In Bill Whittle's latest video, he also uses history to highlight and promote the point he is trying to make - in this case the cult-like obsession or bewitching of those around the 'glamour' of the hard left.
What is timely about this is that the video is released on the same day that PJ Media announces the winners of the 1st Annual Walter Duranty Price for Journalistic Mendacity.
Walter Duranty, as Whittle reminds us, was a New York Times reporter who was one of the useful idiots that Vladimir Lenin so 'admired' of the West. Duranty, it seems, was not really motivated by ideology to write such glowing stories about the 'worker's paradise' of the Soviet Union even as he knew that Josef Stalin was embarking on the murder of 60 million in the Ukraine in order to 'improve' the Soviet Union.
Duranty was instead motivated by his ego and narcissism - willing to say and do anything in order to be perceived as someone special, one of the 'elite'. All that Duranty did was to achieve the desired end - and whatever he had to do to get there was legitimate as long as he got the recognition he coveted.
This mendacity is clearly reflected in the runners-up and winner of the PJ Media award.
The 2nd Runner Up was the insufferable and tedious Andrew Sullivan of Newsweek / Daily Beast.
The 1st Runner Up was Bob Simon, CBS News and 60 Minutes.
But the winners were Joan Juliet Buck, the reporter, and Anna Wintour (Obama bundler), the editor, for their profile in Vogue Magazine of Asma al-Assad, the first lady of Syria. This glowing profile, titled 'Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert' was penned as her husband was actively murdering 30,000 of his own people in an effort to remain in power. As Claudia Rossett, of PJ Media and contributor for the WSJ noted...
In sum, for their stalwart efforts first to cast Syria’s dictatorship as a fashion statement, and then to cover — or erase — their tracks in ways so self-serving that even now they continue to mislead, we congratulate the winners of the Walter Duranty Prize, Anna Wintour and Joan Juliet Buck.They are part of the progressive 'elite'.
If we take a hard look at those of the progressive 'elite' - in media, in journalism, and in government, it seems this 'elite' who are 'running' our country are little more than extremely liberal and naive college students who have suddenly found themselves in the real world - and that the real world isn't as 'logical' as academia is- where there are no real variables or effects of human nature to disrupt 'perfect' ideas. Cocooned within academia, they have no real world experience and no real grasp on real history - just what is repeated and built upon within the echo chamber of their academic cocoon.
The real world is messy. On top of human nature and numerous variables which can impact decisions, there is the inconvenience of being held accountable and responsible for one's decisions and actions. Rather than the vague concept of 'Hope and Change' which allows each person to project into it just what they want it to mean in order to appeal to themselves, we now have a record of actions over the last nearly 4 years to examine and use to decide on November 6th if we are to continue to let these naive liberal college students run something as important as the country.
I find it interesting that few, as they look at this record, seem to ignore one of the most audacious promises made by these people from academia - that they would run one of the most open and transparent governments we have ever seen.
On this very simple and fundamental promise, one based on the supposed character and integrity of those making the promise, we have nothing but utter and epic failure. The lack of openness and transparency by this government, combined by an exhaustive list of major scandals throughout the Executive Branch, demonstrate that this Administration is even more paranoid and incompetent that those of Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter.
Is there a major part of the Executive Branch that has avoided a major scandal in the past 45 months?
State Department - we have the current Libya scandal where they arrogantly lied, for political expediency, to the American people for nearly 2 weeks over their knowledge and culpability in the murder of the first US Ambassador to die in 30 years, and three other Americans. Add this to their feckless policies around the Russian 'reset', the butcher of Damascus being a 'reformer', reaching out to Iran, and insulting our traditional allies of Israel and Britain, and we have a State Department that is making the foreign policy of Neville Chamberlain seem successful.
Department of Energy - we can talk about their handling of domestic energy production, but the scandal that most demonstrates the incompetence of the DoE and Stephen Chu has to be the role around picking the 'winners' of green energy over fossil fuel. Spending over $90 billion to build 'green energy' brought on only a few thousands jobs and a complete waste of funds as those who received the grants of taxpayer funds were those who were friends or contributors of the Administration and whom, in the most part, had their businesses fail because they were not economically viable. Talk about trying to force a round peg into a square hole....Solyndra anyone?
