Caveat Emptor...
It seems some Obamatards are actually beginning to regret their ill-informed choice.

Note the prevalence of goatees and vacant stares; Perhaps this is some sort of characteristic that identifies brain-damaged voters? Hat tip to directorblue.blogspot.com.

Here.

Then Why Get Married?
Read this article, which was posted on the MSN welcome screen;

Gross Couple Habits.

Well, I just had to look. Gee, am I glad I did.

It must be a very sad state of affairs where people actually need to be told to shut the bathroom door, or to not pop each other's zits. Chimpanzees do this kind of shit communally.

All You Need To Know About the State of America...

Fed Up With Being Fed Up...
I was hoping to speak at tomorrow's Tea Party protest in New York City, but I haven't heard back from the organizers at this time, so I'm assuming I shall not be invited to spew my mental venom. Fair enough; they probably have 50 or 100 people better qualified to speak at such an event than me. I still plan to show up anyway and let my so-called political leaders know how I feel about what they are doing to this once-fine country.

Here is a text of the address I had hoped to give, just in case I don't get that plum speaking engagement;

I stand before you today as a citizen of the Greatest City on Earth, and the Greatest Country to ever be graced by God. I claim no special powers of persuasion, I claim no primacy of place, I only ask that I be given a few minutes of your time so that I may ask for your help in conveying a very important message to those who claim to know what's best for us.

That message is: You've gone too far, and we're about to yank your leashes...hard.

Mr.President, I would dearly love to "Invest in America"...but some guy in India now has my job.

Mr. President, I would jump for joy at the opportunity to be "The Hope We've Been Waiting For"...but apparently we have different definitions of "Hope"?

Mr. President, I would weep with happiness if my country were energy independent...but giant ceiling fans on the prairies, and a television powered by 'D' batteries seem like really weak ideas.

The truth, Mr. President, is that we can't Invest in America, we can't be the Hope -- we can't even be independent -- when the government of this country works against us, American Citizens, at every turn. It is the government which is rewarding the corrupt managers of fiscally-bankrupt firms which have ruined their employee's lives by allowing them to outsource jobs and underfund pensions, devastated their customers and investors with their stupidity --- and which are now to be rescued at the expense of the very people they've screwed. It is government which provides us with bromides like "Hope" and "Change" and then delivers nothing tangible...except tax increases, corruption and freedom-strangling laws and regulations. It is government which has decided that fish and caribou and salt marsh rodents are more important than We The People.

I'm here to tell you something Mr. President, Madame Speaker, Senator Reid: In our world, incompetents, whether in business or government, get fired when they fail this badly! Salt Marsh Rodents don't vote...but we do. Caribou don't pay the gasoline and road taxes which are used to maintain and rebuild, as you put it, "our crumbling infrastructure"...but we do.

Listen closely, because I want you to hear us all the way in Washington; we're sick and tired of the same tried and failed policies returning every few years in different suit, with a different letter next to it's name. It's time all of you supposed-brainiacs in Washington started listening to us, your employers. We don't want crushing debt! We don't want rationed health care! We don't want Soviet-style Five-Year Plans! We don't want freedoms crushed and what's left of our economy destroyed in the name of "solving this crisis" --- the very crisis your actions helped create!

Before I leave, Ladies and Gentlemen, there is one more issue to be discussed. The real problem here is the culture which we have managed to create, in which we somehow have decided to leave all of our worries and cares in the hands of the two entities that originally created them; government -- and yet more government. When you go home this afternoon, I want you to think about how that culture needs to change and how you, personally, can bring THAT change -- the REAL change we can believe in -- about.

I want you to go home, and talk to your friends and neighbors and co-workers, and I want you to make a commitment to doing your best to ensure that no member of the NY City Council who helped King Bloomberg I circumvent the law, and the stated will of the people, to run for a third term, gets re-elected -- and then make certain King Mike doesn't, either. Then I want you to think about how we can clean up our State Assembly, beginning with Speaker Silver, who never met a tax increase or public debt he didn't like. Then I want you all to call, e-mail, fax and otherwise harass Senator "We Don't Care" Schumer, and hound his sorry behind right out of office.

Change the culture here -- in New York City -- throw out the rotten apples and remove the regal, tenured privileged of Albany! Demand to be respected and to have our rights upheld, and we may begin...only begin...to change that culture. Be responsible! Refuse to let this government rule over you, or treat you like a serf! Demand instead that government do it's proper, constitutionally-defined job; maintaining the conditions under which We The People enjoy our God-given Constitutional Rights, instead of conspiring to line their pockets at our expense, and certainly not running -- and thus ruining -- our lives! New York First -- America Next!

