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August 2009 (Best viewed with a mind not clouded by the Kool-Aid)

I work with a guy who sees conspiracy everywhere. So, naturally, we mess with him.

I created an e-mail that looked like it had been forwarded dozens of times. You've seen them. "Normally I don't send around stuff like this, but . . . " and "I checked this on snopes, and it's true!" and "You have to make a decision. Are you going to forward this to people you care about, or do you want kittens and small children to die, you unfeeling piece of crap?"

In the fabricated e-mail ("hoax" is such an ugly word) I quoted the scripture in Revelations 13 about the anti-Christ and six hundred three score and six. I said that the scripture said it was the number of a man, but what does that mean? Then I said that although Obama had no 666 numbers associated with him, Rahm Emmanuel was born on April 6, 1966!

Anybody could spend two seconds on Google and could find out that's not true. But anyone who would check the facts wouldn't be vulnerable to that sort of crap, anyway.

We waited to see what he would do. Nothing. He didn't bite at all. Normally he'll stand in the doorway every day or so and expound on the latest conspiracy the government's up to (What? I don't know, maybe he signed up to get on their conspiracy newsletter mailing list. Transparency in government and all that.) Nothing about Rahm Emmanuel being the anti-Christ.

So we needed another hoax. We kicked around this one (which isn't half bad): "You won't believe this. My brother-in-law is a contractor. He was doing demolition of a commercial building and asked if I wanted any small cameras. Yeah, it turns out all the urinals have cameras built-in to what you think is just the automatic flushing mechanism, so the government can do statistical studies. (I checked this on snopes and it's true!)"

Finally we decided on making up something about the government using your cell phone microphone to eavesdrop on you, even if you aren't talking on it.

But before we could implement that one I ended up in a car with this guy driving to Salt Lake on business. On the way he enlightened me all about how the government uses your cell phone as a microphone to eavesdrop on all your daily activities.

Seriously.

But that wasn't all. He also told me that during Desert Storm our military took over all the broadcasting in Iraq. They sent out signals that made the soldiers depressed and want to give up. (If you were an Iraqi I think the sight of all that US Military might would depress you and make you want to give up.) I guess government scientists have discovered some ultrasonic frequency or something that they can broadcast to control the public. He figured that's why they were pushing the digital converter boxes so hard.

So I guess we won't be doing any more conspiracy hoaxes. My imagination is no match for his.

Call me crazy, but he might have gotten one right. I'll guarantee you, if you want a sure-fire way to make the public stupid, television is your best bet.

I know, I know. There is nothing more sanctimonious than someone who says they don't watch TV. But you know it's true. Television is a vast waste land. Minnow called it nearly 50 years ago.

So when they were warning us that analog TV was going away on June 12th, I didn't rush out and buy a converter box. I wanted to see what life without TV was like. I figured on June 13th I'd be dashing to the electronics counter in Wal-Mart, begging them for a converter box, no matter what the price.

But I didn't. I haven't missed it. My brother gave me a converter box a month ago, and it's sat unopened on top of the entertainment center.

I may just be like the celibate priest—I just don't know what I'm missing. But I think it's more like the drug addict who's cleaned up. When I travel on business I walk into the hotel room, set down my luggage, then grab the remote for the TV,* just like you're supposed to do. Hey, I don’t' make the rules, but as a law abiding citizen I'm committed to follow them.

And I'm amazed. If anything TV has gotten worse since June 12th. I stare at it and wonder "How did I ever sit through this inane garbage?"

Seriously, it's a drug. Now that I'm clean and sober I can see it. "That's not funny, you just stuck a laugh track on there. And you call that news? That's not news, at best it's your opinion. At worst it's pure propaganda."

But I'm not suggesting you quit watching TV. I'm just offering my services as a reality check. Use me as your BS detector. If you ever find yourself thinking "Well, if it weren't true, why would Bill Maher say it?" just turn off the TV, log on to Leany.com, and get your dose of brain cleaner.

No charge.

---

*I don't immediately grab the remote. First I grab the hand sanitizer from my bag and clean off the remote. I've done that ever since I was lying in bed in a hotel watching TV, I went to the main menu and the very first item was "Adult Movies." I looked at the menu, then looked at the remote in my hand, then dropped it and washed my hands. Ever since I made that connection I sanitize the remote before I do anything else.

When you go to a doctor he tries to heal you, but you have to do your part. The Plavix isn't going to do you any good if you still eat that artery clogging diet.

What I'm saying is DO NOT watch Bill Maher. If you're watching that kind of crap, I can't help you. Nobody can. At that point it's time to yank the co-ax out of the wall and deal with the DTs.

I can help you with the standard, mind-numbing network stuff. But this service does have its limits.

The concept of subliminal control is always intriguing. Could something be right in front of your face that you're not aware of? My dad talked about the Navajo culture that existed right inside our culture and we weren't really aware of it. (Unless you have experience with it, you have no idea what I'm talking about). A better example would be the posters at the mall that you have to soft-focus on to see the hidden 3D picture. It's there, you just have to know how to see it. It's like the ultraviolet detectors CSI uses to find evidence not visible to the naked eye.

That's why codes are so fascinating. You've got a page of text that everyone can read, but it has a hidden meaning to the guy who has the key.

Okay, hold that thought. We're going to look at something else real quick. I don't have a good name for it, but it's the unseen flip-side. Once my dad wrecked his bike on his mission. He was worried that the rental place was going to be mad for the damage. That's the side you see. I damaged the bike, I'm going to be in trouble. His companion said, let me handle this. His companion dressed down the rental place for renting them an unsafe bike and it's a good thing this guy wasn't injured on your bike that was unsafe or you'd be in real trouble.

See how that works?

You see it all the time. It's like when that guy gave Glenn Beck the statistic about 95% percent of the lawsuits are won by the doctors. He used it to support his case, but it actually supported Glenn's. It's like the stats that Chris posts to prove that Obama is infallible that actually show what a screw-up he is. It's like when my daughter chose the same cell phone her friend had. I thought it was cool. Her friend said it was "creepy" that they had the same phone. That's the idea. Two people looking at the same thing, seeing two different things.

Okay, remember the thought you were holding? You forgot, didn't you? It was about hidden things, like subliminal frequencies and codes and such. So, because I'm hard of hearing, there's stuff going on right around me that I'm not aware of. Bummer, huh? No, but let's look at it from the other side; see if we can use it to our advantage.

What all this rambling is leading to is this: Remember that frequency that only kids can hear? They use it as a ring-tone so the teachers don't know they're texting each other. You might think "Okay, so that's a technology that benefits them but not us." Someone figured out that you can use that frequency as a mosquito repellant to get rid of teenagers.

To see at what frequency your sound drops out take this handy hearing test.

You remember how I compared the pressure to hurry and pass socialized medicine to a sleazy car dealer? Well Linda Chavez made the same observation in her article Who's Un-American?

Why the rush? The way the Democrats are selling health care reform feels a lot like a car dealer desperate to make a sale. The salesman shows you a shiny new model and tells you that you can drive it off the lot today, no money down, and you won't have to pay a penny until sometime in the distant future. What's more, he'll give you a great deal as a trade in on your reliable existing car.

But the offer is only good if you make the decision on the spot. And, he doesn't have a copy of the actual contract so that you can read it before signing, but, not to worry, you can trust him.

Someone has a better picture of this ad that was on KSL.com a few years ago. It's a classic.

This bike is perfect! It has 1000 miles and has had its 500 mile dealer service (Expensive) It's been adult ridden; all wheels have always been on the ground. I use it as a cruiser/commuter. I'm selling it because it was purchased without proper consent of a loving wife. Apparently "do whatever the **** you want" doesn't mean what I thought.

Here's an article about it.

This is old news, but the point that struck me when I heard it was the classic "liberal accusing you of the thing he's guilty of." So Obama gets up and starts talking about "death panels.' Objection: Inflammatory. Also, straw man. They take a legitimate concern and characterize it in an inflammatory way as "death panels."

That's a typical liberal trick. You don't want to increase spending for a worthless program to pay lip service to childhood insurance, they characterize it as you wanting to kill children.

But it went deeper than that. To the informed (meaning the reader of Leany on Life) it was Obama tipping his hand. "Death panels! How ridiculous. That's absurd!" Translation: sure, we have death panels.

Obama has reinstated a VA program that encourages veterans to take a look at whether their life is worth living. Robert Pearlman, a proponent of assisted suicide, has authored a book called Your Life Your Choices that has you rank various aspects of your life to see if you should stay alive.

Here's an exchange between Mike Wallace and some Obama chick who claims she doesn't know anything about what's clearly written.

WALLACE: I just — I have a problem here. And too often on these shows we say one person said, and another person said.

Secretary Duckworth, I don't know if we're able in the control room to put up the first — the full screen of the VHA directive, but I'd like you to put up the first full screen, if you can.

In the VHA directive of July 2nd, 2009, it says the following on page 8, "Primary care practitioners are responsible for giving patients pertinent educational materials, e.g. refer patients to the 'Your Life, Your Choices' module." I mean, it's just there in black and white on the VHA directive of July 2nd.

DUCKWORTH: Chris, I — I'm sorry, I can't see that on the monitor in here. I will tell you that I know for a fact that the only directive signed by Secretary Shinseki — I mean, signed by a V.A. secretary was actually signed by Secretary Nicholson, and it's dated February of 2007

If you find yourself in a fair fight your tactics suck.

I had a friend who was lamenting to me about her alcoholic husband. She was telling me that her marriage would be great except for his alcoholism. If only he didn't have that problem . . .

A couple of years later she was divorced.

But she didn't divorce the guy because of his drinking. Shortly after she talked to me her husband had cleaned himself up and quit drinking. 'Turns out the guy was as big of a schmuck sober as he was drunk.

The drinking was her "If only." That's the main service that Monica provided for Bill. She gave him his "If only." If only it weren't for that whole Monica Lewinsky thing . . . If only . . . it might have been a decent presidency.

No, it still would've been a disaster. You just wouldn't have anything to blame it on.

That's what happened to JFK. What did he accomplish? Not all that much . . . but . . . If only he hadn't been assassinated . . . He's revered because of that.

So the alcoholic husband, who is a schmuck drunk or sober, is a better example of Gibbs' role. If only Gibbs weren't such a nincompoop, Obama wouldn't look so bad. He's so inept that you subconsciously discount a lot of the crap that you hear coming out of his mouth, when it really is an accurate depiction of the incompetence of this White House.

I don't want to shock you, but I wasn't that big of a fan of Ted Kennedy. No, no, it's true. I'm sorry, but for some reason he wasn't on my list of the greatest American heroes of all time.

But his body isn't even cold yet (not that it needs to be refrigerated, because it's well-pickled--did I say that?) and I'm inclined to allow a respectable period of truce just out of decency.

But this is like I said about the gays. I'm happy to leave them alone to do what they want. But when they start getting in our face, they're pushing their luck. And you can bet your house cat, your outhouse, and your favorite pair of boots that we're not going to sit still and take it once they start bashing a beauty queen with a killer body.

So I'm willing to let you have your period of mourning for Kennedy. That's fine. History will paint Kennedy as the most unredeemable scoundrel ever, regardless of what's said about him the week after his death. We were ready to wait a respectable period before we started telling the story of the real Teddy Kennedy. But the demorats aren't classy enough to mourn the death of a human being without trying to use it as a tool to impose their evil on America.

