This is why we love Sarah Palin

Not only is she not afraid to respond to her opponents' constant heckling, she knows how to do it and force them to rub their own noses in it.

A Thanksgiving Message to All 57 States

My fellow Americans in all 57 states, the time has changed for come. With our country founded more than 20 centuries ago, we have much to celebrate – from the FBI’s 100 days to the reforms that bring greater inefficiencies to our health care system. We know that countries like Europe are willing to stand with us in our fight to halt the rise of privacy, and Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. And let’s face it, everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma and they end up taking up a hospital bed. It costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early, and they got some treatment, and ah, a breathalyzer, or an inhalator. I mean, not a breathalyzer, ah, I don’t know what the term is in Austrian for that…

Of course, the paragraph above is based on a series of misstatements and verbal gaffes made by Barack Obama (I didn’t have enough time to do one for Joe Biden). YouTube links are provided just in case you doubt the accuracy of these all too human slips-of-the-tongue. If you can’t remember hearing about them, that’s because for the most part the media didn’t consider them newsworthy. I have no complaint about that. Everybody makes the occasional verbal gaffe – even news anchors.

Obviously, I would have been even more impressed if the media showed some consistency on this issue. Unfortunately, it seems they couldn’t resist the temptation to turn a simple one word slip-of-the-tongue of mine into a major political headline. The one word slip occurred yesterday during one of my seven back-to-back interviews wherein I was privileged to speak to the American public about the important, world-changing issues before us.

If the media had bothered to actually listen to all of my remarks on Glenn Beck’s radio show, they would have noticed that I refer to South Korea as our ally throughout, that I corrected myself seconds after my slip-of-the-tongue, and that I made it abundantly clear that pressure should be put on China to restrict energy exports to the North Korean regime. The media could even have done due diligence and checked my previous statements on the subject, which have always been consistent, and in fact even ahead of the curve. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story? (And for that matter, why not just make up stories out of thin air – like the totally false hard news story which has run for three days now reporting that I lobbied the producers of “Dancing with the Stars” to cast a former Senate candidate on their show. That lie is further clear proof that the media completely makes things up without doing even rudimentary fact-checking.)

“Hope springs eternal” as the poet says. Let’s hope that perhaps, just maybe, they might get it right next time. When we the people are effective in holding America’s free press accountable for responsible and truthful reporting, then we shall all have even more to be thankful for!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

- Sarah Palin

Happy Thanksgiving

Go spend time with Family and/or Friends.  No politics today.  Life is all about the people.  Set some time aside and enjoy them.

Thanksgiving is a big, big deal at our house. Christmas only beats it by a nose. In some ways, I actually like Thanksgiving better.

When the wife and I started this … well, frankly, I started doing this and she joined me a few years later.  And it goes back to the feasts we had in my large family growing up, which often included other friends and aunts, uncles, and cousins.

To me, Thanksgiving is about Family, Friends, Tradition, and Food.  For all of which I'm thankful.  Especially about the family and the friends.  They are the true measure of wealth.

I grew up — for Part II of my childhood, in a poor (by American standards) household. But even before that, there wasn’t a lot of boxed food or pre-prepared stuff in the house. And I grew up cooking, taking over most of the evening cooking duties (and during the week all of the breakfast duties) from my mother, who was completely crippled with rhumetoid arthritis at 32.

I liked cooking. I don’t like it as much now, but mostly because it takes too much time and I have other things to do.  So Thanksgiving is an opportunity for me to practice that craft, and pour a lotta love into it for family and friends. At first, it was often just the wife, me, and stragglers in town who had nowhere else to go.  We've even had kidzdad here for Thanksgiving many times over the years when he was alone.  Because the kids like it better here. :-)  And he is their dad.

But back to the story.

I made the pies (down to the crust), bread, mashed potatoes, yams, dressing, and cranberry sauce from scratch. Gravy from the turkey. Real whipped cream that starts out as cream and gets whipped, with sugar added along the way. I’d start about 10 in the morning. Maybe 9. And we’d eat about 4. Big white chef’s apron. Several batches of dishes done. Wine sipped along the way….

I got everything geared toward a mood from a fire in the fireplace right down to the acoustic instrumental music mix I play quietly in the background (if you have access to Rhapsody, click here). There wasn’t even any football watched (though it’s ok if those interested go down to the family room to watch … but that hasn’t happened real often).

