“I have only one loyalty,” he says, “and that’s to the immigrant community. "He" is Rep. Luis Gutierrez (Thug, Chicago). You and I pay his salary as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Another Obamic "community organizer".
I take him at his word. Which is why I wonder why this pizzle is making laws anywhere but the House of Immigrant Community...wherever and whatever that may be.
Seriously, why do we put up with this? Out of his own pie-hole, he tells us he has no loyalty to the U.S. Constitution...or to this nation as anything like a nation, and not an illegal migrant sponge. He has no business warming a seat in the House, voting on laws that he intends will take our nation down.
And he's hell-bent to see that the DREAM act, which is an important step in knocking down the few barriers to open borders that hang on threads now, is enacted by these lame ducks. When do we insist this stop?
Disarmed, stolid, compliant subjects are always the goal of the Collective. They like people passive, pliant, and powerless. That is a constant, and one that cannot be forgotten.
The Collective is showing a renewed drive to disarm Americans, and that is no joke...and no paranoid delusion.
You know, Chicago. That city where the mayor insists that private citizens have no right to effective self-defense, and where they are vigorously prosecuted for having a firearm. That city where nobody is ever shot to death, like in the other big gun-prohibition cities...Detroit, New York, and Washington, DC.
Speaking of Washington, DC, a Federal judge there essentially told the Supreme Court to screw itself recently in his lather to help reinstate a gun prohibition in that city. Precedent be damned...right along with the Constitution.
The New York Times has redoubled its editorial nonsense against gun ownership and those who advocate that citizens should have a right to have them and carry them. According to the voice of the Collective, such people are irresponsible, and a threat to "public safety". Hmm...
At the same time, we are being told by our Collectivist "leaders" that more and more of us will be pushed to use mass transportation for our needs...buses and the boondoggle bullet trains our taxes are being squandered upon. I think it may be fairly universal that pistol-carry permit holders are not allowed on city buses with their weapons now. It is impossible to imagine they will be MORE tolerated in mass transit in the future.
Our right to travel is being eroded. Our jealousy of our civil-liberties is being tested and desensitized. And the Collective has ALWAYS wanted us disarmed and totally dependent on an armed police force for our personal protection...and for "the public good".
We're thankful for a lot of things today, not the least of which is that this country has survived and thrived through far worse than the present crises - and is finally on course to derail these cretin in Washingtoon who are intent on removing our constitutional freedoms. While the Obama government model would certainly get you an A on a Poli Sci paper at Harvard or Columbia - it can not, does not and will never work in the real world - only on Ivy League blackboards. POTUS has repeatedly suggested that the European model is pretty spiffy, and we ought to move in that direction. Say there EU, "how's that Hope & Change workin' out for ya?"
Strike Outs:
Greek Tragedy (€150 Bil - $210 Bil) A nice reward for gross mismanagement, massive government entitlements, graft and corruption.
Ireland Bailout (€85 Bil - $119 Bil) Already a failure. Ireland is on the brink of collapse.
On Deck:
Portugal Bailout - Public sector debt, at about 80% of GDP, combined with a 9.3% budget deficit. Worse still is the private sector debt, at 240% of GDP. Foreign investors account for about 40% of all bank funding and concerns about the economy have already "shut Portuguese banks out of the international markets".
Spain - Right on the tail of Portugal, but 8 - 10 times larger.
France - Coming unglued over raising retirement from 60 to 62. The move will alleviate about 2% of their future debt crisis.
Belgium has not even had a sovereign government for the last 6 months! EU runs the show there.
Most disconcerting of all - none of the bailed countries have any realistic prospect of paying back these bailouts in the forseeable future.
The fundamental design of the EU was intended to eclipse the United States and ultimately lead the global economy. So why the epic fail of the EU where the U.S. has thrived through 200 years of crisis? Pretty simple really - The framers of the Constitution never intended Washington to amass the level of power it is now reaching (over-reaching) for - and the 10th ammendment further protects the states sovereignty.
Nigel Farage was a Conservative Party MP in Britain until Thatcher resigned. Now he chairs the Independent Party and is a Member of the European Parliament. His recent message to the EU is simply extraordinary. The spectacle of European nations submitting their sovereignty to a central body is bizarre enough in itself...
Who has the kahonas to stand before our Congress and say with conviction, "Just who the hell do you people think you are? You are very, very dangerous people indeed!" He'll be my man for the Whitehouse. Chris Christie is close I guess - but who else? Boehner? McConnel? Romney? Palin? Not even close.
Fisking a Eugene Robinson piece is too easy. I feel guilty...most of the time. "Fish in a barrel..." and all that. But Robinson and several other Collectivist "thinkers" are curiously comfy with the TSA police-state policies, and they invert both fact and logic...again. Some more...
