Finally finished trimming this important clip from Mark Levin one week ago, responding to Obama's obnoxious "silver spoon" comments. Listen to the Great One tear the Class-Warmongerer-in-Chief a new one:
[Edited for commercials, long pauses, and other extraneous content]
Download clip here
As a father, I weep for the parents of Trayvon Martin and can't even imagine what they are going through right now.
But as an American citizen and human being, I am appalled by what the Left has done with this tragic shooting. The lies being spread by black "leaders," the pandering by President Hope&Change, the hate being spread by Obama's friends the New Black Panthers and the unabashed refusal of Obama's (in)Justice Department to do one damn thing about it. Websites dedicated to finding and killing a private citizen, George Zimmerman. The tweeting of said private citizen's (wrong!) addresses by Obama-connected Hollywood celebrities. The error-filled reporting, doctored photos, and deliberate editing of 9-1-1 tapes by the mainstream media.
Actual photo MSM's photo
The rash of stores being ransacked, yet more Occupy destruction, and violent attacks by blacks against non-blacks all around the country after this story went national.
I am just appalled.
Do not think for one second that President Hope&Change, the professional race hustlers Jackson and Sharpton, the opportunistic clowns in the Black Congressional Caucus, or the hateful Hollywood Left like Spike Lee give one rat's ass about Trayvon Martin. The only reason his death made national news -- a whole month after his shooting, by the way -- is because he has exactly the same thing in common with Sandra Fluke. And Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. And Debbie Bosanek (Who? I know, right?). And Crystal Mangum (Who? I know, right?). And that is: they are pawns. They are pawns used simply to score political points and to advance their political agenda.
The Left claims that Trayvon Martin is a victim of persistent white racism (even though the shooter George Zimmerman was half Hispanic, half white) and that blacks are being "hunted down like dogs". Despite substantiation that emotion-based claim, thousands have taken to the streets and even to the floor of Congress in hoodies to stand in solidarity with this purported victim of white racism!
But what of the thousands of blacks who are killed by other blacks and minorities every year?
Rich Lowry at National Review Online spells out the Martin shooting issue well:
The Murders That Don’t Count
In America, the lives of young black people are cheap, unless they happen to fit the right agenda.Everything about the Trayvon Martin case is a matter of contention. About this, though, there should be no doubt: If Martin had been shot by a black classmate, if he had been caught in a random crossfire, if he had looked at a gang member the wrong way, his death would have been relegated to the back pages of the local newspaper. Not a cause, not even a curiosity: Just another dead young black man. Nothing to see here. Please, move on.
Jesse Jackson is right that “blacks are under attack.” According to a 2005 FBI report, blacks accounted for 13 percent of the population and 49 percent of all homicide victims. In 93 percent of the cases, the killer was black. Half of the victims were ages 17 to 29. That works out to 4,000 murders of young blacks in one year, overwhelmingly at the hands of other blacks. In the communities where these killings occur there is, to put it in Jackson’s inimitable terms, no justice and no peace.
There is no comparable epidemic of half-Hispanic neighborhood-watch volunteers like George Zimmerman shooting young black men. Nor is there an epidemic of cops doing the same. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute notes that in New York City, there were nine civilian victims of police gunfire last year, whereas there were “several hundred black homicide victims in the city, almost all shot by other blacks or Hispanics, none of them given substantial press coverage.”
An allegedly racially motivated killing, though, gins up the outrage machine in a way the routine murder of young blacks doesn’t. Cable-TV outlets get to host fiery debates. Chin-stroking commentators get to urge more “dialogue.” Black leaders get to relive the glory of a civil-rights cause that won its major victories decades ago when it took real courage to be on the front lines. And everybody gets to evade the intraracial mayhem that blights the country’s inner cities.
