Heroes and Villains

 

In early October, Peggy Noonan wrote about the passing of the great William Safire, in a Wall Street Journal article entitled, Keeping America Safe From the Ranters. In it, she bemoans the loss of “the Elders” of journalism, and warns us that the guard is changing, and not necessarily for the better:

We are in a generational shift in the media, and new Elders are rising. They’re running the networks and newspapers, they own the Web sites, they anchor the shows. What is their job?

It’s to do what the Elders have always done, but now more than ever.

Ms. Noonan goes on to give two examples of how discourse is changing (one from a left-of-center mainstream media type, and one from an extremely right-of-center marginal kook) as evidence of how current political conversations are becoming more coarse and inflammatory. From these two small molehills, her handwringing conjures up a mountain of danger:

I see it this way. There are roughly 300 million people in America. Let’s say 1% of them, only 1 in 100, are composed of those who might fairly be called emotionally unstable—the mentally ill, those who have limited or no ability to govern their actions, those who act out, as they say, physically or violently. That’s three million people.

Let’s say a third of them are regularly exposed to political media rants from right or left. That’s a million people.

What effect might “they want to see you dead” and “the Republic is falling right now” have on their minds?

I find Ms. Noonan’s estimate intriguing: One million Americans so mentally unstable as to be potentially violent or a physical danger to others (although she does not distinguish between those who are currently receiving treatment or hospitalized and those who are presumably roaming the streets mainlining Ed Schultz, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann).

Think about that for a moment. One million of our fellow citizens (unless Ms. Noonan numbers you and me among those she fears) lumbering around zombie-like, so infused with hate and fear of “the other side” and incited by bloggers, Twitterers, and Bill O’Reilly, that they are willing to attempt to do violence to our political leaders? Really?

Is political debate getting coarser? Probably. Each generation claims that it’s true, anyway. But it’s also getting more and more open and accessible, which is why we are seeing the rise of things like talk radio, citizen journalism, and Tea Parties. And Peggy Noonan must live in a pretty rarified atmosphere, if she fears the hoi polloi of Power Line, Patterico, and Pajamas Media; and the riff raff of Fox News Channel.

Sure, there’s crime in America. That’s why we have police forces. And sure, there are people who hate Americans and wish us ill. That’s why we have our peerless military. And of course there are kooks who are going to hate whoever is President and even possibly wish him harm. That’s why we have the Secret Service.

But Ms. Noonan, if you believe that the lives of our top politicians are vastly endangered  because of these Ranters you fear, then I think you yourself might be among that one million people you worry about.

Stoutcat

Needed: Economic REHAB (Not Recovery)

 

“An Ill Economy Is Not Unlike A Sick Person: Unless You Know The Reason For The Illness, You Can’t Choose The Right Path Back To Health.”   G. Ashley

OK, I realize that’s not very profound. But the point behind it is deeper than you might initially think.

There are times a person needs to be in recovery, and then there are times the same person may require rehab. It’s important to note the difference. 

• A person requires recovery when he has been injured in some manner, usually from an external source (car accident, equipment failure) or an internal source he has little external control over (illness). With the right diagnosis, medications and treatment, the body will heal itself and the person will be able to continue his life, hopefully unimpeded.
• But when a person brings on his own destruction through substance abuse, he needs rehabilitation in order to learn the skills necessary to modify his lifestyle to one that is more conducive to personal health. Those who take rehab seriously stand the best chance of taking back control of their lives. Those who don’t almost assuredly lose their lives or exist as empty shells of what they might have been. 

Our economy works in much the same way. We are still mired in a recession (some are now calling it a depression – I guess it all depends on whether or not the unemployed person is you), and politicians and news pundits talk about the economic recovery.

They can talk all they want, but economic recovery is not what is going to return the economy of the United States to a long-term healthy status. What the country needs is economic rehab.  Consider:

• As individuals, we’ve lived on credit for far too long, racking up our own personal long-term debt just so we could enjoy luxuries, vacations we hadn’t saved for, cars we can’t afford, and homes we had no business buying based on our debt-to-income ratio.
• The government (initially introduced by the Carter administration, subsequently aided and abetted by Clinton) decided it was only fair that even lower income people should be able to bathe in the luxury of home ownership and so mandated it through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac programs. These programs, while perhaps well-intended, lent themselves to horrendous abuse which resulted in mortgages issued to people who couldn’t afford them and ultimately to the collapse of many financial institutions.
• It seems as if at some point along the way fiscal responsibility was factored out of the equation of our lives, either by ourselves or by pandering politicians who saw themselves as the great equalizers of our society.

