Come for the Politics, Stay for the Pathologies



Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Judicial Activism and Political Correctness

activism     Cartoon via the Ryskind Sketchbook

Two things you don’t really need in a Supreme Court Justice:  judicial activism and political correctness. We’re getting both. Judicial activism in the nominee, and political correctness in the body tasked with vetting Elena Kagan’s suitability for the job.

There is excellent commentary at the Bookworm on the Kagan hearings. She explores American Prospect’s take on how political correctness thwarts intellectual debate (duh) and provides Teflon coating for Kagan and her ilk. But more interesting is her discussion of the difference between liberal and conservative definitions of judicial “activism:”

To the conservative mind, the anti-Constitutional bent of decisions made by liberal, or activist, judges, means that, to the extent a prior judicial decision violates Constitutional restrictions, that decision is invalid, and should be overruled.  In other words, merely because a case exists, it is not automatically valid precedent.  If the case was void ab initio, overruling the decision isn’t activism; it is, instead, a corrective act to reinstate Constitutional limitations on government.

To the Left, however, “activism” means any decision that overturns liberal precedent — even if that precedent is, in and of itself, unconstitutional.  It’s therefore no wonder the Left is dismayed by the fact that the Roberts court is tidying up the record and reversing preexisting cases enacted by activist judges.

Bookworm Room: always worthy reading.

 

Sotomayor hearing: remove “ethnic” and it likewise illustrates the current Kagen hearingsotomayor-100also via Ryskind sketchbook

Monday, June 28, 2010

Entitlement: The Road to Serfdom

I snagged this quote from Vanderleun’s Sidelines, where you always find odd and interesting things that may be either pointless or purposeful. This one falls in the purposeful bucket, as it may assist you in thinking through where the country is headed and whether you want to vote to continue the trajectory next time around :

It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.” -- by P.J. O'Rourke

No doubt if you understand this you already know it to be true anyway, so never mind. But need I remind you that P.J. O’Rourke wrote the most brilliant treatise on economics ever?

eat-the-rich-a-treatise-on-economics

If I do, you should get it. Far more entertaining than either Keynes or Hayek, and no math. Do you really ever need to read another summer beach novel anyway?

But if that’s not your cup of tea, I understand Amazon’s deeply discounting An Inconvenient Truth. sigh

Friday, June 25, 2010

The Reason They Give Democrats Talking Points:

Because when they try to come up with explanations on their own they end up looking really stupid:

But I do understand how hard it is to remember the geographic location of all 57 states.

Technorati Tags: ,

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Our Lord of the Flies

“The evil spirit lies like a fly at the door of the human heart.”  Talmud

It’s amazingly hard to keep flies away – even in the White House - when you continue to generate so much garbage that attracts them. Take yesterday’s celebration of the 90-day anniversary of President Barack Obama’s signing of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare:

Incoming! 

incoming  ain't no flies on me 

             The Fly has landed

aint no flies on me          What kind of man doesn’t swat a fly away?

A review of William Golding’s allegory, Lord of the Flies, in 30 words or less:

Young boys stranded on bountiful island.

Piggy- intellect; Simon – morality: both killed.

Evil: innate, emerged.

Civilization: destroyed by lack of good leadership, lemming mentality and lack of societal norms.

The end.

 hmmm

Hmmm. I wonder what it all means?

Sunday, June 20, 2010

What Pat Condell Knows That Mayor Bloomberg Does Not

Here is Pat Condell’s latest video. It takes a Brit to demonstrate how foolish we are growing here in the land of the free. His message is clear,  correct and important. Watch, and pass it on to everyone you know. It may save their lives and our republic.

 

H/T Andrea at Radio Patriot, where you’ll also find a clip of the Three Terrors performing “Jihad is Fun”

Older postings of Pat Condell’s comments: When the Truth is No Defense, and  Moose-lim demands. Still relevant.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Is English a Second Language Here?

I once worked for a boss who was a stickler on grammar and syntax and went into apoplexy if there was a typo in your report (this was a finance department, mind you,  and these were financial reports not Pulitzer material). If you defended your mistake, especially if you pointed out that the numbers were all correct, he would give you a hard stare and advise you that if you couldn’t get the insignificant things right, no one could trust you on the important stuff.

I of course thought of him fondly when I read this post at Hot Air regarding the official release of the text of the President’s letter to the  G-20 members. This is from the official White House Website – THE WHITE HOUSE!  You need to read the entire thing, but just to entice you, here is an example of the spelling and formatting errors contained in the body of the letter: (From the WHITE HOUSE!)

