Cutting back on air fares is easy….

Insane.  Insanely awesome.  Wow.  How do you “practice” something like this? Yee-ikes.

Obama “willing to work” with Congress. Mostly. Ish.

White House: When Congress Won’t Cooperate, Obama Will Take ‘Small, Medium and Large’ Executive Actions

Carney said the president wants to work with Congress, but if the House and Senate don’t, Obama will.

“He’s going to take the actions that he can take using his executive authority to help the cause here, to help Americans deal with this challenging economy. And they can be small, medium or large actions and they don’t have to be just executive authority actions,” Carney continued. “They can be things we can do working with the private sector. So he’ll pursue all tracks.”

Carney added the president still would like to work with Congress (emphasis mine).

 “But it is not accurate to suggest that he doesn’t want to engage with Congress and that he won’t engage with Congress,” Carney said. “He wants to continue to work with Congress. He and his advisors believe there will be opportunities to cooperate with Congress this year. We believe, as a purely political matter, that some members of Congress that have pursued an obstructionist path may begin to see it in their political interest to actually demonstrate to their constituents that they can get some things done.”

To me, the two bolded passages reflect a strange perception on the part of our current President that working “with” the Senate and the House of Representatives is somehow optional.  That it’s sort of the preferred method, but by no means the only method of getting legislation passed and implementing national, federal policy in this country.

In other words, Congress has relevance only as long as the Emperor deigns to give it such.  If it gets in his way, gets inconvenient, slows down his agenda, well then it’s time to shoulder the thing aside and get down to the real business of running this country the way HE thinks it oughta.

Folks, anywhere else, that’s called either a monarchy, or a dictatorship.  And for all their talk about George Bush and his “imperial” presidency, I see President Obama showing a much more overt, fundamental, and arrogant disregard for the rule of law and the concept of separation of powers than any previous member of the White House.

Congress is explicity empowered and mandated BY THE CONSTITUTION as the body which make the laws in our country.  NOT THE PRESIDENT.  If the President is only willing to work with the Congress when they are doing what he wants, then they are no longer “of the people, by the people, for the people,” but rather, merely the steno pool for the CEO.

Scary, scary stuff.

via Protein Wisdom.

Cap and Trade Passes

This is what a Democratically controlled congress gets you.

Cap and Trade in all it’s glory. Hello $5 a gallon for gas, and double or triple your electricity bill in the next 10 years.

Bastards.  We are so phuq’d.

Why I Hate The Environment

They took out the paper towels in the bathroom to save paper, and replaced it with an electric blow dryer thing. Ah, but wait, to save electricity, it is a low power “green” dryer that essential wafts a warm breeze over my hands.

I want enough wind power to peel skin cells off the back of my hand, taking any germs with them.

But nooooooooo.  Gotta be green.  And damp.

I hate the environment.  GIVE ME BACK MY PAPER TOWELS!!!  {{shakes fist in impotent fury at a deaf and uncaring world.}}

Hate Crimes and That Cold Chill They Bring.

Listening to the radio on the way to work this morning, I heard something that chilled me to my very core.  I literally got a chill down my spine.  I quite literally spoke out loud, “Oh, shit.”

It was a “top of the hour” news blurb about how the push for Hate Crimes legislation is gaining steam, being pushed through Congress to bring harsher penalties to those who commit crimes motivated by hate.  You know, rather than the much nobler greed, anger, disinterest, or predatory exploitation.  It’s HATE that we have to watch out for, right?  I mean, in addition to all those “love crimes” we’ve got on the books.  But I digress.

What really rocked me back on my heels was one sentence that came across towards the end of the sound bite.  Some mouthpiece promoting the legislation spoke of trying to keep better track of “bias motivated events.”

Bias. Motivated. Events.  Think about that fer just a sec.

In one swift and subtle movement, we knocked the edges off the definition of “hate crime” and squishy-coated it down into “bias motivated events.”

Can you see the inherent, insidious danger here?

If someone mugs a pedestrian, say, man dressed up in women’s clothes, does this constitute a hate crime?  What is the burden of proof to say that the alleged criminal  didn’t target this person because of their “lifestyle”.  What if the crook took the dude’s predilections for frills and lace to suggest he might be an easy target.  Not because the crook hated the tranny, but because he figured he/she might be an easy mark.  Too effeminate to fight back, who knows?

Instead of 6 months, suspended, for attempted robbery, our felon gets 5 years because it’s a “hate crime.”

But wait.  This goes back to prosecuting intent, rather than actions.  If I further dumb this down to say that any “bias-motivated event” can be prosecuted, ANYTHING I DO that is motivated by my personal bias or worldview, can now become prosecutable.

Anything.

