Wait, Katie Couric is Still On TV?

Howard Kurtz interviewed Katie Couric as her contract with CBS comes to a close.  Here's the money quote:

That’s why Couric has spent recent weeks in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is touring what she calls “this great unwashed middle of the country” in an effort to divine the mood of the midterms.

I don't know about y'all, but I took a shower today. 

6 Days Before Election Day . . .

And the voter fraud has already begun.  Hat tip to Instapundit. 

I'd say that I'm sure both sides engage in these shenanigans, but if the GOP were under any sort of suspicion of this kind of election tampering, then the media would be all over it. 

Voter fraud and election tampering in a democratic society (especially one of the stature of the United States of America) is totally despicable.  It's as though the Democrats and their agents who have done this (notably here, Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader) concede that they cannot win on the merits of their policies and beliefs, so they must engage in criminal activity and steal the votes of their constituents and fellow citizens to keep their stranglehold on power.  Disgusting.

More Government Transparency

Treasury hiring FOIA officers "to withhold information from release to public". 

How loud would the howling be if this happened under Bush? 

Oh, Yes It Does

Some federal workers are getting together for a "Government Doesn't Suck" march. 

"It's time to turn the tables and remind the world that government employees just happen to be people -- people that don't suck," [Steven] Ressler said in a message sent to The Federal Eye on Sunday announcing the march. Government workers "are a lot of cool cats" who work hard, listen to good music and watch Stewart's "The Daily Show," "but that's all after they've spent a whole day keeping the country running," he said.

I think based on the above quotes from Mr. Ressler, it's safe to assume that he does kind of suck. 

So, who's in for the "IT BLOWS!" counter-protest?

What Does America Stand For?

Please watch this video of Dennis Prager speaking on a panel at the University of Denver.  He says everything much better than I ever could.

Obama's Leadership

There has been some discussion in the blogosphere lately about growing anti-Muslim sentiment and some believe that it is due to Obama's lack of leadership on this issue.  Following 9/11, Bush was proactive in exclaiming the virtues of Islam and pronouncing the terrorists as apostates of the so-called religion of peace.  Obama hasn't really continued that effort and his administration's efforts to return to dealing with terrorism as criminal activity and not as an act of war are leaving some Americans feeling more vulnerable to attack.  As such, it's presumed that this vulnerability leaves Americans more fearful of "the other" than they otherwise might be. 

Now we have Obama refusing to visit a Sikh temple because he will have to don a head covering to do so and the optics that creates would harm his image, or so he thinks.  I'm sure the Obama-is-a-closet-Muslim crowd would certainly pounce on that image.  But so what?  Why be beholden to them?  Especially when he's not even going to a mosque -- it's a Sikh temple for crying out loud!  Bush held hands with a Saudi royal (as is the apparent cultural norm in those parts) and Obama's worried about putting a handkerchief on his head?  Please. 

On a sidenote, Tunku Varadarajan claims in his article that "the old, bold Obama" is gone.  I would like evidence that such an Obama ever existed. 

Second sidenote:  for all the talk about how Obama would increase our stature in the world through his superior diplomacy and what-not, we got a President (and staff) who

• gives an iPod filled with his own speeches to the Queen of England
• gives DVDs that don't work to the British Prime Minister
• displays the Philippines flag upside down during an official visit
• and most certainly other transgressions that I can't remember or be bothered to find because it's too depressing

And yet, here's cowboy Bush sucking it up and holding hands with a Saudi prince because that's what grown men do in Saudi Arabia.  (Yes, I am overlooking the fact that the Saudi regime is about as unsavory as it gets.)  Who's more the citizen of the world -- Obama or Bush?

Damn Skippy

Get on with your bad self, Jim DeMint. 

Strange, But True

In light of recent speculation that Obama might change running mates in 2012, he said the following:

“The single best decision that I have made was selecting Joe Biden as my running mate,” he told the crowd.

“The single best decision I have made,” Obama added, for emphasis. “I mean that. It’s true.”

You know, given all the other stuff he's come up with, this might actually be true.  For any other human being, selecting a buffoon such as Joe Biden to sit one heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world would be catastrophic, but for Obama, it's probably the least offensive -- and most entertaining --thing he's done in the past two years.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Did you know that insider trading is legal?  It is -- if you're a Congressman or work on a Congressman's staff. 

Are you as pissed off about this as I am?  Sometimes I think I exaggerate about the ruling class and their sins against regular folk, but now I realize that I don't.  And their transgressions are probably more egregious than you or I can even imagine.  We do not live in a free country.  We are ruled by an oligarchy just as corrupt as you can find in any two-bit Third World country.  I know that's a scary thought and that many of us would prefer to go about our business thinking that everything is just hunky-dory.  But we must admit to ourselves that this is not the country we thought it was.  We have allowed crooks and scoundrels to rule over us because we didn't want to do the hard work of governing ourselves.  We cannot continue down this path -- it will lead to our ruin. 

