May 21, the end of the world?

From Lunatic's Asylum 

The ad reads: "Global Earthquake! The Greatest Ever Judgment Day: May 21," above a photo of night over Jerusalem and a clock about to strike midnight.

Robert Fitzpatrick, a retired MTA employee from Staten Island N.Y. believes the world is coming to an end next Saturday and has shelled out $140,000 on a NYC Transit ad campaign in an attempt to warn mankind of its pending doom, according to the New York Daily News.  His doomsday warning has appeared on 1,000 placards on subway cars, at a cost of $90,000, and at bus shelters around the city, for $50,000 more. 
  
I'm certain there's really nothing extraordinary about our Mr. Fitzpatrick. His millennial mania began after he retired in 2006 and began listening to California evangelist Harold Camping's "end of days" predictions.

The fact that he's managed to find a special brand of stupidity that mixes religion and numerology tells me that this is probably someone who spent his life searching for something...anything...that might take him out of his preoccupation with an unfulfilled life. He quite probably bounced around from one philosophy to another, and never showed any sort of constancy in his lifetime until someone came along and consolidated the disparate threads of his thinking and personal philosophies and wove them into a tapestry that would guide him through the rest of his life. I know plenty of people like this, scatter-shot thinkers with no self-esteem, absorbed by astrology, numerology, and "the healing properties of crystals", and they almost invariably, always wind up in a Church somewhere. Now, whether they wind up there because religion makes some sort of sense to them, or because they have no place left to go, is open to debate.

The fact that it's Jerusalem which appears in the center of Mr. Fitzpatrick's apocalyptic poster tells you all you need to know. Not London, not New York, Ankara, Beijing or Tokyo, only Jerusalem. Even when these ultra-Evangelicals support Israel, it's only because Israel is a necessary ingredient in the formula that will bring about there version of the Rapture. Under different circumstances, Mr. Fitzpatrick could have probably become a suicide bomber, or would have poured gasoline over his head and ignited it on a public sidewalk. If he had tits, he would have become a 'Feminist Scholar'. Fifty years ago, this sort of soft-headed mindset and single-mindedness of purpose would have made Mr. Fitzpatrick the perfect Leftist Revolutionary. Instead, his twisted understanding of Christianity just tells him to waste his money, which I guess makes him harmless enough.

I can't prove to you that God exist, or prove that his "Evangelical Numerology" is an invalid predictor of the End of Times.  They're "matters of faith" after all. Prophecy is a double-edged sword. If you don't believe me, consider this: how many self-professed Nostradamus scholars do you know that became millionaires utilizing his prophecies, rather than by selling books about their opinions on Nostradamus?  What do you reckon is the percentage chance on any given day when a prediction given to you by a medium you called on your telephone and paid $1.99 a minute to turns out to be correct? How often does your horoscope make any freakin' sense, let alone give you any useful information?
 
Matthew 24:36  - "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone."  

I was taught to let prophecy reveal itself to me, not to go looking for an answer to it's meaning. When Jesus says of the Temple in Jerusalem "not one stone will stand upon another..." it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that his real meaning is that "nothing is permanent". It doesn't take a slide rule or a numerologist to tell me.

But in Mr. Fitzpatrick's defense, at least his money didn't go to another one of those destructive charlatans that society pays way too much attention to: the psychiatrist. Somewhere there's a pill-pusher with an M.D. who won't be able to get the leather upholstery in the new Mercedes this year. 

Edited by Diogenes Sarcastica 

______________________________________________________ 

Just a Note From the 9th Tee.....

Mr. President, for at least a little while I was prepared to believe you were on the verge of salvaging your Presidency. Then you made that obscenely self-serving speech announcing at your word,the demise of Osama Bin Laden.  And now you have the balls to take a Victory Lap at Ground Zero?

I don’t blame G.W. Bush and Bill Clinton at all for not wanting to be seen with you at ground zero. Great opportunity for a photo-op and footage for the coming campaign video, eh Barry? BTW, where were you last two 911 memorials?

 But, your lapdogs in the media and the greater mass of people who voted for you that can't wipe their own ass without government provided step-by-step instructions, or without a government check to buy toilet paper, will hail you as the Great Obama, for a few days at least. And then they'll remember that even if Osama is dead they still can't find work, their country is bankrupt and you're a still an incompetent leader.

