the state of the union

That was not a “Joe Wilson” moment.

It is a convention that the Congress invites the president to deliver the State of the Union before a joint session of both houses. No Constitutional obligation requires the Congress to invite the president, and nothing requires the president to deliver a speech. Indeed, the Constitution requires that the president,

“shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

Presidents Georg Washington and John Adams senior both delivered yearly addresses. Presidents Thomas Jefferson [1801-1809] through William Howard Taft [1913 - 1917] delivered their addresses in writing. Woodrow Wilson reestablished the formal speech. President Truman brought it to television and President Johnson brought it to primetime.

But we Americans have come to appreciate the great symbolisms this moment has acquired.

For instance, another convention is the invitation of the Supreme Court. Justice Bryer was the only Justice in attendance at several addresses given by President Clinton, and in 1986 no justice attended—the only time. This year, six justices were gracious to attend.

By convention, these justices sit politely, quietly dressed in their robes representing the judicial branch of government. It should not take a history nerd to be impressed by this moment—and in America, how lucky we are to get a moment like these each year.

The president—our president—submits his agenda to the legislature, calling on it for aid and advice. The president enforces the law, but he still needs the Congress to give him the go ahead. And in this scene—a little bit partisan, a little bit intense, but always, ideally, amicable—the Court gives no input. It is a marvelous representation of the American government. The Court has no agenda and no bias as to what the law shall be or how it shall be enforced: they simply referee when called to do so.

At the State of the Union, they represent what must remain steadfast, unwavering and immune from politics in the American government: justice and the Rule of Law.

Pollyannaish? Not at all. To be certain, those nine Justices are men and women, they are lawyers, and they are Americans. They vote, they take sides, they go to Church and Synagogue for guidance and they pay taxes. But in their roles as Justices, they are blind and take the greatest care to hold sacred the Rule of Law.

They don’t always succeed in their execution; I’ll be the first to admit this.

But the State of the Union is an American moment. It is not the time to obliterate conventions and institutions for political shock value. At this moment, it does not matter that we didn’t like the potential political impact of a Supreme Court decision.

In fact, in a ninety minute speech before 50 million Americans, jam-packed with a year’s worth of legislative proposals, there is simply no room to parse the details of each decision. Not seriously, anyway. President Obama dedicated a moment—two maybe three minutes—to a 180 page decision, stuffed with case law, reasoning and analysis.

It is entirely within the president’s role to criticize and politicize Court decisions. He would not be alone: four Justices dissented in Citizens United.

This is simply not done at the State of the Union. This is a setting where the Justices are present, but, by convention, not even able to respond. Surely, the president could have alluded to the decision and advocated a campaign finance reform for the new Congressional session. That would have been fair and entirely appropriate. But to essentially suggest that the Court had violated the Constitution by going recklessly against precedent, as if for some ulterior political motive, is uncalled for.

Moreover, Obama utterly misrepresented the decision by declaring that it would open the floodgates to foreign corporations’ contributing to U.S. elections. “Not true,” Justice Alito muttered. And it is not. Quite simply, this is not true. Federal law forbids foreign donations—corporate or individual—from being contributed to U.S. elections (state, local or federal). They cannot even give money to U.S. subsidiaries for the purpose of donating to campaigns. Furthermore, the majority in Citizens United expressly states that foreign donations are unaltered by the ruling.

This leads one to believe that either the president does not know the law or that he was intentionally misrepresenting the law for political gain: he got a standing ovation from House and Senate Democrats. What a populous chord he was striking, attacking big-business by slapping around the Court!

Indeed, given that the law was passed in 1996, it is somewhat baffling that so many Congressmen stood and applauded. Many of them had to have been in Congress in 1996. Surely both Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Biden were. (In fairness, President Obama was finishing his third year of elementary school at about this time).

So in the last week, many in the media and Congress have had the audacity to deride Justice Alito for breaking convention by muttering those words. Of course he did—the president had just annihilated the convention.

It has been said this was Alito’s “Joe Wilson” moment. But Justice Alito is undeniably right that the president’s remark was untrue. Actually, with regard to accuracy, Joe Wilson was not even a Joe Wilson moment: he was right too. The difference is, Joe Wilson was disrespecting the president; whereas, Samuel Alito had just been disrespected by the president. Justices Kennedy and Roberts might have been class acts for not responding to the false attack against their majority decision, but who can blame Justice Alito for muttering?

In adlibbing the line “with all due deference to the separation of power,” as if it mitigated the fact that he was proceeding to join with half of one branch of government in lambasting 5/9th of another branch a government, President Obama indicated that his direct public attack of the Court was unprecedented. Otherwise, why add this line? Would he have presumed, otherwise, that people would consider that publically attacking the judicial branch at the State of the Union might infringe on the doctrine? He would have been right.

In a word, we cannot become cynical about these institutions and conventions. The man who occupies the house that Washington built should wise up to that. He is still my president, but sometimes the man holding the office is a real . . . .

george bush is now, permanently, the source of all our problems

We are not entitled to our own facts.  Fortunately for left wingers, we are entitled to our own spin.

To listen to Obama, one would think that Scott Brown won in the liberal fiefdom of Marxachusetts because they were fatigued by the “last eight years” of Bush.

“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office is what swept me into office,” he said. “People are angry and they’re frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened over the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

So, liberal Massachusetts voted for a Republican because they were tired of Bush?  What else has happened in the last eight years?  What could he possibly be referring to besides our erstwhile president whose been out of office for a year?

To listen to Howard Dean, one would think that because the 80% of Obama’s Massachusetts votes who stayed home were upset that there was no public option in the Senate bill, Brown’s victory was really a declaration that many voters wanted a public option.

So, they voted for the one choice out of two who was clearly and openly opposed to, not only a public option, but a universal health care bill in general.  Say, didn’t Coakley support a public option?

To listen to Frau Pelosi, if you can stomach it, one would think that the voters of Massachusetts were not voting against Obamacare because they already have state health care coverage—it being the inference that they clearly enjoy it very much—and moreover, we cannot expect the fate of health care reform to rest solely on the desires of one state.

That’s an interesting take on representative government.  Ought the senators of states who have state health care remain home and not vote?  Does this mean that John Kerry will not be voting, henceforth?  Well I’m all for that Madame Speaker, indeed.

Senator Feinstein was more tempered.  To wit, she advocated that Democrats go slower.  “People do not understand,” she said.  Health care reform is “so big, it’s beyond their comprehension.”

In Feinstein, we find the archetype of all left-wing spin:  hubristic self delusion.

In a word, Democrats just didn’t do a good enough job of telling us how awesome they are.  In the future, they must strive for even more awesomeness.

Still, numbers have a funny way of compelling the logical inferences which the Left tries desperately to avoid.  Brown won by nearly 6%, closing a 30 point+ deficit in less than one month—on the back of a campaign declaring him the “41st vote.”  He won 67% of the vote in one Massachusetts district which Obama carried 53-46 in 2008—the same margin which Obama won by nationally.  That district handed an extra 21% to the Republican candidate just a year after Obama’s inauguration.

Brown won 20% of Democrats, 18% of Obama’s 2008 votes and 70% of Independents.  Obama carried Massachusetts by 62% overall.  Couple these results with the statewide elections in both New Jersey and Virginia, both carried by Obama, and the message becomes clear.

But there’s more.  This seat was held by John F. Kennedy and later Ted Kennedy for more than fifty years.  Ted Kennedy was arguably the safest and most easily re-electable politician from either party in the entire nation for decades.  He was, moreover, the Senate’s champion of universal health care since the 1970’s.  Alas, it’s not Teddy’s seat anymore.

Massachusetts turned out with 50% of registered voters—higher than most presidential election turn-outs.  For what?  Because they really-really wanted a public option as Howard Dean would have us believe?

