Adventure is worthwhile - Aesop

Monday, March 22, 2010

I will acknowledge one point of healthcare’s supporters.  Getting this through Congress demonstrated tremendous political skill on Obama’s part.  For all the Republican bleating about Cornhusker kickbacks and reconciliation, that has always been part of Washington.  I can complain about the complicity of powerful interests like Big Pharama, but those powerful interests aren’t new.  Clinton would have done all this and more in ‘93 but couldn’t even get a vote.  Obama did.

We’ve seen this from Obama before—in the election.  He was never supposed to beat Clinton, but he did.  And then McCain won every news cycle that fall but Obama still won.  Healthcare was declared dead a dozen times but Obama pushed it through. Obama is patient, persistent and plays hardball.  In that sense, he is like Reagan, who also pushed through legislation in the face of fierce and determined opposition.  This is why I get so impatient with people who dismiss Obama as a dim bulb “community organizer”.  He is more than happy for people to underestimate him.  They do so at their peril.  And while they’re smugly yammering away on Fox News and getting seven figure book contracts, he is changing the nation.  First with Porkulus, now with healthcare.

Unlike Obama’s fans, however, I do not see that skill as an end in and of itself.  it doesn’t matter how well you move the football when you’re going in the wrong direction.  I get depressed when I think about what all that skill could do if Obama turned it to something better, like fiscal discipline or education reform or tax reform.  We are so desperately in need of real leadership in Washington.  And it’s unfortunate that one of the few people to show it has his guns pointed the wrong way.

(Of course, Obama’s cheerleaders don’t really care about what was in the bill (and in most cases, don’t even know what was in it).  All they care is that our guy won.  Think of them as the answer to Karl Rove.)

I think the GOP is in great danger of becoming complacent between now and November.  They are talking like all they have to is wait six months and they’ll get back Congress.  But it ain’t necessarily so.  In a few months, Obama will turn his attention to the elections and mitigating the damage HCR has done to Democrats’ prospect.  The GOP needs to go on the attack and stay on the attack.  Not through stupid talk of death panels and Medicare cuts, but with real argumenst about rising insurance premiums and deficits and the stagnant economy (a stagnation this bill is likely to exacerbate).

Don’t underestimate him again, guys.  We can’t afford it anymore.

Update: I speculated below on the fiscal and economic ramifications of HCR.  I’ll now speculate on the political ones.

My basic premise here is that the Republicans are morons.  They really don’t know how to deal with Obama and have no idea how to take advantage of HCR, politically.  During the debate, the focused on dog whistle trivia the public didn’t care about (parliamentary rules) and shibboleths (death panels) instead of the massive tax hike buried in the bill and the likelihood that this will blow out both healthcare spending and the deficit.  They smugly predicted defeat while Obama beat them.  I don’t see any reason to expect them to suddenly wise up.

In a few months, we will start to get glowing media stories about people with pre-existing conditions getting insurance.  It will be some time before the cost of this—higher insurance premiums—kick in.  But this will give Obama and the Democrats the ammunition they need to run on healthcare.

The Republicans will still gain seats if the economy remains stagnant.  But I think they will fall short of majority.  They simply aren’t clued in enough.  It may take Obama wiping the floor with them a few more times before they get it.

They may follow the election with attempts to repeal healthcare (which will die in committee, in filibuster or with the veto pen).  But I expect the narrative to change enough so that they will merely try to fix the system rather than overhaul it.  And we can then welcome another decade of waiting for real healthcare reform.

Monday, February 01, 2010

Fouad Ajami published an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that summed up why our President looks to have feet of clay so far:

There is nothing surprising about where Mr. Obama finds himself today. He had been made by charisma, and political magic, and has been felled by it. If his rise had been spectacular, so, too, has been his fall. The speed with which some of his devotees have turned on him—and their unwillingness to own up to what their infatuation had wrought—is nothing short of astounding. But this is the bargain Mr. Obama had made with political fortune.

He was a blank slate, and devotees projected onto him what they wanted or wished.

Dennis the Peasant has noticed this too, and addressed the left’s complaints in the most caring, compassionate way possible--that is, he sarcastically and gleefully tap dances on their misery:

Anyway, my point is this: You, David Michael Green, voted for the empty vessel. That’s what you wanted. You didn’t want a candidate with a record of achievement (and failure). You didn’t want a man already measured. You wanted a blank slate. A blank slate you could project all your hopes and dreams upon without having to worry about reality.