Eugene starts from this premise; sure, the TSA policy is stinking bad, but the only alternative is the civil-liberty destroying monster of PROFILING. Those two choices he offers us, and nothing more.
Sure, the"don't touch my junk" guy touched a nerve. I spend enough time fighting my way through airport security lines to share his frustration at ever-changing procedures that seem capricious, intrusive and sometimes just bizarre. But what, specifically, is the alternative? [My emphasis]
Apparently, Eugene does not have time to read. Or think much. Why, for instance, were we not subjected to invasive pat-downs nearly a year ago, when the Fruit-Of-Kaboom bomber very successfully brought a bomb aboard a US bound flight? The TSA says that the full-body scan machines were not ready before recently, but TSA people with hands and gloves were in no short supply a year ago. Why now?
If Eugene could find the time, he would read excellent mind-expanding pieces like this, from Michael Totten, describing the Israeli method for airline security. I mean, I'm a practicing attorney, and I found the time. Eugene would have learned that RACIAL PROFILING is not what the Israelis do.
They also don't look for stuff primarily. They look for people. They are PROACTIVE, where our TSA is REACTIVE. We are looking for the stuff people used LAST TIME. Which is beyond stupid. The 9/11 murderers weaponized airliners using OUR REACTIVE POLICY in response to conventional hijacking. They used box-cutters, so all "sharp objects" are now verboten (including finger-nail files). Never mind that one can kill you at least as effectively with a common ball-point pen (which nobody cares about).
What the critics really mean is not that the TSA should let underwear bombers board planes. What they're saying is: Don't search me, and don't search my grandmother. Just search the potential terrorists.
Hmmm... That sounds SUPER REASONABLE to me. Eugene never offers any rationale why that might be a bad idea, except...
In other words, they want profiling. That's a seductive idea, I suppose, if you don't spend a lot of time worrying about civil liberties. But it couldn't possibly work. Our terrorist enemies may be evil, but they're not stupid.
"Profiling"...OMG, we could not have THAT. But some of us DO spend a lot of time worrying about civil liberties...and how the tension between them and public safety ALWAYS has to be carefully weighed. Eugene and Howard Kurtz, among other Collectivists, seem quite sanguine about the CIVIL LIBERTY invasions the TSA thinks are mandatory.
If we only search people who "look like terrorists," al-Qaeda will send people who don't fit the profile.
But nobody suggests that we do that, Eugene. Nobody. That would be as stupid as our TSA policy is right now. We have the INTELLIGENCE to deal PROACTIVELY with terrorist threats, and that would not entail stupid prohibitions on U.S. air travelers, mowing down civil liberties, OR worse than useless practices that expose us to another attack.
George S. Patton is reputed to have said something like, "Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man". By that Patton, a very astute student of military history, meant that in the modern battle-space, pouring resources into a fixed fortification was not efficient. Motivated people of considerable genius would find a way to defeat them, by-pass them, or even use them against you. (linked at http://directorblue.blogspot.com/...THANKS, DOUG!)
The TSA specializes in building fixed fortifications...which are all false front buildings like you would see on a movie set. They are not even real defenses. Not even for the LAST terrorist attack. Motivated people of considerable genius are working to defeat them, by-pass them, and even use them against us.
Like movie sets, they are part of an illusion. In this little melodrama, they are meant...supposedly...to give the flying public some semblance of security that the flying experience is safe. This is gilding the lily, and at enormous cost. Flying is safe...it is the safest mode of travel of which I know. One of the paradoxes of the police-state TSA practice is that it is forcing more Americans to drive, and more of us will be killed. And that will happen to no good end.
The cost/benefit ratio is completely askew. The smart play would be to do as the Israelis and many Europeans do. It is not "profiling"--it is way more than that.
The Israelis do not pull Middle-Eastern-looking men (or women or children) out of line...mostly because so many Israelis are Middle-Eastern-looking people. Duh. Rather, they use intelligence...in the several meanings of that term...to provide a telescopic process of evaluation applied to only certain passengers. Race has very little to do with it, just as race has very little to do with good police work on the streets of your town or city.
An Israeli-Arab passenger will receive hardly a look, where my passport might flag me as someone who needs special attention. That special attention does not (from all I can read) include making me strip down to my underwear. It DOES involve having to answer some questions, put by very sharp people who only do that a few times a day.
Most importantly, it works. It is not a sham. It fluidly responds to fluidly changing threats. It is only minimally invasive...and not at all invasive for the vast majority of passengers. It is, most importantly, not a stupid kabuki that kills the very people it pretends to protect.
During the 1980s and 1990s, people like Rudy Giuliani put the "broken windows theory" to work in some of America's most violent and crime-ridden cities. It apparently worked.
