Obama gives diplomacy a try

Remember that?

"But I have also said that we should be willing to initiate diplomacy as a mechanism to achieve our national security goals, and my national security team, I think, is reflective of that practical, pragmatic approach to foreign policy.

Obama was gonna extend a hand if Iran unclenched its fist.

Well, Iran responds.

[Y]esterday the Iranian government ordered up 10 additional uranium enrichment plants on the scale of its already operational facility in Natanz, which has a planned capacity of 54,000 centrifuges. That could mean an eventual total of more than 500,000 centrifuges, or enough to enrich about 160 bombs worth of uranium each year. Whether it can ever do that is an open question, but it does give a sense of the scale of the regime's ambitions.

The White House Responds ...

"Time is running out for Iran to address the international community's growing concerns about its nuclear program," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday, but the West has said this many times before. Earlier this year, Mr. Obama said Iran had a deadline of September.

Ba haa haa haa ...

Let's revist the criticism of Bush, and praise of Obama:

We've just been through eight years of disengagement by the Bush administration. We had a reckless, testosterone-starved Jesus-driven cowboy march into the White House declaring Iran, North Korea and Iraq the "Axis of Evil". From virtually the get-go, Bush's foreign policy strategy could be summed up in just a few short words: U.S. good, everyone else bad, enemies really bad. Therefore, you don't talk with your enemies, you don't negotiate with your enemies, you don't enjoin your enemies. Instead, you antagonize your enemies, you motivate and inspire your enemies, and you embolden and strengthen your enemies through big-stick rhetoric and cowboy swagger. Oh, and you bomb the shit out of them for no justifiable reason (that would be Iraq for those of you who are having trouble following this lefty diatribe). And in the process you damn-near alienate every one of your allies and severely tarnish America's reputation for diplomatic greatness. Might even say you make America hated throughout the world.

(memo to Andy Ostroy, they still hate us)

So it's no shocker that perhaps it's time for a new strategy. A policy of engagement, whereby the united States uses its diplomatic powers and not just its military muscle. A foreign policy centered on the negotiating table and not some arrogant frat-boy's bully-pulpit. Thankfully, we now have a president who gets it. A president more interested in world peace than proving to his daddy that he's not the colossal fuck-up he always thought, or that the history books will soon surely prove.

What Obama did last week was brilliant. All of it. From going on the Jay Leno program and speaking directly to the American people (pissing off the mainstream media, which tends not to like being marginalized or circumvented) to addressing the Iranian people who, by the way, are 70% under the age of 30 and are much more Westernized than you would think. Obama bypassed Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah Komenei much in the same way he did his end-run around the American press. Oh this Obama guy's smart, alright.

Yea, Smart Power!

And that vision says, let's talk to the enemy. Let's engage them. Let's bring pressure on their governments by opening a dialogue directly with their people. Let's negotiate, but let's not forget our goal of protecting America, nor our unyielding commitment to use force when all else fails.

When has this dialogue with the people occurred? His meek statements after the Iranian elections? Or, perhaps his stance after the Honduran coup?

Knowing the opposition was planning to march, Mr. Obama issued his own statement the night before that instead chose to reach out to the regime. America, he said, "seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interest and mutual respect. We do not interfere in Iran's internal affairs." He went on to list the Administration's various efforts to appease the regime. So far and on all counts, the mullahs have rebuffed these entreaties.

And, on Obama's Honduran mistake:

At least the Obama administration figured out, after four months, that it had blundered. It deserves credit for realizing that elections were the best way forward, and for promising to recognize the outcome despite enormous pressure from Brazil and Venezuela. President Obama came to office intent on a foreign policy of multilateralism. Perhaps this experience will teach him that freedom does indeed have enemies.

One could hope. But I'm not holding my breath.

No post today

But I put a new picture on the sidebar honoring our president.

Must read of the day

I would say that the temptation to redistribute from the rich to the poor is the tragic pursuit of a mirage.

Word. Doctor Zero has been writing some fantastic pieces over at Hot Air.

Collectivists sell their politics with a promise of “equality,” generally understood by their audience as a promise to redistribute the wealth of the rich to improve the lives of the poor… but this is a lie. The upper class in a communist, fascist, or socialist government is fantastically wealthy. Most of the “redistribution” comes at the expense of the middle class, which shrinks as the lower class grows. Every form of collectivist government, including twenty-first century American socialism, declares war on the middle class, or tries to lure them into submission with promises of benefits.

Spreading the wealth around inevitable means one thing - reducing the relative wealth of the middle class, while doing nothing to the truly rich. The rich are always rich. They have the ability to avoid paying those nasty taxes, or the connections to insure that they benefit from government largess.

The fundamental political purpose of State-controlled health care is to transform much of the middle class into the lower class. The economic damage from spending trillions of dollars on a monstrous new government program in the middle of a recession is a feature, not a bug. A middle class dependent on the benevolence of the State for its health care will become less troublesome, less independent, and less able to begin the climb into the upper class through small business formation. Fewer small businesses means fewer working poor rising into the middle class.

Read the whole thing.

Obama's mistakes

Fred Barnes, in the Opinion Journal. Remember this:

"Change must come to Washington," Mr. Obama said in a June 2008 speech. "I have consistently said when it comes to solving problems," he told Jake Tapper of ABC News that same month, "I don't approach this from a partisan or ideological perspective."

Well, Obama certainly hasn't brought bipartisanship to Washington, and he hasn't brought much "change" either. What did he do wrong?

First, Mr. Obama misread the meaning of the 2008 election. It wasn't a mandate for a liberal revolution. His victory was a personal one, not an ideological triumph of liberalism. Yet Mr. Obama, his aides and Democratic leaders in Congress have treated it as a mandate to radically change policy directions in this country. They are pushing forward one liberal initiative after another. As a result, Mr. Obama's approval rating has dropped along with the popularity of his agenda.

Closing Gitmo, the government take-over of the car companies (buy a FORD!), the bailouts, the deficit, cap and tax, the huge expansion of government. Don't. Want. And I'm not alone, as Obama's falling numbers suggest.

Next mistake:

Second, Mr. Obama misread his own ability to sway the public. He is a glib, cool, likeable speaker whose sentences have subjects and verbs. During the campaign, he gave dazzling speeches about hope and change that excited voters. His late-night speech at a Democratic dinner in Des Moines on Nov. 10, 2007, prior to the Iowa caucuses, convinced me he'd win the presidential nomination.

But campaign speeches don't have to be specific, and candidates aren't accountable. Presidential speeches are different. The object is to persuade voters to back a certain policy, and it turns out Mr. Obama is not good at this. He failed to stop the steady decline in support for any of his policies, most notably health care.

Those tingle-up-the-leg moments when Obama speaks apparently don't do much to sway non-Obama-zombies. Obama has gotten an enormous amount of support by the media for his policies, with the full sway of Hollywood filling-in as his propaganda arm. And still, people don't want.