 

For our part, we will pursue measures to SUppOit the recovery in private demand and return the unemployed to work. …

At the same time, we recognize the impoltance of setting a credible medium-term fiscal path: that is why my Administration will cut the budget deficit we inherited in halfby FY 2013 and work to reduce our fiscal deficit to 3 percent ofGDP by FY 2015, which will stabilize the
debt-to-GDP ratio at an acceptable level in that year.

 

It gets worse. Go see for yourself. 

I step aside to allow my betters to continue to rule the nation in the manner they see fit.

communist-manifestorules for rads  communism-party

PS letter released yesterday afternoon, as of  6-17-10, 3:17, it’s still not corrected on WH website. They’re probably all busy - beer Pong Saturdays and all.

UPDATE: Someone must have broken in to the pong game because the original has now been taken down and replaced with a PDF, but in anticipation Ed Morrissey had already captured a link to the cached document  here. He also provides these two updates:

Update: I’ve gotten a number of e-mails saying these look like artifacts of optical character recognition (OCR) from a scanner or fax machine output.  I’d agree with that, but that hardly lets the White House off the hook, either.  Anyone using OCR knows that it requires a lot of fixing on the back end.

Update II: So Right notes that the White House published the PDF as a correction to its website earlier today.  I think it’s impoltant to keep up with the developments in this story.

Big, Big H/T to Ed Morrissey and Hot Air for breaking this impoltant story and capturing the original doc.

What a bunch of yahoos.

Can you spell c-h-a-r-t-e-r-s-c-h-o-o-l?

Do you remember Otis Mathis, our Detroit School Board president who is functionally illiterate?

Well, it now appears that he’s also a bit of a Perv. Yes, that’s right, Otis has been accused of masturbating in front of a school superintendent – apparently this was “habitual” behavior.

I’ve already said more about this than I care to, but the blogprof, as usual,  has assumed the mantle of full disclosure. So do go there for  the full, sordid details. Indeed, you can’t make this stuff up.

I certainly can’t explain any of this other than to remind you that here in Detroit, we eat our young.

And don’t worry. If things don’t work out for Otis on the school board, his plan B is to run for Congress using the Al Greene-North Carolina game plan. He’ll be using the pseudonym “Otis Williams” to cash in on the Motown mystique. If you would like more details on the Al Greene plan, Ann Coulter has it all laid out: Alvin Greene: The Most Qualified Democrat I’ve Ever Seen: 

Yes, how could a young African-American man with strange origins, suspicious funding, shady associations, no experience, no qualifications, and no demonstrable work history come out of nowhere and win an election?”

I hope you enjoy it half as much as I did.

 

TemptationsMid60s_sm

Some tunes from the Temptations Greatest Hits Album:

  1. "The Way You Do the Things You Do"
  2. "Ain't Too Proud to Beg"
  3. "My Girl
  4. "Get Ready"
  5. "Since I Lost My Baby"
  6. "It's Growing"
  7. "I'll Be in Trouble"
  8. "Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)

Like I said, you can’t make this stuff up.

Friday, June 18, 2010

The Pinhead Questions the Patriot

I know there are those of you out there who believe Sarah Palin is an idiot.  Let me just say that in this Pinhead and Patriot segment of the O’Reilly hour, Sarah is definitely not the Pinhead.

I’ll report. You decide.

 

I disagree with her on the number one priority: it’s not plugging the leak, it’s cleaning up the spill. The Government has neither the resources nor technical ability to plug a well a mile under water. Like it or not that’s the purview of BP and the rest of the oil industry.  What the government does have the charter to do is protect the coastline from environmental disaster.  However, Palin is right on the essence of the argument. We need oil, and we will need it for the foreseeable future. Pretending otherwise is a fool’s game.

Trust me on this comrades: we could stand a little more Harry Trumanesque straight thinkin’ and talkin’ around here. I’m not throwing down for Palin just yet, but we’ve seen where “eloquent” rhetoric  delivered by a “presidential” visage takes us. Next time around let’s at least elect someone who believes in America.

