You've got to give James Cameron credit. Only the man who brought forth "Titanic" would have the balls to use Left Wing Demagoguery as the foundation for an action/adventure movie, much less one that cost a half billion dollars to make.
In "Avatar", Cameron flogs his audience with every liberal Hollywood cliché ever discussed over a power lunch, and the entire movie flows like a condensation of talking points memos from the Sierra Club and MoveOn.org. The Pandoran natives - known as the Navi - are one with Nature; Gaia not only lives, but rules in this far-off world. It's Bad Cowboys vs. Virtuous Indians, and all of the Bad Cowboys are White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Males. All of the Good Guys are women, or men who get in touch with their feminine side.
Cameron liberally borrows from a dozen other movies for the bulk of these themes, but he rips off one in particular, and Paul Verhoeven must be pissed, because Cameron milks his masterpiece "Total Recall" like a dairy cow:
- Earth is a hellhole, full of violence and Evil. The distant planet, whether Pandora or Mars, is peopled by Real Folks.
- The military has joined with the Evil Corporations to exploit the innocent natives of the far off world.
- The aforementioned Evil Corporation mines a mineral called - and I'm not making this up - "Unobtainium". In Total Recall it was "Turbinium".
- Gigantic Mining machines play a major role in each movie, devouring the planet, and being used in both cases to threaten the lives of the main characters. In both movies, the Bad Guys operating the machines and using them to kill the Good Guys meet their deserved doom at the hands of the resourceful and woefully underequipped Good Guys.
- Each movie has Over-The-Top performances by two Bad Guys, one the Evil Corporate Chieftain and the other the Bloodthirsty Head Of Security. Total Recall by far did a much better job in portraying these characters, with Ronnie Cox as the unforgettable Vilos Cohaagen and Michael Ironsides as the gleefully murderous security chief known simply as Richter. Giovanni Ribisi and Stephen Lang can't hold a candle playing similar roles in Avatar.
- The Protagonist in both movies starts out as a Bad Guy who uses mind-altering Technology to create an Avatar that serves the needs of the Evil Corporation. This Avatar seduces the Natives and betrays them, causing the death of their Leader and pushing the Natives to the brink of extinction. In both movies, the Avatar falls in love with a Native Girl who teaches them the true Meaning Of Things.
- The Bad Guys revel in their Badness, giving monologue after monologue in tribute to greed, and twirling their mustaches, if only metaphorically. Had the setting been appropriate for trains, Cameron would have no doubt had at least one of them tie a Damsel to the tracks.
- In both movies, the Protagonist and his native girlfriend battle the Bloodthirsty Head Of Security in the Penultimate scene. The Protagonist in both movies is exposed to the lethal atmosphere of the alien planet, and in both, he is saved by the intervention of an Extraterrestrial Benefactor, the only essential difference being that in Total Recall it was a long-departed alien super-race, and in Avatar it was the Navi Hottie that he was tapping in his Avatar persona.
Still, for all that this movie hammers you over the head with its "Republicans and Capitalism are evil" ethic, I couldn't help but enjoy myself. Cameron has created a world so profoundly realistic, diverse and beautiful, that you can't help but get caught up in it, especially in 3D. The criticism of CGI (Computer Graphic Imagery) by movie purists is that technology cannot substitute for humanity. This movie proves them wrong, particularly as Cameron has finally produced characters capable of facial expressions.
For 2 and a half hours, I was not only among the ten foot tall blue natives of Pandora, I was one of them. But that is the essential difference between movies and the Democrat Party that James Cameron so desperately wishes me to join. In both, you get to live in a fantasy world, but but unlike the Democrat Party, movies end, with the satisfied patrons leaving the theatre and rejoining the real world.
Warning to Live Actors: your days may be numbered unless you clean up your act. It's only a matter of time before Russell Crowe, Robert Downey, Jr. and Christian Bale are going to be competing with completely lifelike recreations of Steve McQueen and John Wayne. The Virtual McQueen won't require an entourage, special privileges or even a salary. There will be no scheduling conflicts that Producers need to work around; the Virtual McQueen will not hold up production because he was thrown in jail; he will not require stunt doubles, he will never be a drug addict, and he will not die in the middle of filming.
He also won't throw tantrums or beat up the crew.
Final Note: This movie would have benefitted from the inclusion of one Evil Woman character, as Total Recall did with the character played by Sharon Stone. Because movie-goers loooove Evil Women.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
The Great Appeasers
The Media have made much about the fact that Barack Obama scores highly in popularity polls with the rest of the world, and have spared no effort to portray that popularity as a repudiation of George W. Bush and his policies, and a validation of Obama and his. OffHisMeds is amused at the simple-minded notion that personal popularity equates to sound foreign policy, since from the end of WWII through to present day, foreigners of all stripes - and particularly our allies - have demonstrated their ability to dislike America for no better reason than, well, because we're America.
Democrats have capitalized on anti-Americanism by making it a staple of their foreign policy, flogging the electorate with a tired stereotype animated by Guilt. And where there is Guilt, there must be the Guilty.
Enter George W. Bush.
In the current Democrat narrative, George W. Bush represented the Old Order, unapologetic about America's right to exist, and unwilling to admit to being responsible for all of the World's ills. That is not totally true, of course, because even Bush, for all that he got right on foreign policy, tolerated and even promoted some truly anti-American organizations and ideas, among others the United Nations, Global Warming and the State Department.
It did him no good, and Democrats demonized him anyway, just as they had his even more moderate father, and Ronald Reagan before that.
Now, there's a number of reasons that the rest of the world might have occasion, reasonable or not, to dislike us. For one thing, at some point in time over the past 200 years, we have either waged war or supported allies in wars in much of Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Mexico, Canada, Central and South America and Africa.
It's not to say that all of those countries didn't have it coming, and ironically, virtually all of them were started by Democrats, but that's not the reason America is disliked. No, to understand animus towards the USA, OffHisMeds must take you in his Wayback Machine to 1997 and the infamous British Nanny who murdered an American baby in her care. Her name was Louise Woodward, and the accusations against her were that she abused the infant - including slamming his head onto a flat surface - because she was upset with restrictions placed on her social life by the child's parents. She was convicted of Manslaughter, served 279 days of her sentence, then deported back to England.
What is instructive about this was the reaction of the Public back in Great Britain to the story and the verdict. Before, during and after the trial, Louise Brown was and is singularly popular with the British people. Numerous polls show the kind of favorable ratings that Barack Obama and other poll-driven politicians can only dream about, but for the Hate America crowd within the Democrat Party, there's one major problem: during the trial, George W. Bush was not the President; Obama's soul-mate Bill Clinton was.
One could dwell on how demented it is for Brits or anybody else to cheer for people who kill Americans, but you'd go crazy trying to keep track of every country that enables the murder or debasement of Yanks. Citing yet another instance of British ignominy, recall that recently, Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was released by the Brits to Libya where he returned to a hero's welcome. The Brits supposedly released him on "compassionate" grounds this past August, allegedly because he had only 3 months to live. Well, four months later, al-Megrahi is still alive and living it large, his health miraculously intact.
His longevity and the timing of his release calls into question the "compassionate grounds" argument put forth by the Brits. While much has been made of the fact that Great Britain was awarded a huge oil and gas exploration contract with Libya mere days before al-Megrahi's release, this was about more than simple greed. No, what really stinks about this singular act of betrayal by our British cousins is that al-Megrahi was released - in part - specifically because he blew an American airliner out of the air, murdering hundreds in the process.
As proof, OffHisMeds asks you to consider the likelihood of a foreign national being released in Britain if his crime had been, say, drug smuggling, money laundering or - god forbid - acts of terrorism against Great Britain and Her Majesty's subjects. Not surprisingly, there is no precedent for such a humanitarian gesture. In the case of terrorists acts against Britain, dozens of IRA terrorists languished in prison for decades, with ten of them even starving themselves to death in British prisons during the 80's to protest their incarceration. Britain's principled response? Let 'em die. And they did.
Too bad Ireland couldn't dangle the carrot of a thumping big multi-billion dollar oil contract to get their terrorists out of jail. Apparently, the criteria for British humanitarianism begins and ends with the convergence of profits and Jihadists who kill Americans.
Which brings us back to the question of why the much-beloved Barack Obama and his ass-kissing predecessors get so little traction with the world community. After all, Bill Clinton groveled every bit as enthusiastically to World Opinion as Barack Obama, and literally invented the practice of apologizing that Obama now uses with such abandon. And yet on Clinton's watch, terrorists bombed the USS Cole, bombed the Kobar Towers, bombed US embassies, and blew up - for the first time - The World Trade Center. You'll also recall that the Jihadists then spent literally the rest of Clinton's administration on the planning, training and infiltration necessary for the return engagement to the WTC in 2001, most of it on US soil. And of course, let us not forget that America's single greatest foreign policy humiliation occurred when our embassy in Iran was overrun and our diplomats taken hostage during the presidency of the previous "most popular man in the world", Jimmy Carter.
Kind of makes you wonder what all this much-sought-after popularity on the part of these Great Appeasers has gotten us, other than the back of everybody's hand. One recent story has spotlighted the fact that for decades Brazil has allowed dozens of American children to be kidnapped with impunity and held in Brazil; last month Iran arrested 3 American hikers and will try them for espionage; in June, North Korea convicted two Korean-American journalists reporting on human rights abuses of espionage and sentenced them to 12 years hard labor; China continues to hold Chinese-American citizens protesting human rights violations in prison, denying them access to American lawyers or diplomats; France has provided haven to Roman Polanski for decades, even though he drugged, raped and sodomized a 13 year old girl, American, of course.
Polanski raped the girl and then absconded under the watchful eyes of the Carter administration, by the way.
The list goes on, but how to reconcile these insults with Obama's, Clinton's and Carter's great esteem for the good opinion of the rest of the World? After all, Appeasement has never worked and rarely been practiced when Republicans were in power, the most famous result of which was the release of the American embassy hostages in Iran on the day that Ronald Reagan was sworn into office. Other examples abound: Reagan called the Soviet's bluff on nuclear proliferation, and they collapsed into the dustbin of history. Nixon mined the harbors of Haiphong and the North Vietnamese fell over themselves rushing to the negotiating table. George W. Bush called Saddam's bluff, invaded Iraq and established a functioning democracy - not to mention a huge American military presence - smack in the Jihadist's back yard.
So what do we learn from all this? What we learn is that Hating America is the second most popular leisure-time activity in the World, behind Soccer. We learn that the third most popular leisure-time activity in the World is jerking Democrat politicians' chains, leading them to believe that everlasting popularity - and dare we say it, a Nobel Prize - is within their reach with just a few more acts of contrition, a few more transfers of cash from the American Treasury, and the abandonment of just a few more of the principles that define America.
What we also learn, though, is the extent to which American Exceptionalism defines our relationship with the rest of the world. Most Americans really do believe that there is something unique about America, something "better" in the way we conduct our affairs - politically, economically and culturally - than any system that has come before her.
We are, and that pisses the rest of the world off.
THAT is the reason Brits not only defended Louise Brown, the Au Pair Nanny Murderer, but celebrated her; It's the reason Mexican soccer fans spit on visiting American soccer players and cheered when our Miss World competitor fell on her ass in Mexico City; it's the reason ze French actively worked to undermine NATO for fifty years, and it's the reason Spain (and much of Europe as well) has embraced a fad called "Universal Jurisdiction", the practice of prosecuting people of other countries for crimes, even if the acts were not committed on Spanish soil and did not involve Spaniards in any way. In it's current application, the primary purpose of Universal Jurisdiction is to accuse, extradite, incarcerate, try, convict and imprison American leaders for being, well, American, with our friends the Israelis running a close second for being, well, Israelis.
America and Israel by their examples are a threat to most of the rest of the world, and the established order. While we can laugh at the world-class inferiority complex afflicting Spain and most Spaniards - the Basques being an honorable exception - their surreal extra-jurisdictional maneuverings have real-world consequences. Any American involved in water-boarding, for example (with the possible exception of George W. Bush) could not safely travel to Spain or other countries of a similar bent, including, not surprisingly, Great Britain.
Which brings us back to Barack Obama's adulation mongering. Isn't it amazing that so few commentators make the distinction between affection and respect? If it's a given that people will love us as long as they can jerk our strings, it's instructive that America has rarely, if ever, been loved and respected at the same time. And the World most explicitly does not respect Barack Obama, as was illustrated most recently by his humiliation at the hands of the International Olympic Committee. You could see the rejection of his advocacy for the Olympics in Chicago coming a mile away. Rubbing salt in the wound, the IOC actually dumped Chicago in the first round, this despite the personal assurances by Obama that America would treat athletes well and not terrorize visitors. Only a Democrat could legitimize a world-view that could presume that America would do anything less, groveling before the Vengeful Clerks of the IOC, fruitlessly, as it turns out.
This kind of behavior on the part of the IOC is nothing new, which presents Democrats with a conundrum. How to explain the IOC rejection unless they admit that Obama is a clueless amateur in world affairs? How do you explain the provocations in the past year of Great Britain, Iran, Korea, China, Pakistan, Mexico, Russia and most of South America during the presidency of The Enlightened One?
The short answer would be that Obama is a world-class foreign policy screw-up, but that's not it. The simple fact of the matter is that Obama's Appeasement is part of a 4 decade history of pandering to America Haters by the Democrat Party, notwithstanding that he has taken it to a whole 'nother level. And the reason is that the Democrat Party has targeted American Exceptionalism for extinction. Desiring to control the American populace in the manner of Euro Socialists, Democrats must first undermine all the things that make America exceptional, including Capitalism, personal freedoms, and America's belief in such things. Obama is but the logical extension of the policies of Carter and Clinton.
There's a million English Nanny Murderers and crazed Jihadist airplane bombers lurking in our future, not despite the efforts of the Democrat Party, but because of them.
Democrats have capitalized on anti-Americanism by making it a staple of their foreign policy, flogging the electorate with a tired stereotype animated by Guilt. And where there is Guilt, there must be the Guilty.
Enter George W. Bush.
In the current Democrat narrative, George W. Bush represented the Old Order, unapologetic about America's right to exist, and unwilling to admit to being responsible for all of the World's ills. That is not totally true, of course, because even Bush, for all that he got right on foreign policy, tolerated and even promoted some truly anti-American organizations and ideas, among others the United Nations, Global Warming and the State Department.
It did him no good, and Democrats demonized him anyway, just as they had his even more moderate father, and Ronald Reagan before that.
Now, there's a number of reasons that the rest of the world might have occasion, reasonable or not, to dislike us. For one thing, at some point in time over the past 200 years, we have either waged war or supported allies in wars in much of Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Mexico, Canada, Central and South America and Africa.
It's not to say that all of those countries didn't have it coming, and ironically, virtually all of them were started by Democrats, but that's not the reason America is disliked. No, to understand animus towards the USA, OffHisMeds must take you in his Wayback Machine to 1997 and the infamous British Nanny who murdered an American baby in her care. Her name was Louise Woodward, and the accusations against her were that she abused the infant - including slamming his head onto a flat surface - because she was upset with restrictions placed on her social life by the child's parents. She was convicted of Manslaughter, served 279 days of her sentence, then deported back to England.
What is instructive about this was the reaction of the Public back in Great Britain to the story and the verdict. Before, during and after the trial, Louise Brown was and is singularly popular with the British people. Numerous polls show the kind of favorable ratings that Barack Obama and other poll-driven politicians can only dream about, but for the Hate America crowd within the Democrat Party, there's one major problem: during the trial, George W. Bush was not the President; Obama's soul-mate Bill Clinton was.
One could dwell on how demented it is for Brits or anybody else to cheer for people who kill Americans, but you'd go crazy trying to keep track of every country that enables the murder or debasement of Yanks. Citing yet another instance of British ignominy, recall that recently, Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was released by the Brits to Libya where he returned to a hero's welcome. The Brits supposedly released him on "compassionate" grounds this past August, allegedly because he had only 3 months to live. Well, four months later, al-Megrahi is still alive and living it large, his health miraculously intact.
His longevity and the timing of his release calls into question the "compassionate grounds" argument put forth by the Brits. While much has been made of the fact that Great Britain was awarded a huge oil and gas exploration contract with Libya mere days before al-Megrahi's release, this was about more than simple greed. No, what really stinks about this singular act of betrayal by our British cousins is that al-Megrahi was released - in part - specifically because he blew an American airliner out of the air, murdering hundreds in the process.
As proof, OffHisMeds asks you to consider the likelihood of a foreign national being released in Britain if his crime had been, say, drug smuggling, money laundering or - god forbid - acts of terrorism against Great Britain and Her Majesty's subjects. Not surprisingly, there is no precedent for such a humanitarian gesture. In the case of terrorists acts against Britain, dozens of IRA terrorists languished in prison for decades, with ten of them even starving themselves to death in British prisons during the 80's to protest their incarceration. Britain's principled response? Let 'em die. And they did.
Too bad Ireland couldn't dangle the carrot of a thumping big multi-billion dollar oil contract to get their terrorists out of jail. Apparently, the criteria for British humanitarianism begins and ends with the convergence of profits and Jihadists who kill Americans.
Which brings us back to the question of why the much-beloved Barack Obama and his ass-kissing predecessors get so little traction with the world community. After all, Bill Clinton groveled every bit as enthusiastically to World Opinion as Barack Obama, and literally invented the practice of apologizing that Obama now uses with such abandon. And yet on Clinton's watch, terrorists bombed the USS Cole, bombed the Kobar Towers, bombed US embassies, and blew up - for the first time - The World Trade Center. You'll also recall that the Jihadists then spent literally the rest of Clinton's administration on the planning, training and infiltration necessary for the return engagement to the WTC in 2001, most of it on US soil. And of course, let us not forget that America's single greatest foreign policy humiliation occurred when our embassy in Iran was overrun and our diplomats taken hostage during the presidency of the previous "most popular man in the world", Jimmy Carter.
Kind of makes you wonder what all this much-sought-after popularity on the part of these Great Appeasers has gotten us, other than the back of everybody's hand. One recent story has spotlighted the fact that for decades Brazil has allowed dozens of American children to be kidnapped with impunity and held in Brazil; last month Iran arrested 3 American hikers and will try them for espionage; in June, North Korea convicted two Korean-American journalists reporting on human rights abuses of espionage and sentenced them to 12 years hard labor; China continues to hold Chinese-American citizens protesting human rights violations in prison, denying them access to American lawyers or diplomats; France has provided haven to Roman Polanski for decades, even though he drugged, raped and sodomized a 13 year old girl, American, of course.
