Barack Obama's 15 Minutes of Fame

By Greg Lewis

"In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes." -Andy Warhol

In 1970, George Winne, Jr., achieved his Warholian 15 minutes of fame by setting himself on fire on the campus of the University of California, San Diego, to protest the war in Vietnam.  These days you can achieve the same notoriety if you've done nothing more than bronze yourself to a deep pre-cancerous glow like tanning addict Patricia Krentcil.
Or, you can take things several steps further by doing your best to destroy the U.S. economy, fraternize with the Islamic enemy, and cripple the American energy industry. Add in advancing the cause of bringing our country under the rule of a big-government, crony-capitalist elite by dividing America into warring minority demographic groups in the most blatant manner imaginable, and you've got Barack Obama's claim to his 15 minutes of fame.
The president's 15 minutes has lasted longer than Warhol predicted, but I tend to think that at the time Warhol uttered the words, they reflected his understanding that our culture was changing so rapidly and dramatically, that everyone had the potential to spend time in the celebrity spotlight. In other words, some people's "15 minutes" last longer than others'.
The point is that in the increasingly democratic world of the electronic celebrity, having "what it takes" has taken on a new meaning. It has nothing to do with what we used to think of as being the sort of substantial person that might at least have had a shot at achieving celebrity status.
The key is the word "celebrity." Thanks to Barack Obama, the U.S. presidency now has less and less to do with competence and leadership and more and more to do with that elusive word whose definition changes with each degrading instance of its redefinition downward in the media.
We have a cool president who hobnobs with the ladies of The View and slow jams the news with comedian Jimmy Fallon. The key to these appearances? The people hosting them have risen to stardom despite having done nothing of substance in their lives. They're all products of a culture that's living down to the values Warhol must have had in mind when he began the redefinition of "fame."
Shortly after Obama raised his celebrity status another notch by reluctantly coming out in favor of gay marriage, he shared the spotlight with that most vacuous of celebs, George Clooney, who hosted a fundraiser attended by the Hollywood equivalent of Las Vegas whales and boosted Obama's campaign coffers by some $15 mil. The fundraiser hosted by gay singer Ricky Martin mustered only a comparatively measly $1 million for the "first gay president."
In keeping with the image of a celebrity president, it doesn't hurt that First Lady Michelle has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on 16 vacations, on several of which she has been accompanied by an entourage of a size that would put many a successful hip-hop artist to shame. When it comes to making the most of one's 15 minutes of fame, Michelle knows whereof she speaks.
In order to earn your 15 minutes of fame today, you need to do something that goes against the grain of the American spirit. The events that lead to their perpetrators' 15 minutes of fame need to have at least one of the following qualities: 1) be morally reprehensible (see Kardashian sisters) or downright illegal (see Eric Holder Fast and Furious); 2) contribute nothing to the benefit of society (see Bill Maher); 3) be based on lies or misrepresentations or done solely for personal aggrandizement or political gain (see Barack Obama).
It doesn't hurt that the press continues to drink the Obama "Cool-Aid" and ignores the turpitude at the heart of this administration.
The Obama re-election campaign is attempting to hold together a fragile coalition of minorities almost solely on the strength of Obama's now endangered celebrity status. The list of groups comprising that coalition includes many who have risen to prominence on the strength of their exemplifying at least one of the "values" listed above.
They include the following: radical environmentalists; those heavily dependent on the federal government for their subsistence; illegal immigrants who favor continuing the administration's policies of providing sanctuary and funding for those here illegally; women bent on convincing other women that being a woman consists precisely of not doing those things that women have traditionally done to maintain and define their families; the rapidly shrinking number of union members; and gender-based minorities.
This coalition is rapidly falling into disarray at the expense of the president's compulsion to be in the pop culture spotlight.
Obama's 15 minutes of fame is about to come to a crashing end at the hands of a rival candidate who aspires to nothing more than restoring American values that have been so distorted and displaced by those who, like Barack Obama, must have their 15 minutes in the bleak sun of narcissistic degeneracy and moral relativism that lights the world of the celebrity, and damn the consequences.

Big Lies in Politics

By Thomas Sowell

5/22/2012

 

The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy them, and only in the short run. The current outbreaks of riots in Europe show what happens when the truth catches up with both the politicians and the people in the long run.

