sisu

Fixing the mind on the sound of the mantra*

Cleansing our palate between blogtastings …

*Blogpost title refers to "Om yoga meditation. It is, simply put, fixing the mind on the sound of the mantra “Aum” – the sacred syllable that both symbolizes and embodies Brahman, the Absolute Reality – as the mantra is constantly repeated in unison with the breath. The purpose of pranava yoga is to become free from suffering and limitation."

The Brown Revolution: Term limits by other means?

Click here to join the "Draft Kudlow Committee."

"‘Draft Kudlow’ Movement Picking Up Steam" headlines News Max in an Insider Report that just came in over the transom:

A rising voice is calling for CNBC talk host and supply-side economist Larry Kudlow to challenge liberal New York Sen. Chuck Schumer in this year’s election.

Could anything be more delicious than the thought of replacing New York's unctuous, out-of-touch, all-about me Senior Senator with the fresh-faced voice of reason and boyish enthusiasm that is former Reagan economics advisor — and early Sarah Palin fan! — Larry Kudlow? News Max continues:

And Kudlow said he is going to give a possible run “careful consideration.”

Newsmax first disclosed that Kudlow could have political aspirations back in March 2009, reporting that he was mulling a bid for Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd’s Senate seat from Connecticut. Kudlow announced several weeks later that he wasn’t running.

But on Jan. 20, Newsmax reported that “the New York political scene is buzzing with talk of a movement to draft Larry Kudlow” to run as a Republican challenger to Schumer.

A week ago the "Buffalo News reported that Michael Caputo, who served as a speechwriter for Rep. Jack Kemp, is leading an online movement to draft Kudlow for the race, and has set up a Web site at www.draftkudlow.com":

At one point, the prospect of unseating Schumer in blue state New York seemed a long shot. First elected in 1998, he serves as the vice chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus and is considered the third most powerful Democrat in the Senate. He won re-election in 2004 with more than 70 percent of the vote, and is said to have amassed a campaign war chest of more than $30 million for this year’s race.

But the stunning Jan. 19 election win by Republican Scott Brown in blue state Massachusetts has changed that thinking.

It's that Glenn Reynolds disintermediation-of-the-old-boy-networks-via-the-internet thing. Speaking of which, be sure to treat yourself to the Instapundit's latest Washington Examiner column, "More impact is what's next for the Tea Party movement," a concise, terse, pithy summary of what just happened while the so-called mainstream media blinked. A few excerpts, and then be sure to read the whole thing:

A year ago, the Tea Party movement didn't exist. Today, it is arguably the most popular political entity in America. The movement is already more popular than the Republican or Democratic parties, according to a recent NBC / WSJ poll …

And, of course, Scott Brown's come-from-behind blowout in Massachusetts occurred in no small part because of money and volunteers from the Tea Party movement around the nation.

This is heady stuff — and, for people in the political establishment, both Republicans and Democrats, it's worrying stuff. If political movements can bubble up from below, and self-organize via the Internet, what will happen to the political class?

Term limits by other means, anyone?

Update: Maggie's links. Thanks, News Junkie!

Scott Brown had tapped into a long-repressed, almost religious yearning to breathe free

We drove up Rte 1 to Kowloon Restaurant in Saugus — just north of Boston — to meet and greet Hottie McAwesome, who stopped by our neck of the woods on his "Citizen Open House Tour" early afternoon. To top-down control freaks like the entrenched Democrat machinesters into whose gears Scott Brown had thrown a monkey-wrench last week, it might have seemed sheer chaos, but for our grassroots tribe of Yankee-style individualists — lifelong Republicans like ourselves, current and former Democrats, Independents (known here in Taxachussets as "Unenrolled"), it was an intelligent mob.

A happy, happy throng pressed in upon their conquering hero. We estimate a crowd of about one thousand.

Spontaneous chants broke out as celebrants thanked Scott Brown for breaking the back of the Beacon Hill mob.

