I have a full day of appointments, starting with the doctor, so I'll give you a list of links with which to entertain yourselves. I'll be back tomorrow.
Here's my best imitation of Instapundit.
Fido is clean, so that means I didn't waste any time listening to Obama's campaign budget speech yesterday. The Wall Street Journal was less than impressed.
The economy continues to degrade. That's one helluva laser-like focus on jobs you got there, Mr. President.
This is a joke, right? Bolivia wants the UN to give Mother Earth the same rights as a human being. As I think about animal rights, they/she can have them as soon as they/she can sign their/her name to a contract. If that doesn't happen, then this is just another way for lawyers to expand their market.
If you’ve been to the grocery store or the gas station lately, you may have noticed something. This “something” is a rapid rise in prices. It’s also something Washington struggles mightily to deny.
So, what are you going to believe? The government or your lying eyes? *rimshot!*
It almost seems like someone (or a group of someones) doesn’t want to tell you the truth about the economy. However, some truths cannot be hidden, lied about, or massaged. Money is like that.
You will doubtless recall how our unemployment rate was expressed in the Days Before Obama. There are several measurements that the government uses to track that figure, with the most popular being the U-3 statistic. (Click here for the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s page, scroll down to the chart on page 2.) But today’s long-term unemployed are skewing that number. If you’ve been out of work and can no longer qualify for unemployment compensation, you aren’t counted as being unemployed.
While that figure is still in use, the Obama administration fabricated a metric, “jobs saved or created.” If you’ve never heard of that phrase before, you’re not alone. No one else had either. It’s essentially meaningless since there is no accurate way to measure whether or not a job has been “saved.” Maybe it suddenly got religion.
The methods used to calculate inflation have changed over the years. The method used in the ’70’s isn’t the same method in use today. Even the BLS says so.
“Some have argued that if the CPI were computed using the methods in place in the late 1970s, the index would now be growing at a rates as high as 11 or 12 percent per year.” (This was written in 2008.)
Well, it just so happens that someone has figured today’s inflation using those methods in place in the late ‘70’s. You’ll never guess what they found. Never in a million years.
But someone needs to tell Washington. We know that prices are rising much faster than what we’re being told. We also know why. It’s in the interests of any administration that the public not be told the truth about the terrible economy. An inflation rate of 10% usually means disaster for whoever has his feet on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
Almost as surprising as this number is, what’s even more surprising is where this nugget of information is found. CNBC.com.
Now I don’t for a second think this will make it to the evening news on any of the alphabet stations of the Make Believe Media, but folks will eventually find this out. And it’s not like it’s actual news. We’ve known it for a while now, but it’s always nice to see a bit of validation.
This is particularly noteworthy since President Obama is set to give us a speech on the budget. Our deficit is the highest in history and is in large part responsible for the sagging economy. Government spending is clearly out of control, taken to unprecedentedly new and unsustainable levels by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid during the last two years of their Reign of Terror in Congress.
As usual, I’ll be washing Fido, my imaginary pooch, instead of listening to that speech.
I had the opportunity to have a conversation with a couple of good friends over the weekend. One of my buds had just bought a “new” car. I put the “new” in parentheses because it was 20 years old and had just over 100K miles on it. Even then, it was in better shape than the van he’s had ever since I’ve known him. That one had over 300K miles on it and was starting to give him just a bit of mechanical trouble.
As we were doing what guys do, namely looking over his new ride, opening the hood and the doors, noting this and that and swapping advice on how to keep a vehicle operating for a long time, the conversation turned to the economy. Not surprisingly, we all started noting the deteriorating conditions and the various things we were all doing just to get by. The proud owner of said new vehicle had lost his formerly good-paying job which he’d had for years and had lost his house as a result. They were familiar with my plight too: a lifetime spent absorbing everything I could inside the manufacturing arena only to be tossed aside as we abandoned our lead and were “guided” towards a service economy.
While our collective situations were not nearly as secure as they were a few years ago, we had all managed to make the necessary adjustments to our new normal of greatly reduced income. Despite our current financial woes, we all still had our typical sunny outlook.
