Doug Ross @ Journal: August 2009

Monday, August 31, 2009

Party of Hope, Change and Beatdowns

So it begins. President Obama's paid thugs are now routinely assaulting taxpayers as directed by their leader. Remember?

• Obama to ACORN: "They Bring a Knife...We Bring a Gun"

• Obama to his organizers: "Get in Their Faces!"

• Obama's Alabama-area OFA organizer: "We're not looking for a fight. That will come later, when we have an army."

• Obama discussing ACORN support: "I don't want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I'm angry!"

• Obama to his paid ACORN mercenaries (on the taxpayer dime, no less): "Hit Back Twice As Hard"

In Tucson, over 1,000 anti-socialized medicine protesters peacefully assembled, quietly listening to speakers until an anti-free speech thug disrupted the meeting.

The man entered the meeting shouting, screaming and shaking a sign.

The crowd was shocked.

When a man asked him to stop shouting and leave, the thug elbowed him in the face.

It looks like a clear-cut case of assault and battery to me.

A police officer removed the man from the meeting.

In Georgia, another pro-ObamaCare thug had to be threatened with a taser by police before he was arrested for threatening senior citizens peacefully protesting against socialized medicine.

Consider: this is happening now, a little more than a year before the midterm elections and three years from the Presidential election.

And the precedent for tolerating voter intimidation at the polls has been set.

Folks, I'll be frank.

I don't have a good feeling about this.

Death Knell for CarbonCare™

The Bad writes:

Folks, I'm here to say that we no longer have to worry about the liberal healthcare debacle. All is lost for them:

Al Gore says the country has a 'moral duty' to pass HC reform

As we all know, Gore has the opposite of the Midas touch on issues. When he shows up to speak on Global Warming Hoax, record snow storms follow him. He's now out backing healthcare "reform".

Allow me to be the first to say, "Thanks Al, we might not have defeated it without you!"

Jarrett Skorup adds:

Whoa, Al! Not only is it a moral duty, but it's moral duty to be done now!

Now, I'm not a theologian, but I don't recall Jesus ever saying it was the government's responsibility to take care of the least of us, but rather the individual. When I'm judged before God, I assure you that one of the knocks against me won't be that I didn't vote for higher taxes.

Anyways, I'm not real convinced that Al looks to the Bible for his spiritual guidance. Which means (gasp!), that he's playing politics with religion!

...[but] it's not because of Jesus that the bill needs to be saved, but rather for President Obama. I understand the confusion; sometimes Democrats have the tendency to mix those two up.

Cue the rimshot.

CNBC: Democrat Utopia of California is "the nation's worst credit risk"

Two decades of unchecked liberal leadership have led California straight into the crapper. The state is so financially desperate it "is borrowing money to repay the money it is borrowing which was used to repay some IOUs".

Sounds Madoff-esque to me.

And who would loan funds to "the nation's worst credit risk"? To the capitol of the country's mortgage fraud crisis? To a primary instigator of the illegal immigration and public sector union debacles?

Officially, it's JP Morgan. But since you and I had to loan JPM the money for it to remain solvent (since repaid), perhaps it's the collective.

JP Morgan Chase is lending a hand to the nation's worst credit risk.

California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer announced that the banking giant is lending the state $1.5 billion to help it pay off IOUs... The terms are very favorable to California, as the loan carries a 3 percent annual interest rate, lower than the 3.75 percent rate the state is paying on the IOUs. Also, Chase is not charging any fees.

The loan will allow California to start redeeming IOUs a month early, beginning Sept. 4. That will also be the same day California will stop issuing IOUs. A total of 414,000 IOUs have been issued since early July, totaling $2.26 billion...

How much money California hopes to raise in total has not yet been determined. Controller John Chiang earlier said the state needs $10.5 billion more to get through the year.

Now, why would JPM loan the money to Cali -- a horrible credit risk -- at such favorable terms?

You guessed it: all of us taxpayers -- around the country -- appear to be backstopping this Democrat-instigated catastrophe. Talk about taxation without representation:

A plausible case can be made that this is an indirect bailout by the US government of California. JP Morgan is deemed to big to fail, and can borrow from both the Fed and at reduced costs in the market because of its status. This makes it far easier for the bank to lend confidently to California. What's more, JP Morgan can assume that if California were to come close to defaulting on the loan, the US government would bail out California.

