This is to be taken as an honest-to-God poll???

Read the pdf file here. They polled 427 people (because, as we all know, you get really, super-accurate results when you poll small numbers!). Of those 427 people, only 18% were Republicans (for those of you too lazy to do the math, that’s about 76 people, give or take). 37% were independents (about 158 people). The rest, 45% (!!!) were Democrats (meaning, 192 people). In other words, just under HALF of those polled for this were people who — shocker! — more than likely already supported the President.

And they wonder why we call the press biased. They’re not even trying to hide it anymore.

For those on the left harping and moaning about Joe Wilson’s “You Lie” comment, just remember this: your side did it, too. And, of course, nobody had a problem with it, did they?

When it’s a Republican, it’s all fine and dandy, but when it’s one of their guys, why, suddenly they’re outraged by it. I swear, if you look up the definitions of the words “hypocrite” or “crybaby”, it HAS to say “liberal Democrat” in there somewhere, and if it doesn’t, then it SHOULD.

As for what Joe Wilson called the President a liar over, well…he’s right. Obama was lying. Nothing new, of course, because that’s all he does. That, and talk about himself.

Update: Talk about the pot and the kettle:

Democrats said it showed lack of respect for the office of the presidency and was reminiscent of Republican disruptions at recent public forums on health care.

“I was embarrassed for the chamber and a Congress I love,” Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Thursday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “It demeaned the institution.”

Democrats are all of a sudden concerned about demeaning the institution and showing respect for the office of the President? PUH-LEASE!!! Remember how these guys behaved over the last eight years when they go on television and say that stuff. It’s remarkable how these guys can stand there and lie with a straight face.

Also, this is interesting:

After the speech, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff who sat a few rows in front of Mr. Wilson, said he immediately approached senior Republican lawmakers to encourage them to identify the heckler and urge him to issue an apology quickly.

“No president has ever been treated like that. Ever,” Mr. Emanuel said.

I dealt with that in the pre-update section. Mr. Emanuel is as big a liar as his boss (but we already knew that). The interesting part is how he immediately went looking for the source of the outburst and pressured Republicans to tell him who did it (as if the liberal media wouldn’t do that for him). Because he was concerned about showing respect for the office, you know. Pfft.

You know, liberals love to trash Sarah Palin for her comments regarding the so-called “Death Panels” that the Obama/Democrat health care plan will lead to. Yeah, I’ll grant you that it might — MIGHT — be over-the-top rhetoric, but it’s not far from the truth.

I mean, look at the kind of stuff that happens in the UK and ask yourself if we really, really want our health care system to be like that:

Doctors left a premature baby to die because he was born two days too early, his devastated mother claimed yesterday.

Sarah Capewell begged them to save her tiny son, who was born just 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy – almost four months early.

They ignored her pleas and allegedly told her they were following national guidelines that babies born before 22 weeks should not be given medical treatment.

(snip)

Medics allegedly told her that they would have tried to save the baby if he had been born two days later, at 22 weeks.
In fact, the medical guidelines for Health Service hospitals state that babies should not be given intensive care if they are born at less than 23 weeks.

The guidance, drawn up by the Nuffield Council, is not compulsory but advises doctors that medical intervention for very premature children is not in the best interests of the baby, and is not ’standard practice’.

James Paget Hospital in Norfolk refused to comment on the case but said it was not responsible for setting the guidelines relating to premature births.

A trust spokesman said: ‘Like other acute hospitals, we follow national guidance from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine regarding premature births.’

Sound familiar? It should. This is exactly what Obama and the Democrats want to bring here to the United States. A panel of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats who will set policies and guidelines that literally will decide who gets treated, how they get treated, and when (if ever) they get treated. Now, “death panel” may sound harsh to our friends on the left, but what else would you call it?

Liberals have to know that their vision for America will ruin this country. We have too much debt and too much long-term financial obligations as it is, yet they want to add to it. For all the talk they give about the future generations, etc., it’s quite clear that they don’t care about posterity one bit. I mean, who cares if they’ve mortgaged the future of their children, grandchildren, and great-great-great grandchildren, so long as they get theirs right now? It’s all good, right?

