Came across a link where you can catch a bus to Washington, DC for the culmination of the Tea Party Express this Saturday, 9/12. The one closest to Pensacola is Mobile, AL.
Check the list for a city near you.
http://912marchondc.ning.com/notes/Updated_Bus_List_for_the_March
Unless you’ve been in a coma lately, a lot of people are up in arms over President Obama making an address to school students. I feel obligated to weigh in.
As amended, I don’t see a problem with the president urging kids to pay attention, do their work, and stay in school. All kids need to get that message. The sorry thing is, and what people are upset about, is that Obama made an attempt to capture this audience for a political purpose. It started out to be a community organizer’s wet dream. But as amended, it’s a good thing.
That our education system is failing our children really becomes obvious when you look at SAT scores.
I remember JFK putting out a message to school kids and schools that emphasized physical fitness. It wasn’t on TV in our classroom, but it was directed to the students. It wasn’t a political message, it was a good message, and the schools and kids responded positively. And anything that Obama can do to motivate kids to excel (or at least graduate) would be good.
President Obama held a pep rally at an AFL-CIO picnic today to push his health care initiative. Facing BIG LABOR, he blamed opposition to his health care-turned health insurance campaign on ‘special interests’ who were attempting to ‘scare the heck out of people.’ Actually, it is his plans and agenda that is scaring the heck out of people. Witness the polls and the town hall meetings and the Tea Parties across the county. But that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.
Oh but that’s not all. In Obama-speak, if you oppose his plan, then you aren’t for health care reform or health insurance reform. That’s a smear. He also said, as he has often repeated, that Republicans don’t have an alternative plan? That’s a lie.
“I’ve got a question for all these folks who say, you know, we’re going to pull the plug on Grandma and this is all about illegal immigrants — you’ve heard all the lies,” Obama said. “I’ve got a question for all those folks: What are you going to do? What’s your answer? What’s your solution?
“And you know what? They don’t have one.“ {emphasis added}
Yes ‘they’ do, and it’s called H.R.3400. But the Obama media never told you about it, did they? Keep an eye out in the Editorial pages of your local paper and for the major networks (CBS, NBS, ABS, and pMS-NBCBS) to call him on it? That our President makes no bones about lying to the American people to push his agenda is disgraceful in an of itself. Based on everything Obama, my guess is the mainstream media will overlook it. The media watchdog died last year.
Regarding President Obama, you have a decision to make. Is he lying about there not being a Republican alternative, or is he that far out of touch that he doesn’t even know it exists? Which one works for you? At some point you have to ask yourself what is motivating the President to lie to the American people? Did we elect a President to put America on the fast track to Socialism? Do you think he would have beat Hillary Clinton in the primaries if he ran on what he is attempting to do today?
What happened to President Obama?
His wax wings having melted, he is the man who fell to earth. What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?
The conventional wisdom is that Obama made a tactical mistake by farming out his agenda to Congress and allowing himself to be pulled left by the doctrinaire liberals of the Democratic congressional leadership. But the idea of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi pulling Obama left is quite ridiculous. Where do you think he came from, this friend of Chavista ex-terrorist William Ayers, of PLO apologist Rashid Khalidi, of racialist inciter Jeremiah Wright?
But forget the character witnesses. Just look at Obama’s behavior as president, beginning with his first address to Congress. Unbidden, unforced and unpushed by the congressional leadership, Obama gave his most deeply felt vision of America, delivering the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president. In American politics, you can’t get more left than that speech and still be on the playing field.
In a center-right country, that was problem enough. Obama then compounded it by vastly misreading his mandate. He assumed it was personal. This, after winning by a mere seven points in a year of true economic catastrophe, of an extraordinarily unpopular Republican incumbent, and of a politically weak and unsteady opponent. Nonetheless, Obama imagined that, as Fouad Ajami so brilliantly observed, he had won the kind of banana-republic plebiscite that grants caudillo-like authority to remake everything in one’s own image.
Accordingly, Obama unveiled his plans for a grand makeover of the American system, animating that vision by enacting measure after measure that greatly enlarged state power, government spending and national debt. Not surprisingly, these measures engendered powerful popular skepticism that burst into tea-party town-hall resistance.
Obama’s reaction to that resistance made things worse. Obama fancies himself tribune of the people, spokesman for the grass roots, harbinger of a new kind of politics from below that would upset the established lobbyist special-interest order of Washington. Yet faced with protests from a real grass-roots movement, his party and his supporters called it a mob — misinformed, misled, irrational, angry, unhinged, bordering on racist. All this while the administration was cutting backroom deals with every manner of special interest — from drug companies to auto unions to doctors — in which favors worth billions were quietly and opaquely exchanged.
“Get out of the way” and “don’t do a lot of talking,” the great bipartisan scolded opponents whom he blamed for creating the “mess” from which he is merely trying to save us. If only they could see. So with boundless confidence in his own persuasiveness, Obama undertook a summer campaign to enlighten the masses by addressing substantive objections to his reforms.
Things got worse still. With answers so slippery and implausible and, well, fishy, he began jeopardizing the most fundamental asset of any new president — trust. You can’t say that the system is totally broken and in need of radical reconstruction, but nothing will change for you; that Medicare is bankrupting the country, but $500 billion in cuts will have no effect on care; that you will expand coverage while reducing deficits — and not inspire incredulity and mistrust. When ordinary citizens understand they are being played for fools, they bristle.
