More Proof of Global Warming...

From a Nowcast Email from Weather Underground:

...Record cold high temperature set at Eau Claire Wisconsin...

The high temperature was 62 degrees at the Eau Claire Chippewa
valley regional Airport for August 29 2009.

This sets a new record cold high temperature for this date.
The previous record cold high temperature for August 29th was 63
degrees set in 1965 and 1903.

Quote of the Day...from 1944

-Norman Matoon Thomas

THIS IS NO LONGER AMERICA!!

(h/t Random Thoughts)

General Patraeus Awakens Comatose Soldier...

More heroism in this video than you can shake a stick at:

Congressman Mike Rogers on Obamacare...

Damn..why can't they all be this smart?



And let's not forget a rare moment of lucidity on the part of none other than Howard Dean:

Finally, justice for Mary Jo Kopechne.

Ted Kennedy, dead at age 77.

Rest in peace, Mary Jo.

Epic FAIL On Part of Dems to Blame Vandalism on TEA Party Activists...

It would appear that the democrat headquarters in Denver Colorado were vandalized:

A 24-year-old arrested this morning on suspicion of smashing 11 windows at Colorado Democratic Party headquarters tried to conceal his identity while allegedly committing the crime, according to police descriptions.

So who is this guy who tried to conceal his identity while perpetrating his vandalism? No doubt some whacked out, right wing extremist tea-party nutcase, right?

Wrong!

While Schwenkler does not appear in the state's voter registration database, a person by that name in November 2008 received $500 from a political 527 committee called Colorado Citizens Coalition for "communications," according to campaign finance disclosures.

The accountant for the 527 appears to be the same woman who handles the books for many other Democratic-leaning political committees.

A Maurice Schwenkler also signed an online 2005 petition to free anti-war Christian protesters who were captured in Iraq.

The broken glass hadn't even found its resting place on the floor of the Denver Democrat Party Headquarters before convenient, self-righteous bony fingers of indignation were pointing at TEA Party revelers:

State Democratic Party Chairwoman Pat Waak initially blamed the vandalism on animosity surrounding the health care debate, though Denver police declined to comment on possible motives.

The shattered windows were emblazoned with posters touting President Barack Obama and the Democratic position on health care reform.

The other storefronts surrounding the building on West Eighth Avenue and Santa Fe Drive in downtown Denver's art district were untouched. But the Democratic posters are scuffed from hammer blows, Waak said.

"We ought to be having a serious, conscientious debate about what's best for the country," Waak said. "Clearly there's been an effort on the other side to stir up hate. I think this is the consequence of it."

No doubt Waak wasn't counting on the hired help being caught in the act, and so soon..

An officer on patrol spotted vandals in the act around 2:20 a.m. and took Schwenkler into custody after a short chase, Denver police spokeswoman Vicki Ferrari said.

So, I see that the dems are not above hiring agents provacateurs to foment angst and hate among their ranks.

Yet, somehow, that does not surprise me in the least.

I think I see the ghost of Saul Alinsky in this story somewhere.

The Pax Christi Apostasy.

(file photo)

You can tell a lot about the veracity of a person's expressed principles as conditions change.

Take the local chapter of Pax Christi, for example. During the Bush administration, one could regularly find them in front of Barnes & Noble in St. Cloud, supposedly protesting the war in Iraq. Ask them whether their protests were politically motivated, they would explain that they were against U.S. involvement in war.

Now that President Obama is at the helm, we're still in Iraq. We are also experiencing exponentially increasing casualties in Afghanistan. But somehow, Pax Christi is conspicuously absent from the corner of Highway 15 and Division.

Considering their absence, as the only real difference now is the person at the helm of the Presidency, can one draw any conclusion other than the true aim of Pax Christi was not an end to war, but rather an end to Republican control of the White House?

Given that conclusion, it would also seem fair to surmise that Pax Chirsti’s protests of Operation Iraqi Freedom during the Bush administration were not borne of principled opposition to war, but were rather utilized as convenient tools to remove a political party from power.

