Robert G. Yetman, Jr.

The Candidacy of Doug Hoffman

On November 3, there will be a special election in upstate New York.  It’s called a “special election” because it’s being conducted to fill the seat vacated by Republican John McHugh who’s now Obama’s Secretary of the Army, but what really makes it a special election is how the whole thing is actually playing out.

 

The hand-picked Republican candidate, a state assemblywoman by the name of Dede Scozzafava, had been catching a ton of wrath from conservative Republicans who’ve had enough of traditional RINOs (Republicans In Name Only).  Scozzafava is a classic northeast liberal Republican…so liberal that she can’t even get away with being called a centrist…and she’d been receiving, quite thankfully, a lot of grief from a more active, animated, and aware base from both within and without New York.  Most notably, her most serious competition had been from a former rival for the Republican nomination, Doug Hoffman, who’s now waging a battle for the slot in the name of the Conservative Party.

 

Note that I refer to Scozzafava’s candidacy in the past tense, and that’s because she just dropped out of the race.  Recent poll numbers showed Hoffman ahead of Democratic nominee Bill Owens, and way ahead of Scozzafava, who was, at one time, leading over both Hoffman and Owens.  In a letter to her disappointed supporters, Scozzafava said, in part, “The reality that I've come to accept is that in today's political arena, you must be able to back up your message with money -- and as I've been outspent on both sides, I've been unable to effectively address many of the charges that have been made about my record."

 

Lack of money was never the issue here, Dede; it was lack of an ability to distinguish yourself from the worst of any of the Democrats.  Indeed, the Democratic Party’s choice for this race, Owens, is enough of a blue dog that he’s actually less of a leftist nutjob than the Republican offering in the form of Scozzafava.

 

The race is getting so much attention because it represents the first opportunity since the manifestation of current conservative populist outrage for a difference to be made in an election.  Third-party candidates are normally nothing more than footnotes to elections, but this time may well prove to be different.  We should hope and pray for that to be the case.  To learn more about Doug Hoffman, please visit: http://www.doughoffmanforcongress.com. 

 

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Robert G. Yetman, Jr.  Editor-At-Large www.ChristianMoney.com

 

 

Tags: doug+hoffman

The NFL and Its “Principles”

I’ll get right to it.  Let’s put aside anything that Rush Limbaugh did or did not actually say.  You surely know by now that he quite apparently did not utter the “smoking gun” of statements that was attributed to him…the one wherein he applauded slavery for its role in building the South.  There remains no evidence that he actually said it.  Anyway, focusing on what he did or didn’t say is to miss the grand point here.

 

The point is the gross dishonesty of the NFL’s employers and employees drawing boundaries on the basis of ethics, morality, right and wrong, or whatever you want to call this sort of thing.

 

The problem with making public pronouncements like those we’ve heard is the matter of selectivity.  If you’re going to come down on Limbaugh for the “crime” of being an outspoken conservative, what do you do with Michael Vick, Adam “Pacman” Jones, or any of the numerous other popular players and faces of the NFL who’ve been associated with overtly criminal acts over the last several years?  If you’re NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, you let ‘em keep playing.  Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in a murder investigation…a murder investigation…and his career has progressed without skipping a beat.  It’s worth noting that Lewis was originally indicted for the actual murder, and ultimately reached a settlement with the victim’s family in 2004.  Still, ESPN analysts lionize Lewis each week during football season…but it’s Limbaugh who’s the demon.

 

(Funny enough, as I am writing this, a commercial for the NFL’s official team merchandise just came on the television, a commercial featuring the aforementioned Ray Lewis; it’s curious where NFL honcho Goodell draws his own lines of “appropriateness.”)

 

NFL players like Mathias Kiwanuka and Bart Scott have stated publicly they won’t play for any team Limbaugh owns…that their principles are worth more than that.  Really?  Their principles?  I researched to find any evidence of Kiwanuka or Scott taking any such “principled” stands at any other point in the NFL careers…when they’ve had ample opportunity to do so, given the very public legal and moral failings of their compatriots through the years…and I found none.  Indeed, Bart Scott, currently with the Jets, seems to have quite happily played alongside Ray Lewis on the Baltimore Ravens from 2002 to 2008; now he’s “Mr. Principle” in the matter of Rush Limbaugh, a guy who, by all objective accounts, can be considered nothing more egregious than simply an ideological adversary.  It’s beyond laughable.

 

I’m often asked by friends and acquaintances who’ve known me for so many years and who read my columns why and how I’ve become increasingly embittered in they ways that I have; it is precisely events like “Limbaugh-gate” that prompt people like me to become more cynical about, and more critical of, so-called mainstream society.  The hypocrisy, the disingenuousness, all of it…is more than we can take.  There’s not even a token effort made any longer to even look balanced.  If you’re a conservative like Limbaugh or like the many, many millions throughout America who also see themselves thusly, you’re a target.  Fair enough; now I know where I stand.  Now that I know I am the enemy, I can guiltlessly regard the other side as my enemy…and work to bring about the complete destruction of their ideology as they endeavor to bring about the complete destruction of mine.

 

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Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor-At-Large www.ChristianMoney.com

Tags: rush+limbaugh+nfl

The Real Reason Chicago Lost

Voting is a very personal thing.  In the end, no matter what you say to anyone, you may cast a vote on behalf of someone or something for any reason you choose, regardless of what you declare publicly.  Maybe you said that you voted for McCain-Palin because of high-minded, ideological reasons…when you really voted for them because you think Miss Sarah is so darn pretty; maybe you said that you voted for Obama out of deference to the same sort of ideological motivation…but really cast that vote simply because he’s black.  The point is that you can say what you want, but no one else, ultimately, knows the truth…which brings us to the matter of the IOC’s harsh, early dismissal of Chicago as a considered site for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

 

What has stood out about that vote has been sincere, puzzled curiosity expressed by reasonably independent observers like Rowdy Gaines, 3-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming.  Gaines indicated that he felt Chicago’s bid was very strong…and certainly strong enough to see it survive the first-ballot vote, where it was instead dispatched like an annoying gnat at a picnic.  What, then, could have gone so terribly wrong?

 

The only reasonable conclusion to which one can come is that the rest of the international community wanted to teach King Barack and Queens Michelle (could the First Lady have delivered a more self-aggrandizing, narcissistic speech to the IOC?)  and Oprah that the obvious presumptuousness with which our apparent royalty approached this pursuit would not go unpunished.  Tony Harris of Communist News Network tellingly displayed that arrogance himself, when Chicago’s elimination was announced and he exclaimed, “Chicago is out??  Madrid is in??  Tokyo is in??”  His instinctively condescending attitude said it all, and it is quite likely that this attitude, surely identified early on by the IOC, led to Chicago’s early exit.  This “loss” was not, in my opinion, based on some sort of detailed, objective, empirical analysis of the bids, but rather on the sort of thought process that causes much of the school to vote against the popular girl for homecoming queen precisely because she egotistically expected to win all along.       

 

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Robert G. Yetman, Jr., Editor-At-Large www.ChristianMoney.com

 

Tags: obama,+olympics,+chicago+olympics+bid