Now comes evidence that enforcing our immigration laws on the streets leads to reduced crime...especially violent crime. This is exactly the opposite of what people like Bill White (former mayor of sanctuary city Houston, Texas) and Harold Hurtt (one of White's police chiefs) told us would happen. They insisted that policing illegal immigration will result in MORE crime, since the illegals will be less prone to report perdators in their midst (among other things).
What is really significant here is that Hurtt is now the ICE Director of the Office of State and Local Coordination (OSLC). In other words, this anti-enforcement devotee is in charge of the interface between state, local, and Federal law enforcement. The Obami are nothing if not consistent.
Hurtt and his views on immigration enforcement play a pivotal role in the drama between the Feds and Arizona...and every state in the Union. What the study shows is that Hurtt and the other sanctuary "thinkers" are not only mistaken, they are exposing Americans...and very likely immigrants...to greater risk of harm.
And, according to the study, after a period of adjustment, everyone...including Hispanics...found they could live quite nicely with our laws being enforced. Imagine.
Maybe enforcing our laws...contrary to what the Collective tells us...actually works to make all law-abiding people safer. Maybe living with dignity is something to which every good person responds well.
Seriously, plagiarizing someone's intelligent writing would improve Dowd's column enormously. She is barely even phoning it in these days.
The Dowdy Queen of Manhattan has never been bothered by niggling concerns such as presenting anything like an honest depiction of views opposing her's (in keeping with New York Times policy, apparently). No, no, that would require that she actually come up with a thought or two, and she's been proving for decades that is just...too hard. Much easier to just impute the worst possible motives to your opposition and ignore rational thought all together.
Take her latest "offering":
You know you’re in trouble when you need Henry Kissinger to vouch for you.
But there was the one formerly known as “The One” sitting at a table with a bunch of old, white, Republican dudes, choosing the most abstruse issue on the agenda for his moment to Man Up.
With Republicans treating the president like a dirt sandwich and Democrats begging the president to throw a knuckle sandwich, Obama drew his line in the sand on telemetry.
The Start arms treaty used to be a chance for American presidents to stare down the Russians. Now it’s a chance for a Democratic president, albeit belatedly, to stare down the Republicans.
We are excused for scratching our heads. WTF? Old, white dudes? Like Obama's Vice-President? And what's this about "staring down Republicans"? Over what, exactly?
Well, START, which MoDo goes on to advocate with this;
Even if the treaty doesn’t much affect our strategic security, it affects the relationship with Russia and our standing in the world. And resetting the relationship with Russia, with his buddy Dmitri, is the president’s only significant foreign policy accomplishment.
Again with head-scratching! "His buddy Dmitri" thinks...as do other American foes...that Obama is weak. One may wonder if that is an "accomplishment", but we know it to be a certainty.
And why are we even considering a treaty that does not "much affect our strategic security"? Why bother? Oh, for the atmospherics of "our standing in the world", by which The Dowager Dowd means our kneeling in the world.
Jennifer Rubin, who is everything intellectual that Dowd is not askes;
So we are down to voting for an arms-control treaty, regardless of the merits, because otherwise Obama will look worse than he already does. Does this sound familiar? It’s akin to the Middle East peace talks bribe-a-thon, which was also meant to save the president from embarrassment (but merely has convinced onlookers, as one Israel expert put it, that the Obama diplomats “have taken leave of their senses”).
And what of the timing? In the case of both the Middles East and New START agreements, the deals must happen NOW — again, because Obama needs a boost.
Rubin goes on to suggest that GOP Senators should drive as sharp a bargain as the parties in the Middle East, since Obama has shown such a free hand in bribing folks to get them to make him look good. Dowd does not disagree with the notion that it's all about Obama's image;
He wants to come across as the grown-up in the room, disciplining puerile Republicans who would “mess with nuclear weapons and screw up alliances.”
Dowd's coda to this rambling nuttery is two gratuitous, unhinged swipes at anyone named Palin and Boehner, and this "thought" that bears no logical connection to anything preceding it--
So much for Reagan’s trust but verify. Now we’ve got distrust and vilify.
Indeed, MoDo. Apparently, Speaker-elect Boehner is guilty of not being subjected to the full de-humanizing TSA treatment when flying commercial. Wow. Rampant GOP hypocrisy...!!!
Shazaam. It turns out that Chawlie Rangel is Black! Who knew? Oh, and he once did something or other with Martin Luther King. So he should walk, right?
Well, that was the impetus behind Rep. John Lewis' comments, here (h/t Legal Insurrection)
But pretend Lewis was credible; Duke Cunningham was a bona fide war hero. That did not...nor should it ever...excuse his corruption while in high office, which was no worse or different than that of Rangel. And it did not excuse it, or mediate his punishment or his fall.
