The bad news is, we have Barack Hussein Obama to kick around for the next four years… there is no good news.

Having started  yesterday out with a sense of calm apprehension, I went to bed in a state of being not “comfortably numb”. All of the talking heads and number crunchers on the conservative side of our body politic had proven to be dead wrong. The hard-core Lefties over at DailyKos were evidently calling it correctly a week ago.

How can one be looking at the same polls and come up with two such widely disparate predictions? With so much Democratic malaise, a weak President overseeing a flailing economy and with the Damaclean Benghazi hanging over his head, all the while facing a surging GOP candidate with sterling business credentials and the political expertise to navigate the current turgid partisan Congressional waters — HOW DID WE LOSE?

In her post, “It’s All About The U.S. Supreme Court“, Sonja Eddings Brown, founder and President of The Kitchen Cabinet women’s political organization, has this clue:

But we know for a certainty that the GOP spent a billion dollars waging a 20th century campaign in the 21st century.

We spent the bulk of our hundreds of millions on TV, when no one was watching TV.  The remainder was spent on Direct Mail which most Americans toss before it arrives on our kitchen counters.  That left in the bank, was spent on robo calls when Americans were unplugging their phones.

{…}

[All] was neutralized IN ONE DAY, by the Obama campaign’s smart, state-of-the-art online social networking campaign.  Obama’s strategists developed 30 million followers online and then simply e-mailed polling places to them and told them Romney would steal their lifestyle choices.

We lost this one on the Internet folks. While WE were spending our time online waging a war of ideas with words and images to fire up our base and expose the uninitiated to our ideas, the Obama team was building a sophisticated mechanism to do only one thing: Scare the living bejesus out of a massive amount of voters at just the right time and be right there in their smart phones with all the info they needed to go and save them from that great peril by voting for the Mighty “O”.

It’s so brilliant a strategy that you’d have thought it came from a James Bond super-villain… not the President of ALL the people of the United States — uh, all — yeah right… my bad?

So, what’s next? Have to lick the wounds a little, but then there is much work to do. WE still have the majority in the House and we must make sure our representatives man up and grow a spine if they don’t have one already, else they’ve got to go in ’14! Andy over at Ace of Spades HQ is reacting in his own special way:

You like your big government, assholes? Pay for it. But I’ll have a chair when the music stops.

I encourage all similarly-situated Americans to do the same.

You idiots that reelected Obama, and elected Warren and the like, can’t vote yourselves an infinite slice of my wallet. I’ll always be one step ahead of you.

A large amount of money will be moved to offshore tax havens between now and 12/31. Also, watch dividend-paying stocks. A ton of money’s about to be distributed in advance of the return-to-Boooosh!!11! tax rates plus the new Obamacare tax on investment income.

Oh, and it’s my birthday. Instead of spending it happily effing off, I’ll spend it moving money. Point. Click. Done. So, happy.

Oh, and be careful if you choose that kind of route and be sure you have a great accountant, and probably a really good tax attorney!!!

Before I end this piece I’d like to express how much I appreciate Mitt and Ann Romney and the upstanding and uplifting campaign that they ran. Mitt raised a lot of money, but he also spent many ten’s of millions of his own personal wealth pursuing what he hoped was his destiny. God must have something great in store for this good man as he would have made a great POTUS — and we would ALL have been better off with the next four years being under his stewardship. Over at his blog, Hugh Hewitt has some parting words on this same topic that I’ll end with as well:

Pray for the president and the Congress and yes, with special zeal, for the health of the Supreme Court.  We are in uncharted waters, but the Framers were geniuses, and we will see if that wisdom surpassed even what we had previously appreciated.

I voted for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan today and am damn proud to have done so!!! In just a few hours we’ll know whether this great country of ours will be headed on the road to restoration or hurled down the dark path of perdition. For the sake of my son, his wife  and their precious sons and daughter, I have been praying for the former. Time will tell…

It’s been a long time now since your ol’ Okie has had any enthusiasm for writing on this blog. The more overdosing of Obama that we’ve had to endure, the more bitter and negative I became… to the point that I no longer could see a point to it. Opining just wasn’t going to get anything done about the nightmare.

