At one point in 2012, Perry was far ahead of all the other Republican contenders.  Then he went brain dead on national TV.   His failure to remember which Department he wanted to eliminate was painful to watch.  Perry never recovered.   Many people thought he never would recover.  They could easily be wrong, because of the gift Barack Obama handed him this week.

Obama met Perry in Dallas and he treated Perry as an equal.  While Obama followed his typical pattern of trashing Republicans in congress, he admitted that Rick Perry had a point.  Then, incredibly, Obama asked Perry for help in getting Republicans in congress to pass immigration reform.  If you are a Perry fan, he couldn’t have scripted this any better.  Obama did more for Rick Perry today than Chris Christie did for Obama following Hurricane Sandy.

The all too public Perry collapse was so painful that one would be foolish to think he has put that entirely behind him.  But it would also be foolish to ignore this man.  Rick Perry is someone who absolutely can energize the base.  He just may be the best politician in the country at selling conservative values.  The man can bring a crowd to its feet.  In addition, he has been a very successful Governor of Texas and that is a solid resume when one is running for President.  A strong charismatic governor from a big state can be a formidable candidate.

I remember when Ronald Reagan was running for President.  For a long time the pundits in the main stream media always described him as just some actor.  Then one night I heard one of the news anchors throw out the typical class “B” actor slam, but then he paused and said:  But Ronald Reagan was also a very successful governor of California for two terms and we cannot ignore that.  That was when I realized that Ronald Reagan was going to be the next President of the United States.

There is a long way to go and among other things Perry is capable of another act of self-destruction.  He is not yet there, but he is off the mat and back in the fight.

TDM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidd_Finch

On April 1, 1985, Sports Illustrated published an article about a new pitching prospect for the New York Mets named named Hayden Siddhartha “Sidd” Finch.  The story was written by George Plimpton and it was very funny.  I was stunned to learn that a lot of people at work actually believed this nonsense.  The story was hopelessly absurd.  Plimpton had Finch throwing the ball 168 miles per hour and described him as torn between pursuing professional baseball or the French Horn.   Just to make sure everyone knew this was absurd, Plimpton had Finch wearing a heavy hiker’s boot on one foot while going bare foot with the other while pitching.  In addition, the subhead of the title read:

“He’s a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse.  Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style.  Sidd’s deciding about yoga – and his future in baseball.”  If you take the first letter from each word in this sentence you get:  “Happy April Fool’s Day – ah fib”

Sports Illustrated got the New York Mets to play along with the joke.  They took pictures of a junior high school art teacher named Joe Berton, a stand-in for the fictional “Finch” posed next to Mel Stottlemyre, the Met’s pitching coach.   The Mets even gave Finch a locker between George Foster and Darryl Strawberry.

Incredibly, a lot of supposedly smart people bought this hook, line and sinker.  Mets fans were overjoyed at the new prospect, and Sports Illustrated was flooded with requests for more information.  It was even reported that two MLB general managers called Commissioner of Baseball Peter Ueberroth to ask how a batter could safely Finch and his 168 mph fastball.  ABC, CBS, NBC and the local St. Petersburg, Florida newspaper all sent reporters to a press conference starring Mr. Finch.  At the press conference, Joe Berton, alias Sidd Finch, announced his retirement.

Perhaps this helps some of you understand why so many people in the main stream media continue to believe in Barack Obama.  In many ways, the Obama narrative is more absurd than the fictional Sidd Finch.  Did they really believe that a man who stumbled through Occidental and Columbia and then worked as a community organizer in Chicago miraculously got into Harvard because of his academic brilliance?  Were they really convinced that a man who never had any executive experience at any level was somehow qualified to be President of the United States?  Did they honestly expect a man who wasn’t even a Boy Scout to have the skills necessary to be Commander in Chief?  Were they really willing to trust someone who told so many obvious lies about his own personal history and refused to release any documents, including his own birth certificate, to support his ridiculously thin resume?  Is it possible that they were willing to believe that someone who never even took a first-aid course was fully qualified to restructure our health insurance system?  The obvious answer is yes, yes, yes, yes and yes again.

Obviously, if NBC, CBS and ABC were willing to believe in Sidd Finch, it is easier to understand why they believed in Obama.   Sidd Finch was an obvious joke.  Eventually even the main stream media figured that out, primarily because Sports Illustrated finally admitted it was all a hoax.  I wonder if we could get Sports Illustrated to publish an article explaining that the entire Obama narrative was also a hoax.

Unfortunately, this joke is on us, except that this really isn’t funny.

