Is this blog on?

New Home

2010-03-24T07:34:00.002-04:00

New Home Here.

This commenting system is just too much of a pain in the @ss. Don't want. So, I'm going to wordpress. Almost everything is over there (all the old posts) - still have to get my blogroll going. The comments didn't transfer, but alas I'll get over it.

Isthisblogon.com.

Even easier to find!

Way to go Joe!

2010-03-23T14:50:00.002-04:00

I missed the Big Fucking Deal signing.

How'd it go?

This is our country ...

2010-03-22T09:57:00.003-04:00

VDH sums up what happened last night:

President Obama has crossed the Rubicon with the health care vote. The bill was not really about medicine; after all, a moderately priced, relatively small federal program could offer the poorer not now insured, presently not on Medicare or state programs like Medicaid or Medical, a basic medical plan.

We have no interest in stopping trial lawyers from milking the system for billions. And we don’t want to address in any meaningful way the individual’s responsibility in some cases (drink, drugs, violence, dangerous sex, bad diet, sloth, etc.) for costly and chronic health procedures.

No, instead, the bill was about assuming a massive portion of the private sector, hiring tens of thousands of loyal, compliant new employees, staffing new departments with new technocrats, and feeling wonderful that we “are leveling the playing field” and have achieved another Civil Rights landmark law. (NB: do the math: add higher state income taxes in most states; the new Clinton-era federal income tax rates to come; the proposed lifting of limits on income exposed to FICA taxes; and now new health care charges — and I think you can reach in some cases a bite of 65%to 70% of one’s income.)

So we are in revolutionary times in which the government will grow to assume everything from energy use to student loans, while abroad we are a revolutionary sort of power, eager to mend fences with Syria and Iran, more eager still to distance ourselves from old Western allies like Israel and Britain.

So, what can we expect in the future?

Pelosism: In our brave new world, expect more of the lurid stories about the secretary of the Treasury not paying his FICA taxes. The multimillionaire Madame Speaker will spend more of the state’s millions on private jet travel as she lectures on carbon footprints and a culture of corruption. We will hear more about the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee hiding his income, or a member of the House Rules Committee bragging that, given the historic importance of health care, they are just making up the rules as they go along — and proud of it. Our guardian class has become the new French aristocracy at Versailles. They will rail about Citation jets for the CEO, and then fly federally-owned Gulfstreams; they will put us in Smart cars but limo in Yukons and Tahoes on “official business.” Our lifestyles will be as monitored as much as those who do the monitoring will not be at all.

I get email

2010-03-22T07:40:00.007-04:00

From Obama. Edited for accuracy.

Carin --

For the first time in our nation's history, Congress has passed comprehensive health care reform. ~~America~~ Socialists in America have waited a hundred years and fought for decades to reach this moment. Tonight, thanks to you, we are finally here.

Consider the staggering scope of what you have just accomplished:

Because of you, every American (, except that 30 million who still won't ) will finally be guaranteed ~~high quality, affordable~~ health care coverage.

Every American will be covered under the toughest patient insurance protections in history. Arbitrary premium hikes, insurance cancellations, and discrimination against pre-existing conditions will now be gone forever. Of course, the services you do receive will be approved by the government. And not every service may be available. Or, you may be advised - by your government - to instead simply take a pill. Except for folks like me, because my plan is different than yours.

And we'll finally start reducing the cost of care ( HA - I mean, it's even hard to say that with a straight face, but Rahm says I have to put that in here ) -- creating millions of government jobs, preventing families and businesses from plunging into bankruptcy except those companies that go out of business, or people who lose their jobs over this , and removing over a trillion dollars of debt from the backs of our children HA, ok, that's a pipe dream, right? We all know that's not gonna happen .

But the victory that matters most tonight goes beyond the laws and far past the numbers.

It is the peace of mind enjoyed by every American, no longer one injury or illness away from catastrophe. Except, of course, it's not like people aren't going to still get sick and die. I mean, there might even be more that die, because we're going to have to ration shit. I mean, you do know that, right?

It is the workers and entrepreneurs who are now freed to pursue their slice of the American dream without fear of losing coverage or facing a crippling bill. I mean, like Nancy said, why should a writer actually have to earn a paycheck and contribute to society in order to get shit from the rest of us? Am I right?

And it is the immeasurable joy of families in every part of this great nation, living happier, healthier lives together because they can finally receive the vital care they need. Except, of course, that healthier thing is just bullshit.

This is what ~~change~~ Socialism looks like.

My gratitude tonight is profound. I am thankful for those in past generations past communist, socialists, and progressives whose heroic efforts brought this great goal within reach for our times. I am thankful for the members of Congress whose months of effort and brave votes made it possible to take this final step. But most of all, I am thankful for you useful idiots and the ass kissing media who didn't really look very hard at the back room deals and my hypocrisy regarding bipartisanship and transparency.

This day is not the end of this journey. Much hard work remains, and we have a solemn responsibility to do it right. As I said on the campaign trail, complete government control of health care would take time. This is just the first step to a single-payer system. But we can face that work together with the confidence of those who have moved mountains.

Our journey began three years ago, driven by a shared belief that ~~fundamental change~~ a transformation to a social democracy is indeed still possible. We have worked hard together every day since to deliver on that belief.

We progressives have shared moments of tremendous hope, and we've faced setbacks and doubt. We have all been forced to ask if our politics had simply become too polarized and too short-sighted to meet the pressing challenges of our time, but we elites simply know more and better than you workers. This struggle became a test of whether the American people could ~~still rally together when the cause was right~~ figure out what we were actually up to -- and actually create ~~the change we believe in.~~ Socialism right here in America.

Tonight, thanks to your mighty efforts, the answer is indisputable: Yes we can.

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

Update: Sean M has a the proper response to Bob's linking of Frum. David Frum is super scary-smart.

Udpate 2:

Let us not forget, that Nancy is one of the biggest hypocrites out there. H/t Alex the Chick.

Everyone needs to see this

2010-03-20T19:21:00.002-04:00

Cut and Pasted from JHoward at PW:

Highlights of report, which is entitled “The Wrong Prescription: Democrats’ Health Overhaul Dangerously Expands IRS Authority,” include:

-IRS agents verify if you have “acceptable” health care coverage;
-IRS has the authority to fine you up to $2,250 or 2 percent of your income (whichever is greater) for failure to prove that you have purchased “minimum essential coverage;”
-IRS can confiscate your tax refund;
-IRS audits are likely to increase;
-IRS will need up to $10 billion to administer the new health care program this decade;
-IRS may need to hire as many as 16,500 additional auditors, agents and other employees to investigate and collect billions in new taxes from Americans; and
-Nearly half of all these new individual mandate taxes will be paid by Americans earning less than 300 percent of poverty ($66,150 for a family of four.)
The Republicans noted that despite all these new mandates on Americans, the Democrats prohibit the IRS from imposing these same taxes and penalties on illegal immigrants.

How you like them apples? I have to say I don't like 'em at all.

So it begins ....

2010-03-20T07:53:00.002-04:00

Sigh.

The White House Office of Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle has been feverishly sending out unsolicited email messages to federal employees in an effort to build support for President Barack Obama’s health reform package over the last several weeks.

*****

The unsolicited emails also request that the federal employees take action in order to ensure that Obama’s health reform package is passed and the federal budget isn’t at risk for bankruptcy. One federal employee was so concerned about DeParle’s language in one email that he questioned whether his department’s budget would be cut or eliminated without passage of Obama’s bill. DeParle uses scare tactics that some assume are meant as threats:

“No ifs, ands or buts about it -- if we do nothing to reform our broken health care system, costs will continue to skyrocket and break the budgets of American families, small businesses and the Federal Government,” read the March 12th email from DeParle.

But should federal employees be subjected to partisan propaganda? What precedent does it send for the White House to use the federal work force for their partisan agenda? And shouldn’t we let State Department federal workers concentrate on pressing issues like the Israeli-Palestinian issue or the Iranian nuclear weapons issue? Why would Department of Transportation employees have to worry about forwarding The White House’s partisan emails to their address books?

If you're not outraged, you not paying attention.

Astroturfing for Healthcare Reform

2010-03-19T07:47:00.011-04:00

Great job, guys!.

Oh, and about that WONDERFUL $940 billion (thanks Leon - forgot that zero) price tag the CBO came out with yesterday? Well [ed] ...

To see the bill’s true first-decade costs, we need to start the clock when the costs would actually start in any meaningful way: in 2014. The CBO says that Obamacare would cost $2.0 trillion in the bill’s real first decade (from 2014 to 2023) — and much more in the decades to come.

But $2.0 trillion wouldn’t be the total ten-year costs. Instead, that would merely be the “gross cost of coverage provisions.” Based on earlier incarnations of the proposed overhaul, the total costs would be about a third higher (the exact number can’t be gleaned from the CBO’s analysis, which is only preliminary and is not a full scoring) — making the total price-tag between $2.5 and $3 trillion over the bill’s real first decade.

How would we pay for all of this? According to the CBO, by diverting $1.1 trillion away from already barely-solvent Medicare and spending it on Obamacare, and by increasing taxes on the American people by over $1 trillion. Among the Medicare cuts would be cuts of $25,000 in Medicare Advantage benefits per enrollee — up from $21,000 in the previous scoring. To be clear, those living in South Florida wouldn’t have to worry about this, as the newly politicized nature of health care would cause them to be exempted. These cuts would affect only less-fortunate seniors, namely those living in just about any other part of the country.

Oh, but there's more

We’d also pay for this through increased deficits. Under strict instructions from the Democrats, the CBO gave Obamacare credit for over $400 billion (from 2014 to 2023) in phony “savings” that would allegedly result from cutting doctor’s payments under Medicare by over 20 percent and never raising them back up. As the CBO notes, one of two things could happen: Congress could either follow through on these severe pay cuts — in which case doctors would view all Medicare patients as if they have the plague — or, Congress could eliminate these pay cuts — as everyone in Washington expects to have happen under the so-called “doc fix” — in which case the CBO projects that this bill would raise deficits by over $100 billion from 2017 to 2019 alone.

And what do we get?

According to the CBO, health insurance premiums would STILL rise 10 to 13 percent. The percentage of GDP STILL rises to 21% by 2019. And, according to the CBO, 23 million people will STILL be without health insurance.

GOOD JOB, BROWNIE!

Not to mention, crammed into this piece of shit, is the federal take-over (except in North Dakota) of the Federal Family Education Loan. Why? So they can use the profits from those loans to pay for other federal spending.

But, please, say it again, because it's amusing. No socialism here. Nope. Not a bit.

FIAF tunage:

Now, to bring me off the ledge:

Thom, you may be a lefty loon, but you're awesome when you're just doing your thang.

We're all gonna save 3000%!

2010-03-18T16:36:00.003-04:00

The Other McCain offers up this depressing graphic:

Faaack. The Obama lay-away plan.

The Democrats are telling us ObamaCare will only cost $940 billion over ten years and cut the deficit.
....
Keep in mind that no government entitlement, especially one this big, has ever come in under budget. Look no farther than Massachusetts for proof. Or look at Social Security and Medicare.
But here’s what the Democrats probably don’t want you to know. Of the $940 billion, most of that will be spent in the last six of the ten years, so it’s like a lay away plan for health care.

From Ed Morrissey:

Here’s the key table from CBO’s letter to Pelosi. Via Philip Klein, want to see what a shabby fraud these cost estimates are? Check out the line for “Gross Cost of Coverage Provisions”.
This is why they’re delaying the start of the program, of course. If it kicked in right away, the decade-long estimate would obviously be well into the trillions. So they simply stalled it for four years, incurring just $17 billion in costs — or 1.8 percent of the total 10-year estimate — through 2013 so that wavering Democrats could go back to their districts and tell baldfaced lies to their constituents about the pricetag. A perfect ending to this travesty.

