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"It's official. I must now hate the Paul Ryan budget. David Brooks is in luv with it"

"I asked the Congressional Budget Office to model the economy going forward" explains Rep Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, in "The Path to Prosperity: America's two futures, visualized."

You've read and committed to memory Paul Ryan's Wall Street Journal op ed. Now watch the video and help spread the word. Full "Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Resolution" here.

"So they have these computer programs that simulate the U.S. economy. The computer program crashes in 2027 because it can't conceive of any way in which the economy can continue because of this massive burden of debt."

Best comment so far comes from Erick Erickson this morning on Twitter. Be sure to check out his own analysis, "Paul Ryan is Not Jesus, But His Path To Prosperity Gospel is Really Good." Here's that tweet:

It's official. I must now hate the Paul Ryan budget. David Brooks is in luv with it.

Update: The Heritage Foundation quotes economist Alison Fraser in "How Paul Ryan Uses Heritage Analysis in His Budget Plan":

This is a monumental budget proposal for monumental times, and it opens a serious and necessary conversation about the future of our nation and its great legacy of freedom, opportunity, and self-government.

Update II: Thank you, Michelle Malkin, for Buzzworthy link!

Update III: Matt Lewis at The Daily Caller on "the politics behind how Ryan has presented his plan to the public":

It has become de rigueur for modern political campaigns (including President Obama’s) to employ web video, but I can’t recall another time when a policy debate this significant has incorporated video this effectively (let me know if you can think of an example).

Update IV: Ryan's WSJ Op Ed is top story on Memeorandum.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Leadership: Sarah Palin's rousing invocation to a grieving nation

"Public discourse and debate isn't a sign of crisis but of our enduring strength. It is part of why America is exceptional," Sarah Palin tells the nation in "America's Enduring Strength" on Facebook and Vimeo. Read full transcript here and watch/listen here.

"It is time to restore the precept that each of us is responsible for our actions," Sarah Palin cuts through the ersatz outrage of the vitriolic "character assassins, partisans, liars and propagandists," in John Nolte's words, who have been "doing everything in their power to bring down the right" in the wake of the Tucson massacre. Listen to Sarah's rousing invocation here. Once again she disintermediates the moribund powers that be to speak directly to the American people with her vision of the Shining City, based upon what Thomas Sowell calls the "constrained vision" of human nature. Here's Sarah:

Our Founders' genius was to design a system that helps settle the inevitable conflicts caused by our imperfect passions in civil ways. So we must condemn violence if our Republic is to endure …

Public discourse and debate isn't a sign of crisis but of our enduring strength. It is part of why America is exceptional.

No one should be deterred from speaking up and speaking out in peaceful dissent. And we certainly must not be deterred by those who embrace evil and call it good. And we will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of our country and our foundational freedoms by those who mock its greatness by being intolerant of differing opinion. and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults.

Following the life lesson her father taught her — "Don't retreat, reload" — she doesn't let those character assassins get away with metaphorical murder:

Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state, not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle, not with law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies, not with those who proudly voted in the last election. 

"But frustration makes you stupid and the left is frustrated, especially those in the media, because they are losing," John Nolte explains:

And other than embarrassing ratings and cratering circulation numbers, nothing points to their diminishing power more than Sarah Palin’s ascendancy as a bona fide political force in this country. Whether or not the former Alaskan Governor becomes president isn’t an issue. She’s already changed the face of electoral politics and even managed to gain a serious foothold on the beach of popular culture while doing so.

Update: We like twitterfriend Daniel Morgan's take:

She totally nailed what needed to be said and is the shadow president!

Update II: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update III: Sarah's address is top story on Memeorandum.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

The Social Network: Deconstructing "centuries' worth of privilege and access"

"Fading in from black, an ethereal female chorus sings 'I don't care if it hurts/I want to have control/Iwant a perfect body/Iwant a perfect soul/I want you to notice/When I'm not around … I don't belong here,' building intensity alongside a haunting solo piano" in the trailer to "The Social Network." We haven't seen it yet (tomorrow!), but already it occupies our perfect body and our perfect soul. It resonates with the ur theme of our blog, the importance of being noticed by the other members of the tribe: Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in the trailer: "I need to do something substantial in order to get the attention of the clubs."