Pelsoi would have us believe that since Massachusetts already has universal health care they must like it and therefore could not have been voting against Obamacare.

Yet, we know health care mattered to them.  In fact, 52% of Massachusetts voters opposed health care reform and 42% said they voted for Brown for the specific purpose of thwarting Obamacare.  And was it not obvious to all why Brown was referring to himself as the 41st vote?

Or maybe, as Senator Feinstein would have us believe, people just didn’t understand how great health care reform was going to be.

I don’t understand this though—was there some kind of media black out on the topic?

Let’s see:  President Obama gave more than fifty speeches, made hundreds of comments, held a primetime nationally televised speech before a joint session of Congress, and held another primetime press conference which derailed into a colloquium on the president’s racial musings (Whitey and those stupid cops).  Congressmen and senators held numerous town hall meetings throughout the summer—to be sure, derailed by protestors.

Aha!  A K-street misinformation campaign—that’s what confused Americans.

Americans are so simple that the complex and nuanced health care reform flew over their little heads, allowing those vile naysayers and K-Street lobbyists to stymie debate and influence the dimwitted proletariat.

That’s an interesting position in that it is brilliantly ass-brained:  exactly what an arrogant left-winger needs to excuse the glorious rejection of their unwieldy social agenda.

First, how is that when 52% of the country votes for Obama it is an earth shattering, glass-ceiling breaking orgasm of inspiration; yet, when America rejects his health care agenda by a similar margin it could only be because Americans are dim and easily misled about comprehensive health care reform?  After all, health care reform was supposedly part of his election mandate.

Second, who was hindering debate over health care?  It seems to me that a filibuster prolongs debate while it is cloture which ends debate.  It would also seem that holding partisan, closed-door debates on the bill and rebuking opponents as Nazis and K-Street Lobbyists would stifle debate as well.   Left-wing media hounds called whole groups of citizen-protesters “tea-baggers.”  Albeit, I would not doubt their intimate knowledge of the practice.

Third, who was spreading misinformation, and whose misinformation was the most widely disseminated?  Aside from Sarah Palin’s comment about ‘death panels,’ I can think of no specific fact held up by Conservatives which average voters—such as those who went to the polls on Tuesday—accepted as true, but was arguably not true.  That rationing shall result from this bill is debatable—easily proven, but debatable and, thus , not what I would even call “misinformation.”

Hyperbole Palin’s statement was; misinformation it was not.

Will Obamacare be a government take-over of the health care system?  Yes, of course it will.  Will a public option put private business out of business and cause government to be the only health care option.  Yes.  Will taxes increase and Medicare be cut?  Yes.  Will it be more expensive than Obama is telling us?  Ask the CBO.  Has Obama and company repeatedly advocated single payer health care, thus creating the perception that his bill is no more than a Trojan horse—call it an “incremental” step—toward single payer care?  Yes, youtube it.

Now, for my favorite pieces of misinformation (lies):  (1) that there are 45 million uninsured; (2) that America ranks 37th in overall health care world wide; and (3) that the reason health care is so expensive is because evil insurance companies and drug companies are making obscene profits (2-3%, the same as most industries) in an “unregulated” market.

Obama has spent nearly a year spreading these and other “facts” which are easily disproved:  not arguably disprovable, easily disprovable.

America saw through it—again.  For at least the fourth time in American history, the American people have rejected a federal overhaul of health care and a national health care regime.  Each time it began with high polling numbers, invariably due to the question presented to them being:  “Do you want health care reform which will make it cheaper and more accessible?”  (Personally, I always say “N-O!” to that one).   And invariably, once the details of the reform are released, broad opposition ensues.

But left-wingers tell us it’s because we were too stupid to understand how awesome they and their agenda are.  Well, I am certainly seeing a pattern of stupidity, but not among the American people.

Young Liberals.

Equality California, a prominent LGBT political action group, has issued a petition urging President Obama to file a brief in the Federal Court challenge to Proposition 8, declaring his support for the overturning of Proposition 8 as an unconstitutional state law. The same petition declares it unacceptable that President Obama failed to forcibly speak out against the recent vote in Maine, where for the 31st time, State citizens have defined marriage as between men and women.

I’m not particularly interested in marriage as a political issue. I am nevertheless fascinated in the constant attempt to recruit President Obama in this battle. Donald Trump and Miss California accurately described President Obama’s professed position on the topic as being in agreement with those who voted in favor of Propisition 8; as well as with the opinions expressed by Miss Prejean.

Interestingly, the Minority supporters of Proposition 8 largely mirrored President Obama’s own Minority supporters: Blacks and Hispanics overwhelmingly favored (a) Proposition 8 and (b) President Obama. President Obama’s historic campaign even spiked Minority turn out across the country last year - where 4 states passed some variation on what may be described as State versions of the Defense of Marriage Act. (That of course was the federal act signed by famed LGBT activist, Bill Clinton, which defined marriage as between men and women).

One could argue that President Obama’s own candidacy caused Proposition 8 to pass by a narrow margin of 52-48, insofar as, Blacks (1) turned out en mass to (2) vote 9-1 for Obama while (3) voting for Proposition 8 by 7-3.

Indeed, this recruitment of Obama by the Gay Rights crowd is truly fascinating, if only to extent that great joy is derived from watching naive liberals find out that, while there is a Santa Clause, he has turned out to be a self-involved street pimp.

Barack Obama’s professed position on marriage is no different from George W. Bush’s, John McCain’s or Carrie Prejean’s. Yet, did Equality California ever initiate a petition requesting the aid of President Bush in their fight to promote gay marriage?

In fairness, it is quite likely that President Obama has intentionally misrepresented his position out of political pragmatism. In other words, he’s a stand up guy. Thus, we are left with two alternative conclusions with respect to Equality California’s perception of President Obama: (a) complete and utter naivete or (b) full recognition of the fact that President Obama does not mean what he says to most people.

Perhaps there is a fair amount of the latter, but I think the protests on Universities of California illustrates that the former is a more likely conclusion.

Statistically, young people lean liberal, voted for President Obama, and support all manner of government spending: universal health care, more taxes for education, more taxes for entitlements, taxes on carbon dioxide and other, em, pollutants…. to pay for green energy.

The state of California has been the playground of liberals for some 40 years now. Our legislature, which passes our budgets and manages our public funds, has been Democrat in both houses, almost uninterrupted, since the late sixties. We now have a $21 billion budget gap. Cause and effect, perchance?

California is unique in that our citizens can vote directly on foolish state bond measure. But this only indicates that there are at least enough foolish California voters who are routinely convinced that the government deserves more of their money to pay for “the public welfare”: i.e., young college students.

Last year, these college students supported President Obama, or as I like to think of him: the most expensive decision this country has ever made. Statistically, they will surely support whomever the Democratic candidate is in California’s gubernatorial election next year.

Now, as a result of California’s mismanagement of the public funds (largely to be blamed on the Legislature) and runaway spending, choices are being made: slash the budget or raise taxes? Raise taxes, cut programs or raise UC tuition?

So, the UC Regents raised tuition: 32% (or about $2,500 per student per year). UCLA students promptly marched across the campus while students at my Alma Mater, UC Berkeley, barricaded themselves inside Wheeler auditorium. Action was taken immediately: 3,800 citations. “There’s the Man for ya! With his oppressive, eh, citations! We’ll win this war yet.”

But do these foolish children not realize that they voted for “The Man”? A part of me wonders what stepping, perhaps just one foot, inside the minds of left-leaning college students would be like.

