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I apologize for the annoying screens that keep popping up in this video. I like this compilation because it's not just the his broken record "If you like your plan, you can keep it" over and over all the different times he said it. It includes all the "No matter what you've heard . . . " and "Period!" that he said. He was trying to make it clear "Look, I'm not being cute, I'm not being Clintonian . . . " In fact, he even said "This is a promise we will keep!"

But I freaking hate all the annoying crap that keeps popping up.

Here's another one that's more straightforward. Only it's just Obama saying the same sentence over and over again on numerous occasions (without a single duplicate).

Search it yourself on YouTube. A lot of the hits you get will be the montage inside of a news program, which is also interesting. But I wanted just the clips.

Obamacare is a disaster. The liberals continue with their "But if it weren't for . . ." campaign. One moron on the left characterized it as a flat tire on an otherwise perfectly functioning plane:

And another cartoonist correctly identified it as a crashing plane that incidentally also had a flat tire.

That, of course, is the exact same deal as the "It's just a faulty ignition switch" cartoon, which I brilliantly and humbly corrected showing that yes, there is a faulty ignition switch as you have indicated, but it's in the wreckage of something that fixing a switch won't correct.

---

The problem with this cartoon is that Obama is not haunted by his statements (lies). It doesn't make one bit of difference. Most of us knew he was lying then; everyone knows he was lying now. It doesn't change one blessed thing.

Nobody that voted for the man voted for him for his honesty, any more than they voted for him for his experience or ability, or even his political philosophy (for the most part).

I want to give proper credit for this idea, but I can't recall the guy's name. I think he was on the Hugh Hewitt show. He compared Obamacare to the government forcing you to buy a cell phone.

But not just any cell phone. You have to buy it from them or you have to buy the one they specify. If you already have a cell phone, they take that away. It's not the one they specify.

It doesn't matter if you'll never use the dumb features they've included in their phone. They know better than you do.

What if you don't use a cell phone enough to justify paying a monthly fee? Doesn't matter. You can't just pay for the minutes you use. They know better than you do. And they need your money for the idiots who are constantly texting and using data instead of working a job to pay for their own cell phone.

The concept of forcing you to buy insurance is just stupid. It's unsustainable and . . . it's just stupid. The cell phone analogy is brilliant. Anything the government forces you to buy is stupid, but the cell phone analogy works better than anything I've heard.

But . . .

What difference does it make at this point?

You keep hearing the left scream that Obamacare is "The law of the land!" If that's the case, how come Obama himself doesn't have to live under it? Why doesn't Congress? Is that the way The Law works in this country?

They keep saying it's "settled law."

Read Ann Coulter's column. She explains how "settled law" works for the left. All the laws they don't agree with they keep revisiting. But the second they squeak one over the line that they like that the country hates, it's "Settled Law!"

That's like stopping the game as soon as you get ahead. Don't take a chance that your team doesn't have what it takes to take it to the end of the game.

Al Franken is the perfect representation of their "settled law" concept. He lost the election in Minnesota. Oh, but wait, we just happened to find a bunch of ballots in a trunk. Omigosh, they're all for Franken! Then they had a recount here, and a recount there . . . as soon as he was ahead they declared victory.

Wait, don't you think we ought to recount these other counties as well? No, we're good. It's "settled."

Glenn Beck is Samuel the Lamanite. God bless him, he's seen the future as often as any prognosticator out there.

But I find myself wanting to listen to him less and less. I don't know if I can ever forgive him for not getting behind Romney from the beginning. He was always "I guess I'll vote for Romney, if I have to, just 'cause he's not a socialist like Obama."

Bullcrap. Romney was an excellent candidate for President. He was an incredibly good choice against a disaster like Obama, but he was a stellar choice running against anyone. Mitt Romney was exactly what America needed at that time.

Now Beck is talking about "defunding" the Republican party. He's fallen into this trap people get "I'm not a Republican, I'm a conservative."

Oh, bullcrap. If you're anything but a Republican, you're a democrat. Don't give me your "Libertarian" crap. You can have libertarian philosophies or be a "fiscal conservative" or whatever you want, but if you vote for anyone but a Republican you've given a vote to a democrat.

As Ann Coulter explains, none of that matters a bit unless you win elections.

People called George Bush a "divisive" President.

We'll ignore for the moment that every single President we've ever had has been called divisive. It's just one of the many terms people use to denigrate the man they didn't vote for.

But George Bush was divisive and that's a very good thing. When you have goats in your pasture you'd like to separate them from the sheep.

George Bush revealed who people are. Liberals were screaming how bad they hated George Bush. "Cause he's stoo-oopid!" Oh? What is he stupid about? "He's just stoo-oopid! He's so stoo-oopid!" Well, he got better grades than John Kerry or Al Gore. He's run more successful businesses than they have. "Shut up!"

The liberals didn't even understand why they hated George Bush. They just parroted what the media told them to say. Then they opposed the policies he supported, which were the exact same policies they supported under Bill Clinton.

And in so doing they revealed what they are.

What Bush did that was so unforgivable was to beat the man they voted for. Twice. Their opposition had nothing to do with policy. He could have personally called them up, asked them what to do, and then done it, and it wouldn't change anything. Because he couldn't go back and not beat their guy in a democratic election.

George Bush was a divider. He divided the sheep from the goats. Barack Obama is dividing us against each other

Here's a review. In 2008 Obama got elected because he was the cool black candidate. McCain gave an inspirational speech at the convention, then fell asleep for the rest of the campaign. Pundits surmised that he was too this or too that and that Palin this or Palin that. But Obama won and lots of people got to have a bumper sticker that said "My vote made history."

He then proceeded to spend the next four years bumbling around like an idiot.

