Response to friendly taunting

A little over a week ago I noticed that The Modern Pharisee had resumed blogging. In his post The Lesser of Three Evils, he essentially laid out the case that Ron Paul supporters owed it to themselves and their country to choke back their bile and disgust and vote for "the best conservative candidate on the ballot" this Fall, citing the experience of King David.

In The Pharisee's view, David chose "the lesser of three evils" when given a choice.

While I was reading the post, a paraphrase of Carly Simon's 1970s hit song You're So Vain kept running through my head. "You're so vain. You probably think this post is about you, don't you, don't you, don't you?"

Well, uh, yeah. I did think that post was about me. Hugh and I have had that particular discussion before. But whether or not it was vanity became irrelevant when I received this Google message from Hugh.

Hugh: I'm back to blogging, and this is for you (and a few others)

http://hughmcbryde.blogspot.com/2012/04/lesser-of-three-evils.html.

That got a smile out of me. Okay, taunt accepted. Now it's my turn.

I like your analogy. But it's a bit flawed (sorry, Hugh). David was forced to choose between three horrible punishments, while we may choose between three options that, while not pleasant, are certainly NOT horrible punishments. David's three choices were (a) seven years of famine, (b) fleeing his enemies for three months, or (c) three days of pestilence. Our three choices are (a) vote for the incumbent Corporatist thug, Il Duce, (b) vote for the winner of the Republican primaries Corporatist dilettante hand-chosen by the Team Elephant elites, or (c) stay home and flip 'em both the bird. In our case, choice (c) is not only no punishment, but satisfying, in a juvenile sort of way.

Hugh's analogy further breaks down. David did NOT choose the punishment that befell his people. He chose one of the three options that he absolutely did not want to occur. He left the final decision up to the Lord.

I am in a great strait: let us fall now into the hand of the LORD; for his mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man.

One way or another, in our situation, we have to choose (a), (b), or (c).

We know that choice (a) is out of the question. Il Duce incorporates all of the worst traits of horrendous presidents of the past, including thug Woodrow Wilson, messianic Franklin Roosevelt, "Great Society" Lyndon Johnson, and bumbling Jimmy Carter. But is choice (b) really that much better? Sure, Il Dilettante has great, presidential hair. But he's flip-flopped on every major issue over the past 20 years. If he's a conservative, then I'm Conrad Hilton. The elites moved heaven and earth -- including turning Fox News into the official Romney for President communications organ -- to push Romney through. Why so much effort? It's because...wait for it...NOBODY (and I mean NOBODY) wants him. Okay, Ann Coulter wants him. She can have him.

Choice (c) looks better and better to me all the time. I've already stated that this country is too far gone for any single individual operating as President to fix it.

Four years ago I reacted angrily when The Hausfraurer said that he would no longer vote, because, by voting, he was lending legitimacy to this phony, Corporatist system. Four years later, I completely agree with him.

The game is rigged. There isn't a dime's bit of difference between the "two" candidates. They both love big government; they only disagree when it comes to how big and who pays.

Sign me up for choice (c).

Attention sychophants! Here are your instructions.

We are fast approaching the 100 days milestone of the presidency of His Royal Highness, King Barack Obey-me, Lord and Savior of Big Media (the BM for short). The administration is gearing up for the "event".

April 29 will be the 100th day of Barack Obama’s presidency.

The “100 days” concept has had mythical status since the days of the New Deal, when Franklin D. Roosevelt made history with a blizzard of bold federal actions. And reporters have been addicted to stories around this milestone in every administration since.

White House senior adviser David Axelrod calls the 100th day a “Hallmark holiday,” an essentially artificial event with no genuine significance. But he and his colleagues also know the reality: The early-verdict stories are going to be written, creating both a challenge and opportunity for the new president.

So senior White House aides are playing the game with relish, doling out made-to-order anecdotes and what-it-means analytical insights to help reporters write their 100 days pieces. You can already see the results in a spate of stories that — thanks to competitive pressures — editors are deciding to publish before the actual 100th day.

[...]

Here are seven things the White House wants reporters to write:

Wha-wha-WHAT?!?!?! Here are seven things the White House wants reporters to write?!?!? Did I read that correctly?

