Of COURSE! How Could We Have Been So STUPID?!?!

From the Washington Post, source of All Good News For The People:

Obama's First Budget Seeks To Trim Deficit
Plan Would Cut War Spending, Increase Taxes on the Wealthy

President Obama is putting the finishing touches on an ambitious first budget that seeks to cut the federal deficit in half over the next four years, primarily by raising taxes on businesses and the wealthy and by slashing spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration officials said.

In addition to tackling a deficit swollen by the $787 billion stimulus package and other efforts to ease the nation's economic crisis, the budget blueprint will press aggressively for progress on the domestic agenda Obama outlined during the presidential campaign. This would include key changes to environmental policies and a major expansion of health coverage that he hopes to enact later this year.

Full article here

Because I know that, whenever I've read about the history of American economic downturns or recessions or near-collapses, the solution has ALWAYS been jacking up taxes on businesses and the investing class, and slashing Constitutionally-mandated spending on defense in favor of welfare programs mentioned exactly nowhere.

Nope. Nowhere. Weird.

"Wordsworth...Romney...Obsolescence!"

I do not doubt that I have made my political views clear; tyranny is not easily conquered, but it certainly must be resisted to even think of being overcome. Here in the United States, it has become my considered opinion of late that, as a society, we are reaping the rewards of instant gratification, cultural relativism, and a loss of any sense of national identity that was clearly there to be seen even twenty years ago. This has culminated, of course, in the election of Mr. Obama to the office of the Presidency, and while, in 1948, it was said of Thomas Dewey that he was "an empty suit" and "the man on the wedding cake", I believe that this description is tailor-made for the current occupant of the White House.

Ordinarily, this would not pose such a great threat to the nation's stability and security, as we've had left-wing Presidents and Progressive-influenced Congresses in power together before; they gave us the Great Depression and the Not-So-Great Society, after all, permanently bonding minorities to the Democrat party in a way not seen since their grandfathers had done it with bills of sale. This time, however, I fear it's going to be different. There is an air of sheer fanaticism to this administration and the Democrats in power that troubles me enormously, and there is a reaction building that I do not think they quite understand, both among their followers and among their opponents.

Americans, as a people, have been extraordinarily fortunate, although we do not realize it (especially NOW, thanks to our dumbed-down public educational system); we've not had a true, honest-to-goodness tyranny in our history, no matter what the hysterics scream about the last president and his policies. THIS president and his allies, though, are taking the first steps down a dark and dangerous road that we've tried exploring before in the 1930s, and it was only because that generation got a good, hard look at what Europe had done with the logical, scientific conclusion to that road that the experiment was (mostly) abandoned and we were able to enjoy the blessings of liberty again.

It only cost us four years of fighting and several hundred thousand dead, not to mention supplying everyone else in the free and not-so-free world. If I had been a WWII vet, and my kid wanted to grow long hair and smoke dope, the reaction would not have been pleasant, to say the least. So now, the long-hairs are running things, and they're implementing all their wonderful bong-hit ideas, which seem mostly to consist of how much this country sucks, and how much capitalism is for squares and they shouldn't have to pay their taxes (I'd like to try THAT trick!), all the while screaming about how to resist this inevitable tide is unpatriotic and it was all the fault of the previous guyt and we all need to shut up and take it for the Good Of The Country as the Constitution is warped beyond all recognition by Those Who Know Best in D.C.

TWKB will tell you and I (if they haven't already) what kind of light bulb to use. What kind of car to drive. Where to smoke. When you may stop using a car seat for your child. When you may speak in public, and on what topic, and where (Think I'm kidding? Do an online search for "university speech codes"-coming soon to a public square near you!). What foods you may eat. What doctor you may see, and how much he or she will be paid...by the government. What job you may take, how much you may "invest", and in what firms you may invest your money.

Soon the Government at all levels will have become Leviathan, creeping into your lives bit by tiny bit, all for your own good. I predict within my lifetime that the State will make value judgements on every facet of our lives...EVERY facet, from birth to death, and that process is accelerating like a runaway snowball down a mountain at this very moment.

"You walk into this room at your own risk...because it leads to the future. Not a future that will be, but one that might be. This is not a new world; it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted a ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements; technological advances and a more...sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But, like every one of the superstates that preceded it, it has one iron rule; logic is an enemy and truth is a menace."

-Rod Serling, The Obsolete Man, 1961

Obamandias

(With an apology to the estate of P. B. Shelley)

I met a blogger from a right-wing land
Who said: Two vast and lobeless ears of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose teeth
And wrinkled lip and smirk of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Obamandias, king of kings:
Look on my public works, ye Righties, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, shirtless and bare,
The warm Hawaiian sands stretch far away.

So, what brought on this flight of poetic fancy, you may be asking? Well, I was surfing the web a couple of weeks ago, and found a post on Big Hollywood that just about had me keeling over in laugher, as a gentleman with a well-rounded and classically liberal education.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

The Idiossey!

Okay, This Is Too Good Not To Share Right Away

Now, as many of you (all four of you) know, I have to take mass transit in the Twin Cities. What you may not know is that I actually grew up taking the same wonderful, efficient bus-based mass transit system that has served the Twin Cities metropolitan area since the 1950s (/sarcasm), and that, prior to the advent of the buses, the area was served by one of the best, if, indeed, not THE best, streetcar system in the entire country, Twin City Rapid Transit.

Now, understand that what was once an amazing network of private streetcars was sold off just as the company was engaging in a system of reinvestment in the lines that would have provided stiff competition to the emerging buses of the 1950s, and the resulting transit fiasco was eventually put under the aegis of a regional entity known as the *ominous chord*...Metropolitan Council.

