Holiday

I will be offline until April 13 (save a few uncertain Sundays). Sorry.

Be well. Know peace. Make merry. And love.

Gnade

"I Am So Angry!"

Last night, as I conversed with a woman perhaps 35 years my senior, my interlocutor expressed regrets for spending "the last eight years so angry." Her rage has passed: the election of Barack Obama and the end of the Bush terms has brought her peace.

I am glad for her. She is a sweet lady. It used to hurt me to see how much she suffered. I had seen her a few times crying in church; when I'd approach her to extend my sympathy, she'd actually denounce then-President Bush through her tears and clenched teeth. But that was some time ago. We no longer genuflect and sing in the same nave, as the consecration to the bishopric of a gay man severed me from the church in which she and I worshiped side by side. A man divided us. Another divides us again.

Why do I write against Barack Obama? Because he is not just a man: he is a dividing line. He is not just the proponent of political, social and cultural ideas: he is the incarnation of those ideas. He is a flash-point, a line of demarcation, a litmus test. How you view this man defines your status, your group identity, and even your value. Or so I've noticed.

It is a mere distraction to talk as if Barack Obama is just another politician. He isn't. People have never talked of an American politician as they have of this man. People have never ascribed so much promise to a mere man in the White House like they have with Barack Obama. He is the incarnation of more than the body politic. If you listen closely, he's the hope of the whole world (and his wife is the "First Lady the World's Been Waiting For").

Like my elderly friend, I, too, might regret the anger I've succumbed to since the election of someone with whom I so profoundly disagree. But my anger is not really directed at Barack Obama. I am actually angry at a specific group of people who helped him get into the Oval Office: I am angry at my Christian brothers and sisters who voted for this man. I am angry at my "evangelical," orthodox and Catholic brothers and sisters who set aside wisdom for some pop-culture affectation of change, tolerance, diversity and hope. I am angry because my Christian siblings seemed utterly indifferent to the role deception, false hopes and idolatry play on those who have not known the Savior Christians claim is essential to a truly healthy life. I am angry because a man who was so clearly presented as a competing savior was nonetheless received as a breath of fresh air by those who should know better. I am angry Christians should agree with the near-obsessive idea that materialism and consumerism are the remedy necessary to heal the poor. I am angry that Christians failed to predict that Barack Obama's presidency would be, and has been, solely fixated on wealth and money and "fairness"; that he would peddle the idolatry of goods and services, enslaving the weak and needy, telling them in words of alleged compassion that they are effectively second-class and unfulfilled because they are not at least "middle class." I am angry that my Christian friends would turn the other cheek to such crass materialism and hidden greed; I am angry they would not see the cynical attitude that works behind the curtain of beneficence; I am angry that they failed to understand the slavery of charity.

And I am angry at those Christians who campaigned for Mr. Obama would dismiss challenges against him by suggesting that "there are bigger problems" facing us than such trivialities. You've heard this trope, this deceptive trope: People get too hung up about trivial things, like gay marriage or the size of the stimulus or the beginning of life, when there are so many more important issues that need addressing. Never, of course, will you find anyone who makes this argument offer to give up their trivial support of gay marriage, abortion, or the size of the stimulus in order to finally deal with the big issues of the day. Imagine the outcry if gay rights activists were to say, "There are bigger issues than gay marriage; let us set it aside for now so we can tackle X and Y and Z." We will never hear such an outcry, because these things are THE BIG ISSUES of the day; and because we know that these represent a battle about life's most essential things, things comprising what it means to be human and moral. It is an obscene argument to make -- and yet I hear Christians make it all the time.

I see obscenity where others see leadership. Where others see wisdom, I see absurdity. Where some hear a sacred call, I hear blasphemy. I can't help it. It's who I am.

Christians, of all people, have one duty: to fight deception of the sort that damns souls, that blinds them to their true God. I believe deception is afoot. Many of my Christian brothers and sisters do not. It's a paradox we'll have to live with ... for now.

Peace through dissent.

PS. No, I am not for one second suggesting that John McCain was the more "Christian" choice.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

WHAT OF MR. THOMAS SOWELL?

Because a radio talk-show host read the following essay last afternoon despite his own convictions that reading on the air is a radio black hole, I post this link to Thomas Sowell's "A Fatal Trajectory." I am curious to know what readers think: Is Mr. Sowell correct? Is he representative of "more-of-the-same" fear-mongering from the alleged right-wing lunatics recently voted out of office? Or is he on to something? Is it true that the best days of America have passed?

