West Wing / Bartlett vs Reality / Obama: It ain't Easy being Prez

Good news... You can get the complete series set on Std DVD for $150.

Amazon - The West Wing: The Complete Series Collection (2006)

 Bad News..  Watching in real time and comparing to the Bush administration, Lefties came up with unreasonable expectations of what a 'Progressive Administration' might look like.

If you're sick of the current political environment, and wish to make a trip to the Alternative Earth, where most is goodness and light in a Progressive Democrat administration.. this is the way to go.
On the other hand, you may wish to send that $150 to President Obama's campaign, instead.
After all.. you've already sent the wedding gifts, birthday money and the $20 instead of having 'Pizza Night'.
By the way..can someone who watched every episode point out where the major media cleared their stories with the White House press office? I dont remember that.

And,  while you think about West Wing, how about considering how the series would have treated the Benghazi attack.
Would THEY have blamed it on some non-starter demonstration about a youtube crap video?
Really? And how stupid would they have looked, especially when the people of Libya are almost all on 'our side'?
Then.. there's the pathetic State Dept. apology video

Which seems the more professional?  Obamaville or West Wing.

Yep.. what most of us knew all along. It aint easy being Pres.

They Told Us 'If you vote for John McCain'....

.. then Dubya's fascist warrant-less snooping will only increase.  Well, I did and it has.
- via Instapundit

Slate: 

How Many Anarchists and "Animal Conservationists" Are the Feds Spying On?

What do anarchists, animal conservationists, and military deserters have in common? They were all spied on by federal law enforcement agencies between 2010 and 2011, according to newly released government documents.

...

The documents show that the use of this sort of surveillance by federal law enforcement agencies, which does not require a search warrant, has rapidly increased in recent years. Between 2009 and 2011 alone, the number of orders for pen and trap authorizations increased by 60 percent—from 23,535 in 2009 to 37,616 in 2011. The increase is even more striking when compared with older figures. Between 2001 and 2011, for instance, there was a sixfold increase—from 5,683 original orders recorded in 2001 to the 37,616 in 2011. What that means is that more people were subjected to pen register and trap and trace surveillance in the past two years than in the entire previous decade, as ACLU’s Naomi Gilens has pointed out.

 

 

Go figger!

 

Why are Scott Brown and his supporters such meanies!

Surely the charges about Warren's claimed indian heritage and even her disputed law practice are small potatos to the issues.

Yep... they are.  It's ridiculous. And aren't Republicans supposed to follow a higher road?

Well.. it's become apparent that doesnt work real well.  A lot of us knew that in 08.. why we really couldnt get excited over McCain who is willing to play the goat to any democrat who puts him in that position. Like Russ Feingold who suckered McCain into a campaign finance bill that did the exact opposite of what McCain thought it did.

So now some candidates are playing it smart and going Alinsky on the folks who thought they had a lock on that playbook.  Well the intellectual property copyright has expired and now we're using it too.

Identify-Isolate-Ridicule.  Especially easy when the victim doesnt expect it.

If you Dems dont like it.. tough nuggies!

____________________________________________

Speaking of Isolate and Ridicule.. Celebrity Dumbass Quote of the Week

“Maybe he’d rather talk to me than Netanyahu. Ever think of that?” 

- Joy Behar of The View tweeting on criticism that Obama ducked talks with world leaders but always has time for talk shows

I mean.. is there currently any better example of not getting the plot?  That's exactly the point.
Compare and Contrast Elisabeth Hasselbeck

Obamas 'View' Interview: President Brushes Off Elisabeth Hasselbeck's Tough Question (VIDEO)

What's behind Obama's China tire dumping charges against Romney.

First, let me say I'm a car guy. I not only fix my own cars, I research what parts /mfrs are best in quality and reliability.
Chinese auto parts,  especially tires, are crap.  But they are cheap and low income people can keep their cars going much cheaper than in the past.

However.. Simpleton campaign charges piss me off. {Sorry but I am not going to mince words}. It makes me mad when politicians treat you like you are stupid. You aren't REALLY stupid, are you?

The most sensitive area of foreign policy is trade. The most idiotic response to trade imbalance is to slap tariffs on imports, willy-nilly.  And this is a perfect example of Obama doing the basically right thing, then making charges against Romney because Mitt advised caution.  Mitt remembers when Dubya tried to help out the US steel industry when Europe was dumping product and it didn't work.

