Nothing came to me but more questions.  Satisfied that no further gastric contributions could tell the tale, I rose from the bathroom floor, shrugged unconvincingly and hit the flusher.   What a perfect way to end unseemly encounters.  Flush them. 

I proceeded to weave an unsteady trail down the hallway in the general direction of a coffee pot.  My daughter had arisen before me and FOX News was already drifting in from the other room; Bill Hemmer recounting the latest on the decision to move the admitted 911 terrorists to NYC for trial. 

And then it struck me like a wet trout. 

Why – I hadn’t been drinking the night before at all!  This was no hangover!  This was Bizarro-World 2009 (or as some call it, the Barrack Obama Presidency) — in full flower!

Recovering from the jolt of reality that had knocked coffee grounds everywhere, slipping and sliding on them I staggered into the living room to stare at the TV screen.  Yes, it was coming back to me like a recurring bad rash – the Commies had taken over as America slept.  And we were all out of 2% cortisone cream. 

As the inebriative disorientation of an Obama reality continued to blur my vision, I recounted some of the more recent national realities. 

Emergency stimulus bills – $800 billion in spending, cash-for-clunkers, tax cheat cabinet, Marxist czars, quadrupling the national debt within 10 months…and as Communist China lectures us about deficit spending and fiscal responsibility…Obama pushes hard for a socialized medicine bill that will cost taxpayers at least two trillion dollars, nationalize one-fifth of the U.S. economy, and drive insurance companies, hospitals and doctors bankrupt, leading to rationed health care and a gross decline in research and overall quality of medicine.

But I don’t want to rush to judgment.  It’s only been ten months, give the guy a chance.

Huh!!????

And in the We-don’t-rush-to-judgment category… Major Hasan’s shooting spree at Ft. Hood that left 13 dead and 30 wounded seems to have the mainstream media baffled.  It seems he must’ve been a nut.  He must’ve been tormented by fellow soldiers for his religious views.  He must’ve been a victim of the system…who simply snapped.   And we don’t want to rush to judgment that he may have been a Muslim jihadist murderer terrorist, dead square in our midst, at the largest Army base in the country…that simply wanted to kill as many Americans as possible for his jihad, for his Allah.  Gee, sure didn’t send up any red flags…even with the bitter and angry Wahabbist rantings to his fellow soldiers, his communication with a noted Muslim radical cleric, and oh yeah, his phone calls, documented by the army, to Al Qaeda!

Hmmm…how could anyone possibly have seen anything bad coming….?

And now… The people that admitted to having masterminded the destruction of the Twin Towers and murdered three thousand Americans are to be put on trial a few blocks from where the towers fell in downtown Manhattan. 

As a “Star Trek” alumnus, I am bereaved that the phrase “Beam me up, Scotty!” has been so over-used…or I’d be tempted to use it now.

The ACLU will ensure that these self-admitted terrorists’ ‘rights’ will be guarded as they’re extended every legal privilege, the same as a law-abiding citizen of the U.S.  Upon discovery it will be revealed that they were not Miranda-ized and made fully aware of their ‘rights’ when they were apprehended.  Upon discovery it will be revealed that ‘proper’ search-and-seizure methods were not used when these miscreants were arrested.  Wire-tapping may have been used that the ACLU will have a problem with.  Three of these fellows were strapped to a board and had water poured over their faces, convincing them that they were in danger of drowning – all in a very successful attempt to procure valuable information that may have saved thousands of more lives of Americans.

And the CIA, the FBI, George W. Bush and the entire U.S. Military will be put on trial for the court of world opinion to evaluate – a years-long, hundred-million dollar dog-and-pony show of a trial for the America-hating Leftists to rally behind.  “You see?  You see how bad we were before?  You see what Bush/Cheney/Halliburton gave you?  Well…we’re not like that anymore.  And to show you how sorry we are…we’re gonna serve up America’s autonomy and exceptionalism on a silver platter.  Everybody come take a bite — who wants white meat?”

In Bizarro-World 2009…up is down.  The good guys get prosecuted and the bad guys walk.  So how many betting men do we have out there?  Has Vegas set the odds yet?  And what’s the line and spread on these five guys walking?

