Didnt he say "words matter"?

Well I kind of thought so, and I said as much on camera at a support Iran rally on Friday.

My baby is one already?!

How did this happen?

If you want to save the New York Times

I just read this piece in the Telegraph UK, and it hit me: THIS is how you save the New York Times!

The "Paper of Record" is losing about 2700 readers a WEEK, and yet they print nothing but friendly news about the administration, right? Meanwhile, papers like the Telegraph and other British media are ATTRACTING readers by the thousands weekly, as are the WSJ, Washington Times and Examiner, and I think we all know how Fox News is faring these days. Their ratings consistently CREAM the competition.

So it's simple really! All Pinch has to do is PRINT THE TRUTH. There you go. Print something, anything really, critical of the President that isn't written by an obvious "token" conservative voice on the Op/Ed pages, do a front-page feature on the stimulus money that ISN'T being spent and hasn't helped, or human interest stories on the countless small business owners (Chrysler dealers included) who are going OUT of business daily in spite of Dear Leader's policies. Then contrast that with the Holy One's rhetoric and show him for what he is!

Of course this would require having an owner and editors and writers who a) have integrity and b) want to remain in business, but don't say I didn't suggest anything!

I just BET if they were to do this, people would be snapping up the Times EVERY SINGLE DAY, just to see what they'd say next! First they'd buy it out of curiosity, then they'd buy it for the information which would, for the first time in YEARS, resemble "reporting," and finally they'd buy it out of a sense of duty to keep alive the "free press" itself.

Of course if they did do this, I'd be glancing at the windows constantly waiting for the pigs to fly by.

No, really, please do take a rest, for the love of God, a LONG one!

Obama: "We Can't Rest On Our Laurels "

No really, please do. I beg of you. Please take a fist-full of Ambien, down a bottle of Nyquil and DON'T call us in the morning. We'd all be better off, promise. If you really love the country, you'll take a LOOOOOOONG nap. We'll wake you if North Korea goes postal, but just to get the launch codes, otherwise we'll muddle through.

I mean after all, how can you possibly top what you've already "accomplished" in these past 125+ days? Just look at this list compiled by commenter proreason at Sweetness and Light, it's stunning really, quite an achievement to ruin a country in a mere 6 months!

Mortgage delinquencies are at a record high. Unemployment (if accurately measured) is about 20%. The GDP is down over 6%. The value of private homes on average nationally are down 30% or more. The national debt has doubled in 4 months. Private Banking no longer exists. Private Auto business no longer exists. 700 small business were just shut down for political reasons. The Stock Market has possibly been destroyed forever. At the very least, the risk is extreme. Business funding through Bond sales has been destroyed. Inflation is poised to go through the roof. Seniors have had their lifetime savings reduced by 40 to 50%. Contract law is being flagrantly violated by the federal government. Tax cheats control the government. No administration has ever had as many failed cabinet nominees. Thousands of high-level government positions remain unfilled. Tax receipts are down 36% Credit companies are closing accounts right and left and jacking rates through the roof. The president and first lady urge college graduates to avoid private business. Gay Rights lunatics destroy a 20-year old woman because she believes marriage is sacred. A supreme court nominee has already acted in defiance of a judge’s oath of office. North Korea has tested nukes and missles. Iran is laughing at the US. We have dismantled the methods that kept us free from Terrorism for 7 years. CIA operatives have been humiliated for defending the country. Congress is filled with criminals. Europe laughs at US requests. China could break the US in a minute by refusing to buy our debt. The Moron sent Airforce One on a joy ride over NYC. The administration will not defend a single policy of its predecessor. Military funding is being cut. An attempt was made to make veterans pay for their own war-realated medical care. The president abuses his power by attacting talk-show hosts. The president’s chief of staff conspires with the media to destroy political opponents.

But you don't want to rest on your laurels??

The only item on the list that doesn't bother me that much is what happened to Carrie Prejean, I mean she put herself out there, Obama had nothing to do with it (and I disagree with her and she came off like an idiot, but I digress). The rest is spot-on!

Take a bow, rest assured your communist father would be very proud of you (and so, with your primary neurosis thus defeated, perhaps you could hold off on nailing those last few nails in our nation's coffin? Really, he'd love you, probably bow at your feet, OK? Satisfied? Now go rest.

Just admit he was RIGHT about a few things

I don't get it. If it was the *wrong* thing to do to detain terror "suspects" at GITMO, shouldn't it be relatively easy to do the right thing? Or is it perhaps NOT so easy, and is this perhaps why Bush did what he did?

