I'm reading this article ....

This letter to the editor, actually. Craig Blair has introduced a bill into the West Virginia State House that would require drug testing for recipients of public assistance. Amid the writers arguments that it "criminalizes" being poor, he sites both the Fourth and Fifth Amendment.

And, I'm thinking, where in the Constitution does it mention anything about confiscating the wages of one to give to another?

It just seems a tad ironic (not in the Alanis Morrisett way) to be using the Constitution to defend a position regarding an entitlement which isn't granted in the Constitution.

Don't want to get drug tested to get your free cash? Tough. No one is forcing you to take public assistance.

Bonus heh:

The good book teaches that the right approach is to view them with respect, treat them with equality, and preserve their dignity. Blair's bill does the opposite.

AAACK!! Separation of church and state! ALERT ALERT.

But, to his point, the good book doesn't mention confiscating my money either. You're supposed to give willingly. Which folks usually do at their church.

This is from the WV Legislature's website:

House Bill 4482 would require applicants and recipients of temporary assistance for needy families cash benefits participate in a random drug testing program. An applicant or recipient would have 60 days to pass a drug test before being deemed ineligible to receive benefits. The bill would also require legislators to be required to participate in a drug testing program.

Sounds like a great idea.

FIAF tune/ Important update

Yet another FIAF song

Key word? "Unexpectedly"

From The Washington Post:

Unemployment claims filed last week rose unexpectedly, coming in at 496,000, up 22,000 from the previous week.



Unexpected by whom? Certainly not unexpected by business owners struggling to keep their companies afloat.

The U.S. unemployment rate stands at 9.7 percent, a number that decreased from the previous month only because so many unemployed Americans gave up looking for working, shrinking the job pool.

The truer unemployment rate stands at 16.5 percent, a number that takes into account all of the people who should be working full time but are not: people who have given up looking for work, or "discouraged" workers, and those who want full-time jobs but are forced to take part-time work.

Economists expect the official unemployment rate to remain near 10 percent through at least the remainder of the year, a factor that will impact the midterm elections in November.

DAMN THAT BUSH.

Your assignment, should you choose to accept ...

Barry needs you. Via Ben Smith:

The Democratic National Committee's Organizing for America has quietly launched an initiative aimed at making Obama supporters' voices heard on the largely conservative airwaves.

"The fate of health reform has been a focus of debate in living rooms and offices, on TV and online — and on talk radio. And since millions of folks turn to talk radio as a trusted source of news and opinions, we need to make sure OFA supporters are calling in with a pro-reform message," says the introduction to the online tool.

The online tool presents users with a radio show discussing political topics, to which supporters can listen live, and the phone number for that station, for when health care comes up. It also offers tips for callers and talking points on the issue.

So, it's easy, you listen to conservative radio. You call 'em up. And then you simply follow Obama's tips and discussion points:

These points are only to provide extra information and suggestions. Your personal story will make the most compelling message.

*For most Americans, their health care plan covers too little and costs too much. Far too many people delay or even skip the care they need because they simply can’t afford it.

*The plan the President laid out includes the largest health care tax cut for middle class families in history and makes coverage more affordable for tens of millions of families and small business owners and expands coverage to over 31 million Americans who are currently uninsured.

*This plan will give millions of Americans new choices in health insurance by making coverage more affordable, ending the denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, putting power in the hands of consumers instead of insurance companies and providing one of the largest tax cuts in history while also reducing our national deficit.
Reform couldn’t be more urgent – just this month consumers in California were told their premiums could go up as much as 39 percent.

*Too many in Washington are now saying that we should delay or give up on reform entirely, but Americans understand the stakes for our economy and our lives, and we want action

You know, it would simply MAKE MY DAY if I could hear one or two of these asinine discussion points on America's Hate Radio.

This plan is SO GOING TO WORK.

Lying Liar

h/t:RS McCain.

Details.

What the Senate Bills does, from AUL:

Only prohibits the use of certain funds to pay for abortions, leaving open the possibility that other authorized funds – such as the 11 billion dollars provided for Community Health Centers – will be used to pay for abortions. Furthermore, even the paltry limitation in the bill is not built on solid ground – it is tied to the existence of the Hyde Amendment which is subject to elimination every year. So, if the Hyde amendment is ever removed from LHHS appropriations, the limited prohibition on federal funding for abortion in the Senate health care reform bill will disappear as well. Pro-abortion lawmakers are committed to getting rid of the Hyde Amendment, and it is perhaps not cynical to see this as the first step in a two-step plan to do that.


Allows federal dollars to directly subsidize insurance plans that cover abortions. Again, this contravenes existing law. The most well-known example of the prohibition on the use of federal dollars to subsidize insurance plans that cover abortions is the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP).

So, why doesn't Pelosi just admit it? Come on, Nancy! Just admit it.

