Sour Grapes

Here are a few of Obama's recent sour-grapes comments:

“And then there are probably some aspects of the Tea Party that are a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the president.”

"When we passed a bill earlier this summer to help states save jobs -- the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers and nurses and police officers and firefighters that were about to be laid off -- they said no. And the Republican who thinks he's going to take over as speaker [John Boehner]... when he was asked about this, he dismissed those jobs as 'government jobs' that weren't worth saving. That's what he said, I'm quoting -- 'government jobs.'"

“Looks like the ‘Tan-Man’ [Boehner] keeps drinking from the tanning oil bottle with his buds.”

“We've got a tradition in this country of a press that oftentimes is opinionated. The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox [News] is part of that tradition — it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It's a point of view that I disagree with. It's a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world.”

“ What I'm seeing out of the Republican leadership over the last several years has been a set of policies that are just irresponsible. And we saw in their 'Pledge to America' a similar set of irresponsible policies.”

“ [The GOP Pledge promotes] the very same policies that led to the economic crisis in the first place. It is grounded in the same worn-out philosophy: cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires; cut the rules for Wall Street and the special interests; and cut the middle class loose to fend for itself. That’s not a prescription for a better future. It’s an echo of a disastrous decade we can’t afford to relive.”

“After they [the Republicans] drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want to keys back. No! You can’t drive. We don’t want to have to go back into the ditch. We just got the car out.”

"It is inexcusable [for Democrats] to stand on the sidelines [this election year, given the prospect of big Republican gains]."

“Folks [Liberal audience] wake up! This is not some academic exercise. As Joe Biden put it, Don’t compare us to the Almighty, compare us to the alternative.”

"People [Democrat voters] need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up, if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks [his voters in 2008] weren't serious in the first place.”

All delivered in that snide, haughty, condescending, cadenced, high-handed, smirking manner that typifies Obama.  I ask, do these swipes sound Presidential?

Rush to Judgment

Let me begin by saying that I am a big fan of Rush Limbaugh. He, almost daily, offers insights that enlighten the political and social dialog. But in the last two days he has said two loopy things that have me worried.

Yesterday (or Monday) he said that the U.S. stock market is up in September because the Federal Reserve is buying stocks to prop them up before the elections in November. This clearly is nonsense. The Fed is prohibited from such equity speculation. After a while Rush tried to back off this statement (after his e-mail inbox went viral?) by saying that he meant that the low interest rates that the Fed was charging banks was essentially inflating the money supply which was then being used to buy stocks. Even this is not totally true. Most of the money that banks borrow overnight from the Fed (for essentially the doughnut) is then reinvested in government securities for a small marginal profit. However, the huge dollar amounts of these money flows still make a healthy return for these banks nonetheless.

Today, he opined on Obama’s comments in Albuquerque on how Obama’s Christianity taught him to be “his brother’s keeper.” Now, this reference comes from the Old Testament when God asks Cain where Abel was and Cain says, “Am I my brother’s keeper.” (Rush sounded very much like he had been reading a reference to this incident on the Powerline blog. See here.) However, Rush called this concept the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” said by Jesus Christ in Matthew 7.12). This mixing of religious dogma was later backtracked by Rush (after another e-mail storm?) but he never really dumped the Golden Rule reference.

Now these brain farts were so unlike Rush that I am concerned that something is afoot. I won’t speculate on what it is here, but, if something transpires in the near future, remember you heard my concern here first.

Radical Change

Our nation’s shameful K-12 education system is in the spotlight this week. President Obama has called for radical change … see here. I think that many education reformers are in the process of verbal fibrillation insofar as their suggestions for improving things. They, as expected, are generally calling for more spending, more competent teachers, smaller classrooms, more responsible parents, longer school sessions, and better testing standards. Some of these things I somewhat agree with, but, unfortunately, many are also arm-waving canards that will accomplish nothing.

I have been tutoring in the public school system for the last three years and have had an opportunity to observe a microcosm of our education system from the inside … so I have a modicum of credentials … and therefore humbly offer my suggestions on this matter:

