Sharp Knife

And so is Liz.

Cheney Unplugged

On Missile Defense:

President Obama’s cancellation of America’s agreements with the Polish and Czech governments was a serious blow to the hopes and aspirations of millions of Europeans. For twenty years, these peoples have done nothing but strive to move closer to us, and to gain the opportunities and security that America offered. These are faithful friends and NATO allies, and they deserve better. The impact of making two NATO allies walk the plank won’t be felt only in Europe. Our friends throughout the world are watching and wondering whether America will abandon them as well.

On Iran:

The President has been largely silent about the violent crackdown on Iran's protestors, and has moved blindly forward to engage Iran's authoritarian regime. Unless the Islamic Republic fears real consequences from the United States and the international community, it is hard to see how diplomacy will work.

On Afghanistan:

In the fall of 2008, fully aware of the need to meet new challenges being posed by the Taliban, we dug into every aspect of Afghanistan policy, assembling a team that repeatedly went into the country, reviewing options and recommendations, and briefing President-elect Obama’s team. They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt. The new strategy they embraced in March, with a focus on counterinsurgency and an increase in the numbers of troops, bears a striking resemblance to the strategy we passed to them. They made a decision – a good one, I think – and sent a commander into the field to implement it.

Now they seem to be pulling back and blaming others for their failure to implement the strategy they embraced. It’s time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity.

On waterboarding:

For all that we’ve lost in this conflict, the United States has never lost its moral bearings – and least of all can that be said of our armed forces and intelligence personnel. They have done right, they have made our country safer, and a lot of Americans are alive today because of them. ...In short, to call enhanced interrogation a program of torture is not only to disregard the program’s legal underpinnings and safeguards. Such accusations are a libel against dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well, in our country’s name and in our country’s cause. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future, in favor of half-measures, is unwise in the extreme. In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed.

On the CIA persecutions:

But I will tell you straight that I am not encouraged when intelligence officers who acted in the service of this country find themselves hounded with a zeal that should be reserved for America’s enemies. And it certainly is not a good sign when the Justice Department is set on a political mission to discredit, disbar, or otherwise persecute the very people who helped protect our nation in the years after 9/11. ...We cannot protect this country by putting politics over security, and turning the guns on our own guys.

MANUFACTURED NEWS(tm) NETWORK

*** White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs continued the jihad against Fox News today.

"They have an unacceptable agenda and a point of view. They're not a real news organization," said Gibbs in a lengthy sit-down interview with al Jezeera.

"And, frankly, we all find Megan Kelly slightly intimidating."

*** Authorities said they would be pressing charges against the parents who inflated a balloon and sent it soaring in a dangerous and expensive publicity stunt, only to watch it crash, prompting fears for their child.

However, authorities also said they would not be pressing charges against politicians who inflated the housing bubble with Socialized Mortgages, and sent it soaring in a dangerous and expensive publicity stunt, only to watch it crash, prompting fears for the children that will owe this huge debt.

*** The Miss California USA Pageant filed suit against Carrie Prejean, seeking recover the $5,200 cost of her implants. "We don't really need the money, we're just getting even. We're just a little bitchy," said spokewoman Lill Bichee.

"This is the same kind of medical privacy that all patients will enjoy under Obamacare," added Keith Olbermann, a former Miss Ogyny 1984.

*** The Nobel Committee awarded a bonus Peace Prize to Yassir Arafat, his second such award.

"If we can give Obama an award just for being alive, we can certainly give one to Arafat for being dead. In fact, he's done more for peace by dying than he ever did when he was alive," said Committeeman Sven Sven Svensven.

*** After separatist suicide bombers killed 5 Revolutionary Guard commanders, the Iranian Democrat Party has called for "Truther" investigations to see if Pres. Ahamdinjad was behind the bombings.

"That's as crazy as saying George Bush was behind 9/11," said Ahmadinjahd. "Wait...what am I saying...Bush was behind the 9/11 attack!"

Ahmadinjad went on to blame America for the Iranian bombings. If only.

The Obama Administration condemned the attacks because they always side with those nutty mullahs over their opponents.

*** And in International News, China called and said it would lend us more money only if all Obama administration officials would quit quoting Chairman Mao.

"Frankly, you're all cheapening his cachet," said the PRC's Frank Li. "Stop it."

THUGNATIOUS NATION

"One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it."--Ronald Reagan

You just can't joke around liberals anymore, Ronnie; they enact the punchlines.

I tend to think state officials shouldn't engage in RICO conspiracies to make hate crime victims out of their own citizens. But I'm old-fashioned that way.

SCOTUS Blog:

In September, U.S. District Judge Benjamin H. Settle temporarily barred state officials from releasing the identities of those who signed the referendum petitions. The disclosure was sought by groups named WhoSigned.org, KnowThyNeighbor.org, and the Washington Coalition for Open Government; their plea was based on the state’s public records act. Those groups have said the signers should be identified so that the public knows who is behind Referendum 71, and so that those supporters can be challenged personally. ...

In asking Justice Kennedy to put back into effect the bar disclosure of the signers’ identities, Protect Marriage Washington argued that state officials have suddenly changed a long-standing practice of keeping confidential the identities of those who signed referendum petitions. The group said the signers fear hostile confrontations, and noted that their campaign manager had received death threats. The application contends that there is no compelling state interest in forcing the disclosure of these identities.

State officials have a compelling interest: they want to provide a list of targets so that citizens can be literally beaten into submission.

In California, old people were beaten, churches were invaded, businesses were boycotted and voters were harassed and threatened, all for believing that marriage is between one man and one woman--filthy radicals!

Here's an interesting philosophical question for Jerry Brown: How are these not Hate Crimes? I mean, it's philosophical if you're not the one being punched.

As yet another Obama Czar put it:

"We kinda agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun".

Fittingly, he's a union guy, because this is exactly like Card Check. It would destroy the Secret Ballot and leave voters subject to the Midnight Knock on the Door by Angry Mobs.

For those of you who went to public schools, let me digress.

In America, political power comes out of the People...not a gun barrel, baseball bat or a fist aimed at them. It's America's Opposable Thumb--the thing that separates us from the Thug Regimes that Obama coddles and appeases.

Our Constitution acknowledges (not "grants") the right of the People to bear arms precisely to prevent this kind of criminality by the state against citizens. Elections, referenda, the Rule of Law--these are what we do here instead of mob justice and the Law of the Jungle, not as some fig leaf afterward to justify the intimidation.

If these state officials think they should release the names and addresses of individual traditional marriage voters as a matter of public record in order to facilitate retaliation, then under the same principle, let them release their own personal information at the same time.

*(deafening silence)*

Yeah--I thought so.

That's the way it always is with bullies.

I heard the Newt today, oh boy:

“Just look at what’s happening in New Jersey’s gubernatorial race,” he says, pointing to the campaign of independent candidate Chris Daggett, who has siphoned support from Republican candidate Chris Christie. “What’s happening in New York and in New Jersey should be a sober warning to every purist in this country.”

“If you seek to be a perfect minority, you’ll remain a minority,” says Gingrich. “That’s not how Reagan built his revolution or how we won back the House in 1994.”

What happened to the Newt Gingrich who called Bob Dole a "tax-collector for the Welfare State"?

Back then, Democrats would pass new spending programs without funding them (some things never change). Dole would come along and say: "Look at these awful deficits! I guess we'd better raise taxes." Democrats would laugh all the way to the polls; they got credit for the spending and Republicans got blamed for the taxes...perfect! Then they would Lather, Rinse and Repeat.

Until Newt came along and called them out on it.

And I remember the '94 election a little differently; Bill Clinton overreached and Republicans offered a specific list of conservative principles and policies. They did not draft David Gergen. Now Obama has overreached and Republicans should...punt?

Reagan built his revolution by offering solid conservative principles and this; "Let Them Go Their Own Way":

"...I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, "We must broaden the base of our party" -- when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents." Reagan said Republicans lost because "there was not a sufficient difference" between the two parties, not too much difference.

He asked

"Who has ever been barred from participating?"

That is, anyone was free to go to a Republican caucus and make their best case for their favorite policies, liberal or otherwise. But...

A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers.

I do not believe I have proposed anything that is contrary to what has been considered Republican principle. It is at the same time the very basis of conservatism. It is time to reassert that principle and raise it to full view. And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way.

In The New Republican Party, Reagan said

What I envision is not simply a melding together of the two branches [social and economic] of American conservatism into a temporary uneasy alliance, but the creation of a new, lasting majority.