Today's Must Reads/Prep for today's political theater

William A. Jacobson's article Now Is Not The Time for Weakness. Go read.

The Obama plan contains fiscal gimmicks and gamesmanship which will lead to crushing deficits and debt; sanctions government intrusion into our lives unlike anything we have seen before; will lead to the destruction of a private insurance system which, while not perfect, delivers coverage to the overwhelming majority of Americans in a satisfactory manner; will result in the demoralization of our most honored profession, reducing medical care to the lowest common denominator in the cause of a false sense of fairness; and reflects the ultimate hubris of ideological, power drunk people who have proven themselves unworthy of

Roger Kimbal on health care (who gets the hat tip for the previous quote):

Are you listening? Obama & Co. require, prohibit, mandate, ban. That’s what it’s about, folks. Government deciding for you how and how much to pay (you can be sure it will be lots), what doctors you see, indeed, what sorts of doctors there are for you to see. Lenin put it more briefly still: the fundamental question of politics, he said, is Who-whom? “Whom,” it pains me to report, is us, the American people.

Tomorrow, we can all watch the little circus Obama has crafted for the credulous: the “bipartisan” “debate” over health care in which Obama, as master of ceremonies, will invite his Republican colleagues to demonstrate their “bi-partisanship” by acquiescing to the Democratic plan. The show is guaranteed to be a travesty, though not, I think, in the entertaining, theatrical sense.

Monday, Obama released his (unscored by the CBO) proposal on Health Care and today we get the political theater at Blair House. What is going to happen?

Which brings us to the summit itself. The best way for the president to bring grumbling and nervous Democrats together is to unite them against a common enemy, and it looks like the president wants Republicans to play the role of Snidely Whiplash. The president will claim that he has adopted the Senate proposal’s structure, along with some of the bigger giveaways from the House approach, to show that he has split the differences between the two. Then he will turn his fire on the Republicans for being obstructionist and callous to the problems of health care in this country.

This "obstructionist" charge is nothing but a sound-bite answer designed to be easily digested by the leftard crowd. The White House puts it out, and it proliferates everywhere. Even here.

The response to this obstructionism, is "Reconciliation." Daniel Foster on Reconciliation and he's got that Naked Emperor vid that is oh so amusing.

So while reconciliation is not the "nuclear option," the abuse of it accomplishes the same goal — an end-around on the rule that makes the Senate the Senate. (Cue the cries of "the Republicans did it on tax cuts!", which are perfectly irrelevant to this discussion.) If the Democrats were so interested, they could pursue the end of the filibuster just as the Republicans did with a much smaller caucus in 2005. At least that would be intellectually honest. But Senate Democrats won't do that, because at the end of the day they like the 60-vote threshold every bit as much as Republicans do.

But, the big meeting today is supposed to be a bi-partisan effort, right? Victor Davis Hanson has something to say about that:

Obama also just invited the Republican opposition to a summit at the White House to iron out differences over his stalled health-care legislation. Such a “let bygones, be bygones” group discussion likewise sounds like a good idea — given the climbing cost of health insurance and the millions who cannot afford it.

But the problem again is that such outreach is too little and comes too late — more than a year after Obama began his unilateral effort to have the government assume much of the nation’s health-care system. A year ago — with a supermajority in the Senate and basking in the swell of the November 2008 election — Obama didn’t worry much over the lack of Republican input.

Yea, but that didn't work out so well, did it? Republican obstructionism aside, heh, the Democratic super-majority couldn't get it done. Well, see how bipartisan today's meeting turns out to be.

Riddle me this ...

Obama to run again!

The planning for now consists entirely of private conversations, with Obama aides at all levels indulging occasionally in closed-door 2012 discussions while focusing ferociously on the midterm elections and health care reform, the Democratic sources said. “The gathering storm is the 2010 elections,” one top official said.

But the sources said Obama has given every sign of planning to run again and wants the next campaign to resemble the highly successful 2008 effort.

His "highly successful" 2008 effort relied on the "Bush Sucks" strategy. So.... who is he going to run against in 2012?

Update:

Heh, from Allah:

Didn’t The One tell us just a few weeks ago that he’d rather be a great one-term president than a mediocre two-termer? I guess he’s … planning for mediocrity, then?

Regardless, Obama's busy attempting to secure his 2012 options while most of us are worrying about stuff a tad more immediate.

Heh

They paid no taxes but they gave the Democratic Congressional Campaign committee $10,000 last year, and have a healthy history of donating to various Democrats.

The McCourts, who own the Los Angeles Dodgers (so she says; he says he's the owner and she's not), jointly pocketed income totaling $108 million from 2004 through 2009, according to documents Jamie McCourt recently filed in the couple's divorce case in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

On that sum, they paid zero federal and state income tax. Jamie suggests that some tax breaks will apply this year too

You know, I've got an idea. How 'bout if you pay no taxes, you're not allowed to donate money to a politician?

