Listened to Obama's so-called "press conference" earlier this evening. You know, where the prez calls on obsequious reporters who are afraid of being put on the D-List, and then they ask him things like "What have you found enchanting about the job so far?"
Gee, that was a tough one. And from the New York Times, that bastion of hard-hitting, no-holds-barred journalism. Or panderer to the left, whichever seems most appropriate.
Actually, the conference was pretty boring. Softball questions and canned answers. Only one thing kinda ticked me off. One reporter asked Obama something about having a "rubber stamp" congress, now that Arlen Specter has turned coat and run into the loving arms of the majority.
Obama said, and I wrote it down: "I'll have a rubber stamp and that's the way it should be."
No, actually, that's not the way we do things in America. Most democracies in Europe and elsewhere, including England, have a Parliamentary system. Under that system, the political parties have all the power. For example, in England, a member of parliament (MP) in the House of Commons doesn't have to live in the district he or she represents. The parties assign a member to "stand" for election and represent that district.
The Prime Minister (PM.. just the opposite of MP, get it?) is noted to be "First among peers." He or she is a member of the majority party and is elected by fellow party members. Kinda like if Nancy Pelosi was president.
Excuse the pause, I had chest pains....
Anyway, a lot of variations of the parliamentary system exist. Like in England, they still have the House of Lords, populated by actual nobility. They don't do much, though. I doubt there are any instances in living memory when Lords has opposed anything that came out of the House of Commons. And England also has the Queen, of course. Not sure exactly what she does anymore, except pay for British embassies around the world and make good will tours.
Other countries with parliamentary systems have presidents or chancellors or other executive officers of some kind who are elected independently of the legislatures. Not sure what-all they do, though. I'd be reluctant to assume they have the same kind of power the US president has.
As far as I know, the US government is unique in its three separate branches and in the fact that the executive, legislative, and judicial branches acually each have power enough within themselves to oppose and invalidate the actions and decisions made by the other branches.
Anyway, I wrote a term paper about the organization of the British government when I was in school. It occurred to me even then that the parliamentary system is just too "democratic." In that system, the Prime Minister is always the head of the majority party. There's really no effective means to oppose the PM or the majority.
What sets the USA apart is that at heart, the US is NOT a democracy. It's a republic. It's based on the concept of individual rights, NOT the will of the majority.
Obama doesn't seem to understand this. Maybe in all his fancy Ivy League education, he never read the Constitution, or perhaps he listened too closely to radical left professors and cohorts who convinced him that the Founding Fathers were just out of their minds or something when they talked about individual rights.
So, anyway, that kind of ticked me off. He's starting to tick me off in general. He doesn't seem to understand that many people do not like his policies and will oppose them in any way they can. He seems to glory in the idea that he's some sort of emperor.
Go ahead, push that concept to the limit, Mr. Prez. See what happens.
Since butthead Specter discovered that his bread is buttered on the Democrat side, and with blockhead Nancy Pelosi and senate counterpart Harry Reid, who simply looks confused all the time, running congress, Obama will be able to ram through just about anything he wants. Give him enough rope....
And something really funny... When Obama said, "I want to disabuse people of the notion that we enjoy meddling in the private sector."
That really cracked me up. No, they don't want to meddle in the private sector, they want to do away with the private sector all together and replace it with their half-baked marxist vision of utopia.
And today congress agreed to "reconciliation" for Obama's budget for health care and so forth -- with not one Republican vote. If I were president, I'd say that's a rather bad omen of the kind of cooperation Obama can expect from a sizable portion of the population.
So, anyway, if you need any kind of health care, get it done now or you'll probably die waiting for it under the coming-soon socialist rationing system.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Government by frat-boy
Yesterday the Air Force flew the spare "Air Force One" very low over the south end of Manhattan, accompanied by a couple fighter jets. People on the ground were horrified, flashing back on watching those two 747's flying into the World Trade Center towers in 2001.
It seems that someone thought this would be a good photo-op. The FAA was notified and approved this flyover. Even the NYPD was informed, but they were told not to tell the public about it. Not even Mayor Bloomberg knew about it beforehand.
Many people on the streets in lower Manhattan ran in panic, anticipating another terrorist attack.
Some butthead in the White House admitted to approving the event and said he was sorry. Obama, of course, knew nothing about it. He was caught so off-guard, he failed to link this event to the Bush administration.
And may I ask: What kind of photo-op were they going for? Something like, "See, here's what it would look like if Air Force One was hi-jacked and crashed into lower Manhattan. See the fighters? Pretty cool, huh?"
What the hell?
If the police were notified in advance, why were they not allowed to inform the public? I mean, what kind of a reaction did they expect? Did they think no one would notice a 747 and two fighters screaming over one of the most densely populated areas in the USA? Particularly with its recent history.
