Mr. Obama's Dictionary

"Talking Point (n) - Any substantive argument raised by a Republican that the Democrats cannot rebut."

Would you like an order of thighs with that?

(thanks to Yahoo Sports for the pictures)

Yahoo Sports reports that aboriginal groups are upset by a couple portrayals of native peoples by Olympic skaters.

"I am offended by the performance and so are our other councillors," Bev Manton, the chairwoman of the [New South Wales] Land Council said.

"Aboriginal people for very good reason are sensitive about their cultural objects and icons being co-opted by non-Aboriginal people – whether they are from Australia or Russia.

"It's important for people to tread carefully and respectfully when they are depicting somebody else's culture, and I don't think this performance does."


Let me get this straight: Ice skaters have managed to hurt the feelings of people who are a couple of generations removed from being cannibals?

Teflon Socialist

"The most valuable of all talents, that of never using two words where one will do." - Thomas Jefferson

Oh, hell!!


Look at these remarkable polls, taken over the last couple of weeks, posted on Real Clear Politics:

RCP Poll Averages

President Obama Job Approval
RCP Average
Approve
47.7
Disapprove
45.8
Spread +1.9


Congressional Job Approval
RCP Average
Approve
20.4
Disapprove
73.4
Spread -53.0


Generic Congressional Vote
RCP Average
Republicans
45.3
Democrats
43.7
Republicans +1.6


Direction of Country
RCP Average
Right Direction
35.0
Wrong Track
59.3
Spread -24.3


So the country is headed down to drain, the Democrat congress is responsible, and the President is running positive approval numbers?

Where are all the liberals decrying "teflon" presidents?

Retarded Seems To Be The Hardest Word

I don't like Rahm Emanuel. I don't like him. Not personally. Not politically.

I think he represents everything bad about American politics. He is ideological, self-reverential, and arrogant, and a man who cares only about political power and what it can bring to his party and the ideology it serves. Truth, honor, fairness -- to him, all concepts that don't factor in.

I also think he would have no qualms about killing any unborn baby, anytime, anywhere, if it served a selfish personal or political end.

I also think he thinks mentally disabled or special needs or mentally handicapped people are essentially worthless, essentially drains on society. "Think of all the public works and welfare projects we could fund with those resources," I'd bet he believes. (At least his justifying of the killing such children as unborn useless eaters is based in blind ideology; Joe Biden would support a mother killing such a child, in spite of his belief that they are human beings. That is the special form of evil and hypocrisy that Joe Biden embraces. But that's another story for a different day.)

Anyway, I never apologize for Emanuel. I never think he deserves the benefit of the doubt. So when he called liberals who proposed attack ads against "moderate" Democrats "f---ing retarded," I believe he used the word "retarded" in the worst way possible.

Beneath this flap, however, is the fact that no one, not even those who try to help mentally-disabled people, is on the same page regarding what word is acceptable.

Not many years ago -- certainly within the last ten years -- a lot of people who support and help such mentally disabled people themselves called such people "retarded." One of the leading organizations that helps such childen was ARC -- the Association of Retarded Children.

The Knights of Columbus, one of the leading fundraisers for such children through its nationally-known Tootsie Roll Drive, supports ARC and similar organizations. Thousands of Knights around the U.S. would stand outside their local supermarkets and Walmarts and collect nickels and dimes for such organizations and, in exchange, or even not in exchange, would hand out Tootsie Rolls. They must have given away millions of them. While the did so, they wore bright yellow vests with red words "HELP RETARDED CITIZENS."

Recently, the Knights got the memo, or I should say, got a memo, telling them that "retarded" is the wrong word. But what is the right word?

I heard former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum discuss the hurt he and his family felt at the Emanuel incident. He talked about his "special needs" child. He was obviously sincere and, I thought, charitable to Emanuel, in that he said it was a hurtful use of the word but we all mis-speak or make mistakes and so we should just apologize -- sincerely -- and move on. True enough.