In a rush to re-establish to the world our supposed, and heretofore, absent humility and global cooperation – and in the name of a misguided allegiance to some missing ‘higher good’ for humanity, we have abruptly changed direction and now champion a new banner – ‘Peace through supplication…strength through softness’.

Future Al Jazeera news headline in Arabic:  “The Pussification of America is complete.”

I suppose some will merely deem it to be the natural countermanding of Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George Bush’s ‘cowboy’ persona, in both personal style and foreign diplomacy.  Mr. Obama, in order to counterpoint Mr. Bush’s ‘cowboy swagger’ (Bush calls it “walking”), bows low to foreign heads of state – some would say grovels – and in every tone and rhetoric, apologizes to the world for our excellence and achievement. 

And, oh by the way, we’re sorry we’ve been such horrible racists – unlike you all.

But now that we’ve proven to the international community that we’re no longer racist and are suddenly all too aware that we’re the focal point and primary cause for everything bad, destructive and unstylish in the world — Europe cheers us.  How better to validate their own insistent bend into socialism?  Socialists everywhere just love us now.  Third-world despots embrace our epiphanic rush to change.  Hamas and Hezbollah smile their congratulations at our new enlightenment and willingness to abdicate our superiority of both strength and ideals — all in the name of tolerance and ‘balance’.

Enemies of America everywhere smile warmly at us…as they sharpen their daggers.

Our allies around the globe are getting nervous.  And who could blame them?  I read of Neville Chamberlain’s assurances to his countrymen in 1938 after meeting with Hitler in Munich.  He was certain he had engineered a path to peace in Europe — through appeasement.

Ronald Reagan used to speak of America as a “…shining city on a hill.”  A place of liberty and freedom and personal responsibility; a place people all over the world looked up to and emulated, and couldn’t wait to visit, and even emigrate to legally, to start a new life, a better life for themselves and their families.  He reminded us of our strengths, of our compassion, and of our unending ingenuity, drive and resourcefulness.

Ronald Reagan made us feel good about being an American.  He held us to the high standard of honesty and fiscal responsibility and individual initiative and personal accountability for our actions.  The ultimate result of these ideals was success – success, achievement and excellence, the likes of which the world had never before seen.  And something else we had: Pride in America.  There were no ‘apology tours’… no gestures of contrition… no tacit appeasement, to anyone, anywhere for any reason.  We believed in peace through strength.  And these were not empty words – they were backed by actions.  Reagan meant the words he spoke — and you could take them to the bank.  Reagan spoke of the success that we enjoyed by sticking to our ideals, American ideals.  He said it was ‘morning in America’. 

The image was of the sun coming up in the morning…and not of its setting.

Honest and ardent students of history are not just nervous – they’re alarmed.  This country we know and love, this America, is fast becoming unrecognizable to many of us.  It’s like we’ve had this big wham-jammer of a party…and now we awaken to a monstrous hangover. 

It’s the morning-after in America…only the aspirin bottle is three years away.

–

The ad was selected out of 1,000 entries, as part of Obama’s “Health Care Reform Video Challenge.”  Ironically, instead of showcasing real people who suffer under the current health-care structure, the judges hand picked an ad that is all showbiz and zero substance.  They chose to go with fake health-care horror stories read by adorable but soppy kid actors — pawns in a political high-stakes game of shocksploitation. These kids obviously don’t have dire health care problems;  they just have showbiz parents who hooked them up with a gig.

Don’t be too surprised — Hollywood has lent Obama an ever-willing hand.  The judges were comprised of a celebrity panel that reads like the Hollywood Squares: Rosario Dawson, musician Will.I.Am., Brandon Routh, Kate Walsh and Olivia Wilde, and raunchy “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane. When you think America’s health-care solutions — you want to call in Seth MacFarlane, right?!

In American politics there is a cardinal rule:  if you must use a personal story to advance an ideology or an issue, be sure it is true.  When a President stands before the public and uses names of real people with real problems to advance an agenda, he makes a point through presenting solid evidence — life lessons.  Reagan did it, Clinton did it, George W. Bush did it… and there’s nothing wrong with it if it is true.

