“The nation was poorer for his presidency and is poorer still for his emeritus shenanigans.”

Nancy Pelosi says the anger in the air reminds her of the 1970’s.

She’s crying — literally — in order to get her way. Right after calling her perceived opponents “Nazis” and whatever else she wants to call ’em. Holding nothing back.

You know, in the 1970’s I was on a school playground, dealing with girls who liked to start fights with the boys, no-holds-barred, and then go off screaming to the yard duty teacher the instant they encountered anything that bore a passing resemblance to return-fire. So let us say our House Speaker is not the only one being reminded of the 1970’s; I’m having strong feelings of deja vous as well.

Do not — do not — f**** with the Morgan-Man…

Today was my court hearing. It’s a follow-up to what happened here. Below you see my 15-slide presentation I had prepared in electronic form, in letter-size print-out form, and in oversize full-color hard copy ready for presentation on an easel. Sixty dollars worth of Kinko’s product, ready to present in combat against a $204 ticket…written out way, way back in June…

So what do you think happened.

A. The judge was overwhelmed by the sheer power and force of my irrefutable logic, that the sign objectively failed to fulfill the non-negotiable standards imposed on it by Sections 2A.12, 2A.16, 2A.22, 2B.03 and 2B.19 of the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, published by the United States Government and customized by the California Department of Transportation.

B. The judge was unprepared for the extremely compelling case I made that it was simply not reasonable or realistic to expect motorists to see such a tiny road sign, around so sharp a bend in the road, amidst such a great multitude of other distractions. The video really put this case over the top when I captured all those cars ignoring the sign that they probably couldn’t see any better than I could anyway. And then of course, as frosting on the cake, there is the matter that the sign is plainly NOT legal.

C. The judge was completely bowled-over by the sensible arguments I made in favor of u-turns being allowed at that intersection. No one can recall who ever made the dumbass stupid decision to prohibit u-turns at that location, but they will make every effort to hunt down the miserable sonofabitch, and may God have mercy on his soul.

D. The judge had the wind knocked out of her sails by my water-tight argument that for 206 years now, it has been ingrained into the spirit of American jurisprudence a neverendingly hostile reaction to any hint of an all-powerful legislature; and, that an all-powerful legislature is precisely what we create when laws lose all force and effect as soon as they they apply to other laws. We are bound to follow the law, be it sensible or not, especially when we enforce that law against others. The judge was particularly impressed when I quoted Chief Justice John Marshall from the Marbury vs. Madison decision of 1803. Surely that applies to the case at hand, does it not, for if a sign is enforceable at 12″ wide and 17″ tall, when the standards plainly state that it should be 24″ square or higher — why stop there? Make it as big as the ticket I was written for disregarding it. Make it as big as a Post-It note. Why not? Where does it end? And for that reason, you must dismiss this case and yank the sign out by the roots…or else the standards have no meaning…and we are living in a tyrannical government of our own making.

E. The judge dismissed the case when the cop didn’t show up.

F. I’m guilty, and sentenced to a dog’s lifespan of bicycling to work.

This little drama has been going on for three months now. And I can safely say that every single person I see on a regular basis…son…girlfriend…co-workers…UPS guy…lady who does our dry-cleaning…is sick and tired of hearing from me about u-turn signs. And curious about how things were going to turn out this morning. Both. Feeling conflicted. And letting it show.

Meanwhile, I have been consumed in an endless morass of obsession over road signs that are unreasonably small. I’ve become quite a difficult person to have in proximity, and occasionally something of an embarrassment.

But that all ends now.

Maybe.

From Top of the Ticket.

Hat tip: Treacher.

The Editors of National Review Online weigh in on the dismantling of the missile defense shield in Europe…

President Obama knows how to put a smile on faces in Tehran and Moscow: This morning, he announced the abandonment of plans to develop a small missile-defense system in Eastern Europe.

This overturns one of the major diplomatic and national-security achievements of the Bush years. When George W. Bush came into office in 2001, the United States lacked long-range missile defenses. Today, Americans enjoy a rudimentary shield against North Korea as it strives to produce intercontinental ballistic missiles. There is no such protection for the United States or Europe against a similar threat from Iran, but agreements to build a powerful radar in the Czech Republic and to base interceptors in Poland had put NATO on a course for preparedness.

And here‘s Mister Wonderful promising just five months ago not to do this very thing. Perhaps that’s why the Prime Minister of Poland won’t take Hillary’s phone calls. Chalk up another foreign policy defeat for President Sottero.

It’s a funny thing about liberals. One of the many things that makes their decisions wrong much more often than right, is that they’re constantly in search of the “prime time television” moment in which a decision that looks good, instantly, to those who wouldn’t know a good decision if it smacked ’em in the face, has good results immediately as well as in the longer term. This often doesn’t work.

