Writing over at the fantastic Hot Air, Doctor Zero has some deep thoughts about the 2012 election. Though the article is ostensibly about Sarah Palin the points that he makes are independent of Palin. Whether you like Palin or not, his thoughtful perspective is not to be dismissed.
While discussing the fact that many liberals are trashing her book without reading it, he has some good advice:
Palin is a phenomenon, and honest liberals would be well-advised to read her work and understand her appeal, just as conservatives should read “Dreams From My Father” to understand the mind of Bill Ayers.
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The national debt is piling up like sales of Palin’s book, and the elite don’t understand how either of them got so huge. Taxpayers are trapped on a Willy Wonka boat, hurtling through psychedelic clouds of uncontrolled spending, while the President sits in the back and mumbles nonsense rhymes about imaginary jobs created in non-existent Congressional districts. The people lining up to buy Palin’s book are not the authors of this careless, carnivorous government… but they are expected to pay for it. The assertion that someone who connects with them, and understands their beliefs, is unwelcome on the national stage is just the latest variation of “Shut up and pay your taxes.” No one should accept that attitude from a government as incompetent as the journalists who fawn over it.
On my other blog I posted my idea for a new congressional agency, please give it a read. Small preview:
The Congressional Constitution Office would be a mandatory part of the legislative process. All legislation that made it through the House or Senate would require an addendum from the CCO analyzing exactly where the US Constitution grants the legislative branch of government the power to pass the particular legislation (please see the 10th amendment). Rule changes stipulating that bills must be constrained to one similar topic would be required to make this work, for example no social program spending can be combined with a military appropriations bill, and would provide the side benefit of making the legislative sausage-making process more transparent.
This is an administration hell-bent on taking America towards a socialist country.
If you disagree strongly with Gov. Perry on that assertion, chances are you are simply sympathetic to the socialism that Obama loves so dearly. I do wonder whether you are a Loser Socialist (parasite) or a Benefactor Socialist (elitist self-appointed politburo member), but since both groups believe in slavery to the state the distinction is not that important.
If you feel that way perhaps you should go live in Europe for a few years to see how the standard of living compares and enjoy some of that socialized medicine rather than trying to push my country into that “only good for the losers and the rulers” misery of collectivism.
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.” Winston Churchill
Churchill put it well, didn’t he? And he might as well have been discussing ObamaCare . With 85% of Americans happy with their health insurance, ObamaCare is just another case of trashing the entire system to be most conducive to the needs of the least ambitious, biggest losers in our society. But everyone knows that this is not about health care at all but is instead about dependency and the power that it generates and cements. Obama, Reid, and Pelosi do not care one bit about your health care. They simply want to control you via the best means possible. They are egregiously dishonest and power hungry statists.
Check out Gov. Perry’s short speech discussing what the Obama administration is doing in Presidio, TX with captured illegal aliens:
Hat top to HotAir for their Obamateurism Of The Day, the president bowing a ridiculously low bow to the emperor of Japan:
Looks familiar, does it not? Remember his meeting with the Saudi King.
This is how a president or VP should meet foreign leaders.
From an LA Times piece on this controversy:
Remember Michelle Obama casually patting Britain’s Queen Elizabeth on the back during their Buckingham Palace visit? America’s royalty tends to make movies and get bad reviews and lots of money as a sign of respect.
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Back in 1994 when President Bill Clinton appeared to maybe perhaps almost start to bow to Akihito at a White House encounter, U.S. officials rushed to deny it was any such a thing. And the N.Y. Times chronicled the comedic drama here.
This is a bit late, but Marooned In Marin has a good wrapup of last Saturday’s House Call II at the capital. I grabbed a couple of his pictures to show here but he has a lot more as well as some good video.
From the very beginning of the Fort Hood shooting story the media went into Muslim Apologist Mode. After watching reporting on Fox News for a while, I tuned into World News Tonight and was treated to glaring examples, including Brian Ross’ need to pass along the claim that the shooter had been called a “camel jockey”. Over the course of the next 24 hours we all saw several other reporters lament (and then repeat) that they were sorry that the shooter’s name was not Smith. In the media’s desperate attempt to call it anything other than muslim-related terrorism we were even introduced to the preposterous notion that the shooter actually had Pre Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
As Stuart Smalley (the only funny thing that so-called comedian ever did) said, “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt”.
There is no shortage of people who immediately called this what it was: a terrorist attack. Lt. Col. Ralph Peters typically did not mince words in his analysis:
But to call this an act of terrorism, the White House would need an autographed photo of Osama bin Laden helping Hasan buy weapons in downtown Killeen, Texas. Even that might not suffice.
Islamist terrorists don’t all have al Qaeda union cards in their wallets. Terrorism’s increasingly the domain of entrepreneurs and independent contractors. Under Muslim jurisprudence, jihad’s an individual responsibility. Hasan was a self-appointed jihadi.
Yet we’re told he was just having a bad day.
But too many reporters immediately rushed to treat us all like adolescent potential KKKers. Proving the old adage about the acorn-finding blind squirrel, even NYT columnist David Brooks got this one right when he wrote of A Rush To Therapy:
Major Hasan was portrayed as a disturbed individual who was under a lot of stress. We learned about pre-traumatic stress syndrome, and secondary stress disorder, which one gets from hearing about other people’s stress. We heard the theory (unlikely in retrospect) that Hasan was so traumatized by the thought of going into a combat zone that he decided to take a gun and create one of his own.
