I've often been vehemently criticized for saying on the air--frequently in recent years--that our beloved country may be too stupid to survive, as measured by the outcomes of our elections.
The growing evidence supports this pessimistic thesis. Is there a sizable body of population outside the racial loyalists and committed leftists who can say with any confidence that the Chicago Charlatan is competent to be president of anything?
Barry Soetoro's signature program is his health plan. A recent extensive conversation with a friend who's been a doctor--and served in an administrative position, as well--for fifty years reduced that plan to its simplest, most absurd level. How can we have millions who (choose to) believe that you can (A) serve many more patients with (B) higher quality medical care at (C) a lower total cost? As the late and legendary movie producer Samuel Goldwyn famously said, "In two words...im-possible!"
(I deliberately refer to his stepfather, Mr. Soetoro, because he, after all, raised the lad longer than did the Obama parent, who evidently spread his seed far and wide, with little concern for the consequences.)
Now comes word that Canada's revered "free medical care" program is in deep, deep trouble. The plan is administered on a province-by-province basis, and populous Ontario is scrambling to bring its own crisis under control with the usual nostrums: higher prices, reduced services and, naturally, "means testing", which really means those who've paid the most into the system will pay again to receive its services.
Israel is again targeted by the world's hypocrites for blocking aid shipments to Hamas, the terror group, coming from Turkey in the guise of "aid to the Palestinians." Can anyone be so simple-minded as to believe those carefully-crafted signs flaunted by protestors in Istanbul and elsewhere were suddenly and spontaneously created within an hour after Israel struck in self-defense?
Because two consecutive U.S. presidents have failed the cojones test, it's now far too late to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. The remaining question is: how long before Israel does what it has to do, while the feckless western powers shed their crocodile tears?
My friend Dick Hallford introduced me to the entertaining writing (I now have found time to occasionally read for entertainment) of novelist John Sandford. Given the current manufactured frenzy (thank you, ESPN) over the World Cup soccer matches, he summarizes the majority American view of soccer this way: "Soccer is not a sport, it's a pastime. Like whittling."
Who contrived a sport which encourages athletes to hit a ball with their HEADS? By the way, soccer moms: there has been medical evidence of brain damage resulting from this action. Is it any wonder Argentina's coach and playing legend Diego Maradona is exhibiting behavior bordering on madness?
If you share concerns about the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, you might want to thank your friendly neighborhood environmentalist. He/she is, after all, part of the movement that forced offshore drilling FAR offshore, where every element involved in extracting petroleum is more complicated and expensive--and risky.
It is, of course, indicative of the self-centered arrogance that typifies California that the state that consumes the most oil is also most obsessed with preventing reasonable drilling while consuming product from offshore Louisiana and the other states bordering on the Gulf of Mexico while importing electricity (produced by a coal-burning plant!) from Arizona. Hypocrisy, thy name is California.
Then there's California's boob of a governor, who along with his (fellow?) Democrats has made a total botch of the state's finances, he's asking the federal government for a bailout. In other words, California is such a mismanaged leech of a state that it now thinks taxpayers in other states owe it their taxpayer dollars so the Golden State can continue to live far beyond its means.
What does it tell you about our anti-American president that he greeted the president of Mexico recently with open arms, but had to be shamed and brow-beaten into meeting with the governor of Arizona, who had the audacity to side with a majority of Arizonans and other Americans who actually want our immigration laws enforced?
Joran van der Sloot, suspected but never charged in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba, is now on the run from a potential murder charge in Peru. It is believed this Peruvian woman was murdered five years to the day after Holloway vanished. Aruba is not a high-crime island, but authorities there may now have reason to question their own competence.
Learning anything about Chicago-style business and politics in the case of Joe Sestak--and others likely still to come? It's simple: "You don't have to bump 'em off if you can buy 'em off!"
Noticed CNN's ratings lately? It appears that the longtime leader of the cable-news Obama cheering section is suffering the same fate as its hero. The numbers just keep going down, down, down...
Baseball long ago lost its crown as America's favorite sport to football. The latest indicator that the game is run by a bunch of dinosaurs is the near-perfect game pitched by Detroit's Armando Gallaraga against Cleveland in which he was down to the last out, which clearly occurred on infield ground out. The batter was a step from the bag when the putout throw arrived, but umpire Jim Joyce blew the call, giving the "safe" sign, only to admit after the game that he blew it and cost Gallaraga his place in baseball history. Every other major sport has long used instant-replay to correct such flagrant errors. The cameras are there at every event, so it would require no investment in new technology to reverse wrong and unjust calls. But the neanderthals who run the game are unwilling to admit the silliness of continuing to cultivate an image of infallibility among umpires at the cost of the game's credibility. It is to Jim Joyce's credit that he quickly admitted his mistake, but the solons of baseball will do nothing to repair the damage to Armando Gallaraga--and the game.