After a disastrous summer — mistaking his mandate, believing his press, centralizing power, governing left, disdaining citizens for (of all things) organizing — Obama is in trouble.
Let’s be clear: This is a fall, not a collapse. He’s not been repudiated or even defeated. He will likely regroup and pass some version of health insurance reform that will restore some of his clout and popularity.
But what has occurred — irreversibly — is this: He’s become ordinary. The spell is broken. The charismatic conjurer of 2008 has shed his magic. He’s regressed to the mean, tellingly expressed in poll numbers hovering at 50 percent.
For a man who only recently bred a cult, ordinariness is a great burden, and for his acolytes, a crushing disappointment. Obama has become a politician like others. And like other flailing presidents, he will try to salvage a cherished reform — and his own standing — with yet another prime-time speech.
But for the first time since election night in Grant Park, he will appear in the most unfamiliar of guises — mere mortal, a treacherous transformation to which a man of Obama’s supreme self-regard may never adapt.
related links: Obama, the Mortal | Can You Trust President Obama? | Who Do You Trust?
I rarely post entire articles of a columnist, often using portions of an article to help make a point. In this case however, there is no room to expand on Mr. Krauthammer’s piece. His analysis of Obama’s presidency is spot on.
Did you ever think that sometimes when trying to make a point that you may as well bang your head against the wall? That’s the way I feel about what continues to happen to Bayou Texar specifically, but Bayou Texar isn’t the only waterway in Escambia County that has similar problems.
Last week, I found out that efforts to finally locate the sources of bacterial contamination in Bayou Texar were scrapped by some yet unknown city officials. And yesterday what do we see in the PNJ? Another closure. A mere two weeks since Bayou Texar was again closed.
Unfortunately for the environment and people that want to use the waterways, and people living in the pricey homes surrounding Bayou Texar, the Health Alerts in the newspaper are generating as much attention as, oh I don’t know, how about as much attention as H.R. 3400, the Empowering Patients (not government) First Act. Bayou Texar’s water quality is being ignored just as much as the health care initiative that was introduced by Republicans in Congress over a month ago. What’s wrong with this picture?
Yes Virginia, conservatives like clean water too! What is the city’s excuse? And, why would the canceling of the needed research to clean up the Bayou not be newsworthy?
Some things are worth repeating, and debunking the myths about ANWR is one of them. The media and the environmentalists will show you the prettiest pictures of the reserve, then actually tell you that this is where BIG OIL wants to drill.
This is the coastal plain, the place designated for oil exploration. 
And this is the coastal plain in the spring.
And this is representative of pictures that the media and environmentalists will show you and why we need to save the planet.
Any questions?
It was back in November 2007 that I set out to, once and for all, find out what the deal is with Bayou Texar and why it is closed for public use so often. Most, if not all, of the time because of high levels of fecal matter. I interviewed people in the city and county who not only were aware of the longstanding water quality issue there but who would be involved in making recommendations to the city for remedial action. They included the Health Department, the ECUA, and a professor of biology at UWF.
The culmination of that research is represented in a post here entitled Cleaning Up Bayou Texar dated January 6, 2008. At that time, I was encouraged to learn that a water quality study was already underway under the auspices of Dr. Richard (Dick) Snyder, professor of biology at the University of West Florida. And an update to the Jan 6 post was made on January 8, 2008 that summed up where we were at that point in time. It boiled down to the fact that his study would not be completed until late in 2009 or early 2010, which brings us up to date.
UPDATE 01/08/08: Dr. Richard (Dick) Snyder, the biologist responsible for the current study, was prompt to reply to questions I had regarding the study. Thank you Dick for your quick reply. These were the questions . . .
When do you anticipate completing the report? Will the report, or the work being undertaken to produce a report, actually determine the sources or pathology of the fecal contamination as relates to specific properties along the waterway, including rainwater runoff sources? After determining what is happening to the bayou and why things are happening to the bayou, will making recommendations for remediation of the waterway be part of your report or subsequent reports? Is the subject study a UWF financed project or a federal, state, county or city grant-financed project? Basically, who is paying for it?
This is Dr. Snyder’s reply, which addresses every question, in his own words.
The study will be done over two years to incorporate annual variation in water levels. We will try to identify contaminated ground water as opposed to runoff, with the idea that the groundwater will more likely be septic or sewer malfunction. The data will be given to the DOH and ECUA for them to address any identified problems. Financing is from a fine levied against the Target Corp. for contaminating Carpenter’s Creek, through the West Florida Planning Council and with input from the Bayou Texar Foundation, who is providing some additional funding.
So from the standpoint of what happens next as far as sewage in the bayou is concerned, we wait for the report in late 2009 or early 2010. I suppose we can rest easy in the fact that there are no septic systems in use on the bayou itself. The problem appears to be upstream. Meanwhile, residents around Carpenter’s Creek should know to keep an eye out for septic system failures or sewage system failures and report them to the Health Department (595-6722) or the ECUA (969-3303).
It was with eager anticipation that I followed up with Dick yesterday to get a progress report. With the Bayou Texar water quality still coming up in the local media from time to time, I was confident that soon we would be seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. Was I ever wrong, and were we ever duped into thinking that the city finally took Bayou Texar seriously.
Dr. Snyder’s reply, short and not so sweet. . .
We were never able to do the study. The funds were diverted to the City of Pensacola’a storm water refit project for the area.
related link: Cleaning Up Bayou Texar
Ted Nugent on Second Amendment.
Any questions?