In 2012 Republicans ran a stellar candidate. In a time when the economy had fallen apart and Obama had no clue and no motivation to fix it, Romney was the man who knew what to do and had a track record of doing it. Pundits ran complex computer programs predicting that Romney would win because of this historical fact and that piece of data and because Obama had made such a mess of the economy. I didn't buy it (Look it up—that's why I have my blogs archived). Right up to the day before the election Republican talking heads were explaining why Romney was going to win.

Obama won. Immediately the same talking heads who had predicted Romney would win went on TV analyzing all the things Romney did wrong to lose and all the way the Republican party had to change.

Just like Bush couldn't change what made liberals hate him (he beat their guys in a democratic election) there is absolutely nothing Romney or the RNC could have done any differently to win that election. They were not cool, black Barack Obama. Nobody voted for Obama for what he could do for them in terms of the economy or policy. They voted for him for what he could do for their image for being cool enough to vote for him. Who wants to claim they voted for the CEO guy who understands math?

So now the Republican party is fighting amongst itself.

Different factions are saying we have to do this or that to win elections, all based on an election that had nothing to do with anything they're discussing. Obama is black therefore representative of cool. You can't fix that with policy.

Again, the demorats are benefiting from this, but they aren't smart enough to have orchestrated it. Obama certainly is not. What we're seeing now is the byproduct of a brilliant strategy (run a guy you can't oppose without being racist) buy anyone who ascribes Obama's actions to brilliance did not watch the first debate. I'll remind you again—that is the time when America saw Barack Obama, not the character Barack Obama plays when he's reading his script.

So what? What do you care if the Republican party has an internal war raging? That benefits Obama, but what do you care?

The other thing that he's doing (and again, not through a brilliant strategy necessarily—just being himself) is dividing America against itself.

He place the race card and the class card. If you don't want to buy insurance that covers contraception you're evil and want children to starve.

Eh . . . if you cared you already know. If you don't, I can't help you.

Dennis Miller takes that approach. People call to rant and he's glad to let them. "I feel you, brother, let it out." But he says he got it out of his system election night. Now he doesn't waste the energy on something he can't change.

I love Dennis Miller. He's very smart and conservative and courteous to people. That doesn't make him weak. But he really likes people and treats them well.

Someone called bellyaching about America and how they need to have socialized medicine, and he knows 'cause he lives in America but he came from Jamaica and lived in England . . .

He started in on Dennis and Dennis cut him off. "I'm not going to play that game where you tell me I'm dumb because we disagree on something." It was fantastic. But then, you hear the guy railing on him again. Meaning: Dennis didn't hang up on it—he doesn't do that. He still let the guy rant at him. Then he pointed out again—the guy was saying how much better it was in these other countries that he was so superior for having lived in, but he chose to live in the United States. Finally the guy hung up rather than discuss the issues.

That was an aside, but I love Dennis Miller.

The point I started out to make is this: The time is coming when you have to decide, "Do I stick my neck out and be a Sam Adams, or lay low and not get targeted?"

Nobody reads my web site. I'm a big fat nobody. I post here to sort it out in my mind and because if I don't vent I'm going to freaking explode. But nobody reads this so it doesn't matter that I explain that Obama, in spite of being black and super cool, is a steaming pile of fetid crap.

If anybody did I might have to be more careful. The time is coming.

Dennis Miller was talking about Dick Cheney and how much respect he has for him. Cheney is a Wild Weasel—you know, the F4 Phantom they send over to light up the enemy radar and make them expose themselves. Mention his name and people who think will tell you that Cheney is a great American. Others obey the chip implanted in them by the left and start frothing their Pavlovian horsecrap. Why do you hate Dick Cheney? "Because he . . . I . . . he shot a guy! You're stoo-oopid! Shut up!"

But then Dennis said something really interesting. "I can still say that, can't I? We can still hold views that are unpopular with the rulers. But I have to tell you, when the time comes, yeah, I'll lie."

Did you think you'd see government agencies targeting people based on their political beliefs? Did you think we'd see socialized medicine? Do you really think that the President overtly lying about Benghazi and Health Care to get through an election cycle is just how we do politics in this country?

The time is coming. I'd like to think it's not here yet, but the time is coming when you aren't comfortable posting an opinion on a YouTube video because the group in power will make you pay for it.

If you find yourself in Amsterdam go to the Anne Frank house. That happened pretty recently. Phnom Penh was more recent than that. It happens.

When it does you have to decide: Do I want to just go along to get along and prevent my family from suffering, or am I going to go down in a blaze of glory?

Case in point: Liberal morons reading this would have me put in jail for arson or suspicion of terrorism because I used the phrase "Go down in a blaze of glory." You know it's true.

I was showing a guy at work my political cartoons bashing Obama and he sighed. "Why can't everyone just be groovy?"

His philosophy is that people shouldn't tear other people down. That is absolutely true. But I'm not going to let them tear me down.

My response was that you can't be groovy when people are getting in the way of your groovy. I'm not explaining this very well . . .

I told him that I was happy to live and let live, but when people start getting in my life—like telling me I have to buy their health insurance, I am going to stand up for myself.

Shaking my head . . . I honestly don't know why I chronicle this . . .

Sodium free V8 is nasty. It just is. I was explaining how nasty it is . . . while drinking one. Yes, I was drinking one and complaining about it. This guy said "What are you, four years old? Give it to me, I'll drink it!"

These are the conversations we have.

:-/

He says I shouldn't complain 'cause I have it better than most people in the world. I say that's no reason to tolerate things that are wrong. I call it "Divine discontent" and, by the way, it's very different from complaining. It's "courage to change the things I can." If you want a perfect example look at iOS 7. Are you seriously telling me that I shouldn't be disappointed that something that I now have to use that horrific piece of crap?

