French Feathers Ruffled by British Magazine's Baguette Time-Bomb

The French government is reported to be upset at The Economist for the cover that accompanies the London weekly's leader (along with a special report), a cover that Le Monde indeed qualifies as "anti-French". 

Ailleurs sur la Toile : l'hebdomadaire britannique The Economist publie sa troisième "une" antifrançaise, et les "nerds" de l'équipe Obama ont un look improbable.

Business Insider quotes The Daily Telegraph:

Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg told Europe 1 radio: "Honestly, The Economist has never distinguished itself by its sense of even-handedness."

"It is the Charlie Hebdo of the City," he said, referring to the French satirical weekly which in September drew international criticism for publishing cartoons depicting a naked Prophet Mohammad.

… Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who on Thursday travelled to Berlin to explain France's efforts to boost its declining international competitiveness to Chancellor Angela Merkel, also denounced the cover.

"You are talking about a newspaper which is resorting to excess to sell paper. I can tell you that France is not at all impressed," he told French TV station late on Thursday.

This Will Cheer You Up

… this seems like a terrible fate

wrote Ben Stein on the eve of the 2012 defeat.

But our party has faced far worse. We were pronounced dead after JFK stole the 1960 election in the cellars of the Chicago City Hall. We were in the morgue after the Goldwater defeat. We were dead and buried after Watergate and the 1974 Congressional elections, when the GOP was just a nub in Congress. We always come back because our principles are better suited to human dignity and human happiness than the other side's. We will come back stronger than ever this time, too. We are not afraid and we shall overcome. Our best days as a party and a movement lie ahead. We will rest, regroup, and fight for our beliefs, and next time, it will be different and better. Truth crushed to earth will rise again, as the saying goes -- as the truth goes.

I can hardly believe that Ben wrote this the morning after…

And then there's this, from Newsmax:

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, the outgoing RGA chairman, says there already is one area concerning minorities where the GOP is ahead – the number of governors.

“They have I think two women and minorities. We have seven,” he said. Republicans lead Democrats in the “score that matters,” holding 30 governor positions, compared to 19 for Democrats, McDonnell said. “The point is the people that are coming in and are now the leaders of our party reflect a much more diverse group than the Democratic governors today.”

Is this sounding familiar? Obama's Predecessor of Sorts at the Helm of New York City

As Ann Coulter writes in her (brilliant) new book, Mugged (Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama), Barack Obama has a predecessor of sorts, from the 1980s and 1990s and on the urban level — and not just in any city…

The Obama presidency has been like [New York's] David Dinkins mayoralty all over again, with utter incompetence being papered over with appeals to white guilt.

… In a world of Sharptons, Masons and Maddoxes, Dinkins came across as the kinder, gentler black man.  Just like Obama.

… Suddenly, newspapers were full of references to "the historic nature" of Dinkins's candidacy and bubbling with enthusiasm at the prospect of Dinkins becoming "New York City's first black mayor."

Is this sounding familiar?

… even if Giuliani would make a better mayor, you had to vote for Dinkins [in 1989] or blacks would say it was racist — just what Jacob Weisberg said about Obama twenty years later.

Dinkins won the election and, in no time managed to turn a city that was already dysfunctional into Dante's inner circle of hell.

The hope that his election wold bring an end to raging racial wars turned out to be unfounded.  Dinkins's reign was marked by constant racial tumult — marches, riots, protests and a string of alleged racist incidents, with the mayor invariably taking the side of criminals against the police.  No accusation of racism was too implausible to prevent a Dinkins press conference denouncing racism.

… This was the re-election campaign for the city's first black mayor.  New Yorkers had already voted for him once.  Had they not realized Dinkins was black in 1989?  But unless voters stuck with a disastrous black mayor, they were racists.

… Noticeably, successful black public servants are never helped by white guilt.  The clearest cases are black Republicans.  No white guilt aided their rise.

… White guilt has never produced anything but catastrophe.

