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While I'm Not Watching BO's Speech...

I'm not watching BO.  I've never been so sick of a politician's face and voice in my life.  For anyone else who can't stomach watching Teleprompter Boy, I have just a few wisecracks to pass the time before the experts' opinions start showing up on this website:
 
 
 
 Many people can't understand how Mr. Dithers could take 83 days to decide on Gen. McCrystal's request for 40,000 more troops for Afghanistan.  That's an easy one.  He was trying to find a way to vote "Present".
 
 
 
Possible title for future movie about Obama administration's war against Islamic terrorism:  Victory is Not an Option.
 
 
 
I noticed that no-one in the media seemed to consider one possibility in the recent Afghan election.  They never even considered the possibility that Karzai won the election.  I think that his opponents knew that he won, and they tried to manipulate the election observers and the anti-Karzai press to overturn the election with false charges (or largely false) of election fraud.  Unlike the majority of the big media these days, you see, I don't automatically assume that the pro-America candidate is a lying, cheating, corrupt dirtbag.
 
I guess there's no need to send my resume to NBC or MSNBC...
 
 
 
One of the many sound speculations on the predictable consequences of passing either the House or the Senate Health Care Hostile Takeover bill has concerned what the best and brightest of high school and college students will do if doctors become underpaid, over-regulated, and harassed government employees (but without the civil service protections).  They would not likely become doctors.  It takes too long and usually saddles the student with very large debts to work off.  What field would they go into, to use their brains and make good money?  I pondered this, and suddenly had a horrible thought.
 
OMIGOSH!!  THEY'LL ALL BECOME LAWYERS!!!
 
 
 
 One definition used to identify a liberal -- Can they tell the difference between diversity and perversity?  If not, they're probably a liberal.
 
 
 
 Give the liberals credit for one thing, though.  They have learned the true lesson of Vietnam.  No, not the one they said publicly, which was "Never get involved in a ground war in Asia."  We did exactly that in World War II, and we won.  The real lesson is that the side with terrible ideas and unlimited determination can defeat the side with good ideas and limited determination.  We can defeat them on the issues with our ideas, but we need to match their energy, and not wear boxing gloves to a knife fight.  This ain't beanbag, Junior.  This is war, and the future of our nation.  Fight!
 
 
 
Thanks for keeping me company while we didn't watch together.  Good night, and God help us all!
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The Real Reason BO is Pushing Universal Pre-School

Eagle Forum's Carrie Lucas has written an article on why BO's proposal for universal, "voluntary" pre-school for children ages 0-5.  (Of course, when government shoots for universal, voluntary participation in anything, the voluntary part never lasts long.)  I won't reiterate her very sound arguments here, but I will add one thing she was too polite to mention.  There is a reason that BO and his merry band of Constitution-defiers want this program despite the evidence that it would almost certainly do more harm than good to the children.  The logic goes as follows:

Universal pre-school would mean a lot more teaching positions.
 
The National Education Association, the nation's largest teacher's union, gives lots of money and "volunteer" help to the Democrats at election time. 
 
Therefore, to the Democrats, the NEA is much more important than the children, many of whom won't even have allowance money to give to the Democrats yet.
 
Wasn't that easy?
 
 
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Impolite Thoughts - Holiday Weekend Edition

A few updates ago I wrote of what I consider to be President BO's deliberate discrediting of America and its institutions.  I referred to his appointment of Eric Holder as Attorney General as discrediting the Department of Justice, given Holder's previously-demonstrated corruption.  I made an oversight in that item, apparently.  I forgot "incompetence".
 
 
 
My friend Libertarian Tony sent me an article on the hacked files from the East Anglia Unviersity of Scare-mongering (or whatever in East Anglia they are), disclosing what those of us on the global warming "skeptic" side have known all along -- that the global-warming/climate-change science is so obviously flawed (read: faked) that the scientists and other advocates of this phony theory had to know that they were perpetrating a fraud on the public.  Tony sent the link with the subject line "But don't we know that the scientific debate is over?"  I suggested that substituting the word "cancelled" for the word "over" might be more accurate...
 