Three years ago I began working with Sonja Eddings Brown on a project called “The Kitchen Cabinet” – a political website oriented towards conservative women. I had worked for her briefly in ’06 on the California Constitutional Amendment, Prop 8, and had built a blog, Article6Blog.com, for her husband Lowell and his blogging partner John, who both had been part of a Southern California Christian Bloggers Association formed in the Spring of 2005 of which John and I were two of the founding members. Sonja art directed me on their major redesign a couple of years after we had originally put together their blog.

The first Photoshop sketches for TKC were done in the Fall of ’09 and the initial launch was in the Spring of 2010. The site was extensively revised that August to get it ready for the 2010 election cycle where it played an important roll in coordinating conservative women’s groups across the country in their efforts that helped lead to the largest pickup of GOP House seats in decades as well as many Governorships.

This election cycle it has been all about electing Mitt Romney as the 45th President of the United States. Tonight we’ll see if we have been able to help get that done. I’m but a small cog in a big machine, but it sure is nice to be DOING something rather than just constantly complaining… However, I do feel some major inner-irritation coming on — and I don’t know a better way to get that out of my system than to come here and vent!

Is Okie back? Guess like tonight’s results… we’ll just have to wait and see.

Oh — If you even wondered just how the Golden State of California has gotten itself into such a sad state, check out my friend Laer Pearce’s new book, “Crazifornia”. It’s a nightmare of a cautionary tale to all those that still believe in the Progressive Way.

With two American embassies being assaulted by radical Islamic extremists on this 11th anniversary of the worst attack on American soil, I am remembering this day again with a re-post of one of the earlier efforts that pretty much said it all.

On the dog walk this AM I composed in my head a most wordy, commemorative post to both honor those who were lost in the al-Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and those first responders that risked, and for some, gave all to save as many as possible — as well as to lambaste those among us that no longer give a whit. But hey, for those so lost in their own narcissism that they care more about community organizing, punishing American business, depriving US from opportunity or protecting the weak from the likes of the Taliban — why waste words on them.

They HAVE FORGOTTEN!

They have forgotten the sight of their fellow Americans and yes, some from across the globe, making the harrowing choice to plunge to their deaths instead of burning alive. They have forgotten those that listened on their cell phones as loved ones on the doomed flights said their last good byes. They have forgotten the bravery of the resistors on Flight 93 as they forced that jumbo jet into a Pennsylvania field instead of allowing the hijackers to use it as a bomb against the Capital or the White House. They have forgotten those first responders that rushed into the twin towers to rescue as many as possible, but never made it out themselves.

They HAVE FORGOTTEN!

Not everyone has forgotten:

In today’s dead-tree-edition of the LA Times, they remember as best they can, with a single story on page 17 — with no blurb or mention on page one. Now, this current 9/11 has become “the first official National Day of Service and Remembrance,” to honor the spirit of volunteerism or some such parlance.

The Anchoress is remembering this 9/11 in a very different state of mind:

This 9/11 Anniversary, it just feels like too much. Or not enough. This 9/11, the day feels huge, too big for sentimentality, almost.

{…}

That’s kind of what I am feeling on this terrible anniversary – that the Day of the Bully may yet dawn again, but I am not so sure how psyche-scarred America will handle it. I know our first responders, our military, our Protector lads and He-men (and She-ra’s) will do what they always do; they will never let us down. But this is a very different -much more divided and thus weaker- country than we were 8 years ago. Our trust in each other has been shaken. I believe we would weather another attack and come together, as before, but is that simply because I want to believe it?

Michelle Malkin remembers:

Remember: Project 2,996.

Remember: “Let’s roll!”

Remember: The angels on loan from God.

Remember: The 9/11 babies.

Remember: Falling Man.

Remembrance is worthless without resolve. Resolve is useless without action.

Hugh Hewitt puts our struggle with the Islamists that would gladly have another 9/11 happen every day in perspective:

Thanks to the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, coast guard, counterterrorism and public safety professionals who have prevented a second attack for eight years.

The enormous cost of the battles in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world have been made so that there have not had to be more pictures like this one. We remember the victims of 9/11 today, but we also need to salute the thousands killed and tens of thousands wounded in the war with the Islamists, fanatics who would gladly see a 9/11 every day in their war with the West.