But here’s the twist: This “hawk versus dove” thing comes up, and then they manage to land on the wrong side of both of those goals — which, in other walks of life, are so often mutually exclusive from each other. They manage to make an enormous tactical mistake while looking like dorks. And the “smartest” among them seem clueless about it. It’s as if they really do expect you can disarm yourself, place the blade of the enemy’s knife against your own throat, and everyone all over the place will think that’s a really cool move. Well, here’s some truth for you. It’s not a cool move; nobody thinks it is; you look like a nimrod when you do it; and as far as wise decisions go, it’s boneheaded. To say nothing of dishonorable, when it sends our allies up the creek without a paddle.

I don’t need to elaborate on any of that. Announcing His own decision yesterday, The Holy One used one of my most-deplored phrases…I have no idea where I read it…but I could just go on that. “After an extensive review” or “After an extensive process” or some such.

I recall my mother, who is long dead by now, had another favorite: “At this time” or “At this point in time.” She was a very wise, perceptive woman, and made a point of noticing someone was always up to skulduggery and shenanigans anytime she heard some variant of that phrase. And if you were stupid enough to use “At this particular point in time” around Mary Ann Freeberg, something would be slammed in your face, probably. The door, if it was there, or the phone call would be dropped after a terse but courteous forever-farewell.

I didn’t think much of this at the time. But in the years that have passed, I see she was on to something. There are some sequences of words that honest people have no business using. There are some sequences of words that, if you hear them, you know someone’s snookering you. You’d be ahead of the game just terminating the conversation on the spot. President Obama’s decision, and His way of talking about it, reminds me that my favorite most-loathed phrase does indeed belong in the top slot — I think it does. When’s the last time you heard someone in a position of authority say “After an extensive review”…and then whatever comes afterward is a good idea? No, that hasn’t happened to you. Hasn’t happened to anyone. You know why? Because if it’s a good idea there’s no reason for him to say how extensive the review was — is there? If it leads to good results, the guy in a position of authority can wait, and then point. If it makes a lot of sense when people first hear it, he can stand on that. “After an extensive review” is a phrase used by those who know, down to the marrow of their bones, they’ll be deprived of both of those advantages. And they know you know. And they’re trying to make you forget.

Sorry Mom, I like my phrase better than yours. Living in different times, I guess. I’ll still give you credit for a good idea though.

In fact, I’ve decided to add on to the list…

1. After an extensive process
2. Let me be clear
3. At this ((particular) point in) time
4. In service of a more well-rounded education
5. To serve our increasingly diverse community
6. Smacks of racism
7. Let me (just) say this about that
8. Heteronormative
9. Patriarchy
10. Stereotyping
11. Blue-ribbon panel (commission)
12. Basically
13. Totally
14. Thought/hate crime
15. Separation of church and state
16. His oil buddies
17. (Wall Street) greed
18. Common good
19. Will of The People
20. Disappearing middle class
21. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer
22. Mental/verbal abuse

When there’s time, I’ll go over the What Gave You Away? list of things stupid people say, to put others on the alert to the fact that they’re stupid. Then I’ll go over the list of Words I Totally Hate. There may be redundancy, or there may be far less overlap than I’m hoping…since the Gave-You-Away list is for stupid folks, and this one is for dishonest ones.

Wonder if I missed anything?

Anyway, there’s little point to debating this decision. It’s a disaster. President Obama Himself knows it to be a disaster. You can tell by the way He talks about it.

Update 9/19/09:

From Dad…

23. Let’s move on/Time to move on

From my favorite gal…

24. Trust me
25. (Why) would I lie (to you)?
26. Capiche?

From Blogger Friend Phil…

27. Dialectic

From me…again…

28. Sit down and talk out our differences with our enemies
29. Save money and save the planet (Hey…if the planet’s a goner, what do you care how much $$$ you have??)
30. Xtians
31. Sky fairy/Spaghetti monster

From me, inspired by what Dad said…

32. Distraction
33. Private life separate from his public service

From me, after browsing Feministing looking for some more ideas…

34. Hostile work environment
35. (Basic) human right(s)
36. Loving couple
37. Glass ceiling
38. Making inroads
39. Representative of the community
40. Social justice

It’s only obvious what the old boy is trying to set up…

Guys on the radio are betting by the end of the day, he’s got to eat his words.

I’d take that bet. democrats have no history. Their scandals bother them a little bit for a day or two; they don’t take ’em down.

And Carter will never do anything to give us a better cause to stop taking him seriously, than his one term as our President. Anyone who can forget that can forget anything.

Like, on a hot stove (hat tip to Cassy).

[Olympia] Snowe (Maine), who was one of three Republicans who backed the $787 billion economic stimulus package, was being lobbied heavily by the White House, and some centrists view her refusal to strike a deal with Baucus as troubling. But concerns about how the plan would be paid for prompted her to back away in the hours before its release.

“I do have concerns and I’m not sure they can be addressed before he issues [legislation] tomorrow,” Snowe said.

