Hennessy's View

Within hours of reports of a firebombing at Rep. Russ Carnahan’s (D-MO) campaign finance office last Tuesday, St. Louis’s leftist bloggers leapt to the cause. In what seems to have been a coordinated attack, Riverfront Times and several progressive blogs and web sites ascribed culpability for the crime to St. Louis Tea Partyers.  At one point, Chad Garrison of RFT flatly stated that the suspect “fit the description” of a tea partyer, a statement he later attempted to soften by claiming that firebombing is “too sane” a crime for Tea Partyers.

Gateway Pundit broke the story on August 25, that the lone suspect in the case is a former Carnahan staffer and progressive activist. The leftist bloggers continued to lie, continued to obfuscate, and continued to deflect culpability toward St. Louis Tea Party until Rep. Carnahan admitted that the case appeared to be an inside job.  The leftist bloggers shameless and with malice stretched reason and defied logic the way a child does when attempting to avoid punishment for failing to do his homework.

Now that Congressman Carnahan has been forced to admit that the suspect is a former employee and that his office was aware of the fact for some time, the significance of this story begins to strike home.

• Carnahan knowingly allowed conservatives to take false blame for the crime.  His office staff even joked online about the attack.
• Carnahan’s staff lied to the press about being members of the campaign . . . on second thought, denying any association with the Carnahan campaign is completely reasonable, even if it is dishonest.
• St. Louis media – some knew the ID of the suspect – could have at least mentioned that the suspect was not a conservative.  This was not the paid press’s greatest moment.
• Arsonists are very disturbed individuals. It seems odd for the city counselor to order the suspect’s release while awaiting reports from the lab.  Here’s a profile of arsonists from American Chronicle:

Ninety percent of fire setters are male. They are preoccupied with fire. They get an emotional release from starting fires. There may be sexual overtones. Some researchers claim fire setters are sexually repressed males who masturbate at the fires they set. Whether this is a fact or not, many fire setters are social outcasts and tend to have unsuccessful relationships with women. Fire gives them an excitement they cannot find elsewhere. Finally, for many, fire setting satisfies their need to be recognized and establishes their sense of self worth.

For others, setting fires is an act of aggression. It allows them to express anger and frustration which they are unable to do in their daily social interaction. Many have repressed rage for authority figures. Some get the satisfaction of “getting away with a crime.”

And from WebMD, according to the FBI:

According to a 1987 report in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, the vast majority of “profiled” arsonists have a below-normal IQ — typically between 70 and 90. About one in four fall in the below-70 IQ range that qualifies them as mentally retarded — not to say that all mentally retarded children are going to grow up to be arsonists.

We love due process. But the person who torched Carnahan’s office is a person who belongs behind bars or in an institution, no matter how long he worked for the Carnahan campaign. You throw a bomb, you go to jail. But, in this case, the Carnahan people played politics with a guy who seems to be in need of serious help.

This whole episode shows that Carnahan is unfit for Congress, that Tea Partyers deserve apologies from many quarters, and that Democrat-on-Democrat crime is a growing problem in America. Oh, and one other thing: in this country, you’re innocent until proven conservative.

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Each day, more economists jump onto the Double-Dip bandwagon. Signs abound that the natural economic recovery that would normally follow a deep recession won’t happen. Instead, the economy is now saddled with so much debt, so many regulations, and such onerous new taxes that the Obama Administration tells us to be happy with 9.5 percent unemployment.

Barack Obama is an economic disaster of the first order.

So why all the pessimism? 

Well, every week it seems we’re hit with wave after wave of bad news. At the same time, Biden and Obama tour the country telling the unemployed they never had it so good.  Here’s today’s top stories on Drudge:

Here’s a link to one of the stories—on CNBC—that says we have left recession and entered . . . economic DEPRESSION.

And that brings us to this week’s triple-play of disastrous economic news.

First, existing home sales fell by 27 percent in July to the lowest levels in 15 years. At the same time, inventories climbed and interest rates fell.  That means prices will have drop dramatically before the housing market can recover.

Second, durable goods orders, excluding transportation, fell by 3.8 percent in July. Economists and analysts expected a 12 percent rise.  That means businesses have abandoned hope of recovery.

Third, existing home sales plummeted 12 percent in July to the lowest level on record. 

Why can’t the economy find solid footing?  Because America can no longer afford the government in Washington.  With government workers earning twice as much as people who actually produce value in the economy, wage earners can afford only two things:  subsistence and taxes. Truly, the government has erected a multitude of New Offices and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

Either we cut the cost of government or die.  That’s a stark choice.  But it’s the one we’ve been given.

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Barney Frank Comes Home to the Facts.

Remarkable.  Is this is a true change in heart, a real wising-up, of one of Congress’s biggest Fannie and Freddie supporters?  Or is Barney Frank playing some angle here.

Let’s hope it’s the former.  The best thing for America would be an awakening among big government Democrats. Imagine if Frank became a deficit hawk and a Tenther!.

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I approached the Rennick Park Pavilion with a heavy heart for three reasons.  At least three.

First, it was yet another night that I would not be home. And tomorrow’s first day of school.  The last first day of school for my son, Patrick. I can’t think of that without thinking about his first day of kindergarten—which seems like yesterday—when he insisted on riding the bus.  With his little backpack overflowing with supplies listed on a green sheet of paper (Rockwood-Green Pines-K), he stepped onto that bus in August of 1998.