China Trade Complaint Puts Auto Industry at Center of Dispute – and US Election Battle

Romney is a businessman. Obama is a community organizer and knows how to rouse the Rabble and diddly poop about international trade. His advisors on same are academic and you can bet your booty they are looking at union support first and economic health last.
Note: The writer says Bain Capital manages hedge funds. Not ALL they do.. they rescue companies in trouble and try to make them profitable. If that means production in China.. so be it.
The bottom line is that, if one of those companies go under, the products they make, if any, are probably going to be sourced to China anyway.  And when that happens, many or most of those who work at, or have retired from, those businesses are out of luck.  Of course we know that already dont we.. Don't we?  

Well that's what Obama says Mitt WANTS to do when Bain buys into a failing company on its last legs. Send jobs to China. Does that make sense or is someone treating you like an idiot?

Finally..

I am assuming you all are going to read the link and find for yourself what China's response to the tire dump penalty was. Cuz I DONT think you are stupid enough to just go by what I said.

And another thing.. if we had real journalism anymore I wouldnt have had to write this. For that matter if academia did their job. Back in the day.. we learned this stuff in high school and first year of college. 

WaPo: The American Dream is Dead

The American Dream’s empty promise

 It’s time to retire the American Dream — or at least give it a long vacation. We ought to drop it from our national conversation. This would be a hardship for politicians and pundits, who use “the American Dream” as a rhetorical workhorse embodying goals embraced by almost all Americans.

This is just more 'lowered expectations' propaganda from the Main-Stream media.  Any of you who read this and think you learned something ought to be ashamed. I read it. I can agree ONLY with the line you see below. 

 The American Dream has become so expansive in its meaning that it stifles honest debate and harms some of the very people it is intended to help.

Because the 'educated informed' writer then takes it on himself to define the dream. And when the concept came about.. and he's wrong.
Those of us who were educated, rather than indoctrinated, {and it only took high school to know this} realize the concept was borne in the eyes of Alexis de Tocqueville and chronicled in his "Democracy in America".
Of course back then, government was sorta weak and out of the way of anyone really seeking to achieve something on their own, so I suppose it doesnt count in Samuelson's eyes. He's talking about 'Julia' and 'Did you build that'

If you look closely, he conflates the meaning with group associations.  Home-owners, Students, I'm sure he thinks even races and nationalities.
In fact, he goes overboard to remove home owners from the list of achievable in the American Dream.  He even names WHY.. without pointing to the real problem. Government interference in achieving that dream.  The end result being that many who WOULD have achieved it lost it because of good intentions in the housing market.
To be blunt.. lots of low income black Americans would now have a house with the mortgage paid off if not for that.

What I recall is that de Tocqueville pointed out that group associations hindered personal achievement LESS in the new world than the old.  You could neither count on your group identity for success.. or blame it solely for your failure.
Tell me this ... did you really achieve your American Dream by joining a union?  Or was it because of what you did and where you worked?

I'll have to concede this: Obama followed the American Dream but he didn't make it on his own.
But people with real talent will always be able to achieve their dreams. Until the government totally assumes the role of vocational placement.

And btw: MAYBE I immediately thought of de Toqueville because I dropped out of college and missed being indoctrinated in the new Progressive-Think. Of course I picked up the details from 'Democracy in America" on my own.. reading at home. 

Thank you Mom!!!

Behold the NYT MetroLuddite! How to use real fact to provoke outrage among the Masses.

NYT Section A1: Data Centers Waste Vast Amounts of Energy 

While I was reading this I was thinking.. "Why you Patronizing Condescending Prick!" Then I realized I wasn't the target audience because I could compare and contrast the technical points.

I dare this clown to invite Glenn Reynolds - Law Professor to debate the details on this. As pointed out on his site..

"..just wait ’til the NYT discovers the amount of pollution printing opinions and information on a wood byproduct and delivering it via a fleet of trucks generates!"

Increasingly apparent to anyone who bothers to think and research:
All the News thats fit to line your birdcage.

Stupid Human Tricks: Dressing to Menace and Sue

I dont keep a firearm let alone carry one.   I'm for concealed and even open carry by responsible people. 
I'm against anyone acting like this guy.. who seemed to be dressing for effect.  Wearing camouflage gear, strapped an ak-47 with sawed off stock and full clip then walking through a state park.  
He apparently wants to challenge several laws through the one testing act.

Inviting A “Stop and Frisk” By Openly Carrying an AK-47 Pistol with a Thirty Round Clip In a Public Park: An Unusual Fourth and Second Amendment Case

 How to unite the Brady freaks and NRA, I guess.  The guy might claim  he's doing a good thing...  I dont think he is.  It's against all common sense.  I can't see how it could benefit anyone but the anti-gun people.

It's like those school kids who dressed and acted "Gangsta" at bus stops then got upset and cried racist when Grandma Whitebread was afraid of them.
In my opinion the guy should be brought up on public menacing and his license revoked.
Problem being.. how to prove that.

