The Nigh Seen Creeder

Congrats to Michael Steele upon his election as the next Republican National Committee Chairman.

I, as a card-carrying member of the RNC, went "on record" for Michael Steele back in November. To wit:

GOPAC is the preeminent education and training center for Republican candidates and activists. Back in the mid-'90s, GOPAC helped me out quite a bit when I was working on a State House campaign; and ever since then, I've contributed a considerable sum to GOPAC every year.

GOPAC Chairman Michael Steele has all but announced that he'll be seeking the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee. I've been quite pleased with the work Steele has done as head of GOPAC, and I anticipate supporting his bid for RNC chairman if and when he throws his hat officially into the ring.

Godspeed Chairman Steele! With any luck -- and many Obama ****-ups -- 2010 will be 1994 all over again.

Joltin' Django ain't been feeling too well the past several days. If you've ordered "Don't Blame Me, I Vote for McCain" bumper stickers but have yet to receive them, I will send them out tomorrow.

"
Stickers are available for $3 each, or 4 for $10.

Please send checks, money orders or (well-concealed) cash to:

The Nigh Seen Creeder
2479 Murfreesboro Road, #339
Nashville, TN 37217

From Feb. 2008 ...

During the 1988 and 1992 presidential campaigns, liberals couldn't resist using George Bush's middle names at any and every turn. Calling him George Herbert Walker Bush made the Vice President/President appear patrician and, thus, less understanding of the needs and concerns of the workin' man. We conservatives took this name-calling - accurate name-calling to be sure - all in stride. That's politics, we said.

Fast forward to 2008 ...

A growing number of liberals have their panties in a twist 'cause conservative radio hosts and a small number of Republican political operatives have started referring to U.S. Senator Barack Obama by his full name: Barack Hussein Obama. That's bigotry, they say.

There are two facts that the using-"Hussein"-when-referring-to-Obama-is-racist folks have conveniently ignored: First, that former-President Bill Clinton, a fellow liberal who's never exhibited any racist tendencies, was the first person to regularly use the H-word, if you will, when referring to Senator Obama; and second, that St. Obama himself was the first person to highlight the ethnic portions of his name for political purposes.

For years B. Hussein Obama was known to family, friends and colleagues as "Barry." When he began his political career, however, Obama realized that the über-ethnic "Barack" would impress left-wing money-givers and voters more than a white bread name like "Barry" (pun absolutely intended). His ethnic name game obviously worked; indeed, he went from the Illinois State Senate to presidenial front-runner in 36 short months.

I've taken to referring to Senator Obama as "B. Hussein" 'cause, to tell the truth, it gets under liberals' skin like a two-inch syringe. If liberals have a problem with conservatives using the man's honest-to-God middle name, perhaps they should try to convince their flavor-of-the month candidate to go back to bein' plain ol' "Barry." It'd make liberals and B. Hussein, er, Barry seem a tad less hypocritical.

With regard to the freedom of the individual for choice with regard to abortion, there's one individual who's not being considered at all. That's the one who is being aborted. And I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.

-- Ronald Reagan

I invite any and all folks who respect "life" to join me tomorrow at the ...

Tennessee Rally for Life
Bicentennial Mall Amphitheater
600 James Robertson Pkwy
Nashville 37243

Oh, and check this out :

It's not often that new recording artist put it all on the line to stand for life. It's even more unusual to do so with such skill, sensitivity and sincerity. But that's exactly what Bluefield artists Rick Ferrell and Jennifer Hicks have accomplished. They will share their unique pro-life ballad, "Butterfly," as part of Tennessee's Rally for Life, Sunday afternoon, 2 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. (cst.)

Many already know Rick Ferrell's songs on the radio; he's the writer of chart toppers like Tim McGraw's "Something Like That" and Martina McBride's "Where Would You Be". And Jennifer Hicks is easily recognized by many as a finalist in season 2 of Nashville Star.

To learn more about Bluefield, visit http://www.myspace.com/bluefieldband.

Until I was 14-years-old, there was only one individual in the world who I'd let cut my hair, a barber named Taylor. Taylor cut hair in a little shop about a half-mile from my house alongside a guy named Wallace. Wallace and Taylor's, that's what everybody called the barbershop.

Wallace cut my Dad's hair, and Taylor cut mine. My Dad says that's because the first time he ever took me to the barbershop (I was 4), he plopped me in Taylor's chair - actually on the little booster seat that they used for little kids - and told me that if I started squirming, Taylor might cut one of my ears off. Dad then plopped down in Wallace's chair. He says he looked over a couple of times and I was sitting there as stiff as a totem pole.

Needless to say, I didn't lose one of my ears to Taylor's shears. Dad says Taylor gave me a dollar when he finished, something he did whenever a kid cooperated during his first trip to the barbershop. For the next ten years, I wouldn't let no one near my head with a pair of scissors.

By the time I got to high school, it was no longer "cool" to go to the barbershop. Thus, I started using a "hair stylist" who charged $20 a pop, er, cut. That little experiment lasted about two years, until I got a serious after school/job and my Mom told me that I would have to start paying for my own haircuts. Suddenly, an $8 haircut at the barbershop wasn't so uncool anymore. Back to Taylor I went.

Taylor was the only barber who cut my hair for the next five years. He was in declining health, though, and one day he told me that he was going to retire. I can't tell you how far my heart sank when he told me that. I mean, the barber-customer relationship is a pretty serious relationship. You're actually paying a man who can single handedly dictate what you're going to look like for the next month.

I went to Taylor one last time before he retired. (Wallace was still cutting hair there at the time, but he would retire right on the heels of Taylor.) When I made a joke about never getting my hair cut again, like a Sikh, Taylor told me to go to Gene's Barber Shop, which he said was "just a hop and a skip" down the road. Taylor vouched for Gene, and that was enough for me.

To this day, I won't go anywhere but Gene's. I've used three different barbers at Gene's: Gene himself, James (who bought Gene's from Gene and refused to take Gene's off the sign), and Drew. Drew is a young guy, and he can flat wield a pair of shears, a trimmer, or a straight razor. (He used all three on my cabeza today.) I sure hope that he'll be tending to my tonsorial needs for a long, long time.

Why do I mention all this? Well, I'll tell you. Going to a barbershop ain't just about getting your hair cut. There's an atmosphere in a barbershop that you can't get in a fancy hair salon or one of those unisex strip mall joints. First of all, there's a distinct smell that you'll find in virtually every barber shop you'll ever visit: a combination of shaving cream, barber shop after shave, and that mysterious blue liquid in which combs are sterilized.

Second, and more importantly, the conversations in a barbershop are always top-heavy on testosterone. Indeed, sports and politics, hunting and fishing, cooking animal flesh on an outdoor grill ... that's what fellers discuss when they're sitting in a barbershop. And there ain't no such freakin' thing as being politically correct there, neither -- I sure as hell enjoy that part of the barber-visiting experience.