1) Deemphasize (or eliminate) educational degrees. Any pedagogues who did or do not spend 90% of their learning experience within the subject that they are teaching does not deserve to stand in front of a blackboard. Teaching how to teach makes little sense if the recipients do not know their subjects to a fair-thee-well.
2) Cut the administrative overhead in our education system. The budget of Arne Duncan’s Department of Education has doubled this past year. We are now spending over $160 billion a year on this bunch of bureaucrats who teach not one single student and who, with shameless pomposity, spend most of their time trying to justify their bloated salaries. At one time, many years ago, New York City (NYC) had more school administrators than the entire country of France. I’m reasonably sure that this situation has not improved in the interim.
3) Cut the fiction that classroom size has anything to do with results. Class sizes in the Far East are often two to three times what they are in this country and educational results there are usually much better than they are here.
4) Create and enforce rigid, standardized testing for teachers that assesses them on their competency within their subject. The result of this test should be used not only as a basis for hiring, but also used partly to determine their salary. The remainder of their salary should be based on the change in the standardized testing scores of their students … not on how long they have been teaching or how well they are liked. Department heads should also be evaluated on how well their stable of teachers performs.
5) Eliminate the recently created national student tests … since there is no guarantee that they will work as promised … and the penalty for a sub-standard result is too great. Force all states to develop their own testing process. Reward the states whose tests produce better educational outcomes so that poorer performing states can adopt them.
6) Utilize, nay emphasize, tried and true software programs (on the internet or in the classroom) to improve students’ subject comprehension. This past year I used such a program to teach a problem student his multiplication tables. It worked better than I had any hope for. However, this cannot be a hands-off experience. It must be carefully monitored. The fact that it may be “software” does not necessarily make it good. All such software must be peer-reviewed and back-tested.
7) Textbooks should also be peer-reviewed and back-tested. I have found egregious factual errors and agenda-derived propaganda in some of the textbooks I have had to use. Such substandard stuff never should be allowed in our classrooms.
8) Bring back personal discipline to our schools. Stricter dress codes, tighter truancy standards, reduced grade inflation, increased failure rates, and stronger hall monitoring should convey the message that schools mean business. Helicopter parents who insist on unreasonable special treatment for their precious ones should not be indulged by our legislators, our courts, and/or our school administrators/teachers.
9) Any teachers’ union that strikes for irrationaly higher pay or benefits (e.g., NYC's “rubber rooms”) should lose its rights to arbitration. In fact, eliminating teachers’ unions entirely (at least for a while … until the pendulum swings back the other way) might not be a bad idea. (I also would have everything that Albert Shanker, the late President of the United Federation of Teachers union, ever wrote burned on a pyre of the thousands of other go-nowhere books by “education reformers” preaching the new math, phonic spelling, etc.)
10) This seems a small point but I think that the scrapping of cursive writing training in early education has introduced enormous inefficiencies for students in note taking, creative writing, and test answering. Bring it back.
11) I could be wrong, but I kind of buy the idea that the women’s movement and the resultant transposition of the best and brightest women out of K-12 education and into the corporate world is one reason for our deteriorating educational system. This sea change obviously can’t be reversed, but I have an alternative idea. Why don’t we tap the great reservoir of talent in our retired and out-of-work communities and encourage them to enter pedagogy? I, myself, have taken this step and I believe that there are many more who are brighter and more energetic than I who could augment our teaching ranks with their specialized knowledge and work experience. This of course would require a change to our rigid teaching certification processes … but why not, if it is the right thing to do?
12) Lastly, the most radical idea of all … let’s start privatizing our public school system … an expansion of the charter school concept. This might cut property taxes in half and dramatically reduce local, state and federal income and sales taxes. Let the free-market system start working to weed out inferior educators and schools. Now this is a very complex subject and would need to be solved without political agendas (an unique approach), but I feel confident that the money would be there to provide scholarships to the very poor under such a system. In 2006-07 the national average educational spending per student was $10,900 whereas the average spending per student in the New York metropolitan area is currently around $27,000 (see here). Public schools are a social experiment that did indeed work well for many, many years but seem to have stopped doing so for at least the last quarter century. Radical change is due, indeed required.

Which Witch?

Christine O’Donnell , the Republican candidate for the Senate in Deleware, admitted a number of years ago on the Bill Maher Show that she had briefly dabbled in witchcraft when she was in high school.  The question then is: was she Glinda, the Good Witch of the South?  Or perhaps, was she the Wicked Witch of the West?  Nah, that title already belongs to Nancy Pelosi ... who, instead of having a house fall on her, is crushing the House.

The X Factor

Male chromosomes are described as X-Y’s whereas female’s are X-X’s. The tides that are sweeping clean the political seashore have been variously described as the Tea Party Express or an anti-incumbency fervor or Palin’s picks. However, I have yet to hear any talking head attribute chromosomes as a major contributor to these surprising primary upsets, Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Linda McMahon in Connecticut, Meg Whitman in California, etc., etc. And I strongly suspect that this gender-bending will carry over to the general elections in November. (Remember, you heard it here first.)

One only has to listen to talk radio for a few days to realize that the preponderance of emotional call-ins who decry what is happening in Washington are coming from women. Yes, many men are upset with what has transpired, myself included, but it seems to be the “Momma Grizzlies” that are the most distraught. If one has ever watched a wildlife movie in which the smaller female bear ferociously attacks the much larger male bear to protect her cubs, you will understand this phenomenon. Mothers seem incensed that Washington is besmirching the future prospects for their offspring. Interestingly, many of our erstwhile political pundits, Carl Rove and Joe Scarborough included, seem to be tone-deaf to this building symphonic crescendo. Therefore, if many of the above mentioned X-chromosomers win in November, Sarah Palin will have again shown her political adroitness by coining the term “Momma Grizzlies.”

Semantics

Sarah Shourd (arrested about a year ago for wandering over the Iraq/Iran border with her two male companions) has been released by Iran on $500,000 "bail."  The exact circumstances surrounding this release and the future disposition of this case are confusing, much like the country Iran.  See here. The questions that I would like to have answered by our media would be:

- How much was this "bail"?  Was it the full amount or just 10% as is customary in the United States?
- Who paid this money and under what conditions?
- Must Ms. Shourd return to Iran for her trial ... or if she does not return will this money be lost?

However, my primary purpose here is to decry the American press's continued blind acceptance of the semantics of our antagonists.  I strongly suspect that this money paid to the Iranians is really a ransom ... particularly if Ms. Shourd is to leave Iran and not return.  And if this is a ransom payment, then I also condemn our naive press then giving Iran credit for compassion when it is really blatant and dastardly greed.

Flagging Democracy

My two children went to school in Amherst, Massachusetts and I realized, even back then, that tinfoil hats were a hot item there. My white son, in his youthful liberal zeal, tried to join a black students’ group and was told to “take a hike.” He also wore a Pravda tee shirt to his graduation.

Now, thankfully he is older and wiser, but it seems that the Amherst ivory-tower dingbats have gotten even more loopy. A year or so back the Amherst Town Meeting voted to invite Gitmo detainees to relocate there. Even a very liberal friend of my daughter (and UMass graduate), who lives with her family in nearby Belchertown, was rightfully incensed at this decision.

Now this same town’s Board of Selectmen recently decided that it was “inappropriate” to fly the American flag there to honor the anniversary of 9/11. I therefore believe that it is equally inappropriate to spend any more of our Massachusetts tax monies as viand for the fuzzy-brained skittering cockroaches in this town who call themselves professors. Perhaps we can even ask them to start educating our children instead of indoctrinating them.  What say you?

Buddha's Pest

It's a good thing that the followers of Buddha are a peaceful lot.  Otherwise imagine what would have happened when the Taliban (whom I recall are Muslims) in Afghanistan destroyed the gigantic statue of Buddha there about ten years ago.  Watch it happen here.

As they say, everything in life is relative.

