Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The President did not lie about letting people keep their health insurance. The problem is right-wing kooks keep mis-spelling the President’s carefully chosen words in their wicked efforts to confuse and panic the public. The whole thing was caused by a scrivener’s error.

“If ewe like their health insurance, ewe can keep it.”

Ewe are sheep. You are not a sheep. Therefore, you cannot keep your health insurance.

Don’t call the President a liar just because you can’t spell, you ignorant racissssssssss.

By the way, the problem of journalists not knowing how to spell is not a new problem. William F. Buckley, Jr., pointed it out when George Bush the Elder was in office. The President said:

“Read my lips, no gnu taxes.”

The President did not lie. Your gnu was not taxed. But Democrats pounded him for something he didn’t say and the media was too embarrassed to fess up to their stupid blunder in transcribing his remarks.

History is repeating itself on the other foot, with Obama in the crosshairs. Ha! About time.

Joe Doakes

And re Sarah Palin?

She was worried about “cross heirs” – peevish trust-fund babies.  Like our current governor.

It all makes sense now.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Might be time to buy oil futures, regardless what Al Gore thinks. Barak Obama as a Jimmy Carter re-run is looking like a best-case scenario. Remember the oil embargo in 1973? Might be time for another.

Representative Chris Van Hollen, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Democratic leadership, told Reuters’ Washington Summit on Tuesday that the Saudi moves were intended to pressure Obama to take action in Syria.

‘We know their game. They’re trying to send a signal that we should all get involved militarily in Syria, and I think that would be a big mistake to get in the middle of the Syrian civil war,’ Van Hollen said.

‘And the Saudis should start by stopping their funding of the al Qaeda-related groups in Syria. In addition to the fact that it’s a country that doesn’t allow women to drive,’ said Van Hollen, who is close to Obama on domestic issues in Congress but is less influential on foreign policy.

Gasp. They don’t let women drive? I guess they don’t respect human rights like say Iran, or North Korea, so they can’t be negotiated with like those nations can. And where was Van Hollen last month, when invading Syria was a fierce moral imperative?

They had me at “don’t allow women to drive”.

Kidding.  Kidding.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Gotta hand it to the President, he pays keen attention. But to whom?

He learned of the Fast and Furious gun-running operation by . . . seeing
it on the news.

He learned of that Air Force One flight that caused panic in Manhattan
by . . . seeing it on the news.

He learned of the IRS targeting conservative groups by . . . seeing it
on the news.

He learned of the Justice Department seizing AP reporters’ records by .
. . seeing it on the news.

He learned about the attack on Benghazi by . . . seeing it on the news.

He learned how badly the Obama-care computer program was crashing by . .
. seeing it on the news.

Now it seems he learned the NSA was spying on Angela Merkel, the German
Chancellor by . . . her calling him to complain about it. What, did he
miss the news that day? Guy’s slipping up.

joe doakes

Maybe he gets his news from a new government website?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

President Obama famously promised that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor under the Affordable Care Plan.

Well, you can keep him IF he joins the new plan.  He doesn’t have to.  And many won’t.  So here’s your shiny new Obama-care card.  Now go try to use it.

Also, Obama-care will save money, Congress will have the same deal as we, and Gitmo will be closed.

Joe Doakes

 

We’ll have hope, along with all of that change…

The Lightworker’s Gallup ratings are down in Dubya territory.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Boehner: “Tell you what, Barry, I’ve got a little popularity problem with my own party so here’s what we do:  we let the right-wing crazy people shut down the government for couple of weeks, you punish the public by closing the parks and have your buddies in the media savage the Tea Party.  Send some of your bureaucrats out to tell everybody the sky is going to fall.  Meanwhile, the other senior leadership and I will fumble around not doing much until we can declare that the public pressure is too great and sensible people must step in to restore order and save the day.  Then we’ll give you a blank check to kick the can down the road for a few more months and we can all go back to the cocktail parties but without those pesky Tea Party types, who won’t have any clout so they won’t be invited. How’s that sound?”

Obama: “Yeah, okay.  Now kiss my ring and bow as you leave my presence.”

Joe Doakes

By outward appearances, that’s not too far off.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

President Obama declares a National Day of Gloating

It’s true.  He basically did.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Schools have time and money to send home fat letters, whether the kids actually are fat, or not.  Part of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign?

Schools have time and money to run prevention programs about cyber-bullying.

But schools graduate little more than half their students.  And how many of them actually know anything, versus got passed along by the system?

Plainly, schools need more money.  For the children.

Joe Doakes

It’s always worked so well before.

