"Help" Syrian Rebels? Why?

RE: The announcement by the Obama Administration that it will give "aid" to the Syrian rebels currently fighting the regime of Dictator-for-Life Bashir Al-Assad.

I seem to recall an old saying that goes something like this:

When your enemy is making a mistake, don't interrupt him.

I REALLY MISS GEORGE W. BUSH

You know what? I miss President Bush, and I'm tired of people still dissing him like he's some chump. Yeah Clinton was great, but who would you rather have had in office after that, Gore? Kerry?

With either of those guys as President, we would've been as lame as our neighbors by now. Don't get me wrong, I like Canada. They got free health care and poutine (which makes culinary sense). And Mexico...Mexico is warm.

Anyway, you need President Bush, like everyone else in this world does. Who else could have removed the threat in Iraq, trained the Iraqi people to defend their land, and instilled civility to a country? Who else would've given us stimulus checks in order to pump up the economy? If you don't like that, then you're most likely a Democrat...a crack-whore welfare Democrat.

Behold, my favorite President of the United States of America, in the greatest State of the Union Address ever. A speech you probably missed because you were busy hating him and wishing that your lives were miserable:




Have a good weekend...

*this post also appears at the Insane Asylum Blog*

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Straight from the Horse's Ass: Mormons are a 'Cult'...

I’ve said it before many times on these pages; it’s something that should be obvious to anyone with enough brain cells to breathe without mechanical assistance: Evangelical Christians are amongst the most obnoxious of douchebags in America today.


It’s also been said on these very pages that the biggest obstacle in Mitt Romney’s road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is his Mormon Faith. When the subjects of ‘Evangelical’ and ‘Mormon’ collide, the resulting stupidity is usually one-way, and serves as a warning that maybe we shouldn’t be too hasty about banning abortion on demand, just yet.

I Keep Telling You: These People Are Crazy...

Ama-dina-doo-dad-day: Europe is Stealing Iran's Raindrops.

Naturally, so as not to be outdone by a bunch of dirty-laundry-wearing, livestock-molesting, wife-beaters in the Totally Batshit Crazy category, the United States announces that it will relax visa rules for Iranian 'students' (i.e. potential terrorists). This is just a super-dooper swell idea, ain't it? Let's open the doors to an even bigger wave of numbskulls who are so stupid as to believe that someone is stealing rain from them.

One wonders why this wasn't reported in very many American newspapers. I think I know the answer.

Of course, this is the same government that insists that throwing Israel under the bus in the name of peace is a good thing, and which believes that repeatedly insisting that Syria is a model of human rights and democracy despite the evidence of their own eyeballs and the nightly newscast makes it so.

You can't negotiate with people who believe you can steal their rain. Nor with folks who believe that someone's spiked their chewing gum with a chemical to make them all sterile. Or with someone who's default position is "I get what I want, or I will kill you...", and yet, some in American political circles continue to insist, despite clear evidence to the contrary, that all the problems of Islamofascism are the result of some simple misunderstandings. Something to be solved over coffee and cake.

Or with Israel disarming. Or with Israel giving their enemies clear invasion routes. Or with Israel simply getting over itself and just deal with the occasional Palestinian Riot, Rocket Attack, or Suicide-Bomber-on-a-Bus in a more holistic way. Yep, if we just sit down and have a heart-to-heart, and make a few concessions to homicidal maniacs with a 7th-century mindset, who believe the rain can be stolen, Peace will break out before you know it.

In case no one noticed, even the Palestinians admit they have no desire for Peace, and that any negotiation is simply a waste of time and air.

Why even bother with a Peace Process, if there's no Peace to get? Because it's easier than both telling the truth and dealing with the problem in a realistic way, that's why.

This Administration doesn't want to deal with the problem of Islamic terrorism...unless giving a terrorist a 9-mm. head ventilation job via Navy Seal gets you a bump in the polls...so it pretends that it doesn't exist. When it can't pretend the problem doesn't exist, it simply maintains that what we see and hear isn't what we THINK we see and hear, and we're mouth-breathing retards who just can't understand the barely-perceptible nuances.

John Kerry ran for President on that idea, and all it got him was a lifetime of being Tereza's Bitch because he'll never be able to pay her back the millions she spent on his failed effort.

The solution to the problem of Middle East Peace is to make certain the Muslims of the Middle East know what the price of continued conflict is: their death and the destruction of what passes for their mentally-constipated culture.

As soon as we get a President of these United States who will actually kill Muslims in the millions until they give up, we'll continue to have Presidents of these United States chase a phantom 'peace' between Israel and people who believe in raindrop conspiracies, and who will continue, wrongly, to insist that the problem is with the Jews -- who need to commit suicide -- and not with the other side.

