Month: September 2009

Three Years Ago: House of (Republican) Morons

On September 30, 2006, I posted:

So you’ve heard about Florida Representative Mark Foley’s disturbing e-mail quest[*1] for a (male, underage) Congressional page.

The troubling part is this paragraph:

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner[*2] (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of inappropriate “contact” between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he then told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert[*3] (R-Ill.). Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert.

This spring?  THIS SPRING?  You, John A. Boehner, and you, J. Dennis Hastert, are MORONS.  You should have thrown Foley to the wolves as soon as you found out about it.

Have fun being in the House Minority, idiots.

Strike Two

Remember the Scare Force One flyby of the Statue of Liberty that scared the hell out of lower Manhattan?

They’re at it again. The Coast Guard apparently scheduled some kind of exercise including gunboats firing in the Potomac[*1] . On September 11th.

9/11.

Predictably, Obama blames someone else[*2] :

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Friday morning said he was not aware of any heads-up given by the U.S. Coast Guard to the White House about its training exercise in the Potomac River this morning, as President Obama was at the Pentagon commemorating the 9/11 attacks, and he suggested that any panic that resulted from the reporting of the event was the fault of the media, not law enforcement.

The Buck doesn’t ever stop at Obama’s desk, does it? Oh, no. Some other guy has to take the heat.

“Once is coincidence. Twice is happenstance. Three times is enemy action.”

Strike two for the Obama Administration.

Camille Paglia’a latest

In Salon

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year’s tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web — both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy — I never saw a single minute of any of it. It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

How has “liberty” become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals?

How, indeed? The “liberals” on the left are anything but liberal. They are dogmatic, angry, racist, classist, sexist, totalitarians completely and totally focused on controlling every single aspect of every American’s life, liberty, and property.

A “progressive” is the exact opposite of a classical liberal–one who advocates individual liberty. The fundamental strategy of the progressive is “divide and conquer.” First divide us into groups–races, classes, unions, businessmen, rich, poor; pit the groups against one another with the most vicious possible rhetoric; and then finally swoop in at the end on a white horse (or unicorn, as the case may be) to Save The Day For The Good And Virtuous People–who curiously enough always seem to be the same condescending urban/elite college cocktail-party snobs who always flit towards power like moths toward candles.

Who’s left out in the cold, trying to scrape out a living on whatever crumbs the Virtuous People deign to toss out of their ivory towers?

The rest of us. The majority. The despised masses. The middle class. The poor.

THAT is why the Founding Fathers tried so hard to create a system of government so unwieldy that it would be almost impossible to use it to command how other people lived their lives.

Unfortunately, they underestimated the ability of The Virtuous People to twist and torture the language to suit their own purposes.

Progressive? They seek a return to serfdom, with themselves as the lords, and the rest of us as the serfs.

Liberals? No. There’s nothing “liberal” about them.

they are Tyrants.

Obama translated into plain English

Michael F. Cannon at Cato provides the translation:

First, President Obama:

Some… supported a budget that would have essentially turned Medicare into a privatized voucher program. That will never happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare.

Translation: I will never let seniors control their own health care dollars. I will never give up Washington’s control over your health care decisions. Mmmmuuuuhahahahahaha!

It’s a plan that asks everyone to take responsibility for meeting this challenge – not just government and insurance companies, but employers and individuals.

Translation: I’m going to tax the hell out of you, but I don’t want you to notice how much I’m going to tax you. So I’m going to tax employers and insurance companies, and they’re going to pass the taxes on to you. Most of the taxes won’t even show up in the government’s budget. It’s all very clever. No, seriously – just ask my economic advisor Larry Summers[*1] .

It’s a plan that incorporates ideas from Senators and Congressmen; from Democrats and Republicans – and yes, from some of my opponents in both the primary and general election.

Translation: I may have savaged your ideas in the past, called them irresponsible…risky…dangerous…whatever[*2] . But that wasn’t about principle; I just wanted to become president. Now that I’m president, I need a win. So you’ll help me, won’t you? Hey, where’s Hillary?

Obama thinks you’re stupid. Is he right?

21.3 pounds

I went in yesterday for my weekly check-in at the weight loss doctor’s clinic[*1] . Another good result–257.7 pounds, blood pressure 110/68.

I’m 36% of my way to my goal!

My heel/ankle, on the mend from the achilles tendon repair surgery, is almost recovered–I only walk with a slight limp now. I got in over 7,000 steps yesterday alone, and my target number is 4,000.

I’m pretty excited, in my Nordic stoic Norwegian way. Snookums is really happy, too.

I got a ribbon. Yay.

The anger has faded, but a new fear grows

I remember like it was yesterday my emotions as I saw the World Trade Center collapse. I was working at the time at a financial services company. We had a teleconference scheduled that morning with our colleagues in New Jersey–right across the Hudson River from the World Trade Center. We knew that something bad had happened there–I was hearing the reports of the first “small plane” colliding with the first tower as I pulled into the secure data center where I worked.