You got what you wanted.

At the time of his election to the presidency, Barack Obama had no meaningful experience or accomplishments in the field of politics. You knew nothing of his character or his capacity to lead. You didn’t care. He looked the part and said the right things. Your imagination did the rest. Now that Obama is faced with real life, and his lack of experience and defects of character have been exposed in the most painful manner imaginable, you find yourself professing shock…

Really? What did you expect? Seriously. What did you expect?

You didn’t want the sort of politician who could draw on experience and strength of character to get things done, you wanted the sort of politician you could give yourself a big hug for supporting. It was never about Barack Obama; it was about you. And if he’s fucked it all up, it is in no small part because you fucked it all up, too. You got what you wanted. You wanted Barack Obama and you got him.

That’s not Barack Obama’s fault.

The phrase “In a democracy, we get the government we deserve” has never been so true as it has been the last 17 years or so.  We’ve now had three Presidents from the Baby Boomer generation in charge of this country, and they all have come from broken homes and/or have Daddy Issues.  Clinton was a moral reprobate that got lucky enough to preside during the dot.com bubble; Bush was a “compassionate conservative” whose party had to get its ass whomped in 2006 before he felt compelled to pull out the veto pen; and Obama is President Pretty, Pretty Princess who acts more like Veruca Salt than the leader of the most powerful country in the history of the planet.

And Dennis is right---it’s not Clinton’s fault or Bush’s fault or Obama’s fault that they were put in office and subsequently crapped all over the dignity that it’s supposed to hold.  It’s ours--at least, it’s our society’s.  In an age where two-to-two and a half generations of kids have now been raised largely in homes marked by divorce, single parenthood, and little fundamental stability in the family unit, we aren’t looking for someone to give it to us straight and be blunt with us about what our country requires to stay strong and stable.  We want a national “mommy” to kiss our boo-boos, tell us everything is going to be okay, and give us ice cream afterwards.  Obama is merely the latest step in this generational phenomenon, and barring some monumental event where Gen-X and the Echo Boomers are forced to make a fundamental, foundational change in the way they view the role of the President and society, it likely will not get better.  We have mediocre leaders because we have a mediocre citizenry, plain and simple.

Walt Kelly’s “We have met the enemy, and he is us” was never so appropriate as it is right now.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

If you read any link today, read this one in which Ted DeHaven places quotes from last night’s speech side by side with quotes from Bush’s SOTU.  We are seeing the exact same ridiculous promises and claims --- bipartisanship, helping small businesses, investment in alternative energy (a promise every President since Carter has made).

Read it.  Forward it.  It’s critical that our electorate realize just how much of Obama’s policies are a thin veneer over Bush’s failed policies.  And Clinton’s, And Carter’s.  And Nixon’s.  And…

Update: And if you read two links today, read Gene Healy on the Cult of the Presidency and the awful pageantry that has becomes the SOTU.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Samuel Alito is being bashed for having “Joe Wilson Moment” when he mouthed “that’s not true” when Obama rebuked the Court for its recent decision.  I don’t see the big deal.  I can understand opposing heckling, but not wanting people to even mouth things?  Come on.

Oh, and or the record?  Alito was right.

Thursday, December 31, 2009

If you hoped Rush Limbaugh would die, and you are saddened by the news that it looks like he’s going to recover, please read this.

1. If you think Rush is a bad person, what does wishing him dead make you? Even if you are right about him (meaning you are correct about whatever it is that makes you hate him enough to wish death upon him), how is it ever acceptable to act that way? How does that make you better than him on any conceivable level? Answer: it doesn’t. In fact it could be said that you are worse for that behavior, because you claim (or maybe believe) to “know better” or have a better sense of ethics and/or morality. Except that wishing him dead makes that belief a lie, and it makes you a hypocrite in the first degree.