Over the years we’ve let a few more conveniences such as refrigerated pie crusts slip into the mix, but it’s still a lot of food prepared from the bottom up.

I love it. It’s an awesome holiday. Fork up some turkey and cranberry sauce, and lift a glass. If you listen very carefully, you’ll hear mine “tink” it.

Huzzah! Happy Thanksgiving!

"Fired" Up

This is some good stuff. This guy's a genius.

Fair Game

Watching the TeeVee tonight, an ad came on for a movie.  Hadn't heard of it, but it stuck out at me...

The New York Times

The Washington Post

The Los Angeles Times

and

The Huffington Post

and the gist of it was they all gave it rave reviews.   Huffington Post was mentioned last, but on the screen it visually came up in the middle of them all.

Now the only reason I payed any attention at all was the mention of The Huffington Post as something to, presumably, be taken as seriously as we're supposed to take those other established (and notoriously progressive) big names. 

Like I said, I saw it was for a movie, but they didn't say what it was about and I only saw a man and a woman... a blonde, behind the title, "Fair Game".

I asked aloud "did that say 'The Huffington Post'?"   The wife re-wound the recording.  Yup.  It did.  And we went back to our show.  I was curious as to why that name was being thrown in the middle, especially in light of the fact that Soros granted them money for "investigative" reporters.  Almost as if they're subtly trying to legitimize it in the eyes of Mainstream America.

And then I wondered, somwhere at the edge of my mind ... what is this movie about that they're all raving about.... and I flashed to the couple.   I'd bet it was Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson.  What was the name of that movie again?  The wife re-wound again, and we read "Fair Game".

Yup, that has to be it.  They want to make their version of the story the story of record in the minds of mainstream America.

I wonder if Rove has horns and a pitchfork in the movie?

The View

In which two washed-up commedians and a washed up TV anchorwoman famous for asking people what kind of tree they would be, along with a token conservative-ish former reality show star to gang up on ... pretend they are having intelligent discussions on current events.

Not that we're in it for the att...

Ah, hell, we'll take it.

Yeah, my word for the day on Election Day was "Refudiate".

And apparently ABC News calls it the Word of the Year (they still do news at ABC?  Stossel left for Fox, and after that I'm all confused.  I thought it was the Disney Channel or something.  Oh, that's right, Tap-Tap still works there.)  Anyway, Morgan mused:

Maybe there are some heady celebrations being planned at the Philmon household as well.

Yup. Here in the Phillmon household, we’re partying like it’s 1773.

The wife and I watched Sarah Palin’s Alaska tonight, which we had recorded last night.

No, not riveting television, by any stretch of the imagination. But then, outside of a few shows like Survivorman and Man, Woman Wild — reality type shows really aren’t my cup ‘o tea.

Did I say tea? (seriously, can I plug those simple bumperstickers once again? I think they embody awesome. I’d like to see them everywhere.)

But it was interesting to see her interact with her family, the famous wall to block out Joe McGinniss’s snooping eyes).

The scenery's great.  I love mountains and wilderness. Denali would be Mecca for me. And even the wife isn't shy about observing aloud that she's pretty hot, and she doesn't mind Todd, either.  Plus I noticed Sarah is peppering the “interviews” with the very phrases that she has been ridiculed for — throwing it right back in their faces — one of the things I love most about her. It’s a big, symbolic flip off that shows they don’t get to her, which sends their heads fizzing like the “Pfffff” noise Morgan mentions.

I’ll watch every single damned one of them if I have to put toothpicks in my eyes to keep them open (which I won’t for the reasons mentioned above) just to keep those ratings as high as possible. Because that “Pfffff” sound? It’s the sound of catharsis (my favorite Dennis Miller word).

Mike Pence for President?

I'll tell you what.  He gets it.

A president who slights the Constitution is like a rider who hates his horse: he will be thrown, and the nation along with him. The president solemnly swears to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. He does not solemnly swear to ignore, overlook, supplement, or reinterpret it. Other than in a crisis of existence, such as the Civil War, amendment should be the sole means of circumventing the Constitution. For if a president joins the powers of his office to his own willful interpretation, he steps away from a government of laws and toward a government of men.

Seriously.  RTWT.  That's just a little taste of his grasp of what the presidency is supposed to be.  There's a lot more in that article.

I subscribe to the print edition of Hillsdale College's "Imprimis".   But you can read it on the net, too.   Some really good stuff out there.

Imagine if Sarah Palin had done this...

Or GW Bush for that matter.  

