Al Gore Strikes Back

Former Vice President Al Gore, who has been relatively quiet with all of the holes being poked in global warming science lately which has even lead the IPCC to take another look at their report on climate change, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he implied that we are a criminal generation for denying the "consensus" science of climate change. I think it may be time Mr. Gore starts referring to himself as a denier.

Dear Mr. Fox, We Will be on Vacation Next Week. Please Look in on the Henhouse for Us While We're Gone

Andy Stern, the head of the Service Employees International Union, has been appointed to President Obama's commission on the deficit. In related news, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has been asked to give the President pointers on keeping his speeches short, up is down, left is now right and Jeneane Garafolo is pleasant.

Oops, Looks Like Nancy's Back Off Her Meds

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D. Cali.), whose initial reaction to the tea party movement was to: A) accuse it of being fake grass roots, or "astroturf", drummed up by Republicans; B) accuse its members of being Nazis; and C) insinuate that the movement was likely to result in violence and political assassinations; has now decided that the tea parties and Democrats have a lot in common and the GOP is simply hijacking the movement. If you were drinking something as you read that, I apologize for not warning you of the possible spit-take you probably just did. I think there is no other way to view it, Nancy Pelosi is either insane or a blithering idiot...or both.

Congratulations, Mom

Just a quick congrats to my mother for getting her team to the regional playoffs in tennis. Well done. Now don't blow it.

Progressive Equality

If you ever believed that the left was about equality whether racial or otherwise, I hope you've realized differently by now. A few months ago, several members of the Congressional Black Caucus returned from the Cuban Socialist paradise singing the praises of the murderous dictator Fidel Castro and the Cuban health care system. On February 23, 2010, a black activist by the name of Orlando Zapata-Tamayo died from a combination of his hunger strike and repeated beatings at the hands of Cuban officials. This is a man who tried to emulate the peace tactics of Gandhi. You won't hear much about this man's death. You may not read about it anywhere but here. I encourage you to read the first and second links in full and realize that this is all just a little bit of history repeating, as the song goes. Carter went to Cuba and played baseball with Castro before praising him. Progressives went to see the mass murderer Joseph Stalin, returning to the United States praising his methods and brilliance. The Congressional Black Caucus has been there before, too, with similar results. College students run around wearing T-shirts with Che Guevara on them and Oliver Stone made a four hour movie about Che, a murderous psychopath who helped install Castro.

Don't ever believe that the left thinks about you as anything other than the dumb cattle they were meant to rule over.

Architect or Opportunist

Please read this article. Then look up George Soros, his connections with Moveon.org and the Democratic party, his history with the Nazis and his participation in the collapse of previous currencies. Then, this post is yours, tell me what you think and I'll address your thoughts one week from now.

The Health Care Summit Sham

Let's take a look at the different evidence that the health care summit today was just a sham:

1) President Obama released his own monstrosity of a plan prior to the summit which was even more expansive than the Senate plan, effectively sending the message that this is not a negotiation, it is an invitation to agree to the plan;

2) Despite the supposed desire to include Republicans in the process, 21 Democrats were invited (President Obama not included) compared to 17 Republicans;

3) Democratic speakers (not including President Obama) took 114 minutes, President Obama took 119 minutes, and Republicans took 110 minutes (final tally 233 minutes for supporters of the bill vs. 110 minutes for those in opposition);

4) In explaining the massive difference in talking time, the President (who is apparently from the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez school of fairness and 8 hour speech writing) explained that he didn't count himself because he's the President, make no mistake, President Obama was not acting as an impartial moderator, he was an advocate;

5) Democrats were already planning on moving forward with the bill through the reconciliation process before the summit even started;

6) Faced with his campaign promises of openness the President responded that the campaign and election are over;

7) President Obama scolded Representative Eric Cantor (R. Penn.) for bringing a copy of the Senate bill, which was the basis of the Obama proposal, to the summit;

8) Every time Republicans presented their solutions or their problems with the proposals President Obama accused them of simply resorting to talking points; and

9) The President's closing comments could easily be read as indicating that he is determined to move forward with reconciliation.

The thing to take away from this is that the Democrats and the Obama administration held this summit to try and set up Republicans as the party of no as an excuse to move forward without cooperation on the bill. Democrats don't care how unpopular the bill is with the public. The ideologues will try to get this through no matter what.

The Ephemeral Criminality of Charlie Rangel

Without comment, Representative Charles Rangel (D. NY) was one of the 21 Democrats present at the health care summit today in Washington, D.C. This is the same Charlie Rangel who has been under investigation for corruption for what seems like forever at this point. In fact, on the same day the esteemed and honorable Congressman Rangel was battling for the little man (please add sarcastic voice to that) he admitted that an ethics panel found that our upstanding citizen had accepted corporate money in violation of House rules and the investigation is far from over. Yet somehow, there he was, participating in the sham summit, as he continues to flaunt the investigation under the apparent belief that the longer it goes on, the more public interest will wane. Do I expect more from a politician? No. What I do find distasteful is that the Democrats apparently didn't think twice about bringing him along and neither they nor the President have made any attempt to distance themselves from him. It's as if Rangel wasn't under investigation at all.

It Must be Spring. Pitchers and Catchers are Reporting for Training and the Smell of Freshly Shorn Astroturf is Floating Across the Breeze

Remember how Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D. Cali.) referred to the tea party activists as astroturf? Well, unable to stir up real support for health care reform, the Obama campaign wing (now called Organizing for America) has a helpful tool which not only provides talking points and tips for people to call in to radio talk shows, it even offers up the conservative radio show for live listening so they know to call in when health care comes up and then they can report back on their experience.

