At least as I see them, and admitting that I wouldn’t have been quite so optimistic as this even six months ago, is improving from a conservative viewpoint, though it will be impossible to avoid the great cost to the next couple of generations of Americans the far left controlled Democrats have wrought.

Not to mention that to be endured by those of us who probably still have two or three decades to go before we hit the exit.

I believe in the American system, and even though it seemed like that system was fading away without a whimper {Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid driving the House and Senate, each with a heavy hand and Barack Obama having brought the famously corrupt Chicago political machine with him to the White House; a triumvirate of anti-Constitutionalism and pure socialism with communist overtones and a quiet war on the morality, the sanctity of life and the sense of sovereignty enjoyed under the law by each and every state in the Union}, economy crippling, government expanding legislation like ObamaCare and Cap & Trade being forced down the gullet of a mostly unwilling population by politicians who see themselves as mandated to tell us what’s good for us whether we agree to it or not, and enforce their will by criminalizing non-compliance, the tide is turning.

I was pleasantly surprised when the Tea Party movement materialized, seeming to spring from the Townhall meeting clashes between angry voters and the very legislators responsible for their ire.

Suddenly, Americans had had enough of the bail-outs, the “stimulus” event that was nothing more than the far left trinity now ruling, with an iron fist in charge of the country blatantly stealing money from the taxpayers while also plunging us deeply into an unprecedented* thirteen trillion dollar national debt.

The American people have realized that those running the government are abusing their respective offices in order to transform our country into something no right thinking American wants it to become, and as Americans do when we are backed into a corner by our own government, we are initiating a correction.

House and Senate incumbents in both parties are getting comeuppances in primaries around the country as the Tea Partyers raise large sums of money from fed up Americans, using the donations to enlighten the voters in various districts as to what the men and women representing them in Washington have been up to and what it’s doing to their nation, to them and, later, to their children and grandchildren. “Alternative” candidates are being pushed to replace incumbents, even by their own parties. Democrats and Republicans alike.

What we’re witnessing is a bloodless revolution, friends, that will only intensify as November draws gradually closer.

No matter how hard the left wing mainstream media fights to convince We, The People that the Tea Partyers are just a bunch of racist neocons making noise, the “tea baggers” are proving them to be the effluent propagandists and liars they are, so far removed from the principled, impartial, truth respecting, responsible journalists who once set a standard that made membership in the Fourth Estate a respectable distinction, that they have become.

And now they’re on the run. The media have become so incredibly farfetched in their attempts to justify the lefties on the Hill and in the White House that they really do look stupid, and the politicians they protect and support aren’t looking much better.

A bunch of D.C. Democrat incumbents who sold out their fellow Americans, including their own constituents, by foisting the healthcare bill on us are, right out of the blue, experiencing the need to “spend more time with their families”.

Translation: They know they’ll be soundly humiliated if they run for reelection and, for their egos’ sake, are returning to the private sector.

The long and the short of it is, patriotic Americans are fighting the good fight to get our country back, and if the constantly growing voter backlash continues, the leftist element that’s taken control will be swept out for years to come, the final battle that which sends Obama packing in January, 2013 and replaces him with a president who maintains American values.

*Unprecedented; A term often used by both the incumbent president and his tame media boot lickers to accent his purportedly “magnificent accomplishments.”

First, I must say that this Erick Erickson dude really knows how to throw a punch.

This past week, the Gulf States who hoped Barack Obama would actually do something to help them were stunned when he imposed a ban on deep water offshore drilling.

It is no exaggeration to say that as much as shrimping is part of the way of life in the Gulf Coast area, oil drilling is too. Barack Obama, with the stroke of a pen, put tens of thousands of men and women on the unemployment line.

That was no act of moderation. That was an overreaction — a desire by Obama to move the narrative from “do nothing” to “do something.” He did something alright. In his zeal to turn this from his Katrina to his 9/11 with a “Never Again” moment, he destroyed an entire industry.

That was not an act of moderation. It was a desperate, selfish bid to change the narrative, despite all sorts of collateral damage.

Let hear a loud OUCH! for Obama!

The rest here.