White guilt fueled the liberal crime policies that resulted in tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of murders, to say nothing of maimings, burnings and rapes.  White guilt got us huge tower blocks of public housing that are fortresses of social pathology.  It produced the entire entitlement-dominated politics we have now.

… It's led the nation to turn a blind eye to the ticking time bomb of exploding illegitimacy rates

… The national obsession with racism is a self-inflicted punishment that has resulted in disaster, for everyone, but most of all for black people.  The initial lie from which all other lies flow is the idea that black people's condition in America depends on white people's beneficence.  It's Bull Connor's last revenge.

What Would George Washington Say?

What Would George Washington Say About the 2012 Election?

asks Jerry Newcombe.

George Washington, the father of our country, sent out in written form his Farewell Address (September 19, 1796). In this classic piece of American political writing, he gives some warnings to his fellow Americans (and us) just as a “parting friend” might do.

He said in that message: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness.” When the founding fathers spoke of “religion,” they were speaking of Christianity, in a nation which at the time was 99.8 percent Christian …

Like the other founders, Washington believed that for the Constitution to work, the people needed to be virtuous. As he himself put it in the Farewell Address, “virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”

… Washington … basically asks, how can morality continue without faith? It cannot, Washington warns: “And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle” [Emphasis Newcombe's].

… George Washington also said that as a nation we should never expect God’s blessings if we continue to defy His Word. In his First Inaugural Address, he said: “The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.” (The Ten Commandments come to mind.)

Read more: http://godfatherpolitics.com/7950/what-would-george-washington-say-about-the-2012-election/#ixzz2Bs9KzkjS

It's the American people who are to blame, for it is we who have lost our morality and our love, knowledge, and respect for our Constitution

Much of today's language usage demonstrates a desire to be nonjudgmental. People used to shack up; now they cohabit or are living partners. Few young women of yesteryear would have felt comfortable to publicly declare they slept around. Unmarried women used to give birth to a bastard; later, this was upgraded to an illegitimate birth or a nonmarital birth.

Walter Williams examines a U.S. In Decline As Morals, Standards Just Keep Slipping Away.

To be judgmental about modern codes of conduct is to risk being labeled a prude, racist, sexist or a homophobe. People ignore the fact that to accept another's right to engage in certain peaceable, voluntary behavior doesn't require moral acceptance or sanction.
Another measure of social deviancy is reflected by the excuses and apologies that are made for failures and how we make mascots out of social misfits, such as criminals and bums.

The intellectual elite tell us that it's poverty or racism that produces criminals, as opposed to a moral defect. We call bums homeless people.

That suggests a moral equivalency between people who have lost their homes in a fire or natural disaster and people who choose to be social parasites; therefore, neither group is to be blamed for its respective condition.

People who are very productive members of our society, such as the rich, are often held up to ridicule and scorn.

… Clinton's … kind of lawlessness helped establish a precedent for lawless acts by President Barack Obama. His most recent was an executive order that suspended legal liability for young people who are brought to our country illegally by their parents.

He also repealed the legal requirement that welfare recipients must work, by simply redefining "work" to include other things, such as going to classes on weight control.

Then there are waivers from ObamaCare for favored allies — waivers that offend the principle of equality before the law.

Whether the president's actions were good or bad ideas or not is irrelevant. What's relevant is whether we want to establish a precedent whereby a president, who has no constitutional authority to repeal parts of congressional legislation, can grant special favors and rule by presidential decree like Third World tyrants.

I don't hold President Obama completely responsible for his unconstitutional actions. It's the American people who are to blame, for it is we who have lost our morality and our love, knowledge and respect for our Constitution, laying the foundation for Washington tyranny.

It is all part and parcel of "defining deviancy down," which is the term former U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined in 1993 to describe how we've switched from moral absolutes to situational morality and from strict constitutional interpretation to the Constitution being a "living document."

Constitutional principles that do not allow one American to live at the expense of another American are to be held in contempt.

Today's Americans have betrayed the values that made us a great nation, and that does not bode well for future generations.

