Yuri Gagarin was first into space 50 years ago today. A major accomplishment. Yet he was a Soviet citizen, and so that accomplishment really wasn't his.
From peasant to soldier to astronaut to the first Soviet in space - a remarkable rise that was only possible because the state deemed it so. He brought great pride to his countrymen, people proven to wrap themselves in national pride when not wrapping themselves in a concentration camp pea jacket.
For every Soviet astronaut there were millions already dead or in captivity as political prisoners in the Gulag - where "zero sum" dynamics meant if you ate today, someone else didn't. While the manned space programs in the US and USSR both contributed to new weapons technologies, only the Soviet program was designed for first-strike use.
His is a story of great achievement and depression, and is now told in a book released today - Starman. We have our copy and look forward to reading it. Click the link below to order your copy!
A required attribute of a true leader is one who speaks the truth. *
Our Leaders-on-the-Left list doubled in size this week with the addition of radio talk-show host Adam Klugman. According to The Blaze he said:
People have been brainwashed by the right into associating Socialism with Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia and not with free, highly successful democratic nations like Norway, Finland and the Belgium.
... I believe it’s time for us to stop making up nice words to describe ourselves so Republicans will tolerate us.
Liberal is not a bad word. And neither is Socialist.
The fact that we’ve completely given up on these ideas demonstrates a defensive mindset that always keeps us on the losing side.
Here is a video Adam has posted at his website. Any surprise his site doesn't list the radio stations that carry him?
Adam's message in this video is as foreign to us as socialism - the taking from the one who earned and giving to the one who slept in. Count us out, but give credit to Adam for trying the truth for a change.
* Correction: A required attribute of a true leader is one who speaks the truth all the time, can be expected to tell the truth, and demands the truth of others.
We lower this standard for liberals in order to praise the few who risk it all to speak the truth just once. It is our way of being tolerant.
Today's rare and coveted Tribute post and Ushanka Tip go to Ann Barnhardt from Colorado.
A business owner and bitter clinger (see picture above), she sets the new standard in the areas of leadership and patriotic activism. She is educated and informed, which sets her apart from the masses, even many on our side. She is, in courage and intensity, what Glenn Beck is to using history and research to predict the future, or Sarah Palin is to inspirational classiness.
Likely, you've already seen her videos at the other cool blogs. These two videos are her response to Senator Lindsey Graham's abhorrent comments on a Sunday show where he would be open to banning Quran burning. He didn't help with subsequent comments either. Called "Lindsey Grahamnisty" by Rush Limbaugh, you'll recall that the Senator has sided with the RINO's and Democrats Communists on immigration and other major anti-American legislation. He pushed all his chips in the 'righteous moderate squishy middle' as did his buddy Senator McCain. South Carolina should be ashamed as their senator fails to stand for anything except winning the praise of our enemies.
"I wish we could find some way to -- to hold people accountable," he [Graham] said during a Sunday appearance on "Face the Nation." "Free speech is a great idea, but we're in a war. During World War II you had limits on what you could say if it would inspire the enemy. So burning a Quran is a terrible thing, but it doesn't justify killing someone. Burning a Bible would be a terrible thing, but it wouldn't justify murder."
"Any time we can push back here in America against actions like this that put our troops at risk, we ought to do it," he added. "So I look forward to working with Senator Kerry and Reid and others to condemn this, condemn violence all over the world based in the name of religion."
As a former soldier, may I say this in a way Ann would approve? Hey JACKASS, how dare you wrap yourself in the honor of American service men and women as you suggest we subordinate our Constitution to your whim du-jour. Hey JACKASS, World War II was a war, declared by congress. Libya is a war declared by the UN. You are in congress and you were passed over for a group of dictators, and instead of demanding congress vote, you toe the administration's line of 'anything for the muslims'.
That was therapeutic.
Here are Ann's two videos. As soon as we post this we'll watch them again. Will you join us?
In your face, eh? We went to public school, so like you, we were initially uncomfortable with Ann's directness. It bruised our self-esteem and high degree of tolerance. We've been sheltered all these years in mandatory corporate diversity training so our first reaction was to run and hide from that bright light of truth called Ann.
Will Ann get discouraged? She takes responsibility for her message and is rallying those of us who agree. Yet, we haven't seen any other videos of like-minded folks. (We haven't looked for them either). So will a lack of copy-cat videos discourage Ann? Will she feel she is the only one left with "brains and balls"? We hope not, and here is why:
We stood outside the single entrance to the Democrat National Convention in Denver in 2008 selling our sexy Commie Obama hats. We yelled "Be the first inside with a Commie Obama hat!" as Democrat senators, officials, donors and Hollywood scum were forced to walk by our smiling face. We picked this as our battle space and brought the fight. It was right for us, as were these videos right for Ann in both time and message. We each have our ideal fight and time, and while a mass Quran-burning would be fun to watch, spontaneous outbursts at random times and locations have as good or better effect.
