tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14065138441009325172024-03-13T23:12:19.586-07:00Texas is a Red State of MindMusings on politics, sports and entertainment from a 7th generation native TexanEyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-50113679625671046422010-09-02T04:56:00.000-07:002010-09-02T04:56:09.391-07:00The Beck Rally and What its Media Coverage Means<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TH-QmGOrdEI/AAAAAAAAAIE/JLUHcdIAW54/s1600/glenn-beck-rally-westcott-828-005_606+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TH-QmGOrdEI/AAAAAAAAAIE/JLUHcdIAW54/s320/glenn-beck-rally-westcott-828-005_606+(1).jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">So, TV/radio talk show host Glenn Beck held a rally in Washington on Saturday at which well over half a million folks were in attendance, and the leftist nitwits in the news media and on the radical blogs don't know quite what to make of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The New York Times dealt with the event by writing it off as a "Tea Party" rally, and tossing out a lowball estimate of 87,000 in attendance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The use of an odd number like 87,000 was no doubt designed to promote the notion that the Gray Lady had somehow actually performed a real head count and come up with this exact number of attendees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To understand what a bald-faced lie this number really is, all one has to do is view aerial photos of the event, which shows that the throng of people stretched all the way from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any of you who may have actually walked the length of the reflecting pool and onto the Washington Monument knows that is a long and tiring walk, especially in the heat of a Washington summer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reflecting pool itself spans 2,028 feet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is at minimum another 1,000 feet from the end of the pool to the Washington Monument.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">By comparison, Darrell K. Royal Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin easily holds 100,000 people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From stem to stern, that stadium is about 600 feet in length.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The New York Times, as is its habit, lied to its diminishing base of readers.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Times also bald-faced lied by characterizing the Beck event as a "Tea Party" rally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The event itself in fact had nothing to do with any of the myriad Tea Party chapters around the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nor was it organized by Fox News, as some lefties have claimed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was organized by Beck and contractors in his employ, and promoted by Beck on his television and radio programs.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And, whether the leftwing activists at the New York Times, MSNBC, the Huffington Post, CBS and ABC like it or not, more than half a million peaceful, respectful, well-behaved Americans showed up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They came to praise America, to celebrate the members of the U.S. military who achieved victory (yes, victory, a word you will never hear President Obama use) in Iraq and are now returning home to their loved ones to resume their lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They came to talk about the need to return this nation to the traditional values that made it great, and the fiscal responsibility that made it the strongest economy the world has ever known.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Much to the dismay of the leftwing news media, no one carried any nasty signs – you know, the kind you invariably see at leftwing rallies that are habited by professional protesters and malcontents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was no talk of the Tea Party, little talk of politics of any sort, no one calling anyone else nasty names – in other words, none of the things the leftwingers who infest our national news media were hoping and praying to see.</div><div class="MsoNormal">Heck, these folks even cleaned up after themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unlike what invariably happens at leftist rallies of the sort held on Earth Day, National Abortion Rights Day, and the Obama Inaugural, this half-million throng of people left the national mall free of litter – one Park Service spokesman said it was almost as if there had been no rally at all.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Another big disappointment to the leftist radical editors at the NY Times. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">All of which leads me to the following observation:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the Democrats running for office this year are by and large going to be slaughtered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The polling data just keeps getting worse and worse for politicians with a (D) by their name, and there is little they can do to change that.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One of the main drivers of this anti-Democrat tidal wave is of course the rank unpopularity of the policies pursued by President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is a given.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But an even bigger driver is the utter, outright contempt that Democrat leaders at the national level and their press agents in the national news media have shown and continue to show for ordinary everyday Americans like those who showed up at the Beck rally on Saturday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is as if these elitist thugs cannot believe that the average old Joe Schmoe from Beeville Texas has exactly the same number of votes – one – that they do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The attitude of entitlement and contempt for anyone who disagrees with them literally oozes from their pores with every speech they make and report they file.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One leftist commentator on MSNBC stated last week that 'people who watch this show know what's going on because we are here to analyze it and tell them'.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">That attitude, that hubris, that inability to understand that Americans in "flyover country" can figure out what is going on without being told by Washington elites is, more than any other factor, why the coming election will be a landslide in favor of the Republicans.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Life in the Liberal Zoo is becoming hazardous for liberals.<u style="text-underline: double;"><o:p></o:p></u></div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-31657056321951046532010-08-27T04:03:00.000-07:002010-08-27T04:03:40.451-07:00Reading the November Tea Leaves<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/THebeC590_I/AAAAAAAAAH8/xOBgFScOaOk/s1600/crystal+ball.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/THebeC590_I/AAAAAAAAAH8/xOBgFScOaOk/s320/crystal+ball.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">When you get within 90 days of any national election, overarching voter attitudes and trends are pretty much set in stone, and there is little anyone can do to change them.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There will always be isolated exceptions to that, races in which a candidate who appears to be leading by a significant margin 90 days out will mess up and blow the lead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most vivid example of this in Texas politics in modern times came in 1990, when Republican gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams was 18 points ahead of Democrat Ann Richard in a Labor Day poll, then went on to make a series of major gaffes and lose the race to Miz Annie by a hair.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But Claytie's self destruction was the exception in Texas in that election year, a year in which Republicans otherwise made significant gains in state government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Four years later, in 1994, the overall trend continued, with the Republicans winning every statewide elected office but one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That one was the last time a Democrat won a statewide election in this state.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The trends don't look any better for the Democrats in Texas this year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite the changing demographic makeup of the electorate and upwards of 1,000 people moving to Texas every day, this remains a firmly GOP state for the foreseeable future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>President Obama's fading public approval ratings, along with a sagging national economy are factors that only make the task of winning elections that much harder for Democrat candidates for legislative and statewide offices.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The most likely outcome based on current data appears to be that the Republicans will again win every statewide elected office, will maintain their current significant edge in the state Senate, and will pick up between 6 and 13 additional seats in the House, where they currently hold only a 76-74 margin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the President's public approval rating continues its long downward trend, the GOP gain in the House will trend to the upper end of that range.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Right now, I'll predict that is the most likely result, and the Republicans will increase their margin from 76-74 to 88-62.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">You are no doubt hearing reports that the race for governor is competitive and Democrat Bill White has a real shot to win.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don't bet the farm on that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reality is that he is extremely unlikely to receive more than 42-43% of the vote on Election Day, and lose to Governor Perry by about 7-8% of the vote, with the remaining 5-6% going to the libertarian candidate, whomever that may be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Absent some major, Claytie-esque gaffe by Governor Perry – something he has managed not to commit in more than 25 years in elected office – there's just not much reason for voters in a Republican majority state to turn him out of office in favor of any Democrat.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Nationally, it is now almost a certainty that the Republican Party will regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even very reticent prognosticators like the National Journal's Charlie Cook are now projecting Republican gains of 45-60 seats, with Cook now saying the upper end of that range seems the most likely outcome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The GOP needs to gain 39 seats to be in the majority for the 2011-12 congressional term.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Frankly, I think 45-60 is pretty modest, and the possible range at this point is more like 55-70, with the upper end being far more likely than the lower.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In the Senate, the Republicans would have to pick up 10 seats to gain the majority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That does not appear to be in the cards, mainly due to the race for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's seat in Nevada.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In that race, the GOP could have nominated a raccoon or a potted plant and defeated Mr. Reid, who is perhaps the supreme nitwit in the history of the U.S. Senate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, the Republicans nominated Sharon Angle, who appears to be almost as goofy as Reid, and fully capable of blowing that race.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the Rs can't win Nevada, they cannot gain the necessary ten seats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As discussed in an earlier column, GOP voters also nominated Rand Paul, the crazy son of the also-crazy Texas Representative Ron Paul, in the senate race in Kentucky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rand Paul, like Sharon Angle, also seems to be goofy enough to blow what would otherwise have been a certain Republican pick up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My prediction is that either Angle or Paul – but not both – will lose their race, keeping Republican gains just below the necessary ten to gain the majority.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But here's the thing to remember about the Senate:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in the 2012 and 2014 elections, 43 Democrats will have to defend their seats, while only 23 Republican seats will be up for grabs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So while the GOP will not likely gain control in that body this coming November, they almost certainly will do so in 2012, with their margin growing larger in 2014.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">That's what the trends say, and they're not likely to change in any significant way before November.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bank it.</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-46695542475974640862010-08-27T04:00:00.000-07:002010-08-27T04:00:57.127-07:00Game Time in the Liberal Zoo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/THeauDVMkXI/AAAAAAAAAH0/Rik_pn8xfjs/s1600/200px-Celebrity_Jeopardy_-_Jap_Anus_Relations.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/THeauDVMkXI/AAAAAAAAAH0/Rik_pn8xfjs/s320/200px-Celebrity_Jeopardy_-_Jap_Anus_Relations.png" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Let's play a game today, folks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's called "Liberals/Leftists/Progressives/Socialists Think You are a Racist/Bigot/Ignorant/Hateful if You…".</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Why shouldn't we play this game?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, it's the game the Obama Administration and its mindless supporters on the radical left of American politics and their propaganda ministers in the mainstream news media have been playing all summer with anyone who opposes the President's position on any subject.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having no rational, logical, fact-based means of defending the President's bizarre and unnecessary forays into every controversial subject available to him, his defenders are invariably left with lashing out at his opposition, playing the race or hate card at every conceivable opportunity.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So here we go!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Liberals/Leftists/Progressives/Socialists Think you are a Racist if You…:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Believe the State of Arizona has a right to instruct its law enforcement officers to enforce the federal immigration laws that are on the books today, and that the federal government refuses to enforce.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That's what the infamous Arizona immigration law does, period.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Immediately upon Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's signing of the law, President Obama jumped in with both belligerent feet, cynically seizing upon what he and his Chicago thug advisors believed would be a golden opportunity to increase turnout among Hispanic voters in the November elections.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The President's mindless supporters on the radical left and propaganda ministers in the mainstream national news media immediately began branding anyone who disagreed with Mr. Obama as a racist.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The latest polls on the issue show that Arizona's right to enforce this law is supported by around 65% of the American people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That's a whole lotta racists.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Liberals/Leftists/Progressives/Socialists Think You are a Bigot if You…:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oppose the siting of a radical Muslim Mosque run by a radical Muslim Imam within 2 blocks of 9/11 Ground Zero in New York City.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That's what the Mosque would be, that's who the Imam is, and that is where he proposes to place it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much to the chagrin of Democrats running for political office around the country, President Obama leapt into this issue unprompted with both belligerent feet Friday before last, and then tried to walk his leap back the following Saturday<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The President clearly endorsed the building of this Mosque by this Imam at this site that Friday evening, and then waffled on Saturday by saying he was merely pointing out that Muslims enjoy the religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment, not endorsing the wisdom of siting this particular mosque at this particular place at this particular time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The President's mindless supporters on the radical left and propaganda ministers in the mainstream national news media immediately began branding anyone who disagreed with Mr. Obama – whichever position one assumes the President actually supports - as a bigot.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The latest polls on the issue show that Americans oppose the siting of this particular Mosque at this particular location at this particular time by a 2 to 1 margin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time, a similar majority of Americans fully recognize that Muslims enjoy the same religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment as anyone else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>That's a whole lotta First Amendment – believing bigots.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Liberals/Leftists/Progressives/Socialists/neo-Fascists Think You are an Ignorant Hateful Racist Bigot if You…:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are a participant in the "Tea Party".