Second, one of Seth’s fun favorites, Julia Gorin and, killing two birds with one stone where saying “farewell” is concerned, one of the best commentaries we’ve yet to read concerning the (all too) clear, departing Helen Thomas.

By occasional reader and California resident Avi Zirler:

Dear Ms. Thomas:

I saw the clip where you told the Jews of Israel to get the hell out of Palestine and go back to Poland and Germany.

Really?

Ms. Thomas, one could expect a renowned journalist of your caliber to know that about half of the population of Israel consists of Middle Eastern Jews who where forced to flee Arab countries like Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, and North Africa. The number of those Jewish refugees far exceeded the number of the so-called Palestinian refugees. Some of them, particularly the Jews of Iraq who were extremely wealthy, were brutally forced to leave their wealth behind, and their assets were confiscated by the government.

Are you suggesting that those Jews should return to the countries who tormented them? Are your Arab friends ready to take them back?

Ms. Thomas, I heard that you are an American of Lebanese descent. I am not exactly sure what gives you the right to live on a land which was taken from the Native Americans. Who gave you the permission to live here?

Thus, Ms. Thomas, I believe that you should give these damn Jews a personal example. I therefore suggest that you get the hell out of America and go back to the Middle East, where you and your anti-Semitic ideas belong and fit in.

Yours,
Avi Zirler
La Canada, CA

My only correction for Helen Thomas is that, again, it’s not “Palestine” — it’s Palestein.

– APPLAUSE for that one!

And Third, speaking of earmarks… Were we speaking of earmarks? No? Well, we are now.

These things (earmarks) have become synonymous, and rightly so, with politicians on Capital Hill stealing — that’s right, blatantly STEALING, robbing, ripping off, burgling, pickpocketing — STEALING money from the American taxpayer to reward campaign contributors and other supporters or to help one another get reelection votes in their respective districts. It’s also a pure manifestation of that unconstitutionally sinful act known as “taxation without representation”.

With a rooftop pool and 24-hour concierge service, the new luxury condominiums off Frank Sinatra Drive here seem an unlikely spot in need of a multimillion-dollar federal giveaway.

Yet U.S. taxpayers doled out at least $8 million on a public walkway and park space in front of the Maxwell Place development here overlooking the New York City skyline - an amenity the development touts alongside its entertainment lounge, rooftop hot tub and theater screening room.

But the decision to use tax dollars to fund the walkway project was made after private developers had already agreed in 2003 to pay for it - indeed, it was a key condition for getting the project off the ground, according to public records and interviews.

Still, under the so-called earmarking process, by which Capitol Hill lawmakers slip requests for pet projects into larger spending bills, Sens. Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, New Jersey Democrats, later pushed for millions of dollars in federal funding for the project.

In the swamp of federal earmark funding, $8 million isn’t a lot. But critics say the project is emblematic of why the earmark process so enrages many taxpayers.

Read on.

Have a nice day.

…for expanded management of the marketplace by a correspondingly expanded government, we are provided with one reason after another why putting all our eggs in the basket of dependency upon the competency of federal bureaucracies could only lead to disaster.

The federal agency responsible for ensuring that the Deepwater Horizon was operating safely before it exploded last month fell well short of its own policy that the rig be inspected at least once per month, an Associated Press investigation shows.

In fact, the agency’s inspection frequency on the Deepwater Horizon fell dramatically over the past five years, according to federal Minerals Management Service records.

The rig blew up April 20, killing 11 people before sinking and triggering a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Since January 2005, inspectors issued just one minor infraction for the rig. That strong track record led the agency last year to herald the Deepwater Horizon as an industry model for safety.

Now, does that inspire confidence, or what?

A summary of the inspection history that the MMS officials provided AP said the Deepwater Horizon received six “incidents of noncompliance” — the agency’s term for citations.

The most serious occurred July 16, 2002, when the rig was shut down because required pressure tests had not been conducted on parts of the rig’s blowout preventer — the device that was supposed to stop oil from gushing out if drilling operations experienced problems.

That citation was “major,” said Arnold, who characterized the overall safety record related by MMS as strong.