The annual Lee Rodgers cruise is set for next April. Port calls during the twelve-day voyage include Barcelona, Monte Carlo, Florence, Rome, Messina, Corfu, Olympia, Nafplion, Dubrovnik and Venice. Mediterranean cruises sell out fast, so early booking is recommended. For details, call Jackie Vercelli at 650-342-7292.
In your search engine (I usually use Yahoo) enter: YOU TUBE - OBAMA'S MUSLIM FAITH. Is he, or isn't he? He answers in his own words.
The official job numbers for May show 431,000 jobs added in our economy. Only 41,000 are attributed to hiring in the private sector. That leaves 391,000 created by government hiring. Quiz-time, liberals. Just how do you think the tax revenue to be obtained from the 41,000 private-sector workers is going to pay the salaries of 391,000 more government employees?
Obama's attorney (White House Counsel) says the president may block revelation of some papers that reveal the views of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. Think it might be part of the campaign to put another committed leftist on the court? You think??!!
American education has so long been under the control of myth-makers and outright liars that there is probably little hope that the truth will ever get thru the filters they have constructed.
Case in point: I recently had a conversation with a smart, well-educated person who was shocked when I mentioned in passing the fact...FACT...that Abraham Lincoln only resorted to abolishing slavery when it became apparent that he was losing support for the Civil War or, as southerners still characterize it, "The war of northern aggression."
Historical facts: the war began in April of 1861. Lincoln's emancipation proclamation came in two parts. The original act in September of 1862, and the specific orders January 1, 1863, when he announced where the freed-slave policy would be applied. It was to be imposed ONLY on Confederate states that had seceded. It did not apply to Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware or Tennessee, all of which had slave-owners.
Lincoln may, indeed, have been repulsed by slavery, but you'd never know it from his letter to famed newspaperman Horace Greeley in August of 1862, when the war was well underway and in which Lincoln wrote, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."
In another largely forgotten action by "The Great Emancipator," he ordered the largest mass execution in U. S. history. It took place in Minnesota, where his federal government cheated and abused the Dakota Sioux people. When they fought back, Lincoln offered the state government a payoff and reneged on a deal already made with the tribe to pay $1,400,000 for stolen land. He also promised to kill or remove every Indian from Minnesota. On December 26, 1862, 38 condemned men were executed in one mass hanging. The prisoners who were spared were confined to concentration camps to live in misery.
I guarantee you, America's ignorance factories that we foolishly call "schools" didn't teach these facts about the man whose reputation as "our greatest president" rests on his advocacy of rights for minorities.
Is it any wonder so many Americans are so ignorant that they elected a self-professed Muslim with clear Marxist beliefs to the highest office in the land?
(If you doubt any of the foregoing, it's easily researched via any internet search engine.)
One striking symptom of the mental disorder called liberalism is a deep, irrational belief in magic. Government magic. It's evident in the eagerness to believe that power-mad demagogic politicians can somehow perform the mathematically impossible feat of creating the mythical "free lunch."
That fervent belief is the only justification for support of Obamacare. If one wishes to consider the inevitable result of promising millions of people something for nothing in health care, I have yet another anecdotal example that serves to further illustrate consequences in the real world. If you care to ask the question, "Where are the doctors coming from to provide all this cut-rate care?", the answer is--they aren't. Possibly excepting third-world countries, where they're badly needed at home--a need their own governments will inevitably recognize eventually and stop the bleeding of their medical talent.
I have written recently of a doctor I know who is head of a major medical specialty department in a large hospital. There are six doctors in the department, including the chief. Five of the six are planning to leave the field within the next year and the one remaining is only doing so because he's planning to retire in a few months, anyway.
I also wrote about a nephew who's just finished pre-med school at a major university. He and the five other med students with whom he shares housing held an all-night meeting and unanimously decided to move into other career fields. Not only did the economics of becoming a doctor under Obamacare make less and less sense, they had a revulsion toward the idea of practicing medicine with government bureaucrats looking over their shoulders. More than half of their classmates in pre-med have come to a similar decision.
Now, again from my own extended family, comes another case. From another branch of the family tree, yet another brilliant young man (his work in science earned him a scholarship year at England's prestigious Oxford University) who was well along in preparation for a career in medicine has...quit. He will continue and conclude his education with an entirely different career goal in mind.
Nevertheless, human nature being what it is, millions of the gullible and the stupid will continue to eagerly grasp at promises by political prostitutes who tell them, "I'm going to give you something...and I'm going to make somebody else pay for it!"
Primary Postscript:
It's hard to imagine that election of the chosen California Republican candidates for Governor and Senator wouldn't be an improvement. However, conservatives shouldn't be overly-surprised if Fiorina turns out to be a frequent John McCain-type "reach across the aisle" sellout and Whitman presents a gubernatorial choice (vs. Jerry Brown) between the RINO and the Retread.
In Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln's "victory" in the Democrat primary merely proved that the voters rejected the support of unions and the far left for her opponent and gave her a momentary breather before she gets tossed out of office in November.
