Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

Did political labels flip, and I didn’t notice it?

When I was a lad in school, “Liberal” meant “favored change” which was good, whereas “Conservative” meant “opposed change” which was bad.

But everywhere we look today, Conservatives are the ones desiring change, rolling back government’s over-reaching, while Liberals are opposing change.

Weird.

Only rhetorically.

Joe Doakes notes that Obama is singing conservatives’ tune:

President Obama slipped and called for a flat tax:

The president welcomed the charge. “I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or a teacher is class warfare,” he told the Rose Garden crowd of 200. “I think it’s just the right thing to do.”

Exactly!  Everyone should pay the same, flat tax!

Cool: I propose 15% flat tax across the board, no exemptions, no deductions, no credits. Employer withholds it so no income tax form to file because there’s never a refund. Lay off half the IRS and taxpayers save trillions in lost productive hours, no longer filling out silly forms.

Almost seems too good to be true to you?  Of course it does:

Of course he didn’t mean that. He meant something different entirely. But hey – you offered it, we’ll take it, thanks.

Pass that bill and make him look stupid vetoing it.

Note to John Kline and Erik Paulsen: wanna get carried back to Washington in January 2013 on the shoulders of twenty million people who’ve had enough?  Take Obama up on his newfound desire for tax fairness, and introduce the flat tax.

Obama is losing ground to every Republican candidate:.

A new McClatchy-Marist poll finds that Obama looks increasingly vulnerable in next year’s election, with a majority of voters believing he’ll lose to any Republican, a solid plurality saying they’ll definitely vote against him and most potential Republican challengers gaining on him.

Even in potential matchups where he leads, Obama in most cases has lost ground to the Republican.

And we do mean any Republican candidate:

The biggest gain came for Palin, the former Alaska governor who hasn’t yet announced whether she’ll jump into the fast-changing race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

After trailing Obama by more than 20 percentage points in polls all year, the new national survey, taken Sept. 13-14, found Palin trailing the president by just 5 points, 49-44 percent. The key reason: She now leads Obama among independents, a sharp turnaround.

I still firmly believe that Obama will turn this around – indeed, by next year, if the Democrats don’t gain 2-4 seats in the Senate, flip the House back, and win the presidency with a five point margin, they should feel completely humiliated.

But I’m running out of ways to get from here to that end result.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus note that if the Obamessiah weren’t president, they’d be ‘marching on the White House’:

Unhappy members of the Congressional Black Caucus “probably would be marching on the White House” if Obama were not president, according to CBC Chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.).

So…why not march?

I mean, all us crackers did it, right?

“If [former President] Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House,” Cleaver told “The Miami Herald” in comments published Sunday. “There is a less-volatile reaction in the CBC because nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president.”

In other words, the only reason not to march is…racism

Run a conservative African-American – Alan West or Condi Rice or Thomas Sowell, for all I care – against a white, nay Scandanavian, liberal.

Who do you think I’ll vote for?

Does it make me an anti-white “racist?”

RedSquirrel, writing at the Red Squirrel Report blog, relates what he apparently posted at Stasi.gov.us “AttackWatch.com”.

It’s your informant, ‘Joe’, again. I feel that it’s my duty to blow the whistle on the gang of right-wing miscreants and troublemakers known as The MOB (The Minnesota Organization of Bloggers). I have been working undercover inside that organization, and think that I have their trust.

Two of the MOB bosses, Ed Morrissey and that reprehensible rapscallion, Mitch Berg host The NARN (Northern Alliance Radio Network) on 1280 AM The Patriot. They slander and smear The Messiah regularly, using the public airwaves. I have been monitoring their program for about seven years. Morrissey regularly writes hit pieces for that….that queen of right-wing slime, Michelle Malkin.

A brief point of order;  nobody should feel they’ve “earned the trust” of Ed and I.  We are endlessly devious.  It’s why, for example, we engineered the results of this week’s “Most Valuable Blogger” contest at WCCO – to do for that august competition what Algore, Yassir Arafat and Obama himself did for the “Nobel Peace Prize”. 