They've got to try to characterize him as the greatest thing that ever happened to America. (A pretty good filter to see if you have a functioning brain would be to ask "Do you think America is great because of Ted Kennedy or in spite of Ted Kennedy.) It's like my dad told me once after a funeral. "There are always nice things you can say about somebody without resorting to lying."

As we predicted, they are saying that Kennedy's death is a mandate for passing socialized medicine. Maybe after the actual funeral they could explain the logic of that. I can't imagine what it's like to be one of the hypnotized masses glued to the boob tube. I refused to buy a converter box for my TV and the few minutes I hear on the radio every day are enough to make me puke.

I'm reminded of an event George Lopez put on where he got the Bloods and the Crips together in one auditorium for a comedy show. He was talking about how great it was, what a step towards peace it was, how wonderful that they could all be together for one night without fighting. "But we ran everybody through a metal detector, 'cause we ain't stupid!" he said.

So we understand that you want to eulogize Kennedy. But we ain't stupid. You start painting this drunken coward as some kind of American hero, a man our children should emulate, and a reason to impose socialism on us, you can stuff all the protocols. Let the bashing begin.

My favorite is when The Hero of Chappaquidick was moralizing to Judge Alito. I think they said he was a member of a club that excluded women or some such deal. It doesn't matter. Kennedy was lecturing him about morals and virtue.

Hold on. Hold on. I know Kennedy lecturing anyone about morals is a guaranteed way to make you blow snot bubbles. But that's not the punch line. The very week Kennedy was sermonizing to a man he didn't deserve to be in the same room with, the story was made public that he had an illegitimate son. He had been paying the kid's mother for twenty-one years to keep the thing a secret.

While still married to his wife Joan, he was having an affair with Caroline Bilodeau. He got her pregnant and she had a son, Christopher, in 1984. For all these years he was paying her to keep it a secret. But once he figured he could lecture Alito on morals, it was time to let the cat out of the bag.

Some pictures surfaced of Kennedy on his sailboat getting . . . uh . . . intimate with a woman who wasn't technically his lawfully wedded wife. Senator Howell Heflin told Kennedy that it looked like he "had done changed his position on offshore drilling."

(Yes, those pictures are available. No, I won't post them.)

Ted Kennedy's dead. Now it all starts. Forget the facts and issues, we have to pass socialized medicine to honor his name. It's going to be a circus.

The best encapsulation of the demorats' view of reality happened this morning when media lunatic and Obama man-crush Chris Matthews said " . . . the torch has been passed. Barack is the last brother."

Screaming with laughter!

That's it. In a few words or less, that's the perfect illustration of the demorats' complete congnitive disconnect. Just say it and, Bing! It magically becomes true. Reality is no different from a fairy tale.

So Clinton was the first black president. Barack Obama is one of Joe Kennedy's sons.

Oh, yeah, and you get to keep your insurance carrier.

I am the sexiest man alive. No, I am. It's a simple fact.

"It is an indisputable fact" that if you exclude all the men who are sexier than me (who are alive), then I am the sexiest man alive.

You may be wondering what in the name of Richard Q. Petty I'm talking about.

I'm talking about Keith Olbermann, who has less viewers than Dell Schanze's late night paid programming. Glenn Beck has more viewers than Olbermutt, Chris Man-crush Matthews, and the Y-chromosome owner Rachel Maddow combined. But Olberhonkey says that--if you don't count Fox News--among 35 year old males who live with their mother, he is the highest rated cable news show.

Just hilarious. It's perfect. Hey, if Obama gets to be Ted Kennedy's brother, why not?

LMAO

I wonder if that's going to make it into Olbermann's Dickipedia entry.

I'm just cleaning out the accumulation here. This is why I shouldn't listen to the radio. I get fired up, the issues seem really critical and I jot down my thoughts. A month later when I get around to working them into a post, they seem a whole lot less consequential.

But you know the rules. Once I jot down an opinion I have to bore you with it.

What had me fired up (so long ago) was just some harmless silliness about a beauty contestant with implants is getting trashed in the media. Hey, it's like the liberals are saying: It's just some chick, right? She's just a brainless beauty queen, she has plastic boobs. And she's a conservative! Not really even a person, to speak of. It's a victimless crime!

This is what struck me—this is what sent blood shooting out of my jugular. Apparently some Christian organization is using Miss California as an example of a sensible young woman with the courage to express her opinion. So some blowhard nobody comes along (he's such a nobody I can't even find the quote I heard on the radio). He got hold of a microphone and proclaimed how shameful it was that this group was "Ruining the life of a young girl for their own purposes."

What? Sputter . . . gasp . . . of all the . . . !

Wow. You will never see a better example of what I told you: To find out what an evil person is guilty of, simply look at what they're accusing somebody else of.

I'm astonished that this idiot didn't warp into an alternate dimension of the universe just from the sheer shock of the irony.

Well, anyway, the upshot of this whole thing was that they took away her crown for expressing a non-sanctioned opinion.

Okay, if you're gay, you think that's a great thing. How dare someone think in a way that you don't approve of! You think she got just what she deserved. The nerve of her, believing that marriage is between a man and a woman! She should have been stoned on the spot!

Hold that thought.

Teddy Kennedy's going to be dead soon. Whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, that's a fact.

When Ted Kennedy dies there will be a vacant senate seat in Massachusetts. So the democrats are trying to get a law passed in Massachusetts that says the governor appoints the senator to fill a seat that's been vacated in the middle of a term.

That's fine. A state gets to make its own rules about that. Wait. What's that? Hold on, this just in:

Massachusetts law always was that the governor got to choose the senator in that situation. Only when (Republican) Mitt Romney was governor the democrats changed the law so the governor couldn't choose. That one came back to bite them.

In a democracy you have to be careful of the power you give the group that's in charge, because sooner or later another group's going to be in charge.

Those of you who think Carrie Prejean got what she deserved might want to think about that for a minute. It wasn't always fashionable to be queer. If you turn the power over to mob rule the day might come when you're not in the mob anymore.

Obviously, the reason the Miss California thing made my head explode was the whole thought control thing. I've read "1984" (fiction) and "To Destroy You is no Loss" (fact), and The Killing Fields" (fact).

This is the old Stalin technique. To control a million lives you just have to destroy one. It's what Shelby Steele was talking about in his article on the power of shaming one person when trying to control a group. It's what Obama engaged in when a concerned citizen called 911 trying to protect someone's home. It's what his minions engaged in when they smeared Joe the Plumber with his tacit approval.

Miss California stripped of her title for having an opinion. Listen up, anyone who's thinking about expressing your own opinion. Do you want that to happen to you?

But honestly, it's like a bunch of yapping little dogs. Annoying but not really menacing. Is that all you've got? Carrie Prejean, like Joe the Plumber (whose real name is Samuel (gasp!) and who isn't a licensed plumber), is an unlikely hero in our war against the totalitarian mind control crowd.

Who won the Miss America pageant this year? You don't know. Nobody does. You can't tell me without asking Uncle Google. Everyone knows who Carrie Prejean is. Big freaking deal, you took away her crown. Now what are you going to do?

The theory is good, but people are cluing in to the fact that the Stalinistic techniques of the powerless just can't hurt us.

None less than the President of the United States is engaging in this, laughing it up in public over a joke about Rush Limbaugh dying.

That's harmless. Hey, it's only Rush Limbaugh. It's practically a victimless crime. No reason to be worried about the most powerful man in the world getting his jollies over the thought of the death of those that disagree with him.

(ed. note: Wanda Sykes "joke" that she hopes he dies of kidney failure—that's the problem with topical issues. After one week no one knows what you're talking about.)

Holy crap, haven't we exhausted this topic yet? I'm still plowing through notes on it. Oh, well, I guess I can take it if you can.

Look, gays can get married. To say they don't have the rights everyone else does is a deliberate perversion of the argument (word chosen on purpose, just like "plantation"). That is to say, it's a lie. They are free to marry, just like anyone else. Maybe they can't marry each other, but they can boink all they want. Boo-freaking hoo.

Do they seriously believe their preferences are the only ones that have limitations imposed?

Look, and I do mean look, here's my limitation:

When you're looking for an excuse any one is as good as any other. And a discussion of out-of-control liberalism is as good an excuse as any to post a picture of this bombshell. It should be a legal requirement for any woman as hot as that to submit to my every wish. Who's carrying the banner for that legislation?

Do you honestly think you're the only ones that have urges that are improper to act out? Get back to me when your troubles are equivalent to the pain of millions of gorgeous women being forbidden by some cultural norm from experiencing the Glory of Frank.

Of course, If I were a liberal it would be perfectly legal to use a woman for my own purposes. That's what the liberals did with Carrie Prejean.

And that's the point of today's diatribe. It's a free country. You're perfectly free to pollute the airwaves with your demands that a celebrity with D-cups be prohibited from speaking unless she agrees with you.

Just don't call yourself a "liberal."

These people are not liberals. Clinton is the classic example, destroying decades of Women's Rights efforts. These people are the same thing.

This is the quintessential example of the democrats being the least democratic of parties. You are not allowed to have an opinion or belief that differs from the prescribed party line. Even if you are in the majority, you cannot stray from the plantation.

So call yourselves progressives, or socialists, or fascists. But don't call yourself liberals.

"Liberal" thinking tolerates a variety of opinions.

Gee whiz. Don’t put a quarter in the machine unless you're ready to listen to the whole song.

Speaking of proper nomenclature, we would rather people not use the word "homophobe." Please, call me a bigot instead. Anything–phobe is so inactive. It implies I just have a clinical fear of it. I don't. I made a choice to actively oppose it.

So call me a bigot, but understand this: You drew first blood.

I used to have a small fridge under my desk. It was very handy. I didn't have to deal with anyone stealing my food or spilling Coke in my fridge or leaving onion-smelling dishes uncovered in there.

Then one day Frank (no relation), the dumbest man in the company, bought himself a fridge on the company credit card. He paraded his new fridge through the plant and back to his lab. The next day 'Joe' went around to everyone in the plant who had a fridge and made them get rid of it. It turns out it was against company policy to have personal fridges. It always had been, but it had never been an issue until Frank pushed it in everyone's face.

Same thing with gays. I'd be glad to leave them alone. The only reason I'm actively opposed to them is because they're attacking me. I'd be happy to never mention it again.

But when you start attacking my right to have an opinion, you're damn right I'm going to war against you.

I was attending a meeting where the speaker was talking about how horrible it was that people could be opposed to "immigration."

I don't know what he was talking about. Nobody's opposed to immigration. I wonder if he meant "illegal immigration?" 'Cause that's not what he said and that's a whole different topic.

I talked about this being a game of maneuvering. You've got to be alert every second to counter their moves. They'll try to sneak past something. They try to impose their thought control on you. You try to be reasonable. You think everyone should be able to understand how the system is designed to work. You try, you really do.

But you can understand how the American Revolution came about.

You try to use reason. You try to cut through the political games. You try to respond to every single lie before it gets accepted as truth.

At some point you're going to see the futility of it and just start shooting.

No matter how much I scream at a Jazz game, the bad guys are still going to win.

Okay, got that old post taken care of. As soon as I get all the accumulation cleared out, I'm making a new rule: anything that's not posted in a week gets discarded.

Democrats, realizing the success of the President's "Cash for Clunkers" rebate program, have revamped a major portion of their National Health Care Plan. President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Sen. Harry Reid are expected to make this major announcement at a joint news conference later this week. I have obtained an advanced copy of the proposal which is named:

"Cash for Codgers"

And it works like this...

Couples wishing to access health care funds in order to pay for the delivery of a child will be required to turn in one old person. The amount the government grants them will be fixed according to a sliding scale. Older and more prescription dependent codgers will garner the highest amounts.

