Last Post for a While

Over the last several years (since my heart attack), I have grown more and more disenchanted with the political environment.  For me, most Republican politicians are like most Democrat politicians:  they just want to accumulate power for the party and keep their offices.  Some bright lights are out there, but the Republican establishment and the Democrat establishment are pretty much alike.

So much so, that large numbers of voters didn’t even bother in the last election.  Some voters opted for a third party candidate and therefore kept votes away from the supposed conservative choice in the election.  I tried blogging about things I found funny (as in humorous, not strange), but had not much content.

So, I am changing venues and starting a new blog about positive living.  I’m frankly tired of the negativity surrounding the political scene.  So in an effort to be more positive I am blogging about Forward Living with Pops and Pat.

The rest of this article will be all the reasons I love Barack Obama.

Dave and Blarney and the Tea Parties

Blarney: Dave, did I see you coming from one of those TEA parties last week?

Dave: Yes, you did, Blarney.

Blarney: What is that all about?

Dave: Well, you know TEA stands for Taxed Enough Already. It’s a play on words honoring the Boston Tea Party.

Blarney: Are you guys anti-government terrorists?

Dave: No, Blarney, that is ridiculous. We are for Constitutional government as envisioned by the founding fathers.

Blarney: Isn’t that what we have now?

Dave: Unfortunately, no. According to the Constitution, the federal government power is limited and enumerated. The real power belongs to the states and the people.

Blarney: You mean like anarchy?

Dave: No, Blarney. The founders wanted to strike a balance between statism and anarchy. They founded a representative Republic that was full of checks and balances to prevent power from accumulating at either end of the political spectrum.

Blarney: Like what?

Dave: Well, like the clear division of responsibility of the three branches of government. The legislative branch (Congress) was to create all laws. This branch would be bi-cameral with both a Senate and a House of Representatives. The house would have representation based on population. The Senate would have two Senators for every state, regardless of population. Both houses would have to agree on a bill before it was sent to the President for signature.

Blarney: Like the Health care legislation.

Dave: Well, sort of. Anyway, even if both houses of Congress agreed on a bill, the President could still veto it. And if he did, the Congress could override the veto with a super majority. The president could not make law – he could only sign the bill into law.

Blarney: What about the Executive Order that President Obama used to get the health care bill through?

Dave: That is not a law. Constitutionally, an executive order would only affect the Executive Branch. There is nothing to prevent the president from issuing an executive order cancelling the last one. He does not have a specified process to go through like the process specified for making a law. That process is a protection for the people against an arbitrary dictatorship ruled by a series of “executive orders”.

Blarney: I never thought of that.

Dave: The founders thought about a lot of things that most people today do not realize.

Stimulus Effects for Retirees

The Federal Government has issued the Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) adjustment figures for Social Security and military retirees. Here you go:
Social Security.
Cost of Living increase = 0%.
Cost of Medicare Part B goes from $96.50 to $110.50.
Net Benefit to seniors = -$14.00.

Military Retirees.
Cost of Living increase = 0%.
Tax increase due to stimulus = $10.
Net benefit to military retirees = -$10.

How's that hope and change working out so far?

Why Governments Never Shrink

Our wonderful Republic (not a Democracy, regardless of what dictionary.com says. ) was founded by some really smart guys.  They were not, of course, saints.  They did, however, recognize the fallibility of humans.  We are a flawed people.  Because they rightly discerned the nature of man, they invented a system of government with checks and balances and wrote the Constitution to limit the power of the Federal government.  For my purposes, I will refer to the King’s power as statism and the people’s power as anarchy (Democracy has been defined as two wolves and a lamb voting on what is for dinner).  They strove to seek a balance between the two.  They envisioned the rule of law rather than the rule of a person.  The ideal was that certain “truths” were “self-evident” as put forth in the Declaration of independence.  This new experiment would balance the needs of the minority as well as the majority, because the law was supreme.