Exactly four years ago, I had some serious health problems that necessitated two extended stays in the hospital. My hair was cascading into my face during the second stay, and I had the hospital's resident hair stylist -- basically a nurse with access to a professional-grade trimmer -- cut my hair. When she got through with me, I looked like Morrissey circa 1987 on his very worst hair day. I made an oath to myself that I would never allow anyone other than a barber in a barbershop to cut my hair again.

Next time you need your forehead raised, you'd do well to go to Gene's. Tell 'em Joltin' Django sent you.

Gene's Barber Shop
1609 Murfreesboro Pike
Nashville, TN 37217
615.361.8908

You know, this picture of Tenn. House Speaker Kent Williams - from today's Tennessean - says it all:


Former House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh is looking over Williams' shoulder in that pic, just like in real life!

Here're some more 'bout our new House Speaker ...

Today, Williams announced that all but two House committees would be evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. A bill cannot advance to the House floor unless it's been passed out of a committee by a majority vote (a bill is essentially dead if receives a tie-vote). Talk about a recipe for gridlock.

Williams has already stated that he will use his "power" to temporarily sit on committees and cast tie-breaking votes sparingly. However, he didn't promise that House Speaker Pro Tempore, Lois DeBerry, would exercise her vote-on-any-committee power sparingly. DeBerry is an abortion-loving, anti-gun, statist who no self-respecting Republican would ever dispatch to be the deciding vote on any committee. Whether or not Williams keeps DeBerry on a short leash -- and that's a political, not a racial, metaphor -- will go a long way toward proving whether or not he is "in [his] heart" a Republican.

Speaking of Lois DeBerry, she said this on the House floor immediately after her re-election to the office of Speaker Pro Tempore:

"When I went to bed last night, I went to bed last night as one person, and I wake up this morning as another person."

Given that DeBerry routinely murders the English language whenever she speaks on the House floor, and given that she ain't too very bright ("I wake up this morning another person" is a quote that proves both points, no Republican in his or her right mind would ever consider voting for her for a House leadership position ... like Kent Williams did.

Finally, have you noticed that Kent Williams often refers to himself in the third-person? To wit:

"I think the state of Tennessee is going to see that Kent Williams is here to govern."

As far as Joltin' Django's concerned, Jotltin' Django can't wait until August 2010 ... when Kent Williams gets his ass beat in the Republican primary. And then Joltin' Django's gonna shout "Praise Be!"

CNN tells us 'bout the first Bush-era rule President B. Hussein Obama rescinded:

It's the same Oval Office. The same desk. Even the same curtains. But President Obama has already made one major change: Go through eight years of White House photos, and you won't find one of former President Bush in the Oval Office without his jacket on.

It wasn't just a personal preference. In the Bush administration, it was a rule: Jackets in the Oval Office — and now, it seems, one of the first Bush-era regulations to get scrapped in the Obama White House.

If we're to believe a very big bunch - a very, very big bunch - of hipster doofi, B. Hussein Obama is the "coolest" SOB to ever take up semi-permanent residence in the White House.

If that's indeed true, we shouldn't be surprised when President Barry dons a tight T-shirt (favored by young club-hopping dudes), or a sports jersey (Chicago Bulls?), from time to time when he's doing "biz" in the Oval Office. Or, since he's such a hunk, maybe Obama will get photographed conducting Oval Office business in nothing but his boxer shorts. (Shit, I imagine Oprah'll orgasmically spin herself 3 miles into the ground if that ever happens.)

Remember those pictures of Richard Nixon in which his suit-clad ass was seen sitting in an easy chair, his sock feet resting on a stool? Nixon always had a legal pad full of notes resting in his lap in those pics, and sometimes you could see a highball glass of something sitting nearby. Say what you will about Nixon, he knew how to look cool - professionaly cool - in the Oval Office.

I'm not a big Nixon fan ... but our current president could stand to learn a few things about tradition, decorum, and pomp and circumstance from the 37th president.

Did you hear Sec. of State Hillary Rodham (Clinton) uncork this line today?

"We are not any longer going to tolerate the kind of divisiveness that has paralyzed and undermined our ability to get things done for America."

Reckon if HR(C) will admit that folks of her political persuasion have been responsible for most of the divisiveness that's undermined America for the past, oh, eight years?

Of course she ain't gonna admit such, even though she freakin' knows that it was she and her Senate allies who not only filibustered, but more or less defamed extra-qualified judicial candidates just because they didn't support abortion on demand. HR(C) also is well aware of disrespectful, and dare I say juvenile, acts directed at President George W. Bush by her colleagues ... like Sen. Jim "Surly" Webb refusing to shake Bush's hand at a formal White House gathering. Oh, and HR(C) had to be watching each time a leftist U.S. Representative gave a one-minute speeche on the floor of the U.S. House calling Mr. Bush a "liar," a "thief," a "torturer" ... and worse.

You know, Hillary Rodham (Clinton) criticizing "divisiveness" is kinda like a hawk who criticizes other hawks for killing field mice.

Speaking of "dividing" and all that, Gary Bauer has a great take on what happened during B. Hussein Obama's inauguration. He asks, "Where was the Graciousness?" Where indeed. To wit:

A number of commentators made the point yesterday that there was such goodwill for President Obama that there were no demonstrators at the inaugural. Of course there weren’t. Conservatives and Republicans don’t demonstrate. The 60 million Republican and conservative voters who didn’t vote for Obama wouldn’t dream of trying to disrupt his day. It is the political Left that acts like children when it loses. It’s the Left that tried to turn both Bush inaugurals and both Reagan inaugurals into fiascos.

Actually, there was one demonstration yesterday, but not from our side. Even in victory, the Left couldn’t restrain itself. When President Bush and Mrs. Bush were introduced at the Capitol, the crowd of liberal Democrat VIPs with the close, up-front seats, in one final display of ignorance and classlessness, booed the outgoing president. Not satisfied with that insult, a mocking chant started, “Na Na Na Na, Hey, Hey, Hey, Goodbye.” These are the “tolerant” people who want us to close ranks now – behind their agenda. (By the way, to see how these eco-conscious "progressives" left Washington after their victory bash, click here.)

But the lack of grace doesn’t end there. For decades Democrats have played the race card against Republicans and conservatives. If we opposed quotas, we were bigots. If we thought welfare or subprime mortgages needed reforming, it was said we hated black people. The list goes on and on. But Pastor Joseph Lowery just couldn’t help himself. He had to play the race card again.

He did it with this little prayer/poem: “Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around … when yellow will be mellow … when the red man can get ahead man, and when white will embrace what is right.”

A mixed race man had just become the 44th president of a nation that is 67% white – something that has not yet happened in any of the “progressive” European nations, which we are always told are more “enlightened” than we are. But to Lowery and the Left, if you are white and conservative, you still haven’t “embraced what is right.”

As a matter of fact, to these ideologues, if you are black, brown, yellow or red AND conservative, you are the problem. Seriously, would the media have been in a similar state of euphoria if the man sworn in yesterday had been J.C. Watts, Ken Blackwell or Clarence Thomas?

