Workers Of The World

Lord Obama on The Workers. Next up: abolishing the secret ballot and the unwitting destruction of millions of American jobs.

Don't All Move At Once

This article from USA Today says that about half the people in the country want to move away from where they live and about half don't. Pretty Earth shattering stuff! 50/50. Mediocre. Average.

When I saw the headline my first thought was, "now that the New Socialists are in full control I want to move to a beachfront shack in Belize." But they were really asking about people's desire to move around inside the United States. Well, in that regard, I live exactly where I want to live-- and it doesn't look like this:

Learning Expensive Lessons on the Job

Yesterday was a follow-through day on Wall Street signaling the start of a new rally. Nothing terribly exciting about that since rallies can fail pretty quickly and in the past 12 months they usually have. Still, no bull market can get started without there first being a follow-through and confirmed rally-- so, it was better than a sharp stick in the eye for traders. Then this morning a story made the rounds, in the wake of ZERO Republican votes in the House for Lord O's huge spending bill. The story was that the megabill had 12 cents of every dollar pointed towards stimulating the economy and 88 cents of every dollar attached to long wished-for Democrat spending schemes.

The market opened down and continued down all day. However, there was some hope that the final hour would see buyers come in and save this newborn rally. Not so fast. Obama had one of those photo-ops with questions in the final hour of trading and he used it to vent his spleen about bank executive pay. That's all well and good but what really caught the ear of traders was when he said that there would be a time for banks to make profits again but this was not the time. When the POTUS says that a business, especially a business currently being big-footed by the feds, shouldn't expect to make a profit this year... well, why would anyone own shares in such a venture? Does this kid even know what the stock market is? Does he know what equities are? Doubtful. Predictably, financial stocks got hammered in the final hour and lead the market lower.

This kid has a lot to learn about shooting from the lip. Sitting next to him was Slow Joe Biden when he made this costly mistake. Earlier in the day Joe told CNBC that he wanted to throw executives who were paid a bonus in 2008 "into the brig."

Lord O should keep in mind what Joe would say-- and then NOT SAY IT!

Danger Draws Closer

When hearing that the Iraqi government is banning Blackwater operators from their country many good folks here in the US will call the Iraqis ingrates and worse. It wouldn't be the first time that a country, having been liberated by force from a brutal regime, turned on their liberators. But it's a little more complicated than that. The Iraqi regime wouldn't do this if they hadn't been given a clear signal by the Obama/Biden/Hillary team that they should. Or, put another way, the new administration sees our protecting warriors, whether military or contractor, as a bigger threat than Hamas.

It isn't a coincidence that this happened after January 20, 2009. In the nine days since then the world has gotten quite a bit more dangerous as America is no longer forward-leaning. We are back to the repose of the pre- 9/11 years.

Disconnect

In Fayetteville, AR the citizenry has resorted to placing their Chevy SUV's directly under ice-laden trees in an attempt to quickly make the earth warmer.

Meanwhile in the fantasyland of Washington DC the high priest of Warmism, a former hack politician named Gore, told rapt Democrats that it might be too late-- the world may already be too hot.

Here at Monkeydarts Plantation we wonder how freakin' cold it would be this winter if we hadn't been driving all of those SUV's and pick-ups. 50 below zero? 60 below zero?

Cheer Up! You Won!

Over the past few weeks I've been away from the daily news more than at any time in the past decade. Many duties called me away from reading, listening, and viewing current events so now I'm in catch-up mode. One quick impression has formed regarding the period since the inauguration-- the left-leaning base just doesn't seem very happy. In fact, despite having control of all of Washington DC they seem as bitter as usual.

Now, I'm a big believer that many on the left are self-loathing types to start with-- in fact, that trait might be at the root of their notion that we don't need more liberty and freedom but we do need more state control of every aspect of our lives. Code Pink/ Daily Koz /Move-On types are a pretty miserable sort, and they really hate those of us who are generally happy. So, it isn't strange that they aren't very joyful, I guess. But, still, they just won the presidency with a guy who had the #1 most-liberal voting record in the US Senate. In the first week he's told the world that we will go in repose against Islamic terror, he's had a Secretary State declare that "Global Climate Change" is a key priority of the State Department, and he's taken our tax money to pay for more abortions around the world. It seems that's just the sort of claptrap that the left was begging for-- but grin they do not.

