Recommended reading, Rorty in a nutshell

In a nutshell

There are some books, whether you agree with the perspective or not, that are just so useful in epitomizing a particular matter or worldview that they become necessary reading.

This book, “Contingency, irony, and solidarity”, published way back in 1989, is one of those books. In it Rorty does the average man an immense favor by clearly and unambiguously laying out the operating assumptions of at least one version of the post-modern liberal project.

Of course just what post-moderrnism is, is somewhat in dispute, as a glance at the Wiki editorial history shows. Nonetheless, with an appropriate shrug at the disciples of irony and deconstruction, this 2010 Wiki description (and post modernists are all about description and subversive redescriptrion) serves as well as many I have seen:

Postmodernism is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the problematisation of objective truth and inherent suspicion towards global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. It involves the belief that many, if not all, apparent realities are only social constructs, as they are subject to change inherent to time and place. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations …

This blurb from the back of the book may help as well.

 

So, what else is new, you ask? This book was written 24 or more years ago!

We’ve (you say) been confronting modern-liberals for decades now who seemingly cannot or will not explain how it is that they derive their conclusion that we must yield to their direction, from their seemingly – or so we infer – ultimately nihilistic worldviews.

Yet it is a fact that we continue to ask how it is that they think this all works. How, we want to know, do they get an affirmative conclusion, or an imperative statement, from what must be, when we take their other descriptions of reality into account, negative (metaphysical, ontological, logical, take your pick)  premisses?

Well, this book explains how it is done. Here’s the secret. The secret is that there is no secret. There are no inferences derived. There are no deductions believed to be entailed. It’s all just what they want according to their own, particular sensibilities. Just as we figured.

The point of view is anti-foundational, anti essentialist, nominalist, i.e., anti essential natures and natural kinds, in extreme. Therefore there are [so they believe] no real and objectively existing universals to even fill their places in universal categorical propositions.

Nice to see one of the princes of the pack admit it so clearly.  Yet, the blithe nature of the admission made those decades ago, confirms what nearly everyone – not just intellectuals – by now intuits directly: that the modern political left, so steeped as it is in this theory of meaning,  cannot really be argued with.

Let Limbaugh fume that words have meanings. The opposition shrug and say ‘our meanings are different from yours’.

With them, it’s not as we have repeatedly inferred, a matter of dis-covering an objective reality and reasoning from axioms based on it . What is at issue as far as they are concerned are their sensitivities and their imaginations and their desires: and your reality will bend to their narrative and program, or else.

This is not the place to examine just where their belief system degenerates into incoherence.  I am not sure that incoherence or what is an admitted self-reference problem is even a troubling issue with someone whose notion of “truth” is,

” … that since truth is a property of sentences, [notice it doesn't say 'propositions' or arguments*] since sentences are dependent for their existence upon vocabularies, and since vocabularies are made by human beings, so are truths.”

Why should it? He just previous to that writes,

“The very idea that the world or the self has an intrinsic nature … is a remnant of the idea that the world is a divine creation, the work of someone who had something in mind, who Himself spoke some language in which He described His own project … [then later] On the view I am suggesting, the claim that an adequate ‘philosophical’ doctrine must make room for our intuitions [meaning immediate apprehensions of reality] is a reactionary slogan …”

As I said, you will probably not find a more concise,  lucid, and unabashed exposition of the doctrines we confront every day as the solidarity pedlars steadily gnaw away at our formal liberties in the supposed name of relieving suffering and humiliation and exclusion -  but of just what exactly, they cannot and feel they need not, say.

Thinking back, many of us will say that this entire matter feels like a rehash. Wasn’t the debate over the bankruptcy of post-modernism and deconstruction held back in the early nineteen nineties in the universities, the important journals, and the big papers? Didn’t Alan Sokal make public fools of them? Didn’t they fold up their tents and kind of go away?

Yes, yes, and no. They not only didn’t not go away, the theorist of 25 years ago has clearly written the psychic program that the modern-liberal Democrat runs today.

From academia to the street and polling booth  in a couple decades.

Once upon a time, even Democrats referred to a common reality, imagined that humans had a moral center in addition to inchoate urges, and could be thought to understand the difference between truth and falsehood and to at least know in their consciences if they were lying or not.

Only a fool  would make that assumption now.

 

* Note. Rorty was involved, his curriculum vitae reports, in analytic philosophy before abandoning it for a kind of deconstructive and ironic pragmatism. Therefore he well knows the traditional conceptual difference between a proposition and a sentence, and his use of “sentence” is, for those of us not yet familiar with him, pregnant with meaning and intent and back references. Get the book … cheap from a remainder bin or used book shop if you can.

Lies Of Omission

I’m fairly sure that anyone here is sufficiently ”plugged in” to current politics enough to have heard about House member Gabby Gifford’s recent plea for further gun restrictions. I’m not sure what your local media is like, but there’s a fair chance that there was even a mention of Sarah Palin or at least some sort of “incitement” behind that shooter’s attack. Given the body count, it’s not too surprising.