I do applaud you for giving the gutsy order to do what should have been done a long time ago, thumbing your nose at Pakistani sovereignty in order to bring the Islamic Pig to justice……. but it's a polite Golf Clap.

And this whole "we're not at war with Islam" stupidity doesn't buy you any friends over there in the sandbox. We may not be at War with Islam, but Islam is at War with us. Get that through your thick skull, Barry. The fact is that your administration, by playing to this nonsense about 'Islamic Sensibilities' like burying Bin Laden according to Islamic custom and not wanting to rub salt in the wound of radical Islam and their terrorist folk hero, and to return to the 'beg Islam to be nice to us' policy is doing itself, and us a major disservice.

The disservice is that without evidence, no one in the Islamic World is going to believe that Bin Laden is really dead. Without evidence, the same people who burned brain cells and wasted air over your birth certificate have new grist for the conspiracy theory mill. It seems as if your administration, true to form is attempting to decide what is and what is not secret depending on what the perceived political and propaganda needs of the Administration are at any particular moment, and in the process only reinforcing what so many already think.

But, having made the right decision to get UBL you are now screwing it all up by making, or allowing your minions to make, all the wrong ones. Having scored major points in an area which was one of your biggest weaknesses, being soft on the War on Terror, you've squandered that advantage and re-opened the floodgates of conspiracy theory and charges of incompetence. UBL is said to have valiantly resisted, and the next we’re told that he was unarmed. UBL was found in part because of what happens at Gitmo and then it was painstaking intelligence work done over a series of years, like someone doing a giant jigsaw puzzle in the dark and with one hand tied behind his back. The CIA says one thing, the Pentagon another. The State Department ,which on a good day might be able to find its own collective ass with both hands and a roadmap, says something else entirely and they all contradict and step all over each other in the process.

The disinformation may be deliberate, but from here it appears as if no one in the government is on the same page, and that always leads to the conclusion that no one in Washington can muster enough intellectual firepower to burn calories, and in this political climate that's rather dangerous for a sitting President .

UBL is dead. Great, I'm proud of you. Now prove it. Release video and pictures from the raid. 


FORE!

___________________________________________ 

Can Obama be Defeated? Two Views

Update: links have been fixed.
.

Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had approval ratings close to, and even lower than the 45 percent level where Obama's popularity now stands, and both suffered big midterm setbacks in congressional elections. Both presidents went on to win re-election.

 
But unlike 1984 and 1996, things are dramatically different. Ronald Reagan was tough, an expert negotiator and was able to deal with Tip O'Neal, then Speaker of the House, to lower taxes and bring prosperity back to America. Bill Clinton, while maybe the kind of guy you would want to hang out with and have a beer, was as shady as Richard Nixon but a excellent campaigner and successful politician, in part because of the newly elected Republican House Speaker called his hand and presented him with the list of promises made to the people that helped usher in a republican controlled house in 1994. Clinton had the sense to sign the bills, and of course then take credit.

 
But Barack Obama is neither a great communicator nor the savvy politician his fore-mentioned predecessors were. Nor are the times similar. Obama took a bad situation and day by day has made it every increasingly worst, while ignoring the will of the people.

 Can the former community organizer/ back bench junior Senator who charismatically fooled America into believing he was the answer to America's problems, get re-elected to the most powerful office in the land?

 
I found two very interesting points of view on this subject.  It's going to be a very interesting 18 months till the election.

From Mary Poppet comes the view of one of my favorite columnist Dr. Walter Williams.

"Can President Obama be defeated in 2012? No. He can't. I am going on record as saying that President Barak Obama will win a second term. Nine percent unemployment? No problem. Obama will win. Gas prices moving toward five dollars a gallon? He still wins. The truth is, there simply are no conditions under which Barak Obama can be defeated in 2012. 

Obama's re-election is really a very, very simple math problem." 

Consider his 10 point presentation here No Matter What--Obama Wins in 2012. 

But on the other hand........
from Jeffery Lord over at the American Spectator.

President Obama will not be re-elected. Period. Why? Obamaflation has arrived, and this is what it looks like."