I find myself somewhat ambivalent, though not so much by the message but by its manner. I am quite certain the world is a far more dangerous place than most of my contemporaries seem to think. Many of my peers apparently feel that the problem with those who are mugged is not that they have been mugged, it is that they were jogging in the wrong park, or in the wrong clothing, or in the wrong way, and thus merited mugging because of their dereliction, ignorance, or presumption. What makes the world a dangerous place is the jogger, not the violent mugger.

Peace through dissent.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Is This True?

Barack Obama says he wants to rein in government spending but if what Mitch McConnell is saying right now on TV is true, then we must wonder what Mr. Obama means.

Mr. McConnell has just said that in the last 36 days, the US Congress has spent more money than the United States has spent in the entirety of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, AND the Katrina recovery.

Is Mr. McConnell right? If so, where's the outrage? Or should there be no outrage?

Peace through dissent.

The Great Hortatory, (Live Blogging the non-State of the Union Address - Pt. 2)

One can hardly go a paragraph without noting some stunning deficiency in the master linguist's rhetoric:

Now, I know there are some in this chamber, and watching at home, who are skeptical of whether this plan will work. And I understand that skepticism. Here in Washington we've all seen how quickly good intentions can turn into broken promises and wasteful spending. And with a plan of this scale comes enormous responsibility to get it right.

Let's put this into historical context here. We have heard from Mr. Obama nothing but dire warnings ever since he was sworn into office. He has told us we needed to act sooner rather than later. He told us we needed to do something -- anything -- rather than nothing. His 1,000 page bill was pushed through both the House and Senate in record time; he signed it into law. And yet neither he, nor anyone else who voted for it, had read this necessary and vital emergency bill.

Amazingly, Mr. Obama NOW says that "with a plan of this scale comes enormous responsibility to get it right." Astute thinkers ask whether the responsibility to get things right ought to have come BEFORE the all-important stimulus plan was signed. Surely if we want to get things right, Barack Obama himself might want to read the bill to ensure it meets the requirements he has set. Is that too much to ask of someone in a high place?

Yes, yes it is.

The Great Hortatory (Live blogging the non-State of the Union Address - Pt. 1)

(Live blogging the Obama speech)

What follows in bold is an Unprovable; such is perhaps the most vapid thing ever to come out of Mr. Obama's mouth. And that says a lot, considering this is a man gifted at making inanities sound deeply profound. Here's more of the great emptiness:

Over the next two years, this [economic stimulus] plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs.

If you do not see why this is both vapid and unprovable; if you do not see that this is essentially meaningless and is offered solely as a broad cover, then I feel sorry for you. But I know most if not all of my readers are rather adroit in these matters, so I will not over-analyze the point.

It is easy for Barack Obama's to assert his plan will "save" jobs, for the simple reason that the only scenario that could actually disprove Mr. Obama's assertion is the unlikely scenario that in two years no one is working at all. In other words, unless the unemployment rate reaches 100 percent (though a case could be made that an employed labor force that falls below 3,499,999 is also fatal to Obama's claim), we can pretty much conclude that Mr. Obama has promised us something we can NEVER prove or disprove. In that, we find that Mr. Obama is peddling, for political expedience, mere emptiness solely to control, not our destiny, but his. Well, yes, ours too, but only insofar as ours is determinable and controllable by him and his minions. His needs, political and ideological, must first be met. Ours come next ... somewhere down the line.

The Great Hortatory Begins (Live blogging the non-State of the Union Address -- Intro.)

The most well-trained precision team ever to lead America ONCE AGAIN stumbled over the simplest act of introduction. Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama spoke over each other tonight, with Barack Obama starting his speech before the Speaker of the House had introduced him.

There is an old adage about being trusted with little things. Surely an inability to manage the little things can't possibly translate into incompetency with the big things. No, never. How could it?

(Live blogging, by the way, as Mr. Obama works his mastery of the teleprompter.)

Love those Republicans refusing to clap or stand. Finally, they are doing something right.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

The Bionic Country

This is what the President will say tonight, in part:

While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.

I am sorry, but isn't this incredibly overwrought? "We will rebuild" reminds me of the "Six Million Dollar Man": We can rebuild him ... we have the technology. How dreadful.