Also recently mentioned, though only in passing, is that the guy who shot up the Family Research Council in DC. Honestly, my main memory of that was being on a family trip and wondering why the heck somebody targeting based on “anti-gay bias” would have bags of Chick-fil-A. I can remember a few commentators suggesting that it was some sort of cartoonish attempt at “blending in”– an indication of just how crazy his view of those who disagree is or was. “Hey, Chick-fil-a is ‘anti-gay’ the same way that the FRC is– they don’t support redefining marriage to fit current pop culture appeals. The Family Research Council even denies a man and woman are functionally identical to two guys or two gals, of all the nerve! They’ll never notice me coming in and killing people if I have suitable fast food bags!”   Not someone to take too seriously, even if he <I>did</i> have a gun.

I vaguely remember reading a blog about him choosing the target from the Southern Poverty Law Center, but I think that was from a site that collects examples of the SPLC faking and inflating “hate” for fundraising purposes. As I said, it didn’t stick in my mind, and I already don’t trust the SPLC. I assumed that they’d mentioned the FRC as being against homosexual marriage and the guy had gone from there.

Mostly, the “Giffords shooting” (the six dead victims get less press, since it seems likely she was the focus– if only because her public meeting gave that scum a crowd) sticks in one’s mind so much more because of the horrible range of people killed; from the little girl that was a 9/11 baby and the retired grandparent-types to the federal Judge and the first staffer to die in the line of duty, there was someone incredibly relatable to for everyone. Nobody died in the FRC attack, and Leonardo Johnson was able to overcome the shooter even after being shot in the arm.  No fuss about heroism there, so it must have not been that bad of a shot, or it would’ve hit the news, right? (An aside: You might notice that I don’t name the murderers or attempted murderers. I don’t want to give them that level of recognition. The victims or heroes, though, are a different matter, and it took quite a bit of digging to find Mr. Johnson’s name wasn’t “A. Security Guard.”)

After today, I’m rather disabused of the notion that the Giffords attack was anything but more successful and more hyped: the attempted murderer bought the Chick-fil-A sandwiches to rub in the faces of his dying victims.

Insult to injury.  Fatal injury.  Not as cartoonish, now.

If not for Mollie Hemmingway’s post over at Ricochet, I wouldn’t have even thought about media bias. I’m Catholic– if that doesn’t make you realize how much the media screws up, what on earth will?  It would be easier to find stories about the Church where reporters got it right than where they didn’t.  I’m sure other traditional religion followers, or even folks who simply are part of uncommon fandoms or do something as “strange” as know more about a gun than what end the bullet comes out can relate…. The news screws things up, a lot.

I’m guessing folks will remember the “Blame Sarah Palin Because Her Website Had A Map With Gifford’s Area In A Target” to-do? If not, Mollie goes over it, with links. Although I want you to go read it, the short version is: even though Mrs. Palin didn’t say anything vaguely like ”go shoot this bad woman,” and there was no evidence that the Gifford’s shooter had even seen the map or Palin’s facebook page, it was worrying because it might affect an effect on “troubled” people.

Turns out that the FRC was ”mentioned” on the SPLC site– it was on a “hate map.” That’s where the thank-God ineffective attempted murderer got his target. From a hate map.  They’re hateful, you see– so it’s good to target them.

Target a house seat: dangerous.

Make a “hate map” of those who oppose you politically on an issue: not worth mentioning. In fact, noticing that the attacker specifically stated he chose the target because of that “hate map” means that you are picking a fight.

As Mollie writes in response to a quote about that little detail “reigniting the culture wars that erupted around the shooting:”

Excuse me? What is that supposed to mean? I mean, you have an actual shooting in the culture war – an actual shooting – and you dismiss this aspect of the story as a “detail” that is “sure to reignite the culture wars”? The gall. The chutzpah. The …. hypocrisy of our media. The story doesn’t mention, by the way, that the shooter had a list with other groups whose names he got from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Cherry on top: a guy goes in to kill people he hates, and has a list of other targets that he hates, and intends to assault the dying further with a symbol of yet another group he hates… and the SPLC doesn’t include that as a “hate incident.”

Gun Show Bans Guns, Kills Show

Yorkshire posted an article on The First Street Journal that discussed Reed Exhibitions’ sudden and unilateral decision to side with the anti-constitutional, Second Amendment killing gun grabbers and the aftermath of that decision. One sixth of the exhibitors and celebrities pulled out of the nation’s largest outdoor sportsman’s show in a show of solidarity with the US Constitution. You can find a large (but incomplete) list of the boycotters here. That list includes Cabelas, one of the nation’s premiere big box stores dedicated to the outdoor sportsman, muzzle loaders, knife businesses, bow organizations and businesses, turkey call companies, fishing related companies and organizations, conservationists, television shows and celebrities, and much, much more.

Reed Exhibitions tried to shrug it all off as “a small percentage of more than 1,000 exhibits” as if Cabelas was equivalent to Kokosing Backwater Beaver Traps, but decided to “stop loss” (an investment term for the first rule of holes) and cancel the show. Granted, they called it “postpone” but if Reed Exhibitions continues to side with the anti-constitutionalist gun grabbers, there will be no show. Period. Because the celebrities and exhibitors necessary for such a show will not participate and the people who go to such a show will not attend. As it is, Reed Exhibitions severely and possibly permanently harmed its reputation with the very people it depends upon for millions of dollars of profit a year.

Hey, Reed Exhibitions, spoiler alert: I watched Red Dawn and your side loses.

