Sweet Tweets Volume 1

 

Sweet Tweets is a new feature at Grand Rants where we provide you with Twitter  “Tweets from the rich and famous”  using our various sources. Sometimes they will be tweets between famous entertainers, sports stars or even politicians. Nobody is safe from having their tweets “intercepted.”  For example, today’s tweet allegedly features two high ranking politicians…

Gerry Ashley

Oh No, Joe, Say It Ain’t So!

 

Vice President Joe Biden is up to his old tricks again. Last week he revealed the location of a secret bunker; now he’s trashing the president’s use (or over-use) of his teleprompter.

According to The Christian Science Monitor, his audience was at best, less than enthusiastic:

The Colorado Springs Gazette reports that it didn’t seem to be a great day for him anyway. According to the paper, Biden “didn’t get much love from the crowd” while delivering his speech.

One of the three times that he did receive spontaneous applause, however, was when he made fun of his boss. That’s when the teleprompter blew over.

“Made fun of his boss.” This man is one heartbeat away from the Oval Office. Hmmm, maybe he’s trying to embarrass Obama to death. At the rate he’s going, he may just make it.

And really, how do you go from bluebirds to falcons? If he must quote Thoreau, why not:

“The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.” 

Stoutcat

Latest Biden Gaffe Reveals Location Of VP Hidden Bunker

 

In a phone call with Grant Rants partner Alan Speakman over the week-end, I jokingly said, “Hey it’s the 15th… isn’t it time for another ‘Joe Biden Hoof-in-Mouth Moment’?”

Well, Joe, I knew we could count on you. But this time, I don’t think people will be laughing. The Vice-President in another moment of “far-from-clarity” has apparently revealed the location of a secret bunker designed to protect the Vice President in time of attack. If so, the Biden traveling side show has taken an off-ramp into a dangerous neighborhood.  As Jonathan Passantino points out on FoxNews.com:

According to a report, while recently attending the Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, an annual event where powerful politicians and media elite get a chance to cozy up to one another, Biden told his dinnermates about the existence of a secret bunker under the old U.S. Naval Observatory, which is now the home of the vice president.

The bunker is believed to be the secure, undisclosed location former Vice President Dick Cheney remained under protection in secret after the 9/11 attacks.

Eleanor Clift, Newsweek magazine’s Washington contributing editor, said Biden revealed the location while filling in for President Obama at the dinner, who, along with Grover Cleveland, is the only president to skip the gathering.

While Biden checks back into the Walter Reed Hospital to receive yet another treatment for Hoof-IN-Mouth disease, you may want to read the Fox piece, as well as Ms. Clift’s comments.  In all truth, I don’t know whether it’s funny, sad, or pathetic that the Vice President can’t keep his mouth shut. But what might be more significant is why.

 I think it’s time we take a good hard look to see if Vice-President Biden might have a problem with alcohol.

That may be a harsh allegation, but I think we have a right to know if the person 1st in line to become President is, in fact, someone with a drinking problem. When it comes right down to it, I think his numerous public blunders and embarassing gaffes have few possible explanations. Some might wonder if his propensity to misspeak is possibly a side-affect of the brain anyurism he suffered in 1988. Supposedly, he made a full recovery from that. 

Regardless of the source, however, the more important issue is that he’s not just an embarassment to the Obama Administration, but now a real political and security  liability as well, regardless of the reason. To divulge the location of  a secret bunker designed to protect the Vice President in time of national emergency is a major security violation, one that  would get virtually any other government employee fired on the spot.

Joe, you’ve been a clown up til now. Sadly, you are now both an embarassment and a liability, not just to the Obama administration, but to the entire country. Its time for you to explain these constant gaffes, then get help or step down. America deserves better than this.

UPDATE: Malkin weighs in!

Gerry Ashley

Chavez To Obama: The Thrill Is Gone

As President Obama begins his second hundred days, the morning alarm clock radio wakes him prophetically with the sound of Barbara Streisand…

Memories, light the corners of my mind. Misty water-colored memories of the way we were… Scattered pictures, of the smiles we left behind. Smiles we gave to one another for the way we were. (From “The Way We Were”)

In what has to be one of the shortest political romances in history, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez condemned a U.S. report Friday that alleges Venezuela fails to cooperate in fighting terrorism. Chavez has also ordered US Junior Achievement President Barack Obama to end the decades-old embargo against Cuba. Chavez stated, ”If Obama doesn’t knock down the savage blockade against the Cuban people, it’s all a lie. Everything would be a big farce!”

“Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? could we? “

And so endeth another lesson in the Schooling of a naive President who thinks “reaching out to your enemy,” shaking hands, bowing and apologizing for America’s strength will bring you world peace and friendship.  More important:  they will LIKE you. They will REALLY LIKE YOU!” (apologies to Sally Field)

So Obama had to learn the hard way: Sucking up to your enemy might lead to a pleasant photo op, but as a political move, it usually returns as a bite on the butt. If he actually had any solid political experience other than being a community organizer, he might have known better.

He can sing Kumbaya all he wants, but until you change the mindset of the lunatics who run North Korea, Iran, and so many other countries, weakening ourselves only emboldens them. Even if you don’t have experience in politics, all you need to do is look at history to know this. Recent history: Look at how Iran played Jimmy Carter in the ’70s.

Nations who envy our success but are unable to replicate it with their socialist or communist approach will respect only one thing from America: our strength.They do NOT respect weakness and so far, Obama hasn’t given them anything to fear as he talks about reducing our strength.

Something to think about: Add up the years of political experience these leaders like Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, and others who wish us ill and compare that to the still wet- behind-the-ears Obama, and there’s reason to understand why Joe Biden warned us that our enemies will test Obama during the first six months of his Presidency. You may recall, Biden mentioned that during one of his rare moments of remission from ”Hoof in Mouth” disease.

One would hope the novice President learned an important lesson from this rapid turnaround by Chavez. But I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

Memories, may be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So its the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember…
The way we were…
The way we were…

Gerry Ashley

The Administration that Couldn’t Shoot Straight

Forget about the skyrocketing deficit and the hidden whopper tax that is the cap and trade. Unemployment, bailouts, tax-cheat nominees… Forget about all of that.

Just consider the astoundingly embarrassing goofs. The stuff that even you or I wouldn’t screw up…

• Hillary’s reset button: Yeah sure… “Over charged”… “Reset”… Same thing.
• Gifts to the Browns: cheap plastic helicopters and a DVD set vs. thoughtful and priceless antiques and designer girls’ dresses, described as “rudeness personified” and it is.
• Cancellation of the formal press conference with the UK Prime Minister because of snow: as one of our oldest allies, England has come to expect that its visiting dignitaries will be treated with civility and respect. Clearly the Obamas didn’t read the memo
• Joe Biden: (Take your pick.)
• Teleprompter: we now have a president chronically incapable of speaking off the cuff. Everything is scripted. And teleprompted.
• Secretary of State Clinton’s proclamation that American democracy is older than democracy in Europe
• Clinton’s mis-pronunciation of the names of two of her EU counterparts
• Timothy “TurboTax” Geithner: what can you say?
• Bush is the cause of all things evil. (You might want to check the facts concerning who started this whole financial disaster in the first place.)

Let us hope and pray that these “mis-steps” are just the machinations of a new and busy administration, and not an indicator of its true governing ability.

Alan Speakman

Breaking News: Obama Switches To Stand-up Comedy

This just in from the TIC (Tongue-In-Cheek) News Network:

Washington DC – (TIC) President Barack Obama, in a move some Republicans are calling “calculated to counter his “Doom & Gloom” speeches recently, has decided to add Stand-Up Comedy to his speaking style.

The day after the Senate House of Reps (just wait) approved his pork-riddled $410 Billion, cluttered to the gills with earmarks, Obama announced he will be outlining his proposal for cutting wasteful spending.

(Cue laugh track)

From the AP news story on Foxnews.com:

Obama’s directive would order Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, to work with Cabinet and agency officials to draft new contracting rules by the end of September. Those new rules, officials said, would make it more difficult for contractors to bilk taxpayers and make around $500 billion in federal contracts each year more accessible to independent contractors.

