Back Talk

Does it seem that our government, both federal and state, has been eating away at our take-for-granted freedoms at an ever increasing rate?

I suppose this is a condition one should expect since we have a liberal congress and an extremely liberal California Legislature. The erosion, which has been occurring for years, is hard to ignore because the press informs us of a new item weekly. The Marxist enclaves of San Francisco and Berkeley spearhead the assault upon our freedoms and culture of liberty and self-reliance. This week’s San Francisco idiocy is a ban on drug stores from selling tobacco, one more silly law but demonstrative of the freedom-erosion trend. Los Angeles is passing a law banning any new fast food restaurants in South Los Angeles because African Americans, who dominate that area, have a high incidence of obesity, and someone or something, other than those obese folks, has to take the blame. In today’s world, mama government steps in as a substitute personal accountability. Our welfare State now has banned restaurants from using trans-fats in their dishes. See, Liberals cannot risk allowing us ignorant Americans the chance to make choices in caring for our own health, because we are just too stupid to make those choices. Heaven forbid we should be allowed to make bad choices. Liberals find it impossible to allow a free economy to operate with its wonderful ability to equalize and correct according to the natural law of supply and demand. They have to meddle and tamper by passing ridiculous tax increases, price controls, and tariffs, which always make the situation much worse. To heal our weak economy, Hussein Obama wants to raise taxes, hike the capital gains tax, employ tariffs on imports, and increase welfare payments - actions which are precisely the wrong things to do. Herbert Hoover made these exact moves which were instrumental in causing the great depression, and then Franklin Roosevelt continued with the various welfare state actions and prolonged the problems long after the economy would have righted itself.

Posted by Jim at 11:42 AM | Permalink

The DemPols have been mentioning as a strong possibility for Hussein Obama’s running mate former North Carolina Senator and former vice presidential candidate John Edwards. That possibility took a serious hit when reporters found Edwards in a hotel room with a woman named Rielle Hunter. He ran from reporters and hid in the basement until a security guard escorted him out of the building. The incident is interesting because Edwards could be our next V.P and also because it is just plain fun to watch a self-righteous, lawyer/politician go into action when he is caught with his pants down. Good legal lizard that he is he denied the allegation, said he had never even been near that hotel, didn’t know the woman and, besides, they were only talking.

Posted by Jim at 06:54 PM | Permalink

I keep making the same mistake of giving any attention to information that the nation’s liberal Democrats and the major media (the same thing really) are saying.

I repeatedly forget that the media is no longer a news provider but rather an agenda-driven conglomeration of liberal writers and talking heads that more often than not chose a career in public communications as a means to spread their gospel. The slavish media that are accompanying, en masse, Hussein Obama on his foreign tour are acting like one big Obama booster club. The press cannot wait each day to report how favorably foreigners view Obama, which of course is expected because he is a European type Socialists. The media largely have the same Socialist views so it is a synergistic relationship all around. News coverage has favored Obama four to one over McCain ever since the start of the presidential campaign and has made it the politics of personality. Personality and rhetoric are the only cards Obama has to play because he has nothing else to offer as a first term senator with no background other than his Illinois days as a community organizer.
Al, Internet inventor, Gore keeps popping up in the news telling us about the horrible man-made global warming - that it is going to fry us all in ten years. The media abets this kind of scare talk while ignoring facts: the globe has not warmed one degree in ten years, Alaskan officials say this may be the coldest year of their history, and more and more scientists are coming around with the courage to state that man-made global warming is a hoax.
The press keeps scaring us with talk of a recession or even a depression, warning of increasing unemployment, and various other bad news regarding the economy. Unemployment is still extremely low at 5.5%, hardly the 25% we experienced during the depression. Traveling across several states, I saw prosperity everywhere, “now hiring” signs in shop windows, affluent life styles of vacationers, and expensive cars on the roads. Try as they might the media chickens have not managed to persuade Americans that the sky is falling.

Posted by Jim at 04:05 PM | Permalink

You know the old saw, “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?” Running a close second on the scale is an extreme Liberal caught in the clutches of victimhood – a standard Liberal frame of mind.

Our Lefty, who writes a weekly anti-(fill in the blank) screed, penned an angry whining article that a policeman gave him a seat belt citation not because he violated the seat belt law but because he has an Obama bumper sticker on his car. I will leave aside my feeling that displaying bumper stickers on one’s car should in itself warrant a citation. Our angry Liberal, not satisfied with already having made a fool of himself with his article, wanted to continue the silliness. He attended the Paradise Community Police Forum obviously anxious to do battle with the police for the perceived slight. He shouted out at an officer who was speaking on the complex job the police have to do. George Will called this behavior, “the debilitating mentality of victimhood.”

Posted by Jim at 03:31 PM | Permalink

Having been out of the state for several weeks, we had a number of old newspapers our neighbor had saved for us to browse through; after many attempts, I have yet to see the system work where the carrier stops delivery on a specifically requested date and restarts upon further notice.

I happened upon an opinion piece by our most leftwise lefty which gave me a shot of schadenfreude – pleasure in another’s discomfort – because our favorite Liberal was driving without a seatbelt, a local policeman cited him for breaking the law, and he is accusing the policemen of ticketing him only because he had an Obama bumper sticker on his car. One has to appreciate the humor in this from several different points. Liberals are notoriously mired in the victimhood mud, unhappy with their life, critical of America, business and traditional values, and constantly whining about their plight and always blaming someone or something else for any perceived misfortune. Our opinion writer, an irrational Bush-hater, who felt the need to proclaim his enthusiasm by driving around with a political bumper sticker, now accuses the ticketing officer of malfeasance and whines publicly about the unfairness of being ticketed for breaking the law. This is pure Liberal mentality. This incident is doubly entertaining because our whiner is a retired college teacher – albeit a bonehead English teacher at a community college – whom one would think would try to avoid looking this sappy.

Posted by Jim at 10:22 AM | Permalink

Having taken a hiatus from political discussion, blogs, and presidential campaigns while traveling for several weeks across half a dozen states, it is interesting to come home and note the changes which amount to … not much.

The air is still smoky – although I feel fortunate to have missed the worst of it – the political campaigns still occupy much of the news, although the major news outlets seem to no longer even pretend to give a balanced news presentation. The three big major news anchors, Couric, Gibson, and Williams have announced they are going to accompany Hussein Obama on his, better late than never, trip to Iraq, and are unembarrassed that no news anchors have ever accompanied McCain on his many trips there. The New York Times has refused to publish a John McCain editorial piece that responded to an Obama editorial it had printed a few days earlier, shocking behavior for a major newspaper that has caused even a few liberal columnists some squeamishness. Obama is still the media’s messiah and can do no wrong with the Black community which cries racism at the slightest criticism of their rookie politician. A blogger cried racism because one of the talk show hosts referred to the unquestioning adoration the Democrats have of Obama as “drinking the Obama kool-aid.” The touchy blogger, apparently ignorant of the Jonestown incident, thought the remark implied, negatively, that Blacks are Kool-aid drinkers. Obama is still avoiding any town hall confrontation with McCain, speaking only with prepared text, and taking both sides of every issue and the press gives him a free ride for doing so. The man is an empty suit with no clue about economics, foreign policy, or the military and may be the next leader of the free world.

Posted by Jim at 04:36 PM | Permalink