Constitution lovers, check out the list of boycotters and support them with your outdoor recreation dollars. You don’t have to be a hunter or even a gun owner. If you’re into boating, fishing, camping, hiking, mountain climbing, conservation or any other outdoor recreation, you can find your equipment and educational needs among that list.

Boycott NBC’s Sunday Night Football

It was bad enough when they had uber-loon Keith Olbermann sit in with them on the pre-game and halftime, and when they engaged in doltish PC antics. Now, Bob Costas (who I already can’t stand for his condescending delivery of practically everything) decides to lecture us all about gun control:

“Our current gun culture,” [sports writer Jason] Whitlock wrote, “ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.”

“Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football, will be analyzed. Who knows?”

“But here,” wrote Jason Whitlock, “is what I believe: If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”

Video here.

Because you’re an idiot, Whitlock. And you too, Costas. Belcher was obviously suffering from some severe mental and emotional issues. Thinking that because he may not have had access to a gun he wouldn’t have killed his girlfriend and himself is wishful thinking at best, and plain stupidity at worst. Not to mention that handguns enhance people’s safety every freakin’ day.

It’s bad enough I tuned in to see how my second favorite football team (Eagles) was faring against “America’s Team” (Cowboys) last evening. I certainly didn’t need this sanctimonious garbage on a football game yet again. It’s one thing for Costas to say “Looks like the gun control debate may resurface” or something to that effect, but don’t f’in lecture me.

I’ll never be tuning into Sunday Night Football henceforth. Who needs it. I’ll just scope the constantly updating ESPN.com game schematics.

The Most Important Person In The World

“The most important person in the world to you is you, and you hardly even know you.”

 

That was the most evil, most vile, most satanic, most sadistic, most corruptive, most destructive jingle and ad campaign of the 1970s. It created tens of millions of narcissists nationwide. 50 million of them voted for the biggest narcissist ever to sit in the Oval Office in history. And they have succeeded in destroying this once great (and now crumbling) nation. And it is the fault of that ad campaign and that jingle and the radical Socialist education establishment.

J Jesus first.
O Others second.
Y Yourself last.

The only way to true joy in your life is to dedicate yourself to Jesus first, others second, and yourself last. Any other — all other — routes will lead to despair and an overwhelming feeling of neediness. You will not ever feel at peace until you exercise JOY.

And this nation will never recover from its narcissistic Socialist, nation-destroying agenda until enough people exercise JOY to counteract all the narcissists who voted for the world’s biggest narcissist (eclipsing Adolf Hitler himself).

Cumulonimbus + AgI = ??

A dark cloud follows him wherever he goes.
Every cloud has a silver lining.

Farmers obviously need rain for their crops, so there are some who resort to cloud seeding, adding silver iodide to the clouds to try to force rain out of them. But it’s a bad idea to seed a thunderstorm cloud. Cumulonimbus clouds can produce nasty things like hail storms, massive lightning storms, micro-bursts, tornadoes.

And of course, there are those who always bring bad luck with them, like Bad Luck Schleprock, our current President.

 
So, today I am telling you about the seeding of a 3,000 mile wide thunderstorm cloud hanging over the US — and the silver lining that comes with it. It’s painfully schadenfreudig. Painfully schadenfreudig, indeed. (Multiple stacked redundancy intentional.) Barack Obama and the Democrats, very cynically aware that their grand scheme to shove the US headlong into Socialism could cause them to fall out of power, set up a series of Laws and programs that would save most of the very bad results until after the 2012 election. After having blamed Bush for all the Democrat-and-Socialist caused travails, they would have a way of avoiding responsibility for the looming mega-disaster. It works like this:

• Set up a Socialist system with all the false positives front-loaded and all the negatives back-loaded.
• Get possibly voted out of office before the negatives hit, so the Socialist-caused negatives would hit when Conservatives were in office.
• Blame the Conservatives in office for the economic disaster the Socialists caused.
• Get the Socialists re-elected to complete the evil transformation of the Free Market US into a Socialist state, with the Conservatives forever blemished by the results of Socialist actions.

But a strange thing happened along the way. The Socialists got re-elected by a completely ignorant, envious, slothful, free hand-out seeking crowd. And all the back-loaded disasters will hit while the Socialists are in power. (By the way, did you know that tornadoes are also backloaded? They are on the back end of cumulonimbus clouds, and not up front.)

ObamaCare is one such program. As most of it is set to kick in now that the election is over, total disaster is on the horizon. Businesses, who cannot pay the cost of ObamaCare and stay afloat at the same time, will be laying off massive numbers of workers nationwide. Other businesses will be cutting their low-level employees (the working poor) to under 30 hours a week so those businesses can stay in business. Very little expansion will be happening, if any at all. It’ll be full-on contraction.

A nice little poisonberry in ObamaCare — that “make health care cheaper for all” lie — is a 2.3 percent excise tax on all medical devices, such as crutches, wheelchairs, heart stents, etc, etc. And an excise tax is far worse than a profit tax or income tax. It hits the gross revenue and not the after-expenses cost. For example, suppose it costs a business 5,000 dollars for the raw materials to make a single product. Add in the labor costs, the health insurance costs, the retirement costs, the social security tax, the medicare tax, the property tax for the building itself, the electricity cost, the property insurance cost, the transportation cost, the bookkeeping cost, and all other costs associated with getting the already developed product to market and the final cost to the business is 6,800 dollars. The business sells the product for 7,000 dollars because that’s what the market will bear. The business gets a profit of 200 dollars per sale.

