ON OBAMACARE OPPONENTS

There’s an old saying, "If you can't blind them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bullsh*t." And if that doesn't work, play the race card. And if that fails ....

"Our country is great because people can say what they think and they believe," [Speaker of the House Nancy] Pelosi added. "But I also think that they have to take responsibility for any incitement that they may cause."

... play the 'fear' and 'violence' cards.

THREE VIDEO CLIPS

From PJTV:

 Why You Should Run For Office
 How the #1 Public University Produces First-Rate Idiots
 Getting Rich Off Racism

Watch them all.

UNCLE KNOWS BEST

What happens when you let the inmates run the asylum.

When it comes to greenhouse-gas emissions, Energy Secretary Steven Chu sees Americans as unruly teenagers and the Administration as the parent that will have to teach them a few lessons.

“The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act,” Dr. Chu said. “The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.”

Yep. Put pre-K in charge of the high-school classroom.

ROUGHING UP THE MIDDLE CLASS

“They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.”

OBAMA'S GESTURES

Is President Obama an incompetent boob, or something more ... malevolent? Hillsdale College Professor Paul Rahe thinks it's the latter:

We are living in a dangerous time. It seems highly unlikely that Barack Obama will get his way in domestic affairs. The Democrats may control Congress, but they now fear a rout in 2010, and they are likely to tread with caution from now on. In foreign affairs, however, presidents have a relatively free hand, and this president has ample time to do damage to a country that, there is reason to suspect, he deeply hates.

Read it all, and make your own decision.

HOT LANES ARE RACIST

Our government is officially insane. “A lawsuit filed by Arlington County last month claims the [HOT] lanes benefit wealthy white people and discriminates against minorities.”

Are HOT (high occupancy toll) lanes stupid? Certainly. Racist? C’mon. Give me a break.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES

The chickens have come home to roost.

2008: Peter Orzag, director of the Congressional Budget Office from January 2007 to November 2008: “deficits in Social Security would not come until 2019.”

2009: Peter Orszag, director of the [White House] Office of Management and Budget, member of the Obama Cabinet: “the CBO has determined that Social Security will run cash deficits next year and in 2011, and by 2016 will be more or less in permanent deficit mode.”

At least I’ll get (some of) mine. Tough luck for the rest of you.

OBAMA LIES AGAIN

"Obama has always been a liar .... The MSM gave him a pass ..., enabling his election, because he was their candidate. They were evidently unfazed by the ancient Roman legal principal: Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus."

"Well, there have been plenty of omnibuses since, but few so risible as Obama’s answers this Sunday to George Stephanopoulos concerning the ACORN scandal:"

STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the funding for ACORN?
OBAMA: You know, if — frankly, it’s not really something I’ve followed closely. I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.

ACORN is the best-known community organizing group in the country. Obama was a community organizer. He knows perfectly well where their money comes from.

And Joe Wilson was admonished by Congress for speaking the truth?

[Update & Bump] ACORN, I hardly knew ya.

A BLINDING GLIMPSE OF THE OBVIOUS

Howard Kurtz tries to understand why the tea partiers are angry.

Did I mention that liberals (and that includes the media) are so adept at reading between the lines that they can't actually read the lines? Why, yes. Yes, I did.

THREAT ASSESSMENT

Will McChrystal resign if Obama doesn’t act?

Today, the military is perceiving that the administration is punting the question of a troop increase in Afghanistan, and the military is even questioning the administration’s commitment to succeed in Afghanistan.

It appears that Obama is trying to vote “present” again. He should pay less attention to Jimmy Carter and more attention to another Democrat former president, Harry Truman, who famously said “The buck stops here.”

KILLING GRANNY

Would Obama kill Granny?

In his Newsweek column, Evan Thomas makes the case for letting Granny go (or thinks he does) in the context of discussing his mother's decision to forgo heroic measures to keep her alive at the end of her life. Unfortunately, in his concern for keeping the cost down, Mr. Thomas danced around the essential point: it was his mother's decision; not his, not doctors, not lawyers, not insurance companies, not Medicare.

Ken Blackwell responds: "No, of course President Obama doesn’t want to unplug your grandmother.... It’s just that when he takes over health care, ... millions of decisions are going to be made. And they’ll be made by well-intentioned but fuzzy-thinking Obama [acolytes]."

They won't be made by Granny.

OFFICIAL RECOGNITION

Former president Jimmy Carter can quit digging.

Senator John McCain: Carter worst president in 20th century.

STILL SMUG AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

Jim Sleeper, a lecturer in political science at Yale University, argues that it’s not (all) about race, it's about (conservative) fear and loathing.

The mistake of crying racism is especially tempting to upscale, influential liberals who, no less than protesters on the right, are ducking the true causes of dispossession, fear and rage: the premises and practices of financial capital, predatory consumer marketing and a national-security state boondoggling.

After all these years, liberals are still smug in their certainty that there can't possibly be principled opposition to their plans and programs.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRAVDA

"It [the mainstream media] has only gone way downhill into Soviet-era Pravda territory. The MSM’s modus operandi today is identical ...."

Da Svidaniya, America.

DANCING WITH THE CZARS?

Boob Czar. Beer Czar. Transparency Czar. Stimulus Czars. Green Czar. "We were going to have 20+ people dance in front of the White House in costume .... We wanted to illustrate absurdity by using absurdity. Make a mockery of the czars."

Does anyone have ideas for more czars? Death czar? Too grim. Media czar? Too real. Teleprompter czar? Maybe.

NONDEDUCTABLE MEDICAL EXPENSE

A tax lawyer will continue to challenge rulings disallowing medical expense tax deductions for spending on prostitutes and pornography. "It's a holistic approach to medicine."

Perhaps he should try claiming a medical expense deduction for prosthetutes.

Via Instapundit (here and here).

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

The Obama administration’s decision to scrap the European missile shield may or may not have been wise, but the timing was atrocious.

[The] U.S. president’s cancellation last week of plans to place missile interceptors in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic ... came on Sept. 17, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.

The Poles were not amused.

JIMMY CARTER, PLEASE SHUT UP

Haven’t you embarrassed yourself enough already?

There's an old saying you might want to keep in mind: when you're in a deep hole, stop digging!

NEA: SUPPORT OBAMA’S AGENDA

”An official at the White House Office of Public Engagement encouraged a group of artists on a conference call with the National Endowment for the Arts to produce works that supported the Obama administration's agenda ...”

What I don’t understand is why the Obama administration felt the need to ask.

Details here.

AN EMPTY SUIT

Historical anecdotes describe the Rio Grande as "a mile wide and an inch deep." Ed Morrissey (and others) have used that phrase to describe President Obama.

I think they’re overestimating his depth.