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No matter who you are, what you have accomplished in your life, how you raise your children, what grades you made in school, which charities you support, what you do for a living, how you deal with your fellow man, or how you conduct yourself at Tea Party gatherings, those on the radical left in this country label you as an Ignorant Hateful Racist Bigot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The old guilt by association deal that liberals used to claim to detest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those were the good old days, huh?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">President Obama, though occupying an office whose previous occupants have been careful to avoid getting involved in such defamation of large groups of Americans, has on several occasions let his disdain for the millions of Tea Party participants be know, as have Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and pretty much every other national leader of the Democrat Party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given that the Tea Parties now count their members in 8 figure numbers, and have nominated and elected several candidates for office already, one might think the President and his party would leave the slandering of a huge voting bloc to their agents in the national news media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One would be wrong in entertaining that thought.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Even a radical leftist nitwit like former Democrat National Committee Chairman Howard Dean sees the folly of this kind of behavior.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dean is one of the few liberals to express his opinion that the 9/11 Mosque sends a bad signal and should be built at another site, and stated in an interview on Sunday that President Obama and his administration are "out of touch" with most of the rest of America on that and other issues of the day.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gee, ya think so, Howard?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Life in the liberal zoo is consistently entertaining, if nothing else.</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-3295133759476367432010-08-10T05:58:00.000-07:002010-08-10T05:58:34.393-07:00The Nadler Definition of "Equity"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TGFM8CnhJbI/AAAAAAAAAHk/9NbgrXY0nf0/s1600/jerrold+nadler.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TGFM8CnhJbI/AAAAAAAAAHk/9NbgrXY0nf0/s320/jerrold+nadler.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">"The basic costs of life in the New York region are much steeper than in most parts the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reality is that a dollar in New York isn't worth nearly as much as a dollar in Spokane or Knoxville or Topeka. It's time for our tax code to take reality into account when assessing someone's tax liability."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Leftist Democrat from New York</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In its ongoing war against the middle 3/4ths of the North American continent, i.e., "flyover country", the national Democrat Party now presents to you Jerrold Nadler, leftist Democrat congressman from Manhattan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Nadler, along with an impressive array of fellow leftist nutjob Democrats in the congress, announced on Monday the introduction of what he and his cohorts shamefully call the Tax "Equity" Act, a bill that would require the Internal Revenue Service to adjust individual federal income tax rates based on the average cost of living in each state.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Thus, people living in states where leftist Democrats have reigned supreme for decades and taxed the bejeebers out of the public – creating the high costs of living endured by residents of traditional Democrat states like New York, California, Michigan, etc. – would see their federal income tax rates adjusted downwards as a reward for so stupidly voting for leftist Democrats for all those years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile, residents of states like Texas, who have chosen to elect more prudent stewards of the state coffers and tax rates over those same decades, resulting in a much lower cost of living, would see their federal income tax rates raised as a punishment for having the good sense to keep leftist nitwits out of statewide offices and their legislatures.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">No, I'm not kidding here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is real.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This concept is typical of what Democrats in Washington these days refer to as "social justice", a philosophy wherein the federal government is used to punish Americans for sensible and prudent behavior, i.e., not voting for leftist Democrats.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In addition to his whining about "the basic costs of life in the New York region" being higher than much of the rest of the country, Mr. Nadler went on to express dismay over the fact that, in addition to having one of the highest state income taxes in the nation – New York City residents also must pay a City income tax on top of that – New York state also sports some of the highest property tax rates in the country.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Well, who is responsible for that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The unarguable truth of the matter is that the Democrat Party has utterly dominated the political life of New York in modern times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh, the Republicans will occasionally elect a governor and gain control of one house of the legislature every now and then, but over the long haul, there is simply no question that the state suffers the effects of decades of leftwing Democrat governance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same is true of other high-tax, high-cost-of-living states like California, Massachusetts, Washington, Minnesota, New Mexico and on, and on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The cost of living is higher in traditional Democrat states due to favorable treatment of unions that artificially raise the price of every good or service, liberal social regimes that must be paid for with steadily rising taxes, and a refusal to ever consider cutting spending when budget deficits inevitably occur.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>California today finds itself on the verge of insolvency – the state has in reality been insolvent for several years now, avoiding the final fate only due to massive borrowing and federal bailouts – as the direct result of irresponsible governance by the Democrat Party and liberal Republicans like its current governator.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New York, Michigan and other traditionally liberal states are well on their way.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Meanwhile, New Jersey finds itself getting back on track towards solvency and economic recovery thanks to the determined efforts to control state government spending and taxing and force concessions from government unions by Republican Governor Chris Christie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Christie succeeds in bending the Democrat legislature and unions to his will, the long-term result of his fiscal restraint will inevitably a lower cost of living for the people of his state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the kind of behavior by public officials that should be applauded.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Instead, Nadler and his fellow leftist nitwits seek to reward the irresponsible state and local officials in New York and other high tax, heavily-unionized states, as well as the irresponsible voters who put them into office.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">If residents in New York and California suffer from high taxes and a high cost of living, they should be encouraged by federal officials to take a step back, examine what it is about their own selfish behavior that has led to that situation, and work to change that behavior.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The simple truth of the matter is that consistent voting for leftist nitwits to state and local offices leads inevitably to high taxes and higher costs of living.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Rewarding voters for such stupid, self-destructive behavior will only make their situation worse, but then, such self-destructive behavior is the life's blood of the perpetuation of the Liberal Zoo that America has become.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-7329834985744902332010-08-05T03:42:00.000-07:002010-08-05T03:42:07.874-07:00Some Hopefully Final Thoughts on the BP Disaster/Moratorium<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TFqVceP2FII/AAAAAAAAAHc/EdOrDOpZGlM/s1600/Tony+Heyward.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="121" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TFqVceP2FII/AAAAAAAAAHc/EdOrDOpZGlM/s200/Tony+Heyward.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Just wanted to add a few more thoughts on the whole BP/Moratorium deal before it completely fades from the media/public’s collective mind now that BP has the well under control:</div><div style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"></div><ul style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><li>The best call I’ve had in many weeks came yesterday from a friend intimately involved with the National Oceans Policy Commission. He confirmed preliminary media reports that the Obama Administration is now likely to lift the moratorium in very short order – likely during the August congressional recess when the action will receive minimal media coverage. Political pressure coming from officials in the Gulf Coast region, as well as a changing tone of media coverage has finally put enough pressure on our hard-hearted President to start dealing with this tragic situation in a realistic manner. Better late than never.<br />
</li>
<li>As I drove from Shreveport to Houston early Wednesday morning, I flipped the XM radio back and forth between the early shows on<span class="caps">MSNBC</span>and<span class="caps">CNN</span>. The obvious panic among the liberal hosts of these shows over the fact that cleanup crews in the Gulf can no longer find any oil to clean up was as predictable as it was hilarious. The BP disaster has become a crutch for these folks, an easy way to bash the hated oil and gas industry as well as an ever-present time filler for their shows when other news sources slow down. So there they were, live on the air, in a literal tizzy of confusion about what they’re going to do to make up for the loss of their crutch. Most telling, I heard not a single expression of relief for the lives and well-being of those who live along the Gulf Coast now that the oil is no longer flowing or soiling beaches and marshes. Just another example that these East- and West-coast liberals could not care less about those of us who live in flyover country.<br />
</li>
<li>On my new favorite leftwinger guilty pleasure, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, the hosts went on and on about the evils of BP’s having used “over a million gallons” of chemical dispersants to help break up the oil and better enable it to evaporate and be absorbed into ocean around it. There was not a person among them with the intelligence to understand that a million gallons of anything in the context of the enormity of the Gulf of Mexico is not even a drop in the proverbial bucket. In fact, it’s not even 1/10th of 1/1000th of 1 percent of a drop in the proverbial bucket. But of course, these are the very same media dimwits who actually believe that the 13/100ths of 1 percent of so-called “greenhouse gas” emissions represented by mankind’s production of carbon dioxide is somehow responsible for any weather-related malady that ever occurs, not to mention earthquakes, tidal waves and fires and mudslides in California. Hell, these same people also believe Al Gore is not a crazed sex poodle, but that’s another topic for another time.</li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">As I write this, BP has begun the process of pouring cement down the hole to permanently plug it off. This likely saves the Republic from the nitwittery of the “oil spill” bill shelved this week by noted nitwit Harry Reid because he did not have enough votes from even liberal Democrats to have a hope of passing the atrocity into law. Reid promises to bring the bill back up in September, but this is more bravado than anything else, given the fact that by the time congress comes back after Labor Day, this story will have been out of the media for a month and faded from the public’s short attention span.</div><div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">All of which is good news for America, despite the wails you hear emanating from the morning show hosts on <span class="caps">CNN </span>and <span class="caps">MSNBC</span>.</div><div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Have a great day.</div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />
</span></span>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-74898547281724369152010-07-28T05:08:00.000-07:002010-07-28T05:08:42.244-07:00The Criminal Moratorium<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TFAdnxt35CI/AAAAAAAAAHU/kwiPkpR7AQg/s1600/obama-jail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TFAdnxt35CI/AAAAAAAAAHU/kwiPkpR7AQg/s320/obama-jail.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">You may have seen or heard news reports regarding the Rally for Economic Survival event that was held in LaFayette, LA last Wednesday at that city's Cajun Dome basketball arena.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fully 12,000 mostly ticked-off Louisianans – including Governor Bobby Jindal, Lt. Governor Scott Angele, and other elected officials - were in attendance to protest the ongoing efforts by our fascist President, Barack Obama, and his evil minions at the Department of Interior (DOI) to destroy the oil and gas industry in the Gulf of Mexico. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I felt fortunate to be there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a wonderful, compelling and emotional event.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Too bad no one at the White House or at DOI was listening.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The imposition by Dear Leader Obama of a six month moratorium on drilling in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico on the pretense of allowing DOI to review safety processes in that arena in the wake of the BP disaster seems innocuous enough to the average man on the street who doesn't understand how the oil and gas industry works.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But to anyone who does have an understanding of the industry, and who has been paying attention to the collateral actions the Obama Regime has taken in the context of this moratorium, it is a de facto permanent shutdown of the enormously productive and historically safe deep water region, and a massive scaling back of oil and gas exploration activities in the shallower waters along the Outer Continental Shelf.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Here's why:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the daily rig rate – the rate just to reserve the rig for usage by a given operator – of these deep water drilling rigs and ships can run to $150,000 per day and even more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyone who thinks the owners of these rigs are going to allow them to sit idle for 180 days and longer is living in a fantasy world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two such rigs have already been removed, one to Egypt and the other to the Congo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The operator who is moving its rig to the Congo announced the decision was made to move the rig to a nation that had a more stable political climate than the United States of America.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Think about that for a second:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the judgment of the executives of that company, in making a decision that runs into the tens of millions of dollars, that the Congo has a more stable political climate than the USA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is that the kind of "hope" and "change" those of you who voted for Mr. Obama had in mind?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Once these rigs leave, they are not coming back for a long, long time, if ever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They will be locked up into multi-year deals by other operators in other parts of the world – that is the reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The President and his minions fully understand this, and they do not care.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are focused on placating the radical anti-development groups that fund their political campaigns to the exclusion of all other considerations.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A memo written by Interior Secretary Salazar and leaked to the media last week clearly showed that the Administration understands the true impacts of this action, and that, as Salazar stated, issues like loss of jobs and devastation of the Gulf Coast economy do not matter to this bunch of thugs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They do not matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The memo further demonstrates the Administration's intent to prolong this moratorium long past their stated six month time frame, and to slow-play issuing any new permits in the shallow water as well.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To understand the impact of all of this to South Louisiana, all one needs to know is that roughly 80% of all operations in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico are staged out of Port Fourchon at the very southern tip of the State.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A large portion of shallow water operations are also staged out of this port.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The men and women who work at that port and on those rigs are by and large Louisiana citizens, although a high number of Texas and Mississippi jobs are at stake as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In all, tens of thousands of direct, well-paying, secure jobs are threatened by the callous indifference of the Obama Regime.