Welcome to the era of hope, change and crony capitalism. Oh, and my beloved liberal readers: perhaps you can find a way to blame Bush for the current condition of the Democrat Utopia of California.

Auditing the Federal Reserve: Crossfire

Pro: Reggie Middleton argues persuasively for auditing the Fed: "The Fed Believes Secrecy is in Our Best Interests. Here are Some of the Secrets ."

Con: Henry Bee calls it "economic suicide."

Larwyn's Linx: The Lobbyists-First Healthcare Reform Bill

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email or reply via Twitter.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

New Democrat Town Hall Strategy: Have Constituents Arrested

Rep. Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire's District 1 appears to be implementing the new Democrat Town Hall strategy: have constituents arrested by police.

Writing at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey observes that this "is a curious re-election strategy, especially for a Representative who made her name by bird-dogging her former Congressman at his town-hall forums. Consistency isn’t Carol Shea-Porter’s strong suit, apparently, as she demonstrates in this clip from the meeting she finally held with constituents after dodging them for most of the month. When one of her constituents challenges the presence of union enforcers in the crowd, Shea-Porter asks for police intervention..."

Today's Democrats use the instrumentalities of government to suppress free speech (consider the "Fairness Doctrine", the "Local Diversity Rule" and other mechanisms to silence conservative opinion).

Residents of New Hampshire: watch the video, impress it in your memory, and then throw this Statist hack out of office in 2010.

Update: Robert Moon:

Liberals simply cannot compete on a level playing field, so they try to control the flow of information in this country at every turn, as they have done with academia, Hollywood, and are now even starting to do with the Internet.

No. They. Didn't.

The 2009 Mercedes-Benz G-Class, MSRP: between $100,250 and $119,450:

The 1995 Suzuki Samurai, Kelley Blue Book Price: between $1,700 and $1,875:

Add $1,150 in parts, paint and labor:

And *Voila*!

A brand-spanking new Merzuki Gamurai!

I've got mail!

Received the following message from Garry this afternoon (all spelling and grammatical errors are reproduced for your enjoyment):

as an Englishman who admires much of things America ..including my wife and children.. I find drivel such as yours depressing... its utter nonsense, and its curious that foreigners see the US far moree clearly today than Americans... remember the Daily Express headline re Bush " how could 60 [million] Americans be so stupid".. I thought at the time it was a rather ott comment though I sympathised ..but how right it was..

I speak as one who has lived in countries through bad times.. South Africa/ UK/Canada..and which have come out the other side courtesy of hardreflection and the need for change..

the Right here does America a huge disservice.. and I say that knowing 98% of them probably havent left the country.

Grary [sic]

After thirty seconds of reflection, I politely replied with the following message.

Dear Garry,

I am a conservative, which is to say I believe in the founding principles of the United States of America. That is: limited government, a respect for individual liberty, free enterprise and private property.

Those who oppose me reject America's founding principles: the very tenets that led to the creation of the greatest country the world has ever seen.

In little more than two hundred years, Americans defeated slavery, Nazism, military Shintoism and Communism; refined mass production; invented human flight; created 75% of all medical innovations on the planet; put a man on the moon; invented the telephone, the Internet and the search engine; and advanced humankind in millions of other ways, in every field and endeavor.

Those who oppose me oppose my Constitution and my Declaration of Independence.

Those who oppose me refute the notion of God-given rights of man and carefully constructed limits on an all-powerful, centralized, authoritarian government.

Those who oppose me see the world as rigid classes of people that must be manipulated to advance a political agenda; whereas conservatives revel in the notion that America has no static class structure; that every day the rich become poor and the poor rich.

Those who oppose me oppose free markets and the power of any individual -- no matter the race, creed, religion or color -- to achieve greatness through hard work, study, inspiration and innovation.

Now go wait in line for a dentist, you whining twit. And never sully my blog with your presence again.

Too harsh?

Beneath Moscow

Professional photographers are trekking into the bowels of Moscow's sewer and subway systems, using exquisite, modern lighting techniques to illuminate areas few humans ever see.

Hat tip: English Russia.

Little-remembered homily from Ronald Reagan's state funeral

I don't know what conservatives are complaining about when they observe that the Kennedy grandkids were trotted out at his public funeral ceremony to pimp socialized medicine. It's not the first time such an event has been politicized. Why, don't you remember this brief prayer from President Reagan's funeral service?