Joy in Libville

Rush Limbaugh has an advanced case of lung cancer ...

Reverse Psychology

Rush Limbaugh pointed out something today that is so obvious that it is a wonder that we haven’t noted it before ... viz, whatever Trump is for, Democrats are against ... and whatever Trump is against, Democrats are for. This used to be jokingly how a parent could control an unruly child ... by using reverse psychology. “Don’t you eat that spinach!” “Please make sure you leave your room a mess.” And so forth.

So ...


If Trump wants to control immigration with a wall, Dems campaign for open borders.

If Trump wants better relations with Russia, Dems do a u-turn from their traditional fifth-column-ism and accuse him of being a Putin “cock holster.”

Dems are suddenly concerned with Trump’s national deficits after eight years of their own fire-hose spending.

Because of tax cuts, Trump’s economic miracle is just a continuation of Obama’s recovery.

Trump’s pointing out how many times reporters misrepresent the facts (“fake news”) is an attack on the First Amendment ... a rare Dem defense of same.

Since a few conservative states are placing restrictions on abortions, liberal states now are cheering for infanticide laws.


Given this cultural immaturity, maybe next year Trump should endorse whomever the Dems nominate for president ... to insure his re-election?

A Taste of Reality

The first Deep State leaker has been arrested. Her name ironically is Reality Leigh Winner and she is now a loser for her snowflake gesture of leaking a top-secret NSA document regarding Russian attempted hacking into our voter systems right before last year's election, the details of which are quite fascinating ... see: NY Post Story.

Whether these details were real or were moonbat bait (as Rush Limbaugh suspects) is irrelevant for Ms Winner did feel it her patriotic duty to pass this top-secret marked document on to the  "Intercept", a left wing Internet site. Already she is being portrayed as a Edward Snowden-like hero ... see: NY Times Story

Who is Reality Winner? First read a somewhat sympathetic CV in The Guardian. Then note that this woman has stated that "being white is racist" which does suggest that she has consumed a whole washtub full of liberal Kool Aid. For a somewhat less sympathetic view, read: Talking Points Memo.  (Interestingly, yesterday I read an even more negative story on Ms. Winner. Today, searching with Google, I could not relocate it. I wonder why?)

Anyhow, how this woman ever passed her background check with the NSA is dumbfounding? The fact that her parents gave her this hippy-dippy name, I think, is revealing. As is often said, "squirrels make squirrels" ...

Presser

I have to confess ... I'm not a slobbering fan of President Trump's style ... like he often displayed in his press conference yesterday  ... just like I never was a fan of reality TV. (And Trump is the personification of reality TV.) But I am a big fan of what Trump is doing ... like what he summarized at beginning of this presser. If you have over an hour, watch: VIDEO: SEE IT ALL In general, with a very few exceptions, Trump is doing courageous combat against the alt-Left, the fake news media, our real enemies abroad, and even his own party's establishment ... in order to tell the difficult truths and correct decades of creeping corrosive chimeras (aka, agenda-driven fantasies).

This presidential news conference made big news not necessarily because of what he said but rather because of Trump's performance. Rush Limbaugh said that it "was one of the most effective press conferences I have ever seen." And, I suspect, that the majority of viewing Americans felt the same way. Yes, he, like always, engaged in hyperbole (LIES to the left), he eviscerated the lefty media (but he did take questions from them), he took most of his shots from the hip (without major flubs but lots of media hysteria), and bragged about his accomplishments (despite his Deep State problems).

So, we have passed through a portal into a new reality ... a reality where many of our old assumption no longer hold. President Trump's world is not as many in the main stream media want it to be. And so they, and many of Obama's acolytes look forward to the next four years like a trip to the dentist. Therefore they resist, at their peril, with brickbats, fake news and disloyalty.

If the progs want to change Trump, they better start by changing vast swaths of America outside of both coasts ... before, that is, Trump changes the coasts.

Observations of the Day

Why is almost every female talking head on the Fox News Network a bleached blond? Or, to offer a variation on an old chestnut, "Never get into a argument with a TV network that buys its peroxide by the barrel" (Rush Limbaugh has a quaint appellative for such female commentators ... he calls the them "infobabes.")

And speaking of Rush Limbaugh (who I haven't listened to for over a year) ... he kiddingly  used to call the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas ... the "Bill Clinton Library and Massage Parlor." How right he has turned out to be. Ed Klein in his new book, Guilty as Sin, has just revealed that the Clinton Library has been regularly used for foot massages and wet tee shirt contests ... see: Breitbart Story.

