Recent acquisition (2)

I once mentioned that my bookseller of choice is Goody O'Will, and yesterday he treated me particularly well. All hardbacks are always 75 cents, and there was no exception for this one which has been opened exactly three times, I believe. Once when Bob inscribed it. Once when I glanced at the flyleaf in Goody's. Once when I shot it.

(It goes with Bob 's cloth escape map of Japan and nearby Russia found at his estate sale, along with three or four original aerial bombing photos of Tokyo and Sasebo -- unpriced because the estate sale professionals didn't know what they were. A $10 offer was accepted.)

I know you may consider it extravagant to blow six bits during the current national financial crisis. But remember, the alternative is a CD paying a Clinton/Bush/Obama mandated .01 per cent interest.

L'etat, c'est WTF?

Read this and wonder how President Barack Obama could make this guy a czar of anything, much less of the regulatory function of the United States government -- even after we make allowance for the source, World Net Daily.

Cass Sunstein either means it or he doesn't when he writes: "There is no reason to believe that in the face of statutory ambiguity, the meaning of federal law should be settled by the inclinations and predispositions of federal judges. The outcome should instead depend on the commitments and beliefs of the President and those who operate under him."

Imagine how smoothly everything would work if President Obama and Regulatory Czar Sunstein sat down over a beer and decided how the Commerce Clause and the "general welfare" language of the Preamble should be interpreted.

For one thing it would save all that expense of the judicial branch of government. And maybe the legislative. If this nincompoop thinks Obama ought to be permitted to interpret the law, he might as well let the new Sun King make it in the first place.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the active governing class: This is why you scare us shitless, off our writing chairs and into the shops where ballistics in the lingua franca.

To put it as plainly as possible, Cass, we have a Constitution for the express purpose of keeping humans such as yourself where you belong, in a dim attic, unwashed, contemplating your navel, shunned in the full Mennonite manner by all to whom liberty is an idea not yet dead and monarchy is not the ideal to be desired.

(H/t to John of the GMA)

Gag

The beer summit was a national embarrassment. As male bonding it was Barney Frank meets Larry Craig.

To answer a doofus-duhh question asked by a million talking teevee heads: Biden was there because the official White House Keeper of the Image wet the bed at the vision of two part-blacks ganging up on one white guy.

Next time, Mr. President, try the Tune-In.

Shame on Us

Hardly anyone in this corner of Blogopolis recognized the 55th anniversary of this hemisphere's greatest triumph of socialism, and so I leap into the breech.

Fidel, being somewhat under the weather despite Cuba's universal health care system (which features a public option*), did not speak. Instead, brother Raul sang the praises of socialist solidarity and the terrestrial heaven it spawns.

NPR covered the celebration extensively and reported on El Supremo Raul thusly:

His biggest announcement was a prediction that an aqueduct renovation to provide water every day to Santiago should be completed by 2010. Residents there complain that the water is often out for days and even weeks on end.

And so we understand that socialism is that form of government which, after only 55 years in power, can promise that there will be running water in its second largest city** in only two more years.

Perhaps someone on better terms with Current Administration than I am might mention some of this to Our Leader.

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*And damned little else, if anything.

**Santiago gets 43.6 inches of rainfall a year, leading to a sort of WTF? moment. I mean, if the unemployed, approximately everyone, were assigned to catch rain in coconut shells and dump the surplus in a reservoir...

Hopeful change comes to the prairies

South Dakota has a new U.S. Attorney, a fellow named Greg Johnson who is among the "fine attorneys (who) have distinguished themselves as some of the brightest their profession has to offer," (President) Obama said in a statement.

Greg , 34, has been brightly chasing billable hours for a private law firm since 2005 or so. Previously he was a state prosecutor in Sioux Falls where he distinguished himself by trying "a range of felonies and misdemeanors," according to the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader.

He also avows he told his dad to butt out of the appointment process, and U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., can be right proud that his kid made it strictly on his own merit. Nope, no nepots 'round these parts.

I just knew things would get all unicorny under His Obamaness.

Plastic Dreams

His Presidency is  meeting with credit card  titans -- the black hearted, child-eating pisspots spawned in the in fetid swamp and  nurtured  by the undead priests of the Spanish Inquisition. I think Obama actually believes something like that about them. Funny, so do I.

The Obamaness, however,  is about to screw things up again by pandering to what his constituents really want -- Plastic with unlimited credit; a Visa whose repayment terms are, "When ever you get around to it, ol' Buddy."  They really think it's possible.

A little history lesson is useful here. Perhaps 30 or 40  years ago a small Midwest state was enduring one of those periodical plagues of high populism.  So the moonbat governor and his leftie  legislature  wrote an excruciatingly detailed law about what credit card issuers could and could not do in the state.  Within months consumer credit all but dried up, and if you wanted a Diner's Club card you had to move to  Illinois or Minnesota  or some such hellhole.

