Republicus

The Healthcare President

2010-03-01T15:25:00.000-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/01/barack-obama-told-to-quit-smoking

Ahead of the Curve

2010-03-01T00:58:00.000-08:00

A year ago, when the Left was gloating about the "demise" of the Republican Party and American conservatism, and celebrating the coronation of their invincible messiah and the establishment of some millennial rule, guest fj predicted this a year ago, in the commentary section of the February 26, 2009 post:

"I don't want America to fail... but from what I've have seen of Obama's proposed remedies, there is no doubt in my mind that he's CERTAIN to fail, and most likely DESIRES to fail just so that he can justify imposing even more of the demonstrably failed liberal agenda upon us.But let him. It'll be that much easier to neuter him in 2010 and then undo his entire presidency once 2012 finally rolls around."

Good call. Obama still has time to turn things around (or even get turned around by events) between now and '12, and even the Democrat congress could suffer less of a rout than it had in '94, but at this juncture, from last year to now, fj's prediction was remarkably prescient and warranted its own post.

I don't think Obama "desires" to fail, but he is certainly failing big.

America Rising

2010-02-22T03:38:00.000-08:00

(Thanks Warren@ http://longrange.blogspot.com/ )

PHELONIUS!

2010-02-20T21:35:00.000-08:00

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/20/ron-paul-wins-presidential-straw-poll-cpac/

Nosediving

2010-02-16T19:33:00.000-08:00

CNN poll: 52% say Obama doesn't deserve reelection in 2012

Meanwhile, after over a year of Hope & Change in Washington, Vice President Biden sez:

"Washington right now is broken," and the country is in "deep trouble."

Avatar

2010-02-01T23:07:00.000-08:00

Avatar: Highly recommended (in 3D). The cinematography alone justifies the $14.00 tickets and 2 1/2 hour length, and the drama, action sequences, and love story more than meet what you can expect from Cameron (who, with *Avatar,* has surpassed anything in this kind of genre that we used to expect from Lucas and Spielberg, and has even surpassed what he himself did with *Titanic,* both in spectacle and box office receipts).

However, the message was political and of the kind we got from Roland Emmerich in *10,000 BC.*

Indeed, in theme, it was practically a futuristic, alien take on that racist (i.e. anti-Anglo), anti-Western, and Rousseauan Noble Savage silliness (and crap) that we got in *10,000 BC*--though, unlike Emmerich's movie, the similar political message of *Avatar* was marginalized by the spell-binding cinematography and did not distract from the excellent movie experience.

It came pretty close to doing just that, though, with cheap, gratuitous digs at Operation Iraqi Freedom, like when the mercenary Marine Colonel Quaritch called for a "Shock & Awe" campaign against the luscious moon Pandora's indigenous humanoid culture (for the sake of a natural resource--think oil-- and corporate greed for it--think Halliburton).

Someone should remind Cameron that the Na'vi in no way resemble the brutal, Baathist dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, or the Taliban, for that matter.

However, drawing parallels with Native Americans and the Na'vi and their respective situations with genocidal, alien invasion works and is legitimate.

The Verdict From A Supreme Court Judge

2010-01-28T22:26:00.001-08:00

In other words:

Wow! A Twofer!

2010-01-21T21:36:00.000-08:00

Air America Goes Off the Air

AP

Air America Radio is shutting down its operations after company files for bankruptcy.

Air America Radio, a progressive radio network that once aired commentary from Al Franken and Rachel Maddow, said Thursday it is shutting down immediately.

The company founded in April 2004 said it ceased airing new programs Thursday afternoon and will soon file to be liquidated under Chapter 7 bankruptcy. It began broadcasting reruns of programs and would end those as well Monday night.

Air America said 10 consecutive quarters of declining ad revenue and the difficulty of making money on the Internet contributed to its financial woes.

"The very difficult economic environment has had a significant impact on Air America's business. This past year has seen a `perfect storm' in the media industry generally," the company said in a statement on its Web site.

Yes. "Generally." Just ask Limbaugh!

According to a story covered by the Drudge Report, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has signed a record-breaking deal to keep his program on the air through 2016. The total value of the deal is said to be over $400 million, including a nine-figure signing bonus.

Encore:

"This election is about the importance of not just winning, but breaking their backs and crushing their spirits."

...

"This isn't about winning. It's about destroying the conservative movement, and their dangerous incompetence has given us an historic opportunity to deliver a killing blow."

Encore (and up another notch):

P.S. For The Stankeys:

2010-01-20T12:59:00.000-08:00

Kisses.

John

Re-Alignment

2010-01-19T20:11:00.000-08:00

Night of the Living Dead

2010-01-19T14:40:00.000-08:00

fj asked:

"I wonder how many dead people the ACORN Democrats registered to vote this past MLK weekend..."

I thought he was kidding.

But I guess the dead really want healthcare, too.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/19/watchdog-group-raises-concern-dead-voters-massachusetts-rolls/

The Kiss Of Death

2010-01-18T18:41:00.001-08:00

The Change

2010-01-18T17:12:00.000-08:00

Not too long ago, Candidate Obama ran on a platform of "Hope & Change" that denounced the Bush War on Terror protocols that kept us safe for seven years, including the Patriot Act, phone taps and intercepts, renditioning, military tribunals, Predator drone attacks, offensive campaigns in Afghanistan, and the Bush-Petraeus timetable for Iraq.

All of those were smeared by his antiwar base of support as "criminal," "un-Constitutional," "dictatorial," "murderous," part of an imperial, "Neocon"/Zionist agenda, and/or executed for the purpose of seizing the Iraqi oil wells and/or for personally exacting revenge for the 1993 assassination attempt on Poppy Bush 41, and, of course, "Impeachable."

But a President Obama has sagely--and shamelessly--decided that all of that--the wiretapping, intercepting, renditioning, military tribunals, Predator drone attacks, offensive campaigns in Afghanistan, and the Bush-Petraeus timetable for Iraq--are--"To be perfectly clear," and "Make no mistake about it"--suddenly the right things to do.

And yes, as he declared last week, we are, in fact, at war. A real war. With terrorists.

What happened?

What about "Change"?

Here's what happened, and here's The Change:

Why?

Here's why:

Indeed.

And ouch. That's gotta hurt.

That's what they say is the outcome of bad karma. What goes around, comes around. The piper must be paid. The devil must get his due.

And after eight years of the accumulation of bad karma, and Obama willfully using it all for his benefit, benefitting by the vicious attacks on an honorable man, and becoming empowered primarily by lies and hate cloaked in the euphemisms of Hope & Change, his unapologetic adoption--and even expansion-- of the very policies that he was elected to quickly reverse and undo--as promised--is bad enough (not for the country, of course, but for his own credibility and of his party's), but is just a warm up for what lies ahead.

Just watch karma turn up the heat in Massachusetts tomorrow.

OKLAHOMA!

2009-12-30T13:38:00.000-08:00

OKLAHOMA MAY JUST BE THE PLACE TO LIVE!

An update from Oklahoma :

Oklahoma law passed, 37 to 9, with a few liberals in the mix, an amendment to place the Ten Commandments on the front entrance to the state capitol. The feds in D.C., along with the ACLU, said it would be a mistake. Hey this is a conservative state, based on Christian values...! HB 1330

Guess what.......... Oklahoma did it anyway.

Oklahoma recently passed a law in the state to incarcerate all illegal immigrants, and ship them back to where they came from unless they want to get a green card and become an American citizen. They all scattered. HB 1804. Hope we didn't send any of them to your state. This was against the advice of the Federal Government, and the ACLU, they said it would be a mistake.

Guess what........... Oklahoma did it anyway.

Recently we passed a law to include DNA samples from any and all illegals to the Oklahoma database, for criminal investigative purposes. Pelosi said it was unconstitutional. SB 1102

Guess what........ Oklahoma did it anyway.

Several weeks ago, we passed a law, declaring Oklahoma as a Sovereign state, not under the Federal Government directives. Joining Texas , Montana and Utah as the only states to do so.

More states are likely to follow: Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolina's, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, West Virginia, Mississippi, Florida. Save your confederate money, it appears the South is about to rise up once again. HJR 1003

The federal Government has made bold steps to take away our guns. Oklahoma, a week ago, passed a law confirming people in this state have the right to bear arms and transport them in their vehicles. I'm sure that was a set back for the criminals (and Obamaites). Liberals didn't like it -- But ...

Guess what........... Oklahoma did it anyway..

Just this month, my state has voted and passed a law that ALL driver's license exams will be printed in English, and only English, and no other language. We have been called racist for doing this, but the fact is that ALL of our road signs are in English only. If you want to drive in Oklahoma , you must read and write English. Really simple.

By the way, Obama does not like any of this.

Guess what....who cares... Oklahoma is doing it anyway.

To Verify:

http://newsok.com/oklahoma-state-capitol-to-display-ten-commandments/article/3370730
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-01-09-immigcover_N.htm

Happy New Year.

Retraction

2009-12-22T21:37:00.000-08:00

The post that was here titled "Birther's Progress" was an email hoax.

Gored By Nature

2009-12-19T14:16:00.000-08:00

Meanwhile, simultaneously (in Copenhagen):

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601130&sid=a5wStc0K6jhY

And in DC and the Big Apple:

http://www.accuweather.com/news-top-headline.asp?partner=accuweather&traveler=0&date=2009-12-19_21:10

And still:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126131735544199141.html?mod=loomia&loomia_si=t0:a16:g2:r1:c0.156487:b29452782

You can fool lots of people lots of the time, but you can't fool Mother Nature, who is goring the global warming humbugs like this, for all to see (if they use their eyes, and heads, as intended by her):

Have A Merry Christmas.

The Crime Of The Century

2009-12-07T12:37:00.001-08:00

(Thanks, Steve)

Bow-Wow Obama

2009-11-16T15:36:00.000-08:00

First, instead of bowing like a gentleman before Her Majesty The Queen, President Obama shakes her hand, instead:

Ok, we're Americans. We bow to no one, especially English royalty, which we waged a revolution against on the founding of this country.

So, nothing personal.

And we didn't want the bust of Winston Churchill in the White House anymore, either, as the President sent back.

Maybe it was just "too Bush" (see above). And besides, it was replaced with an artistic rendering of Lincoln, instead, so, again, nothing personal to Her Royal Highness.

But when the president met the king of Saudi Arabia:

Well, it could have been much worse:

Why is a president who affectionately holds an aging monarch and old family friend's hand "much worse" than a president bowing low before him, you ask?

I don't know, but judging from the cries of outrage and howls of derision that came out from the left when Bush held hands with the king, versus the defensive rationalizations if not silence when Obama bowed low before him, the former must be much worse, because, as everyone knows, the Left is the righteous, moral arbiter of what is Right and what is Wrong (despite them otherwise clamoring against Manichaeanism and insisting on moral relativism every time a judgment call is made on one of their sundry attempts to advance the agenda of satan).

[note: The substance of the outrage and derision from the Left when Bush held hands with his old family friend had to do with some supposed symbolic obeisance to Saudi oil, and it was segued in with the conspiracy theory about Bush's arrangement to have bin Laden relatives flown back to Saudi Arabia right after 9/11 when all other flights were grounded, i.e. that Bush was showing favoritism only because of oil. But if all of that--or any of that, for that matter--is true, then what's Obama's excuse?]

Anyway, the presider caught some righteous flack for that, and one would think that he learned his lesson on what it means to be the leader--and savior-- of the Free World, but then, just the other day when meeting the Emperor of Japan:

After having to deal with the negative press he received for bowing to the Saudi king, he must have been fully conscious of what he was doing when he bowed down low to figuratively kiss the feet of the Empeh-woe of Jah-pon.

So what conclusion can Queen Elizabeth arrive at?

That the much vaunted "re-alignment" his election supposedly exemplified goes well beyond an alleged American Right-Left demographic shift, but represents an unprecedented presidential shift in world view that rejects Europe--the Cradle of Western Civilization--and instead looks to a rising East--Middle and Far--with the humility of a prodigal son (having been raised in Indonesia)?

That the only royalty worth respecting is Levantine and Oriental?

That maybe he's just sexist?

Whatever the case may be, it's expected--and forgivable-- for a new, inexperienced president to fumble international protocols until he realizes that he's the quarterback (one rationale given for his bow to the Saudi king was "exhaustion"), but, given his aloof, unbowing treatment of English royalty contrasted with his obsequious behavior towards the Saudi king AND the Japanese Emperor, an anti-Western mode is established and it would be difficult to put a positive spin on it.

The president is un-American, pure and simple, and Americans are figuring it out very fast.

Glenn Beck is KICKING ASS!

2009-11-13T15:03:00.000-08:00

The Vision Thang

2009-11-12T13:39:00.000-08:00

http://www.georgewbushcenter.com/site/c.rvI2IaNVJyE/b.5595939/k.56E1/A_Vision_for_the_FutureLive_Webcast.htm?utm_source=WebcastReminder&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=Reminder2&utm_campaign=Webcast

Republicans Edge Ahead of Democrats in 2010 Vote

2009-11-11T15:07:00.000-08:00

So were the November 3 elections bellwethers?

You betcha:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/124226/Republicans-Edge-Ahead-Democrats-2010-Vote.aspx

If It Talks Like A Terrorist, And Kills Like A Terrorist...

2009-11-10T08:08:00.000-08:00

Senator Lieberman--who wins kudos from Republicus for what he says up there--is an odd hybrid of being a social liberal, a Big Government Democrat, a Blue Dog Democrat, a Neoconservative, and quasi-member of the Religious Right.

That's why he switched to Independent status after the vindictive left ran their own anti-war Democrat in the Connecticut senate race, hoping to dislodge him--as punishment for his pro-war position-- from the post that he held for many terms.

And he won, anyway.

That unhinged the already unhinged left that much more and put him in the crosshairs of their venomous spewage, but he's sitting secure and pretty on his post and is pretty much immunized from their character-assassinating attempts at deposing him.

The only thing the hateful, dependency-driven Democrats hate more than independents are independents who used to be Democrats (and they hate conservatives who used to be liberals even more).

If Joe was a Republican, he'd be a RINO like McCain, Snowe, Graham, and other political chimeras like them.

Nevertheless, on foreign policy he is reliably right.

Somewhat surprisingly, he's right about this, too:

So the Left can have congressional district NY23. And they can throw their little party for passing HR 3200.

But it still has to be passed by the much bigger boys and girls in the senate, and the Republicans have Independent Senator Joe Lieberman in deep blue Connecticut wearing red (not to mention a pack of Blue Dogs who are seeing red with that bill).

Have a nice day.

The Left Whistles Past The Graveyard On November 4

2009-11-09T13:36:00.001-08:00

Unsinkable

2009-11-07T15:15:00.000-08:00

Early in the titanic Obama Administration, Americans had acquiesced to acquiring multi-billion dollars in additional debt on assurances from the president himself that the unprecedented amount of spending was for the primary purpose of preventing unemployment from rising above 8%, and that the borrowed money was specifically targeted to "shovel ready" projects and so would "hit the ground running" and instantly "jump-start" the flat-lining economy.

Almost a year and a trillion dollars in new debt later, on the one year anniversary of Obama's election, unemployment has hit--and surpassed--the dreaded 10% marker, a watermark not reached in 26 years.