Lastly, and this is my favorite I think:

Third, Mr. Obama misread Republicans. They felt weak and vulnerable after losing two straight congressional elections and watching John McCain's presidential bid fall flat. They were afraid to criticize the newly elected president. If he had offered them minimal concessions, many of them would have jumped aboard his policies. If that had happened, the president could have boasted of achieving bipartisan compromise on the stimulus and other policies. He let the chance slip away.

Remember all those articles about how Republicans, as a party, were dead? We would be wandering in the dessert for forty years, yada yada yada. Things looked bleak (actually, they looked bleak ever since somebody chose McCain as the candidate), and liberals were happy to dance on our grave.

Given this situation, Mr. Hope and Change, Mr. I'm-going-to-reach-across-the-isle decided he didn't need to do that. Oh, he was all about reaching out to dictators and tyrants. But Republicans? Not so much. So he didn't. He locked them out of meetings. He even called patriotic Americans who oppose his policies "teabaggers."

The point in all this is Mr. Obama could have given a little and gained a lot. To change Washington, he would have had to corral congressional Democrats, who weren't interested in bipartisanship or compromise. He would have had to disappoint his base and, at times, anger liberal interest groups. Mr. Obama wasn't willing to go that route.

In Washington it's business as usual, except for one thing. The bigger the role of government, the more lobbyists flock to town. By pushing for his policies, the president effectively put up a welcome sign to lobbyists. Despite promising to keep them out of his administration, he has even hired a few. So nothing has changed, except maybe that Washington is now more acrimonious than it has been.

Hope and Change, folks.

Prove It, by staring at a giant orb ...

The Science Museum in London has a new climate change exhibit that aims to "prove" global warming climate change. Visitors are supposed to view the "evidence" and then "vote" whether they're in or out. Just ... bizarre.

"Prove It!” is not an exhibition at all. There are no exhibits, nothing in glass jars, no machines to look and wonder at. Nor is there any real scientific information: no graphs, pie charts, or papers to read and reflect on. Instead there is a seating area with a huge Sun-like object in the middle, a bright disc suspended from the ceiling by orange wires. And this Sun-like object flashes up various slogans, such as “The glaciers are melting,” and also “Climate Change” where the word “change” morphs into “Change the way we live.”

That we are expected to sit and stare at this “Sun,” to be passive recipients of some higher wisdom from a disc hovering above our heads, speaks volumes about how environmentalists view both “science” and ordinary people’s intellectual capabilities. For them, scientific fact is a kind of divine revelation, an unquestionable truth, which must be delivered from on high to us little people in order to wake us from our consumerist-induced stupor and make us rethink our destructive habits. In treating science as both Gospel and political weapon, the green-leaning organizers of this exhibition have committed an act of double violence against scientific truth and integrity.

Indeed, the “Prove It!” exhibition unwittingly, yet brilliantly, illustrates why climate-change alarmism has no place in the world of real science, an arena that ought to be marked by open-mindedness, truth-seeking, and intellectual seriousness. Where most of the Science Museum engages visitors through intelligent exhibitions, explaining in measured terms how things were discovered or how breakthroughs were made, the “Prove It!” exhibition screams slogans in our faces from an overhead projector. Where many of the rooms in the Science Museum take us through the various leaps forward that led to modern technology and medicine, the “Prove It!” exhibition contains no climate science at all (presumably it’s too complicated for us idiots), only ready-made, life-altering slogans.

Add to this that those shouting the slogans are jetting around the world to have their global warming conferences in Bali, living in glass houses, stand to profit from environmental legislation, and are hiding and manipulating data .

Of course, you don't need to go to London to vote yourself in or out. The tally stands, this morning, at 5241 "in" and 7711 "out."

These embarrassing figures are an improvement on the earliest voting tallies. On October 24, two days after the exhibition opened, only 415 had counted themselves in and 2,385 had counted themselves out. As of the first of November, 1,006 people were in, and 6,110 were out. Following much handwringing by green commentators (one said the poll results showed that “climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease”), green bloggers told their readers to go and vote In.

Nothing screams "science" like a good internet vote.

Kate is on effen fire

Clicky and she keeps you up on what's being said about the Climategate.

What "is" Climategate, in case you've been too busy watching football weekend, or you get your news from MSM and/or Huffpoo ...here:

Late on the night of of November 19, news broke on PJM and elsewhere that a large amount of data had been stolen from one of the major climate research institutions by an unknown hacker and made available on the Internet. The institution is the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, home institution for Dr Phil Jones and one of the world’s centers of research into anthropogenic global warming (AGW), or “climate change.”

The hackers released about 172 megabytes of data, and we can be sure examining it closely will take some time. But after a few days, certain things are beginning to become clear.

The data appears to be largely, perhaps entirely, authentic.
The emails are incendiary.
The implications shake the scientific basis for AGW, and the scientific reputations of some of AGW’s major proponents, to their roots

So, what does this all mean?

But, at least on this first look, it appears that the three scandals are:

First, a real attempt by a small group of scientists to subvert the peer-review process and suppress dissenting voices. (For another look at this, by a respected climate scientist who was one of the targets, see these posts on Roger Pielke Sr.’s blog.) This is at best massively unethical.
Second, a willingness to manipulate the data to make a political case. This is certainly misconduct and possibly scientific fraud. This, if it proves true, should make these scientists subject to strong disciplinary action, even termination of their tenured positions.
Third, what gives every appearance of an actual conspiracy to prevent data from being released as required by the Freedom of Information Acts in the US and UK. If this is proven true, that is a federal crime.
These emails and the data associated, taken together, raise really important questions about the whole scientific structure of AGW. Is the data really valid? Has the data been effectively peer reviewed and have attempts to falsify been fairly treated? Is CO2-forced AGW really the best hypothesis?

Until these questions are answered, the various attempts to “deal with the climate change crisis” have no acceptable scientific basis.

Ba ha a haaa haaa

Harry Reid needs to be talked down from that ledge ...

Of insanity.


Stolen from Protein Wisdom:

Today we vote whether to even discuss one of the greatest issues of our generation – indeed, one of the greatest issues this body has ever face: whether this nation will finally guarantee its people the right to live free from the fear of illness and death, which can be prevented by decent health care for all.

Can we then add it to The Constitution? You know, the right to live free from the fear of illness and death.

You know what Harry Reid's bill needs? A theme song. I've got just the tune.

Too good not to steal

From Andy (from the Hostages):

One person's hacker is another person's freedom fighter.

Might just put that up under my header. Watts Up with That on the kerfuffle.

At a minimum, some of these e-mails reveal an undercurrent of elitism that many of us have always claimed existed in the IPCC. These scientists look upon us skeptics with scorn. It is well known that the IPCC machine is made up of bureaucrats and scientists who think they know how the world should be run. The language contained in a draft of the latest climate treaty (meant to replace the Kyoto treaty) involves global governance and the most authoritarian means by which people’s energy use will be restricted and monitored by the government.