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Then you have all the indirect jobs created by all of this economic activity:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the cafes, hotels, motels, clothing stores, filling stations, movie theatres, fitness shops, furniture stores and every other kind of small business you can imagine that depend enormously on the health of two industries impacted by recent events:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the fishing industry that has been decimated by the BP disaster, and the Gulf of Mexico oil and gas industry that the Obama Regime is attempting to destroy.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We should all be concerned about the tragic effect the BP disaster has had on the Gulf Coast region.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But you won't bring back the Louisiana fishing industry by destroying the Gulf of Mexico oil and gas industry, and the thousands upon thousands of jobs that are dependent on it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In a sane society, the people responsible for this moratorium would be brought up on criminal charges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in the liberal zoo, they just go on about destroying people's lives with impunity.</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-62151994805149165592010-07-20T17:32:00.000-07:002010-07-20T17:32:39.888-07:00The Sham That is Elena Kagan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TEZAGWYoYTI/AAAAAAAAAHM/w-7OC0AjM74/s1600/Kagan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TEZAGWYoYTI/AAAAAAAAAHM/w-7OC0AjM74/s200/Kagan.jpg" width="152" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">So I was watching "Morning Joe" on MSNBC Tuesday morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I've gotten to where I actually like "Morning Joe" in a sadistic sort of way – spending an hour listening to the opinions of the collection of plagiarists, freaks and nitwits that appear daily on that show tells me all I really need to know about why our country is in such a sorry state today.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Anyway, on this particular morning, the show's hosts – Joe ("Morning Joe" – get it?) Scarborough and Minka Breszinski were interviewing Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When asked to describe his view on the judicial philosophy that would be employed by leftist Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, Sen. Whitehouse was only able to use the words "pragmatist" and "consensus builder" over and over again:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"I think it would be one of a pragmatist and consensus builder," the Senator said, "She has been a pragmatist and consensus builder her entire career.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was a pragmatist and consensus builder at Harvard, and was certainly a pragmatist and consensus builder as Solicitor General.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I think you'll see a philosophy of pragmatism and consensus building when she is on the court."</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Ummmm...ok.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can somebody please let the good Senator know that "pragmatism" and "consensus building" do not a judicial philosophy make?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not to criticize them, of course – "pragmatism" is a perfectly honorable personal trait, one in fact that we all should aspire to achieve in our own lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And "consensus building" is a fine pursuit to employ in life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why, if every one of us was a "consensus builder", we'd all end up agreeing about every damn thing, and wouldn't that be wonderful?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But somebody really ought to let Senator Whitehouse and, presumably, Ms. Kagan know that "pragmatism" and "consensus building" are not essential elements of the judicial philosophy of a justice on the United States Supreme Court.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>See, the job of being a Court Justice involves a) hearing arguments from both sides in a case before the court, and b) deciding which side wins the case in the context of the text of the United States Constitution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is not supposed to be a bargaining process between the justices that involves "pragmatism" and "consensus building".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Constitution says what it says, and the justices are charged with deciding which side of each given case is constitutional.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Period.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Yet, Sen. Whitehouse wants us to believe that character traits that would be admirable in any member of, say, congress or the Texas legislature, are the essential elements of what makes a fine Supreme Court justice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is sheer and utter nonsense.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Of course, in fairness to Sen. Whitehouse, this nonsense regarding Ms. Kagan was put into the public domain by the White House on the day she was nominated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The President's initial statement used those same words to describe her, and those words were broadly parroted by the propaganda arm of the National Democrat Party, i.e., the establishment news media, for days afterwards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were obviously words that had been carefully tested in focus groups in advance of the nomination.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Leftists have to use such touchy-feely nonsense to describe their judicial nominees, because they know they cannot dare discuss the truth about their true judicial philosophy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Poll after poll shows conclusively that an overwhelming majority of Americans utterly reject the leftwing philosophy of ignoring what the Constitution actually says in order to legislate social policies from the federal bench that Democrats could never hope to achieve through the legitimate legislative process set up by the Constitution.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Leftwingers must obfuscate and outright lie about their nominees, because the truth about Ms. Kagan is that she is a radical leftist who likely has never read the Constitution of the United States and has no intention of ever doing so. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is a radical who hates the military and wants to destroy American society as we know it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, who else would Barack Obama nominate to the Supreme Court?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's not like this is rocket science here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, neither she nor her supporters can ever honestly and directly discuss her actual judicial philosophy, because the truth about her judicial philosophy is that the Constitution is wholly irrelevant to any decisions she will issue from the Court.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Thus, to a person, they all fall back on nonsensical irrelevancies like "pragmatism" and "consensus building" when asked to describe Ms. Kagan's philosophy.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In this, as with everything else they do, the radical leftists who run the National Democrat Party believe we<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>are all too stupid and ignorant to figure out the truth before they get their damage done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 2008, they turned out to be right.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But the nation will survive the rule of Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court, because the great pendulum of </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">American politics is swinging back towards traditional values and conservatism, as it always does when confronted by the ugly face of leftism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This too shall pass, because nonsensical talking points only fool the public for so long before reality slaps us all back to our senses.</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-50397502763652883242010-07-15T05:37:00.000-07:002010-07-15T05:37:13.504-07:00The True Meaning of "Futbol"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TD8A4zeXxUI/AAAAAAAAAHE/Um-BQ22EOuc/s1600/soccer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TD8A4zeXxUI/AAAAAAAAAHE/Um-BQ22EOuc/s320/soccer.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Ok, it's official:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have finally, at long last, after a lifetime spent hating the sport with a passion bordering on lunacy, discovered value in the game of soccer – or, as a young lady at work told me the other day, "futbol, as they call it in all the rest of the world" (Really?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do the Russians, Dutch, Brits, French, not to mention the entire continents of Asia and Africa, use a Spanish word to describe the game?) – and now am officially a fan.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">No, really, I'm serious here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During the 72 month run of the FIFA World Cup "Futbol" Championships (ok, it was really only maybe 2 months, but it sure seemed like 72), there were three Saturdays and one Sunday when I desperately needed to take a nap, but because I was in pain from one ailment or another, I had a heck of a time falling asleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each time this happened, I forced myself to flip the TV in my bedroom over to one of the 85 channels televising a "futbol" game (presumably, roughly 8 Americans were tuned into each channel at any given time), and I kid you not, each time I was sound asleep within five short minutes.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Those of you who have insomnia and currently take Ambien or some other medication to help with rest, I am here to tell you that you too can live a drug-free life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just run down to the local Barnes & Noble and purchase DVDs of any "futbol" contests that might be on the clearance rack, slap 'em into your player, and you will now be able to enjoy hour upon hour of sound, uninterrupted sleep.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I used to believe that the best thing to have on TV when trying to take a nap was golf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But compared to socc…er, "futbol", golf is positively stimulating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, there is actual scoring in the game of golf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On every hole, there is scoring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In most sports, you see, scoring is the point of the game.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But not "futbol".</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">No, in "futbol", the point of the game is to bore the fans in the stadium to such a high degree of frustration that they engage in riots both inside the stadium and outside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other object is to frustrate the leaders of the countries represented by the teams to the point that they declare war on one another, as Paraguay did with Argentina back in the '60s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is also a growing body of evidence that Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 not to put a buffer between his country and the Russians, but out of the incredible frustration he felt after the German and Polish national teams played to their 5<sup>th</sup> consecutive scoreless tie in "futbol".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(And yes, that's how Hitler pronounced it, too.)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I have learned that this true objective of the game of "futbol" is the reason for the senseless rule that denies the players the use of their hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Think about it:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If "futbol" players were allowed to use all of their God-given limbs, there would most likely be actual scoring in most of the games.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, the prevention of scoring becomes the only reasonable explanation for why "futbol" officials would place such an idiotic restriction on those who play the game.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This also explains why the official "futbol" field of play is roughly the same size as Manhattan Island.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, if the game were played on a reasonably-sized field, one that could be adequately covered on high-definition, wide-screen television, then again, there would be scoring going on, and that would greatly lessen the level of frustration felt by viewing fans and national leaders before, during and after the games.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And honestly, where would be the fun in that?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">No, golf is a far more exciting game than "futbol", and thus not nearly as frustrating for the viewer or for national leaders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, you've never seen an American President declare war on Europe over losing the Ryder Cup, have you?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, although I personally think President Bush could have made a really good case back in 2006.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I digress.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Luckily, I didn't need to take a nap on Sunday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, rather than flip the TV over to the final FIFA "futbol" frustration fest, I put it on NBC and watched Paula Creamer's masterful taming of Oakmont Country Club to win the LPGA U.S. Open Championship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her score?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Three under par 281.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My God, there haven't been 281 goals scored in the entire history of competitive "futbol".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, friends, even the LPGA is more exciting than "futbol".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No way I could have slept through that.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">At any rate, I am thrilled to death that I have finally discovered the true meaning and usefulness of the game of "futbol".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because for those of us who simply don't care about the ultimate outcome of any given "futbol" game, it is the greatest sleeping aid ever invented by the human race.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gosh, after writing this, I think I need a nap.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-40495733999970550442010-07-06T05:23:00.000-07:002010-07-06T05:36:09.064-07:00Michael Steele Was Right! And Wrong.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TDMgAe5nHkI/AAAAAAAAAG8/5gZTbz7v1zA/s1600/michael+steele.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TDMgAe5nHkI/AAAAAAAAAG8/5gZTbz7v1zA/s320/michael+steele.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">So we have this dustup going now over the remark made last week by Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele that Afghanistan is now "Obama's war", and that the President should have known "you can't win a land war in Afghanistan". Leftists in the national news media, desperate for a story, any story, that might help stem the growing anti-Obama tide coming this November, immediately pounced on Steele's comment and have treated it as if it were the smoking gun in the Kennedy Assassination. Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol and other conservative hawks have called on Steele to resign, and some senate Republicans – most notably John McCain and Lindsey Graham – have been extremely critical of the RNC Chairman.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There are several observations to make about this episode in the ongoing American political soap opera.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">First, Steele should not have made such comments in a public setting – his critics are right that it is inappropriate for national leaders of either party to make such discouraging comments about a war while congress continues to fund a war that puts thousands of brave American soldiers in harm's way. Steele's remarks are on a par with statements from the likes of Democrats Harry Reid and then-Senator Barack Obama that the Iraq war was "unwinnable" and "already lost", which were made just a few months before the beginning of the Surge strategy that won the war. Steele should know better than to cast doubt on the ability of the U.S. armed forces to accomplish any goal they set out to accomplish.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Second, the rank hypocrisy of leftists in the Democrat Party and the national news media on this matter is so thick you could cut it with a knife. If not "Obama's War", Afghanistan is without any valid argument the</div><div class="MsoNormal">Democrat Party's war. How many thousands of times did we hear from Democrat politicians and liberal pundits in 2002 through 2008 that President George W. Bush had "fought the wrong war" by choosing to go into Iraq?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">According to the national vast leftwing media/political complex, Afghanistan was the noble war, the place where the U.S. should be focusing its efforts to kill Al Qaeda, even as Al Qaeda massed its forces in Iraq and was demolished by the American military. Not content with making grossly irresponsible statements on a daily basis about whether or not the Iraq War was "winnable", the Democrat leadership in the congress went to great lengths to actively undermine the effort for crass political purposes. This is an inarguable truth of American history that we must never forget.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Barack Obama and Joe Biden based much of their campaign strategy in 2008 on the promise to massively escalate the Afghan War, a promise that they have kept in a big way since assuming office. Not only have they escalated in Afghanistan – much as Lyndon Johnson escalated in Vietnam in the wake of the Kennedy Assassination – they have also ramped up U.S. incursions into Pakistan in a very big way.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">For the leftwing media/political complex to now suddenly recoil at the idea that Afghanistan is "Obama's War" is absurd on its face, and a revelation of the truth about their deceitful motives for promoting its escalation since 2002: They were doing that purely for political reasons, to damage Bush and undermine the effort in Iraq, and are even today not serious about actually "winning" the conflict there. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Third, Vice President Biden, in his trip to Baghdad over the weekend, noted that the U.S. phased withdrawal from Iraq would begin on schedule in August, and claimed that his and Obama's strategy there has been a great success. Huh? Beg Pardon? Say What?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The most hilarious aspect of this current Administration for my purposes of ridiculing the cocky, snotty leftwingers responsible for putting this collection of incompetent thugs into office is that the Obama Administration has not changed a single thing about the Bush strategy in Iraq. A phased withdrawal once a viable Iraqi government had been established was always the Bush strategy. The Guantanamo Bay holding facility for terrorists remains open and undisturbed despite the Obama campaign promise to close it. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Warrantless surveillance policies enacted during the Bush years remain intact and functional. Terrorists continue to be tried in military tribunals to this day. Hell, Obama has even adopted the Bush "Surge" strategy for the Afghanistan War, and hired Bush's favorite general to conduct it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The greatest irony for the dishonest lefties who put this bunch into office in 2008 is that Obama has continued the Bush policies because they were the right policies, and is now applying the Bush strategies to Afghanistan because they were the right strategies. There is simply no other honest interpretation of the actions Obama has taken since assuming office.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But back to Michael Steele: Should he resign? Yes. He was right in saying Afghanistan is "Obama's War", but wrong to doubt it is winnable. It is winnable, thanks to Obama's decision to stick with Bush's policies, employ Bush's strategies, and hire Bush's favorite general.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-69959467125061164232010-06-28T08:12:00.000-07:002010-06-28T08:14:22.390-07:00Our Disgraceful National Fourth Estate<div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TCi8PiGjiUI/AAAAAAAAAG0/VumcnJ-f1lI/s1600/lapdog+media.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TCi8PiGjiUI/AAAAAAAAAG0/VumcnJ-f1lI/s320/lapdog+media.jpg" /></a></div><span style="line-height: 115%;">In the wake of last week's firing of General Stanley McChrystal and hiring of President George W. Bush's favorite general – David Petraeus – to run the War in Afghanistan, the snotty leftwingers who run MoveOn.org quietly removed their famous "General Betray-us" ad from their goofball website. That characterization of General Petraeus was fine when he was working for the hated Bush and preparing to testify before a Democrat congress skeptical about his "surge" strategy in Iraq, but not so good for snotty leftwingers now that he's working for their hope 'n change savior, President Barack Obama.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The great irony of the McChrystal firing (an entirely justifiable act by President Obama) and hiring of Petraeus was the glowing praise Petraeus received from media blowhards and congressional Democrats who took great pleasure in ridiculing and slandering him while he was employed by President Bush. This group of Democrats includes President Obama himself, who, as a Senator, strongly opposed Petraeus' surge, which of course became the hugely successful winning strategy in Iraq, and which Mr. Obama ultimately adopted in Afghanistan. Of course, a consistency of thought and honesty of reportage long ago became lost concepts to the leftist news media in America, which is why they find themselves in a long, irreversible death spiral.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;">It was kind of a bad week for the leftwing media in general. In addition to the utterly hypocritical reaction to the hiring of Gen. Petraeus, it was revealed about midweek that the Portland Oregonian and other admirers of Al Gore in the leftist news media had sat for four years on allegations in a police report that he groped a masseuse in a Portland hotel room in 2006. So what media entity finally made this complaint public? Why, the National Enquirer, of course – the same media entity that issued the original reporting on liberal hero John Edwards' affair and fathering of an illegitimate child with a former campaign staffer.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">One would think that, sooner or later, the snotty leftists who run the New York Times would tire of being scooped by the Enquirer, but one would be wrong in that thought, at least when it comes to reporting on the foibles of leftwing folk heroes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
Then, of course, there is the announcement by CNN that it is pinning its prime time ratings hopes on a new talk show featuring disgraced former New York Governor Elliott Spitzer, who was forced to resign the office a few years back when it was revealed that he had been hiring high-priced call girls on the state's dime. Can there be any doubt that CNN is out trying to bring in Gore as the show's weatherman, Bill Clinton as a political correspondent, and Tiger Woods as its sports anchor? Now, that would be a lineup lefties could be proud of.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">You really can't make stuff like this up.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">The final failure of the lapdog leftist media I want to discuss here is its abject refusal to do any real reporting on the criminal negligence of the Obama Administration when it comes to the BP oil spill. Were this a Republican Administration, the media would be making every effort to hound the president from office, as it did to President Bush following Hurricane Katrina. We all know that is true – even the most hopeless snotty leftwinger knows that is true.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Take the refusal by President Obama to suspend the Jones Act for this national emergency. For those unfamiliar with it, the Jones Act protects labor unions by requiring all vessels performing oil and gas-related operations in U.S. waters to be U.S. flagged, and operated by U.S. citizens, i.e., members of U.S. labor unions. Were the President to suspend this disgusting law, there would shortly be dozens if not hundreds more vessels in the Gulf, skimming up this oil. But he refuses to do so strictly due to the fact that labor unions in this country are tools of the Democrat Party. And the news media sit idly by and allow him to get away with this kind of criminal negligence with impunity. It's disgusting and disgraceful.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Seriously, after a week like the last one, you have to wonder if anyone at the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS or any of the other reliably leftwing mainstream media outlets around the country ever stops, takes a step back, and ponders the reality that the only news organs actually performing any investigative journalism in America are a scandal rag and a magazine staffed by stoners. Of course, this would assume that those who run these leftist media outlets were remotely capable of the slightest bit of introspection, which they obviously aren't.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">That is your fourth estate these days – nothing more than a lapdog propaganda organ for the national Democrat Party and this feckless, incompetent, criminally negligent Administration.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-68370789001154564662010-06-28T07:58:00.000-07:002010-06-28T07:58:48.163-07:00Last Monday Morning in the Oval Office...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TCi4ieOXCOI/AAAAAAAAAGk/koVeoUceCWc/s1600/Gibbs+Obama.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TCi4ieOXCOI/AAAAAAAAAGk/koVeoUceCWc/s200/Gibbs+Obama.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>'mornin', Mr. President.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">President Barack Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hello, Bob, what can I do for you?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gibbs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, uh, I kind of need to talk to you about whole BP situation and the, uh, golf game you had this weekend.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yeah, it was great, man!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shot a 78!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can you believe that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, that was with 7 mulligans, and those great secret service guys kept kicking my ball out of the rough when they thought I wasn't looking, but still, best round of golf I've had since the whole BP thing started.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm finally getting that slice with my driver worked out, and…why are you looking at me like that, Bob?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gibbs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, you know, Mr. President, we're starting to take a little heat from all these golfing trips you've been having here recently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, you know that was the seventh round you've gotten in since this well blew out and…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yeah, this job's great!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, if I'd known a President of the United States could just go out and have an entire golf course to himself and his foursome any old time he wanted to, I'd have run sooner.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gibbs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But sir, the impression all of this golfing and vacationing creates with the public is that you're more worried about your handicap than you are about all the people getting put out of jobs down there in hick country, er, Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, what could give anyone that idea?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, I've already flown down there and given three speeches, walked around on those crummy beaches and met with all those losers who voted for McCain in '08 – I mean, c'mon, Bob, there's a real limit to how much compassion I can show to anyone south of the Mason Dixon line.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gibbs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sir, don't forget, you won Florida…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh, sure, Florida, throw that one in my face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Besides, the beaches getting hit by the tar balls are up there in the Panhandle part of the state, and that's just South Alabama as far as I'm concerned.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gibbs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ok, I'll give you that one, but still, sir, we have to think about appearances.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>'Appearances'???<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hell, BP's not worried about appearances – that Hayward guy spent Saturday at a yacht race!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gibbs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, yessir, I'll give you that one, too, but still…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no 'still' here – look, Bob, he's at a yacht race, I'm playing golf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every slob in flyover country plays golf, or at least that's what I'm told, but how many of 'em do you think get to go out and ride on a yacht?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, if you put it in the right context, I'm the really common man here, doing what the common man does.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gibbs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wow, you are good.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You bet your butt I am, that's why I'm President and McCain's out there in Arizona having to fight with everything he's got to beat an ex-radio DJ who's been in more tanning booths than George Hamilton just to get his own party's nomination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile, I am somehow surviving with a walking gaffe machine as a vice president and have my main rival rendered completely irrelevant as my own secretary of state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am really, really good.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gibbs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ok, well, having conceded you're really, really good, sir, I am going to ask you one more time to really, really consider lightening up on your golf game while this well is still out of control.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Look, Bob, I already cut my vacation short by a full day to go make a speech down there – how much more sacrifice must I make here?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, if I can't play golf, what can I do?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gibbs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, there's a bowling alley down in the basement…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was Nixon's deal – not for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Besides, you saw me bowl during the campaign – that probably cost me 40,000 votes in Akron, Ohio alone.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gibbs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sir, all I'm asking you here is to focus more on governing and less on recreating while this thing is going on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe, you know, have some cabinet meetings about Afghanistan and Iran and stuff like that.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dude, you are one serious buzz kill, you know that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Have you spent any time with my Cabinet?</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gibbs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, not all that much, no…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, you go spend two hours in a room with Janet Napolitano and tell me how you feel. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gimme another idea here.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gibbs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ok, how about I get you a pool table installed in the East Wing?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All right, that's a start.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pretty sure I can take Biden at billiards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if I can't, I can always get Rahm to break one of his thumbs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hey, this actually sounds like fun!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gibbs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So do we have a deal?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Done!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But call that nitwit BP CEO and tell him he needs to hurry up and get that damn well plugged, because I really need work on my long irons.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gibbs:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consider it done. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-67809130287097313292010-06-01T08:25:00.000-07:002010-06-01T08:25:18.120-07:00Barack Obama: President of ... What?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TAUmKQZumCI/AAAAAAAAAGc/ppSejz9tUW0/s1600/obama+arrogance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/TAUmKQZumCI/AAAAAAAAAGc/ppSejz9tUW0/s200/obama+arrogance.jpg" width="198" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">The biggest problem with President Obama is that he so often seems not to have a grasp on just exactly what it is that he is president of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There appears to be no recognition in this White House that, once the election campaign is over, the winner becomes the president of all 50 United States, along with every person who resides within them.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We have never had a president who so openly demonizes huge swaths of American society on such a regular basis as we have seen this President repeatedly do with Tea Partiers (even resorting to the obscene "tea bagger" reference), opponents of socialized healthcare, anyone making more than $100,000 per year, and the entire state of Arizona, to name just a few of his chosen rhetorical targets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then there are those segments of our society to whom this President and his gang of Chicago thugs offer nothing more than benign neglect:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The people of Nashville, who just weeks ago suffered through flooding comparable to what Katrina did to New Orleans with barely a mention from this President, millions of Americans living along the border with Mexico who suffer with the drug trafficking and violence that are a facet of daily life in the region while this Administration steadfastly refuses to do anything about enforcing the laws on the federal books, and the people of the Gulf Coast, who had to wait 37 days before this President summoned the interest to deign to hold a press conference about the ongoing tragedy of the BP oil spill.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To that growing daily list, we can add the families of America's fallen veterans, insulted on Monday by this President's choice to vacation in Chicago rather than take part in the traditional Memorial Day presidential ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The breaking of this tradition is just the latest in a long line of insults to the military offered by Mr. Obama and his Administration over the last year and a half.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Given these and many more divisive acts taken by this President, it is increasingly obvious that Mr. Obama considers himself the "president" only of those who voted for him and support his radical leftist political agenda.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can there be any real question, for instance, that had it been a very blue-state Boston that suffered through massive spring flooding rather than deep-in-the-heart-of-a-red-state Nashville, this Administration would have staged a massive federal response to the disaster?