That followed the news that--as reported on October 22--the polled decline of Obama's popularity since July has been the steepest of any president at the same stage of his first term in more than 50 years.

Meanwhile, the president's party suffered the stunning losses of the governorship of deep blue New Jersey and the return to red of Virginia's in the first round of elections since Obama's own a year ago.

Abroad, the president has two left feet, always starts off on the wrong one, and puts the other in his mouth whenever he tries to hip-hop across the trip-wired mine field of international relations while American troops are stationed and fighting in two theaters of a war which he, the Commander in Chief, doesn't even consider a "real" war (as troops die on a weekly basis).

What we see is a much-ballyhooed ship, believed by its stockholders to be "unsinkable," that is recklessly steaming across dangerous waters on its maiden voyage and hitting ice-floes and iceburgs in the dark.

Unnoticed by many, however, the hull has already gotten gashed beneath the waterline, popped rivets, and had its integrity compromised. The hold is taking on water now and there is a slight but perceptible listing. The passengers have become uneasy and have started to ask questions and complain. The crew is confused; yet all they hear from the captain and his complement is:

"Everything is under control. It was just a couple of scratches."

Sour Grapes

2009-11-07T14:37:00.000-08:00

Obsessed troll stankey scoffed:

"Deeds was a total amateur/dud who ran far to the right of Obama."

Then Obama must also be an amateur for foolishly putting his credibility and clout on the line for him (and also a dud for failing to deliver):

"Creigh understands that Virginia faces tough challenges, and solving them will require more than just lip service and political ads!"

lol

Now THAT'S funny!

Stankey sneered:

"Corzine was a corrupt, hated individual who was voted out on those grounds."

Well someone should have told this guy that:

"Two days away from making sure that New Jersey has the kind of quality leadership that it deserves!"

lol

Fools.

SMACKDOWN

2009-11-04T06:41:00.000-08:00

GOP sweep: Big governor victories in Virginia, NJ

Wed Nov 4, 6:33 am ET

WASHINGTON – Independents who swept Barack Obama to a historic 2008 victory broke big for Republicans on Tuesday as the GOP wrested political control from Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey, a troubling sign for the president and his party heading into an important midterm election year.

Conservative Republican Bob McDonnell's victory in the Virginia governor's race over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds and moderate Republican Chris Christie's ouster of unpopular New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine was a double-barreled triumph for a party looking to rebuild after being booted from power in national elections in 2006 and 2008.

Elsewhere on Tuesday, Maine voters rejected a state law that would allow same-sex couples to wed. If supporters had prevailed, it would have marked the first time that the electorate in any state endorsed gay marriage.

And Democrat Bill Owens captured a GOP-held vacant 23rd Congressional District seat in New York in a race that highlighted fissures in the Republican Party and illustrated hurdles the GOP could face in capitalizing on any voter discontent with Obama and Democrats next fall.

California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, also a Democrat, won a special election to a vacant congressional seat, Ohio voters approved casinos and a slew of cities selected mayors, including New York, which gave Michael Bloomberg a third term.

The outcomes of Virginia and New Jersey were sure to feed discussion about the state of the electorate, the status of the diverse coalition that sent Obama to the White House and the limits of the president's influence — on the party's base of support and on moderate current lawmakers he needs to advance his legislative priorities.

His signature issue of health care reform was dealt a blow hours before polls closed when Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid signaled that Congress may not complete health care legislation this year, missing Obama's deadline and pushing debate into a congressional election year. Democrats in swing-voting states and moderate-to-conservative districts may be less willing to back Obama on issues like health care after Virginia and New Jersey showed there are limits to how much he can protect his rank and file from fallout back home.

The president had personally campaigned for Deeds and Corzine, seeking to ensure that independents and base voters alike turned out even if he wasn't on the ballot — and voters still rejected them. Thus, the losses were blots on Obama's political standing to a certain degree and suggested potential problems ahead as he seeks to achieve his policy goals, protect Democratic majorities in Congress and expand his party's grip on governors' seats next fall.

Interviews with voters leaving polling stations in both states were filled with reasons for Democrats to be concerned and for Republicans to be optimistic, particularly about independents — the crown jewel of elections because they often determine outcomes.

Independents were a critical part Obama's victory in Virginia, New Jersey and across the country. But after more than a year of recession, they fled from Democrats in the two states, where the economy trumped all.

The Associated Press exit polls showed that nearly a third of voters in Virginia described themselves as independents, and nearly as many in New Jersey did. They preferred McDonnell by almost a 2-1 margin over Deeds in Virginia, and Christie over Corzine by a similar margin.

Last year, independents split between Obama and Republican John McCain in both states.

In Virginia, McDonnell won by big margins in rapidly growing, far-flung Washington, D.C., suburbs — places like Loudoun and Prince William counties — that Republicans historically have won but where Obama prevailed last fall by winning over independents and swing voters. Republicans swept all three statewide Virginia offices up for election: governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

"Bob McDonnell's victory gives Republicans tremendous momentum heading into 2010," declared Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican Governors Association. "His focus on ideas and pocketbook issues will serve as a model for Republicans running next year."
Said Tim Kaine, the Democratic National Committee chairman and the term-limited Virginia governor: "We are disappointed."

In both states, the surveys also suggested the Democrats had difficulty turning out their base, including the large numbers of first-time minority and youth voters whom Obama attracted. The Virginia electorate was whiter in 2009 than it was in 2008, when blacks and Hispanics voted in droves to elect the country's first black president.

Democratic victories in both Virginia, a new swing state, and New Jersey, a Democratic stronghold, in 2005 preceded big Democratic years nationally in 2006 and 2008.
Tuesday's impact on Obama's popularity and on the 2010 elections could easily be overstated. Voters are often focused on local issues and local personalities.

Yet, national issues, like the recession, were clearly a factor, with voter attitudes shaped to some degree by how people feel about the state of their nation — and their place in it.

And, voter attitudes — particularly among independents — could bode ill for Democrats in moderate districts and in swing states like Ohio, Colorado and Nevada, should they remain unchanged when the party seeks to defend its turf next fall. In 2010, most governors, a third of the Senate and all members in the House will be on ballots.

It's also difficult to separate Obama from the outcomes after he devoted a significant chunk of time working to persuade voters to elect Deeds in Virginia and re-elect Corzine in New Jersey.

More than four in 10 voters in Virginia said their view of Obama factored into their choice on Tuesday, and those voters roughly split between expressing support and opposition for the president. People who said they disapprove of Obama's job performance voted overwhelmingly Republican, and those who approve of the president favored Deeds, the Democrat.

The Obama factor was similar in New Jersey, though there were slightly more voters who said the president did not factor into their choice.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Referendum Day

2009-11-03T07:18:00.001-08:00

Republicus did his duty today as an American citizen and an Arlington, VA resident, and did his part in contributing to the first phase of undoing the mistake of Election Day last year.

Old Dominion is back.

New Jersey might go red, too, thanks in great part to the ineptitude of incumbent Democrat governor John Corzine, who had the maturity, grace, and gravitas of a sitting governor (yeah, sure) to essentially call his opponent, the corpulent Chris Christie, "fatso"--but in a sleazy and sidemouthed (i.e. liberal) way, snidely saying that Christie was "throwing his weight around."

Here's the reportage about that campaign commercial (embedding disabled by request):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrIwT08tqQA&feature=related

The aesthetically-challenged Corzine should just be glad that Christie doesn't stoop to his level and say something about taking Corzine's word at "face value":

(Wow, he's actually wearing a flag pin.)

Anyway, Virginia returning to red, New Jersey possibly, too, and the very telling race in NY, are all very bad news for the evil Left, who have been gloating about nigh-permanent Democrat majorities and dominance for decades to come.

The repulsed recoiling and reactionary reloading by the electorate in just these three elections are bellweathers that prove, yet again, that the Left must never think that it's safe to crawl out from under their rocks and exult in victory just because one of their frontmen managed to get elected on a gimmick-- his race, and that only because the electorate was confused and distracted and fooled into thinking he was satisfactorily conservative.

The ever-innocent American people (God Bless 'em) are generally too busy with their jobs and families to pay attention to--or even be aware of-- skulking, Marxist agendas, tactics, and their Manchurian candidates, and apparently do not recognize these malignant "agents of change" in their nascent stages of development.

However, it is in the nature of the devious Leftist to always overreach and blow their cover prematurely, before power can be fully and irrevocably secured, and that's precisely what's happened.

The reversal and ebbing of the "Changing Tide" that would "Crush the Right Once And For All" (as was incessantly exulted right here at this very blog by the foolhardy trolls) is already in effect a very short one year and one election after "Absolute Victory" was declared.

Today's victory in the state of Virginia--home of the Founding Fathers--is very symbolic and is not only a referendum on the new president's leftward overreach, but a smackdown of the evil ideology that has reared its head here (after being decapitated--by us, ironically--everywhere else...except in freakish, sideshow exhibits like Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea).

And the Leftists know it.

Like all of the MSM outlets,The Washington Post--the American Pravda--has dropped all pretense at objective, professional journalism and shamelessly operates in the open as a propaganda instrument of the Democrat Party.

Here in Arlington, you'll see redundant rows and rows of signs like these endorsing the Democrat lining roads and streets everywhere:

They know what's at stake with these two state and the local election in NY, and the oversaturation of such signs is nothing but desperation--and delusion, since they seem to think that an endorsement by a well-known partisan propaganda producer for the Left will inspire the good Virginians to vote for the Democrat, Deeds.

The Left had their quick, fleeting, euphoric peak one year ago, and it's been all downhill ever since.

And the hateful scribblers at The Washington Post themselves realize it, and, buckling under pressure and jettisoning all pretenses of class and professionalism, are beginning to spew obscenities on the job and turn and attack each other:

http://www.politico.com/click/stories/0911/punches_thrown_in_wapo_newsroom.html

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.

Mission Accomplished

2009-04-15T14:57:00.000-07:00

Blooming Iraq to stage first flower festival

Apr 15 09:02 AM US/Eastern

Iraq was set to hold its first-ever international flower festival on Wednesday with the hope of showing the world that peace is blossoming after the winter of a long war.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Is Dismissed.

2009-03-18T11:29:00.000-07:00

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs...

2009-03-16T22:42:00.001-07:00

...is a dick.

Go, Baby!

2009-03-15T21:33:00.000-07:00

The Lefty Blog Trolls ATTACK! (and attack-attack-attack...and get ZAPPED!)

2009-03-12T20:08:00.000-07:00

Look, it's fathead, Karl, simian, Karin, and the whole gang!

[I'm Gizmo, the benevolent, furry gremlin, and the human at 1:23-1:26 & 1:30-1:36 is fj (after having been smooch-smooched by the heavily-lipsticked trolletes--or trollops, as it were-- here), and the four humans @ 1:46-1:54 are Phelonius, Kelly, fj, and Nanc (astonished at the depth of the troll's decadent depravity)]

Karma's A Bitch

2009-03-07T07:08:00.000-08:00

While in Europe, President George W. Bush infamously mispronounced his EU counterparts' names and claimed U.S. democracy was older than Europe's

Then, in a PR gesture for the cameras, he makes a state gift of a giant, mock-up button. The toy button was thought to be inscribed with the words (in Russian): "Reset," to symbolize a new beginning of relations with the Russians.

But the actual translation, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov explained (taking the oppurtunity to point out the knuckleheaded solecism in front of the cameras), was "Overcharge."

Okay, all of that was moronic.

But wait, that was the "elite" Hillary as Secretary of State, today.

Can you hear the howls of derision?

Like Magic!

2009-03-06T08:44:00.000-08:00

FOXNews.com

Friday, March 06, 2009

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen faster under President Obama than under any new president in at least 90 years, according to a review conducted by Bloomberg.

Bloomberg reports that since Inauguration Day, the Dow has fallen 20 percent, leading at least one investor to dub this the "Obama bear market." The Dow has also dropped 31 percent since Election Day.

Despite a string of government bailout offers and Obama's advice earlier this week that Americans should be buying stock while shares are low, the Dow has continued to freefall.

Obamagic

2009-03-02T15:40:00.000-08:00

Obi-One-Can-B.O. promised to return us to the stupendous prosperity of the Clinton Era (1992-2000).

Today, after a mere month in office, he miraculously delivered:

Back to 1997

Just days after suffering its worst February since 1933, the Dow plunged below the psychologically-important 7000 mark on Monday to its worst closing level since April 1997. The benchmark index, which is mired in its longest monthly losing streak since September 2002, suffered its worst first day of March trading ever, easily exceeding 1931's 2.78% decline. The broader S&P 500 briefly fell through the critical 700 level and ended at its worst level since at least October 1996.

The Lizard Queen

2009-03-02T07:47:00.000-08:00

Anonymous chided:

"Yeah - I'm sure Jim Morrison would luv you linking him to Coulter...I met that keyboardist for the Doors in Boston a few years ago. He would be both amused and appalled by your post."

And here's what Jim would say to that: "Lighten up, Ray. She's kinda cute."

Encore

2009-03-01T23:48:00.000-08:00

In Praise Of Ann

(originally published June 13, 2006)

The mighty Greek Olympian goddess Pallas Athena sprang--fully armed-- from the very mind of Zeus.

She is the goddess of the Arts & Crafts.

And of Wisdom.

Yet she is also the warrior goddess, and could best her male counterpart--Ares, the very god of war himself-- in a fight, any day and anywhere, sending him off defeated and howling in short order.

She had no husband, yet stood tall, proud, and undaunted in the "Man's World" of Olympus, and won her own city in a contest of practical ingenuity against the mighty sea-god.

That is Ann Coulter, a women who--by her brains-- went to law school in the days when the field was very much dominated by males.

Standing on her own, she is a woman who intrepidly spoke Truth to vicious political power, unveiling the character of a sitting, liberal president known for his far-reaching, destructive vindictiveness--especially towards "trouble-making" women.

She is a woman who--on her own-- detoxified and refreshed an entire culture poisoned by liberalism, herself resetting the record straight by boldly slashing and overwriting decades of revisionism, as scribbled by entire armies of liberal liars.

She is a woman who, by reading books, by empirical observation, by her own busy hands and keystroking fingers, by her own talent, by the fire of her own creativity--again, by her brains-- became a self-made millionaire.

She is a woman who fearlessly speaks her mind.

She is a woman who emasculates men who try to bully her.

She chides other women for forsaking their femininity and betraying their womanhood.

She is a strong woman who fights back like a valkyrie against the seething, wailing hordes of liberal demons and harpies, who claw and gnash their teeth at her, trying to discredit and silence her, and destroy her.

And all along she is a woman who is unafraid, and laughs, because she knows.

She knows.

She dances in a ring of fire
and throws off the challenge with a shrug.

Jim Morrison

And the liberal feminists hate such a woman.

Go figure...

Keynote Speakers CPAC 2009

2009-03-01T10:43:00.000-08:00

There Are Worse Ways To Die.

2009-02-26T14:05:00.000-08:00

~or~

"The Wages Of Sin..."?

Online SUN

Thursday, February 26, 2009

A Russian man died after guzzling a bottle of Viagra to keep him going for a 12-hour orgy with two female pals.

The women had bet mechanic Sergey Tuganov $4,300 that he wouldn’t be able to follow through with the half-day sex marathon.