Yum

2010-03-18T07:00:00.003-04:00

Savory Sweet Life looks like an AWESOME food blog.

There's even a recipe to make potato chips in the microwave.

My son will be doing this today.

h/t Ace's.

It's time for us to come together - BLOG-A-THON

2010-03-18T06:22:00.003-04:00

I know there is a lot of back and forth, name calling, and outright nastiness here at ITBO. But today, I ask that we come together for one special cause. The recent earthquake in Hawaii.

I don't know why or how this one flew under the radar, but I'm sure people are suffering over there, and Obama wants to get HCR passed so they can get some of that filthy-lucre-aid money. But they need help NOW.

OBAMA: That also — I’m giving you an example of one that I consider important. It also affects Hawaii, which went through an earthquake. So that’s not just a Louisiana provision. That is a provision that affects every state that is going through a natural catastrophe.

That "Louisiana purchase" crap? Nonsense. It applies to every state that has a devastating natural catastrophe. Well, let me be clear. It applies to every "state" that qualifies. And to qualify it would have to, among other things, have been a state that "during the preceding 7 fiscal years" been declared a "major disaster area."

And, the state name has to start with the letter "L."

Anyway, so I'm concerned that Hawaii may not get that aid it so desperately needs. Can't we come together? For Hawaii?

Why Obamacare will fail to do what it claims

2010-03-17T09:21:00.002-04:00

Another excellent article by Doc Zero.

If you have studied the history of socialism and communism around the world, you know what the inevitable results of a nationalized bread industry would be: hungry people staring at dusty shelves containing a few expensive loaves of low-quality bread. Humanity has invented few weapons that kill people more efficiently than collectivist agriculture.
Why is this always the tragic outcome of collectivism? After all, government control of goods and services is presented as a way to control costs. The bribes and shady backroom deals perpetrated in the service of ObamaCare are supposed to produce a system that increases “access to health insurance” and make it more “affordable.” The inevitable result will be a system that reduces the quality of care, makes it harder to come by, and increases its overall cost to American citizens.
The same thing has happened across decades and around the world, every single time the State has taken control of a private industry. There’s some grim amusement in watching a supposedly educated man like Paul Krugman make an utter fool of himself trying to pretend otherwise. (“In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.“)

Follow-up essay by J.E. Dyer here on how the government cannot bend the cost curve downward.

How's this going to work out?

2010-03-17T08:19:00.002-04:00

No surprise here. A couple of the findings:

Health Reform and Primary Care Physicians
• 46.3% of primary care physicians (family medicine and internal medicine) feel that the passing of health reform will either force them out of medicine or make them want to leave medicine.

Health Reform, Public Option, and Physician Supply
• 72% of physicians feel that a public option would have a negative impact on physician supply, with 45% feeling it will “decline or worsen dramatically” and 27% predicting it will “decline or worsen somewhat.
• 24% of physicians think they will try to retire early if a public option is implemented.
• 21% of physicians would try to leave medicine if a public option is implemented, even if not near retirement age at the time.

Oh, I'm sure they don't mean it.

Government is useless

2010-03-17T08:12:00.001-04:00

Meatless Saturday? Really?

I plan to celebrate with a nice, juicy Steak.

Work day

2010-03-16T06:31:00.000-04:00

No poat.

Wish I were in DC today.

What Media bias?

2010-03-15T08:13:00.005-04:00

An "interesting"* NYT image of Obama, as pointed out by Doug Ross, has:

1) the halo light behind him
2) a small superimposed image of the White House - Obama being "bigger" than the WH
3) Obama is pointing to heaven
4) Superimposed "cross" image using some sort of filter dead center in the middle of the image.

Let's first examine the headline: "As Health Vote Awaits, Future of a Presidency Waits, Too."

The Times' concern, laughably, is for the Obama legacy, not the hundreds of millions of citizens whose very lives will be impacted by a Rube Goldberg-esque, certain-to-fail, country-bankrupting, Soviet central-planner's wet dream. The Times, of course, has yet to report on the outrageous and illegal attempt to surreptitiously pass the Senate's health care bill. This effort, orchestrated by the House Rules Committee and known as the "Slaughter Rule", threatens to light the fuse on a full-blown Constitutional crisis.

For those who cried incessantly about the Patriot Act during the Bush presidency, the lack of concern (as voiced by OC in comments just a moment ago) for their circumventing of the Constitution in the attempt to pass the biggest piece of legislation in my lifetime, gives proof of the left's bankruptcy of core principals and disregard for both the will of the people and that document on which we base our government.

I know this is HARD, but try to follow:

The Slaughter solution cannot be squared with Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution.

...Last Christmas Eve, the Senate approved a health-care bill by 60 votes, overcoming a Republican filibuster. This is the bill that contains the so-called Cornhusker kickback, the Louisiana purchase, taxes on high-cost health insurance plans and coverage for abortions. Virtually no one now supports that version of the bill, but Senate Democrats no longer have enough votes to pass an alternative bill under ordinary procedures.

That is where reconciliation fits in. If the House passes the Senate bill and the president then signs it into law, reconciliation would permit Congress to pass new legislation making changes to that law. Reconciliation might not solve the abortion coverage problem or other nonbudgetary issues, but it would allow Democrats to correct most of the Senate bill’s offensive features.

The rub is that, according to the Senate parliamentarian, reconciliation is permitted only for bills that amend existing law, not for amendments to bills that have yet to be enacted. This means that, for the Senate to be able to avoid a filibuster, House Democrats first have to vote for the identical bill that passed the Senate last Christmas Eve. That means voting aye on the special deals, aye on abortion coverage, and aye on high taxes on expensive health-insurance plans. Challengers are salivating at the prospect of running against incumbents who vote for these provisions.

Enter the Slaughter solution. It may be clever, but it is not constitutional. To become law—hence eligible for amendment via reconciliation—the Senate health-care bill must actually be signed into law. The Constitution speaks directly to how that is done. According to Article I, Section 7, in order for a “Bill” to “become a Law,” it “shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate” and be “presented to the President of the United States” for signature or veto. Unless a bill actually has “passed” both Houses, it cannot be presented to the president and cannot become a law.

To be sure, each House of Congress has power to “determine the Rules of its Proceedings.” ...But House and Senate rules cannot dispense with the bare-bones requirements of the Constitution. Under Article I, Section 7, passage of one bill cannot be deemed to be enactment of another.

The Slaughter solution attempts to allow the House to pass the Senate bill, plus a bill amending it, with a single vote. The senators would then vote only on the amendatory bill. But this means that no single bill will have passed both houses in the same form. As the Supreme Court wrote in Clinton v. City of New York (1998), a bill containing the “exact text” must be approved by one house; the other house must approve “precisely the same text.”

These constitutional rules set forth in Article I are not mere exercises in formalism. They ensure the democratic accountability of our representatives. Under Section 7, no bill can become law unless it is put up for public vote by both houses of Congress, and under Section 5 “the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question . . . shall be entered on the Journal.” These requirements enable the people to evaluate whether their representatives are promoting their interests and the public good. Democratic leaders have not announced whether they will pursue the Slaughter solution. But the very purpose of it is to enable members of the House to vote for something without appearing to do so. The Constitution was drafted to prevent that.

(from Doug Ross pasting from the Wall Street Journal piece by Michael W. McConnel, Constitutional law Scholar at Standford)

We WILL hold you accountable. You cannot hide behind the Slaughter solution. And you cannot hide from this monstrosity of a power grab.

* by interesting, I mean worthy of Joeseph Goebbels. Which is an apt comparison, because I think the NYT is committing suicide rather than surrendering to being balanced.

h/t Serr8d

By Any Means Necessary

2010-03-14T11:13:00.004-04:00

Obama and Nancy and Harry have taken the stance that they must pass HCR by any means necessary. Even if it goes against our Constitution.

These are very scary times.

Reports have come out today that the Parliamentarian has not ruled that the President must sign a law before it is considered a law for reconciliation purposes. First, they came up with a strategy to get Obamacare passed in the House without the House ever voting on the bill, now they have come up with a strategy and a ruling to get the Obamacare bill to qualify as law without the President signing the law. President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid should not support efforts to violate the clear words of the Constitution to pass Obamacare.
****
Just to restate a shocking development in the Obamacare debate; Congressional leaders have found a way to ignore the Constitutional requirement that a law be signed by the President before it is considered a law. Outrage is not a strong enough word for the feelings many American’s have toward elites in Washington, D.C. who will do anything to pass Obamacare.

Darleen has the appropriate photoshop for the occasion.

Alexthechick has a little review for those who don't remember how a bill becomes a law.

And Eddiebear, in his special way of voicing his austere displeasure. The first paragraph is f-bomb free. After that? You're on your own.

FiAF

2010-03-12T08:30:00.000-05:00

This is too funny

h/t Big Hollywood

This is tiring, but necessary

2010-03-11T09:43:00.003-05:00

As to me twisting your comment, feel free to school me, name one rich white guy* who hung out at the WH under Bush and condemn him. Until you do I just figure you're hanging white sheets on the racist republican clothesline.

Bob, I'm not going to let you get away with this, so I'm bringing it up front and center. The issue wasn't that Jay-Z and Beyonce (and her mom) were hanging out at the WH. It was that they were in the Situation Room. Which requires top secret clearance-only to access.

The WHSR was established by President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961. That crisis revealed a need for rapid and secure presidential communications and for White House coordination of the many external communications channels of national security information which led to the President.(1) Since then, the mission of the "Sit Room" has been to provide current intelligence and crisis support to the NSC staff, the National Security Adviser, and the President. The Sit Room staff is composed of approximately 30 personnel, organized around five Watch Teams that provide 7-day, 24-hour monitoring of international events. A generic Watch Team includes three Duty Officers, a communications assistant, and an intelligence analyst.

Where, in that description, does it mention it is open for celebrity tours?

The Sit Room has always been designed to hum nonstop. Mr. Bush goes there for regular meetings with his National Security Council and to talk via secure videoconference with foreign leaders. In times of emergency, the Sit Room becomes a crisis-management center.

Watch officers are glued to computers 24 hours a day, sifting through intelligence information from the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department and other quarters. They monitor diplomatic cables and public sources such as Internet traffic and news dispatches, watching for developments big enough to warrant telling national security adviser Stephen Hadley, who decides whether Mr. Bush must be alerted.

Unless, of course, some rich celebrity wants to pose in the President's chair and post the picture on the internets.

If you've got a picture of some Bush crony laughing it up in some sensitive area of the White House, go ahead an link.

What if Obama supporters held a protest, and stupid showed up?

2010-03-10T08:25:00.002-05:00

With arguments like this ... how can you disagree?

“I want to be free to have health care!” exclaimed Joanna Durham, a resident of North Carolina, originally from Trinidad and Tobago, who led a small group in a chant of “Health care is a human right.”

“We are Americans and we are free to have health care!” She said she believes Americans deserved “free” care, like people in other countries receive. “Are we not in America? We have free speech, free press, we need free health care now! Right now!”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/10/obama-health-care-supporters-storm-washington-hoping-for-arrests-but-end-with-health-care-whimper/2/#ixzz0hmPfjmcE

You know, if we made doctors work for free we'd go far in reducing health care costs. Just thinking out loud here. Going outside the box.

Oh, but there is more:

“If Republicans really cared about their children, they would all be vegans,” she continued. “I don’t believe its going to add to the deficit, if it’s handled right. Obama has plans to cut down on fraud and defensive medicine. It seems to work in other countries, like Canada.”

