How Bad Can Presidents Be? (malaise)

Here is a YouTube of the old peanut farmer himself telling us that "the end is very near". By golly, it is 30 years later and we are still here! Not only that, we seemed to have MUCH more and MUCH cheaper gas once we got Mr doom and gloom out of there. Can the world get darker than Jimmuh? I bet we are about to find out!

Inflating Tires With BO

Power Line: Get This Man A Teleprompter!



My God, inflating our tires is going to save as much as we could pump by drilling! If Bush said this, the MSM and all the comedians would be HOWLING about how stupid he was! Thank God for YouTube! and the net! This stuff would never see the light of day without it.

Yeah sure, that could happen ... in 11 thousand years or so!!!

Hollywood Courage That Makes You Say WOW!

Washington Times - VOIGHT: My concerns for America

A Hollywood guy that has kept completely mum on his obvious conversion over a lifetime from the propaganda the left. No doubt this will cause him a loss of friends and maybe worse, but it is the kind of courage that is going to be needed in MUCH larger amounts to prevent this country from being lost forever to fascism / socialism / nihilism if the likely election of BO comes to pass.

Worth reading it all, but here is a teaser:

The Democrats have targeted young people, knowing how easy it is to
bring forth whatever is needed to program their minds. I know this
process well. I was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era,
which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the
so-called peace movement. The radicals of that era were successful in
giving the communists power to bring forth the killing fields and
slaughter 2.5 million people in Cambodia and South Vietnam. Did they
stop the war, or did they bring the war to those innocent people? In
the end, they turned their backs on all the horror and suffering they
helped create and walked away.

Maybe I WILL Vote for BO?

Commentary: Still looking for a candidate I can support - CNN.com

While I strongly believe that Republicans failed to realize that actually GOVERNING was less pure than being the opposition, and thus assisted in the MSM / Democrat dismantling of the Bush administration post Katrina, I'm starting to think the the logic Mr Beck comes close to here is actually right.

I think the odds of McCain being elected are slim in the extreme in any case, but if he WERE elected, wouldn't that really just give the forces of the left a scapegoat to point to while they did most of what they wanted anyway with both houses of congress strongly in their corner? Billy C fought a lot of the policies of the Republican congress when they were elected, but after those policies started to work, he took the "high road" and claimed credit for every success that he could. Triangulation from the left worked great for Billy and the Dems, not so good for Republicans. The Republican congress took all the heat for the controls on spending and Slick took all the credit for the balanced budget that resulted -- really good if you are a Democrat.

McCain is sort of a much less conservative Bush, and Bush was a more moderate conservative than Slick Willie was a moderate liberal. The last "conservative" we had was Reagan, and he was pretty darned moderate on everything but the USSR as well. So, we STILL haven't even REALLY tried conservative policies, even given all the howling of the media and the Democrats. Right now it is obvious that there isn't ANY potential for us to try conservative policies, SO, do we want to have the band-aid peeled fast or slow?

I remain worried that the big issue here is that BO may not be recoverable at all--we may slip into a fascist "nanny police state" where you MUST do what the state says is good for you, which includes no freedom of conservative media, no armed populace, no real individual control of finance, loss of more at least Christian religious freedom, etc. ... essentially, we all become "wards of the state" -- or incarcerated/dead. BUT, even if McCain somehow miraculously got elected, that would likely mean that the fascist risk just got held off another 4 years and got worse while being held off.

Being conservative means being reality based. It strongly appears that the best we can do given the current mood of the country is to give the left their heads, suffer the likely economic disaster, and hope and pray that the backbone of the American people still has enough mettle left so we will be able to ward off a descent into fascism.

While the Carter years were a nasty time that took until '83 to recover from, we DID recover! Without Carter, we would likely never have had Reagan and the world could be a lot sadder. Conservatism means optimism, BO may be bad enough to usher in a whole new golden age in as little as 4 years, but more likely, more like a decade.

Democrat Change I Believe In

New York money woes to bring spending cuts - CNN.com

Hey, they got rid of the Evil Republican Rudy G in NYC and that nasty 3-term Republican Pataki. Went through huge stock market downturns in 2K and 9-11, but the finanaces didn't tank then.

Now we know that Spitzer was a financial genius, I'm sure those $4K an hour hookers were real bargains, but somehow the state and city finances don't seem to be doing very well.

Ah yes, shades of Jimmy Carter and a lot of the NYC 70's and early 80's "disaster Mayors" ... Koch, Dinkins, etc. One thing I'm sure of, it is NEVER the Democrats fault. They just aren't big on that "Responsibility thing".

The problem with Democrat "change" is that if one actually considers what they are saying, it is EASY to "believe in", in fact, there is very little that their policies possibly COULD create other than financial disaster. They have done it over and over and over--but I guess nearly 30 years of pretty much solid economic good was all that we could handle. Time to see what REAL recession if not depression looks like--the kind with MANY quarters of lower GDP, high inflation, high unemployment ... not low to mid single digits. Nice big juicy double digits 10%+ unemployed, 15%+ inflation, maybe even 10%+ declines in GDP. Gas lines, maybe even food lines. THOSE are the kinds of "changes" that Democrats EXCEL at!

I guess the official MSM and easily led sheep position is "bring it on".

Deer Stand Envy

Man, Just imagine the spending a hard day on the hunt in that beauty! There are more pictures out here ... I think the hot tub is a bit much myself. Lots to keep up, very heavy, and I really don't think the visibility out of that scope is going to work out with all that steam. I'm also not a fan of beer and guns ... but, one can't be too judgmental.

Does the Future Affect Speculation?

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Senate Republicans hold the line on energy; Update: Reid falls apart

The Democrats are all against any form of domestic energy production because "it won't have any effect for 10 years or more". They are also against speculation on oil prices ... so they want to "regulate" that.

Last I checked, speculation is all about the future. If you expect energy to be in short supply in the future, then you will tend to up the price today. That is sort of the basics on how any sort of investment works. Scarce things are worth more, less scarce things are worth less. In the case of speculation, expectations DEFINITELY matter (in fact, that is what it is all about).

For Democrat, drilling, refineries, nuclear, oil shale and coal are all too risky for the environment. They have been making those decisions for 40 years and they have been VERY proud of them. Now that the chickens have come home to roost, why is it that they are just "ducking and covering"? Aren't they proud of the "environmentally friendly" gas prices that they have created? Seems that they certainly ought to be, it may take Democrats a long time to "make something happen", but they have certainly been successful in raising gas prices!

Aliens?

Moon-walker claims alien contact cover-up | NEWS.com.au


For anyone that has listened to anything Kucinich has ever had to say, this is no surprise at all. We have an obvious alien in congress!

Look closely at BO the next time you see him. Those ears look like a bad cartoon of Bush's ears, only larger. There is something just "not right" about the whole package the way the face "fits together", or maybe doesn't fit together. The way it seems that he has no principles in any matter, and even if it seems he does, he is willing to just change in an instant (his church of 20 years, his pastor).

Then, there is that weird thing about supposedly he has no birth certificate? This might explain a lot of stuff! Maybe he should prove that he is NOT an alien!

BO Fails to Intoxicate all of Europe?