Obama: The Message Just Didn't Get Through...

Spare us.

This guy got it. He was a real leader.

And we miss him terribly.

Thomas Sowell Explains All...

Someone ought to put Thomas Sowell on the dollar bill.

Money Quote:

Democrats controlled both houses of Congress before Barack Obama became president. The deficit he inherited was created by the Congressional Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, who did absolutely nothing to oppose the runaway spending. He was one of the biggest of the big spenders.

Buchannan: McCain Won By Being A Douche...

Who knew Pat Buchannan was still alive? Who the fuck taught him how to use a computer? When does he go back on his meds?

Pasty wails today about the unseemly electoral tactics of John McCain in his defeat of The Joker-Look-Alike Contest Runner-Up, J.D. Hayworth.

A few quibbles, if I may, Mr. Buchanan:

1. J.D. Hayworth is not an "authentic" anything, let alone conservative. His kind of "conservatism" is a tribal affiliation, little more than the wearing of gang colors. Then again, neither is McCain a conservative. In the race between neither-really-a-conservative "Douchebag" and "Shit Sandwich", the people of Arizona chose "Douchebag" as the lesser of two evils. This, unfortunately, is the state of American electoral democracy today. In a perfect world, neither man would have been on the ballot. Why don't you write something about that tragedy, Patsy?

2. In the Obama-McCain race of 2008, I don't recall you being quite so critical of McCain, except for your appearances on MSNBC as resident-curmudgeon-in-chief, where there's a check involved, I imagine. In your own personal dilemma of Douchebag-vs-Shit-Sandwich-and-which-do-I-criticize-more-on-TV, you grudgingly supported Douchebag McCain too, if only because to do otherwise would have been a tacit approval of Obama.

3. Don't suddenly get bent out of shape because you've just NOW realized that politics is a dirty profession. I suggest that your disgust at the process has less to do with McCain's tactics as much as it does with his victory, because if you could do to a democrap what McCain did too Hayworth, you'd do so with an indecent haste.

4. How is it that someone still pays you for your opinions? You are the Al Sharpton of the Pantybunched Right.

5. This quote is quite puzzling...
　

"But if the GOP takes the advice of its establishment,
and the neocons who seek power to start another war, and walks away from
cultural, social and moral issues, which are far more popular than the party
itself, folks who care about the character of the country and national identity
should walk away from that party, and find outliers who will pick up the banner
and carry it forward..."

...coming, as it does, from one of those very same "establishment" figures in GOP politics, i.e. YOURSELF.

And what the fuck is a "neocon"? Ever since that term has come into common parlance, it seems that it's only possible definition is "a republican that doesn't agree with Me,and just cave to my ridiculous demands", and has been freely used by both the Communism-is-good-Left and the Taliban-Has-Some-Good-Points-Right. If it is, as I take it to mean "a republican who is willing to find common ground and consensus where that is possible, for the common good, even if it means telling the Church Pikers to fuck off", then this makes a nonsense of this little bit of stupidity in the very next paragraph;

Americans motivated by causes need to maintain their freedom and independence of both parties, forming what George W. Bush liked to call "alliances of the willing.

This is rich: in one paragraph you denounce the "Neocon" War-starters, and then cite George W. Bush (with whom the term "Neocon" originated), as a shining example of enlightened leadership? Do you even read what you write, anymore, Pat?

"Obama's Katrina"

So speaks Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal, with regards to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

I must take exception with Mr. Rove for this pronouncement, if only because being a political operative, it's his job to paint the opposition in the most negative light he can, and let's face it -- it doesn't get any more negative than evoking the nightmare visions of Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Rove, if given the opportunity and the confluence of different circumstances, might as well have made the point that this spill is "Obama's Holocaust" or "Obama's 9/11", if he could get away with it.

What Rove, and many on the political right seem to overlook is that Katrina, and the government response to it, doesn't lend itself to the same sort of political pretzel logic that this oil spill does. To begin with, this isn't a natural disaster; it's a man-made accident (or as Man-et Napolitano likes to say, "Man Caused Disaster"). Katrina was unavoidable, beyond the ability of man to predict and control. This spill probably was, or at least might have, been less-likely had major mistakes not been made. I say this with the full admission that I am not an expert on the oil industry and off-shore drilling, but from what's been reported thus far, there's a lot of "fell-asleep-at-the-switch" crap out there to give one this general impression.