Milk. A gallon of skim. At the local Giant in Central Pennsylvania:

January 11, 2011: $3.20

February 28, 2011: $3.24

March 6, 2011: $3.34

April 23. 2011: $3.48

That would be a 28 cent rise in a mere 102 days, from January to April of this year. The third year of the Obama misadventure.

Then there's the celery. Same sized bag. Same store.

January 11, 2011: $1.99 a bag.

March 6, 2011: $2.49 a bag.

A rise of 50 cents in 54 days.

"WHAT SEEMS TO HAVE LEFT Obama strategists clueless is the fundamental historical fact that inflation comes slowly. Milk today, celery tomorrow, and gas almost every day. Then, too late, there's a collective gasp of recognition by Americans walking around the grocery store that it's no longer just the milk and the celery but the soup, the chicken, the hamburger and perhaps now critically -- the Excedrin."

"It is such moments that elect a Ronald Reagan in 1980."   

Consider the following here Obamaflation Arrives.

_________________________________________________

Narcissism and Ignorance Have Never Been Virtues, Mr. President

Barack Obama is two years into his presidency and he’s managed so far to post an even worse record than George W. Bush. His economy has lost over 3 million jobs, consumer confidence is at half of its historical average, unemployment is over 9 percent and has been that way for well over a year. To what extent is Obama's lack of executive experience  responsible for this?  It has been said the early George Bush and Obama have a lot in common. The difference between them, which is why Obama is the more dangerous for the economy, is he has proved he has very little by way of a skill set to understand the kinds of complex problems that he needs to address. But what he does have is an arrogance, if not unbounded confidence in himself.

Last spring Obama brought together a group of presidential historians for what was supposed to be the first of many meetings.  He was curious about the rise of the tea party, curious as to whether there had been precedents for this sort of backlash against the established order. He listened to these experts on the American presidency, but was prickly and didn't give anything away.

What most engaged Obama before his rise to the highest office in the land was his own biography.   Where so many of his predecessors had sought comfort and guidance in the ordeal of past presidents , there was no great deference in him to the burdens those forty-two men carried. He didn't look like those other presidents on the dollar bills, he said early in his political odyssey.

A president steeped in history would have never pushed ObamaCare on so thin a reed of public approval. Americans haven't ever worshiped at the altar of charismatic leadership like some peoples have, for we have been the most skeptical of peoples. We may have trusted several of their presidents through wars and economic downturns, but we have insisted on the wisdom of the public and on the ability of this republic of laws, institutions and precedent to see our way out of great dangers. 
Obamabots  nod to American history with evocations of FDR’s New Deal and superficial parallels to JFK. But Kennedy had seen combat, was a Cold Warrior and believed in the burdens of American power. He would have never journeyed abroad to apologize on behalf of his country.

If he was indeed a student of history as Obama described himself in his 2009 Cairo speech, our president would have known that a command economy is alien to the American temperament and that liberal unfettered government spending was bound to arouse the antagonism of the American people. We were not all Keynesians after all, and the American people, much to liberals’ wonderment, do care about budget deficits and the future they leave their children. It’s time to let  John Maynard Keynes RIP and admit his failed theories have helped bankrupt many of the western democracies.

The era of charisma, which began when Obama was swept into office by delirium and enthusiasm has drawn to a close. The ‘Styrofoam Greek Columns’ and his  pedestal have been wheeled  away, and replaced with a golf cart.

________________________________ 

Hypocrisy and the Entitlement Mentality

Years ago I could see an uninformed, mostly politically ignorant voter casting a ballot for Democrats because they truly believed a politician with a “D” beside their name was dedicated to looking out for the poor and downtrodden of society.   
But today, a vote for any Democrat by those same voters is clearly just another way of saying, "Don't take away my entitlements; go take away the hope those soccer playing first graders have of living  the American Dream. They should only be allowed to eat at the troff after I spend my life gorging on my government entitlement provided sustenance. It's mine" 

A vote for a Democrat is a vote for continuing fiscal irresponsibly . You're telling the four-year-old eating a delicious ice cream cone, "Screw your chocolate covered face. I'm leaving you a mountain of debt because I want all I can get while I can get it. I don't care about your future financial well being and I certainly don't care if America is indebted to other world powers like China, causing you to spend your entire adult life earning four dollars an hour assembling smart phones for elites. My only goal is making sure enough Democrats remain in power to provide me all the entitlements and handouts I need to live like I work hard."