"I'm actually Chinese"

HT: Morgan.

That Sinking Feeling

How long can I continue to convince myself that this isn't coming?

They Keynesians just won't pipe down and as a matter of fact they're just pressing the accelerator .


I don't see too many ... ok, any viable options for me. You can't eat gold, and I can't afford enough of it to make any sized hedge anyway. I can't grow enough food. I can't store enough food. Can I keep my house?  If so, can I heat it?

Democrats can't fix this, and their "fix" is making it worse. Republicans can't fix it either.  I'm more and more convinced the ship has sailed past the point of no return and Niagra Falls is the destination.

The only way out of this is for America to start making stuff that people need. Not want. Need.

This is wierd, in a spooky way

Update: Thanks to  a heads up from tim. Looks like US Airways flight 808 to Hawaii.

Nice bit of research on the part of Liem Bahneman at "Time to Think". It's good to have alert people with a propensity toward scientific method out there!

Mysterious Missile Lights Up Sky Over Pacific.

Just off the coast of California, right north of the Catalinas.

I was talking to a friend the other night -- a friend who works in the power industry -- about the possibility of using EMP to take out most or all of our power grid, plus wipe out a lot of our electronics. You know, like the little computer in your car that it can't run without.

He was saying the scenario would be for three missile launches from OFF of each coast and one in the Gulf to go over the midwest.... with detonations at about 100,000 feet -- would be enough.

I have another friend in the power business who doesn't think it would be that devastating.

But ... eerie that after talking about this just last weekend, the next monday a mystery missile gets fired off of one of the coasts?

Test run? Or screw-up by our military?

Either way, consider this.  Remember that the 9/11 terrorists took flying classes -- but didn't seem interested in learning how to land.

N. Korea and Iran have nukes, but the word is their delivery systems suck and they couldn't hit anything with them.

What if they didn't need to actually HIT anything?  Say, sneak a boat to near our coastline, launch a missile and have it detonate at 100,000 feet?  What would be the effect of that?  Is it something we're prepared to deal with?

Update:  There is speculation it could be an airplane contrail. Well, I have an open mind about it, but it certainly would be an atypical one. et's just say I'm skeptical of that explanation but I'm willing to be convinced. It just looks too "plumey" and vertical. Most I've seen tend to be flatter.... this looks more cylindrical. But.... I've seen all kinds of phenomena that aren't what you'd expect. So I'll buy that it COULD be an airplane contrail. Maybe.

Speaking of Activism

I read Alinsky's book, "Rules for Radicals".  I read Obama's "Dreams From My Father".  I've read about Community Organizing™ in general.

And now I've read that Cloward and Piven paper Glenn Beck's been talking about for a year or so.

It's called "The Weight of the Poor - A Strategy to End Poverty".   It was in "The Nation" in 1966, when I was only 2 years old.   They had already been hard at work for years Dismantling America (Read the paper.  Also, read Sowell's excellent collection of columns.)

Now I've read a few articles from The Nation over the past few years, and it was clear that it's a very, very liberal (in the progressive sense) rag.   But man.  This is a blatant push for Soviet style Communist "rights".   And it is not a conspiracy.  It, like all the rest of this stuff, is right there out in the open.

And they're gettin' pretty bold these days.
(Frances Piven at the 2010 Brecht Forum  -- an openly Marxist forum held every year)



And here's an MSNBC host ... just not afraid at all to blurt it out and even chastise his liberal guests ...

Activism and Government

I stumbled across an acquaintance's facebook photo album entitled "The Best Signs from the Restoring Sanity and/or Fear" Rally held the weekend before the election.  Stewart, Colbert.  And a bunch of people gathered together to be seen gathering together and looking hep and cool, from what I can tell.

One of the signs had some arabic on it, and underneath it said "Relax, it just says McDonalds".  Another said "I Hate Taxes.  But I like roads and firemen and some cops and stop lights (except red ones) and national parks and the Coast Guard [etc etc]... so I pay them anyway"  then in small letters "oh yeah, and I hate war."   Yet another sign said "God Hates Figs - Mark 11:12-14".

Now everybody, and I mean everybody knows that this was a counter-rally to various Tea Party rallies and especially Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" Rally (at which there were no signs to speak of outside of counter-ralliers and provocateurs).   The RTRSaoF hid behind comedy so that it could say pretty much anything it wanted about the new conservative activism that so upsets them and if anything were off the mark, they could just say "hey, it's comedy, lighten up".   But they want their ridicule to stand.

