President Urkel’s has unquestionably been the most scripted and stage managed presidency America has ever seen. With the entire press in his pocket to a degree never before known, the visuals have always been whatever he needed them to be. Need a cheering crowd? Bring one in. Need protesters not to be seen? The film never hits the air. An obviously necessary component of this strategy has always been for the young man to stay relatively close to his centers of power. It can only be desperation driving him to now throw that to the wind.

This trip will take the president deep into what was already enemy territory — the heartland. That he never thought this was necessary before, let alone an astute move, is evidenced by the fact that he’s never tried it. In the 3 years since he was installed, he has
yet to visit several of the places this trip would have to take him. And with even his officially admitted-to numbers at the bottom of the 40s, I really don’t think absence has made heartland hearts grow fonder than they had been in 2008.

Bus tour visits to small towns in Middle America have a certain feel — the point is to look folksy, regular, connected to the common man. That this doesn’t exactly come easy to the president is shown by the fact that his people so often find themselves trying to manufacture it by bringing their own extras to play the crowd. But this will be no blue state street theater. There are real mid-westerners out there in the mid-west. If Team Zero tries to bring its own cast of extras with it to be the crowds where he stops, well… let’s just say it will be a serious test to the ability of the national media to control the message they have been rapidly losing their grip on for the last 3 years. Buses full of people are not exactly inconspicuous, and every small town has local news people who want to get their faces out there nationally on a big story.

Personally, in his position at this point, with the Team 6 tragedy, the credit downgrade, and everything else, I think there could scarcely be a worse time for him to try to show his face in the heartland. It is hard to fathom the combined desperation and bankrupcy of ideas that would lead him to now give it a try. This may be shaping up to be the biggest PR catastrophe at least since the Ceausescu regime went the way of the dodo. It might just be the beginning of the end.

He doesn’t think he has to change. He doesn’t even think he did anything wrong.

OK. As I said, we knew that in advance. Cpt. B+’s personality does not permit Clintonian triangulation. Clinton wanted, above all, to be popular, and would do whatever it took to be, once he came to know what it was; This guy thinks he’s right, and of course the troglodytes disagree – That’s why they’re troglodytes. It just shows him how badly we all need for his wisdom to prevail.

So, what to do now?

Well, in few words, Full Speed Ahead.

Yes. Obummer has a veto pen, and the Senate. Make him use them. Make them set the stage for 2012 the way they did for 2010. Get a repeal of ZeroCare through the house, so we can see who votes against it in the Senate. Get lower taxes through the house, and see which Senators want to write their opposition ads for the next election. Strike while the iron is hot.

Boehner says he will do what the people asked for in this election. Good – Do that. Don’t worry about the veto and the Senate. Dare them to oppose repeal. Dare them to oppose tax cuts for all. Dare them to oppose withdrawl of any remaining ‘stimulus’ funds.

As to ourselves, and if and when they do oppose, keep the street theater going. Keep having rallies. Get people in large groups cheering when things pass the house. Get them out screaming (and naming Senator’s names) when the Senate disagrees.

And if it gets through the Senate only to be vetoed, scream about that.

We have them on the ropes, and the people are with us. Let campaign 2012 begin. As Rush says, there’s blood in the water now.

This is, naturally, exactly as it should be.  Nothing stands still, least of all in politics. A lot can change, even at this late stage, so when Dems these days whistle past the graveyard with their obligatory reminders that they might turn things around in time, they’re not really wrong.  Yes. America will not be on Election Day where it is today. 

That said, though, which way is it moving?

Daily Caller suggests that it is not only not getting better for the Democrats, it is still not done getting worse.

This rebellion has been going on for a while. Every step of the way, when I was reminded that the election was a long way off, my gut told me that the wave hadn’t crested yet. Certainly, unforseen events can play anyone for a fool, but there were also the not-unforseen ones to consider. Knowing for example, that, whatever else His One-ness did up to November, he would NEVER get his foot off of business and taxpayers so the economy could begin to recover, it was a safe bet that unemployment would not improve.

More recently, Obamacare popularity was not improving, either, and it seemed a safe bet that the rate increases that would have to take place when the 6 month mark regulations went into effect, would not help it any. It hasn’t.

