Time for a "shit I meant to do earlier before life interfered" post

I've been working 12 hours a day (and commuting 3), 6 days a week for most of the last 3 months. Time off during the holidays, to be sure, but mostly too busy to do justice to the blog, and for that I apoligize. I'm going to do a couple quick hits here on stuff I meant to get to weeks or even months ago.

First off, Fidel Castro died, and good fucking riddance. Naturally, nothing is going to change in Cuba. Raul Castro is just as big a graft-and-corruption driven communist as Fidel, so he will continue to suck billions out of the country and be a wealthy man while his people struggle to survive. I understand that a like-minded successor awaits Raul's death. Emperor Barry's "overture" to Cuba did nothing but put more money in the pockets of a dictatorship. Good job, dude.

The point of this post, however, is quite simple, thusly:

That is the Cuban Army vehicle carrying Fidel Castro's remains on his final parade through Havana to the cheers of the "adoring" masses. Yes, you see that right -- the vehicle broke down, and those army turds are pushing it. That, my friends, is Cuba, now and for the foreseeable future. A broken dictatorship unable to do anything right except stay in power and enrich the dictator and his minions. Can't imagine why we didn't open our arms to them before.

Second on the neglected list is, of course, the fact that Emperor Barry is gone. I wasn't a Trump guy, but he has been doing the things he said he would, which puts him ahead of most newly elected presidents, so he has that going for him. Right now, though, the part about Trump being president instead of Hillary (who would have continued Emperor Barry's policies) is this:

Finally, we get to the butt-hurt crybabies who can't seem to get over the fact that the only candidate who could have lost to Trump in the general election did, in fact, lose. They can't stop whining, pissing, moaning, rioting in the city I work in and screaming about "resistance." Remember when all that shit happened in 2008 after Barry won? Oh, wait, never  mind -- that shit didn't happen, and anybody who complained that maybe the socialist who won was a socialist was branded a racist. So, now we have people setting things on fire on Inauguration Day and breaking windows, screaming about being the resistance and getting arrested. Sounds like democracy to me:

I hope to post more regularly soon. Personally, I think this swordfish is almost ready to be brought on board the boat. It's looking pretty tired.

When you've lost the Washington Post . . .

The Washington Post is second only to the New York Times as the official mouthpiece of the Democratic Party and leftists generally. The fact that the Post is saying Emperor Barry I rolled over for Iran speaks volumes:

THE “KEY parameters” for an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program released Thursday fall well short of the goals originally set by the Obama administration. None of Iran’s nuclear facilities — including the Fordow center buried under a mountain — will be closed. Not one of the country’s 19,000 centrifuges will be dismantled. Tehran’s existing stockpile of enriched uranium will be “reduced” but not necessarily shipped out of the country. In effect, Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will remain intact, though some of it will be mothballed for 10 years. When the accord lapses, the Islamic republic will instantly become a threshold nuclear state.
That’s a long way from the standard set by President Obama in 2012 when he declared that “the deal we’ll accept” with Iran “is that they end their nuclear program” and “abide by the U.N. resolutions that have been in place.” Those resolutions call for Iran to suspend the enrichment of uranium. Instead, under the agreement announced Thursday, enrichment will continue with 5,000 centrifuges for a decade, and all restraints on it will end in 15 years.

The administration has repeatedly said that no deal is better than a bad deal. As with every promise Barry ever made, that one came with an expiration date. As it turns out, Barry was willing to do anything, concede anything just to get a deal with Iran.  Now he claims that this horseshit bargain with the mullahs will keep Iran from going nuclear. Yeah, right:

A week of marathon negotiations had produced, finally, an agreement designed to prevent Iran from being able to build a nuclear bomb. Obama’s closest advisers stood off to his side, in the shade of the White House colonnade, relishing the moment. National security adviser Susan Rice fist-bumped another aide. Some staffers hugged.
But Obama, resolute and a little defensive, hadn’t come to celebrate; instead he wanted to make the case for the agreement to the American people and the world.
“When you hear the inevitable critics of the deal sound off, ask them a simple question,” Obama said. “Do you really think that this verifiable deal, if fully implemented, backed by the world’s major powers is a worse option than the risk of another war in the Middle East?”