But minutes after winning the bet, the 28-year-old died of a heart attack, Moscow police said.

“We called emergency services but it was too late, there was nothing they could do,” said one of the female participants who identified herself only as Alina.

MR. Burris Is Dismissed.

2009-02-18T21:49:00.000-08:00

Chicago pol Roland Burris was appointed to fill President Obama's vacated seat by former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.

Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office for putting that senate seat up for sale, among other things quite unbecoming for a state governor.

Burris is now busted for perjury for being involved in fund-raising activities for Blagojevich in an apparent quid pro quo for the seat after swearing under oath something to the effect of: "I never saw that white boy in my life after I raised money for him in June of last year."

"I've done nothing wrong," he insists, meaning that he tried to raise money for him last October, but couldn't, and so didn't.

We need to stop the "rush to judgment!" he cried, decrying what he calls "misinformation."

That's funny. That's pretty much what Blagojevich is still saying.

And pretty much what this disbarred perjurer insisted:

In other words, "Absolutely 100% Not Guilty, Your Honor!"

Liberals.

VICTORY

2009-02-17T11:06:00.000-08:00

...Obama Nation has arrived!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0VV1ipjkyI

The Democrats get busy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPwv7pwT3WE

...and their constituents are very, very happy! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKgXRB3YOak

A Study In Contrasts Part III

2009-02-12T17:48:00.000-08:00

Former President Bush's Axis of Evil:

North Korean Communist Dictator Kim Jong Il

Iranian Theocrat Mahmoud Ahmedinejad

Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein

President Obama's Axis of Evil:

Private American Citizen Joe The Plumber

Private American Citizen Rush Limbaugh

Private American Citizen Sean Hannity

A Study In Contrasts Part II

2009-02-11T09:45:00.001-08:00

Outgoing President George W. Bush quietly boards his helicopter and leaves for Texas, commenting only: "Today is not about me. Today is a historical day for our nation and people."

Outgoing President Bill Clinton schedules two separate radio addresses to the nation, and organizes a public farewell speech/rally in downtown Washington D.C. scheduled to directly conflict with incoming President Bush's inauguration ceremony.

President Bush leaves office without issuing a single Presidential pardon, only granting a commutation of sentence to two former border patrol agents convicted of shooting a convicted drug smuggler. He does not grant any type of clemency to Scooter Libby or any other former political aide, ally, or business partner.

President Clinton issues 140 pardons and several commutations of sentence on his final day in office. Included in these are: billionaire financier, convicted tax evader, and leading Democratic campaign contributor Marc Rich; Whitewater scandal figure Susan McDougal; Congressional Post Office Scandal figure and former Democratic Congressman Dan Rostenkowski; convicted bank fraud, sexual assault and child porn perpetrator, and former Democratic Congressman Melvin Reynolds; and convicted drug felon Roger Clinton, the President's half-brother.

The Bush daughters leave gift baskets in the White House bedrooms for the Obama daughters, containing flowers, candy, stuffed animals, DVD's and CD's, and heartfelt notes of encouragement and advice for the young girls on how to prepare for their new lives in the White House.

Clinton and Gore staffers rip computer wires and electrical outlets from the White House walls, stuff piles of notebook papers into the White House toilets, systematically remove the letter "W" from every computer key-pad in the entire White House, and damage several thousand dollars worth of furniture in the White House master bedroom.

Headlines 4 Years Ago:

"REPUBLICANS SPENDING $42 MILLION ON INAUGURATION WHILE TROOPS DIE IN UNARMORED HUMVEES"

"BUSH EXTRAVAGANCE EXCEEDS ANY REASON DURING TOUGH ECONOMIC TIMES"

"FAT CATS GET THEIR $42 MILLION INAUGURATION PARTY, ORDINARY AMERICANS GET THE SHAFT."

Headlines For Obama Inauguration:

"HISTORIC OBAMA INAUGURATION WILL COST ONLY $170 MILLION"

"OBAMA SPENDS $170 MILLION ON INAUGURATION; AMERICA NEEDS A BIG PARTY"

"EVERYMAN OBAMA SHOWS AMWERICA HOW TO CELEBRATE"

"CITIBANK EXECUTIVES CONTRIBUTE $8 MILLION TO OBAMA"

HUH?!?

2009-02-06T11:57:00.000-08:00

Michael Phelps attended college festivities and was photographed inhaling marijuana smoke through a water pipe (i.e. he took a bong hit at a frat party):

In consequence, yesterday, Kellogg Co. dropped Phelps from a lucrative endorsement deal. And today, the record eight-gold Olympian fish was punished by USA Swimming with a three-month suspension from competition.

Phelps apologized and accepted his punishment graciously--without admitting to anything specific that he was apologizing for.

Meanwhile, this "frequent" indulger (a.k.a. a pothead) admitted it and became president:

A Study In Contrasts

2009-02-05T05:47:00.000-08:00

The Bush 2001 Tax Cuts:

The Obama 2009 Spending Program:

Finally, Some Thrift!

2009-02-04T15:20:00.000-08:00

President "I'm-a-Moderate" Obama overturned the Mexico City Policy before he even finished unpacking and by so doing ensured the flow of tax-payer funds to abortion clinics overseas.

The "emergency economic stimulus bill" included millions of dollars for condoms.

And billions of dollars more for pork projects.

However, lest one should accuse the president of sponsoring a bill that lavishly extravasates spending with zero fiscal discipline, it has been discovered that monies will be held back from school renovation projects if they allow prayer (which the economy happens to need a lot more of right now than aborted fetuses and condoms.)

The Stove Got Hot...

2009-02-04T01:33:00.000-08:00

...so the president and First Lady bolted out of the kitchen and played hooky yesterday.

...at an elementary school (ironically enough).

Who can blame him?

Day One of his presidency began with an unceremonious do-over of his flubbed swearing in with Chief Justice Roberts (just to "play it safe," but this time without the Bible, and so bedevilling the prophylactic replay).

Then the "emergency stimulus bill" that was presented to "create jobs and fix the economy" was discerned to do no such thing. The Democratic Congress that bewailed the Bush deficits as reaching "as far as the eye can see" suddenly began to grunt and snort that the sky's the limit, and oink-oinked like pigs in a poke with the prospect of nearly a trillion dollars worth of slop dump trucked into their pens.

"Yes, oh, YES!" they salivated and drooled, "Yes We Can!"

Rush Limbaugh made a double-take and gaped, his cigar drooping, then it erected again as he collected himself and smacked the napes of the crestfallen Republicans, barking at them to get sane and kosher. They snapped out of the magic spell that The One had cast over the land, dropped the rubber stamps, and pulled out the butcher knives.

And they stood as one--with 11 semi-sane Democrats to boot--and, white-knuckling the butcher knives, said: "No, Mr. President, We Really Can't."

Ah-oh.

So the President, in his first two weeks, is learning that working with Congress to bake a giant cake of an enormous economic stimulus package is a lot less community organizing, hoop skills, and speeches and much more like this:

(Good thing that wasn't Buckwheat, otherwise, it'd be racist.)

Meanwhile, as he tried to set up shop, with his vice president's announcement that "paying taxes is the patriotic thing to do" still echoing in the ears of a confused electorate:

...the president installs an (ergo) unpatriotic tax-evader at the Treasury Department, "Because he knows what he's doing."

Wait...What?

But then he loses his Health & Human Services Secretary appointee--former Senator Tom Daschle-- because he, too, unpatriotically didn't pay his taxes.

Wait...but what about...Huh?

The president apologized for the "mistake" and acknowledged that he was sending out mixed messages by appointing tax-evaders (which means taxes are going to go up).

However, his appointee for Attorney General gets through, despite the stigma of having given exiting President Clinton the go ahead to pardon the greatest tax-evading fugitive in American History--and so the very, very unpatriotic-- Marc Rich.

Alright. What gives?

Every Democrat stridently spoke out against the Bush tax cuts. First, because he cut taxes at all, and then that he cut them too much, and only for "the rich" (supposedly). However, the richest among them (one of them even garishly naming himself Rich--formerly Reich, interestingly enough) still cheat.

That can only mean either that:

(1) They really, personally, didn't think that Bush cut taxes enough (for themselves, the rich) and saw fit to give themselves an additional tax-cut, and so engaging in inverted projection when complaining that he cut them, then cut them too much.

(The inverted projection is the whopping 180 degree lie that puts as much distance from what they say and the truth as possible, putting them on polar opposites of it.)

-or-

(2) They really do believe that Bush cut taxes too much but consider themselves exempt.

The latter is the likely case (they don't call them "elitists" for nothing), but the former cannot be ruled out because such spoken, projected inversions of reality are often heard from the mouths of those inflicted with the mental illness of liberalism (it's from looking at their inverted reflections in the mirror too much).

It's true. And more and more people have figured that out, so the liberal president must continue to act conservative if he hopes to win a second term, the prospects of which have already been diminished in these the first two disastrous weeks, primarily because--in the midst of an economic crisis--his promoted "economic stimulus package" has the giant, flaming-pink word of LIBERAL written all over it.

He also considered it a first order of business to spite the choice of Pro-Life tax-payers not to contribute one red cent to abortion (in foreign countries, no less than here) by overturning the Mexico City Policy and so allowing federal revenues to make their way into abortion clinics abroad, and quickly abandoned his empty campaign rhetoric (in the first week of his presidency) and the assurrances that he believed that the word "marriage" was the exclusive domain of heterosexual husband and wife by calling for the repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which had ensured just that (and so having lied to Pastor Rick Warren's face at the Saddleback forum on his beliefs).

The Hopenchanger, after accusing Billary as part of the problem of American politics (which is true), calling them out on their self-serving, manipulative ways, dirty tricks, and even racist insinuations (true, true, and true), and finally defeating the Clinton Machine, has now stocked his cabinet with Clintonites and just had his arch-rival Billary sworn in to head the State Department (it's true).

And there were little things, too, which nevertheless contributed to putting the kibosh on the euphoria that anticipated a utopia bereft of all the things Bush was ridiculed and/or seethingly despised for, like his misspeaks and occasional buffoonery that were purportedly the proofs that the former governor of Texas had no business being a POTUS, like this supposedly disgraceful display of cluelessness from a jetlagged man in a foreign country (China) who was nevertheless clued in by door handles:

The mishap was reported and replayed widely to much ridiculing glee.

The media silence when the new president cluelessly mistook a window for a door into the White House, however, was deafening:

But there it was.

And the new president must be judged by the same standards.

During the swearing in of Hillary, with Bill and Chelsea looking on, Vice-President Biden briefly bobbled a few words of the oath he was delivering:

It was a cute, giggly moment for all involved, of course, for the vice president, too, who reportedly had a severe stuttering problem as a child, and so it was excusable and really not worth mentioning--except for the fact that the vice president earlier saw fit to mock Chief Justice Robert's own bobbling of a few words during the swearing in ceremony of the president (a mockery which the president, to his credit, did not seem to find amusing).

BTW, there are now only three people--Vice President Joe Biden, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and President pro tempore of the Senate Robert Byrd--standing between Billary and Obama's job, a line of presidential succession that now looks something like this:

Aware that his immediate, leftward lurches would have the effect of throwing cold water on the faces of the many conservatives and moderates who he had succefully hypnotized into voting for him, the president did do the right thing and appointed a conservative Republican-- Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire--to fill the vacancy at Commerce.

With that, the hard left lunatic wing of his support--MSNBC, Daily Kos, Truthout, Moveon, Impaled-Ass, Fathead, Karl, Simian, Lana Banana, Blossom, Karin, etc.-- had cold water thrown in their faces, instead, but figured that their Machiavellian Master of Subterfuge and Ravager of Republicans--i.e. President Obama--must have brilliantly had a Super Majority Senate in mind, which the vacating of Gregg's seat could have allowed if filled by a Democrat.

But NO! Gregg insisted that he would take the post at Commerce only if his senate seat was filled by a fellow Republican, which was agreed to and so filled by J. Bonnie Newman, who appears to be a RINO (she describes herself as a "reasonable Republican," which means that regular Republicans are unreasonable?), but a Republican nevertheless.

And then there was--well, still is-- Club GITMO.

The president was sure to honor his campaign pledge that he would "immediately shut it down," but patience was called for. It's, ah, complicated. (Duh.)

But you can consider it immediately closed within a year.

Or so.

'k? :)

mm-K.

Don't worry. In the meantime, we won't be sending anyone else down there. We'll just send them somewhere else.

You know.

Renditions.

That's right. "Un-Constitutional," "Criminal," and "Impeachable" renditions.

How does that sound, now?

Insane, maybe?

Anyway, so it's turning out that the only "Hope" that Obama could deliver for the moonbatty loons was the hope for George W. Bush to leave the White House (although they had hoped he would leave via Impeachment or assassination), and the only "Change" being that Bush is, in fact, no longer in the White House.

The rest is pretty much same-ol,' same-ol,' only even worse than before, because, before, we had a president who pretty much knew what he was doing most of the time, while this guy is just winging it bathed in the glow of approvals that haven't been this high for a two-week old president since Jimmy Carter.

But there's something going on with his approvals. I can't quite put my finger on it, but you know the American electorate. They may not have the highest standards for their political leaders, but they do have high expectations, especially for one known as The One who promised a whole bunch of stuff that, unfortunately, exist only in Lollipop Land.

Meanwhile, in these the first two weeks of the Hope & Change Administration, Nature had her same old way way in the Midwest and other environs (as she had in the Southeast with New Orleans in 2005). An arctic blast knocked out power for thousands, and many died at just about the same time the insane Al Gore was sounding off apocalyptically to the Congress (for more laws and money) about Global Warming Doomsday unless we stopped burning fossil fuels.

And at just about the same time as that, the President, in firm agreement with Oracle Al, experienced his first snow day as President and torched up the fossil fuels in the White House because, it was explained, "he was from Hawaii."

Incidentally, he did a whole lot less for the freezing Midwesterners than "Heckuva job, Brownie" did for the waterlogged denizens of New Orleans.

Maybe because they were mostly white and vote Republican?

Well, anyway, so yes, it got pretty hot in there and the Obamas took off to an elementary school to get away from it all and hang out with The Children.

And if the next four years are anything like these first two weeks, the title of that book they're reading might just as well be "My Pet Goat."

The Epic First Two weeks Of The Obama Administration

2009-02-03T21:17:00.000-08:00

Expelled AGAIN

2009-02-03T20:03:00.000-08:00

BURLINGTON, Vt. — Comedian Ben Stein has withdrawn as the University of Vermont's commencement speaker because of complaints about his critical views on evolution in favor of intelligent design.

"...and even a stud like Palast..."

2009-02-01T21:10:00.001-08:00

lol

Case closed.

The American Form Of Government

2009-02-01T07:09:00.001-08:00

My Thoughts Exactly Part II

2009-01-30T16:56:00.000-08:00

Yes, Mz. Walsh, it really was outstanding.

And what else can you expect from a Texan named Dick Armey? :)

My Thoughts Exactly.

2009-01-28T19:53:00.000-08:00

Republicus was born and raised in the rugged hill and lake country of central NY (practically dead-center, but that's "upstate" to NYC dwellers).

The winters there are practically Canadian in frigidity (Niagara Falls is only a few hours West to the border).

