Roads & Bridges

Stop me if you have heard this before:

We still have too many ports that aren’t equipped for today’s world commerce.  We’ve still got too many rail lines that are too slow and clogged up.  We’ve still got too many roads that are in disrepair, too many bridges that aren’t safe,” – President Rinse and Repeat

That’s right folks, our roads and bridges are still in need of repair, despite the 2009, $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act! Don’t those words sound great together? Who could possibly be against Reinvesting in America’s Recovery? And putting Americans back to work at the same time?? It’s a win – win.  Why we were going to invest that $800 billion in rebuilding America’s infrastructure, improving deteriorating schools, and beginning the transition to green energy. What noble and heart warming causes, that only evil, backwater, troglodytes, (ie; conservatives) could possibly oppose. But alas, here we are again today, 4 years later almost to the day, and the cause continues. WE NEED TO SPEND MORE MONEY! We need to reinvest in America, don’t you know, and those obstructionist, heartless  Republicans are standing in the way.

Let’s call him President Rinse and Repeat. It seems to work pretty well, so why try and fix something that’s not broken? As long as we have roads and bridges that are in need of repair, the Democrats can get away with just about anything.

 

You Can’t Fix Stupid – Gay Marriage Cont.

And at this point, there is a whole lot of stupid walking around. I find it hard to believe that with gas prices nearing $4/gal., unemployment persistently high, GDP persistently sluggish, record debt, record deficits, higher taxes, increased food stamp dependency, and record number of people on disability, that gay marriage seems to be the most pressing issue. But according to liberals and the media, and again I apologize for the redundancy, gay marriage is paramount to all other concerns. And it isn’t even about equality, of course don’t tell your stupid liberal friend that, because they are bound to become unglued and call you an extremist, and when that happens you know darn well that racist word isn’t far behind. Every single human being in America has equal rights in terms of marriage – we are all free to marry a member of the opposite sex, whom is not closely related and of the age of consent. Love is not required, never has been. Therefore, every living being in this country is on equal terms. Expanding on that, none of us has the right to marry a member of the same sex, with the exception of nine states (can you see where I might be going with this?), nor do we have the right to marry a close relative, or a minor, so again equal terms. Expanding even further, legal rights really aren’t even in question here in that through wills and living wills (thank you Amazona), same sex couples can bequeath personal property to their partner, extend visiting rights and/or POA’s, so the only unsettled issue would then be the tax considerations extended to them on behalf of the IRS, which really would be a minor issue to resolve. What this issue really boils down to is the redefinition of a word and ultimate acceptance. Attitudes are certainly shifting on this issue as evidenced by recent elections at the various states, and this is of course where the issue belongs. If liberals were so confident in the shifting political winds on this issue, they wouldn’t be relying on nine robed justices to impose this mandate for them, but I believe that confidence is not as strong as they would have you believe. Equally wrong in my opinion, is their insistence to offend the hundreds of millions of people of Faith worldwide, who hold dear the timeless and rich tradition of the institution of marriage.

Enough of gay marriage – again hard to believe that this issue has risen to this level. In two other news items, which should be of much more import, unless you listen to the media of course, Kathleen Sebelius today has admitted that health care premiums will in fact rise. This announcement will only surprise the media and brain dead liberals, again sorry for the redundancy, as many conservatives have mentioned this since day one despite the persistent lies from the POTUS. And Janet Napolitano has stated that a pathway to legalizing illegal immigrants should come before securing the border, an effort of which has almost completely dropped off her radar. The cost of illegal immigration, the rising costs of entitlement dependency, the rising costs of SS and Medicare with no sensible reform in sight, and the legacy costs of public unions pensions, which is bankrupting our cities and states, is what our national dialogue should be centered around. Instead, we discuss ad nauseum, an issue of relatively minor concern that is quite frankly intellectually beneath us. Sadly though, you can’t fix stupid.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan:  A libertarian in favor of gay marriage notes his problem…

…I have a feeling that if the push to end DOMA and Prop 8 were primarily the work of Reason or the Ayn Rand Institute, certain traditionalist conservatives would be at least slightly more amenable to it. This would be because the implicit threat of future civil-rights lawsuits against, say, churches that refuse to marry gays would be a moot point. No Cato Institute senior fellow wants to file suit against the Catholic Church for exercising its First Amendment rights. Social conservatives know this; they trust libertarians enough even if they don’t agree with them.