Oh, the sweet irony! One way contractors could be prevented from bilking us out of $500 Billion in federal contracts is to stop passing “Stimulus Packages” costing hundreds of billions of dollars. Simply put, those packages are loaded with over 8,000 slabs of pork. (Do we REALLY need a high-speed rail linking Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Harry Reid?).

Remember the good old days when if politicians wanted to shove a bill down the taxpayers’ throats (and down our wallets), they actually had to do it LEGALLY by presenting a bill with a single point project and pass it in both houses plus get the President to sign it? I think way back then they called that a system of Checks & Balances. Now, all you have to do is have the Congressional Cheerleaders join the President in declaring dire emergencies that can only be solved by spending more trillions of dollars, then attaching all your porcine projects to this emergency legislation and, Voila!  up to 8 Years of Lobbying is now reduced to ONE BILL.

There’s your CHANGE, Obama fans. All that lobbying and screwing of the taxpayers, reduced from 8 years down to 6 weeks!

But wait! There’s More! Act before midnight tonight  and here’s what you’ll get (at a phenomenal extra charge):

No doubt ACORN will receive a $20 million grant to study how to change the whole procurement system.

Gerry Ashley

America, Wake Up! Bozo Is In Washington

Wow… Just wow… What is wrong with us? We’ve got a bunch of out-of-touch, ignorant, elitist, hubristic clowns running our government and robbing us blind. Consider the following video where Biden asks for the phone number for the Recovery Web site:

And who can forget Biden’s “Wheelchair Moment”…

My God… Obama didn’t even know enough to salute when boarding Marine One. And here’s a “Mike McGuire and Sammy Soosa” moment from baseball fan Teddy Kennedy.

And speaking of Al “Green” Gore, let’s not leave out his “Carbon Stomp Print“.

And Michelle Obama didn’t  feel proud of her country until her husband soared to the heights of dizzying power? What about the first responders on, 9/11 Michelle? Was there nothing there to inspire pride and admiration?

Wake up, America… These are the boobs who are running this country right into the ground.

WAIT! This just in… Fox’s Cavuto is reporting that Obama’s definition of “rich” just dropped from $250,000 to $209,000.

Q.E.D.

Alan Speakman

There’s Been a Change, All Right

Ummm… The phrase “change you can believe in” is starting to twist to a breaking point. In just one short month, look at the significant ways Obama is restructuring (or at least trying to restructure) our government and our culture:

• Banking: We all know that we’re creeping up on nationalizing at least one of the banks… Right now, all eyes are on Citigroup. What’s next?
• Census: Sure, shuffle the power of that puppy off to the Executive Branch. All the census does is control how votes are counted and influence the Electoral College.
• Unemployment insurance:  OK all you governors… Want “Fed Bucks” for your cash-strapped states? Well here it is, and all you have to do is re-write your laws for now and forever concerning unemployment insurance. Whoopee!
• Health care:  This one is tricky… Being a computer engineer, I was kind of mystified at the importance of this issue to Obama… Yeah, yeah, yeah… We can streamline our medical IT system and save a few billion… But in the scale of $53 trillion, what’s the big deal? Well here’s the big deal… According to former lieutenant governor of New York Betsy McCaughey,

But the [stimulus] bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446).

This is serious stuff… One way that the federal government can rein in spending on Medicaid/Medicare/SS is to control the cost (and quality) of care provided… No I’m not talking “Soylent Green“, but this sure is spooky.

No matter what side of the political football you huddle on, there should be no disagreement that just one month ago, the game changed – our culture changed. And in a great many respects, the change has been harried and well-intentioned at the very best. Just listen to the TV… Over and over and over again, our leaders, financial experts, and media pundits ponder the change, and wonder if it’s all going to work. My God, even VP Biden gives the Stimulus Plan a 30% chance of failing.

Change you can believe in, or a change that takes a boatload of belief…

Break out the theremin…

Alan Speakman

Newsflash: Obama Apparently NOT Divine

 

The incoming administration makes another attempt to lower expectations, this time via Vice President-elect Joe Biden. Politico reports that in an interview with Larry King, Biden expressed great concern that the expectations of the entire world might overwhelm the President-elect:

“I have been contacted by so many world leaders. Their expectation for Barack’s presidency is overwhelming,” Biden said. “They are so hungry to have an American leader who they think has a policy that reflects our stated values as well as one they can talk to.”