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If the BP oil spill threatened the coastlines of blue-state California, Oregon and Washington rather than red-state Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, does anyone really believe that this President and his minions would have sat benignly by for a full month doing little other than deflecting blame before finally and begrudgingly beginning the process of treating the event as a disaster of national proportions?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you do believe that, well, you'd be much better off reading Alice in Wonderland than this column.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Whatever else one thinks about George W. Bush, as President – and as Texas Governor before that – he was studiously careful not to use derogatory rhetoric about any segment of our society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where Obama derides Tea Party activists at seemingly every given opportunity, Bush never lowered himself or the office he occupied to criticize those who participated in the thousands of obscene and often violent anti-war protests that became a staple of American life after the invasion of Iraq.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Bill Clinton was also very careful to avoid the use of divisive rhetoric against any segment of the American public, and clearly understood the necessity of any president staying above the fray.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In reality, until the elevation of Mr. Obama to the office, one would be at great pains to find an example of any sitting president since Woodrow Wilson who openly and frequently demonized large segments of the U.S. population for political gain.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Clearly, President Obama feels no similar need for restraint, and in fact obviously believes that dividing the nation is in his own self-interest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As long as that political calculation holds at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we can anticipate two and a half more years of a nation becoming increasingly and more bitterly divided.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And there is no reason to believe the political calculation will change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This strategy is in keeping with the Obama Administration's adherence to the demonize-and-conquer strategies taught by late Chicago radical Saul Alinsky, whose teachings have guided this President throughout his adult lifetime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is who Mr. Obama is, and who he will remain.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This reality will bring joy to the hate-filled cretins who inhabit leftwing websites, but it won't do much for the rest of a population yearning for a President who actually gives a damn when a tragedy such as the BP oil spill devastates an entire region of the country, regardless of how that region voted in the 2008 presidential election.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For that, they will have to wait until January 20, 2013.</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-78142229532626660542010-05-23T08:08:00.000-07:002010-05-24T07:06:48.875-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S_lEqMPg2zI/AAAAAAAAAGU/tzCoV8efyog/s1600/rand-paul-new-cropped-proto-custom_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S_lEqMPg2zI/AAAAAAAAAGU/tzCoV8efyog/s200/rand-paul-new-cropped-proto-custom_2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Welcome to yet another thrilling edition of the only newspaper column in America that hasn't lied about serving in Vietnam, Hobnobbing With Dave!<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Item: So this is why libertarians never win elections…<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Well, Sarah Palin can celebrate now: the leftwing news media has discovered a new boogeyman to hound, and his name is Rand Paul, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky. Though nominally a Republican, Mr. Paul is in fact a libertarian, as is his father, Texas Congressman Ron Paul. While libertarian views tend to be technically correct about what the Constitution actually says, those GOP voters in Kentucky who nominated Mr. Paul for this senate seat are about to find out exactly why it is that the Libertarian Party seldom fields candidates who can actually win elections.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Libertarianism is all about telling people what the government cannot do for them. Like it or not, the truth about America is that most voters want to know what the government can do for them, and base their voting decisions accordingly. In a poll released just after last Tuesday's primary vote, Mr. Paul led his Democrat opponent by more than 20%. You can bet that the leftist news media will make sure that gap closes quickly – helped along by the foot-in-mouth disease that Mr. Paul inherited from his father – and that what ought to be an easy Republican win in November will instead become a nail-biter at best, and possibly even a Democrat win.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Item: Blumenthal is the left's latest gold medalist.<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So a Democrat politician is revealed to be a bald-faced liar, and liberals rally around him in support. What else is new? From Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton to Al Gore to John Kerry to Barack Obama, American liberals have made it obvious for a long, long time that bald-faced liars have real political potential as far as they're concerned.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The latest winner of the liberal gold medal for creative prevarication is Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who has now been starkly revealed to have repeatedly lied throughout his political career about having served in Vietnam. Were he a Republican, Mr. Blumenthal would not only be removed as the Party's nominee for higher office, he would be hounded from the AG's job by the leftwing news media.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But because he's a Democrat, the reaction from the news media has been a round of perfunctory reporting on the matter that will soon die away, and a statement from the Obama Administration that its support for Blumenthal has not changed. Knowing this would be the case, Blumenthal last week responded to the revelation of his serial lying with a statement that he would not allow his record to be attacked.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">His "record" is that of a bald-faced liar, which makes him the perfect liberal candidate for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Item: The Great Climate Fraud Morphs into the Great Species Fraud.<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If you thought that the death of Global Warming as a viable driver of government policy means you can relax a little bit, think again. As is always the case with the world socialist movement – the driver behind Al Gore's Great Climate Fraud - the death of one political fraud only gives birth to the next. As of Friday, May 21, we know what that next fraud will be.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On Friday, the United Nations leaked excerpts from its soon-to-be-published fake study on endangered species, and in the process made it obvious that this will be the next great cause of world socialism. For those who closely followed the political drivers of the Great Climate Fraud, it will come as no surprise that this Great Species Fraud will advocate that the UN report will advocate:</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><ul><li>"...a whole sale revolution in the way humans do business, consume, and think about their lives." And</li>
<li>"…massive changes to the way the global economy is run."</li>
</ul><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">In other words, like the Great Climate Fraud, the Great Species Fraud will be little more than a concerted attack on the free market industrial economies of Western Europe, and more importantly, the United States of America. The devolution of market-based economies to the socialist model – with ever-increasing influence of the UN and other world government organizations – has been the singular focus of socialists around the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The collapse of the Great Climate Fraud changes nothing in that regard, and the frightening fact of the matter is that this kind of thinking completely dominates the Democrat Party at the national level, and pervades the senior leadership of the Obama Administration.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So while we should all celebrate the death of fake climate "science" as a driver of government policy, we mustn't kid ourselves that the world socialist movement has died along with it. These people are like zombies – they just keep coming back from the grave to try to strangle us.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-1637231262859362722010-05-12T19:32:00.000-07:002010-05-12T19:32:06.086-07:00The President Gets the Bad News<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S-tkY-SBbWI/AAAAAAAAAGM/XOACud_1WPc/s1600/Obama_Teleprompter_Oval_Office.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S-tkY-SBbWI/AAAAAAAAAGM/XOACud_1WPc/s320/Obama_Teleprompter_Oval_Office.png" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Recently in the Oval Office…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">President Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rahm, I gotta talk to you about this memo we just got from our pollsters.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm Emmanuel:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>um, yeah, go ahead, but I'm in a hurry here – got some heads to bash on the whole Wall Street reform deal, and then I gotta go dig up some dirt on a couple of Blue Dogs who aren't toeing the party line on climate change.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Says here that our pollsters are advising Democratic congressional candidates to avoid mentioning things like healthcare reform, immigration reform, and jobs in their re-election campaigns.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yeah, so?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Says that the very mention of these issues – issues, by the way, that have been the very centerpieces of my administration thus far – can ensure defeat for members of our party in November.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(glancing at watch) uh-huh, uh-huh, can we get to the point here?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, uh, Rahm, reading this memo, you'd think our policies are unpopular with the people or something.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(nodding head rapidly while fidgeting in chair)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ok, so what are you wondering about?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Look, you're acting as if you're surprised here – haven't you been paying attention?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, I've been kind of busy…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. President, the people hate our policies.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I'm fabulously popular!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sir, don't you read those polling memos we place on your desk each morning?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not really.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm not good with paper. I'm more of a high-tech guy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It'd be better if you'd give them to Betty over there and have her scroll them on the TelePrompter, like she does with the newspaper every day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That as you know is my learning tool of choice.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Sigh)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sir, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you are not fabulously popular anymore.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm not?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, sir.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, you're not in Bush territory or anything like that, but your job approval rating has been down in the 40s for quite some time now.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(gasp!)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But how can that be?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, I'm The One and all…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>um, well, sir, it turns out that country really didn't move to the left politically in 2008 like we initially thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Turns out the voters just had Bush fatigue, and voted for you just because you were less like Bush than McCain was.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know, that's damn near impossible for me to believe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, my entire world view is now in jeopardy because of what you just said there, Rahm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are you certain about this?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yessir, I can get you the polling data if you like.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ok, just get it to Betty over there so she can scroll it up on the TelePrompter.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, uh, sir?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It really is worse than that.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What do you mean?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, see, you are actually more personally popular than your policies are.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(smiling broadly)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, that's good news, right?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Depends on your outlook, really.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, I guess it's good news to you…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew it!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>…but it's really not good news to Democrats running for re-election who voted for your healthcare nationalization bill, and who support your policies on other issues.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, but I've always thought that good news for Barack was good news for everybody.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, that's how I've lived my entire life!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yessir, I know that – it's pretty self-evident to everyone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the reality of the situation is that your healthcare bill makes about 60% of the population sick to its collective stomach, and public approval for your immigration policies is even lower than that.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hmmm…that does present a bit of a problem, then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what about jobs?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, wasn't the public listening last November when I announced from my TelePrompter that my administration would henceforth have a "laser-like focus" on job creation?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>uh, well, yes they were, but you know, they were also watching as we moved on to healthcare nationalization immediately after you read that speech.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then they watched as you moved to Wall Street reform immediately after that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they have watched over the last couple of weeks as you have spent your time bashing the State of Arizona over the immigration law they recently passed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they've also watched as the rate of unemployment has continued to hover at around 10% ever since you read that speech last November…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ok, ok, enough!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Geez! </span>So tell me this:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If our candidates can't run on healthcare, immigration, or jobs, and Wall Street reform isn't doing us any good either, how in the world are they supposed to run?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, I'm suggesting they run away from you, sir.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heh-heh.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obama:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Ok, t</span>hat was uncalled for.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rahm:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know, but I couldn't resist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now excuse me while I go bash some heads and blackmail some Blue Dogs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, that's the way we really get things done around here.</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-2931759973681706432010-05-04T05:34:00.000-07:002010-05-04T10:16:31.780-07:00The Consequence of Incompetence<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S-AUSfGXIYI/AAAAAAAAAGE/9BsdPl8j6wU/s1600/Obama+Incompetence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S-AUSfGXIYI/AAAAAAAAAGE/9BsdPl8j6wU/s320/Obama+Incompetence.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">The continuing utter ineptitude of the current presidential administration has never been more starkly displayed than over the last week, in relation to the disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the attempted Islamo-fascist bombing in Times Square.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br />