I mean, c'mon! I know the BM worships the carbon dioxide this guy exhales, but to actually put forward talking points to the media telling them what to write?!?!? Now THAT's some chutzpah! A real media, neutral and suspicious of those in power, would be SCREAMING about an administration that TELLS them what to write. So why do I hear nothing but the sounds of crickets chirping?

I know you're curious about the 7 things His Royal Holiness wants the media to say about him. They are:

• Obama is a promise-keeper.
• Obama is a game-changer.
• Obama is the decider.
• Obama’s not in the bubble.
• Obama is not FDR.
• Obama is FDR.
• Obama is one cool cucumber.
  

Read the Politico story I provided a link to above to see what each of those bullet points is meant to portray. There actually isn't a contradiction between the 4th and 5th items, believe it or not.

Truthfully, Obey-me needn't have bothered with the talking points. The BM does a plenty good job of serving as the administration's cheerleaders on their own.

Vulture Droppings - Amateur Hour

Vulture Droppings is a semi-regular feature of this blog. It's a kind of "Random Thoughts" post in which I try to quickly summarize a particularly large event or series of events. Think of it being sort of like what a vulture leaves behind after devouring a horse. You don't get the whole horse, just highly processed leftovers.

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You may have noticed that Vulture Droppings has been more "semi" than "regular" lately. Mainly that's because there has been a dearth of the kind of seminal events that occasioned the creation of the feature in the first place -- things like political conventions, the 2008 election campaigns, etc. Hopefully, I'll be able to go to the 'droppings' well a little more often in the future. It is one of my favorite features.

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President Obama - "King Obama, the Media's Anointed One" is too large a moniker for regular use - has now been president for one month. It's been a scream. I speculated in the days after the election as to what kind of president Obama would be. I broke it down into four archetypes, each personified by a past president: Carter, Clinton, FDR, and Woodrow Wilson. Silly me! I left out Gerald Ford! If Mr. Obama's first month on the job is any indication, his destiny seems more Ford than any of the other four.

The ruthlessness I saw during the election cycle (Wilson) seems a thing of the past. The imperiousness and openly Socialist Obama of the campaign (FDR) also seem to be missing. The rush to do great things at the risk of overstepping (Clinton) has been there, but mostly via passive-aggressive hints and stealth riders in the phony Stimulus bill. And the pious holier-than-thou attitude and hubris (Carter) have been beaten down by Harry Reed and Nancy Pelosi, who seem to be poised to make Obama their bitch.

But Gerald Ford...ah, there's a match. So far the Anointed One has tried to exit a press conference through a window he thought was a door. He has banged his head getting into Marine One (Air Force One is the President's airplane, Marine One is his helicopter). I'm waiting for him to fall tuckus over teakettle down the stairs next, only to rise from the floor and proclaim, "Live from New York! It's Saturday Night!"

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President Obama's first month has been enlightening. As I mentioned earlier, it appears that Senate Majority Leader (and planet's biggest flaming a-hole) Harry Reed and House Majority Leader (and single most imperious, hypocritical, and corrupt politician outside of Hugo Chavez) Nancy Pelosi have set out to make Obama their bitch. The two of them wrested control of the Stimulus bill from the President and made it apparent through their actions that he needed to sit down, shut up, and let the REAL politicians handle this.

Obama needs to put those two in their place -- and soon -- if he wants to have any chance at all at a successful presidency. It will be a long 4 years if he doesn't.

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I am truly thankful that Obama has shown little of the Wilson-like ruthlessness I saw in him shortly after the election. That said, he and his Team Donkey cohorts seem bound and determined to ram a raft of socialist BS down our throats, recession/depression be damned!

There is also the little matter of the Fairness Doctrine. The Dems and the President seem to be taking baby steps -- mostly through veiled statements, hints, and posturing -- towards reimplementing this patently anti-First Amendment POS in order to shut out opposition voices. Will it happen? Sure! These people are not just ruthless, they're megalomaniacal. But -- and it's a big "but" -- I'm convinced that it won't survive a Court challenge...at least for now. If Obama can be patient and wait for one of the more conservative Justices to retire.........who knows? It's not like the Courts actually enforce the Constitution as written any more.

