Dogs!

If anybody ever doubts there are wonderful things in this world . . . .

Behold! Need say no more.

Ready to Roll!

Happy Thanksgiving

We will going off just like the Pilgrims to have dinner with the Indians . . . at the local Indian casino, that is. Some of the kids will be joining, not sure how many.  As I have mentioned before, the casino buffet gives my wife a chance to avoid turkey and other things with feathers. So that is what we will do.

I am sure we will have a much better time than the poor folks in Ferguson who are watching their town destroyed by "protestors" doing their bit for the progressive agenda.

Democrats Doing What They Do Best: Lynch Mobs

A quick note on Ferguson.

The Grand Jury has refused (rightly so) to indict police officer Wilson for shooting Michael Brown. This normally would be a little story. Not much new, unfortunately: stoned street thug who happens to be black robs convenience store and then assaults police officer who happens to be white and who shoots him dead.

Our Imperial President, his Attorney General, and the liberal/progressive media spin machine, however, couldn't leave it alone. Instead of reporting something along the lines of how unfortunate it was for a young man to die because of his stupid actions, they turned it into a race war. We now see the consequences of what that means on the streets of Ferguson, and, I suspect, soon in other cities. Frustrated in their attempts to generate racial war with the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman incident in Florida, the progressives returned to the battle in Ferguson. They have succeeded this time. People will die for nothing except to further the progressive narrative.

We shouldn't be surprised. The Democrats have been organizing and leading lynch mobs for 150 years.

Lynch mobs were originally led by white Democrats; now they are led by black Democrats.

In the progressive mind, that is progress!

The Emperor Tells A Joke?

Well, the Anointed One, the Healer of the Planet, the Master of Hope and Change, Barack Caesar Obama, Emperor of the USA, has issued his "edict" on immigration "reform." While, of course, we all want to bow down and obey -- for such is the state of affairs in our former Republic -- the Emperor, in fact, is having a little fun with us all. To quote Gertrude Stein, "there is no there there."

A few words on context.

With HM Barack, context is the most important issue. Over the past six years, he has built an Empire of Lies. He is a calculating teller of tall tales. These whoppers have a major purpose, actually a couple. The lies, of course, hide the real agenda behind whatever Obama is up to at that particular moment, and they serve to distract from his previous lies when the prior lies are coming to the end of their lifecycle. It is a never-ending cycle of lies to cover lies to cover lies. It exhausts his opponents. He wears them down. The fog of bore.

Think back over the years of Obama lies. It's hard to remember them all. His upbringing? Solyndra? Fast and Furious? Definition of marriage? Unemployment and deficit figures? IRS scandal? Benghazi? Obamacare? There are lots of others which you can fill in. Now we have immigration.

For years HM Barack told us that he did not have the power to alter our immigration system because he is not "emperor." Such a kidder our Supreme Ruler is! He strung along the Latino lobby for years, until just right after the disastrous midterm elections. Then--Suddenly!--it was imperative, urgent, not a moment to be lost in "reforming" the broken immigration system! The drubbing in the midterms coincided in the news cycle with the Gruber videos and the Obamacare architect's smug gloating over how he and HM Barack had fooled the stupid voters. Obamacare was built on a mountain of lies and even the "stupid ones" had begun to figure it out. So now we urgently must stop discussing the Obamacare fraud and turn to discussing immigration. It is imperative!

So what did our Beloved Leader say about immigration? What is his reform of our creaky system? In two words, "generate confusion." The speech really says nothing. Look at it carefully. He offers lots of platitudes and "little" lies--e.g., our border is secure--but no reform proposals. There is no reform in his reform; no there there. After making the obligatory bow in the direction of those immigrants who played by the rules, and blathering on about accountability and the need to respect the law, he offers up a half-baked proposal to reward those who have broken the law. Even there, however, there is no there there.

We expect people who live in this country to play by the rules. We expect those who cut the line will not be unfairly rewarded. So we’re going to offer the following deal: If you’ve with been in America more than five years. If you have children who are American citizens or illegal residents. If you register, pass a criminal background check and you’re willing to pay your fair share of taxes, you’ll be able to apply to stay in this country temporarily without fear of deportation. You can come out of the shadows and get right with the law. That’s what this deal is.