Polanski raped the girl and then absconded under the watchful eyes of the Carter administration, by the way.
The list goes on, but how to reconcile these insults with Obama's, Clinton's and Carter's great esteem for the good opinion of the rest of the World? After all, Appeasement has never worked and rarely been practiced when Republicans were in power, the most famous result of which was the release of the American embassy hostages in Iran on the day that Ronald Reagan was sworn into office. Other examples abound: Reagan called the Soviet's bluff on nuclear proliferation, and they collapsed into the dustbin of history. Nixon mined the harbors of Haiphong and the North Vietnamese fell over themselves rushing to the negotiating table. George W. Bush called Saddam's bluff, invaded Iraq and established a functioning democracy - not to mention a huge American military presence - smack in the Jihadist's back yard.
So what do we learn from all this? What we learn is that Hating America is the second most popular leisure-time activity in the World, behind Soccer. We learn that the third most popular leisure-time activity in the World is jerking Democrat politicians' chains, leading them to believe that everlasting popularity - and dare we say it, a Nobel Prize - is within their reach with just a few more acts of contrition, a few more transfers of cash from the American Treasury, and the abandonment of just a few more of the principles that define America.
What we also learn, though, is the extent to which American Exceptionalism defines our relationship with the rest of the world. Most Americans really do believe that there is something unique about America, something "better" in the way we conduct our affairs - politically, economically and culturally - than any system that has come before her.
We are, and that pisses the rest of the world off.
THAT is the reason Brits not only defended Louise Brown, the Au Pair Nanny Murderer, but celebrated her; It's the reason Mexican soccer fans spit on visiting American soccer players and cheered when our Miss World competitor fell on her ass in Mexico City; it's the reason ze French actively worked to undermine NATO for fifty years, and it's the reason Spain (and much of Europe as well) has embraced a fad called "Universal Jurisdiction", the practice of prosecuting people of other countries for crimes, even if the acts were not committed on Spanish soil and did not involve Spaniards in any way. In it's current application, the primary purpose of Universal Jurisdiction is to accuse, extradite, incarcerate, try, convict and imprison American leaders for being, well, American, with our friends the Israelis running a close second for being, well, Israelis.
America and Israel by their examples are a threat to most of the rest of the world, and the established order. While we can laugh at the world-class inferiority complex afflicting Spain and most Spaniards - the Basques being an honorable exception - their surreal extra-jurisdictional maneuverings have real-world consequences. Any American involved in water-boarding, for example (with the possible exception of George W. Bush) could not safely travel to Spain or other countries of a similar bent, including, not surprisingly, Great Britain.
Which brings us back to Barack Obama's adulation mongering. Isn't it amazing that so few commentators make the distinction between affection and respect? If it's a given that people will love us as long as they can jerk our strings, it's instructive that America has rarely, if ever, been loved and respected at the same time. And the World most explicitly does not respect Barack Obama, as was illustrated most recently by his humiliation at the hands of the International Olympic Committee. You could see the rejection of his advocacy for the Olympics in Chicago coming a mile away. Rubbing salt in the wound, the IOC actually dumped Chicago in the first round, this despite the personal assurances by Obama that America would treat athletes well and not terrorize visitors. Only a Democrat could legitimize a world-view that could presume that America would do anything less, groveling before the Vengeful Clerks of the IOC, fruitlessly, as it turns out.
This kind of behavior on the part of the IOC is nothing new, which presents Democrats with a conundrum. How to explain the IOC rejection unless they admit that Obama is a clueless amateur in world affairs? How do you explain the provocations in the past year of Great Britain, Iran, Korea, China, Pakistan, Mexico, Russia and most of South America during the presidency of The Enlightened One?
The short answer would be that Obama is a world-class foreign policy screw-up, but that's not it. The simple fact of the matter is that Obama's Appeasement is part of a 4 decade history of pandering to America Haters by the Democrat Party, notwithstanding that he has taken it to a whole 'nother level. And the reason is that the Democrat Party has targeted American Exceptionalism for extinction. Desiring to control the American populace in the manner of Euro Socialists, Democrats must first undermine all the things that make America exceptional, including Capitalism, personal freedoms, and America's belief in such things. Obama is but the logical extension of the policies of Carter and Clinton.
There's a million English Nanny Murderers and crazed Jihadist airplane bombers lurking in our future, not despite the efforts of the Democrat Party, but because of them.
Nigeria Responds
In the wake of the attempted bombing of a Delta airliner over Detroit, Nigerian government officials hastened to distance themselves from the actions of the Bomber, Nigerian native Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. At a hastily arranged press conference in Washington, DC, Ambassador Machmoud Abdulmutallab (no relation to the Suspect) asked "that Americans see this incident for what it is - that of a depraved individual who just happens to be from Nigeria".
Standing next to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, Nigerian Trade Minister Abdul Abdullah Abdulmutallab (no relation to the Suspect) added that he "had every confidence that robust trade relations with the United States would continue, including major Nigerian exports such as Medicare Fraud, the Pigeon Drop, Three Card Monte, Copyright Infringement, Pirated Software, Internet Scams, Multi-level Marketing and Driveway Sealant. Abdulmutallab expressed optimism that "Nigeria could leverage its expertise in these business segments to capture a substantial portion of the growing markets for Identity Theft and Stimulus Packages". He was also "bullish on the latest innovation from Nigeria, providing character witnesses and alibis to refute paternity against and/or corroborate the whereabouts of certain Democrat Senators at the time said paternity was allegedly established".
Secretary Locke spoke briefly, reiterating the benefits of "open and robust trade between our two nations".
Visiting the White House on Monday, Nigerian President-For-Life Anwar al Jihadi Abdulmutallab (no relation to the Suspect), expressed his concern that the "alleged terrorist attack would poison the perception of Americans towards Nigerians. We are just average people", he said, "and we love America and all Americans. We stand ready to cooperate with the American government in any way possible to bring the perpetrators of terrorism to justice, up to and including strongly worded statements condemning these activities".
After the press conference, President Abdulmutallab and his retinue were briefly detained when several reporters, White House travel office executives and President Obama's Personal Liaison To The Council On American-Arab Relations reported that they were missing wallets, watches, jewelry, laptops and in the case of at least one member of the Secret Service, an M-10 automatic machine pistol.
The missing items were all returned and President Abdulmutallab finished his tour of the White House by having tea and Nigerian delicacies with President and Mrs. Obama, including Edikang-Ikong Soup, Ofe Onugbu and Chin Chin. Mrs. Obama attended wearing a Burka until President Abdulmutallab explained that......
Standing next to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, Nigerian Trade Minister Abdul Abdullah Abdulmutallab (no relation to the Suspect) added that he "had every confidence that robust trade relations with the United States would continue, including major Nigerian exports such as Medicare Fraud, the Pigeon Drop, Three Card Monte, Copyright Infringement, Pirated Software, Internet Scams, Multi-level Marketing and Driveway Sealant. Abdulmutallab expressed optimism that "Nigeria could leverage its expertise in these business segments to capture a substantial portion of the growing markets for Identity Theft and Stimulus Packages". He was also "bullish on the latest innovation from Nigeria, providing character witnesses and alibis to refute paternity against and/or corroborate the whereabouts of certain Democrat Senators at the time said paternity was allegedly established".
Secretary Locke spoke briefly, reiterating the benefits of "open and robust trade between our two nations".
Visiting the White House on Monday, Nigerian President-For-Life Anwar al Jihadi Abdulmutallab (no relation to the Suspect), expressed his concern that the "alleged terrorist attack would poison the perception of Americans towards Nigerians. We are just average people", he said, "and we love America and all Americans. We stand ready to cooperate with the American government in any way possible to bring the perpetrators of terrorism to justice, up to and including strongly worded statements condemning these activities".
After the press conference, President Abdulmutallab and his retinue were briefly detained when several reporters, White House travel office executives and President Obama's Personal Liaison To The Council On American-Arab Relations reported that they were missing wallets, watches, jewelry, laptops and in the case of at least one member of the Secret Service, an M-10 automatic machine pistol.
The missing items were all returned and President Abdulmutallab finished his tour of the White House by having tea and Nigerian delicacies with President and Mrs. Obama, including Edikang-Ikong Soup, Ofe Onugbu and Chin Chin. Mrs. Obama attended wearing a Burka until President Abdulmutallab explained that......
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Obama's Agenda Explained
And this was before Health Care passed the Senate.....
http://sendables.jibjab.com/view/54r0FDM2OqUaspWm
http://sendables.jibjab.com/view/54r0FDM2OqUaspWm
Monday, December 14, 2009
Elin Woods vs. Tiger Woods, Day 11
Attorney 1: ".........that the Party Of The First Part, Elin Woods (hereafter referred to as the POTFP), has agreed to the introduction of the "Statement Of Abject Apology" being entered into the record of these proceedings by the Party Of The Second Part, Tiger Woods (hereafter referred to as the POTSP), notwithstanding that inclusion of said statement shall have no bearing on the current division of properties, or the ongoing renegotiation of the division of said properties."
Attorney 2: "The POTSP asserts that all such statements should in fact and law have a bearing on the proceedings since both individually and collectively they constitute a Material Benefit for the POTFP in that all such statements have portrayed the POTFP in a positive light and have at a minimum contained some admission of guilt from the POTSP, either explicit or implied. Further, all such statements have in fact benefited the POTFP not only in presenting her in a positive light but in protecting her from criminal prosecution, these Statements including but not limited to the 'Initial Vague Statement', the 'Clarifying Statement', the 'Initial Rebuttal', the 'Plea For Privacy', the 'Refutation Of Law Enforcement And Other Persons Concerning Motive', the 'Demand For Privacy', and the 'Rebuttal of Certain Claims By Law Enforcement Officials To Material Evidence To Prove Assertions Of Criminality'."
Further, the POTSP is prepared to release additional such Statements that will benefit the POTFP, including the 'Rejection Of Certain Allegations' that the POTFP - after discovering certain text messages to the POTSP from a Person Not His Wife (hereafter referred to as "Mistress") inviting the POTSP to "wear her out" - had on the night in question acted upon her desire to beat both the POTSP and his vehicle with a seven iron, as well as expressed her intent to render the POTSP incapable of physically acting upon such further invitations by inserting the aforementioned seven iron into his rectum until he "tasted leather".
The POTSP will further concede that all such Statements benefitting the POTFP to date are neither comprehensive nor exhaustive, assuming that the POTFP will reciprocate by making such similar public Statements of affection for, solidarity with and affirmation of the Good Character of the POTSP, in return fo which the POTFP will participate in 15% of any and all future Endorsement Contracts that result from such Good Faith efforts by the POTFP, not to include current agreements in force between the POTSP, Nike and Buick."
Attorney 1: "The Proposal in general is acceptable to the POTFP, pending final negotiation of the percentage participation of the POTFP in the aforementioned future Endorsement Contracts as well as some limited participation in any and all existing Endorsement Contracts, with payments to commence upon some Date Certain no less than 60 nor more than 90 days from the date of the aforementioned Text Message.
We further demand that the Senior Arbitrator excise from the record prejudicial comments inserted into the record by the Stenographer comparing the Parties of the First and Second Part to certain Acts of Personal Hygiene and/or the residual of such Acts of Hygiene, as well as her suggestion that the Attorneys in attendance might consume said residual. I recommend we take a recess so as to secure the services of another Stenographer and make the necessary corrections to the record before we resume. Lunch anyone?"
Attorney 2: "The POTSP asserts that all such statements should in fact and law have a bearing on the proceedings since both individually and collectively they constitute a Material Benefit for the POTFP in that all such statements have portrayed the POTFP in a positive light and have at a minimum contained some admission of guilt from the POTSP, either explicit or implied. Further, all such statements have in fact benefited the POTFP not only in presenting her in a positive light but in protecting her from criminal prosecution, these Statements including but not limited to the 'Initial Vague Statement', the 'Clarifying Statement', the 'Initial Rebuttal', the 'Plea For Privacy', the 'Refutation Of Law Enforcement And Other Persons Concerning Motive', the 'Demand For Privacy', and the 'Rebuttal of Certain Claims By Law Enforcement Officials To Material Evidence To Prove Assertions Of Criminality'."
Further, the POTSP is prepared to release additional such Statements that will benefit the POTFP, including the 'Rejection Of Certain Allegations' that the POTFP - after discovering certain text messages to the POTSP from a Person Not His Wife (hereafter referred to as "Mistress") inviting the POTSP to "wear her out" - had on the night in question acted upon her desire to beat both the POTSP and his vehicle with a seven iron, as well as expressed her intent to render the POTSP incapable of physically acting upon such further invitations by inserting the aforementioned seven iron into his rectum until he "tasted leather".
The POTSP will further concede that all such Statements benefitting the POTFP to date are neither comprehensive nor exhaustive, assuming that the POTFP will reciprocate by making such similar public Statements of affection for, solidarity with and affirmation of the Good Character of the POTSP, in return fo which the POTFP will participate in 15% of any and all future Endorsement Contracts that result from such Good Faith efforts by the POTFP, not to include current agreements in force between the POTSP, Nike and Buick."
Attorney 1: "The Proposal in general is acceptable to the POTFP, pending final negotiation of the percentage participation of the POTFP in the aforementioned future Endorsement Contracts as well as some limited participation in any and all existing Endorsement Contracts, with payments to commence upon some Date Certain no less than 60 nor more than 90 days from the date of the aforementioned Text Message.
We further demand that the Senior Arbitrator excise from the record prejudicial comments inserted into the record by the Stenographer comparing the Parties of the First and Second Part to certain Acts of Personal Hygiene and/or the residual of such Acts of Hygiene, as well as her suggestion that the Attorneys in attendance might consume said residual. I recommend we take a recess so as to secure the services of another Stenographer and make the necessary corrections to the record before we resume. Lunch anyone?"
Friday, December 11, 2009
Death By Regulation
"You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war for a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy."
- Winston Churchill
It's disconcerting to hear such appalling words coming out of the mouth of one of the Giants of the 20th Century, isn't it? You're asking yourself, "that's not what Churchill said, right?"
And you would be correct. What he actually said was ".....to wage war against a monstrous tyranny.....", not for it. But in so briefly abusing Churchill's inspirational words, OffHisMeds is making the point that - with the slightest of modifications - laws regulating the Land, Air and Sea can be transformed by a bunch of power hungry clerks with low esteem from resources that normal citizens are allowed to walk upon, cultivate, drink and breathe, into things that are used to destroy society and reduce us all to serfdom.
I am speaking, of course, of the Democrat Party.
In a span of days, the rights of normal citizens to use land, sea and air have come under assault by the Usual Suspects as never before, offering OffHisMeds the opportunity to write a Blog of such pure symmetry. See, Obama and the Democrats have been largely frustrated - despite their absolute congressional majorities and tens of millions of government employees comprised 75% of Democrats - from accomplishing anywhere near the power grab they believe is their birthright.
Their Global Warming initiatives are stalled, Health Care is going nowhere, Cap and Trade is on the ropes; why, even the Stimulus bill has come under attack, and all over such quibbles as the Obama Administration creating 400 non-existent congressional districts to justify giving $787 Billion of your tax dollars to themselves and their cronies. Would somebody please explain the kind of world we live in when a Democrat can't plunder the treasury with impunity, the spotlight safely fixed on more deserving subjects such as Governor Mark Sanford?
OHM has little sympathy for their predicament, mind you. But he does have an almost infinite regard for their adaptability. Unable to achieve their objectives for world domination through the legislative process, Democrats have decided to do it by the simple expedient of declaring that existing law lets them do whatever the hell they want to, transferring policy-making from politicians to Government Lifers.
Sea - Not So Fast With That Duck Pond, Brother
The EPA now wants to regulate all water. I kid you not. As the article attached states: "As confirmed in several recent U.S. Supreme Court cases, federal regulatory authority currently extends only to waters that are navigable or perhaps directly connected to navigable waters. The Senate bill would remove the word "navigable." The significance of the dropped word is that tens of thousands of bodies of water currently managed by the 50 sovereign states would be surrendered to the dictates of bureaucrats at the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/10/leave-our-fish-ponds-alone/
Think it can't happen? Under current EPA regulations, the federal government has for decades abused private property rights by declaring thousands of small pools of standing water on private property to be "wetlands", preventing owners from building or changing their property in any way, and rendering it virtually unsellable. The problem being, of course, that if it is unsellable, it has no worth. And if it has no worth, for all intents and purposes, the Federal Government just stole your property.
Federal, state and municipal governments have also been systematically depriving citizens of the right to use water wells for decades, again, allegedly for the greater good, but that's a crock. Across the country, those same politicians that took away your well and put you on city water - allegedly to protect ground water aquifers - have gleefully allowed utilities and other industries to plunder trillions of gallons of ground water per year. So there you have it: drinking and bathing is harmful to the environment; cooling off a reactor and then dumping the effluent into our rivers is not.
For one final example, the Army Corp of Engineers are the geniuses who straightened the Mississippi and re-engineered the wetlands surrounding New Orleans, resulting in not only contributing to the Hurricane Katrina debacle, but the irreversible erosion of the wetlands which protect the Louisiana coastline.
Air - We're Now Charging You To Breathe
Democrats were getting nowhere linking CO2 emissions and Global Warming, particularly in light of a decade of revelations that the Global Warming lobby had cooked the books on the science, most recently and amusingly when some of their most prominent scientists were outed by their own e-mails on the best ways to game the data and suppress dissenting opinions from other scientists.
What is a motivated bureaucrat to do?
Answer, have the EPA declare CO2 - which all animals exhale with every breath - a pollutant. This would allow the EPA to regulate every aspect of it under existing federal law, thus neatly circumventing the need to propose and pass legislation regarding "global warming". Read all about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/science/earth/18endanger.html
If you're not worried about the ability of a handful of unelected Government Lifers to circumvent the House, the Senate, the 50 Sovereign States, Voters and the very concept of representative government by mere regulatory fiat, then you deserve the Dictatorship that will result. OHM's only beef is that he'll have to live under it too.