A citation on Sept. 19, 2002, also involved the blowout preventer. The inspector issued a warning because “problems or irregularities observed during the testing of BOP system and actions taken to remedy such problems or irregularities are not recorded in the driller’s report or referenced documents.”

During his Senate testimony last week, Transocean CEO Steven Newman said the blowout preventer was modified in 2005.

According to MMS officials, the four other citations were:

• Two on May 16, 2002, for not conducting well control drills as required and not performing “all operations in a safe and workmanlike manner.”

• One on Aug. 6, 2003, for discharging pollutants into the Gulf.

• One on March 20, 2007, which prompted inspectors to shut down some machinery because of improper electrical grounding.

Late last week, several days after providing the detailed accounting, Interior officials told AP that in fact there had been only five citations, that one had been rescinded.

The officials said they could not immediately say which of the six had been rescinded.

The agency’s problems with providing information extends to the data on display on its website. For example, the accounting of accident and incident reports is incomplete, making it very difficult to perform a thorough data analysis of the agency’s performance and preventing a full accurate tracking of safety records of the rigs.

Data problems date back at least a decade. According to John Shultz, who as a graduate student in the late 1990s studied MMS’ inspection program in depth for his dissertation, the agency’s data infrastructure was severely limited.

“The thing I regret most is that, to my knowledge, MMS has not fixed the data management problem they have,” said Shultz, who now works in the Department of Energy’s nuclear program. “If you have the data you need, the analysis becomes fairly straightforward. Without the data, you’re simply stuck with conjectures.”

Wait, let’s go back: That strong track record led the agency last year to herald the Deepwater Horizon as an industry model for safety.

Let’s face it: The majority of federal bureaucrats are where they are because there is where they can “earn” a living with good benefits and a pension without having to worry about job security due to any lack of productivity, common sense or desire to excel. Meanwhile, the folks who would actually be competent at the same jobs are out in the private sector, where competent people go when they want to make more money than the government offers.

As to the former, those are the people the left wants to place in the position of managing our lives, livelihoods and health care issues.

I can’t help wondering just what’s going through the Minds of the Media when they report that westerners, including Americans are going off to Islamofascist guerilla training compounds.

U.S. and European counterterrorism officials say a rising number of Western recruits — including Americans — are traveling to Afghanistan and Pakistan to attend paramilitary training camps. The flow of recruits has continued unabated, officials said, in spite of an intensified campaign over the past year by the CIA to eliminate al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders in drone missile attacks.

I’d bet cash money that 9 in 10 of these “westerners, including Americans”, are recent or offspring of recent immigrants from Muslim countries, like terorrists from the ’stans and the Mid-East are grouped by PC media as “Asians”.

Our good friends the Europeans, apparently easier to infiltrate in required numbers and afraid enough of the wrath of their own Muslim populations to give them plenty of deference laced elbow room, have been enjoying a goodly dose of Islam the last few years, the rioting in France, for example. Germany? Well…

European security officials have warned for many years of the threat posed by homegrown radicals who have gone to Afghanistan and Pakistan to wage jihad. Officials in some countries, such as Britain, said they have successfully cracked down on the number of would-be fighters going to South Asia. But others, such as Germany, are seeing a significant increase and struggling to contain it.

In the past, such volunteers were largely self-motivated and had to find their own way to South Asia. Today, however, al-Qaeda and its affiliates have developed extensive recruiting networks with agents on the ground in Europe, counterterrorism officials said. The agents provide guidance, money, travel routes and even letters of recommendation so the recruits can join up more easily.

In a recent report, the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service said there were a “growing number of indications” that more Europeans were attending camps in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The price, I’d say, of political correctness in the face of pure evil.

Moving right along.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. dismissed recent attacks by predecessor Dick Cheney over President Obama’s handling of the war in Afghanistan with a “who cares,” calling Mr. Cheney “absolutely wrong” to assert that the new administration was “dithering” in setting a fresh course for the conflict.

“I think that is absolutely wrong,” the vice president said of Mr. Cheney’s criticism. “I think what the administration is doing is exactly what we said it would do, and what I think it warrants doing. And that is making an informed judgment based upon circumstances that have changed … to come up with a sustainable policy that has more than one dimension.”

I don’t know, “dithering” sounds like an applicable description to me.