This leads to an interesting discussion about the readiness, willingness and ability — or lack thereof — of the democrats to use fancy procedural moves to pass the bill through the Senate by simple majority, thereby leaving an indelible fingerprint of the democrat party on our nation’s brand new health care plan.

“Brace yourselves!”

Blogsister Daphne at Jaded Haven: The word “racist(m)” has been bludgeoned into shapelessness, beyond any form of possible usefulness. Just like “shit,” “piss,” “ass,” “fuck” and “damn” lose meaning if you throw them around too carelessly. Now that we’ve elected a President who’s going to get us past all our racial-tension problems for good — Hah! — we find the R-word has been worn out like no other word has ever been worn-out before.

James Taranto has some more thoughts on this.

Neo-Neocon has come up with a new word for people who use the R-word against anyone who might possibly disagree with them, for whatever reason: “Racers.” I like it. Like it a lot. Truthers…birthers…racers. Hat tip again to Gerard.

Update 9/16/09: Jimmy Carter is helping to wear it out too.

Racer.

Sowell.

Hat tip to Linkiest.

Boortz.

Compare and contrast: That oh-so-classy Alan Colmes who gets oh-so-many extra props for being oh-so-civilized and observing proper rules of decorum and enjoying sophisticated good-natured calm cool and collected exchanges of ideas with his good friend Hannity…is indulging in Maher humor. And when people call him on it he says it’s their problem.

CNSNews.

Gateway Pundit.

Hat tip to Sister Toldjah.

Throughout all of my mortal life, conservatives have been on the defensive about two things: That they lack compassion, and that they think of and treat people “different” from themselves as inferiors. Time after time I see a prominent conservative granted the opportunity to do the right thing, and take a pass on doing it, only because doing the right thing would reverse some of his “progress” in trying to deny or refute one of those, or both. They are “When did you stop beating your wife” questions: Once you are accused, any action you take to address the accusation in any way whatsoever, only does more damage. Denying it does the greatest damage.

I’d like to see liberals become defensive about something: Their tendency is to make bad decisions, because they aren’t motivated to understand why someone might disagree with what they propose to do. To them, it’s always something that begins with “you’re”: You’re stingy, you’re cold-hearted, you’re mean, you lack compassion, you’re a racist, you’re a homophobe, you’re just a jerk, you cling to your gun and your Bible…

For the good of the country, I’d like to see liberals placed under suspicion for this, everywhere they go, just as conservatives are placed under suspicion of being racists and sexist pigs — and are never, ever finished proving that they aren’t these things. I’d like to see liberals caught on a spinning hamster-exercise-wheel of trying to disprove this thing about themselves, that they cannot intellectually grapple with an opposing argument, and the ad hom is their only refuge. Because in many cases, from what I’ve seen, it’s true.

Update: Gerard wants to push the definition all the way out:

“A raaaaacist is anyone who’s winning an argument with a liberal.”

Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities… [emphasis mine]

— Sarah Palin, during her acceptance speech last summer.

After all that hubbub, and all the chatter since then about community-organizing, you might very well be wondering what exactly a “community organizer” is. You might also rightfully wonder what it is that community organizers do to/for the communities they organize.

Read and learn. Gene Schwimmer, writing in the American Thinker:

Imagine a large city, such as my home town, Detroit used to be, before liberalism destroyed it. Imagine that, in this city, a developer offers to buy a plot of land on which to build a multi-story office building. The upper floors will provide space for visionary entrepreneurs to start new businesses and to expand existing ones, create new products, new services and above all, new jobs. The ground floor will be retail space, providing much-needed products and services to the people who work in the offices above and to the rest of the city, too. And of course, for the people who work in them, the new stores will provide jobs.

Now imagine that someone else has a different idea. This person views people who buy land, put buildings on them, facilitate the creation of new products, services and jobs, but who have the gall to enrich themselves in the process, as evil, bloodsucking capitalists. This person believes that “the community” would be better served by turning the plot into a children’s playground. Or he may believe, grudgingly, that an office building might be okay — but only if the construction workers come from “the community.” (The many jobs that would be created for the people who would work in the building is, of course, irrelevant.)

Imagine further that this person has a lot of friends and associates in “the community.” When he talks, they listen, even when he tries to create an issue where no issue has existed before. (If “the community” needed a children’s playground on this particular patch of vacant land so badly, why did no one demand one before?)

Ever been to Detroit, during or after the Coleman Young days? Then you will join me in shuddering at the thought of Detroit being held aloft, with no shortage of legitimacy, as a harbinger for where the country’s headed. Not good at all, dear reader. We can only hope the country as a whole shows some “bounce,” some determination to head out of the lint-trap of liberalism-created blight once it’s been ensconced there…some bounce that so many of our localities have failed over the generations to show.