It's like Sarah Palin says "A dead fish goes with the flow."

People, especially on my side of the political universe, are screaming for Kathleen Sebelius to resign or be fired.

Why?

She's the person responsible for Obamacare and it's becoming more and more evident what a disaster that thing is. So explain to me, how will replacing Kathleen Sebelius fix that? We want someone more competent overseeing the implementation of socialized medicine?

I'm just not seeing how replacing her gets us what we want.

It's the same old deal. When you live way off the fairway and someone hits a golf ball through your window you have to wonder, "Is he a really bad shot or a really good shot?"

The debate rages. Just this morning Glenn Beck was saying "I don't want to hear any more about how this guy [Obama] is incompetent! He knows exactly what he's doing!"

Glenn, Rush, all of you . . . Obama is incompetent. That doesn't make him less evil. He wants socialism, he hates America, he'd like to see a system where's he's Fidel Castro in the palace the rest of the country starves to pay for. But he's not smart enough to pull any of that off. He's not a genius mastermind. The man couldn't organize a two-car parade.

He is the terrorist in Ironman 3.

I have no idea what I'm trying to say. I'm just going with my old philosophy of "When I find myself in a hole I keep digging." Hey, it might work someday.

The evil/incompetent dichotomy doesn't negate the possibly that someone can be both. I think maybe that's what I'm trying to say. In this particular case I don't know if Obama could implement socialism any faster if he were a genius. The deal here is that he has very little to do with it.

Relax your focus on the poster to get the 3D picture here. I'm not talking about some formal, organized group that he's a puppet for. More like an ideology that's causing a tide that he's carried along in, and he's propped up in the bow of the boat as its captain.

Again, he's not a genius, but he doesn't have to be. No matter how stupid he looks the people that see him as a representation of their own coolness don't care what a fool he is.

But if he's in the bow of any boat he's just the wood carving there—he's not really guiding the ship.

All we've heard the last year is how he didn't know anything about anything and wasn't in control of anything . . . the IRS targeting conservatives, NSA spying, the IG report, the Benghazi attacks, Obamacare . . .

The deal is, he's probably mostly telling the truth. He doesn't keep on top of anything. I'm sure he gets briefed on stuff, but he doesn't care enough to pay attention or remember. That's not his deal. His deal is standing in front of cameras and golfing and hanging out with rappers.

There may be an element of Psychological Overlay here. Of course you remember the Herman Melville deal I briefly mentioned months ago. You write a novel and people are going to find hidden meanings everywhere. You didn't put them there, but they are there nonetheless. That's the way life is. Everything is all tied up together like filaments in plastic polymers.

So Obama wants socialism and it's happening while he's President. But he's just being Barack Hussein Obama. He's not deftly and artfully orchestrating the implementation. He's just basking in the glory of being the object that allows idiots to pretend that they're totally happening.

Obama told us repeatedly "If you like your insurance, you can keep it." We knew it was a lie. Now it's obvious it was a like and he knew when he said it that the majority of people with insurance would not get to keep it.

What's my point?

:-/

No idea. Everyone in America knows it was a lie and nothing is going to change. I guess my point is that it's a very revealing moment. No one can hide behind "Hope" any more. You know what the man is. You can no longer plead ignorance.

More on that later.

Back to the Incompetent/Evil question for a minute.

If you've looked at this deal at all you've got to be wondering, "How can anyone be so incompetent that they can't build a functioning web site for $400 Million?" But, like Obama (Praised be His Name Forever) says, that's only part of the whole system. And the entire system has the same disastrous, disorganized, FUBARed feel the web site has.

Could it be designed to fail?

Right now you have private insurance companies involved. But they can't compete because of the rules of Obamacare. If you're a 65 year old man your insurance has to cover birth control and maternity and breast augmentation and 37 other things you don't need. So the private insurance companies have to drop you or raise your rates.

The way the system is currently structured it will fail.

This will cause Obama to step in (I know, I know, I just spent three excruciating posts making the case that he's not really involved at all) and say that (imagine this in his Yogi Bear voice, I know you can do it) "The private insurance isn't working. We have to go to a single-payer system."

What? You can't see this happening? Why, because he hasn't ever played this trick in the past? Or because he hasn't said multiple times that he wants a single payer system and it has to come in steps?

Sorry. Way late on these.

(I sometimes like to spell Walmart with just one L)

I was reading an article on Townhall.com about the Obamacare rollout, and they talked about the human wallpaper deal that Obama tried to pull off. He had thirteen people on stage with him he was showing off as success stories on signing up for Obamacare. Well . . . as it turns out, only three of them had actually successfully signed up.

The great quote was "The plural of anecdote is data."

A corollary mindset is getting your opinion from Facebook pictures and cartoons. You can draw a picture of a unicorn. That doesn't mean they exist.

The situation is that the Obamacare rollout is a disaster. The spin is that it's just a minor little thing. "The website is just a small part of Obamacare." Yeah, well the jugular is just a tiny part of your anatomy, too.

This is the way one liberal moron described the situation:

The real situation is more like this:

Another liberal moron dismissed it as being like this:

The actual situation is more like this:

Judges would also accept:

This guy, from the same web site surprisingly, got it more right:

But, oddly enough, the same liberal moron who did the ambulance cartoon, actually got this one right:

Obama really is Carter's second term

Apropos of absolutely nothing, I came across this web site of really bad jokes. They aren't bad in the sense that they are crude, they are just real groaners. Stupid stuff you're guaranteed to enjoy.

This is just one page of many. Navigate around for more.