The vice president offered his most extensive comments to date about the White House’s internal deliberations over the Afghan conflict, saying that “to fail to sit back and reassess where we are, I think, would be absolutely imprudent.”

Good one. Just biden your time, huh, Mr. Veep?

Do you love having a bunch of people at the helm of our country who have no gameplan, no clue, not even a guess as to what to do about anything, other than to flounder in private and then try to cover up their incompetence with a lot of baseless doubletalk?

Well, if you do, welcome to the Obama Era.

…given the obvious intentions of the Obama/Pelosi/Reid dynasty to ignore the will of the American people in order to bring their own vision of a socialist country to fruition, whether or not the Tea Party’s culminating march on Washington, D.C. will ultimately effect anything.

I say this as someone who, in the past, has done at least some of my share of conservative activism, because in the past, we’ve had a government led by people who, at least minimally, remembered that their employers were the citizens of these here United States.

Now, however, we have the Obama Administration combined with a liberal-run, Democrat majority in the House and Senate who couldn’t give a rat’s ass what the people want.

After all, they reason, they know better than we do what’s good for us, and obviously that means that a socialist country is far better, in their estimation, than the free country to which we have been accustomed since our forefathers bled and died to earn us that freedom.

So a humongous number of Americans from all over gathered in D.C. on Saturday to convey to the Obama machine what it is that Americans want from their (our) leaders.

Sarah Bond’s outrage over massive deficit spending and debt is not a partisan matter for her. And it was enough to motivate her to travel from San Diego to Washington to let politicians know what she thinks.

“I’m here out of sheer frustration of spending from both parties, and this started with TARP,” Bond said, referring to the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, pushed by President George W. Bush and supported mostly by congressional Democrats.

Bond was part of a large crowd marching on Washington on Saturday. Adam Brandon, spokesman for Freedom Works Foundation, one of the main sponsors of the event, estimated the crowd at 150,000. But on Sunday, the group’s Web site estimated that hundreds of thousands of people turned out.

What do the politicians think of that?

Regardless of precise number, Bond told CNSNews.com that members of Congress “are just confused and panicking because they never had to deal with this many fiscal conservatives before.”

Well, shouldn’t that tell them something?

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) also thought the gathering represented a fundamental realignment of politics in America.

“Anybody that doesn’t recognize this is mainstream America is going to miss the boat. I hope my party, the Republicans, realize that this is not a right-wing group,” DeMint told CNSNews.com. “This is moms and dads and grandpas and grandmas. This is Democrats and independents. They just are alarmed at growth of government and debt and takeovers and the health care was just a tipping point.”

The problem, Mr. DeMint, is that while the Republicans have long been a problem where our fiscal spending is concerned, they are not in the majority on the Hill, and since the Democrats took over that majority, even moreso since Obama lied, hand on Bible, when he vowed to “protect and defend the Constitution” and assumed the Presidency, the Republicans have been continually beaten down by the folks on the left side of the aisle.

The real problem, here, is the Democrats, who are the ass boys & ass gals for the far left. Most of the Democrats on the Hill belong to those lefties, they are no longer their own people. They are the shit the far left scrapes off the bottoms of their shoes when they don’t need them for anything. Once honorable Democrat politicians now follow the corrupt, anti-America beat of the liberal drum, with only a handful of blue-dog exceptions.

Barack Hussein, Pelosi and Reid call the shots, their only ambition being to drag this country so far to port as quickly as they can that there’ll be no turning back. No matter what lies they tell us about their respect for the Constitution, the truth is that they hold that great document in profound contempt and want to grind it underneath the heel of socialism.

Which comes back to why I am not entirely convinced that the whole Tea Party thing is really going to do any good. If no one in the position to do anything about anything gives a damn what the people want, well…

George Skypeck, a Vietnam Army veteran from Accokeek, Md., said Americans are rising up as they did in the 1960s, only this time it is not the radicals who are speaking up. “The 60s radicals are now in office,” he said. “I didn’t like them then, and I don’t like them now.”

Good observation, George.

