Time for Thorns

Gregory Kane has a trenchant column on race everyone should read.    He uses a nickname for Rep.  Charles Rangel which made me laugh out loud.    And he asks a question no liberal dares answer.

I’ve long referred to the New York congressman as Rangel the Ready — a bit of a play on Ethelred the Unready, a long-forgotten English king –   because  the motor which runs his mouth apparently has no “OFF” switch,  although I’ve noticed that as the tonnage of his ethics problems has increased,  he’s rather less of a camera hog than he used to be.

The Washington Examiner had a good piece on his big pharma connections,  and there was some trouble about his niece as well.  Whether traveling or making contradictory claims in mortgage documents,  or failing to disclose substantial assets,  Charlie  has claimed the prize for absent-mindedness,  and it’s contaigous  for his staff.     House Democrats are trying to save their colleague,  but he’s apparently making campaign contributions only to the three on the Ethics Committee.

One might expect the Examiner to say Rangel should resign,  or the Buffalo News,  but when the Washington Post says he should step aside as chairman of Ways and Means,   it’s big trouble.   Charlie knows it,  because he is now playing the race card.

New York  gives us so many examples of government  stupidity,  political pandering,  and the pathologies of the poor.    Nanny Bloomberg and the Obama-lite  governor,  David Paterson,  appear shocked,  SHOCKED,   to discover the $200 debit cards they handed out to welfare recipients for school supplies were being spent for cigarettes and beer and flat-screen TVs.

The official weasel words about perhaps failing  to communicate sufficiently with recipients ignore what happened with government debit cards for Katrina victims.    The ugly truth is that man is a lazy,  opportunistic beast,  and most members of the tribe will do as little as possible to get by.    Nevertheless,  the poor in the USA live like kings compared to most of the rest of the world,  and in actual fact they possess creature comforts actual princes of yesteryear  could only dream of.

Yes,  there are some poor who have slid into their situation by bad luck and circumstances not directly their fault.  But a majority of them are there because they have what I call 5 minute clocks.   They want a flat-screen TV,   so they get one instead of  paying the power bill or  securing more reliable transportation, or buying food.   They do not contemplate the future in terms of reality.

Government encourages this damaging behavior by shielding its practitioners from the consequences of their actions.    Liberals love to preach about how much they care about the poor,  but their policies are designed to make them comfortable enough in their poverty to remain there   –  and reliably vote the straight Democratic ticket.

CNN has some unusual items funded by the stimulus, and the Wall Street Journal finds big firms grabbing most of the money because there is little actual competition.    You’ll be astonished to discover Corps of Engineer funding is going to the districts of those who oversee Corps funding,  but surely thrilled your tax dollars are keeping local orchestras afloat,  not to mention rental cars and outhouses.

Tom Coburn had it right from the start.  Democrats just don’t worry about the corruption they’re so accustomed to,  so they can cheerfully reward the Indian Health Service for its misdeeds,  and simply ignore the Build America Bonds program

You can always count on Teddy Kennedy to be the supreme hypocrite.  After having urged the Massachusetts legislature to change the law so that then-Gov. Mitt Romney could not appoint a replacement for soon-to-be-president John Kerry,  Teddy now wants the law changed back.    Of course he nobly is so terribly concerned that in the event of his demise his beloved sucker state might spend some time without its full representation in the Senate.    Quel horreur!    (Yeah, yeah,  I know it’s French,  but you figured it out,  didn’t you?)

Jeff Jacoby pointed out that because of his brain cancer, Kennedy had been absent for 15 months,  already leaving his state without a second senator,  and should resign.

William Voegeli has a cracking good post over at Ashbrook on the matter,  including whittling two very popular young liberal bloggers down to size with a sentence.

UPDATE:  The wires are announcing that Kennedy died late Tuesday.  Considering the amount of misery and anguish he caused so many other people,  I don’t view his death sentence as harsh enough.   And now we will be treated to His Oneness uttering suitably solemn sentiments of condolence .    There will be no mention of the huge amount of health care resources wasted on treating the advanced brain cancer of a clinically obese alcoholic wastrel.

Michael Barone has a fine  piece in the New York Post warning that the same  geeks who developed formulas they believed had negated the risk of  certain financial transactions are now in Washington promulgating more  formulas  on  cap-and-trade and carbon offsets.

