Wednesday, December 30, 2009

The Humpty Dumpty Presidency

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a big fall.

All the king's horses, and all the king's men

Couldn't put Humpty together again.

"...rarely has a candidate’s entire world view been so abruptly refuted in the first year of a presidency..."

It's enough, you know, almost to conclude that the Left, and Democrats, are wrong about what they think they know, isn't it?

(If only Leftists and Democrats entertained that thought as a possibility...)




If You've Lost Maureen Dowd..?

...See folks, it isn't just me!:

...We seemed to still be behind the curve and reactive, patting down grannies and 5-year-olds, confiscating snow globes and lip glosses...

In the words of Ed Morrissey, "Be sure to read Dowd’s entire column, a sentence I thought I’d never write..."





Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The Democrats' 'Recovery'

Can't help but get a little chuckle from Democratic 'sympathist' Steve Rosenthal's prescription for Democratic 'recovery' before their imminent 2010 electoral disaster. Read it here:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/31035.html

My take on his 'suggestions':

  • Stop whining. We agree right off the top. Any political party heard to be in full whine will largely be ignored. We all want to believe our own whines are more important than anyone else's. Thus, if the Democrats whine that we just don't understand all the wonderful things they intend for us with their higher taxes, health-care overhaul, energy-use deterrents, and apparent disdain for our intelligence, understand that we just don't want to hear it! We're too busy trying to make ends meet!
  • Remember how big you won in 2008. Sorry, Steve, there's just no way to make this one play for you. Democrats -- and President Obama, in particular -- won in 2008 by lying to us! You downplayed the left-tilted agenda you had planned, pretended to be moderates, and sold us down the river once you were invested in power. If you think now 'owning' all those intrusive, government mandates is going to provide enough lipstick to cover that pig slop, you just go right ahead and make the 25% of the electorate who are true believers in the Social Democrat experiment your "permanent majority"! You might want to refigure your math, though.
  • Don't be spooked by 2009... Instead, get organized in Congress and on the ground to move the Obama change agenda. What the voters said in the 2009 elections is that it's not about Obama or Congress; it's not about Democrats or Republicans. It is about us: real people with real problems that we want addressed. The frustration voiced by independents and Obama surge voters in 2009 should be of real concern. These voters are still looking for change to happen and will keep voting for change — regardless of party — or not voting at all, until something real happens. In the 2008 election, what mattered most to voters was the candidate's ability to "bring change," and the 34 percent of voters who cited this quality in exit polls nationally voted 89 percent for Obama...Listening to these "change" voters (or as a Republican acquaintance of mine calls them, "fix it" voters), it is clear they are frustrated, stressed and just want things in the country to get back on track. They are not interested in political expediency. Independents, Democratic base voters and the Obama surge voters want action, and they want the change they voted for in 2008. They want to see real leadership, not legislative gridlock. They don't want their elected officials to go back to the days of legislating "small things" (school uniforms come to mind). To win them back — to engage them at all in 2010 — Democrats need to pass real health care reform, then move aggressively on a jobs, jobs, jobs (it cannot be said enough) program with strong workers' rights. Do as candidate Obama said: Put people to work immediately to fix our schools, rebuild our transportation infrastructure and invest in green technology, energy efficiency and create more green jobs. Oh, please, please, PLEASE, do all of this! I quoted this almost in its entirety because it is so evidentiary of all the mis-interpretations Democrats make about their 'mandate'. Going back to my last point about the 25% or so of hard-Left voters who will support Obama and the Democrats in any case because Republicans/Conservatives are evil, ignorant, racist, misogynist, misanthropic cave-dwellers -- well, you're going to tickle them to death if you do all the things (if you can even manage to define them recognizably) recommended above.  But, I find it truly astonishing that leading Democrats apparently don't understand that they will, by doing so, alienate to some degree virtually every one of the remaining 75% of the hunter-gatherer/provider (for families and employees) types residing in their ignorant appreciation of the abundance of the past 200+ years of American self-reliance, capitalism, and personal freedom. To paraphrase a famous insouciance: We don't need no stinkin' mandates!
  • Put Obama on the ballot in 2010 for African-Americans, Hispanics, single women and young voters. The Democratic base is not energized...Which Obama? The inscrutable one a majority of mostly liberal and independent-moderate votes elected a year ago because they thought his actions would echo his promises and words, or the one who has attempted to govern according to his statist sympathies? If it's the former -- well, you just spent several hundred words explaining why this is a non-starter with your 25% base. If you're expecting the latter -- good luck with that! If we have a do-over of the 2008 race, it'll be a LOT harder to fool a majority of voters into believing Obama's Democratic Party is anything but the left-most majority this country has ever elected. I don't think we'd do it again.
  • Build it, and they will come. Organization is critical in midterm elections. The party with the superior infrastructure to persuade and turn out voters will win. Yep. And motivation is the foundation upon which organization is built. You might respect and accept the likes of MoveOn.org, and ACORN, as partners in participation, but the general public has, shall we say, moved on. Those groups have already motivated everyone they're likely to motivate. The rest of us just don't trust them to put anyone but themselves first. Hasn't happened yet, anyway! As for labor, well...it's not for nothin' that the major, national unions have seen growth only in the public sector. Union bosses and organizations have become little more than another level of bureaucracy to most of their subjects -- I mean, workers. Thus the affinity between statist government and union leadership: they represent pretty much the same structure, and pursue pretty much the same goals -- namely, more power for themselves. If you think the Obama Administration's abrogation of long-standing bankruptcy laws in order to invest General Motors and Chrysler went over popularly, you probably don't realize we all understand this was a sop to labor unions. Well, you're wrong, we do -- and few of us like a bully, especially one so fearsome as intimidates with the power of government behind it. Think of our votes as pebbles, and the ballot box as a slingshot, aimed smack at Goliath! If Democrats truly believe this is their moment to remake America, they are unknowingly past their high tide -- because there is nowhere near a solid majority of us who believe in our hearts that we've lived all these years in an America that requires remaking.