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There was a national rush to therapy. Hasan was a loner who had trouble finding a wife and socializing with his neighbors.
This response was understandable. It’s important to tamp down vengeful hatreds in moments of passion. But it was also patronizing. Public commentators assumed the air of kindergarten teachers who had to protect their children from thinking certain impermissible and intolerant thoughts. If public commentary wasn’t carefully policed, the assumption seemed to be, then the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage.
That patronizing attitude seems to be par for the course from the American media. But that is not the point that needs making, which is simply that this level of feel-good political correctness has no place in the US Army. Col. Peters also points out some disturbing affirmative action programs in the Army that could have played a role in this officer’s promotions in the face of obvious problems and bad reviews.
A dirty big secret in our Army has been that officers’ promotion boards have quotas for minorities. We don’t call them quotas, of course. But if a board doesn’t hit the floor numbers, its results are held up until the list has been corrected. It’s almost impossible for the Army’s politically correct promotion system to pass over a Muslim physician.
From Reuters
But the public statement that shocked me the most and has stayed in my mind came straight from the mouth of Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey, who actually said “what happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here”. Seriously, he actually said that the deaths of 13 people would be less of a tragedy than damage to the beloved D-word.
“what happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.” – Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey
Both articles close with indictments. Brooks says of America’s initial reaction:
It denied, before the evidence was in, the possibility of evil. It sought to reduce a heinous act to social maladjustment. It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation.
And Peters is even more blunt:
Just as we’d expect the Army to get rid of a disruptive white supremacist, we need to cashier anyone who espouses violent Islamist extremism — as Maj. Hasan did, again and again.
We won’t. Because Islamist terrorism doesn’t exist. Just ignore the dead and ask our president.
UPDATE: Brent Bozell wrote a good article on this as well, reminding me of Bob Schieffer’s attempt at drawing moral equivalency between this act and some nameless Christian “nuts”. Read Bozell’s take on it here.
It would appear that a good crowd showed up for Michele Bachman’s call for a House Call to the House to protest Speaker Pelosi’s horrible health care bill. I have managed to snarf some initial pictures from Twitter and will post more as I get them.
First, it seems obvious that the Speaker of the House has control of the Capitol Web Camera:
Does Pelosi control this, perhaps?
A short video taken from the steps. Can you hear the crowd chanting “Nancy”?
Yeah … that’s when the voters elected Barack Obama. If you’ve been scanning the Internet you’ve seen no shortage of news stories about disappointed – and sometimes disgusted – voters who actually thought they were voting for some type of wonderful change in Washington.
I think the retrospective on Obama’s first year should really be saved until the one-year mark from his coronation, not the election. I will say this … Obama has been far worse than I would have ever imagined. Any promises he made about transparency and bipartisanship in Washington have turned out to be a complete joke. He has shown absolutely no understanding of the role of capitalism and our free markets in the creation of our amazing standard of living in America. He has treated the Constitution as a nuisance rather than a blueprint for governance.
For many years I’ve been talking about politicians who believe that America’s greatness comes from government. Obama is the embodiment of that principal.
Others have said this .. but Obama is completely in over his head. This is a job he was simply not prepared to handle. He became president not on the basis of accomplishment, but on the basis of charisma and a well-orchestrated campaign. His election was a crowning achievement of our system of government education. He certainly has the potential of destroying this country as we know it. The ballot box still works … for now. I truly believe that 2010 may be the last chance we have to save our Republic from the likes of Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Frank, Rangel, Waxman, Hoyer and the rest of the statist crowd.
I agree with Neal. I knew that it would be bad, but I was thinking Bill Clinton in 1993 bad, not Russia in 1917 bad. I was naively hopeful in a post that I did on inauguration day, knowing that he would be a leftist but hoping that he would gain some sense. Instead, Mr. Obama has simply shown himself to be an empty suit charlatan blinded by his slave-to-the-state ideology.
In the final episode of the horror story that is the Eastern Front the tale descends into unimaginable darkness as vengeance is called down on Germany. This graphic episode is not for young ears.
Dan wants an anti-corruption party to unify Americans who want a cleaner government. Also: jobs, Nazis, Bolsheviks, Socialists, lobbyists, Right-wing talk show hosts and Ben.
Watch videos at Vodpod and other videos from this collection.
What others had to say
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples' money." Margaret Thatcher
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery." Winston Churchill
This is an administration hell-bent on taking America towards a socialist country.
But to call this an act of terrorism, the 
Major Hasan was portrayed as a disturbed individual who was under a lot of stress. We learned about pre-traumatic stress syndrome, and secondary stress disorder, which one gets from hearing about other people’s stress. We heard the theory (unlikely in retrospect) that Hasan was so traumatized by the thought of going into a combat zone that he decided to take a gun and create one of his own.
Yeah … that’s when the voters elected Barack Obama. If you’ve been scanning the Internet you’ve seen no shortage of news stories about disappointed – and sometimes disgusted – voters who actually thought they were voting for some type of wonderful change in Washington.