Some of the signs read, “Prosecute ACORN, Not the CIA,” “Stop Spending and Start Cutting,” “Obomunism,” “Not with My Money,” and “Adams-Madison-Jefferson: The Original Right Wing Extremists.”

Tom Hill of West Haven, Conn., held a sign reading, “Today’s State Controlled Media,” calling ABC News the “All Barack Channel,” CNN the “Counterfeit News Network,” NBC News “Nothing But Crap” and CBS News “Controlled By State.”

BRAVO!!!!

Now let’s hope I’m wrong, or just one of those yees of little faith, and the sheer numbers of conservatives who participated have made some kind of difference.

…one being about a country and its leader, specifically the leader, upon whom so many of our misguided, stupid, lefty toilet cake Hollywood buffoons fawn with the leg trembling worship of the garden variety MSM “reporter” drooling on the feet of an Obama.

I have a few personal reasons I won’t get into just now for despising that G-d forsaken country, one that would allow a Hugo Chavez and his commie goons to come to power to begin with, but what goes on there is a pure insult to all of humanity.

Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, rebuffed by voters in his previous attempt to become president for life, has now taken a giant step closer to his goal. A reported 54.4 percent of voters approved a referendum on Feb. 15 that would permit Chavez to run for re-election indefinitely. It was the sort of “election” we remember from the communist days — or see today in Zimbabwe. According to the Economist: “Public buildings and vehicles were plastered with pro-Chavez propaganda. State television and radio channels turned over almost their entire resources to promoting the campaign. And even the Caracas metro obliged passengers to listen to campaign jingles.” In 2007, opposition to Chavez’s power grab was led by students. But this time, Chavez ordered that demonstrations against the referendum were to be broken up “with a good dose of gas.”

Now, a triumphant Chavez declares, the way is clear to lead Venezuela to “21st century socialism.” We know what Chavez means by this. He has been implementing his socialism, which is barely distinguishable from Castro’s, since 1999. Freedom of the press is a memory in Venezuela. Newspapers and electronic media that opposed Chavez have been harassed. The 2004 “Law on the Social Responsibility of Radio and Television” requires all outlets to carry Chavez’s speeches in full, contains penalties for a variety of offenses and insults, and permits licenses to be revoked for a second offense. Globovision, a private 24-hour cable news channel, was recently accused of insulting Chavez. Pro-Chavez legislators have urged the attorney general to investigate. Meanwhile, thugs linked to the government lobbed tear gas canisters into the newsroom. RCTV, the second largest television channel in the country, was closed down altogether in 2007.

Read Mona Charen’s entire column here.

Another item is the latest column by Ann Coulter, of whom I can never get enough.

Six months after America’s all-time greatest president left office in 1989, historians ranked him as only a middling president. (I would rank George Washington as America’s greatest president, but he only had to defeat what was then the world’s greatest military power with a ragtag group of irregulars and some squirrel guns, whereas Ronald Reagan had to defeat liberals.)

At the time, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. dismissed Reagan as “a nice, old uncle, who comes in and all the kids are glad to see him. He sits around telling stories, and they’re all fond of him, but they don’t take him too seriously” — and then Schlesinger fell asleep in his soup.

Even liberal historian Richard Reeves blanched at Reagan’s low ranking in 1989, saying, “I was no fan of Reagan, but I think I know a leader when I see one.”

Reagan changed the country, Reeves said, and some would say “he changed the world, making communism irrelevant and the globe safe for the new imperialism of free-market capitalism.” In Reeves’ most inspiring line, he says Reagan “was a man of conservative principle and he damned near destroyed American liberalism.”

Truncating a bit…

Soon after he took office, President Reagan famously hung a portrait of President Calvin Coolidge in the Cabinet Room — another (Republican) president considered a failure by historians.

Coolidge cut taxes, didn’t get the country in any wars, cut the national debt almost in half, and presided over a calm, scandal-free administration, a period of peace, 17.5 percent growth in the gross national product, low inflation (.4 percent) and low unemployment (3.6 percent).

Unlike some recent presidents with Islamic middle names, he didn’t run around comparing himself to Lincoln constantly.

I know I promised not to throw any rocks at the “recent president with the Islamic middle name”, but — wait, it’s not me who’s throwing the rocks, it’s… it’s… one of my favorite author/ columnists.