In comes the 2.3 percent excise tax. Another 161 dollars off the top. The new profit for the 7,000 dollar item falls from 200 dollars to a whopping 39 dollars (an effective tax rate of 80.5 percent of the profit). Not enough to make the company a going concern. Kill the Research and Development department of the company — the life-blood of all businesses that want to survive, for if a business is not growing and moving forward it is necessarily dying.

But it doesn’t stop there. No, not at all. That same company also has to pay the new, higher costs involved in providing ObamaCare to all its employees (instead of the less expensive insurance plans which were optional, which fair portions of employees did not opt into). That 39 dollars per product, which used to be 200 dollars per product goes negative. It costs more to produce than it can be sold for.

But, again, it doesn’t stop there. Obama’s declaration that electricity costs must necessarily skyrocket and he’ll bankrupt coal-fired electric plants necessarily means the energy-intensive manufacturing industry will get hit hard with skyrocketing overhead costs. Costs that cannot be reduced merely by laying people off. So instead, the companies will shutter its doors and either go off-shore or cease to exist, providing a double-whammy of forcing the products to become far more expensive than they are now and far more difficult to obtain.

Small businesses will collapse. The middle class will become working poor. The working poor will become the unemployable destitute. Products the middle class used to be able to afford will become luxury items. Items that were luxuries for the working poor will become nothing but unreachable pipe-dreams. Inflation will go into hyper-drive. Interest rates will climb, making the cost of borrowing prohibitive. And deficit spending, which has been kept artificially low (yeah, I said it), will explode.

How is 1.2 trillion dollars (or more) in deficit spending “artificially low”? That’s a good question. And I have a good answer for that. Two words: “debt” and “service”. Debt service.

Historical view of the Prime Rate from Forecast Chart.com (8 percent line added).

Above is a chart showing the historic levels for the Prime Rate, from Forecast Chart.com. I added a red line at 8 percent for reference. Below is a chart showing the historic levels for the Discount Rate, from a 2009 article on Apin Talisayon’s Weblog (data obtained from the Financial Forecast Center). I added a red line at 6 percent for reference.

US Discount Rate From 1950 as found on Apin Talisayon’s Weblog (6 percent red line added).

From Apin Talisayon:

As I said, central banks had recently been dropping interest rates, and so we cannot use the abnormally low prevailing interest rates (0.5%). I plotted the historical data of discount rates set by the US Federal Reserve since January 1950 from the Financial Forecast Center[.]

As you can see in the above two charts, the Prime Rate and the Discount Rate differ in levels, but mirror each other. And they’re not only at historic lows; they’re far below historic norms. That means the future necessarily will provide much higher rates on borrowing than today. And the Federal Government’s debt service costs absolutely must skyrocket. Couple that with the US credit rating crumbling — and will continue to crumble — and the interest on the debt will become astronomical. Even a fairly normal rate of 6 percent with our current 16,000,000,000,000 dollar deficit means 960 BILLION DOLLARS in interest payments alone. By 2015, our national debt will be 20 TRILLION DOLLARS and the interest on that debt will be 1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS. That’s before paying for roads, bridges, high speed trains to nowhere, free birth control pills for Sandra Fluck (phonetic spelling), free abortion pills for Sandra Fluck (phonetic spelling), free ObamaPhones, free health care, free foodstamps, free college tuition, free housing for the poor and forever pregnant single mothers, free Big Bird, free NPR propaganda, bailing out California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, free cowboy poetry, and oh yeah, paying for our national defense.

1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS SPENT TO PAY FOR ALREADY SPENT MONEY WE DIDN’T HAVE BEFORE PAYING FOR ANY CURRENT PROGRAMS AND EXPENSES!!!

The Socialist who ascended the throne in DC, along with the Socialists in the US Senate who have adamantly refused to produce a Federal Budget since April, 2009, in direct violation of Federal Law and the US Constitution, have successfully Cloward-Pivened the most prosperous nation in the history of the world. The most prosperous nation this world has ever seen has been successfully brought to financial ruin by the Leftists in power who have no use for a document that is “over 100 years old”. The aim? Destroy the Free Market and implement Socialism worldwide.

The silver lining? Conservatives have not been responsible for any of it. Conservatives have not been in charge for any of it. I know, little solace for the loss of a once great and mighty and FREE nation. Will there be anything left to save by 2016? And will there be any conceivable way to save it and return to prosperity from the Abyss of Destitution Obama and the Socialist Democrats have created? Or will it already be too late? I, for one, am not looking forward to the disaster these next 10 years will provide us. (UPDATE: Nice Deb performed her Karnac impression and answered my questions before seeing them. Go to her site to read her answers.)

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Gee, why do you think the Obama administration waited until after November 6th to mail these letters?

How Did The Weimar Republic Collapse?

Weimar Germany had an economic crisis.
The Germans elected a bunch of politicians who scapegoated large groups of Germans, pitting Germans against each other.
German political leaders turned their backs on their Constitution, and the German people followed along, like sheep, out of a sense of expediency and crisis.
Free Germany then collapsed into a totalitarian state, which soon crumbled into total devastation, but only after tens of millions of lives were lost.