Levi has a car for sale. He wants $5,000 for it. Dexter only wants to pay $4500. Levi isn't willing to take less; Dexter isn't willing to pay more. They part ways without a transaction taking place.

Who is to blame for the transaction not happening?

I didn't catch who it was, but some guy running for mayor of New York was being interviewed about appearing with a Tea Party group. The interviewer started to talk and the candidate broke in. "Just let me make it clear, I wasn't there asking for their support or endorsement. Just let me make that clear at the outset."

When did being a patriot make you a pariah?

It's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen. Isaiah nailed it when he talked about good becoming evil and evil becoming good. The left is having great success making "Tea Party" become a term of derision.

It's the same game they always play. They don't want to meet you in the arena of ideas, so their strategy is to shut you up.

You remember when I told "Joe" that "It seems like 'Choice' is only sacred for those who don't stray off the plantation with their viewpoint."

He came back with "the use of the word “plantation” in political rhetoric is certainly racist."

So I asked him "Any other words I'm not allowed to use?"

You get the idea. If they can discredit the term they don't have to address the issues. Rush Limbaugh? Oh, that's bad. I don't know why, but I'm sure I've been told to think that. Tea Party? Same thing.

Words have meanings. Demorats know this and they never get tired of exploiting it to their advantage.

I'm serious. If you haven't seen Ironman 3 don't read this post until you do.

Nothing annoys me more than someone spilling the beans on a show I haven't seen yet, especially when the whole thing pivots on a single "Sixth Sense" moment.

These previous paragraphs add nothing to the post, they're just to keep you from accidentally seeing the spoiler before you avert your eyes in case you haven't seen the movie yet.

Okay, If you're still reading I have to assume you've already seen the movie or you don't care. Here's the lesson:

Ironman 3 is a metaphor for Barack Obama.

You've got this horrifically evil guy. You just hate him. But when you go after the guy you find out that he's just a figurehead. He's not really doing any of the evil stuff—he's a complete imbecile and not capable of pulling it off. He's just the one who's good at being in front of the camera.

Barack Obama.

Barack Obama is nothing, that's why he's there. If he were competent and innovative and capable he wouldn't be useful 'cause he wouldn't let himself be a puppet.

You know the Limbaugh Theorem. It's that Obama is always seen as campaigning, never seen as governing. That way he can't be held accountable for anything. The Limbaugh Theorem is very useful for what it explains. Which is that because Obama is never perceived as governing he can speak out against the very problems that he has caused.

But don't make the mistake of thinking it's a conscious strategy that he's brilliantly implementing. "Oh, man, I want to roll up my sleeves and get into the thick of things, but I have to force myself to remain aloof and not dive in. It's torturing me!"

He doesn't get involved in the hard work because he doesn't like hard work. Barack Obama is a celebrity. That's all he is. He's not a thinker or an innovator or a hard worker. He's not even a politician. He hates talking to people, and that's what politics is. He loves to mug for the cameras.

Again, he doesn't want to be a revolutionary, he wants people to think he's a revolutionary. Being a revolutionary is too darn much work

But some people continue to think he's brilliant.

"Look at him! Look at that!"
What did he do?
"Nothing! It's brilliant! The way he keeps himself at arms' length from everything . . . "
Nothing?
"Yeah, it's brilliant! How can we even try to compete against a man with such cunning?"

There is a novel in here somewhere. The town is waiting for the new sheriff to arrive. The man is a genius. He's going to have the town cleaned up in no time. They'll know him 'cause he wears a white hat with a red band around it.

But the would-be sheriff gets jumped by Indians in the desert. An imbecilic dolt finds the hat blowing across the trail and puts it on then rides into town.

He rides up to the general store. The guy leaning back on the chair on the boardwalk says "You must be the new purveyor of peace that we've been waiting for."

Huh? You're looking for a prospector?

All the guys sitting outside the store chewing tobacco with their boots up on the hitching rail look at each other. What?

"Oh, I get it, he means that it's hard work, like prospecting, you've got to dig in! He's so brilliant he speaks in parables."

Wow, what a deep thinker, it takes us awhile to catch up to his thinking. He is so far above us!

The bad guys go to do a bank job and they're looking around. Where is he? I don't see him! It's driving me crazy. Omigosh, he's gotta' be somewhere waiting to jump out—how did he know right where we were going to be?!!

They give up on doing the bank job, they're so certain they'll get caught 'cause they can't out-think this guy—the guy who's reading a comic book in the outhouse with no idea that six bad hombres are marching down the street to rob the bank.

No matter how stupid he is the people figure out an explanation for it because they are so vested in the idea that he is brilliant. It's an inviolable axiom.

Nancy Pelosi said we have to pass it to see what's in it.

Isn't that the clinical description of a stool sample?

---

I may add more to this post later, but at least I got it posted on Wednesday.

I can still remember that fall day in Mrs. Yetter's 8th grade algebra class when I learned about graphing. First we drew little tables where we put "x" and "y" at the top of the page, drew a vertical line down the center, and then stuck in some values for x. 1, 2, 3, 4 . . . In the "y" column we calculated what x should be for the equation Y=3x+6.

Okay, so you multiply 1 by 3 then add 6, that's 9. Multiply 2 by 3 then add 6, that's 12. Multiply 3 by 3 then add 6, that's 15. That's pretty cool. So that's what all these Xs and Ys are for.

Then she taught us the magic. The Cartesian Coordinate System. Whoa.

Go over on your graph however many spaces to the x value, then go up to the y value, put a dot there. Do that for the next pair, then the next. Hey! Lookee! It's making a line.

Yeah, but what if you square the x? Look what it does to the shape. What if you take the inverse? Every equation that you can make that relates x to y has a form. Check it out! By looking at the equation you can tell the effect of a change in x on a change in y! How cool is that?!

