Of Bullies, Demagogues and Dictators

I've been trying to put my finger on what it is that creeps me out about Donald Trump (other than his support for what will surely be called Trumpcare, abortion and a xenophobic immigration program). The fact that Trump bankrupted four companies, conned little old ladies out of their savings, and skinned his partners on deal after deal is part, but not all of it.

The fact that he's a silver-spoon trust baby who portrays himself as a "self-made" billionaire isn't it either. I could have made a billion if I'd started out with 300 million dollars for crying out loud. He's a bragger. So, what politician isn't? Then in one of those worthless debates with a gang of Trump acolytes that I keep getting myself into arguments with, I saw something familiar. It's Trumps followers, then, that clued me in to the psychological dynamic that I believe is going on between Trumps and the sycophantic minions that surround him. I remember that same dynamic well from junior high school.

Junior high, as most of you will remember, is an extremely tribal place usually dominated by the strongest members of the group. Bullies in other words. Bullies achieve power by picking out small skinny, nerdy kids to knock around in front of the others to establish their dominance. Then, once properly impressed with the bully's dominance, other weaker members of the group, desiring personal safety, a sense of belonging, and power, are drawn to the bully as a protector and for his or her approval. The bully appeals to his toadies' fear, paranoia and distrust of anyone different from themselves, as well as to their desire to share in his power, if only at second hand.

Voila'. You have outlined the same technique as used by every tin pot dictator and megalomaniac in human history. And it works like a charm. Those who use this technique are dangerous. Our current president has used this technique throughout what one television reporter accidentally called Obama's "reign". But Obama uses the technique ineffectively. Instead of attacking the weakest members of the culture, he has gone after some of the strongest: rock-ribbed conservatives. He has drawn acolytes, but these acolytes are the most malleable. They were already prepared to follow him when he appeared. They were looking for a liberal messiah and they shared his ideology. He's had less success at charming the demographic in the middle that form the swing vote. As his policies fail, he has not been able to bully the undecideds into submission.

Now let's look at "The Donald".  He starts out with rhetoric attacking the weakest members of society - people that his target audience do not like; namely illegal immigrants. Trump claims he will run them all out of the country and punish Mexico for send them and make them build a wall to keep all those nasty Mexicans in. Then he goes after members they are frightened of. He tells us he will stop ANY Syrian refugees from coming into the country, appealing to the xenophobia of his potential pool of followers. Notice he doesn't "plan" to address immigration, he WILL stop it. Period. Very authoritative.

Next he makes all kinds of other vague promises without any real concrete plans for fulfilling them. He brags about himself proclaiming himself the deal-maker, military genius and financial wizard (no matter how many people have suffered financial ruin as he accumulated his own wealth). He says he can be trusted because he is rich without explaining exactly how his being responsible to no one but himself should be in any way reassuring. He also never mentions that, although he's never taken bribes, not being a politician and all, he certainly has handed out enough "donations" to them (mostly the Democrat ones). Someone explain to me how putting the briber in charge of things improves the situation.

Like the Wizard of Oz's fiery avatar, Trump says, "Pay no attention to that stuff behind the curtain. I am Trump, the great and powerful."  And like the playground bully's band of toadies, the Trump acolytes defend him blindly against the terrible fearful menace of Hillary Clinton (who attended his wedding and whose previous presidential campaign and whose foundation he supported with huge donations).

Politically, Trump is simply a more successful political playground bully. Watch his response to anyone who challenges him. When Ben Carson surpassed him in numbers, he joined Democrats in assassinating Ben's character. No matter that it was entirely bullshit, it hurt him and restored Trump to the top. He's gone after every opponent of his systematically with accusations, innuendo and character assassination. His toadies approved of it all.

I don't mean to demean people who like Trump. I really don't. It's easy to fall in with the group. Everybody wants to belong to the herd. It's very human. We feel safe being like everyone else. America was originally settled by rugged individualists, but over time, the old latent gene pool began to assert itself and people who wish less for freedom and independence and more for a sense of belonging, safety and power became more numerous.  These kinds of people are now a very substantial portion of the American population - a voting block of some consequence.

This particular cadre of individuals - people of the herd as I think of them - have long formed a dominant percentage of the population of the Old World. It's why the Old World is in the shape it's in and why dictators and demagogues do so well in the Old World and in former Old World colonies which grew for economic reasons rather than because colonists came to them seeking freedom.

At long last the herd has grown to a size and is doing what herds do best - following. All they need is the latest bull to step up and tell them which way to go. They are not interested in principled leaders who think things through, who exercise caution, wisdom and kindness. What they want is the biggest loudest bull they can get; someone who will promise them whatever it is they want. Trump appeals to the angry radical right and to so-called "moderates and independents" who are basically people who have no opinion of their own but stand around waiting to sway in whichever direction the latest and loudest bull says to go.

America is about to fall or at the very least to divide in a very violent and ugly way. It is sad to see.

Just one man's opinion,

Tom King
© 2016

Unraveling the Fabric: The Muslim Contribution to the "Core of our Democracy"

At first I was confused.  Recently in a statement released on the White House website to commemorate Eid-Al-Fatr, the conclusion of Ramadan, the President praised the contribution of Muslims to "...building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy."

It took me a while to figure that one out, but now I realize what he must have been talking about. Back during the Jefferson administration, a helpful bunch of Muslims called the Barbary pirates escalated their habit of preying on American trade in the Mediterranean. It finally became so bad that Thomas Jefferson, who notoriously disliked the idea of a standing military of any sort, was forced to dispatch the frigates that President Washington had ordered built for just such an emergency, to the Barbary coast to quell the Barbary pirates. 


Sadly, the delay in responding happened because the Congress was considering whether paying tribute to the Muslim Pashas of North Africa was cheaper than sending the Navy. Fortunately for the Navy, Americans tend to be generally averse to the idea of paying "tribute" (except of course for pant-waist liberals who held seats in Congress even back in those days). Over the next decade or so, the new U.S. Navy took on the Barbary States and their pirate strongholds several times in an effort to convince the pashas that meddling with Americans could have negative consequences.

So you could say that Muslims gave us the most powerful navy in the world (at least until Obama finishes putting it into mothballs). It's ironic that the very Muslim threat that have the US Navy a kickstart back in the beginning, seems to be inspiring another president who distrusts the military to stand the Navy down to it's lowest levels in a hundred years. 

Oh, yes, the Muslims have contributed to the very fabric of our nation all right.~ Near as I can tell they've been doing their best to unravel that fabric. I'm not sure I'd call that a "contribution", though.