We are repeating history. But this time, there’s no gleaming beacon on the hill to come to the rescue. We are the last bastion of Freedom left in the world. And We The People are willfully letting that freedom vanish.

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

What Our Future Holds

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.

From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:

• From bondage to spiritual faith;
• from spiritual faith to great courage;
• from courage to liberty;
• from liberty to abundance;
• from abundance to selfishness;
• from selfishness to apathy;
• from apathy to dependence;
• from dependency back again into bondage.

–Dr Alexander Tytler, Scotsman, history professor at the University of Edinborough on The Fall of The Athenian Republic around the time of the birth of the US

Having reelected a Socialist who has vowed vengeance on us and to bypass Congress and maintained a Leftist Senate which has refused to obey the US Constitution and Federal Law by refusing to write a Budget since April 2009, here are a few things I see in our future:

1. Energy inflation and food inflation (two items left off the “official” inflation rate) will continue to far outstrip the inflation rate, as the Obama administration bankrupts electricity producers and rolling black-outs become commonplace in this land of plentiful natural resources we will not be permitted to use. The inflation rate itself will necessarily heat up heavily.

2. Businesses will continue to downsize due to the undue burdens of catastrophic regulations and taxes, reducing the number of employees and turning many full-time positions into part-time positions, causing the official unemployment numbers to climb and the real unemployment numbers to skyrocket.

3. The poverty rate and dependency rate will climb higher, as fewer people work and more people hold their hands out for “ObamaMoney”, causing even greater harm to those who are the producers. The US will further cannibalize itself.

4. The National Debt will continue to skyrocket and deficit spending will once again increase year-over-year instead of decreasing, causing two more reductions in US credit ratings. The Fed, which has caused the absolutely inevitable skyrocketing inflation rate, will no longer be able to keep interest rates artificially low. The interest rates will jump 7 to 15 points in the next 4 years, causing the US debt service portion of the (unwritten) Budget to explode.

5. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare expenses will reach half the (unwritten) Federal Budget, and beyond, as each work to bankrupt themselves and the US.

6. Religious Liberty will be curtailed as Government forces Christians to either fund that which is immoral or dissolve their outreach programs. Churches will learn they cannot preach on certain subjects without fear of criminal sanctions.

7. Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom to peaceably protest the Government will be restricted. Our Second Amendment rights will be severely cut. Our rights against illegal searches and seizures will be infringed upon. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments, largely ignored now, will be blatantly curtailed.

In short, the “shining beacon on the hill” that was the Freedom and Liberty the US provided the world will have its 50,000 watt light removed and replaced with a half-watt red decorative light. The US has spent the last 30 years slipping from apathy into dependence. We are now sinking from dependence back into bondage. And it will take great men and women of steely resolve and moral strength to wrest this once great nation out of the entropic hands of the Socialists and the Dependent Class. And that means fighting both the Democrat leadership and the Ruling Class Republican leadership. Tooth and nail.

Are there enough of them left?

Dying California Cannibalizes Itself

I have written multiple articles chronicling California’s Leftism-caused death throes. Yesterday, Californians, in their great wisdom, have decided to cannibalize themselves, (HT Patterico) devouring whatever healthy parts they had left. As businesses and working families have been fleeing the state for healthier locales, Californians have just finished voting to raise income taxes on the most productive of what’s left, raise corporate tax rates for the businesses which haven’t yet fled, raise sales taxes. Californians have also voted not to curtail Public Employee Union power, that power that has already caused multiple California cities to declare bankruptcy. What does this mean for the once-great state of California? It means more business closures. It means more flight of the producers out of the state. It means less tax revenue for the state. It means higher unemployment, higher poverty rates, more personal and corporate bankruptcies. It means more cities going bankrupt.

And this time, it also means fewer places to run to. Because the next four years will be Sheol for all of the US, as Obama exacts revenge on everyone who stood in his Socialist way (meaning Conservative states and Conservative people) as he unleashes his bureaucrats to write all manner of growth-destroying laws, free of the need to even consult the US Congress.

The next four years are going to be a very bumpy ride for all of us, but never so bumpy as the ride Californians, Illinoisians, Marylanders, New Yorkers are going to take.

Welcome to the Socialist caused Sheol, folks.

Vote Fraud Shenanigans Already?

We’ve just begun the longest day of 2012, Election Day, and we’ve already been delivered the first signs of Democrat life: vote fraud allegations.

From Nevada, a Union knowingly registering illegals and then threatening them to force them to illegally vote.

ALIPAC, Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, based in Raleigh, N.C., sent the Nevada secretary of state an email outlining its intention.

“We want to stop the felonious thefts of American elections,” says William Gheen, ALIPAC’s president.

Gheen points to a commentary published in Sunday’s Las Vegas Review Journal. In it, editorial writer Glenn Cook accuses the Culinary Union 226 of knowingly registering illegal immigrants and then pressured them to vote.

Cook quotes an unidentified illegal immigrant who is on the Clark County voter rolls. The person claims a union representative told them they were “in so much trouble” for refusing to vote.

From Oregon, apparently an election worker completed a few incomplete ballots, by helping those incomplete ballots vote Republican.

Fox 12 in Oregon reports that Deanna Swenson, who was working part-time in Clackamas County, allegedly voted for Republican candidates on two ballots where voters had left sections blank. County commissioners reportedly claimed they saw her fill in the blanks on Oct. 31.