Even if this language does not survive in the treaty’s final form, it illustrates the kind of people we are dealing with. The IPCC folks jet around the world to all kinds of exotic locations for their UN-organized meetings where they eat the finest food. Their gigantic carbon footprints stomp around the planet as they deride poor Brazilian farmers who convert jungle into farmland simply to survive.

Even mainstream journalists, who are usually on board with the latest environmental craze, have commented on this blatant display of hypocrisy. It seems like those participating – possibly the best example being Al Gore — are not even aware of how it looks to the rest of us.

The elitist attitudes exist elsewhere, too. While the skeptics’ blogs allow those who disagree to post opinions as long as they remain civil about it, RealClimate.org routinely ignores or deletes posts that might cast doubt on their tidy worldview. The same thing happens at Wikipedia, where a gatekeeper deletes newly posted content that departs from the IPCC party line.

A few of the CRU e-mails suggest that manipulation of climate data in order to reduce the signature of natural climate variations, and to exaggerate the supposed evidence for manmade climate change, is OK with these folks. Apparently, the ends justify the means.
******
Year after year, the evidence keeps mounting that most climate research now being funded is for the purpose of supporting the IPCC’s politics, not to find out how nature works. The ‘data spin’ is increasingly difficult to ignore or to explain away as just sloppy science. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…

Kate has been all over this too. The story has made it into the Wall Street Journal, but I don't think I've heard it on the box yet.

Scumbag Blues

In honor of tonight's vote.

Random surfing (sorta)

And I came upon this screed:

I was a normal size until my late 20s, and still hated my body and started dieting when I was 12 and a size 5. And when I was a 9/10 during my early 20s, I thought I was HUGE and disgusting and “Oh my God, how can you even LOOK at me?” gross. And when in the fuck is that going to CHANGE? When are we women going to stop treating NORMAL like it’s DISGUSTING? I’m not advocating for “fat acceptance,” that’s not my scene, and I don’t love being a size 20.

But Jesus fuck, this shit has to STOP. It’s sick and it’s a wrong way to go through your life. We women need to think more like men, or even better: like the Bush administration. NOTHING TO SEE HERE, EVERYTHING’S GREAT AND RIGHT AND TRUE! DON’T MIND THAT GIANT TURD SCHMEAR WE LEFT ON THE CONSTITUTION, THIS IS THE GREATEST NATION ON EARTH!

It's interesting* that even a rant about weight somehow all comes back to DAMN THAT BUUUSHHSSHSH1111!!!!


By "interesting" I mean pathetic.

Dana Perino Nominated to Broadcasting Board of Governors

Is this just Obama's way of shutting her up?

The only good I see from this is that it's really pissing off the HuffPo crowd.

Harry's New Taxes

You'd think this would be getting a bit more play in the MSM ... from NRO's Healthcare Blog:

An income surtax on taxpayers earning more than $500,000 a year,[1]
An excise tax on high-cost "Cadillac" health insurance plans that cost more than $8,500 a year for individuals or $21,000 for families,[2]
An excise tax on medical devices such as wheelchairs, breast pumps, and syringes used by diabetics for insulin injections,[3]
A cap on the exclusion of employer-provided health insurance without offsetting tax cuts,[4]
A limit on itemized deductions for taxpayers with a top income tax rate greater than 28 percent,[5]
A windfall profits tax on health insurance companies,[6]
A value-added tax, which would tax the value added to a product at each stage of production,[7]
An increase in the Medicare portion of the payroll tax to 3.4 percent for incomes great than $200,000 a year ($250,000 for married filers),[8]
An excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages including non-diet soda and sports drinks,[9]
Higher taxes on alcoholic beverages including beer, wine, and spirits,[10]
A tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage of up to 2.5 percent of their adjusted gross income,[11]
A limit on contributions to health savings accounts,[12]
An 8 percent tax on all wages paid by employers that do not provide their employees health insurance that satisfies the requirements defined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services,[13]
A limit on contributions to flexible spending arrangements,[14]
Elimination of the deduction for expenses associated with Medicare Part D subsidies,[15]
An increase in taxes on international businesses,[16]
Elimination of the tax credits paper companies take for biofuels they create in their production process—the so-called "Black Liquor credit,"[17]
Fees on insured and self-insured health plans,[18]
A limit or repeal of the itemized deduction for medical expenses,[19]
A limit on the Qualified Medical Expense definition,[20]
An increase in the payroll taxes on students,[21]
An extension of the Medicare payroll tax to all state and local government employees,[22]
An increase in taxes on hospitals,[23]
An increase in the estate tax,[24]
Increased efforts to close the mythical "tax gap,"[25]
A 5 percent tax on cosmetic surgery and similar procedures such as Botox treatments, tummy tucks, and face lifts,[26]
A tax on drug companies,[27]
An increase in the corporate tax on providers of health insurance,[28] and
A $500,000 deduction limitation for the compensation paid by health insurance companies to their officers, employees, and directors.[29]

I know that the first two, at least, are not indexed for inflation.

Who doesn't want the Federal Reserve audited?

These people.

Another Saturday Night Vote?

Under the cover of darkness they're going to vote to proceed on this monstrosity in the Senate.

Appropriate, since if people saw the bill for what it is, it wouldn't have the meager support it currently enjoys. One wonders why the AP assigned two reporters to fact check this stuff, while Sarah Palin's book got eleven?

Grace-Marie Turner write for National Review on the Reid plan:

The 2,074-page health reform bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid unveiled last night is a maze of complexity and duplicity. It spends $848 billion over ten years to provide new subsidies for health coverage, increases taxes by $486 billion, and allegedly cuts spending by $491 billion. Yet it still leaves 24 million people without insurance.

The new taxes never will be enough to pay for Reid's reform plan because Congress does not have the will to make the cuts to Medicare and Medicaid he uses to bring down the bill's advertised cost.

What's that? It's going to cost more and 24 million are still uninsured?

Even worse, at this moment, is the job-killing aspect of the plan.

Job-killing taxes on employers: Employers will be faced with new penalties and taxes, especially if they hire workers who qualify for any of the new federal subsidies for health insurance. According to the Congressional Budget Office, "Firms with more than 50 workers that did not offer coverage would have to pay a penalty of $750 for each full-time worker if any of their workers obtained subsidized coverage through the insurance exchanges."

Expect to see more part-time hires. Or no hires.

And then there are the taxes. OH, there are the taxes. On "the rich", for now. But the taxes are not indexed for inflation, so expect yourself to be considered rich in the near future. More from NRO:

Then there are the tax increases. CBO gives Senator Reid credit for cutting the budget deficit in a second decade, but that’s not because the plan would do anything to slow the pace of rising health-care costs. It wouldn’t do much of anything in that regard. What it would do is impose massive tax increases, in part by resorting to the same kind of discredited “bracket creep” so despised by the public in the 1970s. At that time, the thresholds separating the various income-tax brackets were not indexed for inflation, which meant that every year many people paid taxes at a higher rate simply because inflation had boosted their wages. Of course, many in Congress liked it that way because it meant a tax increase without the nuisance of a politically unpopular vote. Senator Reid and his Democratic colleagues are trying to pull off the same trick now. They are proposing two tax increases which would hit America’s middle class increasingly hard over time because the dollar thresholds used to assess the tax are not indexed to full inflation. The first, the 40 percent excise tax on high-cost insurance plans, would apply initially only to family policies exceeding $23,500 in annual premiums and individual plans with premiums exceeding $8,500. Those thresholds would increase by general inflation plus one percentage point each year, but that would be still below the rate of expected medical inflation. Consequently, more and more middle-class families would find themselves bumping into the premium thresholds as time passed.