OffHisMeds has written extensively about the intent of the climate legislation and Global Warming initiatives of Democrats for some time now: to mandate the payment of Trillions to foreigners, virtually all of them Bad Actors. This was the essence of the Kyoto Protocols, voted down by the Senate 99-0 during the early Clinton years. The Obama Administration will make it a reality if this initiative is allowed to succeed, turning the rhetoric of his serial ass kissing foreign tours into a reality financed by the few remaining dollars in your savings account.
Land - The Brave and The Free Need Not Apply
The Rich and Politically Well Connected, though, are invited to queue up to the back door, checkbook in hand.
In the 2005 Supreme Court decision Kelo vs. the City of New London, homeowners had their homes confiscated and turned over to a private developer to build a strip mall, office building and other for-profit developments. This was yet the latest obscenity in a decades-long effort by Democrats to expand the concepts of "Eminent Domain", "Condemnation", and the "Taking" of private property, all of which historically had been limited to Public purposes such as roads and utilities.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6636747.html
Democrats have usurped the whole concept of "Public Use" as the justification for "Takings" to include "economic development". "Public Use" has become nothing more than a code word for rewarding their political patrons with your private property. What makes it more nefarious is that they have also systematically codified such "Takings" to be done at artificially low prices, again to benefit the greedy developer and themselves.
Now comes the word 4 year's later that much of the property confiscated under "Kelo" will not be developed after all, because it can't be done "profitably", per pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, the beneficiary of the Land Grab. And there you have it: with this single act, Pfizer ripped apart the "Public Use" Straw Man that Democrats had constructed to justify treating ordinary citizens the way Railroad Barons treated Farmers.
Think it's an isolated instance? You would be wrong. This morning comes word of another story involving none other than the highly-regarded Mayor Bill White of Houston. Read 'em both:
http://blogs.chron.com/houstonpolitics/2009/01/remainders_and_rejoinders_on_e_1.html
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/6764301.html
Seems the halo of the saintly White has been tarnished just a tad with the revelation that he condemned land owned by two elderly twins as a favor to one of his largest campaign contributors who needed a nice little park to compliment his development. This one has it all: greedy landlords, gross undervaluation by White's cronies, corrupt politicians - and unfortunately for White - feisty property owners willing to go to the mat with the aforementioned landlords and politicians.
The reason this little story is important is that Bill White is almost universally regarded by his constituents as one of the Good Guys: a populist Mayor above corruption, conscientious with the public purse and devoted to the people. The only problem with this narrative is that, during his six years as Mayor, he's proved to be no different from any of his corrupt predecessors, with the exception of being able to maneuver out of the spotlight.
Bottom line, Democrat politicians, bureaucrats and judicial appointees are systematically depriving you of what is arguably the single thing that distinguishes the United States from the Soviet Union: the right to own property.
The common thread of all three of these assaults on our Freedom is that Private Property Rights and Individual Rights are apparently whatever Democrats say they are, Constitution be damned. And while not all of these Commie-Lite policies were initiated during the Obama Administration, most of them were, and the remainder have been kicked into Hyperdrive by him and his Toadies, confirming once again what OffHisMeds has long maintained: Obama is nothing more than a self-interested thief, and the current face of "a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime".
Which is to say, the Democrat Party.
- Winston Churchill
It's disconcerting to hear such appalling words coming out of the mouth of one of the Giants of the 20th Century, isn't it? You're asking yourself, "that's not what Churchill said, right?"
And you would be correct. What he actually said was ".....to wage war against a monstrous tyranny.....", not for it. But in so briefly abusing Churchill's inspirational words, OffHisMeds is making the point that - with the slightest of modifications - laws regulating the Land, Air and Sea can be transformed by a bunch of power hungry clerks with low esteem from resources that normal citizens are allowed to walk upon, cultivate, drink and breathe, into things that are used to destroy society and reduce us all to serfdom.
I am speaking, of course, of the Democrat Party.
In a span of days, the rights of normal citizens to use land, sea and air have come under assault by the Usual Suspects as never before, offering OffHisMeds the opportunity to write a Blog of such pure symmetry. See, Obama and the Democrats have been largely frustrated - despite their absolute congressional majorities and tens of millions of government employees comprised 75% of Democrats - from accomplishing anywhere near the power grab they believe is their birthright.
Their Global Warming initiatives are stalled, Health Care is going nowhere, Cap and Trade is on the ropes; why, even the Stimulus bill has come under attack, and all over such quibbles as the Obama Administration creating 400 non-existent congressional districts to justify giving $787 Billion of your tax dollars to themselves and their cronies. Would somebody please explain the kind of world we live in when a Democrat can't plunder the treasury with impunity, the spotlight safely fixed on more deserving subjects such as Governor Mark Sanford?
OHM has little sympathy for their predicament, mind you. But he does have an almost infinite regard for their adaptability. Unable to achieve their objectives for world domination through the legislative process, Democrats have decided to do it by the simple expedient of declaring that existing law lets them do whatever the hell they want to, transferring policy-making from politicians to Government Lifers.
Sea - Not So Fast With That Duck Pond, Brother
The EPA now wants to regulate all water. I kid you not. As the article attached states: "As confirmed in several recent U.S. Supreme Court cases, federal regulatory authority currently extends only to waters that are navigable or perhaps directly connected to navigable waters. The Senate bill would remove the word "navigable." The significance of the dropped word is that tens of thousands of bodies of water currently managed by the 50 sovereign states would be surrendered to the dictates of bureaucrats at the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/10/leave-our-fish-ponds-alone/
Think it can't happen? Under current EPA regulations, the federal government has for decades abused private property rights by declaring thousands of small pools of standing water on private property to be "wetlands", preventing owners from building or changing their property in any way, and rendering it virtually unsellable. The problem being, of course, that if it is unsellable, it has no worth. And if it has no worth, for all intents and purposes, the Federal Government just stole your property.
Federal, state and municipal governments have also been systematically depriving citizens of the right to use water wells for decades, again, allegedly for the greater good, but that's a crock. Across the country, those same politicians that took away your well and put you on city water - allegedly to protect ground water aquifers - have gleefully allowed utilities and other industries to plunder trillions of gallons of ground water per year. So there you have it: drinking and bathing is harmful to the environment; cooling off a reactor and then dumping the effluent into our rivers is not.
For one final example, the Army Corp of Engineers are the geniuses who straightened the Mississippi and re-engineered the wetlands surrounding New Orleans, resulting in not only contributing to the Hurricane Katrina debacle, but the irreversible erosion of the wetlands which protect the Louisiana coastline.
Air - We're Now Charging You To Breathe
Democrats were getting nowhere linking CO2 emissions and Global Warming, particularly in light of a decade of revelations that the Global Warming lobby had cooked the books on the science, most recently and amusingly when some of their most prominent scientists were outed by their own e-mails on the best ways to game the data and suppress dissenting opinions from other scientists.
What is a motivated bureaucrat to do?
Answer, have the EPA declare CO2 - which all animals exhale with every breath - a pollutant. This would allow the EPA to regulate every aspect of it under existing federal law, thus neatly circumventing the need to propose and pass legislation regarding "global warming". Read all about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/science/earth/18endanger.html
If you're not worried about the ability of a handful of unelected Government Lifers to circumvent the House, the Senate, the 50 Sovereign States, Voters and the very concept of representative government by mere regulatory fiat, then you deserve the Dictatorship that will result. OHM's only beef is that he'll have to live under it too.
OffHisMeds has written extensively about the intent of the climate legislation and Global Warming initiatives of Democrats for some time now: to mandate the payment of Trillions to foreigners, virtually all of them Bad Actors. This was the essence of the Kyoto Protocols, voted down by the Senate 99-0 during the early Clinton years. The Obama Administration will make it a reality if this initiative is allowed to succeed, turning the rhetoric of his serial ass kissing foreign tours into a reality financed by the few remaining dollars in your savings account.
Land - The Brave and The Free Need Not Apply
The Rich and Politically Well Connected, though, are invited to queue up to the back door, checkbook in hand.
In the 2005 Supreme Court decision Kelo vs. the City of New London, homeowners had their homes confiscated and turned over to a private developer to build a strip mall, office building and other for-profit developments. This was yet the latest obscenity in a decades-long effort by Democrats to expand the concepts of "Eminent Domain", "Condemnation", and the "Taking" of private property, all of which historically had been limited to Public purposes such as roads and utilities.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6636747.html
Democrats have usurped the whole concept of "Public Use" as the justification for "Takings" to include "economic development". "Public Use" has become nothing more than a code word for rewarding their political patrons with your private property. What makes it more nefarious is that they have also systematically codified such "Takings" to be done at artificially low prices, again to benefit the greedy developer and themselves.
Now comes the word 4 year's later that much of the property confiscated under "Kelo" will not be developed after all, because it can't be done "profitably", per pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, the beneficiary of the Land Grab. And there you have it: with this single act, Pfizer ripped apart the "Public Use" Straw Man that Democrats had constructed to justify treating ordinary citizens the way Railroad Barons treated Farmers.
Think it's an isolated instance? You would be wrong. This morning comes word of another story involving none other than the highly-regarded Mayor Bill White of Houston. Read 'em both:
http://blogs.chron.com/houstonpolitics/2009/01/remainders_and_rejoinders_on_e_1.html
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/6764301.html
Seems the halo of the saintly White has been tarnished just a tad with the revelation that he condemned land owned by two elderly twins as a favor to one of his largest campaign contributors who needed a nice little park to compliment his development. This one has it all: greedy landlords, gross undervaluation by White's cronies, corrupt politicians - and unfortunately for White - feisty property owners willing to go to the mat with the aforementioned landlords and politicians.
The reason this little story is important is that Bill White is almost universally regarded by his constituents as one of the Good Guys: a populist Mayor above corruption, conscientious with the public purse and devoted to the people. The only problem with this narrative is that, during his six years as Mayor, he's proved to be no different from any of his corrupt predecessors, with the exception of being able to maneuver out of the spotlight.
Bottom line, Democrat politicians, bureaucrats and judicial appointees are systematically depriving you of what is arguably the single thing that distinguishes the United States from the Soviet Union: the right to own property.
The common thread of all three of these assaults on our Freedom is that Private Property Rights and Individual Rights are apparently whatever Democrats say they are, Constitution be damned. And while not all of these Commie-Lite policies were initiated during the Obama Administration, most of them were, and the remainder have been kicked into Hyperdrive by him and his Toadies, confirming once again what OffHisMeds has long maintained: Obama is nothing more than a self-interested thief, and the current face of "a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime".
Which is to say, the Democrat Party.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Tiger Shanks It
Among many other famous athletes of yore, Muhammad Ali supposedly abstained from sex for weeks before a fight so as to maintain his edge. With the revelation that the number of women claiming to have had an affair with Tiger Woods is now up to an even dozen - and virtually none of them credibly refuted - let us once and for all use Tiger's example to put to rest the myth that sex before a big athletic event will sap your strength, will or mojo.
At least if you're a golfer.
Not unexpectedly, the Media and the Public are having a field day with Tiger Woods' issues with fidelity. All the Usual Suspects are wrapping themselves in knots groveling in every lurid detail while simultaneously attempting to explain away Tiger Woods' apparently low moral character, or to rationalize it with the argument that we should admire him solely on the basis of his exploits on the golf course. That said, OffHisMeds can't help but note that Tiger's very marketable public persona - and the source of much of his income outside of his winnings - was built on the premise that he was a good guy.
More about his Marketing prospects later. Now that it's clear that he is not such a good guy, would I be a killjoy to point out that further evidence of his lack of virtue can be found in that, long before he cheated on his wife, Tiger willingly signed on to an arrangement that ensured his life would be a vast and meaningless - albeit gold-plated - exercise in superficiality, devoid of love and arguably an environment not suitable in which to raise children? I am referring of course to his prenuptial agreement.
Let's set aside for the moment that for the past year or more Tiger had placed portions of his anatomy bound by matrimony in or upon the persons of between three and twelve other women not his wife. And if not simultaneously, at least consecutively and alternately. Juggling so much "Strange" along with his marital duties to the neglected wife, his shenanigans resembled nothing so much as an adult version of Leapfrog, except that the Male Frog (Tiger) didn't so much jump over the Female Frogs as he did Jump onto them, struggling to keep their names straight in the process, a challenge that would task even Tiger's legendary capacity to focus his energies in the face of distraction.
It's ironic to think that those distractions would be as varied as the inevitable and tiresome shriek from the Gallery to "GET IN THE HOLE" when he would make a putt during a tournament, to a similar cry from the Mistress Du Jour when he was putting on her Green, to his wife asking in a voice achieving easily the decibel equivalent of a noisy Gallery: "WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME"? It might make you feel sorry for the Schlub, until you realize that Tiger's in the entertainment business, and had arranged his affairs anticipating this very situation.
Let's also contemplate for a moment the fact that Elin most certainly knew of his infidelity long before the "accident" made it all public. How can you read the words "revelations of his infidelity have forced Woods to renegotiate his Prenup with his wife", and not think less of both of them? They willingly turned their relationship into just another business deal, sucking all the joy out of marriage with two strokes of the pen, and ceasing to become real people in the process. With the Prenup, his serial infidelities and the very calculated steps taken since then, Woods and his wife Elin betrayed themselves as the shallow, superficial "Personalities" that they are, fit for the pages of Newsweek, Sports lllustrated and Playboy, but not fit to be allowed in your living room. "They gone Hollywood", as the saying goes, their carefully crafted public image of wholesomeness notwithstanding.
This whole sordid event marks Tiger as one of the crappier Husbands in the history of, well, Husbandry. Granted, he's nowhere near as bad as Teddy Kennedy or say, Latrell Sprewell, but he's still pretty damn bad. All on his own, Tiger inflicted a seriously stingy Prenup on his wife, knocked her up and then went out and cheated on her with not one, but several Bimbos, all of whom, it seems, starting saving text messages, voice mail messages, photos, videos and semen-stained articles of clothing - not to mention hiring an agent to negotiate a Reality TV deal - the day after he did the nasty with them. Between stonewalling the cops, his hypocritical claims of privacy, his weaselly denials that turned out to be lies and panicky phone calls to at least one girl friend to help him fool his wife, Tiger has done a pretty good job rounding out the picture of a fairly execrable excuse for a man. We're talking Bill Clinton territory here people.
You'll recall that Slick Willy dodged being tagged as a low-down Cheat and dog for years with the help of the celebrity-loving Media and a decade of truly heroic lies until some pundit asked on the Internet "yes, but would you let him babysit your teenage daughter"? Within days that simple question went viral, and with it Bill Clinton's reputation.
Unless he comes clean, Tiger Woods may be similarly infected, and along with him his endorsement contracts.
Time will tell.
At least if you're a golfer.
Not unexpectedly, the Media and the Public are having a field day with Tiger Woods' issues with fidelity. All the Usual Suspects are wrapping themselves in knots groveling in every lurid detail while simultaneously attempting to explain away Tiger Woods' apparently low moral character, or to rationalize it with the argument that we should admire him solely on the basis of his exploits on the golf course. That said, OffHisMeds can't help but note that Tiger's very marketable public persona - and the source of much of his income outside of his winnings - was built on the premise that he was a good guy.
More about his Marketing prospects later. Now that it's clear that he is not such a good guy, would I be a killjoy to point out that further evidence of his lack of virtue can be found in that, long before he cheated on his wife, Tiger willingly signed on to an arrangement that ensured his life would be a vast and meaningless - albeit gold-plated - exercise in superficiality, devoid of love and arguably an environment not suitable in which to raise children? I am referring of course to his prenuptial agreement.
Let's set aside for the moment that for the past year or more Tiger had placed portions of his anatomy bound by matrimony in or upon the persons of between three and twelve other women not his wife. And if not simultaneously, at least consecutively and alternately. Juggling so much "Strange" along with his marital duties to the neglected wife, his shenanigans resembled nothing so much as an adult version of Leapfrog, except that the Male Frog (Tiger) didn't so much jump over the Female Frogs as he did Jump onto them, struggling to keep their names straight in the process, a challenge that would task even Tiger's legendary capacity to focus his energies in the face of distraction.
It's ironic to think that those distractions would be as varied as the inevitable and tiresome shriek from the Gallery to "GET IN THE HOLE" when he would make a putt during a tournament, to a similar cry from the Mistress Du Jour when he was putting on her Green, to his wife asking in a voice achieving easily the decibel equivalent of a noisy Gallery: "WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME"? It might make you feel sorry for the Schlub, until you realize that Tiger's in the entertainment business, and had arranged his affairs anticipating this very situation.
Let's also contemplate for a moment the fact that Elin most certainly knew of his infidelity long before the "accident" made it all public. How can you read the words "revelations of his infidelity have forced Woods to renegotiate his Prenup with his wife", and not think less of both of them? They willingly turned their relationship into just another business deal, sucking all the joy out of marriage with two strokes of the pen, and ceasing to become real people in the process. With the Prenup, his serial infidelities and the very calculated steps taken since then, Woods and his wife Elin betrayed themselves as the shallow, superficial "Personalities" that they are, fit for the pages of Newsweek, Sports lllustrated and Playboy, but not fit to be allowed in your living room. "They gone Hollywood", as the saying goes, their carefully crafted public image of wholesomeness notwithstanding.
This whole sordid event marks Tiger as one of the crappier Husbands in the history of, well, Husbandry. Granted, he's nowhere near as bad as Teddy Kennedy or say, Latrell Sprewell, but he's still pretty damn bad. All on his own, Tiger inflicted a seriously stingy Prenup on his wife, knocked her up and then went out and cheated on her with not one, but several Bimbos, all of whom, it seems, starting saving text messages, voice mail messages, photos, videos and semen-stained articles of clothing - not to mention hiring an agent to negotiate a Reality TV deal - the day after he did the nasty with them. Between stonewalling the cops, his hypocritical claims of privacy, his weaselly denials that turned out to be lies and panicky phone calls to at least one girl friend to help him fool his wife, Tiger has done a pretty good job rounding out the picture of a fairly execrable excuse for a man. We're talking Bill Clinton territory here people.
You'll recall that Slick Willy dodged being tagged as a low-down Cheat and dog for years with the help of the celebrity-loving Media and a decade of truly heroic lies until some pundit asked on the Internet "yes, but would you let him babysit your teenage daughter"? Within days that simple question went viral, and with it Bill Clinton's reputation.
Unless he comes clean, Tiger Woods may be similarly infected, and along with him his endorsement contracts.
Time will tell.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Elin Woods vs. Tiger Woods, Day 4
So far, OffHisMed's only regret about the whole sordid affair involving Tiger Woods, his mistresses and his wife has been its timing.