Again to paraphrase another old saw, "One should never underestimate the debauchery of Bubba Clinton."

Anything Goes

The political  right is learning the successful "anything goes" tactics of the political left. For generations liberals have used outrageous actions to push their agenda very effectively. Ever since the anti-war protests during the Vietnam war ... which proved very effective ... the left has been building and refining the way that it captures and keeps the national stage. Act Up, Code Pink, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, etc. ... all these myriad radical organizations have elbowed their way onto the front pages of the American media ... and continually moved their agendas forward by staying top of mind.

The right, being naturally conservative had, for the longest time, eschewed such outrageous behavior ... to its regret. Yes, occasionally Republicans like Newt Gingrich, would make small inroads into this rough and tumble world. But they were quickly belted back by the liberal media ... remember Time magazine's front-cover depiction of Newt as the Grinch who stole Christmas? Basically, outrageous behavior was the privileged territory of liberals ... because it worked so well.

But slowly, painfully slowly, conservatives have been shucking their propriety and getting down in the mud with the liberals. Ann Coulter comes immediately to mind. She has honed outrageous rhetoric to a rapier-edge. The more she is attacked, the more she attacks back, whether she is always right is unimportant ... it's the fact that she is undaunted in this political contest of wills ... and that is her calling card.

Others have filled out the ranks of these conservative brick-bat throwers ... Dinesh D'Souza, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos, and now ... enter stage right ... Donald Trump. Matter of fact, one could argue that one of the reasons Trump has been so successful has been his bodacious behavior. Middle America has enthusiastically embraced someone who is finally really pushing back against our steady descent into socialist anarchy, They are willing to hug a less than a perfect conservative merely because he is kicking over a few of the loony left's bar stools.

And the phlegmatic right ... such stalwarts as Mitt Romney, George Will, Jeb Bush, and, to a lesser extent, Charles Krauthammer are aghast at such Trump effrontery. These straight-lacers are not so much turned off by what Trump says ... it's the way that he says it. It cuts against the grain of what a conservative is. "Conservatives just don't behave this way."

Well, we better get used to it. Outrageous behavior is finally working wonders for the Republicans ... to the point that Hellary Clinton is starting to look like a Victorian school marm. For good or evil, politics has finally become a cage match where now, from both sides, anything goes.

Success!

When Obummer first took office, Rush Limbaugh issued that famous quote, "I hope he fails." Well, unfortunately, Rush was wrong ... and Obummer, over seven years, has experienced fairly wide-ranging successes with his objectives ... many, I am sure, we will hear about this Tuesday night.

He has pulled our troops out of Iraq. He has orchestrated a surge of troops in Afghanistan, "the good war." He has gotten his health care reform, Obamacare, passed and now implemented. He has opened our borders to many tens of thousands of "dreamers," or young illegal Mexican and Central American immigrants. He has also admitted tens of thousand of legal Muslim immigrants. Through the Muslim Brotherhood, he helped spawn the Arab Spring and all the changes it caused in the Middle East. He overthrew the Kadaffi government in Libya. ዕብያ።With the generous help of the Federal Reserve Bank , he has reduced the national unemployment rate to 5 %. He has drawn attention to possibly illegal police shootings throughout the country.  He has waged a relentless war on domestic "assault weapons." He has negotiated a nuclear limitation agreement with Iran. At the Paris Climate Conference he has focused world attention on global warming. He has gone a long way toward closing the Guantanamo Bay prison. He has championed a new free-trade pact with the Far East. He has gotten his most recent $1.1 trillion omnibus budget passed ... funding most of his residual objectives.

All this while enjoying himself immensely and playing hundreds of rounds of golf all around the United States.

Of course many of these successes have also had a dark side ... but we will leave them for another time.

From God's Lips

Rush Limbaugh has had a very apt observation ...  and that is that President Obama has been "governing against the will of the American people." The latest example of which is that His Nibs is going to increase the numbers and accelerate the entry of Syrian immigrants into the United States ... see: CBC News Story. If the main-stream media were so inclined ... which I doubt ... they might commission some polling agency to inquire what percentage of the American populous would be in favor of such a boneheaded move ... particularly in the light of what just occurred in Paris. If the favorable percentage broke 10%, I would be greatly surprised.

Does this sway Obama? Has he given a horse's patootie for what popular opinion has been in the United States during his seven year dynasty? Of course not. Our president's motivations are totally without self inspection or sensitivity to the popular will. It is as though, to paraphrase that old Jewish chestnut, from God's lips directly into his ear. And, since most of Obama's major decisions have been minor disasters, either this Divine communication has been garbled ... or it has been overridden by Valarie Jarrett.