 
 
One of my favorite occupations is reading the Impromptus columns of the invariably entertaining and thought-provoking Jay Nordlinger of NationalReview.com.  While reading his latest Impromptus, I ran across this:
 
"In a previous column, I mentioned Yoani Sánchez, the incredibly brave blogger in Cuba. She was recently beaten mercilessly by the usual goons. She survived and she is still making a glorious nuisance of herself — actually believing that she ought to be free.

Sánchez posed some questions for President Obama. And the president, or someone speaking for him, answered her. You can see those answers at Sánchez’s blog, here. They are pretty bland — pretty noncommittal, hardly Reaganesque, or GWB-esque — but acceptable, you may agree. Obama’s best sentence is his final one: “I look forward to visit[ing] a Cuba in which all citizens enjoy the same rights and opportunities as other citizens in the hemisphere.'"
 
I thought that BO's last line might be more ominous than our Jay may have apprehended.  Is the One advocating more liberty for Cubans -- or less for the other citizens of the hemisphere?  The BO administration hasn't exactly distinguished itself with its devotion to individual liberty.
 
 
 
 
 Also in Jay's latest, I read this:
 
 "As I write, there is talk of a prisoner exchange in the Middle East: 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for the Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit. That would be a more balanced deal than some we have seen in the past: when the Israelis gave up a mass of live prisoners — terrorists, mostly — for a few corpses. To see a little roundup of this history, go here."
 
I thought about this.  After all, I am the new, improved Christian Crab of TownHall.com, not the old atheist Hermit Crab of the now-defunct MyOnlinePublication.  Thus I'm not allowed to think "I would make that trade if I were the Israelis.  That is, I would as soon as I had infected all of the 'Palistinian' criminals being returned with a deadly disease, or inoculated them with a slow-acting poison.  Give the Pallys a taste of their own bargaining sincerity"
 
Am I?
 
 
 
Have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  I'll be back soon -- thanks for visiting!  ( A little Norlingerian geniality, for a change.)
 
 
 
 
 
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Thanks Again, Spineless Republicans Who Voted to Confirm Holder

Public opinion is erupting over the Obama Administration's feckless or perhaps treacherous decision to move Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and some others from the Islamic Merry Band of Lunatics within our borders for trial, almost certainly with all of the rights of American citizens.  Many people will be writing of this in the coming days, but we should not forget the gutless Republicans who voted to confirm an obviously corrupt Attorney General nominee, the current Attorney General Eric Holder (see this article by National Review's Andrew McCarthy), because they were afraid to oppose a nominee who is black.  They were
 
Alexander (R-TN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Chambliss (R-Ga)
Collins (R-ME)
Corker (R-TN)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hatch (R-UT)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lugar (R-IN)
McCain (R-AZ)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Sessions (R-AL)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
 
-- List obtained at Michelle Malkin's blogsite.
 
Eric Holder, of course, is an American Wilhelm Keitel, a man who will unhesitatingly carry out any order from his chief, no matter how distasteful or morally deplorable.  He deserves the criticism he's getting today, but these Republican weaklings who put their own cowardice ahead of their country's welfare bear some of the blame, as well.
 
Let's not let them forget it.
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Corrupt Bargaining Alive and Well in NY 23

It's nice to know that political corruption and double-dealing are still around for bloggers to decry.  The whole course of the fight over the New York 23 congressional seat was amazing for its multiple shifts of double-dealing and self-interestedness.  (Is that a word?) A brief step-by-step chronicle of events is in order here.
 
Let's start with the fact that a vacancy existed at all.  Just like when President BO nominated Republican Judd Gregg to become his Secretary of Commerce, he nominated Republican congressman John McHugh to be his Secretary of the Army in order to create an open seat in a "Blue State", one which Baby Barry had one easily in 2008.  Judd Gregg, to his credit, realized that he was being used and eventually rejected the "offer".  McHugh didn't.
 