Scott Brown had tapped into a long-repressed, almost religious yearning to breathe free amongst us Red Staters living behind enemy lines here in Taxachusetts. As one woman — a 71-year-old resident of nearby blue-collar Revere who proudly told us she was still working — put it, she'd been a lifelong Democrat until about ten years ago, when she realized the state had turned radically left and unresponsive to citizens' concerns. For her and so many of us, Scott Brown's electoral victory was a lamp beside the golden door.

Adam Andrzejewski: "It's a new day in Illinois"

"Our number one manufactured product [is] corruption at the state level," Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate Adam Andrzejewski tells Judge Napolitano on Fox. Click here to contribute to his tea-party-friendly campaign.

"A first for me today," twitters Red State's Erick Erickson. "I have never used the word "numinous" to describe a candidate until now":

The [primary] race in Illinois is exceptionally close with little time left. Adam Andrzejewski has a real, solid, tangible chance of winning. He has given hope to a disenchanted base of people — conservatives and independents — who want the best of themselves reflected in those who lead them.

Let me say one more thing about Andrzejewski that I have not said about Marco Rubio. In his uniqueness as a candidate, his story, and the sheer dread he instills in the corrupt old guard of Illinois, he is politically numinous.

In case you were wondering, as we were, Erickson explains in a footnote his use of the word:

For those of you rushing to the dictionary, “numinous” is an adjective “suggesting the presence of a divinity” — particularly the fear, awe, and trembling … No, Andrzejewski is not divine, but … His presence in the race is spooking a lot of people and turning others to passionate evangelism for him.

"Yet outside of Illinois, he is on very few radars," notes Erickson, who just a couple of a days ago was leaning toward the "safe" candidate, Andy McKenna. As Dan Riehl wrote only yesterday:

While I appreciate some emotional support for Andrzejewski, perhaps due to a Lech Walesa endorsement, the problem is, Andrzejewski is bringing up the rear in a five candidate race. And it's likely to only open up the door for an O-bot to slip through without a run-off.

Ever the romantic, we're following our gut on this one. We'd already donated our standard $10 to out-of-state tea-party sympathizers on Wednesday, based upon things we were hearing from Norsu and other fired-up Scott Brown fans in the twittersphere. Today, having caught Erickson's numinous glow, we added $75 to that, and our imail correspondent tossed in $50:

I'm excited about "paying it forward" to all the Scott Browns in the nation.  As you said … we've GOT to throw the inbred, ingrained career politicians out.  On BOTH sides of the aisle.

Meanwhile, the response of inbred and ingrained types amongst the Grand Old Party leadership is mixed, as these two headlines from today's news attest:

GOP leaders adopt litmus test of values for candidates.

Armey: Steele told he must win tea partiers' trust.

Interestingly, some of the most inbred and ingrained on the other side of the aisle are getting it big time and heading for the exits. The WSJ reports:

Something odd is happening to the permanent progressive majority that the U.S. was supposed to have elected 14 months ago: Its Members are announcing plans to leave Congress even before the voters get a chance to pass judgment on their liberal governance.

"This is my moment to step aside," Christopher Dodd said yesterday in front of the East Haddam, Connecticut home that he once financed with the help of Countrywide Financial. The 65-year-old, five-term Senator said his decision not to seek re-election was his own, but there's little doubt he was heading toward a well-earned defeat this fall amid personal scandal and an angry electorate unsettled by the Obama-Pelosi agenda.

We thought he'd NEVER leave. And now a breath of fresh air, candidate Adam Andrzejewski in his own words guest posting at Andrew Breitbart's Big Government:

This is what happens when a state is in the grip of one-party rule, run by an ideology that the entire nation is now calling the “Chicago Way.”

That’s the bad news.  Here is the good news.  It’s a new day in Illinois.  All across the state, citizens are building the grassroots army that will bring Illinois back from the brink. They are getting activated, informed, and mobilized.  I want to help them by offering them a real choice – not an establishment echo – for Governor.  That ‘echo’ is exacting what I’m running against.

