The 53 Percent – Dog Version

The New Tone – Sarah Palin Version

Caution – as always with liberals they feel that profanity somehow gives their words more love

Democrats and the Filibuster

Sometimes the world turns out right.  To read the weeping, wailing, and knashing of teeth from the left now about the filibuster in the Senate almost causes me to weep with joy.  Some of the most recent examples include Vice President “Plugs” Biden:

Moments after administering the oath to Brown, Biden held court with reporters outside the Senate chamber, in which he had served for 36 years. He said he has tasked his staff to study the constitutional history of filibusters, to determine what steps could be taken.

“I’ve never seen a time when it’s become, sort of, standard operating procedure,” Biden said. “You want to get anything done, you have to have a supermajority. And I really mean this, unrelated to whether or not Barack and I are sitting down in the West Wing now. Any president in the future having to move through anything he or she wants, requiring a supermajority, it’s not a good way to do business.”

Wendy Kaminer (some extremely shrill left-wing kook covering the US for a Marxist UK website) – her bio says shes a lawer, writer, and free speech activist.  “Mommy when I grow up I want to be a free speech activist”:

So by voting as an impenetrable bloc, a minority of Senate Republicans representing a minority of voters have managed the effective shutdown of Congress, while shifting the blame for legislative stasis (and the failure of bipartisanship) to Democrats, who are at least nominally in charge.

Thomas Geohogan at The Nation:

Let the filibuster be the filibuster. If it is an obstructionist tactic, let it obstruct. If the Republicans want to shut down the presidency, make them shut down the Senate. If you take on this battle, you will have the country behind you. For the majority of Americans–yes, even Mr. Smith–want the government to work.

one of may from the Dummy Underground:

As difficult as ending the filibuster may appear, if it has become enough of a threat to the things the White House values, then it has certainly become a major threat to things other powerful Democrats value. And, once it becomes a major threat to something the party values, then the party leadership becomes increasingly likely to join in an effort to defeat it. At this point, it seems to me that many in the party leadership are waiting for the grassroots to start building this movement, so they can jump in later on.

Just remember how eager they were to filibuster anything and everything related to George W. Bush just 2 years ago?

Payback is a b*tch

9/12 – Time Lapse Video

Right Wing Extremists

Rare Democrat Candor – But It Is John Kerry

In his comments today urging his fellow Senators to waste $1 trillion of your money, John Kerry*  made the following slip:

I’ve supported many tax cuts over the years, and there are tax cuts in this proposal. But a tax cut is non-targeted.

If you put a tax cut into the hands of a business or family, there’s no guarantee that they’re going to invest that or invest it in America.

They’re free to go invest anywhere that they want if they choose to invest.

It is rare that Democrats actually come out against freedom in actual words – although  every action they take is to limit dangerous things like personal liberty.

We all know from his failed Presidential campaign that John Kerry is an elitist snob who tends to marry money (big fracking gobs of it), so he is obviously much more qualified than any American family to spend their money wisely.  After all, he got elected Senator didn’t he?  Doesn’t that confer upon him Olympian powers of wisdom?

* John Kerry may or may not have been in Cambodia, but he did serve in Vietnam before throwing some kind of medals over the fence of the White House.

Identification

“How do you identify a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you identify an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.” –Ronald Reagan (1987)

To Heck with Any Of This Conservative Outreach

Marie Coco has an illuminating article today about Obama and “the Right”:

Nonetheless he (Obama) keeps telling congressional Republicans that he will work with them — even though they are among the chief architects of this disaster. Since the Reagan era, Republicans have put tax cuts ahead of all other economic policies, and deregulation a close second. They have stuffed wallets that already were plump, left the broad middle class staggering and allowed the working class to become the working poor. If these politicians that Obama so fervently wishes to engage have such good ideas to offer, why have they not done so? In fact, there are few Washington traditions as annoying as the cultish worship of bipartisanship, for it ignores the simple fact that sometimes one party gets things disastrously wrong.

Although this perfectly illustrates the class-warfare and wealth-creation bashing that is the mindset of “progressives” (and more on that later) – I will agree with her on one thing.  Bipartisanship is absolute and utter crap in the context of where America is today.

