The Week In Review

Well, it has been a week of news hasn't it? We learned a lot about how our government works but precious little as to why it does the things it does.

We've got the head of Justice, Eric Holder, pressing forward with investigations into the actions of the CIA and it's contractors about interrogation techniques. As of this date, head of the CIA Leon Panetta will have his agency provide funds for attorneys from his own budget. So we've got one arm of government investigating another arm of government and taxpayers paying for the attorneys to defend CIA employees. I couldn't make this up if I tried. I never cease to be amazed at the ways gov't bureaucrats find to spend my money. This is like what the government would be like if the Marx Brothers ran the show. All this after President Obama promised that he would stop thinking about the past and start thinking about the future. Another pie in the sky promise down the tubes.

On the free speech front, we learned news of the most serious assault on free speech since the Patriot Act. It would appear that the FCC now has a diversity Czar, Mark Lloyd, and he intends to ratchet up his hatred of conservative talk radio to a new level. CNSNews' Matt Cover writes,

"Government, Lloyd said in his book, is the “only” institution that can manage the communications of the public, arguing that Washington must “ensure” that everyone has an equal ability to communicate."

“The American republic requires the active deliberation of a diverse citizenry, and this, I argue, can be ensured only by our government,” he says. “Put another way, providing for the equal capability of citizens to participate effectively in democratic deliberation is our collective responsibility.” (emphasis added)

He uses the word "ensure" with such ease it frightens me. Put another way, he intends to use the might of the Federal Government to force media outlets to say what he thinks they should be saying. Does anyone remember Pravda? (emphasis needed)

In a related story, "Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.", writes Declan McCullagh with CNET News. This would allow the president to have control over the internet of every American that is connected.

I keep joking that I wouldn't be so paranoid if they didn't keep giving me reasons. I'm not laughing anymore now. Now, I'm beginning to get scared. Left to it's own devices, the Government would have control over Television news, print media AND the internet. In New York...they call that the trifecta. Hugo Chavez, communist extraordinaire, is attempting the same thing in Venezuela. He calls it "returning the airwaves to the people" but what he's really doing is shutting down the outlets that speak ill of him and trumpeting his message of a workers paradise on all the rest.

For those of you who bristle when I even so much as hint about Obama's latent fascist tendencies, I implore you to tell me why this isn't the encroachment of fascism in our own country.

On a happier note...Ted Kennedy is dead. I spent one day not saying anything nasty about Ted. He got his 24 hours from me. Which is consequently about how long it took him to admit that he had been in the car with Mary Jo Kopechne the night she drowned. I actually read an article titled, "The Footnote Speaks: What Would Mary Jo Kopechne Have Thought Of Ted's Career?"
An interesting premise except...we can't ask her.....she's DEAD! Liberals ability to play the moral relevance game used to just amuse me, then they infuriated me. This story disgusts me to no end. Referring to her as a "foot note" is to minimize her as a person who had parents, siblings and a future...that is, until she met Teddy. I love people who say, Mary Jo would have forgiven him. Too bad the one person who can forgive him is dead. Chris Matthews must have felt his leg tingling again when he uttered the words, "Obama is the last Kennedy brother. Ted passed the torch to him."

Anyone wanna see what a slightly used hamburger looks like? Low mileage...one owner.

I've been watching Glenn Beck on TV this week because I was curious what he must be saying to inspire such hatred in the rest of the cable news networks who incidentally can't muster a tenth of his ratings. All week long he's been profiling our new Czars. Outside the reach of the congress, they answer to no one. They can't be compelled to testify, they don't have to answer to the people, they exist as a sort of shadow government. Above and outside the laws they presume to make the rest of us adhere to.

I used to love Glenn Beck before he became the "Grim Weeper". When he used to have fun on the radio. For a while, he was on the edge...then he went over. This week, he's been more coherent than usual and much to my surprise, and dismay honestly, he's beginning to make sense finally. He has a slightly schizophrenic approach to his show. Bouncing around from topic to topic, wildly gesticulating and having the camera zoom in to uncomfortable closeness. This week, he's been making the case for the radical background of the people the President insists on calling his advisers and Czars. He makes sense. Oddly enough...he makes a scary kind of sense that I am uncomfortable admitting to myself. I have obviously not been doing my homework well enough.

This week has revealed a lot to me and I, in turn, have passed much of it on through Facebook. Partly to hopefully enlighten those who would read it and partly to bolster my own sense of incredulity. I know I've annoyed some, amused others and been ignored by most. That's ok, I'm fine with that.

Consider this my journal of what it was like...

just before the end of our republic.

fin