The American Spectator

Reader Mail

MICROCOSMIC
Re: David N. Bass's California Schemin':

California is a shining example of a failed socialist state in the throes of fiscal suicide.  The Governator has aided and abetted the moral and fiscal bankruptcy of this once giant economy by allowing unions to dominate the political agenda while ultra-liberal coastal slices dictate social norms. Where else can you find example after example of the democratic process overturned by an activist bench? Don’t like the way the vote went?  Just file a suit. No problem. 

Within 12 hours of Mr. Obama’s victory, the California press was preconditioning the citizens of this state with a reinstatement of the vehicle registration tax, then a day later a “temporary” 1.5 cent sales tax increase. All the while promising to gore everyone’s favorite ox, the public school system if we don’t go along like the sheep he believes we all are. Scare tactics always work here. 

Mr. Schwarzenegger must believe, like all liberals must, that taxation is the cure for every problem. Certainly it’s helped in California, where tax revenues have increased some 79% but spending has outpaced even that fairly phenomenal rate. Perhaps Arnold needs some remedial arithmetic. Maybe Gavin Newsome can teach him some new tricks. Oh, I forgot, San Francisco is already bankrupt. Did they go to school together?
-- Greg Mercurio
Vacaville, California

This is typical of the Republicans, better known as the stupid party. I for one will never again vote for a Republican for national office. Hence forth I will be supporting candidates of the Constitution party or candidates endorsed by Ron Paul.

My brother lives in Madison, WI, a town known for its liberalism and he has been surprised by the number of people forming Ron Paul support groups. The Republican Party is done, stick a fork in it. It threw its base (European Americans) under the bus in a misguided effort to lock up the Hispanic vote. The Republicans at the behest of Rove and company were also instrumental in pressuring Fannie May and many other institutions to lend to illegal aliens and Hispanics with a poor or no credit rating for the same reason.

This election was the last chance to turn things around in this country, to bring the country back from the precipice of being over run by hordes of third world peasants, who will contribute nothing to this country and will instead end up being supported by the productive, taxpaying citizens of this nation. However, this will not go on indefinitely, the result will be the break up of the United States into several smaller nations based on language, ethnicity and culture.

When given the chance to reverse the gathering momentum towards partition what did the Republicans offer the electorate? Amnesty John McLame, the worst candidate in modern history and possibly the worst candidate to ever run for office. The man is totally clueless and is hopelessly out of touch with what is going on in this country and the forces that are on the verge of tearing it apart. As for the Republicans, they had their chance and they blew it. I will close with the following quote, which by the way was hopelessly mangled by the moron presently occupying the White House. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
-- Paul Martell

WE CALLS 'EM LIKE WE SEES 'EM
Re: Peter Ferrara's The Party-Controlled Press:

My husband watched all the Obama coverage (he's retired) and the news media was extremely biased and pro-Obama. Especially CNN.

Everything that I saw personally was also that way.
-- Edie

The ratings tell the story: All of the ostensible “main-stream” news outlets are down. The Times (LA & NY), the Boston Globe, and others are firing staff, amidst declining revenue & circulation. TV fares no better with the exception of the FOX News Channel, being the only "news" channel that’s either maintained or grown their audience. Talk, Rush & Hannity really, have held their audiences if not grown them as well.

The mainstream press, bored with the anonymous tarmacs of Allentown, PA will blame us, the stubbornly objective American people for not being progressive enough to get it. But we do get it, that’s why we’re here at the Spectator...amongst others.
-- P. Aaron Jones
Michigan

"This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Thus spoke the small town newspaper reporter in the 1962 movie "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." Journalists have truly come full circle. Much of the news is now "legend," at best, not unlike that which caught the fancy of many in the 19th century. Some of the hit pieces that get published are much like the anti-German propaganda during World War I.  And television has "Access Hollywood."  Can "Access Washington, D.C." be far behind?
-- Stan Welli
Aurora, Illinois

ALL THE RIGHTS YOU EVER WANTED AND MORE
Re: Bret Joshpe's The Left's Invisible Constitution:

In 1965, Justice William O. Douglas said in the majority opinion of Griswold v. Connecticut that "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.” One day while rummaging through the U.S. Constitution, Douglas was elated to find a right to privacy amongst all those mysterious emanations within our founding document's penumbra. Voila! A heretofore unknown right materialized.

