Hugo Chávez: On his deathbed, giggling at us…

All Venezuela’s dictator Hugo Chávez ever wanted for America was a dictator just like him running the show.  And now we have one.

It isn’t just the Fast & Furious cover-up, although that IS a very big deal.  Invoking executive privilege to keep documents under wraps is a big deal.  What leaves me completely baffled is, if the White House knew nothing about the monkey poop fight at the zoo known as Fast And Furious, then what possible authority allows the assertion of that privilege?  Either Obama and Holder knew that gun dealers in Arizona were told by the BATF to sell guns to straw buyers, or they didn’t.  Either they knew that 1,000 of those guns had gone missing, or they didn’t.

Richard Nixon taught us that the chief executive cannot invoke executive privilege to cover up screwing the pooch.  Or rather, the Supreme Court taught us that, when they slapped Tricky Dick around and made him cough up his tapes.  (Somehow, eavesdropping on your opponent seems quite mild compared to losing track of 1,000 firearms and having a few of them turn up in investigations of murdered law enforcement agents.  Your mileage may vary.)  That this allegedly brilliant Constitutional scholar doesn’t know he can’t use the privilege in that way makes him look like a clown in charge of a very warped circus.

Why O’Bozo The Clown doesn’t just throw his Attorney Jester under the bus and be done with it is a mystery to me.  There are two possibilities.  One is some sort of racial solidarity thing.  The other is that Eric Holder knows where all the bodies are buried, so to speak.  Fire him and let him take the blame, and he turns around and buries Barry.  Dollars to donuts everyone else gets buried with him, including Elena “Not Involved In ObamaCare” Kagan.  That would not be the fairytale ending Obama had in mind.

Instead of sacrificing Holder, our new dictator is letting us know that he doesn’t answer to Congress, and he doesn’t answer to the people.  Who DOES he answer to?  His reflection in the mirror?

The Clown in Chief also claims the right to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process.  Yeah yeah, I know.  They’re filthy stinkin’ terrorists.  Let us all shout “Team America, f*** yeah!” in unison, and not worry about this exceptional new dictatorial…  er, I mean, executive power.

Except, I AM worried.  I’m not worried for me, because I’m just a nerd who writes as a hobby.  I worry about the folks with a bigger voice, because I worry that Dear Leader will manipulate the definition of terrorist like a wad of Silly Putty until he can call anyone who doesn’t dig him or his policies a terrorist.  That “If you see something, say something” campaign didn’t feature anyone that looked even remotely like any of the individuals who have been detained or arrested on charges related to terrorism since the beginning of the War On Terrorism.  Those folks were all male, and they all looked like dudes who, when they weren’t blowing stuff up, were either goat herders or falafel fryers.

I am not only worried about the big guys, truth be told.  Obama hates Arizona.  He proves it every time his administration sues us, every time he launches an investigation into our doings, and every time he ignores our Governor when she is only trying to be heard.  So say four dudes are sitting in a bar in Heber-Overgaard, AZ, listening to Mogollon.  (That’s pronounced mug-ee-on.  Best bar band in the southwest.)  And say these four dudes make the same observations I did:  We are hated by the current administration, and the guy in charge has shown us his wrath, with no relief in sight.  So say one of these dudes opines that Arizona should just secede from the union.  He says it jokingly, like, if they despise us that much, we could leave and put them out of their misery.  Don’t want to be a bad dinner guest and all.

Is the man who mentioned secession a terrorist?  That Silly Putty could be stretched by Janet Napolitano to say so without too much effort.  Next, she determines that he’s a gun owner, making arresting him too risky.  They send in the drones to execute him, in the interest of national security.

Can’t happen here, right?  Are you sure?  This new breed of dictator has the people’s “Keep us safe at any cost!” seal of approval tattooed on his ass.

Dear Leader also decided to intervene in Libya without consulting Congress.  You can say what you want about his predecessor, but Bush never sent anyone into war without getting the go-ahead from the legislative branch.  I don’t care at all about Libya, but I care very much that someone thought it was okay to bypass the process and do whatever the hell he wanted.