The Brown Revolution gains steam.

Update: Two internecine items to ponder [h/t Dan Riehl]:

Republicans Debate, McKenna Leads new poll

Tea for two divides the 'revolution!' vote

While the frontrunners are busy playing catch-up to Andy McKenna, this is the other big story in the (Republican gubernatorial primary) race at the moment: The fight between Andrzejewski and Proft for the heart of conservatives. Going by poll numbers alone, it's a fight Andrzejewski is winning …

The latest Rasmussen poll puts their combined support at 19%, which would place them second to McKenna, but well within the margin of error. It's speculation of course -- there's no way to know for sure unless it happens -- but were one to back out and endorse the other, then a conservative candidate with Tea Party backing would have a legitimate shot at the nomination, assuming he gets all the other's supporters.

Read the whole thing for insider speculation.

Sissy Willis: "I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected"

Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman as a major general in May 1865. The black ribbon of mourning on his left arm is for President Lincoln. Portrait by Mathew Brady. Blogpost title refers to the General's much-quoted response when he was being considered as a possible Republican candidate for the presidential election of 1884.

We just stumbled upon an update to a January 15 Instapundit item that we'd missed:

Reader EMB Whitton writes: “Sissy Willis for president!” I think she’s much too sane to want the job.

He's right about our not wanting the job, but the jury's still out on the "too sane" part.

SOTU: Ironically, maybe the news isn't so bad after all

"The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all lovers of mankind are affected, and in the event of which, their affections are interested." Introduction to Thomas Paine's Common Sense, 1791.

"Reaganism won out, and the Republican Party are moving back toward becoming a pro-freedom, anti-Washington party once again," writes p.r. specialist Craig Shirley in the Washington Times. Good news and just in time, given the "frightening and dangerous spectacle" of "Obama's Politially Adolescent America," as Dan Riehl explains in a powerful essay vivisecting the beating heart of darkness that was on display for all to see last night at the President's first State of the Union Address, where the Leader of the Free World "demagogued the First Amendment" in front of the world. First the good news:

Of late, "security" replaced freedom for a time as the essential philosophy of Republicans, but with the departure of George W. Bush a year ago, a struggle took place inside the party. Did it stand for Reaganism or Bushism?

Did it stand for the top-down conservatism of Edmund Burke or the bottom-up conservatism of Thomas Paine?

The results were never really in doubt, helped by Mr. Obama's unexpected headlong rush toward big-government liberalism.

Not to mention the Tea Partiers' under-the-radar disintermediation of the old-boy network via the internet. Now the bad news, all over the blogosphere and twittersphere and Fox News last night and spilling out into the day, Dan's "frightening and dangerous spectacle" of President Obama criticizing the Supreme Court's campaign finance decision in such a distastefully unpresidential manner:

Chuck Schumer sat right behind the justices and couldn't wait to spring to his feet and begin clapping over them. That seemed to be the case for many Democrats, all too happy to flaunt Obama's words over the Roberts court that mostly sat stoically silent as the adults they should be. And all that due to an apparently misinformed Obama who, while a candidate, maintained a web donation set-up that made it hard, if not impossible, to track foreign donations.

We liked Ann Althouse's take on Judge Samuel Alito's mouthing of the words "not true" as his black-robed colleagues held their tongues and took it:

Isn't it fascinating that the lengthy, amplified, magnified speech of the most powerful man in the world with his big captive audience — in the magnificent room and in smaller rooms all over the country — are outweighed by one man's headshake and silent mouthing of 2 or 3 words?

And isn't it ironic that, right when we saw the judge's minimalist expression that overwhelmed the President's torrent of words, Obama was railing about the "powerful interests" that would use their great wealth to speak far too much during election campaigns?

It's not how much or how loud you speak that counts, is it?

Maybe the news isn't so bad after all.

Update: Dan links. So does Michelle Malkin's Buzzworthy. Thanks, guys!