So these signs were clearly targeting what people in this crowd believed represented mainstream Tea Party core beliefs.

I figure next Tea Party Rally I go to, I should carry a sign with an American Flag on it and underneath it say "Relax, I just love America".   And of course, except for a few rabid, hard-core capital "L" Libertarians, nobody is arguing for no taxes.   But some taxes do not justify endless taxes -- the constant mining of The People for new sources of revenue.   The incessant hoovering of people's pockets and invading their homes with shop vac hoses slorking under couch cushions, or in our bank accounts and 401k's that have collected "enough" money.

Or maybe they'll just crank up the money printing presses to pay off government excess using the most insidious and non-progressive tax of all  -- inflation.

And as I put it on facebook -- everybody --- every Tea Partier as well as every God-Snubbing Atheist or Big Government Loving Progressive hates the Westborough Baptist Church.  So that sign is right out as well.

I stated that I really for the life of me couldn't figure out what the rally was about outside of ridiculing a caricature of people they knew little to nothing about, and his response was "I love the debate.  I think it was about restoring activism to the country."    To which I replied that activism is alive and well, but the side that's been doing most of the activism isn't happy that the other side has finally gotten into it as well and the stage no longer belongs exclusively to them.  (Plus their bad acting has now been exposed for what it is.)

Which got me to thinking about activism and limited government.

Activism for just causes is great.   And a lot of times you'll hear people saying "we're just raising awareness".  How innocuously noble.  But that isn't really the ultimate goal.   They know it, but they hope the average Joe doesn't and they'll learn JUST ENOUGH from the activists to vote in more government regulation ... the regulation the activists want.

If they just wanted money to fight AIDS or help AIDS victims,  their activism would ask people to donate money and time.  They would make people aware, and persuade those people to get involved in helping.  Start foundations and collection drives.   But that's not what they do.

Government is sanctioned force.  That's what it is.  In the end, outside of self-defense, the government is the only entity that's allowed to apply force to people to get them to behave a certain way.   Ergo, it is power.   And what special interest groups -- activist groups -- want, is for the government to use that power on their behalf to get what they want out of people whether the people want to give it to them or not.  They want their very own set of levers on the power of government.

So what they try to do instead is to try to get people to vote to have the government take other peoples' money and give it to their causes.  And such justifications will never, ever end.  And so the government, which is not efficient at pretty much anything gets assigned more and more roles, sucking more and more money out of more and more people for more and more causes and the government itself grows and has an interest in self-preservation.  So it never drops programs, and it can never become more efficient and save money because we'd be "taking money away" from the people the program was supposed to aid, restricts more and more activities from more and more people and eventually you have a bankrupt government that is all-authoritative and the ideals of Liberty and Self-Reliance and real charity are sacrificed on the altar of Social Progress.   The debt spirals out of control, and the countries enemies divide the spoils.   That's the endgame.  I used to think it couldn't happen.  And in the end, I think this is why it happens.  People think it can't -- like the unsinkable Titanic.  And so they drive the State full-speed ahead into the night through waters that have been known to have icebergs.   One little steering mistake, and bam!   The band's playing "Nearer My God To Thee" as people jump over the rails into the icy water, with the deafening sound of groaning, creaking, cracking metal piercing the night over people in half-empty life boats floating away in disbelief.

Blink

So we're buying $600,000,000,000 of our debt.  I hope we're not charging ourselves interest.  From what I can gather, this is pretty much us printing up money to pay what we owe, which means the value of the dollar goes down.  This also doesn't include, from what I understand, another $75,000,000,000 a month after that, for, I don't know how many months?

Don't believe me?  The Chinese are a bit concerned about it, since they own a bunch of our dollars which we're apparently going to be paying back with cheaper dollars.  And Business Insider has an interesting and somewhat alarming article about the fact that we're apparently pushing the bubble into the final bubble ... the inflation bubble.   Even Warren Buffett (and didn't he endorse Obama when Obama was pretending to be a fiscal conservative?) thinks every American should read this short book from 1975: When Money Dies.

Now I of course am still hoping for the best, but call me Officially just a little spooked.

Hyperinflation is a possibility, and Lord knows what happens if it takes off.  When Money Dies gives us a picture of what happened in Germany back in the 1920's, and it ain't pretty.  People starve.  People have to resort to nasty things.

I don't want to be one of them, if I can help it at all.