Dallabetta went on to explain why she thought Republicans were obstructionists. “I have an aunt in Oklahoma who hates Obama. At bottom she’s a bigot, very racist … and I think that’s the case for a lot of Republicans. I know they use the ‘n’ word around their dinner table all the time. They’re not going to say it outside their house but that’s really what’s going on behind closed doors.”

It's like she's a fly on the wall of my dinning room. If only I had a rational reason to oppose health care. No, Obama being black really takes care of all that for me. I can just reject it on principal.

While I was away ...

2010-03-10T08:16:00.003-05:00

I was skiing over the weekend, so I missed this whole dealo:

J.C. Arena at Big Hollywood has something to say about it.

Who loses credibility? Jay-Z.

Everything OC and Bob learned about "Conservatives" they learned from Amazon reviews ...

2010-03-09T06:13:00.002-05:00

Today's a work day, but I thought I'd leave you (care of Maggie) with a bit of one of the Amazon WALL -O-TEXT reviews of "The 5,000 Year Leap":

The author is an intellectual, which is good, however, he is so caught up in his own world view (which is distorted) that he arrives at many false conclusions. 1) all of American progress is due to capitalism and freedom to do what you want. False, Thomas Jefferson said "If men were angels, we wouldn't need government." We need a big government to have enough power to control giant corporations. That should be obvious now, as we are about to fail & fall into another depression because of the greedy SOB's who screwed us all, and stole money right and left, because Bush destroyed most of the oversight and watchdogs who were trying to keep unbridled greed from running rampant! Capitalism without morality and a stronger structure to keep oversight is the same as totalitarianism, as it will inevitably lead to one successful corporation destroying another until there is only one left. As an example, look at the excesses of Microsoft when it was in its heyday. There were dozens of excellent computer programs written/invented in the late 1980's and early to mid-1990's which were brought about by small businesses, and which their survival depended on selling. In most cases like this, and I am aware of close to 10 personally I was interested in, Microsoft announced they were going to add that feature either to their operating system, or to Internet Explorer in the next year. In every case I know of like this, the sales of these small start-up companies (the kind that create the 5000 year leap) dropped so drastically, that the companies went bankrupt and died out. In the vast majority of these cases, Microsoft never did bring out the feature they had said they would. It is not clear to me if they were just plain evil, or if they were intending to produce something like the products they killed off, but in either case, no one else would dare step in and try to produce it, after seeing how the originators of the idea were crushed by the larger corporation, Microsoft. 2) Perhaps this man's ideals could be met by a modified form of capitalism wherein there was some society or government defined limit to how big a company could be allowed to grow. It should be obvious to everyone today that when some companies grow too big they suffer from the dictator at the top. (In case you never thought about it, the government that everyone seems to like to vilify and hate, is elected by us, but the CEO of your company is the dictator that can fire you any time he wants, and thus he has life and death control over whether or not you can pay for your house and feed your family.) The corporate CEO does not answer to you, and you cannot vote for or against him unless you own stock, and in a large corporation that means very little, because the amount of stock you can afford is a paltry percentage of the total amount unless you are a billionaire. One of the major problems in the world now is the growth to humongous size of corporations, so that they are able to control governments. A few examples: a) look at the horror and devastation that Shell Oil has brought on several small South American nations, where they are so powerful that they can afford to give millions of dollars (or hundreds of millions) to support corrupt politicians, and they are (or at the very minimum were up until a few years ago) polluting the environment to the point they should have senior executives being tried for mass murder! (Watch some of the environmentally oriented documentaries on educational or science channels for more details) There are multiple whole villages where massive increases in cancer are seen from all the organic toxins just being dumped on the ground, or where oil pipelines are leaking, but it's cheaper to let them leak, then to repair them. This is great for the efficiency of capitalism, but morally reprehensible to the average human. Similarly, towns in Nigeria are now uninhabitable due to oil company callousness (I think this may also be from Shell Oil actually). Another example of a company grown too large, too big in the ego of the CEO, and creating disaster for others, including almost ALL of its employees is Enron. Enron purposely re-designed the way its accounting practices were carried out so it could deceive the investors and its own employees. It is a perfect example of what happens when capitalism is allowed to run free with no laws, morals or oversight from a more powerful government that has enough power to control it. It was not controlled in the end, it simply imploded, and maybe less than a dozen of the exploiters who screwed grandmothers in California out of their life savings (making them pay higher electric bills due to purposely staging brownout when there was plenty of power available), as opposed to hundreds or thousands of immoral SOB's who should have gone to jail for the equivalent of economic war crimes against the American public. 3) American giant corporations are NOT American. Look at Haliburton, who screwed the American taxpayer out of billions of dollars by having no bid contracts in Iraq, thanks to having Vice President Cheney as a friend in the White House. They have now moved their corporate headquarters to Dubai, an Arab country! All these SOB's care about is earning more money, and damn whomever gets in their way. 4) There are good things that have been done by large corporations, but that does not mean we should roll over as this author seems to think, and just let everyone have at it, doing whatever they want to, to try and invent or build whatever they can get away with. 5) Look at China today, that's the closest thing we have to pure capitalism on the planet today. The government lets them run wild, only pulling them in when they threaten to destroy their trade advantages by causing bad headlines such as those with the poisoning of our dogs, or the lead based paint on children's toys sent to America. (Then they finally did what maybe we should do with some of our evil CEO's, they executed some of them.) That serves as a good reminder to the next guy that maybe he should not just do what he can get away with all the time.) 6) One of the most obvious Errors in this book is possibly closest to me. As a physician, with real knowledge of how drugs are tested, OK'ed by the FDA, and recalled, I am aware of the huge influence that multibillion dollar companies have on drug regulation. The FDA in the last 10 to 20 years has started allowing many more drugs to be put on the market, based on studies funded by the drug industry! (Has anyone here heard of conflict of interest?) Obviously, if your University or you as a professor of Medicine obtain a multi-million dollar grant to research a drug for a company that is paying you the millions of dollars, you are going to be influenced (even if it's subconsciously) to not want to "bite the hand that feeds you." A specific example is the drug Vioxx, an anti-inflammatory drug. Soon after it was released onto the market, there began to be reports that there were a significant number of people having kidney failure due to use of this drug. It was still not pulled off the market for almost 2 more years, as the FDA (which is highly compromised) kept putting off pulling it, based on arguments from the drug company, and listening to arguments like: "What will those people using it do, there's no good substitute for it?" [Yeah, well, there's no good substitute for having your own functioning kidneys either!)
I think you guys get the point. Capitalism unbridled is a horror of manipulation and domination by the most efficient company, which does not mean the most compassionate and caring company. Corporate bottom lines are based on profit, not on not killing people or polluting the environment, and basically, we should not let capitalism run rampant without large powerful government oversight, or we will eventually be in a dictatorship run by one company with executives that we do not get to vote in or out of office. Thanks for reading.

Take note; this reviewer is a doctor.

[shudder]

And, Mr Physician, JAMES MADISON said in Federalist #51:

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

Now, that there is one of those dealos OC was talking about yesterday where the review misquotes someone (in this case MADISON) and make the phrase to mean something it didn't.

I know OC is appalled.

WHY is Massa being forced out?

2010-03-08T14:13:00.005-05:00

Cough, cough.

"The 5000 Year Leap"

2010-03-08T09:22:00.002-05:00

Part One, page 29-30.

Since the genius of the American system is maintaining the eagle in the balanced center of the spectrum, the Founders warned against a number of temptations which might lure subsequent generations to abandon their freedoms and their rights by subjecting themselves to a strong federal administration operating on the collectivist Left.
They warned against the "welfare state" where the government endeavors to take care of everyone from the cradle to the grave. Jefferson wrote:
If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.

They warned against confiscatory taxation and deficit spending. Jefferson said it was immoral for one generation to pass on the results of its extravagance in the form of debts to the next generation. He wrote:"... we shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life expectancy of the majority."
Every generation of Americans struggled to pay off the national debt up until the present on.
The Founders also warned that the only way for the nation to prosper was to have equal protection of "rights." and not allow the government to get involved in trying to provide equal distribution of "things." They also warned against the pooling of property as advocated by the proponents of communism. Samuel Adams said they had done everything possible to make the ideas of socialism and communism unconstitutional. Said he:
The Utopian schemes of leveling [re-distribution of the wealth] and a community of goods [ central ownership of the means of production and distribution], are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the Crown. [These ideas] are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional.

We are in agreement

2010-03-08T07:45:00.002-05:00

The entire family would like to take a month-long trip to Aspen. We all agree that something must be done. The discussion is over.

The only thing left to figure out is how to pay for it. I say there is no way we can afford such a thing, but a simple majority vote in the household over-ruled me.

So, I guess I'll make the reservations.

I admire his honesty.

2010-03-08T07:25:00.002-05:00

Quick Review:

1) Right to free college education.
2) Right to middle class job, provided by government.
3) Right to food.
4) Right to house that no one can take away.
5) Right to organize every work place.

Socialism. h/t Big Government.

9/11 Truther shoots up the Pentagon

2010-03-05T07:28:00.004-05:00

Gotta love lefties. From the comments at Patterico's regarding the Pentagon shooter:

Everybody feel better now? You should, because THIS time the shooter is not tied directly to the unhinged, violent anti-government rhetoric of the right. No, this time he’s tied to the unhinged, violent anti-government rhetoric of the left. So, good job, unhinged, violent rhetoricians of the right, you are clearly the better of two viles this time.

Yea, THIS time. Oh, and those other times ...

Hope and Change in Action

2010-03-04T08:22:00.003-05:00

Obama just made an excellent case to Jim Matheson (D- Utah), who voted against the Health Care bill in November. He nominated his brother to the US Court of Appeals (10th Circuit).

Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he’s obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson’s brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit…

Whattaya think? Too heavy handed?

He did say he would do everything in his power to make the case for reform.

THIS is what the Tea Party is about

2010-03-04T07:51:00.002-05:00

Andrew McCarthy highlights the Bunning kerfuffle over extending unemployment benefits.

In this case, there ought to have been raging controversy: Bunning was objecting to yet another monthly extension of unemploymentpayments absent an explanation of how it would be paid for.
He was right to do so. These extensions happen continually. The stimulus — which is a redistribution of wealth from the private to the public sector, and from people who work to people who don’t — extended unemployment benefits for 53 weeks. Another extension in November added 20 more weeks. Cato’s Alan Reynolds reports that this brings the total to 99 weeks of benefits in high-unemployment states. The measure on which Bunning has relented adds another month. And having browbeaten him into withdrawing his objection, Democrats will now seek an extension through the end of this year, i.e., another 36 weeks or so.

Bunning was fighting the good fight. The Tea Party fight. But what happened? Republicans urged him to back down. Republicans.

In sum, Bunning’s battle gave Republicans a chance to make points about runaway deficit spending, the fraudulence of PAYGO posturing, the foolish redistribution of wealth to create expensive and unproductive government jobs, unemployment-benefit extensions that Democrats refuse to pay for and that actually increase unemployment, and the monstrous rationing that would be wrought by Obamacare. So, did Republicans rally behind Bunning? Not a chance.

THIS is why there is a Tea Party movement. It isn't about racism "straight up." It's about those fuckers in Washington acting in a manner that protects THEIR interests, not ours. Why did they get Bunning to back down? Because they're afraid of losing elections. Well, then why don't we all just give up?

What's the point in any of it?