An Epic Fail

As relieved as we all are that Friday's Christmas-Day bomber destroyed nothing but his underwear and, perhaps, his reproductive capacity, we all (that includes you, President Obama!) need to realize that Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab's terrorist failings are no consolation for the fact that had he been competent at his chosen craft, nearly 300 passengers -- most of them Americans -- on Flight 253 would be dead at this moment. Irrevocably, permanently dead! As with Richard Reid before him, we got lucky!

But, to make matters worse, Matullab's presence of that flight turns out to be not just the result of neglect and 'lost-in-the-shuffle' bureaucracy, but human failure of operatives who knew about him, had consciousness of his threat, and responsibility to deter it, and STILL failed to act:

http://www.nationalreview.com/onthenews/?q=MjVhZTE3ZWUwOTVkYzFhZWE1NGQzZjZiZDE4OTE0Yjc=

Credit the president with acknowledging the "systemic failure" of the CIA and other intelligence agencies' futility in interdicting this known, would-be assassin before he could directly threaten his chosen targets, Americans. The only acceptable response is the termination of employment of whomever had ultimate responsibility to assure that names, faces, passports and manifests align -- right up to Director of Intelligence Dennis Blair and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Remember when the media and political opposition held President Bush's feet to the fire following his "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job!" statement to FEMA director Michael Brown's response to Hurricane Katrina? The backlash was so severe President Bush's approval rating never recovered. But that, at least, was a natural disaster, not of the "man-made disaster" ilk named by Secretary "Big Sis".  The current Democratic president and Congress would have us believe there's no problem we can't fix if we just pass the right law or redirect the proper resources. In other words, they promise that any man-made situation can be perfected.

Under those circumstances, they should fully expect a failure to take responsibility for and solve 'man-made disasters' such as this potential one a perfect storm much more consequential than Katrina.



Monday, December 28, 2009

After Terror With Its Pants On Fire...

http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/28/monday-open-thread-vacay-edition/

...Does anybody else get the impression that this guy wants to 'be PRESIDENT!', but doesn't really want to 'BE president'?


