L.A.: Battling through it's worst mayor in history

Yeah, the fires are horrific, but here's the real problem; the mayor.

Worst. Explanation. Ever.

 Nancy Pelosi never fails to disappoint when you are looking for a good laugh...

I can't keep up with the bad news

Once again I've fallen behind on posts due to personal circumstances. I hate when that happens.  I've missed out on a lot of important stories.  For example, the CPI index of inflation was up again for March, beyond forecasts, hitting a four decade high of 8.5%.  But if you look at Shadowstats, where they also keep track of inflation as it was calculated in 1980 (i.e. more realistically), it's above 16%.  At Jimmy Carter's worst inflation it peaked at just under 15% in April 1980.

Let's Go Brandon, which was once labeled transitory has now relabeled (how Orwellian) the inflation as the Putin Price Hike.  Wrongly of course.  But to be fair, what else is an incompetent supposed to do beside blameshift?

Biden's worst debate moment (South Carolina edition)

According to Joe Biden, almost 50% of Americans have been killed from gun violence in the last 13 years. Was there a massive national bloodbath we all missed?

D.C. Mayor - Politics at its Worst

In light of the D.C. shootings yesterday, trust a liberal to get out in front of this with a political agenda, that is as incorrect as it is revolting in this time of loss.  Nevertheless, D.C. mayor Vincent Gray blames the shootings on, believe it or not, the sequester.

Via The Washington Times;

D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray said he wondered if budget cuts had something to do with a gunman getting onto the Washington Navy Yard on Monday, killing 12 before being killed himself.

“As I look at, for example, sequestration, which is about saving money in the federal government being spent, have we somehow skimped on what would be available for projects like this and then we put people at risk,” Mr. Gray said on CNN’s “New Day” on Tuesday morning.

The shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords immediately had liberals running to Tea Party blame, which turned out to be incorrect as well as targeting Sarah Palin because she wanted conservatives to 'target' districts for Republican wins.  Again, grossly inaccurate and politically motivated.  Oh, and morally wrong in addition to factually wrong.

 

Liberals it seems, can't let a tragedy go to waste.  Most conservatives won't blame this on say violent video games or other conservative concerns the way liberals jump to conclusions.  We tend to realize that this is the act of a sick mind (or minds).

 

But Liberals are all to eager to cast blame in conservative directions because they know they won't generally be called out on their vapid accusations by a tacitly complicit media.  There's no cost to throwing out unfounded accusations for them so they feel emboldened to spout ridiculousness.  That's not changing any time soon, which is unfortunate because it is politics at its worst.

Top 10 Worst Celebrity Dictator Endorsements (Part 2)

I promised this a few days ago and didn't get a chance to post it.  Here's the top 5 of the Top 10 Worst celebrity endorsements.  You can find #6 through #10 here.  As a bit of a spoiler, there are no endorsements of Obama in the Top 10 despite the fact that he's damaging America, perhaps in a permanent way; and despite the fact that a lot of celebrities have endorsed him and that their endorsements made a big impact.  In that regard, perhaps Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of Obama would rate a Top 5 mention.

Unfortunately the full scope of president Obama's damaging policies has yet to be felt and he certainly doesn't rate the pure evil intentions of the sinister bunch below.  He's naive, Utopian, and progressive, but he's not committing genocide or thuggishly beating down his own countrymen.  He just allows it to go on selectively in other countries.  In other words, he's voting "Present" on doing something about brutal dictators around the world.

Another spoiler, there are no celebrity endorsements of losing candidates as that's more of a Most Ineffective Endorsement category, perhaps deserving of it's own post eventually.  No losing candidate however, can be regarded as a dictator simply because they lost.

And now, the Top 5 of the Top 10 Worst Celebrity Endorsements:

Best-est buddies.

5 Dennis Rodman parties with Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-un is a not only the third communist dictator in a family string of crazy despots, he's also a basketball fan.  By day he starves his people and threatens to start a nuclear war, by night he parties with his idols.  He'd probably invite Michael Jackson if he could.  But he also fancies basketball and apparently is a now a friend of Dennis Rodman.  Not only did Rodman party with the madman, he's going back to do it again.

