WE JUST HAVE DIFFERENT ENEMIES, THAT’S ALL

The moral deficiency that is pacifism does not apply to all leftists.

Pacifists may live on the left, but not all leftists are pacifists.

It’s not that the left has an aversion to fighting. Indeed, they’ll get down and dirty with almost as much frequency as anyone. However, what makes most liberty-loving, Constitution-revering, rugged individualists snicker at the thought of a leftist standing up for, and defending, what they believe in is the fact that their “enemies” list reads somewhat differently than that of conservatives.

Conservatives see Islamo-fascists as the enemy.

Liberals see global warming as the enemy.

Conservatives fight terrorism.

Liberals fight greenhouse gases.

Conservatives speak out against dictators, tyrannies and totalitarians.

Liberals speak out against Arizona lawmakers, Tea Party protestors and conservatives.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar talks about keeping the government’s boot on the neck of BP until the Gulf oil spill is stopped, but Obamacrats never dare use such language when it comes to the likes of Iran or North Korea. That’s because conservatives fight despotic thugs. Liberals fight American corporations and “excessive” profits.

And where exactly has this Obamacratic ”enemies” list left the United States of America? What good has come from the post-partisan, post-racial, post-common-sense messiah-in-chief – the one who was going to pummel through Bush-era barriers and get the entire world cuddling up together by virtue of his mere existence?

How about an all-time-high number of terror attacks against the United States? How about a Messianic Age that has seen more acts of evil perpetrated against America by terrorist punks than at any time in her history?

Richard Esposito and Pierre Thomas of ABC News write:

The pace and number of attempted terror attacks against the U.S. over the past nine months has surpassed the number of attempts during any previous one-year period, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security report issued on Friday, May 21.

The report notes chillingly that while US officials “lack insights” they believe that “operatives are in the country and could advance plotting with little or no warning.”

The DHS “Intelligence Note,” a short, non-classified report, makes concrete the concerns of a number of homeland security experts who have discussed with ABC News the pace and nature of the individual attempts. The report notes that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Pakistani Taliban have “expanded their focus” to include the United States.

Not that this administration is actually using the word “terror.”

Not that high-ranking Obamacrats – like Attorney General Eric Holder, for instance – will admit that Islamic fundamentalism has anything to do with these attacks.

Not that former Presidents – like William Jefferson Clinton, for instance – while addressing students at an Ivy League school actually bothered referring to the Times Square bomber as evil. (Instead, Clinton referred to the terrorist a “poor, tragic man.”)

Not that it is any secret that our Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, is better qualified to fold sweaters at the Big K … maybe.

Not that America’s enemies don’t pay close attention to all of this.

That sound you hear is the chant from caves and terror cells alike, from every corner of the world, of “Four more years! Four more years!”

See? Obama is a unifier.

THAT OLD RACE CARD

It’s been played so much in recent times, handled by so many Obamacrats, that the race card must be nothing more than a mass of frayed wood pulp and lint by now.

From the party of tolerance, acceptance, character-over-color, unity, and plummeting poll numbers comes the latest appeal to potential voters, from none other than the Head Cheese himself.

Try to imagine, if you can, how fast the Reverend Al Sharpton would jettison himself from behind his cheeseburger to find the closest open microphone had a white Republican President, looking to garner support for an upcoming election, said: “It will be up to you to make sure the young people, Caucasians, folks of European descent, and men who powered our victory in 2008 stand together once again. It will be up to each of you to keep our nation moving forward, to keep working to fix Washington, to keep growing our economy, and to keep building a fairer, stronger and more just America.”

Arteries would be bursting in the necks of liberals everywhere.

The collective sound of millions of liberal conniptions would wake the dead and trigger seismograph activity across the globe.

It would be uglier than a surfboardless Keanu Reeves trying to act.

Thank God we don’t have to worry about such things. Thank God there is a Messiah “in da house.”

It is, once again, a Kumbaya liberal bringing all of America together (except those reluctant Limbaugh wing nuts) by breaking out that old tattered race card in the name of justice, fairness and whole lot of blah, blah, blah.

Everybody’s president has spoken.

And no, the Reverend Al Sharpton won’t be needed this time around.

And why not?

Because the President did not single out Caucasians. Instead, Obama appealed to African-Americans.

The President never mentioned “folks of European descent.” Rather, he kept his focus on Latinos.

And Obama did not reach out to men, God forbid. Instead, he was all about the female vote (i.e., the pro-abortion chicks).

Yes, the President of the United States actually said those words in a clip put out by the Democratic National Committee yesterday.

That’s because “fair” means singling out specific races and ethnicities. That’s because “just” means taxing the so-called “rich” – the job creators in this country – even more so that those who don’t earn it themselves can get it anyway. That’s because “stronger” means punishing those who succeed instead of trying to elevate those who haven’t (without handouts).

As Dems continue to do their best to label the Tea Party movement as “racist” and “angry” and “exclusionary,” it is the President himself who just cannot seem to free himself from his own skin-color and ethnicity fixation.

I humbly ask: Who exactly is the divider?

Has there ever been a man to occupy the Office of President of the United States (as well as the Office of President-Elect) who was less Presidential than he?

Hillary Clinton doesn’t count.

ALMOST HALF OF ALL AMERICANS PAY NO FEDERAL INCOME TAX

You can say it over and over again, but it is irrelevant to liberals. Regardless of the numbers – no matter how lopsided the percentages are – it will never be enough for America’s leftocracy.

They use beguiling words and phrases like “fair share” and “impartiality” but don’t really mean it.

They go on and on about equality – liberalism’s most important value – but in practice, spit upon the concept … or should I say spit upon America’s most successful citizens.

The fact is: the top ten percent of wage earners in the United States pay nearly three-quarters of all income tax.

Unfortunately, that isn’t enough for Obamacrats.

In truth, there is no such thing as “enough” when it comes to leftist confiscation (and redistribution) of the private property of America’s money makers.

The President, and his free-enterprise-pulverizing band of economy-crippling sadists, are hell-bent on creating some sort of sweeping “equality” by knocking down America’s top performers a few pegs (i.e., punishing them), rather than encouraging people to elevate themselves.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the scale, the bottom chunk of wage-earning Americans actually make a profit from the federal government.

That’s right … make a profit.

Stephen Ohlemacher from the Associated Press writes:

The bottom 40 percent, on average, make a profit from the federal income tax, meaning they get more money in tax credits than they would otherwise owe in taxes. For those people, the government sends them a payment.

“We have 50 percent of people who are getting something for nothing,” said Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

This year, nearly half of all Americans will pay no federal income tax.

Not a penny.

About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That’s according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization.

…

In recent years, credits for low- and middle-income families have grown so much that a family of four making as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009, as long as there are two children younger than 17, according to a separate analysis by the consulting firm Deloitte Tax.

…

The result is a tax system that exempts almost half the country from paying for programs that benefit everyone, including national defense, public safety, infrastructure and education.

…

In 2007, about 38 percent of households paid no federal income tax, a figure that jumped to 49 percent in 2008, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center.

There’s fair … and then there’s fair.

The reality that more money in the pockets of Americans is actually a good thing – that people do not respond to having more of their own earnings to spend by stashing it away under the high school yearbook in the upstairs closet – absolutely eludes the left.

Facts can be awfully tenacious.

More revenue finds its way into Uncle Sam’s tax collection box when people have more of their own money available to purchase goods and services.

Even my nine year old nephew gets that.

Of course, he hasn’t been to university yet.

RIGHT-WING UNREST … AMERICA IN FEAR

Congressman Steny Hoyer (the one on the left)

Incidents abound, say the mainstream media.

They have been born from the kind of hatred that leftists and other children have been warning us about for years. Since late Sunday, when America became less free thanks to the passage of Obamacare into law, it has been manifesting itself in violent outbursts that – according to the mainstreamers – are sweeping across the nation. Angry right-wingers, threatened by the civility and decency of the compassionate class (i.e., Democrats), are fighting back, selfishly desperate to hold onto their bigotries, biases and tax dollars.

From all corners of the mainstream media complex, the reports have been filling the airwaves: threats, gunshots, broken windows – all being perpetrated by furious anti-Obamacrats.

The mood in America is turning ugly, they say. It’s getting scary out there, they claim. The right-wing is becoming unhinged – and since the right is the home of the “God-and-Guns” crowd, fair-minded liberals are now understandably frightened.

That’s what they’re saying.

Congressman Steny Hoyer of Maryland is very concerned about the threat of reprisals from merciless ObamaCare foes who take the Constitution too literally. Congresswoman Betsy Markey of Colorado says her office received a threatening call the day before the vote from someone who said she had “better hope I don’t run into you in a dark alley with a knife, a club or a gun.” A Democratic lawmaker’s brother in Virginia had a gas line cut at his house. Windows were broken at four Democrat offices in three states.

To hear it from the mainstream media, the nation may be descending into right-wing-led chaos.

Even NBC’s Ann Curry (Today Show) – a beacon of impartiality and objectivity – says that Republican lawmakers are “encouraging the violence” against Dems. Sarah Palin, for example, “posted a map highlighting weak Democratic districts…with a crosshair symbol” on her website. Words like “targeted” and “battleground” are incendiary terms, according to Curry, and can incite violence in these “very dangerous times.”

Curry’s psychiatrist was not available for comment.

It goes without saying that threats against politicians or acts of violence of any kind against any public official – Democrat or Republican – are not to be tolerated. Such behavior is repugnant and can never be acceptable.

But some of these “backlash” incidents have not even been verified; and the ones that have are isolated.

Almost immediately, as soon as the media when orgasmic reporting on this new wave of rampant conservative ugliness, Republicans took to microphones everywhere condemning such acts.

Some of the interviews that ensued were almost comical.

Reporters made sure to ask these Republicans – these monsters, these aliens – what they thought about such behavior against poor Democrats who only wanted to help Americans in need, as if there was a genuine possibility one or two of them might say, “Well, I can see their point.” Maybe – just maybe – one of them would slip up and say something that would confirm the fact that conservatives really are violence-loving, rifle-toting, enraged psychopaths.

Unfortunately, despite salivating palettes and “See, I Told You Conservatives Were Bad” demeanors on the part of the mainstream talking heads and print pimps, there simply is no story here. There is no groundswell of conservative violence across America, nor is there any kind of organized movement. A few freaks do not represent nor define how conservatives are wont to handle Obamacratic encroachments on liberty.

Sadly, threats to people in the public eye – including politicians – are made daily. It’s a fact of American life. There are nuts in all sectors of society, left and right, up and down, high and low. The difference, however, is that in the past, such threats have not followed the passage of “historically transforming” legislation enacted by Obamacrats – thus, making them unworthy of air time, bandwidth or page space.

Note that left-wingers are almost never depicted as being inciters of needless violence, nor are the terms “left-wing” or “left” ever used to describe them. Rather, they are portrayed as concerned justice-seekers, compelled to stand for a cause, sometimes forced into unpleasantness by the weight and severity of a given injustice.

That is, unless the act is so heinous, so egregious that it cannot be glossed over.