Anyway, the entire piece is a good read, so it would behoove any and all to take the time to read it.

And finally, I know this issue has been receiving its share of flogging in recent weeks and months (and years, though one would think, by the way the linked article puts it, that it has only been of concern for the last couple of weeks). Howsomever…it’s actually been an issue ever since liberal talk radio began to realize that no one wanted to hear their blathering, commie malarkey while Americans had and have their ears glued to conservative talk radio. According to the rules of a free market, the liberal dudes and dudettes had to be dropped because no sponsor wants to waste money running ads during a program that no one is listening to.

An Obama senior adviser has indicated that the administration is mulling whether the controversial Fairness Doctrine will get a new lease on life, according to a report in Broadcasting and Cable.

The now defunct Fairness Doctrine, if revived, could be used by a liberal administration to silence Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other radio talk show hosts, as well as much of the new alternative media. The doctrine required broadcasters to report both sides of controversial issues. The Federal Communications Commission dropped it in 1987.

And now…

“Senator Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters,” press secretary Michael Ortiz said in an e-mail to Broadcasting and Cable at that time.

“He considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible,” Ortiz said.

Hmmmm, opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible sounds to me like a somewhat left-handed method of saying one doesn’t support the fairness doctrine but supports the fairness doctrine just the same. It would certainly be a pleasant change if these people would just come out and speak their minds, but heaven knows, telling the American people the truth about their actual intentions might receive a largely negative response.

Yeah, better to mince a few words than just say what you mean, you “progressives”, you…

Of course, Bubba weighs in:

Last week on a radio show, former President Bill Clinton announced that in his opinion something needed to be done to balance broadcasting.

How about broadcasting some patriotic programming, instead of left wing garbage put forth for the sole purpose of tearing our great nation down?

“Well, you either ought to have the fairness doctrine or you ought to have more balance on the other side,” Clinton said, “because essentially there has always been a lot of big money to support the right wing talk shows.”

Big money tends to support winners, Mr. Bill, at least smart big money does. This ain’t Utopia. In the competitive game of the free market, the losers have to work a little harder to run with the winners, and do so without a Mom & Dad government interfering on their behalf.

If you want the kind of government you left wing folks are trying to force on us, I suggest you abandon your plans and, instead, move here, where you’ll get exactly what you’re asking for, because the rest of us just won’t be having any of what you’re peddling.

To the rest of you, have a wonderful day, breathing the freedom laced air of America.

Thanks, all, for your good wishes, prayers and comments after Wolf’s 6 Dec 2008 post.

I have been “cleared” to post a bit, as opposed to laying low while Wolf and his friends try to work out a permanent solution to a problem that has come up to CONUS from the hell hole I visited in late November (well, a small part of it was a visit, the rest was as a profoundly reluctant guest), in the form of some spooks who wish to pursue certain topics we never quite got through discussing to their satisfaction when I was previously in their clutches.

Theoretically, I argued, even if these miscreants know about Hard Astarboard, they can’t read a post and determine where it was posted from. I hope.

Safehouse-wise, newspapers, TV and radio abound, and luckily, one is not cut off from news, or, at least, from the dubious offerings put forth by the MSM.

I find it pretty interesting that our new president, Obama, is already starting to tick off some of those that rooted vociferously for him during election season. The Muzzies were vocal about the fact that he didn’t throw his all behind Hamas and condemn the Israelis for defending themselves by finally invading the Gaza Strip. I myself was surprised when he made remarks that people, referring to the Israelis, have a right to defend themselves, knowing that, along with Irreverend Wright, he has previously taken a strong pro-Hamas/ pro-Palestinian stance.

After the NYT railed against Camp Delta, down yonder at GITMO, as Torture Central and, in complete agreement with Obama, whom they worshipped as the true messiah during his campaign, believed the place should be closed down, well…

…now that Obama has ordered that the incarceratory complex there be shut down, the Grey Lady of the Left has this to say.

