Switching Oxen

Op-Ed Columnist - Where Did ‘We’ Go? - NYTimes.com

I read through Freidman's piece and despair that Americans can return to some semblance of reality based discourse. He seems to realize that Bush was also de-legitimatized, but seems to think it was only because his first election was close. True, the Republican's tried to impeach Billy C, but that was only after he clearly lied often and egregiously in a suit that would have cost any other male at least his job, if not jail time. He also certainly perjured himself, and the Democrat side was recently very pleased to see Scooter Libby be prosecuted on that charge.

It is clear that someone as smart as Friedman CAN utterly forget the CONSTANT calls of "Bush Lied", "Bush is Hitler", "Bush is tapping your phone" ... and indeed, whole movies, some of them shown in theatres to millions of people like "Fahrenheit 911", dedicated to any sort of shoestring insinuation and smear that could be trotted out, not only of Bush, but of American troops, and "Death of A President", a FILM about the assassination of Bush. The number of people that "Bush ought to be shot" got to be so high that it wasn't shocking to hear anymore.

It is very hard to believe that Friedman (and others of his ilk) is not just trying to "set the stage" so that **IF** anything should happen to BO, there can be maximum use of force against all who  Tom is "holding responsible in advance". When Reagan was elected, I remember A LOT of folks saying "he is going to get us all blown up with his cowboy attitude". I personally knew a number of people that were actually building and stocking bomb shelters for the apocolypse -- and while I thought they were idiots, they were college educated folks working in good jobs at a major US corporation. If someone honestly believes that the president is going to "kill us all", isn't that MORE of a reason that someone might try to harm him than "he might be a socialist"?

Reagan of course WAS shot shortly after taking office and AFAIK, NOBODY tried to make it out that the rhetoric of the time "caused his death". People of course DID try to claim that "the hate filled climate in Dallas" got JFK shot, but the guy that shot him had gone to the USSR and Cuba and was a Communist -- not exactly the sort of "Southern angst" that the MSM was hoping for. How about today? It is certainly possible that any sort of a crackpot MIGHT take a shot at BO -- the Reagan would be assassin was trying to impress Jody Foster. You don't get a whole lot loonier than that -- unless of course you take Squeaky Fromme who was a drugged out Manson follower that tried to shoot Gerald Ford with a .45 ACP, but she had failed to chamber a round.

So ANY president COULD have an attempt made on his life at any time -- Saddam Hussein for example tried to have Bush 41 assassinated, but the MSM wasn't very worried about that other than they were concerned that W may have been trying to "get even". Were we missing ANYTHING of the "climate for violence against the president" when Reagan or Bush 43 were in office? I can't imagine what it would have been. Would it have been helpful for the media to assert that during Reagan, "people concerned that he was going to blow us all up" would be tempted to do him harm? or that during Bush 43, that "people who thought he was not legitimately elected, a liar, having soldiers killed for the corporate interests, or trying to harm lower income people for his rich friends" might have cause to do him harm?

Either Friedman is so far gone on bias that he utterly missed the 80's and the '00s, or he has his own rather nasty agenda. There is no way to know, we just have to guess.

But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far left has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.

What kind of madness is it that someone would create a poll on Facebook asking respondents, “Should Bush be killed?” The choices were: “No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care.” The Secret Service is now investigating. I hope they put the jerk in jail and throw away the key because this is exactly what was being done to Rabin.

Even if you are not worried that someone might draw from these vitriolic attacks a license to try to hurt the president, you have to be worried about what is happening to American politics more broadly.

The previous isn't really a quote -- replace "far left" with "far right" in the first paragraph and "Bush" with "Obama" in the second, THEN it is what Friedman said. BUT, unless the guy is especially evil (see above), we have to assume that he is so biased that he didn't have at all the same feeling in the years from '03 to '08 that Bush was demonized beyond ANY comparison with relatively mild criticism of BO today. Apparently, whose Ox is getting gored really DOES make all the difference.

French Contempt for BO?

RealClearPolitics - Sarkozy's Contempt for Obama

Hey, these are the folks that take showers once a week! BO is a subject they know a good deal about.

Nicolas Sarkozy was furious with Barack Obama for his adolescent warbling about a world without nuclear weapons at a meeting Mr. Obama chaired of the United Nations Security Council last Thursday (9/24).

"We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth," President Obama said.

What infuriated President Sarkozy was that at the time Mr. Obama said those words, Mr. Obama knew the mullahs in Iran had a secret nuclear weapons development site, and he didn't call them on it.

‘President Obama dreams of a world without weapons...but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite," Mr. Sarkozy said.

"Iran since 2005 has flouted five Security Council resolutions," Mr. Sarkozy said. "North Korea has been defying Council resolutions since 1993."

"What good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community?" he asked rhetorically. "More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe out a UN member state off the map."

Golly, the cheese eating surrender monkeys are finding BO to be worthy of disdain. Our media used to CELBRATE any slight or perceived slight of Bush from any foreign power -- it was "evidence of how little respect the world had for Bush". But what is up here? Oh, wait -- the MSM LIKES BO, so when foreign leaders show that they think he is an idiot, they do their very best to ignore it, rather than to trumpet it from the mountaintops for days as they did with Bush. If they throw a shoe at him, I bet the MSM will demand that the US go to war over it -- just like we ought to do SOMETHING about those damned "tea bag protestors"!! (after there are so many they can't ignore them anymore).

NOT "The Decider"?

RealClearPolitics - The Campaign is Over, Mr. President

One thing BO seems to want to very much be is "not Bush". Although implementation of that has been hard -- he announced last week that there isn't any way they are going to make the deadline he had set up in January for closing Gitmo -- my expectation is he may just have to rename it rather than close it. Imagine, the great and powerful BO has been unable to convince folks that they REALLY ought to take a couple hundred terrorists that the US deems as too dangerous to be housed on US soil. Might it have been just a BIT more intelligent to figure out a plan for closing it BEFORE you announced that you were closing it by a specific date? That is the way some of us mortals in business have to operate.

The press was certain it was BAD for Bush to be "The Decider", but how good is it now that BO clearly isn't? He is dithering around on Afghanistan while soldiers die -- for what? Things are certainly much worse since BO's last brilliant strategy. The Generals have asked for more troops, but now he isn't sure. While running, he was CERTAIN that Afghanistan was the "war of necessity" and Iraq was "the wrong war". So is it OK for BO to screw up and lose the war that he had declared the right one? Maybe he can cover that on Letterman the next time.

The trouble with Obama is that he gets into the moment and means what he says for that moment only. He meant what he said when he called Afghanistan a "war of necessity" -- and now is not necessarily so sure. He meant what he said about the public option in his health care plan -- and then again maybe not. He would not prosecute CIA agents for getting rough with detainees -- and then again maybe he would.