Special "bonuses" will be paid for those submitting codgers in targeted groups, such as smokers, alcohol drinkers, persons 10 pounds over their government prescribed weight, and any member of the Republican Party.

Smaller bonuses will be given for codgers who consume beef, soda, fried foods, potato chips, lattes, whole milk, dairy products, bacon, or Girl Scout Cookies.

All codgers will be rendered totally useless via toxic injection. This will insure that they are not secretly resold or their body parts harvested to keep other codgers in repair.

You know the deal. When evaluating your investments you look at two things: Fundamentals and technicals. You look at a candlestick chart and make decisions about where you're going to move your money.

So when you heard John McCain say "The fundamentals of this economy are strong," your first instinct was to think he was just using economics language.

The left did much knee slapping over the statement. That's to be expected. "Investment" to them is a bag of weed and a bag of Cheetos. You wouldn't expect the anti-showering, sandal-wearing, protestor crowd to spend a lot of time examining their 401(k).

As it turns out, McCain was talking about fundamentals in the more general sense. What he meant was that the foundations of our capitalist system were strong enough to weather a storm. McCain believes that fundamentally America is right.

What's that? Okay, sure. If you want. I guess we could take a look at what Obama believes about the fundamentals of America.

Obama said "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America!"

Ain't that interesting? You don't fundamentally change something that's fundamentally right. Obama believes that America is fundamentally wrong.

Glenn Beck says that we can't be surprised. Obama told us exactly what he was planning to do.

I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students, the foreign students, the Chicanos, the Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance pullets who smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night in the dorms we discussed neocolonialism, Frantz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet, we set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting Bourgeois society's stifling constraints.

Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.

. . . as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers and the Constitution . . . that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you.

But it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf . . . and one of the, I think the tragedies of the civil rights movement was . . . a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change . . .

If that doesn't make you scream, go back to your X-Box and leave the thinking to the adults.

Then Glenn finishes with:

He said it as plain as it possibly could be said and people lived in denial. No one,--almost no one--took him at his word . . . You want a president who will say what he means and means what he says. And yet when you get one, you think it's campaign rhetoric.

You think he doesn't believe in taking wealth from one group and giving it to another. You think he doesn't mean that he's actually going to change or make useless the Constitution through community service groups. You think he actually means or doesn't mean that he's going to start an AmeriCorps where your children will be required to serve. You think he doesn't actually mean that you won't be able to go back to your life as you knew it. You think he doesn't actually mean that you're not going to be affording electricity. You think he doesn't actually mean that you can't have your thermostat at 72 because of what Europe thinks.

It's time we take this politician at his word.

Read the article.

Fortunately, as David Limbaugh points out, Americans who still believe in liberty are forming a brick wall for Obama's socialist agenda.

You should read the whole article, but here are some excerpts.

Barack Obama has run into a brick wall: the American people, who cherish their liberty and revere their nation and do not want it remade in Obama's socialist image.

When Obama promised to bring fundamental change to America, most Americans, fortunately for him, did not take him literally . . . most voters had no idea just how much change Obama had in mind.

But Obama was dead serious . . . He doesn't share the majority's vision of America . . .

These are not tweaks to a glorious constitutional republic, but a frantic effort to undo this republic brick by brick.

But probably not used to running into much adversity in his adult life, Obama's doubtlessly been thrown for a major psychological loop as he's run into the fierce grass-roots resistance to his radical agenda.

Based on what we can glean from his background, we have to assume he remains in that policy cocoon in which he has been surrounded mostly by radicals who see America through different lenses than most Americans do.

The faux messiah faces the test of his life. Saul Alinsky, the godfather of street organizing, will be watching from the grave to see whether his best student can finally consummate the Marxists' generations-long boast of conquering this nation without having to fire a shot.

I checked my blogger's charter and yes, I am required to say something about Hillary coming unhinged.

The audio is hilarious, but to really get the flavor of her evil eye you have to see the video.

I can't understand why Bill would ever want to seek female companionship elsewhere . . .

Reminds you of the time Clinton was at a ball gamer right after he got elected and the umpire walked up to him and whispered something in his ear. Clinton shrugged and then threw Hillary over the rail out onto the field.

The umpire said "No, I said to throw out the first pitch."

This is worth a thousand words.

Notice who is helping Dr. Gates down the stairs and who is strolling away up front.

Obama may not fire Robert Gibbs. Robert Gibbs is a moron, I wasn't wrong about that. Every press briefing he gleefully re-confirms that. But I was wrong about him getting canned. For some reason he is useful to the idiot community organizer in chief.

I have a theory. I think that Robert Gibbs's incompetence masks the incompetence of the White House. People who see him mumbling, bumbling, and stumbling through a press briefing subconsciously think "It can't be as bad as it seems. This cretin is just unable to articulate what's going on."

Gibbs provides a cover for Obama' incompetence similar to what the Lewinsky scandal did for Clinton.* No, think about it. Monica was Clinton's "If it weren't for . . ." If it weren't for the Lewinsky scandal Clinton's presidency would have been a transparent disaster. But as it is, that disaster can be blamed on the scandal.

So the astonishingly incompetent Gibbs is the perfect spokesman for an astonishingly incompetent White House, because he can be blamed for Obama looking bad. And as a populace who desperately wants to believe that their president isn't a complete imbecile, we'll latch onto anything we can get.

---

*Originally typed: Gibbs provides for Obama what Monica did for Clinton. Immediately edited.

What were the liberals always whining about when they bashed Bush? Two things. First, they said he was dumb, which was an interesting observation coming from the people he outsmarted time and time again. Bush on his worst day never said he visited 57 states.

But the other thing they were constantly bellyaching about was his —say it with me—arrogance.

Yeah, you see where I'm going with this. There is not a more arrogant being on this planet than Barack Hussein Obama.

Tell you what, if you can find a more arrogant human being than Barack Obama, I'll give you a free one year subscription to this blog. The man is in a class by himself when it comes to egotism.

You know what I'm talking about. Just in case you didn't pick up on this during the campaign, once he was elected he wasted no time demonstrating that he had an extremely elevated opinion of himself. Back in November of 2008 he said the country was in for a very difficult 60 days because he didn't have the "reins of power" yet. From his wanting to speak at the Brandenburg Gate to his constant sermonizing on topics we know more about than he does, the community organizer in chief gets real tiresome real fast. Even after stepping in it on the Dr. Gates race crap, he figured he was going to use the beer summit for a "teachable moment" for his ignorant young pupils.

Get over yourself already.

I was looking through this site on The Constitution. I know you've thoroughly perused this site, because I have it listed as a link on my "What to do until the blog" arrives section. So you already know that it really is an excellent site, with an astonishing wealth of information.

Just in case you need a break from the annoying community organizer in chief, you can find an excellent example of a real statesman in Ben Franklin's speech urging the convention to approve the Constitution.

That Founding Father talked about doubting his own infallibility—quite a contrast to the unwarranted arrogance of today's Foundering Father.

I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.

Hard-wired into our human nature is a sympathy for the innocent person that's struggling. Who's heart doesn’t break to see a kid on crutches. We are programmed to help and support our fellow human beings.

By the same token, when you see a jerk you just want to smack him. I don't know, maybe the reasoning is that he thinks so much of himself he doesn't need your help. Maybe the same inner sense of equity that makes you want to raise up the downtrodden is what makes you want to take the schmuck down a notch.

That's how you feel when you see Obama. Since he's such a prick, you love to make fun of him.

On a completely unrelated subject, I feel like looking at some baseball pictures.

Hey, that technique seems familiar. Is it possible you've seen someone pitch like that before? Oh, for heaven's sake, I believe that's so. Here's someone with a very similar pitching style.

Hey, I wonder, and I'm just thinking aloud here . . . I wonder what kind of pitching technique Obama has. Since he was such a "brilliant community organizer" I wonder if he's as amazing at everything . . .

Hmm . . . that technique looks familiar, too. I'm pretty sure I've seen that somewhere before . . . if only I could remember who throws like that . . .

There is an excruciating amount of really boring text in the blog this month, so I figured I'd take pity on you and randomly splash about some Obama bashing pictures. So even though you've already religiously read my posts as I put them up, you might want to go back through and get your dose of poking fun at the community organizer in chief (oh yeah, and Jimmah, too).

I wish I could find the cartoon that has the community organizer in chief sitting at his desk eyeing a monster labeled "blame" sitting off to the side. King Hussein is saying "Is that getting closer?"

You know the deal. There's no problem facing this country that is so complex that it can't be blamed on Bush. The only person in the country who hasn't clued in to how infantile that is is King Hussein.

Here's a great link about Obama whining, moaning, and lying about how it's all Bush's fault.

I asked David Baldacci to help me with the last post. Here's what he came up with.

The man was sitting at his desk. The suit-wearing individual in the oval-shaped office looked around at the oval shaped office. And he had other guys wearing suits standing around. And the office was oval. And it was in Washington. And he was the President, but I can't say that outright, but I keep giving you silly hints even after you figured it out. And then he's looking at something in the corner of his office. And then he whispers something to the Secret Service guy.

Then the Secret Service guy leaves the room like a leaf blown from the bumper of a tractor. And then the Secret Service guy whispers to the secretary outside. And then the secretary opens her eyes wide like a casket opening at a funeral when it's not supposed to open but nobody knew they weren't supposed to open it but the mortuary guys didn't tell them but there was a button on the bottom and when you push it then it releases the latch and then if you pull on the top twice to the left and once up it opens because nobody knows about that except casket guys and authors who research that sort of thing by asking their neighbor who says he knows about caskets.

Then the other secretary says "What did he say?" And then the first secretary opened her drawer. Then she got out a pen. Then she opened another drawer. Then she got out some paper. Then she put the paper on her desk, which was made by an Amish guy in Pennsylvania, but his wife got sick and he doesn't make desks any more. Then she wrote on the paper and passed it to the other secretary. Then the other secretary looked at the paper and said "What does this mean: Is that getting closer?"

Then later we find out that it was a monster in the office. That's what the President was talking about when he said "Is it getting closer?" Then we find out the monster had a sign on it. The sign said something on it. It was one word. It was the word that makes the whole thing work.

"What was the word?" the one Secret Service guy asks. The other one shrugged. "I don't know what it means. It said 'blame.' Does that mean anything to you?"

You read the article Misunderstanding the Cold War, about how Obama either misunderstands what happened in the Cold War or he's just spreading his anti-Americanism to the globe. Krauthammer has a good point of view on Obama's dangerous position with Russia.

I wouldn't have believed it possible to find someone so astoundingly unsuited for the job of running America.

Let me get this straight. You're going to take $4500 of my tax money, give it to someone for a car that's not worth that amount, then destroy that car?

Is it any surprise that cash for clunkers is hitting a speed bump?

You might recall one of the finest minds of our generation explaining about historical compression on this very blog. If I'm not mistaken, he used an example out of the Old Testament of a cataclysmic event and posited that people at that time likely didn't see it as being as dramatic as we picture when we read about it. It seems like that same brilliant mind once used the example of a trip with scouts on a river that seemed pretty placid on its surface, but that would overwhelm you trying to swim in the current.

If it were obvious you wouldn't need a warning.

Maybe that's the built in filter. As long as I'm dealing in analogies that have already been made, I'll go over the reason for delayed consequences. Delayed consequences exist in this world so that only the intelligent can benefit from them. If every bad action had an immediate bad consequence, every idiot could make good choices. Because it takes some intelligence to link delayed consequences to the actions that cause them, idiots can continue to make bad choices and intelligent people get to benefit from good choices.