Peck’s Bad Boys

When I was a naughty child, my grandmother would often call me “Peck’s bad boy,” an impish character from early dime novels … or “skeezicks,” an equally mischievous character from the “Uncle Wiggily” series of children’s books. I don’t recall being that puckish, but clearly I was getting under her skin. And my punishment was often mild and loving.

Today we have grown-up versions of Peck’s bad boy populating what remains of our newspapers and the wall-to-wall frenetic coverage on our cable news networks. These recent headline grabbers, Reverend Terry Jones of the threatened Koran-burning, and Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf of the Ground Zero mosque are annoying 15-minute-of-famers who I would prefer not intruding into my life. They are ticks sucking on the juices of our world’s popular culture, much like Lady Gaga, Al Sharpton, and that bloated comb-over of a tick, Donald Trump, who couldn’t resist entering the current 9/11 mosque fray.

I kind of wish my grandmother could return and make them all sit in the corner.

A Message ...

to Obama, Biden, Reid, Pelosi, those in Congress, all the POTUS's advisers, and those Republicans about to be elected in November ... the thing on the right is an elbow.

The Wages of Sin

Mexico is rapidly becoming a place of brutal Afghanistan-like anarchy. Recently 72 men and women were massacred in north-eastern Mexico in what is believed to be a mass execution of Central Americans hoping to slip across the United States border. See: Mexican Massacre. These killings are attributed to a Mexican drug cartel branching out into human trafficking. It is believed that the four-year total of deaths attributed to these drug cartels now exceeds 28,000. Mexico, itself, seems unwilling or unable to curb this violence. And we in this country seem conveniently to paper-over this horrendous bloodshed.

Why do we ignore it? I think that many in our ruling class and glitterati find the work of these drug cartels to be quite utile. (By glitterati I mean many in the entertainment and sports industries who have more money than they can possibly rationally spend. And by ruling class, I mean our politicians and industry titans who turn their backs on our illegal immigration problem.) These cartels supply the cocaine that the glitterati (and some in the ruling class) stuff up their noses … and offer the ruling class a steady supply of cheap labor and emotional voters who are useful to their power-hungry purposes.

What is even more galling is that our glitterati and ruling class too often pontificate on how we, who decry this massive illegal immigration and this manic drug abuse are the baddies … and that they are the compassionate ones. Bull hockey! Tell it to the families to these Central American victims.

PORC

The Republicans have come up with a number of nicknames for the $26 billion “Second Stimulus” bill that the Democrats just rammed through Congress … just in time to try to buy enough votes in November to keep their porcine asses from being run out of town on a rail. See: Second Stimulus. A few of my favorites from this article are:

”-- ‘Recovery Summer’ Bailout Act (Cash for Flunkers)
 -- Delivering Unions a Major Boost (DUMB) Act
 -- Helping Election Expenditures, Hurting American Workers (HEEHAW) Act
 -- Frivolous Act of Ineffective Largesse (FAIL) Act”

If this is not another example of Obama/Pelosi/Reid ruling against the will of the American people, I have no rejoinder. Although, the Democrats claim that this bill will not add to our country's deficit (much of the money will supposedly come out of the Food Stamp program in 2014), such chimeral rationalization stinks of the sty. To the oinked cheers of the public service unions, we have taken one more mindless step toward this country’s financial Armageddon.

I myself have another name for this self-serving legislation – PORC (Progressives Only Rule Congress)

Ditch the Republicans?

Yesterday at a Democrat fundraiser, our august prexy, Barack Obama, gave his partisan argument as to why a Democrat Congress deserves to win the elections in November. Basically, he said that Bush and the rest of the Republicans drove our economy into the ditch in 2008. Obama was subsequently elected and thus he [sigh] was required to patch up this accident. With that sly grin of his, he went on to say that the Democrats have gotten the car (our economy) out of the ditch and back on the asphalt. And he added with a snide guffaw … now the Republicans want the keys back. In his best sophomoric manner, he said, “No! You can’t drive. We don’t want to have to go back into the ditch. We just got the car out.”

Perhaps what he said has a modicum of metaphoric truth to it, however please allow me to modify and extend his remarks with the following observations:

- The Republicans were not alone in driving our economy into the ditch. Clearly, by insisting on the irrational expansion of sub-prime mortgages, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and their cronies in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did their share of reckless driving. The major sin that Bush and his Republican compatriots in Congress can be accused of is not pushing back hard enough.

- Yes, the Democrats have stopped our economy from sliding further into the ditch. But to say that we are back on the asphalt is, at best, political hyperbole. At worst, it is demagoguery. Economic growth is clearly anemic and unemployment still hovers around 10%. In fact, we are in serious jeopardy of slipping back into negative GNP growth. And this is occurring after monstrous government deficit spending that cannot be sustained. Such a Keynesian economic experiment has once again been proven misguided … and if the Bush tax cuts are left to expire this coming January, it is quite likely that Obama’s stretch limo will also end up back in the economic ditch.

- Even public opinion has now decided that it is Obama’s recession. See: Obama's Fault. After 18 months in office, Obama needs to stop pushing his ultra-liberal agenda at the expense of job seekers and economic growth. He is rapidly losing Bush as a scapegoat and would be advised to start accepting responsibility for our economic malaise. Perhaps, as Obama was decrying at the fundraiser, the Republicans might make an equivalent mess of things if they win back majorities in Congress this fall, but then we would still have some hope that things will finally change. I kind of suspect that if the tea partiers have anything to say about it, things will.

Jumbo Shrimp

The example that is most often used to exemplify the term oxymoron is "jumbo shrimp".  I have a new candidate.  How about "opinion journalist"?

A Few Insolent Questions

President Obama has stopped all oil well drilling in the Gulf of Mexico until we find out the reason(s) for the failure at the BP oil rig.  My question is: how come BP is still allowed to drill the two relief wells to stop the oil from coming out of the original well that exploded?  Do not these relief wells carry the same risks as any other wells that were being drilled? 