How do we get from building childrens’ playgrounds, to a cesspool of blight? It has to do with manufacturing an incendiary regional passion, where one did not necessarily exist before. Schwimmer continues…

The community organizer’s job is to speak to groups within “the community;” write letters to sympathetic newspaper editors; bring in outside experts and professional rabble-rousers (who often come with their own professional rabble) and, most important, get the media to cover the demonstrations — all with the object of assembling the critical mass of humanity needed to embarrass and/or pressure the private parties and/or government into doing what “the community” wants. Or, sometimes more accurately, what the community organizer has told them they want.

That’s the community organizer’s job. That’s all he does and it’s not rocket science. Any anti-Semitic, loudmouthed racial demagogue can do it (and, incidentally, become as rich as a real estate developer in the process). Community organizers are a dime a dozen.

Need a shot of optimism? Then head on over here.

Hat tip, for both links, to Maggie’s Farm.

If I have to pick just one snippet of text that will demonstrate Josh Olson just might deserve to benefit from the livelihood he has as a scriptwriter, I think these two paragraphs just might do it. I’m looking for the occasion upon which I might shamelessly steal them, and thinking back on some situations in which I could have stolen them had I been aware of them.

At this point, you should walk away, firm in your conviction that I’m a dick. But if you’re interested in growing as a human being and recognizing that it is, in fact, you who is the dick in this situation, please read on.

Yes. That’s right. I called you a dick. Because you created this situation. You put me in this spot where my only option is to acquiesce to your demands or be the bad guy. That, my friend, is the very definition of a dick move.

“You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and independence.” — Abraham Lincoln

John Holdren, the Science Czar, on American “Exceptionalism”:

Like having a fox in charge of the chicken coop.

From Weasel Zippers, via Boortz.

One among many reasons why the How The World Works Guy says — Holdren needs to go. Now.

The Clinton Triangulation Strategy lives on: This side is childish, that other side is childish, so ignore both of them and just listen to what I say.

Hat tip to WebWench, at Nealz Nuze, where Yankee Infidel speaks for me:

Ledger claims to know the facts, but he’s clinging to some “facts” that have already been debunked through analysis already. Rightists are students of history, and as such, we are concerned about what government control of health care will do to the industry. Having 1 party (the government) not only be a referee in the industry but also a player instead obviously unbalances the scale in favor of the government/public “option” to the point were the only option that will survive is the government/public “option”.

Mike Todd at Waving or Drowning wants to give the recently departed Sen. Ted Kennedy a decent send-off. That is certainly his right. I have neither the time nor the inclination, to deny him that right. Part of the reason I’m so dis-inclined to interfere with the expression of one’s innermost thoughts that run so contrary to my own, is this: I’m not like Ted. I understand people are different, and life would be boring if they were not. Kennedy never really was at ease with that. Some of his “greatest” speeches were inspired by his resentment against people and organizations who thought about life in non-Ted-like ways.

But another consequence of me being not-like-Ted, is that I am occasionally curious about things. I notice things are out of place, and when I notice things are out of place I don’t think it is a cause for celebration and drinking, but rather a cause for learning. Mr. Todd’s silly, hagiographic farewell (hat tip: Rick) is a cause for the rest of us to learn something about ourselves if ever there was one.

Just look at it from a thirty-thousand foot level:

Paragraph One comments “I admire people who don’t hide from their brokenness” in the course of building up to the statement “my heroes tend to be imperfect.” Okay, the object of the exercise is to say something positive about Ted. Mike’s managed to squeek out a negative and make it look like a positive; Teddy didn’t try to hide the negative. A couple months back, some homeless guy waltzed into my girlfriend’s store and shattered a bunch of bottles of booze so that he could be sent back to jail — the cops said, alright. You know, he didn’t try to hide his brokenness either. So that jailbird bum is on the same level as Ted? According to you, Mike, he’s managed to match the Senator’s most appealing quality.

Paragraph Two winds up with “Some are describing him as the greatest Senator in history, and I don’t think that is a stretch.” People who can’t admit to what they’re trying to say, even to themselves, write like this quite often. To say “Ted Kennedy was the greatest Senator in history” would be out of the question. Too active; too much responsibility being taken. For a few years now I’ve been noticing this about Mr. Todd, and Rick has occasionally commented on it too. He doesn’t really say things, especially in response to being challenged. He just goes through paragraph after paragraph implying things. In the zoology of writers, he is a decidedly non-skeletal, gastropodic slimy mollusk of a being.

Todd then tells the story of the Senator “accepting,” in 1983, membership in the Moral Majority and then “requesting” the opportunity to give a speech. Todd and myself agree on what is the most notable part of that speech:

I am an American and a Catholic; I love my country and treasure my faith. But I do not assume that my conception of patriotism or policy is invariably correct–or that my conviction about religion should command any greater respect than any other faith in this pluralistic society. I believe there surely is such a thing as truth, but who among us can claim a monopoly on it?