Today's Racist Post

In SHOCKING news, there are accusations of a "pay-to-play" scheme going on in Detroit. The Detroit Free Press, that racist paper, reveals:

A contractor who pleaded guilty in an ongoing corruption probe in Detroit has told investigators that he handed as much as $100,000 in bribes to then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in 2002, according to interviews and sworn documents reviewed by the Free Press.

The contractor, Karl Kado of West Bloomfield, also told the FBI he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the mayor's father, and thousands more to a close mayoral aide, according to the records and interviews.

Kado told authorities he paid Kwame Kilpatrick in four or five installments of about $20,000 each. Kado, who is awaiting sentencing for paying bribes to protect multimillion-dollar Cobo Center contracts, said he sometimes delivered the money in envelopes to Kilpatrick's office on the 11th floor at City Hall, and sometimes Kilpatrick dropped by Cobo to get the cash.

The allegations are significant because they show, for the first time, that the government has secured the cooperation of someone who says he gave payoffs directly to Kilpatrick.

Authorities obtained the information as part of a years-long, complex and wide-ranging investigation in Detroit and Southfield that has produced a series of public corruption charges and 10 guilty pleas.

I don't know what kind of racist federal government we've got that feels it can just target Detroit. Obviously, there is no other reason but to pick on the black man. I am, personally, outraged. I demand an immediate appearance by Jesse Jackson so we can begin the healing.

This is just another example of the government lynching the black man.

I'm disgusted.

Tea Party racists, straight up

Wiser sends this our direction.

The Road to Serfdom

We're marching ever closer.

I've long cringed from calling Obama a Marxist or a Communist. He is a Socialist, which is (like Marxism and Communism) a form of collectivism. An advocate of central planning. And this move is right out of a collectivist's playbook.

President Obama is working on health care legislation intended to reconcile differences between House and Senate Democrats that could be attached to a budget bill and avoid a Republican filibuster, according to a published report.
The president's proposal, which is still being written, will be posted on the Internet by Monday morning, senior administration officials and Congressional aides told the New York Times.

By piggybacking the legislation onto a budget bill, Democrats would be able to advance the bill with a simple majority of just 51 votes, averting a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

The White House signaled Thursday that an aggressive, all-Democratic strategy for overhauling the nation's health system remains a serious option, even as Obama invites Republicans to next week's televised summit to seek possible compromises.

"It will be a reconciliation bill," the Times quoted a Democratic aide as saying. "If Republicans don't come with any substantial offers, this is what we would do."

Time to get out our pitchforks.

Good stuff

A Barton Hinkle:

But there is something else going on here, something Thomas Sowell put his finger on a decade and a half ago in The Vision of the Anointed. The progressive elite, he wrote, "do not simply happen to have a disdain for the public. Such disdain is an integral part of their vision, for the central feature of that vision is preemption of the decisions of others."
As The New York Times' David Brooks wrote earlier this year in a column condescending to the "Tea-Party Teens," the Obama administration "is premised on the conviction that pragmatic federal leaders with professional expertise should have the power to implement programs to solve the country's problems." Those problems are presumed to be primarily economic: investment bankers making too much money, insurance companies charging too much for coverage, and uninsured Americans' inability to afford medical care. Offended by such disparities of wealth and want, progressives have expended vast amounts of energy to produce greater equality.
Yet as J.R. Lucas wrote more than three decades ago, equality has more than one dimension, and efforts to tame economic inequalities can produce bureaucratic empires that crystallize "an inequality of power . . . more dangerous than the inequality of wealth to which objection was originally made." Members of Tea Party Nation may simply prefer to tolerate monetary inequalities rather than to hand more power over their lives to progressives who, while purporting to care about the great unwashed, sometimes treat them with casual contempt.

h/t: puppyblender

The interesting part of about the bolded section is that when the government steps in to tame these economic inequalities, the result is an elite class of politicians and bureaucrats who then become both the ruling class and wealthy. We're already seeing the disparate levels of income between private and civil workers.

The Hammer

Yesterday's post brought us the kookie talk regarding the filibuster, the Senate, and the electoral college. The problem, as the left sees it, is that Obama's failures are not due to the man, but simply systemic problems in our government. The new meme we will be that the problems are simply too large for one man. It's an old meme.

In the latter days of the Carter presidency, it became fashionable to say that the office had become unmanageable and was simply too big for one man. Some suggested a single, six-year presidential term. The president’s own White House counsel suggested abolishing the separation of powers and going to a more parliamentary system of unitary executive control. America had become ungovernable.

As Krauthammer points out, both Reagan AND Clinton overcome these insurmountable obstacles.

It’s 2010, and the first-year agenda of a popular and promising young president has gone down in flames. Barack Obama’s two signature initiatives — cap-and-trade and health-care reform — lie in ruins.

