Friday, February 12, 2010

Not One Dime...

Quoth Professor Hanson:

"After a single year of governance, there is now scarcely a single issue that Obama & Co. have not backtracked on, flip-flopped, redefined, or quietly dropped — mostly matters that were once demagogued to score political points. At some point — I think it was around mid-January — the public collectively shrugged and concluded of Obama, “I don’t trust anything that this guy says.”

"The cultural relativism of the dopier university campuses is to be applied globally..."

Mark Steyn on Tony Blair in the dock. Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair is being questioned (at least he was last week when I watched some of it), at length, about the 'legality' of the Iraq War. I've watched some of the questioning on BBC America (a.k.a the Gordon Ramsey Channel. He's on every other program, it seems), and it seems rather...trifling and petty. It's almost as if the point of the exercise is to get Blair on record as having said something, and then a week later ask him the same question, get a slightly different answer, and then jump up and scream "Aha, me Old Beauty, you are fuckin' nicked!" (Ten points to anyone who can identify that pop-culture reference).

Now, I'm no lawyer, but I can recall that in this country, the legal wrangling over whether the President had the power to dispatch troops without the authority of Congress was debated exhaustively, just as it had been ever since the Vietnam War (Anti-War democrats in those days were legendary dead-equine-beaters). There was all sorts of talk about the War Powers Act, about the prerogatives of the U.N. and the sanctity of it's charter and resolutions. The debate on the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was thrashed out on American television screens for several months before it actually took place. Had Saddam Hussein actually taken advantage of the time given to him, he might have actually turned the Invasion into something serious. Instead, we got to watch US Troops dash for Baghdad after campin gin the desert for a week due ot duststorms. Congress was all but demanding that American military and political leaders lay out their core strategy for the world to see. It's not as if anything was hidden, or anything untoward had to be done here in the U.S. to justify an unjustifiable war.

The War was legal and just, based on the best information available to GWB and his people at the time. For all of their posturing, no democrat in his right mind was going to deny the President of the United States the power to invade Iraq when;

a. The country had been attacked on September 11th, and there was evidence (later, legitimately brought into question) of Iraqi involvement with, or connection to, Al'Qaeda

b. There were only 17 U.N. Resolutions, all a result of the 1991 Gulf War, that the Iraqis had violated, ignored or otherwise flagrantly disregarded that had to be enforced, and which were undertaken in the expectation that when the U.N. called for enforcement, it would be the United States and Great Britain who would do it.

c. Democrats who had vehemently argued against Bush Sr. in Gulf War I, a near-cake walk in historical terms, who barely survived the subsequent re-election fight, were not going to sit on the sidelines for this one -- they were all-in.

Nothing was left to chance; Blair, Bush, Rice, Powell, went to the United Nations and laid out their evidence in support of the invasion and the enforcement of the sanctions and resolutions that had been the result of Gulf War I (that some of their 'intelligence' about Iraqi WMD and connections to Al'Qaeda later turned out to be wrong, was a surprise that would not be discovered until the invaders managed to get a hold on Iraqi political and military leaders, their archives and reports, and many scientists, engineers and administrators who could be questioned). There was nothing hidden, and the U.N. legally sanctioned the invasion.

There were reasons to invade Iraq, if only to enforce existing International Law, even before September 11th;

1. Anyone remember Hans Blix and his nuclear inspectors who weren't allowed to inspect anything, but who somehow still managed to give the Iraqis a clean bill of health on their nuclear programs? Iraq was supposed to comply with the resolutiont hat required it to open all of it's archives and facilities to Blix's team; instead, they often barred them from entering facilities, trucked contraband out the back door while delaying the UN Teams at the front door, destroyed or invented data to confound and confuse Blix and his folks, threatened some inspectors, bribed others, and ultimately kicked Blix out of the country.

2. Anyone remember Scott Ritter, former weapons-inspector charged with investigating the Iraqi WMD regime -- and unrepentant pedophile -- who went from Saddam's worst nightmare to his greatest defender in about a week, even receiving money from Saddam for some mysterious 'documentary film' (maybe kiddie porn)? Ritter and people like him were supposed to be up to speed on the state of Iraqi WMD's, and their compliance with the resolutions that these programs be open to international scrutiny and the weapons destroyed under international observation. In the aftermath of Gulf War II, Iraqi WMDs (mostly nerve and chemical agents, shells, bomb casings and warheads) were being found, buried or hidden, all over Iraq. It's now obvious that the Iraqis were not complying with the resolutions.

3. Anyone remember the Oil for Food scandal that saw Saddam Hussein and politically-connected foreigners split oil revenues that were supposed to buy the Iraqi people food and medicine? Wasn't former Secretary General Kofi Annan's son involved in the illegal program, walking away with millions in possibly ill-gotten gains? Anyone remember how many billions were stolen from the Iraqi people, and not only by their own government -- but by an international community that stole with the left hand, while attacking the United States with the right for it's cruelty in enforcing the sanctions, which they insisted prevented Iraqi children from eating and getting immunizations, in the first place? Half-a-trillion dollars sound familiar?

4. Anyone remember the No-Fly Zones, and the persecution and attempted genocide of the Kurds, our all-but-forgotten allies in Gulf War I? How about the Marsh Arabs? Anyone recall just what sort of suffering and human rights abuses these people were under when Willy Jeff was in office? They were conveniently forgotten in some political circles when it came to authorizing a war that was increasingly portrayed (on the Left) as the Son's Revenge on behalf of the Father, or putting Money in Dick Cheney's Pockets.