The Mess Obama Inherited was Clinton Built

DailyBeast: The Housing Bubble? Clinton Helped Build That

CRA 1999 

...the decision to leave derivative trading unregulated, the decision to allow deposit-taking institutions to engage in proprietary trading, the pressure on banks to relax mortgage lending standards, the decision to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to grow enormously large thanks to the implicit subsidy of the government guarantee of their bonds and borrowing.

Clinton later acknowledged it was a bad deal. Republicans went along. In fact GOP Sens from Texas, Phil Gramm, shared culpability in CRA 99.
 Dubya tried to address it but was told to shut up and go away.. by...
You guessed it.. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd... and, I'd forgotten, Maxine Waters.

Added: The Libs on DailyBeast are going ballistic on this.  But whatever the take.. Blame it all on Phil Gramm, I dont care; the core is that you never saw {esp on radio commercials} 110% financing on no money down and relaxed lending standards until CRA 1999.
I even blame Dubya.. he should have made a big deal of it.

Post Labor Day.. consider this.

In my Labor Day post I said:
There are no 'low jobs'

The king of that premise, Mike Rowe, has expanded on that on his site:
mikeroweWORKS
It's a must read... unless you actually think that the union bosses speak for the everyday working guy.  But it's not anti-union or management... it's about us appreciating the folks who do what needs done and using that as a leg up instead of sitting in some room listening to a lecture.
Every speech we hear, it's about 'raising productivity' through higher education. 'Send more kids to college'! 'Job Training'
To do WHAT?  Engineering and Sciences, sure.  Liberal Arts?  Gimme a break.
If you dont read the blogs I do, then you still know about all the grads that cant find work.
What you probably DONT know, when you ignore all but lefty sites, is that Academia is about to implode, throwing thousands of liberal arts and administration drones into the unemployed ranks. It will not happen overnight but it will happen.
Seth Godin
Mark Cuban
'Net Academia is about to take off big time and the smart Universities are getting ahead of the curve. Thing is though.. how many Poli-Sci majors do we need? I say we already have way too many but some think it's the perfect panacea.. let em work in the government.
And you know exactly what they'll do there. Make and enforce EPA / OSHA / HHS policy.

Happy Labor Day..And Why we in NA Do Not Celebrate it May 1st

There are no 'low jobs'
I know, I've done just about all of the job categories, other than fast food, and I appreciate those people, too.

Saturday I dealt with a sewage backup in an Apt house. If it had been an easy case, I would have done it myself.
I called in a Professional and assisted him.
He was easy to get along with, proud of his skills and doing a job right. And I cleaned up the sewage mess so he didn't have to.

There are no LOW JOBS! Only low class people, and I've found those types to be distributed widely over education, ethnic and income strata. 
The job should never define the person.
Because in a free society there is no work that can't be used as a lever for self-betterment.  And that happens by making sure you do that job right and taking pride in your work.  When your peers chide you for working too hard, you're not in the wrong job, you've got the wrong friends.  I have experience in a couple unions where I learned that.
So who is it defines the person by their job.. take a guess. They celebrate on MayDay.

Wiki: International Worker's Day

Carping Tunnel Syndrome

I gotta get an attitude adjustment!
All I've been posting on FB the last week or so is negative stuff.  Even looking at this record the only views that aren't totally negative are making fun of idiots, whatever the stripe. And of course, that offends some in itself.

I've been looking for good news.. HONEST!  But when I typed into the google box 'only good news' the top hit was a site which last post was mid-August!!!
And there should always be something on the Yahoo home page.. and was for a few hours about a 19 year old rookie who homered in his first major league at bat.

And then Michael Clarke Duncan dying at 54 broke that.

Meanwhile, on FB, a friend posts:

So, does anyone out there have anything to say that isn't politics or religion-related? I vote and I'm spiritual...both very personal and private. I may have to take a FB hiatus until Thanksgiving. Just saying'.....

Oh well.. take the light stuff where you can get it.

Like how's about that 'Empty Chair Meme'?

Today was National Empty Chair Day!  Why it seems like just last Thursday the elite beltway news commissariat were agog at the confused and disoriented Clint's senile diatribe.  And how no one could possible get a message from that.  Least of all those whitebread hicks on the convention floor, or the goobers at home watching their 'Make My Day' hero.

Guardian: 
The 82-year-old's rambling gravel-voiced conversation with an empty chair – supposedly supporting an invisible Barack Obama – proved a bizarre and confusing warm-up act for Romney.
"Mr President, how do you handle promises that you have made when you were running for election, and how do you handle them? I mean, what do you say to people?" he asked. He berated Obama for not learning from the Russian experience in invading Afghanistan. It was George W Bush who ordered US troops into the country.