Four years later, Sen. Kennedy made himself “great” in the minds of his fans and lackeys once again, during the confirmation proceedings of failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork. Sen. Kennedy rejected everything meaningful about his speech four years earlier. Sen. Kennedy — let’s see, we can just go through the list, can’t we? — assumed that his conception of patriotism was invariably correct, and that his conception of policy was invariably correct. He was steadfast in claiming his conviction about religion-versus-state issues should command greater respect than anybody else’s conviction about the same thing; he was certainly consistent on that from womb-to-tomb.

And absolutely, positively, during the Bork nomination and at many other times, Sen. Kennedy knew there surely was such a thing as truth, and he himself claimed a monopoly on saying what exactly it was —

Mr. Bork should also be rejected by the Senate because he stands for an extremist view of the Constitution and the role of the Supreme Court that would have placed him outside the mainstream of American constitutional jurisprudence in the 1960s, let alone the 1980s. He opposed the Public Accommodations Civil Rights Act of 1964. He opposed the one-man one-vote decision of the Supreme Court the same year. He has said that the First Amendment applies only to political speech, not literature or works of art or scientific expression.

Under the twin pressures of academic rejection and the prospect of Senate rejection, Mr. Bork subsequently retracted the most neanderthal of these views on civil rights and the first amendment. But his mind-set is no less ominous today.

Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.

America is a better and freer nation than Robert Bork thinks. Yet in the current delicate balance of the Supreme Court, his rigid ideology will tip the scales of justice against the kind of country America is and ought to be.

The damage that President Reagan will do through this nomination, if it is not rejected by the Senate, could live on far beyond the end of his presidential term. President Reagan is still our President. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate, and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and on the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice.

In light of the 1987 Bork speech, Mike Todd’s words seem even more risible than usual when he says, in reference to the 1983 speech, “[it] is yet another piece in the puzzle of [the] ‘unity’ theme that seems to be hammering me lately.”

Mr. Todd, I think I have found the last piece of that puzzle for you. People like Ted Kennedy, do, after all, leave large gaping holes behind when they depart, suitable for causing an utter collapse of the flimy structure built on top. It is their vision of the world and how it should work; it requires their leadership in order to make sense. Their ramshackle, inconsistent, quivering, whimsical, vacillating leadership. It would make much more sense, of course, to champion the cause of unity all the time. It would also make much more sense to demonize and derogate those same concepts all the time. Or, if one is committed to being a fair-weather friend to unity, to tack back and forth in the interest of the Constitution and the country…rather than to get a few more licks in against the Moral Majority and against Republicans.

But of course, it’s really just about attacking people isn’t it? That’s why you can’t go into any great detail about what made Sen. Kennedy great. Kennedy was great because he shared enemies with you and had brilliantly refined the fine art of inflicting damage on that enemy — by holding it to standards of behavior while rejecting any standards for his own behavior.

This is the final nail in the coffin on Todd’s eulogy for the Senator. It doesn’t suffer damage because I disagree with it personally; it suffers damage because it disagrees with itself. It is an apt illustration of Thing I Know #265: “You can’t be better than everyone else when you’re trying to be like everyone else.” This is the internal contradiction that ultimately robs it of any structural strength, and destroys it from within. For all this great urgency to salute Ted Kennedy with this giant-among-mortals theme, it seems so few among his fans can really follow through on it. Todd himself availed himself of the perfect opportunity, oozing his gastropod form within a slug’s antenna of calling him, but not actually calling him, “the greatest Senator in history.” He can’t quite bring himself to bubble out the superlative. What’s the problem, Mike?

The problem is with — to borrow a phrase from the departed Senator from the famous “Bork” speech — a glaring inconsistency with Ted Kennedy’s America.

Ted Kennedy was not known for his respect for the concept of individual achievement, and here and there are some bits of evidence to suggest he was quite antagonistic toward such a thing. Praising the New England Patriots, he read into the Congressional record “At a time when our entire country is banding together and facing down individualism, the Patriots set a wonderful example, showing us all what is possible when we work together, believe in each other, and sacrifice for the greater good.” [emphasis mine] Now, think on that for just a minute or two. If you want to go to a country that faces down individualism and where life is all about sacrificing for the greater good, why, there are scores and scores of places around the world where you can go. But that wasn’t good enough for Ted; he wanted the United States to be transformed into just another filthy collectivist socialist mudpuddle. He said so. He specifically identified the very concept of the individual as an inimical force, one to be engaged and defeated.

Doctor Zero made a brilliant point about this last week:

This is why the death of Mary Jo Kopechne doesn’t trouble liberal intellectuals all that much. In fact, they think you’re a bit childish and primitive for being obsessed with it.

The meme floated by the Left over the past few days, that Kopechne’s death was a reasonable price to pay for Ted Kennedy’s wonderful political career, is a brutally candid expression of the principle that even an individual’s right to live is negotiable — a commodity to be measured against the “needs of the many,” which the Left believes were far better served by Kennedy’s politics than Kopechne’s insignificant little life. The striking thing about the two most infamous expressions of this opinion, by Melissa Lafsky and Joyce Carol Oates, is how breezy they are. They don’t caution the reader to brace himself for an outrageous, controversial assertion, which the author plans to defend. Both Lafsky and Oates are rather wistful in tone. They don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t think Kopechne’s life for Kennedy’s legislative agenda was a sweet trade, the deal of the century for America.