Using a similar bit of legal legerdemain, the judges deciding Roe v. Wade explored this method further. With a little extrapolation they were able to uncover another implied "right” -- the “right” to an abortion. Boy, there must have been a whole lotta emanating goin' on while this case was being argued!

And on and on it goes...

Average Joes like us cannot see all these deeply embedded extra rights in the Constitution because they are not visible to the untrained eye. Until a person is sworn in as a member of the Supreme Court’s judicial panel, all those emanating penumbras remain completely hidden from human consciousness. However, after being sprinkled with Penumbra Magic, fairy dust found only in liberal SCOTUS judges’ chambers, the scales covering the eyes of newly affirmed jurists fall off and these previously unseen apparitions instantly become visible. This transformation is absolutely positively miraculous!

The word is that the new Obama administration will be working with Congress to appoint more liberal SCOTUS judges who have developed a new super strength formulation of this judicial potion. Their reconstituted version is said to have the power to detect emanations emanating from all previous emanations!

Pretty soon we won't even need real judges. Future Presidents with the advice and consent of Congress will merely appoint people with liberal sensibilities and equip them with a special pair of 3-D emanation detection glasses along with a big bottle of Penumbra Magic. Soon we'll discover more rights in the Constitution than you can shake a stick at!
-- Rick Arand
Lee's Summit, Missouri

OR FOR KINDLING A FIRE
Re: Rachel Alexander's The Newspaper Belongs in the Trash:

I canceled my 20+ year subscription to the New York Times the day they ran a front page article on Sarah Palin's clothes, after neglecting for three days to report on Biden's comments as to how Barack Obama would be seriously tested early in his Presidency.

It struck me that the prediction of an attack against the U.S. made by one vice-presidential candidate was slightly more newsworthy than were the clothes purchases of the other Vice Presidential candidate. The obviously slanted coverage on those two issues made me realize that my subscription was tantamount to contributing roughly 500 dollars a year to the DNC.

Cancel your subscription -- you will not be less well-informed because there are other outlets for news now. Stop paying for the left's agitprop.
-- Vic DiRita
Ann Arbor, Michigan

QUESTIONS WITHOUT ANSWERS

I've been a Republican since I've been able to vote, since the early '70s. I am like many other Conservatives feel dishearten by the ways this Nation is going! I want to present a question to you, a question with no legitimate answer. Why? We each own ourselves, in full, and property is an extension of person.

Question: Who says that my life and my property are not entirely my own?

It would be interesting to see the comments!
-- D. J. Feindel

AS SURE AS DAY FOLLOWS NIGHT

After the disaster of the elections in 2006 and 2008, I think it is about time that we stop putting off the obvious, specifically, the need to shut down, close, end, what ever you want to call it, the Republican Party. With an almost guaranteed second term, BHO will easily set up his successor to make a successful bid for the White House and twelve years of Democrat "rule."  (Oh how they will rule, too.) No doubt the GOP will put up some lame, weak, silly candidate who will be stomped into the ground by "the anointed one" BHO. Let this be the time in which we create and build a new conservative movement around a new party. By starting from scratch now, by breaking from the tainted name "Republican," it would be possible to draw Latino, African Americans, and other minorities into a new conservative movement. God knows that these groups have conservative members, but they can't bring themselves to vote "Republican" (barely could I this last go around). As much as it might bother the old guard, the name Republican is now a guarantee for political defeat. Thanks to the Bush family's pathetic moderate Republicanism, Karl Rove, and other compassionate conservatives, the Republicans now have an image that can never, absolutely never, be fixed. It is the Edsel of party politics.

We conservatives, not moderates mind you, need to form a new party, a party that can not be smeared easily by an association with the current version of the GOP, the "Republicans" (as Mark Levin calls them). Fresh faces, young folks, who can attract young voters of all races and background, who will have doubts about much in the ruling Democrat party, need to dominate the new party. Why not call it "American Party." What ever we call it, it must be started now. Let the GOP be a holding action to make life miserable for the Dem over the next four years as the new Conservative movement takes control of the Congress in 2012 and the White House in 2016. On to victory!
-- Paul M.
Gainesville, Virginia