Obama: Losing Nixon-Slayer

Aside from classic fairy tales, or shall we say faery tales, I never cared much for stories of magic, shape-shifting, or dragons. I always found that bringing in mystical or magical forces was a cheap way for an unimaginative writer to get out of a problem in a story--much as now in modern movies we see computers used to find some magical data that clinches the case against the bad guy. I try to avoid hobbit, vampire, Alec Baldwin, and zombie movies, and, therefore, resisted watching HBOs "Game of Thrones" (GOT).

Tangent Alert!  Why do actors, except for Kirk Douglas, in almost every drama involving ancient Romans, Greeks, wizards, gladiators, dragons, mythical gods and beings, have to speak with British accents and use faux-Shakespearean syntax? Did Julius Caesar have a British accent? Was reading Shakespeare a requirement in ancient Rome and Greece? Just wondering. End of Tangent Alert!

OK, back to today's story. Still suffering from my knee issue, I had little to do except lie about the house, whine, growl, and complain, so my kids insisted that I watch GOT. I, reluctantly, did so. It's ok, although I could do without the magic spells, witches, dragons, and extreme violence and vulgarity. I, however, did like two characters in particular: Khal Drogo, a well-coifed Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun, who sweeps all before him, and the one called "King Slayer" for having slain a mad monarch. What does this have to do with anything important? Not much, except I like saying Khal Drogo--might name my next dog that. I also notice that just about everybody goes around armed: a good thing.

Where was I? Oh, yes, going on about Drogo and "King Slayer." I don't see any Drogos on the scene--Allan West, Bibi Netanyahu, and Ted Cruz come closest--but we do have a proven "King Slayer," well, actually a Nixon-Slayer. I speak, of course, of Bob Woodward, a long-time Washington fixture and liberal icon held up to two or three generations of journalism students as the ideal investigative newsman. It seems, however, that Obama has managed to offend Woodward. The man who brought Nixon down--well, helped Nixon bring Nixon down--has rightly labelled Obama's behavior on the international scene as a "madness." Woodward, despite being a liberal, seems to be a patriot and understands the parlous state of the international scene and the need for resolute US behavior. He underlines something which many of us on the right have long said, to wit, the President's main responsibility under the Constitution is to defend the United States from its enemies. It is not to propose or defend massive welfare and other entitlement programs; not to give vacuous speeches at college commencements; not even to play golf. No. His clearest responsibility is to be Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and to deal with our enemies from a position of strength. He cannot say that we will not deploy a carrier to the Gulf because the GOP won't give him more money for Obamacare.

Obama is playing a stupid and dangerous poker with our nation's security, one that could cost American lives. He is playing typical urban Mayor vs. City Council politics: "Councilman, if you don't give me what I want, then I am shutting down the police and fire stations in your district." Obama, once again, has revealed himself as a mean little man with no appreciation for the role of his country in the world. He would rather put our national interests at stake than save money by not flying off on the taxpayers' money to play golf.

It is somewhat refreshing to see a "liberal icon" take note of the "madness" of King Barack I. How long before Woodward gets trashed by the liberal Mau-Mau machine and has to eat his words? We'll see.

No Politics For You and Funeral Showers

I want to avoid politics today. I am going to try write about stuff that has nothing to do with politics. Here goes.

The Oscars? Didn't watch them. Haven't watched in years. When I was kid the Oscars were a big deal. Now, who cares? A bunch of movies most of us have not seen, very often dealing with and glorifying social deviancy. I also heard that Michelle "Helmet Head" Obama made an appearance at the show.  That . . . oh, never mind. No politics today, no politics today . . .

The only movie I saw was "Argo" which won best picture. I have written before about that film, noting that it was a good straight-forward, basic feat of story-telling with about 80% accuracy. Not bad. It, however, was a politically correct film: no mention of Ronald Reagan or the 1980 election; featured an interview with Jimmy Carter as the credits rolled; and, of course, a couple of Hollywood producers were the co-heroes. I gather the libs were up in arms about "Zero Dark Thirty" because it is allegedly inaccurate in its portrayal of the importance that Bush administration "enhanced interrogation" played in getting the information that led to Bin Ladin. Suddenly Hollywood liberals are concerned about accuracy in films?!? Will we see Oliver Stone and Michael Moore put before the firing squad? Right. Deep breathing, no politics today, no politics today, no politics today . . .

