As we all know, Barack Hussein Obama was hired by Madeline Talbot to train the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, shock troops in Chicago. These trained troops broke into private property and threatened bankers' wives and children into making bad loans, the same bad loans which are corrupting the entire financial system of the world.

Here is a news report of ACORN blatantly breaking the padlock off a foreclosed house. "This is our house now," the ACORN criminal said, as he let the woman back into the house which she did not keep up the payments on. She complained of course that the bank would not modify her loan, but as anyone who has dealt with banks knows, there comes a time when the bank has no more room to maneuver and has to foreclose. I am not painting banks as being innocent angels for I know far too much to say that, but it is irresponsible for a bank not to try to recover an asset that it has. It is irresponsible to the shareholders of the bank, to the bank's other customers, and it is morally reprehensible for it not to tend to its assets. Lethal too but I suspect that that's the point of the exercise.

But morality, as understood by, oh, the founding fathers and anyone who is to the right of Karl Marx is simply not on the menu for the ACORN thugs. Breaking into private property, violating the sanctity of contract, and of course wholesale voter fraud is their menu.

Stuart Varney, the British journalist on Fox, interviewed Bertha Lewis, the executive director for the New York branch of ACORN. Mr. Varney made the valid point that people should pay their bills; Ms. Lewis said that they are paying their bills, just not their mortgages, and Mr. Varney tried to get this woman to understand that a mortgage is a bill. They are both voluntarily and legally incurred debts. It is like trying to nail Jello to a wall--she simply refuses to understand anything about personal responsibility, and cheers on, you guessed it, the abolition of the sanctity of contract, to be replaced by brute force.

If you want to see a prime example of Vespertilio Lunae Americanus (American moonbat), try to follow Ms. Lewis' screaming flight from reason to the bitter end. Like arguing with the mentally ill.

The Stimulus Bill, which is entirely the creation of the Democrat Party, provides for $4.19 billion dollars for foreclosure relief, and this is where ACORN and its ilk get their paddy-paws on taxpayer money--to continue their fraud and thuggery and destruction of contract.

His O'liness has trained ACORN. His campaign paid $832,592 to Citizens Services Inc., an ACORN affiliate. He led a voter drive for another ACORN affiliate, Project Vote, and he's represented ACORN in court.

In 2007 he spoke at an organization of community organizers, which we now know means fraud and thuggery, thus:

"Before I even get inaugurated, during the transition, we're going to be calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda. We're going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America."

It is not known is he had to use a TelePrompTer for this speech. One presumes that he doesn't to recite his social-security number or other tocsins so dear to his heart.

Ain't it great? The President of United States trained people in voter fraud and menacing people, breaking the law of contract, which is to my mind the single most important American virtue, and now is getting ready to funnel more of your money to these same people, so that they can do more of the same for their own wicked ends.

Which is the wholesale destruction of the country as I know it.

I'm sure we'll hear a whole lot more about the Midland Vision 2020 Committee as the Spring and Summer heat up, but their first meeting generated an eye popping quote about the "perceived" state of education in Midland that just floored me:

Across the table, Rachel Stone agreed and said kids are dropping out "left and right" often because they're not being challenged and lose interest in school as young as in pre-kindergarten.

WTF? Losing interest in school as early as Pre-kindergarten? How the hell do you screw up finger painting, Lincoln Logs, recess, nap-time and growing beans and caterpillars so bad kids lose interest?

You think it is the PARENTS of those pre-kindergartners that "lost interest" in school and re-inforced those values in their 4-year olds, which causes their kids to mimic that attitude in school?

I say concentrate on the parents and quit wasting gobs and gobs of money on more and more programs for kids. If you can't fix the attitudes and environment where the kid sleeps and wakes up in the morning, all the money in the world for new and expanded pre-K, early childhood or even late night teen programs and places won't change a thing.

And by "woobie", I mean the security blanket that is his teleprompter.

I watched the President again on the television this morning and he must have been using his "woobie" again.

Up to now I have just watched him speak and have never really noticed anything.....until this morning.

He. Never. Looks. Straight. Ahead.