The problem with any formula is that  it works only so long as the various components behave exactly as predicted,  and nothing can screw up a good  mathematical equation faster than the ordinary quirks and whims of human nature.  You can not expect His Oneness to recognize this, because  liberals understand human nature  only through the lens of their own beliefs.

For example, they believe that most people are greedy and grasping and must therefore be willing to latch onto the government teat and thereafter vote for the ones who put them there.  They are   permanently baffled by the independent let-me-do-it-myself attitude of  those citizens who simply want the government to get out of their way.   Yet liberals are perfectly happy when a 3 year old with the same attitude wants to “spell” and do “math” his own way.

That sort of  schizoid view makes it difficult for rational minds to  understand how liberal brains work.   It’s actually quite simple:  liberals  have for decades substituted emotion for reason.   Very few of them can actually conduct a logical discussion or debate, which is why you see them repeatedly go the Saul Alinsky playbook and hurl invective, rather than facts.     Al Gore and Obama both claim “the debate on global warming/climate change is over”, which  is a bald-faced lie.    They must ignore the truth, and any contrary facts, because their position is otherwise unsupportable.

They live by “the means justify the ends”,  so you should never be surprised when liberals  lie about anything.

There was a raid at a Yamato Engine Specialists plant in Bellingham, WA last month, the first such since His Oneness took office, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano  didn’t know about it, but  promptly ordered a review of the policy.

Now we learn that the illegal aliens arrested were given the option of returning to their native countries or receiving work permits.

The ICE excuse is that the work permits are only good for the duration of the case.     Color me spectacularly unimpressed.    They will all grow old and die here before then,  and the permits will probably be passed on to their heirs and assigns and their families.

You have only to look at the aunt of His Oneness, who lives in public housing and has defied TWO deportation orders, and now has another 10  months before her appeal will be heard.    That is because the Obama administration is determined to “fix” the immigration problem the same way Democrats and liberals always do — amnesty everybody and congratulate themselves for their cleverness and compassion and moral superiority.

Can we please have somebody — anybody — stand up and point out that the illegal workers take jobs away from actual American citizens, and depress their wages?    Does anybody have the balls to point out that Democrats are pushing policies which damage the poor they claim to want to protect?

The only Americans who won’t do those jobs are the people who prefer welfare to work,  and so long as their weakness is encouraged they will continue to find an excuse to quit every job they are given.

Read this article, and try telling yourself it couldn’t happen here.  It already has in a few places.    This is what European democratic socialism turns citizens into.

In fact, I am surprised only by the fact that some of the bystanders actually were prepared to help at all, even if they weren’t prepared to ignore the police.

Is this where you want to end up?    Is this what you want to end up being?    Well, this is the destination envisioned by His Oneness.   Your children will be dressed in uniforms and told what public service, er, good works, to perform by the federal government.    If you run a business — any business — you will be told not only the minimum you must pay, but the maximum you may pay.  We are already regulated half to death.

The liberals mean to turn us all into sheep, obedient but dumb, which is why I laugh whenever any of them claims to want a first class educational system.    They’ve worked tirelessly for over 40 years to take it from your grandparents being able to read a First Year McGuffey’s Reader in the first grade, to your parents struggling to do so in the second, to you maybe conquering it in the 4th grade,  to your children being lucky to manage it by the 8th.    And there are more than a few inner city high schools where the graduating seniors would stumble through it.

Sit back on your haunches and do nothing, and you will be like the acquiescent British sheeple, except that you won’t have big soccer matches to vent your spleen at.

Bret Stephens says liberals will shortly lose their excuses:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122697207170735899.html

He’s correct, but I expect Obama will continue to blame Pres. Bush for  everything, and liberals will continue to blame Republicans and conservatives for their own failures.  They’ve learned such claims go over well, even when totally without substance, so they’ll continue employing them.

It’s safe to assume big media won’t call them on this tactic, so it’s up to us.  Are you ready?

Veteran psychiatrist  Dr. Lyle Rossiter says liberals really are mad:

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=56494

and Ellis Washington agrees:

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=81033

Neither man claims ALL liberals are loons, but the case they make is persuasive when one considers characteristics such as disassociation from reality, and perception of victimization, and a strong tendency to favor “the government” over the individual.