My wife has been invited to a wedding shower. In the course of our lives we all have been to innumerable wedding showers, baby showers, retirement parties, bar mitzvahs, bachelor parties, etc. I want to propose something else: funeral showers. I wrote many years ago (reposted here) that modern science has moved us well beyond our design specifications. I believe that nature wanted us out of the way by the time we turn forty: notice that everything you need to avoid becoming a saber-toothed tiger's lunch begins to go by that age. We become a burden on the tribe. Most of us, or at least those of us who live in the scientific West and refuse to live "organic" lifestyles, can reasonably expect to live into our 80s and beyond. That gives us plenty of time to hold a funeral shower. I am not talking about planning your funeral--who cares?--or leaving detailed instructions on what you want done with you and your stuff (I understand that my kids want me to die on a Tuesday night as Wednesday morning is trash pick-up day.)

I am talking about holding a party when you're still healthy enough to hold one and making it your funeral shower. Gifts are to be expected and you should register at your local Corvette or Kimber Arms dealer. I want presents! I want to hear flowery and inaccurate speeches praising all of my inconsequential achievements while I am still able to do so. I think Vegas would be a great destination for funeral showers--and Nevada is a concealed carry state.

You see, this is what happens when I go cold turkey on politics . . .

The Hammering Yammering of The Buffoon Elites

It is getting harder and harder to write anything worthwhile about the domestic and international political scenes. Everywhere one looks, one sees mountebanks, liars, fools, evil doers, and just plain dopes at work--and all aided by a grotesquely incompetent, lazy, and leftist mass media.

Where to start?

How about our amazing Vice President Joe Biden? Without doubt, he is one of the stupidest politicians on the global scene--he even gives Britain's Clare Short a run for the title of Dopus Maximus. Any conservative politician with his record of plagiarism, malapropism, buffoonery, vanity, and pure unadulterated idiocy would have been laughed off the stage long ago. Not Joe, however. No, not Joe.  The press finds him "charming," a man who connects with the simple people, a man with a good heart, etc.

Now we see this philosopher viceroy lecturing gun owners with a series of made up stuff--I believe the formal term is "lies."  His little homespun homilies on the advice he supposedly gives his vacuous "educator" wife on self defense most certainly would appear to fall into the category of lies. Does anybody believe that he and his wife have talked about gun ownership? That he has advised her to get a shotgun because they live out in the middle of nowhere? That he has told his wife to fire "both barrels" into the air if she hears anybody prowling about the property? I wonder how the legion of Secret Service agents he has protecting him would respond to that? What total nonsense. He proceeds from this base of lies to tell us that we "don't need AR-15s" because, well, he finds them "hard to aim," and that everybody should buy a shotgun for home defense. In other words, what he doesn't like, or doesn't know how to use, that should be banned. He will tell us what we "need." He does all this in the guise of being a "friend" to gun owners, and the press goes along. I suppose next he will tell us we don't "need" any car than can go more than 45 mph. We don't "need" 300 brands of yogurt, or more than one TV or more than one candidate in an election. He will tell us what we "need," what we should have. Joe knows. Joe knows.

Senator McCain: An undoubtedly brave man in war, who withstood torture, and turned down repeated offers to capitalize on his father's fame and rank and get released early from the Vietnamese prison hell where he rotted. He, however, insists on pretending that he is a Republican conservative. His inept, half-hearted campaign in 2008 is why we now have to live with the Obama nightmare. He should retire or just become a Democrat and stop living the lie. He wanted desperately to be Teddy "U-Boat" Kennedy's best friend. He can't bring himself to oppose the treasonous Kerry as Secretary of State, or help stop the foolish and destructive Hagel as Secretary of Defense. He is trying to sell a snake oil immigration plan, and the only people calling him on it are some of his constituents who have had enough of his Washington nonsense, and who, unlike their Senator, seem to know what is happening along the border. McCain continues to seek the favor of the editorial writers at the Washington Post and the New York Times, when, in fact, almost nobody in the country cares what those people say.

The list goes on and on. On the international scene the world has the gangster Putin and his Foreign Affairs Frank Nitti, Sergey Lavrov. It has the malevolent Castro brothers, the putrid Chavez, the insane Correa, the thieving Ortega, the disaster of the "Arab Spring,"and the defiant Kim Jung-Un threatening fire and brimstone. What do we have? John Kerry who can't even get Lavrov (whom I know) to return his calls. And, of course, we have that other man, that one who makes Carter appear Lincolnesque and Churchillian . . . you know who, the guy on the golf links.

