We learned today that a CNN poll is showing that the errand
boy sent by grocery clerks cannot be trusted.
He’s dishonest, untrustworthy, a liar.
57% of those polled disagree with
his views on the size and power of the federal government and 53% say he cannot
manage the government effectively. No
shit, Dick Tracy.
This
poll, coming from the same people that have habitually showed better
presidential approval numbers than any other pollster, reveals that this
remarkably absent president is at his lowest rating in more than a year-and-a-half.
The CNN/ORC
International survey released Monday morning comes as the White House
has been reacting to controversies over a massive U.S. government surveillance
program; the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of Tea Party and other
conservative groups who applied for tax-exempt status; the administration's
handling of last September's attack in Benghazi that left the U.S. ambassador
to Libya and three other Americans dead; and the Justice Department's secret
collection of journalists' phone records as part of a government investigation
into classified leaks.
The poll indicates that for the
first time in Obama’s presidency, half of the public says they don't believe he
is honest and trustworthy. And Americans are split on the controversial
National Security Agency anti-terrorism program to record metadata on U.S.
phone calls, but they support the NSA program that targets records of Internet
usage by people in other countries. That doesn't mean they necessarily like
what is going on: Just over six in 10 believe that government is so large and
powerful that it threatens the rights and freedoms of ordinary Americans.
Gee, I hope this news doesn’t
hurt his chances for reelection. I kid.
I have to say when I announced
the winners of the 2013
Paul Revere Awards I never dreamed that one winner in particular would be
so appreciative. He’s acting like he won
the Publishers Clearing House contest.
The NSA crept over to Odie’s
humble abode, bugged the joint and set up some surveillance cameras.
Odie had already rolled up the
carpet, installed an Academy Awards-like stage with spotlights, took a bath,
brushed his teeth, raked through his beard and even put on a tuxedo.
I think he’s almost proud enough to
channel Sally Field. If the NSA is still
recording the celebration, they just might catch him saying, “You like me, you
really like me.”
Calm down hon. Yes, we do like you.
And then there’s this
demonstration of astonishment—Earl of Taint went and changed his website banner
citing that he was now the “Award Winning Earl of Taint” and even included his “hunk
of InnerWeb Candy.”
He
wrote in his blog post, “There you go. The award is 100% authentic. Meaning
it was obviously sent to me by mistake because I clearly don’t belong in this
elite group of people that write things, with words, in a linear fashion,
consistently. I’m deeply honored regardless. And I’m not giving it back. I cannot live without it.”
All the winners have written to
me in emails or in the comment section expressing their appreciation for the
recognition of their hard work, but these two guys take the cake.
I’m proud of all the
winners. Next year, the winners will get
a big bag of personalized M&Ms to go with the trophy.
Politics is not a playground,
it’s a battlefield. Here are a few links from conservative bloggers who
are waging a war of words against the misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice,
luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism of the mainstream media bobble-head
dolls and groupthink poodles of the press corps. But first, this little tale (pun most certainly intended):
The strapping young Marxist and
his shrill spouse will be trekking to sub-Saharan Africa later this month. They are due to travel to Senegal, South
Africa and Tanzania.
Originally, their plans included
a Tanzanian safari to drink in the beauty of that fascinating travel
destination where they could view the splendor of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount
Meru, relax on the beaches of the islands of Zanzibar, Mafia or Pemba and tour
The Serengeti National Park known for its unbelievable density of animals.
That density of animals would
have required the president’s special counterassault team to carry sniper rifles
with high-caliber rounds “that could neutralize (or what we poor folks like to call killing) cheetahs, lions and other vicious predators if they became a threat
according
to a leaked document.
Gun grabbers are pissed finding
hypocrisy in the president’s “short-lived plan to rely on armed men for
protection from wildlife, using the same kind of weapons his administration
wants banned from public use to protect against human predators.”
“Mr. Obama shouldn’t need special counter-assault teams to neutralize threats,”
Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb said. “He’s got the IRS for that doesn’t he?”
The left provides tyranny with
the social motive to come into being, but in the long run the left
is only the midwife of tyranny. Its ideology and activists dismantle
democracies and burgeoning democracies and replace them with tyrannies.
It is a great irony, and history
will marvel at it, that the president most committed to expanding the
centrality, power, prerogatives and controls of the federal government is also
the president who, through lack of care, arrogance, and an absence of any sense
of prudential political boundaries, has
done the most in our time to damage trust in government.
