How to tell if you are a Liberal or a Conservative

Do you wonder where you stand on the political scale? Are you so far left that Obama actually got his health care message through to you, or do you fall somewhere to the right of Ghengis Khan?

Fear not, I am here to help you find out whether you should register as a Democrat or a Republican: just answer the following questions truthfully by circling either A or B:

1. If you are asked for money from a scuzzy bum on the sidewalk, you:

A: Tell him to get a job.

B: Empty your wallet into his filthy fingers.

2. When President Obama appears on your television to give his 788th speech on health care reform, you:

A: Throw a brick through the TV screen.

B: Listen with rapt attention for important additional information on the issue.

3. If you find out that you and your spouse are expecting a baby, you:

A: Celebrate the joyous news.

B: Race to the abortion clinic to remove the unwanted fetal tissue from your body.

4. When asked by a pollster what you expect from government, you:

A: Tell the pollster you want absolutely nothing from the feds except a body count of dead terrorists.

B: Tell the pollster you want security and the fulfillment of any want or need from the time you are born to the moment of your death. 5. When the same pollster asks you your thoughts about unions, you tell them:

A: Unions are bloodsucking parasites on capitalism.

B: Unions help promote paradise on earth.

6. Ronald Reagan was:

A: the greatest president of our times.

B: the dunciest dunce to ever come out of Dunceville.

7. Kelo vs New London is:

A: a SCOTUS decision trampling our rights to hold private property.

B: some kind of new Little Debbie snack cake.

8. Teddy Kennedy was:

A: a murdering coward who left a girl for dead in a submerged car he drunkenly wrecked.

B: the greatest senator of our time.

9. President Obama has proposed taxing big banks. You think:

A: that Obama is an idiot who has no clue about how commerce works, and just wants a new bad guy to demonize, just like Saul Alinsky taught him.

B: that this is a good move, to penalize those fat cat bankers who have bags and bags full of ill gotten money laying around doing nothing anyway.

10. When asked if you want to join the neighborhood recycling drive, you:

A: tell them that recycling is a pointy headed liberal concoction that doesn't work, and you point to the sign in your yard that states "Don't Feed The Hippies."

B: jump up and down shouting 'oh goody goody goody, I can help save the planet.'

SCORING:

Count the number of "A" answers you circled, and match this number to the scale below:

10 A's: You are definitely conservative material, welcome to reality. Register as a Republican.

7 - 9 A's: You need some work, but have potential to wake up from your dream world. Register as a Republican.

6 A's or less: you are a Birkenstock wearing, bean sprout and tofu eating, pony tail sporting, Ted Kennedy loving, tree hugging socialist loser. Please don't take your insane notions of utopia out on the rest of us at the ballot box. Stay home during the next election.

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* Please note the irony in my use of the Simpsons characters above: The Comic Book Guy, while on the surface appears to be a pony-tail wearing, peace sign T-shirt donning liberal, is in fact a small business owner who is the target of the Obama administration via tax hikes and oppressive regulations. Superintendent Chalmers, on the other hand, while displaying his sartorial splendor in his three piece suit appears to be the consummate conservative, he is in fact the head honcho of the Springfield School District, a card carrying union member of the NEA and in all probability votes Democrat straight down the line. To actually use arch conservative Montgomery Burns as my icon of a conservative would be to diminish my point. I considered it, but gave the nod to 'Chalmy' as my conservative stalwart.

Where have all the 'manly' men gone?

Question: What is more sad and pathetic than the sight of an able bodied average American guy standing next to his car on the side of the road with a flat tire, cell phone to his ear calling AAA to come rescue him?

The answer: nothing.