Others have also asked these questions:
- If one airliner crashed, would we stop all airline flights until such time as we knew exactly what happened?
- What if we never find out the reason(s) for the explosion, does that mean that we never will be able to drill again for oil in the Gulf?
- What about other countries that are drilling in the Gulf (China, Mexico, Iran), does this order apply to them?  And, if so, how do we enforce it?  And, if not, aren't we being economically foolish? 
- If, as a result of this moratorium, these oil rigs pick up shop and move elsewhere in the world, how do we entice them to come back?
- Who will insure that the extra-legal $20 billon slush fund just pledged to Obama by BP is spent wisely ... and who will keep it from becoming a huge Democrat honey pot?

Being Deferential

In the southern United States, whenever a funeral procession nears, all the cars on both sides of the road, pull over in respect to let the it pass. This type of behavior is archetypically deferential. May I suggest that this seems to be the type of treatment that Barack Obama has experienced most of his adult life. People have been deferential to him at college, in his community-organizer life, during his stints in state and national legislatures, throughout his campaign for President, and even now as POTUS.  He has respectfully been given the benefit of the doubt by the public and the media … very likely because of his race, certainly because of his oratorical skills, possibly due to his attractive family, and, to summarize, as Joe Biden bluntly said it, he is “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

Now things are beginning to unravel for our ass-kicker-in-chief (see: Ass Kicking). He seems to be unable to demonstrate his management skills to the degree that voters expected when they overwhelming elected him about twenty months ago. I have previously detailed his numerous crisis management failings in another of my blogs: Crisis Management. But, herein I want to briefly explore why he may be so inept administratively. To me, all indications point to the fact that his preparation for the Presidency has been sadly bereft of management experience and successes.

When he was the head of the Law Review at Harvard, he never had to express his own legal adroitness in writing … as was customary for such a position. The fact that his academic records in college have been sealed suggests that there are also some damaging personality failings therein. College professors (rather “senior lecturers” as was the case for Obama) are notoriously unable to manage their associates and departments. (This is why former college professors often make lousy college presidents.) And community organizers seldom have to deal with serious management crises. And lastly, continuously voting “present” in his legislative career suggests that Obama too frequently opted to hide under his desk rather than face difficult governance issues.

Yes, Obama did successfully run (with the help of the Chicago political machine) a stellar campaign for President in 2008. But again, I suspect that he let the wave of deferential media enthusiasm carry him into office rather than having to fight hammer-and-tongs through an even-up political battle. One gets the distinct impression that, now that the exigencies of running the most powerful nation in the world have imposed themselves on his previously unflappable universe, he is in way over his head. His early apology tour of the world, in which he seemed to want to curry favor … particularly with many of our adversaries ... by proudly fouling his own nest … has bought him only a fistful of guano dust. Nowhere has this humble-pie foreign-policy reset solved any of the United States's stickier diplomatic issues. One may argue that he has made most of them far worse. He has kept his own counsel all too frequently and now can only point at others instead of confessing to his own bad advice.

The only hope for us as a nation is that Obama is a quick-study and can mid-course correct while on the job. If not, we will likely suffer some very painful two and a half more years of “hope and change.”

Optics

These days, television, in particular cable TV, seems to be increasingly able to shape public opinion. Be it the Israeli commandos rappelling down on a Turkish ship running the Gaza blockade … or a live shot of that broken British Petroleum “containment valve” one mile down spewing a cloud of evil oil into the pristine Gulf … or President Obama kneeling down on a Gulf of Mexico beach to examine a tar ball … it is all about the visuals that the news editors can effect on their viewing audience. The term that has gained current popularity for this phenomenon is “optics”. And, I don’t know about you, but I am getting a little tired of seeing that same ten yards of Gulf Coast wetlands with the BP oil slick lapping on its marsh reeds or those same Turkish militants (soon to be martyrs) wailing on the Israeli commandos. And now we are beginning to see oil coated pelicans (pelican?) consigned to bird heaven … covered in immoral BP petroleum.

These visuals can’t be the whole story by any stretch, but the gullible American public seems to be wedded to this form of information pabulum. I may be swimming against the tide here (so to speak), but 45 days into this BP drilling rig explosion, there seems to be remarkably little ecological damage (numerous pelicans die every day from shark attacks) relative to what we have been led to expect by the hysterical video and copy editors. (This morning on Morning Joe they graphically extrapolated the oil slick moving into the Atlantic and polluting shorelines all the way up to Cape Cod.) “A majority of Americans see the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico as a major environmental disaster.” (The Pew Research Center on May 11th)

These dire predictions may in fact transpire if this leak is not contained for months to come, but I for one am skeptical … particularly when I see the environmentalist and politicians expeditiously stepping in to take advantage of the publics’ angst. Viz: President Obama has shut down all drilling for oil in the Gulf for six months (a far bigger economic disaster) and the Democrats in Congress are smacking their lips about using this incident to push through their Cap and Trade (read carbon tax) legislation this summer.

May I suggest that famous Clintonista line? “Let’s all step back and take a deep breath.”

Associative Illogic

The Obama administration has tapped James Cameron (the Director of Avatar) as a consultant on how to solve the Gulf oil-spill crisis. This is because he has had some experience with submersibles, presumably during the filming of Titanic. Now this seems to me to be the ultimate in thinking outside the box on the part of the White House. As a consequence, I have the following suggestions for future administration appointments:

- George Lucas (creator and director of Star Wars fame) to help us plan for NASA’s future after our last space shuttle flight this fall.

- George Lopez (Mexican-American comedian and star of The George Lopez Show) to opine on how to solve our illegal immigrant problem.

- Homer Simpson (star of The Simpsons) to help us plan on how to expand the number of our domestic nuclear power plants … and get rid of our nuclear waste.

- Ray Croc (deceased McDonald’s founder) on solving our unemployment problem.

- Suze Orman (financial consultant and host of The Suze Orman Show) on solving the U.S. national debt crisis.

- Kevin Costner (of The Untouchables fame) to help us wipe out organized crime.

- George Soros (billionaire monetary speculator and former Nazi collaborator) on unwinding the world’s monetary crises.

