ELECTIONS! HAVE! CONSEQUENCES!

Obama administration will accept no more public input for federal fishery strategy:

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is “fluid” and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn’t issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters. That’s a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning.

Wouldn’t be the first time this administration has LIED to us, damn sure won’t be the last!

Led by NOAA’s Jane Lubchenco, the task force has shown no overt dislike of recreational angling, but its indifference to the economic, social and biological value of the sport has been deafening.

Additionally, Lubchenco and others in the administration have close ties to environmental groups who would like nothing better than to ban recreational angling. And evidence suggests that these organizations have been the engine behind the task force since before Obama issued a memo creating it last June.

Apple pie, Chevrolet and fishin’ — real Americana — what’s not to like?

That same tunnel vision, in which recreational angling and commercial fishing are indiscriminately lumped together as harmful to the resource, has persisted with the task force, despite protests by the angling industry.

As more evidence of collusion, the green groups began clamoring for an Executive Order to implement the task force’s recommendations even before the public comment period ended in February. Fishing advocates had no idea that this was coming.

These elites in Washington don’t want you to be able to fish the rivers, lakes and streams of America. Out here, California is letting the entire central valley agricultural zone wither and die from lack of water — just to “save” the Delta Smelt. After all, to these enviro-ideologues Mother Earth is a hell of a lot more important than humans. We are the stain, the virus, the planet’s scourge that will be the end of all . . .

Morlock fears that “what we’re seeing coming at us is an attempted dismantling of the science-based fish and wildlife model that has served us so well. There’s no basis in science for the agendas of these groups who are trying to push the public out of being able to fish and recreate.

“Conflicts (user) are overstated and problems are manufactured. It’s all just an excuse to put us off the water.”

After all, it’s just fishin’ — won’t hurt nobody to hang up the ol’ rod and reel and instead sit in front of the tube and chant praises to the Obamessiah. Nah — nuthin’ wrong with that . . .

You will submit — You will obey — You will like it!

After all, as they say, “We won — get over it!”

Victoria Jackson — gotta LUV her for tellin’ the truth.

With what’s going on today — the Dems deciding to use reconciliation to pass their onerous Health Care bill regardless of the will of the American People, Jackson’s little ditty takes on more gravitas than would normally be granted. November can’t get here fast enough!

Here’s a great Reconciliation PhotoShop from Maksim at The People’s Cube:

The Left’s newest meme is that our government is broken, that the way the legislative branch is setup, especially on the Senate side, makes it impossible to get anything done. Barack Obama’s agenda has crashed and burned with more debacles happening every day. So, obviously if the Obamessiah can’t shove his pet projects down our throats and up our collective asses — something drastic must be done. Something like, oh, well, how ’bout just eliminating the filibuster in the Senate ’cause everybody with a brain knows that this is just allowing the “tyranny of the minority” to keep the Democrat majority from creating Heaven right here on good ol’ terra firma.

Bullshit!

As Charles Krauthammer patiently explains in his Washington Post column today, Obama is whining like Carter instead of kickin’ butt like Reagen and Clinton.

It turned out that the country’s problems were not problems of structure but of leadership. Reagan and Clinton had it. Carter didn’t. Under a president with extensive executive experience, good political skills and an ideological compass in tune with the public, the country was indeed governable.
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It’s 2010, and the first-year agenda of a popular and promising young president has gone down in flames. Barack Obama’s two signature initiatives — cap-and-trade and health-care reform — lie in ruins.

Desperate to explain away this scandalous state of affairs, liberal apologists haul out the old reliable from the Carter years: “America the Ungovernable.” So declared Newsweek. “Is America Ungovernable?” coyly asked the New Republic. Guess the answer.

The rage at the machine has produced the usual litany of systemic explanations. Special interests are too powerful. The Senate filibuster stymies social progress. A burdensome constitutional order prevents innovation. If only we could be more like China, pines Tom Friedman, waxing poetic about the efficiency of the Chinese authoritarian model, while America flails about under its “two parties . . . with their duel-to-the-death paralysis.” The better thinkers, bewildered and furious that their president has not gotten his way, have developed a sudden disdain for our inherently incremental constitutional system.

Yet, what’s new about any of these supposedly ruinous structural impediments? Special interests blocking policy changes? They have been around since the beginning of the republic — and since the beginning of the republic, strong presidents, like the two Roosevelts, have rallied the citizenry and overcome them.