President Dick Tater then concluded he would give work permits to illegal aliens who are, by law, not eligible for them.  If THAT isn’t giving the giant middle finger to Congress and the people, I don’t know what is.

There is also endless government largess for all of Obama’s buddies.  It isn’t just Solyndra, and related “green energy” boondoggles, or the myriad other examples of “rewarding our friends and punishing our enemies.”  (His words, not mine.)  It is more about the General Motors debacle.  Does the federal government truly have the interests of most American at heart when they gift unto several thousand union members, and screw the daylights out of GM’s shareholders?  Sure, a certain group of people got to keep their jobs…  for now.  The piper will be paid down the road.  A substantial number of those jobs will STILL go away, and the shareholders that took it in the shorts will never recover that money.

Remind me again why the government should be in the car business?  And by what authority do they enter into that business?  Because the dictator said it had to be done, at an enormous cost to the taxpayers.  (Amazingly, investors pay taxes too.  It just ain’t right to use their tax dollars to give them the shaft.)  Also, when the government gets in the car business, you get the Yugo or the Trabant.  That might actually be a step up from the Amazing Exploding Chevy Volt, and the New & Improved!!! Immolating Chevy Cruze.  That recall just happened today, and involves all 400,000+ of the little buggers they’ve sold over the last two years.  This experiment will not end well, because with the government pulling your bacon out of the fire, you have no incentive to run your business correctly and produce a quality product.

Then there’s those pesky illegal non-recess appointments to the NLRB and that Consumer Confusion Cabal or whatever the hell it’s called.  I really cannot fathom how our new dictator can blatantly ignore a procedural tool that his own party flogged until it cried out for mommy when HE is the one doing the appointing.  You ‘splain, please.

I could go on and on, about BarryCare being rammed through using budget reconciliation and being grossly unconstitutional, about the efforts to backdoor us into cap & tax, about Obama wanting an internet “kill switch” just in case, about his disrespect for and attempted intimidation of the Supreme Court, and so on and so on.  These are not the desires and actions of the leader of a free country.  They are the actions of a dictator.

Alas, there is nothing to be done about our newly minted dictator.  His dyed in the wool Kool-Aid drinkers aren’t even having the same conversation as the rest of us.

When you say the emperor has no clothes, they ask you why you hate naked black men.  When you mention that those 1,000 missing guns are killing people, you get “Bush lied, people died.”  Never mind that you are a whole hell of a lot less safe in Mexico than you are in Iraq.  Hell, you’re less safe in DETROIT than you are in Iraq.

If you point out that Congress makes the rules regarding immigration, per Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, they will tell you that Obama did what he did because the republicans were blocking ALL his efforts.  They’ll toss that one out for the illegal appointments as well.  When you say that’s tough cookies, and just the way government works in an ideologically divided country, they will shout that at least he got something DONE!  They plainly don’t care how it got done, and if they are even on speaking terms with the phrase “separation of powers,” they don’t get what it means or why it’s important.

Oh, and do not DARE point out that Obama had a majority in the House, and a super-majority in the Senate until Scott Brown showed up.  His impotent first two years are all Bush’s fault or something.  Matter of fact, any salient point you make will be rebutted with “Where are the JOBS?!?!”  Government doesn’t create jobs.  The most they can do is create a prosperity-friendly climate.  This dictator hasn’t even created any make-work government sector jobs for the truly hapless, let alone fostered growth in the private sector.

Don’t even bother saying it.  Obama’s acolytes can’t hear you, now or ever.

Finally, when they have exhausted all of their ignorance and apathy, they will call you a racist.  It is not possible that you disagree with pretty much everything our new dictator has done, and everything he stands for.  You obviously hate him because he’s black.

The rest of the road to totalitarian rule is paved with republicans.  Why isn’t anyone putting a stop to these shenanigans?  Is it lack of political will, or something more malevolent?  Are they as crooked and power-hungry as Obama is, and unwilling to upset the apple cart?