© 2015 by Tom King

*And before you whip off an angry "How dare you hate on innocent Muslims" comment, I am NOT anti-Muslim.  I believe in the free exercise of any religion, so long as it doesn't advocate blowing up buildings and replacing the constitution with some religious law that allows for the stoning of gays, lesbians, rape victims and saucy feminists just because. I like the Constitution and would like to keep it thank you very much. I AM kind of anti-appeasement, though.  Given that the president seems to be trying to rewrite history and to do what the Congress back in the late 1700's and early 1800s did (appease the nations of Islam), I am rather concerned with regard to Obama's loyalties. Appeasement doesn't work. (see Neville Chamberlain, 1939). I thought we learned that lesson in WWII. Apparently not so much.

The GMO Presidents - A Conspiracy Theory

I think that Barak Obama is a genetic experiment (cue the X-Files music). For that matter so were the rest of the Democrat presidential candidates for the last 40 years. This blog post was first suggested by another blog post by Mark Milliorn, history professor at Enema U whose work I have long admired. Over the painful years of the Obama presidency, I have begun to wonder about the nature of the individuals that Democrats choose as presidential candidates. At last, through diligent research in the darker recesses of the Internet and among back issues of the National Enquirer littered with space alien conspiracies, I think I know what's going on!

I have a theory that the Democrats are conducting genetic experiments trying to produce the ultimate president. It started with Jimmy Carter who was an early attempt to create a half Christian/half Marxist. As we know it didn't turn out very well and their next two attempts (half German/half weasel and half robot/half Kitchen-Aid Toaster) were not terribly popular with the electorate.

Democrat geneticists finally hit a workable combination that did manage to capture the imagination of the voters the next go-round with the half redneck/half testoterone-soaked Jackrabbit that was Bill Clinton. They then made two consecutive attempts at reanimating the dead, both of which failed (with the last one you could still see the bolts sticking out of his neck, which creeped people out).

They hit the jackpot (or genepot) again, finally, with the half guilty white liberal/half black communist candidate they ran successfully in 2008. This version came out of the more traditional liberal husbandry program being run out of Harvard University. Unfortunately, flushed with success, the Democrat scientists apparently have been resting on their laurels during the Obama years (perhaps expecting them never to end). According to my cocaine-addled sources within the White House, the Democrats' next experimental presidential candidate wasn't quite ready for the 2016 election cycle. Apparently Biden is a demonstration of what happens when you breed too closely - like hip dyspalsia in certain dog breeds like St. Bernards and German Shepherds and too-narrow skulls in Dobermann's that cause their brains to be squeezed. That would explain a lot of the Vice-President's public statements over the years.

So instead, the perfect presidential candidate breeding program decided to recycle The Bride of Half Jackrabbit/Half Handsy Redneck. They were fortunate in that Bride was the product of an early abortive attempt to create a guilty white liberal/socialist/feminist. At this point, they are hoping to keep her erect for at least as long as it takes to get elected and to keep the husband of guilty white liberal/socialist/feminist from groping the female campaign workers (at least not in public) - in other words, not so erect.

To hedge their bets, the Dems are also offering up a pair of earlier experimental attempts at breeding an acceptable honky Marxist. Both are a little long in the tooth, having been kept in the lab pens for several decades, but they don't have anything else at present. So a hoary old leftist and the old dim-witted serial groper have been trotted out by the team as an alternative offering just in case the Bride of Clintonstein accidentally wanders off deeper into the email mine field or grabs hold of a solar electric transformer and blows herself up.

I hear they're planning a black/Hispanic/feminist/communist hybrid for 2020, but so far, they've been unable to make one that is a reliably pro-choice atheist Marxist. The specimens keep sneaking off to go to Mass and have lunch at Taco Bueno and Popeye's. They had to dispose of two, that I know, of recently because they just couldn't keep them from shopping at Walmart.

But the Dems still have faith in genetic science (except the kind that produces better crops, prevents childhood diseases and keeps the elderly alive longer). As the old saying goes, "Hope springs eternal in the Progressive Socialist Petrie dishes.

(c) 2015 by Tom King

The Tragic Hacking of North Korea's Internet Connection

Apparently some American hackers have re-discovered their patriotic gene. North Korea is being hacked!  :-o

Despite our collective wish that the president might have discovered his own inner tough guy, it's unlikely that the US government is taking North Korea offline (at least not with the president's blessing anyway).  Some members of the press are expressing fear that such a retaliation might set a dangerous precedent. This confuses me. Are they advocating that we set the no less dangerous precedent of allowing attacks on our infrastructure to go unanswered?

Might as well paint a target on ourselves and invite the world to take out its frustrations on us. That would be a very Obama-like position to take, though, in the wake of the president's World Apology Tour.

Let us therefore extend to Kim Jong Un the Handkerchief of Pity and to the North Korean government and military (the only ones allowed to actually use the Internet in North Korea) our deepest heartfelt sympathy for their loss. It must be a wrench for the generals and Communist Party operatives to lose access to the Asian porn and free pirated Western movies that make the great burden of leadership bearable.~


© 2014 by Tom King

The Umbrella Men

Failed Obama Middle East Policy and How Ron Paul is Partly to Blame

I'm going to catch H E double hockey sticks for this post, but I'm fed up and I don't care anymore.  I am utterly sick of hearing Paulestinians gloat as thousands of Christians and Jews in Iraq are being slaughtered by the peaceful Islamist armies marching toward Baghdad.  And I am violating my policy of not calling them names like Paulestinians, Paulistas and Paul-bots in this post because they keep calling me a stupid neocon and I'm tired of it.

As Inigo Montoya famously said, "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."

If I get one more post from a Paulite gloating about how Ron Paul was right about Iraq and Obama should make him Secretary of State, I'm going to start marking these guys junk mail so I don't have to see it anymore and some of these guys are friends. Of course, they do give me a lot of blog material, which is why I haven't done it yet.

The gloating is completely disgusting. The fringe right is prancing around saying George W. Bush was wrong and this proves that Ron Paul was right. Not a word for the victims of Islam. Not a prayer for the dead or a word of condemnation for the army of Islam - and don't kid yourself, those guys are the armies of Islam. What's even more puzzling, there's been nary a word among my RP loving correspondents condemning Barak Obama's dismal policy failure in the Middle East. This strange support for a clearly disastrous Obama policy only helps encourage more Middle East foolishness by this State Department.