BO's gamble could have backfired, at least slightly.  The district opened up by McHugh's "promotion" (Does anyone even remember who President Bush's Secretary of the Army was?) had been in Republican hands since 1852, according to the reports I've heard.  However, this advantage was immediately thrown away by New York State's Republican Committee chairmen, who decided to take all of the real Republicans for granted, and tried to win the ACORN types votes by nominating Dede Scozzafava, a "Republican" somewhere to the left of Chris Shays.  The conservatives in the district revolted, since the choice was revolting.  The New York Post called Scozzafava's nomination a "corrupt bargain", and it certainly must have been, since there was no logical explanation for it otherwise.
 
Enter Doug Hoffman.  He had (narrowly, it is reported) lost the nomination in the caucus of knuckleheads to DIABLO Dede.  (As fans of Mark Steyn and Hugh Hewitt know, a DIABLO is a Democrat In All But Label Only.)  Since he was not willing to watch a race between two leftist for a historically Republican district, he ran for the seat on the Conservative line.  It seemed with a week to go that he would pull off the upset.  It was time for another dirty deal.
 
Enter the BO White House.  When Scozzafava withdrew from the race (having polled as low as 13% in recent polls), BO sent staffer (and Valerie Jarrett confidante) Patrick Gaspard to strike a deal with the disappointed DIABLO.  Reports vary, but the most accepted theory as I write this is that the President promised to obtain for Dede a cushy administration post or, failing that, a nice high-paying union job.  Within 24 hours, Skozzafava endorsed the Democrat candidate Bill Owens.  With the confusion resulting from Scozzafava remaining on the ballot on two lines (Republican and Independence), Owens narrowly defeated the conservative Hoffman by 3%.  Let's keep an eye on the DIABLO, and see what cushy port she docks in.
 
Checking the scorecard, I see a dirty political trick by BO that opened the seat to begin with, then a shoddy deal by the Republican bosses to nominate a hopelessly bad candidate for the vacancy, and then an 11th hour intervention by the White House operators to bribe a phony Republican to endorse a Democrat by offering a lucrative post with (presumably) a fancy title.  I'd caution Dede to get a long contract in writing, since the people she made this devil's deal with are no more trustworthy than she is.
 
My neo-conservative (in the traditional sense - I'll return to this subject soon) friend A often tells me she hates politics.  With dealings like this occurring in our times, who can blame her? 
 
By the way, when was the last time you heard of any politician earning the nickname "Honest"?
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Richard Cohen and Predictable Liberal Fatuity

Richard Cohen, the predictable liberal columnist at the Washington Post, in a column a week or two ago reviewing a hagiomentary produced by HBO on Baby Barry's successful presidential campaign, gave us perfect examples of two recurring liberal themes, although I will give him some credit for criticizing the producers of this film for not even trying to show any flaws in their films hero, President BO himself.  However,...
 
In the second-from-last paragraph, Cohen writes "If Obama ends the deepest recession since the Great Depression..."  Am I the only person alive who remembers Jimmy Carter and the invention of the "Misery Index"?  That is a measure we had little use for before, for no president before Carter had manage to blow up unemployment, inflation, and the prime rate simultaneously.  In theory, it should be all but impossible, but Jimmy was no ordinary president.  Of course, conservatives and honest moderates remember the late 1970s and the economic ruin President Ronald Reagan inherited in 1981, but for liberal journalists and in fact liberals in general, they are edited out.  Gone.  Never happened.  They have to do this, you see, because the Democrats held the presidency and both houses of congress by large margins, so if something happened to the economy then, it was there fault.  So, let's just forget those years, okay?
 
