Rico,

Not that it makes any difference at this point (no Supreme Court would likely oust Obama nor would a Congress impeach him), but if I had to make a bet, I'd say there's a 70% chance that Obama isn't eligible for the presidency per the Constitution. Oh, you remember that piece of paper, right? Some don't.

But here's a sign that the bloom is coming off the Messiah's rose.

And I gotta make that my new signature. (I'll thalonize it and resize it later...volunteers appreciated.)

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quote:

I lost my health insurance.

I didn't. I simply changed the type of coverage. Instead of eating crap and not exercising, I'm stuffing my gut with vegetables, very little meat, and working on doing regular exercise. I just couldn't afford the $400/mo for just pretty much basic coverage. If Obama were an honest man (or at least one who put "what works" ahead of his own twisted and narrow ideology) he'd work toward the one thing that government could do to improve the number of people who are covered, and that would be to reduce costs. How to do that? Well, this is why his little pea-brain can't conceive of such a thing because to cut costs it means getting government further out of the health care industry. It means reducing regulations, the time needed for new drugs to be approved, etc. But one thing it could certainly do proactively would be torte reform. Again,this won't likely happen because the Democrats are in the back pockets of trial lawyers and prefer their health to that of their constituents when it comes right down to it.

Reduce the costs, the rest will take care of itself. And you don't reduce costs by getting government involved in handling health care.

Yeah, I guess I did the same as you. I'm trying to improve my health other ways, because like you, $1600 per QUARTER was too much for me to spend. Just for basic coverage, and with preexistings, nothing is covered FOR A FUCKING YEAR until you pay into the system for that long. So every doctor visit, every test, you pay out of pocket for anyway, in the first year... and that's after you've signed up, and paid, for so-called "health insurance."

It's a fucking ponzi scheme. Run by con men.

Hey, it would be nice to live under the security blanket of health care. It's not fun to dwell on the idea that I'm one illness away from the poor house. But maybe it is better to just up and die rather than give up freedom for socialism.

The great thing about that Obama/Joker poster? It's CHILLING. It's actually scary, like Ledger's sociopathic Joker was scary. It's an ugly face that bespeaks a twisted, sick mentality. It's a smile, but a horrific one.

Yeah, that's about right. Kudos to whoever designed it. In a country that was starting to look like a dictatorship with posters of the One... it's good to see somebody fuck with that hero worship and kind of show that there's a deep dysfunction under it.

Here is an article on Afghanistan from Markle's news source the The LA Times reporting on how July was the worst month for causalities since the the Taliban was toppled.

72 coalition troops were lost in July. 43 of them Americans. The next deadliest month for Americans was June of 2008 when 28 soldiers were lost.

Now over the course of time Markle kept insisting how President Bush failed in Afghanistan. That the strategy was all wrong. How we needed more troops in Afghanistan etc, etc, etc.

I always countered that Markle was clueless when it came to Afghanistan. The only thing that would happen with increased troops in Afghanistan would be more dead soldiers.

Fast forward to the Hussein Administration and low and behold what strategy do they take in Afghanistan but the Markle strategy. Increase troop levels. What have the results been nothing less than what was told to Markle for the last five years put more troops in Afghanistan will only result in more dead soldiers.

Bravo Hussein Administration. Nice of the media to have a black out of news in Afghanistan. Could you imagine the news stories that would be happening if it were 2 or 3 years ago with casualty reports like this coming in. Terrorists Reid and Pelosi would be screaming bloody murder that the war was lost.

Rico, I haven’t been following events in Afghanistan of late, but the stock reply from liberal apologists would be something like this.

"Well, we’re trying to clean up George Bush’s mess. We discovered that things are even worse than we had imagined and that’s the reason for the causalities. But any day now things will get better."

When things do get worse, it goes unnoticed or unreported. When things get better, it will be trumpeted by the fascist state-ass-kissing media. That’s what scientists call the confirmation bias, "...the tendency to interpret new information in such a way that confirms one's prior beliefs, even to the extreme of denial, ignoring information that conflicts with one's prior beliefs."

Basically, one may not always be right about a subject. There is just so much to know and learn and often the sources of information are problematic at best. But the non-Kool-aid approach is to be well aware of the confirmation bias and to not make one’s total outlook based on that bias, as I think Markle and others tend to do.

The confirmation bias is also known as the Tolstoy syndrome because Tolstoy once said:

quote:

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life.