This shot of a wintry wood from the hometown of your august host would not only inspire Robert Frost to write a poem, but is quite the typical jingle-belling scene in them thar parts of the state:

A "snow day" there was caused by nearly a foot of snow dumped overnight-- which was hardly rare, and, last time I checked (but Al Gore apparently didn't), still happens.

Any less than that, the snowploughs could be heard in the wee hours of the morning making sure the school buses would be on time.

Oh, those infernal snow ploughs!

So the infrastructure up there didn't sweat it.

When your scholarly host was enrolled in a university in the Nation's Capital--not too much further south, but just below the Mason-Dixon Line--he realized that he was in an inherently southern town when he experienced his first snowday.

Two inches of snow fell, and...

RED ALERT!

The schools were closed. The goverment was closed. Telephone lines went dead; and power outages were reported...

"Wimps," your yankee host would chuckle, walking over the pathetic excuse of a "blizzard" in bare feet. (Well, not really, but...)

Those sentiments were never expressed by--and perhaps never occurred to-- our last five presidents, who were-- starting with #39 Carter over three decades ago-- from Georgia, California, Texas, and Arkansas, but now a northerner has finally come to town, and had his first snow day today.

And he said this:

Indeed. Welcome to Washington.

P.S. In all fairness, the snow day today here was not due to the fine-particled snowfall that took place per se, but because the streets and sidewalks were encrusted with black ice.

Speaking Of Abortion...

2009-01-28T17:25:00.001-08:00

I've Seen This Movie Before

2009-01-27T18:36:00.000-08:00

Reminiscent of Bill Clinton's meaningless 1993 pledge to have "The most ethical administration in history" and signing new standards pertaining to that in his first week in office, newly-installed President Obama--surrounded by Clintonites-- pledged:

I will also hold myself as President to a new standard of openness. Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.

That's great, Mr. President, but you can start by releasing your Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard academic records, your Columbia thesis paper, your Selective Service Registration, your Medical records, your Illinois State Senate schedule and records, a certified copy of the original birth certificate, the signed paper certification of live birth, and your record of baptism.

Otherwise, you're about as transparent as this guy:

First Things First

2009-01-27T10:30:00.000-08:00

Intrepidly confronting the massive economic meltdown primarily brought about by the cultural dismissal of the four conservative cardinal virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude, President Obama remembered his strongest base of support (see "anonymous," top pic), rolled up his sleeves, and boldly got to work to do what must be done to get the greatest nation in the history of the world back up on its kneecapped feet.

First, the president enacted one of the largest tax-cuts in history...

No, wait, that was former President Bush.

First, new President Obama abandoned his empty campaign rhetoric and the assurrances that he believed that the word "marriage" was the exclusive domain of heterosexual husband and wife by calling for the repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which had ensured just that.

It helps the economy, you see, if these two were married:

Wasting no time ("You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said White House Chief of Staff Rahm "The Finger" Emanuel), President Obama issued an executive edict on Thursday that reversed the Bush administration policy that banned the use of federal dollars by non-govermental organizations that deal with abortions abroad (known as The Mexico City Policy).

In a symbolic, ceremonious gesture of endorsement, the president signed the executive order on the 36th anniversary of the dubious Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling.

Aborting these things, see, help the economy (as Congresswoman Pelosi explains below):

The DOW was unresponsive to the reversal.

Undeterred, the empowered Democrats, who once bewailed deficits "as far as the eye can see," decided now that the sky's the limit (and it's Bush's fault, anyway), and made sure to include earmarks for hundreds of thousands of dollars in family planning equipment (like lots of condoms) for low-income families in the $825 billion government debt and welfare program (a.k.a. "the economic stimulus bill").

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi explained that, essentially, the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tax-paid distribution of condoms will help the economy by inhibiting the birth of more Children to The People, thereby saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in child services and other welfare programs.

Remember, this here (rendered in a Walt Disneylike-style by the pied pipers of Liberalism to appeal to The Children):

...is just as crucial an economic recovery device as this here is:

"Hahahaha! We finally won!"

"Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!"

The Adults Have Arrived

2009-01-23T11:33:00.000-08:00

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things...

The Obama Inauguration

2009-01-21T11:53:00.000-08:00

And the meek shall inherit the earth...

Weve taken care of everything
The words you hear, the songs you sing
The pictures that give pleasure to your eyes
Its one for all, all for one
We work together, common sons
Never need to wonder how or why

We are the priests
Of the temples of syrinx
Our great computers
Fill the hollowed halls
We are the priests
Of the temples of syrinx
All the gifts of life
Are held within our walls

Look around this world we made
Equality our stock in trade
Come and join the brotherhood of man
Oh what a wide contented world
Let the banners be unfurled
Hold the red star proudly high in hand:

We are the priests
Of the temples of syrinx
Our great computers
Fill the hollowed halls
We are the priests
Of the temples of syrinx
All the gifts of life
Are held within our walls

Rush, "The Temple Of Syrinx"

Thank You, Mr. President, And Farewell.

2009-01-15T19:40:00.000-08:00

Fellow citizens: For eight years, it has been my honor to serve as your President. The first decade of this new century has been a period of consequence – a time set apart. Tonight, with a thankful heart, I have asked for a final opportunity to share some thoughts on the journey we have traveled together and the future of our Nation.

Five days from now, the world will witness the vitality of American democracy. In a tradition dating back to our founding, the presidency will pass to a successor chosen by you, the American people. Standing on the steps of the Capitol will be a man whose story reflects the enduring promise of our land. This is a moment of hope and pride for our whole Nation. And I join all Americans in offering best wishes to President-elect Obama, his wife Michelle, and their two beautiful girls.

Tonight I am filled with gratitude – to Vice President Cheney and members of the Administration; to Laura, who brought joy to this house and love to my life; to our wonderful daughters, Barbara and Jenna; to my parents, whose examples have provided strength for a lifetime. And above all, I thank the American people for the trust you have given me. I thank you for the prayers that have lifted my spirits. And I thank you for the countless acts of courage, generosity, and grace that I have witnessed these past eight years.

This evening, my thoughts return to the first night I addressed you from this house – September 11, 2001. That morning, terrorists took nearly 3,000 lives in the worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor. I remember standing in the rubble of the World Trade Center three days later, surrounded by rescuers who had been working around the clock. I remember talking to brave souls who charged through smoke-filled corridors at the Pentagon and to husbands and wives whose loved ones became heroes aboard Flight 93. I remember Arlene Howard, who gave me her fallen son’s police shield as a reminder of all that was lost. And I still carry his badge.

As the years passed, most Americans were able to return to life much as it had been before Nine-Eleven. But I never did. Every morning, I received a briefing on the threats to our Nation. And I vowed to do everything in my power to keep us safe.

Over the past seven years, a new Department of Homeland Security has been created. The military, the intelligence community, and the FBI have been transformed. Our Nation is equipped with new tools to monitor the terrorists’ movements, freeze their finances, and break up their plots. And with strong allies at our side, we have taken the fight to the terrorists and those who support them. Afghanistan has gone from a nation where the Taliban harbored al Qaeda and stoned women in the streets to a young democracy that is fighting terror and encouraging girls to go to school. Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship and a sworn enemy of America to an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East and a friend of the United States.

There is legitimate debate about many of these decisions. But there can be little debate about the results. America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil. This is a tribute to those who toil day and night to keep us safe – law enforcement officers, intelligence analysts, homeland security and diplomatic personnel, and the men and women of the United States Armed Forces.

Our Nation is blessed to have citizens who volunteer to defend us in this time of danger. I have cherished meeting these selfless patriots and their families. America owes you a debt of gratitude. And to all our men and women in uniform listening tonight: There has been no higher honor than serving as your Commander in Chief.

The battles waged by our troops are part of a broader struggle between two dramatically different systems. Under one, a small band of fanatics demands total obedience to an oppressive ideology, condemns women to subservience, and marks unbelievers for murder. The other system is based on the conviction that freedom is the universal gift of Almighty God and that liberty and justice light the path to peace.

This is the belief that gave birth to our Nation. And in the long run, advancing this belief is the only practical way to protect our citizens. When people live in freedom, they do not willingly choose leaders who pursue campaigns of terror. When people have hope in the future, they will not cede their lives to violence and extremism. So around the world, America is promoting human liberty, human rights, and human dignity. We are standing with dissidents and young democracies, providing AIDS medicine to bring dying patients back to life, and sparing mothers and babies from malaria. And this great republic born alone in liberty is leading the world toward a new age when freedom belongs to all nations.

For eight years, we have also strived to expand opportunity and hope here at home. Across our country, students are rising to meet higher standards in public schools. A new Medicare prescription drug benefit is bringing peace of mind to seniors and the disabled. Every taxpayer pays lower income taxes. The addicted and suffering are finding new hope through faith-based programs. Vulnerable human life is better protected. Funding for our veterans has nearly doubled. America’s air, water, and lands are measurably cleaner. And the Federal bench includes wise new members like Justice Sam Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

When challenges to our prosperity emerged, we rose to meet them. Facing the prospect of a financial collapse, we took decisive measures to safeguard our economy. These are very tough times for hardworking families, but the toll would be far worse if we had not acted. All Americans are in this together. And together, with determination and hard work, we will restore our economy to the path of growth. We will show the world once again the resilience of America’s free enterprise system.

Like all who have held this office before me, I have experienced setbacks. There are things I would do differently if given the chance. Yet I have always acted with the best interests of our country in mind. I have followed my conscience and done what I thought was right. You may not agree with some tough decisions I have made. But I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions.

The decades ahead will bring more hard choices for our country, and there are some guiding principles that should shape our course.

While our Nation is safer than it was seven years ago, the gravest threat to our people remains another terrorist attack. Our enemies are patient and determined to strike again. America did nothing to seek or deserve this conflict. But we have been given solemn responsibilities, and we must meet them. We must resist complacency. We must keep our resolve. And we must never let down our guard.

At the same time, we must continue to engage the world with confidence and clear purpose. In the face of threats from abroad, it can be tempting to seek comfort by turning inward. But we must reject isolationism and its companion, protectionism. Retreating behind our borders would only invite danger. In the 21st century, security and prosperity at home depend on the expansion of liberty abroad. If America does not lead the cause of freedom, that cause will not be led.

As we address these challenges – and others we cannot foresee tonight – America must maintain our moral clarity. I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This Nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense and to advance the cause of peace.

President Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” As I leave the house he occupied two centuries ago, I share that optimism. America is a young country, full of vitality, constantly growing and renewing itself. And even in the toughest times, we lift our eyes to the broad horizon ahead.

I have confidence in the promise of America because I know the character of our people. This is a Nation that inspires immigrants to risk everything for the dream of freedom. This is a Nation where citizens show calm in times of danger and compassion in the face of suffering. We see examples of America’s character all around us. And Laura and I have invited some of them to join us in the White House this evening.

We see America’s character in Dr. Tony Recasner, a principal who opened a new charter school from the ruins of Hurricane Katrina. We see it in Julio Medina, a former inmate who leads a faith-based program to help prisoners returning to society. We see it in Staff Sergeant Aubrey McDade, who charged into an ambush in Iraq and rescued three of his fellow Marines.

We see America’s character in Bill Krissoff, a surgeon from California. His son Nathan, a Marine, gave his life in Iraq. When I met Dr. Krissoff and his family, he delivered some surprising news: He told me he wanted to join the Navy Medical Corps in honor of his son. This good man was 60 years old – 18 years above the age limit. But his petition for a waiver was granted, and for the past year he has trained in battlefield medicine. Lieutenant Commander Krissoff could not be here tonight, because he will soon deploy to Iraq, where he will help save America’s wounded warriors and uphold the legacy of his fallen son.

In citizens like these, we see the best of our country – resilient and hopeful, caring and strong. These virtues give me an unshakable faith in America. We have faced danger and trial, and there is more ahead. But with the courage of our people and confidence in our ideals, this great Nation will never tire … never falter … and never fail.

It has been the privilege of a lifetime to serve as your President. There have been good days and tough days. But every day I have been inspired by the greatness of our country and uplifted by the goodness of our people. I have been blessed to represent this Nation we love. And I will always be honored to carry a title that means more to me than any other: citizen of the United States of America.
And so, my fellow Americans, for the final time: Good night. May God bless this house and our next President. And may God bless you and our wonderful country.

The Year In Review (by Uncle Jay)

2008-12-30T07:02:00.000-08:00

Have A Happy New Year.

Hope & Change Part II

2008-11-17T21:09:00.001-08:00

President-Elect Obama continues to Clintonize his cabinet.

P.S. Fool:

http://arlingtonian.blogspot.com/2008/06/senator-obama-dont-be-fool.html

The "Elite"

2008-11-17T18:48:00.001-08:00

And let's not forget these fine specimens of humanity:

http://arlingtonian.blogspot.com/2008/06/political-elite.html

Okay. Honeymoon's Over.

2008-11-06T14:27:00.000-08:00

For now, we have a new president-elect. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president.

Starting tomorrow, if not sooner.

Anne Coulter

Heh heh. Yesssssss...

Hope & Change

2008-11-05T20:25:00.001-08:00

President-Elect Obama taps veteran Clinton-insider--and partisan schemer--Rahm Emmanuel as White House Chief of Staff.

Two-Faced Democrats

2008-11-05T19:52:00.000-08:00

Vote Of Confidence

2008-11-05T15:01:00.000-08:00

Floored: Dow Plunges 486 Points

President-Elect Barack H. Obama

2008-11-04T18:38:00.000-08:00

Ladies & Gentlemen, the American people have spoken.

Hail To The Chief.

Thugs

2008-11-04T11:05:00.000-08:00

In Toledo, Ohio, riot police have been alerted and are standing-by (in case McCain wins):

http://www.wnwo.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=216464

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania:

Do Your Duty Tomorrow.

2008-11-03T07:25:00.000-08:00

Morning Glory Vs. Closer

2008-11-01T11:46:00.000-07:00

ZOGBY SATURDAY: Republican John McCain has pulled back within the margin of error... The three-day average holds steady, but McCain outpolled Obama 48% to 47% in Friday, one day, polling. He is beginning to cut into Obama's lead among independents, is now leading among blue collar voters, has strengthened his lead among investors and among men, and is walloping Obama among NASCAR voters. Joe the Plumber may get his license after all...

The Surge Is Working

2008-10-29T13:37:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows Barack Obama attracting 50% of the vote nationwide while John McCain earns 47%. This is the first time McCain has been within three points of Obama in more than a month and the first time his support has topped 46% since September 24 (see trends). One percent (1%) of voters prefer a third-party option and 2% are undecided.

Obama & Taxes Part II

2008-10-27T13:34:00.000-07:00

In the last post, the prospect that a President Obama would raise taxes to a much greater extent than is downplayed by his persistence that he will give tax-cuts to "95% of Americans" was made with near certitude.

He has already unabashedly boasted of spending programs surpassing a trillion dollars, but the underlying Marxist ideology is couched by the tax-cutting mantra and his name-dropping of mega-Capitalist supporters like Warren Buffet (though he wisely remains mum about George Soros' support).

When a Florida anchorwoman asked Joe Biden point-blank if Obama was a Marxist, Biden sneered contemptuously: "Are you joking?" and denied and protesteth much-too-much, methinks.