Desperate to explain away this scandalous state of affairs, liberal apologists haul out the old reliable from the Carter years: “America the Ungovernable.” So declared Newsweek. “Is America Ungovernable?” coyly asked The New Republic. Guess the answer.

The rage at the machine has produced the usual litany of systemic explanations. Special interests are too powerful. The Senate filibuster stymies social progress. A burdensome constitutional order prevents innovation. If only we could be more like China, pines Tom Friedman, waxing poetic about the efficiency of the Chinese authoritarian model and complaining that America can only flail about under its “two parties . . . with their duel-to-the-death paralysis.” The better thinkers, bewildered and furious that their president has not gotten his way, have developed a sudden disdain for our inherently incremental constitutional system.

This dovetails nicely with what I quoted from Doug Ross yesterday. I repeat that quote, because it's so dang good:

History teaches us that the decline of a society and the demise of a government comes with the institutionalization of corruption and a wanton disregard for the written law. Such is our situation today, wherein the states have become puppets of an all-powerful federal government that confiscates more and more private property while exerting increasing control over every aspect of our lives.

The greatest bulwark against tyranny in America has always been the Constitution, which instantiates our carefully designed system of private property, God-given individual liberties and free enterprise.
Yet today the Speaker of the House can’t articulate why a federal takeover of the entire health care system is constitutional. And mainstream Democrats seriously debate the destruction of the U.S. Senate.

This crowd of leftists are literally advocating the overthrow of the United States government. Tossing aside thousands of years of human experience and advocating a return to a centralized, authoritarian form of government that can’t work and has never worked.

What these Democrats offer is nothing less than treason.

Now, if our commenters could stay focused and refrain from "But Bush" and "You're Racits" and "Teabaggers!" crap, perhaps you folks could explain to us your position regarding the issues presented HERE. In THIS POST.

Begging to be photoshopped

Obama has changed the name of the war in Iraq to Operation New Dawn..

Kookie talk

Over at Fire Dog Lake, that comes to us via the Green Room.

The blame has been flying–it’s Obama’s fault, Rahm Emanuel’s, Harry Reid’s–but what if the problem simply is the Senate?

What can we change? Would eliminating the filibuster–the so-called “nuclear option” back when Republicans were suggesting it–be enough, or is the Senate, with its two-Senators-per-state-regardless-of-population mandate, just too fundamentally undemocratic? We ask the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg, author of ¡OBÁMANOS!: The Rise of a New Political Era, Lawrence Lessig, Harvard professor and author of a new Nation cover story on the subject, and Nancy Scola of the Personal Democracy Forum.

The (serious!) panel discussion ends with the suggestion that both the Senate an the Electoral college be eliminated.
Where is Eddiebear when you need him for a nice, profanity-laced response to this?

Well, we've got Doug Ross:

History teaches us that the decline of a society and the demise of a government comes with the institutionalization of corruption and a wanton disregard for the written law. Such is our situation today, wherein the states have become puppets of an all-powerful federal government that confiscates more and more private property while exerting increasing control over every aspect of our lives.

The greatest bulwark against tyranny in America has always been the Constitution, which instantiates our carefully designed system of private property, God-given individual liberties and free enterprise.

Yet today the Speaker of the House can’t articulate why a federal takeover of the entire health care system is constitutional. And mainstream Democrats seriously debate the destruction of the U.S. Senate.

This crowd of leftists are literally advocating the overthrow of the United States government. Tossing aside thousands of years of human experience and advocating a return to a centralized, authoritarian form of government that can’t work and has never worked.

What these Democrats offer is nothing less than treason.

Indeed.

Hope? Change?

Apparently, Obama didn't really mean all that fluff about taking money out of politics. From The Daily Caller:

Obama has not only embraced the sordid money-driven culture of DC, but actually outdone his predecessors. An analysis by the American Foreign Service Association, for example, found that Obama has stuffed the diplomatic corps with more political appointees (i.e., cronies) than any president in the past 40 years. Only a year into the administration, close of half of the president’s biggest donors already have federal jobs.

Oh, but there's more:

Then there are the folks from Wall Street. Democrats usually see these folks as greedy jackals who destroyed the global economy, unless Obama puts them in the special “savvy businessman” box. For example, Michael Froman, who raised over $200,000 for Obama, is now Deputy National Security Advisor for International and Economic Affairs. He worked for Citigroup. Eric Schwartz, who raised over $100,000 for Change, is now Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration. He worked for Goldman Sachs. Louis Susman raised over $200,000 for Obama, and landed a gig as Ambassador to the Court of St. James in the UK. He worked for Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking.

So, exactly what "IS" the Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration? Their website. You know what I'm thinking, right?

Numerous other organizations, such as UNICEF, the World Food Program, and others also provide assistance to IDPs that complement the activities of UNHCR and ICRC. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funds the work of these other international organizations as well as non-governmental organizations to respond to IDP needs as well.