They released the full text of the speech (I wonder how much they edited it after word got out he was doing it?) and, as usual, it’s about him. Everything is about him:

When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

(snip)

I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

He left out the part where her dad was a cog in the Chicago political machine. I think that had more to do with what kind of schools she went to, don’t you?

Besides the references to the typical lefty agenda (talk about new energy technologies and “protecting our environment”, and fighting “poverty and homelessness…and discrimination”), it was a basic, boilerplate speech that one would expect a normal politician to give to students. But B. Hussein Obama isn’t a normal politician, is he? He’s the most liberal president we’ve had since FDR, and he’s got an ideological axe to grind. The fact that he was able to restrain himself and keep this on the level is remarkable.

And, just so we’re all clear on this, it wasn’t the speech that was ever the problem…it was the companion lesson plan they were going to hand out to the kids. You know, the “how you can help Obama” stuff.

Update: Well, harumph-harumph!!!, that was then, this is now!

For the record, I agree with GayPatriot. If it hadn’t been for the ruckus the right kicked up over this, you can bet Obama would have made a super-partisan speech. As it was, he was “caught” in a bind, so he scrapped what he more than likely intended to say and instead delivered a rather benign “stay in school” and “It’s all about me” speech.

And, again, it wasn’t the speech that conservatives had the problem with, it was the “educational” materials the administration was planning on sending along with it.

While the Republican candidate in Monday’s special election lost, I’d have to say the vote results are actually positive.

Here are the results by counties:

Jefferson County:

Curt Hanson (D): 2699
Stephen Burgmeier (R): 2064

Wapello County:

Curt Hanson (D): 599
Stephen Burgmeier: (R): 603

Van Buren County:

Curt Hanson (D): 667
Stephen Burgmeier (R): 1171

I didn’t list the third-party candidates because they didn’t have enough votes to sway which direction the individual counties went. However, taken overall, one third-party candidate may have done a Ross Perot and siphoned votes away from Burgmeier. Here are the total results:

Curt Hanson (D): 3965
Stephen Burgmeier (R): 3838
Dan Cesar (Fourth of July Party): 40
Douglas William Philips (Nominated by Petition): 242
Write-In Votes: 7
Total Votes: 8092

So Burgmeier lost by 127 votes in what is traditionally a heavily-Democrat area. I don’t see anything bad with that. Naturally, I’d prefer that he had won, but I will gladly take this as a positive sign.

I don’t know about Van Buren county (never lived there, don’t know anyone from there, etc.), so I will assume it is a Republican area and was in the bag all along (may or may not be the case).

But the other two counties, Wapello and Jefferson, I do know about, having ties to both,

First off, Wapello county (where I was born and raised and, until recently, lived) has almost always been a bastion of the Democrat Party. I’d be hard pressed to remember them voting for an actual Republican for anything (they did twice that I know of, the most recent one being a moderate Democrat who had to register as a Republican because the Democrat ticket was full…no joke, he was a friend of my dad’s and he admitted this). In this county, Burgmeier actually won, albeit barely (4 votes). That confirms what I said just the other day, that people in this area are fed up. And that doesn’t bode well for Democrats seeking re-election.

Second, Jefferson county. This is interesting to me because Wapello county has more people living in it than Jefferson county, yet Jefferson county posted about four times as many people voting. If you aren’t aware of it, Fairfield is the main town in Jefferson county, and it’s home to a bunch of meditation kooks who think they can fly/float, that world peace and stability is just a meditation chant away, they don’t eat meat, and (trust me on this one) they really, really like their “herbs” (if you know what I mean). So naturally they fit right in with the Democrat Party.

Put another way, to find an area of Iowa further to the left of this one, you’d have to go up to tea-smoking hippie territory. Of course the county is going to vote (D), no matter what. Still, Burgmeier only lost the county by about 600 votes which, to me, is another positive sign. If a Republican can stand toe-to-toe with a Democrat in these two counties, and actually win one of them, then we’re on our way to taking our country back.

