"Forget about bringing the troops home Iraq - we need to get the troops home from World War II," Maher said. "Can anybody tell me why in 2009, we still have more than 50,000 troops in Germany and 30,000 in Japan? At some point these people are going to have to learn to rape themselves."
This is not a boycott, nor is it an attempt to induce HBO to change their programming. They chose to give Maher a platform knowing what the man believed. That's their choice. I don't have to listen to it, and I damn sure do not have to pay the guy's salary. Maher belongs in the same wing of Arkham with Moore and Olbermann and the rest of the rabid yellow dog Democrats, but until that blessed day that idiots like him are kicked off the air because Americans have decided that they are tired of listening to hate disguised as smug arrogance, I'll just do without the HBO family of networks.
Remember that scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Darth Vader shows Lando Calrissian exactly what happens to those who try to appease tyrannical despots?
"I'm altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it further."
Yeah, well now Darth Barney is telling American businessmen the same thing.
The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.
Think about that for a moment, and I'm talking to Republicans and libertarians now, because if you still call yourself a Democrat after the crap this administration has pulled, you have ceased to be a thinking creature at all. Go bow down to Obama and let the adults talk.
Barney Frank has proposed that the government take control of any business which has accepted federal assistance, even those companies that were forced to accept the money, setting salaries for all employees, and giving Tim Geithner, the financial wizard responsible for the AIG bonus mess, the ability to determine whose salary is excessive or unusual. Actually, I need to rephrase that. He's giving Geithner the responsibility; Geithner has no ability to do anything with anything remotely like competence.
What really bugs me is that every Democrat on the committee voted for this garbage, and they expect to pass it through the House with little or no problem. Can anybody point to anything in the Constitution that empowers our government to do that? The fact that this is a blatant abuse of power and has no Constitutional foundations whatsoever should have kept all those little dictator wannabees in the House from voting for this steaming pile of crap, but obviously, it didn't. I hope that the grown ups in the Senate stop this piece of trash like they did the 90% tax plan, but I'm not holding my breath.
If you voted for Obama, the next two decades of misery are all on your tab.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, Although with Inflation, that Might Change
Yesterday, I posted on Obamathematics and the magical way he's going to cut the deficit in half while increasing spending for, oh, just about everything. The Heritage Foundation linked an image from the Washington Post showing the CBO deficit projections for the next several years and compared than to the Obama projections.
Wow.
Now then, any liberal who cried about Bush's out of control spending and record deficits, please tell me how the vasy ocean of red ink run up by the Obama Administration is somehow ok. Please explain it to me because from where I sit, he's spending money that he doesn't have, I don't have, my kids don't have, and my grandkids don't have.
For perspective, in his first year in office, Obama will increase the debt as much as President Bush did in 8 years. He'll add another $3 trillion on top of that after his first 4 years. He claims he'll cut the deficit in half, but if you look at the numbers, even his own fairy tale projections, his budget never brings the deficit down to the levels established by President Bush.
Think about that for a minute. While running deficits that dwarf any recorded in the history of our country, Obama is on national telvision claiming to be fiscally responsible. How many members of the mainstream press are calling him on it?
And newspapers can't understand why they are going broke.
If this wasn't so dangerous, it would be funny.
These deficits have a very real impact on our future as a nation. For the last several presidential administrations, we've been able to support our spending habits through the sale of Treasury notes. Basically, we're borrowing money from other countries. Now take a look at that graphic again. Would you loan that guy money?
Neither will anybody else, and that means the only way for President Obama to fund his programs will be to raise taxes and print more dollars. Increased taxation and rampant inflation are not the prescription for a vibrant economy, a lesson we're about to learn again since we didn't seem to get it the first time around with Jimmy Carter.
But hey, at least we'll have health care, right? As long as we're not veterans, I mean.
During his second teleprompted PR event, President Obama broke his own record for telling the biggest lie in history. He actually claimed that his budget was fiscally responsible because he was going to cut the deficit in half over 10 years.
Of course, he glossed over the part about how he was first going to massively increase the deficit by quadrupling spending, but hey, what's a few trillion dollars among friends. (Insert lunatic chuckle from Obama here.) How many people would have the balls to stand up before the entire country and claim that by effectively doubling spending, he was actually cutting the deficit?
It probably helps that he has no clue what it is he's saying; they're just words scrolling across the teleprompter to him. I'm surprised he didn't accidentally start reading the reporters questions before they could ask them.
Barack Obama is a hypocrite and a liar. There's no other explanation for a man who on the one hand tells us he;s all about providing healthcare to every one while at the same time looking for ways to remove US military members from the government health care system.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance.
I knew the guy was full of crap since he always says exactly what he thinks is best for him at the time he is speaking. Remember the third debate? He and John McCain were both asked if the economy would get worse before it got better. McCain said yes it would, that there were serious problems that had to be dealt with. Obama said no, he had faith in the American people, and that the economy was strong.
We see how well that particular prognostication panned out.
Then, after winning the election., Obama went down the dark path, warning us ominously that if we didn't pass his monstrosity of a spending bill that the crisis, which he failed to see coming, according to his own words, would become a catastrophe that we might never recover from.
But yesterday, like an epileptic juke box, he changed his tune again, saying all those predictions of gloom and doom were maybe just a bit over the top, and that the economy might not be as bad as we had been told.