If you really want to be depressed, go read the rest of McCarthy's article, in which he explains that the Democrats are ok with backing this electoral-loser health care bullshit, because they know that they'll get theirs in the form of a cushy, overpaid government job where no one will be able to see 'em or vote them out of office. With THAT as an incentive, growing government is always a winning proposition.

Offered with minimal comment

2010-03-04T07:34:00.003-05:00

There are riots in Berkley.

Students at the University of California’s flagship Berkeley campus took to the streets on Friday night, vandalizing university buildings, burning trash cans and clashing with police in the latest expression of frustration over cuts to the educational budget in California.

The ironies are so numerous, I don't know where to begin.

Rangel still the Chairman?

2010-03-03T08:55:00.003-05:00

Most ethical Congress ever. Can't even get rid of Charlie Rangel. NYT:

And with Republicans preparing to force a vote Wednesday seeking to oust Mr. Rangel from his chairmanship, support among his fellow Democrats appeared to be crumbling. He huddled in a meeting with senior party leaders, including Ms. Pelosi, and officials said Democrats were urging him to step down, at least temporarily.

As he left his crisis meeting with party leaders around 8 p.m., Mr. Rangel insisted that he was not stepping down. Asked if he was going to remain as chairman, he said, “You bet your life.”

Pushed on whether he would step aside temporarily, he replied, “No.”

He said he was headed back to his office to work on jobs legislation, and when a reporter asked if he would still be the committee chairman on Wednesday, Mr. Rangel said, “Yes, and I don’t lie to the press.”

Nice Majority you got there Nancy.

And Kudos to the CBC; all but one of them appear to be standing by their man. As for the one who DARED to to criticize their brother? Rep Artur Davis demanded that RAagel resign from his committee.

"I think Mr. Davis ought to step aside," sneered CBC member Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL). "He ain't here much. And if he's speaking for anyone black, he ain't speaking for me."

Ha ha ahhhaa ... that's too good. Thanks to Cyn for that last bit.

Steven King, Schlock or Genius?

2010-03-03T07:42:00.004-05:00

The first book I ever read by Stephen King was "The Stand" when I was about 14. I loved it, but I never confused it with literary greatness. King told a good yarn, and that's always been his thing. I read a few more books, but the yarns got increasingly feeble, and I eventually decided that King just really didn't like writing anymore, since his books seemed to peter-out before they got to the end.

But, despite the fact that his writing quality has gone down, the accolades for King have gone up. Sam Sacks on King.

To me, it all goes back to this idea held by a lot of people who analyze literature for a living, who say, If we let the rabble in, then they’ll see that anybody can do this, that it’s accessible to anyone. And then what are we doing here?

_____________

With serious literature (or at least the chimerical “idea” of it) thus -tidily quarantined to a few fusty English departments, the noble fight to reclaim writing for the people could commence, a struggle that reached a rhetorical peak in 2003, when King was honored with the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. This event was an opportunity to prove to the public that you were not a snob. Lev Grossman in Time celebrated the overthrow of the Western canon. In USA Today, Samuel G. Freedman wrote an essay called “Stephen King Deserves Award for Creating Readers,” attributing to King heretofore unknown divine powers. And straight from central casting, Harold Bloom emerged as the perfect foil to the popularizers, grumbling that King writes “what used to be called penny dreadfuls.” In his acceptance speech, King acted as the peacemaker, magnanimously hoping that the “award means that a bridge can be built between so-called popular fiction and so-called literary fiction.”

King certainly writes popular fiction, but is it literary fiction?

Because the truth is that, as praise for his books has become a shibboleth for open-mindedness, King himself has become one of the worst writers in America.

Become is the key word here. The decline of King’s work is not the fault of the horror and suspense conventions his books hew to. All writers are beholden to conventions of one kind or another, and it’s what they create within those strictures (or how they subvert them) that defines their art. The hallmark of horror is to visit the macabre upon the ordinary, and much of King’s earliest work does this very successfully.

Those would be known as his "good books." "The Stand", "Salem's Lot", "Carrie", "Stand by Me", "The Shining." "The Green Mile" was a pretty good book, although it came after a whole bunch of really crappy ones.

In his succeeding books, with his popularity exploding, King tilted his focus to scheming up ingenious guises for his malevolent forces to assume. We got a murderous Plymouth, Saint Bernard, zombie child, spinster nurse, and so on. The evil tended to be explained in terms of psychosis, which relieved King from the burden of providing any rationale for his killers (later he would make them aliens, who are equally inexplicable). People turned to these books for shrieking and viscera, and they left satisfied.

Cough, cough. I wasn't satisfied. I wanted my money back. "It", "Skeleton Crew", "Thinner", "Christine", "Pet Cemetary", and (OMG) "Tommyknockers."

That last one's sins were especially egregious. My complaints with King focus on the story/yarn [or lack thereof]. But there are other, more "literary", problems:

Thus, as early as 1990, a shorthand had emerged in King’s writing, in which massaged clichés (a garden of fear, suffocating fear), redundancies (utter loathing and contempt), laundry-list sentences, italics, and, elsewhere, the CAPS LOCK key do all the work on the writer’s behalf. In these books even the dialogue, once original and often comic, begins to parody itself, exaggerating the New England dialects and salt-of-the-earth aphorisms. King’s small-town backdrops feel increasingly like movie sets that he can trundle from one book to the next.

It’s no exaggeration to say that in the years that have passed, every single one of these lazy writing habits has metastasized to ugly proportions, so that the same Stephen King who wrote a pietistic memoir about his craft (On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, 2000) and was anointed in the country’s most-read book pages as a modern-day Hugo ...

So, next up we have King's treatise on fascism in America: "The Dome."

Baffling claims have been made that King is providing an astute vision of modern American life; but really, from the first pages of Under the Dome, you feel trapped in King’s private and intensely self-referential echo chamber, bouncing back and forth between famous movies and King’s own books. I found no less than three directmentions of King’s prior work, including the depressingly accurate observation that what’s happening here is “exactly like in that movie The Mist.”
******
The dome, you see, is allegorical, a kind of intergalactic lesson in human kindness. The novel ends with a chapter of sententious moralizing about the importance of empathy that would be awful in any book but that is doubly galling from an author who has shown such sophomoric gusto in crashing things into his glass dome, including a fully loaded 767 passenger plane.

I'm going to pass on "The Dome." As I've passed on almost everyone of his his books since "Tommyknockers."

Here is Wiserbud's take on King.

Everything Obama learned about Diplomacy he learned in kindergarten

2010-03-03T07:33:00.003-05:00

Obama is putting America on the path of "set a good example and others will follow." It would be funny, if it weren't so fucking scary.

Obama’s intention to halve the existing inventory of about 5,400 nuclear warheads goes well beyond the mutual reduction goal of the Bush-Putin SORT Treaty of 2002, which envisioned 4,600 warheads for the U.S. by 2012. Obama has also cut funding to the Pentagon’s development program for a low-yield nuclear weapon to attack hardened and deeply-buried targets, and he reportedly will scrap the development altogether with implementation of his NPR. This, of course, is the kind of weapon needed to deal effectively with suspect underground facilities in Iran and North Korea.

Moreover, key Congressional Democrats are demanding NPR language that would explicitly commit the U.S. to using our nuclear arsenal solely for the deterrence of nuclear strikes – a short-sighted posture that could not be reversed in the future without precipitating political crises. The Pentagon prefers a more ambiguous formulation, and the outcome of this policy debate is uncertain. But the unprecedented political momentum of the Capitol Hill “deterrence-only” advocates will have the attention of foreign observers from Moscow to Beijing to Tehran.

Obama’s express hope is to set an example for the world with these unilateral reductions and renunciations. By making them, however, he thoroughly undermines the New START negotiations. Cuts of this magnitude would require the Russians to rethink their own policy in order to match them. But with Obama proposing to make the cuts unilaterally, Russia has no incentive to pay the cost of participating. The only bargaining chip left for leveraging Russian concessions is our missile-defense program.

Obama is really taking that "hope" thing seriously, isn't he? I didn't realize it extended to our national security.

Oh, so you say ?

2010-03-02T20:49:00.002-05:00

Leonard Pitts Jr on the Tea Party movement, which is (you know) if not primarily motivated by race, owns it as it's major component:

But ultimately, people seem moved by something even bigger than race. This is race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, culture, and the fact that those who have always been on the right side, the power-wielding side, of one or more of those equations, now face the realization that their days of dominance are numbered.

Dominance of what, Mr Pitts? Who has always been on the "power-wielding" side?

There is a poignancy to their responsive fury because one senses that the nether side of it is a choking fear. We are witness to the birth cries of a new America and for every one of us who embraces and celebrates that, who looks forward to the opportunity and inclusiveness it promises, there is another who grapples with a crippling sense of dislocation and loss, who wonders who and what she will be in the nation now being born.

One hopes they will find answers that satisfy them because the change they fear will not be turned back. No one ever volunteers to return to the rear of the bus.

A "new"America? You know what this is sounding dangerously like, don't you? What are you celebrating? Statism? An abdication of personal responsibility? An ever increasing paternalistic federal government?

So for all the frustration the tea party movement engenders among the rest of us, one also feels a certain pity for people like the woman last year who cried, plaintively, that she wanted her country back.

As if she didn't realize that it is already, irrevocably, gone.

That's rather big talk.

Now, for an alternate perspective:

To sum up: in 2010, an energized Republican Party will address a public charged with grassroots energy, and furious over the passage of legislation they didn’t want… forced on them in the express belief they’re too stupid to understand its magnificence, and too feeble to survive without it. The Republicans will explain the only way to roll back this legislation is to decimate the party that passed it. They might just be smart enough to demonstrate how ObamaCare is the concentrated essence of everything that has gone wrong with American government – not America – over the last half-century, and present its repeal as the beginning of a comprehensive movement to cleanse the tainted ground from which it sprang.

In other words, Democrats, ObamaCare might indeed become your ticket to perpetual influence… or it might become the centerpiece of the best argument Americans will ever hear to get rid of you. You’ll have your core supporters and a few safe seats, but that’s the formula for a rump party. Americans will always insist on a vibrant opposition party, and they are wise to do so. They tremble on the verge of becoming wise enough to realize the Democrat Party doesn’t “own” its position as one of the two major parties, any more than it owned the “Kennedy seat” in Massachusetts. When Barbara Boxer says every state is now in play, believe her. She knows what she’s talking about.

It’s been a hundred and fifty years since a major American political party was erased. I’ve often wondered what it would look like, if such a thing happened in the modern era. I imagine it would take a combination of widespread voter anger, the messy death of a failed ideology, an energized opposition, and hopelessly out-of-touch leadership. Whatever remains of the “moderate” wing of the Democrat Party should consult their own imaginations, before arrogantly passing a bill that can only be rolled back over their dead bodies.

It's game on.

Analyzing the Edwards mistakes

2010-03-01T07:33:00.002-05:00

The media is largely responsible for vetting our political candidates. They SUCK at this. Michael Calderone on the "Edwards Epilogue."

"I feel sorry for the liberals who were duped by Edwards,” said Cliff Kincaid editor of the right-leaning watchdog organization Accuracy in Media. “They were the real victims of the failure to vet Edwards.”

“Now we know that Edwards was a phony in more ways than one,” Kincaid added. “Our media, especially progressives in the media, were in love with Edwards because of his liberal views. But he wasn't in love with them. He was in love with someone else—and it turns out it wasn't his wife.”

Yep. Sad chapter.

I'm reading this article ....

2010-02-28T08:06:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-26T11:26:00.002-05:00

Yet another FIAF song

Key word? "Unexpectedly"

2010-02-26T10:47:00.002-05:00

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 ...

2010-02-26T08:35:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-26T07:51:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-25T07:54:00.003-05:00

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 ...