But he said "special needs." What about the Knights' vests above? "Mentally handicapped"? "Mentally disabled"? Is it times for new vests?

Sarah Palin trashed Emanuel, too. In the past, she'd referenced "special needs" people, but in her Facebook post on the Emanuel matter, she called them "cognitive and developmental disabilities." That's way too big for a vest.

(Keith Olberman, in turn, and predictably, criticized Palin for using her son's condition for political purposes. He supported his position with a quote from erstwhile non-son-in-law Levi Johnston, who claimed Palin once referred to her Down Syndrome son Trig as her "retarded baby." First, using Levi Johnston to support ANY argument, other than a belief that fathers should accompany teenage daughters on all dates, is ludicrous. So Olberman must be suffering from oxygen deprivation caused by ratings lower than a brotulid fish. Second, the hypocrisy of this is stunning. Olberman never criticizes the Democrats' use of children to promote the liberals' political agenda. Whether the issue is health care, education, taxes, spending, global warming (this became "climate change" once we started to get blizzards in the South every three days), and even, believe it or not, partial birth abortion, Democrats constantly use "the children," including their own children, as a battering ram for social policies that expand their own power and increase the dependency of people on the state.)

But other groups used the incident to scold Emanuel and prime the guilt machine:

"Using a slur about people with intellectual disabilities to criticize other people just isn’t right,” said Peter V. Berns, chief executive officer of The Arc of the United States. “For people with disabilities it is disrespectful and demeaning and only serves to marginalize a constituency that already struggles for empowerment on every front,” Berns added.

Tim Shriver, CEO of Special Olympics wrote to Emanuel:

"Of course, I have no way of knowing if this expression was actually used by you or anyone else. However, I want to take this opportunity to familiarize you and the members of your staff to the suffering and pain that is perpetuated by the use of the terms 'retard' and 'retarded.' Special Olympics has welcomed the voice of thousands of people with intellectual disabilities who have joined us in trying to change the conversation and uproot the stereotypes and stigmas carried by what we refer to as the 'R-word.' Regardless of whether the term was actually used or not, I would ask you to join us in this important fight."

Advocates also want to pass federal legislation that will strike the word "retarded" from all federal laws.

The justifiable offense of these people to the coarseness of Emanuel's comment aside, the real problem is that Emanuel used the word in a derogatory manner. If he had said, "I really think Americans should increase their charitable contributions to groups that help retarded citizens," there would be no outcry at all. Emanuel's sin is showing a lack of respect to citizens who are vulnerable.

But unless defenders of special needs people figure out a way to decide a consensus term, it's pretty hard to criticize the use of the word in general. Sure, Emanuel's obnoxious use is obviously wrong, but who is going to decide the right word or phrase? Tim Shriver? Sarah Palin? Keith Olberman?

Special needs advocates should stop trying to transmogrify Emanuel's revolting use of the word "retarded" into some international cause, especially when they aren't on the same page yourselves. Such kneejerk whining comes across as a self-serving effort to elbow into the continuing and disgusting Victims' Parade that has such a corrosive effect on discourse and substantive progress in this country.

Special needs advocates, especially those in the Kennedy family like Tim Shriver, should stop being hypocrites and openly condemn those who support the use of abortion as a means of ridding themselves, before birth, of special needs children. I realize that would extend logically to condemn all abortion, but, yes, that is the logical conclusion.

In the meantime, advocates, yes, I agree, words hurt. Toughen up.

It's not a deficit, it's a cry for Obamacare and more taxes!




(Thanks to shaman, http://www.shamans.blogger.com.br/2008_07_01_archive.html)





James Kwak's recent post on Huffington Post takes the position that we need two things to resolve the deficit/debt crisis: (1) more and higher taxes and (2) the Obama health care plan. This is John Maynard Keynes Meets Jack Kevorkian.

