Archive for December, 2011
HillBuzz Open Thread: Tuesday December 27th, 2011
Since then, I’ve gotten a lot of emails from people asking what all the ornaments on the tree were and what they signified about American history. The trees were decorated by Denise McNulty of DMI Interior designs in Woodland, California. I sent her an email with an interview request and have a call in to the Reagan Library itself to talk to someone knowledgeable about the exhibit for any hidden or inside references in the trees. Until I hear back from them, however, I thought it would be fun to include a decade a day in the open thread and see what YOU can find hidden in the trees that’s designed to conjure images of life in the decade the trees represent.
I also am a fervent believer that Christmas decorations should stay up and dazzle in full glory through at least January 2nd (if not the Feast of the Three Kings). I love buying blank Christmas bulbs on sale wherever I can find them after Christmas: I especially go for the blue, white, and red ones. Though I didn’t have the time or energy to do it in 2011, I typically use these bulbs to make Christmas presents for my friends…and create homemade ornaments personalized for them that I give out for Christmas every year. At Christmas in 2007 I made a bunch of Hillary-themed ornaments that I gave out in Iowa to people I especially liked when we went canvassing door-to-door before the Caucus. I planned on making Sarah Palin ornaments this year to canvass for her in Iowa, but the Governor decided not to run and that scrapped my plans to be on the ground for the Caucus, regardless of how well I’d feel or how brutally cold the weather would be. There isn’t a candidate running who I’d invest the time to make ornaments for to give away to people in Iowa…but I keep stocking up on these bulbs because I know there will be such a person like that in the future…and that there is always my list of good friends to make ornaments for next Christmas.
To make ornaments, I just keep a shoebox that I fill with clippings of interesting graphics or fun pictures that I find in the magazines I read all year. Then, when it’s time to start making the ornaments, I look in the box and always find things that speak about the intended recipient to me. With a little glue and a dusting of colored glitter, I’ve got an ornament for a friend…at less than $1 in cost per ornament. I also find somewhere on the bulb to note the year and to sneak in some little message about how much the person means to me. I’m actually really sad that I didn’t get to do this in 2011, so it’s a project that’s at the top of my “2012 To Do List” for sure.
I mention all this because if you’d like to start a tradition like this yourself, then you should snap up all the blank, round Christmas ornaments you can find while they are on sale in the next week or so (before they disappear under a flood of Valentine’s Day candy). Thrift shops are also a great place to find this stuff any day of the year…or you can always go to a Michael’s or JoAnne’s Fabrics and pay five times what you would doing it my way.
But, back to the Reagan “An American Christmas” trees, what do the ornaments tell YOU about life in the 1770s?
What are the people in YOUR part of the country talking about today, as everyone gets back from the Christmas holiday?
Were there any interesting political discussion you can share that you witnessed over Christmas Eve or Christmas Day gatherings?
The Reagan Library’s Philippine Shell Christmas Tree (Just One of Many State Gifts on Display)
I always feel a little let down on Boxing Day, with the joy and celebration of Christmas concluded for another year. The lights may still be strung up on the trees and houses around town, but a lot of people stop turning them on. The store shelves are being cleared of Christmas items and will have Valentine’s Day chocolates for sale by this afternoon, I’m sure.
So I thought it would be nice to show you one more Christmas treasure today from the Reagan Library’s collection in Simi Valley, California.
This was a gift to President Reagan from Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, made from clam shells, sea star needles, and other sea life appendages and accoutrements that washed ashore on those islands in the Pacific.
By law, Presidents are not allowed to keep gifts that are given to them by the visiting heads of state or government who visit the White House. The President, as the representative of the people of the United States, graciously accepts these various items…which are often displayed to the public somewhere in Washington during that president’s term.
Upon leaving office, the private entity that is formed to create that departing President’s official library and museum raises the funds from donors to purchase many of the treasures given to the President by these dignitaries. For instance, when Gordon Brown visited the United States as Prime Minister of Great Britain in 2009, he gifted Obama an antique pen set that was carved from wood of as sister ship to the HMS Resolute (the ship from which the wood for the Oval Office’s desk was obtained); Barack Obama, it should be noted, gave Brown a set of dvds a staffer had bought at Best Buy (which contained old movies that routinely play for free on most cable stations…and the dvds were in fact Region-1 coded, which British dvd players can’t operate…on top of Gordon Brown being legally blind and unable to watch dvds of anything, so they might as well have been radio programs).
