Tough Row To Ho

To the shock of absolutely no one except the experts, unemployment rose again in November to 9.8%...creating holiday visions of empty stockings for the millions of people whose unemployment benefits are about to expire, and for whom no new jobs are on the horizon. The broader index which includes former job seekers who have given up all hope (the so-called "Obama Unemployed") remains at a staggering 17%...a number which even jolly old Santa can't laugh off.

But the Democrats can!

Those mischievous elves in Washington are actually using the final days of their lame duck session trying to kill more jobs. For instance, the Democrats want to raise taxes on the small businesses that do most of this country's job creation... thereby killing their ability to expand, and probably making it necessary to lay off employees.

And big business is on the Democrats' "naughty" list too - which is why they're proposing a massive increase in capital gains taxes which will encourage investors to pull their money out of the stock market when businesses need it most. And when investor capital dries up, employees lose their jobs.

And so, once again this year, destruction of our economy is the great gift that Democrats are giving the country for Christmas. When all we really wanted was a long overdue visit from some wise men.
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Lean Forward

It turns out that there's a very good reason that MSNBC's alleged news coverage slants so heavily in favor of the Obama administration. In fact, there are 16 billion reasons...because that's how many taxpayer bailout dollars were secretly given to MSNBC's parent company, General Electric.

In fact, the bailout money quietly went everywhere - not just in the United States, but around the world; to banks, companies, private businesses, and anyone else with connections. In other words, the trillions in giveaways went to everyone except the people footing the bill: the American taxpayers. You know, the people that MSNBC is currently saying should pay higher taxes.

But MSNBC didn't mention their financial windfall when giving leg-tingling praise of all things related to the Obama administration, or hint that they were on the government payroll as surely as (other) Whitehouse Spokesman Robert Gibbs.

No, the money quietly went to things like MSNBC's advertising campaign for their new slogan: "Lean Forward." Which must have been created by a woman who didn't realize that these are the most dreaded words that men of a certain age can hear when in their doctor's office.

It means that it's time for a prostate check...and that you're about to get something unpleasant shoved up your rear end, and you'll actually be footing the bill to have it done to you.

Come to think of it, maybe that's the perfect slogan for MSNBC after all.

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Lame Duck Hunting

For two years, Democrats have largely ignored the business of running America and have instead spent all of their time on Barack Obama's priorities - like screwing up healthcare, and shoving taxpayer money down the throats of unions like geese being fattened for foie gras.

But with only days left in this lame duck legislative session, there simply isn't time to get everything done that the Dems have previously ignored. Which is why Republicans are taking a stand and preventing any legislation from moving through the Senate until the Democrats agree to a funding bill necessary to keep the government running, and also agree not to raise anyone's taxes in the middle of an economic crisis. Which sounds like it should take all of, oh, five minutes.

But nooOOooo. Before those things happen, the Democrats want to vote on the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" issue to protect the Gay rights of soldiers like PFC Bradley Manning (who lip-synched to "Lady Gaga" while stealing the Wikileaks documents) , and the DREAM Act which creates a path to citizenship (and all of those lovely, taxpayer-funded citizenship perks) for illegal aliens.

Perhaps the Republicans were discouraged after meeting with Barack Obama and other top Democrats to try to prevent tax hikes...and the presidential response was to create a bi-partisan committee to explore the possibility of negotiations on taxation and the horse it rode in on.

Hope n' Change salutes the Republicans for taking a tough and necessary stance, and forcing the Senate to finally do a little honest work before the lame duck Democrats get the flock out of Washington DC for the last time.
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Freeze Play

If a fat person declared that he was going to lose weight by eating exactly the same amount of junk food which caused the problem, we'd say it's stupid. If an alcoholic proclaimed that he was going to dry out by drinking exactly the same amount of liquor he's currently chugging each day, we'd say it's stupid.

And now, Barack Obama has suggested that his bold plan to reduce the national deficit is to keep federal salaries exactly the same as they are now. But we won't say it's stupid, because we don't want to be called racists.

Still, in an economy with millions of people unemployed, the president's proposed two-year "salary freeze" for non-military federal employees sounds suspiciously like a salary guarantee that the average private sector worker would give his left arm for. Moreover, federal employees are already receiving far higher salary & benefits packages than people doing equivalent jobs in the private sector (back when there were any).

In fairness, there is at least one report which claims federal employees are underpaid compared to their private sector counterparts. The report was prepared by...um...federal employees, and you paid for it. In spades.