He ventured forth to bring light to the world | Gerard Baker - Times Online

At one level, this is a pure hoot, at another it shows how much of a lapdog the MSM is for BO.


A little "teaser":

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the
Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the
shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the
wilderness.

The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family,
offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an
African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of
righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a
little blow.

When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of
Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet
Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard
and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our
hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”

I thought this pretty much summed up the Surge analysis of late:

And lo, in Mesopotamia, a miracle occurred. Even though the Great Surge of
Armour that the evil Bush had ordered had been a terrible mistake, a waste
of vital military resources and doomed to end in disaster, the Child's very
presence suddenly brought forth a great victory for the forces of the light.

It appears that those across the pond may not see BO as QUITE as much a "saviour" as those in the US media.

Last Lecture Proffessor Dies

YouTube's star lecturer dies at 47 - CNN.com

One of the things you notice about age is that "all of a sudden" there are a lot of "young" people dying. Very sad to see that Dr. Pausch couldn't "pull a Farve" and say he was terminal and then go and "fool us all" by living. He said a lot of important things anyway, and we know that he was very much one that believed in "playing the hand you were dealt" with every ounce of wit, effort and fun that you could muster and being thankful you got to play. I'm thankful that was able to "live his death" with passion and openness and the web allowed it to be shared by millions.

MSM Operation in a Nutshell

New York Times rejects McCain essay - CNN.com

The NYT prints Obama's essay a week before ... gee, they love it! Quite unsurprising because the editor doing the accepting and rejecting is one of Slick Willies old speech writers. (naturally, it is VERY bad when any of those folks that are Republicans get a position at Fox, and is pointed out by guys like the NYT as bias).

Reading between the lines of what they say, one gets the classic MSM view. Unless McCain wants to write an essay that agrees with them on main points, it just isn't "interesting", and thus doesn't need to be published!

If they can just get the fairness doctrine back, then we will be back to a great country with LOTS of "freedom" to say exactly the same thing in a slightly different way.

BO Visits Scene of "Failed Surge"

The Associated Press: Obama expected to meet with commanders of Iraq war

We all know that Bush is one of the worst Presidents in US history and that the Iraq war has been lost for years now, as was correctly called out by Harry Reid, April 19 2007:

"I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week," Reid told journalists.

We know the surge in fact did not work, because that was predicted by the greatest most intelligent politician in the history of the planet, a designation that no doubt sells his messianic qualities short to many of his ardent followers in the media. His worshipfulness BO declared on Jan 10 2007 that:

"I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there," the Illinois senator said that night, a month before announcing his presidential bid. "In fact, I think it will do the reverse."

We know that Bush, McCain, Lieberman and all Americans who believe that defeating terrorists in Iraq are completely wrong and that Reid, the MSM, and of course the all-knowing BO are NEVER wrong!

Buried in this article there is some false information that must have been planted by the Bush admin:

The trip will be Obama's second to Iraq, but conditions are quite different from when he visited in January 2006. Obama's first tour was treated as a footnote, while the country was caught in a growing Sunni insurgency and was moving toward a flood of sectarian violence. But the bloodshed has declined significantly since Bush sent thousands more troops last year to help quell the rising violence.

It is a good thing this is buried deep in the article. Some radical right wingers might think that a president that went against the MSM, Democrats and even brilliant first term foreign policy expert Senators like BO and went ahead with a surge of troops that saved Iraq and America from a military and political failure that would have cost Iraq millions of lives impacted us worse than allowing ourselves to be defeated in Vietnam might be a cause for some level of at least national "relief" if not celebration. They would of course be WRONG, for the MSM and Democrats around the country the only desirable outcome for Iraq is the worst defeat for the US possible.

Clearly though, since BO said that the surge would not work and in fact would make things worse, then it must be so!! BO is brilliant, Bush is an idiot. If the MSM has made ANYTHING clear over the past year or so, it is this fact, so it really must be true, since we have an unbiased and brilliant MSM!! To believe otherwise would cast the whole world view of something like 70% of the American population and a huge portion of the world into the land of fantasy.

This tidbit that I KNOW that we can ignore was at the VERY end of the article:

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told the AP on Saturday that after intense U.S. assaults there, al-Qaida may be considering shifting focus to its original home base in Afghanistan, where American casualties are running higher than in Iraq.

We know that Gen Petraeus was called a liar by Hillary (she was nice enough to say one would have to "suspend disbelief" to say the surge was working last September), and BO failed to react to the "General Betray Us" Ad from last September until a few weeks ago as he is now making a few "reasonable political moves" to appeal to radical right voters that don't approve of claiming that our military commanders are lying to us.

Certainly the reason that violence is on the rise in Afghanistan CAN'T because the "front line on terror" had moved to Iraq after our attack in Afghanistan, and now, since the coalition forces have the clear upper hand there, the vermin are fleeing back to Afghanistan.

NO! That CAN'T be true!!! It would simply make too many people wrong and the WRONG people right! No matter what the cost, that is a view that the MSM and the left can NEVER accept!

The Messiah Heads to Europe

RealClearPolitics - Articles - The Audacity of Vanity

Read the whole Krauthammer piece, it is well worth it. I thought this summed it up well though:

For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was:

Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?

We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed
lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his
rise marks the moment when "our planet began to heal." As I recall --
I'm no expert on this -- Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick.
Obama operates on a larger canvas.

So BO has headed to Afghanistan, and then Europe. He is a guy that is all about "change". Eight years ago would an American presidential candidate be able to go to Afghanistan and Iraq? How in the world is it possible that he can go to Iraq? Less than a year ago the entire MSM and all the Democrats told us beyond any shadow of a doubt that "Iraq is lost to civil war with no hope of improvement, the surge is a failure". To make the claim that the surge was working and there was progress there required "a suspension of disbelief" as Hillary put it in telling our commander there essentially that he was lying to congress. Who is it that was lying? How is it that BO can walk into what MUST be a seething caldron of civil war, since by his OWN statements all during 2007, the surge was "a problem", "making things worse", etc. How can this be? One would almost think that the great and supreme BO is WRONG!?

AP Notices BO Re-Write

Obama Web site removes `surge' from Iraq problem - Yahoo! News

So what is so different about BO? He takes a position that is popular to get votes and when it turns out that he is wrong, he just changes his story and claims he never said what he said before.

This is "new"?

Fictional Yellowcake Sold to Canada

Iraq's nuclear 'yellowcake' moved to Canada | Philadelphia Inquirer | 07/06/2008


The ability of the MSM to keep even things reported by the AP a secret is way amazing. Our high risk, devil may care neighbors to the North are going to use some of Saddams old "WMD in waiting" to make ELECTRICITY!! Wow, them and the French who get like 75% from nuke.

Good thing we have smart Democrats in this country that know that Saddam never had any WMD designs, Iraq is "lost", nuclear power is too dangerous, drilling for oil is too dangerous, using oil shale is too dangerous, coal is too dirty and refining petroleum is too dirty!! If we didn't have those smartie Democrats, we might end up taking grave risks like Canada, although it seems like a really bad deal to buy fictitious yellowcake.

