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The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails. -- James Joyce
I'm not sure why, but a local guy has taken to reading my Tweets even though he doesn't follow me. His name is Chris, and he's an Obama supporter.
I offered to go to lunch with him. There's only so much you can explain in 140 characters. But that's not really his thing.
Yesterday, I mentioned that Obama had no outrage about the Lockerbie bomber's release. Chris pointed me to this article, which says this:
"Highly objectionable," Obama told reporters on the White House lawn.
"Outrageous and disgusting," added White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.
So threatening is Obama's outrage that the Libyans danced and celebrated upon the return of their bomber hero. Scotland and England don't care. British PM Gordon Brown has yet to make a statement about it.
Chris asks me, in Tweet, "What should he do, bomb Libya?"
To which I replied: "Somewhere between 'Highly objectionable' and 'bombing' lies an appropriately outraged response."
And Chris comes back with: "What response would have made you happy? Obviously you don't like the guy, but to call him out on this is silly."
Silly? Really? Obama got more involved in Skip Gates' brush with a Cambridge police officer than he involves himself with a man freed who murdered hundreds of people in a terrorist act.
So, to answer Chris, here are some examples of a more appropriate reaction. Keep in mind, I'm no super genius like Obama, but these seem right to me:
Send Hillary Clinton, a high-ranking administration official, to England immediately to let them know that this is unacceptable.
Consider sanctions against Scottish imports.
Send in a team to extract the unrepentant bomber to a White House beer summit where the relatives of those murdered can confront the murderer. That would at least be the equivalent of what he did on behalf of his friend, Skip Gates - though it might end in a few broken beer bottles.
What Chris fails to realize is that Obama doesn't care about these families who have seen some measure of justice robbed of them. Chris fails to realize that America looks bewilderingly weak with Obama at the helm.
Silly? No. Silly is defending the indefensible.
We elected a king of fancy words, and not an executive who values America enough to protect it. Shame on us for choosing such a weak man whose priorities are openly anti-American. If you haven't figured out yet why Obama selects his priorities as he does, you need to pay closer attention.
In the first seven months of this year, [Wells Fargo] completed 240,000 modifications for Wells Fargo and Wachovia customers. About 20,000 of these modifications are part of the government's Home Affordable Modification Program.
One-twelfth of all loan modifications performed by Wells Fargo qualify as the best benefit under Obama's HAMP program. Now check this out:
Loan mods were applied to maybe one-tenth of all delinquent or foreclosure-in-process mortgages? So Obama, for all the hype, will only "help" maybe 1 out of 50 homeowners struggling to pay their mortgage?
If an average house payment for those delinquent homes were $2,000, Obama could have assisted 1 million Americans.
Now I'm not recommending that we start giving away money to help struggling homeowners. But it's real obvious that Obama has no intention of helping the little people who voted for him. He doesn't care about you. He never did. If you voted for him, you fell for the fancy words from the suit.
Don Henley said it well: "A man with a briefcase can steal millions more than any man with a gun."
You're being fleeced, America. Just ask car dealers.
...is working the problem a lot harder than any reward might bring.
If you ask the US Postal Service why they're bleeding money, they tell you:
"We are subject to Congressional oversight, regulation by other government agencies, and also oversight by various other organizations and the public," USPS said in their annual report. "If we cannot successfully address their various, and sometimes competing, concerns, we may be subject to greater regulation, which could increase our costs or otherwise place additional burdens on our operations," USPS warned regulators in the annual report.
Government oversight is as cost-effective as skiing with a snow-maker on your back. Washington is never a source for answers for that very reason.
I wonder if Washington's Super Genius regrets the comparison now.
Ran across this amazing song tonight. I have no idea what the picture in the video above has to do with the music, but really - just focus on the music.
Yesterday, I met with both the Des Moines Tea Party folks and then with the brainstorming group. The pictures below are of the Sunday night brainstorming group.
The question at hand: how do we spotlight the good and the bad of our politicians' performance?
Sixteen people showed up for that last night. Interest to get involved continues to blossom, and unlike the left, we're not paying anyone to show up and get busy.
These folks are fighting for their freedom. That's all the incentive they need, just as it was all the incentive that was needed over 200 years ago.
The media and the politicians can't fathom that. Some citizens can't fathom that. I'll try to explain...
It boils down to this becoming a fight between those who believe that they have a right to confiscate the property of others (I'll call those folks thieves) and those who believe that they have a right to the property they earned in voluntary transactions with others (I'll call those folks workers).
It's not hard to imagine that the workers want to keep what they've earned. They not afraid to show up in public and fight for what they've earned, even if it takes time out of their lives to do so. This explains the high number of regular Americans at town halls.
It's also not hard to imagine that the thieves aren't many in number and are mostly embarrassed to show up in public demanding what they didn't earn. Most Americans aren't thieves.
And only a few of the thieves have rationalized their thievery to the point of actually being proud of it in public. This explains the low number of those fighting for their "right" to confiscate the property of others.
How this will end is predictable - the workers will rout the thieves. What's unknown is the time involved and the path to getting there. But since thieves don't like working and workers have no problem working, the workers will apply more effort and win, despite the thieves having some prominent players in positions of authority. The workers are greater in number and will work harder.
I've wondered about Obama's grasp of math, given his predilection for debt. But I've determined that he's quite good actually at division.
Sixty-seven percent (67%) believe politics in Washington, DC will become even more partisan over the coming year. That’s up from 55% a month ago and from 40% when President Obama took office.
In just seven months, Obama managed to help people see that there is no working together in Washington. Not to mention the fracture of America itself.
Two Americas: one that believes it is their right to confiscate the property of others, and one that believes in individual property rights.
"On Nov. 4, the hope and happiness seemed boundless for supporters of President-elect Barack Obama, leading some to speculate, with a wink and a nod, that in nine months there would be a virtual Obama baby boom - a celebratory uptick in the national birthrate. But now, 40 weeks later - the average human gestation period - MSNBC is reporting the prediction has largely been nothing more than, well, false hope."
I'm guessing that enough people saw the debt explosion headed toward today's children and decided that it was better to wait and see how it all turned out.
Here's a bit of marketing advice: when your product has people bragging about you, the maker, that's okay, but usually temporary. Where it really has legs is when people can instead brag about what they're able to do with your product. Then it's about them, and people love to talk about themselves.
The major flaw in all of this Obama-ness is that fact that it's not at all about people doing more with greater efficiency, greater productivity, greater resourcefulness than before. Instead, we're all just supposed to celebrate Obama-ness. Yawn. Buying a poster and hanging it in your room never made anyone better for it.
I would have loved to see Obama storm into office and work damn hard to provide us with greater liberty. Americans are a resourceful lot. It's how we became who we are - the greatest nation on the planet.
But we got a guy who instead apologizes for our greatness, hates on business and enterprise, concerns himself with trying to make our decisions for us, and frankly screws up a lot.
I believe that you should be free to live your own life, to determine your own direction, so long as you don't step on the liberties of others.
I believe that you can only enjoy self-determination to the degree that you practice self-reliance.
I believe that self-reliance leads to productivity.
I believe that you are the only person who has the right to the reward your productivity brings you, and that you have every right to do with that reward what you choose because you earned it.
Yesterday, I mentioned that Obama had no outrage about the Lockerbie bomber's release. Chris pointed me to 
