Unlawful Combatants

Judge's Gavel on American FlagOn Monday, February 16, 2015, a mere one day before Obama’s sweeping executive actions on immigration would have allowed illegal immigrants to begin applying for work permits and legal protection, Judge Andrew S. Hanen, of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Texas, ruled in favor of Texas and 25 other states that had challenged Obama’s unilateral immigration actions and issued an injunction against carrying out these changes to the law.

Obama’s White House will, of course, challenge this ruling and battle it in the federal court system, possibly with it ending up in from of the SCOTUS in the relatively near future. That challenge is to be expected and is largely immaterial in the larger, deeper scope of America’s tribulations. There are bigger issues.

The bigger, deeper, and more fundamentally dangerous issue that this relates to is that almost half of the Democrats don’t believe that Obama should listen to- or abide by federal court rulings.

Should the president have the right to ignore federal court rulings if they are standing in the way of actions he feels are important for the country?

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 26% of Likely U.S. Voters think the president should have the right to ignore federal court rulings if they are standing in the way of actions he feels are important for the country. Sixty percent (60%) disagree and say the president should not have the right to ignore the courts. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

But perhaps more unsettling to supporters of constitutional checks and balances is the finding that 43% of Democrats believe the president should have the right to ignore the courts. Only 35% of voters in President Obama’s party disagree, compared to 81% of Republicans and 67% of voters not affiliated with either major party.

Yes, you read that right. 43% of Democrats believe that Obama shouldn’t be bound or constrained by the federal courts, 22% aren’t sure, and only 35% Democrats think he should be bound by the federal courts’ decisions.

Obama Worship
All Hail Barack Obama

So one of the most horrific and potentially destructive problems facing America and Americans is that almost half of the Democrats are not just Statists, not just Anti-Federalist, but in favor of a tyrannical, autocratic presidency which unbound by- and unbeholden to the laws of the land set forth in the check and balances demanded by the Constitution.

If war is politics by other means than politics is just war by other means. These beings within the borders of our nation are not our opponents, they’re our enemies. An the very lawless, tyrannical nature of rule they desire makes them unlawful combatants. We, the People should treat them and such with no restraint and extreme prejudice.

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Other Than Eldritch

When one thinks of H. P. Lovecraft, if one does think of him at all, one thinks naturally of his Cthulhu Mythos. That’s unsurprising since Lovecraft is heralded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, writers of horror fiction of the twentieth century and the Cthulhu Mythos was the centerpiece of his writing. Lovecraft, however, wrote more than just horror. He also published a journal heavily focused on sociopolitical thought, The Conservative.

H. P. Lovecraft’s The Conservative had little no nothing to do with eldritch horrors. It was a journal edited and self-published sporadically by H. P. Lovecraft between 1915 and 1923. Some of its pieces were written by Lovecraft himself, but many of them were written by others. They included not just political and social commentary on the issues of the day, but also poetry, short stories and literary criticism.

The period in time covered by The Conservative coincided with some of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century, including the First World War and the Russian Revolution.

It’s quite the interesting read.

Note, however, that I said it was an interesting read. It is not an easy one; not at all. It is firmly grounded in the society, issues, and history of a century ago. Still, I wholeheartedly recommend it as an addition to any American’s library.

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Where Did Ebola Go?

Ebola Just Up and Vanished
Ebola Just Up and Vanished

Well, the simple answer is that Ebola hasn’t gone anywhere. Indeed, despite the now near complete media blackout, Ebola is progressing apace in West Africa.

What has happened is that the American news cycle has moved on because both Americans and Liberals, quite rightly, can’t sustain interest in fighting a disease that is endemic to West Africa and which poses only a limited risk to America.

The only reasons it made the news in the first place is because Obama, in the lead up to the 2014 elections, made a big, public deal about it and this resulted in Ebola reaching US shore and being very poorly contained. Once the combination of public outcry causing a tightening of containment procedures and the election being over, Ebola stopped being news.

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The Cola Wars 2.0

The Cola Wars have been raging since the 1980s, with Coca-Cola and Pepsi targeting each other in advertisement after advertisement. Given that there were billions of dollars on the line it wasn’t too surprising how vicious the Cola War became for a while. Even so, some of us were surprised and a little concerned about the war over cold drinks “going hot” when, in 1989, PepsiCo purchased: 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer from the Soviets.