The Case for Large Magazines

Power Line: Argument for Armed Citizenry


Lots of lefty victims in waiting like to argue that "nobody needs magazines over 10 rounds" (or even less). Sometimes there are no shortage of worthy targets and even a couple 16 round mags might be "shy" with say 9mm.

When you have 8 of the very flower of humanity that think that stomping a father trying to protect his 12 year old daughter is a great idea, it is a shame that any get to leave the scene "unbagged". How many fathers out there MIGHT be willing to try to protect their 12 year old daughter? Seems like it would be rare. Shows a lot of "courage" to call your "homes" into action when you are taking on one unarmed guy and a couple of women. Attacking a family leaving an amusement park on the 4th of July. This really DOES seem to be the beginning of some sort of "change" in America.

Why does one need an assault weapon? Because if they get your name, they might want to hunt you down to avoid your testifying against them (at least that is what the police are worried about, but I'm sure they are just paranoid). Saying "welcome to my house" with a 45 round AR magazine makes certain that even a nice size group of very limited discernment will "feel the love". The .223 in large quantity has that certain degree of unrelenting snap crackle and pop that sends the sort of pointed message that may provide a couple seconds of near comprehension of "bad idea" even to such limited minds. What a shame that full-auto isn't a legal option. We live in a day when folks have short attention spans and they may get bored waiting for all that manual trigger work to erase all their worries about being testified against.

This is off PowerLine, but the Strib FINALLY minimally covered it. They don't like to cover this kind of thing, folks may "generalize". So, if 8 whites had executed a similar attack on a black family, would that pretty much be a local news story with delayed and limited coverage (this happened on the 4th!!!)? I think the only real question would be how many "shakedown blacks" we had in town. Just the Jesse "cut the N**s nuts off" Jackson posse or Al Sharpton and the whole NAACP road show? I think it would be the complete circus -- these days you can get that group out for a doll hanging in a tree.

Dowd on "Mock Barack"

Op-Ed Columnist - May We Mock, Barack? - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

The navel gazing left is fast on the path to making satire off limits after that HORRIBLE New Yorker cover. Imagine, SATIRE of a politician! As Maureen points out:

Many of the late-night comics and their writers — nearly all white — now admit to The New York Times’s Bill Carter that because of race and because there is nothing “buffoonish” about Obama — and because many in their audiences are intoxicated by him and resistant to seeing him skewered — he has not been flayed by the sort of ridicule that diminished Dukakis, Gore and Kerry.

Hey, of course, there is NOTHING "buffoonish" about him! My opinion would be that there isn't a human yet minted with "nothing buffoonish" about them!!! The very idea that any such thing could exist shows a level of worshipfullness for a perspective leader that is extraordinarily dangerous in at least what USED to be a democracy!

Have these folks somehow missed his ears? That he is a closet smoker? How much fun have they had with "Dubya" (W) for an initial? Bush/shrub/women's anatomy? So we are REALLY going to ignore the whole "BO, Hussein, Osama" deal? He has never misspelled anything in his life??? Did you know that Dan Quayle misspelled "potato"???? That was HUGE hoot!!! Now BO "Hit 57 states with 2 more to go" ... but of course that is NOT funny!!

Wow, the navel gaze is truly amazing-but what is Dowd worried about? Gee, the Messiah might not seem like a "regular enough guy" if they can't figure out a good enough way to poke a little "appropriate humor" at their deity? I wonder if once the Fascist Prince is President if those of us that have no trouble at all seeing "a couple of flaws" will need to be "re-educated"?

The Change Has Already Begun!

Price jump worst since '91 on record gas, higher food - Jul. 16, 2008

The Democrats roared back into Congress in '06 promising "change", and BO is on the stump pushing it now. One of the Democrats favorite pieces of "change" is called INFLATION, and they love it for many reasons:

• It devalues savings, and Democrats HATE savings. Savings indicate personal responsibility and can end up being invested, which causes people to believe in the market economy, which Democrats REALLY hate.
• It increases dependency on government - savings, pensions, dividends, etc are devalued and only things that are "cost of living indexed" supposedly "keep up". Since only the government can hope to "keep up" when chasing it's own tail, government programs SEEM like a "good deal". Naturally, the downside is that they are like throwing gasoline on a roaring fire since the rising programs fuel more inflation and keep the cycle growing.
• It allows the government to pay back it's expensive debt with cheaper money.
• It allows them to present non-inflation adjusted figures for income, education, tax revenues, etc against figures from a Republican era (lower inflation) and act like "things are better". When the MSM loves you, that tends to work to convince the sheep for a good long while.
  
• Providing they can get the indexing that Reagan did removed (likely a first 100 days BO deal), at least over some income level), it gives them "autopilot tax increases" and people creep up the brackets.

The Democrats have been throwing 100's of billions at things for a couple years now, claiming "recession", and Bush with no popularity left has been signing them. Of course they have been trying to increase energy prices since '69 by prohibiting drilling, refining, nuclear, oil shale, coal ... and even wind, (unless it blocks Teddy Kennedy's view!) They have been all for subsidizing ethanol with government dollars, but now have decided that consumes too many corn flakes ... I THINK they are OK with human labor as long as we follow a low flatulence diet to try to help our poor feverish planet, otherwise I guess it is back to the Jimmuh, "turn off your lights, turn down the thermostat, put on a sweater and shiver away ... America has entered the cold dark slide to the death that the left believes it has always deserved".

ah yes, "change".

The BO Approach on Iraq

Power Line: Obama's Dishonest Op-Ed

I think we will all be amazed at just how big the whoppers can be as BO rolls on. For Bush, the MSM decided that the truth was a lie even if it required proving a negative--Saddam never had WMD even though everyone was sure he did, because we didn't find them. Therefore, Bush is a liar. For BO, no matter how many times he has said the opposite in the past, he is going to get a pass on whatever he says now and in the future. The MSM has decided that there has been too much Republican success since '80, the it is going to stop here, and there isn't going to be any concern about "bias". They have had some experience with this-Slick Willie said that "The budget could not be balanced", then after the Republicans took the heat for cutting the rate of growth in medicare and balancing it, he took the credit. The MSM found that to be a nice exchange.

BO gets all the campaign funds he can raise, plus 24x7 on NPR, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, NYT, etc.

I wonder if he will win? Maybe if he raped and tortured a reporter to death? Well, maybe one from the list above it may be viewed as a "flaw", but if they were from Fox it would be a postive!

Wishful Reality on Iraq

Caught Between Iraq and a Hard Base

If only the US electorate would look at things this rationally. Nice to read, but I don't buy it.

Boxing their candidate in is, of course, what the Democratic base wants and insists on. So far, the line has been that the surge is a success but the war is a failure--"whipped cream on a pile of fertilizer," as Time's Joe Klein puts it, "a regional policy unprecedented in its stupidity and squalor." But even this hasn't quite caught up with events. Saddam is gone, Al Qaeda in Iraq is on the run, the Sunnis are with us, the Shia are turning against their militias, and the Washington Post is suggesting that "Iraq, a country with the world's second largest oil reserves and a strategic linchpin of the Middle East, just might emerge from the last five years of war and turmoil as an American ally, even if its relations with Iran remain warm." In other words, the operation was a failure, but the patient has survived, and is somehow becoming healthier by the day. Seldom has failure appeared quite so good.