The former U.S. basketball star said at a charity event in Miami Beach over the weekend that he's keeping plans to visit North Korea again in late summer to have "fun" with the country's dictator, the website "Gossip Extra" reported. 

"I’m going back August 1," he told the website. "We have no plans really, as far as what we’re going to do over there, but we’ll just hang and have some fun!" 

Rodman raised eyebrows when he became the first American to meet the reclusive young leader in a visit to Pyongyang in February. 

Weeks after the controversial visit, Rodman, 51, described Kim as a friend. 

"I don't condone what he does, but he's my friend," Rodman said in a March interview with North Dakota's KXJB. Rodman continued to say he will be "vacationing" with Kim in August.

I'm sure everyone is glad that Rodman doesn't condone what Jong-un has done.  That's a relief.  Back when Paul Simon created the album Graceland with South African musicians (1986) he was pilloried.  Dennis Rodman hasn't been embraced by either the left or the right over this because as it turns out, nobody is crazy enough to embrace Kim Jong-un.  Except Rodman.  It's a terrible endorsement - and yes it is an endorsement, his actions speak louder than his words - but it doesn't rank higher because despite the evilness and danger of Kim Jong-un, nobody is going to have a more favorable opinion of Jong-un as a result.

4 Sean Penn mourns Hugo Chavez.  Sean Penn makes his second appearance in the Top 10, the only celebrity to do so, marking him as an uber-leftist.  He visited the Castros and wrote about it.  Buth with Hugo Chavez, he embraced him, lionized him and went so far as to mourn his death by attending his funeral.  That's hero worship, not journalism (the guise Penn uses as his cover for his embrace of Chavez).

The mourners lamenting the death of late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez included the presidents of Iran and Cuba, a Spanish prince and a man that Chavez himself once floated as a possible American ambassador to Venezuela: Hollywood actor Sean Penn.

Penn flew to Caracas for the Friday funeral, where he was filmed among the mourning crowd. Earlier this week, he called Chavez “a great hero to the majority of his people.”

"Today the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world lost a champion," Penn wrote in a statement sent to the Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday.

That's an endorsement. Sean Penn has a lot of celebrity clout, but he's clearly a socialist.  It matters because he can still influence the vast swaths of low information voters in America and that makes a difference.  Making Chavez likable is not a good thing - he was a thug, he cheated his way into office forever (or at least until he died) and he was an enemy of the United States, cozying up to the likes of Iran and Russia, not exactly friends.  Penn couldn't be more wrong, or more blind.

Robson, left confused civil rights with communism.

3. Paul Robeson morally defects to the Soviet Union. Wait, who? Robeson was a multi-talented artist and athlete  having played football at Rutgers but he was also was a singer and actor;

At the height of his popularity in the 1930s, Robeson became a major box office attraction in British films such as Song of Freedom and The Proud Valley about Wales. Briefly returning to the US he reprised his title role in Dudley Murphy's film version of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones in 1933. 

The 1936 Universal Pictures film Show Boat was a box office hit for Robeson, and the most frequently shown and highly acclaimed of all his films. His performance of "Ol' Man River" for this film was particularly notable. He was also King Umbopa in the 1937 version of King Solomon's Mines.

Later he would become the grandfather of all celebrity dictator endorsements being the first high profile celebrity to do such a thing, and he did it on a grand scale, embracing Stalin and communism in a big way.

Robeson first visited the Soviet Union in 1934, during a genocide in which the Soviet government intentionally murdered some 14 million of its own citizens through deliberate starvation in an engineered famine. Upon his return, the official Communist Party organ The Daily Worker published an interview with Robeson, in which he gushed about the "workers' paradise": 

“I was not prepared for the happiness I see on every face in Moscow," said Robeson. "I was aware that there was no starvation here, but I was not prepared for the bounding life; the feeling of safety and abundance and freedom that I find here, wherever I turn. I was not prepared for the endless friendliness, which surrounded me from the moment I crossed the border. I had a technically irregular passport, but all this was brushed aside by the eager helpfulness of the border authorities. ” 

Robeson was asked about Stalin's then-ongoing bloody purges: 

“Commenting on the recent execution after court-martial of a number of counter-revolutionary terrorists, Robeson declared roundly: "From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!