 If the vetting process for Syrian immigrants is anything like it was for the Tsarnaev family (from which emerged the Boston Marathon bombers), we are in for a very dangerous future.

Wrecking Ball

Rush Limbaugh, when Barack Obama first took office, trumpeted that now famous challenge, "I hope he fails." Unfortunately, President Obama has succeeded beyond I think even his wildest HOPE. He has been a one-man wrecking ball to the many structures that once made the United States the leader of the free world ... and he and his Svengali, Valerie Jarrettt, unfortunately still have a year and a half left to cause even more havoc.

Without getting into the gritty details, this disaster of a chief executive has mortgaged our great-grandchildren's future, corrupted just about every executive department, continually lied to the American people, gutted our military, alienated our allies, cozied up to our enemies, set race relations back generations, pissed on our Constitution, stifled our economy, rewarded failure, punished success, created new entitlements that probably will persist forever, broken numerous laws with impunity, abetted illegal immigration, ransacked our health-care system, elevate pop-culture banality to preeminence, encouraged much of our lap-dog media to ignore these many evil transformations ... and I am sure there are more sins that we will learn about as historians sift through this two-term carnage..

But there is one positive ... as David Brooks once observed, Obama still has a sharp crease to his trousers. The question of the day is ... does Hillary also take equally good care of her pants suits?

People I Could Do Without

Mitch McConnell

Flo

The Donald

Linda Dunham

Debbie Wasserman-Shultz

Vladimir Putin

Adam Sandler

Pope Francis

Ayatollah Khamenei

Rush Limbaugh

Gravitas

Charles Barkley

Rush Limbaugh posed a question on his radio show yesterday, "Who is the only respected black leader who can speak out truthfully about the situation in Ferguson without being vilified in the national media?" The answer, after a bit of filler tease, was Charles Barkley ...  who had just called the recent looters in this St. Louis suburb "scumbags" ... see: Breitbart Article. (Although Bob Beckel did take a shot at Barkley last night on "The Five" on Fox ... perhaps because he had listened to Limbaugh?)

Now for the much more revealing question ... who was the last black person with sufficient gravitas and courage to speak out about the excesses and dislocations within the black community? Scroll down for the answer ...

Bill Cosby

Playing Possum

Rush Limbaugh has a new corollary to his old “Teflon Barry” theory (wherein Obama appears detached from world and national events so that he is never held accountable by the media for bad outcomes … it is always other persons or events that are to blame.) Now Rush believes that Obama is slyly encouraging the now popular meme that he is inattentive to all his administration’s problems so that he can, sub rosa, still advance his agenda of transforming America … basically a clever political rope-a-dope. (I, myself, could be then accused of playing into this Obama tactic … see my Hand on the Throttle posting.)

If this is truly President Obama’s sinister strategy, then one only needs watch events over the next few months to see how much pissing on the Constitution he tries to carry off. If this is in fact faux presidential inattentiveness, then Limbaugh may once again be on to something. The acid test will be whether our fearless leader continues to stick it to middle America … particularly after the mid-term elections in November.

I don't often disagree with Rush Limbaugh ... but somehow I feel he may be giving Obama more credit by a half than he deserves … his apparent sleep-walking through his many administration problems may well be just a mélange of laziness and inexperience … and not perspicacity … in my humble opinion.

Peace

Rush Limbaugh has espoused that peace will not be achieved in the Israeli-Palestinian (or any) conflict until one side wins … and wins decisively. I agree. The reason why this belligerency seems interminable is that as soon as Israel achieves a limited tactical advantage, the world rises up in banner-headline protests (I wonder why this is), and Israel withdraws to await the next Hamas (or whomever’s) onslaught.

Already we see the negative press surrounding Israel’s attempt to stop the rocket and mortar barrages from the Gaza strip. Our Secretary of State, John Kerry, reflects this administration’s private cynicism over Israel’s incursions into Gaza (“pinpricks?”) … even while tepidly endorsing Netanyahu’s efforts.

To establish a lasting peace in this region, Israel must destroy Hamas, kill all its leaders, destroy all its weaponry, collapse all its tunnels, and severely punish all its warriors and fifth column. Anything else means that this charade will re-occur and re-occur until such time as those who want to destroy Israel finally achieve their goal. Then perhaps the liberal left in this country and in Europe will fall silent … and happily declare peace.