Same thing with releasing the information about so-called "torture." Obama releases the memos -- proving primarily that the Bush administration did seek legal counsel before they went through with it -- and says he's not going to prosecute anyone for it.
So, why did he release the memos in the first place? Kinda like finding a pair of dirty thong panties in your brother's laundry bag and hoisting them on the flag pole. I mean, what is the point?
Obama doesn't want a congressional hearing or investigation about the memos. I wouldn't either, if I was him.
1.) He's only inviting the same from whomever wins the presidency in 2012, and I seriously doubt that they will be Democrats. And I think they will find plenty of dubious back-room deal-making to crow about;
2.) Nancy Pelosi and maybe a dozen other ranking members of congress from both parties were fully briefed -- about 30 times -- about the "enhanced interrogation techniques" and they raised no objections to them at the time. After lying about being briefed, Pelosi, looking like a deer caught in the headlights, told newspeople there was nothing she could do... Funny, though, how since then she's found the superhuman ability to wave a magic wand and anihilate the health care industry in the USA.
And Arlen Specter is changing parties. Gee, what a shocker. His move is not on principle, however; rather, because he thinks he has a better chance of winning in his district. Oh well, old Arlen probably doesn't want to give up the "cafe-style" health care benefits avialable to members of congress -- and which he and other Democrats are going to deny to every other American citizen ('course, illegal aliens will continue to qualify for them.) I hope the voters in his district are smart enough to recognize that no matter what party label Specter sticks on his forehead, he's still the same old addle-brained weak sister.
These people are some pretty sorry buggers. Frat-boys -- irresponsible, reckless, shortsighted, ignorant, putting on a show for each other and offending everyone else -- and damn proud of it too! They're intoxicated with the idea that they can actually get people to drive them around in Air Force jets, that they can trigger public panic, that they can force their simple-minded and sophomoric programs on hundreds of millions of people. Gee, what a rush! Hey, Ma, watch this!
What next? Obama and the Cabinet speeding along the interstate in a stretch limo with their bare butts hanging out the windows?
What a photo-op that would be.
It seems that someone thought this would be a good photo-op. The FAA was notified and approved this flyover. Even the NYPD was informed, but they were told not to tell the public about it. Not even Mayor Bloomberg knew about it beforehand.
Many people on the streets in lower Manhattan ran in panic, anticipating another terrorist attack.
Some butthead in the White House admitted to approving the event and said he was sorry. Obama, of course, knew nothing about it. He was caught so off-guard, he failed to link this event to the Bush administration.
And may I ask: What kind of photo-op were they going for? Something like, "See, here's what it would look like if Air Force One was hi-jacked and crashed into lower Manhattan. See the fighters? Pretty cool, huh?"
What the hell?
If the police were notified in advance, why were they not allowed to inform the public? I mean, what kind of a reaction did they expect? Did they think no one would notice a 747 and two fighters screaming over one of the most densely populated areas in the USA? Particularly with its recent history.
Same thing with releasing the information about so-called "torture." Obama releases the memos -- proving primarily that the Bush administration did seek legal counsel before they went through with it -- and says he's not going to prosecute anyone for it.
So, why did he release the memos in the first place? Kinda like finding a pair of dirty thong panties in your brother's laundry bag and hoisting them on the flag pole. I mean, what is the point?
Obama doesn't want a congressional hearing or investigation about the memos. I wouldn't either, if I was him.
1.) He's only inviting the same from whomever wins the presidency in 2012, and I seriously doubt that they will be Democrats. And I think they will find plenty of dubious back-room deal-making to crow about;
2.) Nancy Pelosi and maybe a dozen other ranking members of congress from both parties were fully briefed -- about 30 times -- about the "enhanced interrogation techniques" and they raised no objections to them at the time. After lying about being briefed, Pelosi, looking like a deer caught in the headlights, told newspeople there was nothing she could do... Funny, though, how since then she's found the superhuman ability to wave a magic wand and anihilate the health care industry in the USA.
And Arlen Specter is changing parties. Gee, what a shocker. His move is not on principle, however; rather, because he thinks he has a better chance of winning in his district. Oh well, old Arlen probably doesn't want to give up the "cafe-style" health care benefits avialable to members of congress -- and which he and other Democrats are going to deny to every other American citizen ('course, illegal aliens will continue to qualify for them.) I hope the voters in his district are smart enough to recognize that no matter what party label Specter sticks on his forehead, he's still the same old addle-brained weak sister.
These people are some pretty sorry buggers. Frat-boys -- irresponsible, reckless, shortsighted, ignorant, putting on a show for each other and offending everyone else -- and damn proud of it too! They're intoxicated with the idea that they can actually get people to drive them around in Air Force jets, that they can trigger public panic, that they can force their simple-minded and sophomoric programs on hundreds of millions of people. Gee, what a rush! Hey, Ma, watch this!
What next? Obama and the Cabinet speeding along the interstate in a stretch limo with their bare butts hanging out the windows?