"It is the government's duty to put down any opposition to this really free society with a firm hand," he continued, "and I hope they will always do it ... It is obvious that there is no terror here..."

Robeson often exhorted African Americans to consider communism.  His impact overall was small, but it was high profile and the impact has the added weight of additional generations to its sphere of influence.  Stalin was not likable in any way.  But communism was something he could sew the seeds of belief in his community and he did so vigorously. He made it celebrity chic to bash democracy and capitalism in favor of a Utopian alternative.

2 Jane Fonda goes to Vietnam and becomes Hanoi Jane. During the Vietnam War, Jane Fonda, already a star, visited the North Vietnamese and betrayed her country, indelibly staining her stardom with the military community while cementing her image as a counter-culture hero for the liberal crowd.

Fonda visited Hanoi in July 1972. Among other statements, she said the United States had been intentionally targeting the dike system along the Red River. The columnist Joseph Kraft, who was also touring North Vietnam, said he believed the damage to the dikes was incidental and was being used as propaganda by Hanoi, and that, if the U.S. Air Force were "truly going after the dikes, it would do so in a methodical, not a harum-scarum way". 

In North Vietnam, Fonda was photographed seated on an anti-aircraft battery; the controversial photo outraged a number of Americans. In her 2005 autobiography, she writes that she was manipulated into sitting on the battery; she had been horrified at the implications of the pictures and regretted they were taken... 

During her trip, Fonda made ten radio broadcasts in which she denounced American political and military leaders as "war criminals". Fonda has defended her decision to travel to North Vietnam and her radio broadcasts. Also during the course of her visit, Fonda visited American prisoners of war (POWs), and brought back messages from them to their families. When cases of torture began to emerge among POWs returning to the United States, Fonda called the returning POWs "hypocrites and liars". She added, "These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed." Later, on the subject of torture used during the Vietnam War, Fonda told The New York Times in 1973, "I'm quite sure that there were incidents of torture ... but the pilots who were saying it was the policy of the Vietnamese and that it was systematic, I believe that's a lie."  Fonda said the POWs were "military careerists and professional killers" who are "trying to make themselves look self-righteous, but they are war criminals according to the law"

She may have been duped, or she may have been a sympathizer, but her impact was more profound than she lets on.  Her decision reverberates to this day. 

Fonda has apologized numerous times and tried to explain her actions.

In 2005, Fonda published her autobiography in which she described in detail her decision to go to North Vietnam. She said it was primarily motivated by her desire to document the U.S. bombing of important dikes that, if destroyed, could kill tens of thousands of people and devastate the lives of millions.  The U.S. had denied the bombings. In the book, Fonda is unapologetic about the trip or her participation in broadcasts on radio Hanoi but regrets the pictures taken of her at the gun emplacement.  She said it made it appear as though she was celebrating armaments aimed at American planes, which was not how she felt and was not the context in which the pictures were taken.  She reminds readers that the U.S. investigated her trip and found no reason to bring any charges against her.  She also describes her longstanding support of, and interaction with, U.S. military personnel and says her only beef was with the U.S. government, not the troops.

But many do not believe the sincerity of those apologies,

Were Jane Fonda's actions treason, or were they the exercise of a private citizen's right to freedom of speech? At the time, the legal aspects of this question were moot: President Nixon was engaged in trying to wind down American involvement in Vietnam and had to face another election in a few months, so politically he had far more to lose than to gain by making a martyr out of a prominent anti-war activist. (No requirement in either the Constitution or federal law states that the U.S. must be engaged in a declared war -- or any war at all -- before charges of treason can be brought against an individual.)

On the one hand, Jane Fonda provided no tangible military assistance to the North Vietnamese: she divulged no military secrets, she gave them no money or material, and she did not interfere with the operations of the American forces. Her actions, offensive as they were to many, were primarily of propaganda value only. On the other hand, Iva Ikuko Toguri (also known as "Tokyo Rose") was convicted of treason for making propaganda broadcasts on behalf of the Japanese during World War II (although she claimed her betrayal was forced and was eventually pardoned many years later by President Gerald Ford), and Fonda's efforts could fall under the definition of "giving aid and comfort to the enemy." It is also undeniable that some American soldiers came to harm as a direct result of Fonda's actions, an outcome she should reasonably have anticipated.

