The Weekly Hardon (1/27/09)

From the files of Town Hall's Amanda Carpenter....

BROKEN PROMISES FOR PRO-LIFERS: Thousands of pro-life activists who rallied at the Capitol last Thursday to mark 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade were given a chilly reception by newly-inaugurated President Obama. Obama made a public statement reaffirming his commitment "to protecting a woman's right to choose" that day and rescinded the Bush Administration's "Mexico City policy" prohibiting the use of tax dollars to fund abortion abroad the next. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins believes the action may forecast more "broken promises" Obama made to pro-lifers. "At a debate last year at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, then-candidate Barack Obama vowed to find 'common ground' on the issue of abortion and that he, as President, would work to 'reduce the number of abortions,'" Perkins said on Friday. "His action today flies in the face of that vow and probably sets a record as the most quickly broken campaign promise ever leaving the question, how many more broken promises to families lie ahead?"

"Broken promises" {chuckle}.  You can't tell me that pro-lifers actually bought into Lucifer's "promise" to "find common ground" with them on abortion.  The reasons are legion - he's a Democrat, he's a liberal, he's ALWAYS been radically anti-life, and he's as "Christian" as Judas Iscariot.  Actually, ol' Judas was more pious than Barry O, because when he realized what he had done in betraying the LORD, he had the good grace to rush right out and hang himself.

As for King Hussein, "he's president" so that means he gets whatever he wants, or else.  And "finding common ground" with pro-lifers means pro-lifers give up their viewpoint and become "pro-choicers," just like "bipartisanship" means Republicans are supposed to abandon "partisan politics" and assimilate into the Democrat Party in order to "get done" Red Barry's Marxist policy agenda.

Seriously, pro-life activists didn't already know this?  Am I the last of the ingrained right-wing cynics?  Alone immune to the mental disease known as "Hopeandchange"?

As the next sun-driven Ice Age approaches, the "global warming" hoaxers keep sinking deeper and deeper into self-parody:

HILLARY'S VERY OWN CLIMATE CZAR Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has taking an unprecedented action by appointing her department its very own Climate Czar. She named Todd D. Stern, who once served as her husband's senior White House negotiator during Kyoto talks, to the post. (Note: Stern should not be confused with President Obama's White House Global Warming Czar, Carol M. Browner). Before joining the State Department, Stern was a senior fellow at the liberally-leaning Center for American Progress which staffs many former Clinton officials. There, he specialized in climate and environmental issues. And, he probably has some ideas for Hillary. Stern wrote a public memo to the next president in the June 2007 issue of the American Interest in which he proposed the creation of an "E-8," which would include four developed and four developing countries. Ideally, he wrote the group would be a vehicle to bypass the slow-moving United Nations and "break through the political fog and bureaucratic clutter to give global environmental issues the focused top-level treatment they deserve." He wrote, "an E-8 would create an ecological board of directors able to operate outside the bureaucracy and politics of large UN conventions. This is sorely needed. Just as you can't run a company through plenary meetings of the shareholders, you can't manage crucial global issues that way either."

An unaccountable, rogue ecological extra-bureaucratic bureaucracy.  Leave it to enviromarxists to get impatient with the inherent limitations of their own governing mechanisms.  Can't let government stand in the way of demolishing what's left of the economy and herding the scattered, tattered survivors back into the caves from whence their ancestors came all those thousands of years ago, right?

And leave it to the Empress to come up with such a concept.  Yeah, it's not the presidency, it's not world domination, but she's going to make Foggy Bottom as much of her own personal empire as she possibly can.

If I were B.O., I'd be keeping a close eye on her.

STRING ATTACHED TO ILLINOIS's STIMULUS Tucked inside the 1,588 page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, otherwise known as Obama's economic stimulus bill, is language that forbids any stimulus dollars to be given to the state of Illinois while disgraced Rod Blagojevich remains Governor. The current version of the bill reads: "None of the funds provided by this Act may be made available to the State of Illinois, or any agency of the State, unless (1) the use of such funds by the State is approved in legislation enacted by the State after the date of the enactment of this Act, or (2) Rod R. Blagojevich no longer holds the office of Governor of the State of Illinois."

Blago is a crook and she already be in jail.  But then, the same is true of most Democrats, most especially the architects and shephards of Red Barry's gonzo-megaporkzilla bill, under whose direction (and not any Republican) that particular provision was inserted as an explicit attempt to distance themselves from Blago.

But doesn't this amount to overt federal extortion of a "sovereign state"?  I want to see Blago frog-marched to the clink in orange jumpsuit and hand-cuffs as much as the next rightie, but do they have to further kill federalism in the process?

Yes, that's a rhetorical question.  Federalism died decades ago.  This amounts to pissing on its grave.  Again.

BIDEN BANKS FOR MORE Vice President Joe Biden indicated the administration may ask Congress for more money to save fledgling banks even though taxpayers have already pumped $700 billion to Wall Street. The first $350 million of the financial bailout package has already been spent and the remaining $350 billon left in the TARP program will soon be released. Biden said he wasn't sure if the remaining $350 billion would be the end of the bank bailouts. He explained after Tim Geithner is confirmed to become Treasury Secretary, Geithner "will then report back to the president and me as to whether or not he thinks that 350 is enough," on CBS's Face the Nation Sunday.

Because, as the M-TV slogan once went, "Too much is never enough."

More.  Wasn't that a line from the "Neo vs. a thousand Agent Smiths" scene in Matrix Re-Loaded?  At that particular moment there are only a few dozen Smiths and Neo is kicking all their asses, and one of the Smiths, after being thrown clear across the courtyard (or whatever it was) to smash through a park bench props himself up on his elbow and says, "More!"  And then all the surrounding ground-floor doors suddenly burst open and all these additional Smith copies, hundreds of them, come rushing out like the water from the Alkali Lake Dam at the end of X-Men II and turn the fight scene into such an overdone farce that I was doubled over laughing in the theatre.

Which should give you a fairly good idea of my subterranean opinion of TARP and Veep Rogaine's prescription refill.  All that money, spent to accomplish an ostensible purpose - reliquidizing credit markets - that was far more psychological in nature and thus immune to this mammoth cash-dump.  Lenders were, and are, scared - of the downward state of the economy, and of the terrifying growth of federal power over the banking industry as a result of TARP.  They don't WANT to be "helped" by the feds, because that means getting taken over by the feds.  It's like a woman taking money for sex; once she does so, she becomes a whore forever, even if she never does it ever again.  And in this case, Timothy Geithner would be a most ruthless pimp.

The only way to end the fear is to reverse course, repeal TARP, divest the feds of their bank preferred stock portfolio, and abolish the Community Reinvestment Program that knocked over the banking sector in the first place.  Which is kind of like asking a hungry lion to pull its entrail-enslimed snout out of the wildebeast's guts, sew up its gaping wounds, revive the poor bovine beast, and send it on its merry way with a twenty dollar tip for its trouble.

Sure, that'd still make the wildebeast a whore.  But at least it'd be free.