The whole region is going to go up in flames once we come back home to hide. It may tamp down temporarily once either the Sunnis or the Shiites wipe the other side out. When that happens, it will get quiet for a while alright. They'll use the time to rearm, but they WILL turn on us and there won't be a thing we can do about it. They will take Pakistan's nukes and make themselves some more. The top Pakistani nuclear scientist has already said that he wants to donate nukes to all the Islamic nations. Establish an Islamic mega-nation and that's going to be the first thing they acquire. And won't that be fun?

Meanwhile, if we follow the Obama/Paul doctrine, we'll sit back and wait for the attack, believing firmly that no one in their right mind would attack the USA. We're far too strong for that. And besides, we could boost our economy by not having to have such a big military. So let me get this straight. Let's gut our military, withdraw from the rest of the world and people are going to be afraid to attack us. Did you not watch the atomic bomb safety films when you were a kid? Let them attack us first?  Can you say, "Suicide"? I do believe these guys have been smoking rather too much of that marijuana they want to legalize.

And you can be sure that Islam will go first in any war with the West. They are not afraid of the consequences. Allah, their militant wing believes, will protect them. Besides, if Allah gives them a new terror weapon, they believe they must use it. Being terrorists, their militant wing is likely to hold the world hostage for as long as they can to the threat of nuclear war. They've always been able to raise money for the cause that way. It's kind of their favorite fund-raising technique.

I'm not saying all of Islam is evil, but if there is a peaceful wing of Islam, they are sure being terribly quiet about the excesses of their fanatical members. Silence is complicity, guys. When my church had an armed terrorist in our midst, we expelled him. He went elsewhere and wound up getting himself and 82 of his followers killed along with 4 ATF agents. The point is, we kicked him out from our midst once he revealed himself for what he was. If Islam is a religion of peace, it needs to expel their murderous members from their midst.


Every time one of my Paulista friends drops me a note to gloat about how Ron Paul was right, they call me a neocon and use all these talking point phrases over and over ad nauseum. The big killer argument is always that I'm a stupid neocon and can't see the truth (as revealed by Alex Jones, Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell) and if I'd just watch a few more Youtube videos, I'd understand and support Ron Paul. I've actually watched some of those videos and they are a hash of unsupported "facts" and wild speculation that works out to be about 90% uninformed speculation based upon ideology rather than an understanding of history as it actually happened.

It make me weary; it really does.  To believe all this "America is evil" crap and to think that peace and love will magically break out across the world if we just hunker down behind our borders and hide is the worst sort of stupid. It's not America's chickens that have come home to roost. It's the vultures created by an evil culture that treats women like cattle and unbelievers like dogs and dogs like vermin. And they are circling, waiting for America to lie down, nice and quiet-like in the sand.

My reaction to the tragedy unfolding in the Middle East is to offer up prayers for the thousands being slaughtered in Iraq. It's genocide and we are supposed to be against that. A Christian woman and her two children are sitting in prison waiting to be stoned because her father was a Muslim and she chose not to be one. Muslim warlords in Africa are suiting up children as soldiers to go and slaughter Christians for Allah.

I'm just about ready to declare war on Islam. It wouldn't take very many carpet bombings of ISIS army formations, SEAL team strikes to eliminate Muslim warlords and a few air strikes on the houses of terrorist leaders before the nations of Islam would decide to take the road to peace.

What Ron Paul, Alex Jones and Lew Rockwell do not understand (and apparently my Paulista buddies don't either) is that the Arab/Islamic culture only understands strength. The culture is a tribal culture. It always has been. Islam draws its DNA from those origins. Over the centuries European diplomats have despaired of making any real progress in Islamic/Western relations. Throughout Arab history a substantial majority of sheiks, caliphs, pashas, bashas, shahs, sultans and kings of Araby were strangled by one of their lieutenants fairly early in their terms of office. Few Arab leaders ever died comfortably in their beds. Any slight show of weakness in a leader virtually demanded that someone stronger kill him and replace him with someone stronger. Politics in places like the Barbary States was a bloody Darwinian business. The Arab cultures to this day see a nation that is hiding at home as being weak and unworthy. Steeped in the belief that strength is the most important thing, Arab/Islamic strong men feel duty bound to Allah to subdue the weak in Mohammed's name.

Modern historians like to pain Muslim culture, particularly where it existed in Spain as benevolent and tolerant.  A 13th century Spanish Grenadan Muslim general wrote, "It is permissible to set fire to the lands of the enemy, his stores of grain, his beasts of burden, if it is not possible for Muslims to take possession of them." This "peaceful and tolerant fellow advised his fellow Muslims to raze cities and do everything in their power to ruin anyone who wasn't a Muslim. So much for the religion of peace.

When the mullahs talk about subduing "the weak" - there talking about us, guys. As seen through Middle Eastern eyes, Bowin' Barak is the epitome of American gutlessness. And Ron Paul looks like a major wimp to the warlords and pashas over there too and not a whit of difference between the two.

More and more, I find that I really do miss Ronald Reagan. If we could only find someone like the Gipper, who wasn't afraid to tell the truth right out where people could hear it - advisors be damned, we might restore peace. Reagan was willing to be strong. He started developing defensive weapons against nukes and then had the stones to walk out on nuclear disarmament talks at Reykjavik. The result?  He got an entire class of the most dangerous nuclear weapons in the world eliminated. He publicly challenged Mikael Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" and down came the Berlin wall. When Mohamar Gaddafi bombed our soldiers and blew up a planeful of people, Reagan bombed his house and wiped out his anti-aircraft capabilities in one shot. Gaddafi was quiet for 30 years after that.

What we don't need is government by wimps. The Paul-bots* are going to get all over me about this, but I think GW was right. Preemptive action was the best way to bring peace to the Middle East. Obama's wimpitude confused them and the noise from the Paulestinians encouraged them. That's not George's fault. He did the best he could with the crowd of colossal wimps he had to work with.

Just my opinion, of course, but I'm right.  Feel free, however, to puff and sputter about the Illuminati, the Bilderbergs and tell me how steel doesn't melt.

© 2014 by Tom King

*That's equals exactly half of the total number of names I've been called by Ron Paul fans in just the last 4 emails I've received. I'll stop now, but don't make me do that again. I have more euphemisms and I'm not afraid to use them.

