Recognize Our Rulers for What They Are . . . and Address Them Accordingly

An earlier post on this blog actually understated the truth about individuals who currently hold a public office that calls for its occupant to be addressed as honorable when it pointed out that such individuals  almost certainly are not honorable and are unworthy of any such honorific.


Eric Holder, the nation's attorney general and head of the bureaucratic body that he has transformed into the Department of Just Us, proves the point. In his lengthy tenure at the public trough Mr. Holder has wracked up an awesome record of public disservice. He deserves to be, and in any rational society he would be addressed as The Contemptible Eric Holder.


Mr. Holder may get his comeuppance for displaying contempt for the body of his fellow contemptibles who comprise the U.S. House of Reprehensibles.


But I digress. The point is that citizens who are gainfully employed in the private sector would be well advised to knock public office holders back down into their rightful place as public servants . . . and a good place to start would be by no longer addressing any of them as the honorable anything. In fact, we should begin addressing anyone who has become accustomed to being addressed as The Honorable So-and So as The Contemptible So-and-So.  The Con. makes a good substitute and today is far more accurate in almost all instances. 

Shouldn't Be a Crime Anyway

In the wake of the acquittal of Roger Clemens on charges of having lied to Congress, one has to ask how, in any event, could it possibly be a crime for anyone to lie to the greatest collection of liars ever assembled under one roof.

Smart Question

E-Mail from an Old Friend

Just wanted to let you know - today I received my 2012 Social Security Stimulus Package.

It contained two watermelon seeds, cornbread mix, a prayer rug, a machine to blow smoke up my rear, 2 discount coupons to KFC, an "Obama Hope & Change" bumper sticker, and a "Blame it on Bush" poster for the front yard.

The directions were in Spanish.

Watch for yours soon. 

"Dallas" Not the Only Thing That's Back

The original "Dallas" series started in 1978. Back then, America was very different. We had an ineffective, one-term president. Gas prices were through the roof. We were in a stand-off with Iran. I'm glad those dark days are over.

. . . Craig Ferguson

The Unspeakable Doing the Unthinkable In Pursuit of the Uneatable

Oscar Wilde said something like that about the recreational fox hunts in which England's elites used to engage to amuse themselves.


It is even more applicable to the ongoing hunt by members of America's current political and chattering classes for the source of leaks that exposed our government's pursuit of  activities far more barbarous and destructive than anything ever engaged in by any four-legged creature.


The question of whether we would be better advised to focus more on our government's debasement of our country's traditional culture, values, and laws than on those bringing those malodorous activities to light is examined by Judge Andrew Napolitano in this excellent essay.

Economic Timeline in Brief -- A Dose of Reality

January 2009 -- Its present occupier moves into the oval office.

June 2009 -- Government (with support of most economic and academic experts) officially declares recession to be over.

July 2009 -- First economic measures of the new administration become effective. Many more quickly follow.

Three years later -- Stagflation, high unemployment, reduced workforce, food stamp use at record levels, net worth of citizens devastatingly evaporated: the new normal under Obama. Administration adamant -- won't change economic policies that haven't worked in three years.

What was it that Einstein said about repeatedly doing the same thing and and expecting a different result?

Our Fearsome Police State In Action . . . Why the Second Amendment Is Necessary

Now the Chicago police department is following Obama’s example and telling people that their First Amendment rights can be terminated anytime.  Check out the incident caught on camera when a couple of news reporters were trying to cover a story outside a Chicago hospital.

Following the threat, the officer arrested the two journalists. Even though they were released a short time later, the incident has not gone unnoticed. According to the National Press Photographers Association, there have been 70 such arrests that they have documented since last September. Many of the arrests have involved the filming of news stories when the police decide they don’t want to allow it to be filmed. They seem to just arbitrarily decide on their own when it is legal and when it isn’t.

Differing Investment Imperatives

Though hardly a Mitt Romney fan, I have to acknowledge the  stellar record he achieved in the private equity industry. He did that in the course of investing his own funds together with funds that other investors voluntarily contributed to his ventures. Absent anything other than a consistent record of success, those voluntary contributions would not have been forthcoming.


