OUTRAGEOUS AND CONTROVERSIAL?

I just heard a Larry King promo touting tonight's show.  "Outrageous and controversial talk show hosts, tonight on Larry King live."  Hold on a minute?  Outrageous and controversial?  Dennis Prager?  Me?  That's right, I'm one of the hosts scheduled to appear.  Nice promo, Larry.  It's good to see you're approaching the show with this attitude.  "Hey, look at me!  I have to deal with a bunch of outrageous and controversial talk show hosts tonight!"  You would never hear a promo for "outrageous and controversial" columnists or politicians. 

WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?

I saw something yesterday I just couldn't explain.  It was yesterday afternoon and I was about three-quarters of the way through a five-mile walk.  I was passing in front of the ESPN Zone in Atlanta's Buckhead entertainment district when I heard screaming and car horns.  The problem was immediately obvious.  At the exit from the restaurant .. a single-lane exit with walls on either side .. a car was stopped blocking the sidewalk and its nose into Peachtree Rd.  The car was going nowhere.  The two young women in the car were, I guess you would say, dancing in the front seat.  They were just having a big ole time bobbing back and forth to their hip hop "music."  Behind them were about four cars waiting to get out of the parking lot.  They were beeping their horns, but none of the drivers of those cars were out of their cars yelling or even had their windows down.  As I neared the driveway the two girls got out of their car and started dancing outside.  They then started yelling at the cars that were waiting:  Let's just say that the two women weren't being what you would call "racially sensitive."  As I walked by I looked one of them in the eye with a less-than-pleasant expression.  "What you lookin' at whitey?"  I just turned and kept walking.  For the rest of the walk I just wondered how these two women could possibly be such jerks. 

This isn't isolated though.  Any walk up and down Peachtree Rd. in Atlanta will reveal other examples of this type of behavior, self-indulgent behavior that the person know is irritating other people, but they just don't care. You have the drivers of cars with impossibly loud sound systems, the thump - thump - thump of their bass speakers reverberating more than a block off Peachtree, penetrating the walls of every home as they drive by. (Hey, maybe St. Louis has the right idea.)  Then you have the Harley riders with their loud pipes twisting that throttle as they sit at the traffic lights.  (And don't give me that "loud pipes saves lives crap.  It's BS, and you know it's BS.)  Step into a restaurant and you have parents wish screaming, misbehaved kids.  These people know full well that their actions are irritating to other people, but they don't care.  They just flat-out don't care.  It's all about them.  We live in an era where people intentionally take action designed to do nothing but irritate other people, like the two fat gals at the ESPN Zone, or who don't care that they are irritating everyone around them.  You just wish there were cops around to write tickets for creating a disturbance and violating the noise ordinance, or a restaurant manager who would tell parents who don't see the need to control their children to find another place to eat.  You keep hoping .... and that's about all you can do. 

TOMORROW NIGHT'S STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH

Tomorrow night George Bush will deliver yet another State of the Union Speech.  I'm not particularly excited about what he's going to be saying.

For starters ... here is what President Bush will not say .... though he should:

"My fellow Americans.  For decades presidents have used this occasion to tell you that the state of the union is strong.  Perhaps it's time to be a little more honest.  The truth is that the state of the union, the state of this republic, is weak, and growing weaker with each passing year. 

We are evolving from a nation of self-reliant individuals who once worked within a system of personal freedom and economic liberty,  to a nation of whining malcontents; an ever-growing herd of reliant sheep making our daily pilgrimage to the trough of government to be fed.  Things that our grandparents would have considered to be issues of personal responsibility are now generally looked upon as the responsibility of government.  Freedom has taken a back seat to security, self-reliance a back seat to government dependency."

Nope .. that most certainly will not be Bush's opening tomorrow night.  Instead, he'll be promoting government as the cure to all that ails us.  I understand the president is going to be talking about health care. What do you think the chances are that Bush will include this line?

"Somehow a majority of Americans, perhaps most Americans, have formed the opinion that health care is not their responsibility.  How did this happen?  How did Americans come to believe that their personal health care is somehow the responsibility of their employer or their government?  Is this what freedom is all about?  Is this how we exercise the responsibility for our own lives?"

You're right.  No chance at all.  Tomorrow night George Bush will lay more of the foundation for a chaotic system of socialized medicine in America.  Oh, to be sure, we won't call it socialized medicine.  We'll come up with some fancy name to hide the socialist reality, but socialized medicine it will be, and Americans will join their Canadian neighbors waiting months for a simple arthroscopic knee surgery. 

Word has also leaked out about whether President Bush will address high gas prices, which is a pressing issue right now in polls.  Will he call for more domestic oil drilling and the construction of more oil refineries?  Evidently not.

What the press is saying is that Bush will push proposals for hydrogen fuel cells, ethanol and solar power.  That's all well and good, but it's just talk.  All of that is years away from coming into existence for the masses...and will do nothing to drive the price of a barrel of oil down.  Right now, the single largest contributing factor to the price of oil is supply.  Yet  we are doing nothing as a country to increase our own output.  Every time we do, Democrats and other socialists are waiting to shoot down the idea.  But perhaps the talk of alternative fuels will make people feel good.

Speaking of oil, it will be interesting to see how the president addresses the issue of Iran having nuclear weapons.  Polls show the majority of Americans favor a military strike on Iran to prevent that from happening.  Will he use the opportunity of a speech to give the Iranians an ultimatum?  We shall have to wait and see.