The deal is no deal, to paraphrase the great Canadian philosopher Howie Mandel. Does anybody sane think that the horribly managed and thoroughly politicized Department of Homeland Security can run such background checks? I can assure you if this "proposal" takes root, there will be a booming business--as happened back in the 1980s with the ill-conceived "one-time, never-again" amnesty--in fraudulent documents, e.g., rental receipts, water bills, to prove that an applicant has been in country for over five years. Criminal background checks? That alone gives the lie to Obama's earlier boasting about his misadministration's deporting of criminal aliens. If an illegal alien has a criminal record why is that person still in country? If one has a criminal record, why would he or she come forward to "apply" for . . . what exactly? What is being offered? A temporary stay free of deportation? The illegal aliens already have that. State that you're willing to pay taxes? What? Most of these people I am willing to wager do not reach the income level of having to pay taxes. They collect public dole, but they do not and will not pay income taxes.

And then we have the lachrymose story of how,

Astrid was brought to America when she was 4 years old. Her only possessions were a cross, her doll, and the frilly dress she had on. When she started school, she didn’t speak any English. She caught up to other kids by reading newspapers and watching PBS. And then she became a good student. Her father worked in landscaping. Her mom cleaned other people’s homes. They wouldn’t let Astrid apply to a technology magnet school, not because they didn’t love her, but because they were afraid the paperwork would out her as an undocumented immigrant. So she applied behind their back and got in.

Who believes that? Her parents did not want her to apply to an elite school for fear of what would happen and she secretly applied and--HORRORS!-- she got in. Nothing happened. Nobody got arrested at 3 am and deported. By the way, I think growing up watching PBS to gain knowledge of the world is justification for deportation, but that's just me . . .

The activists will eventually figure out that they have been conned. The ones to watch, however, are the little bureaucrats, the Lois Lerner types who will be interpreting the Great Oracle's pronouncements, as the fine folks at Legal Insurrection have noted with the fate of "secure communities."

Obama has positioned himself so that no matter what happens on immigration he can claim credit for it or disavow it. The speech is a Seinfeld-like masterpiece of nothing, with the spaces left to be filled in by the observer.

Defund DHS.

Barack Caesar Obama Crosses the Rubicon: The End of the Republic Draws Nigh

We all wait with bated breath for the announcement tonight by our New Emperor defying the laws of Congress on immigration and putting paid to the creaky 238 year-old Republic.

Our new Imperial Master shall let us stupid ones know which laws we must obey and which we can ignore in pursuit of new wards of the state and voters for the ruling Democrat party.

Stay tuned for further announcements from the Palace.

Little Bit of This, Little Bit of That: Landrieu and Gruber

Keystone Pipeline Cooks Some Louisiana Fried Chicken

Well, . . . or should I say oil well, or oil's well that ends well? The Democrat-controlled Senate has not passed the Keystone XL Pipeline. Good. Let the Republicans do it next January.

Anyhow, I can't help gloating over the Democrats slicing, dicing, grating, AND throwing their colleague, Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, under the hybrid bus and doing so on high environmental principle as the New York Times scolds us to remember,

Throughout her Senate career, Ms. Landrieu, a moderate who was known as the oil industry’s best friend in the Democratic Party, has clashed with the liberal environmental wing of her party. 

She has for years pressed for votes on measures that infuriate them, such as expanding offshore drilling, while voting against measures to tackle climate change.
Those lawmakers took to the floor Tuesday to express their opposition to the Keystone pipeline, even as they acknowledged the importance of those votes to Ms. Landrieu’s political fate.

Environmental advocates had spent the week lobbying Democrats to ensure they would oppose Ms. Landrieu’s bill.

NextGen Climate, the advocacy group founded by the California billionaire Thomas Steyer, who spent over $50 million of his own money to back pro-environment Democrats in 2014, also hit supporters with emails asking them to urge senators to vote against the pipeline measure. 

“Today the U.S. Senate decided to stand on the right side of history,” Mr. Steyer said in a statement after the vote. “This is a legacy-defining issue where one’s position signifies whether they are standing up for or against the next generation on the issue of climate.”

I guess in Demo world some billionaires are good and some are bad, even though, of course, Steyer made a big chunk of money from Australia's Maules Creek coal mine. Some carbon is good, some carbon is bad? I can't keep up. I need guidance from the Dear Leader.

Landrieu's chickens have come home to roost and roast. This was her payback for slavishly supporting Reid and Pelosi and Obama. Love it when the sharks eat each other.

