Read Judge Vinson's opinion here. it is brilliant, and plainly enough written so that a layman (like me!)can comprehend the judge's points well enough without necessarily being familiar with the judicial precedents being referenced.
I just love this part, where the judge throws Obama's words (and the Democrats in both houses) right back in his face - Page 68:
Moreover, the defendants have conceded that the Act’s health insurance reforms cannot survive without the individual mandate, which is extremely significant because the various insurance provisions, in turn, are the very heart of the Act itself. The health insurance reform provisions were cited repeatedly during the health care debate, and they were instrumental in passing the Act. In speech after speech President Obama emphasized that the legislative goal was “health insurance reform” and stressed how important it was that Congress fundamentally reform how health insurance companies do business, and “protect every American from the worst practices of the insurance industry.” See, for example, Remarks of President Obama, The State of the Union, delivered Jan. 27, 2009.28
(See also, e.g., The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, OfficialTranscript of President Obama’s News Conference, July 22, 2009, available at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/news-conference-president-july-22-20
09; The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Official Transcript of President
Obama’s Remarks at Health Care Reform Town Hall, July 23, 2009, available at:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Health-)
Meanwhile,the Act’s supporters in the Senate and House similarly spoke repeatedly and often of the legislative efforts as being the means to comprehensively reform the health insurance industry.
To be sure, the words “protection” and “affordable” in the title of the Act
itself are inextricably tied to the health insurance reform provisions (and the
individual mandate in particular), as the defendants have emphasized throughout the course of this litigation.
Love this analogy as well:
In the final analysis, this Act has been analogized to a finely crafted watch,and that seems to fit. It has approximately 450 separate pieces, but one essential piece (the individual mandate) is defective and must be removed. It cannot function as originally designed. There are simply too many moving parts in the Act and too many provisions dependent (directly and indirectly) on the individual mandate and other health insurance provisions --- which, as noted, were the chief engines that drove the entire legislative effort --- for me to try and dissect out the proper from the improper, and the able-to-stand-alone from the unable-to-stand-alone. Such a quasi-legislative undertaking would be particularly inappropriate in light of the fact that any statute that might conceivably be left over after this analysis is complete would plainly not serve Congress’ main purpose and primary objective in passing the Act. The statute is, after all, called “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” not “The Abstinence Education and Bone Marrow Density Testing Act.” The Act, like a defectively designed watch, needs to be redesigned and reconstructed by the watchmaker.
Amen, your Honor. Amen.
Monday, January 31, 2011
If we can ban offshore drilling post-BP, why not close the abortion clinics after Gosnell?
Little Miss Atilla begs the question:
Is there an analogy to be made between the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill last year and the Gosnell abortion clinic scandal in Philly a few weeks ago? Because most of my friends on the left felt pretty strongly last summer that a dramatic failure to enforce regulations meant any given industry should be largely shut down until new guidelines could be drafted.
The New York Times, which supports the moritorium on drilling that is starving the Gulf Coast, raising gasoline prices through the roof, and damaging our national security, provided an immediate answer, on the same day Miss Atilla makes her innocent inquiry:
Away from Washington, another ominous anti-abortion battle is accelerating in the states. Anti-abortion forces have been trying to take advantage of the 2007 ruling in which the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on a particular method of abortion.
November’s elections made the outlook even bleaker.
...This math greatly increases the prospect of extreme efforts to undermine abortion access with Big Brother measures that require physicians to read scripts about fetal development and provide ultrasound images, and that impose mandatory waiting periods or create other unnecessary regulations.
Such restrictions, combined with a persistent atmosphere of intimidation and violence....
Americans who support women’s reproductive rights and oppose this kind of outrageous government intrusion need to respond with rising force and clarity to this real and immediate danger.
One can not blamed for wanting to burst out in laughter after hearing the Times complain about "Big Brother measures", after all, isn't that the sum total of their precious ObamaCare? As for the persistent atmosphere of intimidation and violence, well...maybe if the Times would obey the laws of the "new civility" and stop inciting such hatred with words like "ominous", "extreme", and "danger", maybe their cadres on the Left would cease their violent outbursts.
But that's not the point, really. Let's just change a few words in the NYT editorial and see how easy it is to clarify the dark heart of the Left:
"Within Washington, another ominous anti-energy battle is accelerating in the states. Radical Green forces have been trying to take advantage of the 2010 "temporary" moratorium on oil drilling...
...This math greatly increases the prospect of extreme efforts to undermine energy exploration and access with Big Brother measures....
Such restrictions, combined with a persistent atmosphere of intimidation and violence....(no change needed here!)
Americans who support oil independence, job creation, low energy prices, and national security and oppose this kind of outrageous government intrusion need to respond with rising force and clarity to this real and immediate danger."
So looking through the prism of the Times' filthy mirror, we learn that -
Cheap oil that spurs the national economy and lifts everyone's standard of living: EVIL
Putting even the slightest restrictions on abortions, to prevent recurrences of the Gosnell clininc scandal: EVIL
Killing unborn babies wantonly and in massive numbers: GOOD
Miss Atilla, does this answer your question? At the very least, it clearly spells out the moral divide between even simple economic conservatism and the human carnage that is liberal philosophy.
And that is why we have a culture war well underway. And that is why it won't remain "civil" - because we won't shut up, and we will continue to point out their hypocrisy and lies, and demand they explain their morality to us - if they even can....
Is there an analogy to be made between the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill last year and the Gosnell abortion clinic scandal in Philly a few weeks ago? Because most of my friends on the left felt pretty strongly last summer that a dramatic failure to enforce regulations meant any given industry should be largely shut down until new guidelines could be drafted.
The New York Times, which supports the moritorium on drilling that is starving the Gulf Coast, raising gasoline prices through the roof, and damaging our national security, provided an immediate answer, on the same day Miss Atilla makes her innocent inquiry:
Away from Washington, another ominous anti-abortion battle is accelerating in the states. Anti-abortion forces have been trying to take advantage of the 2007 ruling in which the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on a particular method of abortion.
November’s elections made the outlook even bleaker.
...This math greatly increases the prospect of extreme efforts to undermine abortion access with Big Brother measures that require physicians to read scripts about fetal development and provide ultrasound images, and that impose mandatory waiting periods or create other unnecessary regulations.
Such restrictions, combined with a persistent atmosphere of intimidation and violence....
Americans who support women’s reproductive rights and oppose this kind of outrageous government intrusion need to respond with rising force and clarity to this real and immediate danger.
One can not blamed for wanting to burst out in laughter after hearing the Times complain about "Big Brother measures", after all, isn't that the sum total of their precious ObamaCare? As for the persistent atmosphere of intimidation and violence, well...maybe if the Times would obey the laws of the "new civility" and stop inciting such hatred with words like "ominous", "extreme", and "danger", maybe their cadres on the Left would cease their violent outbursts.
But that's not the point, really. Let's just change a few words in the NYT editorial and see how easy it is to clarify the dark heart of the Left:
"Within Washington, another ominous anti-energy battle is accelerating in the states. Radical Green forces have been trying to take advantage of the 2010 "temporary" moratorium on oil drilling...
...This math greatly increases the prospect of extreme efforts to undermine energy exploration and access with Big Brother measures....
Such restrictions, combined with a persistent atmosphere of intimidation and violence....(no change needed here!)
Americans who support oil independence, job creation, low energy prices, and national security and oppose this kind of outrageous government intrusion need to respond with rising force and clarity to this real and immediate danger."
So looking through the prism of the Times' filthy mirror, we learn that -
Cheap oil that spurs the national economy and lifts everyone's standard of living: EVIL
Putting even the slightest restrictions on abortions, to prevent recurrences of the Gosnell clininc scandal: EVIL
Killing unborn babies wantonly and in massive numbers: GOOD
Miss Atilla, does this answer your question? At the very least, it clearly spells out the moral divide between even simple economic conservatism and the human carnage that is liberal philosophy.
And that is why we have a culture war well underway. And that is why it won't remain "civil" - because we won't shut up, and we will continue to point out their hypocrisy and lies, and demand they explain their morality to us - if they even can....
The Egyptian Uprising: Germany Blames The Jews?
You know, after all these years of hearing about how Israel was the obstacle to peace in the Middle East, and if only a "final solution" was arrived at to solve the Israeli-Palestinian "crisis", this turgid region would become calm, lukewarm water - easy for the intellectual superiors of the West to manipulate, and lead.
Well, we have rolling waves, all right - but none of them seem to be emanating from Israel. As a a matter of fact, as Egypt boils over into revolution, not a single ordinary Egyptian citizen has been seen screaming about Israel malfeasance or Jewish chicanery, nor has one tourist had a hair harmed on their heads.
What do we make of this? Could there be -gasp - other factors at play in the Middle East?
Unemployment is unofficially estimated at over 25 percent, even higher among the youth, food price inflation has been at about 17 percent per year and the rampant poverty and inequity in income distribution have all served as a catalyst for the popular uprising....
For 30 years Mubarak has been channelling hsi people's rage at Israel. The Egyptians seems to have had enough of blaming a beaten-up people on a tiny strip of land for all of their woes, and have instead turned on the leadership that has kept them poor, illiterate, hopeless, and oppressed.
Is there anyone who still thinks that if, say, Benjamin Netanyahu had succumbed to Obama's demand to halt settlement building in Jerusalem, that the Egyptian revolution would not have come to pass? Is there anyone that stupid, or that anti-Semitic, to still point a finger at the Jews?
Would you believe...the Germans?
German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday called to stop the building in the settlements, saying that in light of the events in Egypt, it is important to further the diplomatic process.
Merkel, who arrived Monday afternoon at the head of a delegation of eight ministers for a joint Israeli-German government meeting, shared her assessments with Netanyahu about the situation in Egypt and in the region.
Note that Merkel doesn't even try to make a logical connection between the settlements and the Egyptian uprising; she is just too intellectually lazy to realize the paradigm she's comfortably sat on for her entire life has been pulled out from beneath her. Hey Angie, you ain't relaxing comfortably on the Barcalounger anymore; your fat ass just landed on the floor with a thud...
Go with what you know, I suppose. Outdated concepts and Jew-baiting. Beats re-thinking a puzzle that you & all the other smart guys were so sure you had figured out years ago....
In other words...expect similar sentiments to come from Barack Obama, to try to show he is doing something - anything - in the face of crisis that is way above his intellectual capacity to comprehend.
Obama blames Jewish settlements for renewed violence in Egypt, demands an immediate halt
Bet on it...
Well, we have rolling waves, all right - but none of them seem to be emanating from Israel. As a a matter of fact, as Egypt boils over into revolution, not a single ordinary Egyptian citizen has been seen screaming about Israel malfeasance or Jewish chicanery, nor has one tourist had a hair harmed on their heads.
What do we make of this? Could there be -gasp - other factors at play in the Middle East?
Unemployment is unofficially estimated at over 25 percent, even higher among the youth, food price inflation has been at about 17 percent per year and the rampant poverty and inequity in income distribution have all served as a catalyst for the popular uprising....
For 30 years Mubarak has been channelling hsi people's rage at Israel. The Egyptians seems to have had enough of blaming a beaten-up people on a tiny strip of land for all of their woes, and have instead turned on the leadership that has kept them poor, illiterate, hopeless, and oppressed.
Is there anyone who still thinks that if, say, Benjamin Netanyahu had succumbed to Obama's demand to halt settlement building in Jerusalem, that the Egyptian revolution would not have come to pass? Is there anyone that stupid, or that anti-Semitic, to still point a finger at the Jews?
Would you believe...the Germans?
German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday called to stop the building in the settlements, saying that in light of the events in Egypt, it is important to further the diplomatic process.
Merkel, who arrived Monday afternoon at the head of a delegation of eight ministers for a joint Israeli-German government meeting, shared her assessments with Netanyahu about the situation in Egypt and in the region.
Note that Merkel doesn't even try to make a logical connection between the settlements and the Egyptian uprising; she is just too intellectually lazy to realize the paradigm she's comfortably sat on for her entire life has been pulled out from beneath her. Hey Angie, you ain't relaxing comfortably on the Barcalounger anymore; your fat ass just landed on the floor with a thud...