Note the hyperbole in this excerpt:

"The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure. What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more.

What? Is Mr. Obama suggesting we were not taking responsibility until he gave his speech? Were we not taking responsibility yesterday, the day before, or last year?

What vapidity. Seriously, if you want to read excerpts chock-full of Democratic boilerplate, then go here.

Trickle-Down Wreckonomics: More Barack-ative Thought From ACORN

I have said before that Barack Obama DOES NOT believe -- as he says he does -- in building an economy from the bottom up. He believes in trickle-down economics as ardently as any Reagan-ite.

But there is a different trickle-down at work in America, and it is this: when incompetency holds high office, incompetency trickles down through the ranks.

Please, if you can manage to wend your way through the interruptions and barbs, listen to Stuart Varney's interview with the head of the New York chapter of ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. And while listening, please consider that Mr. Varney's guest is not some sort of anomaly; she is representative of millions and millions of people (black and white, but mostly white) who voted for Barack Obama.

Please, consider the video an example of what is a very Barack-ative argument:



And you thought an Obama presidency had nothing to do with chaos and anarchy.


Peace through dissent.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Henninger, Straight Up

The unintended consequences of the Obama Super-Duper Stimulus Plan are discussed in this incisive commentary by Daniel Henninger.

Mr. Obama's stimulus plan is in many ways a lot like a theological argument: it's based in faith and fraught with paradox. And then there's that fear element pushed at nearly every turn.


Peace -- and prosperity -- through dissent.


BG

The "Eternal Optimist"

Readers might recall the mild uproar over comments made last year when then-presidential candidate John McCain's economic advisor, Phil Gramm, described the recession in psychological terms. In fact, Mr. Gramm was forced to leave his post in the McCain campaign after making this shocking statement:

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession..."

Needless to say, Barack Obama and his minions seized on Mr. Gramm's apparent misstep and exploited it for vast political gain.

Perhaps you've heard analysts repeatedly say that Mr. Obama is actually something of an economic suppressant. What is meant by this is that his rhetoric has had a depressing impact on Americans and the economy. In fact, as I write this, the DOW has fallen nearly 300 points in response to Mr. Obama's signing of his stimulus package. Surely anyone paying attention to economic trends knows about market psychology and consumer psychology. Surely anyone with a radio has heard reports like "oil prices rose steeply today over fears that the conflict in Israel and Gaza will escalate," or reports of similar kind. Psychology plays a major, often THE major, role in markets. (Right now I see this on the TV screen: "Dow plunges nearly 4,000 points since first financial 'rescue' talks.")

Psychology is in many ways nearly everything. And Barack Obama has not helped one bit.

This morning, as I was traveling to a dentist appointment and listening to the radio, I heard Don Imus ask George Stephanopoulos about the need for someone in the White House to begin boosting consumer confidence with some encouraging words. Mr. Stephanopoulos, as you know, is both a political analyst with his own TV show and a fan of Barack Obama. In his answer to Mr. Imus, Mr. Stephanapoulos admitted that psychology is a "major factor" in an economic recovery; he added that Barack Obama, in order to push his agenda through, may have pushed too hard on the "fear pedal."

And Mr. Stephanopoulos is not the only person to criticize Barack Obama for this sort of thing. Mr. Obama is, without a doubt, a master of spreading fear.

INCREDIBLE STUFF!

Here's Mr. Obama last Monday night as he concluded his "prime time" news conference. Note how much better a speaker he is than his predecessor:

And so when I hear people just saying, "Uh, we don't need to do anything, this is a spending bill not a stimulus bill," without acknowledging that by definition, uh, part of any stimulus package would include spending, that's the point, then what I get a sense of is that there is some ideological blockage there that, that needs to be cleared up. But I am the eternal optimist. Uh, I think that over time people respond, uh, to uh, to civility and, and rational argument. I think that's what the people, uh, of Elkhart and people around America are looking for and that's what I'm, that's the kind of leadership I'm gonna try to provide. Alright? Thank you guys.

I must say it is nice to see civility demonstrated so impeccably, especially with locutions like "ideological blockage...that needs to be cleared up." And then there's the "rational argument" thing -- as if Obama's opponents are irrational and he in his gracious and conciliatory manner embodies reason at every turn.

