Gender Wars, Human Kindness, And One Leg....

So I've been on the DL for just over a week now, with what has been describes as a "strained calf muscle", which is actually more of a tear than a strain.  Mine is of the more severe variety, so I've been on crutches the entire time, and looking at about another 7-10 days of the same before I transition off.

But being the dogged conservative that I am, after taking two days off to rest up I returned to work in New York, with my primary challenge being an arduous commute involving buses and subways.  Being a dogged libertarian, I ask for no help, as I can usually maneuver my way just fine.  My key problem is opening doors, whether they need to be pulled or pushed.  Didn't realize how many of them I encountered on a daily basis, and of course I can get through them myself, but only with pain and difficulty.  Still, I'm too much of a proud jerk to ask for help.

But what has been really interesting is the response people in New York have to someone on crutches trying to make their way through some sort of minimalistic daily routine.  A pattern emerged quickly, and has stayed pretty constant for the entire week:

-Men of all ages are extremely helpful.  They will hold doors, will ask me proactively if I need help, and go out of their way to give me space and time.  Even younger men - teenagers - will hold doors unbidden; even in one or two cases racing ahead of me to grab a door.

-Women are the worst.  Unhelpful to the point of sadism.  I can divide this up a little bit:

*black and Hispanic women are slightly better that the rest.  An occasional holding of a door, sometimes a cluck of sympathy.  Not that I'm asking, I'm just noticing.

**White women are the bottom of the barrel.  And again, I can subdivide this as well:

-married white women are slightly less horrible, only in that they will occasional make a sympathetic remark, or will at least have a guilty expression on their face when they let a door slam in my face

***Single white woman are the worst.  I exist simply as a barrier to them.. They will shoulder right through me on the subway, shove me aside as I am trying to get through a tight doorway, or in one memorable case, leaped ahead of me to steal a cab I was flagging one down with a waved crutch. Older single women are worse than the younger ones - the younger ones are indifferent, the older ones are openly hostile to me.

(and incidentally, yes, I can tell the difference without even seeing the ring finger, who is a married women and who is single in NYC.  I've worked as a salesman in New York for two decades, and almost all of my buyers are women 25-50, and I can tell their marital status within ten seconds.  It's not hard, once you notice the cues...)

So why the gender difference?  Are men sympathetic to another guy, who may be "just like them" in many respects - working, athletic, wearing a boot that can be perceived as the result of a sports-related injury?  Are they used to being chivalrous, and are these acts of kindness reflex rather than thought out?  Or are men evolving into "better people" than women?

And what's up with single white females?  City-dwelling women who have passed 30 and have no prospects tend to give up a little bit inside and fill their lives with other pursuits - and the city offers a myriad of them from career to dinners to plays to arts to shopping to the gym.  It is usually the first two and last of the list which single New York women seem to avail themselves to - the gym is a 4-7x/wk routine in their lives, and most of them are thin and fairly physical fit (Thomas Wolfe referred to them as "social X-rays").  And most of their non-gym downtime (after a psychotic day at the office) is spent with similar friends over dinner in one of a thousand New York restaurants, where they all talk about how they can't believe that guys won't marry them, or even ask them out.  "They're intimidated by women of accomplishment", they'll sniff...

Maybe. First, lest I come off as misogynist, let me tell you that I love women, and have more "girl (space) friends" than any guys I know ("why do you need girl - friends?", my buds have asked me, "if you have a girlfriend?"  Because I love girls...).

Maybe.  But maybe you ladies are single because you have become so self-absorbed and self centered, so concerned about yourself and your own needs in the emotional vacuum that NYC can be, that you have forgotten about the needs of everyone around you, including the guy on crutches whom you looked at blankly before letting go of the door that slammed in their face (and about that blank look....like the woman whole stole my cab.  Sneer at me with triumphant victory, fine.  You beat a crippled guy, good for you.  But the blank look, an attempt to wipe my presence out of  their consciousness, or trying to negate their own nastiness out of existence, is almost scary). Maybe men are looking for someone who will care for them as much as they will care for you.  And if that's the case....why in the world would they touch you with a ten-foot pole, skinny body or not?

And the younger single ladies - they haven't a clue.  Maybe a lifetime of having courtesies done for them has made them oblivious to the need to extend courtesies to others as well.  But they are morally helpless and socially hopeless.  They are the next generation of the unmarried 30+ that will knock me down to get on a subway train before the doors close.

Fascinating stuff.  And I hope I don't sound too angry here (I'm not), I'm just...stunned, and a bit appalled.  I thought women were supposed to be the sensitive and nurturing ones...and it turns out that that's a man's job, as well.

God, I can't wait to get better.

 Moralizing on one leg sucks.

Jay Carney: A Bad Liar, Or Just A Clueless Bitch?

Obama's latest offensive in his personal war against Benjamin Netanyahu had - like all sneak attacks -some serious collateral damage.

In this case, it was the credibility of his press secretary, Jay Carney. The PJ Tatler reports on the mess Carney now finds himself sitting in:

White House reporters today feel burned by Carney’s earlier absolute denial that the president would call for Israel to withdraw to pre-1967 borders.

Two days before the speech Carney rejected an Israeli press report alleging the president would call for an Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders. He flatly told White House reporters the news account, reported by Pajamas Media was “completely false.” But by the end of the yesterday’s speech, it was clear that what was deceptive was Carney’s denial.

As today’s Politico noted, the new Obama policy “surprised reporters.” The incident raises questions about Carney’s credibility and his “insider” status at White House. Was Carney lying or, more benevolently, was he “out of the loop?”

I actually believe Carney is the victim here; no doubt Obama wanted minimal leakage of what he knew would be a controversial plan, and wanted to make sure it was a surprise to his true adversary, Mr. Netanyahu.

Now Carney has to come clean about being out of the loop, or be seen as a liar by the White House press corps, which will lead to more rumor and innuendo being reported as fact by a reporters who do not want to made to look foolish by buying into "official denials".

So besides crippling his press secretary, Obama's attempt to reset the peace talks at the 1967 borders was a complete success, right?

