The Little Sheeple

In a fabled land, sea cows out of curiosity gravitate toward human swimmers. Then ridiculous park rangers blare orders for the people who are in the water their taxes pay to maintain to exit the water that they came to enjoy. The visitors are told Federal regulation forbids them to swim with manatees but one must wonder why the guests must leave the water when the manatees are the ones swimming to them and not the other way round. The huge water mammals glide effortlessly about while the human guests must struggle against the St. Johns River current to avoid contact with the animal who is actually in control of the situation and heading to the person who is after all much less able to maneuver in the water than an animal who leads its life in that natural environment. What a spectacle: Watching a ranger from the state of Florida enforce incredibly stupid Federal law by berating the people that pay her salary.

Weak as Water

Will appeasing the Islamic Republic of Iran make the world a safer place? Will having the Mullah regime that butchered protesters in the street in possession of a few nuclear devices make the Middle East more stable? Is Barack Hussein Obama right in exerting pressure to restrain Israel from self-defense by means of preemption? Is Mitt Romney merely posturing when he promises to keep Iran from going atomic? I would say the best and only hope of averting World War III is a Romney victory in November.

An Olympic Travesty

Jews are used to baiting, so it should not surprise that the Olympic Committee slapped the Jewish people down by denying a moment of silence for the 1972 Munich Massacre victims at the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Summer Games now in progress. Israel is a tiny nation always in a fight for existence, and Jews are few, fifteen million at most in a world where billions of anti-Semites still seek the annihilation of this minority that has been persecuted for two thousand years. It is incredibly insensitive that London terror victims from the July 7, 2005 bombings were honored but the murdered Jews from Seventy-two were deliberately excluded. All that needed to be done was to have the speaker announce that "we will now hold a moment of silence for both the 7/7 victims and those murdered in 1972".

Living Is Easy

I spoke with a man and his son in this tourist town last night. In these "best 0f times" Baraconomy, they were taking their first vacation since Obama was elected. You see the man is a chocolatier and actually works for a living. I also saw three Hispanic women crossing an intersection, one with a baby carriage and the other two pregnant. Do you think these anchor baby gals work for a living?

Most Elusive Quality

Yesterday this blog dealt with hype about the gallantry some supposedly needed to muster to attend a Batman screening. Today, an actual brand of bravery is discussed that sadly has become all too rare, particularly in America's political class. Three Dutch nationals demonstrated this courage in spades, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Geert Wilders, and Theo van Gogh, all had the guts to speak truth to the violent and intolerant aspects of Islam and van Gogh paid for his boldness with his life. Michele Bachmann and four other national security-conscious GOP members of the US House of Representatives had the temerity to warn of the grave danger of Muslim Brotherhood and jihadi infiltration at high levels of our government and in our military ranks and these five are widely pilloried for speaking out even by their own Republican Party establishment. I would rather have a Congress entirely composed of Bachmanns than politically-correct McCains of Boehners. These so-called GOP leaders that would condemn their colleagues who are actually attempting to guard our country are politicians of a stripe so unctuous as to leave in doubt the preservation of liberty in this nation.

Act of Courage?

Some dinosaur media reportage has dealt with members of the Batman movie audience as if they are or have to be heroes to take in a flick. This is preposterous hyperbole. No special bravery is required to go to the cinema. It is not like joining the combat infantry or the Marines and certainly not like jumping on a live grenade to save your comrades. Movie attendance is and should be a most mundane act.

Anaheim Is Aflame

Anaheim, California is being racked by civil disturbances of the type witnessed in Greece. The immediate provocation for the riots was a pair of fatal shootings by police. Whether the actions of the officers was appropriate will no doubt be fully investigated. There exists a broader question as to whether the street violence in Anaheim is a one-off or a harbinger of what will take place on many city streets across America.

A Lightning Rod

I have a feeling that Team Obama will soon manufacture a "Sister Souljah" moment. A Leftist public figure, perhaps even one known to strongly back Obama, will make some disturbingly anti-American statement, maybe overtly anti-Constitutional or against people who happen to be white, and Barack Hussein Obama will leap to denounce the statement and repudiate and chastise the speaker. This tactic will be used to demonstrate how traditionally American Obama is. This piece of theater will be broadcast in the dinosaur press to show how "moderate" the President is. The dinosaur media may convince some of the more gullible that Obama has some conservative leanings. No matter what show the Obamabots produce, Obama will of course remain the most radical figure to gain the White House.