When your liberal friends, or even your less-informed Republican friends start yapping about the imperative to hike the debt limit, have them read this.  It’s John Hinderaker, and it points out that the government doesn’t constitutionally have the option to default:

So what will actually happen if Congress doesn’t increase the debt ceiling by approximately October 17? The government’s debt obligations will be paid, but reductions in other spending will start to become necessary. In effect, leaving the debt ceiling as is would function as a spending cut. This is why the Democrats hate the idea so much. They know there is zero chance of default, but they are horrified at the prospect that voters and taxpayers may find out that there is a relatively simple way to bring about spending reductions that would create, in effect, a balanced budget. Hence the hysteria.

And hence the ratcheting rhetoric.

Look for a racial angle any day now.

A friend of mine emailed:

A friend of mine sent this to me today while vacationing near White Mountain National Forest in Vermont.

By the way if you want to visit a federal open air sculpture garden that is still open, you can’t go to the national Korean War memorial. But you can to the the front of the U.S. Courthouse in Minneapolis and have your picture taken by the cute little animals sculpted there. So why is that open but not the open air Korean War memorial. Is the sculpture garden in front of the courthouse more necessary? Just a thought.

I’m gonna guess if we organized a “cute little federal animals tour” with a couple hundred people, we’d see barricades.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

What do these have in common:  My Lai massacre;Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse;  Fast and Furious gun running to Mexico;  IRS harassment of conservatives; Mount Rushmore shut down.

Tone from the top.

Everybody who deals with a giant organization knows what issues management is focused on, and what issues management doesn’t care about.  You might get by doing as little as 15 minutes of useful work in any given week; but God help you if you forget to submit your TPS report.  The rental housing inspector doesn’t care if the ceiling is falling down as long as the window latches work.

Nobody got orders to commit a massacre. They didn’t need no stinking orders.  They knew what management wanted, without being told.  That’s why leadership matters, to set the right tone so subordinates do the right thing without being told.

That’s why The Empty Chair is such a problem.

Joe Doakes

I also think it’s basic human behavior in organizations; absent authority, the best and worst in the employees comes out.

Unfortunately, with government, “the best” is “no harm is done”, which is what’s supposed to happen anyway; it doesn’t make headlines.

And the worst?  Well, that doesn’t make headlines either – provided a Democrat is in office.

But you get what I’m saying.

President Obama, apparently afraid that government can’t perform its essential law enforcement functions while operating at only 83 percent strength, has shut down the Amber Alert website. 

But not Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” site.

Priorities.

They warned me that if I voted for Mitt Romney, we’d get an omnipotent police state with no right to privacy, the police breaking into our houses at night, and authority flexing its idiot muscles at every turn.

And they were right.

On Government Radio last night, Melissa Block interviewed the grand poobah of the National Park Service.

Now, like many of you, I’ve been to DC.  Last time I was there, in 1995, you could most certainly go through all the monuments, pretty much 24/7.  There was security there – preventing vandalism, yadda yadda – but they were open.  Because they’re statues and walls and big rocks with things carved into them, and if you prevent idiots from spraying graffiti or chipping off Lincoln’s nose for a souvenir, you’ve pretty much got it covered. 

And to her minuscule credit, Block pointed that out to the NPS poobah.  Who responded “there are people there.  You don’t see them, but they’re there”. 

Which people?  When?  Where?

Well, he answered that; security people.  Who are still on the payroll!

The cutoff in appropriations also apparently forced the Feds to have to rent thousands of barricades, not only to block off open-air sculptures from the public, but to block parking spots on federally-owned roads. 

Which have already been paid for. 

This is Hope and Change.

It may not be the definitive image of the Obama regime – unionized government employees putting up barricades around the World War 2 memorial in the face of World War 2 veterans whose wheelchairs they are scarcely fit to push.

But if I have any say over it,  it will be

A new wave of veterans were forced to move barricades at the WWII Memorial in Washington Wednesday morning to gain access during the government slimdown, a spokeswoman from Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., told FoxNews.com.

Bear in mind that these monuments and memorials are usually accessible 24/7, without the need for government workers to be standing around. 

But no matter.  Harry Reid’s passive-aggressive snit must be carried out – veterans be damned. 

The WWII veterans, from Ohio, Kansas and Missouri, arrived at the memorial one day after another group relied on the assistance from elected officials to move the barricades to allow access. Parks police did not prevent the first group from entering, nor did they interfere with Wednesday’s group.

Harry Reid’s kamikaze mission strikes again.

