Thursday, April 30, 2009
The 9/10 President, or, ‘I Won’
Welcome to a blog post that is long overdue......maybe this should better be known as ‘The Tale of the 9/10 President’.
Maybe ‘The Story of the 6th Grade President’
I waited, and waited, and waited, and I wanted to be true to my word that I would not say anything negative about the man for the first 100 days of his Presidency.....and I didn’t.
Frak me...it was hard.
So...I have a lot of catching up to do.
This is going to be somewhat of a long post....so a lot of it is going to be beneath the fold, so to speak. In fact, let’s just go there right now.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
I’ll start easy….
The Obamasslickers are making me want to PUKE.
Folks, this is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. However, I am on Eastern time, and I am tired, so I am going to go to bed and I will post something tomorrow.
I promise. A simple preview....
“Hey, all you people that wanted change? You got it! Kind of like the Soviets when Germany invaded in ‘41.”
Each and every sycophant that voted for this guy ought to just bring their fists smashing into their testicles. Repeatedly. Over and over.
I mean....he is everything everyone warned people about. He couldn’t have been more of a model arch-liberal if he’d tried. I mean, everything from cutting defense to paling around with world leaders that call America ‘Shit’ to apologizing to Europe for America defending it’s interests when most of them decided to sit it out and lay down to the Islamofascists. Wow.
Proof? Two words. Mohammed cartoons.
He’s managed to blow the deficit to a level that surpasses the first seven of Bush’s....combined!
I gotta get some sleep. More tomorrow.
Tickticktick
Paging John Cross. 100th day warning for John Cross…
{starts digging foxhole}
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Show us the Pictures
It was claimed that the stunt with Air Force One yesterday - which caused some pregnant women to go into premature labor, according to some eyewitnesses - was a “photo op”.
Show. Us. The. Pictures.
I know for a fact that there are ALWAYS many more pictures taken than are ever published, so that only the very best (in terms of lighting, focus, crispness, etc.) will actually be used. So there should be LOTS of them, a few of which would have caught the fleeing crowd (so that we would know that it wasn’t the “file copy” from previous Administrations), even if they don’t have the perfect angle on AF1.
Show. Us. The. Pictures.
It was argued that this was just a standard exercise photo op, in order to “update the file pictures” (as though the use of Photoshop was somehow beyond the Government’s ability), so this is a simple thing.
Show. Us. The. Pictures.
All it would take is a few of them, shot from the air rather than from the ground, to absolutely end this shitstorm. Yeah, it would still be considered a numbskull move, but the guy who allegedly authorized this alleged “photo op” would be shown as just a moron who utterly lacked common sense, rather than an underling who lied in order to protect Duh Won.
Show. Us. The. Pictures.
Who wants to bet that these pictures will never ever be seen?
Raising an old, new Specter
I read the Powerline article about the news that Arlen Specter is going to flip from Moderate Republican to Democrat, and have to agree on the premise....that Specter is doing this less because of principle and more because he wants to be re-elected.
He’s switched before....you know he started out as a Democrat....so this is as much of a surprise as the clouds being in the sky. The fact is that the man was polling poorly against Pat Toomey, and the Democrat politician that was planning on running is Joe Torsella, who is a comparatively unknown.
See, I spoke about term limits in a recent post, and this is one of the reasons. Specter was going to pay a political penalty for his vote on the stimulus...the majority of voters were going to vote against him in the primary (he was trailing by 15-20 points). So, instead of running on his record, he’s going to go for the deeper resources and the perceived widespread popularity of the Democrats. He’s looking at Murtha’s win, Obama’s win, and he’s going to sell himself to their caucus in order to get their help in getting another term.
Face it...it is questionable that Toomey, should he win the primary, could beat a Democrat in a state-wide election in left-leaning Pennsylvania (the axis of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia trumps the more conservative rural areas). Specter was trailing Toomey, so his hopes were fading as well. However, in his desire to stay in the cushy Senate, and keep the cameras and attention as a member of the political upper-class, he switched parties.
He’s a whore...he was utterly obliterated by conservatives for his vote on Porkulus, and he had no answer for it other than he thought it was a bad idea, but ‘...we had to do something...”. He’s a political weakling and his departure hurts the Republican Caucus. Now, the Dems are very close to a fillibuster-proof bloc of votes.
It ticks me off. I’m no Republican, but the GOP-side of the aisle was the only chance we had of curbing the sprint towards socialism that the Democrats in Congress are taking. His self-serving, butt-kissing, power-hungry desire to win another election is a blow to our ability to stop socialistic creep in our nation.
What a political whore.
A Good Point
The claims about “government-run health care” usually include an assertion that the People have a “right” to health care, and that only the Government has enough muscle to guarantee you that right, and HMOs are just out after your money.