Only From the Minds of the Imbecilic Left!

Hagel Announces Steps To Improve Missile Defense Against North Korea

3/15/2013 3:20 PM ET

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Friday that the U.S. is taking additional steps to defend itself from a nuclear attack by North Korea.

Hagel said that the U.S. would deploy fourteen additional ground-based missile interceptors, providing a 50 percent increase in the nation’s missile defense capability.

The Defense Secretary said that the U.S. would also deploy additional radar in Japan to provide improved early warning and tracking.

Additionally, Hagel said that the Defense Department is conducting an environmental impact study of a new ground-based interceptor site in the U.S.

The moves come on the heels of a recent nuclear test by North Korea, which has also threatened a pre-emptive attack on South Korea and the U.S.

http://www.rttnews.com/story.aspx?Id=2078047

——–

Let’s see, which is more harmful to the environment?

1) an Anti-Ballistic Missile System or,

2) a nuclear explosion

Sorry Seattle, but we cannot protect your city from a nuclear ballistic missile attack since the protective missile system will harm the environment.

What was the Senate thinking when they confirmed this clown.

Dystopia–In His Own Words.

Just prior to the 2008 elections, Barack Obama boldly stated,

“We are 5 days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America” (October 30, 2008)

Many among my conservative friends took that to be so much fluff; pretty much liberal boilerplate consistent with his whole “Hope and Change” campaign message.  Given, however, Obama’s background, cutting his teeth with the radical leftists/communists of his day (i.e., Frank Marshall Davis, Bernadine Dorn, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright) I believe I was one of the relative few that took him at his word.  Unlike most of America, conservatives such as myself and others who actually took the time to vet Obama, knew that background and worldview mattered, and that Obama’s past gave more than a glimpse of how he intended to govern in the present.

When Obama uttered those words, “.. fundamentally transform America” I knew he meant it. It was Obama himself who stated (emphases added),

“As radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical.  It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least, as it’s been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the States can’t do to you; says what the Federal Government can’t do to you, but doesn’t state what the Federal government or State Government must do on your behalf.”  (Barack Obama, June 18, 2001).

There is no question that Barack Obama was unhappy with his perception of unequal distribution of wealth that America so unfairly championed, and that he wanted to transform this nation into something more ‘equitable’ in his eyes.  The question was how, and to what extent.  Just how does one “fundamentally”  transform a nation whose very basis for existence is freedom, itself?  The only feasible answer is to transform that already-free nation, into a nation with fewer freedoms.  Given Dinesh D’Souza’s brilliant insights as to Obama’s worldview engendered by his past, one knew that Obama’s absolute contempt for what he saw as America’s unequal distribution of wealth would result in his promoting policies that would necessarily stifle economic growth.   Obama’s America would no longer be one of unbridled economic opportunity; rather, America would be a nation of egalitarian outcomes, regardless of effort; to coin a phrase, to each, according to his needs; from each, according to his means.  

As a means of bringing about this transformation, America could no longer be a free nation.  No where as free, at least, as it was at the time of he assumed his presidency.  Liberties would need to be forsaken to bring about his vision of utopia.  The free market system would need to be reined in, and done so in no small measure.   Obama would have four years, eight at most, to make this happen.  This transformation would need to be done quickly, and in a big way.