In 1988, sixteen years after denouncing American soldiers as war criminals and tortured POWs as possessed of overactive imaginations, Fonda met with Vietnam veterans to apologize for her actions. It's interesting to note that this nationally-televised apology (during which she attempted to minimize her actions by characterizing them as "thoughtless and careless") came at a time when New England vets were successfully disrupting a film project she was working on. It's also interesting that not only was this apology delivered sixteen years after the fact, but it has not been offered again since. More than a few have read a huge dollop of self-interest into Fonda's 1988 apology. (Finally, in an interview in 2000, almost thirty years after the fact, Fonda admitted: "I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in an anti-aircraft carrier, which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes. It hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless.")

She clearly has not repaired her image because she really did some damage with her unjustifiable actions.

1. Charles Lindbergh supported Adolf Hitler.  It's hard to imagine topping some of the other celebrity stupidity on this list but when you endorse the policies of Adolf Hitler, it almost doesn't matter what your own star power is, or what impact it might have, it's about as close to endorsing Satan as a person can get.  It's hard to imagine blowing celebrity like Lindbergh had:

In May 1927, a shy, handsome 25-year-old suddenly sprang from obscurity to instant world fame when he flew a small single-seat, single-engine airplane, called the “Spirit of St. Louis,” from Long Island, New York, to an airfield in Paris. In a grueling 33-hour flight that covered 3,600 miles, Charles A. Lindbergh became the first person to fly the Atlantic ocean, alone and non-stop. His daring flight, and his aviation pioneering afterwards, made him, for some years, the most admired man in America, and the most admired American in the world.

There;s no denying his infatuation with the Nazi leader.  Lindbergh, a decade plus later, was not shy though about sharing his admiration of Adolf Hitler, and his achievements.  He went so far as to almost move to Nazi Germany.

“While I still have many reservations,” he wrote to a U.S. Army officer who was also a personal friend, “I have come away with a feeling of great admiration for the German people. The condition of the country, and the appearance of the average person whom I saw, leaves with me the impression that Hitler must have far more character and vision than I thought existed in the German leader who has been painted in so many different ways by the accounts of America and England.” 

In a letter to another American friend he wrote: “With all the things we criticize, he [Hitler] is undoubtedly a great man, and I believe has done much for the German people. He is fanatic in many ways, and any one can see that there is a certain amount of fanaticism in Germany today. It is less than I expected, but it is there. On the other hand, Hitler has accomplished results -- good in addition to bad -- which could hardly have been accomplished without some fanaticism.” 

Lindbergh’s wife was Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a remarkable woman who was, in her own right, an accomplished aviator and a successful author. In a 1936 letter to her mother, she wrote: 

“Hitler, I am beginning to feel, is a very great man, like an inspired religious leader -- and as such rather fanatical -- but not scheming, not selfish, not greedy for power, but a mystic, a visionary who really wants the best for his country and, on the whole, has a rather broad view.” 

Charles Lindbergh was so impressed with Hitler’s Germany that he seriously considered moving there with his family. “I did not feel real freedom until I came to Europe,” he remarked in 1939. “The strange thing is that of all the European countries, I found most personal freedom in Germany, with England next, and then France.” After a search for a suitable place to live, he found a property in a suburb of Berlin that he came close to buying. But as the threat of war grew in Europe, he abandoned those plans.

That;s admiration. It's also completely wrong-headed.  It may have been less obvious to some at the time than it is today, but many people knew even then about the dangers that Hitler represented.  

Today far too many people associate Nazism with right wing fascism but the Nazi Party in Germany were socialists.

There you have it.  The worst celebrity endorsements of all time.  The lesson it seems is that celebrities should keep their political beliefs to themselves but we all know that's not going to happen. In the coming decade there are bound to be new entrants into the Top 10.  Look forward to that.