This will mean compromise. But not a compromise of basic principle. What will emerge will be something new: something open and vital and dynamic, something the great conservative majority will recognize as its own, because at the heart of this undertaking is principled politics. ...All too often in the press and the television evening news it is treated as a call for "ideological purity."

I consider this to be the complete opposite to principled conservatism. If there is any political viewpoint in this world which is free from slavish adherence to abstraction, it is American conservatism.

I do not view the new revitalized Republican Party as one based on a principle of exclusion. After all, you do not get to be a majority party by searching for groups you won’t associate or work with. If we truly believe in our principles, we should sit down and talk. Talk with anyone, anywhere, at any time if it means talking about the principles for the Republican Party. Conservatism is not a narrow ideology, nor is it the exclusive property of conservative activists.

So far, so good for Dede (sorta). But then he says

Our task now is not to sell a philosophy, but to make the majority of Americans, who already share that philosophy, see that modern conservatism offers them a political home. We are not a cult, we are members of a majority. Let’s act and talk like it.

Picking a left-leaning Republican to run in an essentialy conservative district is playing it safe. It's not acting like we're a majority and it's not how Reagan built his revolution and it's not how we'll win ours.

"An age that does not exalt courage will be confounded by the Alamo, and baffled by the men who stayed in it. Any age that fears war more than servitude, or death more than honor, must denigrate the Alamo. Ages that do not honor the concept of "Liberty or Death" will fight no Alamos. Ages that do not cling to the great values of Love, Honor, Courage & Sacrifice, the soldier values, will not only fail to 'Remember the Alamo'; they may not long endure."--T. R. Fehrenbach

From an excellent photo-essay by Michael Yon:

I have developed a strong belief that the war is winnable, though on current trends we will lose. ...In my view, we need more troops and effort in Afghanistan — now — and our commitment must be intergenerational.

The idea that Afghans are tired of war seems an illusion. ... The culture is old, but the population is a teenager. Most Afghans today probably had not reached puberty when al-Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks. Eight years later, Afghanistan is more an illiterate kid than a country.

...Afghans don’t like to see Americans living in tents. Tents are for nomads. It would be foolish for Afghans in “Talibanastan” to cooperate with nomadic Americans only to be eviscerated by the Taliban when the nomads pack up.

The child-nation will fail unless we are willing to adopt the people. Many Afghans clearly hope this will happen, though of course we have to phrase it slightly differently. Afghans are, after all, proud and xenophobic. They are not just xenophobic but also Afghanophobic [fighting each other]. Most houses are built like little Alamos.

Half-solutions failed in Iraq and are failing in Afghanistan.

The Alamo is appropriate here.

Anglo settlers and disaffected Tejanos joined together to stop the oppression and wrest freedom from Santa Ana and his army, just as Afghanis have joined with Coalition Forces to stop the oppression of bin Laden and the Taliban, to obtain our mutual security.

Gen. MacChrystal is asking for reinforcements, just as Col. Travis did:

Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism, & of everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible...Victory or Death-William Barret Travis, Lt. Col. Comdt.

Jay Winik:

Is there a final verdict on the Alamo? Perhaps one need look no further than John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1960. After speaking at the Alamo, JFK had hoped to avoid the gridlocked courtyard. Turning to his host, a Daughter of the Republic of Texas, he asked for the Alamo's back door. "Senator," she returned, "there are no back doors at the Alamo. Only heroes."

Today we have another young, charismatic Democrat president looking for his own back door to our Afghan Alamo. Only this time, he's not just trapped by adoring crowds, but by his own words and shallow political expediencies.

On the back of Travis' appeal he was charged to carry, Capt. Albert Martin wrote an answer for Washington today:

"Since the above was written I heard a very heavy Cannonade during the whole day. Think there must have been an attack made upon the Alamo. We were short of Ammunition when I left. Hurry on all the men you can in haste."

Let them win. Then bring them home. That we may long endure.

From: Eric "the Brave" Holder
The Democrat Dept. of Democrat Justice
The Sovereign 51st State of the Union
at Washington, D.C.

To: All Subjects of the City of Kinston,
Federal Administrative District of North Carolina

Dear Kinstonians;

Who can forget the immortal words of the legendary racist broadcaster Rick Sanchez:

"Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark."

After all, Limbaugh never uttered such a thing on the air... but Sanchez did!

Anyway, we just want you Kinstonians to know that you are property of the Democrat Party. You belong on our plantation and we view runaways dimly.

That's why we've overruled your decision to do away with party labels in local elections. You are simply too stupid to run your own affairs. And we here in the Great State of New Columbia (formerly DC) know what's best for you.

That's why your federal government is such a model of political integrity, financial probity and fiscal rectitude. Those are big words that mean "Sit Down, Shut Up and Do As You're Told".

I'm glad we've had this honest conversation on race and voting rights. And remember; if you want to take some baseball bats down to the precinct at the next election, we're cool with it.

Just remember to Look For The Democrat Label!

Sincere whatevers,

Eric

MOP IT

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."--John Maynard Keynes, 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace'

Mop it good:

"...But what I reject is when some folks decide to sit on the sidelines and root for failure on health care or on energy or on our economy. (Applause.) What I reject is when some folks say we should go back to the past policies when it was those very same policies that got us into this mess in the first place. (Applause.)

Another way of putting it is when, you know, I'm busy and Nancy busy with our mop cleaning up somebody else’s mess –- we don’t want somebody sitting back saying, you're not holding the mop the right way. (Applause.) Why don’t you grab a mop, why don’t you help clean up. (Applause.) You're not mopping fast enough. (Laughter.) That's a socialist mop. (Laughter and applause.) Grab a mop –- let’s get to work."

I'm a partisan. I admit it. But all fault does not lie with Democrats.

Businessmen got greedy. Speculators, too. Republicans messed up plenty. Many of them signed on to the Socialized Mortgage plan. They didn't regulate well. They spent too much.

But I'm pretty tired of this virginal Polly Pureheart act by Obama and the Democrats. He acts like he just showed up last week.

As an ACORN organizer and attorney, he led the charge to make banks hand out bad loans. He sued Citibank:

"The suit alleged that Citibank had violated the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Fair Housing Act and, for good measure, the 13th Constitutional Amendment, which abolished slavery."

In other words, their failure to make enough risky sub-prime loans for Obama was the equivalent of reintroducing slavery to America. Remember when the press made an issue of this during the campaign? Of course you don't. They were too busy taking dictation.

In the two-and-a-half weeks he served in the senate, he became the second largest payee of cash from Freddie and Fannie, second only to Chris "Countrywide" Dodd, the King of the Free Mortgage. Freddie and Fannie got their money's worth, or rather, our money's worth: when Republicans finally got off their ass to regulate Fred/Fan, Obama was there filibustering the fix, allowing the "Too Big to Fail" crowd to explode their bad debt and fail bigger than ever.

Ironically, but typically, all the Democrats who looted Fannie and Freddie practiced Reverse Socialism: all the benefits went to the Liberal Oligarchs like Franklin Raines, Barney Frank's boyfriend, Jamie Gorelick and Rahm Emmanuel, while all the risk was dumped on the good old "teeming masses". That would be you.

Obama and the Democrats mostly voted for George Bush's new spending, complaining that it was too meager...and then complained about his deficits! Only to quadruple Bush's record this year and for as far as the eye can see.

This is not "someone else's mess". Those "very same policies that got us into this mess in the first place" are Obama's and the Democrats', too.

He's right about this, though; it's not a "socialist mop". It's a socialist shovel and he wants to heap on even more bad debt, doubling down on the Socialized Mortgage Debacle That Ate the Economy. Democrats learned nothing--that's why this Blame Game matters.

But is it "socialist"?

Of course it is. The president should embrace his inner Socialist and proclaim it. Every major figure in his life was a socialist. Even the Socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont has had to tell the administration to dial it back at times. The Chinese Communists warn this administration not to get too carried away. He's too socialist for the socialists.

Churchill:

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. ...The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

I want people to own homes and I certainly demand that minorities have the same access to loans as everybody else. But not an entitlement to risky Race Preference loans by the billions.

Churchill was right; this was essentially a socialist plan to redistribute wealth and it failed miserably, unless failing miserably was the goal as Comrade Lenin noted at the top.

It didn't lift the poor up; it brought everyone down. It merely spread misery...and even left its supposed beneficiaries worse off than they were before.

And now Democrats want to do it again?

Own up, Mr. President. Take responsibility for your part. Grab a mop.

But lose the Shovel-Ready Socialism.