The second example of liberal-think occurs in the last paragraph, where Cohen writes of BO/BB, "But if he fails in all or most of that, it will be because it is not enough to be the smartest person in the room."  Will liberal journalists ever stop trying to tell us that every liberal leader is a genius?  They told us Bill Clinton was a genius at Oxford, reading a book a day during his time there.  (Oddly, he never checked out a single book from the Oxford library.  He also didn't graduate.)  They told us that Al Gore was "the Senator who can write" when "Earth in the Balance" came out over his name.  (P.J. O'Rourke pointed out in a hilarious review that Gore couldn't even correctly interpret the graphs in his own book.  Al flunked out of two colleges himself, according to what I've read.)
 
More recently, there was John Kerry, who famously said on election night 2004 "I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot."  The supposed idiot, President George W. Bush, is the only president I can name who holds degrees from two Ivy League schools (Harvard and Yale).  The "idiot" also, it turned out, had slightly higher grades in college that the haughty, French-looking Kerry. 
 
Let's face it, boys and girls.  If an egomaniac like BO (who has yet to show any particular ability to understand any part of his current job)refuses to release his college transcript, there's an obvious explanation. 
 
You'll need only one guess.
 
 
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Impolite Thoughts -- Not Just Mine Today!

Libertarian Tony sent me a suggestion for (I'm assuming) this feature.  I like it so much I'm putting it first.  Not the exact words, though -- they're on my home computer and I'm at work.
 
The top executives at Bank of America (or one of the firms that got bailout funds) are being required by the (unconstitutional) "pay czar" to accept pay cuts of 90%.  Tony points out that since the Chinese, Japanese, and other foreign investors are in effect "bailing out" Congresses and Prez BO's profligate spending, shouldn't the leaders of Congress and Baby Barry have to take a 90-% pay cut, also.
 
Sounds good to me!
 
 
 
In the wake of the administration's declaring war on Fox News, some scribblers have compared BO to Richard Nixon.  Good Lord!  Will the slanders of Richard Nixon never cease?
 
 
 
As a long-time member of the Pro-Life movement, I am appalled at the poor judgement of pro-lifers who carry large, graphic photos of aborted babies at their protests, or print them in their pro-life literature.  When you wave a banner or sign at a demonstration, you want to make people look, not look away.  Don't carry pictures of aborted babies, carry pictures of live, adorable babies.  Virtually every time a baby is aborted, the world loses one of these, and the entire world is poorer for the loss.
 
I hate it when people on my side do stupid things.
 
 
 
 In my reading about the anti-slavery movement in America in the mid-19th century, I've run many times across the term Barnburners.  This term was applied to the Democrats in New York State who opposed the extension of slavery into the territories, and who, by bolting the Democratic fold to help form the Free Soil Party, helped Zachary Taylor defeat Lewis Cass for the Presidency in 1848.  The name was meant to be an insult, referring to the fabled Dutchman who burned his barn to rid it of rats.
 
Sounds rather like the Democrats' health care proposals, does it not?
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The Nobel Prize for Irony

I've suspected for some time that President BO is trying to discredit American institutions in the eyes of Americans and the world, as well.  Consider:
 
He appointed the notoriously corrupt Eric Holder Attorney General, thus ruining the reputation of the Justice Department.
 
 He nominated Judge Sonia Somediocre (she of the one-page opinions, thumb-on-the-scale rulings, and vacuous public statements) to the Supreme Court, thus spoiling the reputation of that once-revered institution.
 
 He awarded the Medal of Freedom to the likes of Mary Robinson (of Durban Anti-Semitism Festival fame) and Harvey Milk (who won apparently for being openly homosexual and a murder victim).
 
He appoints "czars" by the dozen, thus discrediting the Constitution's "advise and consent" clause.
 