Economic experts warned us for years, “This cannot continue indefinitely.” “Sooner or later,” we were told, “we will reach a point of critical mass. And when that happens, it won’t be a balloon bursting, but more like a dam.”

“Dam” if they weren’t right!

Where Do We Go From Here?

Full disclosure: I am not an economist. I didn’t major in accounting. Hell, I barely made it through Freshman Math in High School. But even I can tell you that taking the path President Bush used with TARP and that President Obama is taking with his gigantic stimulus package is not going to return us to prosperity. How could it?  When you are in debt, only a fool believes you can spend your way out. And if President Obama doesn’t realize that the level of debt he is subjecting us to — with his stimulus package and his other schemes — is more destructive than helpful, he is only going to guarantee the eventual (and, most likely, final) collapse of our economy.

Now we can spend all day discussing whether that’s his intent or not, like some radio talk show hosts. Or we can do the hard work: do the research necessary to determine what needs to be done and then put the pressure on our elected officials to do these things or face defeat in their next election.

Notice that the responsibility is put back on us? In truth, folks, that responsibility has always been there. It’s always been our responsibility to monitor our elected officials to make sure they don’t  succumb to their own powers and become so corruptibly focused on themselves and lobbyists.  

Unfortunately, we have delegated our responsibility to our elected officials themselves (and they have taken full advantage of it – and us).

Will you heed the call?

The various tea parties have sounded the alarm. Some of our elected officials are now getting their perspective back in line: They had better regard us more than they fear President Obama. But will you continue to fight for what we demand from our elected officials? Lest you need to be reminded:

• For too long, “we the people” have allowed ourselves to be subjugated by special interest groups who have our elected officials in their hip pockets (or wallets).
• For too long, we have been complacent about politicians who have been able to create an economic moat around themselves by creating elaborate benefits and the ability to raise their own salaries as needed.
• For too long, we have allowed them to create their own health plans that far exceed anything they will attempt to pass down to us.
• For too long, we have enabled them to create pension systems that guarantee their salaries even after they have been voted out of office for having abused the privilege of representing us.
• It is time to keep sending them a reminder just who their employers actually are (Hint: it’s not other members of Congress; it’s not the President; it’s not the unions; it’s not your loyal cadre of lobbyinsts. It’s We the People. And you’d best not forget it!)
• The time for Government Reform is now in preparation of the 2010 mid-term elections. Without doubt, this will be the most critical mid-term election in our nation’s history (Are you listening, Republican Party?).

We must learn to do with less opulence,  or at least to live in line with our incomes again. Living within our means is the first step to an economy in rehab. We have ample proof that living on credit brings down the house eventually. Because we are the junkies of this economy. We. The People. Congress. The President. And “We The People” are, ultimately, responsible for all in that list.

The alternative is to lose the America we grew up in, and have nothing left to pass on to our children and theirs. And while it may be easy to stomp our feet and blame Congress and the President, we will ultimately have only ourselves to blame if we choose not to take the necessary action now.

Heed the call!

Gerry Ashley

Herd Intuition

Many moons ago, I went to a day/night event at Madison Square Garden in NYC. As the crowd filtered in, it would have been impossible for even the most oblivious observer to not see that that was an ugly environment. Drugs were sold openly, the language from the street folk was vile and confrontational, it smelled like an open sewer… And all in open daylight. Anyway, we got there, and as always, the show was over-hyped. Thankfully, the gala finally came to an end, but then there was that little issue of getting back to the car safely in the darkness. What were nasty streets at 4pm were downright dangerous at 10pm. But as the crowds left the arena something strange happened. Without any coordination or a spoken word, we immediately formed packs – groups of strangers sensing harm coalesced shoulder to shoulder. Each herd moved to its own parking area, and then broke up and left. It was a sort of collective consciousness at work.

I’m getting that same weird karma now about our country and our culture as it interacts with this new reality.