An injustice may well have been done in the handling of the Martin shooting, but let’s not fool ourselves. Zimmerman could be arrested, convicted, and hanged tomorrow, and it will have no effect on the lives of young black people in communities beset by social disorder. Whatever happens to Zimmerman, the drip-drip of spilled blood will continue, all but ignored except in the police blotter. In America, the lives of young black people are cheap, unless they happen to fit the right agenda.
One such example of a minority victim unusable as Leftist political fodder is Aliyah Shell, age 6. She was killed St. Patrick's Day weekend while sitting on her Chicago porch with her grandmother, caught in the crossfire of a gang shooting. The Chicago Tribune writes:
From Jan. 1 through Sunday [Mar. 18], homicides soared 42 percent, to 94 from 66 a year earlier, according to a police spokeswoman. ... That continues a troubling trend that started in the last quarter of 2011. Police say gangs are to blame for much of the violence, including Aliyah's killing.
This leaves blogger Doug Ross to wonder:
So where are the professional race-baiters like Al "Not So" Sharpton and Jesse Jerkson? Where is MSNBS, ABS, CBS and NBS Nightly News? Where are the New Black Panthers and the other thugs seeking to profit from Trayvon Martin's death?
They don't give a crap about Aliyah Shell, or the hundreds of others killed and wounded every year in Obama's hometown of Chicago.
No, they care only about fomenting hatred, division and dissent.
P.J. Salvatore at Breitbart.com picks it up from there, arguing that the exploitation of Trayvon Martin's death by the Left has all the familiar political motives:
“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
Why? Why would the president weigh in on this specific case at this specific time?
It’s not about wrong or right. It’s not about justice. It’s not about Trayvon Martin.
“The despair is there; now it’s up to us to go in and rub raw the sores of discontent, galvanize them for radical social change.”- Saul Alinsky
An interesting quote to consider, from the man who shaped the minds of those who shaped President Obama.
Now consider Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s notorious statement: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”
The meaning is the same. It is calculating and it is dangerous, part of a bigger picture--a multi-faceted war to divide America for the sole purpose of securing Obama's re-election and subsequent radical social change.
Look at the contrived conflicts on the left wing's political chessboard:
Move 1 Occupy Wall Street: the (self-appointed) 99% versus the 1%
Move 2 Contraceptive/abortifacient mandates: government versus religion
Move 3 Sandra Fluke: women versus conservatives (supposedly)
And now…
Move 4 Trayvon Martin: black versus "white" (so-called)
This is not complicated. President Obama is organizing. It’s that simple, and it’s straight out of the radical playbook:
“Once you organize people, they’ll keep advancing from issue to issue toward the ultimate objective: people power. We’ll not only give them a cause, we’ll make life goddamn exciting for them again — life instead of existence. We’ll turn them on...” – Saul Alinsky
This is not about Trayvon Martin. This is about divide and conquer. Hope and Change has been replaced with Us vs. Them. This about pitting Americans against Americans.
Yup.
Interestingly, all the people I mentioned above -- Martin, Fluke, Bosanek, etc. -- are extremely flawed specimens in the Left's utopian tinkering with America. Every one of their stories concocted and promulgated by the Left -- including our own preisdent! -- false apart after just a mere examination of the actual facts.
But the Left is allergic to facts. Facts prevent them from "fundamentally transforming" America, as one particular president has put it. So they use these "victims" all the same. The rewrite history just as quickly as history occurs. They point fingers at imaginary culprits (e.g., Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, right-wing Islamophoooobia, right-wing homophoooobia, etc.).
And millions of Americans buy in to their fallacious stories because the Left knows that enough Americans have been dumbed down enough to believe anything they are told.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Trayvon Martin deserved to get shot or even that George Zimmerman is not guilty of a crime! But let's face facts: Despite the attempts of the mainstream media to paint him as a boy scout, he had multiple suspensions from school and was clearly well-steeped in the drug-filled, profanity-laced, sex-abusing, bling-sporting gangsta thug lifestyle that has claimed many a young African-American's life.