For instance, is Lee Harvey Oswald ever described as a “left-wing” assassin? If he had been, for instance, a commited fascist instead of a die-hard communist, the words “right-wing” would have become extensions of his name.

Just for fun, I must make it a point to go back through the archives of the major news services and revisit how the “drive-by” media, in all of their objectivity, covered the angry protests of the Left during the Bush administration.

There were probably more Hitler moustaches seen in public during the Bush years than at any time since the days of Joseph Geobbells, but I don’t recall too many stories on the outrage and instability of the “incendiary” Left.

Recall how the letter “s” was given a much-needed rest on protest sign and banner alike, thanks to swastika substitutions in the word “Bush.” Those were the days when dissent was good, remember?

Where was Ann Curry then?

Movies and books that talked about the assassination of George W. Bush must’ve gotten a wealth of coverage as well, although I don’t recall.

And the incivility of students on college campuses across the map attacking such conservative speakers as David Horowitz and Ann Coulter certainly must have had the talking heads expressing concern.

Right?

Oh wait …

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PELOSI CALLS UPON ST. JOSEPH

If this wasn’t Nancy Pelosi, I might shake my head a little harder, a little faster.

It’s at the point now that Pelosi should only warrant mention on this blog if she actually does something noteworthy – like speak coherently or juggle pomegranates with one hand. Truly, if this wasn’t something coming out of the mouth of the most inept and incompetent House Speaker in my lifetime, I might actually be surprised.

I’m not.

Pelosi, apparently, is summoning higher authority in the hope that it will be enough to get ObamaCare passed.

From the woman whose purpose (among others) as a militant Leftocrat is to ensure that as many abortions take place as possible – in the name of “reproductive rights,” mind you – comes the revelation that Nancy Pelosi has been praying to Saint Joseph in the hope that he might sprinkle a little magic dust on the process.

On Friday, Madame Speaker said the following:

Today is the Feast of St. Joseph, the worker – particularly significant to Italian-Americans. And it’s a day where we remember and pray to St. Joseph to benefit the workers of America. And that’s exactly what our health care bill will do.

Along with a whole lot of blah, blah, blah about how the bill is gaining momentum and will be historic (there’s that word again), Pelosi went on to say that she has received letters representing “sixty leaders of religious orders” supporting this “life affirming legislation.”

Life affirming legislation?

It’s obviously no great analytical accomplishment on my part to showcase the absurdly obvious, but that’s still one hell of a ballsy assertion considering that the Catholic Church is adamantly opposed to abortion, and the bill that would become law – the original Senate version – would allow taxpayer dollars to fund the killing of the unborn.

If by “life affirming” Pelosi means everyone except those who have yet to emerge from the womb, those who’ll be dead soon, and those considered disabled, Pelosi may be on to something.

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BECAUSE IT WILL FOREVER CHANGE THE GAME … THAT’S WHY

It’s all about legacy.

It’s all about making the kind of fundamental change that cannot – and will not – be overturned. It’s all about the willingness to take the political hit now, suffer significant losses, and figure out how to come back sometime down the road.

If victory can be secured now, many will be more than willing to get knocked down and tend to what will be undoubtedly be an ugly wound, knowing full well that time is a great healer.

The fact is, once the changes (i.e., fundamental transformations) are enacted – once seventeen percent of the American economy falls under the heel of the federal government – the chance of seeing things reversed is nil.

And that’s the point.

They’re not stupid.

They know that entitlement programs don’t go away. They never ever disappear.

They know that once ObamaCare becomes law, there’s no way in hell it will be wiped off the books. Once Bammy signs it, the fight in the opposition will effectively die on Capitol Hill. All that will follow will be a whole lot of blah, blah, blah about how it is now the law of land and must be implemented as effectively as possible, along with a boatload of doubletalk about controlling the rate of growth, and so on and so forth.

It sounds so antithetical to the game of politics. Why would one side deliberately pursue legislation that is tremendously unpopular and be willing to fall face first on a sword that will all but guarantee major losses for their party?

Because of the big picture.

If history is any sort of guide, it simply isn’t possible for ObamaCare to be a temporary measure. Once the rot of liberalism sets in, it is a victory for the left that forever changes the playing field. Indeed, the right may win future elections because of Obama’s gross miscalculation, but the default position will be further left. passing ObamaCare is a permanent move toward Camp Socialism.

That’s why the President will take his tired act on the road once again to try and sell something to the American people that they do not want – despite the fact that he said there is nothing more to say about the health care debate.

Unless he says it, I guess.

From Fox News:

With the fate of his signature legislative initiative far from certain, President Barack Obama is taking his last-ditch push for health care reform on the road.

In a speech Monday in Philadelphia, Obama will try to persuade the public to back his plan to remake the nation’s health care system, while also urging uneasy lawmakers to cast a “final vote” for a massive reform bill in an election year.

Obama’s pitch in Philadelphia, along with a stop in St. Louis Wednesday, comes as the president begins an all-out effort to pass his health care proposals. Though his plan has received only modest public support, Obama has implored lawmakers to show political courage and not let a historic opportunity slip away.

I must ask the same question I asked last week: If the bill is such a good idea, and if it will do much to solve America’s health care problems, and if the American people will unquestionably benefit from the bill’s passage, and if it will keep health care so affordable for everyone without compromising quality, why do the Democrats need “courage” to pass it?

I don’t give a damn how “historic” this bill is supposed to be.

President Obama’s election was “historic,” wasn’t it?

Look where that got us.

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WEINER GIBBERISH – A LIBERAL CLASSIC

Congressman Anthony Weiner

I live in New York, so I am well acquainted with the bellicose sniveling of Congressman Anthony Weiner. If ever there was a quintessential poster child for a New York Democrat, Mr. Weiner is it. To Weiner, the self-sufficient among us are involuntarily obligated to carry the load for everyone else through incentive-raping taxes and government-led smackdowns of free enterprise. Corporations, big businesses, wealthy people and, of course, conservatives are to blame for everything wrong in society and need to be roundly punished for whatever successes they’ve amassed. After all, achievement is largely a matter of luck, inheritance, and successful cheating, right? 

On the floor of the House of Representatives, pulling out his “corporations are evil” card, Weiner called Republicans a “wholly owned subsidiary” of the insurance companies. Granted, it wasn’t a particularly intelligent or original thought – he is a liberal’s liberal, after all –  but because he happens to be quite good at class warfare rhetoric, I thought it was worthy of mentioning.

After some objections, Weiner decided to revise his comments by being less general in his assertions, saying that every Republican he had ever met is wholly owned by the insurance companies.

Gee, that was better.

That Weiner and all Democrats are wholly owned by the teacher and labor unions is probably largely irrelevant.

That Weiner and the Democrats are wholly owned by enviro-fascists, pro-abortionists, the race-baiting left and the New York Times probably means nothing.

And despite the fact that the cost of a college education has gone through the stratosphere in recent years - and no one on the left seems to be  complaining about the out-of-control education industry – the fact that Weiner and the Democrats are wholly owned by big education probably  should be overlooked.

Just ignore the man behind the curtain. 

“Wholly owned by the insurance companies”? 

In what way? 

How exactly? 

What in the world in Weiner talking about? 

I honestly believe that liberals do not know what it is they’re actually saying. They’re like Slinkies. They just reflexively move along – alone or in pairs – until they can’t anymore. 

I know this is a difficult point for leftocrats to comprehend, but I’ll try to write in small letters …. Dems like Weiner can blame the Republicans all they like, but up until a short time ago, it was the Democrat Party that had super majorities on both houses of congress. They should have been able to pass through a peptic ulcer with that kind of power. They blew it – not the GOP.

That the Dems couldn’t get anything passed for President Obama’s salivating pen has nothing – repeat nothing – to do with Republican dissent.

Not a damn thing. 

Other than Republicans are on the right side of the issue, of course.

 

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THAT STENCH? THE SMELL OF LIBERALISM

City Hall, Chicago

Only those on the left could ever come up with such towering propositions as granting terrorists the rights of citizenship, making public restrooms and college campus dorms co-ed, and offering needles to junkies at taxpayer expense.

You’d have to be a liberal to ever fashion such absurdities and consider them reasonable.

Enviro-fascists, one of leftism’s more colorful sub-groups, want – nay, demand – we clean ourselves with uncomfortable, xerox-paper smooth, sensitive-skin scraping bathroom tissue (because it’s better for the earth); they insist we install mercury-filled squiggly light bulbs in our homes in favor of planet-killing incandescent bulbs; they say we must re-use those flimsy plastic shopping bags when we go marketing because when thrown away, they strangle wildlife;  they would also have us believe that we can control the weather by making environmentally-friendly “lifestyle changes.”

Et cetera.

Inside Chicago’s City Hall, yet another one of these glorious, earth-saving, enviro-chummy, go-green, leftist ideas has met with some unintended – yet obvious and easily foreseeable – consequences.

To be frank, it stinks at City Hall. Words like repulsive, repugnant, putrid and rank come to mind.

It smells like liberal spirit.

It smells like – well, urine.

Why?

Two words: waterless urinals.

Fran Speilman from the Chicago Sun-Times writes:

There’s been a stench coming from the second floor of City Hall — and it has nothing to do with the steady stream of Chicago aldermen convicted on corruption charges.

Waterless urinals installed to promote water conservation in the public men’s room outside the City Council chambers have turned into a stinky mess. The odor got so bad that the “green” urinals are now being ripped out and replaced with the old-fashioned kind at a cost City Hall has refused to disclose.

…

The men’s room is now closed while the marble wall is “removed” and new urinals are installed.

Only liberals.

Rumor has it, because human exertion causes an increase in breathing – which means an increase in CO2 – City Hall is planning on doing away with all emergency exit staircases. In the event of an emergency, such as a fire, pillows will be placed on the ground underneath windows to accommodate escapees.

It makes good environmental sense.

Since the air will already be polluted from the smoke of a potential fire, the obligation of humans, as stewards of our fragile planet, to cut back on any additional atmospheric poisons is obvious.

In short, if people aren’t hustling down staircases, they cannot needlessly contribute to egregious increases in greenhouse gas levels.

You can almost hear Mother Earth sigh with relief.

Incidentally, the “flushless toilet” experiment is being given a few more months.

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In other news, another foot of global warming is expected to fall here in New York City on Tuesday night,

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THERE’S PORK … AND THEN THERE’S PORK

The epoch of earmarks had seen its last days, the American people were told. Government waste was a thing of the past, Americans were advised. Fresh sounding, twenty-first century words like “transparency” and “post-partisan” were peppered into the national dialogue from a guy with great dulcet tones. Things were going to be different. Even people on the right were excited about the dawning of the new age.

Remember what the new guy told us: We were the people we were waiting for.

He was going to be everyone’s president, we were assured. He was going to hear our voices too, he promised. The Transformation Express was boarding on Track Forty-Four, and everyone was invited to grab their slice of the American pie.

