Linkaround; Flowers & Weeds

It’s spring; that time before summer when you get to decide what’s a flower and what’s a weed.

Kind of like that with the news, too. Let’s look around – lots of stuff I’ve been meaning to share with you, and you can determine the weeds from the flowers on your own!

Quote of the day, week, month, etc:

Isn’t it fabulous how Obama has reconciled with our enemies and put fear into the hearts of Americans? Does any image illustrate so neatly the wrongheadedness of the Obama administration than Americans scrambling in terror from Air Force One?
–(Source)

“Mistakes were made…” Egad. I must once again insist that I be given Janet Napolitano’s job. I’m in no way qualified, but I know I can do it better. Also an “I apologize” from the White House military office is not going to cut it, after scaring the hell out of folks in lower Manhattan for a carbon-heavy, Master-Card Priceless and thoughtless photo-shoot, a sword or two must be fallen upon.

Yesterday’s assholery (sorry, I’m in a mood, and must call it what it was) underscored for me just how out of touch and dismissive this White House is about the reality of 9/11. I blame Bush for that. When all of us “knew” that another shoe was going to drop, and another successful attack would be launched against us, Bush told us to go not allow the terrorists to keep us from living our lives as normal and then -can you believe the nerve- he kept us safe. So safe that this White House, which evidently would like it very much if we would forget 9/11 ever happened, blundered hugely and brought it all back for us.

Because truth be told, many Americans had, feeling perfectly safe, had forgotten. Bad screw up, there, Mr. President. And coming at the end of the most perfect first hundred days of any president, evah, too!

“We are back in the game.” Hillary speaks the truth, especially if “game” actually means “global tax flim-flam.”

Yep, Cap & Trade? Tax Flim Flam.

A Banking Scam? Suddenly Bank of America and Citigroup “may need more capital.” Wait…didn’t we just read about BofA’s boffo first quarter?.

I think we’re being scammed. I think we’re being scammed every which way. And I’m starting to think we’re just being crisis’d to death because misdirection is the illusionists stock-in-trade. Get everyone hyperventilating about the economy, or about AIG executives, or the need for trillions and trillions of dollars being earmarked for the Federal Government, or about Rush Limbaugh, or greedy corporate jet-flyers, or about Swine Flu, and suddenly, no one is thinking about Fannie and Freddie, or Barney Frank and the way Congress precipitated the housing bubble, the lending crisis and the recession with their policies and their refusals to heed warnings and make adjustments. No one is talking, anymore, about questionable Freddie & Fannie bonuses, or Obama’s (and Pelosi’s) tortured two-steps over torture, or Obama’s reliance on the teleprompter or the trojan horses of taking over health care, taking over General Motors, taking over the banks, or Barney Frank’s baloney. Suddenly no one who can actually do anything about it is talking about Bushian torture.

We have had a very volatile 100 days, in each one of them President Obama -when he has been in the country- and his hive have buzzed our “intensity” buttons; if you look at the lists of “crises” in the last paragraph, you’ll note that they all come to abrupt ends, and are simply never mentioned again. Poof! No more claims about the “catastrophic” economy. No more rabble rousing about “those greedy AIG guys,” until these ordinary businessmen feared for their lives and safety. No more Rush is ruining the nation (although free speech is still going to be a battle, over time) no more demonizing people who fly corporate jets, (especially when members of Congress (and other princes) fly private all the time, and umm…the White House flies Air Force One on Earth Day to make a speech or, ummmm for photo-ops).

President Obama is a “community organizer.” It is all he has ever done, and it is all he knows. So, while the mediating intelligences in the Pravda-ized press, who have a vested interest in promoting him endlessly in order to salvage their own credibility, “celebrate” the glorious first 100 days, you and I are finally able to define what it is a “community organizer” actually does: He stirs the beehive into wild flight, in order to lift the honey.

No Surprise: Dems have 60 votes. When you can’t be stopped, you betcha you can be as arrogant as you like. You can pay all the lip-service you want to about ethics, and bi-partisanship, and “honest dialogue” you want, when you don’t have to mean a word of it.

Enough weeds; we’re choking: Here is a flower.

A posy: Because I’m a fangirl

Another flower: If the “Swine Flu Crisis” really becomes a crisis, at least the last American president had things in place for this one.

Borrowing heavily from Hot Air, today – hard not to when it is so comprehensive – but I like this piece; it’s so “counter-intuitivenarrative”

A few more random gleanings:
On Stewardship
Mental Murder of Torture (I know, I know…I said I’d write about it…have to clear off these tabs, first!)

Here, I’ll leave you with a great visualization:

(Source)