Ah, no. Once again, Barack was bitch-slapped by the Israeli prime minister, who - unlike his American counterpart - is intelligent,realistic, and actually understands a bit of world history. "Bibi bops Bam" was the headline of the New York Post editorial today, but apparently Benny Avni catches the proper tone:

...after the two men spent much more time behind closed doors than previously planned -- 1½ hours, mostly one-on-one -- Netanyahu emerged to face the TV cameras acting like a university professor lecturing a bad student about the difference between "wishes" and the real world.

And via The Corner:

None of what Netanyahu said was new, but what was striking was the way in which he felt the need to provide this kind of a history lesson when discussing Israel’s situation with an American president. After 60-plus years of friendship between the two countries, one would think that we were past that point. Obama’s speech yesterday evidently showed Bibi that with this president, he feels the need to return to square one.

So what did Obama's latest foray into foreign affairs result in? A less secure Israel, strained relations with a key ally, the empowerment of a terrorist government, the ruination of a press secretary, and the exposure of the president's ignorance of world history and international affairs.  Not to mention that, once again, he was bested by Bibi.

Other than that, though, it was a great speech....

The Few Arabs Who Paid Attention Thought Obama's Speech Sucked

While the primary focus of Obama's speech was his attempt to de-legitimize the boundaries of Israel (much as he has done with America's, actually) I thought the Arab reaction was quite noteworthy as well:

“I don’t think this is going to fix his image. He should have said something from the very beginning, but we’ve been waiting,” said Fares Braizat of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Qatar.

“Most people have realized that what the U.S. does or does not do is no longer important because people took matters into their own hands and decided their own future,” he said. “So why should people care what he says? America is no longer an issue.”

It might not have helped that Obama chose to deliver his speech on a Thursday evening, the beginning of the weekend for most of the Arab world, when almost everyone goes out.

So this is "smart diplomacy", I suppose. Alienate the very people you assured us you would be easily able to reach out to (hey - the guy's middle name is "Hussein"! What other proof is needed?) with a hypocritical half-hearted speech when the bulk of your intended audience was out partying (or a reasonable Arab facsimile thereof).

Yet more embarrassment for Obama as the "Assad as reformer" meme came out again:

“The Syrian people have shown their courage in demanding a transition to democracy,” Obama said. “President Assad now has a choice: He can lead that transition, or get out of the way...."

“But I wonder,” Wissam Tarif asked. “Does Obama really believe Bashar is capable of leading reform? We have not seen in the past eight weeks a president who is willing to reform."

No, actually, he just went ahead and killed more people almost immediately after the speech. Seems like the only two people stupid enough to believe that the scorpion will not sting are Obama and Hillary Clinton. Even the frog, alas for him, knows better.

What kind of lasting impression did the Obama speech leave?

The impression was created of a superpower attempting to reconcile its strategic interests with its values and not entirely certain how to get it right, said Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar.

And the region didn’t seem convinced that the United States would get it right.

Not with Obama at the helm. In thus case, it seems your average Arab man (or woman) on the street has more of a clue than our President. Seems like they are making a determined effort to ignore him, as most Americans have.

I fear, however, that in the bowels of the Hamas/Fatah underground headquarters, there are some folks who take him very seriously indeed. And they are capable of mass murder on a horrendous scale...


UPDATE:  More negative reaction to Obama's speech from the "Arab Street" at the New York Times:

“Everybody still has it in the back of their minds how America flip-flopped in their position toward these Arab revolutions,” said Amr Jarrad, 28, a banker in Amman, Jordan, recalling when the White House at first appeared to stand by its ally, Hosni Mubarak, during the Egyptian uprising. “If you were so good in supporting autocratic regime, why can’t you be so good in telling them to leave?”

....Many said Mr. Obama seemed most willing to support democratic revolts after the fact.

“They wait to see who wins and then support them,” said Ahmed Maher, 30, a civil engineer and an architect of the Egyptian uprising as coordinator of the liberal April 6 Youth Movement.

Obama vs. Netanyahu: This Time (Like Last Time), It's Personal

How much of Barack Obama's increasingly insane policies towards Israel are rooted in a personal dislike of his ideological antipode, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu?  The call for Israel to return to pre-1967 borders was one he knew would be immediately rejected by Bibi, while simultaneously giving the Palestinians the football on the Israeli ten-yard line, leaving little to no negotiating room for the Jewish State.

To Obama, solving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict would be proof-positive of both his personal greatness as well as a affirmation of his worldview.  But his method - Chicago-style thug politics - were not going to work on the Israelis, who face death every time they pay bus fare.
Remember the tactics?

Obama Fails To Force Netanyahu To Crawl...

....Obama's policy vis-a-vis Israel is the greatest Audacity yet. Barack Hussein Obama, a Muslim/not Muslim, is hoping to succeed where mullahs, Middle East dictators, terrorist Chairman, and Kings, Princes, and madman have failed.

He believes he can bring Israel to her knees before him.

He tried, earlier this week:

The Israeli prime minister arrived at the White House on Tuesday evening brimming with confidence that the worst of the crisis in his country's relationship with the United States was over.

But Mr Obama was less inclined to be so conciliatory. He immediately presented Mr Netanyahu with a list of 13 demands designed both to the end the feud with his administration and to build Palestinian confidence ahead of the resumption of peace talks. Key among those demands was a previously-made call to halt all new settlement construction in east Jerusalem.

When the Israeli prime minister stalled, Mr Obama rose from his seat declaring: "I'm going to the residential wing to have dinner with Michelle and the girls."

As he left, Mr Netanyahu was told to consider the error of his ways. "I'm still around," Mr Obama is quoted by Israel's Yediot Ahronot newspaper as having said. "Let me know if there is anything new"

There wasn't.  So Obama refused to pose for photos with Bibi.  Big man, our president.

So what has happened since?  Settlements have continued, the Palestinians - having felt that they were thrown under a bus by Obama, having made demands he couldn't enforce -  have now gone all-in on terrorism, and Obama has rewarded them.  Is it all just spittle in the face of Benjamin Netanyahu?  Just more of Obama "punishing his enemies"? A childish act of frustration by a president who can't get his way?

Barack Obama

Funny, I wrote last month about the Barack v. Bibi brawl, calling it a "mismatch" a la Mike Tyson vs. Glass Joe.  Seems like Obama is still itching for payback any way he can get it, even if it means threatening the national security of the entire nation of Israel.