I assume this means she will lose the run-off next month, and the GOP will pick up yet another seat. Change You Can Believe In!

More Gruber 

Don't you love how the Dems are squirming under the Gruber magnifying glass? I really love how they're denying he was a big player in the Obamacare disaster. Just for fun, before it gets erased, go to www.whitehouse.gov  and enter the words "Jonathan Gruber" in the SEARCH box. Go ahead. Read all the stuff put out by Gruber which the White House used over and over while pushing Obamacare. Amazing for a guy they now have never heard of . . .

On Stupidity: The Obamacare "Architect" Lets Us in on the Joke

OK. By now we all have heard the "off the cuff" comments by Obamacare "architect" MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber boasting about how he and a cabal of progressives, such as then Senator John Kerry,  fooled the American people into buying Obamacare. The video recordings of him bragging about how the "economic illiteracy" of the American people helped get Obamacare through have gone viral. Even the Washington Post, yes, THAT newspaper, is now reporting on the hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars that Gruber made as a "consultant" on Obamacare, and that the media and others accepted his numbers and statements on Obamacare as objective.

But did he "fool" anybody? Hearing him talk reminded me so very much of staff meetings at State where the nation's "best and brightest" were devising ways to package a policy so that it would, in essence, fool everybody into thinking it was one thing when, in fact, it was another. Progressives end up fooling only themselves when they think that they are so clever and that the "great unwashed" will never catch on.

Nobody I know was fooled by the arguments in favor of Obamacare. Polls consistently showed a supermajority of the American people against Obamacare. The only ones for it were those who thought--maybe correctly--that they would get something for free for which "others" would pay.

The progressives arguing in favor of Obamacare, in fact, were either stupid or dishonest. That is the choice they have. The rest of us know and knew it as a scam. Had the American people been allowed to vote on Obamacare, and not just a cabal of dishonest and stupid politicians under the leadership of Reid and Pelosi, is there any doubt what would have happened to it?

It is imperative that the new Republican Congress keep quoting Gruber and launch a relentless effort to dismantle the Obamacare abomination.

And these People Will Confront Putin, Lavrov, etc.?

Just got back from my brief visit to DC. Found this wonderful piece sitting in my in-box thanks to an agent of the vast Diplomad underground which exists at State. This, folks, is real. This is not some satire or faked-up notice. This is a real unclassified State Department memo.

And so it has come to this . .  .

Office of Origin:    MED/EX Announcement Number:    2014_11_048 Date of Announcement:    November 6, 2014 Workplace Bullying Supervisor’s Support Group The Office of Medical Services Employee Consultation Services Presents WHEN:          1st group January 6, 2015                         (1st Tuesday of the month thereafter)             WHERE:       HST Ralph Bunche Library, 3rd Floor Conference Rm 3239 TIME:            12-1pm  The purpose of this self-help group is to offer support to supervisor’s who believe they have been bullied in their work environment. The focus of this group is to provide resources and information sharing in a confidential setting.  Please join us in sharing experiences, ideas, support and resource information; or just listening. Benefits of a support group: ·         realizing that you are not alone and others may be experiencing the same issues ·         members support each other and may suggest new ways of dealing with a particular problem ·         feeling less lonely or isolated ·         emotional support ·         problem solving support The group will be facilitated by Ms. Jacqueline Pouncy-Smith, LCSW Clinical Social Worker– MED/ECS/EAP. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Ms. Pouncy-Smith at 703-516-1582 or email pouncysmithjx@state.gov. These sessions are open to all federal employees at the Department of State.  Registration is not necessary; however, space is limited to 15. To request a sign language interpreter, please contact RoyalEA@state.gov.

Going Dark for a Few Days

Off to DC to see my son sworn in to the DC bar.

Yes, yes, just what Washington DC needs, another lawyer . . . I know, I know.

I will take my creaky ol' IPAD with me, but you know how that goes.

I can't wait to see all the morose and depressed Dems.

I might even play a little Wagner outside the White House: Götterdämmerung!

GOPsmacked: Obama Loses Big

As of this writing, it seems the GOP will pick up 8 Senate seats, with the very real possibility of one more next month in the Louisiana run-off, plus another 10 to 12 seats in the House, including for the terrific Mia Love in Utah. In addition, the Republicans won governorships in traditionally "progressive" states such as Massachusetts, Illinois, and--surprise!--Maryland where the Democrat candidate had Obama campaign for him. That means the GOP will have comfortable majorities in both chambers, and a solid grip on most state governments.