But quicker than someone could say TARP, the new guy in charge – The One, we called him in the early days – started doing things that didn’t seem quite right. He spent three-quarters of a trillion dollars on door knobs, hiking trails, the study of rabbit feces, and new computers for government offices, all in the name of stimulating the economy. Not particularly stimulating. Without batting a lash, he mortgaged the future of those yet to be born, burdening them with epic costs so that their predecessors could avoid having to tough it out. He commanded government to take over segments of the private sector – like the auto industry – and made it his primary task to annex 16% of the American economy. He said earmarks were a thing of the past, then redefined the word so that he could let himself off the hook. He said over three million jobs would be created on his watch, only to see at least that many lost.

And now, the most fiscally irresponsible administration in this nation’s history is officially back in the earmark business to the tune of nearly $4 billion. That may not sound like much in today’s trillions-happy environment, but four thousand million is four thousand million … and that’s our money.

Richard Simon from the Los Angeles Times writes:

Reporting from Washington – Getting into the holiday spirit, the House of Representatives on Thursday approved a spending bill loaded with goodies for the folks back home.

Trails for Monterey Bay. An arts pavilion for Mississippi. Bus shelters for Bellflower.

In all, the bill contains 5,224 earmarks costing about $3.9 billion, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group.

Though Democrats say they have cracked down on pork-barrel spending, critics attacked the bill as excessive.

“Clearly, the earmark culture has not been swept away,” Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, blogged Thursday.

The $447-billion bill, which passed the Democratic-controlled House with no Republican votes and moved to the Senate, combines six spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.

The measure brings total earmarks in this year’s spending bills to 7,577 at a cost of about $6 billion, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. The Pentagon spending bill, the last of the annual appropriations bills, is expected to contain more earmarks than the omnibus bill, said Steve Ellis of the taxpayer group.

In the event you are keeping a score card at home, some of the other pet projects in the bill include a half-million dollars to help build a trench, thirteen-and-a-half million for the creation of a bus lane, a quarter-million for textile research, and almost two-hundred thousand for weather forecaster training.

Oh yeah … I almost forgot two-hundred thousand for the Aquatic Adventures Science Education Foundation in San Diego.

Thank God for that.

“When are we going to say, ‘Enough is enough?’ ” asked House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who does not seek earmarks. “I don’t know how worthy any of these projects are, but I do have to ask a question: Are they more important than our kids and grandkids who are going to have to pay the debt?”

It is the very essence of modern liberalism – to act without regard for what happens next. It is what the great Thomas Sowell calls being stuck in “stage one” thinking – failing to consider the ramifications of a policy decision that, for the moment, serves to make the boo-boo feel better.

It is closely related to “Do Something” Disease, which is a mutated strand of “Change For The Sake of Change” Syndrome.

It is a weakness of liberalism best exemplified in how Barack Obama has approached the economic crisis from the outset. To him, Americans aren’t capable of handling tough economic times. We aren’t resilient enough to brave a recession. We cannot face whatever hardships might lie ahead. We need the government to step in and make things better. We need him to tell us everything will eventually be all right. It is imperative that we make our kids and grandkids pay for it tomorrow so that we might live more comfortably today.

Mr. President, that is not America. It never has been.

Not only can Americans handle the most difficult of times, we do so with the understanding that it is our charge – our purpose – to make things better for the next generation. We weather the toughest of storms because there is no other alternative. We roll with the best life has to offer and we bear the brunt of the worst,  aware of the immorality in mortgaging the future of our children, our civilization.

For example, what would we think of a parent who secured credit cards in his or her child’s name only to max them out?

I resent the fact that this president has engendered that sense of weakness in a nation built on rugged individualism. That he is willing to make things more difficult for yet unborn generations so that today can feel better may be the most disgraceful thing yet to come from the Messianic Age.

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AFTERNOON THOUGHTS – FOUR QUESTIONS THAT SHOULD BE POSED TO LIBERALS

While I am certain that I could construct a comprehensive list – a definitive collection – of mandatory questions that every liberal must be asked by anyone who dares to call himself journalist, I will attempt to whittle it down to a mere four for this afternoon’s edition of “Coffee Thoughts.”

(These are the things that help keep me awake as I wait for my second wind to kick in).

Indeed, I’ve posed these questions in the past at various times on this blog (as regular readers know), but I thought it would be instructive and beneficial to put them together in one place.

So, for this exercise, if you would, picture your favorite leftist – let’s say, President Barack H. Obama – behind a sea of microphones being “questioned” by adoring minions, when all of a sudden, some renegade reporter with a bad attitude (i.e., a genuine journalist) steps up and poses any one of these four questions in these exact words (to a room of gasping outraged bed fellows, no doubt).

Try to imagine the President’s teleprompter-free responses to these:

-If you were absolutely certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that “global warming” was not the result of anything human kind was doing, and were convinced all temperature fluctuations were completely natural, would you still care about the “dangers” that rising temperatures pose to the planet?

-Contrast these two questions, if you would: What do you think would happen in the Middle East if terror-groups like Hamas and Hezbullah laid down their arms? What do you think would happen if the country of Israel did the same? (Feel free to substitute “Hamas” and “Hezbullah” with *any* terrorist organization hell bent on the murder of innocents, and replace “Israel” with the “United States.” The idea is the same).

-If you are unsure of your opinion as to when life begins, why would you come down on the side of having the right to abort the unborn with such certitude? And if it were proven to your satisfaction, beyond question, that human life did begin at conception, would you still feel that abortion was a viable “choice?”

-If quality of health care is not an issue, and accessibility is the real concern, would you be willing to give up your current health care package and sign up for whatever health care reform plan the government proposes for the uninsured?

Assuming the journalist had not already been tased or hauled off, how delicious would that exchange be?

Obviously, there is a myriad of other questions that can – and should be – asked of liberals. Perhaps the next time my eyelids decide to declare war on me, and I need to keep shaking my synapses into coherence, I’ll come up with more.

-

LIBERAL RACIST RADAR

Columnist Maureen Dowd, among her other enviable attributes and talents, has sensory perceptions beyond those of most mortals. She can actually hear things that have not been said. She knows what others are saying without them having to say it because she hears the words in her mind.

Impressive doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Such was the case when Congressman Joe Wilson spat out the “You lie!” heard ‘round the world. It was after Wilson became Hitler-light to the left and a hero to the right that Dowd afforded all of us the opportunity to witness her miraculous gift. While the rest of us may have heard his outburst as two now infamous words, Ms. Dowd heard three: “You lie, boy!”

She said so.

No one is quite sure how she did it exactly (or how she will undoubtedly continue to do so), but one thing is for sure –  this is a skill set that must be developed and exploited properly.

Extraordinary as her Godless-given ability is, there is one thing that Ms. Dowd falls short on – namely, the ability to hear things that actually are there.

Of course, that can be a decidely difficult thing in and of itself.

To be fair, one can hardly blame her.

Having to deal with the things that resonate only in her head can predictably have a detremental effect on comprehending the tangible.

It’s not easy being Maureen.

Recall these controversial words by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

While the shallow (and less clairvoyant) among us might have heard what were seemingly racist sentiments coming from Sotomayor, Dowd heard no such thing, writing in a column called “White Man’s Last Stand“:

“You can’t judge a judge by her cover. Despite the best efforts of Republicans to root out any sign that Sonia Sotomayor has emotions that color her views on the law, the Bronx Bomber kept a robotic mask in place. A wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not know that a gaggle of white Republican men afraid of extinction are out to trip her up.”

Clever.

How delightfully discerning.

Note how selective and unpredictable liberal racist radar can be.

There are times when its trigger mechanisms are tripped falsely by innocuous phrases like “black eye,” or “in the black.”

Call them false positives.

And there are other times when the alarms are dead silent, like when rap artists use the “n” word in their songs, or when Charlie Rangel opens his mouth.

Recall earlier this week when former President Jimmy Carter said:

I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man.

Radar systems were apparently offline.

Carter is so morally detestable on so many levels that it’s hard to be angry with him anymore when he reaches new highs in taking the low road.

To him – and all other desperate Dems – health care reform’s demise, should it come to that, will be because the President is black.

What was the excuse when it failed under Bill Clinton?

I know he was called “the first black President,” but come on ….

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LOVE THAT DIANE WATSON

Serving California’s 33rd Congressional District is Los Angeles native, Congresswoman Diane Watson. Among her other laudable attributes is not only her titillating support of Fidel Castro and his country’s exemplary health care delivery system, but her capacity to deal cards from the race deck effortlessly.

At a town-hall meeting on Thursday, Watson declared that those who oppose ObamaCare do so because they wish to see the President destroyed. As sure as there are pungent armpits in a summertime New York subway tunnel, it is no surprise to learn that the President’s skin color is the real reason. Indeed, according to Watson, the desire to see Bracak Obama’s initiatives defeated – and thus, his presidency branded a failure – comes down to good old-fashioned, let’s-break-out-the-hoods-and-matchstick racism.

From the well of incisive thought and seasoned analysis that is Diane Watson, there are two comments she made during that meeting that I’d like to dissect.

First, said Watson:

“You might have heard their philosophical leader. I think his name is Rush Limbaugh. (She pronounced it Lim-BO). And he said early on, “I hope that he fails.” Do you know what that means? If the President – your Commander-In-Chief – fails, America fails.”

To begin with, the term “philosophical leader” is about as meaningless as the words that roll off an Obama teleprompter, or a New York Mets baseball game.  However, seeing as I’m in a particularly festive mood this morning, I’ll roll with it.

Rush is certainly one of conservatism’s finest “spokesmen” (for the want of a preferable phrase), but he didn’t invent conservatism. To the great dismay of liberals, leftists and other children, he happens to articulate it exceedingly well – almost as well as the “drive-by” media misinterpret, misquote and misunderstand almost everything he says. And while there is definitely a profusion of weak-kneed, mushy-in-the-middle, pseudo-conservatives who attempt to redefine conservatism by abandoning its principles for more leftward ideals, Rush does no such thing.

His “philosophy” has remained steadfast since his Sacramento radio debut in 1984. That fact alone is enough to send the undergarments of liberals into vexatious knots.

Again, assuming the “philosophical leader” tag is applicable, the most entertaining part of Watson’s statement is when she says she “thinks” his name is Rush Limbaugh – as if trying to decide whether or not she’s heard of him.

There isn’t a single self-respecting, self-serving, big-government liberal taking in oxygen today who has not heard of Rush Limbaugh.

He haunts their dreams.

Additionally, Limbaugh’s “I hope Obama fails” remark has been so well explained, so painstakingly explicated and so remarkably misunderstood by the saliva-danglers who spend countless hours frantically collecting fractured phrases and out-of-context hateful commentary from him, that Watson – like all Democrat notions – comes across as weak, tired and pedestrian. However, for those who came in after the credits, read my articles The Limbaugh Fetsih – The Democrats Are Obsessed and My Two Cents On Whether You Can Support The President While Not Supporting His Policies. 

In short, if the Commander-In-Chief fails to apologize on foreign soil for his own country; and fails to expand the deficit to unsustainable record-breaking levels; and fails in his quest to nationalize the greatest health care delivery system in the world; and fails in his attempts to have the government take over automobile companies and financial institutions; and fails to weaken the defenses of the country he is charged to protect by keeping agencies like the CIA from doing their job; and fails to recognize the ongoing battle against murderous Islamo-fascists as a genuine war; and fails to understand that enemy combatants captured on the field of battle are not to be afforded the same rights as American citizens; and fails in adopting industry-killing, job-killing “global warming” legislation … then America wins.