Go with what you know, I suppose. Outdated concepts and Jew-baiting. Beats re-thinking a puzzle that you & all the other smart guys were so sure you had figured out years ago....
In other words...expect similar sentiments to come from Barack Obama, to try to show he is doing something - anything - in the face of crisis that is way above his intellectual capacity to comprehend.
Obama blames Jewish settlements for renewed violence in Egypt, demands an immediate halt
Bet on it...
Americans reject Obama's SOTU, and everything in it...
...and embrace the Tea Party. The LA Times is even more perplexed than Gallup is, but they at least report the story straight:
An earlier post-speech Gallup Poll found the president's assertion that the troubled economy is "poised for progress" was rejected by a majority of Americans, who say the economy is actually still worsening....
Although historically relatively little of State of the Union speeches actually come to fruition, Gallup found widespread doubts about some other assertions by the Democrat:
Contrary to the Obama administration's offshore drilling moratoriums, two-thirds of Americans favor a new energy bill to expand domestic exploration and drilling.
The president outlined a vast new program to rebuild what he called a "crumbling" infrastructure. Americans oppose more stimulus spending and think reducing the deficit is much more important.
Americans oppose giving existing illegal immigrants "a path to legal status" and prefer halting the flow of illegal immigrants before addressing the problems of those already here.
And on Obama's proudest achievement, his signature healthcare legislation, only 13% like the idea of keeping it as is. Everyone else favors minor changes, major changes or tossing out the entire thing.
Other than that though, the president's 62-minute speech seems to have gone over really well.
And even 50% of Democrats agree - It's time for Tea:
A new Gallup Poll out this morning finds that 71% of Americans, even many who do not think highly of the "tea party," say it's important that Republicans should take the its positions into account.
Gallup appears puzzled by its findings: While only 6% of Democrats call themselves "tea party" supporters and only 11% hold a favorable view of it, more than half of Democrats still....
... think it's important the GOP work the movement's views into Republican programs. Perhaps some hope the tea party will help weaken the GOP, despite increasing support for the tea party's fiscal conservatism as deficit fears mount.
Yeah. The Tea Party hurt the Republicans so much in November that they were limited to a takeover of only 63 seats in the House and a half-dozen in the Senate, a historic landslide. Not to mention the tremendous flip of statehouses from Left to Right...
The LA Times does offer a propohecy of sorts:
Developing support for tea party positions as well as listening could augur large trouble for Obama's reelect next year.
Not to mention blinking helplessness in the face of a revolution in Egypt that can change the face of the Middle East for generations, and not necessarily in a positive way.
But as far as listening goes, Barack Obama doesn't seem to be doing much of that - either to the American people, the new Republican majority, or the few fiscal hawks in his own party:
President Barack Obama will send a multitrillion budget to Congress on Feb. 14, administration spokesman Kenneth Baer said, setting up a conflict over spending that may dominate a divided Congress for the rest of the year.
The budget for fiscal 2012 is a political document that will put into precise language the administration’s priorities for increasing economic growth and creating jobs...
Just what the American people want. Looks like Obama's first serving of Tea will be piping hot...
An earlier post-speech Gallup Poll found the president's assertion that the troubled economy is "poised for progress" was rejected by a majority of Americans, who say the economy is actually still worsening....
Although historically relatively little of State of the Union speeches actually come to fruition, Gallup found widespread doubts about some other assertions by the Democrat:
Contrary to the Obama administration's offshore drilling moratoriums, two-thirds of Americans favor a new energy bill to expand domestic exploration and drilling.
The president outlined a vast new program to rebuild what he called a "crumbling" infrastructure. Americans oppose more stimulus spending and think reducing the deficit is much more important.
Americans oppose giving existing illegal immigrants "a path to legal status" and prefer halting the flow of illegal immigrants before addressing the problems of those already here.
And on Obama's proudest achievement, his signature healthcare legislation, only 13% like the idea of keeping it as is. Everyone else favors minor changes, major changes or tossing out the entire thing.
Other than that though, the president's 62-minute speech seems to have gone over really well.
And even 50% of Democrats agree - It's time for Tea:
A new Gallup Poll out this morning finds that 71% of Americans, even many who do not think highly of the "tea party," say it's important that Republicans should take the its positions into account.
Gallup appears puzzled by its findings: While only 6% of Democrats call themselves "tea party" supporters and only 11% hold a favorable view of it, more than half of Democrats still....
... think it's important the GOP work the movement's views into Republican programs. Perhaps some hope the tea party will help weaken the GOP, despite increasing support for the tea party's fiscal conservatism as deficit fears mount.
Yeah. The Tea Party hurt the Republicans so much in November that they were limited to a takeover of only 63 seats in the House and a half-dozen in the Senate, a historic landslide. Not to mention the tremendous flip of statehouses from Left to Right...
The LA Times does offer a propohecy of sorts:
Developing support for tea party positions as well as listening could augur large trouble for Obama's reelect next year.
Not to mention blinking helplessness in the face of a revolution in Egypt that can change the face of the Middle East for generations, and not necessarily in a positive way.
But as far as listening goes, Barack Obama doesn't seem to be doing much of that - either to the American people, the new Republican majority, or the few fiscal hawks in his own party:
President Barack Obama will send a multitrillion budget to Congress on Feb. 14, administration spokesman Kenneth Baer said, setting up a conflict over spending that may dominate a divided Congress for the rest of the year.
The budget for fiscal 2012 is a political document that will put into precise language the administration’s priorities for increasing economic growth and creating jobs...
Just what the American people want. Looks like Obama's first serving of Tea will be piping hot...
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Will The Egyptian Revolt Lead To An Islamic Empire?
An overmatched Democratic president watches a revolution unfold, and draws all the wrong conclusions, and makes all the wrong decisions. From a brilliant yet dark piece by Abraham Miller, we go to Jimmy Carter, circa 1979:
The scene is all too reminiscent of the Iranian revolution of 1979. Then, President Jimmy Carter not only demanded restraint but also had his administration work behind the scenes to bring down the shah. Carter believed he was watching a democratic revolution unfold, one led by Mehdi Bazargan, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh and Abulhassan Banisadr. Neither Carter nor his advisers understood that this democratic-centrist revolution, like those in Europe, would be short-lived. Bazargan resigned from the government over its authoritarian turn; Ghotbzadeh was shot by a firing squad; and Banisadr fled to France...
The Egyptian people want democracy, but there are no elements or institutions in place (or even national historical precedents) to help guide them. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, so here comes the Muslim Brotherhood - Islamists all, friends of Iran, blood brothers of Hamas and tied tightly to Hezbollah - to fill the empty space with "leadership":
The choice in the streets of Egypt is not Mubarak or democracy. It is Mubarak or the Muslim Brotherhood. It is the Muslim Brotherhood, like the ayatollahs of Tehran, who are the best situated to benefit from and direct the revolution, unless of course the Egyptian military holds firm.
If the Brotherhood comes to power, it will behave as did its proxy in Gaza: one man, one vote, one time, with the opposition shot in the legs and thrown off rooftops.
What must Obama do? Something that really has never been done before:
Our first order of business in Egypt is to produce stability and then to do something we have not done before: Assist the Egyptians in finding a mechanism for a transition to reform through an evolutionary rather than revolutionary path.
But this is Barack Obama we are talking about, a man who speaks of "boilers" and "Sputnik" and of welfare plans hatched in the 70's; what hope have we really for forward thinking from this man?
While one can sympathize and support the Egyptian people, a completely hands-off approach (the one Obama seems to be favoring here, as he is spending most of this crisis partying with David Axelrod) rather than guided involvement can bring the Egyptian people and perhaps the entire Middle East to ruin. As Miller writes:
Did those who ran through the streets of Paris in July 1789 think they were revolting for the ensuing “Terror”? Did the workers who charged the Winter Palace in 1917 think they were fighting for the Gulag? Did Banisadr and Ghotbzadeh think they were replacing the shah of Iran with a theocracy?
We must be involved, actively, in urging Mubarak to transition to democracy, to set up new institutions, to cede some power immediately, and to move his nation forward. A laissez-faire approach to revolution brought us the Sandinistas and the ayatollahs (Carter's watch). More thoughtful intervention has brought us a thriving democracy in South Korea and in the Philippines (Reagan's watch). Alas, Obama, as has been is way, is following the Carter model - just witness his abandonment of the Iranian people if their "Green Revolution", so that he could continue with a scenario he felt comfort in - crawling before the mad mullahs.
What is at stake in Egypt? How about...everything?
For decades we have been dumping billions of dollars worth of advanced weapons into Egypt. A revolution means that those weapons could fall into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood. This will tilt the balance of power in the Middle East. Emboldened by success in Egypt, radical Islam will next show its power in the Gulf and threaten the world’s oil supply. Already there are riots in Yemen.
The world as we knew it might just spin out of control....
A heavily armed Islamic axis, from Iran to Egypt to Gaza to southern Lebanon, poised to destroy Israel as their first victory, and then threaten Western Civilization from their perch atop the minarets.
Can Obama rise to this challenge?
Or are we asking a child to stop a bulldozer?
The scene is all too reminiscent of the Iranian revolution of 1979. Then, President Jimmy Carter not only demanded restraint but also had his administration work behind the scenes to bring down the shah. Carter believed he was watching a democratic revolution unfold, one led by Mehdi Bazargan, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh and Abulhassan Banisadr. Neither Carter nor his advisers understood that this democratic-centrist revolution, like those in Europe, would be short-lived. Bazargan resigned from the government over its authoritarian turn; Ghotbzadeh was shot by a firing squad; and Banisadr fled to France...
The Egyptian people want democracy, but there are no elements or institutions in place (or even national historical precedents) to help guide them. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, so here comes the Muslim Brotherhood - Islamists all, friends of Iran, blood brothers of Hamas and tied tightly to Hezbollah - to fill the empty space with "leadership":
The choice in the streets of Egypt is not Mubarak or democracy. It is Mubarak or the Muslim Brotherhood. It is the Muslim Brotherhood, like the ayatollahs of Tehran, who are the best situated to benefit from and direct the revolution, unless of course the Egyptian military holds firm.If the Brotherhood comes to power, it will behave as did its proxy in Gaza: one man, one vote, one time, with the opposition shot in the legs and thrown off rooftops.
What must Obama do? Something that really has never been done before:
Our first order of business in Egypt is to produce stability and then to do something we have not done before: Assist the Egyptians in finding a mechanism for a transition to reform through an evolutionary rather than revolutionary path.
But this is Barack Obama we are talking about, a man who speaks of "boilers" and "Sputnik" and of welfare plans hatched in the 70's; what hope have we really for forward thinking from this man?
While one can sympathize and support the Egyptian people, a completely hands-off approach (the one Obama seems to be favoring here, as he is spending most of this crisis partying with David Axelrod) rather than guided involvement can bring the Egyptian people and perhaps the entire Middle East to ruin. As Miller writes:
Did those who ran through the streets of Paris in July 1789 think they were revolting for the ensuing “Terror”? Did the workers who charged the Winter Palace in 1917 think they were fighting for the Gulag? Did Banisadr and Ghotbzadeh think they were replacing the shah of Iran with a theocracy?
We must be involved, actively, in urging Mubarak to transition to democracy, to set up new institutions, to cede some power immediately, and to move his nation forward. A laissez-faire approach to revolution brought us the Sandinistas and the ayatollahs (Carter's watch). More thoughtful intervention has brought us a thriving democracy in South Korea and in the Philippines (Reagan's watch). Alas, Obama, as has been is way, is following the Carter model - just witness his abandonment of the Iranian people if their "Green Revolution", so that he could continue with a scenario he felt comfort in - crawling before the mad mullahs.
What is at stake in Egypt? How about...everything?
For decades we have been dumping billions of dollars worth of advanced weapons into Egypt. A revolution means that those weapons could fall into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood. This will tilt the balance of power in the Middle East. Emboldened by success in Egypt, radical Islam will next show its power in the Gulf and threaten the world’s oil supply. Already there are riots in Yemen.
The world as we knew it might just spin out of control....
A heavily armed Islamic axis, from Iran to Egypt to Gaza to southern Lebanon, poised to destroy Israel as their first victory, and then threaten Western Civilization from their perch atop the minarets.