Read More At IBD: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/110612-632376-us-decline-fueled-by-low-morals-sloppy-language.htm#ixzz2Bs45PLJX

Those are the "bright" voters of Obama, I bet smoking weed, playing Xbox all day, and having their purses full of condoms being the main goal of their worthless lives

From Benny Johnson of The Blaze (thanks to comrade Allie):
  

To any conservative wondering where they went astray this cycle, observe the religious-like conviction of the voters here when rattling off democratic talking points. But beyond the rhetoric, how much do these eager voters know about our American government? Just a few questions, then: How many Senators are there? How many Congressmen? Supreme Court Justices? Who is Nancy Pelosi? Harry Reid? Can you name an amendment to the Constitution?

The answers inform. Was this election really a rebuke of conservatism and its principles? Or was it a function of the masterful marketing of emotions, niche issues and yes, even revenge? 

From top commenter auras ALEXANDRESCU (a Romanian immigrant?):

i know all the answers to the questions and i just moved to US 11 yrs ago.Those are the "bright" voters of Obama ,i bet smoking weed,playing Xbox all day and having their purses full of condoms are the main goal of their worthless lifes . Before u gain the right to vote Everybody should pass first a test in knowledge of the Constitution ---JUST LIKE I DID !!!!

To win in the political realm in the future, it is not only finding new candidates that count; We must also change the culture

If we can turn away from the elections for a moment, and the future of the Republican Party, a more fundamental problem exists. It is nothing less than the nature of the American culture. By the term “culture,” I am not referring to the social issues that usually come up when one talks about culture wars; i.e., abortion, gay rights, religion, etc. Rather, I am talking about the perception and outlook that stand beneath the way our American public define the very nature of civic life in our democratic capitalist society.

Thus writes Ron Radosh.

 … we have to “wage a war of position on the cultural front and to do all possible to challenge the ascension of a failed intellectual liberal ideology, whether it is in the form of Progressivism, liberalism or socialism.” I’m referring to the kind of work Fred Siegel carries out in a new book he has just finished writing, and which I had the pleasure of reading in manuscript form, on the nature of American liberalism. When it is eventually published, I believe it can have the kind of impact that great works of history like Richard Hofstadter’s books had in the 1940s and ’50s.

Siegel shows that from its very inception, liberalism was a flawed ideology whose adherents substituted its would-be virtues as a way of distancing themselves from most Americans and their workaday lives; an ideology based on a view whose believers saw themselves as superior to most Americans, including those who were merchants, workers, or regular folk, who could not be counted on to comprehend the backwardness of their beliefs.

… If we want a different kind of social polity than the one we have now — based on catering to the power of competing interest groups that compose the core strength of the Democratic party — we have to address first the essential question of the kind of social order that liberalism has built.

… If you doubt that this intellectual work is necessary, you might ponder the question of why college-educated Americans are overwhelmingly liberal Democrats or among those even much further to the political Left. An answer appears in this article by Richard Vedder, which appears today in Minding the Campus. Vedder shows that the majority of professors who teach our young people in the humanities are primarily on the Left, as he writes, “62.7 percent of faculty said that they were either ‘far left’ or ‘liberal,’ while only 11.9 percent said they were ‘far right’or ‘conservative.’ The notion that universities are hot beds for left-wing politics has a solid basis in fact. Moreover, the left-right imbalance is growing — a lot. The proportion of those on the left is rising, on the right declining.” The latest research reveals that there are 5.7 professors on the left for each one on the right!

… in Minding the Campus[, Richard Vedder states that]

Promoting “diversity” in higher education means supporting relatively trivial variations in physical attributes of humans (such as skin color or gender differences), not the far more important differences of the mind manifested in verbal and written expression.