The footsoldiers were quickly dispatched and drew the long knives, as one anonymous tool commented in the last post:

"Meanwhile, Biden goes on TV shows in poorly educated areas of the country and 'reporters' ask him questions so absurd and loaded that Sean Hannity would find them unfair."

Right. And Joe The Plumber is Joe "The Plumber."

Anyway, the recent expose' (below) makes clear, once and for all, from the donkey's mouth, that Obama believes in a "redistribution of wealth"--i.e. Marxist-- philosophy, and so guarantees--with a filibuster-proof Congress, at worst, or a thuggish majority, at best--that Obama will radically change the tax-structure of the American system (which is already overtaxed) for the sake re-booting LBJ's failed "Great Society" welfare state (that had only rather recently been reformed, by the Clinton Administration, under pressure by a mandated Republican Congress and the conservative mood that swept the country in reaction to two years of unfettered Clintonism).

He will squeeze out as much money as he can from the private sector, and, in cahoots with the deep-blue Congress, legislate integral, structural change to the traditional American Way (already assaulted and battered by the takeover of the Fourth Estate and Ideological State Apparatuses like the Education, Legal, and Entertainment fields while using the growing power of The State to attack resistant institutions like The Church).

And all three branches of government are in a real present danger of going under.

Here's where he's finally busted clearly stating his Marxist beliefs (e.g. that wealth must be distributed and the Supreme Court and legislative branches radicalized to facilitate that agenda):

Confoundingly, the question no one has come out and asked him is:

"Senator Obama, where do you stand on reparations?"

...because a reparations agenda seems to fit right in with everything from what Reverend Jeremiah Wright (Obama's "spiritual mentor") has been preaching, to the record of Obama expressing a redistribution of wealth philosophy (years apart and in different situations, i.e. the radio interview and his impromptu exchange with Joe the Plumber--who gets the Toto Award), to his desire to raise the greatest amount of government revenue in American history (by restoring the historically huge 1993 Clinton tax-hikes simply by letting the offsetting Bush tax-cuts expire, and then coercing additional government revenue by fear-mongering "The situation is worse than I thought, and calls for an 'Emergency Stimulus Bill,'" and so doubling Clinton's own looting of the private sector back in 1993).

Obama & Taxes

2008-10-26T20:33:00.000-07:00

A President Obama is going to raise taxes on everyone (except, of course, his bedrock base of indigents who will get welfare checks I mean "tax credits" and his super-rich elitist enablers who know all the tricks to avoid paying them).

First of all, he's going to let the Bush tax cuts expire, and not count that as a tax-hike. He'll say stuff like "We're just putting them back to where they were when Clinton was in office."

In other words, he's going to restore the massive 1993 tax-hike that Clinton enacted first thing when he got into office (with the help of Democrats controlling both houses of congress, and which slowed down an economy that was already recovering and primed for expansion).

That would be like adding insult to insult of the injury of Bush 41 losing his bid for a second term to Clinton-- in great part because he broke his own "Read My Lips" pledge of not raising taxes.

So Bush 41 had lost his credibility because he raised taxes when he pledged he wouldn't, while the unknown Clinton had yet to lose any and so could contrast himself by credibly saying that he wouldn't, but enacted an historically huge tax hike first-thing, anyway (which began the erosion of his own credibility).

Eight years later, Bush 43 reversed those hikes (a reversal which, btw, had nothing to do with the meltdown underway and a lot to do with the excellent expansion we've enjoyed), so we went back to pre-Clinton tax-rates.

And so, by letting the Bush 43 tax-cuts expire, a President Obama will restore what originally was Clinton's broken campaign promise not to hike taxes on the middle class and argue that it doesn't count as a "tax-hike."

Further exploiting the well-established short-term memory of the American people (if not their stupidity after having their minds sandblasted by liberal academia, popular culture, and the liberal infiltration and makeovers of the Ideological State Apparatus, as Comrade Gramsci prescribed for a stealth coup d-etat of Western culture)--and this is a prediction, mark it--a President Obama, by the 1993 role model or direct, present day counsel of Bill Clinton, will raise even more taxes than would be raised by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts by explaining:

"It's worse than I thought when I was campaigning, and we're going to need an 'Emergency Economic Stimulus.'"

That's exactly how Clinton played it (and what he called it, which is simply Democrat-speak for tax-hikes, despite the recovery already underway, as Bush 41 tried to assure), and the mythology of some paradisical, economic Eden being created by the succesful passage of the 1993 "emergency stimulus" (i.e. the historically huge tax hike on everyone who paid taxes despite campaign promises to the contrary) will be referenced by a President Obama to justify his own tax-hike on top of Clinton's kicking back in when the Bush cuts are allowed to expire.

That's audacity, alright, and he could very well get away with it.

For a long time now, Clinton was ridiculously crediting his 1993 tax hike for the economic expansion that boomed at the end of the decade.

It was a quiet boast, at the time (before his post-Katrina rehabilitation), and roundly ridiculed and dismissed--by almost everyone-- as just another pathetic attempt by the impeached president to scrape up some credit for the only positive thing about his disgraced presidency that he could hang his hat on (if only by his fortuitous presence), an expanding economy, and so the boast, buried among countless others and made vaporous by Clinton's well-earned reputation for saying things that mean nothing, was forgotten.

Indeed, to say that his "Emergency Economic Stimulus Bill" was the Prime Mover of an expansion that (1) began a year before he took office, (2) was stalled with hiccupping interest rates after the tax-hikes were passed in his first year, (3) trudged anemically along while Hillary tried--and failed--to socialize 1/7 of the macroeconomy (the health service field), (4) but then began to trot after the Republicans and their "Contract With America" consequentially took over both houses of congress in the '94 midterm elections (forcing Clinton to cut taxes, balance the budget, and reform welfare), (5) all in tandem with the accelerating Tech Revolution (a revolution on par with the preceding Industrial and Agricultural Revolution in being a milestone for human civilization, and driven by a Bill named Gates) that (6) began to balloon faster and bigger than Clinton's own big, FAT, HEAD (because of a climate that Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan described as being driven by "irrational exuberance" during the dot.com craze), and (7) had more inflated numbers behind it due to the book-cooking of megacorporations like Enron and Worldcom by mega-accountants like Arthur Anderson (both 6 & 7 paying the piper in Bush 43's first year in office), to say that Clinton's 1993 "emergency economic stimulus bill" (i.e. the historically huge tax-hike) provided the wings for that economic flight--as he himself did say--is worthy of derision and became eminently forgettable.

But I remember, and after eight years of all the above falling away into the past like a sunken ship falling through the depths-- while being mythologized by landlubbing yarn-spinners-- it is that vicissitudinal history which has been forgotten, and that one quiet, self-aggrandizing and rightfully ridiculed assessment from long ago that will float to the surface: "It was the 1993 Emergency Economic Stimulus bill that was responsible for the unprecedented (whatever) prosperity of the Clinton Era (the late 1990's, anyway)."

He got away with saying that because of a media that was a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.

And a President Obama will get away with saying that, too, easily, because the media has now become two arms and two legs for the Democratic Party.

Well. That settles it.

2008-10-25T15:17:00.000-07:00

Judge tosses lawsuit challenging Obama citizenship

Oct 25, 3:37 PM (ET)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging Barack Obama's qualifications to be president.

U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick on Friday night rejected the suit by attorney Philip J. Berg, who alleged that Obama was not a U.S. citizen and therefore ineligible for the presidency. Berg claimed that Obama is either a citizen of his father's native Kenya or became a citizen of Indonesia after he moved there as a boy.

Obama was born in Hawaii to an American mother and a Kenyan father. His parents divorced and his mother married an Indonesian man.

Internet-fueled conspiracy theories question whether Obama is a "natural-born citizen" as required by the Constitution for a presidential candidate and whether he lost his citizenship while living abroad.

The reasoning:

Surrick ruled that Berg lacked standing to bring the case, saying any harm from an allegedly ineligible candidate was "too vague and its effects too attenuated to confer standing on any and all voters."

It would just violate the Contitution's prerequisites for POTUS.

No biggie.

Just A Coincidence!

2008-10-19T17:44:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO (AP) ― The Nation of Islam, a secretive movement generally closed to outsiders, has planned a rare open-to-the public event at its Chicago-based headquarters in what the Minister Louis Farrakhan deemed a "new beginning" for the group.

http://cbs2chicago.com/local/nation.of.islam.2.843209.html

Class Acts

2008-10-17T04:27:00.000-07:00

Thuggery

2008-10-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

In the commentary section of the last post, anonymous complained:

"Unfortunately, Palin has turned out to attract the worst element of the GOP."

Give me a break, anon. You had isolated instances of rowdy cheerleaders shouting stuff about the opposition that you hear in any sports arena (and often from parents at Little League games).

You never hear this kind of hateful crap from any McCain/Palin supporter (about Muslims and the Koran, for example):

"Are Christians the sickest pack of slime on the planet or what?Just think. They used to be able to burn you for saying that...now, we just shove it down their throats."
...

"yas, the holy bible...foulest piece of pornographic shit on the planet."

And you never hear this kind thuggery:

"This election is about the importance of not just winning, but breaking their backs and crushing their spirits."
...

"This isn't about winning. It's about destroying the conservative movement, and their dangerous incompetence has given us an historic opportunity to deliver a killing blow. Leave everything on the roa" (sic)

Those are quotes from Evan Sayet's blog, http://sayetright.blogspot.com/ (a conservative in the lion's den of LA.)

And it's not an anomalous, isolated voice, but the esprit de corps from the far-left base of Obama supporters.

They're Nazis.

The Democrats Dunnit.

2008-10-12T23:40:00.000-07:00

David Asman hosted an excellent, comprehensive and truly fair and balanced documentary the other night on Foxnews Special called "Saving Our Economy."

There is a campaign underway right now from the Left that's trying to pull blame away from Fannie Mae, Countrywide, other guilty institutions, and the significance of subprime lending itself (in relation to the scale of the economic breakdown) and place it on other things (like "Republican deregulation," which is nonsense, despite the frenetic posting of economic Kool Aid from "experts" who are devoid of non-partisan objectivity).

It is an organized campaign from the Left to deflect and sow confusion (an environment in which they thrive).

Ignore them. They're liars. "Saving Our Economy" is the best summation, with links to it in six parts below (embedding codes were available, but for some reason could not be cut & pasted in their entirety).

Many questions are answered here-- as well as my own regarding McCain's reluctance to go there when debating Obama, even when asked point-blank about causes: McCain himself received contributions from Fannie Mae (though a lot less than Obama).

Nevertheless, it's clear what happened.

If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend that you take the time to watch all six segments of the special.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0g0mtZyZB4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8ziPZyGf3g&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqw9UzUtxbg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qVuG7-fsWM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKu8Jg4TOsg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2nHqJZazuc&feature=related

This Man Is RIGHTEOUS

2008-10-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

Here's Zo's blog: http://zo.black-and-right.com/?p=26#comments

The Nutshell Has Roots

2008-10-10T04:47:00.001-07:00

In the recent post(s) "In A Nutshell," the cause of the financial breakdown and the central culprits were revealed:

1) The causus causata of the snowballed meltdown has been identified: The subprime lending corruption at Fannie & Freddie.

(2) A look at the timeline makes clear that the practice of sub-prime lending began in the Clinton era and was called to the carpet in 2004 when it started getting out of hand and raised red flags to number crunchers. The Republican-backed snooping was beaten back by Democrats like Barney Frank, Reid, and others.

(3) The "community organizing" that Barack has on the top of his resume' for "experience" refers to his activities with ACORN--which worked hand-in-hand with Franklin Raines at Fannie.

(4) Raines is now "economic advisor" to Obama.

Furthermore, Senator Obama blames "Republican deregulation" for the breakdown. That's demonstrably false. There's been no "deregulation" in the financial sector that Barack can point to. Nada. Zip.

When additional regulation was sought for Fannie Mae specifically (by Republicans--like McCain himself-- who recognized a potential S&L redux), it was Democrats like Dodd and Frank who bullied and blocked it.

Fannie Mae, as mentioned, worked hand-in-hand with the group ACORN to get sub-prime loans out to indigents, and packaged those very loans and unloaded them for big bucks that were enjoyed by Fannie Mae executives like Raines, Mudd, and Wilkinson, who then gave large contributions to the Obama campaigns.

Meanwhile, the group ACORN is all over the news now for serial voter fraud.

Recall also that Barack was the lawyer and trainer for ACORN, which is the "community organizing" outfit he refers to for his "experience."

HELLO?!?!?

Nostradamus 101

2008-10-08T21:34:00.001-07:00

Okay, I'm ready to make a prediction on the presidential race using a poetic technique of prognostication (and a highly subjective analysis of it) that many believe predicted Napoleon, Hitler, the Kennedy brothers, and even 9/11 centuries before they existed when used by Nostradamus in the 16th Century.

Let's begin with the relevant facts:

McCain's a Virgo, and Obama's a Leo.

Hmm. Does the lion eat the virgin, or does does the virgin soothe the savage beast, and vanquish it?

To find the answer, we have to gather more clues:

Election Day--November 4--is seven days after the new moon, and two days before the lunar first quarter.

Coincidence? Maybe.

Significance? Unknown (i.e. above my paygrade).

More significantly (perhaps), it's on a Tuesday, which, as everyone knows, is not only hamburger payday for Wimpy (i.e. Obama?), but, as I'm privileged to know, was quarters night at my alma mater's Tavern, before the campus went dry...

....like the economy just did.

A-ha. Now I'm getting somewhere.

Many young lions prowled the Tavern for virgins...

...which were nowhere to be found (and, when making the analogous extension, certainly not on Governor Palin's end of the ticket).

Let's just cut to the chase. The outcome is clear (unless, of course, the skies are overcast).

Behold the inspired quatrain:

The hungry lion
Dark & smelly
Will strike the old virgin
(Veteran though he be)...

And the prediction:

...And win to lose
Or lose to win.

Go ahead and write that in stone. And you can be hailed as an "expert" and used in a pretentious documentary on cable no matter who wins, because the ambiguity of the couplet allows you to say you were right no matter what the outcome will be.

If you want, you can also easily read bin Laden (i.e. "dark & smelly lion"), the United States ("old, veteran virgin"), and 9/11 ("strike," "win to lose, or lose to win") into the quatrain and couplet and call me a prophet if 9/11 happened not in 2001, but will happen in 2009, even though I'm really talking about contemporary political events, because Nostradamus is hailed as one for writing far more ambiguous quatrains "about 9/11" half a millennium ago (even if he, too, was writing about his own contemporary political events).

It would really help your credibility, though, if you had an English accent and smoked a pipe.

P-U!

2008-10-08T20:14:00.000-07:00

There was this:

Q: Speaking of your girls, what do you think they think of Mommy? How do they think of you?

Mrs. Obama: ...you know we have this ritual in the morning....they can come in my bed and if Dad isn’t there--because he is too snore-y and stinky, they don’t want ever to get in the bed with him...

And now this:

(From CBS News' Dean reynolds)

(NASHVILLE, TENN.) - After most of the previous 12 months covering Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency, it was interesting, instructive and, well, relaxing to follow John McCain for the last few days. The differences between the two are striking.