This despite the fact that their protests (and those of other groups) served to demoralize our troops, as well as to embolden our enemies to keep up their fight, thus placing our troops in increasing danger.

If Pax Christi’s protests were truly borne of principled opposition to war, one may have understood. But utilizing the Iraq War issue as a mere political football, and endangering the lives of our troops in the process, all as a means of getting their party of choice in power, is nothing less than unconscionable.

But then again, one could never accuse Pax Christi of having a conscience. Or at least not being able to turn it off, at will:

Pax Christi USA’s “Life Does Not End at Birth” statement – a Catholic election year statement that articulates a call for Catholics to vote on the broad range of issues that impact the common good – was placed in more than 30 diocesan and secular publications throughout 2004, reaching more than 30 million Catholics in the U.S. This work was done in partnership with Faithful America and Res Publica.

This notion, of course, allowed CINOs (Catholics In Name Only) to turn off their consciences (if they had any to begin with) to vote for and to promote the candidacy and election of the most pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia president. Ever. All as a means of promoting their socialist utopian heaven on earth.

Of course, the killing of innocents for the greater good, and all that.

Here's to you, Mr. Jefferson...

A most excellent, timely video:

These points need to be made at ALL town hall meetings:

I Know This Song Parody Doesn't Make Much Sense...

But then again, neither does Obamacare...

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the one that Obama gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Nancy
When she's two feet tall

And if you go talking Obamacare
And you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Barney
When he was just small

When men in the Congress
Get up and tell you where to go
And tell you to take some kind of pain pill
If your mind is moving slow
Go ask Barack
I think he'll know

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
With the spinmeisters talking backwards
And the Pelosi's "off with her head!"
Remember what Alinsky said;
"Keep YOUR HEAD
_______________
Keep your head"

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Currently relaxing at Grand Marais with the Class C, a beer, a campfire, and the wife.

doesn't get any better than this!

In Memoriam...

It's sad when a member of the blogging community passes ad astra.

It's even sadder when that member is a true military hero who sacrificed greatly for freedom.

But what's nearly unbearable is when that hero, with so much to live for, dies by his own hand.

Such was the case with Flopping Aces' Chris Galloway.

Rest in peace. May God bless your family, sir.

How do the MN DFL Want to Solve Problems..Let Me Count the Ways...

Errr... None.

It seems that in their never-ending quest to formulate health care policies, Minnesota DFLers have made it clear that ideas that actually work need not apply.

As I keyboard this tome, Linda Berglund and Tom Huntley are chairing an "informal" meeting to discuss the fate of Minnesota's GAMC (General Assistance Medical Care) program. It's so 'informal,' in fact, that its informality led to an oversight by Berglund and Huntley in that they forgot to invite any Republicans to the meeting.

This never-ending attempt by the Minnesota DFL to re-invent the wheel is a farce, since it was Minnesota Republican legislators who offered a real solution on the House floor for continuing GAMC coverage; ideas that were rejected by the DFL majority, simply because they preferred keeping the wound open so that they could then blame the fallout on Governor Pawlenty.

C'mon Berglund, Huntley & DFLers... enough with the Kubuki theatre. Start doing what folks elected you to do. Quit admiring problems, and actually start solving a few once in a while.

Pawlenty to Kelliher and Pogemiller: Pound Sand!

(Click on image for full size)

Governor Pawlenty gets it. Never humor the delusions of a liberal.

Astroturfing in New Hampshire..

I knew that there was something #fishy about this AP Story regarding the Portsmouth, NH Obamacare rally, featuring the Chief Snake Oil Salesman, himself:

The White House had been ready for an unruly reception from opponents of overhauling health care. There was no sign of that, perhaps because of the makeup of the day's crowd or out of traditional deference for the president.

Obama's push came amid a string of disruptive health care town halls nationwide that have overshadowed his message and threatened to derail support in Congress. Indeed, Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter faced hostile questions, taunts and jeers earlier Tuesday as he tried to explain his positions at a town hall in Lebanon, Pa. Voter fears of a government takeover of health care were on stark display.

