A Distaff View of the World

Obama Versus - Anyone Who Disagrees With Him

I'm a visual person, so when I hear there is a gang of bullies in the White House beating up on people who disagree with them, I picture it very clearly.

We have Rush Limbaugh, certainly no fan of Obama but a big fan of football, who wanted to buy into a team, and whose membership of part of a  consortium was very hush hush.  But suddenly it leaked along with a lot of racist quotes attributed to him.  Did he really say those things?  Not that anyone could find.  For this man who is taped speaking three hours every day not to mention speeches and other events, you'd think finding the genesis of the few racist quotes attributed to him would be easy to locate.  But no.  Best researchers in the world couldn't find them. 

He didn't like a particular quarterback who was black; didn't back away from anything he said about him and only in this post racial Obama world could what he said be found to be racist.

Rush was asked, because of these things he didn't say, to remove his name from the consortium.  He refused and said if they wanted his name removed to do it themselves.  They did.  What was less publicized was that George Soros was also one of the bidders.

And would this be the same George Soros who I recently read a transcript of admitting that he turned in Jews to the Nazis and then looted their things, but really didn't feel any guilt about it because, well, gosh, if he didn't do it someone else would have? 

So on the one hand we have doing business with outspoken conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.  And on the other hand we have doing business with a sneaky philanthropist who backdoors political contributions to liberal Democrat organizations and who happens to have been a Nazi sympathizer.

Well, if you're the NFL, of course you're going to want to do business with the Nazi sympathizer.  Suddenly Monday night football doesn't seem as much fun as it used to.

Did the long arm of the White House reach into this for the simple pleasure of undermining an outspoken conservative and to watch the back of a good buddy?  I'll just say yes, because I can, using the same kind of proof the White House does.  And it went to their heads.

So what else have our little buddies been up to?

"That went well, so let's go after Fox News.  Brewskis all around."

"What can we say, Axelrod? "Rahm wonders. 

"Oh, I know, I know," says Obama.  "We'll tell everyone they're not a real news organization."

"Yeah, yeah," says, Rahm excitedly, "and then we'll make some threats, but we'll smile so they don't really sound like threats, that if the other networks start trying to educate their viewership and ask questions like FOX, we'll cut them out of the loop too."

"Who else?" asks Axelrod.

"It goes without saying that we can get Move.On on board.  Maybe they can do a petition or something, "says Obama.

"Yeah," says Rahm.  "I'll put that on my to-do list."

"We should have a meeting with  FOO (Friends of Obama)," says Rahm.  "We'll let Gibbs in on this one.  We'll have folks from The New York Times, MSNBC commentators and others we know  who are firmly in our camp.  Make them feel like part of team Obama.  That should get us even more favorable coverage.  And don't tell anyone.  This has to be kept under the table."

"Great."

"But we need another enemy."

"I know, I know," says Axelrod.  "There's no point in governing when we can stay in campaign mode.  Any ideas?"

"How about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce?  They've been a thorn in my side since I took office.  Lobbyists all over the place.  And not the kind I like.  You know what I'm saying," laughs Obama.

"Yeah," says Rahm.  "Let's go after them.  This is how Nixon must have felt.  But let's makes sure we don't write any of this down.  Poor slob.  Imagine actually recording yourself planning nefarious deeds.  I mean actually getting it on tape.  Dude deserved to get caught."

"Yeah.  Nothing on paper.  Nothing on tape.  Stealth all the way."

"I've got it.  The U. S. Chamber of Commerce."

"Yeah," say Obama.  "Who needs something that calls itself 'the voice of American Business'.  They're against all three of my major initiatives on healthcare, climate change, and financial re-regulation.  We'll take them down.  We schmooze away some of its members, invite them here to meet Michelle and the girls.  Promise them stuff like we did the insurance execs and doctors.  We already bought off that General Electric guy.  Man, Immelt has been the gift that keeps on giving." 

"Gift?  He's cost us a fortune."

"It's taxpayer money.  Doesn't matter.  And so he gets his name on a board or two.  Makes him feel like somebody.  What a tool.  When someone finally puts the pieces together about who he's done business with, he's the one who's going down, not us."

"He's been worth every penny and position we've given him."

"But back to the Chamber of Commerce.  We'll tell companies they don't need it.  All power rests with the presidency.  Not the Chamber.  They'll see the light, just like General Electric.  Just like the insurance companies until I turned on them.  Hey, I just made a joke." 