And...

quote:

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

I think ferocious fighting is actually a good sign. Means the enemy is desperate. We could be closing in on Osama bin Prickwad, or some stronghold that the Taliban will fight to the last man to protect.

And I hate to say it, but the casualties of this war are nothing compared to past wars. I remember the casualty reports coming in from the Vietnam war, and those were in the hundreds upon hundreds. I mean, one brave American lost is too many, of course. But the price in lives for fighting this true evil has been quite low, considering that war is an awful and savage thing. And for the relatively low caualties, we have our military to thank.

More people are killed on the highways in a year, than we lose in war. In 2008 US Highway deaths were 37,313, and that's the lowest level since 1961! Down from 41,059 the year before.

To put it in perspective, the total coalition casualties in Afghanistan, since 2001 haven't even broken 1300 yet, 768 of whom are American. In Vietnam, we were talking over 58,000 Americans killed in action.

According to the Drudge Report, here’s more socialist/Communist creepy imagery from the creeps of the Obama administration:

Man, that's a creepy picture indeed.

Those ghostly figures are all the souls of the soon to be departed.

The Taxing of the Screw

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Reid's fellow Nevada Democrat, State Senator Bob Coffin, the aptly named chairman of the State Senate's Taxation Committee who represents Las Vegas, thinks it would take $5 bucks a pop...um, per act... to stiffen the finances of Harry Reid's home state. If you are visiting from, say, Sweden, where they have a 25% tax on condoms, a night of Bunny hopping could start to mount up.

Yet State Senator Coffin's new definition of a head tax is an interesting proposition. Obamacare advocates are insistently hectoring that X behavior is not only bad for us, it adds gazillions to health care costs. Which is why whatever X is -- they want to tax it. For our own good, don't you know. This is why New York's Governor David Paterson wants a soda tax, for example. Something Dr. Thomas Frieden, the new Obama head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, enthusiastically supports. Frieden, by the way, is the guy who got trans fat banned when he was New York City's Health Commissioner.

Those who say state-run healthcare would give these Marxist/socialist fiends an avenue to control all of our behavior are right. “For your own good” will be taken to new heights – and already has been.

Another example of what Brother Jonah calls “Liberal Fascism.”

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Says Paterson, illustrating the liberal mind precisely: "The surgeon general estimates that obesity was associated with 112,000 deaths in the United States every year. Here in New York State, we spend almost $6.1 billion on health care related to adult obesity -- the second-highest level of spending in the nation."

Paterson is disturbed X behavior (soda drinking in this case) causes bad result Y (obesity in the Paterson example) and therefore needs to be taxed because X behavior causes death. Ergo this dreadful behavior of drinking sodas in New York is costing his state $6.1 billion in health care costs. Thus the best policy is an obesity tax -- make every New Yorker pay through the nose every time they quench their thirst with a Coke or a Pepsi. A tax like the obesity tax results in the best of both worlds in the liberal mind: more revenue for more programs, lower health care costs and, most importantly, more control over you.

Ditto. Who votes for these kind of people? I mean, really?

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Ghostly souls. LMFAO.

Citizen Informants

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In 1930's Germany, the new socialist government of Adolf Hitler (NAZI National Socialist Workers' Party) began indoctrinating children in the quasi-military organization, the Hitler Youth, to inform on their parents should they overhear discussions subversive to the policies of the Leader. As the noose was tightened, local community organizers were appointed to watch their neighbors and were told to report subversive comments to the bureaucrats above them. Neighbors informed on neighbors, some for reasons of patriotism or loyalty, some from fear. A modern inquisition ensued; a terror to free thought and expression. Increasingly harsh penalties were meted out to those who dared to dissent.

The socialist governments of the Soviet Union, Fascist Italy, N. Korea, Cuba, Yugoslavia, and the People's Republic of China employed the same citizen informer techniques. Citizens of those societies were reduced to either silence or whispered discussion only among those they trusted the most. Of course none of those things would ever occur here in the land of the free. But wait...

Now on the White House website posted by Macon Phillips comes an eerily similar request for citizens to inform on their neighbors. It states,

"There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to the end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

Read this again carefully. The government of the United States is openly asking citizens to report rumors, the contents of casual conversation, and the contents of emails. They decry the fact that they are unable to "keep track" of the communication between citizens effectively and are asking for help from informers. Of course forwarded emails would contain the electronic addresses of the sender.