Can Obama rise to this challenge?
Or are we asking a child to stop a bulldozer?
The Egyptian Revolution: George Bush's Defining Moment?
Over the past two years, we've seen an interesting inverse ratio - Barack Obama's star, once deemed brightest in the firmament, dimming more rapidly than a government-approved fluorescent bulb, while George W. Bush's returns to a glory he may not have seen since the early days of the post-9/11 era, all without saying a word.
Perhaps it is because actions speak louder than them. Maybe it is because it turns out that the smartest guys don't always need rooms full of synchophants telling them just how brilliantly they shine. And it turns out that "book smart" may just not be smart enough to run a super-power:
Turns out that Bush knew a thing or two. He may not have been all that sophisticated by some standards, but like Ronald Reagan, he grasped basic truths that eluded the intellectuals. Reagan, recall, earned endless scorn for suggesting that the “evil empire” might soon be consigned to the “ash heap of history.” But he understood that basic human desires for freedom could not be repressed forever. Bush understood precisely the same thing, and like Reagan he also realized that the U.S. had to get on the right side of history by championing freedom rather than by cutting disreputable deals with dictators.
Or perhaps Bush's regained stature has to do with the fact that even the hard core left is conceding Bush's points, the sames ones they rejected as not quite being "smart diplomacy". Speaking of...here's Fareed Zakaria:
This sort of striving for democracy is what Arab intellectuals have yearned for, speaking of the freedom deficit in their lands, which is quite true. And, of course, George W. Bush set forth to fix the problem with what he called a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East...
...give President George W. Bush his due. He saw the problem and he believed that Arabs were not genetically incapable of democracy, and he put America's moral might behind the great cause of Arab reform.
Erstwhile Bush opponent John Kerry finally - six years after the fact - comes around to the fact that Bush was right, and takes a tougher stand - more "rightward?" - than Hillary Clinton
Kerry echoed Clinton's message...But he went one step further than the administration in calling on Mubarak to actually hold free elections.
"In the case of Egypt, President Mubarak has the opportunity to quell the unrest by guaranteeing that a free and open democratic process will be in place when the time comes to choose the country's next leader later this year," the statement read.
Even Chris Matthews attributed the Egyptian uprising to George Bush, although it seems as if the very fact of Bush's apparent prophetic powers simultaneously drove him off the deep end (video at the link) as well:
Good evening. I`m Chris Matthews in Washington.
Leading off tonight: Unrest in Egypt. Proving the Iraq war wasn`t needed, these protests in Egypt, as well as in Yemen and Tunisia, are all aimed at dictators supported by the U.S. The demonstrations have not yet turned anti-American, but they could. These are the events the Bush administration hoped to encourage by lying about weapons of mass destruction and invading Iraq.
On the New York Times opinion pages, we see...nothing at all about the unfolding Egyptian Revolution, and insteadwe are provided with Obama love stories from Maureen Dowd and Tea-Party bashing from Frank Rich. Sigh. If you can't speak ill of George W. Bush, the Times seems to feel, don't speak of him at all.
That's fine. Don't speak of him. Your filthy mouths are not fit to utter his great name. You, who mocked, sneered, and defiled a great president and a great man for speaking thusly:
"Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even to have a choice in the matter?"
The Times said yes, as did the Democratic party. Turns out that history doesn't follow the will - or theories - of the Times editorial board, or the Hard Left. Seems like some are awakening to that fact. Will be interesting to see who remains a denier, though, besides the New York Times and possibly Barack Obama.
Hey - every century has had it's "flat-earthers". So we have ours. Unfortunately they currently hold positions of power and communication, but that too is not forever...
Perhaps it is because actions speak louder than them. Maybe it is because it turns out that the smartest guys don't always need rooms full of synchophants telling them just how brilliantly they shine. And it turns out that "book smart" may just not be smart enough to run a super-power:
Turns out that Bush knew a thing or two. He may not have been all that sophisticated by some standards, but like Ronald Reagan, he grasped basic truths that eluded the intellectuals. Reagan, recall, earned endless scorn for suggesting that the “evil empire” might soon be consigned to the “ash heap of history.” But he understood that basic human desires for freedom could not be repressed forever. Bush understood precisely the same thing, and like Reagan he also realized that the U.S. had to get on the right side of history by championing freedom rather than by cutting disreputable deals with dictators.
Or perhaps Bush's regained stature has to do with the fact that even the hard core left is conceding Bush's points, the sames ones they rejected as not quite being "smart diplomacy". Speaking of...here's Fareed Zakaria:
This sort of striving for democracy is what Arab intellectuals have yearned for, speaking of the freedom deficit in their lands, which is quite true. And, of course, George W. Bush set forth to fix the problem with what he called a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East...
...give President George W. Bush his due. He saw the problem and he believed that Arabs were not genetically incapable of democracy, and he put America's moral might behind the great cause of Arab reform.
Erstwhile Bush opponent John Kerry finally - six years after the fact - comes around to the fact that Bush was right, and takes a tougher stand - more "rightward?" - than Hillary Clinton
Kerry echoed Clinton's message...But he went one step further than the administration in calling on Mubarak to actually hold free elections.
"In the case of Egypt, President Mubarak has the opportunity to quell the unrest by guaranteeing that a free and open democratic process will be in place when the time comes to choose the country's next leader later this year," the statement read.
Even Chris Matthews attributed the Egyptian uprising to George Bush, although it seems as if the very fact of Bush's apparent prophetic powers simultaneously drove him off the deep end (video at the link) as well:
Good evening. I`m Chris Matthews in Washington.
Leading off tonight: Unrest in Egypt. Proving the Iraq war wasn`t needed, these protests in Egypt, as well as in Yemen and Tunisia, are all aimed at dictators supported by the U.S. The demonstrations have not yet turned anti-American, but they could. These are the events the Bush administration hoped to encourage by lying about weapons of mass destruction and invading Iraq.
On the New York Times opinion pages, we see...nothing at all about the unfolding Egyptian Revolution, and insteadwe are provided with Obama love stories from Maureen Dowd and Tea-Party bashing from Frank Rich. Sigh. If you can't speak ill of George W. Bush, the Times seems to feel, don't speak of him at all.
That's fine. Don't speak of him. Your filthy mouths are not fit to utter his great name. You, who mocked, sneered, and defiled a great president and a great man for speaking thusly:
"Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even to have a choice in the matter?"
The Times said yes, as did the Democratic party. Turns out that history doesn't follow the will - or theories - of the Times editorial board, or the Hard Left. Seems like some are awakening to that fact. Will be interesting to see who remains a denier, though, besides the New York Times and possibly Barack Obama.
Hey - every century has had it's "flat-earthers". So we have ours. Unfortunately they currently hold positions of power and communication, but that too is not forever...
Bloomberg's Bikes Are Made For Riding...Right On Over You
You keep saying you've got something for me.
something you call love, but confess.
You've been a messin' where you shouldn't have been a messin'
and now someone else is gettin' all your best.
New York's Michael Bloomberg takes a deep breath, sighs loudly, and tells angry New Yorkers, "OK, let me try explaining myself again. I'll talk even slower and use even tinier words so you middle class dolts can understand me, all right? Here goes...":
What, you don't like bike lanes? It couldn't be that they're a menace, waste millions of dollars and add to traffic congestion and more parking tickets.
No, it's just because you don't understand their virtue. That's Mayor Bloomberg's story and he's sticking to it.
After hundreds of people at a meeting booed new lanes in the Rockaways, the mayor threw the taxpayers a bone. "I don't think we've done a very good job of explaining and planning," he told the crowd. The implicit message is that he knows best, and you will agree once he explains it all. And if you don't, tough noogies. You're still getting bike lanes because he wants them.
You keep lying, when you oughta be truthin'
and you keep losin' when you oughta not bet.
You keep samin' when you oughta be a changin'.
Now what's right is right, but you ain't been right yet.
Sounds like a certain president and his beloved social programs that we're all just too f*cking stupid to appreciate, no? The pattern is a perfect match: Importing the trappings of "social democracy" into America, and when the people protest, tell them it's because they're too stupid to understand what's best for themselves - that's a job best left to the government, assuming it is run by Democrats.
Bloomberg, like Obama, has been pretty much given up on by the people he claims to govern. The city was sick of the "independent" Bloomberg by 2009, when, after spending over $102 million dollars - an average of per $175- voter and more than 16x his Democratic opponent, he still barely won the NYC mayoral election by a tally of 50%-46%. But like Obama, who saw his party get pounded in the midterms for his policies, Bloomberg sees no need to govern in a way that reflects the will of the people. It's about his ideology, democracy be damned.
He's pretty much done as mayor of New York, and few will weep at his departure, but is this guy serious as he contemplates a 2012 presidential run, offering voters an imperious snob as a replacement for another imperious snob?
The voters have already gotten your message, Mikey, and they don't like it. But I guarantee they have a message for you - and it's already in the mail:
These boots are made for walking, and that's just what they'll do
one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.
Are you ready boots? Start walkin'!
something you call love, but confess.
You've been a messin' where you shouldn't have been a messin'
and now someone else is gettin' all your best.
New York's Michael Bloomberg takes a deep breath, sighs loudly, and tells angry New Yorkers, "OK, let me try explaining myself again. I'll talk even slower and use even tinier words so you middle class dolts can understand me, all right? Here goes...":
What, you don't like bike lanes? It couldn't be that they're a menace, waste millions of dollars and add to traffic congestion and more parking tickets.
No, it's just because you don't understand their virtue. That's Mayor Bloomberg's story and he's sticking to it.
After hundreds of people at a meeting booed new lanes in the Rockaways, the mayor threw the taxpayers a bone. "I don't think we've done a very good job of explaining and planning," he told the crowd. The implicit message is that he knows best, and you will agree once he explains it all. And if you don't, tough noogies. You're still getting bike lanes because he wants them.
You keep lying, when you oughta be truthin'
and you keep losin' when you oughta not bet.
You keep samin' when you oughta be a changin'.
Now what's right is right, but you ain't been right yet.
Sounds like a certain president and his beloved social programs that we're all just too f*cking stupid to appreciate, no? The pattern is a perfect match: Importing the trappings of "social democracy" into America, and when the people protest, tell them it's because they're too stupid to understand what's best for themselves - that's a job best left to the government, assuming it is run by Democrats.
Bloomberg, like Obama, has been pretty much given up on by the people he claims to govern. The city was sick of the "independent" Bloomberg by 2009, when, after spending over $102 million dollars - an average of per $175- voter and more than 16x his Democratic opponent, he still barely won the NYC mayoral election by a tally of 50%-46%. But like Obama, who saw his party get pounded in the midterms for his policies, Bloomberg sees no need to govern in a way that reflects the will of the people. It's about his ideology, democracy be damned.
He's pretty much done as mayor of New York, and few will weep at his departure, but is this guy serious as he contemplates a 2012 presidential run, offering voters an imperious snob as a replacement for another imperious snob?
The voters have already gotten your message, Mikey, and they don't like it. But I guarantee they have a message for you - and it's already in the mail:
These boots are made for walking, and that's just what they'll do
one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.
Are you ready boots? Start walkin'!
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Limbaugh/Yee dust-up proves media has learned NOTHING from Tuscon
Folks, this is all it takes for the Democrats to demand suppression of the 1st Amendment, and for the media to make dark insinuations about the Right's alleged propensity for violence:
"ching cha, ching chow cho cha, chan cha ching, chee ba ba ba, hon chong hee, ee kah ah ahh! Che, cheech eh! Jing ja, bo ba, ya ya, cha che cheech che! Cha gee! Doohhh, kit bah le bah! Bah, cheech cho bah!’”
That's Rush Limbaugh, imitating Chinese despot Hu Jintao, and saying that's about all he got out of the joint press conference with Barack Obama. Yahoo concurs, somewhat:
Indeed, the afternoon presser was marred by long stretches of time where translation would be conducted only after each statement from the two leaders was concluded...
But it was enough to send at least one Democrat into a complete meltdown:
“Today, Rush Limbaugh reached a new low as he mocked the Chinese language and culture,” read a January 19th statement from Senator Leland Yee, Democrat of San Francisco....