Irony Department:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi looking shell-shocked being on the receiving end of vituperation and hurled objects by the Code Pink leftists who used to harass President Bush. Politicians from the extremes of either party never seem to learn the basic lesson that you can never give that part of your constituency enough.
Ms. Pelosi, of course, is a product of a politically powerful and legendarily corrupt Baltimore family which operated as a sort of minor-league version of the Daley Machine in Chicago.
NO MATTER HOW YOU WATCH IT, IT'S STILL JUNK
I find myself bemused by the endless flow of reports from the business media and technology press releases about more new ways of watching TV. Viewing via phone being just one example. Who wants to watch football on an inch-and-a-half screen?
The parade of gadgets enabling one to watch television and replay its products anywhere, anytime, fails to address the fundamental question, "Who needs this crap?"
Television networks, both over-the-air and cable, clearly have--with few exceptions--abandoned all standards in their perpetual quests to jam their product with more commercials as their shows find new lows in the search for lowest-common-denominator.
Why the growth of the faked, so-called "reality shows?" Because they're cheap--almost as cheap as watching a few gambling addicts play poker, or some poster-boy for a future heart attack demonstrate how much he can eat while another porcine performer purports to savor bugs for breakfast.
"All-news" cable television channels provide their equivalent with the endless parade of talking heads, many of whom attempt to compensate for their lack of information with hysterical posturing.
It wasn't so long ago when quiz shows represented the cheapest format on television. As a denizen of the media world, I was always amused when viewers were dazzled by a quiz show that gave away thousands of dollars. Little did they realize that it was, in fact, cheap on-air product. Same set, day after day...a small production crew...and a host who, in most instances, was paid little above union scale for doing a rote routine a couple of days a week when the shows were taped. All of it far cheaper than paying writers, actors, set designers and the myriad skilled people required to do real entertainment.
Now, those represent the halcyon days of television compared to the current supply of drivel. (The word, by the way, is NOT "dribble", as I see constantly in media.)
Infomercials, of course, which now devour hours of both radio and TV time, are a whole different category of electronic slime. I wonder about one thing. Whose lives are so empty, they actually watch/listen to these snake-oil salesmen/women? My immediate thought is...Obama voters!
THOUGHTS IN PASSING
When a pillar of the liberal establishment like the Washington Post reports it, we'd better take note. Chances are, according to analysis in the Post, you will lose your present medical plan under Obamacare. I know, I know: O told us we could keep our medical plan if we like it. Hard to believe a committed leftist would lie in pursuit of a big-government, socialist agenda-- isn't it?
Despite the predictable big-media negative response to the American public's overwhelming support for enforcement of immigration laws, made clear in every poll on the Arizona law, the country-club dopes who run the Republican Party establishment are overdue to learn one clear lesson: stop worrying about losing the ethnic vote favoring open-borders. Republicans can no more get those votes than they can harvest support from the race-based Obama support or the committed leftists who want America to fail. Fools like John McCain and the Maine senators are anchors dragging down "reach across the aisle" Republicanism. How much such accomodation have you seen coming from the Obamunists?
PS to the above: why are Sarah Palin and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer campaigning for a worn-out retread phony like McCain in his effort to retain his senate seat?
If you're in the small minority of Americans with a real interest in the World Cup soccer matches, isn't the constant blaring of those kazoo-like horns overriding the audio of the TV coverage insufferable? The attendance in South Africa is far below capacity. Wonder how much that's cut into business for the 40,000 prostitutes working the games, half of whom statistically are HIV-positive? And that's just the official estimate.
Saudi Arabia denies a report that it's given the okay for Israel to fly thru its air-space if/when the Israelis decide to attack Iran. Of course they deny it! Does anyone expect they'd tell the bloodthirsty Muslim mobs, "Yes, we are going to support the Jews against the crazies in Tehran."
By the way, how much longer can American Jewish voters continue to support a party whose leader clearly supports an ideology that is sworn to kill every Jew on the planet?
Have we had about enough of the children of rich, overly-indulgent parents trying to set new records for "the youngest person to sail solo around the world" or "youngest to climb Mt. Everest," etc., etc.?
AND...the award for the best new comedy show goes to!--The South Carolina Democratic Senate Primary, won by Alvin Greene who campaigned not at all and stands accused of showing pornography to a University of South Carolina coed in a school facility, then trying to persuade her that they should both go to her dorm room so he could, uh...connect... with a potential voter.
Of course, some might say his behavior would further qualify him for a place in the Washington establishment.
A coughing-up of utterly incompetent political hacks is nothing new, but it is startling when they are products of an electorate with a historical record of common sense in voting patterns. Arizona and Kansas are two states with such a record. So how did the generally sensible voters of these states produce such silly, power-mad politicos as--respectively--Janet Napolitano and Kathleen Sebelius? The former has taken an utterly feckless Obama border control policy and expanded it into a justifiable object of ridicule; the latter has zealously taken on the assignment to force people into the impending disaster called Obamacare whether they want it or not. Yes, Obama did lie when he told us we could keep our medical plan if we so choose.