Please take few minutes of your time and contact your Congressman about the above.  There have been bills brought before the House to apply the private sector's rules to the public sector -- make yourself heard and demand some accountability.

Bullying and Suicide

I woke up (too) early this morning and caught something on the Today show that bothered me.  There is a high school in Ohio where 4 teens have committed suicide over the past two years.  All of the teens were bullied in some way or another.  The parents of 2 of the teens are now suing the school system for turning a blind eye to the bullying of their children.  I will address the bullying, but first let me address what I think is obviously the bigger issue:  suicide, particularly teen suicide.

The parents of these kids are in pain and they are looking for someone to blame and I can understand that.  In the course of their suing the school system, the school has claimed that they have an "aggressive program" geared toward tolerance and acceptance in order to prevent bullying.  That's probably the problem.  How about an aggressive program to explain to these kids that dead is dead?  You don't come back from that.  You don't bask in your classmates' belated adulation and acceptance of you.  You don't witness how bad they feel about how badly they treated you.  You're dead.  

Life is tough.  I have never been bullied to the extent that it appears these kids were, so I don't know the anguish they felt and how they must have dreaded school every day.  What I do know and what someone (either parents or teachers) should have told them is that the kids bullying them are douchebags.  That the bullies probably will have peaked in high school.  That while life is tough, it's also short.  That high school will be over before you know it -- even when it feels like an eternity.  That dead is dead and that no one should kill themselves over some punks calling them names and pushing them into lockers.  This is the issue.  Yes, that school does seem to have a problem with bullying, but when 4 kids kill themselves I think that's the larger issue, no?  

Now, for bullying.  See above about the douchebags.  There are 2 -- not mutually exclusive -- approaches that parents can take when their kids are bullied:  1) tell them to ignore it, to laugh it off, to get through it until they graduate and leave that hellhole and/or 2) get your kid into some martial arts class and kicking some serious ass.  I'm serious.  Bullies in every stage of life are nothing more than insecure little punks who have to go on the offensive against others because they're afraid they're going to get bullied if they don't bully first.  So, kick their ass.  High school is probably the last time it will be socially acceptable to kick a bully's ass.  You can't do it at work and you risk more serious legal repercussions if you do it in college.  So, take advantage.  The best advice my parents ever gave me was, "you can't start a fight, but you can sure as hell finish one."  

Incidentally, my mother had a bully in her neighborhood growing up.  He would terrorize her sisters.  One day after school, you know what my mother did?  She kicked his ass -- Ralphie-style.  Problem solved.

What kids (and adults) need to understand is that we can only control our own actions and reactions to what happens around us.  No matter what the problem is, suicide is always an overreaction.  It doesn't solve anything and only leaves more pain in its wake.  To address these kids taking their own lives through the prism of bullying is a huge mistake and misses an opportunity to reach all of the kids at that school and talk about what really matters -- life.

Transparency in Government

So, I'm assuming this is the kind of transparency and openness all of you Obama voters were yearning for during the awful Bush years, right?  Well done. 

Can we all please realize that regardless of political party, those in power will do whatever necessary to shield themselves from the purview of the people?  This is not some fundamental flaw of either the Republican or Democratic parties -- this is a fundamental flaw of a system that has given the political class way too much power.  They'll do anything they can to keep it.  Lying and covering up data is the least of it.

So, I Guess It's Not Really About Choice

Just came across this at the Corner on National Review's website.  Gloria Feldt, former head of Planned Parenthood, wants to let women know that if they choose to leave the professional arena and stay home with their children, then they are hurting the sisterhood:

They make it harder for the rest of us to remedy the inequities that remain. We have to make young women aware of how their choices affect other women. It should be acceptable criticism to point out that, although everyone has the right to make their own life decisions, choosing to “opt out” reinforces stereotypes about women’s priorities that we’ve been working for decades to shatter, so just cut it out. 

What?  I'm an individual.   It's not my responsibility to stay in the workforce in order to help women at large get equal pay.

And then there's this:

If we could see child-rearing as a necessary task and not an identity, and if we could collectively recognize that facilitating it benefits us all, we would go much further in guaranteeing women’s choices than we do when we are expected to uncritically celebrate every individual’s decisions. 

First of all -- she wants us to see being a mom as a task and not an identity.  Okay.  What then is being a "professional" woman?  Is it a task or an identity?  Because most of the professional women I work with (and I work with many) see it as an identity.  And secondly, it's been my experience (again, as someone who works with a lot of professional women) that it's the working women who are more apt to seek celebration and approval of their individual decisions to be working moms (or to have no children period) than it is the stay-at-home moms who are seeking outside validation for their choices.

Again, I refer to the fact that I am an individual and I could give a flying you-know-what if anyone besides me celebrates my individual decisions.  Conclusion:  Gloria Feldt must have some low self-esteem.