A buddy and I used to talk about possible, far-fetched but plausible ITSHTF (If The Shit Hits The Fan) scenarios where political factions start fighting and the state can't keep law and order ... for a few days to a few weeks or more, and the business of protecting the home, the family ... or worse having to forage for and hunt for food.  

But if hyperinflation, which we hadn't even considered because we had faith that our government wouldn't be stupid enough to try to go down that road ... if it happens, the spectrum of possibilities goes from maybe I keep my job, maybe everything collapses  ... but in either situation you're presented with the possibility of food prices going up faster than your income, or food merchants flat out unwilling to sell you food for dollars that will be worth much less by the time they get to spend them than they were when you bought the food.  I've been staring these things possibilities in the face, thinking "Nah .... that won't happen."   But evidence is mounting that we're just sauntering toward this possibility, and I'm no longer able to convince myself that there's really nothing to worry about.   And so ....

I blinked.

Basically, I'm going to keep some extra dried food around.  Nothing fancy, nothing diverse.  Something that will keep us alive perhaps long enough for things to stablize or long enough for us to try to figure out how we're going to cope in a new reality.   Rice.  Beans.  Salt.  Sugar.   Maybe flour, but I worry about the bugs that will hatch in the flour bags.  (looks like freezing for a few days and sealing can prevent this.)   If we do flour, then probably some powdered milk.  Perhaps some texturized soy protein.  And some unscented bleach for water sanitization in case things really, REALLY go south. The rice and beans alone I think you could live off of for a couple of months if you had to.  Not saying you'd emerge the picture of health, but at least there'd be a you to emerge.  And all of this stuff is relatively cheap, and except for the flour due to the bugs ... these things should keep for several years.  

If any of this happens.   The inflation is sure to happen.  I really don't see how it can't.   The ITSHTF scenario, maybe not.  Hopefully not.  But I really don't want to look back if it does happen and say "hey, if I'd just spent a couple hundred dollars back then, we might live through this."

But I can't help but laugh at myself and wonder if I should add tinfoil to my shopping list.  This is crazy shit.

Olberman Gets 4 day weekend

So what it really amounts to is that Olberman got a 4 day weekend for "breaking the rules" at NBC.

Hilarious.

Blatherer In Chief

I turned on the boob toob this morning.  We flip it on for the weather, then switch over to Fox & Friends.  Because they're fun, and the ratings piss liberals off.  Hey, anything I can do to help.

This morning, I was met with a live broadcast of the Blatherer In Chief, playing teleprompter ping-pong, looking and sounding for all the world like a robot, spewing manufactured platitudes.  It all sounded something like: promoting a just and sustainable global international order, moving forward for legitimate reform, transforming the world through effective leadership and cooperation.  Together, we can lay the cornerstone for peaceful norms, while strengthening the bonds that tie us together in mutual goals.  Progress will not come through the paradigms of ideologies, but through forged pathways of new understandings based on Science™ and Reason™. ^*

People were nodding off to the mechanical tennis match head-turns of the President. The Indian Prime Minister looked like he had to pee and was wondering when the speech would end.  Seriously, the upward-tilted chin, pointing left, then right, then left again was getting distracting.  Eventually I realized that I had the power to silence the Leader of the Free World in the palm of my hand, and pressed the mute button.   After a time the wife couldn't even stand the Prince of Smugness's image on the screen, and turned the whole thing off.

^* Science™ and Reason™ are registered trademarks of Big Brother.

Liberal Wisdom

Maybe this will be a new post theme.   I was talking ... to that certain progressive family member ... about "wasting water".... we were actually talking about washing dishes.

And she said, "Water won't last forever you know."

I paused, and then responded, "No, actually, it pretty much will."

Hydrology.  Learn it.

Yeah, clean water supplies are a concern, and an important one.  But that's a pollution issue, not a overuse of dishwashing water issue.

The Racist Tea Party Obviously Hates Hispanics and Blacks

Pat Gray: The racist, horrible, hateful Tea Party elected more minorities than Democrats did. Including Governor Sandoval in Nevada or was that -- yes, Nevada. First Hispanic governor. Brian Sandoval, Latino Republican. They elected him. New Mexico elected Susannah Martinez, nation's first Hispanic female governor. Florida, of course, elected Marco Rubio, son of a Cuban immigrant. And South Carolina elected Republican Nicky Hailey, state's first female, whose parents immigrated from India, as well as Tim Scott, the state's first black Republican Congressman. There's a few more. There's Allen West, the first black Republican elected to Congress from Florida. since a former slave served two terms in the 1870s. Two Latino republicans from Texas, Congressman Bill Flores and Francisco Canseco. It's awful. A racist bloodbath.