But Rangel is a Collectivist, and he is Black. And in this America...which is more racially oriented than it was a few years ago...that matters. It never should, but it does.
Do you notice anything strange about this chart? The chart breaks down economic growth into 5 year segments. Notice that the chart breaks up the Bush years from 2001 to 2005- during the Clinton recession and 9-11 – and 2006 to 2010- including the mortgage meltdown of 2008 and Obama’s failed first two years in office. Of course, breaking up the Bush years in this way is a clever way for big government statists to misrepresent the tax cut effects on the US economy.
But of course! When they can't show their stupid ideas actually...you know...WORK, they simply LIE. It is the Collectivist way. Like "creating or saving jobs". But we know them, and the rest of America is waking up, too.
I would add, "With all due respect", but I just don't have any respect. I don't give a rat's asp what this fool is hungry for, or what he wants or thinks. He is just another Collectivist thug, of the breed we need to crush (in the world of ideas).
This is a sterling example of why we MUST pull the power cable on Washington, DC...now...today, and every tomorrow until it is disabled in its present bloated form.
Nappy Jan Napolitano is arguably one of the most risible figures in government. The dark side of the joke is that she's in charge of your security, and that of everyone you love.
From her declaration of deepest denial that the borders are more secure than they have been in decades, to her insistence that air passenger security be performed by the Keystone Kops to avoid any effective method that smacks of "profiling", this half-witted woman...hand-picked by Obama...is exposing us to greater danger every day. The cost, of course, is immense by every possible measure. From tax funds to freedoms, but most of all to safety, we are paying to keep incompetence in office.
This is madness. It isn't just STUPID; it is dangerous. It is the result of the Collective's slavish devotion to the dogma of political correctness. It WILL get Americans killed. It is nothing short of miraculous that it has not to date.
It is faint and indistinct, but undeniably there. Like the first rumor of dawn that may be as much hope as visible light, we are hearing a murmur of change in the land.
From different quarters, there is a growing realization that we cannot carry on as we have for decades, flirting with Collectivism in various forms and strengths. All are poisonous and destructive.
Bottom line: You’re either for changes to the benefit formula, or you’re for big tax increases on the next generation. If you oppose benefit formula changes on the grounds that they are “cuts,” then you are for big tax increases. Period.
That is not a quote from Sarah Palin, but Charles Blauhaus, one of two public trustees who oversee Social Security and Medicare.
Slowly at first...then with gathering speed, the scales of darkness are going to be falling from the eyes of people in the United States. They are going to be awakening to where we are, and the perils of our position. They are going to be increasingly aware of the hard...but potentially wonderfully empowering...choices we as a people are going to face.
It is no small thing that people in public life...even some brave politicians...are beginning to face reality and raise the issues of ruinous spending. To move a nation, one must build a notion into a movement. Liberty and self-reliance are not creeds of heartless selfishness. They never have been, and they never will be. They are how a nation becomes...and continues...great.
You might have thought having his a$$ handed to him on a mid-term platter would humble the Narcisist in Chief. Think again. Once again Dear Leader jumps into Ego One and demonstrates his utter cluelessness across the globe. Three goals for the trip - per ABC - and three strikes. Trade deal with South Korea? Thanks so much for the visit, but nope. Convince China to stop manipulating their currency (the same week the Fed drops $600 Bil into circulation)? Thanks for the lecture, but go f%& yourself. Convince G20 nations to pressure China and buy more American stuff? Thanks for the offer, but nobody wants American stuff. Too expensive. Union labor.
Jonathan Last at The Weekly Standard has a good take that helps solve the mystery of how this man can possibly be so dense. His field of vision is completely obscured by himself, and he can't understand how anyone could possibly see anything other than him either. American Narcissus - The Vanity of Barack Obama.
But hope is in sight. As Rags reminded us, "We Just Won A Battle, Not The War". If anything, it's time to turn up the pressure. Balance the budget. Kill the earmarks. Repeal Barry Care.
Not finding enough by way of actual civic need to address, the city fathers parents of San Francisco have determined that no longer will Happy Meals as we know them be legal in their precincts. Freedom, schmeedom.
The vote was strong enough to survive a veto by the major.
Of course, what this means is that better-off parents will still obtain Happy Meals from the benighted suburbs around San Francisco. They will burn more fuel in the process, naturally.
Only the poorest parents in the city will find that their children, who may eat the same food, will be deprived of the plastic plunder that the nanny statists find so terribly, awfully threatening. The poor will pay the same price, naturally, for the food alone.
Way to go, Collectivists. Unintended consequences abound!