"Congress, with an approval rating below 20%, is about to throw an $800 billion patchwork quilt of taxpayer dollars at 'infrastructure' and unproven green technologies. This 'stimulus package' is based on little more than theory never tried on an economy of this scale and complexity. What if, like the TARP, it doesn't work?"

-- Daniel Henninger

With all the talk of President B. Hussein Obama and his allies in Congress wishing to lauch a free-spending New New Deal," folks need to take a hard look at the free-spending Original New Deal and investigate whether or not it successfully jump-started the econonomy.

Of course, pundits and leftist politicians - and most U.S. history text books - will tell you that FDR's New Deal ended the Great Depression. In a devastating essay in The American Conservative, Foundation for Economic Education's Sheldon Richman says that's pure bunk. First, Richman quotes historian David Kennedy: "Whatever it was, [the New Deal] was not a recovery program, or at any rate an effective one." Richman goes on from there with a devastating critique of the New Deal and the FDR's-statism-saved-us consensus. (You can read Richman's entire essay here.)

Here's Richman's summation:

What can we learn from all this? That money is too important to be left to the state. One way or another, government mismanagement of the monetary system wrecked the U.S. economy. It’s happening again now. The only permanent way to avoid a repetition is to place the system where it belongs: in the free market.

Second, efforts to prevent liquidation of malinvestment caused by inflation bankrupt companies and only prolong economic agony. Bailouts are counterproductive. Assets must be revalued and rearranged in the light of reality.

Third, government stimulus spending, borrowing, taxation, and public works commandeer scarce private resources and prevent entrepreneurs from shifting them to investments aligned with consumer, not political, preferences. As Price Fishback of the University of Arizona points out, even FDR didn’t try to stimulate the economy with extraordinary budget deficits, something for which Keynes criticized him.

Fourth, individual liberty is the first casualty when bureaucracy expands to manage the economy.

President-elect Obama would do well to take note, but we hardly have grounds for optimism. Obama has declared his intention to spend, New Deal-style, hundreds of billions of dollars—perhaps a trillion—to rebuild infrastructure, modernize schools, retrofit public buildings for energy efficiency, and expand the broadband network. No matter how meritorious these projects, they do not constitute a genuine recovery program. Government cannot escape the fact that it cannot create wealth. It can only transfer wealth from the private sector or create the illusion of wealth through inflation. Jobs created under inherently politicized programs will displace jobs the private sector would create if the burden of government were lifted and investor confidence restored.

It’s about time we learned something from the New Deal.

Remember when I said that I'd no longer approve off-topic comments?

Today, this anonymous comment was attached to my most recent post 'bout the Speaker of the Tenn. House of Representatives:

Man, it's effing Obama day. Write about that or shut the fuck up.

O
B
A
M
A

"[E]ffing Obama day" ...?

Sounds like a film geared toward those who pursue an alternative lifestyle. I'm not trying to pass judgement, but that whole comment was just plain weird. And off-topic, to boot!

Thanks to Creeder Reader Mr. Mordecai for sending us this Newsbusters story:

In a 7:43 AM commercial break during Monday’s CBS Early Show, the network aired a promo for a new episode of the show ‘Two And A Half Men,’ that used an Obama campaign slogan: "Can CBS show you the funny side of families?...Yes we can." The words appeared on screen in red, white, and blue, soon followed by a flash of the CBS logo in the same colors, looking very similar to Obama’s campaign logo.

Now take a look at these CBS screen captures:



If it was John McCain getting sworn into office today, do you really think CBS - or any network for that matter - would be running promos using his campaign colors and themes? If you do, I have a condo on a sandy beach in Kansas that I'll sell you dirt cheap.

If McCain'd been elected, jokes about his age, and his Vice President's supposed lack of intelligence, would've started the day after the election. The denizens of popular culture wouldn't be talking about "bridging divides" or encouraging folks to "come together." Oh, no. It'd be "President Old Coot" and "VP Caribou Barbie" -- or worse -- all day and all night.

You know it, too.

Back in the late 1990s, there was a Internet message board called Bianca's Poetry Shack (I think) at which self-righteous and supposedly educated individuals would post line after line after line of the most tediously idiotic poetry known to man. When I needed an extra good laugh, I would whip up a few lines of verse and see what kind of response I could elicit from my fellow "poets." I would be all cryptic and arcane, and I would always begin my poems with a little introduction to demonstrate that I was totally full of myself.

One of my poems was an autobiographical poem that began with the line A poet I'm. I then had another 12-14 lines of crap that ended with words that rhymed with "I'm," like "chime" and "sublime." I had a half-dozen folks who went on and on in a very long message thread talking about great was my poem. In fact, each and every poem I posted on that there message board got compliments and encouragements, as well as comments from folks who attempted to "deconstruct" what I was saying.

I couldn't help but think about my short stint as a "serious" poet as I was listening to Elizabeth Alexander's poem at B. Hussein Obama's coronation, er, inauguration. You can read a transcript of the poem here.

I'm of the opinion that Obama should've invited a six-year-old boy or girl to opine on their favorite Cartoon Network show instead of having an inaugural poet. I mean, having some cherubic boy or girl appear on the stage for five minutes would've been worth, like, a million political brownie points with Middle America. And, more importantly, anything a Little Junior or Little Miss Junior said about Transformers Animated or Skunk Fu! would be at least, or more, profound than anything a poet plucked from the halls of Yale could say.

I caught some hell last week for calling Tennessee House Speaker Kent Williams a "fuckin' rat bastard." Now that I think about it, that probably was a bit over the top. Therefore, I'd like to revise and extend my remarks by stating for the record, "Kent Williams is a fuckin' liar."

Two days before the election for House Speaker, Kent Williams said this in an interview in his hometown newspaper, the Elizabethton Star:

"I made a commitment to vote for Jason Mumpower for House speaker and I intend to keep my commitment. I think Jason will make a good leader."

As we all now know, had no intention of honoring his commitment to vote for Jason Mumpower for Speaker. Indeed, he'd been planning his coup with a handful of House Democrats for weeks, if not months.

And here's the infamous letter Williams signed back in November pledging to support Republicans for the top spots in the State House (click on picture for larger view):


Williams can say that by voting for himself for Speaker he did keep his commitment to vote for a Republican for that post. However, by signing that letter he also pledged to support a Republican for Speaker Pro Tempore. Williams actually voted for Democrat Lois DeBerry - whose command of the English language and shrieking speaking style makes her painful to listen to - for Speaker Pro Tempore.

Again, I'll be the first to admit that calling Kent Williams a rat bastard was a mistake. After all, it's pretty hard to prove whether someone is or is not a "rat bastard." However, the newspaper article and the letter I referenced and posted about offers concrete proof that Williams is indeed a fuckin' liar. Don't hold your breath waiting for me to back down on that point.

UPDATE: My offer to send $100 to the first candidate who announces that he or she will run against Kent Williams in the August 2010 Republican primary still stands.