After he leaves office in 2013, the Obama presidential library and museum in Honolulu, Hawaii will have an option to purchase that pen set from the US government for display to the public in the same way this Philippine shell Christmas tree is displayed at the Reagan Library. Something tells me the pen set is going to stay in the White House or end up in the Smithsonian, though, since I can’t imagine Obama wanting to part with any of his own coin for something thoughtful and historic the British people gave to him (considering how aggressively Obama seized every available opportunity to snub and slight our allies in London).
If you’re someone who still thinks the Obama Library will be in Chicago, you need to think again. I have a friend who works at the University of Chicago; in 2009, the University here was very gung-ho in pursuing the Obama Library. Mayor Daley and other Chicago politicos were zealously scheming to land what they saw at the time as “a prize”. The doomed Chicago Olympics bid included a provision to use land reclaimed from one of the temporary stadiums to have been constructed for the Games to build the Library near the University of Chicago’s Hyde Park campus, with the University gaining all the documents and other treasures for some sort of “Obama Center” akin to the “Carter Center” in Georgia.
Well, I’ve been told that “it’s been a long time” since anyone at the University of Chicago “has said boo about even wanting that Library”. It is as good as a done deal that the University of Hawaii is getting the Library, and that it’s going to be, most likely, some sort of gaudy Frank Gehry-designed, crumpled steel and curvy glass monstrosity right on the water. The Obamas are not coming back to Chicago once they vacate the White House in January of 2013…they are headed to Honolulu, where no doubt Barack Obama will pick up where Jimmy Carter leaves off and become the official America-hating former US president once Carter passes away in 2013 or 2014.
It’s sick how the timing on all this has worked out: just as Carter’s about to permanently join Kim Jung-Il, Muyamar Quadaffi, and other vile America haters somewhere much, much warmer than Hawaii or the Philippines, Barack Obama’s going to begin his post-presidency in Honolulu where he’ll no doubt eclipse Carter in the global apologies-for-American-excellence department.
It’s like there’s an undeserved gift that just keeps on giving or something.
Hope!
Change!
Worse than Carter!
Which means there’s always hope that the 45th or 46th president could be even better than Reagan.
It’s Boxing Day…I just have to end on a positive note here.
HillBuzz Open Thread: Boxing Day 2011
How weird is this nostalgia…but, do you remember when America’s worst enemies in the world were super buff and wicked hot? Man alive, could Dolph Lundgren fill out a pair of red and yellow silk shorts. The only way this movie could have been any better is if it was about the Olympic swim team, “Dolph” was short for “dolphin” and longed for his little red Speedos. What were we saying? Oh, that today America’s greatest threat isn’t the Soviet Union, but Islam…most aggressively pushed not by “I vill break you!” hotties, but stinky lunatics in long bears who plot our destruction from caves and whose endless threats of murdering anyone in media who speak the truth about Islam results in Muslims almost never appearing as villains in any films (when in reality they are the only people on a global scale causing any turmoil these days).
It’s a far cry from a time when all we ever had to really do to win the cold war was to pit two hot studs against each other in a ring and box it out. Remember when movies were not only awesome like that, but also featured montages scored by Survivor?
Boxing Day — as you well know — commemorates the great Rocky Balboa/Ivan Drago 1985 boxing title bout that began the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s very big in Britain, where Sly Stallone remains a huge box office star. Hence, that whole “boxing” theme for today.
What are you and the pugilists in your family going to do to celebrate Boxing Day today?
What important non-boxing related stories are you following this Monday?
How many people (rough guess) do you think are going to frantically post in comments that this is not really what Boxing Day is all about?
Seriously, how hot was Dolph Lundgren back in the day?
Her Majesty the Queen’s Christmas Message 2011 (and Archive of Previous Years’ Messages)
Wherever you are in the world, and regardless of what citizenship you hold, I hope you’ll take a few moments and listen to Her Majesty the Queen’s Christmas message, as aired today, December 25th, 2011.
I personally have always seen Queen Elizabeth II as a sort of grandmother to America. I’m sure she’d be thrilled to hear that, considering the fact she’s nowhere that old, but because she is the living personification of Great Britain and the British people to me, it’s how I feel every time I hear her speak.
I love the woman like a grandmother because I love the people of the Commonwealth like our British cousins. We are family, if estranged by oceans and the divorce of revolution.
I’ve read that Her Majesty the Queen and her family celebrate on Christmas Eve and have a great deal of fun together that night, but on Christmas Day the Queen retreats by herself into cloisters of intense prayer and reflection. It’s on Christmas Day that she renews her vow to serve the British people as their Queen and to continue the burden of being the living personification of all things British on the world stage.