- Kiefer Sutherland (of 24 fame) on preventing future domestic terrorist attacks.

- Peter Shin (Korean-American and director of The Family Guy) on how to pacify North Korea’s nuclear belligerency.

- Christiana Amanpour (Iranian-American, CNN newsreader and future anchor of NBC’s This Week) on convincing Iran to give up their nuclear ambitions.

- Barbara Streisand (star of Yentl) to help us solve the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

The Cover Up

“It’s never the crime but the cover up that takes politicians down.” Now, the triumvirate of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Joe Sestak have short-order cooked up a whopper of a story to explain away Sestak’s three-month-old allegation of being offered a job in Obama’s administration (Navy Secretary?) in exchange for dropping out of the Pennsylvania Democrat Senatorial primary race in favor of Arlen Specter.

I’m not even going to parse all the inconsistencies and suspicious circumstances surrounding this pre-Memorial-Day rationalization of this possible White House felony. I’m just going to say that this cover up is so transparent as to be embarrassing. I herein predict that this sophomoric mendacity is now the beginning of the end to this mob of Chicago thugs’ jack boot on the throat of the American populus. It may take into 2011 for this all to transpire, but I’ve seen this B-movie too many times before.

Crisis Management

President Obama has had more than his share of crises. To whit:
- near domestic financial meltdown
- Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis
- escalating medical-care costs crisis
- collapsing Euro crisis
- North Korea belligerency (including torpedo attack)
- multiple domestic terrorist attacks
- South/Central America swinging left
- Pakistan/Afghanistan insurgency crisis
- illegal immigrant crisis (including new Arizona law)
- Iran going-nuclear crisis
- unemployment crisis
- continuing Arab/Israeli crisis
- looming U.S. national debt crisis
- a critical shortage of wagyu beef

The question poses itself: How well has he and his administration handled these crises?

 ala Keystone Kops
 “it’s all Bush’s fault”
 used as an opportunity to push their agenda
 with aplomb
 very professionally/all under control

Please cast your vote from the above … or chose your own designation.

The Bear Trap

Let me start by saying that I am not a Libertarian. Libertarians too often take stands that are so pure and theoretical that they appear loopy ... and thus fall into rhetorical traps. But, without agreeing, I do think I halfway understand Libertarians. Yesterday Rand Paul, the newly selected Republican candidate for the Senate from Kentucky, fell into one of these bear traps set by Rachel Maddow from MSNBC. Ms. Maddow asked Rand Paul whether the civil-rights decisions of the 1960's were right in removing the then-prevalent Southern exclusion of blacks from sitting at lunch counters (a clever semantic twist recalling Selma, Alabama sit-ins ... can we call this Rachel-profiling?). Mr. Paul, with typical Libertarian naïveté did not directly answer this question by first vigorously decrying such segregation (as do I) but, instead, replied with some twisted logic about whether restaurant owners had the right to exclude gun-toting patrons from their "private" premises.

I think I know what Rand Paul meant to be saying (but didn't). To whit: although it was proper for the federal government to force the integration of public accommodations, now governments of all ilks have taken this prerogative to increasing anti-Libertarian extremes ... first smoking was banned in restaurants, then trans-fats, now some localities are even trying to exclude the use of salt. Even the EPA has recently decreed that carbon dioxide, which all of us exhale and which is essential for plant survival, is an air pollutant ... of all things. I do think Libertarians justly rankle at such extreme governmental intrusion into our private lives and thus lumber into such semantic pitfalls as Rachael Maddow set for Rand Paul yesterday. Unfortunately, our knee-jerk video media does not allow for explanations that take more than two sentences ... and thus, politicians, who take principled positions, are continually snared.

It will be interesting to see whether Rand Paul today is given the time and leeway to better make his Libertarian case by the media talking heads, particularly those on MSNBC.

Are We Nuts?

Whilst perusing the Homeland Security website here, I came across the fact that, in 2009, the United States granted permanent residency status to these numbers of immigrants from the following countries:

Pakistan         21,555
Iran                 18,553
Somalia          13,390
Iraq                  12,111
Venezuela      11,154
Afghanistan     3,165
Yemen               3.134
Syria                   2,442
Saudi Arabia    1,418
North Korea          67

We even granted permanent residency status to 1,366 people whose former country was unknown.  I don't know about you, but this doesn't make me feel very homeland secure. And given what has happened recently with the Times Square bomber being a recently naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan, the obvious question comes to mind for Janet Napolitano: Are we cuckoo-pie nuts?

P.S., for those who believe that we are not doing enough to help our impoverished southern neighbor, we issued 164,920 green cards to Mexicans in 2009.

Flood …

 

Insurance?  We don’t need no stinking flood insurance!

Our neighbors just received over $7,000 from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) to compensate them for the basement flood damage they received in the recent 50-year record rainfall here in Massachusetts. They really did suffer considerable damage: a new furnace, a new hot water heater, a long motel stay, etc. but could not persuade their insurance company to pay for their losses … even though they had a flood rider. Other friends got an unspecified (but possibly equivalent) FEMA recompense for considerably less real damage … but here they had no flood insurance coverage. We also got a $2,000 FEMA settlement for redoing a basement floor and other tradesmen visits. We also had no flood insurance.

Now the question that rises out of this largess is: why would anyone buy flood insurance when the Federal government is willing, nay eager to pay citizens for loss of this type? Since our government seems prone to declare disasters much more readily than in times past, I would suggest that private flood insurance has been usurped by taxpayer-funded vote buying. I surmise that, in the first instance mentioned above, the insurance company was reluctant to pay anything out to our neighbors since it knew that a federal disaster had been declared and therefore FEMA could step in its stead.

While we are not now ready to give this $2,000 FEMA settlement back, I do suffer from a guilt pang for helping, in our small way, to push our federal debt load into the multi-multi-trillion dollars. I rationalize this angst by mimicking Rush Limbaugh (“exhibiting absurdity by being absurd”) in that, “I decry greed by being greedy.”