Alcohol had nothing to do with it, I swear.
It was on my drive back home that I started to note something. We Americans really are different. We have an inborn resiliency. How much of this can be attributed to the natural state of humanity and how much is due to our society is up for debate. It’s the classic nature versus nurture question that we’ve debated ever since we could talk and reason amongst ourselves.
We have access to relatives who are able to remember what it was like when there were similar downturns in the economy. Mom had me later in her life; she grew up during the Great Depression. So I got to hear her horror stories about people living hand-to-mouth for years at a time. I also learned how to make do with less. Mom was resourceful when she wanted to be, especially in the kitchen. The only bad part that I saw was her tendency to place too high a value on money, a psychological scar that she embraced, sometimes irrationally. She tended to carry on as if we were still in a depression, when she could have enjoyed the fruits of her labor.
Since I seem to be on the lookout for any silver lining in a cloud, I’ve come to the conclusion that this recession, the worst in modern times, has the potential to be quite good for all of us. We’ve been forced to do more with much less. We’ve started to ask questions, particularly of our elected officials, notably why they aren’t doing more to get our economy back on the road again.
We’ve circled the wagons, to borrow a phrase. We’ve been forced by circumstances beyond our control to rediscover things within ourselves, things we’d forgotten because life was almost too good. Family and friends have become more important. Virtually everyone is in the same boat to varying degrees, and we have collectively and instinctively drawn our loved ones closer. Financial transactions now go through family members when possible, since banks won’t lend money to someone without a decent job. Bartering has taken the place of the greenback in some situations. Our social circle has expanded to include others in similar fashion. Charity on a personal level has increased dramatically. We’re helping each other more than ever.
Collectively, we’re coming together during these difficult times, as we are wont to do. It’s in our nature. We also have the great fortune of living in a country that has created a very high standard of living. Even the poor among us have a car, a computer, and a cell phone. Such are the fruits of capitalism.
Even in the worst of times, we are truly lucky to be Americans. And there’s nothing like hard times to make us even more aware of that.
But in the meantime, we’re going to be busy making lemonade out of the lemons we've been given.
A national crisis has been averted. Last Friday’s down-to-the-wire agreement by Obama, Reid, and Boehner kept the Federal government open. Thankfully, our troops got paid, The Washington Monument stayed open and all the non-essential workers stayed on the job. Grandmothers were spared untold horrors, as were countless puppies and kittens.
And the spending spree in Washington continued unabated.
While the argument over spending had been simmering for a few weeks as Republicans did what the Democrat-controlled 111th Congress refused to do, (as was their Constitutional duty) namely to submit an operating budget for fiscal year 2011. The pot had begun to boil over, fueled mostly by the typical doomsday rhetoric from the progressives on the far-left side of the political aisle who think that the world cannot rotate without money from Washington.
And the amount of cuts to programs was miniscule compared to the amount of money this administration spends. With a record-high peacetime deficit in the trillions, and Washington spending more than $50B in one week, this budget that cuts only $38B for a short time is like bailing out a dingy with a thimble while under a waterfall. It just isn’t enough.
But, we’ll take our victories where we can find them. I found one tiny ray of real hope in all this: we started to change the mindset in Washington from ever-increasing levels of spending to one of actually considering cuts in funding, something this Boy never thought he’d see.
The usual suspects on the left attempted to lay blame (once again) on the dread Tea Party as though this was a replay of the last showdown back in the mid-nineties where the GOP was the party that wanted to kill Granny. And children. And puppies. And kittens.
The nation knows better. Had the government been shut down, the blame would have fallen directly upon the dainty shoulders of Reid and Obama. They knew it. Nothing else explains the President’s rush to take credit for the “biggest cuts in history.” Never mind that he had pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, and sat by idly as the Pelosi and Reid-led Congress created the most extreme debt our country has ever seen.