What a photo-op that would be.
The end of health care
Just been perusing the London Times about health care. If you're interested in doing some research, go to:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
and search on "rationing" and "healthcare" and you might try "NICE", which is the acronym for the rationing board.
I can't imagine wishing this system on the USA, yet this is similar to what the USA's health care industry will look like when the socialists in Washington finish with it. Or, more simply, put an end to it. Canada has a "single payer" system, which is a little different. In Canada, you can be prosecuted for seeking health care outside of the government-run operation, which pretty much sucks by all accounts.
In England, the policy for many years was that if you accepted NHS (National Health System?) treatments, you agreed you wouldn't seek private care or drugs at the same time. Sort of like if you try to fix your own transmission, the warranty is thenceforth invalid. In one long article in the London Times, one woman with stomach cancer did this -- went to Europe and paid for drugs commonly used in Europe but not in England -- and she was denied NHS treatment. Her case was appealed, and the policy was changed. But she was dead by then.
The NHS is apparently famous for its stinginess in rationing cancer drugs and treatment. Seems they just hope people will die quietly and not screw up their cost-benefit ratios.
For a time in England, too, the NHS promoted home births using midwives to reduce medical and hospital costs. The doctors didn't like this at all. They weren't especially opposed to home births and midwives, rather to the fact that the NHS didn't offer any back-up for care by a physician or in a hospital if something went wrong with the birth.
Seems the NHS was promoting the program by reminding British moms-in-waiting that in third world nations, moms simply wandered off to a quiet corner, squeezed out their offspring, and then went back to finish the day's work, no complaints, no worries. The physician who authored this article hoped to reveal that this was not the true story; rather, that the third world has an astronomical mortality rate among preggie moms and newborns that would be unacceptable in England.
In the US, congress is supposed to debate this week on whether to putsch socialized medicine through via a technique called "reconciliation," ("battering ram" might be more appropriate) which would limit debate and requires only a simple majority in congress to pass the legislation.
What the hell is wrong with these people? They propose changes in the entire US health care system, measures that will drastically change the care that's available now, and they want to just jam it through "like crap through a goose," to borrow a phrase from General George Patton. And a an apt description of the process, I must say.
They don't want any debate. They want to limit opposition. They don't want to stop and think about what they're doing. They certainly don't want to look at the statistics of US care compared to socialized medicine, or to tour a British hospital, or even a Canadian one, if they could find one open at this time of year. They simply want to jam this bullshit down the throats of the American people -- no matter what the people might want.
I just don't get it. Whatever happened to America?
These bastards in Washington are just not even anti-American, they're anti-life. Mainly what they want is all of us goose-stepping behind them. They assume, Square One, that we're all incredibly stupid. Actually, they're so stupid themselves they can't even see us. Their minds aren't big enough.
They're a bunch of blockheads. Who elected these clowns? Easy answer: The New York Times and NBC. Moveon.org and other hysterical Big Lie rags.
And why is someone like George Soros pumping so much money into radical left-wing propaganda organizations? Who the hell is Soros? He's rich. Big whoop. He's making sure no one else ever will be, not in America.
Read somewhere that he manipulated the currency of Kenya or Zimbabwe or someplace and totally destroyed that nation's economy. Is this how he gets off? He plays power games? And this is a real person, not some nightmare freak from a sci-fi flick. Maybe he's just too damn old to be capable of anything else. Really, who the hell is this man? Some doddering old fool hell-bent on killing people any way he can. A pathological egomaniac who is compelled to leave his boot prints on everyone's backs? Envisions himself some grand puppeteer, pulling the strings and everyone dances. How is he different from any other petty dictator in his aims and aspirations?
What a slimy pig. Only that's an insult to pigs.
What the hell is his problem? Shouldn't he be locked up for this own good? And Pelosi with him? Call it a national security measure.
And Obama with them.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
and search on "rationing" and "healthcare" and you might try "NICE", which is the acronym for the rationing board.
I can't imagine wishing this system on the USA, yet this is similar to what the USA's health care industry will look like when the socialists in Washington finish with it. Or, more simply, put an end to it. Canada has a "single payer" system, which is a little different. In Canada, you can be prosecuted for seeking health care outside of the government-run operation, which pretty much sucks by all accounts.
In England, the policy for many years was that if you accepted NHS (National Health System?) treatments, you agreed you wouldn't seek private care or drugs at the same time. Sort of like if you try to fix your own transmission, the warranty is thenceforth invalid. In one long article in the London Times, one woman with stomach cancer did this -- went to Europe and paid for drugs commonly used in Europe but not in England -- and she was denied NHS treatment. Her case was appealed, and the policy was changed. But she was dead by then.
The NHS is apparently famous for its stinginess in rationing cancer drugs and treatment. Seems they just hope people will die quietly and not screw up their cost-benefit ratios.