Now all that posturing and outright lying would be bad enough, but this latest dodge just turns my stomach. He actually wants to force American soldiers, wounded in the line of duty, to pay for their own treatment using their private insurance.
You know, one of the reasons I got out of the military after almost 9 years was that with the election of BIll Clinton, I knew my veterans benefits would come under attack. But it never even crossed my mind that any sitting President, even a leftist twit like Obama would go so far as to try and take medical benefits away from soldiers, sailors, marines, or airmen wounded or injured on active duty. I didn't think anyone could be that evil.
Once again, I underestimated the foul depths of the liberal mind. How can anyone have seriously conceived of this plan? And taken it seriously enough to allow a trial balloon to float? And even more importantly, how can anyone continue to support a President who thinks that this is a good idea? If you still support this President, then don't dare try to tell me how much you really support the troops because you are a lying hypocrite if you do.
It's hard to advance an argument based on science when you're handicapped by a complete lack of knowledge of the relevant science.
In case there are any of you out there who don;t already know this, an embryo is the result of fertilization of an egg by sperm. In other words, contrary to former President Bill Clinton, fertilization has already taken place, and the resulting zygote has already matured to the embryonic stage.
This is what happens when ignorant people are allowed to make decisions for the rest of us.
Here's an odd thing. The guy who is piling up mountains of debt that will have to be paid by our grandchildren is doing his level best to reduce the number of grandchildren who will be around to pay it. First, he supports any abortion anywhere for any reason. (If you think I'm exaggerating, find evidence of any restriction on abortion that Barack Obama has voted for at any time in his political career. Best of luck to you, and dress warmly. You'll be gone a while.) Now he's declared that the next generation can be cannibalized to make spare parts for the current generation.
There's a problem with that math, not to mention the ideology there, but President Obama is claiming that allowing federal funding for embryonic stem cell research is a triumph of science over ideology. Using the same logic, exposing black Americans to syphilis without their knowledge to learn about how the disease progresses is also a triumph of science over ideology.
Oddly, President Obama will keep in place restrictions on cloning humans, because, well, that's just icky.
And just for clarity, although I know nobody really cares, President Bush did not ban ESC research. He didn't even remove all federal funding. HIs restrictions allowed federal funding on ESC research as long as the researchers used existing lines of stem cell producing tissues, much the same way as fetal tissue from abortions performed 40 years ago are used to produce certain vaccines like the Chicken pox and MMR vaccines.
It's significant that during the Bush administration, there were no venture capitalist firms exploiting the wide open field of ESC research. You woulod think that if the field were so promising, that those greedy capitalistic bastards would want to get a head start on developing those therapies. The fact that they didn't tells you more about the actual promise of ESC based therapies than any other indicator. It's too bad that most people aren't paying attention.
Here's a thought. Since we're all about science over ideology, let's allow poor women to get pregnant and sell the embryos to researchers. Their body; their choice, right? Come on, feminists, stand up for your sisters! They're doing it for themselves!
For those of you out there who think you're being all revolutionary and daring by threatening to "Go John Galt" on Twitter/Facebook/blog, get a grip on reality.
John Galt didn't talk or threaten or posture. He just did what he did because he had to.
So do it or don't, but shut up about it. You're making yourself look silly.
Next thing you know, there will be a bunch of rowdies dressing up like indians and throwing tea into the water.
Alan Moore was right. The Watchmen cannot be filmed. Zack Snyder did yeoman's work in bringing the central plot of the comic series to the big screen, but when he jettisoned the "Tales of the Black Freighter" comic within the comic, he ripped out the beating heart of the story, the engine that drove it.
Here's what I'm talking about. Who were the heroes in the movie?
The Nite Owl? Dr Manhattan? Adrian Veidt? Silk Spectre? Rorschach? All of them? None of them?
In the comic series, the answer to that question was painfully, tragically clear. In the movie, no such luck. The movie ends with Veidt murdering millions, with the tacit approval and complicity in the cover up of God himself (I think I'll create some life.) Because the carnage he unleashed pulled the world back from the edge of nuclear war, every "hero" decides that since justice will only make things worse, the right answer is to walk away and live happily ever after.
Except for Rorschach, the violent psychopath. He's the only one who refuses to compromise with evil, the only hero, and in the end, his heroism kills him, because our world doesn't want heroes.
Moore carries this message, not through the ambiguities of the main plot line, but through the pirate story. By splitting the stories, he allows the reader to be drawn into the "real world" where compromise and moral relativity lead even those who fight for justice into complicity with absolute evil, while at the same time maintaining an unflinching eye on the real horror, the slow corruption of power turning a hero into the monster he fought to destroy. In the end of the comic, the hero of the pirate tale joins the crew of the Black Freighter, corrupted by his willingness to do anything, no matter how foul and grotesque, in order to protect his home and family. Adrian Veidt takes the same journey through The Watchmen, becoming the monster he once fought to destroy. Like the survivor in "Freighter," he winds up joining the monsters.
Unfortunately, the movie does not reach the same conclusion. Without the sharp clarity of "Freighter," Veidt appears to be a tragic, flawed man, but still a hero, having brought peace to the world. That conclusion is a perversion of Moore's story, and is why the movie fails as an adaptation.
I'm not surprised Moore refused to allow his name to be attached to it. « Close 'er up!
It is the job of government to protect its members from the actions of others. It is not the job of the government to protect its members from their own actions. That's the difference between being a citizen and a subject.
Bible Verse of the Day
“I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have preserved my life.”