[Snicker]

Since I've commented on the site of the progressive rag "The Nation", I'm on their mailing list.

This came in today:

Dear Nation Reader,

There's no disguising it—the results of the midterm elections were, with few exceptions, grim, as candidates who are intent on rolling back decades of economic and social progress were swept into office.

But this is no time to despair. It is time to stand and fight for a real debate about ideas and for small-d democracy. The Nation is committed to that work, and to ensuring that our truth-telling journalists lift their ideas into our country's all-too narrow debate.

Decades of economic and social progress?  I thought that had all been destroyed over the "previous 8 years" with George W. Bush and then that evil Republican congress under Clinton.

Plus, like I've always said, it all depends on whose definition of "progress" you go with.

As Newt so adroitly put it the other night when Greta Van Sustren pointed out that Obama delivered on change, and people wanted change ...

 "If somebody offers you a chance to go to Disney World and you get all excited - and they promise to take you to Disney World, and then they didn't quite tell you that by the way the way they're going to get there is they're going to crash the plane into the park ..... ?  The fact that they were going to take you to Disney World may not have been quite as attractive as you thought."

"Change".  I was stunned to see that someone could win over America on such a transparently meaningless word.   All it means is "not this".   I'm sorry, there are a lot of places in the world I don't want to be like.  I need something more concrete than "not this".

Thomas Sowell put it rather well talking about another mushily vague word....

"If there is ever a contest to pick which word has done the most damage to people's thinking, and to actions to carry out that thinking, my nomination would be the word "fair." It is a word thrown around by far more people than have ever bothered to even try to define it.

This mushy vagueness may be a big handicap in logic but it is a big advantage in politics. All sorts of people, with very different notions about what is or is not fair, can be mobilized behind this nice-sounding word, in utter disregard of the fact that they mean very different things when they use that word."

Word for Today

Yankophobia:  The fear of Americans.

California ... ?

What the hell were you thinking?????

As Glenn Beck put it ... don't you need to be high (pass 19) before you elect this guy?

George Will's Take on the Obamacrats' reaction

Pretty good, really.

Actually, as the distilled essence of progressivism, he should feel ratified by Tuesday's repudiation. The point of progressivism is that the people must progress up from their backwardness. They cannot do so unless they are pulled toward the light by a government composed of the enlightened - experts coolly devoted to facts and science.

The progressive agenda is actually legitimated by the incomprehension and anger it elicits: If the people do not resent and resist what is being done on their behalf, what is being done is not properly ambitious. If it is comprehensible to its intended beneficiaries, it is the work of insufficiently advanced thinkers.

Of course the masses do not understand that the only flaw of the stimulus was its frugality, and that Obamacare's myriad coercions are akin to benevolent parental discipline. If the masses understood what progressives understand, would progressives represent a real vanguard of progress?

Of course the progressive agenda must make infinitely elastic the restraints imposed by the Founders' Constitution and its principles of limited government. Moving up from them - from the Founders and their anachronistic principles - is the definition of progress.

It explains much.

Pattern?

I know it's been pointed out before ... but ... just sayin'.


Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Kristi Noem, Christine O'Donnell, Dana Loesch, Janine Turner, Michelle Malkin, Star Parker, Nikki Haley, and of course ... Daphne.

Well, that was good

Not great, but good.   Biggest disappointments of the evening:  Boxer and Reid, for sure.   6 more years of Boxer looking down her snooty nose at people who treat her with respect by calling her "ma'am".  That's "Senator ma'am" to you.
.
Reid -- I'm sorry, I just can't help but think crooked, crooked corruption.   Dude's just slimy.   And anything that touches SEIU just has disgusting green goo all over it.

Here in Missouri, the only real disappointment was HSUS's Prop B ... not an immediate threat to anyone but some dog breeders, but nonetheless one of those foot-in-the-door pieces of legislation where people with good intentions vote for bad policy.

The Columbia taser ban was duly stomped.  Robin Carnahan was defeated -- though nobody I know was particularly happy about voting for Blunt.

The best news is that the California Chihuaua (sorry, that's just what her nervous body language and startled eyes that can't seem to look straight at anything for any length of time reminds me of) is out and Boehner is in as House Speaker.   Also, Rand Paul was extremely good, symbolic news.