One might call it an "audacious gamble" by Obama, especially with Netanyahu coming to town next week to address Congress and Jewish supporters.  To me, it smells like more of the same amateur, peevish behavior from the most immature president since either Clinton or JKF.

Does Obama believe this time, unlike last time, he can force Bibi to crawl?  Unlikely.  Expect Netanyahu to coolly reject Obama's demands, again, and take his case to a supportive Congress and American people.  And once again, he will emerge victorious, further enraging the bitch-in-Chief, and perhaps leading him to contemplate a first-strike on behalf of the poor, oppressed, Palestinian people.

But what about that fat Jewish cash?  Ah, that's a subject for another post...

At the Current moment, Al Gore is wedded to Keith Olbermann. For better or worse...

Keith "Countdown" Olbermann was on Letterman Wednesday evening, talking about his departure from MSNBC and his new gig at Current.  This line jumps out:

Olbermann said former Vice President Al Gore contacted him directly about Current TV, which seemed to fit the template he desired.

You know what? I believe him.  Is Olbermann really going to randomly call the former VP up and beg for a job, or is it more likely that an avid fan like Gore would want to jump on a property like Countdown Keith to help his own struggling (and that's me being polite) cable channel?

Gore should look to Jimmy Carter.  Not for inspiration, God forbid, but as a cautionary tale.  The ex-prez is an international laughingstock, now left holding on as a member of a self-involved, self-anointed group of similar vagabonds named The Elders, who are routinely snubbed  by world leaders from North Korea to Washington D.C. in their pathetic attempts to prove their names still have value  Dismissed by all save cranks and haters, Jimmy Carter's poisonous post-presidential travails have left no possibility of a positive re-assessment of his disastrous presidency at some (very) distant date in the future.

Gore is heading down the same road.  Shilling for "Global Warming", now "Climate Change", he ignores pointed challenges about his personal hypocrisy and refuses to debate honest opponents of his views.  Chugging around the world carrying a slide projector and an ever-expanding waistline, Gore too is becoming less of a serious national figure, and more of a serious national joke.

Now he has tied himself to Keith Olbermann, and his judgement will be inexorably bound to a man who has made such well-thought out statements as:

"[The Tea Party-backed Republicans are] a group of unqualified, unstable individuals who will do what they are told, in exchange for money and power, and march this nation as far backward as they can get, backward to Jim Crow, or backward to the breadlines of the '30s, or backward to hanging union organizers, or backward to the trusts and the robber barons...
— MSNBC's Keith Olbermann in a 21-minute "Special Comment" on Countdown, October 27, 2010.

"In Scott Brown, we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees. In any other time in our history, this man would have been laughed off the stage as unqualified and a disaster in the making by the most conservative of conservatives.”

— MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Countdown, January 18, 2010, the night before Massachusetts’ special election.





“So, besides urinating on the Constitution and the rights and freedoms every American soldier has ever fought to win and protect, the Bush administration has now decided that when its victims have actually served their sentences, doled out under its own medieval, quote, ‘justice,’ unquote, system, it still might not choose to set them free....
— MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, August 7, 2008 Countdown.

"Good evening. A President who lied us into a war and, in so doing, needlessly killed 3,584 of our family and friends and neighbors; a President whose administration initially tried to destroy the first man to nail that lie; a President whose henchmen then ruined the career of the intelligence asset that was his wife when intelligence assets were never more essential to the viability of the Republic; a President like that has tonight freed from the prospect of prison the only man ever to come to trial for one of the component felonies in what may be the greatest crime of this young century."
— Keith Olbermann on Bush commuting Lewis Libby's prison sentence, MSNBC's Countdown, July 2, 2007.

"A past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back....The nation’s marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit....
— Keith Olbermann referring to Bill Clinton’s interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, MSNBC’s Countdown, September 25, 2006.


This, Al Gore, is your new public face.  Let's hope Countdown Keith doesn't urinate on it....

The Boston Herald is banned: How the rest of the media should react

Long and short of it:  The Boston Herald's reporter was banned from the White House press pool because the thin-skinned whiny bitch in the Oval Office didn't like to read bad things about himself.  Boston.com reports the following message, sent to the Herald in response to their inquiry, by White House press aide Matt Lehrich:

I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters.

The Herald doth protest too much, but hey, if the president hands you a cudgel, why not swing it?  More importantly, Michael Graham, writing at the Herald, recites a long laundry list of offenses agaisn the First Amendment and the people's right to know by the most transparent administration evah:

Remember the White House’s self-declared “War On Fox News?” Upset by unfavorable coverage, they declared that Fox was “not a legitimate news organization,” tried to get a Fox reporter banned from a press pool interview and announced no more Obama interviews for the rest of the year. Team Obama only backed down when other media outlets objected.

Last month the White House kicked San Francisco Chronicle reporter Carla Marinucci out of the local press pool for recording protesters at an Obama event. And according to Chronicle editor at large Phil Bronstein, “more than a few journalists familiar with this story are aware of some implied threats from the White House of additional and wider punishment if Carla’s spanking became public.”

Then there was the Orlando Sentinel reporter stuck in a closet during a Joe Biden fundraiser by White House hacks. “Every time I . . . stepped out to see what was going on a staffer told me I couldn’t come out yet,” Scott Powers reported.

And now it’s the Herald...

On occasion, the media has banded together - as in the numerous early attempts Obama made to ice FOX news out of White House coverage - and demanded fair and equal treatment for all, lest the president get none.  It's time again for them to grow a pair, and take on the president, regardless of their affinity for his ideology.   At the next presser, pepper Jay Carney with questions about the ban of the Herald.  Couch questions to Carney and Obama in more aggressive, challenging tones.  Show him that their is a price to be paid for forcing the media to be pliant to his demands.

He cannot ban everyone.  Or, should he take that course, leave him to rubbing noses with Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, and see how that helps his approval ratings.  He'll fold - he needs the media more than they need him.

I realize the media is in love, but at what point does an battered and abused wife leave?