Top 10 Worst Celebrity Dictator Endorsements (Part 1)

It seems to be happening more often these days, but history is replete with celebrities endorsing dictators  murderers and thugs, providing evidence that celebrity does not equate to intelligence or moral compass.  Here are the ten most egregious celebrity endorsements of dictators in the 20th and 21st centuries.  The definition of endorsement here is broad it includes deeds as well as words.  The ranking is based on a mix of three factors - the star power of the celebrities in question, the evilness of the endorsed dictator and the potential impact of the endorsement.

There are a few dishonorable mentions before we start with the list.  Hillary Swank and Jean Claude Van Damme attended a birthday bash held for Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya, responsible for torture, killings abductions and more by human rights groups.  Swank did later apologize but fell squarely in the camp of useful idiots at the time of the event.  Her apology was quickly accepted by the left, or at least at Huffington Post.  Useful idiots aren't as common as you think, and the left needs them. This doesn't make the list since attending the event was less an endorsement than just plain dumb.

Another dishonorable mention goes collectively to Beyonce, Usher, Mariah Carey, Nelly Furtado and 50 Cent for putting on a concert for the barbaric sons of the barbaric Libyan strongman Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and taking money for it.  They reportedly all agreed to donate the money to charity. Again, this is more a matter of not thinking through a situation rather than endorsing a dictator.  But to do business with someone so brutal and repressive, even through stupidity, is myopic and ill-informed.  In addition to donating the money, a clear no-brainer, condemning the leader would have been a courageous and meaningful distancing of themselves from the terrorist.

Fiscal Irresponsibility Has Led To This Mess

You need to watch this video.  The United States' finances are ranked near the lowest in the world.  Fiscal irresponsibility and disinterest for decades has led to this mess.

The Best of Liberal Worst for 2009

Some highlights of the worst liberal moments of 2009. Sometimes, despite the importance of the struggle to keep America intact, you just have to laugh at the sheer foolishness of some on the left.

10. Why did this question even get asked of Martha Stewart?



9. If this was the best Palin could do to slam McCain, then she's just lame and not worthy of all that liberal bashing she takes. Either that or she really is a threat to the left and they're desperate to try to find some wedge issue to tamp down her rising approval ratings;



8. Janeane Garafalo or Janeane GarAWFULo?



7. Is this guy supposed to be the left's version of Glenn Beck? Ed Schulz has a long way to go to get there. how about starting with some facts instead of liberal fear-mongering hyperbole?



6. Chris Matthews being Chris Matthews still feels the leg tingle, and wonders why the rest of the press doesn't continue to share his Obama enthusiasm enthrallment. Don't worry Chris, many media types still do.



5. Yet again, MSNBC. Strategic editing making Tea Party protesters look violent and deranged and racist. Here they get called out on it.



4. Katie Couric wins A Gracie Award and a Cronkite Award for nailing Sarah Palin in a biased, edited and damaging interview that achieved it's goal - to knock the McCain-Palin ticket out of contention for the Presidency. If the celebration of a biased act doesn't say it all about the media and their motivation, I don't know what does.



3. The war on Tea Party Protesters extended from calling them Teabaggers, to outright misrepresentation of the size of the protests on 9/12 being in the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands that clearly were in attendance. ABC reported the number at 71,000 at one point. According to the website Ihatethemedia,

MSNBC reported, “thousands have turned out, some have said tens of thousands.” The Washington Post estimated “tens of thousands.” ABC figured between 60–70,000 protestors. The New York Times initially described it as a “sea” of people before stating, “The demonstrators numbered well into the tens of thousands, though the police declined to estimate the size of the crowd.” According to Examiner.com, there were “as many as two million protestors.” CBS, CNN and FOX all reported on the Tea Party but declined to provide estimates.

But look at this schema from USA today on the Obama inauguration crowd.

And then look at this photo of the 912 event. You don't have to be a math wizard to see that it's more than 70,000.

Thankfully, someone, Mail Online in the U.K., has a more reasonable number, and a great article to boot.

2. CNN Reporter Susan Roesgen trying to lecture a protester instead of getting the story and listening to an opinion. You just know she wouldn't have done the same thing to a Bush protester. Reports report, they don't argue with the news subject. That's got to be part of "Journalism 101", no?

Then again - we should have known her orientation already;



So should have CNN.

1. Newsweek's Evan Thomas sees Obama as God. Simply beyond the pale.