Doubly Standard Procedure Watch: Government Spending

Sigh.

Back in 2006...Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the Republican budget “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic” because it increased the amount of U.S. debt held by foreign countries. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., accused Republicans of going on “an unprecedented and dangerous borrowing spree” and declared GOP leadership “the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of our country … no other president or Congress even comes close.”

Yet, strangely, when given control of the purse strings, what did the Budget-conscious Pelosi and Reid do?

They wrote a bill (1100 pages, which few in Congress have admitted reading before they voted for it) that gave us an $870 billion tab for our kids and grandkids to pick up (Remember, sticking the tab to our descendants was a BAD THING when done by Republicans).

And there’s this tidbit from our Dear Leader, Obama:

According to a recent analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Obama's tax plan would add $3.4 trillion to the national debt, including interest, by 2018.

And the silence from Pelosi and Reid is deafening.

Doubly Standard Procedure: It's the new true!

Hope and Change Watch: Free Speech

If Bush did this, it would be evidence of the trampling of our civil rights.

The police officers who stopped Oklahoma City motorist Chip Harrison and confiscated a sign from his car told him he has a right to his beliefs, but the Secret Service "could construe this as a threat against President Obama," according to the incident report released this morning.

The sign? "Abort Obama Not the Unborn."

Cast your mind back for a moment onto some of the vomitous bile that was piled continuously on President Bush.

Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint, a novella conversation between two people about the advisability of assassinating the president;

– “Art” exhibits like this one:

And yet...these brave artists didn't have their means of expression taken away. I doubt the Secret Service paid a visit to Nicholas Baker. And don't forget the hip "Abort Palin" stickers, posters and tee-shirts.

Free Speech: Speak Freely (and correctly) about our Dear Leader.

Shame on them

The Democrats, with help from just three "moderate" Republicans, have passed the Stimulus package.

Known variously as Porkulus or Paybackulus, it is nearly one trillion dollars. That's $1,000,000,000,000.

The written bill, itself, was over 1100 pages long. It was voted on in less than 48 hours. Do you think the entire bill has been read? Do you know what is in it? You hide a lot of stuff in 1100 pages and $1,000,000,000,000.

So. These buffoons voted for a bill they could not have humanly read and they are spending our money to do it. Take a quick look at your own life. If you are in debt, say by $100,000 dollars, would you go out and spend another $100,000 to get out of debt. How would you do that? How would that help you? You can't get out of debt by getting into more debt, can you?

Remember the promises of the campaign?

How many have been broken by the Candidate of Hope and Change?

There's only one answer. Throw the bums out.

Doubly Standard Procedure Watch: Conspiracy Thoughts

If I were conspiracy minded, I might think this was all part of The Plan.

Here's an example. I've long thought that one reason for the yo-yo on gas prices is about conditioning the consumer. That is, prices periodically spike to about twice what we have come to expect. There's concern and the usual outrage from the do-nothings in Congress, and the price eventually settles down to our great relief. But the price never settles back down to what it was before. It settles to a new "low," which, strangely, is always higher than our previous normal. But, since it's not the shocking high of last summer, we think "This is all right." We have be come accustomed to the new normal.

(And remember, next time you see the gas prices creeping up, and you reflect that your money is going to our "friends" the Saudis, ponder this: the Democrats are against domestic drilling. They like Americans to be hostages, if not to the Dems and their government largesse, then to somebody. A hostage is usually happy for whatever crumbs the captors give them.)

Back to The Plan.

There is so much DSP that it's hard to keep up to date. That leads me to wonder if possibly that is The Plan: flood us with so much DSP that we become numb to it after a while, and then our Dear Leader and His Devoted Servants can do whatever they want.

A few examples of the current Doubly Standard Procedure.

President Obama hits his head on the door of a Marine Helicopter.

Waiting for the SNL skit of how stupid he is for doing that. The Jon Stewart show? Anyone to make fun of him?

Uh, huh. That’ll happen.

During the campaign, now Vice-President Joe Biden suggested paying higher taxes is more patriotic, especially for wealthier Americans.

"We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people…”

Unless, of course, you are a powerful Democratic member of Congress, like former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

“The disclosure -- involving unreported income and the use of a car and driver provided to Daschle -- comes 2 1/2 weeks after Obama's choice to head the Treasury Department, Timothy Geithner, admitted that he had not paid about $43,000 in taxes.”

Daschle owed about $140,000 dollars in back taxes. Oh, wait, there’s the new Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, mentioned in passing above. And Charles Rangel, too. These weeds have no problem wanting to take our money, and wanting to tax us over and over...yet they have a real problem with paying their own taxes.

I guess they’ve discovered patriotism about the same time the public discovered their tax problems.

And, just for fun, imagine the mad dog Media pursuit of scalps that would have ensued if a Bush nominee hadn’t paid their taxes until they were being considered for a high government post.