Well, it's nice to know that the United States ain't the only country on earth that's actively trying to ensure that its youngest citizens don't know nothin'. The December 29, 2008, National Review reports on happenings in the United Kingdom:

Out with the old, in with the new. Oxford University Press publishes a "junior dictionary," widely used in British schools and popular with parents. More than 150 obsolete or offensive words have been dropped from the most recent edition, and a corresponding number of improving words brought in, to reflect, says the publisher, the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multifaith society. So it’s out with "altar," "bishop," "coronation," "disciple," and "empire"; in with "apparatus," "blog," "celebrity," "database," and "Euro." How long, we wonder, before British encyclopedias follow the old Soviet example, mailing out packets of replacement pages to subscribers when some historical or political article becomes "incorrect," with instructions to cut out and destroy the superseded text?

Closer to home, the Tennessean recently reported on a Williamson County teacher, a Mr. David Rector, who had his students translate the Declaration of Independence into "text speak," the two and three-letter words kids use in instant messages and text messages. Here's how two students translated the passage in which King George III is taken to task for violating the American colonists rights:

"Ur King has treted us like slaves. Hes taxd us outragusly, & has takn almost all of our rights away. Hes evn cut off our trade w/ the rest of the world. Dude, we cant walk out our doors w/out getting poked at by an officers gun."

Encouraging kids to engage in such nitwittery is probably an easy way for a teacher to earn cool-points with his charges. But with more and more students needing remedial English classes during their freshman year in college, is it really a good idea to encourage them to purposefully misspell words and flaunt the rules of grammar and punctuation?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for teachers trying to motivate students by moving beyond the standard lecture-reading assignment teaching methods. However, deliberately dumbing down the curriculum for the sole purpose of making it "contemporary" is just, well, dumb.

Get 'em while they're hot ...


Stickers are available for $3 each, or 4 for $10.

Please send checks, money orders or (well-concealed) cash to:

The Nigh Seen Creeder
2479 Murfreesboro Road, #339
Nashville, TN 37217

To everything (spend, spend, spend)
There is a season (spend, spend, spend)

-- Words adapted from the Holy Bible (Ecclesiastes); music by Pete Seeger, certified Commie

B. Hussein Obama and his congressional lackeys are promising nearly $1 trillion in "stimulus" to get the American economy back on track. Here're some of the programs they hope to stimulate ...

- $6 billion to weatherize "modest-income homes"

- $6 billion to provide Web service in "underserved" areas

- $20 billion to increase food stamp funding

- $300 million to provide rebates for people who purchase "Energy Star" products

- $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration programs

- $350 million to research using energy efficient technology on military bases

- $300 million for grants and loans to state and local governments for projects that reduce diesel emissions, "benefiting public health and reducing global warming"

- $500 million for "energy efficient manufacturing demonstration projects"

- $400 million to build major research facilities "that perform cutting-edge science"

If all that's so important, how come no federal dollars have been dedicated to the universe's cutting-edge moisture farms?!

Last month, Ole Miss head basketball coach Andy Kennedy was sued by Cincinnati cab driver Mohamed Jiddou, who claims that Kennedy punched him outside a local bar. Jiddou also claims that Kennedy shouted several racial slurs during the punching.

Coach Kennedy denies that he punched Mr. Jiddou. He recently filed a defamation suit against Jiddou and a valet who supposedly witnessed the assault. (Kennedy was due in court yesterday for a preliminary hearing of the assault charge.) But that ain't the only counter-suit coming out of the Kennedy camp. Oh, no ...

Kennedy's wife, Kimber, is also suing Mr. Cabbie and Mr. Valet ... over the claim that her husband hasn't been able to do what husbands, ahem, do when the lights are out and the kids are asleep.

Damn! Why didn't Mrs. Kennedy also claim that her husband has taken to wearing lace panties and a "I ♥ Lifetime Movie Network" T-shirt? Talk about being completely emasculated, indeed!

I don't know a lot about Andy Kennedy, but every time I've seen him on TV he's struck me as high-strung and a bit of a jackass. I can sure see him taking a poke at a cabbie for no good reason. Indeed.

That said, I look for Mr. Kennedy to offer Mr. Jiddou a pile o' cash before any of the punchin' and/or sex stuff can reach a jury. Thus, we'll probably never, ever hear about Kennedy's inability to "shoot" or "drive the lane" or "put it up from 'down home'" and ... you get the b-ball sexual analogy drift.

Last year, I caught hell every time I suggested that the mainstream media was in the tank for B. Hussein Obama. During a political discussion with a colleague yesterday, I mentioned the fact that there is a discernable left-wing bias in the mainstream media. I was promptly told, "You're crazy."

If being right - and in this case I mean correct, not conservative - means I'm "crazy," well, then, color me a full-fledged loon.

Just five days after the votes'd been tallied, the Washington Post's ombudsman, Deborah Howell, admitted that her paper had a pro-Obama bias during the election. You can read her admission here.

A couple of week's later, Time magazine's Mark Mark Halperin got in on the admission act. At a post-election conference sponsored by The Politico, Halperin unleashed on the media’s election coverage:

"It’s the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war, Halperin said at a panel of media analysts. "It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage."

Halperin cited two New York Times articles as examples of this slant:

"The example that I use, at the end of the campaign, was the two profiles that The New York Times ran of the potential first ladies," Halperin said. "The story about Cindy McCain was vicious. It looked for every negative thing they could find about her and it case her in an extraordinarily negative light. It didn’t talk about her work, for instance, as a mother for her children, and they cherry-picked every negative thing that’s ever been written about her."

The story about Michelle Obama, by contrast, was "like a front-page endorsement of what a great person Michelle Obama is," according to Halperin.

Why is all this important? Well, I'll tell you.

It is the duty of the mainstream media - meaning newspapers of record, network news organizations, the Big Three news magazines (Times, Newsweek, U.S. News), etc. - to offer balanced, unbiased reporting on the events of the day. We now know that a great many, if not most, of the media shirked its duty to report, not politic, during the 2008 presidential election.

Which begs the question: If the mainstream media was hell-bent on slanting its coverage in order to get Obama elected, what's it gonna do to make sure he stays in office past January 2013? I don't even want to think about it ...

The Campaign for Working Families PAC relates some very interesting polling information, which I'm sure will get The Nigh Seen Creeder's nutbucket brigade's commentin' fingers a-flying 'cause, well, check it out ....

A Fox News poll conducted this week had some good news for Sarah Palin. Right before the election, as she was taking the brunt of the media’s criticism, Palin’s ratings were 45% positive and 49% negative. They now stand at 49% positive and 40% negative. That’s a 13-point swing in her favor. Among Republicans, Palin remains wildly popular, enjoying an 85% favorability rating, while nearly half of Independents view the Alaska governor positively.

Here are some other interesting results:

When asked if the media has treated Caroline Kennedy fairly, 52% of voters said "yes." When asked if the media treated Sarah Palin fairly, only 35% of voters said "yes." Even 41% of Democrats felt Palin had been unfairly treated by the liberal media.