If we allow this to continue, we will have the same state of affairs existing in the Collectivist heavens of Cuba and North Korea. There, you can have neither "happy" nor "meal". San Francisco is half-way there.
Idiot Time (nominally called Time) has a piece posted under The Curious Capitalist which is WAY the hell past "curious". It is...as we would expect...anti-capitalist, and simply loopy.
Nonetheless, inflation, so far. Not so much.Palin herself seems to have missed the fact that prices in the past year or so have barely budged. So for the past few months, Leeper and Davig and another of Leeper's colleagues Todd Walker have been looking into why. Turns outs that it is very unlikely the Fed would cause hyper-inflation. That's why near zero interest rates and the Fed's early efforts to drive down long-term interest rates have done little to boost inflation. The real threat of inflation comes from tax policy, namely lower taxes.Lower taxes and the government will have a harder time paying back its debt. Investors run from our bonds and currency. Inflation ensues. [bold in the original...really]
Ah-HA...!!! The cause of high inflation is LOW taxes! Well, that certainly explains a lot. Except, no it doesn't, because it is daft. Those of you with some economic literacy, just try to think of the historical models supporting that. Those of you with no economic literacy, let me assure you...the author is nucking futs.
Essentially the author is saying that lower tax rates cut revenue. We know historically this is a lie, but it is a favorite Collectivist lie. We know it empirically and because we understand human behavior. When you raise the cost of anything, you will cut its demand. When you raise the cost of making "income", people will find other things to do besides producing "income". Duh. If you cut the cost of "income" (within reason), people will be happy to show more "income". This results in MORE revenue from taxes AND MORE economic health in the nation.
Oh, but wait! The lunacy does not end there!
But here's the trick. Leeper doesn't just model actual tax policy. He is looking at tax expectations. You don't actually have to lower taxes for inflation to rise. Nor do you have to raise taxes to get inflation to fall, for that matter. Leeper says as we get closer to the point that is looks like the government is unwilling to raise taxes people will get increasingly nervous about our debt. And that's the problem with the Tea Party. [bold in the original...honest]
Hence, all you have to do is suggest lower taxes, and YOU are guilty of causing inflation.
Wow. So, the problem in the Weimer Republic was all those TEA Party types after all. The monetary policy of the central banks had NOTHING to do with it. It was all those low taxes Germans were getting away with that made their money so worthless they burned it for fuel!
But, but.... What about BEFORE there were central banks with the power to control an entire currency? Where is the historical model showing how lowering taxes caused rampant inflation back then?
Oh, and the Idiot Time author seems to forget that inflation IS a tax, and that it really IS caused by monetary policy (as proven by one Milton Friedman, who got a Nobel when those meant something). How is inflation a tax? Well, if you have anything of value right now, you are going to lose part of its value in a period of high inflation. Like equity in your home. Or like your savings or retirement account. Or like a contract with fixed dollar amounts. The government benefits by your loss, since it can pay back its creditors with cheapened money (what we call "cheating").
We can DEPEND on seeing more of this kind of madness as the Collective gets more and more desperate to find some way to frighten Americans into turning against the TEA Party's common sense approach to government. We spend too much. We need to stop spending what we do not have.
Funny... The oil drilling industry (evil enviro-rapers) is found NOT to have committed any culpable conduct in the Gulf. Conversely, the Obami (lowering the rise of the seas by their mere election) are found to have bald-faced lied, and then defrauded a Federal Court in pursuit of destroying an entire regional economy.
The White House rewrote crucial sections of an Interior Department report to suggest an independent group of scientists and engineers supported a six-month ban on offshore oil drilling, the Interior inspector general says in a new report.
In the wee hours of the morning of May 27, a staff member to White House energy adviser Carol Browner sent two edited versions of the department report’s executive summary back to Interior. The language had been changed to insinuate the seven-member panel of outside experts – who reviewed a draft of various safety recommendations – endorsed the moratorium, according to the IG report obtained by POLITICO.
Several of us have noted the GRINDING contradiction between the Obamic practice and what Obama said about "putting science back in its proper place". Obama, in his usual incredible self-congratulating fashion, implies that the evil BOOOOOSH put politics (or...worse...religious dogma) over science. But we see just what that really means.
If we took a small break from activism to savor a hard-won victory in this past mid-term election, that is fine. If you think we are victorious and the fight is complete, you are badly mistaken. We have only started. Your break is over; gear up, and move back to the front. (H/T Dale Franks @ QandO)
Washington, DC, is a powerful place, and we are sending people into a deeply broken machine. It grinds up new meat, and reforms it to fit...or it spits it out. The Political Class with "R" behind their names is sometimes little different from the Collective...sometimes NO different, and they all have to be controlled. They will not control themselves, as we know too well.