Are people seriously buying this crap about how it's Bush's fault that it's "haaaaard" to get rid of GITMO? Didn't he face the same issues? Where to put them, how to treat them (as criminals or prisoners of war), where to send them if they were found guilty after trials, but not so guilty they could be locked up for life (and their countries of origin didn't want them back)...

Yeah Barack, if it's so easy, where's your plan??

Admit it, Bush was--if not right--between the same rock and hard place as you, he didn't create these problems.

Navarette channels Deb

If you want to know what I think of the torture memo/picture mess.

If I could write that well, that's what I'd have written.

Nuff said.

Let the shit-storm commence.

So we'll be "safer" than zero attacks?

Can someone please explain to me how the Obama government knows we were made "less safe" because we used waterboarding? How do they KNOW it was a recruiting technique? Because those trustworthy Al Qaeda guys said so?

Maybe I'm nuts, but I'm guessing people who want to attack you without risk of suffering any discomfort if they're captured would tell you that the methods you use are a reason they attack you! So you stop using those methods and yay for them! Now they get to recruit saying "Don't worry, you can kill the infidel and nothing worse than being subjected to a few hours of the Barney theme song will happen to you!"

And do we honestly believe they will treat our people better because we're going to treat their people better? REALLY?

You know what I want to see released? I want to see the memos released showing who in the Congress was briefed on the fact that these techniques were deemed legal, and when they knew, and what they said. I want to see who said nothing then or approved of it as well, who might now be changing their tune? Don't we have a right to know this TOO?

I see no upside to any of this. None. And now they say we're safer? SAFER HOW? Al Qaeda has not been able to successfully attack us in 8 years. How much safer can you get than THAT? I really don't care if AQ is able to recruit thousands more, as long as we can stop them from doing what they want to do--either by killing or capturing them--that's really all that matters, and I don't think for one second that there's anything we can do that would cause the would-be terrorist to say "Oh, well, those people don't torture, they're cool, I'm going to cancel my reservation at camp Behead-An-Infidel."

Please. Spare me.

Are they stupid, or just hoping we are?

The MSM has had a parade of lawmakers on the talk shows today repeating the bizarre claim that we Americans are perfectly content with the amount we are taxed. HUHWHATHEFU? I would love to get a look at the question people were asked in that poll! Let me guess: "Do you think you're taxed enough already?" And a yes answer translates to "People are perfectly fine with how much they pay right."

Oh reeeeeeally?

And since when are "taxes" all about federal income taxes? The thing these people keep hoping we forget (or maybe they have forgotten) is that every decision they make in D.C. backs up on states and the states are doing their fair share of taxing people to death right now TOO. Just ask the people in CA and NY! They took to the streets to protest the fact that their states and the federal gov't are tone deaf and spending like crazy assuming the people will just pay for their decisons, if not today, then later.

There were also a lot of people out there protesting the taxes to come, the ones that will be inevitable, for their kids and grandkids when Obama's budget passes. So it really matters not if they like the amt. they're taxed NOW, these are taxes to come in the next decade or two.

And then of course there's the fact that 50% of Americans pay NO TAXES to the federal gov't! So why wouldn't they be satisfied with what they pay??? Let's see, I pay nothing. Yup! I'm pretty cool with that, thanks for asking!

/eyeroll

So really, if 61% say they think they pay enough, it's only 11% who actually PAY anything!

Finally, the poll and it's parrots who are using it to mock the protesters and act like they are nothing but whiners, assume that people protest purely for their own self-interest. What if that's not true? What if these people (like the anti-war protesters who were never in danger of a single bomb falling on them or of their kids going to war) were actually concerned about OTHER PEOPLE, or about the country, or about their kids and grandchildren?

I know, radical concept, but it's possible right?

My point is, no matter how much they try to tell us how much we LURVE to pay our taxes, and how patriotic it is, we aren't just concerned about the amount we pay, we're concerned about how much we OWE as a nation and what we're buying with that debt.

But I guess when you mock people and see them as "peasants" and can't resist making puerile jokes at their expense, such complex nuanced concepts are completely out of reach.

Late night thoughts on turning older

So I'm officially older now than I was four minutes ago, and it hit me: I am ridifuckinliculously LUCKY, to be who I am, where I am in life, with the family I have, the health I enjoy and living here--in the USA.

If I were 43 in many other parts of the world, I would either already be dead, dying, or not looking forward to a whole heckuva lot of good things in my future. If I hadn't married until I was 36 in most other places, I sure as shit wouldn't have three beautiful children born *after* that happy event, and if I'd even tried, chances are with the complications I had just the first go-around, I'd have died before the other two could have been conceived.