What happened to us formerly red blooded, All-American guys over the last few decades? Have we guys all become helpless weenies? A nation chock full of what Arnold Schwartzenegger would call 'girly men?' Maybe so. I drew this cartoon above a few years ago after reading an article from Popular Mechanics, whose editors compiled a list of the basic skills that they deemed every American guy should possess, and it appears below. Read it and weep: 1. Patch a radiator hose 2. Protect your computer 3. Rescue a boater who has capsized 4. Frame a wall 5. Retouch digital photos 6. Back up a trailer 7. Build a campfire 8. Fix a dead outlet 9. Navigate with a map and compass 10. Use a torque wrench 11. Sharpen a knife 12. Perform CPR 13. Fillet a fish 14. Maneuver a car out of a skid 15. Get a car unstuck 16. Back up data 17. Paint a room 18. Mix concrete 19. Clean a bolt-action rifle 20. Change oil and filter 21. Hook up an HDTV 22. Bleed brakes 23. Paddle a canoe 24. Fix a bike flat 25. Install a wireless router system When I read this list, I agreed that most of these are all skills that fathers used to teach their sons in days gone by, and I scored a perfect 100%. But I am an old guy, with perhaps tired old notions of self reliance, determination and a willingness to get your hands dirty from time to time. In that bygone era, dads used to take their 10-year old boys out in the back yard and show them how to build a tree house. That right of passage taught young boys many skills to include using hand tools, planning, organization, safety and pride in workmanship. Sadly, those days are gone thanks to several factors such as advances in technology, and the slow and steady urbanization of the country. Most folks don't have backyards with substantial trees able to support any kind of tree house anymore unless they are out in the country. And even if they do, they have busy body home owners associations keeping their eyes peeled for these unsightly tree houses, those images of Americana now lost to our modern sensibilities. Rather than make excuses for why guys are turning into helpless losers, I suggest that this trend need not continue. Take a long, hard look at this list, guys. If there are a few things here that you don't have a clue as to how to proceed, man up. Find out how, and go do it. If you can't start a campfire, then you have no business calling yourself a guy anymore. Just turn in your man card, and we will scratch you off of the man list, and don't bother coming to the man meetings anymore. And one final thing: change your name to Shirley. Or Pam.

Haiti's woes: blame climate and culture, not Satan

Haitians just can't catch a break, or so it seems. And they never will, either. If it’s not revolution, it’s hurricanes. If not hurricanes, it’s earthquakes. If it's not earthquakes, it's floods. Constant corruption and poverty are a guaranteed way of life in Haiti: it always has been so, as it always will be. A few decades ago they made the news as the poor and dispossessed Haitian mobs booted out one dictator, Baby Doc Duvalier, and crowned another, Juan Betrand Aristide, and the current dictator, Rene Preval, is just the last in a long line of corrupt, ineffective despots to preside over this country currently formed by former West African slaves. The history of this pathetic country takes it from a tropical paradise inhabited by the indigenous Arawaks, to a French colonial sugar plantation. Afterwards, the former African slaves who overthrew the French themselves murdered, enslaved and otherwise exterminated the native Arawaks, and this country has been governed by a very small handful of the ruling class ever since, who themselves are the offspring of pirates, slave owners and all manner of scoundrels and thieves. And these handful of thug descendants still control virtually all of the cash flow of this country, which produces almost nothing. 40% of the Haitian government budget comes from foreign aid, of which nearly all of this money goes into the coffers of the ruling thugs. And why does nothing ever change in Haiti? The answer should be obvious. While Pat Robertson seems to attribute it to a pact with the devil, Haiti is simply a nation of ne’er-do-wells, where sloth is the cultural norm. Why bother building anything of value, when either the thugs in control come and confiscate it, or a hurricane or earthquake eventually destroys it. Why go through all that trouble? Property rights are virtually nonexistent, and the religion of most of the population is not Christianity, but rather voodoo. With such obstacles to overcome, how is it that the population of Haiti is now over 10,000,000 on a piece of island of only 10,714 square miles (936 people per square mile population density, versus 83 in the U.S.)? The climate is such that the temperature rarely if ever goes below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and permanent housing is not really a necessity, but rather a luxury. If the bamboo poles and plastic tarp that the typical Haitian puts up to keep the warm rain off them blows away in a tropical storm, no big deal. They will just pull a few banana leaves over them at night, and they are fine. The climate does not demand that they put forth anymore effort than that, unlike the northern climates, where the winter will thin the herd of the lazy, slovenly and nonindustrious retches. The ‘industrious’ Haitians who actually put up more substantial dwellings care little if anything about the integrity of their structures. Putting reinforcement bars (rebar) into their concrete (if you can call it concrete, it’s more like really hard mud) only adds 'unnecessary' costs. And now a 7.0 earthquake comes along and levels virtually the whole country, and they wonder why God has forsaken them (or more accurately, since most Haitians are not really a God fearing bunch, they will wonder what witch doctor is sticking pins in their voodoo dolls). With perhaps 100,000 dead (or more, many more), the blame for this kind of devastation cannot squarely be put on God’s hands (or laid at the feet of those pin wielding witch doctors). The San Francisco earthquake of 1989 was also 7.0 on the Richter scale, yet only 57 deaths were attributed directly to the quake. The western democracies have been pouring billions and billions of dollars into Haiti for decades, now. You would think that some of that dough would go for infrastructure, right? Wrong. It went directly into the pockets of the handful of ruling thug families that are the proximate cause of all of the misery you see on the TV night after night. And all we hear now from the media is that rather than sending relief supplies such as medicine, food, water, etc., we should instead send buckets and buckets of cash. Cold hard cash will relieve the suffering. Exactly who do they think they are fooling? Rather than sending $10,000 to a Haitian relief fund, the same results would be seen if instead you just set fire to the $10K stack of bills and watch them burn. The only trickle down effect of any cash relief effort to Haiti will be realized by the ruling thugs' Mercedes Benz dealers, their yacht brokers and their Caribbean real estate agents. Pact with the devil? Maybe. But Haiti’s woes are more likely rooted in factors associated with the climate, the culture and politics rather than any satanic foolishness.