Anyway, it felt good to vent even if no one will ever read it or hear it.

Seriously...
Timothy Geithner, our new tax-dodging Secretary of the Treasury, addressed the Keepers of Wall Street about what the Fed'ral Gubmint intends to do about our fiscal nightmare. They almost puked. The market fell 400 points almost as soon as he began speaking.

Prior to this meeting, Geithner tried to explain what the Obambi Administration planned to do about our fiscal nightmare to the collection of idiots called Congress. And Congress laughed him out of the room.

It's difficult to take this man seriously, apparently. The people who know money seem to think he's woefully unprepared (yet we were told that this was exactly the man for the job, since he'd been at the epicenter of the failed TARP program, and understood all aspects of the financial system's collapse), and if he's not unprepared, then he's crazy. He has, in effect, asked businessmen who have already been burned by doing what the government told them to do (i.e. make bad loans to people who had the worse credit ratings than Upper Volta), and who are now scared absolutely shitless about spending a penny that can't be either funnelled into their own pockets, spent for their own amusement, or used to shore up a sagging stock price, to pony up and eat bad investments that he swears he will insure. He doesn't exactly say 'eat', he basically says 'I encourage you to buy the bad assets already on your books as an investment'.

He does not indicate where the money will come from, but it'll be insured. He doesn't know exactly how the plan is supposed to work, just that it'll be a really-spiffy 'public-private venture', but it will work. He can't tell you, not just this minute, how bad assets will be priced, but somehow, it'll be attractive enough to make it a worthwhile investment, even in this recession.

Congress simply brushed him off. Like he was a six-year old in Daddy's suit, playing CPA.

When you can't get desperate money-managers who need an out, and even-more-desperate Congresscritters who need to be seen as 'doing somthing' for the sake of avoiding the question of 'what are you doing?', to take you seriously, you must be some sort of loser.

Yes, this will all magically work, because a man who can't file his taxes properly, either through criminal activity or stupidity, can be trusted to come up with a cracker of a plan. Yep, all makes sense.

HopeChangeWeCanBelieveIn. See you all on the bread line.

The Wall Street Journal chimes in.

Shmuck Schumer...
Via Anne Althouse, yet another reason why this country is so completely phucked: Charles Schumer (Moron-New York). This is the attitude that is at the root of almost all of America's problems; the Anointed Classes (in business, academia and now, obviously, in politics) believe that we don't care -- Schumer was just dumb enough to actually come out and say it, and worse, one gets the impression that Schumer and his ilk not only believe we don't care, but that we're stupid, as well.

Obviously we are -- Schumer keeps getting re-elected.

Remember this about Charles Schumer; his only concern is Charles Schumer. He can talk all he wants about serving the public interest, and what a privilege it is to be a Senator from the Great State of New York, but it has been said for many years now that Schumer is a self-serving egomaniac who can't help himself if there's a chance of getting his moribund mug on television. He's a shining example of the old maxim that the best way to tell if a politician is lying is to see if his lips are moving. There is no crusade, no matter how petty, minor or inconsequential that Schumer will not take up for the express purpose of putting his name and picture in the newspaper.

Now, in a moment of abject clarity, Schumer makes his opinion on the Great Unwashed Masses perfectly clear. We're dumb. We don't care. We need our elected 'betters' to protect us from ourselves because otherwise we'd all stick our tongues in wall outlets and eat our own feces. It's better that we not ask what he's up to, or what his friends might be doing, because, well, we don't understand it anyway, and can't be bothered to work up the ambition, on our best day, to figure it out.

If you've never before realized just what an asshole Charles Schumer is, he's made it perfectly clear for you. So clear that even an uncaring, mentally-retarded slug like you can understand it.

Of Deer and Headlights...
Well, you asked for hopechange, and you've got it! Once again, naive Americans who are dumb enough to consider Rock of Love and American Idol to be stimulating entertainment, easily fell hard for the titillation and novelty of an attractively-packaged Barack Obama. No one, it seems, ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, as H.L. Mencken once told us. This streamlines nicely with George Carlin's contention that the packaging, marketing and distribution of bullshit, is the biggest, and most successful, business in America. And no where is this more evident than in the rise (and very quick descent) of the 44th President of the United States.