Yee demanded an apology from Limbaugh. After realizing this was a fruitless endeavor, something else unusual, quite coincidentally, happened:
On January 26th, a follow-up statement by Senator Yee entitled, “Racist Limbaugh Fan Sends Death Threat to Yee,” detailed a fax purportedly sent to the senator’s office that was rife with racial epithets, a reference to “Rush…kick[ing] your Chink ass,” and a death threat against “all Marxists! Foreign and Domestic!”
“It is quite disturbing that such racist sentiment still exists in our country,” said Yee. “As I have said in the past, it is unfortunate acts like these that demonstrate why we must continue to be vigilant against hate and intolerance. Such vitriol has no place within our political discourse or anywhere in our society.”
And since civility now means "shut the f*ck up and don't you dare disagree with me, that's hate speech!", we get this:
Yee has since launched a campaign for a boycott against the talker’s radio program entitled “Help Stop the Hate from Rush Limbaugh.”
No surprise, it's not about civility, it's about silencing of dissent. But back to the "fax", Brian Maloney points out the media has gone totally Tuscon on Rush Limbaugh here, with no rational reason for doing so:
Almost immediately, news media outlets in all parts of California and elsewhere across the nation seized upon the opportunity to smear Limbaugh without any verification of the n
ote's authenticity. Many have reported the "Rush fan" allegation as fact without the slightest indication of who may have really sent it.
With a few hours of the first report, this "controversy" had already been picked up by the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Fresno Bee, Sacramento Bee, KGO, assorted free weekly throwaways in San Francisco, the Washington Post, NBC News local coverage and many more.
A curious mishmash of racist images and language, the letter seems strangely designed to place Limbaugh front and center in the resulting controversy. But why would someone with such extreme views use Rush's name in this way?
Because perhaps the person with extreme views is...Yee himself:
Interestingly, Yee happens to be running for mayor of San Francisco this year, so a fresh injection of sympathetic publicity is just what the campaign strategists ordered.
And there's also a convenient history of other faxes sent to Yee during similar political grandstanding stunts, including an anti-Palin campaign last year.
So a desperate candidate, with a history of creating false controversies via fax(?), makes wild, unsubstantiated claims, and what does the media do?
Run with it, without question. Much like they ran with the storyline that Sarah Palin shot Gabrielle Giffords. Until which point when they were proven incorrect, at which time the media then begged for a "new civility", in order to keep criticism of themselves to a bare minimum. So they could do it again, to another conservative figure, just a few weeks later.
"ching cha, ching chow cho cha, chan cha ching, chee ba ba ba, hon chong hee, ee kah ah ahh! Che, cheech eh! Jing ja, bo ba, ya ya, cha che cheech che! Cha gee! Doohhh, kit bah le bah! Bah, cheech cho bah!’”
That's Rush Limbaugh, imitating Chinese despot Hu Jintao, and saying that's about all he got out of the joint press conference with Barack Obama. Yahoo concurs, somewhat:
Indeed, the afternoon presser was marred by long stretches of time where translation would be conducted only after each statement from the two leaders was concluded...
But it was enough to send at least one Democrat into a complete meltdown:
“Today, Rush Limbaugh reached a new low as he mocked the Chinese language and culture,” read a January 19th statement from Senator Leland Yee, Democrat of San Francisco....
Yee demanded an apology from Limbaugh. After realizing this was a fruitless endeavor, something else unusual, quite coincidentally, happened:
On January 26th, a follow-up statement by Senator Yee entitled, “Racist Limbaugh Fan Sends Death Threat to Yee,” detailed a fax purportedly sent to the senator’s office that was rife with racial epithets, a reference to “Rush…kick[ing] your Chink ass,” and a death threat against “all Marxists! Foreign and Domestic!”
“It is quite disturbing that such racist sentiment still exists in our country,” said Yee. “As I have said in the past, it is unfortunate acts like these that demonstrate why we must continue to be vigilant against hate and intolerance. Such vitriol has no place within our political discourse or anywhere in our society.”
And since civility now means "shut the f*ck up and don't you dare disagree with me, that's hate speech!", we get this:
Yee has since launched a campaign for a boycott against the talker’s radio program entitled “Help Stop the Hate from Rush Limbaugh.”
No surprise, it's not about civility, it's about silencing of dissent. But back to the "fax", Brian Maloney points out the media has gone totally Tuscon on Rush Limbaugh here, with no rational reason for doing so:
Almost immediately, news media outlets in all parts of California and elsewhere across the nation seized upon the opportunity to smear Limbaugh without any verification of the n
ote's authenticity. Many have reported the "Rush fan" allegation as fact without the slightest indication of who may have really sent it.With a few hours of the first report, this "controversy" had already been picked up by the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Fresno Bee, Sacramento Bee, KGO, assorted free weekly throwaways in San Francisco, the Washington Post, NBC News local coverage and many more.
A curious mishmash of racist images and language, the letter seems strangely designed to place Limbaugh front and center in the resulting controversy. But why would someone with such extreme views use Rush's name in this way?
Because perhaps the person with extreme views is...Yee himself:
Interestingly, Yee happens to be running for mayor of San Francisco this year, so a fresh injection of sympathetic publicity is just what the campaign strategists ordered.
And there's also a convenient history of other faxes sent to Yee during similar political grandstanding stunts, including an anti-Palin campaign last year.
So a desperate candidate, with a history of creating false controversies via fax(?), makes wild, unsubstantiated claims, and what does the media do?
Run with it, without question. Much like they ran with the storyline that Sarah Palin shot Gabrielle Giffords. Until which point when they were proven incorrect, at which time the media then begged for a "new civility", in order to keep criticism of themselves to a bare minimum. So they could do it again, to another conservative figure, just a few weeks later.
It's OK, though. The mainstream media no longer serves any purpose in the United States anymore, save to expose to the citizenry the true aims of the Left, and the methods they intend to use to get there.
So ironically, unintentionally, in its final waning days, in its agonizing, hard-to-watch death throes, the media is serving a purpose and doing a noble deed, albeit without even realizing it is doing so....
How Many Americans Will Freeze To Death In Their Electric Cars?
What will American roads look like in the not-to-distant future if Barack Obama realizes his version of Hitler's dream to create a volkswagen for the American people - an electric car for every man, and for every man an electric car (purchased from Government Motors with taxpayer subsidies)?
At the Washington Post, Charles Lane sits stuck in Wednesday's snowstorm, and contemplates life in Obama's bizzaro world:
The situation could have been worse, I realized: My fellow commuters and I could have been trying to make it home in electric cars, like the ones President Obama is constantly promoting, most recently in his State of the Union address.
It is a basic fact of physical science that batteries run down more quickly in cold weather than they do in warm weather, and the batteries employed by vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf or the Chevy Volt are no exception.
When the temperature drops the chemical reactions happen more slowly and the battery cannot produce the same current that it can at room temperature. A change of ten degrees can sap 50% of a battery's output.
...The batteries also have to work harder so the effective range of the car is also significantly reduced...Cold has a negative impact on all aspects of battery operation.
Alongside the negative impact on the batteries cold also has a negative impact on the driver as well. Drivers need to be warm to operate the vehicle effectively so on top of the reduced range and power of the batteries just from the temperature they also must operate the car heater to keep you warm. This will further reduce the range of the car.
...for the Leaf, which touts a 100-mile range under optimum conditions (i.e., mild weather and no big hills like the ones I had to negotiate on 16th Street), Nissan is designing a "cold weather package" of options. But neither the cost nor the availability date has been announced.
So if Obama's goal of 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015 bears fruit, and if global warming continues its curious course of not actually occurring, expect to see thousands of Americans who took Obama at his word to be killed, most likely by exposure, as they freeze to death in discharged cars, or who lie frostbitten in snowbanks after attempting to walk home those last few miles after the battery has coughed it's last frozen wheeze...
Just think of the third-world imagery - a nation brought to heel by a snowstorm, with abandoned cars and dead bodies littering the streets, while somewhere, a sanitation department, upset with their union contract, refuses to plow streets.
And just think - this is the future Barack Obama aspires to, for all of us...
At the Washington Post, Charles Lane sits stuck in Wednesday's snowstorm, and contemplates life in Obama's bizzaro world:
The situation could have been worse, I realized: My fellow commuters and I could have been trying to make it home in electric cars, like the ones President Obama is constantly promoting, most recently in his State of the Union address.
It is a basic fact of physical science that batteries run down more quickly in cold weather than they do in warm weather, and the batteries employed by vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf or the Chevy Volt are no exception.
When the temperature drops the chemical reactions happen more slowly and the battery cannot produce the same current that it can at room temperature. A change of ten degrees can sap 50% of a battery's output.
...The batteries also have to work harder so the effective range of the car is also significantly reduced...Cold has a negative impact on all aspects of battery operation.
Alongside the negative impact on the batteries cold also has a negative impact on the driver as well. Drivers need to be warm to operate the vehicle effectively so on top of the reduced range and power of the batteries just from the temperature they also must operate the car heater to keep you warm. This will further reduce the range of the car.
...for the Leaf, which touts a 100-mile range under optimum conditions (i.e., mild weather and no big hills like the ones I had to negotiate on 16th Street), Nissan is designing a "cold weather package" of options. But neither the cost nor the availability date has been announced.
So if Obama's goal of 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015 bears fruit, and if global warming continues its curious course of not actually occurring, expect to see thousands of Americans who took Obama at his word to be killed, most likely by exposure, as they freeze to death in discharged cars, or who lie frostbitten in snowbanks after attempting to walk home those last few miles after the battery has coughed it's last frozen wheeze...
Just think of the third-world imagery - a nation brought to heel by a snowstorm, with abandoned cars and dead bodies littering the streets, while somewhere, a sanitation department, upset with their union contract, refuses to plow streets.
And just think - this is the future Barack Obama aspires to, for all of us...
Friday, January 28, 2011
As Egypt Burns, Barack Obama Does His Best Jimmy Carter
A Middle Eastern despot, facing tens of thousands in the streets, sees his power tilting on a fulcrum whose 
point grows increasingly thinner. Desperate, he turns to the United States for support, and gets it, both in public statements and whispered into his ear. Nevertheless, the revolution succeeds, and old regime is overthrown, and a new power emerges, who's view of the United States is based upon it's unwavering support for the man who held them down for decades....
Egypt 2011? Actually, this is Iran 1979:
....the administration of then President Carter followed "no clear policy" on Iran. The U.S. ambassador to Iran, William H. Sullivan, recalls that the U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski “repeatedly assured Pahlavi that the U.S. backed him fully." On November 4, 1978, Brzezinski called the Shah to tell him that the United States would "back him to the hilt." ... Brzezinski and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger were adamant in their assurances that the Shah would receive military support...the Carter administration was consistently supportive of the Shah and urged the Iranian military to stage a "last-resort coup d'etat" even after the regime's cause was hopeless.
And we made an enemy that has grown in (evil) power and is still tormenting us today. With that lesson in mind, what actions are "student of history" Barack Obama and his stooges taking to avert a similar epic failure?
Well, actually...it seems as if they are doing everything they can to make sure they repeat the most horrific misjudgement in recent US foreign policy history.
Hillary Clinton seems as if she can't answer a 3AM phone call either - witness her mealy-mouth statement full of the moral equivalence that makes liberal feel so good about themselves, but invariably leads to the death of others:
"We are deeply concerned about the use of violence by Egyptian police and security forces against protesters. We call on the Egyptian government to do everything in its power to restrain security forces. At the same time, protesters should also refrain from violence and express themselves peacefully. We urge Egyptian authorities to allow peaceful protests and reverse unprecedented steps it has taken to cut down means of communications.
We strongly believe that the Egyptian government needs to engage with its people on immediate reforms. We want to partner with the Egyptian people and its government.”
What does Hillary think, this is a union bargaining session? This is revolution, and our elite are too stupid to see it (then again, they couldn't see the Tea Party forest for the trees, and that was much closer to home). Abe Greenwald comments further:
The protests are not peaceful and the regime is not so much cracking down as it is fighting for its survival. The time to urge a dictator to grant his people freedoms is before he’s flitting between burning buildings. But back when that was the case the Obama administration was too busy being pragmatic and humble to raise the issue of human rights in Egypt...