When voters were asked if they were "comfortable" or "concerned" about the proposed "changes" Barack Obama says he wants to make, voters were split, with 49% saying they were "comfortable" and 41% saying they were "concerned." Not exactly a mandate for change.

When [voters were] asked what they felt was the most effective way to improve the economy – individual/business spending vs. government spending – 52% of voters said individual and business spending, while just 19% said government spending. Yet, 66% of the $825 billion stimulus plan announced yesterday by Speaker Nancy Pelosi is dedicated to more government spending.

When asked how the vacancy of Barack Obama’s Illinois Senate seat should have been resolved, 60% of voters, including 54% of Democrats, said it should have been filled by a special election. But yesterday Senate Democrats seated Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s handpicked successor, Roland Burris. Only 25% of voters said Gov. Blagojevich should have been allowed to make the appointment.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted yesterday to expand a health-insurance for children and low-income families (SCHIP), which President George W. Bush twice vetoed. The House bill seeks to enroll four million additional children in SCHIP, at a projected cost of $32.3 billion over the next 4 1/2 years. A 61-cent increase in the federal cigarette tax, as well as increases in other tobacco taxes, will supposedly fully fund the expanded program.

I hate to get all Econ 101 on my readers again, but there ain't no way that SCHIP is only going to cost $32 billion over the next 4+ years. Back in 2003-4, President Bush, under pressure from Democrats to demonstrate his "compassionate conservatism" in an election year, threw his weight behind a Medicare drug benefit. The program's cost accelerated like an Indy car in a straightaway, and Democrats then criticized the president for cost overruns! No wonder he vetoed SCHIP, twice.

What's truly disturbing about the House SCHIP bill is the fact that program's expansion is to be almost entirely funded by a 61-cent increase in the federal cigarette tax, as well as increases in other tobacco taxes.

First of all, tobacco use has been steadily declining in recent years; thus, an elected representative is a confirmed ass when he or she assumes that an increase in tobacco taxes will result in increased tobacco use.

In addition, cigarettes are already heavily taxed, and each subsequent tax increase encourages criminal and black market tobacco sales. Don't believe me? Google-search "New York cigarette black market" and see what you find out. (In addition to informative news, you'll find a lot of economically-ignorant souls who claim - sans reliable facts and figures - that the illegal cigarette trade has Big Tobacco's thumbprints all over it.)

Now, I do not begrudge those who wish to ensure that poor kids have access to quality health care. That's a noble wish, indeed. However, those noble souls should be honest about how much their wishin'-and-wantin' will cost -- at least two times what they're now saying.

The same folks should also learn themselves enough on basic economics 'til they figure out that you cannot fully fund a budget-busting program with a tax that is not only increasingly confiscatory, but is also designed to discourage use/consumption of the "thing" being taxed to fund said program!

Again, SCHIP is a good -- utopian? -- idea on paper, but it will prove to be a true budget-buster if it's enacted. When, three or four years down the road, SCHIP's budget ain't $32 billion-and-change over the next 4 1/2 years but $20-30 billion A year, folks are gonna say ... "President George W. Bush was on to something."

Thanks to Creeder Reader Reggie for sending us this story:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has launched a marketing campaign to rebrand fish as "sea kittens," a name the organization hopes will increase awareness and make the vertebrates more endearing to those who would eat them.

I've talked about how much I disdain the members of PETA (see here and here). After reading that news story, I just feel fuckin' sorry for 'em, for being so fuckin' stupid.

An individual would have to be completely detached from reality to think that large numbers of the citizenry are going to call fish "sea kittens." Said individual would have to be even more detached from reality to think that folks are going to stop eating tasty sea and lake creatures ... no matter what the damn things are called.

The fact that an organization with thousands of members and sympathizers is mounting a lobbying and "educational" effort -- and spending God-know-how-much money -- to encourage large numbers of the citizenry to call fish "sea kittens" is ... well, it's just plain stupid is what it is.

That said, I've only rubbed elbows with a handful of PETA folks over the years. Each and every one I've known, however, has been extremely liberal, and probably pro-choice to boot. And that's one of the things that bothers me about PETA: they go ape-ship whenever someone wants to eat an animal that roots and swims in its own filth, but they have no problem terminating a life that will one day walk, talk, reason, and love just like them.

I just wonder what the reaction from a PETA person would be if pro-lifers mounted a serious effort to replace "fetus" with, say, "baby snail darter" or "veal-like organism" or "human foie gras" or -- I could go on and on. Needless to say, I don't think the PETAs would do anything but laugh their asses off. Kinda like I'm doing at them now ...

In response to the Creeder post in which I took our soon-to-be president to task for his proposed Keynesianism on steroids, I got an e-mail from a Mr. Stoneman (add enough @.coms and you'll find him) in which I was told that I'm a "Republican shill" who "doesn't know anything." Weeeeeell ...

In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, George Melloan, a former WSJ deputy editor, said this 'bout what caused our nation's economic meltdown:

Last year's crash was caused primarily by the deflation of a real-estate bubble that those two government behemoths, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, had a large role in inflating.

And today, the Wall Street Journal has a story about Japan's current economic woes in which the author, John Murphy, says:

The infrastructure spending that other nations hope will be a silver bullet is a cautionary tale in a country dotted with big construction projects ... that never lived up to expectations of lifting the economy during the downturn of the 1990s.

In my Saturday post, I said the sins of Fannie Mae and Freddie, as well as other government entities are to blame for our economic ills; and I also stated that only a major boob would think that public works spending is the economic cure for what's ailing America, especially since Japan in the 1990s is Exhibit A that such hyper-Keynesian ain't gonna ****in' work.

Looks like I know a few things after all.

Next time you find yourself in a room with a nutbucket who's opining on what a hellhole the United States is, tell him/her this: "Well, at least you don't live in a country in which stoning is a spectator sport."

Check it:

A man convicted of adultery has escaped death by stoning in Iran after dragging himself out of the pit he had been buried in for the punishment – an act that means he is free under Islamic law.

Two other male adulterers were killed by the barbaric method in the same incident, which took place in the north-eastern city of Mashhad last month.

I know it's tacky to ask, but I'll ask it anyway: Reckon what Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham (Clinton) think when they see stories like this? "WHEW!" perhaps?!

Stickers are available for $3 each, or 4 for $10.

Please send checks, money orders or (well-concealed) cash to:

The Nigh Seen Creeder
2479 Murfreesboro Road, #339
Nashville, TN 37217

Folks, if you want to know what a rat bastard looks like, well here you go:


The rat bastard in question is Tennessee State Representative Kent Williams (R-Elizabethton). Excuse me, Tennessee Speaker of the House Kent Williams (R-Elizabethton).

Today, after having his name placed in nomination as the Republican candidate for House Speaker by Democrat Gary Odom, Kent Williams voted for himself, along with Odom and the remaining members of the Democratic caucus, and was thus elected.