The dangerously high budget deficits and national debt are ominous signs for the next generation that face threats, foreign and domestic, that can only be imagined. And despite the fact that America is at the breaking point and  todays children  will begin adulthood well behind the starting line, democrats and those supporting them still won't man up and admit the entitlement mentality has come to be our ruin if not addressed now.

 They refuse to say, "We're adults and our refusal to act responsibly is ruining the future for children across this once great country. Its one thing to claim that reaching into the pocket of a rich man is noble, but even we can't spin the inherent evilness behind stealing from children. We're one step away from literally taking candy from a baby.”

 Conservatives are of the mindset that adults should make sacrifices that will benefit the youth of America and the generations that follow. Liberals on the other hand, demand endless gut expansion, regardless of the tiny empty bellies their gluttony leaves behind.

I guess it's only "for the children" when it's convenient. 

___________________________________ 

The Earl of Ketchup Goes Hawkish

U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-Mass), Duke of Heinz, Earl of Ketchup today said the U.S. Military should set up and maintain a No Fly Zone over Libyian airspace.
Sen.Kerry, a [Navy] veteran turned anti-war activist and critic of the use of the military by Reagan, Bush 41 and campaigned for the presidency in part against Bush 43's efforts at waging of war on terror (while never criticizing the bombing of civilians during Clinton's misuse of the air force in Kosovo and ignoring the rivers of Rwanda running red with blood and headless bodies) now wants to inject us into a senseless operation and endangering our fighter pilots over Libyan airspace. 

NO, Senator Kerry! This is a problem better addressed by NATO, the European forces of NATO! Europe imports more of their oil from Libya then America and  could be confronted by mass immigration that could come their way from north Africa, so let them let deal with it.
It's their backyard. 

Let the French Italians, Germans and  Belgians pilots take the high risk operations of disabling the Libyan air defenses, which must be done first . We have more important things to tend to, like fighting the war on terror for them! 

 And is it just me, or is it coincidental that anti-war demonstrations tend to disappear and some democrats get all brave, gutsy and hawkish when their guys occupy the White House? Just a thought.

_____________________________________________________

Picture of the Week.

The process being played out in Madison...

has done us a great public service, however unintentional; it has exposed the naked hypocrisy of the unions, and given us yet one more example of what's wrong with our so-called 'Political Leadership'.

This battle is not about economics (even if economic factors have brought the Madison Protests to the fore), or even of fundamental fairness; it's about maintaining a series of often-outrageous privileges which can no longer be justified, and about the ability of the Unions to buy the politicians who will continue the gravy train.

If anyone ever needed a list of reasons as to why the rest of the planet is kicking our ass economically, and why employers are willing to risk breaking the law and hire illegal immigrants, or flood the State Department with H1-B requests, you need only show up at any mass meeting of Unionized Workers. There you will find, in microcosm, everything that's wrong with the American labor market. 

Picture source: Moonbattery

__________________________________ 

Jimmy Carter Says The Brotherhood is Cool. That Outa Worry You Right There.

When we talk about the President's ability to influence events, we saw that was incredibly limited even within the context of Egypt. And now if this starts spreading abroad, it’s going to be so far beyond what the United States can influence here. - Monica Crowley, Washington Times

"While the pliant liberal and American news media coo over the so-called “freedom” demonstrations in Egypt, there are riots and protests breaking out all over North Africa and beyond Jordan, Yemen, Algeria, Bahrain, Tunisia." Jane Jamison

*Update 2/17- “Charismatic” Imam Returns to Egypt From Exile

_________________________________________

Yep...I Still Think Pantsuit is Gonna Run.

As I wrote in an previous post Warming Up the Clinton Smear Machine, I believed Hillary Clinton will oppose Obama in the primaries for the 2012 nomination. The discontent in the electorate, Obamas inability to understand elementary economics and all around incompetency in office, spells blood in the water.  All the while, Secretary Clinton has remained for the most part out of view, avoiding controversy while meeting with former Clinton allies’ overseas and gaining trust and foreign policy experience. I expect her to resign as Secretary of State soon and prepare for a run.  The Earl of Ketchup (John Kerry) awaits in the wings to be appointed Secretary of State.