Given the above, I think it amusingly appropriate that BO has also managed to discredit the Nobel Peace Prize simply by winning it without having done the slightest thing to earn it.
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Obama Wins Nobel Peace Bribe

I'm at work, so I haven't time to write more than a sentence or two.  The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Prez BO is a bribe.  They know that our preening peacock of a president is a sucker for international praise, so they are awarding him this "honor" to persuade him to sell out American interests at any and all opportunities (isn't he already doing that?)  Vladimer Putin is laughing today, for he's sure it will work.
 
So am I.
 
(I also read that the Nobel Prize comes with a cash award of some $1.4 million, and that BO has declared that he will give it all to charity.  Can someone follow up to make sure that the charity has no connection to ACORN?)
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Some Impolite Weekend Comments

I was doing some bottom-of-the-workbag reading Thursday, and I read this in the July/August edition of the National Right to Life News:
 
"A spokeman for the Rules Committee chair, Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY), said, "The starting point for Rep. Slaughter on the healthcare debate was protecting abortion rights."
 
Concerning this, a few observations (and I've had plenty of opportunity to observe Rep. Slaughter, since for many years I lived in her congressional district):
 
While the frank avowal of the primacy of abortion "rights" may shock some (and it ought to), it does not shock anyone who is familiar with Slaughter's years in the House.  About the only distinguishing feature of her time in Congress has been her dedicated, absolutely fanatical advocacy for the totally unfettered right to kill one's baby.  No limits on abortion at all.  Ever!  She's not known as Louise Slaughter-the-Unborn for nothing.  I've often suspected that every child born into the world strikes Ms. Slaughterhouse as a lost opportunity.
 
One can't help but wonder what the abortion-funding-by-stealth forces in the Democratic Party thought when they read the quote I just cited.  "Quiet, you fools!  You're giving the game away!"
 
Normally, I object to any man or woman being referred to as "the chair".  Most people, of course, are far smarter than a piece of furniture.  In old Louise's case, however, I'm forced to consider the necessity of admitting that my theory may have at least one exception to its universal application...
 
 
 
Also from the National Right to Life News of July-August 2009:
 

Adult Stem Cells Treat Heart Disease in Clinical Trial

Mike Jones, 66, has shown marked improvement after participating in a clinical trial that used his own adult stem cells to treat congestive heart failure. Doctors from the University of Louisville (UofL) and Jewish Hospital harvested stem cells and then transplanted them back into Jones’s heart in an attempt to repair damaged tissue, according to a UofL press release.

“We’ve studied this in rats, mice and pigs but this is the first time we’ve tried it in a human,” said Roberto Bolli, director of UofL’s Institute for Molecular Cardiology. “If it works, it will be a revolutionary treatment for heart failure.”

The cells were transplanted July 17 into Jones’s bloodstream through his leg, and then traveled into his damaged heart. In only one week, his heart function rose from 20% to 30%, according to the press release.

Jones appeared with his doctors at a press conference July 24. He said that he is now exercising three times a day, and “I may even start jogging again.”

The clinical trial is expected to involve 20 patients over the next two years, testing for the safety and effectiveness of the procedure, according to the press release.

“We continue to enroll patients in this first-of-its-kind clinical trial,” Bolli said in a press release issued by Jewish Hospital. “We hope to help the heart regenerate its own tissue and improve heart function.”
 
You may be thinking that this is the kind of promising research that we should be funding if indeed the federal government should be funding any at all (that's for you, Tony).  We were -- when the President was George Bush.  However, Barack Obama, when he decided to loudly proclaim that the government would now fund embryonic stem cell research (which many object to on moral grounds, and many others point out has never produced any cures or treatments for any diseases, and very likely never will), he also quitely defunded research being conducted with adult stem cells and umbilical cord blood stem cells (both in plentiful supply and scientifically very promising), for no apparent reason other than the fact that President Bush funded it.  I see a lot of juvenility in BO.  At a time when we face dangers on all fronts, we appear to have a President who never outgrew the petulance of youth.  He seems to be always determined to wipe out everything that his predecessor did -- especially the good things.
 