5. I guess everyone managed to forget the illegal trade in dual-use technology that was taking place between an Iraq under sanctions and individual states, like France, Germany, Russia and China, all of whom did whatever they could to prevent the U.N. from enforcing it's own sanctions or resolutions? Duplicitous governments weren't about to let anything like international law and U.N. Sanctions to interfere with the important business of commerce, even if Saddam Hussein was a verifiable lunatic with a history of irrational and unpredictable violence.

I mean, if you were a prosecuting attorney who had to justify a trial, and you had evidence like this (even the circumstantial stuff) your case would probably be a slam dunk (weren't those the words George Tenet -- the former CIA director who had all the bad information collected on his watch -- actually used in reference to the casus belli?). Was the war legal? Was it justified? You bet it was! In fact, there was probably so much attention paid to the legal details in that War that it might even have cost some soldiers their lives and limbs. Paying greater attention to the Rules of Law than to the Rules of War, cost us some people, I'm convinced.

Tony Blair has nothing to answer for, and the people who have dragged him before this dog and pony show should find some better hobbies. This is serving no useful purpose at all.

Yes, Cowboy, We Really DO Miss You, Part II...

The people who were against the Surge, campaigned vigorously against it as a signal of frustration and failure in an Unnecessary War Fought on behalf of Dick Cheney's friends at Haliburton, but who nonetheless repeated the strategy in Afghanistan, the war they called The New Vietnam...are now claiming victory for it's success. With video.

It'll make you puke. Especially since it's delivered by Robert Gibbs, who has all the attraction of syphilis, but with none of it's charm.

With every passing day, George W. Bush begins to look more and more prescient and Presidential than his floundering, whining successor ever will.

George W. Bush was caricatured as the spoiled, paralyzingly-stupid, sophomoric, drink-and-drug addled scion of Well-Connected-Old-Boy-Network Oil Money, but the more Barack Obama appears on my television set to complain, play the bait-and-switch pitchman, posture, lecture and ultimately FAIL in full view of 300 million Americans, while continuing to blame the problems of the Nation on the Man-Who's-Policies-He's-Adopted-and-Claimed-Credit-For-About-Half-the-Time, the more George Bush looks positively Churchillian by comparison.

So much for Change You Can Believe In.

Another One Bites the Dust...

And this Kennedy didn't even need to get shot first, although rumor has it that his brand of "shooting" has little to do with guns, if you get my drift...

By my count, that's about 10 major democrats (from both houses) who have decided to either resign, retire, or who have basically decided to not run for re-election in the last few months, not including two who simply dropped dead. Those were Edward Kennedy (who defied medical impossibility like the Lyin' of the Senate that he was, and grew a brain tumor in what appeared to be an empty skull) and John Murtha, who died from complications during a routine gallbladder operation that was (allegedly) botched so badly that you'd almost think it was paid for by the government...Oh, wait, Congresscritters have a great healthcare plan paid for by the taxpayer, don't they?

Good thing there's no tort reform in all that Health Care talk, and Abscam Johnny's family will be able to sue like a motherfucker. Boy, talk about a cheap way to avoid an ethics probe!

Still, there's a few more I'd like to show the door. I don't see why Harry, Nancy, Blanche Lincoln, Charlie Rangel, Barney Fwank, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Anthony Weiner, Patrick Leahy, Bernie Sanders, John Kerry, Kirsten Gillibrand, Chucky Schumer, Maurice Hinchey should be so shy about beating a hasty retreat before they're embarassed anymore in public ....They should all get out now and beat the traffic in November.

Last week, The President vowed that he would "fight" and reassured his disciples that "I don't quit", but it appears as if his fellow travelers can't wait to throw in the towel themselves. In numbers that begin to stagger the mind. Why, even Arlen Specter, the newly-minted democrat was thinking of changing parties again, I hear -- but the American Asshole Sniffer Party told him to pike off --- they would rather have Khalid Sheik Mohammed on thier ticket.

At this rate, it's not difficult to begin to imagine somewhere near half of the democratic Congressional incumbancy could possibly take a powder before the mid-terms, if things continue this way. Frankly, I wouldn't mind if a near-equal number of republican incumbents followed them. At least then the Hallowed Halls of Congress might begin to smell somewhat cleaner just before that crisp, autumnal breeze blows through them and banishes the awful odor of Imperious Doofus right out of the drapery with a new generation of (we can hope!) principled politicians.

Explaining the Tea Party Phenomenon...

This is a must read if you're not sure who or what Tea Parties are all about. It's a short primer of what Tea Partiers (most of them) believe, and what they hope to accomplish. I agree with every word of it. It's an honest and positive article.

Then, imagine my surprise when I saw this from the Economist. I thought "Holy Shit! Even the Economist, gets it! You start to believe the message is getting through when even uppity snobs who eat endive and smelly cheeses, bathe rather infrequently, and usually surrender to the first German they see, show every sign that, perhaps, they're beginning to understand.

If The Economist gets it, why doesn't the White House?

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Why Every Home Should Have a Kathy Shaidle...

Because she's awesome, and finds stuff like this, this and this and lets us know about it.

Notice anything similar about these three articles, besides all the guys named Mohammed? They're all examples of how the right of Free Speech is being denied to citizens all over the world in the name of sensitivity to Islam. It's happening everywhere; our culture is being pulled apart brick-by-brick (and Free Speech is perhaps the most important brick in the whole bloody foundation) by people who want to kill and enslave us while they take advantage of all the things our culture offers them -- especially the welfare benefits.