TDM

Megan Kelly skewered Bill Ayers during her interview.  She proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is a world class slime bag and a pathological liar.  No one who watched that interview with an ounce of objectivity could have anything but scorn for this miserable excuse of a human being.  That being said, like a lot of conservatives today, Megyn missed the point.  On several occasion Ayers floated out the argument that everything he did was justified because he was stopping the Vietnam War.  Why are we so quick to let people say the War in Vietnam was totally unjustified and that the world was better off when we left with our tail between our legs.

For example, I know of a man whose leg was amputated by a doctor at age 11.  As you can imagine, this was a very tragic event.  If you only look at the amputation, one would assume that this was a terrible decision by the doctor.  But in reality, that amputation saved that boys life because of an incurable cancer in that leg.

We all know that a lot of people died in the Vietnam War.  We know that the U.S. military killed a lot of people.  We tend to forget that the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were not exactly operating under the guidance of Mother Theresa.    We ignore the really obvious question:  How many people died after we left and how many people would have died if we hadn’t fought at all.

The communists were determined to take over Vietnam.  They didn’t exactly ask nicely.  They had a policy of exterminating anyone they thought might be a threat.  This is similar to what happened in China, Russia and Cuba.

I know this because I personally interviewed several survivors of the communist occupation of Hue following the TET offensive.  Since I was usually one of the few Americans they ever met who spoke their language, they were very anxious to tell me their stories.  Following is a link to an article about an American who was in Hue at the time.  The stories I personally heard were much much worse than this.  They are too horrific to repeat:

http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_8/bullington_tet.html

During the occupation of Hue, there were some 2,000 documented cases of execution and mass murder of Vietnamese civilians whom the Communists saw as enemies. These included South Vietnamese government employees, politicians, teachers, intellectuals, business people and religious leaders, as well as U.S. Government employees. Although cadre came to her house, since Tuy-Cam was working in Danang at the time, she apparently was not on the hit lists for Hue that had been carefully compiled in advance of the attack.

Note:  The communists attacked Hue with a list of people they wanted to kill!

The article included reference to a poem by another survivor:

The bodies of the dead float on the river.

They lie exposed in the fields,

On the housetops of the city

And in the winding streets.

The bodies of the dead lie lonely

Under the roofs of the pagodas,

In the aisles of the churches,

On the floors of deserted houses.

The bodies of the dead lie all around, in those cold rains.

Along side the bodies of the old and weak

Lie the bodies of the young and the innocent.

Which body is the body of my little sister?

(Trinh Cong Son, “Ballad to the Dead: Hue 1968”)

How about this Mr. Ayers, BFF of the President of the United States. Explain to me, once again, why the United States was so evil in fighting against such pure unadulterated evil.  Explain to me, once again, why your outrage is solely directed toward those people fighting to spare others.  Explain to me why the people in North Korea are so much better off than the people in South Korea because of the imperialist military intervention by the United States.  Explain to me how the people in Cuba are so much better off than the Cubans in Miami forced to live under our repressive regime. Explain to me why so many Vietnamese risked everything they had to find a way to get to the United States rather than live under communism in Vietnam.  But better yet, explain to me how the two million people who died in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge took over benefited from your efforts to end the war.  Please explain it to me, because I have having a real problem understanding this.

TDM

If you believe that the IRS targeting of conservatives was not politically motivated.

If you believe that the loss of Lois Lerner’s e-mails was an unfortunate accident.

If you believe that our border is secure.

If you believe this President can be trusted to enforce any law he doesn’t like.

If you believe that 99% of scientists agree with global warming alarmists.

If you believe the biggest threat to our national security is global warming.

If you believe there was no threat of WMD from Iraq when Saddam Hussein was in power even after Sunni extremists just overran his massive chemical weapons facility.

If you believe that the State Department and/or the White House really bought the video- made-me-do-it theory on Benghazi.

If you believe that a record number of people are no longer in the workforce, but unemployment has dropped to 6.3%.

If you believe that there is some tiny corner of the world where U.S. influence is stronger than it was six years ago.

If you believe that government run health care will be much better than VA health care.

If you believe that Barack Obama will make good decisions about Iraq.

If you believe Democrats in congress have any interest in finding out the truth about the IRS, NSA, Benghazi, Fast & Furious, VA, Immigration, or any of the other Obama scandals.

If you believe the main stream media is ready, willing and able to report the truth about any Obama administration scandal.

Then you are probably a liberal.  You probably didn’t read this.  If you did read this, you probably didn’t understand it.  If you did read it and understand it, you realize this was all caused by George Bush.