Benghazi had death under
terrifying circumstances, the IRS scandal had the most feared federal agency on
the rampage against innocent citizens, the Justice Department scandal had
reporters targeted for doing their jobs. But it is the NSA scandal that has
provided the context for all the others, that has brought them together as a bleak and brooding menace
threatening American life as it has always been lived.
Last Sunday,
BC the proprietor of I’m 41,
presented the winner of the 2013 Coolest SOB in the Conservative Blogosphere
Award. Many excellent sites were listed
as nominees for the award and those who walked away with top honors certainly
are deserving of the recognition.
BC was
honoring the late Andrew Breitbart when he envisioned the awards and wanted to
call attention to bloggers that espoused “class, common courtesy, etiquette,
selflessness and a genuine respect for the efforts of other conservative
bloggers—no matter how minimum.”
I was
disappointed that so many of the bloggers I know didn’t fare well in the voting
process. The sites listed below in
alphabetical order are being presented the First Annual Paul Revere Award
sponsored by Political Clown Parade.
I chose Paul
Revere as the icon for the award because he was an American patriot who’s
legendary “Midnight Ride” to warn the colonists of Massachusetts before the
historic battles at Lexington and Concord played a vital role in America’s
struggle to gain independence from Britain.
Paul Revere
was not born to wealth—he was an ordinary man who lived an extraordinary life.
Revere was a patriot, a businessman, an involved citizen, and a popular and
well-respected member of his community.
An obituary in
the Boston Intelligence commented, "Seldom has the tomb closed upon a life
so honorable and useful."
These bloggers
are but a few of the brave and resolute men and women who hold down jobs and raise their families while standing guard over liberty. They don’t have big advertising on
their sites nor do they have a bevy of contributing writers. They pore over information and bring their
opinions to their readers in order to inform and warn.
They have the
keen zest of the citizen whose patriotism is of the lusty type that causes them
to take an active part in politics. They
add humor and common sense. They deserve
to be recognized.
I will be
contacting each winner via email to provide them with a personalized badge
which they can place on their website if they so chose.
Thank you to
each of them for all that they do and may God bless them.
UPDATE:
Two of my favorite bloggers who were never nominated but are tops on my
list are Adrienne’s
Corner and Zilla of the Resistance. They are receiving the Paul Revere Award as
well. Thank you both.
When I was
just a kid there was a TV show I loved to watch. That show was The Outer Limits.
Each episode
would open with a “Control Voice” warning the viewer, “There is nothing wrong
with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are
controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the
volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will
control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image;
make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to
crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that
you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set.
You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience
the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to—The Outer Limits.”
Throughout
history, compassionate minds have pondered the dark and disturbing
question: what is society to do with
those members who are a threat to society, those malcontents and misfits whose
behavior undermines and destroys the foundations of civilization? Different
epochs have found different solutions to this disturbing problem.
Peggy Noonan,
in her Op-Ed for The Wall Street Journalwrites, “The security age began on
Sept. 12, 2001. The enormity of the surveillance state since has grown.
Americans, in the shock after 9/11, didn’t mind enhanced security, and in fact
were mostly grateful for it and supportive of it. But built into that support,
and the acceptance of the surveillance mentality’s intrusions, was I suspect,
a broadly held assumption that we’ll just do it now, and down the road we can
stop it. It’s just an emergency thing. We can make it go away when we no longer
want it. But can we? Do government programs tend to remain static, or wither?
Or do they tend to grow?”
The web is
ablaze with debates about government surveillance of ordinary citizens. The focus is on the Fourth Amendment and the
FISA courts, the NSA and the recently revealed Code Name PRISM.
The Fourth
Amendment of the Constitution reads, The
right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no
Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
persons or things to be seized.
Back to The Outer Limits. One episode, O.B.I.T., opens with this narrative:
“In this room,
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, security personnel at the Defense
Department's Cypress Hills Research Center keep constant watch on its
scientists through O.B.I.T., a mysterious electronic device whose very
existence was carefully kept from the public at large. And so it would have
remained but for the facts you are about to witness…”
The Outer Limits was a science fiction
anthology created in 1963. Science
fiction then. Now, not so much.
There is another
electronic device with which we became familiar. The “telescreen” in George Orwell’s 1984 enables “the Party” to monitor its
members almost all of the time. In Orwell’s dystopian novel, technology (the
telescreen and microphones) are generally perceived as working toward moral
good but can also aid and abet the most diabolical evil.