Joe Biden pooh-poohs any talk of human rights, freedom, and revolution, and throws high-profile support behind the Mubarack regime:
JIM LEHRER: Some people are suggesting that we may be seeing the beginning of a kind of domino effect, similar to what happened after the Cold War in Eastern Europe. Poland came first, then Hungary, East Germany.
We have got Tunisia, as you say, maybe Egypt, who knows. Do you smell the same thing coming?
JOE BIDEN: No, I don’t. I wouldn’t compare the two
JIM LEHRER: The word — the word to describe the leadership of Mubarak and Egypt and also in Tunisia before was dictator. Should Mubarak be seen as a dictator?
JOE BIDEN: Look, Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things and he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interests in the region: Middle East peace efforts, the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing the relationship with Israel.
And I think that it would be — I would not refer to him as a dictator....
point grows increasingly thinner. Desperate, he turns to the United States for support, and gets it, both in public statements and whispered into his ear. Nevertheless, the revolution succeeds, and old regime is overthrown, and a new power emerges, who's view of the United States is based upon it's unwavering support for the man who held them down for decades....Egypt 2011? Actually, this is Iran 1979:
....the administration of then President Carter followed "no clear policy" on Iran. The U.S. ambassador to Iran, William H. Sullivan, recalls that the U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski “repeatedly assured Pahlavi that the U.S. backed him fully." On November 4, 1978, Brzezinski called the Shah to tell him that the United States would "back him to the hilt." ... Brzezinski and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger were adamant in their assurances that the Shah would receive military support...the Carter administration was consistently supportive of the Shah and urged the Iranian military to stage a "last-resort coup d'etat" even after the regime's cause was hopeless.
And we made an enemy that has grown in (evil) power and is still tormenting us today. With that lesson in mind, what actions are "student of history" Barack Obama and his stooges taking to avert a similar epic failure?
Well, actually...it seems as if they are doing everything they can to make sure they repeat the most horrific misjudgement in recent US foreign policy history.
Hillary Clinton seems as if she can't answer a 3AM phone call either - witness her mealy-mouth statement full of the moral equivalence that makes liberal feel so good about themselves, but invariably leads to the death of others:
"We are deeply concerned about the use of violence by Egyptian police and security forces against protesters. We call on the Egyptian government to do everything in its power to restrain security forces. At the same time, protesters should also refrain from violence and express themselves peacefully. We urge Egyptian authorities to allow peaceful protests and reverse unprecedented steps it has taken to cut down means of communications.
We strongly believe that the Egyptian government needs to engage with its people on immediate reforms. We want to partner with the Egyptian people and its government.”
What does Hillary think, this is a union bargaining session? This is revolution, and our elite are too stupid to see it (then again, they couldn't see the Tea Party forest for the trees, and that was much closer to home). Abe Greenwald comments further:
The protests are not peaceful and the regime is not so much cracking down as it is fighting for its survival. The time to urge a dictator to grant his people freedoms is before he’s flitting between burning buildings. But back when that was the case the Obama administration was too busy being pragmatic and humble to raise the issue of human rights in Egypt...
Joe Biden pooh-poohs any talk of human rights, freedom, and revolution, and throws high-profile support behind the Mubarack regime:
JIM LEHRER: Some people are suggesting that we may be seeing the beginning of a kind of domino effect, similar to what happened after the Cold War in Eastern Europe. Poland came first, then Hungary, East Germany.
We have got Tunisia, as you say, maybe Egypt, who knows. Do you smell the same thing coming?
JOE BIDEN: No, I don’t. I wouldn’t compare the two
JIM LEHRER: The word — the word to describe the leadership of Mubarak and Egypt and also in Tunisia before was dictator. Should Mubarak be seen as a dictator?
JOE BIDEN: Look, Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things and he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interests in the region: Middle East peace efforts, the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing the relationship with Israel.
And I think that it would be — I would not refer to him as a dictator....
The 3AM moment is now, and Barack Obama is frozen by fear, while his high-level appointees mouth empty support for the protesters but offer a full-throated endorsement of the "Egyptian government", which is not run by a dictator, apparently...
Let's see how the Egyptian people see this a few weeks down the road. Will the chants of "Death to America!" fill the streets of Cairo? If I were in a foreign embassy out there, I'd be trying to get my sorry ass out. And fast.
We always said that Obama would be another Jimmy Carter, but never thought he could actually create another Iran.
We underestimated him.
ABC News in bed with new Obama press secretary Jay Carney...literally
Here's all you need to know about Obama's newest propaganda chief:
Carney, now the communications director for Vice President Biden...will assume perhaps the most high profile staff job in the White House.
He came to the Administration in 2008 after a long career in journalism that included serving as Washington bureau chief of Time magazine. Carney is married to ABC News' correspondent Claire Shipman.
How will this shape Claire Shipman's - and ABC's - coverage of the Obama administration? No doubt anything Shipman now writes/reports on domestic politics has to be taken with more than a grain of salt, although that's been true of her for a while. She's perhaps most famous for her Barack Obama as "prom king" analogy, which in a sense also forshadowed the "Tuscon libel" conducted by the media just weeks ago:
It would have been great had he come home (from Copenhagen) a winner,” Shipman wrote. “Great for all of us. But maybe not so much for him. Why? Because then he would have then really irked his critics.”
“[Obama’s critics] already secretly and not so secretly peeved that he’s been voted the world’s prom king. Another victory would have just started a wave of dangerous, uncontrollable seething.”
But that's only the tip of Shipman's iceberg of liberal bias. See here for links to preposterous stories she has penned claiming that Rahm Emmanuel is a "centrist", a title she hands to Sonia Sotomayor as well. Not to mention other articles hinting racial aspects to Obama's unpopularity, as well as a doozy where she equates a young Israeli girl slaughtered by terrorists (on her way to buy groceries) with the animals that murdered her.
Again - this woman's title is Senior National Correspondent for ABC's Good Morning America. Shouldn't the fact that she's sleeping with a key figure in the Obama administration give ABC some pause about keeping her in that position, a position in which she can slant and shape news to fit and reflect her husband's boss's needs?
How about a disclaimer, at the very least? Or is my request for any kind of journalistic honor and decency simply laughable in these last, crumbling days of the mainstream media empire?
Somewhere, Edward R Murrow spins like a top in his grave...
Carney, now the communications director for Vice President Biden...will assume perhaps the most high profile staff job in the White House.
He came to the Administration in 2008 after a long career in journalism that included serving as Washington bureau chief of Time magazine. Carney is married to ABC News' correspondent Claire Shipman.
How will this shape Claire Shipman's - and ABC's - coverage of the Obama administration? No doubt anything Shipman now writes/reports on domestic politics has to be taken with more than a grain of salt, although that's been true of her for a while. She's perhaps most famous for her Barack Obama as "prom king" analogy, which in a sense also forshadowed the "Tuscon libel" conducted by the media just weeks ago:
It would have been great had he come home (from Copenhagen) a winner,” Shipman wrote. “Great for all of us. But maybe not so much for him. Why? Because then he would have then really irked his critics.”
“[Obama’s critics] already secretly and not so secretly peeved that he’s been voted the world’s prom king. Another victory would have just started a wave of dangerous, uncontrollable seething.”
But that's only the tip of Shipman's iceberg of liberal bias. See here for links to preposterous stories she has penned claiming that Rahm Emmanuel is a "centrist", a title she hands to Sonia Sotomayor as well. Not to mention other articles hinting racial aspects to Obama's unpopularity, as well as a doozy where she equates a young Israeli girl slaughtered by terrorists (on her way to buy groceries) with the animals that murdered her.
Again - this woman's title is Senior National Correspondent for ABC's Good Morning America. Shouldn't the fact that she's sleeping with a key figure in the Obama administration give ABC some pause about keeping her in that position, a position in which she can slant and shape news to fit and reflect her husband's boss's needs?
How about a disclaimer, at the very least? Or is my request for any kind of journalistic honor and decency simply laughable in these last, crumbling days of the mainstream media empire?
Somewhere, Edward R Murrow spins like a top in his grave...
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Jim Moran (D-VA) sprays the "new civility" with bullets & bombs, then dances in the blood....
...and does it all on Arab TV. Explaining the Republican landslide in the miderm elections, he claims:
...it happened for the same reason the Civil War happened in the United States. It happened because the Southern states, the slaveholding states, didn't want to see a president who was opposed to slavery. In this case, I believe, a lot of people in the United States don't want to be governed by an African-American, particularly one who is liberal, who wants to spend money and who wants to reach out to include everyone in our society.
Hmmm...I always thought the Democrats rationalized their seemingly self-destructive national priorities - going green, nuclear disarmament - under the guise of worldwide leadership, as in "if we destroy our nukes/go Green, everyone will follow our us". So what is Jim Moran telling the Arab world? That all arguments about politics and policy difference are really rooted in religious and racial hatred?
Tell them something they don't know. Gee Jim, way to show leadership and set an example for the rest of the world, not to mention honoring the "new civility" that your side has been begging for since liberal nutjob Jared Loughner shot down Gabrielle Giffords...
And I'm waiting for the condemnation from Paul Krugman, Barack Obama, Dana Milbank, the New York Times editorial board, and the entire on-air staff from both CNN and MSNBC, for Moran's ugly statement accusing the entire Southern portion of the United States of racial hatred, an accusation he has absolutely zero evidence for.
What? No calls of outrage? Oh, I see....the call for a "new civility" was a call for me to shut the f*ck up, and allow Jim Moran's venomous bile to go unchallenged, as fact.
Hmmm....guess what? No f*ckung deal.
The 3-minute mark is the money shot:
...it happened for the same reason the Civil War happened in the United States. It happened because the Southern states, the slaveholding states, didn't want to see a president who was opposed to slavery. In this case, I believe, a lot of people in the United States don't want to be governed by an African-American, particularly one who is liberal, who wants to spend money and who wants to reach out to include everyone in our society.
Hmmm...I always thought the Democrats rationalized their seemingly self-destructive national priorities - going green, nuclear disarmament - under the guise of worldwide leadership, as in "if we destroy our nukes/go Green, everyone will follow our us". So what is Jim Moran telling the Arab world? That all arguments about politics and policy difference are really rooted in religious and racial hatred?
Tell them something they don't know. Gee Jim, way to show leadership and set an example for the rest of the world, not to mention honoring the "new civility" that your side has been begging for since liberal nutjob Jared Loughner shot down Gabrielle Giffords...
And I'm waiting for the condemnation from Paul Krugman, Barack Obama, Dana Milbank, the New York Times editorial board, and the entire on-air staff from both CNN and MSNBC, for Moran's ugly statement accusing the entire Southern portion of the United States of racial hatred, an accusation he has absolutely zero evidence for.
What? No calls of outrage? Oh, I see....the call for a "new civility" was a call for me to shut the f*ck up, and allow Jim Moran's venomous bile to go unchallenged, as fact.
Hmmm....guess what? No f*ckung deal.
The 3-minute mark is the money shot:
Chris Christie Goes Reagan, Fires All PVSC Commissioners
OK, so it's not exactly like Ronald Reagan firing the entire membership of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), but New Jersey governor Chris Christie is taking the fight to the public sector, which is where the battles of the future lie:
For decades, the commissioners who ran the state’s largest sewage treatment plant operated it as if they lived in their own kingdom, accountable to no one — not even the governor.
They hired brothers, wives, children and in-laws; cut sweetheart deals for insiders; gave out lucrative, no-bid consulting contracts, and ran up lavish travel expenditures.
Today, Gov. Chris Christie said he had had enough.
He fired nearly all of them.
Taking steps to terminate six of the seven members of the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commissioners, the governor said using the state authority as a "personal spoils system" would no longer be tolerated. He gave the six until Thursday to voluntarily resign or he would move to have them removed for cause.
It's not 11,345 striking air traffic controllers, but it's the 2011 equivalent: Public employees draining taxpayer wallets to create mini-fiefdoms for themselves and their chums.
This is only a skirmish, a probe, a quick-strike to test the strength of the enemy. Much bigger battles, if not all-out war, looms on the horizon.
Kudos to Chris Christie, again, for having the guts to take point on these (politically) perilous missions. Hopefully, many other Republicans leaders are watching, and move forward with sorties of their own...