Giving by the Rich Declines Under Redistribution

(Except for a Recent Surge in Funding for the Arts)

 

According to a Pew study, between 2009 and 2011 the wealthiest 7% got wealthier by a big 28% and the rest of us got poorer by 4%.  Oh, dear. That was during the time Obama had the presidency and the Democrats had both the House and Senate. How could that be?  Oh and another shock. Charitable giving by the wealthiest 7% of Americans declined and is only slightly recovered.

The good news according to The Nonprofit Quarterly, is that giving for the arts has risen. In other words, Mrs. Frumpyfeller's favorite opera company, The Bedford-Stuyvesant Companie' de Opera, is in danger of closing so Mrs. F orders Mr. F to give them something since she simply cannot live without seeing "Carmen" again this fall, performed in the ornate Lititia Frumpyfeller Auditorium de' Opera. And Mrs. Von Stuffypompous is concerned that there won't be enough paintings of tastefully naked people in the Stuffypompous Gallery over at the Uppity Museum of Fine Art so she pushes through a nice fat grant for the museum from their tax write-off foundation. The Uppity gives Mrs. Von Stuffypompous their Humanitarian of the Year Award.

The left is really struggling to understand why, that when they jacked up the taxes on the wealthiest among us, the wealthiest among us stopped giving to charities in nearly direct proportion to the additional tax bite they endured under the Obama soak-the-rich policy. Weren't they just supposed to just accept becoming poorer in the name of redistribution of wealth and keep on giving just as much? That's what pundits like Rick Cohen over at Nonprofit Quarterly were assuring us when he was singing the praises of jacking up taxes on the rich for humanitarian reasons.

Turns out, the rich weren't prepared to take a pay cut after all. "Shame on them!" cries NPQ. I mean, the filthy rich should at least be grateful that the administration left all their favorite tax loopholes in place. They did, after all, keep getting richer under this Democrat administration, despite all the "soak the rich" rhetoric.

© 2014 by Tom King

Channeling His Inner Neville Chamberlain

Streamlining the Military - Different Sauces for Goose and Gander

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's new defense budget proposes to reduce the size of our military to its lowest level since 1939. He makes noises about making the military more stream-lined, flexible and lethal, but one sees little of that in what we've seen so far. What we've seen so far in history is a pattern of Democrat presidents Carter, Clinton and Obama demoralizing and defunding the military every time they have the power to do so. After Carter's disaster in the desert during the Iran Hostage Crisis Clinton's record with the Black Hawk Down incident and the bombing of an aspirin factory, one waits with baited breath to see the results of Obama's gutting of the US military.

I notice the media have stopped counting the number of deaths in Afghanistan since this president came into office. I remember during the Bush years we used to get an ABC special every time we got another death toll magic number.

George W. Bush with the troops

The idea of stream-lining the military is not new. I remember President Bush proposed stream-lining the military at the very beginning of his administration. He proposed a massive re-evaluation of all systems and equipment and a careful, planned sharpening of the sword so to speak. He believed we should skip a generation of weapons and shifting funds from weapons development programs that would be practically obsolete when completed and used the funds to speed up technology, which would give us speed, flexibility, potency and survivability on the battlefields of the future. 

The Democrats howled like they’d been personally sandpapered and dipped in alcohol. The perfume princes (the guys already planning their post-service consulting careers) in the Pentagon hated it, but it would have given us a lean, affordable and extremely scary military a decade later. Of course, 9/11 intervened and prosecuting a war and squeezing the money for it out of the Democrats prevented his going ahead with his plans for upgrading the post-Clinton military, but it would have worked I think.

But the Democrats hate the military, except when they can use it to throw an international temper tantrum, raise taxes and get soldiers killed to no purpose (see Black Hawk Down and Vietnam). Unless we change the complexion of the Congress and presidency, we’re going to be in the same place the world was in 1939. President Obama with his confiding to Vladimir Putin that he'd be able to be more "flexible" after his reelection, his hand fluttering and confusing and ineffective responses in Syria, Libya and the Middle-East in general have only convinced the dictators of the world that they can act with impunity. That America is a paper tiger.

Vladimir Putin and Barak Obama have a meetin'.

Unfortunately for our future as a planet which does not glow in the dark, America possesses terrible and destructive weapons. Ask yourself, if someone mistook you for an intruder and were pointing a gun at you, which would you rather have on the other end of the gun: a trained soldier or police officer or a frightened girl who barely managed to release the safety on her 357 Magnum. Criminals know for certain who is more likely to shoot them accidentally and probably hit them where it's painful if at all. They also know who to speak calmly to and not make any threatening moves at because they will likely wind up dead if they do.

We have a frightened bunch of girls in the White House right now with the nuclear trigger in their handbags. At least that's the impression virtually everyone in the world has after Obama's World Apology Tour and his confusing tough talk and no follow-through foreign policy.

Neville Chamberlain and Adolph Hitler making "peace".

The current Russian incursion into Crimea and the limp-wristed response by this administration reminds me eerily of the Nazi incursion into the Sudetenland and Neville Chamberlain's sellout of the Sudetenlanders to Hitler for an illusory promise of “peace in our time”. Politicians who truly believe they are smarter than everyone else and can, through manipulation and charm, twist others to their will are every bit as dangerous and deluded as the dictators, tyrants and madmen who find them weak and stupid.

Just sayin’

Tom King

I remember President Bush proposed stream-lining the military, skipping a generation of weapons and shifting funds from weapons development programs that would be practically obsolete when completed to ones which would give us speed, flexibility, potency and survivability on the battlefields of the future. The Democrats howled like they’d been personally sandpapered and dipped in alcohol. The perfume princes (the guys already planning their post-service consulting careers) in the Pentagon hated it, but it would have given us a lean, affordable and extremely scary military a decade later. Of course, 9/11 intervened and prosecuting a war and squeezing the money for it out of the Democrats prevented his going ahead with his plans for upgrading the post-Clinton military, but it would have worked I think.
But the Democrats hate the military, except when they can use it to throw an international temper tantrum, raise taxes and get soldiers killed to no purpose (see Black Hawk Down and Vietnam). Unless we change the complexion of the Congress and presidency, we’re going to be in the same place the world was in 1939. The current Russian incursion into Crimea and the limp-wristed response by this administration reminds me of the Sudetenland and Neville Chamberlains sellout to Hitler for an illusory “peace in our time”.
Politicians who truly believe they are smarter than everyone else and can, through manipulation and charm can twist others to their will are every bit as dangerous and deluded as the dictators, tyrants and madmen who find them weak and stupid.
Just sayin’
Tom King
- See more at: http://www.ktbb.com/youtellme/2014/02/27/to-be-unready-for-war-is-to-invite-one/comment-page-1/#comment-13331