Green with Envy

Green cards are the way that immigrants can enter and stay in the U.S. legally.  In 2009, we issued 1.1 million green cards to legal immigrants ... to me an astounding number.  See Green Card Influx  (You can also click through to the Homeland Security website for a breakdown by years and by country of these green card recipients -- 18,553 to Iranians in 2009 alone no less!)  Now, yes, these numbers are somewhat typical of recent years, including Bush's latter years, but remember this is occurring in the same year 3 million resident Americans have lost their jobs.

Now admittedly, most of these green cards were issued to family members of legal U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, but still this seems to place an undue burden on this country's currently strained resources.  Now, exhibiting my continued political paranoia, I have to suspect that this spate of new green cards during an economic downturn and a period of increased national turmoil might possibly be motivated by reasons other than pure charity.  What do you think?

Climate Change

The huge eruption of a volcano in Iceland has disrupted airline flights all over Europe. Heathrow airport near London is closed for the rest of the day at least. And, all this fly-ash in the upper atmosphere is quite likely to cool down our northern climes for at least this summer ... much like Pinatubo's eruption in the Philippines did in 1991. So, rather than pass the proposed onerous "Cap and Trade" carbon-tax legislation in the Senate this year, why can't we just take all the oratorical effluent being produced in Washington and shoot it into the stratosphere? This should keep us gelid for at least a decade.

Tea Party

Boston is hosting (rather, enduring) a Tea Party on Boston Common this morning with Sarah Palin speaking no less. I find the tea-party movement to be a remarkable political phenomenon ... primarily because of the vitriol it elicits from many liberals:

- being called "tea-baggers" (a lewd reference to a homosexual act). My reaction to anyone using this epithet is utter revulsion. This population unfortunately includes many on network and cable news programs.

- being castigated for not having enough blacks in attendance (Obama did get 96% of the black vote for heavens sake) ... ergo they are racists. This is akin to calling Israelis xenophobes for not having any Iranians in their Knesset.

- being labeled radical right-wing nutty moon bats. I thought "moon-bat" was a word reserved for those who think Republicans stole both Bush elections.

- being named "Astroturf" (i.e., rent-a-mob) by the White House to denigrate the tea party's grassroots origin.

- being compared to Tim-McVeigh-style terrorists. Is it accidental that MSNBC is running a Tim McVeigh retrospective at this time?

- being labeled "birthers" (those who believe that Obama wasn't born in the U.S.A.). There is a group of lefties who have even threatened to infiltrate tea-party rallies with signs to this effect ... and to the other slimes mentioned above.

As far as I can ascertain, these tea parties are a genuine grass-roots reaction to the fiscal excesses of the current (and past) administrations. And any politician who ignores or disparages this movement does so at considerable career risk.

Hold That Tiger

Tiger Woods is back playing golf in the Masters this weekend in Augusta, Georgia. I might in fact watch some of this august tournament ... but whereas, in the past, I would be rooting for Tiger to win ... this time I will be hoping that he loses.

"What immortal hand or eye, dare frame thy fearful symmetry?" -- William Blake

The Poker Game

President Obama has unilaterally given away another big pot in the poker game of world hegemony. He has shown our hand to many of the other players and, as is his all-too-frequent wont, gotten nothing in return. See NY Times Article. He now boasts that the U.S would not use nuclear weapons in a number of situations where, in the past, our enemies were wary of how we would react ... and were therefore constrained. Now these other players have been gifted many more degrees of freedom in there strategic planning. Why Obama pulls these bone-headed moves can perhaps be explained by his over-weaning ego. He may indeed believe in his demigod invincibility: "What if I give up some minor game advantage, since I know that my vision of a world utopia is ordained by my birthright?"

Or, can it be that he is just plain stupid?

A Sign of the Times

Relativity

Recent threats of violence levied against those who voted for Obamacare are to be condemned ... and I herein heartily do. Such behavior is childish and misbegotten. But there have been other public death threats made in the past that were not taken so seriously. Witness Rahm Emanuel's knife-wielding outburst back in 1992 ... see the nutty left. Why is this dismissed as political theater while tea-party activists are chastised for generally more benign expressions of outrage? ... such as: the nutty right. I guess Einstein was right ... everything is relative.

The Nose Knows

There have been a number of "promises" made to the American public that would occur as a result of the passage of Obamacare legislation. These vows are:

- it would not increase the federal deficit

- it would not cause anyone to lose their existing health-care insurance

- it would not increase taxes or fees for anyone earning less than $250,000 per year

- it would not include the plethora of sweet-heart deals (explicit or implicit) made in secret with legislators

- it would not cause existing health-care insurance premiums to increase

- it would not provide for taxpayer funding of abortion

- it would not cause any reduction in healthcare treatments or Medicare coverage

- it would not federally-subsidize healthcare insurance for illegal immigrants

- it would reduce Medicare and Medicaid waste, fraud, and abuse by tens of billion dollars

None of these pledges, in fact, will transpire as a result of this just-passed bill. Yet, politicians and political pundits continue to mouth them with a straight face. To me, these group-think prevarications are staggering. And, add to these downsides, the fact that the federal government will now become the only provider of student loans ... and Congress will still exempt themselves from these healthcare insurance constraints ... all this makes for a large case of dyspepsia for this blogger.

But then 26-year old "children" can still be covered on their parents' health insurance policies. This makes it all worth while.

Demon Pass

This Sunday it seems will bring us some interesting national legislative chicanery. The U.S. House of Representatives will be asked to pass a set of changes to the Senate's health-care bill. This House bill has been misnamed a "reconciliation" bill. In this bill will be a provision that the Senate bill will be "deemed to have passed" by the House. At this point, the Senate bill will be separated from the House's hoped for changes and sent to the President for his signature. The House changes will then be sent back to the Senate to deal with (or not deal with) at their leisure. Voila! Barack Obama will win his signature achievement and his Presidency will have been snatched from a monster defeat (after Scott Brown's recent election in Massachusetts removed the Democrats' Senate filibuster-proof majority).