2. Imagine Rush was your family member and divorce the politics for a second. Really think about this. Imagine the man you love the most. Now imagine some flippant jerk online wishing him dead because he went to the hospital and they don’t like his political views. Now realize that YOU are that flippant jerk. You’re not better than him. You’re not a good person for saying it. Rush Limbaugh is not a mass murderer or a serial killer or even a capitalist robber baron stealing from the downtrodden and piling wealth in his secret vault, into which he dives naked like a fat, sweaty Scrooge McDuck. He’s just a regular person with opinions, and the oratory skill to make a certain segment of the population listen to him spout those opinions on the radio for three hours a day.

3.I hate having to do this, because it seems like such a lame “establishing my maverick bona fides” statement to make, but I want to be understood and not have to explain this later:  I’m no fan of Rush. Never have been. I have a long history of not liking the guy. I think he used to be a lot worse than he is now, because he was A) younger, B) doing the conservative version of Howard Stern before Glenn Beck ever picked up a mic, and C) hadn’t been somewhat humbled by his drug escapades going public. I hardly ever hear his show unless I happen to be showering between noon and three PM in my own house. (Explanation: I have a shower radio that pretty much ONLY receives the local AM talk station that is about a mile away from my house). So, now I have established for the record (again) that I am not a big Dittohead. I’ve just never been a big fan of any of those AM talk hosts. Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, Levin...none of them appeal to me. And they don’t represent my personal political beliefs. I’m not a fan.

What I am a fan of is basic human decency and trying to live life with as little hypocrisy as I can manage. To me, in a situation like this, that means when I hear that someone with whom I disagree politically with great fervor - for example, Ted Kennedy - is sick or even dying, if I have nothing supportive to say about the man, I will either wish his family well in their ordeal or just - and this is an option that more people need to realize is available - I SHUT MY MOUTH AND SAY NOTHING.

Yeah, that was maybe the longest sentence I’ve ever written, but the meaning should be clear: If you want to live your life with any kind of honor at all, if you want to be - not just be seen as, but be - as decent a human being as you can be, part of that is not wishing death upon a sick person because you don’t like their politics.

4. On a personal level, If you know us and/or have any kind feelings for me or my wife, just remember that MY life was threatened and horrible things said to me and my wife because we dared disagree publicly with Michael Moore. So...if that means anything to you, maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to make jokes about Limbaugh’s death. Because it only makes you look like a bigger ass than you think he is.

5. Lastly, this Tweet from Lee Doren should be seen by all:

Irony = Hoping Rush Limbaugh Dies. Then asking for citizens to trust you with power.

I’m not sure that is actually irony, at least not in the proper sense of the word, but then Alanis Morrissette has screwed up irony for an entire generation, so whatever. The sentiment is there and it’s true: You cannot expect me to trust you to determine the course of MY health care when you harbor so much hatred for the political opposition that you gleefully wish them dead and don’t care who knows it.

So...you know. Just my $0.02 and it’s worth what you paid for it, but I have lost some respect for a few people this morning. Not that my respect is worth jack to most folks, and most of the people who need to read this won’t see it, but I felt like it needed to be said. So I said it.

Get well, Rush.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Looks like the terrorists that killed 3000 of us on 9/11/2009 are just as excited as the radical America hating left is about their opportunity to spout their views of the evils of our great nation.

NEW YORK (AP) - The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday. Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but “would explain what happened and why they did it.”
The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. will face a civilian federal trial just blocks from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center.

Sure makes Holder’s choice of this venue very obvious now. It is a bone thrown out those that like them think it is America’s fault for being or doing whatever they don’t like. All the usual Bush and America hating turds can rejoice in the crap these idiots will spout and secretly, or not in many cases, nod in agreement. Of course, not even the Obama people are so stupid to believe that these people should be able to go free. That’s why Holder has promised they will be found guilty. BTW, if that claim by Holder is not a clear indication of a rigged trial and a huge problem with our justice system, I don’t know what is.

Critics of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try the men in a New York City civilian courthouse have warned that the trial would provide the defendants with a propaganda platform.

And also the losers that agree with them. That’s how this should read. But it won’t. We all know it, but we will not say it out loud. Need to give these shlobs something to feel good about considering they are front and center for the destruction their kind of thinking is wreaking on our country these days.

The attorney general said he does not believe holding the trial in New York - at a federal courthouse that has seen a number of high-profile terrorism trials in recent decades - will increase the risk of terror attacks there.

