I found out something interesting over the weekend.  From the Washington Times:

It turns out that Harry Reid using the ‘N’ word in reference to Obama’s dialect (or lack thereof) is actually a statement “[I]n the context of saying positive things about Senator Obama” — according to Tim Kaine, DNC Chair.

Um… O.K.

So as long as we are using the N word in a *positive* context… and you are a Democrat… you are cool.  Everybody forgives you.  The Media accepts your apology and moves on.  Grace is extended to you and explanations of how you “really meant to say it in a positive context” are proffered from Liberal leadership.  If, on the other hand, you are Trent Lott, and you tell an old congressman that you are proud of him for his accomplishments… you are unquestionably a racist…  no apologies or excuses could possibly suffice.

Harry Reid should resign… Immediately.

I couldn’t have said it better myself:

Notice that Washington is pictured as the heart of nation, where tired, oxygen-depleted blood is replenished and returned to the hinterland. Its a perfect illustration of the worldview of the Left.

via The Beating Heart of America – Mark Krikorian – The Corner on National Review Online.

Wow… Kudos to Camille Pagilla.  This is some of the most intelligent Democrat analysis in recent memory.  I’m still stunned… I can’t believe I’m reading this!

By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis.

Why did it take so long for Democrats to realize that this year’s tea party and town hall uprisings were a genuine barometer of widespread public discontent and not simply a staged scenario by kooks and conspirators? First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web — both of which Democrat-sponsored proposals have threatened to stifle, in defiance of freedom of speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights. I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy — I never saw a single minute of any of it. It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills).  Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy…

How has “liberty” become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin’s book “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto,” which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.)…

But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it’s invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote “critical thinking,” which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms (“racism, sexism, homophobia”) when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it’s positively pickled.

WOW.  Read the whole thing @ Salon .

Just so you know how comfortable Democrats are with power…

For those who missed it (and Andy’s post doesn’t quite convey the whole story of the farrago), Rep Mike Pence started the debate yesterday morning by pointing out that the House leadership had dropped a 300-page amendment to the already 1200-ish page Waxman-Markey energy tax bill at 3:09 in the morning.  Clearly, debate started before anyone had had a chance to read it properly, but the House leadership just didn’t care.  Then, mid-afternoon, Reps Louie Goehmert (who did a splendid job all round) and Energy & Commerce Ranking Member Joe Barton (who clearly couldn’t believe what was going on) raised a series of Parliamentary Inquiries as to whether there was a copy of the amended bill anywhere in the House for members to read.  Chairman Markey was dismissive, saying there was a copy on the wesbite, which, Rep Barton pointed out, was not much help to members on the floor of the House actually, you know, debating the bill.  Eventually the Chair, who was very fair throughout the afternoon, admitted that the Clerk was in the process of integrating the amendment into the hard copy in the House.  So for most of the day the House was debating a bill that didn’t actually physically exist, never mind having had a chance to read, digest and consider it.

If Congressmen were kept to the same standards of lawyers, they would be guilty of malpractice.

via Just Read The Bill, Already – The Corner

This guy understands Obama.  From The Nation:

The truth is that Barack Obama has a penchant for these narratives and yet an inclination to rise above them. Two grand but antithetical stories about the same problem, awaiting him and his Olympian skill for the discovery of “common ground”: That is Obama’s favorite script. He regards himself as a kind of unprecedented referee between histories and philosophies. He likes to think that he can see what others cannot see and that, therefore, they must come to him if they wish to live in peace and with meaning. He did this with race in the Philadelphia speech, articulating what blacks see from their end of the periscope and what whites see from theirs. (Until, that is, he had to dump his minister from the campaign truck as a matter of survival. “Common ground” is sometimes not discovered so much as invented, or imposed.) A man of not especially discriminate empathy, he sees himself in the Whitmanesque sense of containing multitudes.

In addressing American intelligence and security professionals at the National Archives, the president again aimed at bridging differences by showing that apparent contradictions are not contradictions at all and that everything will go together, if only for as long as he is speaking. National security that never compromises national values? No problem. National values that guarantee national security? Say it and it will be done. Yes, we have values that elevate and restrict us at once, the ideal of free men and women that procedurally protects also the guilty and the wicked–and never mind that, absent energetic domestic and international defenses, these principles would be outmaneuvered and outclassed on both fronts. And again at Notre Dame, the same above-it-all structure of rhetorical conciliation was applied by Obama to the subject of abortion. “Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words.” Nice enough. But the debate on abortion will not be so tidily retired. All of this is rising above but not really reconciling.

via Narrative Dissonance.