I've got a GREAT idea. How 'bout we let UNICEF, WFP and others provide ALL the assistance? And, call me crazy, but this sounds like something the UN should be doing . I wonder how much we spend on this. And, I wonder how many other bureaus and departments there are like this in Washington, bureaus and departments that overlap other agencies. Of course, everyone needs their little piece, right?

OPEN BLOG

This is the post, Bob, where you can ignore whatever content I've brought and bring up your own little issues.

Have at!

More corruption

If the House Ethics Committee drags out its “investigation” of Charlie until the 2010 elections, they’ll come close to matching the time it took the Allies to plan the Normandy Invasion in World War II. At least the MSM is keeping this one alive ...

Extra tidbit, totally unrelated to Charlie Rangel being a crook, but more that our government wastes our money, which makes it related:

The energy crisis of 1973 was the impetus for President Carter to propose creation of the DOE and the enabling legislation was passed and signed into law on August 4, 1977. The DOE began operations on October 1, 1977.

On its website, this department lists all its awards and achievements but the fact is that hundreds of billions later with a budget of $24.2 billion a year, 16,000 federal employees and approximately 10,000 contract employees, we are no closer to being independent of foreign oil. That’s how a bureaucracy operates — it produces nothing except a mechanism to drain money from taxpayers. Now the banking, healthcare and auto industry are scheduled for the same ‘fix.” Heaven help us!

So, on the departments that should be eliminated we've got Department of Energy, Department of Education ... what else?

Right Wing Hate Machine attacks the Black Caucus

Oops, my bad. It's the New York Times examining the corruption of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Here's an interesting fact from the article -- "All eight open House investigations involve caucus members, and most center on accusations of improper ties to private businesses." The bottom line is that it appears the Congressional Black Caucus is devoted to two things -- spending millions of dollars on lavish parties and raising money from corporations and lobbyists.

Memo to black voters: they don't serve your interests. They serve THEMSELVES. The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation is the charitable arm of the Black Caucus. From their website:

The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc. (CBCF) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy, research and educational institute that aims to help improve the socioeconomic circumstances of African Americans and other underserved communities.

But where does the money go? From the NYT article:

The caucus says its nonprofit groups are intended to help disadvantaged African-Americans by providing scholarships and internships to students, researching policy and holding seminars on topics like healthy living.

But the bulk of the money has been spent on elaborate conventions that have become a high point of the Washington social season, as well as the headquarters building, golf outings by members of Congress and an annual visit to a Mississippi casino resort.

In 2008, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation spent more on the caterer for its signature legislative dinner and conference — nearly $700,000 for an event one organizer called “Hollywood on the Potomac” — than it gave out in scholarships, federal tax records show.

Oh, and remember last week when Bob brought up that NYT poll and I questioned it's reliability? Yea, apparently I was right.

Donald Douglas at American Power blog notes other questions and responses that suggest the president's position with the public is vastly more negative than the Times' leads its readers to believe. A strong majority, 56 percent, say they prefer a "smaller government with fewer services," and nearly 60 percent say "government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals."
But the bad news for Obama and his political supporters in the New York Times/CBS News poll gets even worse the more you read in it.

And now for a little bit of music ...

Carry On.

Happy VD, but get that looked at, ok?

This and That ...

Department of Education spending. Biggest waste of money.

Puppyblender reminds us of pork busters.

HEY, REMEMBER PORKBUSTERS? So I was talking to a reporter about the Tea Party movement yesterday, and he asked why nobody was complaining about spending under Republicans. Well, I remarked, there was the whole PorkBusters movement, whose biggest target was probably Trent Lott. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I had forgotten about that.”

Scroll down to see pre-Obama criticism of pork.

Johnah Goldberg on the Bipartisan Health Care Summit:

“The president doesn’t think we should start over,” White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer explained. Obama himself has said he’s committed to the existing bills in the House and Senate. He just wants to hash out ideas with Republicans — in front of TV cameras — at a much-hyped summit because he thinks it would be good for America, or something. The Republicans can get whatever fixtures they want in the guest bathroom. Beyond that, they should just co-sign Obamacare and shut up.

The best you can say about the effort is that it fits into the White House’s universal answer to all of its problems: “We just need to explain to these confused Americans how we’ve been right about everything.” To that end, the White House wants to use Republicans as a skeptical prop-audience in one last infomercial for the ShamWow of Obamacare.

The worst you can say is that it’s a cynical trap designed to make the GOP look out of touch, ill informed, and ideological. Indeed, there’s a bipartisan consensus growing in Washington that the whole thing is a setup. Obama is going to say “nice doggie” to Republicans right up until the moment he smashes them with a rolled-up 2,000-page health-care bill.

Should the GOP go? Goldberg says yea. I'm not so sure.

The "Big Announcement" from Iran?

Well, it's the 11th.