"Man, we're good," says Axelrod.

"That General guy is outside.  He wants to talk to you about Afghanistan or something."

"Man, he's persistent.  Tell him to go away and come back later.  We've got important business here."

"Press is going to be all over you about that."

"Just Fox.  But we've marginalized them.  You watch.  No questions about it at the press conference tomorrow.  They'll be asking about Fox.  Not about healthcare or Afghanistan or the economy.  So now we'll target the Chamber of Commerce.   Get Gibbs in here to set up those double secret meetings."

"And get what's his name in here so we can talk about going in through the back door and taking over those conservative talk shows through fines at the local level until they can't afford to operate any longer.  We'll do it under the guise of diversity," said Rahm.

Obama kicked back and put his hands behind his head with a wide smile.  "Power is a good thing, Rahm, my friend.  It's going to be a great world once we get rid of all of our enemies."

"I love ya, man."

The FOX is in the Chicken Coop - or Coups

Though I wasn't in much of a position to watch first hand, I've spent the past  couple of days viewing replays of Rahm and  other White House representatives making the rounds of various hack networks  and explaining to them why they think the only network on television actually asking hard questions of them, their agenda and their beloved leader is the REAL hack network and will henceforth be ignored by the White House and Anyone Who Is Anyone in the Democratic Party.

There was also a not so veiled threat that the heretofore friendly networks had better mind their p's and q's and not get any of their talking points from  FOX News or start asking any of the same questions FOX has been asking, or the hammer will be coming down on them next.  And presumably the Sickle after that.

It was George Soros who said something that bothered him about the Bush W. administration and one of the things that got him involved in politics was their attitude that if you disagreed with them, you were their enemy.  I haven't heard that from anyone else about George W.  But if that bothered him, he must certainly be choking on Obama's tactics.  Right George S?  I mean, we wouldn't want to be two-faced, would we?

I guess if I were the Rahm Emanuel administration, I'd be upset with FOX News, too.  And in particular Glenn Beck. Let's look at the world through Rahm's eyes without FOX News:

There would be no Tea Parties.

There would have been no march on Washington.

No one would have questioned, in any kind of forum that garnered any publicity, Obama's choice of Czars, their belief systems and what kind of power they were wielding behind the scenes.

Van Jones would still be in place and would still be claiming that white people were sending poison into the neighborhoods of people of color and not being challenged.

No one would know that ACORN and SEIU were connected and that the president was up to his  charismatic little neck pre- and post- election with both organizations.

No one would know that the Apollo Alliance was responsible for writing much of the stimulus package and that the co-founder of the  Weather Underground, Jeff Jones, was on its board.  What a lucky fluke that our president just happens to know BOTH founders of this little terrorist group.

Obama care would have been passed with barely a whisper uttered by a public still sitting, fat and happy, on its couches.

Very few people would have shown up at town hall meetings to question their elected representatives about why they weren't even bothering to read the bills they're signing.  Heck, no one would have known.  The old people would have stayed home and not gotten all excited about losing part of their Medicare to pay for a Healthcare bill that no one could explain and no one knows how it's going to be paid for.  Ah sweet Utopia.

People would be going about their business as usual while Rahm, Obama, Pelosi and George Soros dismantled the United States of  America unnoticed.

With FOX News not towing the party line, everything has gotten so darned inconvenient for the  Rahm and Obama and George government. 

People are being asked to read history; to understand what progressivism is; to understand the thinking behind some of our president's mentors; to actually read books and papers written by his Czars; to understand basic economics and what the consequences have been in history when you print money without anything to back it up.

FOX News, and Glenn Beck in particular, want viewers to ask tough questions and look for answers;  read history,  read current events, watch for patterns, hold politicians  accountable for their actions and don't take anyone's word for anything.  Do the digging yourself.  Be your own researcher.

No other network is doing that.

So yes, indeed, I can see why the Obama administration fears FOX News.  They damn well should.

This administration that promised transparency obfuscates everything. 

When FOX News and its millions of viewers - more viewers than all of the other cable news networks combined plus an additional hundreds of thousands on any given evening - shines its light on the government night after night, Rahm, Obama and their chosen ones have to scatter like cockroaches to find another dark corner to continue to do their business.

So that's okay.  You keep threatening FOX News.  They'll continue to investigate what you're doing and shining their light.  We'll continue to watch them with even more loyalty and become even better students of our history.

