The memorial rally in Tuscon

It was a rally. Cheering and raucous carrying on. Sitting at my locker changing into workout clothes at my sports club and hearing the cheering and noise from a TV in an adjoining room it sounded as though one of the usual sports event was on one of the many TVs located around the facility. Then I heard Obama's voice.  A memorial event with raucous cheering?  What's this all about? It seemed what this is all about is a kick off rally for the 2012 presidential campaign, including tee shirts passed out to the 12,000 attendees, most of whom appeared to be students at the U of Arizona.  Emblazoned on the Tee Shirts was the slogan "Together we thrive" and at the bottom of the shirt was the following inscription: "Rocking America and Rocking the Vote".   Sound like thoughts for a memorial event?  Some media follow up on this event revealed the  "Organizing for America" group, an Obama campaign arm, headed  by self-described "globalist" John Berry IV, was behind this whole T-shirt escapade.  Naturally the Obama WH claims they knew nothing about all this but given their message control and planning during the last election cycle, who can believe that.  This entire event was looked upon by the WH as an opportunity to galvanize and enthuse the youth vote which was instrumental in O's win in 2008.  Rather shameful, but then given the caliber and mind set of the people running things in the Dem party these days it is far from unusual to use any crises to promote their political interests.  There is nothing sacred to the thoroughly disreputable, dishonest and corrupt bunch of thugs running things in our country today.  


Sadly, watching the usually pretty astute Fox News the evening of the event I was appalled by their reaction to this overt political rally.  Quite muted.  No outrage.  Laudatory of O's eloquence.  I hope it's not the case if you've lost FN you've lost the country.  

e-publishing

Self-publishing has been around for a while and I actually know someone who self published a book about a relative of his who was instrumental in the founding of Union Carbide Company, as I recall.  At the time he self published (10-15 years ago) we weren't talking about e-publishing but print and paper publishing in small quantities.  Now e-publishing means writing and producing a digital book for use on a Kindle or other e-book reader.  The possibilities of this newest technology are revealed in this post here.  And the possibilities are great indeed.  What it means is large publishing entities or "houses" as they are called, no longer have a monopoly on the distribution of the written word and that while these houses may still have a valuable function in terms of editing, promoting, etc, they are definitely no longer the only game in town with respect to bringing the product to the marketplace.  Kindles and e-books have made this possible and the penetration of the market by these devices was brought home to me observing my 10-year-old grandson with his nose in a Kindle over Christmas.  BTW, the Kindle is the best selling product ever at Amazon.

The political class

There's been much talk about the pitifully horrible quality and competence of the political class as perhaps the biggest contributor to our nation's fiscal problems.  This recent post regarding Joe Biden's thoughts on the wisdom of a payroll tax cut bears out the validity of this judgment in spades. Joe Biden is a career politician who has been in the Senate for over 30 years and who has a son who is following his footsteps as a career politician.  These folks, and there are many, many of them in the government today,  have long since forgotten how to reason and think logically.  Theirs is a make-believe world where money is a plaything by which they are enabled to buy votes and satisfy the needs of the rent seekers who want to pervert capitalism through special legislation, e.g. General Motors, General Electric, big banks, etc.  It is for this reason the emergence of the Tea Party is such an important event.  In most cases of the Tea Party candidates who were successful in their campaigns for public office we found the likes of Tennessee's new senator, Rand Paul,  people who had successful careers in other fields who are not careerists.  This is the model the founders had in mind when they formulated our checks and balances, limited government in the 18th century.  People should volunteer some time to help make laws and then return to the private sector to live, like everyone else, under those laws they helped create.  What we have now is professional politicians, mostly lawyers, who glom onto the now lucrative jobs of representative and senator, buy votes any way they can, and stay in place for decades, is many cases.  This is not what the founders had in mind and is what term limits were about.  Except in the case of a few state legislatures, that very good idea went the way of the dodo bird somehow or the other and that's a shame.  Joe Biden is the poster child for the professional politician.  He's a shamelessly insincere panderer, and he has no principles other than perpetuating himself  in office.  The result: a buffoon who has no idea what he's talking about and doesn't even know how ridiculous his thoughts are when published.  It gets really difficult to imagine how we are going to survive with this kind of leadership.

Blame it on the Tea Party

The left is going wild blaming the Tuscon shooter on the Tea Party.   Here is another example of their obsession.  Talk about derangement.