Just for starters, that wasn't the choice. This deal, and this deal only, or war? No one except Barry has suggested those were the choices. Yet another Obama strawman lights the horizon with its flames. Iran repeatedly threw new objections in the way of a deal, and Barry repeatedly relented. The Iranians have conceded nothing, and this is clearly not a deal "designed to prevent Iran from being able to build a nuclear bomb." This isn't even a speed bump. The Iranians won't even allow spot inspections. They are closing no facilities. They are keeping all of the enriched uranium they already have, and they will continue enriching uranium. Supposedly, they will be using fewer centrifuges to do so, but without rigorous inspections, which the deal does not require and Iran has never allowed, does anyone think Iran will shut down thousands of centrifuges? The lifting of sanctions just gives Iran billions to sponsor terrorism abroad -- something else the deal doesn't require them to relinquish.

Let's face it. If the French think you're being too easy on Iran, you might want to rethink your position:

"The French understand the value of time, and essentially they know that the longer this goes on, within reason, the more reasons the Iranians have to give things up," said Atlantic Council senior fellow Nicholas Dungan.
"The French feel that we can ask for an agreement on specifics which the Iranians might be reluctant to give but which the French believe they probably will give in order to get the deal done."
And France isn't just playing the bad cop role for the sake of stiffening negotiations -- it has its own unique view of power politics in the Middle East.
For one thing, it has been burned by Iran before.
Paris has actually been engaging Tehran on its nuclear program for years longer than the U.S., and therefore has had more time to see its expectations dashed. It was part of negotiations with Iran along with Germany and Britain in 2004 and 2005. And it learned hard lessons when it was revealed in September 2009, during a visit to the United States by then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, that Iran had built an underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordow -- despite previous denials.

"The French do not necessarily trust the commitment that the Iranians might actually engage in," said Guillaume Xavier-Bender, a Transatlantic Fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

"They don't trust that every element will be respected because of their history of negotiation with the Iranians -- they have been deceived multiple times."

The French don't believe Iran will live up to its commitments, yet Barry insists upon becoming Iran's prison bitch. The question I don't see being asked is, why is Barry so willing to give the mullahs pretty much everything they want when our allies think we're being idiots? I keep reading about a foreign policy legacy, but is being remembered as the biggest chump since Neville Chamberlain really the kind of legacy you want? Hell, Barry is making Chamberlain look like Churchill at this point.
Hat tip to Hot Air.

This president does everything he can to make himself unlikeable

Seriously, I don't know who does PR for this guy, but everybody in that office must be afraid to let Emperor Barry I know that something he is doing will look bad. Most recently, of course, is when the emperor told a wedding couple, on 24 hours notice, to move their wedding because he wanted to golf there. There are probably about a bazillion golf course on Oahu, most of which likely didn't have weddings scheduled for that day, but either Emperor Barry I or one of his PR guys thought his desire to play on that particular course one of his hundreds of rounds of golf as president trumped a couple's long-held plans to hold their (hopefully) one and only wedding on that same course. The conclusion is easy -- either Barry knew about the wedding, and he's a dick, or his PR people wouldn't tell him, because he's a dick and would take it out on them.

Doubt me? Read this:

But here’s the thing: In December, we never left Washington, D.C., until the day after Christmas. Never. Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura, would always depart the White House a few days before the holiday and hunker down at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland. After a few years, I asked a low-level White House staffer why.
I still remember what she said: “So all of us can be with our families on Christmas.”