Katrina, Valerie Plame, "Bush lied about WMD", the "recession", Global Warming and a whole host of other items have proven to me that we are in a new phase-"reality optional". The Democrats and MSM are not currently tethered to any realities, they are able to make up their own realities.

It is certainly true that there has been over a year of tremendous progress in Iraq, but most of the MSM sheep haven't seen it. The technique of "report failure / fail to report progress" in Iraq has been as good as "report hot weather/hurricanes, fail to report cold weather/no hurricanes", or "report only bad economic news, fail to report good". For most Americans, what they believe is what they repeatedly hear, and I think until some major piece of reality bites them in the posterior and they realize that they have ACTUALLY been faked out (rather than being faked out that they were faked out by Bush), we will go on in dream mode.

Supposedly, the 80's were that "dream we would wake up from", but we have had 28 years of unprecedented growth in that "dream" with only very short hiccups in '91 and in the 2K-2001 internet bubble burst and 9-11 aftermath. This "dream" is a completely new form though where many realities (economic/income growth, progress in Iraq, tempratures cooling, N Korea dismantling weapons programs, etc) are forcibly ingnored, while "false reality" gets all the news ( "failure" in Iraq, "recession" (with GDP growth), "global warming" (even it may cool for a decade or more), etc)

Rangle on Housing

Harlem Congressman Rents 4 Apartments at Below-Market Rates - NYTimes.com

Another Democrat "champion of the poor", a fixture in congress-and apparently this rent controlled building since 1970. The old kind of graft has lived for a long time as long was one is a Black Democrat-but we haven't had one of those in the WH before, the future may be be truly special.

Pretty nice to be getting something excess of $4K in benefits a month for having that elected power. Ah yes, the good life. He gets it the OLDER way, "elected" to it ... of course in a gerrymandered district where the odds of him ever being defeated are slim and none. How HORRIBLE that some CEOs and others get there by earning it in the market. That is the kind of thing BO will be working hard to put a stop to for sure. The Rangel kind of life may become much more of a fixture in the government controlled fixture.

Hats off to NYT for publishing this at all, even in the local pages. No doubt it is a "one day wonder" so they can claim (correctly) that they "reported it". Thanks to the internet it is POSSIBLE to find it, but certainly not EASY for the masses.

Regretting BO

Obama's frequent regrets may make us sorry | ajc.com

I think this article points out a big difference with between much of the left and "folks that actually do stuff". People that do things know that all decisions are imperfect with up and down sides and always mixed results. If it doesn't seem that way at the moment, just hang around. "Those that do" discover the logic of "you don't have to beat the bear, just the other guy". In fact, you really don't have to "beat" anyone at all, just keep moving, learning, and trying to make a better decision next time. "Regret" is pretty useless-if you made the best decision that you could make with the information you had, even if it went bad, regret just isn't going to do anyone any good. It is non-productive, and people that do things worry about that a lot.

BO on the other hand has never been a person that does things. He does a lot of complaining "professionally", and in the rare cases that he does make some personal decisions, he tends to regret a lot of them. He hasn't ever really been in any decision making or leadership role, so he hasn't learned the uselessness of "regret". From the current MSM "Obasm" state of affairs, anything he does is fantastic, and seems just peachy to them. Even his "regrets" are a sign of greatness. (No doubt his fecal material smells great to the MSM as well!)

"Viagra Question Flusters McCain"

That was one of the side headlines out on CNN today. What was the "story" about?

He was asked if it was "fair" (on his bus, not at an event) that many insurance companies covered Viagra for men, but not birth control for women and it was asserted that he had voted in the Senate in such a way to indicate that he thought it WAS fair. To the extent he was "flustered" it was because he was obviously caught off guard on the issue and wanted to go figure out how he had voted and what he really thought of the issue. "Flustered" is even a REAL stretch -- he didn't have an immediate answer.

So, do you suppose that a headline about a 72 year old guy with a decade or more younger wife that is "flustered" about a Viagra question is intended to convey a problem with consistency on Senate votes?

Sure it is.

Senate Bows to Bush on FISA

Senate bows to Bush, approves surveillance bill - Yahoo! News

Wow, he must sort of be the Sith Lord from Star Wars, huh? "Bows to Bush ... ah, 69-28 with even his Holiness BO voting in favor? You mean the Lord god BO BOWED to the evil Bush??? That really IS a news story!!

My guess is that BO figures he is going to be President and if companies that did exactly what they were told by the US Government are prosecuted by the US Government, then one would expect a certain "chilling effect". I suppose this is sort of like a heavenly idea for the Democrats... Hmmm, we could prosecute companies for NOT doing what we tell them to do, and then, on the other hand, if the DO what we tell them, we can prosecute them for doing it!! Cool, the lawyers lobby is really going to get their money on this! What a GREAT idea!!

I'd also guess that once BO gets a few briefings and gets to ask something like "Gee Mr President, why IS it that the US hasn't been attacked since 9-11, and in fact has been safer than it was during the wonderful Slick Willie Administration?" That is one of those questions that the MSM has no curiosity on, and it is one that Bush hasn't been very interested in providing any information on. Suppose it has anything to do with gathering intelligence? Nah, couldn't be THAT!!!

Maybe the Terrorists are "Bowing to Bush" just like the Democrat Senate? I suppose they are doing that because ???

How Taxes Actually Work

Political Diary - WSJ.com

This is VERY short and VERY important to read. In case you are REALLY lazy:

New data from the IRS will be out in a few weeks on who pays how much
in taxes. My contacts at the Treasury Department tell me that for the
first time in decades, and perhaps ever, the richest 1% of tax filers
will have paid more than 40% of the income tax burden. The top 50% will
account for 97% of all federal income taxes, while the bottom 50% will
have paid just 3%.

Any questions? The top 50% pay 97% of taxes. BO wants them to pay MORE?? Nice idea, but how likely is that really? How did they get to be in the top 50%? By being idiots? They MIGHT be there because they understand the time value of money and the value of their own time and will make different decisions if you increase their tax burden. Gee, didn't tax rates used to be higher? Let's go back and look at some historical data:

Economist Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University has shown that in 1970,
when the highest tax rate was 70%, the top 1% shouldered 16.7% of the
income tax burden. Today the top tax rate is 35% and the same class of
taxpayers pays a whopping 39% of the burden. The worst way to "soak the
rich," Mr. Hubbard finds, is to raise tax rates.

Hmm, people of some level of intelligence CHANGE THEIR BEHAVIOR due to the environment!! That is nearly impossible for lefty's like BO to figure out, since they don't believe in merit (other than their own of course!). They think that the folks with money either just "got lucky", or "took it from someone else". In that sort of a model, there is a fixed amount of "wealth" to be moved around and it can't be grown and it can't be shrunk. That is an interesting model, but it is completely wrong. It is VERY easy to destroy the economy, and "reasonably possible" to grow it -- we know enough of how it works to have a 100% chance of being able to slow it down or stop it, and a better than 50/50 chance of making it grow.

Looks like BO doesn't understand any of the above. Guess he just isn't "a numbers guy".