...a shameless ploy, offloading $247 billion in Obamacare costs onto a separate, standalone, unfinanced piece of legislation. Obama promised not to add “one dime” to the deficit for health care: Democrats now plan to dump $247 billion onto the nation’s already staggering pile of debt, using this piece of accounting trickery to cover their tracks.

They've got more smoke and mirrors than Tommy Chong's bedroom. Or the Savoy. Roy Boy.

THE BAD HUMOR MAN

Jonah Goldberg:

"...I think Maher is a bully. I also think he's got the values of a Belgian pimp. He's a libertine socialist who calls himself a libertarian. I'll take prudish capitalists over libertine socialists every time. Oh, and worst of all: He's not all that funny.

...He and his guests were talking about Afghanistan and Maher said something like (I'm quoting from rough notes), "The idea — and it’s really just an idea — that 9/11 came from Afghanistan . . . if we only cleaned that up everything would be fine, it’s ridiculous. . . . I’m sure if there was a conservative here he would say we need to be in Afghanistan because that’s where they plotted 9/11."

Now what bothered me about Maher's comment wasn't that he was attempting to speak for conservatives, which would be akin to Gandhi trying to speak for the Texas Beef Council. Nor was it that he butchered the conservative case for winning in Afghanistan. Nor was it his assumption that there is a single conservative position on Afghanistan (there quite obviously is not).

No, what bothered me is that insisting that Afghanistan is the central front of the war on terror is exactly what liberals, including two Democratic presidential nominees and, I have no doubt, Bill Maher have been saying ever since the Iraq War entered the equation. "Why are we fighting in Iraq when we were attacked from Afghanistan?" was the number-one rhetorical trick of the Democratic party from the moment the Iraq War started going south. Kerry, Dean, Obama, and countless others insisted that the "central front" of the war on terror was in Afghanistan. Indeed, it was such a staple of liberal argumentation that Barack Obama has gotten himself into the mess he's in precisely because he acted like he believed what he was saying. And now he has to figure out what to do now that it's become clear that this was a cynical talking point masquerading as political conviction."

Goldberg just named one of my political cornerstones, and it's not the hypocrisy or even the demagoguery. I dislike bullies.

TOO BIG TO FAIL, YET TOO FAILED TO BE BIG

"This strange chiaroscuro is always the characteristic of revolutionary times. Everything is on a knife’s edge and every man’s effort counts. That’s how it must have been at all the times that really mattered. Well, which will it be? The Bolshevik past or the stars?"--Wretchard

Yet another "Hitler-in-the-bunker" film...and more fine work from Belmont Club:

The recent movie Downfall dramatizes the last days in Hitler’s bunker. In narrative structure it can be described as the story of the Titanic on land. It has all the familiar elements: the initial gaiety and optimism, the foreboding, the arrival of nemesis and then the gradual realization among the main characters that they are doomed.

The chronicle of how each of the main characters in the Bunker adapts to impending destruction provides enough material for a hundred dramas. There is the fate of the damned: the Hitlers and the Goebbels who in the end they destroy themselves, their children and whoever else they can from sheer pride, even when it is pride in something they can no longer believe in. There is something Satanic about their stony inflexibility and it is easy to see them uttering the devil’s own defiance of God from Paradise Lost. ...

...My favorite characters in the movie are the unthinking: the people of no particular intelligence, heroism or malevolence, who keep on doing a job until they find themselves pointlessly tidying up in a deserted bunker wondering how it all came to this. Maybe the most common last words on earth are, “oh shit”. There are a lot of people in the world who only want to earn a paycheck and go bowling on Saturday night.

The characters in Hitler’s bunker are the archetypes; and every tale of downfall has their kind again and again. The Bad, the Unlucky and the Clueless. We judge victims and even villains by their according to these categories. We sympathize with Italian or Romanian troops who slink away when defeat impends. But we look askance at Ceauşescu and Mussolini as scoundrels because they were killed while running for their lives. Even as devils they were second-rate.

But the true fascination of stories of the End is the realization that great empires — and great ships — are mortal; that and the realization that its most privileged members are often the last to see it. They remain blind to the end, toasting each other, offering one another meaningless Golden Party Badges. Madmen in a madhouse. Those who trusted in the walls of Constantinople, the professionalism of the German Army; or the subdivision of the unsinkable RMS Titanic were according to their own lights the best informed, the most knowledgeable and the most worthy of their societies.

Such as a Michael Moore, who wants to spread the wealth by killing the system that produced it. And produced the films, theaters, folding chairs, popcorn machines, fountain drink dispensers and electricity to run the place that made Moore a multi-millionaire. Which is great. Except he wants to yank the rug out from everyone else.

As one of Wretchard's commenters comments:

In a different kind of movie, the privileged don’t see it because it never affects them. Everyday, in this small university town I live in, I run into retired and current faculty who will never experience the creeping economic and social disintegration enabled by their anti-American, Leftist politics. Their pensions and university privileges continue until they die. Those still working will never be laid off. Yet despite their working-class rhetoric, I know from experience that they won’t raise a finger to save a staff job.

I'm for good wages and good benefits. But when you call capitalsm "evil" you undermine the only chance most people have to obtain them. Honestly, anyway.

And that's just economics. But it's way too early to go into the social engineering and geopolitical jive that our Super-Genius overlords are cooking up for us today.

I need some more coffee. And a Space/Time Helio-Torque/Thrust Disgronifier.

OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND

Don't laugh; it's Mo Do--yes, that Mo Do:

Havel, the 73-year-old former Czech president, who didn’t win a Nobel Peace Prize despite leading the Czechs and the Slovaks from communism to democracy, turned the tables and asked Smale a question about Obama, the latest winner of the peace prize.

Was it true that the president had refused to meet the Dalai Lama on his visit to Washington? ...

Havel reached out to touch a glass dish given to him by Obama, inscribed with the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. “It is only a minor compromise,” he said. “But exactly with these minor compromises start the big and dangerous ones, the real problems.”

Our president would be well advised to listen. Havel is looking at this not only as a moral champion but as a playwright. Obama (who, as Robert Draper wrote, has read and reread Shakespeare’s tragedies) does not want his fatal flaw to be that he compromises so much that his ideals get blurred out of recognition.

As Leon Wieseltier writes in the upcoming New Republic: “The demotion of human rights by the common-ground presidency is absolutely incomprehensible. The common ground is not always the high ground. When it is without end, moreover, the search for common ground is bad for bargaining. It informs the other side that what you most desire is the deal — that you will never acknowledge the finality of the difference, and never be satisfied with the integrity of opposition. There is a reason that ‘uncompromising’ is a term of approbation.”

F.D.R. asked to be judged by the enemies he had made.

And Obama asks to be judged by how many enemies he has saved or created.

And he'll do the the judging.

AND VERY, VERY DRY

His word is his Bond:

GEORGE WILL: This is a government that right now is borrowing 43 cents of every dollar it spends. We're going to pay for this the way we pay for everything. We're going to borrow the money from the Chinese.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The president says we're not.

WILL: Sentences that begin "The president says" are not as impressive as they used to be.

THIS IS YOUR COUNTRY ON THUGS

Doc Zero again:

...“Rush is rich, powerful, intelligent, and articulate, so he can take care of himself, and he’ll be just fine.”

I don’t mean to disparage the authors of these sentiments, but I must disagree. ...We have become much too relaxed about laughing off vile slander, because the target can nurse his wounded soul from the plush accommodations of a West Palm Beach mansion. Honor is as valuable to the millionaire as to the pauper. ...

Perhaps the President could direct one of his many czars to prepare a list of certified “divisive” positions, and which aspects of society are closed to offenders. It would save people like David Checketts, the investor seeking to purchase the Rams, the time he wasted inviting Limbaugh to join his consortium. Imagine how much more convenient it would have been for Checketts, if he could have pulled up a handy whitehouse.gov web page and learned Rush was too divisive to be minority owner of a football team! The Homeland Security spectrum of terrorist alert levels could be used to measure divisiveness ratings.

Limbaugh’s accusers want him burned at the stake for the crime of effective conservatism, not the racism they were so eager to lie about last week. The American public should think long and hard about which side of this ideological struggle should be on trial.

As I have consistently said (heh), if a guy has been talking on the radio for hours everyday for over twenty years and you still have to invent quotes to make him look bad, maybe it’s because you’re a damn liar.

Rush was told that he was too "divisive" to sit at the NFL's Politically-Segregated Lunch Counter, even though soda- and all-round jerk Keith Olbermann is allowed to work the Sunday night-shift there. The Legendary Olbermann Inclusiveness:

"thanks to the total mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic hatred, without which Michelle Malkin would just be a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it." ..."I’d spit on her if I saw her."