2010-02-24T10:27:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-24T09:53:00.004-05:00

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

2010-02-22T09:30:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-19T18:25:00.001-05:00

Wiser sends this our direction.

The Road to Serfdom

2010-02-19T13:32:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-19T12:24:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-19T08:08:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-19T07:58:00.002-05:00

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

Kookie talk

2010-02-18T12:52:00.002-05:00

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?

2010-02-18T08:23:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-17T11:08:00.001-05:00

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

2010-02-17T08:11:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-15T08:51:00.010-05:00

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 ...

2010-02-14T11:30:00.001-05:00

Carry On.

Happy VD, but get that looked at, ok?

This and That ...

2010-02-12T08:39:00.002-05:00

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?

2010-02-11T08:24:00.002-05:00

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?

2010-02-09T06:07:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-08T09:15:00.002-05:00

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 ....

2010-02-08T08:32:00.003-05:00

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

Fucking UN...

2010-02-08T08:06:00.002-05:00

Fucking UN in Haiti. Worse than useless and corrupt.

Just why?

2010-02-07T10:06:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-07T08:07:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-05T10:18:00.002-05:00

I ♥ Justice Thomas.

h/t: HotAir

Daily Krauthammer, etc

2010-02-05T08:07:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-04T08:28:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-03T10:06:00.003-05:00

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"

2010-02-01T06:41:00.004-05:00

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.

It's a Win/Win

2010-01-29T12:20:00.002-05:00

Or, more accurately a Win/Win/Lose. Guess which category you and I fit into?

"We have been discussing new approaches with Warner Bros. for some time now and believe we've come up with a creative solution that is a 'win-win' all around," said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos, who handles studio relations.

Warner Bros. first said it wanted to change its relationship with Netflix in August, at the same time that it imposed the 28-day window on Redbox and its smaller kiosk competitors.

Other studios have privately expressed similar concerns recently about Netflix, which has more than 11 million subscribers. It's likely that some or all will follow Warner Bros.' lead and strike similar agreements soon. 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures are the most likely candidates, as they have imposed windows on Redbox.

The new deal means that for the first four weeks after Warner Bros. movies are released on DVD, consumers will be able to only purchase them, download them them through Internet or cable video-on-demand services, or rent them at retail stores like Blockbuster. Video-on-demand and retail rentals are more profitable for studios than Netflix and Redbox, though it remains to be seen whether Warner will look to impose a window on Blockbuster Inc. and its competitors as well.

Put out a horrible product that the public isn't willing to waste it's money on? The solution is to limit our options.

Look, Warner Brothers, if I wasn't willing to buy your DVDs before, I'm even less wiling to do so now.

I welcome our new Public Servant Overlords

2010-01-29T08:32:00.004-05:00

The communist movement in the US was, around the beginning of the last century, was rooted in the working class. Then, starting in the 50's, the "intellectuals" took the helm. While they are still the main driving force, the new contingent can be found in the public sector. That's why Obama's plan to forgive student loans for those who go into public service is all the more disturbing. From The Corner:

An Oregonian responds to my piece on the recent tax increases there:

As a lifetime resident of Oregon, small business owner and one of the earners this new tax increase will affect I read your article and thought something is missing.

What is missing is that Oregon is one of the states that is at the forefront of turning the Public sector against the Private sector. As the private sector has continued to shrink here, the public sector has continued to grow. What we are left with is a continual monopoly of liberal democrats in power at the state and local level and a populace that is dependent on the income of the few to pay for the expenses of the many. Every year or two a new tax is proposed, sometimes they pass, sometimes they don’t, but mostly they pass. It is so frustrating as a person that works 60-70 hours per week to see this. I see this latest vote as the final proof that the public sector now has control of this state.

That's the trend, and not just in Oregon. As our editorial on the SOTU noted, "The proposal to forgive student-loan debt on special terms for people who go into 'public service' typifies this administration’s attitude toward the economy: Producing wealth is less noble than rearranging it."

Public service sounds like such a noble calling, but when studies have shown that public service is more generous (in both pay and benefits) than that of the private sector, where is the sacrifice?

And, let's not be fooled to think that all public servants are putting their life on the line for the American people. Public service includes anyone who works for the government.

Like, for example, Nancy Pelosi is a public servant. (H/t Dan.

Judicial Watch said the newly obtained 2,000 pages of documentation show Pelosi's military travel cost the U.S. Air Force $2,100,744.59 over two years – including $101,429.14 which was for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol.

Remember, public service is a noble endeavor for which we owe them.

Uhm, about that O'Keefe "wiretapping" dealo

2010-01-28T08:23:00.003-05:00

Oh, lookie here.

I am shocked - SHOCKED - that the loony left raced to judgement on this.

Update

In comments - this is Civil Disobedience, man. FIGHT THE POWER.

Yes, I watched it. Did you?

2010-01-28T07:51:00.002-05:00

I like this comment from The Corner's Jeff Anderson:

In a meandering speech in which he seemed somewhat smug but not really in command, he scolded the Supreme Court, Congress, and “Washington.” He struck a surprisingly confrontational tone — a somewhat unusual tone for a president at a showcase event — toward the Republican side of the chamber. In a passage clearly written to be said to the Democrats but delivered (with a hint of venom) while looking directly at the Republicans, he said, “And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership.”

But mostly he showcased his own understanding — or lack thereof — of the proper limits of government, while indicating that he has no intention of ceding ground to the electorate and its rejection of his agenda in the recent elections in New Jersey, Virginia, and, particularly, Massachusetts.

He implicitly compared Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts to the Union’s loss at Bull Run (at least it sure sounded like it): “But when the Union was turned back at Bull Run . . . victory was very much in doubt. . . . Again, we are tested. And again, we must answer history’s call.” One wonders: Are the Massachusetts voters who rose up against Obamacare supposed to be the Confederates in this scenario?

Regardless, the message was clear: Don’t listen to the voters, and don’t back down on Obamacare: “Change has not come fast enough”; “when I ran for president, I promised I wouldn’t just do what was popular”; “we still need health-insurance reform”; it may not be “good politics,” but “we are closer than ever”; “the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills”; “I want everyone to take another look. . . . Let’s get it done.” Throughout much of this section, there was noticeable silence in the chamber.

To the extent that the president took responsibility for his health-care agenda’s troubles, it was “for not explaining it more clearly.” But this, he made clear, was no reason to turn back.

Besides this, I'm not really interesting in talking about it. To fucking depressing. I was hoping for a "You lie"moment, but all we got was a "not true."

Anything on TV tonight?/ Now updated with some tastey Krauthammer

2010-01-27T07:34:00.006-05:00

"The press is against me." LOL. He's experiencing it (harsh press) for the very first time. Ba. Ha. Ha.

Did everyone else find yesterday's announcement that Obama would initiate a "spending freeze" as ~~funny~~ fucking pathetic as I did? The NYT finds something to spin it in a positive manner:

The freeze that Mr. Obama will propose for the fiscal years 2011 through 2013 actually means a cut in real terms, since the affected spending would not keep pace with inflation.

See? It's practically a spending CUT!

Remember when the libs kept going on and on about Bush's $1 trillion deficit?

Let's put the President's spending freeze into persepective:

Last year’s shortfall [deficit] was $1.4 trillion. This year’s is projected to be $1.35 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has projected that cumulative deficits over the next ten years will reach $9.3 trillion, and the amount of federal debt held by the public will reach 82 percent of GDP. Economist John Taylor has noted that without deep spending cuts, taxes would have to go up by 60 percent in order to bring the debt-to-GDP ratio back down to a “manageable” 41 percent, which is where things stood when Obama took office.

1.The Congressional Budget Office had already projected a decline in non-defense discretionary spending over the next few years (from $682 billion in FY 2010 gradually down to $640 billion in 2014)--which can be found on Table 3-1 of the CBO report. Which the group says actually makes the spending freeze "a hike in projected spending over the next several years."

2.The so-called "spending restraint" is only "a drop in the bucket." The White House claims the freeze will reduce total spending over the next decade by $250 billion. The CBO says that under current services, the federal government will be spending $42.9 trillion. Even with the freeze, Obama and the Democrats in Congress get to spend, ATR points out, 99.42 percent of what they were planning to.

3.Non-defense discretionary spending during Obama's first year in office grew by 17.4 percent. Freezing spending at that level over the next three years would still produce an average annual increase of 5.5 percent, which is faster than both the economy and wages are expected to grow.

Prepare for "But Bush ..." in 3 ...2 ... 1 ...

The Hammer on the Freeze:

It's not a hatchet. It's not a scalpel. It's a Q-tip. It's a fraud. This is a miniscule amount. It excludes Defense, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs. It excludes all the entitlements, which are 60 percent of the budget. It excludes stimuli past and future — the two thirds of the near trillion-dollar stimulus that has not been spent. All of that is excluded.

It excludes the $1 trillion that would end up being spent on health care if it were passed.

What it is, is a $15 billion reduction in a year, 2011, in which the CBO has just announced we are going to have a deficit of $1.35 trillion, which means it is — it's a rounding error, it's lunch money. . . .

This isn't a real cut. It's an appearance of cuts. It's a maneuver as a response to what happened in Massachusetts because he lost the independents – Obama – 3-1, and he knows independents worry about debt and deficits and spending. . . .

So he announces a freeze which is meaningless. Remember, these departments enjoyed a 20 percent increase in budget as a result of what Obama and the Democrats had done in 2009. So you are freezing [discretionary spending] at an extraordinarily high and unusual [level].

The Hammer is why I tune in to Fox every night at 6:40 eastern.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry

2010-01-25T06:41:00.006-05:00

BE A PART OF A GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT, AND GET PAID FOR DOING IT!!!

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a grassroots movement popular, of-the-people, bottom-up, nonhierarchical, rank-and-file.

We're hiring Directors to run 32 Canvass Offices across the United States.
Qualified candidates are:
Committed to and motivated by progressive politics and social change.
Leaders, with the ability to think strategically and motivate a team.
Goal-oriented, excellent communicators, team players.
Experience in hiring, training and supervising staff or volunteers is preferred. Previous field or canvassing experience is a plus.
Job Description:
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Canvassing: Get on the Frontlines of some of the most crucial campaigns of our time! Work on the ground bringing progressive change to America!

Hours: 80-100 hours/week

One of these things is not like the other. But, of course, who is Ellie Light?

h/t RSM

Could we have found Ellie LIght? Could she be a member of Obama's "New Media Specialists"? Via Dan, via the Prowler:

The unit is housed in the Office of Public Affairs. Not only is the Department of Justice Blog Squad going to reach out to nontraditional media like TPM Muckraker or the Muffled Oar, but they are also tasked with fostering anonymous comments at conservative leaning blogs such as the Free Republic. They are also tasked with fostering anonymous comments, or comments under pseudonyms, at newspaper websites with stories critical of the Department of Justice, Holder and President Obama. One conservative editor recently told the Muffled Oar that they have noticed a significant increase in the number and aggressiveness of comments to stories critical of the Holder Justice Department. “There is clearly a designed effort to rebut stories that are exposing the Holder Justice Department as more political than the last. We’ve seen a change in the pattern of anonymous emails we receive and comments posted at our paper’s webpage.”

From Dan's link at the Prowler:

Meanwhile, according to a career employee in the Department of Justice, both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees sent formal letters of inquiry to the Department of Justice regarding its “blogging” policies, but DOJ officials have yet to even acknowledge the letters.

This was posted back in October, so I have no idea if the inquiry has been addressed by this time.

But, this isn't the bill of goods Obama was selling back in '08. Hope. Change. Transparency.

h/t Dan.

