Watching non-American news media respond with puzzled bemusement at the hysteria and rampant fawning adulation being heaped on His Obamaness sharpened my eye for some way to explain what was happening, when just now I chanced to read this comment on another blog, by someone nicknamed Eon:

I will make one prediction, though. Namely, that it will be a long time before the MFM criticize The One’s policies, if ever, no matter how badly they founder on the rocks and shoals of reality. Because the media put him in that office. And to criticize him, they would have to acknowledge that they made a mistake- in fact, that they were factually wrong, and philosophically invested in a man, a party, and a worldview that is intellectually bankrupt. And that just isn’t going to happen anytime soon, if ever.

If this is anywhere NEAR accurate, American media only need fear ONE HONEST REPORTER, who takes a stand in the desert of their malfeasance and pours out the water of truth…

For such HONEST REPORTERS are still alive in America, and they will find both their backbones and their voices in the days to come!

In the meantime, Onward! On to the Rocky Shoals of Reality!

Voters may be asked to end state budget impasse

If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger calls a special election this year, California voters might be forced to make the hard choices on the budget and taxes that the Legislature won’t.

State Controller John Chiang said in an interview that he would support putting a tax increase package to voters in an effort to break the long-running legislative stalemate that has left California with a $42 billion deficit and weeks away from delaying refunds to taxpayers and grants to college students and low-income and disabled residents.

WHY do we keep re-electing these incompetents who can’t make the hard choices or compromise on anything??

The last special election cost the taxpayers of California about $50 million. If we have to pay a similar amount again how about taking it straight out of the legislature’s funding?

The commenters on the article at SFGate have some interesting ideas as well:

monet2u
If I have to vote to resolve these budget issues, then I want them to relinquish their titles, salaries, etc. Apparently, I could easily do their jobs.

bigwhitedog
So while we are voting on this mess, lets recall everyone of them and start over!

looktoplanb
I’d guess that the State of CA would be better served not having a special election. I’m no Carnac, but I think any tax increase proposal would go down to defeat by probably historic percentages. Save the money and work with the Republicans. It’s pretty obvious at this point that there needs to be severe cuts in benefits, workforce and programs on a permanent basis for California to survive and eventually prosper going forward.

lamont_cranston
We need to fire all these people. We keep re-electing them and then whine when we have the same results. Fire all of them, particularly if we have to pay for a special election to fix what we ‘hired’ them to.

drumstick
Why are we paying the members of the CA legislature when they pass their duties back to the voters!? I thought this country was a republic, not a democracy! Oh well, I can make the difficult decisions for you very quickly: Postpone rail, 20% pay cuts to state employees, stop payments to welfare recipients, raise the sales tax by 1%, raise car registration fees, and fire the CA legislature. That wasn’t so hard, was it?

firstand3
Lets vote. And while we are at it also vote on making the legislature part-time and set their salary at minimum wage.

qawagstaff
Let’s bring back the poll tax! It isn’t that outrageous! The original purpose wasn’t to discriminate, that only came in the South post Civil War. The founders put it in the constitution as a protection against the populace voting themselves money and as a way of raising taxes. If you wanted to vote, you paid a tax, and the money the Government spent was from poll taxes and tariffs. Those Founders were pretty smart.

gojira
According to the nonpartisan California State Legislative Analysts’ Office, the state will spend on education in fiscal 2008-09, per K-12 pupil, $11,626. That’s really the elephant in the room. The past 20 years have seen a massive influx of immigrants, most of them poor and unskilled, and of rabbitlike fertility. But the children of those immigrants, the “anchor babies”, are citizens the second they pop out on U.S. soil — entitled to a free public education. And as soon as they are old enough to hit kindergarten, one of those anchor babies costs the rest of us more than eleven and a half grand per year, each. And will continue to cost that each year through 12th grade. There’s no way that the small amount of taxes their parents typically pay will ever come anywhere close to offsetting that huge educational bill. And if we don’t do something about this, the financial future of the state is pointed straight down the toilet.

fatboy_baxter
I am OK with deciding what to keep and what to cut. Just put every single budget line item on the ballot with its budget for 2008 right next to it. In my infinite uninformed wisdom, I’ll make the decisions the nincompoops we elected cannot. Of course, one of those budget lines will be for legislative salary expense. Hmmm, now how should I vote on that…..???

