The Palin Replacement

It didn’t take a 12K gold casket to tote off the remains of Sarah Palin’s political aspirations. Still at the peak of her game (Hockey), she moonwalked off the stage leaving an admiring right wing fringe reeling in grief. Never fear, nature abhores a vacuum. And the good Lord has provided someone equally unqualified, and almost as fetching, to carry on the torch. And this little gal can torch the socialist, fascist liberalsphere with as much cuteness and betcha-golly charm as  America’s favorite Hockey Mom. You’ll remember her as the dumb blonde with the squeaky voice from the mid 80’s SNL crew. Victoria Jackson. She’s dopey like Palin, only articulate:

I woke up in the middle of the night and realized the trick. You see, evil doesn’t just show up.  It disguises itself as something nice; so you’ll let it in.  It tricks you.

Murdering babies is called Pro-Choice.  Unfair Censorship is called The Fairness Doctrine.  Outlandish Taxes and the Death of Freedom is called Cap & Trade.  Sounds like Fish & Chips.  You gotta figure out the trick…

Social Security and Medicare are broke.  Baby boomers, like me, are getting old and will soon be asking for it.  Socialized medicine makes people die...Obama legally kills babies and now he can legally kill Grandmas!

Hitler did this.  He killed the weak, the sick, the old, and babies and races/religions he didn’t like.  Hitler also controlled the media.  (Where’s the public debate between scientists on “Climate Change/Global Warming?”)   Hitler had the VW bug invented as the state car. What will O’s nationalized car be? So… kill off the weak.  That’s the plan.  Tax the workers to death.  Erase the middle class.  Sounds like the evil governments we studied in high school long ago.  The evil governments were :  kings, oligarchies, facist, socialist, and communist.  Now it’s called the Obama Administration.

Obama is Hilter. Can this gal coin a catch phrase or what? The GOP is saved. Jackson 2012. Seriously.

Old-fashioned Values

We had a particularly bucolic 4th of July this year in Dallas. A flag-waving neighborhood parade. A fried chicken and watermelon meal with friends. And a church-sponsored sing along full of patriotic songs followed by barbeque and a pie tasting. It all felt so wholesome and small town America. As I sat in my creaky wooden pew watching a gregarious bearded priest lead octogenerian servicemen in George M. Cohan’s It’s a Grand Old Flag, I imagined that outside the narthex doors existed  a quaint, rural town, bustling with salt-of-earth types  chock full of small-town values and homespun homilies. At the barbeque after the musical entertainment, my wife and I shared a table with a group of other church visitors.  They were friendly, plain-spoken folk who shared their names, their hometown origins and their hot-enough-for-ya? pleasantries. Then, as I was returning from the parish pie-tasting, a portly man with a Clark Gable moustache  went off on those damn Democrats. Apparently, President Obama had spent the National Day of Prayer cosying up to homosexuals. Bad move, that. Homosexuaity, J.R. (that was his name, I can’t make this stuff up) informed the table, is the most vile, and perverted form of wickedness ever perpetrated by the Devil. I quietly ate my cherry pie, stared vacantly around the Tudor-inspired Episcopal chapel and listened to J.R. rant. Sure, I could have graciously concurred with J.R. that homosexual sex was a most wicked behavior generally decried in both Testaments and add that it is found side-by-side with those equally wicked heterosexual sins of adultery, lasciviousness, and fornication. I could have pointed out to my dear J.R. how a  good Republican like Mark Sanford had spent Father’s Day dittling his Argentine mistress, behavior uniformly condemned by Holy Writ. Equally Satanically-inspired and far more pervasive in our culture– and perhaps our own personal pasts–than homosexual buggery. I could have cited the Apostle Paul who said that the sexually immoral of both stripes shall not inherit the kingdom of God and its colloary “and such were some of you, but you have been washed.” I could have, but instead , I shook J.R.’s meaty hand and said it had been a pleasure meeting him. After all, had this really been a small town in America, everyone would be talking like J.R. about that damn  gay-loving Obama. I walked out the church’s doors, so happy to live in a big, diverse city. Proud to be an American, if not one of those “True” Americans with their old-fashioned values and their mainstream sins.

Caribou Barbie 2.0

I’ve figured it out. Sarah Palin’s resignation is starting to make sense. She is quitting to be the one thing for which she is qualified: a Barbie Doll. I mean that in the best possible way. Think of it. Libertarians and conservatives love Palin as a symbol. She never was really a public servant, a stateswoman or an ideological philospher, she was more of an action figure. They liked her personalized pro-life story. They liked her smaller government rhetoric. They liked her NRA Caribou Barbie fashion accessories and her rugged, Ken-doll hubby. All this and a lean, plasticized body that looks good in form-fitting couture. But pop off her head, and just like a Barbie doll, you can’t find a brain in that pretty plastic noggin. However, now with her newly found frontier plainsman moxie that cavalierly quits halfway through her first term as Governor of Alaska, she is the total libertarian package––a crowd-drawing, electable candidate who after they take the oath of office, then does the ultimate in anti-government governing. She quits.

Office of the Precedent

After two political failures and a bumpy ride with the American press, Dick Nixon famously said,”You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” Six years  later, he had a Pennsylvania avenue address and a tape recorder in his office. I don’t think this is the last we see of Sarah Palin. After all, the American voter is notoriously bad at judging character.

Sanford and sons

When asked why he was not stepping down as governor, Mark Sanford explained that as a father  it would be the wrong signal to send his children. Seriously, he said that. That’s right, kids.  Never be a quitter. Cheater, sure. But never a quitter.