Prior to today's events, Williams gave every indication that he would vote for Rep. Jason Mumpower (R-Bristol) for House Speaker. Indeed, he signed a letter last month pledging to support "a Republican" for speaker, which, as every other House Republican certainly knew at the time, meant Rep. Mumpower. That makes him a liar perhaps not in letter, but certainly in spirit.

I have to hand it to former House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh. He is one cagey - and resilient - SOB. I always marveled at Naifeh's ability to round up a handful of Republicans to vote for him for speaker every two years, even though he had a track record of gleefully sticking it to the GOP at every turn. The Republican turncoats who voted for him in those instances, however, were only rewarded primo assignments on preferred committees.

I can only imagine what political thirty-pieces-of-silver Kent Williams was promised to pull the stunt he pulled today. I know why Jimmy Naifeh offered said silver -- and lets be honest, Jimmy Naifeh's fat hands are ALL OVER the unprecedented events of today -- he's hoping the Democrats will regain control of the State House in 2010, and he can resume his iron-fisted control over the body. I'm sure Kent Williams has been promised to be richly rewarded if Naifeh again becomes House Speaker.

Here're are a couple of things for Williams and Naifeh to consider:

First, as part of his "deal" with Democrats, Williams will no doubt appoint Democrats to chair most major committees. Tennessee is facing a serious budget shortfall this year, and any unpopular cuts in services will have to come through committees headed by Williams-Naifeh Democrats. That'll provide great campaign fodder for Republicans in 2010.

Second, Tennessee has been trending heavily Republican for the past decade. If you don't believe me, just compare county-by-county maps of the 2006 Corker-Ford U.S. Senate race and the 2008 McCain-Obama race. To say that Tennessee has become even more Republican in the past two years is indeed an understatement. Chances are the GOP will pick up a couple of seats to build on its one-seat majority in the State House in 2010. (If Obama falls flat on his face, a couple of seats may be a bunch o' seats.) If Naifeh betting that he'll be able to get his gavel back in 2011, well, he probably shouldn't put no money down on that bet. He may look - and act - like a Mafiosi, but even Jimmy Naifeh can't change electoral tides or shift political winds.

Republican voters in this state are going to remember what happened today when they vote in November 2010. I know this Republican voter will. We all thought we'd banished the "good ol' boy" politics that's dominated Tenn. House politics since -- wait, has there ever been a time when ol' boys, rouges and adulterers (one of whom's been mentioned in this post, who conducted "business" in plain sight of his colleagues)?

Finally, I, Joltin' Django, pledge that I will send a check in the amount of $100 to the first Republican who files papers to challenge Kent Williams in the August 2010 primary. And I promise to post a copy of the canceled check, too.

This lifelong Red Sox fan is elated that Jim Rice is - finally - heading to the Hall of Fame.

It's long bothered me that the Hall of Fame has had an all-but-announced set of benchmarks for Hall of Famers, i.e., 400 homers, 300 wins, this many stolen bases, and a batting average that high, etc., instead of honoring ballplayers who had long careers during which they were invaluable to the team(s) for which they played, and who also had periods of league-wide dominance. Like Jim Rice.

Here's what Rice did:

"He played his entire 16-year career in Boston, hit .298, collected 382 homers and 1,451 RBIs, led the American League in homers three times, made eight All-Star teams, won an MVP award and had a 12-year run (1975-86) in which he was considered the league's top hitter."

More:

"Hall of Fame reliever Rich Gossage, who beat Rice to Cooperstown by one year, said, 'There's no hitter who scared me, but Jim Rice came the closest. He had tremendous power, but yet he was an excellent hitter who could hit to the opposite field or go up the middle. Most power hitters have holes. Jim Rice had no big holes.'"

That said, the 1980 Topps baseball card you see on this post was one of my favorites when I was growing up. When I was 11 or 12-years old, my next door neighbor gave me all of his baseball cards (he was older than me and was more interested in girls than baseball cards at the time). The card collection he gave me was a who's who of all the best players from the late 70s and 80s.

Included in the collection of cards I got from my neighbor were eight 1980 Topps Jim Rice cards. A lot of my card-collecting friends coveted those 1980 Jim Rice cards --it was a cool-lookin' card, after all -- and I used six of those cards to make some pretty good trades. To this day, though, I still have the remaining two. And while I might give up one for the, ahem, right price, the other will remain in Joltin' Django's roll-and-stock until ... well, for a long ****in' time!

Almost two years ago, I won a Cleveland Hibiore XL driver in a contest sponsored by Golf magazine.


Said driver immediately became one of my prized possessions. I was playing golf with a fairly nice set of golf clubs when I received my Cleveland driver, but I'd never actually played golf until I received my Cleveland driver. That is, I'd never whacked balls farther, or played entire rounds of golf without a single slice or hook off the tee, until I got my until I got my high-dollar driver.

Well, it didn't take long for my driver - and other drivers like it - to become a menace to society. This from Sports Illustrated:

Issued by scientists in Scotland, a warning that golfers who use titanium drivers are risking damage to their hearing. The scientists found that the thin-faced clubs make a loud ping when they strike the ball. Dr. Malcolm Buchanan, an Edinburgh-trained ear, nose and throat specialist (and golfer), said the research showed the clubs "may produce sufficient sound to induce temporary or even permanent - cochlear damage in susceptible individuals." The report, which was cowritten by Buchanan for the British Medical Journal, advises players to consider earplugs.

If that's true, then why no warnings from Buchanan and other, er, scientists about hearing-related dangers from aluminum baseball bats? Ever heard someone smack the hell out of a baseball or softball with an aluminum bat? Talk about a "ping"! I played baseball for ten years (from age 8 to 18), almost year round, and 99 percent of time I used an aluminum bat. My hearing is just as good now -- probably better since I decided to play acoustic music exclusively -- as it was when I was 18.

You know, I've always enjoyed the sound of locusts buzzing on hot summer days. Next thing you know, some busy-body doctor is gonna tell me that the sounds of summer are bad for you. You think I'm kidding ...

Here's the sign in front of Napier Elementary, which is located in South Nashville:

The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore says Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which was published 52 years ago, has gone from fiction to fact:

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as "the looters and their laws." Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the "Anti-Greed Act" to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel's promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the "Equalization of Opportunity Act" to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the "Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act," aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn't Hank Paulson think of that?

These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and the "Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act." Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan." This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion -- in roughly his first 100 days in office.

The current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That's the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies -- while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls."

Read the rest here.

At least a half-dozen times during the 2008 presidential campaign, I stated unequivocally that B. Hussein Obama is one of the most economically ignorant individuals to ever seek the presidency. With each pronouncement on economic policy that's issued by the Office of the President-Elect, I'm starting to look like a soothsayer.

Yesterday, our soon-to-bee president said this 'bout the economy:

[O]nly government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe. Only government can break the cycle that is crippling our economy.

First of all, it was acts of government that got us into our current predicament:

The Fed not only kept the dollar too weak for too long, it was slow to react to when it became clear that housing prices were appreciating too much too fast.

