Beating a Dead Camel

I know, I know I am beating a dead camel about where Barack Obama was born. But I was recently curious about whether Stanley Dunham, Barack’s mother, had ever traveled to Kenya. In this search I came across the following interesting article that makes a compelling case that she had been there and that this is where our 44th President was born ... revealing things that I had never before seen. If you can open your mind dear reader, peruse it, you might be enlightened: Israel National News.

The assertions therein, combined with the fact that his college applications have never been made public, his curious Social Security number ... together with the above sales sheet for his book “Dreams from My Father” certainly make an interesting case that Obama’s handlers did a very professional job obfuscating this Constitutional-relevant fact.

This possible revelation obviously makes no political difference now that Obama is out of office. But, to me, the need to inform history supersedes the razzle dazzle that America has been subjected to during Obama’s presidential campaigns. Facts eventually persist ... no matter the level of pooh-poohing or partisan blowback. Maybe, this revelation won’t be generally accepted for fifty years ... but  the truth will out whatever it really is. Maybe even our Constitution will be amended to remove this birthplace structure in retrospect.

Sunspots

Climate scientists are sounding a warning. But this time it has to do with global cooling. It seems that lack of sunspots, like now, are a reliable predictor of lower global temperatures ... see: Daily Mail Article.

What? I thought that CO2 was the only driver of climate change? (Now it is sunspots ... and there are many others.)

Now, in order to save us from freezing, Al Gore, Barack Obama Jerry Brown and 97% of climate scientists are now pushing for more fossil fuel usage to increase CO2 to counteract our dimming sun. This we will have to do anyway to  burn to help us warm our homes.

Useless Idiots

Stalin had a term for the fifth-column Communists around the world.  He called them "useful idiots." President Trump has a different set of issues ... "useless idiots" ...  a large set of detractors who bend over backwards to undermine his efforts to keep America safe. I know it is early-on, but here are my nominations for the Useless Idiots of the Year ... those stentorian radical-Islam apologists who apear to care more for their own ideologies and election ambitions. I'm sure that some of my liberal readers might have some other names to put forward:

Bill "Big Bird" DeBlasio

Justin "Timber" Trudeau

Elizabeth "Lieawatha" Warren

Barack "Bathhouse Barry" Obama

Chuck "Tiny Tears" Schumer

Hillary "Sir Edmund" Clinton

Rahm "Godfather" Emanuel

Nancy "Botox" Pelosi

Keith "I CAIR" Ellison

Bleeding Hearts

The term "bleeding-heart liberal" must exist because of hard evidence. For some reason, perhaps guilt by association, lefties often want the world to be as they wish it ... not as it is. So, President Barack Obummer and Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown, Governor of California, are both in a pardoning and sentence commutation frenzy ... particularly insofar as drug dealers are concerned (many also with gun violations). Over his eight years in office, Obama has pardoned or commuted the sentence of 1324 felons ... see: NY Times Article ... with some more Bill-Clinton-like bomb shells likely to occur before January 20th. And Brown has had equivalent but likely misguided compassion ... forgiving the sins of 856 mostly drug felons ... see: LA Times Article.

Yes, the federal and often state Constitutions grant these government executives these powers ... but I don't believe that the framers believed that they would be granted in such a blanket fashion. Yes, in the past, there have been overall pardons granted to soldiers after the Civil War, for polygamist Mormons and for  the draft evaders in the Vietnam War ... but these were special cases. It would appear to this observer that Obama and Brown's mass forgiveness comes out of a sense of empathy with these criminals ... both executives having been heavy drug users in their pasts.

It is almost a certainty that some of these released felons will display recidivism and return to their criminal ways ... at which time bleeding hearts will most certainly result in more bleeding bodies.

Afterward: Over the past year both presidential candidates and the media have focused on the epidemic of drug use and abuse that is sweeping our nation. Somehow, releasing thousands of drug dealers back onto our streets likely won't help this problem ... and actually may be part of the reason it exists in the first place.

Necktie Party

A ragtag posse composed of Barack Obummer, the Clinton crime family, Bernie Sanders, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and many other desperadoes are in the process of stringing up the Democrat Party. It has taken them a number of years, but the extra-legal and self-serving actions of these political lynchers has the Dem Party gasping for air. The Party is not dead, quite yet, but the rope is cutting well into its neck as the lamentations over Fidel Castro's death rises to a crescendo from these masked men and women. And Jill Stein ... with Hellary's blessing ... has just slapped the horse's rump saddling the doomed party and yelled "giddy-up" ... as result of her contesting the recent presidential voting results in three states.

The United States used to be a two party country ...  but, the neck-tie party of these western outlaws suggests that this dipole is rapidly becoming a political monopole. All because of the gigantic egos of these teeny teeny people.