Sunday, December 27, 2009

Iran

Irony could be defined, I think, by those caught by surprise by history.

The protesters in Iran -- where almost 70% of the population is under the age of 35 (meaning they don't remember the relationship between the U.S. and the Shah from personal experience) -- are at least in the game toward overthrowing the current, hierarchical, theocratic regime:


http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-12-27/could-the-mullahs-fall-this-time/full

 

(Frankly, I'll feel more confident when Michael Ledeen predicts it.)

The irony comes from the fact that Iran's theocracy hates us today because we opted to support -- or, at least, not oppose -- the Shah when Khomeini returned from exile in the late-'70s. Today, any future Iranian government might choose to hate us because we did nothing to promote the Islamists' fall outside of empty rhetoric and belated condemnation.



Coincidences are useless; I'm suspicious...

Call me a conspiracist, if you will, but I find it disturbing that yet another Nigerian (Muslim? Will they tell us?) passenger -- deemed harmless this time -- on the exact, same flight that the Christmas-Day bomber targeted from Amsterdam to Detroit, was arrested upon arrival for being 'unruly':

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/report_flight_crew_requests_emergency_j9ZlOCtnHrNePzruDQfxoI

It sure sounds a lot like testing responses, to me. I'd assume al-Qaida is about to step up suicide missions directly against the U.S., if I were the Obama Administration (and I wanted to remain relevant!).

And, please -- let's not pull more Grandmas from the security line for pat-downs, okay? Again, it ain't coincidence that all these actual and would-be bombers are Muslims from, you know, Muslim countries!

We all chuckle at and tut-tut cliches, too. But cliches become such because they have been so often true! Stop treating 'profiling' like a distasteful cliche -- it works!


Update: Uh-huh!

http://www.620wtmj.com/news/local/80201152.html

What would be the point of videotaping the 'performance' if the guy was going to kill the videotaper, too, anyway? As noted above, seems like an effort to gauge response via a trial run.

This ain't over yet:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2785733.ece

Is Janet Napolitano the new "Brownie"?


Monday, December 21, 2009

Just wondering...

...why, even if the CBO figure of $132 billion over 10 years is accurate (which it most assuredly is NOT -- most of the savings figured in won't actually materialize) from our soon-to-be-new, nationalized health care, it's such a big victory? In a year which has seen c. trillion-dollar programs such as TARP and the pseudo-stimulus, that works out to $13.2 billion a year. In other words, it's piffle!

That's more than a little like dropping a penny in a child's piggy bank while you sneak a 10-dollar bill out the bottom, and expecting to be congratulated for your generosity as a 'giver'!


Sunday, December 20, 2009

The REAL Global-Warming Agenda

Today's 'watermelon' environmentalist (you know: green on the outside, but red on the inside!) is virtually always an anti-capitalist, anti-democratic statist (and Al Gore is a Democrat which, more and more, amounts to the same thing). This is not coincidence, but consequence: the Modern Left has adopted environmentalism, global warming and climate change as the vehicles by which to destroy Western democracy, and redistribute wealth to the so-called developing world (we call 'development' in an egg something else: rotting!).

They are beyond parody, and out of the reach of irony, in their belief that the West's wealth will remain and continue once they've achieved that goal. Because, of course, the failed history of Soviet-style collectivism that has died almost everywhere it's been tried -- and continues to fail even where it has survived, a la Cuba -- demonstrates with clarity that ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit suffocates without the motive and goal of personal profit. Now, that profit can come in the form of money, acclaim, or personal satisfaction, but it's beyond proven that those benefits accrue in the West's capitalist societies, and wither where the state claims all those benefits to itself.

On the other hand, how can one blame Bangladesh, Nigeria, et al, from seeking the shortcut of rescue by the forced distribution of someone else's assets after failing to husband any of their own virtually since existence? Pretty hard to figure, though, how turning the West into another Russia is going to result in anything but a disastrous and petty, universal plutocracy. I guess that would be a good thing for the would-be plutocrats, though. Hence, the efforts in the West to subdue populist democracy before the citizenry identifies their statist goasl.