They laugh at us while they plot our ultimate demise, and the ultimate victory of Sharia and their Pedophile Prophet, and his insane system of mind control.

We're not shooting enough of these people in Afghanistan or Iraq, and we've invited far too many of them into our society.

Drop in on Kathy at FiveFeetofFury. She's a treat!

Salon Defends Racist, Leftist Birthers...

By trying to persuade you that people who voted for Hillary Clinton aren't really Leftists. Who should you believe, Salon or your Lying Eyes?

Here's the original article.

Let's just say this; if you supported Hillary Clinton, fought for her nomination, even going to the extent of threatening to implode the democratic party if she didn't get the nod --- then you're a Lefty. Probably one of those fully-committed mentally-suspect Lefties. You might as well wear a pink, neon-lit sign that flashes "LEFTY!", and no amount of obfuscation and denial will ever change that fact. Those who defend the PUMA's by saying that Birtherism is simply a mental disorder of the fringe right, without acknowledging that it was the Clinton supporters who went as far as to connive at it and hire people to propagate it, cannot reconcile this one. No matter how thin they try to slice it; the disease may have found a home in the political right, but it was the Left that were the carriers.

They have all but admitted that they tried to smear the guy; they tried to influence the electoral process by attempting to bring Obama's citizenship into question publicly. Note how they decided to question Obama's qualifications based upon his African Heritage, and not on his actual fitness for office. How do you decide which would have been more overtly racist, I wonder? Perhaps if they had gone the route of legitimately questioning his political accumen their woman might have won -- and we'd be laboring under a different kind of socialism right now. Everyone knows the Press failed in it's responsibility on that count. It might have happened -- completely accidentally --that the PUMAS would have performed a useful public service. Now, it looks simply like pettiness and veiled bigotry, which is basically what Leftist ideology is.

The Mask has dropped for a moment and we glimpse the true ugliness beneath.

If anything, that this issue has arisen probably shows that the Far Left and the Far Right probably have more in common then they think: they were both obviously willing to go to any extent, or believe and spread any lie, if the overall goal was to keep someone out of the White House....at the expense of truth and fairness.

By saying that I'm raising some very uncomfortable questions about whether Lefties are truly concerned with truth, equality and fair play, and if those questions were ever answered openly and honestly, it's my considered opinion that there would be no more Lefties. They would virtually disappear overnight, exposed for the bullshit artists that they are.

I don't like Barack Obama; I think he whines too much, I think he's delusional in his policies and I believe that he doesn't know how the American government is supposed to work. Despite his reputation as a Constitutional Scholar/Lawyer, I have grave misgivings about whether he's actually read that document at all. But, being fair, he's been wronged in this case, and the crime was almost severe enough to cost him his opportunity to fuck up the country. We can survive Obama, we won't survive people like Dan Rather and the PUMA's.

I simply imagine how people would have felt if Dan Rather actually succeeded in smearing GWB in the Fake-Real National Guard Memo-gate. There would have been genuine outrage once the facts of the case and the source of the accusations became known, as there was, especially if Bush had lost .The fact that an election may have been tampered with by a gang of lunatics with an agenda would have angered Americans to no end, and would have gone against their sense of fair play and basic decency. Barack Obama, for all his other deficiencies, deserves -- at the very least -- the same consideration we'd reserve for ourselves in this matter.

You can rest assured that if the perpetrators of this hoax and attempt to steer an election were republicans or conservatives, the Justice Department and five gazillion pundits would be all over it.

If you think this is a defense of Obama, it ain't. It's simply a recognition that someone tried to cheat in a most despicable manner, and that even a dyed-in-the-wool Alinsky Communist deserves the courtesy of fairness.

It was a nice try, though, Mr. Koppelman.

Another "Miss Me Yet" Billboard...


They're becoming ubiquitous...
Think anyone is Washington is paying attention to this phenomenon? Probably not. After all, they missed all the other phenomenon like Tea Parties and Town Hall Meetings and three Elections lost by Democrats who had Obama at Their Side.

I'm Surprised it Wasn't Addressed, "Dear Dago Bastard...."

Remember what I said a day or two ago about how you go about getting loopy people to write you ridiculous e-mails that make no sense? Well, it's happened again.

What did I do? Why, I went ahead and wrote this pearl of wisdom:

"...there's a piece of the Far Right, which despite claims to the contrary, really is consumed by racism and stupidity.."

That was written in the context of the Tea Party and it's potential-future problems with members who have swallowed all the crap over Obambi's birth certificate.

Well, I got an e-mail written by someone with, at best, a sixth-grade education and perhaps five teeth. The dickwad who wrote it is probably lurking around here, just waiting to see if I I'll reprint it, so that he and his nosepicking, bedwetting buddies can have a good laugh at how they "outed the Pinko" -- I won't give them the satisfaction. Besides, I'm surprised that He was able to spell 'ass-munching Communist' , and 'cock-sucking Libtard', and probably without a spell-checker (that's how I know the writer is a 'He'; because he constantly challenged/questioned my sexuality -- to Far Righter's, being Gay is the next best thing to being Muslim. They fear Gays even more than the Devil himself, it's the worst accusation they can lob at you without quoting Scripture. And for the record: I'm straight, Ladies!). That sort of rhetorical brilliance, that beautiful use of the language, would have brought Cicero himself to tears with jealousy.

