When they put together the Super Committee* that’s supposed to find all of the ways we can pull the fiscal policy of our country out of the spin cycle, I hope that they put together their rules so that it’s run in the same way that the question and answer periods in British parliament are run.

“Mr. Senator, what is your justification for wanting to cut funding for research into the mating habits of the Upper Zambezi Poison Death Frog, a study that funds three good paying jobs in my district?”
“Congresman, I want to cut this funding because your mother’s a whore.  Got any other bright questions before we adjourn for the day?”

*(which sounds like it should be a political Justice League of America, but I digress)

Since I turned 18, a lot of names have been used to ridicule and denigrate me.

• When my family moved to California, I was called “Okie” because I came from a place where people worked for a living and took care of themselves instead of being a self-centered consumer drone.
• When I signed up for the Army before I graduated high school, my aging hippie teachers started calling me “Killer” because I had decided it was better to serve my country than to go to Berkeley and get stoned for four years.
• When I was at Monterey during the Panama invasion and Desert Shield, more aging hippies and their proto-slacker companions called me “Baby Killer” and “Murderer” as they protested at the gates of the Presidio and Fort Ord.  Side note – I never saw a protest when I transferred to Texas just prior to the beginning of Desert Storm
• When I was stationed in Germany, I was regularly called “Auslander” by people who were too young to remember the famine that American money stopped or the rebuilding that the Marshall Plan paid for.  Side note – I’ve shared more than a few beers with German veterans of World War II who remembered being helped up from the ashes by American GI’s.
• When I lived in southern Arizona, I was sometimes called “Pendejo” or “Gringo” by illegal immigrants, who would show up at my door asking for handouts, because I told them to get off the property or I’d call the cops.
• After moving to Kentucky, I’ve been called a “Carpetbagger” or a “Yankee” because my family chose to go north after getting off the boat instead of south.  Usually this has been done jokingly, but sometimes it’s done in all seriousness.
• On several occasions throughout my life I’ve been called “racist” because I expect everyone, regardless of where they or their ancestors come from, to work as hard as I do, act like a civilized human being, and respect my property rights.
• I’ve been called “Bambi Killer” because I like to walk around in the woods in the fall on the off chance that I’ll bump into a deer. This is usually told to me by someone who has no problem buying milk fed veal at the butcher for her Saturday evening dinner parties.
• I’ve been called an “abuser” in public because I expect my children to act like something more than what they evolved from in public, and am not shy about correcting them no matter where we are.
• I’ve been called a “gun nut” and a “paranoid” because I believe that it’s my responsibility to provide safety, nourishment, and security to my family and not the governments.

Now, people who, like me, believe that the government has lost its way and needs correcting in the form of reform and pruning are being called terrorists for not folding like a bed sheet at the first disapproving glance from the White House.

To those who say that believing in the desirability of a smaller, more efficient government and fighting for that idea is the moral equivalent of being a member of Hamas or Al Qaeda, I have one thing to say:

Bring it.  I’ve been insulted by better people than you.

If you think I’m scared by the words of some pissant who thinks he’s one of the proletariat because he rode a train back to Delaware every day after wasting time in the Senate, think again.  And if you think I’m worried about what some over-botox’ed harpy from the Bay Area thinks of me, think again.  If you think a man who’s served in the military, been married three times, and thinks its fun to train soldiers by letting them shoot him in the chest is concerned about the opinions of talking heads from Los Angeles and New York, think again.

Middle America is waking up, and it is you who has woken the sleeping giant.  The shrill screeching of a political class that has grown fat sucking off of the government teat does nothing to keep us from knowing what is right, and who is wrong.  Insulting and denigrating the salt of the earth folks who actually get out of bed every day and produce in order to curry favor with the parasites who have never worked an honest day in their lives and keep re-electing you does nothing but make the electoral ass whooping you so richly deserve even bigger when it inevitably comes.

My one word of advice:  Live in fear of the power of those you attempt to chastise.  We are peaceful people, and you are in no physical danger.  But we will remove you from power using every legal, constitutional method we can find.  We have a long memory, and a vote, and we outnumber you.  We are not tied to a party.  Until we remove you, we will resist you.  We will protest, we will prosthetylize, and we will make converts out of those who realize how much you have betrayed us.  We are tied to principles, not party.  Republicans who look down their patrician noses at us for being part of the unwashed masses are no safer than Democrats who scream at us from the heights.