So this is The Unifying Face Of The NFL?

Do we want a country where you have to produce a Democrat Party Membership Card to get a job? Or invest in a business? That's what this is coming to. Democrat politicians denounced Rush in such harsh Soviet terms that I was waiting for one of them to command grocery clerks to refuse to sell him food.

Of course we defend Rush. He's earned it a thousand times over. But even if he hadn't, to defend Rush is to defend ourselves.

Yes, he's wealthy and powerful--but conversely, if they can do this character assassination to him, what about ordinary people? What chance do they stand? What if you get in their way and you're just a plumber? Oh, wait--we already saw that with Joe the Plumber. They ransacked his files in violation of every known privacy law. But what if his elevated profile hadn't protected him?

When they call Rush a "racist", they're really calling you and me racists. When they say he should be banned from business, they're saying you and I should be banned from business. Business, and every other aspect of American life--all shall bow to the State just because these Chicago grifters won an election.

Benjamin Zycher:

With the arrival of The One and absolute Democratic control of Congress, the groups that provide actual health care and insurance services — the doctors, the hospitals, the producers of drugs and devices, the insurers — knew that the thieves would view them, Willie Sutton–style, as the places where the money is to be found. And so they began to run around in circles like a guy whose mistress was in the bathroom when his wife came home a day early from a visit to her mother.

First they started cutting "deals" with the Beltway thieves, arrangements that from the very beginning were obviously unenforceable and that powerful interests had every incentive to violate. ...

Will PhRMA's "partnership" with Families USA induce Henry Waxman to back off his demands for far more than a mere $80 billion in "contributions" from the drug producers? In precisely what sense is Families USA "with" PhRMA? ...

At some point the private sector is going to have to learn how to do ideological battle; it really is not that difficult, but it is a skill very different from those characterizing most businessmen and their "communications" offices. With that knowledge will come the larger wisdom that the Left cannot be mollified, it cannot be bought off, and that its ultimate goal is political power rather than protecting consumers or any of the other rhetorical props used in its endless masquerade.

Not to mention the assault on Fox. Why Fox?

In the Old Days(tm), government would send out operatives on risky missions with no written orders. "The Secretary will disavow any knowledge" went the 'Mission: Impossible' tape. The president didn't want to know. It was called "plausible deniability".

Today, the Forgery Free-for-All Press doesn't want to know what this president is doing. They won't investigate Van Jones' communism. Or the Dragon Lady's Mao fetish. Or ACORN. Or foreign contributions to Obama's campaign. Or...

If you want to know about those things, you have to watch a real reporter: Glenn Beck. Or Andrew Breitbart. Sure; they're doing opinion--but only because they first went out and dug up the facts themselves. The Lap Dog Press won't. They want "plausible deniability"--and for themselves, not the president. THEY DON'T WANT TO KNOW. Think about it. Reporters who flee from facts, lest they be forced to share them with the likes of you.

Like everything else in Thugknuckle, USA, it's upside down.

Except Al Capone. He rolled over in his grave, and he liked what he saw.

Welcome home, Al, welcome home. Cicero's missed you. Cicero-on-the-Potomac.

DOWN MEMORY LANE

before they tax our memories and confiscate the lane for a bike path.

From the Summer of '08, James Lileks:

In the summer of ’78 I was back home in Fargo between college years – exiled from the civilized world, cast into barbarity. During the day I labored under the hot sun painting giant fuel tanks in the hot sun, next to an auto-body shop that exhaled poison and Eagles all day. A sensitive soul, cast into such grim circumstances. A noble soul, a poet, reduced to living on the gruel of hometown “culture,” almost unable to stir himself each day to face the hopeless allotment that stretched forth until the sun turned its face away.

Naturally, I was in the perfect mood to read the entire Gulag Archipelago. I got all three volumes from the drugstore – which should have told me something about the land in which I lived, that one could buy this work from a creaky wire rack at the drugstore – and it taught me much about the Soviet Union and the era of Stalin. After that I could never quite understand the people who viewed the US and the USSR as moral equals, or regarded our history as not only indelibly stained but uniquely so. Reading Solzhenitsyn makes it difficult to take seriously the people in this culture who insist that Dissent has been squelched. Brother, you have no idea.

DON'T BE A DINOSAUR

when the meteor hits.

As Mike noted here, there's a race goin' on upstate between a Leftist, a Liberal and a Conservative. And the Republican is the Leftist.

I can understand the Party backing moderates sometimes. But leftists? YOU'RE NOT LISTENING, PEOPLE!

The Other McCain:

This is a time for choosing, Mrs. Palin. A battle rages in upstate New York. Doug Hoffman needs help. And people are praying.

McCain also has this hilarious "Little Green Lantern" link which refers to the Family Feud Funnies.

MORAL CHARACTER VS. KHARTOUM CHARACTER

Fur? EVIL!
Darfur? Let's not rush to judgment here.

KILL ME NOW

No...wait! I was just kidding! No...

Mary Claire Kendall:

The government first got involved back in 2001, when Butler secured funding from Congress to pay for certifying and organizing the local crisis centers. He didn’t imagine that, by accepting government funds, he would risk losing the very program he designed in his wife’s memory to help so many others. An agency deep in the bowels of HHS called the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) was put in charge of administering the grant.

Even though a SAMHSA study showed that the suicide-prevention hotline was saving lives, the agency decided to pull the funding from KBHC — and then asked KBHC to “donate” the number 1-800-SUICIDE to the federal government. Deeply concerned about its callers’ privacy, KBHC declined to cede control of the number to the government, opting instead to continue its work entirely with private donations.

But SAMHSA delayed paying $400,000 it owed KBHC, making the nonprofit temporarily fall behind in its payments to the phone company. Then SAMHSA launched its own competing suicide-prevention hotline with a new contractor (using 1-800-273-TALK, a line that never received anywhere near the traffic of 1-800-SUICIDE). Next, SAMHSA asked the Federal Communications Commission to temporarily transfer the 1-800-SUICIDE number (as well as two other numbers KBHC owns) to SAMHSA’s control on the grounds that the hotline might cease operations due to KBHC’s financial troubles.

The FCC agreed...

All Good Ideas Must Be A Government Program.

All Property Is Property of the State.

If You Like Your Plan, You Can Keep It.

HITLER AT CANNES...NOT AGAIN!

Comrade Steyn on that wacky and whimsical sense of humor so often noted among White House Communications Directors and East German border guards:

If you say, “Chairman Mao? Wasn’t he the wacko who offed 70 million Chinks?”, you’ll be hounded from public life for saying the word “Chinks.” But, if you commend the murderer of those 70 million as a role model in almost any school room in the country from kindergarten to the Ivy League, it’s so entirely routine that only a crazy like Glenn Beck would be boorish enough to point it out.

Which is odd, don’t you think? Because it suggests that our present age of politically correct hypersensitivity is not just morally unserious but profoundly decadent.

Twenty years ago this fall, the Iron Curtain was coming down in Europe. Across the Warsaw Pact, the jailers of the Communist prison states lost their nerve, and the cell walls crumbled. Matt Welch, the editor of Reason, wonders why the anniversary is going all but unobserved: Why aren’t we making more of the biggest mass liberation in history?

Well, because to celebrate it would involve recognizing it as a victory over Communism. And, after the Left’s long march through the institutions of the West, most are not willing to do that. There’s the bad totalitarianism (Nazism) and the good totalitarianism (Communism), whose apologists and, indeed, fetishists can still be found everywhere, even unto the White House.

Rush Limbaugh’s remarks are “divisive”; Anita Dunn’s are entirely normal. But don’t worry, the new Fairness Doctrine will take care of the problem.

The other day, Van Helsing linked to a Hitler movie-spoof mocking Obamacare. You know the clip--it's been used to mock Charles Johnson, Microsoft, your high school football rivals, etc., etc., etc.

The RNC tossed it a link, and then retracted it after the DNC got their Victoria's Lederhosen all in a bunch because, hey, they just like them in a bunch. And also because of Godwin's Corollary: "All Hitler Analogies Are Strictly zee Intellectual Property of Code Pink, Noam Chomsky and zee Speaker's Office".

Funny; the owner of the Democrat Party, George Soros, collaborated with the Nazis. The teen-ager helped point out the Jews in town. He put the "Die" in "The Diary of Ann Frank". Yet I've never heard Pelosi call him a "Nazi". She saves that for retired WW 2 veterans who don't want Obamacare. American veterans, I mean.

But do you know why the "Hitler-explodes-in-the-bunker" movie-scene is so widely used?