Yeah, Chuck Schumer, what was extreme was the unprecedented run-up of debt that you helped create, not Republican efforts to trim it. And when, exactly, did wanting to reduce the nation’s historic and potentially devastating deficits become extreme?
We’re waiting, Chuckles.
Dems can make all the excuses they want for adding more to America’s debt than all the previous administrations before it combined. The Stimulus has not only failed, it has failed in spectacular fashion. We are now much worse off than had we been if nothing had been done. The $787B that was spent did nothing to lift our economy from the worst recession in recent memory; I maintain that it did the exact opposite, on purpose.
But, we had to try it your way. We had to see what didn’t work before we, as a nation, suddenly realized what we already knew. There is no way to spend our way out of a recession, as Slow Joe Biden proclaimed. His Gump-like solution sounded like the perfect antidote to our ailing economy to everyone except those of us who could count. Maybe, we thought at the time, there was some sort of magical formula, known only to those inside the Beltway, which would prove to be the solution to the negative effects of a large and overweening government presence in the free market: even more government intervention.
After the massive failure of this administrations’ misguided economic policies, American’s eyes no longer glaze over at the mention of deficit numbers. As this battle has proceeded, the public is hearing more accurate facts and figures concerning the budget, and it doesn’t like what it has been hearing. Or seeing. Too many of us know too many of us who have been unemployed for years, or have lost their home or business, or had to move in with relatives as a result of this, the Obama Depression.
So, we can claim a small but not insignificant victory, one that is tactical instead of strategic: it’s time to reduce the size and scope of the Federal government and the negative impact that it has on our economy.
Last Friday’s compromise that actually cut spending was only the first step in changing the national dialogue from one of how much we spend to the more sensible notion of cutting real spending.
It would be nice if nothing happened, especially after this week. Sheesh, what a week. Another earthquake in Japan, like they haven't had enough already, the judicial election in Wisconsin, the federal budget meltdown with our military caught in the middle and not getting paid, and now Obama's biweekly vacay.
Oh well, let's let the rest of the world do whatever it is they want to do. I'll just open a nice Breakfast Beer. I'll put it in this beer holster for my walkabout. Everything is better with beer. And bacon.
Duude, like if you, like, eat one of these pot candy bars, like, won't you get the munchies and, like, man, want to eat another pot candy bar? You'll be, like, really, really busy eating all day, won't you, man?
This is not good news: Mankind is nearing the end of the Age of Speed. Coulda fooled me, it seems as if everything is happening faster and faster. Oh, that's just for machines? Nevermind.
What do Carlisle Cullen, Scrooge McDuck, Jay Gatsby, and Jed Clampett all have in common? They're on the Forbes Fictional 15. Consipuous by his absence from this years list is Uncle Sam. Go figure.
And now for the crux of the biscuit, today's videos. There are a few I've posted just because you need to see them if you haven't already. It'll be good for you, trust me. A couple are just standard Friday fare, a way to welcome the weekend.
Here'e a one that's good for you. It's the kind of Congressional hearing we should be having more of.
Here's another pair, because all the goodness just won't fit in one YouTube video.
An interview with this amazing woman is here. A devout Catholic, she says, " I reckon He looks at me and just shakes His head." He Might, but we don't. We need more like you.
As of this writing, Atlas Shrugged hasn't been picked up by a major distributor yet, so you'll have to call your favorite theater and ask them to run it. Haven't heard about plans for the DVD yet.
This is just way cool.
And finally, the official video of this blog (for this week, anyway).
Ya'll come back now, y'hear? Also, if you could hit the tip jar, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
In a speech yesterday at a town hall meeting at Gamesa Technology Corp., a Spanish-owned company that makes wind turbines, President Obama mocked one questioner in the crowd complaining about the high price of gasoline.
“Let them eat cake!”
OK, that was Marie Antoinette, but the sentiment was the same. An out-of-touch, narcissistic leader, well insulated from the masses, makes a condescending remark to the honest concern of an average American about high gas prices. Out loud. "You may want to think about a trade-in."
Clueless Incompetence, thy name is Obama.
