The Department of Homeland Security is considering reducing the number of color-coded threat levels from five to three. Somehow, this is going to make our Homeland more Secure. The new proposed levels would be:

    * Yellow = Guarded  – “A constant state of vigilance to protect against a terrorist attack.”
    * Orange = Elevated  – “Increased protective measures based on specific threat information regarding a known or suspected terrorist plot.”
    * Red = High Alert – “Maximum protective measures to protect against an imminent or ongoing terrorist attack.”

So in other words, in the best of times, the most we can hope for is to live in constant anxiety, always wondering where the next attack is going to come from. Hope & Change!

The whole thing was a stupid idea from the start. Nobody ever defined how we were supposed to react or behave at any given threat level, and nobody ever explained in a satisfactory way why the threat level had been changed. Even if Tom Ridge was lying, that the threat levels weren’t actually being manipulated for political purposes, the potential for political manipulation was there. They’ve combined the power to affect the national level of anxiety with powerlessness of individuals to DO anything about it but look to the government for direction. That’s a nut that politicians can’t help but fantasize about busting.

Just do away with the thing.

Haha

After Congressman Joe Wilson accused President Barack Obama of lying during is national address last week, Congress has apparently been hard at work figuring out which words are OK to use. God these people are worthless.

As a guide for debate, it is permissible in debate to challenge the President on matters of policy. The difference is one between political criticism and personally offensive criticism. For example, a Member may assert in debate that an incumbent President is not worthy of re-election, but in doing so should not allude to personal misconduct. By extension, a Member may assert in debate that the House should conduct an inquiry, or that a President should not remain in office.

Under section 370 of the House Rules and Manual it has been held that a Member could:

• refer to the government as “something hated, something oppressive.”
• refer to the President as “using legislative or judicial pork.”
• refer to a Presidential message as a “disgrace to the country.”
• refer to unnamed officials as “our half-baked nitwits handling foreign affairs.”

Likewise, it has been held that a member could not:

• call the President a “liar.”
• call the President a “hypocrite.”
• describe the President’s veto of a bill as “cowardly.”
• charge that the President has been “intellectually dishonest.”
• refer to the President as “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”
• refer to alleged “sexual misconduct on the President’s part.”

A member of Congress, therefore, can not call a president a liar, a hypocrite, or dishonest. They also would not have been allowed to discuss President Clinton’s “sexual misconduct.” How this is relevant today is curious. Do they know something about who Obama’s been rubbing up against that we don’t?

On September 8th, Barack Obama will deliver a broadcast to every public school in the country. Supposedly, his speech will be about the importance of staying in school and getting good grades, etc. I don’t think anybody would be opposed to those ideas. What has people riled up is the prefunk messaging that the Department of Education has delivered to school administrators.

First off, the email was apparently sent directly to school principles, while superintendents and school boards were kept out of the loop. The people who are supposed to set standards and goals for the districts were subverted.

Secondly, the email contained creepy language, such as:

Before the Speech:

• Teachers can build background knowledge about the President of the United States and his speech by reading books about presidents and Barack Obama.

During the Speech:

• As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following:  What is the President trying to tell me? What is the President asking me to do? What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?
• Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something. Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do?

After the Speech:

• Students could discuss their responses to the following questions: What do you think the President wants us to do? Does the speech make you want to do anything? Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us?

Extension of the Speech:  Teachers can extend learning by having students:

• Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.  These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.

What the fuck? Is this just a “stay in school” message, or is it something else? What “new ideas” is Hopey McChangerson going to try to “challenge” these kids to think about? And this crap about writing letters to themselves about how they can “help the president?” This is North Korea stuff. Many glories to His Greatness Dear Leader Barack Obama, or something.

These kids are there to learn history, geography, science, to read and write, do math, and think critically. They’re not there to get out their crayons and butcher paper and compose promises to the Lightbringer. If the speech is any more than, “you are our future, work hard, take your vitamins, stay in school,” then there’s gonna be a shitstorm like you wouldn’t believe.

Barack Obama’s friend, terrorist Bill Ayers, has summed up the radical philosophy that Obama believes in. In a speech to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, he said, “education is the motor-force of revolution.” This is a progressive doctrine, and Obama has not and will not separate himself from these people. Given the opportunity to have his Big Brother head beamed into the mushy skulls of millions of kids, what will he say?

He wants to be their symbol of authority. He wants to be their father figure. He wants them to think of him as the voice or reason and responsibility in their lives. He wants to extend his cult of personality. He’s directly politicized the Department of Education. And he’s taking the unprecedented step of broadcasting directly to the kids, while providing teachers (whose union overwhelmingly supported him in the election) with curricula to present to these kids before, during and after his speech.

Now there’s a movement afoot to make September 8th an unofficial skip day:

Added conservative talk show host Tammy Bruce, in a Twitter feed: "Make September 8 Parentally Approved Skip Day. You are your child’s moral tutor, not that shady lawyer from Chicago." And conservative author Michelle Malkin said the lesson plans have a "heavy activist bent."