Hard-core ideologues of either stripe can’t rally the citizenry — they turn off the majority who see them for what they are and won’t put up with being bullied. As many are commenting, instead of this being a flaw, a glitch, it’s how the system is supposed to work. What’s truly pathetic is that with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, a huge majority in the House, radical Leftists controlling both of those bodies plus a Weatherman’s wet-dream of a radically-progressive President in the Oval Office they couldn’t get anything done!

Nada! Nuttin’! Big. Fat. Effin’. ZERO!

Except of course the passage of the humongous Porkulus Stimulus Package his first month in office, but hey, the country was so freaked out by the economic collapse last Fall that even many Republicans supported that nightmare of a budget buster which my kid’s grand kids will still be payin’ off when they’re my age!

What scares me just a bit is that the Carter administration was trying to figure out how to fundamentally change the government — again as Krauthammer notes, “The president’s own White House counsel suggested abolishing the separation of powers and going to a more parliamentary system of unitary executive control.” The Obama administration is going the way of Carter — who knows what political nightmares this hard-Left crew is dreaming?

It’s becoming ever more critical for the GOP to take back control of Congress this November and plan for an unbeatable bid for the 2012 Presidential race. After that, we need to hold our own guys’ feet to the fire and not let them go the way of the Grand Ol’ Party during the Bush 43 era. If they don’t do the will of the people — kick their asses out!

Do that enough times in a row and even a politician will finally get the memo!

[Update: Found it on YouTube]

This is almost criminal, or maybe just more Obama administration lies. Sure, homeowners will be able to get loan modifications — “Trust Us!”

I wish that I could embed this, but that option’s not offered. Still, you really owe it to yourself to go and watch this video at Think Big, Work Small, wherein they ’splain it to us how One West Bank is makin’ BANK with a super-sweetheart deal from the F.D.I.C. that involves a whole lot o’ your tax dollars.

Poor George Soros . . . he really needs a hug or something — or maybe just MORE of your tax dollars!

After saying a good dozen or so times during the ‘08 Presidential campaign that families making $250,000 or less would not see a penny of tax increase under an Obama administration, he now says that he’s ‘agnostic’ about doing exactly that to cover the out-of-control spending that he’s already implemented plus the new spending the Dems want to pile of top of that. Over at Business Week we get the skinny:

President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.

Obama, in a Feb. 9 Oval Office interview, said that a presidential commission on the budget needs to consider all options for reducing the deficit, including tax increases and cuts in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“The whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the table,” the president said in the interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “So what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions.”

Obama repeatedly vowed during the 2008 presidential election campaign that he would not raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 and households earning less than $250,000 a year. When senior White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner suggested in August that the administration might be open to going back on that pledge, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs quickly reiterated the president’s promise.

Of course, it’s all Bush’s fault — Anyone besides me getting tire of hearing this tired ol’ shit from our President all day, every day? I warned everyone to stock up on the KY, ’cause the American taxpayer is gonna get a hard-core life lesson in what it’s like to drop the soap in a prison shower.

Just sayin’ . . .

An editorial from Mortimer Zuckerman, chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report and publisher of the New York Daily News, trustee of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, and the International Institute of Strategic Studies. (That’s what ya call major “chops”!)

Uh, Mort’s really not very happy with The Obamessiah!

He’s Done Everything Wrong

Obama punted on the economy and reversed the fortunes of the Democrats in 365 days.

He’s misjudged the character of the country in his whole approach. There’s the saying, “It’s the economy, stupid.” He didn’t get it. He was determined somehow or other to adopt a whole new agenda. He didn’t address the main issue.

This health-care plan is going to be a fiscal disaster for the country. Most of the country wanted to deal with costs, not expansion of coverage. This is going to raise costs dramatically.

In the campaign, he said he would change politics as usual. He did change them. It’s now worse than it was. I’ve now seen the kind of buying off of politicians that I’ve never seen before. It’s politically corrupt and it’s starting at the top. It’s revolting.

Five states got deals on health care—one of them was Harry Reid’s. It is disgusting, just disgusting. I’ve never seen anything like it. The unions just got them to drop the tax on Cadillac plans in the health-care bill. It was pure union politics. They just went along with it. It’s a bizarre form of political corruption. It’s bribery. I suppose they could say, that’s the system. He was supposed to change it or try to change it.

{…}

I don’t consider it a triumph. I consider it a disaster.