...speaking of which, we have this from the "Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree" department: Barbara Bush, the daughter, not mother, of President George W. Bush and wife Laura, has come out publicly in favor of... Obamacare. Said so to Chris Wallace on Fox. Someone needs to acquaint the charming Ms. Bush with the sign to be found in every public hospital in America, stating that no one will be denied medical care because of lack of ability to pay.
The Obamster wants to put his/our failing government further into debt by demanding Congress spend another $50 billion to prevent the loss of--his list--"teachers, police and firefighters." It's always the same casualty list from big-spending politicians. It would never occur to them to dispose of the multitudes of hack bureaucrats who infest every government agency.
Mexico's education system clearly has flaws as serious as our own. The (fourteen, fifteen, sixteen?)-year old-- reports vary--who was shot by a U.S. Border Patrol agent had clearly never been taught that it is not wise to throw rocks at an armed person less than forty feet away. A sympathetic liberal media immediately regaled us with stories about what a wonderful lad he was. The Border Patrol, on the other hand, says he'd already been caught six times smuggling illegal aliens across our border. Any of the diversity-maniacs who are opposed to stanching the flow of illegal alien criminals coming into our country should spend some time on the border, acquainting themselves with the havoc wrought by President Calderon's scum. That's the Mexican president who has Obama's lips glued to his buttocks.
THE HILL political newsletter has been keeping count, and it seems this past weekend our Dear Leader played his 38th round of golf since assuming the mantle of power. Nice to know the golf world has another item of interest, now that the Tiger appears to have lost his stroke.
One doesn't expect to find large social messages in NASCAR racing, but there was such a lesson on display Sunday at the Sprint Cup event at Michigan International Speedway. The huge, two-mile track, historically packs 'em in, Michigan being serious car-country. No more. There were thousands of empty seats as, ironically, the race was won by Denny Hamlin in...a Toyota. The larger lesson is that Michigan, home of the American car industry, is an economic shambles, largely for two reasons. First, the short-sighted, stupid greed of the United Auto Workers union, which priced itself out of business with salaries and benefits far higher than those of the masses of Americans who bought--then quit buying--their product. Secondly, the managers of the companies who ritually caved in to unreasonable union demands while continuing to turn out inferior cars for many years after their "use-by" date. I recall a quote from Lee Iacocca, regarded by some gullible people as a prophet for getting government-bailout money for Chrysler before such practices became fashionable. Iacocca, referring to the junk his company produced in that period (remember that automotive joke, the "K" car?) by saying, "We shipped a lot of crap." Referring to his own cars!
When the leaders and workers of any industry assume that the public is obligated to buy their product, however inferior, they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction.
PELOSI: ETHICS ARE OVERRATED
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is sending private signals that she is willing to support watering down the powers of the Office of Congressional Ethics, the panel she and fellow Democrats created last year to serve as a new watchdog on congressional misconduct.
Susan Crabtree of The Hill newspaper reports on a meeting late in May between members of the Congressional Black Caucus and Speaker Pelosi. The Speaker heard a litany of complaints about the OCE's aggressiveness and its public release of documents that reflected badly on the reputations of members.
Consider this the next time you get a pitch from a "moderate" Republican: When was the last time you saw a liberal "reach across the aisle" to help pass legislation important to conservatives?
TRANSLATION GUIDE
Obama & Co. have tried to obscure their "cap and trade" scam. No need to be confused. It simply means "higher taxes"... and you will pay.
* * * * *
It's
now obvious that Obama plans to cut and run from Afghanistan, which
may be a wise thing to do. The question is... why get more young
Americans killed for this exercise in futility? Does anybody named
Obama or Bush seriously believe we're going to
bring a western-style
democracy to a backward, tribal culture? Why do we elect leaders who
pander to a very American inclination to fix all the problems in the
world? Except for a small exercise on the Caribbean island of
Grenada, our "leaders" have bungled every war since Big War
II and a plausible argument can be made that the world is now a more
dangerous place then ever, especially given a U. S. president whose
sympathies obviously lie with a fanatical religion/ideology sworn to
destroy
* * * * *
Post-script to the above: Check back with me in ten years--no, make it five--and let me know if our effort in Iraq achieved its stated goals in the not-so-long term. Of course, we have made that country safe for foreign interests to invest in oil exploration. Remember "no blood for oil"? Our blood, but who gets the oil? China! They've made the deal with the Iraqi government we effectively put in place. The staggering stupidity of our government continues to amaze.
* * * * *
The government of the city of Sacramento has decided to boycott Arizona because of California's tender feelings toward illegal alien criminals. Message from Arizonans to Californians: Many--most--of us hold the view that the fewer Californians cluttering up our landscape with their silliness, the better. We are entirely content to be deprived of the company of people who elect the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, et al. So..again...thank you!