For things to break the Dem way by November, something has to dissipate the anger. At this point, it is hard to see what might.

And, failing that, it can only continue to build. I don’t think even the more optimistic conservatives like myself are appreciating yet how big this thing might be. Still think the Senate is out of reach?

Remember – the election isn’t tomorrow.

Aren’t you relieved?

Welcome to the club, Mr. Ferrara.

The second option calls for drafting a new, compromise bill more palatable to moderates, including some Republicans.

I have a proposal for the GOP to consider. Someone else has to be thinking this, because it’s pretty obvious to my mind:

How about making it clear, right off the bat, that yes, we want to work on it; we have lots of ideas, after all – but the only way this happens, besides starting with a clean piece of paper, is a) actually putting it on CSPAN, and b) no more Dem-only writing sessions? The first time anything like that happens, the GOP holds a big news conference, and says, well, we tried, but there they go again, shutting the door and writing it in secret. After that, it’s make ‘em read it on the floor every time – there’ll be no more secrecy, one way or the other.

I have to think the best time to lay this out would be in the SOTU GOP response. After all, if they decide on this tack, as some sort of way to prepare a ‘See? They won’t work with us‘, ‘party of no’- type frame for the upcoming election, that’s where zero will announce it. Why not be ready with a ‘good — first, show us the transparency’ response?

Martha Coakley‘s resounding defeat in the Massachusetts Senate race is hardly the sort of anniversary gift President Barack Obama could have predicted. Yet there it was, wrapped in a bow and plopped on his doorstep like a flaming bag of dog poo to mark the end of his first year in office.

Heh. Wish I’d said it.

“There are messages here, we hear those messages but there is a tendency in this town … to over blow things even beyond their importance,” said David Axelrod, a top adviser to President Obama, on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown.”

Axelrod signaled that the White House is not giving up on health-care reform.

“He believes there is a real crisis,” Axelrod said. “He believes we have to deal with that crisis.”

Read it all.

It’s getting to where I almost hope they DO push it through, just so there can be not one of them left in November. Yesterday was as strongly as a warning can be sent without resorting to actual physical violence. God help them if they ignore it. But it may be fun to watch.

‘Man proposes, but God disposes’, as they say. Exit The Lion Of The Senate™.

Now, blue-state 80+%-Democrat legislatures being what they are, there was still reason to think that the powers that be in Massachusetts would manage to save The Swimmer’s seat. They had, after all, swiftly changed the law in 2004 when they thought Jean-Francois Kerry had a chance at a promotion, to make sure then-Gov. and GOP member Mitt Romney would not be able to pick them a new junior Senator. There wasn’t even a fillibuster-proof majority to save back then. And sure enough, when the last person Mary Jo Kopechne ever saw finally announced that his reward was at hand, that august body went right to work, er, changing the law back. You see, they now have a Democrat Governor – don’t really need to send it to the voters under those circumstances (as little risk as that can be expected to entail, MA voters being what they are.)

But the naked partisan machination proved too much even for them, and the short time available forced them to settle for a delay in the special election, and an interim (Dem, natch) appointee by the governor to fill the seat of the 60th vote.

Even that ought to have been enough — ObamaCare should have been sewn up long before January 19th of 2010. They wanted it for the SOTU, after all, and Deval Patrick’s pick was as reliably for it as Kennedy himself. But while continuing public anger kept the bribe negotiations dragging on into the 11th hour, there was time for a strange and wonderful thing to happen: those polls on ObamaCare that PBO and Horsetrading Harry Reid had been so determined to ignore come hell or high GOP hopes for 11/10, finally came before the voters of that bluest of blue states, Massachusetts.

The lines couldn’t have been any clearer, either. Eschewing decades of electoral tradition, there were no weasel words in the ObamaCare debate at this blue state ballot box. Nobody hemmed, nobody hawed. One would vote for it and get it through, the other would finally kill it dead. How often is there as clear and boldly stated choice as that?

The best part is, it still shouldn’t have been all that fair of a fight. After all, Massachusetts hasn’t sent a Republican to the Senate since Paul Tsongas took Edward Brooke’s seat in 1979. And Chappaquiddick Ted’s seat has been warmed by a Democrat tush since JFK himself took it from Henry Cabot Lodge in 1953. Regardless of the rumblings going on in the South and Midwest, surely Massachusetts voters would back their President’s play on as holy a liberal grail as socialized medicine… Non?