Not only did the Obama team ignore the facts, they ignored any input by average Americans.  When you ask a glitzy Hollywood panel to come up with your health-care message, don’t be surprised if they enlist a reality TV has-been director of stoner movies.   What is surprising in all this is that ads that deal with highly sensitive political messages are normally carefully focus-grouped in front of an audience of regular Americans.  This is done so they have the opportunity to voice their opinions and concerns about vitally important policy decisions.

Apparently, no one at the White House or the DNC were bothered much with grassroots concerns in this case (after all, DNC Chair Tim Kaine was on the judging panel). If they did, they would hear more about the economy — according to the latest Gallup poll 51% think the economy should be the President’s main focus, only 21% said health care. It all begs the question:  if you have to make it all up with actors, what are you really saying?  Perhaps a better question in this case: what are they smoking?

Check out the winner.

–

Look, there’s a bottomless pit of creepiness going on here – but none of it should surprise anyone familiar with leftist propaganda. But here`s a quick summary of the ad, anyway: if you don`t bend over for Obama, you`re going to kill these kids.

Which is yucky, I guess – but underneath this lie is an even more outlandish one: that these artists actually give a crap about kids. What they care about, really, is sucking up to Obama – and the adorable brats are just props to serve that end.

Even more, it takes a special kind of filmmaker to get a child to utter, “I`m going to die of leukemia in two years.” And it has to make parents of authentically sick kids feel great, watching a child play “let`s pretend!” with their suffering.

But these kids in the video are just acting, after all. Which means their biggest threat isn`t illness, but unscrupulous parents who rent them out as tools for pathetic videos.

I predict raging crystal meth habits for all of them, in ten years.

And if you disagree with me, you`re probably a racist.

Tonight we’ve got Rick Folbaum, actress Barrett Switak, Tucker Carlson, and JP Hasson!

The Health Reform Video Challenge, launched by Obama’s Organizing for America in September, is a contest “to make the best 30-second ad showing why the President’s plan for reform is so critical.” The winning video, selected by a list of Hollywood elites and Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe, will be the basis for a new television ad that will air across the country delivering a clear message to viewers – children will die if health care reform is not passed. The secondary message is only one Defcon level lower on the fear-o-meter – the parents of sick or injured children will go bankrupt or lose their houses for even the simplest of injuries.

–

Using children to pluck at the heartstrings of the electorate and further a political agenda is nothing new, but it shifts into the land of Disgustopia when our young are exploited to distort the truth or spread outright falsehoods. The winning video opens with a young boy stating, “A year from now I’ll break my leg and my parents will have to sell our house because we couldn’t afford health care.”

This statement is designed to instill broad fear and disseminate the idea that anyone, even a family faced with the common injury of a broken leg, is susceptible to being thrust from their homes as a consequence of being uninsured. The odds of needing to sell your home to pay for the cost of a broken leg are so remote that it borders on preposterous to use it as an example of why we need reform. House closing costs in almost every scenario would exceed the medical bill, yet this is the video that the President’s organization has selected to justify the need for reform. It’s much easier to sell health care reform if our system is so fractured that a broken leg can expel a family out from under the safety of their roof.

The power of fear to induce submission is one that few can avoid. In researching the twenty finalists for this piece I even found myself second-guessing my position on the health care reform debate. Such is the power of good propaganda.

We have an innate affinity towards altruism. It is a reality of the human condition that Big Government knows and exploits, without conscience, if the means justify its ends. Fear is Big Gov’s most useful tool for expansion. The mounting growth of entitlement programs provides clear evidence of our inability to tame this altruistic affinity.

The power of using children as propaganda tools can also be seen during the last “historic” health care reform debated in our country, a case study that also provides a clear example of the phenomenon of “mission creep” that the current reform bill will surely experience in the long run.

In the wake of their failed attempt to overhaul the health care system in 1993, the Clinton Administration looked for a smaller, targeted initiative that could get bipartisan support. After examining several options in separate efforts, both the First Lady Hillary Clinton and Senator Ted Kennedy came to the conclusion that expanding health care insurance to children of the “working poor” would be the most politically popular route. This insight gave rise to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, better known as SCHIP.

SCHIP was signed into law by President Clinton in August of 1997 with the goal of insuring up to 5 million kids whose parents made too much money for Medicaid but could still not afford health insurance. After the first year of the program nearly 1 million children were enrolled.