A Pitiful Creature

Watching the initial court proceeding for the alleged mass murderer, I was struck by just how small and bizarre James Holmes seems to be. Perhaps he was drugged before the appearance but he did not act as though he was capable of rational volition or as if he even understood why he was there. I have neither empathy nor sympathy for Holmes, but my heart bleeds for the families he tore asunder, who no matter the outcome of any eventual trial, will never be whole again.

Constitution Under Assault

As predictable as thunder following lightning, the gun banners are out in force attempting to exploit the Aurora massacre to deprive the law-abiding of their Constitutional rights as enunciated in the Second Amendment. Our freedom is of course God-given and predates the Constitution. The framers were merely echoing what they knew to be Natural Law with our Bill of Rights. I am appalled but not surprised by the Mike Bloombergs and Dianne Feinsteins of the world just waiting for any pretext to snatch liberty away while they will always have ample armed protection around them and their loved ones to ward off threat. These adversaries of freedom embody the sort of hypocrisy that must be exposed and combated by every lover of liberty. If the Second Amendment is threatened with so-called "common sense" restrictions on the right of gun ownership, then all too soon, the First Amendment will be eroded with calls for "common sense" restrictions on speech, like forbidding criticism of our Federal masters. After all, we serfs might be inflamed if someone was to point out just how despicable our political class has become. What sickens me is hearing the neoconservative William Kristol on today's Fox News Sunday joining the political hacks in calling for stripping our liberty. Does he not know that those who would squeeze the life out of the Second Amendment are equally eager to gut the First?

Just Tempting Fate

Some local Nashville newscasters and other folks on national broadcasts have expressed fear about going to a movie theater in the wake of the horror in Colorado. We need some degree of sanity and balance in our lives. People must not be afraid to attend the cinema. If you dwell on risk, you will be forever petrified in everyday life. You could be hit by an eighteen-wheeler when you drive to see your grandfather one county over. You could crash on an airline flight on your graduation trip to Tokyo. You could be hit by an automobile when you go to the corner store to buy your gallon of milk or your ground chuck which might have Mad Cow in it. You can not live a fulfilled life worrying about what might happen. There is a Higher Power and we must trust that we are in His Hands.

The Aurora Massacre

An act of madness befell innocents in Aurora, Colorado not far from Columbine where innocence was shattered back in 1999. The shooter has been caught. James Holmes is the alleged mass murderer. Holmes is culpable, not the movie makers, not the theater owners, not the manufacturers of the guns he used, not society in general, or America as a nation in particular. A fiend was unleashed on the unwary and unguarded and only he must be held to answer for his crime.

The Rat King

Bashar Assad is by no means the only or last despot in the world or the Middle East. It could be said that Assad is merely carrying on the tradition of lineal tyranny initiated by his late but hardly lamented father Hafez against the Syrian people. Bashar learned at the knee of his Dad the dictator that when you really must insist on maintaining your power, everything goes from rape to artillery barrages directed against your own civilian populace. Assad no doubt suffered a blow yesterday when close members of the inner circle of his regime were blown up by a bomb. Bashar could get the message that the noose is tightening and perhaps he is one rat smart enough to flee the sinking ship of his father's creation and go to one of the countries that would still grant Bashar and his close associates sanctuary.

Spare the Corn

With corn increasingly scarce and corn price soaring, the government should suspend ethanol mandates. If the ethanol mandate persists, then non-corn, non-food items should be substituted in the formulation. Switchgrass would be a plausible alternative. Turning food into fuel for vehicles is only defensible when that food is so plentiful that it remains easily affordable. As the corn price reflects, that is clearly no longer the case. "Spare the corn" will never enjoy the ring of "save the whale" but is never more important than now.

Our Jobless Presidency

Barack Hussein Obama promised to be a "jobs President". During the 2008 campaign, Obama promised to keep the unemployment rate below eight percent (8%). Three years plus into his first and hopefully only term, Obama has not quite managed to reduce the jobless rate yet, as even the artificially manipulated rate stands at around 8.2% today and if a true accounting was permitted, would surely be over ten percent. Obama's spokesmen assured us of his "laser-focus" on job creation and heralded Obama's Jobs Council as a reflection of the President's seriousness in fighting joblessness and as a tool to tamp down unemployment. The President is mighty serious only about one job- that is his own- as he flits from fundraiser to fundraiser for his own reelection campaign. An ironic "Politico" story by Josh Gerstein today chronicles Obama's "determination" to create employment- Obama is so serious about saving our economy that his own brain trust on growing jobs has not met in nearly six months. The article is seen here: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78637.html. Let us hope there is one notable job loss in early November.