But yes – it is a fact we are attacking President Obama, where “attacking” means “exercising our First Amendment rights to dissent while we’re still allowed to”.

Scary!

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

From yesterday’s paper.

Click to see full-size image

Does it seem as if the Left is a little desperate to find something, anything, good to say about the President?

The ones that aren’t giving up on him completely.

Dan Haugen, who we last ran into a few years back when we taught him a little about research, writes for “Midwest Energy News” – which is funded by an alt-energy pressure group – about Minneapolis’ new biking director, which recently survived a challenge in the Minneapolis city council even as the city lays off firemen.

The rationale is – well, both typical and mildly troubling (emphasis added):

‘An investment, not an expense’

Across the country, cities like Portland are hiring bicycle and pedestrian coordinators to help attract not only federal project dollars but also to make their cities a more attractive place for workers who want the option of living without a car, says Joan Pasiuk, director of Bike Walk Twin Cities, which promotes non-motorized transportation.

In other words, you have to spend taxpayer money to get other taxpayers’ money:

Chicago has had a bicycle coordinator for a decade and a half. Omaha hired its first bike coordinator last year. Even cities like Miami and Phoenix that probably don’t come to mind as major bicycling hubs have hired for similar positions in recent years.

“Cities are seeing this as an investment, not an expense,” says Pasiuk.

And there you see the spread; cities that are broke, or cities that are doing well enough that they can afford some of the petty luxuries like, well, biking coordinators.

It’s an odd set of priorities for a city that’s flirting with “broke”.

I had to mention this:

And then there’s the health savings. Researchers in the Netherlands found that despite being at higher risk for injury, cyclists enjoy “substantially larger” health benefits compared to drivers.

But if you read this blog, you knew that two years ago.

UPDATE:  I changed the reference to MN Energy News in the first graf; it’s “Funded by”, rather than “a front for…”, the pressure group.  It was pointed out to me – civilly, mind you – that the phrase “front” casts an unnecessary aspersion.  I’ve reworded accordingly.

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

Pass This Bill?

Okay, Let’s Do It.  Hey you, Mr. Clerk of the House, what’s the File Number of the President’s jobs bill?  Let’s call it up right now and take a vote.

Huh?  There isn’t a House File number?  Why not?

What do you mean the bill hasn’t been written, yet?  He just called on us to pass it, a dozen times.

The President is going to start writing the jobs bill next week?

Then why in Hell did we have to listen to his speech last night?  Why the hoo-haw about scheduling the speech on the night of the Republican debate, the hysterics about rescheduling it to the night of the Packers game, the wailing about the discourtesy of Republicans not responding to the speech, not even attending, when in the end it turns out the Republicans were right all along – there’s no point in responding, there’s no point in even attending, because there’s NO BILL TO PASS.

This entire episode was empty hot air from an empty suit.  Worse than Carter, which I wouldn’t have believed possible.

Worst.  President.  Ever.

It’s always tempting to run a poll – but a poll with only two options is kinda anticlimactic.

Gibson Musical Instruments Corp. CEO Henry Juszkiewicz via smacked Obama and his speech with a big piece of rosewood:

”He’s a government fan,” he says. “He has a problem with successful businesses. He thinks they’re the problem, that they shouldn’t be quite as successful.”

“He is using the levers of government to not only redistribute, but to penalize,” he adds. “I see a difference between what he said and what he’s doing.”

“We’re under attack,” Juskiewicz says. “It’s pretty interesting to see that one of the points in Obama’s speech was to cut back regulation and promote jobs, when, in fact, he’s done just the opposite…

The splash Obama’s made about “cutting regulation” is, of course, purely potemkin – or as that other Gibson player, John Lennon, once noted…

The Gibson "John Lennon", modeled after one of Lennon's old instruments

…it’s one (cut regulation) for you, nineteen for me.