Contrast that with the record achieved in the profligate spending of public funds referred to as "investments" by our Chosen One. That of course is possible because there is nothing voluntary about taxpayers anteing up the funds distributed to the likes of Solyndra and other Obama cronies. Neither success nor persuasion is necessary to come up with the funding.  'Investing' with the government is compulsory. Individuals not ponying up appropriately and their assets can be carted off by armed government goons who can appear at the door of reluctant 'contributors' at any time.

News Item's Astute Analysis

Guantanamo Bay is now undergoing millions of dollars worth of renovations, including a new soccer field, cable TV, and better housing. Which is kind of ironic. The only people who say they're better off today than they were four years ago are the inmates at Guantanamo Bay.

. . . Jay Leno

Private Sector Perspective

Based on his experience with the private sector, it is not surprising that our Chosen One thinks it is doing well. After all, Obama's exposure to the private sector has spanned the gamut from George Clooney to Sarah Jessica Parker . . . and they as well as others in their milieu are doing just fine. Isn't that just dandy?

Psychology 101 . . . or Why We Must Replace All of Them

If you start with a cage containing five monkeys and inside the cage, hang a banana on a string from the top and then you place a set of stairs under the banana, before long a monkey will go to the stairs and climb toward the banana.

As soon as he touches the stairs, you spray all the other monkeys with cold water.

After a while another monkey makes an attempt with same result . . . all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put the cold water away.

Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one.

The new monkey sees the banana and attempts to climb the stairs. To his shock, all of the other monkeys beat the crap out of him.  After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys, replacing it with a new one.

The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment . .. with enthusiasm, because he is now part of the "team."

Then, replace a third original monkey with a new one, followed by the fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs he is attacked.

Now, the monkeys that are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs. Neither do they know why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

Finally, having replaced all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys will have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, not one of the monkeys will try to climb the stairway for the banana.

Why, you ask? Because in their minds . . . that is the way it has always been!

This, my friends, is how Congress operates . . . and this is why, from time to time:

ALL of the monkeys need to be REPLACED AT THE SAME TIME

Economic Calendar: Funny, Sad, and True

A Comedian Gets It Straight:
Forget the Mayans. According to NASA, the world will not come to an end for another 4 billion years — or about the same time your 401(k) comes back.

. . . Jay Leno 

Shredding America's Values

Since 9/11, the United States government has set up national security systems that function not under the Constitution, not under the Geneva Conventions, not under the rule of law, not under the rules of war, not under federal law, but under a new secret system crafted by the Bush administration and personally directed by Obama, the same Obama who condemned these rules as senator and then extended them as president. In the name of fighting demons in pick-up trucks and wars that Congress has never declared, the government shreds our rights, taps our cellphones, reads our e-mails, kills innocents abroad, strip searches 87-year-old grandmothers in wheelchairs and 3-year-old babies in their mothers’ arms, and offers secrecy when the law requires accountability.

Obama has argued that his careful consideration of each person he orders killed and the narrow use of deadly force are an adequate and constitutional substitute for due process. The Constitution provides for no such thing. He has also argued that the use of drones to do his killing is humane since they are “surgical” and only kill their targets. We know that is incorrect. And he has argued that these killings are consistent with our values. What is he talking about? The essence of our values is the rule of law, not the rule of presidents.

. . . Judge Andrew Napolitano

'Protect and Serve' Response From a Reader

Dear Mr. Kerr Mudgeon:


     Your posts over the last two days [Saturday, May 26, and Sunday, May 27] have made clear the real meaning of that previously nonsensical"To Serve and Protect" phrase.


     The powers that be see to it that they are well and truly protected and that the rest of us get royally serviced.


     Thank you for making this clear, and keep in mind the maxim expressed by George Orwell's porcine forerunner of the rulers we have today -- "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."

[Correspondent's Name Omitted at Her Request] 

Many Good Things About Getting Old But I Can't Remember Any of Them

I've sure gotten old!  I've had two bypass surgeries, a hip replacement, new knees, fought prostate cancer and diabetes. I'm half blind, can't hear anything quieter than a jet engine, take 40 different medications that  make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts. Have bouts with dementia.  Have poor circulation; hardly feel my hands and feet anymore.  Can't remember if I'm 85 or 92. Have lost all my friends. But, thank God, I still have my driver's license.

