The Politics of Apology

It is ushering in an era of American History that is likely to be known as “The Great Capitulation.”

clipped from dipsochronicles.blogspot.com While our President is running around the world garnering all manner of foreign praise and applause for his “Operation: Global Submission,” I have a question for every American who thinks this little grovel-go-round is going to have positive results for our country, and especially for the President and his Secretary of State: When did it become a measure of pride to stand up in front of the biggest audience you can find and announce “I am a pussy?” I have to assume that your fathers did not have the skill or intelligence or acuity to teach you the difference between humility and weakness, and that you are under the impression that constant public apologies backlit by ravenous blame acceptance is an acceptable substitute for a national backbone. Clearly, we are in excellent hands. This “We’ll quit first if you promise to quit later” mentality is nothing but an attempt to win a last man standing contest by being the first man kneeling.

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Good Barry – Bad Barry

The People Cube has the answer for all the Obamabots dithering over the sudden and complete policy changes currently being pronounced by the One True Messiah:

But it turns out that Obama’s sudden rightward shift has an easy and rational explanation: he has an evil twin who often poses as Good Obama and spouts disturbingly non-progressive views. The absolute resemblance of the Obama twins makes it almost impossible to distinguish between the two, although it has been reported that Evil Obama wears a goatee.

Separated from his evil twin at birth, Good Obama happily grew up among the friendly and altruistic Marxists, while Evil Obama had the misfortune of being raised by distant cousin Lynne Cheney and her conniving husband Dick. This explains Evil Obama’s bitterness that is causing him to cling to his Bible, guns, and victory in Iraq.

Are British Politicians All Idiots?

Let’s see – The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom thinks this:

Gordon Brown wants to see petrol-driven cars off the roads within 12 years as evidence that Britain can break its addiction to oil.

The Prime Minister, hailing a climate change agreement by world leaders at the G8 summit in Japan yesterday, insisted all new vehicles could be powered by electric or hybrid engines by 2020.

The driving force to achieve that goal, he suggested, would be fuel costs and road taxes.

So in 12 years the Brits will essentially be back where they were in the Middle Ages – the aristocrats and politicans will be driving their hybrids and electro-cars while the peasants walk or ride donkeys or some such.  Isn’t it interesting that he thinks that high fuel costs and raising the taxes on any road use is a really GOOD thing and that the peasants should be happy?

But when your “environment minister” (what a crock – jobs for the boyos?) says this?

A Cabinet minister welcomed spiralling petrol prices last night as an incentive for drivers to make fewer car journeys.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said the high cost of oil helps force people off the road and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

He also launched a robust defence of road tax rises for more than 9million cars  -  insisting it was right that they should also apply to second-hand vehicles.

Or what about this lunacy?

Police made the astonishing admission yesterday that they have given up even trying to catch thousands of burglars.

Just days after the Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine insisted that the public don’t want to see many house-breakers jailed, officers have been told not to bother investigating many offences.

That means there must be clear evidence pointing towards a suspect such as DNA traces, fingerprints or a possible identity, which makes an arrest likely.

In other cases, unless there are “special factors” – such as an elderly victim or if it is a repeat attack – no effort will be made to track down the criminal.

It means a huge number of cases of robbery, violent crime, car crime, sex offences – all of which saw rises in the latest crime figures – as well as burglary, will be left to gather dust.

OK – the curtain has rung down on Britain as a place where good, normal people live.  Those of you there who want to live in a place where your politicians think that making the cost of living unbearable while simultaneously refusing to protect you deserve what you get.  Everybody else – we need people who want to work hard.

And there are a few people left in Britain who realize this too:

While Gordon Brown prattles about wind turbines, and plays silly games for the cameras with electric cars, Britain within a few years is facing the near certainty of a massive shortfall in our electricity supplies.

By 2015, thanks to the obsolescence of our nuclear power plants and the forced closure of nine of our major coal and oil-fired power stations under EU anti-pollution rules, we are due to lose 40 per cent of our current generating capacity – and Mr Brown hasn’t the slightest practical idea of how to fill the gap.

Forget the nonsense about a 50 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2050. Our Government has already committed Britain to go even further, by imposing a statutory cut of 60 per cent through its Climate Change Bill.

But long before that, unless those who rule us come down out of cloud cuckoo land very fast, our lights will go out, our computers will shut down, our economy will judder to a halt and we shall face a national catastrophe. We may well be meeting that 60 per cent target sooner than we think – but not for reasons that reflect well on our politicians, of any party.

The New Political Discourse

There’s a little rough language, but Jackie and Dunlap have a great one here:

And a great riff on Gas Prices too:

Some Good Advice

From P. J. O’Rourke - not that anyone will actually listen:

1. Go out and make a bunch of money!

Here we are living in the world’s most prosperous country, surrounded by all the comforts, conveniences and security that money can provide. Yet no American political, intellectual or cultural leader ever says to young people, “Go out and make a bunch of money.”

2. Don’t be an idealist!

Idealists are also bullies. The idealist says, “I care more about the redwood trees than you do. I care so much I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. It broke up my marriage. And because I care more than you do, I’m a better person. And because I’m the better person, I have the right to boss you around.”