Some lawmakers, holding forums during Congress' August recess, have gone so far as to replace public forums with teleconferences or step up security to keep protesters at bay.

But the Democratic president faced no outbursts.

The encounter was so friendly, in fact, that by the end Obama was even asking for skeptical questioners to come forward — to no avail.

Of course, to the clueless AP state-run media, there was nothing #fishy about this happenstance. But to anyone with a google search engine, the reasons were obvious:

On Monday dozens of workers — including White House staffers — spent hours setting up the high school auditorium for Obama's forum, which is only open to those members of the public who secured tickets. Organizers would not disclose how many tickets were issued.

John Moran, 71, of Nottingham was among the many who went to the school to pick up tickets for an event marking Obama's first trip to the Granite State since he took office in January.

Moran, a Democrat, said he is a strong Obama supporter who was thrilled when he got a call notifying him that he would have two tickets for today's Town Hall forum.

The Nottingham resident said his wife — who will also be attending — was even more excited with the chance to see Obama live.

"She is really tickled. You should have seen her ... she was jumping up and down," Moran said.

Moran said he has a couple questions in mind if he is called on at the forum with one of them being how the president intends to get health insurance companies to work with him to reform health care.

He said he hopes Obama's plan will push for a more proactive approach to healthy living that involves coverage for preventive health care like screening and exercise.

Kathleen O'Brien, 64, and Jean Sanders, 66, both of Atkinson, said they will be sitting on stage for the event as they worked on Obama's campaign beginning in 2007.

On Monday they both went to the high school to pick up tickets and their excitement was more than evident.

"He is as good as everyone says he is. The last person I worked this hard for was Robert Kennedy," O'Brien said.

O'Brien wore an American flag-style scarf around her neck and a lanyard carrying several Obama pins.

She said she's read most of Obama's reform bill concerning health care, but still wants more information.

"I want to hear as much as possible about the plan," O'Brien said.

O'Brien and Sanders said they spent the weekend calling those who were selected in the lottery to receive tickets.

Sanders said some people sounded like they had just won a fortune when they were informed they would be able to attend the forum and hear Obama speak first-hand about his plan.

"It was unbelievable," Sander said.

Now here's the real 'laugh-a-minute' quote:

O'Brien said she is sure many "hecklers" will be outside Portsmouth High School trying to derail reform, but she said anyone paying attention to the specifics of the plan will support what Obama is trying to do. She balked at those who say the plan is not in the best interest of senior citizens.

"He is actually protecting seniors," O'Brien said.

Now that's Astroturf you can believe in.

The Two Faces of Obama

He was for Single Payer...



Before He was "against" Single Payer:

Projection: It's not just for movie theaters anymore. RE: Obama as Joker..

Due to the insistence of the Obama administration on calling those who are dissident to his policies members of a mob, I have added the words, "I am the Mob" to my Twitter avatar.

Some heretofore unknown-to-me self-righteous Minnesota blogger named Holly Cairns decided to make an example of me to feebly attempt to illustrate that those who are like minded:

1. ... all failed civics class.

2. Many of them are sensationalists, looking for attention

3. They bleat and baaaah worse than the average Joe

4. Many of them worry about race and superiority

5. Some are f ‘ing nuts.

Read all her pointless blathering here.

I responded to Ms. Cairns' thusly:

Hello, Holly. I don’t know you from Eve, but I will take the following presumption as fact:

You are a somewhat intelligent woman.

Taking that presumption under consideration, after reading the subject title of your post, I can come to one of three possibilities.

I’ll tackle the first two right off the bat:

1. You were born just after January 20, 2009; or

2. You have just awakened from having been in a deep coma since the election of November, 2000.

Now, you just may be a 7-month old child prodigy who can not only utilize a word processing program, but can also string complex sentences together utilizing advanced grammar and syntax. As improbable as this may seem, if this accurately describes you, I would appreciate if you would allow me the indulgence to rule out that possiblity, given that the chances of this scenario achieving the status of reality is infinitessimal, at best.