 

The constitution outlines three branches of government, taking the king’s legislative, executive, and judicial powers and spreading them around.  Each branch of government was to be suspicious of the other branches.  The Congress was to have two houses, one in which all states were equal (Senate), and one in which the states with larger populations had a larger vote (House of Representatives).  Originally Senators were to be chosen by the state legislatures (Article I Section 3), later that was changed (17^th Amendment) to require direct elections by the people.  Because slavery was a contentious issue and because the less populous states feared that states with large slave holdings might have undue influence in the House, they settled on an enumeration that include three-fifths of a person for each slave held.  There is a general misunderstanding today about that three-fifths clause, which I will probably have Dave and Blarney discuss in the future.

 

But the point of this article is that each branch then was free to hire people to assist them.  The President has a staff, Congress has staff people and the supreme court has numerous law clerks.  The executive branch is the one most likely to grow, but Congress can commission studies and offices for itself.  Let’s say that we decide to eliminate poverty, or maybe reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  We could have a “War on Poverty” or create a “Department of Energy”.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  The people in those areas would be hired to solve those problems.  We could throw money at the problem and create large executive departments filled with people who are charged with solving the problem.

 

Oh, wait.  We already did.  And how is that working out?  Not surprisingly, neither problem (poverty or dependence on foreign oil) has been solved in spite of armies of people and billions of dollars attacking the problems.  Not surprisingly, you say?  Indeed.  It is Basic Economics.  Once a federal agency is created, it takes on a life of its own..  If they ever solve the problem, they will be out of a job.  It takes a strong character to cut out one’s own job.  Not gonna happen.

 

And that is why governments never shrink.

 

Dave and Blarney and photosynthesis

Blarney: Dave, you still haven’t told me why you think Lisa P. Jackson was stupid to call carbon dioxide a pollutant. After all, the UN has stated that it definitely causes global warm… Climate Change. Humans are to blame.

Dave: Blarney, have you ever heard of photosynthesis?

Blarney: Is that something like using Photo Shop to make up phony pictures?

Dave: Good parsing of the word, but no. Photosynthesis is the process in which plants convert carbon dioxide and water to make glucose. In the process, the plants release oxygen into the air.

Blarney: Really? You mean carbon dioxide is food for plants?

Dave: Yes. I forgot you attended liberal arts schools. The lack of plants to generate oxygen is one of the concerns about deforestation.

Blarney: I thought you were a conservative. Why are you worried about the planet? Aren’t you one of the Global Warm… - I mean Climate Change – deniers?

Dave: Wow. No sane person denies climate change, Blarney. We only deny that man is causing it.

Blarney: Oh.

Dave: See, that is one of the problems in talking with you. You drop out significant words, like “man-made” or “anthropogenic” when calling us “deniers”.

Blarney: Well…

Dave: And when you were confronted with the fact that the earth is actually cooling, you switched from “global warming” to “climate change”.

Blarney: That’s because you might get by with denying global warming, but you would be an idiot to deny climate change.

Dave: Indeed. And. As I said, nobody does deny climate change. We simply point out that it will happen with or without man’s activities.

Blarney: Don’t you care about the environment?

Dave: There you go again. We can be all for clean air and water without getting hysterical about some mythological man-made climate catastrophe.

Blarney: Well, you don’t have to resort to name-calling.

Dave: What?!? Never mind. Plants take the carbon dioxide from the air and use it along with light and water to make glucose. In the process they release oxygen back into the air.

Blarney: OK. So plants clean up the pollution.

Dave: No, Blarney, that isn’t my point. Humans breathe in the oxygen and use it in a reverse process to extract the sugar from foods and release carbon dioxide back into the air.

Blarney: So I’m polluting the atmosphere just by breathing?

Dave: One more time. Carbon dioxide is NECESSARY for the plants. In fact, the richer the atmosphere is in carbon dioxide, the better the plants do.

Blarney: How can a pollutant be good for plants?

Dave: I think you are almost getting it. That’s my point.

Dave and Blarney, UN and Pollution

Blarney:  Dave, why so serious?

Dave:  I just can’t believe the stupidity of some people.

Blarney:  To whom do you refer?