The European scene is equally as bleak. Britain's leadership is a gang of squabbling clowns content to watch their once very great nation descend into the Euro muck, and allow London, one of my favorite cities, to become a Third World slum full of crooks, welfare manipulators, and scads of people who hate the country that has given them safe harbor. France is done for; Spain, Greece, Italy all on the verge of collapse and dependent for survival on the already strained and sputtering German economy.

All of you can add hundreds of names to the above list. A most depressing exercise.

I need a break. Going to save my pennies, buy the new Stingray and drive off into the sunset before the political correctness cops come knocking.

Bringing in the White Guys

Well it seems that the President has decided to bring in the white guys to clean up the mess made by his first diverse cabinet.

By doing so, however, he is once again showing how incredibly stupid race is as a selector of talent.

The white guys he is bringing in are pretty, pretty, pretty bad to horrendous. Kerry is a joke. Hagel is, to put it kindly, an idiot--and that's putting it very kindly. Lew is a hypocritical money-grabber of the first order.

Makes you despair about white guys . . .

"Fire is the Devil's Only Friend"

Just a few thoughts about this Dorner fiasco.

First, lest there be a misunderstanding, I think the guy was a murderous creep. He had no justification for killing anybody. Nothing that might have been done to him justifies any of the mayhem he caused and caused to be caused by the incredibly inept, cowardly, and trigger-happy Southern California police forces.

Now, let's imagine that Dorner, rather than being as he was a black supporter of Obama and the prevailing liberal ethos--including gun control--had been a white supremacist/survivalist, who before going off on his murderous rampage had posted a screed praising Sarah Palin. What sort of press coverage would we have seen? I don't think I need to describe it--you know what it would have been. The calls for the Tea Party to "stop the hate," for conservatives to distance themselves from this sort of behavior and thinking; we would have seen John McCain falling all over himself trying to get as much camera time as possible as he blasted the "extremists within our ranks." The media frenzy would have been a sight to behold! Funny, in contrast, how Obama supporters are not being called to order and made to disavow Dorner and his ilk; how the media is not blasting his views on gun control and support for the liberal orthodoxy. No need to go on. You can all come up with all sorts of this on your own without my bloviating disrupting your thought process.

The cops. Readers of this blog know my views on the state of the police in America today. I find the overwhelming number of of police forces to be inept, overpaid, overstaffed, over-equipped, poorly trained, and of a brutish disposition that sees the public as the enemy. The only thing I can say in favor of American cops is that European ones are even worse.

The worst features of the police were on display throughout this Dorner mess. If he was clearly a troubled man, why was he accepted in the LAPD in the first place? Were there no clues pointing to the fragile nature of his psyche? Or was he a perfectly normal person driven mad by the LAPD, by the Code of Blue which declared him the unit "bitch" for having ratted out a superior for brutality?

Once he snapped, the operation to nab Dorner was a disaster. As I have noted before, innocent civilians were shot in bizarre cases of mistaken identity. The crack police forces that defend us thought that two petite Asian ladies delivering newspapers in the morning "looked like" a nearly three hundred-pound, bald, muscle-bound black man--so, of course, they shot these ladies. Likewise they shot a white couple driving a vehicle completely different from Dorner's. I understand that they had a bus load of marachis in their gunsights when word came that Dorner was dead. Lawsuits, please! Fast and furious to coin a phrase popular among liberal defenders of the law and proponents of "gun control." For once, I hope the lawsuits blossom like weeds after a spring shower.

So our heroes in blue find that Dorner is holed up in a cabin in the touristy Big Bear Lake area. They found out through meticulous scientific and dogged police work . . . well, actually, they found out because two maids told them Dorner was there. So they bring in enough manpower and firepower to fight a small war. They have him surrounded; he can't escape; hunger and thirst will eventually drive him out or provoke his suicide. . . so, of course, they decide to burn him to death--did they know he was alone? Now that's due process. If conservatives waterboard some terrorist creep, that's torture. If liberals burn a suspect to death -- Waco, anybody? -- well, that's just stuff that happens . . .

What a weird world we have created for our kids . . .

Too Much to Hope for Change?

Won't be watching the State of the Union address. Do you really need President Obama to tell you?

I, however, was hoping that he would be inspired by the example of Pope Benedict.

I guess it is too much to hope for that sort of change . . . sigh . . . .

"Guns for Me but Not for Thee"

I am still in So. Cal; still partly laid up with this stupid knee issue. That means that I have lots of time on my hands, and have been reading the news.