Does this sound like the country you know (knew)? Are these the words of people who think of themselves as public servants, or is this something darker? Does a constitutional government tasked with protecting the rights of its citizens ask them to inform on each other to the White House?

Are we now like one of those totalitarian states? No. But we have become more collectivist. Is the move toward appointing unaccountable Czars with enormous authority, the takeover of multiple industries (corporatism), the restructuring of the economy on a socialist-command model, and the request for citizens to inform on their fellows a step closer to that ugly place? Unquestionably, the answer has to be yes. We must be concerned with the direction in which we are headed as well as the breathtaking speed.

Another great point is about the opposition party accepting the premises of the left:

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Forty years ago, a philosopher named Leonard Peikoff wrote a book (still in print) called The Ominous Parallels. In it he shows the parallels (then scarcely noticeable) between the rise of Hitler's socialism and the trends in the United States. At the time, the book could have been dismissed as the ranting of an over-zealous, though erudite and articulate, conspiracy nut. In retrospect, Peikoff appears to have been quite prescient. Reading it today, it appears like a roadmap of the last half century and how we got to this point. The implications are clear. If the direction of the nation and the philosophic perspective of the populace isn't brought back to the founding principles, the end point is predetermined. Unfortunately, the premises underlying the agenda are shared by both major parties. The opposition party is neutered in that it has accepted the premises of the socialists, a strategy doomed to failure.

That’s a book I may have to read.

quote:

Our forebears sacrificed so much to pass on the blessings of liberty. The least that we can do in the shadow of those heroes is to exercise our right to speak, and to do so out loud, not in whispers fearing that someone will forward our thoughts to the Watchers. These intimidating tactics must end.

And I’m not likely to shut up about these leftist fiends at thalo.net until they shut me up, which I’m certain they will try to get around to doing. Oh, not me at first, but the larger sites. Did you hear how these Marxist/socialists fiends have tried to demonize anyone and everyone who opposes their plans? You’re not a citizen. You’re being told that you’re bought and paid for by someone else. These Marxist/socialist totalitarian fiends depend on lies and propaganda to advance their cause. It’s all a show for the public until the public is hog-tied to the extent that it’s too late to overturn their web of control or the price one personally pays for trying to do so becomes truly high. And the use of deceit, deception, intimidation, and propaganda by the left as their normal mode shows their deep and abiding contempt for the public and for freedom itself. Again, how was it that people ever accepted their lies as the truth? How could we be so dull, dense, and gullible? But it happens.

How can a leftist cunt like Andrea Mitchell of NBC actually get away with saying the words "they may not know what's good for them??"

Watch O'Reilly's talking points "The health care duel"

Where you will see another cunt: Linda Douglass. Watch O'Reilly totally catch her.
watch videos here

A good and educational article by Brother Jonah: How Much is That Clunker in the Window?

I mean, yeah, from the party that wants us to "reuse, reduce, recycle," they’re giving out free (well, borrowed from the Chinese) money to destroy perfectly good cars, sometimes if the gain in mpg is only 2 points. Brother Lowry chimes in as well (as sounding a bit like Brother Goldberg as well):

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Washington has finally found a runaway hit of a stimulus program: Paying people to buy cars.

The "Cash for Clunkers" program offering people a rebate worth as much as $4,500 to trade in an old car for a new one exhausted its first $1 billion — meant to last four months — in a mere week. Congress is scrambling to pony up another $2 billion. It’s hard to say where the Clunkers program falls on the spectrum of Washington economic policies that, these days, run in a narrow span from the thoroughly asinine to the merely ill-considered.

Start with the focus on cars. What strange, narrow-minded obsession with the internal-combustion engine made Congress only pay people to buy new automobiles? Why aren’t they paid to buy appliances, TVs, and sofas? To go out to eat, and to buy business suits, blue jeans, and lingerie? Are all of these consumer activities inherently less worthy than trading in a 1999 Dodge Caravan for a Chevy Cobalt?

quote:

The Clunkers program is supposed to help save the planet by shelving gas guzzlers. To qualify for trade-in, an old vehicle has to get less than 18 miles per gallon. But the environmental upside shouldn’t be exaggerated. If the trade-in wasn’t driven much, a new car isn’t necessarily a boon to the environment. Remember, the very act of manufacturing a new car is itself an energy-intensive process.

The Clunkers program demands that the old cars be disabled. In a ritual repeated in dealership lots across America, sodium silicate is being poured into car engines to kill them. Many of these cars have value and could be sold on the used market. They are being destroyed senselessly in a diktat reminiscent of Franklin Roosevelt’s slaughter of livestock during the New Deal. Decades later, we still haven’t learned that the wanton destruction of goods is scandalously wasteful economic policy.