I remember President Bush proposed stream-lining the military, skipping a generation of weapons and shifting funds from weapons development programs that would be practically obsolete when completed to ones which would give us speed, flexibility, potency and survivability on the battlefields of the future. The Democrats howled like they’d been personally sandpapered and dipped in alcohol. The perfume princes (the guys already planning their post-service consulting careers) in the Pentagon hated it, but it would have given us a lean, affordable and extremely scary military a decade later. Of course, 9/11 intervened and prosecuting a war and squeezing the money for it out of the Democrats prevented his going ahead with his plans for upgrading the post-Clinton military, but it would have worked I think.
But the Democrats hate the military, except when they can use it to throw an international temper tantrum, raise taxes and get soldiers killed to no purpose (see Black Hawk Down and Vietnam). Unless we change the complexion of the Congress and presidency, we’re going to be in the same place the world was in 1939. The current Russian incursion into Crimea and the limp-wristed response by this administration reminds me of the Sudetenland and Neville Chamberlains sellout to Hitler for an illusory “peace in our time”.
Politicians who truly believe they are smarter than everyone else and can, through manipulation and charm can twist others to their will are every bit as dangerous and deluded as the dictators, tyrants and madmen who find them weak and stupid.
Just sayin’
Tom King
- See more at: http://www.ktbb.com/youtellme/2014/02/27/to-be-unready-for-war-is-to-invite-one/comment-page-1/#comment-13331

I remember President Bush proposed stream-lining the military, skipping a generation of weapons and shifting funds from weapons development programs that would be practically obsolete when completed to ones which would give us speed, flexibility, potency and survivability on the battlefields of the future. The Democrats howled like they’d been personally sandpapered and dipped in alcohol. The perfume princes (the guys already planning their post-service consulting careers) in the Pentagon hated it, but it would have given us a lean, affordable and extremely scary military a decade later. Of course, 9/11 intervened and prosecuting a war and squeezing the money for it out of the Democrats prevented his going ahead with his plans for upgrading the post-Clinton military, but it would have worked I think.
But the Democrats hate the military, except when they can use it to throw an international temper tantrum, raise taxes and get soldiers killed to no purpose (see Black Hawk Down and Vietnam). Unless we change the complexion of the Congress and presidency, we’re going to be in the same place the world was in 1939. The current Russian incursion into Crimea and the limp-wristed response by this administration reminds me of the Sudetenland and Neville Chamberlains sellout to Hitler for an illusory “peace in our time”.
Politicians who truly believe they are smarter than everyone else and can, through manipulation and charm can twist others to their will are every bit as dangerous and deluded as the dictators, tyrants and madmen who find them weak and stupid.
Just sayin’
Tom King
- See more at: http://www.ktbb.com/youtellme/2014/02/27/to-be-unready-for-war-is-to-invite-one/comment-page-1/#comment-13331

I remember President Bush proposed stream-lining the military, skipping a generation of weapons and shifting funds from weapons development programs that would be practically obsolete when completed to ones which would give us speed, flexibility, potency and survivability on the battlefields of the future. The Democrats howled like they’d been personally sandpapered and dipped in alcohol. The perfume princes (the guys already planning their post-service consulting careers) in the Pentagon hated it, but it would have given us a lean, affordable and extremely scary military a decade later. Of course, 9/11 intervened and prosecuting a war and squeezing the money for it out of the Democrats prevented his going ahead with his plans for upgrading the post-Clinton military, but it would have worked I think.
But the Democrats hate the military, except when they can use it to throw an international temper tantrum, raise taxes and get soldiers killed to no purpose (see Black Hawk Down and Vietnam). Unless we change the complexion of the Congress and presidency, we’re going to be in the same place the world was in 1939. The current Russian incursion into Crimea and the limp-wristed response by this administration reminds me of the Sudetenland and Neville Chamberlains sellout to Hitler for an illusory “peace in our time”.
Politicians who truly believe they are smarter than everyone else and can, through manipulation and charm can twist others to their will are every bit as dangerous and deluded as the dictators, tyrants and madmen who find them weak and stupid.
Just sayin’
Tom King
- See more at: http://www.ktbb.com/youtellme/2014/02/27/to-be-unready-for-war-is-to-invite-one/comment-page-1/#comment-13331

Diplomacy Always Triumphs Over Action (Our Ideology Says So)

Pay no attention to those masked Russian soldiers with very large guns.
They're not really in Ukraine. President Obama has used his magic diplomacy!
We may expect unicorns and universal healthcare any minute now.

In 2008 Sarah Palin predicted that a wishy-washy response to Russia's invasion of Georgia would only encourage them to invade Ukraine next. The liberal press piled on her for that calling her a dim bulb and telling her not to worry her pretty little head about that because Obama's wise diplomacy would prevent that from ever happening. Now that the Russians have invaded Ukraine, the liberal self-appointed pundits claim that diplomacy is actually working despite appearances to the contrary.

One self-styled pundit said that threats of violence never work with Russia and that the Cold War ended, not because of Reagan's tough stance with the Russkies, but  because of "diplomacy".  Yeah, right - diplomacy in the form of more US military power than the fragile Communist Soviet Union's smoke and mirrors economy could keep up with. Diplomacy, they say, is actually working because President Obama is the smartest president ever and because, according to our ideology, diplomacy works. Diplomacy, they say, if done properly by a Democrat administration, works. The liberal punditry have said it works, therefore it must be working (again, despite evidence to the contrary).

Me? I think Palin was right.

© 2014 by Tom King
Sarah Palin image © Gage Skidmore
Russian soldiers © Daily Caller

The Medal of Freedom Should Perhaps Be Renamed

Daniel Kahneman

Interesting - President Obama is awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Daniel Kahneman for Economics. Kahneman is a behavioral psychologist who has worked in something called "hedonistic economics". His work attempts to explain, in part, the mistakes people make when estimating the effects of different scenarios on their future happiness (also known as affective forecasting - predicting how feelings can be affected by illusion. The "illusion" occurs when people consider the impact of one specific factor on their overall happiness while ignoring other factors. In other words, give people a powerful enough illusion and they tend to greatly exaggerate the importance of that factor in their future happiness, while overlooking the numerous other factors that would in most cases have a greater impact.