For a time in England, too, the NHS promoted home births using midwives to reduce medical and hospital costs. The doctors didn't like this at all. They weren't especially opposed to home births and midwives, rather to the fact that the NHS didn't offer any back-up for care by a physician or in a hospital if something went wrong with the birth.
Seems the NHS was promoting the program by reminding British moms-in-waiting that in third world nations, moms simply wandered off to a quiet corner, squeezed out their offspring, and then went back to finish the day's work, no complaints, no worries. The physician who authored this article hoped to reveal that this was not the true story; rather, that the third world has an astronomical mortality rate among preggie moms and newborns that would be unacceptable in England.
In the US, congress is supposed to debate this week on whether to putsch socialized medicine through via a technique called "reconciliation," ("battering ram" might be more appropriate) which would limit debate and requires only a simple majority in congress to pass the legislation.
What the hell is wrong with these people? They propose changes in the entire US health care system, measures that will drastically change the care that's available now, and they want to just jam it through "like crap through a goose," to borrow a phrase from General George Patton. And a an apt description of the process, I must say.
They don't want any debate. They want to limit opposition. They don't want to stop and think about what they're doing. They certainly don't want to look at the statistics of US care compared to socialized medicine, or to tour a British hospital, or even a Canadian one, if they could find one open at this time of year. They simply want to jam this bullshit down the throats of the American people -- no matter what the people might want.
I just don't get it. Whatever happened to America?
These bastards in Washington are just not even anti-American, they're anti-life. Mainly what they want is all of us goose-stepping behind them. They assume, Square One, that we're all incredibly stupid. Actually, they're so stupid themselves they can't even see us. Their minds aren't big enough.
They're a bunch of blockheads. Who elected these clowns? Easy answer: The New York Times and NBC. Moveon.org and other hysterical Big Lie rags.
And why is someone like George Soros pumping so much money into radical left-wing propaganda organizations? Who the hell is Soros? He's rich. Big whoop. He's making sure no one else ever will be, not in America.
Read somewhere that he manipulated the currency of Kenya or Zimbabwe or someplace and totally destroyed that nation's economy. Is this how he gets off? He plays power games? And this is a real person, not some nightmare freak from a sci-fi flick. Maybe he's just too damn old to be capable of anything else. Really, who the hell is this man? Some doddering old fool hell-bent on killing people any way he can. A pathological egomaniac who is compelled to leave his boot prints on everyone's backs? Envisions himself some grand puppeteer, pulling the strings and everyone dances. How is he different from any other petty dictator in his aims and aspirations?
What a slimy pig. Only that's an insult to pigs.
What the hell is his problem? Shouldn't he be locked up for this own good? And Pelosi with him? Call it a national security measure.
And Obama with them.
Friday, April 24, 2009
What? No free lunch?
Our president today announced that there will be no middle-class tax cut.
Apparently it's beginning to dawn on even this pie-in-the-sky administration that "There's no such thing as a free lunch." That is, you can't escape reality, no matter how hard you try, no matter how many Nancy Pelosis you have backing you up, or how many people are sitting in your circle with their fingers in their ears, humming. There is no free lunch.
That tax break is being thrown into the kettle of murky witch's brew to help fund socialized medicine -- which, if enacted, will send the USA into absolute, abject bankruptcy. Toss in cap-and-trade, and the citizens of this great nation are looking at a third-world lifestyle from which we may never recover.... until we vote these buttheads out of office.
Hate to say "I told you so," but....
Nana-na-nana. Told you so.
Have to go to work now. More later, probably, but really have to go look up other countries to move to.
Apparently it's beginning to dawn on even this pie-in-the-sky administration that "There's no such thing as a free lunch." That is, you can't escape reality, no matter how hard you try, no matter how many Nancy Pelosis you have backing you up, or how many people are sitting in your circle with their fingers in their ears, humming. There is no free lunch.
That tax break is being thrown into the kettle of murky witch's brew to help fund socialized medicine -- which, if enacted, will send the USA into absolute, abject bankruptcy. Toss in cap-and-trade, and the citizens of this great nation are looking at a third-world lifestyle from which we may never recover.... until we vote these buttheads out of office.
Hate to say "I told you so," but....
Nana-na-nana. Told you so.
Have to go to work now. More later, probably, but really have to go look up other countries to move to.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Bankrupt in so many different ways
Leftist rage began while Bush was in office. That's how the Democrats won so many congressional seats in the off-term election and probably also part of the reason why Obama won the presidency. I doubt any Republican could have won, the rage against the Bush administration was so great.
The Republicans misread this rage. They believed the country was taking a turn to the left. I don't believe this. I think the haters were whipped up by a very well-orchestrated propaganda campaign that includes groups like moveon.org and even MSNBC. They went after and recruited teen-aged voters for support, for the same reasons crack dealers recognize this group as potential customers. Certainly Howard what's-his-name, who was Grand Dragon of the DNC promoted this strategy. You remember, the doctor who ran for something (presidential primary?) and made a fool of himself after he'd lost, pumping his fists and yelling in a maniacal fashion about how this wasn't the end by a long shot.