Hugo Chávez will be shuffling off this mortal coil sooner rather than later.  He giggles, because the joke is on us.  Chávez became a dictator by boldly seizing power.  Our dictator is much more subtle.  At the end of the day, though, the results are the same.  Obama does not behave like a leader of a free republic.  He acts like the dictator of a banana republic.

Welcome to the new America.  Check your freedoms and your conscience at the door.  My bookie is taking action on the fall of the republic.  The over-under is five months.

Amnesty by executive fiat? Is that even legal?

Can a president really just say “I know the law reads a certain way, but I don’t like it, so I’m going to issue an executive order to change it”?

Having had a few hours to digest the bypassing of Congress to inflict the DREAM ACT on America, I have a few comments and questions.

My first comment is to the girl on the right in this photo:

I don’t know.  What does an illegal alien look like?  Since illegal aliens come from many dozens of different countries, there is no “look” associated with them.  “Illegal alien” is a legal status, not a race or ethnicity.  To say they all look the same is like saying all felons look the same.  There’s plenty of room for everybody on the Criminal Train.

My next comment is that this order definitely gives Obama a certain “look.”  He looks duplicitous, and like a hypocrite.  In May of 2011, he opined that “There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply, through executive order, ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President.”  What changed between then and now?  Did Obama find a Cloak Of Duplicity in his closet or something?

After the BarryCare oral arguments, Obama declared, “Ultimately I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”  Leaving aside the fact that there was no “strong majority,” why is it okay for one man to ignore the will of Congress when it comes to immigration, but not okay for nine Justices to do so when the will of Congress involves an unconstitutional law?  That’s enough hypocrisy to choke an elephant.

That brings me to a question.  How does giving work visas to illegal aliens square with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996?  The law is quite specific about the process for correcting one’s status.  It states that aliens unlawfully present in the United States for 180 days but less than 365 days must remain outside the United States for three years unless they obtain a pardon. If they are in the United States for 365 days or more, they must stay outside the United States for ten years unless they obtain a waiver. If they return to the United States without the pardon, they may not apply for a waiver for a period of ten years.  In a nutshell, ya gotta leave to fix your status.  So is Obama going to wave his Magic Pardon And Waiver Wand and make the 1996 law go away?

If he can do that, then when Mitt is elected in November, can he gut BarryCare via executive order?  In this new paradigm, with a mere stroke of a pen, he can say that he will be using his “discretion” to allocate no resources towards enforcement.  Voilà!  It will be like the law never passed.  (He may not get the chance, of course, because the Supremes might beat him to it.  But you catch my drift.)

Let us turn to eligibility.  Seems the standards have slipped from the original DREAM idea of requiring the young illegal aliens to have served in the military or attended college.  Under the new CRAP – Criminal Rendering of Amnesty by the President – it’s the military, or a high school diploma or GED.  Considering that a lot of high school graduates are roughly as smart as a dead bonsai tree, it would have been better to require a degree from a four-year university.

Further, CRAP (yes, I made it up, but I like it, so it gets to stay) requires the illegal aliens to not be law-breakers.  Will this exclude illegal aliens who committed fraud by providing false and/or stolen information and identification to obtain employment?  I read an article about an illegal alien who started a business, and employs several other illegal aliens.  Knowingly hiring illegal aliens is a crime.  Will she be eligible for CRAP?  How about illegal aliens who worked under the table and didn’t pay their taxes?  That, too, is a crime.  Are those people of the “good moral character” that CRAP requires?

How thorough are the bureaucrats going to be in verifying that the Crappers actually graduated high school, are under 30, and have resided here for five continuous years?  I see a lot of fake diplomas, fake leases, and fake foreign birth certificates on the horizon.  Not to mention, if the purpose of CRAP was to allocate scarce resources, couldn’t those resources be used to process deportation paperwork instead of going on wild goose chases to verify documentation?

(I also see a bunch of human smugglers south of the border convincing people that all they have to do to get a work permit is get to America, as well as a thriving forged documents market.  This is a very bad time of year to cross the Arizona desert, and many people will die because they get conned.  But hey, way to create jobs, Obama!  Smugglers, forgers, and morticians all thank you.)