The veterans vowed to make the trek to D.C. regardless of the situation in Washington. When asked how they were going to visit the World War II Memorial when it’s closed, Ian Drake, a WWII veteran, told Fox4KC.com the group will “find a way in, one way or another. We might have to climb or something. It’s no problem. Well work it out when we get there.”

Heavy flak then, heavy flak now.

The veterans are traveling as part of Honor Flight , a program that enables World War II veterans to partake in an expense-paid trip to view the memorial.

“A lot of my old comrades were lost in World War II,” Ian Drake, a WWII veteran told the station. “Eighteen of 100 in my graduating class were lost in World War II, so it’s important for me to show my respect at the memorial.”

It’s not the first bunch of barricades they’ve pushed aside, after all.

Keep it up, Democrats.

Scenario 1:  Obama wants the shutdown.  

The government shutdown will be a bonanza to Obama.

Pro:  It’ll draw attention – with the aid of his Praetorian Guard, the media – away from the mounting disaster that is the Obamacare rollout, to say nothing of the IRS, NSA and Fast and Furious scandals.  With the aid of his lackeys in the media, he could actually play it into a big win, a la Clinton vs. Dole in 1996.

Con:  This isn’t 1996. Back then, this was a pretty trivial country, awash in a boom.  This country could still get away with fripperies like electing Jesse Ventura, for crying out loud.  Now, people are hurting, and seeing the way government behaves with the money it’s borrowing from our grandchildren is galling at least.  And the only people it’s going to affect are those who are never going to vote Republican anyway.

Scenario 2:  Obama Doesn’t Want The Shutdown

Pro: Remember “sequestration?”  Despite the best efforts of Obama’s Praetorian Guard, which tried to portray it like Operation Barbarossa gathering on the Atlantic seaboard, either do most of you. Obama counted hard on “sequestration” to do for him what the 1996 shutdown did for Slick Willie.

That didn’t work, did it?

Con:  John Boehner could screw up a third date with a drunk Lindsay Lohan.

And even if Boehner and the DC establishment don’t screw the pooch, the media will, will will be out there working overtime to represent, and misrepresent, for Obama at every turn.  If there’s a low-information voter to be convinced, the MSM will be there to carry whatever meme Media Matters and Organizing for America need carried.

Discuss.

I don’t care if it is a Photoshop. In fact, it’s almost too good not to be.

I don’t care. It may be the ultimate metaphor for Obamacare’s rollout.

And you too, MNCare!

The political battle against Obamacare failed.  Twice, actually – in the ’08 and ’12 elections.  And it’s going to fail again; the Senate and the President will likely succeed in blocking any effort to defund it, if by no other means than calling in markers from their praetorian guard in the media to make sure any shutdown is catastrophic to the GOP.

Which will blink.

Dan Henninger says the time has come to exploit Obamacare’s key weakness; Obamacare:

As its Oct. 1 implementation date arrives, ObamaCare is the biggest bet that American liberalism has made in 80 years on its foundational beliefs. This thing called “ObamaCare” carries on its back all the justifications, hopes and dreams of the entitlement state. The chance is at hand to let its political underpinnings collapse, perhaps permanently.

If ObamaCare fails, or seriously falters, the entitlement state will suffer a historic loss of credibility with the American people. It will finally be vulnerable to challenge and fundamental change. But no mere congressional vote can achieve that. Only the American people can kill ObamaCare.

I just finished watching Ken Burns’ Prohibition – which is all about how big social engineering goes terribly awry when it runs into contact with social reality.

I don’t like indulging in historical parallels – they’re seductive drugs that convey little real knowledge.  But Obamacare is one of the greatest social engineering measures ever attempted – and “great social engineering” is almost invariably a synonym for “failure”.

Obamacare hasn’t even been fully inflicted, and it’s already a disaster.

Maybe the best thing that can happen is to have the American people look all of that Hope and Change in the face, and take it.

They asked for it, after all.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Pioneer Press article says this federal government shut-down could be worse than the last. They’re right, but for the wrong reasons.

There are more people dependent on the federal government than ever before, so more will be harmed, so more will complain and there will be more heartbreaking news stories about how bad the shut-down is and how wicked the Republicans are, for causing it.

To President Obama and Congressional Democrats, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

To me, it’s evidence how much farther the system has gotten out of whack. The underlying premise of the tearjerker stories will be the federal government cannot fail because people will be hurt. But “too big to fail” only works if there is someone to bail you out.

Who will bail out America?

Joe Doakes

Smug self-satisfaction will be a medium of exchange by that point.  It will be legal tender.