As for the possibility just awakening from a near decade-long coma, you would at this point most likely continue be in a neurological stupor, and the manual dexterity required for even keyboarding such a tome would most likely be beyond your capabilities.

Therefore, I am left with only one possibility:

3. You are PROJECTING.

Allow me to explain. Projection is a defense mechanism utilized when one projects one’s own faults onto others, while at the same time denying that those faults exist in the one who projects. This allows the projector to focus one’s attention on the projectee, while temporarily relieving herself (or hisself) of the mental anguish that would certainly come with facing one’s own moral failings.

Obama as joker as proof that there is racism among the right wing cabal? Do you really think so? Or is it just a lame attempt to cover the left’s own failings in your infatuation with playing the race card at every turn?

In case you haven’t noticed, conservatives aren’t the ones who are focused on the concentration of melanin contained in a person’s skin as an indicator of value of a person’s character nor as a steretypical pigeonhole of how he or she should or shouldn’t act or believe. If you really must project your own faults on to us in a temporarily effective effort to mask your own shortcomings, I guess I understand. I only ask that you ask for and receive help as soon as you are able. It’s not good to harbor ill feelings toward your fellow man or woman based on the color of their skin. On the other side of the coin, if we should in the future decide to become hatemongering frothing-at-the-mouth demogogues we’ll consult you and yours, since you have undoubtedly gained quite a bit of expertise in such pursuits.

Okay, next:

“They all failed civics class.”

If we really understood our civics (which I believe most conservatives do), chances are we definitely would have failed a civics class as taught by a Harvard professor or a University of Chicago-indoctrinated social studies teacher. On the other hand, chances are that you in fact got an “A” in civics class. But chances are equally probable that you didn’t learn any civics as a result. First of all, try as you might, you will not find the phrase, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” in the Constitution. You will, however, find it in the Declaration of Independence. But nonetheless, I’m sure the liberal teacher in your civics class probably didn’t know that, either. So I’ll give you a pass. But even so, let’s focus on that phrase, shall we? The latter concept of that wonderful, life-sustaining phrase; undoubtedly the bedrock upon which the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were built had absolutely nothing to do with ensuring happiness. Note the word, pursuit in the pursuit of happiness. In other words, we have been endowed by our CREATOR (note, not by government) with the right to pursue happiness, to wit, our dreams. Note also that what one pursues is not always what one attains. Sometimes pursuits end in failure. And that’s okay. Because failure is the mother of innovation and diversification. The freedom to fail as well as the freedom to succeed are all covered in the freedom to pursue happiness.

Note that there is nothing in the Constitution regarding the “ensuring of happiness.” Nor is there anything in the Constitution regarding “leveling the playing field.” Nor, for that matter, will you find any such phraseology in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, nor in any of the Federalist Papers or any other writings of our Founding Fathers. Yet, somehow, like a “Magic Eye” picture, liberals see ‘leveling the playing field’ as somehow ensuring Constitutional rights. Another instance (of many) in this phenomenon is the elusively non-present “right to privacy” supposedly mentioned (NOT) in the Constitution that is utilized as a Carte Blanche justification to snuff out the lives of millions of fetal children. While at the same time other rights clearly outlined in that phrase (the right to LIFE; the right to LIBERTY) as well as rights clearly outlined in the Constitution (to wit, the right to keep and bear arms) are summarily IGNORED by the same folks who say things are there that aren’t (anyone else noticing the pathology?).

You say you’d like to be rich. For many, that’s what the pursuit of happiness is about. To be rewarded for hard work as they play by the rules. Pretty darn difficult to pursue happiness when you’re met at every turn with a tax on this and a tax on that to be redistributed to someone else who didn’t work as hard or provide a service as valuable to society. Not to mention to be regulated at every turn by leftist powermongers who utilize faux science as an instrument to confiscate and distribute wealth (can you say, “Cap and Trade” -yeah, nice euphamism for oganized theft).