But even if we removed the hypothetical of me living in another country, what about just being someone else in THIS country? I don't want to think about it, I really don't. I am so blessed it terrifies me at times. Even with all my worries and compulsions and the problems I have (most of which are self-induced), I *still* wouldn't trade places with anyone.

So today, I just want to take a moment to thank God--quite literally--for these last 43 years. The good, the bad, the ugly, the really really ugly, and everything awkwardly in between. There are things I wish I hadn't gone through, but nothing I'd risk going back to change given the opportunity--not if it might (most likely) mean that my life today would be different than it is.

So thanks, Lord, I am--as you know--wholly unworthy of the abundance of riches with which you have blessed me, but please know that I will do my utmost for the next 43 years to endeavor to deserve what I've already received in the first.

Assessing the ASSessors

I can't write intelligently about the Homeland Security Report (you know the one) but Slobo does a great--no, stellar--job of it for me.

Is it sinking in yet? Do you realize that you may very well be the target of this assessment?

If you don’t believe abortion should be legal, or you are opposed to illegal immigration, your government thinks you may be a “rightwing extremist”. Like I said at the beginning of this post, there’s no turning back now. They already know what you’ve done, and if you open your mouth or stand up for what you believe in you face the risk of being labeled an extremist and an “American Terrorist”.

While they try to deflect your attention by throwing in the white supremacist groups and violent antigovernment groups connections to benign threats received by the government, they in essence are making it easier to deal with you, if you just happen to fit that “individual” definition of an American terrorist.

The assessment adds more insult to injury by including anyone that may object to new restrictions on firearms. Can you imagine a Guantanamo style facility housing nothing but American citizens who object to abortion, illegal immigration, and strict gun controls? Sure, it sounds a little extreme, but remember, your government thinks YOU are the extremist, so it’s not really that extreme now is it?

There’s a reason they didn’t want anyone releasing the information contained in the document. If everyday Americans realized what they were up to, it could “adversely affect or jeopardize” their investigative activities. It’s not as fun for them if they know you know they’re watching you.

Which is why you will now go read the whole thing.

And if you are met with some asshat liberal who tries to talk you off the ledge (where you ought to be after reading Michael's brilliant analysis) by doing the Obama "Two Wrongs Make a Right, Don't They?" routine, just toss them this answer from Jonah Goldberg who's had his fair share of that shit this week too.

I hate you Spike Lee

I just watched Miracle at St Anna, and not only was it a waste of my money because it was long , disjointed, boring at times and hamfisted in it's portrayal of the violence of WWII, it had a scene of a Nazi massacre of an Italian village and in the scene a mother is shot while nursing her infant daughter. He shows us the dead mother, bare--breast and all--and her crying baby on top of her. A german soldier walks up, regards the baby for a moment and then bayonets the baby to death. I will have nightmares from now until next week at least over that!! Seriously? Was that necessary??? A- hole!

Oh goody, most people still prefer capitalism

Dear Lord! I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm happy about this, but really? "Adults under 30?" Is there such a thing? Really?

OK, I know I'm beting an ageist, but let's get real shall we? How old do you think the people are who pay most of the taxes in this country? Who create most of the jobs? Who do most of the investing and financing of the twenty-something's "dreams" of future glory?

Yeah, it's us old-fart capitalists, that's who! So is it really any wonder that we prefer capitalism and they are skewed slightly higher on the "socialism's kewl dude" scale?

Also, what age group came through school having a greater immersion in the multi-cultural utopian one-world bullshit view that socialism is a "moral imperative" or some such? I know it wasn't MINE, and I still had to endure my far share of crappy teaching by profs who had no clue about the real world.

I'll be interested to see how these same poll subjects feel once Obama's brand of socalism really gets going and they begin to realize how smart their parents and grandparents were after all.

Yuppers, it was a bow

Oh yeah, it was.

testing iblogger

This is a test. I better figure out links!


How about this?

Here, this should soothe your eyes (and stomach!)

Huh, wha, who, ARE YOU SERIOUS??

Just as I was beginning to think I was the only one hearing Obama blame the current crisis on a lack of healthcare, or universal college or federalized education--that everyone else in America (many of whom were still giving Comrade Obama high marks) seems to have missed, along comes Charles Krauthammer to make me feel so not alone.

The "day of reckoning" has arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.
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At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the banking industry. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan's Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful home buyers.

The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-ass MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe.

And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing-in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.

What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

Things. Now we know what they are.