Dave:  EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, for one.  She called Greenhouse gases a threat to our health.

Blarney:  What is stupid about that?

Dave:  Do you know what the largest greenhouse gas is?

Blarney:  Sure.  Everybody knows that it is Carbon Dioxide.  That’s what is causing Global Warming – I mean – Climate Change.

Dave:  Actually, Blarney, the largest greenhouse gas is water vapor.  It makes up about 4% of the atmosphere.  Carbon dioxide makes up about four hundredths of one percent.

Blarney:  But, I heard that the concentration of carbon dioxide went up dramatically over the last thirty years.

Dave:  Well, it has increased over 35% in the last 300 years.  That means it went from 275 parts per million (ppm) to 375 ppm.

Blarney:  You’re saying that it increased only 100 ppm in 300 years?  The concentration went from 0.000275 to 0.000375?  And that caused all this warming?

Dave:  Actually, the globe has been cooling since about 1998, even though the atmospheric carbon dioxide continued to increase.

Blarney:  Why would that be?

Dave:  Well, it wouldn’t IF carbon dioxide caused warming.  That’s one of my points.

Blarney:  ONE of your points?

Dave:  Yes.  You do know that there was a big Ice Age, right?

Blarney:  Yes, that first one was the best of the three.

Dave:  Not the movie, Blarney.

Blarney:  Oh.  OK.  Yes there was an ice Age.

Dave:  And you know that there was a little ice age?

Blarney:  Yes, around 1550 to 1850.  But there were warming periods in there.

Dave:  You get a gold star, Blarney.  Now tell me what caused those warming periods or for that matter, what ended the big Ice Age?

Blarney:  Well… I don’t know.  I never thought about it.

Dave:  And you know that there were concerns about a new ice age in the 1970s?

Blarney:  Yes, but it warmed up instead.  That was caused by Anthropogenic Global Warming.  The science is settled.

Dave:  Why do I bother?

 

Dave and Blarney and AGW

Dave: Well, Blarney, how’s that Global Warming working out now? Houston has the earliest snowfall ever.

Blarney: Dave, you should know you can’t take one data point and make a theory go away.

Dave: Speaking of data, how about those emails in Great Britain?

Blarney: I don’t know what you are talking about.

Dave: There has been some data washing going on at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU).

Blarney: That is the first I have heard of it. There is nothing on my major news stations (ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC).

Dave: That isn’t particularly surprising. But it has been reported in the New York Times and on Fox News.

Blarney: Fox is not a real news source. My favorite bloggers call it Faux News. Get it? Faux, Fox?

Dave: That’s really clever Blarney. You do realize that “faux” rhymes with “no” instead of “knocks”. Right?

Blarney: Of course I knew that, but you should see the right wing nuts react to it as if “Faux” is just another way to spell “Fox”. It’s rich.

Dave: But then aren’t they too stupid to know the meaning of faux? And if so, they don’t get the insult. Maybe they just think you are an atrocious speller.

Blarney: Huh?

Dave: But back to my topic. How does the recent cooling trend affect global warming?

Blarney: See, Dave, you just don’t get it. We quit calling it “Global Warming” years ago.

Dave: So what do you call it now?

Blarney: It’s now “Climate Change.”

Dave: So now the claim is not that man is causing global warming, but he is causing global climate change?

Blarney: Exactly!

Dave: But the climate is always changing – it is either cooling or warming all the time.

Blarney: That’s the beauty of it! No one can deny climate change.

Dave: {sigh}

Some Healthcare Thoughts

I read an interesting article today. Two thoughts struck me about this:

1. 11 Let’s not be hasty to dismiss patients as “vegetative” without more extensive testing.

Belgian doctors who treated him early on said that Rom had gone from a coma into a vegetative condition.

Coma is a state of unconsciousness in which the eyes are closed and the patient can't be roused, as if simply asleep. A vegetative state is a condition in which the eyes are open and can move, and the patient has periods of sleep and periods of wakefulness, but remains unconscious and unaware of him or herself or others. The patient can't think, reason, respond, do anything on purpose, chew or swallow.