How much more timely had this all come out, say, a week before Halloween. How many women would be pairing up with their black male friends to imitate Elin and Tiger Woods, complete with seven iron, bandages, splints and body cast? As it is, this event has done more for race relations in America than Obama's election ever did.
But, since Tiger didn't drive into a tree before Halloween, OHM will settle for being a fly on the wall when the new Prenuptial Agreement is negotiated, assuming both the Party Of The First Part (Elin) and the Party Of The Second Part (Tiger) would be in attendance for all or a portion of the proceedings, along with attorneys representing both sides and a stenographer and video camera operator, as is customary in such dealings:
Day Four:
Attorney 1: "..........such schedule as outlined herein will establish the visitation rights between Tiger Woods (hereafter referred to as the Party Of The Second Part) and all third parties with intimate knowledge of the POTSP (hereafter referred to as Mistresses), as well as the frequency and type of electronic communications between them, not to include any and all improvements in said technology not anticipated by this agreement. In return, the POTSP agrees to increase the lump sum payments to Erin Woods (hereafter referred to as the Party Of The First Part) in Years 10, 15 and 25 from the previous sums of $10 million, $15 million and $25 million to the sums of $20 million, $30 million and $50 million dollars".
Attorney 2: "This is agreeable to The Party Of The Second Part with the proviso that terms such as 'filthy whoremonger' and 'rat bastard son of a bitch' which appear in the draft agreement are stricken from the final agreement, along with any and all Swedish expressions, including 'Hora Jaga Scumbag', and if agreement can be reached on certain other provisions as shall be discussed, including sexual privileges."
Attorney 1: "The Party Of The First Part will insist on a moratorium from sex between both Parties for a period of one (1) year beginning January 1st, 2010. Further, during said period it is agreed that The Party Of The First Part shall exercise her right to engage in sexual relations for a period of one (1) year with a quantity of Professional Golfers and Other Celebrities of her choosing, in a number not less than three (3) but not to exceed six (6), from the list of names attached. It is understood that this list is not exhaustive, and may be added to at any time based on the revelation of any further past indiscretions by the POTSP. The POTSP shall have the right to strike no more than one (1) consecutive Candidate from the list for each occurrence. It is further understood that beginning January 1st, 2011, the POTFP is free to engage in sexual relations with persons other than the POTSP once per fiscal quarter until the payment of the Year 25 Lump Sum, to be exercised or not at her sole discretion."
Attorney 2: "The POTSP objects to the inclusion of John Daly, Charlie Sheen and Kanye West to this list."
Attorney 1: "In so doing the POTSP will surrender the right to strike additional candidates until October 1st, 2010."
Attorney 2: "This is acceptable, assuming we are in agreement on the claim of ownership by the POTSP of the POTFP's breasts implants, and the concomitant right to custody of the POTFP's breasts implied therein."
Attorney 1: "The POTFP rejects the contention by the POTSP that her breast implants are property as that term is defined in law or that they are material in the renegotiation of the Prenuptial Agreement solely on the basis of the fact that the POTSP paid for the aforementioned implants. Further, because the implants were gifted before the execution of the original Prenuptial Agreement, they clearly fall outside of the conditions that govern said document."
Attorney 2: "The POTSP disagrees, since by purchasing the aforementioned breast implants, the POTSP improved the POTFP's appearance which contributed materially to the subsequent proposal of marriage and the creation of the Prenuptial Agreement and Other Documents (hereafter collectively referred to as "The Agreement") that govern the contractual obligations of both Parties under said Agreement. The POTSP also asserts a custodial and familial relationship with the POTFP's breasts under Chapter 11, Subsection F, Paragraph 3b of the Agreement titled 'Pets'.
The POTSP will prove that he had accorded the aforementioned breasts the attention and affection characteristic of the relationship between a Person and a Pet, including caressing them, speaking to them in the first person, praising them in a loud voice, and encouraging them to perform tricks in exchange for certain non-monetary rewards.
Furthermore, as the POTSP had also named the aforementioned breasts "Nike" and "Buick" respectively and referred to them as such on numerous occasions not only and exclusively to the POTFP but also in the company and presence of numerous witnesses including but not limited to Family Members, Friends, Agents, Chaffeurs, Doorman, Publicists, Mistresses, Reporters and Galleries, the POTSP had established a personal and custodial relationship with said breasts and asserts his claim to all the rights and privileges inherent therein. A selection of affidavits from the aforementioned Family Members, Friends, etc. attesting to the Personalization of said breasts by the POTSP is attached.
Based on that claim and other material factors, the POTSP will assert a claim of joint custody of and a Special Relationship with the POTFP's breasts, and shall have such reasonable visitation and other rights (including possession) as are accorded under The Agreement. Attached is a copy of the list of acceptable activities already defined in The Agreement beforehand. The POTSP will assert a continuing claim to all of those activites."
Attorney 1: "The POTFP agrees, with the proviso that said activities will under no circumstances lead to overtly sexual activities for the calendar year 2010. Further, the POTFP wishes to amend the Master Agreement to include a prohibition from the POTSP simulating a drum solo on the buttocks of the POTFP to the song 'In a Gada Da Vida' or any other songs of a similar nature, or verbalizing either during foreplay or afterwards a desire to 'wear her out'."
Attorney 2: "The POTSP agrees, with the condition that he will be allowed to continue to express such sentiments via text, e-mail, Twitter and other forms of electronic communication."
Attorney 1: "Agreed. On a related matter, the POTFP rejects any claims to custody of her vagina based on the videotape evidence provided by the POTFP of himself and the POTFP playing 'Good Kitty, Bad Kitty' and 'Mr. Microphone', as said evidence does not establish any familial or custodial relationship............
I've been advised that we need to take a one hour recess so as to allow the Stenographer treatment for symptoms of Carpal Tunnel syndrome and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and to allow the videographer time to purchase more recording disks. Shall we resume at 4:00 p.m.?"
How much more timely had this all come out, say, a week before Halloween. How many women would be pairing up with their black male friends to imitate Elin and Tiger Woods, complete with seven iron, bandages, splints and body cast? As it is, this event has done more for race relations in America than Obama's election ever did.
But, since Tiger didn't drive into a tree before Halloween, OHM will settle for being a fly on the wall when the new Prenuptial Agreement is negotiated, assuming both the Party Of The First Part (Elin) and the Party Of The Second Part (Tiger) would be in attendance for all or a portion of the proceedings, along with attorneys representing both sides and a stenographer and video camera operator, as is customary in such dealings:
Day Four:
Attorney 1: "..........such schedule as outlined herein will establish the visitation rights between Tiger Woods (hereafter referred to as the Party Of The Second Part) and all third parties with intimate knowledge of the POTSP (hereafter referred to as Mistresses), as well as the frequency and type of electronic communications between them, not to include any and all improvements in said technology not anticipated by this agreement. In return, the POTSP agrees to increase the lump sum payments to Erin Woods (hereafter referred to as the Party Of The First Part) in Years 10, 15 and 25 from the previous sums of $10 million, $15 million and $25 million to the sums of $20 million, $30 million and $50 million dollars".
Attorney 2: "This is agreeable to The Party Of The Second Part with the proviso that terms such as 'filthy whoremonger' and 'rat bastard son of a bitch' which appear in the draft agreement are stricken from the final agreement, along with any and all Swedish expressions, including 'Hora Jaga Scumbag', and if agreement can be reached on certain other provisions as shall be discussed, including sexual privileges."
Attorney 1: "The Party Of The First Part will insist on a moratorium from sex between both Parties for a period of one (1) year beginning January 1st, 2010. Further, during said period it is agreed that The Party Of The First Part shall exercise her right to engage in sexual relations for a period of one (1) year with a quantity of Professional Golfers and Other Celebrities of her choosing, in a number not less than three (3) but not to exceed six (6), from the list of names attached. It is understood that this list is not exhaustive, and may be added to at any time based on the revelation of any further past indiscretions by the POTSP. The POTSP shall have the right to strike no more than one (1) consecutive Candidate from the list for each occurrence. It is further understood that beginning January 1st, 2011, the POTFP is free to engage in sexual relations with persons other than the POTSP once per fiscal quarter until the payment of the Year 25 Lump Sum, to be exercised or not at her sole discretion."
Attorney 2: "The POTSP objects to the inclusion of John Daly, Charlie Sheen and Kanye West to this list."
Attorney 1: "In so doing the POTSP will surrender the right to strike additional candidates until October 1st, 2010."
Attorney 2: "This is acceptable, assuming we are in agreement on the claim of ownership by the POTSP of the POTFP's breasts implants, and the concomitant right to custody of the POTFP's breasts implied therein."
Attorney 1: "The POTFP rejects the contention by the POTSP that her breast implants are property as that term is defined in law or that they are material in the renegotiation of the Prenuptial Agreement solely on the basis of the fact that the POTSP paid for the aforementioned implants. Further, because the implants were gifted before the execution of the original Prenuptial Agreement, they clearly fall outside of the conditions that govern said document."
Attorney 2: "The POTSP disagrees, since by purchasing the aforementioned breast implants, the POTSP improved the POTFP's appearance which contributed materially to the subsequent proposal of marriage and the creation of the Prenuptial Agreement and Other Documents (hereafter collectively referred to as "The Agreement") that govern the contractual obligations of both Parties under said Agreement. The POTSP also asserts a custodial and familial relationship with the POTFP's breasts under Chapter 11, Subsection F, Paragraph 3b of the Agreement titled 'Pets'.
The POTSP will prove that he had accorded the aforementioned breasts the attention and affection characteristic of the relationship between a Person and a Pet, including caressing them, speaking to them in the first person, praising them in a loud voice, and encouraging them to perform tricks in exchange for certain non-monetary rewards.
Furthermore, as the POTSP had also named the aforementioned breasts "Nike" and "Buick" respectively and referred to them as such on numerous occasions not only and exclusively to the POTFP but also in the company and presence of numerous witnesses including but not limited to Family Members, Friends, Agents, Chaffeurs, Doorman, Publicists, Mistresses, Reporters and Galleries, the POTSP had established a personal and custodial relationship with said breasts and asserts his claim to all the rights and privileges inherent therein. A selection of affidavits from the aforementioned Family Members, Friends, etc. attesting to the Personalization of said breasts by the POTSP is attached.
Based on that claim and other material factors, the POTSP will assert a claim of joint custody of and a Special Relationship with the POTFP's breasts, and shall have such reasonable visitation and other rights (including possession) as are accorded under The Agreement. Attached is a copy of the list of acceptable activities already defined in The Agreement beforehand. The POTSP will assert a continuing claim to all of those activites."
Attorney 1: "The POTFP agrees, with the proviso that said activities will under no circumstances lead to overtly sexual activities for the calendar year 2010. Further, the POTFP wishes to amend the Master Agreement to include a prohibition from the POTSP simulating a drum solo on the buttocks of the POTFP to the song 'In a Gada Da Vida' or any other songs of a similar nature, or verbalizing either during foreplay or afterwards a desire to 'wear her out'."
Attorney 2: "The POTSP agrees, with the condition that he will be allowed to continue to express such sentiments via text, e-mail, Twitter and other forms of electronic communication."
Attorney 1: "Agreed. On a related matter, the POTFP rejects any claims to custody of her vagina based on the videotape evidence provided by the POTFP of himself and the POTFP playing 'Good Kitty, Bad Kitty' and 'Mr. Microphone', as said evidence does not establish any familial or custodial relationship............
I've been advised that we need to take a one hour recess so as to allow the Stenographer treatment for symptoms of Carpal Tunnel syndrome and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and to allow the videographer time to purchase more recording disks. Shall we resume at 4:00 p.m.?"
Friday, December 4, 2009
LTE: Missing the boat
Chronicle editors put forth a thoughtful analysis but missed the boat on a couple of key points.
Pete Smith, Cypress
http://www.chron.com/default/article/Letters-Who-pays-for-health-care-1721208.php
First, while you deserve kudos for not lapsing into use of the politically correct term “undocumented workers,” any sensible person should take exception to the notion that just because they got here, America must take care of them. That's not only wrong, it's the very thing that has fueled and continues to fuel the orgy of illegal immigration America has experienced for the past thirty years, and retarded political reform in Mexico and various other countries in Central and South America.
Second, the contention that illegal immigrants deserve to be counted in the Census and thus have congressional representation is offensive not only to the rule of law, but common sense. If you provide representation, are you not disenfranchising legitimate citizens? As much as providing free health care, education, welfare and various other subsidies, is this not yet further incentive for continued illegal immigration?
Finally, it is not just the states with low immigrant populations that lose political clout, but states like Texas and California as well. Since illegal immigrants are counted in determining the number of congressional seats allocated to a state, those additional seats do not promote democracy, and they do not benefit the legal citizens and taxpayers of those states, but the minority special interest groups such as La Raza that purport to represent the illegal immigrants. California is the textbook case of how massive illegal immigration coupled with gerrymandered districts ensures maximum political representation for lawbreakers and the continuing disenfranchisement of the citizenry. The result is a state that has devolved to Second World status and is well on the way to Third World status.
If the Chronicle wants to productively address the whole question of illegal immigration, why not start with the root cause: the endemic corruption of Mexico and other countries that deprives people of not only political representation, but health care, education, security and, in many instances, simple subsistence? And if you want to clarify the debate and what is really at stake here, start calling these unfortunate souls what they are: Refugees.
http://www.chron.com/default/article/Letters-Who-pays-for-health-care-1721208.php
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Government Subsidized Monopolies
There was an article in the paper a while back that reminded OffHisMeds once again of the consequences of government-run monopolies and how unfriendly they are to their customers. The article describes how the Houston Texans had reduced the size of their over-priced ($7.75) beer from 24 oz. to 20 oz. Their alleged reasons? To keep fans from getting drunk, and to "avoid having to raise prices".
In these hard times, why is it that it would never occur to them to take a smaller profit, like the Chinese restaurant down the street that recently dropped their prices 12%? That 24 oz. beer cost them less than a dollar, including the collectible cup. Wasn't their 700% markup enough? The Houston Texans were granted a monopoly on professional football in Houston, hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to build their stadium, and the bulk of the profits on concessions and parking.
Just like our Education system, professional sports franchises are immune to the needs of their customers, exist only to serve themselves, deliver an inferior product, and use every lame excuse in the book to explain why they're overcharging us.
This is what happens when the government picks winners and losers, all subsidized by taxpayers. And while it would be easy to blame this all on Big Government Democrats, OHM may have to revisit his thinking on the whole issue in light of recent events. As the Health Care debate devolves to some inevitable compromise, it seems that Republicans are as happy with the status quo.
In these hard times, why is it that it would never occur to them to take a smaller profit, like the Chinese restaurant down the street that recently dropped their prices 12%? That 24 oz. beer cost them less than a dollar, including the collectible cup. Wasn't their 700% markup enough? The Houston Texans were granted a monopoly on professional football in Houston, hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to build their stadium, and the bulk of the profits on concessions and parking.
Just like our Education system, professional sports franchises are immune to the needs of their customers, exist only to serve themselves, deliver an inferior product, and use every lame excuse in the book to explain why they're overcharging us.
This is what happens when the government picks winners and losers, all subsidized by taxpayers. And while it would be easy to blame this all on Big Government Democrats, OHM may have to revisit his thinking on the whole issue in light of recent events. As the Health Care debate devolves to some inevitable compromise, it seems that Republicans are as happy with the status quo.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Obama In Pajama In Cuba
You'll recall that recently, the former President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, attempted to subvert the Honduran constitution that mandated a single term for the presidency by forcing a referendum that would allow presidents to serve more than one term, the proximate cause being that Señor Zelaya's single term was coming to an end. In response, the Honduran legislature ruled against him and the Honduran Supreme Court affirmed the ruling. In response - and in true fascist style - Zelaya called out his supporters to intimidate his opponents, then confiscated the ballots, fired the head of Hondura's military and attempted a bogus referendum himself.
Stop me if this sounds remarkably like any number of tyrants who have declared themselves "president for life", starting with Idi Amin, the cannibal, straight through to the Jefe' du jour in South America, Hugo Chavez. They too made the most blatant of attempts to subvert democracy, likewise using the institutions of Democracy against itself.
Zelaya was not so lucky. After his eleventh-hour power grab, his legislature condemned him, and his Supreme Court ruled against him. Then, his military paid him a visit in the middle of the night, put him on an airplane to Costa Rica in his pajamas, and bid him goodbye.
President Obama's reaction? Of course, he came down on the side of the would-be dictator, as did his ideological soul-mate, Hugo Chavez.
Since the "coup" as Obama put it, the Hondurans have been subject to sundry international pressures, including a cutoff of U.S. aid, UN condemnation, and threats by Obama to restrict trade. Four month's later, though, they're holding up pretty well, and Zelaya has been reduced to cravenly lurking around the border in Nicaragua, holing up in the Costa Rican embassy and holding press conferences with an ever-diminishing group of reporters, his 15 minutes of fame - not to mention his dreams of power - rapidly drawing to a close.
The moral of this story is not clear, except for the fact that Obama's reaction was drearily predictable, so in thrall is he to dictators. As OffHisMeds and others have observed time and again, while President Obama is perfectly content to bestow his favor on the likes of Chavez, Zelaya, Prince Abdullah and Vladimir Putin, he reserves his scorn and criticism for countries that actually sanctify Democracy and observe its norms. Countries like Israel, for example. Or the Czech Republic. Or Honduras.
OffHisMed's consolation in the face of such behavior is that Obama - never one much for introspection - will finally overstep his boundaries in America as Zelaya did in Honduras, occasioning Congress to defy him, the Supreme Court to overrule him, and the American military to escort him from his bed in his pajamas, hustle him to an airstrip and ship him to, say, Cuba, where he, Raul, and the only partially decomposed corpse of the ultimate president-for-life, Fidel Castro, can commiserate until the wee hours, albeit with the consolation of some really good cigars and the compatibility of their world views.
OffHisMed's other happy thought is that - if this were to happen - there would no longer be a U.S. president around to be the enabler of dictators.
At least, that is, until the next election cycle.
Stop me if this sounds remarkably like any number of tyrants who have declared themselves "president for life", starting with Idi Amin, the cannibal, straight through to the Jefe' du jour in South America, Hugo Chavez. They too made the most blatant of attempts to subvert democracy, likewise using the institutions of Democracy against itself.
