A Dixie Carpetbagger

You’ve been President just over one year. You’ve achieved nothing, and while the percentage of people who like you hasn’t fallen much (around 10%), the number of people who don’t like you is skyrocketing. Every candidate you’ve campaigned for has lost, but the one member of your party who won a race not only didn’t seek your help, he was endorsed by the Republicans… and he promised to vote against you.

What do you do?

Try even harder in the next year, of course! “What the president will not do is let this moment slip away. He hopes to have Republican support in doing so — but he is going to move forward on health reform.” Oh, and you admit that you and your predecessor are alike in a lot of ways. And you call your detractors terrorists. And you have your Treasury Secretary (who can’t figure out TurboTax) say that your spending money like a drunken sailor in a Hong Kong bar will “never” hurt your credit rating.

I… I… oh, blood and martyrs. (shakes head) You would think that his approval rating dropping like a thermometer in an icebox would be a hint that his ideas were crap, but apparently not. But, hey, at least he’s not Bush, right?

(H/T Uncle, Robb, Gun Free Zone )

I don’t drink.  Seen too many people destroy themselves to ever try drugs.  Don’t chase skirts (no male in the family has, since great-grandpa taught us the secret of courting a woman).  I’ve even given up most of my guilty food pleasures.

But a man’s gotta have some vices, and I like a cigar or a pipe every now and then.  Which will be much more expensive soon.  (sigh)  Well, looks like I’m gonna have to start making the ’shine, like Gramps did.  Maybe grown my own tobacco.

I try hard to keep my libertarianism in check, but it’s becoming harder and harder…

(H/T Sebastian)

Awesome: just made the Dean’s List.  For the first semester I’ve been at my university.

Not so awesome: I’m not at class right now, because I can’t get out to the main road.  Because the county decided that the hill with a small sinkhole would be an awesome place to scavenge gravel from.

Now the hill has a large sinkhole.  I miss having a four wheel drive vehicle.  (sigh)

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana

“How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.” – C. S. Lewis

Breda comments on the fact that recent events seem to be almost miraculous, but also fated to happen. Simply put, when a person is ignorant of history, their path is set. No matter how many turns they take, no matter how their pace changes… their endpoint is marked, and the only variable is how long it takes to get there.

To those of us who know their history, the path is clear… to quote Gator in the comments of Breda’s post: “now go back and re-read the first couple of paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. It’ll make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.”

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

With a few changes, the list of grievances could’ve been written yesterday.  One line stands out, due to the fact that it rings so true now.  “In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.”

I think that the Founders knew that they were effecting history, and even the very patterns of future events.  Hopefully, we work under a rising, and not a setting sun.

No Brown celebration post. Meant to do one last night, but I laughed myself to sleep. A Republican Congressman from Massachusetts? HA! This seat hasn’t been held by a Republican since 1953, as Rustmeister points out. (For those of you curious, it was Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.)

The past few years, I’ve found myself wondering if I’d entered a parallel universe. This just makes it worse. I’m halfway tempted to start asking people who the first man on the moon was. (Just to check, it was Leslie LeCroix, right?) Like Sebastian, I’m halfway expecting to wake up from a weird dream.

Now, the finger pointing has started. Unsurprisingly, Olberman is in on the action, too.

Now for some humor, courtesy of Weer’d.

Keep crying, Dems.  You need the practice for November.

This race is one of the most exciting I’ve seen in a while.  The very prospect of Massachusetts being represented in the Senate by a Republican is astounding.  I’ve felt that I woke up in an alternate reality sometime back in 2008, but now I have hard proof– people in Massachusetts rallying for a Republican.

Of course, this isn’t going to be easy.  The Brady Bunch have come out for what’s-her-name, and even Chuck Schumer has thrown in his two cents.  The governor is trying to find a way to disqualify Brown, the attack ads and mailers are getting truly hysteric (Brown is a Bush puppet!  BUSH BAD!  BUUUUUSH BAAAAAAD!).  Note to the Dems: stop try to frighten the children your base.  It’ll backfire; they’ve grown up, up understand that you’re going to have to take responsibility for your actions.

The situation looks bad… for the Dems.  Obama has had to go and throw in his contribution, and even The One couldn’t slow down Brown.  Even CNN is having to report this.  Even the bookies like Brown.

Now, to quote Jay…  GO SCOTT, GO!

“… and I’m here to sink you.”  Ford sales up 33%, GM sales down 6%, Chrysler down 4%.  How’s that bailout workin’ for ya’, GM?  Oh, and the guy now running the show (Whitacre) admits he knows nothing about cars… but he does have a history of co-operation with the government.  No wonder the company’s in a death spiral.

As I’ve said before, I’ll never buy a GM vehicle again.  It would have pained my dad to have seen GM in such a shape… would have hurt him even more to buy a Ford.  (chuckle)

(H/T Uncle)

The TSA, which could not stop a guy from bringing a bomb onto an airliner even after his own father dropped a dime on him, managed to catch one of the bloggers who published the TSA security memo released after the attack. Please note that the memo wasn’t classified.

(H/T Breda)

Behold, the ATF (BATFE) tree.  All that’s missing is a GI Joe at the base with a big rifle.  Like a silenced 20mm rifle.  (chuckle)

Apparently, sometime between 1787 and now, the Bill of Rights changed, and never got around to telling me.

Yet another reason that I support home schooling. That is so wrong it’s almost funny. Amendments 2 and 4 are the most chuckle inducing. So, I can petition for “permission” to own a gun? Whatever happened to “the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”?

Oh, right, it doesn’t work with the modern role of government. Can’t have those citizens getting uppity or anything. They might even get the concept that government needs limits, and we can’t have that!

Here is the original post by the father of the 6th grader who brought this home.

(H/T David Codrea)