Giving his most earnest look he turns from side to side...and to the exact angle offset each time. Even though the bulk of the listeners in the room with him are sitting directly in front of him.

Never. Straight. Ahead.

And once you do notice it, it is all you see.

Just got this in an email from a friend who knows a guy whose hairdresser's cousin works in the Department of Defense. Or something.

It is the President's new Woobie Teleprompter. No more ugly glass panels or big screen TV's to help the greatest orator of our time get through a newser.

This is a clip from the American show, Whose Line is it Anyway? with Drew Carey as the host. The guest star is Richard Simmons, who, until this moment I had loathed with that moment of perfect hate that I normally reserve for Chuck Schumer.

But at about 3:10 or so is one of the most hysterically funny moments that I've ever seen. The premise is that Wayne and Richard have to be the props in the sketch. And Simmons does a superlative job. Warning: don't watch if you want to continue to loathe him. It was one my of my hobbies. Was.

If for no other reason than she and Orion are both hunters.

I guess teleprompters don't help with pronunciations.

President Obama 60 Minutes was asked about his decision to close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, and pooh-poohed criticism by former Vice-President Dick Cheney.

"How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney?" Mr Obama asked.


"It hasn't made us safer," he said of Guantanamo Bay.

I see that we are going to enter the era of Clintonian-level spin.

Mr. Obama, while you were running for office instead of learning how to run government, you may have failed to notice that since 9/11 there has not been a terrorist attack on American soil. That is I think the very definition of being safer.

We have repeatedly offered to repatriate the Gitmo detainees to other countries, who say, "Thanks, but no thanks. You keep them. We don't want them."

The recidivism rate is high. I saw one Gitmo detainee was given an artificial leg by America and better treatment, in food and medicine, than he's ever had before. He admitted this, but said, "I still hate America." And no doubt he hobbled off on his release to see what damage he could wreak on America. And no doubt he'll be back to have a refitting on his artificial leg, or to get an artificial hand should he blow one of them off making an IED to kill Americans with. I wish the policy of detaining people like him had been a bit stronger. Perhaps we could fit him and the other ones there with artificial heads. That would work for me.

And, Mr. Obama in his foolish and reckless televised appeal to Iran didn't even bother to distinguish between the regime and the oppressed people of Iran, who are said to be pro-American and quite tired of the mad mullahs, and whom he effectively threw under the bus when he recognized "the Islamic Republic"; that is, the vicious regime. The regime knew diplomatic incompetence and weak will when it saw it, and the president of Iran, Ahmadinejad, said

The huge political and security crises have become deeper and deeper. Today, the pervasive and huge economic crisis indicates the failure of the materialistic powers in their thoughts, policies and expansionist goals. These mean that the Western Liberalism and materialistic school of thought have come to the end of the road while facing a dead-end.

The Ayatollah Khamanei graced us with:

The world has been convinced that it is not possible to block the Iranian nation's nuclear progress...Iran's progresses in different scientific and non-scientific fields indicate ineffectiveness of the sanctions...

Way to go, Barry O. Bankrupt us and make the world a good deal less safe and in only 60 days. An overachiever.

The flummoxed protesters spent several minutes outside trying to figure out how such "evil" people could be nice to an organic grocer.

Professional protesting isn't the big growth gig some folks think it is. Read the whole thing. A Big Smile.

Anyone heard the term "Lightworker" in a while?

Me neither.

On February 29, 2009, a carnival parade in Dusseldorf, Germany, boasted the above float. I see that the Germans believe that His O'liness--and I do not in light of the above picture apologize for the sneer in the soubriquet--will lead the world to prosperity, or the Progressive World of Next Tuesday™, whatever, with Europe hanging onto his skirt. Sad to think of the nation that gave us Bach and Gauss and Goethe sinking to this. But then Germans with SatNav systems in their cars tend to turn into buildings when told by the voice, "Turn right."

A friend of mine suggested that Barack Hussein Obama was the stupidest smart man he'd ever seen, and on reflection there is some truth to that. I suppose that you could except the academic left, degreed and pedigreed but diploma-foolish, but recall that Mr. Obama's c.v. is in academia, training ACORN in voter fraud community organizing, or running for office. Let's never forget that Jesse Jackson memorably said, "He ain't run nothing but his mouth." When Jesse Jackson knows that a man is composed of equal parts attitude, mouth and hubris, you have learned something.