TDM

If you wonder how the Hobby Lobby decision will impact the election, just keep the following in mind.  If you have to lie to support your position, it is because the facts don’t support your position.  So far everyone who has come out against this decision has lied.  Liberals, including Hillary Clinton are falsely claiming that Hobby Lobby didn’t want to pay for contraceptives for anyone.  That is a deliberate lie.    The truth is that Hobby Lobby is only against 4 out of twenty contraceptive choices.  This is not exactly difficult to understand, even for liberals.

The main stream media is certain to repeat the lies of the liberal left.  The main stream media always repeats the lies of the liberal left.  But fewer people rely on the main stream media for news and the truth is out there.   If Republicans are smart they will start trotting out some women employees from Hobby Lobby who are almost certain to say they don’t see this as a problem.

We should never be shocked that people are so willing to tell, spread and believe convenient lies.  That is how people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton get elected.  But I still firmly believe that if the foundation of your position is based on something that is not true; at some point truth will out.

We are watching this happen with all the lies about global warming.  The more the truth comes out, the louder the lies are repeated.  But the global warming crowd has already lost this battle.  Fewer and fewer people believe the myth anymore and a high percentage of those who do believe don’t care.  That is because even if they believe in global warming they definitely don’t believe that cutting down carbon dioxide is essential to saving mankind.

Democrats are desperately hoping that the Hobby Lobby case will energize their base and help them snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.  They are right about the jaws of defeat but I doubt that a really obviously lie is going to be enough this time around.

TDM

White House spokesman Josh Earnest discussing the Hobby Lobby decision:

We disagree and the constitutional lawyer in the Oval Office disagrees with that conclusion from the Supreme Court. And that’s why we–primarily, because he is concerned about the impact it could have on the health of those women.”

The implication here is that Obama believes his legal knowledge of the constitution trumps the United States Supreme court.   He disagrees with the Supreme Court, so they must have got it wrong.

There is no hard evidence that Obama is remotely qualified to be a constitutional lawyer. He will not produce a copy of his Harvard Law School transcript so we cannot confirm that he had any significant academic training with regard to the constitution.  There is no evidence that Barack Obama ever helped work on a case that was submitted to the Supreme Court and he certainly never argued a case before the Supreme Court.  Constitutional attorneys typically spend a year clerking for a Circuit Court Judge and then another year clerking for a Supreme Court Justice.  Obama didn’t clerk for anyone.   It is very difficult to argue that one is a constitutional attorney without such experience.

Obama’s only experience was as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.  This would be the equivalent of someone claiming to be a medical doctor, although they had never actually practiced medicine, because they had delivered lectures on the subject.

We really shouldn’t be surprised.  Obama considered himself to be qualified for the most difficult executive position in the world even though he had no prior executive experience.  He considered himself to be qualified to be Commander in Chief although he had no military experience and wasn’t even a boy scout.  The real mystery is not that Obama feels he is qualified, the mystery is why so many people bought it.

TDM

At a time when there is so much wrong it is nice to see something really special.  The following story in the San Jose Mercury News is just pure magic:

http://www.mercurynews.com/giants/ci_26054326/brandon-belt-makes-good-home-run-promise-cancer

Brandon Belt plays first base for the San Francisco Giants.  In May he was hit on the thumb by a pitch resulting in a serious break.  He is close to a full recovery, so the San Francisco Giants sent him to play a rehab game with the San Jose Giants.  I doubt that Belt was all that enthusiastic to play for a single “A” baseball team.

A twelve year old girl, Lyndsey Dworkin, who is a cancer survivor was chosen to throw out the first pitch.  She has endured 31 radiation treatments and 9 chemotherapy treatments.  She was wearing a Brandon Belt tee shirt.  Belt raced out of the dug out to meet her and then told her he would hit a home run on her behalf.  In his first place appearance Belt did exactly that.  Then he signed the ball and sent it to Lindsey with the following message:

“To Lyndsey, My Good luck charm. — Brandon Belt.”

Saturday morning Lindsey woke up and could hardly believe this was even true:

“Did that all really happen last night?” she wondered. “Otherwise, I just had the craziest dream.”

This story is almost, but not quite too good to be true.  Following is a picture of Brandon Belt talking to Lindsey and promising to hit a homerun.

Sometimes, God really does send us miracles.  I think it is his way of reminding us who is ultimately in charge.   In this case, he used a very special little girl and a classy professional ballplayer named Brandon Belt.

TDM

http://definitions.uslegal.com/a/adverse-inference/

An adverse inference generally is a legal inference, adverse to the concerned party, made from a party’s silence or the absence of requested evidence. For example, as a sanction for spoliation of evidence, a court may instruct the jury it could draw an inference that the evidence contained in the destroyed documents would have been unfavorable.