Yeah: well, …no. There it is, boyez: Suck on those results, and despair. Go ahead and spin if you must. God knows you did when you lost in Virginia and New Jersey not so long ago. But we did try to warn you, and in plenty of time for Harry Reid and Ben Nelson to decide it was a better strategy after all to respect the will of the voters. And we saw what they did instead.

It has, preposterously enough, become a matter of liberal dogma that it would be worse for the Dems to not pass anything than to pass even something as manifestly unpopular as ObamaCare. The thinking, if you can call it that, is apparently that, as bad as it is to be unpopular, it’s not as bad as losing. And who knows, maybe that’s so. We don’t live in a world where you get to try such things both ways in real time. But you do, in the end, kind of have to ask yourself: when something is sufficiently unpopular as to lose the Kennedy seat for the Democrats in as blue a state as there is, could losing really be all that much worse?

He just got off a jag about the Club Gitmo Official Ramadan Pastry Chef (no fooling), who apparently makes the best baklava in the Caribbean.

I came nigh a-spoilin me pantaloons. He really ought to book a comedy tour with this stuff, with the announcement made on the tickets and promo material, that, laughs aside, it’s all the God’s honest truth. He could further openly challenge anyone to debunk a word of it.

Boy, would I pay to see that.

So. Who has one now? Al Gore. Jimmy Carter. And my favorite, Yasser Arafat.

But I’ll leave the ‘good company he’s in’ jokes for the comments. What I really want to get to is this: I realized this morning that our President will be the first person to repeat the award. Really, and you heard it here first – He will get it again next year, unless there’s a rule against that. Frankly, if there is, they will change it for him.

When you get one for just showing up, which he literally did, who can come onto the world stage while he’s here who can lay claim to it next time?

It’s his, for as long as he’s here. The thing that amazes me most is that I didn’t see it coming.

C’mon, you guys. Most of us here are Conservatives; We’re busy people, with jobs to go to. Can we get this fixed?

The answer came quickly: a new stainless steel finish clip-loaded Semi-Auto by US maker Remington in the house.

Remington, founded in 1816, isn’t quite old enough to have had their products used in our first revolution, but I don’t doubt that they will be well represented in the next one.

Have a nice day.

As I have been saying for months, if he was who I thought he was, he would not lose. Such a being would not run for POTUS, and lose. And he didn’t.

I couldn’t even pray against it. I couldn’t bring myself to think the REAL Messiah would change a plan that was at least 2500 years old on MY say-so.

Since I’m not surprised, I can’t say I’m shocked. I wanted desperately to believe I was wrong, but I didn’t. So be it. He didn’t get my vote, and that will matter.

There is much talk about how “we” (meaning conservatives, or Republicans, or whatever) can come back in 2010, and then in 2012. I don’t disagree. It probably will be us spearheading it, and the comeback will certainly be much more complete than most think. But it probably won’t look like you’re picturing. A great many of us won’t be here.

42 months. He will be thrown from power in 42 months. And just as nothing could stop him getting in, nothing will stop that. It will be a very different world, and (if you’ll pardon the expression) a hell of a ride getting there. But just as there is no road back for his supporters, neither can we go back to before it happened. The battle is to us. It will be successful.

For those of you laughing, enjoy it. I take no pleasure in this. I wish you were right instead of me. But if I’m right, it will be within a very short time that it becomes obvious to everyone. As soon as he’s safely sworn in, I say he gets right down to business.

Batten down.

This is indeed an unusual election. Now, politics ain’t beanbag, as everyone and his brother says; there have been curves, sliders, and all manner of screwballs in this race, and that’s nothing new. Sometimes it’s interesting, sometimes maddening, and sometimes it’s just darn gripping theater. But I can honestly say I never saw this one coming. A beautiful dark-haired woman, who survived an abortion 31 years ago, is the latest one to add her voice to the debate.

I say again: A commercial has been made, against the Democrat candidate, by an abortion victim.

I was speechless for over an hour.

I can’t shake the feeling that what the Lord said, so long ago, has started to happen. We’ve been silent too long – The stones themselves have started to cry out.