The left is trying to diffuse attention to the CRAP that Obama put in the punch bowl by focusing on Neil The Shouting Reporter.  I don’t know if it will work or not, but I do know this:  After more than four years of the media lobbing softballs to Obama, it’s refreshing to see a member of the press play hardball.  He’s not a king, or an emperor, or a god.  He is a man, who works for the people, and lives in a house that belongs to the people.  As such, the people have a right to question him.  If he’s going to refuse to answer questions, preferring instead to sit for interviews where he can control the content, the setting, and how much eyeliner the makeup girl puts on him, then anyone who blurts out a question is all right by me.  Bad timing or not, it should be fine with anyone who believes in freedom.

The question Neil Munro asked, which was essentially “What about the unemployed?”, brings me to another comment.  Obama is toast.  People in Ohio and Arizona and everywhere in between who are unemployed are confused as to how offering back-door amnesty to almost a million illegal aliens is going to help THEM.  As I’ve said before, everyone knows someone who is unemployed.  Not only are Obama’s policies killing whole industries in places like West Virginia, but now a million new workers are going to flood an already struggling job market.  And you can bet Eric Holder will be letting the lawsuits fly fast and furious if anyone declines to hire the Crappers.

Mitt thanks you for the campaign assistance, Barry.

Immigration is a good thing.  But there is a process in place to do it legally, and to say you’re going to come here and stay here illegally is spitting in the face of America.  I understand that some of these people were brought here as children.  That does not mean they couldn’t have done something about their illegal status once they turned 18.  The talking point has always been, we don’t punish children for the crimes of their parents.  This is true.  We also don’t reward them for the crimes of their parents.  If mom and dad broke federal law by pulling off a million dollar bank heist, would we let the children keep the money because affluence is “the only life they’ve ever known”?  Of course not.

I saw a dude from India on TV.  He speaks 14 languages.  He is subject to deportation because the ICE Man sent some paperwork to a company he had worked for that went out of business.  He never got it, and that jeopardized his case.  If he wants special dispensation to stay, I’m all for it, because he brings something extraordinary to the party.  Ditto for anyone with a degree in a useful discipline such as science or engineering.

However, if your only claim on my country is that it’s, like, WAY better than the third-world pile of dung you came from, then go home, and immigrate the right way.  Obama can sign all the executive orders he wants.  You still don’t legally belong here, and if Obama believes it is acceptable to bypass Congress and offer amnesty by fiat, then he doesn’t belong in the presidency.

Some Gave All

The president disgusts me.  Once again, he is failing to honor the men who managed to pull off that righteous thumping known as D-Day.

My Dad was not part of D-Day.  He was a P-51 Mustang pilot, stationed in England, so he was basically eating lamb chops with mint jelly while that action was going down.  Still, he is a hero.  He is MY hero.  Or rather, he was.  He passed away last year.  He did do his part, though, when the chips were down and performance mattered.

I listen to the Billy Ray Cyrus song Some Gave All fairly often.

If you ever think of me
Think of all your liberties
And recall
Some gave all

Please explain to me why Barack Obama doesn’t “get” how big of a deal D-Day is.  While you are at it, explain why he and his people demonize veterans.  They appear to presume that everyone who saw combat is in the raging throes of PTSD, a danger to society, and not stable enough to exercise their Second Amendment rights.

What a huge steaming crock of stinky tofu.  The veterans I know – and I know a lot of them – are the best of the best when it comes to being good Americans.  They have such a fine-tuned sense of justice that I would trust any of them with my life.  Even on a bad day, they are better men than Barack Obama could ever hope to be.

D-Day is something special.  America got involved, got physical, and kicked ass and took names.  Are we perfect?  Nope.  But that day, we were close enough to perfect.  What kind of moron doesn’t make an effort to honor the dwindling number of men who were part of it?

Do you remember the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan?  I almost had to leave the theater because of the realism.  There was blood all over the water, and all over the sand.  It wrenched my heart.

The leader of the free world is apparently unmoved by such things, both in the movies and in real life.  I don’t know why, but I’ll hazard a guess that it is because his America is not my America.