It's late and I'm rambling. The point of this post is that I stumbled across an observation from somebody else who arrived at the same conclusion. George Q. Cannon said:

The greatest events that have been spoken of by all the Holy Prophets will come along so naturally as the consequences of certain causes, that unless our eyes are enlightened by the Spirit of God, and the spirit of revelation rests upon us, we will fail to see that these are the events predicted by the Holy Prophets.

One morning I was driving home from Colorado. I headed out the second the equipment was ready to go, but that wasn't until 10:30 am. I was in a crunch because I was driving the truck that had to tow the horse trailer that had to be at the event at 7:00 that evening. The GPS said that my arrival time was 6:37. That would give me barely enough time to hook up the trailer and get to the rodeo arena.

But I knew a short cut through Fort Collins that would cut 30 miles off my route. I took it and the GPS recalculated. 6:25 pm. Yeah, it's a two-lane road instead of the freeway to Cheyenne, but I expected a little more gain than that. But I figured I could beat that time.

Except I didn't count on the motor home on the winding two lane road. I drove behind him for miles while the GPS displayed my ETA as 6:26, :27, :28 . . .

I finally had a break in oncoming traffic on a straight level stretch, got around him, and opened her up--as much as I dared based on the number of cops I usually see on that cutoff road. But mathematics being what they are, adding 10 mph to your average doesn't drop your ETA as much as taking off 10 mph adds to it. Then I got behind a truck that was behind a row of cars behind three more trucks.

By the time I got to Laramie the GPS was estimating 6:40.

I stopped for lunch at Subway--bad choice since they had no drive through and a huge line. Then, like an idiot, decided to take the next exit to fill up where the fuel was cheaper, instead of paying a couple bucks more across the street from the Subway.

According to the GPS I wasn't going to get home until 6:55 pm.

I figured I could get that time back across the hundreds of miles of open Wyoming freeway ahead of me, and I could have. If it weren't for the cops. And the construction.

If it were a Baldacci novel, some magic military helicopter would have appeared and lifted me over the mountain from Evanston to home. But since this is real life, I got home late.

My point is that when things are tight, there's no room for screwing up.

Like Obama is doing.

Amazingly enough, Joe Biden said it best. Speaking about Obama he said that the presidency isn't a place for on-the-job training. When things are going well you have some margin for error. Let's try this, if it doesn't work, no harm done. But when one wrong move means certain death, you need to be a little smarter.

You see my point. When you're ahead by 30 points you can afford to play your second string. If we had an economy going like a prairie fire we could tolerate an idiot in the White House.

As it is, we're doing a Thelma and Louise straight for the cliff. Either Obama doesn't know which pedal is the brake or his ACORN buddies are telling him that 72 virgins are waiting for him just over the cliff.

The Board of Meaningless Restrictions has just informed me that the previous post barely squeaked by under their limit for the maximum number of analogies in one blog posting.

You know what job would suck right now? Being a T-Mobile (or Verizon or any company but AT&T) customer service rep. You would spend all day telling people "Can you telling me why you're changing your service?" and hearing the answer "I'm going with the iPhone."

That's probably a more useful example than my incoherent narrative about how ReedHycalog had dominated the market with its T-Rex. AT&T has an exclusive with Apple to run the iPhone, so AT&T gets everyone who wants the extremely cool iPhone and doesn't like their current service enough to warrant the nuisance of hacking it.

You get the idea. Every so often a company comes out with something that the competition has a hard time coming up with a good answer to. They've got it all locked up and there's nothing the other side can do about it.

But eventually the other guys come up with something. Especially if the one with the advantage puts all of its eggs in that basket and focuses all of its energy on its secret weapon.

The demorats' secret weapon is losing its steam. Liberal cries of "racist" are no longer resonating. In fact, they are sounding sillier and sillier. We cringe when the shot is fired, but once it hits we just have to laugh. Is that all you've got?

Why can't we just play by the rule book? We question a policy, Demorats scream "racist," we cower and never broach the topic again. Everybody's happy. That's the way good little collectivists are supposed to behave. Don't present facts. Just take the hit and fall down like a good little pawn.

Instead we have the unmitigated audacity to keep on exercising our Hillary-given right to debate and disagree with this administration. We keep on talking about it. "You wanna' talk race? Come on, let's talk race. You brought it up, let's talk about it. Come on, whatsa' matter, huh?"

The liberals' "You racist!" arrow is getting blunt in a hurry. The first time you hear the f-word in a movie you're shocked. By the 9,387th time you're well beyond bored out of your skull.

You get this. You are the uber-informed kind of reader that cutting edge blogs like Leany on Life attract. You understand the lessons we're learning from the Health Care debate.

There are the obvious ones. Obama's approach to government is socialism. He will not tolerate discussion or debate. Obama is a liar.

But you don't come here for the obvious. You come here to see the patterns in the endless columns of numbers that the ordinary mortal doesn't see. I'm your non-insane beautiful mind.

The take-away from this one-sided "debate" is that Obama's form of government is the one we overthrew two centuries ago. Obama has no use for a written canon of law. What the king says is the law, and it varies depending on who the king likes. That's the way they do it in the warlord governed villages of Kenya. That's the way they do it in Gangland Chicago.

The answer to any objections about what's written in the bill is "Look, trust me. Let me tell you my personal philosophy."

Hey, I used to clean up a cow barn. I've seen your personal philosophy. And no, I don't trust you. For some reason I'd rather take my chances on the Rule of Law than hoping I'm on the list of the king's favorite subjects.

Here's what racist pukes like Janeane Garofalo don't understand: Their mindless name calling is undoing what generations have fought to achieve.

I talked about this when the liberals took out Imus because they didn't agree with him. Believe it or not, there is one positive aspect of nimrods like Garbarfalo trying to destroy careers by calling people racist. We've reached a place where it's universally acknowledged that racism is an ugly thing that is beneath civilized people.

But word meanings are fluid. We saw this in the way the word "democratic" has been rendered unusable by being attached to concepts it does not describe. In the same way, the tactics of the Kool-Aid drinkers are undermining the shock of the word "racist."

Okay, so a racist is someone who believes that you shouldn't be forced to join a union or perform an abortion. What's your word for a guy in a white hood burning crosses on a lawn?

Repeatedly screaming "racist" at reasonable people who disagree with you sucks all the sting out of the word.

So Hillary goes overseas and starts bashing the United States. She says that we're as rotten as any third world country. Our system is so screwed up that the guy she voted for actually lost the election in 2000. That's how crappy the country she represents is.

Hey, but I'm not questioning her patriotism. There's no question about it. She is not a patriot.

Hillary Clinton is an enemy of the United States.

Did you see that? I just removed myself from the debate. That's how Michael Medved characterized it—and he was right. Calling Hillary an enemy of the United States brands me as non-mainstream.

Isn't that interesting? Being an enemy of the United States carries its own immunity because anyone who points it out is disqualified from the debate.

Isn't that interesting, part two: The rule only applies to conservatives. Somehow Whoopie "the Mouth" Goldberg and Michael "Ham Sandwich" Moore-on and Howard "Where are my meds?" Dean can spout as much childish name-calling as they want . . . and holy cow! What about James "Lizard Man Baby Eater" Carville? Their infantile bilge somehow makes them courageous participants in the free exchange of ideas . . . but I digress.

See, that's what I mean about the game . . . maneuvering and such. (If this were a real blog I could link right to that post, but that would involve coding bookmarks into the html and it could take up to 30 seconds . . . and frankly this blog isn't worth 30 seconds of your time, much less mine. So I'll try to remember what I said and convey it better this time.)

Obama would like to flip a switch and institute socialism tomorrow. In Obama's perfect Amerika, jack-booted government agents would go to every door in the country and ask "Who was the greatest US President ever?" Anyone who answers "Ronald Reagan" would be shot on the spot.

But if he moves too fast he's going to make the frog jump out of the hot water. So he's forced to deal with this whole frustrating democracy thing.

We also have to move cautiously to maintain our credibility. It's like Michael Medved says (paraphrasing) "If you characterize Obama as evil, you remove yourself from the debate."

This is the lesson we learned from Sotomayor. In her perfect world, being a white male would be a capital crime. But she can't openly adopt that position or she'd eliminate herself from the running for positions where she can implement her radical policy. She's dishonest, but she's smart.

So call me courageously stupid. I'm going to point out that Hillary Clinton does not have the best interests of America at heart. I will outright tell you that power is more important to her than what's good for America.

And yes, I do understand that by putting this position in writing I am forfeiting any chance I have of ever being on the Supreme Court.

You depend on industrial diamond. You don't know it, but you do. Everything you have contact with in your daily life has somehow benefited from industrial diamond, from the eyeglasses you wear that were ground by diamond grit, to the gas in your car that comes from an oil well drilled by a diamond bit, to the plate you had breakfast on that was manufactured from tooling made with industrial diamond.

What I'm saying is that it's a significant market.

A few years ago a company called ReedHycalog patented a cutter called the T-Rex. This diamond cutter was made with a process that removes the cobalt binder from the upper layer resulting in . . . well, I'll spare you. If you gave a crap you'd already know. Bottom line: it has superior wear resistance so it became a formidable player in the market.

Since then other companies have been scrambling to catch up. They are trying a lot of different things to gain an edge over the T-Rex cutter. A close personal friend of mine works for a company that's about to kick some serious booty in that particular market, but you've read this blah-blah-blog long enough to know I'm not talking about diamond.

I'm talking about getting an edge in the market.

For decades the democrats couldn't do it. Jimmy "The Worthless One" Carter (whose DNA I swear is 98% identical to King Hussein's) only got in because Ford pardoned Public Enemy Number One. In a fair fight he got wiped out. Clinton (pardon my language) got in because Perot split the vote. Gore couldn't do it and neither could Kerry. Dukakis, Mondale, and McGovern got slaughtered. Americans do not want what these guys are selling.

But now the demorats have discovered their T-Rex. They finally stumbled onto the secret formula. They have a black guy.

You'll have to admit, it's a pretty good plan. While we were busy trying to elect a good president, they were focused on installing a black president. It didn't matter if he was horribly unsuited for the job. Now we are racists because we oppose the exact same ideologies we opposed when they were being spouted by all those white idiots that couldn't get elected. Issues are a thing of the pre-post-racial past. You either agree with him or you are a filthy stinking white robe wearing racist. If he nukes Cleveland we can't utter a peep.

We weren't caught off guard. I used to post on Chris's blog as "You're racist if you support McCain." And Rush nailed it, as in Wham! with a 20 lb. sledge, almost a year before the election. But just like when ReedHycalog tied up the T-Rex patent, what were we going to do?

It's a weapon the demorats joyfully wield that we're still working out exactly how to defend against. And we're making some progress. In fact, it seems like the best defense so far is just to refuse to be wounded by it. And as others see that we're not wounded they come forward, too.

Here's the good news. A secret weapon only works for so long. When you have a secret weapon, it becomes a crutch. Remember the old Avis ads that said "When you're number two you try harder"? My close personal friend believes that ReedHycalog is behind in developing new technologies because they figure they've got it covered with T-Rex. Other manufacturers are closing in and finding ways to get around the T-Rex.

Same thing with the demorats. They only have that have one weapon in their arsenal. The oncoming troops aren't falling down as much now and they're frantically slinging the arrows faster and faster. But that's all they've got.

At some point even the staunchest Useful Idiot will realize that, black guy or not, Obama is a national tragedy as a president.