Most tellingly, he gave Congress an August deadline for passage of health care legislation -- "Now, if there are no deadlines, nothing gets done in this town ..." -- and then let it pass. It seemed not to occur to Obama that a deadline comes with a consequence -- meet it or else.

Well, actually there is a lot more trouble with BO than that, but it is a start.

How surprising. Super candidate without any leadership experience finds that being a leader is HARD -- especially when it is leader of a nation of 300 Million people. Candidate returns to what he knows, being a candidate!! That was much more fun, and he was successful at it! But wait, did those 300 million people hire him to prance around on TV everywhere and be "entertaining"? Not really.

In the Presidents Secret Service

The subject book by Ron Kessler is generally an easy and fun read. It gets way too preachy on the alleged shortcomings of SS management and funding shortages at times, but that stuff can be skimmed.

Generally a fun look behind the scenes at some of the Presidents and first families. Sounds like Jimmy Carter was an even bigger fake than it seemed -- he would carry an empty bag for the camera to make it seem like he carried his own bags, made a big deal out of having a "dry White House" and then liked Bloody Marys before church and treated the help and the SS like absolute crap.

LBJ was as nuts as he seemed -- very close to being a drunk, but kept it under control. Would whip it out and pee with press or staff around anytime he wanted outdoors and didn't mind calling a secretary to take notes while he was taking a big dump.

Reagan was what you would expect -- respectful of the guys, apologetic that they had to work holidays, always saying thanks and giving them food and inviting them and their families to parties. Nancy was as cold as you might expect.

They disliked most of the protectees that were womanizers -- JFK, LBJ, Spiro Agnew, but they sympathized with Slick Willie. They had to deal with Hillary too, and it seems that Billy was very easy to like in private. Apparently the infamous "Hillary throwing stuff at Billy" never happened, but he did get to spend the Martha's Vinyard vacation after the Monica "confession" in the doghouse.

In most ways the book makes the SS seem less invincible than one would like -- I'm not sure that it is doing their ability to protect the president any favors.

Oh, they like BO and family -- he is still smoking away, but that is OK -- he's a Democrat!!

The "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy"

Bill Clinton: 'Vast right-wing conspiracy' as 'virulent' as ever - CNN.com

Does this really make any more sense than "Birthers", "Truthers", or whatever zany idiots are braying at any moment? I think not, except this is the man who walked the halls of power with his pants around his knees, believe it or not, this particular zany idiot was once president.

What would the press have to say if Bush was on a show and talked about a "vast left wing conspiracy"?? From the lefty view, anyone who doesn't accept that the MSM in generally is completely unbiased, Fox is virtually a Nazi hotbed, and there is NO SUCH THING AS LEFT WING MEDIA is as bad a nutcase as someone that believes in hard work, individual responsibility and paying your bills. That kind of howl at the moon naked kind of stuff that really ought to get one locked up as a racist or worse these days ...

KIds SInging Praises to "The One"

The Associated Press: Scrutiny rises over NJ kids singing Obama song

Naturally, the MSM finds this to be just fine. What could be wrong with singing praises to "the one"? Unless someone is a racist, don't they simply HAVE to support the great and powerful BO?

How would kids singing praises to Bush be? Suppose there would have been a Hitler comparison or two on that? Nah, Our press is UNBIASED!!

Preemptive Hillary Use

Have we no mercy?


U.S. Condemned For Pre-Emptive Use Of Hillary Clinton Against Pakistan

Carter Racism

Jimmy Carter says that tea baggers hate President Obama because he's black.

America abhors history. No wonder, given how many national crimes are lurking back there. But we’ve arrived at a time when a politician’s refusal to consider the past is a perverse testament to prudent leadership. And as a result, a statement as obvious as Carter’s—that the tea-baggers hate President Barack Obama because he’s black—can be passed off as controversy in 2009.

Yes indeed, America abhors history. Like how about the last 6 years? Did America hate Bush because he was white? How many times was he called liar, Hitler, idot, burned in effigy and generally maligned in every way possible? The left loved to carry a sign that said "A village in Texas is missing it's idiot" -- it was a pure scream. Now though, "A village in Kenya is missing it's idiot" is completely inappropriate. Strange.

For the leftys, the answer is simple -- Bush did everything wrong and BO does everything right. There is no possible reason to dislike BO other than he is black, end of story. The war in Afghanistan was worthy of protest with  Bush in office, now it is fine -- even though it is going far worse under BO's policies. Being left means that ideology is the only answer -- hatred of folks with opposing views is reflexive. True, blacks are hated worse if they are conservative like Clarence Thomas, but leftys can never  be racist. It is righteous to hate conservative views and the idea that blacks would have such views is so abhorrent, they are hated especially badly. Forcing blacks into a standard thought prison isn't racist at all if you are of the left.

So to the left, Carter is right -- criticism of the right is just inherently good. Racism is especially noxious, so hanging that placard on anyone that disagrees with BO is just fine. Everyone is free to agree with the left!!

Liberal = Forced

Op-Ed Columnist - Have a Nice Day - NYTimes.com

Friedman is a smart guy. At one time he seemed to have a pretty good handle on what global competition means, but lately he seems to have decided that we are too much at peril from global warming to keep being competitive. He makes this rather straight forward statement relative to solar energy:

The reason that all these other countries are building solar-panel industries today is because most of their governments have put in place the three prerequisites for growing a renewable energy industry: 1) any business or homeowner can generate solar energy; 2) if they decide to do so, the power utility has to connect them to the grid; and 3) the utility has to buy the power for a predictable period at a price that is a no-brainer good deal for the family or business putting the solar panels on their rooftop.

I'm always impressed at how quickly the leftward leaning fall into the force mode -- "has to"! They are all about "choice" as long as it is offing the unborn, same sex marriage, or paying taxes (as long as you are a Democrat), but for the stuff they get interested in, "has to" arrives very quickly. A few laws for public safety and preventing crime isn't enough for them -- they need to have a law for every aspect of your life, your companies life, and if possible, the lives of everyone in the "universe" (as in "universal" health care).

 Businesses, markets and such are just not as smart as "the experts" ... although we find out over and over that they are.  

Charles on BO and the Truth

RealClearPolitics - Does He Lie?

Great column, just read it.

Czars!

Nuff said!

Wilson Gauranteed Not Racist

Jimmy Carter Cites 'Racisim' in Joe Wilson's Outburst

If Jimmuh thinks Joe is a racist, that is absolute proof to me that he isn't. It seemed like Jimmuh was right one time, but then he changed his mind.

ACORN Video

Just take the time to watch it, and THEN give just a TINY bit of thought. This ranks amoung the most AMAZING things I've ever seen!! In some ways I almost hope it is a hoax -- one would think it almost has to be. If it isn't, the level of corruption in the Democrat party and the MSM is WAY beyond anything I ever imagined.