Another realm of mis-education is that of the popular media. This week, I have written about this in an article published in The Weekly Standard, which fortunately the editors have not put behind their firewall. It is titled “A Story Told Before: Oliver Stone’s recycled leftist history of the United States.”   Stone’s TV weekly series premiers Nov.12^th on the CBS-owned network Showtime, and will eventually be used by leftist professors in their own history courses on our campuses. It is, I show, nothing less than a rehash of old Communist propaganda from the 1950s offered up as both something new and as the true hidden history of our country’s past.

Imagine how many television viewers, many of whom know virtually nothing about how we got to where we are, will learn from this expertly edited documentary how and why the United States is basically an evil nation, on the wrong course, and supported the wrong side in all foreign policy crises throughout its modern history. We cannot disregard the effect this kind of miseducation has on the knowledge of our fellow citizens. Do you wonder why the polls show that most Americans think Barack Obama’s foreign policy the past four years was successful? It is because they are a generation educated from “historians” like the late Howard Zinn, political theorists like the linguist Noam Chomsky, and now from filmmaker Stone and his historian co-author, Peter Kuznick.

… To win in the political realm four year from now and in the future, it is not only finding new candidates that count. We must also change the culture.

Place the blame squarely on the media and the co-opted culture

You can always count on Pamela Geller to find the tight words…

Our work is most needed, now more than ever. Essential is understating it. I won't put a smiley face on this rout. The disastrous consequences of the rise of the subversive cannot be understated, nor can the force for good in combating it.

That's you and that's me. I place the blame squarely on the media and the co-opted culture. The Obama regime got away with murder, quite literally. The enemedia packaged the left's steaming pile of dung in a pretty, blue Tiffany box and told the American people it was good for them.

There is nothing to be done but fight more fiercely, more passionately. Because we are right and we are righteous and we fight for the good. It's just that simple.

This is not new. We have seen this before. Every historic catastrophe was preceded by this same pattern. It is only when good people quietly accede to fascism and totalitarianism that the war is lost.

So take a breather, regroup, and fight, fight, fight. When the enemedia lies and deceives, we will be there, When the Obama regime tries to impose restrictions on free speech (blasphemy laws), we will storm the Capitol. We will take to the streets and we will fight for our freedom. It is incumbent upon us. If nothing else, gridlock can be a wonderful obstacle.

America is still the greatest country on earth and she is worth fighting for. We have soldiers dying in the jihad theater, they deserve nothing less from us. Ramp it up. Cede no ground. Take lessons from the left. Be a pitbull.

Soldier on, my dear, sweet patriots. It is up to us. Yes, it is dark. Be the light. Shine on. This is just the beginning.

What would Reagan do?

What would Reagan do? 

asks Martin Sieff.

The Republican Party and the conservative movement in America have been brought to their current appalling state because they are full of people who endlessly praise Ronald Reagan while doing the opposite of what he taught and practiced. In fact, Reagan’s brilliant example and crystal spirit can light up the road ahead – if conservatives will open their closed minds and shriveled spirits to him.

First of all, Ronald Reagan was a lifelong optimist and an example of remarkable resilience especially in bad times.

… Reagan therefore would not have lost heart and despaired of conservative and patriotic principles, nor of America. He would have taken a good night’s sleep and got up in the morning eager to find new directions and new opportunities for the way ahead.

Second, the conservative movement that Ronald Reagan created was generous and inclusive. Reagan welcomed brilliant African-American and Jewish intellectuals alike on to his team.

… Ronald Reagan was a social conservative and one of the greatest spokesmen for genuine moral values in the history of American politics. But he was never a bigot or a fool. He never outraged women or any other group by expressing ridiculous, offensive, or plain absurd sentiments.

… Ronald Reagan did not mindlessly worship youth or embody it. His mind and spirit were always young – always optimistic, intellectually curious and ready to challenge old orthodoxies from economics to national security. But he was almost 70 years old when he took the oath of office for the first time, the oldest American ever to do so.

Neither was Reagan afraid to change and adapt his policies to changing times. The Ronald Reagan who ended one of the most dangerous periods of the Cold War by launching a new era of détente with Mikhail Gorbachev was not a different Reagan from the Reagan who had had fearlessly stood up to previous Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yury Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. It was the same Reagan. But when the Soviet leadership changed, he recognized when he needed to change his policies – never his principles – too.