I'd rather we had elected Hillary (Boy, that wasn't easy to type.).  At least she's a grown-up!  Of course, so was Eva Peron.
 
 
 
 
 
I'm somewhat puzzled by the people asking why President BO and his lovely wife Imelda would travel to Copenhagen to lobby the IOC (unsuccessfully, as it happened) to give Chicago the chance to host the Olympic Games in 2016.  Earth to the naive -- it was just another taxpayer-paid vacation for the King and Queen.  I have read reports that Imelda even took a second jetliner for Her Royal Highness and her court.  It was just another chance to blow another few hundred thousands of dollars of our taxes on themselves and their lavish lifestyles.  It would be somewhat easier for me to take BO's "concern" for the working class seriously if he and his garishly-extravagant wife would stop blowing oceans of money they never earned on themselves.
 
 
 
When I came to the TownHall.com website the other day, I saw an ad at the side of the page that read "Help Pat Toomey beat Arlen Specter".  Sounds good to me, was my first thought.  What is he planning to beat him with?
 
Naughty Crab!  You mustn't think things like that.  Not out loud, anyway.
 
 
 
Very few modern politicians have taken more unjust abuse in recent years than President George W. Bush (oddly, the things he really did do wrong are almost never the things he's attacked for), but one of the few is GWB's own Vice President, Richard Cheney.  For me, one of the great moments of the latest Bush presidency was when the Democrat viciously partisan attack dog, Patrick Leahy (D-VT), after years of venomous and mendacious attacks on virtually every Bush policy (real or imagined), had the gall to ask the Veep to pose with him for a photo that quite likely would have been used in Leahy's mailings back home.  The website I'm blogging on won't allow me to quote the great Mr. Cheney's response exactly, so let's just say that he told Leahy to " go (rhymes with duck) yourself".
 
Now, how many of you Republicans reading this have never themselves wanted to say that to Leahy themselves?  Boy, it got quiet in here all of a sudden...
 
 
 
One final thought for you all before I'm off to bed -- where is the public outcry against Roman Polanski on the part of the feminist groups?   Do famous movie directors get even more leeway than Democratic presidents?  Will this silence on the part of the NOW and other radical women's groups work to kill off whatever credibility they have left after their failure to condemn ol' Billy Jeff Clinton for his serial abuse of women in the '80s and '90s?  Shouldn't it?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Death Panels, Skepticism, and President BO

President Obama and members of the major media can't seem to understand why many (millions) of Americans are suspicious of government-provided "end-of-life counseling".  Why are we so suspicious of Big Brother Obama?  Gee, I dunno.  Maybe the fact that BO said that the Senate vote he regretted most was the vote he cast to help give Terri Schiavo, the mysteriously brain-injured Forida woman who became the first victim of a civil court issued death order (sought by her monstrous estranged husband Michael Schiavo, and issued by the hard-hearted Judge George Greer).  Don't just take my word for it -- watch it here.
 
If we don't trust Obama when he speaks of "pulling the plug on Grandma" (and what kind of person says that as a joke?), it's just possible as we have some reason for our distrust...
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An Unusual Burial for Teddy

Just before heading off to work today, I heard that President BO is going to speak at Ted Kennedy's funeral.  (Our affirmative action President eulogizing our hereditary senator.)  I hope he speaks at the burial, too.  That way Ted will have a fitting send-off as he heads into the hereafter -- buried under 6 feet of manure.
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I Shall Not Be Celebrating Obama

I will watch none of the Inauguration festivities and solemnities tomorrow.  I shall spend most of the day alone with my wife, who understands my feelings about the ascension of Barack Obama to the highest executive position in the free world.  I believe that the election of this President, at this time, is nothing for our country to be proud of.  I do not say this because I do not believe a black man should never be President, far from it.  If the Democrats had nominated a man like Roy Innes (or his son Niger, assuming he's old enough), I would have voted for either of them above John McCain.  It isn't just that I feel that Barack Obama is grossly unqualified by experience, temperament, or ideology for the office, although I firmly believe that he is deficient in all of these areas.
 