Flash forward to January of 2009. “Either you are for kids or not for kids,” was the rallying cry of Democratic Senator Max Baucus in the push to expand funding of SCHIP. Similar rhetoric brought 40 House and 9 Senate Republicans over to the majority, and the Democratic controlled Congress presented to President Obama a bill that increased SCHIP funding by over $30 billion – in essence doubling the budget of the program.

SCHIP, which was intended to provide health insurance to the 5 million children of the “working poor”, has the ring of a morally sound program. An argument using children as the beneficiaries is a powerful message that few politicians can counter. But here’s the kicker, the Obama Administration’s SCHIP funding expanded eligibility to children in families earning $84,800 – that’s almost 400% of the poverty income level for a family of four. In some states families with incomes over $100,000 become eligible due to “income disregards” that allow for deductions such as rent, mortgages, and heating bills among others.

The expansion also has the goal of insuring 11 million children by the year 2013. That is over double the goal of the initial bill. Its also been argued by Republican lawmakers that over half of the newly eligible children already have insurance, which means they will be driven away from private insurance into the government sponsored program, piling on more of a burden to our system. That is the textbook definition of mission creep, a program’s expanding well beyond its original intent.

Here’s the point that we must understand – we cannot let propaganda prey on man’s primitive altruistic instinct in such a way that we burden our system to the point of collapse. Our entitlement programs, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, already account for more than 40% of federal spending! If we keep on the path of endless entitlement expansion we will see a depression the likes of which we have never seen before. That is not a play on the emotion of fear – just an unavoidable law of nature.

Yes we need change to our health care system. The costs of private plans are growing and there are people falling through the cracks due to catastrophic ailments that are of no fault of their own. We need targeted reform that tackles these problems. But what we don’t need is President endorsed propaganda that exploits children and is designed to scare the electorate into submission with distorted information.

Some of the things he swore to included keeping lobbyists out of his administration, providing five days for the public to review pending legislation and a bi-partisan approach to problem-solving.  Instead, lobbyists, particularly those representing unions, have freer access to the Oval Office than Michelle and the kids.  Not only is the public not given time to digest major legislation, neither are the legislators.  Early on, you may recall, Congress was given less than 24 hours to vote on an 1100-page, trillion dollar, so-called stimulus bill; more recently, when it came to health care, Obama was telling the sheep on Capitol Hill to vote even before an actual bill was written!

So far, as bi-partisanship is concerned, the Republicans have been banished to Washington’s equivalent of Siberia.  These days, bi-partisanship simply means that  David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel are in agreement.

There is one promise, however, that Obama has kept.  He vowed transparency, and anyone who can’t plainly see what the rock star and his left-wing groupies (Axelrod, Emanuel, Jeff Jones, Valerie Jarrett, Cass Sunstein, Anita Dunn) are up to is simply spending too much time watching “American Idol” and college football.

Consider, if you will, the way that Obama has managed to take the spotlight off his attempt to grab control of one-sixth of the nation’s economy that’s devoted to health care and to put the kibosh on conservative talk radio and free access to the Internet.  All he had to do was declare war on Fox News.  Just like that, the mass media, otherwise known as faux news, turned its attention to the phoniest battle since Gorgeous George and the Super Swedish Angel hung up their wrestling tights.

The way the media carried on, you’d have thought Obama was trying to decide whether to send 40,000 additional troops to fight in Afghanistan or to invade Fox.

On the other hand, it is just possible that Obama’s feud with Fox merely proves that he is as thin-skinned and as vain as some of us have suspected all along, which would fit right in with the narcissism that his constant TV appearances suggests.  Not since FDR have we had a president so in love with the sound of his own voice.  Not since Jimmy Carter have we had a president so convinced of his own saintliness.

Although Obama is a prime example of egomania, liberals generally hold themselves and one another in such preposterously high regard that normal people — in other words, conservatives — can only laugh.

For instance, because liberals are always blathering on about how much they love Mother Nature and how concerned they are about ecology, they are never asked to explain why they are so much better at talking the talk than they are at walking the walk.  It’s not just the obvious phonies, either — elitists such as Al Gore, Arianna Huffington, Michael Moore, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Kennedy, Jr., who live in mansions and fly around in private jets, leaving carbon footprints the equivalent of fair-sized communities in their wake — that I have in mind.

