Waiting for Obama to Assume his Presidency

Image via Wikipediaby Tom Rowan at American Thinker

Facts are stubborn things.  The Obama-led Democrats have held the nation's purse strings for 4 of the last 8 years.  It was the Obama-led Democrats which insisted that wasteful spinach farm subsidies and  wasteful corn fuel subsidies be included in Iraq war funding bills.  This would only make sense if we were sending Popeye to fight the terrorists.

Indeed, Bush's final budget deficit before the Obama led-Democrats took complete control of spending in 2006 was less than 200 billion and trending downward.  In 2007, with the economy still humming along, Democrats complained of the "weak economy" under Bush.  And really, who can forget the massive unemployment rate of 4.6%?

In 2008, the unemployment rate jumped to a whopping 5.8%.  The Obama-led Democrat controlled congress sent a "stimulus bill" to Bush that wrote a 6 hundred dollar stimulus check to taxpayers who did not pay taxes.  Bush signed the bill the Obama led-Democrats sent him. The 6 hundred bucks filled our gas tanks for about a month at 4 bucks a gallon.

Bush, taking his job seriously, ended the executive moratorium on offshore drilling and broke the oil bubble.  The big banks and financial warehouses that invested in "green energy" saw that the jig was up when trillions of barrels of oil were discovered sitting under the nation's feet in the Dakotas.  There was even talk that the ANWR oil reserves would finally be tapped.  Facing angry voters in 2008, the Obama led Democrat controlled congress allowed the congressional ban on offshore drilling to lapse as well.

Barney Frank & Chris Dodd sold the notion that bad loans were good for banks and towed the party line about "green energy" and "green jobs" of the future.  The banks balked when a likely Obama victory stampeded investors in these shams to the exits.

Bush's final signature achievement was to keep the banks solvent via TARP.  The banks and financial warehouses that foolishly listened to the Obama-led Congress and invested in "green energy" and loans to people who could never pay them back were made whole with loans.

The stock market crash after the Obama election was a perfect opportunity for the suddenly flushbanks and financial warehouses.  They took their TARP loans and bought stocks cheap.  As the stock market rallied, the banks paid back their loans with their profits.  Bush's deficit spending in his final year saved the banks and the taxpayer loans were repaid.  The emergency deficit spending that Bush signed did not add to the nation's debt.  TARP has been repaid.

So whenever Obama claims he "inherited" the massive debt the Obama led Democrat controlled Congress created, it should be noted that Obama voted for every spending bill sent to Bush after 2006 and signed every spending bill after 2008.  Facts are almost as stubborn as the 4 years of Obama led policies that got us into this mess.  Had enough?

Related articles

• Obama Tanking (bokertov.typepad.com)
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One Year In - The Top Failures of ObamaCare

Image via Wikipediaby Emily Miller, Human Events, 03/23/3011

President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law on March 23, 2010.  In just the year since, the law known as ObamaCare has already severely crippled the nation’s economy and health care system.

Despite Obama’s continued pride in his signature health care legislation, a new CNN poll shows that 58% of Americans disapprove of the way Obama is handling health care.

The Republican House passed a repeal of ObamaCare in January, but the bill was blocked by the Democrat-controlled Senate.  Four House committees are now drafting a replacement bill for ObamaCare.  The House also passed legislationdefunding ObamaCare in March, which was likewise blocked by the Senate Democrats.  Republican leaders are committed, however, and say that they will be defunding the health care law through the appropriations process this year.

These are the top 10 failures of ObamaCare, starting with those that have had the most serious effect already on the economy, jobs, and the American people.

You Might Be President Obama If......

Image via WikipediaCourtesy of Ken Carroll from Below the Gnat Line:

With apologies to fellow Georgian Jeff Foxworthy, who had absolutely nothing to do with this.

You might be President Obama . . .

If the ten year-old with the neighborhood lemonade stand has more business experience than you, you might be President Obama.

If you have more communists in your cabinet than Vladimir Putin, you might be President Obama.

If you try to look more macho by taking part in a military operation – run by France, you might be President Obama.

If the only campaign promise you have ever kept was to "make energy costs skyrocket", you might be President Obama.

If you got a Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing – and you’re following the same strategy to win a second, you might be President Obama.