Anyone else find that incredibly creepy?

So Nice it's Posted Twice

I posted this as part of a link earlier, but it's worth revisiting as a separate post. As I'm sure we're all aware now, the Democrats are threatening to enact health care legislation through the "nuclear option", more properly known as budget reconciliation, a procedural move allowing for only 50 votes in the Senate in cases of legislation which is deficit neutral (its first use was actually to curtail spending to reduce the deficit). In fact, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (soon to be retired D. NV) even told Republicans to "stop crying" about the option. But then, Harry knows all about crying about reconciliation. In fact, so does President Obama, Senator Chuck Schumer (D. NY), and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D. ummm...Arkansas? NY?...) amongst others now threatening to use the procedure despite 56% of Americans being against the plan and only 44% for Obama care. So once again for your viewing pleasure, I give you hypocrites row on video. I especially like how they call it an arogant power grab and a threat to constitutional separation of powers.

Let's be clear, both parties have used this method before and both have complained about it before. But this is beyond the pale.

Methinks Thou Doth Protest Too Much

President Barack Obama claimed today that he is "an ardent believer in the free market", all evidence to the contrary, in an attempt to reject claims that his programs are socialist. So let's check the record. He told Joe the Plumber he thought spreading the wealth was good. He took over GM and Chrysler in violation of the rights of secured creditors and federal bankruptcy law. He appointed a Pay Czar to oversee compensation. His administration has overseen "cash for clunkers", a program designed to create demand for cars by destroying cars (the Soviets used to burn boots in piles outside factories because there was no demand for them but the government had said they must be produced).

This is an ardent believer in the free market? I find it easier to believe he's an ardent believer in the tooth fairy.

Maybe There's a Chance

It's clear that President Obama and the Democrats are more than happy to discard public opinion (10% approval rating) and charge head on with unpopular measures in the interests of ideology. Not only this, they are willing to look like massive hypocrites by using the "nuclear" option which was designed for budgetary measures that don't increase the deficit. Watch the President and other Democrats cry out against this supposedly unconstitutional procedure here. So I was ready to give up, frustrated that the system is so far from what was intended and so broken that it couldn't be fixed, it's "public servants" so insulated from public opinion that they could simply ignore the outcry from the masses.

But hope springs eternal. Senator Scott Brown (R? Mass.), so recently the darling of the right for taking the seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy, voted for a jobs bill so asinine it should disqualify anyone who votes for it from public service. The backlash was immediate. Not only that, my Congressman, Joseph Cao (R? LA), the sole Republican vote in the House in favor of the health care program, has since seen his campaign donations drop 40%.

So maybe, just maybe, the people are willing to hold the politicians feet to the fire. Maybe the outrage can be maintained long enough that we can begin to correct the system. Maybe sometime in my lifetime, the Constitution will have meaning again.

Mardi Gras and the Superbowl

I'm taking a few more days off from this to soak in the usual New Orleans carnivale season and the Saints' Superbowl victory. Be back soon with Part 2 of the Plan (assuming I haven't forgotten it by then).

I'll Have the Irony and Some Peas

Everyone remember Foezzy Zoeller? In April of 1997, a young lecher and sex addict with a penchant for putting a ball in a hole...let me rephrase...a young golfer with a partial African-American heritage was tearing up the PGA by the name of Tiger Woods. Mr. Woods had just won the Masters, a huge accomplishment for any golfer and one of the "Masters" tournaments. The winner hosts the dinner the next year and chooses the menu as the former winners attend. Fuzzy, well known as the jokester on the tour, said something along the lines of I hope the "little boy" (Fuzzy was 45 versus the 21 year old Woods) doesn't order fried chicken and collard greens for the dinner. Tiger Woods accepted his apology, but Fuzzy effectively dissapeared that year. I don't remember ever hearing from him again.

Enter the modern era. NBC, the television company so far up President Obama's ass you can see their logo on his uvula, had this cafeteria sign posted to celebrate black history month. I wonder if Chris Matthews forgot he was eating black folks' food in the cafeteria for the lunch hour. Maybe he just figured the meal was post-racial.

Jokes aside, I actually think both the Fuzzy Zoeller comment and the menu are fine, though perhaps in bad taste given the context. Black culture in the U.S. is inexorably tied to Southern culture and vice-versa in the area of cuisine. That menu is available downstairs at the Poydras Center in downtown New Orleans at Dizzy's, a popular lunch stop for businessmen of all backgrounds. Be careful to recognize real racism. It comes in two forms. One side is the unreasoning hatred, the Aryans and the KKK and Malcolm X and Black Panthers. The second is more subtle, the reasoning pity of those who want to represent you because you can't take care of yourself. The Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton and liberals (Democrat and Republican alike) who tell you how much they respect you so they are going to make sure the government cares for you because you can't do it.

Personally, I'd like everything on the menu and, sad to say, I haven't tried the greens, but let's rock.

A Rather Hectic Week

I've had what has been one of the more hectic and travel intense weeks of my life. I'll be posting again soon.

When Blind Ignorance of the Facts Just Won't Due, Call Clyburn

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D., S.C.) demonstrated today what happens when all brain function ceases in a human being opining that we have to spend our way out of the recession. Clearly Clyburn is not familiar with American history if he thinks FDR spent us out of the Great Depression. Also, logic is strained, to say the least, when it is used to say that government spending increases economic output. If that were the case, governments should spend every sent they can print constantly and they'd be able to have the best economy in the world. I'll be interested to see if Clyburn is challenged for his seat in South Carolina and if that little tidbit isn't featured in the campaign.