Maybe Barack Obama was wrong; you can put lipstick on a pig, but only if you believe you can continue to rely on the stupidity and short memories of the American Left. 

Dissecting the 2008 primaries as best I can remember, it seems that Obama was originally the Ultra-Liberals attempt to get their views to the fore, because so far as they were concerned, Hillary Clinton was simply George W. Bush with a pantsuit on.  No one expected Obama to win so much as to be the standard bearer of the demented Left. His 'job' was to put their issues on the table, and to warn 'centrist' dems (a contradiction in terms) that the Dingbat Wing of the party should not be taken for granted.  Subsequent events, I think  have proven me correct in this assumption, bearing the last two years in mind,  does it look like Barack Obama was ever prepared to be President of the United States, or that he ever expected to win?
 

What has resulted from a policy perspective, both foreign and domestic, seems to indicate that no, he was not expecting to win, and when he actually did, he had no plan. None of that vision stuff. What Barack Obama actually did was to let Congress do his heavy lifting while he played golf and bought time to learn what being in charge actually means, a lesson he still seem not to have mastered.

 

The way I see it, Clinton lost an election she had every 

opportunity to win primarily for three major reasons:

 (1) - She ran her campaign as if she had already won, as if the Office of President was her birthright.  She seemed to be taking the Victory Lap before the race even started. She did everything but measure the Oval Office windows for new curtains (on the off-chance the old ones might still have Bill's you-know-what all over them), and plan to return the silverware that came up missing  when the Bushes moved (back) in.  Politically, Hillary would have been Bush-like, she would have continued the War, she would have kept the Patriot Act and she would not have advanced the same radical Health Care stupidity that Obama did (at least not in her first term). If you were a Whackjob Lefty in 2008, Hillary Clinton was George W. Bush's third term.

 

If you were a democratic party voter in the fall of 2008, and your choice was between The Crusty Black Pantsuit who talked a good game, but lied to your face, and could be reasonably expected to simply continue Bush's policies with only minor  cosmetic changes, or the Slick Hipster 'Outsider' who had inspired you with lofty rhetoric and a thin resume, but who restored your deluded vision of the heady days of JFK, RFK and MLK, only with a Program of Reparations attached, who would you chose?

(2) - Hillary Clinton carried far too much baggage.  About 200 pounds of it in the form of a guy named Bill.

(3) - In the "Great Pecking Order of Worthiest Victim Groups" that is democratic (small 'd' intentional) politics, Hillary The Heir Apparent was stunned to learn that (half-) Black Man still trumped Woman Done Wrong By Cheating and Abusive Husband.  As a result, Clinton took the job of Secretary of State because it was the next best thing; it gave her a serious job (junior Senator from a state you don't really live in is like being an unpaid intern, and besides, Charles Schumer is an obnoxious asshat), and it might even prove a springboard to future success.  And judging from the foreign policy mistakes of this Administration (ones that Hillary will be glad to tell you in the coming primary season were not her doing; she was simply following orders from above...yeah, like that worked at Nuremberg, too) that's not exactly something I would want on my resume.

 

She will pull out her old 'Centrist Democrat' disguise, something that barely exists anymore thanks to the GOP-Tea Party romp in the 2010 Mid-Terms, and run to Obama's right as a New-Old-Centrist-Blue-Dog Democrat (four lies for the price of one) while out-hawking the GOP Hawks, and do her damndest to be as indistinguishable as the most centrist Republican come 2012.

As for illegal immigration and border security, she’s been silent on both, because if you plan to run for President on the Democratic Party ticket you can't afford to offend all the illegal voters in California, your Mother Lode of illegal-alien-and-welfare-mother-supplied Electoral Votes --54 of them. That's 20% of the total required to be elected, you know. Let's see if the American electorate can still be that stupid two Presidential elections in a row, and fall for someone who's so obviously a poser, or whether the 'Throw The Bums Out' fervor of the Tea Party and the Great Middle continues.