That's it. My political electrolytes are exhausted. I'm bored to tears with the topic.

But I'll draw from somewhere deep within myself to valiantly struggle on for just one more post. That's just the kind of guy that I am.

The irony here is that their calling me a racist is what makes me blast their "black guy." We would never have mentioned it if they hadn't brought it up. I would speak about him with respect, and adopt the civil tone that proves to that raving lunatic Joan Walsh that I'm a white guy who is trying really, really hard, 'cause I "really like it when black people make [me] feel that way."

Except that I absolutely refuse to submit to your filthy stinking anti-American totalitarian attempt to control what I say, Janeane, you ignorant slut.

You've probably been following these town hall meetings where members of congress have been sent out by Obama to quell any dissent over his plan to socialize the health care system. They'll stand up and tell the "angry mob" that all of these things you're hearing are lies and rumors and speculation. Then a member of the "angry mob" will read chapter and verse from the bill, making a fool out of the politician by demonstrating that it's not rumor or speculation. It's simple fact as written in the bill that he has not read.

It's clear that we've got them on the ropes.

Or maybe not so much. Let me 'splain.

Imagine you have a daughter in her very early teens who wants to travel to Idaho for a week with her friend. You're not comfortable letting a girl her age go that far away for that long. So you tell her she can't go. She asks why.

You say she's too young. Any bets on what she's going to say?

She's going to say "But Allie went clear to Montana when she was only eleven!"

So you're going to say . . . well, it doesn't matter what you say. Because any objection you raise she'll have an answer for. You aren't willing to let her go, but you've let yourself be maneuvered into a position where you are discussing the possibility.

I paid pretty close attention during the campaign and I don't remember a great groundswell demanding "health care reform." As I recall the issues voters were concerned with were the economy and whether or not John McCain said "my friends" too much.

The next thing we know Obama is sneaking socialized medicine into a bailout/stimulus package and suddenly we find ourselves having a discussion about how to do it.

This still just flabbergasts me. The community organizer in chief said "It is an indisputable fact that we cannot recover from this recession without socializing the health care system."

What the . . . ?

Since this technique seems to work so well for Obama, I wonder if other shameless liars could effectively put it to use?

"Look, Honey, it is an indisputable fact that the only way I can find a job is to take your paycheck and go out drinking with my buddies."

Holy freaking crap. Where to start?

Okay, let's start in the Bible. The Old Testament, specifically. You read about some of those cataclysmic events and think "Thank goodness that sh-tuff doesn't happen these days."

Wrong.

In the account of Sodom and Gomorrah, for example, you've got a couple of cities sitting there, everything's going fine, then Blam! It's like a Bruckheimer movie. Flaming crap is streaking from the sky and trashing the place. One minute you've got a civilization, the next the whole thing's destroyed.

That's the beauty of time compression in the relating of historical events. It's all so swift and clear cut when you're looking back on it. But I guaran-doggone-tee you that there were people at the time all that was going down who had no clue that everything was unraveling.

Just like today.

Two types of people inhabit today's America: 1) those who have never read Atlas Shrugged, and 2) those who are buying food storage and ammunition in massive amounts.

You thought it couldn't get worse after Obama created his snitch web site, where people can go to turn in those who oppose Obama's socialism.

Well, it got worse.

The White House is sending out its thugs to beat up people at Town Hall meetings. I know you saw this story where the White House sent its people around to the town hall meetings with instructions to "punch back twice as hard." And they did. In Louisiana, for example, they beat up a conservative who was handing out "don't tread on me" flyers. Sent him to the hospital.

As it turns out, the conservative that got beat up was a black guy. I wonder if Obama's going to say that his union thugs acted "stupidly." I guess it's okay to send a black guy to the emergency room if he's a conservative.

When people in the future read the history of what's happening right now they are going to say "How in the name of Dale Herbert Earnhardt did they not see what was happening?"

On a typical day you get up, go to the gym, put gas in your car, drive to work, have lunch with friends, go to your son's little league game, ride horses with your daughter for awhile, then watch the news for a bit before you turn in. You have a pretty good life.

Imagine someone a hundred years from now putting together a history report about the world you live in by watching the news clips you see every night. Murders, people being killed for cutting someone off in traffic, children being snatched from their homes, children being killed by their own parents, people dropping dead from a flu virus we have no cure or vaccine for. What a horrible society to live in!

But it's not. You're not being killed. You don't know anybody that died of the flu. Things aren't so bad. So one guy who dares disagree with Obama gets beat up at one town hall meeting. Big deal, right? Call me back when every conservative at every town hall meeting gets beat up.

Doesn't happen that way. That's what I was talking about with the Bible and historical compression stuff. You hear the story from long ago encapsulated in a few paragraphs and you imagine destruction everywhere—you imagine a scenario where a person can't find refuge. You look out your window and don't see mobs wearing Obama T-shirts kicking in doors. Everything must still be copacetic.

The Boston "Massacre" was a few people killed. Not a lot of people paid much attention to it at the time, especially outside of the region.

Your life today wasn't all that dramatic. But after the smoke clears from this Civil War, the history for today will record that conservatives were getting beaten up by mobs sent out to do the will of Obama.

What's happening is that we have a generation with no memory of Soviet Russia or Tiananmen Square. They haven't heard the story of what Salvador Allende did to Chile when he rose to power. They are still out of breath that they were able to be a living, breathing part of this moment in history.

If you see someone with a bumper sticker that says "My vote made history," you can bet they don't understand history.

Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, the Boston Strangler, and the Unabomber all made history, too. So did Salvador Allende. So did the Bolshevik Revolution.

The problem with being all breathless about your role in history is that you lose objectivity. Congratulations. You voted for a black guy. No, seriously, you really are very cosmopolitan.

Now, could you get over yourself long enough to take a peek at what's happening in the present day?

The government is soliciting people to snitch on their fellow citizens who dare to engage in dissent. I wonder how Martin Luther King would have felt about that.

But the people who voted for Obama have abandoned that objectivity. They've forfeited their freedom to impartially examine his actions, having vested themselves in their little moment in history.

If you're a wolf, and a really smart wolf—maybe a wolf that has studied Sun Tzu—you wouldn't just attack the herd of sheep. You'd make yourself visible for awhile, then be gone by the time the villagers got there. Then you'd make another appearance by make yourself scarce before the villagers showed up. You'd do this a few times until you would waltz in and eat all the sheep you want without any interference from the villagers.

If I had a conspiracy and it were crucial that no one find out about it, I'd leak it to the conspiracy whackos. They would tell everyone, embellishing it as they went, and the more they talked the less anyone would believe them. Before long I could get away with the most outrageous stuff and no one would suspect a thing.

This perfect storm has been a long time in the making. I've been piecing together an overview of it, but frankly I've got more important things to do (or, more accurately I don't have anything that's less important). It's an evolution that has been in the working for decades but has accelerated in the last twenty years. Think "Clinton era."

This portion of it, the immunity aspect, involves three interdependent legs.

First, what you do has to be so outrageous that it's not really believable by itself. It's like I've said before: one of the things I hate about Obama is that he makes me sound like a conspiracy whack job. You cannot accurately report what this guy does without sounding like a conspiracy nut.

Then you have fatigue. If a politician is doing something rotten and a talk show host is talking about it, yeah, he's going to sound a little negative, isn't he? You just get so tired of hearing about it, it can't be true. Nobody can be that evil. Just leave the guy alone, for Heaven's sake.

So those are your first two immunity legs.

Finally, you have the conspiracy whack jobs that embellish, fabricate, and predict to the point where anything negative that's said about you is immediately dismissed. Life as it exists is not dramatic enough for them (see posts about historical compression and deceptive river currents).

I got an e-mail the other day that quoted Obama as saying "I only saw Rod Blagojevich one time . . . and that was in the stands and from a distance at a Chicago Bears Football Game." Then it had a series of pictures showing Obama and Blagojevich together on many different occasions, proving without a doubt that Obama lied when he said that.

Only he didn't say it.

So what it "proved" was that you couldn't believe anything bad about Obama because it's probably just been made up by people who are out to get him.

Now, help me understand. If the boy cried "Wolf!" when there wasn't one, what are you supposed to holler when you really do see one?

That's a general case. In this specific case we have one final bolt in the safe.

You saw this with Max Cleland. He was a socialist, but he was in a wheelchair. Any criticism of him was proof you are heartless. You saw this with Cindy Sheehan. She was a raving lunatic. But she lost a son in Iraq. You had to give her a break. Liberals said she had "absolute moral authority."

Take those three immunity legs I outlined, couple them with a black man and you've got an iron-clad fortress. His supporters are too breathless about their role in history to ever see any fault in him, and anyone who opposes him must be a simple-minded racist.

You have a runaway train.

Speaking of conspiracy whack jobs . . . Obama was born in Hawaii. Deal with it. (Consistent with his role as Messiah, he was a miracle baby, requiring only six months of gestation.) Even if he had been born outside of the states (as was John McCain) he is a citizen because his mother was.

But even if he were not . . . what are you going to do about it? Seriously. How do you guys expect this to turn out? "Well, you caught me. Guess I'll step down." You're dreaming.

This is what I'm talking about with conspiracy nuts. If I were Obama, I'd release an obvious fake birth certificate. The more time people waste on this, the less credibility they have. And meanwhile he's free to trash the country in a thousand ways that really do matter while they're distracted by this foolishness that doesn't. Idiots.

Oddly enough one of the most sensible angles on this was offered by Michael Savage. He pointed out that the birthers are going to look like idiots when a suitable birth certificate is released. Even if such a thing didn't exist, these are the people who print money. Do you think they can't fake a birth certificate? So the birthers are idiots either way.

If politics bores you as much as it does me, you're probably ready for a break. Here's a great video, some more of Ken Block from Top Gear doing his psycho gymkhana stuff.

I wish I could remember the way 'Joe' phrased it.

From time to time 'Joe' will wander into my office. He'll stand there like he's trying to figure out how to articulate something. Then he'll say something like "I've figured it out." He'll say that he's turned it over in his mind and studied it and—even though he doesn't necessarily want to—he can't help but come to this inescapable conclusion.

Then he'll posit something that is patently absurd.

On this particular occasion he had figured out that "democratic" means everyone gets to offer their input and things are done by consensus. Like I say, I can't remember how he phrased it, but his thesis was that if you weren't a democrat you were obviously opposed to being open-minded.

Of course, that's just ridiculous. 'Joe' knows it's absurd. He's just playing Phil Hendrie with me.

'Joe' knows that it'll drive me so crazy that months later I'll still be posting about it on my blog. 'Joe' works for the good guys. He just doesn’t have the means to get the word out, so he'll plant the bug in me, knowing that I can't help but formulate my brilliant ripostes to his self-evident fallacies.

It's like I told 'Joe' at the time: Anyone who can tell the difference between a marine and a marine biologist already understand this. There is nothing 'democratic' about the democrat party. If it were democratic, it would commend a beauty pageant expressing her opinion. A democratic party would agree to a Conscience Clause that allowed people to decline performing abortions. It's just an arbitrary name; some moniker that somebody decided to hang on it.

I t's like the time I was watching my daughter compete in a pole bending event. The arena we were in was a little bit short, so the timing lights were a little close to the end pole. Her horse swung wide going around that pole and I hollered out "Don't break the beam!"

"Barrier," the lady next me said.

"What?"

"Barrier. It's called a barrier."

Oh. Okay, I thought it was a beam. But I'm a big believer in proper terminology. If it's called a barrier I'll call it a barrier.