If it’s fair to presume some things about the idol, based on the demonstrated priorities of those who worship it — and I think, in this case, it is — we are ready to re-write the Bork speech because know some things about Ted Kennedy’s America.

Ted Kennedy’s America is one in which the value of all individual attributes and possessions, including human life itself, is negotiable.

It is a culture in which unity is the primary collectivist asset, the prize to be jealously guarded by us all…until a leader of some stature tells us it is not, and then we are to turn on it and tear it asunder. Unity is good when it helps democrats and hurts Republicans, but it’s bad when it helps Republicans or hurts democrats.

It is a business environment in which, if any one individual manages to do more than his part to make life better for the rest of us, and receives payment in kind — no way can that story be concluded just yet. The dirty bastard must not have been taxed enough! Unless, that is, his last name is Kennedy.

It is an economy in which it is terribly important to us all how high the minimum wage is going to be this year…since so few of us make any more than that.

It is a nation in which leaders join hands, reaching across the aisle, overcoming their differences to write legislation together and the partisan divide should finally be healed. For just a certain amount of time. And then, as soon as the Republican can’t do anything to help the democrat, the democrat should be ready, willing and able to give blistering scolding speeches about “George Bush’s Vietnam.” The pattern remains; it’s a strategic mindset, one that exists to inflict damage on the enemy. Like a slug devouring your strawberry patch, it pretends not to be non-destructive, by moving slowly.

It is a place where we all ask ourselves what we can sacrifice for the greater good, while people sufficiently fortunate to carry the name “Kennedy” respond with the Not-In-My-Back-Yard protest “But don’t you realize — that’s where I sail!”

It’s all so clear, Mike. You’re being whacked upside the head repeatedly with this unity theme. How much less traumatic the experience would be for you, if you could show some consistency about it. But you can’t, being a slimy mollusk who lacks a skeleton, and so your heroes are the ones who similarly cannot be consistent about it. They, like you, pulsate, vibrate, meander back and forth: Oh, now we’re all to pick out an individual from among us, and worship him. Whoopsie, no today’s a different day, and now individualism doesn’t matter and is to be frowned-upon. Oh, today we’re all going to help each other out. Whoopsie, no, the most wonderful among us are the ones who inflict the greatest sum of damage upon that guy over there.

From what I see, what little that defines this mindset has to do with valuing destruction over creation. Someone destroys something or inflicts damage on something, it’s time to idolize the person who is the destroyer. But if nothing is destroyed, and the only way anyone has set himself apart from the rest is by creating something, suddenly that’s when we’re back to our war against the individual. Maybe you could confirm that for me, since Sen. Kennedy isn’t around to do it anymore.

But that’s not really necessary. I was privileged to watch the Senator for a good long time, and that pattern always remained consistent. Invidual contributions important when individuals destroy things; individual contributions toxic and resented, when individuals were creating things. That’s the Kennedy pattern. No wonder you can’t bring yourself to call him history’s greatest Senator, even though you so clearly want to. What an uncomfortable, tortured existence you must be living out, you little slug.

Jenny isn’t getting along with her GPS.

Hat tip: FARK.

That is the only title that can be affixed to this wonderful clip, as you shall see:

She nailed it. Nailed it. The health care debate, like all significant disagreements in human history, comes down to a difference in philosophies. Does government exist to do all the minimal tasks that can’t be done at the local levels, organize a military, provide redress of grievances — the things actually listed in the Constitution? Or is it a teat to be suckled?

If the purpose of government is seize wealth for redistribution to others, then let us view that act as the theft that it really is. Stop dressing it up in bullshit town hall meetings, fancy legislation, marble buildings and business suits. Stop with the pious platitudes about “Doing the Work of The People” and get down to the brass tacks. Just come on over and take my twenty bucks. With force. Let’s see it happen in front of our faces.

Hat tip to Ace, via Robert Stacy McCain.

Jennifer Rubin writes in Commentary Magazine:

James Sherk of Heritage makes a compelling case that the problem is not persistent layoffs but a drop in job creation. The labor market simply can’t absorb new workers entering the labor force. That slowdown in job creation, he says, is in large part attributable to “enormous increases in federal spending on traditional liberal priorities, such as for government-run health care, [which] raise the prospects of vastly higher taxes or rapidly rising inflation.”

He explains:

The federal deficit is expected to approach $2 trillion this year, and to remain well above $1 trillion for many years to come, doubling the national debt in just five years. This situation is not sustainable…Gross private investment in equipment and software—a good measure of business investment spending—has fallen by a full 20 percent since the recession began. As long as business investment remains low and entrepreneurs hold back from starting new enterprises, job creation will remain low—and unemployment, high.