Depending on who is currently in the White House, this commitment and dedication makes me wish we had separate Heads of State and Government in this country the way they have in the Commonwealth; Queen Elizabeth II is a professional and loyal representative of her people as Head of State. She takes her duties seriously and commits herself every year to living every day with strict regiment to her duties.
In America, with Head of State and Head of Government combined into one President, we leave things up to chance that we’ll get someone in the Oval Office who will be able to travel the world and represent American values successfully and embody all that is good and just about this country. Clearly, Barack and Michelle Obama fail every day at this; he’s constantly apologizing for American exceptionalism and working diligently to undermine traditional alliances while encouraging radical Islamization — while his wife’s sourness and obvious distaste for the country she’s only just become “proud of ” in her adult life is evident wherever she goes, whatever she does (and those travels primarily take place just so she can squander a fortune on luxuries for herself).
Please contrast that with the role Her Majesty the Queen plays as Head of State to the Commonwealth nations. This woman has been proud of her country every day of her life. During WWII, she served as an auto mechanic fixing military vehicles while her parents refused to be evacuated to safety in Canada; her father famously exclaimed his fate would be that of the British people and her mother ordered that her children would stay put with her and that she would never leave the side of the King.
At the first sign of any trouble at all, the Obamas would have their sorry butts on the first plane to Honolulu where they’d wine, dine, golf, fart, and belch while America collapsed in ruin. I would not put it past these people to also laugh gleefully while it was happening.
My boyfriend Justin doesn’t understand the respect I have for Her Majesty the Queen and why I keep a framed photo of her hanging on the wall here at Buzzquarters; it’s actually a portrait from an old copy of Life magazine I bought for $5 at a thrift shop here in Boystown. She’s so very young in the picture; I think it was taken in the first year or two of her reign, but her commitment to her duties and her love of all things British is clear in her eyes (and familiar still in the video of her Christmas message). Justin and I actually had our first fight over Queen Elizabeth, when he made fun of the photo and the Queen once; he was joking with me, but there are some things I take seriously, always, and disrespect for the Queen is one of them.
Justin didn’t understand this, since his Millennial generation thinks it’s funny to mock the Queen or other people and things that are steeped in tradition and meaning that might escape the Millennials. I’ve noticed that many Obama voters from 2008 have no problem with the current President traveling the world bowing to Emperors and Muslim kings, apologizing for the United States being the greatest country in the history of the world, and disrespecting the British in particular. This, after all, is the White House that presented British Prime Minister Gordon Brown with a collection of DVDs from Best Buy as a gift (when the man is blind and can’t watch Region-1 coded disks on a British dvd player even if he could see the screen) and gave Her Majesty a used iPod in 2009 that was filled with recording of Barack Obama speaking. Horrible. But, many in Justin’s age cohort think things like this are funny.
I find nothing amusing about it at all.
When I see Her Majesty the Queen — and more importantly when I hear her speak — I am reminded of the great gifts the British people have given the world. Britain is the grandparent of not just the United States, but of many countries around the world who today exist as the engines of freedom and democracy and the mighty vanguard of Western civilization. Britain’s children, like Canada and Australia, are some of our country’s dearest friends.
I consider the United States a “grandchild” of Britain and not a “son or daughter” country because I think of America’s parents as the Founding Fathers and the government formed under the Articles of Confederation of the 13 original American colonies. That Confederation was Britain’s child, and the country it birthed became the current United States (while Commonwealth countries like Canada and Australia are more directly related to Great Britain itself).
I hate thinking about a future world where Her Majesty the Queen is not around to deliver her Christmas message. I realize I feel about her the way I did when I was in high school and it occurred to me my own grandparents would not be around forever and that I need to appreciate them and hang on their every word because one day I would wish more than anything that I could have them back, for only a day, to hear them talk again.
I feel none of this love, respect, or affection for Prince Charles — whom I regard as an idiot and unfit for the duties that rest ahead of him. It’s my sincere hope he never ascends to the throne and that the crown falls to Prince William by some intervention of fate, so the world is spared the embarrassment of a Charles V reign. I believe the man has early onset dementia and that his ramblings sympathetic to both the “Church of Green” and Islam are dangerous to Western civilization as we know it.
Here’s hoping we get 20 or so more of these Christmas messages from Queen Elizabeth II, followed immediately by a message from King William when he’s in his 50s (and Charles is already in his grave, having missed the chance to ever embarrass the British the way the Obamas embarrass America with their current antics).
One of the Christmas traditions that Justin’s getting used to in life with me is the reviewing of Her Majesty’s past Christmas messages. It’s incredibly interesting to hear her take on the world’s events through the years.