Zelaya was not so lucky. After his eleventh-hour power grab, his legislature condemned him, and his Supreme Court ruled against him. Then, his military paid him a visit in the middle of the night, put him on an airplane to Costa Rica in his pajamas, and bid him goodbye.
President Obama's reaction? Of course, he came down on the side of the would-be dictator, as did his ideological soul-mate, Hugo Chavez.
Since the "coup" as Obama put it, the Hondurans have been subject to sundry international pressures, including a cutoff of U.S. aid, UN condemnation, and threats by Obama to restrict trade. Four month's later, though, they're holding up pretty well, and Zelaya has been reduced to cravenly lurking around the border in Nicaragua, holing up in the Costa Rican embassy and holding press conferences with an ever-diminishing group of reporters, his 15 minutes of fame - not to mention his dreams of power - rapidly drawing to a close.
The moral of this story is not clear, except for the fact that Obama's reaction was drearily predictable, so in thrall is he to dictators. As OffHisMeds and others have observed time and again, while President Obama is perfectly content to bestow his favor on the likes of Chavez, Zelaya, Prince Abdullah and Vladimir Putin, he reserves his scorn and criticism for countries that actually sanctify Democracy and observe its norms. Countries like Israel, for example. Or the Czech Republic. Or Honduras.
OffHisMed's consolation in the face of such behavior is that Obama - never one much for introspection - will finally overstep his boundaries in America as Zelaya did in Honduras, occasioning Congress to defy him, the Supreme Court to overrule him, and the American military to escort him from his bed in his pajamas, hustle him to an airstrip and ship him to, say, Cuba, where he, Raul, and the only partially decomposed corpse of the ultimate president-for-life, Fidel Castro, can commiserate until the wee hours, albeit with the consolation of some really good cigars and the compatibility of their world views.
OffHisMed's other happy thought is that - if this were to happen - there would no longer be a U.S. president around to be the enabler of dictators.
At least, that is, until the next election cycle.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The NFL And Their Reputation
Hey, it's a lucky thing they kept Rush Limbaugh out of the NFL; otherwise, he might reflect badly on such class acts as Bud Adams, Keith Olbermann or Michael Vick. Here's Bud being Bud, saluting the Buffalo Bills for their valiant play in losing to Tennessee:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTxHuUGG_2c
And here's the frothing-at-the-mouth Keith Olbermann, a fixture on NFL broadcasts. Ironic to think that Rush was banished from a similar broadcasting gig by the NFL ten years ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_8xbV_1McE
Of course, many folks will see nothing wrong with Olbermann's portrayal of Michelle Malkin as a "bag of meat with lipstick", just as they will have no problem with his serial misogynistic rips of Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin over the past few years. All three are Conservative Hotties, and apparently that scares Olbermann into the near impotence that causes his rage. Just go to Youtube and Search Olbermann and the name of any prominent Republican woman who happens to be good looking, and you'll see what I mean. For good measure, Search the number of times he also goes after Carrie Prejean, the Miss California candidate who was villified for declaring her support for heterosexual marriage.
Scary.
Absent any conclusive proof that Olbermann is himself a homosexual, his hatred of Conservative women who disagree with him borders on Stalker status.
He and Bill Maher should form a support group. Maher is - as I have documented in the past - another world class woman hater, content to say on his television show things about the likes of Sarah Palin that he would never say to her face. Which makes him a Pussy.
But, back to the NFL, who knows which side their bread is buttered on, and keeping their monopoly, taxpayer subsidies and $8.00 beer prices intact means doing what their masters in the Federal Government (aka the Democrat Party) tell them to do. If that involves shoving Left Wing Loonies like Olbermann or scumbags like Adams into the faces of the football-viewing public, so be it.
One final note: You'll recall that Bud Adams is the poster child for the Corporate Welfare schemes that Democrats have cooked up over the years, particularly as it relates to Taxpayer funding of stadiums. He has now milked that cow in both Houston and Tennessee. OffHisMeds will also go out on a limb and predict that he's not done. Assuming medical science can keep his sclerotic and vile personage alive another decade, Ol' Bud will abandon Tennessee and milk yet another subsidy out of yet another American City desperate for an NFL franchise.
Leopards can't change their spots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTxHuUGG_2c
And here's the frothing-at-the-mouth Keith Olbermann, a fixture on NFL broadcasts. Ironic to think that Rush was banished from a similar broadcasting gig by the NFL ten years ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_8xbV_1McE
Of course, many folks will see nothing wrong with Olbermann's portrayal of Michelle Malkin as a "bag of meat with lipstick", just as they will have no problem with his serial misogynistic rips of Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin over the past few years. All three are Conservative Hotties, and apparently that scares Olbermann into the near impotence that causes his rage. Just go to Youtube and Search Olbermann and the name of any prominent Republican woman who happens to be good looking, and you'll see what I mean. For good measure, Search the number of times he also goes after Carrie Prejean, the Miss California candidate who was villified for declaring her support for heterosexual marriage.
Scary.
Absent any conclusive proof that Olbermann is himself a homosexual, his hatred of Conservative women who disagree with him borders on Stalker status.
He and Bill Maher should form a support group. Maher is - as I have documented in the past - another world class woman hater, content to say on his television show things about the likes of Sarah Palin that he would never say to her face. Which makes him a Pussy.
But, back to the NFL, who knows which side their bread is buttered on, and keeping their monopoly, taxpayer subsidies and $8.00 beer prices intact means doing what their masters in the Federal Government (aka the Democrat Party) tell them to do. If that involves shoving Left Wing Loonies like Olbermann or scumbags like Adams into the faces of the football-viewing public, so be it.
One final note: You'll recall that Bud Adams is the poster child for the Corporate Welfare schemes that Democrats have cooked up over the years, particularly as it relates to Taxpayer funding of stadiums. He has now milked that cow in both Houston and Tennessee. OffHisMeds will also go out on a limb and predict that he's not done. Assuming medical science can keep his sclerotic and vile personage alive another decade, Ol' Bud will abandon Tennessee and milk yet another subsidy out of yet another American City desperate for an NFL franchise.
Leopards can't change their spots.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Colonoscopies As A Metaphor For Obamacare
A friend recently forwarded a piece written by Dave Barry regarding his first encounter with a colonoscopy that has been widely circulated on the Internet. In it, Dave describes the experience in typical Dave Barry fashion, heavy on intimate details, many of them fantastical, others mundane, but collectively a bit much; and while I was amused, I couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t a better way to educate those who were candidates for a colonoscopy and similar procedures; you know, kind of like a public service. And thus, this Riff was born.
For your edification, here’s a link to Barry’s article: http://www.miamiherald.com/dave_barry/story/427603.html
Some background is in order, since a Colonoscopy is by no means the be-all and end-all of humiliating medical procedures that men must endure. Just as women must surrender their dignity for a gynecological exam when embraced by the stirrups (not to mention the doctor’s artificially chilled fingers), men are subject to a plethora of similar humiliations starting at a very early age. These include a hernia exam administered in Elementary School for any who endeavor to play sports in school and the infamous instruction to “turn your head and cough”, straight through through to the mandatory prostate exams and colonoscopies of men's later years.
Let me start by saying that my qualifications to speak on this subject are greater than Dave's. I had my first colonoscopy when I was 36 at the recommendation of my doctor, who thought I needed this procedure when I went in complaining of chronic heartburn and diarrhea. I know what you're thinking: what could heartburn possibly have to do with the need for a colonoscopy? Nothing, as it turns out, but it was a medical procedure that my doctor could refer to a Specialist, and nothing greases the wheels of Commerce in the medical profession like a referral, as I was to learn repeatedly throughout my life.
I arrived for my appointment and was directed to a change room, where I donned the universal garment of humiliation. You know the one I’m talking about: The drafty, uncomfortable, one-size-fits-all, ties-in-the-back, ass-hanging-out slab of table cloth required for every medical or diagnostic procedure more complicated than a prostate exam. Speaking of prostate exams by the way, I’m convinced that the only reason men are not required to don this garment for said procedure is that it would deprive the Urologist of the opportunity to say “drop your drawers”, as he pulled the plastic glove onto his hand, releasing the bottom with a resounding “SNAP” and sitting down in a chair behind you.
I always wondered if the “SNAP” was absolutely necessary, by the way, or if the good doctor did it because the procedure – at the end of the day – involved one guy sticking his finger up another guy’s butt? And besides, what exactly would your urologist say if you were wearing a hospital gown? “Part the curtains”? Too frivolous, and it just doesn’t leave any room to segue into the Guy Code humor the situation demands. Since most urologists are men, it is not lost on them or their male patients that they are the only people on the face of the planet for whom the command to "drop your drawers" would be honored - the "SNAP" being the flourish that pulls the whole thing together - with the possible exception of folks inclined to explore the recreational possibilities therein, and the alternative lifestyles such choices imply.
But I digress.
Whether you’re subjected to a hernia exam, prostate exam or colonoscopy, all of them have the virtue of reducing even the most powerful and important of us to a figure of abject humiliation. Presidents get fingers and devices stuck up their behinds in exactly the same manner as Joe Six-pack, as do Captains of Industry, Congressional leaders, Talk Show hosts and Hollywood Moguls. Barack Obama, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bill O’Reilly, Dr. Phil or Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, it makes no difference. In our modern health care system, all stand (or stoop) before the man and do exactly as they are told; all of them take the Turbo-laxative the night before; all of them confine their movements to within six feet of the toilet for the next four hours; and in the case of a prostate exam, all of them are handed a tissue by the doctor after the examination and encouraged to remove the micrograms of residual lubricant he so thoughtfully applied to his gloved finger before working your butthole like Mad Max scooping the last bit of the dog food out of the can before giving the near-empty container to his pet dingo. For more on this cultural reference, check out the 1981 Mel Gibson classic "The Road Warrior".
The universality of these procedures is the thing that makes them bearable, whatever your opinion of their efficacy, so the next time you're subjected to one, simply imagine the Celebrity of your choice being subjected to the same thing. My personal Surrogate: The Pope. "This is the laxative required to cleanse your bowel, Holiness; I have taken the liberty of cancelling your appointments for the evening". "Please hike up your gown, Holiness; you will feel some pressure". "Offer up the suffering as penance, Holiness; no, I believe God will forgive a little profanity under these circumstances". "That will be 3,000 Euros, Excellency. What is your preferred method of payment"?
When one compares the various intrusive procedures that bedevil men, it's clear that a colonoscopy is a far bigger deal than a prostate or hernia exam, wherein your doctor divines your state of health by the mere poking and prodding of your privates. They are positively 19th century in their sophistication. Colonoscopies, by comparison, are lent a legitimacy born of technology: all gleaming metal, shiny plastic and complex machinery, tended by serious professionals under conditions of extreme antisepsis, and thus to be greeted with a suspicion reserved for the people who took the time to invent such technology in the first place, considering its purpose.
After donning my gown, I was escorted down a public hallway and past at least a half dozen waiting rooms full of people, wondering – not for the first time – if it was truly necessary for me to have disrobed 400 feet from the examination room. Guided into what appeared to be an operating room, I was directed to lie on an incredibly narrow table by a surly young nurse. You know the kind I'm talking about: not wide enough to comfortably lie on, not quite narrow enough to actually cleave you in two by virtue of your own body weight. I’m referring to the table, of course.
Lying on my back, the surly young nurse approached me with a Rube Goldberg-ish device consisting of an impossible maze of tubing, metal protrusions and superfluous plastic devices. It looked for all the world like a gigantic Swiss Army knife suspended from a hot water bottle, minus the sharp edges. "What's that?” I asked. "This", she said, "is the colonoscope". Even though it was almost twenty years ago and my cynicism as to the motives of the Health Care industry was not near as defined as it is now, I asked her: "in what particular part of hell did they come up with this design?"
The Surly Young Nurse was not amused. “Lie on your side”, she said, and I did. And thus the fun began. After shoving the contraption up my butt, she proceeded to inflate the balloon using a little hand pump similar to a blood pressure cuff. Since this was my first exposure to this procedure, I was uncertain of the necessity of inflating it to the size of a regulation NFL football, but while Surly, the Nurse was also commanding and briskly efficient, so I remained silent.
Once that was done, she fiddled with a few other devices and walked out of the room. Fifteen minutes later she returned, and I asked her when the procedure would begin.
“The doctor is running behind”, she said, “and won’t be here for another twenty minutes”.
“And you expect me to lie on this table like this for another twenty minutes? Please take it out”.
“I can’t do that”.
“But it’s damned uncomfortable”.
“That will put us behind schedule”.
“I don’t care about your schedule”.
“The doctor has very strict orders about this kind of thing”.
“Fine, let him lay on this table with a football up his ass. Take it out. You can put it back in when he gets here”.
Sad to say, this was not my first - or last - exposure to the indifference of Health Care professionals. Like many in Public Service, the Customer is viewed as an Object, not a customer. You serve their ends (pardon the pun), and if their protocols mandate your extreme discomfort for their greater convenience, so be it.
Surly Young Nurse finally relented and took it out, but not before giving the cuff one extra pump before deflating the contraption.
Forty minutes later the doctor and an assistant showed up, along with Surly Young Nurse. The device was reinserted without comment, the doctor’s busy schedule notwithstanding. "Try to relax", the doctor said. “I’ll be inflating your colon to allow the easy passage of the probe, so you’ll feel some pressure”. Thanks for the truth in advertising, doc. I’ll get right to work on the whole relaxation thing.
In the not-too-distant future, they would provide anesthesia for the procedure; in 1991, no such luck. I’ll spare you the rest of the gory details except to say that the procedure had me doing furious cost/benefit analysis as a distraction to the "pressure" I was feeling, and the withdrawal of the probe felt exactly like the withdrawal of several feet of colon. Within minutes, though, the procedure was over and I was soon on my way, worn but not much the worse for wear.
Years later, I again complained about chronic heartburn and diarrhea to my new GP. After asking me a few questions about my diet and lifestyle, he said “I could schedule you for a colonoscopy, or put you on a prescription drug for Acid Reflux disease, but what say you stop eating so much junk food and stop drinking so much sugary soda instead?”, and that was that. I couldn’t help but wonder what motivated this guy, as opposed to his predecessor. On the one hand, a no-nonsense doctor with no patience for the foibles of his patients; on the other hand, a for-profit Sadist who desired nothing so much as the ill-gotten dollar begat at the business end of a device that resembled nothing so much as a Freddy Kruger handshake.
Me, I learned a valuable lesson that day: doctors are invested with not one whit more - and arguably less - virtue than other people. Notwithstanding the tendency of most people to worship them for their ability to heal, I see folks every bit as capable of being money-grubbing humps as anybody else. I see folks generally comfortable with a fatally corrupt system that has made expensive procedures like colonoscopies mandatory, and the percentage of GDP gobbled up by "Health Care" balloon from 6% of GDP in 1970 to 20% of GDP today. I see folks that - with rare exceptions - will subject you to a battery of expensive tests rather than look you in the eye and say "look, fatass, your diet of Twinkies, fast food and frozen pizza will kill you. Start eating some fucking vegetables, get some fiber in your diet and get your ass off the couch". Where others worship at their altar, I see a profession that has done the math and realized that simply treating our lifestyle-inflicted health problems is orders of magnitude easier - and more profitable - than counseling prevention. I see a profession that has collectively shrugged their shoulders and decided that they have no stake in a healthy America, minus the income side of the equation.
Just keep that in mind as the debate over Nationalized Health Care progresses. Absent some unexpected moral awakening, the same doctors who have no problem shoving a large, unwieldy and painful device up your ass for money - regardless of the merits of putting it there - are not about to deny Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi the same opportunity, and for the same reasons.
For your edification, here’s a link to Barry’s article: http://www.miamiherald.com/dave_barry/story/427603.html
Some background is in order, since a Colonoscopy is by no means the be-all and end-all of humiliating medical procedures that men must endure. Just as women must surrender their dignity for a gynecological exam when embraced by the stirrups (not to mention the doctor’s artificially chilled fingers), men are subject to a plethora of similar humiliations starting at a very early age. These include a hernia exam administered in Elementary School for any who endeavor to play sports in school and the infamous instruction to “turn your head and cough”, straight through through to the mandatory prostate exams and colonoscopies of men's later years.
Let me start by saying that my qualifications to speak on this subject are greater than Dave's. I had my first colonoscopy when I was 36 at the recommendation of my doctor, who thought I needed this procedure when I went in complaining of chronic heartburn and diarrhea. I know what you're thinking: what could heartburn possibly have to do with the need for a colonoscopy? Nothing, as it turns out, but it was a medical procedure that my doctor could refer to a Specialist, and nothing greases the wheels of Commerce in the medical profession like a referral, as I was to learn repeatedly throughout my life.
I arrived for my appointment and was directed to a change room, where I donned the universal garment of humiliation. You know the one I’m talking about: The drafty, uncomfortable, one-size-fits-all, ties-in-the-back, ass-hanging-out slab of table cloth required for every medical or diagnostic procedure more complicated than a prostate exam. Speaking of prostate exams by the way, I’m convinced that the only reason men are not required to don this garment for said procedure is that it would deprive the Urologist of the opportunity to say “drop your drawers”, as he pulled the plastic glove onto his hand, releasing the bottom with a resounding “SNAP” and sitting down in a chair behind you.
I always wondered if the “SNAP” was absolutely necessary, by the way, or if the good doctor did it because the procedure – at the end of the day – involved one guy sticking his finger up another guy’s butt? And besides, what exactly would your urologist say if you were wearing a hospital gown? “Part the curtains”? Too frivolous, and it just doesn’t leave any room to segue into the Guy Code humor the situation demands. Since most urologists are men, it is not lost on them or their male patients that they are the only people on the face of the planet for whom the command to "drop your drawers" would be honored - the "SNAP" being the flourish that pulls the whole thing together - with the possible exception of folks inclined to explore the recreational possibilities therein, and the alternative lifestyles such choices imply.
But I digress.