If your OCD problem is that you compulsively bow to foreign thugs and dictators, you might be President Obama.

If you actually apologize for our behavior toward countries whose idea of a good time is to practice genocide on their own citizens, you might be President Obama.

If you’ve started a war and you don’t know why, you might be President Obama.

If you’ve never met privately with some of your own cabinet members, but average seeing your golf pro once a week, you might be President Obama.

If you’ve ever put Joe Biden in charge of anything bigger than setting up a Parcheesi board, you might be President Obama.

If your idea of fixing the economy is to go shopping – in another country, you might be President Obama.

Of course, more will probably be added. So many gaffes, so little time.

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The Great Government Scrap Yard

Image via WikipediaOnce upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert.  Congress said, "Someone may steal from it at night."  So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job. 
Then Congress said, "How does the watchman do his job without instruction?"  So they created a planning department and hired two people, one person to write the instructions and one person to do time studies.

Then Congress said, "How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?"  So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people, one to do the studies and one to write the reports. 
Then Congress said, "How are these people going to get paid?"  So they created two positions, a time keeper and a payroll officer, then hired two p eople.

Then Congress said, "Who will be accountable for all of these people?"

So they created an administrative section and hired three people, an Administrative Officer, an Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary. 

Then Congress said, "We have had this command in operation for one year, and we are $918,000 over budget.  We must cut back."  So they laid off the night watchman. 
NOW slowly, let that sink in. 
Does anybody remember the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY..... during the Carter Administration? 
Anybody? 
Anything? 
No? 
Didn't think so!

Bottom line:  We've spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency...the reason for which not one person who reads this can remember! 

Ready??  It was very simple and, at the time, everybody thought it very appropriate. The Department of Energy was instituted on 8/04/1977 TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL. 

Hey, pretty efficient, huh??? 

AND, NOW, IT'S 2011 -- 34 YEARSLATER -- AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS "NECESSARY" DEPARTMENT IS AT $242 BILLION A YEAR.  IT HAS 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES, AND LOOK AT THE JOB IT HAS DONE! THIS IS WHERE YOU SLAP YOUR FOREHEAD AND SAY, "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?"
A little over 33 years ago, 30% of our oil consumption was foreign imports.  Today 70% of our oil consumption is foreign imports. 

NOW, WE HAVE TURNED THE BANKING SYSTEM, HEALTH CARE, AND THE AUTO INDUSTRY OVER TO THE SAME GOVERNMENT? 

Hello!!  Anybody Home?

Global Warming Scam

Image via Wikipedia

From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara

To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society

6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).

Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal

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Is Love Blind?

This guy is Alvaro Alfonso de Miranda Neto:

0 

#1

He was married to  —  this woman:

2

Her name is Cibele Dorsa.

She is a Brazilian swimsuit, Victoria ‘s Secret, and Playboy model.

He divorced her because he fell in love with this woman:

3

Those two are very happily married right now:

4

Some people argue that love is blind.

This story clearly proves it…

It proves that men are capable of real love; truly seeing a person’s inner beauty, not basing their decisions solely on looks.

Oh, by the way…

The new girl is Athina Onassis.

She’s worth 12 billion dollars.

Kinda brings a tear to the eye, doesn’t it?


Credits: bitsandpieces.us

The Dithering President

Image via WikipediaWhen you are elected to be the President of the strongest country in the world you are expected to lead. The position requires the ability to make command decisions, often with incomplete information and with little time.

Obama promised to change the world view of our country and to build stronger relationships. The following is a view from across the pond as to how well he has fulfilled that promise:

BARACK OBAMA: THE WEAKEST PRESIDENT IN HISTORY?

By Anna Pukas (Express.co.uk}

INEFFECTUAL, invisible, unable to honour pledges and now blamed for letting Gaddafi off the hook. Why Obama’s gone from ‘Yes we can’ to ‘Er, maybe we shouldn’t’...

Let us cast our minds back to those remarkable days in November 2008 when the son of a Kenyan goatherd was elected to the White House. It was a bright new dawn – even brighter than the coming of the Kennedys and their new Camelot. JFK may be considered as being from an ethnic and religious minority – Irish and Catholic – but he was still very rich and very white. Barack Obama, by contrast, was a true breakthrough president. The world would change because obviously America had changed.

