So Obama has decided to demonize, with the full force of his bully pulpit, the evil “speculators” who loaned money to Chrysler and who are now insisting on their legal rights in the distribution of Chrysler’s remaining assets. The President is doing this in order to force the transfer of the creditors’ legal share to the United Auto Workers union instead.

Throwing out contract law in order to achieve a desired result sounds suspiciously like the kind of decision that might be arrived at by a judge more concerned with “empathy” than with the law.

Maybe the union is just a bunch of good guys. Maybe the bondholders are all nasty rich people. Contract law is for everybody. A society with a weak rule of law is not a fun place to live. Obama, with his submission to the UAW, as well as to the left’s desire for revenge on the Bush administration, is weakening the rule of law in the United States.

No good will come of this. Except of course for the resurgence of the Republican Party, or perhaps the resurrection of the Whigs.

“I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives,” said the President, as he contemplates Judge Souter’s replacement.

Yes, I am looking forward to that. I’ve been getting the feeling, more and more, as I am sure many people have, that Congress no longer cares “about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives.” It is past time that the Supreme Court should shoulder that burden. This whole thing about voting and elections, when everyone knows that the majority of the people have no idea what’s right and what is not.

“The People” don’t even believe, along with Miss California, and the President of the United States, and the voters of California, that two men ought to be able to marry one another. That is so backward! Thank God that we have the Supreme Court to overrule all of these silly, so-called democratic institutions.

In the future, perhaps we can dispense with all this messy legislation and just have SCOTUS decide what is best. Everything would be so much better if we didn’t have to take into account all those yahoos who have never heard of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, but who would, unfortunately, agree with them if they had ever heard of them.

Looks like I may have to quit emailing my friends and victims, and definitely quit blogging. California Rep. Linda T. Sanchez and 14 others (all Democrats I presume) are proposing a bill containing this language:

Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both….

[“Electronic means”] means any equipment dependent on electrical power to access an information service, including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages.

Yes, I admit it. I am not innocent. I knew what I was doing. I have been causing “substantial emotional distress” on purpose! At least I hope so. But that’s OK. If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. I’m resigned to my justly deserved fate.

I’ve been watching Dickens’ Little Dorrit on PBS. It made me nostalgic for debtor’s prison. Back in the good old days, as a last resort, you could always count on a bed at the href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshalsea”>Marshalsea.

Now this new Democratic initiative promises the same kind of entitlement for Republicans who insist on spewing out their hateful dissents from the policies of President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Leader Reid. The Democrats, God bless ’em, are putting a penal safety net under freedom of speech.

Forget the President’s crafty mantra about reducing taxes for 95% of the people. President Obama’s own figures predict doubling the national debt. Tripling is more realistic, according to the OMB. I conservatively predict quadrupling myself.

This debt will be paid, one way or another. By somebody. This means doubling, tripling, or quadrupling taxes, not just on the rich, but on everybody, even the current 40% who do not pay any federal income taxes whatsoever, only social security and medicare payroll taxes. It will be paid, either by increased taxes, or by devaluing the dollar to wheelbarrow levels, or some combination thereof.

Obama is not stupid. He understands this. His plan is to provide the benefits, and then somebody else, someday, will perforce institute the taxes. And we the people, the gun and religion-clinging people, will pay them happily because we love the new reality where our health care, retirement, education, housing, and subsistence are all paid for by the government.

I can dig it. There is nothing I would have, at one time, liked better than to only have to pay for pot and cheap wine, and to otherwise be free to hone my artistic talents.

I wonder who will choose to take risks and work their asses off to support the new reality with their taxes? God bless ’em, whoever they may be. I hope my grandchildren treat them with the proper gratitude and respect.

Too soon to tell, I would have to say. I think the bank bailout was necessary, although badly mishandled by Bush’s guys, Bernanke and Paulson, and then, in the spirit of bipartisan continuity, by Tim Geithner. I don’t like any of Obama’s breathtakingly expensive proposals for energy, health care, or education. I think the stimulus is a huge, corrupt waste of money we don’t have. I think not letting GM go into bankruptcy is a malfeasant handout to the union at the expense of the bond holders.