The Maliki Withdrawal Demands

Maliki's Demands

Commentary has this great little coverage of the obvious on the Maliki demands. The summary that would be no surprise to the rational, but probably "shocking" to your average lefty:

1). Democracy breeds "politicians", and now Iraq has them as well. The lefts favorite kind of government, Dictatorship, has a few of them too (one guy can't really do EVERYTHING, and he may even realize he is mortal and will have a successor someday). News for the leftys-politicians say things to get votes! (shocking revelation though that may be)

2). Since Iraq now has politicians and elections, they say things that have to be taken politically. Bill Clinton; "The age of big government is over", Billy C again; "We need to have regime change in Iraq". MOST times the politician doesn't really mean what he says, he just wants votes! Politicians sometimes like results too, but only when those results can be translated into votes!

3). Our media these days isn't interested in much beyond making Bush look bad and getting BO elected, so they take statements that DIDN'T include a "timetable" in any sense other than the US would be "out at some point in the future" and translate them very disingenuously into "Maliki Calls For Timetable'. That would be the equivalent of getting married with the "Until death do us part" in the ceremony and the headline reads "Groom Calls for Marriage Timetable". There is misleading and downright lying-I'd put this one in the lie category, but I'm sure the MSM would make the claim it is just a good head fake for the good of the sheep. (gotta defeat that horrible Bush!!)

Naturally, this works really well with the MSMs bleating lefty sheep ... Bush "isn't hearing the calls"!! One of the other clues that can help when evaluating our MSM is this. When they state something like this that "seems so obvious", then it only lasts for a short time and the Democrats never pick it up, that probably means something. They don't WANT it dug into, because then the stupidity of their headlines would be obvious and they would eventually be exposed as biased quacks. Whereas by doing it the way they do, even some reasonable people are caused to "wonder". "Gee, I saw a headline that said that the Maliki government wants US troops out on a timetable, and then I didn't hear anymore-I wonder what is up with that? Maybe there IS something to that Bush incompetence!" Of course for the lefties it is; "Biased right wing media, won't even hammer away on the obvious story that the Maliki government is working their tails off trying to get the US troops out just as fast as they can and stupid Bush is dragging his feet ... shucky darn, guess I'll go read the Daily Kos".

The nice thing about the MSM is that if one is too exposed to them, they manage to make EVERYONE stupider ... and waste a ton of time just getting to the bottom of their head fakes!

Who Pays the Taxes?

Political Diary - WSJ.com

So the top 50% of earners pay 97% of the taxes, and the bottom 50% pay just 3%. BUT, according to BO and the Democrats, it STILL "isn't fair". By god, that goose had better give us more golden eggs RIGHT NOW!!

New data from the IRS will be out in a few weeks on who pays how much in taxes. My contacts at the Treasury Department tell me that for the first time in decades, and perhaps ever, the richest 1% of tax filers will have paid more than 40% of the income tax burden. The top 50% will account for 97% of all federal income taxes, while the bottom 50% will have paid just 3%.

But hey, maybe it will work! Maybe we CAN get those golden eggs faster and that lower 50% can get even MORE benefits ... after all, we know it is ONLY those higher income earners that are "greedy". But wait, didn't we do high taxes before? How did that work?

Economist Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University has shown that in 1970, when the highest tax rate was 70%, the top 1% shouldered 16.7% of the income tax burden. Today the top tax rate is 35% and the same class of taxpayers pays a whopping 39% of the burden. The worst way to "soak the rich," Mr. Hubbard finds, is to raise tax rates.

News at 11, people that only get .30 cents out of every $ they make will find a way to "not make that $" ... they may defer it, they may plow it back into their business, or they may just go fishing, but they aren't going to take it as income. They didn't GET to be high income by being stupid!!!

So current tax policies are "soaking the rich" for over DOUBLE what they were in '70, PLUS, the economy is MUCH larger and those "rich" are making far more money, so the overall revenue is MUCH higher! One would think it couldn't get much better than that, but of course that would assume that taxation was actually about "funding the government".

Much like rape not being about sex, taxation has never been about funds. Both are about the same thing-POWER! BO and the Democrats don't like to see people be motivated and carry through on moving to higher income brackets by earning saving and investment. Those activities tend to breed INDEPENDENCE, and it is DEPENDENCE that BO and company want!! Now it is true that killing that off is likely to make EVERYONE worse off, but that is not their concern. They have NEVER actually cared about the people that they claim to care about, and could care less if they all die of starvation, national health care or AIDs.

Their purpose is to use their power to destroy independence in any form they can. High taxes and inflation are two very good levers to help them meet their goals.

Bad Day for the Captain

He Truly Is About CHANGE!

When BO says CHANGE, he really means it! He is about as shifty as a drunken cat on a beach ball! Pretty well done Ad. Now if BO was a Republican the MSM would have put all this together and run it as often as "Bring Em On" and "Mission Accomplished"!

Conservatives for BO?

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Conservatives for Obama?

Thomas Sowell is always brilliant, and maybe even more important in this age of BO, BLACK! One would hope that he can speak the truth without being called a racist.

The whole article is important, but particularly the following:

If all that was involved was Democrats versus Republicans, the
Republicans would deserve the condemnation they are getting, after
their years of wild spending and their multiple betrayals of the
principles and the people who got them elected. Amnesty for illegal
aliens was perhaps the worst betrayal.

But, while the media may treat the elections as being about
Democrats and Republicans-- the "horse race" approach-- elections were
not set up by the Constitution of the United States in order to enable
party politicians to get jobs.

Nor were elections set up in order to enable voters to vent their emotions or indulge their fantasies.

Voting is a right but it is also a duty-- a duty not just to show
up on election day, but a duty to give serious thought to the
alternatives on the table and what those alternatives mean for the
future of the nation.

No matter what anyone thinks of BO, the fact is that there is no way this guy has DEMONSTRATED any qualifications to be President. One would NEVER hire anyone for a leadership job in a business, or even in your personal life without having DEMONSTRATED ***WAY*** more than this guy!!!

I suspect that the nation has NEVER come even close to this level of frivolity in the election of a President.

Just in more or less my lifetime:

Eisenhower - Supreme Comander Eurpope WWII
Kennedy - 2 terms US House, in 2nd term Senate, War Experience WWII
Johnson - House of Rep and Senator forever
Nixon - House, VP
Ford - Speaker of House (+)
Carter - Gov State of Georgia
Reagan - Gov State of California
Bush - Head of CIA, VP
Clinton - Gov Arkansas
Bush - Gov of Texas

Obama? -- less than a SINGLE term in the Senate, and Illinois House????

If this wasn't for real it would be beyond imaginable. This is a roll of the dice on long odds beyond anything ever seen in the US. WHY????

My Theories:
1). The MSM successfully convinced the populace that W is the greated idiot in the history of the world -- and we are still here. The message is "if Bush can be President, than ANYONE can be President, it is EASY" ... yes, they claim that he has done a "horrible job" (wink, wink, nod, nod) ... but everyone actually knows that things are "pretty good". We put the village idiot in the job and he didn't REALLY (wink, wink) do THAT bad, ANYONE will CERTAINLY do better!!!