. . .

The case came to light after Laureys published a study in the journal BMC Neurology this year showing that about four out of ten patients with consciousness disorders are wrongly diagnosed as being a vegetative state. Houben, although not specifically mentioned, was part of the study.

2. 2. Advanced technology saved the day here.

More searching finally got her in touch with Laureys, who put Houben through a PET scan that indicated he was conscious. The family and doctors then began trying to establish communication.

A breakthrough came when he was able to indicate yes or no by slightly moving his foot to push a computer device placed there by Laureys' team.

Then came the spelling of words using his finger and a touch-screen attached to his wheelchair.

Houben has started writing a book on his experiences.

Sleight of Hand in Health Care

This is the cautionary tale of two bills:

1. H.R. 3590 - To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees, and for other purposes. Entered IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES on September 17, 2009 by Charlie Rangel.

2. H.R. 3962 - Affordable Health Care for America Act. Entered IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES on October 29, 2009 by John Dingell.

H.R. 3950, when in the House, had the short title of Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009. The bill was six pages long and primarily affected the tax treatment and first time home buyer credit for US Military. It passed on Oct 8, 2009 with 416 Yes votes and 16 not voting. After all, it was a good thing to help our heroes fighting in the War on Terror. Good going House guys in passing it virtually unanimously.

As you probably know, H.R. 3962 was voted on a late Saturday night (Nov 7) and squeaked by 220 – 215 with one Republican voting yes. It was placed on the Senate calendar on Nov 16, 2009. Some pundits said it was dead on arrival in the Senate and would never pass in its current form (2,016 pages).

Now here’s the tricky thing: H.R. 3590 was amended in the Senate (by replacement) by Harry Reid. The original six page bill suddenly became 2,076 pages and acquired the new title of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This bill, remember, started as a Revenue bill. Now it is the health care bill, but it can be reconciled by simple majority vote in both chambers. This sleight of hand was accomplished with these words:

AMENDMENT NO. 2786

Purpose: In the nature of a substitute.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES—111th Cong., 1st Sess.

H. R. 3590

To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify

the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members

of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees,

and for other purposes.

November 19, 2009

Ordered to lie on the table and to be printed

Amendment in the nature of a substitute intended to be

proposed by Mr. REID (for himself, Mr. BAUCUS, Mr.

DODD, and Mr. HARKIN)

Viz:

1 Strike all after the enacting clause and insert the following:

Now, some on the left will think this was clever of the Democratic leadership. Some on the right will think it is chicanery. What do you think?

I think I’m going to vomit.

Blue Dogs in Name Only

The following so-called Blue Dog Democrats failed to join the other 39 to defeat the Health Care bill:

Mike Arcuri (N.Y.)
Joe Baca (Calif.)
Marion Berry (Ark.)
Sanford Bishop (Ga.)
Leonard Boswell (Iowa)
Dennis Cardoza (Calif.)
Christopher Carney (Penn.)
Jim Cooper (Tenn.)
Jim Costa (Calif.)
Henry Cuellar (Texas)
Kathy Dahlkemper (Penn.)
Joe Donnelly (Ind.)
Brad Ellsworth (Ind.)
Gabrielle Giffords (Ariz.)
Jane Harman (Calif)
Baron Hill (Ind.)
Mike Michaud (Maine)
Harry Mitchell (Ariz.)
Dennis Moore (Kan.)
Patrick Murphy (Penn.)
Earl Pomeroy (N.D.)
John Salazar (Colo.)
Loretta Sanchez (Calif.)
Adam Schiff (Calif.)
David Scott (Ga.)
Zack Space (Ohio)
Mike Thompson (Calif.)
Charles Wilson (Ohio)

 

Should they be called BDINO’s?  or maybe BINO’s?  Or how about “outta there!”.

In case you missed it

It seems that NY-23 was prematurely conceded by Hoffman. Had he not conceded, Pelosi would have been one vote shorter from passing the Health Care Monstrosity. Then maybe the Republican would not have voted for it either. Ah, well.