The thing is, I know Dick Cheney was an executive at Halliburton before he became vice president. As vice president, he was accused of contracting some military logistics operations to Halliburton to line his own pockets. I doubt this is true because when any person is elected or appointed to a high-level government job, their investments and all else go into some type of blind trust. It's managed for them, and they aren't allowed to know where their money is for obvious reasons.
So anyway, Dick Cheney was held up as some kind of "suspect" because of Halliburton. I don't know what else he's done that inspired such hatred.
Bush, of course, is responsible for many rather dodgy maneuvers, including locking up terrorists at Guantanamo Bay as POWs, rather than charging and trying them as criminals. Tangled inside this issue is the matter of habeus corpus, which must be invoked for criminals, but apparently can be suspended indefinitely for enemy hostiles. But the people at Guantanamo are considered foreign belligerents, or something to that effect, rather than simply having violated US law. And hey, they declared war on us. Remember?
'Course, Obama and the Democrats are changing that status now, and I suspect they're running into the same kind of problems that the Bush administration did: these people are much more than common criminals, unless you want to charge them with like, 3,000 murders and vandalism on a massive scale -- destruction of the World Trade Center. And conspiring to do much more.
So anyway, one day a liberal-leaning friend of mine made some really nasty comment about Dick Cheney. I was supposed to go, "Yeah. That's for sure." But I don't hate Dick Cheney and I'm not sure why the Democrats and liberals do. I mean I'm really not sure what he's done to warrant their vitriol.
So I asked, "What did he do, anyway?"
Shrugging at my blockheaded stupidity and walking away muttering.
I hardly ever join in with group things just because they're group things. It's caused a lot of problems for me socially, as you might suspect. I don't knee-jerk anything. And I still don't know what Dick Cheney did.
Apart from the shrug, I've been told by others: "Well, he was in [Reagan's/Bush #1's] administration, too."
I suppose that's the in-depth explanation.
Anyway, so now the Democrats are rifling through classified information left to them by the Bush administration. They seem to be going over it with a fine-tooth comb, like those Iranians who seized the US Embassy in Iran on 1979, and took years to paste together mountains of shredded documents in search of some fresh fuel for their hatred of the US, and in order to try to embarrass the US. That's what the Dems are doing now in Washington.
The Dems ran a campaign based on hatred and rage against the Bush Administration, and they've been unable to develop any other direction for their own administration. Seriously, it's amazing.
On the news the anchors will ask even some low-level Dem p.r. flak anything about what Obama's plans are, and the answer always comes down to, "We inherited this mess."
Hey, you know what? Every president inherits a mess. You're supposed to do something positive with it. That's why you were elected. Or that's why people are elected most of the time, anyway.
Even outside the US, the president seems just incapable of talking to foreign leaders about anything else except about how terrible the Bush administration was and how he's going to be all different now.
The Democrats ran on hatred. They were determined to get rid of Bush. Bush would've been gone anyway after his second term... But the Democrats don't seem to be able to get past that. They don't seem to realize that they're in charge now, they're accountable, it's up to them to do something. They don't have Bush to kick around anymore. (Sorry, couldn't help that last.) But they just keep on campaigning.
Economic policy -- Obama reaches back into the past to dredge up programs from Roosevelt's New Deal. You know, many of those were declared to be unconstitutional even while Roosevelt was in office, and the others failed. Obama's Budget Proposal apparently was something written up a couple years before the election and was what he ran his campaign on. He appears to be unwilling and/or unable to change or alter it to suit the new reality of economic devastation.
Advisors -- he re-hires Clinton's old staff, as well as beating the thickets of the radical left looking for people who are generally 1) totally unqualified; and 2) of dubious loyalty to the US. This is change we can hope for?
This administration seems to be still running on hatred for the Bush administration, and by extension, anything American. Jeannine Garofalo is a prime example of their frame of mind. And if I spelled her name wrong, gee, that's really tuff.
Well, you know what? Bush is gone. If the Dems want, they can try him for war crimes, but that would require a considerable waste of time and public treasure, and I don't believe it will yield many results. It might fan the flames of anti-American/anti-Bush hatred for a while, but that's about it.
And I really don't think the Democrats want to set a precedent for putting past presidents on trial for their policies. If Obama has any foresight, I really don't think he wants to do that.
This whole debacle over the CIA memos only reveals the complete moral and even pragmatic bankruptcy of the Democrats and the Obama administration. They don't have any new ideas. They don't have any real policies except "Throw some money at it and see if it sticks." Their only perceived "value" to date seems to be getting vicious and despicable tyrants around the world to love the US, and trying to get most Americans to hate it.