From DoctorHousingBubble we get a clear picture of California’s problem:

Total Revenues and Transfers - 2008-09
*Dollars in Millions

Personal Income Tax $58,023

Sales Tax $35,093

Corporation Tax $11,937

Other $11,490

Motor Vehicle Fees $5,966

Highway Users Taxes $3,565

Insurance Tax $2,276

Tobacco Taxes $1,096

Liquor Tax $341

Note item #1 - personal income tax. This is where the state gets most of its money…and that number is going to sink like a stone this year, as is item #2 because people are losing their jobs.

Total Expenditures (Including Selected Bond Funds)
*Dollars in Millions

K-12 Education $43,710

Health and Human Services $35,687

Higher Education $14,567

Business Transportation & Housing $13,406

Corrections and Rehabilitation $10,290

General Government $7,749

Legislative, Judicial, Executive $6,358

Resources $5,707

Environmental Protection $1,582

State and Consumer Services $1,555

Labor and Workforce Development $427

Note item #1 - the biggest cut of our expenses goes to a failing public education system. A system that “educates” students who then need remedial classes just to attend community college. A system that educates all children, including illegal immigrants, at taxpayer expense. A system that fights school vouchers tooth and nail even though vouchers would ultimately save taxpayer money. A system that spends most of its resources on administration and not on students.

Note item #2 - the second biggest share of our taxes goes to welfare. In an economy where people are losing jobs and losing the health insurance that is tied to employment, that number is going to go UP.

What the hell is “general government” that it’s a separate category from the three legal branches, legislative, judicial and executive AND gets a bigger budget than the Big 3? Put together (as it should be, not divided up to move it farther down the list) government comes in at #4, just barely beat out by higher education. Can you say “bloated?”

Note the item dead last on the list - labor and workforce development. That which we need MOST right now is dead last.

Really, if they go forward with a special election I hope and pray that an initiative goes on it that kicks every last one of our state legislators out of office. We can carry the load until replacements are elected. We’re doing that anyway.

California. Or to be more specific, California’s government where this:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered Friday that state employees take two unpaid furlough days each month starting in February and that the least-tenured workers may face layoffs to save cash during the ongoing budget crisis…

occurs at the same time as this:

California is facing a $42 billion budget hole that is likely to mean severe cuts to state programs and possibly layoffs, but legislators still are collecting $173 a day for expenses when they’re in Sacramento.

The Assembly and Senate haven’t met since Monday…most senators check in at the Capitol every few days to keep the daily expense payments flowing.

A legislature that can’t even suck it up enough to give up their daily expenses in the face of a crisis of this magnitude can’t be expected to figure out how to fix that crisis. The whole lot of them should lose every penny of their pay until this budget is balanced!

Meanwhile, the Democrats in the state congress are trying to pull a fast one to get around the two-thirds majority vote they can’t get to raise taxes by redefining a “tax” as a “fee.”

The Democratic leadership is trying to get around safeguards put in place so simple majorities can’t raise taxes by coming up with a proposal that would make the Flim Flam man proud. They’ve got legal advice saying they can raise taxes with a simple majority by assuring that it is “revenue neutral.”

How are they going to create this great act of neutrality on our collective pocketbooks?

• First, repeal the 18-cent a gallon excise tax on gasoline as well as the sales tax on gasoline.
• Then they are going to increase state income tax by 2.5 percent, raise sales tax by at least a three quarters of a cent, and put in place several other taxes that apply to those who produce oil and who hire independent contractors.
• Next the state is going to replace the gas taxes they plan to eliminate — they come to about 39 cents a gallon — by adding a 39 cent a gallon gas fee. That money would go to the transportation fund, which is where the sales and excise tax on gas, is currently going.

I hope the rest of the country is paying attention and learning how NOT to lead.

We here have no special divinely-guided foresight or unique forewarning… we just Call BS now and then when we hear it.