You have to keep up with these things. Word meanings change and you might get in trouble if you're not aware of it.

It's like that word you might have heard on a beautiful summer day in 1965: "What a beautiful day. I feel quite gay." Careful. Doesn't mean the same thing today.

I have to think I've been mis-using this term 'open-minded' that 'Joe' is always throwing around. It seems to have undergone a metamorphosis, too. In the same way that people who could be gay at any given moment in the sixties are not gay now, I am no longer open-minded. It used to mean to be receptive to a variety of ideas. But the way 'Joe' throws it around it means "Only certain sanctioned ideas are allowed."

By the way that Joe uses 'open-minded' I understand that the usage is now "shut the hell up and think the way you're told to think."

You remember 'Joe.' He's the token liberal I made up, completely out of my imagination without any reference to anyone that I know or work with, to illustrate the irrationality of modern "liberal" thought.

'Joe' is the one who I told about the idiot camp directors who were putting food out for the bears. He said "Sounds like a great idea. Give 'em what they want and they'll leave you alone." I said "Joe, you just encapsulated how a liberal thinks."

As I said, every so often Joe will wander into my office or I'll be in his office and he'll say something like "You know, I've been doing a lot of thinking on this. I've turned it over in my mind and I keep coming to the inescapable conclusion that . . . "

Then he'll say what he's figured out. Then I'll laugh my hindquarters off.

Here's a short list of the things that 'Joe' has "figured out."

America hates Hillary because she's a woman (which would explain why we hate Sandra Bullock and Oprah and Teri Hatcher, and . . . )

The message of the Book of Mormon is the futility of war. (It doesn't seem to mention the futility of eating, which, no matter how well you do it in the morning you'll have to do again throughout the day, and no matter how well or how often you do it, you are going to die.)

Communism is good because it's a government and all governments are instituted of God. (What the . . . ?)

The only reason Obama might lose the election is because he's black. (Seriously. The day before the election he walked into my office and pronounced that one. First, who didn't know by October first that Obama was going to win the election? Then, as everyone in America knows—the demorats more than anyone—Obama, who is just Jimmy Carter with an actual personality, got elected when Mondale, Gore, Kerry, McGovern and Dukakis could not precisely because he is black. Can you say "180 degrees bass-ackwards? Janeane, you ignorant slut . . . )

Mormons would all be democrats if it weren't for abortion. (Nothing to do with that whole free-agency thing that Mormons are so enthused about.)

"Democratic" means encompassing all ideas, so anyone who isn't a democrat is not open-minded. (And a coffee table is made of coffee.)

Washington, DC – August 10, 2009

Congress today announced that the office of President of the United States of America will be outsourced to India as of September 1, 2009.

The move is being made in order to save the President's $500,000 yearly salary, and also a record $750 billion in deficit expenditures and related overhead that his office has incurred during the last 3 months.

It is anticipated that $7 trillion can be saved to the end of the President's term. "We believe this is a wise financial move. The cost savings are huge," stated Congressman Thomas Reynolds (R-WA). "We cannot remain competitive on the world stage with the current level of cash outlay," Reynolds noted.

Obama was informed by email this morning of his termination. Preparations for the job move have been underway for some time.

Gurvinder Singh, a tele-technician for Indus Teleservices, Mumbai , India , will assume the office of President as of September 1, 2009. Mr. Singh was born in the United States while his Indian parents were vacationing at Niagara Falls, NY, thus making him eligible for the position. He will receive a salary of $320 (USD) a month, but no health coverage or other benefits.

It is believed that Mr. Singh will be able to handle his job responsibilities without a support staff. Due to the time difference between the US and India , he will be working primarily at night. "Working nights will allow me to keep my day job at the Dell Computer call center," stated Mr. Singh in an exclusive interview.

"I am excited about this position. I always hoped I would be President."

A Congressional spokesperson noted that while Mr. Singh may not be fully aware of all the issues involved in the office of President, this should not be a problem as Obama had never been familiar with the issues either.

Mr. Singh will rely upon a script tree that will enable him to respond effectively to most topics of concern. Using these canned responses, he can address common concerns without having to understand the underlying issue at all. "We know these scripting tools work," stated the spokesperson.

"Obama has used them successfully for years, with the result that some people actually thought he knew what he was talking about."

Obama will receive health coverage, expenses, and salary until his final day of employment. Following a two-week waiting period, he will be eligible for $140 a week unemployment for 26 weeks. Unfortunately he will not be eligible for Medicaid, as his unemployment benefits will exceed the allowed limit.

Obama has been provided with the outplacement services of Manpower, Inc. to help him write a resume and prepare for his upcoming job transition. According to Manpower, Obama may have difficulties in securing a new position due to a lack of any successful work experience during his lifetime.

A greeter position at Wal-Mart was suggested, due to Obama's extensive experience at shaking hands, as well as his special Howdy Doody Smile.

I hope you caught the implications of this (Or, as Michael Savage would say "You people don't understand the implications of this"). Obama has always promised that you could keep your own insurance. But he was caught off-guard when presented with specifics in his plan that say something completely different. The fact that he doesn't know what was in the bill eclipsed the more telling move he made next.

So much attention is paid to the insignificant part—the fact that he wasn't familiar with the plan—that I had a hard time finding the text, so I have included a link to it here. (search for "let me just speak for")

Obama's view of how government should work is encapsulated in his statement of "I'll . . . let me just speak for, uh, the Obama administration. Uh, I have committed myself . . . "

Translation: Who needs a written canon of law when you have a benevolent dictator? Is that how you want to do business? Can you think of any transaction that you'd do that way?

So I'll bore you with (an updated version of) my car dealer analogy one more time:

Your local car dealer is pressuring you to buy a car. But you're just not quite sure. Then the salesman says "Oh, and you get free maintenance for life."

Free maintenance? For life?

"Sure. That's part of the deal. Oil changes, detailing, tune ups, alignment, tires . . ."

Free tires for life?

"Absolutely."

That's the tipping point. Heck yes, you're going to buy the car. What a great deal!

Then you're reading the contract. Hey, what's this clause that says "Customer will be responsible for any and all maintenance, including, but not limited to, tires, oil changes, tune ups, cleaning, glass, seals . . . ?"

The salesman says "I have to say, I'm not familiar with the provision you're talking about. But let me just speak for my personal philosophy on the topic. Just sign right there."

This is something you see all the time. Sometimes you'll miss the point because another one eclipses it. Other times you'll be so surprised by a fact that it's lost that the fact proves something completely different from what was intended.

Such an occurrence took place on Glenn Beck the other day. He was talking about the health care "crisis" and the legal system and the benefits of the loser pays system, and he said that the problem is lawyers suing doctors all the time. Doctors can't afford the malpractice insurance. It's because the doctors are getting sued all the time. It's the lawyers.

Then someone else on his show who happens to be a lawyer said, No it's not, Glenn. That's not the problem.

"Sure it is. You have doctors getting sued all the time . . . they can't afford malpractice insurance. Some people just decide not to go into medicine because it's just not worth it, worrying all the time if you're going to be sued, paying malpractice . . . "

Glenn, Glenn, listen to me. That's what people think. That's what everyone thinks, but you have to look at the facts.

"Oh, and what are the facts?"

Listen, did you know that 95% of those cases are decided in favor of the doctors. 95%! The doctors win 95% of the time!

So Glenn said something like "Oh . . . well, . . .uh . . . harrumph . . . . . moving right along . . . "

I'm screaming at the radio. "Don't dismiss this! He just made your case! Hey, wake up! Would you pay attention, for crying out loud!"

Nineteen times out of twenty the lawsuit never should have been filed. Tell me again why lawyers aren't the problem.

I'm not saying it would be a bad thing if the whole world were Muslim. I'm saying it would be a horrible, catastrophic thing if the whole world were Muslim.

Actually, it would be a short-lived thing. Picture that map of the concentration of Muslims in the world. Now imagine that everyone in the countries that aren't dark green go on vacation to another planet for a year.

With everyone who's not busy growing opium blowing themselves up in the name of Allah, there'd be no one to grow food and practice medicine. One winter and the whole planet would be wiped out of humans . . . or as Al Gore followers call it: perfect.

Okay, that wasn't very cheery. Here's one that should bring a smile to your face. It's an ad for a Free Jeep Wrangler . . . with the purchase of a bride. This gal seems like a really good sport.

It's kind of similar to this ad that was on Craigslist. I don't know, but it sounds like this is a gal I'd like to meet. And I'm sure most Y chromosome owners feel the same way. The ad was pulled (at the request of this gal). I can't understand why it would have attracted anyone but the most honorable-intentioned gentlemen.

Okay, enough silliness. Let's get back to Obama bashing.

My wife keeps asking me "What is Obama getting out of all of this? Why would he want to destroy the very country he lives in?" I try to explain it to her from my experience in Argentina. First of all, there's very little danger of the country being destroyed to the point that the ruling class will feel any pain. But a strong middle class is a threat to a dictator.

I tried to explain that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. In a country where so much of the population spends all of its energy trying to find the next meal, you don't have to be that bright to be on the top of the heap. Honestly, do you see Hugo Chavez as a scholar? Does he strike you as the kind of guy who would shoot to the top of the corporate ladder in any company in America?

But that wasn't working for her. It still didn't make any sense to her. What does he gain from this?

Honestly, I think it's just like the frog and the scorpion. You remember. The scorpion approached the frog and asked for a ride across the river, since the frog was going anyway. The frog said "Are you crazy? You'd sting me." The scorpion pointed out that if he were to sting the frog, he'd drown himself. How much sense would that make? The scorpion's sense of self-preservation was the frog's guarantee of safety.

The frog saw the logic in that and agreed to carry the scorpion across the river.

Halfway across the river the scorpion stung the frog. As the frog was dying he said "I don't understand. Now you'll die, too. Why did you sting me?"

"Because I am a scorpion," was the answer.

That's why Obama destroys America. It's just his nature.

I've been watching that movie for about a month now. I never get through much of it at a time. Is it just me, or is the Denzel Washington character Obama?

He's filthy stinking rich off the drug trade. So what if his actions degrade the general level of society. He benefits, and besides, they're just worthless junkies, right? Besides, the overall system can support a certain level of that.

That's what Obama's gangland Chicago experience has taught him. The system can tolerate a skimming of profits. So what if the general standard of living is lower? ACORN and others who benefit from the spoils system are better off.

Michael Medved cautions us that we must be reasonable. He won't tolerate talk about Obama being a Marxist or putting his own wealth and glory above the general welfare of the country. He says that you have to believe that Obama wants what's best for this country. You can believe that he doesn't have the right approach to get there. But you have to believe he's trying his best to do what's best for the country.

If you believe anything other than this, Medved cautions, then you remove yourself from the debate.

Well, I'm glad Michael Medved's got that part covered. 'Cause that leaves me free to explore the other possibilities,

Driving a car is pretty straightforward. You've got a control there that makes you go faster. Use that pedal to slow down and stop. Turn this wheel in the direction you want to go. Have fun and try to be home by midnight.

A plane is not so simple. You don’t have a control that makes you go up or down or one that makes you go faster or slower. When you don't have wheels firmly touching a surface it's a little trickier and things work in combinations. In some flight conditions pulling back on the yoke makes you go up. Other times that's what you do to slow down. It requires a good understanding of what's going on.

If you don't know what you're doing you can get into a condition called "getting behind the power curve." That's when you get the plane into a configuration where you don't have the excess power to climb safely.