</i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Bombing</i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">For those of you who haven't been keeping count, Friday night's attempted bombing in Times Square constitutes the fourth significant terrorist attack by Islamo-fascists on U.S. soil since President Obama took office. That compares to zero significant terrorist attacks by Islamo-fascists on U.S. soil during the Bush Administration post-9/11. So do the math: that's 4 in 16 months compared to zero in 87 months.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If you think this is somehow mere coincidence, think again. This is a matter of focus, or lack thereof by this current President and his Chicago thug minions on the real threat this nation faces. President George W. Bush, for all of his touchy-feely political correctness when it came to airport security and constantly referring to Islam as a "religion of peace", also consistently and clearly identified and targeted the real terrorist threat to America in modern times, which invariably comes from male followers of radical Islamic factions between the ages of 18 and 35. That is the demographic the Bush Justice Department and intelligence agencies focused on, and that focus kept this nation safe from terrorist attack for the final 87 months of the Bush presidency.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">By contrast, the Obama Administration can't even bring itself to use the word 'terrorist' until absolutely forced to do so when reality slaps it in its collective face, as happened on Tuesday morning, and it is incapable of using any iteration of 'Islam' in describing individual terrorists or the terrorist threat in any event whatsoever. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To make matters worse, the Justice Department under feckless Attorney General Eric Holder has made it clear that its focus will be on domestic, 'right-wing' paramilitary groups, the likes of which have not staged any sort of attack in this country in the 15 years since Tim McVeigh attacked the FBI building in Oklahoma City.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It should surprise no one that this refusal by U.S. law enforcement officials to focus on the real threat at hand has emboldened Islamo-fascists around the world and led inevitably to frequent deadly attacks on American soil. Islamo-fascists are like vicious dogs – if you don't take the threat they present seriously, they will bite you in the butt until you do. Until the Obama Administration begins to take the vicious dog in the neighborhood seriously, the dog will continue to bite.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br />
</i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The BP Spill</i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">First, let's be crystal clear here: This disaster is the fault of BP and its contractors, and they will and should pay dearly for it. That said, the response to this terrible event by the Obama Administration has been shamefully inept, and the parallels to the Bush Administration response to Hurricane Katrina are too obvious to let pass.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">President Bush was pilloried by the national leftist news media for being two days late in responding to Katrina – which was undeniably true. They were late, they were inept when they finally did respond, and the President's advisors gave the appearance of being uncaring. No question about any of that. But they were also dealing with an utterly incompetent Mayor of New Orleans, and an utterly incompetent Governor of Louisiana who waited two days to cede her own jurisdiction over disaster response to the federal government. This lack of clarity of jurisdiction was at least partially responsible for the mass confusion that existed after the hurricane's devastation of New Orleans.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">By contrast, there is no lack of clarity whatsoever in who has jurisdiction in response to major oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico. That jurisdiction goes to the U.S. Department of the Interior. Period. It is an undeniable fact that the Obama Administration waited nine full days following the initial massive explosion before mounting any sort of meaningful response to this event.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">You will note that there is no similar outcry in the nation's Obama lapdog news media regarding this Administration's failure to respond in a timely and effective manner. Oh, the New York Times published a half-hearted editorial on Sunday that mildly criticized the Administration, and Bill Maher belched out a typically obscene comment on his HBO show on Friday night, but those and few other isolated criticisms are pretty much the extent of the non-outrage displayed by the supposed protectors of the public interest towards this Administration's incompetent response to what could become the worst ecological disaster in the nation's history.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But don't worry: the President finally, at long last made it to Louisiana on Monday, 13 days following the explosion, to announce that his Administration would not rest until the disaster has been contained. He was so serious about this commitment that he even made his announcement without the aid of his ever-present TelePrompter.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I know the people of Louisiana feel much better now that The One has spoken.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-29048729971311724822010-05-02T07:19:00.000-07:002010-05-02T07:28:38.815-07:00Three Positives From the BP Disaster<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S92DSrEEA-I/AAAAAAAAAF8/oc4NPK5qyJ0/s1600/BP+Disaster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S92DSrEEA-I/AAAAAAAAAF8/oc4NPK5qyJ0/s320/BP+Disaster.jpg" /></a></div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;">1) In the last 20 years, the only thing our public school children have learned about the oil and gas industry has been the Exxon Valdez disaster. From this point forward, the only thing future school children will learn about the oil and gas industry will be this BP disaster. So Exxon will be able to feel better about its contribution - or lack thereof - to our system of education.</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;">2) If "climate" legislation wasn't already dead as a doornail before this happened, it certainly is now. A big part of the compromise surrounding the Kerry/Graham/Lieberman (KGL) bill currently under senate consideration was the Obama Administration's recent announcement that its 5 year plan for the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf would include opening up new areas for exploration for oil and gas. That has been key to getting the votes of Democrats like Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Mark Pryor, Jeff Bingaman and a few others. The BP disaster will destroy that compromise. Good riddance.</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;">3) Over the last few days, we have been treated to the spectacle of our first openly fascist President, Barack Obama, and other high officials in his administration defending exploration for oil and gas in the offshore United States. The only reason they are doing that is because they are desperate to hold together the votes to pass the KGL bill. Had they not included expanded offshore access in their 5 year plan, they would without any question whatsoever have spent the last 10 days excoriating Republicans for their support of offshore drilling. It has been hilarious to watch the rank hypocrisy in action.</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;"><br style="min-width: 0px;" /></div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;"><br style="min-width: 0px;" /></div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;">If y'all can think of other positives from this horrible tragedy, let me know, because I'm keeping a list.</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;">In all seriousness, our hearts should all go out to the people of Louisiana and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast whose environment and livelihoods will likely be impacted - and in some instances, devastated - by this broadening disaster. It is now obvious that the oil from this spill will become an ecological and economic disaster along the Southern coast of Louisiana. It is already moving into sensitive coastal wetland areas that were devastated just five years ago by Hurricane Katrina, and will almost certainly have severe impacts on the Louisiana fishing, shrimping and oyster bed industries that constitute such a vital part of the Louisiana economy. It seems likely that the currents in the Gulf of Mexico will ultimately carry this oil to the shores of other states, ultimately even being carried around the Florida peninsula and impacting that state's Eastern shore.</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;">All sorts of theories are beginning to float around about what might have caused the initial explosion that triggered this disaster, most of them centering around the failure of the blowout preventer to trigger and shut down the flow of oil through the well bore. I have heard some of my colleagues talk about what "bad luck" BP has had in recent years, with several major disasters taking place at their U.S. facilities. The truth is that such accidents at large facilities of this sort are almost always due to some form of human error - they are almost never the result of a "bad luck" mechanical failure. </div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;">The reality is that BP has established an unfortunate safety record at its U.S. facilities in the last 5 years - both the explosion at its Texas City Refinery and its pipeline leak on the North Slope of Alaska were clear results of its personnel failing to follow safety procedures. BP and the federal government will perform their investigations and ultimately identify a cause, and we can expect that cause to have very little to do with "bad luck", and much to do with human error. Blowout preventers with triple-redundant triggering systems just don't fail on their own.</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;">The sad part of this is that the oil and gas industry as a whole has over the last 20 years established an extraordinary record for safety in the Gulf of Mexico. The federal government defines a "significant" oil spill as any spill over 1,000 barrels. Not even the devastation wrought to oil and gas platforms in the Gulf by hurricanes Katrina and Rita triggered a single such spill.</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;">That record will now be totally discounted in the U.S. liberal news media by this single incident, and the nation will become far more dependent on foreign oil as a result.</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="max-width: 99%; min-width: 0px;">That's very sad, but it's also an unavoidable outcome of this terrible tragedy.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We are also seeing questions beginning to arise, even in the Obama lapdog media, about the slowness of the federal government's response to this event, with some even beginning to speculate that this could become "Obama's Katrina".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only time will tell if that ultimately becomes the case, but we must all realize that only the lapdog news media can make that happen, and given that they have richly earned their "lapdog" moniker in relation to this President, such an outcome seems very unlikely to ultimately take place.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">After all, life in the liberal zoo bases its entire existence on a compliant and cooperative lapdog media.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-59165240474807678342010-04-27T04:11:00.000-07:002010-04-27T04:11:17.063-07:00Lindsey Graham, Pitiful RINO<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S9bGIl-DMqI/AAAAAAAAAFs/biw9d0U7NeM/s1600/Lindsey+RINO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S9bGIl-DMqI/AAAAAAAAAFs/biw9d0U7NeM/s200/Lindsey+RINO.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Pity poor Lindsey Graham.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ok, well, don't pity him – rather, snicker at him for his stupidity in becoming the latest Republican senator to get caught up the crossfire of Democrat mid-term electoral calculations.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Mr. Graham, of course, is the Senator from South Carolina who styles himself as the second coming of the now former "maverick", Arizona Senator John McCain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(McCain, we recently discovered, is now an ex-Maverick, having recently disavowed having ever been anything but a loyal conservative Republican in the face of a strong GOP primary challenge from former congressman J.D. Hayworth.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Senator Graham has spent the last six months engaged in a negotiation with Democrat Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and "independent" (but really Democrat) Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut on "climate", i.e., cap and trade legislation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Keeping with the hubris of their massive egos, these three senators have proceeded on the belief that they, and only they, can devise the ideal solution to the non-existent "problem" of man-caused global warming, with Sen. Graham taking on McCain's former role as the poster child for Republican-in-name-only (RINO) stupidity.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Kerry/Graham/Lieberman bill – we'll call it KGL for short – was set for a grand unveiling this past Monday, but a funny thing happened on the way to Lindsey's coronation:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Democrat election year politics intervened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On Saturday, poor Lindsey issued a plaintive message announcing he was pulling out of his negotiations on the KGL bill – meaning, one supposes, that we will have to henceforth refer to it as simply the KL bill – due to the fact that the White House has now convinced Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to take up immigration reform rather than "climate" legislation next on the senate's agenda.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Graham's note went on to express his disappointment that the Democrats have chosen to yet again delay dealing with such a critical issue, after they had promised him that KGL would be next on this year's agenda.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Oh me, oh my, what is a poor RINO to do?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The only surprising thing about this shift in Democrat strategy is that it comes as a surprise to anyone, much less Sen. RINO.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Democrat agenda is never about dealing with issues that are somehow important to the American people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If it was, healthcare would have been far down the list of priorities, and "climate" wouldn't even be on the list.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, large majorities of the public adamantly opposed the healthcare atrocity, and that majority has continued to grow since the bill's passage, and "climate" legislation consistently places dead last in polls that ask respondents to the issues that are most important to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In most polls, it wouldn't even register as an issue at all unless the questioner specifically asks about it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Immigration, on the other hand, does register in the collective public mind, and so, as the Democrat leadership in Washington looked at this year's remaining congressional schedule, and realized they were quickly running out of days on which issues could be brought to the well of the Senate for consideration, they had a choice to make.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not surprisingly, they made the choice that they perceive will give them the greatest political advantage in November.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite Sen. RINO's complaints, it was an entirely rational choice.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">For the Democrats, "climate" legislation is about one thing and one thing only:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>placating the radical leftist "environmental" groups who contribute tens of millions of dollars to Democrat campaigns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But while the radical greens control gobs of money, they don't control a lot of votes at the end of the day, and they can just as easily be placated through the regulatory processes at EPA and the Department of the Interior as they can through legislation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, although they give great lip service to it, for the Democrats, "climate" legislation is really a secondary priority, especially in an election year.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Immigration reform, on the other hand, is where the votes are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the great looming problems the Democrats face in this year's elections is a great deficit in what pollsters call "voter enthusiasm".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The </div><div class="MsoNormal">Democrat voter base always tends to experience lower turnout in mid-term congressional election years, and that is only exacerbated in years, like this year, when the Democrat voter base – made up largely of ethnic minorities – is less motivated to vote than the GOP voter base.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So, facing this election-year reality, the Democrat leadership in the White House and congress made the very cynical and simple calculation:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What better way to stir up the voter base than with a big fight over immigration reform?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn't matter to the Democrats if they win or lose, it makes no difference whether a bill is ultimately signed into law or not – the fight is what matters in an election year.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So, the Arizona immigration bill that was passed late last week gave the President and Sen. Reid their opening, and they jumped through it, with Sen. RINO becoming the big loser in the whole process.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gosh, don't you feel terrible for poor Lindsey?</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-24674108541794700062010-04-19T07:19:00.000-07:002010-04-19T12:46:18.845-07:00The Tea Party Demonization Campaign Continues<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S8xmKy7X6AI/AAAAAAAAAFk/kMQu1Csv1I4/s1600/teanote.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S8xmKy7X6AI/AAAAAAAAAFk/kMQu1Csv1I4/s320/teanote.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">The single most consistent truism in American political life is this: If you see a liberal/leftist/progressive/ socialist/neo-fascist accusing conservatives of engaging in some unseemly behavior, you can be absolutely, positively certain that said liberal/leftist/progressive/socialist/neo-fascist is either currently engaging in the exact same behavior or has done so in the past. This absolute truism has never been more starkly on display than in the ongoing effort by the Democrat Party and its propaganda arm in the old, tired, dying leftist news media to demonize the millions of ordinary Americans who participate in the Tea Party rallies all over the country.