Doctor Zero at Hot Air answers those that minimize the importance of that day and our efforts to see it never repeated:

Eight years later, it’s a lot to ask people to think about 9/11 every single day. On this one day, at least, we can remember three thousand people who began an ordinary morning, and ended it by falling through fire. It was not a natural disaster, or a “tragedy,” and by God I am weary in my soul of people who amuse themselves by pretending it was a government conspiracy. It was an attack. It was murder. Across the Middle East tomorrow, there will be people who celebrate the murderers. Don’t turn away from the sight. We cannot afford to allow this enemy to become invisible. We can’t afford to let our heroes become invisible, either. The savages with box cutters were real. So were the men who ran into those collapsing towers. In their name, with love for their memory, and luminous with their spirit, we will prevail.

James Lileks has put together a moving remembrance of that fateful day:

As for me, I can’t forget.

I can’t forget how such a level of EVIL existed eight years ago that 19 men armed with box cutters slaughtered so many of US purely out of their hatred for our society, our freedoms, our faith. I can’t forget that in Pakistan the Taliban is working and fighting night and day to overthrow the ruling government and get their hands on nuclear weapons to use on Israel and on the West. I can’t forget . . . well because to do so would be suicidal. With our current slate of leaders and their misguided policies it will most likely happen again, sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, next time will be worse . . .

Just in case you’re wondering how Obamacare will be enforced, just look at all the new IRS agents that were hired over the Spring when it looked like the ACA was likely to be overturned, just to kick off the Fed’s efforts in a timely fashion I’d imagine. $500-million of the HHS budget was diverted from initial use to add the new agents.

From The American Thinker just this past April:

President Obama is playing shell game with tax dollars in order to rush implementation of Obamacare before the Supreme Court strikes it down.

It may also be a ploy to bring Obamacare implementation so far along, that the Supreme Court will be reluctant to overturn the entire bill.

The shell game involves a $1 billion appropriation to HHS – Republicans call it a “slush fund” – that the agency can use as it sees fit. Half of the funding has been transferred from HHS to the IRS in order to set up enforcement structures for those who fail to buy insurance under the individual mandate.

The top section of today’s LATEXTRA section of the dead-tree edition of the Los Angeles Times, above the fold, features the story of Maria Gomez, an illegal immigrant that has managed to graduate from UCLA with a degree in Architecture. Actually, considering her circumstances, that’s a mighty impressive accomplishment. However… that’s not the gist of the piece. Here’s a taste:

At 26, she was getting her master’s in architecture from one of the nation’s top schools. But the triumph felt hollow, her sense of achievement tangled up with bitterness and fear.

{…}

The country that made you hide like a criminal and the country that promised to let you stand tall atop your talent — she’d grown up with both, somehow believed in both. But now, about to be pitched into a job market where she could not legally work, she felt dread in her stomach.

The rest of the piece details her early life and her collegiate journey, all while extolling the dangers of her being illegal. She even became an activist for the “Dream Act” legislation (where WE the taxpayers would be on the hook for the higher-education cost for illegals) — the LAT does love their progressive activists.

It ends, (all three pages of it online!) with her just missing out on a paying job, again because she’s illegal. Hmmm… what to do, what to do?

There’s real tragedy here. A child is brought into the country at the age of eight and taught to hide in plain site to avoid deportation. Our society makes it possible for her to get a first-class education in a field that could provide her an excellent living. One would think that Mexico would be clamoring for for folks like these to come, work and be a productive part of that country. Of course there’s this – who in their right mind, after living here all their lives, would want to go live and work in Mexico right now?

I have no answers for this dilemma, I’m just wondering if this was the most important “Late-Breaking” story of June 8th, 2012… or, is it just more water-carrying by the MSM for President Obama? Some convenient distraction from the Wisconsin results, the mess at Justice, the wide-spread predictions of Economic Armageddon next January — all of the above?

Just askin’.

Today once again we pause to remember all those who gave up their tomorrows
so that we could live out our todays. Not sure who came up with that one . . .
but it’s a darn good one.

Our eternal gratitude is owed to the fallen, to those that served and made it home,
and to our men and women in uniform who are out there getting it done on our behalf each and every day.