It’s pretty simple, really.

Watson continues:

“Now when a Senator says that this will be his Waterloo – and we all know what happened at Waterloo – then we have him, and he fails. Do we want a failed state called the ‘United States?’ So remember, they are spreading fear, and they’re trying to see that the first President who looks like me fails.”

Regarding fear … it was not a conservative who scared America into believing that the nation would be ravaged by heterosexual AIDS in the 1980s. It was not a conservative who promised that food supplies would run out by the year 2000. It was not a conservative who warned that natural resources would be depleted by 1990 due to human over consumption. It was not a conservative who foresaw a world in peril due to global cooling. It was not a conservative who promised a planet devastated by overpopulation by 1996. It was not a conservative who said the bird flu would wipe out countless numbers of humans. It was not a conservative who promulgated the impending Y2K disaster and set up numerous agencies, websites, roundtables, taskforces and contingency plans to save the world from it. It was not a conservative who predicted widespread catastrophe due to mad cow disease.

And as far as the “first President who looks like me” remark … is there any group of people more intolerant, more race-consumed, more fixated on the skin color of people than leftists? Time after time, these sorry excuses for thinkers hurl their character-assassinating bombs into the public square, accusing conservatives of harboring animosity toward President Obama due to his race, never once realizing that everything they project is a direct reflection of how they think. To leftists, everything that carries even the slightest negative connotation regarding Barack Obama can only be about his color. It must be about his color. It simply isn’t possible for anyone to legitimately disagree with President Obama policy-wise and not be bad; it has to be because they hate blacks or resent the fact that America would put a black man in the White House.

Frankly, people like Watson need to get their antiquated behinds out of the 1960s and enter the real world. If Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of a nation where character previals over color is at all being asphyxiated, it is happening because of the likes of Watson and her race-obsessed ilk. 

To people like me, President Obama needs to fail because of his desire (and promise) to transform America into something the country has never been – a nation where the State is more important than the individual.

Obama’s failures assure that such a transformation cannot – and will not – take place.

Watson also threw in these gushing words about Cuba’s world-class health care:

Let me tell you, before you say, ‘Oh, it’s communist,’ you need to go down there and see what Fidel Castro put in place. And I want you to know, you can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met. And you know, the Cuban Revolution that kicked out the wealthy – Che Guevara did that – and after they took over, they went out among the population to find someone who could lead this new nation and they found … well, just leave it there … an attorney by the name of Fidel Castro.

Perhaps Ms. Watson could use a paper towel or a sedative … or a cigarette.

As Jay Ambrose wrote in October, 2007, outside of Guevara’s reckless extermination of “people proven guilty of absolutely nothing,” his desire to use Soviet missiles against America, and the fact that he “ran a Havana prison in which he killed, killed and then killed some more, and later helped start the labor camp system in which homosexuals and others considered undesirable were to be confined as nothing more than slaves,” what’s not to love? 

Does anyone love a war criminal more than a leftist? Or a t-shirt manufacturer?

And as for Cuba’s health care system … until Congresswoman Watson ditches her inferior Capitol Hill health plan for CastroCare, the discussion is closed. 

Diane Watson is a first-class farce and a genuine disgrace.

The great Breitbart.com website has the audio.

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WHAT’S NOT TO BELIEVE?

Obama, Transformer

In speaking of President Obama and his ongoing bid to transform the nation he says he loves (because, naturally, if one loves his country, the customary instinct is to want to transform it), I admit to some perplexity when conservative friends make curious comments like, “I can’t believe what Obama is doing to my country,” or pose questions like “Can you believe what this President is doing to America now?”

Some I’ve spoken with shake their heads not at the President’s liberalism, but at how far left his worldview actually is.

“I knew he was a liberal, but not like this.”

While exasperation and resentment understandably exist among limited-government, Constitution-loving, free-market types (like myself) – as well as some head scratching Democrats who are now looking at each other with puzzled expressions, asking themselves, “Is this what we asked for?” – the Obama Transformation Plan is not at all unbelievable.

Throughout the eon-long presidential campaign season, the writing on the wall was unmistakenly bold and legible. His resume, associations, public comments and policy positions prior to becoming a candidate for the presidency revealed a man with leftism in his blood and Marxist sympathies. Once Obama officially threw his hat into the presidential ring - and details of his leftist past were brought to light by industrious alternative news sources - the mainstream news outlets routinely brushed aside much of the concern coming from conservatives about Obama’s hard left leanings, dismissing them as fear-mongering and shameless demagoguery.

That’s not to say these stories did not make the news.

They certainly did.

The alphabet channels, for example, did explore Obama’s associations with people like the racist Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the reprehensible Bill Ayers; but ultimately, their desire to be a part of history and jump on the Bam-a-licious bandwagon trumped any real interest in getting at the heart of these stories or Obama’s radical leftism. Obama’s “past” was deemed largely irrelevant to the task of saving America from George W. Bush.

The media were so enamoured with him – so consumed with everything Obama - it didn’t seem to matter that only days before the election, some of the biggest names in America media admittedly still had no idea who Barack Obama was.

Take this famous exchange between PBS’s Charlie Rose and former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw:

ROSE: I don’t know what Barack Obama’s worldview is.

BROKAW: No, I don’t, either.

ROSE: I don’t know how he really sees where China is.

BROKAW: We don’t know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy.

ROSE: I don’t really know. And do we know anything about the people who are advising him?

BROKAW: Yeah, it’s an interesting question.

ROSE: He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational (sic) speeches.

BROKAW: Two of them! I don’t know what books he’s read.

ROSE: What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama?

BROKAW: There’s a lot about him we don’t know. 

But how on earth can that be true? Especially for professionals like Rose and Brokaw?

In the real world, the man who admitted to choosing his friends carefully while in college – namely, “the more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists” – couldn’t exactly be confused for a political centrist. The man who, while in New York, would visit the East Village for “the socialist conferences (he) sometimes attended at Cooper Union” could never be mistaken for a middle-of-the-road independent.

His support of late-term abortion was perfectly clear. His desire to see the American health care system transformed into a single-payer model was unquestionable. His belief that wealth should be distributed was incontrovertible. His two-decade long membership in a church led by a man who promulgated racism and hatred of America was indisputable. His affiliation with terrorists like Bill Ayers was undeniable. His adherence to the teachings of hyper-radical Saul Alinsky was unmistakable.

Yes, Virginia, these are among the tell-tale signs of leftism.

This once again brings me to ask my conservative friends … What exactly is there to be surprised about? What exactly is “unbelievable” about the Obama vision for America?

In October of last year, at the great American Thinker website, Kyle-Anne Shiver wrote:

Obama was raised on the mother’s milk of socialism. Both his parents were fellow travelers, who met at the height of the Cold War in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii. Obama’s grandfather was a close friend of Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis, sending young Barry (as he was then known) to him for mentoring, despite (or in ignorance of ) Davis being a pedophile. From the time he returned from 4 years in Indonesia and rejoined his grandparents in Hawaii at the age of 10, he was taken often to be with Frank Marshall Davis.

In Obama’s book, Dreams from My Father, there is a strange revelation, perhaps intended as a signal of Davis’ stamp on Obama’s socialist creds. Obama makes this odd observation:

“The visits to his (Davis’) house always left me feeling vaguely uncomfortable, though, as if I were witnessing some complicated, unspoken transaction between the two men, a transaction I couldn’t fully understand.”

Dedicating the young Obama to the elder socialist mentor for the collective cause, perhaps? One hopes there were conditions protecting the ten year old from worse than indoctrination, in this “transaction.”

Obama did everything Alinsky prescribed. He went to Chicago, home of Alinsky and the place where Davis had worked for the communist revolution. Obama trained at the Industrial Areas Foundation, an Alinsky training institute. He organized in Chicago and did voter registration and training for ACORN. He went to law school. He built political alliances. He kept a tight lock on his records and his past.

You may recall that the official blogger for the Obama Campaign was a man by the name of Sam Graham-Felsen. He was a writer for the leftist magazine The Nation before he joined the Big Bam ranks.

As reported in April, 2008 at World Net Daily:

In 2003, Graham-Felsen participated in a labor march in France that Associated Press reported ended in violent riots – a characterization he disputed in The Nation. His coverage of the 2003 French protests against a new employment law again appeared in 2006 in Socialist Viewpoint, a journal that proudly proclaims its Marxist point of view:

The Socialist Workers Organization was formed to advance the revolutionary Marxist political program in the United States. Our members are long time active participants in the socialist and labor movements. We agree with Karl Marx that society is divided into social classes whose interests are irreconcilable. …

Socialism, the ownership and democratic control of the means of production by the working class, and the removal of profit from the system of production, is the aim of Socialist Viewpoint, which reflects the political views of the Socialist Workers Organization. Socialism is the prerequisite for the next stage in human development that will end class oppression and exploitation for all time.

The President’s catapulting deficit totals; his attempt at destroying private sector health care delivery; his unabashed declarations that the “rich” should have to pay more taxes to help those who are not (which they already do in gross disproportion); his transparent contempt for the free market system; none of this should be surprising to anyone.

In a 2006 opinion piece, Benjamin Shapiro writes:

Obama cites as his economic guru Warren Buffett and quotes him as stating, “[Billionaires] have this idea that it’s ‘their money’ and they deserve to keep every penny of it. What they don’t factor in is all the public investment that lets us live the way we do.”

This is Marxist trash.

“Capital is therefore not a personal, it is a social power,” Marx wrote in “The Communist Manifesto.”

Viewing private property as social property is a mandate to tyranny. Yet that’s precisely how Obama views private property: “I simply believe that those of us who have benefited most from this new economy can best afford to shoulder the obligation of ensuring every American child has a chance for that same success.”

Let us also not forget that Barack Obama was named the most liberal Senator on Capitol Hill prior to becoming the Democratic nominee for President .

Quoting Barack Obama himself:

-What I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

-This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably

-We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

-I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.

-If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples, so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order, and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted – and the Warren Court interpreted it in the same way – that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

That pretty much sums it up.

I’m not sure what else anyone could have been expected from electing someone with such a pedigree.

-

BULLDOZERS AND JUST PLAIN BULL

Does this scenario sound familiar?

An entrepreneur comes along and develops a new product – lets call it nose hair conditioner. He sets up shop in a place that is business-friendly – lets call it Nice Town, USA.

Demand is high for his new product, and before Mr. Entrepreneur can say “Damn, I Love Free Enterprise!” the nose hair conditioner market is taking off.

Wealth is being created.

As a result, Nice Town, USA begins to attract productive and creative people from all over. More and more capital is infused into the local economy. The nose hair plant expands. Pretty soon, ear hair plants and toe jam plants begin to spring up.

Nice Town, USA is growing.