Happy Birthday, Wolfie: "Filled with such unfulfillable longing, it had me trembling"

"Amadeus was inspired by Mozart and Salieri, a short play by Aleksandr Pushkin and later adapted into an opera of the same name by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Shaffer then adapted the play for a film released in 1984," according to Wikipedia. Above Murray Abraham in the role of a lifetime as Mozart's tormented rival Antonio Salieri.

Our old friend Sippy reminds us that this date, January 27, is the 254th anniversary of the birth of the "beloved of God," Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with a clip from that most totally awesome of movies (We're Republican so watch movies, not films), Amadeus. This quotation by the beloved of God's tormented rival Salieri, as spoken in old age within the asylum, is heart stopping:

On the page it looked nothing. The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse - bassoons and basset horns - like a rusty squeezebox. Then suddenly - high above it - an oboe, a single note, hanging there unwavering, till a clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I'd never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing, it had me trembling. It seemed to me that I was hearing the very voice of God.

Don't know whether that was the sheer genius and poetry of screenwriter Peter Shaffer or adapted from Salieri's journals, but it's music to our ears. Click here to hear "the very voice of God" at Vladimir Horowitz's fingertips.

Dr. Keith Ablow eyes John Kerry seat for 2014?

Dr. Keith Ablow "believes that it is in sharing these truthful stories of the human condition that empathy is sparked and people are connected most powerfully, one to another," according to the Fox blurb for "The Dr. Keith Ablow Show." Rumors are flying that the good doctor might give Senator John Kerry a run for his money in 2014.

"I have some exciting conjectural news," writes our imail correspondent:

She: Our local semi-famous psychiatrist, Keith Ablow (he sometimes appears on Fox and Friends), is considering running for the Senate seat currently occupied by the inedible John Kerry. YES, you Brown Bloggers.  You've really started something!

We: TOO COOL. Tuck acquainted with him, used to live in Chelsea, was friend of Apollinaire Theatre lady!!!

She: Yes. I know him through work. Very gentlemanly.

"It's on the front page of yesterday's local rag, if you care to check it out," she taunts, "above the fold!":

NEWBURYPORT — Psychiatrist, best-selling author and TV personality Dr. Keith Ablow may soon add political hopeful to his resume.

Ablow is not ruling out a run for U.S. Sen. John Kerry's seat in 2014 as a Republican opponent.

Ablow was spotted over the weekend in New York City with Republican strategist Roger Stone ...

"Roger asked me to think about the idea," Ablow said last night ... "I'm interested in using the talent I have to help the greatest number of people I can help" ...

While not a career politician, Albow does have some experience. "As a kid I worked for U.S. Sen. Ed Brooke," he said.

He's got a number of websites and blogs, and we were about to register to delve into his Living the Truth Online Community for Becoming a Powerful Individual blog when we balked at the intrusiveness of his "Create your MyTruth profile." Will have to learn more about that.* Meanwhile, our imail correspondent notes:

She: I am eager to learn, after graduating from Brown, he became a Republican.

He worked as a reporter for Newsweek. Need I say more vis a vis his becoming a Republican?

We: Instead of posing for a Cosmo centerfold like Hottie McAwesome?

So much to learn, but there's plenty of time since Kerry doesn't come up for re-election till 2014.

*That "Create your MyTruth profile" was all talk. (What comes to mind?) We had entered a User Name and Password before abandoning the site when we were asked for too personal info, but they went ahead and approved our membership in the "community" anyway. Mind games on the unwitting?

President Obama as the nose in Sleeper?

"Here's Obama dropping in for a chat with his middle-class task force. And people made fun of Reagan because of his notecards!" fleers Rich Lowry at The Corner in "Teleprompter shot of the day."

"LMAO How did this guy ever get a law degree if he can't even talk to his staff on his feet?" asks Dan Riehl.

"Don't move or the nose gets it," Woody Allen threatened as Diane Keaton cringed in "Sleeper.