This is where we are, folks: A country where blacks are at war with whites, women with men, Muslims vs. non-Muslims, the 99% with the 1%, the uninsured vs. the insured, etc. There is rioting in the streets from Manhattan to Oakland. This is Obama's America. And don't tell me for a second that he does not love this. He and his closest relations have purposely opened up this can of worms. What better way to distract the populace while he and his administration continue to tear down the foundations of this republic bit by precious bit.
Just above P.J Salvatore argued that "Hope and Change has been replaced with Us vs. Them." I disagree: Hope and Change is and has always been Us vs. Them.
Welcome to the future, suckers.
If I had a nickel for every time I had to go toe to toe with a liberal over the minimum wage, or came across literature petitioning my representatives to raise it, I'd almost be able to balance the budget.
The late great economist Milton Friedman has said it, Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams have said it as well: The minimum wage destroys jobs and slows the economy. And now El Rushbo is saying it. Because it's true.
Everything you need to know about the minimum wage is right here in these 13 minutes. School is open and the professor is in.
Some gems to listen for in this clip:
Have you seen the teenage unemployment rate in this country? Well, can you say 25%? It's 16%, 18%. It's way, way up there! The teenage unemployment rate, it's at record highs. Whatever it is, it is at a record high, and why do you think that is? In part, it's the minimum wage.
Businesses are having enough trouble as it is in this economy, and then to be told to go out and hire a bunch of people who have no experience and pay them an arbitrary amount of money that has no relationship to the business's operation or cost structure, is literally absurd! And so the only option the small businessman has is not hiring anybody. ... It's sort of like raising tax rates and these dummkopfs in Washington think, "Well, you raise the tax rate and these taxpayers just sit out there like a bunch of idiots and they'll pay it." And every time tax rates are increased, guess what? Revenue goes down!
* * * * *
If you want more of an activity, you cut taxes on it. If you want less of an activity, you raise taxes. If you want more homes sold, then you allow the interest on a mortgage to be deducted. If you don't want a lot of homes to be sold, take that deduction away. If you want to spur teenage hiring, lower the minimum wage or get rid of it. If you want to retard teenage hiring -- if you want to slow it down, if you want to limit the amount of teenagers to get jobs -- raise the cost of hiring them. And that's what an increase in the minimum wage is!
* * * * *
The national teenage unemployment rate in November, 21.4%. The teenage unemployment rate in Washington is over 50%. Now, who does the unemployment rate hit besides teenagers? It hits the unskilled worker. The unskilled worker who needs the first rung of that ladder. ...
The whole safety net idea is a disaster. It's robbing people of opportunity. It's robbing people of dignity. It's creating dependents. It's creating perpetual Democrat voters reproducing. That's what it is. That's what it was designed for. LBJ, FDR, that was the purpose in all it is, to create an ever-growing and perpetually renewing pool of Democrat voters who never learn to depend on themselves, who never learn the skills to support themselves. That's fine with the Democrat Party. That's fine with guys like Barack Obama.
Two things happen: Those people become dependent and then you run around and talk about how heartless and cruel the Republicans are for opposing ever more money in the policy to give them ever more benefits. So it's a double whammy for 'em. ... The real safety net is a job, and the minimum wage is one of the many obstacles in the way of people trying to find work in this economy.
* * * * *
This is another part of the charade the Democrats play: They try to convince you that every minimum wage earner is a 40-year-old, bedraggled person who the Republicans don't care about, who the Republicans are trying to keep poor and homeless, trying desperately in this horrid country to support a family of four. And the vast majority of people on the minimum wage are teenagers, young people.
If the minimum wage gets too high and then they start cracking down on interns, what's the next place business will go? Illegal aliens. You see how this works? The minimum wage can be said to be responsible for a whole bunch of problems in this country -- while a bunch of dummkopfs run around thinking with their hearts, "Oh, boy, is that compassion!"