And this presidential election cycle has been full of it! Replete, over-flowing, rampant, stuffed to the gills… all across America… left, right and center…

But the two lawsuits coming to critical junctures on or before December 2 of this year, in time to CHANGE the outcome of the Electoral College, deal with much more than simply whether or not Hussein Obama has sold Ice Cream to 40 Million Americans, or set up a minimally-expensive ‘Gotcha!’ to burn a small group of his detractors, who wanted him to show citizenship in America, as required by the United States Constitution.

No, these lawsuits (Keyes’ in California and Justice David Souter’s for the US Supreme Court) are about something much deeper, more profoundly disturbing and central to the lives of rational Americans, namely: whether America will continue to be a nation based on law, respect for the law, equal rights and equal responsibilities before the law?

Or will America choose (is America CHOOSING, right now?) to drift into rule by trickery, subterfuge, spin, hype, bloviation and coordinated lies and half-truths propagated by a wide range of entrenched orthodoxies calling themselves News Media?

For with any law-oriented outcome in either of the lawsuits demanding Mr Obama show documentary proof not only that he was BORN HERE, in America, but that Mr Obama did not acquire Indonesian citizenship as a minor, and hence lose his American citizenship at that time- Mr Obama (and his visible and less-visible supporters and sponsors) would be rather greatly inconvenienced by any ruling that does not allow him, under American law, to serve as president.

Greatly inconvenienced is hardly the word… and the Ice-Cream Third-Graders, all over 21, who voted him in would feel greatly embarrassed, frustrated, angry and victimized. They would feel deprived of their Ice Cream.

Because of these foreseeable outcomes, it is easy to surmise that much pressure is being brought to bear on the court justices hearing these arguments and making decisions, ostensibly in accord with Constitutional law, by December 2nd, that their decisions might somehow gloss over Mr Obama’s Kenyan birth, or his underage mother’s lack of sufficient time in America to bestow upon him legal citizenship, or his stepfather’s loving efforts to get Obama-the-Youth into a Jakarta school and therefore Obama’s acquired Indonesian citizenship.

Maybe the courts will find that, sure enough, Mr Obama has failed to demonstrate his American citizenship, and one or the other of the courts will rule that Mr Obama is ineligible to serve as president… only to have that ruling NOT publicized in ANY American newsprint paper and NOT ONCE spoken of on Mainstream (legacy) Media or Cable TV or any medium except the Internet and the blogosphere…

Then what? It’s Friday, December 5th, and Mr Obama has been found ineligible to serve as president, but nobody can be found to serve papers on him to step aside, and nobody outside of a tiny portion of the blogosphere knows of the ruling… what can be done?

Are YOU going to hand out copies of the District Court ruling, stuff them into the hands of laughing delegates to the Electoral College as they convene to vote? Will YOU raise your voice to go against the speeding train of ‘America’s First Black President’? Will YOU risk everything in order to re-establish government of the people, by the people and for the people BY LAW?

Because if you DON’T, if you are willing to go along with non-Americans ‘ruling’ America… If you are willing to let US troops (NOT the National Guard) be stationed INSIDE America… if you’re willing to work 10 hours a day for 5.2 hours’ pay so that your earnings can be ‘redistributed’ to people unwilling to WORK for their OWN wealth…

If you are willing to accept these and other indignities, then you will get the tyranny you so richly deserve, and will learn to lick spittle from the boots of your masters, marching off to Sensitivity Training to learn how to criticize yourself before a tribunal of your betters, your peers, your comrades… and it still will not save you.

Mr Obama’s friend William Ayers agrees that Obama’s government may have to eliminate (kill) upward of 25 MILLION PEOPLE in America, to get rid of the obstructionists and anti-government racists and other intelligentsia and ne’er-do-wells and holdouts and rednecks and homos and Jews and Bible-thumpers and Pope-lovers and Polacks and Baha’is and all the other ignorant, racist jerks who just don’t want to cooperate with America’s new masters!

Leave a comment or better yet, take the time to LEARN of Justice Souter’s decision and the outcome of the Keyes lawsuit and take them to your local newspaper and a television station near you and courteously DEMAND that they take this news to the citizens of a law-abiding America!