Gibson Musical Instrument Corp. CEO Henry Juszkiewicz will be at President Obama’s “Jobs” speech tonight, to remind His Excellency and the assembled, adoring media that the Administration’s politicized, idiotic policies – enforcing an arcane Indian law – are going to cost the company millions of dollars, and if followed through will cost the Nashville area 40 skilled, high-paying manufacturing jobs.

Close-up of the new re-issue "Eric Clapton 1960 Les Paul". Hint, Santa.

In solidarity with Gibson, I’ll supply them some free advertising.

Indian Freaking Rosewood, Administration Byatches!

I do endorse Gibson guitars (although, to be fair, most guitar players do – even lifelong Fender guys like me; I finally took the plunge on a Gibson product last year, and yeah, it’s niiiice).

Oooh - Gibson provides jobs all over the world!

Gateway Pundit writes:

Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz told reporters today that the federal raid on the popular American guitar maker will cost the company $10,000,000. Juszkiewicz also said that he will attend Obama’s big spending jobs speech tomorrow in Washington DC.

Is that a gorgeous piece of work or what? It sounds even better than it looks. And guess what? Yep - made in the USA. One of those "American Manufacturing Jobs" that lefties are constantly barbering about. Outsource this? Why not outsource guarding the Tomb of the Unknowns to the Pakistani military, while you're at it?

Attorney General Eric Holder said the raid on the Gibson was not political.

And if you believe Holder you are an idiot here’s an excellent Fox News clip summing up the entire story so far.

Remember – the CEO of Martin guitars (sorry – while they make gorgeous guitars, and I also own a Martin product, they get no free ads from me), which builds guitars out of exactly the same Indian-grown, American-finished rosewood as Gibson, which is not illegal under US law and only vaguely-sanctioned under Indian law, is a big Democrat contributor.

A Gibson ES335. A favorite of both jazz musicians and loud rockers who like the ES' excellent feedback characteristics.

Of course, Gibson is just one of many such stories – companies being harried, money being confiscated, jobs being destroyed by our rapacious, power-mad bureaucracy.

Yep, there's parts, too. This is a Gibspon "Soap Bar". I have one sunk into the middle position of my Fender Jazz, wired out of phase with the bridge pickup; when they play together, it sounds more like Mark Knopfler's Strat (think "Sultans of Swing") than Mark Knopfler's Strat does.

I’m working to get Mr. Juskiewicz on the Northern Alliance one of these next few weekends.  Keep your fingers crossed; if you’re a fan of limited government or music, it’ll be a great chat.

Obama’s approval among Hispanics slips under 50%, says Gallup:

Despite launching his presidency with a large majority of Hispanics approving of his job performance, along with most blacks, Obama has seen significant erosion in Hispanics’ support. As a result, while Hispanics’ approval of Obama was at one time 20 points higher than the national average, at this time it is just 7 points higher. Two significant slips in Hispanics’ approval of Obama were seen in 2010, perhaps linked with the president hedging on campaign promises to make immigration reform a priority. However, that decline has continued into 2011 as the nation’s focus has turned more to the economy and federal budget problems.

The fact that illegals are returning to Mexico to find jobs means that there will be fewer Obama voters in Minnesota, at any rate.

Senator Roger Chamberlain writes:

I assume all you have heard Jimmy Hoffa’s comments regarding 90% of Americans who are not in the union.

My humble observation:

1. Hoffas comments, included – “War on working people”, “We’re your soldiers”, “Fight” and of course referred to Americans who don’t share his opinions as “Son’s of a bitches”

2. The President said nothing

3. The press has said little to nothing

And pick your lefty pundit – they’re either strenuously avoiding the subject, or telling themselves it’s the GOP’s problem (if I could have a nickel for every lefty tweet I read that was some variation of “ReTHUGlicons are weting teh pants over Hoffa! LOLZ”, I could retire early).

4. Our opponents agenda should be clear

5. Our opponents tactics, what they intend to do, should be crystal clear. It should no longer be a mystery to anyone.

6. We should make sure others have no illusions about the challenges we face

The biggest challenge we face?  We – the thinking, responsible Americans who make this country actually work – have to share a country with a movement whose intellectual and moral leaders are Jimmy Hoffa and Robert Espinosa.