Because there simply just aren't very many "Stalin-loses-it-in-the-Kremlin"-scenes or "Mao-blows-a-gasket-in-the-Great-Hall"-clips to choose from.

Hollywood has made very few anti-Communist films compared to the glut of Nazis-are-the-bad-guys movies. Not to mention the zillions of anti-anti-Communist films. Today, they're even making anti-anti-Communist films as anti-anti-Terrorism; "Goodnight, and Good Luck" starring George Costanza as "Edward R. Olbermann".

Part of it stems from our WW II alliance with Stalin. As Churchill put it "If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." But the truth is that when the war began, half of Europe was in the grasp of an evil, expansionist, totalitarian regime. And when it ended, half of Europe was in the grasp of an evil, expansionist, totalitarian regime.

And then Ronald Reagan won the war and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize which he keeps over at Mikhail Gorbachev's house. But I digress.

Yes, there have been some anti-communist films:
John Wayne's 'Big Jim McClain'
Ronald Reagan's 'Prisoner of War'
Andy Garcia's 'The Lost City'
The St. Louis Rams' 'The Killing Fields' (managing to be both anti-American and anti-Commie!)
Max Baucus' 'Dr. Zhivago'
Bill and Hillary Clinton's 'I Married a Communist'.

Speaking of the Long March Through the Institutions (the pinko plan to take power here from within by capturing all positions of cultural influence), here's a good list of pro- and anti-Communist films, from a pinko university site funded by Tides Foundation. Although some of their conclusions are therefor understandably odd.

As Steyn says, it's remarkable how unremarkable quoting Mao is in Obama's cell circle; they quote him like we quote Reagan. "Chairman Mao says follow your own drummer, kids; now get out there and build your own Lao Gai!" Most dictators are obviously pretty big on self-actualization.

Stalin was a big cinema--and propaganda--fan. Reportedly, he wanted to kill John Wayne. I know how he felt. Many times I have wished for the tires on Warren Beatty's Porsche to be marked by the parking maids, permanently staining them with hard-to-remove chalk. Not for "Reds". Or even "Ishtar".

For "Dobie Gillis". Commie.

UPDATE: From the Reason article mentioned:

"On August 23, 1989, officials from the newly reformed and soon-to-be-renamed Communist Party of Hungary ceased policing the country’s militarized border with Austria. Some 13,000 East Germans, many of whom had been vacationing at nearby Lake Balaton, fled across the frontier to the free world. It was the largest breach of the Iron Curtain in a generation, and it kicked off a remarkable chain of events that ended 11 weeks later with the righteous citizen dismantling of the Berlin Wall.

Twenty years later, the anniversary of that historic border crossing was noted in exactly four American newspapers, according to the Nexis database, and all four mentions were in reprints of a single syndicated column.... A Google News search of “anniversary” and “freedom” on August 23, 2009, turned up scores of Woodstock references before the first mention of Hungary.

Get used to it, if you haven’t already. November 1989 was the most liberating month of arguably the most liberating year in human history, yet two decades later the country that led the Cold War coalition against communism seems less interested than ever in commemorating, let alone processing the lessons from, the collapse of its longtime foe. At a time that fairly cries out for historical perspective about the follies of central planning, Americans are ignoring the fundamental conflict of the postwar world, and instead leapfrogging back to what Steve Forbes describes in this issue as the “Jurassic Park statism” of the 1930s..."

Even at the time, we didn't know how to process it. Years of liberal conditioning had left us leery of freedom. Pres. Bush Sr. gave his infamous "Chicken Kiev" speech cautioning against irrational exuberance. Clearly, there would not be the same sailors-kissing-nurses-in-Times-Square that our elders enjoyed.

But now we have a president who thinks the World-as-One wished the Wall down in what was a big misunderstanding between two moral equals, which is wrong on more counts and more levels than a four-story ACORN whorehouse.

Nor can we expect a reconsideration, given that he wishes to bring socialism to America, or more precisely, bring America to socialism.

Reagan however went to Europe just to take a hammer-blow to the Wall himself. And he enjoyed it. He got it right then so we could get it right now. His A.N.S.W.E.R.?:

"Let Freedom Ring".

ME, OR MY LYING FIGURES?

The Ponzi Administration has striven mightily to hide the true cost of, well, just about everything.

The Bureau of Consumer Protection warns people about "bait-and-switch" salesmen, but it can't tell us what to do when the entire Congress is one giant carny scam, the entire White House a bunker-mentality bunco squat.

On paper, they kept Porkulus under a trillion dollars, even though with interest it will cost over a trillion. No real reason except they didn't want the headline "A Trillion Dollars About Nothing."

When Obama rewarded the PLO with a bombers' bonus entitlement, a Terrorists' Welfare Check, he kept it to $900-plus million, just to avoid the new "B"-word: Billion.

And now Health Care.

To keep the price-tag under a trillion dollars, they played so much Three-Card Monty that Monty had to use the full deck and change his name to "Floyd". The bill is more back-loaded than Sandy Berger's underpants at the National Archives. It has more childish games than Roman Polanski at a "Sweet Thirteen" birthday party. They're using more parlor tricks, fake stunts and publicity gimmicks than Arianna Huffington, Jesse Jackson, Octo-Mom and Al Sharpton put together in a runaway silver balloon. It's a hopeychange-ling remake of Jimmy Stewart's "Mr. Criss Angel Deficitfreak Goes to Washington".

In his own inimit imnintable inmintable un-copyable style, Harrymonger Reid tried to spill the beans. But when they claim it will cost under a trillion, this is probably a better guide:

@markknoller New Treasury #s show federal deficit for 2009 fiscal year (ended 9/30) hit $1.417-trillion - 3 times bigger than previous all time high. 10/16 3:52 P.M. -

Here's the transparency you were promised:

@markknoller Interestingly, Treasury says deficit for '09 is $1,417-billion rather than $1.417-trillion. Which do you think seems larger? 10/16 4:32 P.M. -

That's like quoting the price of a used-car in quarters so the salesman can claim it's just pocket change.

The only thing transparent are the lie$.

“I don't care what you say about me, as long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name right.”--George M. Cohan

"Areana Hufin'tun shall in all cases exercise veto power over the selection of duly-elected vice presidents."

I like all Ten Amendments of the Bill of Rights except Number 11 there.

The noted Greek fugitive is upset because she feels B. Hussein Procrastinator isn't the leftist she thought George Soros was buying for her. In a naked power grab that should really get dressed, she has ordered Joe Biden to resign over Afghanistan, clearly scheming to have Nancy Pelosi installed as vice-president and later POTUS.

Obama has taken so long formulating an Afghanistan policy that he's in danger of becoming a Khartoum-character. But Ariany is mad only because he hasn't surrendered to the Taliban yet.

But just because the gaffe-tastic Joe Biden referred to the commanding officer over there as "Major MethCrystal, dude", that's no reason to fire him, Arrowanna. After all, you yourself call him "General McChrystalburton".

Remember when almost all Democrats supported Iraq and Afghanistan? Then they decided to Get Bush by supporting defeat in Iraq--but they swore that Afghanistan was the Good War that they would win if entrusted with power. But now that they've got power, they don't want to win that war either!

Like Wimpy, they will gladly pay you Thursday for a hamburger today. And they will gladly support America in some future, unnamed, hypothetical conflict if they can weasel out of supporting victory in Afghanistan today.

Once upon a time back before the election, our flag-waving feta-accomplice published some of her patented Afghan advice columns in Stars and Stripes:

For all the disastrous consequences of the Iraq invasion -- including another 28 Americans killed over the last five days -- one of the most devastating has been the way it caused us to take our eye off the ball in Afghanistan. You do remember Afghanistan, don't you?

Sen. Chuck Hagel, so courageous in his critique of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq, is equally clear-eyed about the problems plaguing Afghanistan -- drawing the unmistakable connection between the two countries: "You can't carry the same intensity in two global invasions," he said. "Iraq is sucking the oxygen out of everything." Including our efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.

...Ronald Neumann, Bush's new ambassador to the country, says [funding] falls far short of what's needed. He told Congress that it would take some $5.2 billion over the next four years to get the job done.

"This is too critical to just say we want victory but we want it on the cheap," said Neumann. But that is exactly how Bush hopes to get it.

When it comes to discussing America's withdrawal from Iraq, the president's default talking point is that America won't cut and run. But when it comes to Afghanistan, he's cutting troops (by 13 percent) and funding -- and running the risk of allowing the country to fall into chaos.

What about his commitment to staying the course? Or does that only apply to Iraq?