One business leader said to me, “In the Clinton administration, the policy people were at the center, and the political people were on the sideline. In the Obama administration, the political people are at the center, and the policy people are on the sidelines.”

I’m very disappointed. We endorsed him. I voted for him. I supported him publicly and privately.

{…}

I hope there are changes. I think he’s already laid in huge problems for the country. The fiscal program was a disaster. You have to get the money as quickly as possible into the economy. They didn’t do that. By end of the first year, only one-third of the money was spent. Why is that?

He should have jammed a stimulus plan into Congress and said, “This is it. No changes. Don’t give me that bullshit. We have a national emergency.” Instead they turned it over to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who can run circles around him.

It’s very sad. It’s really sad.

He’s improved America’s image in the world. He absolutely did. But you have to translate that into something. Let me tell you what a major leader said to me recently. “We are convinced,” he said, “that he is not strong enough to confront his enemy. We are concerned,” he said “that he is not strong to support his friends.”

The political leadership of the world is very, very dismayed. He better turn it around. The Democrats are going to get killed in this election. Jesus, looks what’s happening in Massachusetts.

It’s really interesting because he had brilliant, brilliant political instincts during the campaign. I don’t know what has happened to them. His appointments present somebody who has a lot to learn about how government works. He better get some very talented businesspeople who know how to implement things. It’s unbelievable. Everybody says so. You can’t believe how dismayed people are. That’s why he’s plunging in the polls.

I can’t predict things two years from now, but if he continues on the downward spiral he is on, he won’t be reelected. In the meantime, the Democrats have recreated the Republican Party. And when I say Democrats, I mean the Obama administration. In the generic vote, the Democrats were ahead something like 52 to 30. They are now behind the Republicans 48 to 44 in the last poll. Nobody has ever seen anything that dramatic.

Hell’s still frozen over — Pigs are flyin’ higher than ever! Quick, somebody get me some ice — I see an Eskimo comin’ . . .

[H/t: Ace]

Republican Scott Brown is leading the polling in tomorrow’s Massachusetts’ special election for the Senate seat previously held by Teddy Kennedy. Real Clear Politics is showing the Republican poll having him up by ten and the Democrat poll having him up by five over rival candidate Massachusetts’ Attorney General Martha Coakley.

Coakley has run an abysmal campaign so far — her ear is so totally made out of tin — and the more you learn about her actions as a district attorney and as the Attorney General, the more you’d like to see this one run out of town on a rail. A little tar & feathers would be a nice touch!

The Brown campaign learned much from the Minnesota race “won” by the Demwit Al Franken and have called for legal volunteers to help monitor the voting, clamp down on voter fraud and report any intimidation.

Next This week, Massachusetts’s citizens will head to the polls to vote in a historical election. Close elections draw intense scrutiny, and ensuring the accuracy and credibility of the process is crucial. For that reason, the Scott Brown campaign is assembling a volunteer legal team to ensure that no voters are disenfranchised and that all ballots are accurately counted. The citizens of Massachusetts deserve a fair and honest election.

On Election Day, we will need lawyers in a variety of tasks, including legal research of compliance issues that arise; witness interviews, preservation of evidence, and preparation of witness affidavits to document any voting irregularities; and monitoring of polling places, courts, and city halls.

You can sign up at the link below. We will contact you with further information, including a conference call training session.

Please do not wait, Election Day is January 19th! [Tomorrow!]

Sonja Brown is mobilizing her Kitchen Cabinet PAC to help with the phone calls from concerned conservatives to voters in Massachusetts. If you have some time today and wish to personally participate, go there and follow the link and you can be all good to go in minutes. As Sonja reminds us:

Spend ONE HOUR Talking To Voters in Massachusetts encouraging them to protect the economy from Obama Care. If elected, Massachusetts Senate candidate Scott Brown will be the missing 41st vote needed for Republicans to BLOCK Obama care.

Time is short and Democrats are marshaling all of their machinery to stop the surging Brown candidacy.

The Kitchen Cabinet alone, could make 10,000 phone calls in the next 24 hours.

Conservative women and their families ARE the majority in this country. Let’s Act Like It!

The Dems are running plenty scared on this one. Obama even put some more of his diminishing aura on the line yesterday coming in to a rally for Coakley — and for his efforts to a less than full crowd, the Mighty ‘O’ got something he’s not used to, yet — Obama was heckled!