* * * * *
Impossible but highly desirable constitutional amendment: No person named Obama, Bush, Clinton or Carter shall ever again be eligible to run for any elective office and any attempt to do so will result in imprisonment.
It's as predictable as another Obama spending bill. A sports team wins, and the thugs hit the streets, attacking innocent people and destroying property. It's understandable that people with no discernible athletic talent cheer for those multi-millionaires who do have such talent, but only the truly simple-minded can somehow transmute hired, professional mercenaries from far away into "WE won." We? Just what do these dolts think they have in common with people who wear the name of a city on a sports uniform, and will play just as enthusiastically next year for somebody else's money? By the way: if you were in your car and found yourself surrounded by a bunch of drunken goons who begin rocking your vehicle in an effort to overturn it, might your immediate reaction not be to simply...floor it?
Question: Who cares what Mexicans think, since the shift is clearly based on their position that U.S. immigration laws should be violated with impunity? We have a leech, outlaw nation on our southern border, and the longer we try to evade that reality, the worse our problems will get.
TYRANNY WATCH
Barack Obama would be given power to shut down the internet--block it, stop it!--under new legislation proposed by the untrustworthy habitual turncoat Senator Joe Lieberman.
* * * * *
It becomes ever more evident that Obama aims to put another committed leftist and anti-Second Amendment justice on the Supreme Court in the person of Elena Kagan. Wonder if anyone has ever suggested this lump-of-the-left take a look at crime statistics in both Washington D.C. and Chicago, cities with harsh anti-gun laws, to see just how well her sacred "gun control" measures have worked. Republicans would do well to watch which of their senators meekly go along her selection in the sacred name of bi-partisanship. Start with McCain.
* * * * *
Under consideration at the Environmental Protection Agency, the most dictatorial agency in the federal government, is a scheme to increase the percentage of ethanol that can be used in gasoline by 50%. One certain result: your mileage will suffer, as will the power output of your engine. For a more disturbing possible result, take a look at your car's manual for information about its tolerance for ethanol. The whole ethanol program, of course, is a gigantic fraud perpetrated by gutless politicians in exchange for farm-state votes, even though it's long been known that the cultivation and processing of corn into the product uses more energy than is created.
If Cong. Bob Etheridge (D-North Carolina) keeps attacking people on the street, wonder how long it'll be before he picks on the wrong guy and gets his beak rearranged? One can only hope...
* * * * *
MEMO TO NEWSNIKS: An AP item refers to boats assisting in the Gulf oil cleanup being sent "further" offshore.
My friend The Wordman, Dr. Richard Lederer, would be pleased to have me remind one and all that if talking/writing about a distance that can actually be measured, the word is "farther." "Further" rerers to a non-specific, unquantifiable objective, as in, " I further believe that we live in a nation governed by morons."
ALSO...a press release quotes "AN historian." Wrong. If the "H" is sounded, it's "A historian". One would not say, "an history book!"
Alas, the Wordman and I have obviously lost our battle with the ignoramii over the mis-use of "media". Even people in the various media refuse to recognize that it is a plural word. Ditto the misuse of "begs the question", which actually means to EVADE a question, not prompt one. The stupid win again--and thank you, educators of America!
And yes, I know "ignoramii" is a contrived plural, but I like it anyway.
So...after delivering a pointless, cliche-ridden speech about the Gulf oil crisis, the party-boy president hits the golf course again over the weekend. Has anyone suggested to this lazy, incompetent fool that the presidency is about a little more than an endless round of golf, parties with showbiz suck-ups and using Air Force One for sightseeing and weekly or monthly vacations?
Get it? The goal is to make sure that opponents of Obama's goal of a Soviet-style government cannot use this pervasive, freewheeling information network to raise objections. (He doesn't have to worry about TV. Except for Fox News channel, still minuscule in audience compared to the old Big Three, that medium is one giant Obama public relations operation.)
"More important than your obligation to follow your conscience, or at least prior to it, is your obligation to form your conscience correctly. Nobody — remember this — neither Hitler, nor Lenin, nor any despot you could name, ever came forward with a proposal that read, ‘Now, let’s create a really oppressive and evil society.’ Hitler said, ‘Let’s take the means necessary to restore our national pride and civic order.’ And Lenin said, ‘Let’s take the means necessary to assure a fair distribution of the goods of the world." That Lenin quote sound like anybody you know?
Few of us have had the immigrant experience, the "i"--incoming--experience, as new arrivals in America. Even fewer have had the "e"emmigrant experience. Leaving America. And fewer still have had both.
I talked recently with two longtime friends who managed to get out of the old Soviet Union during the Cold War days of the 1970's. They came to America penniless seeking, not government freebies but the bounty available in the form of opportunity. With hard work, the husband and wife both built successful careers and became tax-payers rather than the sort of freeloaders who have since flooded our borders.
They look upon--aghast--the foolishness and downright childishness of Americans who, by supporting Obama and the utopia-fantasizing left, have chosen to import the kind of overpowering, oppressive government they risked everything to escape. They are now seriously considering becoming "e" emigrants, depending largely on the outcome of the November elections.
