Category Archives: Uncategorized

Air Force One Over New York

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Quite any number of bloggers and pundits have weighed-in regarding the recent $390k AF1 photos taken above the Statue of Liberty.

None of them, that I’ve seen, have commented on the released photo itself — which is largely an abortion on toast.
As you can see (click on each image for a much larger result), this photograph appears to obviously have been taken inside another aircraft and through an aircraft window. The shot is therefore cheapened markedly.

Do you not see the reflection in the upper-right portion of the photo which clearly delineates a darker aspect on the right, a lighter aspect on the left?
And do you not see a darker aspect on the lower right portion of the photo? As though — for example — the photo were taken through another aircraft window?

Above is the original photo. Beneath that is a photo that I lightly PhotoShopped in order to make it slightly more palatable.
And the White House couldn’t do this?

Incompetents in coordination, incompetents in photography. Any of you Obama bastards ever hear of the Rule Of Thirds?
BZ
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Considered: Taxing Your Health Benefits

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Demorats consider this is one way to fund ObamaKare:

The idea of taxing employee health-care benefits to raise money for an overhaul of the health system is gaining strength in Congress, although it drew criticism from Barack Obama when he was campaigning for president.

Experts lined up Tuesday before the Senate Finance Committee and said it is one of the best ways to pay for a health-care overhaul. Many top Democrats support the concept.

But here is the reality:

Americans will say to themselves silently or publicly:

“Screw this. If you tax me then I’m going to ensure I get my money’s worth.”

Which means:

Health care visits for their own sake — going up.

And with more persons entered into the system to make a point or otherwise: unable to handle.

You want federal Health Care? You want ObamaKare?

Then you’ll get the courtesty, consideration, rationality, proportion, logic, efficiency and provision of your local DMV. Or your local VA hospital.

Just ask a couple of soldiers awaiting consultation.

BZ

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Dick Morris: A Lone Voice

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. . . in the Republican wilderness:

Gen. Colin Powell is wrong to say that the Republican Party must move to the center: Now is not the time to try for triangulation.

This is a time for the party to stand firm on its principles until this nation again comes around to the GOP’s way of thinking. This process will be driven by the consequences of President Obama’s program.

The challenge brought by Obama is no longer just theoretical: He means to pass the ultimate leftist agenda and has the votes to do so.

As a result, our nation will be unrecognizable well before the 2010 elections. Business will march to a beat drummed in Washington. The top producers will be hounded by confiscatory taxation. A majority will pay nothing or receive government welfare. Our health-care system will be destroyed. Illegal immigrants will be well on their way to citizenship.

Obama’s brave new world will be the subject of the 2010 elections. We believe that his Congress will be swept from power as a result.

We think that inflation will join a lingering recession — giving us recess-flation — and that high unemployment will continue. Voters will recognize the damage to their health care as bureaucrats weigh in to prevent them from getting the care they need. Our security and defense failures may well have cost us Pakistan, and the nightmare of a nuclear-armed terrorist state may have already come true (even before Iran).

All America will be watching the Obama fallout, and Republicans must be seen as a clear alternative — a strong voice for reversal of the harm the president will have inflicted — if they are to benefit from this catastrophe.

If the GOP is seen as a moderate force, a party just looking to split the difference, voters will cynically conclude that there is no distinction between the parties.

There is a season for triangulation and a season for confrontation. When America faces a new challenge — such as what the financial crisis now poses — we look to the left and right for new answers. We want the debate to rage. Those who seek to paper over are ignored. Such was the fate of the first President Bush in 1992 and of Sen. John McCain in 2008.

But once the debate has raged and the alternatives have been fleshed out, voters want a consensus, a Hegelian synthesis, on how to move in a new direction. They want to extract the best from each alternative and combine them. This is triangulation (a term coined by Dick Morris).

To ignore the demand for synthesis and insist on continuing the debate is to suffer the fate of Sen. Bob Dole in 1996 and Sen. John Kerry in 2004.

This process — polarization, debate, synthesis and action — is how America has always moved ahead. We are not Japan; we use the debate to see the options. And we are not Italy or France; we come to conclusions and act upon them, eventually leaving the debate far behind.

Now another great debate has been born. The thesis is democratic socialism. The antithesis is free-market capitalism.

The Obama Democrats have posed the challenge. It’s up to the Republicans to fight along these lines. Compromise is not an option, yet.

At some point, the synthesis will set in. But now is the time for clear alternatives and sharp disagreement. Only later can we hope to extract America from the leftist clutches into which it has fallen.

So what do we have? What voices in the proverbial wilderness? It seems that two voices have predominantly been heard and read recently: Dick Morris and Dick Cheney.

When the Left skewers Dick Cheney and he’s far out of power, I know he must be doing something correctly. And Dick Morris states what many of us believe in our core: don’t give up.

In fact, react in a polar opposite fashion to “tenting.”