HHS - The First Amendment of the US Constitution is an inconvenient foil to promote ensuring 'social justice' by making contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization products and services freely available to all - particularly when one tries to ignore the religious freedom aspect of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights to force those with religious and moral objections to those services to promote eugenics and population control so freely available. But in this enlightened age, with this enlightened progressive leadership, fundamentals like the First Amendment are insufficient to curb the progressive agenda - they'll just order it in effect despite what the Constitution says...and dare the Judicial Branch to try to counter the agenda.
Department of Interior - We don't need a national energy policy or a process to leverage energy independence in order to improve the economy of the US, create jobs, and upward mobility of America's population. Let's partner with the DoE and EPA to sharply curtail the development of oil / natural gas on federal lands. Let's partner with them to make green energy economically viable by massively increasing the prices of traditional energy - coal, gas, and oil. Let's support the elimination of one of the country's breadbaskets - the Central Valley of California - because of the need to save a 2 inch long fish that may or not be endangered.
Department of Treasury - let's see, if the $831 billion stimulus added directly to the national debt is passed, by the summer of 2012, three years after the end of the recession, growth would be 4% and 6% unemployed - but in reality growth is 1.3% and slowing, and the real unemployment rate is between 11.1% and 15% depending on if we count underemployed. We've had 4 consecutive years of deficits over $1 trillion and added about $6 trillion to the national debt in 45 months - but a $187 billion annual deficit (2007) and adding $5 trillion in 8 years is unpatriotic. We 'saved' the auto industry by taking over GM and Chrysler in conjunction with the UAW - costing taxpayers probably $35-$50 billion when Ford is growing despite not being bailed out, and an independent bankruptcy judge would have managed GM and Chrysler better without cost the taxpayers billions.
Department of Homeland Security - On Christmas Day, 2009, an Islamic terrorist attempts to detonate a bomb he is carrying as a passenger jet is on final approach into Detroit - and the bomb fizzles because the design failed due to sweat - but the national security system 'worked'. Another Islamic terrorist parks a bomb laden SUV in Times Square, NYC - and the bomb fails to detonate because of an error the terrorist made in the construction of the bomb - and the DHS Secretary tells us her system 'worked'. If one wants to fly a plane, they are subject to a legal sexual assault - and that's the system 'working'. A Major in the US Army who happens to call himself a 'Soldier of Allah' conducts a murderous terror attack in Fort Hood, Texas, and the DoD and DHS term it a case of 'workplace violence'.
Department of Labor - if the truth doesn't work for political expediency, let's cook the books. If the bad economy is hurting the President's polls, let's drop the 'official' unemployment rate by removing millions from the calculation and dropping the labor participation rate. If the polls are still bad, let's create nearly 400,000 jobs so that the President can campaign about creating more jobs than were lost during his term in office. If the President is still having problems, let's leave out the data from one large state and say that the number of new jobless claims has dropped by over 10% in one week - to the lowest level in 4 years. You're not cooking the books, the data was 'incomplete' and you had a deadline.
Finally, we have the Department of Justice, the law enforcement focal point for our country. What a record of failure and incompetence from this organization ranging from selectively determining which laws to enforce (along with the DHS) ranging from immigration, to voter identification, to voter intimidation, to the defense of marriage act - to perhaps the greatest act of government malfeasance since the Watergate cover-up, Fast and Furious. In order to create a scenario to justify increasing gun control via legislation to invalidate / limit the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, the leadership trust of the DoJ (and others?) decided to walk thousands assault and high-powered weapons from US gun stores and give them to Mexican Drug Cartels currently engaged in a violent war not only amongst themselves, but against the Mexican government and civilian population. (Ironically, we will not arm Syrian rebels trying to overthrow a tyrant - but we will arm the Zeta's of Mexico...) Thousands of Mexicans die in the carnage from these weapons - but this isn't an issue to the law enforcement leadership of this country. The ends justifies the means. Then they lie and obfuscate to Congress knowing the progressives in the media will help them - because the ends justifies the means.
