Monday, February 23, 2009

Pleased as Punch

Obama parachutes into an Upper West Side dinner party
"Mission Accomplished!"
wulffmorgenthaler.com

Shoo Fly

 
"Well, his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven't seen any birth certificate. You have to be born in America to be president." Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

Mo Money, Mo Money

Why are at least five Republican Governors
saying thanks but no thanks to
Free” Obama money?


Consider South Carolina. Its annual budget is roughly $7 billion and the stimulus will send about $2.8 billion to the state over two years. But to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars allocated to the likes of Head Start, child care subsidies and special education, the state will have to enroll thousands of new families into the programs. "There's no way politically we're going to be able to push people out of the program in two years when the federal money runs out," Mr. Sanford says.
This [Govs. v, Congress] says it all.  I'm disappointed that Sarah Palin had to skip the conference to fend off political attacks, but maybe she'll join in anyway.  Maryland gets 3 Billion of the free money.  Our Governor O'Malley announced he'll use it to purchase "Green" school buses.   The  Maryland State Retirement and Pension System have  $11 billion worth of unfunded pension liabilities, and  Counties 'devour' 40% of the State Budget on Pensions each year, but, we'll have environmentally friendly school buses.  Someone stab me in the liver, please. 

Our money

Immigrantos


Someone sent me this story, and got all worked up, but then it didn't really pass the smell test, so I Snoped it.  Sure enough, it was substantially false.  However, I'd already done a PhotoShopped on it (pretty good, eh?), so what the Hell.  Waste not, want not, I always say. (Really.  I stop and pick up pennies).

Lord Chaos

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood ...
... except for ...


This WSJ report about the gummint nationalizing Citigroup
When federal officials began pumping capital into U.S. banks last October, few experts would have predicted that the government would soon be wrestling with the possibility of taking voting control of large financial institutions. The potential move at Citigroup would give the government its biggest ownership of a financial-services company since the September bailout of insurer American International Group Inc., which left taxpayers with an 80% stake.

Under the scenario being considered, a substantial chunk of the $45 billion in preferred shares held by the government would convert into common stock, people familiar with the matter said. The government obtained those shares, equivalent to a 7.8% stake, in return for pumping capital into Citigroup.

The move wouldn't cost taxpayers additional money, but other Citigroup shareholders would see their stock diluted. A larger ownership stake by the government could fuel (could fuel?) speculation that other troubled banks will line up for similar agreements
Simultaneously, Obama tries to halt talk of bank nationalization, and his Secretary of Mayhem George Soros is comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.  Non-stop crisis generation since September, eh wot?  Here's a funny (he wept) reaction from the moron camp.
[Salon's Glenn] Greenwald imagines that militias are again on the rise because Barack Obama is "an exotic other occupying the White House" and because the U.S. is a "declining imperial power," these things upsetting to gun-owning, white folks, apparently.

Bill Clinton's election in 1992 gave rise to the American "militia movement": hordes of overwhelmingly white, middle-aged men from suburban and rural areas who convinced themselves they were defending the American way of life from the "liberals" and "leftists" running the country by dressing up in military costumes on weekends, wobbling around together with guns, and play-acting the role of patriot-warriors. Those theater groups -- the cultural precursor to George Bush's prancing 2003 performance dressed in a fighter pilot outfit on Mission Accomplished Day -- spawned the decade of the so-called "Angry White Male," the movement behind the 1994 takeover of the U.S. Congress by Newt Gingrich and his band of federal-government-cursing, pseudo-revolutionary, play-acting tough guys. [The 1990s are back ... .]
These guys fear constitutional citizen militia like the French fear soap.  Too bad there aren't any militia in these parts, because I'd join one.  At this point I have no fantasy, no realistic fantasy,  about storming congress; I'm looking for an organized resistance to the chaos these people are trying to throw us into.  Someone to defend against gummint thugs in the event Obama suspends the constitution and declares a FEMA free-for-all. Or, against lawless scavengers on the order Mad Max faced if Obama's master plan comes to full fruition. 

Ha-ha.  Just kidding.  Everything will be just great.  How about them Oscars?