The Star/Tribune Editorial Board puts the happiest, rah-rah-local-team-iest face they can on the aftermath of “Operation Fast And Furious”, the “Justice” Department’s infamous “gun-running sting” that morphed into an organized attempt to slander America’s gun owners and gun dealers to undercut the Second Amendment movement – and tried to play the issue against the GOP.

They start out with the facts, more or less…:

The agency’s “Operation Fast and Furious” was supposed to monitor illegal gun sales from small-time gun buyers to large weapons traffickers, but after the sting operation failed an ATF analyst concluded that about 1,400 of the more than 2,000 weapons linked to the operation have not been recovered.

That’s one way of looking at it.

The other way – and the one that I’m pretty well convinced history will find accurate – was that the program was supposed to create a trail of guns from small American gun dealers to the narcotraficantes, that would allow the Administration to step in in 2012 and declare they were shocked, shocked to see a trail of firearms from Texas to the carterls.  This, of course, would allow them to frame the “bitter gun-clingers” of the Second Amendment movement, in classic Alinsky style, as aiders, abetters and profiteers from Mexico’s anarchy.

The Strib starts with some bipartisan gurglings…

It’s been reassuring to see dogged Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley take a lead role in the congressional investigation. While Jones, who will continue to serve as U.S. attorney in Minnesota, works to straighten out the agency’s internal operations, the American people deserve a thorough review of what went wrong in Operation Fast and Furious.

…which lead to the paper’s real goal; finding some way of tying this fiasco to the GOP and the Right (emphasis added):

[It’s] already clear that the ATF has suffered from being without a permanent director since 2006, when Congress began requiring Senate confirmation of the position.

President Obama nominated Andrew Traver, special agent in charge of ATF’s Chicago field division, in November 2010, but like other candidates he’s been opposed by the too-powerful gun lobby.

And there you have it.  For the “crime” of demanding better accountability in the leadership of the BATFE – a government agency with a decades-long history of colossal, epic, face-palming incompetence and politicization aimed at law-abiding gun owners – the Strib editorial board wants it to share in the responsibility for a bureaucratic cluster-hug designed entirely to slander that same movement.

The BATF doesn’t need Minnesota’s US Attorney to fix it. It needs to be shut down, its staff scattered to the four corners of the country, and have its offices demolished and the land beneath it salted.

The Strib editorial board has less interest in “fixing the BATF” than it has in cutting down Barack Obama’s opponents – or at least limiting damate to their President.

Yesterday, we reported that labor leaders in Wausau, Wisconsin had disinvited Republican politicians from participating in the Labor Day parade, because they’d sided with Scott Walker (and that a Minnesota politician had more or less joined in).

Today, Wausau’s mayor says if they wanna play, they gotta pay:.

“This is not a political rally, it’s a parade, for God’s sake,” [Wausau Mayor Jim] Tipple said, noting that taxpayer money is used by the city to pay for staging the event. Tipple’s office is nonpartisan, and he claims no affiliation with either political party.

He said the annual cost of the parade, including insurance, setting up and taking down a stage, and police personnel, runs anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000 each year.

The Republican-backed collective bargaining limits made Wisconsin the center of a battle over union power this year.

I’m not sure if the various public employee unions responded “What?  We spend taxpayer money on our own interests all the time!”, but I’m sure it came up…

Ann Althouse notes that it looks like Bradley was trying to be “first to the Courthouse” in her physical and then legal scuffle with David Prosser:

 Who gets to frame the story of the workplace bully? A person who fears accusation as the aggressor might opt for a preemptive strike, and that could have been the case here. During the incident, Justice Roggensack pulled Bradley away from Prosser and said, more than once, “This is not like you.” Bradley describes herself becoming very emotional. Perhaps she was shocked by her own behavior and self-defensively saw it as in her interest to portray Prosser as the aggressor

Read, naturally, the whole thing.