Make clear definitions. Stick to our Conservative guns. If exclusion occurs then so be it. Damn. I’m almost pulling on the flap of the Texas Fred tent. But I’m not yet quite ready to completely concede the GOP. I’m still inclined to continue the fight.

Because, I posit: morals and ethics and common sense doesn’t change year-to-year and doesn’t bend to the prevailing prairie winds. Right is right — now, in the past, and in the future.

Some things really are Constants.

BZ
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Why Conservatives Will Never Win:

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Jim Knapp, a writer from The Sacramento Citizen, has written an article first appearing in The Sacramento Insider, entitled “Why Conservatives Will Never Win.”

In this article he writes, in part:

Conservatives will never win because they can’t organize, it’s that simple. While they claim to be the “silent majority,” they are silent for a good reason; they are unable to speak with a unified voice, or for a common cause. They ramble on about taxes, big government and social programs, yet nothing will change because they simply can’t organize, and much of their leadership cannot be honest with the public.

Take the Tea Party “movement,” it evolved (only via heavy marketing by FOX news, despite vehement denials) in response to the largest political shift in American history, so they had their protests, FOX news doubled their ratings, then, nothing…zero…nada…

Republicans surely can’t help conservatives; The national & state GOP have divined that the Party needs to shift further to the Left to compete with Democrats. The California GOP recently provided the necessary votes for the largest tax increase in the state’s history. Our “Republican” Governor has outspent his predecessor, the disgraced & recalled tax-and-spend-liberal Gray Davis, by some 45%!

The GOP appears to be imploding, citizens are leaving the party in droves, even former GOP campaign superstar Joe the Plumber. Nationwide, less than 24% are now registered as Republicans. For the first time in history, those registered as Independents outnumber those registered as Republican or Democrat. Independents, America’s largest registered group, have no party representation, and besides the disorganized TP’ers, there is no third party remotely on the horizon. So where does that leave the average conservative? Out in the cold, without a political party, our wallets being fleeced, our childrens futures being threatened, all while being force fed government cheese.

Mr Knapp wraps up:

For full disclosure, I am a conservative, and not a Bush/Clinton era neo-conservative, but an old-school-America-first-anti-illegal-immigration-gun-toting-tractor-drivingflag-waving-Pat-Buchannan-loving-paleo-conservative. This leaves me and tens of millions like me, without any political representation and very frustrated. I believe that we ARE in fact the silent majority; I believe that we could take back our country from the grasp of socialism and I believe that the movement could easily evolve into a third party movement…there has been no better time in our history for a third party; if only we could get a few of the so called “conservative” organizers out of our way.

Once written, a very large Fornicalia “conservative organizer” named Mark Meckler (who organized the Sacramento, Fornicalia TEA Party) responded in the comment section of the listed article, again in part:

Perhaps in your world view, where the only thing that matters is the formation of a third party, what we have done is “nothing…zero…nada.” In my world, having activists for fiscally responsible government involved constantly and at all levels of government, holding officials’ feet the fire, represents a turning point in recent American politics. I’m proud to be involved in that, and proud of all the real folks on the ground around the nation who are volunteering their time and efforts, and making it happen. You can criticize them if you like, but what are you doing to change things other than complaining about those who are actually doing the hard work on the ground?

The tea party movement itself has existed for all of two and a half months. I’m sorry you expect more out of those of us who are trying to grow this nascent movement into a permanent national force. We’re honest, hard working volunteers doing the best we can. Perhaps you could assist us in doing the things you claim we are failing to do, instead choosing to lie, whine and write about things of which you clearly know so little. And perhaps, if you think a third political party is the appropriate route to take at this time, you can get up from behind your computer, put your boots on the ground and get organizing. If you can do it honestly, without the types of intentional libel, incorrect assumptions and innuendo that make up the majority of your writing in this article, I for one will support you in doing so. I think any attempt to rattle the current power structure is worth doing, and rather than attack you for doing something, I’d support you in your honest efforts. Me…I’m not a politician, have no desire to be a politician, and don’t like political parties. I understand they are necessary in our system, but I don’t personally want to form or be part of one. You seem to want to form one. So I think you should.

People have written most recently about the possible formation of a Third Party. This primarily because the Republican Party seems to be purposely stepping away from a Conservative philosophy and wants to acquire, quote, “more persons under the tent.”

I submit the following to be Truths with regard to Conservatism:

  1. Conservatives are up in arms because President Bush abandoned the very First Tenet: fiscal Conservatism and smaller government;
  2. More of “everyone” in the Republican Tent and you have no more GOP; you have the Demorats;
  3. If the Republican Party were to once again truly embrace Conservatism and not abandon its voter base and core philosophies, it would find itself again flooded with cash and votes.
This current iteration of the Republican Party still doesn’t seem to “get it” — which is why its foundation of Conservatives are fragmented and leaving the party, disaffected, cast aside, ignored.

It’s not simply an axiom but a truism when I and others write: “I didn’t leave the GOP; the GOP left me.”

Question:

Can the GOP be resurrected?

BZ
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