Whether you’re subjected to a hernia exam, prostate exam or colonoscopy, all of them have the virtue of reducing even the most powerful and important of us to a figure of abject humiliation. Presidents get fingers and devices stuck up their behinds in exactly the same manner as Joe Six-pack, as do Captains of Industry, Congressional leaders, Talk Show hosts and Hollywood Moguls. Barack Obama, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bill O’Reilly, Dr. Phil or Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, it makes no difference. In our modern health care system, all stand (or stoop) before the man and do exactly as they are told; all of them take the Turbo-laxative the night before; all of them confine their movements to within six feet of the toilet for the next four hours; and in the case of a prostate exam, all of them are handed a tissue by the doctor after the examination and encouraged to remove the micrograms of residual lubricant he so thoughtfully applied to his gloved finger before working your butthole like Mad Max scooping the last bit of the dog food out of the can before giving the near-empty container to his pet dingo. For more on this cultural reference, check out the 1981 Mel Gibson classic "The Road Warrior".
The universality of these procedures is the thing that makes them bearable, whatever your opinion of their efficacy, so the next time you're subjected to one, simply imagine the Celebrity of your choice being subjected to the same thing. My personal Surrogate: The Pope. "This is the laxative required to cleanse your bowel, Holiness; I have taken the liberty of cancelling your appointments for the evening". "Please hike up your gown, Holiness; you will feel some pressure". "Offer up the suffering as penance, Holiness; no, I believe God will forgive a little profanity under these circumstances". "That will be 3,000 Euros, Excellency. What is your preferred method of payment"?
When one compares the various intrusive procedures that bedevil men, it's clear that a colonoscopy is a far bigger deal than a prostate or hernia exam, wherein your doctor divines your state of health by the mere poking and prodding of your privates. They are positively 19th century in their sophistication. Colonoscopies, by comparison, are lent a legitimacy born of technology: all gleaming metal, shiny plastic and complex machinery, tended by serious professionals under conditions of extreme antisepsis, and thus to be greeted with a suspicion reserved for the people who took the time to invent such technology in the first place, considering its purpose.
After donning my gown, I was escorted down a public hallway and past at least a half dozen waiting rooms full of people, wondering – not for the first time – if it was truly necessary for me to have disrobed 400 feet from the examination room. Guided into what appeared to be an operating room, I was directed to lie on an incredibly narrow table by a surly young nurse. You know the kind I'm talking about: not wide enough to comfortably lie on, not quite narrow enough to actually cleave you in two by virtue of your own body weight. I’m referring to the table, of course.
Lying on my back, the surly young nurse approached me with a Rube Goldberg-ish device consisting of an impossible maze of tubing, metal protrusions and superfluous plastic devices. It looked for all the world like a gigantic Swiss Army knife suspended from a hot water bottle, minus the sharp edges. "What's that?” I asked. "This", she said, "is the colonoscope". Even though it was almost twenty years ago and my cynicism as to the motives of the Health Care industry was not near as defined as it is now, I asked her: "in what particular part of hell did they come up with this design?"
The Surly Young Nurse was not amused. “Lie on your side”, she said, and I did. And thus the fun began. After shoving the contraption up my butt, she proceeded to inflate the balloon using a little hand pump similar to a blood pressure cuff. Since this was my first exposure to this procedure, I was uncertain of the necessity of inflating it to the size of a regulation NFL football, but while Surly, the Nurse was also commanding and briskly efficient, so I remained silent.
Once that was done, she fiddled with a few other devices and walked out of the room. Fifteen minutes later she returned, and I asked her when the procedure would begin.
“The doctor is running behind”, she said, “and won’t be here for another twenty minutes”.
“And you expect me to lie on this table like this for another twenty minutes? Please take it out”.
“I can’t do that”.
“But it’s damned uncomfortable”.
“That will put us behind schedule”.
“I don’t care about your schedule”.
“The doctor has very strict orders about this kind of thing”.
“Fine, let him lay on this table with a football up his ass. Take it out. You can put it back in when he gets here”.
Sad to say, this was not my first - or last - exposure to the indifference of Health Care professionals. Like many in Public Service, the Customer is viewed as an Object, not a customer. You serve their ends (pardon the pun), and if their protocols mandate your extreme discomfort for their greater convenience, so be it.
Surly Young Nurse finally relented and took it out, but not before giving the cuff one extra pump before deflating the contraption.
Forty minutes later the doctor and an assistant showed up, along with Surly Young Nurse. The device was reinserted without comment, the doctor’s busy schedule notwithstanding. "Try to relax", the doctor said. “I’ll be inflating your colon to allow the easy passage of the probe, so you’ll feel some pressure”. Thanks for the truth in advertising, doc. I’ll get right to work on the whole relaxation thing.
In the not-too-distant future, they would provide anesthesia for the procedure; in 1991, no such luck. I’ll spare you the rest of the gory details except to say that the procedure had me doing furious cost/benefit analysis as a distraction to the "pressure" I was feeling, and the withdrawal of the probe felt exactly like the withdrawal of several feet of colon. Within minutes, though, the procedure was over and I was soon on my way, worn but not much the worse for wear.
Years later, I again complained about chronic heartburn and diarrhea to my new GP. After asking me a few questions about my diet and lifestyle, he said “I could schedule you for a colonoscopy, or put you on a prescription drug for Acid Reflux disease, but what say you stop eating so much junk food and stop drinking so much sugary soda instead?”, and that was that. I couldn’t help but wonder what motivated this guy, as opposed to his predecessor. On the one hand, a no-nonsense doctor with no patience for the foibles of his patients; on the other hand, a for-profit Sadist who desired nothing so much as the ill-gotten dollar begat at the business end of a device that resembled nothing so much as a Freddy Kruger handshake.
Me, I learned a valuable lesson that day: doctors are invested with not one whit more - and arguably less - virtue than other people. Notwithstanding the tendency of most people to worship them for their ability to heal, I see folks every bit as capable of being money-grubbing humps as anybody else. I see folks generally comfortable with a fatally corrupt system that has made expensive procedures like colonoscopies mandatory, and the percentage of GDP gobbled up by "Health Care" balloon from 6% of GDP in 1970 to 20% of GDP today. I see folks that - with rare exceptions - will subject you to a battery of expensive tests rather than look you in the eye and say "look, fatass, your diet of Twinkies, fast food and frozen pizza will kill you. Start eating some fucking vegetables, get some fiber in your diet and get your ass off the couch". Where others worship at their altar, I see a profession that has done the math and realized that simply treating our lifestyle-inflicted health problems is orders of magnitude easier - and more profitable - than counseling prevention. I see a profession that has collectively shrugged their shoulders and decided that they have no stake in a healthy America, minus the income side of the equation.
Just keep that in mind as the debate over Nationalized Health Care progresses. Absent some unexpected moral awakening, the same doctors who have no problem shoving a large, unwieldy and painful device up your ass for money - regardless of the merits of putting it there - are not about to deny Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi the same opportunity, and for the same reasons.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
College Education Funding - Fraud On Steroids
If you liked the Stimulus Package and the Omnibus Spending Bill - a $1.2 Trillion dollar giveaway from the Democrat Party to the Democrat Party, you've got to love the College Financing boondoggle that's unfolded over the past 15 years.
On that subject there's been some recent and interesting developments in Higher Education here in my home state of Texas (and no doubt duplicated nationwide) and those developments reinforce the fact that government-guaranteed college loans like the Texas Tomorrow Fund are nothing more than a scam indistinguishable from the Mortgage lending practices promoted by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. In both cases, government guaranteed loans promoted speculation, hyperinflation and eventually disaster.
For some background, the Texas Tomorrow Fund guaranteed parents a college education for their children with the "investment" of a fraction of the actual cost of that education, roughly $12,000 over ten years. The contributions were invested in stocks, bonds, money markets and other investment vehicles. The theory was that the fund would grow with the stock market, and that the cost of a college education in the future would not exceed the "present value" estimates of the Fund's managers.
Right out of the blocks, there were at least three things that stunk to High Heaven about this Plan. In order to be successful:
- Government employees would need to be able to predict inflation in the Education market.
- Government employees would need to produce an investment return that exceeded the inflation of Education costs.
- Government employees would need to be able to predict both the supply and demand for College Education, and how low-cost government-subsidized financing programs would affect both.
Since Government employees at all levels are not known for their ability to balance their own budgets, much less predict markets and long-term investment trends, the Fund's managers were also oblivious of the fact that the very Plan they implemented would distort the market for Higher Education, and blow all of their financial projections out of the water, with Taxpayers left holding the bag.
Here's where the comparison with no-obligation, no-down payment government-backed mortgages comes into play. Because both tuition and mortgages were backed by "the full faith and credit" of taxpayers, the price of both an Education and homes have skyrocketed since the mid-90's. In the case of EZ mortgage credit, that strategy created millions of over-valued homes and an unsustainable glut of inventory which precipitated the crash of the stock market. In the case of the Texas Tomorrow Fund, it caused Texas in-state tuition to almost triple in the past fifteen years against a relatively static supply, making the Texas Tomorrow Texas Fund insolvent well before the Stock Market crash of last year. Ironically, the mortgage-induced stock market crash only made things geometrically worse for TTF.
And in both cases, it is only responsible Taxpayers who got the short end of the stick: the ones who bought a house they could afford, or put aside money themselves for their children's tuition.
On the heels of these State-sponsored disasters, George W. Bush and his successor Barack Obama decided to double down on the fiscal irresponsibility by a) squeezing private lenders out of the college loan business, and b) then setting up sweetheart re-payment schedules on all existing and future loans that virtually assure that they will be paid off to the tune of mere pennies on the dollar. On one of OffHisMed's favorite topics, the new repayment programs being created will allow Government Employees to default on their loans after a mere 10 years, whereas anybody in the Private Sector will have to wait 15 years.
The results of these new initiatives on college loans is that most students in America will qualify for a heavily taxpayer-subsidized college education, with the prospect of a tiny repayment spread out over ten or fifteen years upon completion. Perversely, these initiatives will compete with participation in investment funds like TTF, further exacerbating their decline.
The net of all this will of course result in yet more hyper-inflation in college tuition, since a) the investment in a Fund or the repayment on loans represents a risk-free commitment of only a fraction of the actual cost of an education; b) universities will be relieved of any necessity to control costs by competing for business; and c) demand will far outstrip supply, allowing our universities to further lard themselves with Education specialists of all stripes, each working at least four hours per day, and loafing their way to a 75% pension after twenty year's of a part-time job, causing a back-end deficit that our politicians have not even begun - or care - to contemplate.
So there you have it: State taxpayers are currently on the hook for untold billions in guaranteed tuition because a bunch of social engineers decided they were Wall Street Whizzes; taxpayer subsidized loans to those disinclined to save can be defaulted on by their recipients; and both of these will be indexed or re-legislated in the future to match Inflation in the Education sector, costing taxpayers yet further untold billions in the decades to come.
And there's no end in sight.
It's understandable that Democrats support such Boondoggles, since they are immune to an understanding of even basic market concepts, and inflated government spending of any type perpetuates their political advantage. Thus, the Stimulus Package and the Omnibus Spending Bill are of a piece with giveways in the Education sector.
It's worse when Republicans - supposedly the fiscally responsible party - support the subsidy of unsustainable Education spending just as enthusiastically. They should have protested both just as vigorously as they protested the Stimulus Package.
On that subject there's been some recent and interesting developments in Higher Education here in my home state of Texas (and no doubt duplicated nationwide) and those developments reinforce the fact that government-guaranteed college loans like the Texas Tomorrow Fund are nothing more than a scam indistinguishable from the Mortgage lending practices promoted by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. In both cases, government guaranteed loans promoted speculation, hyperinflation and eventually disaster.
For some background, the Texas Tomorrow Fund guaranteed parents a college education for their children with the "investment" of a fraction of the actual cost of that education, roughly $12,000 over ten years. The contributions were invested in stocks, bonds, money markets and other investment vehicles. The theory was that the fund would grow with the stock market, and that the cost of a college education in the future would not exceed the "present value" estimates of the Fund's managers.
Right out of the blocks, there were at least three things that stunk to High Heaven about this Plan. In order to be successful:
- Government employees would need to be able to predict inflation in the Education market.
- Government employees would need to produce an investment return that exceeded the inflation of Education costs.
- Government employees would need to be able to predict both the supply and demand for College Education, and how low-cost government-subsidized financing programs would affect both.
Since Government employees at all levels are not known for their ability to balance their own budgets, much less predict markets and long-term investment trends, the Fund's managers were also oblivious of the fact that the very Plan they implemented would distort the market for Higher Education, and blow all of their financial projections out of the water, with Taxpayers left holding the bag.
Here's where the comparison with no-obligation, no-down payment government-backed mortgages comes into play. Because both tuition and mortgages were backed by "the full faith and credit" of taxpayers, the price of both an Education and homes have skyrocketed since the mid-90's. In the case of EZ mortgage credit, that strategy created millions of over-valued homes and an unsustainable glut of inventory which precipitated the crash of the stock market. In the case of the Texas Tomorrow Fund, it caused Texas in-state tuition to almost triple in the past fifteen years against a relatively static supply, making the Texas Tomorrow Texas Fund insolvent well before the Stock Market crash of last year. Ironically, the mortgage-induced stock market crash only made things geometrically worse for TTF.
And in both cases, it is only responsible Taxpayers who got the short end of the stick: the ones who bought a house they could afford, or put aside money themselves for their children's tuition.
On the heels of these State-sponsored disasters, George W. Bush and his successor Barack Obama decided to double down on the fiscal irresponsibility by a) squeezing private lenders out of the college loan business, and b) then setting up sweetheart re-payment schedules on all existing and future loans that virtually assure that they will be paid off to the tune of mere pennies on the dollar. On one of OffHisMed's favorite topics, the new repayment programs being created will allow Government Employees to default on their loans after a mere 10 years, whereas anybody in the Private Sector will have to wait 15 years.
The results of these new initiatives on college loans is that most students in America will qualify for a heavily taxpayer-subsidized college education, with the prospect of a tiny repayment spread out over ten or fifteen years upon completion. Perversely, these initiatives will compete with participation in investment funds like TTF, further exacerbating their decline.
The net of all this will of course result in yet more hyper-inflation in college tuition, since a) the investment in a Fund or the repayment on loans represents a risk-free commitment of only a fraction of the actual cost of an education; b) universities will be relieved of any necessity to control costs by competing for business; and c) demand will far outstrip supply, allowing our universities to further lard themselves with Education specialists of all stripes, each working at least four hours per day, and loafing their way to a 75% pension after twenty year's of a part-time job, causing a back-end deficit that our politicians have not even begun - or care - to contemplate.
So there you have it: State taxpayers are currently on the hook for untold billions in guaranteed tuition because a bunch of social engineers decided they were Wall Street Whizzes; taxpayer subsidized loans to those disinclined to save can be defaulted on by their recipients; and both of these will be indexed or re-legislated in the future to match Inflation in the Education sector, costing taxpayers yet further untold billions in the decades to come.
And there's no end in sight.
It's understandable that Democrats support such Boondoggles, since they are immune to an understanding of even basic market concepts, and inflated government spending of any type perpetuates their political advantage. Thus, the Stimulus Package and the Omnibus Spending Bill are of a piece with giveways in the Education sector.
It's worse when Republicans - supposedly the fiscally responsible party - support the subsidy of unsustainable Education spending just as enthusiastically. They should have protested both just as vigorously as they protested the Stimulus Package.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Protest Equals Racism
So, if criticizing President Obama is racist, according to his defenders, not liking the dude must really be racist. I love the double standard, particularly considering the number of times Barack Obama has thrown George W. Bush under the bus in the past two years whilst dodging any accusations of Racism. That aside, let me be the first on my block to admit I don't like Obama, and that I don't like him specifically because he is - as Congressman Joe Wilson described him - a liar. Now, my only objection to old Joe was his timing. His analysis was spot on.
The knee-jerk rebuttal of Obama's apologists is three-fold: 1) that his accusers are misrepresenting his policies; 2) that all politicians lie, and thus, that Obama is held to a double-standard; and 3) they complain that he's been in office a mere eight months and thus, his critics have not "given him a chance".
Taking each argument in turn, Obama's problem is that 1) he is repeatedly "caught on tape" contradicting his own claims as regards his policies; 2) his lies are not garden-variety lies; they are world class lies, unexposed to scrutiny by a complicit Media and unexamined by a large but diminishing percentage of an Electorate still grooving on the Obama election Vibe; and 3) it is the very point that he has peddled so many whoppers in so short a period of time that has given not just Republicans but Moderates the heebie-jeebies.
As to OffHisMed's particular animus, I can sum it up in a few words by observing that I dislike Barack Obama no more - and in most instances less - than most of those who are fixtures in the Democrat Party; people like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Kerry and Al Gore. They are all white, of course, and their history as liars goes much farther back than his; the problem is that, as President, he is in a position to do ever so much more damage.
To cite particular examples of Obama's lies, consider his latest: Per Obama, conservative opponents are ruining the prospects for a "civil debate" on the Health Care issue with their angry protests. And yet, this is the President who tried to ram through Health Care reform before the August recess without an opportunity to even understand it's contents, much less debate them. It's interesting that his reverence for "civil" debate only developed once his uncivil attempt to subvert democracy was shoved back in his face.
For another example, his singular legislative achievement has been to ram through a $1.2 Trillion dollar "stimulus" bill, again without any time allotted to inform the public and debate its merits, but represented by Obama as a responsible use of taxpayer funds, and vital if we were to avoid disaster. Only later did we appreciate that it was a $1.2 Trillion dollar gift to Democrat politicians and special interest groups, and that the money did nothing to slow the Recession, despite Obama's claims that it would hold Unemployment under 8.5%.
For yet another example, there is his enthusiastic embracement, and then jittery rejection of ACORN, an outfit apparently devoted to Election Fraud and counseling Pimps on the best means to acquire government backed mortgages so as to set up houses of prostitution stocked with underage girls. Obama dropped their name repeatedly during the campaign, his ties to ACORN are long and deep, and his Stimulus bill proposed to give ACORN $8 Billion (160 times more than the $50 million they've gotten since 1994), and to make them the lead organization on the new Census. By his words and deeds, it certainly sounds like he and ACORN were thick as thieves. Now, he acts like he never knew 'em.
Shades of Obama denying Reverend Jeremiah Wright and William Ayres. Radical lefties must feel like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, with Barack playing the role of Peter, the only difference being that Obama's denied them a lot more than three times, and there's no reliable evidence that any cock crowed, which would have been handy, was Obama inclined to keep score.
Of course, that's assuming that Obama's strategy is not simply to lie low until the controversy has passed and ACORN enacts some superficial reforms, followed in three month's time by Obama reinstating them as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party, as well as the orgy of funding in his Stimulus Package.