"It's about the ability of a new media class to deconstruct centuries' worth of privilege and access that would've won in every other generation but now," writes Frank Chi at HuffPo, reviewing the movie that's the talk of the "sphere." First a bit about TSN itself, and then a bit of analysis. Now playing at a theater near you, David Fincher's "lightning-fast dramatization of the disputatious founding of Facebook" is "a grandly entertaining reminder of everything we used to go to the movies for (and still can’t get online)," writes Joshua Rothkopf at TimeOut New York:

… sparkling dialogue, thorny situations, soulful performances, and an unusually open-ended and relevant engagement with a major social issue of the day: how we (dis)connect. Forget about damage control — if I were billionaire site exec Mark Zuckerberg, I’d be down on my knees in gratitude for an origin story this brainy, suggestive and, yes, flattering. Sort of … 

The Social Network zings along like nothing attempted since the heady days of Paddy Chayefsky. (We might be looking at the heir to his darkly dazzling Network.)

An heir to Chayefsky's "darkly dazzling Network," indeed. It's in the air. This from Dan, who's been pounding the idea forever, often to deaf ears in the upper reaches of the GOP:

Thanks in large part to new media, politics as usual will not continue to be usual in the future … The system is broken, and it needs to be broken up.

As usual, Glenn Harlan Reynolds is primi inter pares, from his cyberancient Army of Davids (2006) to his latest must-read Washington Examiner column, "Tea Party dominance was inevitable — and I told you so." He quotes a prescient April 15, 2009 column on the topic:

General disgust has drawn a lot of people off the sidelines and into the political arena …

This influx of new energy and new talent is likely to inject new life into small-government politics around the nation. The mainstream Republican Party still seems limp and disorganized. This grassroots effort may revitalize it. Or the tea-party movement may lead to a new third party that may replace the GOP, just as the GOP replaced the fractured and hapless Whigs.

"Really, that was only last year? Seems like it's been around for three years, anyway," says Tuck as we reminisce about our first Boston Tea Party on that same April day last year. Meanwhile, a clueless Thomas Friedman gets the "disgust" vs "rage" distinction but continues to be astounded:

I continue to be astounded by the level of disgust with Washington, D.C., and our two-party system — so much so that I am ready to hazard a prediction: Barring a transformation of the Democratic and Republican Parties, there is going to be a serious third party candidate in 2012, with a serious political movement behind him or her — one definitely big enough to impact the election’s outcome.

Update: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Update II: Trending on Memeorandum.

Update III: Instalanche!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

The Shining City: Limited government, unlimited potential

Caption from our June 2010 post "I do declare: Tweeting the Declaration of Independence for fun and profit": "The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do," Slate quotes Thomas Jefferson — a man after our own less-is-more writer's heart — in "All Men Are Tweeted Equal," an invitation to fellow freedom lovers to "condense the Declaration of Independence to one tweet."

"In about two years the entire course of the nation changed," writes our dear friend Scott Ott, setting us up for a cathartic "aha" moment. His headline suggests something along the lines of how Obama & Company's governmental overreach unwittingly led to the Third Great Awakening that is today's Tea Party movement, but no. Ott has something more profound in store for us, a "Founding of the Republic" mini-course delivered in the equivalent of about seven tweets on Twitter:

Consider this…

Feb. 21, 1787: Congress votes for a Convention to consider reforms to the Articles of Confederation

May 25, 1787: Convention starts

Sept. 17, 1787: Convention adopts totally new plan of government, the Constitution

Sept. 28, 1787: Congress sends Constitution to states for ratification, 9 states required for approval

June 21, 1788: New Hampshire, the 9th state, ratifies

March 4, 1789: First Congress convenes under new Constitution

Thomas Jefferson would have approved.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

I have a dream … and a nightmare

”Watch behind you; remember you’re just a man!” Victor Davis Hanson tried to warn Barack Obama on the eve of his "I Am the Dream" acceptance speech at Mile High Stadium in Denver (above) two years ago on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech.

"But perhaps the greatest consideration is Obama’s Hellenic hubris, which is different than simple arrogance," wrote Victor Davis Hanson in late August of 2008 with rare insight into the character of the man who would become our 44th President. First a few words from the great military historian and then our own reading of the entrails, the dream and the nightmare of our blogtitle. Here's Hanson back then:

Hubris is a sort of fit, a haughtiness steeped in delusions of grandeur and divinity that takes over a weak individual, and soon encourages recklessness and overreaching (atê), all culminating in ruin and divine retribution (nemesis).