But beyond even the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution, the DoJ also has utter contempt towards the Tenth Amendment of the US Constitution as well - filing suit against legislation being passed in states to permit the states to do what they need to do to protect themselves from the DoJ not enforcing federal laws they don't like.
Every day, I am more and more convinced that history will be very unkind to the Obama Administration and this experiment with progressivism - and the only one really thanking Barack Obama is going to be Jimmy Carter.
Voters are starting to see all of this. The numbers are working more and more against the President and his effort to have naive liberal college students run the country for another 4 years. GOP voter registrations are up - and Democrat voter registrations are down. In the battleground state of Ohio, in key counties that overwhelmingly voted Democrat in 2008, like those around Cleveland, are seeing a 800,000 drop in Dem registrations while the GOP is only seeing a drop of 80,000.
Pollsters in the bag for the Obama Administration, like those from Marist and Quinnipiac, continue to skew their polls in order to mask the tide moving away from Barack Obama and his policies. The latest Marist poll from Ohio is laughable in its absurdity - as we are supposed to accept at face value that Barack Obama has expanded his lead to 6 points post debate despite Mitt Romney gaining 12 points in Independents (now leading Independents by 8 points). All that only translates into a 2 point gain for Romney compared to the Marist pre-debate poll?
In their last poll before the debate, Marist modeled the Ohio turnout to be D+5 - level higher than the state saw in 2008. In this latest poll, Marist looked at the effects of the debate and the trends in the electorate and decided that a D+11 sample would be 'accurate'. A level more than double than the turnout of 2008. They 'justify' these numbers by claiming greater Democrat enthusiasm. But early voting in 2008 saw Democrats voting by 15 points more than Republicans - a clear measure of their enthusiasm. Today, their lead in early voting is only 6 points - and that is changing in the wrong direction as Republicans have already early voted more than they did in 2008, while the Democrats are still short of half of their 2008 level.
All of this points to GOP enthusiasm in Ohio - not Democrat enthusiasm.
The Investor's Business Daily's latest poll is almost as 'magic' as a Marist poll - it's weighted at D+8, but it is showing that Mitt Romney has surged to a 5 point lead over Barack Obama - up three points from their previous poll taken earlier in the week. Key to the move - Romney has expanded his lead in that poll with independents to 20 points.
If polls, which are skewed to show a Democrat turnout greater than that of 2008, still show that Mitt Romney is in the lead, and that lead is expanding, to what level will they continue to cheat in order to protect their candidate? D+19? D+25?
Where do they draw the line to protect what's left of their integrity? Or do they finally decide to throw Barack Obama under the bus before he utterly destroys the progressive agenda - falling back to the old canard that progressivism and statism aren't the causes of the problems we are facing. Instead, they will blame it on the incompetence of Barack Obama to execute the agenda, particularly in the face of the 'obstructionism' he faced.
Today in History
Oops, October 11th Today in History was listed on the QH report for the 10th...so this one is from October 10th in History...
732 - At the Battle of Tours near Poitiers, France, Frankish leader Charles Martel, a Christian, defeats a large army of Spanish Moors, halting the Muslim advance into Western Europe. Abd-ar-Rahman, the Muslim governor of Cordoba, was killed in the fighting, and the Moors retreated from Gaul, never to return in such force.
1780 - A massive hurricane, now named the Great Hurricane of 1780, slams into the West Indies - killing over 20,000 in the deadliest storm recorded. The Royal Navy lost 8 of 12 ships anchored in St. Lucia harbor - with most of the sailors drowning while the French Navy, at war with Britain, lost 40 ships and over 4,000 soldiers to the storm.
1845 - The US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD opens with 50 midshipmen and 7 professors.
1877 - Lt.Colonel George Armstrong Custer receives a full military funeral at the US Military Academy at West Point, NY. Custer was killed the previous year at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
1973 - Vice President Spiro Agnew resigns the office of Vice President - becoming the first to resign from that office. On this same day, he would accept a plea deal for federal tax evasion on the condition of charges on political corruption being dropped, fined $10,000, sentenced to 3 years of probation, and disbarred from the Maryland State Bar.
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