Ba haa haa haa

2010-01-24T10:33:00.001-05:00

Title of the day goes to RSM.

Ellie Light is a Nasty Slut.

Genius.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain ...

2010-01-23T08:30:00.002-05:00

Karl over in the Green Room points out the inconsistencies between what teh One says, and what he has done.

Barack Obama’s first major step on the campaign trail — in December 2006 — was to Wall Street, where he snagged the backing of convicted inside trader George Soros and investment banker Robert Wolf, who became CEO of UBS Americas. Before the Wall Street meltdown got into full swing, Swiss banking giant UBS had written off more debt from the subprime mortgage crisis than any other bank; a number of Obama’s top bundlers came from with firms mired in that mess. Such bundlers raised at least 22 percent of Obama’s money during the first half of 2007, and got perks from the Obama campaign. Indeed, Obama’s national campaign-finance chairwoman, Penny Pritzker, helped run Superior Bank — which was at the forefront of securitizing of subprime mortgages, until it collapsed in 2001.

When Wall Street went into meltdown mode, the establishment media ignored that Obama got big donations from associates of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and was one of the all-time recipents of political cash from Lehman Brothers. Before the election Obama voted for TARP. After the election, Obama twisted arms to get the second half of the TARP money, and packed the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place.

All that populist garbage he's spewing now? Doesn't jive with his history. How do you know that Obama is lying about reforming Wall Street? His lips are moving. Matt Tabbi in Rolling Stone:

What’s taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

Is it an about face? Or is it just garbage spewed by the teleprompter aimed at inciting class envy and anger?

Karl, again, over at Paterrico:

The notable point of this Lefty consensus is that you heard nothing like this from the Left or its establishment media outlets when the Wall Street meltdown struck during the peak of the 2008 campaign. They were not remotely interested in the financial ties between Wall Street and the Democrats, or the role of Clinton HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo in plunging Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the subprime markets, or the Fed’s role in dumbing down lending standards, to name just a few topics.

Moving forward, the Left — from Pres. Obama on down — should not be allowed to whine about having inherited a bad economy from the Bush administration. By their own admissions, Clinton-era Democrats were among the “very people who caused the crisis in the first place” — and they now hold high offices in the Obama administration.

Progressives talk a good game about reforming the fat cat crooks who who get rich off of backs of the workers, but in reality they all are busy behind the scenes insuring that they reward themselves, and their friends.

Case in point? The lack of tort reform in either of the health care bills.

Remember, "progressivism" is merely communism without the revolution. And every communist state is corrupt.

Times' FOIA request denied

2010-01-22T08:42:00.003-05:00

What does one make of this? A refresher:

In the Philadelphia incident, two New Black Panther Party members wearing black berets, black combat boots, black dress shirts and black jackets with military-style markings were charged in a Jan. 7, 2009, civil complaint with intimidating voters, including brandishing a 2-foot-long nightstick and issuing racial threats and insults. The complaint said a third member "managed, directed and endorsed the behavior."

None of the New Black Panther Party members responded to the charges or made any appearance in court.

A Justice Department memo shows the career lawyers decided as early as Dec. 22, 2008, to seek a complaint against the party; its chairman, Malik Zulu Shabazz, a lawyer and D.C. resident; Minister King Samir Shabazz, a resident of Philadelphia and head of the party's Philadelphia chapter who was accused of wielding the nightstick; and Jerry Jackson, a resident of Philadelphia and a party member.

They said the deployment of uniformed members of "a well-known group with an extremely hostile racial agenda, combined with the brandishing of a weapon at the entrance to a polling place," constituted a violation of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits intimidation, threats and coercion.

The defendants refused to appear in court or file motions and U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell ordered Justice to file it's motions for default judgments. But that didn't happen. Charges were dropped. Why? The assumption is that it was a political favor, by political appointees at the DOJ. The official line:

Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler has steadfastly maintained that the department has an "ongoing obligation" to be sure the claims it makes are supported by the facts and the law.

She said that after a "thorough review" of the complaint, top career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division determined the "facts and the law did not support pursuing the claims against three of the defendants."

Ms. Schmaler also has said the department is "committed to vigorous enforcement of the laws protecting anyone exercising his or her right to vote." [cough cough cough]

Mr. Perrelli, nominated by Mr. Obama to the Justice Department post on Jan. 5, 2009, raised more than $500,000 for the Democratic candidate in the 2008 election.

Mr Perrelli is the fellow who approved the decision to dismiss the complaint. But, don't worry, because they made a "thorough review" and decided there was nothing "there" (despite the videos that clearly show voter intimidation) and, no, you're not going to be able to see any of the information that supports the governments assertion that these folks did NOTHING wrong because ...

In a letter, the department said that while 69 documents totaling 135 pages were responsive to the Freedom of Information Act request for information on how and why the decision to dismiss the complaint was made, they were being withheld because of "deliberative process" and "attorney work-product" privilege exemptions.

"For your information, the withheld material includes e-mails between officials in the Civil Rights Division and the Office of the Associate Attorney General regarding the litigation strategy, drafts of court filings and briefing materials related to the subject of your request," said Carmen L. Mallon, chief of staff in the department's office of information policy.

Some animals' civil rights are more equal than other's ...

h/t : Weaselzippers

BiW draws our attention to this excellent article. I tried to quote a bit, but I simply couldn't pick just one passage. You must read the whole thing.

Obama's suburban problem.

2010-01-21T13:50:00.002-05:00

Too many posts today, but this is too interesting to ignore:

For the first time in memory, the suburbs are under a conscious and sustained attack from Washington. Little that the adminstration has pushed—from the Wall Street bailouts to the proposed “cap and trade” policies—offers much to predominately middle-income-oriented suburbanites and instead appears to have worked to alienate them.

And then there are the policies that seem targeted against suburbs. In everything from land use and transportation to “green” energy policy, the Obama administration has been pushing an agenda that seeks to move Americans out of their preferred suburban locales and into the dense, transit-dependent locales they have eschewed for generations.

Read it all here .

Good read.

2010-01-21T12:27:00.003-05:00

Mark Steyn, in the most recent National Review hardcopy, speaking about how the fall of Rome may apply today:

Hayek's greatest insight in "The Road to Serfdom" is psychological; "There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which at the present time provides special food for thought," he wrote with an immigrant's eye on the Britain of 1944. "It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem and which consequently become rarer are precisely those on which the British people justly prided themselves and in which they were generally agreed to excel. The virtues possessed by Anglo-Saxons in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch, were independence and self-reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one's neighbor and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority." Two-thirds of a century on, almost every item on the list has been abandoned, from "independence and self-reliance" (40 percent of the people receive state handouts) to "a healthy suspicion of power and authority: - the reflex response now to almost any passing inconvenience is to demand the government "do something," the cost to individual liberty be damned.

Well, that's Great Britain, it cannot happen here, right? Well, it certainly won't occur in such a cushy manner ...

Why did decline prove so pleasant in Europe? Because it was cushioned by American power. The United States is such a perversely non-imperial power that it garrisons not ramshackle colonies but its wealthiest "allies," from Germany to Japan For most of it's members, "the Free World" has been a free ride. And that, too, is unprecedented. Even the few NATO members that can still project meaningful force around the world have been able to arrange their affairs on the assumption of the American security umbrella; In the United Kingdom, between 1951 and 1997 the proportion of government expenditure on defense fell from 24 percent to 7, while the proportion on health and welfare rose from 22 percent to 53.

So, when we decline, who will have our back? When our national expenditures on health and welfare rise to 53% and 40% of our population receive state handouts), who is going to send aid down to Haiti?

"Leaked" memo

2010-01-21T08:08:00.002-05:00

Insight into how the Democrats go from here, so be prepared to hear the following talking points from here on out.

MASSACHUSETTS ELECTION MEANS THAT SENATE REPUBLICANS HAVE MORE RESPONSIBILITY TO GOVERN, NOT OBSTRUCT

· We welcome Scott Brown to the Senate.

· While Senator-elect Brown's victory changes the political math in the Senate, it does not change the challenges are country faces or the need to address them.

· We remain committed to strengthening our economy, creating good paying jobs and ensuring all Americans can access affordable health care.

· Senate Republicans have an obligation to the American people to join us in governing our nation through these difficult times and to help clean up the mess they left behind.

· It is mathematically impossible for Democrats to pass legislation on our own. Senate Republicans to come to the table with ideas for improving our nation and not obstructionist tactics.

· Saying "no" might be a good political strategy but it does nothing to create jobs or help improve the lives of struggling America

I wondered, all day, what tact the Democrats would take. It took 'em all day to come up with THAT?

Expect to hear the "Party of No" charge ad nauseam. Expect the Senate Democrats to fail to invite Senate Republicans to the table, and then charge that they "offer nothing." Expect to see faile bills, which are voted down because they haven't been created by bipartisan agreement, blamed on Republicans.

If Republicans are not offered any real ability to affect legislation, they only thing they CAN do is vote no. And I will stand by them for that.

I hope Obama trots out that mop analogy again. That one kicks ass.

New Rules Poat

2010-01-21T07:49:00.001-05:00

Throw any suggestions in comments.

Now this is the first thing she's ever written that made sense

2010-01-21T07:37:00.002-05:00

Amanda, from Pandagon:

Here’s my prediction of what will happen: Democrats will drop health care reform like a lead balloon, starting this week. They weren’t able to move the ball down the field very quickly to begin with, and now they’ll feel like it’s impossible. Some of them, like the abortion boys Bart Stupak and Ben Nelson, have clearly wanted this all along, and will feel more empowered. Democrats will try to shore up their 2010 campaigns by running on obstructionism. The public will remember that Bush was able to run wild with a much smaller majority in the Senate and will decide the Democrats are liars and assholes for saying this. 2010 will be a bloodbath. Republicans will win possibly both houses of Congress, effectively bringing anything Obama might want to do to a halt, not that he was that bold to be begin with. Since the mortgage crisis is far from over, our economic turnaround will be short-lived indeed---most people will never know the news said it happened---and things will get worse. Obama won’t be able to do much besides hand the people who ruined our economy more money to flush down the toilet, because Republicans will block anything that actually puts money in the pockets of people who need it the most. Jane Hamsher will be blamed, and the media will demand that Democrats move to the right.
In 2012, if we’re lucky, Obama’s charisma and a lack of decent Republican candidates will put Obama over the finish line. If not, then the next disaster train of a Republican administration finishes the job Bush set out to do of destroying this country starting in 2012. Or they start off that job in 2016.

Or the Democrats wake up. *pulls self off the floor after hysterical sobbing laughter*

Of course, I'm curious as to what she means about Republicans blocking anything that "actually puts money in the pockets of people who need it the most."

But, on a day (after) like today, why quibble?

Of course, nothing is set in stone. Obama could pull a Clinton. Personally, I don't see that he has that in him.

Is there NOTHING we cannot do?

2010-01-20T12:01:00.001-05:00

Why did Obama do this? I thought he was going to make the world love us.

Well, with him reducing Haiti to rubble with his super-secret earthquake machine ... WHY DOES OBAMA HATE BLACK PEOPLE?

New Rules

2010-01-20T10:41:00.002-05:00

OT comments will be deleted.

Or sucky comments that bore me.

So, STAY SHARP. I'll accept nothing below a B+ effort.

Damn that BUSH! w/ AN IMPORTANT UPDATE!

2010-01-20T07:51:00.007-05:00

Mark Steyn:

On Sunday, the line from Obama, Kerry, and everyone else to the voters of Massachusetts was:

"We understand why you're angry. But don't let your anger with George W. Bush allow you to get tricked into voting for a Republican who'll obstruct the reform agenda you're crying out for."