For instance, what were their opinions on the Tea Party protesters, whom their sexually frustrated heroes Keith Olberman, Rachel Maddow and John Stewart referred to as “Tea Baggers?” (This is important, because it’s telling that the first mention of a “Tea Party” strangely evinces images of genitalia being inserted into people’s mouths, rather than, say, the founding of our country. I’m certainly relieved that the UC’s did not produce the sick, dimwitted minds of Olberman and Maddow. I don’t, however, know what’s going on up there at Maddow’s Alma Mater, Stanford).

The “Tea Baggers,” in the minds of most Useful Idiots, were little more than under-educated, gun toting White Christians who didn’t want to pay taxes. (Historically, what was it that occasioned the other time such a group came together of late…?).

The “Tea Baggers” were indeed heartless: here, we have people “dying in the streets!” without health care, and those “Faux-News-Halibutron-K Street-Bush-Tea Baggers” are just concerned about taxes and government spending!

Yet, as soon as the tiniest effect of government largess is felt in the checkbooks of 18-23 year old UC students, we’re supposed to bear state-wide demonstrations, the interruption of classes and, potentially, the damaging of public property? This reaches the very height of arrogance and egotism. It’s like watching hungry Romans demand more bread and becoming obstinate when asked to pay up.

Young people like this (mainly college students) suffer from a level of naivete which makes the case, quite brilliantly, that the voting age should be raised to forty. (Yes, I would be more than willing to give my vote up for another 15 years to keep these fools from making anymore political decisions).

These kids are screaming at the smallest fragment of bark on a tree, too stupid to realize that there is a forest around them engulfed in flames. By the time they see the fire, they’ll expect the arsonists to put it out.

220-215

They couldn’t create or save anymore votes than that?

Can’t the White House just calculate the House vote the way they are calculating job statistics? It would create or save a much bigger mandate for universal health care than actually exists.

Maybe the House Dems could multiply the number of yay votes cast by the number of uninsured Americans dying in the streets of boubonic plague - which Obama tells us is now 73 billion - and damn that’s a lot of votes, either created or saved, supporting universal health care.

Fifty four percent of the country is against, and 39% is strongly against (compared with 23% strongly in favor of) universal health care. Thirty-nine House Democrats are also opposed to what House Dems just forced upon us.

Still, this is what Pelosi’s far left wing of the Democratic party thinks is best for us. Never mind broad opposition. Was there ever a bigger “screw you” delivered from the Congress to the nation they serve?

the homegrown wisdom of michelle obama

The “sacrifice” she endured for all our sakes shall never be forgotten. Standing before the International Olympic Committee Michelle Antoi-bama courageously repressed tears, reminiscing of her late father, and declaring: “Some of my best memories are sitting on my dad’s lap, cheering on Olga and Nadia, Carl Lewis and others . . . .”

Yes, Carl Lewis was and remains a track and field super-athlete as well as an eminent Black-American icon. Why, he practically set Los Angeles on fire at his first Olympics, swooping up four gold medals at the 1984 games. Forever tied to his great legacy, must now, forever, be the powerful image of young First Lady Michelle Obama, a starry-eyed babe at aged-twenty reclining in her “dad’s lap” for the 1984 Olympic games.

Before this speech, Michelle, fresh off a European shopping spree, humbly reassured a crowd working on Chicago’s bid that she, Oprah and Barack were up to the “sacrifice” of coming all the way to Copenhagen to tireless jet around on Airforce One, shop for some new Prada-wear, and savor ‘Roasted Maine Scallops with cauliflower and almonds & brown butter, oven roasted bone with paprika crust and country bread, sliced veal with white tuna sauce or roasted organic chicken with buttermilk and herbs.’

Wait, that’s what the London Daily Mail reports the First Couple ate the following week for their Anniversary. Prague is where they were lavished with the finest food in Eastern Europe during a quick prance through Czech Republic after the Olympic defeat. What was on the menu in Copenhagen, again? Oprah did leave a few morsels for Michelle, right? Never mind. Oh yes, the “sacrifice” . . . .

There, Michelle stressed the importance of a Chicago Olympics and warned that “athletics is becoming more of a fleeting opportunity . . . .  [f]unds dry up so it becomes harder for kids to engage in sports, to learn how to swim, to even ride a bike.”

It’s true, American athletics is practically a long forgotten memory in 2009, given the high cost of bicycles and, um, the scarcity of, uh, bodies of water for swimming.

Sadly, this trend will continue now that Brazil is sure to get the Olympics. And while American athletic traditions are sure to fall into antiquity as skyrocketing costs prevent kids from riding bicycles, running on tracks and kicking soccer balls, we should take solace that somewhere out there the next generation of full grown adult Brazilian men and women in their twenties and thirties shall perch themselves on their daddys’ laps in 2016, to become inspired throughout midlife.

Nevertheless, Michelle had a little more of that signature-homegrown advice for the great nation she has been proud of for at least a year and half and counting now. This week, Obama wrote in US News that “Teachers are a key to a successful economy.”

A celebrated economist, First Lady Obama is well equipped to speak on this momentous issue. But her economic bona fides aside, Obama tackles this issue from the standpoint of a simple stay-at-home (aside from occasional European tour) Mom. First, she says, “I can’t help but think that some of the most influential people in my daughters’ lives won’t be the ones they . . . . read about in the pages of a book—they will be the people who stand up every day in front of their classrooms.”

Recalling my own upbringing inside the nuclear powerhouses of knowledge known as California public schools, I must differ from the First Lady’s assessment that the countless models of mediocrity I encountered in school rooms somehow rivaled the influence Washington, Ghandi and Martin Luther King had on my life. One reason for this difference could be that the Obama’s have declined the public option, opting instead to spend the rich fruits capitalism and high-paying elected office has showered upon them, on private schools for their daughters.

“[I]t’s not surprising,” Obama continues, “that studies show that the single most important factor affecting students’ achievement is the caliber of their teachers.”

Assuming these supposed “studies” are reliable I simply revert to my prior criticism of government schools. For, if this is true, it should be no surprise that government schools staffed by government teachers, choked by government control and powerful teacher’s unions have led, over the past fifty years, to high drop outs, abysmal performances in most of the subject areas once foundational to Western education, and increasing teen pregnancies; that they have stymied American competition abroad in science and engineering while concurrently fashioning a nation with the highest proportion of unthinking, pacified fools America has yet seen.

I’m glad Michelle seems to understand all this, for she goes on to say that, “in a 21st-century global economy where jobs can be shipped to any place with an Internet connection and children here in America will be competing with children around the world for the same jobs, a good education is no longer just one road to opportunity—it is the only road. And good teachers aren’t just critical for the success of our students. They are the key to the success of our economy.”

I completely agree. Here are some ways to reform American education which would allow us to regain the economic dominance we once enjoyed: close the Department of Education and let state and local governments take back their schools at the community level, give parents generous tax credits so they can pick which schools they want to send their kids to, eliminate government administrators at the local level to free up tax money being wasted on “education budgets,” and refocus on the foundational subjects that sparked a revolution in Western education: math, science, history, language, arts and American civics.

The last goal will be accomplished by divorcing education from a federal government which has spent the last several decades confusing and distracting American school children with liberalspeak and multicultural perspectives that lead one to believe that all approaches and all cultures are equal in every way, when they are, quite actually, not equal.

I wonder how the Safe School’s Czar feels about all of these ideas. Yes, instead of an hour a week devoted to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender tolerance in Kindergarten, maybe we can – this is a crazy idea – just teach them about math or history during that hour. Heck, let’s just send them home an hour early and let their parents have that conversation instead. It’s pretty radical, I know.

“More than half of our nation’s teachers and principals are baby boomers. And in the next four years, as many as one third of America’s 3.2 million teachers could retire.” Good riddance to bad rubbish. Maybe we can hire a new generation under our reforms (see above), eliminate tenure and start rewarding teachers who prove themselves worth their salaries.