So, eat it, Suckers! You've asked for it, and you've gotten it -- in spades (no pun intended). Our President is nothing if not a practiced bullshit artist who managed to finesse his way into office, aided and abetted by a public who can't tell shit from shinola, and who can't be bothered to find out, and by a political opposition that, on a good day, might be able to find it's collective ass with both hands and a compass. It now becomes apparent that all that talk about 'experience' might actually matter after all. It now becomes apparent that all that talk about 'judgement' might actually matter, too. It is now about to become axiomatic that 'cool' is not necessary 'better'. We're about to be taught a very bitter lesson that, sometimes, change is not all it's cracked up to be, and that more often than not, hope is little more than a leap in the dark born out of desperation.

The Spectator weighs in here. So does the normally-unreadable Michael Goodwin of the New York Daily News. Meanwhile, the adorable Mary Katherine Ham has this to say about the mindset of the Obamatards and their 60's-retread foot-soldiers.

McCain/Palin, in retrospect, suddenly looks like the best thing since penicillin, despite the idiocy of the campaign they ran. Perhaps we'll have learned our lessons four years hence, but I rather doubt it. After all, all you really need is a very slick marketing campaign, a catchy slogan, and a dumbed-down electorate, and you too can be President of the United States.

And Another One...
Via USA Today, Hilda Solis, President Obama's nominee for Secretary of Labor, is also caught up in a tax scandal. One which has lasted approximately 16 years. Read it here.

Geithner, Rangel, Killifer, Dashcle and now Solis. When anti-war democrats tried to sabotage our troops in Iraq, we were warned against the practice of 'questioning democrat's patriotism'. According to our new Vice President, Joe Biden, "paying taxes is every American's patriotic duty." I wonder if, in light of all these scandals involving democrats and their spouses not paying their taxes, it is permissible to question it now? If not now, then when?

HopeChangeWeCanBelieveIn is certainly begining to sound ever more hollow as each day passes. If anything, all of these tax issues have revealed two important themes which should be front-and-center on Congress' agenda, even before this stupid, practically-worthless Porkulus Bill:

a) There is a culture of corruption and entitlement within Washington, D.C., which infects the entire elected class, regardless of party. For republicans, this curse takes the form of hypocrisy, for democrats, it manifests itself in criminal wrongdoing. It can no longer be hidden, and will require some mechanism outside the halls of power (i.e. beyond the political classes' ability to influence it) to correct. Thank God we have a clean electoral system, and an independant press! (note sarcasm), and

b) The people who wrote the damned tax code can't understand it, nor can their CPA's and attorneys, and if they all do understand it, they're very good at circumventing it...right up until the time that sheer greed and gall push them to go beyond the limits of even simple good taste knowing they will simply be able to wriggle out of any punishment, protected, even aided-and-abettted, by their fellows in the Congress, the White House, and within the federal apparatus.

The Information Desert...
Occasionally, I force myself to watch the cacophony that bills itself as The News from different sources (I prefer FoxNews, personally) so that I might (I pray) be given another take on the world, and insights that I may not be getting elsewhere. Hopefully, these other viewpoints are going to be juxtaposed against their intellectual and rhetorical counterparts, place din context free of bias, and something resembling useful information will come out of the TV. It is often a fruitless activity.

CNN is long past the point where objectivity is anything to be prized or striven for. In my experience, the last time CNN told the truth about anything is when it admitted that Peter Arnett lied about American chemical and biological warfare in Vietnam. Still, you might catch Wolf Blitzer in an unguarded moment when his mouth slips a gear and moves out of sync with his mouth. However, the amount of time one must devote to stalking such a choice morsel is counter-productive; you could, if inclined, learn quantum mechanics in the time between uttered truths on CNN. It's a useless exercise as the only thing you'll learn is today's DNC talking points.

Headline News is, I think, simply CNN under the No-Frills label. The 'Store Brand' CNN, if you will.

CBS and ABC News are simply lame. Whoever decided that Katie Couric was a journalist should be neutered -- painfully, and with every precaution taken to ensure rapid and pervasive post-operative infection. The issue is not that Katie is unattractive, nor unintelligent; there's no question as to her appeal, although the brain thing is open to debate. Her real problem is that she simply isn't believable. She hasn't the slightest inclination towards objectivity either, and she can't hide it. Poor Katie's also laboring with the Albatross of Dan Rather hung 'round her neck. This perception of CBS being so, a) dishonest and b) credulous, in it's handling of the G.W. Bush 'desertion' story is a stain that will not go away. It will linger for years, until CBS itself is a distant memory. I wonder if that clouds my judgement on the issue (see? Katie and CBS wouldn't even ask themselves that kind of question! I have more objectivity than CBS News!). Again, no real counterpoint is given to anything that passes ideological muster at CBS. The network who once carried Murrow's famous "London is burning..." now carries nothing at all.