H/T for Larry Correia for writing something that helped to coalesce something that’s been going through my head for days.

I have known several addicts in my life.  When their problem became public knowledge, we all knew that all of the ‘gifts’ and ‘loans’ we had given them over the years had done nothing but feed the monkey on their back.  Even then, there was always some soft-hearted and soft-headed individual who would continue to give them money to buy poison.

Over the last couple of years, and especially in the last few months, a growing number of Americans have come to realized just how addicted to massive deficit spending we have become.  Last night, the political leadership of our country agreed to give the money-addicted monkey on our country’s back another $2.4 trillion to buy smack.  Mind you, a few years ago, people were freaking out when our yearly deficit hit half a trillion dollars and now we’re adding double that amount in one stroke of a pen.

In exchange for that, we’re being told that there will be a trillion dollars in cuts over the next decade.  Let’s look at 10 years, shall we?

10 years ago:

• The World Trade Center was still one of the tallest buildings in the world
• Saddam Hussein was still the dictator of Iraq
• Girlie Bear was almost 3, and Little Bear was almost 5
• I had just moved to Kentucky and had just started dating Irish Woman
• The United States was running it’s last budget surplus
• The public debt of the United States was 30 to 35% of GDP
• A lot of the people who made this budget deal were either unknown to most Americans or were junior members of the Congress

Today:

• We are squabbling over what should go in the hole where the World Trade Center used to be
• Saddam Hussein has been dead for years and we are still occupying Iraq
• Girlie Bear is almost 13, and Little Bear is almost 15
• Irish Woman and I have been married almost 7 years, and we have a beautiful little boy
• The projected budget deficit for 2011 was supposed to be about $1.4 Trillion, but we just upped the ceiling by another $1 Trillion, so who knows?
• The public debt of the United States is estimated to be between 70 and 75% of GDP
• Most of the people who made this deal are up for re-election next year and did a pretty good job of kicking the can down the road just long enough to keep this problem from interfering with that

In 10 years:

• There will probably be some memorial at the former site of the World Trade Center, but the attacks will be 20 years in the past
• Few people under the age of 30 will easily remember who Saddam Hussein was, and we will probably still have troops in Iraq
• Girlie Bear and Little Bear will probably have graduated from college, and will either be in graduate school or working
• Irish Woman and I will have been together for 20 years, and Boo will be in middle school
• Heaven knows just how much money these goobers are going to spend above and beyond what they take in in taxes, but given their track record, it doesn’t look good
• According to the CBO, our public debt is projected to be around 90 to 95% of GDP
• Most of the people who made the budget deal yesterday will either be retired on very generous terms or will be dead

It’s amazing what can happen in 10 years, and how things that we planned on happening can become a faint memory.  I have no doubt that no matter what this blue ribbon committee finds, they will phase any cuts in over more than the halflife of their retirement plans so that they won’t have to go through the pain of actually governing the country like statesmen instead of weaseling out of their responsibilities like politicians.

For those of us who will still be holding down a job, trying to make ends meet, and pay our taxes, small cuts over the next 10 years are meaningless.  Boehner, Reed, McConnell, and Obama betrayed us this weekend, and they won’t be around to deal with the consequences.  We have to cut federal spending now.  Not over the next decade, not next year, not after the next election cycle.  Right. Bloody. Now.  We were enslaved to huge public debts by Roosevelt and Johnson.  That yoke was weighted down by Reagan, Bush I and II, and Clinton.  Obama has tied us to a wheel that will slowly grind us down to dust if we do not break the chains of fiscal irresponsibility.  Both parties are guilty of putting us in this situation, and we cannot wait for it to be politically expedient to get us out.

I am contacting both of my Senators and my Congressman to tell them that I want them to vote against this deal.  One of my Senators is Mitch McConnell, so I’m pretty sure that I’m wasting paper writing to him about this, but I have to try.  I urge all of you to do the same.  I’m beginning to believe that we can’t vote our way out of this, but we have to try to use the system as it is until something changes.  In the meantime, I am also stocking up on things that can be traded for goods and services that weren’t printed at the mint.  Something tells me that toilet paper will be of more value than greenbacks sometime in the near future.

The head of the NAACP is comparing requirements in some states to show a government issued ID before voting to Jim Crow laws.  It seems that asking people to prove that they are indeed the person they claim to be is in some way discriminatory. The argument seems to be that the poor cannot afford an ID, young people might not get an ID, and the elderly might not be able to get to the license bureau to get one, and those groups tend to vote in a way that makes the NAACP happy.  The evil people who support these laws must be racists, ageists, and classist in some way.  Apparently, these laws are a racist reaction to the election of the first African American president, even though I’ve been hearing proposals for these laws since the mid-1990’s.