The law was quickly (and all but unanimously)  repealed,  and once again rubes could make their  own decisions about how to use credit.

I don't suppose, though, that His Hopefulness will pay much attention to things like that. After all, he's giving us a New Beginning. 

(There are ways for Joe Sixpack  to beat the credit card bastards at their own game, and the  results are  better than anything Barney Frank could dream up to enstatuate. )

How scared should we be?

I'm not going to live-blog the President's  speech,  but I'll offer you the first quote I heard a few seconds ago. He says of the auto industry: "Our  (White House)  evaluation  is now  complete."

If that doesn't scare Hell out of you,  you and I do not share even the slightest similarity of thought processes.

I wonder what Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden will decide to evaluate next. 

Getting Rattled?

The new President fields criticism of his $786 billion economic plan by citing 25 new police officers in Columbus on a day when 651,000 February layoffs were announced.

There's a  sense of proportion for you.  

Say we learn that Iran has an A-Bomb and a delivery system. Obama says yabbut he has cleverly prevented Fiji from going nuclear. 

 

Infant development

Y'know, I'm not sure the new president knows his toes belong to him yet.

So Much for Ethic Cleansing

Roddy Blago of Illinois had it right, a U.S. Senate seat IS  "a (effing) valuable thing."

Just ask St. Hoppen Change's man to oversee your personal health. He's Tom Daschle, former senator from South Dakota and apparent tax evader to the tune of about $125,000. Like new Treasury Boss Ted Geithner,  he's also pleading that he really didn't understand all those tax laws he wrote and as soon as the light bulb clicked on, why, he forked over. 

Also like Ted, his forkover came only after he learned for sure Obama was about to offer him a super job with about the coolest office around and a really nice limo. Plus the authority to toss around a few billion dollars contributed by people who do pay their taxes. 

Tom and Ted each decided they better fess up because those annoying reporters might start checking little details like that.

"Daschle filed amended tax returns for 2005, 2006 and 2007 to reflect additional income for consulting work, the use of a car service and reduced deductions for charitable contributions. He filed the returns after Obama announced he intended to nominate Daschle to head the Health and Human Services Department."  (AP)

Politico did a little digging

"...Daschle pulled down a total of more than $500,000 from the speaking circuit in the last two years, and $5.3 million in overall income. That includes more than $2 million in consulting fees from InterMedia Advisors, a private equity firm."

Daschle didn't report cash income, didn't report something like a quarter-million for a personal car and driver, and decided that he didn't really give $15,000 to charity after all. 

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So Right On,  Brother Blago.  A guy can turn a senate seat into a really nice buck or two.  

St. Hoppen Change, Himself,  says all this is piddly stuff and should be ignored because former Senator Daschle is the right man to handle your health care.  "All that stuff about lilly white ethics, well, y'know, I said it in, like, I mean, when I was running, y'know, and...".

A lot of folks seem to be collecting guns and ammo and MREs against the chance of governmental disaster. 

Under uberhealthfuerher Daschle, a reserve case of KY Jelly might also be useful, speaking of forkovers.

The List (2)

A while back a list of blemished Obama appointees was tagged with a note that it was undoubtedly incomplete. Yep.

Today we read of another St. Hoppen Change appointee problem. It's a two-part deal:

1. Obama says: "No former lobbyists in the new administration get to work on deals they dealt with while lobbying."

2. Except when President Obama decides they can.

The guy in question is Billy Lynn. Obama wants him to be deputy secretary of defense. That's the guy who actually runs the Pentagon while his boss, Bob Gates, thinks great thoughts.

Lynn comes to our defense fresh from a stint lobbying for Raytheon, the fifth-largest defense contractor.  Obama says it's okay because Lynn won't deal with anything that could make Raytheon another buck or two. Hokay.

(Readers are warned against using the term "smudge" on Obamian ethical purity when referring to such peccadillos. Racist, don't you know?)

TBC.

Can't happen here

Some of our younger friends may appreciate a quick explanation of the reference to Nuremberg. 

In 1934, American journalist William L. Shirer  decided to try to understand the Nazi phenomena. He went to a National Socialist rally in the old Bavarian city and reported:

 "I was a little shocked at the faces," Shirer wrote in his diary, 'when Hitler finally appeared on the balcony for a moment. They reminded me of the crazed expressions I once saw in the back country of Louisiana on the faces of some Holy Rollers...they looked up at him as if he were a Messiah, their faces transformed into something positively inhuman'."

Adolph Hitler's tame writers labeled it "The Rally of Unity and Strength."

Obama is no Hitler. Mill-run Obama worshippers  are not NDSAP material.  But  words have meanings and ideas have consequences, so let's be wary about those who sculpt graven images to an unexplained "unity."

Fear

"Unity," the alpha word varously woven into the rhetorical excesses of the recent extravaganza on our Capitol steps ought to frighten us.

Has anyone ever seen  "unity" more perfectly expressed than in the grainy old films shot at Nuremberg in the 1930s?