Secondly, what Rove and the political right fail to recognize is that, unlike Katrina, there are no images of African-Americans too stupid to get out of the path of a hurricane they knew was coming, and watched on television as it crossed the Atlantic for two weeks -- before it finally made landfall. There are no heartbreaking images of children slogging through waist-deep sewage, no reports of gang warfare in the streets, no elderly folks left to die in abandoned nursing homes. There are no "victims" for Chris Matthews, Geraldo Rivera and Katie Couric to sermonize upon and to club a Republican President over the head with. The "outrage" is mostly coming from the predictable precincts: the environMENTAL fringe, James Carville, and the Gulf Tourism Industry, aided by Bobby Jindal (governor of Louisiana) and Mary Landrieu (Senator) who see it as an opportunity for even more federal funding to their state.

(As if FEMA air-dropping Krugerands in buckets into Louisiana post-Katrina -- there's a reason why New Orleans is 30' below sea-level and sinking ever-deeper, you know -- and Landrieu's $300 million Health-Care bribe wasn't enough? Look, you need to clean up that spill for obvious reasons, but dammit, when does the Federal Spigot get shut off?).

I defy any government, no matter how efficient, to deal with these sorts of issues, whether a Katrina-like storm, or a massive oil spill 5,000 feet under water. The problem for GWB post-Katrina is that the "victims" were mostly part of a supposedly-oppressed class which was reflexively trained to believe that "The Government" is supposed to "do something", and upon the discovery that "The Government" (starting with the Mayor of New Orleans and Governor of Louisiana) was unequal to the task, and when the Victim Class found itself stripped of even the simple self-preservation instinct, their resulting plight was that much easier to attribute to a lack of leadership and outright racism. Obama, personally, will not be tarred by this brush in the way that George W. Bush was; he will largely skate -- aided and abetted by the media which has an emotional and ideological investment in the man -- on the worst of the Katrina comparisons.

Where Obama will have problems with this situation is in some aspects of the federal response, such as it has been, and most of those will disappear as soon as a few heads roll. Obama is very good at deflecting criticism by throwing his friends under the bus, you'll remember. As for what that Federal Response has been, and why it's been so dismal, I postulate the following:

1) In this, as in most things, Obama is simply in over his head. Then again, when you present yourself as the Messiah, making such grand pronouncements as "This is the Moment When Global Warming Ends" and "this is the Moment When The Oceans Cease to Rise", well, you get what you deserve. I never expected Obama to part the waters -- or in this case just separate the oil from the water -- because I never had the sort of investment in the Cult of Personality that most Lefties do.

To be fair, it's difficult to expect Obama himself to have the answers to every problem, but you would think that he would at least have access to the best-and-brightest with the expertise to advise him in these situations. It's becoming clear that his best advisers are probably also infected with the same ideological stupidity as their leader; the initial response has been to find a way to make certain everyone knows BP is responsible, especially financially, and then reignite the dormant debate on the need for Green Energy programs. Some have said this has been the goal all along; that the government was going to do it's least so as to further justify the Green Boondoggle.

There's many reports of Obama and BP campaign cash, and the federal regulatory agencies involved with the oil industry being stuffed with to the rafters with porn-surfing, drug-taking, ticket-punchers who want an oil industry gig after their government "service" is ended. This is the modus operandi of every federal regulatory agency, by the way, and it's something that needs to stop. And I thought Obama was against giving Big Business the ability to sway elections and policies with huge campaign contributions? After all, he did call out the Supreme Court on just this notion. If so, how did BP's cash wind up in his wallet? Corruption -- all the way down the line, but mostly within government -- seems to be the common thread that runs through most major disasters (Oil Spills, Financial Crisis, etc.), nowadays.

2) The Greenie Meanies in the Administration may have disrupted or interfered with initial spill responses because of competing environMENTAL agendas; The initial NOAA-approved plan for a controlled burn may have been halted because the EPA was concerned about elevated air pollution levels, or the effect on fisheries. The ability to build sand berms to keep the oil from reaching shore are hung up in EPA red tape over impact statements. In no small part, certain aspects of this disaster are a direct result of The Greenie Meanies and their dumbass Global Warming Cult; they have advocated for tougher regulations for decades (which apparently aren't enforced by the masturbating junkies in government "service", or which can be side-stepped with a campaign contribution), which has pushed the oil industry to drill in ever-deeper waters, further from the coast (because we don't wish to inconvenience caribou, or a few dozen Eskimos, or ruin some summer-vacationers ocean view), so that when disaster strikes, the conditions under which present-day off-shore drilling is conducted make it impossible to swiftly respond.

