The Epic FAIL-In-Chief Partays On

With the world falling apart around us — Japan in disarray after an earthquake and a tsunami and potential meltdown of nuclear facilities, the national employment rate is at 10 percent (20 percent if you count underemployed and people who have quit looking), gas prices soaring past $4 a gallon, the governments of one Middle Eastern country after another collapsing, record budget deficits, a looming stalemate over the 2012 budget on Capitol Hill and a resulting government shutdown … we get this image of Our Lord and Savior Barack Hussein Obama partaying on in Brazil:

Worst. President. Ever.

Like Nero fiddling while Rome burns, Obama partays down in a foreign country, plays golf and picks His NCAA brackets.

As Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft says:

Good grief.

Once again, since it’s all that comes to mind:

There’s a hold up in the Bronx,
Brooklyn’s broken out in fights.
There’s a traffic jam in Harlem
That’s backed up to Jackson Heights.
There’s a Scout troop short a child,
Khrushchev’s due at Idlewild
Car 54, Where Are You?

Michigan Teachers Threaten Statewide Strike

The Michigan Extortion Association is, well, practicing what it does best: using strong-arm tactics to get its way.

In this case, the teachers union thugs are threatening a statewide strike if Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposed budget cuts are enacted.

A letter by Michigan [Extortion] Association President Iris Salters to 1,100 locals asks them whether the union should authorize “job action,” up to and including illegal strikes, to “increase pressure on our legislators.”

The union and other education advocates have criticized Snyder’s proposal to cut funding to schools by $470 per pupil as excessive.

Salters’ letter cites proposed budget cuts, privatization of government services, mandatory health insurance payments and a new law giving emergency managers for cities and schools sweeping powers.

The letter states it would not be possible for schools to replace all or most school employees in the state, should they have an illegal strike — suggesting a statewide action.

“While there may be some inconvenience for your students, you will need to weigh that against the impact of the Legislature’s actions,” the letter states.

This is how kidnappers operate. Put a gun to the victim’s head and demand the loved ones cough up the ransom money. In this case, the victims are the children who attend Michigan schools and the loved ones are the parents and other taxpayers.

All Snyder is asking for is Michigan teachers pay 20 percent of their health care costs, something not out of the ordinary for people working in the real world, as opposed to the Fantasy Island known as the public sector. The Governor says that having the teachers union thugs pick up 20 percent of their health care would offset the proposed cuts.

Sounds like a fair trade-off to me.

But not for the selfish, it’s-all-about-my-luxurious-salary-and-Rolls-Royce-benefits teachers. Dig this one up the next time the schools beg for a tax increase and say: “But … but … but it’s for the children.”

Another Personalized Threat

Just when is the state-run media going to give any attention to stuff like this?

From Caledonia Unplugged comes this letter that was forwarded to radio talk show host Vicki McKenna:

This is a very serious, significant threat against a man who participated in a rally supporting Gov. Walker. It included vile profanity from a man with a criminal background and a confessed propensity for violence, including having served time in the Crowbar Hotel and having ties to organized crime. Yes, the North Side Disciples qualify as organized crime.

Of course, some people think the recipient of this letter somehow made all of this up. From Fred at RDW:

WRJN Racine radio manager Don Rosen thinks Republicans are making these up.

Yes, in Don Rosen’s world, someone is sitting around writing these death threats to the Governor, members of the State Legislature and bloggers and ordinary citizens for standing in the way of union thugs with a sense of entitlement to OPM just to make those union thugs look bad.

I wonder what color the sky is in Rosen’s world.

Thugs Arrested At Sendik’s

Figures.

Two thugs were arrested at an eastside Milwaukee Sendik’s for trying to block customers from entering the store.

Milwaukee police arrested two people Saturday who were picketing Sendik’s grocery store on the east side, apparently in connection with state budget-related boycotts.

The two were arrested for disorderly conduct. Police have not released their names.

A witness said a group of people arrived at the grocery around noon and began picketing the store in the 2600 block of N. Downer Ave. One of the protesters attempted to block customers from entering the store.

The incident occurred one day following an ugly incident at the Sendik’s in New Berlin where union thugs picketed the store, hurling invectives and yelling obscenities and profanities at customers entering the store.

Once again, with emphasis: protesters do not have the right to trespass on private property; they do not have the right to yell profanities or invectives at customers; and they do not have the right to block access to legitimate places of business or harass verbally or physically people trying to conduct business anywhere.

The union thugs continue to show themselves to have all the class of a fart at a formal dinner party.

Bird Vs. Jordan

Still one of the Best. Commercials. Ever. The classic Larry Bird vs. Michael Jordan Game of H-O-R-S-E for M.J.’s lunch:

Weekend Tunes

Some music for the weekend. First, some recent with Kid Rock and Born Free:

And some classic with Van Halen’s Jump:

It’s A-Brewing

Sadly, I agree with Deekaman at Beer, Bicycles and the VRWC on this point:

Truly responsible Wisconsin government is attempting to rein in the cost of government by addressing the highest cost of government – labor.  The response has been enlightening.  Intimidation, violence threats, death threats, boycotts and recall.  This is only the beginning.  When Prosser is elected in April and Republicans maintain their seats in the recalls, the Left will only become more violent.  Next, government will begin to address entitlements.  This is when the takers begin their literal war on the producers.  They will gladly kill the goose that lays the proverbial golden egg before they allow these cuts.