Thomas Sowell's article, Ego and Mouth, in NRO contains this nonpareil insight:

Barack Obama has the kind of cocksure confidence that can only be achieved by not achieving anything else.

No doubt you, like me, have had emails from people suggesting that you send a tea bag to the White House and to Congress. I dismissed it as I dismiss nearly all web forwards.

It seems that there are people who are doing more than that: they're actually having tea parties. In places like Cincinnati, Nebraska, Tampa, Lexington, Ridgefield, Conn., Raleigh, Orlando, Washington D.C., Staten Island, Pasadena, Boston, Rochester, N.Y., Jacksonville, Minnesota, Cleveland, Columbus, Mo., Little Rock, Ark., Philadelphia, Kansas City, Harrisburg, Green Bay, Salt Lake City, Fullertown, Lafayette, Boise, Monterey, Maui, Yonkers, Utah, Tucson, Phoenix, Hoboken and Chicago.

I read that Fox News, and in a bit of a shocker, CNN, covered them, but otherwise there's been silence.

I recall during the Bush Terror that every time some coven of witches thought that their stump water had gone (more) brackish, there was a demonstration which all the media gleefully covered. I suppose that since Obama is in the White House all opposition will be ignored as not being worthy of notice.

Here's a picture of the demonstration in Cincinnati.

"You're talking about running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them into the Chicago River," said Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican who stepped down last month as Obama's pick for Commerce secretary. "It takes the minority completely out of the process."

I am shocked, shocked to learn that Our President will try to find a way to circumvent the Republican minority from having any say in our governance.

Read the whole thing. Elections have consequences.

In the future, big screen tv's will come to be called simply "tv's" and anything under 30" will be called a "small screen tv".

Eighty-seven percent of all female spouses will still consider either of them to be much too big for the living room.

So sayeth Walsingham.

If there's one thing that I never expected, it was a helping hand from the Chinese. Well, a true helping hand from the Democrat Party is just as unlikely, but the Chinese don't even pretend to help us, and they don't self-righteously preach to us, which makes me tend to prefer them.

But the Chinese are helping now. They're expressing their concerns over the policies of Barack Obama by wondering if our treasury bills are a good investment. We will not default on the bonds, but the Chinese are concerned that we will take the normal debtor-nation way of paying back huge debts by deliberately inflating the currency, to pay the debts back with cheaper money.

Let's see. Borrow trillions, splash out with the earmarks, make all your constituencies feel good, and let's not forget that 40% of those earmarks were Republican ones, and what's the result?

Debt that's nearly impossible to repay without debauching the currency, destroying the wealth of savers, and undermining the world's faith in the soundness of our currency.

Way to go, Barry O.

Mark Steyn on the fix we find ourselves in; that will disproportionately disadvantage B. Hussein Obama's biggest voting bloc.

This is the biggest generational transfer of wealth in the history of the world. If you're an 18-year old middle-class hopeychanger, look at the way your parents and grandparents live: It's not going to be like that for you. You're going to have a smaller house, and a smaller car -- if not a basement flat and a bus ticket.

Read the whole thing.

Is this the ultimate result of AARP-ism in hyperdrive as well? Definition: I'll take mine now. You'll get yours later. Maybe.

(Somehow I find myself recalling Dean Wormer's rant to the Deltas, especially "Flounder" Dorfman: "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son." Though it might explain why current generation "Flounder"s voted for hope and change at about a 3 to 1 rate.)

If you are President Obama, at what point do you begin to wonder if your picks for Treasury posts are shorting your stock?

There has been a spate of articles recently just like this one that blame the availability of guns in the U.S. for the proliferation of guns among drug cartel members and gangs in Mexico.

Mexico. Where guns are completely prohibited. Already.

Obviously, the only solution to this crisis will be to restrict gun purchases in the U.S.

The Obama administration has already spoken (yes, spoken) of their philosophy that you should never let a crisis go to waste. Look for this "crisis" to be the impetus for a gun grab.