• Every other commercial on TV bellows the importance of gold as an investment, as if American paper money is reaching the end of days.
• The Toob has changed… Long gone are the days of the Sci Fi Channel running cheesy movies about giant mosquitoes – instead they’ve been replaced with “end of the world” stuff involving mega twisters, mega volcanoes, and mega earth faults. The History Channel has taken on the chant of “Hotel Ground Zero”;  “Clash of the Gods”; and probably most emblematic, “Life After People”.
• Video games are… well… frightening. And at this point, we don’t even talk about them. Others might, but we don’t.
• There’s no doubt that Iran will get a nuke while our elected geniuses bandy words with fanatics. (See link below.)
• Just heard tonight that Syria has its own uranium enrichment program going on. (Hell, why not? They’ve got so much conventional WMDs that they might as well join the Armageddon party…) Very little fanfare on the American homeland front though. Do you even know about this, or did you just take it for granted?
• Our economy over the next ten years?
• North Korea…
• Pakistan…
• What’s another car bomb in Iraq or another home-grown terrorist right here?
• Gun sales in the U.S.?
• Gee, Glenn Beck seems a little alarmed too, but who listens to him?

And it goes on and on and on… Lest you think I’m a complete nut (and the facts above don’t make you bristle just a little…) In 1913 (roughly a year before the start of World War I) psychologist Carl Jung dreamt of “rivers of blood”. And British politician Edward Grey had the same premonition of doom.

I can’t put my finger on it, but nonetheless, unless I miss my read, there’s a feeling in our collective gut (just like that night outside Madison Square Garden) that something’s brewing – that something very wicked this way comes. Be honest… Does your “Herd Intuition” tell you otherwise?

Alan Speakman

White House Escalating War… With Fox News?

It comes as no surprise to anyone with an IQ higher than onion dip that, with the exception of Fox News, the “mainstream media” (MSM) has been little more than a cheerleading squad for The Left.  The MSM has consistently refused to cover (or even acknowledge the existence of) many major stories (ex: ACORN workers allegedly involved in Voter Registration Fraud) until the Fox News coverage made it impossible to ignore. When President Obama’s “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones’ controversial history as a “Truther” and a communist was exposed, none of the mainstream news channels – except for Fox News again – mentioned a word of it until the problem was so blatant that Jones had to resign.

Over the past year, Fox News has clearly established itself as the only member of the MSM that is willing to put the truth out there and let the people make their decisions based on the availability of BOTH sides of the story. America has come to depend on Fox as the only major television source of news they can trust.  Their ratings overwhelmingly bear this out:

Prime Time News Network Ratings
(as of October 9, 2009)

P2+ Prime Time
FNC –      2,299,000 viewers
CNN –        582,000 viewers
MSNBC –    816,000 viewers
CNBC –        158,000 viewers
HLN –          551,000 viewers (HLN= Headline News)

Source: TVbythenumbers.com

All ten of the “Top 10 Cable News Shows” are Fox News programs.  The top 5 (All Fox News programs) break down as follows:

1. “The O’Reilly Factor” - an average of 3.295 million total viewers for the quarter, up 12% over the previous year.
2. “Hannity” (2.603 million viewers, up 9%)
3. “Glenn Beck” (2.403 million viewers, up 89% )
4. “On the Record with Greta van Susteren” (2.150 million viewers, up 16%)
5. “Special Report with Bret Baier” (1.997 million, up 20%)

Source: Huffington Post

No wonder, then, that the Obama administration (aka the gang that can’t do anything straight) is setting their sights to discredit Fox News.

It all comes down to this: Americans are voting again, but this time it’s with the remote control.  In response to the Fox News absolute dominance in the ratings (see above), and in what has to be seen as further proof of the Obama administration’s complete lack of common sense coupled with inexperience, the White House seems to be declaring war on Fox News.

Sunday, on CNN, White House Director of Communications Anita Dunn said:

“What I think is fair to say about Fox — and certainly it’s the way we view it — is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party. They take their talking points, put them on the air; take their opposition research, put them on the air. And that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.” (emphasis mine)

Dunn is obviously hoping… desperately hoping… that American viewers will buy into her criticism of Fox News. Look at the ratings, Ms. Dunn and you will see you have just been diagnosed with “Hoof IN Mouth” disease. Even the Huffington Post admits there’s no contest when it comes to which news network the American Public turns to for “fair and balanced” reporting:

Fox News has pulled off another dominant quarter, claiming the top 10 cable news programs in 3Q 2009 and growing against 3Q 2008, while CNN and MSNBC lost substantial portions of their election-boom audience.

