UPDATED: A Shrub Between Two Ferns (Galifianakis: A Good Kind Of Goofy)

Barack Obama, Bush, Healthcare, Pop-Culture

The Shrub, aka George Bush, stood apart. Plant life, however, frames Barack Obama just as well. Zach Galifianakis is host of “Funny Or Die” and “Between Two Ferns.” Here Galifianakis lets Barack Obama drone on, “Between Two Ferns,” about “that thing that doesn’t work.”

UPDATE (3/11/014): Galifianakis: A Good Kind Of Goofy.

Wasn’t it obvious that the star in the clip is Galifianakis, not Obama? Seriously, did someone not get that? Facebook Friends didn’t. They do not appreciate off-beat, “awkward humor.”

Surveillance For Thee But Not For Me

Constitution, Founding Fathers, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Politics, The State

Remember when the The Transportation Security Administrator dared to manhandle Sen. Rand Paul in the same way these goons grab our privates daily? Rand responded by telling CNN’s Erin Burnett, essentially, that the TSA folks were good people bogged down by inflexible rules. He followed up with special pleading, suggesting a system of sectional privileges and rights, based on professional need and proximity to power.

But that’s the way the system was destined to work. I know: This nerd’s lasting infatuation is with the unsung heroes of the American founding: the Anti-Federalists. And one of the Anti-Federalist essayists said that the Constitution creates a city or district in which power is concentrated. Once the elected representative (too few to represent anyone meaningfully) reached Rome on The Potomac—they would act as a cloistered, privileged ruling class, impervious to the people’s pleas.

And this has come to pass.

That phony, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), is furious that the CIA “has secretly removed documents from computers used by her panel to investigate a controversial interrogation program.” Lo and behold this bitch has “discovered” the Fourth Amendment and is bemoaning its violation. “The Fourth … bars unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as various federal laws and a presidential executive order that prevents the agency from conducting domestic searches and surveillance,” Feinstein preached.

Man of the people whistleblower Edward Snowden said all there is to say. He “accused the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee of double standards on Tuesday, pointing out that her outrage at evidence her staff were spied on by the CIA was not matched by concern about widespread surveillance of ordinary citizens.”

Snowden said almost all there is to say about the premise of surveillance for thee but not for me under which Americans labor.

It is eminently reasonable to surveil politicians. Because of the special privileges and powers they are able to arrogate to themselves, they ought to be exempt from many of the so-called protections afforded to ordinary citizens.

And of course, they should be denied the vote.

Bad Dreams From Dinesh D’Souza*

Federalism, Founding Fathers, Neoconservatism, States' Rights

What if Lincoln had not won the War of Northern Aggression?

According to the quintessential neoconservative, filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, had Lincoln lost, America would not be America. By which D’Souza means that the “union would not have existed. And America would be completely different.”

The Anti-Federalists warned that the creation of a national government would sunder the autonomous states and usher in an empire.

Indeed, if not for Lincoln, the US might have reverted back to a decentralized confederation of sovereign states (and slavery would have ended without bloodshed, as it did almost everywhere else).

“While a national government will add to the dignity and splendor of the United States,” wrote “A Farmer” (an anonymous anti-Federalist), in March of 1788, “true happiness lies in a simple quiet government.”

Before consolidation under the Constitution, Americans hardly had a government.

If only…

* Dreams from My Father is a book by Barack Obama.

Dumb Dogs of War

Barack Obama, Conservatism, Foreign Policy, Russia, War

“Putin invaded Georgia when George W. Bush was president. Nobody ever accused George W. Bush of being weak or unwilling to use military force.” Them’s fighting words belong to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Warbot conservatives want Obama to do something to Putin so as to keep them feeling like the world’s top dogs. Gates was addressing the incongruous nature of the continuous attacks lobbed by the warbots.


Via Fox News Sunday (the only show on Fox News to offer full
transcripts):

WALLACE: You’ve defended President Obama’s handling of the situation this week, but in January you said you thought that President Obama made a big mistake when he set the red line for the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Here’s what you warn. “If you cock the pistol you’ve got to be willing to fire it.” By “cocking the pistol” whether it’s on the red line in Syria or giving asylum to Edward Snowden or other issues. You’re really — and then not firing it, you really don’t think that President Obama has emboldened Putin at all.

GATES: Well, all I would say is – what I was saying earlier in the week was simply that I thought in the middle of a major international crisis, that some of the criticism, domestic criticism of the president ought to be toned down, while he’s trying to handle this crisis. My own view is, after all, Putin invaded Georgia when George W. Bush was president. Nobody ever accused George W. Bush of being weak or unwilling to use military force, so I think Putin is very opportunistic in these arenas. I think that even if — even if we had launched attacks in Syria, even if we weren’t cutting our defense budget, I think Putin saw an opportunity here in Crimea, and he has seized it. You know, the ouster of Yanukovych was a big strategic setback for Putin, and — and I think it’s — it’s testimony to how skillful he is or how agile he is that he’s tried to offset that by the seizure of Crimea and throwing this whole situation into a very different — into a very different light, and I think that —