Say a church decides that since Sally has decided to become Sam, that maybe we don’t want him/her teaching Sunday School anymore.  Is that my right as a private institution, or is it now a hate crime, because it was motivated by a religious bias against Transgendereds?  Not that we hate them, but just that we don’t want them teaching our sunday school class.  That’s not hate, it’s bias.  Instead of just being unfaaaaaaaair, is it now also a hate crime?

If I choose not to rent to a couple of guys because they look, act, and sound like belligerent gang bangers, can I be prosecuted for my “bias” against thugs who will likely wreck my rental?

If a pastor speaks out against men preying on boys for sexual exploitation, can I be prosecuted for a hate crime because of my BIAS?

This is an incredibly dangerous area, a slippery slope that, in the name of protecting rights, will end up destroying them.  I mean, short of a diary, a blog post, or a text message, etc., how can you prove INTENT behind an individual’s action?  Do gays, or blacks, or hispanics have special protections against crimes that others don’t?  Shouldn’t all be equal under the law?

Robbery, murder, rape, arson.  They are crimes.  They are illegal.  They shouldn’t be MORE illegal because of who the victim is.  WHY I committed the crime might make me an asshole, a reporbate, a truly descpicable human being.  Sadly, or thankfully, there’s no law (yet) against being an asshole.  It is only the CRIME I commit which makes me a criminal, regardless of my motivations for it.

Isn’t that what this trend in hate crimes suggests?  That eventually, what you THINK about a situation will have as much legal weight as what you actually DID about it?

Scary stuff.  Beyond even 1984.  Madness.

Media Coverage of TEA Party Protests – Compare and Contrast

Well, on CNN, the Tea Party protests got only one link, but amazingly enough, the article was balanced, fair, and by no means a hit piece.  I encourage you to read it.  It lays out the basics of what the protests are about, and even seems to paint them in if not a positive light, then at least in neutral terms.

Nationwide ‘tea party’ protests blast spending

However.

Let us compare that article to this one from that bastion of journalistic objectivity, MSNBC.

 Anti-tax ‘tea parties’ being held across U.S.
Obama aims to ease dread of deadline day, vowing ‘simpler tax code’

Notice how they manage to toss a puff for Obama into the Headline?

Also notice that the Page Title in the HTML actually says, “Anti-tax ‘tea parties’ vent anger across U.S.”  The anger part becomes important pretty quickly. I’ll just highlight in bold all the fun, inflammatory terms and polarizing language:

Whipped up by conservative commentators and bloggers, tens of thousands of protesters staged “tea parties” across the nation

Whipped up. As in, into a frenzy.  At least they didn’t downplay the numbers, got to give them that.

Protesters even threw what appeared to be a box of tea bags over the fence onto the White House grounds, causing a brief lockdown at the compound before the package was declared not dangerous.

The assumption being, of course, that something the protestors threw over the fence would be dangerous.  Which, if it “appeared to be tea bags“  would, I propose, be a bit of stretch, wouldn’t you think?  Unless of course it fits your narrative.

Shouts rang out from Kentucky,

Looks a bit like “shots rang out,” doesn’t it?

“Frankly, I’m mad as hell,” said businessman Doug Burnett at a rally at the Iowa Capitol, where many of the about 1,000 people wore red shirts declaring “revolution is brewing.”

That’s right.  Angry, red-shirted Iowans warning of revolution.  Hey, maybe that DHS report was right!?

Texas Gov. Rick Perry fired up a tea party at Austin City Hall with his stance against the federal government, as some in his U.S. flag-waving audience shouted, “Secede!”

Not just revolutionists, but successionist as well!  The way this is worded, does it not give the impression that Texas Gov. Rick Perry might tacitly approve this sentiment, as it is “HIS” flag-waving audience?  Not THE audience, but HIS audience.  A subtle but grammatically significant difference.

Other protesters also took direct aim at Obama. One sign in the crowd in Madison, Wis., compared him to the anti-Christ.

Don’t forget rabid, fundie Christians.   “Taking direct aim” at Obama.  I believe they use to call this sort of thing “yellow journalism.”  Now they just call it, well, MSNBC.

Jim Adams of Selma carried a sign that showed the president with Hitler-style hair and mustache and said, “Sieg Heil Herr Obama.”

Must have changed the name on one of the Code Pink signs, I guess.

To be honest, I can’t tell if the penner of this AP piece was simply trying to present a sense of the moral outrage of the participants, but I doubt it.    The use of such charged terms as “whipped up” and “shouts rang out” do more than convey intensity…the suggest a frenzy, the possibility of violence.  Which is at odds with the vast majority of other reporting on the events out there.

The movement attracted some Republicans considering 2012 presidential bids.

Really?  Like who?

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich planned to address a tea party in a New York City park Wednesday night. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal sent an e-mail to his supporters, letting them know about tea parties throughout the state. South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford attended two tea parties.

These three have all expressed interest in running in 2012?  Who knew?