Giver Versus Taker

Barack Hussein Obama is in the process of transforming America into a dependency state. Obama is the only US President to attempt to remove the ability of donors to deduct donations from their Federal income taxes. Removing this deduction will obviously reduce the amount of giving by private individuals. Consequently, those in need will have to rely that much more on government auspices. Those who may never have sought the aid of government will have no place else to turn as gifts to non-governmental charities inevitably diminish. This will in turn increase the numbers on the government dole. In fact, these government handouts will become a very cynical way of buying the votes and eternal loyalty to Democrat sugar daddies of those in need.

Real Inside Baseball

What was the name of George Bush's oil company? What company did Ross Perot run? What was the name of New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg's enormous payroll processing company? Ask a thousand Americans just a week ago what Bain Capital is and nine hundred plus of them would have shrugged their shoulders and walked away? Nobody knew and nobody cared who ran a virtually unheard of company back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, yet the Democrats themselves and their bootlicks in the dinosaur media have managed to manufacture a scandal where none exists. This manipulation should be no surprise as the same main stream media was able to talk the economy down into recession during the last two years of the George W. Bush administration. It is a shame that Romney can not afford to joke about outsourcing- he could say,"At least, I created private sector jobs somewhere".

The Digital Cage

No one alive could possibly assimilate all the information with which we are bombarded in First World technological society. Not to say that we should envy the simple life in the pre-electronic, still developing world, but to see toddlers on iPads is stunning. We too often seem to have smart phones being used by dumb people. What did we do before we had the Internet constantly at our fingertips? As I remember, we won the Second World War, enjoyed relative prosperity, and even sent men to the moon before we were permanently attached to our information technology devices. We did not have Facebook, just good and fulfilling face-to-face relationships. We did not Skype, but many of us took up the adventure of physical travel to go see Grandma in some distant part of America, (and we always had that great love-affirming Sunday lower phone rate long-distance call) making seeing relatives in another state all the more special. We did not have Google maps or a Global Positioning System but managed to find our way to and from without becoming lost in the woods. We certainly did not have ubiquitous surveillance systems overseeing our movements in both the real and virtual world (according to those doing the monitoring, for our own protection) but we did have something increasingly rare, unencumbered freedom.

The New Abnormal

A little while back I was in a telephone/wireless company's store near the most tony mall in my hometown of Nashville. A woman all tatted and pierced up including her face shouted, "What the h..l are you looking at" along with a few more choice obscenities toward me; when in fact, her appearance was so disgusting that I had tried to avoid even noticing her. Why would someone adorn their visage with tattoos except to draw attention? Why would you have chains dangling from your nose and mouth hooked somewhere under your clothes onto your torso but to elicit freak show stares? What in the world possesses these people and do normal folk now need to hide in their houses behind locked doors?

House of Cruds

The White House has never been occupied by so venal, mendacious, in it for themselves people. When First Lady Nancy Reagan bought a set of china that was never going to be cosseted back to California but obviously and always, going to be left for use by future US Presidents for future official occasions hosted in this People's House, the main stream media had a conniption fit. The dinosaur media today gives a complete pass to Michelle Obama, vacationer-in-chief Barack Hussein Obama and their kith and kin living it up large at taxpayer expense. If any Republican were in the Oval Office and the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party that now constitutes the dying press could find any dirt to throw on them or their family, they would lead the evening news with it on all three lame stream networks. Barack Obama has played more rounds of golf in less than three years than George W. Bush did in his full eight year, two term Presidency. When W hit the links, the media mongrels pilloried it as an unseemly act by a President while US troops were dying. Barack Obama is also a wartime President and sadly, US troops are still dying, but there is not a peep out of the dinosaur mis-reporters who took such glee in bashing Bush. Even though the dinosaur press has done its best to run interference for the Obama crew, enough of the American people are waking to the stench to knock down their house of cards in November.

The College Conundrum

Our glorious leader Barack Hussein Obama has decreed that more Americans should graduate from college, not withstanding that virtually every college has become a liberal indoctrination factory or that the cost to attend has skyrocketed with tuition and fee increases not only outpacing inflation but rapidly eating the government subsidy of tuition aid and swallowing entire lottery scholarships faster than Joey Chestnut wolfs down a Nathan's. The Greeks have long enjoyed virtually universal access to free college and on paper, Greece would seem to be among the most educated countries in the world but that has not exactly helped the Greek economy keep its head above water. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs made incredible fortunes in a highly technical field without completing college degrees. I think the United States already has plenty so-called book-learning but could stand a dose of common sense and that common sense will never leave its owner with one hundred thousand dollars of student debt.