I’m also referring to the crowd that showed up in Washington for Obama’s coronation and left our nation’s capitol looking like a pigsty.

I’m thinking of the California Coastal Commission, the folks entrusted with keeping the Golden State’s coastline pristine, but who can always be convinced, for the right price, to come up with a variance.

While on the subject, we shouldn’t overlook the greenies who populate Hollywood and who never once gave George W. Bush a thumbs-up for taking out Saddam Hussein even though his setting fire to the oilfields of Kuwait was the single greatest man-made ecological disaster in history, rivaled only by Adam Sandler’s 30-odd movies.

Finally, we come to nature boy himself, Robert Redford.  Although I am a free market capitalist and believe that Redford should be allowed to build a ski resort, a giant cell phone tower or even have his head carved out of a mountainside, if he chooses to on his own land, I have to question the environmental bona fides of a guy who creates a film festival in the snow-covered hinterlands of Utah.

I mean, every year, upwards of 50,000 people jet in from all over the world for the Sundance Film Festival.  It may be swell for the Utah economy to have all those coke-sniffing, fossil fuel-burning, mugs showing up to watch bad movies and make distribution deals, but if you were really concerned about preserving the environment, wouldn’t it make more sense for these clucks to stay home and watch the movies on their TV sets the way the rest of us do?

In my experience, which consists of watching movies on airplanes, a movie that stinks at sea level reeks just as badly at 30,000 feet.  Otherwise, why settle for Utah?  It would make far more sense to hold a film festival atop Mt. Everest.

Press release from Judicial Watch:

“(Washington, DC) — Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it obtained more documents from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to the NEA’s controversial August 10 conference call encouraging artists to create work that promotes the Obama agenda.  The documents consist of internal NEA emails indicating the idea for the NEA propaganda effort grew out the Obama campaign while also providing new details regarding White House involvement.  The Corporation for National and Community Service, which runs the AmeriCorps program, was represented during the call.  The agencies and the White House were supposedly promoting the administration’s United We Serve political initiative.  The emails include the actual conference call invitation, which details the controversial policy agenda that was being promoted.  (The controversial call was first uncovered by www.BigGovernment.com. Other documents about the call were first released last week by Judicial Watch.) 

“The following are email excerpts: 

• July 28, 2009, 4:47 pm, Email from unknown Obama campaign activist to Yosi Sergant, former NEA Communications Director:  “It was good to see you a few weeks ago in Washington.  After our conversation, I thought it would be a really good idea to convene via a conference call some significant tastemakers/producers who can support United We Serve.  As many of us contributed our services to the campaign, I would love to gather some of those folks to use their enthusiasm to get behind the President’s very important service initiative.  Here are some people who I think should be part of the call.  [Names redacted.]
• August 6, 2009, Conference Call Invitation sent via email by Yosi Sergant:  “A call has come in to our generation.  A call from the top.  A call from a house that is White.  A call that we must answer.  And to answer it, we need you…United We Serve is President Obama’s call to service challenging all Americans to engage in sustained, meaningful community service.  With the knowledge that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things when given the proper tools, President Obama is asking us to come together to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda – health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.”
• August 6, 2009, 9:46 pm, Email from Unknown to Yosi Sergeant:  “How can I get down Yosi?  I’m working with [redacted] doing brand consulting and event production for [redacted].  Love to see how we could collaborate our corporate funds with what you’re working on.”
• August 12, 2009, 3:30 pm, Follow-up Email from Unknown participant to Yosi Sergant.  “As per a suggestion on the call, below is a list of action items that might be helpful to inspire an idea on how you can participate in the campaign…Ex) If you are a graphic designer tap into your professional network and organize other designers to create a series of United We Serve posters that can be featured in print, through social media and on serv.gov.  Ex) If you are a DJ, tap into your professional network and organize other DJs to promote Serve.gov or a specific local opportunity on the radio or at a club.” 

“The documents also detail the use of the 9/11 anniversary as a vehicle for this political effort. 