Here’s a little gem I found on Yahoo News:

Describing the $787 billion stimulus package, President Obama evokes the 1950s construction of the interstate system, conjuring images of highways, bridges, and orange cones…

But as projects are chosen, it’s becoming clear that the program may amount to little more than an infrastructure face-lift. Owing to the need for speed and to institutional obstacles, most stimulus transportation projects are small and localized. “Here and there, people will notice things,” says Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at the libertarian Reason Foundation. He cites repaired potholes and new streetlights. “But I don’t think the country as a whole will say, ‘Wow, transportation is so much better,’ ” Poole says…

An even bigger problem, experts say, is how that funding is doled out. Decisions are often politicized and are rarely coordinated between levels of government. Transportation dollars are traditionally spread thinly, “like peanut butter,” says Robert Puentes, senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s metropolitan policy program. “We don’t do cost-benefit analysis in this country.”

America may not have a clear vision for its transportation system, but infrastructure advocates, not to mention Americans who have ever sat in stalled traffic or bumped over a pothole, hope that will change.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that last sentence was a brilliant piece of literary sarcasm.  Unfortunately, that bit of humor was probably lost on the author.

via Obama’s Stimulus Projects Won’t Amount to Major Infrastructure Overhaul – Yahoo! News.

One of the fundamental economic and monetary protections we have in this country is in the area of secured, prioritized loans.  In fact, we have an entire area of law devoted to secured interests in property and how these interests take priority in bankruptcy proceedings.  This amounts to the RULE OF LAW.  THESE RULE PROTECT INDIVIDUALS… THESE RULES ARE SET IN STONE… ARTICLE 9 OF THE UCC… at least, they were, before Obama started dictating who the auto industry’s winners and loosers were going to be.

Recently, a number of Republican lawmakers have gotten concerned about the way in which the rule of law is being ignored and subverted by the Obama administration… and rightly so.   For those of you who care about being protected from the power of the federal government… who care about the rule of law… you should also take note of what is happening:

WASHINGTON, May 22 (Reuters) – Four U.S. Republican lawmakers have complained to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that a plan to restructure automaker General Motors Corp (GM.N) subverts the rights of bondholders, according to a letter from the lawmakers obtained by Reuters on Friday

A proposed restructuring favors the claims of the United Auto Workers union “over the rights and claims of the company’s diverse group of bondholders, who collectively hold $7 billion more in General Motors debt than the UAW’s health trust and are equal members of the creditor class,” the lawmakers said.

“Bondholders must have a seat at the table during negotiations in how the company would be restructured,” said the letter to Geithner from Representatives Jeb Hensarling, Eric Cantor, Mike Pence and Pete Sessions.

“We are extremely concerned that in the name of restructuring General Motors, the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry … has begun waging what some believe amounts to a war on capital: contractual rights of investors are being trampled by the government under the rationale of ‘extraordinary circumstances,’” the lawmakers wrote.

Kudos to Jeb Hensarling, Eric Cantor, Mike Pence and Pete Sessions.  Way to stand up for those being trampled by the Obama administration.

via US House Republicans back GM bondholders in talks | Reuters.

For a rather definitive piece of analysis on the fundamental problem with the Republican party (which simultaneously happens to really suck – follow the link for the joke), you need to look no further than “The Other McCain’s” analysis in Hot Air.  Here are just a few snippets to wet your appetite.  I think he’s DEAD ON.

Like the conservative grassroots of the GOP, I’m disrespected and abused because all the “influential” and “respectable” Republicans are quite naturally embarrassed to be associated with me. Ignorant backwood hillbillies like me, we never get invited to the White House Correspondents Dinner, never get promoted to the front page, because everybody knows that we’d show up barefoot in bib overalls asking to see the “cee-ment pond.” Je suis un Americain Ordinaire…

You see, the grassroots conservative might have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. He remembers very clearly hearing this same kind of claptrap before, from the same kind of “centrist” wienerheads who always seem to gravitate toward the top of the GOP prestige pyramid. They’re not much good in a fight, these elitists, because they are ambitious cowards…

You perceive, therefore, why the orthodoxy of the elite is sacrosanct, while the fundamental beliefs of the average Republican in Temecula or Tupelo almost never find a defender in the political class or elsewhere in the elite. For what is true of the politician is true also of the journalist, the professor, the beauty who hopes to become an actress or model. To identify yourself with the Ordinary American – plain-spoken rustic types like Joe the Plumber and Sarah the Hockey Mom – is to abandon any prospect of being accepted by the arbiters of respectability.