Enter Obamacare, America’s first stop on its train ride to Utopia. Against the wishes of 60-70 percent of Americans, and without the vetting of congressional legislators who rammed through the legislation, the United States Federal Government took control of a full one-seventh of the American economy, which had the net effect of driving up the cost of health care for all involved,  taking away freedom of choice, relegating freedom of conscience incompatible with the party line to irrelevancy, while at the same time having the no-doubt intended effect of casting a chilling pall on America’s ability to sustain economic growth and prosperity.  For those who wish to argue regarding this latter point, how better to right the wrongs of the perceived injustice of unequally-distributed wealth than to stifle the engine that creates such wealth?

As I’ve said, Obamacare is but stop one on America’s train ride to Obama’s Dystopia.  Obama’s seeming assault on everything traditional America has held dear for centuries appears to have taken on epidemic proportions.  Remember- Obama only has three and three-quarter years left.  Those who haven’t yet felt the pinch of his “transformations,” most likely have not yet realized that they, too, have been pinched.   Obama’s willing media accomplices can only cover for him for so long before a critical mass of Americans, admittedly as dull as many of them are, will start to put two-and-two together and finally determine that the hopey-changey unicorn jockey they voted for may actually have had something to do with the plight in which they suddenly find themselves.

Then what?

When the critical mass of Americans finally wake up one morning, to find that they have been played as chumps, they are liable to get a bit–shall we say, testy. When this inevitability finally does come home to roost, The TEA party protests that grew out of Rick Santelli’s historic February, 2009 rant will no doubt look like a series of school pep assemblies.   Such civil unrest would certainly be difficult to quell, and will no doubt be yet another bump in the tracks on the way to Obama’s Dystopian dream.

What to do, what do do? You can’t just sick the military after the troublemakers. Well, you could, I suppose, but then you risk pissing off your fellow travelers who have had a history of contempt for men and women in uniform.

What to do??

Since, at least philosophy- and policy-wise, one can take Obama at his word, one may get a clue as to Obama’s plans by again, studying his own non-TelePrompter inspired rhetoric:

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set.  We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”   -Barack Obama, July, 2008.

Yeah- remember that phrase?  Neither did a lot of other people.  Like the rest of Obama’s sordid past and rhetoric that if brought to the light of day would have rendered his election impossible, The media (true to their sycophantic nature) pretty much glossed over that little tidbit.  A powerful Civilian security force. Remind you of anyone?

So when you see articles like this, or like this, or like this, and then think, aww–Leo–take off that tinfoil hat!  You’re just blowing smoke.  That would never really happen here.  There’s no way.

Just remember.  I didn’t put those words into Barack Obama’s mouth.

He did.

The Odd Reaction to Christopher Dorner

No, I haven’t read his “manifesto” and I’m not inclined to ever do so.  You want me to read your revolutionary manifesto?  Then engage in a full scale attack on a police station or military base – don’t bushwhack unarmed people, especially if one of them is merely the daughter of the person you’re mad at.  Real revolutionaries are manly and do the right thing.  But what Dorner has done and is doing is of less interest to me than some of the reactions I’ve seen.

Twitchy has been diligent in gathering reactions, and Robert Wargas went over to Huffington Post and got a large sample, as well.  What is happening is that a lot of our liberal friends out there are finding much to cheer about in the actions of Dorner.   Dorner is described as a hero – which does make a little bit of sense once you place yourself in a liberal mindset:  liberals have a long history of applauding cowards who attack the unarmed in the name of “justice”.  The Los Angeles Police Department is described as a pack of racist pigs who are getting what they deserve, and t his is after decades of the LAPD making every possible effort – often to the detriment of actual law enforcement activities – to implement “diversity” at the command of our liberals.