If you think an oil spill is already hard enough to contain and clean up on dry land or enclosed waters, try containing one 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. BP may be in deep shit, as it were, but it was the Tree Huggers, in part, who forced them into deeper water, into taking greater risks, and into pushing the boundaries of modern engineering to this extent. The Green Assholes will never admit their complicity in this disaster, but to them responsibility is always something for other people to exercise and accept, isn't it? This spill is (almost) a direct result of paying Tree-Hugging Retards far too much attention, and exempting government from the same levels of accountability that hold sway in the Private Sector.

Some have gone as far as to say that the Federal Government has conspired NOT to act, so that the Oil Industry can be demonized in much the same way as Wall Street was.

As I write this, President Odickhead is back on television -- and the first words out his mouth are "The Government has been in charge since Day One" and "BP is responsible for this mess". He's already saying that off-shore exploration is being halted, and is setting the case for further government intervention in the industry. The last 37 days belie the "Day One-assertion" made by the Obama Administration, and the rest of this speech is simply the setting-up of the legal framework which will explode into the rationales behind a further restriction of freedoms and commerce. New regulations, Blue-Ribbon Panels and government organizations are on the way -- because this is the solution to every problem on Earth, you know -- which will raise energy prices and hurt an already-anemic economy. These but make Lefties feel better about themselves but will do nothing about reducing American dependence on foreign oil, or meet the energy needs of the country. We're about to further destroy economic progress for the sake of a few thousand windmills that won't work (and which the Greenie Meanies will cry to shut off because they kill birds in the thousands).

You know, none of this would have happened if they were just drilling in ANWAR, already.

Our country is being micromanaged by complete and utter retards who haven't got a clue. On anything. Worse, they are being directed by even bigger retards with agendas. If this disaster hasn't driven that home to you, I don't know what will --short of another 9/11.

Purple Fingers Do Not A Democracy Make...

In re: Iraqi Elections.

The newscasts are making a big deal of this. If you were a supporter of G.W.B., the fact that Iraqis can vote is a sign that the invasion and the death of so many thousands of Americans and allied soldiers was worth it. Iraq is now "on it's way" to becoming a "stable democratic nation" which will "take it's rightful place in the world" and serve as a "shining example to the Muslim world" that pluralistic society and free-market economics is a better system than dictatorial rule of both church and madman.

If you opposed the war., Iraqis flashing dyed fingers is a symbol that Obi-Won Obama can finally fulfill his campaign promise to begin bringing Americans home from an ill-advised foreign adventure that was undertaken on behalf of Haliburton, Big Oil and McDonalds by the Evil Shrubby McBushhitler, and which caused the deaths of millions of innocents (Their innocents somehow still have more moral standing that Our innocents to Lefties). Yet, somehow, Joe Biden can still claim "victory" for a strategy of "stay the course" that his own side bitterly opposed (but somehow couldn't bring themselves to de-fund), in the name of the Great Obambi.

My view is simply this: so fucking what? Your view of democracy is seriously warped if you believe either theory. Democracy,as I've said here many times before, is not like a piece of software; you don't just "install" it and have it run seamlessly after some minor technical troubles and customization. One of the reasons, I think, why American diplomacy often fails in some respects is because people who think this way happen to be in charge of the government, or at least, ensconced within the bureaucracy. We somehow believe that democracy is easily transportable, and therefore, are eager to believe any asshole in a Third-World Shithole who claims to be a Democrat (it's why we keep supporting "Iranian Opposition" groups, and "dissident" Chinese, you know, with no tangible results or even an indication that many people actually believe them or would follow them). There is a belief in the upper eschelons of government that "Inside every ________ is an American dying to get out!".

This is a very poor formulation, which discounts the history and culture of democratic nations.

Because Democracy is a cultural phenomenon, with a 4,000-year old pedigree. It is not just a set of rules which people agree to follow, as it involves much more esoteric features than just The Law and Government. It is a system which has evolved in those 40 centuries to include a bunch of often-mutually-exclusive conventions which have all been modified, tempered, and adjusted by experience. I call these, for lack of a better term, Institutions.