Then, right on cue, the productive are joined (and eventually outnumbered) by the bloodsuckers and opportunists who see Nice Town, USA as an untapped nipple of wealth – lets call them politicians. The business owners and working people of Nice Town are told by these smooth talking snake-oil merchants that while their successes are something to be proud of, danger looms ahead. Capitalism is great, they say, but there are too many uncontrolled no-goodniks out there who want to use and abuse the free market to screw over the little guy. Unless government can protect them from themselves, the future is downright grim. And unless government’s best friend, the union, is brought in and allowed to look after all the Johnny Lunchbuckets who slave and toil in the nose hair plants, there may not even be a future.

“We are here to help. We are here to unify,” say the leeches who speak pretty words.

The old school, antiquated, free-market types who ran things before cannot compete stylistically with the new slicksters. The old guard is stuffy, uninteresting and almost certainly racist.

Nice Town, USA must now head in a new direction. The city must become progressive.

It all sounds so reasonable.

The bloodsuckers then move into power.

They begin to siphon the life blood from the area through regulation and taxation.

Slowly but surely, over time, the productive and creative element of Nice Town, USA grow weary of the leeches. While government continues to move left and grow larger, the very best people – once the very heart and soul of Nice Town, USA – gradually leave to find places like the one Mr. Entrepeneur originally found when he began his nose hair conditioning empire – business-friendly and accommodating to wealth creation.

Nice Town, USA – once a thriving city of industry – eventually falls on hard times as the wealth builders leave. Nothing new is being created there because it isn’t profitable to do so anymore.

The city begins to crumble under the weight of government intervention and union domination.

What’s left behind is an oppressive “finger-in-everyone’s pie” bureaucratic establishment, a diminishing working class, and a whole lot of people forced to live off the government’s teat thanks to liberal, incentive-raping, creativity-shattering policies that help no one.

If all of that does sound familiar, it should.

That’s how you get cities like Flint, Michigan – a shell of its former self, once the home of the great General Motors Corporation.

That’s how cities die.

So, what exactly is the answer to the question of what to do about dying cities?

If you said, “Create incentives to get investors to rebuild,” you’re as wrong as astroturf.

To many, the only answer is more government intervention – specifically, using taxpayer dollars to bulldoze entire sections of cities to the ground in the hope of reeling in out of control costs. It’s called the “shrink to survive” approach.

Tom Leonard from UK Telegraph online writes:

The government is looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.

Most are former industrial cities in the “rust belt” of America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.

Forget questioning whether or not it is a good idea to plow over abandoned  areas of cities to promulgate recovery. Personally, it befuddles me – with a superfluity of evidence to feed my confusion - why anyone in their right mind would turn to government to solve these problems.

Why is it that liberals reflexively assume that power must always be placed in the hands of elected officials for things to get done? And why is it when things don’t get done by the ever-inefficient, over-sized, unaccountable government – which is just shy of always – the liberal response is to give government more to do? Take a look at the cities in question – Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, etc. The common thread is that they’re all run by Democrats with big government leftist agendas.

The real question is whether or not such decisions about bulldozing neighborhoods (and what criteria will be used to decide which areas will be flattened) is something that should be controlled at the federal level. Is this something that really needs to be added to the already long list of things the Obamacrats have to have their paws in?

If this “knock-em-down” idea is going to become a reality in cities that have been ravaged by liberalism, then at the very least, keep it local.  Keep the feds out of it.

Better yet, let the free market do its thing. The best thing any government can do is get the hell out of the way.

Why is it that the answer with liberals always lies in taking away liberties and money from the people?

Why is it that the idea of lowering taxes and creating incentives for people to come back to abandoned areas to rebuild is not an option? Gentrification is a successful reality in many urban areas across the country – areas once seen as hopelessly beyond rescue. I’ve seen these types of renaissances happen myself in several neighborhoods in Brooklyn, New York.

Large corporations and governments don’t revive the economies of neighborhoods. Small businesses do.

It’s all about the private sector.

Knocking down the abandoned buildings of a community will not suddenly make what’s left thrive.

Policies have to change first. The landscape will eventually follow – in the right way.

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THE OBAMA MANIFESTO – 25 REASONS TO SUPPORT FAILURE

During the first hour of his radio program on Thursday, Rush Limbaugh said that the country is failing because President Obama is succeeding.

I happen to agree.

Following the Messiah’s ”You ain’t seen nothing yet” comment at a fundraiser in front of a bunch of rich Hollywood liberals on Wednesday – a comment that literally struck fear into my heart (along with a sprinkling of nausea) – I have decided to re-post one of my most requested pieces – The Obama Manifesto – 25 Reasons To Support Failure.

This was originally posted on 27 January 2009.

—

1. If President Barack Obama is resolute on reversing Bush administration measures that have served to keep this country safe from attack for over seven years, I want him to fail.

2. If the President believes that enemy combatants captured on the field of battle are due the same Constitutional rights as American citizens, I want him to fail.

3. If the President believes that “direct diplomacy” with despotic leaders of murderous regimes is the best way to keep America strong, I want him to fail.

4. If the President is willing to trod upon one of the fundamental rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence – namely, the right to life – with his illimitable support of abortion, I want him to fail.

5. If the President believes that taxpayer dollars should be used to fund abortions, I want him to fail.

6. If the President wishes to use taxpayer dollars to fund embryonic stem cell research, I want him to fail.

7. If the President wishes to appoint judges to the Supreme Court who view the Constitution as a document that breathes and bends with time, I want him to fail.

8. If the President wants to infringe on my Constitutional right as a law abiding American to own a firearm, I want him to fail.

9. If the President believes that government is better equipped to solve the problems of Americans than Americans themselves, I want him to fail.

10. If the President attempts to follow through on his campaign promise to fundamentally transform the United States of America, I want him to fail.

11. If the President wishes to send me a check that I didn’t earn, paid for with other people’s hard-earned tax money, and call it a tax cut, I want him to fail.

12. If the President wishes to send a so-called stimulus check to those who did not pay federal income taxes, I want him to fail.

13. If the President believes that government bailouts of private sector businesses are the way to tend to an ailing economy, I want him to fail.

14. If the President believes that the government should set pay limits on executives of companies who receive bailout money, I want him to fail.

15. If the President believes that government spending of unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money is the way to deliver the economy from recession, I want him to fail.

16. If the President believes that the planet is in danger of catostrophic ruin due to man-made global warming, and is willing to implement so-called “green” policies that will damage this country’s economy, I want him to fail.

17. If the President wishes to undertake an unparalleled “domestic infrastructure” plan that puts untrained non-professionals on the government’s payroll with the belief that this will stimulate the economy, I want him to fail.

18. If the President believes that people who fall into the highest tax brackets in this country need to pay more taxes, I want him to fail.

19. If the President believes that the military of the United States is a venue for social engineering – such as lifting the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy – I want him to fail.

20. If the President believes that healthcare is not only a right but a moral obligation of government, I want him to fail.

21. If the President believes that it is a good idea to attack those who listen to conservative talk radio as a means of fostering unity, I want him to fail.

22. If the President supports a reinstatement of the so-called Fairness Doctrine, effectively ending talk radio as we know it, I want him to fail.

23. If the President is unwilling to boldly deal with illegal immigration into the United States, and chooses to try and come up with something “comprehensive” to solve the problem, I want him to fail.

24. If the President is unwilling to take a serious look at nuclear energy as a viable and safe alternative source of energy, while wasting time focusing on wind turbines and solar paneling, I want him to fail.

25. If the President decides that he will continue his class-warfare style assault on big corporations – such as oil and pharmaceutical companies – as he did during his campaign by punishing them with higher tax rates, I want him to fail.

Not because he is black. Not because he is a liberal. Not because I seek some sort of vengance on the deranged, lunatic Bush-bashers of the past eight years.

I want him to fail because each and every one of these policies hurts my country.

Period.

There are more to be added, I’m certain.

This particular list is a breathing document.

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DIGNITY? ARE YOU OUT THERE?

the great wanda sykes

Enough has already been written about the disgraceful appearance by (so-called) comedienne (and militant black lesbian) Wanda Sykes at the White House Correspondents Dinner over the weekend.

You’ve surely read about what easily qualifies as one of the most embarrassing and pathetic appearances ever at the annual event in which Sykes decided to unleash some of the most inappropriate and malevolent prattle anyone’s ever heard there – as leftists are wont to do when void of any substance (which is almost always).

With that grating, nasal cavity-dredging voice that would have had both the chalkboard and jackhammer grimacing, Sykes broke out the best of her venomous arsenal of unfunny personal attacks on – of all people – Rush Limbaugh.

How original. How cutting-edge.

Because jokes about the September 11th attacks are so damn funny, she quipped that Rush was the 20th hijacker.

Brilliance.

Because people with addictions make for such knee-slapping fodder, she worked in some drop-dead hilarious references to Rush’s former troubles with the drug oxycontin.

How does she do it?

And, of course, what stand-up routine in front of the President of the United States would be complete without asking for the death of Mr. Limbaugh by kidney failure?

Nothing but net.

Even the President thought it was funny. He laughed.

Yesterday, however, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs went out on a limb and said that the September 11th terrorist attacks are a topic “better left for serious reflection than comedy.”

No wonder this guy is considered the best Press Secretary in the history of the world. No one can put things in perspective like he can.

Of course, the question has yet to be answered – Why was the President of the United States laughing at any of these personal attacks on Limbaugh?

Indeed, the President thought it was a hoot – including Sykes’ follow up line about Limbaugh needing some waterboarding.

(Move over Lucille Ball. There’s a new sheriff in town).

Let’s set aside the obvious. Limbaugh never said he wanted the country to fail, as Sykes alleged in her “routine.” It never came from his lips. No such quote exists. Rather, Limbaugh stated that he wanted Obama’s leftist policies to fail – just as libs wanted the policies of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan to fail.

Somehow, this is news – that the opposition party wants policy failure of the party in power.

Let’s also put aside the outpouring of affection and support regularly given to celebrities who battle addictions with recreational drugs. Inspirational stories about their “courage” and “fortitude” fill magazine pages and gossip columns as the celebrity in question navigates the troubled waters of addiction toward the safe harbor of sobriety. However, slap a conservative label on the celebrity and all bets are off. It’s open season. After all, what could be funnier than addiction?

But even more noteworthy than all of that – even more of a head-shaker to me – is something I’ve written about several times since Obama’s inauguration – namely, what seems to be a diminishing sense of dignity and elevation surrounding this White House. It is no secret that President Obama is very much an anti-pomp and circumstance man. He is, in his own words, more laid back and casual than any of his predecessors. Traditions mean far less to him than those who came before him. Thus, with that “there is nothing bigger than me” mentality that leftists regularly embrace, Obama believes everything is all about him and not about the Office of the Presidency – which is infinitely larger than any man who has ever occupied it.

el rushbo

In approaching his Presidency this way, he erodes some of the dignity of the office – and in doing so, entertainers like Wanda Sykes, who have had open contempt for Obama’s stodgy, God-happy, predecessor, now see themselves as more welcome and closer the inner circle of power. They see the President as more like one of them, one of the “regular” people, not tied down by an antiquated, patriarchal set of traditions. Without saying so specifically, the laid-back President sends the signal that it is quite alright for Sykes and her ilk to bring a more gutteral act – something more “real” and unconstrained – to a public function involving the President of the United States. Thus, the undignified diatribe of Wanda Sykes in front of the leader of the free world becomes possible.