You are, of course, free to back the candidate of your choice. But I will gladly choose someone who believes the Constitution still guides our little republic, even if their cadence and word choices are  offensive to some, over someone who thinks the Constitution can be deconstructed and whose very ideology finds America offensive.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Plug the Damn Hole! Day 54

The remaining Obamabots heed the call of the Messiah to fill the damn hole. I know it’s repetitive, but apparently there are fewer and fewer Obamabots left every day, so we need a few more special effects from James Cameron to make it appear life-like.

Warning: Do not watch for longer than 15 minutes in any one session, even though it is oddly satisfying.

 

BP soldiers-hole divers

H/T Gerard’s Ka-Ching! at American Digest via Curmudgeonly

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Big, Bigger, Biggest: Why Government Just Doesn’t Work

Here is the one thing the BP oil spill has proven for sure: government can’t handle disasters. Not Hurricanes, not floods, not gargantuan oil spills. Neither Republican governments, nor Democratic governments. We have developed a bureaucracy that’s designed to sustain itself rather than be responsive:  to either citizens or crises. By it’s nature and structure government has become too big, too unwieldy and too self-interested to be either efficient or effective. That’s the central message the Tea Party is  trying to impart to a citizenry that seems to have acquiesced to this waste and inefficiency.

Now it is laid bare: government has become nearly as incompetent at the large and important things as it is at the mundane. One of the reasons is that every bureau, department and division acts like its own principality. It establishes it’s own domain (funded by your tax dollars), usually by declaring their mission to be everything but what they were originally chartered to do. No one wants to do their job, they want to do your job; it makes them more important, more irreplaceable,  a better roadblock, harder to ignore, impossible to eliminate: mission accomplished. Welcome to the birth of the ministry of dysfunction.

And yet, people always seem surprised at government’s impotence. So they blame the head of state, which is fine with me, but they miss the core of the problem which is too much government on every level. Nevertheless, it’s entertaining to watch the previous Obamabites quickly pile the blame on their guy. Take Maureen Dowd for example – now suspended in a state of perpetual surprise that we elected a self-absorbed light weight –  who is trying to figure out how this happened:

“How can a man who was a dazzling enough politician to become the first black president at age 47 suddenly become so obdurately self-destructive about politics?”

Uh, Maureen, he was never really anything but a mouthpiece. His script was developed jointly by his puppet masters and all of you supportive “journalists.”  You and your comrades narrated the tale of “Emperor Obama’s New Clothes”, which my friend MOTUS has capitalized on so effectively.  Did you miss that part, or was it just too noisy in the cheering section to hear yourself think?

Later in today’s column Mo effectively summarizes her own psyche:

W. and Dick Cheney were too headlong, jumping off crazy cliffs and dragging the country — and the world — with them. President Obama is the opposite, often too hesitant to take the obvious action. He seems unable to muster the adrenalin necessary to go full bore until the crowd has waited and wailed and almost given up on him, but it’s a nerve-racking way to campaign and govern.

This is the non-thinking man’s (sorry Mo, woman’s) Goldilocks conundrum: one’s too hot, the other’s too cold and I’m looking for the one that’s just right. If that’s what you wanted, you probably would have been better off voting for McCain instead of a socialist.

Bottom line: I think it’s a little unfair to dump all this criticism  on Obama. He’s never been anything but a useful tool of Big, Bigger, Biggest Government. What did you expect? A Rhodes scholar?

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Crisis Management: 101

Why%20Barack%20Obama%20is%20having%20problems%20now__ Day 54, Command and Control room:“ I can’t seem to get through this corporate governance structure.”

Why on earth would people consider actual executive experience helpful when applying for the job of leader of the free world?

Possibly it’s because it demonstrates that you can actually run a complex operation; that you understand how the chain of command works. With executive experience you are also likely to  know how the chain of command breaks down and how to get things back on track when it does. People who’ve made it to senior executive status – corporate CEO’s, state governors  - have usually mastered at least the basic and intermediate course work in crisis management. Which helps, in the event you have to manage a really big crisis on your watch, which you most likely will.

Crises will happen. Handling smaller ones along the way to the top is how most execs earn their crisis management chops. Experience provides the know-how required to muster and dispatch resources effectively to address and resolve the situation efficaciously. But somehow, we didn’t think this basic training was necessary for someone of such rarified intelligence and good will as Obama.