Freaking magic.

Taguchi is famous for, among other things, his shifting of the transistor curve.

Let's say you can control a process by within 10 points of whatever it is you're measuring. That's the x axis in the curves above. If you're working on the left side of the curve, that much variation results in a big y change. What if you could move the curve over, or change the product to use the output in a shifted part of the curve? Your 10 points variation in the top, more horizontal part of the curve results in much less variation in the output value y.

That is understanding.

So you want to build a portable bridge. You need it to be lightweight so you can transport it on the back of a lowboy, but it has to be strong because tanks and troop carriers are going to drive over it. You're going to want to know that the load it can carry is related to the moment of inertia, which is Bh^3/12. What that means is that if you double the width of the load carrying member you get twice the strength for twice the weight. But if you double the height you get 8 times the strength for double the weight.

Only you don't actually double the weight, you just put the lower piece twice as far away, so it's kind of a freebie if you know what you're doing.

This is the value of understanding the equation.

This is the example I always use about understanding the data. Liberals are fond of tracking the economy with the President. Look! Look at this! In Bush 41's term the economy was down. Then during Clinton's time in office it went up. Then it went down again in the middle of Bush 43's time.

(Funny, they don't seem to talk about how it's doing under Obama . . . )

You could graph it all out. Yeah, it's true, it kinda does track with the President. But, wait. The economy didn't improve under Clinton until after the Republicans took over Congress. And it didn't tank under Bush until the democrats took over.

Huh!

This is another of the Phaedrus's knife deals I was talking about. The information is there. Understanding is the key that aligns the tumblers and makes the universe reveal its secrets.

Here's another favorite of the liberals. You ought to see the uneven wealth distribution in the United States! Dude! It's worse that . . . well, it's worse than about anywhere.

Go ahead and look it up. You'll find a lot of people screaming about that. They are wrong.

What's that? Oh, no, they're not wrong about the data. You can read the chart yourself. But they are either lying to you or they don't understand what it means.

The reason the United States has unequal wealth distribution is because the United States has wealth!

If you want equal wealth distribution move your sorry lying carcass to Somalia. Everybody there has about the same level of poverty as everyone else there.

Two adages apply here:

1) Figures don't lie, but liars do figure.
2) Liberals use data like a drunk uses a lamppost—for support, not illumination.

Here's the funny thing. The liberals are manipulating all this data to try to prove to everyone that icebergs are not dangerous, and they are going to drown on the same ship as everyone else

Read this great article about Mark Levin's proposal.

Then read this on-the-money piece explaining how the government is only shut down because the demorats are sure the Republicans will be blamed.

When I was a kid I used to read the Parade Magazine insert that came in the Sunday paper. Every week they would have a section of someone's favorite jokes. They would typically include something like this:

I saw a pigeon standing on the forearm of the statue in the park, and told my wife "I didn't know Lulubelle Sanders was in town."

I figured I was the only person on the planet who didn't know who Lulubelle Sanders was or what her famous and hilarious connection was to pigeons or forearms or statues.

After decades of listening to the news instead of doing something productive, now I'm the one who is always throwing out obscure references; I find myself making the reference to events that no one remembers.

Like the Hussein Hustle of 1990.

In 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Bush 41 made it clear that he was on his way over to kick Saddam's trash and toss his sorry mongoloid idiot carcass out of there. Hussein said "Wait! Wait! I have a proposal that will resolve this without military action!"

Saddam "proposed" that the US leave him alone and Israel get rid of its weapons and not defend itself from the Arabs and the US remove all its troops from anywhere close to the Middle East. In exchange, he would kind of mostly sort of pull out of Kuwait, but he'd get to keep their oil.

Bush 41 ignored the ridiculous "proposal" and continued his force buildup. Then, predictably, Hussein said "George Bush is a warmonger! I offered a way to peace, but he is intent on waging war no matter what!"

No one with two live brain cells ever paid any attention to that moron's terms. His whole purpose in pitching them was so he could say Bush rejected them.

This a trick that the Husseins of the world play all the time. Hussein Obama was too stoned at the time to remember the Persian Gulf War, but someone on his staff has coached him on the technique. Since he's guilty of the tactic, it's only logical that he now accuses us of employing it.

He's dismissing the Republicans "demands" as not reasonable. What's not reasonable about them?

If Obamacare is "the law of the land," as he keeps saying, why doesn't he or his family and cronies have to obey it? Is it the law of the land, or only the law of the people whose lips aren't surgically attached to his thin-skinned backside?

The Republicans have offered a sensible way to keep the entire government fully funded. They have passed bills to fund every single thing that Obama is shutting down to inflict pain on the people he's supposed to be leading.

Explain how it's not reasonable to deal with budget items separately, or to delay a program that's not ready. Explain how making the law apply universally to everyone should be dismissed as not reasonable.

Let me tell you a story about a man who was going through a divorce. He was furious at his wife for daring to leave him.

One day he announced he was taking his kids to Disneyland. He told them a specific date, and gave them brochures with maps of the park and descriptions of all the attractions.

Of course the kids were excited. Every day they watched Disney videos and talked enthusiastically about meeting the characters. They made a chart with an outline of Mickey Mouse and squares representing how many days until their trip. They posted it on the fridge and every day colored in one more square.

Two days before they were to leave the man announced they would not be going. It was all their mother's fault. Because she was leaving him he had to pay for a lawyer and an apartment and he just couldn't afford it.

The man was thrilled with himself. His wife would get the blame for all the children's anguish. They might even hate her for life. The worse the kids hurt the more pleased he was with his plan.