This is all very bizarre.  Liberals are essentially applauding violent, insane attacks upon the sources of their own power – and describing someone as a hero who, had he been of the right, they would have condemned as a lunatic.  Ultimately, this whole case is just another bit of proof that we are living in the Age of Lies…so much moral confusion that way too many people here – starting with Dorner – are disconnected from reality

Walk Into The Fire

I have become a big fan of political commentator Ben Shapiro as of late and have started reading his new book “Bullies”, which is terrific. Not surprisingly, Ben was mentored by the late Andrew Breitbart who pioneered the conservative tactic that Ben has now taken up the mantle on and that is to shine the light on the left and their despicable bullying tactics. It is imperative that conservatives spend the next four years methodically exposing the left, Obama, and the media for the shameful, divisive nature of their politics that they display daily, and have successfully used as a club to gain control and power. The tactic is to pit “victims” against “aggressors”, and to famously champion the victims. And of course, the Democrats side with the victims, therefore, anyone opposed to the Democrats is the aggressor; ie: bully, ie: Conservatives. And everyone hates a bully therefore everyone should hate Conservatives. Obama has even made himself into the victim claiming that people think that his name is funny, that he doesn’t “look” like previous Presidents, and that Republicans attack him on the floor of the Congress, all of which is designed to foment hatred against those who oppose him. This tactic has been very effective on the low information voter, and the intellectually challenged, which unfortunately constitutes far too many of the current population of voters, and is a tactic that Obama and the media have recently accelerated as evidenced by John Dickerson’s column on “pulverizing” the GOP.

Ironically in 2008, Obama ran as, and was elected as a uniter. But that again was just another lie as his Chicago thug-like nature took over shortly after the election, displaying no real interest in building coalitions, a fact cemented by his appointment of Rahm “dead fish” Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff. But why should he build coalitions? When all he has to do now is continue to play the well established “victim” card and demonize anyone who opposes his sanctimonious agenda. We are seeing that in the gun debate, the gay marriage debate, the higher tax debate, and so on and so on. This allows Obama and the Democrats to avoid any adult like, real substantive debate on the issue and unfortunately, this fact sails over the head of too many people. This shameful tactic was also in full display during the last campaign, when Obama relentlessly attacked the very character of Romney, claming him to be an uncaring, rich person who evades taxes, strips people of their healthcare and allows spouses to die. And the complicit media carried his water the entire way. That is why conservatives have no choice and must confront this tactic head on, and as Breitbart famously exclaimed “walk into the fire”.

We Conservatives Are So Stupid

At least, that is the allegation of a new “study” – from Pajamas Media:

…The results of a 4 year study show that Americans who obtain their news from Fox News channel have an average IQ of 80, which represents a 20 point deficit when compared to the U.S. national average of 100. IQ, or intelligence quotient, is the international standard of assessing intelligence.

Researchers at The Intelligence Institute, a conservative non-profit group, tested 5,000 people using a series of tests that measure everything from cognitive aptitude to common sense and found that people who identified themselves as Fox News viewers and ‘conservative’ had, on average, significantly lower intelligent quotients. Fox Viewers represented 2,650 members of the test group…

The study, itself, is bogus – as is the allegation that it came from some sort of conservative group (you can read the linked article to see just how laughably fake the whole “study” actually is).  But, fake as it is, that is the way liberals view us – we’re conservatives because we’re just too stupid to be smart liberals.

To be sure, we are politically stupid – that I grant.  The reason for this is that we don’t live and breath politics:  we don’t hold it as the be-all and end-all of existence as liberals do.  Only a liberal, for instance, could have thought up political correctness, which is nothing more than a demand that whatever is politically fashionable at the moment among the elite become obligatory among everyone.  You can only think  up something like that if you hold that what is political trumps what is personal.  But while political correctness is idiotic, in practical, living terms it is highly effective in purely political terms:  it allows you to control the debate by either insisting that everyone affirm some particular view or, more often, condemn some idea…with what is being condemned always being something that is traditionally held by the broad majority of the American people.  We’re stupid in the sense that we let them get away with it.