NOTE: The fleet’s purchase, along with PepsiCo being the US distributor for Stolichnaya was part of a countertrade arrangement that allowed Pepsi to be sold in the Soviet Union.

The fleet was nearly immediately sold for scrap. Interestingly, however, for a short period of time PepsiCo had the 7th largest submarine fleet in the world. 😯

Shortly after that the Cola Wars calmed down a bit. Now, however, Coca-Cola has changed the war by politicizing it and bringing America as whole into the conflict. They did this with their 2014 Super Bowl commercial, “It’s Beautiful.”

Coca-Cola’s “America” The Beautiful

Some love it, others loath it. Few have no opinion about it. Coca-Cola’s “It’s Beautiful” almost seems more battle anthem than marketing. Perhaps never before has a simple television commercial so divided a population.

Americans v. Liberals

Whether they intended to do or not, Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl commercial directly pit Americans and Liberals against each other. Americans have, at least, some discomfort with- and qualms about the message “It’s Beautiful” promulgates and/or reinforces and normalizes, while Liberals absolute love that message.

It boils down to whether the viewer loves America and her culture or loathes it in favor of foreign cultures. If the viewer believes that immigrants should strive to become Americans, bringing with them those parts of their birth culture that will add to America, they will likely find fault with the commercial’s underlying message. If, however, the viewer desires for immigrants to keep all or most of their birth culture after relocating to America. they will likely love it.

This is simply because Americans love their country, their culture and language, and convergence. Liberals, contrariwise, loath American culture but love diversity and plurality.

Godless Passive-Aggression

Naturally, the Atheists had to chime in because the song, “America The Beautiful” contains the refrain, “America! America! | God shed His grace on thee,” and any mention of the God(s) anywhere outside of the home or a church that isn’t a denial of the Divinity’s existence sets their teeth on edge. What was interesting about their interjections into the conversations were their acrobatic apologetics.

Reading the various displays of the Godless’ passive-aggression was actually amusing since they had to contort their comments to show support for the various oikophobes that fetishize diversity while still maintaining their Atheist “cred” by bemoaning the Godly reference.

~*~

Read the rest of this entry »

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2014 SOTU Buzz

Microsoft fired up it’s Bing Pulse tool for the second year in order to record real-time audience sentiment during Obama’s fifth SOTU speech. The online voting tool allowed viewers to share their opinions about the speech using a smartphone, PC or tablet.

This year, Microsoft is added some new functions to the tool, including an annotated graph feature that allowed viewers to click on spikes and/or dips in the real-time graphs to see the issues being addressed during the speech that have prompted major reactions.

SOTU Buzz

BING PULSE – 2014 SOTU

Last years SOTU Bing Pulse registered 12.9 million votes, according to Microsoft, and this year’s should have been at least as popular so these are the broadest political polls in existence at this time. The re results are also quite interesting.

Speechcrafting

Firstly, I have to give credit where credit is due. Whatever team of writers developed Obama’s 2014 SOTU speech did a very credible job.  The Overall Intensity Graph show a solid curve of interest that builds well, peaks, and drops off at the end, indicating a good denouement. The pacing of the peaks and valleys of engagement also shows a good pace to the speech.

A Telling Response

The listeners’ responses, broken out by political beliefs, is very telling indeed. There’s a huge and stark disparity between how Democrats viewed Obama’s speech and how both Republicans and Independents did so. It’s quite a dramatic difference.

Democrats held largely uniformly positive views of each of Obama’s talking points, only dipping below the 50% mark on the issues of the War on Terror and continuing to support Israel.  They’ve approval didn’t waver much throughout the speech either, showing far less mean difference in approval rating and engagement from one talking to point to the next than either Republicans or Independents. For the most part, however, while differing in amplitude, Democrats showed the same peaks and valleys of approval as both Republicans and Independents.

Republicans and Independents conversely were, by and large, quite disapproving  of Obama’s talking points during his speech, rising above 50% only when it came to the War on Terror and providing medical benefits to veterans. They were, in fact, both more disapproving of it than the Democrats were approving of it.

One point to make specific note of is that Republicans and Independents responded to the talking points in Obama’s 2014 SOTU speech almost identically. There was almost no statistical variation between them, whereas both differed greatly from the Democrats’ responses.

Women’s Needs

Interestingly, despite the constant contention that women have different needs and priorities than men, the responses and engagement of the respective genders was, talking point by talking point, almost identical. This largely held true even on those parts of Obama’s speech which would normally be considered “women’s issues.”

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