Credit Where Credit Is Due

Be A Patriot! Be An Informer!

Thus reads a phone-number-equipped sticker that was affixed to store-bought copies of a recent concept album by Nine Inch Nails called "Year Zero". The plot, ostensibly, is a near-future sort of thing where humanity has become so religiously judgmental, paranoid and mean-spirited with each other that beings from the stars come down and proceed to kick the human race's collective fifth-point-of-contact. (Disclaimer: Politics aside, I'm a pretty big fan of Trent Reznor's music. No one else in the business does things quite the way he does. What can I say.)

Anyway...The aforementioned sticker referenced a fictional government agency called the "U.S. Board of Morality" and basically encouraged one to rat out one's fellow man if one saw or heard something unorthodox (for lack of a better term) committed or uttered by said fellow man.

Again...the phone number and referenced agency noted above are fictional.

THIS...from the White House's official website...is real.

Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things."

Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions.

In this video, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office, addresses one example that makes it look like the President intends to "eliminate" private coverage, when the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.

In the video, Ms. Douglass singles out a Drudge Report link to a video which shows the One True King speaking to a chapter of AFL-CIO in 2003 and directly telling them: "I happen to be a proponent of single-payer universal health care". Direct quote from the video clip.

From there, she goes on about how opponents of His Royal Barry-ness take him out of context all the time, blah, blah, blah. Watch it yourself before it goes down the memory hole.

Let's get back to the text coming up after the video...and the real reason for being just a little more nervous about our Dear Leader's intentions (emphasis mine):

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

As my wife said when she pointed this out to me last night: "George Orwell is jumping up and down in his grave."

If "1984" hasn't become your default textbook by now for how this guy seems to want to nose-dive America into the ground, start reading.

There are, of course, several far-more-able bloggers than I referencing this little gem. Here's a quick list:

JammieWearingFool
Allahpundit, via Hot Air
Matters of Truth
DoublePlusUndead (See? "1984", folks.)
The Jawa Report

Read 'em while you can.

Well, jeez, don't break yer arm or nuthin'...

Seriously...I find it hard to believe she couldn't find ONE competent translator IN THE ENTIRE STATE DEPARTMENT. (Thanks for the tip, Ace.)

If I was on the receiving end of this little slap-in-the-face, I'd at the very least wonder why the U.S. Secretary of State doesn't feel I was worth just a LITTLE extra effort.

But then, I suppose I would also consider myself lucky I didn't get a sock in the jaw:

The fears intensified when press secretary Robert Gibbs, announcing British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's visit to the White House, demoted the Churchillian phrase "special relationship" to a mere "special partnership" across the Atlantic.

And the alarm bells really went off when Brown's entourage landed at Andrews Air Force Base on Monday night. Obama, breaking with precedent, wouldn't grant the prime minister the customary honor of standing beside him in front of the two nations' flags for the TV cameras. The Camp David sleepover that Blair got on his first meeting with Bush? Sorry, chaps.

Still, Brown kept a stiff upper lip as he sat in the Oval Office yesterday as Obama, skipping the usual words of welcome for his guest, went straight to questions from the news services. Brown didn't get to speak for six minutes, after Obama had already answered two questions. Gamely, the snubbed premier tried to speak the president's language.

"I don't think I could ever compete with you at basketball," Brown said. "Perhaps tennis."

"Tennis? I hear you've got a game," Obama replied mildly.

"Yes, we could maybe have a -- have a shot," the prime minister went on.

"We haven't tried it yet," the president said.

"I don't know," Brown said. "I think you'd be better, but there we are."

Obama smiled faintly. Brown spent much of the session with both soles planted on the floor, his palms gripping his thighs.

Apparently that's what happens when the One True King DOES consider you worthy of special effort.

So why all the animus? Jolly old England is one of our staunchest allies, isn't she?

Ours, yes. But, according to Baldilocks, not HIS. And she's got a pretty good hunch as to why.

