Jack Daniels Explains the Deficit

A useful metaphor (especially for college folk).

Obama: CEOs Suck, So Boycott Oil

REPORTER: Have you spoken directly to Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I have not spoken to him directly and here's the reason. Because my experience is when you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he's going to say all the right things to me. I'm not interested in words. I'm interested in actions.

WILLY WONKA: After all, we have so much time and so little to do! Wait. Strike that- reverse it.

There it is, in black and white: The reason that President Obama has taken so long to sit down with BP CEO Tony Hayward- who, as head of not only the responsible party, but also the party whose resources are clearly the best equipped to handle the oil spill, ought to have been number one on Obama’s schedule- is due to the simple fact that the president just doesn’t like CEOs. There are a number of questions to address in response to what is a clear display of Obama’s bizarre political convictions: Just who is “like” a CEO, anyway? A businessman? A rich man? A private citizen whose company provides employment to several thousand people? (No thanks to the stimulus, thank you very much.)

The liberal prejudice towards the oil industry is no great secret, and thus this arrogant behavior, tactless as it was for a president speaking to the press, comes as anything but a surprise. True, he didn’t pull a James Cameron and accuse BP of being nothing but a pack of hopeless morons, but his disdain for the oil provider was evident enough- a disdain which, shared by most of the American people at this juncture, is hardly objectionable in and of itself. What proves more objectionable is the source from which the present Commander-In-Chief derives his particular brand of loathing. Turning back the clock a year or so, Obama didn’t object to the corporation's estimated $77,000 in campaign contributions over the course of his short political career- estimates which make Obama the biggest recipient of BP’s voluntary contributions in the last two decades. Predestined divine justice for the company? If the thought brings you satisfaction, I suppose so.

Unfortunately, much of the public at large has responded in like manner, with many drivers openly boycotting BP gas stations as a political statement of supposed solidarity with the affected residents of the Gulf Coast. BP gas station owners have been hit hard as they feel the weight of this allegedly compassionate protest. At my own place of employment, I have overheard coworkers angrily discussing this very topic, expressing nothing less than a potent hatred for the oil giant (No mention of the idiotic environmental policies which have forced oil workers to drill ever more dangerously far offshore in the first place, but that’s a separate issue). The conventional wisdom seems to be that hurting BP- including those they employ at gas stations across the country- will somehow result in a positive effect on the gulf.

In words of the immortal Gene Wilder, “WRONG, SIR!!”

I’m no expert in the economy, the oil industry, or in the causes and remedies of the country's ongoing unemployment problem, but you don’t need any credentials in those areas to expect, within a reasonable margin of error, that 1.) boycotting a large gasoline provider 2.) with employees in the upper tens of thousands 3.) in the middle of what some have called the worst recession since the Great Depression will cost possibly THOUSANDS of people to lose their once-secure jobs at BP and find themselves desperate for new employment, which they are less likely to find if economic woes persist. So much for compassionate boycotts, huh?

“So shines a good deed in a weary world", I guess...

Obama Hates My iPod?!

"You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank all that high on the truth meter."

Like those of Saul Alinsky, for example?

"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.”

The point being that we ought to be using our xboxes to blow up real terrorists?

"All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy."

Says the man with 8 million friends on facebook. Give me a BREAK!

Such are but a few quotes by our esteemed president to university graduates yesterday at Hampton University in Virginia, and while we cannot judge with certainty the degree to which this amateur lecture on the morality of Turok, Halo, and the Pussycat Dolls is reflective of Obama’s own perspective, the words themselves are troubling enough.

Let’s forget for a moment that Xboxes and PlayStations have NO place in a discussion concerning the 24/7 news cycle. Let’s forget that in 5 out of 10 photos, Obama is clutching his Crackberry like Gollum with the Ring of Power. Let’s forget that in China, “truth meter” is probably the technical term for the number of times you’re permitted to mention the Dalai Lama on national television before you find yourself sharing a cell at an undisclosed location with a Chinese practicing Christian who failed to adequately conceal his religious convictions. And, of course, let’s just forget that a democracy is by its very definition a safe haven for ALL political brands- except for those that express a desire to destroy that democracy, obviously.

And how does one attack democracy in the media? What are some of the typical arguments we can expect from a closed-minded ideologue intent on censoring and regulating any opposing political machines in the media? By condescending to the people of the United States, like in this speech. After all, every American teenager sitting at home playing patriotic games like Call of Duty really OUGHT to be spending their time reviewing the latest Rachel Maddow blog, right?

There have in the past been various leaders of countless nations who- whether possessing a nefarious agenda or some misguided sense of public service- have taken to the notion that societal ills can be cured if only the right people can be made to shut up. In the case of Mr. Obama, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for a moment and assume he was trying to imply something about the blogs by certain Islamic extremists that led to the censorship of South Park and may or may not have been a factor in the motivation of the recent attempt to destroy innocent lives at Times Square. In addition, we ought to agree wholeheartedly with the president when he recalls the Jeffersonian notion of a republic’s need for an educated citizenry. But let us not stand idly by when the administration begins to slide into the ideology of censorship.

When it comes to the mass media, government knows what is best- for the government. We must be vocal in our opposition to any attempt by those in power to attack those forces in the media who do not share the regime’s collectivist agenda. An attack on the rights of a man or woman to express themselves politically- excepting calls to violence, naturally- is an open assault on the liberty of all Americans at every level of society, and it must not be tolerated.

But on some level we can understand why Obama is so frustrated. After all, it must be frustrating to observe the successes of Andrew Breitbart’s blogs, the commercial success of patriotic games like Call of Duty, and the proliferation of conservative fiction like The Dark Knight and Iron Man 2. Avatar or no Avatar, the ideals of conservatism are being further embedded in pop culture day after day.

And it’s making the statists VERY nervous.