The same trick is being used on the payroll tax, 2.9 is increased to 3.4 on those making more than $200,000 a year. As more and more hit that $200,000, they join the ranks of the "rich" as that income increasingly become "middle class."

Hope and Change?

Trolling Drudge headlines ....

Not so much change. And, I'm not feeling very hopey either.

In other news, no Afghanistan decision until after Thanksgiving. Smart Power.

Look at my breasts

Over at Pandagon, they are up in arms over the new government recommendations regarding breast cancer screening:

Government to women: Women over 40 are expendable. They have outlived their usefulness now that they need to dye their hair, and their breasts aren't so naturally perky anymore. Let 'em die, because we don't want to have to pay for their treatment.

Oh, wait. There isn't a single post about this at Pandagon. There are, though FOUR posts on Sarah Palin on the front page.

I mean, why should we be concerned that a government task force has determined that breast cancer screening is too expensive for women under 50? It's not like any of us know any women who had breast cancer under the age of fifty ... oh, except for these folks who run a a breast imaging center:

"I feel strongly against this. It's a large step backward," she says. "It puts a lot of confusion out there. Starting at age 40, a yearly mammogram reduces a woman's chance of dying from breast cancer by 30 percent. We detect breast cancer in women in their 40s every week here."

This should allay our fears:

Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform, responded to Mr. Camp’s comments by stressing that the task force had no power to deny insurance coverage. “This is a typical scare tactic designed to protect the health care status quo of rising costs, unaffordable coverage and unfair insurance company practices,” she said.

Richard Kirsch, the national campaign director for Health Care for America Now, a group supporting expanded coverage, said Republicans could be expected to exploit the issue.

Let me shorten that for you , Pay no attention to those teabaggers! And, Ms Doulass, the task force has no power to deny coverage ... for now.

American Cancer Society says:

Our experts make this recommendation having reviewed virtually all the same data reviewed by the USPSTF, but also additional data that the USPSTF did not consider," ACS said. "The USPSTF says that screening 1,339 women in their 50s to save one life makes screening worthwhile in that age group. Yet USPSTF also says screening 1,904 women ages 40 to 49 in order to save one life is not worthwhile. ... With its new recommendations, the USPSTF is essentially telling women that mammography at age 40 to 49 saves lives; just not enough of them."

That extra 565 women makes it not worth it, apparently. Most outrageous is the idea that women shouldn't be doing self-exams. What's the issue? That a woman might find a lump? Leading to that "unnecessary" mammography.

Plus, false positives cause "anxiety" .... and you know how deadly that is.

Bravo Pandagon for being intellectually inconsistent! I know how hard it is when you've got all those pressing articles on Sarah Palin to write ...

People are funny

Now you can own an Authentic imitation Lincoln/Obama Inaugural Bible!

The reviews are in ....

65 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
Awesome history in my awesome hands, November 18, 2009
By William Sullivan "Im in ur Amazon, reviewin'"
I bought the other version of the bible which was actually held by the Baby Jesus, but it doesn't radiate awesome as much as this version. I bought this in a fit of patriotism and joy at no longer being racist a year ago. I sat it on a bookshelf but, even a year later, it hasn't gathered any dust. Not long after, my father caught cancer from a tea party protest. I had him touch this bible and he was instantly cured. I touched it and won the lottery. I'd have to say this is the best bible I have ever bought. In fact, I don't even need my viagra anymore. A+++ would elect again.

And another:

Nice additon to collection., November 19, 2009
By Erik Ruhling "negentropy" - See all my reviews

I find it complements the awesomeness of my replica Carter/Obama Nobel Peace Prize. I hear there are plans for a Milli Vanilli/Obama replica Grammy to be offered in the future. Can anyone confirm this?

I'm also hoping beyond hope that I can add a replica Gore/Obama Academy Award to the collection in the next few years. Don't let me down Academy!

Obama lied, people ...lost their jobs

From Hot Air:

Obama promised to stimulate the private sector with Porkulus, but the vast majority of the jobs being reported are those of government bureaucrats. Peter Morici, the University of Maryland economist, told the Free Press that 90% of the supposed stimulus would take place in the public sector, not the private sector — and the FP’s numbers support that conclusion. Even those jobs are questionable[.]

Michigan unemployment is over 15%. Findings from the Freep Analysis :

-Three of every four stimulus grants, contracts and loans approved in Michigan created or retained one job or less.

- Fewer than 700 awards had received some money, and nearly half of those -- 327 -- had created one job or less, at a cost per job of $2.7 million.

And, the Freep is a librul paper.

Here's a cool little link where you can enter your zip code (or any zip code) and get a list of who received some of that mad Obama-money. A quick look at my zip, finds that most of it went to schools and a little bit to local City government.

I checked my old zip code and what did I find? City of ... City of ... County of ...

Honestly, this is really fucking depressing. We've bailed out ... the government.

No jobs have been created or saved. Don't take my word for it. Take my liberal-, Obama voting-, and democrat backing- paper:

Seven months into the massive federal stimulus program, the vast majority of government grants, contracts and loans in Michigan so far have created or retained virtually no jobs, a Free Press analysis shows.

Extra heh:

"It looks to us like the program is unfolding much as we hoped in Michigan," said White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein.

Really? Really? This is what you hoped for?

Great News!

Government Motors only lost a billion dollars last quarter.

Political Correctness as Cultural Marxism

Bill Lind (hat tip, Adam Baldwin:

Second, the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness, like economic Marxism, has a single factor explanation of history. Economic Marxism says that all of history is determined by ownership of means of production. Cultural Marxism, or Political Correctness, says that all history is determined by power, by which groups defined in terms of race, sex, etc., have power over which other groups. Nothing else matters. All literature, indeed, is about that. Everything in the past is about that one thing.

Third, just as in classical economic Marxism certain groups, i.e. workers and peasants, are a priori good, and other groups, i.e., the bourgeoisie and capital owners, are evil. In the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness certain groups are good – feminist women, (only feminist women, non-feminist women are deemed not to exist) blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals. These groups are determined to be "victims," and therefore automatically good regardless of what any of them do. Similarly, white males are determined automatically to be evil, thereby becoming the equivalent of the bourgeoisie in economic Marxism.