Now Lord O proposes that the citizens of states who managed their budgets correctly must send money to Washington to be disbursed to Deep Blue states that spent (and continue to spend) way beyond their means. We're supposed to bail-out California, New Jersey, New York et al. If I wanted to pay money to Sacramento I wouldn't have moved away from The Golden State in the first place. All of this, and more, on top of taxpayer money to the UAW-burdened automakers and other losing business plans. Still, not a smile from the hard-core left.

Lord Obama's biggest problems are going to come from his left. They have convinced themselves that every problem in the world, right down to the weather, has been caused by George W. Bush. In the deepest regions of their flaccid brains they probably know they're full of it-- some of 'em might realize it anyway. Their leader isn't helping either. Why would he pick a fight with a radio talk show host? Did GWB pick fights with media members who criticized him daily? Dan Rather tried to stop his re-election with an obvious fake document and President Bush never spoke about it directly. It seems very petty and small-minded for a fresh, young, energetic new president to be taking shots at commentators. He needs to be above that.

Obama's going to roll a very socialist agenda out in the first three months of his administration and my impression is that many on the left know it has to work or they're way up a river without any HOPE of return.

It won't work.

It never has.

And now they're realizing that it's more fun to be out of power, mindlessly screaming "Nazi! Fascist!" at your opponents than it is actually putting your far left policy prescriptions to the test. That makes them nervous and grim.

At least that's my impression from a distance.

Burning Blood

When the nutballs in Iran burn and deface pictures of Lord Obama Reuters calls them "hardliners." When they do the same to President Bush or VP Cheney they're just the average Iranian citizen having a bit of an understandable lark. Still, as our friends at Unwelcome Distractions would say, this is an Unwelcome Distraction for our incoming Messiah, no? Wasn't he supposed to turn the world on with his smile, suddenly make a nothing day seem worthwhile? Wait, that was Mary Tyler Moore. Sorry.

Crazy Like A Fox?

Today we find out that the actor Mickey Rourke is a vocal defender of President Bush and a serial blaster of Sean Penn. That was a nice tonic as the blizzard rolls in on my little outpost so far away from the warm breezes at home. In fact, I feel so good about Mr. Rourke that I kinda wish I hadn't sold my VHS copy of 9 and a Half Weeks on ebay four years ago. I'd pop it in the video toaster and celebrate this brave thespian.

Then again, it could be that Rourke's nuts.

All The News That's Fit To Go Away

In December we wrote about a prediction that the NYTimes would go under in 2009 and the pieces would be swept up into a tidy pile by Rupert's News Corp. After their treachery this past weekend it can't happen fast enough to suit me.

Meanwhile the WSJ is reporting this morning that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is going under. The P-I is owned by Hearst and they're trying to sell it by the end of this quarter but, really, how many idiots are out there that would buy a failing newsprint operator in a 2-paper town? It's toast. I'd give 'em more money for the sign on the building than the whole freaking libtrash newspaper.

The more interesting part of the story to me is that Hearst's San Francisco Chronicle is losing $1 Million per week! Hey, I'm sure they're making it up in volume, volume, volume. I lived for quite a while in the SF Bay Area and tried to never give a dime to The Chron. Editorially it's to the left of Pravda.

In Detroit the daily papers are stopping daily home delivery of their low-yield rags. In St. Louis it's believed that there will be no local paper by the end of 2009. The NYTimes, despite failing and having their bonds priced as "junk", apparently believes that the way to go is to undermine the security of the US and her allies. And things are possibly worse on the West Coast with the Chron and P-I. Sound like a flawed business model to you?