Doesn’t matter that Osama said he targeted new York for this very kind of stuff. Watch these idiots blame Bush for this too.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Edmunds.com recently published an analysis of the Cash-for-Clunkers program, concluding that the economic impact was minimal.  You know what comes next from the Least Confident Administration Ever.

It is an odd, and we’d say regrettable, pattern of this White House that it lets itself get dragged down into fights with specific media outlets.

George W. Bush experienced acrimony with the New York Times, but for the most part, other than general frustrations of a conservative administration, complaining about a liberal media, it was no big deal.

But in addition to Fox News, now The White House is going after highly-respected and influential car site Edmunds.com.

They’re actually using The White House blog to dispute the site’s analysis of Cash-For-Clunkers (via Detroit News).

The post is snarkily titled: “Busy Covering Car Sales on Mars, Edmunds.com Gets It Wrong (Again) on Cash for Clunkers”

They have a copy of the post, which reads like something I would write on a slow blog day.  It’s snarky and sarcastic.  Even worse, it’s snarky about something that ended months ago.

Why are these guy so think-skinned? This a pattern of behavior that been going since they got into office nine months ago.  It’s not a Big Communist Conspiracy to destroy the First Amendment or anything.  But it is childish and bizarre behavior from people who, quite frankly, have more important things to worry about, like the health care turd currently squishing its way through the Congressional water pipes.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Boy, the libs really melt down when it comes to Fox News, don’t they?  After denouncing Fox as not being a news organization—while having secret meetings with Rachel Maddow and Keith Olberman—the White House tried to deny Fox access to the “pay czar”.

The other networks would not cooperate.  This has nothing to do with principle and everything to do with self-preservation; the networks realize that the can not allow a precedent to be set where the White House denies access to networks they don’t like.

Say what you will about the Bush Administration, there were never this whiney about the media (although the McCain-Palin campaign got incredibly petulant during the campaign).  Clinton whined about Rush Limbaugh, but you really have to go back to Nixon to find an Administration that was this obsessed with the media.

Now also consider that the Administration recently put a link on the HHS website so that people could voice their support of healthcare reform.  The White House is claiming this doesn’t technically violate the law because it doesn’t identify a specific bill.  But that’s using the letter of the law to violate the spirit of the law.  Whatever the technical details, the idea of the Hatch Act is to keep the President from using the government to advance his agenda.  The HHS link is clearly intended to do precisely that.

All in all, I have to agree with McArdle:

Increasingly, I feel like Obama and his team are trying to run his office like a community organizing outfit.  But this is the presidency, not a political campaign.  You don’t put your message out through every available channel, you don’t go to war on news operations, and you don’t threaten groups that say things you don’t like.  You are now running the whole country, not trying to win a race.

I don’t mean this to sound like what I’m sure a lot of my conservative commentators will make it into--some screed to the effect that Obama is a tinpot dictator and a secret communist.  I think Obama’s longest life experience is as a campaigner, and so it’s natural that this infects his actions as he learns to govern.  And I think that, again like most presidents, he is testing the boundaries of his power.  But I think it behooves the American citizenry to set firm limits, and slap his hand when he overreaches them.

The pattern we’re seeing is of a party that has no confidence in their message.

Update: Media Myrmidons claims that Fox started it.  Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick.  Do you assholes not understand the difference between Fox’s news operations and their opinion operations? Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, et al. are not even part of Fox News (and appear on other networks as well).  Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Bill O’Reilly have opinion shows, which are stated as opinion shows.  They don’t pretend to be objective.

You guys just can’t stand the idea that there is a news organization out there that is not on board with your liberal views.  I’ll agree Fox has a conservative slant.  So what?  The NYT, for years, has had an editorial page indistinguishable from the Democratic Party platform.  NPR and PBS routinely parrot liberal lines—as “news”.  MSNBC, as I noted above, had its chief pundits meet with Obama to figure out how better to advance his agenda.  Where’s your concern on that, Media Matters?

Jesus.  Your “waaa-waaaa” Fox News crying jag has got me defending a network I don’t even like.  For fuck’s sake, liberals.  Pull up your diapers, dry your eyes and start running the country.  Are you going to spend all of the next eight years in a snit?