Pelosi to Americans: 'Let them eat cake.'

Is it possible that our Democrat leadership in the White House and in Congress can get any more arrogant? No, that is not possible, as their hubris allows them to thumb their nose at the overwhelming opposition by the majority of Americans who abhor their lunatic lunges towards socialism, because they truly believe they are smarter and more 'well born' than the rest of the Great Unwashed in Fly Over country.

We're all just too dag nab dumb to understand how great this country will be with the government running every aspect of our lives. To our elite Democrat leaders, we simply can't manage our affairs 'correctly' without their help. And, like little kids who whine about taking their cod liver oil, Mommy Pelosi will just ignore our caterwauling and jam this stuff down our throat because she truly believes she knows what's best for us.

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Mars) was asked about the constitutionality of requiring Americans to buy anything, such as health insurance, she looked at the questioner and simply said, 'are you kidding?', and promptly dismissed the question. At a recent press conference, Pelosi was asked about Obama's many and repeated promises to publicly air congressional debates about health care reform legislation on C-Span, and she arrogantly dismissed the question with a laugh, stating 'there's lots of things said on the campaign trail...'

In other words, 'let them eat cake.'

Rather than go into the tedious details of the last arrogant, elite woman who supposedly uttered that sentiment (Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI of France pictured above) to a growingly hostile population to their tyrannical and indifferent regime at the beginning of the French Revolution, let's just say that the commoners wielding pitchforks and torches found that suggestion offensive and arrogant, and in 1793 it ended somewhat badly for her.

November 2nd, 2010 is just around the corner, and while I would be exaggerating to compare it to the guillotine for these guys, I can tell you that the Zeitgeist we all feel today will result in their liberal heads rolling at the ballot boxes in November.

The National Organization of Women (NOW) thinks of the military as nothing more than a jobs program

Get pregnant while on active duty in Northern Iraq under Major General Tony Cucolo's command, and you get in trouble. Penalties for getting pregnant, or for a male soldier who impregnates a female soldier would be administered under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, likely in the form of a letter of reprimand and perhaps a reduction in grade and a small monetary fine.

When asked about this policy put in place last month, Gen. Cucolo said 'I realize it might be hard for those who have never served in a military unit. I knew there would be public interest and I am fine with that, that's Americans. I've got to take every measure to preserve my combat power.'

To date, the order is considered valid and has not been challenged by anyone other than by National Organization for Women (NOW) president Terry O'Neill. She has reportedly requested via correspondence to the military commander in chief, President Obama, that he intervene and countermand this standing order. Ms. O'Neill was quoted as saying 'well it may be his prerogative to be dumb but that's really not a very good idea.' .

The two sides of this issue are of keen interest to me.

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The army, as represented by Gen. Cucolo, has finally taken a baby step towards turning back decades of political correctness as it pertains to women in combat or combat support roles. Prior to this, great pains were taken to insure that women were given equal standing in the ranks with their male counterparts, but were given great latitude regarding issues that relate only to female soldiers, and pregnancy is the primary issue here. Male members of combat and combat support units for decades have been expected to pick up the slack for missing females in their ranks when the females became pregnant while on active duty.