Just Splitting Heirs

Is it not just splitting hairs to criticize Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney for vouchsafing some money abroad while Democrat National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman (Test) Schultz does the same? Of course not- when a nationally-known Democrat does it according to the dinosaur press, it is either a non-story or just good business sense while for the main stream media, when a prominent GOP figure invests overseas, it is a scandal. See reports here: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/dem-chair-invested-swiss-banks-foreign-drug-companies-and-state-bank-india_648350.html or here:http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/07/10/wasserman_schultz_it_would_be_nice_if_we_had_a_candidate_for_president_who_was_committed_to_america.html from The Weekly Standard and Real Clear Politics respectively.

Wizards of Woe

Another Federally-subsidized "green" energy company has gone the way of Solyndra, which is of course the way of the dodo. Would these now extinct companies have ever existed without the "helping hand" of Big Government which turns out to have been of little help at all but only after billions of dollars have been squandered? The best action that government can take in regard to real business is to get out of its way by reducing regulation and taxes and permitting the natural business cycle to produce jobs and economic growth, but our brilliant Federal masters are far too smart to simply leave us be. They have to exert their reverse Midas touch to give the US the great push toward Greek-style economic collapse.

Their Expectations Fading

All but the most ardent Obama supporters must now recognize that Barack Hussein Obama has not fulfilled his campaign promise to be "a uniter, not a divider". Obama has pitted legal immigrants, who must go to enormous and expensive effort to dot every "i" and cross all their "t"s in massive red tape paperwork, against gatecrashers, who simply sneak into the country, by rewarding young illegal aliens with what is essentially amnesty. Obama has deliberately set the poor against those better off by employing the rhetoric of class warfare and the tax policy that backs soaking the rich, who after all, create most of the private sector jobs. Obama has turned those who have lapsed on their mortgage payments or even those who made little effort to pay at all) against those who diligently send their checks or are at least are trying mightily to, making those trying to do the honorable thing into absolute suckers. Most dangerously of all, our first so-called "post-racial" President has fostered dissension between blacks and whites when it serves his political ends as in voter ID laws are propagated to surpress the black vote and a race-baiter like Eric Holder is allowed to continue to serve as his Attorney General of the United States, though by all appearances Holder has dropped the ball by allowing the "gun walking" that facilitated the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

The Vanishing Corn

It is ironic that the corn for the July Fourth lobster boil cost as much as the lobster did. This surge in corn cost is one of the perils of ethanol, or more to the point, an illustration of how when government manipulates a market, it ruins it. Yes, drought and other weather is a factor in rising corn prices, but this staple used to be so cheap that it was routinely used as animal feed before so much corn was diverted from food and former agricultural uses to grab the government ethanol subsidy. Who could possibly contend that this subsidy has kept fuel prices down when gasoline spiked over four dollars a gallon after ethanol was both heavily subsidized by government and mandated?

Unleashing a Cataclysm

The damage of the Arab Spring is just beginning to be realized. When the Shah of Iran was deposed, the ramifications were rapidly felt but are also still being dealt with today as the Islamic Republic threatens regional and world stability and attempts to construct an atomic arsenal. Now consider an aggressive, backward looking Islam being unleashed in every nation where revolt against Arab autocrats succeeded and might soon throw Syria and Lebanon, which remains largely under Syrian control, into this atavistic column. All of the newly "liberated" countries are likely to become increasingly hostile to the West and especially Israel. There is no prospect that Muslim Brotherhood led governments will be more inclined to keep the peace with the Jewish states than the dictators they replaced. Suddenly, Islam is on the ascendancy and Western interests are under threat across the Middle East.

Obama Regime Unravels

Racist here, racism there, Obama flacks proclaiming "everywhere"- this is the tactic of desperation and the last bastion of scoundrels. Could identification being required to vote be because responsible office holders want to inhibit cheating in the electoral process? Could people oppose Barack Hussein Obama's agenda because they value liberty and do not want America turned into a socialist dystopia? Could patriots of good-will of every race want to preserve the Founding ethos of human freedom? Are Florida's Allen West, J.C. Watts, South Carolina's Tim Scott, Walter E. Williams, and Thomas Sowell somehow anti-black because they have publicly opposed Obama? What sort of monster attempts to pit the races against each other for political benefit? In criticizing Obama's insouciant arrogance and continuing missteps, for most, there is no racism present, only a love of the United States that cherishes the individual liberty provided by limited government.

A Little Humor

If ignorance is bliss, Obama voters are some very happy people.