I’ve collected as many as I could find for you here, via YouTube, for you to listen to a few on your own if you like.
I wish Her Majesty the Queen and all the people of the Commonwealth the very best on this Christmas Day. I hope they all know that I am not alone in appreciating the special relationship that exists between the United States and Great Britain…and I am joined by millions in the belief that the next President we elect (in 2012) will abandon the Obama’s deliberately poor treatment of all things British and will restore the Anglo-American alliance to what it should always be.
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2002
2001
2000
1992
1991
1989
1988
1987
1986
1984
1957…the very first televised Christmas message
A “through the years” photo recap of the Christmas messages.
Some beautiful Christmas music with photos of Her Majesty and the Royal Family through the years.
Here’s something else you might enjoy: it’s when Barack Obama made an ass of himself at Buckingham Palace in March of 2011. In the clip, “King Putt” breaks wind royal protocol and makes a toast to Her Majesty the Queen, and it looks like no one around him is listening or paying attention to him, like they are all ignoring him. You can clearly see panic sweep across his smug mug as he feverishly wonders why no one is drinking anything and they are all standing at attention and staring straight ahead. Though the camera’s not focused on her (thankfully), I can imagine Michelle Antoinette’s already chugged not only her own wine but the glasses belonging to anyone in grabbing distance as well.
Why is no one drinking? It’s due to protocol, where no one drinks until the Queen herself does, and the Queen does not drink for a toast until after the anthem is played. Obama looked foolish because he has no idea how to conduct himself as a Head of State when traveling abroad. Also, I’m pretty sure Secretary of State Hillary Clinton deliberately did not have anyone in Protocol tell him how to do this properly so that he would indeed look very stupid. That’s totally something Hillary would do on the sly to humiliate him, since she’s just old “likable enough Hillary” and that’s how she rolls.
I’m sure Buckingham Palace officials didn’t go out of their way to help Obama either, considering the slights and slings he’s directed at the British people since becoming the US President.
Here’s Obama admitting how stupid he is:
Classic.
The Reagan Library’s “An American Christmas” Trees Through the Decades Display
[ Click above to embiggen...the annual display of Christmas trees decorated with ornaments representing different decades of American history at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California ]
Here’s a little Christmas cheer for you to enjoy on this very special day: images of the Reagan Library’s Christmas trees, decorated for each decade of our country’s history.
I think it’s especially fun once the trees hit the 20th Century and pop culture zooms to the forefront. My favorite tree is the 1920s with all the jazz baby silver and sparkle…but am partial to the 80s and 90s trees since those are the decades I grew up in. I was born in the decade of the 70s tree (though I’m a Ford, not a Carter, baby) but have more pity than emotional attachment to it. My boyfriend Justin’s a Reagan baby but is part of the Millennial generation, so he relates most to the 2000s tree.
Wouldn’t it be a fun hobby to start collecting ornaments that represented YOU or YOUR own decade and begin adding them to your family’s tree?
I hope you enjoy these photos as much as I do — please be sure to chime in below if you have any favorites from the trees.
[ Click below to see the Christmas trees ]
He Was Sent As Carpenter, Not A Conquerer…and Was Delivered in A Manger, Not Anointed in A Giant Styrofoam Temple in Denver
Oh, Ms. Whitney, every year I wish on Christmas Day that you could someday sing like this again…but I’m so happy you were put on this Earth to belt out my all-time-favorite Christmas song even once.
It’s important to remember the reason for the season this Sunday morning.
They’ll be a lot of distractions inhibiting that - a flurry of tinsel and a hurricane of wrapping paper and ribbon sure to build to critical mass in many living rooms, one of which you and your family might be assembled in today. I hope you have a lot of good food to eat and great company to enjoy, but I wish you’ll take the time to remember whose birthday it is today…the reason for the season…and what his birth that day so long ago still means to all of us today.
Instead of a conqueror in the cold, God sent the world a carpenter to a warm little manger where he was surrounded by people who loved him and gentle animals who had no idea what was going on but were lucky to be there. He could have sent His son to a royal palace with armies awaiting their next commander, or delivered the world not a Savior but a Subjugator.
In the modern equivalent, He could have birthed the King of Kings live on television in a massive styrofoam temple in Denver with a legion of cultish followers determined to set the world on fire in his name…but instead, Christ was born in the most simple manner possible and never in His life demanded anyone’s fawning adoration or commanded obedience.
Every year, on December 25th, I stop to marvel at that.