Let's work through a simplified explanation of that. Any airplane you fly has a certain rate of climb you can achieve. Imagine that as a line sloping upward at a certain angle. Now imagine you're flying toward a mountain with the top a certain distance above you. Take your rate of climb line and angle it back from the top of the mountain. As long as you are somewhere on the side of the line away from the mountain, you can climb over it. If you get on the other side of the line (simplified, remember) you are going to hit the mountain. You haven't hit it yet, but you will. You've gotten behind the power curve.

It would come in handy to understand those sorts of things if you're going to fly.

If you want to run a country there are some things you need to understand, too. Some of them are pretty obvious, some of them have tricky little hidden things where the lazy observer—one who only looks at things from one dimension—would come to the wrong conclusion.

Frederic Bastiac explains some of these very well in "Economic Sophisms." Like if you break a window, that seems like a bad thing. But it's not so bad because it gives the glazier a job. So why not really stimulate the economy and break every window in the city?

Paying cash for clunkers seems like a really good idea—if you're an idiot. But if you think about taking taxpayer money to give $4500 for a car that is worth much less than that, then taking all the materials and manufacturing energy it took to build the car and reduce it to a form that can't be used, you realize how stupid it is. It's the modern-day equivalent of Bastiat's example of breaking every window in Paris.

So you tell me. Is Obama an idiot, as Michael Medved would have you believe, or is he evil, as others might guess?

I acknowledge that it's very possible he's just an idiot. I'll grant you that a career as a community organizer might not have prepared him for the intricacies of running an economy this size.

If he truly is trying to fix things with this approach (rather than pay his debts to the unions and ACORN), he has some fundamental misunderstandings about the consequences his actions will have. He believes that since he hasn't hit the mountain yet, it's perfectly safe to mess around on the back side of the power curve.

He's like a bus driver we had in high school. She discovered that she could hold the bus stationary on a hill while waiting for traffic by partially engaging the clutch. It worked for her—but she's not the one that had to change out the trashed clutch every week.

Maybe the best example of how stupid Obama is (hey, would you rather I call him evil?) is Fen Phen. You remember that one. You weigh 250 lbs. You take this pill for a week. Now you weigh 175. Why would anybody think that might have a deleterious effect on your health?

In the excellent article Misunderstanding the Cold War: Liz Cheney vs. Barack Obama, Pejman Yousefzadeh talks about Obama's fundamental misunderstanding of America's role in the end of the Cold War. The piece includes this excellent insight into how The President of the United States views the world:

Asked at a NATO meeting in France in April whether he believed in American exceptionalism, the president said, “I believe in American Exceptionalism just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” In other words, not so much.

Then the author says "Of course, no one thinks that Barack Obama is not a patriot . . ."

What? I do!

This is Hannity's trick. He'll go on and on blasting some politician, how he's trashing America, how he's got it in for us, doesn't care about the voters, wants to turn the country over to the terrorists. . . And then he'll say "but I'm not questioning his patriotism!"

Oh, no, of course you're not.

Where is that rule written? If a guy is not a patriot, don't pretend you're not questioning his patriotism. Have some guts. Don't be Sotomayor, who wants to be a revolutionary, but not bad enough to take an actual stance.

Obama is not a patriot. For starters, Patriots believe in American exceptionalism. That's all you need to know.

But as a bare minimum, patriots put their hand over their heart for the National Anthem.

I got that e-mail. I dismissed it as just conspiracy whacko stuff. So they snapped the picture before he had a chance to put his hand over his heart. The other candidates got their hands up quicker. Big deal.

Then I watched the video. He stood for the whole national anthem with his hands firmly clasped in front of him. Then his campaign issued a statement saying that sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't. No big deal. It's like flossing. Purely optional. This is a candidate for the Presidency of the United Freaking States. Doesn't even clue in to the fact that even if doesn't mean a thing to him, there are hundreds of millions of Americans who think it might be important.

The list could go on. If you don't get it, you never will. If you do understand it, you don't need me telling you.

If Obama is a patriot, who could possibly be on the list of people who are not? Obama has more in common with Timothy McVeigh than he does with John Adams.

If you want to drive someone nuts—make their teeth hurt nuts—it's easy. Drag your fingernails down a blackboard.

There are a couple of problem with that approach. First, it's borderline impossible to find a blackboard any more. Whiteboards and markers have replaced them almost everywhere. We have a generation of children to whom "fingernails on a blackboard" means nothing, until you explain that it's just like the sound of Hillary's voice.

But the main problem with scratching a blackboard is that it hurts you as much as the person you're trying to annoy. Maybe more, 'cause it's your fingernails that are getting rattled.

I know that you come here for answers to just such tricky problems as this. I will not disappoint you. I have the solution.

Just use the phrase "The reason why."

Ouch! Ouch, ouch, ouch, cut it out!

So if you're trying to make my teeth hurt, that's a good way to do it. A huge portion of the population doesn't seem to be bothered by it at all.

In addition to the grating from the phrase itself, the fact that people can use it and not be hurt by the sound annoys me.

When you hear someone say "supposably" it's a safe bet they're not in NASA's Rolodex. But people who are otherwise intelligent use that phrase as though it were perfectly good English.

Glenn Beck says it all the time. Drives me crazy.

Which brings us to our next topic.

If you've ever read a novel by David Baldacci you know this. David Baldacci, author of nineteen bestselling novels, is a terrible writer. Just awful.

But I heard Glenn Beck talking to him about his new book "First Family." He sounded intelligent and informed and Beck (who says "the reason why") recommended the book.

That's why (or the reason why, for you Lakers fans), when I saw the book in hardcover for 99 cents, I bought it.

So last weekend I read "First Family." I say that with a measure of pride, because it was an accomplishment. It was like swallowing live crickets to get through it. If anything, Baldacci's writing has gotten worse since he wrote "Split Second."

His writing is just appalling. To understand what I'm talking about you would have to read his books. And I highly recommend against it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he's successful. And it's not like a bestselling author gives one microcrap what some loser on a blog recommends to his follower. He seems like the nicest guy in the world. He sounds intelligent, he's involved with charities . . . as a human being he kicks my fanny six ways from Sunday. But he can't write to save his life. It's just painful.

I've struggled to come up with a description of what's so bad about his writing. I think it's kinda' like the music in a movie. If you're aware of the music in a movie, it's poorly done. Likewise, when you read a novel you should be able to forget it's fiction. You can't care about what happens to the characters if it's painfully obvious that it's all made up and doesn't have to be plausible. You feel like you can just take a pen and write your own events and they'll be just as valid. The best I can come up with is that Baldacci's writing is "clumsy and contrived."

Someone describes it better in this piece about him called "Thriller Instinct."

Critics rarely take Baldacci's novels seriously. The reviews of his books (when they're reviewed at all) can be nasty: "The Winner," "full of mixed metaphors and malapropisms, often reads like an exercise by someone trying out a language he is not entirely at home with,"

In the interview I heard Glenn Beck was trying to weave some conspiracy into it, like: Why do you think you get bad reviews? Is it because of your politics?

No, it's because of his writing. It's just awful.

It's funny. I'd be plowing along in the book and see some interesting insight to the inner workings of the Secret Service. I'd think "Oh, isn't that interesting?" Then I'd slap myself.

Why would I think he's right about something I know nothing about when he's so incredibly confused about the things I do know about?

For example, there isn't a set of "inner flaps" controlled by the top of a Cessna rudder pedals that steers an airplane on the ground. If you don't know anything about something, just don't write about it. Just say he taxied the airplane.

So I'm going on my own judgment about whether or not it was official policy for the Secret Service to do the strange things they did in the book that conveniently made the story go the intended direction.

Kinda' reminds me of a certain manager who didn't understand but believed the complex computer analysis from an engineer who was wrong about everything that the manager did understand . . .

Baldacci's books are thrillers, but we're talking about mysteries here. The mystery is why would I have read one of them, not to mention two?

Could it be because of Baldacci's subject matter? Stephen King is a gifted writer, but his subject matter doesn't appeal to me. Baldacci's subject matter interests me, but I know of no one who is a worse writer. But I don't think that's it. His topics aren't powerful enough to make me ever pick up another book with his name on the cover.

Maybe I persevered through the two books because of the subject matter, but I think it was a sense of . . . what? Mission? Proving that I could finish an impossible task?

Another mystery is, why do I care? Why not just relegate him to the list of authors I don't read and leave it alone? Why waste time telling you how awful the guy is, while saying he's the nicest guy in the world.

It's because it's a mystery. I really want to figure this one out.

The biggest mystery is how he ever got published in the first place. Like I say, he's probably the nicest guy in the world. But he can't write and he's published something like 19(!) best sellers. If you can figure that one out you've long ago cracked the JFK assassination.

But even if he got published on the strength of the story or something, don't they hire editors anymore? You'd think that at some point he would have walked into the office and the manager said "Thanks for coming in, Mr. Baldacci. This is Heather, she'll walk you through some of the changes we are suggesting."

Heather, the college freshman intern, takes Baldacci into a glass-walled conference room and they sit down with the marked up manuscript in front of them.

"Just a few changes, Mr. Baldacci. For example, dangling modifiers, which you might recall from Mr. Wortzman's eighth grade English class ? Yeah, that's still the rule, so we've cleaned them up some. And the dialog . . ."

It just makes no sense. Is his editor trying to make him look foolish?

You'd think Baldacci's books would be a great encouragement to a struggling author—hey, if he can do it, anyone can. You don't have to have the gift, like Stephen King or Pat Conroy.

But it really has the opposite effect. A struggling writer thinks "Omigosh, what demeaning thing did he have to do to get that first novel published?"

You can imagine being in the publisher's office and she says "I'm sorry, I just don't think this is the kind of material we're looking for right now."

As you turn to go she says "Unless . . . "

You stop. "Yes?"

"How much do you want this?" she asks. You want it bad. She leads you to a room off the reception area. You peek your head in the door.

Repulsed, you ask "Are you sure David Baldacci did it this way?"

The publisher nods grimly.

You've heard "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results."

And you've read this blah-blah-blog long enough to know that it's not true.

It's not true because it's not a definition. It's not a definition at all. It might be a symptom. It might be a manifestation. But it's certainly not a definition.

Also, if you've ever dealt with computers, you know that it's not even a manifestation of insanity. It's just the way things are done. Most of the things that work on a computer are things you've tried over and over and over again without success. And most of the things you're doing that have always worked will at some point quit working for no reason at all.

So if you're working on a computer and don't expect a different result from the same action, you're crazy.

But the phrase is still worded wrong.

So what? It's just a cute thing people say. Why waste precious space in a highly influential blog talking about it?

When words cease to mean anything, what do you have left?

Let's say you invent a chordwheel. You call it the JamCoach. There are lots of chordwheels out there, but your JamCoach is the best. It's so good, in fact, that people just start calling all chordwheels by the name of yours. "Hey, you gotcher JamCoach with you?"

That's when you know you've arrived. When someone uses your trade name to refer to the generic product. You don't care what brand of polytetrafluoroethylene you have on your frying pan. To you it's just Teflon. You'd think that's a good thing, right? As it turns out, not so much.

It's weird, but the makers of Kleenex, Band-Aid, Kook-Aid, Teflon, (Rolodex, Windex, Clorox, the list goes on) don't want you to use their names unless you're talking about their specific product. DuPont spends a lot of money on ads telling people that the ® in Teflon® is silent but important. They want you to talk about "PTFE" unless you're specifically referring to the DuPont product.

What's the deal? Why would you not be thrilled that you have so dominated the market that your name becomes the generic name for that product?