We could do this all day. The bottom line is that no other politician much less president in modern times has generated so many colossal whoppers in such a short period of time, and so far, with impunity.
Whether or not the pattern of lies continues depends greatly on the inclination of the American people - in the face of all those lies - to yet further suspend disbelief, and their willingness to accept that if they criticize him, they must be Racists.
The trend does not favor Obama.
The knee-jerk rebuttal of Obama's apologists is three-fold: 1) that his accusers are misrepresenting his policies; 2) that all politicians lie, and thus, that Obama is held to a double-standard; and 3) they complain that he's been in office a mere eight months and thus, his critics have not "given him a chance".
Taking each argument in turn, Obama's problem is that 1) he is repeatedly "caught on tape" contradicting his own claims as regards his policies; 2) his lies are not garden-variety lies; they are world class lies, unexposed to scrutiny by a complicit Media and unexamined by a large but diminishing percentage of an Electorate still grooving on the Obama election Vibe; and 3) it is the very point that he has peddled so many whoppers in so short a period of time that has given not just Republicans but Moderates the heebie-jeebies.
As to OffHisMed's particular animus, I can sum it up in a few words by observing that I dislike Barack Obama no more - and in most instances less - than most of those who are fixtures in the Democrat Party; people like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Kerry and Al Gore. They are all white, of course, and their history as liars goes much farther back than his; the problem is that, as President, he is in a position to do ever so much more damage.
To cite particular examples of Obama's lies, consider his latest: Per Obama, conservative opponents are ruining the prospects for a "civil debate" on the Health Care issue with their angry protests. And yet, this is the President who tried to ram through Health Care reform before the August recess without an opportunity to even understand it's contents, much less debate them. It's interesting that his reverence for "civil" debate only developed once his uncivil attempt to subvert democracy was shoved back in his face.
For another example, his singular legislative achievement has been to ram through a $1.2 Trillion dollar "stimulus" bill, again without any time allotted to inform the public and debate its merits, but represented by Obama as a responsible use of taxpayer funds, and vital if we were to avoid disaster. Only later did we appreciate that it was a $1.2 Trillion dollar gift to Democrat politicians and special interest groups, and that the money did nothing to slow the Recession, despite Obama's claims that it would hold Unemployment under 8.5%.
For yet another example, there is his enthusiastic embracement, and then jittery rejection of ACORN, an outfit apparently devoted to Election Fraud and counseling Pimps on the best means to acquire government backed mortgages so as to set up houses of prostitution stocked with underage girls. Obama dropped their name repeatedly during the campaign, his ties to ACORN are long and deep, and his Stimulus bill proposed to give ACORN $8 Billion (160 times more than the $50 million they've gotten since 1994), and to make them the lead organization on the new Census. By his words and deeds, it certainly sounds like he and ACORN were thick as thieves. Now, he acts like he never knew 'em.
Shades of Obama denying Reverend Jeremiah Wright and William Ayres. Radical lefties must feel like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, with Barack playing the role of Peter, the only difference being that Obama's denied them a lot more than three times, and there's no reliable evidence that any cock crowed, which would have been handy, was Obama inclined to keep score.
Of course, that's assuming that Obama's strategy is not simply to lie low until the controversy has passed and ACORN enacts some superficial reforms, followed in three month's time by Obama reinstating them as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat Party, as well as the orgy of funding in his Stimulus Package.
We could do this all day. The bottom line is that no other politician much less president in modern times has generated so many colossal whoppers in such a short period of time, and so far, with impunity.
Whether or not the pattern of lies continues depends greatly on the inclination of the American people - in the face of all those lies - to yet further suspend disbelief, and their willingness to accept that if they criticize him, they must be Racists.
The trend does not favor Obama.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Obama Puts Foot In Mouth, Then Speaks
Normally, it's Joe Biden's size ten tasseled loafers President Obama is having to munch on. This time, it was Barack's own exquisitely refined Italian jobs that he inserted so neatly into his own mouth.
Forcing myself to watch what was predictably going to be yet another exercise in Lefty Smashmouth politics, OffHisMeds nonetheless set the DVR to record "America's Got Talent", and settled down to watch President Obama's prime time address to Congress on Health Care. Since I'm a handicapping kind of guy, I predicted that Obama, despite the pre-speech noises about bipartisanship by his lapdogs in the Media, would go all Junkyard Dog on the Republican Party, blame them for all of his failures, and then whine about the lack of bipartisanship. I also predicted that, as has been the case in most of his public appearances, President Obama would run late, messing up my recording of "America's Got Talent".
It's too bad Las Vegas doesn't cover these kinds of bets. I was right on all counts. I would have cleaned up.
Sure enough, he showed up about seven minutes late, and made no effort to hurry along any of the preliminaries so as to allow me (and the rest of America) to stay on our TV viewing schedules. Working the aisle, wandering left and right, addressing various Democrat Swells and finally meandering up to the podium, Obama let wave after wave of tepid applause wash over him, clearly savoring the moment. It was jarring, in a way. Repubs stopped clapping shortly after his entry, and Democrats weren't exactly hailing the arrival of Caesar, if you know what I mean. Still Obama worked it, well beyond a point that even our previous Narcissist-In-Chief Bill Clinton would have done.
Then he spoke.
Despite actually using the word bipartisan several times, Obama's speech was a dreary call to arms to Democrats. He gave Republicans nothing. He threw them under the bus. He blamed them for everything. He groveled to the Left, begging them to stay on board. He lied repeatedly out of his well-groomed albeit moderately tobacco-stained piehole. For a change of pace, I would at various times shut off the sound and just watch him, and noted with interest that he reserved every raised eyebrow and finger wag for the Right side of the aisle. He magnanimously threw a few rhetorical bones to reliable turncoats like John McCain, but in so doing, made McCain and himself both look like fools, no mean trick. McCain returned the favor by giving him the old aviator Thumbs Up, a rictus-like smile frozen upon his face, and looking for all the world like a man desperately in need of a place to hide, up to and including his old cell at the Hanoi Hilton.
This modern version of a Great Communicator was anything but. Not only did his soaring rhetoric completely fail him, but he came across as a Harry Reid-like Partisan Hack, accusatory and paranoid, giving a speech normally reserved for The Daily Kos Faithful. His delivery was nasally; his eyes shifted left and right. Most telling of all, his head would turn beseechingly to the Democrat side of the aisle at the points where applause was expected, as if he half-expected that it would not come.
At one point, after insisting that his Universal Health Care plan would not change anybody's coverage nor cost any more money, Obama made the mistake of saying "now, I realize there are some details to be worked out". This caused a roar of laughter from the Republican side with more than a few Democrats joining in. Obama looked stunned. It was as if he only then realized that he wasn't just talking to a bunch of politicians, 60% of whom are Democrats, and another 39% of whom felt compelled by tradition to show the President some respect (Joe Wilson being the notable albeit feisty exception); he was speaking to the Congressional representatives of the American Electorate, and that Electorate was right there, hovering over their shoulders, watching and judging with a Gimlet Eye.
Bewildered by his inability to goad the pols into greater displays of enthusiasm, much less avoid the scorn of the Republicans, Obama lost it, and right there, he lost America.
Perhaps sensing that that portion of his speech might cause him some problems, Obama later conjured Teddy Kennedy from beyond the grave. That fell flat too. Apparently, somebody forgot to tell President Obama that Kennedy was hardly beloved by the American People when alive, and arguably no more so now that he's dead. But then, they were two peas in a pod. Teddy was the master at demonizing Republicans, and did it productively for many decades. Obama was merely taking a page out the same book, oblivious of the fact that Kennedy - for all his faults - was a master at this kind of thing, and used the tactic sparingly. Obama has beat that drum in seven months as much as Kennedy did since the Reagan era, and it has lost its effect.
As he eulogized Kennedy, I couldn't help but wonder if perhaps Americans were reminded that, if indeed President Obama held Kennedy in such high esteem, why it was that Obama couldn't be bothered to interrupt his vacation so as to attend the Viewing or the Internment at Arlington? The hypocrisy was stunning. Having failed so completely to fabricate a Virtuous Teddy, Obama, in his self-indulgence, was left Channeling only the real deal. The Teddy we all knew. The Bad Teddy; the Gluttonous Teddy; the Hyper-partisan Teddy.
Unlike Obama, that Teddy was a hands-on kind of guy, abusing decade's worth of congressional aides, pages, waitresses, hangers-on, subordinates, co-eds, constituents, passers-by and complete strangers. With the passage of time, this is the Teddy people came to know, and will eventually conflate with other notorious Gluttons of our Age. Was it Teddy who encased Han Solo in Carbonite, or was that another guy who simply looked and acted like him? Even as I write this, nobody is certain. What is certain is that this is the Gestalt that Obama so unwisely decided to tap into, thus inviting comparisons between the Tedster and himself. That isn't entirely fair to Obama. Like Kennedy, Obama is a Global Abuser, desiring to abuse Americans communally and incrementally on the sound theory that - in proper application - nobody will notice. Teddy also got off on abusing people individually, a slave to his craven physical needs, trousers unzipped as he lurched from victim to victim.
It's not clear that such behavior is in any sense Obama's style, although our knowledge of his personal predilictions is limited. What is clear is that despite the ample record (how many congressmen have a rap sheet?) he nonetheless saw fit to portray Teddy as a paragon of virtue so as to pimp out his memory to the benefit of Health Care reform. Karma alone dictates that such an astonishing lie should be rewarded with a comeuppance, and trust me, Obama's is coming.
After Obama's speech there was a pathetic rebuttal from some Republican who was "not only a Surgeon, but a member of Congress as well". Too bad he was not also a customer of the Hair Club For Men, Bally's Fitness and Darque Tan. Apparently, the Republican Party decided that they would counter our handsome, fit and photogenic President with the most chronically unattractive person on the planet. And as he nattered on about trivialities, I could only think that his Day Job must not have worked out. Why the Hell else would one give up the highest paying job in America in order to be a United States Congressman? This guy must really have sucked as a Surgeon.
Afterwards, I watched the recording for America's Got Talent, and sure enough, it cut off just as Piers, Sharon and The Hoff were about to announce the names of the semifinalists. Thanks for Effing Nothing, Barack Obama. I was disappointed, but no worries. They'll replay last night's episode tonight at 7:00 p.m.
And right there it hit me, how short a leash nitwits like Obama and John McCain are on with the American People. As politicians, they sweat bullets every time they pre-empt prime time television, knowing full well that they can only go to that well a tiny handful of times before the American people tune them out. Barack has been to the well. Repeatedly. The One just had his last prime time stab at selling us on Socialized Medicine, and without seeing the poll numbers or listening to any Talking Heads, I know he has failed. I also know that he has burned political capital like an arsonist.
The good news is that this Hump has profoundly misinterpreted the mood of the country, will fail at Health Care reform, and will be a one term president. We'll be suffering a hard three years in the interim, however.
Forcing myself to watch what was predictably going to be yet another exercise in Lefty Smashmouth politics, OffHisMeds nonetheless set the DVR to record "America's Got Talent", and settled down to watch President Obama's prime time address to Congress on Health Care. Since I'm a handicapping kind of guy, I predicted that Obama, despite the pre-speech noises about bipartisanship by his lapdogs in the Media, would go all Junkyard Dog on the Republican Party, blame them for all of his failures, and then whine about the lack of bipartisanship. I also predicted that, as has been the case in most of his public appearances, President Obama would run late, messing up my recording of "America's Got Talent".
It's too bad Las Vegas doesn't cover these kinds of bets. I was right on all counts. I would have cleaned up.
Sure enough, he showed up about seven minutes late, and made no effort to hurry along any of the preliminaries so as to allow me (and the rest of America) to stay on our TV viewing schedules. Working the aisle, wandering left and right, addressing various Democrat Swells and finally meandering up to the podium, Obama let wave after wave of tepid applause wash over him, clearly savoring the moment. It was jarring, in a way. Repubs stopped clapping shortly after his entry, and Democrats weren't exactly hailing the arrival of Caesar, if you know what I mean. Still Obama worked it, well beyond a point that even our previous Narcissist-In-Chief Bill Clinton would have done.
Then he spoke.
Despite actually using the word bipartisan several times, Obama's speech was a dreary call to arms to Democrats. He gave Republicans nothing. He threw them under the bus. He blamed them for everything. He groveled to the Left, begging them to stay on board. He lied repeatedly out of his well-groomed albeit moderately tobacco-stained piehole. For a change of pace, I would at various times shut off the sound and just watch him, and noted with interest that he reserved every raised eyebrow and finger wag for the Right side of the aisle. He magnanimously threw a few rhetorical bones to reliable turncoats like John McCain, but in so doing, made McCain and himself both look like fools, no mean trick. McCain returned the favor by giving him the old aviator Thumbs Up, a rictus-like smile frozen upon his face, and looking for all the world like a man desperately in need of a place to hide, up to and including his old cell at the Hanoi Hilton.
This modern version of a Great Communicator was anything but. Not only did his soaring rhetoric completely fail him, but he came across as a Harry Reid-like Partisan Hack, accusatory and paranoid, giving a speech normally reserved for The Daily Kos Faithful. His delivery was nasally; his eyes shifted left and right. Most telling of all, his head would turn beseechingly to the Democrat side of the aisle at the points where applause was expected, as if he half-expected that it would not come.
At one point, after insisting that his Universal Health Care plan would not change anybody's coverage nor cost any more money, Obama made the mistake of saying "now, I realize there are some details to be worked out". This caused a roar of laughter from the Republican side with more than a few Democrats joining in. Obama looked stunned. It was as if he only then realized that he wasn't just talking to a bunch of politicians, 60% of whom are Democrats, and another 39% of whom felt compelled by tradition to show the President some respect (Joe Wilson being the notable albeit feisty exception); he was speaking to the Congressional representatives of the American Electorate, and that Electorate was right there, hovering over their shoulders, watching and judging with a Gimlet Eye.
Bewildered by his inability to goad the pols into greater displays of enthusiasm, much less avoid the scorn of the Republicans, Obama lost it, and right there, he lost America.
Perhaps sensing that that portion of his speech might cause him some problems, Obama later conjured Teddy Kennedy from beyond the grave. That fell flat too. Apparently, somebody forgot to tell President Obama that Kennedy was hardly beloved by the American People when alive, and arguably no more so now that he's dead. But then, they were two peas in a pod. Teddy was the master at demonizing Republicans, and did it productively for many decades. Obama was merely taking a page out the same book, oblivious of the fact that Kennedy - for all his faults - was a master at this kind of thing, and used the tactic sparingly. Obama has beat that drum in seven months as much as Kennedy did since the Reagan era, and it has lost its effect.
As he eulogized Kennedy, I couldn't help but wonder if perhaps Americans were reminded that, if indeed President Obama held Kennedy in such high esteem, why it was that Obama couldn't be bothered to interrupt his vacation so as to attend the Viewing or the Internment at Arlington? The hypocrisy was stunning. Having failed so completely to fabricate a Virtuous Teddy, Obama, in his self-indulgence, was left Channeling only the real deal. The Teddy we all knew. The Bad Teddy; the Gluttonous Teddy; the Hyper-partisan Teddy.
Unlike Obama, that Teddy was a hands-on kind of guy, abusing decade's worth of congressional aides, pages, waitresses, hangers-on, subordinates, co-eds, constituents, passers-by and complete strangers. With the passage of time, this is the Teddy people came to know, and will eventually conflate with other notorious Gluttons of our Age. Was it Teddy who encased Han Solo in Carbonite, or was that another guy who simply looked and acted like him? Even as I write this, nobody is certain. What is certain is that this is the Gestalt that Obama so unwisely decided to tap into, thus inviting comparisons between the Tedster and himself. That isn't entirely fair to Obama. Like Kennedy, Obama is a Global Abuser, desiring to abuse Americans communally and incrementally on the sound theory that - in proper application - nobody will notice. Teddy also got off on abusing people individually, a slave to his craven physical needs, trousers unzipped as he lurched from victim to victim.
It's not clear that such behavior is in any sense Obama's style, although our knowledge of his personal predilictions is limited. What is clear is that despite the ample record (how many congressmen have a rap sheet?) he nonetheless saw fit to portray Teddy as a paragon of virtue so as to pimp out his memory to the benefit of Health Care reform. Karma alone dictates that such an astonishing lie should be rewarded with a comeuppance, and trust me, Obama's is coming.
After Obama's speech there was a pathetic rebuttal from some Republican who was "not only a Surgeon, but a member of Congress as well". Too bad he was not also a customer of the Hair Club For Men, Bally's Fitness and Darque Tan. Apparently, the Republican Party decided that they would counter our handsome, fit and photogenic President with the most chronically unattractive person on the planet. And as he nattered on about trivialities, I could only think that his Day Job must not have worked out. Why the Hell else would one give up the highest paying job in America in order to be a United States Congressman? This guy must really have sucked as a Surgeon.
Afterwards, I watched the recording for America's Got Talent, and sure enough, it cut off just as Piers, Sharon and The Hoff were about to announce the names of the semifinalists. Thanks for Effing Nothing, Barack Obama. I was disappointed, but no worries. They'll replay last night's episode tonight at 7:00 p.m.
And right there it hit me, how short a leash nitwits like Obama and John McCain are on with the American People. As politicians, they sweat bullets every time they pre-empt prime time television, knowing full well that they can only go to that well a tiny handful of times before the American people tune them out. Barack has been to the well. Repeatedly. The One just had his last prime time stab at selling us on Socialized Medicine, and without seeing the poll numbers or listening to any Talking Heads, I know he has failed. I also know that he has burned political capital like an arsonist.
The good news is that this Hump has profoundly misinterpreted the mood of the country, will fail at Health Care reform, and will be a one term president. We'll be suffering a hard three years in the interim, however.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Does The President Deserve To Speak To Schoolkids?
So, after getting their hands slapped for what appeared to be an attempt to politicize the classroom, Democrats have gone on the offensive, portraying those who protested President Obama's speech to our schoolchildren in exactly the same way that they did the Town Hall protestors over President Obama's socialized Health Care plan: as radical right wingers unhinged from reality. That would resonate if it was true, but it clearly is not.
Consider first the presumption of Obama's apologists about the speech itself. Why does any representative of the Federal government, much less the President, feel they have the right to lecture schoolchildren on anything? What part of "Independent School District" do they not understand? If you're a fan of centralized government (most Democrats), it fits right in with your worldview, but if you're a fan of limited government and wary of the further entrenchment of centralized government (most Republicans), it's downright offensive.