Oh...and while we're at it, how about a solution from the president for all of the illegal aliens streaming across the border.  We can dream, can't we?

Pessimistic?  You bet.  There is nothing "small government" about George Bush.  He gets it right on the issue of tax cuts and defending our nation.  Beyond that ....... don't expect much.

The big disappointment, of course, will be that there will be no call for fundamental tax reform.  American manufacturing jobs are disappearing.  Warren Buffet recently said that our trade deficit was the biggest economic problem facing our nation.  Both of these issues would be successfully addressed by the FairTax ... but I sincerely doubt that those words will be heard tomorrow night. 

It's certainly not time to give up ... but we can sure pause a while to be disappointed.

THE INCOMPETENCE OF FEMA

As more and more details emerge about how FEMA handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it becomes clearer and clearer that the agency is a screwed-up mess.  It has come out that hundreds of rescue workers, large numbers of boats, aircraft and bulldozers were offered to FEMA in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina....and they turned it all down.  That's nice. The offer came from the Interior Department...which also offered up to 400 law enforcement officers.  FEMA took a month to put them to work.

It's also being reported that Amtrak offered to carry residents out of New Orleans before the hurricane hit, but thanks to poor planning and coordination, the trains left the station almost empty.  Nice. All of this government incompetence was paid for by us....the American taxpayer.  Such a wise investment of our precious resources...not.

Yet, this week Congress will have hearings about the problems at FEMA.  You will notice that despite all of the shortcomings of FEMA...the wasted money, the missed opportunities and the bungling of the aid effort, many politicians from both parties will conclude that the answer to the problems at FEMA is to give it more money.  Isn't that always the answer when government comes up short?  It's worked so well for schools, hasn't it?

But that isn't it at all.  The problem is and was bad management.  FEMA has plenty of money.  In fact, if anything, their budget should be cut, since they obviously can't handle the task at hand.  But it won't play out that way.  After all, here we are 5 months removed from the hurricane, and you're still paying to put Katrina "evacuees" up at the Holiday Inn.

Is this a great country or what?

CINDY SHEEHAN'S NEVER-ENDING 15 MINUTES

Crawford crackpot Cindy Sheehan, somebody whose popularity should have gone away months ago, is back in the news.  She has decided she just might challenge Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein for re-election.  I can't possibly imagine why.  Could it be something to do with the war in Iraq?  Wow!  That's probably it!

Says crazy Cindy about Senator DiFi: "She voted for the war. She continues to vote for the funding. She won't call for an immediate withdrawal of the troops."  Is this being greeted in the press as the joke that it is?  Of course not.  They're taking it seriously.  And so is Dianne Feinstein for that matter, who released a statement saying she hasn't supported George Bush's Iraq policy.

Sheehan herself admitted she has no chance of winning, saying "If I decided to run, I would have no illusions of winning, but it would bring attention to all the peace candidates in the country."  Sadly, it's possible...in a state like California...for her to make a dent in the primary.  Some people, including the press, just can't resist a publicity-starved attention monger like her.

Cindy Sheehan should have been gone from the public radar months ago...but as long as the media hates George Bush, she'll be front and center.

See more Insensitive Katrina T-shirts

REDNECK SCRAP BOOK

Today, let's take a little break from pictures and enjoy some Redneck Haiku. More in the Redneck Scrap Book.

READING ASSIGNMENTS

Actress Rosanna Arquette is making a movie about PMS....and she wants Hillary Clinton to star in it.  Insert your own joke here.

Illinois Senator Barack Obama says that filibustering Samuel Alito is a bad idea, and that Democrats need to actually convince people that their ideas are actually worthwhile.  Imagine that!

Hamas, the terrorist organization that is rising to power in the Palestinian territories was immediately denounced by Hillary Clinton.  But it turns out The Hildabeast and Hamas go way back.

This can't be good.  Looks like Jack Abramoff attended several White House parties and celebrations, including one where President Bush was in attendance.  What do you suppose somebody still has their pictures from one of those events?  This could get ugly.

The left has now joined the right in attacking the mainstream media.  One side accuses them of being (obviously) left-leaning, the other says they're too cozy with the right win.  John Leo says the press can't win.

Senators John McCain and Tom Coburn are forcing the Senate to make a specific vote on the pork projects that were added to a large spending bill.  Robert Novak writes that this could mean pork is in trouble.

Up in Canada, Mark Steyn reminds us that yet another anti-American government has fallen.  Furthermore, not a single western leader has lost election because of the war in Iraq.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says it's time for the GOP to reform itself in the area of lobbying and corruption, before the public does it for them.

Michael Barone thinks the 2000's are starting to sound a lot like the 1970's.  Bad music, bad hairstyles and clothes....and the worst public policy of the century.  Interesting column.

Republicans need to realize that size does matter, according to Star Parker.  Of course, she's talking about the size of government.  But under George W. Bush, that government has increased in size faster than under any other president.

And now, part four of Professor Mike Adams' series on why he doesn't take feminists seriously.  Entertaining as always, and not to be missed.

Some of you think that I'm going overboard when I say that the principal problem with government schools today is teacher's unions.  Well here's a story about how teacher's unions are killing educational opportunities in Florida and Wisconsin.  This is just scratching the surface.

WHAT THE HECK ARE THOSE POINTY HAND THINGS?

These are links to each individual story on the Nuze, p-links for the geeks out there. Plus, they work today and they'll work tomorrow. Now you can easily discuss/debate/rip apart the Nuze without worrying about the links going bad. Enjoy!

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