Attentive readers know that Mr. Obama actually amended his own convictions to make his case. Earlier he said that a stimulus package and spending were identical. Now, spending is only "part" of a stimulus package ... "by definition." Of course, at least this writer laughs at Mr. Obama's audacity and cunning: "'By definition', sir? Really?"

Mr. Obama's rhetoric will brook no dissent: his definitions leave no room for stimulus plans constructed solely of cutting taxes and government largess. He knows his definitions, and they are static.

David Axelrod, chief Obama advisor and extremely highly-overrated thinker, told Chris Wallace Sunday the same sort of drivel, namely, that a stimulus package and spending are essentially identical. But that's the nature of propagandizing: say a thing just often enough to make it true. Mr. Axelrod is, after all, precisely where he is because he is expert in propaganda (which, of course, requires high-level thinking skills, albeit deceptive ones, so I concede, in part, that Axelrod might not be entirely overrated).

Mr. Obama believes the Bush tax cuts prove that such cuts don't stave off recession and that they may even cause recession. This from the same man who asserted on the campaign trail that Bush spent too much money. Moreover, if the "failed policies of the past," as Mr. Obama is wont to describe such things, led to this recession, then it must be asked which failed policies, the cuts or the spending. And if the New Deal was so effective, or increased spending under any president is an irrepressible inducement to economic growth, how come recessions still follow? If spending did not keep the economy in recovery under many different presidents, then why are we emulating the "failed policies of the past?"

The fact is this: the vast majority of Americans AND economists believe that the BEST stimulus package is one heavy on tax cuts combined with reduced spending. During hearings about the Bush tax cuts early in the Bush tenure, Allan Greenspan testified that the tax cuts would indeed work AS LONG AS THERE WAS A DECREASE IN GOVERNMENT SPENDING. It was a statement that still rings in my ears. And yet it was, and continues to be, utterly ignored. (It would be interesting to hear Greenspan now.)

But, alas! Barack Obama has everything in place: he has a package heavy on spending that also includes significant tax cuts. Hence, in the end, no one will be able to divine -- should the economy recover -- what portion of the stimulus was effective. Plus, as I've said in other posts here, the lower fuel costs we are all enjoying are part of a current windfall that can only assist recovery in ways profound and effective. And despite our inability to know whether this stimulus is ever effective, Barack Obama will insist that it was, will be, and ever shall be, effective. Perfectly effective.

In the end, it is all about psychology ... the psychology of fear, arrogance and conceit.

Peace through dissent.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Ecce Novus

It's so brazen it's almost funny in a tragic sort of way.

Mr. Obama is in a great struggle against his own beneficence and elevated sense of self. Such struggles do not end well, especially when self and public perception fail to conform to the truth.

Mr. Obama has told us that the economy is so dire that apocalyptic terms are necessary to describe our nation's situation. He has also told us his administration will be "based on facts," and that science will be "restored to its proper place."

Today, Mr. Obama has flown, at great financial cost, the American people's massive, global-warming-gas spewing jet-liner to Denver, Colorado,† so he can SIGN a bill that was printed in Washington, DC, for the sole purpose of emphasizing his stimulus package's huge fiscal commitment to research into alternative fuels.

This is one sick administration. Sick. Sick. Sick.

Behold, the New.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

He Is A Liar

A few months ago I finished reading Miguel De Cervantes' amazing work, Don Quixote. The novel is 940 pages long, and it introduces to the reader 669 characters. It took me about four weeks to read it.

I did not read Cervantes' masterwork, arguably the first of all novels, because I had to. I did not read it because failure to do so would result in disaster. I did not read it because it claimed to contain all manner of remedy and solution. I did not read it because it promised to stave off some inevitable slide into depression, sorrow, or destitution. I read it simply because of desire: I had read a condensed version in college with the expressed aim of reading it in its entirety at some later date. That date has now come and gone.

Barack Obama is about to sign into law an emergency bill full of all kinds of promises; the bill is over a thousand pages long and promises to help in this time of economic recession. At the very least, or so it goes, if the bill does not turn the American economy around, it promises to ease all Americans' pain. It may not stop the recession -- the mother of all recessions, allegedly -- but it will ensure that the recession will be "less bad," less deep, less painful.

Mr. Obama has told everyone in America that unless the bill is passed, all hell MAY break loose, a hell so vile, so vulgar, we may never escape from it. This, in a real sense, is allegedly the Al Qaida of all recessions: We must act boldly and swiftly, without wavering, to preempt a disaster that may -- or may not -- come! Mr. Obama stands upon the trash heap of the American economy, shouting to the world through a megaphone.