So, the eeeeeeeee-vil W let the folks who have to move with him stay home for Christmas? Weird how nobody else among those people mentions this. Because they should. It's an interesting contrast with the current occupant of the White House, who always leaves for his vacation a week or so before Christmas and drags all those people with him:

Who was “us”? Hundreds and hundreds of people, that’s who. Sure, the reporters who covered the president, but also dozens and dozens on his staff, 100 Secret Service agents, maybe more, and all of those city cops required whenever the president’s on the move in D.C.
. . . .

All that has changed with President Obama. No more press plane, for one. Reporters are on their own — so taking family is, say, $1,000 a pop. Not likely. And this president would never delay his trip to his island getaway. He’s off every year well before Christmas. Hundreds and hundreds head off with him, leaving family behind.

This guy doesn't give a fuck about any Americans except himself. His legislation -- or executive actions, since he can't actually get any legislation passed -- isn't intended to help Americans, nor are his personal actions taken with Americans in mind. He's just not that into you.

Shitty-golfer-in-chief to wedding couple: move

Sure, they are only going to marry each other once (one hopes), and he's played hundreds of rounds of golf, but Emperor Barry I told a couple in Hawaii to move their wedding. On 24 hours' notice:

President Obama’s golf game Sunday forced U.S. Army captains Natalie Heimel and Edward Mallue Jr. to relocate their wedding ceremony.
The lovebirds were set to wed Sunday at the Kaneohe Klipper Golf Course, located on Marine Corps Base Hawaii, until they learned Obama had his eye on the same course and they would need to find a new spot for their nuptials.
“In less than 24 hours they had to change everything they had planned,” the groom’s sister told Bloomberg News.
Instead, they held the ceremony on green lawn on the base that offered views of the Pacific coastline.

Does anyone at the White House think this is good PR? Nothing like showing some concern for the little people. Let them eat cake.

And hey, I'm not the one who say's he's a shitty golfer. Michael Jordan is.

This could get interesting

In an interesting development regarding Emperor Barry's exercise of "executive authority" in rewriting immigration law without the benefit of actual legislation, The Volokh Conspiracy is reporting (hat tips to Insty and Ace) that a federal district court in Pennsylvania has ruled that the emperor's decision to stop deporting pretty much all illegals, while granting work permits to many of them, is unconstitutional:

According to the opinion by Judge Arthur Schwab, the president’s policy goes “beyond prosecutorial discretion” in that it provides a relatively rigid framework for considering applications for deferred action, thus obviating any meaningful case-by-case determination as prosecutorial discretion requires, and provides substantive rights to applicable individuals. As a consequence, Schwab concluded, the action exceeds the scope of executive authority.
This is the first judicial opinion to address Obama’s decision to expand deferred action for some individuals unlawfully present in the United States. [I've now posted the opinion here.]

The question arose in a deportation case involving an illegal immigrant who was deported and re-entered the country illegally. The judge asked the parties to brief the applicability of the emperor's amnesty, then ruled that amnesty to be an unconstitutional attempt to expand executive authority. While this case might end up being important, it might not. But I think we can expect to see a lot of litigation over this issue.

This is why Emperor Barry I has a teleprompter

Mostly because, when he doesn't use it he says something really fucking stupid, meaning the truth. Thanks to The Weekly Standard, we know that Emperor Barry I knows that he is legislating without the benefit of the legislature:


In case you can't hear, here is the transcription from The Weekly Standard:

"All right, OK. OK. I understand," Obama told the protesters after letting them go on for some time. "Listen. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Young lady, young lady, don't just -- don't just start -- don't just start yelling, young ladies. Sir, why don't you sit down, too?
"Listen, you know -- here. Can I just say this, all right? I've listened to you. I heard you. I heard you. I heard you. All right? Now I have been respectful, I let you holler. All right? So let me just -- nobody is removing you. I have heard you, but you have got to listen to me, too. All right? And I understand you may disagree, I understand you may disagree. But we have got to be able to talk honestly about these issues, all right?
"Now, you're absolutely right that there have been significant numbers of deportations. That's true. But what you are not paying attention to is the fact that I just took an action to change the law."