Democrats have made a big deal about the fact the George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan also addressed the nation's schoolchildren, but the comparison is false:
- Did Bush or Reagan have access to Channel One, ubiquitous cable/satellite TV, the Internet and similar technologies that would ensure that their speeches made into every classroom in America? They did not, so it's dishonest of the Democrats to equate the impact of Obama's speech with theirs.
- Did the Bush or Reagan White Houses dictate to and stage-manage the event with the Department of Education, and literally force it on so-called "Independent School Districts"? They did not.
- Who benefits from a presidential address to our schoolchildren? In the present case, it's clearly the Federal education bureaucracy that now controls our Education system, the Democrat Party that supports it, and our current President. As proponents of small federal government, no similar benefit could have accrued to Bush, Reagan, or the Republicans.
- The speech has been portrayed as innocuous, yet that is ridiculous in light of revelations that the Educrats intended to follow up the speech with a hard-core indoctrination of students with a "lesson plan" including questions like "how can you help the President achieve his goals?". What further evidence do we need of the political nature of this speech than the existence of this lesson plan? Regardless of the content, it's the kind of creepy indoctrination practiced by the likes of Hugo Chavez and sundry other tinpot dictators and the Cult of Personality parlor tricks they employ, right up to and including Chavez's "Hello Mr. President" television show.
- Why this speech at this time? And isn't it amazing that there had been no mention of it until the last couple of weeks? This is the umpteenth time the Obama Administration has gone off on a tangent, and these episodes have a suspicious tendency to coincide with attempts to distract attention from the failure of the Stimulus Package, their failure to right the economy, their awful predictions regarding the state of the economy, or their woefully misguided efforts to transform the Health Care system.
- Who is politicizing what? Democrats have repeatedly portrayed Republicans as the ones politicizing issues by their protests, whether it is about Health Care or The Speech, yet the Republican Party is a political basket case, incapable of affecting the outcome with their votes in any way. The only avenue available to them is through Protest, yet Congressional Republicans have been almost universally silent. Only Pundits and the stray Floridian is protesting the Speech. It's strange that Democrats would deny this tiny minority their due, much less use it to suggest a monolithic protest by the Republican Party.
- What moral right does President Obama, of all people, have to make such a speech? Consider the sheer disconnect between this President's words and his deeds, so different from those of his predecessors, including George W. Bush. For one example, he claimed openness in government was his number one priority, yet his first initiative was to ram $1.2 Trillion in extra spending through Congress without so much as an opportunity for Congress to read it. What informed citizen would not be offended by such an affront to Democracy? And should that not affect his credibility when he proposes to address our children?
- Finally, why should we take the Obama Administration at their word that the speech that was released to the public is the one he originally intended to give? The speech he gave was jarringly inconsistent with the Stalinist lesson plan that was to accompany it, yet still came across as a commercial for the Democrat Party. I'm not going out on much of a limb in speculating that the original speech was much more politicized, but we'll never know otherwise. With a compliant Media accepting the ex post facto claims of the Democrats about the intent and content of the speech, you could more productively flog a dead horse to produce the truth.
Which brings us to the handful of Republican stalwarts like Laura Bush and Newt Gingrich who have defended President Obama in this debate. What combination of Stockholm Syndrome (Bush) and Beltway Ennui (Gingrich) could cause them to support such a terrible precedent? I would ask these folks to address the questions above as readily as I would any Democrat. Their answers would be interesting to hear.
Consider first the presumption of Obama's apologists about the speech itself. Why does any representative of the Federal government, much less the President, feel they have the right to lecture schoolchildren on anything? What part of "Independent School District" do they not understand? If you're a fan of centralized government (most Democrats), it fits right in with your worldview, but if you're a fan of limited government and wary of the further entrenchment of centralized government (most Republicans), it's downright offensive.
Democrats have made a big deal about the fact the George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan also addressed the nation's schoolchildren, but the comparison is false:
- Did Bush or Reagan have access to Channel One, ubiquitous cable/satellite TV, the Internet and similar technologies that would ensure that their speeches made into every classroom in America? They did not, so it's dishonest of the Democrats to equate the impact of Obama's speech with theirs.
- Did the Bush or Reagan White Houses dictate to and stage-manage the event with the Department of Education, and literally force it on so-called "Independent School Districts"? They did not.
- Who benefits from a presidential address to our schoolchildren? In the present case, it's clearly the Federal education bureaucracy that now controls our Education system, the Democrat Party that supports it, and our current President. As proponents of small federal government, no similar benefit could have accrued to Bush, Reagan, or the Republicans.
- The speech has been portrayed as innocuous, yet that is ridiculous in light of revelations that the Educrats intended to follow up the speech with a hard-core indoctrination of students with a "lesson plan" including questions like "how can you help the President achieve his goals?". What further evidence do we need of the political nature of this speech than the existence of this lesson plan? Regardless of the content, it's the kind of creepy indoctrination practiced by the likes of Hugo Chavez and sundry other tinpot dictators and the Cult of Personality parlor tricks they employ, right up to and including Chavez's "Hello Mr. President" television show.
- Why this speech at this time? And isn't it amazing that there had been no mention of it until the last couple of weeks? This is the umpteenth time the Obama Administration has gone off on a tangent, and these episodes have a suspicious tendency to coincide with attempts to distract attention from the failure of the Stimulus Package, their failure to right the economy, their awful predictions regarding the state of the economy, or their woefully misguided efforts to transform the Health Care system.
- Who is politicizing what? Democrats have repeatedly portrayed Republicans as the ones politicizing issues by their protests, whether it is about Health Care or The Speech, yet the Republican Party is a political basket case, incapable of affecting the outcome with their votes in any way. The only avenue available to them is through Protest, yet Congressional Republicans have been almost universally silent. Only Pundits and the stray Floridian is protesting the Speech. It's strange that Democrats would deny this tiny minority their due, much less use it to suggest a monolithic protest by the Republican Party.
- What moral right does President Obama, of all people, have to make such a speech? Consider the sheer disconnect between this President's words and his deeds, so different from those of his predecessors, including George W. Bush. For one example, he claimed openness in government was his number one priority, yet his first initiative was to ram $1.2 Trillion in extra spending through Congress without so much as an opportunity for Congress to read it. What informed citizen would not be offended by such an affront to Democracy? And should that not affect his credibility when he proposes to address our children?
- Finally, why should we take the Obama Administration at their word that the speech that was released to the public is the one he originally intended to give? The speech he gave was jarringly inconsistent with the Stalinist lesson plan that was to accompany it, yet still came across as a commercial for the Democrat Party. I'm not going out on much of a limb in speculating that the original speech was much more politicized, but we'll never know otherwise. With a compliant Media accepting the ex post facto claims of the Democrats about the intent and content of the speech, you could more productively flog a dead horse to produce the truth.
Which brings us to the handful of Republican stalwarts like Laura Bush and Newt Gingrich who have defended President Obama in this debate. What combination of Stockholm Syndrome (Bush) and Beltway Ennui (Gingrich) could cause them to support such a terrible precedent? I would ask these folks to address the questions above as readily as I would any Democrat. Their answers would be interesting to hear.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Municipal Surety Bonds - A Study In Corruption
It's not a topic that sounds too sexy, I'll grant you that. But there was an interesting article in the paper last week about the relationship between our politicians and the Surety bonding industry:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/6587327.html
Titled "Metro light rail tactic raises funding concerns", it details the criticism Houston Metro President Frank Wilson endured because he had not obtained performance or payment bonds for the expansion of the Houston light rail system, as if doing so might put taxpayers in peril.
"And why", you ask OffHisMeds, "does this matter to me?"
Because across the country, Surety Bonds cost 1 to 3% of construction costs on virtually every road improvement, mass transit, building, bridge or airport project in the country, that's why. Yearly. In perpetuity. As if Houston Metro's multi-billion dollar spending orgy sending buses and trains all over town without passengers to nowhere wasn't bad enough, we now discover that one significant slice of the multi-generational gouging of taxpayers is a cozy arrangement whereby politicians and Surety providers raid an ever-expanding pool of billions by doing: nothing.
More about that later. On with the story:
In refusing to bond the Rail expansion, Wilson explained that the risk of default was small, the contractors were reputable, and that they had all guaranteed their work with the assets from their own companies. That all sounds reasonable, right? Well, not to his critics, including Mayoral candidate Peter Brown and representatives from the Bond industry, one of whom called Wilson's plans "foolhardy". You might think it a sign of how bad the corruption has gotten that "representatives of the Bond industry" feel they are even entitled to a frigging opinion as they are poised at the trough; OffHisMeds sure does.
That said, it strikes me that it is hardly "foolhardy" to question the status quo, particularly when it is revealed in the article that: "Texas statute requires public agencies to obtain performance bonds on construction contracts larger than $100,000 and payment bonds on contracts larger than $25,000". This is where it gets interesting.
Texas statute sprung from a federal law known as The Miller Act, passed in 1935. Like today, that law also mandated performance and payment bonds on projects of $100,000 or more: but that was back in 1935. If you compare cost-of-living in 1935 with 2009, $100,000 was worth about 20 times what it is today, equivalent to around $2 Million. However, if you estimate inflation based strictly on the comparative cost of public works projects, the inflation factor is at least 100 to one.
One of the peculiarities of comparing inflation rates today and in the first half of the 20th century is that prior to modern times, America could crank out huge projects for next-to-nothing. For some perspective, the Hoover Dam was built in 1935 for $50 million. By comparison, Jerry Jones just took the gift wrapping off a new Cowboy's football stadium that is not a pimple on the butt of the Hoover Dam: for $1.15 Billion.
For another perspective, here in Houston $50 million these days gets you about 3/4's of a mile of MetroRail. You do the math: On the one hand, the Hoover Dam was built in 1935 to provide most of the electricity for the state of Nevada, including all the glittering lights in Las Vegas. It is the engine that drives an entire state's economy, and wildly profitable to boot. On the other hand, Metro can build only 4000 feet of trolley in 2009 that goes from nowhere to nowhere and operates at a permanent deficit, sucking up millions in taxpayer dollars every year. But hey, we're already in agreement that MetroRail is useless, so let's stick with the cash grab by the greedy Money Changers.
Some interesting questions pop up:
1) Why haven't surety bonds been inflation-adjusted since 1935? Had they done so over the past 74 years, there would be only a tiny handful of present-day improvement or construction projects that cost more than $10 million. By not adjusting for inflation, that means that for the vast majority of projects, surety bonds are now the rule rather than the exception. That's a sweet deal if you're in the Surety bond business, not so sweet for the taxpayers who have to pay for them.
2) The Miller Act mandates that the winning Contractor pays for the bonds. Why does Texas law mandate that a municipality (meaning taxpayers) subsidize them? Take Payment Bonds, for example. Why must the city buy a policy to protect itself from liability when a Contractor for the City doesn't pay it's sub-contractors? Why should Taxpayers be on the hook for transactions between two private parties?
3) Considering all that has changed in the past 74 years, are surety bonds even necessary? With improvements in financial reporting laws and the instantaneous nature of communications, computers and the internet, you'd expect to see less of this kind of thing, not one hundred times more. If Metro bureaucrats do their homework and get a serious peek under their contractors' kimonos, it seems like they ought to have a level of "surety" that would obviate the necessity of going out and paying a third party to do the job for them.
The premise seems to be that mandatory surety bonds relieve politicians of their responsibility to do their jobs, award honest contracts, and keep contractors at arm's length. Is it really necessary for taxpayers to take out a policy to ensure that their elected representatives are not incompetent or corrupt? The real scandal here, though, is Point Number One: the "Inflation Creep" that has forced bonding on even the smallest of projects instead of the very large projects that the 1935 law intended. Pretty it up anyway that you want to, but State-mandated surety bonding in this day and age strikes me as nothing more than a legalized protection racket.
And as I mentioned earlier, all the politicians, contractors and surety bond companies have had to do to grow the gravy train by orders of magnitude since 1935 was: nothing. Just let inflation work its magic, and the money torrent grows bigger and bigger. Stop me when this sounds like the "bracket creep" of graduated income tax rates that Democrats inflicted on us in the 20's. Makes you wonder how these people live with themselves.
A superficial take-away from this whole story appears to be that Metro President Frank Wilson - by not bonding this project - has broken with a corrupt tradition and taken a small and tentative step in the direction of the Public Interest. That may be. OffHisMeds will frankly admit that - as a neophyte in Municipal politics - he is not well enough informed to discern any other motive. That said, Wilson presides over the organization that routinely does to taxpayers what Willie Sutton did to bank vaults.
I'll take what I can get, though. And if Wilson continues down the good and righteous path by breaking with the bond merchants, who knows what else might happen? He might start asking his contractors why they're charging $75 million per mile for something that ought to cost less than a third that amount, and once again the Public Interest will be served.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/6587327.html
Titled "Metro light rail tactic raises funding concerns", it details the criticism Houston Metro President Frank Wilson endured because he had not obtained performance or payment bonds for the expansion of the Houston light rail system, as if doing so might put taxpayers in peril.
"And why", you ask OffHisMeds, "does this matter to me?"
Because across the country, Surety Bonds cost 1 to 3% of construction costs on virtually every road improvement, mass transit, building, bridge or airport project in the country, that's why. Yearly. In perpetuity. As if Houston Metro's multi-billion dollar spending orgy sending buses and trains all over town without passengers to nowhere wasn't bad enough, we now discover that one significant slice of the multi-generational gouging of taxpayers is a cozy arrangement whereby politicians and Surety providers raid an ever-expanding pool of billions by doing: nothing.
More about that later. On with the story:
In refusing to bond the Rail expansion, Wilson explained that the risk of default was small, the contractors were reputable, and that they had all guaranteed their work with the assets from their own companies. That all sounds reasonable, right? Well, not to his critics, including Mayoral candidate Peter Brown and representatives from the Bond industry, one of whom called Wilson's plans "foolhardy". You might think it a sign of how bad the corruption has gotten that "representatives of the Bond industry" feel they are even entitled to a frigging opinion as they are poised at the trough; OffHisMeds sure does.
That said, it strikes me that it is hardly "foolhardy" to question the status quo, particularly when it is revealed in the article that: "Texas statute requires public agencies to obtain performance bonds on construction contracts larger than $100,000 and payment bonds on contracts larger than $25,000". This is where it gets interesting.
Texas statute sprung from a federal law known as The Miller Act, passed in 1935. Like today, that law also mandated performance and payment bonds on projects of $100,000 or more: but that was back in 1935. If you compare cost-of-living in 1935 with 2009, $100,000 was worth about 20 times what it is today, equivalent to around $2 Million. However, if you estimate inflation based strictly on the comparative cost of public works projects, the inflation factor is at least 100 to one.
One of the peculiarities of comparing inflation rates today and in the first half of the 20th century is that prior to modern times, America could crank out huge projects for next-to-nothing. For some perspective, the Hoover Dam was built in 1935 for $50 million. By comparison, Jerry Jones just took the gift wrapping off a new Cowboy's football stadium that is not a pimple on the butt of the Hoover Dam: for $1.15 Billion.
For another perspective, here in Houston $50 million these days gets you about 3/4's of a mile of MetroRail. You do the math: On the one hand, the Hoover Dam was built in 1935 to provide most of the electricity for the state of Nevada, including all the glittering lights in Las Vegas. It is the engine that drives an entire state's economy, and wildly profitable to boot. On the other hand, Metro can build only 4000 feet of trolley in 2009 that goes from nowhere to nowhere and operates at a permanent deficit, sucking up millions in taxpayer dollars every year. But hey, we're already in agreement that MetroRail is useless, so let's stick with the cash grab by the greedy Money Changers.
Some interesting questions pop up:
1) Why haven't surety bonds been inflation-adjusted since 1935? Had they done so over the past 74 years, there would be only a tiny handful of present-day improvement or construction projects that cost more than $10 million. By not adjusting for inflation, that means that for the vast majority of projects, surety bonds are now the rule rather than the exception. That's a sweet deal if you're in the Surety bond business, not so sweet for the taxpayers who have to pay for them.
2) The Miller Act mandates that the winning Contractor pays for the bonds. Why does Texas law mandate that a municipality (meaning taxpayers) subsidize them? Take Payment Bonds, for example. Why must the city buy a policy to protect itself from liability when a Contractor for the City doesn't pay it's sub-contractors? Why should Taxpayers be on the hook for transactions between two private parties?
3) Considering all that has changed in the past 74 years, are surety bonds even necessary? With improvements in financial reporting laws and the instantaneous nature of communications, computers and the internet, you'd expect to see less of this kind of thing, not one hundred times more. If Metro bureaucrats do their homework and get a serious peek under their contractors' kimonos, it seems like they ought to have a level of "surety" that would obviate the necessity of going out and paying a third party to do the job for them.
The premise seems to be that mandatory surety bonds relieve politicians of their responsibility to do their jobs, award honest contracts, and keep contractors at arm's length. Is it really necessary for taxpayers to take out a policy to ensure that their elected representatives are not incompetent or corrupt? The real scandal here, though, is Point Number One: the "Inflation Creep" that has forced bonding on even the smallest of projects instead of the very large projects that the 1935 law intended. Pretty it up anyway that you want to, but State-mandated surety bonding in this day and age strikes me as nothing more than a legalized protection racket.
And as I mentioned earlier, all the politicians, contractors and surety bond companies have had to do to grow the gravy train by orders of magnitude since 1935 was: nothing. Just let inflation work its magic, and the money torrent grows bigger and bigger. Stop me when this sounds like the "bracket creep" of graduated income tax rates that Democrats inflicted on us in the 20's. Makes you wonder how these people live with themselves.
A superficial take-away from this whole story appears to be that Metro President Frank Wilson - by not bonding this project - has broken with a corrupt tradition and taken a small and tentative step in the direction of the Public Interest. That may be. OffHisMeds will frankly admit that - as a neophyte in Municipal politics - he is not well enough informed to discern any other motive. That said, Wilson presides over the organization that routinely does to taxpayers what Willie Sutton did to bank vaults.
I'll take what I can get, though. And if Wilson continues down the good and righteous path by breaking with the bond merchants, who knows what else might happen? He might start asking his contractors why they're charging $75 million per mile for something that ought to cost less than a third that amount, and once again the Public Interest will be served.
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