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Each unit (be it a platoon, battalion, regiment, division, etc.) has specific man power allotments prescribed by equipment and staffing regulations (technically called TO&E, or Table of Organization and Equipment) that specify how many soldiers are required to carry out any unit's assigned mission. For example, an army supply company may specify 100 soldiers, but the ratio of male to female soldiers within that company has never been specified. If at any one time, 10 female soldiers are pregnant and have been relieved of more strenuous duties via a medical document of pregnancy (called a 'medical profile'), the remaining 90 soldiers must still perform 100% of the duties of this supply company to meet it's mission requirements. Many times this involves additional guard duty, for example, or other unpleasant duties that are shouldered by fewer soldiers, and morale suffers accordingly. Resentment towards these pregnant females builds over time, when they have been given light admin duties involving pencil pushing and drinking coffee, rather than sitting out in the cold numbing snow or perhaps searing, sweltering heat at a guard post. General effectiveness of these affected units is diminished as a result.

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Terry O'Neill sees things in a totally different light: she does not understand that the purpose of an army is to kill people and break things. She looks at these positions as purely social in nature, and does not agree that armies should be going around killing people and breaking things. Ms. O'Neill is highly perturbed that the army does not continue in its old manner of coddling pregnant women, using the ranks of the military as a protector of a budding family, and paying these unproductive pregnant women full pay while they simultaneously adversely affect the cohesiveness and overall morale, and ultimately the fighting effectiveness of the unit.

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Contrary to believing in the force of the military being used to protect and defend our country, Ms. O'Neill and her entire organization (NOW) are showing their true colors: they are pacifists who think (incorrectly) that people of different nations can always negotiate their differences away, and that evil does not exist in the world, only bad negotiators. She sincerely believes that we employ a standing army as a way to create jobs, and sending them into battle is not what they are there for. Or at least that is my guess as to what she thinks military people are supposed to do: sit around and cash a pay check but Heaven Forbid they actually kill people and break things.

. Terry O'Neill calls Gen. Cucolo 'dumb' for demanding that all soldiers under his command be accountable to their unit and fellow soldiers, I call Major General Tony Cucolo a patriot. We need more of this kind of policy in our military today, not less of it.

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I know who the 'dumb' one is on this issue.

All Hail King Barack I?

Well, it's done. The foot is in the door, the tooth paste is out of the tube, and the Genie is out of the bottle. On December 19th, 2009 (mark this day on your calendars, fellow soon-to-be Proletariat's), was the day that Ben Nelson (D-Neb) reportedly accepted whatever back room agreement offered by Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nv) to secure his vote on the disastrous senate version of Barack Hussein Obama's coveted health care reform initiative. If all 58 Democrats and 2 Independent senators keep their words and actually vote in favor of shutting down debate on the Senate floor, this one is a done deal. It will pass, regardless of it's wildly unpopular standing with the American public.

Even though the hated 'public option' was taken out of the wording of the bill, and the God awful 'Medicare buy in' provision has been scuttled as well, they will be back. Those provisions will be added by hook or crook going forward, in addition to public funding of abortions, rationing, death panels, and all the rest of those unsavory ingredients: in a few years, it'll be like the old ad for Praego spaghetti sauce: 'it's in there.'

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This wildly unpopular legislation will be touted by the Obama administration as the beginning of a new era, the first significant social program to find footing since Social Security was passed in 1935. And we all know how well Social Security is doing these days.

With the upcoming signature of Obama's into law of this health care reform debacle, we will have the foundation arguably of a primarily socialist republic. And now for the scary part: Barack Hussein Obama will want to be around to make sure that those stricken provisions (you know, the death panels, the abortion funding, and outlawing private insurance eventually, etc.) are put back into the wording so that the government will in time be able to tell us what to drive, what to eat, what to smoke/not smoke, what to drink/not drink, what to play/not play, where to live/not live, what to listen to/not listen to, what to (fill in the blank), what not to (fill in the blank). All in the name of keeping health care costs under wraps. Like they care about the cost of anything in the first place, they don't. Barack Hussein Obama and his ilk just want to be able to control our lives down to the tiniest detail.

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With the current system in place, the 112th Congress will likely see the huge majority of Democrats shrink if not even disappear, and Barack's administration will come to an end in 2012 as all Republicans, a majority of Independents and even some Democrats will sack him, maybe even in the Democratic primary.

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Not so fast. Since we just got rid with a single signature on a piece of paper of our current capitalistic based representative republic for a socialist base for the most part, what's to stop Barack Hussein Obama from seeking to get rid of other components of our country's heritage? Like removing the 22nd amendment regarding presidential terms of office limits via executive order, increase ACORN's funding by ten fold, and thus have the framework in place for securing fraudulent election victories from now until he tires of being president for life. Heck, why stop there, he may as well just dissolve the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives and the Senate while he's at it. Sound unconstitutional? The Constitution of the United States of America has not stopped this guy from doing what he wants to do, not even one time.