Anyways, the argument this douchebag was making was that the Far Right is always tagged with the epithet "racist", and He believed that nothing could be further from the truth. He has a point, and I should clarify some:

There's a difference between a Bigot and a Racist; a Bigot hates everyone who isn't part of his specific group or tribe, a Racist hates people because of their race. I should have written:

"...there's a piece of the Far Right, which despite claims to the contrary, really is consumed by bigotry and stupidity..."

Now, a second clarification; when I refer to the "Far Right", I'm referring to two specific sub-groups of people;

1. People who believe Pat Buchannan is a prophet, because, you know, even a broken clock is still right twice a day, and

2. The New/Old patrician-class republicans, the scions of what used to be called WASPs, who may appear to be slightly more hip, but they're every bit as bigoted as their forebears...they just manage to hide it a whole lot better, and besides, when you live in a gated community, you never rub elbows with the hoi polloi, anyway.

In Conservative website circles, these folks are known as the One-Percenters (the Buchannan folks), and sometimes, as the Country Club Repubs (the old money folks). Both descriptions invoke certain stereotypes, but if we've learned anything watching Je$$e and Al, stereotypes persist because they're largely true.

These are not the racists of the past; they aren't out in the streets shouting about integration, nor do they wear sheets and burn crosses (although they are usually incensed about immigration...right up until a Country Clubber needs a housemaid or pool cleaner), because they've been cowed into near silence on the subject by society as a whole; we've made a lot of progress from the days when you could openly call someone "Boy", "Heeb", or "Dago"; nowadays, these saucy Neanderthal Untermenschen might actually punch you in the mouth for such talk! Things were so much easier in the 1940's, when the Rabble knew it's place.

There is a vestige of bigotry left in these people -- to see it, all you have to do is scan a few 'Conservative' websites, and you'll find them without much trouble -- and there's no amount of reason or argument that will ever get through their bulletproof skulls.

The reason why they glommed onto the Birth Certificate nonsense has nothing to do with The Law and The Constitution. To begin with, while many of them vigorously claim to have a copy of the Constitution in their wallet or pocket, they apparently never read it; for they almost always either get the intent of the Founders grossly wrong, or adopt interpretations which are...shall we say, extremely liberal?... especially when it comes to things like whether or not they're entitled to own a machine gun, a bazooka, a flame thrower and a B-52. On most other subjects, they simply repeat what they've read on the Web, heard on their favorite Radio Show, or the usual propaganda that flows into their inbox from the usual grubby little Birch Society-inspired outlets. They're not great thinkers; they constantly regurgitate the same grievances and wishes to one another across cyberspace, often the same ones their fathers and grandfathers repeated endlessly at the dinner table.

Trust me; I spent five years arguing with them over at FreeRepublic. An original thought and a cold drink of water might actually kill some of these guys.

Anyway, they saw this birth certificate thing and they wanted to believe it in the worst way. They invested their emotions in it. Every One-Percenter on Earth was doing his level best to become the next Buckhead (Buckhead is the Freeper who discovered that the infamous GWB National Guard Memos were fake with his brilliant typewriter analysis....that's the sort of hobbies some of these guys have, besides a'shootin' and NASCAR...). It was the one way they might have delivered the (figurative) death blow to that Uppity Negro Who Had the Audacity to Run for the Presidency; why, he might have been born in Africa! The birth certificate had to be a fake, planted by an evil cabal of Leftists who groomed him like a Manchurian Candidate -- you know, the one with Denzel Washington, not the Original One With a White Guy. It simply HAD to be true; because McCain was such a rotten candidate and campaigner, and the country so rapidly headed for the crapper, that even the RINO John McCain was preferable to some Black Guy.....to any Black Guy. The alternative was too terrible to contemplate.

And they didn't even LIKE McCain, either! He just became the lesser of two evils by default. If these guys had their way, a 'real' Conservative would have stood for election, like Duncan Hunter or, or dare we dream?, Mike Huckabee...a guy with mediocre opinions, and no chance of victory, but at least he's a good Christian. These guys became disenchanted with the Republican party a long time ago; they opted for Perot in '92, they absolutely abandoned Bob Dole, and they were lukewarm on GWB until he said that Jesus was his favorite "political philosopher". The only time they ever truly loved the GOP was when Reagan said the magic words: "Prayer in Public Schools" and "Ban on Abortion". Naturally, they got neither, but they had no place else to go. Now they see a chance to dump the GOP altogether (since they've never been able to co-opt it, despite all the money and energy they've put into it), and take a flier on being able to properly 'shape' the Tea Parties (you'll notice that the individual Tea Parties that have sprung up haven't got much in the way of a common platform).

They often complain loudly that the GOP took them "for granted", and they very often scream about how they "owned the republican party" because of the cash and organized voting blocks of good little Evangelical stormtroopers they brought to the polls, and especially-incessantly about how they never got a "Real Conservative" to vote for (mostly because Francisco Franco is dead), and then they sulk about and cry, they sit home on election day, and then lament that RINO's have brought us a Black Communist. These very same people, the one's who bought this Birther Conspiracy hook, line and sinker, showed up in Nashville last week.

They love Tea Parties because they aren't The GOP, and the chance to take them over from the inside (something they could never do with the GOP) is good to pass up. The Tea Parties say all the right things about the fiscal part of Conservative ideology, but they'll be very disappointed when they discover that most Tea Partiers are probably not as socially conservative as they are, which is where the trouble will start. If the Tea Parties are ultimately successful, and they get what they currently want on the Economy, National Security, Federal Spending and Taxation, watch the One Percenters and Country Clubbers and Birthers crawl out of the woodwork and start tearing the Party asunder. Tea Partiers are people for Common Sense; the One Percenters and Country Clubbers are a bunch of self-appointed gatekeepers who believe in an America that only exists for those they judge fit to live in it.