...The McCain campaign plane is better than Obama's, which is cramped, uncomfortable and smells terrible most of the time. Somehow the McCain folks manage to keep their charter clean, even where the press is seated...

Comic Relief

2008-10-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

But Obama actually reminds me of this guy:

Not Doomsday For Capitalism

2008-10-08T11:51:00.000-07:00

The Bush-hating Left has been slamming the "Bush Economy" since the last recession, the recovery, a record-setting expansion, and now the crunch with equal calumny throughout.

Now they have a real (and very conveniently timed) downswing that they can celebrate.

But it was never as bad as slandered when it was doing well.

Despite the subprime larva which broke out of its cocoon and is now wreaking havoc like Mothra, the problems we have now have nothing to do with the tax-cuts, deficits, or the general de-regulation that they railed about for the last eight years (when specific regulation was attempted for Fannie Mae, as needed, and as called for by Bush, McCain, & other Republicans, Democrats sabotaged the effort).

Those things, like the sub-prime lending, drove the expansion, but unlike the sub-prime lending, they did not cause the catastrophe.

Nevertheless, they finally have a real "economic debacle" they needed that would "validate" their serial complaints for the fiormer and roll out the red carpet for "change."

But, as before, are things here really THAT bad as to warrant Marx's I-Told-You-So obituary for Capitalism and a Cinderella shoe for socialism?

Knowing that there were ideological forces behind the sub-prime lending catastrophe that may have intentionally pushed the System to the brink (see the Cloward-Pivens strategy designed to ultimately discredit capitalism--with thanks to fj for the tutorial links), those forces and their sniveling tools here are spreading rumors of Capitalism's demise prematurely, methinks:

We're Not Headed for a Depression

No, this isn't the crisis that kills global capitalism.

By GARY S. BECKER

In order to promote a much smoother functioning of the financial system, it is paramount to distinguish between the immediate steps needed to cope with the present crisis and the long-run reforms needed to reduce the likelihood of future crises. Let's start with the short-run fixes.

David GothardFirst of all, the magnitude of this financial disturbance should be placed in perspective. Although it is the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, it is a far smaller crisis, especially in terms of the effects on output and employment. The United States had about 25% unemployment during most of the decade from 1931 until 1941, and sharp falls in GDP. Other countries experienced economic difficulties of a similar magnitude. So far, American GDP has not yet fallen, and unemployment has reached only a little over 6%. Both figures are likely to get quite a bit worse, but they will nowhere approach those of the 1930s.

The Treasury's announced insurance of all money-market funds, and the full insurance of bank deposits, carry considerable moral hazard risks, but they have not aroused much controversy. The main thrust of the new banking law allows the Treasury secretary to purchase bank assets up to $700 billion in order to increase the liquidity of the banking system. These assets are of uncertain worth since there is essentially no market for many of them, and hence they have no market price. The government hopes to create this market partly through using auctions, where banks would offer their assets at particular prices, and the government would decide whether to buy them. I would have preferred starting with a smaller dollar value of purchases, and up the amount if the situation deteriorates further.

Partly because many consumers are repelled by the intention to bail out companies and their executives who made decisions that got the companies into trouble, the new law includes income and severance pay limits for executives whose firms seek government help. Even though one cannot think much of executives who led their banks into such a mess, that is a bad precedent since it involves too much micromanagement of bank operations. Moreover, such salary controls can be evaded by very generous fringe benefits.

The moral-hazard consequences for banks receiving a bailout now is worrisome since they may expect to get rescued again by the government if their future investments turn sour. Yet while I find helping these banks highly distasteful, moral-hazard concerns should be temporarily relaxed when the whole short-term credit system is close to collapse. Still, the bank bill with its huge bailout does suggest that the $29 billion bailout of the bondholders of Bear Stearns in March was a mistake. It seemed to have a moral-hazard effect by encouraging Lehman Brothers and other investment banks to delay in raising more capital because they too might have expected the government to come to their rescue if times got much worse. Although the government was apparently concerned that foreign central banks were major holders of the bonds, it was unwise to give them and other bondholders such full protection.

One troubling provision is that the government can take an equity stake in banks it helps. Some economists have proposed a similar role for government equity in these banks. I believe it is unwise to give governments equity in private companies, even if the government does not have voting rights in company policies. Many examples in recent history, such as the current Alitalia fiasco, show that political interests outweigh economic ones when governments have some ownership of private companies. This is likely to happen in this bailout if some banks that are helped decide to sharply cut employment in the districts of some congressmen, or to transfer many jobs overseas.

Taxpayers may be stuck with hundreds of billions of dollars of losses from the various government insurance provisions and government purchases of assets. Although the media has made much of this possibility through headlines like "$700 Billion Bailout," such large losses are highly unlikely except in the low probability event that the economy falls into a sustained major depression. Indeed, with efficient auctions, the government may well make money on its actions, just as the Resolution Trust Corporation that took over many savings-and-loan banks during the 1980s crisis did not lose much, if any, money. By buying assets when they are depressed and waiting out the crisis, the government may have a profit on these assets when they are finally sold back to the private sector. Making money does not mean the government involvement is wise, but the likely losses to taxpayers are being greatly exaggerated.

The temporary banning of short sales is an example of a perennial approach to difficulties in financial markets and elsewhere; namely, "shoot the messenger." Short sales did not cause the crisis, but reflect beliefs about how long the slide will continue. Trying to prevent these beliefs from being expressed suppresses useful information, and also creates serious problems for many hedge funds that use short sales to hedge other risks. Their ban can also cause greater panic in other markets.

The main problem with the modern financial system based on widespread use of derivatives and securitization is that while financial specialists understand how individual assets function, even they have limited understanding of the aggregate risks created by the system. That is, insufficient appreciation of how the whole incredibly complex financial system operates when exposed to various types of stress. In light of such limitations, it is difficult to propose long-term reforms. Still, a few reforms seem reasonably likely to reduce the probability of future financial crises.

- Increase capital requirements. The capital requirements of banks relative to assets should be increased after the crisis is over in order to prevent the highly leveraged ratios of assets to capital in financial institutions during the past several years. Possibly a minimum ratio of capital to assets should be imposed by the Fed on investment banks and money funds. As much as possible, the measure of capital should not be its book value but its market value, such as the market value of publicly traded shares of banks. Book value measures, for example, apparently badly missed the plight of Japanese banks during their decade-long banking crisis of the 1990s.

- Sell Freddie and Fannie. The government should as quickly as possible sell Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to fully private companies that receive no government insurance or other help. These two giants did not cause the housing mess, but in recent years they surely greatly contributed to it, partly through congressional pressure on them to increase their purchases of subprime loans. They have owned or guaranteed almost half of the $12 trillion in outstanding mortgages while having a small capital base. The housing market already has excessive amounts of government subsidies, such as from the tax exemption of interest on mortgages, and should not have government sponsored enterprises that insure mortgage-backed securities.

- No more bailouts. The "too big to fail" approach to banks and other companies should be abandoned as new long-term financial policies are developed. Such an approach is inconsistent with a free-market economy. It also has caused dubious company bailouts in the past, such as the large government loan years ago to Chrysler, a company that remained weak and should have been allowed to go into bankruptcy. All the American auto companies have asked for and received handouts too since they cannot compete against Japanese, Korean and German car makers, partly because these American companies have been incredibly badly managed. A "too many institutions in trouble to fail principle," as in the present financial crisis, may still be necessary on rare occasions, but failure of badly run large financial and other companies is healthy and indeed necessary for the survival of a robust free-enterprise competitive system.

Is this a final "Crisis of Global Capitalism" -- to borrow the title of a book by George Soros written shortly after the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98? The crisis that kills capitalism has been said to happen during every major recession and financial crisis ever since Karl Marx prophesized the collapse of capitalism in the middle of the 19th century. Although I admit to having greatly underestimated the severity of the current crisis, I am confident that sizable world economic growth will resume before very long under a mainly capitalist world economy.

Consider, for example, that in the decade after various predictions of the collapse of global capitalism following the Asian crisis, both world GDP and world trade experienced unprecedented growth thanks to the power of market competition on a global scale. The South Korean economy, for example, was pummeled during that crisis, but has had significant economic growth since. World economic growth will recover once we are over the present severe financial difficulties.

Mr. Becker, the 1992 Nobel economics laureate, is professor of economics at the University of Chicago and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Portions of this article first appeared on his Web site.

Subtleties

2008-10-07T21:58:00.000-07:00

Tellingly, in tonight's debate, That One's (i.e. Obama's) attitude towards those eligible for healthcare is the same attitude Fannie Mae (and Obama's outfit ACORN) had for those eligible for home loans: Pre-existing conditions should be ignored.

It's a philosophy that tells you exactly where That One's coming from.

It manifested itself again with his "right" to healthcare (vs. McCain's "responsibility").

For his part, after McCain scolded That One for saying he would just go in and bomb Pakistan, and That One shot back by reminding everyone that McCain said (joked), "Bomb-bomb-Iran" and "nuke N. Korea" (or something), McCain failed to ask: "Is That One really comparing Iran and North Korea to Pakistan, a democracy and our ally in the war on terror?" (internal problems with jihadist hordes notwithstanding)

Because he was.

M-Hm.

2008-10-07T16:40:00.000-07:00

It turns out that one of Barney Frank's fanny-frends was a chief executive at Fannie Mae.

Getting Out The Vote (Democrat-Style)

2008-10-07T14:20:00.000-07:00

Obama sure knows how to get the vote out:

"CLEVELAND - Volunteers supporting Barack Obama picked up hundreds of people at homeless shelters, soup kitchens and drug-rehab centers and drove them to a polling place yesterday on the last day that Ohioans could register and vote on the same day, almost no questions asked.

The huge effort by a pro-Obama group, Vote Today Ohio, takes advantage of a quirk in the state's elections laws that allows people to register and cast ballots at the same time without having to prove residency."

Right. "The People."

That was the other day. And now this:

"Nevada state authorities seized records and computers Tuesday from the Las Vegas office of an organization that tries to get low-income people registered to vote, after fielding complaints of voter fraud.

Bob Walsh, spokesman for the Nevada secretary of state's office, told FOXNews.com the raid was prompted by ongoing complaints about "erroneous" registration information being submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also called ACORN."

M-hm. ACORN.

It's About Time.

2008-10-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

"Whatever the question, whatever the issues, there's always a back story with Senator Obama...Our current economic crisis is a good case in point. The crisis started in our housing market in the form of subprime loans that were pushed on people who could not afford them.

"Bad mortgages were being backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it was only a matter of time before a contagion of unsustainable debt began to spread," McCain said during an event in Albuquerque, NM.

"This corruption was encouraged by Democrats in Congress, and abetted by Senator Obama."

McCain said he raised the alarm and called for tighter borrowing rules on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years ago, which could have helped stem the crisis.

By comparison, he said, Obama was "silent" while congressional Democrats fought efforts to rein in the mortgage giants.

"As recently as September of last year, [Obama] said that subprime loans had been, quote, 'a good idea.' Well, Senator Obama, that 'good idea' has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression," McCain said.

Carl Campanile, AP

Good. Keep it up. Harder.

In A Nutshell

2008-10-01T03:25:00.001-07:00

(1) The causus causata of the snowballed meltdown has been identified: The subprime lending corruption at Fannie & Freddie.

(2) A look at the timeline makes clear that the practice of sub-prime lending began in the Clinton era and was called to the carpet in 2004 when it started getting out of hand and raised red flags to number crunchers. The Republican-backed snooping was beaten back by Democrats like Barney Frank, Reid, and others.

(3) The "community organizing" that Barack has on the top of his resume' for "experience" refers to his activities with ACORN--which worked hand-in-hand with Franklin Raines at Fannie.

(4) Raines is now "economic advisor" to Obama.

In A Nutshell

2008-10-01T03:25:00.000-07:00

(1) *The causus causata* of the snowballed meltdown has been identified: The subprime lending corruption at Fannie & Freddie.

(2) A look at the timeline makes clear that the practice of sub-prime lending began in the Clinton era and was called to the carpet in 2004 when it started getting out of hand and raised red flags to number crunchers. The Republican-backed snooping was beaten back by Democrats like Barney Frank, Reid, and others.

(3) The "community organizing" that Barack has on the top of his resume' for "experience" refers to his activities with ACORN--which worked hand-in-hand with Franklin Raines at Fannie.

(4) Raines is now "economic advisor" to Obama.

Do the math.

YAAAARGH!!!

2008-09-28T16:32:00.000-07:00

Somali Pirates Demand $20 Million Ransom for Weapons-Laden Ship
Sunday, September 28, 2008

MOGADISHU, Somalia — As a heavily armed U.S. destroyer patrolled nearby and planes flew overhead Sunday, a Somali pirate spokesman told The Associated Press his group was demanding a $20 million ransom to release a cargo ship loaded with Russian tanks.

The spokesman also warned that the pirates would fight to the death if any country tried military action to regain the ship, and a man who said he was the ship's captain reported that one crew member had died.

Paul Newman, 1925-2008

2008-09-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

Watch & DISTRIBUTE

2008-09-26T16:07:00.001-07:00

The Deal

2008-09-11T19:18:00.001-07:00

In the last post, Obama's page-lifting from Clinton's 1992 campaign playbook was pointed out and his increased resorting to the cynical strategems therein as political pressure compelled him to abandon his transcending "Hope & Change" abstraction--itself plagiarised--and get down and dirty with the wordly Machiavelli.

And no better mentor is there for that than former President Bill Clinton himself, who, in eight years time, went from leaving--after burglarizing-- the White House Impeached, heavily-indebted, and facing criminal charges to a celebrated docent on all things great and small who's banked over $100 million dollars on speaking fees and book deals, and has become a virtual Prince of the World with his Clinton Global Initiative.

And it was in the self-proclaimed Comeback Kid's Harlem office of that very organization, today on 9/11, that Senator Obama--reeling from the McCain-Palin surge-- met the Master of the Democratic Party to plan a two-pronged attack and win back momentum for his own comeback.

No one but they know what scheme was hatched, but hatched it was:

"We're putting him to work," Obama announced after the meeting.

"I've agreed to do a substantial number of things, whatever I'm asked to do," Clinton confirmed.

That was typically fork-tongued. In one sentence, Clinton admits to having already agreed to execute a series of specified tactics on behalf of an activated strategy, but then implies that nothing was specified and he's nonchalantly standing by on-call.

Anyway, it seems Obama did:

http://arlingtonian.blogspot.com/2008/08/did-he-or-didnt-he.html

"I predict that Senator Obama will win and win pretty handily," the Master forgave.

Obama added: "You can take it from the president of the United States. He knows a little something about politics."

Not enough, though, perhaps, if his efforts here for Hillary--along with the not-so-veiled veiled suggestion of who can't win--is any indication:

McCain's judgment has been criticized by the opposition for putting the quickly polarizing Palin on the ticket, but Obama's decision to hire the far more polarizing Bill Clinton to help him campaign says much about his own, because one thing's for certain:

The Clinton Curse--a weird phenomenon that unleashes all sorts of strife, misfortune, and divisiveness in its sphere of influence, whether in the circle of Clinton associates, upon the body politic at large, or against other Democratic presidential aspirants he tries to "help" get elected (like Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry)-- is alive and well, and Obama's a fool for gassing up his wagon with it.