But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, along with other Senate leaders from both parties, say that earmarking is a constitutional right and senatorial privilege and show little interest in relinquishing the decades-long practice of inserting pet projects into appropriations bills.
On Thursday, McConnell, who has secured $113 million in earmarks this past year, declined to say whether he’d support DeMint’s moratorium. Instead, he framed the issue as a debate over whether Congress should give the president unchecked spending authority.
“Every president, Republican or Democrat, would love to have a blank check from Congress to do whatever he chose to do on every single issue,” McConnell said after a speech at The Heritage Foundation. “We’ll be discussing the appropriateness of giving the president that kind of blank check in the coming weeks, because that’s really what that issue is about.
“As I think all of you know, you can eliminate every congressional earmark and save no money,” the Republican leader said. “It’s really an argument about discretion.”
That is GOLDEN. It IS an argument about discretion, and the fact that the ESTABLISHMENT uses none when it comes to spending other people's money. Earmarks are not a big budget issue; they are a BIG GOVERNMENT, corruption issue. The American people want them stopped.
There are GOP "old hands" that SAY they have gotten religion. Consider Rep. Jerry Lewis (R., CA), a guy who has not been "Mr. Responsible" in the past, and who now would require a waiver of Republican caucus rules to serve where he wants...chairing theHouse Appropriations Committee.
“The American people have demanded a change in the spending habits of Washington, and they clearly want an end to the massive deficits and debt that are stifling our economy,” Mr. Lewis said in a statement Friday evening. “The Appropriations Committee will be ground-zero in this fight.”
“There are numerous talented and capable fiscally conservative Members and incoming freshmen who would make many valuable contributions to our Committee,” he said. “While these decisions will be made by the Steering Committee, I will encourage the addition of Republicans to the Appropriations Committee – including Congressman Flake – who are ready to roll up their sleeves and work with their colleagues to conduct critical and time-consuming oversight, and get down to the serious work of cutting government spending.”
Not to be flip, but a guy from Kulhifornia named Jerry Lewis...makes me scratch my head when considering the CFO of the U.S.A.
We all knew that we were just starting this war...or we should have known. We have to remain activists. We cannot flag or retire. For some of us, this will be the work we do the rest of our lives, and we very likely won't see the end of it. The Machine has to be set right, and winning one election will never be enough.
A certain blogger (a-hem) wrote months ago to dispel a number of myths about the Deepwater Horizon incident.
Just today,the story is breaking that the probe into the incident is finding what that certain blogger was saying they would find.
“We certainly found no evidence that anyone had scrimped on safety, for example, to save money,” William Reilly, co- chairman of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, told reporters at a break in the commission’s meeting in Washington. He later said, “What we have really heard today is a story of what appears to be several very human decisions made by competent professionals who missed signals.”
There were a series of challenges that had to be addressed,” said Reilly, a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency. “It looks as though, by and large, almost every one of the responses to those challenges was justifiable and professional.”
To that was added this assessment--
Panel Chief Counsel Fred Bartlit, who presented the preliminary findings, touched on the role of BP’s wells-team leader, John Guide, who vetoed a proposal to install equipment that may have kept explosive natural gas from seeping into the well and jetting up to the floating rig.
“We have not seen a single instance where a human being made a conscious decision to favor dollars to safety,” Bartlit said.
Henry Waxman, eat dooky!
Of course, none of the CongressIdiots like Waxman, or the enviro-nuts who smeared everyone in general...and the drilling industry in particular...will EVER be called to task for the crap they spewed (far exceeding the effects of the oil spill). Too bad...
Just as one would predict, the Collective is eating its tail over the fact America has turned out not to like it. They came out from behind the fleece they are used to wearing and showed their true teeth, and Americans didn't like the vision.
Political scientists are going crazycrunching the numbers to uncover the skeleton key to understanding the Republican victory last Tuesday.
Actually, none of the poli-sci types I read is having any trouble whatsoever understanding the CONSERVATIVE rout of the Deemocrats (my use of that sobriquet might give the rest of the poli-sci guys a hint...). Perlstein must be referring to those OTHER poli-sci guys who have been assuring the Collective it could not happen, that America loves Collectivism and their Mad King.
But wait! Stop all that number-crunching! Our boy Perlstein has the unified field theory explaining the Collectivist rout--
But the only number that matters is the one demonstrating that by a two-to-one margin likely voters thought their taxes had gone up, when, for almost all of them, they had actually gone down. Republican politicians, and conservative commentators, told them Barack Obama was a tax-mad lunatic. They lied. The mainstream media did not do their job and correct them. The White House was too polite—"civil," just like Obama promised—to say much. So people believed the lie. From this all else follows.
And it was all too predictable.
Well, the madness at the root of that BS is certainly understandable, and the proffer of that "theory" is all too predicable. Here's how it goes...
