Thoughts On A Sunday

We were hoping the Weekend Pundit household would be able to avoid the flu this winter, but those hopes were dashed on Friday when BeezleBub woke up with a slight fever. By Saturday morning it was a full-blown case of the flu. This morning Deb is showing symptoms. All I can do is help them when they need comforting...or water, or Alka Seltzer Plus, or whatever will bring them some relief. I'm just hoping the flu shot I got last fall will prevent me from becoming the next victim.

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The fight over the stimulus bill continues in Congress. A vote on the package is expected in the Senate on Monday. If it passes it goes to a committee to hash out the differences between the House and Senate versions.

As it stands now, I don't like what I have seen of either version. There's too damn much pork and political payoffs built in that have nothing to do with economic stimulus. It's politics as usual in Congress. Despite calls for bipartisanship, the definition of bipartisanship this time around is “shut up and do what we tell you to do!”

If the stimulus passes and is signed by President Obama, there's one message we should all be sending to Congress and the White House: “Not one penny more!”

The American people are not an ATM to be tapped by the government when they feel the need to “Do something!” Far too often the something they do is the wrong thing. I believe the stimulus package as written is the wrong thing, written large. Therefore we should not allow them to come back for even more money a year or two down the road when the stimulus money is gone.

As Michael Greenspan puts it, “This monstrosity of a bill, and the assumptions underlying it (e.g., "Politicians are wiser than non-politicians," "Citizens don't own what they earn," etc.), are making me consider joining the Republican Party. Not because the Republicans are great, but because they've shown they can be decent. The Democrats are just ravening parasites.”

I'd say that's just about right.

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Says Jules Crittenden, “Obama should channel his inner Eastwood.”

That works for me.

(H/T Instapundit)

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It appears the glamour that has blinded the eyes of those seeing Obama as The One is fading, and they are finally waking up to reality.

“A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into catastrophe.” - President Obama, Feb. 4.

Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

[...]

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

We are now seeing the real Obama, not the slick, well packaged media presentation we saw during the election campaign. He promised us change. Unfortunately the change he promised is bringing back the bad old days of FDR and LBJ. The people wanted change, and they're going to get it. But not the way they expected. As the old saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.”

Welcome to reality, Obamabots!

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Speaking of reality, Krauthammer (linked above) also brings up a number of other realities far too many people are willing to overlook when it comes to Obama's stimulus package.

And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress's own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.

This is theft on a scale never seen in our history. Even FDR didn't steal on this scale. But we're supposed to applaud the efforts of the thieves and looters in Congress and the White House? Where's John Galt when we need him?

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Bruce adds his 2¢ worth about Obama's stimulus package, calling it what it is: a crap sandwich.

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Well what do you know! All the hoopla about a link between MMR (mumps, measles, rubella) vaccines and autism are false. The clinician originally making the claim back in 1998 falsified data and fixed reports in order to imply the link existed.

How much damage has that report caused, both in lives lost and millions, if not billions of dollars spent on lawsuits and damages awarded?

And people wonder why science has been suffering such a bad rap lately.

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A number of states have sovereignty legislation in the works meant to block any more federal government intrusion into the running of the various states, particularly unfunded mandates that have already placed a dreadful burden upon them. The bases for the legislation are the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which basically state the federal government cannot claim powers not defined in the Constitution, and that the states and the people retain rights and powers even if they are not enumerated in the Constitution. Basically, it means the federal government doesn't have the right to tell the states to do anything unless it is allowed under the Constitution. Unfunded mandates is one of those things the states believe the federal government has no right to impose upon them.

So far eight states have such legislation in the works and twenty others are expected to introduce such resolutions, all in an effort to get the federal government and the US Congress off their backs. It might also be a way to blunt the effects of Obama's stimulus package, which includes the expansion of all kinds of social programs the people neither need or want, or for that fact, can afford.

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The gun-grabbers are at it again, this time at the congressional level. At the moment there are no co-sponsors, but that could change at any time. It would also have to meet constitutional muster, which at first glance it appears to fail miserably.

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Will the American public be forced to listen to liberal talk radio? The complete collapse of liberal talk radio would seem to indicate the public doesn't want to listen to their drivel. But if the Democrats get their way, the so-called Fairness Doctrine would be reinstated, which would force radio stations that presently carry conservative talk shows to offer equal time to liberal talk, even if doing so would cause the radio stations to lose money. And that may be the point.

If the stations can't afford to host money-losing liberal talk radio, they would be forced to stop carrying conservative talk radio. That would in effect silence the conservative voice. But would the Fairness Doctrine also apply to the television media? For networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC, it would. But for cable/satellite-only operations it wouldn't.

If conservative talk radio is forced off the public airwaves, it could always make the move to satellite radio, which is not considered public. If it worked for Howard Stern it should work for Limbaugh, Beck, Hewitt, and the others. There's also the Internet, as we've seen for Pajamas Media, Meet the New Press, and other online conservative 'radio' talk shows.

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The 30th Annual Great Rotary Fishing Derby on Lake Winnipesaukee has come to a close. Over 5400 tickets were sold, up over 300 from last year despite the hard economic times.

The money received from the tickets sold go to charity and to a scholarship fund.

For the first time in Derby history, the First and Second Place winners were the same fisherman, meaning he won both the Grand Prize, a new fishing boat and trailer, and the second place prize, a new ATV and trailer.

Not bad for a weekend's worth of fishing.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where everyone is holding on to their wallets, the winter flu season has made itself felt, and where ice fishing continues even though the Fishing Derby is over.