If you recall, before Kenya became Kenya (1963) it was a British colony known as British East Africa. Between 1952 and 1960, there was this little “difference of opinion” between the UK and the natives of British East Africa—primarily from the Kikuyu tribe. That conflict is known as the Mau Mau Uprising. There were tens of thousands of African civilians killed and, according to Wiki, seven to ten thousand Africans interned by the British colonial masters. In Dreams from My Father, President Obama says that his grandfather was tortured by the British during the conflict, though he was not a Kikuyu but a Luo. Guess which prime minister ordered the Mau Mau insurgency to be put down.

Boy, with friends like these, no wonder Barry's always sucking up to guys like Putin and Ahmadinejad.

Thereby Hangs A Tail

There's a common theme I keep hearing over and over about our Dear Leader's shiny new spendapalooza law...just how much stuff is in it that somebody sneaked in under wraps, because too many of our nation's best and brightest didn't bother to read it before jumping on board.

Byron York at the DC Examiner is sounding off about one such precious little nugget. But first, a little background.

There is a position in the government called "Inspector General". Those who occupy this position are tasked with keeping an eye on government agencies, contractors, and pretty much anyone doing government business, in order to sniff out instances of waste or fraud. Think of them as a sort of wandering mongoose in the snakepit of American politics.

Classically, the IG's main strength is that they operate largely independently from the agencies in which they serve. In other words, the various offices of the IG's are not swayed by political pressure from any agencies, officials or appointees to either prosecute, or not prosecute, individual cases. They have the authority to pursue whatever malfeasance they find, regardless of who it might embarrass.

Until now.

Just before the final vote in the Senate, someone slipped in a provision which calls for the creation of (brace yourself)....the "Recovery Accountability and Transparency" board.

Sen Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) was tipped off to it by a justifiably worried IG. This is what he found when he read it.

In the name of accountability and transparency, Congress has given the RAT Board the authority to ask “that an inspector general conduct or refrain from conducting an audit or investigation.” If the inspector general doesn’t want to follow the wishes of the RAT Board, he’ll have to write a report explaining his decision to the board, as well as to the head of his agency (from whom he is supposedly independent) and to Congress. In the end, a determined inspector general can probably get his way, but only after jumping through bureaucratic hoops that will inevitably make him hesitate to go forward.

When Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, a longtime champion of inspectors general, read the words “conduct or refrain from conducting,” alarm bells went off. The language means that the board — whose chairman will be appointed by the president — can reach deep inside a federal agency and tell an inspector general to lay off some particularly sensitive subject. Or, conversely, it can tell the inspector general to go after a tempting political target.

That's right: this board will now preside over those very same IG's, with the authority to "ask" the inspectors to target -- or overlook -- any case the board deems fit.....and the One True King gets to pick the lead knave.

So why was there no hue and cry over something so completely opaque, that had absolutely nothing to do with righting the economic woes this bill was supposedly designed to combat?

Simple, says Grassley...no one who would have fought against it knew it existed, until it was too late.

...It wasn’t until Friday morning — after the bill was finished and just hours before the Senate was to begin voting — that Grassley discovered the board was in the final text. “This was snuck in,” Grassley told me. “It wasn’t something that was debated.”

Snuck in by whom? It’s not entirely clear. “I intend to get down to the bottom of where this comes from,” Grassley vowed. “And quite frankly, it better not come from this administration, because this administration has reminded us that it is not about business as usual, that it is for total transparency.”

Uh-huh.

Kiss the investigation into Jack Murtha's lobbying ties goodbye.
Say adios to looking the wrong way at Chuck Rangel's tax & real estate shenanigans.
And anyone who even accidentally digs up anything The Chicago Kid wants to stay buried will be painfully reminded of the plague of locusts that descended upon Wasilla when their favorite daughter dared to rise above her station.

The gloves are, ever increasingly, being taken off.

With every inch they gain on our individual and representative voices, those who now control the Capitol grasp for one inch more.

And it's only been ONE MONTH since the Inauguration.

If anyone needs me, I'll be over here clinging just a little harder to my Bible and gun collection, thank you.