We live in strange, dangerous, and often horrifying times. Evil not only really exists in the world, but it’s on the move, and in 2011 has a publicity department with press agents. Every day, Christianity is directly contrasted with “a religion of peace” that spreads its message not through peace, but through violence and murder that the politically-correct brigades work diligently to downplay and our own agenda-driven media in this country apologizes for.
Well, Jesus wasn’t born to be a conqueror, but He wasn’t sent here to be politically correct, either. As a man, He called it like it was and when He turned over the tables in the temple He set the gold standard for forthright activism. Somehow He accomplished His mission and instilled in His followers a respect for life and a quest for peace — unlike those today who claim to be part of a “religion of peace” but condone the downing of airplanes or the exploding of skyscrapers to further the reach of Islam (which is neither peaceful nor a religion, but a death-cult criminal enterprise where true evil in our time has aggressively flourished).
Christmas Day is hopefully not just a time for you to enjoy presents and wonderful things to eat, but a day of the year when you really think about what sort of world you want it to be and what side of the battle line you’re on. Today commemorates the day Jesus was born, the day He began His mission to do great good in the world and embark on His assigned and destined quest.
As we look towards the new year, it’s an ideal time to start thinking about who YOU want to be and what YOU want to do in 2012 to further the individual quest YOU are on.
God sent His son as our Savior, but he put YOU on this Earth for a reason, too.
You won’t find that reason under a tree in your living room today, but I bet you’ll find it in your heart if you look hard enough. More people than you will ever know are counting on YOU to light your lamp and take it out from under your bushel.
I know you have an important role to play in 2012. And I know the forces of good will triumph over evil next year, and all years to come, if we all do our best to play our individual roles as best we can.
I hope you all have a truly merry Christmas and that you are inspired by the reason for the season in a particularly powerful way next year, because I know this country we all love so very much definitely needs it.
And I know the key to victory rests with YOU and your family and what YOU are going to do for this country and all that is good in the important year ahead.
Merry Christmas 2011
Hillbuzz is wishing everyone a wonderful and blessed Christmas….one filled with lots of love and laughter.
May God bless each and every one of you.
Christmas Eve Open Thread: 2011
Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tinny reindeer.
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!
“Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.
His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”
What are your plans today? What traditions do you celebrate on Christmas Eve?
We hope that you all have a wonderful day.
Remember: If You Want Ron Paul to POOF! Away, You Must Say His Name Backwards Every 90 Days
[ Click above to embiggen ]
Ron Paul really comes off as a sort of “trickster imp” in a lot of the things he says and does, especially in the Republican debates. He’s just the latest in a long line of these “imps” in recent presidential elections, running back to Ross Perot in 1992, Lyndon LaRouche in 1996, Ralph Nader in 2000, Howard Dean in 2004, and Dennis Kucinich in 2008.
In the Superman comics, Mr. Mxyzptlk (pronounced “Mix-ush-pit-lick”) isn’t a bad man, and he actually considers himself to be Superman’s pal.
But his thought processes are rooted in a completely different dimension from our own.
Whenever Ron Paul goes off on a tangent describing his dream of withdrawing all American troops from everywhere in the world and closing down all our bases, so that Islamist theocracies like Iran (and the Islamizing countries that have radicalized under Barack Obama’s watch) will like us and drop all plans to arm themselves with nukes or obliterate Israel from the map, Dr. Paul comes across as a very naive and out-of-touch-with-reality little man who may very well hail from the Land of Zrrf somewhere removed from the visible spectrum.
During the debates, the talking-head moderators always seem to trick Ron Paul into saying something that the majority of Americans interprets as completely insane and horrifying. It’s happened at every single debate so far. Like orange clockwork.
It always reminds me of Superman tricking Mr. Mxyzptlk into saying his name backwards (Kltpzyxm) — which sends him POOF! back to the Fifth Dimension.
There was one episode of the late-90s Superman animated series where this happened over and over and over again, with Superman not having to work hard at all to make it happen.
Doesn’t that remind you of Ron Paul’s performance in the debates, where over and over again he falls for the moderators’ tricks and makes an outrageous statement about Iranian nukes or turning this country into an isolationist ostrich?
I hope at the next debate Newt Gingrich gets him to say “Luap noR” aloud so we can see what happens.
He won’t be able to participate in a debate for at least 90 days, if the comic books are right about this sort of thing (as they usually are). It takes that long for him to rematerialize from the Fifth Dimension and get up to his antics again.
Ron Paul’s Newsletters: What Should He Have Known About His Ghostwriters?