Update: More on the pay czar gambit here.  I probably was too cynical in writing off the networks’ refusal to isolate Fox.  Jack Tapper, in particular, has stood by his fellow news organization.  Good for them.  Nice to see them stand up to an Administration.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Here comes the left’s new spin on why Iranian nukes are actually going to be a great thing. Suddenly the nutjobs are no longer demanding a nuke free world - with the US of course being the first to unilaterally disarm, as a token of good faith, and a fantasy that this will somehow make brutal and evil thugs follow along - but embracing the reality that in our world nukes now serve an indisputable function. In fact, now that Iran is heading that way and none of their jabber-jabber has made a difference, they are all for it:

President Barack Obama was surprisingly given the Nobel Peace Prize “primarily for his work on and commitment to nuclear disarmament,” according to Agot Valle, a Norwegian politician who served on the award committee. Valle told the Wall Street Journal that the stewards of the prize wanted to “support” Obama’s goal, as expressed recently at the U.N., “of a world without nuclear weapons.”

It’s tough to think of a goal more widely espoused than the dream of an H-bomb-free planet. President Ronald Reagan and activist Jane Fonda, political opposites, came together on this one — in his second term, Reagan stunned his advisers and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev by suggesting a treaty that would take nuclear arsenals down to “zero.”

As long as a nukeless world remains wishful thinking and pastoral rhetoric, we’ll be all right. But if the Nobel Committee truly cares about peace, its members will think a little harder about trying to make it a reality. Open a history book and you’ll see what the modern world looks like without nuclear weapons. It is horrible beyond description.

During the 31 years leading up to the first atomic bomb, the world without nuclear weapons engaged in two global wars resulting in the deaths of an estimated 78 million to 95 million people, uniformed and civilian. The world wars were the hideous expression of what happens when the human tendency toward conflict hooks up with the violent possibilities of the industrial age. The version of this story we are most familiar with is the Nazi death machinery, and we are often tempted to think that if Hitler had not happened, we would never have encountered assembly-line murder.

Yeah, really. A nukless world is suddenly wishful thinking – and yet Obama is lining up and giving away the game to everyone in the hopes he can convince the Russians to lower their warhead count so we can do the same (and my bet is this idiot reduces our arsenal even if the Russians don’t because he is just that full of himself) – and these twerps sudden understand the role of nukes. Know what this talk reminds me off? The whole “détente” bullshit that these same leftists bring up when discussing SDI and our scrapped Missile Defense plans. Do they even realize how stupid this 180 looks like?

Anyway, get used to it. These collectivist apologists are laying the ground work for the Obama administration to drop the ball on Iran: letting them go nuclear. I wonder why the leftists that love to claim the North Koreans went nuclear with Bush at the helm, ignoring bill Clinton’s role in that affair, don’t give him the honor of the same defense. And credit the Bush administration with never trying to pull this ridiculous line that a nuclear armed North Korea – or Iran - was a good thing.

So, after the left has tried to talk strong while acting as weak as possible, showing strength only when they could help prevent any action against Iran that might have made a difference, they now drop even that pretense. Now a nuclear armed Iran will suddenly help bring stability to the world!  I am sure that’s why the Saudis told MI-6 they would allow Israeli over flight to attack those facilities even if they later denied they said so. They still have to keep appearances for the locals I guess. But in the mean time the left is getting ready to make the Middle East become a much more dangerous place, and this article showing the left suddenly engaging the nuclear reality is nothing but the precursor to our capitulation. Talk failed.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Look.  I’ll be the first to say that the anti-globalization protestors are nitwits.  As far as I can tell, their agenda is that the people of poor countries are best off staying poor.  And I have no problem with arresting those who resort to violence and mayhem.  But there’s a balance to be struck between civil order and the freedom to protest.  And, as Radley Balko notes at the Best Magazine on the Planet, we’re increasingly falling on the wrong side of it:

But a number of disturbing images, videos, and witness accounts have come out of Pittsburgh, as well as from similar high-stakes political events in recent years, that reveal the disquieting ease with which authorities are willing to crush dissent—and at the very sorts of events where the right to dissent is the entire purpose of protecting free speech. That is, events where influential policymakers meet to make high-level decisions with far-reaching consequences.

...

Emily Tanner, a grad student at the University of Pittsburgh who describes herself as a “capitalist” and who doesn’t agree with the general philosophy of the anti-globalization protesters, has been covering the fallout on her blog. The most egregious police actions seemed to take place on Friday September 25, when police began ordering students who were in public spaces to disperse, despite the fact that they had broken no laws. Those who moved too slowly, even from public spaces on their own campus or in front of their dorms, were arrested.