Yet…it’s rather quiet on that front.

Other DSP that I don't have time to go into: Obama was about Hope and Change, and yet, he's peddling fear. "Pass the political Payback...er, Stimulus Package now, or the crows will peck the flesh from your cold dead bodies!" That's hopeful.

Doubly Standard Procedure: It's the New True!

Reality Check

Who is shaping your reality?

It's an important question. The world is far too large for us to understand, so we make models of how we believe the world to be. Some of those models come from our own experience (fire burns, water is wet), but much of the information we add to our model comes from other sources.

It's the sources outside of your own experience that need watching.

For example, in the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church had a great deal to do with shaping "reality." They defined right, wrong, good, and bad for a lot of people, if not directly, then indirectly by their influence and power over Kings and other rulers. History shows that for a while, the Church may not have been as interested in being the Rock upon which Christ built his house as the they were in consolidating power for themselves.

Fast forward to today. What shapes our reality, at least in the West? Modern media, in many cases. You know Sarah Palin never said, "I can see Russia from my house." That was Tina Fey in her parody of Sarah Palin. And, to be fair, Al Gore never said "I invented the Internet." Yet those mis-constructions of reality are perpetuated over and over.

In the case of our currently elected/sanctified President and His Good Works, much of the information we're getting is...skewed. It's not the Catholic Church doing it this time, to bolster their power and earthly treasures. It's a lot of the modern news and popular media.

And we have to ask: what's in it for them? While today's Catholic Church (to name but one example) has made mistakes and errors -- errors the press has reported on repeatedly -- they don't define our reality today with anywhere near the reach and power of NBC, ABC, the AP, and Reuters.

Like the Church then, the Press now has lost its moral compass. When was the last time the press reported, honestly, on their mistakes, omissions, and own biases?

Take a look at your mental map. Question the received wisdom. You might be surprised at what you find.

Doubly Standard Procedure: Hollywood

Elia Kazan was a very famous Broadway and film director (Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, On the Waterfront). He did some serious work in the early fifties.

He had also, at one time in his youth, been a member of a secret cell of the communist party. During the so-called Red Scare, he “named names,” that is, revealed the names of individuals with whom he’d associated in his days as a communist. Some people in the industry lost their jobs and livelihoods, it must be noted.

But it is equally important to remember that the Communist Party’s avowed goal was total world domination. That fact is downplayed a lot, and a lot of blame is put on the US (evil capitalists) for turning the Worker’s Paradise in the Evil Empire (read about the forced famines in the Ukraine that the New York Times lied about for one example of their real evil the Communists perpetrated).

Anyway, Hollywood finally wanted to give Mr. Kazan an honorary Oscar for his years of work in the Industry. There were protests. Some actors in the audience stood with their backs turned when the Oscar was presented.

Then we have Roman Polanski. Renowned director, right up until the time he drugged a thirteen year old girl and sodomized her. I apologize for being so graphic, but it’s important to understand what happened. Polanski was caught,

“..and was allowed to plead guilty to one of six charges, unlawful sexual intercourse, and was sent to prison for 42 days of evaluation.

Lawyers agreed that would be his full sentence, but the judge tried to renege on the plea bargain.”

So he did what anyone else would do. He fled the country to continue making movies and to win an Oscar in exile.

Now he wants the case overturned for prosecutorial misconduct.

So, he gives a 13-year-old girl Quaaludes and has sex with this child. Among the other crimes are the idea he could only get 42 days of time for this. The man should have been horsewhipped out of town. Children are the most defenseless of our citizens. They need our protection from predators. We want people to understand it is a BAD thing to drug them and then have sex with them.

Yet, are there protests in Hollywood against Polanski? Did anyone stand up and turn their back on the presentation of his Oscar (accepted by someone else) for The Pianist?

Am I missing something here?

Doubly Standard Procedure Watch: Democrats in Power

Isn't it amazing? Now that Democrats are in power, what a change in Washington:

FEMA failure during a weather related catastrophe that is happening right now. No problem.

Of course, when it was Katrina...It was Bush's fault. NOT.

Two of the president's cabinet picks failed to pay taxes to the tune of about $150,000 dollars (that we know of).

They get a pass.

To say nothing of Charles Rangel and Chris Dodd (google them yourself). Think Foxes whoring out the Henhouse.

There is so much DSP going on I don’t have time to capture it all. But it’s easy to see. Just ask, “If it was President Bush or a Republican who said or did this, what would the reaction of the press have been?”

Quick examples:

“If President Bush was meeting to discuss a major economic stimulus package with the Democrats, and he rebuffed their concerns by saying, ‘Hey, guys, I won,’ what would the press have said?”

“If a Republican nominee for Cabinet had failed to pay 100s of thousand of dollars in taxes, would he have been given a pass?”

Doubly Standard Procedure: it is the New True.