Then, House Democrats, who voted for the "Deem and Pass" back-door way of giving Obama his proto-socialized medicine, will hope that they can hide behind this legislative trick to escape voter retaliation in the Fall. This may be true. But. personally, I kind of hope that this process goes exactly the way Obama's Chicago RICO thugs want ... augmented by that consigliore, Pelosi. This wish of mine seems a little foolish, but hear me out:

First, the Obama/Pelosi tag team will have stuck a stick into a huge hornet's nest of super angry voters and I don't think they have any concept of the national retaliation (not just at the polls) that might be served to them as dessert to their orgy of fiscal irresponsibility.

Second, I believe that the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn this unconstitutional "law" in a New-York second.

And lastly, this slimy process has, I believed, opened the eyes of many otherwise naive Americans as to just how fragile our American Democracy is ... and what diligence must be observed to keep it from slipping away.

Choice Cuts

Sarah Palin arouses strong feelings on both sides of the political spectrum. She has shown that common sense can go a long way toward making government work ... but also that sophistication seems a requisite for acceptance by the media elites. And Barack Obama has once again demonstrated why a pedagogical demeanor makes a lousy management style ... but can easily capture the hearts of the utopians. I'm afraid the question Americans may have to answer in less than three years is: Would you rather be governed by an honest rube or a nuanced charlatan?

My only true hope is that our misguided political process will, next time around, give us two rational choices. Choices that will restore my faith in what our forefathers had in mind when they created a government that would not fritter away our greatness. Choices that would demonstrate strength in both mind and heart. Is that too much to ask?

Arrogance

The President held his health care summit yesterday and, as is his wont, dominated the process ... grabbing most of the face time, continually interrupting many Republicans when they managed to squeeze in a few salient points, slipping Senator Paul Ryan the sly finger when he had questioned Obama's arithmetic, and reminding John McCain that it was he who had been elected President. (Oh, how I wish that McCain had said, "could I have a Mulligan on that?") Our President's hubris is becoming his signature characteristic ... just like Gerald Ford was defined by his clumsiness, Bill Clinton, by his mendacity, and George W. Bush, by his oratorical ineptitude. Why Obama is so arrogant is a subject for historians, but may I suggest that his disdain meter often reads all the way over to "hatred" ... hatred for conservatives, hatred for this country's exceptionalism, hatred for our middle and upper classes, hatred for many of our industries and companies, and maybe even hatred for capitalism itself. And this haughtiness, I suggest, may well be his undoing. I would not be that unhappy with this outcome

Now onto a sidebar brought out by yesterday's subject. Howie Carr, a talk-show host here in Boston was taking calls about health care. Someone phoned in from Bangor, Maine and said that the parking lot at the East Maine Health Center in Bangor told the story better than any of these Congressional debates. He said that his cruise through this parking lot showed that at least half the license plates were from Canada. (Also note that the Premiere of Canada also traveled to Florida to have heart surgery ... as opposed to subjecting himself to the vagaries of Canada's socialized health care.) What if Obama and the Congressional Democrats manage to clone the Canadian health-care system here in the United States? To where then are we going to travel to get better health care ... Mexico?

Off Balance

The current sovereign-debt crisis in Greece is apparently caused by unfunded off-balance sheet transactions (reportedly aided and abetted by Goldman Sachs ... so what else is new?) I am over seventy years old and I can't remember a single financial crisis, either private or public, which was not caused in whole or in part by off-balance-sheet shenanigans -- last year's banking crisis, Mexico's near collapse in 1994, the Enron scandal, AIG, Tyco, etc. ... the sliminess goes on and on. How can the accounting community, which has created such a beautiful mechanism for faithfully representing the fiscal health of corporations, charities, and public trusts, continue to allow these entities to subvert this process with off-balance-sheet transactions of any type? It is as though the Swan Lake ballet was being danced in a garbage dump ... or Mozart was being played with kazoos.

Until such time as veracity is returned to the accounting profession, we will continue to enjoy a conga-line of financial crises into the forever future. And this, unfortunately, includes how we, as a nation, keep our own books.

Do You Know ...

where your children (and grandchildren and great grandchildren) are? This woman has built candy-covered gingerbread houses all over California ... just waiting to lure our innocents into her fiscal oven. She is using promises of free-health-care gumdrops, no more carbon-dioxide spinach, chocolate-covered civilian trials for terrorists, and ice-cream-sundae federal deficits into the hereafter to seduce them to their doom. And when she has corralled all our little ones and turned them into cinnamon cookies, she will use their rendered baby fat to keep her ruby-red lips pouty. Please! please! do not let your children again vote for this cackling crone.

"Corpse Man"

Dan Quayle could not have said it better than Barack Obama at yesterday's Prayer Breakfast ... referring (three times) to a Navy corpsman. I didn't see or hear these Presidential snafus on any news show this AM. Amen.

Tortured Logic?

Indulge me the following scenario: A Muslim man in his early twenties is picked up in Boston because his cell phone has been the source of a series of suspiciously encoded text messages to a known Al Qaeda operative in Yemen ("The pumpkin pie is in the oven," etc.) These intercepts were done by the NSA under the aegis of the American Patriot Act. (Trust me, they can do this.) He is then found to be in this country illegally ... and when his clothing is scanned by a Geiger Counter it exhibits a dangerously high level of radioactivity. His laptop computer is also found to have detailed and credible diagrams of a suitcase nuclear weapon. Other notable intelligence suggests that an illicit atomic bomb has been smuggled into the United States and is now hidden somewhere, ready to be detonated.

For you Pollyannas who believe that such an event is impossible, please explain 9/11. Now, how do you, as our head of Homeland Security, deal with this captured Muslim man to find out the who, what, when, where and how of this possible devastating terrorist attack ... knowing that it might kill hundreds of thousand of Americans and set back our economy for possibly a generation? And, obviously, time is of the essence. Would you immediately and continuously waterboard him until he spilled the beans or, perhaps, read him his Miranda rights and lawyer him up?