If true (which I find increasingly hard to imagine, but if NOT true, why doesn't someone expose them???to one of the liberal dodges to press bias."They just print what sells". Are you KIDDING!!! We have a cute young woman, scantilly dressed running around looking like the college Halloween party version of Pimp and Hooker, but it is WORKING, over and over with employees of a national organization that has both helped and been paid by the current President!!! BO wanted to have these stooges do the CENSUS for crying out loud. The ONLY sort of legit job that BO ever had was as one of these folks!!!!

You've got sex, scandal, stupidity cubed, connection with the President. This is a GREAT story -- except, except -- well, it is the MSM's guy!!! They can't run this, it makes BO look like the idiot he is. If they could have had something like this connected to Bush, it would have been 24x7 -- "when will he resign"!!!

To Almost Get It

Op-Ed Columnist - High-Five Nation - NYTimes.com

Brooks sees the disease, and he ALMOST gets the cause:

And there was something else. When you look from today back to 1945, you are looking into a different cultural epoch, across a sort of narcissism line. Humility, the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else, was a large part of the culture then.

But that humility came under attack in the ensuing decades. Self-effacement became identified with conformity and self-repression. A different ethos came to the fore, which the sociologists call “expressive individualism.” Instead of being humble before God and history, moral salvation could be found through intimate contact with oneself and by exposing the beauty, the power and the divinity within.

Brooks is right -- most of the nation is self absorbed, self promoting, out to "get it all", "only going around once -- and grabbing for all the gusto". We used to have "shared values" -- actually we basically had ONE "shared value" -- that we were all children of God that would finally be judged by a standard that was much higher than our own. Gayle Sayers said it as "God is first, my friends are second, and I am third". I'd argue that God, Family, Friends, Country, and then self might be good, but the only REALLY important think is that God in position one. See, it IS always "God" in position #1 -- for some folks it is self, for some political party, for some money, for some the Packers (OK, so that one is hard for me) ... the point is that EVERY human has a "God" -- the issue is just which one.

The difference in America is that the vast majority of folks have took the eternal, the transcendent and the redeeming person of Christ out of their lives and replaced it with some earthly idol -- for a lot of folks and the media, it is his holiness BO, but one idol is pretty much like another.

The idea that of the supposed "civility thing" being somehow worse now is absurd. The Democrats booed Bush in at least '05 during the SOTU, and I think at other times. John MacEnroe made swearing at the line judges a standard part of tennis, and odd happenings at celebrety awards events are also so normal that they hardly bear reporting except for the media to make some tenuous connection with Joe Wilson and claim that somehow "town meetings" are responsible for the "loss of civility".

Egads, "Bush lied, people died", "Bush=Hitler" and at least some screaming and chanting set of protesters at any sort of a Republican event has been old hat for as long as I have known. It is true that it IS very different to get Republicans away from family, church, job, hobbies, volunteer work, etc to speak out. Democrats figure that leftward demonstrators are "comforting" and supposed "right wingers" are somehow "chilling". The left is always hot to defend your right to agree with them and pretty certain that anyone that doesn't agree with them is dangerous, racist, evil, stupid or all of the above. Democrats don't believe in debate -- they have all the correct positions, it is up to the Republicans to shut up, work hard and pay for whatever crazy scheme the Democrats dream up.

Nothing important ever changes. If it changes, it is just mechanism.

Admonish the Democrats!

The Democrats have gone nuttier than usual.

In the words of our most holy and illustrious leader, BO; "Wiith all that's going on in the country with health care and the economy and the wars abroad, it doesn't make sense to arrest a guy in his own home if he's not causing a serious disturbance."

That was over the Gates arrest, for which it made no sense at all -- it isn't a policeman's job to think about those issues, but it IS the job of congress!! Does it make any sense to take a day of Congressional time to admonish a guy who apologized already? Especially when Bush was booed at a SOTU by the Democrats and called a "liar" CONSTANTLY for saying that Saddam had WMD --- which Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Teddy Kennedy, Harry Reid, and virtually everyone else ALSO said?

We just got done with 6+ years when the MSM and the Democrats succeeded in making "Bush=Liar" essentially the national view over a position that their leadership virtually unanimously shared prior to the Iraq war.

But now when BO spews lies that he MUST know to be lies a mile a minute, it is a HUGE breach of decorum to call him on it? I agree it IS a breach of decorum (in congress) and the ONE Republican that told the truth from the floor OUGHT to have apologized ... which he did.That ought to have MORE than ended it given the past history of the other party.

Who Are they Kidding?

RealClearPolitics - The Media's Pathetic Double Standard

The link covers fairly well the amazing double standard in the MSM. Bush/Cheney were called every name in the book in any venue you can imagine. Bush was booed by Democrats during the SOTU.. **NOW** we are worried about "incivility"???

People are so biased they have lost all contact with reality.

Wisdom on Getting More

RealClearPolitics - Fables for Adults

Sowell is always a fount of wisdom. Here on how when you try to take something away from someone else -- Doctors, Insurance Companies, Rich People, etc, you can often end up losing what you have now.

Defining "Community Organizer" (ACORN)

Power Line - My Heroes

You really need to go off and watch at least a little of one of the videos -- remember, your tax dollars are helping fund ACORN!!

We have a "Community Organizer" as President. ACORN is "the Association of Community OrganNizers". Most people know very little about it because the MSM tells them very little about it. They ended up with indictments against them for voter fraud in how they got out the BO vote, they get millions in GOVERNMENT money as well as millions from Democrats. It is a really cozy relationship -- BO wanted them to do the census for him!!

A couple of young folks enterprisingly did a hidden camera operation posing as a pimp and a prostitute trying to get a house -- AFTER the Sub-Prime meltdown. ACORN took it in stride -- no concerns that they were going to import underage prostitutes (hey, 98% of prostitutes vote Democrat!!!), they were just interested in how they could scam the system in order to get a house! BTW, ACORN was a MAJOR part of creating the Sub-Prime debacle.

Don't see much MSM coverage of this!!!

Perspective of a Russion Immigrant

Take the time to read this. Someone else understands that while greed is a bad human propensity, so is envy. The result of greed as been proven to be more for all, but MUCH more for some. The result of envy driving a system is less in aggregate, far less for 98%, and a "decent living" for a couple % -- but only in relation to the impoverished 98%. Even the "richest" leaders in the USSR had less than the middle class in the US.

Read it and weep. We didn't know what we had, so now we are heading fast down the road to destruction.

The Perspective Of A Russian Immigrant

Posted by NFRA Staff • August 22, 2009 • Printer-friendly The Perspective of a Russian Immigrant, by Svetlana Kunin

In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, I was taught to believe individual pursuits are selfish and sacrificing for the collective good is noble. 

In kindergarten we sang songs about Lenin, the leader of the Socialist Revolution. In school we learned about the beautiful socialist system, where everybody is equal and everything is fair; about ugly capitalism, where people are exploited and treat each other like wolves in the wilderness. 