We hope to see more of Ann.
You can get to know Ann better. She was interviewed this week by Andrea Shea King.
Mr. Ryan's budget rollout is an important political and policy moment because it is the most serious attempt to reform government in at least a generation. The plan offers what voters have been saying they want—a blueprint to address the roots of Washington's fiscal disorder. --- The Ryan plan would chop $179 billion from the 2012 White House budget and another $241 billion in 2013. This would be the largest two-year savings since the demobilization of the military after World War II. Mr. Ryan would cut funding for corporate welfare and hundreds of ineffective programs, reform agriculture subsidies, reduce the federal work force by 10% and repeal ObamaCare, among other good ideas. --- Unlike many Republicans and some in the tea party, Mr. Ryan understands that the budget can't be balanced with spending cuts alone. Above all, we need faster economic growth to drive higher incomes and more revenues. So Mr. Ryan also proposes a tax reform that would cut the U.S. personal and corporate tax rate to 25%, in return for eliminating loopholes and credits that allow companies like Whirlpool and General Electric to pay little tax.
This won't pass, but the vote on Ryan's budget now will speak volumes next November when we are even further in the hole. For that reason the CAO Brazilia smolders today.
"We are the one's we've been waiting for" is now "It begins with us."
So decrees our Dear Leader, who wrote us a personal email today announcing he is running for re-election next year.
We'll start by doing something unprecedented: coordinating millions of one-on-one conversations between supporters across every single state, reconnecting old friends, inspiring new ones to join the cause, and readying ourselves for next year's fight.
And it came with his video of the commie-next-door variety where publicly-educated envy-filled "workers" have already made their voting decision for 2012. (Hint: They chose the candidate who will promise to take away from others and give to them.)
If they can decide now who they are voting for, why can't we too?
UPDATE 4:30PM
Mr. Pinko at IOTW has posted an alternative 'Vote For Me" video. Feels more authentic and more honest - don't you think?
UPDATED April 5 7:30am
Jon Stewart shares his reaction with the Dear Leader's opening campaign video. Found at The Blaze.
We are making fast progress through Robert Conquest's The Dragons of Expectations. Unlike his other books, which seem to take as long as the USSR to collapse, this one is fun and fast. This brilliant scholar uses this 2005 book to sum up his vast work from previous decades. We are enjoying his input of recently uncovered facts as he reviews the major events that were Communism. One example from page 116: the total of signed death orders by Stalin - 44,000. He also quotes - liberally - from Orwell. Good stuff!
A couple paragraphs that stood out, from page 120:
Dead bodies were a common product of the Stalinist system. But minds did not do well either. They had to endure a continuous barrage of untruth. It can be argued that the Soviet Union's main negative characteristic - with plenty to choose from - was falsification. One finds it right from the start. But in the 1930's, after the disastrous failure of collectivization, the disjunction was complete. Henceforth, two different Soviet Unions existed - the official one, a flourishing and happy country (beset, though, by traitors), and the real one, overrun by poverty, squalor, and terror, and with a crushed population.
The prettier of these pictures was not only compulsory in all Soviet media and deniable by citizens at the cost of their liberty or lives. It was also, as far as possible, conveyed to the outer world and especially (as we have said) to a stratum of the Western intelligentsia, many of whom were even taken in by, for example, the official denials issued by Soviet representatives in the West of the very existence of the 1933 famine, let alone its causes.
An inside look at the White House Communications office?
This video reminds us of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago (Volume 2, we think) where he writes of the positives associated with confinement in a Soviet death camp. Two of those positives: No Party Dues, and no Party Meetings. Ha!
Some items cleverly edited out of the video:
"Will you accept a collect call from the Communist Party?"
"Is life a zero-sum game, where you must take from someone else to get ahead?"
"Would you fight for the right to get free stuff paid for by other people?"
"Do you agree that Communism is pure and that Lenin, Stalin and Obama were flawed leaders?"
. Unlike his other books, which seem to take as long as the USSR to collapse, this one is fun and fast. This brilliant scholar uses this 2005 book to sum up his vast work from previous decades. We are enjoying his input of recently uncovered facts as he reviews the major events that were Communism. One example from page 116: the total of signed death orders by Stalin - 44,000. He also quotes - liberally - from Orwell. Good stuff!