Obama’s campaign slogan was mesmerisingly simple and brimming with self-belief: “Yes we can.” His presidency, however, is turning out to be more about “no we won’t.” Even more worryingly, it seems to be very much about: “Maybe we can… do what, exactly?“ The world feels like a dangerous place when leaders are seen to lack certitude but the only thing President Obama seems decisive about is his indecision. What should the US do about Libya? What should the US do about the Middle East in general? What about the country’s crippling debts? What is the US going to do about Afghanistan, about Iran?

What is President Obama doing about anything? The most alarming answer – your guess is as good as mine – is also, frankly, the most accurate one. What the President is not doing is being clear, resolute and pro-active, which is surely a big part of his job description. This is what he has to say about the popular uprising in Libya: “Gaddafi must go.” At least, that was his position on March 3.

Since then, other countries – most notably Britain and France – have been calling for some kind of intervention. Even the Arab League, a notoriously conservative organisation, has declared support for sanctions. But from the White House has come only the blah-blah of bland statements filled with meaningless expressions and vague phrases. Of decisive action and leadership – even of clearlydefined opinion – there is precious little sign.

Where's Obama?

Image via WikipediaOur fearless leader, the one who was supposedly the best prepared for a 3AM emergency phone call, has been noticeably absent for most of the major crises that have happened on his watch. From his sluggish response to the BP oil spill to his lack of action on the Libyan situation, Obama seems to be in over his head.


Now with the crisis in Japan worsening by the day, what does he do? He takes off for Rio? At least he got his NCAA basketball pics in.


This is the same man who, in 2008, proclaimed that "...we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth."


You know that he has failed miserably when the New York Post publishes the following piece titled "Obama the Invisible." 

Obama the invisible

Where is the president? The world is beset. Moammar Khadafy is moving relentlessly to crush the Libyan revolt that once promised the overthrow of one of the world's most despicable regimes.

So where is the president?

Japan may be on the verge of a disaster that dwarfs any we have yet seen. A self-governing nation like the United States needs its leader to take full measure of his position at times of crises when the path forward is no longer clear.

This is not a time for leadership; this is the time for leadership.

So where is Barack Obama?

The moment demands that he rise to the challenge of showing America and the world that he is taking the reins. How leaders act in times of unanticipated crisis, in which they do not have a formulated game plan and must instead navigate in treacherous waters, defines them.

Obama is defining himself in a way that will destroy him.

It is not merely that he isn't rising to the challenge. He is avoiding the challenge. He is Bartleby the President. He would prefer not to.

He has access to a microphone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If he tells the broadcast networks in the middle of the day that he has a major address to deliver on an unprecedented world situation, they will cancel their programming for him.

And yet, since Friday and a press conference in which he managed to leave the American position on Libya more muddled than it was before, we have not heard his voice. Except in a radio address -- he talked about education legislation.

And he appeared at a fund-raiser in DC. And sat down with ESPN to reveal his NCAA picks.

He cannot go on like this. Niall Ferguson, the very pessimis tic economic his torian, wrote the other day that the best we can now hope for is that Obama leaves the country in the same kind of shape that Jimmy Carter left it in.

That doesn't do Obama justice. Despite how disastrously he has handled the crises of the past two months, he can still turn his presidency around on a dime.

For Obama to save himself, he should be thinking about the example of an unlikely Republican predecessor: Richard Nixon.

The multifarious crises the president now faces are eerily similar to the kinds of calamities that greeted Richard Nixon in his first term from 1969-1972. Then, as now, the world was on fire. Wars erupted between China and the Soviet Union, India and Pakistan, even El Salvador and Honduras.

Jordan was nearly taken over from within by the Palestine Liberation Organization. There were humanitarian disasters in Biafra (the result of civil war), Bangladesh (due to flooding) and Nicaragua (deadly earthquake).

There was more, much more -- including a war he inherited in Vietnam, just as Obama has the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You get the point.

Nixon in 1968, unlike Obama 2008, was elected as a minority president with only 43 percent of the vote. Yet, in 1972, he won what, in some measures, was the most lopsided election in American history with 61 percent.