Any Republican who goes along with this humongous generational theft and Democrat Party re-election slush fund known as the “stimulus” should be cast aside immediately.  Any Republican who thinks they will gain anything from “outreach” should have those outreaching arms chopped off at the elbows.  The only thing they will gain is to further entrench government dependence and subservience on the American people – which is to say they would further cement the downfall of this once-great nation.

There is absolutely nothing that Barack Obama and his socialist administration wishes to accomplish which would a) help America in the long run or b) further Republican views and aims.  Just what part of shutting down Gitmo would make Republicans safer or more electable?  “Oh yes, we supported President Bush, but now that the Messiah has come to town we will go along with his idea that quarantining these two-legged beasts where they can no longer work for our downfall is just an icky idea and we see the light”.  That will work for them?  So when the next election comes around and their Democrat opponent points out just how little they believed in supporting Gitmo and how they “voted for torture” and how they were immoral people with no center – they will not have much to stand on.  Or if you thought Gitmo helped make us more secure, why did you then work to shut it down?  I know that if I were trying to unseat these twerps who have such “flexible” moral imperatives that would be an easy way to position them for the voters.

And especially on this idiotic trillion dollar plus (above and beyond the $700 billion TARP) monstrosity.  Any Republican who supports any of this is simply whistling past the graveyard.  The Democrats know that the spending won’t actually take place till just about time for the mid-year elections when that big boost to the economy will allow them to say “see – we saved you from George W. Bush and the Republican’s efforts to destroy your livelihood”.   And it won’t matter one whit if some gutless RINOs stand up and try to take credit for some birdge or road or anything.  Voters know that if they want goodies, they go to the Democrats.  Democrats are the mommy party – and that especially includes “money for nothing”.

And as for Ms. Coco’s economic arguments – this one just kills me:

Another is the mantra that “entitlements” — that is Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — are costly, bloated and threaten the nation’s economic future. Obama already has pledged to undertake “entitlement reform,” a phrase that sends a shudder down my spine. With banks and other financial institutions now “entitled” to hundreds of billions in public money to bail them out of disastrous decisions, it is impossible to see why taxpayers who have paid for their future benefits through their payroll taxes should not be “entitled” to receive them. Besides, since there is no immediate crisis in Medicare — and certainly not in the healthier Social Security program — there isn’t even a reason to mention this right now.

Which seems to boil down to three things.  1 – you are paying for Medicare and Social Security (not enough for what is actually needed, but you are paying)  2 – the evil Wall Street bankers got tons of money and 3 – the real problems will happen tomorrow and we can just all Scarlett O’Hara that issue anyway.

And if anything tells you about Democrats and all the huge amounts of spending they plan – that tells you all.

Media Awards – Inauguration Division

A few of my favorites from the long, long list of gushing and fawning yesterday.

1.  The Beating the “Literally” Dead Horse Award

Naomi Wolf

The great leaders in the US weren’t the cheerleaders who promised ­morning in America. They were the ones that forced us to look in the mirror. Since Reagan there has been this tradition, which has become a cliche, of promising morning in America, this fake optimism, we’re the best, the city on the hill.

2.  The 12-year-old Schoolgirl Thrill Award

Melissa McEwan
It is, however, mere moments before footage of the crowd – that amazing, breathtaking crowd – makes me giddy with anticipation and disinclined to look backward, no matter how thrilled to see the back of Bush I am.

And oh how thrilled I am.

Barack Hussein Obama gives his first speech as our president, and its every word and every beautiful turn of phrase appeals to our better natures. It implores us to service, to sacrifice, to shared responsibility. It asks for our imagination and our participation. It says, in each idea, each exhortation, each question, each sentence: I am a uniter, not a divider.

3.  The I Can Name The Most Dead Guys In One Paragraph Award

David Sanger

Mr. Obama talked, with echoes of Churchill, of the challenges of taking command of a nation beset by what he called “gathering clouds and raging storms.” As a student of past Inaugural Addresses, he knew what he needed to accomplish. He had to evoke the clarion call for national unity that Lincoln made the centerpiece of his second Inaugural Address, in 1865, married with Franklin Roosevelt’s warning that the market had been allowed to go haywire thanks to the “stubbornness” and “incompetence” of business leaders. And he needed to recall the combination of national inspiration and resoluteness against new enemies that John F. Kennedy delivered in his Inaugural Address, just over six months before Mr. Obama was born.