Go figure: Obama/Oedipus goes to Berlin. There he speaks in front of a grandiose Victory Column commemorating Prussian arrogance … He reviews American sins … Meanwhile an Ethel in Tulare turns on the TV and sees thousands of Europeans (who habitually make fun of her country) applaud Obama — and makes the logical assumption that they apparently think he is one of them, rather than one of us.

Next, drunk with pride, Obama thinks that such a losing paradigm (again, really a warning from the gods) apparently was not only successful, but will work again in Denver. So he transfers his speech to an outdoor forum, where tens of thousands of raving fans can watch him apotheosize in front of a faux Doric temple and accept nomination.

"Martin Luther King, Jr. chose the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to deliver his audacious message of hope, 'I Have a Dream,' August 28, 1963, exactly 45 years ago tomorrow, when the nation's first major-party black presidential candidate will give his acceptance speech from the podium of a set designer's mini-version of the Great Emancipator's memorial set in a football field," we captioned this image in our post "Obama has a dream" two years back.

So how's Hanson's Obama/Oedipus doing two years later? Sheltered from accountability by an enabling commentariat throughout the presidential campaign and on into the first year and many months of his incumbency, the Leader of the Free World may be puzzled to find himself now with an ominous approval index rating of -14. On Wednesday, during a family vacation on Martha's Vineyard, "a fleet of fishermen gathered 'to protest his destructive eco-policies.'" Don't they realize he knows better than you what's best for you?

Photo caption of our August 29, 2008 post "It's a girl?" the day after Barack Obama's acceptance speech at Mile High Stadium (top photo): "I think [John McCain's] going to evolve into eventually supporting ANWAR," Sarah Palin told Larry Kudlow (above) recently, adding that "Obama is way off on all of that." Watch and listen here, and see what you think. She's Governor of Alaska, a mother of five and only 44 years old — younger than Obama! — and John McCain is rumored to want her for VP. Like Aldo Cella and Elisson, John McCain knows what women like.

Meanwhile, in the wake of two years — and counting! — of unrelenting persecution by that same commentariat, Mama Grizzly Sarah "Don't retreat, instead RELOAD!" Palin has emerged stronger than ever, the President's most persistent and effectual gadfly, first among equals of our Tea Party rabble in arms disintermediating the powers that be and their allies in the legacy media via the internet, Fox News and on-the-ground appearances. Everything she says or does goes viral online and in the gateway media, who can't resist documenting her every move, if only to snark. We don't know President Obama's plans for this 47th anniversary of MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech, but Palin celebrated with Glenn Beck and a multitude of "God's almost chosen people" — as Lincoln called this nation of believers in America's exceptionalism — for Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial this morning in a salute to "the good things in America."

"They tell me there are at least 1,000 people here, quipped a joyously weeping Glenn Beck as he mounted the stage at his "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial this morning. "We are humbled that you are here … Something is happening in this country. America is turning back to God." "This isn't a political rally, its more of an old-time religious camp meeting," twittered political commentator Matt Lewis, who should have known better. As twitterfriend WooHooYoo notes, it's "by design." Beck himself had referred to the event on his Fox News show the other day as the latest iteration of the All-American tradition of "Great Awakenings." There's a bit of Elmer Gantry in Beck's style, and we did have a fleeting "Omigod moment" when he asked the happy crowd to whip out their mobile phones and dial "SOWF944" to text a $10 donation to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. But the difference is that Beck really believes in what he's selling.

Googling old blogposts to gather material for this post, we stumbled upon a fascinating fact that led us to an insight of literally Proverbially Biblical proportions.

The fact: John McCain launched Sarah Palin onto the national stage on August 29, 2008, the very day following Barack Obama's acceptance speech.

The Biblical Proverb (13:24 King James Version): He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.

The insight: Like the indulgent parent or the nanny state itself, the effete elites of our political and cultural institutions who enabled Barack Obama's rise by failing to properly vet him are complicit in creating a Mewling Infant President incapable of taking responsibility for his own actions. It's always Bush's fault, or, more recently, the "professional left's" fault.

Extra points for correct answer: By our logic do effete elites who chastened Sarah Palin all these years actually "loveth" her "betimes"?