2). Sowell points this one out kind of ... it is time to "teach the Republicans a lesson". I'm a bit reminded of Clevon Little in Blazing Saddles holding the pistol to his own neck and saying "nobody move or the Ni***r gets it!! It would be nice if all the worlds dangers were the humorous foils of a Mel Brooks script, but I'm afraid such is not the case.

3). Thanks in part to the media and thanks to the times being as good as they are, we completely miss our peril. We have lived with strongly divided government for so long ... the whole Reagan administration, all but the first two years of the Clinton admin, and all but the middle 4 years of the Bush admin that we are complacent. Even during the brief periods of undivided government, the Senate margins were razor thin so a fillibuster threat was always exteremely real, the minority party could stop whatever they really wanted to. Even if the Democrats don't completely get a filibuster proof senate, it is almost certain that their margins are going to be close to that. I completely agree with Sowel that the Republicans did a lot of stupid things relative to spending and immagration while they had control. BUT, this is giving the Lamborghini, the liquor and the firearms to the teens ... and going off to Europe for a year!!!

Any "conservative" that falls prey to BO ISN'T!!!

Big Re-Up Nothing to Report

Power Line: The big re-up

1200 troops re-up in Iraq, no news from the MSM at all. Why would they do it? I thought all the troops that are on the ground every day would HAVE to know even more about the "Iraq Fiasco", "lost cause", "civil war", "no progress or hope of progress", etc. Why in the world would 1200 of them re-enlist in a volunteer force when it is obvious that they are risking their lives for something that has no hope of any kind of success at all? They must be insane? Seems like that would be a HUGE news story.

I KNOW that our MSM has no bias and is always trying to give us the straight information, so why would this not be reported. This is like a 10% at one time re-enlist. That would seem to be completely impossible if the view that the MSM and Democrats present to us every day is true, wouldn't it?

I'm SURE that the MSM and the Democrats are going to give us some clear explanation for this "sometime soon".

Kerry Forgot VP Discussion of 2004?

The Associated Press: Kerry says McCain lacks judgment to be president

I've always thought that one of the things that allows lefties to be lefties is very short and selective memories. As the VP search was going on, I recalled the interval when the Kerry camp and the MSM was in a tizzy over the delightful prospects of the then "maverick" John McCain running with Kerry in a cross-party ticket.

Four years later, Kerry thinks that McCain doesn't have the judgment to be president! Wow, so that must mean that Kerry isn't much of a judge of character. Also shows the kind of trust one can put in your typical liberal. McCain crossed party lines to defend Kerry, one can see the sort of result that bi-partisanship earns from those bastions of "even handedness", the lefties. The following from the AP article.

McCain came to Kerry's aid in March 2004 after Bush and his campaign tried to paint the Democrat as weak on defense. He rejected the suggestion in broadcast interviews and chided both parties for waging such a "bitter and partisan" campaign.

Your typical liberal just figures it is "fun to watch" when they throw some foolish person that actually practices that "bi-partisanship" from the right under the bus. It is the classic "mistake" that conservatives are prone to. Since we hold many things more important than politics, when a liberal does something we agree with, we tend to support them. We are also much more likely to just "put politics behind us and do the right thing", since we see so very many things as FAR more important than politics (God, country, family, friends, career, sports, fireworks, firearms ....).

Not so the left-politics and political power are all there is. If they can make use of a conservative, they will, but it is pure "use" they have no loyalty to anything beyond raw political power and control. They were all for having a few Republicans around as long as they were "Democrat lite" and held no real power of any sort. Ah yes, the days of "civil politics". The left is perfectly willing to be "civil" as long as you operate the way they dictate. Difference of opinion? You are suddenly "evil, racist, extremist, radical, uncivil, a hater, a liar ..." etc. Not agreeing with a lefty is the only real definition of "uncivil".

Towing the Sheriff Boat

Managed to get down to the Mississippi last Tuesday for a PERFECT night out. We drove down to the Alma lock and dam, then started towing tubes north of the Wabasha bridge. As we were retrieving a tuber, we were motioned over by a boat that turned out to be the Sheriff boat ... disabled engine. I suspect the two deputies figured that the least embarrassing potential was the ugly bald fat guy with the family in the boat. It was an obvious embarrassing situation. It was clear that getting it over was high on thier priority list-one of their first comments was "tow as fast as you feel comfortable, don't pay any attention to the no wake zone!" We ran about 10MPH and threw up plenty of wake and got them to the lower harbor in Wabasha.

They offered to pay for gas, but we enjoyed doing our good deed for the day and were on our way. More tubing and a nice meal at the Pickle Factory in Pepin. Kind of night one wished that they could bottle for re-use as desired!

Fireworks 2008

Last night we had our best home fireworks show ever. The weather was perfect, and progress is being made on the methodology front. The KEY innovation this year was the addition of 40 HDPE tube launchers from Pyro Mortars. I'm a little taken back by the name, as a person with an average interest in firing off something like $700 worth of fireworks (shared 3x) in 15 min or so, the term "pyro" seems extremely misplaced!

After years of fireworks, I continue to come to the conclusion that fireworks are not "sippin entertainment". There is some "optimum show", but it is not a long drawn out shoot one, reload, shoot another, repeat. It needs a kickoff with some draw, a middle with solid interest and reasonable pace, and then a finale that is something to remember.

We got there. Fireworks were purchased from Island Fireworks, but I'll link to some websites to show examples and to try to remember what to purchase for next year.

• For $29, we picked up 6 small 200 gram repeaters in a grab bag and fused them together (maybe just a bit too slowly). Very nice kickoff I thought, could have been improved by a short volley of mortars.
  
• For value, it is very hard to beat Rambo Kid and Double Impact as mortar shells. They can be had for around $1 a mortar, and with taking the time to fuse them in a nice mortar setup with HDPE tubes, these are the bread and butter of the display. For a decent amount more size, Excalibur is a nice touch, but at $75 for 24 shells, more spendy.
• It was the first year for a "wave repeater" Peacock is an example on the web and one we had, but "Pyro Swords" stole the show in the category.
• We ended the show with a 3" 9 shot finale with assorted other items to fill in (mortars and a nice triangle 500 gram cake, but I think for next year we will skip the 3".
  

Live and learn, everything appeared to be shut down, we even had a slow beer around the fire before heading off to bed, but in the AM it was discovered that a couple of spent cakes next to one of my 20 tube mortar sets had caught fire and had COMPLETE melted to a puddle with the cakes being nothing but ash. Sitting in the middle of our 2x football field sized lower lawn of grass with nothing but green for 100+ yards in any direction, the danger approximated zero, but it was a reminder to do some soaking at the end of the show, especially if conditions are getting dry. At $50 or so, a VERY inexpensive fireworks lesson!


The initial model for next year:

1. Some small "early test firings" to maintain crowd interest.
   
2. more mortars, mixed multiple fires ... except for kick-off an finale, 2-4 in a group is likely all that is needed.
   
3. A couple of roman candle packs in a milk crate that are fused can give a good relatively long shoot, inexpensive "filler".
   