It was a bad night for Obama and the Democrats. It was a big night for the GOP.

That's good.

Was it, however, a good night for conservatives and the desperate fight to defend individual liberty? I hope so, but don't know.

So we must ask, now, what?

The medium- and long-term trend lines remain negative for those who hold to the founding principles of this country. The continuing expansion of government at all levels; the deliberate promotion of mass immigration from very poor countries; and the dumbing down of education, all form part of the progressive plan to keep power. Progressives need an ill-informed and dependent rabble of poor and young people, a docile echo-chamber media, and an elite cadre of cynical well-off bureaucrats, lobbyists, and crony capitalists. The Dems have that and their numbers grow.

While we celebrate last night's victory over the progressives, let's also not forget that the Dems do better at getting their people out to vote in presidential election years than in mid-terms. That's one cost of having lots of really dumb voters: they are hard to motivate in "boring" mid-term elections.  In addition, of course, as noted before--here, here, and here--progressives prove quite adept at using outright fraud in voting; the big plan to have hundreds-of-thousands of illegal and legal aliens voting will be firmly in place well before 2016.

At best, we have a two-year window to begin to roll back the most egregious aspects of the past six years of Obamismo. Completely revamping our absurd energy policy must lodge at the top--including freeing up fracking and drilling, getting the Keystone pipeline going, and resurrecting coal. In addition, we can begin taking apart Obamacare piece by piece, starting with the individual and corporate mandates, and freeing up the insurance market to make it compete on a national and even international basis, e.g., why can't I buy health insurance from a Canadian, British, or Australian company? I would advocate, at a minimum, a temporary freeze on all immigration while we figure out what to do with our insane tangle of immigration laws, procedures, and bureaucracies. We need to cut funding for absurdities such as the Departments of Labor, Commerce, Energy, Education, and the obnoxious and toxic EPA; and, at last and at least, get to the bottom of the hideous IRS, Benghazi, and Fast and Furious scandals.

It's a tall order, but the GOP wanted power. They now have it. They better know how to use it, and use it quickly. They and "we the people" confront one of the most arrogant, inflexible, dishonest, and, yes, totalitarian Presidents in our history, a man with a profound disdain for Western values and a deep resentment against the very country that elected him president. It won't be easy to take on him and his claque, but it can and must be done.

The Vote Next Tuesday

I have written a lot of harsh things about the GOP (here, here, and here, for example). I remain troubled by the party's weakness when confronting the ever expanding size and reach of federal, state, and municipal government. Republicans too easily let themselves get Mau-Maued by the progressive insult and spin machine, and try to appease it by turning against some of the more gutsy members of the GOP, e.g., Senator Cruz, Governor Palin. All that said, almost any Republican politician is better than almost any Democrat politician when it comes to genuine concern for the country and the future we are creating for our kids and grandkids.

As noted before, I am a libertarian with an asterisk. My default setting on nearly every issue is let the people and the free market handle it. I want our number of laws and regulations radically slashed; whole departments of government eliminated; huge tax cuts; an end to the phony "war on drugs," and so on. I don't get too worked up over some social issues that get Republicans tied up in knots. I, however, want government to do what it is supposed to do: keep the country safe from the multiple threats that exist in what is an increasingly insane planet. I want our military and international alliance structure so powerful that no whacky totalitarian or crazed jihadi would think of attacking us or our friends.

I vote Republican because, whatever the flaws of that party, it is overall a far better choice than its principal alternative. The Democratic party has become destructively insane, and gets crazier by the year. It is a threat to liberty. It believes only in government and in a weird view of America as a place that is endlessly in need of more government.

At a bare minimum, we need to get control of Congress and hold the Republicans we elect accountable for stopping Obama in the remaining two years of his reign of error and terror. Obamacare must be killed off; the IRS seriously overhauled and reduced; the Department of Justice needs a radical redo; illegal immigration must be dealt with as the threat to our future which it is; the misadministration's anti-energy policies must be eradicated, etc. Can a Republican Congress do all that? Probably not, but we will never even get started on saving our country if we don't have a Republican Congress.

Elections have consequences. Yes, I would like to see libertarians elected. That's not going to happen. If we squander our vote on libertarians and other well-meaning folks, we end up with Obama and Reid. For all their flaws, I would much prefer Romney and McConnell.