Fox News averaged 2.25 million total viewers in prime time for the third quarter, up 2% over the previous year. That’s more than CNN (946,000, down 30%) and MSNBC (788,000, down 10%) combined.

What does worry me a bit is just what the Obama administration has in mind to counter the impact of conservative radio talk shows and now, television news that isn’t afraid to tell the truth.

This might be a good time to keep tabs on Mark Lloyd, President Obama’s “Media Diversity Czar.”  Another one of Obama’s un-vetted advisors,  Lloyd is the person who has suggested what amounts to nothing more than fining radio stations that broadcast conservative talk shows but don’t provide, in his opinion, enough opposing programming. If he pulls this off as well as going after broadcast TV, a victory for the Obama administration would mean people in this country would have about the same level of access to news as residents of the former Soviet Union.

Isn’t the preservation of the Constitution part of the Presidential Pledge that was taken by Barack Hussein Obama?

Gerry Ashley

Ain’t Gonna Treat Your Heart No Longer

 

The Senate Finance Committee is voting to pass the vaporous ObamaCare bill today (and yes, Olympia Snowe will do what we all expect her to do, which is to vote for the bill).

We must prevent this ill-conceived, non-written, steaming pile of groat clusters from becoming law.

And one of the best tools in the arsenal of most people is Saul Alinski’s Rule # 5: ”Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.”

With Rule #5 in mind, I’d like to post a  genius muse-inspired video from Omaha doctor Chris Link, entitled “Ain’t Gonna Treat Your Heart No Longer.” 

Readers may recall another Dr. Chris video we posted back in July, ObamaCare: The Musical.

Humor is a potent weapon. Let’s use it and every other argument, persuasion, and conviction in the arsenal of political debate, and get this stinking piece of legislation voted down once and for all.

The alternative is simply too disastrous to contemplate.

Stoutcat

It’s Not Always Raaaaacism! (Except When It Is)

 

And in this case, it’s not.

Via Patterico comes a tale of some guy named D. Aristophanes at a blog called Sadly, No who trumpeted as raaaaacist!™ something radio talk host and blogger Tammy Bruce wrote on her blog.

In reaction to President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, Ms. Bruce posted about her first thoughts on hearing that the President had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. She wrote:

1) Hahahahahahahaha!!!!
2) peeps at the Onion had managed to fool everyone, or
3) we had been thrown back to April 1st in a time machine, or
4) everyone on the Nobel Peace Prize Committee is on crack.
5) How can I get that crack?

Then, I found the answer–the new prize in the box of Cracker Jack is, that’s right, the Nobel Peace Prize! I have one now, too. In addition to the million or so dollars he’ll receive (perhaps he should he should donate that to the US Treasury) I bet he’ll get a Mood Ring with the prize. He can keep that for himself.

She followed that up with another entry, in which she posted a photo of her pet raccooon, Rocky, paw in a box of Cracker Jack, digging for his very own Nobel Peace Prize.

Well, D. Aristophanes saw in this photo of a cute animal the dreaded specter of raaaaacism!™, and so wrote:

Really? A coon? Is this where we’re at now? Because this sort of stuff isn’t coded speech, it’s not a dog whistle or faux-irony … it’s flat-out, no-apologies, bottom-of-the-barrel, peckerwood racism.

Evidently this blogger sees racism where none exists. I wonder if he wrote about the racism of this image:

Or this one:

Or these:

Crickets chirping.

Oh wait, I forgot. Those were done before President Post-Racial was elected,so these images were obviously gently tongue-in-cheek, or sophisticated non-racist humor, or post-ironic, rather than the dreaded “R” word.

But post a photo of a raccoon digging through a box of Cracker Jack, and what do you get? Raaaaacism™!

Face it, D. Aristophanes. Sometimes a raccoon is just a raccoon.

Stoutcat

It’s Happening There; It Will Happen Here

 

I’m concerned about Death Panels. They’re in the news again, those much-mocked death panels first named by Sarah Palin to describe people wielding life-and-death power over those “‘unproductive’ members of society” who “could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care…”

I’m concerned, because they already exist, you know. And no matter how dramatically bad the phrase “death panels” sounds, their actual execution is far worse. In England, patients who are identified as dying are sedated, denied food, water, and medicine, and left to die. Over there, it’s called the ”Liverpool Care Pathway” instead of death panels. Much less stressful-sounding.

