Reflections From a Murky Pond

Whether we wanted to or not, just about everyone in America knows that Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) called out President Obama during the POTUS’ recent speech on Health Insurance Reconstruction before a joint session of Congress. President Obama tried to convince people that illegal immigrants wouldn’t be covered and Rep. Wilson bellowed, “You Lie!”

Now the Liberals who’re running the US House of Representatives want to pass a Resolution of Disapproval against Wilson.

OK, to sane people this is a near criminal waste of Congress’ time. A Resolution of Disapproval is utterly meaningless and carries no penalties whatsoever; the victim doesn’t even have to be in attendance to here it, unlike the more serious Resolution to Censure where the victim does have to stand before the House and here the resolution read aloud. It serves little or no purpose except to distract from the real issues at hand.

On the other hand, the grievance-mongers in the inherently racist Congressional Black Caucus are demanding that such a waste of time be committed. They seem to believe in what passes for their minds that the KKK will rise again and burn them all out if Rep. Wilson isn’t rebuked.

I guess we’ll probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside, intimidating people,” he said. “That’s the logical conclusion if this kind of attitude is not rebuked.

– Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)
Congressional Black Caucus

Of course people in America have to learn to expect such things from the Congressional Black Caucus. They’re the sort of Blacks who can’t here a sentence come out of a White’s mouth with out believing that it contains a sub-vocalized or unspoken “Boy” or “Nigger” in it somewhere.

But they’ll get their way in this, at least so far as having the resolution debated and voted upon. Whether or not it’s passed is slightly open to debate since not all Democrats want to go down that road. It sets a precedence that they don’t want to later be on the wrong side of.

The GOP’s Amnesiac Response

House Republicans are obviously dead set against such a resolution of disapproval against Rep. Joe Wilson. They can be expected to vote en mass against it, not that they can balk it, or anything,  if the Dems decide to force it through. That’s expected in these partisan days. What’s not quite so expected is the GOP’s very public outrage.

If we are going to march Members down to the well of the House to apologize, Joe Wilson is going to have to get in line behind Nancy Pelosi, who attacked the intelligence community who protects us, Charlie Rangel who cheated on his taxes, Jack Murtha – a walking scandal, and we all know how the Democratic leadership tried to protect William Jefferson.

Democrats don’t want an apology. They want a side show – something to shift the focus away from their government-run experiment on health care.

– RNC Chairman Michael Steele

I sympathize with Mr. Steele’s position. I very much feel the same way and feel that the previous behavior of the Dems v. President Bush abrogated any right to outrage or offense they might have once had. But I also remember Pete Stark (D-CA) on October 18, 2007 and the GOP’s response to his lack of decorum and any vestige of respect for President Bush.

Rep. Stark hated President Bush and was not shy about saying so or degrading the POTUS and the US Military before Congress, though he, unlike Wilson, did not do so directly to the Presidents face.

First of all, I’m just amazed that they can’t figure out– the Republicans are worried that we can’t pay for insuring an additional ten million children. They sure don’t care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you gonna get that money? You gonna tell us lies, like you’re telling us today? Is that how you’re going to fund the war? You don’t have the money to fund the war or children, but you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people, if we could get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President’s amusement.

~*~

But, President Bush’s statements about children’s health shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than his lies about the war in Iraq. The truth is that Bush just likes to blow things up… in Iraq, in the United States, and in Congress.

I urge my colleagues to vote to override his veto

– Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA)
Failed override vote of Pres. Bush’s veto of S-Chip

Back then in 2007 the Republicans were overwhelmingly outraged by Stark’s statement. They felt that the statement was both vile and a blatant violation the rules of the House. The Republicans did not, however, settle for a Resolution of Disapproval; they forced a Resolution to Censure, a more serious penalty, which the House Democrats voted down.

If it was wrong then, then it is wrong now. If it was right then, it is right now. Gods, I have had it with these motherfucking idiots in my motherfucking Congress!

This is a case where I believe that the Democrats and the Republicans both need to just move on. Their ridiculous, bipartisan hypocrisy is disrespectful to the People who employ them to perform a job, not to whinge, whine, and rail at each other to no purpose.

Gods above and below! It’s so bad that the only one who’s been consistent is Speaker Nancy Pelosi; she disapproved of both Stark’s and Wilson’s outbursts but didn’t want to bother formally reprimanding either one of them.

On Tuesday, September 8, 2009, President Obama gave his much anticipated – and dreaded by many American parents – speech to many of America’s school-aged children during what was for many of them the first day of their new school year.