Any pain you feel because of the 15% of the government that is shut down is the fault of the vindictive Barack Hussein Obama. He doesn't care about the American people. We're just pawns in his efforts to get his own way and punish those those who dare to disagree with him.

---

There is one person who makes more obscure references than I do: Dennis Miller. That guy's brain is a silo of information.

That's why I was shocked when he was talking about the (then) upcoming Government Shutdown and was curious how life would be. He said he had heard that it had shut down before, but he couldn't remember it. That's really odd, 'cause I know for a fact he was on the air at the time, 'cause I can remember specific things he said back then.

Please keep your hands and feet inside the ride while we once again take this stroll through my memories.

The first I heard of the concept of a government shutdown was the summer before Clinton (pardon my language) did it in 1995. I was driving home from work and the news said "The White House says that if they can't come to an agreement with Congress on the budget they may have to shut down the government."

I was shocked. First, the idea of a government shutdown seemed pretty drastic. Also, why were they even talking about it at this point? The end of the fiscal years was months away.

I didn't know it at the time, but there was nothing anyone short of God could have done at that point to keep the government from "shutting down." Clinton had made up his mind.

From time to time you'd hear the same blurb as the time grew closer. Congress submitted budget after budget which Clinton rejected. He refused to give them specifics. He wouldn't even talk to Newt Gingrich. Bob Dole said that he was in the bizarre position of negotiating with the President through the press.

The deadline came, the government shut down, then Clinton signed a budget that wasn't substantially different from any of the many budgets Congress had already sent him.

Everyone wondered what the point of all that had been.

Until 1996, which was an election year, and the demorats started talking about how the Republicans had shut down the government. The Republicans didn't respond, I suppose because you don't think you need to refute morons who claim the moon is made of green cheese.

But as the election drew closer I started screaming at the TV and radio. "Do you cretins not see what's happening here?!!!!" (Why, yes, as a matter of fact, apparently I am that much smarter than those numbskulls.)

The Sunday before the Tuesday election someone on a Sunday show asked Haley Barbour (RNC chairman) if he regretted shutting down the government. Before I could throw a chair through the TV he responded "I regret not getting the truth out about what really happened in the government shut down."

Seriously? Two days before the election?!

I threw my hands up in the air, turned off the TV and left the room.

Here's a rule of thumb for taking vacations: Stay away long enough that they miss you at work, but not so long that they figure out they can do without you.

Obama's vindictive little temper tantrum is losing its effectiveness as time goes on and we get accustomed to life with a "shutdown" government. If you planned a trip to Yellowstone and found it closed, you'd be disappointed. But that only worked for vacations that were already arranged. Now people are making other plans, which leaves Obama shaking his little fists and crying "No! Come here so I can tell you that you can't come here!"

The first blow to his little strategy came when we called his bluff and let the government "shut down." That was why he escalated his threats so much before that happened, like the parent who desperately hopes the kid won't find out how empty his " . . . or else!" threat is.

That's also why Obama is trying to make his little hissy fit as painful as possible. He's thinking, "Oh, crap, I thought they'd cave at the threat. What am I going to do now that they realize this scary "government shutdown" doesn't change their lives at all?"

What an irrelevant little putz that jackhole is.

Okay, we're going to start this way because I don't want to turn away my good friends whose opinion I respect who are still pissed off about the 17th Amendment. Understand that I'm on your side. But I'm going to use a word that makes you cringe: Democracy.

I was taught in grade school, probably like you, how wonderful it was that we live in a democracy. Then as I progressed, I, like you, learned that we don't live in a democracy, we live in a republic.

I heard someone at work expounding about political systems. He was explaining why a democracy is so evil. He explained that "A monarchy is the rule of one. A democracy is the rule of many. But . . . a republic is . . . [dramatic pause] . . . the rule of the law."

I don't know if everyone else was thinking "Wow, that's deep," or if their silence was, like mine, just human courtesy while they thought "Okay, but who gets to make those laws?"

You know I never get into politics or religion on this blog, but our political system is based on what the Prophet Mosiah called "The Voice of the People." The premise is that in general the majority will choose the right most of the time. You'll get little special interests that have whacked out ideas, but by definition the mainstream of thought is what most people think.

I'm with you, in my experience most people are idiots. But if the majority doesn't make the decisions, who gets to pick who does? Who gets to say which people are smart enough to make the rules?

We are fortunate to live under the Rule of Law, and the way we makes those laws is through a Republic. But the basis of a Republic is still majority rule.

Just sayin' . . . I'm going to use the word "democracy" and when I do what I'm talking about is the will of the People. Deal with it. Take this whole freaking boring explanation and stuff it into the word "democracy." That way I can use one word instead of eleventy-three paragraphs every time I need to access the concept.

When you have a disagreement you have two parties with two different views. You can't have a disagreement where only one party disagrees. That's absurd; it's the sound of one hand clapping.

So it's absurd for the democrats to say "The Republicans are the cause of this disagreement!" Their idea is that there would be no disagreement if only we agreed with them. Well, we wouldn't have a disagreement if they came over to our side. That concept is way beyond their reasoning capacity.

Speaking of people working outside their mental capacity . . . it's a shame that the irony is lost on Obama when he's screaming that he refuses to negotiate with Republicans and they just want to have things their own way.

Understand that this is different from one side being wrong and the other side being right. When the democrats try to argue that the square root of two is seven, that's not a disagreement. That's incurable stupidity. It takes two sides to disagree; it only takes one side to be wrong.

Obama is calling us extortionists. (That's ironclad evidence that he's engaging in extortion.) His idea of democracy is the same as Hugo Chavez's: everyone agreeing with him.

People—mainly liberals—wring their hands and moan that they wish we could all just get along. These people completely miss the point of democracy.