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Political pundits make it a game to "grade" a President. "His grade for the first [n] days is...". I'm not going to go there...at least not in the traditional sense. I don't grade a President for "effectiveness", as Big Media (the BM for short) would. I grade a President on how his policies and leadership affect the lives and liberties of the American people.

For his first month in office, I give The Anointed One a D. His grade reflects the following negatives.

1. The feelers he's put out about the Fairness Doctrine
2. His (hijacked by Reed/Pelosi) phony Stimulus bill.
3. The new "Health Effectiveness Czar" position created in the Stimulus bill; it's the 'camel's nose' into the tent of socialized medicine.
4. His pre-selection of which White House reporters will be allowed to ask questions at press conferences.

He didn't get an F. Why? Because, as of the moment, he hasn't imposed any new enslaving burdens on the American people. It's something to hang your hat on, I suppose. He's ahead of King George the Dim, who gets an 8-year grade of F.

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Look for His Holiness to be more aggressive in the next month or so, as the "Amateur Hour" effect starts to dissipate. Who knows? He may shed Jerry Ford and take on one of the other four presidential personalities by then. I hope not. Jerry Ford I can live with.

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For unto us a tyrant is born

On February 12th, 1809, the man who set our Nation on its course towards eventual governmental enslavement was born. The irony of the life of this man is that he's viewed by most Americans as the greatest American President. He was nothing of the sort.

Abraham Lincoln. Honest Abe. The Great Emancipator. The man who Saved the Union.

It's all crap.

Lincoln was a thug and a dictator. He took a situation that could have been resolved via diplomacy -- a group of States that were part of a voluntary union formed by our Founders who had decided to leave said union and form their own nation -- and turned it into the bloodiest war in this nation's history. His unconstitutional acts are legion: the suspension of Habeas Corpus, the coercion employed to "keep" Maryland in the Union against the wishes of the citizens of that State, the brutality employed against the Draft protesters in New York City.

Irony. His life is replete with it. How ironic that this racist bastard, who considered Blacks as little more than animals, should be remembered as the Great Emancipator, the man who freed the slaves.

His worst legacy, however, is the establishment of the Federal government as superior to the rights and wishes of the individual States. This set the stage for every anti-freedom assault for the next 150 years. Without Lincoln, the atrocities of Woodrow Wilson would have been impossible. Without Lincoln, the patently unconstitutional acts of Franklin Roosevelt would have been unthinkable. Without Lincoln, the freedom-sapping Great Society of Lyndon Johnson would have been nothing but a pipe dream. The actions of Bill Clinton and King George the Dim? Impossible!

Happy 200th, Abe. May you burn in Hell forever, MF'er.

What will an Obama presidency look like?

Okay. Take a deep breath, all. It's time to put the emotion of the campaign behind us and take a dispassionate look at what an Obama presidency could look like. Using American history as my guide, here are the four presidents whose terms in office Obama's presidency could end up mirroring.

Scenario I - Obama as Jimmy Carter
The last Team Donkey candidate for president to receive more than 50% of the popular vote, Jimmy Carter began his presidency on a wave of popular support very similar to what Obama will have when he takes office in January. It didn't last. It took Carter less than two years to self destruct. It wasn't just that he was incompetent and clueless. He was incompetent, clueless, and sanctimonious.

The "center of gravity" moment of his presidency was his "malaise" speech. In that speech, he basically threw up his hands and said that the American century was over; we'd all better get used to living lesser lives.

Gasoline shortages. Double-digit inflation. Double-digit interest rates. Double-digit unemployment. And let's not forget his performance in Iran. First he threw the Shah under the bus, allowing Iran to fall into the hands of the Ayatollahs. Then he stood by, impotent, as our embassy was stormed and American citizens were taken hostage for over 440 days.

Given Obama's complete lack of experience, there is a fair chance that the Obama presidency could mirror the Carter presidency.

Scenario II - Obama as Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton took office in 1993 to the strains of "Don't stop thinkin' about tomorrow". To his supporters, Bill Clinton represented a new dawn after the "dark night" of Reagan/Bush (their perspective -- certainly NOT mine!).

But Clinton took this period of euphoria to mean that he had a mandate from the American people to implement all of his policies right now. He overstepped badly.