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were
striking thirteen,” is the first line in 1984.
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
These are the
official slogans of “the Party” and are referred to as “doublethink”. They are illogical but are central to the
psychological control of the masses—the low information voter, if you will.
If the
government’s constant propaganda induces fear and doubt then its citizens will
accept anything. A common enemy keeps
the people united. The man who is
independent is doomed to fail and the man who accepts the collective is free
from want and danger. The powerlessness
of the people to recognize the contradictions bolsters the power of the
authoritarian regime. Every citizen lives to serve the nurturing mother state.
Keith Koffler
at White
House Dossier opines, “President Obama and his fully politicized White
House have shown their contempt for the Constitution, the rule of law, the
other branches of government and the watchdog institutions of our society time
and time again.”
“Laws are
meant to be circumvented. The Supreme Court is to be vilified for making the ‘wrong’
decisions. The press is to be bullied and intimidated. Opponents in Congress
are cynical, politically motivated extremists who want to oppress Americans
they don’t like.”
In the dark and brooding video
below, a totalitarian propaganda world is ruled from above. A young girl witnesses the fate of a tortured
worker and the murder of her protesting mother.
The girl rises up and confronts the dehumanized regime occupying her
Motherland. She can be all it takes to spark off a revolution…
On Friday, May
31, 2013 Sen. Rand Paul brought
the funny while he outlined his vision for the growth of the Republican
Party to a sold-out crowd at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi
Valley.
Moments after
taking the podium, he began drilling the Obama Administration over the Internal
Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny last
year.
“You know, I
hardly know where to start. It’s kind of like Old MacDonald’s farm of
scandals,” said Paul. “Here a scandal, there a scandal, everywhere a scandal.”
(My apologies
to artist Grant Wood for parodying his 1930 American Gothic
painting. I simply couldn’t resist.)
Hearing from some top Hill sources that IRS scandal about to explode. Low-level agency workers miffed at being blamed. About to return fire.
— Joseph Curl (@josephcurl) June 3, 2013
There was an
interesting exchange between House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa
and CNN’s R2DoubleD2 today on the cable new channel’s “State of the Union”
program.
Issa’s bluntness
was uplifting. The scandal surrounding
the IRS’s decision to target Tea Party groups was, he believes, “mostly likely
the employees in the Cincinnati IRS offices were acting on orders from
Washington, DC.
Issa said, “The
administration is still—their paid liar,
their spokesperson, picture behind, he’s still making up things about what
happen[ed] and calling this local rogue.” [Emphasis
mine.]
“The reason
that Lois Lerner tried to take the Fifth [Amendment] is not because there’s a
rogue in Cincinnati,” he added. “It’s because this is a problem that was
coordinated. in all likelihood, right out of Washington headquarters.”
On May 21,
Carney said: “I think that the tenor of the president’s public comments about
it, both in his statement Tuesday night and his public comments the next day
reflect his feelings upon learning about the apparent conduct by our IRS
officials in Cincinnati.” A day earlier, Carney discussed “matters involving
the office in Cincinnati” in an exchange about when the White House learned of
the episode.
An IRS employee
was asked if the scandal could be the work of a few local rogue agents.
"It's impossible," the employee said. "As an agent we are
controlled by many, many people. We have to submit many, many reports. So the
chance of two agents being rogue and doing things like that could never
happen."
The
interrogator then asked: "With respect to the particular scrutiny that was
given to Tea Party applications, those directions emanated from Washington, is
that right?"
The contest is
so named out of a reverence for the late Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart, to whom BC had sent an email tip,
replied thanking him for the tip and BC was impressed that he had taken time
from his busy day to respond to “a nobody blogger.”
BC contends
that Andrew was not the only blogger out there that excels in all-around
coolness, class, common courtesy, etiquette, selflessness, and genuine respect
for the efforts of other conservative bloggers.
This year,
your humble scribe has been nominated as “The Coolest SOB in the Conservative
Blogosphere.”
I’m still
giddy over my award from Zilla and by
the 2012 PUK Award sponsored
by IOwnTheWorld. I hope that my
readers and their friends will help Political Clown Parade rake in another
award.
Voting began today
and runs through Saturday June 8th.
Vote often for your favorite SOB.
There are some awesome blogs vying for the title of The Coolest SOB.
Thanks in advance for your support and best of luck to all the nominees.