Addendum to Nobel Peace Prize

It might seem strange that a man who voted present in the Illinois Senate, spent most of his US Senate time campaigning to be President, and has been in office a scant nine months to win the Peace Prize.  It is stranger still that someone who had been in office 11 DAYS would be nominated.  In case you are unfamiliar with the process, let me help you out. 

 

The Deadline for nominations is 1 February of each year.  This is from the official web site of the committee:

February – Deadline for submission. The Committee bases its assessment on nominations that must be postmarked no later than 1 February each year. Nominations postmarked and received after this date are included in the following year's discussions. In recent years, the Committee has received close to 200 different nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. The number of nominating letters is much higher, as many are for the same candidates.

 

You will recall that US Presidents are inaugurated on 20 Jan of each year. 

Am I in the Twilight Zone?  Are we in the first movie of the Left Behind series?  Are we all being punked?

The Nobel Peace Prize

As if the Nobel committee had any credibility left to lose, they outdid themselves this time.  Let’s briefly review who did NOT win the Nobel Prize in recent years:

Mahatma Gandhi

Irena Sendler

Pope John XXIII

Dorothy Day

 

Now let’s see who DID win

2009       Barack Hussein Obama  “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”

2008       Marti Atasaari                   ‘for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts"

2007       Al Gore                                 for a Power Point presentation, er, I mean , "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change"^[

 

Wonder what else is on SyFy?

Dave and Blarney Discuss Health Care - Part 1

Blarney:  Yes we can!  Hope we can believe in!  Change that matters!  Organize for America!

Dave:  What has you so worked up, Blarney?

Blarney:  I am just so pumped!  I just left a “Town Hall” meeting with the  President.  It was great!

Dave:  What was it about?

Blarney:  It was about health care reform.  Wow!  It was stupendous!

Dave:  Really?  What is the plan?

Blarney:  I’m not really clear on that, but it will be great!

Dave:  How do you know, if you don’t know what the plan is?

Blarney:  No child will be without health care!  Everyone in America will be covered!  The current system is broken and he will fix it!

Dave:  How?

Blarney:  Are you one of those right wing nuts that is opposed to health care reform?  Why are you asking these obnoxious questions?

Dave:  I just want to know what kind of change we are expecting.

Blarney:  If you are happy with your current program, you can keep it!  There will be no rationing!  This will save Social Security and Medicare!

Dave:  If everybody keeps their current plan, what will change?

Blarney:  Well…  Uh… People without current insurance will have lifetime coverage!

Dave:  And who pays for that?  Where is the money coming from?

Blarney:  There you go, asking irrelevant questions.  The GOVERNMENT will pay for it all.

Dave:  And where will the government get its money?

Blarney:  We’ll tax the rich, of course.  We need to spread the wealth around!

Dave:  Ok, let’s let that one go.  Will this plan provide more medical personnel?

Blarney:  What?  Well… Uh… Why is that important?

Dave:  Because if more people will have medical care than now, unless there are more doctors, somebody will have less.

Blarney:  This plan will keep the greedy doctors from overcharging, so the money will go further.

Dave:  That’s not the point.  If currently each doctor is seeing as many patients as they can, who will take the new patients?  Someone will have to lose their current care or we need more doctors.  What is the incentive for someone to be a doctor if the government will cap their wages?

Blarney:  We don’t need to worry about that.  With more abortions and mandatory end of life counseling, there will be less children and less seniors to drain the system.  If we can convince everyone to kill themselves after 65, Social Security will no longer be bankrupt.  Medicare will be solvent.  It is the perfect solution.

Dave:  Unless, of course, you are 65.  Why should 65 be the magic number, what about 60?

Blarney:  Sure, even better.

Dave:  How about 55?

Blarney:  Now you are getting it!

Dave:  Did you ever see Logan’s Run?

Blarney:  No, why?

Dave:  Never mind.