Life in the USSR modeled the socialist ideal. God-based religion was suppressed and replaced with cultlike adoration for political figures. 

The government-assigned salary of the proletariat (blue-collar worker) was 30%-50% higher then any professional. Without incentive to improve their life, professionals drank themselves to oblivion. They — engineers, lawyers, doctors, teachers — earned a government-determined salary that barely covered the necessities, mainly food.
Raising children was a hardship. It took four to six adults (parents and grandparents) to support a child. The usual size of the postwar family was one or two children. Every woman had the right to have an abortion and most of them did, often without anesthesia.
There is a comparative historical reality that plays out the consequences of two competing ideologies: life in the USSR and in America. When the march to the worker's paradise — the Socialist Revolution — began in 1917, many people emigrated from Russia to the U.S. 

In the USSR, economic equality was achieved by redistributing wealth, ensuring that everyone remained poor, with the exception of those doing the redistributing. Only the ruling class of communist leaders had access to special stores, medicine and accommodations that could compare to those in the West. 

The rest of the citizenry had to deal with permanent shortages of food and other necessities, and had access to free but inferior, unsanitary and low-tech medical care. The egalitarian utopia of equality, achieved by the sacrifice of individual self-interest for the collective good, led to corruption, black markets, anger and envy.
Government-controlled health care destroyed human dignity. 

Chairman Nikita Khrushchev released facts about Stalin and his purges. People learned of the horrific purge of more than 20 million citizens, murdered as enemies of the state.
Those who left Russia found a different set of values in America: freedom of religion, speech, individual pursuits, the right to private property and free enterprise. The majority of those immigrants achieved a better life for themselves and their children in this capitalist land. 

These opportunities let the average immigrant live a better life than many elites in the Soviet Communist Party. The freedom to pursue personal self-interest led to prosperity. Prosperity generated charity, benefiting the collective good. 

The descendants of those immigrants are now supporting policies that move America away from the values that gave so many immigrants the chance of a better life. Policies such as nationalized medicine, high tax rates and government intrusion into free enterprise are being sold to us under the socialistic motto of collective salvation.
Socialism has bankrupted and failed every society, while capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system. 

There is no perfect society. There are no perfect people. Critics say that greed is the driving force of capitalism. My answer is that envy is the driving force of socialism. Change to socialism is not an improvement on the imperfections of the current system.
The slogans of "fairness and equality" sound better than the slogans of capitalism. But unlike at the beginning of the 20th century, when these slogans and ideas were yet to be tested, we have accumulated history and reality. 

Today we can define the better system not by slogans, but by looking at the accumulated facts. We can compare which ideology leads to the most oppression and which brings the most opportunity. 

When I came to America in 1980 and experienced life in this country, I thought it was fortunate that those living in the USSR did not know how unfortunate they were.
Now in 2009, I realize how unfortunate it is that many Americans do not understand how fortunate they are. They vote to give government more and more power without understanding the consequences. 

Svetlana Kunin, Stamford, Conn.

What About "Settled Science"?

Scientists discover surprise in Earth's upper atmosphere / UCLA Newsroom

That bastion of conservative thought, UCLA discovered a "surprise" that interaction of the Solar Wind and the Magnetosphere is heating the upper atmosphere. They make no mention of Global Warming (I suppose because that is "Settled Science"), but if we live in an era where "Scientific Surprise" is possible, then how can Global Warming be settled?

Tim Walz Healthcare Town Hall

I went to the Tim Walz local healthcare town meeting Saturday. There were around 3000 folks there and it looked and sounded like about 2 to 1 against the current healthcare proposal. In some ways it was almost laughable -- ex Senator Durenberger was there, a big guy from Mayo, a guy from Blue Cross and Blue Shield and a business owner. All agreed that "the biggest problem is medicare" -- it sets the standards for forms, procedures, charges, etc. MN, WI, N&S Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming,, etc have an average cost of $6K a head for medicare and their results are the best in the nation. NY, California, TX, FL, IL, Michigan, etc cost greater than $13K per medicare recipient (adjusted for pop age, cost of living, etc), but their results are the worst in the nation.

Why? Medicare pays on "what you do", NOT on "what are your results" -- and since medicare is by far the largest single payer TODAY, the hospitals, insurance companies, etc have really no choice but to generally follow that lead -- it would increase their costs horribly if they did not. Mayo (and others in the the low cost states) buck that trend -- Mayo lost $800 million on medicare last year, but if they were to try to break even, they would have to spend LESS time with their patients and order more tests that would allow them to get more reimbursement, but would mean that elderly patients were transported, pricked and prodded more often with poorer results.

So why don't they fix it? Well, this is the funny part -- Walz essentially says "they can't" -- those high cost states are bigger and get a lot more money for the way they are doing business now, and they aren't about to admit that "MN / WI do it better" AND take a lot less money from the federal coffers. So the PRESSURE is to "do it worse" -- for Mayo and others to operate like medicare operates even though they know it is wrong. Walz is a Democrat though, so the ONLY thing he can think of to make things better is to pass is "a big new program -- NOT fix medicare, that can't be touched because folks PERCEIVE it to be what they want" -- since the Democrats hope in big government is boundless, even though everyone up there (all brought in by Walz) is in agreement that medicare is the root cause of our rising and inefficient medical costs, the only way to fix it is with ANOTHER government program, and HOPE that one somehow came out better.

Naturally, the 2 to 1 ratio kept trying to say "JUST FIX MEDICARE" !!! they know what to do, there is a big set of states doing it and getting cheaper and excellent results --- all Walz could keep doing was explaining that "CA and NY have more representatives than all the states that are doing it right combined" -- it is politically impossible to do the right thing!!! BUT, "we need to do something"!!! -- and the votes might be there for another Trillion dollar program, so we do a huge new program and HOPE that SOMEHOW whatever political greed, kickbacks and screw ups it was that made medicare into the gold plated albatross that it has turned out to be, "this is different".

I guess just keep repeating "Yes We Can" over and over and click your ruby red slippers together and maybe somehow it will all work out!!!

The highlight of the day was a Russiian immigrant that was lucky enough to get to speak and in broken english said "I grew up in the USSR, I've SEEN what government healthcare is, you people would be CRAZY to go that way! I came to America because I believed it is different, I can't believe that this discussion is even going on here in America!!" He got a standing ovation from the 2/3 of the people opposed to BOcare. The other 1/3 looked mighty unhappy that we allowed legal immigration from the old USSR.

Some closing thoughts:

• Walz talked about "roads and schools" and made the comment "try driving home without roads". Certainly a specious argument in any case ("did you buy your clothes at a government store?" ... it ISN'T "all or nothing"). The idea that there isn't a difference between "federal and local" is especially stupid given the big chart he showed multiple times of the difference between MN and places like NY. Locality matters!!! ... that is a good reason to NOT have FEDERAL healthcare!!
• The idea of "we HAVE to do SOMETHING ... so, it may as well be THIS" ... when "this" is nearly totally undefined borders on insanity. "First do no harm" is an INCREDIBLY good piece of advice. It was WAY easier to screw things up than to make them better -- and the fact that Medicare has screwed things up was very apparent.
  
