The Spin Cycle

The dinosaur media machine is in overdrive, racing to cast blame on Republicans for the coming government shutdown that GOP members in Congress have actually bent over backwards to avoid. On this front, Republicans are being over cautious and too accommodating because they fear that the onus of blame for the shutdown will fall on them as it did during the Clinton era shutdown of 1995. But this is a new age, with the New Media tearing deeply into legacy media hold over the narrative. Then, the Internet was in its infancy and talk radio was but a babe up in arms personified largely through the single voice of Rush Limbaugh. Now, America has the FOX news network, hundreds of conservative talk radio shows not only at the national but at the local level, and vibrant voices from the right all over the world wide web. This is not 1995 and Barack Hussein Obama is no Bill Clinton.

The Budget Police

A man is drowning but there is no lifeguard near. A nation is drowning in debt but there is no lifeline there. We are being spent into oblivion by a narcissistic, insouciant egoist and power mad Democrats in the United States Senate. And in comes Republican Paul Ryan, an unassuming but serious young father and patriot from beleaguered Wisconsin, our shining light in the US House of Representatives and his cadre of insurgent TEA partiers who want nothing more than to save the country. Who in this piece is the culprit, the wanton villain and who is the cop, at least trying to save the day?

Search and Enjoy

Has anyone noticed that some TSA screeners seem to enjoy their jobs too darn much? When most people talk about cracking open a cold one, they don't mean a 737 at thirty-eight thousand feet. Gee, America is supporting the installation of a new leader in Ivory Coast who happens to be a Muslim Outtara who will incidentally be supplanting a Christian Gbagbo. Outtara's forces seem to have massacred a thousand or so Christians who had taken refuge at a Catholic compound, but somehow Outtara has been selected as the better alternative by the UN and world powers over a leader with sticky fingers in Gbagbo who may have pocketed a little more than the cocoa companies wanted to pay him. As the globe seems to be on fire, try to keep an extinguisher handy.

The Gifted One

The United States announced last week that America would cease involvement in the air campaign in Libya by Thursday last except in "extraordinary" circumstances. Spokesmen for American forces then declared that the deadline had been extended and that US bombers would continue attacking Qaddafi regime targets for "forty-eight hours". Do you think if the last President Bush was still in office that the dinosaur media would have let him off over a similar backtracking, almost without comment? When a potential Republican contender for the Presidency emerges to challenge Barack Hussein Obama, flies from Washington D.C., to her home in an upper Midwest state, and then with no rest or chance for advance preparation flies back east to New Hampshire and is handed remarks prepared by staff that she has never even seen and certainly not had a chance to study and rehearse, and following this text prepared for her by others blurts out that "Concord" in that state played a crucial role in the American Revolution, does this disqualify her for higher office? Should she become fodder for derision on both the main stream media evening newscasts and the so-called comedy shows? Sure she should- when the anchors and comedians mock our current President for his "fifty-seven states" or even bother to mention that he is systematically disassembling the nation as the Founding Fathers intended it. What about the former speaker of the US House of Representatives who might stand against Obama whose association with a gambling magnate is now being scrutinized based on unproven charges against the casino owner? Where was the similar curiosity about or press investigations into Barack Obama's relationship with Tony Rezko who not only was alleged to be involved in wrongdoing but now stands convicted of criminality? We have an absolutely partisan dinosaur press which is in league with the Obama administration in ways never seen with any previous US President. They have made Obama immune from criticism or inquiry while lambasting any potential rival for his office. Unsurprisingly, Barack Obama has just announced that he will be seeking reelection, and he does so knowing the legacy media is in his corner and has his back.

Provocation or Pretext

Did the burning of a single Koran by an American pastor with a few dozen followers really cause murder and butchery half way around the globe? I would contend that it did not. Afghanistan is the most illiterate nation on earth. The congregation of the local mosque does not explore world events on their own but under the influence of the imam or mullah. In this event, a story that only received so much attention in Afghanistan because President Hamid Karzai railed against the Koran destruction, the local Islamic clerics in the city of the massacre wildly exaggerated the desecration in Florida, falsely claiming"hundreds of Korans were burned". This was deliberately done to inflame the passions of the mob. If an imam would stir up and incite a massacre, would it be beyond him to simply fabricate a provocation to achieve the same evil end? With a simmering combination of atavistic, misogynistic, fanatic seething illiterates being led by a religious authority that despises "infidels" in general and the West, America, and Israel in particular, it is a wonder that more such outrages do not occur against those who have reached out from abroad to help the Afghan people. Unrepentant raging savages should be carpet bombed.

Hot Button Issue

A bunch of craven Republicans in the United States Congress are willing to "split the difference" in negotiations with the Democrats over the relative pittance in budget cuts each party is willing to accept. For many years, I have contended both parties are essentially socialist to varying degrees with Democrats as fully socialist with rare exceptions and the GOP lesser socialists with a handful of holdover capitalists of long-standing consistently fighting the Democrats now joined by some more fiscally sane members of the so-called T(taxed)E(enough)A(already) party in resisting the unchecked expansion of the scope and cost of the Federal government. I would much rather have the chance to fight a strong armed robber than lose my wallet to a pickpocket. I would rather contend with an honest self-identifying socialist like Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont) than a weak as water Republican Senator Susan Collins (Maine) who will often vote with Democrats on polarizing issues. It is a shame that so many politicians will shake your hand when they are willing to proverbially stab you in the back. At least the honorable ones are willing to figuratively cudgel you square in the face and not pretend to be something they are not.

Make a Bet

The dinosaur media announced breathlessly yesterday that the job situation was improving in the United States of America. Would you not wager that before the next Presidential election Barack Hussein Obama will be crowing that he has fulfilled his promise that unemployment will be under eight percent? Do not forget that Obama said that he would not permit the jobless rate to rise to 8% if he were elected President- a pledge that he has already failed to keep. In any event, the positive new job creation and jobless numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. They seem to be massaged (read as deliberately manipulated) as a propaganda tool for the administration. How many readers sense any general confidence in the US economy with costs for everything soaring due largely to the surge in the price of oil? Whether you trust the numbers or not, would you not concede that the American economy is more fragile now than at any point since the Jimmy Carter malaise years?