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A couple of weeks ago we detailed how several members of congress leveled obviously false charges that Tea Party participants in Washington hurled racial and homophobic epithets at them as they filed into the capital building. That effort having been exposed as a fraud and failing to move the public opinion needle away from the Tea Partiers, the Democrats and their media agents redoubled their efforts last week, desperate to find some traction as the November elections grow ever more near.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The fun started with Chris Matthews, who believe it or not is still on MSNBC, hosting a show viewed by literally dozens of people late each afternoon. Mr. Matthews went into a literal hissy fit – the kind only smarmy leftwingers can throw – after hearing Rush Limbaugh refer to the current administration as the Obama "Regime" on his radio program. Matthews went on and on about how the use of that specific word is simply unacceptable in American public discourse, contending Limbaugh should be shunned for having used it to refer to any duly-elected American president, because in so doing he might incite those evil Tea Partiers to violent behavior.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One problem: a cursory Google search on the term "Bush Regime" returned 1.4 million hits, including hundreds of examples of its use by Democrat members of congress, and several instances when Matthews himself used the term to refer to the George W. Bush Administration. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Oops.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Next we had NY Times columnist Frank Rich, in his Saturday column, trotting out the tired and disgusting canard that the only reason why the Tea Partiers oppose the current President's policies is due to their inherent racism. He went on to contend that race is in fact the sole motivating factor of the Tea Parties, and that Republican politicians who encourage the Tea Parties are in fact inciting violence and risking creating another Timothy McVeigh. This from a guy who never had word one to say about the hundreds of real violent protests conducted by those on the far left during the Bush years, and who has never had a word to say about real race baiters like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and the criminal behavior their acts have provoked over the years.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Not content to merely use media tools to drumbeat this "Tea Partiers = Violent Racists" message into the public consciousness, the Democrats trotted out the big gun over the weekend in the form of former President and Oval Office Fornicator Bill Clinton. At an event recognizing the 15<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, the former Prevaricator in Chief built upon Rich's comparison of the Tea Partiers as one big Timothy McVeigh waiting to happen, stating that the rhetoric he is hearing from the Tea Parties today is reminiscent of the rhetoric he heard from the right prior to McVeigh's atrocity. Those of us with long memories will remember that Clinton, on the advice of pollster Dick Morris, disgracefully used the tragic deaths of almost 200 Americans as a tool for attacking his political enemies, attempting to blame the event on conservative talk radio hosts like Limbaugh, instead of the abuses of the FBI under his own watch at Mount Carmel and the earlier incident at Ruby Ridge, as McVeigh himself attested to.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Not content with merely labeling millions of ordinary Americans as hateful, violent, racist terrorists, the Democrat demonization campaign continued onto the Sunday morning talk shows, where Time Magazine leftist nitwit Joe Klein accused Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin – and by extension, the Tea Partiers – of making statements that border on "sedition". To quote Klein: "</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%;">I looked up the definition of sedition which is conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state. And a lot of these statements… rub right up close to being seditious."</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Oh, ok, so now those on the radical political left would have you all believe that statements criticizing the taxing and spending excesses of this Administration and congress are somehow seditious in nature. This is life in the liberal zoo carried to its logical conclusion: any idea contrary to those held by the poobahs of American leftism must be criminalized in order to be shut down, because those on the left have no means of making any fact-based argument to refute them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="line-height: 115%;">At long last, it has come to this. November cannot get here soon enough.</span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-24530833330547691262010-04-18T08:15:00.000-07:002010-04-18T08:15:40.387-07:00Must be Global Warming, 2010 Part V<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S8siAAl5Z-I/AAAAAAAAAFc/3g2FyY-wTXQ/s1600/mancowringdreamstime_6635182.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S8siAAl5Z-I/AAAAAAAAAFc/3g2FyY-wTXQ/s200/mancowringdreamstime_6635182.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">I swear, the most gifted fiction writer in the world could never make up the abject bullshit that global warming "scientists" belch out on a daily basis. Now we're supposed to all cower in fear because there is just not enough air pollution around anymore to keep the planet cool:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-collapse: collapse; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kintisch18-2010apr18,0,3774828.story">Why Cleaner Air Could Speed Global Warming</a></span><br />
<br />
Seriously, does anybody actually believe anything these clowns have to say anymore? Amazing.<br />
<br />
Have a great Sunday.EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-9357910866901325452010-04-12T08:37:00.000-07:002010-04-12T08:37:05.660-07:00The 16 Year Cycle of Presidential Politics<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S8M944_D3HI/AAAAAAAAAFU/fmn2c4d6cDc/s1600/obama_carter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S8M944_D3HI/AAAAAAAAAFU/fmn2c4d6cDc/s200/obama_carter.jpg" width="178" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">I have long held the theory that each new generation of Americans has almost a genetic need to experiment with liberalism/leftism/progressivism/socialism or whatever '–ism' is being attached leftist ideology in this country these days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, every 16 years or so, as a new generation of American voters comes of age and the people begin to get bored with whatever moderate-to-conservative administration happens to be in power at the time, the country elects a leftist to the presidency, and waits to see what happens.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It generally doesn't take too long for the public to collectively recoil in horror at the terrible mistake it has made, and to then begin the process of correcting things at the polls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's very easy to go back in history and observe this apparently unavoidable cycle of American politics.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Let's begin in 1960, when a public tired of 12 years of boring prosperity under Truman and then Eisenhower elected the young liberal John F. Kennedy to the presidency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kennedy's liberal social policies and feckless, amateurish conduct of foreign affairs had his public approval rating on a downward trajectory by late 1963, and the country was well on its way to a correcting election the following year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then JFK was assassinated, and the public turned to Lyndon Johnson in a sympathy vote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Democrats were turned out of office in 1968, but not until Johnson had saddled the country with the massive escalation of the Vietnam conflict, and a set of Great Society programs that are still wreaking damage on the population to this day.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Fast forward 16 years to 1976, and a new generation of voters tired of the Watergate scandal turned to a liberal peanut farmer from Georgia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most incompetent presidency in the nation's history followed, resulting in the Reagan landslides of 1980 and 1984.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When George H.W. Bush prevailed over leftwinger Mike Dukakis in 1988, it looked as if the public had learned a lasting lesson from the Carter debacle, and might well avoid another disastrous flirtation with leftism.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But it wasn't to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1992, the magic 16 years after 1976, a public furious at Bush for breaking his "no new taxes" pledge in a shameful deal with congressional Democrats turned leftwards again, elevating Bill and Hillary Clinton to their co-Presidency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This time the public caught on far more quickly than it had following the mistakes of 1960 and 1976, recoiling in terror as the Clintons attempted to socialize the healthcare system and implement a massive new BTU carbon tax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Voters were so appalled by these and many other Clintonian initiatives that they awarded the Republicans with a massive congressional sea change election in 1994, turning both houses of congress over to the GOP for the first time in almost half a century.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Many anticipated that a personal repudiation of the Clintons would follow in the 1996 presidential contest, but Bill Clinton was smart enough to shove Hillary and her hard-core leftism aside, choosing instead to adopt the strategy of "triangulation" suggested to him by pollster and then-White House aide Dick Morris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, throughout 1995 and 1996, Clinton co-opted Republican positions on everything from military policy to welfare reform, and ended up being re-elected and presiding over a successful presidency for the most part.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">All of which brings us forward now to 2008, sixteen years after Clinton's 1992 victory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another new generation of voters grew tired of 12 years of moderate-to-conservative policy, and also tired of a war in Iraq that had dragged on for 6 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Predictably, another lurch to the left occurred, this time elevating a true leftist radical to the presidency.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This time the public learned even faster than it had following the 1992 mistake, beginning the process of turning the Democrats out of office in November of 2009, as it recoiled in horror at the radical leftist, even fascist, policy pursuits of President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats in congress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All indicators today point to the likelihood of another sea change election coming this November.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>True, there are still more than six months between now and Election Day, but it's hard to see what could happen between now and then that would turn back this growing tide.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Should such a sea change take place this November, the question will then become whether President Obama will choose to moderate his worst impulses as Bill Clinton did following 1994?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this point, there is no indication whatsoever that this President has a moderating bone in his body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bill Clinton was all about Bill Clinton, and was willing to do whatever it took to secure some sort of positive legacy for himself in history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Leftist ideology was Hillary's deal, not his.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Barack Obama, on the other hand, is all about ideology, and transforming the country as he promised repeatedly to do during his election campaign. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given that, there appears little chance he will divert himself from the Jimmy Carter-esque path to a one term presidency he currently finds himself treading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such a fate could not happen to a more deserving person.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-76348208182345462172010-04-06T07:52:00.000-07:002010-04-06T07:52:10.528-07:00The Mindless and Disgraceful Alinsky Democrats<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S7tKbZUX1sI/AAAAAAAAAFM/yIHiQg9avoY/s1600/Alinsky+Rule+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S7tKbZUX1sI/AAAAAAAAAFM/yIHiQg9avoY/s320/Alinsky+Rule+5.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">One of the most amusing pass times I've engaged in recently has been to observe as the Democrat Party and its press agents in the old, tired, dying, Dinosaur national news media demonize those who participate in the loosely-organized Tea Parties around the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Democrats are in fact so frightened by the Tea Partiers that they have resorted the tactics preached by their apparent guiding philosopher, the late radical Saul Alinsky, attempting to brand all Tea Party participants as racist rednecks.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In the runup to their vote on the healthcare nationalization atrocity a few weeks back, several African American Democrats leveled accusations that some of the participants in the Tea Party rally that took place on the day of the vote had shouted racial epithets at them as they filed into the Capitol building.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Barney Frank, the gay pathological liar from Massachusetts, similarly alleged that at least one of the tens of thousands of Tea Partiers there that day hurled a gay slur at him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The leftist news media, as always utterly incurious about why these specific members of congress would choose to enter the capitol building at ground level, rather than use the tunnels they use about 99% of the time, breathlessly reported the accusations from these members of congress as fact (after all, they're all liberals, they wouldn't lie, would they?), and have spent the last three weeks tarring and feathering everyone who has ever participated in a Tea Party rally.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On the day of the vote, I told some friends that I suspected these accusations were fake, and after a few days of the demonization of the Tea Partiers, others began to wonder the same thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, dozens of members of the media recorded every step those members of congress took that day, and yet none of them managed to catch audio or video of a single racist or homophobic remark coming from the crowd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet no one in the dinosaur media found this to be curious.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Andrew Breitbart, a journalist who runs the very successful website, Breitbart.com, realizing that there had to be hundreds of individuals in the area using either video cameras or cell phone capable of recording audio, decided to offer a $10,000 reward for anyone who could produce any evidence at all that any racist or homophobic remarks had come from the crowd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a week of getting no response, he upped the reward to $100,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this day, there has been no response.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Why?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the accusations were clearly fake, staged by these Alinsky Democrats as a means of marginalizing a movement they perceive as a threat to their political future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These fake accusations are based on these rules from Alinsky's Rules for Radicals:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: windowtext; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: windowtext; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: windowtext; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: windowtext; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: windowtext; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: windowtext; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">So, the Tea Party participants now become demonized as a bunch of lower-class, uneducated, racist rednecks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nevermind recent polling data that show a) more than 40% of Tea Partiers are political independents or Democrats, b) the average education level of Tea Partiers is virtually identical to that of the population at large, and c) the average income level of Tea Partiers is virtually identical to that of the population at large.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the Alinsky Democrat view, Tea Partiers cannot be perceived to be a cross-section of the population at large because that lends them legitimacy in the eyes of others.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: windowtext; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: windowtext; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I think this Alinsky Democrat tactic will fail – and already has failed, in fact – with everyone who is not already a hopelessly smug, leftist ideologue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because most Americans are going to understand that an attack on the Tea Partiers is really an attack on middle America, that vast swath of the country that lies outside of the leftist media centers in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Alinsky Democrats used the same tactics against Sarah Palin, and were largely successful in marginalizing her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Sarah Palin is one person – the Tea Partiers are millions of ordinary Americans, whose views are supported by millions more.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;">The Tea Party movement is the single most important political development of the last 20 years, and the Alinsky Democrats know it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When 48% of those surveyed in a recent poll say their political views are closer to the Tea Partiers than to the President's, the Alinsky Democrats know they have a very real problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: windowtext;">Lashing out and demonizing millions of registered voters, at a time when your party is already lagging behind in the polls, does not appear to be a recipe for success, regardless of what Saul Alinsky taught.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-37553265136590126162010-04-05T04:57:00.000-07:002010-04-05T04:57:58.722-07:00Meanwhile, from our Peace-loving nancy-boys at Greenpeace...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://media.timeoutnewyork.com/resizeImage/htdocs/export_images/661/661.web.gay10.rollerblade.jpg?" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://media.timeoutnewyork.com/resizeImage/htdocs/export_images/661/661.web.gay10.rollerblade.jpg?" width="133" /></a></div>...we have this declaration of war on global warming skeptics like yours truly:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://weblog.greenpeace.org/climate/2010/04/will_the_real_climategate_plea_1.html">http://weblog.greenpeace.org/climate/2010/04/will_the_real_climategate_plea_1.html</a><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"></span><br />