“[B]y 2014 . . . . our nation’s schools will hire as many as 1 million new teachers.” What do you know! Problem solved. We’ll begin our reforms (see above) with these fresh faces.

Obama says, “we need to treat teachers like the professionals they are by providing good salaries and high-quality professional development opportunities.”

In California, more than 2/3 of our state budget goes to education. Our schools have remained in the bottom five out of fifty states based on performance. We have the highest unemployment rate we’ve seen in decades and one of the highest nationwide. We have a deficit problem that refuses to go away with every new band aid the democratic-controlled legislator (as it has been for most of the past forty years) place on the problem. In the midst of this, the California teacher’s union has staged hunger strikes in the face of budget cuts. California K-12 teachers are paid, pro-rata, higher than state attorneys who are required to spend an extra three years in law school in order to become attorneys. The tenure system is so overbearing that, as the LA Times reported a few months ago, there are literally thousands of teachers being paid to stay at home while they are being sued, many under investigation for molestation. In sum: it practically requires an act of Congress to fire them.

Teacher certification requires a bachelor’s degree with no particular academic distinction and a certification process which can often be financially supplemented. They can usually return to school later for a Master’s with state supplements provided. They enjoy every reasonable form of employee benefit as well as three months of vacation with the option of teaching summer school for additional compensation. Their union is easily the most powerful lobby in the state. At the same time, our education budget is spread over countless, superfluous administrators, bureaucrats, paper-pushers, projects and personnel. I wonder how did Plato’s Academy or the universities of Enlightenment Europe fair without Human Resource departments and guidance counselors?

Should teachers be treated like “professionals” and “provided good salaries and high-quality professional development opportunities?” Yes, of course – absolutely.

Should they be paid as much as professional lawyers and neurosurgeons? No, surely that would be rather strange given the disparity in educational levels and professional duties. Unless we’re going to start raising the hiring criterion so that one must have a PhD to teach Kindergarten, let us disabuse ourselves of this notion that teachers merit the same pay as doctors.

Should they be afforded their salaries and opportunities by the federal government rather than local communities by means of local taxes and federal tax credits? No, and the history of Western and American education proves that the form of schooling we currently misidentify as “education” is not effective; whereas locally controlled education focusing on basic and rudimentary subject areas is quite effective.

“We need parents to do their part as well to match that leadership in the classroom with leadership at home.” Agreed. Now can parents teach their own kids about sex, tolerance, God and social norms?

“And we need government to support significant efforts to recruit and retain teachers and to reward high-performing teachers. Along those lines, President Obama is already investing more than $3 billion to turn around struggling schools.” I hope no child will be left behind in the process.

As per usual, Michelle Obama has been carted out as the affable Jackie Kennedy/stay at home Mom disseminating family values and the personal wisdom she’s collected as a simple Momma Bear lookin’ over her little cubs.

What’s masked is the philosophy premised on the centralization of all individual wills into the hands of the federal will. What else is masked behind warm-colored images of children learning under the wings of wise, caring teachers is the greedy will of powerful unions seeing it as their cause to lobby without hesitation for more our tax money despite already defeated state economies, and to achieve as little serious accountability for failing schools and failed teachers as possible: tenure, tenure, tenure.

It’s insinuated that it is heartless to rip funding from education budgets and teacher’s salaries, despite the existence of countless reforms to the failed government system which continues to gobble up tax money after having provided disastrous results for forty years or more.

Unfortunately, the American left has set up teachers as a priestly class in their cosmological world view. Unquestionable in their integrity and virtuous beyond any of our mortal standards in their perseverance and willingness to take small incomes (frosted with lavish benefits, tenure and mandatory raises every few years) – teachers and their unions ought not to be challenged.

To add insult to injury, the administration props up the First Lady, appearing to levitate above partisan debate, in order to spearhead a shrewd political campaign by means of simple homegrown wisdom.

Its high time teacher’s unions, teachers’ performances, federalized education and education budgets are thrown in to the ring of serious political discourse where they belong. And if the affable Michelle is going to keep thrusting herself into political debates, then it’s high time we get past the charm, fashion, gardening techniques, recipes, motherliness and Women’s Home Journal nonsense and truly examine her philosophy. We should see her as the political animal she is.

Roman Polanski Didn’t Committ “Rape-Rape.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/roman-polanski/6245219/Roman-Polanski-backlash-as-Whoopi-Goldberg-says-director-didnt-commit-rape-rape.html

As it turns out, legal scholar Whoopi Goldberg, accompanied by her panel of snaggle-toothed hags, has informed us that Roman Polanski did not commit “rape-rape.” California statute 2107, which is on point, clearly states that “mere rape” carries only a minor fine, while “rape-rape” carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 72 viewing hours of the View and 17 viewings of Sister Act, thus, serving a prevantaive penal scheme by destroying the rape-rapists libido entirely.

Render unto Czar the economy, energy, cars, green jobs, AIDS, climate change, war, terrorism, faith based initiative, regulatory policy, safe and drug free schools……………….

Given that there are officially more Czar’s in President Obama’s shadow-Cabinet than can be claimed for the entire three hundred and seventy year period between the reign of Ivan the Terrible and the October Revolution, the U.S.A. can once again affirm the scientific fact that we are No. 1!

While many presidential advisers are not given the official title of Czar-dom, estimates have put Obama’s total between thirty-four and forty-four (http://kingston.house.gov/UploadedFiles/BKAC.pdf). By comparison, Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA) puts the tallies for George W. Bush at fourteen czars and Ronald Reagan at three in eight years, respectively. Others have placed Bush’s much higher.

For the years between 1547 and 1917, I counted twenty-four Russian Tsars and four Empresses.

Now, there’s nothing brand-new about the metaphorical ‘Czar’ in American history.

When Judge Kenesaw Landis was appointed Commissioner of Baseball in the wake of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, this ‘Czar’ terminology was applied by some newspapers.

Later, President Franklin Roosevelt created about a dozen czars to oversee a variety of newly established bureaucracies, such as the Director of the Office of Censorship and the War Food Administrator and other brainchildren of fascism. These were, in turn, informally referred to as the Censorship Czar and the Food Czar, respectively.

After Roosevelt, such positions were less common. Succeeding presidents sparingly appointed advisers to oversee pet-projects and advise them on critical matters. It was not until President Nixon, who appointed a Drug Czar and an Energy Czar, that a president officially used the term “Czar.”

President Carter appointed two Inflation Czars. Unfortunately, these Czars seemed to have misunderstood the objective they were charged with, hence giving America the worst inflation since the Civil War.

President Clinton, who memorably ended illegal immigration, AIDS and climate change, expanded the use of Czars beyond Roosevelt’s dreams, creating a Border Czar, an AIDS Czar and a Climate Czar.

But it was under George W. Bush when the number of Czars truly ballooned. Bush had a Health Czar for the World Trade Center, or as we Americans warmly referred to him, the Special coordinator to respond to health effects of September 11 attacks, World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program.

So far, Czars have generally been one of two things, and always two other things.

First, they are always symbolic posts established to give Americans the temporary perception that the federal government is working hard on an important issue. Second, they are always soon forgotten by Americans, nonetheless continuing to bloat an ever-growing Byzantine system, concurrently robbing the tax-payers blind.

They are either un-approved Lords of a vast network of shadow executive programs, or they are initially un-approved Lords of a vast network of shadow executive programs but soon-to-be permanently established, Senatorially-approved federal bureaucrats.

Nixon’s Energy Czar became the Director of the Department of Energy under Carter; the position is now simply the Secretary of Energy. George W. Bush recently established the Homeland Security Czar, which quickly morphed into the Secretary of Homeland Security.