Dignity matters. Decorum matters. As talk show host Dennis Prager says, “It adds tremendous substance to life.”

I couldn’t agree more.

But perhaps most astonishing is to observe how much anger still exists on the left. I admit to being astounded at how much nastiness and bitterness still comes from that side.

If you doubt me, here are two words to illustrate my point: Miss California.

The left owns both houses of Congress, the have the White House, they maintain their stranglehold on academia, they run just about every major newspaper in the country, Hollywood is all theirs, most of television media serve as Obama’s personal cheerleading squad, and outgoing liberal Supreme Court justices are fixed to replaced with even more liberal judges.

What in hell do they have to be angry about?

Utopia is no laughing matter, I guess.

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BAM’S BIG BENCH BS

the independently liberal David Souter

Here’s a shocker … Liberals don’t think of themselves as liberal.

They, in fact, see themselves as straddling the median of the cultural highway. To them, society can be divided into radical right-wingers and reasonable people.

On his Monday radio program - as he regularly does so well - Dennis Prager dissected and analyzed some of the comments made by President Barack Obama regarding the retirement of Supreme Court Justice David Souter. As is often the case with the President, his delivery was smooth and eloquent (in that side-to-side teleprompting style of his), but his words were successfully meaningless. Said Mr. Prager: “Every time he gives a speech, you analyze it and it’s painful … but it sounds so good.”

This is the way our Messianic Big Man operates. He makes both leftism and leftists sound so reasonable.

Obama, speaking of Souter, said:

Throughout his two decades on the Supreme Court, Justice Souter has shown what it means to be a fair-minded and independent judge. He came to the bench with no particular ideology. He never sought to promote a political agenda.

Is that right, Mr. President?

David Souter has no ideology? He has no sense of what he believes in?

What is he? An android?

It sounds as if the President is suggesting that to have an ideology means one cannot be fair. By definition, that would, of course, mean that just about all of humanity cannot be fair – with the notable exception of Obama himself, of course, and his trusty Obamacratic underlings.

At last look, the Supreme Court of the United States is comprised exclusively of human beings – unusual creations, to be sure, but predictable in many ways. For instance, they tend to have opinions about things. They tend to “judge” the people and events that comprise the circumstances of their lives. They develop conclusions and assessments based on experiences. That’s how they’re wired.

To suggest that any of the humans that sit on the Supreme Court do not have particular belief systems that directly affect what they do and how they do it is to be at direct odds with reality – not unlike Vice President Joe Biden is with common sense, for example.

The fact is, Souter is a typical liberal, just as Antonin Scalia is a strict constructionist. Justice Clarence Thomas is as much a ‘rightist” as Justice Steven Breyer is a “leftist.” Their value systems play an enormous role in what they do and how they rule. If not, then it wouldn’t matter who was appointed to the bench, would it?

Dennis Prager commented:

What (Obama) means is, I assume, is that they don’t have a political principle or a political agenda.

Of course they do. (Souter) was a left-winger. Justice Scalia is a conservative. Would anybody say that Justice Scalia comes with no pre-existing agenda? That’s absurd. Scalia would say it’s absurd. “This is my philosophy. I’m a constructionist. I ask, ‘What did the Founders mean when they wrote this in the Constitution?’ That’s what I believe.” .

The Left doesn’t ask, “What did they mean?” Their question is, “How can we use it to promote justice and compassion and welfare for the community as we understand it?”

Liberals and Conservatives ask different questions as justices.

Correct.

Seeing as Souter is free of ideology and agenda – according to Obama - it’d be interesting to find out from the President which justices on the Supreme Court actually do have political agendas.

(Did you know that only conservatives have “political agendas?”)

I invite anyone who truly believes that Justice Souter was somehow agenda-less during his time on the court to stand on his or her head. I also have a couple of suspension bridges in the heart of the city I can unload on you for very cheap.

Obama continued to gush:

He consistently defied labels and rejected absolutes, focusing instead on just one task – reaching a just result. 

Prager responded:

Defied political labels? Mr. President, he was not a liberal?

Liberals don’t think that they’re liberal. That’s what’s so fascinating. They think that they’re middle of the road.

In other words, if you believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, you’re a right-winger. But if you believe that marriage should be redefined, you’re not a left-winger. If you believe the government should be the only group in business paying health care, you’re not a left-winger. You’re a moderate. The only left-wingers, I guess, were Lenin and Stalin. 

Obama continued:

I will seek someone with a sharp and independent mind, and a record of excellence and integrity. I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives – whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes.

This is extraordinary and remarkably telling. This statement by the President perfectly epitomizes the leftist’s view on what a judge is charged to do. This quote should be embossed on business cards and passed out to students, pundits, political hacks or anyone who may be unclear on how the modern liberal sees the role of a judge.

Besides the obvious (and predictable) call for someone of an “independent mind,” i.e. a non-conservative, to replace Souter, it is apparently the job description of a judge – according to Bam – to ensure the employment, security, and well-being of the families of the American citizenry.

Wow.

I must’ve been smoking in the boy’s room that day in US Constitution 101.

I wonder if today’s judges will also remove boils, do algebra, clean out the drainpipes and help change the oil in a struggling businessman’s truck.

As Prager comments:

A judge is supposed to make a decision based on whether a person can take care of his family? That is in direct contradiction to the whole point of a court room. The court room is not the place to work out whether I can feed my family. That is worked out by charitable groups and by the state. It is not worked out by a court.

This is why the Left distorts whatever it enters because it sees everything as a means to an end.

Justice is not an end in a court room.

And it violates the biblical prohibition against favoring the poor in judgment.

I would like to ask the President, “Do you disagree with the Book of Exodus which says, ‘Do not favor the poor man in judgment’?”

Because if the issue is, “How does the does the law impact a person’s ability to feed his family?” do you have to, then, favor the poor in a court room? Which is essentially what he wants to do.

So, the purpose of a Justice is to help people. The purpose of a Justice is not to render justice … But then why have a court room? Why not just change all laws to “help people,” which indeed is what the Left feels it does.

Look for Obama’s appointment to be someone decidely to the left of David Souter. That’s just a guess.

Not that there’s been a pattern or anything.

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BETTER PANICKING THROUGH UPDATED LANGUAGE

The term “global warming,” which for a period of time had been unofficially replaced in the American lexicon with the phrase “climate change,” just doesn’t play well with a lot of people anymore. That the world is neither warming (and hasn’t been for several years) nor behaving in any way inconsistent with the cyclical climactic nature of its four billion year life span seems to be irrelevant to those attempting to determine why this is so.

According to John Broder of the New York Times, the term “turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes.” The reality that people may actually be tired of being bombarded day and night with nonsensical threats of a bogus global warming catastrophe doesn’t seem to enter into the minds of the people at EcoAmerica, the “nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm” that conducted a recent poll on the matter.

Rather, it is all in the packaging.

Thus, as liberals are wont to do when evidence, history and facts shatter their contrived calamities and political agendas, they change the label in the hope that the people will buy into the product.

Broder writes:

Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”.”

EcoAmerica has been conducting research for the last several years to find new ways to frame environmental issues and so build public support for climate change legislation and other initiatives. A summary of the group’s latest findings and recommendations was accidentally sent by e-mail to a number of news organizations by someone who sat in this week on a briefing intended for government officials and environmental leaders.

…

Environmental issues consistently rate near the bottom of public worry, according to many public opinion polls. A Pew Research Center poll released in January found global warming last among 20 voter concerns; it trailed issues like addressing moral decline and decreasing the influence of lobbyists. “We know why it’s lowest,” said Mr. (Robert M.) Perkowitz, a marketer of outdoor clothing and home furnishings before he started ecoAmerica, whose activities are financed by corporations, foundations and individuals. “When someone thinks of global warming, they think of a politicized, polarized argument. When you say ‘global warming,’ a certain group of Americans think that’s a code word for progressive liberals, gay marriage and other such issues.

Arrogance, thy name is environmentalism.

A question … The fact that “environmental issues” consistently rate near or at the bottom of polls couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that most people understand that the hysteria of impending doom that environmentalists like Al Gore peddle to the masses is pure hogwash, could it?

The idea that most people are not operating in red-alert panic mode over the preposterous claims that the planet is on or near the brink of irreversible devastation absolutely infuriates the greenie-wacko set. The problem, according to EcoAmerica, is that they just haven’t hit upon the right catchphrases, slogans or angles to sell their haggard agenda well enough.

If “global warming, as Mr. Perkowitz suggests, is perceived as a code phrase for “progressive liberals,” who exactly is to blame for that? If today’s environmentalism is associated with “progressive liberalism,” it’s because they are the ones who consistently and repeatedly latch onto crisis after phony crisis, hysteria after hysteria, doomsday scenario after doomsday scenario, with the fate of the planet and humanity hanging in the balance. There isn’t a crisis they won’t promote … or one they have gotten right. From global cooling to overpopulation, from resource depletion to the threat of heterosexual AIDS, from global warming to second-hand smoke, each new challenge is a threat to the very existence of humanity – and ultimately, the earth itself.

They’re batting 1.000.

They’ve been wrong every time.

It makes one wonder what the “perfect” temperature is, or what the “correct” number of people on earth would be, to today’s enviro-warriors.

If “global warming” was anything but political fodder for the Left, why would a name change even be necessary at all? Why would “campaigns” and “strategies” need to be devised to convince people of its very existence? The fact is, years and years of environmentalist screeching about the dangers of human activity and the effect it has on the climate ring less true to more and more people as global temperatures continue to go down – just as they always have after a warming trend. In other words, if the Left (and a few misguided rightists) genuinely believe that the danger facing the planet was clear-cut and irrefutable, why would their agenda need to be prettied up with more favorable focus-group-friendly phraseology?

This isn’t just a matter of finding the right bumper sticker slogan for an unknown product that needs public exposure. Anyone who has been alive and cognizant anywhere in the developed world over the past decade-and-a-half has heard the phrase ”global warming” and knows what the phrase implies.

That many have rejected the product  – with many more doing so each day – is proof that clarity of thought is not yet dead – only victims of lefticide.

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KILLING THE FIRST AMENDMENT BECAUSE THEY HATE THE SECOND AMENDMENT

On college campuses across the star-spangled map, the First Amendment is taken very seriously – especially when it comes to protesting wars, demonstrating for abortion rights, fighting against global warming, resisting God, embracing socialism, advocating same-sex marriage, promoting multiculturalism, castigating America and crapping on the military. (Such diversity!)

However, a disturbing trend is developing at America’s higher institutions of indoctrination – er, learning.  The protection of free speech provided for in the First Amendment is, in increasing numbers, becoming optional in the eyes of academia when the speech touches upon a long-time anathema of the Left, namely the Second Amendment – the Constitutional right to bear arms.