To me, giving cherry-picked statements from isolated firebrands equal time with the more common tone of frustrated but motivated political activism in the name of “balance” really isn’t.  It makes it appear that this undercurrent of revolutionary fervor was a common theme, which it is not.

The TEA Parties are really just about getting the government back on track, under control, and accountable to the people again.  Rather than the other way around.

Folks, all you have to do is look at the pictures from the various Tea Party rallies, and then compare and contrast the pictures over at ZombieTime from a series of Lefty proteests, to see what a fallacy it is to be so cautionary against “conservative” activism.  The Radical Left long ago cornered the market on crazy.

DHS Report on Right-Wing Extremists Makes Stars & Stripes

There’s a front-page report on the DHS report highlighting the dangers of “right-wing extremists” in today’s Stars & Stripes,  yet strangely I can find nothing about it on their web site.  I wonder if that was an editorial decision to bury the story?  You can’t unprint newspapers, but you can easily delete a link.

There was some speculation that this report was some sort of clever and complex hoax, but Michelle Malkin confirmed it, and the Stars & Stripes has it front page of their print edition, at least here in Germany.

I think this comes under the heading of “boiling the frog slowly.”  They don’t even mention any “credible threat” in the report.  Just a vague sort of “sense” that economic conditions and a black president “might” foment discord by disgruntled right-wingers and disaffected miliatary veterans.

In other words, there are dangerous points of view out there, against which we must be vigilant.   Viewpoints like, illegal immigration is bad, abortion is wrong, or that the President of the United States shouldn’t be running our civilian corporations or determining what content on the Internet is permissible.

What exactly is it that the Left is so afraid of?  So afraid that they have to villify, marginalize, even criminalize conservative viewpoints?  And more importantly, why are we letting them get away with it?

You can’t be trusted with your money.

Found this quote over at Carin’s place:

 it is wrong to give them (ed. – that would be YOU) unilateral power to decide whether their taxpayer-subsidized donations should go to, say, well-heeled operas or lavish care of pets rather than to organizations that meet more pressing communal needs (my emphasis)

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Liberal Political Theology in a nutshell.  It is WRONG to allow wage earners to be the sole determiners of how their income is spent, because at some point, some where, they utilized a government funded resource or utility in the earning of it, and thus they “owe” that “taxpayer-subsidized” money back to….someone.

And since you can’t be trusted to spend that money wisely, you know, like buying a pedicure for Fifi instead of shoes for a homeless guy, it is the responsibility, nay, the OBLIGATION of the government to step in and make those kinds of sticky decisions for you.

Because, you know, the Government is so much wiser, so much more altruistic, and so much more caring than you are.  Just remember that the next time you are waiting in line at the DMV.

This is the mindset against which we struggle:  That people can’t and shouldn’t be trusted with how to spend their own money, because they will inevitably make the “wrong” decisions, and so the more of that money that the Government takes, then the better off everyone will be.  Until, one glorious and liberating day, every freakin’ cent you make goes right into the government coffers to be wisely and graciously distributed as handled by the benificent Higher Beings knows as “Politicians” and “Civil Service Workers.”  You know, the ones running the Post Office and the IRS.  Can’t you just see the clouds parting and the light shining down now?  What a utopia, no?

You know what happens when you arbitrarily decide that as long as there are poor people, then discretionary spending on things like pedicures or facials, or latte’s or pinstriping on your car or a new TV in the game room is “irresponsible?” 

Pretty soon the pet salon and the latte stand and the electonics store and the auto detailing shop GO OUT OF #$%@&* BUSINESS!!!!

And TADA, now you’ve got more unemployed homeless people for the government busybodies to take care of.  Do people really not understand this?

These are the people who aren’t raising more of a stink about what Obama is doing, because they agree with what he is doing and how he’s going about it.  They genuinely want our economic system to fail and be completely retooled into textbook Marxist socialism.

Stupid, meddling bastards.

UPDATE:

RightWingSparkle has the proof in the puddin’.

And Patterico.

We all seem to understand the perils of this trend.  Those that don’t, fail to do so because they want it to happen, not based on any practical understanding of the issues or long term consequences, but rather, because they are operating out of emotive idealism liberally intermixed with a dash of retribution and “revenge thinking” promoted by the vocal, hard-left Alinsky-ites who seem to get most of the press time in this country lately.  The “hate the rich” meme that has become the social buzz, even among the Lefty rich!  Bizzarro world.

Roe V Wade – True or False

If the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, then abortions would be illegal.

True or False?