Peace and quiet come through a dominant force. There are relationships where that's appropriate. Kids don't get to negotiate whether they can leave the house looking like a prostitute.

Democracy is a noisy proposition. Whenever you have equality you have disagreement.

I could leave it there . . .

But I just have to reiterate why I never use the word "democratic" party. It's the nature of democrats that whatever they're telling you is the opposite of what they're after. The last thing a democrat wants is to do something by the will of the people.

I'm done.

See above.

My life is an unending exercise of pouring Cheerios into a bowl of milk and seeing if any patterns emerge. Lately the Cheerios I've been looking at have been the idea of harmonics in life—those unseen (unheard) events taking place as a result of conscious events that shape our psyche without our being fully aware. I think I could track down patterns and relationships and associations between these concepts better if I would start out at least naming them . . .

I find that my tendency is try to draw analogies with concepts and principles that I already understand. That's one of five methodologies in learning (that I define as "owning" knowledge—making it yours) that I already outlined in an earlier excruciatingly boring treatise that you were wise to ignore. Occasionally I'll stumble across allegories that perfectly illustrate what I'm struggling with, but invariably I don't get them written down before they flee the vast wasteland that I jokingly refer to as my brain.

I can point to the exact place in the road where I was driving where one such brilliant analogy occurred to me. I've driven past it two dozen times since then without being able to re-create the enlightenment I got there.

That particular one had to do with the idea of "Understanding," as in Proverbs 4:6. That's the deal I was flapping my gums about where if you speak the language of mathematics you can talk the Universe into giving up its secrets. It's probably a good thing I can't remember, because as it is I can legitimately say that the explanation worked brilliantly. If I remembered it that would expose its flaws.

(Hey, you don't know—maybe I AM getting paid by the word here . . . )

One example might be how interest and debt work. Maybe some people don't get why they're not making headway on their debt. It's simple math. You think you're ahead 'cause you threw in your appliances on the loan on your house. You just paid for them four or five times over, and you'll still be paying for them 20 years after they've been turned into Kias.

Some more math: If you have charitable deductions you should pay them when you're being taxed at a higher rate . . . you know, stuff like that.

I'm already bored. You've gotta be gouging your eyes out by now.

On that topic, here's something I figured out along the way: Making lots of money is like playing the piano. Some people have a God-given talent for it, but anyone can master the art.

You have to put in the time and the work and it has to be a priority, but it's not something that you're out of luck on if you don't draw the right cards or don't have the talent to make the right decisions. (I guess in that way it's like learning to write without mixing metaphors . . . ) There are principles and fundamentals and if you want to make a lot of money and are serious and passionate enough to learn and apply them, you will. Just like any other skill.

The old (sexist) saw was that a woman shouldn't go to college to attract a mate. If she were good wife material, a college degree would be unnecessary. If she were not, it would be inadequate.

That's what I've got going on here. If you understand these concepts—if you're paying attention and you've read Adam Smith and you're halfway thinking—you don't need me to explain it to you. If you're not, all the explaining in the world is not going to convince you.

So why do I do this?

Good cotton-picking question . . .

No, it's the same reason I cheer for the Jazz. No matter how loud I cheer I'm not going to help the Jazz win, any more than the Lakers fan is going to make his team win. I'm not going to convince him to come over to my side and he's not going to move me to his. As I cheer more boisterously and get more obnoxious about it Jazz fans will love me, Lakers fans will hate me.

So I just do it to annoy the Lakers fans.

Okay, enough pre-ramble. On to the main event ramble . . .

Where to dive into this bowl of Cheerios?

You know that music and weather—among a billion other things—affect your mood. There are background things that influence and inform how we feel and how energized we are. What if we could identify those and arrange them so that we are always energized and productive?

I take this to extremes. I truly believe that Brits think slightly different from us because they drive on the opposite side of the road. Their brains are wired to deal with information in a slightly different way because they are making those decisions based on traffic coming from a different direction when they cross. I also think that the language you speak informs how you think, because the architecture of different language facilitates the processing of some ideas more efficiently. (and I title this "for the 'Non-crazy' . . ." ) I wonder, although I don't postulate it as axiomatic, that the British spelling is correlated to a gentler mindset, with the softer "s" in place of our harsh "z," etc. Same thing for German and its more guttural, harsh sounds.

Crazy, I know, but what I'm talking about are extremely subtle effects.

Here. Here's something we can all agree on: iOS 7. Honestly, can anyone deny that just looking at that horrible operating system zaps the testosterone right out of you?

That's what I'm talking about. If you want to implement your strobe lights to cause mass epileptic seizures, that's a great way to do it.

In earlier posts I've covered the subtlety of these effects. These are harmonics; they're not the primary pitches. They affect the timbre of the note. And it doesn't take a big force to move a swing, just a little nudge at exactly the right time.

Okay, hang onto that concept.

Now we're going to get into some 18th century philosophy. Jeremy Bentham and John Locke, among others, taught that humans will act in a way that they perceive best fulfills their own self-interest. That's why Capitalism is such a brilliant and sustainable and stable system. In order for you to get what you want, you have to give me what I want. It results in constant progress and increasing prosperity.

So the question becomes, why would people act in a way that's contrary to their best interest?

One obvious answer is that they don't think they are, or they mis-gauge the magnitude of the effects. Why would people do drugs, or get drunk for that matter? They know it's not helping them progress as a human. Why would they play video games or hang out around the mall flipping their phone open and closed and saying the "f" word a lot instead of studying and working and making themselves a better human?

You don't have to go as far as drug addicts with this. Why do I stay up late, knowing that I'll be wasted in the morning?

Okay, hang onto that concept as well. We'll come back to both of those groups of Cheerios.