Among the biggest lies of the welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic is the notion that the government can supply the people with things they want but cannot afford. Since the government gets its resources from the people, if the people as a whole cannot afford something, neither can the government.
There is, of course, the perennial fallacy that the government can simply raise taxes on "the rich" and use that additional revenue to pay for things that most people cannot afford. What is amazing is the implicit assumption that "the rich" are all such complete fools that they will do nothing to prevent their money from being taxed away. History shows otherwise.
After the Constitution of the United States was amended to permit a federal income tax, in 1916, the number of people reporting taxable incomes of $300,000 a year or more fell from well over a thousand to fewer than three hundred by 1921.
Were the rich all getting poorer? Not at all. They were investing huge sums of money in tax-exempt securities. The amount of money invested in tax-exempt securities was larger than the federal budget, and nearly half as large as the national debt.
This was not unique to the United States or to that era. After the British government raised their income tax on the top income earners in 2010, they discovered that they collected less tax revenue than before. Other countries have had similar experiences. Apparently the rich are not all fools, after all.
In today's globalized world economy, the rich can simply invest their money in countries where tax rates are lower.
So, if you cannot rely on "the rich" to pick up the slack, what can you rely on? Lies.
Nothing is easier for a politician than promising government benefits that cannot be delivered. Pensions such as Social Security are perfect for this role. The promises that are made are for money to be paid many years from now -- and somebody else will be in power then, left with the job of figuring out what to say and do when the money runs out and the riots start.
There are all sorts of ways of postponing the day of reckoning. The government can refuse to pay what it costs to get things done. Cutting what doctors are paid for treating Medicare patients is one obvious example.
That of course leads some doctors to refuse to take on new Medicare patients. But this process takes time to really make its full impact felt -- and elections are held in the short run. This is another growing problem that can be left for someone else to try to cope with in future years.
Increasing amounts of paperwork for doctors in welfare states with government-run medical care, and reduced payments to those doctors, in order to stave off the day of bankruptcy, mean that the medical profession is likely to attract fewer of the brightest young people who have other occupations available to them -- paying more money and having fewer hassles. But this too is a long-run problem -- and elections are still held in the short run.
Eventually, all these long-run problems can catch up with the wonderful-sounding lies that are the lifeblood of welfare state politics. But there can be a lot of elections between now and eventually -- and those who are good at political lies can win a lot of those elections.
As the day of reckoning approaches, there are a number of ways of seeming to overcome the crisis. If the government is running out of money, it can print more money. That does not make the country any richer, but it quietly transfers part of the value of existing money from people's savings and income to the government, whose newly printed money is worth just as much as the money that people worked for and saved.
Printing more money means inflation -- and inflation is a quiet lie, by which a government can keep its promises on paper, but with money worth much less than when the promises were made.
Is it so surprising voters with unrealistic hopes elect politicians who lie about being able to fulfill those hopes?

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Inflation is outright theft of our savings by politicians and the Fed. Printing money takes the "value" of your money without you realizing it until a later date, then it is too late to do anything about it. They take that value and apply it to kicking the can down the road so they will not be accountable. It a trick of last resort and it works every time until hyper inflation wrecks the currency and makes its value nill. Its a hidden trick used throughout history because it works and people cannot see it. To understand this takes thought and unfortunately, most people do not take time to think making us all fodder for politicians.

 

Learn the true definition of "inflation". It is the expansion of the money supply by reducing the value of existing money and applying it to new printed money. Inflation is NOT 'the rise in prices. The rise in prices is a sympton of inflation caused by the expansion of the money supply which increases demand for scarce resources. When more dollars attempt to purchase the same goods, prices will rise. Look at food and gas right now.

The Beltway Establishment Still Doesn't Get It

Jay Cost

May 21, 2012 12:01 PM

Earlier this month, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein made quite a splash with a lengthy piece that, when boiled down to essentials, blamed the Republican party for what’s gone wrong in Washington, D.C. This weekend, they were back with a list of reforms to fix the problem.

I was a bit surprised that they didn’t suggest a constitutional amendment banning the GOP! After all, that seemed to follow most directly from their thesis.

But at any rate, here are their four ideas for alleviating partisanship.