A day or two of faux conciliatory rhetoric ...

Our job is far from finished. 

Well, it will never be "finished".  The price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance, and we have fallen behind on our payments.  We just cut a  deal with the debt broker, but we have some serious catching up to do.

Oh.... My ... God... this is funny

Second City caught up with some folks at the Stewart/Colbert Rally "to Restore Sanity and/or Fear"  (aren't they so clever to come up with that innovative ironic funny ok, really, really stupid name.

Here's how up on things you need to be to get on your morally superior high horse.  [snicker]



Keynsian. Too rich!

Oh.  And sanity.  Yeah.  Lots of sanity there. 

Here's another:


And for those of you outside of CA, Prop 19 is the Legalize Pot proposition.  Which personally, I'd vote for on civil liberties grounds.  So duuuuuhuuuuude and I have at least something in common.  Of course, that guy is a perfect example of why Morgan probably voted against it.

Update on The Car in the Ditch Analogy

Ramirez. No surprise there. Excellent.

Again With the "Ha Ha, She said 'Death Panels'"

Smart, edumacated people in the know "know" that Sarah Palin's an idiot because she said there were "death panels" "in the bill" (she didn't, but we'll let that slide) and of course, the words "Death Panel" never appear anywhere in the bill so she obviously doesn't know what she's talking about. This Reid Wilson article in the National Journal does it again:

"The bill passed on Sunday, March 21. Democrats were convinced their party would benefit from a fuller explanation of the bill's contents. But Republicans made effective arguments, pollsters said, that the health care reform overhaul contained lurking passages worthy of suspicion, from Sarah Palin's inaccurate "death panels" to the more widely accepted claim, advanced by virtually every Republican candidate running this year, that the bill represents an unwanted takeover of private health care plans by the federal government."

I bring this up again only because a commenter going by "Grizzled" had an awesome comeback to it.   I've been saying this in a much more dry manner -- that conservatives argue consequences while progressives argue weasely words.  Grizzled said:

You can call it anything you like, "Terminal Savings", "Adjusted Quality Limits", or "The Cuddly Puppy Treatment", it's obvious that end of life care will be rationed; i.e. death panels.

Awesomesauce.

Update:  In my copy of TIA Daily, in a not completly related topic, I see a better, more succinct way of describing the difference between what is literally in a bill and what the effects or consequences would be.

Implicit vs Explicit.

Implicitly, the bill pointed toward an entity that would have power to decide whether or not "life sustaining" treatment would be given.   Explicitly, it spoke of no such entity being created to do exactly that thing.  Though it did speak of state authorities with the authority to sign off on "life sustaining" treatment.

Which presumably means they'd also have the authority not to.

The Dems and their cohorts spoke of what the bill didn't explicity say.   Palin and other opponents spoke of what processes it implicitly outlined.   Since the bill didn't say "Death Panel" or describe the formation of some board to make these decisions, the Dems feel that Palin was "proven" wrong.

Which is hogwash.  The very opposite of awesomesauce.

Word for the Day

refudiate \ri-ˈfyü-dē-ˌāt\  1. To reject an opponent's arguments as untrue or unjust 2.  to refuse to accept -- giving argument or evidence. 3. To divorce or separate formally from because it is untrue or incorrect.

I voted.   I voted extra hard.  I darkened my ovals darker and oval-er.  Just for added emphasis.

I like Sarah's word.   You know, all of us, in the course of speaking, have unintentionally combined words -- usually when you have two words that mean approximately the same thing and you're trying to figure out which one to use and you change your mind while speaking one of them.  Everybody does it.  Bush, Palin, you, me, Obama ...

I also love what Palin and others did with the word as soon as the hecklers started heckling it.  She kept using it, but on purpose --even emphasizing it --  to rub their faces in it.  Sometimes not showing fear is the way to go.  Palin has an instinct for this that the rest of us can learn from.

Today I voted to refudiate.   To refudiate the idea that this is a fringe or extremist movement.  To refudiate the idea that America wants this health care bill, this increase in government size, this movement further toward the nanny state.   I voted to refudiate the idea that "We Are All Socialists Now".

There are those who are going to laugh again and say that this is not a word and it only shows our ignorance.   To them I say this:

You are angry.  I understand.  And when you're angry, sometimes you don't think clearly.  You cling to the Language of the Past™, when you need to move forward.