Reflections From a Murky Pond

Childhood ends, and with it normally ends many of our flights of fancy, our whimsy, and wonder at the world. So too end the lives we created for our imaginary playmates, if we had any. For the most part we grow up, put “childish things” behind us, and start the long – often dreary and tedious – process of making some accommodation with the world at large.

Indeed, if Calvin & Hobbes were to mimic reality, it was foredoomed that someday Calvin would outgrow his tigerish playmate and Hobbes would cease to exist except as occasionally dredged up memory of Calvin’s lost childhood.

The Last Calvin & Hobbes Cartoon?

There is a certain sadness that this happens at all. There is a far greater sadness in how young many children are these days when it happens.

That it happens, however, all too often because parents and teachers find the often unfocused energies and fantasies of their children to be too difficult or too inconvenient to deal with causes me far more anger than sadness – both at the proximate perpetrators and at our society, which makes their actions seemingly logical and for the children’s benefit.

~*~

NOTE: The above cartoon wasn’t actually the last Calvin & Hobbes cartoon. Bill Watterson ended the series on December 31, 1995, on a much more hopeful and upbeat note. It ended with Calvin and Hobbes hopping on a sled and going exploring.

The Tea Parties and their supporters are much maligned by the Liberals. Those Liberals have taken great pains to paint all dissent against President Obama’s Leftist agenda as racist, but have taken especial pains to paint the Tea Parties and their supporters as a latter day Klu Klux Klan.

In truth, it’s an easy bit of rhetoric for the Liberal politicians, power brokers, and their MSM operatives such as Olbermann and Maddow, to use against the Tea Parties, since it resonates with both a large segment of the Black population and Leftist Whites as well.

It’s a simple fact that, when you’re a Liberal who is supporting America’s First Black President, who you’ve decided cannot be allowed to fail, a crowd of angry White Americans protesting his policies and agenda is both a danger and an opportunity.

After the Internet allowed the Tea Parties and alternate or citizens’ journalism outlets to largely refute the Liberals’ and their MSM operatives original tactic of only depicting and reporting upon the “lunatic fringe” of the protesters at the various rallies the Liberals fell back on a simple statement to continue to paint the Tea Parties as racists:

You never see Blacks at the Tea Party protests and rallies; the Tea Party is all White and, therefor, must be racist. No matter what the Tea Partiers are saying, it’s really all about race.

This is, admittedly, a somewhat alluring argument. The Tea Parties, after all, do seem to be a White phenomenon; one rarely, if ever, sees a Black among the crowds shown during coverage of the events. This means it’s certainly reasonable to question why there is such a seeming racial disparity between Blacks and Whites in the Tea Parties.

Is this racial disparity evidence of the racism of the Tea Party supporters or is this disparity caused by factors other than racism, prejudice, and animosity?

Read the rest of this entry »

Since it was first developed by the Babylonians in the 7th century BC the Zodiac has, in one form  or another, been a fundamental part of astrology.  So for approximately 2700 years mankind has believed or entertained the idea that our thoughts, desires, actions, and fates are controlled by the placement and movements of heavenly bodies.

I’m not sure if mankind’s lives are ruled by the stars and planets, but I’m absolutely certain that men’s thoughts, desires, actions, and fates are controlled by heavenly bodies. On that note, the Zodiac:

Can you seriously doubt that these heavenly bodies could easily control the destinies of men? 😛

So what’s your sign?

There’s an ill wind blowing, both from the from the clean-energy program from last year’s Stimulus and from some of Obama’s erstwhile Democrats in the Senate. It’s carrying the wreak of failure and internal dissent straight into the face of President Obama and his Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner.

It seems that the renewable energy grants included in the Stimulus are stimulating other countries’ economies instead America’s and various Democrats in the Senate are rightfully angered by this.

From Politico:

Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana announced Wednesday a new initiative to require the “Buy America” provision of the stimulus to all programs, not just the government ones. A study done by the Investigative Reporting Workshop found that 79 percent of the $2 billion in clean-energy grants allocated since Sept. 1, 2009, has gone to foreign wind companies.

“We are demanding the Obama administration suspend this program immediately … [and] indefinitely,” Schumer said. “We are sending a letter to Secretary [Timothy] Geithner asking him to halt all payouts for this program until we in Congress can go back and fix this law.”

The senators highlighted a wind farm project in west Texas, which received stimulus aid and is projected to create 3,000 jobs in China and a tenth as many in the United States.

“Some of us complained about this to the administration back in November when this project was first announced, so it’s not that they don’t know about it, but the Energy Department in their reply said they were powerless to stop it because projects like this are automatically eligible for the grants. That answer is not good enough,” Schumer said. “The goal of the stimulus is to strengthen the American economy, and that means creating jobs here in the U.S. not in China.”

That’s right; 79% of the $2 billion in clean-energy grants allocated through the Stimulus since Sept. 1, 2009, have gone to foreign wind companies. That’s $1.58 billion of the American taxpayers’ money going into the coffers of foreign companies.

It’s shockingly refreshing and somewhat heartening to see at least some of the Democrats in Congress not bowing and scraping to Obama and actually looking out for Americans.

At least it proves that President Obama’s claims that the Stimulus and renewable energy would each create jobs was true, at least in a Rovian sense; just the bulk of them won’t be American jobs.

As all who pay even the slightest of attention to American politics know, the Democrats attempting to rule this nation are seriously considering using the Budget Reconciliation Process aka the “Nuclear Option” to ram ObamaCare through now that they’ve lost their supermajority in the Senate with the election of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA).

What’s interesting in this situation is how far the worms have turned in the span of slightly less than five years and one change in majority power. In 2005 the Democrats had a slightly different view of the filibuster and the Nuclear Option.

Obama, Biden, Reid, and Other Dems On Nuclear Option in 2005

No matter how one feels about the filibuster and the Nuclear Option, it’s important to compare the Senate Democrats’ opinions and the force and stridency of their rhetoric in 2005 when they were in the minority and a Republican was POTUS vs. how they feel now in 2010 when they’re the majority and a Democrat is POTUS.

Shall Americans measure them by their own yardstick? It would seem that President Obama and his Liberals had best hope that we don’t.