3. Get politically uninvolved!

All politics stink. Even democracy stinks. Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. I’d be standing here with my bellybutton exposed. Imagine deciding the dinner menu by family secret ballot. I’ve got three kids and three dogs in my family. We’d be eating Froot Loops and rotten meat.

4. Forget about fairness!

Life sends the message, “I’d better not be poor. I’d better get rich. I’d better make more money than other people.” Meanwhile, politics sends us the message, “Some people make more money than others. Some are rich while others are poor. We’d better close that ‘income disparity gap.’ It’s not fair!”

5. Be a religious extremist!

The Bible is very clear about one thing: Using politics to create fairness is a sin. Observe the Tenth Commandment. The first nine commandments concern theological principles and social law: Thou shalt not make graven images, steal, kill, et cetera. Fair enough. But then there’s the tenth: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.”

Here are God’s basic rules about how we should live, a brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts. And, right at the end of it we read, “Don’t envy your buddy because he has an ox or a donkey.” Why did that make the top 10? Why would God, with just 10 things to tell Moses, include jealousy about livestock?

Well, think about how important this commandment is to a community, to a nation, to a democracy. If you want a mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don’t whine about what the people across the street have. Get rich and get your own.

6. Don’t listen to your elders!

After all, if the old person standing up here actually knew anything worth telling, he’d be charging you for it.

Only Stupid Voters Want a Tax Cut

From Newsbusters:

On Friday’s Countdown show, MSNBC analyst Jonathan Alter, also of Newsweek, suggested that voters who support Hillary Clinton’s call for a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax are “stupid” as he contended that the Clinton campaign team are “assuming that people are too stupid to realize that this is a bad idea that won’t save them any money at the pump.”

I defy you to find one Democrat who will point to any tax and say “this is excessive, we don’t need this money for government.  It should stay with the people who actually earn the money”.

Even Hillary’s “acceptance” of this tax holiday is not really one.  She just is so stupid as to think that she can force the oil companies to pay the tax and not pass the expense on to the consumers.  This ignorance of the laws of supply and demand sure makes her sobriquet of “Smartest Woman In the World” seem rather inappropriate.

Barking Crazy in Vermont

From the “No Adults Here” category:

Voters in two Vermont towns approved measures Tuesday calling for the indictment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for what they consider violations of the Constitution.

More symbolic than anything, the items sought to have police arrest Bush and Cheney if they ever visit Brattleboro or nearby Marlboro or to extradite them for prosecution elsewhere — if they’re not impeached first.

In Brattleboro, the vote was 2,012-1,795. In Marlboro, which held a town meeting on the issue, it was 43-25 with three abstentions.

Actually if I were advising the President I’d schedule a trip to both of those towns and just see if their police really wanted to take on the Secret Service. Or if the gutless turds who “voted” on this were willing to put their own butts on the line in that cause.

How many hippies are willing to get their geriatric heads broken now? 1968 was a long long time ago.

Healthy People Cost More

So should governments encourage people to eat twinkies and smoke?

Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn’t save money, researchers reported Monday.

It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

”It was a small surprise,” said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. ”But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more.”

And this really brings into sharp relief an interesting point about turning the responsibility over health care to a government.  While the initial jabber about universal healthcare is how wonderful it will be that no one has to worry about getting sick because the all-knowing Big Brother will take care of everyone – once you screw up the system and get government running  it, the focus becomes COST!  As in – holy crap this free health care costs tons of money.  And if we only have 25% of the population carrying everybody else, the productive ones will finally balk.

So it becomes a cost-benefit analysis – as in just how much cost can we shave off these silly people who are going to die anyway in order to keep the productive ones happy.  And government bureaucrats are really good at a) screwing over people who aren’t government bureaucrats and b) responding to political pressure.  So whoever screams the loudest gets the health care and the peasants are sent off to watch TV and die quietly in the corner.

Which this interesting little snippet in the story illustrates:

”This throws a bucket of cold water onto the idea that obesity is going to cost trillions of dollars,” said Patrick Basham, a professor of health politics at Johns Hopkins University who was unconnected to the study. He said that government projections about obesity costs are frequently based on guesswork, political agendas, and changing science.

EcoNazi – Jail Politicians Who Ignore Science

anti-growth, anti-human, anti-logicand heaven help us “to cheering” wants to lock up politicians who ignore science. Who decides what is the right science? Him? Just how much of today’s science was considered completely wrong 5 years ago? And what was considered truth 5 years ago that would be derided as idiocy today?

clipped from www.mcgilldaily.com Suzuki underlined the importance of looking backward by explaining that, because the past 50 years have seen a boom in technology and population expansion, ideas of economic growth have been skewed. “That means you have lived your entire lives in a completely unsustainable period,” Suzuki said to the young audience. “You all think [economic] growth and change is normal. It’s not.” He urged today’s youth to speak out against politicians complicit in climate change, even suggesting they look for a legal way to throw our current political leaders in jail for ignoring science – drawing rounds of cheering and applause. Suzuki said that politicians, who never see beyond the next election, are committing a criminal act by ignoring science.