Meanwhile, you may recall Iran's president Ahmadinejad promised earlier in the week that there would be a "surprise" today coming from Iran. Well, it's not the arrival of the 12th Imam. Apparently, it isn't really news at all; Ahmadinejad announced that Iran is now a "nuclear state:"

Oh goodie. But, never fear, the UN is writing a harshly worded letter.

A nuclear Iran. Good thing they're not crazy or nuthin over there.

February 11th?

Ahmadinejad is making noise that this Friday will bring about the demise of the liberal capitalist system:

“God created mankind … to reach a point that it could have control over the world of creation and days and nights,” Ahmadinejad said. “It is clear to all of us that the Islamic Revolution today is a giant stride toward the implementation of this great goal. The Islamic Revolution is in the direction, and of the same nature of, the great prophet’s move. It is guided by God.”

Ahmadinejad further said that the West, particularly the United States, had been the “biggest historical impediment” to the Islamic Revolution.

“The arrogant and hegemonic powers, which mankind experienced in the past 300 years – and past 60 years in particular – have been the biggest historical impediment in the face of fulfillment of this goal,” he said, according to the BBC.

I'm thinking ... yea us!

Slogans of freedom, human rights, democracy, and the right to decide your own fate, were so attractive that [they] misled many,” he continued. “Today, they have no thoughts or means other than the use of arms to prove themselves.”

The fiery Iranian leader predicted the “end” of American “civilization.”

“This means the end of a civilization, the end of a thought, and the end of a system,” said Ahmadinejad.

Sure, you say, this is just that nut spouting off. It's meaningless. Ignore it. But not so fast:

When the country’s actual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, echoes this threat, declaring that Iran will “punch the arrogance” of the West on February 11, it becomes much more likely that the Iranian regime is plotting to do something spectacularly foolish.

Two days.

Bingo

The New Left is misogynist.

I'm talking about the impulse in the Democratic base to use a non-sexual situation to sexualize and demean a female politician. Hillary had to deal with it. And there is a long history of sexist treatment of Palin, including the Newsweek cover last November.

Of course, with their "teabagger" history, I'm not dismissing the thought that leftists are simply unable to respond in a more substantive way.

No no no no ....

Meet the New Boss Stimulus Package. Same as the Old Boss First Stimulus package.

Fucking UN...

Fucking UN in Haiti. Worse than useless and corrupt.

Just why?

Why is Obama doing a pre-game interview with Couric? Why?

Some Steyn for Sunday, on what Obama's mispronunciation of "corpsman" means; they don't know what they don't know.

Which is embarrassingly true. Hence, the awful flop speeches, from the Copenhagen Olympics to the Berlin Wall anniversary video to the Martha Coakley rally. The palpable whiff given off by the White House inner circle is that they’re the last people on the planet still besotted by Barack Obama, and that they’re having such a cool time starring in their own reality-show remake of The West Wing they can only conceive of the public — and, indeed, the world — as crowd-scene extras in The Barack Obama Show: They expect you to cheer and wave flags when the floor-manager tells you to, but the notion that in return he should be able to persuade you of the merits of his policies seems entirely to have eluded them.

I'm sure plenty of folks, non-military, were equally unaware of the difference between corpsman and corpseman, but most of them are neither 1) the Commander-in-Chief of said corpsman, or 2) using the aforementioned "corpseman" as a prop in a speech.

Regardless, we're doomed, folks. Our problem isn't that Obama doesn't know how to pronounce "corpsman" - it's that he doesn't know what he's doing. $5000 tax credits for businesses who take on new hires? More money thrown at the Department of Education?

It’s not the “debt” or the “deficit,” it’s the spending. And the only way to reduce that is with fewer government agencies, fewer government programs, fewer government employees, lower government salaries.

Doomed. And, it's not enough that Obama and company are in control of the federal government. They've also got their hands on local politics. Why does a potential Michigan candidate for governor need to be "interviewed" by the White House?

Thread envy

Why can't we have discussions here like Geoff got going at IB?

In other news, I just started reading "The Road to Serfdom." Prepare yourselves accordingly .

Offered with minimal comment

I ♥ Justice Thomas.

h/t: HotAir

Daily Krauthammer, etc

National Review:

This belief in the moral hollowness of conservatism animates the current liberal mantra that Republican opposition to Obama’s social democratic agenda — which couldn’t get through even a Democratic Congress and powered major Democratic losses in New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts — is nothing but blind and cynical obstructionism.

By contrast, Democratic opposition to George W. Bush — from Iraq to Social Security reform — constituted dissent. And dissent, we were told at the time, including by candidate Obama, is “one of the truest expressions of patriotism.”

No more. Today, dissent from the governing orthodoxy is nihilistic malice. “They made a decision,” explained David Axelrod, “they were going to sit it out and hope that we failed, that the country failed” — a perfect expression of liberals’ conviction that their aspirations are necessarily the country’s, that their idea of the public good is the public’s, that their failure is therefore the nation’s.