Weed 'em out, National Tea Party, and perhaps your road to electoral success will be much easier, and the world will take your claim to be dedicated to the cause of Common Sense much more seriously.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Get These Folks Out of the Tea Party, Before They Start Making Everyone Wear Swastikas and Tin Foil Hats...

The origins of the Obama Birth Certificate kerfuffle, and how it finally landed within the Tea Party.

It all seems so obvious now; it's was Clinton's fault! The Hildebeest's folks -- some of them the same people who tried to do a hatchet job on George W. Bush with the fake-real National Guard memos in 2004, set out to do a similar job on Obambi, too. Remember what I wrote about "Arkancide" the other day?

Well, fortunately for Barack Obama, the country was so demoralized and pissed off that they would have voted for a cock-eyed, bow-legged leper with halitosis, and it didn't really matter. And then, unfortunately, there's a piece of the Far Right, which despite claims to the contrary, really is consumed by racism and stupidity, who managed to sink their teeth into this manufactured conspiracy and have held on with pit-bull tenacity ever since...and some of them have found their way into the Tea Parties. If Tea Partiers are serious about making strides towards improving both the country and it's political system, they should do the right thing and weed these people out of the ranks, immediately...even if it means electoral defeat in a few places.

The cost of keeping them on far outweighs the risk of losing elections without them.

I quote from the article:

"Of course, the rush to delegitimize Obama once he was elected president fell to wingnut conservatives, who continue to confuse losing an election with living under tyranny...."

Exactly! They're emotional, they're overwrought, and that makes them both stupid and dangerous. Best put some distance between them and yourselves.

Yes, Cowboy, We Really DO Miss You...

This billboard is hanging over I-35 in Wyoming. It sums up what, by now, must be a Nationwide Sentiment.

National Public Radio, naturally, is concerned about just who put that thing up. They seem to find it puzzling that anyone would pine for GWB when the Anointed One is busy running the nation straight into the ground. They fear some hidden political message or agenda. They've even gone as far as to ask their readers to investigate the origin of the billboard, perhaps the better to harass the people who paid for it.

Remember back in the days when liberals said that it was GWB and John Ashcroft who were a greater danger to your privacy and personal rights than terrorists were? Terrorists didn't hold an opinion counter to the prevailing one at NPR, I guess? Apparently, when NPR has an agenda or opinion which differs from yours, your life is about to be pried into by politically-motivated strangers -- they'll call themselves 'citizen-journalists' but they're really out to expose and hurt their ideological opponents -- with no legally-constituted authority nor safeguards.

These Uber-lib Stormtrooper types have no sense of humor or proportion, do they?

Nice picture, though!

Update: Doh! I really should read things more carefully, sometimes! That billboard is in Wyoming, Minnesota...not Wyoming the State!

It's also been discovered that the people responsible for the billboard happen to be a consortium of small business owners who are really, really pissed off at what the Obamatards are doing to them...and they wish to remain anonymous, for very good reasons.

Is This Sort of Thing In Our Future?

Not the power shortages, but the President having his own TV or radio show -- that can come on at any time of day or night? I wonder what the point is if there's no electricity?

Don't put it past our President, or at least his handlers. After all, they've made certain that he's been on TV before the Super Bowl for the last two years, he's on our TV screens at least 6 hours a day speechifying or whining. I can't take anymore as it is. No one tell The Teleprompter Kid that his man Hugo can hit the airwaves unannounced at any time of day or night! He might be tempted to try it.

Seriously, there's not even much difference between Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez in that regard; both are constantly in campaign mode, they live before the cameras. They're never seen in anything that hasn't been carefully staged. They can't actually stop to govern, because things like lowering taxes in any meaningful way to spur an economy, or building oil-burning powerplants in an oil-producing nation -- that is, to do the obvious things required to solve your immediate problems --are apparently too difficult to do, and incompatible with the goal of turning a once-great nation into a Third-World-Pisspot-Dictatorship.

That's why the "solution" to our problems is always the impossible, disconnected or fanciful; it's easier to seed clouds -- or destroy a health care system -- especially if the solution to your problems runs counter to the message of Socialist Revolution. Only a Socialist could make the formulation that "people don't have jobs because 30 million losers and illegal immigrants can't get a tonsillectomy" or "In one of the OPEC states,they depend upon the vagaries of the weather to make electricity".

It's an incredible example of piss-poor planning, based upon a flawed worldview itself shaped by a rare species of what can only be described as a deep brain injury. It's the only logical explanation for such stupidity. But at least you get to listen to some really neat harp music.

Monday, February 08, 2010

Hmm, Maybe I Need a Communications Director?

To save me from people even crazier than myself....

There are three things you can do on a blog that are guaranteed to get you a response from the unhinged; criticize their heroes, criticize their politics, and criticize their religion. When you post something that happens to criticize all three at once, you're pretty much asking for an inbox full of either the most hateful bullshit imaginable, or the biggest laughs you've had in while.

I've committed the cardinal sin of having a go at the Tea Party folks the other night, in particular, the one's who believe that some guy who got himself nailed to two pieces of wood is some sort of deity. Worse, I made the further mistake of mentioning a) Conservatives and b) Sarah Palin in the same post, and well, hell...that makes me the next best thing to Anti-Christ.