[ Ghost writers can be ghost readers too, apparitionally, but only if the ghostwriters are already dead. ]
Because Ron Paul’s leading in polls taken for the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary, the Alinsky Methods Death Star’s been fired up and aimed at him by the Left and agenda-driven media. This means everyone and their elf will be talking at Christmas dinner about newsletters that were published under Dr. Paul’s name in the 1990s. Typically, the agenda-driven media’s now claiming this proves Dr. Paul is a RAAACIST.
I’ve never read the newsletters and I don’t intend to because I am already not a Ron Paul supporter – because of his stance toward cutting aid to Israel (the one country in the world I feel we have a moral duty to protect, support, and defend with all our might) and his terrifyingly naive belief that Iran should not be prevented at all costs from gaining a nuclear weapon. Whatever was printed in newsletters years ago pales in comparison to this, in my mind – since anyone who downplays the Islamic theocracy’s clear and present danger to the world has DONE LOST HIS OWN MIND.
I do, however, want you to think about just how often people are called RAAACISTS! by the agenda-driven media and how this always happens whenever these individuals are doing something that either threatens the Left’s plans or provides some sort of obstacle to a narrative the agenda-driven media itself is crafting. Twenty years have passed since those newsletters were written, so you need to ask yourself why — at this exact moment, just days away from the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire primary — are all the talking heads on almost every Leftist-supporting network working overtime to depict Dr. Paul as a foaming-at-the-mouth RAAACIST!.
One of the worst and most stupid mistakes the Republican Party forever makes is not as a giant, cohesive unit hitting the agenda-driven media back HARD whenever any Republican is called a RAAACIST! for any reason. This is the Left’s number one weapon against conservatives: false accusations of racism or threats of branding someone a RAAACIST! if he or she doesn’t shut up and go away like the Left wants them to.
The Left, the agenda-driven media, and the Cocktail Party GOP establishment all want Ron Paul and his supporters to go away, and they are honest-to-goodness terrified at the thought of Dr. Paul winning the Iowa Caucus for two important reasons:
1. These people all want Willard Mittens Romneycare to win the Iowa Caucus, not Ron Paul, and calling Dr. Paul a RAAACIST! and really amping up the attacks on him is designed to make Iowans take another look at “noncontroversial” cucumbers-and-mayonnaise Romneycare and possibly decide the only way to avoid being called RAAACISTS themselves is to vote for the bland candidate the media’s deliberately not taking any smacks at (since they want him to win the nomination before they unleash Hell on him).
2. If Ron Paul wins the Iowa Caucus, then Iowa will no longer be allowed to be the “first in the nation” in the next presidential election…and the permanent political class in both parties doesn’t feel like going through the arduous task of changing the nominating system (as many of these consultants believe they’re experts on manipulating the system in place now, so why would they ever want to change it?).
One of the most thrilling and euphoric days of my life will be the day the Iowa Caucus is tossed onto the trash heap of history. Do not believe all the lies the agenda-driven media will tell you for the next week about how “seriously” Iowans take their “first in the nation” role. I went to Iowa for eight straight weeks in the leadup to the 2008 Caucus and canvassed a dozen cities and small towns, going door to door in the cold campaigning for Hillary Clinton. I never met one of these “serious” Iowans who “followed the candidates and issues closely”.
I did, however, meet a lot of very spoiled, overly indulged, rather petty people who — more or less — seemed to vote for whichever candidate they met the most times, or which candidate actually knocked on their door personally and came in to eat cake with them.
Almost all of the people I met knocking on doors were very nice, and all were thrilled to have people knocking on their doors. Even the twenty-somethings and middle-aged people behaved like they were octogenarians in nursing homes that only got visitors every four years; at some houses, people raced to answer the door, falling over each other to have the honor of being courted by representatives of the campaigns.
I can’t remember a single Iowan having anything interesting or original to say, but I have vivid memories of how greedily they ate up all that attention and how aggressively they bragged about which candidates they met in person and how often they or their relatives had seen them at a local market or coffee shop or whatever.
The whole Iowa Caucus spectacle reminds me of going to Disneyland and seeing little kids racing around with their autograph books to meet, and get photos with, the various actors dressed up as princesses or plushy characters. While it’s not just acceptable but actually expected for small children to be so starstruck, and at times overly demanding of their favorite character’s personal attention, none of this is becoming on people in their 40s and 50s who live in places like Dubuque, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, or wherever…and behave this way with presidential candidates.