Moving on, does this sound familiar?:

Granholm entered office on the tired heels of a three-term Republican with a wave of good tidings as the state’s first female governor. Beautiful, silver-tongued, and Harvard Law–educated, Granholm was a young pol with little executive seasoning. Supremely self-confident despite her inexperience, Granholm raised income taxes(as the state’s economy literally and figuratively headed south), “invested” billions of stimulus dollars in infrastructure that she predicted would create tens of thousands of jobs, mandated renewable-power standards, and backed them up with millions in government subsidies to transform Michigan from “the Rust Belt to the Green Belt.” In her 2006 State of the State address, she promised that “in five years, you’ll be blown away.”

I told you folks ... Michigan (and Detroit) is the future for all of us! Granholm has long believed that it is the government's job to bring jobs to Michigan. We need to "invest in our future" she declares, as she prepares us for even more tax hikes yet to come.

In the new Michigan, perpetual public stimulus in the form of government-directed industrial policy means non-stop headlines for the chief executive as she picks winners and losers for “new jobs.” Redirecting commerce through the capital, the governor’s power profile grows even as the broader business climate chokes.

Welcome to Obama’s vision, America. Welcome to Governor Granholm’s Michigan.

Memo to Jenny and Obama - we don't want you investing in our future. You suck at investing in our future. Let me invest in my future, and you folks worry about keeping us safe. Everything else is "extra." Not baseline. EXTRA. You folks have forgotten that.

This is a good piece that addresses the fallacious argument Obama and his team make here:

The fact is, 10 years ago, we had a budget surplus of more than $200 billion, with projected surpluses stretching out toward the horizon. Yet over the course of the past 10 years, the previous administration and previous Congresses created an expensive new drug program, passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and funded two wars without paying for any of it -– all of which was compounded by recession and by rising health care costs. As a result, when I first walked through the door, the deficit stood at $1.3 trillion, with projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade.

Hennessey take us point-by-point through each of these accusations. It's wonderful. Sample:

Argument: The previous Administration cut taxes for the wealthy without paying for it.

Response 1: Setting aside the mischaracterization “for the wealthy,” President Obama proposes to extend a significant portion of that tax relief “without paying for it.”
Response 2: If all the Bush tax cuts are left in place bracket creep will soon cause total federal taxes to once again climb above their historic average of just over 18% of GDP. Repealing these tax cuts would mean the government would be taking far more from the private sector in taxes than it has in the past. I believe taxes are not too low.
Response 3: Our medium-term and long-term deficit problems are driven by the growth of entitlement spending: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Raising taxes will not slow this spending, it will just buy us a few years of delay and slow economic growth.

Go read. H/t : the puppyblender.

Barefooting

Sort of divergent from politics, but I recently got a pair of these. I've only taken them on two runs so far, but I love them.

I've run, on and off, since I was a teenager. Pain in the joints was always something I just had to deal with, but as I've gotten older foot problems have been added to the mix. Who would have thought that the answer wasn't to buy better shoes, but instead to go nearly barefoot?

Strange as they look, the FiveFingers shoes hark back to a simpler time. Humans have long run barefoot or in flat soles. Professor Lieberman’s research suggests that two million years ago, our ancestors’ ability to run long distances helped them outlast their prey, providing a steady diet of protein long before spears and arrows. More recently, at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Abebe Bikila, an Ethiopian runner, caused a stir when he ran the marathon barefoot and won.

Things changed in the early 1970s, when Bill Bowerman, a track coach turned entrepreneur, created a cushioned running shoe that allowed runners to take longer strides and land on their heels, rather than a more natural mid- or forefoot strike. Mr. Bowerman and his business partner, Phil Knight, marketed the new shoes under the Nike brand, and the rest is history.

At the same time, millions of Americans began taking up running as a pastime. Those twin trends ushered in a golden age of biomechanics research. “There was a lot of concern about injuries because of the boom,” said Trampas TenBroek, manager of sports research at New Balance. The logic, he said, was that “if you build a heel lift and make it thicker, you take stress off the Achilles’ tendon.”

Walk into a sports store today and you’ll see the results: shoes with inch-thick heels and orthotics designed to correct overpronation, supination and a host of other ills.

Mr. McDougall, the “Born to Run” author, ” said manufacturers, doctors and retailers were doing runners a disservice by pushing such shoes. “People are buying it thinking it’s going to do something for them, and it’s not,” he said.

Not to mention that a good pair of running shoes are over $100 and last only a few months. My Five Fingers cost me around $75 + tax and are supposed to last for about 10,000 miles.

No coffee post

RED ALERT RED ALERT.

I am (a)out of coffee and (b) my husband took my car keys by mistake.

Also, per Puppy blender, a discussion, in comments, on the difference between calling Dubya "Hitler" and Obama a Marxist.

After all, Marxism is alive and well. Some people even admire Marxists.