• Walz had the big show of hands on Social Security and Medicare -- how many are on it, how many want to give it up. Gee, people like "free stuff" -- BUT, when people get exposed to how much it is COSTING, how many TENS OF TRILLIONS we are in the hole with those programs with NO IDEAS on how to get us out, it is different. The fact that the masses like the stuff that they are given is EXACTLY what killed Democracy prior to the US, and exactly why we are killing ours!
  

Humor and Politics

A more liberal friend of mine sent me this Archie Bunker on Gun Control in good fun. I've been a bald guy since I was 21, I learned to laugh at myself a long time ago. I also find the human condition in general to have a lot of humor. So even though I know what Archie is "up to", he is still funny.

Carroll O'Connor, the actor that plays Archie, and Norman Lear, the producer of "All in the Family" are VERY far to the left of the political spectrum. There is nothing wrong with that, and it is exceedingly common in all of our media, from news, television, movies and music to be fairly far left. It is in fact "the dominant culture". News, entertainment, or even entertainers that are not generally left are in fact "called out" -- Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the late Charlton Heston, etc. The general media makes sure to tell everyone, "these outlets are biased -- they have an axe to grind, be careful". Again, it is a free country, that is fine -- although one wonders what it really means when the pot calls the kettle black. What does the claim of "bias" against those found to somehow be "conservative" say about those pointing??

The Archie character uses his malappropisms and bigoted attitude to malign and belittle the idea of "guns making us safer" by the assertion that "we ought to just hand out guns to people getting on planes" in order to stop hi-jacking. While Archie was well in advance of 9-11, I find it interesting as a CC holder thinking of those folks on the aircraft being flown into the WTC buildings faced relatively well trained men that had almost certainly killed or were holding a Stewardess or worse (maybe kids, we don't really know) under the threat that they would "slit their throats".

A 9mm slug to the forehead will pretty much abate throat slitting. If US citizen CC permit holders were allowed to carry on domestic aircraft, I sincerely doubt that 9-11 would have happened at all ... at least not the way it did. The non-us citizens could not have got a permit at and would have known that it was highly likely that their box cutters would have had to face one or more armed citizens that they would not have been able to discover in advance. Even if they DID manage somehow to illegally obtain a permit, not knowing who is going to draw a gun on you increases your difficulty.

The combination of educational system attitudes and the general media makes it seem like "legal gun owners are stupid" (I often wonder if they think that criminal gun owners are smarter than the legal ones?) -- BO's 2nd book has the quite laughable thinking that "conservatives think of their guns like liberals think of their books". It is always comfortable to think that folks that think differently from us are "less intelligent". Given the vast limits of human intelligence, the sad fact is that we are all stupid enough relative to the problems of existence, let alone meta-existence, that it is more than likely that ALL human positions are far more inaccurate to actual reality than we realize. On a universal scale, the difference between "Archie Bunker and Albert Einstein" is likely about as significant as the difference between the smartest ant in the ant hill and the least intelligent. From our vaunted position, we feel such discussions about ants are meaningless.

You can go look around the web and find a lot of evidence that CC laws seem to reduce crime. Like anything on the web, I'm sure you can find some counter examples, but it seems that if there was even a SHRED of evidence in the other direction, at least one of the 39 states that have liberalized CC laws in the last couple decades would have repealed the change. While my view is that criminals are generally less intelligent, one might think that the thought that your intended victim may be legally armed isn't all that comforting. As a criminal, it isn't very likely you get out to the range very often in order to improve your competence with your weapon, so the prospect of a gun owner that does silver dollar multi-tap groups on a regular basis is likely not to help your sleep. That seems like common sense to me, and when statistics and common sense go together, it seems pretty plausible.

More RTC, less crime: Since 1991, 23 states have adopted RTC laws, replacing laws that prohibited carrying or that issued carry permits on a very restrictive basis; many other federal, state, and local gun control laws have been eliminated or made less restrictive; and the number of privately-owned guns has risen by about 90 million.² There are more RTC states, gun owners, people carrying firearms for protection, and privately owned firearms than ever before. In the same time frame, the nation's murder rate has decreased 46 percent to a 43-year low, and the total violent crime rate has decreased 41 percent to a 35-year low.³ RTC states have lower violent crime rates, on average, compared to the rest of the country (total violent crime by 24 percent; murder, 28 percent; robbery, 50 percent; and aggravated assault, 11 percent).⁴

You Lie!

PostPartisan - Republicans Behaving Badly

Naturally, the MSM has been all over the one congressman that said "you lie!" to BO. I agree, that is bad behavior and he was right to apologize. Listen to the Democrats boo and guffaw away in the background while Bush tries to make progress on overhauling Social Security in the video below -- another multi-Trillion dollar bad debt hanging over our collective heads. Remember any outcry in the MSM over the impropriety of that show of disrespect? Neither do I!




How many times has Bush been called a "liar" for WMD? I'd think thousands by just the Democrat elected officials alone, yet a "lie" assumes that one KNOWS the truth. Saying "the stock market is going to go down" and then seeing it go up isn't a LIE, it is making a bad prediction. The Republican that blurted out "liar" apoligized and could validly claim "heat of the moment", but what about the same rule of decorum being followed by the President since he is speaking in the chamber? Certainly he can't assert that he said this in "the heat of the moment":

Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

While "death panel" is certainly incendiary speech, that sort of speech is far from unusual in congress. I recall Reagan's "Dirty Water Bill", and BO recently appointed Van Jones (who had to resign) that claimed that Bush did 9-11 as an "inside job". BO himself mentioned "And we will also create an independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead." So what is "waste"? Is it a waste to give expensive brain cancer treatment to a guy in his late '70s with brain cancer? (like Teddy Kennedy) I honestly don't know -- to one set of folks, it is probably "wasteful", but to another set, not doing it would be a "death panel". How about if he was 85? 95? 105? Does it EVER become "wasteful"? What does it mean when someone is too old for national health care to pay for some treatment?

Isn't this EXACTLY what is "uncivil" -- one side says "independent commission", the other says "death panel" and then the president escalates it to "lie"? Can we talk about some age where "heroic measures" are just going to prolong suffering rather than improve life? Who decides that? A "commission"? the individual? insurance companies (including maybe the "government option"?). Isn't that what the discussion is supposed to be about?

Oh, and while we talk about that, last night's speech had a lot of examples of the Democrat's favorite argument -- SHUT UP!!

Finally, our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers. When health care costs grow at the rate they have, it puts greater pressure on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined. Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close.

These are the facts. Nobody disputes them. We know we must reform this system. The question is how.

Reminds me of Global Warming -- "the debate is over".