“‘These new documents leave little doubt that the NEA conference call and the ongoing United We Serve effort are direct extensions of the Obama presidential campaign.  Taxpayers should be outraged that their tax dollars were used to promote political ‘art’ for the Obama big government agenda,’ stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. 

“Visit www.JudicialWatch.org to read Judicial Watch’s NEA documents.”

–

Note: No children were actually sent to Guantanamo Bay during the making of this movie.

How can you tell when they’re lying?    Their lips are moving.

They think you’re stupid.   It’s understandable that they should think that, because though they may on occasion listen to you, they never really hear you.  Hence, the only frame of reference for feedback on their incredibly absurd redistributive ideas, tax-and-spend proposals and unprecedented treasury-busting health care take-over bills…comes from their own constituents, the Democrats.  Whoops and hollers, cheers and laughter, nods, smiles, enthusiastic ‘yes-we-cans!’… as they serve up yet another heaping portion of socialist slop you’ll be expected to grab your ankles and pay for.  They think you’re stupid.

As the entire Democratic Party has now been fully commandeered by the hard Left, I wrestle daily with the following quandary:  Are they evil?  Or merely dense? 

Anyone paying attention and not mired in self-deceit can easily see that everything the current administration and Democrat-controlled Congress is doing and attempting to do is based in Marxian principles of redistribution, government takeovers of private industry and control of the American citizenry.  And anyone with just a rudimentary knowledge of basic economic principles and merely a modicum of historical perspective can see that capitalism lifts up and advances any civilization it touches; whereas socialism degrades quality of life by enriching the government as it dis-empowers the individual.  Freedom-loving people worldwide have been battling these statist oppressors throughout the millennia.  The failure of a modern American voting populace to intellectually link the smiling promises of today’s ‘free’ lunch with the blood, death and horror of tyrants of the past is to shame us all with a new definition of national  myopia.

They’re lying to us.  A bill crafted behind closed doors, excluding participation by the opposition party, the Republicans, and rejecting all alternative ideas about health care reform like freedom to shop insurance plans interstate?   Or TORT reform,  so that doctors don’t have to practice defensive medicine?   Or how about cutting down government red tape so hospital administrators don’t have to add the cost of voluminous paperwork to medical bills, and pairing back excessive government regulations so that hospitals and doctors can drive down costs through healthy competition?   But Steny Hoyer called it an open and transparent process.   Right.

Timothy Geithner is asking the government for more control over the Fed.  That’s certainly comforting.  His answer to current economic woes is to borrow more hundreds of billions from China…and print more money.  But – if they’re printing billions and billions of more dollars, doesn’t it make the dollars already in my hand…worth… less?  Uh…yeah.   And just wait until next year when the banks start to put these newly printed dollars into circulation.  And gold shoots sky high and the dollar plummets.  Then the fun begins…

They’re stealing from you.

Not only are they working around the clock to shore up their losses and lunatic-lefty programs, but they are preparing to raise your taxes through the roof.  Some of them will be hidden ‘fees.’ (Watch for them to pop up like measles spots when the virus begins.)  Some of them will be overt, you’ll be able to see them, at least for the ‘wealthy’ – you know, anyone earning over 100K.  But once inflation kicks in, pretty soon that will be the greater majority of us.  And they’ll expect us to be happy we’re earning so much.  And never mind the fact that those dollars we’re earning are becoming ever-increasingly worthless, and our standard of living is starting to tank.  Shortages, rationing, loss of services…   Anyone remember the long lines at the gas stations in the Carter years?  Odd-and-Even days to fill up?  Fist fights at the pumps…station owners wearing side-arms?

But our leader smiles endearingly and promises us that it will all work out.  After all, there is a beautiful rainbow in the sky and if we just follow his dream for America we will find at the end of it (after eight short years)…a pot of gold.  We merely have to Believe.  Just close our eyes, stare at his picture, click our heels three times and the Leprechaun in Chief will deliver us a pot of gold.

As the media and the Marxists march us to the edge of the bottomless pit of total government control of our wealth, our businesses, our property…our very lives…(some call this tyranny)…we are left with this question about our current leaders:   Are they evil…or merely stupid?   Or both?

And more importantly…what are you going to do about it?