Sleepwalking to Our Perdition

I am more and more verklempt that the American public … and its increasing dissatisfaction with the Obama administration … are becoming irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. We protest and Obama plays pool … lifting a middle finger to our angst as irrelevant.

Our fearless leader cares not a wit about the mare’s nest that he (and Hildebeest and the Botox boy) have created with our foreign policy … nor his administration’s cacophony of corruption interrupting our domestic tranquility. He reads his Teleprompter li[n]es completely assured that this absolves him from any responsibility for these problems. He is not the trouble … it is the do-nothing Congress … or the tea party … or Darrell Issa … or Rush Limbaugh … or the Supreme Court … or those mean Israelis.

“There is not one smidgen of corruption at the IRS. Al Qaida is on the run.  Bin Laden is dead and G.M is alive. The Affordable Care Act will bend our healthcare costs down. Just wait [until after 2016]!” We are a nation of pajama-boys whose concerns are not to be concerning to Barry.

After all David Letterman will joke with him at the drop of a bad pun … and Slick Willy will defend Obama’s many screw-ups with his folksy delivery … and the New York Times is still in his corner fanning him with its ticky-tacky towel … and Jon Stewart will give America’s youth the straight liberal skinny … and most of Hollywood will write him big checks. Obama’s only rationale and salvation is, “I won.”

And the searing flames and the stink of hell’s sulfur are the only things that possibly might interrupt the damning somnambulance of America’s media mindset. But somehow I doubt it ... admitting that one was wrong is a feast not savored.

Rush to Judgement

Much as I admire Rush Limbaugh for his many accurate insights and push-backs against our current political miasma ... let's be frank, he, like our President, is a egomaniacal blowhard. Sometimes his self-aggrandizement seems to have no bounds. Clearly, humility is not his middle name. So, we must suffer this obvious fault if we want to enjoy his frequent choice words of wisdom.

This dichotomy of style is now repeated in his latest commercial effort ... his award-winning children's books, Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims and Rush Revere and the First Patriots. These books (and there will be more) have the noble purpose of teaching American youngsters about the historic underpinnings of our country and why our nation is unique ... something that is clearly being abandoned by many of our schools. However, Limbaugh being Limbaugh, he still must overlay his name and visage into this process. Rush Revere? Pleeease ...

To me, this is kinda like hiding a bitter pill inside a sweet treat for one's pet ... or, maybe even, visa versa.

Unlikely to Happen

- My winning the Powerball lottery

- The New York Times endorsing a Republican for President

- A gay marriage in a Mosque

- Harry Reid bringing a Republican bill up for a Senate vote

- Rush Limbaugh admitting that he is a blowhard

- Eric Holder charging a black man with a hate crime

- U.N. staffers staying in one-star European hotels

- Obama approving the XL pipeline before the 2014 midterms

- Russia's Putin proposing self-determination for Ukrainian voters

- The ACLU defending the display of a creche on public property

- Gabby Giffords propounding Second-Amendment gun rights

- Iran endorsing Israel's right to exist

- Bill Clinton coming out of the closet

- Hell freezing over ... but ... then again ... maybe not

Far Fetched

There is a shocking account circulating among the conservative media that Varerie Jarrett gave the stand-down order during the September 11^th last Benghazi attack by radical Muslims … and not the only person who had the real authority to do so, President Obama … see the original story in: The Conservative Report.  This effectively stopped any military rescue efforts to protect our diplomatic staff there … with the sad result that Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were consequently slaughtered. No one as yet has testified that Obama gave this order ... yet we know that it was given.  

If this seems a little far fetched to you, it does to me too … except for one thing.  And that is the plethora of smoke and mirrors that have been constructed by this administration as extraordinary cover-up over the fallout from this attack.  They obviously have something (or things) to hide.  Despite our then Secretary of State’s screeching, “What difference does it make?” …. Madam (former) Secretary Clinton, it indeed does make a difference … particularly if Varerie Jarrett had been acting as our make-believe President.

If you wish to read other accounts of this shocking supposition … each presenting interesting viewpoints and supporting facts read: The Examiner Story and Charles Krauthammer's Comments and Rush Limbaugh's Comments.

Foundation Garments

In what Rush Limbaugh calls “a random act of journalism,” the New York Times has today published a very revealing article exposing much (but I’m sure not all) of the sleaze surrounding the Clinton Foundation.  This article outlines how this foundation has clearly become the sluice-way to Hillary’s run for Presidency in 2016 ... and an international belly-rubbing society in which world-wide movers and shakers get together to chew over global issues.