I will end with more lyrics from Some Gave All:

Love your country
Live with pride
And don’t forget those who died
America can’t you see

All gave some
Some gave all
And some stood through for the red, white and blue
And some had to fall
And if you ever think of me
Think of all your liberties and recall
Some gave all

Raise a glass tonight for the men, living and dead, who stormed the beaches of Normandy.  I wouldn’t mind at all if you tack “Barry sucks” on to the end of your toast.  Just sayin’.

The “slut” vote? You’re joking, right?

I’m only 48, and sometimes, I feel ancient.  I recently read in an article that some women are trying to “rock the slut vote.”  To paraphrase Billy Ray Cyrus, I just don’t think I understand.  When did having round heels become fashionable?

Women have a gift, and it is one that men all over the planet want.  Okay, we have multiple gifts to give.  We are warm and soft and we smell good.  And we have breasts and pretty hair and sparkly makeup.  Those and more are things men adore.  And there’s one thing they desire more than all of that.  They want to “know” us in the biblical sense.

A woman’s inner regions, so to speak, are something very powerful, and very valuable.  Why are so many women proud to give it away like it’s stale popcorn at a “We finance anybody!” used car event?

Do not take me wrong.  I am no prude.  I’m just a little bit perplexed as to when things changed so dramatically.  Back in the day, a woman and a man occasionally jumped the gun, as it were.  Then, when the rabbit died, they got married.  I jokingly refer to those children as “shotgun preemies.”  There was no shame in a full-term baby arriving seven months into the marriage, because that was how that generation rolled.  My oldest brother is a shotgun preemie.  He is one of about six in my social circle.  I won’t out every shotgun preemie I know, but you catch my drift.  And nobody cares that someone honked the bobo before having benefit of the clergy, because both the man and the woman did the right thing for their kids.

Now, we have something known as “booty calls.”  That is women giving away the milk for free, and then some.  I mean, you’re not just giving away sex.  You are also foreclosing some opportunities.  What decent man wants to spend his life with a gal whose sexual partners number in the triple digits?  Besides the very obvious health concerns (yes, sexually transmitted diseases are both real and sometimes deadly), there is a complete lack of mystery.  That furrow has been plowed a hundred times.  What exactly is left to discover?

Also, there are men out there who will raise another man’s child.  There aren’t a whole lot of them, though.  Are you 25 with three kids?  You are more likely to be struck with a meteorite than you are to find a good husband.

Do not think for a second that I am letting men off the hook.  I believe a promiscuous man is equally as icky as a promiscuous women.  Man-sluts don’t get as much airplay, because they aren’t standing there with their hands out, demanding that the government pay and pay and pay for their poor choices.  Quite to the contrary, there is a distinct legal bias against fathers.  The tales of men trying to be involved in the life of their children, but women treating them as nothing more than a cash cow, are tragic.  Gentlemen, have as much sex as you wish.  But remember, when that accident happens, and you willingly pay your child support, you are still completely screwed.  She doesn’t want your offspring to have a male role model.  She only wants to live off your assets.

I hope none of this sounds preachy, because it is not intended to be.  I’m no saint, and I have made my share of mistakes and bad choices.  Still, at the end of the day, I believe in the concept of man and woman as partners.  Not adversaries, not f***ing friends, not sources of income, not something to be sliced and diced.  Simply…  Partners.  Friends.  Lovers.

Is that hopelessly quaint?

Today’s women could learn a lot from an 80s film called Streets Of Fire.  There was Willem Dafoe, the bad guy who took what he wanted without asking.  There was Michael Paré, the hero who would brave the fires of hell for his lady.  And there was Rick Moranis, the adorkable “steady guy.”  (Watch this video.  You will never look at shiny red dresses the same way again.)

Girls, it doesn’t matter if you’re Diane Lane, the beautiful sexy singer, or Amy Madigan, the bad-ass chick with a shotgun, or some combination of the two.  Whoever you are, pick one of the two good guys.  Stay away from Raven.  He is not a good man.