Not good.

Lots about this crazed ex-LAPD cop Dorner who has been on a killing spree and has disappeared. The wonderfully trained and always dedicated public servants in Southern California's police forces have responded to the presence of a deranged colleague by taking a page from their colleagues in the NYPD: they have been shooting innocent people and showing, once again, that increasingly cops in America are out of control. They are poorly trained, brutish, cowardly, and overpaid bureaucratic bullies to whom we have ceded extraordinary power and given exaggerated deference. I am not saying that all cops are this way, but most, yes, most are or will become that way after a couple of years of service in the Gang of Blue.

It is time to reduce the size, power, and armament of police forces in America. They think increasingly like armies of occupation, and see the public as the enemy or at best something nasty to be tolerated, and then just barely. The police in the US have become militarized with excessive para-military SWAT training and have been gifted a level of war fighting equipment that would make many a Third World army jealous. Even small town police forces have an impressive array of armored vehicles, aircraft, powerful weapons, and, above all, an attitude that they are the Lords of War. Deal with a cop on even the most mundane and banal issues, and you will see the attitude I am describing.

I remember the outrage when many years ago Alan Dershowitz noted that in his experience cops frequently lie under oath. I see that there is a renewed interest in this topic. Having spent years in a close-knit bureaucracy, I know exactly the mentality that leads to this lying and the impulse to protect the herd from outsiders. Unlike, however, the pinstriped herd in which I lived for 35 years, this blue herd is heavily armed.

It is no surprise that this loser Chris Dorner was an ardent Obama supporter and a believer in gun control. He is also a lesson in why we need an armed citizenry.

I  hereby make a gun control proposal. It should appeal to liberals who have long lectured us all on "freedom of choice" when it comes to killing unborn babies: Anybody who doesn't like guns, and doesn't want any guns, should not buy any guns. The rest of us need to be ready for the Chris Dorners of the world.

All So Obvious: Part II, in an Ongoing Series

The topic is Benghazi.

So, ladies and gentlemen, what have we "learned" in the past few days about the performance of our Comander-in-Chief and his "brilliant" Secretary of State during the slow-motion Benghazi massacre?

Hmmmm . . . so much . . . so much . . . . Panetta's testimony Hill testmony earlier this week and that of General Dempsey make it clear that neither Obama nor Clinton were either deeply concerned about or involved in the Benghazi crisis. You can read all about it on the net--I am having trouble setting up links (sorry). Despite their subsequent teary statements about how deeply they felt the tragic deaths of Stevens et al in Benghazi, neither of our fearless leaders could really be bothered too much to have worked to avoid the massacre or to have worked to stop the assault once it began.

Let's see hands: How many of you are surprised to hear this?

All So Obvious

Been laid up a few days with a recurring problem, one that reminds me of the old line "revenge is a dish best served cold." Bad knee, lots of pain, lots of ibuprofen, x-rays, tomorrow an MRI, inability to sleep, can't drive my Corvette because I can't bend down far enough to get into it . . . sigh . . . those Guatemalan narcos are getting their revenge some thirty years after the fact. I first messed up the knee getting out of a helicopter in a drug op in Guatemala; I stepped on the skid as I was jumping out, and went for a roll in the dust. Second time was in Bolivia on a hunting trip when I stepped on llama poo, slid, broke my leg and twisted the knee. Third time was three days ago, going for a walk in a peaceful, boring So. California suburb when I took a misstep off  the kerb--shooting pain, almost unable to walk.

Curse you drug war! You claim yet another victim!

Anyhow, sitting about in a ibuprofen/codeine induced haze led me to think, of course, about politics. One should only think about politics these days when the pain is numbed by the products of modern pharmacology or old whisky. Even when under the influence, I cannot bear to hear the news and the pontifications of the pundits. So many opinions, so many solutions for what ails us, when, in fact, any housewife who has ever tried to balance a checkbook knows exactly what is wrong and how to fix it. Stop spending so much! Most certainly, stop spending so much on stupid things!