Notice how every other article you read about these drug cartels always emphasizes the uber-sophistication of their fully international organizations along with their massive resources both in personnel and finances.

But if they can't buy guns in El Paso they will be disarmed.

No taxpayers showed up to the public hearing to provide input on which pocket they will pay from to the cover ongoing operational deficits at the stadium. Property owners are marginally better off because costs have shifted from a property tax based charge to a sales tax based one. But except for the big property owners there is no essential difference.

The City of Midland wins big, however. They have thrown off the responsibility of suffering the consequences of having to help pay for a stadium complex enthusiastically promoted by previous council members and are now free to venture into promoting Midland's next great need.

This is odd:

Councilman John James, a 4B Board member, said he now looks forward to dealing with revenues and costs at the complex, which the board has said could be on its way to $1 million of red ink.

At least it is odd in the sense that this is exactly what the Managed Competition Comittee is, was, or should have been looking into for over a year. There is plenty of talent on that committee and they have probably already identified and have cut as many costs as they can.

But I never really held out much hope for the success of the Managed Competition Committee in this endeavor. Not because they were not good, capable people. But because they were operating on the premise....or at least the hope...that there was demand for the stadium out there somewhere that just hadn't been located.

It isn't out there. The demand doesn't exist. Any true market analysis...the kind people who are risking their own money do...would have shown that the stadium was never going to generate the revenue that proponents were hoping for and using to "sell" the stadium complex to the public. That is the best case scenario.

The worst case? They knew then that their revenue figures were unrealistic and it didn't matter to them.

No doubt Democrats in general and Clintonites in particular still get the warm fuzzies whenever they remember the phrase "It's the economy, stupid", as their reminder of what to focus on to win the White House way back in 1992.

How delicious would it be for bumper stickers displaying this exact phrase to begin showing up now?

I'll tell you why. Because President Obama's Hopey Changey economic policies are so brilliant that the usual investors have realized that there is no longer any need to invest in the stock market.

How brilliant? Think, like, Star Trek brilliant. Where there is not even a need for currency because everything is taken care of for you...like health care, food, retirement, abortions...you name it.

In short, President Obama's plan obviates the need for personal investment. Which is why investors are bailing from the stock market and causing it to tank. It is a good thing, not a bad thing.

On the other hand, the question is never answered why, in the future, everyone isn't able to have a Starship.

Details, details.

First off, I find it funny that the 2007-2008 Annual Report is on the "PDF Downloads" page and the rest of the annual reports are on the "Agenda / Reports" page. It's posted, so I guess I shouldn't complain about all that money they are spending on their websites.

Now for the interesting tid-bits:

You have to love all the code names for the recent development prospects. Maybe we should have a comment contest to try and guess the potential incentee.

Worked on the following projects for development: Projects Paint, Polar Bear, TLC, Pisces, National Oilwell, Skoll, Mac, Abourami, "D", NY Chat, Hans, Pulp, Whisker, Ingenious, Arrow, October, Jersey, Cotton, Jade, Pug, Green, Apollo, Lincoln, Pontiff, Panza, Wendell, EZ Rider, BCAPB, Immigration, CAT, Laundry, UK Oil

Ever wonder what happened to the deal with the CO2 outfit, Reliant, from Odessa? Well that incentive was cancelled.

Ever wonder how much money the MDC is giving the Hosital for physician recruitment and other endeavors? According to the report, they got $829,749 in November 2008.

This last item isn't in the Annual Report, but I can't help checking out how all that website development money is being spent:

On the Press Release page there is a scan and pdf link to a release from Devon Energy regarding their groundbreaking. The funny part is when you click the "read further link" on the MDC website, it turns up a letter on the site from Devon expressing their regrets that the MDC couldn't attend that event.

Yep, money well spent.

UPDATE I can't resist this one... check out the file name for the Office Inventory Analysis: http://n.b5z.net/i/u/10000471/i/Finished_and_Correct_report_-_USE_THIS_ONE.pdf

The hospital district wants a new medical tower. The stadium people want a permanent sales tax to fund the ongoing operations of the Lemon Bowl. And the Midland Development Corporation still takes millions out of the local economy each year to create job growth stimulus within the Chamber and the MDC itself.