Presumably even Patrick Kennedy isn't stupid enough to believe this. Even as elite condescension to the boob masses, it barely passes muster.

So, to steal a line from another blog, now is the time when we dance

Now is also the time where we stop name-calling in old threads.

Let us focus our attention on Scott Brown. Today is a day for pudding, and the Teabagger victory dance. Which is kinda like this, except with pudding.

More - what's next? The Coming Democrat Counteroffensive.

The 2010 midterm elections will be nationalized, and money spent by the Democrats and their allies will be staggering, as will the level of vitriol and mudslinging. Anything and everything must be expected.

The current Democratic leaders will rely on two assumptions: 1) that the electorate, after decades of peace, prosperity, and lack of civic education, is generally ignorant and apathetic towards the machinations in Washington, D.C.; 2) that gerrymandering, skewed election laws, and political financing regulations -- and most importantly, the fragmented nature of the opposition -- will greatly benefit the Democrats. The Left will be confident in the reelection of their own congressmen in sufficient number to maintain control of the levers of power in Washington.

Onto "teabagging" and the left's affection for it:

Everyone is aghast that the Democrats and the liberal media have employed a base and vile vulgarism not only to describe the activities of those who are sincerely concerned for the country's future, but also to denigrate the individuals, their motives, appearance, and social status. This tactic is used because it works.

It works because it distracts from the real issues by fomenting discussions about what is said and forcing a response to an absurd accusation or portrayal. The pundits, politicians, and leaders on the right feel obligated to respond and deny the allegations, thus giving them more credibility and allowing the Left to find ways to make even more outrageous charges, thus perpetuating the cycle.

Exactly. It works because it distracts. Like here. Like in comments. I suppose that is why Ace and friends have embraced the teabagger label, and thus started dipping their balls in the pudding.

Many have proffered the theory that the Left resorts to name-calling and hyperbole because they cannot defend their socialist and secular philosophy. While it is true that they must resort to emotion to sell their theories to the masses, the political strategy to achieve power is fragmenting the opposition by questioning their motives, accusing them of hypocrisy or criminal and unethical behavior, and by using election laws to skew close elections against them. As long as this strategy works, the Left does not have to defend its philosophical positions.

The only way to defeat the Left is to stop playing by their rules.

The modus operandi of the left is, often, to make the conversation personal. Calling us teabaggers, for example. It's a distraction and takes us away from the issues. What's going on in comments isn't helping Michelle buy fruits and veggies, and it's not advancing liberty.

So, time to cut it out. Don't make me have to figure out how to delete comments. And I don't want to hear about how anyone was slandered on a blog.

So, what will it be today?

2010-01-19T06:04:00.003-05:00

Will it be the miracle in Massachusetts? And why have we gotten to this point just one year after Hope and Change came to Washington?

Democrats and their media allies attribute it to GOP obstructionism, though Republicans lack the votes to stop anything by themselves. Or they blame their own Blue Dogs, who haven't stopped or even significantly modified any legislation of consequence.

Or they blame an economic agenda that wasn't populist or liberal enough because it didn't nationalize banks and spend even more on "stimulus." It takes a special kind of delusion to believe, amid a popular revolt against too much government spending and debt, that another $1 trillion would have made all the difference. But that's the latest left-wing theme.

The Democrats need to look inward, and assess their political over-reach. It definitely isn't a new era in Washington. It's the same old Washington on power steroids.

So, what's gonna happen today?

No Comment

2010-01-18T14:43:00.000-05:00

Obama's Haiti

2010-01-18T12:34:00.002-05:00

Cogent argument:

Angry mobs, starving people wandering aimlessly, corpses piling up in the streets, international criticism, people shouting wild conspiracy theories about how the President doesn't really care about the victims? Cripes, is anybody ever going to get all of those poor people out of the Superdome?

Presidentin', as it turns out, is hard work, and the institutional failures in Haiti are killing people in real time. The very best efforts of a lot of good people, as it turns out, aren't nearly enough to overcome the obstacles in front of them. However, you can expect little media comment on the topic beyond this post on a Newsweek blog, because those obstacles are not really Obama's fault, anymore than they were Bush's. Disaster management is hard, especially when you're trying to do it in a place where the infrastructure and local institutions have utterly crumbled, or, in Haiti's case, where they barely existed in the first place.

Actually, some people would say that about Louisiana, too, but I digress.

George Bush hates black people. I still hear that Katrina bullshit.

When you look at it that way, it would only be fair if Obama were scapegoated just the same, wouldn't it? After all, Democrats claimed that it was unreasonable to blame local officials during Katrina because the disaster was just "too big" for them to handle, and the federal government should've been expected to take total responsibility. Putting aside that we now know Blanco explicitly blocked Bush's efforts to do just that, Democrats can hardly duck out of this one by simply claiming that Haiti's disaster is "too big" for the world's leading superpower. Even under Bush, we were supposed to be able to save everyone in New Orleans, so there's no good reason that Obama shouldn't be able to save everyone in Port-Au-Prince, is there? Can't he fly around the Earth in reverse and unwind the earthquake, like in Superman?

The truth of the matter, is that the difference between Obama's Haiti and Bush's Katrina will be the carefully massaged messages that come out of the White House and the MSM who are still willing to carry O's water.

Waiting for Tuesday

2010-01-18T09:17:00.004-05:00

Honestly, I'm so anxious to see what happens tomorrow, I have little to say today. Zo is in Mass.

Jake Tapper is doing some good analysis on the Brown/Coakley race.

Puppy Blender directs to this Baron piece:

Barack Obama got 62 percent of the vote in Massachusetts in 2008. His percentage was lower in 42 other states. With the Massachusetts seat in jeopardy, no Senate seat in those 42 states can be considered utterly safe for Democrats in today's climate of opinion.
That climate might have been different if Democrats had never gotten that 60th seat. In that case, they would've had to bargain with Republicans to pass a health-care bill and might even have proceeded on the genuine bipartisan approach that Obama promised in his campaign.
We might have been spared the spectacle of the Louisiana purchase ($300 million for Mary Landrieu's vote) and the Cornhusker hustle (Ben Nelson got Nebraska exempted from Medicaid increases). Or at least the onus of such spectacles would fall on Republicans as well as Democrats.
But with 60 seats, the Democratic leadership took the partisan path and the Obama White House supinely went along. They ignored the abundant evidence that most voters increasingly opposed their government-directed health-care bills.
The 60th seat was a temptation, and like Oscar Wilde, the Democrats were able to resist anything except temptation.

Good stuff.

Michael C. Moynihan writing in Reason Magazine on Coakley's incompetence:

A decade ago, Coakley told The Boston Globe that if her political career were to flame out she would likely "retire to Martha's Vineyard and write murder mysteries." On Friday, liberal journalist Steve Kornacki reported that Coakley's own internal polling shows Brown with a three-point lead. I eagerly await Coakley's literary debut.

O/T conclusion:
Does anyone watch the Golden Globes? That was apparently on last night , and - well - who cares, right? I couldn't honestly even tell you what the "Golden Globes" celebrate? Celebrity? You've got me.

Global warming, packs with the devil cause Earthquakes

2010-01-15T08:46:00.003-05:00

Danny Glover is just stupid. Why is anyone interviewing this guy about Haiti? His entire comment is stupid, not just his blaming of the earthquake on global warming.

h/t Drudge

And, Yes, Robertson's comment was equally stupid. Valarie Jarett responded to Pat. Will she make a statement regarding Danny Glover's equally asinine pronouncement?

Brown OUT

2010-01-14T13:49:00.003-05:00

It's all over for Brown.

Of course, some folks advise bloggers to not steal stories from guys like Ace, since everyone reads him already.

But the problem is I'M BANNED FROM ACE'S site. Did I write something bad? Did I upset Ace's delicate sensibilities? No. My IP merely continually gets banned for no reason. I've bored of writing Ace and asking if it could be cleared up, because that only lasts a few weeks until it gets banned again. So, I can't go and play in all the fun. So, there you have it.

Anyway. Here's the details:

The Coakley campaign just sent out a press release pushing this HuffPo hit piece on Scott Brown. They’ve dug up some real dirt on this supposedly “regular guy” candidate. Did you know he “owns five properties”?

Brown owns three rental units in the college neighborhood of Brighton, and the Coakley campaign is trumpeting the fact that “Brown's 2008 SFI reports . . . a net income derived from [one of these units] of $1,001 to $5,000.” Obviously, Brown doesn’t need some crummy senate job with an income like that!

Then there’s this stunner: Scott Brown, who pretends to be a modest, typical Massachusetts resident, owns a time share in Aruba. That’s right: A time share. The Coakley e-mail reports the value of this Aruban paradise as “valued at $10,001 to $20,000.”

Well, after such a revelations ... I await Brown's press conference announcing his withdrawal.

Book Report

2010-01-14T13:25:00.003-05:00

I just got my copy of Jean-Francois Revel's book Last Exit to Utopia, which was just translated. I've only just begun, but I thought I'd share what I'm reading as I go along.

From the preface, by Anthony Daniels:

M. Revel's book is, as ever, rich in ideas. He points out that liberal democracy is not an ideology in the sense that Marxism or any other form of utopian political thought is an ideology; liberal democracy does not hold out the hope of a denouement of history in which all human contradictions are resolved, no conflicts can arise and everyone is ceaselessly-andone might almost add remorselessly-happy. It assumes that conflicts, difficulties, problems and dissatisfactions are inescapable characteristics of the human condition, and that the best that can be hoped for is compromise without slaughter, brining with it some faint hope, though not the certainty, of progress. There is no blueprint. (xxi)

On to the first chapter!

Labor Unions exempt from Cadillac plans

2010-01-14T09:37:00.002-05:00

As if you knew this wasn't going to happen ...

The nation’s labor unions have reportedly cut a deal with House Democrats: Labor will drop its opposition to the so-called Cadillac tax — an excise tax on high-cost employer-provided health-care plans — if Congress will carve out an exemption for plans provided under collective-bargaining agreements. Even after all the unsavory bargains and rotten deals that have characterized the rush to get this thing passed (the “Louisiana Purchase,” the “Cornhusker Kickback,” etc.) the “Labor Loophole” surely takes the prize.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

How Alyinsky has failed Chicago

2010-01-14T08:46:00.004-05:00

Heather Mac Donald in City Journal on Chicago's youth violence and how "community organizing" has failed to do anything. It's a great, although long, article.

The Alinsky model views poverty as a lack of political power. Well, from a racial standpoint in cities such as Chicago and Detroit this just doesn't jive with reality.

But by the time Obama arrived in Chicago in 1984, an Alinskyite diagnosis of South Side poverty was doubly irrelevant. Blacks had more political power in Chicago than ever before, yet that power had no impact on the tidal wave of dysfunction that was sweeping through the largest black community in the United States. Chicago had just elected Harold Washington, the city’s first black mayor; the heads of Chicago’s school system and public housing were black, as were most of their employees; black power broker Emil Jones, Jr. represented the South Side in the Illinois State Senate; Jesse Jackson would launch his 1984 presidential campaign from Chicago. The notion that blacks were disenfranchised struck even some of Obama’s potential organizees as ludicrous. “Why we need to be protesting and carrying on at our own people?” a prominent South Side minister asked Obama soon after he arrived in Chicago. “Anybody sitting around this table got a direct line to City Hall.”

So, where does an Alinsyite go from here?