4.  The Of Course My Expectations Aren’t Too High Award

Kenya – From The Times of London

“This man is Jesus,” shouted one man, spilling his Guinness as Barack Obama began his inaugural address. “When will he come to Kenya to save us?” If Barack Obama’s spin doctors have been trying to lower expectations since his election victory, the message clearly has not reached the land of his father.

“Now he is president we will get food and jobs,” said Ben Ochieng, as he danced to the traditional music that replaced the planned show.

“It is right that when people get power they look after their family, so we know that Obama will build lots of good things for us, like schools and roads and clinics,” said George Opiyo as he left the theatre.

5.  The How Can I Impress The Importance of This On You Any More Award

Mary Dejevsky

Few public utterances can have been more keenly anticipated by more people in more places than the inaugural address of President – President, now, how does that sound? – Barack Obama.

(And we need to be aware that this includes things like The Sermon on the Mount, Moses and the 10 Commandments, and any address by the Pope – me)

6.  The Undeniable Force Tin Foil Hat Trophy

Steven Weber

But Barack Obama is our new leader, our new son of freedom. He is at once at the center of a force and the force itself. That he is the right person for this job can not be denied, indeed there must be no more Orwellian denials of the sort the outgoing administration engaged in daily, hourly.

7.  The Economic Idiot of 2009 Award

Benjamin R. Barber

As the president gave his campaign cry of “yes we can!” the reality of an exuberant walk up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, cynical men and women eyeing their assets with that very greed the new President had condemned in his inaugural speech were whining “no we can’t.”

As the country rose to heights the most hopeful could scarcely imagine, these cynics were pushing the stock market down to new depths — more than 300 points down, below 8000. This knee-jerk vote of non-confidence in the economy in the face of the most impressive vote of confidence in democracy the country has ever seen reveals a dangerous schism. It sets how we think as investors against how we act as citizens. It makes Wall Street more important than Constitution Avenue.

(We swear in a proud “wealth spreader” and you are surprised people want to take the money and run?)

8.  The Death to Conservatives and Neocons and Especially BUSH!!!!!!!!! Award

The Guardian Leader

For all the immensity of the symbolism, though, yesterday was about something more tangible and practical. It was a day of change as well as a day of ceremony, and Mr Obama made clear, in his hugely anticipated inaugural address, that this moment in Washington marked the death and burial not just of the George Bush presidency, but also of the neoconservative approach to foreign policy, the hands-off-the-markets approach to the economy and to what Mr Obama called the era of “petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas” in public life which underpinned the past eight years.

Predictions for 2009

Just a few of mine:

1.  Ending DJIA – 6200

2.  Iran announces it has enough material for at least two nuclear bombs.

3.  China sends in a couple hundred thousand troops as North Korea announces Kim Jung Crazy has suffered a massive stroke and domestic rioting begins.

4.  Obama administration completely capitulates to global warming nutjobs and signs on to 2009 Copenhagen accords to gut US economy by reducing carbon emissions by 70% fromn 1990 levels by 2020.  What will he care – even with two terms he will be long gone from getting the blame.  Treaty approval is rammed through the Senate on voice vote with no committee hearings and the joyous votes of RINOs Snow, Collins, Spectre, and McCain.

5.  Attorney General Holden begins war crimes investigations against former Bush Administration officials.

6. Obama re-instates the Fairness Doctrine administratively and court case proceeds to Supreme Court by end of 2009.

7.  US Senate seats Illinois Democrat Burris rather than risk a court fight and lose the vote for a year or more.

8.  As economy continues to deteriorate, Michedlle Obama becomes Mother Teresa figure for the downtrodden and out-0f-work as the media continues to massage her ego.

9.  Joining Britain–Germany, Spain, Italy, and Greece allow the establishment of Islamic courts as a parallel justice system for Muslims continues to grow in Western Europe.

10.  Smug, self-congratulatory Silicon Valley Obama backers will be furious to find out that they are considered to be “rich” by their Messiah.  California will continue to hemorrage the intelligent and hard-working.  Unfortunately they will move to Colorado and continue to remake this wonderland into another version of Tax-and-tax-and-unionize-and-elect-Democrats that they created in California in the first place.