"We must not fundamentally transform America as some would want. We must fundamentally restore her honor," a luminous Sarah Palin told the tens — possibly hundreds — of thousands of devotees at today's "Restoring Honor" gathering.

Hence our title, "I have a dream … and a nightmare," a play on Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" and Myron Magnet's brilliant analysis of the unintended consequences — infantilization of our fellow citizens — of the welfare state, The Dream and the Nightmare. As we blogged half a decade ago, "It does not take into account the psychology of people."

Update: Melissa Clouthier at Liberty Pundits delights with "Glenn Beck Rally: Restoring Honor, Annoying Lefties." The aerial shot will take your breath away:

Lots of people, hundreds of thousands of them showed up for the Restoring Honor rally at the Lincoln Memorial. The bitter clingers keep showing up.

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Update III: Stacy McCain links!

Sissy Willis has some relevant thoughts on Obama’s “Hellenistic hubris” and links Melissa Clouthier.

Update IV: Twitterpal Jimmie of The Sundries Shack links:

As Sissy Willis reminds us, we are not infants and Beck does us the courtesy of not treating us as such.

Update V: Drudge top billing next day: "BECK HAS A DREAM."

Update VI: Dan links with "The Emotionally And Politically Bankrupt Left Was Not Happy Today."

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Ground Zero Mosque: It's not easy being green

Central Park, Manhattan, USA.

"Parks are for the public. Parks are fun. Parks are green. And parks are not controversial," gushes Ibrahim Abdul-Matin in a Daily Beast "Exclusive: Ground Zero Mosque Goes Green," telling the online publication's readership — card-carrying members of Angelo Codevilla's "America's Ruling Class" — what they want to hear. According to his DB blurb, Ibrahim is "author of Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet," as well as "an environmental policy consultant" who has worked for something called "Interfaith Leaders for Environmental Justice." Buzzword alert alarm! Here's the Taqiyya — the Qur'an-sanctioned practice of misdirecting the Infidel's attention away from the faithful's insidious mission of imposing Shari'ah law on "the planet" — they're peddling:

Amid the uproar over the Cordoba House project, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin reveals that it will be the country's first certified "green mosque," named Park51 to connect faith and the environment.

Court of the Lions, The Alhambra, Spain.

Isn't that special? Ibrahim Abdul-Matin paints pretty pictures for our friends on the left side of the aisle who would accuse us of bigotry for fighting back against the grave robbers of Ground Zero:

In the midst of the drama around the mosque that’s being erected two blocks from Ground Zero, a few details have been left out that provide some clarity as to the purpose of this project. Specifically, the project will be the country’s first certified “green mosque,” in full compliance with stringent LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards, which is why organizers have named the project Park51, rather than the oft-cited "Cordoba House."

The mosque (which is more accurately a community center with a prayer space) is located on Park Place in Downtown Manhattan, but the new name also reflects a desire to emphasize the intricate (though widely unknown) connections between Islamic teachings and environmentalism. For example, Islam calls upon people to be "stewards of the Earth" and to treat all things in nature as sacred.

All things in nature except the Infidel, not to mention the female of the species, of whatever faith. Why can't we all just get along? Al "Sex-Crazed Poodle" Gore was unavailable for comment.

Update: Sunday morning, trending on Memeorandum.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

I do declare: Tweeting the Declaration of Independence for fun and profit

"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do," Slate quotes Thomas Jefferson — a man after our own less-is-more writer's heart — in "All Men Are Tweeted Equal," an invitation to fellow freedom lovers to "condense the Declaration of Independence to one tweet":

It took Thomas Jefferson only 17 days to write the Declaration of Independence. Pretty impressive work for what one historian famously described as "American Scripture" and what the National Archives calls "the nation's most cherished symbol of liberty." Then again, it's only 1,300 words or so, approximately 8,000 characters. In other words, three-and-a-half tweets a day …

So here is our challenge to Slate readers: Condense the Declaration of Independence to one tweet. For example: "All men should be equal, happy and free. Suck it, King George. We quit. Love, the U.S. of A." Or maybe: "All men are free. Also: No more quartering of troops." Reduce the document to what you see as its essence. The most recent tweets, and the most popular, will be collected below. After three days, we'll collect the best and publish them the weekend of July Fourth.