Or, is that what it really is?
As you should know (as a regular reader of this blog), candidate Obama very simply and succinctly laid out his energy agenda thusly:
Is there any doubt that he’s pursing that strategy with vim and vigor? The saddest part (heh, I almost typed “the sadist part”) is that we don’t need to be held hostage by high energy prices. But in the town hall meeting yesterday, he tried to sell his energy policy as one that will help America by becoming “energy independent.”
Now, that’s not a bad idea, in and of itself. Other countries are striving to do that very thing, realizing that it’s in their national interest. There’s only one thing wrong with the approach that Obama wants: it defies the laws of physics and economics.
Obama wants to make a major shift in the nations’ energy production into “green energy.” Ask Spain how many private sector jobs are lost for every one “green energy” job. The answer is 2.5. Aside from the problem I just outlined, he blissfully ignores another fact or two: we already have in place a large and efficient infrastructure for the distribution of the best form of portable energy currently known to man, oil.
Physically, oil is the most energy-dense substance on Earth. It can be made into many things. Ironically, it’s the primary component in helping to achieve higher mileage in cars due to its light weight, replacing heavier metal parts. As I’ve pointed out before, you probably had some of it rubbed on your bottom as a child. It’s not the evil substance that it’s made out to be by the rabid enviroNazis. It’s such a vital component of everyday life that to reduce its use would be a serious economic blow, and a stupid one at that. We’re not “addicted to oil” like some helpless junkie. We use it precisely because it is useful in a staggering variety of ways. That isn’t addiction, it’s common sense.
But that doesn’t stop Obama from peddling his mistaken beliefs on an increasingly unwilling nation. His actions and policies are the main reason we now have to pay twice the amount for a gallon of gas than we did on the day of his coronation. Illegal drilling moratoriums while helping a foreign competitor (and Soros investment partner Petrobas) are directly responsible for the unnecessarily high prices we now pay, high prices that can only stifle the very fragile economic recovery that we’re told is happening.
Evidence is coming to light that this is bad policy, but you knew that already. Every time the price goes up at the pump, you receive a cut in pay. If you’re poor, a minority, or a senior living on a fixed income, the increased costs of energy are an even larger burden. Nancy Pelosi railed against President Bush when the cost of gas was over $3.00 dollars a gallon. Don’t you find her silence as prices exceed $4.00 just a bit odd? It seems that high gas prices under a Republican president are outrageous, but just hunky-dory under a Democrat president.
It’s funny how that works.
Obama seems to think that alternative fuels are the answer. As we’re slowly finding out, making fuel from food sources isn’t all that good. The regulatory rush to mandate the use of biofuels has some very bad results, as this article points out. Skyrocketing food prices and deadly food shortages are just two of the results. But, of course, you already knew that, too.
There is a sensible solution to our energy problems, the very same problems that were brought about by the childish belief in the Global Warming Monster. It doesn’t exist, it never did exist and it never will exist. Mankind is incapable of inflicting any form of long-term damage to the Earth. But it provided a handy excuse for political radicals to use to weaken America from within. Repetition of this lie has cost us trillions in wasted time, jobs, and capital.
It’s time to put that belief in the Global Warming Monster back under the bed where it belongs. Or back in the closet.
And to tell the truth to the children in charge of our national energy policy.
There are two fights currently being waged in Washington over the budget. Both of them are due to the 111th Congress led by Pelosi and Reid and their irresponsible and ruinous tactic of creating massive debt on a level unseen in American history in an attempt to gain political power. Aided by President Obama and his similarly misguided efforts to violate all the known laws of economics, we have now reached an impasse that threatens to shut down the Federal government.
The first fight is one over the continuing resolutions made necessary by the previous Congress’ refusal to do their duty by passing a budget for this fiscal year. The second battle will be over the new Congress’ budget as proposed by Paul Ryan. You’ll be hearing a great deal about the budget, so it’s important to keep these two undissimilar issues separated.