Just a refresher, before things get rocking and rolling:

"Hitler" was a person.
Marxism is a form of government.

About that "Credibility Gap"

I like this Doc Zero fello. Money line.

It’s humiliating to let the President tell you he can’t “afford” to give you a tax cut.

That's like going up to your boss and telling him you can't "afford" for him not to pay you more. But in the upside-down world of politics, Obama says stuff like that without a blush. Without a hint of irony. Without the slightest understanding of how shit works.

Or, should I say, shit out in the Real World. He knows how things work in the public sector, 'cause that's pretty much all he's done.

But, he's gonna close that credibility gap. With speeches, I'm guessing. More Doc Zero:

Why shouldn’t the public have deep doubts about Obama’s government? He actually tried to pass off a $787 billion heist of public funds, laundered through his party’s loyal supporters or poured into imaginary congressional districts and zip codes, as a positive achievement in his State of the Union address. He insults their intelligence with ridiculous “jobs saved or created” metrics that would cause an embattled business executive to be escorted from the building by security. We don’t even know what happened to the million-dollar Nobel prize he was supposed to donate to charity. I wonder if the lucky charity will have a valid zip code.

Obama brags about going from a “bystander to a leader in the fight against climate change” – a boast about making America the biggest sucker to fall for the most expensive fraud in history. In fact, he diverted half a million dollars of that stimulus loot to Dr. Michael Mann, the con artist who created the ridiculous “hockey stick graph”… which would, in the hands of a truly trustworthy government, serve as evidence for the prosecution at Mann’s trial.

Which members of Obama’s corrupt party should the public trust? Chris Dodd? Charlie Rangel? Barney Frank? Should we trust the Speaker of the House more after the Freedom of Information Act revealed she’s using military aircraft to shuttle her royal family around in style, often at a cost of over $18,000 per hour of taxpayer money? Should we trust the people who expect us to ignore an orgy of backroom deals, vote-buying, and subsidies for special interests, and treat them as honest statesmen with the best interests of the entire country at heart, when they attempt their next parliamentary maneuver to ram their health-care takeover down our throats?

I don't care that Bush originally authorized the use of a military jet for Pelosi to trip back and forth. He shouldn't have. Our politicians have become the ruling elite. They are not public servants. They ascend upon high and start sucking on that teat like you wouldn't believe.

Obama can't afford to give us a tax break, though. Remember that. We've all got to buck up and pay for this shit.

****

Some Steyn Goodness on the SOTU speech:

As my colleague Rich Lowry put it after the Massachusetts vote, the public thinks Obama doesn’t get it, and Obama thinks the public doesn’t get it. And as he’s got the microphone, he’s gonna keep talking at you until you do get it.

But there's more!

That’s why Obama is such a job-killer. Why would a small business take on a new employee? The president’s proposing a soak-the-banks tax that could impact your access to credit. The House has passed a cap-and-trade bill that could impose potentially unlimited regulatory costs. The Senate is in favor of “health” “care” “reform” that will allow the IRS to seize your assets if you and your employees’ health arrangements do not meet the approval of the federal government. Some of these things will pass into law, some of them won’t. But all of them send a consistent, cumulative message: that there are no rules, that they’re being made up as they go along — and that some of them might even be retroactive, as happened this week with Oregon’s new corporate tax.

In such an environment, would you hire anyone? Or would you hunker down and sit things out? Obama can bury it in half a ton of leaden telepromptered sludge but the world has got the message: More Washington, more micro-regulation of every aspect of your life, more multi-trillion-dollar spending, and no agreed rules in a game ever more rigged against you.

Obama has proposed small business tax credits for new hires, or raises. Businesses are doing everything they can right now to stay afloat. If they COULD hire new folks, they would. But they will not, because any symbolic tax credit isn't going to offset the cost to their bottom line. It sounded really good during the State of the Union speech, but only to those who have no idea how businesses work.

Another rotten idea thrown out during the speech was the early forgiveness of student loans for those who go into public service. Because, you know, NO ONE ever willingly goes into public service on their own, right?

In the last 60 years, the size of America’s state and local workforce has increased five times faster than the general population. But the president says it’s still not enough: We have to incentivize even further the diversion of our human capital into the government machine. Like most lifelong politicians, Barack Obama has never created, manufactured, or marketed any product other than himself. So quite reasonably he sees government dependency as the natural order of things. And in his college-loan plan he’s explicitly telling you: If you start a business, invent something, provide a service, you’re a schmuck and a loser. In the America he’s building, you’ll be working 24/7 till you drop dead to fund an ever-swollen bureaucracy that takes six weeks off a year and retires at 53 on a pension you could never dream of. Obama’s proposals are bold only insofar as few men would offer such a transparent guarantee of disaster: It’s the audacity of hopelessness.

As for his "Drill now" and nuclear power suggestions? I don't believe it. Yes. I'm saying he was lying.