Fourth, both economic and cultural Marxism rely on expropriation. When the classical Marxists, the communists, took over a country like Russia, they expropriated the bourgeoisie, they took away their property. Similarly, when the cultural Marxists take over a university campus, they expropriate through things like quotas for admissions. When a white student with superior qualifications is denied admittance to a college in favor of a black or Hispanic who isn’t as well qualified, the white student is expropriated. And indeed, affirmative action, in our whole society today, is a system of expropriation. White owned companies don’t get a contract because the contract is reserved for a company owned by, say, Hispanics or women. So expropriation is a principle tool for both forms of Marxism.

And finally, both have a method of analysis that automatically gives the answers they want. For the classical Marxist, it’s Marxist economics. For the cultural Marxist, it’s deconstruction. Deconstruction essentially takes any text, removes all meaning from it and re-inserts any meaning desired. So we find, for example, that all of Shakespeare is about the suppression of women, or the Bible is really about race and gender. All of these texts simply become grist for the mill, which proves that "all history is about which groups have power over which other groups." So the parallels are very evident between the classical Marxism that we’re familiar with in the old Soviet Union and the cultural Marxism that we see today as Political Correctness.

Of course, the "first" attempts at Marxism failed, in so much that it didn't overtake the globe. So, what did those little Marxists do? They founded a think tank, the Institute for Social Research. They couldn't call it the Institute for Marxism, now could they? Born here was "Critical Theory."

The stuff we’ve been hearing about this morning – the radical feminism, the women’s studies departments, the gay studies departments, the black studies departments – all these things are branches of Critical Theory. What the Frankfurt School essentially does is draw on both Marx and Freud in the 1930s to create this theory called Critical Theory. The term is ingenious because you’re tempted to ask, "What is the theory?" The theory is to criticize. The theory is that the way to bring down Western culture and the capitalist order is not to lay down an alternative. They explicitly refuse to do that. They say it can’t be done, that we can’t imagine what a free society would look like (their definition of a free society). As long as we’re living under repression – the repression of a capitalistic economic order which creates (in their theory) the Freudian condition, the conditions that Freud describes in individuals of repression – we can’t even imagine it. What Critical Theory is about is simply criticizing. It calls for the most destructive criticism possible, in every possible way, designed to bring the current order down. And, of course, when we hear from the feminists that the whole of society is just out to get women and so on, that kind of criticism is a derivative of Critical Theory. It is all coming from the 1930s, not the 1960s.

Now, Feminism, gay studies, black studies and all the other offshoots of Critical Theory have, so far, failed to bring around the new Marxism. But, they have a new tool in their belt with dangerous potential. Environmentalism. This article/ speech was given around 2000, but the reality of this today is even more alarming.

Speaking of "Global Warming", Dicentra points us to this little tidbit and has this to say:

Richard Lindzen of MIT finally proves that the founding assumptions of AGW are a crock. [PDF]

AGW promoters say that the more CO2 you get in the atmosphere, the less heat will radiate into space. On page 45, he shows all of the estimates by AGWers as to what will happen with the increased accumulation of CO2.

On the next page, he shows actual measurements of what has happened.

Conclusion? Increased heat in the atmosphere results in increased amounts of heat radiated into space.

Ergo, it’s all wrong. Every bit of it. But then, Lindzen also knows that no one will stop promoting the AGW cause: it’s just too good to stop.

I'm still reading the Lindzen piece, but he quotes Eisenhower:

"Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitue for intellectual curiosity ... The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present - and is gravely to be regarded."

"Global Warming" aside, you know who needs to start cleaning up their act? China. YUCK! Maybe Obama should bring that up while he's over there.

Late Night Conversations at the Hostages

Last night, BiW had this to say:

[W]e each have a choice to make, because if it hasn’t yet become clear to you yet, you should know that the government, those tasked to rule within the confines of the law set forth in the Constitution, is now largely a mix of coniving schemers who will ignore it when they can no longer twist it to meet their ends, and ignoramuses, who have no idea what it says and cannot contemplate a limitation on their ultimate aims and powers, both intent on centralizing their power without regard to the cost or the damage they leave in their wake.

Part of the reason that we find ourselves in the predicament we’re in today is because the schemers deftly distracted us, and because we ourselves comforted ourselves with the idea that someone was going to “take care of it”, and nothing would be expected of us…we who understood what was going on, and quietly abdicated our duty to become involved and take our turn preserving and defending the republic not just against its enemies, but from a creeping lack of character that allowed such craven calculation to run its course, and make corruption commonplace.

Bingo. Discuss.

(more)

At issue, for those of denser make-up, is the centralization of power in Washington, and the infringement on individual and State's rights. This experiment has been tried again and again, and can be viewed, in real time to the South of us where the smartest man in the world has decided he can run his country better than those awful capitalists.

shamelessly stolen

From Small Dead Animals, because it's too good.

Puppy Blender received this email:

Just something that occurred to me today while trying to cross Fifth Ave in Manhattan during the Veteran’s Day Parade:

The towers fell in New York on 9/11/01, Kabul fell to American led forces on 11/14/01. That’s 65 days.

President Obama’s hand-picked replacement commander in Afghanistan, GEN McChrystal, delivered his Afghanistan war plans to President Obama on 8/30/09, and President Obama hasn’t acted on his General’s recommendations as of today, 11/11/09. That’s 73 days, and waiting.

Kate juxtaposes that with the news that Obama has rejected all the Afghan war options presented by his national security team.

The Recovery Continues Apace

A girl I know got laid off on Monday. My kids take music lessons from a local joint which, since Obama has taken office, has gotten in increasingly dire financial straights. Last January/Feb they laid off one of their most popular teachers because she was also a manager and thus was paid more.

So, on Monday, they laid off yet another person. Once again, because she was the highest paid employee. Hourly rate, I doubt she made much more than minimum.

Music lessons, and the accompanying accoutrements, are how people spend their disposable income. If they have no "disposable" (or any) income, all that shit goes away. So, people who get paid "too much" and all Obama's bullshit spreading the wealth around socialism means that only the very rich (not the middle class, not the lower middle class) will be able to enjoy such things.

You see, shit rolls downhill.

Oh my ...

Zac Efron goes to the White House:

"I admire anyone who has devoted their lives to public service," Efron said.

Linklater is also an Obama fan. "It's great to have a president with such obvious empathy," he said. "You can see it in his books, his speeches and hopefully his politics, although I know that we've got to be patient."

What world is Efron living in? Just about every politician who "devotes their lives to public service" comes away a millionair. Or, in Al Gore's case, a soon-to-be Billionaire.

We've abandoned that ideology, Zac. Get a bit of education.

As for this Linklater fella (I have no idea who he is) ... well, the mind wobbles. "Obvious empathy?" I've got a "shoutout" that says otherwise.

I don't think I can stand ...

.... another privileged, overpaid Hollywood asshat lecturing me about the evils of Capitalism.

“I was thinking about it this morning, how this story ties into everything we’re going through,” says Carrey, who, thanks to the technology, plays Scrooge as well as the three ghosts haunting him. “Every construct we’ve built in American life is falling apart. Why? Because of personal greed and ambition. Capitalism without regulation can’t protect us against personal greed."