Grasping at Straws

I think I can see a theme to the Democrats' emotional embrace of Hellery Clinton. All those seemingly bright people who really should know better are again being swayed by feelings ... not logic. Obummer was elected on feelings ... twice ... "Oh, wouldn't it be peachy if we had a 'clean, articulate black' (Biden's words) as president to prove that we are not racists and are sorry about that slavery thing." All these kumbaya voters cared not a wit about Obummer's shady past. He went to Harvard Law and briefly served in the Senate and that was enough for them. Forget that the important details of his past were under seal and ignore what damage he has since wrought on their country ... these same robots amazingly still give him a decent approval rating (unless the polls are biased, which is quite possible).

Hellery is playing off of this similar emotional appeal ... "Oh, wouldn't it be nice to have a woman in the White House to finally show that we are not a sexist country ... and we can make up for all the years when women did not have the vote." Such a mindless choice would bring at least another four years of self-serving governance in which the Clinton crime family would clearly cut deals, both domestic and abroad, that further diminished the United States' fortitude and rectitude. The mere thought of all the damage that she would likely cause gives me the shivers. Any country or miscreant offering material rewards to the Clinton Foundation would be given the keys to Fort Knox. She has no genuine patriotism or scruples  ... just imagine Obummer squared.

I guess the bottom line is this -- as things deteriorate in this country ... and most of us can sense it ... the solution that many Democrats seek is ... more of the same. I think that this is realistically called "grasping at straws." And, I will also confess, that voting for Trump unfortunately has a soupçon of "change at any cost" emotional rationale.

Fire Hydrant Talks

Thursday night, in order to push forward his agenda of prison and criminal sentencing reform ... and lifting his leg once again on the fire hydrant he calls the police ... Barack Obummer emoted some very misleading statistics trying to show how racist America's law enforcement system is. On Friday Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute was on talk radio providing the real numbers ... most of which knocked Obummer's assertions into a cocked hat ... see: Rush Limbaugh Interview and National Review Article.

The show she was on was the Howie Carr Show here in Boston and Howie treated us to another interesting statistic. Apart from his body language and tonal disparity, Barack Obummer spent over 16 minutes Thursday night, before the Dallas shootings, disparaging, on Polish television, American police forces as racist for the shooting in Minneapolis and Baton Rouge. Friday morning, in response to the heinous shootings in Dallas in which five police officers were murdered, Obummer spent less than four minutes with his monotonal and perfunctory remarks some of which were directed at blaming guns for this mayhem. Obummer was over four times more vocal about those first two black killings than he was about the five police deaths in Dallas.

The One who promised in 2008 to be an uniter is, as an unfortunate fact, a natural-born divider.

Conservation of Energy

In physics there is a law that states that, "in a closed system, the total amount of energy is conserved," Apparently, this is also true in politics ... as recently exemplified by Mitt Romney's attack on fellow Republican and presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump. Since Romney could really not find the gumption or the traction to attack with force his Democrat opponent, Barack Obummer, during his run for this same post in 2012, Romney. therefore has plenty of energy leftover to vilify his follow-on Republican candidate ... see: NBC News Story.

It is really a shame that these recent brickbats could not have been used four years ago against his then Democrat opponent, Obummer. Romney might have saved our country a whole parcel of grief over this last leaderless term of our now child president.

And has Romney directed any of his current vitriol against Trump's presumptive opponent, Hellery Clinton? No? Strange!

Afterthought: Many of those voters, who didn't pull the lever for Romney in 2012, are now cheering him on ... so sad.

Registrate y Vota

Community organizers are essentially the ground game for the Democrat party and, in many instances, this ground game is meant to subvert the laws of the United States ... such as, in California where they are trying to register Latinos to vote so that they can support Democrat candidates in the Fall ... see: The Press Enterprise Story. This article implies that these registration efforts are only for legal immigrants ... but anyone who pays attention knows that illegals are also being recruited (now that, in many states, illegals have driver's licenses.)

And the community organizers doing this work are quite often front organizations like PICO, the Center for Community Change and many others (often funded by government grants and tax-exempt charitable donations) ... see: New York Times Article. This article also points out that many colleges are now offering courses in community organizing and acting as conduits ... feeding this progressive movement.

And these community organizers are also then used on Election Day to get out the Democrat vote.

Before he became a politician, Barack Obummer was a community organizer in Chicago for three years ... see: Byron York Article. Community organization is but one way that the Democrat party maintains its grip on governance despite the fact that only 31% of Americans consider themselves to be liberals ... see: Wall Street Journal Article. The other is liberals' insidious infiltration of higher education and our national media. As I have previously said, no well-meaning government program, like community outreach, cannot be subverted for some self-serving end.

Sinister

The Latin word for both "left" and "evil" is "sinistra." And consequently, for most of the modern era, left-handed people were considered to be sinister. That is why, until early in the twentieth century, left-handed children were mostly forced to write with their right hand. Interestingly our last three presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obummer have all been lefties ... physically and politically. Whether they were sinister is up to you to decide. I think that at least one fits this description.