One problem, though.
The government is not granting you a right to health care. They are denying you the right to any health care except what they deem appropriate, and forcing you to pay for it whether you use it or not.
Look, as I have pointed out here in the past, health care is not a right, it is a commodity, and all the claims that health care is a “right” neglects one fact: it isn’t a right if it take the efforts of someone else to make it possible.
I have the right to freedom of speech, because a generous Creator gave me the ability to speak and a mind with the ability to invent sentences, including those sentences that have never been used before, either spoken or written down. No one has to give me something to make it possible for me to speak. I have the right to worship that Creator in any way that I deem appropriate, because no one has to give me things to make that possible. Same with the other actual rights.
But health care requires the assistance of highly trained experts in unpleasant fields (ever had to empty a bedpan?), and unless those professionals have no personal needs of any sort (like food, shelter, sleep, etc.), they deserve to get compensated for their efforts, one way or another. That makes health care an economic phenomenon, not a right, and “Economics” can be roughly defined as “the allocation of scarce resources that have alternative uses”. Those health care workers don’t have to go to Med School - they can learn to flip a mean burger, too…
You could hope that the Government declares beach-front property a “right”, and it would be just about as effective.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Obama to the 52
"Hey, how’s my ass taste?”
Quote from Tantor: “Isn’t it fabulous how Obama has reconciled with our enemies and put fear into the hearts of Americans? Does any image illustrate so neatly the wrongheadedness of the Obama administration than Americans scrambling in terror from Air Force One?
In case you missed it (seeing as how the media are busily ignoring the story), the White House apparently thought it would be a good idea to have one of the 747s used as Air Force One buzz the NYC skyline, causing literally thousands of people to flee tall buildings.
The official explanation you would have gotten depends on who you asked. The Air Force called it a “training exercise”, Joe “Baghdad Bob” Gibbs admitted that he hadn’t bothered to find out even though he admitted having seen the footage, and the White House eventually called it a ”photo op”.
Can you tell me which moron thought it would be a good idea to have a 747 - pursued by military fighters, no less - buzz the most identifiable parts of the Manhattan skyline?
As I have said before, “You broke it, you bought it.”
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Southwest Swine
WTF!?
Can someone please tell me something that has come from Mexico in the past twenty years that hasn’t tried to kill us? I think this is just more proof of it.
Mexico is a cesspool. Drug dealers, floods of illegal immigrants, and now a deadly flu. Thanks guys!
Saturday, April 25, 2009
The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend
Just a reminder....Nazis and Communists fought each other in the Second World War, and we did fight as an ally of the Soviet Union, but are they our friends?
I say this as I watch Charles Johnson from Little Green Footballs get hammered by people on the Right. He is against some of the European groups that oppose Islamic thought and extremism in Europe, such as Pro Köln and Vlaams Belang.
I want to remind people that the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.
Fascists, of any kind, are racists. They have to be; it is an inherent condition when you have to justify the superiority of the State. It is not a stretch to say these people on the fascist end of the political spectrum would dislike Islamic fascists...they aren’t the kind of fascists the Vlaams Belang or Pro Köln support. Many people call the Israelis fascists, but do these two sides support them?
No.
Charles Johnson is, by my account, a non-religious, libertarian-leaning conservative that ‘gets’ the War on Terror and the implications of allowing either Islamofascism or a overzealous counterrevolution to it. He is not wrong about this.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Another poll
Hey, you can humor me, considering the mess I have to clean up - hash pipes, half-eaten bags of microwave popcorn, and one of you has apparently tried to disassemble the tuba. And not even good hash, either!
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Karma
It’s a killer.
When you’re one of the people responsible for the downfall of a nation, it’s safe to say that it weighs on the conscience.
It’s ‘Earth Day’
That’s with a capital ‘Urr’ and a soft theta.
(Bonus Nerd points for knowing that reference.)
Any plans? I mean, besides poisoning the planet with every exhale?
Go buy some styrofoam cups and throw them away unused? Piss on a hybrid as it passes by, just to see if the circuits will short themselves out?
We’re all gonna die when the polar caps melt this summer anyway, am I right?
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
I read this article….
In it’s own way, the article supports Drummy’s opinion of a revolution in the next 20 years or so, but I do not think that it will be violent.....I can’t see that here, if only because of the standard of living and that there is nothing that could be enacted by this government that would precipitate armed conflict within the border. Our government is not dictatorial, no matter what we are thinking of it right now, even though it is a huge, bloated thing.