So, can we expect a Department of Faith Based Initiatives? Would it be suprising? George W. Bush created the 15th Cabinet position of the Federal government just six years ago. Fifteen. Never mind that George Washington did alright with four. My word, how did he manage without a Secretary of Housing and Urban Development? Did they just live in back-water mud-huts?

At the very least, turning these Czars into Senate-approved cabinet-level positions would at least bring to end the Executive’s ever dazzling tango-with-Totalitarianism, as our “living” Constitution is placed on life support.

Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution reads that “[The President] . . . . shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.”

Just how “inferior” are these Czars? How much power do they have? How big are their budgets?

No doubt, these Czars pose serious Constitutional questions. It is, moreover, high time American citizens quit abdicating their place in serious Constitutional debates in exchange for bread and circuses.

One Congressman has decided to finally do something about this, and he should be applauded. Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA) has introduced legislation (http://kingston.house.gov/UploadedFiles/KINGST_039_xml.pdf) that would withhold funding from all Czars until they are Senatorially-approved.

Still the more recent, and albeit important, debate has been in relation to the ideologies held by the particular characters (and that’s a pretty friendly way of describing them) whom Obama has been appointing.

By the grace of God, Emperor, Autocrat and Czar of Green Jobs and, yay, all unholy realms thus related: Van Jones.

Van Jones, former Green Jobs Czar, resigned in disgrace a few weeks ago after it was revealed that he is a Marxist, 9/11 denying, envrio-fascist lunatic. Or as they used to call Fred Astaire: a triple threat.

Jones signed not one, but four petitions demanding an investigation of President Bush for his involvement with the planning of 9/11.

Jones also crusaded for Mumia Abdul-Jamal, a former Black Panther and convicted cop killer, by helping Jamal fight off his death sentence.

Nevertheless, I think we’ve all heard quite enough about the eminent Star Jones… I mean Czar Jones. What does Cass Sunstein think?

By the grace of God, Emperor and Grand Duchy on the Left Hand Side, Regulatory Czar: Cass Sunstein.

Cass Sunstein, confirmed by the Senate as President Obama’s Regulatory Czar, thinks animals have a right to sue humans in courts of law. Sunstein is on tape quoting Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who said “the day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withheld from them but by the hands of tyranny.” According to Sunstein, “a full grown horse or dog is a more rational and conversable animal” than a week or month old baby. I hear Frederic Nietzsche enjoyed a good dialogue over tea and scones with horses himself. Tell us about his philosophical musing. Please, more wisdom, oh sage!

At least we are finally able to extract the route logic behind why these people think abortion on demand is tolerable: unlike with dogs, you just can’t converse with babies.

Ps, for those who enjoy the kind of priorities which Bentham’s Utilitarian philosophy espouses, please see Europe circa 1933 to 1945.

By the grace of God, Emperor and Autocrat of Schools, Sire, Liege and pagan Lord: Kevin Jennings.

There is the Head of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, Kevin Jennings. Jennings believes that a key to safe and drug free schools is hate crimes legislations for gay and lesbian students. Jennings founded the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network in the early 1990’s. Although Jennings submitted the idea of hate crimes legislation to foster safe schools, in 1995 he admitted that the safe-schools stuff was mere rhetoric and that GLSEN really just “threw [the] opponents on the defensive, and stole their best line of attack.”

Jennings wrote about the introduction of diversity policies that mandate gay lesbian and transgender themes being brought into school curriculum.

Can any one rationally describe the virtue of such themes being introduced in school curriculum?

“Ok class! Today’s plan shall include one hour of civics, thirty minutes of algebra, followed by your fifteen minute play break and then forty-five minutes of LGBT studies.”

This is not a social, religious, moral or political debate. This cannot be confused with the issue of gay marriage or gay rights. This is an agenda posed to teach about social and sexual relationships better explained by parents. Radicals like Jennings, however, have convinced themselves that parents have no right to socialize their own children in the ways they see fit. Any attempt to block a LGBT curriculum would surely be met with cries of “homophobia.”

It also turns out that Jennings is a prolific writer. In yet another book he describes an incident which occurred while he taught at the Concord Academy in Massachusetts, in which a fifteen year old student came to him and described having sexual relations with an older man. Rather than reporting this act of statutory rape to authorities as a teacher is legally obligated to in most states (well, maybe not in Massachusetts), Jennings merely asked if the boy used a condom. I give you, our Safe and Drug Free Schools Czar.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Once merely a narrative, icing over the bio of the high cherub of change, Obama’s associations with crazed and deranged acquaintances has by now morphed into a veritable Vagina Monologue for Marxist nut jobs.

Never mind his whimsical soothsayer, Reverend Jeremiah Rasputin, Obama’s shadow cabinet makes Wright look moderate. Never mind that a few Marxists popped up along on the campaign trail, they now occupy valued positions in the Obama White House (senior adviser Valerie Jarrett once described Van Jones as someone who Obama “has been watching since he’s been active out of Oakland.”).

I would ask all of us to simply remember President Obama’s request of us: “Judge me by the people with whom I surround myself.”

You bet your ass we will.

manufactured outrage, indeed

I have a theory. Humor me. After watching footage of a cancer survivor speak before Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee at a town hall in California today and watching as Lee openly took out her cell phone as the cancer survivor spoke, I concluded that the US Congress has been disproportionately stricken by Attention Deficit Disorder and are urgently in need of Ritalin. Unfortunately, on a Congressional salary, a gal like Lee can barely afford her hefty dose of Hallucinogenic drugs, let alone Ritalin, to boot.

Lee’s aloofness to the public outrage certainly explains Congress’ paranoid response to the Health Care protesters who have been greeting them at town hall after town hall. It couldn’t by any means be real outrage, could it?

Just the other day I opened my Twitter feed to find that even the BBC is now asking whether the Health Care Reform protesters are part of a “manufactured” “conspiracy.”

First, it is trite to even discuss the infinite, blatant and documented examples of extreme-leftists planting protesters at public events; of leftists shouting down public speakers they disagree with; and of leftists ‘organizing’ to protest.

Second, to say that the Republicans are behind all this is laughable. With the party of Bush-McCain in disarray, the Conservative, Independent, and Libertarian movements momentously and vocally lashing out at the US government’s march toward Socialism, the Republican Party can only wish it could claim credit.

Third, I should state upfront that the BBC article by Jonathan Beale was one of the fairer takes on the subject I’ve seen yet.

Nevertheless, I still find the concept of dissecting the motives behind town hall protesters in and of itself rather specious – conspiratorial, one might say. Ultimately, unless these protesters are insincere in their beliefs, who cares who organized them? Why are people so concerned about this?

Indeed, it seems that the moment the Speaker of the House, others in Congress, and the White House itself all began spreading the rumor that these protesters are just “manufactured” protesters planted by special interests, various news outlets simply ran with it.

A few days ago for instance, an unsettled Nancy Pelosi mentioned seeing mobs of protesters “carrying Swastikas and symbols like that.”

Curious, I Googled “health-care-protesters-swastika” and came across a single photo of a protester. The protester is holding up a sign with a Swastika on it and “? Obama” written underneath. Of course, Frau Pelosi surely felt that the inclusion of a red line – the universal symbol for opposition – drawn across the Swastika is contextually insignificant to the point being raised:  these protesters are simply ‘uncivil’ Swastika-flashing ‘mobs’ destroying political discourse and dialogue and lions and tigers and bears oh my!

So, anyone listening to Pelosi’s disconcerted ramblings about unspecified protesters with Swastikas would think your local Neo-Nazis had turned out in force to protest Health Care Reform. In reality (a place that Pelosi rarely makes it to these days), the one protester I’ve seen carried an anti-Swastika, clearly communicating (a) that Obama is nazi-esque and (b) that Nazism is bad.