A-Obama is really doing exactly what he said he would. He's a race-transcending, divide-uniting, truth-telling, change-to-Washington-bringing, tax-cutting razor who only spends Federal dollars on fine projects to protect THE PEOPLE, like earth-quake monitoring or volcano-control or something...oh, yeah...who works hard.
B-Rush Limbaugh is a big, fat liar who lies...but he is the big, fat head of the GOP who everyone fears and hates...and he has listeners who listen, but never think about what they hear, see, smell or taste going on around them.
C-But Obama, ever the uniter and LIGHT BRINGER, is tragically flawed. See, he's too classy to call Rush and his lying hoards liars. NO. REALLY!!!
What if the White House had in those months in early 2009 put in the rhetorical forefront a story about Rush's tens of millions of listeners, and all politicians who refused to denounce Rush, were effectively saying anything the Chief Constitutional Officer of the United States said was a priori a diabolical lie?
But Obama didn't. That would be the "old politics of division." Not Obama's bag.
To which one attached to reality can only say...WTF?!?!?
Umm...been there, done that. Where were you? For the first time in my six decades, a President Of The United States personally attacked a national media personality...and an entire news organization that was uniquely not firmly behind his zipper. The Obami have actually done it in cycles, and rather recently as well as early on. In what universe is this Perlstein cat?
The White House would have been telling ANOTHER lie if they tried Perlstein's meme. Obama DOES lie; one of the characteristics I find remarkable is that he will say things that contradict themselves in virtually every paragraph he utters. You can try this at home, kiddies.
When one side breaks the social contract, and the other side makes a virtue of never calling them out on it, the liar always wins.
I think Tueday's results rather soundly repudiate that, Mr. Perlstein. But what does it tell us about you and the Collective that such putrid drivel is used to salve your wounds of rejection by the American people?
Lisa "Murky" Murkowski is working HARD for the title of Washington's MOST Despised Woman. By some lights, she just might pull it off.
Bringing new meaning to the term "political whore"...as applied to either...no, make that ANY...gender (we have to remember Bwarny Frank), Murky broke both her promise to and faith with the GOP when she was whipped by Joe Miller in the Alaska primary for U.S. Senator. Being the Political Class brat she was raised to be, she could not accept defeat...or keep her word. So, she ran AGAINST Miller.
For some reason I have yet to understand, the high number of write-in votes is supposed to mean Murky won. There were about a hundred people who made it to "write-in" status, but certified smart people seem to assume the only one who actually got voted for was Murky. Odd.
Meanwhile, Old Sheriff Joe Biden...beloved of all Alaskans...called Murky to encourage her by telling her he was proud of the way she "stood up". Meaning, we must suppose, the way she stood up to the rank and file of Alaskan Conservative voters and the majority of the GOP there. A profile in courage, indeed, Murky. We can't have those proles thinking they can rob us of our privileges, right?
If she does win, she will go to a Washington that has shifted tectonically to the Conservative side of things, and one being watched and steered by those of us who love liberty much more than power. She will both hate that, and be despised for her conduct. She may still think it a bargain.
As the dust settles from the mid-term election, it is more than revealing to study some of the reactions expressed by prominent Deemocrats, including The Mad King Barack.
The Bitch is Back
Bwarny Frank survived a serious challenge to his seat...er...office in the House. He was not pleased. In fact, he was a deeply, darkly twisted sister over the prospect of having to really fight a political campaign.
Chock full o'nuts
As Bwarny notes, Deemocrats did very well in Massachusetts. Despite the nation in general turning a deep red, there were places where that was not so. Which is fine. That is was Federalism is really all about.
It was that way in Kulhifornia, too. The people of that state chose an ancient moonbat for governor over a very successful lady who headed a major corporation. Which, I suppose, is a great moment in gender equality. They returned to the Senate one of the stupidest people in that body, Barbara Boxer. Fine. They get what they deserve.
Which goes to the proposition that...regardless of the generalized out-break of sound thinking we saw around the nation...there will be areas of this nation that are simply Collectivist enclaves. They are nuts, and cannot see reality. What the election permits is that they be nuts, without dictating to the rest of us that we be nuts, too. I will not pay a cent to bail out California or Massachusetts. Let them learn by eating the consequences of their choices.
Delusions Are Grander
Nancy lost her joy-stick. She has no regrets, says she. In the House of Mirrors that is San Francisco political "thinking", she is warmly loved by the voters, after all.
She's trying to herd the cats of her remaining caucus to get their votes so she can be Minority Leader. Perhaps they really are that stupid. I cannot venture a guess on that. But if they are not, they will remember the trail to the edge of the cliff, and the Collectivist ideologues who led them OFF the cliff, and they will remember 2012 is coming.