Regardless of what the left says, the people — regular, everyday folk — are pissed at what is being done in their name by these elitists in Washington and their own state houses. They don’t like it, and there’s going to be a backlash next year, mark my words.

No defense for this at all:

Authorities say the girl and her mother were shopping Monday when the toddler began crying. The police report says Stephens approached the mother and said, “If you don’t shut that baby up, I will shut her up for you.”

Authorities say Stephens then grabbed the 2-year-old and slapped her. The child began screaming and Stephens was arrested. Police say an examination showed the girl’s face was slightly red.

Quite simply, you don’t EVER lay a hand on another person’s child, especially if you don’t even know them.

Was there a better way to handle this? Of course. And that goes for both the a-hole who did the slapping and the mother of the child. He should have, at the very most, asked her to quiet the child down or take her outside/to the restroom until she calmed down. The mother, really, shouldn’t even have to be asked to do this. It’s common sense (and common courtesy) to take you disruptive child somewhere private where they can finish their tantrum and quiet down.

I’m a father of two (boy and a girl) and, believe me, they’ve had their fits in public. We’ve always handled the situation so as not to bother other people, but there are times when the only thing you can do is just leave.

I’d have to say that if you think there are more and more incidents like this going on (crying/disruptive kids bothering you at every turn), you’d probably be correct. I don’t have the statistics, of course, but I’ve noticed that more and more often kids throw a fit in a store and the parents basically stand by, helpless to do anything about it. You know why that is? Because they’re afraid to do anything about it.

Think about it. You swat your kid on the butt for acting out, just how soon do you think it will be until someone calls the social worker police on you? Pretty damn quick in this day and age. So, naturally, parents refrain from correcting their kids. I’m not saying we should be beating our children, by any means, but a smack on the hand or butt never hurt us when we were growing up, did it? It got our attention and made us stop doing whatever it was we were doing, didn’t it? Damn straight it did.

But in this day and age, you don’t dare lay a hand, however lightly, on your child in public because someone, somewhere, will turn you in for “abuse”. Kids aren’t stupid, you know…they learn rather quickly what they can and cannot do, and if they act out at Wal-Mart (or anywhere else, for that matter) and nothing bad happens to them, then they know they can do it at will and get away with it. Especially if a parent, in their efforts to quiet the child, give in to whatever demand they’re making (“But I want THAT toy! Waaaah!”).

To recap, this clown who slapped a complete stranger’s child should have the book thrown at him. But the mother isn’t totally innocent, either. She could have done something to stop it from getting that far. But, given the fact that parents aren’t allowed to be parents anymore, I can certainly understand.

On the face of it, it sounds innocent enough:

As children across America go back to school, President Obama will deliver a national address directly to students on the importance of taking responsibility for their success in school on Tuesday, September 8th at 12:00 PM EDT at Wakefield High School in Arlington. In advance of this address, the Department of Education is providing resources developed by and for teachers to help engage students and stimulate discussion about persisting and succeeding in school.

But knowing how liberals constantly go after our kids, you know it won’t be anything “innocent” at all. If Mr. Hopenchange wants to have a pep talk with our school children, telling them how important it is to stay in school, great.

But I have a hard time thinking that he’ll stick to that subject. He very well may tell them how terrible it is that THEIR parents oppose his health care plan and, before you know it, grade school children across America will come home and, later that night around the dinner table, ask their parents why they hate America so much. Wouldn’t put it past him at all.

You want to give kids a talk they need? Tell them to a) stay in school, b) keep their pants on (for you tea-smokers, that means abstain from pre-marital sex), and c) stay away from drugs. Do those things and you more than likely won’t be poor and mooching off the American taxpayer.

I’ve said it countless times, and I’ll say it again: Beware the politician that says “It’s for the children”, because it sure as hell isn’t. It’s about them and their agenda, not our kids. That goes for both parties, by the way.