So Medicare and Medicaid are growing out of control. Wouldn't a sane person say to control the costs of Medicare and Medicaid FIRST, then we will give the government more control over health care once they have proven that they can control the costs on these two programs that they have owned for decades? If the government can't control the costs of these key programs, how in the world is it going to control the costs by taking on MORE??? If the CURRENT burden is "unsustainable", then why in the world would we want to ADD to that burden?? "These are facts, nobody disputes them". In other words, "shut up". But you follow it with "the question is how". My goodness, "Death is a real issue that causes a lot of grief, nobody disputes this. We must reform death. The question is how."

Indeed -- the question very often is "how" -- sometimes just because in the case of winning the game, making a really good cherry pie, or getting a kiss from Cindy Lou, it is the HOW (execution) that is difficult not the goals, even if we have decided on the outcome that we would like. Sometimes, like the death case, and possibly like the health care case, even though the problems are obvious, the solutions (how) are anything but. They are flat out impossible (like death), or they require a whole set of trade-offs that are so difficult or costly that they are fraught with peril. In those cases, the obvious answer is INCREMENTAL! Show the brilliance and resourcefulness of the US government by fixing medicare and medicare FIRST. Instigate various programs at a STATE LEVEL and verify that they work, and THEN see if they SCALE!! Things that work for 30 million people are not guaranteed to work for 300 million people. If you doubt this, put 300 lbs in your trunk, see how your car drives, and then try it with 3,000lbs!! (10x, same scale factor as 30 million to 300 million). The scale factor alone is one of the reasons that our situation is different from Canada, England and others.

BO did very little to help on that path. One man's "bickering" is another mans "discussion of issues" -- were a Republican trying to deal with a real problem (as Bush did with Social Security), no matter how much he "reached out", there would be ZERO help from the other side (as there was with FICA) and he would be 100% demonized over "trying to kill social security" (as Bush was). It is really interesting to watch the MSM be 100% on the reverse side -- all BO's motives are pure, he would NEVER try to create a bunch of big government unionized bureaucracy that would vote Democrat!! or (perish the thought), try to pay off one section of the population that he thinks will vote for him with money taken from those he thinks will not!!! Certainly, the great and pure BO is above that!!

Blogging BO Address

So why do Democrat Presidents seem to have trouble just getting to a speech on time? Slickster was notorious for it, and now it seems that BO has followed along. Would you be late for a job interview? A meeting with your boss? Whatever the great BO says, his actions speak louder than his words. He simply has no respect for the American people.

Man, the lies are thick and heavy.

• "Nobody will have to give up what they have". He really can't believe that. Unless you are filthy filthy rich, you can't avoid Medicare. Once the government steps in, every current business providing healthcare is going to step out.
  
• "Preventative testing saves money". Preventative testing is a great idea, but it does NOT save money, it costs more. The VAST amount of tests will be NEGATIVE ... which means that they incur a cost, but don't save anything. While SOME set of early detections may well save money, the amount isn't enough to cover the huge percentage that don't.
  
• EEK, Does he REALLY believe that a public option can be cheap enough just because there are no profits!!! PROFIT and the attempt to cut costs to make more of it is one of the largest pushes for efficiency. Take it away and let everything go "cost +" and you are going to get a more massive disaster than Medicare!
  
• Not one dime to the deficit?? Gee his own CBO says it will cost over $1.6 Trillion extra over the next 10 years. How can you lie like that with a straight face??
  
• Gee, I faced a Trillion dollar deficit ... and RAISED it to $1.6 Trillion!!! That is one hell of a performance!!

If this convinces ONE person, the American people are gullible to elect someone with no leadership experience with no plan other than "change" and "yes we can" ... hmmm, on 2nd thought.

Bipartisanship

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Clinton’s advice to Obama: Forget about Republicans « - Blogs from CNN.com

Isn't this special? Remember back to when Bush and the Republican's were "arrogant" because they managed to pass a few things on a party line vote? Of course they never had even 55 votes in the Senate, so they did MUCH more than "consider" the Democrats else they get stopped with a Fillibuster. Any move the Republicans made that wasn't basically kissing the Democrat minority  boots was "divisive" and "hyperpartisan" and a whole bunch of new words thought up to cover the horror of the MSM's Democrat party not owning a single branch of government. It was the time of boo hoo, boo hoo.

My my, how times have changed. Now it is just fine to "Forget about Republicans". Why Slick Willie, the great triangulator as decreed it!! If the Republicans disagree, they are "insane", "obstructionist", "irrelevant", and whatever other derisive adjective can be conjured at the moment.

Van Jones Who? Truthers

Why did the press ignore the Van Jones scandal? | Washington Examiner

After a rather long break, BO has thrown another victim under the bus -- to keep Jerimiah Wrght, Tom Daschle, the whole Anti-War movement and a quite a few others company I suppose. If you are no longer useful to BO, you get to be thrown under there right away!! Nobody is ever going to accuse BO of being "too loyal".

The press never saw fit to publish the reason that Jones ended up there, so many folks are confused. It isn't because he called Republicans "A**holes". It is because he is a a "Truther", one of those many lefties that feels that 9-11 was "an inside job" -- created and executed by the evil Bush Administration.

One would think that such people would be certifiably insane, and I'd tend to be on your side --  but the fact is that as many as 20% of the Democrat party at least "wonder" on the "inside job" issue. Not surprisingly, the MSM tends to not like to talk about this very much -- and the fact that BO would think it a reasonable idea to have a  Truther as a "Czar" kind of boggles the mind.

Now the right has it's "Birthers" who wonder if BO is really a US citizen. While I don't subscribe to their concerns, I find it somewhat more rational a question if a man that we KNOW had a Kenyan father that was NOT a US citizen met the requirements of being born here. Last I checked, the number of Presidents that we have had anytime in the last 100 years that didn't have both parents be US citizens is very low (zero I believe). I think it is a bit easier to imagine how someone MIGHT have a birth in Kenya and decide to get to the US quickly to gather the benefits of US citizenship, rather than postulate how and why a US President would engineer a set of attacks on his own nation, and how such a conspiracy would be kept secret.

Again, I'm not a "Birther" --- I just find it very odd how really really unhinged the media finds them to be, but somehow thinks that the "Truther" idea is "sort of reasonable by comparison". But, I'm sure I only think that way due to the horror of conservative bias.

The BO Shuffle

RealClearPolitics - What Obama Says vs. What He Does

BO has a way with words, that is for sure. It also that the press just finds everything he says to be so doggone wonderful that there is no reason to check any of it.

As this article points out, the massive healthcare makeover that is being rushed with all possible speed won't take effect until 2013, when BO hopes to have been elected to his 2nd term. Why? If it is a really good thing that will save a lot of money and make everyone happy, wouldn't he put it into effect as rapidly as possible? Uh, well, NO!!