You are going to hear a lot more about this because of the IRS scandal.  Some legal analysts have already addressed this issue.  But so far, no one is addressing the obvious conclusion.  The decision to destroy those IRS e-mails was made at a very high level. This cover-up involved multiple steps and multiple entities.  Stupidity is an inadequate explanation.  Odds are high that legal counsel was involved in the decision.   That means the potential for an adverse inference instruction was probably addressed.  Yet it is pretty obvious that obviously material e-mails were still deliberately destroyed.  Or, more accurately, there was an all-out attempt to destroy those e-mails.  It is still possible, if not probable, that someone will find a way to recover them.

That leads to one conclusion.  Someone, very high up on the food chain, made a decision that ANYTHING was better than releasing those e-mails.  That means whatever is on those e-mails is more than bad.  It is more than very bad.  It is devastating.

TDM

I hate to say this but lately Republicans look and sound a lot like Barack Obama, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton with regard to foreign policy.  They are constantly getting outraged.  They are loudly demanding answers.  They describe things as unacceptable.  They issue meaningless threats.  But they do nothing.   No one takes them seriously.  The last IRS hearing was a sad commentary on the system.  The IRS commissioner was sitting there with a smirk on his face openly challenging congress to do anything about it.

At this point I am angrier with Republicans than with Democrats.  I am well aware that Democrats have sunk pretty low.  It was nauseating to watch those Democratic congressional representatives try to make excuses for the inexcusable.  But we have come to expect this from Democrats, so it shouldn’t be a surprise.  Why would we expect them to do anything different?  We learned during the impeachment of Bill Clinton that Democrats will vote to acquit an obviously guilty man if they think it is better for them politically.  Only a fool would expect Democrats to act honorably and put truth and justice ahead of politics.

But Republicans pretend to know better.  I don’t believe them anymore.  They have claimed that the White House and the State Department deliberately covered-up the events in Benghazi.  They have accused the IRS of deliberately targeting political opponents of the President.  Now they are claiming that the IRS is conducting a blatant cover-up.  Now they are accusing this administration of letting illegal aliens flood through our borders.  These are not minor problems.  If these are true, then action is required.  If they are not true, then shut up.

I think we would all be wise to keep in mind the following quotation from the book of James, with some minor substitutions:

James 2:17  (NIV)

 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead

Modern application

In the same way, outrage, with no action, is meaningless.

To Republicans:

When you continue to hold the same worthless hearings with the same worthless results while pretending to be outraged, we don’t believe you anymore.  You have the power to get things done; you only need the courage to do the necessary.  When you consider the problem serious enough, you will take action.  My question is how bad does it have to get before that happens?

TDM

The new book, Blood Feud, just blew the lid off Benghazi. Following is an excerpt from that book published in the New York Post:

http://nypost.com/2014/06/22/clinton-bristled-at-benghazi-deception-book/

“However, when Hillary picked up the phone and heard Obama’s voice, she learned the president had other ideas in mind. With less than two months before Election Day, he was still boasting that he had al Qaeda on the run. If the truth about Benghazi became known, it would blow that argument out of the water.

“Hillary was stunned when she heard the president talk about the Benghazi attack,” one of her top legal advisers said in an interview. “Obama wanted her to say that the attack had been a spontaneous demonstration triggered by an obscure video on the Internet that demeaned the Prophet Mohammed.”

Hillary allegedly called Bill Clinton and asked for advice.

“During their phone call, Bill started playing with various doomsday scenarios, up to and including the idea that Hillary consider resigning as secretary of state over the issue. But both he and Hillary quickly agreed that resigning wasn’t a realistic option. If her resignation hurt Obama’s chances of winning re-election, her fellow Democrats would never forgive her. Hillary was already thinking of running for president in 2016, and her political future, as well as Obama’s, hung in the balance.”

Obama had put Hillary in a corner, and she and Bill didn’t see a way out. And so, shortly after 10 o’clock on the night of September 11, she released an official statement that blamed the Benghazi attack on an “inflammatory video” posted on the Internet.”

We do not know if any of this is true. Ed Klein is not exactly a pillar of virtue. We don’t even know the identity of the alleged source and whether or not this person actually had this kind of access to Hillary. One problem with this version of events is that it seems too good to be true. One immediately suspects that this story is designed by Hillary supporters to throw Obama permanently under the bus.

If this story is true it is really hard to justify Barack Obama remaining in office as President of the United States. But perhaps the person hurt the most by this story is Hillary. Neither she nor Bill apparently considered putting the country first regardless of the personal political cost. That, sadly, is all too believable.  Ironically if this was true and she had resigned, she probably would have just waltzed into the 2016 Predential election.

Like I said, this just seems too good to be true. But, it is a far more believable explanation than anything released by either the State Department or the White House.

TDM