 

Life is Good

Once upon a time there was a country founded by people who wanted to enjoy freedom of religion and freedom from unjust taxes. These people framed a document which they called a "Constitution". This document clearly described a system of limited federal government holding together a group of otherwise autonomous states. These states, in turn, were governed by the people from the state. It was a wonderful plan and it lasted over 150 years.

At that time, people who had enjoyed freedom began to get strange ideas. They reasoned that life could be much better if the government could fix things. And so, little by little, the government began to take responsibility for more than diplomacy and defense. The elected leaders were so much smarter than the citizens that they were able to determine how much each should receive for the mere act of breathing. As more and more people were allowed to depend on the government, they implemented a system of taxation which was "progressive" (That means that the larger the income,the larger the percentage of it that the government would confiscate). Now some thought that "progressive" sounded so good they would adopt that terminology, making the word an emotional one.

Once upon a time the government-owns-everything-and-will-only-let you-keep-what-it-thinks-is-fair economies collapsed, but no one noticed. People everywhere liked the sound of "fair". They even applied it to what people could say and called it the "Fairness Doctrine". By that they meant it was not fair to speak the truth about economics or politics. It was only fair to be "progressive.""Liberal" and "progressive" are good, "conservative" and "fundamentalist" (one who wants to return to the fundamentals) and "originalist" are bad - like old stick-in-the-mud fuddy-duddies. Much better to be fun loving liberals. (Funny how those fun loving liberals always seem so angry.)

But I digress. My sad tale continues. Once upon a time there was a political party that believed in freedom and liberty and limited government. They are largely extinct now and the government believes it know the right kind of car for all to drive, and the right kind of fuel to put in that car (depending on where you live, of course). The government also know the right kind of light bulb, toilet and television to put in your house. Life is so much simpler when you don't have to make choices. I will just sit back, quit my job, go on welfare and let my rich Uncle care for me.

Would you like some Kool-aid?

Eleven Principled Democrats

The recent vote on the so-called stimulus package found every single House Republican voting “No”.  That isn’t much of a surprise, since the package is all about funding liberal pet projects, growing government and having no positive impact on the economy. 

 

What might be more surprising is the fact that eleven Democrats stood up to their party (including my own Representative, Bobby Bright).  In case you are interested in personally thanking these people, I am providing a link to their Congressional home pages.

Allen Boyd, FL (2)

Bobby Bright, AL (2)

Jim Cooper, TN (5)

Brad Ellsworth, IN (8)

Parker Griffith, AL (5)

Paul Kanjorski, PA (11)

Frank Kratovil, Jr, MD (1)

Walt Minnick, ID (1)

Collin Peterson, MN (7)

Heath Shuler, NC (11)

Gene Taylor, MS (4)

 

Kudos to the Blue Dogs and the conservatives in the Republican party for standing up to this sham legislation.  Too bad it passed the House anyway.  Now let’s see what the Senate does.

 

Dave and Blarney at the Inauguration

Dave: Well, Blarney, your man gave a great speech. I only hope he will be a great president.

Blarney: Dave, have you nothing good to say?

Dave: Weren’t you listening to me? I said the speech was great.

Blarney: That’s the problem with you right wing Looney Tunes. You are always criticizing our great President. Look at the mess Bush made of the last eight years.

Dave: Blarney, get a grip. I did not criticize President Obama. And to what specific mess do you refer? The fact that we were not attacked since 9-11? Or is it the fact that we have liberated over 50 million Iraqis and Afghanis?

Blarney: The economy, stupid! Bush absolutely ran the economy into the ground. Look at the unemployment – look at the banking crisis – look at that mess!

Dave: For seven of the eight years, the economy was doing well, although you would not have known that if all you listened to was the drive-by media. If you actually did some research and looked at the facts, you would see that unemployment has been lower than previous administrations until this last quarter when the economy finally caught up to the dire reporting.

Blarney: This is worst economy since the Great Depression!

Dave: Blarney, that’s just not true. This might be the worst economy since Jimmy Carter, but unemployment and inflation are actually still lower than during his watch. Again, do some research and look at the facts.

Blarney: I need a bailout. My stocks have tanked.