For decades, the commissioners who ran the state’s largest sewage treatment plant operated it as if they lived in their own kingdom, accountable to no one — not even the governor.
They hired brothers, wives, children and in-laws; cut sweetheart deals for insiders; gave out lucrative, no-bid consulting contracts, and ran up lavish travel expenditures.
Today, Gov. Chris Christie said he had had enough.
He fired nearly all of them.
Taking steps to terminate six of the seven members of the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commissioners, the governor said using the state authority as a "personal spoils system" would no longer be tolerated. He gave the six until Thursday to voluntarily resign or he would move to have them removed for cause.
It's not 11,345 striking air traffic controllers, but it's the 2011 equivalent: Public employees draining taxpayer wallets to create mini-fiefdoms for themselves and their chums.
This is only a skirmish, a probe, a quick-strike to test the strength of the enemy. Much bigger battles, if not all-out war, looms on the horizon.
Kudos to Chris Christie, again, for having the guts to take point on these (politically) perilous missions. Hopefully, many other Republicans leaders are watching, and move forward with sorties of their own...
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Brooklyn Decker Brings Hope To Jersey
When I was a kid, Brooklyn was Jersey. Only in the sense that it was a media location sensation (Saturday Night Fever, Welcome Back Kotter, and....Mayor Koch) the way New Jersey (Jersey Shore, Real Housewives of, Chris Christie) is today. But like all fads, lust turned to disgust, and the borough of Brooklyn became just another used-up former star on the ex-celebrity trash heap.
It took almost a quarter-century for Brooklyn to return to the public consciousness. Once a setting for irony and kitsch, it was reborn trendy urban chic, as the setting of Williamsburg, Fort Greene, and DUMBO (as in, "down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass") - all seemingly more desirable places to live and play than Manhattan itself.
What's the point of all this? Primarily to show pictures of Brooklyn Decker, of course. And to pay homage to Rule 5. But the fact that she would rename herself after the borough once known strictly for ethnic stereotypes and bad urban camp means that one day New Jersey can be reborn, too. Mocked now for our illiterate men (and why is is still OK to keep picking on Italians, after 25-odd years?) women of questionable moral character, and a bombastic politician, maybe we too will be reborn as a cooler-than-thou collection of towns and burbs where folks, free of the burden of onerous taxation, will live, and create, and procreate...
And super models will give themselves names like "Jersey Jones", and the such.
Brooklyn Decker....you give us hope:
Democrats blast Paul Ryan's "Roadmap", then admit they never read it...
Health care reform, redux....back then, the Democrats swore their reform bill was wonderful, although they never read it. Turns out it was awful....
Now, Democrats swear Paul Ryan's economic "Roadmap" for reform is awful, although they haven't read that either. Which, using the corollary I am laying out, means it is likely the Road Map is most likely the greatest thing since the adding of chocolate to milk.
Send in the clowns:
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York has taken the role of lead Democratic attack dog in the renewed campaign against Paul Ryan's fiscal Roadmap, but it's not clear that he's fully aware of
what the plan lays out. Asked today in the Capitol if he had read the Roadmap, Schumer gave no response....
Which means he didn't read it. If you haven't noticed, Schumer is in a panic lately, blasting all deviations from "tax and spend politics as usual". Without pork to ladle out, Schumer is will have to rely on his intelligence and charm, neither of which he has in any great abundance...
While Schumer was silent, some of his Democratic colleagues openly admitted they haven't read Ryan's plan. "I haven't had a chance to look at anything," Ben Nelson of Nebraska told me. "I looked at it briefly when it came out last fall, I think," said Mark Pryor of Arkansas. "I didn't master the details."
“I use Google Maps,” was all Richard Durbin, the number two Democrat in the Senate, would say when asked if he'd read the plan.
At least one Congressperson watched the speech (apparently), and found realism so distasteful, he turned to the bottle:
Rep. Anthony Weiner (N.Y.) praised Obama's speech as "uplifting," but said that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) response was too dour for his taste.
"[Obama] was then followed by a guy who was bumming us out," he said on MSNBC Tuesday night. "I felt like I just needed a drink when I was done with Paul Ryan."
When the going gets tough, the Democrats get drunk. Easier, I suppose, than reading and thoughtfully examining a domestic policy initiative. But think of the mindset: If liberals see the only antidote to the reality of our times as escapism, what are the odds the Democrats will actually face up to and fix our nation's problems?
And it isn't just the liberals in Congress that are ducking responsibility and snuggling with a bottle - seems like the president has a bad case of denial as well:
As the elected leader of the nation — and as one of the architects of our fiscal crisis — Obama has an obligation to address it in a serious, systematic, and intellectually honest manner. Instead, he is eschewing his governing duties. He is living in a world of his own imagination. That might be fine for writers of fiction and fairy tales. But for the president of the United States, it is quite a bad thing indeed.
Well, Schmukie Schumer, Rich Durbin, and Anthony Weiner are just idiots; perhaps illiterates as well. Obama, I fear, may have gone down a darker path altogether....
Now, Democrats swear Paul Ryan's economic "Roadmap" for reform is awful, although they haven't read that either. Which, using the corollary I am laying out, means it is likely the Road Map is most likely the greatest thing since the adding of chocolate to milk.
Send in the clowns:
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York has taken the role of lead Democratic attack dog in the renewed campaign against Paul Ryan's fiscal Roadmap, but it's not clear that he's fully aware of
what the plan lays out. Asked today in the Capitol if he had read the Roadmap, Schumer gave no response....Which means he didn't read it. If you haven't noticed, Schumer is in a panic lately, blasting all deviations from "tax and spend politics as usual". Without pork to ladle out, Schumer is will have to rely on his intelligence and charm, neither of which he has in any great abundance...
While Schumer was silent, some of his Democratic colleagues openly admitted they haven't read Ryan's plan. "I haven't had a chance to look at anything," Ben Nelson of Nebraska told me. "I looked at it briefly when it came out last fall, I think," said Mark Pryor of Arkansas. "I didn't master the details."
“I use Google Maps,” was all Richard Durbin, the number two Democrat in the Senate, would say when asked if he'd read the plan.
At least one Congressperson watched the speech (apparently), and found realism so distasteful, he turned to the bottle:
Rep. Anthony Weiner (N.Y.) praised Obama's speech as "uplifting," but said that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) response was too dour for his taste.
"[Obama] was then followed by a guy who was bumming us out," he said on MSNBC Tuesday night. "I felt like I just needed a drink when I was done with Paul Ryan."
When the going gets tough, the Democrats get drunk. Easier, I suppose, than reading and thoughtfully examining a domestic policy initiative. But think of the mindset: If liberals see the only antidote to the reality of our times as escapism, what are the odds the Democrats will actually face up to and fix our nation's problems?
And it isn't just the liberals in Congress that are ducking responsibility and snuggling with a bottle - seems like the president has a bad case of denial as well:
As the elected leader of the nation — and as one of the architects of our fiscal crisis — Obama has an obligation to address it in a serious, systematic, and intellectually honest manner. Instead, he is eschewing his governing duties. He is living in a world of his own imagination. That might be fine for writers of fiction and fairy tales. But for the president of the United States, it is quite a bad thing indeed.
Well, Schmukie Schumer, Rich Durbin, and Anthony Weiner are just idiots; perhaps illiterates as well. Obama, I fear, may have gone down a darker path altogether....
Obama's State of the Union: Most Schizophrenic Speech Ever?
I suppose if you have no core values, you can speak simultaneously out of both sides of your mouth, hold multiple divergent views on any number of issues, drone on endlessly about visions of a future that will never be and a past that never was, and still pat yourself on the back while marveling at your own communication skills.
Of course, the same behavior can also get you institutionalized.
They used to call Bill Clinton "Slick Willie". Perhaps they should call the president "Schizoid Barry". Some examples:
We must reform Social Security, Obama declared, but not reduce benefits for future retirees or expose them to the vicissitudes of the stock market. That pretty much removes 80 percent of a potential compromise on entitlement reform from the table. We must reduce government spending — but increase “investments” in education, energy, and infrastructure by tens of billions of dollars. We must finish what we started in Iraq and Afghanistan — but bring all the troops home as soon as possible.
Jennifer Rubin points out the president in a classic act of insanity - doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results:
On infrastructure, he tells us, "We will put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges. We will make sure this is fully paid for, attract private investment, and pick projects based on what's best for the economy, not politicians." Wasn't that what the stimulus was for -- or did we fritter away that money?
We frittered it away, but....don't worry, we'll win the next round of three-card monte, I just know it!
And this is a classic example of the disorganized speech and thinking that characterizes schizophrenia:
Obama says this:
None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be, or where the new jobs will come from.
Followed by this:
We’ll invest in … clean energy technology – an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.
Not to mention the delusions (often bizarre or persecutory in nature) that accompany this mental disorder:
"America’s standing has been restored.”
Still sniping at George W.?
Well, it has been restored, I suppose - amongst Latin American dictators and Chinese Communists...
My neck hurts. I better still see a doctor while I can. And in the meantime, let's just hope that Barack Obama never realises there's more to being president than making speeches and talking down to the citizenry.
With an obvious schizophrenic at the helm, we could be in a lot more trouble than we already are...
Of course, the same behavior can also get you institutionalized.
They used to call Bill Clinton "Slick Willie". Perhaps they should call the president "Schizoid Barry". Some examples:
We must reform Social Security, Obama declared, but not reduce benefits for future retirees or expose them to the vicissitudes of the stock market. That pretty much removes 80 percent of a potential compromise on entitlement reform from the table. We must reduce government spending — but increase “investments” in education, energy, and infrastructure by tens of billions of dollars. We must finish what we started in Iraq and Afghanistan — but bring all the troops home as soon as possible.
Jennifer Rubin points out the president in a classic act of insanity - doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results:
On infrastructure, he tells us, "We will put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges. We will make sure this is fully paid for, attract private investment, and pick projects based on what's best for the economy, not politicians." Wasn't that what the stimulus was for -- or did we fritter away that money?
We frittered it away, but....don't worry, we'll win the next round of three-card monte, I just know it!
And this is a classic example of the disorganized speech and thinking that characterizes schizophrenia:
Obama says this:
None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be, or where the new jobs will come from.
Followed by this:
We’ll invest in … clean energy technology – an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.
Not to mention the delusions (often bizarre or persecutory in nature) that accompany this mental disorder:
"America’s standing has been restored.”
Still sniping at George W.?
Well, it has been restored, I suppose - amongst Latin American dictators and Chinese Communists...
My neck hurts. I better still see a doctor while I can. And in the meantime, let's just hope that Barack Obama never realises there's more to being president than making speeches and talking down to the citizenry.
With an obvious schizophrenic at the helm, we could be in a lot more trouble than we already are...
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Prior To The SOTU, Obama Massages The Messengers
Just so that the messaging is all in key, and sung together in harmony:
From a White House pool report, on the day of his State of the Union President Obama was seen heading for a lunch with TV anchors and pundits, including Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer, Diane Sawyer, Brian Williams, and George Stephanopoulos.
Used to be a time when this would be considered sacrilegious amongst the journalistic purists. No honor among thieves, I suppose....
From a White House pool report, on the day of his State of the Union President Obama was seen heading for a lunch with TV anchors and pundits, including Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer, Diane Sawyer, Brian Williams, and George Stephanopoulos.
Used to be a time when this would be considered sacrilegious amongst the journalistic purists. No honor among thieves, I suppose....
Obama's State of the Union: Code Words and Dog Whistles
Earlier I posted on how President Obama is planning on using the word "investment" tonight, as opposed to the more honest "government spending", as he gives his SOTU address (entitled, interestingly, "How to win the future". Hmmm. Sounds like something out of a socialist community-organizing seminar....).
The Weekly Standard defines how Obama will use the term "competitiveness":
More often than not, the code words are invoked to hide one thing: more and more government intervention in the economy.
Obama’s favorite new word is “competitiveness.” This doesn’t mean he wants to enact free market reforms to increase competition in the private sector. Perish the thought. He wants to fund programs that aid or subsidize industries involved in global markets. Once again, it points to more spending, more intervention.