Many Conservatives, fueled by the Obama campaign’s previous use of children (here and here), were terrified that President Obama would use his address to America’s children as a means of indoctrination and of furthering his Leftist agenda. It certainly didn’t help that the event included “lesson plans” for teachers to use in conjunction with contained exercises that instructed to the students to write “how they could help President Obama.”

President Obama’s actual speech though was utterly unalarming, surprising only in a Liberal’s repeated use of the word, “responsibility,” and focused tightly on admonishing students to stay in school and to study hard in order to succeed later in life.

President Obama’s Message for America’s Students

In fact President Obama’s speech was quite similar in content and tone to President George H. W. Bush’s 1991 televised speech to America’s students. It was actually less politically charged that President Ronald Reagan’s 1988 address to school children.

It should be noted, however, that President Reagan’s and President Bush, Sr.’s speeches drew complaints from Liberals and that Congressional Democrats, unsatisfied with merely complaining, launched a fruitless investigation into the address’ funding sources.

My Quick Synopsis of President Obama’s Speech

The government may fail you. Your schools and teachers may fail you. Your parents may fail you. None of that matters; you kids need to stay in school, study hard, and get an education. If you don’t, you’ll fail in life, you’ll fail the country, and you’ll fail yourselves.

When all is said and done, getting and using an education is each individual student’s responsibility and hardships, irrespective of their nature, source, or difficulty, are no excuse for failing to excel.

As far as can see, as long the content of the speeches is not indoctrination, such speeches are an acceptable outlet for President who wants to bolster his image or salve his ego. Who knows? They might even do a small bit of good and saving even one child from throwing away their education is worth at least the cost of such a broadcast.

The devil of course is in the details – the content of the speech’s message both spoken and implied.

Read the rest of this entry »

As I predicted earlier when the imagery hit the national media, the Liberals are continuing to propagate the false idea that the posters of Obama as Keith Ledger’s Joker are an example the “rabid racism of the Far Right.”

Liberals rant that this is racist

It would be odd that the Liberals keep continuing this meme if it wasn’t for the fact that deriding any and all opposition to- or dislike of President Obama and his agenda as racist is a useful tactic, both politically and ideologically. It is essentially a mirror-image opposite reuse of the old meme of “Nigger Lover” that was used by bigots against White civil rights activists in the 1950s and 1960s.

From the Left Coast:

The poster, which bears a very superficial resemblance to Shepard Fairey’s famous Obama Hope illustration, has been pasted on freeway supports and other public surfaces. It has a bit of everything to appeal to the drunk tank of California conservatism: Obama is in white face, his mouth (like Ledger’s Joker’s) has been grotesquely slit wide open and the word “Socialism” appears below his face. The only thing missing is a noose.

– Steven Mikulan
LA Weekly

Sadly from one of the few Liberal bloggers that respect:

This is what it means to be a projective and paranoid neo-authoritarian American racist in the 21st century. And this is the response of the far right to the nation’s first African American president. No grace. No mercy. No decency. What a gross coarsening of the public realm. Absorb what this image means, its basic lack of civility, and the encouragement to Obama demonology that it fuels. Isn’t the cumulative logical effect of the far right’s response to Obama, assassination? And isn’t this how unbalanced people will interpret this kind of image? It’s a virtual Wanted poster, something you distribute to identify murderers. If Obama is a monster, then he must be stopped, right?

– santitafarella
Prometheus Unbound

What these Liberals don’t want to ever mention or give anyone a reminder of is that this sort of cruel depiction of a US President is very much nothing new. Far worse and more insulting depictions were widely disseminated by Liberals over the last eight years. In point of fact, even depicting the President as the Joker, a homicidal, psychotic, clown-faced villain is nothing new in the cruel world of political imagery and cartoons.

This image drew no outrage from the Liberals

This image is the forgotten beginning of the meme or trope of portraying the President of the United States as The Joker. It was created by Drew Friedman, the author of The Fun Never Stops, Old Jewish Comedians, and More Old Jewish Comedians, and published by Vanity Fair in July, 2008.

There was nothing but chortling glee from the Liberals about this image. Similarly, the Liberals showed nothing but glee over these depictions of President George W. Bush:

Again – the Liberals’ and their minority tenants’  gambit of crying ‘Racism” over any dissent to Obama’s rule is small-minded, tired, and shows an inherent racism, ethno-guiltism, and insecurity on the part of the Liberals who favor using it. It’s a divisive tactic that underlines their fixation upon President Obama’s racial self-identification.