A recent example of this plan in execution is being widely reported today. From the TimesOnline:

AN 80-year-old grandmother who doctors identified as terminally ill and left to starve to death has recovered after her outraged daughter intervened.

Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients…

[Christine] Ball, 42, from Robertsbridge, East Sussex, said: “My mother was going to be left to starve and dehydrate to death. It really is a subterfuge for legalised euthanasia of the elderly on the NHS. ”

Hazel Fenton is one of many. Fortunately, her daughter was concerned enough to fight for several weeks to ensure that her mother got the care she needed to survive. But Mrs. Fenton is not alone in her plight. The Times article goes on to report another instance of this particular form of death panel being used simply to pigeon-hole patients to justify drastically reduced care.

In a separate case, the family of an 87-year-old woman say the plan is being used as a way of giving minimum care to dying patients.

Susan Budden, whose mother, Iris Griffin, from Norwich, died in a nursing home in July 2008 from a brain tumour, said: “When she was started on the [plan] her medication was withdrawn. As a result she became agitated and distressed.

“It would appear that the [plan] is . . . used purely as a protocol which can be ticked off to justify the management of a patient.”

In his blog Notes From A Hospital Bed (The ramblings of a poor sod forced to spend months in traction in an NHS hospital), Traction Man refers to the Liverpool Care Pathway as the NHS’s own version of euthanasia.

This procedure is innocuously called  the Liverpool Care Pathway Plan. If you ever find yourself in a hospital and the doctors and nurses start whispering and asking the student nurse to fetch the care pathway manual, you can safely assume you’re about to be decommissioned. Usually you’ll be unconscious and in no state to argue the toss.

If you are ‘Liverpooled’ you can expect to have your food supply withdrawn and your antibiotics stopped as you’re allowed to gently slip away. However, the alarming fact about this unofficial form of euthanasia is that some 3% of patients who experience the Merseyside Murder are ungrateful and thoughtless enough to survive and go on to make a full recovery, in some cases going on to enjoy years of extra life.

Oh yes; you’re allowed to “gently slip away” after being denied food and water and medication. I wonder how gentle it actually is.

For instance, the nurses will put lip balm on [her] because her lips will crack, peel, and bleed from the dehydration.
~And her mouth will not open after a day or two…the aides will pry it open to do oral care. They’ll do a good job with it though.

They’ll use body lotion because [her] skin will begin to break down and show signs of flaking, drying, cracking, or being parched.
~Hopefully they’ll use a nice scented lotion so [she] can have stimulation. The aides will never forget the smell.

They’ll put a “scopolamine patch” behind her ear to enhance the drying up of saliva and other secretions.
~Can you imagine how your mouth would feel?

And it gets worse. Does that sound a bit familiar? It should. It happened here, neraly nearly five years ago, to Terri Schiavo.

Starvation; dehydration; withholding medicine: This is what the Liverpool Care Path entails. And it describes succinctly the death panels that Sarah Palin and many others are concerned about.

I have a mother in her 70s and a mother-in-law in her 80s. You’re damn right I’m concerned. You should be too.

Stoutcat

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Tell When…

 

It’s interesting to note what rates warp speed for the Obama crew and what does not…

Don’t tell when there are rush items (a.k.a. Never let a crisis go to waste):

• Executive branch power grab of census (that didn’t take long)
• Stimulus
• Health care
• TARP  II
• Cash for clunkers
• Cap and trade

Don’t ask and don’t tell when there are not so-rush issues (a.k.a. Campaign promises? What campaign promises?):

• Afghanistan
• Don’t ask, don’t tell
• Gitmo
• 72 hrs and transparency
• Post racial

At this point, we’re rushing so fast, I’m not sure if anybody knows what to “tell” anymore…

Alan Speakman

Obama, Peace Prize, Rendition, etc.

Last week, Barack Hussein Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. Congratulations, Mr. President. No joke… Congratulations. However, if I were awarding the prize, I might have chosen another such as Wei Jingsheng, Hu Jia, or Gao Zhisheng. The following is from The Epoch Times:

Chinese dissidents nominated include Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in a Chinese labour camp for encouraging reforms of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and democracy, environmental, and AIDS activist Hu Jia, who was sentenced to 3.5 years in jail last year for “subversive activities.”