These people LIVE for the orgy of attention they’re lavished with every four years, but it’s a damn lie the agenda-driven media propagates that Iowans take candidate vetting seriously and actually have the slightest clue what they are doing when it’s time to “caucus” (which, on the Democrat side at least, involves wandering into corners of a large room while people in their 80s or 90s attempt to count the individual bodies huddled there). Always remember this simple fact: Barack Obama is president today because his campaign gamed the Iowa Caucus through voter fraud and the general atmosphere of chaos and ineptitude prevalent in a caucus; if Obama had lost Iowa, he would not have been the Democrats’ nominee and none of the terrible things that happened in the last four years would have happened. Obama would be Vice President instead, and he’d be having a ball playing golf and saying stupid things somewhere (Joe Biden style) with absolutely no ability to do any damage whatsoever to the country. It is only because of Iowa that we are in the enormous collective mess we are in during this “The Golden Age of Hope and Change”.
While I would never vote for Ron Paul, and I certainly don’t want him to be the Republican nominee, I must admit a large part of me wants him to win the Iowa Caucus just so this will be the last time in American history that Iowans are indulged so preposterously in a presidential election year or have such opportunity to vault a candidate like Barack Obama into the White House.
If we are ever to end the boondoggle that is ethanol subsidies then we need to take the “first in the nation” rights away from the attention-seeking divas of Iowa, since neither political party will ever make a move against the ethanol scam while Iowa still holds such disproportionate sway over presidential nominations.
If Ron Paul would win the Caucus, expect to witness the full power of the Alinsky Methods Death Star aimed at him because the permanent political class will not want to allow him to make clear and obvious fools of the divas in New Hampshire as well, by winning that primary a few days later too….which, honestly, he could very well win if his fans actually turn out the votes as aggressively as they defend Dr. Paul from all criticism on the Internet.
This is all backdrop for what I really wanted to take a moment to talk about in this post because you’re going to hear a lot of people at your Christmas dinners talking about “Ron Paul’s RAAACIST! newsletters”, since that’s what the agenda-driven media and Cocktail Party GOP establishment WANT you to talk about.
I’ve seen many people commenting on various articles here and there not really understanding what a ghostwriter is or how much Dr. Paul would have known about what was being ghostwritten for him.
Well, I’ve been a professional ghostwriter for eight years now and have ghostwritten for all sorts of clients, including a few here in Chicago political circles. Mostly, I ghostwrite very detailed, time-consuming, and quite boring things like grant proposals, annual reports, and copy for different trade publications. But through the years I’ve also ghostwritten for a few people who are somewhat famous, and are thus extremely careful and conscious of their brands.
I’ve ghostwritten cookbooks for a celebrity chef, public remarks for a Chicago philanthropist, and speeches for a fairly well-known architect and artist. All three of these people watched everything I did under their name LIKE HAWKS and repeatedly sent me back to the computer to rework every draft dozens of times until they were satisfied that every single sentence, down to the period, represented them and their brands they way THEY wanted to be represented.
Even though the grants I ghostwrite are incredibly important (since the nonprofits I write for depend on them to cover the programs they’re specifically written for), in the eight years I’ve been doing this now I’ve never had a single Development Director or foundation executive micromanage me because the grants don’t have a direct and personal connection to any of these individuals. They might be signing the grants as if they wrote them themselves, and they certainly look better the more grants are accepted and the more programs are funded, but the people approving the ghostwritten grants don’t feel their PERSONAL reputations or good names are on the line with anything that’s being dispatched to a grant review board at a foundation somewhere, since these grants will never be made public and will never be published anywhere.
The cookbooks, public remarks, speeches, newsletters, and other things I’ve ghostwritten for public figures were a completely different story, no matter how laid-back or pleasant the famous person was otherwise. One of these clients was a real control freak who micromanaged everyone who worked for him, but the rest of these people were very nice and generally carefree…except when it came to anything that would be printed out and distributed to the public signed with their name. They insisted on reading each and every word, multiple times, and would never in a million years approve anything written in their voice that was not 100% factually accurate to the best of their knowledge.
I’ve told you all of this because you need to understand that I do not believe for a moment that Ron Paul did not know exactly what was in each of the newsletters that were published with his name on them, ghostwritten in his voice, and signed under his name.
The only way for anyone to convince me that Dr. Paul did not know exactly — to the period in every sentence — what was in those newsletters would be to tell me that Ron Paul has multiple personalities and “Paul Ron” approved the letters in a take on “The United States of Tara” when “Ron Paul” was unavailable and this alternate “entity” took over his body.
Granted, a politician might not read every piece of campaign material his staff writes, but I don’t believe for an instant that Ron Paul wouldn’t read everything that was written in his voice and signed with his name because recipients of those newsletters would assume they were written by him (as mot people out there have no idea how prevalent ghostwriting actually is).