On Mike Gallagher’s radio show yesterday, he took a couple of moments to read an article posted at the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) website that counts some of  an ever-growing number of instances where students on campuses across the country face censorship, police inquiry, or even penalty, for simply talking about guns – and nothing that could even be remotely construed as threatening or promoting of violence. Rather, students are being silenced for exercising their right to free expression.

Want to talk Marxism? Feel free.

How about the slaughering of North American Indians by evil Europeans? You bet.

Feel like screaming about the need to impeach President Bush? Have at it, crusader.

Think reparations for the descendants of slaves is a good idea? Testify, brother.

Think the idea of carrying a concealed firearm on a college campus is worthy of, at least, some discussion? Get ready to be questioned by the cops.

Literally.

According to the article at the website’s Daily Policy Digest page:

… an unfortunate consequence of the tragedies at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University is that students are increasingly facing punishment or investigation for engaging in any kind of gun-related speech, says William Creeley, of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

It’s useful to review just how many incidents of overreaction to gun-related speech we’ve seen on the part of school administrators in the past several years, says Creeley:

• At Central Connecticut State University, a student gave a presentation for his speech class about the safety value of concealed weapons on campus; his professor called the police, who subsequently interrogated him about where he was storing the guns that were registered under his name.

• At Tarrant County College in Texas, a student chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus was prohibited from wearing empty gun holsters to protest policies that forbid concealed carry on campus; in addition, the group was only allowed to protest (still without holsters) in the school’s tiny and restrictive free speech zone.

• At Colorado College, two male students were found responsible for sexually-related “violence” after they put up posters making fun of a feminist newsletter; because the posters, which also parodied “guy stuff,” made references to chainsaws and the range of a sniper rifle, administrators claimed that feminists on campus became afraid for their lives.

Also:

• At Lone Star College near Houston, the Young Conservatives of Texas distributed a humorous flyer listing “Top Ten Gun Safety Tips” at the school’s “club rush”; they were threatened with probation and derecognition, and the flyer was censored.

• Arkansas Tech cancelled a student production of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins “out of respect for the families of those victims of the tragedies at Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech, and from an abundance of caution.”

• Yale University attempted a similar maneuver after the Virginia Tech shootings, banning the use of any realistic-looking weapons in theatrical productions at the school; under public pressure, Yale backed away somewhat from its original overreaction but still required audiences to be “notified in advance of the use of fake guns, swords and knives.”

American Leftocrats believe in liberty – as long they define the parameters – and they’re more than happy to limit exercise of the First Amendment if the speech is intended to defend the Second Amendment.

The fact is, the Second Amendment not only provides for the citizenry the right to protect itself against a potentially tyrannical government, but against criminals with intent on doing harm. That liberals seem to have a difficult time differentiating between law abiding citizens exercising their right to bear arms and criminals who couldn’t give a damn what laws are on the books illustrates why liberals cannot be trusted with protecting innocents.

Is there anyone who lost a family member or friend in any college campus murder spree who would have objected to a student carrying a concealed weapon blowing away the killer before their loved one was slaughtered?

Yes, Virginia, violence is sometimes justified and moral.

Yet, on American college campuses, where free expression of thought and the open exchange of ideas is supposed to be at the very heart of their purpose, anyone who even broaches such an argument seemingly runs an ever-increasing risk of being silenced, censored or branded a right-wing radical by totalitarian-like educators and their indoctrinated.

These are the values being slammed into the skulls of your children at today’s universities.

And if you do have kids that are going away to college, pray they stay drunk.

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W-VA DEM: GO AWAY BARBIE

Lincoln County, West Virginia must be so very proud. Democrat Jeff Eldridge, from the unincorporated town of Big Ugly, is making a name for himself in the legislature by proposing an outright ban of Mattel’s famed Barbie Doll in his state. He doesn’t want them – or any dolls like her – sold in West Virginia anymore. Said Eldridge: “I knew a lot of people were going to joke about it and poke fun at me. I couldn’t get anybody to sign on the bill with me but I said I’m still going to introduce it.”

Crusader alert.

According to the text of the bill itself:

A BILL to amend the Code of West Virginia … relating to banning the sale of “Barbie” dolls and other dolls that influence girls to be beautiful.

Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:

ARTICLE 25. BARBIE DOLLS.
§47-25-1. Unlawful sale of Barbie dolls.

It shall be unlawful in the state to sell “Barbie” dolls and other similar dolls that promote or influence girls to place an undue importance on physical beauty to the detriment of their intellectual and emotional development.

NOTE: The purpose of this bill is to ban the sale of Barbie dolls and other similar dolls.

Liberals simply dumbfound me – although, by now, they shouldn’t. At their very core, with every fiber of their existence, in all facets of life, they sincerely believe that they know what’s best for everyone else. This attempt at nixing the Barbie Doll – which has an icicle’s chance in hell of ever becoming law, but is critically instructive in exemplifying the liberal propensity to want to stick their smoking nostrils in everyone’s business - is yet another glaring illustration of how today’s Leftocrat instinctively moves toward Nanny Statism to cure whatever perceived ills are destroying the fragility of the twenty-first century American. And rest assured, something like this will be attempted again in some form down the road. Leftists plug away and plug away until they finally hit upon the right combination of words, and the most appealing collection of reasons and rationales, to further their otherwise feckless agendas.

Libs operate with a bluster and sense of superiority usually reserved for Hollywood types and MSNBC hosts. Who the hell does Eldridge think he is to measure for all the citizens of West Virginia what qualifies as important or unimportant to girls? And how does he come to the feminized, whine-time conclusion that the importance of physical beauty is potentially detrimental to intellectual and emotional development?

The goal here, obviously, is to make sure that no child anywhere, in any circumstance, for any reason is ever exposed to anything that may upset, hurt, offend, or expose them to the realities of existence on Earth.

I swear on all that is holy that liberals have lost their ever-loving minds. These hyper-sensitive, emotionally fragile, societal basket cases are an embarrassment. These are the same people who say that keeping score at a kids’ sporting events can prove traumatic, or that every child who particpates in any activity is entitled to a certificate just for showing up, or that playing dodge ball at recess can be damaging to the psyches of the less athletically inclined.

Is it any wonder that America is churching out as many emasculated boys and confused girls as it is?

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LIB GOV SAYS SODA FAT TAX PLAN IS GOING FLAT

Liberals are keen on making the rest of us uninformed, self-absorbed bundles of God-obsessed narcissists, i.e., conservatives, “aware” of things. (“National School Backpack Awareness Day,” “National Pit Bull Awareness Day,” “National Self-Injury Awareness Day” – all real). New York Governor David Paterson, if nothing else, has made us all “childhood obesity aware” now that his “fat tax” proposal looks like it will fail in blue-state New York.

I appreciate the Governor’s willingness to open my eyes, but I happen to drive past McDonalds, the Greek diner and the impoverished who live in the housing projects on my way into Manhattan almost daily – I know what obesity is.

Yesterday, the Governor spoke to college students saying that his plan to slap a “fat tax” on sugary beverages is going down in flames. He says the Empire State legislature will not go for it.

From CBS-TV in New York:

In meeting with college students over his budget, Paterson told the young New Yorkers not worry about his soda tax because the Legislature won’t go for it. But he said it has served its purpose of raising awareness of childhood obesity.

His proposal would put an 18-percent tax on soda and other sugary drinks containing less than 70 percent fruit juice. His analysis showed it would raise a projected $1 billion in revenue over two years and reduce use of sugary drinks by 5 percent.

The fat tax was the subject of articles, editorials, polls, talk radio and TV commentaries.

The plan had been supported by New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden.

“Every can of regular soda has the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar – 150 calories. Children that cut down on their soda intake cut down on their risk of becoming overweight or obese,” Frieden said.

Here are a few additional proposals:

Totalitarian Liberal Awareness Day (celebrated daily)

Leftist Jackass Awareness Day

Stop Ruing My Country You Stupid Dems Awareness Day

I am loathe to ever lavish any sort of praise on anything related to New York politics … but if New York’s legislature is giving this “health is the new morality” idea the thumbs down, good for them.

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YES, MY COUNTRY IS GOING AWAY – BAM GOES AMERICA

Think of the free market as a fire hydrant and President Obama as the dog about to shower it with contempt. The President told America – and the world – last evening that only government is capable of fixing the economic problems this country faces. The very concepts that help to define America itself – rugged individualism, personal responsibility, liberty, entrepreneurialism – all found themselves thrown under the Obama magical misery bus during his first prime time press conference as President.

The leader of the free world sent the message that it isn’t the individual who can make things right. It isn’t the free market that can set things straight. It is government – big, bumbling, inefficient, unaccountable, tyrannical, fingers-in-everybody’s pie government – that can save this country. With his ringing endorsement of an all-powerful, all-intrusive Washington as problem-solver and healer, the President of the United States made it clear that he possesses no confidence in the American people.

Such inspiration. Such leadership.

Contrast these two quotes:

Ronald Reagan: “Government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem.”

Barack Obama: “It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money which leads to even more layoffs.”

If that doesn’t serve as the quintessential distinction between right and left, then nothing does.

What Bam also did last night was add to his ever-growing list of contradictions, inconsistencies, half-truths and downright lies. He said during his less-than-impressive performance that he found it difficult to accept criticism of his porktabulous spending bill from the people (Republicans) who helped double the size of the deficit during the previous administration. Yet, with his $800 billion-plus pig-meat bill, he wants to propel to deficit into uncharted territory with a spending spree that would put Bush’s recklessness to instant shame.

I’m not sure if his handlers and preparers are this obtuse, or if he is just the worst out of the box thinker America has seen since John Kerry, but he embarrasses himself when he is away from the nestling warmth of his teleprompter.

No one likes to give a hard time to those who have come down off the cross to save humanity, but how about some honest analysis?

This works part and parcel with the President’s fractured view of his own country – his misguided, university-constructed, leftist take on the greatest country the world has ever known.

It is frightening, but no one should be surprised now. The tone for the Obama-Nation was set on January 20, 2009 in what was an otherwise sleepy and forgettable inaugural address.

Recall The One said:

“Our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.”

How many of you, when you heard those words, took pause to say to yourselves, “Wow, the Bush years really are over.”

If ever something more provably untrue were uttered by a President, it’s not immediately popping into my head. How exactly is the safety of the United States enhanced in any way because of how just our cause is? Where in all of human history has a cause served to strengthen the security of a people? That such a statement can be made without any serious scrutiny or backlash (outside of conservatives who pay attention) is utterly astounding. No country’s security ever emanates from the justness of a cause.

Security emanates from a strong military. Period.

Were the Jews of Nazi Germany more secure because of the justness of their cause?

Can I now keep my doors unlocked at night because I am a just man?

What poppycock.

The security of the United States emanates from the men and women who serve in the armed forces.

Then, there was this little ditty, extracted directly from the multiculturalist’s songbook:

“We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.”

This country may be comprised of people from every corner of the world, but it is patently false - and in no way defensible - to assert that this country has been shaped by every language and culture.

How exactly?