...

Note that a group of people needn’t have actually broken any laws, only possessed the “potential” to do so, at which point not moving quickly enough for the liking of the police on the scene could result in an arrest. That standard is essentially a license for the police to arrest anyone, anywhere in the city at any time, regardless of whether those under arrest have actually done anything wrong.

This sounds like something that would happen in Tiananmen Square, not Pittsburgh.  But it’s hardly unprecedented.  As Balko notes, the authorities in Minneapolis decide to pre-arrest potential protesters at the RNC last year.  442 of 672 arrestees were released without charges, including a former professor of mine who would be on the shortlist for the Most Harmless Man in America.  That’s a dropped charge rate that makes Gitmo look like a model of efficiency (almost).  Of course, it’s not like the noble Democrats are any better with their absurd “free speech zones”.  Have you guys read the First Amendment?  The whole fucking country is a free speech zone!

I don’t tolerate it when tea parties are demeaned and I sure as shit won’t tolerate it when protests are blocked, even ones I disagree with.  While I was ashamed of the violence that accompanied earlier G-20 meetings in this country, I was proud to be part of a country that allowed such open, visible and stupid dissent.  This is America, guys, not a product roll-out.  It’s supposed to be raucous.

Saturday, October 03, 2009

The left is already blaming the right for Chicago going down in flames and being eliminated first from the Olympics. They are foaming at the mouth and mad with rage that Obama didn’t bring it in - after all, he was the One, and he was supposed to fix our standing in the world! - and they want someone to blame. So how long before they either call the IOC part of the VRWC and racist? The lesson here for these collectivist morons is that despite all their fantasies about how the people of the world don’t like Americans, the problem is not the people - most of them like America and would give up anything to get here - but their governments and elites. In fact Obama was just snubbed by those same elites across the globe that told us we HAD to elect Obama to repair all that damage Bush did! Do I think they will learn that lesson? Not a chance…

They will not point out that the failure here was their ideology and Obama’s own ego, so get ready for the IOC to be labeled part of the VRWC and racist!

Friday, October 02, 2009

The Messiah has crashed and burned, and there will be no Chicago Olympics: it is going to Rio. With Obama jetting there, I thought this was a done deal. But it seems that my belief Obama was just going to capitalize on the given, was wrong. One is now left wondering WTF he was thinking. This is an epic fail, and the left is already blaming the right for it. I think I know the plan though, with horrible unemployment, the deteriorating Afghanistan situation, the mounting deficit spending, a Nuclear Iran, the Public Option failure, ACORN going down in flames, taxes going up, and yet another public sector crisis in the making, this trip to Copenhagen to fail was being done to distract from these things. Everybody will be talking about how the world, which we were all told would love us again if we elected Obama, just dicked us, this weekend. And in the mean time the democrats will continue to destroy the country without any worries as all are distracted by this crap.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Dwex over at Victorious Opposition linked to the video of the elementary school kids chanting to Dear Leader.  Here’s the video, in case you haven’t seen it by now:

This is simply fucking unconscionable, for a number of reasons both major and minor.  For starters, getting children to sing paens to an elected leader that hasn’t done anything yet, particularly in the vein that this song is crafted, is pure brainwashing.  Can you imagine the uproar on the left if a private Christian school had done this with Bush or Reagan as the subject?  Not to mention that it isn’t even original--one of the lyrics is swiped directly from “Jesus Loves the Little Children”.  An allusion like that in a Republican-feting song would have put the left on a headhunting mission to shut down the entire school for promoting religion in the classroom.  And this is what just happened to be recorded and put on the net; I’m wondering just how much our largely left-leaning teacher’s unions are doing to promote similar group-think activities that we just haven’t seen since the election.

Fortunately, the scamps at Reason sniffed out exactly what this type of propoganda resembles several months ago.

As if I needed another reason to homeschool any future children I may have....

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

By now, you’ve probably heard of the conference call among Obama-supporting artists.  An NEA official participated and urged the artists to support President Obama’s agenda.  This story actually broke a few weeks ago (as did the story of Yosi Sargent first denying the story and then begin re-assigned when a transcript and e-mails surfaced).