They're bankrupt all the way around, directionless, ultmately useless. They aren't pro-active, but re-active, and and apparently incapable of reacting in any other but a hateful anti-American way. Hey, you idiots in Washington you are the US government now! Think about it.
But anyway, the liberals really need to let go of the hatred. It's unhealthy for one thing, bad for the heart.
The Republicans misread this rage. They believed the country was taking a turn to the left. I don't believe this. I think the haters were whipped up by a very well-orchestrated propaganda campaign that includes groups like moveon.org and even MSNBC. They went after and recruited teen-aged voters for support, for the same reasons crack dealers recognize this group as potential customers. Certainly Howard what's-his-name, who was Grand Dragon of the DNC promoted this strategy. You remember, the doctor who ran for something (presidential primary?) and made a fool of himself after he'd lost, pumping his fists and yelling in a maniacal fashion about how this wasn't the end by a long shot.
The thing is, I know Dick Cheney was an executive at Halliburton before he became vice president. As vice president, he was accused of contracting some military logistics operations to Halliburton to line his own pockets. I doubt this is true because when any person is elected or appointed to a high-level government job, their investments and all else go into some type of blind trust. It's managed for them, and they aren't allowed to know where their money is for obvious reasons.
So anyway, Dick Cheney was held up as some kind of "suspect" because of Halliburton. I don't know what else he's done that inspired such hatred.
Bush, of course, is responsible for many rather dodgy maneuvers, including locking up terrorists at Guantanamo Bay as POWs, rather than charging and trying them as criminals. Tangled inside this issue is the matter of habeus corpus, which must be invoked for criminals, but apparently can be suspended indefinitely for enemy hostiles. But the people at Guantanamo are considered foreign belligerents, or something to that effect, rather than simply having violated US law. And hey, they declared war on us. Remember?
'Course, Obama and the Democrats are changing that status now, and I suspect they're running into the same kind of problems that the Bush administration did: these people are much more than common criminals, unless you want to charge them with like, 3,000 murders and vandalism on a massive scale -- destruction of the World Trade Center. And conspiring to do much more.
So anyway, one day a liberal-leaning friend of mine made some really nasty comment about Dick Cheney. I was supposed to go, "Yeah. That's for sure." But I don't hate Dick Cheney and I'm not sure why the Democrats and liberals do. I mean I'm really not sure what he's done to warrant their vitriol.
So I asked, "What did he do, anyway?"
Shrugging at my blockheaded stupidity and walking away muttering.
I hardly ever join in with group things just because they're group things. It's caused a lot of problems for me socially, as you might suspect. I don't knee-jerk anything. And I still don't know what Dick Cheney did.
Apart from the shrug, I've been told by others: "Well, he was in [Reagan's/Bush #1's] administration, too."
I suppose that's the in-depth explanation.
Anyway, so now the Democrats are rifling through classified information left to them by the Bush administration. They seem to be going over it with a fine-tooth comb, like those Iranians who seized the US Embassy in Iran on 1979, and took years to paste together mountains of shredded documents in search of some fresh fuel for their hatred of the US, and in order to try to embarrass the US. That's what the Dems are doing now in Washington.
The Dems ran a campaign based on hatred and rage against the Bush Administration, and they've been unable to develop any other direction for their own administration. Seriously, it's amazing.
On the news the anchors will ask even some low-level Dem p.r. flak anything about what Obama's plans are, and the answer always comes down to, "We inherited this mess."
Hey, you know what? Every president inherits a mess. You're supposed to do something positive with it. That's why you were elected. Or that's why people are elected most of the time, anyway.
Even outside the US, the president seems just incapable of talking to foreign leaders about anything else except about how terrible the Bush administration was and how he's going to be all different now.
The Democrats ran on hatred. They were determined to get rid of Bush. Bush would've been gone anyway after his second term... But the Democrats don't seem to be able to get past that. They don't seem to realize that they're in charge now, they're accountable, it's up to them to do something. They don't have Bush to kick around anymore. (Sorry, couldn't help that last.) But they just keep on campaigning.
Economic policy -- Obama reaches back into the past to dredge up programs from Roosevelt's New Deal. You know, many of those were declared to be unconstitutional even while Roosevelt was in office, and the others failed. Obama's Budget Proposal apparently was something written up a couple years before the election and was what he ran his campaign on. He appears to be unwilling and/or unable to change or alter it to suit the new reality of economic devastation.
Advisors -- he re-hires Clinton's old staff, as well as beating the thickets of the radical left looking for people who are generally 1) totally unqualified; and 2) of dubious loyalty to the US. This is change we can hope for?
This administration seems to be still running on hatred for the Bush administration, and by extension, anything American. Jeannine Garofalo is a prime example of their frame of mind. And if I spelled her name wrong, gee, that's really tuff.