Dave: You do know that the Democrats were in charge for the last two years, don’t you? Since 2006, they have had a majority in Congress. Congress makes laws. Congress oversees the Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac corporations that caused the banking crisis. Congress raised the minimum wage, which, predictably, caused a rise in unemployment. You know that the Democrat controlled Congress had a lower approval rating than President Bush.

Blarney: Of course, the rating was low – it’s those darned Republicans. That’s why we voted for change! Change we can believe in! Yes we can!

Dave: Blarney, the Republicans were not in control of Congress during this debacle – the Democrats were.

Blarney: Says who? You? Am I supposed to believe that right-wing propaganda?

Dave: Look at the Senate and House statistics for yourself. Do you know who the Speaker of the House is?

Blarney: I sure do, it’s Nancy Pelosi.

Dave: Right. And do you know who the Senate Majority Leader is?

Blarney: Well, of course. That would be Harry Reid.

Dave: I’m impressed. That’s better than most people. Now you know that they are both Democrats, don’t you? And you know that those positions are filled by the majority party don’t you?

Blarney: Well,…yeah…Oh!...er….But that doesn’t mean that the Democrats were in control!

Dave: [Sigh]

Eleventh Hour Victory for Compean and Ramos

If you have followed the case, you know that the last best hope for these border patrol agents would be a pardon or have the sentence commuted by the President.

President Bush has just announced that he would commute the sentences of both Compean and Ramos. The Associated Press, in true left wing fashion, hammered on the Border Patrol agents:

Bush's decision to commute the sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean,
who tried to cover up the shooting, was welcomed by both Republican and
Democratic members of Congress. They had long argued that the agents were merely
doing their jobs, defending the American border against criminals. They also
maintained that the more than 10-year prison sentences the pair was given were
too harsh.
...
Bush didn't pardon the men for their crimes, but decided instead to commute
their prison sentences because he believed they were excessive and that they had
already suffered the loss of their jobs, freedom and reputations, a senior
administration official said.The action by the president, who believes the
border agents received fair trials and that the verdicts were just, does not
diminish the seriousness of their crimes, the official said.Compean and Ramos,
who have served about two years of their sentences, are expected to be released
from prison within the next two months.

At least they will be released soon. Now about the lawsuits and movie deals...

It's a New Year

It is an historic year, with the very first black American set to assume the highest executive office in the land.  As everybody knows, he is a Democrat and should be instituting an extreme agenda of left-wing policies.  Indeed many pundits are warning us of that very possibility.

 

Yet, here is an amazing thing.  Of the announced nominations for his cabinet, I really can’t object to any of them on ideological grounds.  Oh, sure, they aren’t Republicans (well some of them anyway), but neither are they charter members of MoveOn.org.  As far as the War on Terror, Mr. Obama proposes leaving the current Secretary of Defense in place.  For his National Security Advisor, he has chosen a decorated General (is that redundant?).

 

Now, it could be that he is even more clever than some give him credit for.  The Senate must approve all the nominations.  Since it is Democrat controlled, we could expect a rubber stamp on each one.  But wait, there is more.   Suppose the Senate REJECTS his “first” choices.  Then Mr. Obama will be FORCED to nominate someone more in line with the extreme left, just so he can get them confirmed.

 

Kind of makes you go “Hmm…”

About Obamanation

Republicans clearly had no plan of attack about the ideology of Barack Obama. The even almost ignored the associations which gave a clue. The significant thing about Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers is not their radical ideas, nor why Obama hung around with them. The significant thing is why THEY felt comfortable hanging around Obama.

I submit that they are ideological bedfellows. Obama is as radical as they are. He wants to “spread the wealth” around. Not his, mind you. He wants to spread other people’s wealth around. He considers people selfish if they want to retain their hard-earned money, but has yet to send any money to his aunt or brother.

I was on his mailing list and, after his raising record amounts of money, he sent out an appeal to help bail out the DNC because they went into debt to finance his campaign. It apparently did not occur to him to “spread the wealth” that he had brought into his campaign.

Watch closely in the coming months.