American Republic Online

I heard about this and I just had to laugh. Rush Limbaugh has elicited the help of his call screener Bo Snerdley to criticize Obama in areas requiring an African American perspective. Mr. Snerdley offers his criticism twice - once for whitey and once for the brothers. The translation alone makes it worth the read:

This is Bo Snerdley, official criticizer for the EIB Network, certified black enough to criticize. I have a statement. Senator Obama, we understand the need for you to take time off with your family, but this is a presidential race, and while you were away, your former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, continued making news. Now he’s attacking Italian-Americans, referring to them as garlic noses. Senator Obama, one of your platforms is that you would speak to America’s enemies, persuade them somehow to become our friends. Yet you apparently can’t even speak with your friend, your former pastor, after all that has happened in recent weeks and persuade him to just be quiet, for the sake of your own campaign to be quiet and for the sake of unity. Mr. Obama, we’re losing hope, and it’s very sad.

And now the translation for the brothers and the sisters in the EIB community: Yo Barack, I had you confused with the brother that knows how to throw down. Your homey, first he goes out and disses the World War II vets, he disses us dropping the bomb to win a war, then he lifts some lines from brother Malcolm. All right, all right, that was cool. But after all that, it starts to blow over. What does he do? He comes out and disses the Italians. What’s next, bro? He’s going to diss the Jews? Yo, Obama, tell your homey to shut up, at least, man, until you win. Your main B man, he sounds like he’s hooked on madness, and what are you doing? Chilling somewhere out in the Caribbean. Yo, bro, you in the game, you wanted to be in the game, now you in the game. In the game, you either play or you get played. And bro, you’re getting played out by your homey, Reverend Wright. That concludes our statement.

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The Bush administration is going to propose new regulations in the financial markets, and propose consolidation of regulatory power.  It is dressed in an “effort to limit Washington’s role in the market.”  But I’m not so sure.  The idea of consolidating power is, not surprisingly, unappealing to me.  This is especially true for an organization such as the Fed that has remained somewhat politically independent to this point.  Indeed, the Fed must be as politically independent as possible.   Can you imagine a room full of politicians deciding (even discussing) the issues faced by the Fed?

Well, what about a Fed that must answer to political posturing?  A Fed that must answer to Congress’ every whim and fancy.  In fact, the Fed is facing this very issue.  John Mauldin fills us in:

Basically, there are two vacant seats on the Fed. President Bush has nominated two very qualified people with distinguished records and backgrounds who have hands-on experience in real-world banking, as opposed to being academicians. These are not political appointments, but serious economists.

[Senator Chris] Dodd refuses to allow these nominations, or any others, to move forward…

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This mostly got a pass the first time she told it, but apparently the re-telling of the whopper got Hillary a little more of response than she intended. You Tube and the news networks are now all atwitter pointing out just how much of a lie Hillary’s Bosnian snipers story is.

I’m actually a little surprised that the Georgetown students and profs that didn’t murmur at the telling of this tale tail during her speech. You would have to believe the US Military to be pretty inept to send the First Lady running through sniper fire unnecessarily. Earth to Georgetown - why not simply take off (or not even land in the first place)? You scholars do realize that Air Force One is more than a government funded private jet, right? What about the Secret Service - you know - those guys with the dark glasses and the ear pieces? Seriously being duped by something like this…. I wonder when we should tell them about the Easter Bunny?

The Washington Post has a nice assemblage of the facts:

Hillary Clinton has been regaling supporters on the campaign trail with hair-raising tales of a trip she made to Bosnia in March 1996. In her retelling, she was sent to places that her husband, President Clinton, could not go because they were “too dangerous.” When her account was challenged by one of her traveling companions, the comedian Sinbad, she upped the ante and injected even more drama into the story. In a speech earlier this week, she talked about “landing under sniper fire” and running for safety with “our heads down.”

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On March 19th at the Campaign for America’s Future Take Back America Conference in Washington, Arianna Huffington (co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, and one of Time Magazine’s “100 most influential people”) made the following statement:

“It’s time to actually have zero tolerance for certain ways of arguing.  First of all, we can not allow John McCain to ever say again that Al-Qaeda is going to increase the levels of violence because it doesn’t want John McCain to be president.  That should be outside the realm of political debate in this country.  We need to say, it is completely un-American to politicize real threats to this country for the sake of getting elected.  There is nothing we can do about Rush Limbaugh and all the rest of them.  They are toxic curiosities.  But there has to be a different standard to what happens in the United States Congress, and it is up to us to demand censure and to demand an absolute zero tolerance for statements like that starting with John McCain’s statement.” - Arianna Huffington (emphasis added)

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Our good friend Patrick Bedard of Car & Driver has a excellent piece on the governmental sneaky tax: Robo-Cop.

This just in: A red-light camera on Broadway Street in Knoxville, Tennessee, has suffered fatal gunshot wounds. Three bullets struck the device, destroying the lens and rendering it inop. Clifford E. Clark III, 47, holed up in a nearby minivan, was arrested and charged with felony vandalism.

Not to put words in Clark’s mouth, but what I think he was trying to say with his .30-06 Ruger was that he had withdrawn his consent to be governed by robots. You may remember that our founding fathers had a very clear idea of the source of government legitimacy. The Declaration of Independence says that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The political theory here is that there is no moral authority to use state power unless the people say there is.

One guy expressing disapproval of a red-light camera won’t curb government zeal for robot surveillance, but it’s a start…

Let’s be clear about the tyranny here. This is not about running red lights. Camera enforcement is a revenuing scheme that depends on an end run around the fundamental American principle of innocent until proven guilty. The glassy-eyed accuser is a robot, and it’s not subject to cross examination. Moreover, it’s a robot employed by a for-profit business that makes its profits from guilty verdicts. It makes nothing on innocent verdicts. Such an obvious conflict of interest should bring out all the rifles…

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I was right, it is a right-wing conspiracy!  McCain has his highest favorable rating in eight years.

(Of course, we all what happened eight years ago: Karl Rove got a hold of McCain.  But now, Rove is pulling the strings for McCain, and you see what happens?!)

Obama took a breather from his recent sparring session with Senator Clinton to criticize Senator McCain. Who? John McCain, the guy running for president on the Republican side… yeah, remember him? Ever since he cinched up the nomination, it’s like the media packed up and forgot about him. Now, he may be taking a breather himself before he starts his general campaign. On the other hand, he may really be trying to make news. But he’s got a real task before him: how to get the media to look his way (besides hiring a high society hooker)? He can’t let Clinton and Obama hog the limelight this long. People will forget about him, thinking the race is between Obama and Clinton. If the Democrat process drags into the summer, McCain may be DOA. Perhaps this is part of the Democrat’s strategy: steal all the media attention and kill McCain’s campaign. It’s a Left Wing Conspiracy!

On the other hand, we haven’t seen Karl Rove in a while, and this “turn-the-Democrats-on-themselves” ploy is right up his strategery alley: have Clinton and Obama slice each other up, only to have McCain ride in, white as the driven snow, untouched by criticism. It’s a Right Wing Conspiracy!

As ARO pointed out recently, the Democrats will be demonstrating for us all whether sexism or racism is stronger in America (Democrat party), and here’s a glittering example:

Geraldine Ferraro has left Clinton’s team because of what she said about Obama, and an Obama aide stepped down for her remarks about Clinton.

It sure is getting fun to watch.

Sorry about the short outage.  We outgrew our old server and had to move to a bigger, faster server.