Undoubtedly, one could probably find just about every one of world’s languages spoken somewhere in the United States, but the influence of Hindi and Latvian on the United States is nil. The role of Farsi and Burmese in forming the cultural landscape of America is nonexistant. Even the effect of Zulu on American life is negligible.

And as deplorable as it is for anti-religious revisionists to have to admit any prevailing Christian influence, this country has not been shaped by Hindus or Muslims, despite ongoing attempts to reconstruct American history into an all-inclusive, everybody-influenced-everything fairy-tale.

Culturally, this country exists in the English tradition, shaped by its Judeo-Christian value system. Period.

This is not a matter of opinion.

But worry not … just a little while ago, the Obama spendulous bill passed in the Senate, 61-37. America is well on the way to a “fundamentally transformed” future filled with big government band-aids,  astronomical deficits and encroaching tyranny.

Yippee, eh?

Piece by piece, America is going away.

America is falling down and going Bam.

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KEEP ON SMOKING … FOR THE CHILDREN

Paying for the S-Chip bill all by himself

Being a Democrat can mean several things – possessing the ability to emote as a means of creating policy, having the facility to substitute feelings for wisdom, or the innate instinct to never think what happens next. It’s a cushy intellectual life, to be sure.

Take the President’s signing of the so-called S-CHIP bill into law last week – a measure which expands (fancy that) the State Children’s Health Insurance Program by roughly $35 billion over the next five years.

President Obama may not have asked anyone to read his lips, but you’ll recall he did promise no new taxes of any kind to those making under $250,000 a year.

Well, feel free to add another tick into the Obama-lama-ding-dong column of Lies and Redefinitions.

Back on September 12, 2008 – when the word “trillions” was still more freely associated with how many reality shows were on television than with bailouts and stimulus – the President said:

“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

One fourth of all smokers are below the poverty line.

Respectfully, the President can take his ” firm pledge” and put it in the same place his “no earmarks in the stimulus bill” promise rightly belongs.

The only thing “firm” is the grip America has had on its ankles since January 20, 2009.

To pay for this idiocy, the federal excise tax on tobacco will increase 62 cents per pack of cigarettes. In short, Obama is taxing smokers to pay for the healthcare of children – many of whom have absolutely no business being covered by this nonsensical piece of … legislation.

But Democrats are so cute.  They do everything in their power to make cigarette smoking as morally deplorable as possible, systematically legislating it from American life “for our own good,” yet rely on it to save the children.

Taxing cigarettes, as we’ve been told, is a genuine deterrent to purchasing them. Once the price gets too high, it stands to reason that less people will smoke. Yet without those who do smoke, many of America’s children will apparently be deprived of the healthcare they deserve or can afford. Without these yellow-fingered, second-hand smoke producing, nicotine fiends feeding their disgusting addictions, innocent kids across the map will be shut out of the medicine supply line and forced to exist (somehow) on antiquated home remedies and penicillin derivatives made from household bread mold.

Is the risk of what would essentially amount to the government having to support some cigarette smoking – and thus condoning the infliction of second-hand (and third-hand) smoke on an innocent population, which we’ve been told kills tens of thousands annually – worth funding health care for those children who would otherwise be forced to rummage through garbage cans for Robitussin residue and half-sucked Halls cough drops?

What a predicament to be in.

Maybe what the government should do is raise the excise tax by twenty-thousand percent on each pack of cigarettes and buy up all the smokes needed to fund the S-CHIP bill themselves.

Viola! Instant funding!

That’ll keep the mint busy.

(And it’ll take only forty-two generations of Americans to pay it back).

Then, perhaps the government can sell their newly acquired smokes back to the public at a discounted price, thus generating even more revenue – or to China.

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A QUICK STUDY IN DEMOCRAT-SPEAK … DETAILED CHEAT SHEET

If, as Vice President Joe Biden asserted during the campaign, paying taxes is a measure of one’s patriotism, then both Tom Daschle and Timothy Geithner are this century’s Sacco and Vanzetti. And if the Obama “tax cut” deception becomes law, then it will – by the grace of messianic engineering – have afforded the federal government the opportunity to create a far more patriotic class of Americans then we have now.

See how clever liberals can be? They’re not only masters at igniting skirmishes in their ongoing class war, but they excel at constructing the definitions that make the whole world sing.

For example, in Democrat-speak, “earmarks” are not earmarks unless they are last-minute add-ons of pet projects shoved into an already existing bill without review. In Dem-land, it isn’t the wasteful spending itself that makes it an earmark – like, for instance, replacing defective air conditioning systems in Buffalo, New York or installing on-site hydrogen dispensers for fork-lift hydrogen battery applications in Columbia, South Carolina – it’s the process by which it gets into the bill.

In Democrat-speak, “tax cuts” for “working Americans” means tax rate increases on the wealthiest Americans. A tax cut, by definition, is lowering a specific tax rate – like an income tax rate, for example – so that more of one’s own money is kept. Thus, a genuine tax cut does not involve taking from someone else. By contrast, the Obama crapulous plan boosts tax rates on those in the upper income tax brackets so that the revenue collected can be redistributed to those who don’t deserve it. Call it welfare. Call it socialism. Call it a lie.

In Democrat-speak, “unity” is defined as falling in line with liberal policies. Terms such as “bi-partisanship” and “post-partisanship” can be used freely as substitutes for the word “unity” at almost any time. Fertilizer by any other name would still roll off the liberal tongue just as effortlessly. Other phrases worthy of honorable mention are “pulling together,” “working together,” “doing what’s right for the American people” and “Obama is our God.”

In Democrat-speak, “playing politics” is defined as wishing to debate the merits of liberal policies, while “attacking the President” means disagreeing with Barack Obama. Thus, if a Senator speaks up and says that the “Recovery Bill” doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of “recovery” attached to it and calls for open debate to talk about possible revisions or addendums, he or she will be looked at by core Dems as “playing politics.” If, however, a Senator speaks up and says the bill is a bad idea and should be defeated, he or she is “attacking the President.”

In Democrat-speak, “mainstream America” is defined as the consensus of like-minded liberal media folks and political insiders who attend Upper West Side cocktail parties, Georgetown dinner parties and Hollywood galas.

In Democrat-speak, “change” means astronomically larger government, an over-regulated free-market, tolerance of tax cheats in Cabinet positions, a gay-friendly fighting force, a deficit larger than Paul Begala’s forehead, a war against the Second Amendment, rights for enemy combatants, and free Rush Limbaugh dartboards for anyone who sends in a self-addressed stamped envelope.

In Democrat-speak, “Rush Limbaugh” means conservatism.

In Democrat-speak, the term “since the Great Depression” means since the end of Jimmy Carter’s term in office. (“This is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression!”) For hardcore liberals, Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 – and subsequent landslide in 1984 – was as depressing to them as it was great to us.

In Democrat-speak, a “mandate” is anything over 50% when they win – like the just-under 53% of the country who elected Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States (52.7%). (“Obama’s election is a mandate from the American people for change!” )”Diversity,” on the other hand, is measured as any tally under 50% when they lose – like the just-under 53% of people who voted for Proposition 8 in California (52.2%). (“Prop 8 barely passed. Just look at the diversity of thought here.”)

In Democrat-speak, “undocumented worker” means a potential vote.

In Democrat-speak, any word tagged with either a “phobe” or “ist” suffix – as in homophobe, xenophobe, racist, nativist, sexist, et al – applies to anyone and everyone who doesn’t subscribe to the ideas of expanding the welfare state, giving government control of private industry, changing the traditional definition of marriage, affording benefits to illegal aliens and giving preferential treatment based on skin color.

Please keep this cheat sheet handy for the next time you read any mainstream media news story, watch any mainstream media newscast, involve or immerse yourself in any way in pop culture or are simply walking in Manhattan.

It may help.

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THE OBAMA MANIFESTO – 25 REASONS TO SUPPORT FAILURE

1. If President Barack Obama is resolute on reversing Bush administration measures that have served to keep this country safe from attack for over seven years, I want him to fail.

2. If the President believes that enemy combatants captured on the field of battle are due the same Constitutional rights as American citizens, I want him to fail.

3. If the President believes that “direct diplomacy” with despotic leaders of murderous regimes is the best way to keep America strong, I want him to fail.

4. If the President is willing to trod upon one of the fundamental rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence – namely, the right to life – with his illimitable support of abortion, I want him to fail.

5. If the President believes that taxpayer dollars should be used to fund abortions, I want him to fail.

6. If the President wishes to use taxpayer dollars to fund embryonic stem cell research, I want him to fail.

7. If the President wishes to appoint judges to the Supreme Court who view the Constitution as a document that breathes and bends with time, I want him to fail.

8. If the President wants to infringe on my Constitutional right as a law abiding American to own a firearm, I want him to fail.

9. If the President believes that government is better equipped to solve the problems of Americans than Americans themselves, I want him to fail.

10. If the President attempts to follow through on his campaign promise to fundamentally transform the United States of America, I want him to fail.

11. If the President wishes to send me a check that I didn’t earn, paid for with other people’s hard-earned tax money, and call it a tax cut, I want him to fail.

12. If the President wishes to send a so-called stimulus check to those who did not pay federal income taxes, I want him to fail.

13. If the President believes that government bailouts of private sector businesses are the way to tend to an ailing economy, I want him to fail.

14. If the President believes that the government should set pay limits on executives of companies who receive bailout money, I want him to fail.

15. If the President believes that government spending of unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money is the way to deliver the economy from recession, I want him to fail.

16. If the President believes that the planet is in danger of catostrophic ruin due to man-made global warming, and is willing to implement so-called “green” policies that will damage this country’s economy, I want him to fail.

17. If the President wishes to undertake an unparalleled “domestic infrastructure” plan that puts untrained non-professionals on the government’s payroll with the belief that this will stimulate the economy, I want him to fail.

18. If the President believes that people who fall into the highest tax brackets in this country need to pay more taxes, I want him to fail.

19. If the President believes that the military of the United States is a venue for social engineering – such as lifting the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy – I want him to fail.

20. If the President believes that healthcare is not only a right but a moral obligation of government, I want him to fail.

21. If the President believes that it is a good idea to attack those who listen to conservative talk radio as a means of fostering unity, I want him to fail.

22. If the President supports a reinstatement of the so-called Fairness Doctrine, effectively ending talk radio as we know it, I want him to fail.

23. If the President is unwilling to boldly deal with illegal immigration into the United States, and chooses to try and come up with something “comprehensive” to solve the problem, I want him to fail.

24. If the President is unwilling to take a serious look at nuclear energy as a viable and safe alternative source of energy, while wasting time focusing on wind turbines and solar paneling, I want him to fail.

25. If the President decides that he will continue his class-warfare style assault on big corporations – such as oil and pharmaceutical companies – as he did during his campaign by punishing them with higher tax rates, I want him to fail.

 

Not because he is black. Not because he is a liberal. Not because I seek some sort of vengance on the deranged, lunatic Bush-bashers of the past eight years.

I want him to fail because each and every one of these policies hurts my country.

Period.

 

There are more to be added, I’m certain.

This particular list is a breathing document.

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