Date ►►► November 28, 2013

Action-Packed Replay of My Favorite Thanksgiving Annunciamento

Merry Gotdankbar to All, and to All a Gut Gotdankbar!

Hatched by Dafydd

 

What, today you should starve?

 



First Gotdankbar

 

Eat, eat, you're skin and bones!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 28, 2013, at the time of 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

Date ►►► November 23, 2013

Fili Mignon

Hatched by Dafydd

So the filibuster is cooked. It's no longer rare or even medium; and since Senate Majority Leader Harry "51" Reid (D-NV, 90%) has his fingerprints all over it, it most assuredly was not well done.

But that burnt stakeholding has already been chucked into the Dempster Dumpster. The moment the cremains of the filibuster -- Supreme Court appointments, legislation -- become inconvenient for the party in power (whichever it is), it too will softly and suddenly vanish away. (Don't expect even the "stupid party" to restore the filibuster when Republicans regain the Senate; it's patently obvious what the Democrats will do when they recaptured the chamber.)

But what hasn't been discussed in all the excitement -- not even by the Democrat thuggees -- is the colossal mistake that 51 made in his rush to pack the D.C. Circuit Court (a triumph that will reverberate down the ages... or until the next few liberals retire or die). Simply put, the filibuster, in recent times, was far more potent in Democratic hands than Republicans, for several reasons:

  • Democrats exercise more party discipline (not to mention Party discipline); the Left plays "follow the leader (from behind)" very well indeed: Being both unprincipled and corrupt by its very nature, the Democrat Party discourages independent, contrarian thinking; while in the GOP, it's at least tolerated, if not applauded. Thus, Democrats are better able to hold the filibuster line -- having no deeply held beliefs to get in the way of raw power.
  • Democrats have a simpler propaganda appeal, because they have simpletons as constituents. John Hindrocket never tires of posting the latest hysterical, paralogical, racist, bigoted, and antiAmerican "fund-raising" letters; they're about as nuanced and intellectually sound as "Jeremiad" Wright's falsetto shrieks of "God d**n America!" Or House Minority Leader Nancy "Poison Pill" Pelosi's (D-CA, 80%) pronunciamento that we must pass Obamacare to find out what's in it. Or President Barack "You can keep that plan" Obama smirking as he scratches his nose with his middle finger (profile in courage).

    So long as the Dems can get their constituents to bleat "four legs good, two legs bad," they needn't answer any questions on any filibuster. By contrast, Republicans typically debate the underlying policy issue before deciding whether to support a GOP filibuster -- or crush it.

  • And most esoterically, a very large number of conservatives believe that use of the filibuster, to prevent an up or down vote in the Senate anent a judicial or cabinet nominee, is itself "extraconstitutional," by which they mean not quite unconstitutional but certainly violating the spirit of Article II, section 2.

    I'm not saying I agree with the argument; I'm not a lawyer, and I only play one in Ruritania. But because a bunch of Republicans espouse that argument, they have a principled objection to any filibuster other than legislative... and they exercise that objection by voting to break the appointment filibuster, or at least abstaining from supporting it. (E.g., the "gang of fourteen.")

When partisans realize they're losing the war, they become desperate; desperation begets panic; panic begets mindless, ultra-short-term thinking. That is the state of the Left today: They clutch at any straw that might provide instantaneous relief, no matter how devastating it will be to the Left itself, even in the medium future.

So hold fast -- we are winning. The Obamunists' hysterical tactics plant the seeds of their own destruction, and it won't take long for those angry seeds to come to a boil.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 23, 2013, at the time of 12:27 PM | Comments (1)

Date ►►► November 16, 2013

The Dangers of Dehydrantation

Hatched by Dafydd

Obamic Idiocy of the Day: Tens of thousands of fire hydrants ready to be installed or replaced in cities around the country, to supply water for fire hoses, must now be scrapped -- because the Evironmental Protection Agency has ruled that hydrants must conform to the same lead-in-drinking-water standards as kitchen and bathroom faucets. Thus cities must purchase extremely expensive, low-lead hydrants... or more likely, go without.

Fewer and more expensive fireplugs... that's what America's all about!

The  rent seekers'  regulators' reasoning runs thus:

  1. A while ago, the EPA changed the rule for how much metal can come in contact with water in ordinary kitchen and bathroom faucets. Today, 8% of the metal in a faucet can come in contact with the water; but starting January 4th, the EPA allows only 0.25% of the metal in a faucet to touch the waterflow. (This happened first in California, I believe; a few years ago, I had the dickens of a time buying a nice brass faucet assembly for my kitchen sink; I had to use a cut-out buyer in Texas.)
  2. In rare and extreme emergencies, such as the contamination or loss of all drinking water in a large area, fire departments might open fire hydrants to give people water to drink, so they wouldn't suffer dehydration or heatstroke.
  3. Because of this conceivability, the EPA abruptly and without warning decided, starting January 4th, not to exempt fire hydrants from the faucet regulations!

It is an Obamic moment.

The EPA says it wants to make sure that even in the most unlikely of circumstances, even during a life and death emergency, Americans will be protected from the levels of lead (now considered "toxic") that we have all lived with all our lives without noticible ill effect. If it saves the live of just one child who imbibes hydrant water once or twice in his lifetime, it will be worth the regulation -- even if we have to kill hundreds of other children by reducing the number of life-preserving fire hydrants in America's cities. Can't make an omlet without cracking a few heads!

Your federal government hard at work, for your safety. Say, here's a thought that might appeal to both  regurgitators  regulators and regulated cities alike: Why not just slap a "luxury tax" on ordinary fire hydrants? It worked so well with yachts.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 16, 2013, at the time of 5:53 PM | Comments (0)

Date ►►► November 14, 2013

Isn't It So Frantic...

Hatched by Dafydd

Now that I ponder upon it, it is a peculiar coincidence that if President Barack "Keep your plans" Obama "allows" Americans to keep the plans they like (but Obama doesn't) for one more year before being canceled (as he promised today)... then cancellations would resume almost immediately after the midterm election is safely past.

And thereafter, nobody could do a thing about it until Obama himself was also safely gone.

So the big question is, are voters like unto mere animals, intellectually incapable of anticipating coming danger until it's actually charging at them? Or are voters human beings who understand that Obama's motto is, "après Nous, le déluge?"

I reckon we'll find out soon. For example, if Obama's approval rating skyrockets due to his purely political procrastination, well...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 14, 2013, at the time of 1:25 PM | Comments (0)

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