… Like Dwight David Eisenhower, for a full eight years he brilliantly preserved peace through strength and wisdom when it seemed almost impossible to do.

… Reagan would not have despaired -- or even been disheartened -- by the national election results on Tuesday night. He would have been energized by them to seek out new opportunities. He would have sought to learn the right lessons and apply them. And he would not have let the architects of such a sweeping and comprehensive defeat get the chance to bang their heads against the same old brick walls and ever bury the conservative movement again.

Finally, Ronald Reagan would never have tried to turn the clock back to some mythical golden age before the New Deal, or before Teddy Roosevelt’s Square Deal or, for that matter, before the Bill of Rights. For him the true golden age was always ahead, and it was a privilege for him and the American people to strive to achieve it.

What Would Breitbart Do?

What Would Breitbart Do? asks Andrew Marcus

… unfortunately, something else also became more clear than ever before, the corrupt media that Breitbart often assailed had its thumbs on the scales and tipped the election in the President's favor.

Everything that Andrew predicted in my film, Hating Breitbart, played out in real-time during the election right before our eyes. From Candy Crowley interrupting and taking Obama's side in the debate to George Stephonopoulous's introducing the 'war on women' narrative in the primary debates, members of the so-called mainstream media did everything they could to re-elect Obama and they were successful. And many of us are, as Andrew so often was, righteously indignant. Some might even be feeling hopeless, tired or defeated. And while I can understand a temporary crisis of faith, I believe Andrew would refuse to surrender to a defeatist attitude over one election loss. He understood that the true fight is with the Mainstream Media and Institutional Left and that they don't get ‘elected.’ We must bring the fight directly to them relentlessly. That was always his fight and that does not change with an election cycle.

… he would remind each of us that we all have to power to expose the malfeasance and corruption in the MSM and Institutional left. He would not Monday morning quarterback the Romney campaign or dissect numbers and graphs. He would exhaust every hour of every day exposing the corrupt mainstream media for who and what they are. Though they might be silently (and disturbingly some not so silently) grateful that Andrew is no longer here to stand up to their destructive behavior, in the months and years to come they will be forced to face the reality that his spirit and his example continues on every single day with thousands of citizen journalists in every inch of this nation. And they will never be able to put the Genie that Andrew released back in the bottle. That's what Andrew Breitbart would have done, and what millions of citizen journalists will continue to do as long as we have breath.

John Kirkwood adds:

A majority of Americans chose the path of 18th century Frenchmen and 1930 Germans last night. A majority chose to vote for “revenge,” for redistribution of wealth, for abortion on demand, for abandoning Israel and for “leaning forward” in front of Dan Savage and Vladimir Putin. A majority of Americans chose to steal from their neighbors, their neighbor’s children and their own children (if they haven’t aborted them) to pay for their condoms, Skippy Peanut Butter, lottery tickets and Band-Aids. A majority turned a deaf ear to the cries from Benghazi. A majority closed the drapes on Israel and those Russian nuclear subs off our coast. A spatter of blue paint on a mostly red country shows where the cancer has spread and the metropolitan areas have opted-out of arduous freedom for the ease of complacent servitude.

… God never promises freedom to a nation that has forgotten Him. We’ve had liberty; we’ve lost it. We no longer live in a free America; we are now the victims of a tyranny that will be entrenched for as far as the eye can see. If there was something fishy about this election, it won’t matter. In the next four years, this President will pass an amnesty bill that will flood Democratic voter registration and bring in millions of new votes. If there ever was fraud in the past, it won’t be necessary in the future because we’ll be facing a perpetual Democrat majority.

Justin Owen is more optimistic:

Despite the gridlock that was just returned to Washington, the looming political battle in this country will not be Republican versus Democrat. It will be the states versus the federal government. It will be real innovation and true reform versus the status quo that has failed us time and again.