4. The 500 gram cakes can hold their own ... no need to mass mortars around them.
   
5. Some 200 gram cake/mortar combos are great for the intermediate.
   
6. While we did a "No firecrackers" version this year, the addition of a few strings of fused firecrackers is a nice inexpensive way to add some sound interest.
   
7. Getting to the right combo of some 200 gram cakes and potentially a fountain or two could be a great way to go. The big shows are generally limited as to what they can do on the ground due to lack of visibility ... good spot to capitalize in a private show.
   

Another high for the home show, onward and upard for next year!

Good Reading on Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh is Just Getting Warmed Up - NYTimes.com

I rarely get to listen to Limbaugh unless I'm driving somewhere. From my POV, the amount of time taken for the amount of content is not worth my time unless I can easily "double up" and listen while doing something else. I find him far more of an entertainer than a political personage, but I think that in itself is interesting. "Conservative entertainment" is what he does and it can be just as "fun" as the usual liberal forms, I'd argue that society would be improved if that was understood and something over 50% of entertainment was in fact conservative.

What would that mean? True "conservative" entertainment covers at LEAST "both" sides of topics (left/right) and often many more angles. It assumes that the audience is mature and open minded enough to WANT to hear what the entertainer finds to be the most important/interesting/funny/etc information on the topic from as many sides as the entertainer finds to to be important to the topic. Appropriate emotion is certainly important, but conservative entertainment sees the human as BOTH an emotional and rational being, with a balance where reason is primary being sought if not always achieved. The core of maturity (and true intelligence) is to be able to hold multiple ideas in one's attention and realize that in the human state, our task is to discern the "best currently possible". CERTAINLY realizing that part of that "best" is determined by our emotion, but also always aware that it is important that our emotion serves our reason and intellect.

Liberal entertainment is something we are well familiar with. Sadly it is mistakenly often called "mature entertainment", when in fact it should often be called "juvenile entertainment". The term "pornography" is horribly misused in our society to be generally limited to sexual pornography, when the word is MUCH more important than that. It might better be described as "looking at only a single or very limited aspect of something in order to achieve some sort of physical or emotional arousal/impact". The overt appeal is to the simplistic physical or emotional aspects of thetopic. Much of liberal entertainment, and even "news" is simply that; pornography. A specific response is the objective of the pornography purveyor, and that objective is very clear and accessible to even those with little or no maturity or knowledge of a subject. Liberal entertainment removes many dimensions of the world and leaves it seemingly simple, accessible, obvious, limited, predictable and "all about me and my easy satisfaction/titilation/emotional wallowing/feeling superior/feeling correct etc"

Liberal entertainment and reporting is extremely easy to find in our society today. In general it is all that is easily accessible to most people. Here is a great example from today's CNN headlines. A woman died in a hospital. We know very little about much of anything relative to it happening, BUT, it is clearly "an indictment of the health care system". It is a single emotionally charged incident, the MSM tells you how you ought think about it--in the unbeleiveable case that all aspects of the presentation of the information didn't already tell you how to "think" about it as easily as a provocatively dressed woman or nicely prepared meal tells you how to "think".

I believe that Chafets and the NYT did a good job here, not a hatchet job at all. No doubt that Limbaugh is a "personality" with a large ego that like all large egos sometimes gets in his own way. One doesn't become a lot of things--surgeons, fighter pilots, entertainers, CEOs and politicians come to mind as easy examples; without a large ego, it simply goes with the territory and is both a help and a hindrance in the same way as everything else that humans bring to the table is.

This quote states the obvious proof that Limbaugh is conservative entertainment pretty well I think:

Limbaugh’s audience is often underestimated by critics who don’t listen to the show (only 3 percent of his audience identify themselves as “liberal,” according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). Recently, Pew reported that, on a series of “news knowledge questions,” Limbaugh’s “Dittoheads” — the defiantly self-mocking term for his faithful, supposedly brainwashed, audience —
scored higher than NPR listeners.

In general, most Limbaugh listeners (and Limbaugh himself) ENJOY discussion of key issues or the day, since they understand that there are many sides and viewpoints and the task at hand is ALWAYS selecting from conflicting alternatives the best available answers. In contrast, most liberals would like to chant "Bush lied people died" or scream "The Planet is being Raped" and walk away to talk with others that agree with what they have been manipulated to feel and think on a given topic today. If feels much better to them to see themselves as superior, they know that the mainstream culture will support them in that view, so that is the course they choose to take.

I found this discussion on Reagan to be important. I believe that many in the conservative movement today have again lost their faith in America:

Limbaugh admires many aspects of Reaganism, but he is especially animated by his belief in American exceptionalism. “Reagan rejected the notion among liberals and conservatives alike who, for different reasons, believed America was in a permanent state of decline,” he wrote to me in an e-mail message. “He had faith in the wisdom of the American people. . . . He knew America wasn’t perfect, but he also knew it was the most perfect of nations. Reagan was an advocate of Americanism.” In response to a separate question, he wrote: “America is the solution to the world’s problems. We are not the problem.”

Hat's off to the NYT, they don't ALWAYS get it wrong!

If He was an R, He Could Be Censured

Power Line: Enjoying the Good Life in a Mean Country

While it is news to most of the MSM sheep, the only thing "new" about BO as a politician is that his graft is bigger and his cronies are more shady than the average Democrat pickpocket. This post covers a few more of the sordid details ... ho hum, BO gets sweetheart deals on a subprime loan and a giant book deal. Why not? He is GOOD! for goodness sake! It isn't like he is some evil Republican that has like grubbed for money WORKING or (perish the thought) tried to get (horror) profits! Can't have those profits! A little graft from convicted felon buddy Uncle Tony? Hey, NO PROBLEM, see that "D" next to his name? Talk about your free pass. You can be the Pope of Hope AND live in a 2 million home you paid 1.6 for because your felon buddy helped you, AND you got a sweetheart loan, AND a book company gave you a deal they would give to nobody else! Talk about your "new kind of politician"!

Now THIS is Newsworthy!

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time - Blogs from CNN.com

So I wonder if BO had any "incidents" with anyone in '87? Maybe he is a "hot head" too? Who knows, all it takes is somebody to "make the claim", and I KNOW that the MSM will have it listed as a headline, right? Heck, that is only 21 years ago. I wonder what the statute of limitations is on roughing up a Sandinista?; assuming it happened of course. I love the special deal that since McCain is a "renegade", so he has crossed swords with many Republicans, it makes it "especially believable" that one could just report an out of hand statement from someone with an axe to grind from an incident that allegedly happened in '87. I wonder what else it is that the MSM is going to suddenly find Republicans so believable on? I thought Republicans were greedy, ignorant, evil liars? Maybe at least some of them have suddenly reformed?

See, it is is ONLY Republicans that engage in the "politics of personal destruction", no way the MSM or Democrats would EVER be guilty of such a thing! They just NEVER report on "rumor and innuendo", that is one of the ways that we can tell that the MSM and the Democrats are good and Republicans are evil!