In other words, whether that was his intent or not, Kahneman gave the propagandists a tool that teaches them how to fixate the minds of the masses on one big thing that is presented as the "key" to their future happiness so that they will ignore and dismiss other factors that are likely to be more important and may even undermine their happiness. For example, fix the public mind on the importance of universal healthcare so that they ignore the loss of individual liberty, the threat of massive debt, massive taxation and the loss of opportunity and freedom of action.

While Dr. Kahneman may be a lovely person who had no intent to aid in the downfall of America, perhaps "Medal of Freedom" isn't the write name for his award. 

Obama also included Bill Clinton, Oprah and Gloria Steinem in the group and, oddly enough, Loretta Lynn - though Lynn is an old pal of Jimmy Carter, so that probably explains it.

Ah, well, the politics roles on.

© 2013 by Tom King

Voyage of the Damned II...Obama Denies Asylum to German Home-School Family

(c) 2013 by Tom King

It's 2013 and people are STILL fleeing Nazi persecution and STILL being turned away by Democrat presidents.

FDR in 1939 turned away 939 Jewish refugees on the SS St. Louis. Nearly a third of those eventually were captured by the Nazis and died in Auschwitz and its sister death camps.

Barak Obama in 2013 is trying to deport a German family fleeing Germany to keep their children from being taken away under a 1938 Nazi era law prohibiting home-schooling.

If you don't know about the St. Louis, here's what happened.  In 1939 Hitler decided in a bold public relations stunt to prove that nobody else wanted the Jews either.  He loaded nearly a thousand Jews onto a ship with tourist visas and sent them sailing about the Atlantic looking for refuge status. Cuba, their original destination took a few and sent them away.  FDR rejected them under threat from Southern Democrats to withdraw their support from him in the 1940 election.  Canada turned them away as did Britain.  They finally landed in places like France, Belgium and Holland where fully a third of them were captured and murdered in the Nazi death camps.

Fast forward to 2013.  The Romeike Case is about the Romeikes, a German family who fled Germany because of persecution by the government over home-schooling their children.  Home-schooling is illegal in Germany under a 1938 law that prohibits the practice.  Yes, you read that right. The law dates back to Hitler's Germany and was enacted to insure that the government had full control over what children were taught.  The Hitler Youth sprung up as the fruits of this law. 

The Obama administration fails to see any irony in backing the German law (written by the way by a government that notoriously compared Jews and blacks to monkeys, murdered one group and banned the music of the other as being corruptive of German youth.

What is particularly revelatory is the way the Democrat government that is so concerned with being fair and merciful to illegal immigrants who sneaked across the border illegally, can turn around and be completely unsympathetic with a family who came here legally, were originally granted asylum and who are supporting themselves and paying taxes. The Obama Administration has all the latitude it needs to grant the Romeikes asylum.  Instead they are burning up tax dollars to prosecute this family and to drive them back into the arms of a German government determined to either force them to send their kids to public school or to take their children from them.  They let known terrorists like the Boston Marathon bombers not only enter the country, but also to sign up for nearly a hundred thousand dollars in cumulative welfare and they want to turn out a family that needs no welfare, costs the school system nothing and actually pay their taxes. It's mind boggling.

In revoking their asylum, the administration makes two arguments:

1. They argue that because the Romeike's have the choice to simple obey the German law and send their kids to public school.  Therefore, according to the Obama administration, they are not being persecuted. One supposes they make that determination under the "your children don't belong to you"/"It takes a village" principal.
2. They also argue that because the Romeike's are not a member of any recognized persecuted group (Muslims, blacks or..........well, Muslims) that they have no right to asylum.

In other words they aren't the right race or religion to receive protection. The argument seems to be that if you're white and Christian, you don't need any protection from persecution - ever!

This would be shocking except that this ruling is from an administration that has always lumped people into groups by race, creed, color and voting blocks.

To find out more about the Romeike case click on this link and follow the links to sign the petition on Whitehouse.gov. 

I hope we get 20 million signatures.

Just sayin'

Tom

How to Get Yourself Blown Up - North Korea Could Give Lessons

 All the blustering that North Korea's diminutive leader, Kim Jong Un is doing lately, just may get his country turned into a sheet of radioactive glass if he's not careful.  Kim's high-testosterone postering may be an effort to mask the 29 year-olds apparently tentative hold on power in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.  Kim came to power with fewer supporters than any previous leader since 1949 and his probably misguided attempts to shift the power structure in North Korea from the military to the Party and security apparatus may have made trigger fingers itchy among the generals, who seem more than a little concerned about the security of their own positions.

Kim Jong Un has shut down some of the North Korean military's favorite money-making activities like overseas investment and the notorious "Room 39", a black market operation that counterfeits US currency, smuggles drugs and produces a significant portion of the world's fake Viagra.  He's even fired top flag officers like Vice-Marshall Ri Yong Ho.

China, busy with its own internal political turmoil hasn't helped any in toning Kim down. In fact they've handed the North Koreans at least six mobile missile launchers, increasing Kim's launch capability.

In what is apparently a behind the scenes attempt to shift the Communist party  to preeminence in the new government, Kim's supporters have created unrest among the folk who have their hands on North Korea's nuclear trigger. In typical tin-pot despot fashion, Kim has resorted to a display of his manhood as a way to get his troops in line and focused on an outside threat - any outside threat - that will draw attention away from his ineptitude as a leader.

Unfortunately, he's chosen a poor target for his threats.  He might get away with it if he had a conservative or even moderate Republican in the White House. Ronald Reagan probably would have issued a warning and then blown up all his missiles and shot the back porch off his house while he was at it.  The Bushes would have spent a year organizing a coalition and given Kim plenty of time to ratchet down the rhetoric. Unfortunately, he has a liberal Democrat sitting in the oval office.

It is axiomatic among criminals that if you had a choice of cops pointing a gun at you, that you'd be far better off if that cop were a man. Bad guys are far more frightened if a woman is looking down the barrel of a gun at them than if it's a man back there.  They belief among criminals that a woman is more likely to pull the trigger than a man is probably based at least on anecdotal evidence.

The thinking is that a man is stronger and more aggressive by nature, therefore is more in control of his decision to shoot than a woman who is seen by hoodlums as weaker and less aggressive, but more easily frightened and therefore more likely to shoot if threatened.

With the increasingly wimpy commander-in-chief the US currently has calling the shots, Kim may find himself threatening someone who is more likely to be frightened and to shoot first. Though whatever shot Barak Obama may take may be less deliberate, Kim Jong Un should remember that it doesn't take much accuracy or planning to hit a target with a nuke.  For every nuke he can point at the US, he's got 50 that can be quickly pointed in his direction.