Nixon achieved it, in large measure, because he appeared to be a serious man grappling in deadly earnest with the serious problems presented to him by a world careening out of control.

He demonstrated high competency when it came to matters on the world stage. He and his team (primarily Henry Kissinger) developed coherent policies and strategies for coping with the world. There was no question, to friend or foe, that he was fully engaged, paying attention, deeply involved.

Nixon was an awful president in many ways, including in some of his foreign-policy choices. But he left no doubt that foreign policy and America's leadership in the world outside its borders was of paramount importance to him.

All this had the effect of elevating Nixon during his time in office, so that when it came to running against George McGovern in 1972, Nixon seemed like a Titan and McGovern a pipsqueak.

How Nixon conducted himself in office in times of crises made possible his triumphant re-election. Right now, how Obama is conducting himself in a time of crisis is having the opposite effect.

He began his presidency as a potential colossus -- but if he doesn't change, he will finish it as a pipsqueak. Pipsqueaks don't win second terms.

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Putting the Tax-The-Rich Myth to Rest.

Image via WikipediaOne of the favorite liberal ploys today is to complain that the "evil rich" just are not paying their fair share. They propose that by taxing these evil, greedy rich folk we can solve our deficit and debt problems and increase employment and finally reach never-never land. Kevin D. Williamson published a piece that does a darned good job of actually analyzing this strategy. He used real numbers as opposed to warm and fuzzy feelings.

MARCH 14, 2011 5:00 A.M.

There Aren’t Enough Millionaires 
The rich can’t fund our deficits.

This may sound like a liberal parody of conservative economic thinking, but let me put it out there: America’s problem is that the rich don’t have enough money.

There, I said it. Let’s rumble.

When it comes to the Scrooge McDuck set, the problem isn’t that they’re not rich enough, it’s that there aren’t enough rich — not enough to do what liberals want to do, anyway, which is to balance the budget by increasing taxes on them. Let’s deploy some always-suspect English-major math:

There are lots of liberal definitions of “rich.” When Pres. Barack Obama talks about the rich, he’s talking about people living in households with income of more than $250,000 or more, the rarefied caviar-shoveling stratum occupied by the likes of second-tier public-broadcasting executives, Boston cops, nurses, and the city manager of Lubbock, Texas(assuming somebody in her household earns the last $25,000 to carry her over the line). Club 250K isn’t all that exclusive, and most of its members aren’t the yachts-and-expensive-mistresses types.

3 Essential Facts About the Current Moment

This is a great article over at Reason.com

We're Out of Money, The Public Sector is Overpaid, & We Can't Tax Our Way Out of This

THOSE WONDERFUL TEACHER'S UNIONS

Image via WikipediaBy 

Neal Boortz 

@ March 14, 2011



The government employee unions lost in Wisconsin. Thankfully that largely includes a loss for the teachers union in Wisconsin. Why do I say thankfully? Because the less power that these teachers unions have, the better. Now I can only partially blame them for asserting their power; you parents who send your children to these people to be educated deserve some of the blame as well. You willingly submit the most precious thing in your life - your child - to these people every day and expect your child to become a competent, well-educated, hard-working individual. But it's hard to imagine how that could be accomplished when these teachers unions care only about one thing: power. And they know they have power, and they admit they have this power.

Now let's try to remember what those teachers unions were fighting for in Wisconsin, shall we? They were fighting for our children, right? Somehow our children were going to be denied a good education of that evil, Hitler-like governor of Wisconsin succeeded in taking away the teacher's collective bargaining right. Isn't that the way it worked?

Now if you believe that nonsense that was being spouted by the teachers unions - if you believe that this is all about your precious children -- perhaps you might take the time to listen to something said by "Bob Chanin, General Counsel to the National Education Association. This comment was maid at his farewell address to the NEA convention last summer --- last summer, before Governor Scott Walker's move in Wisconsin.
Here are the words of Mr. Chanin. If you listen to the program today you'll hear them as he spoke them.

Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas; it is not because of the merit of our positions; it is not because we care about children; More.. and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child.

The NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power. And we have power because there are more than 8/2 million people that are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year because they believe that we are the union that can most effectively represent them.