Befitting this blog, I’ll start with Ryan’s budget proposal first. This is the 2012 Federal budget that he outlined in a Wall Street Journal article here. In it, he plans real live cuts to the budget, not cuts in the rate of increases. Democrats have already begun to howl that these cuts will starve senior citizens and children, result in the closure of police, fire departments and libraries, cause dandruff, and make all animals be born naked. As scripted, Nancy Pelosi has already started her tired attacks on the mean old Republicans, stating most of those things here. Come on, Nancy, at least try to come up with something more original.
But most of the news in the next few days will be about the latest in a series of continuing resolutions, again made necessary by Pelosi and Reid’s failure to submit a budget for this fiscal year. Their failure was a calculated effort to try to paint the incoming Republican-led Congress as brutal brutes, catering to the whims of eeeeevil corporations and the source of all things bad in America, “the rich.” They did this (or, rather, didn’t do it) when they started seeing polls last fall accurately predicting their losses in November. So, Pelosi and Reid decided to give their remaining progressive partners some ammo for the next election cycle: no budget.
Never mind that America has witnessed the many failed efforts to spend us out of a depression with Porkulus, Cash 4 Clunkers, a takeover of Wall Street and the health care industry, student loans, all resulting in a financial disaster of Biblical proportions. Mysteriously, even the $800,000 spent to teach Africans to wash their genitals didn’t lift us out of the Obama Depression. Funny, that.
All the smoke and mirrors in the world can’t disguise the failure of this administration’s fiscal irresponsibility. Obama himself bravely committed to a freeze after increasing federal hiring to historically high levels. He wants to keep that spending at unsustainably high levels for a reason, and you won’t like the reason why.
Even during his presidential campaign, Obama was committed to causing as much economic damage to the country as he could once in office. Remember his intention to cause everyone’s utility bills to “necessarily skyrocket” under his plan for a Cap-and-Trade environmental bill? That this single statement didn’t automatically disqualify him for further consideration is a mystery that remains unsolved, save for the fact that the Make Believe Media ignored it. That should have been a gigantic red flag for every voter in the country. Klaxon alarms should have sounded inside the heads of every sentient American that if we elected a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist, the first thing he would do is bring us to our knees by destroying our economy. It's the Cloward-Piven, divide-and-conquer America strategy on steroids.
Ask yourself what Obama would be doing differently if he were deliberately planning America’s destruction. Everything he’s done so far has harmed the nation in undreamed of ways: he is anti-business in a capitalist country whose business is business. He has embraced only certain companies like General Electric who stand to gain from his perverted brand of crony capitalism and who also control a major arm of the Progressive Pravda Media. He supports public sector unions who are draining state treasuries in order to keep the Democrat Party funded with taxpayer dollars confiscated from member’s checks against their will.
Obama even has the audacity to tell Congressional Republicans to “act like grown-ups” in the battle over the continuing resolution.
Well, Mr. President, they are acting like adults.
Adults know when to say “no.” Adults realize they can’t spend more than they take in every month. Adults are capable of basic math like addition and subtraction. Adults don’t play childish games with something as serious as the crushing debt you’ve helped create that has failed to get our economy out of the ditch. Adults don’t blame others for their own failures.
Adults also understand free-market capitalism in a way that you obviously don’t.
Let me make this perfectly clear – any shutdown of the federal government will be purely the fault of Obama and Reid. Should either one of them fail to pass a continuing resolution that starts to whittle away at the size and scope of the federal government, they will be the ones directly responsible for starving seniors and children.
This isn’t the Nineties. Obama doesn’t enjoy the advantages that Clinton had, namely high public approval ratings and a sound economy. He will be unable to pin this on the Republicans, as the Democrats hope to do.
America is awake. Games and fiscal parlor tricks won’t cut it anymore. We will not tolerate any obstruction by Democrats. There will be no compromise and no excuses for cutting the government down to size.
Mr. President and Harry Reid, get it done and do it right.
This video can barely contain all the enthusiasm. Confidence virtually drips from the monitor. Can you feel the Hope, or maybe that’s the Change, it’s hard to tell.