These people are loons.

quote:

Watch O'Reilly's talking points "The health care duel"

"Cunt" is an understatement. For my own mental health and blood pressure, I try to limit my exposure to these America-hating, capitalist-hating, freedom-hating fiends to just the various news articles and analysis/opinion pieces I read during the day. I haven’t watched much O’Reilly, Hannity, or Greta lately. But, Jesus, how does anyone make a case for just lying and for the press being but a noxious and arrogant agent for the Democratic Party? What’s up with this?

Well, here at thalo.net we’ve had some practice asking the tough questions and exposing bullshit. And you can sort of tell that some of the public is beginning to catch up a little bit. These townhall meetings (and I’ve been to a couple of them) are anything but the ACORN- or Alinksy-style for-pay agitators, which is pretty much the main qualification of our Marxist/socialist president. These are real people exposing the layered, thick, persistent, prolonged, and noxious bullshit of the propagandistic left. Will the general public ever see as far as Sowell, Limbaugh, Newt, or Ann (not Anne)? No. It would be good for all concerned if they did, if they understood Madison better than Murtha, but there is at least a bit of a backlash going on. We’ll see how far it goes. But the bloom is definitely coming off the rose. It will be personally interesting for me to see if some of the real dirt on Obama starts coming out. Maybe some of his various writings and stuff that have been suppressed. God knows what we do know about this Marxist/socialist and even Leninist clown is scary enough. We should from time to time remember these words from out Imperious Leader:

The Video. The words:

quote:

"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set... We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded."

As one random internet poster said:

quote:

Actually if the idiot would only realize, we already have a vast 'civilian national security team'. It is comprised of millions of responsible, law-abiding citizens with not only the right to bear arms, but who actually do bear arms. It is a proven statistic that communities where most of the homeowners are armed have less crime.

Obama is a shill for socialism and government control.

Amen anonymous brother. Amen.

Talk about cunts listen to Terrorist House Leader Pelosi describe the people attending the Town Hall meetings on healthcare. Just incredible the fantasy land these people live in.

If anyone DID carry a swastika, it's because people like HER are acting exactly like friggin' NAZIS!

I hate to remind, Terrorist Pelosi this, but symbols are free speech. People in her milieu wear fucking CHE shirts, come on. The use of symbol is powerful to marketeers and politicians, yes. But it's also a part of the free speech of this great nation. We may argue back and forth whether the symbols are in good TASTE, sure. Hanging an effigy of Obama would be SO politically incorrect that it would cause a shitstorm... yet nobody batted an eye when it was Bush. But the bottom line is, in this country, we not only ALLOW things like that, we PROTECT them under our constitution.

It's not for Pelosi to decide why or which symbols anyone carries to a town hall meeting. We see here clearly that her job as a politician is to demonize her detractors. That's all that's going on here. I can EASILY see a swastika being a rather APT symbol for what Democrats are pulling on us. She of course is trying to spin it to her advantage.

But it brings up an interesting point. Which symbols, which semiotic devices drive Democrats the most nuts? That's the stuff I'm fascinated by. How does a swastika stack up to a picture of Ann Coulter's face? How powerful is the "Don't Tread on Me" flag? What's the relative postmodern punch of a tricorn hat?

All that stuff SAYS something to our leaders. They have their own set of propaganda symbols, Obama logos, ghostly departed souls, change posters. They know and use this vocabulary. It's hilarious to me to see them squirm when similar tactics are used against them.

As somebody pointed out here (a random Google search), the creepy Obama healthcare logo looks a lot like this creepy imagery:

The next thing the goose-stepping Democrats need, is some sort of hand gesture or uniform for solidarity. With the nazis it was the swastika pins, armbands, and the straight arm salute.

Already, far leftists have kind of absconded with the peace sign, the two-fingered "V" salute that used to be "V" for Victory in the WWII era. You can't see a liberal democrat celeb who doesn't flash that sign to the paparazzi nowadays, like some über cool gang sign.

In the BRILLIANT movie of Orwell's 1984, the one with John Hurt, it was raised arms with the wrists crossed over the head... classic body language for warding off evil. And it was used most effectively in the movie. Like when Goldstein would come up on the screen, and the crowd would melt down... then get drummed up into tearful patriotic fervor.