Perhaps “(a)” is an extreme position, but let’s keep in mind the all important “(b).” This much, at least, I can concede to the approximately eighty-three billion protesters we have been seen carrying effigies of George W. Bush plastered with every imaginable reference to Nazism – yes, including a Swastika or two. Yes, their mental faculties notwithstanding, I can at least concede that these protesters didn’t seem to prefer Nazism.

Thankfully, the Speaker toned down her criticism of the protesters: now she simply calls them “Un-American” in her official press release.

Barbara Boxer (no, she really hasn’t earned, nor does she deserve the title “Senator”) provided a pointless anecdote to NBC news about the last time she’d seen protesters so “well dressed.” She said that in 2000, when Al Gore asked her to come to Florida, she was told to ‘go back to California.’ Unabashed, the fierce lioness said ‘your hero Ronald Regan’ is from California, and they all quieted down.

I seem to have missed or forgotten that soaring example of rhetorical savoir-faire during the course of Gore’s thirty-five day coup d’état. I firstly doubt very much that it ever happened; yet, if it did, I doubt that it caused any protesters to eat their words. Charles Manson, Scott Peterson and Grey Davis are also Californians. Certainly, having shared a state with one’s favorite former president seems an unlikely criterion for making it into one’s heart.

Now, the upshot of Boxer’s drug-induced babble is this: the Health Care protesters, like the 2000 election protesters, are just a well funded, well connected, ‘well dressed’ mob who doesn’t represent America. They are just members of a vast, wealthy, organized conspiracy, planted by insurance companies.

Being that she is a fabulously wealthy millionairess, who has spent the better part of thirty years soaking up tax money as a cradle-to-grave-politician, I shan’t doubt Boxer’s keen ability to spot fine and expensive clothing. However, the clips and photos of protesters I’m seeing are looking rather Wall-Mart-chic these days.

Is it Boxer’s belief that average Americans – people likely to show up to protest a town hall meeting on an expensive and increasingly unpopular bill – would sloppily shuffle into a town hall meeting with their Congressman wearing their filthiest peasant rags?

Perhaps she’s just unaware of the new USA Today/Gallup poll showing that a majority of people over fifty, and of people with existing Health Care, and of seniors (many of whom are already on Medicare) are opposed to government run health care. These are citizens who generally work, earn money, pay their taxes and take an interest in civics. I’ll go out a limb and assume they typically shower and dust off their polo shirts and blouses from time to time, “Ma’am.”

These well-dressed mobs are clearly the result of all that “fishy” information being disseminated. As a public service, White House Communications Director for Health Care Reform, Linda Douglas, posted this message on an official White House blog:

“There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care.  These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation.  Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

Now, I’m not one of those who would go so far as to say that President Obama is compiling an enemies list, but let’s stay here for just a moment. First, its very likely, any email sent to the White House is archived in a database and investigated – even if the FBI doesn’t show up at your door.

Second, while I certainly doubt that Douglas was attempting to silence political opposition, maybe advising people to report all casual conversations they’re having with friends, neighbors and colleagues if the content of those conversations seems “fishy,” at least has the flavor of a Totalitarian thought-control policy, no?

This statement can still be read at http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/facts-are-stubborn-things/

Rather than asking us to report suspicious conversations to the White House so they can respond email-by-email, Obama could just speak directly to the American people and convince those of us who aren’t so stupid as to think universal Health Care will be deficit neutral – you know, like those crazy folks at the Congressional Budget Office, who are now foretelling of unavoidable deficits in the proposed program reaching the low twelve digits within the first decade.

Well, yesterday, he did just that in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

First question.

Q: ‘I’m a senior citizen I have a wonderful government run healthcare plan called Medicare. I like it. Its affordable. Its reasonable. No one tells me what to do, I just go to my doctor, my hospital, I get care . . . . you’ve been striving for bipartisanship . . . .

(Really?)

. . . . my question is, if the Republicans actively refuse to participate in a reasonable way with reasonable proposals, isn’t it time to just say we’re going to pass what people need and what they want without the Republicans.’

Sure, I mean, that’s a fair and evenhanded point. Obviously this was just your average Joe the Plumber Six-pack off the street at Obama’s town hall. Nothing like those dreadful town halls we’ve been seeing – full of planted protesters and manufactured outrage.

A little later, an angel-faced, starry-eyed eleven year old pixie of a girl warmed our hearts and dulled our senses with this question:

Q: ‘I saw a lot of signs outside saying mean things about reforming health care, how do kids know what is true, and why do people want a new system that can help more of us?’

What a sharp little princess. Why would people – get this – why would people want to create a ‘system’ that helps more people? I’ve been as confused as she on this point. Prey tell my für? Mr. Obama, you’re not one of these crazy guys – these, these guys who likes to help people all the time, are you? What a crazy concept. That’s just crazy!

I wonder. Could it be that this well-informed little girl inherited her smarts from her dear old mom, Manning Hall, a coordinator for Massachusetts Women for Obama during the 2008 election?

Yes, the Boston Globe is now reporting that little Julia’s mommy was a campaign fund raiser – a community organizer of sorts – who has actually met with Michelle Obama, the Obama daughters and Vice President Biden during the campaign.

I give you a manufactured, well-organized town hall brimming with planted questions, compliments of the Community Organizer in Chief.

Yet, the President’s finest hour surely came with:

Q: ‘How can a private company compete against the government?’

A: “I think private insurance should be able to compete . . . . if you think about it, uh, ya’know UPS and Fedex are doin’ just fine. Right? No, they are, it’s the Post Office that’s always havin’ problems.”

Huh. You know, that’s exactly the best analogy someone could give in making the case for government run health care. Phew, that certainly cleared up all the “fishy” misconceptions I had.

With his credibility on Health Care hemorrhaging, Obama’s response to broad, bipartisan public outrage is to ‘manufacture’ his own friendly town hall – totally unrepresentative of what’s occurring in dozens of town halls across the country – in which he gives few details, plays with numbers (giving wishful, at best, estimates about cost-control measures that are totally contrary to the non-partisan CBO) and playing with facts, in the end amounting to little more than a, “Trust me folks, I got this one!”

Even before this shameless spectacle occurred, Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote a slam-dunk of an article in the Wall Street Journal of Obama’s tone-deafness to this public outrage.

She wrote that, “[Obama] seems unable to grasp . . . . [t]hat Americans don’t take well, for instance, to bullying, especially of the moralizing kind, implicit in those speeches on health care for everybody. Neither do they wish to be taken where they don’t know they want to go and being told it’s good for them.”

Well, in fairness to Obama, at least he turned his Black Berry on vibrate during his town hall. Are you listening Sheila Jackson Lee? Didn’t think so.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342653428074782.html

diversions

I hope that Bud Light sufficiently washed down those unhealthy soon-to-be-taxed peanuts, those pricey cigarettes he raised taxes on 250% and the bitter taste of his own foot.

I’m a bit enchanted, you see – full of mirth, I tell you.

Yet, as the Cherub in Chief finally embarks on his long awaited and spectacularly orchestrated fall to earth, I’m left torn over which diversion aimed at shielding this blindingly glorious sight, indeed born on the Sun-speckled rays of Heaven above, shall go down as my favorite.

Nearly two weeks ago polling trends placed President Obama’s overall job approval below 50% for the first time.

Thankfully, at least while this brief but memorable Honeymoon lasted, Obama did treat his Lady Liberty to a Latin-flavored apology tour, bought dozens of shiny new automobile [plants] and a new house (for everyone who couldn’t afford to pay their mortgage). He sure knows how to treat a gal.

Currently, 39% of America strongly disapproves (compared with 31% strongly approving) of the president’s performance.

If one thinks it is only natural to fall so swiftly let’s recall some historical examples to gauge the novelty of a drop from 69% to 49% in just shy of his first seven months.