[Edited for long silences, commercial breaks, and extraneous talking]
(Download clip here)
Then:
The average American is not looking at the newspaper and saying: Gee, the economy is great. They are sitting down at the dinner table Friday night and tearing out their hair about how they are going to pay their bills.
-- Senator Chucky "Schmucky" Schumer (D-NY), May 5, 2004
For the Administration to be out there saying things are great shows just how out of touch they are with the average American.
-- Senator Chucky "Schmucky" Schumer (D-NY), January 23, 2006
No one needs to remind the Senator that at those times, the economy was excellent. In 2004 the unemployment rate was a respectable 5.5%. In January, 2006, unemployment rate was 4.9%, 400,000 new jobs created in the two months prior, the GDP increased 4% in 3Q 2005 (during which, for whatever it's worth, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita occurred), and there had been a 3.5% annual productivity growth since George W. Bush took office. In other words, the economy was by all standards fantastic.
Now:
After three years of Obama's America, the unemployment rate has been higher than 8% for over two years. The GDP increased 3% over all of 2010 and only 1.7% in 2011. But what does Schmucky say:
The Republican speaker last night, Mitch Daniels, talked about Americans must talk about the state of the union as grave. So, we think we are in great shape. We are in good shape.
Gee, what a difference a president makes.
I'm certainly not the only one to notice the ludicrousness of Schumer's statement. An editorial at the Arkansas Republican Assembly website sums up the response to Schumer pretty well:
Currently, over 13 million Americans are unemployed. There are fewer jobs in America than when President Obama took office in 2009, and the unemployment rate is still more than 8%. And Sen. Schumer thinks “we are in great shape”?
Yesterday, the AP reported, “Fewer people bought new homes in December. The decline made 2011 the worst year for new -homes sales on records dating back nearly half a century. The Commerce Department said Thursday new-home sales fell 2.2 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 307,000. The pace is less than half the 700,000 that economists say must be sold in a healthy economy. About 302,000 new homes were sold last year. That's less than the 323,000 sold in 2010, making last year's sales the worst on records dating back to 1963. And it coincides with a report last week that said 2011 was the weakest year for single-family home construction on record.” In December, Standard & Poor’s announced, “The Fourth Quarter Starts with Broad-based Declines in Home Prices”. And there have been 7.7 million foreclosure filings since President Obama took office. But Sen. Schumer thinks “we are in great shape”?
Today, National Journal writes, “Real Gross Domestic Product rose by just 1.7 percent in 2011, the Commerce Department reported on Friday. That's not great news for President Obama, who oversaw 3 percent GDP growth in 2010 and cannot use the latest GDP data to support a narrative of economic turnaround.” The AP notes, “The Commerce Department said Friday that the economy grew just 1.7 percent last year, roughly half of the growth in 2010 and the worst since the recession.” And University of Pennsylvania economist Justin Wolfers tells The New York Times, “At this rate, we’ll never reduce unemployment. . . . The recovery has been postponed, again.” But Sen. Schumer says “we are in great shape”?
But we know Schmucky really doesn't believe his own lie. But why does he lie to begin with? And why, when the Bush economy was excellent, did he lie then? Easy: Because Schumer is a bitter partisan hack, that's why.
Not too long ago President Hope&Change waxed eloquent for the umpteenth time about howRepublicans need to stop putting party and ideology over the welfare of the country. He ought to look in the mirror. And when he's done, he should give his own warning to Schumer.
"This was a mass of confusion, hypocrisies, lies, and distortions, and a failed attempt by a failed president to attach himself to America's greatness when he wouldn't recognize it if it slapped him upside the head!"
That pretty much sums up Rush's analysis of President Hope&Change's SOTU STFU speech on Tuesday:
[Edited for long silences, commercial breaks, and extraneous talking]
(Download clip here)
(Download clip here)
Mark Levin's much-anticipated book "Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America" came out yesterday.