[O]n the eve of Obama’s first political campaign, the aspiring state senator gave an interview to the Chicago Reader that epitomized the uselessness of Alinskyism in addressing black urban pathology—and that inaugurated the trope of community organizer as visionary politician. Obama attacks the Christian Right and the Republican Congress for “hijack[ing] the higher moral ground with this language of family values and moral responsibility.” Yeah, sure, family values are fine, he says, but what about “collective action . . . collective institutions and organizations”? Let’s take “these same values that are encouraged within our families,” he urges, “and apply them to a larger society.”

Even if this jump from “family values” to “collective action” were a promising strategy, Obama overlooks a crucial fact: there are almost no traditional families in inner-city neighborhoods. Fathers aren’t “encouraging” values “within our families”; fathers are nowhere in sight. Moving to “collective action” is futile without a core of personal responsibility on which to build. Nevertheless, Obama leapfrogs over concrete individual failure to alleged collective failure: “Right now we have a society that talks about the irresponsibility of teens getting pregnant,” he told the Reader, “not the irresponsibility of a society that fails to educate them to aspire for more.”

It's society's job to educated kids to inspire them for more. Ok, let's go with the thought that just perhaps society can't do that? It needs to start a bit closer to home. Yea, maybe not. This from last summer after the murder of Derrion Albert, from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan:

“I came here at the direction of the president, not to place blame on anyone, but to join with Chicago, with communities across America in taking responsibility for this death and the deaths of so many other young people over the years,” announced Duncan. Of course, the government has been “taking responsibility” for children for several decades now, at a cost of billions of dollars, without noticeable effect on inner-city dysfunction. The feds have funded countless programs in child and youth development, in antiviolence training, in poverty reduction. If “collective action,” as Obama put it in 1995, could compensate for the absence of fathers, the black violence problem would have ended years ago.

Can we now, please, put this canard to bed? Of course not.

Some members of Chicago’s Left will argue against holding fathers or mothers responsible for their children. “To blame it on the family is totally unfair,” says Gwen Rice, a board member of the Developing Communities Project. “I’m tired of blaming the parents. The services for the poor are paltry; it boggles the mind. Historically, you can’t expect a parent who can’t get a job to do something that someone with resources can do. These problems have histories; there are policies that have mitigated against black progress. What needs to happen is a change in corporate greed and insensitivity.” Rice corrects my use of the term “illegitimacy”: “There are no illegitimate births,” she says.

Chicago, Detroit, it's all the same. It's a great article. Read the whole thing.

SEC AIG STFU

2010-01-13T13:34:00.000-05:00

The crooks are in control.

Ha ha haa haa

2010-01-13T13:10:00.002-05:00

First there was the Hope and Change that Obama promised. Now there is Pandora.

How do you cope when that fantasy land you were hoping for doesn't materialize? When you figure out it was all just a ~~lie~~ movie?

James Cameron's completely immersive spectacle "Avatar" may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.
On the fan forum site "Avatar Forums," a topic thread entitled "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible," has received more than 1,000 posts from people experiencing depression and fans trying to help them cope.

See, now it's not wonder 52% of us fell for that Hope and Change bullshit.

Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them. I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it," Mike posted. "I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in 'Avatar.' "

Yea. Ok. Anyone want to make a wager on who Mike voted for in '08?

Within the fan community, suggestions for battling feelings of depression after seeing the movie include things like playing "Avatar" video games or downloading the movie soundtrack, in addition to encouraging members to relate to other people outside the virtual realm and to seek out positive and constructive activities.

.

Oh. My. Lord.

This just in ...

2010-01-13T07:30:00.004-05:00

Amish get "religious exemption" from participating in this new national nightmare coming our way.

The Amish, as well as some other religious sects, are covered by a "religious conscience" exemption, which allows people with religious objections to insurance to opt out of the mandate. It is in both the House and Senate versions of the bill, making its appearance in the final version routine unless there are last-minute objections.
Although the Amish consist of several branches, some more conservative than others, they generally rely upon a community ethic that disdains government assistance. Families rely upon one another, and communities pitch in to help neighbors pay health care expenses.

OMG! I'm Amish! Woot! Well, now that I know I won't have to participate ... that's for you suckas.

In other news, Global warming has now lead to the death of a Miami man.

A 77-year-old man died of hypothermia Tuesday in what could be considered the first death in Miami that could be attributed to the record cold weather that has lingered in the city.
Wilfredo Arreyes died at Jackson Memorial Hospital and his roommate Miguel Alemon, 93, is still in critical condition after the two spent days in the frigid cold weather with no heat or covers in their apartment on Northwest 10th Avenue and Northwest 2nd Street in Little Havana.

What?

Victor David Hanson du jour from the Corner:

People took the candidate at his word of bipartisanship, fiscal seriousness, and centrism, and from day one got instead shady Cabinet nominations of tax cheats and lobbyists, indifference to congressional corruption as symbolized by Rangel and Dodd, a whiny monotony of "Bush did it" for a year, a 1000-page health-care monstrosity, fiscal insanity, serial appeasement of enemies with conscious neglect of old allies, and on and on. No hope, less change.

Back in '08, some folks told me that the reason they were voting for Obama was that Bush (who wasn't running) had run up such a deficit. That's why it just makes me scratch my head (to the point of bleeding) when Obama is running up the deficit like you cannot imagine for shit that isn't helping the economy.

Despite the truly historic events listed above, U.S. deficits from President Washington through the election of President Obama averaged only 1 percent of GDP. Since President Obama’s election, they have averaged 10 percent of GDP — and they are on the rise.

President Obama and the Democratic Congress racked up $390 billion in new debt from October 1 to New Year’s Eve. In current dollars, that would rank as the fourth-highest deficit tally in U.S. history for an entire year. Only once before 2008 did we run up an annual budget deficit as high as the one we’ve just amassed in a single quarter.

This puts us on course for more than $5,000 in new debt spending for every man, woman, and child in America during fiscal year 2010. That’s $5,000 per person that you, your children, or your grandchildren will have to pay back — through either paying higher taxes or accepting reduced government spending.

Is anyone on the left upset by this? Anyone? And yet still they want to ram through, by whatever means necessary, this health care monstrosity.

Oh, one more tidbit that really belongs in the post below this one, but ... whateve - guess who is backing Coakley?

As first reported by Timothy Carney of the Washington Examiner, the host committee for the fundraiser at Pennsylvania Avenue's Sonoma Restaurant includes lobbyists for Pfizer, Merck, Eli Lilly, Novartis and sundry other drug companies that have been among the biggest of ObamaCare's corporate sponsors. Other hosts—who have raised at least $10,000 for Ms. Coakley—include representatives from UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Humana and other insurers. As far as we can tell, the insurance industry claims to oppose ObamaCare's current incarnation.

So, why are they backing Coakley? I'm thinking because it's only US* who are going to be screwed by health care reform. All those other folks have figured out and paid for their "out".

*And by "us" I mean you non-Amish folks.

Ted Kennedy's Seat

2010-01-13T07:09:00.002-05:00

The Democrats have a back-up plan.

If all else fails and Coakley loses, Democrats are prepared to delay credentialing Brown until after a final vote on a merged House-Senate health-care bill. The Senate majority has signaled it would not seat a victor in the special election without formal certification from Massachusetts’s top election official, Democrat William Galvin, a process that would give Senate Democrats at least ten days after the start of their 2010 legislative session to pass a bill with interim Senator Paul Kirk (D., Mass.) in place as a 60th vote.

Waiving rules is very unusual and very rare. Except when it's not:

But a by-the-book certification and seating would stand in contrast to Massachusetts’ last special election, in which Rep. Niki Tsongas (D., Mass.) was rushed to the House of Representatives on Oct. 18, 2007, just two days after she defeated Republican opponent Jim Ogonowski, before the state had certified her election. At that time, Democrats needed Tsongas to stand with them in overturning President Bush’s veto of the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP.)

Senator Paul Kirk, you may remember was appointed, not elected. Let's not forgot how THAT all went down- from Wiki.

In 2004, the Massachusetts General Court had withdrawn the authority of the governor to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy by appointment, to prevent the then-Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, from appointing a Republican to fill the remainder of Democrat John Kerry's Senate term, if Kerry were to win the 2004 presidential election. The legislation was enacted over Romney's veto.[13][14][15][16][17] At that time, Senator Ted Kennedy successfully made personal appeals to Massachusetts Democratic legislative leaders to pass the bill, which had been stalled prior to his request.[18] The new law called for a special election months later to fill the vacancy. However, Kennedy's death denied Democrats in the U.S. Senate the 60-vote supermajority required to end filibusters. Given the urgency of and narrow partisan support for some legislation before Congress, most notably health care reform, Democratic lawmakers and liberal pundits called for an interim senator to be appointed so that Massachusetts would have full Senate representation until the special election. In September, the General Court passed legislation restoring the governor's power to make interim appointments to serve until the special election stipulated in the earlier legislation is held, over multiple bipartisan concerns of hypocrisy

I weep.

This just in ...

2010-01-11T09:57:00.001-05:00

December 2009 14th coldest in 114 years. And, 3.2 degrees colder than the average.

You reap ...

2010-01-11T07:53:00.002-05:00

Steyn nails it, as usual:

One understands the realities of power. You can talk about how light-skinned and clean the Negro is and that's perfectly okay as long as you support the President's policies or (as Mr Obama put it in his acceptance of Reid's apology) "social justice". But, if you go along to a town hall meeting and say you oppose the health care bill because you're very concerned at what you hear about waiting times for MRIs in Canada, you're obviously a knuckledragging racist who's itching to string that uppity Negro from the nearest tree.

Teabaggers are racist "straight up", but Harry Reid ...

Remember when Obama said this:

I understand MSNBC has suspended Mr. Imus," Obama told ABC News, "but I would also say that there's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group. And I would hope that NBC ends up having that same attitude."

h/t: Pillage Idiot who has a handy-dandy flow chart for figuring when offense has been made.

I've read that what Reid said wan't really that offensive, because he was complimenting Teh One. For being "light-skinned" and not speaking in "negro dialect."

Come again?

Dan Riehl's got a bit to say about that.

Obama accepts apology, praises Reid on “social justice”

Social justice? Fair enough. Now, as applied to education policy, what is it exactly that Democrats have been telling generations of blacks in mostly urban schools? See, they've been telling them, hey, it doesn't matter, you needn't embrace strict standards of English, or speech. That's simply an oppressive old white man's thing. You should just go on and express yourselves as you please, man. Drops those consonants, misuse, or misplace those verbs, it all good! But then what happens once they graduate?

But all this is irrelevant, and Reid is going no where, the "D" next to his name insures that. Because everyone, Obama, Sharpton, and the Congressional Black Caucus have all forgiven Harry.

The bigger pictures is that the RACISM charge is used as a cudgel to beat Republicans/non-leftists whether it is deserved or not. Any whiff, and the charge is trotted out. Against Rush, Bill Bennett, Trent Lott, Don Imus (I'm not defending him), George Allen, Tea"baggers", me ... it is the left's FAVORITE tool. Truth and intent doesn't matter.

The next time you asswipes attempt to use it? I'm going to fucking laugh and laugh.

Update: K-Lo posts this caution:

Republicans need to be somewhat careful in their glee to pillory Reid over this — both from a "lowering the bar" perspective (It will be a Republican who next gets "caught" so why build a bigger case in advance) and also from a voter backlash in Nevada perspective

Republicans will be "caught" no matter what, and a bigger case will AWAYS be made. Pillorying Reid is a win/win.

But, I could care less if Dems boot 'em. He's your tool.

Must watch du jour

2010-01-07T13:02:00.002-05:00

The Cafferty File:

This is CNN.

"President Obama hasn't even made a TOKEN effort to keep his campaign promises of more openness and transparency in government. It was all just another lie that was told in order to get elected."