The solution to our great worries is a "vital" bill over 1,000 pages long. This bill is so DESPERATELY needed for our DESPERATE times, that every person who voted in favor of it, and the person who will sign it into law, has not bothered to read it. In fact, there are no reports coming from the White House that Mr. Obama is holed up in his study poring over his first legislative masterpiece. No one has even announced that Mr. Obama -- or anyone else! -- has simpy read this massive, cumbersome and unwieldly tome. No one has even hinted that tomorrow, or Tuesday, Mr. Obama will probably come out with a revised and edited bill, one that conforms not only to his image of excellence in literature, but also one that has been analyzed to see if the work meets its objectives. And Mr. Obama's preface to his novel bill -- there really has never anything like it before -- has been at times petulantly and amateurishly presented; yet he boasts without knowing the contents of his own work that something -- apparently anything -- is better than nothing.

Welcome to the new politics, far more vapid than the old. Nihilism seems more attractively informing and engaging than this cynical approach to stimulate economic recovery.

And cynical is the apt word for what is going on. Mr. Obama is just cynical enough to have his minions denounce critics with the apparently incisive retort that "no one ever reads appropriations bills." He is just cynical enough to publicly and unabashedly proclaim that doing anything is better than doing nothing. He is just cynical enough to confidently swagger toward the podium and suggest that Americans don't mind enslaving themselves to his massive debt for generations -- in the land of the free. He is just cynical enough to tell Americans -- except for his own cabinet appointees -- that we all must show our patriotism by "giving back," by sacrificing through hard work and persistence the monies earned fairly and honestly. He is just cynical enough to earmark billions of dollars to many of his campaign's largest donors. He is just cynical enough to believe you don't really care.

Indeed, it may be true that no one reads appropriations bills, which is a shame. But this is no ordinary appropriations bill: this is nearly a trillion dollars in EMERGENCY outlays. This is SUPPOSED to work. But who believes Barack Obama when his own party has not read its own answer to his warnings? Attentive Americans respect in an instant those who voted against the bill BECAUSE they have not read it; Republicans who stonewalled did so largely because the NEW and IMPROVED president and his minions did not provide enough copies of the bill or even enough time to read it before putting it to a vote. (Apparently, it is historically [in a recent sense] the case that bills of this magnitude are presented in digital format so analysts can search for key words to expedite the analytical and editing process. Not with this bill, which came over the transom in print form. Moreover, the Obama administration promised all bills would be posted for five days on the White House website so the public could comment. But not this bill. Such actions and inactions prove how cynical and grotesque this new government actually is.)

The reality is that you've been deceived. Barack Obama is both a liar and a mere Yes Man. He has not read his own work; he has no idea what he is actually signing. Yet he tells us we live in desperate times and thus must act responsibly. His very actions speak against his own alarmism and moral convictions. And since he has not read his bill but will sign it anyway, we know he does not care that he puts his name to the work of ghostwriters. He is merely saying Yes to those who are REALLY leading him. He's not in charge. He's merely the front man. How else to explain his shameless signature on a bill he has not read -- or drafted -- that claims will heal all woes? This is supposed to be HIS bill, his legislative success. How can that be when he can't take the time† to read a manuscript presented in his name?

It is hard to believe that this man won an election. Any election.


Peace through dissent.

©2009/Bill Gnade. All Rights Reserved.

†Even if Mr. Obama reads the entire bill, his signature explicitly endorses the entirety of the bill. Can you imagine that this alleged master politician and this alleged master of language would read this bill and not hold it for further editing, emending and review? Yes, it is easy to imagine because this is not about his actual leadership. Clearly, he is not his own. Welcome to the "new."

I'd Suspect The Mayor

Love the headline:

Dutch city fears loss of pornography collection

Heilige koe!

But note what one person of the town says:

Mayor Ferd Crone of Leeuwarden, 87 miles (140 kilometers) north of Amsterdam, told local media he had been unaware of the collection's existence and was surprised it was gone.

Ah, hah! One would expect as much from a man called Ferd. Ferd Crone.

Ferd's remark reminds me of a quote (truly) highlighted on the front page of my local newspaper a few years ago:

"It's a lifelong dream I never knew I had."

