This was originally posted on May 16, 2012

President Obama recently added his contributions to the biographies of his predecessors.   I’ve taken a look, and I think he missed a few:

• 1802 – President Jefferson requests authorization from Congress to deal with the Barbary Pirates of Libya and Morocco.  President Obama carries on his legacy by waging a war against the Quaddafi regime in Libya without getting authorization from Congress.
• 1863 – President Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in territory that has been taken from the Confederacy.  This is a prelude to the eventual emancipation of all slaves in the United States.  President Obama honors this act by continuing and extending policies that keep black Americans on the plantation of poverty.
• 1962 – President Kennedy challenges the nation to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.  President Obama honors this legacy by telling NASA leadership that their biggest task was to reach out to Muslim countries and improve their self-esteem about the contributions to science and mathematics done by Muslims 1000 years ago.
• 1964 – President Johnson calls on the nation to wage a War on Poverty.  President Obama is doing his part by pursuing policies that put almost three million additional people under the federal poverty line, with minorities being hardest hit.
• 1970 – President Nixon signs the Controlled Substances Act, kicking off the war on drugs in the United States.  President Obama continues this fight against personal responsibility by using federal agents to suppress the use of marijuana as a pharmaceutical in the states that have legalized the practice.

Can y’all think of any more?  I’d hate for the President’s glorious record to be uncelebrated.

This was originally posted on May 1, 2012

Let’s say there are two grocery stores in your neighborhood.  To be honest, there isn’t much difference between them, except for the signs over the door and one has a few more organic vegetables than the other.  One of them is the dominant store in your town, and you’ve been buying your groceries from them for a few years.  To be honest, you aren’t happy with the quality of their wares or the service you get.

So when the other store gives itself a makeover and has a bit of publicity, you decide to go over there one morning.  You buy a few things, and while things are pretty much the same as at the other store, your experience is marginally better, so you start doing regular business with them.  You notice that there are a lot of people who start shopping at the second shop at about the same time you do.

A few weeks later, you get an email from a friend.  It’s basically asking “Have you seen this?”.  The first store, the one you left because of service, price, and quality, has put up a big billboard in front of their store.  On the billboard is your name, your picture, the times you went to the other store, and the amount you spent.  It also details the things you bought, and even goes so far as to make aspersions about your character based on any run-ins you’d had with store management over the years.  They have a little section for each person who has stopped doing business with them in favor of the new store.

For a grocery store, this is pretty crass and classless. For a President of the United States, it’s shameful.

President Obama and his re-election campaign are doing somethingvery similar when it comes to people who are donating money to the Romney campaign.  The campaign’s website is singling out individual donors to Mr. Romney and impugning their motivations and character for committing the sin of supporting Obama’s opponent.

These are not the actions of a man and an administration that recognize the rights of citizens to support whatever political candidate or cause they want.  This is voter intimidation just as certainly as if he had posted thugs at the polls with cudgels.

I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone reading this that I don’t care for Mr. Obama, his politics, his values, or his work ethic.  I don’t have a much better opinion of Mr. Romney.  I’ve been very torn as to whether to vote for Romney this year.  I don’t like his record as governor of Massachusetts.  Nothing he has said during the primaries has convinced me that he has changed enough since then to make me want to support him.

But I will be damned if I will be intimidated by some Chicago machine thug from questioning and opposing President Obama, no matter who I vote for in November.  Things like this make me want to vote for Romney if for no other reason than to spit in the eye of the President’s campaign.

Want to see me cut my nose to spite my face, President Obama?  Keep pulling stuff like this.

This was originally posted on April 1, 2012

Washington D.C. – (DBI)  President Obama called an emergency joint session of Congress today to report on something he had found in the White House that will have shocking ramifications for the United States.

“Last night, as I was preparing for bed, I found this in the sock drawer of the extra dresser in the Lincoln Bedroom.”, said the President as he waved around a sheet of yellowed paper.

“It’s an old document that lists out how our government is supposed to work, and if you can believe it, lists out several things that our government is prohibited from doing, like establishing a religion or forcing someone to testify against himself.  Most worrisome, it limits how much we can push the American people to do in their private lives, including not doing anything about that worrisome American habit of wanting to own and carry around guns.”

Analysis of pictures taken at the event indicate that the President had found an old copy of the United States Constitution, a mostly forgotten document written during the early years of the nation.  While  some people in the United States hold to it as a ‘founding’ document for the United States, the majority of people who matter in the country, mostly found on either coast, had forgotten about its existence.

“What fools we’ve been!” opined Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, flanked by Minority Leader McConnell and Speaker of the House John Boehner,  ”This actually says that if something isn’t given to the federal government as a power, then it can’t do that!  How are we supposed to continue paying people to not work and interfere with people doing things that we don’t like like making money and deciding about their health care and what they do with their own reproductive organs?”

After a quick bi-partisan conference where the document was read aloud to congressional leadership, many members of congress took the rostrum to express shock at the document’s contents.

“Really?  We have the power to declare war, and the President isn’t supposed to do anything like that without getting our OK?  But what about all of those if-we-don’t-do-something-we’ll-lose-the-interest-of-the-masses wars we’ve been launching?” said Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California.

Congressional leadership immediately began drafting legislation to scale the federal government back to its level of involvement in the country as it stood sometime in 1903, the last time anyone remembered that document being brought out when leaders where trying to decide the direction of the country.