We’ve said it over and over again. You think the Left has hit rock-bottom with its threats against elected officials who refuse to do their bidding, who vandalize property a la Kristallnacht of anyone suspected of being part of the other side, who bully, threaten, harass and intimidate anyone who attempts to stand in their way or speak out in opposition?

In the words of Bachmann Turner Overdrive: You ain’t seen nothing yet.

The real Greek-style violence is coming. The end goal is to provoke a massive confrontation with the Right which would allow Our Lord and Savior to impose martial law and rule as the dictator He so desires to be. You know, like Hu Jintao, the ChiCom dictator.

Remember: one of the paragons of virtue on the Radical Left, the Original Fat Bastard himself, Michael Moore, said: “This is war.”

Our side better be prepared to defend itself in any manner necessary.

Worst. Pop. Song. Ever.

Well, maybe not. There are lots of songs that would enter that competition and be competitive.

But this is 3:48 of my life I will never get back (via Professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection):

Here’s what The Independent had to say about it:

It could be the robotic vocal delivery. Or the inane chorus of “tomorrow is Saturday and Sunday comes afterwards”. But “the worst pop song of all time” has become a global sensation, catapulting its 13 year-old performer to stardom.

“Friday” by Rebecca Black is either a witty parody of saccharine teen-pop or a new low in manufactured song production. The song, which details the fresh-faced California girl’s excitement at the impending weekend, has become a YouTube sensation since she posted the video last month.

It has received 10 million views and now leaped into the official iTunes download chart. Black’s name even “out-trended” the Japanese earthquake on Twitter. However most of the comments are not positive. Black’s monotonous auto-tuned vocal has been mocked. Rolling Stone criticised the song’s “sub-par production values, grating hooks and extraordinarily stupid lyrics”.

The lyrics of “Friday” have come under particular scrutiny. The song follows the teenager as she gets up, eats a bowl of cereal and struggles to choose whether to sit in the front of the back seat of the car.

The chorus, “Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday/ Today is Friday, Friday (Partyin’)/ Tomorrow is Saturday/And Sunday comes afterwards”, has prompted inevitable YouTube parodies. There is now a “Friday” sung a la Bob Dylan and a version in the style of minimalist composer Steve Reich.

This jumped out from the article:

The credit for “Friday” does not belong to Black alone. She is the product of the Ark Music Factory, a Hollywood company that charges wealthy parents a fee in return for the chance to turn their offspring into stars.

Ark writes and produces bespoke songs for star-struck teens and produces low-budget videos. The company says that its mission is to “make it possible for an emerging arist to be discovered, defined and delivered, to advance in their career and be successful.”

In other words, let’s entice parents into thinking life is what Dip Geckhardt used to refer to as a lottery. Anyone who makes it and becomes rich has just won life’s lottery. Education and hard work do not matter.

How many stage parents have shelled out money to this company? What’s more, how many obsessive, living-vicariously-through-their-kids stage parents will this create?

Ask most teachers or people involved with kids activities what the biggest problem is and many will reply: “Parents.” On one side, the parent who just dumps their child off and refuses to engage in any way, shape or form. That is a major problem with many urban schools. Parents not involved with their children’s education. The flip side is the helicopter parent, the one who hovers anywhere their child is (yes, even adult children). That child is the best, the brightest, the most excellent at anything he or she attempts.

That parent’s attitude gives the child an inflated sense of self esteem and inability to recognize talents and limits to talent. They’re the best baseball player, the best student, the best singer.

Remember the early days of American Idol, when all of these hacks who were mediocre karaoke performers went up in front of Simon Cowell just to get their balloons burst by his blunt honesty? I’ll bet many of them were kids whose parents and others never bothered to tell them that, well, they just weren’t all that talented at singing.

We live in a society when being mediocre is OK. When every competitor is expected to get an award just to trying. When we have schools whose statement of purpose begins with: “To attempt is to succeed.” When less than stellar classroom work gets an A with a gold star and a smiley face.

We have truly raised mediocrity to an art form.

By the way, watch the video all the way through. Does anyone else get a creepy feeling from that guy in his late 20′s or early 30s driving the car being in a video with kids who aren’t old enough to drive?

Conversation With Shankman

Writing at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government, Dan Riehl of Riehl World View, details the telephone conversation he had with unhinged moonbat Jim Shankman, author of the violent Internet screed against blogger Ann Althouse. You can read the screed here.

This part is most telling about Shankman:

Apart from his nasty rant, if Shankman, a self-defined “radical progressive” reminded me of anyone, it was Peggy Joseph, who, after hearing Obama speak in October of 2008 said, “I won’t have to work, I’ll put gas in my car. I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage.” Now, those perceived promises unfulfilled over two years into the Obama presidency, Shankman emphatically and repeatedly claims “Obama is the worst president in history.”