I traced the links in Kwak's posts and they took me to an Atlantic article that quotes a Stanford professor's "Four Pillars" of a deficit-reducing health care bill, which he claimed the Baucus bill was. First among those Four Pillars is a tax on Cadillac plans. Given that Obama traded away the tax on Cadillac plans owned by Big Labor in exchange for House lefty support of the Senate bill, by your definition, the House of Card has collapsed.

And this doesn't even get to the substantive flaws of the Senate health care bill, i.e., whether, even assuming the numbers "work," it would produce the kind of health care "reform" this country wants or needs. Simply put, the other pillars involve, essentially, health care rationing, based, not on likelihood of success, but on cost, simple cost.

Choice, ProChoice Style












(thanks to Vlad.com for this Michaelangelaic image) http://http://www.vladville.com/category/gators


Woman, child die in crash on I-94

Tip of the cap to Jivin'Jehoshaphat for this story.....What's most striking is the hypocrisy of the left regarding abortion. It never ends.

As I commented on Jivin', the Chicago Tribune is actually only following its own perverted logic when it calls the dead baby a "fetus." Here's how:

The proabortion movement believes in a world in which women, to paraphrase Justice Kennedy, define their "own concept of existence." In a rejection of plain English, however, abortion supporters interpret this (nonsensical and) completely subjective and solely personal standard as allowing women to apply their own concept of existence to another dependent human life. Result?: If a woman WANTS the baby, it is a "baby." If she DOESN'T want the baby, it's not a baby, it's a "fetus" or something even less (zygote? blob? trash?). So the proabortion people use a totally subjective analysis when they want to permit the killing of the unborn; there is no intrinsic, objective truth at all when it comes to abortion.

Unless, of course, a prolife group wants to define ITS own concept of existence and express its "subjective" opinion that inconvenient unborn human life does have intrinsic value, because it just may turn out to be a Heisman Trophy winner, so perhaps the better "choice" is to NOT kill the nascient human life, even if it is inconvenient to let it live. In this case, the subjective prolife opinion becomes "inflammatory" and "divisive," and not at all a matter of subjective value, but a viewpoint that is "objectively" harmful and must be silenced.

Got it? I don't.

Busy. But in the 15 months I've been away, the prez has been spinning and lying and doing end runs.

SOTU last night.......Backpedals? Well, does the failure to mention Gitmo count?

This comes on the heels, in the last couple of months, of the president's abandonment of his multi-promise to put health care negotiations on C-Span, so the American people can see who's saying what and making what deals. The irony of this is that, when the president made this promise repeatedly, he made it with the implied threat that such public airing would expose those scoundrels who were making backroom deals out of view of the American people. At the time, he assumed the backroom sleazeballs would be Republicans flacking for the insurance industry, so it was a good way to score cheap points. As it turns out, the sleazeballs making high-handed deals have been Congressional Democrats and the president himself. Hmmm. Exposing these people is not what the president had in mind. Reverse course.

The ignoring of this broken promise, by not only the White Hose, but by its allies in the MSM, is breathtaking. What does it say about someone and his moral bankruptcy when he won't keep even a simple-to-keep promise. How much must he fear the shedding of light on his party's healthcare legislation development process? How much must he want to keep hidden both the substance of the bill and messy deals it took to get it?

And while ignoring both these firm promises and the public's current contempt for the bill and the process, Pelosi and Reid remain committed to its passage by whatever means necessary. A view such as theirs ignores newly-raised concerns of Democrat moderates who, having found their voices, apparently in the snowbanks of Massachusetts, are increasingly nervous about being put to the test on a bill for which voters appear willing to put them to the sword. But Democrat leadership approaches this bill with Stalinesque singlemindedness and an arrogance of power that is impressive -- and well may lead to a devastating political autumn for Democrats.

It's all quite a gamble. Zealots are willing to take such risks, though, even if they correctly perceive the potential political harm. The ideology is what matters, even if it kills them politically. And it very well may.