Oregon is the only state in the nation that does its elections entirely by mail. No possibility for fraud there, right? In fact, that system is a fertile feeding ground for anyone wanting to commit mass vote fraud.

From Pennsylvania, Democrat election officials boot out Republican election officials in Democrat fraud and intimidation heavy Philadelphia. A judge orders the Republicans’ reinstatement.

A Pennsylvania judge is issuing an order to reinstate Republican election officials across Philadelphia who allegedly were ejected or refused entry by on-site Democratic voting chief judges, GOP officials tell Fox News.

One Republican official claimed that “just under 70″ Republican election officials were blocked from Philadelphia polling sites Tuesday morning by Democrats on site. One of them, the official claimed, “was shoved out of the polling place.”

“For this many inspectors to be ejected from polling places is rare, even for Philadelphia,” the official told FoxNews.com

More Pennsylvania news that needs to be seen and actively corrected. From the Fox News.com front page (which is, obviously, constantly changing):

Public school indoctrination and vote law violation

Look at a major part of the reason public schools are failing. They’re too busy trying to indoctrinate your children into being mind-numbed radical Leftist automatons. But aside from that, it is illegal to promote a candidate or ballot measure within a specific distance of the polling place itself. And this mural pushing Obama is inside the polling place itself. Note the voting machine set up right beside the Obama face and quote. Update: A judge ordered the Election Law violating mural covered, and the Democrat election officials did a urine-poor job of it.

From Michigan, illegal electioneering, assault of a citizen, assault of a police officer.

REPORT: A woman in a Detroit polling location was aggressively campaigning for Obama. A female voter in line objected. The Obama supporter punched the woman in the face.

Police came to arrest her and she smacked the cop.

Developing…

From New York (via Nice Deb): A New York City poll worker tries to force a voter to fill in every blank on the ballot, straight-line Democrat all the way, and declares the ballot would be rejected if any of the lines were left blank. The Republican US Senate candidate strongly obects. Republican US Senate candidate Wendy Long’s letter:

“This morning when I went to vote, a poll worker who was at the scanner, studied my private ballot and proceeded to tell me that it was rejected because I did not ‘fill in every space.’ She then proceeded to indicate that I should mark the Democratic line all the way down.

The poll worker said, ‘you have to fill in all of THESE, all the way down,” indicating the whole line at the far left of the ballot, saying ‘you can’t leave any blank.’”

I said, “I’m sorry, but that just can’t be the case …. that would force me to vote for people I don’t want to vote for.” She insisted again, that every office had to be filled out or the ballot would be rejected. And I said again “I don’t want to vote for those people!”

I protested again and said that I wanted to feed my ballot into the scanner as I had filled it out. She eventually relented saying ‘well you can TRY it’ — meaning she would allow me to put it in the scanner.

It obviously worked.

I had just remarked to all the poll workers, before I filled in my ballot, that we were all very fortunate to have heat and water and electricity.

It is heartbreaking, especially in these trying times for New York City with thousands of voters displaced from their homes and their polling locations, that poll workers would behave in this way, and through intent or ignorance, work to distort the outcome of an election and violate an individual’s right to vote for whomever he or she chooses.

I urge all voters to know your rights when you vote.

You can ask for help in how to operate the scanner, but your ballot is private and cannot and should not be inspected.

You do not have to vote in every office, or fill in every oval. Vote only for the candidates whom YOU want to vote for.

Finally, question authority – poll workers are there to help you to vote, not to tell you how vote. If one crosses the line, contact the Attorney General’s Office or your local Board of Elections.”

In North Carolina, electioneering by a Democrat election official?

Sharpe said he watched as the worker showed the woman where the Obama button was – along with all the other Democrats on the ticket.

“She was pushing the buttons he told her to push,” Sharpe said. “This is pretty shady.”

When it was his turn to vote, the poll worker did the same thing, he said.

“I went up there to vote and he came over and set up the machine for me,” Sharpe said. “He said, ‘If you want to vote straight Democratic ticket mash this button.’”

In Virginia, vote fraud? Former National Republican Congressional Committee Digital Director tries to vote in person in Alexandria and is informed he’d already voted.

2012 Presidential Election Results As They Come In

UPDATE 10:18PM TEXAS TIME, FOX NEWS CALLS THE RACE FOR BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

FIRST PRESIDENT IN 96 YEARS TO WIN A SECOND TERM WHILE SHEDDING ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES

Welcome to Truth Before Dishonor’s version of live-blogging the 2012 Presidential election. As a reminder, here’s how the 2008 elections turned out (via US Election Atlas.org).

Note the Republican states are in blue and the Democrat states are in red. Republicans were not always red and Democrats were not always blue. It wasn’t until someone on MSNBC decided to employ some psychological propaganda that the colors were set in that way. As I noted in my Obama Wins 2008, In All Likelihood Loses 2012 article, it is my plan that Republicans and Democrats revert back to their appropriate colors.

This is set to be a long day of poll-watching from home. Stay tuned for the updates, and may Providence guide the election results.

UPDATE 8:00am Texas time: The longest day of 2012 has barely begun and we already have vote fraud allegations.

UPDATE 8:15am Texas time: It’s already old news, but the first official counts are in, with Barack Obama taking a commanding lead. Dixville Notch, NH and Hart’s Location, NH have opened and closed their precincts.