At the federal level it is obvious what needs doing. Slash and burn. Departments of education, interior, energy, health, labor, commerce, and transportation should be eliminated asap, as should the EPA and USAID. Yes, completely eliminated. The Department of Justice needs to be radically reduced in size and power; eliminate the ATF and DEA, for starters. The FBI has completely overstepped its original mandate and needs to be reined in. The State Department can be cut by one-third almost immediately, and closer to one-half in a couple of years. DOD needs to focus on its mission and shed programs, offices, and employees that have nothing to do with defense. Lawyers. My God, does DoD have lawyers. Slash and burn. Get rid of all the environmental nonsense in DoD. Drop the vast, corrupt, and bloated domestic PX network. In a time of WalMarts and Targets, why have a PX? Negotiate a discount for military personnel. The same with VA hospitals, most of which are substandard; get veterans a voucher system they can use at private hospitals. The CIA? A complete overhaul and reduction in the massive stateside bureaucracy which interferes with and stifles CIA's proper role overseas. NASA? Privatize as much as possible of the space program, keeping in government hands only the most secret and sensitive operations. Don't get me started on Homeland; it needs a radical downsizing or even a splitting apart.

Stop making everything illegal. Get rid of the drug and gun laws, and you will empty a lot of prison cells.

Stop viewing life as a series of problems that needs "solution" by the government.

Not so hard.

WLA

The Liberals and Their Shiny Things

Go ahead ask a landed fish. OK, OK, cut me a little slack: I mean assume it were possible to ask a fish a question and get an answer. So, ask a fish about shiny things. As many a fish has discovered, shiny things are not always your friend. They might be hiding hooks.

Shiny things have presaged trouble throughout history--and not just for fish. European explorers and conquerors found they could fool indigenous people into giving up, for example, vast tracts of land with gifts of a few cheap shiny things, e.g., beads and mirrors. I remember in this regard an incident during a cocktail party at a diplomatic residence in Central America. A Latin American Ambassador, who would not have passed a DUI checkpoint sobriety test, loudly and throughout the evening harangued and berated the Spanish Ambassador demanding to know, "When are you going to return the gold you stole from the Americas?" The Spaniard, exasperated, finally lost his professional diplomatic cool and replied, "¡Cuando ustedes nos devuelvan los espejitos! " ("When you return the little mirrors!") A pretty neat and witty put down, and a potent reminder of the danger of taking shiny things in exchange for your birthright: once it's gone, it's most likely gone forever.

American lefties love shiny things. They are so much better for their purposes than dull, boring facts and reality. I wrote before about their obsession with shiny things when it came to Libya. Throughout the execution of Obamista foreign policy we see the obsession with the shiny "new" thing. Unfortunately for America, many times the "new" thing is only new to the ahistorical people who run our foreign policy apparatus. We see the enthrallment with the "Arab Spring," for example. Nothing new  there. The Arab world goes through "Springs" every few decades. Such "Springs" in the past produced beautiful flowers such as Qaddafi, Nasser, the UAR, and the Bathist regimes of Syria and Iraq. Out with the evil corrupt monarchs who favor the West! In with the even more evil and even more corrupt military dictators who favor the USSR and terror! Progress! The shiny new lures of the 1950s and 1960s, of course, proved to have some very large and hideous hooks hidden in them. The Obamistas, of course, are, at best, bored by history, and, at worst, driven by a desire to undermine the position of the United States, Israel, and the West writ large in the region. The latest shiny Arab Spring has brought about a resurgence of Al Qaeda and has lined us up for endless war in the region, with it spreading to Sub-Saharan Africa. The hooks are there, and they are sharp.

We see the Obamistas pursuing the same sort of nonsense in Latin America. We, in effect, have become totally irrelevant to developments in that region, and the region is slipping evermore under the sway of what should be the highly tarnished lures of Castro, Chavez, Morales, Correa, Ortega, and Evita Peron, er, uh, Cristina Kirchner. But for the Obamistas this is all exciting and refreshing to see the Latin Americans strike out on their own paths to the future . . . there will be consequences and, to quote the movie of the name, "There will be blood." Anybody with even a bare understanding of history knows that the current political movements in Latin America are not new at all, but then, we have the Obamistas in charge. Everything is new!

This obsession with the shiny thing, of course, is not limited to foreign policy. We see it in the continued obsession with "climate change," although every day seems to knock a new hole in the "theory." We see with the false "medical care" crisis in the United States which brought us Obamacare. We see it by the bucketful in the phony debate over "gun violence." Yet another shiny thing with which to distract the people from the disastrous "drug war," the collapsing economy, the ballooning deficit, and the hollowing out of the military. The gun grab effort shares with all the other lefty crusades, whether overseas or at home, the drive to expand the power and reach of the government, and to corrupt the nature and status of the United States.

Look at this shiny thing! Pay no attention to the laws and cops whittling away your freedoms at home, and the bureaucrats selling us out abroad.