Couple that with the prospect that employers may be hit with higher energy costs, a cap-and-trade regulatory scheme, and health-care mandates and one can understand that a hiring paralysis may become a fixture in the economy, absent a substantial change in the administration’s approach to economic recovery. If the president and his advisers think we can have a recovery while they attack the private sector and seek a vast expansion of government, they are in for a rude awakening. It turns out we need those private-sector employers. Who knew?

Let’s play Devil’s Advocate on this one, just to see if I can —

Silly Jennifer Rubin! Doesn’t she realize United States history, and world history, are chock full of stories of the private sector enterprises being hounded, taxed and regulated into providing more jobs they otherwise wouldn’t have. Like…uh…uh…er…ah…

Oh dear. Let me get back to you on that.

Hat tip: Inst.

Wow, we certainly can’t have that, can we? In your congressional office that you’re running…that belongs to you & everything…as you run it as you see fit. Can’t have the little people watching you do it, that wouldn’t do at all.

Hat tip to Rick, who seems to delight in offering the Indiana Congressman as much rope as he needs to hang himself. Oh yeah, I am so down with that.

…we have very few things that we do not owe to this. Observes Blogsister Daphne:

I will never understand a certain breed of woman who discounts the power lying between her legs. Those who choose to use their pussy as a crutch, rather than ratchet that bitch up to the highest level of architectural management.

Men bend to to the smell of us, they love some premium snatch, will murder and humiliate themselves to obtain the furry object of their prime pink affection. Men love pussy, they kill for this shit, overthrow countries, gain thrones, change the course of history following their loin’s longings, entertain depths of madness following thwarted passion. They’ll slit the throats of blood kin over a piece of our ass.
:
Without man’s raw need for our bodies or intense cravings for the soft approval of a beloved woman’s smile, the world at large would be experiencing little more than cold caves, raw meat and gritty beer.

Sometimes women miscalculate their choice, find themselves bruised by a bad man, that’s called living, not a vaginal tragedy. The existence of these brutal outliers shouldn’t be a wholesale indictment of the male sex. The misogynists, rapists and wife beaters crawling the earth can’t be discounted, but let’s face the bald fact that most of these men were raised by women.

We truly do mold the world that exits the soft folds between our thighs. When women abdicate the responsibility of raising sound male children and accept twisted partners as lovers, we breed and sustain the very thing we despise most.

Knights and Princesses.

Then along comes the feminist movement, and suddenly the worms are breeding just as fast as the workhorses. Because the fairer sex, striving to assert itself, in an irony of irony suddenly becomes less picky and less choosey. They held their revolution to achieve the “power” they thought they were being denied, when in reality, they had power wielded by nobody else in all of human history. Until they gave it up.

Mistake. Big mistake.

Throughout most of yesterday I heard & read of speculation here & there that the democrats were going to start rising up to pass a health care bill this year, because very late the night before a profound, meaningful thing happened. The question “what problem is this supposed to solve?” got answered. Ha ha! No, that’s a little joke right there. Of course that didn’t happen. What happened was that Ted Kennedy started taking his scheduled course in swimming lessons from Mary Jo.

How long before the democrats would start a campaign to revive their terminally ill stinky albatross health care bill under some misguided platform of “Let’s win this one for the swimmer”? How long before we started an autumn of misery, constantly hearing the refrain that although no one can justify this Obamacare plan any better after The Swimmer’s demise, than they could before…that we just gotta do it for dear old Uncle Ted?

Now we have our answer: One stinkin’ day.

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed Wednesday to push through embattled health reform legislation this year following the death of Senator Ted Kennedy, who called the effort “the cause of my life”.

“Ted Kennedy’s dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration,” Pelosi said in a statement.

Senate President Pro Tem Robert Byrd joined in the fun.

Ailing Senator Robert Byrd, one of only two to have served longer than Kennedy, suggests in an emotional statement renaming the pending health care legislation for the late Massachusetts Senator:

In his honor and as a tribute to his commitment to his ideals, let us stop the shouting and name calling and have a civilized debate on health care reform which I hope, when legislation has been signed into law, will bear his name for his commitment to insuring the health of every American.

Evidence of a parallel universe — one in which debates can be “civilized,” or debates can grapple meaningfully with the consequences of implementing a proposed plan. But it’s one or the other. Those are mutually exclusive things. Pondering the ramifications of doing something, is inherently uncivilized.

It really is democrat politicians against The People. All people; white, black, rich, poor. Every left-wing politician’s argument, it seems, is a distraction away from the “If we do this, that thing will happen” that is central to all responsible planning. Their talking points seem to systematically address all concerns in the universe except that.

Now we have to pass a bad bill to put a smile on the face of Kennedy’s ghost.

My question is: How about putting smiles on the faces of people who actually have to live with the laws that are being passed? And pay for them? Part of the democrat party world-view seems to be that by passing just the right law to force people to do something, you can make those people into a better class of people…more morally inspired and pristine…because of what they are forced to do. The reality is that laws don’t, and cannot, do that. But laws certainly can kill a lot of dreams.