"Hillary Health" was a colossal flop; even the most liberal Democrats in Congress were scared to vote for its passage. Clinton's flip-flop on a middle class tax cut angered even more Americans. "Don't ask, don't tell" angered gays for not going far enough, but angered conservatives who thought it went too far. The Clintons were seen as arrogant, condescending, and out-of-touch with mainstream America.

When the Senate and the House of Representatives, which had been in Democrat hands for over 40 years, fell into Team Elephant hands in 1994, it looked like the Clinton presidency would be every bit the flop that the Carter presidency had been.

But fortune smiled on Bill Clinton. He was able to turn the corner, triangulate his way around the Republican-controlled Congress, and take credit for a Welfare Reform bill initiated by the Republicans. Fortune smiled again in the form of Bob Dole, the Team Elephant candidate for president in 1996. Dole's campaign made McCommie's look positively inspired by comparison.

Because Clinton was able to turn the corner from his early failures, he was able to complete his rather rocky presidency viewed by at least a portion of the population as a successful president.

Obama's cockiness could get him into the same sort of overstep quagmire that Clinton experienced. But if he is as savvy as Clinton, he too could weather the overstep, scale back his agenda -- perhaps even moving to the right on the issues -- and finish as a successful president.

Scenario III - Obama as FDR
FDR was the original cult of personality. He ran roughshod over the Congress and the Constitution for over 13 years. If he hadn't died in office, he might still be president today!

There is STILL a certain element of the population drinking the Roosevelt Kool-Aid, mostly on college campuses. But anyone who is a student of history know that Roosevelt's 13 year neo-fascist reign over America was the second time in our nation's history where we just missed being enslaved by a megalomaniac.

The FDR presidency had it's moments. The administration's execution of WWII was exemplary. And the worst excesses of the FDR administration were successfully thwarted by the Supreme Court. But FDR left us with a legacy that included Social Security, minimum wage laws, government favoritism towards organized labor, and a network of spies in the State Department (only proven conclusively in 1994 when the Venona papers (captured Soviet communications to Americans acting as spies for the USSR) were released).

Could Obama be the next FDR? It's certainly probable. After all, he's every bit the socialist/fascist in his core ideology that Roosevelt was. And he's quite the spell-binding speaker, as was FDR. With term limits on the office of the Presidency, we don't need to worry about 13 years of Obama. But he could be a two-term president and he could ram through a formidable FDR-like array of socialist nonsense in that time.

Scenario IV - Obama as Woodrow Wilson
This is the scenario that scares the Bejeezus out of me, because Obama's personality seems to mirror that of Wilson. Wilson projected an image of a calm, scholarly man. But he was a thug and a megalomaniac. His administration was marked by brutal physical attacks against those who opposed him. And he was, in point of fact, the very first Fascist; there was nothing implemented by Mussolini that wasn't a core plank of Wilson's administration.

Wilson leveraged WWI as an excuse to implement "war socialism". Trust me, he had no intention of "undoing" that economic stance upon completion of the war. But with the war ending as quickly as it did following the US entry into it, and with his subsequent stroke a year later, Wilson was thwarted in his goal to make America the first Fascist state.

This was the first attempt at enslaving the American people under a stateist ideology, and, had WWI lasted longer and Wilson remained healthy, it could have succeeded!

Obama shows every sign of being the petulant megalomaniac that Wilson was. Is he capable of being the thug that Wilson was? That I don't know. But if he is, we could be in for a WORLD of trouble.

Obama as Wilson is the most dangerous of all scenarios. Obama is much more popular than Wilson ever was (he squeaked by in the 1912 election only because of a third party run by Teddy Roosevelt against incumbent President Taft). Obama has another advantage Wilson lacked; he has Big Media (the BM for short) under his spell. They're more than happy to carry his water and run his propaganda as fact.

Watch carefully to see if Obama pushes for a return of the Fairness Doctrine, which, like all good Marxist efforts, has nothing to do with "fairness" and everything to do with removing all dissenting voices from the public discourse. If he pushes hard for the Fairness Doctrine within his first 100 days, we'll know that we've got Woodrow Wilson on our hands...and we're f***ed.

Okay, I've made my case. Let me know what you think about what an Obama presidency will look like. I'm curious to see if you see the different scenarios the same way I do.