The script is telling, coming almost exclusively from women,
“The last couple of elections have been almost turning point campaigns.”
“Kinda nervous about it.”
“I think it needs to reflect the changes we’ve seen in the last two and a half years.”
“I can’t not be involved. There’s just too much too much that’s fundamentally important right now that’s going on.”
“I don’t agree with Obama on everything, but I respect him and I trust him.”
Well, Ed from North Carolina, right there’s your mistake…
The rest of those well-rehearsed lines contain about as much intelligence as one can expect from an Obama supporter: There’s no “there” there. Vapid, rambling, bordering on incoherent, all in all, it’s the perfect Obama campaign ad.
Three years ago, all this worked on an unsuspecting country. After eight years of continuous Bush-bashing by the MBM (Make Believe Media), we’d been softened up to the point where Bill the Dead Cat could’ve won the election.
We got his cousin instead.
While the DNC and Obama think they can get by this time with more gauzy platitudes and indistinct goals, the rest of us know better. We have a bit more data with which to measure this administration.
Here’s a short list:
Avg. retail price/gallon gas in U.S.
01-09 $1.83
Today $3.104
+69.6%
Crude oil, European Brent (barrel)
01-09 $43.48
Today $99.02
+127.7%
Crude oil, West TX Inter. (barrel)
01-09 $38.74
Today $91.38
+135.9%
Gold: London (per troy oz.)
01-09 $853.25
Today $1,369.50
+60.5%
Corn, No.2 yellow, Central IL
01-09 $3.56
Today $6.33
+78.1%
Soybeans, No. 1 yellow, IL
01-09 $9.66
Today $13.75
+42.3%
Sugar, cane, raw, world, lb.
01-09 $13.37
Today $35.39
+164.7%
Unemployment rate, non-farm, overall
01-09 7.6%
Today 9.4%
+23.7%
Unemployment rate, blacks
01-09 12.6%
Today 15.8%
+25.4%
Number of unemployed
01-09 11,616,000
Today 14,485,000
+24.7%
Number of fed. employees, ex. military (curr = 12/10 prelim)
01-09 2,779,000
Today 2,840,000
+2.2%
Real median household income (2008 v 2009)
01-09 $50,112
Today $49,777
-0.7%
Number of food stamp recipients (curr = 10/10)
01-09 31,983,716
Today 43,200,878
+35.1%
Number of unemployment benefit recipients (curr = 12/10)
01-09 7,526,598
Today 9,193,838
+22.2%
Number of long-term unemployed
01-09 2,600,000
Today 6,400,000
+146.2%
People in poverty in U.S. (2008 v 2009)
2008 39,800,000
2009 43,600,000
+9.5% in one year!
U.S. rank in Economic Freedom World Rankings
01-09 5
Today 9
National debt, in trillions
01-09 $10.627
Today $14.052
+32.2%
In light of two years of Obama, this ad is much better:
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
In case you haven’t yet heard, a Florida pastor finally followed through with his plan to burn a Koran last week. Had this event happened, say, twenty years ago, I doubt it would’ve made the evening news. But since we cannot escape the relentless 24/7 news cycle and the fact that everyone with electricity can tune in to our news broadcasts, events are pretty much reported instantly around the world.
Thanks to this worldwide dissemination of “news” (I put that in quotes because so much of what passes for news these days is opinion, not raw information), pastor Terry Jones’ action led to riots and murders in Afghanistan, among other reactions.
I’m not here to condone his action in burning a book. Would I have done it? No, I have better things to do, like wash Fido, my imaginary dog. I’m also not an attention-whore. I would, however, like to point out that he merely exercised his Constitutional First Amendment right to express himself, and in so doing, he pointed out several things.
1. He is well within his rights to burn a Koran.
2. Barbarians half a world away didn’t like it.
3. Said barbarians felt the need to demonstrate their displeasure by killing a few innocent people.
4. One of our own generals highlighted that it placed our fighting forces in greater danger, as if somehow they were safe to begin with.