If their (now) fellow Americans choose to continue along the path to socialism, they plan to leave the country they'd dreamt about for years, hopes dashed by a silly, immature electorate largely consisting of people who know nothing about the larger world or the lessons of history.
THE MEDITERRANEAN CRUISE
It's on, but our allotment of cabins is going fast. Next spring's annual Lee Rodgers cruise, bringing together fellow fun-loving conservatives, will feature port calls in Spain, Monaco, Italy (including Sicily), Greece, Dubrovnik and ends in Venice. A major plus: the ship is your hotel for overnight stays in both Barcelona and Venice. If you've checked hotel prices in either of those cities, especially the latter, you know that alone is a saving of a minimum of $500 per person in room and meal costs.
For details, call Jackie Vercelli at Holiday Travel, 650-342-7292. Better sooner than later!
RAHM TO ROAM?
The serious and responsible London Telegraph newspaper, which covers Washington better than most American newspapers, reports that White House bully-boy Rahm Emanuel is expected to part company with the Obama administration by the midway point--i.e., after the election in November--of the Dear Leader's first term. In the spirit of the Emanuel dictum, "Never let a good crisis go to waste," we suggest that his talents might support a new career as a collector for a loan-shark back in his native Chicago. Of course, given his background as a ballet dancer, some might question his credentials for that sometimes-rugged business.
* * * * *
There's a serious message in this item for those capable of learning from actual events as opposed to Ivy League theorizing and socialist daydreaming. That would exclude the liberals and the loonies, of course, and I apologize for the redundancy. The message comes in the form of an item in a small-town newspaper near the Arizona-Mexico border. It reports that in one small section of the border between Nogales and Yuma, just since April at least a dozen illegal border-crossers have been shot. Most have been shot in the arms and legs, but at least three have been shot dead. It is unknown how many wounded may have bled to death in the desert. No suspects have been arrested. It is assumed, however, that American border residents, fed up with the U. S. government's inability (or unwillingness) to enforce its own immigration laws, have decided to take it upon themselves to send a message to illegals waiting to cross illegally. Do not hold your breath waiting for the big media to report this.
* * * * *
MEANTIME... the Chicago Tribune reports that in Obama's hometown, the soil from which his political career grew, at least forty people were shot over the weekend, with seven of them killed. Just another weekend in the Windy City. Does Chicago need a community organizer?
* * * * *
The biggest non-surprise of the month comes from MSNBC liberal media shill Mika Brzezenski who admits what was obvious, anyway. She admits on-air (well, on-cable; MSNBC is not an over-the-air network) that she, quote, "Works with the White House on oil-spill talking points." Does little-watched MSNBC need someone as blatantly far left as Mika to provide cover for their in-house RINO, Joe Scarborough? And is it time to revive the ancient Glen Campbell joke in reference to Mika's immovable hair? You know... "Mika had an accident. She fell down and broke her hair."
CALLING
RINGLING
BROS.!
Reality check: if you are a law-abiding U.S. citizen, your federal government has made it clear by its behavior that it holds you in contempt.
Corrupted language note: "moderate Muslim." Here's a more practical working definition of that term. It means a Muslim who's a bit more patient than the terrorists when it comes to plotting the downfall of western civilization. They share the identical goal. Gullible and/or suicidal Americans are only too happy to cooperate.
The projected (by economists) cost of Obama's cap-and-trade energy scam is $7 per-gallon gasoline.
Wonder if FIFA, the international federation that runs soccer's World Cup, has concluded that putting the games in South Africa with the incessant noise from those plastic horns on worldwide TV was an awful idea?
Another Obama debacle makes the news. More homeowners have dropped out of his socialistic plan to help them save their homes from mortgage foreclosure than have stayed in it. Not even Wonder Boy can re-write the laws of economics that dictate its bad policy to loan money to people who have no real prospect of paying it back.
Since they have no chance of altering the views of the anti-Semites at the U.N. and in the White House, anybody running a betting pool on exactly which date the Israelis decide they've had enough (male bovine excrement) from the lunatics running Iran and decide to put them out of business with a very loud "bang"?
Is any serious person really surprised to learn that, throughout much of the Cold War, Teddy Kennedy was playing footsie with the Soviet KGB in an effort to undermine the efforts of both Republican and Democrat presidents to protect this nation from USSR tyranny? More details at The American Spectator website.
STUPID--OR
VICIOUS?
Question for the respondents to one poll who said Hillary Clinton was the best-qualified person to be the next president: Are you CRAZY?
UNITED WE FALL
There's no doubt that the union movement has done a lot of good for a lot of people. There is equally no doubt that unions, especially government employee unions, have developed such a stranglehold on many budgets--federal, state and local--that the entire economy is jeopardized. We know how the political game works. Democrats buy union-worker votes with endless increases in wages and benefits, with the clear understanding that many of those taxpayer dollars will come back to the party to finance ever-growing electoral power.