Now, before anyone thinks that this blog has a grand following, or some sort of impact upon the Internet, you need to know two things:

1) This page probably averages about 100-120 hits a day. On a very good day. Considering that nine months ago it was averaging barely 2 hits a week, my influence is widening, but not astronomically; I'm not Instapundit, or Lucianne.com or even Andrew Sullivan. You'd have to search very hard to find this page, and chances are, you'll come across it completely accidentally long before you find it on purpose.

2) The only way you ever will find this blog -- on purpose -- is if you've stumbled upon it before, someone has recommended it, or you do a lot of internet searching upon specific topics. So, if you entered "Sarah Palin" into your Google-thingy, this blog probably pops up, assuming there's something including the tag "Sarah Palin" in it. Depending upon how recently Sarah's name appeared in the blog, I'll either be near the top of your search, or buried somewhere on Page 51 of your search results.

Apparently, this is how the Person Who Sent Me The Most Annoying E-mail I've Gotten In Years found this blog; he must have been searching for Sarah, Tea Parties, et. al. more or less within a short time of my post... and boy, was he pissed about what he read.

But, he managed to remember that he was "A good Christian Man", and no profanity was used in his response to what he took as an attack on Christianity and Social Conservatism, but mostly as an attack on Sarah Palin.

For the umpteenth-thousandth time; Sarah Palin gives me a hard-on. That woman is everything you could ever want in a political candidate: she's a looker, she's not condescending, she has obvious smarts, what she lacks is the polish (the thick layer of refined bullshit) of the seasoned politician and campaigner -- but that is part of her overall charm. I cringe, however, every time she makes a reference to the Hanging-from-the-cross-guy because I'm convinced that people who are capable of falling for religion are capable of making incredible leaps of illogic, and the last thing I want in a President is that sort of blind belief in something that cannot be proven. So far as I'm concerned, if God exists, She's a capricious little bastard, like a rotten 8-year old sitting atop an anthill with a magnifying glass on a sunny day, waiting for us little ants to pop our heads out of the hole.

If you believe in the sort of God that can claim responsibility for September 11th ("It must be a part of God's Master plan...God works in mysterious ways..."-- or if you were the Saudi Terrorist -- "God said I have the right to slaughter thousands because I can't get a blond girl to do the nasty with me..."), while simultaneously denying that She had any part in it ("Man was given free will, and he doesn't always use it wisely or for good..."), then you are capable of a sort of mental gymnastics that I can't even begin to comprehend -- and would prescribe medication for. Only you call it "Faith".

This is what makes you dangerous to people like me; You'll swallow anything. Given time, it's not inconceivable that people like this, given political power and convinced of the "holiness" of their cause, would turn this country into it's own version of Iran or Afghanistan by chipping away at our liberties if (when) they conflict with Scripture. I thought we were supposed to be killing Muslims so that doesn't happen here; Did I miss the memo, or something? Many of these Far Right lunatics make a hell of a lot of noise about their own freedoms (especially their religious freedom), but they wouldn't hesitate to create a Federal police force empowered to peek into people's bedroom windows, just to make sure no one was engaged in a sexual act proscribed by Scriture.

Don't get all indignant; you know you want to, and would love to -- if you could get away with it.

Anyways, the letter. What makes it so annoying is that I have tangled with this sort of mental midget before. You find them all over the (Small 'c'-) conservative websites, like FreeRepublic, and they all operate in the same way; they take issue with something you've said, asking you where you come off saying something so offensive and outrageous. They then say they respect your First Amendment right to freedom of speech, but that you should have more respect for God, because that Right is granted by God, and you should have better taste and not clobber Her over the head with it.

Actually, I don't recall any passage in the Bible where God says "You have the right to...". There's an awful lot of "Thou shall.." and "Thou shall not...", but no "Thou may...". God was great at giving commands -- not so much at granting liberties -- so I would say that the argument that our Rights are granted by God is a load of hogwash (it's a construct of 17th century political philosophers looking for an argument to counter the premise of the Divine Right of Kings) . Somehow they always miss this strange disconnect between rights and commands and what God intends. I guess if it's something they love or value, then it derives from God, and if it's something they detest, it's an abomination of Man. Go figure...

Anyway, the letter follows a formula that I've seen a million times before; the correspondent states his opinion about what you've written and why God says it's wrong. To belabor the point, he then quotes a verse from Scripture. People who can quote Scripture are sanctimonious assholes, and it's one reason why I don't want them anywhere near a position of responsibility, because it almost never fails -- the quote NEVER has anything to do with the original point. It's put in there to a) lend some sort of authority to an inane argument, b) confuse the shit out you, and c) is supposed to punctuate the argument so as to imply that you've been knocked to the rhetorical canvas, no matter what counter-argument you bring -- you'll never overcome the Wisdom of God. You've been served, you Heathen Bastard! The longer the argument the more this pattern repeats itself, with the sources for the quotes becoming ever-more obscure, and the quotes themselves further removed from any context, so that you get a letter which reads something like this:

"Dear Sir,
I really disagree with your contention that God does not exist. I know He does, because he's answered my prayers many times before (I wonder, if this guy has such an "in" with the Almighty, why didn't pray for several billion dollars, and why is he lurking the internet after 4 a.m. writing letters of complaint to obscure part-time bloggers?). God is a loving, caring being who truly loves us all, even though He did Flood the Planet, and invented cocaine and AIDS and put New Orleans thirty feet below sea level -- and He let ABBA live, too -- but he Loves us all. Even those who doubt his presence in our lives, for as the Bible says

...Yea, for unto the third generation, the goitered scrotum shall be the mark by which they are known to all Nations, and verily, I say unto you, that thou who dost not keepeth the Sabbath with beer and salty snacks, being naughty in my sight, shall have brown, itchy patches upon the ankles and elbows, and be tormented by a plague of dandruff as the Pharohs of Old...It is as the Lord hath commanded... Book of Englebert, 3:17...