Perhaps the most important thing that real executive experience teaches you is how to clear the obstacles that are  purposely built into day to day operations.   Such obstacles – known as corporate policy in business and regulations in government - are theoretically enacted as checks and balances to instill controls that prevent normal business situations from running amuck. This life-of-its-own phenomenon, in both environments, is known as bureaucracy. In a crisis the CEO needs to know how to quickly and efficiently blow the bureaucracy away in order to clear the decks for people to handle the aftermath of a major system failure. And it’s not as simple as saying, “let me know if you run into any problems.” Anyone who says that hasn’t a clue as to how bureaucracies work – or more to the point, refuse to work, in a crisis.

Experienced executives know that you don’t wait for people to ask for obstacles to be removed: they (or their staff) already know where the bottlenecks are going to be and expedite their elimination before there is an even bigger breakdown. This is perhaps the one time pragmatism is not only warranted, but mandatory. Sure, you may make a bad call, eliminate one too many control. But experience will have taught you that not taking some chances will guarantee failure. And having knowledgeable people in place as your advisors, greatly improve the odds

For example, maybe Obama or someone in his direct chain of command should have known that the disaster in the Gulf warranted waiving environmental regulations in order to expeditiously protect the coastline. With oil gushing at magnum force, you don’t have six months for the EPA to conduct an environmental impact study to determine if dredging sand berms is going to cause more environmental damage to the marshes than the oil.  Unless instructed otherwise, bureaucrats follow procedures. Still, with the governor of Louisiana begging on the public airwaves for permission to dredge, you’d have though even inexperienced Administration officials might have found a way to expedite the request.

Maybe if Obama had run anything more complex than his Hope and Change campaign – ever - it might have occurred to him that he was responsible for cleaning up the spill  and protecting our coastlines, not stopping the leak; or talking about stopping the leak. Forget the damn hole and kicking ass Mr. President: that’s not your job. Your job is to ensure that everything that can be done to clean up and protect the coastal communities is being done. Like getting the EPA regulations out of the way of building protective barriers. Like bringing in foreign resources to help. Yes we know, that requires waiving the Jones Act, which under normal circumstances requires ships working in US territorial waters to be built in American shipyards and manned by Americans.  Surely someone on Obama’s staff might have suggested waiving this Act in order to bring in ships from foreign countries to help contain and collect as much of the oil spill as possible. Surely they must have - since many foreign countries volunteered early on to help with booms and other skimming equipment and were waved off.

We need all the help we can get, and 54 days into the oil spill disaster the President is still “waiting” for someone to request that the Jones act be waived, as it was during the Katrina disaster. Who is he waiting for? Who does he expect to request it? George W. Bush?

Putting someone in charge who has no real world experience running anything other than a campaign is problematic. He’ll see everything through a political prism. He will handle everything in ways that have proved successful for him in the past. Everyone does. But if your past successes have always depended on grandstanding, demonizing,  scape-goating, and deflecting blame in order to take credit for successful outcomes, well, crisis management just isn’t going to come naturally. To paraphrase the old saw, “if you’re a hammer, every problem looks like a nail;”  if you’re a politician, every problem’s going to look like it needs someone’s ass to kick.

And one more skill that most experienced executives  pick up on the way to the top: negotiating.  With real adversaries, not  just your sycophants. World of difference.  As Warren Buffet famously pointed out to his shareholders, “"Negotiating with oneself seldom produces a barroom brawl." But if you stay within your comfort-dome, with your own advisors, your idea of negotiating might just finding someone’s “ass to kick.”

You can learn a lot from bar room brawls. And I’m not talking about beer pong.

So how about we lay off the hissy fits, and figure out how to clean this mess up. Ass kicking comes later.

beer-pong

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor and chief speechwriter Jon Favreau partaking in an impromptu, shirtless beer pong match at Old Glory in Georgetown on Sunday. photo via FamousDC

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Bye-bye, Miss American Pie

It’s come to this: now the White House is blaming Obama’s failure to talk to BP’s CEO Tony Hayward on… “corporate structure.”

Gibbs said Obama hasn’t called CEO Tony Hayward because — according to what Gibbs called the “executive structure of corporate governance” — the CEO alone isn’t the final word on company decisions, which are made by the board of directors.

“Look, the CEO is elected by the board. Anything that the CEO wants to do has to be approved by the board,” Gibbs said.

Later, he added: “I’m telling you, based on the corporate governance structure, in order to implement what — whatever you get from BP the CEO has to get clearance from the board to do. That’s — that’s the corporate governance structure is — is laid out.”

So did that mean that Obama had picked up the phone to talk to some of these powerful board members?

No.