First, what Sargent did was obviously inappropriate.  It’s one thing for Obama official in the Office of Public Engagement to do this—that’s the point of the OPE.  But for an NEA official to do so is clearly inappropriate, if not technically in violation of the Hatch Act.  And you know the White House agrees because they are now proposing new guidelines to prevent this sort of thing.  It’s SOP in Washington: when caught with hand in cookie jar, propose new guidelines for jars.

Of course, Republicans stood silent—or more accurately, threw nasty invective at those, like me, who complained—while the Bush Administration fired US attorneys for political reasons, while the GSA went all out in violating the Hatch Act and while Monica Goodling absurdly testified that she has sworn her oath to the President.  So there is a bit of pot calling kettle black here.

You have to wonder why an Obama official would feel the need to do this.  It’s not like artists and actors need any spurring to produce nausea inducing videos supporting his agenda.

However, some insight comes out of a recent report that the Obama Administration may be pressuring insurance companies to keep their mouth shut about objections to the healthcare plan.  I can understand the Administration’s frustration—they bought the insurance companies and they’ll be god-damnned if the companies start waffling now.  But it seems, again, to be going overboard.

They pattern connecting these incidents, and others, is not a totalitarian one. This behavior is amateurish, easily proven in the face of denials and clearly unnecessary.  It speaks not of an Administration enacting Big Brother, but one frustrated that the country is resisting their agenda.  They won the election, dammit, and they will sit around while people oppose their grand plans.

In short, we’re getting to them.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

You know there is trouble when the NYT and most of the other MSM units have to report on people that want government misspending to end. There were rumors that the democrats were setting ridiculously high expectations for this event - I heard the 2 million figure thrown out in order to make sure no number was ever going to be high enough - but they could not have expected the numbers they got anyway. Guess the collectivists can no longer ignore those they disdainfully call the “tea baggers” because the ones getting tea bagged are them.

WASHINGTON — A sea of protesters filled the west lawn of the Capitol and spilled onto the National Mall on Saturday in the largest rally against President Obama since he took office, a culmination of a summer-long season of protests that began with opposition to a health care overhaul and grew into a broader dissatisfaction with government. On a cloudy and cool day, the demonstrators came from all corners of the country, waving American flags and handwritten signs explaining the root of their frustrations. Their anger stretched well beyond the health care legislation moving through Congress, with shouts of support for gun rights, lower taxes and a smaller government.

But as they sang verse after verse of patriotic hymns like “God Bless America,” sharp words of profane and political criticism were aimed at Mr. Obama and Congress. Dick Armey, a former House Republican leader whose group Freedomworks helped organize the protest, stood before the crowd and led the rallying cries in nearly the same spot where Mr. Obama took his oath of office eight months ago. “He pledged a commitment of fidelity to the United States Constitution,” Mr. Armey said, suggesting that Mr. Obama was in violation of what the founding fathers intended the size and scope of the government to be.

“Liar! Liar! Liar! Liar!” the crowd shouted back, echoing the accusation that Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, hurled at the president three days earlier during his address to Congress.

Despite the NYT’s best efforts to paint these people negatively by inferring their dislike of Obama – RACISM!!!11!!! – the fact remains that most Americans have had enough of these lunatics and their destructive economics. Even the WaPo had to point out Obama is getting hammered. Although they too wanted to create the illusion that the Americans that are calling the collectivist for their destructive economics are somehow extremists. Obama’s response was that he was going to ignore those telling him enough is enough, destroy healthcare and turn it over to government, and tack trillions more to the deficit. And those that try to stop him are evil!!!1!! Yet event these collectivist idiots that are trying to destroy us have to admit that they have wrecked the economy for years. You heard that right.

Which reminds me. Some lefty I was talking to was all up in arms about how the guy running against Joe Wilson had raised 500K so far, most of it after Wilson’s comments. Well, Wilson got $1 million and he is still going. I myself donated to a political candidate - Wilson - for the first time in 3 years. I should also point out that Barack and his people are now distancing themselves from ACORN. They must sense that ACORN is about to be exposed, and the extend and breath of their criminal activities will make the mob look like child’s play. We should not let those that profited from their allegiance with ACORN get off the hook. People should know how corrupt these bastards really are.