"It took time to free the slaves . . . "

And Rome wasn't turned to rubble in a day.

My favorite sign says "Austerity kills!" So does nationwide poverty.

What's wrong with manual labor? I've felt that way since I was a Co-valedictorian in high school. I went to college and law school because I could see that I didn't really have the aptitude to make it in most of the other fields.

Today, I heard a clip of Hugh Hewitt interviewing Gloria Allred on his radio show. She hung up on him after he refused to let her evade the point that this bogus claim, about Meg Whitman hiring an illegal alien, was an October surprise stunt. At one point, he told her, "You can't handle the truth!"

Then there was this moment with Greta Van Susteren. I had long dismissed Van Susteren as a tabloid scandal chaser, but after seeing her program on a number of occasions, I think she's a very good lawyer.

Has Gloria Allred the shark lady jumped the shark? Oh, I hope so.

Update: Ms. Whitman says that she has a debate on Saturday, October 2, scheduled against Brown on Unavision a Spanish language cable channel, which explains the timing. The SEIU is running ads based on this faux scandal. It's such blatant dirty politics, it certainly ought to blow up in Brown's face and make him toxic for every public office in the future.

Via Politico.com

“Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company,” CNN said in a statement. “We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well.“

Reduce your carbon footprint No Pressure! I think they were trying to say that we're all going to suffer if we don't do this, but it comes across as a wish for global warming skeptics to die. Very funny . . .

James Delingpole comments.

Duh. Assuming that she's willing to put her license on the line to get Jerry Brown elected, I think Allred should have waited another three weeks before spilling this. Hugh Hewitt is saying that this stunt is backfiring on Brown.

Also removes warts!

Breast enhancement creme. It could be Jergens repackaged and it would still make a mint.

Talk about a sense of entitlement

Obama to Democratic donors: “There better not be an enthusiasm gap, people.”

If he were asking for my money, that would have had me on my feet and out the door, demanding for my money back. Who does he think he is? I wonder what Oprah thought of that.

He also said:

“Now’s not the time to quit…it took time to free the slaves…ultimately we’ll make progress.”

and

“I need you to be fired up.”

Does he really consider trillion dollar deficits and socialized health insurance to be the equivalent of freeing the slaves? If so, when can we expect to begin Reconstruction?

In the light of the utter failure of the stimulus bill, one has to assume that the other alternative of Democrats is to raise taxes, but without their sixty seat majority in the Senate, how will they pass them? By executive order?

Progressive sof the nation, arise!

All you have to lose is your lethargy!

"The idea that we've got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible," Obama told Rolling Stone magazine. "We have to get folks off the sidelines. People need to shake off this lethargy, people need to buck up."

Surely, you knew that all that Hope and Change was going to Cost and Hurt the Economy, didn't you? How could you be so Naive?

Moving America Forward

I wonder if that was the best choice in slogans, considering how the polls are going for Democrats. Interesting that there isn't a Feingold sign anywhere, or any other Democrat candidate's either.

Talk about a grim group! Obama's fabled personal charm seems to have evaporated, but not the debt he has helped create.

Live by party discipline, and die by it. I hope that this year marks the permanent decline of the Democratic Party, although it won't. It stands for everything that has harmed America and no longer stands for the things it did that helped us win WWII and the Cold War. It's like the rotten, termite ridden leg of a three legged stool. Unless it rids itself of its progressive base and returns to the belief in government by the people, rather than by the eggheads and technocrats, it will destroy this country.

Meg Whitman's former maid admits she's here illegally and that she committed fraud in getting her job.

I just saw a clip of this woman weeping about not being able to get a job and saying that Whitman had refused to hire an immigration lawyer for her. It seems like an obvious political stunt by Gloria Allred on behalf of the Democratic candidate for California Governor, Brown. She's suing Whitman for back wages and mileage.

Mobile X-ray Vans Hit the Streets

What's in my car that I don't want the FBI to notice? If I had a drug stash, I suppose I'd be upset if the FBI grabbed it. But otherwise, would I even know that they had looked? If the FBI X-rayed my car, found nothing to investigate and moved on, has my privacy been violated? If there's no prosecution or actual disruption of my life, such as a traffic stop, has the Constitution been violated?

I'm sure most people would say that it's still a violation, but if you don't know about it, and there's no arrest, how does it get before the courts? Does the ACLU have standing to inspect the government's records for potential clients?

Maybe if they hadn't anointed him the Progressive Messiah

Obama's 'rally' sounds like a bummer. Maybe this is a requiem tour for the filibuster-proof Congress.

Michael Gerson:

Having not achieved their entire State of the Union agenda in a two-year rush, progressives blame structural forces or Senate procedures or Glenn Beck or the Koch brothers. And this disappointment easily blends into arrogance. As conservative populists argue that "the people" are better than the government, some liberals bluntly assert that the government is better than the people. "We have an electorate that doesn't always pay that much attention to what's going on," Sen. John Kerry said recently, "so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what's happening." . . .

Disappointed that Congress and the public did not cheer every progressive initiative, modern liberalism has become a search for explanations that do not involve concessions. For the Obama team, that explanation is Washington -- the Babylon on the Potomac. Thus they avoid the need for reflection and readjustment -- at least for a time.

Antaeus and the Tea Party

Stanley Fish:

We the people hear this and know who is being talked about, and react with anger: “Don’t presume to tell me what to think and whom to vote for just because you have more degrees than I do. I don’t know much about these people but if you guys are against them, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt.”

Mr. Fish gets it, and it's nothing short of astonishing that so few of our elites in politics and the media have before now. Washington seems to have developed the view that it can do whatever it likes and nobody out in the hustings would understand, let alone care about it. But when you suddenly jack up national deficits by trillions and impose a broad new nationalization scheme that harms most people to benefit minorities and do so in the face of a clear and growing public opposition, and then belittle them for complaining, people will remember it when elections come. If there were such a thing as a national recall, Obama would be out on his ear, along with Harry Reid.

[Antaeus, by the way, was a hero in Greek myth "won victory after victory because his opponents repeatedly threw him to the ground, not realizing that it was the earth (in the figure of his mother, Gaia) that nourished him and gave him renewed strength."]

Jim DeMint will block "all legislation that has not been cleared by his office in the final days of the pre-election session." This is probably a response to the Democrats' intent to introduce as many as 20 bills during the session.


Personally, I'd prefer that no legislation be permitted between the elections and the date the new members get sworn in. There's generally no necessity for a lame duck session, except to get around the will of the people, and if there were, it would most likely be something both parties agreed on.

Pew Survey: Mormons and Evangelicals know most about Christianity, based on knowledge of the Bible.

This isn't really news. Any cause involving progressives will have two elements: intractability and seeking a solution through big government. Because of those elements, it will be ineffective, costly, wasteful and an annoyance. The whole Global Warming scare provides us a primer on how these things work, since it's just a smaller iteration of the overall environmental movement. Any "science" supporting belief in the "problem," will be accepted uncritically, while skepticism, even by equally qualified scientists will be treated as pigheaded or worse, heretical.