Sometimes lack of experience really does matter. This  White House clown posse is so unfamiliar with “corporate structure” they can’t even use it in a sentence. Or craft a plausible lie.

Unlike community organizing work, running the (currently) free world would probably benefit from something other than on-the-job-training. For starters, since the President is now so hot to kick ass, a little “corporate structure” experience might have taught him where to go to find the one arse he should be putting his foot to. Then common sense would have kicked in to tell him that the best way to bring this to fruition might be to actually MEET WITH THE CEO OF BRITISH PETROLEUM! Good grief.

Kind of makes you wonder about the “wisdom” of the AIG bailout doesn’t it? And eventually someone is bound to ask just how smart it was to let Obama buy GM and Chrysler as a  Christmas present for the UAW.

On the other hand, since GM is now focusing on really important things, like killing the use of the nickname “Chevy,” maybe things will work out after all.

Bye-bye Miss American Pie.

1958-chevrolet

With H/T to vereteno, Michelle’s Mirror resident ex-Soviet and MOL :

“We are on correct path comrades!”

Monday, June 7, 2010

The Poster Post Turtle

The Rational Jingo ponders why anyone is surprised to discover that Obama is simply a turtle on a post:



Obama is a media created myth who is more than likely a puppet for far more sinister forces. Problem is, those sinister forces have a belief system rooted in Marxism also… It's easy to destroy things. Much harder to govern and develop functioning systems that keep the people out of the streets with burning pitchforks…

She points out the inconvenient truth about the Left’s sustainability – or more to the point lack thereof:

Most importantly for leftism to exist, even in it's more democratic forms, anywhere in the world, it needs, at least one engine of productivity to cling it's parasitical claws into. We were that engine.

And under current ‘leadership’ we are in the process of shutting that engine down.

…The left only operates from a position of strength from the sidelines and armchair quarterbacking. Ginning up class envy and creating divisions is what they do best. Those are skills that are safely practiced from a position of non-leadership and taking on the status quo. That is why leftism, historically, is a revolutionary movement.

To paraphrase: those who can do, those who can’t preach revolution.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Detroit Finally Gets it Right

By now EVERYONE has heard about the near perfect game pitched by the Tigers Armando Galarraga: one out away from  pitching a perfect game, first base coach Jim Joyce blows the call on Cleveland pinch hitter Jason Donald, putting him on base. No one disagrees with the facts, after the fact. Unfortunately, that doesn’t matter because that’s not the way the game’s played.

tigers

But what followed was even more remarkable It has been described by most accounts as an exercise in grace.

As my brother wrote:

“I think this has turned out to be a much better story than if the umpire had made the right call...  a gracious, forgiving Galarraga, a genuinely remorseful Jim Joyce immediately and tearfully apologizing to the kid, Jim Leyland and the Tigers showing more class and sportsmanship than most teams in baseball would ever have demonstrated, and finally the majority of Comerica fans unbelievably applauding Jim Joyce yesterday in obvious understanding and sympathy with the guy. A national story that makes Detroit look good!”

I agree. And let’s face it: making Detroit look good (especially in light of Saturday’s front page WSJ article on “Black Flight”) isn’t an option very often. I can’t say “for the first time in my adult life, I’m proud of being a Detroiter,” since within my lifetime we’ve made some great cars around here, won two World Series, a few NBA championships and several Stanley Cups. And of course, Vernors was created here. But there has been a dry spell lately.

But just so you know, Rick Moran weighs in with the contrarian view and makes some valid points:

But it is what occurred after the game, and continues today, that is both disturbing and maddening. Mr. Galarraga has been elevated to victim status, because for the millionth time in baseball history an umpire blew a call at first base. “But it was a perfect game,” Galarraga partisans argue. “Surely something must be done. Surely this injustice must be rectified. Surely we must take this to the commissioner and ask him to overturn the call and give the perfect game to Galarraga..” …

…What’s the point of asking Commissioner Bud Selig to overturn a call made in good faith by a professional umpire? Joyce wasn’t on the take, or drunk, or conspiring with Cleveland to deny Mr. Galarraga his place in history. He got it wrong. So what? Life is unfair and baseball may be the unkindest of games next to golf.

I agree. It’s a great story, and not one you’d necessarily see in other ball parks. So let’s celebrate that and not expect the Baseball Commissioner to “make it better.”  Is it unfair? I guess. But that’s how baseball is played. That’s how life is played. Learning about rules, consequences, and the fact that life is unfair is an important part of growing up. As is learning when the appropriate reaction to unfairness is outrage and aggression (e.g. denial of civil rights, anti-Semitism, jihad against anyone) and when grace is called for. Or at least manners.