It's a reminder of the FDR-era dictum, "We will tax and tax...and spend and spend...and elect and elect."
As Margaret Thatcher said, the problem with socialism is, eventually you run out of other people's money.
At some point, union greed exceeds the supply of taxpayer dollars, hence the enormous debt run up in many countries (think of Greece, for starters) that jeopardizes their economic survival.
Then comes the REAL problem. Taking away goodies that workers have come to believe are their due. The outrageous benefits handed Greek workers by a succession of socialist-minded governments became unsustainable--two months' salary as an annual "bonus", retirement at a ridiculously young age (fifty, for some) and padded payrolls. And when the Greek government, under pressure from other nations that were begged to bail them out, told the pampered unionists there had to be modifications the result was riots in the streets, burned buildings and bloodshed.
Now there is similar resistance in France, where the government has found a retirement age of sixty with generous benefits to be unsustainable. And leading the parade of strikers and demonstrators, naturally: public school teachers.
Given the distress of many state and local budgets, as well as at the federal level, one need only look at those two nations (there are plenty of others in similar straits) to see our own future unless the whoring by (mostly Democrat) politicians for union votes is halted. And it's difficult to be optimistic about that happening.
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Those who think of Australia as a nation of solid, level-headed people, take note. Australia's new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is planning to revive the discredited global warming fad and a "carbon" tax similar to the cap-and-trade scam Obama is promoting.
Note to those who urge the impeachment of Obama: Only the utterly ignorant could believe that a Democrat-controlled house would vote to impeach (i.e., indict) this president and that a Democrat-controlled Senate would then vote to convict (i.e., expel him from office).
YOUR FUTURE
Care for a grim look at America's future if the stupid continue to elect the evil and/or incompetent? The following history lesson focuses upon Argentina, a big country well-endowed with natural resources. I have pointed to it before as an object lesson illustrating where venality and plain political stupidity among the masses can lead.
This brief history was called to my attention by a reader who was born in Argentina and still has family there. If you think what that country has done to itself can't happen here, you are delusional. Read...and learn. If you doubt, read some history of Argentina and decide for yourself. This is the path that took a country from prosperity to national shame.
In the early 20th century, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world. While Great Britain's maritime power and its far-flung empire had propelled it to a dominant position among the world's industrialized nations, only the United States challenged Argentina for the position of the world's second-most powerful economy.
Like the United States, Argentina was blessed with abundant agriculture, vast swaths of rich farmland laced with navigable rivers, and an accessible port system. Its level of industrialization was higher than many European countries; railroads, automobiles, and telephones were commonplace.
In 1916, Argentina elected a new president. Hipolito Irigoyen had formed a party called The Radicals under the banner of “fundamental change” with an appeal to the middle class.
Among Irigoyen's changes: mandatory pension insurance, mandatory health insurance and support for low-income housing construction to stimulate the economy. Put simply, the state assumed economic control of a cast swath of the country's operations and began assessing new payroll taxes to fund its efforts.
With an increasing flow of funds into these entitlement programs, the government's payouts soon became overly generous. Before long its outlays surpassed the value of the taxpayers' contributions. Put simply, it quickly became under-funded, much like the United States' Social Security and Medicare programs.
The death knell for the Argentine economy, however, came with the election of Juan Peron. Peron had a fascist and corporatist upbringing, he and his charismatic wife, Eva, aimed their populist rhetoric at the nation's rich.
This targeted group “swiftly expanded to cover most of the propertied middle classes, who became an enemy to be defeated and humiliated.”
Under Peron the size of government bureaucracies exploded through massive programs of social spending by encouraging the growth of labor unions.
High taxes and economic mismanagement took their inevitable toll even after Peron had been driven from office. However his populist rhetoric and “contempt for economic realities” lived on. Argentina's federal government continued to spend far beyond its means.
Hyperinflation exploded in 1989, the final stage of a process characterized by “industrial protectionism, redistribution of income based on increased wages, and growing state intervention in the economy…”
By 1994, Argentina's public pensions – the equivalent of Social security – had imploded. The payroll tax had increased from 5% to 26%, but it was not enough. In addition, Argentina had implemented a value-added (VAT), new income taxes, a personal tax on wealth, and additional revenues based upon based upon the sale of public enterprises. These crushed the private sector, further damaging the economy.
A government-controlled “privatization” effort to rescue seniors' pensions was attempted. However, by 2001, those funds had also been raided by the government, the monies replaced by Argentina's defaulted government bonds.
By 2002, “...government fiscal irresponsibility...induced a national economic crisis as severe as America's Great Depression.”
In 1902, Argentina was one of the world's richest countries. Little more than a hundred years later, it is poverty-stricken, failing to meet its debt obligations.
The Democrat Party's populist plans for the U.S. Cannot possibly work. History teaches us that ObamaCare and unfunded entitlement programs will be utter, complete disasters.