Ruh-roh...it looks like Mrs. Expiration Date is mad at Mr. Expiration Date! I'll alert the media!

"Dear Joe,

How dare the President listen to what I said before the election! He needs to listen to what I'm saying now! And if he doesn't, you need to resign!

Yours truly, Arianna"

"Resign"? Joe Biden should call on Huff-Mommy to resign from...well, whatever it is she's in charge of.

Don't get me wrong; she's allowed to change her mind--and so are the millions of people who are already changing their minds about the clowns we sent to D.C. last time.

...and sometimes, it creates you.

"When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale."--G.K. Chesterton

Lileks:

The Funeral was held at the old country church. I parked on the road, by the rustling field. In any direction you look, North Dakota, and lots of it. More than enough for all.

It was a good funeral. You don’t think of a funeral as “good” until it’s done, and then you tote up the last 24 hours, and you get the sense of completion. The way it feels when you slide in a bookend – it goes under the volumes, holds them tight, stands straight. The choir – hardy men from the farms that stretch for miles around the church – sang one of Uncle Myron’s favorite songs. (He was in the choir.) My cousin sang a solo in a clear fine tenor, which surprised me a bit, although it shouldn’t. He’s the do-all guy, the one who took over the farm from his dad – who took it over from his father. The one who knows land and business and vehicles and hunting and all the necessary skills of pulling a living out of the dirt, the one who stood over the casket of his own son in this very spot a while ago. I shouldn’t be surprised he can sing. Nothing any of these people do should surprise anyone.

Stand. The Lord’s Prayer. Amen.

Hotdish in the Fellowship Hall. I had to make it back, so I said my goodbyes all around, and slipped out. The church was founded by my ancestors. They’re out in the boneyard out back...

Gregory: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
Holmes: "That was the curious incident."--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 'Silver Blaze'

Three states have already tried Obamacare.

Oddly, though, we hear nothing about them from those who want to impose this nationwide. If it's such a "slam-dunk", why aren't the Hounds of Washington baying these success stories far and wide? Curious, these unsung stories...

Maine, or The Adventure of the Blue Lobster's Carbuncle--or is The Red Lobster's Blue Carbuncle? Or maybe it was Aunt Kathleen Whitehair in the infirmary with a blunt mandate. Alas, it's a mystery...

Running out of money, the legislature went back to taxing Maine insurance companies (and, by extension, private policyholders), enacting a 2 percent tax on all paid insurance claims. The state also has capped enrollment in order to keep costs from spiraling further out of control. The program’s supporters are now looking to Washington for help. “We have a very limited capacity because of limited resources..."

Obamacare would relieve a handful of northeastern states, including Maine, of the burden of funding their broken, heavily regulated and subsidized health-care systems while imposing new burdens on the South and Midwest in the form of expanded eligibility for Medicaid. Of course Snowe voted for this bill. It's a bailout for Maine.

Massachusetts, or The Heiress of Frankenheinz:

Like gamblers doubling down on their losses, Democrats have already hiked the fines for people who don't obtain insurance under the "individual mandate," already increased business penalties, taxed insurers and hospitals, raised premiums, and pumped up the state tobacco levy. That's still not enough money....

Which brings us to Washington, where Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats are about to try their own Bay State bait and switch: First create vast new entitlements that can never be repealed, then later take the less popular step of rationing care when it's their last hope to save the federal fisc.

The consequences of that deception will be far worse than those in Massachusetts, however, given that prior to 2006 the state already had a far smaller percentage of its population uninsured than the national average. The real lesson of Massachusetts is that reform proponents won't tell Americans the truth about what "universal" coverage really means: Runaway costs followed by price controls and bureaucratic rationing.

The Massachusetts plan thus violates the individual's right to spend his own money according to his best judgment for his own benefit.

Some desperate patients have even resorted to "group appointments" where the doctor sees several patients at once (without the privacy necessary to allow the physician to remove the patient's clothing and perform a proper physical exam). These patients all have "coverage," but that's not the same as actual medical care.

The Massachusetts plan is also breaking the state budget. Since 2006, health insurance costs in Massachusetts have risen nearly twice as fast as the national average. The state expects to spend $595 million more in 2009 on its health insurance program than it did in 2006, a 42 percent increase. Those higher health costs help explain why the state faced a $5 billion budget gap this summer. To help close it, lawmakers raised taxes sharply.

And Tennessee, or "The Invisible Case of the Mother of all Unfunded Mandates."

TennCare was launched by Democratic governor Ned McWherter on the promise that it would save the state money, reduce costs, and increase coverage. Instead, in a decade, the program went from a budget of $2.5 billion to nearly
$8 billion, became mired in litigation, and was forced to make major cuts.

Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn was a Tennessee state senator back when many of the problems began to materialize in 1999. "There is not a credible example of having brought about a cost savings and insured everyone. We have seen that in TennCare," Blackburn told me. "I just find it unconscionable that they are not talking about the lessons that they learned from the TennCare experience, the lessons that are still being learned every day from the TennCare experience."

..."I would like to know what lessons the administration has taken from Tennessee's experiment with 'public option' health care; a program known as TennCare," Blackburn wrote.

Sebelius wrote back tersely, "We have learned many lessons from the TennCare experience and recognize its goals, but TennCare is not a traditional public option [unlike Obama's favored plan, aka "The 100% Solution"]."

The brevity of the response could be chalked up to the fact that it's not in the administration's interest to engage in a dialogue about what happened in Tennessee.

But Tennessee's administration will talk about what's happening in Washington:

Gov. Bredesen [D.] said, estimating that those costs, if realized, could exceed another $3 billion from 2014 to 2019.

"By my calculation, Dr. Watson, that's an additional $3 billion in 5 years for just one state!"
"Indubitably!"
"What does that word even mean?"
"I've no idea, sir."
"Incredibly, they dare not even speak about the experience of these three states; it's the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" of Socialized Medicine!"
"You're making me nervous, sir."
"States: Petri Dishes of Democracy, or Specimen Jars, Watson?"
"You're in trouble, sir."
"Yes, quite. Exactly so. And he thinks he can pull off this mad scheme just because he's 'special'!"
"Just like the evil Dr. Moriarty!"
"Doctors aren't evil this week, Watson. It's the insurance companies' turn this week."
"But who will they turn on next, Holmes?"
"Patience, Watson; patience."

JIM CROW IS BACK

and it still sucks, even with a different boss.

Rush:

DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the Players Association is an Obamaite. He's donated to Obama. He is a Washington lobbyist at Patton Boggs, and I think he even served on Obama's transition team. He has no experience in professional sports. The National Football League's agreement, collective bargaining agreement with the players expires soon. Next year, the salary cap -- if they don't get a new deal done, next year the salary cap -- will go away. And after that, there is a fear that the owners -- who think they're giving up too much of the gross in salary, compensation to the players -- might lock them out, a work stoppage. This is something that the Players Association doesn't want, obviously.

And the real reason, the real reason -- and there are many, many reasons that are valid, but the real reason -- that pressure was brought upon me by Sharpton and Jackson and DeMaurice Smith and the commissioner is that the Players Association is using my involvement in the Rams and this whole episode as a bit of leverage in their negotiations, the upcoming negotiations with the league and with the owners on a new collective bargaining agreement. That is what's really going on, and the Players Association... I don't know how many players know this, but Mr. Smith has let it be known that if he has to he'll bring the White House into this. He'll bring the Congressional Black Caucus into this.

So Obama's America is quite possibly going to include the National Football League, and pressure from Obama, the Congressional Black Caucus and other places might be brought to bear on the owners. ...

Oh, yeah, I would prefer to be noted as a part-owner of an NFL team. ... What I'm now going to be known as is The Mirror. I am the man who showed the country what America is becoming. I still love professional football. I'll still love the people that play it and admire them, and I'll probably end up remaining the biggest nonpaid promoter of the sport. But those people who enabled this event -- for their own racial reasons, for their own ratings, their own fundraising, their own face time, their own business reasons -- they're going to be just as unhappy as they were before this happened.

It's a collection of unhappy, angry, agitated people, and that's not going to change. But this kind of stuff: This misreporting; lying; repeating lies while also saying "Limbaugh denies," repeating the made-up quotes, the blind hatred -- and, believe me, the hatred that exists in this is found in the sportswriter community. It's found in the news business. It's found in the race hustler business. As I said yesterday and I've said I don't know how many times in this program, "I love the National Football League." I don't dislike anything about it. I'm a fan. But the hatred that I am able now to mirror for the country to see is all over the place. And I tell you with absolute sincerity: I am more sad for our country than I am for myself.