A Nation of Cowards

A Nation of Cowards

This is a nicely written laymen oriented philosophical treatise on the relationship between gun rights and freedom. The bottom line is pretty easy to understand--the only enforcement of the idea that government exists at the consent of a the governed is an armed populace. If the governed have no actual power to revoke that consent, then it is only a matter of time that the government will rule as it pleases, consent be damned. After 9-11, many liberals seemed to want to compare the 3K deaths to "car accidents", and yet "one shooting is too many, guns need to be banned".

There seems to be a significant dichotomy there, but I think it actually turns out consistent. On one hand a nation ought to "learn to live with" mass murder by terrorists, and at the same time the general public ought to simply hope that some form of public protection or "social justice" can save them from the depredations of criminals. Control of the masses in a Fascist state demands a certain level of docility in order to be effective. Both the arms and maybe more importantly, the basic idea of individual responsibility for protecting ones own life, family and home is critical to the breaking of the spirit, and the populace accepting their position as wards of the state.

While Nazi Fascism was active and promotional of German exceptionalism as a collective, there is no reason that Fascism must always take that approach, and it appears that the current US virus is taking the opposite track since the historical American spirit is far more individual than collective. There seems to be a move to actually destroy any aspects of American exceptionalism along with the move to Fascism and in it's place to make former "Americans" into "citizens of the world", "part of the world community" where any of the "specialness" of America is removed and we stumble along as a "former world power" -- more than mildly ashamed of our history, but ever seeking approval from our European, UN, or Third World "betters".

Majority Against Freedom?

Poll: Majority against free trade - CNN.com

The MSM seems to think that a majority of American's being against free trade is a problem for "McCain". I'd say it will turn out to be just a bit bigger problem than that. Global Warming may or may not be a problem, and it may or may not be due to human efforts, but I'll let you in a big secret; Trade **IS** Human Caused! What people think and do DOES make a difference in trade!

So what does it mean to be "against free trade"? To the extent that we know anything at all about economics (and if we know anything about anything, it would be hard to imagine that we don't know anything about a 100% human initiated area like economics), then FREE TRADE IS GOOD! Nothing in economics is much more certain than that. Saying 51% of Americans are against something that basic relative to economics is worse than 51% of Americans thinking that babies are delivered by storks! Human beings created economics, they invented neither sex or babies, and sex and babies will continue to happen no matter what people believe. Not so with economics!

How many times as the press lamented belief in creationism? A lot, but science knows WAY less about the physical universe than we do about Economics, no scientist yet has indicated that the universe is 100% created by and for humans and exists only because of human interaction like the economy. Again, the universe will continue operation no matter what we think about it, but it has been shown again and again that when groups of people get stupid ideas about economics, it is is WAY easy to destroy the economy. In fact, it is MUCH easier than having a good one!

How many times have they lamented that some % of Americans see a connection between Iraq and Al Quaeda? A bunch, yet "proving a negative" is pretty much impossible, and proving a negative when there are some "inconvenient facts" like connections of Iraq to the first WTC bombing and some of the key folks that fled Afghanistan fleeing to Iraq. The MSM may well be right, there may be "no connection", but their idea that it is somehow "impossible for a rational person to believe" it is "out there" and VERY selective on what is rational / believable at best. It takes only ONE black swan to disprove the theorem "all swans are white".

But what about this? 100% of economists will tell you that free trade is good, it is in fact the cornerstone of economic success, without which we would be back somewhere between medieval serfs and Soviet Gulag slaves. What is more, since economics is all human created, if we CAN'T understand something that 100% of economists agree on, then is there ANYTHING that is "knowable"?

The answer is no, there is not. To the accuracy of this poll, 51% of Americans have left rationality behind and are blindly following the manipulations of the MSM or some emotion, whim or error of their own. Most likely when the peril that we are in becomes clear, people will wring their hands and say "how could this happen here"? There were PLENTY of signs--the manipulation of Katrina into some supposed "FEDERAL government failure", the whole Global Warming gambit, the current "recession", Valerie Plame, the manipulation of the public to fail to see progress in Iraq and on and on. At every step, statements have been made about "Karl Rove and the manipulation of America by the Bush administration", while the true mass manipulators have picked most of the masses up with both the left and the right hands. (many on the RIGHT are ALSO now convinced that "free trade is bad" and "there is no progress in Iraq").

Unlike the shadowy figures of the supposed "vast right wing conspiracy" the Richard Scaife's, Olin foundation, etc, the left is a bit more clear, and it really isn't a "conspiracy". ABC, NBC, CBS, NYT, MoveOn.org, Harvard, Yale, etc, Hollywood, George Soros, etc. are pretty clear about a number of their goals, they just don't STATE them directly--so I'll help:

1. The destruction of religious faith and transcendent morality -- the abolition or reversal of right/wrong, just/unjust. They see the goal of human existence as "maximization of pleasure" via any means possible with no moral component.
2. The advancement of "practicality/pragmatism" as law--"the most good for the most people" as decided by a small elite that makes those decisions and uses the mass media and or police forces to convince/coerce the rest. Environmentalism, gay rights, abortion on demand, euthanasia, gun control, control of trade, government owned business. "Liberal Fascism"
3. The destruction of "upward" mobility. The idea that children can "advance" economically beyond their parents is dangerous to the the amoral society. It allows a belief in individual potential, responsibility, merit, valuation of some choices beyond others, and a whole host of other issues of "meritocracy" that the left abhors. At the core, "merit" and "individual achievement" exposes the fact that the elite of the left DO NOT hold the sum total of human knowledge in their heads, and even if they did, that quantity of knowledge (however far we may expand it) will ALWAYS be insignificant next to transcendent knowledge (God). Their most core belief is that man is infinitely perfectible on his OWN power and merit. God is not desired and does not and can not exist!
4. All "advancement" must be controlled and dictated by the elite. The university and the government being the only significant components of this, but some wealth is allowed as long as it is controlled by or in direct service of the elite. "Advancement" is by following the dictates of the elite in education / government and "performing" as what THEY define as "performance" (some forms of education, seniority in right contexts, entertainment or sports success). The destruction of upward mobility can also be called "destruction of the middle class" (or bourgeois in more traditional terms). ALL must be dependent on the elite and the dictates of the elite. To stray from the elite in thought or action is either actual or symbolic death. When thus is achieved, liberal fascism is acheived -- the goal of all left movements.

We are seeing the destruction of knowlege in the populace at a frightening level and the movement to BO promises to increase the level of peril immeasureably.

Naive Limosine Liberals?

Op-Ed Columnist - Obama’s Money Class - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

The MSM is always hugely interested in where any money the Republicans get comes from. Brooks is the NYTs "token conservative" (and the "conservative" REALLY needs quotes in Brooks case!). They seem to believe that Republicans are swayed by money, but strangely, Democrats aren't. Surprise, surprise, lawyers have given a lot of money to BO, as have teachers, professors and investment folks. No doubt they have zero expectation he will be swayed by that!

Will BO have second thoughts on big capital gains increases? I certainly hope so, but I don't really think he is going to need those limousine liberal dollars after he gets the reins of power, so I would expect that he is actually quite likely bit the hand that is feeding him. Many of the very class now contributing to BO would not have the money to contribute if it were not for Reagan and a generally conservative basic economic approach the last quarter century. Sadly, most of them are too manipulated to realize that, and therin lies a large part of our peril.