Gao Zhisheng, a prominent human rights lawyer who was kidnapped and tortured after attempting to defend Falun Gong practitioners, was also among the nominees. Hu Jia and Gao Zhisheng were also nominated for the award last year. CCP officials expressed anger about these nominations last year.

On the other hand, I might have pulled a non sequitur a la the spirit of the 1982 Time Magazine “Person of the Year”  (they nominated the PC). So, my choice might even have been NASA for their phenomenal (and peaceful) work with the ISS, Hubble, the moon, and Mars.

Anywho… My choice certainly wouldn’t have been Mr. Obama. (Do you realize that he was in 1600 less than two weeks when he was nominated?)

But there are a couple of dirty little facts that our progressive world chose not to look at during this Nobel Peace Prize selection process…

The first bit of awkwardness has to do with Barack’s support of the use of drones in Afghanistan and beyond. While the technology behind unmanned aircraft is plenty slick, it still ain’t as good as human eyes. And according to at least one expert, drones consume much more than their share of civilian carnage… The following is from an interview with David Kilcullen in the Financial Times. (Mr. Kilcullen was a key strategist behind the successful US surge in Iraq and a key adviser to General Petraeus.)

The strategist also warned that US drone strikes in the Pakistani tribal areas aimed at hitting al-Qaeda and Taliban figures were counter-productive. “They have an undeniable benefit, because we have disrupted AQ operations and damaged AQ cells in Pakistan. But they have a negative strategic effect in that they incite Punjabi militancy, which is the biggest problem in Pakistani right now.” Mr Kilcullen said the hit rate on drone attacks was “unacceptably low”.

He said the US had killed 14 mid-level or lower level al-Qaeda leaders since 2006 but the strikes had killed 700 civilians.

“That’s a hit rate of two per cent on 98 per cent collateral. It’s not moral.”

The second uncomfortable bit of Obama non-peace has to do with his quiet support for rendition – the process of sending terrorists to counties who use interrogation techniques that are just a smidge more severe than ours. Oh, he assures us that his diplomatic oversight will assure that no human rights will be violated… Uh huh. If I’m a terrorist, I’d be thinking Gitmo looks pretty good.

Look, don’t get me wrong. I’m a conservative, and I applaud the president for supporting both hoary policies. It is a hoary world. It just seems a bit disingenuous on the liberal side to ignore these policies.

But it doesn’t matter. The world loves Barack, and he’s got a nice shiny new medal. The Left will point to the award and crow proof that he’s the man of peace and change we all wanted and needed. Besides, it’s another way to dis Dubya.

Alan Speakman

Why Obama Deserves Nobel Peace Prize

 

Photo Credit: Fox News

Yes, you read that correctly. I want to congratulate President Obama on his winning of the Nobel Peace Prize. The committee could not have chosen a better person to demonstrate just how meaningless this award truly has become. Over the past 20 years or so, it has been more of a political statement on liberalism than anything else.

Something to think about:

• The nominations for this year’s winner closed only 11 days after President Mmm-Mmm-Mmm took office… were those 11 amazing days or what? 
• The committee isn’t releasing the name of the person who nominated Obama, but Jimmy Carter and Algore are suspects.
• In 2002, the award went to former President Jimmy Carter for his mediation in International Conflicts.  More than anything this was a swipe at the Bush administration for the hard line they took as they made plans to invade Iraq.
• In 2007, another slap to the Bush administration as they selected former VP and current Carbon Credit Huckster Algore for his work to convince people global warming is an issue, and one that can only be solved by buying carbon credits from his company.

On Michelle Malkin‘s blog, she quotes Michael P. Leahy, who wrote: “Where’s Kanye West when we really need him?”

Reportedly, Obama’s selection was due to his committment to world peace which, as pointed out by Tampa morning radio personalities Jack Harris and Tedd Webb, ”Ought to make every Miss America contestant eligible.”

The peace-seeking President was not immediately available for comment. He is in meetings this morning, planning a new war strategy for Afghanistan. I’m just sayin’…

Mmm-Mmm-Mmm Nobel Prize Winner Barack Hussein Obama…

H/T:  Jack Harris & Tedd Webb

Gerry Ashley