You may also want to brush up on your civics by actually reading the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Pay close attention to that 10th Amendment, while you’re at it.

Oh, I can go on about Civics lessons til the cows come home, but seeing as it’s now 1:18am local time, I’ll move on..

“Many of them are sensationalists, looking for attention.”

Yes, and those oh-so- peaceful window-smashing protesters at the RNC convention in Minneapolis were real wallflowers. No doubt when they stripped their clothes in protest to the G-8 summit, they were merely trying to blend in with their surroundings.

Projection again, Holly? Yeah… I guess you can call it that.

Next…

They bleat and blaah worse than the average Joe

You know, Holly–I’ve been to a few Tea Parties in my day, and let me clue you in on something: They’re ALL average Joe’s. But at the same time, I know your disdain for the “average Joe.” Case in point, Joe the Plumber. A citizen asks a presidential candidate a tough question, and the media and the left descended on him like a pack of ravenous pirhanas. I would call Sarah Palin another average Joe. She appealed to a lot of average folks in what you call “flyover country.” If the leftist media paid even a quarter of the amount of attention to Barack Obama’s past that they did to the likes of Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin (remember the hundreds of journalists and leftists that descended upon the sleepy town of Wasilla, looking for ANY dirt they could on Sarah Palin?), chances are more than likely we’d have a President McCain in the oval office. But I digress.

Many of them worry about race and superiority

At the risk of repeating myself, please refer to Possibility #3, above.

Some are f’ing nuts!

And Rosie O’Donnell, Jimmy Carter, Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore, and Sean Penn are paragons of sanity. Give me a break.

Again, if you must assuage your shortcomings by projecting them onto others, I offer myself as a source for your short-term relief. But for heaven’s sake and yours, seek help.

Charlie the Unicorn can teach us a lot about why it's never a good idea to humor a liberal..

One minute, you're giving into a liberal just to humor him or to shut him up, and the next minute, you're missing a kidney.

This is illustrative why it's never a good idea to humor the pathological rantings of a liberal.

Can you say, Obamacare?

At the Bidding of the Queen...and other friends in low places...

John Murtha bows...

Relations between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the Department of Defense grew testy last year when the Pentagon couldn't come up with the aircraft she wanted for congressional travel. But this year the House has a $132 million solution: buy the Air Force more executive jets so Congress can take more junkets.

Roll Call newspaper reports the addition of two unasked-for new Gulfstream 550 jets to the executive aircraft stable at nearby Andrews Air Force Base. It is not even considered an earmark under the rules of the House, just an "expansion" of an existing Air Force mission.

But it isn't hard to trace the influence of House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha, D-Pa. When Ms. Pelosi's demands first surfaced in 2007, Mr. Murtha said the Pentagon was making a "mistake" by being uncooperative.

With Rep. Murtha leaning hard on the Pentagon from his position of control over defense spending, the legislative demands got quite aggressive last year. Judicial Watch, a non-profit watchdog group, earlier this year published an e-mail in which a Pelosi staffer complained, "It is my understanding there are no G5s available for the House during the Memorial Day recess. This is totally unacceptable. ... The speaker will want to know where the planes are."

Of course, the high-flying Madame Speaker of the Universe notwithstanding, having never met an earmark he didn't like, Murtha, as usual, was again quick to reward his campaign contributors:

Murtha got 15 earmarks, worth $61.4 million, for companies whose employees or related political action committees (PACs) donated $199,050 to his campaign or leadership committee since 2007. All have offices, and jobs, in Pennsylvania. This is business as usual for Murtha. Federal prosecutors are investigating a defunct lobbying firm, PMA Group, whose defense clients have contributed heavily to Murtha and remain immensely successful at getting earmarks.

My, Jihad Jack, but what a tangled web we weave, when power through corruption is your plan to achieve.

(Also posted at Murtha Must Go!!)

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Nothing like a good campfire to end an evening...