But in terms of actual living, I wouldn’t trust a liberal with a burnt out match.  These are people, after all, who think you can craft a national health care system for a nation of more than 300 million people, spread across four time zones and having places as completely different in demographics, economics and philosophy as, say, San Francisco, California and Birmingham, Alabama.  They also think that incurring debt creates economic growth and that spending is more important than saving (we might get some liberal denials on that, but the whole of liberal, Keynesian economics is based upon the laughable fallacy that spending is better than saving).

Preening themselves on their credentials, secure in well-paid Big Government and/or Big Corporation jobs, liberals look out upon us and see a great, unwashed mass of ignorant bigots, bitterly clinging to guns and the Bible…meanwhile, their Great and Glorious Leader presides over a bankrupt nation and their solution is to raise taxes on “the rich” which will pay for 8 days of spending…brilliant!

UPDATE:  76% favor cutting spending across the board.  In a very real sense, we’ve won the argument…we’ve just failed to craft a plan which gets us back in to the White House with full control of Congress.  We figure that out over the next four years and we’ll be unstoppable.

Will The REAL ‘post racial’ Barack Obama, Please Stand Up?

As the Daily Caller reports, a video of a 2007 speech from Barack Obama has surfaced.  An astonishing video, to be sure.

Gone is Obama’s measured midwestern, pedantic dialect.  Gone is Obama’s ‘post racial’ tone.  Gone is Obama’s supposed distance from Pastor Jeremiah Wright (you remember “G-d DAMN AMERICA!” Reverend Wright-you know, the guy that Obama sat in front of for over 20 years, that he supposedly never listened to).   In fact, in the video, Obama embraces Jeremiah Wright, naming him as his mentor and counselor.

Class warfare rhetoric is rampant in this video, as is his allusion to the principles inherent in liberation theology.

It is said that the true character of a person can be seen by how that individual acts when he or she feels that they’re not being watched.

Ladies and gentleman, I give you Barack Obama,

unplugged and unhinged.

Liberal Love and Tolerance

Twitchy has the latest string of liberal hated – calls for Anny Romney to die, or kill herself…and kill her husband, too. There is more to see at Instapundit where there is a thread about how people who are conservative but work in “liberal” professions are afraid to have their colleagues learn of their views…because everyone knows that if you’re surrounded by liberals and don’t toe the line, they’ll make you pay for it.

Remember that “new tone” bullsh**?  Yeah; me, neither.

A Liberal Whine: Obama Not Playing Race Card, Enough

From Ta-Nehisi Coats in The Atlantic:

…From the “inadequate black male” diatribe of the Hillary Clinton supporter Harriet Christian in 2008, to Rick Santelli’s 2009 rant on CNBC against subsidizing “losers’ mortgages,” to Representative Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” outburst during Obama’s September 2009 address to Congress, to John Boehner’s screaming “Hell no!” on the House floor about Obamacare in 2010, politicized rage has marked the opposition to Obama. But the rules of our racial politics require that Obama never respond in like fashion. So frightening is the prospect of black rage given voice and power that when Obama was a freshman senator, he was asked, on national television, to denounce the rage of Harry Belafonte. This fear continued with demands that he keep his distance from Louis Farrakhan and culminated with Reverend Wright and a presidency that must never betray any sign of rage toward its white opposition.

Thus the myth of “twice as good” that makes Barack Obama possible also smothers him. It holds that African Americans—­enslaved, tortured, raped, discriminated against, and subjected to the most lethal homegrown terrorist movement in American history—feel no anger toward their tormentors. Of course, very little in our history argues that those who seek to tell bold truths about race will be rewarded. But it was Obama himself, as a presidential candidate in 2008, who called for such truths to be spoken. “Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now,” he said in his “More Perfect Union” speech, which he delivered after a furor erupted over Reverend Wright’s “God Damn America” remarks. And yet, since taking office, Obama has virtually ignored race…

The article is quite long and it just goes on and on like that – America is and has been a hopeless, racist hell and Obama hasn’t been doing enough to pay whitey back for his transgressions.  Obama is just playing the white man’s game, as it were, for fear that an enraged black man will awaken the racist within us all and thus defeat him on November 6th.  The underlying premise of it all is that all white people are guilty and until they confront their terrible crimes, we can’t get past the race issue in the United States.