Fork it over, Ferd.

Triskaidekaphilia: A Friend of the Jason Act

Barack Obama will have to be a true friend of Friday the 13th, particularly if Congress agrees today on the Great and Necessary Salvific Stimulus Package deemed absolutely essential by his presidential decree. If the Great and Necessary Salvific Stimulus Package does clear Congress today, one rather doubts Mr. Obama will sign the bill on Friday the 13th, despite his promise to sign it immediately. (And if he does not sign it today†, rumor has it that Stevie Wonder will be performing "Superstition" during the formal signing ceremony.)

The Friday the 13th bill, hereafter known as the Jason Act, is the economic equivalent of global warming legislation. Barack Obama's urgent and rather plaintive pleas for quick action, and his dire warnings about imminent disaster and catastrophe, have not been the least bit scientific. He has been warning us in religious terms: this MIGHT happen; this COULD be the consequence; repent, and follow me. His alarmist, fear-mongering rhetoric (I've long noted that the left, including Barack Obama, is the fear-mongering set in domestic and international politics) about stimulating the economy is built on the identical fallacies global warming activists rely on -- the non causa pro causa fallacies where correlations are confused with causalities (a word which, I note, looks a lot like casualities).

Since Barack Obama is unable to tell us what WILL happen if a stimulus package is not passed "immediately," he therefore cannot tell us what WILL happen if a stimulus package IS passed. Knowing this, he and his disciples, particularly those posing as economists, have already begun to change their language. This stimulus is not so much meant to get America out of recession. It is meant to prevent the recession from being as bad as it MIGHT be. This is not a stimulation of the economy as much as it is a bandage: it is not meant to make things better, only to make things "less worse." Sort of like Al Gore's pleas to make imminent global devastation "less worse."

Such vagueness is endemic to liberal political agendas; you find obfuscation and red-herrings rubbed all over the landscape of liberal political arguments. Liberals don't really want you to follow the actual logic trail. They'd rather cloud and misdirect. They'd rather you not actually ever catch the fox (because that would be cruel).

The stimulus package as it stands is set to hit the streets at about the same time the economy might be reviving -- on its own. The huge economic windfall that has hit America in the form of vastly lower fuel costs WILL show up in a few months as a recession of the recession; lower fuel costs are stimulating the economy right now though proof of such a stimulus will not be seen for some time. And all this WITHOUT Obama's stimulus package. But throw his package into the mix, and attempts to clearly discern what aided the soon-to-be lauded "Greatest Recovery Since Roosevelt" will be clouded by political pollution. Was it just the lower fuel prices that turned the economy around? Was it just the natural cycle of the market? Was it the tax cuts in the Obama stimulus package? Was it the expansion of government programs and projects? Alas, we will not know. And that is why this stimulus is a joke: Barack Obama and congressional Democrats have placed every idea, good or bad (mostly bad), into this package in hopes that, throwing it at America, something will stick.

One good thing: We've got nearly four weeks behind us of America's Great National Embarrassment.

Peace -- and prosperity -- through dissent.

†And if Barack Obama signs it tomorrow, will the Great And Necessary Salvific Stimulus Package be known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre Package? One wonders.
©Bill Gnade 2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

The Complete Master Of Language

The god of language has spoken:

"Then you get the argument that this is not a stimulus bill, it is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? That's the whole point." -- Barack Obama

Critics need not bother the master with clarity of meaning. His deliberate use of language precludes them from even exploring the nuances of words in his presence. That Mr. Obama fails to note that tax cuts, tax holidays, and the like are entirely stimulative without the nasty necessity of spending a cent, proves only how stiffly precise language is when he is in command. He is, after all, editor-in-chief. Linguistic flexibility, by the way, is not a quality of "change we can believe in."

He can stutter and stammer and stall all he wants; he can read everything from a tele-prompter or note card -- even the simplest announcements -- but we are reassured by his minions we can be confident he has his finger on the red pen of self-editing.

Peace -- and prosperity -- through dissent.

©Bill Gnade 2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

You Should Have Seen This Coming

Barack Obama may not be Pandora's Box, but surely he is the key -- and every lunatic is turning it. 

Peace -- and prosperity -- through dissent. 

©Bill Gnade 2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved. 

You Will Disagree

If a presidential term of office was three weeks long, then Barack Obama is the worst president in history.