UPDATE:

Too good not to post.  From one of those “Might Be Related” links below, comes this cogent, erudite, well-reasoned defense of Roe V. Wade:

Roe v Wade is a Surpreme Court of US case on abortion rights. Roe (not her real identity, though you could wiki her and discover she’s now a pro-life lady. The idiot)

Yeah. Nice.  Go prof-life.  Want to preserve unborn children.  It means you’re an idiot.  Pot meet kettle.

was raped (ed. – no she wasn’t – that part was completely fabricated, as in a big fat stinkin’ LIE.) 

and wanted to get an abortion but the state she lived in (I can’t remember what and I’m to lazy to wiki it) forbid abortion. They brought the case in the Supreme Court and the Court decided that there should be a right to choose or something along that line,

No, you ignorant douche.  They mythicalled up a never-before-seen-or-heard-of, ”Right to Privacy” inherent in the 4th Amendment, which essentially meant that under the protections of the Fourth Amendment, the government was specifically prohibited from preventing what was essentially a “private” action, at least without a search warrant.  Come on, chica.  I don’t even SUPPORT abortion, and I know that much.

and if a State makes a law contrary to that, it would be unconstitutional. To be honest, I can’t remember the judgment, really; we were studying the 14th Amendment more than the right to privacy (even though all the cases were on right to privacy; a right that is not guaranteed in the US Constitution)

Uh, mkay.  Soooo then, uhm, tell me again how the decision in Roe V. Wade IS Constitutional, if the foundational premise supporting it IS NOT?!

 14th Amendment is how the Supreme Court make up their own bunch of Bill of Rights that weren’t guaranteed by the people of the 1700s (since the US Constitution is really the will of the people of the 1700s; it is not at all the will of the people who are currently living in the US. The last amendment was in 1992. It’s horrible; though not as bad as Australian’s, I suppose…).

Ah yes.  The “living document” defense.  Yes, yes.  Standard Lefty talking point:  Our Constitution is an archaic throwback reminiscent of the besotted musings of a bunch of old elitist white guys in wigs.  No application to our modern life whatsover.  Except, you know, for that whole right-to-privacy thing, which of course is so, like TODAY, you know?  And needs to be defended to the last breath. Provided you ever get a chance to TAKE a breath, that is.

One would suppose that for this individual to open her ignorant suck and expound on the virtues of a certain piece of legislation (ed.- No, that wasn’t a typo), one would hope she would at least know what the bloody freakin’ hell she is talking about!  But it’s more along the lines of, “Yeah, there was this case, by these guys, about this stuff, for this one girl, from this place.  And, uh, ABORTION ROCKS, DUDE!  GO OBAMA!”

The only plus is apparently, this abortion survivor can’t vote.  So, yeah, we got that going for us.

Peace Through Capitulation

Terror Group Leader Takes Control of Somalia- Obama Approves

Ask Britain how trying appeasement worked out with Hitler.  Ask the Israelis how appeasement worked out with Hamas, or the Syrians.  Ask the Marines how appeasement worked out in the initial stages of Fallujah.

All appeasement does is give your enemies more time to arm and equip.  Giving the Shariaists of the world what they want only emboldens them to demand more.   Trying to make friends with militant Islamicists does two things:  1) Convinces them that you are an idiot, and 2) Proves them right.

There can be no “dialogue” with these people.  They are not interested in rational discourse.  The are interested only in subjugation, the rule of Sharia, and the expansion of Islam to every corner of the globe, through influence, coercion, deceipt, or force of arms.

And if you haven’t figured this out, you ain’t been listening.  To them.  To their own rhetoric. 

I simply do not understand people who can listen to the fervent, frothing intensity of these virulent, caustic leaders of Islam who freely and unabashedly state that they want nothing less than the deaths of those who refuse to follow Islam, the destruction of countries who refuse to bow to their demands…people who then turn around and propose with naivete’ and incredulity, “Well, they can’t really MEAN that.  It’s just because they don’t understand us.  If we try really hard to be friends, to make nice, well, I’m sure we can make them see the light.”

Folks, the only light that will help Islamic fasicsts ”understand” the realities of a 21st century world is the flash just before the boom.  Remember, these are people who profess to hate technology so much that they refuse to develop any themselves…and yet have no compunctions about selling heroin to buy weapons technology from countries they one day hope to destroy.

These….THESE are the people with whom Pres. Obama want’s to “open a dialogue?!”   In this uncertain day and age, with the influence of a barabaric and reactionary islamic fundamentalism gaining increasing sway throughout large swaths of Europe, Asia, the pacific rim, and even the United States, the willful ignorance, the deluded naivete, and the misguided idealism of the current administration towards the threats we, as a country, face from our enemies, gives Barack Obama the potential to be the single most damaging President this country has endured in our history.

Between his fiscal irresponsiblity, his rampant expansion of government powers, his embracing of bellicose antagonists as “respected” world leaders, and his fumbling inability to appoint a cabinet not plagued by controversy and scandal, one has to wonder what else is in store for us?

Hope and Change, eh?

UPDATE:

Ooooh.  Looky Looky.  Geert Wilders agrees with me.  I must be, like, famous our smart or something.