The reality is a bit different, of course.  The true issue of race in America is that it is dead as a doornail except for those who need it for fun and profit.  The fact that Obama has been treated just like anyone else doesn’t enter in to liberal minds – it was my (very white) wife who first clued me in to the Obama phenomena.  She was quite taken with this well spoken, good looking man who was clearly ambitious for higher office.  I, too, could not escape immediately the charm of Obama.  While I wouldn’t have voted for him under any circumstances this was entirely due to his standard-liberal positions on the issues.  That he is a black man was, is and always will be entirely irrelevant.  It wasn’t until the Jeremiah Wright issue came up that I became aware of the dishonesty underneath the surface of Obama – and while an author like Coats clearly admirers people like Wright, anyone who is not committed to the con-job which is race in America these days would immediately be offended by someone who lives well off America and yet condemns it in such hateful terms.  And as Obama and team started going “Jeremiah who?” it really just told us that Obama is dishonest – he sat in the man’s church for 20 years and could not reasonably argue that he was unaware of Wright’s raving lunacy.

Obama’s 2008 persona, though, carried him through to victory – just as anyone else with that sort of persona and given that set of political circumstances would likely have been carried in to the White House.  In other words; treated just like anyone else.  The problem for Obama is that his management style (probably the worst decision-maker we’ve ever had in the White House) coupled with the disastrous policies normal to liberalism have ensured complete failure of his Administration.  And just like any other person who is failing in the job of President, he’s getting hammered in popular approval and will likely lose on November 6th.  He wasn’t elected due to race in 2008, won’t be defeated in 2012 because of race – he was elected because of his personality and circumstances and will be defeated because of his policies.  But if this narrative is accepted as true then all the racial con-artists out there (people like Wright and Farrakhan and Jackson and Sharpton) would shortly be out of work.  A certain segment of the population (which does include a very large number of white people, of course) needs to have race to be a painful, divisive issue now and forever more.

It will be funny – not to me, as I’ll be dead right around that time – in 30 or 40 years when America is no longer a white-majority nation to see the successors of these people.  How will they keep the race hustle up?  Don’t doubt that they will try – Mugabe in Zimbabwe is still blaming the white people of Zimbabwe for his problems even though there are hardly any white people left in that country.  It’ll just be entertaining to watch the mental back flips these people will have to do to convince people that whitey is still keeping the black man down.   Think of it like this – the race-hustlers of 2052 will be trying to convince a panel of 1 (aged) white guy, two Latinos, two Asians and three mixed-race people that we still need racial set-asides to clear up the racial disparities of the Jim Crow era.

The sad part of it is really the way these people feel the need to keep hate alive.  We all know the truth of our past – the glory and the sins; slavery will always be a stain upon the Great Republic, as will segregation.  But it is also very much long past, now.  There are no slaves left.  No children of slaves, either.  I doubt we even have a great-grand-child of a slave alive in the United States.  The Jim Crow laws have been a dead letter since the mid-60′s.  Black people serve at all levels of American society and no one would ever dream of barring anyone from any position simply based upon their skin color.  More and more of us, also, have mixed race families – while I’m sure there are still some hill-apes out there who don’t want their daughters to marry a black man, they are few and far between (and getting ever fewer by the day); people just don’t care about it any longer.  All we want is decent people who obey the law and do the right thing – skin color is irrelevant.  But here are our liberals – so fearful that the race-baiting gravy train may come to an end that they will do whatever is necessary to keep old hatreds inflamed.

Pray for them.  Don’t get mad about it.  Hopefully they will wake up from their befuddlement in the by and by.