A Stopped Clock Is Twice Right

President Obama occasionally gets things right. In his State of the Union address he called for more "safe, clean nuclear power plants." And yesterday he called for $54 billion of federal loan guarantees to those who would build this new generation of nuclear power. See: Loan Guarantees. IF we can take him at his word (the big "if" is on purpose), then this would be an important step forward in the U.S.'s attempt to achieve energy independence. In this speech he also mentioned more offshore drilling for gas and oil. This would be wonderful if it happened, but my cynicism takes over here and such a development (ANWR too?) I'm afraid, is even more suspect.

It would seem to this author that the real path to our nation's energy independence might require the following steps:
1) Build as many new nuclear power plants as can be economically financed and open up Yucca Mountain for long-term nuclear waste disposal (if required).
2) Aim to generate all our electrical needs from nuclear energy (east and west coast) and from coal-fired plants (middle America). No more natural gas and oil-fired electrical power plants should be given permits.
3) Encourage all Americans to heat their homes with natural gas and help build the infrastructure and offer the tax incentives to accomplish this. The objective should be no more oil-heated homes.
4) Specify that kerosene, diesel fuel, and gasoline are the most desirable fuels for transportation vehicles (air, rail, and ground). Offer the necessary incentives to achieve better mileage in these vehicles (including hybrid technology). Investigate liquefied coal as a long-term vehicular fuel option.
5) Set a national goal of ceasing all foreign oil imports within ten years (using the above methodologies and including oil recovery from our vast oil shale deposits.) I predict that the price of Mideast oil would plummet as a consequence of just such a goal setting.
6) Stop wasting federal funds on solar, tidal, geothermal, and wind-power projects and use these funds instead on the above items. Let the private sector fund any of these "green" projects that make any economic sense (likely very few).

I can dream can't I? Tick ... tick ... tick.

Pinocchio

Barack Obama is sure to try to dazzle us with his State of the Union address tonight. I doubt that any attendee will be shouting out "You lie!", but I still suspect that mendacity will creep into his rhetoric. Ben Shapiro has written an insightful piece in "Town Hall.com" to help us decipher what will oil its way out Obama's cigarette-stained lips tonight. See Obama's Lexicon of Rhetorical Devices. This is one of the funniest columns I have read in quite a while. May I suggest that you print it out and keep it by your side if you plan to watch or listen to Obama's teleprompter tonight. (Thanks to Howie Carr for pointing this column out to us.)

Stealth Socialism

While our nation's attention is diverted toward the Scott Brown upset victory in Massachusetts, the White House and the Senate are quietly pushing forward more of their stealth socialist agenda. Not satisfied with owning two auto companies, keeping the banking industry under its thumb, attempting to become the country's only health-care insurer, and maneuvering to tax the U.S. utility industry out of existence (with Cap-and-Trade), the Obamites are now on the verge of grabbing the $100 billion per year student loan business. See student loan takeover ... and also please click through to the "Wall Street Journal" article to read more of the details.

This sotto voce move by Tom Harkin (with the clear approval of President Obama), will finish what comrade Nancy Pelosi started back in September and will surely squeeze the private sector out of the student loan business in a very few years. To paraphrase P.J. Clark, "If you thought student loans cost the U.S. taxpayers a lot of money, wait until our government runs everything."

By the bye, what makes these transplanted Chicago thugs who currently run our Obamafied government think that they can ever manage the U.S.'s $14 trillion economy when they have never have run so much as a corner candy store?

Head(s) Should Roll

President Obama recently called it a "screwup" in the U.S. intelligence community over the Nigerian Islamic terrorist's attempted crotch-bombing of an airliner over Detroit. Now our President is pointing his finger at these same intelligence agencies for their inability to connect the dots. But as the old canard goes: "When you point your finger outward, three more fingers point back at you." By this I mean that Obama's National Security Czar, John Brennan, after a dismal performance on Fox News this past Sunday (see: Dodge and Weave), has, up until now, evaded any culpability for these "systemic failures" (also Obama's words).

But, what hasn't been generally reported is that John Brennan was the primary person responsible for the software and database that was built to connect these dots, see: the Rest of the Story. He,"having designed and built our multi-agency terrorist threat integration center", now is charged by our empty-suit (but stuffed-shirt) of a President to fix things. From 2005 to 2008 he was the CEO of Analysis Corp. (see: The Analysis Corporation) which spent $50 million of taxpayers funds to build the terrorist-screening system that was supposed to be the ultimate in dot-connectors. Oops.

May I humbly suggest that John Brennan's head clearly should be the first to roll ... closely followed by Janet Napolitano's.

Signal Flags

How is it that the Bush/Chaney administration carried this country through seven years terrorist-attack free while the Obama/Biden duo has had three serious events in its first eleven months? Personally, I don't believe that our operational intelligence apparatus has appreciably changed. However, what has changed is the signals that this administration is sending to Al-Qaeda, viz: the planned closing of Gitmo, no more waterboarding, turning terrorist acts into criminal offenses, renaming the "war on terrorism" into "overseas contingency operations", the non-existence of our "High Value Detainee Interrogation Group" (HIG) ten months after Obama announced its creation, making a Girl Scout leader the head of Homeland Security, closing down military tribunals, moving the KSM trial to New York City, the president's slow, low-key responses to each terrorist act, sending Chinese Islamic terrorists to Bermuda, refocusing our government on global-warming/health-care/fire-hose domestic spending, and finally blaming everything that goes wrong on Bush.

One other point that needs to be reiterated: during the Bush years the war in Iraq was a magnet that drew disenchanted Muslims from around the globe to sacrifice themselves there in the name of Allah. Now, that Iraq is being deemphasized, many more venues have become attractive to would-be martyrs ... including unfortunately the U.S.A. This last reason clearly is not of Obama's doing alone, but our haste to leave Iraq may turn out to be a gigantic mistake ... witness the dramatic increase in terrorists bombings there recently.

So, it may be that style is just as important as substance in combating the terrorist threat we suffer. And, if Obama does not do a convincing 180-degree turn in his rhetoric, we may be in for three more years of "isolated incidents".