From the safe (heh!) suburbs of Bangkok, this week plods slowly to a close with the weekend and end-of-month coming up.

Suwannapoom (NO, it is NOT pronounced Su-var-na-b-hu-mi) Airport is still shut down by the gutless cretins now in their 19th month (?) of continuous ‘protest’ of everything they can think of to protest, whine about or criticize! The legitimate, legally-elected government is crippled by disunity and an archaic holdover called Rule of Law (what? outrageous!), to which it bears allegiance as the ‘loyal opposition’ sabotages every effort-to-date to clean up these by-now semi-professional “People Against Democracy” protesters!

For more in-depth reporting on this and other Thai issues, I recommend Bangkok Pundit.

News Flash! Global Warming is so cold this year that people are dying in northern Thailand! Will someone PLEASE tell Reverend Gore his ‘Gaia Religion of Global Warming’ is proving to be a disaster?

Not quite live-blogging, but send in your questions and I’ll answer them or take pictures as you request!

How long does an oath last?

How long am I bound by an oath? Earlier in my life I freely took this oath:

“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.” (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

In seeking to understand what ‘all enemies, foreign and domestic’ meant, I looked at America’s enemies in the Revolutionary War, in the War of 1812, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Korean (Police Action) War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, Gulf War I and the Iraqi-Afghan War only recently won and now in its waning stages.

The common threads running through the most recent 7 were that America was defending against a socialist enemy OR a tyrannical dictator-thug whose unchallenged whim, with the armed might of even a small nation behind him, could seriously damage freedom-loving people and/or America’s freedom-loving interests.

Personally? My father fought against socialists in Korea and 12 years after he returned I took my post on the line (actually a De-Militarized Zone or DMZ) between the socialist world and the free world.

Now America has (by whatever means) chosen as its president a socialist.

Does that ‘election’ suddenly make socialism no longer the dehumanizing, cruel, dysfunctional form of tyranny that has always before set it in enmity to America? Does having a president who seems to want the socialist methodology (redistribute the wealth) imposed on America DESPITE 100 years of historical, factual evidence of socialism’s impotence to ennoble citizens or even provide for their basic needs MAKE IT SOMEHOW PERMISSABLE and no longer poisonous and antithetical to the very existence of America?

Am I now, in November 2008, somehow suddenly relieved of the burden of conscience as regards an enemy ‘foreign … domestic’, because he’s somehow NOT a domestic enemy IF WE ELECTED HIM?

“That strychnine has been poisonous, is poisonous and will continue to be- WAIT! No, excuse me, it is no longer POISONOUS strychnine because we’ve re-named it ‘Hope & Change’… go ahead and drink it.”

How long am I bound to ‘defend the Constitution of the United States… against all enemies, foreign and domestic’? Are we in the process of ingesting some deadly poison, chosen for us by monied interests who’ve long hated America?

Grumpy

While searching for answers, or even the right questions to ask of ‘The Mob’ (PAD), I interviewed some Thai high-school students, and a few of their answers are here:

Komkrit (a lad) said: “I hate The Mob because they bomb the police. They stop (us from attending) our school.

Ketkaew Kemapet (a lass) said: “I hate the Mob because they make (everything) confusing, they attack the police and Thailand loses money!”

Chanita (another lass) said: “The Mob hurts Thais by stopping school, attacking police and making us all dirty!”

Warunee Weerasak added: “They ruin business, stop trains, stop tourists, stop airlines and shame us all. [ These were from Thai freshmen. ]

Meanwhile, back at the raunch…

Prime Minister Samak, after an emergency session of Thai parliament, will not dissolve this government. Constitutional Law & Order ONE, PAD thugs 0.

Thai unions will be huddling to determine their response to the near-absence of violence against the PAD. Thugs 1, Law 0.

The government approved permission for citizens in the north (ChiangMai, ChiangRai), the north-east (Roi-Et, Issan country) and the center (Sukotai) to hold PRO-Government, ANTI-thugs rallies… Law 3, Thugs Minus 1

But there’ll be more.

And we will report it.