First they claimed that GITMO is illegally/illicitly holding all sorts of innocent, misunderstood, nice, right neighborly folks, mis-identified as terrorists/ enemy combatants, etc, now that their hero the Messiah is President and has decreed that GITMO be de-prisonered, they abruptly admit that Said Ali al-Shihri, a GITMO releasee, is a terrorist whose release enabled him to do further damage as such.

I foresee a lot of unforeseen turmoil between Obama and a whole passel o’ folks on his side of the aisle in the next couple of years, I think mainly because the new president is out to prove that he’s his own man and will attempt to do so by going against the policy preferences of his own side from time to time.

I agree with Wolf that we need to give Obama a chance, no matter what we think of him, his beliefs or his policies. He was elected by the majority of the voting public. The way the liberals went after Bush from the minute he was elected was both disgraceful and, to my way of thinking, just a bit treasonous, and I’d hate to think that any conservative, whom I would expect to remain a true American, would thus badmouth the chief executive officer of the United States of America. Leave that to the liberals, they have neither the grace, the maturity nor the class to behave like adults when they don’t get their way politically.

So I’ll just sit back and watch, and see how things develop as a result of the policies of the Obama Administration and its relationship with the Democrat majority in the House and the Senate.

The new president is already in the midst of reversing a whole slew of Bush Administration policies, and these include a few that are centered around the 2nd Amendment, such as the still pending legislature on the right to carry firearms in our national parks. Obama wishes that all still pending policies be put on hold for “review” by himself and his cabinet.

All this in less than a week. Hmmmm.

Sarah Palin makes a true and verifiable reference to Obama’s past association with a devoted commie, one who was the liberal presidential candidate’s mentor at the time, and the lefty media goes haywire, accusing the Republican VP candidate of underhanded, nasty mudslinging.

In other words, inconvenient truths are anathema when they concern a Democrat.

If a Democrat called a Republican a “shit eating baby rapist”, the media would see no problem, would probably applaud the Democrat’s boldness and plain spokenness. If the same Republican, however, said that the offending Democrat “is not a nice person”, the same media would scream that the Republican was resorting to sleazy innuendo to besmirch the good name of the Democrat.

Hypocrisy reigns to the left of the aisle.

Wolf

Wolf here.

The article at the link below is one I found to be of interest, as in years gone by I had occasion to use the venerable weapon discussed about half a dozen times and believe it an asset to any grunt force that is graced with its issuance.

Shooters, enjoy.

http://www.military.com/news/article/the-ultimate-battle-rifle.html

Moving on, a column by Chuck Norris that’s worth the read:

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28787

In a so-called age of tolerance, it amazes me just how intolerant some people are of those who stand for traditional values. For example, if I stand against California’s memorializing of Harvey Milk Day or stand for California’s Proposition 8, which would create an amendment to the California Constitution to safeguard heterosexual purity in marriage (which I do support and encourage Gov. Schwarzenegger and all Californians to do the same), I’m considered by many to be intolerant and a bigot. But if another actor takes just the opposite positions on those measures, he is considered to be compassionate and a liberator. Or when a liberal candidate, such as Hillary Clinton, runs for president, her candidacy is considered a fulfillment of civil rights and women’s suffrage. But when a conservative candidate, such as Sarah Palin, runs for vice president, she’s considered a radical right-wing extremist who could usurp the Capitol by toting rifles at her side.

This is America, and we should respect the fact that we will have strong, diverse opinions, and we must allow one another the freedom of speech to air such opines, not suppress them through peer pressure of any type like children. I have many acting friends and many friends in politics. I vehemently disagree with some of them, and that is my American right, as it is theirs. We must agree to disagree agreeably, without blogging about or denigrating someone’s life and character before the nation and rest of the world. We must do better at keeping the focus on the fact that we are Americans first; we are not just conservatives and liberals.

Much as I hate to sound intolerant myself, I have to say that like Chuck, I am intolerant of intolerance by those who endorse tolerance only when it is directed toward their own beliefs, no matter how farfetched or downright off the charts they may be, yet see nothing wrong with denying the rest of us the right to express our own, dissenting, points of view.

This is one of the biggest anti-American traits demonstrated by so called “progressives” in our society, a trait more in line with communist dictum than with the First Amendment rights granted all Americans, not just those embracing liberal beliefs.