So here’s an idea. Here’s another way to affix the health care debate to Kennedy’s passing. How about this: Ted Kennedy, like our health care debate, lived a long, full life and is now dead. The decent thing to do is to bury them both. Anyone who wants to live in a country that provides universal health care, there are scores of other nations they can live. True, some of those nations are desperately trying to find ways to do things the American way…but for the time being, if you want to wait half a year to get an MRI, you have your pick of where to do your waiting. Let’s honor Ted Kennedy’s memory and send all our universal-health care advocates to those places. Maybe drive them there over a bridge.

It’s a dating web site for sugar daddies and sugar babies. Yeah…that’s pretty much what you think it is. And the industry is withstanding the current economic malaise quite well.

Erin Miller, a 23-year-old, self-described model/actress, uses a dating Web site called SeekingArrangement.com. On her profile, she has advertised herself as looking for a “playful, open relationship with financial benefits.”

“I’m dating four sugar daddies right now,” she said.
:
Miller has only been on the Web site for a couple of months, yet she feels as though her life has already changed drastically.

“I’ve been shopping all over, nice cars. I got a new condo,” she said. “Every day is a new adventure.”

One of her sugar daddies lets her use his yacht. He also sends her a Rolls Royce and a chauffeur to take her shopping. Another date pays for her condo, and another gave her a Mercedes.

“Self-described model/actress.” For some reason, that just cracks me up.

…love it or hate it, it’s a reality now.

The rich, as a group, are no longer getting richer. Over the last two years, they have become poorer. And many may not return to their old levels of wealth and income anytime soon.

For every investment banker whose pay has recovered to its prerecession levels, there are several who have lost their jobs — as well as many wealthy investors who have lost millions. As a result, economists and other analysts say, a 30-year period in which the super-rich became both wealthier and more numerous may now be ending.

And I have the perception that if we were to conduct a vote on it, the folks who say this is a good thing, would outnumber the folks who say it is not. At least, that’s the way things have been up until now…when the vision of “social justice” and income equalization was a distant dream.

Now that it’s “Mission Accomplished” I wonder how much that’s going to change. The most likely future is one in which our kids swap stories about the good ol’ days, when there were rich people. Before we got rid of ’em. You know, it’s kinda tough to nurture those dreams for a better life, when there are fewer people around who’ve managed to achieve it and hang on to it.

“Brother, you asked for it!” — Atlas Shrugged, Ch. 25.

Maybe not…

One of the more troubling components of the ObamaCare bill wending its way through the House is the inclusion of individual mandates to carry health insurance. What gives Congress the power to dictate that choice to American citizens? A single document enumerates Congressional power, and former Department of Justice attorneys David Rivkin and Lee Casey have some trouble finding that power in it. They argue, with appropriate citations of precedent, that HR3200 and any other bill that attempts to impose mandates will violate the Constitution:

Although the Supreme Court has interpreted Congress’s commerce power expansively, this type of mandate would not pass muster even under the most aggressive commerce clause cases. In Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the court upheld a federal law regulating the national wheat markets. The law was drawn so broadly that wheat grown for consumption on individual farms also was regulated. Even though this rule reached purely local (rather than interstate) activity, the court reasoned that the consumption of homegrown wheat by individual farms would, in the aggregate, have a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce, and so was within Congress’s reach.

The court reaffirmed this rationale in 2005 in Gonzales v. Raich, when it validated Congress’s authority to regulate the home cultivation of marijuana for personal use. In doing so, however, the justices emphasized that — as in the wheat case — “the activities regulated by the [Controlled Substances Act] are quintessentially economic.” That simply would not be true with regard to an individual health insurance mandate.

The otherwise uninsured would be required to buy coverage, not because they were even tangentially engaged in the “production, distribution or consumption of commodities,” but for no other reason than that people without health insurance exist. The federal government does not have the power to regulate Americans simply because they are there. Significantly, in two key cases, United States v. Lopez (1995) and United States v. Morrison (2000), the Supreme Court specifically rejected the proposition that the commerce clause allowed Congress to regulate noneconomic activities merely because, through a chain of causal effects, they might have an economic impact. These decisions reflect judicial recognition that the commerce clause is not infinitely elastic and that, by enumerating its powers, the framers denied Congress the type of general police power that is freely exercised by the states.

Well, double-hmmm. And to think it’s a constitutional law professor pushing it. How’d this get past Him?

Update: Speaking of abiding by the Constitution, Rick brings us video of some worthy commentary from an informed and somewhat righteously blazing leatherneck, who swore an oath to defend that document and sees to it that he is good for that oath. Not to be missed:

Courteous and respectful to everyone, friendly to no one. And what an appropriate place for it. Why don’t you head on over to his YouTube home page and thank him for his service to our country. Twice.

From here.

Hat tip: Gerard.