As usual with this Internet stuff, there are some crucial details. The most important is that each tweet contain the hashtag #TinyDeclaration. That will allow us to collect all the entries, but it also means that you really have only 124 characters left to summarize Mr. Jefferson. (Sorry.) Feel free to tweet as often as you like — there's no limit on the number of times you can enter — but remember that we won't count any tweets made after Wednesday at midnight. If you like a tweet, retweet it — that will help us see which ones are most popular.

We invite our readers to jump in. Like Bill Whittle's exercise of writing out the Declaration long hand, it's a great way to reinhabit one of our precious founding documents. Here's a fave we just retweeted from @davidkomatar:

Dear king, perhaps it would be better if we were "just friends" #TinyDeclaration

And our own tiny masterpiece:

@kinggeorge3: We're tired of your abuse of our God-given rights. After careful consideration we declare our independence #TinyDeclaration

And while we're in a patriotic mood on this Fourth-of-July Eve, a sampling of Declaration-inspired blogposts from the archives:

King George III 2.0, meet Declaration of Independence 2.0

A Declaration of Independence: Art for freedom's sake

Too Late to Apologize: Music video as history lesson

God's "almost chosen people"

Oh, say, can you see?

Update: Opinionated Catholic links.

Update II: Bird Dog at Maggie's links.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Without the darkness there can be no light

"This is what makes Thomas Kinkade ["one of the most financially successful artists in the world" now "beset by legal troubles," but that's not our point here] exasperating: He is both a creator of some of the most inspiring [that's debatable] paintings of the past two decades and a producer of some of the worst schlock [no question] ever manufactured by a talented artist," writes Joe Carter, linked by the Anchoress.

"I took a gander at your link of his 'real' stuff (left) vs this dross (right)" as blogged by Joe Carter, we wrote in the comments at The Anchoress's latest post about self-described "painter of light" Thomas Kinkade's "saccharine little cottages on exclusive little coves in a perfect little world." We'd been vaguely aware of Kinkade's vapid motel-friendly "art" — and even been fond of some of his appropriately sugar-coated Xmas card illustrations — but would never have given it a second thought had not the Divine Miss Scalia brought it to our attention. Here's what we wrote in her comments:

Obviously sold out. Proved what I already knew in my heart, not to mention my art-educated eye. The popular stuff has no soul, no sense of space, none of the mystery of the early-morning or late-afternoon light. No contrast of values. Totally made me think of the bland dumbing down of statism, where everyone gives up one’s individuality for the “greater good of the whole.” By contrast, the individualism and yearning and Chekhovian/Bergmanesque aloneness of, for example, John Singer Sargent’s portrait of the Daughters of Edward Darley Boit.

"Ominous use of dark and light and lengthy sequences without dialogue characterize both Tiny and Baby's and Ingmar Bergman's films," we wrote a couple of years back, comparing the cinematographic style of the Chelsea Grays' "Want your supper?" with that of the great Swedish director's "The Virgin Spring" … "in the magic light of a setting sun, Baby (left) and Tiny are at it again, inviting our camera's eye to explore the sounds of silence," we blogged years later in "Lengthy sequences without dialogue."

Greeting-card art. The last thing Kinkade's "mass-marketed" travesties are about is 'light." He takes the low road, trying to dazzle with all light all the time. The result is a bland sameness throughout. The light fantastic is revealed only by the dark that surrounds it, like the wolves that lurk just outside the campfire of civilization waiting for the light to dim. Without the darkness there can be no light.

Exposed: What really goes on beneath the burka

"Now THIS is how you hit back at the oppression of women in the Muslim world," twittered Newsbusters blogger Lachlan Markay this afternoon, linking a brilliantly provocative Liaison Dangereuse lingerie ad that turns Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils on its head and puts Victoria's Secret to shame. Set against the smoky, sultry strains of a ney — the flute of classical Arabic music — and tambourine, the camera's eye caresses a smoky, sultry woman getting ready to go out on the town. Depending upon your perspective, you'll either love or hate the surprise ending.

Update: Way cool: NewsBusters' Editors' pick!

Update II: From our imail correspondent, a woman of the world:

The post is fabulous. It reminds me of the Secret Lives of Plants.

Update III: Maggie's links.

Crossposted ar Riehl World View, Cloven Not Crested and Liberty Pundits.

I always knew someday you'd come along

Birds love  …

 

And bees love …

And whispering trees love …

And that's what we both should do.

We'll make a twosome that just can't go wrong … darling …

Crossposted at Cloven not Crested.