You know, we Christians are the butt of all sorts of jokes and slander in today's day and age, mostly because we're a forgiving people who will never fight back against our tormentors. We are getting sick and tired of it, but never do anything constructive about it except write indignant letters because Christ taught us to forgive our enemies. Like the Bible says:

...and give unto thy Enemy the right of counsel, and perhaps an enema. Bring him thy sugary cereal, they neighbor's ass, thy rod and thy red-headed concubine, so that he may stand before the judgement of God with a balanced breakfast in his belly, and fully knowing his shame..." Book of Roger, 4:26...

Why is it that you feel we are some kind of threat to you, that you must speak against us? We only wish to live quiet, decent lives, in a country where our values are respected, for as the Bible says:

...looketh not into thy neighbors condo; for there is only sin inside... for there man lieth with woman and the beasts of the field, and perhaps he eateth crackers in his bed. Thy eyes shall not behold the refrigerator, full of the Lord's bounty of beer, guacamole and day-old fried chicken. Thou shalt not ringeth the doorbell and beggeth for a cup of sugar from such Heathens, for surely the Lord shall smite thee..." Book of Three Dudes in a Drunken Stupor, 12:10.

You should apologize to all the good Christians you have offended, and Pray to the Almighty for forgiveness and guidance. I can tell your soul is dark and in need of his Cleansing Love...."

Actually, I'm constipated and could use some Cleansing Bran, but the less you know about that...
Yeah, like I'm going to take advice about my "soul" from someone who gives money to a preacher he saw on television? I'm taking advice from a guy who can't even write a letter without constantly referring to a book?

You know, Mao had a book once, and everyone quoted that, too. It didn't mean he had all the answers.

To answer the complaint, I'm not anti-Christian, having been raised and educated as one. I have no issue with most aspects of Christian philosophy, either, just with Christian theology and mythology -- and the people who can't make the great mental leap necessary to separate both from their politics and the realities of everyday life. Your faith is a personal issue, please keep it that way.

This is why Muslims are so incredibly fucked up, and remain, mentally, mired in 7th Century Desert Nomad culture and incapable of solving their problems without resort to fatwas and high explosives.

We're better than that.

About That Healthcare Thing...

I've had yet another fascinating discussion this day with one of those cantankerous Baby Boomers. I call these little chats 'fascinating' because this particular person is one of those who typify the attitude of the Baby Boomer generation; she's entitled to everything by virtue of having been alive and managing to survive the Vietnam era, the absolute worst period of American history since the Kennedy Assassination, which itself was the worst period of American history since they took Annette Funicello off television.

For them, there is no period of time which exists outside the limited scope of their own self-indulgent experience; the 1950's, when they were mollycoddled and given everything under the sun, the 1960's when they rebelled and fucked everything on two (and sometimes even four) legs, and the 1970's when they discovered abortion, cocaine, disco and multiple divorces. So long as it's something that makes them feel good, but which ultimately has no point, you can expect this sort of Baby Boomer to grasp for it with both hands and virtually no sense of shame.

Be that as it may, the discussion this morning revolved around why she should be entitled to free healthcare at my (and her grandchildren's, and great-grandchildren's) expense; she once worked for a living, you know.

Yeah, you're the only person who did, right? No one else has ever worked for a living besides you Baby Boomers? Now, having once worked for a living, the rest of us are somehow mystically compelled to continue to work so you can keep on living? That's rather selfish of you, isn't it? She stated that she was entitled to the right to live her life any way she saw fit, and that if The Government (i.e. the taxpayer) was going to help her do it healthier and cheaper, that was a good thing. She intends to be just as healthy in 20 years as she is now, and she says, she'll be just as sexy then, too (it was difficult to decide whether that was intended as a joke, I think, because this woman's visage could not only stop a clock, but clog a toilet, and she is rather clueless). She says she wants men to find her attractive well into old age.

Let's get this straight: I don't want this person dead. I certainly don't want her dead from some preventable disease or condition. But I'm not paying to keep her in replacement knees, false teeth, life support, sexual aids, breast enhancements and all the free happy pills she can swallow way longer than she'll be able to make any sort of useful contribution to society. Because, frankly, this is a major reason why they (Baby Boomers) want free healthcare; it's not all about being taken care of when they're about to shuffle off this mortal coil, it's often not even about doing all they can to postpone that dreadful day. The Baby Boomer argument for free healthcare is that medical science is making it possible for older people to lead more 'productive lives' (defined as being able to better enjoy the years when they're no longer wanted or needed in the workforce, and become otherwise useless to society, but still able to get an erection or have an orgasm).

You only need to watch television every day to see what the Baby Boomer Generation actually wants in it's "healthcare": pills to get it up, pills to get it up on a schedule, pills to stave off the heart attack that comes when you're getting it up, pills to keep your bones strong enough so you can try out the Kama Sutra without that terrible snapping sound, pills to keep you stupid-happy even though you've just discovered that sex after 60 really sucks. Pills to grow hair, the better to attract a sexual conquest on the mountain bike trail (amazing how many 60-year-olds seem to be wearing Spandex bike shorts on Television). Pills to keep your brain active so that your Alzheimer's-ravaged mind might remember his/her name after the fling is over.