Oh, yeah. "I just took an action to change the law." He knows damn well what he's doing, and he doesn't give two shakes of a rat's ass if the Constitution allows it. Just in case Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who is overseeing the efforts to listen in on Americans' phone calls and emails doesn't understand how I feel about this: Yo, Clapper, blow me. And Fuck Barry while you're at it.

I expect to be audited by the IRS at some point in the coming year.

Yeah, I think this pretty much sums up Barry's stature in the international community

Emperor Barry I must be asking at this point, "Et tu, Kerry?" The Rodney Dangerfield of international leaders is now getting dissed by his own secretary of state -- and not the former one who hopes to replace him. Secretary of State John Kerry met with the Russian foreign minister recently and, according to the Russian foreign minister, basically told him that Obama is full of shit:

Though it went entirely unnoticed in the Western press, all major Russian news outlets – RIA Novosti, Sputnik, RT, and others – were only too happy to report on what US Secretary of State John Kerry said last week to the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in private: “Just ignore Obama’s statements.”

Granted, most of us have known for a good while that Emperor Barry I is full of shit -- hell, even Emperor Barry I knows it (the problem being, of course that he believes "his own bullshit") -- but this apparently came as a surprise to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov:

According to Mr. Lavrov, John Kerry advised him not to pay too much attention to the US President’s harsh rhetoric directed toward his state. As recently as September, during his speech to the 69th UN General Assembly in New York, Mr. Obama puzzled and shocked Mr. Lavrov by placing “Russian aggression in Europe” in second place among the world’s threats, behind only the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, resigning to third place the “brutality of terrorists in Syria and Iraq.” “Aggressive Russia” again was included in Mr. Obama’s world top-danger list during November’s G20 Summit in Australia.
. . .

“Talking to John Kerry,” said Mr. Lavrov in his speech to the State Duma assembly, “I asked him, what did it mean. He said to me: ‘Just ignore it.’ You understand, if this is so serious, then, of course, it is very sad. And he said ‘just ignore it’ because he wanted at that moment to discuss how we were going to co-ordinate our approaches on solving Iran’s nuclear program and on the situation on the Korean peninsula.”

This is what the administration calls "smart power." Leaves me longing for a little good old-fashioned dumb power, where we told our enemies "Don't fuck with us" and they believed it because they knew that 1) we meant it and b) we could back it up with muscle. Now they know we can't back it up, that we wouldn't anyway because we are basically a bunch of pussies (in the White House, anyway) and that we don't actually mean it anyway.

Emperor Barry I proves who he cares about (Hint: Not you)

The number of people living in poverty is at an all-time high, the percentage of people who have dropped out of the labor force is near an all-time high, job-creation is centered on part-time and low-wage jobs, so what does the president of the United States do? He promises illegal immigrants he won't deport them and, even worse, that he'll give them work permits. Good plan.

And yes, I meant "illegal immigrants." They aren't undocumented. They have documents. Those documents -- passports, ID cards, driver's licenses, birth certificates, whatever -- were issued by other countries, though, before those illegal immigrants came to this country without bothering with the legal immigration system. They are immigrants who are here illegally and are, therefore, necessarily illegal immigrants. So who is more important to the president of the United States -- illegal immigrants or the people actually allowed to legally elect the president? Those people -- the citizens and legal residents of this country -- probably thought the president was elected to look out for Americans. Suckers. What the emperor just did is not immigration "reform" -- it fixes nothing. Nothing. It makes things worse for people who are here legally who can't find a job, or have given up, by making it that much easier for millions of people here illegally to compete for jobs. And who thinks this action won't lead to a leap in illegal immigration, just as the emperor's promise of amnesty for children caused illegal immigrant children to swarm across our borders in record numbers? Show of hands, please. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Yeah, that's what I thought.