Know how to prevent sagging? 

Just eat till the wrinkles fill out.

It's scary when you start making the same noises as your coffee maker.

These days about half the stuff in my shopping cart says, 

'For fast relief.'

I feel like my body has gotten totally out of shape, so I got my doctor's permission to join a fitness club and start exercising. 

I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors. 

I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But by the time I got my leotards on, the class was over.

Just before the funeral services, the undertaker came up to the very elderly widow and asked, 'How old was your husband?' '

98,' she replied . . . .  'Two years older than me' 

'So you're 96,' the undertaker commented.

She responded, 'Hardly worth going home, is it?

Once Was Sufficient

More on Protect and Serve Priorities

Police services are not unlimited and therefore have to be prioritized.


The question raised by the facts and circumstances surrounding the murder of the Berkeley hills homeowner after the city's police department decided not to respond to his call for help with a prowler on his property is whether police services are allocated and prioritized on an appropriate basis.


It is an unfortunate fact that some individuals and their lives and safety are more important than ordinary citizens and their well being. The reality is that the Berkeley constabulary would have been dispatched to, and arrived on the scene in force in a heartbeat had the call for help come from the city's mayor or a member of its city council.


So it behooves us to understand just where private citizens stand in the list of priorities. How great is the disparity of the protection afforded them and that allocated to public officials . . . members of the political elite who make up our ruling class?


As is pointed out in an item posted on this blog just a day or two ago, the Berkeley police department was able to send an officer to the neighboring city home of a reporter in the dead of night to demand revision of a news story that supposedly had quoted the police chief incorrectly. The department also was able to deploy ten officers (including four command personnel on overtime) to endeavor to retrieve a cell phone that had been stolen from the son of the department's chief.


So there you have it.  Those who share places at the public trough have first call to be protected and served.  Private citizens rank somewhere down the line -- their protection and service has less priority than the recovery a stolen cell phone.


There's a lesson here:

Nemo Curat

That's Latin for Nobody Cares.


The reality is that your life and well being, and that of your loved ones are not as important to anyone else as it is to you. You are and always must be your own first responder. So arm, train, and prepare both mentally and physically to meet that responsibility. Nobody can predict if and when you will be challenged by the need to do so.

Bravo for Newport Beach

The Southern California town has displayed both common sense and a spine. It is billing the Obama election campaign $35,000 to reimburse the city for what the big zero's political visit to the community cost it. The full story can be seen here. 

Cribbed Gem

Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette examines the media-created myth about Obama's breathtaking intelligence . . . .

    Mr. Obama has said a lot of unsmart things: there are 57 states; Canada has a president; 'Austrian' is a language; America is '20 centuries' old; Arabic is spoken in Afghanistan. He's called the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) the Maldives, and declared it would be 'unprecedented' for the Supreme Court to invalidate a law passed by Congress.

     President Obama's stimulus bill didn't stimulate. His subsidies to 'green' firms have produced neither the jobs nor the energy he promised. Deficits are out of control.

     Noemie Emery in the Weekly Standard ... 'Journalists who wept when he won the election now grind their teeth in despair . . . .  The gap between sizzle and steak never seemed so large.'

     Could it be that Mr. Obama's 'superior intellect' is a myth created by journalists to mask what may be the thinnest resume of anyone ever elected president?

     An example of puffery is the description of Mr. Obama as a former 'professor of constitutional law.' Mr. Obama was a part-time instructor at the University of Chicago law school, without the title or status of professor. And, according to blogger Doug Ross, he wasn't very popular with the real professors. 'I spent some time with the highest tenured faculty member at Chicago Law a few months back,' Mr. Ross wrote in March 2010. 'According to my professor friend, [Obama] had the lowest intellectual capacity in the building . . .  . The other professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified'.

The man's a plain fool. So how dumb did his voters have to be in order to not notice?