Oh, and non-messy, un-oozey denture pastes so that you don't lose your teeth, or gross your partner out when you're Frenchin'.

They don't appear to want free healthcare so they can live longer and be more useful, as much as they seem to want free healthcare so that they can fuck all day after retirement. Because to a Baby Boomer, eternal youth can only be truly measured in orgasms.

To those who would ask "why shouldn't people be able to enjoy their Golden Years to their fullest? What do you have against people who only want to have a bit of fun before they run the course of years?"

They can enjoy whatever the fuck they want, just so long as they pay for it themselves. And since they'll live far longer than previous generations, they'll not only become more expensive as time wears on, they'll also have nothing to do (other than fuck, of course) but vote; and once you allow free Viagra for Grampa, and a Butt Implant for Granma, it's a very short leap (and a few Congressional seats) to penile implants and In-vitro Fertility treatments; you'll soon have the argument that 80 is the new 30, and why wouldn't a couple that old have more children if they wanted to,and are physically capable of it?

Which is pretty fucking disgusting, if you ask me, but Baby Boomers have made, and won, dumber arguments before. But, perhaps the very worst aspect of the whole Healthcare debate that often gets overlooked is that if Obamacare or some similar monstrosity is ever passed, the tone and thrust (no pun intended!) of political debate in this country will change forever. Once Obamacare becomes an expectation, a right, a part of the culture, no Republican in this country will ever be able to campaign against it, even in the context of "fiscal responsibility". Those on the right will be forced to defend a leftist proposition, even allow it to continue to exist in an ever-expanding form, in order to maintain even the possibility of ever acquiring or exercising political power. If you doubt that observation, just remember that Social Security is stil here, and when G.W. Bush set out to "reform" Medicare, and all he got was a Prescription Drug benefit, an expansion of benefits, and one of John McCain's top-five "Fuck you, Georgie Boy!" moments; the Gang of 14.

Medicare is still here, only now it costs more, and is being taken advantage of by people who live and die by their gonads. It's not about to go anywhere, and even when The Won talks about "cutting $500 billion" from Medicare, he's really only talking about an accounting trick, shuffling half a billion from one irresponsible federal "health" program, to a bigger and even more irresponsible one, that will put obligations upon generations yet unborn.

But for people like my Boomer-would-be-octogenarian-sex-poodle, that even isn't a consideration. She just wants her free Botox and porn-star labiaplasty so that she might "enjoy" her retirement.

Douchebag of the Week (2/08/10): Rahm Emmanuel...

You know, it isn't often that someone can engage in openly obscene behavior for so long and still manage to escape the notice of the Douche Patrol. I mean, Rahm Emmanuel hasn't even been nominated yet, not even once. That's either an indication that there's far douch-ier people out there, or that douche-y behavior is simply Rahm's modus operandi; he's expected to act like a douche, and so, garners no special praise nor approbation when he displays those traits.

However, it's often the case that someone will do something so extraordinary, so seemingly beyond their capabilities, or outside the range of their typical behavior, that it can't help but be noticed that someone has done something extraordinarily special, and slipped the surly bonds of workaday douche-ery and reached the very apex of douche-dom.

And the most delicious part is that Mr. Emmanuel has achieved this Great Moment in Douchebag History for simply uttering a truth.

What did he do? He called some Congressional Democrats "Fucking Retards" for not jumping on Barry Obama's full agenda. They didn't vote for Obamacare, they didn't vote for Cap-and-Tax, they won't walk the plank so that this President can go down in history as the man who flushed the American Dream down the toilet, and into the Sceptic Tank of Third-Worldom. Because America is not yet Zimbabwe, Rahm assumes those who he counted upon to make it that way must be the stupidest people on Earth.

It doesn't matter if Congressional Democrats really are Retards, you just can't use that word. Political Correctness demands it. If Ultra-Libs are about anything, it's Political Correctness. Barry's already losing them because he can't close Gitmo and get free abortions and laxatives to the masses, and now Rahm violates the Rules of PC.

Of course, Real Retards, and the people who love them (Sarah Palin was front and center, naturally) , were aghast; Emmanuel's comments were insensitive. They were evidence of a man who has no heart (He needed to call someone a retard for people to figure this out?). He should be punished upon the Altar of Political Correctness. This Administration has already has a bad reputation with the handicapped (excuse me, Handi-capable); wasn't it The Golden Child himself who made fun of the Special Olympics on Jay Leno? One incident of such barbarically-heartless behavior can be excused as a slip of the tongue, twice is evidence of an Administration with a bias against the Differently-abled.

Panty-bunched liberals tend to think in this way; everything is a conspiracy against someone.

And besides; who can blame them for being pissed off -- who the hell wants to be associated with Nancy Pelosi in the first place?

And that is just the least of Rahm' sins this week. Later in the week it was revealed (or at least the narrative is being planted in the press) that Rahm Emmanuel told Eric Holder that trying terrorists in civilian courts in New York City was a really bad idea. My memory is a bit foggy, but I think the day after "Fucking Retard" hit the news, "I told Eric, and the President, and everyone who would listen not to try KSM in civilian courts" came out. It's CYA mode 24/7 in Rahm's office. If it means Eric Holder has to get knifed in the back, then that's the price of staying alive in modern White House politics.

Mr. Never-let-a-good-crisis-go-to-waste is not only insulting the intelligence of retards, he's insulting everyone else's, as well.

For being an insensitive prick and a back-stabbing asshole, Rahm Emmanuel is this week's Biggest Douche.