The Institutions required for true democracy are as follows: Secular Rationalism -- the separation of politics, science and economics, and just about every other human endeavor, from the tyranny of religious orthodoxy. The Word of God is not always the final arbiter of what "works" for the greater good of society, particularly when cold, demonstrable experience contradicts the Scripture. A secular-rational society does not dismiss God entirely, but it does diminish the power of religion and superstition when these threaten to narrow the human worldview, deny the impeus towards achievement and discovery, or when they prevent the individual from being included in the Second Institution, which is;

A belief in the Rights of the Individual. All people are born with the assumption of equal capacities, if not actual, equal talents, and equal worth. We are entitled to certain courtesies (rights) by virtue of the fact that we are alive and may contribute, in whatever way we might, to the greater (but never-perfect) communal good. This means that the Individual is born with the right to own property, to enjoy a measure of personal safety against the use of arbitrary power, and to be able to use their talents, skills, and energies for their personal enrichment and growth. For this reason, Systems of Law have evolved from their predecessors --enacted and enforced precisely to protect the exalted status of Church or Monarch, and excuse and justify their arbitrary use of power -- to where they now (theoretically) protect the individual citizen against tyranny. This attribution of rights to the individual brings us to the Third Institution:

Equal Application of the Law. It's all well-and-fine to be free from the use of power of the church and state, and recognized as an individual with rights, but these mean nothing if there is no system within which they can be exercised freely, securely, and with some corresponding responsibilities. This is where the Law and Governments enter the equation, as they are specifically created and empowered by the free citizen for our mutual support and protection. In our own Western culture we have experimented with various forms of government; direct democracy, republics, proportional representation, Socialism and Communism in various forms, Anarchy, Feudalism, Dictatorship, and so forth, but always these systems come up short in some respects, and are continually refined by the application of experience (that is, by the use of secular-rationalist methods being exercised by people enjoying the right to do so without threat of retribution by those in power). One of my heroes, Winston Churchill, once described democracy as "the least-worst system of government yet devised by man..." which tells you that he, at least, thought the experiment was not over.

But, government only really exists to ensure that "The System" is fair, equitable and applied (yes, through use of force, Libertarians!) in a way which ensures that liberty is protected against those who would pervert it, or take it away. The Law is simply one of the more powerful weapons in the arsenal of free peoples, but it, too, is not perfect. It also evolves through a process which is similar to the one which creates governments -- free people, accorded equality, who are able to apply the lessons of experience to it's betterment and refinement. When this requirement is met, you are now ready for the final cornerstone of democracy:

Economic Freedom. This is the ability to exercise your rights to own, trade, sell, and profit from your work, talents, mind, skills and assets. It is the right to pass on your property from one generation to the next without it being taken away (except by reasonable circumstance, like fair taxation for the benefit of the citizenry as a whole) by the use of the overwhelming power of the state. Without the Marketplace, the place where the whole system of secular-rationalism, individual rights, the Law and Government all meet, whether of goods, services or ideas, the system as a whole could never be supported.

Without Economic Freedom, people are reluctant to work. They would refuse to co-operate except in the most extreme of circumstances. They would fight amongst themselves even more than they do now. Without the knowledge that there is some reward (a full belly, a roof over one's head, the ability to afford a minimum of comfort beyond those base requirements), people are not motivated to better themselves, their community, or their country. There must be a system of rewards for work and success (and this, naturally, also requires there be penalties for failure), regulated by fair law and custom, equally applied by governments given the authority to do so by free individuals by mutual consent, and always subject to public audit.

If you do not have those Four Institutions, you cannot have a democracy. If you have no history, no cultural record at all, of these conventions then it doesn't matter how many purple fingers there are, you're only going through the motions.

The real test as to whether voting Iraqis ultimately create anything of lasting value to the world or themselves, is whether or not they manage to establish these institutions on their own, or whether they will continue to be implemented under the cover of American guns for the next few centuries. Because what is passing for "democracy in action" in Iraq is nothing of the sort: Arab nations, and especially Arab nations under the influence of Islam, don't believe in Secular Rationalism, Individual Rights, Equality under the Law, Government by Consent of the Governed, or Economic or Intellectual freedom.

Right now, we might be protecting the next generation of would-be Saddam Husseins who are simply waiting for us to go home so that they can start blowing each other up in earnest in order to re-establish the pre-War status quo. It's what their history and their culture, compels them to do. We'll see if the fledgling "Iraqi Democracy" (and ditto for Afghanistan) manages to survive the removal of the American prop, but I wouldn't bet on it.

In the meantime, let's stop all this nonsense that George W. Bush is now somehow vindicated, or that Barack Obama has, miraculously and vicariously, accomplished something where his efforts were so much in obvious opposition. If memories really are that short -- Because Bush cited WMD's, and Obama was against the War and the Surge that seems to have "won" it --or that fungible, then we have some serious problems here at home to fix.

Note: As for me, my support for the Iraq War was always predicated on a much baser and cruder formulation; anything which promised to kill Muslims in large numbers in the wake of 9/11 was just fine by me. Where I opposed the War was the timid nature in which it was fought; there was less War -- and more Public Relations Campaign with Guns.

Discussion?