I like his policy in Afghanistan so far. I really have no idea whether his sucking up and apologizing to everyone in the world will help, hurt, or have no effect one way or the other. I like that he let the Seals shoot the pirates. Closing Guantanamo makes no sense. Releasing the “torture” memos is stupid, and possibly endangers national security. Opening the door for harassment of Bush administration officials and advisors is despicable and dangerous.

All in all it’s not any worse than I expected, maybe even slightly better.

We just returned from Orlando, where Candace was singing at the wedding of the daughter of an old friend. Nice people, old friends, good party, etc. On the way home we stopped at a beach by the highway, about 30 miles south of St. Augustine. It was a beautiful day and I wanted to go for a swim. The surf was pretty rough and the undertow was very strong. I did some body surfing and wanted to go out a little farther where the waves were bigger. Before I knew it the current pulled me out to where I could no longer touch bottom.

I tried swimming back towards shore, but it was no go. I just kept being pulled out farther, and the waves were crashing on top of me, pulling me under. Panic set in. I thought of yelling for help, but realized there was no help. There were no lifeguards. There was nothing anyone could do. I was swimming with all my might, swallowing a lot of seawater, being smashed under, over and over, getting nowhere. Very quickly I became exhausted. I was gasping for breath, and realized that I wouldn’t last much longer. My life was completely at the mercy of the merciless, all-powerful ocean. It looked like this was it for sure. It was the most scared I have ever been.

In the midst of the panic, a calm voice instructed me to lay on my back and relax. Too exhausted to keep fighting any longer in any case, I laid on my back, did my best to relax, and stroked with my arms in the direction I hoped was the shore. The waves continued to smash and force me under, but I wasn’t fighting it anymore. I just kept stroking with my arms and legs, on my back. After awhile I stepped down and could barely touch sand, but as soon as I did, the undertow began to sweep me back out again. Back on my back, moving my arms and my legs, eventually I was brought to a place where I could stand. I could barely walk. I walked very slowly to shore, against the undertow. I was still gasping desperately as I staggered up out of the surf and collapsed on the wet sand, my chest heaving with huge, loud gulps.

All around me was a beautiful, sunny day, a few people laying on the beach, some girls playing in the surf. Candace came up with some shells she had collected. It was quite awhile before my breathing returned to anything like normal. Life does not like to die. I was very lucky.

As I was sitting, gasping, on a bench, halfway up the stairs back to the parking lot, a middle-aged couple came up the steps. The woman asked me if I was OK. I said yes, but I thought I was a goner out there. “Yes,” she said. “I saw that. I also thought that other guy was a goner, the one who went out chasing his fishing pole. Are you sure you’re all right?” “Yes, I’m OK,” I said.

I understand that politicians weave and dodge and spin. That’s what they do. But, you know, there are degrees. George W. Bush may not have always made the correct decision, but he was, relatively speaking, a what you see is what you get kind of guy.

As an out Republican, I am of course axiomatically a racist, but it is not Obama’s race, or half-race, that bothers me. What bothers me is the President’s flexible relationship with the truth.

Following are some excerpts from Obama’s press conference that, in my opinion, are bald-faced lies. Well, not really bald-faced. They are actually very hirsute lies, but they are falsehoods that the press corps would never ever have allowed Bush to get away with.

…moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest.

I’m as angry as anybody about those bonuses that went to some of the very same individuals who brought our financial system to its knees, partly because it’s yet another symptom of the culture that led us to this point. [His Treasury Secretary inserted approval of the AIG bonuses into the bill, via Chris Dodd, and Obama signed it.]

What we can’t do, though, is sacrifice long-term growth, investments that are critical to the future, and that’s why my budget focuses on health care, energy, education, the kinds of things that can build a foundation for long-term economic growth, as opposed to the fleeting prosperity that we’ve seen over the last several years. [Fleeting meaning almost constant growth and prosperity for the last 20 years.]

…What I’ve tried to do is to be out front as much as possible explaining in very clear terms exactly what we’re doing. [Really? Exactly how much are all of those toxic assets worth? It’s been several months now. Are they really that hard to figure out?]