Often considered among the worst presidents of all time, Richard Nixon started out with a 59% approval in January of 1969, shot up to 69% by the year’s end and remained above 50% until early 1971. He spent 1971 bordering the 50% mark, shooting up to the high 50’s for 1972, and winning reelection by the biggest popular vote in American history, reaching his precipice of 69% just before Watergate broke in 1974.

Gerry Ford, of course, dropped swiftly from a post-Nixon resignation high of 70%, falling below 50% in the span of four months. (Of course, pardoning a guy who is considered among the worst presidents of all time probably didn’t sit well with America).

George H.W. Bush typically sat in the 60’s throughout his presidency, falling below 50% as the recession kicked and the ‘No New Taxes’ promise was broke in late 1991. (Also significant is the fact that his party had already controlled the White house for nearly eleven years at this point – and still, the nation approved).

Even Carter lasted a full year, holding solidly above 50% until January of 1978. (I know, I know, everyone was pretty stoned in 1978 – but even copious milkshakes can only distract and appease the senses for so long).

Bill Clinton, on the other hand, beginning with an approval rating of 56% plummeted to 37% in less than six months after taking office.

I don’t understand it, I mean, was there some kind of monstrously oversized government program being stomped down our throats around this time? Did it come packaged in red tape, bureaucracy and a vomit-colored pantsuit?

(Of course, one thing Obama learned from Clinton’s little soiree into Universal Marxism: get Hillary the hell out of the country and off the TV if we’re going to get this thing done already!)

Diversion the first: Beer Summit.

A couple weeks ago, at the close of a nauseating 50-minute press conference on the Health Care Reform bill, comprised of approximately one and half thirty-minute responses by the president, Mr. Obama was asked about the recent arrest of a Black Studies professor from Harvard University.

‘What does it say about race relations in America?’

Briefly, here are the greatest hits of that exchange: “I don’t know all the facts . . . . I’m sure there [was] some exchange of words . . . . I don’t know, having not been there, what role race played in this . . . . but the Cambridge police acted stupidly [and] there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped disproportionately in this country”

We all know the outcome. Professor Gates was uncooperative, asked whether he was being asked for identification by the police because he was a “Black man in America!”

Yes, and dagnamit, with a Black Mayor, Black Governor, Black President, and a Black Studies degree, can’t a Black man get a break in Cambridge Massachusetts?! That, and I would just die if I could get some of those tasty clams from Nantucket.

One arresting officer (another Black man in America) came to the defense of the commanding officer on the scene, saying that Sgt. Crawley acted reasonably while Gates acted rather strangely.

Obama was seen as race bating. (No, not Obama, not my Obama!) White House Press Secretary Glib brilliantly added that of course the arresting officers would all stick together inasmuch as the “fraternal order” of police all voted for McCain.

Alienating and politicizing all the police in America as a lobby – a fraternal order, no less – in bed with John McCain? Ok. Sure.

In response to the backlash, the president, uh, said, uh, “there are some who say that as president, uh, I shouldn’t have stepped into this at all because it’s a local issue. Uh, I have to tell you that, uh – that thing – that part of it, I disagree with. Um. The fact that this has become such a big issue I think is indicative of the fact that, ya know, uh, race is still a troubling aspect of our society. Uh, whether I were Black or White, uh, I think that, uh, me commenting on this, uh, and hopefully contributing to constructive as opposed to, uh, negative understanding about the issue is, uh, part of my portfolio.”

Uh, ok. Quite clearly and manifestly obvious to nearly everyone, his comments contributed to “uh negative” understanding of the issue. Also, given that he so uncharacteristically paraded his race around the East Wing declaring himself testament to the racial progress we have made, what was this crap two days later about “whether I were Black or White?”

I mean, would one call such an issue part of his “portfolio” whether he were black or white? Or is it fair to assume that Obama was answering this question, not from his role as Commander in Chief, but from the role as disillusioned Black man. . . . in America.

And the “fact that it became such a big issue” is likely more indicative of the fact that most Americans own TV sets, thus were able to watch the President of the United States go on national television and insinuate that a local cop he’d never met is a racist, insofar as he is a cop and therefore racist.

Now, I have no doubt that the police officers in Cambridge overreacted, as many police officers are wont to – regardless of there being an irrational Black Studies professor with a chip on his shoulder trying to get arrested, for the sheer anecdotal quality such an arrest would have on his meaningless and wasted career.

Of course, while that’s for me as a private citizen to speculate about, its probably for the leader of the free world to decline to reflect upon and get back to Health Care Reform.

Diversion the second: Clinton in Korea.

We’re now to believe former President Clinton parachuted into North Korea in a “surprise-Boo!” effort to free the imprisoned American journalists.

First, while we’re always gladdened to hear Americans making it home and out of harms’ away from abroad, this was public relations at its most mind-spinning.

The deal for their release was already made before Clinton even showed up.

Clinton was sent for the sole purpose of causing us all to ‘oh’ and ‘aw’ over the last ‘liberal-lion’ to sit in the White House. It was part of a more than eight-year long effort to reshape and recast this sociopathic molester into a facilitator of world peace.

The deal was already made, and, what’s more, it is beneath an American president (in or out of office) to be meeting with dictators who have been openly hostile to America and who just imprisoned two American civilians for over 140 days.

Let’s also not forget Bill’s last dealings with the Koreans. The 1994 non-proliferation treaty, intended to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapon’s programs in exchange for allowing them to build nuclear plants, allowed them to escape the radar and continue with their nuclear program – a program which they’ve chosen to test in the vicinity of Hawaii on our Independence Day. Way to go Bill.

Diversion the third: the Health Care protesters

In dozens of town hall meetings on the Health Care reform bill, protesters have been interrupting Democratic Senators and Congressmen, with one protester, in a more memorable incident, declaring the bill a ‘bureaucratic nightmare.’

The White House is now informing members of the courtier press that these protestors have indeed been planted by lobbyists.

Just a second, are they trying to say that lobbying groups actually plant protesters at events, and that, moreover, some protestors get unruly and shout down speakers at public events?

Oh, that’s right – this is just what we call the chief tactic of militant leftists waged on non-leftist political candidates and University speakers for the last five decades.

Anyhow, a couple of things come to mind.

First, a Quinnipiac University poll shows 52% of Americans disapproving of Obama’s handling of Health Care, compared with 39% approving. This is sort of like saying ‘pro-lifers are a fringe terrorist cell’ when in fact 51% of the country self-identifies as prolife.

I don’t believe for a second people are being bussed in to protest for insurance companies.

In any event, even if they were planted: so what? It doesn’t change 52% disapproval. It also doesn’t make these people any less genuinely outraged.

Unfortunately, pride blinds the arrogant in their quest to rule people’s lives. When irreligious, egotistical leftists who worship at the shrine of secularism hold a religious view, such as that all people must have government healthcare, it becomes justifiable to drown out opposition and to force your agenda by every means necessary. Dissenters just need to be converted, that’s all.

So, diversions become useful.

And what about this little trillion-dollar Frankenstein monster?

Universal Health Care has been tossed around since the 1950’s. We know the talking points: health care is expensive because (a) evil insurance companies making profits; (b) high salaries for insurance CEOs and doctors; etc. By contrast, we’re told the federal government can bring down these costs by creating a public option to force competition for lower prices.

Of course, Medicare ought to stand as our example of the profligate inefficiency of the federal government in its attempt to provide medical care for seniors.

Medicare has proven totally unable to control costs, and most Medicare patients are finding out that their out of pocket expenses are growing. Administrative costs are also higher for Medicare patients. Medicare places no catastrophic limit on out-of-pocket expenses, as private insurance does.