 With a Bush or Reagan, Kim would have plenty of warning that all hell was fixing to break loose. If he's counting on that with this president, however, he may have seriously misjudged the situation. And if Obama closes his eyes and squeezes the trigger, heaven only knows what or who he might hit.

(c) 2013 by Tom King

Supreme Court - Farmer vs. Monsanto

I hope this old guy wins. 

Vernon Hugh Bowman, a 75-year-old Indiana farmer figured out how to squeeze an extra bonus crop out of the growing season and to get around seed-giant Monsanto's strict monopoly on weed-killer resistant seeds. Tuesday he goes up against the monolithic agricultural company in the supreme court.

The deal is this:  Bowman bought Monsanto's patented Roundup-resistant seeds for his first crop.  Roundup, by the way, is also a Monsanto product.  For a risky, late season crop, however, Bowman needed a cheap source of seed. Monsanto doesn't allow farmers to reuse some ot the second generation seeds from their own crops, a practice that has kept farming viable for millenia.  Since Bowman can't reuse his own beans and he can't buy seeds from other farmers who are also bound by the agreement they are forced to sign when buying Monsanto seed.  Few dealers carry cheap unmodified seeds, especially later in the season and a late season crop is too risky to buy the more expensive seeds.
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What Bowman did was go down to a grain elevator that had a supply of viable soybeans that they usually sell for livestock feed or milling, but not as seed.  Bowman figured most of those beans would be resistant to weed killers and would grow just fine.  He continued the practice, not keeping it a secret from anyone, for eight years before Monsanto, smelling a profit to be made, or rather to be lost and sued him for violating their patent.

Monsanto, too my way of thinking, is a bit too much of a monopoly. They hold a virtual stranglehold on agricultural seed production with up to 90% of the seed market in some places. Monsanto claims to own the gene for weed-killer resistant soybeans, corn and other genetically altered seeds, even unto the third and fourth generation as the Book of Judges would put it.  I'm not sure that's quite fair.  If you look at how other industrial patents and copyrights are treated, it seems Monsanto is being treated rather better than some of us.

For instance, I'm a writer. My book is posted on Amazon.com. My publisher and I own the rights to those books as my intellectual property.  When my publisher prints a copy and sells it, they pay me a small royalty.  My books are also sold on Amazon.com.  If they are sold new, I make about $3 per book.  Amazon.com  also sells used copies of my book that belong to people who bought it new and no longer need it sitting around on their shelves.  I receive absolutely no royalties for those used books, whether or not I own the intellectual property rights.  I only profit from what I actually produce. I get paid for first sale of my product, but I don't get paid when my product gets resold, lent out or stuck on a library shelf for anyone with a library card to read. It's the same for any other patent or copyright holder. If I buy a Ford Mustang new from the company, keep it 40 years in mint condition and resell it for 10 times its original value, Ford does not get a penny from my good fortune.

I think Monsanto is over-reaching by claiming that subsequent generation seed genes are covered under its patent. While I understand that Monsanto needs protection so that another seed company shouldn't be able to just start producing identical seeds for sale by using Monsanto's seed stock, we're not talking about patent infringement.  The farmers have already bought and paid for the original seeds. Mr. Bowman is merely wanting to use the seeds he already paid for to get an extra crop in the same year on his own farm.  Okay, so don't let him buy the seeds from the grain elevator.  Fine, you don't want grain elevators setting themselves up as seed companies using Monsanto's seeds.  But I think a farmer should be able to use the second generation seeds in the same year if he already paid for the seeds once.  It would give Monsanto a bit of good will with the farmers if they could okay farmers using second generation seeds in that way if they get them from their first harvest in order plant a risky second season crop.

Make it a one season deal on the contract. How hard would that be. Good for the economy because it makes risky second crops profitable for farmers, it increases the crop grown for that year and thereby reduces the price of soybeans and soybean products. Good for the farmer because it makes that second crop affordable. Good for consumers because it lowers prices. 

It's time American companies gave a little bit to help their direct customers and their indirect customers, the food-buying public. Monsanto, at 90% saturation of the seed market, looks a wee bit like a candidate for an anti-trust suit if you ask me.  I would think it wise if they stopped acting so much like robber barons that they draw the attention of some ambitious lawyer. Monsanto has the Obama administration in their pocket on this one thanks to generous campaign donations to Democrats, no doubt. Like too many corporations participating enthusiastically in what the dominant party calls "managed" capitalism, Monsanto doesn't much care if consumers pay for their protected business monopoly at the grocery store.

Like I say, I hope this old guy wins in the Supreme Court. It would be refreshing if the Supreme Court could encourage corporate giants to show a bit of compassion to their customers.  It isn't going to cost them anything in this case.  Bowman isn't going to risk a second crop if he has to buy the expensive seeds. Then he doesn't make a profit.  Had Monsanto taken a look at the situation and said, "Okay, this is fair use, we'll allow it," they would likely have saved themselves a lot of legal expense.  They're certainly not going to make more money if they win.  Bowman and other farmers will simply not plant that second crop and consumers will pay at the grocery store for higher priced food.


Besides, there are people starving in Africa. The more food we grow, the more we have to sell where people need food.  The more we sell, the more we can afford to give to the hungry around the world and in our own country. Where's the compassion Mr. President?  Here we have one of those evil corporations the president is always saying need to contribute a little more to the general welfare, AND we have a solution available that neither hurts the corporation, the farmer, the public nor the poor and starving of the world. It is not an expensive solution. It doesn't require the creation of a new government agency.  It requires only a slight change of wording on Monsanto contracts. Monsanto doesn't lose money. Arguably, it would never have had that money anyway.  Farmers won't do second crops with Monsanto first generation seeds. It's not worth the risk given the high cost of the investment. If Monsant's competition is smart, they'll get the cheap seeds out there for that second crop and capture that niche market.  After all, the fields have already been weeded, so the fields shouldn't need another dose of roundup.  You have to wonder how Mosanto is going to charge farmers for second use of weed-free fields if farmers start heavily using non-engineered seeds for high-risk second crops. Monsanto should stop worrying about its monopoly and start worrying about what's good for its customers.  Second use per season of their seeds would be a great way to show farmers and consumers that the company wasn't pulling a modern day version of the JP Morgan, John D. Rockefeller or Cornelius Vanderbuilt.monopolies that earned them the sobriquet - "robber barons".