Graham claims the media has already shown their true colors:

 If a single major-paper reporter had been booted from a Bush event over editorial policy, journalists would have organized a hunger strike. But Obama does all this — and more — and liberals are silent. Why?

Because Barack Obama is the Nixon the left always wanted.

Last chance, guys, to show that you have any morals, and that you're not just militant Leftists who will support suppression when it suits your ideological needs.  Last chance to be taken seriously.  Final shot at saving your business model.  Time to fight, or die.

What path will you choose?

"Only Israel", Indeed...

..in which pianist and vocalist Yedida Freilich poses a rhetorical "question", and answers it around the 2:15 mark.

Hamas does not need Ydida's explanation - they know it, of course - which is why they feel free to fire rockets aimed at civilian targets with little fear of retaliation.

I would love to hear our president answer "Only Israel". Of course, he would deny its central thesis, while enforcing its reality. Ideologues like Barack Obama need to maintain a large amount of cognitive dissonance to get through the day without a mental breakdown.

Listen, and answer for yourself:

Sacre Bleu! French Get Sniffy Over Strauss-Kahn's "Rape / Conspiracy".

The French, so confused for the past two years seeing America led by a president who thinks almost exactly like they do, are taking their anti-Americanism out of the closet with glee as they have found reason to hate us anew.  And it's with good reason: We've shown that their fabled "romantics" can also be rapists, and that their precious socialism is a sham.

I guess they do "justice" differently in France.  The New York Post reports:
   

Former French Justice Minister Elisabeth Guigou decried published US photos of Strauss-Kahn being led from an East Harlem precinct in handcuffs Sunday night.

"I found this picture [telling of the American system's] brutality, violence [and] cruelty . . . and I am happy that we do not have the same legal system," Guigou told France Info radio.

What about Strauss-Kahn's brutality, violence, and cruelty towards his maid?  On that, apparently, Guigou had no comment.

And speaking of the maid, famed French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy voices his outrage over the very notion of the proletariat bringing down the powerful.  And if that inversion of the tenets of socialism wasn't funny enough, he throws in some bizarre conspiracy elements as well:

 I do not know—but, on the other hand, it would be nice to know, and without delay—how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending a “cleaning brigade” of two people, into the room of one of the most closely watched figures on the planet.
And I do not want to enter into considerations of dime-store psychology that claims to penetrate the mind of the subject, observing, for example, that the number of the room (2806) corresponds to the date of the opening of the Socialist Party primaries in France (06.28), in which he is the uncontested favorite...

This morning, I hold it against the American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other.

And Lord forbid that a politician be forced to obey the same laws as the proletariat, and for shame on the mere "chambermaid" for not being willing to ease the sexual frustrations of those who are quite clearly more important individuals than they are.  Because, as Levy explains, there are more important things than rape:

He was arrested just hours before the meeting during which he would face a more orthodox German chancellor to plead the cause of a country, Greece, that he believed could be brought back to order without being brought to its knees. His defeat would also be that of this great cause. It would be a disaster for this entire part of Europe and of the world, because the IMF, under his leadership and for the first time in its history, did not intend to sell out to the superior interests of Finance. And that would really be a dreadful sign.

If only the maid would have just laid back and taken it, Levy implies, socialism could have won.

If this is the state of French intellectualism and philosophy, well...it explains much about the moral state of France.

And while more French play at conspiracies against Strauss-Kahn (via the NYP):

Another Strauss-Kahn defender questioned whether the suspect is the victim of a set-up orchestrated by his No. 1 political enemy, French President Nicola Sarkozy.
Jean-Christophe Cambadelis, a French Socialist legislator, questioned US authorities' claims....

...the real storyline is the privilege of power.  French writer Tristane Banon (below), assaulted by Strauss-Kahn in 2002 during an interview, had gone public but did not file a complaint because - well, again, a disgusting French/Socialist morality play:

Her mother, Anne Mansouret, a Socialist Party official, persuaded her at the time not to file suit against a man who was close to her family and to their politics, Ms. Mansouret conceded in a television interview on Monday.

Suggesting that she probably was in error, Ms. Mansouret recounted the conversation this way: “Listen, you know, if he had raped you, I wouldn’t have any hesitation, but that wasn’t the case. He sexually assaulted you, there wasn’t any rape per se; so until the end of your life, you’re going to have on your résumé, you know, Tristane Banon is the girl who ... ’ ”

Ms. Banon...said she contacted a lawyer but never filed a complaint because “I didn’t wish to be the girl who had a problem with a politician for the rest of my life.”

So what is Socialism?  $3,000 hotel rooms and 1st class cabins for the leadership, and rape and humiliation for the "people".  A mother allows her own daughter to be molested, and warns her to keep her mouth shut for the good of the party and for fear of political retribution.

And the French champion this system.  So, incidentally, does the American Left.  And if you think they are not capable of the same actions, well. look at Bill Clinton.  Or what their despicable rank-and-file has done to Sarah Palin, Nikki Haley, Christine O'Donnell....

They're just licking their chops to go wild, French-Socialist style...

Obama 2012: Like Running Against Hugo Chavez

I was reading this piece in the Washington Post about Venezuela's Henrique Capriles, who will be running for president against proto-fascist Hugo Chavez. And I noticed how similar some of his challenges are to those that the anointed Republican will face as he stares down Barack Obama, the state-run media, and the left-wing hate machine:

Dirty politics is an unfortunate part of democratic politics.  We could ignore it . . . if that was all that Henrique Capriles had to worry about. But it isn’t. The bigger worry is whether he will even be allowed to stand for office.

Remember Jack Ryan, Obama's opponent in the 2004 Senatorial campaign? He was forced to withdraw after the Chicago Tribune and other media outlets sued (five years after the fact) to have his divorce records unsealed in an unprecedented request. Barack Obama eventually called for Ryan's divorce papers not to be injected into the race, but did not restrain his backers, who were furiously fighting for their release (sound familiar?). Once unsealed, allegations of Ryan's sordid sexual conduct (with his wife, mind you) were enough to force him to withdraw, allowing Barack Obama to run unopposed. Just as Chavez likes to.