Government regulators cajoled and outright forced banks to issue too many subprime loans; and certain members of Congress, most of whom were Democrats, steadfastly refused to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which was purchasing subprime mortgages from banks and encouraging banks to issue even more loans to folks who were never be able to repay them.

Dirt-worshipers in Congress worked to enact legislation -- the so-called fleet average rules -- that forced Big Three automakers to build unprofitable "green" automobiles at high-wage, i.e., union, plants. Thus, congressional meddling has been one of the biggest thorns in the side of America's automakers as they seek to return to profitability. Congress' solution? Force 'em to build even more cars that nobody wants. Makes perfect sense to me, don't it you?!

Too many members of Congress, mostly Democrats but including several Republicans who should know better, refuse to grab a bucket and endorse the drastic reforms that will be necessary to save the sinking ships known as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

I could go on and on. What B. Hussein Obama and his cronies need to realize is this: Ronald Reagan was 100% correct when he said that government ain't the solution to our problems, it is the problem. The government has enacted too many barriers to saving and investing, and the new Congress is hell-bent to enact even more.

Furthermore, Obama seems not to have read anything about what made happened in the United States in the 1930s and in Japan in the 1990s. In the 1930s, Roosevelt's New Dealers enacted dozens and dozens of make-work programs, none of which did a damn thing to revive economic growth. (Indeed, the United States suffered a recession within a depression in the late 1930s.) In the 1990s, the Japanese government did all kinds of Keynesian pump-priming, which included a lot of public works projects and a lot of deficit spending (sound familiar?). Japan suffered through a decade of economic stagnation, and economists there refer to the 1990s as the Lost Decade.

A wise philosopher once said that folks who do learn from history are doomed to repeat it. There might not be a bigger collection of non-learners than the members of the incoming Obama administration and the Democratic leaders in Congress. The fact that most of these folks are going to be in charge for the next four years means - and I hate to say it - that at least a little gloom is coming , if not a lot of doom.

I can't tell you how quickly my heart sank when I learned that Jack Kemp is battling what is probably a pretty aggressive cancer. I became a confirmed Jack Kemp fan after watching his speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention. An uplifting and inspiring speech -- "[Republicans] don't believe compassion should be measured by the size of the safety net, but by the number of rungs on the ladder of opportunity" -- I remember thinking at the time, "Too bad Kemp couldn't be the GOP's nominee."

Sometime in early 1993, I procured a signed copy of Kemp's An American Renaissance in a used bookstore in Clarksville, TN. I read the thing three times through over the course of about four days. It was at that time that I started identifying myself as a "supply-side conservative," which I continue to do to this day. (For a time in the late 1990s, I would only wear Jack Kemp-style "snap-collar" dress shirts.)

Kemp's book, which was published when Jimmy Carter was president, was a foreshadowing of what would happen in the 1980s: he said cutting marginal tax rates would ensure economic growth (true), and he said a full-bore effort to strengthen the U.S. military would eventually end Soviet adventurism (true). Oh, and for good measure, Kemp suggested that there should be a total reform of America's welfare system (which would eventually take place, when a GOP-led Congress forced the issue on President Bill Clinton).

I was one of the happiest sombitches on earth when Bob Dole picked Jack Kemp to join his presidential ticket in 1996. I was bummed that Kemp didn't run for president himself in '96, but I figured he'd be first in line to be the next president if Dole got elected that year. The Dole campaign - as we all know - never took off, and the VP debate that year was a complete disappointment. Kemp, who'd never been known as a hyper-partisan sort, brought kid gloves to his fight with Veep Al Gore and was almost too respectful during the debate. Gore, by comparison, shed his gloves about three lines into his opening statement, and he more or less accused Dole and Kemp of wanting to turn America into a right-wing dictatorship.

As disappointed as I was in Kemp's '96 debate performance, I had by then developed a deep respect for him for co-founding Empower America, a public policy outfit that published heavily-footnoted essays in which it was suggested that supply-side, free market principles could be used to solve social problems. Empower America proposed Enterprise Zones -- which would encourage the creation of small businesses with promises of low-to-no taxes and little regulation -- to revive American. In addition, Empower America was big supporter of charter schools and vouchers. And let me tell you, my fellow College Republicans couldn't keep enough Empower America materials on hand; indeed, EA's glossy brochures and stickers were the first to be snatched from our membership-drive tables.

If you read the whole of Jack Kemp's Wikipedia entry you'll think that he's a liberal - due to his many statements over the years in which he's expressed sympathy for the poor and for racial reconciliation - masquerading as a conservative. It's always been a canard that conservatives don't care a whit for what happens to poor folks and minorities; but, as Kemp has pointed out in the hundreds of op-eds he's penned over the years (practically all of which I've read), just handing out checks ain't gonna help nobody. America should be constructing ladders of economic opportunity, with supply-side, pro-growth fiscal policies. Which brings me back to that 1992 speech ...

Get well soon, Jack Kemp. My prayers are with you.

Things truly are tough all over. Banks were the first to go hat-in-hand to the federal government for a bailout; and then, a few weeks later, the auto-makers famously flew - and drove - to Capitol Hill to beg for cash. Now porno wants a piece of the pie ... no pun intended.

Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis are petitioning the government for upwards of $5 billion for the porn biz. According to Fox Business, the money is to, er, re-excite the traditional pornography market, i.e., mags, movies, etc., which has suffered due to the availability of free smut on the Internet.

Certain politicians have suggested that President-elect Obama should appoint someone to serve as a "car czar" to help revive the auto industry's fortunes. If he decides to appoint a "czar" to assist porn-peddlers, I'm thinking that Bill Clinton would be a good pick for the job. I mean, Larry Flynt was one of Clinton's biggest defenders during the whole Lewinsky imbroglio.

Oh, and speaking of Larry Flynt. He is suing his nephews for tarnishing the family name by trying to sell low-quality porno flicks. Considering that Flynt has amassed a fortune by publblishing a magazine in which trashy gals are photographed spreading their legs so wide that it's often possible to see their kidneys, he has a lot of nerve for suggesting that his family name can be tarnished any further.

I guess by now everyone's heard that President-elect B. Hussein Obama has picked Bill Clinton's former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Obama is taking a lot of heat, and rightfully so, for picking the hackish Panetta to head what -- in this age of terrorist threats, Russian authoritarianism, and Chinese ascendency in the Far East -- is one of America's most important government agencies. Here's my take:

Panetta's office was just around the corner from the Oval Office during the time when Bill Clinton was diddling Monica Lewinsky. When news of Clinton's sexcapades with his young intern hit the fan, if you will, Panetta claimed that he had no idea any funny business had been going on mere feet from his office. Why in God's name do we want such a clueless boob running the agency in charge of gathering intelligence on America's overseas enemies?!

Clueless boob ... that's Leon Panetta (and his would-be future boss, too).

Just so you know, Joltin' Django's ...