London Olympic Threat

Arrests have been made and extreme vigilance has been evinced with authorities even surrounding a bus on the major tollway when a passenger tried to surreptitiously take a smoke, but this hyper-sensitivity to a potential terror threat is absolutely proper now with the stakes so high. London was already subjected to lethal jihad on July 7, 2005 when bombs blasted mass transit and blood gushed on the streets and in the tubes of London. British law enforcement already had long and grim experience in fighting off terror attempts from and the sometimes successful attacks of the Irish Republican Army in the bad old days before the essential reconciliation in Ireland after the implementation of the Mitchell Plan with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. British intelligence services are well aware that the world's focus will be on the Olympics and both police and elements of the military are making every effort to counter any possible outrage. The Olympics themselves are no strangers to the bloody hand of terror with both the 1972 Munich Olympics and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics being stuck. Let us hope and pray that the determined effort to safeguard the events and attendees of these latest Summer Games is a complete success.

Mexico Election Turmoil

"Gambling at Rick's" really did not shock anyone in the movie "Casablanca", and allegations of cheating in a Mexican national election are rather par for the course. I am not surprised that over half the votes are having to be recounted, but I have no idea how an ordinary recount will resolve allegations of vote buying. Was there sufficient irregularity to sway the outcome? Was misconduct limited to the winning PRI? Doubt will never be satisfied in a country so afflicted with institutional corruption. All I can say to those who want good government and a transparent process in Mexico is "good luck" ("buena suerte").

Some Fresh Disambiguation

A new meaning has arisen in light of a particular recent event. "John Roberts" used to be merely a name and a relatively common one at that. Now, "John Roberts" may be used as a verb when one buckles under pressure and betrays formerly sacred values. "John Roberts" may now be construed as a byword for "Judas", someone else who gained eternal infamy for an act of betrayal. To all the true Gentlemen "John Roberts" out there in this world, please understand that using "John Roberts" as an insult is directed only at the unctuous Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

The Power Grab

One-sixth of the American economy has just been taken over with the five member Supreme Court rubber stamp of Obama Care and this follows on the heels of two of the Big Three US automakers, Chrysler and General Motors being taken over by the Federal government and the Democrat handmaiden United Auto Workers union. Accompanying this massive usurpation of the private economy, at least sixteen thousand Internal Revenue Service agents are being hired to enforce Obama Care, along with thousands of other new Federal employees. Barack Hussein Obama knows no bounds when it comes to growing the Federal government or expanding the intrusiveness thereof. Our new overlords may tell us what to eat and because obesity contributes to sleep apnea, the Federal government may now even intrude literally into our bedrooms. What Obama is imposing and our highest court just upheld is the opposite of freedom.

A Certifiable Democrat

My Mother has a lifelong friend, an educated woman from a good family background with whom she took part in a civil rights march who is a bona fide Obamabot, a true believer. We ran into this lady at a local grocery near our home. She was ecstatic about Obama Care, how it would "give" so many folks access to health care. The government has no capacity to give anyone anything. They can tax the productive to provide dole dwellers with their medical treatments. They are able to print fiat currency which devalues whatever real wealth people have left, or they can borrow to pay for parasites. Even China is reluctant to loan us more due to Obama's profligate spending (even before Obama Care goes into force), so America is left with the Federal government buying its own debt in a lunatic maneuver known as "monetizing" America's insane overspending. Obama's blind faith backers do not realize how government destroys so much more than it creates and with care rationing, will shorten lives. There is nothing the GOP can say to my Mom's buddy to win her vote because in her eyes, Obama can do no wrong.

The Crooked Referee

The dinosaur media only makes noises that they are fair and objective in matters of politics. In fact, the poison press are baldfaced partisans of the political Left. Look at how the last President Bush was pilloried for Hurricane Katrina- not the Democrat New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin who left buses idle that could have saved hundreds who ultimately died- Bush was blamed when all he did was assume that those on the local and state level were routinely competent and would put measures in place that would preserve as many human lives as possible in an event that after all was an act of God. This same main stream media is giving a total pass to Barack Hussein Obama for cutting back the fleet of airplanes available to fight fires. One leader merely trusted those who did not perform their foremost duty of office, that is the protection of innocent human life, responsibly. The other leader actively diminished the government's ability to protect life by making one of his few actual cuts in an area that would cost lives. The places where Obama reduces spending are few but are in the Department of Defense budget and in the allocation of Federal funds for fire fighting airplanes and these reductions that are never reported by the dinosaur press actually make us less safe.