OVERBEARING
OBAMA SILLINESS
Elena Kagan, the latest leftie nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, clerked for--and reveres--the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, who
viewed legal questions thru the prism of "get even". Consider the following and decide for yourself whether Marshall was interested in justice or revenge: "You guys have been discriminating for years. Now it's our turn!" Justice Thurgood Marshall to Justice William Douglas.
It's indicative of the big-media mind-set that some outlets assign a reporter to cover "the conservative beat." In other words, they regard conservatives as some kind of foreign entity and to be subjected to scrutiny as such.
Dan Sorkin passes along this updated Dr. Seuss:
I do not like this Uncle Sam,
I do not like his health care scam.
I do not like these dirty crooks,
or how they lie and cook the books.
I do not like when Congress steals,
I do not like their secret deals.
I do not like this speaker, Nan,
I do not like this 'YES WE CAN.'
I do not like this spending spree,
I'm smart, I know that nothing's free.
I do not like your smug replies,
when I complain about your lies.
I do not like this kind of hope.
I do not like it, nope, nope, nope!
If you find this blog interesting, please forward it to others.
READY FOR MORE "REACH ACROSS THE AISLE"?
It appears likely that we'll get it. Arizona Senator John McCain has been fortunate in having had a rich father-in-law to bankroll his launch into a political career. He's also been fortunate in opponents. J. D. Hayworth, who carries the hopes of many conservatives fed up with McCain's habit of playing footsie with their opponents, is in trouble in the Arizona Republican primary race. Despite the rank hypocrisy of McCain now trying to play the role of Mr. Border Control in his campaign advertising, Hayworth is being hanged by his own history of having been an infomercial shill for a company selling courses in how to get "free money" from the government. That's probably enough to sink him with conservatives.
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Point to ponder, especially for liberals: What will Utopian environazis do when the gas pumps are either empty, or showing a price of, say, $7 a gallon. That's the projected ultimate cost of the Community Organizer's "cap-and-trade" scam. All the po' folks gonna LOVE that!
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The refusal of Republicans (and obviously, some Democrats, considering their congressional majority) to further extend unemployment benefits will doubtless cause discomfort for thousands. However, this statistical fact should also be considered. History shows that the number of longtime unemployed who suddenly find work rises significantly as benefits expire. Any student of human nature should have no difficulty figuring that out.
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Discretionary spending on leisure-time activities is one of the surest measures of the health of the national economy. One of the more obvious indicators can be seen by simply following the TV cameras at NASCAR races. One of the best-attended sports in recent years, NASCAR is now plagued by an abundance of empty seats. Sunday's race at Loudon, New Hampshire, was an obvious example, despite the best effort of the TV director to stay away from shots showing thousands of vacant seats.
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Impeachment Fantasies, Part Two: It's another indictment of our pathetic education system that so many Americans obviously don't know the chain of succession to the presidency, in the event the nation's highest office becomes vacant. Just as a reminder to conservatives who are infatuated with the "Impeach Obama" mantra, should such a move succeed (in a congress dominated by Democrats??!!) you would get... President Joe "Don't be a smartass" Biden, whose entire career is a joke. Then comes the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Just how much improvement in this disastrous administration might one expect to find among those choices?
The Fourteenth Amendment to the constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868. It states:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
The original intent was to protect the rights of the children of slaves; parents brought to the U.S. against their will. It has become, instead, a vehicle for mass illegal immigration, the so-called "anchor babies." You know the scam: Foreigners enter the U.S. illegally to have their baby born in this country, likely at taxpayers' expense. The child is instantly a U. S. citizen, making it impossible to deport the infant and therefore a practical impossibility to deport the parents, brothers, sisters, etc.
Now Arizona, on the front lines of the illegal alien assault, is considering a move to deny such citizenship to babies born to parents unlawfully in the country. Predictably, liberals are "tut-tutting" like a barnyard full of hens, despite the fact that surveys show a large majority of Americans agree with the Arizona position.
Of course, when we have a president whose own citizenship bonafides are questioned by many serious people, we can expect Washington opposition to any change.
And just for the record, whatever you think of the "birther" argument, the fact is, despite liberal media claims, the State of Hawaii has NOT issued a copy of the Obama birth certificate. Only a "certificate of live birth" which has no more legal standing than a birth announcement printed (usually for a price) in a local newspaper.
Seventy days after the Gulf oil spill broke out... 70 DAYS!...Obama finally accepts the advice of battalions of sane people and agrees to suspend the antiquated Jones Act, in itself a sop to unions to avoid competition from foreign vessels and their workers. So, much belatedly, those vessels equipped to deal with the oil can get to work. Once again it is imperative that we ask ourselves basic questions about the Dear Leader. Is he stupid... plain incompetent... or deliberately destructive of the nation's economy? Question for Democrats: How much of Obama's ineptitude will you tolerate before you admit that your party made a HUGE mistake?
"...and now, if you'll excuse me..."