Sometimes, when our symbols or rituals are questioned, rethought, stood on their heads, it can be very emotionally powerful. Take something like the typical bride walking down the aisle, solemn and virginal. Stand it on its head, and we see one offbeat wedding where everyone dances down the aisle to a popular dance song. I'm sure you guys have seen the viral video.

This is humanity at its best. I weep over crap like that. Irreverent, (there are church types who would consider it the height of bad taste), but joyful and FUN expressions of life. Everything that's GOOD about people.

This is stuff that politicians can't take away from us... BUT. THEY. TRY.

Some of the spectacles of the Nazis took music and marching in unison, and would literally leave people in tears, their hearts soaring. Ready to follow Adolph to the center of the sun.

We have to watch how emotionally manipulable we are. Because our true enemies, the politicians, know the kinds of things that raise us up, or make us angry, or motivate us to agree (or disagree) with whatever bullshit they want to foist on us.

I suppose the trick is, not to shut DOWN our feelings, no can do, they're a part of us. But to make sure they are used for good, for uplifting us, rather than tearing us down.

If you had stick in the mud church people, dogmatic types, doctrinal fiends running things, you'd have NEVER had a wedding march like that. Political correctness is like religious correctness. It squelches truly FREE expression. And freedom, by brothers, it what makes this country great. There is a bit of a dose of the rebel in all of us. We were founded on rebellion. Democrats take that and try to get mileage out of it. Freedom is what made that wedding march viral. There is quite a healthy "screw-you" attitude to true American Patriotism.

And we need to remember that. And there's fiends and demagogues and corrupt, crooked politicians we need to say screw you to RIGHT NOW, and do a little dance of our own... right in their fucking faces.

quote:

Take something like the typical bride walking down the aisle, solemn and virginal. Stand it on its head, and we see one offbeat wedding where everyone dances down the aisle to a popular dance song. I'm sure you guys have seen the viral video.

Oh the irony of the little superimposed message at the start of that wedding video that said: "To make a donation toward violence prevention...". Umm....DON'T GET MARRIED!!! That would prevent a lot of domestic violence.

quote:

This is humanity at its best. I weep over crap like that. Irreverent, (there are church types who would consider it the height of bad taste), but joyful and FUN expressions of life. Everything that's GOOD about people.

Okay, now remember, it's my job to offer a differing opinion. Oh...wait...this isn't The McLaughlin Group. I just have to be honest. And honestly, I have to admit I wanted to vomit by the time I got done watching that video, although it might have been primarily because that was the worst song ever recorded. Viva la difference, and all that. And maybe I'm like the Tin Man who just didn't have a heart. But that, in my not so humble opinion, looked like they were trying way too hard, as if they were in front of the judges on American Idol, or were planning a viral YouTube video all along. That video, in my not so humble opinion, was a bit douche-chilling. If they were all drunk or on drugs, I withdraw my remarks.

You may spare me your harsh judgment. I'll just quote one of the talk-back messages from that video:

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fucking retarded alll you hill billy fox news - republican pigs need to burn in hell
( not that its real )

Well,
As I always say... Trekkies, LOTR-ers, the Star Wars kid... there are a lot of things that give me douche-chills, and yet say something good about people.

This video was an instant threat to the Huffington Post, who posted a parody "JK Divorce video"... the same reaction the Star Wars kid video had on people.

I see things a bit differently than the mainstream cynics. And remember, I'm a massive cynic with almost zero faith in human nature. Except a video like this gives me hope. I guess I'm a different kind of cynic. I see that sometimes even when folks are being a bit queer, trying too hard, I can tell when their heart is in it, and they somehow end up doing something beautiful. Often unintendedly so.

These weren't great dancers. It wasn't brilliantly choreographed. I wouldn't go out and buy that crappy song either. Your propensity for being underwhelmed misses the point that their friggin' HEARTS were in it. There was a good natured, honest HUMOR in it. It was a bit of screw you, we're going to maybe make fools out of ourselves, but it'll be worth it. This wasn't Paris Hilton doing model-face and expecting people to fawn all over her hotness. This was more quirky, damn the douche-chills and full speed ahead. I love that. These kids were just having some fun, being irreverent. You can heap all the scorn and mockery on this you like... me, I say it touches a chord. The viralness proves that.

It's proof that something is there worth watching. And yeah, you can goof on it... it's certainly EASY to goof on. Or you can examine what it is that hits that little nerve of humanity in us.