This is not true of a voluntary organization like a political movement. The grassroots political activist is not motivated by desire for material reward, but by the expectation that the movement will advance his personal ideals. When political leadership becomes tone-deaf, when decisions that contradict the ideals of the movement are made by a consensus of the leadership cadre, without grassroots approval, and then implemented over the objections of the grassroots — and when those decisions lead to repeated electoral defeat for the movement — then disintegration comes swiftly.

As Someone once said… READ THE WHOLE THING

You gotta love the opener of is AP article.

WASHINGTON – “That wasn’t me,” President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One. It actually was him — and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years — who shaped a budget so out of balance.

And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plan that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still…

via FACT CHECK: Obama disowns deficit he helped shape.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

I thought this was an interesting article discussing the recently-released interrogation memos by the Obama administration.  I personally think it was a mistake to release ANY of the memos; broadcasting to our enemies the limits of our interrogation tactics has no value other than as a political weapon Obama is indiscriminately using against the previous administration.  Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), Obama is only releasing the side of the story he wants us to hear… and is withholding from us just how successful these interrogation tactics were in protecting American lives:

In releasing highly classified documents on the CIA interrogation program last week, President Obama declared that the techniques used to question captured terrorists “did not make us safer.” This is patently false.

Consider the Justice Department memo of May 30, 2005. It notes that “the CIA believes ‘the intelligence acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al Qaeda has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since 11 September 2001.’ …

The memo continues: “Before the CIA used enhanced techniques . . . KSM resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, ‘Soon you will find out.’ ” Once the techniques were applied, “interrogations have led to specific, actionable intelligence, as well as a general increase in the amount of intelligence regarding al Qaeda and its affiliates.”

Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques “led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the ‘Second Wave,’ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.” KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast…

The memo notes that “[i]interrogations of [Abu] Zubaydah — again, once enhanced techniques were employed — furnished detailed information regarding al Qaeda’s ‘organizational structure, key operatives, and modus operandi’ and identified KSM as the mastermind of the September 11 attacks.”…

But just as the memo begins to describe previously undisclosed details of what enhanced interrogations achieved, the page is almost entirely blacked out. The Obama administration released pages of unreacted classified information on the techniques used to question captured terrorist leaders but pulled out its black marker when it came to the details of what those interrogations achieved.

Yet there is more information confirming the program’s effectiveness. The Office of Legal Counsel memo states “we discuss only a small fraction of the important intelligence CIA interrogators have obtained from KSM” and notes that “intelligence derived from CIA detainees has resulted in more than 6,000 intelligence reports and, in 2004, accounted for approximately half of the [Counterterrorism Center's] reporting on al Qaeda.” The memos refer to other classified documents — including an “Effectiveness Memo” and an “IG Report,” which explain how “the use of enhanced techniques in the interrogations of KSM, Zubaydah and others . . . has yielded critical information.“

And I love this closing thought:

Why didn’t Obama officials release this information…? Because they know that if the public could see the details of the techniques side by side with evidence that the program saved American lives, the vast majority would support continuing it.

Wow.  Tough talk… but I like it.

Take something as small as Obama’s need for a word-for-word script, just to answer questions at press conferences. His teleprompter dependency is simply unprecedented. Any Republican president would be laughed out of the room with that kind of hand-holding from Axelrod, or Bill Ayers, or Michelle, or whoever is dictating the words behind the scenes. No wonder Obama is considered eloquent. Like a talking head on TV he constantly needs his writers to feed him the words, so he can pay total attention to his acting style. But even his acting is degenerating in front of our eyes: Obama is turning Obombastama. You can tell from the tone of hysteria creeping into his operatic baritone. Maybe they need to switch that reverb circuit back on? That should impress all the lickspittles of the White House press.

via American Thinker: Obama’s essence.

According to Obama’s own standards… Obama is out of touch.

WASHINGTON – The economy is fundamentally sound despite the temporary “mess” it’s in, the White House said Sunday in the kind of upbeat assessment that Barack Obama had mocked as a presidential candidate.

What’s worse is that the dow is roughly 2000 points lower NOW than when McCain said the same thing 4 months ago.  I wonder how many of McCain’s critics will be equally critical of Obama for essentially identical statements.

Just kidding.  Of course they won’t.

via White House says economy is sound despite ‘mess’.