This sounds very much like a ballooned-out version of Bill Clinton’s role in the Democrat Leadership Council (aka, the New Democrats … see: Wikipedia Entry) in the late 1980s which helped propel him into the Presidency in 1992.  It also gets rather specific about the number of the Clinton acolytes who are sucking on the teats of this multi-million dollar non-profit sow … keeping this posse in caviar until such time as Hillary has announced for the Democrat imprimatur.

And it seems that, for all the money that the Clinton Foundation takes in, very little of it actually goes to the causes it professes.  Instead, other foundations and influence-seeking oligarchs are asked to donate to these causes under the aegis of the Clinton name.  The Times also mentions that this foundation is moving its headquarters to the Time-Life building in midtown Manhattan … so much for Bill Clinton’s previously-propounded pied a terre in Harlem.

I strongly recommend that you read this expose before it disappears from the Times white-board and its authors, Nicholas Confessore (great name!) and Amy Chozick are relegated to the secular arm … see: NY Times Article.  Oops, it's already been girdled ... instead read this same article by proxy at ... The UK Telegraph Article

I now also wonder if the IRS will revisit its granting of tax-exempt status to this obviously politically-motivated and self-serving foundation?  What do you think?

(A tip of the hat to my wife, Jeanette, for pointing out this article to me.)

Afterward: Here are more disclosures ... Townhall Story and the actual Times article itself that is back online: NY Times Article.

Untouchables

From time to time the I-word, impeachment, is whispered in the halls of power (see: National`Review Story).  But Rush Limbaugh was right today when he predicted that President Obama will never be impeached in the House … let alone convicted in the Senate.  The reason being is that he is a black man … and the first black President to boot.  A large segment of America would not tolerate such a development … both because it proves their voting logic flawed ... but it would also brand our body politic as racists.  This is a very dangerous situation … because, if Obama understands that he has been thusly inoculated (and I suspect he does), it gives him great license to do almost anything he wants.

Already we have numerous festering administration scandals in various stages of discovery.  Obama’s posture in all these malfeasances is that he either was somewhere else … or that he found out about them in the national media. This, as we all know, is called "plausable deniability" which is, of course, ridiculous ... but our dumbed-down American public seems quite willing to accept his lame excuses.  They are distressed about these scandals, but once Obama avers that “we will hold the guilty parties accountable,” “we will work with Congress to remedy these problems,” and “we will not keep back any pertinent information in these investigations;”  they swoon and hold him harmless.  Even if there turns out to be a smoking gun in one or more of these scandals, Obama is likely still to escape cupability unscathed.

But the real point of this blog posting is that, being “untouchable” and being of questionable character, President Obama and his posse are likely to escalate the ruthlessness of their future Constitutional tramplings until the very foundation of our republic is threatened. 

Three and one half years is a very long time for them to concoct such mischief.

Clipping Hedge Funds

I criticize President Obama quite a lot.  So when I get a chance to agree with him, I feel to be out of step with myself.  However, his calling for hedge fund managers to pay taxes on their compensation ... as though it were ordinary income ... strikes me as quite rational (see: Huffington Post Story).  The reason that these barons of Wall Street ... such as Warren Buffet ... currently get away with paying 20% (just upped from 15%) on their hedge-fund compensation (which often can runs into the tens, if not hundreds of million dollars) is that it is treated as "carried interest" ... in other words, it is viewed for tax purposes by the IRS as though it were real interest on invested capital.  It most often isn't.  The definition of "carried interest" is:

"A share of any profits that the general partners of private equity and hedge funds receive as compensation, despite not contributing any initial funds. This method of compensation seeks to motivate the general partner (fund manager) to work toward improving the fund's performance."

Rush Limbaugh has also  zeroed in on "carried interest" as possibly being a problem. This could be because the recent raising of the taxes on capital gains from 15% to 20% may have been inspired by this tax loophole  That is, the rest of the country is now paying a penalty for this one taxing inconsistency.  Rush had in the past implied that this compensation represents a fair (interest) return on what these managers initially invested.  It most often isn't.  Or, if it is, is is not allocated according to what percentage their initial investment represents relative to the total hedge fund assets.  This, to me, is wrong ... and needs to be remedied.  The closing of this tax loophole is not going to balance the federal budget (bringing in just a few extra billion dollars), but this unfairness seems to be gnawing at Obama’s (and my) psyche … and should be fixed.   Then maybe we can drop the real capital gains tax rate back to 15%?  That would be fair.

So even though Obama seems to be biting the hand (Wall Street) that has fed him royally, I will support him on this one issue.  But I won't make it a habit.