Climate Change (Sigh!)

A couple of thoughts about global-warm(onger)ing, which seem obvious to anyone with a lick of sense -- which seems to leave out the modern, liberal anarchist:

  • It's not secret that 'global warming' has been going on for some time, or the Ice Age glaciers, for example, would still be covering half of North America. And, of course, some global cooling must have occurred before that to form those glaciers. All of which would seem to point to the fact that (drum roll, please!) EARTH'S CLIMATE CHANGES. Naturally. I lived through the "New Ice Age" warnings of the mid-'70s, so am amused that many of the same alarmists now are alarmists again, but at 180 degrees.
  • Is all of this -- or any of this -- man-made, and therefore man-preventable? That IS, of course, the Kyoto/Copenhagen argument. Obviously, the folks who think they know this for sure sure don't want to compare analyses with anyone who expresses any doubt. Again, this is emblematic of today's modern, liberal mind-set: "If we can't persuade you with our arguments, you must be a small-minded idiot incapable of reason, because if you won't simply accept our conclusions, you're being unreasonable. Don't be so stupid I have to explain things to you!" Because, you know, they can't. It's all Post-Modern emotionalism internalized, with nothing to do with rational thought. 
  • Finally, even if we were to conclude that humanity has caused the ice caps to melt, how does one predict the consequences -- particularly the unintended ones -- of returning our 'carbon footprint' to early-20th Century levels (and, understand, that IS what the stated goals amount to!)? Have we learned nothing about unintended consequences from all the centuries of recovering from them? I think there's an awfully good chance that even should we get the diagnosis right, we'd foul up the treatment. We're not nearly as smart as we are conceited. That's another symptom of the modern Left!


Thursday, December 10, 2009

Zero Population Growth, blah, blah!..

Well, since Canada's National Post won't let me post this in their comments about single-child, one-world regulation because it's too long, I'll post it here instead:

This isn't even an old argument, but an ancient one. It wasn't all that many decades ago that 6 billion people were considered 'unsustainable' for Earth by the so-called experts. But then, you know, along come the Norman Borlaugs and his like. It's ironic to think that you also cut in half the likelihood of such genius, too, when you cut the population in half.
It takes only a single flight over the western half of the North American continent to realize the world is nowhere near over-populated. And I'm not talking about supplanting food-producing regions with people, either. I'm thinking of all the absolutely empty, unused space. Is the National Post suggesting that we can dream of colonizing the moon or Mars, but not the Rocky Mountains?
At least until we take the profit motive away from entrepreneurs -- which DOES seem to be the latest trend, however stupid it is! -- I'm pretty confident that we'll figure out how to feed/water/house/employ the growing millions, even at current population growth, for a fair spell yet.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Well, so much for regularity...

I hadn't realized it had been 6 weeks since I'd posted here, even if I am seemingly, simply talking to myself. Nonetheless, it illustrates even to me how hectic my schedule has been.  Halloween weekend included a Friday-night school (where I teach) carnival; the following weekend was a round-trip drive to Natchez, MS via the Natchez Trace (one-way) http://picasaweb.google.com/tsousley62/NatchezTrace; the middle November weekend was the last round of 'in-season' yard work; Thanksgiving weekend; and now today.

I've come to understand fatigue better when I don't even get the weekends off!

During that time, however, a new fascination has come into focus: driving around the Mid-South has crossed my paths with a significant number of 3-wheeler, or trike, motorcycles. With the long 'riding season' here, it seems like a pretty attractive way of touring. Trouble is, I know next to nothing about motorcycles, not having been on one in about 40 years. Factory-built ones only come via Harley-Davidson, and are mucho pricy http://www.harley-davidson.com/en_US/Content/Pages/2010_Motorcycles/2010_motorcycles.html?locale=en_US&bmLocale=en_US#/model/flhtcutg. It may become one of those pipe dreams that never comes true, but I'll bite, I think, should an affordable, reliable one make itself available.