If baseball wants to avail itself to technology by changing the rules to allow for a (limited) number of video reviews, so be it. But let’s not do it retroactively. Life is not lived retroactively.

Meanwhile, perhaps our lawmakers can get over it, too. And maybe get back to doing the work of the American people instead of pandering? In case Senators Levin and Stabenow haven’t noticed, we’re drowning here in a sea of debt and unemployment. And if they’re tired of dealing with that, we also have an endless stream of illegals – including terrorists - streaming across the border and an out of control oil gusher in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico that could use some federal resources for clean-up.

Maybe the Tigers can give Galarraga a raise to go with the new Corvette GM gave him, and we can all get on with our summer. It seems that Armando has. Classy dude, despite what Rick Moran thinks.

Armando-Galarraga-CorvetteH/T bro Dave

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Israel Joins the Suicidal Kabuki Play

What is most disconcerting about the Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla is the fact that it is eminently unclear what transpired and why. The BBC and most other Western news outlets (along with the UN, of course) immediately condemned Israel. Other sources contend that the ship was filled with terrorists determined to force the confrontation knowing world sentiment would be with the Palestinians. Fausta’s Blog cites several views of how this would play out.

World Net Daily, and others, contend the incident was  orchestrated by the American left socialist Free Gaza movement (who counts among their illustrious members none other than Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn, unrepentant terrorists and friends of Obama – or at least “a guy in the neighborhood.”)

Since there was violence, and it involved Israel and “humanitarian aid” workers seeking to provide aid to Palestinians, the world press has already written the copy and convicted Israel as the instigator, brute and bully in this fight. This seems to fit conveniently into the contention that it was a set up to produce just such a world reaction.

I don’t profess to be privy to enough data to know who did what to whom and in what sequence. What does seem clear so far is that there were many people with terrorist ties onboard the flotilla. We also know that Israel is committed to keeping terrorists out of the Gaza strip because they have a history of shooting missiles into Israel, killing innocent people. But the way the operation played out demonstrates political maneuvering and gamesmanship on both sides. That Israel bungled the intelligence and/or execution of this blockade infraction is beyond question. No matter what the circumstances, you don’t rappel commandoes unto a ship armed with paint guns. What kind of a commander would order such a plan?

The aftermath demonstrates that the Western world no longer has the benefit of the wise, reasoned, responsible leadership required to handle this type of powder keg. We live in a Cold War world which could go hot in an instant by the tripping of a livewire. And the West - including Israel – is  now saddled with weak leadership that thinks we can resolve ancient hatreds by meting out politically correct solutions that satisfy no one and accomplish nothing. The other side doesn’t hamper itself with such constraints.

Unless the West abandons this suicidal kabuki play it’s not going to be hard to project the winner.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

There is a God of Hell-Fire

Boy, talk about a joke with legs. Last March,  speaking of the passage of the Healthcare bill, President Obama told a group of supporters:

The leaders of the Republican party, they called the passage of this bill Armageddon! Armageddon. End of freedom as we know it! So after I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling. Any cracks opening up in the earth. Turns out it was a nice day.

 

memday2

Some might say that the opening of the skies over the Abraham Lincoln cemetery where President Obama was scheduled to speak at a Memorial Day ceremony might have been an indication of the REAL Big Guy’s displeasure. But to be fair, thunder, lightening and torrential downpours do happen. Although this storm  did seem to come from nowhere.

So lets review the Armageddon checklist so far:

Asteroids: check.

 

Cracks in the earth opening up: check

sinkhole guatemala

What else? Earthquakes? (check)

Volcano? (check)

 

iceland volcano A volcano in southern Iceland has erupted for the first time in almost 200 years, raising concerns that it could trigger a larger and potentially more dangerous eruption at a volatile volcano nearby.

 

More volcanoes?

Or maybe something along the lines of  the new Obama-speak variety of “man-caused disasters?" (check and, luckily, check-mated)

Deepwater-Horizon-rig-fir-006 Deep Water Horizon drilling rig explosion

Of course  there’s  always that lingering little disaster known as the “economy,” and the ever burgeoning national debt.

And that’s after only two months. I can hardly wait for the six month check-up, Mr. President. This joke just keeps getting funnier every month.