Blue Collar Muse

don’t be expecting a great deal of excitement when you show up in public. And please, DO NOT APPEAL TO OBAMA’S CHANGE MANTRA in your defense! Because you just have to know that there are people out there who would love to make the connection between a guy like you and Obama … Although one wonders how good a Nazi the guy can be if he appeals to a black man’s argument to support his Nazi sympathies. Well, it’s obvious the guy is confused … I’ll leave it to you to decide which guy …

Blue

Popularity: 63% [?]

Some things just have to be seen to be believed! Just when you thought the dilution of the Christmas season couldn’t get any worse, there’s this.

I just opened my email and found this email from the President-Elect.

SUBJECT:Your Obama Holiday Mug

Ken –

This holiday season, celebrate the historic accomplishment of our movement for change. Treat yourself or a loved one to a limited edition Obama coffee mug.

Make a donation of $15 or more right now and get an official Obama mug to mark an amazing year:

Celebrate our historic accomplishment

Items purchased by December 15th are guaranteed to be delivered before December 25th.

When you make your donation, you’ll be supporting the Democratic National Committee. The resources they invested in the 50-state organizing strategy made this movement possible — help us build for future victories together.

Share this amazing moment with your friends and family. Thanks to supporters like you, we all have the opportunity to bring real change to America.

Get your holiday Obama mug today:

But when you click through the link to see the mug, this is the picture:

Excuse me? What holiday are we celebrating with this? I guess we’re in for more change - evidently we’re changing from Christmas to Obamamas …

Blue

ADDITIONAL READING: David All emailed me to remind me the GOP is only marginally better … Meet Nick: The Symbol of What is Wrong With the GOP

Popularity: 87% [?]

I started out commenting on a Lefty blog which strenuously disagrees with me on my stand that Obama is not my President. A commenter took exception to my contention

… Obama will be the President; but he will never be my President. Obama wants what he is unwilling to give. To get the job, Obama divided us. Now on the job, he yearns for unity’s strength. But leopards don’t change their spots. As he ran, so will he govern.

As proof of Obama’s unifying ability, the commenter, Ice, offered

“Obama divided us” — patently false, since Obama united us into a majority, the first majority to elect a Democrat since ‘76. Also demonstrably false, in that Obama’s rhetoric was uniting, and his plans and specifics were both appealing to the majority and specifically aimed at the majority.

I responded with the following and thought to bring it back here to get my readers’ take on the matter. I have edited my comment to keep it relevant to the discussion at hand. The offer I make Ice is open to any reader who disagrees with me. Any parties interested in adding support to my contention are welcome to do so as well. Discussion to take place in Comments. Please abide by the rules as outlined in the post.

Ice -

As far as Obama uniting or dividing us. I will grant you that he won the election. He even did so by being the first Democrat in 50 years or so to win with over 50% of the vote. Nice to finally have a majority on your side for once, I’m sure. But a 52-48 victory, while a majority is hardly evidence of Unity. It is still true that almost half of the country did NOT vote for him – tens of millions of people.

The reasons they did not, with apologies to your completely unsupported assertions that 5% of those voting against BO (more in some states) did so because of race, are grounded in issues and policies. It is here that Obama divides America. That divide is a scary one because a large portion of it is a divide between the “Producers” and the “Give me what you Produce-ers”.

Obama’s clearly Socialist leanings driving his “Spread the Wealth” ideology are divisive. And unnecessary. This is America (for a little while longer, anyway). Anyone can be whatever they want – isn’t that part of Obama’s draw? Why then shoot for the brass ring of “I’ll take whatever Government can coerce from Ken to give to me” and ignore the far more valuable gold ring of “I’ll work hard and make my own way and enjoy the fruits of my own labor”? Isn’t that what Barack, your hero, did? Why not emulate him, and by extension the Right wing principle of self reliance? Unless you believe the Left wing principle that you are not capable of succeeding on your own and have to be propped up by Government taking from your betters to support you in your inability.

I don’t happen to believe that. So many of BO’s supporters do. They voted “Gimmes” for themselves without considering the meaning of their vote. Or worse, because they actually agreed with the meaning of their vote.

Success is a heady thing. Once you’ve had a taste, it lingers for a while. You begin to play the “What if?” game. “I’ve done well in THIS area. What if I do as well over there? Or over there?” It is Obama that doesn’t want you thinking that way, not me or the Right. We want you taking counsel of your dreams! We want you to think about what could be instead of what is! We want you to be unsatisfied with your current state and strive for something better – as much better as you can imagine. We just think you should do it yourself – and then enjoy the fruits of your efforts knowing that you earned and deserved your success. It wasn’t taken from someone else who earned it and deserved it and given to you who has not.