Liberal/leftist seepage into the Democratic party in my lifetime has waterlogged the folks on the far side of the aisle with some kind of phobia of the contents to be found among the articles of the U.S. Constitution, and this has reached the point of becoming a free-for-all over there.

What else would explain the Democrats’ wanting to make federal issues of agendas like gay “rights” or of their offering up a creature like Barack Obama as a presidential candidate?

– Wolf

Just a few observations.

While quite a few (an understatement) people drive their personal vehicles in New York, most Manhattanites don’t even own cars because a) N.Y.C. has an excellent public transportation system, arguably the best in the country, b) a guaranteed parking place costs thousands of dollars a year and there are often long waiting lists for same and c) who wants to spend half ones time in traffic gridlock, anyway?

To make up for the usual car owner’s status pecking order, there are…Baby strollers.

A $70.00 Combi might replace a Saturn, while a $900.00 Bugaboo might be another woman’s (and baby’s) Mercedes. A lot is based upon design, storage space (yes, a house wife or her husband might need to pick up a few things, maybe some groceries or whatever, and take baby along for the “ride”, so places to stash the purchases aboard the toddler’s personal vehicle are a plus, as opposed to having to carry a grocery bag and control the stroller at the same time).

I can just imagne the conversations that take place:

Barb: Oh, did you see the new Stokke Xplory Marilyn just bought for little Davey? Eleven hundred dollars!

Harriet: Yes, it’s a dream! And right after Connie picked up that $900.00 Orbit Baby Travel System. Just in time for spring, too.

Barb: I hear Fred’s out of work, and it shows. Mabel’s been pushing Deanna around in that same old $400.00 McLaren she bought two years ago.

Harriet: Oh, that’s so dreadful! How embarrassing that must be for poor Mabel!

******

From a recent column by Mona Charen,

Administrators at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis had seemed to be vying for the title of most ludicrous educators in America. The story began when a student, Keith John Sampson, who worked in the university’s janitorial department, was seen reading the book “Notre Dame Vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan” in the break room. Sampson was notified by the university’s Affirmative Action Office that he had committed the offense of “racial harassment.” He protested that the book lauded the Notre Dame students who had taken on the Klan in 1924. Never mind, said Lillian Charleston, the AAO director. By “openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject,” he had violated university policy.

The university has since reversed itself and expressed “regret that this situation took place.” But consider the fascist environment the PC police have created. That the student felt constrained to defend the book’s content as politically acceptable is an outrage in itself that goes to the heart of academic freedom. Welcome to an America where you must glance over your shoulder to wonder whether your co-workers will inform on you for reading forbidden matter!

Read the entire column here.

******

Go to Chinatown. Ask for Cane. He can help.

He sure couldn’t have helped one hapless little Italian fashion photographer and the model with whom he was doing a shoot yesterday, in the late afternoon rain at the intersection of Chinatown’s Grand and Christie Streets.

I was passing by on my way to the B and D trains’ subway station over there and had to stop and watch.

The model, a tall, thin (aren’t they all!), attractive woman with a familiar face (I’ve seen her picture someplace before, but not being one to care one way or another about such celebrities, I haven’t the faintest idea who she was), was wearing a slinky, silver silk dress and holding up a grey fur coat. The photographer wanted her to walk towards him across the street, but only while there was a walk sign so she could be moving along with the pedestrian flow.

Obviously, he didn’t know Chinatown.

Chinatown here in N.Y. is a densely crowded, fast moving, busy place whose denizens have no brief but for their own day-to-day activities, and no one paid the slightest attention to the model. Everytime the walk sign appeared, she began crossing the street and was immediately engulfed in throngs of other pedestrians headed the same and opposite ways, jostling her, cutting in front of her and generally making it impossible for the photographer to get the shots he wanted.

But he was determined and they kept trying over and over, to no avail.

Seeing the amused grin on my face and having himself picked up on what was going on, a young Chinese man smirked at me and said, “This guy doesn’t seem to know he’s in Chinatown.”

Finally, I shook my head and continued on to the subway station, wondering how many dozen additional attempts it would take before the photographer finally gave up and relocated to Broadway or someplace…