You can’t have it all

Can a spunky,  hard-charging sparkplug of a woman with a happening bod and a designer wardrobe oversee the largest state in the union, fend off Russia spy planes, run for federal office, have a facile command of global politics, keep her daughters out of trouble and motivate the base at redmeat, fist-pumping Republican rallies?  No, she can’t. Alaskans, you can now have your state back.

Less is more

Peggy Noonan has a word of advice for the president: Do less.

Mr. Obama’s White House is, at the moment, like most new White Houses. Every administration wants to do great things. Or, rather, it wants greatness. It wants to break through on some great issue or issues and claim to be, as they used to say, consequential…It’s adult to see limits, it’s right and realistic.

That’s right. Obama should do less to fix this mess. While he’s at it, he can make government less intrusive. In other words, he can become a Republican. Thanks, Peggy. It’s always nice to get advice from the opposition.

Bork on Roe

Newsweek interviews Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan’s defeated Supreme Court appointee who many pro lifers thought could help end abortion by overturning Roe. He finds the concept absurd.

“I oppose abortion. But an amazing number of people thought that I would outlaw abortion. They didn’t understand that not only did I have no desire to do that, but I had no power to do it. If you overrule Roe v. Wade, abortion does not become illegal. State legislatures take on the subject. The abortion issue has produced divisions and bitterness in our politics that countries don’t have where abortion is decided by legislatures.”

Of course, it should be remembered that shortly before Roe was made the law of the land, the legislature in California had just liberalized its abortion laws. The governor at the time was Ronald Reagan. Ironic.

The Man in the Mirror

Only in America  could a little black boy grow up and become a gorgeous white woman. And we thought Barack Obama’s journey was improbable. RIP, laddy.

Yes, he can

JibJab has done it again.

Protecting Cheney from Conan

Dick Cheney has found a friend in the Obama Administration. Just as the current President decided to withold compromising photos of US torture, Obama is making sure the Cheney interview doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

In an afternoon U.S. District Court hearing in Washington, Judge Emmet Sullivan presided as Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Smith defended the government’s refusal to release the details of the Cheney interview. David Sobel, an attorney for the group suing for the documents, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, was there to argue in favor of disclosure. Here’s how it went:

Sullivan asked if President Barack Obama’s appointees stood by the Bush administration’s steadfast refusal to make the Cheney interview public, noting, “there’s a new administration.”

“This has been vetted by the leadership offices,” Smith said. “This is a department position.”

//

…“The government doesn’t want to have what’s in these documents end up on a late-night comedy show,” Sullivan said.

I guess a laugh riot might break out.

I demand a recount!

And I got it. I just hope for Ahmandinejad’s sake that Iran has an electoral college and a Supreme Court. This is soooo year 2000!

Iran’s Guardian Council has announced a recount of disputed votes from last week’s election as massive protests continued in the streets of Tehran. It’s not clear how extensive the recount will be or whether it could threaten to upset the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who flew to Russia on Tuesday.

A spokesman was quoted by state media saying the council was “ready to recount the disputed ballot boxes claimed by some candidates, in the presence of their representatives,” and, “It is possible that there may be some changes in the tally after the recount.”

It does not appear likely that Ahmadinejad will lose his job, though a recount seemed like a remote possibility 24 hours ago.

I’ll see your Ayatollah

And raise you. There’s another Ayatollah in town, and boy is he pissed:

In the name of God

People of Iran

These last days, we have witnessed the lively efforts of you brothers and sisters, old and  young alike, from any social category, for the 10th presidential elections.

Our youth, hoping to see their rightful will fulfilled, came on the scene and waited patiently. This was the greatest occasion for the government’s officials to bond with their people.

But unfortunately, they used it in the worst way possible. Declaring results that no one in their right mind can believe, and despite all the evidence of crafted results, and to counter people protestations, in front of the eyes of the same nation who carried the weight of a revolution and 8 years of war, in front of the eyes of local and foreign reporters, attacked the children of the people with astonishing violence. And now they are attempting a purge, arresting intellectuals, political opponents and Scientifics.

Now, based on my religious duties, I will remind you :

1- A legitimate state must respect all points of view. It may not oppress all critical views. I fear that this lead to the lost of people’s faith in Islam.

2- Given the current circumstances, I expect the government to take all measures to restore people’s confidence. Otherwise, as I have already said, a government not respecting people’s vote has no religious or political legitimacy.

3- I invite everyone, specially the youth, to continue reclaiming their dues in calm, and not let those who want to associate this movement with chaos succeed.

4- I ask the police and army personals not to “sell their religion”, and beware that receiving orders will not excuse them before god. Recognize the protesting youth as your children. Today censor and cutting telecommunication lines can not hide the truth.

I pray for the greatness of the Iranian people.

Obama’s Health Care Dilemma

We have seen the enemy and it is us. The New Republic explains why health care reform is unAmerican:

Two nations, the Netherlands and Switzerland, have health care systems that provide convenient, high-quality care to all citizens–for much less money than Americans pay now. And they do so exclusively through private insurance. If it were possible to re-create those systems here, the United States would be in good shape.

The problem is that it’s nearly impossible to re-create those systems, in which government regulation is far more aggressive than anything American policymakers are contemplating. Swiss insurers can’t even make profits from the basic benefits package; Dutch health care has heavy price controls. Both countries also have stronger traditions of social solidarity and corporate responsibility. The rules work, in part, because insurers feel duty-bound to follow them.

American insurers have no such tradition. On the contrary, the history of American health care is replete with examples of insurers–like all industries–trying to maximize their profits, often in ways that leave Americans without the financial protection or medical care that they need