Second, being totally selfish and shallow, I was late.  The service started at 6:00, but I was rolling in during the invocation by Pastor Curtman.  Nothing makes you stand out like walking in the middle of prayers.

Third, the very need for this event is disturbing.  A man and his family are targets of political hit job. Brian Nieves’s only crime it appears was winning an election that men of power and money had reserved for someone else. 

I was surprised when Brian Nieves took the podium to speak. He was both humble and determined. The ridiculous accusations by a political opponent would not end his fight, he told us, but it had rattled him. He said he understands, now, why his candidate recruitment efforts were so difficult. 

“I won’t put my family through that,” they told Brian. 

He assured us knows why.

Republican party power brokers wanted another candidate to win the primary for Missouri Senate District 26, which covers parts of Franklin, St. Louis, and Warren Counties.  Nieves won a tough four-way race in which he was attacked and lied about by opposing candidates, their supporters and staffers, and Republican power brokers.

Brian wanted to tell the story, but he’s under lawyer orders not to discuss the incident. He did let us know that his accuser—for whom he asked us to pray—was comfortable enough at Nieves’s office to return for his sunglasses and enjoy a soda. Less than twenty-four hours later, that accuser would swear in a police report that he was so traumatized by a visit to Nieves’s campaign office that he was rendered a quivering mass of humanity, curled in a fetal position on the floor, begging for mercy.  Mercy and a nice refreshment, that is.  “Could I get a lemon wedge?”

Sorry. The accuser seems to have demons of his own.  He must be under incredible pressure.

The 200 or so people who came out on an evening designed by God, to stand and sit, cheer and prayer by the banks of the Missouri River left certain about two things:

1.  This episode will end someone careers, and

2.  Brian will come out standing.

I wish I could report how exciting it was. I can’t.  I was thrilled to see the response to Annette Read’s and Cindy McGee’s call for a prayer vigil for the Nieves family. But need for this—when we should be out fighting the disassembly of America—just pisses me off. The abuse of this man and his family pisses me off.  The abuse of the system, from the police to the courts to the political process, pisses me off.

While I should have left that ceremony full of love and hope, as I was told, in the end, I did not. I am not angry, not spitting nails, not enraged.  I’m just disgusted that human beings are using good people as pawns.

I understand that the Nieves family will face monstrous legal bills.  To defray those expenses, they have established an emergency legal defense fund.  To contribute, to help push back the ridiculous attack on Brian and his family, please contact his campaign office at 636-432-1776.

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One of the most popular and most talked about movies of 1993 was Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas, Barbara Hershey, and Robert Duval. 

Douglas played William “D-FENS” Foster, an engineer at a defense contractor who has a really bad day.  Some described the movie as “an ordinary man at war with the everyday world.”

Foster became an iconic anti-hero for the people who (stealing Bill Clinton’s line)worked hard and played by the rules, yet found themselves at the bottom of the heap in the post-Cold War era of 1993.

Foster’s wife (Hershey) had left him, and he moved back in with his mother. Making matters worse, Hershey had a court order barring Foster from visiting their young daughter, whom he clearly loved more than life itself.

On the little girl’s birthday, everything falls apart.  Foster gets laid off from the defense contractor job.  The police (Duval) remind him he’s not to go near his wife or daughter.  And in one memorable scene, a fast food chain’s rules interfere when Foster just wants breakfast:

When I read the story of Jetblue flight attendant, Steven Slater, Falling Down  comes to mind. 

And I’m not the only one. 

According to a new Wall Street Journal/MSNBC Poll, two-thirds of Americans believe the worst is yet to come for the economy.  Democrat pollster Peter Hart sees Steven Slater as metaphor for voter sentiment.

Mr. Hart said the 2010 contest is being pulled by the sentiment associated with the JetBlue flight attendant who fled his plane via the emergency chute after an altercation with a passenger. Calling it the "JetBlue election," Mr. Hart said: "Everyone’s hurling invective and they’re all taking the emergency exit."

Like William Foster, Steven Slater seems to symbolize—in exaggerated form—the mood of the American people.  We’re fed up with bureaucracy and petty rules, “minute and uniform,” as Tocqueville put it,  “. . . through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.”

Steven Slater broke through, alright.

In 1993, ordinary Americans—the Tea Party before it had that name—were ready to rumble.  After the Reagan years had restore some semblance of normalcy following the weird 1970s, Bush and Clinton conspired to impose a “new world order” that was inconsistent with our constitution, to use 18th century lingo. 

On November 6, 1994, the American voter signaled our disgust with Washington’s incompetence and encroachments. We switched controll of Congress from Democrat to Republican. In 2006, the voters reversed themselves, returning Congressional control the Democrats.  The voters wanted a change.

It worked.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 12,398 when the Nancy Pelosi’s surgically enhanced hand snatched the Speaker’s gavel from Denny Hastert.  Today, the DJIA opened at 10,300 and some change.  Some change, indeed.

In 2007, the unemployment rate was 4.6 percent. Today’s it’s 9.5 percent and rising, according to Timothy Geithner.  Today, new unemployment claims unexpectedly rose by 2,000 for the second week in a row. Consumer spending slowed. The national debt has increased 21 percent since the Democrats took over Congress—and sole authority to tax and spend.

Even with all that bad news and angst, there is great news ahead. Elections offer Americans the opportunity to take control of their lives and their future. In 2010, the shift in power from Washington to the people could be  of a historic scale.

Can you see November?

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