1. Campaign finance reform to increase disclosures and cut down on coordination between parties and candidates.
2. Independent commissions for redistricting.
3. “Restoring majority rule” to the Senate by reforming the filibuster.
4. Boosting turnout through things like automatic registration.

What a terrible list. After going full bore on the Republican party for all the evils of partisanship, this is all they can come up with? Four ideas that have been bouncing around ill-attended, dull-as-dishwater Beltway panels for decades? Talk about a letdown!

I want to make a narrow point about this list, specifically their argument about reforming the filibuster, and then a broad point about their entire premise.

Narrow point: I’m all for a debate about the utility of the filibuster. I’ve written extensively on it in the past, and respect and appreciate people on the other side of the issue. What I do not respect, however, is the misappropriation of the English language to make a point.

That’s exactly what Mann and Ornstein have done here by invoking the concept of “majority rule.”

From a rhetorical standpoint, this is a great phrase to use. This is a democracy, after all, and majority rules. Who isn’t in favor of majoritarianism?

Well, for starters, the framers of the Constitution had their doubts, which is one of the reasons they invented the Senate! Put simply, a majority in the Senate does not have to equal a majority of the whole country. In fact, you can construct a majority coalition in the Senate with less than 20 percent of the total voting public being represented by the winning side.

In other words, "majority rule" has no relevant meaning when we apply it to the Senate. So can we stop misusing loaded, moralistic words like “majoritarian” to win an argument? If the facts support your case, you shouldn’t need to do that, right?

Broad point: Mann and Ornstein have accidentally reminded me of something that I occasionally forget: Much of the liberal  establishment class in Washington does not understand what is happening to our country. It was an utterly tone-deaf and just plain incorrect idea to blame the GOP for all the ills of D.C. last week, but then to come back with this milquetoast list of reforms is unintentionally illustrative.

The American political process is starting to break down because of major changes to the political economy of this country. For half a century after World War II, the economy grew at such an incredible pace that we could have low taxes, high social welfare benefits, and a low deficit. This was one of the major reasons why there could be bipartisanship. Economic growth bankrolled these “great” compromises. It had very little to do with the foresight, courage, or moderation of the pols in Washington. They were just riding the wave generated by the private sector.

But all that seems to be over now. For more than a decade (not just the Great Recession but going back to 2000), economic growth has been far below its postwar average, and too low to keep the old regime afloat. You can’t have low taxes, high spending, and low deficits when the economy can’t break 3 percent growth.

This is something the D.C. establishment still does not seem to get. For years, their “farsighted,” bipartisan compromises were possible because the guys with the green eyeshades told them that the economy would grow to fill the gaps that they couldn’t fill. But now the economy can’t do that – so we have a mind-bogglingly large deficit and increased polarization in the political sphere.

That’s why the Beltway establishment has fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the Tea Party. That’s why they think the GOP battle over the debt ceiling was just plain rude. That’s why Mann and Ornstein have come back with these four sorry ideas. They don’t understand that the old way does not work anymore.

If we don’t jumpstart economic growth, sooner or later the bondholders are going to demand structural reforms of us just like they’ve forced upon Greece today. When that day comes, God help us all, but especially help the liberal D.C. establishment! For their days of comfy preening about the ills of partisanship will be over once and for all.

Jay Cost is a staff writer for THE WEEKLY STANDARD and the author of Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic, available now wherever books are sold.

WHO IS BARACK OBAMA? SEALED...

by Ulsterman Report on May 20, 2012

The “Anybody But Obama” movement is growing – as evidenced by this scathing (and quite accurate) image portraying the ongoing cover-up of Barack Obama’s still largely unknown past:

The Rules Are Changing for Talking about Race

By Jay Schalin

(See also: Racism and the PC Inquisition)
Attorney General Eric Holder should have been more careful about what to ask for.  When he first took office, he called for a national dialogue on race, calling us "a nation of cowards" for not facing the subject honestly.
It may be that he's getting what he asked for, but it is not taking the direction he expected.  There's perhaps a little too much courage and honesty going on for his tastes.
Until very recently, white people in the public eye carefully avoided any comments that fell outside narrow politically correct boundaries; to do so was to volunteer to be the defendant in a media show trial, with a loss of reputation and career the likely result.  Even Bill Cosby, who had achieved a universal father-figure status among African-Americans and was arguably the nation's most popular black person, had his ears pinned back with a firestorm of criticism in 2004 when he suggested that problems in the black community originated in that community rather than with white racism.
But the Trayvon Martin case seems to have lifted the lid off the forbidden box, and, despite attempts to put the lid back on, politically incorrect spirits are escaping into the mainstream.  Subsequent events show that a real dialogue may be taking place -- with conservatives hitting back instead of submitting to expectations of ideological perp walks and mea culpas.
Martin's death at the hands of community watch captain George Zimmerman was at first depicted in the national media as a classic case of violent white racism.  Yet as more facts trickled out, that depiction became increasingly dubious.  Furthermore, the media, politicians, and racial activists behaved so unethically, and their rhetoric was so over the top (Al Sharpton said the Republicans were calling for "a war on blacks" and that it was time to "fire back"), that it provoked an unexpected reaction; rather than the usual intimidated assent and backpedaling the country was used to in such cases, some whites became emboldened.  They pointed out the fallacies in the case against Zimmerman and raised some disturbing facts, such as U.S. government statistics that show a black person is 39 times more likely to assault a white person than vice-versa.
One was conservative writer John Derbyshire, who wrote a column for the online publication Taki's Magazine that summed up safety advice he had given his teenage sons over the years concerning blacks.  These lessons included telling his sons to avoid black neighborhoods, to leave events where blacks were in the majority, and that a small but significant percentage of the black population hated whites enough to do them harm without cause.
For that, Derbyshire had his decades-long relationship as a columnist with the conservative National Review ended.  
Several weeks ago, another such "firing" occurred, with Naomi Schaefer Riley sent packing from her role as blogger at the Chronicle of Higher Education for daring to insinuate that a selection of black studies dissertations with cringe-inducing titles, such as "'So I Could Be Easeful': Black Women's Authoritative Knowledge on Childbirth," might be "a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap."
Unlike Derbyshire, Riley was not banished to non-personhood in established conservative circles.  Instead, she fired back from the op-ed pages of her previous employer, the Wall Street Journal, doubling down on her assertion that black studies departments were too politicized from their inception to be objectively academic.
Then, on Tuesday, May 15, the noted black economist and philosopher Thomas Sowell wrote an article entitled "A Censored Race War" for the very same National Review that bounced Derbyshire, becoming the highest-profile figure to describe in detail a phenomenon that has been occurring with increasing frequency for years: gang beatings of random whites (and occasionally Asians) by blacks, sometimes in organized "flash mobs."
These beatings are sometimes reported in local media, sometimes not; Sowell led his article with a case in Norfolk, Virginia, in which two newspaper reporters were viciously beaten by a mob numbering as many as 100 people (with perhaps as many as 30 taking turns working them over).  The victims' own employers, the Virginian-Pilot, did not report on the incident for over a week, and then did so only when a national outcry forced their hand.
The Norfolk incident and others have made the local news, and have even made it onto some national outlets such as Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor -- but as isolated events.  Only a few brave conservative writers have taken on discussing them as part of a patterned national development.  Yet there have been dozens, perhaps hundreds, of such incidents over the last decade, raising the possibility that some element within the African-American community is conducting a campaign of violent intimidation against whites that is only a few degrees short of the white lynch mobs during the Jim Crow era.
At least, nobody as prominent dared to put the pieces together about the racial gang beatings until the courageous Dr. Sowell wrote his National Review piece.  Perhaps this is a sign of how far the pendulum has swung: Sowell, perhaps by virtue of his race, was able to state what white writers could not.  Indeed, his column citing the many cases of unprovoked violence by black mobs against whites provides justification for people to give Derbyshire-like warnings to their children, in the very publication that chased Derbyshire for doing so.
Sowell's, Riley's, and Derbyshire's refusal to submit to the politically correct line -- and Sowell's and Riley's ability to put their opinions on the matter into top national publications -- is hardly what Holder had in mind when he raised the issue of race relations in America.  Most likely, more critics of the politically correct status quo will speak out as time goes on.  Perhaps the attorney general would now prefer that we had remained a nation of cowards.