Frank Fleming asks “who’d be a better president – Obama or a sack of hammers?”, and reaches a conclusion…

Overall

Taking all these areas into consideration, it’s pretty easy to see that a sack of hammers would be a much better president than Obama. This isn’t to say that Obama is dumber than a sack of hammers — a ridiculous assertion — it’s just to say that he’s much worse at being a president than one.

…that would surprise nobody that is really paying attention.

Of course, this is all hypothetical, as you’ll never find a sack of hammers with the fire in the belly necessary to both run for president and win. Perhaps that’s a problem in our system of democracy that someone like a sack of hammers, who would be an above average to great president, could never be elected.

Check out the reasoning that led to the conclusion.

A New Hampshire man allegedly faked a brain injury to get women to change his diapers:

Hooksett police said Thursday that Eric Carrier is facing

charges of indecent exposure and lewdness.

 

The 23-year-old is accused of pretending to have a brain injury to lure the woman to his home, claiming he needed help changing his adult diaper… Police say Carrier placed an ad on Craigslist seeking home health care. Investigators say nurses would change his diaper, not knowing he was scamming them.

No word on whether the Minnesota Second District DFL has approached the man to see if he’ll run against John Kline.

Well, he does for one Democrat, anyway.  Democrat Kate Marshall is a Democrat running in a special election in Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District.

And she released a lit piece pointing out her really double-dog sincere support of Israel:

“I am proud to consider Israel a friend and I reiterate my unwavering support for its fundamental right to exist and the absolute necessity for Israel to secure its people from outside threats. I stand ready and willing to assist Israel in defending itself against all acts of terrorism,” the statement reads.

Unfortunately, nobody copy-edited the piece – so it went out with one of Marshall’s strategists’ internal comments still in the text:

“Background: Israel has been in the news lately, and will be even more in the news with [Glenn] Beck’s ‘Rally to Restore Courage’ in Jerusalem. In an R district, it will be useful to express support for Israel and demonstrate some foreign policy prowess while it is a timely topic — especially for people who are likely paying attention to Beck’s event.”

To be fair, the Dems have had their agenda driven by much worse…

Michelle Obama seems to be a bit of a vacation junkie, and we – according to this story from the London Daily Mail, sourced from the Enquirer – are paying for it:

White House sources today claimed that the First Lady has spent $10million of U.S. taxpayers’ money on vacations alone in the past year.

Branding her ‘disgusting’ and ‘a vacation junkie’, they say the 47-year-old mother-of-two has been indulging in five-star hotels, where she splashes out on expensive massages and alcohol.

The ‘top source’ told the National Enquirer: ‘It’s disgusting. Michelle is taking advantage of her privileged position while the most hardworking Americans can barely afford a week or two off work.

‘When it’s all added up, she’s spent more than $10million in taxpayers’ money on her vacations.’

Now, it’s a fact that travelling for the First Family, with all its security, is not going to be cheap under any circumstances. Still – taking separate goverment jets to Martha’s Vineyard? Really?

Of course, Atomizer will perk up at this reference:

The source continued: ‘Michelle also enjoys drinking expensive booze during her trips. She favours martinis with top-shelf vodka and has a taste for rich sparking wines.

I’ll paraphrase him; “there’s no such thing as a vodka martini”. There.  (And I wanna try a “sparking wine”. Just saying).  Don’t say I never did anything for ya, Atom.

And I had to mention this; it’s a photo from Mrs. Obama’s trip earlier this year to Spain:

Can there be anything in the world more awkward than a Secret Service agent trying to look “casual?”  And the guy to the immediate left of Mrs.Obama (her right) – when did Peter Garrett join the White House staff?

Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak shows that deals with the city’s fiscal woes with the aplomb of a Gabor sister;if you take care of life’s luxuries,the necessities take care of themselves:

The day after Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak vetoed a City Council effort to prevent 10 firefighter layoffs, the city sent out a new job posting: a bicycle and pedestrian coordinator.

Which just goes to show that no matter how much Minneapolis and Saint Paul carp about losing (part  of) their subsidy from the parts of the state that work, they can always find the money to take care of their pets and their pork.  The bike and pedestrian director will make betwen $61-84K.