It’s not even the speech itself that’s the problem. It’s the lesson plan they wanted to send out in advance of the speech, asking kids how they can “help Obama”. Not the country, not their parents, not their communities, not themselves, but Obama. So much for JFK’s “ask not what your country can do for you” speech, eh?

It’s a funny thing when leadership of this country changes hands from Republicans to Democrats. Back in 2005, when Katrina hit New Orleans, liberals were demanding action like yesterday from FEMA and the Feds. Now that they’re in charge? Yeah, time to learn to take care of yourself:

“We need to change behavior in this country,” he told about 400 emergency-management instructors at a conference in June, lambasting the “government-centric” approach to disasters. He learned a perverse lesson in Florida: the more the federal government does in routine emergencies, the greater the odds of catastrophic failure in a big disaster. “It’s like a Chinese finger trap,” he told me last spring, as a hailstorm fittingly raged outside his office. If the feds do more, the public, along with state and local officials, do less. They come to expect ice and water in 24 hours and full reimbursement for sodden carpets. But as part of a federal system, FEMA is designed to defer to state and local officials. If another Katrina hits, and the locals are overwhelmed, a full-strength federal response will inevitably take time. People who need help the most—the elderly, the disabled, and the poor—may not get it fast enough.

To avoid “system collapse,” as he puts it, Fugate insists that the government must draft the public. “We tend to look at the public as a liability. [But] who is going to be the fastest responder when your house falls on your head? Your neighbor.” A few years ago, Fugate dropped the word victim from his vocabulary. “You’re not going to hear me refer to people as victims unless we’ve lost ’em. I call them survivors.” He criticizes the media for “celebrating” people who choose not to evacuate and then have to be rescued on live TV—while ignoring all the people who were prepared. “This is a tragedy, this whole Shakespearean circle we’re in. You never hear the media say, ‘Hey, you’re putting this rescue worker in danger.’”

The left cried bloody murder when a conservative dared to suggest that people, you know, learn to take care of themselves and prepare for emergencies and the like. Yet here we are, barely four years later, and they’re now saying the exact same thing. Which just goes to show you that they knew we were right all along, they just wanted to make a political issue out of it, just like they did with the war, with spending, with interrogation, wiretapping, corruption, etc. The ONLY reason they had a problem with ANY of that stuff was because it wasn’t them doing it, and they feel that they’re the only ones entitled to do it.

Sorry for the light posting, I’ve been working some insane hours lately. Which, ironically, brings me to this post.

I work in Ottumwa, Iowa, which is a heavily Democrat area, and has been since before I was born. It’s rare that the people here vote Republican for anything, basically.

Anyway, I deal with the public quite a bit and I get to chit-chat with them now and then and what I’ve begun to see is an actual backlash against the Democrats. People who are, self-admittedly, hard-boiled Democrats are getting fed up. They don’t like the spending, they don’t like this health care business, and they don’t like where Obama and his cohorts are leading us.

These aren’t a handful of people I’ve talked to, either. We’re not talking about a couple of people here and a few people there, we’re talking hundreds of them over the past few weeks. Almost every single one of them are upset and disgruntled. And they aren’t pulling any punches, either.

I’ve heard a few of them say they should have backed Hillary, but then they state that she probably wouldn’t have been any better (probably?!?). I’ve had more than a few say they should have backed McCain. In other words, “buyer’s remorse” has set in here in the heartland of America.

If the Democrats in Washington (and in Des Moines) are losing support of these guys, then I think we’re going to see one hell of an upset come next November, because the way these people are talking, there’s no way they’re voting for them again.

We’ve got a special election coming up on Sept. 1 here in this part of Iowa, and it should be a good litmus test of what’s going to happen in about a year. If this guy wins, Chet Culver and the rest of the Democrats in the State House are going to be running for cover. And so will the politicians in Washington.

Here’s something for you to chew on.

The “cash for clunkers” program ended yesterday, right? How long until the people who traded in their p.o.s. cars start defaulting on their loans and Obama decides to bail them out?

Me, I give it about six months.

Oh, and count on him saying that these auto dealers took advantage of the poor while he’s at it.