No, the main reason that I shall refrain from any but ill feelings toward the raising of Barack Hussein Obama to the Presidency is that I believe that the majority of voters who voted for him did so for the wrong reasons.  They elected a symbol, not a man.  The Cult of Personality has come to America.  Let me elaborate.  I'll begin with a riddle:
 
What do you get if you take away Barack Obama's black skin?
 
Dennis Kucinich, but with a thinner resume.
 
Ideologically, there isn't much to chose from between our 44th President and the lefty fringer who kept us amused for months by insisting that he could be our President.  I do not think that an honest, intelligent person truly believes, deep down inside, that a white man (or woman, Hillary) could have been elected with Obama's thin resume, soda-pop speeches, questionable associations, and consistent hopscotching of the line of truth.  From the trickery involved in only promising to use the public-financing-of-campaigns system until Republican opponent John McCain said he would, and then quickly reversing his field by announcing that he would accept all of the domestic (and foreign) money that people could contribute on, or under the table, to the unnecessary lies and "corrections" regarding contacts with the Senate seat selling Rod Blagojevich, he proved himself to any fair-minded witness to be a man with no regard for the truth.  Why lie about contacting the Governor of Illinois about his successor in the Senate.  There is nothing inappropriate about that, and yet he lied instinctively ... unnecessarily.  This is Clintonian behaviour.  Do we really need to go through that again?
 
Anyone who watched the campaign saw Barack Obama reveal himself to be a cold, arrogant, humorless man who showed no great mental agility when forced to speak "off the cuff".  He could deliver a speech in a rich tone of voice that sounded authoritative, but his speeches were very often merely platitudes strung together to form a sonorous, semmingly dazzling message of ... of ... what?  Mostly nothing at all.  He counted on the American electorate to be too dim or too dazzled to notice that he had told them nothing of substance, and he also relied on the media not to give the game away by pushing him for direct answers to important questions. 
 
He was right on both counts.  Generation X-Box, which is what I call our youngest voters these days, was too dazzled by the craftily-manufactured youthful tone of the Obama campaign to notice the contradictions and occasional blatant deceptions of the daily messages they received.  They at least have the excuse of their youth, although I can't help remembering that I knew more about how the world works at 13 years of age then they do now.  The media has no such excuse.  Indeed, they would not use it if they had it.  Their role in this campaign was, to my crabby old eyes, the most disturbing facet of this whole campaign.
 
I am forty-nine years old.  I have been watching political campaigns since 1968, and this was the first time I ever watched the major media outlets chose their candidate for President four years in advance, build him up for three years, blatantly campaign for him for 18 months (there is some overlap there, obviously), and carry him into the White House.  For example, do you remember what event first brought him into the national spotlight?  That's right, it was his brilliant speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention.  Do you remember anything he said?  Neither do I.  So how do we know that his speech was "brilliant"?
 
Because the media never ceased telling us that it was.
 
 Many of us kept believing that the American voter would eventually be tipped off to the suspicious nature of the story the media allies of the Obama campaign were selling by its sheer volume of repetition and exaggeration.  We had, however, a crucial error in our thinking -- we measured the average voter's attention to politics by our own.  To us, watching with critical eye, the endless repetition of Barack BS was a reason to suspect its accuracy; to the average voter watching only 10% as closely as we, that 10% was quite convincing.  The Barry boosters were canny enough to avoid too much detail in their pitches, as modern Americans confronted with the challenges of data and logic will usually wander back to their video games or "reality" TV shows.  They just told the viewers and audiences "Barack Obama has the answers", and the voters said "Great.  I'm voting for him!"
 