Charlie Gibson is simply moribund. He reminds me of rice pudding. Six month old rice pudding. Stodgy and dodgy, and still laboring under the pretense that he offers something to the hungry -- in this case, hungry for news. I have a feeling that before Charlie goes on, someone scrapes the mold off him and props him up in his seat. I find him to be as interesting as unbuttered toast, and he makes me positively yearn for the days of Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts. I don't like Charlie Gibson, and I find even less useful information on ABC news as I would expect to find in any collegiate doctorate course.

So, I'm left with NBC, which is really quite frightening. Rockefeller Center should be renamed Red Square. NBC is so devoted to the political left in this country that it's frightening. Now, if the hallowed halls of NBC News weren't scary enough, what with Tom Brokaw getting misty on Ascension (Inauguration) Day, the NBC cable operation is down right horrifying.

I call it PMSNBC. It's appropriate, because it's major hosts are all whining sacks of estrogen -- Nora O'Donnell, Chris Matthews and (especially) Keith Olbermann . All are shills for the political left and make no secret of it. In a token gesture of fairness, they drag Pat Buchannan out as the Conservative Curmudegeon and then surround him with two or three communist sympathizers programmed to repeat the same rubbish ad nauseum, in three different configurations. These are three of the most ingenuous people I've ever seen on TV. The other major host is Rachel Maddow, who has mysteriously proclaimed herself the Queen of Cable TV, while managing to be wrong in her pronouncements more often than those who defended Bill Clinton's innocence and decency. Her only saving grace is that she's obviously smarter than Olbermann, but her leftist zeal leaves you wanting to smack her with a brick. She reminds you of the poodle next door that won't stop yapping, But give her credit: she's at least probably in control of her faculties.

Nora O'Donell, I get the impression, doesn't have an idea that doesn't originate on a teleprompter; she's simply eye candy they taught to read. Matthews occasionally hits upon a patch of impartiality, but it's usually when the occasion is too obvious to obscure. Olbermann is simply insane. He's in love with his own voice, his own ideas, and his own (vapid and vacuous) jokes (I think they're supposed to be jokes). He's also obsessed with Bill O'Reilly. Like high-school-pimply-geek-who-keeps-asking-you-to-the-prom-stalker obsessed.

However, I will say this for PMSNBC -- Morning Joe is better than Fox and Friends, but only from the standpoint that since both really suck, it manages to suck a little bit less. Mostly because of Mika. That Mika Brzs-sha-sha-nis-shin-ski is nice to look at in the morning, and she actually offers some useful dialogue and asks the occasional relevant question...when Scarborough lets her get a word in edgewise, that is. When he presents a republican point of view, however, you feel as if the surface has merely been scratched, and barely at that. Toss JOe and give Mika more time to do her newswoman shtick; I'll bet she's good at it. She looks bright and competent

There is no possibility of an alternate point of view from the political right being fairly or fully presented on cable or broadcast TV, it seems, except on the Internet, and for that you have to actively search them out. Since most people are lazy and have attention spans measured in RPM's, I rather doubt many of them are spending their time trying to get properly informed, and are simply swallowing the mental jetsam available on TV without a thought.

It's no wonder people fell for HopeChange as a political program for American greatness.

The Rangel Rule...
There seems to be a big problem in Washington, these days. It's not a lack of lobbyists, Code Pink protesters, or Streetwalkers (That's three kinds of whores in one sentence!).If those things were in short supply in D.C., perhaps our elected officials would get something done properly (entirely by accident, I assure you). Oh no, Washington DC., Sodom-On-The-Potomac, shall never want for these things, since those who have been elected always draw such creatures as surely as a pile of shit shall draw flies. The Cardinal Rule of Human Relations: uninteresting, stupid people don't get any attention -- but really super-uninteresting, stupid people with the ability to hijack billions of tax dollars suddenly become the sexiest people. Ever.

Anyway, back to that problem I was about to complain about.

It seems that democrats, and their hangers-on, have problems paying taxes. See: Rangel, Daschle, Geitner. It also turns out that they have problems paying for a lot of things, as well. Like parking tickets (Rangel), or for chauffeurs and limousines provided by a 'very good friend' (Daschle). Even when informed by accountants, given written instructions on what to do, and even given a separate check to cover the expense (Geitner), these guys, for whatever reason, can't seem to stick a crowbar in their wallets and do what Joe Biden called 'your patriotic duty' (i.e. pay your taxes).