The danger for Capriles is that he is clearly one of the more formidable challengers for President Chavez. (Hence, the need to try to smear him so quickly.) Despite the central government’s attempts to hamstring his ability to administer the state of Miranda, Capriles still polls extremely well, and his numbers place him well above other opposition candidates.

Try running Texas these days, where Obama cannot even make the effort to look out of his plane's window at the wildfires burning through the state (while refusing all requests for emergency aid). Or New Jersey, where Obama is now demanding that Chris Christie return $217M spent by Jon Corzine on a tunnel to nowhere. Or ask Nikki Haley about how the administration is refusing to allow Boeing to create over 1,000 jobs in her state, instead demanding that any new facilities be built in a "blue state".  Talk about "hamstrung..."

After his first year as governor, I spoke with Capriles about the risks of running for office against Chavez. We met at a rally he held a couple hours outside of Caracas. “It’s good to have many leaders,” he told me, “because he will annihilate that one leader.”

True, that.  Although the current Republican field looks weak, thank heavens for their deep bench. Ryan, Christie, Rubio, Walker, Perry, Haley, Bachman...Obama and his orcs may be able to take a few of them down with smears and cut-blocks, but he cannot outlast their onslaught of better ideas presented by reasonable candidates.
A final thought on Capriles:

...he has no illusions. Trying to defeat an authoritarian leader at the ballot box is never easy, if they even let you run at all.

Which may be why the chaff (Trump, Huckabee) have fallen off quickly, leaving only the mad (Gingrich, Ron Paul) jostling to be the first to get impaled by the enemy's swords, while the brave (see above) lay their plans and sharpen their weapons in anticipation of the great battle that lies ahead...

             Soul brothers, indeed...

Newt Gingrich: A Poll-Chasing, Flip-Flopping Philanderer...

Jeez, this guy is making steam come out of my ears, Obama-style.  Yesterday I eviscerated him for taking a shot at Paul Ryan's knees (the "chop-block", as it is known in football, is considered the dirtiest of plays in the NFL, and assuming the victim can arise, he will usually do so with fists clenched.  Who likes to be "hit below the knees while otherwise engaged?") by calling his budget reforms "radical", what I didn't know is that just a few short weeks ago, Gingrich stated he would have voted for the Ryan plan:

Gingrich's disavowal of Ryan's Medicare reform comes just a few weeks after he told Time's Jay Newton-Small that he would have voted for it:

The former speaker sang Ryan’s praises for being a “brave” “man of ideas,” like Gingrich himself.

 “But would you have voted for Ryan’s plan?” I pressed.

 “Sure,” Gingrich replied.

 “Do you think it would actually save the health care system?”

 “No, I think it’s the first step,” Gingrich said. “You need an entirely new set of solutions.”

So he would have voted for it before he would have voted against it.  And apparently, according the above-linked piece, Gingrich's spokespeople are now claiming that he meant the Ryan plan was only "politically" radical, and thus unworkable. Flip, then flop, then...flop.

Yesterday, I compared Newt with Barack Obama, today, I wonder if John Kerry might be the more apropos analogy.  Especially since Gingrich, like Kerry, has been all over the place on foreign policy.  George Will calls him out:

On the 7th of March he said, 'Let’s go get Qaddafi.' On the 23rd of he says, 'I never favored intervention.' He did it on television. … He’s one of these people who says that to understand Barack Obama you need to understand his 'Kenyan anti-colonial mentality.' This is just not a serious candidate."



And remember Dede Scozzafava? Gingrich fully backed the liberal "Republican" in the 2009 upstate New York congressional race, despite a grassroots uprising of support for Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman.  He supported her quite vocally, until she dropped out of the race and endorsed the Democratic candidate. Newt's excuse? "She had some positions that were far more radical than I realized at the time".

So Ryan is a "radical social engineer", while Scozzafava, who voted for same-sex marriage in the New York State Assembly, received an award from a Planned Parenthood, supported "card check" union legislation, federal funding for abortion, Obama's 2009 stimulus package, and refused to rule out support for health care reform that included a "public option", is not a radical.  Until she starts supporting Democrats.

And of course, there's cap and trade.  Gingrich supported this legislation in 2007 when it seemed inevitable, even running ads together with Nancy Pelosi, perhaps the most liberal Speaker in House history. He flipped in 2009, when historical inevitability seemed to be going in the opposite direction, but this picture should live for eternity, and doom Newt the way Charlie Christ was cursed forevermore by his heartfelt embrace of Barack Obama:

The final flip-flop: Three wives and counting.  "Till death do us part" is a meaningless phrase to Flip Gingrich...

Yesterday I wondered at Gingrich's motivation:

Is Newt tearing Ryan down, consciously or otherwise,in order to retain his own unique legacy?

Newt reminds me a bit of Barack Obama - infatuated by his own intelligence, flattered by his sycophants, and utterly convinced that he is the smartest man in the room.

Looking at the flip-flops, I wonder if Newt is simply attempting to stay in the spotlight by chasing the front-running ideas amongst the liberal elite: "Cap and Trade" is a must, Ryan is radical while Dede Scozzafava isn't, bomb Libya/don't bomb Libya...it seems as if where ever the conventional wisdom is at the moment, Newt Gingrich is there, like a dog chasing a car, or his own tail. All this in a year when the "CW" has been turned completely on its head...

Hardly an intellectual. Hardly a leader. And completely unprincipled, except when it comes to inflating his own pathetic ego.

I'd say he reminds me of Obama, but at least the president believes in certain things, wrong though they may be. Newt believes in nothing, except Newt.

Get him off the national stage. Stat.

Newt Enters The Race With Guns Blazing...At His Feet.

Kind of surprising that Newt Gingrich would roll out his presidential campaign by flaunting Reagan's 11th commandment, and directing his opening salvo at Paul Ryan and his budget plan.

So I guess Newt's got a better one? Ah, no:

Newt Gingrich’s appearance on “Meet the Press” today could leave some wondering which party’s nomination he is running for. The former speaker had some harsh words for Paul Ryan’s (and by extension, nearly every House Republican’s) plan to reform Medicare, calling it “radical.”

“I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering,” he said when asked about Ryan’s plan to transition to a “premium support” model for Medicare. “I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.”