How Doakes from Como Park emails:

Libya will let reporters interview the terrorists who blew up our consulate in Benghazi, but not FBI agents who want to arrest them. The area where the terrorist live is too dangerous.

One word, Mr. President: Noriega.

Joe Doakes

Carter is actually looking pretty good in comparison these days.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Only a person obsessed with racial issues would worry about why there aren’t more people of color brewing craft beer.

I’m guessing the reason there are few Black beer crafters is the same reason there are so few Black start-up business owners: they don’t know anyone who ever did it so why would they consider it possible?  Instead, they look at the other choices they see patterned for them by the adults around them and that’s what they take up.  Entrepreneurship is a learned behavior but our First Black President’s administration is working vigorously to kill it.

Only a dog can hear a dog whistle.  Only a racist sees racism everywhere.

Joe Doakes

Technically speaking, there are two ways to be a “post-racial” president; when there is no more racism, and when racism is the norm.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

One of the early, successful examples, of drawing a line in the sand, from before President Obama got into the act.

The Light Bringer can’t pull this off because his words carry no authority.  When the Roman Consul threatened you, it wasn’t with a strike “just muscular enough to not get mocked” or one that would be “unbelievably small.”  When Barak Obama threatens you, it’s an international joke.

Joe Doakes

You don’t risk American lives and spend American money to “send a message”.

Say what you will about both of Dubya’s wars – Afghanistan went bad, and the unintended consequences in Iraq were worse than the war itself for all concerned, we get that – but when Dubya went to war, he didn’t “send a message” to the Taliban, or “punish” Hussein. He went to war to unconditionally defeat them.

Not to send a message.

“Messages” are why we have a State Department.  “Punishment” is why we have trade sanctions, Stuxnet and spooks .

How is it that the Administration is absolutely double-dog certain that Assad launched chemical weapons – in an area with no US presence, much less sovereign control – but after one full year still claims not to know what happened in Benghazi?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I know we’re only half-way through, but can we take a moment to consider Barak Obama’s legacy as President?  How’s he shaping up against his competition?

Reagan and Bush I ended the Cold War.

Nixon opened China.

Johnson – civil rights.  Like it or hate it, he made it happen.

Kennedy – I credit the inspirational ‘put a man on the moon speech’. That was a pivotal moment.

Truman won The War by dropping The Bomb.  World changing event.

Slick Willie, Carter, Eisenhower – nothing much happened, good or bad, they’re as forgettable as Hayes or Cleveland.

The Light Bringer?  So far, the subjects for his legacy include:

the worst economy since the Great Depression

the worst race relations in 50 years
global terrorists rebounding bigger, stronger and more confident than ever
alienating our allies and destroyed all hope of working relations with our associates (China, Russia for example).
destroyed the concept of rule of law with scandals such as IRS, Fast and Furious, GM bailout
executed American citizens without trial, hearing or oversight
increased surveillance of American citizens to levels the KGB only dreamed of
has drones over everyone
has people reading this email
This is Barak Obama’s legacy – The hope and change – so far.  It’s bad enough.  And we have three years left.

Maybe if we invade Syria, things will get better?

Joe Doakes

Remember when his supporters said that one of the dreamiest things about Barack Obama was that he was a “constitutional scholar?”

I said at the time that a President – a good one anyway – needs to know about as much about the Constitution as a good policeman does, and that a Constitutional Lawyer was nothing if not more prone to use his “knowlege” to circumvent rather than uphold the Constitution.

History, as just about always happens, is proving me right.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Unconstitutional and ineffective. Pretty much sums up his whole administration.

First, military surplus rifles have been imported for years and sold out of the NRA magazine. They’re not automatic weapons, they’re antiques. German Mauser rifles. Russian sniper rifles from the Siege of Stalingrad. M-1 rifles we left behind in Korea. Now, we’re going to ban anybody from bringing them into the country? Why? Who does the rule affect? A few people who collect antique rifles. It will have absolutely no impact on crime.

Second, the ATF received 39,000 requests to transfer restricted weapons to gun trusts last year. Restricted weapons are machine guns. Transfers of machine guns require ATF approval, a fee, background investigation, etc. It’s not the same as buying a regular gun, it’s a big deal, even if the transfer is simply from me to my son. So some smart lawyers came up with the idea of putting the gun into the trust. The trust owns the gun, not me, so the beneficiaries of the trust can use it but the trust continues to own it.

Not one single person who was killed in America last year, was killed by an ATF-registered machine gun. The new rule affects collectors, not criminals. It will have absolutely no impact on crime.

Joe Doakes

Barack Obama: afflicting the afflicted, comforting the comfortable.