And of yours.

And you keep scattering like the cockroaches you are every time that light comes on.

Click.

Run!

(And Rahm, just as a programming note, you might want to take a handkerchief with you on your next appearance to mop up the nervous sweat that kept popping up so inconveniently on your forehead.  Or just try to not think about what those guys at FOX who aren't REAL journalists are finding out about what you're doing now.)

And the Nobel Goes To....Barack Obama?

Like everyone else in America, I heard the news that the man who has been on the apology for America tour has just won the Nobel Peace Prize.

On November 27, 1895, Alfred Nobel signed his last will and testament, giving the largest share of his fortune to a series of prizes, the Nobel Prizes. As described in Nobel's will, one part was dedicated to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".

Okay.  And Barack has contributed to this how? 

But this might finally explain something that has been niggling at me.  Why didn't Obama want to confront Iran about its hidden nuclear facility when he had all those heads of state right in front of him and the attention of the world press?  Why was it more important for him not to distract from his fictional message of mutual harmony and disarmament than to confront Iran right then and there?  This, despite the urging of France and Great Britain.  Why throw away such a grand opportunity and wait  to announce the big reveal until he was in, of all places, Pittsburgh?   It made no sense at the time.

But as we have learned with this president, if you pay too much attention to what one hand is doing, you completely miss what the other hand is doing.

Don't tell me he didn't have a heads-up this honor was coming.  His speech was pivotal and directly related to the prize and he wasn't about to let Iran mess it up for him.

Now let's talk about the last date for nominations in a given year, which I find interesting:

The Nobel Committee makes its selection on the basis of nominations received or postmarked no later than February 1 of the year in question. Nominations which do not meet the deadline are normally included in the following year's assessment. Members of the Nobel Committee are entitled to submit their own nominations as late as at the first meeting of the Committee after the expiration of the deadline.

That means Barack Obama had been president for approximately twelve days when the nominating process was closed, and until that time had basically been running for one office or another and writing books about his, er, accomplishments.  Hmmmm.

Okay.  I'm not terribly impressed so far.  But maybe I'm missing something.

Well, who makes those nominations?

Each year between 150 and 200 different nominations are received of candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize. The number has risen steadily as the Prize has become increasingly globalized. There may occasionally be several thousand nominators behind one and the same nominee.  Information in the Nobel Committee's nominations data base is not made public until after fifty years.

In other words, most of us will never know who nominated this ten day president and chronic candidate for this increasingly tarnished honor.

 According to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, a nomination is considered valid if it is submitted by a person who falls within one of the following categories: Members of national assemblies and governments, and members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union; Members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague and of the International Court of Justice at the Hague; Members of Institut de Droit International; University professors of history, political science, philosophy, law and theology, and university presidents and directors of peace research institutes and institutes of international affairs;Former Nobel Peace Prize Laureates and board members of institutions that have previously been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Just because I find it interesting, the following is a list of nominated candidates for the Nobel who didn't get it:

Joseph Stalin, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922-1953), was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 and 1948 for his efforts to end World War II.

Mahatma Gandhi, one of the strongest symbols of non-violence in the 20th century, was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, shortly before he was assassinated in January 1948. Although Gandhi was not awarded the Prize (a posthumous award is not allowed by the statutes), the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to make no award that year on the grounds that "there was no suitable living candidate".
 
Adolf Hitler, was nominated once in 1939 by E.G.C. Brandt, member of the Swedish parliament. 

Other statesmen and national leaders who were nominated but not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:
Czechoslovakia: Thomas G. Masaryk, Edvard Benes,
Great Britain: Neville Chamberlain, Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee,
Ramsay MacDonald, Winston Churchill
USA: the presidents William Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman 
Dwight D. Eisenhover; the foreign ministers Charles Hughes, John Foster Dulles
France: Pierre Mendès-France
Western Germany: Konrad Adenauer
Argentina: Juan and Eva Peron
India: Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru
Finland: Juho Kusti Paasikivi
Italy: Benito Mussolini

I view Obama as the Neville Chamberlain of our time.  You remember him.  He was a Conservative British Prime Minister from 1937 to 1940. Chamberlain is best known for appeasement foreign policy,  (sound familiar?) in particular regarding his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia  to Germany, and for his "containment" policy of Germany in 1939 that ended in declaring war on Germany on September 3, 1939. 