It's a trademark issue. When your name becomes the common nomenclature for the item, you lose your trademark. You can't trademark "tire." You can trademark "Traction King" or something, but "tire" is a common term for the item.

That's why I will never, ever, not even on a bet or a dare, refer to the party of James Carville and Michael Moore-on as the "democratic party." It's just not the right word. Democratic is an adjective with a specific meaning and it has nothing to do with the political party that has democrats as members. If I ever referred to the party as "democratic" it would completely screw up the real meaning of the word.

Think how confusing it would be if the word democratic not only described the practice of majority rules, but also referred to the party of Barack Obama--the man who will ram through his socialist agenda in spite of the majority's vehement opposition to it.

That's why the meanings of words have to be respected. It's not enough to say it so people can understand. You have to say it so people cannot misunderstand. That's why language has to have structure.

That's why we only use "democratic" to describe things that are democratic in nature. It's so when someone says "democratic principles" you don't have to stop and think—"Wait. Do you mean the idea that the general populace decides—majority rules? Or do you mean the principle of elitists steamrolling over anyone that opposes them, dead people voting and ACORN terrorizing businesses into unsound practices?"

"It is an indisputable fact" (I'm adopting Obamaspeak) that there is nothing democratic about the democrat party.

You might still be hung up on the word, thinking that if someone arbitrarily hung that word on the party it must be for a reason. So let's engage in a little thought experiment or two.

Imagine this. Imagine a democrat saying "You know, I think that hybrids are great, but I think people should be allowed to drive whatever they want." Or how about this? "Let's put Roe vs. Wade to a vote." Just imagine (democrat) Al Gore saying "I think healthy debate on Global Warming is a good thing."

Will you ever hear a democrat say "Hey, if the people of California vote that marriage is between one man and one woman, so be it"? Oh, wait. You don't have to imagine that. We did put it to a vote. The liberals lost. And they didn't stand for it.

I will say it again: There is nothing democratic about the democrat party. Hey, if they're "democrats," why are they so afraid of what the majority thinks?

Just imagine Obama saying "Let's not move too fast on card check, cap and trade, and nationalizing the health care system. Let's take time to hear what the American people have to say about it."

Okay, here's one. "Al Gore lost the election. Let's move on."

Yeah. If you ever hear a democrat say that, duck and cover, 'cause the universe just went spinning off its axis.

Nothing causes more fear to a democrat than someone else's opinion. That's why you will never hear a democrat say "I think Ann Coulter has the right to say what she thinks."

Just in case you had any doubt whether there was anything democratic about the democrats, remember this. You never heard a democrat say "Miss California has her opinion. Good for her. She's entitled to believe what she wants."

A woman's right to choose doesn't extend to choosing what to say in a beauty pageant. For a party that believes every issue in America revolves around "Pro-Choice," demorats care precious little about choices that don't fit their narrow-minded viewpoint.

Ptolemy struggled with explaining the motion of the planets. Bless his heart, he tried to explain it given the constraints he had to work with. But he had a fundamental misunderstanding.

A lot of things in life are like that. You wrestle with them because you don't have a good understanding of what's going on.

The trim tab on an airplane's elevator keeps it in the position you want. So if you don't want to keep pulling back on the yoke (or pushing forward on it) while you're flying, you dial in the amount of trim to keep the elevator where you want it.

Okay, what if you have to land with a flat tire on the nose gear? Hey, you just dial in nose-high trim on the elevator, right? Wrong. The trim is a small elevator on the plane's elevator. So, just like the elevator on the back pushes down to make the wings point up, the trim pushes up to make the elevator push down to point the wings up. Understand? The trim actually reduces the lift of the elevator. So if you're landing with a flat nose gear you leave the trim neutral and muscle the elevator to get the most response.

If you survived that example, congratulations. That was just what popped into my head when I thought of situations you struggle with because you do exactly the wrong thing because you don't understand the inner workings of what's going on.

Here is Understanding: Obama is a community organizer.

That's all you need to know about Barack Obama. He is a community organizer. If you understand what a community organizer is, it all becomes very clear.

It's very simple: An community organizer is an anti-democratic force. Community organizers and their groups are the absolute antitheis of democracy. Think about it. Their entire philosophy is "You WILL do it my way." Period.

When you think about ACORN what do you think of? Rigged elections. Fraudulent voter registrations. Impeding the democratic process. That's what community organizers do, try to prevent any ideas other than theirs from getting out there.

Understand this. Barack Obama is a community organizer. He doesn't give crap one what the majority wants. There is one way to do things—the way he wants to do it. His philosophy does not allow the possibility of other people being right.

What I took away from the movie "Swing Vote" was this: The campaign manager for the democrat said "Do you know what it feels like to always be right and never win an election?" Can you believe it? The voters don't know what's right, I do.

A close personal friend of mine moved out to a small farm a few years ago. You've heard the joke: The most common murder weapon in Utah is a shovel. That's because water, specifically irrigation water, is such an emotional issue. My close personal friend learned that right away. He looked out into his field one day to see a backhoe working on his irrigation ditch.

He went out to see what was going on. The neighbor was installing a large PVC pipe in my friend's irrigation ditch.

"Whatcha' doing?"

I'm installing this large PVC pipe in your irrigation ditch.

"Well, I don't want you to install a large PVC pipe in my irrigation ditch."

The neighbor said, No, you don't understand this is better. My close personal friend said "Well, hurry up and finish, because I'm going to have to tear it out as soon as you're done and I've got water coming soon."

No, but you don't understand. This is better. This is a better way. This is better, you don't understand.

"No, YOU don't understand. This is my --king ditch."

If I'm not mistaken that ditch does not have a large PVC pipe in it to this day.

And that's how I feel, too. Just because you, living in a rent-controlled apartment in New York with seventeen locks on the door, don't like to shoot skeet on Thursday nights, that doesn't mean you have the right to dictate that I can't. Don't tell me what kind of car I can drive. Don't tell me what kind of art my taxes have to pay for. And don't freaking tell me what kind of light bulb I have to buy. If your mercury-filled compact fluorescent really is better, I'll decide that for myself.

So you may be struggling, still not quite understanding. You're thinking, "Wait a minute. I thought we'd crossed over into the post-racial period."

Until you understand it, you're going to struggle and not make headway.

Rush understands it. He understood it clear back in February of 2008.

"If Obama gets elected president wouldn't it be good to get this done, Rush, and then we could end the civil rights squabbles that we're having."

It wouldn't do that. Folks, it wouldn't do that. It might even exacerbate them. Let me explain how.

It takes somebody like me who can read the stitches on the fastball. Let us fast forward to January of 2009. Obama has been inaugurated president and he proposes his first bit of legislation. And let's say that it's, I don't know, some civil rights oriented thing, and a bunch of people start howling.

You know that the race industry can't wait for this. Any criticism of Obama, the first black president, is going to be met with charges of racism by the likes of the Reverend Jackson and Sharpton. It will make their race business all that much more prominent.

If you don't want to keep beating your head against the wall, you've got to acknowledge the heliocentric universe. Only in this case, it's Obama-centric. If you're still trying to predict these orbits with the equivalent of a geocentric model you are fooling yourself.

For all my talk about non-linear presentation, I've fallen into the same boring trap. I've flapped my gums about this before. I'd rather have a newspaper, where I can look around and read what I want at my reading speed, rather than a newscast, where I have to sit through everything linearly and listen at their talking speed.

So then I go and post this one article after another after another. But the subject matter is nodal.

If you're reading a post about democrats, you have an anti-democracy thread that winds through all of it. Then it has ties to radicals who don't want to jeopardize their career, but you have three other articles to read through to get to that point. So I finish one post and have to decide which one ties in next, but maybe three or four do. But I have to choose one. So by the time I've posted that one, the thread has migrated and the next one doesn't tie in.

The point is, it's multi-dimensional, not linear. You should be able to spring from the context directly to the related items without scrolling through the other articles. Then you get everything that ties together; the same topic examined from different angles. The medium most suited for doing that very thing is . . . you guessed it. The internet.

But frankly, it's just not worth my time. While I'm grateful that you've taken the time to read what I have to say, every moment that I spend posting to this blah-blah blog is a complete waste of my time.

All of Gibbs's incoherent babbling notwithstanding, Obama will raise taxes on the middle class. You know he will.

And you know that when he does he will blame it on Bush.

"That's just a fact."

I apologize for how long and rambling this is, but you'll get the point. We're eight months into this ordeal and we've already accumulated all this.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I have to come to the inescapable conclusion that George W. Bush was a lousy President. Like, for example, the way George W. Bush gave Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift. What a gaffe that was! Oh, wait a minute. Was that Bush that did that?

Anyway, I hate the way George W. Bush gave the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches. How embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky! Uh, just a minute. Was that Bush? I might be confused here.

But when Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, then made a ridiculous spectacle lying about, that was just . . . hold on . . . I'm not sure . . . was that Bush?

But that ridiculous slip-up Bush made when he visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent "Austrian language." Oh, that was hilarious. What a freaking idiot . . . wait a minute. Hold on. I need to check and make sure it was Bush that did that.

But it was unforgivable the way George W. Bush filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people with tax cheats. That was just . . . it was just . . . was it Bush?

But Bush is so Spanish illiterate that he referred to “Cinco de Cuatro” in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the fourth of May. And continued to flub it when he tried again. That was just an embarrassment, especially after he had berated Americans for not knowing anything but English. What a bumbling idiot Bush is . . . or . . . hang on . . . was that Bush that did that?

But when George W. Bush mis-spelled the word advice, the press hammered him for it for years like they did Dan Quayle . . . but, I'm trying to remember here . . . no it seems like the press completely ignored it . . . and (I'll have to check) it seems like that might not have been Bush that did that.

Anyway, when George W. Bush burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on “Earth Day.” That was a hypocritical move for . . . uh . . . for . . . hmmm, nope. I don't think Bush did that either.

Here's one. When the Bush’s administration okayed Air Force One flying low over downtown Manhattan followed by a jet fighter. That was proof that he was completely clueless about what happened on 9-11. Oh, wait a minute . . . uh, never mind on that one.

But the way Bush needed a teleprompter to get through a press conference! Hah! What an inept moron, has to have his words fed to him by smarter men behind the scenes. Oh, what a . . .uh, hold on . . . I'm sorry, maybe that wasn’t Bush.

But when Bush didn't send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest, for a flood that that killed or made homeless more people than Katrina in New Orleans , that proved he was racist and incompetent. That proved that . . . uh, maybe . . . no, I guess I might have been mistaken.

No, matter, when George W. Bush ordered the firing of the CEO of GM! That was so outrageous! I'm surprised there wasn't an uproar over Bush doing . . . you know, Bush, shredding the Constitution, Bush . . . uh . . . wait a minute . . .

What about this? What about when George W. Bush reduced your retirement plan’s holdings of GM stock by 90% and then gave the unions a majority stake in GM. Can you believe that? What gall, for him to take over a corporation like that, as is Bush knew how to . . . uh . . . hmmm

But when George W. Bush proposed doubling the national debt in one year. That was completely . . . that was . . . that was not Bush. Sorry. My mistake.

When Bush spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take Laura Bush to a play in NYC, that was just irresponsible. That was being clueless. That was . . . that was . . . uh, that was not George Bush.

But you know, I just got sick of the way Bush was always in your face, always holding prime-time press conferences to blame all of his failings on the previous administration. I just found that to be . . . uh. Oops, my mistake. Never mind.

Well, I can't remember exactly why, but I know Bush was a lousy excuse for a president.