Another standard Leany on Life caveat here: Ride these concepts like a dirt bike. Don't hang onto the handlebars too tight and force it to go exactly where you want it to. Guide it in the general direction and let it move around a lot as long as it's moving basically where you're pointing it. Let the ideas orbit around out there without latching onto them too rigidly. In keeping with my metaphor mixing custom, you have to soften your focus to see the 3D picture in all this.

I was talking to a buddy of mine who's a nurse in a psych ward. He was telling me some stories, and the crazy ones didn't stand out. The ones that stood out were the more subtle and more prevalent self-destructive behavior—people who sit around instead of making something of their lives.

So we know that people—well people, people who are behaving as humans behave—act to fulfill their best self-interest. Is it too much to call behavior that doesn't sick? So when I stay up late that's not healthy behavior. It's not cancer, but it's a sniffle in the organism.

Okay, remember, we're not hanging onto the dirt bike too tight here . . .

As a society what is that sickness? What is the low-grade illness that keeps us from performing to our potential?

I would submit that it is despair.

Hope is what energizes the human soul. Hope is the fuel that we live on.

Hope is what makes America prosperous. It's what created the greatest nation in the history of nations. Way back when we seceded because we believed we could and we succeed because we believe we can.

It is the epitome of Evil to use the concepts "Hope" and "Yes, we can" as a weapon to implement the very opposite of those ideals.

I'd like to find a way to infuse hope into society. I'd like to be able to heal everyone so that they are productive and act in their true self-interest, which is in the interest of society. I would love to discover the Muzak to play in the background of our nation that would keep everyone optimistic and energized and hopeful.

I don't know how to do that. But I do know how to do the opposite. What Barack Obama is doing to this nation is the opposite.

There is an underlying feeling of despair, uncertainty and confusion. There is a fear. Prosperity results in happiness and health. What Obama is after does not.

Again, if you get this you don't need me to explain it to you. If you don't, I can't cure stupid.

I shared my contribution to Snopes with my co-workers at lunch. One guy there, I'm just going to call him "Brad," said that Barbara's argument sounded perfectly feasible. Sure, when you say "My father" did this or that you can mean whatever person you want.

As you can imagine, we went back and forth, him trying to convince me and I entertaining myself with his ridiculous blind hero worship.

So finally "Brad" asked me if I thought the man was intelligent. Compared to whom? We saw the real Barack Obama exactly once, and that was when Mitt Romney tore him apart in the first debate. Other than that he's reading from a script. Is Harrison Ford intelligent when he plays a neurosurgeon in a movie?

I finally conceded that for the purposes of our argument I would allow that he wasn't an idiot.

Well, then, why would he say something that is an outright lie knowing that it was a verifiable lie?

Therein lies the problem. The fact that Barack Obama is not accountable for his actions is the very root of the problem that we have. And that he had the audacity to say it knowing that . . .

Wait a minute . . . audacity. Wasn't that in the title of a book?

I believe it was. And that author wrote another book called . . . what was it . . . Dreams From my Father?

I wonder which of Obama's "multiple fathers" he was talking about in that one.

You sat through all of that. Here's your treat.

---

A friend of mine on Facebook said she felt like vomiting when all of a sudden she heard that the government had shut down.

You recall how snopes explained that Barack Obama didn't really lie when he claimed that his father, who was nine years old at the end of WWII, served in WWII.

Claim:
    Barack Obama "lied" about his father's military service during World War II.
Status:
    False

She explained that whacked out right-wing extremists claim it was a lie " . . . ignoring the fact that his complicated family tree encompasses many fathers."

Really.

It's got to be a big job to research all of the claims and misinformation that come across Barbara's desk. You know me. I'm always looking for ways I can help out a fellow human being.

So I am going to do my civic duty and help snopes sort out fact from fiction, following the great example that she has set.

---

Claim: Monkeys will fly out of your butt if you don't lift your feet when you cross railroad tracks.
Status: True

Some people have claimed that monkeys won't really fly out of your butt if you keep your feet on the floor of the car when you cross railroad tracks. They point to the fact that no one has ever seen monkeys fly out of someone's butt. Others have claimed to have tried it themselves without experiencing monkeys flying out of their butt.

These whacked out extremists ignore the fact that such anecdotal "evidence" is highly suspect. Common logic dictates that the fact that you didn't see something doesn't mean it didn't happen. Since you didn't see monkeys fly out, and you don't understand logic, it's only logical that monkeys really did fly out of your butt when you foolishly kept your feet down while crossing the railroad track.

Status: True.

Today:
The government is "shut down." The clamor from the left is how horrible it is that federal workers won't be going to their jobs today.

Last week:
Nancy Pelosi said that people who are out of work because of Obamacare will now have time to pursue their happiness, like the Founders intended! It's a wonderful thing!

Seriously.

That stupid old job was just getting in the way of your hobbies and doing all those things that you love to do except you're too busy making money to pay the bills to do that.

I honestly wonder if the woman has some sort of brain tumor. You can't have a properly functioning brain and be that idiotic.

She really said that. Look it up.

But don't look it up on Snopes.

That used to be the place you went to find it if someone was just making crap up . . . like if Thomas Crapper really was the guy who invented the flush toilet . . . speaking of making crap up . . . (he wasn't—but he was a plumber).

I guess you can still go there to look up stuff about toilets, but if you go looking for anything about politics you'll find what you find in a toilet.

For example, ask Snopes "Did Barack Obama's father (who was nine years old when WWII ended) serve in World War II like Obama said he did?" Status: True.

Well, yeah, Obama really did say "My father served in World War II," and his father really was only nine years old at the time . . . but you have to understand, Barack Obama had many fathers!

Seriously. Snopes really said that.

Look it up.