STFU, Jim Carrey. Honestly.

Why we'll be worse off than Europe

American leftists screw it up:

Well, America is now more like Europe when it comes to unemployment. But not when it comes to social benefits and protections. The American Left knows how to import Europe’s failures, but not its successes.

The massive health-care bill passed by the House on Saturday is a classic example. It would expand health care coverage somewhat, but not to European levels, and it would vastly increase the costs of our health care system, rather than reducing it to European levels. It would also increase taxes to “European levels of taxation.” The health care bill contains politically-correct provisions that Europeans would never put up with, like pork for trial lawyers and racial preferences. And restrictions on national competition in health insurance, which do not exist in Europe.

In France, doctors don’t need to be paid as much, because competing professions, like lawyers, are paid less. French law is much more conservative than American law when it comes to lawsuits, including lawsuits against doctors. There are NO punitive damages, and France discourages lawsuits by making unsuccessful plaintiffs pay the other side’s legal bills. (Other European countries have specialized health courts, rather than American-style jury trials, to cut lawyers’ bills, speedily compensate the injured, and prevent American-style baseless lawsuits against doctors.) There are no racial preferences — even my Marxist father-in-law, a French trade unionist who likes Michael Moore’s book Stupid White Men, thinks that racial preferences are evil. French people do not let political correctness shackle their minds the way American leftists do.
Europe is not as far to the left of America as people think, and America’s business climate is already not much more favorable than Europe’s. For every three ways in which Europe is more socialistic than America, there are two ways in which it is less socialistic than America. The Obama administration is getting rid of our advantages, but not our disadvantages.

American tort law and family law are much more burdensome, anti-business, and bent on redistribution of wealth, than Europe’s

But, you know, let's rush the vote so Obama can brag about all he got done in his first year. Stuff he got done, you will note, without harming his lawyer friends.

Why those Islamists better keep women under those Burkas

Sgt Kim Munley. Kicking jihadi ass. I hope peps are letting Hasan know, now that he's awake, who capped him.

So, let's review. Pussy jihadi Mulsim attacks unarmed , innocent Americans, but is brought down by a woman.

Suck it!

Important Update:

Nice Deb on the other officer who brought down the pussy jihaid muslim, Sgt Mark Todd.

Another kuffir who rocks. Once the pussy jihadi Muslim had to face someone who was armed, he only lasted about 30-45 seconds. Allah's not gonna be happy about that.


Update again
The art of framing a snapshot, the art of framing a President. No telepromters here, nope! .

Yet again:

If Obama wants to play the role of our nation's healer, he can start by not calling us teabaggers.

Yet again, again:

Via RSM, Dan Riele notes this obagasm of Marc Ambinder:

Today, at Ft. Hood. I guarantee: they'll be teaching this one in rhetoric classes. It was that good. My gloss won't do it justice. Yes, I'm having a Chris Matthews-chill-running-up-my-leg moment, but sometimes, the man, the moment and the words come together and meet the challenge.

Yea! Obama gave a speech! Isn't he the dreamiest?

Kill the bill

I miss W

Class act.

VDH du jour

Us v Them:

First, of course, “they” are the rich in perpetual war against the poor. “They” made out like bandits under Bush, so “they” should have their federal income taxes raised to make “them” “pay their fair share” in “patriotic” fashion. Forget that currently about 5 percent of taxpayers shoulders nearly half the federal income-tax burden. It matters little that a greater percentage of households (well over 40 percent) now pays no federal income tax whatsoever.

Quick note, 'cause I hate disrupt Mr VDH, but if you don't pay any federal income tax, you are ALREADY leeching off of the rest of society. Federal parks? Thank me for supporting them. Military? Me again. Everything that comes from the top down (to you), directly or indirectly, is thanks to someone else.

So, fuck off with the rich v poor bullshit. Fuck off with income disparity bullshit. You ALREADY benefit for living in the US and having "the rich" ( and the middle class) carry your ass.

n the Obamist reading, the record federal deficits are not due to waste and fraud. Nor are unnecessary government spending and excessive entitlements the culprits. A bankrupt Medicare and soon-to-be-bankrupt Social Security, congressional pork-barrel projects, and interest due on past profligate spending did not cause our budget crisis. Instead, the red ink is almost entirely due to a shortage of revenue, and brought on by the greedy who have the capacity, but not the caring, to fork over more.

I'm gonna remember Mr. Obama (and Jenny Granholm's) trick next time I can't pay my bills. It isn't that I overspent. I had a shortage of revenue. It's GENIUS.

“They” should be targeted as well by the states, many of which have rightly raised their tax rates — in California, to over 10 percent. “They” are easily able to pay a new health-care surcharge, the greedy few lending a helping hand to the virtuous many. “They” surely have enough to pay the full 15.3 percent FICA tax on most of their income over the current $106,000 cap. Add it up, and soon state, federal, FICA, property, and sales taxes will reach 60 to 70 percent of “their” incomes.

Let that marinate for a bit. Sixty to seventy percent. Thirty cents on a dollar. But, Obama isn't a socialist who is in favor or redistribution. That's just right-wing kookie talk.

Read the whole thing.

So, what's next?

Everyone goes home.

But next week they will head home to answer to constituents who will be learning more and more of the details about the bill they supported — the jobs-killing mandates on businesses, higher taxes, burgeoning entitlement programs, government intrusion into personal medical decisions, higher health costs, and federal dictates about the kind of health insurance Americans must have to avoid federal penalties — for starters.

And members of Congress will have to explain the false promises that the president made to win passage of the bill. In his statement Saturday, Mr.Obama said: "The bill that the House has produced will provide stability and security for Americans who have insurance; quality, affordable options for those who don't; and lower costs for American families and American businesses." In fact, the bill the House passed Saturday night violates every one of those promises, as numerous independent studies have proven.

And members will have to explain to their constituents why they supported legislation that dramatically changes the relationship between the American people and their government — forcing them to relinquish freedom over health care decisions for themselves and their families to the political will of Washington.

$250,000 fines. Going to jail for 5 years for not buying insurance. Where in the Constitution? Where?

Ba haah haaa haaa

Rachel Maddow simply doesn't know shit! LOL. Think she's embarrassed by her little smugness? I love the little hand-waving. Don't they have fact checkers over at MSNBC?



h/t DPU's Eddiebear.

Ut Oh

That wasn't supposed to happen, was it?

10.2%

DAMN THAT BUSH.

Fuck you Nancy

And your inflation tax:

The return of the inflation tax demonstrates once again the stealth radicalism that animates ObamaCare. In the case of inflation indexing, Democrats would repeal a 30-year bipartisan consensus that it is unfair to tax unreal gains in income, thus hitting millions of middle-class Americans over time with tax rates advertised as only hitting "the rich." Oh, and the House vote on this exercise in dishonest government will come as early as Saturday.