Quite frustratingly, it was not easy to find at our local "big name" book store. You had to walk a good 2/3 the way in to find it hiding among others at the "new non-fiction" table. But that's all right; it's already #1 on Amazon as of this writing and is sure to be at the top of the NY Times bestseller list.
After laying out the historical and philosophical foundations of "utopianism," Mark argues how, using utopianism as their model, our current government has brought us to a post-constitutional America. This dovetails nicely with the observation by William McGunn in yesterday's WSJ that more and more regular Americans are becoming interested in the Constitution. He writes:
Yes, in the Bush years the air was also thick with accusations that the Constitution was being "shredded." We now know that the professed concern for the Constitution was fake. We know it was fake because the same Bush claims of executive authority in war that provoked such apoplexy in our pundits, professors and politicos have for the most part been embraced by Mr. Obama—all to the distinct sound of silence.
Today we have a wholly different order of constitutional complaint. Where the accusations against Mr. Bush were led by prestigious law faculties and law firms, those against Mr. Obama reflect a more popular hue. Where the indictments of Mr. Bush were largely limited to war policy, those against Mr. Obama's extend broadly to all areas of policy: foreign, economic and social. And where critics of Mr. Bush were obsessed with outcome, the discontent with Mr. Obama has been magnified by the uneasy sense that he is changing the fundamental rules of the game.
This awakening started with the tumultuous legislative path to Mr. Obama's health-care victory. Along the way, Americans watching were given an education in words like "cloture" and "filibuster," and saw the leaders of the Democratic House and Senate consider a maneuver whereby the House would "deem" the Senate version of the health-care bill to have passed without having to vote on it. That left a bad taste.
It proved only the beginning. Since then, Mr. Obama's aggressive disregard for any constitutional limit on what he wants to do has come to define his approach across the board. ...
Here's Terry Jeffrey at CNSnews.com interviewing Mark about the book, which, based on what I've read so far, I completely recommend!
And here's an article on it by Jeffrey Lord at American Spectator.
UPDATE: I've read the first couple of chapters already and admit skimming some of it, not because of Mark's writing, but because the subject matter is, IMO, a little dry. Don't get me wrong -- I don't underestimate the importance of understanding Plato's Republic and Mark does do a good job of providing a "conservative cliff's notes" of it. It's just not the most interesting stuff in the world; I'm expecting the second section of the book, the section that focuses on the U.S. and current politics, will be markedly more exciting.
Oh yeah: Here's yet another interview Mark gave to Jason Mattera at Human Events: Part I Part II
My apologies for being so late on this one. A week ago I posted a 20+ minute sound clip of El Rushbo's take on Obama doubling down on Marxist class warfare at a Kansas high school on the 6th.
But I couldn't with good conscience delete my podcast of Mark Levin cutting through the crap without first providing a portion of it here. So here's the Great One doing what he does best:
[Edited for commercials, long pauses, and other extraneous content]
Download clip here
Download clip here
On Tuesday the 6th, President Hope&Change doubled down on his Marxist-socialist ideology. He actually declared that the United States in its 235 year existence does not and has never worked, that the free market is "a license to steal," and that an activist government that taxes, spends and regulates more is the only way to "preserve" the middle class.
Rightfully, the conservative punditry lambasted him. Even the Washington Post -- not exactly a right-wing rag -- criticized him not actually on his sentiments but on the veracity of some of his statements, earning him 3 "Pinocchios" on their political Fact Check page.
Here's Rush the day after the speech, doing his best to control his anger, tearing apart this disastrous, wholly anti-American speech (Yes, I said anti-American. Whaddaya think of that!?)
[Edited for long silences, commercial breaks, and extraneous talking]
(Download clip here)
(Download clip here)
The Great One announced the title of his new book on yesterday's show: "Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America."
Hope it's as brilliant has his previous ones.
It's to be released on January 12 (which is El Rushbo's birthay, I believe. Coincidence???)
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