Notice, if you will, that the Met Council answers to...NOBODY. From the article:

These powers can supersede decisions and actions of local governments. The legislature entrusts the Council to maintain public services and oversee growth of the state's largest metro area. This agency is similar to Metro in Portland, Oregon (see Metro (Oregon regional government)) in that both agencies administer an urban growth boundary.

The Council's role in the Twin Cities metro area is defined by the necessary regional services it provides and manages. These include public transportation, wastewater treatment, regional planning, urban planning for municipalities, forecasting population growth, ensuring adequate affordable housing, maintaining a regional park and trails system, and "provides a framework for regional systems including aviation, transportation, parks and open space, water quality and water management."[1]

But wait, you cry! It says right there that the Legislature controls the Council! What am I talking about? Ah, therein is the peril, for, you see...

The Met Council currently has 17 members, 16 of which represent a geographic district in the seven-county area with one chair who serves "at large." All members are appointed by the governor and are reappointed with each new governor in office. The Minnesota Senate may confirm or reject each appointment.

Bear in mind that the Minnesota Senate has been historically controlled by the Democrat-Farmer-Labor party for about as long as I can remember. If you think they're going to reject *anyone* who wants to sit on this monstrosity, you're nuts.

So where am I going with this, you may be asking? That's a fair point. All right, here's the setup. As noted earlier, the Met Council is responsible for the vast majority of the bus service in the Twin Cities, and, back when Jesse Ventura *snickers* was Governor, ol' Jesse got a tax pushed through that redirected the way transit was funded; traditionally, the state applied a tax to the licence renewal fees for every vehicle in the state of MN, and, the more expensive the vehicle, the more you forked over and the more cash went to fund buses as a result. However, Jesse didn't like having to pay more because he happened to own a Hummer, so, instead, for every new car sold in the state, a percentage of the sales tax (which was, naturally for MN, increased) would go to fund transit instead.

Fast forward from 1998 to 2008. Auto sales are in the tank. Mass transit, which has been massively subsidized anyway, because it can't pay for itself (being a branch of government rather than a private company), has reported its ridership levels are the HIGHEST in 27 years.

And yet, the chair of the Met Council, one Peter Bell, had the sheer gall, the unmitigated nerve, to say, in his State Of The Region speech (side note: don't you just LOVE these "State Of The _______" speeches? :\) that not only did Metro Transit NEED to raid other budgets, it *also* needed Federal stimulus money just to keep in operation, AND (get this) there were NO plans to stop the Central Corridor Light Rail line or the North Star Corridor commuter rail line, which haven't even started construction yet, as those have "already been budgeted for".

His money quote, though, and keep in mind that this man has no shame in demanding your hard-earned cash for nonexistent publicly-funded projects of dubious value, is this one, taken from the St. Paul Pioneer Press story and directly from his speech:

"It makes no sense to build what you can't afford to operate."

Get. Me. The. Cluebat.

I have some bureaucrat whackin' to do.

Hello? *tap...tap...* Hello? Is This Thing On?

CHECK. CHECK. TWO. TWO.

Let me just...whew, there's a lot of dust here...man. Some cobwebs, too. Kind of creepy, actually. I don't dig spiders.

Okay, so it's been a while. About three months, actually. I could give all three of you the usual lies about how I've been busy and all that, but I have more respect for you than that. The truth is, this just sort of fell by the wayside with the advent of the electoral foofaraw, and the holiday season (so whoop-de-doo, and dickory dock, etc.), and work picked up (I know...in *THIS* economy?), but I'm back!

I can't promise daily updates, so don't throw rocks and brickbats at me, but I'll at least try to update twice weekly; once during the week, and once on the week-end, when I'm not out jaunting about paying my social calls or engaging in gamesmanship.

My Registration Was Challenged Tonight...

No, not by some Democrat/union/Black Panther thug with a baseball bat, picking his teeth and tapping his Louisville Slugger menacingly against his knee in a menacing fashion.

Rather, when I went to my polling place (the Ramsey Cty. Nursing Home), card in hand, the elderly ladies manning the rolls noticed that my registration had been "challenged", due to a postal return (?). So I had to affirm, with my state ID, that I did, in fact, live at the address shown, and I wasn't, you know, some sort of person who couldn't legally vote.

Amazingly enough, I was able to exercise my franchise. Not that it mattered in the end (except maybe for the Senate), but when I got home, I felt good about being a citizen during this momentous time in the history of the Republic.

Then I hunkered down and made plans to invest in canned food and shotguns, because the next four years are going to really, really suck.

"Hurray For Hollywood!"

Quite simply one of THE funniest parodies I've seen in a long time (and I own the entire Weird Al collection on DVD):

Spider-Man Told Me To Vote!

Go to Dirty Harry's Place anyway; "This, I command!"

EDIT: I cannot recommend this site enough! A review of the 1951 sci-fi classic The Thing, for example: "So who buys it in this film? Who’s wrong in this film? The gung-ho military? Oh, no. It’s the touchy-feely we just want to understand you pansy, that’s who. Because in Howard Hawks world you kill what you don’t understand. You kill em’ now. You kill em’ slow."

Priceless. Plus there's a smokin' hot pic of Anne Archer from Fatal Attraction.

Mr. Lileks, I Tip My Hat To You...

Hat tip to The Bleat!



























Special Financial Panic Edition. Don't feel bad, ma'am; a lot of us gave money to the monkey.