I wonder what has led “so many world leaders” to have overwhelming expectations of Obama? Oh, wait, I remember!

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.”

Thank goodness! We are finally caring for the sick, and of course, now good jobs are plentiful. Those rising oceans? Now receding. The war on Islamofascism? Over (I wonder who won). Our nation? Secure. And our image–once again, the last, best hope on earth. What on earth are those world leaders worried about?

Of course, I also wonder exactly which world leaders have contacted Mr. Biden… and why they would bother.

Stoutcat

Why Obama? Well, What Are People Watching on TV?

 

Back in 1826, famed epicure Brillat-Savarin wrote, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.” (Actually, he wrote “Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es,” but since I don’t speak French, I had to translate.)  This of course has morphed down to the more simplistic “you are what you eat.” But these days, even that has changed. I posit that we no longer are what we eat; instead, we are what we watch on TV.

Given all that’s been written about Obama, and all his shady acquaintances, his inexperience, his liberal voting record, his refusal to admit that the surge worked, and especially how he emerged from a Congress with a lower approval rating than even Dubya, I wondered why America did in fact elect Obama? There are a couple of obvious reasons.

First, America is ready for a black president. (That sort of goes without saying at this point.) Also, anything hyped anti-Bush was a surefire winner. But why Obama? I can see a mandate of the people ushering in Colin Powell – that would make perfect sense… But Obama? So, how can we get even the slightest clue as to where the nation’s “mind is at”?

The indicator I chose was the stuff of the dreaded one-eyed, cable-connected, living room brain bandit – yes, the TV. More accurately, I suffered through the listings for all 800+ cable networks/feeds and in doing so tried to form a “Vulcan Mind Meld” with the American Psyche. Observations…

• First, this was terribly unscientific and subjective. I’ll grant you that. But at the same time I hope you grant me a bit of insight derived via that painful experiment.
• Next, somebody owes me big time! There is so much pap on TV that just looking at the listings hurt. Whole lot of wincing was going on.
• I came up with 25 impromptu categories comprised of 282 networks, and I’ll save you the hassle of dragging through all that muck. Here are just a few of the highlights and lowlights.
  • The good stuff was restricted to: military info (1), news (14), financial news (2), weather (5), history (2), home and garden (9), Science (3), and that’s about it.
  • Beyond the good stuff, there were more or less harmless networks: sports (49, though some may be “dupes”), religion (5), nature (3), fitness (3), children (11), family (5), movie (49, though virtually every one was a stinker), and women’s issues (11)
  • And now we get to the lowlights – the stuff destined to an 8th-grade reading level and a 12th-grade libido (wrestling, soap operas, “reality TV”, insipid game shows, the gross, the mindlessly violent, “music” videos, etc.) (100).
  • Last but not least, there were 10 porn cable networks.

So what does it all break down to? Without applying useless stats, it does indicate one very clear fact – based on my “you are what you watch” hypothesis, a significant chunk of our society is stuck on stupid, to borrow from Gen. Honore. We are what we know we are but afraid to face it – a culture of “Deal or No Deal”, the “Cheetah Girl”, and Britney Spears. We’re Anna Nichole and OJ, and for the most part, we don’t have a clue about math, science, engineering, or even government or civics for that matter. We’re lemmings who actually fawn in packs for pet rocks and the Fonz and disco and rap and grunge. We’re the moral, artistic, and social relativists who are fat enough and secure enough to actually suck up to TV like “Sex in the City”, MTV, BET and call it “good”.

In short, we are a culture miles wide and one-quarter of an inch deep. Doubt it? Turn on your TV and surf. Better yet, consider this: When all was said and done, the very best we could come up with in ‘08 was a shiny Obama/Biden and a flat-finish McCain/Palin – two hucksters, a flip flopper and an idiot.

But I hear the rebuttal brewing already…

Get real dude, just look at how they come across on the HD TV…

That’s how Obama got elected.

Alan Speakman