Speaking of delusional ideologues and cliffs, The Mad King Barack continued his war on reality, post-election. He only failed in helping us understand his brilliance. There was his tragic flaw...imaging. Everything else is hunky-dory.
"You know, I think that over the course of two years we were so busy and so focused on getting a bunch of stuff done that we stopped paying attention to the fact that leadership isn’t just legislation. That it’s a matter of persuading people. And giving them confidence and bringing them together. And setting a tone. And making an argument that people can understand. And I think that we haven’t always been successful at that."
Lest anyone think that delusional thinking is solely the province of the Collective (instead of just being their forte), let me point to the Mad Men of the GOP. They claim...risibly...that the TEA Party failed...was in fact a bunch of stupid, feckless rubes for putting O'Donnell, Angle, and one or two others up for election instead of those tried and true COINs (Conservatives Only In Name) who would have been shoo-ins. Wow. Both tone-deaf and brain-dead in the same individuals. The TEA Party won the day. And TEA Party-backed minority candidates form the new vanguard of the House and Senate. Men like West and Rubio, and CONSERVATIVE women abounding now.
Capitalism's Savior?
I cannot leave the election aftermath without noting the amazing nonsense published by the NYT. I know, we expect nothing less. But this was superlative. According to Timothy Egan, Obama saved capitalism, and it cost him the mid-terms.
Not only is that the most amazing twaddle, it is trite twaddle. I have heard (or read) professors of history intone the same BS about FDR saving capitalism from itself. Please! Read a freaking book! One on economics, preferably.
What Obama HAS done is convert the U.S. into the Obamabanana Republic, perverting contract, property, and bankruptcy law in the process. He has imposed a fascist economic model on much of the U.S. economy, and that will be the work of years to reverse.
And Americans won't forget it. Nor will they be duped by people like Egan or Collectivist organs like the NYT. We have to CAREFULLY watch the new Congress, and we have look to 2012. This is not a time for rest. LINKED BY DOUG ROSS...THANKS!!!!
On the opposite end of the "effectiveness" and "reality" scales from last Saturday's "Restoring Sanity Rally", Tuesday saw Americans across the nation hold a rather more sober event. We went to the ballot box and voted to REALLY restore sanity...or to at least begin.
One thing we voted FOR was American exceptionalism. We have decided we will not be led into a Great Receding.We choose to be great as a people, a nation, and economy.
We voted AGAINST the Collective...against BIG GOVERNMENT...and FOR individual liberty. We voted FOR MARKETS and AGAINST crony-capital fascist economics.
Now, make no mistake; there are pockets where...try as we might...nobody can restore sanity. Kulhifornia comes to mind. The people of that mad-house state CHOSE to have Gov. Moonbeam in their statehouse. They CHOSE to have Barbara "Don't Call Me Ma'am" Boxer in the Senate. As a native Californian, I mourn...while making sure I stay as far away (geographically and ideologically) as I can. Those people are nuts!
Texas (mah home) got MUCH more deeply RED yesterday. In some respects, that is too bad. Not everyone who was tugged into office on the Obamic coat-tails was bad, and some of them were really quite good (the Harris County District Clerk, Loren Jackson, did a very fine job in his office). But that is the way of tidal-wave elections.
Even here in DEEP RED Texas, we still have people like Sheila Jackson-Lee re-elected with 70% of her racist-voting district returning her racist self to Washington. This is, of course, insane, and we all live and hope for the day when Black Texans vote something besides color. Maybe, given the record number of Black Conservatives who that "racist" TEA Party movement supported into office, that day is coming soon.
Except for isolated pockets of CRAZY (like California), the nation has turned decidedly RED...even in places like Minnesota and Wisconsin. Garrison Keilor should be put on a suicide watch immediately...especially given his NPR connection.
After being subjected to the farcical facial fraud that was "Recovery Summer", Americans are today giving themselves a real Recovery Autumn. We are taking back...beginning to take back...our nation from the Collective. This will, of course, be a long, hard, difficult road.
It will be a road requiring constant vigilance, which a lot of those in the Political Class are counting on. They count on our not remaining vigilant. That has always been the safe money bet in the past. Why should it be different this time?
Well, simply because it IS different this time. There has been a sea-change in American political life. To employ another useful cliche'...a tipping point was reached. For that, we have Barack Hussain Obama and his Obami to thank.
We are not the America of only two years ago. We are learning. We are seeing. We understand more now. We will not trust anyone...regardless of the political label they wear, or what they SAY. We will only judge them by what they DO, how they do it, and who they show themselves to be. And we will turn them out...root and branch...if they fail us in their high office. Whether that office is Dog Catcher, or Senator.
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