The Descent

2008-09-11T05:48:00.001-07:00

The Palin pick knocked Obama off his pedestal and the messianic glow has disappeared.

He was like Fonzie jumping the shark with that over-the-top World Tour and the Hail, Caesar stadium speech with styrofoam Greek columns and a thousand waving American flags (that were then headed for the dumpster after the show ended, as effectively tattle-taled).

Mac graciously let him have his last meal and one more good night's sleep...

... before knocking him off the front page and his game first thing in the morning without further ado.

It's been downhill ever since.

Obama's a plagiarist--just like his veep, Biden--and has been tearing pages out of Clinton's 1992 playbook since Day One.

Bill knew it, and it angered him (though it serves him right since he himself tried to replicate the Kennedy-Nixon dynamic in '92).

But that pig isn't flying (no pun intended).

First Obama plagiarised Clinton's (Man from) Hope & (It's Time To) Change mantras, but you won't hear him saying that anymore.

Then he lifted Clinton's "Out-Of-Touch elitist" shtick, but that backfired.

And now, increasingly desperate, he's stealing his "It's The Economy, Stupid" spiel.

Good luck with that one, porky (again, no pun intended).

The Citizens Against Government Waste rated the gluttony of the three senators thusly:

Sen. Obama’s 2007 rating was 10 percent, making his lifetime score 18 percent. The 2008 Congressional Pig Book contained 53 earmarks worth $97.4 million for Sen. Obama, including $1,648,850 for the Shedd Aquarium.

Sen. Biden received the worst possible rating in 2007 with 0 percent, while his lifetime rating is 22 percent. According to the Pig Book, Sen. Biden had 70 earmarks for a total of $119.7 million in fiscal year 2008, including $246,100 for the Grand Opera House in Wilmington.

Sen. McCain has a 2007 rating of 100 percent, and a lifetime rating of 88, has never requested nor received a single earmark, and has pledged to veto any spending bill that contains any earmarks.

What's next, Senator Obama?

"I Feel Your Pain?"

The World Wants Obama!

2008-09-10T15:09:00.000-07:00

World wants Obama as president: poll
Posted Tue Sep 9, 2008 10:50pm AEST

US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may be struggling to nudge ahead of his Republican rival in polls at home, but people across the world want him in the White House, a BBC poll said.

All 22 countries covered in the poll would prefer to see Senator Obama elected US president ahead of Republican John McCain.

In 17 of the 22 nations, people expect relations between the US and the rest of the world to improve if Senator Obama wins.

But look who's getting polled:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, there is no consensus outside the United States that Islamist militants from al Qaeda were responsible, according to an international poll published Wednesday.

The survey of 16,063 people in 17 nations found majorities in only nine countries believe al Qaeda was behind the attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people in 2001.

On average, 46 percent of those surveyed said al Qaeda was responsible, 15 percent said the U.S. government, 7 percent said Israel and 7 percent said some other perpetrator. One in four people said they did not know who was behind the attacks.

Unspinning

2008-09-05T23:23:00.000-07:00

With high gas prices, the implosion of the housing bubble, a credit crunch, and rising unemployment, the Left have some actual bad economic news now to harp and nitpick over on behalf of their seven-year long hyperbolic howling that the Republican Bush Administration has "destroyed" the economy.

The economy-bashing began with the recession in 2001, and kept going strong throughout the recovery and aggressive expansion that transformed the skylines of American cities and put SUVs in many garages, aragula stews in many pots, Starbuck's coffees in many hands, flat-screen plasma televisions on many living room walls, and the Internet at most every fingertip.

And yet the last eight years have been characterized as some kind of free fall from the supposed paradise of the Clinton Era-- which itself had supposedly transformed the economy of the preceding Reagan-Bush 41 Dark Ages into an economic Rennaissance.

However, to say that America was "transformed" during the rare Democratic executive leadership from 1992-2000--as the Clintons and the Democrats peddle-- is not accurate.

The Reagan-Bush 41 years themselves were transformative, bringing us out of the Post-Vietnam doldrums and climaxing with the dramatic--and bloodless--implosion of the Soviet Union, leaving the United States of America the sole-surviving Super Power and the wealthiest and undisputed leader of the Free World.

That was the situation Bill Clinton inherited-- with a mild recession he characterized during the campaign as "The Worst Since The Great Depression" already over and the recovery underway before he even took office.

But it would take many years to sweep up the pieces of the Cold War and of renovating and repositioning to set the globalized stage for the new era we live in now (though the Berlin Wall came down at the start of Bush 41's term, the Soviet Union would be officially declared dead at the start of Clinton's first term).

The economy--or "New Economy," as Clinton himself correctly identified it--in tandem with the Post-Cold War restructuring of a geopolitical "New World Order" (as post-Gulf War Bush 41 identified it) was in the process of transforming-- or transitioning-- throughout the 1990s.

The real driver of the economic boom in the final years of the transitive 1990s--i.e. the Technological Revolution, seeded well before 1992-- rather quietly spread its roots underground through most of the decade.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton took the opportunity of the respite between the two epochs to celebrate himself (having the stage practically all to himself, though he had to share the limelight at times with the likes of Madonna-In-Her-Prime and O.J. Simpson), with an adoring media and world enabling the orgiastic indulgence.

All along the seedling--conceived in the Department of Defense many years before and cultivated in Silicon Valley--having taken firm root, sprouted and grew beneath the radar...

...and then sprung skyward near the end of the second term, surprising everyone how majestic the tree was.

And thanks primarily to the husbandry of Bill for it.

That's private citizen Bill Gates.

And here we are, having built treehouses in it.

We enjoy an ability to communicate that was unimaginable a decade ago. Our ways of life have been transformed well beyond the luxury of blogging and include the ability to instantly access news of the world, entire libraries of information, department stores for shopping, and even our bank accounts 24/7 at our fingertips, all without leaving our homes (or our chairs, for that matter).

That is a profound, transformative sea-change for humanity at-large that is on par with previous revolutions like the Agricultural and Industrial in significance for human history (understand that, and appreciate the time you live in with its unprecedented bounties and benefits).

Self-conscious that he had nothing to do with this tree--which was the bloom of the economic boom at the end of the 1990's-- but needful of attention and credit, to this day Clinton tries to inject himself into its fruition by saying that his 1993 historically-huge tax-hike was responsible for "paving the way" because it lowered interest rates.

That's a lie. Interest rates jumped immediately upon enactment of the tax-hike, and he must know that.

His vice president and presidential aspirant Al Gore also tried to inject himself into the fruition by saying that he "invented the Internet."

Both injections indicate that they both knew that they were really on the sidelines and wanted some credit for the real action on the entrepreneurial field of private enterprise.

Nevertheless, it is only the Tech Boom at the end of the second term--and the bells and whistles echoing from the exuberance--that underlies the myth of an Eden--economical and otherwise-- that the Democrats invoke to this day to draw as a contrast to the Fall from it as caused by the Republican Bush's alleged multifarious Sins Against The Planet.

True transformation did indeed set in after 2001. The country-- and the world-- today is much different than it was during the 1990s decade, which was a brief--and often bizzare--interregnum between the end of the epic Cold War and the last millennium and the post-9/11 world at the beginning of the new one, which itself began with the economy suffering the blows of 9/11, the popping of the Tech bubble, and the mega-corporate scandals in the first year or two of the new Bush Administration, all paying the piper for the reckless, irrational excesses of "The Clinton Show" interregnum.

This picture of the Washington Monument undergoing renovation for years during the Clinton second term best symbolizes the transitive nature of the interregnum, a national adolescence for the country after two centuries of infancy and childhood, and now here wearing braces:

The unveiling of the strenghthened monument came with the adulthood of the Bush 43 Administration as the new millennium began, ready to take on real-world challenges-- well beyond the domestic disfunctions of government shutdowns and go-to-your-room impeachment, temper-tantrum compelled--and accordingly fleeting--military spectacles, and road trips and junkets abroad that are characteristic of adolescents (while bin Laden explicitly declared war on "the people of the United States"--twice--and, having observed the United States as being a "paper tiger," fearlessly planned 9/11 in full confidence).

Along with merciless--and expensive-- natural disasters on top of 9/11 and the rest, nevertheless, amazingly, by the end of Bush's two terms, the nation pulled out of the recession and embarked on a stellar recovery, confronting the enemy we are at war with on their own turf while re-capturing our status as the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world in the process, still at the vanguard of the Cause of Freedom, and dead serious about it.

We are still Ronald Reagan's "Shining City on a Hill," still are the favorite destination place of the world's poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and still lift our lamp beside the golden door.

The Left are liars. The Clinton era was an intermittent sideshow of reckless buffoonery that had the luck of finishing off just as the Tech Revolution took off and created wealth and an exuberance that saved Clinton from conviction and removal from office when Impeached for perjury, subornation of perjury, and obstruction of justice in a political--not jurisdictional--forum.

(When a real court of law got a hold of the case after he left office, it saw fit to suspend Clinton of his license to practice law; further punishment was plea-bargained away. The news of that was buried by 9/11, which occurred almost to the day of the verdict.).

To howlingly call President Bush "The Worst President in History!"--and a liar, no less--immediately on the heels of such a presidency can only be vindictive projection.

If the howlers are to be believed, America, as an entity, stopped producing, stopped getting wealthier, and went into negative territory across-the-board approximately eight years ago.

You keep hearing that the economy was "better" (the nation richer?) during the Clinton interregnum, and that the Bush 43 terms "took us backward" (i.e. made us a nation less rich than before?), that we, as a nation, in effect, are not better off than we were eight years ago.

But here is the simple, bottom line:

Nominal GNP (in billions of dollars)--

Jan-2001: $10,060.20

Apr-2008: $14,427.70

The nominal figures were used because the real one for April of 2008 is unavailable, but it should not significantly compromise the breadth of the differential between both nominal figures.

That's solid, macroeconomic growth--four trillion worth and then some, in fact-- and that growth is remarkable with all the catastrophic troubles and challenges the economy suffered in Bush's first term, which includes the aggressive talking-down of it throughout by vociferous, Bush-hating media outlets (on the mainstream airwaves and in the submarine blogosphere alike), which surely affects consumer confidence to one degree or another (which is a driving force of the economy, as the talking-downers must know).

Put another way, were the "In-The-Toilet Bush Economy" to lose four trillion dollars plus in GNP, it would be where the "Stratospheric Clinton Economy" was when Clinton left office.

The reality simply does not match the rhetoric.

There is a slowdown underway, but that follows every boom (a boom that was spitefully never acknowledged when booming, incidentally, by the howlers).

History indicates--if not outright proves--that the ebb and flow of economic performance is cyclical, and wavy, and rushes in and inundates, but then recedes and leaves many high and dry, like sea-tides.

Bush's moon is in its waning, last quarter, and the tide he presided over appears to be receding, but he and his team managed the flood-gates and aqueducts of fiscal policy well (the Act of God on the levees of New Orleans notwithstanding).

That's the best--and most--a president can do (and should do).

The new Millennium began with a bang but the last eight years were mostly a Time of Plenty in America. That's self-evident. And they're ending more bountiful--by the numbers, from GNP to the sheer number of those employed, and yes, still, housed--than any other time before.

For any nation in the history of the world.

Economics 101 teaches us that human desire is limitless, insatiable.

People will always have less than what they want.

Donald Trump, for example, always seems to need one more building.

It is easy to exploit that part of human nature and make everyone feel wanting. It is easy to create a need that didn't exist before and offer to satisfy it.

And it can be easy to convince some people who are otherwise happy and content that they are really miserable and should be seeking change.

Our consumer-driven economy counts on that, for there's a price to pay.

There will always be opposition dissidents, malcontents, and propagandists insisting that the eternally half-full glass of the status quo is not only half-empty, but completely dry (if not smashed into pieces on the ground), if only to make us thirsty by suggestion, and so Hopeful for Change.

And they will exploit the notorious, short-term memory of the good American people by harking back to some mythical Eden before the Fall, to a land flowing with Milk & Honey--e.g. The Clinton Years--and promise a return to them.

And to satisfy the thirst--and to allay the fomented fear of dying of it-- this time (even though it's a quadrennial thing) they offer a messianic candidate who promises to replenish and fill the glass to the brim (and even make it overflow into new rivers of Milk & Honey) for us to consider as an alternative to a parched palate and four more years of despairing.

While listening to all that however, just keep in mind that the economy of the United States of America is bigger now than it has ever been. We are the wealthiest country in the history of civilization, which should make you realize not only that the glass has been filled to the brim all along, but that what the opposition is offering is Kool Aid that may be colorful and sweet, but very low in nutrients, and dubiously mixed, and has a price to pay.

DYNAMITE

2008-09-03T21:44:00.001-07:00

Excellent Analysis.

2008-09-02T23:48:00.000-07:00

Johnny's got a new girl
Pat Buchanan
Posted: September 02, 2008
5:55 pm Eastern

© 2008

The risk John McCain took last Friday is comparable to the 72-year-old ex-fighter pilot knocking back two shots and flying his F-16 under the Golden Gate Bridge.

McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his co-pilot was the biggest gamble in presidential history. As of now, it is paying off, big-time.

The sensational selection in Dayton, Ohio, stepped all over the big story from Denver – Barack Obama's powerful address to 85,000 cheering folks in Mile High Stadium, and 35 million nationally, a speech that vaulted him from a 2-point deficit early in the week to an 8-point margin. Barack had never before reached 49 percent against McCain.

As the Democrats were being rudely stepped on, however, Palin ignited an explosion of enthusiasm among conservatives, evangelicals, traditional Catholics, gun owners and right to lifers not seen in decades.

By passing over his friends Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge, and picking Palin, McCain has given himself a fighting chance of winning the White House that, before Friday morning, seemed to be slipping away. Indeed, the bristling reaction on the left testifies to Democratic fears that the choice of Palin could indeed be a game-changer in 2008.

(Note: "The bristling reaction on the left testfies to Democratic fears that the choice of Palin could indeed be a game-changer in 2008.")

Liberals howl that Palin has no experience, no qualifications to be president of the United States. But the lady has more executive experience than McCain, Joe Biden and Obama put together.

None of them has ever started or run a business as Palin did. None of them has run a giant state like Alaska, which is larger than California and Texas put together. And though Alaska is not populous, Gov. Palin has as many constituents as Nancy Pelosi or Biden.

She has no foreign policy experience, we are told. And though Alaska's neighbors are Canada and Russia, the point is valid. But from the day she takes office, Palin will get daily briefings and sit on the National Security Council with the president and secretaries of state, treasury and defense.

She will be up to speed in her first year.

And her experience as governor of Alaska, dealing with the oil industry and pipeline agreements with Canada, certainly compares favorably with that of Barack Obama, a community organizer who dealt in the mommy issues of food stamps and rent subsidies.

Where Obama has poodled along with the Daley Machine, Palin routed the Republican establishment, challenging and ousting a sitting GOP governor before defeating a former Democratic governor to become the first female and youngest governor in state history.

For his boldness in choosing Palin, McCain deserves enormous credit. He has made an extraordinary gesture to conservatives and the party base, offering his old antagonists a partner's share in his presidency. And his decision is likely to be rewarded with a massive and enthusiastic turnout for the McCain-Palin ticket. Rarely has this writer encountered such an outburst of enthusiasm on the right.