I doubt Barack Obama has ever read “Dreams of My Father” (which was ghostwritten by William Ayers) or “The Audacity of Hope” (ghostwritten by the Jon Favreau who isn’t the movie director), but he is a very rare exception to the rule because his own hubris and ego preclude him from ever imagining his ghostwriters would write a single word that would disparage him…in a world where he felt certain the agenda-driven media would trumpet anything with his name on it as “the greatest autobiographical writing the universe has ever seen”.
Ron Paul, through the years, has insisted that various entities and organizations are out to get him, to stop him, or to keep him quiet about all sorts of things that Dr. Paul’s newsletters covered. I just can’t square the circle to ever conclude that a man who lacks Obama’s media protection would ever feel comfortable enough allowing controversial articles to be disseminated under his name when these articles would eventually come back to hurt him.
I once had to re-write a chapter on organically grown mushrooms something like 57 times because the chef I worked for was paranoid he’d be raked over coals for any tinge of cliche in those seven or eight pages; this man was convinced his career would never recover if an amusing anecdote I’d written about chanterelles wasn’t “him” precisely and definitively as he insisted it needed to be.
If Chef was that obsessed with my characterization of mushroom preparation and so convinced I could ruin his life and career with the smallest mistake in that ghostwriting, then I just can’t imagine a non-multiple-personality-disorder scenario where Ron Paul (or “Paul Ron”, whichever one is ultimately dominant) knowingly allowed newsletters to be written in his first person narrative and signed with his name that he didn’t personally approve line by line, sentence by sentence, down to the last period.
I truly don’t believe Ron Paul’s a RAAACIST, for the simple fact that his Congressional district is 40% black and there’s no way Democrats wouldn’t have knocked him off in an election with RAAACIST! accusations if they had anything at all to go on.
But I believe Ron Paul very much indeed read and approved every one of those newsletters, since it’s illogical to believe someone in his position wouldn’t supervise his ghostwriter(s) on a micro level like that.
Dr. Paul does himself and his fervent supporters a major disservice by obfuscating on this and giving the agenda-driven media more material to attack him with in these last few remaining days before the attention-gluttons of Iowa have their “Me! Me! Me!” fest.
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Side Note:
This is something that always makes me laugh when I see it written in reference to Ron Paul’s newsletters, but a “ghostwriter” is someone like me who produces prose for a client that the client will ultimately sign their name to and take credit for.
A “ghost writer” is someone like Agatha Christie, William Shakespeare, or Ulysses S. Grant who is a writer, dead for some length of time, and returned from the spirit world to churn out new books via seance or other paranormal means.
Ghostwriters sign confidentiality agreements with stiff penalties precluding them from ever identifying themselves as authors of the works they were assigned to write. In many cases, it would be a career-ending embarrassment for someone like Barack Obama if ghostwriters like William Ayers or Jon Favreau ever publicly admitted they authored his books (and, in my opinion, embarrasing for Ayers and Favreau since those two book are so trite and terrible).
Ghost writers don’t sign anything because their hands pass right through the pens, coating those Bics with ectoplasm while possibly giving Ray Parker Jr. false hope for a career resurgence. Who you gonna call?
If you ever see a quickie, celebrity autobiography that has “with So-and-So” written under the celebrity’s name that So-and-So writer is not a ghostwriter (or a ghost writer, either, most likely…unless it’s Shirley MacLaine we’re talking about…or, yet again, Ray Parker Jr.) but the actual author of the book who has just been paid to take a backseat on the dust jacket in order to sell more copies. The celebrity probably just had a few meetings with the writer, where the two of them talked about what the celebrity wanted the book to be about and the writer tape recorded everything and used that as an outline.
After that, it was just a matter of filling in the blanks, making the narrative flow reasonably well, and meeting the publisher’s demand for number of chapters and ultimate page count.
My all-time favorite example of ghostwriting was Fantasia Barrino’s “book” — which she claims to have “written” — soon after being a contestant on American Idol…which was a singing competition she appeared on, during which she repeatedly stifled back tears while talking about being illiterate (to gain sympathy from voters).
The book’s still on sale on Amazon (for as low as one cent), but it has no “with So-and-So” credited under Fantasia’s name. This means, quite miraculously, that an illiterate reality show contestant “wrote” a book about being illiterate when, by her own admission, she couldn’t ever read a book because of her illiteracy.
And that book is STILL probably better than “The Audacity of Hope” by “Barack Obama”.