And what's amazing is the amounts of taxes owed! Rangel owed 75-grand, Daschle over 140,000 large, Geitner, a mere pittance, at 40k. These guys must be very rich, indeed. They seem to owe more in taxes than some people earn as a pre-tax salary. I thought it was axiomatic in democratic circles that rich people were evil parasites, sucking the lifeblood from 'the underprivileged' whose 'fair share had been 'stolen' by those with enormous wallets. Certainly, no one who has been financially fortunate could ever have come by that sort of money honestly. That's on Page 1 of the democratic (small 'd' intentional) party handbook. Why, the entire point of the so-called progressive tax system was to ensure that the rich paid their fair share. I think these guys would qualify as 'rich', and it's apparent they haven't paid their 'fair share'.

Of course, if you have a 'D" next to your name and are either the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, responsible for writing the tax laws of this nation, or you are to be named to some important post (like, you know, being the guy who will run the freakin' IRS!) by the Savior of the Universe in Mortal Form. Then there is no criminality, no hypocrisy, no act of sheer audacity that can't be forgiven. In this case, you can just pay what you owe -- quietly, if you can -- and then the little people can just ignore the screaming hypocrisy. That's right...go back to watching Oprah and American Idol...good peasant...good...nothing to see here.

Except the Peasants actually noticed this time. Ooops.

Not only did these three men not pay their taxes, like the rest of us must (in fact, most of us have our taxes taken directly from our paychecks so that that we can't make the kinds of 'mistakes' these guys do), they then, mystically, have avoided the payment of interest and other penalties that you just absolutely know they would hit you and your neighbors with. Not a peep about interest and penalties, not a mention of possible criminal proceedings, no garnishing of wages or freezing of accounts. The dreaded Audit Beast was apparently put back in it's cage and given a sedative.

The IRS would have made life an unmitigated hell for the average person who did what these guys did, and very often does for a lot less money.

The people who scolded GM executives for flying in private jets to attend a meeting Congress itself told them to come to, while they looked the other way as $350 billion dollars simply vanished into the darkest recesses of the banking system, have a bigger issue that they'd better solve before any other;

They are sorely, incredibly, painfully out of touch with the real world. The next time one of them says 'for the American people' or 'working families' someone should step out of the crowd with a 2-by-4 and whack them right across the forehead. These people don't know jack shit about working families or the American people.

Neither working families nor the vast majority of the American people could get away with "I made a mistake on my taxes" when they've been helping to write the goddamned tax code for a quarter of a century. Working families don't have friends who lend them limousines and chauffeurs, while they collect a $83,000-a-month paycheck from him as well, or have their employer provide them with a check to pay their taxes separate from their salary. These people have a credibility gap that's wider than the gap between Nancy Pelosi's ears, deeper than the black pit of Henry Waxman's nostrils, more hazardous than the open ground between Chuck Schumer and a TV camera.

Our political class, and their satellites, cannot be trusted. They make up the rules as they go along, and then alter them as they see fit or are required to for political purposes. They do not obey the laws they pass, and often, exempt themselves from them. They feast at the public trough, all the while taking backdoor paychecks-by-other-euphemism from private industry, citizen's groups, labor unions, those seeking their favor in terms of government contracts or legislation, and even each other.

A Congressman from Texas is about to submit a bill in the House of Representatives this week (assuming Nancy Pelosi lets him, since alas, he's a Republican) that would allow any American who owes taxes this April 15th to simply write "Rangel Rule" on the bottom of his/her tax form, and thus, claim the same privilege enjoyed by Rep. Rangel so that they don't have their life turned upside down by the IRS. I hope he succeeds.

One of the founding ideals of the American Experiment is that all people, regardless of wealth, position, race, religion, and especially political affiliation, are considered equal in the eyes of the law, and that no matter what that law will be equally and fairly enforced. Apparently, it's not. We've known it for a very long time, but didn't want to admit it. Now it can no longer be hidden or ignored, and seems all the more disgusting when people in this country are losing jobs; robbed by their businessmen on the one hand, cheated by their political leaders on the other. We have no one to blame but ourselves as shareholders and voters.

These are the people to whom we're about to entrust the spending of one trillion dollars. It's a fucking disgrace.

Update: More on this from American Thinker here and here. Now, the woman who was supposed to the Chief Performance Officer (some sort of super-efficiency guru) has had to bow out here. Professor Hanson agrees with me.