WE are still in control. The People. WE put this guy into power, WE put the congresscritters into office. Mr. DeLong agrees with this...we still hold the reigns of power. However, the special interests are pervasive and paint the efforts to take away their power and control as unethical or immoral. Imagine the screams of despair that would come from either the pro-abortion or pro-life movements were defunded, or if the ACLU or NAACP were disallowed from sending lobbyists to Congress.
What do we do? What are your ideas?
Well, I would make the following changes:
1. A COTUS amendment that will limit the terms of federal representatives and senators. In U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995), the SCOTUS ruled that the States could not limit the terms of their federal representatives, because that would add a qualification to the representatives/senators that exceeded that dictated in the COTUS. 37 states limit the terms of their governors, and the House did try to pass a federal term limiting amendment to the COTUS in the mid-90’s, but it didn’t get enough votes to become an amendment. However, it takes two thirds of the States to force the House to consider such an amendment, and three-quarters to ratify it, and 37 is damned close to that. The only way to get this is for a grassroots push through the states, or, as in 1994, and shake-up of the Congress and a removal of the problematic power-hungry individuals we have there right now.
2. Change the salary and benefits package of federal representatives. People get rich serving in the House and Senate, and that was never meant to be. I say you give them free room and board, $50 per diem (that’s $18,260 per year or so), $50,000 base salary, and 10 round-trip commercial air tickets to their states. Senators would get $75,000 a year, and the same travel plan. Also, since there would be term limits, no lifetime retirement benefits.
3. Change the POTUS term and election. Make it a 7-year term, and change the COTUS so that a person could serve two terms, but NOT consecutively. This would also mean that elections for House, Senate, and POTUS would only occur together once every 14 years. It would dilute the effects of presidential partisan politics on non-nationwide elections, and make state elections more like state elections. AND, no campaigning while serving as President! I would also pay the POTUS $1,000,000 a year, so successful people would be attracted to the position.
4. Remove all inhibitions on political donations from individuals. I’d kill McCain/Feingold as fast as the hatchet could fall. Also, no inhibition on corporate donations, either, but each party or person that donated any money to any party, PAC, or candidate must divulge their name, be a US citizen, and must be a registered voter.
5. Require a photo ID or proof of citizenship to vote in any election.
What do you think?
Monday, April 20, 2009
Funniest TV Episodes
I’ve been catching up on reruns of some old TV shows that I really enjoyed in my younger days - WKRP in Cincinnati and Hogan’s Heroes, and I started wondering what episodes could be taken as “The Best” of the various series.
Now I realize that there are a lot of the old shows out there, and just as many new shows that I’ve never seen myself (except by accident - after all, who wants to deliberately watch Eric McCormack pretend to be an ad executive - what’s next, Andy Dick as a Roving Librarian?), but I thought that you guys might have some favorite episodes. Not shows, but the specific episodes of a favorite series.
For example, the “Turkey’s Away” episode of WKRP is widely held to be among the funniest episodes ever aired, anywhere, anywhen.
What else you got?
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Ignorance is POTUS
The President of the United States was “unaware” that the Tea Parties were going on?
You wanna know the scariest part? I actually believe them.
When Empress Catherine II and many foreign dignitaries visited the recently conquered area known as the Crimea, there was this one general-field marshal, Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin, who was trying to suck up to the Empress and show her how valuable this new conquered land was going to be. Potemkin ordered the construction of village facades along the Empress’ route, so that she and the others would be suitably impressed with his efforts and reward him appropriately.
But there was nothing behind the facades. Just walls facing the roads and rivers, and no buildings behind it.
Think of that scene in Blazing Saddles where all of the townsfolk - Mr. Johnson, the Johnsons, that old Johnson coot, Howard Johnson, the other Johnsons, and the Johnsons - all build a fake town while the bad guys are stuck at the ‘Governor William J. Lepetomane Toll Booth’ ("Somebody’s gotta go back and get a shitload of dimes!"), and you’ll have the right idea.
Now we have the Potemkin President, who is apparently being shown nothing but good news as the results of his decisions and policies. Not the laid-off workers, not the closed business, not the companies that are trying to return the TARP funds (only to be told that they would not be allowed to do so), and not the hundreds of thousands of pissed-off citizens (including the many thousands who were actually protesting directly across the street from the White House - a group that even shut the White House down when they tossed ordinary tea bags over the fence keeping the hoi polloi at bay).
Dozens of events with tens of thousands of people in the weeks leading up to this last Wednesday’s mass protest, which had literally hundreds of cities holding protests (five of them within a half-hour drive of where I live) and hundreds of thousands of Americans of all political and socio-economic strata, and no one bothered to tell Obama?
Ever get the feeling that we have Arthur “Big Guy” Carlson running things? Or Governor Gatling? “As God is my witness, I thought Socialism could fly...”