Obama on His Bowling Skills

Get him off of a teleprompter and he speaks with the same skill that W spoke with.

I don't think the idea that President Obama heavily relies on a telemprompter it s a bad idea. People lose money and lives based on what the President says and it had better be right. Still I think the notion he is eloquent is silly, he can deliver a good speech that is prepared for him and that he reads off the prompter, don't get me wrong, that is not the easiest thing to do either, but it is not a sign of general intelligence.

His off-prompter remark about his bowling skills is proof positive of that. Now, I don't get all indignant about that either. Let's face facts here, there is a special league for the "Special Olympians" for a reason. Yes, it was one of those remarks many of us would make around our drinking friends but not at work or in polite company.

However, what gets me is the reaction to it and I am not talking about the bloggers or outright partisans. I am talking about media reaction. How many think if President Bush made a similar comment there would not be all sorts of canned outrage being dumped on our laps by the mainstream media. We would hear from numerous offended parents of Special Olympians and I bet we would have some nice sound bites from the leaders of the Special Olympics.

As I have said a number of times before, I am quite used to it and treat it pretty much as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Still, it is galling.

I know I know, there are bigger stories out there, right? Uh, I don't buy that for a second. If W, had uttered it that story would be pretty high on the priority list.

The MSM is not a neutral observer & reporter — nor is there any requirement they be neutral.

Fertilizing the Wal Mart Garden

The Empress and I shop Wal Mart & Sam's Club occasionally. I have no compunctions about doing so, in fact, The Empress purchases a number of her prescriptions from Sam's Club and she purchase the Sam's Club generic of an over the counter medication. All are a great savings.

Still, Wal Mart & Sam's Club typically are not close to the top of our list for a shopping stop. They are often times convenience plays. We prefer to grocery shop at Woodman's and Festival, we prefer to do our other shopping at specialist outlets looking for deals.

That said. I have long known the Left demonizes Wal Mart and quite frankly I am not extremely hostile to some of the arguments they put forward. However, I find it highly ironic the left really works hard to cultivate, fertilize, and water the Wal Mart garden. That is, many of the policy goals the left pursues actively and fruitfully encourage the growth of Wal Mart and similar establishments.

The latest thing making the blog-around is a couple of new food safety proposals in the House of Representatives World Net Daily reports on H.R. 875 the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 (Introduced in House).

In short, my review of the actual legislation appears to federalize all food safety regulation. I am somewhat hazy on the exact regimen of food regulation but a lot of it is state controlled. A state sets its minimum standards and health departments down the line can create their own codes to strengthen the state code. One restaurant manager told me the chain he was a part of just goes ahead and forces all of its restaurants to abide by the strictest standards of all the states the chain operates in, which makes sense.

So reading various reports on this bill I thought people were getting overheated in their reactions. Most of those reactions are that HR 875 would require me (for instance) to register my little garden on my lot. It thought the reaction overheated. So I went to Thomas to read the bill for myself.

The proposal does appear to call for the registration of ALL food production and processing facilities (the term used is food establishment) commercial, for profit, non-profit, or otherwise. Food production is defined as growing fruits, vegetables or other such for food as well as the raising of livestock (land or water based).

Now, making law into a machine is a tricky process. There is still time for amendments to correct what may be an oversight, and I give the author(s) the benefit of the doubt they are not intending to federally regulate private gardens. Still, what our economy and people do not need is more regulation. It has been well pointed out that agri-giants such as Monsanto, ADM, etc have no problem with operations like this. They have big fat wallets to pay for the needed attorneys, accountants, food specialists, regulatory specialists, investing in the extra hardware & facilities to comply. Sure they will grumble about having to pay for that, but the small gardener supplying your Farmer's Market with fresh, juicy, and tasty produce will not be able to comply or will spend more time complying and less time producing. That is, the giant, whom the left profess to detest will win and the small guy whom the left professes to support will lose.

In any event, the corrupt or lazy will not abide by the increased regulations any more than they do now. I would argue for increased enforcement of current regulations rather than expanding the regulations.

DITTO!

Over the past few months one thing has become more clear to me than it was on November 4, 2008 — Barak Obama is a bait & switch artist. He wasn't all that good at it, but good enough to get a large number of people to vote for him believing he is a "centrist". He is no such thing, I had held out hope he would live up to his rhetoric but on a large number of policy concerns he is much farther to the left than Bush was to the right.

Obama is smart, making his moves on a large number of insignificant fronts, but add them all up and they sum to a decidedly leftward lurch. It will take time for these directions to percolate down but when they do it will be too late and the guy after Obama will take the rap.

Now, Al-Pazeera has a story out on W speaking in front of a Canadian crowd:

CALGARY, Alberta – Former President George W. Bush said on Tuesday that he won't criticize Barack Obama because the new U.S. president "deserves my silence," and said he plans to write a book about the 12 toughest decisions he made in office. Bush declined to critique the Obama administration in his first speech since leaving office in January. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has said that Obama's decisions threatened America's safety.

"I'm not going to spend my time criticizing him. There are plenty of critics in the arena," Bush said. "He deserves my silence."

Bush said he wants Obama to succeed and said it's important that he has that support. Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has said he hoped Obama would fail. [emphasis added]

Source: Bush declines to criticize Obama in Canada speech from Al-Pazeera & Yahoo News (ROB GILLIES).

Now, what gets me in this article is how Rush is gratuitously brought into the discussion. There is no mention of him being brought up in the speech. Sure, Rush is well on the record as hoping for President Obama's failure, but there were scant few Democrat well wishes for President Bush. In fact, James Carville had hopes similar to Rush's and by the last eight years so too many Democrats. Quite simply put, many Democrats despite their feigning outrage over Rush Limbaugh's desire for President Obama to fail, were in the failure cheering box from '00 to '08.

In any event, I don't think we can be 100% united for more than brief periods of time. This is not an indictment, but a praise. Our nation was built on the premise we will never agree and instead of assuming 100% agreement rules were put down to deal with our disagreements in a peaceable manner. I am much more in fear of those who outrage at Rush than those who outrage at squishes who praise President Obama. Remember, President Obama commands the US Military and Federal Law Enforcement, whereas Rush does not.

For the record, I detested the bleating of certain commentators who were outraged (or at least acted so) when Democrats would "play politics" with our national defense. Politics is how we settle our disagreements, I rue the disagreements but in a liberal society there are bound to be disagreements.

I too hope for an Obama failure. I fear the direction he is trying to lurch the nation into is one of servitude and slavery.