It's in there. In that bloated 1900+ POS Nancy is rushing for a vote tomorrow. This way, our governmental overlords don't have to pass an unpopular tax increase, risking their precocious jobs-for-life. They just have to wait for inflation to do it's dirty work, while the unsuspecting dupes (you and me) who've been undereducated (by public skools) have no idea what's going on.

Remember that (long) piece I had a few days ago? About the view that liberals have of themselves as protectors of the sheep? They're fucking fooling themselves.

The details for those of you who don't hit those linky things:

We also know what has happened with the Alternative Minimum Tax. Passed to hit only 1% of all Americans in 1969, the AMT wasn't indexed for inflation at the time and neither was Bill Clinton's AMT rate increase in 1993. The number of families hit by this shadow tax more than tripled over the next decade. Today, families with incomes as low as $75,000 a year can be hit by the AMT unless Congress passes an annual "patch."

The Pelosi-Obama health tax surcharge will have a similar effect. The tax would begin in 2011 on income above $500,000 for singles and $1 million for joint filers. Assuming a 4% annual inflation rate over the next decade, that $500,000 for an individual tax filer would hit families with the inflation-adjusted equivalent of an income of about $335,000 by 2020. After 20 years without indexing, the surcharge threshold would be roughly $250,000.

Same thing will apply to businesses.

As for the business payroll penalty, it is imposed on a sliding scale beginning at a 2% rate for firms with payrolls of $500,000 and rising to 8% on firms with payrolls above $750,000. But those amounts are also not indexed for inflation, so again assuming a 4% average inflation rate in 10 years this range would hit payrolls between $335,000 and $510,000 in today's dollars. Note that in pitching this "pay or play" tax today, Democrats claim that most small businesses would be exempt. But because it isn't indexed, this tax will whack more and more businesses every year. The sales pitch is pure deception.

I don't think I can say it enough. Fuck you Nancy, you Botoxed bitch.

And, OC you can insult my hair color any time you want. I. Don't. Care. If I did, if I were insecure and vain enough, I'd ban you.

What's the rush?

House vote on Saturday?

What's the rush for a program that won't even go into effect until 2013? Of course, taxes would start right away. How come no one's wondering about THAT? That our government is going to be collecting taxes on this boondoggle for three years before they are able to start the program.

I got an idea, next time you buy a car, I want you to make payments on it for THREE years before you go and take ownership. See how that sits with folks.

But, even more hilarious is that amendments to force our politicians to abide by these same new rules have been shot down EVERY time. I'm glad to see Republicans haven't given up on this:

Republican Reps. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, Wally Herger of California, Phil Gingrey of Georgia and John Fleming and Steve Scalise, both of Louisiana, announced their intention Wednesday to bring the amendment, which failed in committee, to the floor when the health care reform bill surfaces.

“If Speaker Pelosi and her Democratic counterparts truly believe that their government insurance option is the best way forward for health care in the United States, then they should be fully supportive of amending the bill to ensure that every single Member of Congress – both in the House and Senate – is enrolled in it," Gingrey said.

But alas? The amendment has no shot of passing since Democrats said yesterday that they won't accept any amendments to the reform bill.

Still, just by offering it, Republicans intend to score political points by arguing that Democrats are taking the do as I say, not as I do approach to reform.

Update: House Speaker's Pelosi's office responds to the amendment saying it "would run counter to the central promise of health insurance reform that all Americans have their choice of affordable quality plans."

Yea, well fuck you Pelosi. With a swordfish. That doesn't even make sense. Batty dingbat has had too many botox injections.

update:

Perhaps this is why Nancy's rushing the vote. The trending isn't really working in their favor. And it's prolly only going to get worse.

Just as good as Carter

Obama, restoring America's moral leadership!

For this broad coalition of democrats, America is a beacon of hope and the Iran of the street arguably the most pro-American place in the world. Earlier this year, before the huge demonstrations in the wake of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's brazen theft of the June presidential election, one popular opposition chant was, "O ba ma!"—in Farsi a play on the new American President's last name that translates as, "He with us!"

But the opposition's dreams of American support, moral as much as anything, have been dashed. Mr. Obama was slow and reluctant to speak out on their behalf and eager to engage the Iranian regime in nuclear talks as soon as the summer of protest tapered off. Iran's democrats are now letting their disappointment show. The new chant passed around in Internet chat rooms and heard in the streets yesterday was, "Obama, Obama—either you're with them or with us."

nowing the opposition was planning to march, Mr. Obama issued his own statement the night before that instead chose to reach out to the regime. America, he said, "seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interest and mutual respect. We do not interfere in Iran's internal affairs." He went on to list the Administration's various efforts to appease the regime. So far and on all counts, the mullahs have rebuffed these entreaties.

Obama is basing our interactions with Iran on a philosophy of mutual respect. Problem? Iran doesn't respect Obama or his administration. I don't know if they "respected" previous administrations, but at least they feared us. Obama's told them they need not fear us.

So, we've got nuthin.

Yesterday, protesters were out in the streets of Iran, and what does Obama say? Not, we are with you, like he should.

-The White House is calling for an end to violence in Iran as security forces there crack down on anti-government protesters.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday that Obama administration leaders are following reports of the unrest and "hope greatly that violence will not spread."

You know when the violence will end? When the protesters go home.

The Liberal Paradigm is out of date/ with some VDH goodness added in

That paradigm being, as explained by John Steele Gordon, that peps can be divided into three groups. The mass of good, but ordinary people. Sheep. Not really bright enough to figure out what is good for them, they are easily swayed. They are swayed by the second group; the politically powerful. The wolves:

The second group, far smaller, are the affluent, successful businessmen, corporate executives and financiers. Capitalists in other words. They are the establishment and it is the establishment that, by definition, runs the country. They are, in the liberal paradigm, smart, ruthless and totally self-interested. They care only about personal gain.

It is in the third group that we find our liberals. These are the folks who selflessly protect the sheep from the wolves.

[T]hose few, those happy few, that band of brothers, the educated and enlightened liberals, who understand what is really going on and want to help the members of the first group to live a better and more satisfying life. Unlike the establishment, which supposedly cares only for itself, liberals supposedly care for society as a whole and have no personal self-interest.

Gordon explains that this paradigm, which can be traced back to the late 19th century, once made sense. It actually reflected a reality. But no longer.

The sheep are now richer, better educated, and able to look out for themselves thankyouverymuch. And to wonder if liberals are "non-establishment" folk acting absent of self-interest, we need to look no further than Al Gore and his carbon trading scheme that will make him even richer, very likely the world's first Carbon billionaire. Liberals don't get more "establishment" than the likes of Pelosi and the Kennedys. What about these sheep protectors?

What has the liberal leadership become? It garners more Wall Street money than the Republicans. The high-income brackets favored Obama. The shriller the populist or nihilist—think everyone from Arianna Huffington to Michael Moore to Noam Chomsky to Gore Vidal—the nicer the home. Think of the vast diversity of such celebrity hypocrisy: John Edward’s “two nations” is defined by his own vast estate—and those outside it. Michael Moore profits in the millions from, of course, damning profit-driven capitalism.

