Best comment of the year

When Sarah Palin nailed President Obama's health care nationalization bill for containing provisions for "death panels," it all but stopped the behemoth bill in its tracks. The massive protests at the town halls, already in full force, picked up the battle cry, and Obama was forced to loudly whine about the comment to his supporters. The battle to stop this monstrous grab for power is still far from over, but this Palin salvo could well have crippled it (and to think, the former governor wrote his on her Facebook!).

It's also hilarious to see the Left's tactics being used against them. Arch-Leftist Saul Alinsky, in his Rules for Radicals "community organizing" book that Obama and his followers live by, states in Rule 13: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it." That's exactly what Palin did to Obama's health nationalization bill with her "death panel" statement. Mr. President: How does it feel to get a taste of your own medicine?

Idiot comment of the year

Just one more sign of the idiocy of the left wing bloggers: Melissa Lafsky at the Huffington Post recently asked "what Mary Jo Kopechne (the woman left to drown by Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick) would have had to say about Ted's death, and what she'd have thought of the life and career that are being ... heralded.

"Who knows -- maybe she'd feel it was worth it."

Don't count on any boycotts by DailyKos, Moveon.org or the letterhead group Color of Change against this lower-than-contempt commentator anytime soon (since they're all squarely in the left corner of the political spectrum). As Forrest Gump observed, "Stupid is as stupid does."

Best TV show of the week: Glenn Beck

Best TV broadcasts this week: the five-part series on Glenn Beck's program about how groups surrounding President Obama are poised to snatch away our freedoms in their efforts to "change" our society to a leftist oligarchy. If you missed any of the broadcasts, you can get the facts from Glenn's web site.

Any of the broadcasts, of course, should send chills up your spine. Glenn asked on Thursday, for example, why Obama NEEDS a "civilian national security force" he openly proposed during his presidential campaign, "that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the military. More importantly, Beck asks, who is the enemy that this "security force" is supposed to defend us from?

If you wonder why leftists bloggers and the mainstream state-run media seem to zero in on Glenn Beck, this is part of the reason why: he's asking the questions the watchdog media refuses to even consider. For example, Glenn's viewers (3 million of them) are learning about how Obama's 1,000-page stimulus and health care bills are being written by radical groups, and the Marxist background of some of Obama's "czars." In contrast, I learned more about Obama's vacation at Martha's Vineyard from CBS News's Up to the Minute newscast than anything else.

If truth can put a stop to the new American oligarchy, then these broadcasts will make a difference.

On Ted Kennedy

My one and only Ted Kennedy story goes back to 1980, when I worked at a state park on Long Island where Kennedy had docked his boat (actually, it was docked there for him), in the midst of his sinking presidential bid. I remember the workers of the park having to scrub that park clean and pull up every stray weed we could find, to make the place immaculate for the great senator. Finally (with us lowly workers safely kept away), Kennedy bounced out of his car, waved (I think), got on his boat and sailed away. Alas, so much for the “common touch."

Oh well, maybe that’s the way senators are (although I had met others who were or were to be in the Senate, who seemed to have no such problem talking with the public; I interviewed former Senator and Vice President Dan Quayle in 1994 and soon-to-be Senator George Voinovich at about the same time; and chatted with Senator Gary Hart in 1983).

As much as part of me wants to praise the “Lion of the Senate” for his lifetime of achievements, I can’t. I’m sure his dealings with political opponents were cordial and friendly; and maybe he DID think highly of Rev. Jerry Falwell, whom he befriended, and Falwell was able to speak some of the truths of God into his life (much the same way, I believe, that Rev. Billy Graham was able to do so with the senator’s older brother, President John F. Kennedy, according to Graham’s autobiography).

So why CAN’T I offer my accolades for Kennedy?

1) Let’s start with his unbelievable fanatical support for abortion on demand, which has led to millions of unborn being slaughtered. He did this flying in the face of his Catholic upbringing, and in contradiction to a statement in 1971 that he believed in protecting the life of the unborn (click on his letter on the matter above). Is it any wonder Pope Benedict XVI has kept mum on Kennedy’s death?

2) There’s tons of materials on the Chappaquiddick incident, so I’ll let you sort through all that. What the 1969 incident comes down to is this: he was willing to leave a young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, to drown in his submerged car--and subsequently to lie about the accident--to save his political career. While Chappaquiddick did prevent Kennedy from becoming president, it did not stop Massachusetts voters from blindly voting him back to the Senate. And if he ever formally apologized to Mary Jo’s family, I have yet to read about it.

3) Then there was his collaboration with the KGB, to try and derail President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy dealings with the Evil Empire, the Soviet Union. See this link.

4) “Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law? Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty?” Kennedy made this statement when ex-President Richard Nixon was pardoned by President Gerald Ford in 1974, following the Watergate scandal. The same question should have been put to him. The arch-environmentalist, for example, opposed having wind mills set up near his Cape Cod sailing waters. The champion of women’s rights was infamous for his exploitation and abuse of women. And yet the national media never really called him to account for these contradictions. In fact, one of the few times national media came close to criticizing him was at the end of the 1980 Democratic convention in New York. President Jimmy Carter had just given his famous nomination speech (when he called Hubert Humphrey “Hubert Horatio Hornblower”). The defeated Kennedy then joined Carter on stage—and roamed around accepting applause, while ignoring Carter and refusing to lift up Carter’s hand to acknowledge his support for the president. The TV commentators were perplexed by Kennedy’s selfish display.

So I’m sure the media will be bellowing its mourning for Kennedy until the end of the year (unlike its coverage of other long-serving senators from both sides of aisle, including Humphrey and Jesse Helms). I sympathize with the fact that Kennedy suffered from brain cancer, a horrible death I would wish on no one, and pray for comfort for his family. But you’ll have to excuse my not joining in on the national dirge (which President Obama will no doubt use to try and ram through his flailing health care nationalization).