As far as an alternative, Gingrich trotted out the same appeal employed by Obama/Reid/Pelosi — for a “national conversation” on how to “improve” Medicare, and promised to eliminate ‘waste, fraud and abuse,’ etc.

....In another surprising move, Gingrich also reiterated his previous support for a “variation of the individual mandate” for health care. “I believe all of us — and this is going to be a big debate — I believe all of us have a responsibility to help pay for health care,” he said...

The only word missing from that sentence is "collectively, as in "I believe all of us have a responsibility to collectively help pay for health care”.

Just because you didn't say it, Newt, doesn't mean I didn't hear it.

Why go after Paul Ryan, the hottest star in the party, and arguably the sharpest knife in the Congressional drawer? It's not as if he's running for president (yet). Perhaps Newt, a man known for his vanity (or perhaps insecurity? This article by John Podhoretz is quite revealing) sees in Ryan a young version of himself, the rare Congressman who becomes a national figure and drives the national debate. Is Newt tearing Ryan down, consciously or otherwise,in order to retain his own unique legacy?

Newt reminds me a bit of Barack Obama - infatuated by his own intelligence, flattered by his sycophants, and utterly convinced that he is the smartest man in the room.  And a right-wing version of Barack Obama is the last thing we need.  Eight years of demagoguery from alternating sides of the pendulum will be enough to send this nation into revolt.

Of course, their is another rationale for Newt's actions - from the comments at the above link:

Confirms my suspicion that newtered man isn't serious about winning the GOP nod, he just wants to ad "former presidential candidate" to his resume so he can up his speaking fee and get on more talk shows.

Alas, if true. But these days I won't discount anything.

And speaking for myself - I wouldn't vote for Newt Gingrich for dog-catcher.  Any man who demands a divorce from his wife while she lies in a hospital bed recovering from cancer surgery is one heartless son of a bitch who thinks of nobody or nothing save for himself and his own wants and desires.

Which explains a lot of the above, actually...as well as the below:

Dominique Strauss-Kahn: Socialism as Rape

So it turns out the head of the IMF, and the presumed presidential candidate of the French Socialist Party, is a rapist:

The French political bigshot who heads the International Monetary Fund was arrested for allegedly sodomizing a Manhattan hotel maid yesterday -- hauled off an Air France flight just moments before takeoff from Kennedy Airport, police sources said.

Three Port Authority detectives pulled Dominique Strauss-Kahn from the plane's first-class cabin just two minutes before it was due to depart for Paris, according to the police sources

The trouble began at around 1 p.m. yesterday when a 32-year-old housekeeper entered Strauss-Kahn's $3,000-a-night suite at the luxury Sofitel on West 44th Street -- apparently unaware he was still inside.

The married Strauss-Kahn was in the bathroom, and emerged naked, chased her down a hallway and pulled her into a bedroom, where "he jumps her," a source said.

"She pulled away from him and he dragged her down a hallway into the bathroom where he engaged in a criminal sexual act, according to her account to detectives," Browne said. "He tried to lock her into the hotel room."


A predator, preying on, and imprisoning the very people - a poor, menial laborer, likely a 3rd-world immigrant - that the dictates of socialism would demand he protect.  All while staying in rooms costing $3K/night and flying continent to continent first class.

Ayn Rand got it right, of course:

When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature...No human rights can exist without property rights.  To deny property rights means to turn men into property owned by the state. Whoever claims the “right” to “redistribute” the wealth produced by others is claiming the “right” to treat human beings as chattel.

Not unlike Strauss-Kahn, all right.  Rand adds the following:

No man of authentic benevolence could evade or ignore so great a horror on so vast a scale.

Socialism is not a movement of the people. It is a movement of the intellectuals, originated, led and controlled by the intellectuals, carried by them out of their stuffy ivory towers into those bloody fields of practice where they unite with their allies and executors: the thugs.

...and share in the spoils, like the body of Strauss-Kahn's unfortunate maid. Which apparently he had more right to than she did.

Their is no separation from the rapist and his socialism - this heinous act was an outgrowth of a political philosophy, of that I have no doubt.

Remember that, the next time you hear the Democrats talk about "shared sacrifice", or "shared prosperity", or "The People's" anything.  You are the ones being sacrificed to their desires, and the prosperity will be theirs, for they are truly "The People".

Just ask Dominique Strauss-Kahn....

The Boeing / NLRB Fiasco: Precedent in New York

You've read about it, I'm sure:

In what may be the strongest signal yet of the new pro-labor orientation of the National Labor Relations Board under President Obama, the agency filed a complaint Wednesday seeking to force Boeing to bring an airplane production line back to its unionized facilities in Washington State instead of moving the work to a nonunion plant in South Carolina.

It is highly unusual for the federal government to seek to reverse a corporate decision as important as the location of plant....

Yeah, well, "highly unusual" is a phrase that could describe much of what has gone on under the Obama Administration, although certainly under a Republican administration it would be called "fascist".

But my point is that this decision will cost the state of South Carolina over 1,000 desperately needed jobs in a shaky economy.  And I am willing to bet that Boeing will not submit to the NLRB's thuggery and move the work back to Washington and add 1,000 jobs there.

So why would the Obama Administration kill 1,000 blue-collar, well-paying jobs?  There's precedent, and on a somewhat larget scale.  Let's go to the Bronx, and check out the economics of: Borough President Ruben Diaz (D):

A developer offered to build a $300 million mall at the Kingsbridge Armory, using $50 million in tax subsidies, but balked at Diaz's demand that all future jobs there pay $10 an hour or more, which would have made the project uneconomical. So Diaz got council members to nix the project. And goodbye 2,200 jobs.

Diaz, who Gov.-elect Cuomo tapped for his transition team yesterday, was delighted that folks would go jobless, even as unemployment in The Bronx was 13.1 percent. "The notion that any job is better than no job no longer applies," he boasted.

Read that last line again, and you get to the heart of the philosophy that lies within the bosom of the NLRB:  Better no jobs than 1,000 non-union jobs.

Of course, the unemployed would most heartily disagree, for most of them, unlike stalwart liberals, see receiving public assistance as a badge of shame, rather than a symbol of honor.

But the Democrats are not working for their constituents, or the poor, or for the good of the nation.  Thanks to the NLRB, they've been exposed.