This weekend I was in a situation where I had to sit in a waiting room with nothing to do but read the local paper where I'm visiting, The Toledo Blade. The Blade actually had an editorial stating that the only book President Bush is known to have read is "My Pet Goat." Now, if someone wants to write an op-ed that channels the idiocy of Mikey Moore, that's fine. He's about as relevant as The Fonz when you think about it, so rave on in the darkness. But this is the editorial voice of the only "major" paper in Northwest Ohio and it reads like it was written by a simpleton with pudding between his ears and an axe in his hands whilst banging on his manual typewriter.

You don't have to be a big George W. Bush fan to know that he's extremely well-read. America's greatest living novelist, Tom Wolfe, has spoken at some length about the reading habits of the current president. The man is an avid reader and, I would surmise, has read far more non-fiction in the past 10 years than the clown who typed the editorial for, as their front page proclaims, "One of America's Great Newspapers."

I suppose The Toledo Blade might very well be what their banner proclaims. Years ago it might have seemed like a brash and bold statement. Now it's like arguing that you really are one of the tallest munchkins marching on the yellow brick road. The Blade is the usual hodgepodge of dreary local interest prose tied to the same left-leaning national news services every other unreadable paper uses. The sports pages have no unique voice, the editorials are uniformly hard-left/ pro-labor and are written in the no-nothing style of the "My Pet Goat" howler. The obits are about the only reason I can see to plunk down a couple of coins and they don't write those-- they come fully-formed from the funeral home-- including the picture.

So that's the state of American journalism today. Will we miss them when they're all gone?

I suspect that soon the editorial writer at The Toledo Blade will have plenty of time to work his way through the lengthy list of books read by President Bush since taking office eight years ago.

Big Drama Obama

If you aren't reading John Kass in the Chicago Tribune regarding the ongoing Burris/ Blago/ Rahm/ Obama fiasco you are flat missing out.

Check this from Friday's Trib on Obama telling Reid how it's gonna go: The Chicago Way.

Bailout Misery

Governor Sanford has a well-reasoned piece on NRO:

"Each bailout leads many who work hard and take prudent risks to wonder why they should work hard while Washington strays toward a political economy — one in which you need the right lobbyists or a loud voice to be heard by Congress. There’s no bailout for your cousin across town or your brother-in-law’s little business; they didn’t pass muster with those in Washington who are picking winners and losers in today’s political marketplace.

Similar measures to stimulate the economy were tried without success in the 1930s. Prescribing the wrong medicine for an illness can make the patient still sicker. In downturns caused by excess production or inventory, current stimulus efforts could have worked because the goal is to spur consumer spending. By contrast, what we face today is a balance-sheet crisis, and in this situation, a stimulus like the one proposed will have little effect. We were told by leaders in Washington last spring that if we just sent $150 billion in stimulus checks things would get better, and we were told the same thing as we saw $2.3 trillion spent and committed to various stimuli and bailouts for the year. The tab for what’s been committed has now crossed $7 trillion — half of the yearly U.S. economy. Our leaders in Washington sound less credible with each new attempt.

The new administration’s bailout proposal is said to total between $700 to $800 billion. In a global slowdown, with a $67 trillion world economy, can another 1 percent make a difference? It’s as if we’ve tried to sweeten a local lake with truckloads of sugar and, upon seeing that this didn’t work, propose to toss in a box of donuts and confidently proclaim, 'Now that will make the difference!' "

From Bad Beltway Medicine.

What A Mug

I just saw an ad on this very website touting Obama plates and mugs. Good luck with that. But I got a chuckle out of it since the company is called Discount Mugs.

If ever there was a "discount mug" Lord Obama is it.

In Her Own Words

If you've been reading Big Hollywood from Day 1 you've probably already seen this first part of an interview with Governor Palin. It comes from a documentary being made by John Ziegler about how the legacy media promoted the candidacy of Barack Obama.

More Global Warming Please

It is so cold in Alaska that planes can't fly. They have a thing called ice fog-- the air gets so cold that fog freezes in the air.

Meanwhile in Europe Czar Putin is taking the opportunity of extremely cold weather to cut off natural gas to The Ukraine. Having done that they also blame The Ukraine for the problem as it spills over into the nations in "Old Europe". Not coincidentally those countries will decide who gets into their EU club.