OK Massachusetts’ voters — time to stand up against Obamacare and the ever escalating tidal wave of deficit. Time to enact some real Hope & Change! Time to elect Scott Brown and put a Republican in the people’s seat! Time to take away the cloture-proof 60th Democratic Senate vote!

Uh Oh! Mickey Kaus writes that if Brown wins tomorrow, the House will pass the Senate bill as written and then it’s game over — Obamacare for everybody!

You know, with the unions having to eat Obama’s “Cadillac tax” on their health care, just like the rest of us.

Still, tomorrow’s gonna be exciting! Go Brown! Go get ‘em!

An open letter to the Democrats in power in Washington D.C.

November 2, 2010 — the most important election in my lifetime!

If like me you think this pre-Christmas move by Obama is totally FUBAR, then you’ll want to go over and read what Mark Tapscott has written today at the Washington Examiner:

Some distressing civil liberties questions must be asked about an ever-lengthening list of decisions, proposals, and observations by President Obama.

To begin, Obama is the first president to give an international law enforcement organization like Interpol free rein within the territorial confines of this nation, presumably not excluding the arrest and exportation of Americans to be charged with crimes under international law.

Put simply, this means the Constitution is no longer the supreme law of the land in America. Thanks to Executive Order 12425 , which Obama signed Dec. 16 without explaining why, the supreme law of the land is now arguably whatever Interpol says it is, most likely as directed by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, in conjunction with the United Nations.

{…}

So tell us, Mr. President, why do you think Interpol should operate with no accountability and no transparency in our country? Is this what you had in mind in your 2008 presidential campaign when you said “we’ve got to have a civilian national security force that is just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the U.S. military?

Pentagon generals and admirals answer to the president and Congress. Under Obama, Interpol answers to no American.

In his update, Mark tells us that when asked by the NYT about this executive order White House spokesperson Christina Reynolds replied, “there is nothing newsworthy here.” The White House is still not answering any inquiries on this.

Yesterday Mark’s opinion piece outlined what is most disturbing about this executive order 12425:

There are multiple reasons why this Obama decision is so deeply disturbing. First, the Obama order reverses a 1983 Reagan administration decision in order to grant Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, two key privileges. First, Obama has granted Interpol the ability to operate within the territorial limits of the United States without being subject to the same constitutional restraints that apply to all domestic law enforcement agencies such as the FBI. Second, Obama has exempted Interpol’s domestic facilities — including its office within the U.S. Department of Justice — from search and seizure by U.S. authorities and from disclosure of archived documents in response to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by U.S. citizens. Think very carefully about what you just read: Obama has given an international law enforcement organization that is accountable to no other national authority the ability to operate as it pleases within our own borders, and he has freed it from the most basic measure of official transparency and accountability, the FOIA.

2010 is shaping up to be the most important election in my lifetime. If the Democrats keep control of both houses of Congress through 2012 there might not be enough of the republic left to matter anymore.

You’re not being asked to go out in the streets and die for your freedom like the Iranian protesters are doing today, just to go out and campaign vigorously for what’s right and then vote responsibly, and to encourage your family and friends to do the same.

If you don’t, then that first option may no longer be just an option . . .

It’s a balmy 61 degrees here in Santa Monica and I’m feelin’ badly for the folks back in the heartland. OKC got 14 inches of snow yesterday, Tulsa 6 or so. Both airports have been mostly closed and the highways and turnpikes are treacherous at best. I know that some of the fam was planning to make it to Oilton for Christmas dinner — hope they left on Wed. or early yesterday, although having watched the radars all day yesterday if it wasn’t on Wed. then they’re probably scramblin’ around fixin’ dinner at home. I miss you guys!

I just got the pecan pie in the oven and am going to attempt to make the wife’s mother’s apple pie. Hard to believe that she’s been gone for almost two years now — doesn’t seem possible. Mom’s last Christmas was eight long years ago — now that was an interesting Christmas week. One learns a lot about one’s own self and about life sleeping on a bench in the ICU waiting room. One also learns much tangling with his Mom and losing — learning how to let go and let God.

But, enough of that for now. I just want to wish all a very Merry Christmas and once again leave you with an amazing image from the Hubble telescope that seems so appropriate to the season, along with the Gospel of Luke’s recounting of the announcement of the Christ child’s birth to the shepherds that were tending their flocks.

And, take care and keep warm out there!

“And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them,
and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold,
I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude
of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

Merry Christmas