Well, you know what? Bush is gone. If the Dems want, they can try him for war crimes, but that would require a considerable waste of time and public treasure, and I don't believe it will yield many results. It might fan the flames of anti-American/anti-Bush hatred for a while, but that's about it.
And I really don't think the Democrats want to set a precedent for putting past presidents on trial for their policies. If Obama has any foresight, I really don't think he wants to do that.
This whole debacle over the CIA memos only reveals the complete moral and even pragmatic bankruptcy of the Democrats and the Obama administration. They don't have any new ideas. They don't have any real policies except "Throw some money at it and see if it sticks." Their only perceived "value" to date seems to be getting vicious and despicable tyrants around the world to love the US, and trying to get most Americans to hate it.
They're bankrupt all the way around, directionless, ultmately useless. They aren't pro-active, but re-active, and and apparently incapable of reacting in any other but a hateful anti-American way. Hey, you idiots in Washington you are the US government now! Think about it.
But anyway, the liberals really need to let go of the hatred. It's unhealthy for one thing, bad for the heart.
A penny saved is still a penny
Mr. Obama revealed his plan today to slash the budget deficit in half -- he's requested that his Cabinet members cut $100 million from their budgets. Spend $12 trillion, cut $100 million.... I don't know, is it just me, or does it seem that $100 million is not a significant reduction? It's more like .003%.
I'm on the mailing list for the Libertarian Party. In a release dated April 20, they say:
I'm on the mailing list for the Libertarian Party. In a release dated April 20, they say:
Obama’s budget calls for around $11,755.00 in spending for every man, woman and child in America. But his “cuts” -- which aren't even new reductions -- come out to only around 32.7 cents per person.
I'm trying to think of what you can buy for 32 cents. About half the federal tax on a pack of cigarettes? You can't park at a meter in Chicago or ride a city bus for that anymore. Poor Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, got to try to explain today why $100 million is a lot of money. How would you like his job?
In other news...
Obama gave a speech to the CIA today, apparently to try to make them feel better about his selling them out by detailing the "torture" the US perpetrated upon the terrorists who were trying to blow us all up. He told them that we all have to protect American values, even when it's difficult.
Ya know, Mr. President, I think that's just exactly what they were trying to do. Maybe the CIA was doing that when you were only three months old, Mr. Obama. I'll even bet they have dossiers on some of your close friends.
Not to mention, it's OK for Mr. Obama and select members of his handpicked entourage (I don't know: Cabinet? Czars? Overseers and drivers?) to circumvent the US Constitution whenever they feel so moved to push their socialist agenda, but God forbid the CIA takes any authorized actions in the name of national security.
We certainly don't want the rest of the world to feel uncomfortable about hi-jacking passenger airplanes and flying them into our high-rise towers. That just wouldn't be very nice. They might not like us anymore. They might not ever come back. Obama might lose some potential fans.
Charles Krauthammer says Obama needs applause. That he'll do just about anything for applause. On the surface, this might seem like just a glib, even a bit snide, remark. But you know, Charles Krauthammer is a highly-respected psychiatrist. He was a psychiatrist before he became a journalist. So, based on his background as well as my own observations -- I tend to agree.
So look at it this way: On the one hand we have the president of the US, fresh from a trip to South America where he grinned up into the monkey-like face of a vile dictator who whole-heartedly hates the US and has never been shy about saying so, and this trip comes soon after "holding out an olive branch" to another vile dictator who's occupied Cuba for about 50 years, slaughtering the population willy-nilly and running Cuba's economy into the dirt. Then on the other hand, we have the CIA, whose heroes are represented by anonymous gold stars, having died horribly in some foreign hornet's nest in defense of the nation.
The irony is pretty thick here, isn't it? I mean, which of these entities is more committed to preserving American values? Talk is cheap.
Doesn't he have any shame at all?
Sunday, April 19, 2009
The road to nowhere?
Just briefly, saw a couple news stories about Rt. 101 in New Hampshire being the first project funded by the Stimulus package to get underway. The project involves repaving 9.5 miles of Rt. 101. The final bid accepted for the project is happily touted as being "under-budget." For that reason, I thought the job was already completed. But it turns out, they just started it.
Ray LaHood, apparently a politician from New Hampshire, helped turn over the first shovelful of dirt to start the project. When I was an editor, we used to get at least a half-dozen photos a month of corporate executives all standing around with chrome-finished hard hats gleaming in the sun, wearing suits-and-ties, gold-plated shovels in hand, celebrating the new plant or HQ or something. I used to call these "Men With Shovels" shots. Oh well....
We'll see if the New Hampshire project is still under-budget when it's been completed. And, by the way, when it is completed, what are the contractors and workers going to do? I mean, how long can it take to repave 9.5 miles of highway?
If New Hampshire workers operate at the same rate as highway workers in the Chicago area, they can conceivably stretch this project out to three or four years. It took at least that long to build a new on-ramp to an interstate near my home. I could have done it quicker on my own with a teaspoon and a couple bags of blacktop, but then I didn't even bid on it.