When it comes to cap-and-trade, the broader principle is that we’ve got to move to a new energy era, and that means moving away from polluting energy sources towards cleaner energy sources. That is a potential engine for economic growth. I think cap-and-trade is the best way, from my perspective, to achieve some of those gains, because what it does is it starts pricing the pollution that’s being sent into the atmosphere. [by “pollution” he means carbon dioxide. You know, the gas that is exhaled by mammals, which is a miniscule fraction of the presence in the atmosphere of that other much more potent polluting greenhouse gas, water vapor.]

Both under our estimates and under the CBO estimates, both — the most conservative estimates out there, we drive down the deficit over the first five years of our budget. The deficit is cut in half. And folks aren’t disputing that. [The deficit is cut in half after it is first doubled, or, more realistically, tripled.]

Our assumptions are perfectly consistent with what Blue Chip forecasters out there are saying. [No credible economist expects the growth figures that Obama is projecting, including Paul Krugman.]

look, I’m not going to lie to you.

…the best way for us to do that is to reduce health care costs. That’s not just my opinion. That’s the opinion of almost every single person who has looked at our long-term fiscal situation. [Hardly.]

It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak. [He knew about the bonuses weeks before it became public.]

Now, if it’s really a charitable contribution, I’m assuming that that shouldn’t be the determining factor as to whether you’re giving that $100 to the homeless shelter down the street. [Yeah, right.]

…if you look at the evidence, there’s very little evidence that this has a significant impact on charitable giving. [What evidence is that, Mr. President?]

QUESTION: In your remarks on stem cell research earlier this month, you talked about a majority consensus in determining whether or not this is the right thing to do, to federally fund embryonic stem cell research. I’m just wondering, though, how much you personally wrestled with the morality or ethics of federally funding this kind of research, especially given the fact that science so far has shown a lot of progress with adult stem cells, but not a lot with embryonic?

OBAMA: OK. No, I think it’s — I think it’s a legitimate question. I — I wrestle with these issues every day. [I thought it was all about science?]

…and I respect people who have different opinions on this issue. [yeah, right.]

When it comes to Iran, you know, we did a video, sending a message to the Iranian people and the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And some people said, “Well, they did not immediately say that we’re eliminating nuclear weapons and stop funding terrorism.” Well, we didn’t expect that. We expect that we’re going to make steady progress on this front. [Nobody ever said anything of the sort.]

Nancy and Harry and Barack aren’t as dumb as they look. The Democrats, and, to their credit, half of the Republicans, in Congress may have stumbled onto a way to pay off the deficit and provide free health care and college educations and energy for everyone. It’s so simple, so obvious once you see it.

Tax the unpopular!

In the upcoming census, which is to be contracted out to ACORN and overseen by Rahm Emanuel, get everybody’s opinions of their neighbors, collate the results and raise the taxes of the unpopular to 90%. That would not only solve the fiscal problem, but it would motivate the citizenry to be nice. It may not be possible to make us all love our neighbor, but you could sure make everybody pretend to love their neighbor.

And the tax wouldn’t be applied to current income. It would be applied retroactively to the previous 4 year’s income, since that’s when those rotten bastards were making themselves so unpopular. Why limit ourselves to employees of AIG? Let’s tax the crap out of everybody we don’t like! Watch out, Rush Limbaugh, you SOB! We’re comin’ for your money!

Hey, maybe we can all unite around Pat Buchanan. It is St. Paddy’s day after all, even if Pat is an Orangeman, as are my ancestors, Scottish owners of a pub in Dublin. Better for the Scots to be in charge.

If the global financial system is going down, and I’m tellin’ you it is, my friends, then Pat is right. Globalization, no matter what its theoretical virtues, has become a way in which the rest of the world will drag the U.S. down with it.

If we close off the borders to immigration and trade, we will suffer a decline in our average standard of living. Some goods will become more expensive. Some will decline in quality. We will have to drive American cars. But we will have full employment, a solid domestic currency, and a decent federal balance sheet. The decline in our standard of living will be far, far less than what it will be if we remain tied to the rest of the “global economy”.

The global economy is quickly approaching the mythological status of “global warming”, or, excuse me, “climate change”.

The real scandal of the latest AIG bail-out is not the $165 million bonuses to the executives, but rather the more than $50 billion (that’s a $thousand million each) that went from AIG to foreign banks.

Our children and grandchildren are now in hock because of banks in Germany.

Protect the depositers, let the banks go out of business, let China go hang. Come home.