The Unrepentant Tyrannical Thug

Perry Hood, the retired Lewes, Delaware Socialist, has repeatedly threatened another’s livelihood because Perry Hood does not like what that other person says online. He has accused another of Federal Income Tax Evasion, a felony. He goes out of his way to try to bully and intimidate his enemies, Conservatives, into silence. And he doesn’t care what rules are in place to prevent his thuggish actions.

Wagonwheelsays:

November 4, 2012 at 19:15

Ropelight now takes his turn:

Koolo, if Preey is taking lessons from Brett Kimberlin, The Speedway Bomber and Democrat activist, resident in the neighboring state of Maryland at last notice, you might consider notifying your local police department that SWATting could be a possibility.

It’s a good idea to be on-record if something truly dangerous might be in the offing. It’s happened to too many bloggers too many times before to ignore the possibility. No one knows the extent of the evil that lurks in the hearts of these belly crawlin’ leftist bastards.

This is typical of the venom that emanates from your blog, Mr Editor. It reflects on them, and on your blog, all because of ideological differences.

Maybe not.

I stand up for the well being of our students.

koolo’s behavior on here, if repeated in the class room, which it probably is, would constitute predatory behavior by a bully against children. Hube is in exactly the same category. As a matter of fact, Mr Editor, you yourself, by your Comment and Content Policy, have in the past exercised your prerogative to limit what you call “liberty”. So playing that card this time on me is not impressive, with all the other crap going on here on a daily basis.

Face it, the amount of abuse given me on here by these extremist ideologues, koolo, ropelight, Eric, and Hitchcock being the worst offenders (Who’s left?), is reprehensible, but is part of the rhetoric we see repeated time and again by these people, and you do nothing about it. Your own modeling of civility has been of no good influence on these people.

If I knew koolo’s identity, I would turn him in in a New York minute. Unfortunately, I don’t, so there is no threat which can be carried out. However, he considers it a threat, because he knows his behavior here would trigger an investigation, if known. We must not have a person with his obvious character deficiencies in our classrooms teaching our children, period. If he is worried about his livelihood, then he needs to demonstrate that he has gotten control of himself.

Note that even when you asked for civility on your Friday thread, koolo was unable to stifle himself, totally ignoring your request. Same with Hitchcock. Some respect they showed to you!

Koolo surely said that he would apologize, which he did not do in a timely fashion. What kind of an adult person would push the limit until caught, then apologize? This is what bullies do until they see they have caused harm, which in some cases could be serious harm, as we’ve seen reported in the news in recent years. Then they apologize, when often it is too late, the harm already done. Does koolo do this bullying in his classroom, push it to the limit, then apologize? If so, what kind of damage has he done to our children?

If this means that I am to be banned from your blog, so be it. Then your cowardly right wing friends will be most pleased, as they have been lobbying for this for many months. They can give out the heat, but they can’t stand it themselves, like crybabies. How childish and immature is that?

Does that tell you enough about Perry Hood? How about this?

Wagonwheelsays:

November 3, 2012 at 12:58

In case you can’t figure it out, you aren’t even in the ballpark about my professional behavior.

I’ll believe that when I see some professional behavior on here from you!

I’ll apologize to the Editor in this thread now … for hijacking the thread. But I hope he understands b/c Perry has made yet another threat to a commenter b/c he can’t stand it when his own tactics are turned against him.

Absolutely I have said that I would turn you in, based on your behavior on here vis a vis a classroom. If you have nothing to fear, then you would not be pushing back on this issue, to the extent that you would even refer to it as a “threat”. You know full well, or should know, that your behavior on here would raise questions by administrators and board members, the same questions I am raising. So clean up your act, koolo, as a demonstration of your “professional” persona!

[Comment left intact; in this, Wagonwheel has admitted that he has threatened koolo's livelihood.

It should be obvious that, if koolo is a teacher, simply a complaint made of this nature would cause serious repercussions, whether the complaint was dismissed or not. Because Wagonwheel is, himself, retired, he is immune to such threats.

We have endured many, many personal insults on this site, but only one commenter here has threatened someone else's liberty or livelihood, and that commenter, himself, has made complaints when others have published his real name, even though that commenter has no job to lose. His request for personal anonymity has been honored on this site, simply because he has requested such.

I fully recognize that there are some significant personal animosities here, and that as discussion gets more strident, those animosities accelerate. However, threatening someone's livelihood or liberty crosses the line, very blatantly. -- Editor]

That should be enough to tell you everything you need to know about the evil, hate-filled tyrant Perry Hood of Lewes, Delaware.

They Always End Up Showing Us What They Are

Hate-filled totalitarian Leftists who have no regard for Rule of Law. That’s what they are, and they always end up showing it. The difference between now and then? “Then”, the dinosaur Mainstream Media was fully able to cover up their actions. Now, New Media exposes them to millions of people.

For instance, most people in the blogosphere have heard about Obama calling people to vote for him out of a sense of revenge — revenge toward Obama’s American enemies. And Romney called him out on it. What did the dinosaur Mainstream Media do? They accused Romney of talking about revenge, and not Obama.

Next up, Valerie Jarrett, the brains behind the Obama frankenstein monster.