Now for some good news ... all the presidential candidates who are still in the race are right-handed. The only left-handed ones, Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham, have dropped out. So, it now appears that the U.S. will indeed break this southpaw trend in presidents. Hopefully we will also then break this nation's downward spiral?

Quote of the Day

"It's better to live one day as Mussolini than 100 years as Barack Obama." -- Donald Trump

Afterward: In case you haven't seen Donald Trump's original re-tweeted quote: "It's better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a lamb -- Mussolini  

I Agree with Bernie

In last night's Democrat debate, Bernie Sanders made a few points with which. I concur:

- Wall Street was mainly responsible for the housing and financial collapse in 2008. The fact that no one has been indicted for this travesty proves that Washington ... in particular the Obama administration ... is beholden to Wall Street money.

- The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in the late 1990's (under Bill Clinton's presidency) is the primary reason that America's big banks have gotten too big to fail and required huge government bailouts in 2008 and 2009. Glass-Steagall needs to be reimposed.

- The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill has not fixed this problem ... in fact, these banks have even gotten bigger since the collapse and would require another bailout the next time around.

- Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have taken huge campaign contributions and speaking fees from the Wall Street banks ... particularly Goldman Sachs ... and this is why things are so cozy between these parties. Hillary Clinton cannot be relied upon to sever her relationship with Wall Street.

Now, am I a Socialist because I agree with Bernie? Not hardly, in fact what Bernie didn't and couldn't say was that the Democrat party ... in particular Barney Frank and Chris Dodd ... are another primary reason for the financial collapse in 2008 ... because they forced banks to give sub-prime mortgages to poor credit risks and then had these mortgages purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two Democrat-controlled honey pots.

Dreams

I just ran across a 56-minute video of Barack Obama discussing his book, "Dreams from My Father," at the Cambridge Public Library in September of 1995 ... see: Video. Please watch it ... it is a worthy hour investment. This reference also contains a video of a discussion of this Obama lecture as it relates to Frank Marshall Davis being a father figure for Obama (the first video). I recommend that you watch the second video first and then, if interested, go back and watch the first one second to see if you can agree with its observations.

But it is the second video that is most important in my mind as it gave me a few insights into this man's being ... a man who has been at the helm of our country for the last seven years. Here are a few of my thoughts that I derived from his lecture:

- I now believe that Obama did in fact write this book ... as opposed to the rumor that it was ghost written. He may have had lots of editorial assistance ... but it was clearly an Obama original.

- Obama was then an older student at Harvard Law School ... after he had been a community organizer in Chicago and traveled to Africa. Perhaps this added to his gravitas and helped propel him to edit the Harvard Law Review without the usual requisite law writings.

- I also now believe that Obama is brighter and more articulate than I have given him credit for in the past ... not as articulate as those who lade his Teleprompter, but certainly glib and perspicacious.

- It also seems obvious that Obama is a complex and layered personality ... much more layered and hidden today than he was back in 1995 ... possibly a product of the many handlers that have shaped his political career during the ensuing 20 years.

- To me it is also obvious that race has been the idee fixe in most of Obama's political decisions during his presidency ... driven by the kind of incidents to which he relates in the book passage he reads in this lecture. This obsession seems the basis of many of Obama's poor presidential decisions.

- At one point in the video Q and A, Obama makes the point that white America today lives in a mainly black culture. I concur, but feel forced to add that, up until about 1960, the opposite was true. It was the final liberation of American blacks that more balanced justice  ... but also flipped our culture ... not always for the betterment of our society

The Next Caliphate

The Muslim religion has often had an unique proselytizing strategy ... either convert to our way of worship or we will kill you. And this impetus has been abetted by the promise that any Muslims dying in the pursuit of this end will be richly rewarded in the afterlife. These unyielding stratagems have worked at least twice in the past ... first when the Bedouins helped Islam conquer almost half of the known world and, secondly, during the growth of the Ottoman Empire. For a bloody maddeningly complicated and a maddeningly bloody exposition of this history of Islam, see: Wikipedia Entry.

Now Islam appears to be entering another ascendancy with the creation of multiple radical sub-sects spread throughout the Mideast desiring finally to create the ultimate world-wide caliphate. This, interestingly, corresponds with the leader of the free world, the President of the United States, having grown up in a Muslim world, clearly exhibiting a sympathetic prejudice to this quest. And, for some mysterious reason which escapes me, much of the rest of the Western progressive movement seems to be following in lock-step with our fearless leader.