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Once these inconvenient (and in Barack's mind, trivial) constitutional matters have been eliminiated and we are completely under his boot, he can anoint his daughter, Sasha The First, as Queen of America in 2045. Then King Barack Hussein Obama The First, or likely in the history books, King Barack I, will have realized his vision for our country.

Remember, Adolph Hitler accomplished much the same thing: he was duly and legally elected by the German voters to the Reichtag in the 1920's, solidified power of the National Socialists over the next 4 years, and was then elected Chancellor (the last Chancellor of the Wiemar Republic), dissolved the Reichtag and took over as Der Fuhrer of the Third Reich. And we all know how things turn out for him thereafter.

Yes, all of this doom and gloom speculation sounds pretty far out there. I wonder how Hitler's rhetoric sounded to the citizens of the Wiemar Republic back in the 20's. I understand that the old paper hanger was quite the gifted orator.

Sound familiar?

Obama intends on being a one term president.

Does Obama intend on becoming a one term president? You would think given his enormous ego that he would not want to think about getting the boot after only 4 years, but it sure does look like he is not overly concerned with his receding chances at getting re-elected in 2012. Many of us, concerned about Obama’s record of extreme liberalism during his short stint in the U.S. Senate, and several terms in the Illinois state senate, were told not to worry: he would, like all other liberal presidents have in the past, govern from the center. We were told he was not a crazy fool who would try and foist on the American public all of that demonstrably failed Marxist garbage that he wrote about in his books, and espoused during his days as a law professor. We were told that doing so would limit him to one term, and that the American people would not stand for such a vicious lurch to the left. Accordingly, we felt a bit more at ease during his ‘president-elect’ period prior to the inauguration. What’s the first thing President Obama did after his swearing into office on January 20th, 2009? He didn’t even let the ink dry on the paperwork before he started implementing his wildly irresponsible spending initiatives, starting with an enormous stimulus bill (which only stimulated Democratic bank accounts), the TARP bailout of banks (which again seems to have only effected Democrat interests), and on and on. This guy spends so wildly that he makes drunken sailors look like misers in comparison. And that is not even the tip of the iceberg as to the concerns that many independents and all Republicans, and frankly even some Democrats now have: his plans to cram massive tax increases down our throats in the name of health care reform and environmental protection (cap and tax) are particularly galling, and there are now murmurs on the horizon that he plans on granting legal status to all 20 or 30 million illegal immigrants currently here by fiat. His approval numbers for any president at this time in their terms is the lowest ever recorded. Does Obama seem to care about this? Seemingly not, as he is doubling down on his march towards achieving a socialist America. Which now begs the question: doesn’t he notice that the widespread opposition to his policies by most Independents, some Democrats and all Republicans are not only likely to profoundly and adversely affect the fates of Democrats who face elections in 10 months or so, but his re-election as well? If he notices, he doesn’t seem to care. And why would he not care? Maybe, just maybe, he’s acting much like a ‘rabbit’ in a long distance foot race: there’s one guy who’s sole predetermined job is to sprint out to the front of the pack, and set a pace that he himself cannot sustain, but that the strongest runners in the race will keep up with, and in the end they will cross the finish line, while the rabbit burned himself up after only three or four laps before dropping out. Obama, the rabbit, will have set in motion the necessary steps that his handlers (George Soros and other deep pocketed socialist ideologues) want him to initiate. Then, during the elections of the 112th Congress in 2010, the first of the Democratic rabbit causalities will bite the dust. In 2012, Obama himself will fall to whatever Republican candidate who will run on claims of being able to return America to its capitalistic former self. But by then the handlers will figure that it will be too late to substantially return American entrepreneurship and self reliance to the overall structure of the American economic system, and socialism will have crept into every fabric of our lives. Even though the Democrats will have been summarily booted from majorities in congress, and the White House will fall into Republican hands in the short term, this newly implemented structure will in the long run favor Democrats who fully understand and embrace imposing rules, taxes, restrictions on the masses, and bestow favors upon the anointed ones, and they will in the fullness of time claim their rightful places in the U.S. government: Masters and Rulers of The Great Unwashed. All thanks to the heroic pioneering efforts of ‘Rabbit’ Hussein Obama, who in kamikaze fashion fully intended on being a one term president.