A rep from Jarrett office was in today. She gave us a finish line pep talk and then afterwards, heard her saying how Jarrett is very excited about a 2nd term agenda and a big part of that agenda is to punish everyone who opposed them during the first term and the campaign. Strange that everything was “Ms. Jarrett wants this, and Ms. Jarrett is looking forward to that”. You hardly heard Obama’s name mentioned by her which I guess reinforces what people are saying. Valerie Jarrett really is the power in the White House. I know that when her representative showed up it was like royalty was visiting. All the big dogs were lined up to meet her and acting real friendly and they gave us a heads up an hour before and told us we better “put on a good show” while she was here.

The part that really stuck out to me was when I overheard the rep say that Jarrett told them, “After we win this election, it’s our turn. Payback time. Everyone not with us is against us and they better be ready because we don’t forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded, the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve. There is going to be hell to pay. Congress won’t be a problem for us this time. No election to worry about after this is over and we have two judges ready to go.” She was talking directly to about three of them. Sr. staff. And she wasn’t trying to be quiet about it at all. And they were all listening and shaking their heads and smiling while she said it. Pretty creepy.

If that isn’t bone-chilling, you’re already completely gone. Very clear hate-filled guarantees of throwing the US Constitution and the Rule of Law out the window, in order to “punish” those who opposed their tyrannical rule. Congress won’t be a problem because Obama has already shown he’ll rule by fiat, completely ignoring the Constitutional requirements. Violating them on a whim.

This is the existential election. Obama wins and kiss America and Liberty good-bye. Obama loses and America survives its greatest existential threat.

Sheet Metal Workers International Truck Filled With Romney/Ryan Yard Signs

HT Jazz Shaw

From Ohio:

Perrysburg police arrested four Toledo area men early Friday morning on charges of stealing Mitt Romney campaign signs in Wood and Lucas counties in Northwest Ohio.

The signs were found in a pickup truck owned by Sheet Metal Workers International, Union Local 33 in Parma, according to the police report.

Many of the signs — some measuring as large as 4 feet by 8 feet — were believed to have been put up by members of Northwest Ohio Conservative Coalition, said John McAvoy, the group’s president.

I was a member of the Sheet Metal Workers International for over eight years in Ohio. My Union dues helped get Barack Obama elected. My Union dues helped get Sherrod Brown elected. My Union dues helped get Ted Strickland elected. All of whom I have always vehemently opposed.

So, why did I remain in that Union for so long?
1) Ohio is NOT a Right to Work state.
2) I needed the job for my own survival.

Leftists Prove They Are The Disease … AGAIN

Robert Stacy McCain provides more evidence that the Leftists are not carriers of a disease, but are in fact the essence of the disease themselves. (Republished in its entirety, with explicit permission from RS McCain himself.*)

Democrat Troll Accounts Wage Hateful ‘War on Women’ Against Dana Loesch

Posted on | November 1, 2012 | 18 Comments and 33 Reactions

Evidently, the polls in the Missouri Senate race — which show Claire McCaskill at only 45% and Todd Akin within 2 points — have unhinged Democrats, who have adopted a “kill-the-messenger” frenzy against St. Louis-based Dana Loesch:

Kognitive Diss @KognitiveDiss

Surely, @DLoesch ‘s husband hate-fucks her – and she likes it – because she knows that she and her miserable vagina deserve to be punished.

1 Nov 12

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Why does Twitter @Support permit vile monsters like @KognitiveDiss to use their service, and thereby make Twitter such a toxic pool of filth? This isn’t about “Free Speech.” The First Amendment imposes no requirement on commercial providers to allow their services to be abused in this digusting manner. Dana Loesch’s political opinions — she wrote about the Missouri Senate race yesterday — should not make her an open target for these kind of hatefully obscene attacks from troll accounts.

UPDATE: Here’s a nice video from Glenn Beck’s “American Voices” series in which Dana Loesch explains who she is:

What kind of wicked person — what kind of vicious twisted soul — would say the hateful things about her that @KognitiveDiss has said? And why would Twitter @Support not automatically delete that kind of troll account?

*Permission declaration. (And could someone explain to this neophyte how to do a proper twitter blockquote? I’m blockquoting RS McCain’s article in visual and not text, which I tried to do with the tweets.)

John Hitchcock ‏@TruthBeforeDis

@rsmccain wrote abt @dloesh and the disease @KognitiveDiss . I want to repub it in its entirety. Can I have permission? http://tinyurl.com/bkgvxcj 

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10:01 PM – 1 Nov 12 ·

Tweet text Reply to @TruthBeforeDis @rsmccain @Dloesh @KognitiveDiss

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8m Robert Stacy McCain ‏@rsmccain

@TruthBeforeDis Sure. Just give us a link.

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UPDATE: I had a brief twitter convo with the Leftist disease. And I hate what 140-char limits do to writing.

		John Hitchcock @TruthBeforeDis	01 Nov
		@KognitiveDiss FYI, U’r not from hum civ either. U love the idea of Conserv women being ravaged and brutalized. U’r a disease 2b vanquished.

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		Kognitive Diss
		@KognitiveDiss
@TruthBeforeDis You’d be truly surprised at how many of those same conservative women want nothing more than to be ravaged. #50Shades ofGrey
11:22 PM – 01 Nov 12

Is there any doubt, any doubt at all, that Leftism is a disease?