5. Last but not least, he managed to discover anti-Constitutionalists within the halls of Congress.
In a most graceless, unChristian way, Pastor Jones did the nation a favor by pointing out hypocrisy and double standards, both abroad and, sadly, here at home.
Several bloggers noted them also this weekend. Ace posed this question to the Moron Horde, Should Terry Jones Have Burned That Koran? Be sure and click on over to read the comments.
Dr. Sanity had a great post that probed the question further with her post, The Last Roundup. Also a good read, enjoy.
Terry Jones managed to raise our awareness of the difference in cultures, poking even more holes in the misguided theory of multiculturalism, whereby all cultures are even, except for Western culture, as a result of the codified insanity of postmodern “thought.”
Christians have had to endure the desecration of religious icons for years without complaint. Piss Christ, a sculpture of Mary made out of elephant dung, and many other alleged works of “art” have insulted the sensibilities of Christians. Noticeably absent from these displays is any violent protests or murders of innocents on the part of the offended. Naturally, this doesn’t make the news.
Even more insanity is shown by those who blame Jones’ action for the deaths of others instead of those who actually did the killing. It’s almost as if those murderous Afghans were mind-numbed robots, or something. There's also this little unreported item,
Tonight, the governor of Balkh province (of which Mazar-i-Sharif is the capital) is telling the international media that the men who sacked the UN compound were Taliban infiltrators. That’s rubbish. Local clerics drove around the city with megaphones yesterday, calling residents to protest the actions of a small group of attention-seeking, bigoted Americans. Then, during today’s protest, someone announced that not just one, but hundreds of Korans had been burned in America. A throng of enraged men rushed the gates of the UN compound, determined to draw blood. Had the attackers been gunmen, they would likely have been killed before they could breach the compound.
What struck me was the eagerness of Harry Reid and Lindsey Graham to condemn Jones. His actions were not reprehensible by any means: what he did was perfectly legal. What is reprehensible is the outright refusal of some of our elected officials to recognize that Jones is protected by our Constitution. The fact that they would consider any form of Congressional action, be it an official condemnation, as Graham suggests, or holding hearings, as Reid suggests, should strike each and every American as the affront to our nation that it is. It should also cause us to wonder if these two lawyers know anything about American law and the founding principles upon which it rests.
Even worse is the idea that we’ve somehow managed to elect people into high office who took a sacred oath to protect and defend our Constitution, and are failing to do so.
What we should have heard out of these two on the Sunday talk shows is a full-throated defense of American law and a sound rejection of any efforts to condemn Jones. The fact that we didn’t is far more offensive than a barbecued book.
Get your gowk hunting gear ready and make sure you've harvested the remaining spaghetti from your spaghetti tree, because after we visit the Taco Liberty Bell, we're going to Burger King for a left-handed Whopper.
It's April 1st. All Fools' Day, it's oddly appropriate that the first Speaker of the House was elected on this day in 1789. We NASCAR fans also lost Alan Kulwicki on this day in 1993.
So, it is in this spirit that I announce that Congress and the President have reached an agreement to balance the budget for 2011. Also, the New Black Pathers, Code Pink, Think Progress and the Democrat Party have announced that they were only kidding and will immediately cease all operations, as will George Soros, who announced his intention to retire to Crete, which he purchased yesterday.
"I'm terribly sorry, I can't seem to find your name on the guest list, Mr. Rqz3dsmv#pd. Please accept these Royal Pez Dispensers and our sincere apologies."
Condoms heists explained: the purps apparently couldn't get a prescription for them, so they just stole 'em. Not content with that, they're busy expanding their criminal empire to include rubber ducks.
You may have seen these two little fellows on that Interweb thingy...
Here's a quiz. They are:
1. Discussing dinner plans.
2. Deliberately talking louder than the muffled barks coming from the freezer.
3. Planning their climb of Mount Frigidaire.
4. Making more sense than any Progressive Democrat ever could.
The winner will recieve a free, one-year subscription to this blog.