"It reminds me of the nose in Sleeper," we wrote in the comments":

Miles and Luna successfully infiltrate the Aries Project: they learn that the Leader was killed by a rebel bomb ten months previously, and all that survives is his nose. The nose has been kept alive, and the members of the Aries Project, mistaking Miles and Luna for doctors, want them to clone the leader from this single remaining part. Instead, Miles steals the nose and "assassinates" it by squashing it under a steamroller.

Scott Brown and The Brown Revolution as a metaphorical Miles?

FreedomWorks labels Charlie Crist an "Enemy of Liberty"

"I'm arranging an event on February 10 for the one-year anniversary of 'The Stimulus Hug,'" says a giddy FreedomWorks Florida field coordinator, referring to a hug between President Obama and Florida Gov Charlie Crist last year when Crist endorsed the President's stimulus package, for which Crist is now under fire (See below for more).

The Florida Senatorial race is "a case study in how quickly political fortunes can change: Rubio's, Crist's – and Barack Obama's," writes Matthew Continetti in The Weekly Standard:

When Marco Rubio challenged popular incumbent governor Charlie Crist for Mel Martinez's U.S. Senate seat, no one thought he had a chance. What these skeptics assumed was that the current state of affairs would persist indefinitely. They ignored electoral dynamism ... Take Scott Brown for example. Or Marco Rubio.

Rubio has been steadily gaining ground on Crist for the past year. And now, according to Quinnipiac University, he's winning ... leading 47 – 44 percent and topping Gov. Crist on trust, values and conservative credentials, [and beating] the leading Democrat, [even as] President Barack Obama is under water in Florida as voters disapprove 49 – 45

Enter stage right tea-party-friendly Michelle Bachmann, Dick Armey and FreedomWorks' "enemies of Liberty" list:

Hours before the president's speech on Wednesday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), one of the lawmakers most closely allied with the movement, and FreedomWorks will hold an event with conservative activists and lawyers to tout a "Declaration of Health Care Independence" ... one of the first steps the Tea Party movement will take this year as it seeks to expand its influence.

They're gunning for Florida Gov. Charlie Crist among others:

FreedomWorks, the conservative political action committee that is one of the major players with close ties to the Tea Party movement, released its list of 2010 target Senate races and congressional districts today. In the Florida Senatorial race, the group supports conservative Marco Rubio over current Republican Governor Charlie Crist, conservative Pat Toomey over Senator Arlen Specter (D) in Pennsylvania, Rand Paul (R), son of 2008 Presidential Candidate Ron Paul, for the open Senate seat in Kentucky and among those listed as an ‘Enemy of Liberty’, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada. The group has not yet picked a Republican to back in Nevada, they just want Reid ousted ...

These races are just a drop in the bucket, however. The group plans to monitor dozens of races and jump in with both feet when it's ready.

Crist might have looked like a good bet to the NRSC and other GOP power brokers before the Brown Revolution, but in light of the tsunami that washed over the political scene one week ago today, he appears to be sinking fast:

“It’s hot in Florida, Charlie Crist is on the run” says Thomas Gaiten, a Florida Field Coordinator for FreedomWorks, "I’m arranging an event on February 10 for the one year anniversary of 'The Stimulus Hug.'"

Gaiten is referring to a hug between President Obama and Florida Governor Charlie Crist last year. Crist was an exuberant host and endorsed the President’s stimulus package, for which Crist is now under fire.

It is a moment that conservatives have flogged in Florida. A few months ago Crist was leading his Republican competitor, Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, by 30 points. However, the Tea Party movement in Florida has been aggressively organizing for Rubio both on the ground and on the web, and the latest polls show the two neck and neck.

In other news, Rubio will be speaking at this year's CPAC, controversially shunned by Sarah Palin. But that's another story.

Update: Thanks for the link, Dan Riehl!

A friendly note to Marco Rubio: Your campaign website is rankly amateurish beside Crist's highly sophisticated Scott-Brownish clone. We suggest you have your social-networking people talk to Brown's social-networking people to get your online presence up to speed. There's nothing like a little cutthroat competition to bring out the best in a man.