Get your popcorn folks, there's gonna be a fight on the Left very soon. Ya heard it here first.

_______________________________ 

  

On Egypt:

 Excerpts from Lunatic's Asylum

A society which has no history of Freedom, which has gone from Pharaohs,  to Caliphates,  to Foreign Occupation,  to Presidents-for-Life, all of it overshadowed by the threat of force, is a land totally devoid of even the simplest idea of what freedom is.  At the moment, all the talk about "Freedom" in Egypt is little more than people using this month's new buzzword. 

So, for those of you who are beginning to buy the "democratic movement arises in Egypt" theme the American Press so fervently hopes to spin you with, it has no actual facts to back that assertion up  There are no democratic institutions, for a start, and they could not be magically created overnight (see Iraq). Sure, Egyptians could vote, but that's not the same thing. Purple fingers do not a democracy make. In fact, if given the chance to vote in fair, democratic elections, Egyptians are likely to do what the Palestinians and Lebanese have done and vote for the Terrorists and Islamonazis among them. When the smoke clears, and Mubarak and the other despots in the region who are also under threat from this nascent "freedom movement" are gone, we're likely to see even worse forms of government arise.

What has happened in Egypt up to this moment was,  to a point, entirely predictable. This is why our government,  press, intelligence and diplomatic services all seem to have been taken by surprise. Even the dumbest people on this planet, given time, will eventually get fed up with some situation and then decide to do something about it, even if they're not quite certain as to what they're pissed about, or what to do about it. I'm not going to pontificate on whether or not Mubarak is a prince amongst Men, or the worst sort of douche bag, because I have no first-hand experience, and because I know that at least 80% of what passes for information on the nightly newscast is someone's opinion, rather than facts.  But my guess is when the American punditocracy (a.k.a The Flapping Rectums) asks the question in another decade, "Who Lost Egypt?", the first people they'll look to blame will be the American political class, but the real culprits will have been the Egyptians themselves.

Edited for content by Diogenes 

_______________________________________________ 

If there's anything a Muslim man fears more than Allah, it would be an original thought and a vagina.

Pakistani Woman Enrolls in First Grade.

Excerpts from The Lunatic's Asylum 

Societies which restrict the spread of information, forbid the principle of debate, stifle education, cut off access to viewpoints which conflict with the "official" point-of-view, are societies which eventually wither and die. They are strangled by a lack of creativity, and a the inability to adapt to an ever-changing world. Societies which treat their women as livestock, and don't bother to educate or encourage them to work in a capacity other than sperm receptacle or human punching-bag, become irrelevant or simply cease to exist, eventually.

The only thing that's keeping the Islamic world relevant is that there's so damned many of them, but the ability to breed like roaches still won't save that culture and those societies from the slow rot from within. They are stale backward cultures. Hence, all the violence. They aren't allowed awareness of another way to live.


The Iranians can cite the Stuxnet virus attacks on their nuclear program all they want, the real reason they're clamping down on the internet is because it's a place where people are exposed to ideas that are dangerous. Well, that and because the Middle East is the internet rape video and donkey sex capital of the world (just ask Google).


No educated women + no political or religious dissent + no exchange of ideas + the criminalization of unofficial thought = Islam is a intellectual wasteland. 


Culture, the real reason why they hate us in the West, it has little to do with religion, it's all about the culture. Our system represents cultural freedom and progress, and theirs represents a culture of repression, ignorance, violence and perpetual poverty, even as they swim in a sea of oil. The Taliban have bombed and set fire to hundreds of schools, most of them for girls. They are incapable of changing so as to match and join us in the 21st Century, so they try to pull us down to their level (that's what terrorism is all about, after all), the easier to enslave us all so that they may live off the fruits of our labors and productive, creative brains.


Productive and creative brains that got that way because we allow dissent, educate our women, and don't spend the majority of our day looking at deviant pornography.  The Whole Fundamentalist Islamic thing has less to do with religion and more about ensuring a system in which Might Makes Right and where men can lord it over women.


Because on close inspection of 21st Century Islam it becomes apparent, if there's anything a Muslim man fears more than God, it would be an original thought and a vagina. 

Edited by Diogenes Sarcastica

___________________________________________________