But to get back to the main topic: What are these New Hampshire people going to do when the project is done?
Since the job was under-budget (as bid) by about $2 million, maybe they could do a parking lot or something, too.
And then....????
That's the trouble with goverment projects. They aren't ongoing concerns, they aren't self-sustaining through profitability. You do them and they're done, and then you go home.
So maybe a hundred people will get union-scale pay for however long this one job lasts, and they'll be able to pay their mortgages, they'll be buying lunches and coffee from local vendors, etc etc., for maybe a month or two, if they're honest about it.
And then....????
That's the trouble with government projects.
It's been said that in Chicago, we have two seasons: winter and construction. What amazes me is that the highways are continuously torn up and they never seem to be completed. Ever. Honestly, I know so many back roads into Chicago it's positively amazing, and back roads and alleys are really the only way to get around the city. All the main boulevards and avenues have things planted in them. Really. Take a nice broad avenue and reduce it down to one lane in each direction with brown and dying foliage on a median strip in the middle separating them. It's called "beautification." I think it was supposed to be Mayor Daley's wife's idea. She didn't like Meigs Airport, either. And it's gone now.
In addition, a main artery near my home (six lanes, and right off the interstate) was repaved last year -- or at least the worst parts of it were. Included in that project was an overpass over the interstate, which has been torn up, the lanes rerouted with cement abutments for about a year now. It's like, don't try driving this at night, because there are no lights on it, and driving through these cement barriers is like winding through a Chinese maze. Anyway... They haven't finished that overpass yet, which seems to be part of the artery repave job, and all that new repaving on the artery has already degenerated into major potholes.
So maybe the object really is to not EVER finish it. Just keep pouring more and more and more money into it, do a crappy job that falls apart as soon as possible, so when you finally finish the bridge, you can start repaving the artery again.
Somehow, I don't get it.
But I just love it when they have the signs out: YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK.
Yeah, right, my tax dollars. Not so sure about the "work" part, though.
Ray LaHood, apparently a politician from New Hampshire, helped turn over the first shovelful of dirt to start the project. When I was an editor, we used to get at least a half-dozen photos a month of corporate executives all standing around with chrome-finished hard hats gleaming in the sun, wearing suits-and-ties, gold-plated shovels in hand, celebrating the new plant or HQ or something. I used to call these "Men With Shovels" shots. Oh well....
We'll see if the New Hampshire project is still under-budget when it's been completed. And, by the way, when it is completed, what are the contractors and workers going to do? I mean, how long can it take to repave 9.5 miles of highway?
If New Hampshire workers operate at the same rate as highway workers in the Chicago area, they can conceivably stretch this project out to three or four years. It took at least that long to build a new on-ramp to an interstate near my home. I could have done it quicker on my own with a teaspoon and a couple bags of blacktop, but then I didn't even bid on it.
But to get back to the main topic: What are these New Hampshire people going to do when the project is done?
Since the job was under-budget (as bid) by about $2 million, maybe they could do a parking lot or something, too.
And then....????
That's the trouble with goverment projects. They aren't ongoing concerns, they aren't self-sustaining through profitability. You do them and they're done, and then you go home.
So maybe a hundred people will get union-scale pay for however long this one job lasts, and they'll be able to pay their mortgages, they'll be buying lunches and coffee from local vendors, etc etc., for maybe a month or two, if they're honest about it.
And then....????
That's the trouble with government projects.
It's been said that in Chicago, we have two seasons: winter and construction. What amazes me is that the highways are continuously torn up and they never seem to be completed. Ever. Honestly, I know so many back roads into Chicago it's positively amazing, and back roads and alleys are really the only way to get around the city. All the main boulevards and avenues have things planted in them. Really. Take a nice broad avenue and reduce it down to one lane in each direction with brown and dying foliage on a median strip in the middle separating them. It's called "beautification." I think it was supposed to be Mayor Daley's wife's idea. She didn't like Meigs Airport, either. And it's gone now.
In addition, a main artery near my home (six lanes, and right off the interstate) was repaved last year -- or at least the worst parts of it were. Included in that project was an overpass over the interstate, which has been torn up, the lanes rerouted with cement abutments for about a year now. It's like, don't try driving this at night, because there are no lights on it, and driving through these cement barriers is like winding through a Chinese maze. Anyway... They haven't finished that overpass yet, which seems to be part of the artery repave job, and all that new repaving on the artery has already degenerated into major potholes.
So maybe the object really is to not EVER finish it. Just keep pouring more and more and more money into it, do a crappy job that falls apart as soon as possible, so when you finally finish the bridge, you can start repaving the artery again.
Somehow, I don't get it.
But I just love it when they have the signs out: YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK.
Yeah, right, my tax dollars. Not so sure about the "work" part, though.
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