And, throughout all of this, we await the inauguration of Lord Obama who has at the top of his stack a Green Agenda to halt Global Warming. And make the oceans recede or some such.

My question to the Lord and his minions and handmaidens, "How much colder would it be this winter around the globe if we hadn't been driving SUV's the past 30 years? Would it be 50 below instead of 25 below? Do tell, please."

I sometimes wonder if some of the enviro-Marxists ever admit to themselves how full of it they are. Maybe they're just totally dishonest.

Four Years Have Gone By on 24

We watch very few network TV "comedy" or "drama" shows since Hollywood often seems incapable of telling a joke or delivering a dramatic scene without offending those of us not of the liberal persuasion. Around Monkeydart Plantation our satellite dish is usually pointed to sports, history, science, or movies made before 1968. Many folks over the past few years have touted "24" as a good respite from the far left drivel. We tried to watch the first few seasons on DVD so we weren't hopelessly behind. It had its moments, but when watching them in rapid succession, the idea that all of this stuff was getting done in 24 hours became unintentionally humorous. Jack's wife tumbles down the hill behind the Hollywood sign in a fall that would leave anyone laid up for a minimum of a couple weeks and yet, an hour later, she's running and jumping like a young gazelle. Suspension of disbelief is easier if "24" is seen in a one hour chunk separated by a week of your regular life.

Still, it was always good to think that there was at least one show out there every week that promoted the idea that fighting terrorists was a good idea. "The Unit" did a good job for a season or so and then they lost their way. "NCIS" is fun but mainly because of the characters not the terror-fighting story lines. So... it's a wasteland and we spend no time there.

For escape I watched "Redemption", the 2 hour "24" movie last weekend thinking the title was strange (Why does a relentless terror fighter need to be redeemed?). Like everyone who ever liked "24" for its fighting spirit vis-a-vis terrorists I had heard the stories that the show was going to lurch left this year. "Redemption" gave few hints of this. The representative from Congress who is trying to bring Jack back to DC to testify to the Pelosi types is a worm. The UN guy is worse than worthless-- he is so limp he actually leads the terrorists to the children Jack is trying to save. The inaugural address by the new liberal female POTUS is so vapid and banal it could have come straight out of Lord Obama's teleprompter. So far, so good-- although I felt cheated that we were denied seeing the presidency of Cy Tolliver, er, Powers Boothe, er Noah Daniels.

But, over at Big Hollywood, we find that things still might take a turn for the worse this season.

Does anyone really need a Jack Bauer who channels Hamlet?

Animals Don't Worry Much About Recessions

State bird of SC, the Carolina Wren, visits on Christmas Day.

Squirrel (AKA: fluff rat) enjoying the ice and snow in the Midwest.

Another One Bites The Dust

Remember how Rev. Wright, who ranted about how horrible America is, was a mysterious figure to Lord Obama? He didn't seem to know where all that crazy rantin' came from, since in the 20 years he had been hangin' out in the Rev's church he'd never heard anything like that!

Of course domestic terrorists, Mr. & Mrs. Ayers were just some people from the Lord's Hyde Park, IL neighborhood. In fact, just about everybody that Obama knew who had any unwelcome questions asked about them ended up being nothing like the person that Obama knew. Or thought he knew. The legacy press, concerned about how these revelations might hurt their chosen candidate, swept it all under the rug.

All of which makes it pretty funny to see how Team Obama reacts to the news that the big hombre they picked for Commerce Secretary, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, has a big enough scandal brewin' that he needs to vamoose: Obama Team Feels Richardson Wasn't Forthcoming About Investigation Before Being Offered Commerce -ABC News

6 Figure Income For Guzzling Beer?

WDIV-4 in Detroit did an expose on UAW bosses that will turn your stomach.

Warner Todd Huston at Stop The ACLU tips us off to the story.

Just remember, the "bailout" isn't for the "Big 3" or the "Detroit 3", it's for the United Autoworkers' Union.

10 Big Stories

Just to be contrary I waited until 1/2/2009 to do my Top 10 stories. I'm not real concerned about the order of these and I'm even less concerned about any arbitrary rules. Here's a list of 10 big stories.