BO KNOWS that it is gong to cost WAY more than what we have now -- that is why the CBO projected it as a Trillion dollars over the next 10 years -- but of course they know that is a Trillion for only 2013 on, not '10 on. BO also knows that it is going to be painful -- to the folks that get sick. There is NOTHING  better than the PROMISE of Universal Healthcare to people that are WELL!!! It is like asking you "How good is your fire insurance or your life insurance". It MUST be GREAT!!! ... if you had somehow come to the conclusion that it wasn't you would have gotten a new policy that you THINK is great! Of course, you certainly aren't dead (in which case your heirs would know how good your life insurance REALLY was) and it is pretty darned unlikely that your house just burned.

BO Accomplishments

Hey, who says that BO hasn't been able to do much as President! Here is a good list of some of his top accomplishments. It is quite a list for someone that hasn't been in office very long. Just think what he might get done in a whole term!

1. Offended the Queen of England
2. Bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia
3. Praised the Marxist Daniel Ortega.
4. Kissed Socialist Hugo Chavez on the cheek.
5. Endorsed the Socialist Evo Morales of Bolivia
6. Sided with Hugo Chavez and Communist Fidel Castro against Honduras
7. Announced we would meet with Iranians with no pre-conditions while they're building their nuclear weapons.
8. Gave away billions to AIG also without pre-conditions.
9. Expanded the bailouts.
10. Insulted everyone who has ever loved a Special Olympian.
11. Doubled our national debt.
12. Announced the termination of our new missile defense system the day after North Korea launched an ICBM.
13. Released information on U.S. intelligence gathering despite urgings of his own CIA director and the prior four CIA directors.
14. Accepted without comment that five of his cabinet members cheated on their taxes and two other nominees withdrew after they couldn't take the heat.
15. Appointed a Homeland Security Chief who identified military veterans and abortion opponents as "dangers to the nation."
16. Ordered that the word "terrorism" no longer be used and instead refers to such acts as "man made disasters."
17. Circled the globe to publicly apologize for America 's world leadership.
18. Told the Mexican president that the violence in their country was because of us.
19. Politicized the census by moving it into the White House from the Department of Commerce.
20. Appointed as Attorney General the man who orchestrated the forced removal and expulsion to Cuba of a 9-year-old whose mother died trying to bring him to freedom in the United States.
21. Salutes as heroes three Navy SEALS who took down three terrorists who threatened one American life and the next day announces members of the Bush administration may stand trial for "torturing" three 9/11 terrorists by pouring water up their noses.
22.Low altitude photo shoot of Air Force One over New York City that frightened thousands of New Yorkers.
23. Sent his National Defense Advisor to Europe to assure them that the US will no longer treat Israel in a special manner and they might be on their own with the Muslims.
24. Praised Jimmy Carter's trip to Gaza where he sided with terrorist Hamas against Israel
25. Nationalized General Motors and Chrysler while turning shareholder control over to the unions and freezing out retired investors who owned their bonds. Committed unlimited taxpayer billions in the process.
26. Passed a huge energy tax in the House that will make American industry even less competitive while costing homeowners thousands per year.
27. Announced nationalized health care "reform" that will strip seniors of their Medicare, cut pay of physicians, increase taxes yet another $1 trillion, and put everyone on rationed care withgovernment bureaucrats deciding who gets care and who doesn't.

Bloomberg: Daschle says,
"Health care reform will not be pain free. Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them," while former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm says seniors have "a duty to die."

Hearings On Presidential Speech to Students

When Bush spoke to students, Democrats investigated, held hearings | Washington Examiner

Bush 41 had a nationwide hookup to students in '91. Now I really doubt that the original plan for the speech included lesson plans on kids writing down what they could do to "support the President", or videos of any famous people "pledging allegiance to Bush" (as BOs did when the plans first got out). Very few conservatives cared about the FACT of a president addressing the children, the issue was if this was a pep talk or an indoctrination talk. Generally, the MSM has failed to report what was planned and just reports on the content AFTER it was modified in response to conservative voices.

I'm guessing there won't be any investigation into the cost of the speech after the fact this time!

Why did the press ignore the Van Jones scandal? | Washington Examiner

Teddy The Traitor

Ted Kennedy's Soviet Gambit - Forbes.com

I find it absolutely incredible that this was never covered in the US.

"On 9-10 May of this year," the May 14 memorandum explained, "Sen. Edward Kennedy's close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow." (Tunney was Kennedy's law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) "The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov."

This is from Soviet archive information and was published in the London Times in 1991!!! My GOD!! A US Senator offering to work with Soviets to bring down an American President!

Now that bozo is buried in Arlington?? Can't we have him dug up and buried in Moscow?

We all ought to have been clear that the man had no morals, but no patriotism either? I guess once you have no values, it really means NO values!

I Pledge Allegiance to BO

Many conservatives enraged over Obama school speech - CNN.com

One can read this fine CNN article top to bottom and come to the conclusion that they would like you to "conservative opposition to BO is nuts". Maybe so, I'm not going to say that I'm unbiased, but I always like to ask myself a question that I really think CNN and their liberal buddies ought to consider.

What if it was Bush?

How would you feel then? The same? or different? Why? Would THAT be "nuts"? ... and of course I understand that many on the left are going to say that is COMPLETELY different, because BO is great, Bush was all wrong and evil to boot, and naturally anyone stupid enough to vote for Bush is BOTH stupid and nuts! That is why America is (was?) such a great country -- wildly divergent opinions got aired and people were able to compare reality to those opinions. We beleive (ed) in "principles not people".

Apparently, many classrooms intended to show the video that I embedded below. While some of the symbolsm might border on the spooky, it is mostly bubble gum grade propaganda about stupid stuff "I Pledge" ... to be nice to old ladies, shut off lights, study hard, etc ... but at the end, they "Pledge Allegiance to Barack" ... to the President". Now, go look in the mirror, and say "A YouTube Video of Bush supporters saying that they pledged allegiance to Bush that was directed at school kids by using stars that appeal to them would NOT have gotten liberals up in arms" (independent of trying to combine it with a message to school children). Look yourself in the mirror and then think about where you think the media in this country is at left or right??

"I Pledge Allegiance to George Bush" -- for kids. Think about it, and then read the CNN article. Could you pry them off the ceiling? I doubt it. Frankly, it creeps me out about 98% as much to hear "Bush" as it does "I Pledge Allegiance to Barack". Which country is this? Demi Moore and Ashton Kucher may be idiots, but they are well known idiots -- this isn't some "right wing militia" or "Marxist zombies". Frankly, I have an awfully hard time understanding how one can be American at all and not be somewhat concerned about this.