....Who takes the lead in achieving this? Not the private economy unleashed by tax cuts and deregulation. Free markets and free individuals can’t be trusted with this task. The government must be in charge.
Both winning the future and competitiveness have another role. Properly understood, they’re a diversion from the present, with its weak economy and high unemployment. You’re supposed to ignore what’s happening today and look to the future....
...when Obama's true genius will be seen in all of it's glory, i suppose. Much like a certain Georgia peanut farmer....
Protein Wisdom has an "Obama Code to English" dictionary as well:
“competition” = “See? I’m all for capitalism, provided I can control the outcome, and get mine in return...
“Deficit reduction” = “increasing your taxes." Which I’ve said I’m going to run on in 2012, even as I re-image myself tonight as a moderate. Because I’m a leftist ideologue.”
“back from the brink” = “Remember when we all blamed Bush for everything bad? Remember how good that felt? Well, I’m bringing that back…”
“reform government” = “I can get a lot done behind the scenes, without resistance, using bureaucratic agencies. Why the hell do I need Congress?”
“Tucson tragedy” = “never let a crisis go to waste. We’ll be coming for your guns soon, me and the rest of my moderate buddies. Plus, Sarah Palin is the TEA Party and talk radio, so the TEA Party and talk radio = inspiring murderers to kill young children and attempt to assassinate popular moderate liberals. Which is why we as a newly civil country need to put a check on conservative speech, hopefully through some governmental mandate.”
And don't forget, right before the speech ends, in a final dog whistle to the media which adores him so, Obama will renew his call for "civility" (defined as “agree with me or shut the f*ck up, you hate-mongering racists") just before the cameras fade to Rep. Paul Ryan, aka The Devil Himself.
Should make for an interesting night. I'll start pouring the bourbon early...
UPDATE: Here's another good one: Green Energy Initiatives = income redistribution and social justice.
Hey, I didn't say it....Van Jones did.
The Weekly Standard defines how Obama will use the term "competitiveness":
More often than not, the code words are invoked to hide one thing: more and more government intervention in the economy.
Obama’s favorite new word is “competitiveness.” This doesn’t mean he wants to enact free market reforms to increase competition in the private sector. Perish the thought. He wants to fund programs that aid or subsidize industries involved in global markets. Once again, it points to more spending, more intervention.
....Who takes the lead in achieving this? Not the private economy unleashed by tax cuts and deregulation. Free markets and free individuals can’t be trusted with this task. The government must be in charge.
Both winning the future and competitiveness have another role. Properly understood, they’re a diversion from the present, with its weak economy and high unemployment. You’re supposed to ignore what’s happening today and look to the future....
...when Obama's true genius will be seen in all of it's glory, i suppose. Much like a certain Georgia peanut farmer....
Protein Wisdom has an "Obama Code to English" dictionary as well:
“competition” = “See? I’m all for capitalism, provided I can control the outcome, and get mine in return...
“Deficit reduction” = “increasing your taxes." Which I’ve said I’m going to run on in 2012, even as I re-image myself tonight as a moderate. Because I’m a leftist ideologue.”
“back from the brink” = “Remember when we all blamed Bush for everything bad? Remember how good that felt? Well, I’m bringing that back…”
“reform government” = “I can get a lot done behind the scenes, without resistance, using bureaucratic agencies. Why the hell do I need Congress?”
“Tucson tragedy” = “never let a crisis go to waste. We’ll be coming for your guns soon, me and the rest of my moderate buddies. Plus, Sarah Palin is the TEA Party and talk radio, so the TEA Party and talk radio = inspiring murderers to kill young children and attempt to assassinate popular moderate liberals. Which is why we as a newly civil country need to put a check on conservative speech, hopefully through some governmental mandate.”
And don't forget, right before the speech ends, in a final dog whistle to the media which adores him so, Obama will renew his call for "civility" (defined as “agree with me or shut the f*ck up, you hate-mongering racists") just before the cameras fade to Rep. Paul Ryan, aka The Devil Himself.
Should make for an interesting night. I'll start pouring the bourbon early...
UPDATE: Here's another good one: Green Energy Initiatives = income redistribution and social justice.
Hey, I didn't say it....Van Jones did.
Global Warming Outside My Window....
...look how peacefully global warming swirls and descends upon Broadway, leaving a nice white hue on all it touches:
Of course, about a decade ago climate change theorists posited that by this time, Broadway would be lined with palm trees as the waves of the Atlantic lapped up to the marquee...
Of course, about a decade ago climate change theorists posited that by this time, Broadway would be lined with palm trees as the waves of the Atlantic lapped up to the marquee...
Guess not.
Barack Obama SOTU: "Investing" Us Into Bankruptcy
We've known since last weekend - but still finding it shocking - that Barack Obama is going to tout more government spending in his State of the Union address later this evening. Shocking, as it is most likely the last thing the American people want, save for further enhancement of ObamaCare.
But Obama, ideologue to the end, cares not a whit for the will of the great unwashed he poses to champion. He's going to drive the car right over the cliff, and take us - his passengers - with him.
Certainly Barack knows that that to champion increased government spending will have the pitchforks glowing outside the capital by speech's end. Fortunately, he leads a nation of dolts, dullards, and the disinterested, so a smart guy like him can fool chumps like us with half his brain tied behind his back.
Apparently - in a brazen stroke of unoriginality - he's going to label his call for increased spending as "investments", so that the rabble only thinks "increased returns". Rich Lowery rightly mocks the president for this weak sleight of hand/mouth:
President Obama hopes to be saved by a euphemism.
He is wagering on the power of the word "investment." It sounds so market oriented and cutting edge in contrast to its more pedestrian, politically fraught synonym, "spending," especially the toxic "deficit spending" that, to this point, has defined Obama's presidency.
The focus on "investment" is nothing new. Obama already had leaned heavily on one of the hoariest Democratic tropes. When he signed the stimulus bill in February 2009, he used the word "invest" or "investment" 15 times in a 2,000-word speech. A casual listener might have been hard-pressed to understand that any new government spending was involved at all, what with all the "critical investments...."
It seems as if Barack Obama, Supergenius, has learned all he needs to know about the presidency from watching a Simpsons episode entitled "Bart to the Future". In a terrifying glimpse of things to come, Lisa Simpson is the first straight female president of the United States, and is faced with a crippling budget deficit. Surrounded by advisers, she discusses how to best make the American people swallow her bitter pill:
Lisa:
If I'm going to bail the country out, I'll have to raise taxes, but in my speech I'd like to avoid calling it a, "painful emergency tax."
Milhouse:
What about, "colossal salary-grab?"
Lisa:
See, that has the same problem. We need to soften the blow.
Milhouse:
Well, if you just want to out-and-out lie ... [pause, while Lisa doesn't object] Okay, we could call it a, "temporary refund adjustment."
Lisa: I love it.
[Later, Lisa is on TV, speaking from the Oval office]
Lisa:
My fellow Americans and voting illegal aliens, I will not mince words. Your country needs you. That's why today I'm proposing a temporary refund adjustment.
And here's the reaction that Obama expects to get tomorrow night:
Moe:
Refund adjustment? Hey, sounds good to me.
Lenny:
Sure beats a tax.
Carl:
We love you, President Simpson!
Alas for Barack, we are all not Lennys, Carls, and Moes. No matter how hard he (and his ilk in the media) desperately wish we were...
But Obama, ideologue to the end, cares not a whit for the will of the great unwashed he poses to champion. He's going to drive the car right over the cliff, and take us - his passengers - with him.
Certainly Barack knows that that to champion increased government spending will have the pitchforks glowing outside the capital by speech's end. Fortunately, he leads a nation of dolts, dullards, and the disinterested, so a smart guy like him can fool chumps like us with half his brain tied behind his back.
Apparently - in a brazen stroke of unoriginality - he's going to label his call for increased spending as "investments", so that the rabble only thinks "increased returns". Rich Lowery rightly mocks the president for this weak sleight of hand/mouth:
President Obama hopes to be saved by a euphemism.
He is wagering on the power of the word "investment." It sounds so market oriented and cutting edge in contrast to its more pedestrian, politically fraught synonym, "spending," especially the toxic "deficit spending" that, to this point, has defined Obama's presidency.
The focus on "investment" is nothing new. Obama already had leaned heavily on one of the hoariest Democratic tropes. When he signed the stimulus bill in February 2009, he used the word "invest" or "investment" 15 times in a 2,000-word speech. A casual listener might have been hard-pressed to understand that any new government spending was involved at all, what with all the "critical investments...."
It seems as if Barack Obama, Supergenius, has learned all he needs to know about the presidency from watching a Simpsons episode entitled "Bart to the Future". In a terrifying glimpse of things to come, Lisa Simpson is the first straight female president of the United States, and is faced with a crippling budget deficit. Surrounded by advisers, she discusses how to best make the American people swallow her bitter pill:
Lisa:If I'm going to bail the country out, I'll have to raise taxes, but in my speech I'd like to avoid calling it a, "painful emergency tax."
Milhouse:
What about, "colossal salary-grab?"
Lisa:
See, that has the same problem. We need to soften the blow.
Milhouse:
Well, if you just want to out-and-out lie ... [pause, while Lisa doesn't object] Okay, we could call it a, "temporary refund adjustment."
Lisa: I love it.
[Later, Lisa is on TV, speaking from the Oval office]
Lisa:
My fellow Americans and voting illegal aliens, I will not mince words. Your country needs you. That's why today I'm proposing a temporary refund adjustment.
And here's the reaction that Obama expects to get tomorrow night:
Moe:
Refund adjustment? Hey, sounds good to me.
Lenny:
Sure beats a tax.
Carl:
We love you, President Simpson!
Alas for Barack, we are all not Lennys, Carls, and Moes. No matter how hard he (and his ilk in the media) desperately wish we were...
Monday, January 24, 2011
Meet Your Next Hitler: Paul Ryan !
With the left-wing hate machine now rolling with a mind of its own, blasting away at anything that moves like a drunken turret gunner, Paul Ryan had best invest in a rhetoric-proof vest.
When Sarah Palin came on the scene with her speech at the Republican convention - a brilliant speech, plainly spoken and charming - the hate machine was confused for a moment, like a remote-control car getting static thru the antenna.
And then it did what it does best: Went full-throttle into "hate at high speed" mode, smearing Ms. Palin with every slur imaginable, logic and truth be damned, in the hope that some of it would stick.
Some of it did, but as the machine is still blasting away in her general direction, one has to feel the drunken gunner still lives in fear of the shadows she casts...
And what, pray tell, does this have to do with Rep. Paul Ryan's upcoming State of the Union response? Well, he's going to come across as a youngish, non-threatening, likable gentleman who has a handle on facts and figures, and a plan on how to use them to take the nation in a positive direction.
So he must be destroyed. Palinized. Or at the very least, Hitlerized.
It has begun:
Brace for a "dark" vision of America when Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) delivers the GOP response to the State of the Union, a Democratic colleague of Ryan's on President Obama's fiscal commission warned Monday.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a member of the bipartisan, 18-member commission, said her experience with Ryan over the past year made her worry about his response to the president on Tuesday night.
"I served with Rep. Ryan on the 18 member Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and learned firsthand from the personally congenial Ryan just how dark his vision of America's future is for all but the super-rich," Schakowsky wrote in a blog for the Huffington Post.
When Sarah Palin came on the scene with her speech at the Republican convention - a brilliant speech, plainly spoken and charming - the hate machine was confused for a moment, like a remote-control car getting static thru the antenna.
And then it did what it does best: Went full-throttle into "hate at high speed" mode, smearing Ms. Palin with every slur imaginable, logic and truth be damned, in the hope that some of it would stick.
Some of it did, but as the machine is still blasting away in her general direction, one has to feel the drunken gunner still lives in fear of the shadows she casts...
And what, pray tell, does this have to do with Rep. Paul Ryan's upcoming State of the Union response? Well, he's going to come across as a youngish, non-threatening, likable gentleman who has a handle on facts and figures, and a plan on how to use them to take the nation in a positive direction.
So he must be destroyed. Palinized. Or at the very least, Hitlerized.
It has begun:
Brace for a "dark" vision of America when Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) delivers the GOP response to the State of the Union, a Democratic colleague of Ryan's on President Obama's fiscal commission warned Monday.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a member of the bipartisan, 18-member commission, said her experience with Ryan over the past year made her worry about his response to the president on Tuesday night.