There. NOW how do you feel about protecting these wonderful teachers unions? Aren't they just amazing? As if Mr. Chanin wasn't enough, please remember Albert Shanker, a past-president of the American Federation of Teachers. After an AFT convention someone asked Shanker why all the emphasis on teachers and so little emphasis on the children at the convention. He replied that he would start paying attention to the children when they could vote in union elections.

Did you send your child off this morning to be educated in a government union school? Don't worry, I'm sure it's going to be just fine. It's the other schools that have these self-involved union teachers .... certainly not your child's government school. So .. no need to worry I'm sure.

Complaining About Conservatives

Image via Wikipediaby Burt Prelutsky



Unfortunately, the best thing you can usually say about Republican politicians is that the Democrats are worse.

For instance, it’s easy to fault those on the left for ObamaCare, but why is it that those on the right side of the aisle never bothered making it possible to shop for health insurance in other states or cleared the way for a worker to take his health insurance to a new job? Instead, as usual, the Republicans merely reacted once Obama and his cronies cooked up their vile stew, consisting of rat tails, bat wings and eye of newt.

Republicans aren’t the Party of No, as the Democrats have snidely suggested; rather, they tend to usually be the Party of I Don’t Know. Aside from objecting to the nonsense concocted by those on the left, Republican politicians rarely have convictions or policies of their own. Which is why they got so little done between 2001 and 2007, when they controlled the House, the Senate and the Oval Office.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had a while ago with a Hollywood insider. I was complaining about how difficult it’s been to line up interview subjects for my next book. The problem isn’t simply that those I approach don’t agree to be interviewed. After all, these people are strangers and they don’t owe me a favor. The problem is that in spite of the fact that I provide an email address, a mailing address and a phone number, I so rarely receive a response.

Hypocrisy in Action

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeOver at The New Media Journal, Frank Salvato has a great take on the goings on in Wisconsin.

Government Shutdowns and
Death Threats...Bring It On
Frank Salvato, Managing Editor
March 11, 2011


Maybe you've heard this one. What do you get when fourteen Democrat Senators go AWOL from their jobs in Wisconsin? You get fiscal responsibility, the tools to balance an out-of-control budget and a boatload of evidence that the Progressive Left is prone to violence and thuggery over process. Thank you very much and goodnight. Be sure to tip your waiters, waitresses and bartenders on the way out. You've been great.

Seriously, does anyone else find it abhorrently hypocritical for Progressives and Democrats to proclaim an abdication of process in the Republican's out-maneuvering of them on the issue of limiting – not eliminating – collective bargaining rights for public-sector union employees, especially when their own national leadership just jammed Obamacare down our throats? Wasn't "deem-and-pass" an abdication of "the process?" Weren't behind closed door meetings used to craft Obamacare; meetings where Republicans were excluded in total, an abdication of "the process?" Wasn't the democratic "process" abandoned when lawmakers were given a 2,700 page piece of legislation and less than 72 hours to absorb its content?

Spare me the tears about "abandoning the process"...and if you're a Wisconsin Democrat and a State Senator, dry your eyes in Illinois. Elections, as the Obama Democrats have espoused, have consequences. Remember Mr. Obama's "I won" and "You can ride with us if you want, but you've got to sit in the backseat" comments?

One thing that is abundantly clear through the recent Progressive onslaught in government is this: If Progressives don't get their way, if they aren't allowed special privilege in the process, if their cronies and benefactors aren't positioned to get rich off of the taxpayers so they can fill their political coffers, they cry about "the process"; the "evil that has befallen the democratic process." They can disenfranchise their minority constituents, usurp and waive established rules in governmental chambers and falsely demonize anyone who doesn't tow their line of thinking and that's just politics; their version of the "democratic process." But confront them with the US Constitution – or a state constitution, for that matter – and hold them to the rules as they are established; demand that they take their elected seats and honestly debate the issues, and we get the waa-waa-waa that is Harry Reid bemoaning a threat to a Nevada cowboy poetry jamboree, Nancy Pelosi tearfully recalling "the violence" in 1970s San Francisco and now, death threats for Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin for their audacity to hold true to their campaign promises of executing fiscal responsibility in a bankrupt state.