To put forth effort, successful or not, to draw people to yourself based on that premise, sows division within the country that may take years or generations to wash out. Unlike most you may encounter, I am more than willing to debate you – on the issues, on the facts. I won’t be disrespectful or dismissive to you unless you treat me that way first. You interested? Be careful – the truth is not really on your side, here.

I’ve outlined one issue by which Obama has divided us. You can respond by showing how this is not divisive. But stick to the issue of how taking what is mine by force to give to someone else who has not earned it is not divisive. I’d be even more fascinated to see you turn this into something unifying.

Once we’ve finished this one, you can choose a point on which you believe Obama has brought unity to the country and we can debate that. Fair enough? (Editor’s note: This offer was made to Ice, elseblog. If this post generates intelligent debate without snark, I’ll extend that offer to some here.)

No more assumptions about my motives, no more making unsupportable claims, no more emotional responses with no factual foundations … just a discussion of the issues. If you think you can do that … I LOVE that sort of thing. I have to say it’s because most people end up finding they prefer the end results of Conservative principles more than Liberal ones. That’s not my fault … It’s just the nature of the discussion …

You game?

Blue Collar Muse

Popularity: 74% [?]

Eric Odom passed on this link to a story about a Michigan church service disrupted by Leftist whackjobs with an agenda. No doubt feeling frisky fresh from their election day victories, members of Bash Back Lansing erupted from various locations throughout the congregation to rush the stage, shout obscenities, engage in inappropriate behavior and generally try to terrorize Lansing’s Mount Hope Church.

Right Michigan reports,

On Sunday morning, amidst worshiping congregants and following unifying prayers that our President-elect be granted wisdom as he prepares to lead our nation through difficult global, social and economic challenges, the Michigan left declared open war on peaceful church goers.

They did it with banners, chants, blasphemy, by storming the pulpit, by vandalizing the church facility, by potentially defiling the building with lewd, public, sex acts and by intentionally forcing physical confrontations with worshipers.

Click through and read for yourself the entire story. These are the sort of people I expect to be proclaiming Obama as “their” President. I have no wish to be seen in agreement with them on anything any more than I would want to be in league with the Westboro Baptist bunch.

It sounds like they chose wisely, though. I can think of several churches I’m aware of that would not have permitted this to occur in their midst without bashing the “Bash Back-ers” back. It would seem Bash Back Lansing has a poor understanding of Scripture. The Book warns against seeking revenge and inappropriate responses to attacks. But nowhere does it say Christians cannot defend themselves. My guess is had they pulled this stunt in certain churches, a few 2nd Amendment supporters would have thinned their ranks before abandoning survivors to the uncertain mercies of husbands and fathers who don’t take kindly to even cartoon threats to their wives and kids.

I expect this sort of thing to be more common until people learn that yelling obscenities in a crowded congregation and defiling objects of worship are no more protected speech under the 1st Amendment than the proverbial cry of “Fire” in a crowded theater.

How long will it be before my repeating “It’s going to be a long 4 years!” gets old?

Blue Collar Muse

Popularity: 71% [?]

Welcome to all of you coming from Instapundit.  While visiting here, you may also enjoy yesterday’s post, ‘MY President or Just THE President’. Feel free to look around and comment. I’d like to know what you think.

They are also uneducated, out of step with the rest of the country, to be pitied, isolated, suffering in the area of “jobs, education and development”, ideologically aligned with the old Confederacy, at odds with the values of the rest of the country, and are getting what they deserve because they won’t “… get with the right program.”  Hat tip to Dan Cleary for making sure I was aware of this.

Or you could ask Dwight Lewis at The Tennessean.  Lewis learned all this in a phone interview with “… David A. Bositis, senior political analyst for the Washington-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies …” He felt it true and significant enough to share it with all of us.  The Tennessean evidently agreed with him.  Why publish his lunacy otherwise?

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies is a misleading name for the group.  Per Lewis, the politics and economy the JCPES finds worthy of  studying are those “… of concern to African-Americans and other people of color …”  The picture at their site includes pictures of Asians and Hispanics.  However, reading through the headlines on their site, the only people of color mentioned are either Blacks or African Americans.  There is one vague reference to “America’s minorities.”

This is the environment in which Bositis’ claims must be evaluated.  And what is Bositis’ basis for making such outrageous claims?  It’s his analysis of who voted for John McCain and who voted for Barack Obama.  He has lots of high sounding analysis.  I’ll save you some time.  Anyone who voted forJohn McCain is all of those things in the opening paragraph.  Anyone who voted for Barack Obama is not.