A Sean Penn or Oliver Stone praises the egalitarianism of Latin American thugs whose socialist utopias would jail both in short order if they ever moved in pursuance of their egalitarian rhetoric. The Obama populist team hires Wall Street insiders to bail out friends, whose firms they will shortly join when out of office.
****
A Nancy Pelosi shouts slogans from the barricades, while her husband subsidizes her aristocratic liberalism through a network of arcane deal-making. Chris Dodd worries about the roguery of credit card companies while he finagles an Irish getaway “cottage” through influence peddling. The list could go on.

So, why do "liberals" still act as if the paradigm was valid? And, perhaps a more interesting question posited by VDH; (hint- it's not about they hypocrisy):

What are we to make of the George Soroses and Warren Buffetts and the club of the mega wealthy preferring the populist rhetoric of Barack Obama? Why did a “redistributive change”, “spread the wealth” Barack Obama move into a million-dollar mansion, or a “truth to power” Valerie Jarrett make out like a bandit from questionable insider Chicago real estate deals, or Rahm Emanuel cash grab as a director of a scandal-plagued Freddie Mac, or raise-our-taxes Timothy Geithner’s in the most tawdry fashion avoid taxes? In short, why the liberal fascination with money and privilege—and populism?

He offers three explanations. Choice one? Guilt. Praising a populist agenda assuages the guilt one feels for the extreme privilege one lives in.

Choice two? A tad more complicated.

There are never consequences for crazy theoretical positions; money and status ensure insulation from high crime, welfare dependency, or the pernicious culture of the underclass.
****

Obamamism’s targets are wannabees, who lack the proper sophistication that real wealth ensures. Again, note the hatred of Sarah Palin and her followers: how dare this upstart sell her memoirs, this winking, you-betcha tart whom we’d never let in a Georgetown party. For many, liberalism, in contrast, is the proper social accoutrement for big money, a tasteful indulgence like driving a XK-150 Jaguar rather than an Escalade, cruising in a Gar wood boat, or having hardwood, machine-worn hickory floors in the kitchen instead of linoleum. Yes, snobbery is part of high liberalism. It is a fashion marker that says: “I want high taxes, because for me they are as superfluous as white lace and crystal.”

Choice three?

We don’t associate hardball, tawdry shenanigans with the creation of the Buffett, or Turner or Gates fortune. Even modest fortunes like that of democratister Terry McAuliffe do not receive careful scrutiny when we understand their creators are “with the people” and for whom money-making was always incidental, a brief pause between public service.

Libearls, you see, made money "the good way." Or, for a good cause. They're not like the greedy capitalists. I mean, they're "like" them, but not "like like" them. IfyouknowwahtImeanandIthinkthatyoudo.

Liberal elites cannot be harmed by (extremely) high taxes, because (simply) they have a ton of money. Besides, they set up some trust years ago, and yada yada yada...

The rest of us?

The push-back to all this is not Republican, but a populist distrust of elites and the cozy government they craft. Americans by and large not only resent higher taxes, but feel that the additional revenue makes things worse not better, by either politicizing public service or corrupting the nature of the recipient. The rich liberal has others go to the DMV for him. The lower middle class gets a job at the DMV. But the middle class waits in line for hours for service from the SEIU clerk behind the window, who can’t be fired as a loyal constituent of big government.

So much for the elites protecting the sheep from the wolves. The elites have become the wolves. For our own good, you see, 'cause we're to stupid to know what's good for us.

Leave that to Michael Moore and Sean Penn and Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore. Your betters.

OMG

November 17th .

Socialism, dressed up in fancy words

Thomas Friedman thinks Obama has a "poetry" problem. You see, it's not that people are unsupportive of the "Obama plan" - it's just that he hasn't framed it correctly.

He has not tied all his programs into a single narrative that shows the links between his health care, banking, economic, climate, energy, education and foreign policies. Such a narrative would enable each issue and each constituency to reinforce the other and evoke the kind of popular excitement that got him elected.

I can tie it all together for you in that single narrative, but I don't think Tom is gonna like it.

Without it, though, the president’s eloquence, his unique ability to inspire people to get out of their seats and work for him, has been muted or lost in a thicket of technocratic details. His daring but discrete policies are starting to feel like a work plan that we have to slog through, and endlessly compromise over, just to finish for finishing’s sake — not because they are all building blocks of a great national project.

Great national project ... like National Socialism?

But to deliver this agenda requires a motivated public and a spirit of shared sacrifice. That’s where narrative becomes vital. People have to have a gut feel for why this nation-building project, with all its varied strands, is so important — why it’s worth the sacrifice. One of the reasons that independents and conservatives who voted for Mr. Obama have been so easily swayed against him by Fox News and people labeling him a “socialist” is because he has not given voice to the truly patriotic nation-building endeavor in which he is engaged.

I'm telling you ... some parades ... a few posters ... THAT is how you motivate people for a "Great National Project."

The mistake is in the belief that our Country can be improved from the top down. A bigger government, with more power and control will certainly be the answer, right? Friedman and friends are so loath to call what Obama and Pelosi wants "socialism" but I really don't know what it is when the Federal government has so much power and income is increasingly redistributed in the name of "fairness."

One of these things is not like the others

Ford posts third quarter profits.

Let's make "the rich" pay for all our shit

Health care funding problem SOLVED.

This is gonna work just GREAT.

House Democrats said they are proud that they found a way to finance the health care package largely from a tax on the wealthy. There is, however, little appetite for a millionaire's tax in the Senate, and some tax experts think it is a mistake to tap only rich people to pay for services used by all.
"If health care is a benefit that is worth having, then it's worth paying for," said William Gale, who was an adviser to President George H. W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers and is now co-director of the Tax Policy Center. "This gives the impression that it's only worth having if someone else pays for it."

Those dang WEALTHY people. What do they need all their money for anyway? No, Obama and Pelosi wanna spread the money around. This is the new era of Hope and Change!.

Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan "reform" and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be "universal coverage." The result will be destructive on every level—for the health-care system, for the country's fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity.

So what if the bill expands spending. There is a health care CRISES and Obama promised to get health care costs under control before we all went bankrupt.

The overriding liberal ambition is to finish the work began decades ago as the Great Society of converting health care into a government responsibility. Mr. Obama's own Medicare actuaries estimate that the federal share of U.S. health dollars will quickly climb beyond 60% from 46% today. One reason Mrs. Pelosi has fought so ferociously against her own Blue Dog colleagues to include at least a scaled-back "public option" entitlement program is so that the architecture is in place for future Congresses to expand this share even further.

As Congress's balance sheet drowns in trillions of dollars in new obligations, the political system will have no choice but to start making cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are allowed to receive. Democrats can't regulate their way out of the reality that we live in a world of finite resources and infinite wants. Once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical rationing is inevitable—especially for the innovative high-cost technologies and drugs that are the future of medicine.

Remember, they are doing this for our OWN GOOD. Besides, I'm sure that rationing stuff won't start right away. The government is well equipped to manage our health.