The wicked may refuse to serve God's will, but unwittingly, they wind up doing so anyway...

"Be Wery Wery Quiet! We're Drilling For Oil! Hahahahaha..."

For God's sake, man, at least have the courage of your own convictions!

Wait - convictions? What the hell am I talking about?

U.S. President Barack Obama, under pressure from Republicans and the public to bring down gasoline prices, announced new measures on Saturday to expand domestic oil production in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico....

"I am directing the Department of Interior to conduct annual lease sales in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve, while respecting sensitive areas, and to speed up the evaluation of oil and gas resources in the mid and south Atlantic," Obama said in the address.

"I believe that we should expand oil production in America - even as we increase safety and environmental standards."
 
Government lease sales give energy companies the chance to rent offshore or onshore federal tracts, which can be drilled for oil or natural gas. Companies with the highest bids generally lease the tracts for 10 years.

Oh, is Obama in bind! As Reuters notes:

High fuel prices have dented Obama's ratings in opinion polls and threaten to dampen the economic recovery that is critical to his re-election in 2012.

And on the other hand, his base - and his administration - is filled with anti-drilling Luddites who howl with feigned outrage anytime black gold surges forth from a new hole in the earth.

What to do? Well, self-preservation above all, so Obama bows to reality and allows more drilling. With no fanfare. On a springtime Saturday. While his base is preoccupied with stalking the Koch brothers or some other productive enterprise. And meanwhile, when gas prices go down, he can claim all the credit in 2012, as opposed to having to admit to once again having borrowed Republican platform planks.

Or having to confess that once again he stole from the playbook of his frenemy, George W. Bush:

July 15, 2008: President Bush rescinds Executive Order banning offshore drilling.

Price of oil at close on July 14 — $145.18.
Price of oil at close on July 16 — $134.60.

Of course, let us never forget that Obama the ideologue might once again just be making a head-feint towards the center - again - in an effort to "prove" his opponent's theories do not work. Just ask Shell Oil, who got screwed out of $4 billion and quit its drilling plans when the EPA denied them a critical permit on the flimsiest of flimsies:

Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board to withhold critical air permits....

 The closest village to where Shell proposed to drill is Kaktovik, Alaska. It is one of the most remote places in the United States. According to the latest census, the population is 245 and nearly all of the residents are Alaska natives. The village, which is 1 square mile, sits right along the shores of the Beaufort Sea, 70 miles away from the proposed off-shore drill site.


The EPA’s appeals board ruled that Shell had not taken into consideration emissions from an ice-breaking vessel when calculating overall greenhouse gas emissions from the project.


Get that? A ship, operating between 70-100 miles away from a village of 245 people, is being used as a rationale by Obama's hand-picked flunkies for killing a multi-billion dollar project that would both create jobs and lower oil prices.

So what does Obama's declaration that he will support new lease sales for oil drilling mean, exactly?

Absolutely nothing. Like everything else that comes out of the man's mouth...

In Greenland, They Love Their Global Warming!

And why not? Hey - I would love to see palm trees lining 5th Avenue the way they do on Rodeo Drive myself.  So who would mind if a few thousands indigenous people finally escaped Arctic conditions to live a better, richer, healthier, more fulfilling life?

American liberals, that's who.  Because those folks in their offices in Washington DC and in their townhouses on Manhattan's Upper West Side know what's best for everyone, everywhere.

And is it surprising that the #1 busybody is Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton?
 Few places on Earth have seen starker changes in weather than this icebound island straddling the Arctic Circle. With that in mind, America’s top diplomat arrived here this week intent on calling attention to the perils of climate change.

The problem was that Greenlanders aren’t exactly complaining.

In fact, as Secretary of State of Hillary Rodham Clinton toured snow-covered fjords on Thursday, there were awkward reminders of Greenland’s embrace of the rise in temperatures that began two decades ago.  Rather than questioning global warming, many of this island’s 60,000 inhabitants seem to be racing to cash in.

The tiny capital of Nuuk is bracing for record numbers of visitors this year; theretreating sea ice means a longer tourist season and more cruise ships from the United States. Hunters are boasting of more and bigger caribou, and the annual cod migration is starting earlier and lasting longer.

In the far south, farmers are trying their hand at an exotic form of agriculture: growing vegetables.

“Before, the growing season was too short for vegetables,” said Noah Melgaard, a local journalist. “Now it is getting longer each year.”

But Hillary knows was best for the Greenlanders, like she knows what's best for everyone.  After all, she's too smart to be wrong, and if you ask her why the United States has moved so slowly on enacting job-killing global warming legislation, why, she'll be the first to tell you - in an easy to decipher code - it's not her fault, it's us dumb-as-dirt ordinary Americans who are the problem:

“It’s been challenging in our political system to take the kinds of actions that we know are dictated by the science and by what we see in front of our eyes,” Clinton said at a news conference.

What's in front of my eyes is the coldest spring I can remember, following the coldest winter I can remember.  Give me some of that global warming, baby, and while you're at it, feel free to entomb our esteemed Secretary of State in ice for a while.  Maybe she can then rise up to the challenge of seeing what is in front of everyone else's eyes but hers...

Herman Cain Debates Bill Clinton on Health Care Reform....

...circa 1993.

Note how smoothly the "brilliant" Bill Clinton conjours up numbers out of his head.  Note how firmly Herman Cain refutes his faulty mathematics.

See how easily Bill Clinton recommends, with a shrug of his shoulders, simply (and at least more honestly than the White House's current occupant) passing his rise in health care costs onto his customers, and making them foot the bill for HillaryCare.  See how patiently Herman Cain explains business economics to the President of the United States.

Then note how quickly Bill Clinton moves to end the conversation....

This guy would make mincemeat out of Obama:

Chris Christie Quotes "Animal House"....

...but the only one laughing is Barack Obama.  The laughter of relief when the Sword of Damocles is removed from above one's head, as Chris Christie reiterates what he has been saying all along.  Via Real Clear Politics (video at the link):

"No! My God, I'm not running for president. Everyone remain calm, all is well," Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) said at an event in Washington, D.C. today.