His primary work experience was as a Director of National Service  before becoming Prime Minister and declaring Hitler, after a face-to-face meeting, a fine fellow who was no real threat to Britain.  As honest as the day is long.  What a surprise when, after that warm handshake with a smiling Hitler, he invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and France.

Imagine someone that nice, and who even liked dogs, not keeping his word!

I suspect if there had been a United Nations at that time, Hitler would have been severely reprimanded and then would have continued to have been reprimanded as he nearly obliterated London with bombs and murdered millions of people.  But I digress.

The thing is, our president has that special something.  That, oh, I don't know, j'ne sais quois. Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro love him like a brother.  The Arab world has embraced him.  We're demolishing our CIA and agreeing to disarm ourselves while our erratic enemies build ever bigger and deadlier bombs and boldly threaten to anhilate entire nations.  We lay all of our cards on the table so everyone knows everything we have.  And the terrorists - or whatever politically correct term they're called these days - are smiling from ear to ear. 

He's spending money on new social programs so fast he's turning us into the Weimar Republic.

Yep.  He's dismantling the last superpower as fast as he can.  I guess to some that makes him the perfect candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

And I will lay you odds that in fifty years when we can see who was behind his nomination, we will discover that the committee was inundated with nominations for this man from every corner of the globe and academia and that the fingerprints of George Soros are all over that lovely medal.

Real peace is arrived at through strength, either actual or perceived.

Barack Obama hasn't a single genuine qualification that I can see.

Except friends in high places who have no love for the United States.

To My Readers, Thank You for Your Patience

Dear Readers,

I have been pleased and somewhat astonished at the number of readers I have gained since beginning this blog. 

As you may have noticed, I have also struggled with an appropriate title and have gone through several.  While I am stuck with the sighsmatters.typepad.com address, the first title for the blog, I think I have now hit upon a title I'm happy with.  A DISTAFF VIEW OF THE WORLD. 

Distaff is an old world word for female.  I like the way it sounds and it reflects my personality in many ways.

At the suggestion of someone whose opinion I respect, I'm going to make a genuine attempt to not harp on political matters all of the time, but enlarge my scope to a smattering of other topics.

A distaff view of the world, of course.

Thank you again.

Obama Vows to Donate Nobel Money to Charity; How About Using it to Help Pay Down the Deficit?

President Barack Obama, master of the grand gesture, says that he is giving the $1.4 million prize money that goes along with winning the Nobel Peace Prize to charity.

First, I want to see the proof.  His charitable donations before running for office were, I believe, around one per cent of his income.  When he got caught being cheap on charity, he gave a large donation to the Reverend Wright that upped his percentage considerably.

Second, if I might be so bold as to make a suggestion, perhaps he could give the Nobel money to the American people to help us pay down the deficit he's running up at a record rate.  It won't go far, but every million helps.

Saying Goodbye to General Patton

He was big and fierce and loved his family unconditionally.  At the first inkling of a threat, he would put himself between that threat and those he loved. 

But he didn't like getting his feet wet and he'd rather hold it in all day than go out in the snow.

He had a look that could make make bad guys quake in their boots. 

And then he had this look where he knitted his incredibly expressive eyebrows as if he was trying to figure out what on earth this human was talking about.  Particularly in my case.

He was a Presa with a handsome face, and when he wanted to kiss you, there was no sloppy nonsense.  Just a big buss on the cheek.

Patton was smart and never ceased to amaze.  He understood body language as well as words.  There were times, if your body tensed, or you just whispered, 'What's that?' he was on full alert, checking out the windows in the house, looking for the danger.  Nobody but nobody was going to get past him.

But he was just as likely to walk to where you were sitting and put that great, heavy head on your lap and look up at you with brown eyes that let you know he loved you - and if maybe you could just  scritch him a little below that left shoulder...

It always seemed that Patton's favorite time of day was when his 'dad' came home from work.  His dad and best friend.  As soon as he heard that car pull into the driveway, there was a mad dash to get to the door, front paws going one way, back paws sliding around the corner trying to catch up.  Then there would be lots of jumping and barking.  Sheer, unadulterated joy.

Now it's just quiet.

Everyone thinks their dog is special.  But Patton had such magnificent qualities of character.  Not only courageousness, but a visible intelligence and tenderness with those he loved.  And just enough goofiness mixed in to make him endearing.

I miss you, Patton. 

I know there will be a time when I can think about you and smile and not cry, but not today.