Reading:

Twenty Thousand Roads: The Ballad of Gram Parsons and His Cosmic American Music

The Existential Jesus

Listening to:

The Smithereens: Live at the Roxy 1992

Metallica: Death Magnetic

Bel Canto: Beautiful Voices Of Opera

Watching:

The Major League Baseball Network (yeah!)
Hellboy: Director's Cut DVDs

Here I was tonight watching a show 'bout the 1946 World Series (Red Sox vs. Cardinals) on the Major Leage Baseball Network when ... I was assaulted by a the-ice-caps-are-melting-and-polar-bears-are-dying commercial featuring C-list celeb Noah Wyle.

When the show went off I started poking around the Inter-Web. I came across this, and it make me chuckle (at Mr. Noah Wyle's, and his fellow Hollywood nutbuckets' expense):

In December ... [Al] Goracle [Gore] told a German audience that the North Pole will have a complete meltdown by 2013.

Don't think so, Al.

Even the global warming religionists at The Huffington Post are jumping ship.

Now, we learn that the sea ice ends the year at levels seen 29 years ago.
Daily Tech reported:


Rapid growth spurt leaves amount of ice at levels seen 29 years ago.

Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.

Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards.

The data is being reported by the University of Illinois's Arctic Climate Research Center, and is derived from satellite observations of the Northern and Southern hemisphere polar regions.

The oceans have been cooling since 2003.
Sea ice is growing at the fastest pace on record.
A rare 50 year arctic blast is cooling the west coast.
There are growing fears of a coming freeze worse than the ice age.
Alaskan Sea Glaciers are advancing for the first time in 250 years.
And, for the second straight year the Earth is, in fact, cooling ... not warming.

Th[e] US Climate Map October 2007-November 2008 shows that temperatures are well below normal throughout the US this year.

It looks like Al Gore is a bit off on his prediction that North Pole will be completely gone in 5 years.

More ... Eiffel Tower closed as snow blankets Europe and Great Britain could be in the grip of its hardest winter for decades as temperatures struggle to climb above freezing.

You gotta click here for all the links. You're gonna laugh (in a sad-laughter kind o' way) when you condider how clueless -- nay, how clueless and demagogue-like -- Al Gore is these days.

Yesterday, an article in the Washington Post gushed that President-elect B. Hussein Obama's transition has been one of the "smoothest" in history. Hell, I get tired of pointing out left-wing media bias ... but any journalist who says Obama's transition has been "smooth" is a sniffer of leftist thrones. I mean, when was the last time a president-elect's "organization" had to conduct an internal investigation to determine whether any of its staffers'd discussed selling their boss's legislative for political favors?! If that's "smooth" then a saw blade is gelatinous.

More from the Campaign for Working Families PAC:

In the days following his historic election, Barack Obama won high praise from the pundits for his cabinet choices and smooth transition efforts. But more recently, the president-elect has hit a few potholes on his road to the White House. There are growing suggestions in Washington that Bill Richardson’s abrupt withdrawal was the result of poor vetting, or no vetting at all, by the Obama team. And even though the new 111th Congress, sworn into today, will feature a vastly greater Democrat majority to assist the new Democrat president, there are signs of straining relations.

When President-elect Obama chose Pastor Rick Warren to pray at his inaugural, Democrat Rep. Barney Frank reacted bitterly. Mr. Obama repeatedly said after the election that getting a stimulus package on his desk by Inauguration Day was his top priority. Yesterday, he went to Capitol Hill to prod lawmakers and warned, “The economy is very sick. The situation is getting worse. ... We have to act and act now to break the momentum of this recession.” But key Democrat leaders in Congress are insisting that no stimulus package will be passed until next month at the earliest.

And when the president-elect announced his choice of former California Congressman Leon Panetta for CIA Director, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), issued this terse statement, "I know nothing about this, other than what I’ve read. My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time." Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Former U.S. Senator Bill Frist says he ain't gonna run for Guv in 2010. That clears the way -- clears the field -- for Harold Ford, Jr. and U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis to become the biggest names of big-name Democrat candidates who'll maybe run for Tenn. Gov. in 2010.

Here's what I think:

Former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., aka Junior, is making too much money in NYC to come back to Tennessee and have to deal with TennCare, Department of Safety scandals, a Republican General Assembly, etc.

U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis is an idiot. Indeed, I'll bet he could'nt define "marginal tax rate" if a gun was suddenly pressed to his head and he had to define such to live. Davis is a fat version of Gomer Pyle, and tain't a bucket of any size that would fit RIGHT over his head. He ain't gonna never be Tennessee's governor. Bank it. (Apologies to George Plaster.)

So who's left for the Dems? Former State Rep. Kim McMillan? She's a flake with a circa 1955 hairdo. State Rep. Gary Odom? Capitol Hill girlfriend(s) ... 'nough said.

Watch what U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp and Tenn. Lieutenant Gov. Ron Ramsey do for the next, oh, six months. Either of those two guys will be Tennessee's next governor.

Again, bank it.

Minnesota's Canvassing Board -- headed by Minn. Sec. of State Mark Ritchie, who sailed into office on dollars provided by a nefarious ACORN-endorsed group called the Secretary of State Project -- says this former-druggie/ left-wing sombitch is now Minnesota's junior U.S. Senator:


Anyone who thought or said -- or who still thinks or says -- that Minnesota's senior U.S. Senator Norm Coleman had any chance of getting a fair shake after he beat Al "Cokenose" Franken in November is an idiot, or a left-wing idiot, or, well, an idiot.

There was NO WAY the liberals in Minnesota were going to let Coleman win a recount, and today's Wall Street Journal tells us 'bout it:

Minnesotans like to think that their state isn't like New Jersey or Louisiana, and typically it isn't. But we can't recall a similar recount involving optical scanning machines that has changed so many votes, and in which nearly every crucial decision worked to the advantage of the same candidate. The Coleman campaign clearly misjudged the politics here, and the apparent willingness of a partisan like Mr. Ritchie to help his preferred candidate, Mr. Franken. If the Canvassing Board certifies Mr. Franken as the winner based on the current count, it will be anointing a tainted and undeserving Senator.

If this were a perfect world -- in which most voting-age folks not only had a grasp of basic economics, but they'd readily switch votes when they learned that they were turning into office candidates who didn't know sh** 'bout basic economics -- I would encourage Norm Coleman to concede and immediately form a Coleman 2014 PAC. Folks in Minnesota, however, have a history of re-electing socialist fools ... see Wellstone!'s 1996 campaign.

Thus, I endorse each and every one of Norm Coleman's legal efforts to legally prove that he was partisanally (sp?) done wrong. He was, you know.

That said, if Al Franken -- I still can't fathom a confirmed former coke-nose with no elected experience serving in the U.S. Congress -- his left-wing ass, er, face should find its way into each and every GOP fundraising letter and TV ad ... especially GOP ads in swing-states like Florida, North Carolina, Arkansas, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, et al.

Maybe-Senator Al Franken: Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and Bob Taft are no doubt spinning in their graves. There's a GOP ad right there.

Stay tuned for ordering information, folks!