1. US & coalition partners win Operation Iraqi Freedom, commonly called The Iraq War, and nobody notices because it doesn't fit the conventional wisdom and it could cause people to question the idea of voting for an anti-war candidate when the war he was "anti" has already been won.

2. A harsh market correction caused by needed de-leveraging in the home lending sector is turned into a global financial crisis through government intervention. And... the intervention is just getting started.

3. A rookie, freshman US Senator from Illinois beats the Democrat field in proportionally awarded primary sweepstakes. Barack Obama then goes on to beat a Republican whose name escapes us.

4. Governor Sarah Palin, heretofore little known outside of Alaska, bursts onto the national scene and scares the crap out of Democrats and their handmaidens in the legacy media. Their vicious attacks on her are assuring to Conservatives since the Republican candidate for President, old whatzhisname, was a long-term darling of the same media and anathema to Libertarian-leaning Conservatives.

5. The bull market in oil trading ends just when "experts" are predicting confidently that oil will continue up to $200 pb. and gasoline to $10/ gallon. Before year-end oil will break under $40 pb and draw a chart that looks like someone fell in a mineshaft. And... a gallon of regular goes for $1.34 in my neighborhood where last August it was $3.97. Nobody seems happy about it-- at least not to the extent they were angry about it in August. Curious.

6. The UAW pimps out the CEO's of GM, Ford and Chrysler and the Detroit 3 go beg the US Congress to hand over taxpayer money to them. A handful of Conservative Senators block Congress from doing that so the President of the US whips out the people's wallet and drops the T.A.R.P. Visa card on the table--- with big strings attached. The UAW swipes the card, says a brief thanks to the POTUS and a loud prayer for the coming of Obama (a half billion dollars from unions making for a nice I.O.U.) and then says there will be no strings as far as they're concerned.

7. Russia invades Georgia and the West yawns. Before year-end Russia tells the Ukraine that their nat gas supplies will be cut off during extreme cold. Meanwhile, Israel responds to Hamas provocation and the world howls.

8. Mumbai, India is attacked by Islamic terrorists. Tension with Pakistan, already high, is ramped up.

9. Scandals: Liberal Democrat Bernie Madoff is nabbed for running a Ponzi scheme and most of his victims are other LibDems and their charities... Democrat Guv Blago of very blue IL is nabbed for running a pay-for-play scheme to fill Obama's old seat... Republican pork king Ted Stevens is nabbed for taking a bit of free work from a contractor without pay... Liberal Democrat Gov. Spitzer of deep blue NY is nabbed for fiddling with a pay-for-play call girl... Liberal Democrat John Edwards is nabbed for fiddling with a girl who isn't his wife-- but he seems to have been paying for his play too... Dodd, Schumer, & Barney Frank are up to their ears in causing the financial meltdown, yet are now the guys presiding over Congress's efforts to "get to the bottom of this scandal." I'm sure I missed a hundred or so other scandals. Oh yeah, the Chinese gymnast girls were only 14 years old and that mattered more to most Americans than any of the others just listed.

10. China hosts the Olympics and the world press attends and meekly peddles the Chinese government's PR packets to their home countries. The opening ceremonies are breathtaking and a bit unsettling.

Bolton Sees Obama Like Condi On Iran Policy

Over the next few years there will be many assessments of the eight years of the George W. Bush presidency in regards to foreign policy. I think the honest ones will see that there was the period where the views of Cheney held sway in foreign affairs and the latter period where the views of Condi Rice were paramount. The two periods aren't divided accurately by first term/ second term. Frankly, I await the books by Cheney and Rumsfeld more than the book by GWB.

Now it's very safe to say that John Bolton was more a Cheney guy than a Rice guy. Given that, it's interesting to read his op-ed here about Obama's approach to Iran.

Job Security Is #1

There will be lots of discussion today about a poll in the Army Times about how US military folks view the incoming Commander-in-Chief. In the same poll the respondents were asked to give their reasons for staying in the military. Here's the chart:
Job security, patriotism, and health care for the family rank 1,2,3. I reckon that sounds about right to anyone who knows people in the military.