Don’t Send a Community Organizer to Do a President’s Job

 
Thomas Jefferson

My fellow Americans —

I’m angry. Not just because the southern coastline of our nation — including Louisiana, which I purchased from Napoleon in the sweetest deal of 1803 — is being destroyed.

Read these pathetic remarks from our president, Barack Obama:

The president also implied that anti-big government types such as tea party activists were being hypocritical on the issue.

“Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying ‘do something’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much,” Obama said. “Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms.”

So let me get this straight: If I didn’t support the government takeover of the healthcare industry — which I didn’tI’m a hypocrite for expecting the president to show leadership in a crisis?!

SWEET SASSY MOLASSY! Community organizers don’t know how to handle oil spills, do they?

— Tom

A Few Blocks from Home

 
Bravo

Police received a call around 12:30 a.m. June 14 about a man hanging from a fence post in front of an apartment complex in the 800 block of South Baker Street in Santa Ana.

Later identified as Hipolito Tapia Bravo, the 26-year-old Santa Ana landscaper was pronounced dead at the scene.

He was just a few blocks from home.

OC Weekly

They say most homicides happen within a few blocks of home. Especially if your home is in Santa Ana.

Or is that traffic accidents?

Happy Father’s Day

 
Fathers Day

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

— Mark Twain

A wise son maketh a glad father.

— Proverbs 10:1

Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later . . . that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called ‘Being a Father’ so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.

—Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities

Not Much to Show for Myself

 
miniature food en masse

My wife gives the boy a plate of donettes as he comes down for breakfast. Then she asks me, “Do you have 10 dollars you can give him?”

Checking my fund supply, I find that I have a five-dollar bill and two ones.

“I have seven dollars,” I say, holding up the bills. “Fifty years of life and this is what I have to show for it. Seven dollars.”

The boy jumps into the conversation at this point. “There’s only five donuts here,” he says. “These definitely come in a package of six.”

“Okay, I modify my statement,” I say. “Fifty years of life has given me seven dollars and a donut. Not even a large donut. A donette.”

No One Listened

 

Today, I will introduce the Free Housing Market Enhancement Act, which removes government subsidies from the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), and the National Home Loan Bank Board. . . . Congress should act to remove taxpayer support from the housing GSEs before the bubble bursts and taxpayers are once again forced to bail out investors who were misled by foolish government interference in the market.

— Ron Paul, 2003

[HT: Steven Landsburg]

Thomas Jefferson on the Oil Spill

 
Thomas Jefferson

I do not believe that the federal government should have a central and powerful place in American life. I believe in freedom and self-reliance.

Some people, like President Obama, disagree with me. He believes you should part company with your freedom and your money for the privilege of having the government take care of you — wipe your collective backsides, so to speak — from cradle to grave.

In which case — why doesn’t he know how to plug an oil leak?

— Tom

Don’t Look Back

 
Looking back

In uncertain conditions the main question should not be: “Why didn’t your performance yesterday conform to the original plan?” Rather, it should be: “What kind of feedback can help you learn faster and perform better tomorrow?”