Whatever. I just hope he keeps it clean and level-headed. He apparently doesn’t understand that he’s an unpopular guy right now, and a lot of people are growing more and more skeptical of his bullcrap.

The White House sets up their snitch hotline, asking people to send report their friends and neighbors and parents and children for saying “fishy” things about the health care plan. If you’re up in the air about this, consider how the media and the left would have responded had Bush set up a White House mailbox for reports about people who disagreed with the Patriot Act.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives implied that the people protesting Health Care reform are Nazis.

Senator Barbara Boxer said the protesters could not be for real because they were too well-dressed. When you compare them to stinky anti-war hippies, yes, they’re far too civilized to be compared to those kinds of people.

Barack Obama blamed his health care bill on Republicans, implying that whatever he thinks is wrong with it is there fault. Whatever. The cool part is that the president of the United States told conservatives to shut up and stop debating it. "We’ve got some work to do. I don’t mind, by the way, being responsible. I expect to be held responsible for these issues because I’m the president. But I don’t want the folks that created the mess — I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking."

We’re supposed to ignore the part that the “mess” that Bush left for Obama was a deficit of about $450 billion. It’s now over $2 trillion. SHUT UP YOU!

Let’s see, what else. Democrats are apparently deciding not to face their constituents in town hall meetings, as they normally do, and are instead holding meetings in childrens’ hospitals and conference calls, so that they can control the discourse that way.

A liberal talk show host has called upon Glenn Beck to commit suicide live on TV.

Joe Biden commented on the economy, “Less good is not good, but less good is better than worse. When I say ‘less good,’ I mean ‘less bad.’”

The president’s two top advisors on health care are cost-benefit analysts who believe old people and infants are less valuable to society, and therefore we should direct money that we currently spend on sick babies and grandmas to the 18-54 year old consumer market segment.

Interestingly, AARP came out in favor of health care reform anyway.

The socialist labor unions are mobilizing against conservatives to support socialized medicine.

The president’s top science and technology advisor believes in putting sterilization agents in the water supply to control the Earth’s population.

The Senate rejected a proposal to use the traded-in cars from the Cash for Clunkers program to help poor families and charities. On a party-line vote, Democrats chose to continue destroying functional, working assets that could be put to good use.

And finally, the FCC named a “Chief Diversity Officer” who opposes the “imbalance” of political talk radio. The pieces are falling into place for the government to censor conservative talk radio.

I hope Jesus comes back soon.

I’m not in the market for a new car this week, but unfortunately my taxes are subsidizing everybody else’s Cash for Clunkers purchases. You’re welcome.

I’m not in the market for a used car, either. Which is fortunate because every car traded in to the Cash for Clunkers program has to be destroyed, regardless of its condition. So the government is in the process of destroying the used car market in order to subsidize the new car market.

By promising up to $4500 in welfare for anybody who trades in their clunker, the government effectively makes the down payment for people. Low-income folks who would normally buy a used car when they need one are being encouraged to buy more car than they can afford. Does this sound familiar? It should. It’s the subprime auto industry.

What happens when people figure out that they can’t make the payment on their government-subsidized Prius? I guess it gets repossessed. Their credit is ruined, their car gets taken away, and there aren’t many cheap used cars left in the market because they’ve all been crushed.

Meanwhile, the resale values of the cars people already own or are making the payments on take a nosedive because of the repossessed cars that will flood the market in six months. Immediate, accelerated destruction of wealth. Yay. Furthermore, auto manufacturers have reduced their output this year. Suddenly you have a few million people with “free” money chasing after a limited number of cars. Inflationary pressure? You betcha!

The evidence points to the idea that people have been putting off their car purchases so that they could participate in this program. Similarly, they’re buying these new cars earlier than they normally would in order to partake in this deal. So we’re compressing the sales for the last four months and the next couple of years into a couple of weeks right now. After the Clunkers program ends, car sales are going to drop back down to their normal market rate, which has been significantly low due to the shitty economy. The net benefit to the economy and the industry is zero, only we’ll have spent a couple billion dollars of money the government didn’t have, and there will be a few million used cars destroyed. Woo!

All this is done in the name of saving the planet from the evil internal combustion engine, right? Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and all that. Well, the Cash for Clunkers program increases the use of natural resources by subsidizing the energy-intensive process of manufacturing cars. We’re not going to be reusing the cars that were traded in. The government is destroying perfectly good assets that are in working condition in order to force you to buy the cars they’ve decided you need to buy. Yes, the materials will be recycled, but whatever they’re used for in the future will have to be manufactured, which requires more energy, fossil fuels, transportation, yada yada yada. In other words, there’s probably not a big net change in the amount of CO2 produced because of this debacle.

It’s all a waste, unless you happen to need a new car right now. In which case, you’re welcome. Enjoy the new cars I just helped you buy, assholes.