"I served with Rep. Ryan on the 18 member Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and learned firsthand from the personally congenial Ryan just how dark his vision of America's future is for all but the super-rich," Schakowsky wrote in a blog for the Huffington Post.
"A dark vision" - you know, just like Hitler had for Europe, or Sauron had for Middle Earth, or Lucifer has for
the entire universe. You know, if she was being "civil", she could have just explained to us - in nuts and bolts fashion - what her difference of opinion with Ryan was based on. But you won't find that at the HuffPo...This is only the beginning. Bobby Jindal escaped it, because he delivered a miserable rebuttal. Ryan won't make that mistake, and by Wednesday evening, after the media realize that they're the only ones left wet and tingling by the Obama's SOTU speech, the blitzkrieg against Ryan will begin.
Let us hope the Republican party will not allow him to be Palinized by the Panzers of the Left...
Jeff Immelt: Another Dim Bulb In Obama's Inner Circle...
...look, when you have a room full of 10 watt bulbs, and none of them can shed any new light on the subject (the economy), adding another 10-watter isn't going to make a hell of a lot of difference here.
Could just be that the president likes dim bulbs; all the better to bask in his radiance. Or perhaps Obama is simply nowhere near as smart as we were led to believe. But back to Immelt, and why he'll be a perfect fit for the Obama administration:
During Immelt’s ten-year reign as CEO, GE had to cut its dividend and its stock price has fallen to about half its previous value.
I guess to Barack Obama, a company who's decision-making process has cost it's small stockholders 50% of their stake is a good corporate citizen. What else has Immelt done that makes him a star in Obama's eye?
As CEO of General Electric, Immelt directly participated in promoting Obama’s “cap-and-trade” energy regulations proposal. While this could increase GE’s short-term business in wind and solar technologies, the consequences of the policy is certain — by Obama’s own admission — to “skyrocket” energy costs. GE has additionally sold technology to Iran and it is planning on sharing jet engine technology with China. GE also lobbied for and received tens of millions in stimulus money and received financial support from the Federal Reserve.
To recap: He's a corporate whore who is complicit in raising energy prices on all Americans, plans to profit heavily on green initiatives (such as fluorescent bulbs), and trades with our enemy.
No wonder Obama's in love. Immelt is a private-sector version of himself.
Two dim bulbs don't produce bright ideas, by the way.
Can I go a step further? Obama and Immelt combined don't equal one run-of-the-mill idiot.
Bad to worse, I suppose...
Could just be that the president likes dim bulbs; all the better to bask in his radiance. Or perhaps Obama is simply nowhere near as smart as we were led to believe. But back to Immelt, and why he'll be a perfect fit for the Obama administration:
During Immelt’s ten-year reign as CEO, GE had to cut its dividend and its stock price has fallen to about half its previous value.
I guess to Barack Obama, a company who's decision-making process has cost it's small stockholders 50% of their stake is a good corporate citizen. What else has Immelt done that makes him a star in Obama's eye?
As CEO of General Electric, Immelt directly participated in promoting Obama’s “cap-and-trade” energy regulations proposal. While this could increase GE’s short-term business in wind and solar technologies, the consequences of the policy is certain — by Obama’s own admission — to “skyrocket” energy costs. GE has additionally sold technology to Iran and it is planning on sharing jet engine technology with China. GE also lobbied for and received tens of millions in stimulus money and received financial support from the Federal Reserve.
To recap: He's a corporate whore who is complicit in raising energy prices on all Americans, plans to profit heavily on green initiatives (such as fluorescent bulbs), and trades with our enemy.
No wonder Obama's in love. Immelt is a private-sector version of himself.
Two dim bulbs don't produce bright ideas, by the way.
Can I go a step further? Obama and Immelt combined don't equal one run-of-the-mill idiot.
Bad to worse, I suppose...
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Barack Obama Humiliated By Lang Lang, His Own Personal Piano Monkey
I posted a few days ago about my distaste, disregard, and disgust for Chinese pianist (and state dinner performer) Lang Lang, so beloved by the liberal elite and so personally desirous of the second-hand prestige that comes with performing the role of court jester to those in power. An excerpt:
Lang Lang will play for Obama and Hu. He tends to do that. He played at the Beijing Olympics. He played at Obama’s Nobel ceremony. He played at the White House event for Paul McCartney, in which McCartney made those asinine anti-Bush remarks, and Lang Lang and everybody else laughed like hyenas.
The point being:
He’d rather entertain for the gulag-masters than criticize them.
Turns out he's worse than I thought. His choice of song at the state dinner than Obama shamefully offered Hu was specifically designed to humiliate America, and to flatter Hu:
At the White House State dinner on Jan. 19, about six minutes into his set, Lang Lang began
tapping out a famous anti-American propaganda melody from the Korean War: the theme song to the movie “Battle on Shangganling Mountain.
The film depicts a group of “People’s Volunteer Army” soldiers who are first hemmed in at Shanganling (or Triangle Hill) and then, when reinforcements arrive, take up their rifles and counterattack the U.S. military “jackals.”
The movie and the tune are widely known among Chinese, and the song has been a leading piece of anti-American propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for decades.
The name of the song is “My Motherland,” originally titled “Big River.” In an interview broadcast on Phoenix TV, the first thing Lang Lang is quoted as saying is that he chose the piece.
Whether Lang Lang’s decision to play “My Motherland” was entirely his own is impossible to confirm. That his choice was known in advance to CCP officials is very likely...
Yet another humiliation for the American people, as Obama's hand-picked entertainer spits in his eye and monkey-dances for a tyrant. Of course, our worldly and so-well-educated Narcissus had no idea what was going on, despite the fact that this parade of insults and lies unfolded before his very eyes (and ears). All made possible, of course, because of the president's seemingly bottomless craving to bow to, kneel before - and honor - some of the worst human beings on the planet.
Will it cast a shadow on Lang Lang's "rockstar" persona amongst the limousine liberal, "patron of the arts" crowd?
Nah. Being anti-American will give him more "street cred" with this crowd, despite the fact he directed it squarely at their own personal Jesus...
Me, I'm going to keep an eye on this Lang Lang clown, and watch to see which Americans are giving this hateful, deceitful, yet synchophantic artist standing ovations and high praise. I'll bet it won't be too hard to guess the type of people that will fall all over themselves to rub elbows with him...
Lang Lang will play for Obama and Hu. He tends to do that. He played at the Beijing Olympics. He played at Obama’s Nobel ceremony. He played at the White House event for Paul McCartney, in which McCartney made those asinine anti-Bush remarks, and Lang Lang and everybody else laughed like hyenas.
The point being:
He’d rather entertain for the gulag-masters than criticize them.
Turns out he's worse than I thought. His choice of song at the state dinner than Obama shamefully offered Hu was specifically designed to humiliate America, and to flatter Hu:
At the White House State dinner on Jan. 19, about six minutes into his set, Lang Lang began
tapping out a famous anti-American propaganda melody from the Korean War: the theme song to the movie “Battle on Shangganling Mountain.The film depicts a group of “People’s Volunteer Army” soldiers who are first hemmed in at Shanganling (or Triangle Hill) and then, when reinforcements arrive, take up their rifles and counterattack the U.S. military “jackals.”
The movie and the tune are widely known among Chinese, and the song has been a leading piece of anti-American propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for decades.
The name of the song is “My Motherland,” originally titled “Big River.” In an interview broadcast on Phoenix TV, the first thing Lang Lang is quoted as saying is that he chose the piece.
Whether Lang Lang’s decision to play “My Motherland” was entirely his own is impossible to confirm. That his choice was known in advance to CCP officials is very likely...
Yet another humiliation for the American people, as Obama's hand-picked entertainer spits in his eye and monkey-dances for a tyrant. Of course, our worldly and so-well-educated Narcissus had no idea what was going on, despite the fact that this parade of insults and lies unfolded before his very eyes (and ears). All made possible, of course, because of the president's seemingly bottomless craving to bow to, kneel before - and honor - some of the worst human beings on the planet.
Will it cast a shadow on Lang Lang's "rockstar" persona amongst the limousine liberal, "patron of the arts" crowd?
Nah. Being anti-American will give him more "street cred" with this crowd, despite the fact he directed it squarely at their own personal Jesus...
Me, I'm going to keep an eye on this Lang Lang clown, and watch to see which Americans are giving this hateful, deceitful, yet synchophantic artist standing ovations and high praise. I'll bet it won't be too hard to guess the type of people that will fall all over themselves to rub elbows with him...
New York City: Wanna Be Safe? Get A Gun...
A lesson on "gun control" from New York, one which Mayor Michael Bloomberg - an anti-gun nut without rival - will surely ignore, as most liberals ignore facts that don't fit into their preconceived notions:
A middle-class enclave on the South Shore of the city's southernmost borough is the gun capital of New York, with 509 residents -- or about one in every 57 males -- legally packing heat.
The neighborhood is filled with single-family homes on 40-by- 100-foot lots and attached town houses, largely populated with conservative-leaning civil servants like cops and firefighters, as well as Wall Streeters.
The well-armed area is also one of the city's safest. The 123rd Precinct has seen a 27 percent decrease in major crimes over the past 10 years, and there were just two homicides there in 2009 and 2010
Conversely:
There are dozens of ZIP codes with only one permit issued, including in Queens, The Bronx and Brooklyn.
Let's look at just one - Morrisania, in the Bronx. What's a typical week like in the gun-control capital of Bloomberg's New York? Let's look at the week of November 15th, 2010, by police precinct:
Precinct 42
34 crimes reported in Precinct 42
4 rapes, 9 robberies, 6 felony assaults, 8 burglaries, 2 grand larcenies, 5 grand larcenies (auto).
Precinct 41
27 crimes reported in Precinct 41
6 robberies, 7 felony assaults, 3 burglaries, 10 grand larcenies, 1 grand larceny (auto).
Precinct 44
65 crimes reported in Precinct 44
1 rape, 23 robberies, 16 felony assaults, 9 burglaries, 14 grand larcenies, 2 grand larcenies (auto).
Precinct 40
30 crimes reported in Precinct 40
2 rapes, 9 robberies, 6 felony assaults, 3 burglaries, 7 grand larcenies, 3 grand larcenies (auto).
Nah, no reason to own a gun in Morrisiania...the next thing you know, those brown-skinned ingrates will want to move out of their city-run projects and own a house, like those neanderthals on Staten Island...
A middle-class enclave on the South Shore of the city's southernmost borough is the gun capital of New York, with 509 residents -- or about one in every 57 males -- legally packing heat.
The neighborhood is filled with single-family homes on 40-by- 100-foot lots and attached town houses, largely populated with conservative-leaning civil servants like cops and firefighters, as well as Wall Streeters.
The well-armed area is also one of the city's safest. The 123rd Precinct has seen a 27 percent decrease in major crimes over the past 10 years, and there were just two homicides there in 2009 and 2010
Conversely:
There are dozens of ZIP codes with only one permit issued, including in Queens, The Bronx and Brooklyn.
Let's look at just one - Morrisania, in the Bronx. What's a typical week like in the gun-control capital of Bloomberg's New York? Let's look at the week of November 15th, 2010, by police precinct:
Precinct 42
34 crimes reported in Precinct 42
4 rapes, 9 robberies, 6 felony assaults, 8 burglaries, 2 grand larcenies, 5 grand larcenies (auto).
Precinct 41
27 crimes reported in Precinct 41
6 robberies, 7 felony assaults, 3 burglaries, 10 grand larcenies, 1 grand larceny (auto).
Precinct 44
65 crimes reported in Precinct 44
1 rape, 23 robberies, 16 felony assaults, 9 burglaries, 14 grand larcenies, 2 grand larcenies (auto).
Precinct 40
30 crimes reported in Precinct 40
2 rapes, 9 robberies, 6 felony assaults, 3 burglaries, 7 grand larcenies, 3 grand larcenies (auto).
Nah, no reason to own a gun in Morrisiania...the next thing you know, those brown-skinned ingrates will want to move out of their city-run projects and own a house, like those neanderthals on Staten Island...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)