No word on the character of Barr, Baldwin and Nader voters.  Words fail to describe how offensive Bositis’ words are, or should be, to every man or woman who supported a candidate OBO, “Other than Barack Obama.”  Obviously, however, Lewis, Bositis and presumably some of their readers and supporters believe this tripe.  I would point out the position of Lewis and Bositis are, on their face, far more racist and divisive than that of any of John McCain’s supporters of any color.  Except, I must be wrong.  It’s not possible for Blacks to be racist.  Jesse Jackson himself told us so.

When people criticize me for declaring Barack Obama is not my President, I’ll take comfort in knowing that he is not mine, although he is Mr. Lewis’ President and he is Mr. Bositis’ President.  To all you who want to claim Barack as your own, enjoy their company.  Barack forged a coalition he greatly desired to get him elected.  It contains a great many fine people who mistakenly believe in the untested, unproven promise of Barack.  It also contains a great many craven, twisted racists such as Mr. Lewis and Mr. Bositis.  Their bile and ignorance, passed off as lofty and intellectual analysis, is rubbish if for no other reason than it fails to address the rationale for McCain voters elsewhere.  That such thinking might be indicative of the actual change and hope we’ll see as opposed the empty rhetoric Obama offered ought to terrify Americans.

Men like Lewis and Bositis are destroying Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of integration.  They are callously dividing our nation along racial lines for purposes I cannot fathom.  How any sane and educated individual in 2008 can believe, let alone put into print in what should be respectable publications, the notion that millions of Americans may legitimately be labled racist and backward based solely on the vote they cast is beyond outrageous.

I’ve read it in a score of places in the last 48 hours.  I cannot help but repeat it here.  It’s going to be a long 4 years …

Blue Collar Muse

ADDITIONAL READING:

Home Sweet Home by Susanna @ Cut on the Bias.

Popularity: 66% [?]

The election was decided just two days ago. It didn’t take long for one of Obama’s most controversial and largely unheralded new programs to hit the news wires. It’s not his tax plans or his plans to “spread the wealth”, it’s not a cabinet or staff appointment, it’s not even a demure revelation that the US is a big place filled with many different views and that he was going to take some time to make sure the things he does are good for all Americans.

Nope.

The first major balloon floated by the nascent Obama administration after the announcement controversial Clinton appointee Rahm Emanuel would be Obama’s Chief of Staff (didn’t take long to drop the idea of “Change”) is a salvo in the sure to be hard fought battle to establish Obama’s “Civilian National Security Force.”

Back in July, in Colorado, Obama called for the creation of such a group.  His statement, largely unreported at the time and even since, was reported in a post here that quickly became and remains the most popular post at BCM attracting  hundreds of visitors per week looking for information.

In a July 2 speech outlining plans to expand opportunities for people to serve in areas such as AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps, Obama makes the following statement with no explanation or amplification.

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

When I read that, I furiously started looking for it on the web. Interestingly, I found only 3 references to it. The Chicago Tribune reported it. Joseph Farah at World Net Daily reported it.   It’s reported that Congressional Quarterly reported it as well but I can’t find the article. Google searches reveal only blogs are covering it and none of the usual suspects have it. There are references to some discussion on Sean Hannity’s forums.

With the US Army alone at over 500,000 serving members and the US Military budget at over $400 billion for 2007, there were a lot of questions regarding such a gargantuan, sweeping program. Most important, how is it to be funded?

This morning, World Net Daily reports some light is being shed on the question. It is reporting Barney Frank is proposing cutting the budget for the military by 25%, by $150,000,000,000, and diverting the money to pay for his civilian national security force.

This will be an issue to watch closely. Not only is it the first example of things Obama will do as “the President but not my President”, it is the first example of Obama’s intentions for the future of this country. I have said, in offline discussions, that I believe a Barack Obama Presidency has the capacity literally to destroy this country. That sentiment has been pooh-poohed by Obama supporters who assure me Obama is a proud American who loves this country and would never do anything to harm it. In the face of such statements, for an administration yet to have served a day in actual power to float, as one of their very first ideas cutting our military budget by a fourth while we are still at war isn’t exactly confidence inspiring.

I applaud the President-elect’s efforts to cut spending. I’m all about that! But generally, when talking about spending cuts, the first things to eliminate are wasteful, redundant, unnecessary spending. Why start slashing Defense? Obama and company couldn’t find $150 billion dollars in the unconstitutional entitlement programs this country funds?

It appears Obama is taking this mandate thing a lot more seriously than he is taking his pledge to be my President, too! Keep watch over here for more on this as it develops …

Blue Collar Muse

ADDITIONAL READING:

Obama’s Plans for the Involuntary Servitude of American Youth by Velvet Hammer @ Velvet Hammer.

Community Service, Yep - Mandatory by Walter Olson @ Overlawyered - Hat tip to IInstapundit

Popularity: 44% [?]