Asked about his politics, Shankman expressed no great regard for Democrats or union bosses and sees them as forces, combined with moderate Republicans, who pose a serious threat to America’s future. While denying he is a socialist, or Marxist, Shankman labeled his economic ideology “distributionist.” He believes we should divide the wealth of America across the population “so that everyone can buy a house,” feed and support themselves, starting over from there based upon some concept modeled somewhat after Catholic charity. He also believes in single payer health care and believes Obama has abandoned progressives on that issue.

Here’s a blast from the past. Peggy the Moocher.

You remember her. The one who thought Our Lord and Savior was going to take care of everything for everybody.

As for Shankman, I’ll put him right alongside of the Original Fat Bastard, Michael Moore. His followers, dubbed here as Moore-ons, aren’t too bright. It’s all pure class envy and class warfare and using the coercive power of the state to take your possessions away and give them to others.

I’m not sure if I would call that Catholic or Christian charity, since those are inward based on a sense of compassion for others. You cannot mandate compassion. The state confiscating wealth from Peter to redistribute to Paul is not compassion; it’s legalized strong-arm robbery.

This is frightening:

Finally,as regards Ann Althouse, Shankman said he believes in what he called the “law of privilege.” As best as I could interpret it, it meant that if the majority of Madison residents were progressive and didn’t want an Ann Althouse in their midst, then they are somehow entitled to make it unpleasant enough for her to live there, so that she’ll leave.

So, in other words, using Shankman’s logic, if the majority of a community, say, were white and they decided they didn’t want blacks living among them, it’s OK to make it so unpleasant — through cross burnings and implied lynchings — that blacks would be driven out of town. Using Shankman’s perverted logic, he just legitimized the Ku Klux Klan.

Says Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft:

The dude is nuts.

Th-th-th-th-th-th-that’s all, Folks!

Time To Fight Back

The line from Popeye says it best: “I’ve had all I can stands and I can’t stands no more.”

With all of the thuggery and goonish behavior on the part of Big Gummint unions and their allies, it’s time to deal with them as what they are: bullies.

In a week in which Our Lord and Savior Barack Hussein Obama hosts an anti-bullying conference at the White House and a congresscritter wants to make bullying a federal crime, allies of the Obama Regime are acting like bullies against Americans tired of paying to maintain the lavish lifestyles the gummint unions demand.

Joe Newby says it’s time for the rest of us to do what we were taught to do as kids when dealing with a bully: stand up to them.

Why are union thugs who commit illegal acts not locked away?

The answer is simple.

Conservatives have not taken a firm stand against these bullies.

We’ve turned the other cheek and tried to get along.  We’ve tried reasoning and countering liberal arguments with logic, history and facts.

But these hardcore radicals are not interested.

They want what they want, and they will do whatever it takes to get their way.

We must stand up to these bullies using every legal means available to us.

We need to demand law enforcement arrest and charge those who violate the law.  If necessary, file civil suits against those who violate us.  We must demand that unions act in a way that does not violate the law and our civil rights.

At the rate things are going, it will only be a matter of time before someone is killed by one of these radicals.

We are a nation of laws, and we must obey those laws if we are to remain a civilized society.

We can – and should - debate the role and the necessity of public sector unions, but we cannot tolerate violence, no matter who calls for revolution or civil war.

It’s why more and more on our side are suggesting we use their tactics against them. The Left has decided it is appropriate to target elected officials at their homes, to go to the places of employment of spouses of elected officials, to demonstrate at schools where their children attend, to target businesses because of the political campaign contributions of individual employees (an exercise of First Amendment protected political free speech), to go so far as to send Rent-A-Mobs to the homes of individual employees of a targeted business to terrorize children.

I got into a debate that had all the signs of going downhill over at Ann Althouse’s place last night over my decision to publish the picture and location of the hippie commune connected with Jim Shankman, the poster who threatened Althouse and Meade. I was told that such an act, along with revealing home addresses of other thugs for possible retaliatory protests and other personal information, made us no better than Shankman and others.

You know, if that is true, so be it. It’s way past time to fight fire with fire. To use their tactics against them and see how they like it. See how they like having their personal contact information on the Internet. To see real peaceful demonstrations in front of their homes. Paraphrasing the words of their Messiah against them, bringing a gun to the gun fight instead of a butter knife.

I’ve believed for a long time that many on our side — too many — are simply not comfortable with and are unwilling to play brass knuckle politics, unlike those on the Left. “But … but … we’re better than that! We need to be above that! We can’t do that! That would be wrong!” Now say that in your most sniveling New Castrati voice (“Mithter Limbaugh!”)

This is why our side gets rolled so often in the game of politics. From the new girlie men running the GOP in Congress getting rolled by the Democrats on a daily basis, unable to cut anything from the budget to suddenly losing the backbone to defund ObamaCare, to our people getting beat up and bullied by thugs at political rallies.

Understand: we don’t need to instigate anything. But we need to respond in kind. If it takes a scuffle or two for their side to get the message, that’s a price worth paying.

That’s the only thing a bully understands. Bullies love weakness and a refusal to fight back. It only encourages them to continue and intensify the attacks.