For the sake of argument let us say that we live in a perfect world and that elections are scheduled and timed to best determine the will of the people. (I know, I know....just go with me here.)

So why not schedule a single Saturday sometime in the near future to determine these three issues:

1. Hospital Bond Proposal
2. The proposal to make permanent the 4(b) Sales Tax in order to pay for the ongoing operations of the Scharbauer Sports Vortex.
3. Place on the ballot the question of whether or not to "sunset" or even do away with the 4(a) Sales Tax used for "Economic Development".

All three initiatives to be voted on at the same time on the same day.

Of course this will never happen. The way these things get passed in the first place is to motivate a smallish base of supporters and then gear the timing of the vote in order to minimize the participation of everyone else. That is why you hardly ever see these kinds of things voted on during a national or even state-wide election.

But I can dream can't I?

Arch-conservative (is there any other kind?) and Republican leader T. Coddington Van Voohees VII weighs in on how to right the conservative ship.

(Imagine being Christopher Buckley, Humor Writer, and knowing that some guy named Burge throws off more humor in one blog post than you have in your whole career. For free. When he is just screwing around.)

Link fixed now. Sorry.

"I think it was the Sunday Style section that brought us together," say Ken and Barbie.

"Just $4.70 a week delivers the world to your home," and the world is that described by the New York Times, which world would be very familiar to a proctologist.

"The Times has the best reporters in the world. There's no denying that." How quickly they forget Jayson Blair.

"How many sections are you fluent in?" asks an Asian woman in knee boots doing nothing for her legs. A bald man in tortoise-shell glasses responds, wriggling with pleasure, "I'm fluent in three sections: business, travel, the book review."

No one can make that up--it perfectly demonstrates the snotty insularity of the paper of record--to assume that they are the language that people can aspire to. The demotic of the good and the great, or the patois of people who can pay money to be informed by them, to adopt a style, for only $4.70 a week, which will somehow let them peer through the windows into the offices of the Good and Great, or those who feel that they are, against all evidence, Good and Great.

"Please sir, can I have another section?" Will we have Berlitz courses on reading the Old Gray Corpse? University of Phoenix Courses on how to approach the Style Section? To the blacking factory with them.

We can all take comfort that more and more people are seeing them as being the sniffing, insular New Yorkers that they are, and these commercials to foist their fishwrap on fly-over country are pathetic with their desire to be seen as cool. We all know the rather sad person from long ago who still has the sideburns and wears the polyester and thinks of himself as cool--time stopped when he decided he was cool, and he was so satisfied with himself that he managed, for a while, to make other people think that he was still cool. And all of his close friends still think he's cool and don't notice the sideburns and the polyester. But the rest of the world does, and quietly slips away, his coolness eroding until only he believes in it. Fewer and fewer people come to his party and the few guests that are there, relatives and employees and fellow-travelers all, are louder and louder in their denial and sneering at those who didn't come.

"How many sections are you fluent in?" The arrogance.

Their circulation is declining, and they were forced to mortgage their building to meet debt obligations. One of my fondest hopes is to wake up one day and to see a picture, in some respectable paper, which is of course not the paper of record, of Frank Rich on the sidewalk, like the madam in Pretty Baby who was drunk on absinthe in bed when the New Orleans bailiffs came to repossess the furniture. They tipped her out of bed and she lay in the floor, drooling. Of course Rich would be shouting imprecations against Republicans through the slobber, blaming them, inter alia, for the Black Death.

A fitting end for a once-great paper sunk into the irrelevance brought by its own preening, snooty liberalism. A paper way past its sell-by date, whose only asset seems to be its own opinion of itself.

Which other people aren't buying. See the mortgage, above.

The NYT, the Los Angeles Times and all of the other great, and great cough here, papers in severe financial distress, taught people not to have values but to throw attitude. Which made them vulnerable. I wonder if they will ever appreciate the irony as I do? Nah. At all? Nah. They positioned themselves as being fashionable instead of being honest and guess what? They gave a paper and nobody came. They're selling bustles and no one is buying. See the old whore above.