Ah, but like someone once told me when a group of us proposed a low-cost and simple solution to a local transportation problem that seniors and people with disabilities were having, "The problem with your idea is that it's too simple and it's far too inexpensive, and besides," he grinned, "Nobody would make money on it and no politician would be able to take credit for it."


Our idea didn't get accepted and I don't hold out a lot of hope for poor old Mr. Bowman. It's too simple and only farmers and consumers would benefit. It would be far too difficult for any politician to take credit for and it certainly wouldn't help the Democrats (or the Republicans for that matter) to get re-elected.

Just sayin'


Tom

Disappointment’s Haunting All Their Dreams….

© 2012 by Tom King

 

 

The split screen was unkind to the President.

If Mitt Romney manages to avoid shooting himself in the foot and wins this election, then for a long time after his inauguration is over and done, pundits, political consultants and Democrat true believers will be still shaking their heads and wondering how things went so very, very wrong.

 

After all, they had this guy. They were so certain sure. I mean, how could Obama lose when Mitt Romney had so much going against him?

 

1. He is a Mormon. No self-respecting conservative redneck Christian was ever supposed to vote for a Mormon so that meant he would certainly lose the Christian right?
2. He’s rich. The Occupy Movement was supposed to define Romney as one of the privileged exploiters in the top 1% - something guaranteed to turn the proletariat 99% against him, or so, their Marxist professors assured them.
3. He presided over the creation of a state health care system while he was Massachusetts governor. This should have turned all the hard right fiscal conservatives against him.
4. He was the Republican candidate most diametrically opposed by Ron Paul in the primary. The Paulistas were supposed to reject a Romney nomination and carry Ron Paul on their shoulders into the presidential race as a third party candidate and divide the Republican vote. How could Ron Paul not lust for the presidency so much that he would take the opportunity to bask in all that national attention? Surely he knew he’d have the support of the mainstream media. How could he do something as principled as consider the good of the country over his own ego? Isn’t he a politician after all?
5. He laid off workers as president of Bain Capital. This was supposed to undermine his reputation as a job creator and turn all the unions against him – even the coal miners who could be counted to vote Democrat despite Obama’s anti-coal rhetoric.
6. He’s awfully white. The minority vote was supposed to be solidly against him.

Romney, like McCain before him, was supposed to be a political straw man; an easy target for the charismatic Barak Obama, the emblem of hope and change, the brilliant speaker and the “clean and articulate” black person. Working hand in glove with the mainstream media, the Obama campaign pummeled Romney’s primary opponents for him while smoothing his way to the Republican nomination – even inducing Democrats to vote for Romney in the primary to insure he would be the candidate.

 

In focusing so hard on setting up the Republican Party to lose the 2012 election, President Obama’s handlers failed to notice that the president’s policies were a disaster.

 

1. The new tone from the American president was supposed to send people into the streets around the world to cheer the new and improved United States foreign policy. Even Islamists were supposed to like us. Instead, if anything, things got worse. We’re hated more than ever. Terrorists are hitting us on our own soil again, murdering diplomats and continuing to blow themselves up willy nilly, even though we left Iraq like we were supposed to. 
2. Obama was supposed to save us from the disastrous policies of George W. Bush and save the economy. In reality, the stimulus packages did little for the economy besides give corporate bigwigs a golden parachute and jack up the national debt beyond what anyone can imagine and put us heavily into debt to China, which doesn’t really like us much. Unemployment is higher than any time under President Bush and persisted throughout the Obama administration. The economy is relentlessly bad and small business has pretty much lost hope.
3. Obama was supposed to unite America and end partisanship in a burst of rainbows and unicorns. Instead, the country is more sharply divided along political lines than it has been since 1859 and we all know what started up in 1861. I saw a political cartoon the other day showing a small businessman boarding up his windows “in case Obama is re-elected”. He should probably go ahead and keep them boarded up if Romney is elected. It could get ugly!
4. Obama was supposed to close Gitmo and end the war and stuff. Gitmo is still open; troops in Iraq went from being soldiers to “advisors as though that counts as withdrawing. We’re mired in Afghanistan under rules of engagement reminiscent of those that hamstrung G.I.’s in the Vietnam era. Obama, almost reluctantly and at great personal risk to his political career, ordered Seals to capture Osama(with a “U”) Bin Laden, then saw his staff leak so much information that it compromised the security of intelligence assets, got people arrested and probably more than a few killed. A helicopter full of Seals wound up shot down shortly after the operation. The timing was more than a little troubling.
5. Obama was supposed to give us universal health care and lower the debt in the process. Ironically he did get the bill passed, but the whole “you can’t see what’s in it till we pass it” strategy left Americans deeply suspicious of the bill and rightly so. Reading the bill brought forth a litany of horrors that shocked the economy into inactivity. Homeowners who were supposed to not lose their homes lost them anyway. Small business took cover and stopped creating jobs. Corporate giants chose to sit on their piles of money till the dust settles, if it ever does.
6. Obama was supposed to collapse the economy by overloading the government with entitlement spending. The American economy proved more resilient than Obama advisors Bill Ayers or Frances Fox Piven counted on and the Progressive Millennium did not arise from the ashes of capitalism like it was supposed to.
7. He was supposed to bring true equality and opportunity to all minority Americans. They were supposed to march lock step to the polls because Obama was a man of color like them. In his first term he became a man at odds with the church that the majority of members of one of those “reliable” minorities belong to; a man who is being burned in effigy by mobs of the minority whose schools he attended as a child; a man who has done more to increase the numbers of his own ethnic group who are joining the Republican Party, the tea party and other conservative groups than any president in history; a man on whose watch saw black unemployment rise to almost double the unemployment rate of the general population. Between inflation and falling wages, guess who got hit the hardest by the recession?
8. Finally, the mainstream media was supposed to make this election a walk in the park. Unfortunately for the president, the failures of his administration have left blood in the water and reporters are more closely kin to sharks than sheep. If he looks like he’s losing, the MSM will rush it’s armies of pundits to the nearest microphones and get it on record that they knew Obama was toast long before the election.

The president’s mistake was confusing sheep with sharks, cats with dogs and freeloaders with fans. The media smells blood and circles the source in a feeding frenzy. The almost-feline prides of pundits wander away to look for someplace where they will be better fed and will look more attractive. The mob will turn on him because they expected free housing, free food and their car payments to be covered with cash from the Obama stash. All they got were free cell phones.

 

Seriously, there could be pitchforks!