An appropriate response to our current chaos:

Medical Providers Stare In Disbelief At Obama's Proposals

From the AP headline, you would think it is the fault of the medical providers that yet another aspect of Obamacare is falling apart:

Obama plan for health care quality dealt a setback

But, being that the plan was...oh, I don't know, perhaps "insane" is the best word - maybe a more honest headline like "Obama plan deemed unworkable by experts" would have been more apt.  But honesty left the building about a decade ago, so this is what we're left with.

This, and the imminent destruction of the American health care system:

President Barack Obama's main idea for getting quality health care at less cost was in jeopardy Wednesday after key medical providers called his administration's initial blueprint so complex it's unworkable.


Just over a month ago, the administration released long-awaited draft regulations for "accountable care organizations," networks of doctors and hospitals that would collaborate to keep Medicare patients healthier and share in the savings with taxpayers. Obama's health care overhaul law envisioned quickly setting up hundreds of such networks around the county to lead a bottom-up reform of America's bloated [excuse me? a bit of editorializing, no? -ed] health care system.

But in an unusual [really? - ed.] rebuke, an umbrella group representing premier organizations such as the Mayo Clinic wrote the administration Wednesday saying that more than 90 percent of its members would not participate, because the rules as written are so onerous it would be nearly impossible for them to succeed.

"It's not just a simple tweak, it's a significant change that needs to be made," said Donald Fisher, president of the American Medical Group Association, which represents nearly 400 large medical groups around the country providing care for roughly 1 in 3 Americans. Its members, including the Cleveland Clinic, Intermountain Healthcare in Utah, and Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania, had been seen as the vanguard for accountable care.

The medical groups say they are worried they will be left holding the bag for losses, that the government has designed things so there is no easy way to tell which patients are part of the program, and that there's no reliable way to adjust for patients who are sicker and require closer follow-up and more expensive treatments


The regulations are "overly prescriptive, operationally burdensome, and the incentives are too difficult to achieve to make this voluntary program attractive," the medical group association said in its letter. One of the major problems seems to be that medical groups have little experience in managing insurance risk, and the administration blueprint rapidly exposes them to potential financial losses.
 
Fisher, the medical association head, said he does not think the administration will easily back off its approach, because on paper it saves the government money.
 
What a shock.  Barack's bureaucratic minions have come up with a plan with rules impossible to follow, and are designed to force the medical community to take losses that used to be the proviso of the federal government.  And despite the fact the plan is DOA, he's going to push it through, regardless of the danger that it could cause a complete collapse in a key component of the health care delivery system.
 
But that's not a bug to Barack, it's a feature.  Perhaps the feature.  From the outset he can claim the medical community is not "obeying the letter of the law", despite the fact that from the outset they are claiming they can't figure out what "the law" is. And once his onerous rules force medical providers into bankruptcy, he can then declare private medicine a failure, and take over the entire system himself.
 
Presto!  Socialized medicine before his second term is out.
 
And people say Obama isn't smart....

Barack Obama: A Street-Corner Lunatic?

Hey, I didn't say it...Center-leftie Mickey Kaus did!

Over at The Daily Caller, Kaus is a bit nonplussed at the President's recent firey rhetoric about immigration.  Some of his concerns:

1) Does he really think he’s going to sell us the same old amnesty/enforcement sandwich by saying it will “make America more competitive in the global economy”? That’s hard to believe.

2) ...at what point does talking obsessively (big speech, constant White House meetings, etc.) about an issue that has been defeated politically, is going nowhere, and is tangential to the main crises of the day begin to lose Obama the far more numerous votes of independents, non-Hispanic Dems and Hispanics who care about something other than amnesty?

3) Maybe the White House is just plodding ahead dumbly. “It does beg the question: ‘Where are we going with this?’” says Angela Kelly of the Center for American Progress in USA Today. When Obama loses CAP …

All of which leads Kaus to say of his beloved Barack Obama:

Like a man declaiming at nobody on the streetcorner, he looks a bit disoriented.

I think Mickey is being hard on my streetcorner lunatics; after all, at least their crazy theories and hate-filled rants are often the product of a diseased mind, and ususally have some grain of truth to them.  barack's, well...not so much.

Incidentally, doesn't the comparison of Barack Obama to a crazy homeless man make Mr. Kaus a...racist?

No, of course not.  But dare a conservative say the same exact thing...and...well, you know...

Michelle Obama Showing "Common" Cause With Racists...

...and is pissing off lots of folks in New Jersey while she's at it....

Apparently, it was the lovely Michelle who invited rapper Common to some sort of "arts event" at the White House, despite the facts he penned a love poem to a murder borne of racial hatred: 

 In question: the lyrics to “A Song for Assata,” about convicted cop-killer and former Black Panther Assata Shakur….The outrage centers on “A Song for Assata” lyrics like “Your power and pride is beautiful. May God bless your soul.” Shakur, formerly known as Joanne Chesimard, was convicted for the 1973 slaying of Trooper Werner Foerster on the New Jersey Turnpike. She escaped prison in 1979, and is living in asylum in Cuba.

Well, it's a black women who killed a white cop, so it's OK in Michelle's book.  Bonus points for her new home in Cuba, too!  So sing it, Common!

I'm thinkin' of assata, yeah.
Listen to my love, assata, yeah.
We're molded from the same mud, assata.
We share the same blood, assata, yeah.
Your power and pride, so beautiful...
May God bless your soul.
Your power and pride, so beautiful...
May God bless your soul.
Oooh.

So Common claims to have much in common with this vile murderess and escapee.  And while that doesn't bother Michelle, it is irking the hell out of the New Jersey State Troopers:

"The young people who read this stuff, hear this stuff, are getting a very dangerous and deadly message," said David Jones, president of the State Troopers Fraternal Association union.

The White House appearance comes during the same week that lawmen from across the nation, including Jones, make their annual trek to Washington to honor their fallen comrades at the National Law Enforcement Memorial.
Sal Maggio, a retired troop commander with the state police, said his colleagues still talk about Shakur and the million dollar bounty the FBI has put on her capture.
 "Hopefully someday she'll be caught," Maggio said in reaction to news of this invitation.

Not if Michelle Obama and her husband can help it.  What is it all those radicals chant?  "No justice, no...."