In choosing Palin, McCain may also have changed the course of history as much as Ike did with his choice of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan did with his choice of George H.W. Bush. For should this ticket win, Palin will eclipse every other Republican as heir apparent to the presidency and will have her own power base among lifers, evangelicals, gun folks and conservatives – wholly independent of President McCain.

A traditional conservative on social issues, Palin has become, overnight, the most priceless political asset the movement has. Look for the neocons to move with all deliberate speed to take her into their camp by pressing upon her advisers and staff, and steering her into the AEI-Weekly Standard-War Party orbit.

Indeed, if McCain defeats Barack, 2012 could see women on both national tickets, and given McCain's age and the possibility he intends to serve a single term, women at the top of both – Sarah vs. Hillary.

The arrival of Palin on the national scene, with her youth, charisma and vitality, probably also portends a changing of the guard in Washington.

With Republicans having zero chance of capturing either House, and but a slim chance of avoiding losses in both, a Vice President Palin, with her reputation as a rebel and reformer, would surely inspire similar revolts in the Republican caucuses.

As Thomas Jefferson said, from time to time, a little rebellion in the political world is as necessary as storms in the physical.

The Palin nomination could backfire, but it is hard to see how. She has passed her first test, her introduction to the nation, with wit and grace. And the Obama-Biden ticket, having already alienated millions of women with the disrespecting of Hillary, is unlikely to start attacking another woman whose sole offense is that she had just been given the chance to break the glass ceiling at the national level.

Her nomination, which will bring the Republican right home, also frees up McCain to appeal to moderates and liberals, which has long been his stock in trade.

With his selection of Sarah Palin, John McCain has not only shaken up this election, he may have helped shape the future of the United States – and much for the better.

Sarah Palin & The Demoncats

2008-09-02T01:06:00.000-07:00

Over at Evan Sayet's blog (http://sayetright.blogspot.com/), opposition worker bee "Suze" said:

"...Ms. Whale Blubber, as Mr. Palin fondly refers to his wifey--or Harriet Miers,as some of us have come to think of her."

Right. In the last 48 hours.

Actually, that's a bad analogy.

Conservatives had a problem with Harriet Myers.

They'll fight for Governor Palin.

The proper equivalent is the selection of Bush 41's veep Dan Quayle in 1988, which was likewise motivated by a search for a young, fresh-faced conservative. The latter's potential gravitas was nipped in the bud and savaged and destroyed by a vicious, whithering, unwarranted (for the most part), and unrelenting attack on his intelligence within 48 hours of the selection (which was so effective that I must confess that I myself can't help but chuckle everytime he pops up to this day).

They laid a trap for him. Bush 41 was on to the Democrats' perpetual trotting out of JFK doppelgangers every four years since the assassination in their hopes of milking the mythologized mojo and thought he had in Quayle a Republican counter-response to the strategy of evoking JFK (and Quayle certainly had JFK's All-American good looks, height, and youth over the short, swarthy, and Mediterranean Dukakis' Boston pedigree and JFK bush-cut).

However, the Democrats got wind that Quayle would compare his experience to JFK's in the debate, and O Moumias--i.e. the mummified Lloyd Bentsen (Dukakis' veep)-- was assigned as executionor.

He was ready for it; and pounced:

That was indeed uncalled for. Quayle simply compared his length of time in the senate with Senator John Kennedy's--which was an objectively accurate assessment-- but Bentsen treated him as if he was a pretender who was laying claim to the Throne of Camelot (though not a prior or subsequent peep about the long succession of Democrats from the assassination to the present day who engage in precisely that charade).

Granted, the Republicans had it coming by trying to co-opt the Democrats' idol, and the price they paid for daring to reach for Camelot's Crown was the utter humiliation of the Republican's version of the Once-And-Future King.

Poor Dan Quayle. For a fleeting moment he was the young face of the future of the party-- the GOP's own JFK, in fact-- but in the next he suddenly found himself the laughingstock of the nation, which only pressured him into committing more gaffes, compounding the humiliation and causing more blurted bloops and blunders in the nerve-racking process and disqualifying him forevermore from positions of political influence:

Alright, admittedly, Quayle doesn't come off as the brightest bulb in the box there, but the man was educated as a journalist, got his J.D., and was a United States senator, the point being that he could not have been anywhere near the mental midget he was ruthlessly caricatured as.

Anyway, aggressive--and much more unwarranted--ridicule is precisely what they're warming up for in preparation of "hahahaha-ing" Sarah Palin (and McCain for picking her).

The eager lols were already launched like the first, warm-up fireworks on the 4th of July before the full-monty extravaganza when Cindy McCain said that Alaska's close proximity to Russia in itself gave Palin foreign policy experience.

Like Quayle comparing his own length of time in the senate to pre-JFK Jack Kennedy's, Mrs. McCain's statement was perfectly true: In her role as governor, Palin certainly had to deal with Russia in one way or another (even if it just involved fishing lanes).

Mrs. McCain made no comment comparing Palin's experiences with Russia as being comparable to, say, Ronald Reagan's or Condoleeza Rice's, and yet the comment was hyperbolically treated as if she did.

And yet that-- along with the news of young Bristol Palin's unwed pregnancy-- was enough to get the wheels of derision to start spinning.

And it's going to get louder if/when Palin misspeaks (as everyone in the political arena--particularly the newbies in the spotlight--does and has, as Senator Obama reminds us regularly--though with impunity) with the intention of portraying Palin as the female equivalent of the "airhead" Quayle-- i.e. a bimbette.

Palin, however, has demonstrated far more poise and confidence on the stage than Quayle did, though that will only make the attacks more vicious in the hopes of breaking her (Quayle, it should be added, though his political future was destroyed, was never broken but fulfilled his term with acquiescent grace, dignity, and good cheer, with malice towards none, a true conservative).

The modus operandi of the relentless attacks already underway will--as before and since-- follow Alinsky's Rules for Radicals #8:

"Keep the pressure on. Never let up." Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

It should be noted that "attack" does not mean an aggressive debating of the issues, because they can't win that way. It means ripping the kitchen sink out of the wall and throwing it.

In tandem with that is the reliance on Rule #4:

"Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity's very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)

(btw, thanks fj & Andronicus)

They demonstrate their Alinskyite mindset right here.

Our "own book of rules" is the conservative honoring of Free Speech and--for Republicus--an honest effort to respond to every poster, if only out of courtesy.

Taking a look back at earlier posts when infestation was in full swing here, those good-faith policies were exploited by the Alinskyites by their flash flooding of the commentary section with cut & pasted, unanswerable Kool Aid (with the source rarely cited, for obvious reasons), and the continuation of the first argument with no acknowledgement of superior points made in the interceding counterargument made by your host (which, by the rules of Reason-if not common decency-- needed to be addressed and/or necessitated re-evaluation and adjustment of their argument), so it was as if your host was arguing with the wind.

They just came in here to vomit and defecate, treating this blog as some kind of vomitorium or restroom.

Yet your host had to abide by his own rules and principles, and he either had to let them propagandize with impunity (and pollute the place with their filth), or swamp himself trying to reason with an unruly, mindless mob which had made themselves at home here.

They figured that out.

Only when they attacked my guests with no provocation did I allow myself to delete and evict them in good conscience, seeing as how protection of my guests from harrassment by others was a rule that could override the others (when their harrassing of me, and my own personal sense of annoyance and disgust, could not).

Counting on me to uphold my own Prime Directives, they were hoist by their own petard.

Nevertheless, on other blogs accessible by the lefty trolls, they persist in precisely the same manner.

Returning to the main subject of the planned dis-Quaylifying of Governor Sarah Palin by the same methods, that methodological cat was let out of the bag long ago, and it must not be allowed to work again.

It's just an old--and tiresome--Marxist ploy, like Alinsky's 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. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)

So when you see the lefty trolls aggressively posting the Kool Aid from the Daily Kos and Moveon mixing factories--"attacking attacking attacking" and in effect trying to control and monopolize any dialogue, shout down the opposition, and/or sow confusion-- and persist in their ridiculing "hahahahahahas," know that they are engaging in mindless, tactical rote that has nothing to do with the veracity of the Kool Aid (no less any universal or enduring principle behind it that they can actually apply consistently across-the-board), nor any just desserts of ridicule, nor the substance at hand, nor the topic of the post, for that matter.

It's just the distracting and deflecting noise of thrown pies, pots, and pans, and it only identifies exactly where they're coming from.

They're just employing Alinsky's sleazy tactics that hope to win "by any means necessary." (Malcolm X)

What the lefty trolls don't understand is that, despite the thousand faces they wear to hide their true identity and sow strife and detonate i.e.d.s like masked terrorists, they're transparent and one is able to see right through them.

So brainwashed are they and enslaved to the service of their subversive cause that they don't pause to wonder if their robotic behaviorial patterns have already been discerned and their programming discovered.

They just mindlessly keep doing it.

Any rebuttal to this will probably begin with "hahahaha," which--like almost all of the tactics-- is merely a psychological defense mechanism converted into an offensive weapon.

They can't think outside the box they're in, so even when the tactics are unmasked for what they are--i.e. sleazy, Marxist ones--all they can do is robotically pick-up the pace of importing cut-&-pasted Kool Aid and heckling out their "hahahahas," confident that "A lie told enough times will eventually be believed"--as they readily and roundly (being well familiar with the tactic) accused the Bush Administration of engaging in when the latter simply had to repeat the facts over and over again in the attempt to counter the aggressive, mischaracterizing Kool Aid, thinking they were misunderstood in good faith.

The Bush Administration eventually--and obviously-- said "fuhggit" when they realized--just as you can see here--that the attacking opposition is not interested in reasoning and good faith intercourse, nor that they somehow misunderstood.

They understand what's at stake for their agenda very well, and, since their agenda has irreconcilable differences with the traditional American one, they attack that much more rabidly to destroy the matter by their anti-matter--and antisocial, if not sociopathic-- substance.

However, persisting in the exposed tactic of "telling a lie enough times until it is believed (by the weary citizenry)" has arrived at its saturation point and can snooker no more simpletons .

And so persisting in the lies has turned into a belief that "If we just keep saying/doing something over and over again, it will eventually succeed" (despite all evidence that the limitations have been reached), which is a futile persistence that Freud diagnosed as being insane.

These lefty trolls have mental issues, and, like most genuinely crazy people, they not only think that they're "normal" (and "in-touch" with real normal people), but simultaneously contradict their Everyman delusion in the process by conceitedly thinking that they are better, that they are of the elite (not knowing that a true elite would never solecistically--and disgracefully-- exult: "I'm an elitist!").

Their illness, though, is not of the type that exhibits itself in the erratic, unpredictable behavior of the psychotic (although they're encouraged to "Go Nuts"--obviously--when executing Rule #8 to keep the opposition reeling), but more the ritualized type exhibited by the neurotic, so their behavior is always predictable, robotic, and they all sound as if they came off of the same assembly line (beyond the one or two trolls here and elsewhere who go by a dozen aliases between them).

Hence, within 48 hours of Palin's selection, the vats at the Kool Aid factories were feverishly mixed and churned all night and ready for distribution the next day for the predictable "attack-attack-attack" onslaught of data dumps, with the obligatory "hahahahas," and the automatic projection:

"Wow it only took 12 hours (for you) to respond glad you guys got your RNC talking points this week."

After a stunned delay of 24 hours and an additional 24 to prepare the Kool Aid for mass distribution, and now the inundation of it, look who's talking.

They will always try to overwhelm and shut down the argument with the Kool Aid, and heckle like hyenas and/or project with each step.

They do it over and over again, same-ol'-same-ol,' and, apparently, don't even realize they're doing it.

And they're doing it to Sarah Palin.

Senator Obama called for his blogsoldiers to cease and desist from attacking the Palin family.

They may obediently back off on that (though maybe not), but they'll overcompensate by focusing that much more contempt and derision on the Governor herself (in the diagrammed manner that they universally apply to conservative presidential candidates and right-wing bloggers alike):

Alinsky's Rule #8: "Keep the pressure on....(Attack, attack, attack from all sides...).

In the past 48 hours, Palin was aggressively attacked for being an "out-of-touch elitist," a yokel, inexperienced, a bad governor with a bad husband, a bad mother, and a hypocrite for championing abstinence while her teenaged daughter gets knocked up by her hockey jock boyfriend (albeit the true hypocrisy would have been if she arranged for her daughter to have an abortion, a choice not to that seems to infuriate pro-Choicers).

Attack-attack-attack.

Alinsky's Rule #4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."

The easiest and most obvious application of that rule is the exploitation of the First Amendment which has allowed the Alinskyites to scream "FIRE!!!" in a crowded political theater with impunity.

They say whatever they want, scornful of the Founding Father's assumption that good character will prevail over the centuries and with it a sense of honesty, civility, and temperance that reveres the First Amendment by not abusing it.

Alinsky's Rule #5:

Dis-Quaylify and belittle the governor by ridicule.

Once again, the trollette Suze:

"...Ms. Whale Blubber, as Mr. Palin fondly refers to his wifey--or Harriet Miers,as some of us have come to think of her."

The programmed behavior of the Lefty trolls is kind of sad in the sense that they evoke the once-human beings who were assimilated into the Borg Collective in episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

And they themselves were injected with and made dependent upon the very Kool Aid that they now peddle, mindlessly chanting "Resistance is Futile":

...and you can't help but hope that they can be extracted and be salvaged from the hive (like the Borged human Seven from Star Trek: Voyager):

Most of the lefty trolls here (or who used to be here but still spread their poison across the political blogosphere) come out of that very Far Left Collective hive that even the liberal Obama tries hard to keep his distance from (and who he just told to stfu about the Palin family).

Like Borg drones, though, they'll just keep coming, one after another, mindlessly attacking-attacking-attacking.

They've poisoned the atmosphere of the country a lot more than Exxon-Mobil has, and they're determined to take over.

Draw the line, people:

(Great scene!)

Don't be afraid of them. Aside from being noisy nuisances peddling nonsense, they're feckless once you figure out the frequency that they're operating on and picking them off one-by-one-- or even 3-5 at a time--is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

...As long as you don't drink the Kool Aid that they're constantly trying to pour down your throat so as to turn you into one of them.

Don't swallow any drink that's offered. What differentiates the lefty trolls from Star Trek's Borg is that, outwardly, they look pretty "normal," so in that sense they're like the Body Snatchers from the movie about the invasion of their namesake.

And so be careful when invited to give it a rest and have a cup of bedtime tea with one of them, because it might be spiked with the Kool Aid:

I've personally had experiences with the Body Snatchers.

They'll engage in perfectly "normal" conversation with you, but when the subject of politics comes up--and especially if the name "Bush" is mentioned-- you will first see their eyes flash and then go dark as a barely-discernible tremor ripples over their face. Then their features twitch uncontrollably and contort, become distorted and, grimacing, their voices change and they begin to sneer and spew obscenties and vomit their bile, much like Linda Blair as the little girl Regan who was possessed by Satan in the classic horror movie *The Exorcist.*

That's not an exaggeration.

They call it "passion."

It's possession.

And here they are trash-talking Palin's daughter, Bristol:

Fear not: "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." James 4:7