Indoor Aerial Robot

Pretty impressive. Suppose this is the most advanced thing that exists? Maybe, but I'm not sure I'd bet on it. Make this a little smaller, give it Bin Ladin recognition capability, "sleeps" by day and re-charges with solar power and hunts at night? Little C4? Little nerve toxin projectile? Audio of a BO speech? (no wait, that last one would violate the torture prohibition, I apologize)

Mass produce a couple 100 thousand and make a lot of areas of the world "less terrorist friendly". True, countermeasures might be "netting", strong fans on openings to buildings, etc -- but putting a little window breaking firepower on something seems like a potential, as well as maybe a bit of a "swarm capacity"? "Hey, I've found him, all units converge!!" ... say each one of them carry's a few oz of C4 -- 100 of them going for a building/vehicle/etc in unison should be impressive.

Yes yes, it might be tough on tall skinny guys with beards in the assumed area, but how many tall skinny guys does the planet really need?

Reality Speaks At Boston Globe?

Obama’s soak-the-rich mentality - The Boston Globe

Wow. The Boston Globe, deep in the heart of leftville. THEY are looking at things an starting to wonder??

High taxes can have unwelcome, and unintended, consequences.

Governments delude themselves when they imagine they can easily raise all the money they want by soaking the rich. The rich always have other options. When taxes grow too onerous, high earners can adjust their economic behavior. Some move to Spain to play soccer for La Liga. Others, less glamorously, cut back on their investments, forgo new business opportunities, seek out tax havens, or work fewer hours. The impact is felt not only in lower-than-expected tax revenues, but in lower rates of growth and productivity and job creation. Jobs are disproportionately created by those who have money to invest. “You can’t have employment and despise employers,’’ Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas used to say. “No goose, no golden eggs.’’

Holy Moly Batman! You think? Folks with more money, more skills, etc have more options? Tell me it isn't so! I thought they were stationary money cows that could be miked at will. Perhaps the Globe needs to bulk up on some frothy BO rhetoric:

“While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not,’’ charges Obama’s 2010 budget. “There’s nothing wrong with making money, but there is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few.’’ Accordingly it vows “to restore a basic sense of fairness to the tax code’’ and to ensure “that the wealthiest pay more.’’

There you go, how can you argue with that? Well, if one was reality based (not that we will be accusing the BO administration of any of that), one might look at the following:

By any reasonable standard the rich pay far more than their fair share. According to the latest (2007) IRS data, the top 1 percent of US taxpayers earn 22.8 percent of adjusted gross income but pay 40.4 percent of all federal income taxes. By contrast, the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers, who earn 62.5 percent of the income, pay just 39.4 percent of the income tax burden. That bears repeating: The income tax burden of the top 1 percent, who comprise just 1.4 million taxpayers, now exceeds that of the bottom 134 million combined.

One doesn't have to think very long to realize why the BO Administration and the MSM tend to be very fact averse. They are such "stubborn things". You go to all the work of devising a brilliant class warfare strategy, and much like your Afghanistan strategy, the rich just don't cooperate. Go figure. Why don't your targets ever sit still?

Lion of Leinenkugel

iowahawk: "Lion of Leinenkugel" Norm Snitker, 62, Laid to Rest

Any resemblance to drunks living or dead is intentional -- forget moderation, just enjoy it!

BO Breaks A Non-Spending Record

Op-Ed Columnist - The Obama Slide - NYTimes.com

The result is the Obama slide, the most important feature of the current moment. The number of Americans who trust President Obama to make the right decisions has fallen by roughly 17 percentage points. Obama’s job approval is down to about 50 percent. All presidents fall from their honeymoon highs, but in the history of polling, no newly elected American president has fallen this far this fast.

Hey, who says BO isn't special? His popularity has fallen the farthest the fastest of any newly elected President!! Wow! It seems that from '05 to '08, falling Bush poll numbers were being trumpeted from front pages with regularity. I wonder why it is that our unbiased press feels so differently about BO?

Oh The Morality!

Cheney’s dark side - and ours - The Boston Globe

As I read through this column I'm struck by a certainty that goes well beyond the farthest reaches of the "religious right" in the US and heads directly into Islamic Fundamentalist "morality". The horrid moralizers of the religious right are only trying to work with the law to control things like infanticide in the service of convienience and to prevent the conversion of a rite that has been between a man and a woman for all of human history into "something new". Those discussions are about using a political system that was supposedly suggested for exactly what it was intended for -- what exactly is the "mechanism" that might be suggested by the columnist below to deal with Americans "not getting their polls right"?:

The rot in our national morality is evident in a June poll by the Associated Press, which found that 52 percent of Americans said torture was sometimes or often justified to obtain information from terror suspects. An April CNN poll found that even though 60 percent of Americans thought harsh techniques including waterboarding constituted torture, 50 percent approved of them. A Washington Post/ABC News Poll was almost evenly split between Americans who say we should never use torture (49 percent) and should use torture in some cases (48 percent).

Whether it is because of the politics of fear that defined the Bush-Cheney years, the recession engulfing the Obama administration, or simply an indifference to foreigners languishing in jail, Americans have displayed scant curiosity about the dark side. A May McClatchy poll found Americans to be almost evenly split on having a “bipartisan blue-chip commission’’ on interrogations, and the CNN poll found nearly two-thirds disapproving of either a congressional investigation or independent panel.

This is a level of apathy, even civic debasement that makes it no wonder Cheney can spout off despite leaving America in a disgraceful place. He feels empowered to defend the dark side, because we have yet to shine a light.

Nobody on the Christian right that I know of expects that the minds of many of those who support Gay Marriage or Abortion on Demand are somehow going to get "educated" to "get it right". The politics is about getting people who SAY one thing (like 70%+ against Gay Marriage and later term abortions) to stand up and be politically counted. We don't expect Planned Parenthood and or the folks that march in the parades in San Francisco to suddenly "see the light".

When faced with people that fly planes into buildings to kill as many civilians as possible with their minds firmly fixed on 72 virgins in paradise, many Americans suspect that prissy Boston Globe columnists might not be the final moral authority on "what's fair in love and war". If they manage to put together some inquisition that puts a bunch of CIA folks and maybe even Dick Cheney in jail, is that going to change their minds.

Maybe. The reality that puts the numbers where they are today is that while the MSM and the Democrats have told us REPEATEDLY that "The policies and methods of the Bush Administration have made us less safe", there hasn't been any obvious evidence of that, such as an attack equivalent or greater than 9-11. If what the MSM and Democrats have said had any foundation in fact, we ought to have been attacked repeatedly during the Bush administration or shortly thereafter. The old low point for the security policy environment left to an administration was 2001 as Clinton handed off to Bush. Eight months later, 9-11. I write this on Sept 1, 2009 -- while BO and the MSM were so very certain that we were made "less safe" by Bush, the Clinton administration saw the first WTC bombing, Kovar Towers, 3 African Embassies and the USS Cole, the Bush Administration saw NONE after changing security policy on 9-11-2001.

We have now changed our policies sufficiently that we ought to be able to see over the next 4 years how much safer we have become with the great and powerful BO at the helm.