Stands to reason why half of Medicare recipients also have private, supplemental insurance.

It’s also, obviously, insane to suggest, as Mr. Obama has, that the 200 million insured Americans would keep their current insurance.

Obama even subtly admitted as much in his press conference a few weeks ago: “if you found out your neighbor got the same car for . . . . less” you’d want the same deal. Yes, yes you would.

“If there’s a blue pill and a red pill” why not pay for the cheaper one? Sure. And what’s more, whichever one was good enough for Keanu Reeves is good enough for America!

Ultimately, the so called public “option” would charge lower premiums, attract all the patients, force providers to participate, pay providers less, drive many providers and private plans out of business, ultimately leaving the bill for inefficient, low-quality healthcare on the middle class.

In the end: a single-payer government health care plan with less providers, longer waits and less capital to invest in technology and innovation. Physicians will be forced to accept lower payments and thus lower income, or find new employment: thus, facilitating a decrease in incentive to enter the healthcare profession.

And now that we’re all ‘in it together’ the fed becomes the mediator and final arbiter of intimate medical decisions – as they are in all federally controlled agencies.

Not to mention, further government entanglement in biological and medical issues which are the subject of moral and ethical debates. The fight to keep tax-funded abortions out of ObamaCare may have been won in 2009, but wait and see what the revolving political powers will bring in years ahead.

Thankfully, none of the many diversions have worked long enough to get our minds off the magnificent catastrophe that is ObamaCare,

Still, I simply can’t pick which of these diversions from Obama’s fall from grace delighted me the most in these last weeks. It truly is a tough call – like picking which of your own children is your favorite. It’s time like these when a man just wishes he could have his waffle and eat it to.

george tiller and the waning credibility of the new york times

I am repulsed. It would take some work to parse David Barstow’s column in the New York Times, “An Abortion Battle, Fought to the Death,” and pull out all the fawning adjectives used to describe slain abortion doctor, George Tiller. “Savvy,” “warrior,” “defiant;” he even had a “sense of mission.”

Attached to the article is a picture of men (all men, including a priest and a man holding a crucifix) praying with clasped hands, with another of women (all women) with hands clasped in protest. Such is the image of the abortion debate we are asked to believe: white Christian men versus women. The issue thus framed is one of women’s rights.

Barstow even writes, “Employees said Dr. Tiller did not have moral qualms about his work, in part because he defined it as saving women’s lives and giving them freedom to determine their futures.” Tiller himself once bragged that, “We have helped correct some of the results of rape and incest. We have helped battered women escape to a safer life. . . We have helped women and families struggle to save their unwell, unborn child a lifetime of pain.”

It is a perverse mind that thinks the result of rape can be “corrected” let alone that such is corrected by an abortion. It is a deranged individual who thinks an “unwell” unborn child is “saved” from life by summary termination. Indeed, let us not be lulled by such high sounding rhetoric. “Unwell” simply means a child with disabilities. Approximately 92% of unborn children in the U.S. and England diagnosed with down-syndrome have been aborted over the last twenty years.

Why, if only “Christian conservatives” would stop “demoralizing” and “outmuscling” abortion defenders, even more unborn down-syndrome babies could get some justice. For so long we have looked for a cure to down-syndrome, yet no further should we have looked than to Tiller’s Abortuary.

Barstow relished in bitter-delight that Tiller gave his employees plaques that read “freedom fighters.” A “warrior” who fought to the end, he was.

Now let me say that it is unnecessary for reasonable people to have any debate over whether a cold blood murder is morally wrong. Tiller’s assassin is obviously unclear on the meaning of “pro-life.” But so is Barstow.

In fact, “pro-life” is seen nowhere in his front page article. “Anti-abortion” is used often. Yet “pro-abortion,” we are often told, is a mischaracterization of men like Tiller. They aren’t “pro” abortion; no one is “pro” abortion.

I beg to differ. Tiller performed tens of thousands of abortions in his long career. He didn’t advocate a reduction in the number of women seeking abortion as President Obama, who is “personally opposed” to abortion, purports to: at $6,000 a pop, abortion was his bread and butter. Abortion was not a last resort procedure in Tiller’s mind as more moderate pro-choicers feel it should be: abortion saves women’s lives, according to his former employees.

From what? Financial troubles? Social stigma? The prison of motherhood?

Perhaps they are “correcting” a rape? Perhaps from a statutory rape in the case of the legion pregnant teenage girls being, at best, ditched by their older boyfriends; and, at worst, abused by discrete older men: men who, but for opponents of parental notification laws, ought to be exposed, prosecuted and kept from repeat offensives.

Perhaps he was protecting us all from more un-fathered Black babies who are being terminated at a rate of three-to-one over White babies. Well, to be fair, at $6,000 per abortion, Tiller was probably catering to a slightly different class in Wichita. It’s Planned Parenthood who has set up 80% of their facilities in heavily Black neighborhoods. And it’s Planned Parenthood who makes no qualms about accepting donations for the express purpose of “lower[ing] the number of Black people,” as the pro-life student group from UCLA exposed.

If you haven’t heard, that UCLA group conducted phone calls to multiple planned parenthoods in which they asked if they could make donations for the express purpose of aborting Black babies. Their donations were readily accepted. One girl even posed as a fourteen year old and went into a Planned Parenthood to ask for counseling. She told the nurses her boyfriend was in his late twenties. The nurses at best pretended they didn’t hear her; and more often recommended that she not tell anyone.

Of course, after about an hour of attempting numerous search combinations, combing the New York Times website for this incident (which certainly made the news), I came up short. So far, it appears that the Times never paid this sting much attention. Instead what I found was an article by Robert Mackey about how Bill O’Reilly of Fox News has been mean to George Tiller these last couple years, and musing over whether all the mean rhetoric leveled against Tiller led to his death.

“As Dr. Tiller’s killing inevitably becomes part of the war of words over abortion rights in the United States, it is worth asking if heated rhetoric, like that invoking mass murder and jihad, does help to create a climate in which violent attacks, like the one in Kansas, become more likely.”

Bartow cites the words of one representative from the National Organization of Women who demands that the attacks on abortion doctors be treated like “domestic terrorism.” After all, four have been slain since Roe v Wade was decided in 1971.

I wonder, do the words and rhetoric of pro-choice politicians help to “create a climate” in which abortions, likes the thousands happening every day, become more likely? Did President Obama’s address to Planned Parenthood plant the seed of abortion in the minds of young girls “punished” with pregnancy? Did the great abortion rights “warrior” George Tiller’s “defiant” words play any role in the thousands of abortions he gleefully performed?

These cartoon characters from the extreme left have effectively raped the Times of all credibility on issues like abortion.

Firstly, fifty-one percent of Americans, according to Gallup, now identify as pro-life. That’s one hell of a terrorist cell.

Less than twenty percent (a high estimate) support the kind of abortion Tiller was famous for: late term abortions. Twenty to twenty-five percent support no form of abortions. The rest, in between, believe abortion should be restricted, not used as birth control, and limited to cases of rape or to save the life of the mother. This means that even though fifty-one percent self-identify as pro-life, more than seventy-five percent oppose abortion as birth control and late term abortions.

Of course, the number of abortions performed to save a mother’s life or to “correct” a rape account for less than one percent of all the abortions performed. So, seventy-five percent of Americans (crossing all political ideologies), at minimum, oppose more than 99% of all the abortions being performed.

Most women cite youth, financial problems, that the father left, that they want to finish college, that they aren’t ready (the number one reason), or that they fear a social stigma. If one feels an unborn child is a human life possessed of intrinsic moral worth, these reasons, at the very least, do not amount to just causes for the destruction of life. Most people are seriously examining this moral dilemma. That is, all but the fringe left, George Tiller, his assassin and the New York Times.