Pinch, before you throw stones at the CEOs of the Big Three, look in the mirror.

Another papal bull from the White House has been delivered and Mr. Obama has decreed that he wants to put a cap on charitable giving by the wealthy. This is to finance changes in our approaching socialized medicine, which, with WalMart and other big companies behind it, is likely to be rammed down our throats. No doubt WalMart is hot to make all Americans pay for its $4 prescription loss leaders. I'm going to Target, even if it is French.

Under the Obama plan, families making more than $250,000 a year would be capped at 28¢ on the dollar for itemized charitable deductions.

The biggest days for charities are the last ones of the year, when wealthy individuals decide how much they can give, to get it in on the current tax year. Now, with this limit, there will be less incentive, in fact 72% less incentive, to give this money. Leftists have said that it would make no difference to charities, citing, rightly or not, wrinkles in tax law, and ignoring, as usual, the people who make the deductions, because for the left the individual, although made much of, is merely a construct. Charitable giving will indeed go down drastically.

This is of course yet another assault on American freedom. The very essence of freedom is personal agency--if you want to give money to the American Cancer Society, it is your right to do so. If you want to give money to the Mortimer Snerd Buggy Whip Museum in East Sump Pump, Ohio, and it is an accredited charity, it is your right to do so, and still take the charitable deduction. But with this fiat the government will interpose itself, yet again, between one's volition and one's possible actions.

I have said for years that the raison d'être of modern liberalism is to unlink actions from consequences, and therefore to destroy one's sense of agency. This is servitude and people who impose servitude are your masters and owners.

The flip side of not being able to do what you what to do is not being made responsible for what you do do, and in both cases the government will put itself right in the middle, deciding what consequences follow from what actions--and the decisions will be purely political ones, instead of moral ones.

Think: a moral action is being wrested from you by a political decision made by an arrogant man in Washington who knows best.

When actions are rewarded or punished not by ethics but by politics, the successful are those who play the political game, which is, as we all know, the game of gaining power over other people. Virtue has very little to do with it. Virtue as traditionally virtuous people know it, and not the politicized construct of the virtuous person today. A successful political player is honest only insofar as he has to be to remain viable, politically or in the system which he is profiting from. There is no impetus to be an ethical person and indeed ethics can be a positive hindrance. In the entirely politicized system, check your conscience at the door.

The Obama White House has determined that even the human heart will be remade into the image of His O'liness. Charities will no longer by our own to choose but will instead be the choice of the government. A final test of the arrogance of this man is that he has decreed that his moral choices will become our moral choices.

Now, according to the Obama White House, charity does not begin at home.

A new low in American government. A new high in arrogance and conceit.

Now I understand. We have African Americans. Italian Americans. Native Americans. Mexican Americans. It only makes sense to have Criminal Americans.

The Democrat Party has pandered to every group that it can, and now I understand that gun control is pandering to Criminal Americans.

And why not? The Democrat Party has quite cynically figured that the American populace would be so flattered at the pandering that they would not realize that the pandering done down the block, or in the next sentence, was contradictory to the pandering just done to them. This is just the same thing as believing that the whore loves you and only you.

Why not pander to Criminal Americans? The government is making a two-fisted grab for your money and liberty; his O'liness has rolled over for Iran and Russia; his attempt to destroy the onshore drilling will make us ever more vulnerable to foreign oil, and only moonbats think that windmills and solar cells can fill the gap. The borders are porous and the government doesn't even count the Arabs it stops. In many meaningful ways the government has abdicated its principal responsibilities as government, and is making me question its legitimacy.

Now the major difference between a footpad and the government is that your tax dollars do not bear the cost of the prosecution, and defense, of the footpad.

When you are the richest kids on the planet people are already looking at you. This pretty much obviates the need for any Apple product.

Because you have to figure that this guy just isn't worth a billion dollars anymore. It is more like two cartons of smokes in prison at this point.

If you have reached the age of 30 and still have a tendency to regale anyone who was not an actual fraternity brother with tales of your time in the frat house...then you have forfeited the right to make fun of Trekkies.

Because you essentially are one.

So sayeth Walsingham