The teleconference was cancelled. Instead, somebody found a television, plugged it in, and we watched what was happening in New York from our data center in Kansas City.

The towers came down that beautiful New York September morning.

I wasn’t afraid, I wasn’t dismayed, I wasn’t in shock–OK, maybe I was, a bit–but I didn’t wonder “why someone would hate us so much.” I was angry. Livid. Enraged.

I went home, went into my back yard, looked up at the clear Kansas City sky, a sky devoid of any contrails–which is very unusual for Kansas City. There’s almost always at least one contrail visible here in the middle of the country.

The anger has faded. We as a nation decided to strike out–at those directly responsible, and also at those who we thought might also be an equivalent threat. We can debate about whether the latter was a wise decision, but the simple fact remains that we, collectively, decided to do that.

Now, today, we have elected a blatantly socialist President, who backs Central American would-be strongmen against the elected government and lawful courts of Honduras, who consistently appears friendlier with fellow travelers like Hugo Chavez than he is with our strongest ally, the United Kingdom. Who lectures endlessly about “changing the tone” and “lowering the volume” while in the next breath insulting, demeaning, and threatening (“get in their faces”) anyone with the temerity to disagree with his belief that socialism does anything but destroy human lives and the human spirit.

My anger at the barbaric actions of a few crazed Islamic extremists on that fine September morning has faded a bit. It has been replaced by a new fear, one I have never in my entire life experienced. It is a dismaying thing, this fear. When the 9/11 attacks occurred, I never once feared for my country, for my freedom.

I fear for both now.

If you are a supporter of President Obama, and have gotten this far, I beg you to understand this–I am far more frightened of you than I am of some wacko Islamic fringe nutjob hiding in a cave in Afghanistan. All he can do is kill me. What you want to do is turn me into a serf. From where I sit, it looks to me like you want to shackle the productive class in this country in the service of those who produce nothing. This is serfdom. This is slavery.

You, and President Obama, are scaring the hell out of an awful lot of people. Perhaps you should spend this day considering this–considering what you intend to do to your fellow countrymen in the name of “fairness.” You say you are concerned about those among us who have the least, who are at the bottom of the economic ladder. You don’t seem to have any concern for anybody else, though. It seems to me that you believe, without even a second thought, that the money will always come from somewhere–from “the rich” perhaps.

Hell is paved with good intentions. Your good intentions scare the hell out of me.

Liberty–not fairness–is the highest human aspiration, and the most noble of all human virtues. This is worth dying for.

Shoes for Industry!

Trees good.

Trees very good.

Trees good, so good to give money to plant more trees.

Give tax money extorted from people at gunpoint, because trees are good-er than people.

Make ridiculous guidelines for where people can plant trees with extorted tax money.

Heritage.org[*1] on just one little piece of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill:

Section 205 of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill creates a program to subsidize targeted tree-planting programs by retail power providers in “residential and small office settings.” To be clear, we are not against planting trees. They are aesthetically pleasing and good for the environment. But do we need the government funding our tree planting or telling us how and where to plant our trees?

Provisions are written in Waxman-Markey for the creation of “tree-siting guidelines” which regulate the minimum required distance to be maintained between trees and “building foundations, air conditioning units, driveways and walkways, property fences, preexisting utility infrastructure, septic systems, swimming pools, and other infrastructure as deemed appropriate” (Sec. 205, b4 & d4D).

To receive support, tree planting programs must utilize “targeted, strategic tree-siting guidelines to plant trees in relation to building location, sunlight, and prevailing wind direction” (Sec. 205, d3) The program also includes “free or discounted shade-providing or wind-reducing trees to residential and small office consumers.”

Sub-contracting tree-planting organizations must “sign agreements committing to voluntary stewardship and care of provided trees” and “monitor and report on the survival, growth, overall health, and estimated energy savings of provided trees.” (Sec. 205, e2F-G)

If there are no local nonprofits that wish to subcontract, tree-planting responsibilities may fall on “local municipal governments with jurisdiction over the urban or suburban forest” (Sec. 205, e3). The bill even creates a technical advisory committee to “ensure tree recipients are educated to care for and maintain their trees over the long term.” (sec. 205, f1)

If the tree planting provision seems like a small detail in an extremely economically devastating bill, it is. It covers about 15 pages of the 1,427 page bill. And surely you can think of a lot worse ways the government can spend your taxpayer dollars. But it’s another example of government intrusion and government planning for which the private sector can do, and do it better. Economist Friedrich Hayek put it best when he said, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

Post title, in case it befuddles you, is from the 1970 Firesign Theater comedy album “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers”[*2] which depicts a now elderly former child actor, watching old movies he made in some martial-law future America.