A-TENTION!

I keep waiting to for Sean Connery to burst out of the crowd and start wrestling with these gals. He'd lose, of course.

But, what is "losing" really, anyway?

IS TO ASK IT

Tony Blankley inquires of the Emperor's sartorial habits;

"Is Washington Nuts?" :

"Health Care Bill Gets Green Light in Cost Analysis" -- The New York Times.

That's right. The federal government is giving the "green light" for the country to drive to the poorhouse -- and drive there, I would argue, by way of the lunatic asylum. Are they nuts?

Helping out the uninsured might be a nice notion someday. But the first priority now is to avoid permanently destroying our economic capacity -- as we rapidly are doing -- by the insanity of adding to entitlement programs while the dollar begins to fail and the CBO predicts we never will recover from the current debt and deficit levels.

Most of these Democrats have been on the Gumment Tit all their lives. Few
have ever run a business, met a payroll or given anyone a private sector job. So when they see a good thing, they automatically assume government should provide it.

Jobs are good--government should provide it. Food--ditto. Housing? Sure--what could go possibly wrong? Health care? You betcha'! College? You're owed that much. Pensions--a-okay, guv'nor! For a while, government was even in charge of the Mustang Ranch!

Our Founders created a system of limited government. It's a philosophy that says government is the last resort. Today, it's the first resort and we don't even consider that there might be any other. They knew that people weren't free unless government was limited. We've made it our project to blow through almost every limit. And now it looks like we're going to keep printing money until the presses start smoking and seize up.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe all those who came before us were wrong to worry about spending borrowed money. Maybe we can just spend, spend, spend without a care in the world. Maybe Liberals are right in this sense--if we really do want government to give us everything, maybe we should turn over our entire paycheck and let them divvy it up. That's certainly their goal. As Troy Senik said of California:

Liberals have won their campaign for bigger government and runaway spending, and conservatives have usually succeeded in keeping tax hikes at bay. The Golden State’s signature optimism may be to blame: How else to explain the delusion that Californians could be taxed like libertarians, but subsidized like socialists? The result, of course, has been a fiscal crisis addressed with slashed spending on public services and increased taxes in the midst of a deep recession — a recipe for yet more discord and trouble. In a grim irony, Californians are now being taxed like socialists and subsidized like libertarians.

That's the Socialist Death Spiral. Who wants to work overtime with no reward? Who wants invest and risk it all simply because "in Beijing...the glorious sun of Chairman Mao Tse-tung shines upon the Chinese people twenty-four hours a day"? Or Chairman O in Washington? It all pays the same...why stick your neck out? "Just lean on that shovel, boys; we've got all week."

Socialism assumes there will be the same amount of wealth to spread around no matter what. But when socialism is implemented, people start producing wealth at a much slower rate. And it feeds on itself. Forget the dynamic America we knew. Even shades of gray will be frowned upon--too risky, too bold, too...daring.

For years, Liberals have driven up the cost of health care in hopes of making it so expensive that you would beg them to make it "free". They have purposefully taxed people into needing government help. There are ten different ways to drive down the cost of health care and expand coverage but they're not interested in any of them. I want people to get the care they need. They want control. Period.

They're lying about the cost.
They're lying about you keeping your policy.
They're lying about illegal aliens being covered.
They're lying about abortion taxes.
They're lying about the gifts to unions and trial lawyers buried in the bill.
They're lying about privacy.
They're lying when they say it's not designed to lead to a complete government takeover.

Is Washington nuts? No. This is the pure, sweet logic of socialism and by that standard, it's not crazy at all. By that logic, it's inevitable.

It's only crazy you still have to ask.

LIKE A GOOD NEIGHBOR

who is secretly a mob hit man on evenings and weekends.

I've never understood this thinking:

"Insurance companies are too powerful and greedy. Government is too powerful and greedy, but also corrupt and stupid. Hey; let's combine them!"

Rich Lowry:

“I will not stand by while special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are.” How stalwart, how Churchillian.

Except this is all a political pose and the purest hogwash. The Democrats have managed to buy off and/or bully all the major special interests into supporting Obamacare. The drug industry, the doctors, the hospitals, and the AARP have all been broadly on board (although the doctors and hospitals are getting restive). Even the dreaded insurers — despite their opposition to the public option — were running gauzy ads in favor of reform at the same time Pelosi and Co. denounced them as immoral.

The Washington Post story on the PWC study on Monday opened this way:

"After months of collaboration on President Obama’s attempt to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, the insurance industry plans to strike out against the effort on Monday with a report warning that the typical family premium in 2019 could cost $4,000 more than projected."

Months of collaboration.

When the Mob moves in to a neighborhood, you can't be too tough on those businesses that choose to pay protection money. Especially when out of the corner of their eye they can see "Bugsy" Pelosi and Barney "Boom-Boom" Frank unloading cans of gasoline out of the trunk of their Crown Vic, as Barney lights a fixed-parking ticket for a fuse.

The Insurance Companies released a Price Waterhouse study that said--and you may want to be sitting down for this--prices would go through the roof under this plan. Insurers were willing to go along when they thought the government would force everybody to pay in. But maybe they've finally realized who they're dealing with: President Expiration Date.

As I said, you can't be too tough on extortion victims. Sometimes victims choose to pay the ransom. But I will say this for the Mob: unlike the government, at least they want the business to live so it can keep paying.

And patients will be payees, not payers. Burdens.

Don't be a wise guy, Granny.

That's what Margaret Thatcher did (and Ronald Reagan, too) during the Wilderness Years of the 1970's. Conservatism in those days was almost literally "unthinkable". Yet, think it, they did.

She did...strikingly endorse the idea, in a radio interview in mid-May [1974], that the Conservatives were likely to become the radical party of the future, "because we are not naturally a people who submit to control for a very long time" and a backlash was coming.

It came. And it was magnificent in its season. And then, sadly, it went.

I was, however, wrong on one important matter. Of course, I understood that some of my Cabinet colleagues … were more to the left, some more to the right. But I believed that they had generally become as convinced of the rightness of the basic principles as I had. Orthodox finance, low levels of regulation and taxation, a minimal bureaucracy, strong defence, a willingness to stand up for British interests wherever and whenever threatened — I did not believe that I had to open windows into men's souls on these matters. The arguments for them seemed to me to have been won. I now know that such arguments are never finally won.

So now we must "think the unthinkable" in our time, for freedom must be defended in each generation and reborn once again.

Happy Birthday, Baroness. And happy birthday to us.

"GET RUSH! SPREAD THE WORD!" "GET RUSH! SPREAD THE WORD!" "GET RUSH..."

"I'm comin' fo' yo' white wimmens the way greedy doctors are comin' fo' yo' tonsils."--B. Hussein Mandingo, "Stuff Lincoln Said to George Jefferson; 'Weezy in the Heezy: Vol. II"

"My wife should never be president. Under any circumstances. NEVER!"--Wm. Jefferson Clinton, "Stuff Wm. Jefferson Clinton Said To Wm. Jefferson Clinton While Alone in the Shower At His Girlfriend's House Which the Press Would Never Dream of Reporting Unless It Was George W. Bush, Pt. 1 (Abridged Version of Madison County)"

"I pledge @%$*& allegiance to the *?#)*@# flag of the *!^&$@** States of *%$#$% America"--"Rahm Emmanuel Recites the Pledge and Other Great American Rhetoric for the %@*&%* Children"

That's fun. Making up quotes out of thin air. No wonder it's so tempting.

Remember when Rush told black people "We’re going to let you die”?

Oh...wait; that was Robert Z. Reich III talking about sickly old people. And he was a Democrat cabinet secretary, not just some whacked-out commie-coddling loon like Ramsey Clark. Oh...wait; he was Democrat cabinet secretary, too. Still.

And nobody said Ted Turner and Jane Fonda couldn't own the Atlanta Braves just because he created CNN Internationale with Fidel Castro and she pointed anti-aircraft guns at American pilots. Those two have some pretty interesting quotes, too-- but quoting Ted Turner costs brain cells I can't afford, frankly.

Al Sharpton is leading this parade to have Rush banned from the pro-sports business because of Rush's creed, a blatant violation of current civil rights law. Not that it matters today. That's par for the course in Obamamerica. Did I say "par"? Sorry--banned due to the New Equality-ness.

And nevermind that Al Sharpton has left a trail of corpses behind him with his Hate Speech:

"...he rails against the "diamond merchants" -- code for Jews -- with "the blood of innocent babies" on their hands. He mobilizes hundreds of demonstrators to march through the Jewish neighborhood, chanting, "No justice, no peace." A rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, is surrounded by a mob shouting "Kill the Jews!" and stabbed to death.