But getting back to the point at hand, we're starting to think that Barack Obama doesn't really understand what a "cut" is. After all, he believes that keeping tax rates exactly the same as they are is a "tax cut" for the wealthy. But he also believes that keeping federal salaries exactly the same is a "wage cut" for federal employees.

And the truth is that neither one is a cut. These are political wordgames, and they're killing the American economy at a time when real leadership is needed. And we'd say that playing wordgames is stupid, but we don't want to be called anti-semantic.

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The Barack Obama miracle diet: eat the same number of "Fed Burgers" every day.
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Something Wiki This Way Comes

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is no stranger to the damage that can be done when government secrets (among other things) get blown, has declared the Wikileaks release of secret State Department documents to be "an attack on the world."

At the very least, the leaks are shaking up the diplomatic world as she, and we, knew it.

Among the seemingly endless stream of revelations is the fact that Secretary Clinton ordered US diplomats to spy on U.N. leaders (which actually strikes us as a pretty good idea), Saudi Arabia has been funding Al Qaeda (not exactly a surprise), Iran received missiles from North Korea, Russia is actively involved in cyberattacks and crime syndicates, and the world in general is even more screwed up than we thought...which would have seemed unimaginable even a few days ago.

The catastrophic consequences of the Wikileaks cybercrime can hardly be overstated, but US authorities are moving quickly to take control of the situation. Already, Janet Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security have seized a number of music-downloading websites which have nothing to do with Wikileaks, but which are rumored to have involved the use of "computers" and so are considered both suspicious and potentially dangerous.

And Attorney General Eric Holder has issued the no-nonsense warning that individuals will be held responsible "to the extent that we can find anybody who was involved in the breaking of American law." Also, to the extent that he can find anybody, he'd like to put them on trial in New York because the whole Khalid Sheikh Mohammed thing has fallen apart and Mr. Holder still wants to go there and write it off as a business expense.

Overall, it seems that the world, which was supposed to be unified by our first "global" president, has only gotten more complicated, more confused, more aggressive, and more dangerous during these first years of "Hope" and "Change."

Which Barack Obama really should say something about but, according to Wikileaks, he's busy playing basketball.
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Name Dropper

The scenario was absolutely terrifying. A terrorist parks a van at the site of a crowded, outdoor Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Inside the van are six 55-gallon drums of explosive, wired to a cellphone detonator.

The terrorist walks a safe distance away, enters the detonator's number into his own cellphone and presses "send" - expecting thousands of men, women, and children to be killed or maimed. Instead, FBI agents tackled him as he screamed "Allahu Akbar!"

The bomb was a fake, supplied to the terrorist by undercover FBI agents.

The terrorist, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, was a young middle-eastern man (Somali-born) who believes in a radical form of islam, has been in touch with suspected terrorists in Pakistan, and who said that his attempt to attack "families celebrating the holidays" was an act of jihad.

In other words, he would perfectly fit the profile of a radical islamic terrorist if such profiles were allowed to exist.

We are thankful that the FBI acted aggressively to protect Americans from this nightmarish scenario...and hope that the Department of Homeland Security and TSA will finally start to concentrate more on genuinely "likely terrorists" than on squeezing the breasts of nuns or touching children on their "special parts."

When Bush was in office, the Democrats repeatedly called on our intelligence agencies to "connect the dots" before later deciding that it was more politically correct to make believe the dots don't exist. But as Mohamed Osman Mohamud reminds us, there really is an appropriate use of profiling - and it needs to be done before the terrorists connect the detonators.

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The intended victims of islamic radical Mohamed Osman Mohamud

Lip Service

The Germans seemingly have a word for everything. And in this case, the word is "schadenfreude," which means "overwhelming sympathy for a great man."

We're referring of course, to the tragic maiming of Barack Obama's lower lip...the very same lip which promised us "Hope and Change" and "post-partisan politics," the lip which told us that Obamacare would bring down healthcare costs, the lip which so-recently delivered such inspiring words about our country's "recovery summer," and so much more. And now, in a sad instant, everything has changed.

The president, as we all now know, was bravely showing the world that the threat of nuclear escalation in North Korea wouldn't keep him from playing basketball. Because, as the president himself said back when he could still talk, "if we can't play basketball, then the terrorists - who are probably old white women and little children - have won."

Fortunately, our forefathers planned for just such emergencies and, per the requirements of constitutional succession, Joe Biden's lower lip has been transplanted onto the president's face. Should it be rejected before year's end, Nancy Pelosi's lower lip will be next in line.

This is a hard time for all Americans, but we must somehow try to carry on. Relying, if we must, on the concept of schadenfreude. Because truthfully, we're full of it.

Lower lip, we hardly knew you.

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