My response:  Shut up.  I’m tired of hearing about it.  The laws have been passed by the people’s representatives, approved by the chief executives of the states, and upheld by the courts.  The time to act like a petulant child is over.  If getting the young, the poor, the minority, and the old to the polls in order to support politicians that the NAACP likes is so important, then quit your bellyaching and start getting these people to the DMV to get an ID and then get them to the polls.  These groups obviously don’t have a problem getting to a government office to arrange to have free money delivered.  Every state I’ve heard of has some program that allows the indigent to get an ID at no cost.  For those without the necessary paperwork, such as a birth certificate or Social Security card, you have over a year to get off your butt and get that taken care of so you can get an ID and vote.  Quit complaining, get off your butt, and do what needs doing.  If you can’t be bothered to devote a couple of hours to get an ID, then I doubt you’ll be bothered to register to vote and actually vote.

You know, I think some people would complain if it was raining gold.  Not too long before I was born, a person who wasn’t lilly white had a hard time voting at all in some parts of this country.  Now you can get on the rolls and vote pretty much anywhere with little to no hassle.  And now the NAACP wants to complain because the voters of some states are being asked to prove their identity so that elections can be a bit cleaner.

Sometimes, I just want to stand on a corner yelling “Stop being a jerk!”.  Comparing a requirement to acquire and present a little plastic card in order to do the most important thing a citizen can do to laws that restricted Americans of African descent from participating in most of society is asinine.  And while we’re at it, how about a requirement to have an index finger dipped in flourescent indelible ink so that the slogan of “Vote Early, Vote Often” becomes meaningless?

According to the Washington Post, the U.S. and French embassies in Damascus, Syria, were attacked earlier today.  The French embassy guards reportedly opened fire over the heads of demonstrators in order to stop them before they did any damage, while the American ambassador allowed the sanctity of his post to be violated with no real response from the local Marine guard.

Now, I’m not saying that Barack Obama is the second coming of Jimmy Carter, and Damascus in 2011 is not Tehran in 1979, but the parallels are there.  We have a middle eastern dictator who needs to distract his people from internal issues with a foreign bogeyman facilitating assaults against our embassy.  It’s not a big step from smashing a few windows and ripping down our flag to a full scale overrunning of the embassy by a mob at the direction of the current Syrian client of Tehran.

President Obama needs to respond to this more forcefully than a stern look at a press conference.  Armed Americans need to be on the walls and roofs of that embassy.  They need to have clearly written, publicly viewable rules of engagement.  It wouldn’t hurt if someone went around the perimeter of the embassy with fluorescent, glow in the dark orange paint and put up a very visible line that will not be crossed.  That way when some dumbass gets the top of his head removed by a 7.62mm haircut, his family can’t say he wasn’t warned.  If Syria continues its provocations, a complete MEU and carrier battle group need to be in the eastern Mediterranean and an Air Force strike group needs to be in the Kurdish region of Iraq.  A repeat of today’s activities or worse should bring the full wrath of the United States on the Assad regime, including the residences of the president and his family.

I never want to watch images of 3rd world goat pimps parading U.S. diplomats and military personnel around for the cameras again.  If President Obama is not willing to do what is necessary to protect our embassy, he should either close it or step aside and let a grown-up take charge for a little while.

The presidential seal fell off of President Obama’s limousine the other night as he was travelling to the airport in Philadelphia.  While the Secret Service maintains that this kind of thing happens from time to time, but it’s the first time I’ve heard of it.  If I were a superstitious man, I’d take this as a sign of things to come, like a broken sword in a king’s scabbard.

What other signs that the Obama presidency is in trouble should we be be on the look out for?

• His head speechwriter gets struck by lightning on a clear day
• His teleprompter is found hanging by its own power cord with a goodbye note nearby
• The seal on his speaking podium bursts into flame
• “Hail To The Chief” is replaced in the press room with the theme from “The Omen”
• The bust of Lenin that the President’s mother left to him in her will starts to cry tears of vodka
• The bust of Churchill he returned to the Brits is found with an ear to ear grin on its face
• The President’s doctor reports that he is not sleeping well due to nightmares that cause him to wake up screaming “Palin!  Perry!  Rubio!”