<blockquote>Emerging battle-bruised from the disaster zone of Copenhagen, but ever-hopeful, a <a href="http://blog.brian-fitzgerald.net/?p=741"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;">rider on horseback</span></a> brought news of darkness and light: "The politicians have failed. Now it's up to us. We must break the law to make the laws we need: laws that are supposed to protect society, and protect our future. Until our laws do that, screw being climate lobbyists. Screw being climate activists. It's not working. We need an army of climate outlaws."</blockquote><blockquote>The proper channels have failed. It's time for mass civil disobedience to cut off the financial oxygen from denial and skepticism.</blockquote><blockquote>If you're one of those who believe that this is not just necessary but also possible, speak to us. Let's talk about what that mass civil disobedience is going to look like.</blockquote><blockquote>If you're one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this:</blockquote><blockquote>We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work.</blockquote><blockquote>And we be many, but you be few.</blockquote><br />
<br />
Bring it on, Shirley. I'll be happy to introduce you to my little friend, Mr. Sawed-off 16 Gauge.<br />
<br />
Sheesh.EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-37401168992654732212010-04-04T07:17:00.000-07:002010-04-04T07:17:53.687-07:00A Low Degree of Equanimity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S7ifaiR33PI/AAAAAAAAAFE/1yTp7FwMTZY/s1600/obama+testy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_2nomkUzEEhA/S7ifaiR33PI/AAAAAAAAAFE/1yTp7FwMTZY/s200/obama+testy.jpg" width="198" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Equanimity.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">About 20 years ago, my boss at the time recommended me for a promotion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A partial basis for his recommendation was that I possessed, in his view, a "high degree of equanimity."</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I read that and thought, "Wow, that's great!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who would have ever thought I would have a 'high degree of equanimity'?"</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And then, about 2 seconds after that, I realized I didn't know what the word meant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I looked it up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Turns out this is a fancy word used to describe a person who exhibits 'grace under pressure'.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cool.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'll take it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Since that initial exposure to 'equanimity', it has become one of my favorite words, mainly because it turns out pretty much nobody else knows what it means, either. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can only conclude that this particular word is not a standard feature in high school vocabulary curricula. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">For a while back in the early '90s, I'd toss the word into columns here and there just for fun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then I thought, what's the use in that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, I'm trying to get a point across in these things – generally speaking, of course – so what kind of sense does it make to use words that people aren't going to know?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn't, so I quit doing it, at least consciously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I do still use it in business memos from time to time, with mixed results.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back in 2004, I used the word in a memo that was distributed to the executive team of the company I worked for at the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The next morning, I noticed a reply had come in from the company's CEO.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Now, for a guy in my position, attracting the attention of your CEO can either be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the context.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this case it was hard to tell, because the note read "You are the first person I've ever seen use the word 'equanimity' in a business memo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm impressed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don't do it again."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was just joking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I bring this all up because it occurred to me during the last few weeks that our current President, Barack Obama, is not in possession of a 'high degree of equanimity'.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He often appears sorely lacking in this quality, in fact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This reality becomes especially apparent when the President finds himself without the crutch of his near-omni-present Teleprompter.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We saw a great example of this just on Saturday, in fact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At a townhall meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, the President became flustered when a woman complained about the myriad tax increases contained in his healthcare nationalization law, complaining that "we are already over-taxed".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In response to this question that his trusty thugs, er, aids had clearly failed to screen ahead of time, Mr. Obama launched into a rambling filibuster that went on for 2500 words and lasted more than 17 minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This answer was so extraordinary in its disjointedness and lack of logic that even the liberal Obamatons who run the Washington Post felt compelled to publish an article dedicated to it in the paper's Sunday edition.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Then there was the interview on Fox News with Brett Baier, the first interview ever conducted with this President in a truly journalistic manner, i.e., an interview in which the questions were actually tough, and the person asking them was willing to follow up when the President refused to answer directly, or did not know the answer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this interview, one or the other was pretty much always the case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It became readily apparent that the President did not want to directly answer questions about what was actually in the healthcare legislation, and in fact that he did not even know what was actually in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He became ever more testy as the interview when on and he was caught in a seemingly endless series of prevarications and information voids.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">No doubt that will be the last interview Mr. Obama ever grants to any media source that has not agreed to serve as a member of his propaganda bureau.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has since gone back to conducting cozy puff pieces on NBC and CBS in which he is shown playing basketball, and taking questions about how his wife maintains her buffed arms, and how his daughters are adjusting to life in Washington.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Faced with tough polls in the wake of the healthcare nationalization vote showing that upwards of 60% of the population disapproves of the rank atrocity, the President has lost all semblance of grace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The speeches delivered at a seemingly endless procession of staged townhall events have taken to sounding more like Comedy Central monologues than presidential addresses.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As the November elections grow nearer, with no sign of the polls presaging a massive repudiation of Democrats around the country moderating, one senses a level of near-panic setting in at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The President needs to work on his own equanimity, because the pressure will only get worse from here.</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-47807401665226620882010-03-28T06:54:00.000-07:002010-03-28T07:02:38.364-07:00The Costs of American Fascism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nostate.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/draft_lens1876359module8652131photo_fascist-1205264910.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.nostate.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/draft_lens1876359module8652131photo_fascist-1205264910.jpg" width="219" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Back in the first term of George W. Bush, yours truly penned a series of columns that posited that the Republican Party, then in control of all levers of power as the Democrat Party is today, would do the country a great service by moving towards a market-driven, private-sector-based system of universal healthcare. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The reasoning then was that there was a growing mood among the public that something needed to be done to improve the delivery of healthcare services to those who either did not have health insurance provided through their employment or could not afford to purchase it themselves. This line of thought further concluded that, if the Republicans did not seize their moment in power to move the nation to some form of market-based universal delivery of health services, then the Democrats would move the nation to a ruinous government-based form of the same thing the next time they assumed absolute power.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Predictably, the Republicans did nothing in this regard, and the nation now stands saddled with the worst-case scenario: a nationalized system of healthcare delivery based upon the fascist model (private ownership, government mandate and control) preferred by the nation's first outwardly fascist congress and President. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
This is undeniably what Obamacare amounts to – there is no logical, fact-based argument to the contrary, though there is plenty of dissembling, name-calling and lying from the President and his supporters.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">You begin with the unprecedented mandate that everyone must purchase a healthcare policy. The President and his army of liars like to reply that this is no different than the mandate to buy auto insurance, something only a blatant liar or an oaf who flunked his Logic 101 course would attempt to argue. You are forced to purchase auto insurance in order to engage in a privilege – the privilege of driving an automobile – and we have always paid all manner of fees in order to engage in privileges in this country. The mandate on health insurance is the first time the federal government has imposed a mandate on citizens for the simple fact that they are alive. If you take in breath on a regular basis, the federal government now says you must purchase health insurance. If you do not purchase health insurance, you will be fined. If you refuse to pay the fine, you will be thrown in jail.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This is the very essence of fascism. Benito Mussolini would be proud.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Obamacare will have a depressing effect on the economy in the short run, and ruinous effect in the long run. It received a 10-year "score" from the Congressional Budget Office of "just" $984 billion only due to the fact that it imposes its new taxes immediately, but does not implement its budget outlays until 2014. Thus, you have 10 years of Obamacare taxes counted against just 6 years of outlays. Its mandate that any business employing more than 50 people provide them with healthcare insurance will ensure that thousands upon thousands of small businesses will never grow beyond 49 employees, and many of those who currently exceed that number will lay enough off in order to get themselves under that threshold. That process has already begun.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Where larger businesses are concerned, we've already seen announcements from Caterpillar that Obamacare will impose a new cost of $100 million on that company in its first year, and from AT&T that its cost will be more like $1 billion. What do companies do when they incur massive new costs? They increase the prices they charge to their customers, and they lay people off.<br />
<br />
Continuing on the fascist model, the Democrats in congress next move into bullying and intimidation mode. This morning, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman announced he will subpoena CEOs from these and other large companies to explain their calculations to his committee next month. See, their announcements do not fit into the approved story line, and any deviation from that storyline must be discredited and punished.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On the insurers themselves, the government now imposes mandates that they allow parents to carry their kids on their policies until age 26, and that they can no longer screen applicants for pre-existing conditions, among other things. So what will happen there? Well, both mandates will dramatically increase costs to healthcare insurers, and so the rates they charge will naturally go up as a result. The anticipation of these higher rates is largely the basis for the cost estimates from companies like Caterpillar and AT&T.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This is not rocket science here, folks. It is all very, very easy to predict.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Finally, the Obamacare army of liars love to compare this atrocity of a bill to Social Security and Medicare, and predict it will ultimately become as well-liked by the public as those prior entitlements. Let's note that both Social Security and Medicare are currently actuarially insolvent and will be completely broke within the next decade. Let's also note that the combined un-funded liabilities of those two massive programs that must somehow be paid by future generations of Americans is upwards of $50 trillion. That's Trillion with a "T".</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Those two programs may be popular, but the reality is they are well on their way to bankrupting this nation. Obamacare will just speed that unhappy process along.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Liberal Zoo welcomes you all to Fascist America. Hope you enjoy the stay, but be sure to meet all your mandates.</div>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406513844100932517.post-8559651848017809642010-03-26T15:52:00.000-07:002010-03-26T15:52:54.116-07:00On Losing Your Wallet<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.ehow.com/images/a04/vd/8e/react-lose-wallet-800X800.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://i.ehow.com/images/a04/vd/8e/react-lose-wallet-800X800.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">So I lost my wallet on Sunday. Credit cards - gone. Social Security card - gone. Driver's license - gone. Lost it on my way to Lake Charles for a three day stay at L'auberge Du Lac. It was purely a business trip, I assure you. Luckily I had some cash and my passport on me, so I was able to go ahead and check in.<br />
<br />
What I am finding out is this: cancelling and replacing your credit cards is a cinch. Took me about an hour and a half altogether to replace 5 cards.<br />
<br />
Replacing your driver's license is no different today than it was 40 years ago. Drive to an inconveniently located Texas Dept. of Transportation office. Wait in line 30 minutes for a disgruntled state bureaucrat to look at your insurance card and passport and tell you to fill out a form at a table where there are pens on chains. Find out that none of the pens on chains have any ink in them, and borrow a pen from the Scottish guy in front of you who just moved to Houston from Aberdeen. Nice guy - he tells me not to be too upset - it works the same way in Scotland.<br />
<br />
Fill out the form and stand in another line for another 30 minutes, before another disgruntled low-talking bureaucrat who speaks English as a third language calls you over, looks at your paperwork and says something completely incomprehensible. Get a dirty look from the disgruntled low-talking bureaucrat when you respond with "huh?". Lean in very close to her and listen intently as she mumbles "take off glasses, stand in front of blue screen", and then try to smile as she takes the most god-awful photo that has ever been taken of you in your entire life, or at lease since the last time you had to replace your drivers license.<br />
<br />
Listen very intently again as the disgruntled low-talking bureaucrat mumbles "eleven dollar", and count out the bills. Take your receipt and ask how long it will take to get the license in the mail. Recoil in shock at the utter futility of it all when she replies "thirty, forty-fi day". </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Run out of there in utter despair knowing that this is what my healthcare service is going to be like for the remainder of my life now that the system has been federalized.<br />
<br />
I just cannot wait for my visit to the Social Security office next week. I'd rather have dental surgery without anesthesia.<br />
</span>EyesOfTXhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14347161010747212551noreply@blogger.com0