Governors across the country received telephone calls from Mr. Obama, explaining the document and how it meant that the states would be given a lot more responsibility for themselves, but also that they would not have Washington pushing them in one direction or another anymore.  The governors of Texas, Arizona, and Montana are all reported to have shrugged and gotten on with business, while those of Massachusetts, California, New York, and Illinois are under suicide watch at this time.

Stay tuned to DaddyBear International for late breaking updates to this story and others.

This was originally posted on February 17, 2012

When I’ve talked to people who know more than I do about self-defense, the thing that I’ve heard more than one person say is “Watch the hands”.  Hands hold weapons, hands point guns, and hands are used to strike the first blow.  Mouths can say things that distract or incite you, eyes can fake you out about intentions.  If you pay attention to what the hands are doing, you have a better chance of knowing what someone is going to do in a confrontation.

President Obama and his supporters are cranking up the rhetoric machine to get their political base whipped up for the 2012 elections.  Their heads are making noises, and the mob is responding.  Maybe it’s promises to finish the work he wanted to do this term but couldn’t because of the evil opposition.  Maybe it’s igniting jealousy about those perceived to have more.

But that’s not what the hands are doing.

The hands are creating “Truth Squads” to disrupt and refute those who oppose the President.

The hands are describing people who prefer to pay cash or keep the government out of their lives as terrorists.

The hands are pushing the limits on constitutionality and decency to see just how far they can go to make us comply.

The hands are circumventing the Congress through executive fiat to do things that the representatives of the people won’t vote for.

The hands are negotiating with the U.N. on treaties that could potentially impinge on our civil rights if the President and Secretary of State can get them through the Senate.

The hands are organizing unions and a rabble to create the perception of mass demonstrations against the President’s opponents.

The hands are implementing economic and fiscal policies that will drive us to poverty and financial slavery for generations.

If we want to unseat President Obama in November, we need to stop listening to his rhetoric and start watching his actions.  We need to recognize and counteract them when they threaten the opposition and the integrity of the process.  We need to make sure that no matter who sits in the White House next January, there are enough Representatives and Senators who don’t belong to the Cult of Obama that they can slowdown or stop harmful things that Obama tries to do in the event that he has a second term.

Because it’s not his silver tongue that’s going to do damage to the Republic, it’s his hands.

By all accounts, Mitt Romney took Barack Obama to the woodshed last night.  Hey, anything that puts the staff at MSNBC on a suicide watch must have been good.

All indications are that Mr. Romney ‘won’ last night’s debate by a wide margin. You can put me in the “surprised” category on that one.  President Obama is a talented orator, and he performed very well during the debates in 2008.  I expected that the best Romney could accomplish would be to not lose badly.  I’ve seen nothing in him that indicates that he’s a good debater, but I guess the preparation and practice really paid off.  The football fan in me wonders if he didn’t watch tapes of the 2008, 1980, and 1984 debates to get an idea of how to handle his opponent.

Personally, I didn’t watch the debate.  Sorry guys, but I’m not going to do that for blog fodder.  I’ve already made up my mind that I’m not voting for Obama, and what Romney says in a carefully choreographed ‘debate’ with someone who’s already lost my vote isn’t going to convince me to vote for him.

I put debate in quotes  because I don’t see this as a true debate.  When you hold negotiations on what will be asked, it’s not a debate, it’s a joint press conference between two men who don’t care for each other.  The two major parties stopped using a neutral third party like the League of Women Voters to run the debates while I was in high school, and for the most part, candidates without a (D) or an (R) aren’t welcome.   This is especially true since Ross Perot stole the show in 1992.  I’m not convinced that Gary Johnson is the best man for the job, but it would have been nice if he and the candidates from one or two of the other alternate parties could have participated in at least one debate.  I guess when you plan the soire, you get to pick and choose who gets invited.  Heaven forbid that someone who will actually make the candidates articulate and defend their positions on issues shows up and pisses in the punchbowl.

So anyway, congratulations to Mitt Romney on the victory.  Coming up, we have the VP candidates debating in Danville, Kentucky, followed by a couple more presidential debates, where the guy in the blue suit and red tie will disagree with the other guy in the blue suit and the red tie.  I’m off to make popcorn.

The jackasses are rounding the last turn, and we’re heading into the home stretch on Election 2012.  Depending on who is polled and who is doing the polling, either Rainbow Unicorn is pulling away from the pack, or Olympic Rhino is ahead by a nose.  Also depending on which echo chamber you listen to, one of them or the other is winning this thing without breaking a sweat.

On the “Obama must go” side, everyone is talking about how the president is losing it, his administration and re-election are in disarray, and he will lose by a huge margin.  While I hope that they are right, I have two words that should give all of us pause:  John Kerry.

In 2004, George Bush was about as unpopular as I’d ever seen a sitting president in a re-election cycle.  Honestly, you could have knocked me over with a feather the day after the election when I found out that Bush had been re-elected, and I supported the guy.  Kerry supporters had been crowing for weeks before election day, and afterward they needed a suicide watch.

I want Obama to start packing on November 7.  I want this country to start the long, slow, slog back to sanity.  But we won’t get there by assuming we’ll win because everyone we know says he’ll lose.  Leave the celebration for the day after the election.  For now, we need to get on the ground and grapple with the opposition, no matter how defeated we think they are.  We need to scrounge the voter lists for every possible person we can get to the polls, argue every point with the misguided, and point out every single reason Obama should join the ranks of the unemployed.

I will sincerely hate having to come on here on November 7 to discuss how we lost because we got cocky and didn’t take care of the electoral essentials.  Let’s all do what we can to make sure that doesn’t happen.