The mayor’s office argues that the new coordinator will make the city safer for cyclists and pedestrians, but council President Barb Johnson said it is a “tempting” target for extra revenue to save firefighter jobs.

“We’ll look at that. We’ll look at all the general fund positions that we have currently,” Johnson said. “Because a majority of the council wants to maintain these 10 firefighters and not lay them off.”

Those 10 firefighters, of course, have less to do with balancing the city’s budget than they do with serving as a battering ram against the GOP in the legislature, giving Dayton, Tom Bakk and Paul Thissen a chanting point when the GOP attacks “Local Government Aid”.

Speaking of which, here’s what the city’s hiring:

In addition to the bicycle coordinator, the city is looking to hire a database engineer, a stationary engineer, an internal auditor and a manager of intellectual properties for the police department.

Intellectual property in the police department?

Cops are getting patents?  Or are so many of them writing books (I guess that reference dates me) that the department needs to be administering copyrights and trademarks?

Can anyone ‘splain me that one?

“1. Announce to media that I’ll have a “Jobs Plan” when I return from vacation”.

“2. Go on vacation”.

“3. Come up with a jobs plan”.

One of the five second sound bites about Michele Bachmann is her take on her church’s (occasional) commandment that wives be “submissive” to their husbands.

Most non-Christians, and/or more liberal Christians (and I don’t belong to a denomination that preaches it, by the way) for that matter either misunderstand the idea, or know nothing but the distorted idea of “submission” fed to them by people like, well, Bachmann’s critics.

One of the areas where it’s irrelevant is, well, the presidency.  Michael Prell has an answer he’d suggest Bachmann give when she’s asked about the idea of “submission”.

Here’s the conclusion (read the whole thing here):

“Finally, as president, I will not be submissive to union bosses, to billionaire puppetmasters like George Soros, or to militant anti-American leftists who demonize our soldiers and preach ‘God damn America.’ And, unlike President Obama, I will not be submissive to indicted or convicted special interest groups like ACORN, or to Weatherman terrorists, or those who want to see Israel wiped from the map.”

“Instead, as President, I will be submissive to the American People, and to the Constitution, because as President I will honor my oath to serve both the Constitution and the People—unlike the current president of the United States and his minions who demonize patriotic and Constitution-loving Americans as ‘terrorists.’”

Submission is not the issue. It is who, and what, you submit to that matters.

That’s the real issue, and comparison, here; every tin-pot tyrant and banana-republic strongman is Barack Obama’s dominatrix.

…when Barack Obama was going to “restore” America’s “reputation” around the world?

Don’t worry – neither does anyone else:

The United States has apologised for controversial remarks made by a US diplomat who spoke of “dark and dirty” Indians, calling the comments “inappropriate”.

US Vice-Consul Maureen Chao told Indian students on Friday that her “skin became dirty and dark like the Tamilians” after a long train journey, according to Indian media — referring to people from the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

During her speech in the Tamil Nadu capital, Chennai, Chao was quoted as saying: “I was on a 24-hour train trip from Delhi to (the eastern Indian state of) Orissa.

To be fair, I’m not sure that Obama is counting on the Tamil vote…

The question, rather, is “how dumb does Obama think his base actually is?

“We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again,” Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa. “But over the last six months we’ve had a run of bad luck.” Obama listed three events overseas — the Arab Spring uprisings, the tsunami in Japan, and the European debt crises — which set the economy back.

Leave aside the fact that two out of those three bits of “bad luck” could have been avoided by scrupulously avoiding policies like Obama’s (Obama’s bobbling of Mideast policy, the gundecking of domestic oil drilling which has extended and institutionalized America’s dependence on imported oil, and the running of catastrophic debt levels), perhaps it’s a sign that Obama’s growing up; he’s stopped blaming Bush, and turned to blaming unaccountable, intangible “luck” for his administration’s failure.

The question isn’t so much “is it dumb”.  The question is “why does his base fall for this claptrap?”