And since there are something like 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, this is not a trivial threat. Even if only 1% of this this populous is radicalized, this still means 15 million bad guys are to be dealt with ... the ones who may be naively trying to recreate this caliphate. Fortunately for the rest of us ... some 7 billion of other religions or no religion ... there are at least three major countries which are not ready to rollover to this existential threat ... Russia, China and India. I am tempted also to include the United States and France, but not quite yet ... perhaps after the next presidential election. The rest of  Europe, particularly Germany, seems still to have the scales firmly attached to their eyes.

I can't believe that, given the firepower of the protagonists mentioned above ... and the demographic imbalances ... that this will turn out well for the caliphate antagonists ... particularly if the protagonists can garner the gumption to resist. Of course when Iran gets atom bombs ... combined with those that Pakistan already has ... this shifts the odds slightly.

Afterthought: The motivation for many liberals (Western European politicians, the Clinton Foundation, John Kerry and much of the Obama administration) to embrace Muslims and Muslim causes may be little more than money ... 30 talents of silver ... the cash crumbs that fall from the oil-rich tables of Mideastern potentates.

Beefcake

Martin O'Malley

I'm not sure that Howard Taft could get elected president these days ... as he wouldn't look too ripped in a Speedo. The sign of the times seems to be inanity and beefcake ... Vladamir Putin riding bareback bare chested  ... and now Democrat candidate, Martin O'Malley, is taking every opportunity to show his pecs to potential young lady voters (and maybe others?)

In this era when millennials can't answer simple political questions like who won the Civil War, savvy pols have dumbed down their campaigns to kindergarten levels ... learning from the likes of Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga and Barack Obama. I can easily project that, in a few more years, Spiderman might indeed achieve high elected office.

The Hollow Men

To honor John Kerry, Joe Biden and Barack Obama for the framework of an agreement that was just struck with Iran, I reproduce T.S. Eliot's poem, The Hollow Men:

Mistah Kurtz - he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer -

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of this tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper. 

Firsts

If Hillary Clinton runs for the presidency, her strongest argument for winning is that it is time for the first woman president ... just like Barack Obama's advantage in his elections was that it was time for the first black in the White House. This "first" worked for him (much to the regret of many of his voters) and Hillary, in her high-hatted hubris, obviously thinks another first might work for her.

Of course, there are many other firsts that the American public could also be pining for ... the first Hispanic (Rubio, Cruz, Julian Castro?), the first black woman (Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett ... oh, I forgot she already has been acting as president), the first Jew (Michael Bloomberg?),  the first Martian (James Carville?), the first faux Native-American woman (Elizabeth Warren?), the first Mormon (oops, that didn't work), the first cross-dresser, the first Communist (done that already ...). etc.

I know I am being silly again, but why would such "firsts" be a over-riding advantage for winning the presidential election? But then again why would making a YouTube-published sex tape be a prerequisite for becoming a major media personality (Paris Hilton)? I guess that, given our nation's mindset, these things go together ...

Obama Nation Update

Back in early 2008, well before Barack Obama was elected, I made some predictions as to what might happen if this were to occur … see: Obama Nation. I here list those predictions that came true or are close to coming true:

- The U.S. will recognize Hamas
- Taxes will be increased across the board
- The budgets for the Defense Department and U.S intelligence activities will be slashed
- Sharia law will be made a local option throughout the U.S.
- All U.S. soldiers will be out of Iraq and Afghanistan by July 1, 2009
- All wire-taps will be stopped and those who have been tapped will be informed and any such evidence collected will be destroyed
- Illegal immigrants will be granted amnesty and given Social Security benefits

- Presidential pardons – Lynne Stewart and all current and past Guantanamo prisoners

- Oil will hit $200 per barrel
- A national carbon tax will be endorsed by the U.S. and implemented through the U.N. 

9.3 out of 22 isn't a bad batting average.

Bully Pulpit

Teddy Roosevelt bragged that the president enjoyed a “bully pulpit” from which he could persuade societal change. President Obama feels he can enjoy this same Roosevelt leverage to combat climate change with extra-Constitutional measures … see: Washington Times Story. There is one major difference however … in Roosevelt’s day “bully” mostly meant “good” and “beneficial.” To Obama “bully” means “intimidation” and “my way or the highway.”

Stupid Is That Stupid Does

Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economics professor who has been called the architect of Obamacare, has made the headlines (only on Fox News unfortunately) by repeatedly referring to the American people as stupid and needing to be deceived about the Democrats' remaking of our health care system ... see: Powerline Opinion. Let me see, we twice elected Barack Obama president without knowing much about his background except what he chose to tell us (or to concoct.) The more damaging aspects of his earlier life were generally either ignored or rationalized by our nation's media.

Perhaps Gruber was right after all ...

Afterward: Since no Democrat seems to remember Professor Gruber's contributions to the construction of Obamacare, John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog has suggested that Gruber give back the $6 million of taxpayer money he collected in the process ... see: About Gruber, I have One Question. You also might enjoy Grubergate for Dummies.