Choose a man that will be a good partner, and a good father to your children should you decide upon that path.  And please, I beg you, stop handing out access to your veejayjay like it’s penny candy.  Do you really want to wake up some day and realize you’ve bonked the entire regiment?  More to the point, do you honestly want to embrace and epitomize the word “slut”?

But it wasn’t supposed to be like this!

The May jobs report was supposed to be all happy and sunny, with Obama as the fearless knight on the galloping steed of economic recovery, and “Julia” riding a unicorn that farts rainbows.

Oops.

The private sector gained 89,000 jobs, the government sector lost 13,000 jobs, and unemployment rose to 8.2%.  I’m staring at the horizon, and there’s not a steed or unicorn in sight.  Economists may have predicted something different, but this result is precisely what I expected.

There isn’t a lot of optimism out there in Small Business Land.  It’s poignantly absent in Corporate Megalopolis as well.  Everyone, from executives to janitors, is feeling bleak.  Even the salespeople, fueled by expense accounts and single-malt Scotch, are less cheerful than usual. When THAT happens, the apocalypse is surely nigh.  A couple of months of moderately positive jobs reports were supposed to cure the economic doldrums, but it didn’t happen.

There are a lot of reasons for that.  First, everybody knows somebody who’s unemployed, or they are unemployed themselves.  We’re not talking millions of slackers here, either.  Corporate America had already shed most of its dead weight.  Then it shed a lot of good, hard-working people who just happened to be in the wrong job at the wrong time.  I don’t blame the companies OR the employees.  I blame pessimism, government favoritism, and an anti-business culture.

Secondly, it’s hard to be fiscally chipper when the economy is a perennial Prometheus.  Sure, that liver grows back every night.  Yay.  Then the next day, the birds come and pick it to pieces again.  And in this version of the story, it’s not even the noble eagle destroying the regrowth.  It’s a bunch of vultures, taxing the most resilient, versatile, and hardest-working organ in the body, and never giving it a chance to fully recover.  The vultures come from many places, but only one direction.  They come from above, as in, government at all levels, against which neither Prometheus The Plumber nor his liver stand a chance.

Thirdly, a lot is riding on what the Supreme Court does in the next month.  Pending rulings, such as Arizona’s law regarding illegal aliens, and what becomes of Obamacare, are going to set the tone going forward for the relationship between businesses, individuals, states, and the federal government.  Until those cases are decided, everything is in flux.  Depending upon what the rulings are, we move forward in a more positive or more negative fashion.

But all of that is just backstory.  The looming question is how to fix it.  Have you ever been in one of those meetings where there’s so much finger-pointing going on that you wish you’d brought your safety goggles so no one pokes your eye out?  That’s about where we are now.  I’m shocked – SHOCKED, I tell you – that Obama hasn’t appointed a Blame Czar.  Granted, his job would be fairly simple.  Every day, he would release a memo to the effect of “It’s Bush’s fault.”  But at least putting it in a memo would make it official, yes?

Frankly, it doesn’t matter whose fault it is.  One phrase I am fond of uttering when the meeting goes down the “blame” rathole is, “Who gives a {bleep} who shot J.R.?  That’s not important.  What’s important is that he’s lying on the floor bleeding.  Now, what are we going to do about it?”

I suppose the nation could bite the bullet and reelect Obama.  He says he’s just hitting his stride, and the REAL solutions will come in his second term.  Three and a half years is a very long time to hit one’s stride.  Even if we’re talking distance running and not a sprint, metaphorically speaking, and even if we allow for some very high hurdles, this dude is no tortoise plugging away against the hare.  He’s more like a snail:  Slimy, destructive, and seriously slow.  If he is reelected, we might as well fold up our tents, pot up our petunias, and seek bliss elsewhere.

In other words, no more Slimy The Snail, unless we want the jobs report (and everything else) to go from bad to worse.  That leaves Mitt Romney.  He’s the Anti-Slimy:  Dynamic, squeaky clean, and productive rather than destructive.  But does he have a plan?

I sure hope so, and I hope the big picture looks something like this:

1)  Lower taxes and a vastly simplified tax code.

2)  Taking a meat axe to the budget.