When the United House of Prayer, a large black landlord in Harlem, raises the rent on Freddy's Fashion Mart, Freddy's white Jewish owner is forced to raise the rent on his subtenant, a black-owned music store. A landlord-tenant dispute ensues; Sharpton uses it to incite racial hatred. "We will not stand by," he warns malignantly, "and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business." Sharpton's National Action Network sets up picket lines; customers going into Freddy's are spat on and cursed as "traitors" and "Uncle Toms." Some protesters shout, "Burn down the Jew store!" and simulate striking a match. "We're going to see that this cracker suffers," says Sharpton's colleague Morris Powell. On Dec. 8, one of the protesters bursts into Freddy's, shoots four employees point-blank, then sets the store on fire. Seven employees die in the inferno.

Funny how the networks never quote any of that while providing Sharpton a platform on which to lecture Americans about racial harmony.

Instead, the All-is-Fair-in-Hate-and-Forgery Media jumped right in, trumpeting manufactured quotations around the world, while lecturing everyone else about the subtleties of "context".

If a guy has been talking on the radio for hours everyday for over twenty years and you still have to invent quotes to make your point, maybe it's because you're a damn liar.

Or as Chesterton said, "It's as easy as lying...because it is lying."

For those of you in the press, that's a real quote. Try it sometime.

IT'S ALMOST AS IF IT WERE SOME TWISTED CULT

CNSNews:

Over the next five years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) plans to make climate change its “highest priority.” [...]

According to its new “Action Plan” released last month, the branch of the U.S. Department of Interior charged with protecting fish, wildlife and plants will focus first and foremost on the global weather.

“(A)s a Service, we are committed to examining everything we do, every decision we make, and every dollar we spend through the lens of climate change,” it declares on page one.

If they're going to do global weather, I guess we're going to need a new agency devoted to fish and wildlife.

I know; we could call it...the Dept. of Climate Change!

The report compares the modern fight against climate change to past efforts to ban the pesticide DDT.

“We see climate change as an issue that will unite the conservation community like no other issue since the 1960s, when (environmentalist) Rachel Carson sounded an alarm about pesticides,” the plan said on page three.

Look out, Africans--they're ba--aack! They're from the government and they're here to help:

"No one concerned about the environmental damage of DDT set out to kill African children," reporter Tina Rosenberg generously allowed..."

No, but with a race record this bad, the Fish and Wildlife Service should put in its own bid for the LA Rams.

Oops; I mean "The Dept. of Climate Change".

WAITING FOR GO-D.O.T. AND WAITING. AND WAITING. AND...

Terry Jeffery:

"The Secretary and/or states would do the following: ... Enable customers to enroll in health care plans in local hospitals, schools, Departments of Motor Vehicles, local Social Security offices, and other offices designated by the state."

This is the bill's most revelatory passage because it sublimely symbolizes the bill's true aim: a government takeover of the health care system.

You do not get food at the DMV. You do not even get auto insurance at the DMV. But under what The Associated Press inaptly calls the Finance Committee's "middle-of-the-road health care plan," you will get health insurance at the DMV.

What will the DMV and health care have in common if this bill is enacted? Government will control both.

PRETEND THEY'RE OLD TERRORISTS, BOB

...'cos even mass-murdering terrorists don't get the Death Penalty from this crowd.

But seniors will.

Don Surber:

Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary Robert Reich gave a speech on what an “honest president” would say about health reform. It was at Berkeley on Sept. 26, 2007.

Reich: “We’re going to have to, if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It’s too expensive, so we’re going to let you die.”

There it is. If that doesn't prove what a liar Sarah Palin is, I don't know what does.

Who is this "We, we, we" that you speak of, Robert B. Reich III? How does any "we" get to decide to shave years off of an individual's life?

The only good part: we don't have an "honest president"-problem.

NANNY STATE HAS BEEN TAKING STEROIDS--ISN'T THAT A VIOLATION, TOO?

Pundit and Pundette:

He wanted to eat his lunch with his cool Swiss Army knife, the kind with a fork and spoon. Now he's being sentenced to 9 weeks in reform school. ("Reform" from what, or into what?)

Hot Air:

But, based on the code of conduct for the Christina School District, where Zachary is a first grader, school officials had no choice. They had to suspend him because, “regardless of possessor’s intent,” knives are banned.

But aren't these are the same people who say they can read minds in Thought Crime-cases to hand out enhanced sentences?

But the question on the minds of residents here is: Why do school officials not have more discretion in such cases?

“Zachary wears a suit and tie some days to school by his own choice because he takes school so seriously,” said Debbie Christie, Zachary’s mother...

The kid is a Boy Scout and wears a suit to school...and we want to "reform" that out of him?

The only threat to children here are the idiot adults who want to send him away. They need reform school, not the child. People that stupid shouldn't be allowed around children.

But, wait; there's more:

A 17-year-old Eagle Scout in upstate New York has been barred from stepping foot on school grounds for 20 days — for keeping a 2-inch pocketknife locked in a survival kit in his car.

Matthew Whalen, a senior at Lansingburgh Senior High School, says he follows the Boy Scout motto and is always prepared, stocking his car with a sleeping bag, water, a ready-to-eat meal — and the knife, which was given to him by his grandfather, a police chief in a nearby town.

The incident is similar to the case of Zachary Christie, a 6-year-old Cub Scout in Delaware who faces up to 45 days in his district’s reform school for bringing a scout utensil that can be used as a fork, spoon and knife to school. But for Whalen — who has received an award from the Boy Scouts of America for saving a life and completed 10 weeks of basic military training last summer — the stakes are much higher:

He is concerned that the blot on his school record could kill his dream of attending West Point.

Liberal educators have long frowned on manliness. They've certainly declared war outright on the Boy Scouts and the military.

These cases are starting to stink like political targeting. They're certainly not about safety or education.

Don't worry, though; One-Size-Fits-All State-Run Health Care will be nothing like this.

NUZZINK, I tell you!

IT'S WHINING TIME AGAIN

"I've made up my mind
I'm tired of wasting all my precious time
You've got to be all mine, all mine
Foxy News Lady
Here I come."
--B. Hussein Hendrix, "Are You Marxperienced?"

The White House can't decide on a policy to fight in Afghanistan...but it knows how it wants to fight the War on Fox. Priorities, people, priorities.

Jonah G. questions the timing, noting that Health Care does better when the pRez is off the air and people are distracted by shiny rocks. I don't think so.

After all, this is the guy who said back in May at the Correspondents' Dinner: “Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me---Apologies to the Fox table.” He's been obsessed with Fox from the beginning of his administration.

And even before the beginning:

Dunn used an appearance on CNN's "Reliable Sources" over the weekend to complain about Fox News' coverage of the Obama presidential campaign a year ago.

"It was a time this country was in two wars," she recalled. "We'd had a financial collapse probably more significant than any financial collapse since the Great Depression. If you were a Fox News viewer in the fall election, what you would have seen would have been that the biggest stories and biggest threats facing America were a guy named Bill Ayers and something called ACORN."

Guess what, lady: we're still in two wars, we've still got a financial meltdown, the administration has a Bill Ayers education policy and an ACORN housing policy...and your boss won the election! First we had Sore/Loserman and now we've got Sore Winnermen, too?

Peggy Sue Got Married...but she's still worried about what Betty Lou said about her on Spring Break in 1958! Did widdle Barry get a smudge on his Saddle Oxfords?

btw, Fox was ahead of the curve on both Ayers and ACORN, as recent reports--and non-reports--have proven.

But last weekend, Dunn blamed Fox News Channel's coverage of the administration for Obama's snub of Fox News Sunday.

"Is this why he did not appear?" Dunn said. "The answer is yes."

Wallace has called White House officials "the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington."

There's no grand strategy here. It's as simple as Wallace said; they're crybabies.

Obama's gotten so used to people handing him stuff he hasn't earned, he folds up like a suitcase at the first sign of a tough question or someone being "insufficiently obsequious".

Oh, fer cryin' out loud; Man up, Mandy. You came and you gave without taking, but this is an 11 on the Barry Manilow Wimpitude Scale of 10--and I like Barry!

You're supposed to work out your Daddy Issues and Need for Approval before you get to the White House, not seek the White House because of them.

This is just a tiny little taste of what we learned to deal with years ago. For years, Republicans had to put up with ALL the networks slamming them.

I don't mind them elevating Fox News--except it betrays a dangerous lack of maturity and perspective.

Message: GROW UP!