Time to chant the mantra once again: "We live . . . in a land . . . run by morons."

. . . Cribbed from Lee Rodgers
(whose blog  is well worth 
visiting on a  daily basis)

What If . . . ?

Who Gets Protected and Served

Remember that Berkeley, California, homeowner who was beaten to death in his own front yard well after he had called the police for help with the unarmed young black man who was prowling about on his property?  The police deemed the call to have a low priority, decided not to respond to it, and even ordered off  an officer who offered to respond and could easily have done so in ample time to save the homeowner's life.


Shortly thereafter, a Berkeley police officer was deployed in the dead of night to the neighboring city home of a news reporter to demand revision of a news story that the chief of the department believed to be incorrect about something that he had said.


Now it turns out that about a month earlier ten -- yes, 10 -- Berkeley police officers were deployed to recover a cell phone that had been stolen from an unlocked locker at the city's high school. That intrepid crime fighting task force included three detectives and a sergeant, each of whom logged two hours of overtime on the assignment.


Incidentally, the stolen phone belonged to the son of Berkeley's police chief.


Question: Did the deceased homeowner die because he lacked the right relatives or because he made a poor choice in the selection of a time to be attacked?


While cogitating about just who gets protected and served, the following explanation reached me via an e-mail from a friend --

I became confused when I heard the word 'service' used with these agencies:

Internal Revenue 'Service'

Postal 'Service'

Telephone 'Service'

Cable TV 'Service'

Civil 'Service'

General 'Services' Administration

City, State & Federal 'Services'

Customer 'Service'

This is not what I thought 'Service' meant.

But today, I overheard two farmers talking, and one of them said he had hired a bull to 'service' his cows.

 BAM!!! It all came into focus.

 Now I understand what all those agencies  are doing to us.

Admire the Guy Who Opted Out

That fortunate guy who renounced his U.S. citizenship for Singapore before reaping the benefits of his Facebook investment deserves respect and applause, and I write that as a guy who for too long respected and strictly obeyed the rules.

That of course was before we had:

           *   A federal government that spent tax money without a plan . . . on autopilot with no budget . . . just continuing resolutions for more than three years.

      *    A treasury secretary who didn’t pay his taxes until he was nominated to that sinecure, a former senate leader who didn’t pay his taxes, a chairman of the tax writing committee of the House of Reprehensibles who didn’t pay his taxes. Remember Leona Helmsley, who went to jail a few decades ago for accurately, though unwisely, publicly stating that “only the little people pay taxes.”

       *   A General Services Administration that throws itself lavish taxpayer funded parties, and federal judges from the 9^th Circuit who are planning a sumptuous paid vacation for themselves in Hawaii that will cost the taxpayers some $900,000.

   *  Federal and state governments incurring gargantuan debts that cannot ever be repaid but that will burden all future generations.

The fact is that our system of government has become irretrievably corrupt, and does not deserve support.  The guy who absconded to Singapore was wise enough to recognized and act on that fact.

Senators Charles Schumer and Robert Casey are pushing legislation to make following that worthy’s example more difficult and very expensive. They are proposing a financial version of East Germany’s infamous Berlin wall to maintain their enslaved subjects under the control. Good luck with that!

A few years back Claire Wolfe wrote America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.  Her book, The Freedom Outlaw's Handbook: 179 Things To Do Until the Revolution is well worth reading. It’s fun though probably superfluous.

Despite – or perhaps because of -- the efforts of the likes of Messrs. Schumer and Casey, the system is coming apart like an overripe grapefruit. Like the Soviet Union in its final days, it’s on the brink of, and headed for extinction, collapsing of its own weight.

The State We're In

Even If Biden Is Right . . . .

The nation's number two moron, Vice President Joe Biden, claims Mitt Romney is no more qualified to serve as president than Joe the Plumber.

Questionable assertion.  But even if it's correct,  Mr. Romney as well as the plumber obviously are more qualified for the presidency than either the self-aggrandizing guy with delusions of adequacy who now (occassionally) sits in the oval office or the gaff-prone number two backup doofus who has spent a lifetime feasting at the public trough.