On my old website, I once predicted that America would be the first great nation to fall not by external invasion or internal corruption, by by the sheer dead weight of its citizens massive ignorance.  Thomas Sowell once predicted that the greatest threat to America's future was its populations of economic principles.  I still think we're both right.
 
What is most frightening to me about Barack Obama is his total inhuman coldness on the "life issues".  A recent nationwide poll revealed that 92% percent of the American people want abortion to be restricted or banned outright.  (Of course, the media hid this fact throughout the campaign, asking about his beliefs and his record on abortion nearly never.)  Thunderous majorities want the hideous "partial-birth abortion" procedure to be banned outright.  Even the National Abortion Rights Action League (or whatever NARAL claims that their initials stand for these days) refused to defend the outlawing of the gruesome practice, but Senator Obama did.  With near-unanimity, the people want so-called "live-birth abortions" (in which the baby is delivered, and then left to die) to be banned.  Please note that I said "near-unanimity".  After a courageous Chicago nurse named Jill Stanek publicly revealed the existence of the shocking practice, the Illinois State Senate considered legislation that would make the brutal practice illegal.  One guess who the only Senator to speak against this bill was? 
 
During the early months of the campaign, Obama proved himself just as callous at the end of life.  In answer to the question "What do you think the worst vote you have cast in the Senate was?" (or some such; I do not guarantee I have the wording exactly correct), our incoming Chief Executive named the vote he cast to protect the life of the helpless, disabled Florida woman, Terry Schiavo.  Terry Schiavo was threatened with death by starvation, by court order, despite the fact that she was neither brain-dead or on life support.  Poor Terry eventually died this unnatural death, at the request of her estranged husband Michael Schiavo and by the order of the inhuman Judge George Greer, after the frenzied efforts of her natural family (I use this word with the obvious implication) and good hearted people across the country had failed.  (Full disclosure -- I was a financial contributor to the legal efforts to save her life).  I find it most alarming that the man whom American voters elected to "the highest office in the land" on the repeated media testimony that he was an almost "Christ-like" figure, would reserve his greatest regret for a vote he cast to save the life of a disabled woman.
 
Many observers have tried to tell us that the election of Barack Obama is at least a partial fulfillment of Dr. Martin Luther King's dream.  I believe that it is nothing of the kind.  Dr. King dreamed of a day when his children would not be judged by the color of their skin.  Great black leader Malcolm X (whom my father remembers and respected) would not have rejoiced at seeing a black man elevated to the White House not as a man, but as a painless expiation by guilty white liberals of a crime committed by white oppressors long dead.  My father told me that Malcolm X would have spit on Affirmative Action programs; his attitude was "I don't want your help, just get out of the way!"  I do not believe, from what I have read of Frederick Douglass, that he would have rejoiced to see a black man exalted for any reason other than as due justice for his merits and acheivements.
 
So you will excuse me when I do not join the celebrations.  The people have elected a symbol for a post which must be filled by a man (or woman, of course).  Instead of a qualified candidate being refused a position simply because of the color of his skin, we have now elected an unqualified candidate simply because of the color of his skin.  We are still not achieving Dr. King's dream -- we are just missing it to the other side.
 
 
 
 
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Forget the Relief About Obama's Economic Team

Anyone who understands economics was a bit relieved when President-Elect Barack Obama picked a centrist (by Democratic standards, anyway) economic team.  I wish to officially declare the relief over.  It has been released that Baby Barry is appointing Carol Browner (a "global warming" fanatic) and others of her ilk to run the Energy Department and EPA.  Get ready for dozens of absurd, useless, and economically devastating regulations on Americans and American industries.
 
As for economic growth, we may look at 2008 as a good year when this bozo brigade is done.
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A Historic Election

Everywhere I turn, I see, hear, or read how the election of Benito O'Carter is "historic".  I can't help but agree.  I do not believe that we have ever before elected the candidate for President who was endorsed by the Communist Party USA.  (Of course, Baby Barry was also endorsed by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Col. Moammar Khadafy.)
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