Dear MacArthur’s Pink Slippers, BFHat…. It’s too damned early for that. Spew warning next time please?!?

Don’t ask me what inspired this; it’s just what I would expect to see at the gateway to the modern Hell.

"Abandon all hope, and your personal defense weapon, all ye who enter."

Moreover, I had to raise BigFurHat for his Sharon Stone ante.

It’s good to know that we’re putting our elected representatives to good use.

UPDATE: Heh. Seems I’m not the only person to think along the lines of our Gov’t officials getting, um, personally involved. Cap’t Ed has Michael Ramirez’ latest editorial cartoon that details how the capping ought to be going on at the Oval Office.

I’m not going to turn this into a major literary work (as if I’d had the option), but there has been a clear departure from standards of decorum both in public behavior and speech of both the President and many of his staff and party members.

Now, before I continue let me be forthright in saying that it’s not occasionally to be found on our side of the aisle. Dick Chaney has been known in exceptional circumstances to lay out a few choice words (ask Pat Leahy)  and Joe Wilson allowed his feelings to overtake his sense of decorum at a State of the Union address. Certainly there are more examples.

In the last fifteen months, there have been numerous examples of intemperate language coming from the White House, and judging from the first days after taking the oath on January 20th of last year, this pattern of behavior is indicative of the low class of the people involved than a product of long aggravating series of battles with a disapproving press office and intractable legislature.

There can, and will, be differences in the attitudes of each administration with regard to how it approaches their duties. The former President George W. Bush is reported to have never entered the Oval Office without first donning a coat and tie out of respect for the office, and never singled out for derision individuals in speeches or addresses. Although I would better appreciate Mr. Obama if he would have a similar dress code when approaching the tradition of the office, I understand that there is no “law” regarding this and he truly can do as he please. But when many in the majority decry the highly partisan nature of debate these days, I cannot but harken back to the 2010 SotU address (where I previously mention Joe Wilson) where Obama  called out the Supreme Court, who were present- and, indeed, front and center to the rostrum- for ridicule due to a recent decision (which similarly turned out to be an inaccurate critique by Obama, by the way). Even beyond the official statements that might, or might not, be considered out of bounds, the actions of various staff of this Administration has even more to be desired.

Never known as the most diplomatic of individuals, Rahm Emanuel has more stories concerning his temper than Nixon had reels of tape. From steak knives to dead fish,  naked congressional shower diatribes and even belittling foreign heads of state to their faces, Rahm serves at the pleasure of the President. Well, apparently Obama is pleased by a man with a mouth so crude and a mind to compose such filth that WH staffers operate in fear.

Even in official policy statements, this administration has no issue with using terminology that is geared to intimidate people. With the recent oil rig fire and spillage in the gulf, pressers have given over several uses of the term “our boot is on the throat of BP.”  This is the height of gall, and one which I don’t think the White House is even capable of identifying of itself. The vitriol toward the loyal opposition and the business targets of class warfare have been on the receiving end of language that would normally only be seen by extreme-fringe candidate supporters before an election, not an elected politico governing in office. Even derogatory sexual terminology that would ordinarily be censored from daytime programming is now being used to refer to tea party protesters by The One himself.

Truly, we’re seeing a freefall in the behavior and methods of those in power, and without the ability to sense their own boundaries they may be similarly at risk of not being able to recognize the dangers of provoking an increasingly frustrated majority of mainstream America.

Some liberals are fearful of tea party protesters that carry Culpeper or Gadsden (“Don’t Tread On Me”) flags. This fear is incorrect on several levels, but most importantly in that it’s as much a plea as a warning. My thinking is that liberal policymakers need to begin fearing when a majority of America begins carrying Gonzales flags- the ones that say “Come And Take It” with a picture of a cannon or firearm. Will the current administration take notice?

Truly, I can’t think of a single reason that it benefits the Unites States to implicitly outline the number and style of nuclear warheads and capabilities in our stockpile. Generally I like to sit and think up something snarky to say in the absence of anything humorous before I make a blog post, but right now I’m simply out-of-my-mind gobsmacked that The One would think this is a good idea.

Carter at least didn’t outline specifically where cuts in intelligence services would take place, to my recollection. I’ll have more on this later when I get my thoughts together.

racist rac-ist (noun) \ˈrā-ˌsist\ 1. A person or policy that doesn’t strictly comport with a liberal (see PROGRESSIVE) political view regarding any subject that does not involve any form of personal ancestry, skin color, religion or national origin*.

Usage example:
Person 1: “That hamburger is too expensive.”
Person 2: “Racist!”

(*)

Homeland Security Chief Janet "The Batteries in My Hummingbird Are Dead" Napolitano

The headline might as well be completely accurate for all the difference it will make.

In a case of FAR too little too late, Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano stated that unmanned predator drones will be monitoring the Texas-Mexico border in order to enforce immigration enforcement, according to a brief update now on Drudge.

“Big Sis” declared that over the past 15 months, federal law enforcement initiatives have made the border more secure than in any other time in history, the SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS reports in Wednesday editions.

You mean, so safe that Arizona felt it had to take over authority from a non-responsive Federal law enforcement effort? So safe that Mexican drug violence is getting so bad that people are dying in the streets?

Left unsaid is that drones are only tools used to gather intelligence, not act on it (barring equipping them with offensive armament, which isn’t going to happen), and without fortifying border agents and marshals on the border, streamlining deportation and prosecution efforts, and building walls, Napolitano can fly as many RC hobby planes as her little heart desires and it won’t make a singular difference to the illegal immigration problem.

A month after contentious legislative tactics saw the passing of the health care bill, the Senate Health committee is trying to implement a bill that imposes price controls over the health care premiums that are likely to kill, or at least functionally nationalize, private health care insurers.

Cost control claims before and during the voting sessions, although never convincing a majority of the public but seemed to give some on-the-fence Representatives some cover of plausible deniability, turned out to be inaccurate -if not wildly apocryphal- and the new bill from the Health committee is an attempt to “fix” costs (someone try and get former Pres. Carter to comment on how well price controls work).

Not mentioned in the article is the assumtion that this bill would also be a second pass at trying to convert a few Republican Senate and House members so the inevitable “bipartisan” label can be attached and some type of electoral escape hatch be given to the Dems come November.

This bill is as equally dangerous a trap for Republican members to fall into as the argument will surely be made that opposition to this “fix” bill would be the chance to for members of the right to address whatever problems they saw in the original bill (never mind the fact that any conservative amendments would stand a donut’s chance with Rosie O’Donnell than being attached). Vocal members of the right would be castigated as being being purely the party of “no” and placing partisanship over fixing “an otherwise good bill”. However badly they might play up this position, I think it’s in the best interest of the conservative position to continue to own the “no” moniker under the view that a purely Democratic program is both fatally flawed in principle and that no amount of fiddling with trivialities will change that reality.

Of course, Republican fingerprints on the fix won’t help us and allow the plan’s authors to begin scapegoating in earnest.

UPDATE: Posted without further comment:

Left: US Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) and right: one nutria, a scavenger of the order Rodentia