3)  Dialing back over-zealous government agencies, and eliminating useless government agencies.

4)  Fomenting a culture of prosperity and creativity, both in word and in deed.

I’ll leave it to Mitt to flesh out the details.  But keep in mind, Mr. Future President, that simpler is always better.  Also remember, to paraphrase the third-party candidate, Gary Johnson, government does not create jobs.  Government’s job is to get out of the way so the real job creators can do their thing.  Heed Governor Johnson’s wise words, Mittens, and do not forget that you were not everyone’s first choice.

Anyway, there are five more jobs reports between now and the elections in November.  All that you and I and Prometheus The Plumber can do when that gloomy news arrives is sit tight, hope America backs the right pony, and look forward to the passing of the storm, and the sun shining on all of us once again.

Nope. Not going to ram the iceberg twice.

I received a hilarious email that said reelecting Barack Obama would be like backing up the Titanic and driving it into the iceberg a second time.  I laughed, and laughed, and laughed.  Then I somberly realized something.

The death of America at the hands of Barack Obama is not a laughing matter.

Is “death” a bit of hyperbole?  Well, that depends.  (No, I’m not going to crack a joke about what the meaning of “is” is.)  The Obama vision for the country is Zombie America, still walking around, but not alive.  It’s a place where the very much alive people are at risk of having the life sucked out of them by the tax code, the regulations, and the zombies who won’t deign to work.

I was hoping someone dynamic, charismatic, and electable would show up.  Alas, Ronald Reagan is dead.  So instead, we get Mitt Romney.

He was by no means my first choice.  That would have been Gary Johnson, before he fled to the Libertarian nomination.  He believes in a lot of what I do:  Reforming the tax code, auditing the Federal Reserve, school choice, standing up for Israel if they are attacked, reforming entitlements so the whole thing doesn’t go bust, and creating a business-friendly environment so the economy can prosper.  But there was no room for him, because there were other parts of his message that offended Republicans.

So instead, I’ll be voting for Mitt.  And so will a lot of other people who aren’t in love with him.  It isn’t perfect, but it could be worse.

“Worse” is a federal take-over of health care.  America has 426 of the top 1,000 hospitals in the world.  Our allegedly “broken” system must be doing SOMETHING right.

“Worse” is neutering our military.  Maybe we shouldn’t be running all over the planet being Team America – World Police.  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have the very best weapons of war.

“Worse” is not reining in the soaring national debt.  No, it can’t be done by eliminating the Department Of Ugly Mauve Shoes.  The sacred cows of Social Security and Medicare need to be personalized, so the truly needy get what they require, and everyone else has options.

“Worse” is using tax dollars to bankroll inefficient solutions.  Yes, choo choos and windmills and electric cars are all the rage.  If they were worth half the price it would take to blow them straight to hell, the private sector would have been all over them years ago.

“Worse” is overly complex laws and regulations that make everyone a criminal.

“Worse” is an overly complex tax code that rewards the sloth and punishes the gazelle.

“Worse” is a federal government that sues a state government for trying to enforce federal laws.  Yes, I am referring to Arizona, and immigration.  “Worse” is also suing Sheriff Joe, who is the most popular elected official in the whole dang country.

“Worse” is an economy that can’t thrive because the CEO, as it were, doesn’t know a thing about running a business.

“Worse” is acting like our friends are our enemies, and our enemies are our friends.

“Worse” is creating a culture of dependency.

“Worse” is appointing very biased individuals with no respect for the Constitution to federal judgeships and the Supreme Court.

“Worse” is never missing an opportunity to create racial tension.

“Worse” is turning identity politics into a flippin’ circus.  We stand or fall as one.  Pick your side.

“Worse” is a man who said that even if he wanted to ban guns, he doesn’t have the votes in Congress to do it.

And last, but by no means least, “worse” is someone who I do not believe honestly loves and understands America.

There’s more, but the upshot is this:  If you don’t think backing the Titanic up and ramming the iceberg twice is a good idea, you have only one choice in November.  You don’t have to love Mitt.  You just have to vote for him.