Lefty twit!!  Read the Transcript! He was talking about ramping it up in Afghanistan.. Bush left it in a holding situation because you simply cannot win the peace there. That's what the Russian reference is about.

And of course it was racist  ..

According to Mike Elk, labor journalist for In These Times magazine, Clint Eastwood's empty chair routine at the GOP convention was racist, Twitchy reported Friday.
"Eastwood chair rant was RACIST, white man putting dirty words into mouth of black man like a puppet, (sic)" he tweeted.

 Well.. if it was racist, rambling dissonant and confusing the Dems wouldn't have leapt onto the idea, would they?
Note.. Clint didnt abuse the chair did he?  But a union thug just cant help it.. it is who he is.

And this poor recent journo grad got it WAY wrong {That's Juli w/o the 'e' - cute!}

It’s possible Eastwood, confused and bored, just wandered into the Tampa Bay Times Forum, seemed like he had a lot of issues to work out with a certain chair, and the R.N.C. simply offered him its stage upon which to do so. Or was it the chair’s idea? Did Chair Eastwood convince Clint to head down to Florida on some sort of rusty moped? We might never know, but what we do know is this: 

There are already two (2) Twitter accounts honoring Eastwood’s remarks: Clint’s Empty Chair and Invisible Obama. Their half-life was probably this morning, but they’re worth a look, if not a follow.)

Really.. I should be able to laugh at cluelessness like  that.  But even psyching myself into laughing at Chris Matthews doesnt last.  I find it an affront that anyone listens to someone projecting his inverted racism onto others.

Say it to the Chair - DNC 2012's Counter to Eastwood will be??

Like, surely, 95% of everyone watching .. my initial reaction to Clint's soliloquy was ..
"What the.....!!!"
First I had to get over the mixmaster hair do.  Then I had to recall "Tonight Show" type Eastwood guestings.. he is not a good guest when it comes down to smooth repartee...

Then I realized this was all him.. there was no script, he was winging it.  Then the chair.

And then I got it... "Oh.. this is Eastwood doing 'Performance Art!'" a sort of SNL type skit. A guy to guy.. or boss to employee exit interview.
Where the 'boss' is us.  Slightly dithered. Reluctant to shame but pointedly showing failure to perform. 
All in Eastwood's personna of course.

"You meant well, you tried, it didn't work.. we're moving on."

I missed a couple delicious touches.. like one blogger pointed out Eastwood didnt use a teleprompter but the chair had one.
And HuffPo had a 'Who said it' quiz, between Eastwood and Grandpa Simpson.. that is FUNNY!
 And Forbes asks: "Who's Responsible for this Fiasco?"
meaning "disruption of the smooth message delivery for the GOP "

The problem with that idea is.. I GOT the message.. and so did a lot of other people. That's why the blogs arent full of quotes from confused delegates and convention goers.
Sure it broke the scenario and scripting but I listened and it conveyed how I think.

So.. what can we look for in way of counteraction from DNC?  I assume it might be a break from what's promising to be a Celebration of Abortion.. aka Women's Rights.

And it should be Entertainment Celebs doing it. Probably will be chairs involved.. hopefully without a podium {That distracted from Eastwood's Performance Art}

Here's what I would like to see:
Four Chairs...In them are
Larry David
Ed Begley Jr
Rosanne Barr
Samuel L Jackson

Alternates:
Perez Hilton
Danny Glover
Ellen Barkin

Note I left out easy fodder like Charlie Sheen.  And Oprah

But someone with half a brain or more will probably drag out Ellen DeGeneres. 
That would be brilliant.  Everyone loves Ellen D.
Because she does what people want to see.. she doesnt insist she is an expert on everything.  Or that people should think how she thinks.
Which is probably why that wont happen.

UPDATE:  But a State Labor leader used it... He lectured Chair Eastwood in front of a state delegation.  Then he kicked Chair off the stage.
Is that any way to treat a Hollywood Icon?

Barbed Humor: How the midwest will be Won

WSJ: Healthy Ridicule 

Of course the Left doesn't see it that way 

But they understand this..

The GOP Goes Alinsky on Obama

And it's driving them crazy.  In some cases, maybe literally. 

But let's leave Chris Matthews, and his racial dog whistles heard from his near all white enclave, out of it.

 Here's a gentle dig from Mitt's speech:

 President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet…My promise is to help you and your family.

To which an apparent lunatic NYT expert responded:

Seriously, Romney's speech esp troubled me by mocking rising seas/climate change. The dismissiveness was appalling.

The fact the seas ARE NOT RISING, and the case for CO2 caused climate change being weaker than ever, aside..  Just how the hell did Kristof get from point A to Point B?!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, on that and other dissonant correlations, we will rest our case.