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State Of The Union Bingo

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Five year update: Wow, how things have advanced since the 2010 SOTU show. Now we don’t just make a list and keep count; go to presidentbingo.com for your own customized bingo card!

The tiles are randomized every time the page is opened, so nobody should have the same card. Send the link around to friends before the show, and stay in touch while President Obama is speaking to keep score. You can even print up multiple cards so the whole family can play; print one, click the Create a new card button, and print again, as many times as you need. It’ll shake up the tiles so no two are alike.

I still think it’d be great if someone in the chamber jumped up at a serious moment in the speech and yelled, “Bingo!” I can totally see Joe Biden doing that!

Here’s a fun way to make President Obama’s State Of The Union address, coming up on January 27, fun for the whole family, and perk things up a bit;

… it would be fun and also a good exercise for those of us who are going to listen to Mr. Obama’s State of The Union Address on January 27th to print off this list and keep count of how many times he says the following phrases, which I lifted from Mark Alexander’s essay, State of Disunion:

  • “let me be clear”
  • “make no mistake”
  • “back from the brink”
  • “signs of recovery”
  • “restored our reputation”
  • “fiscal restraint”
  • “greed on Wall Street”
  • “affordable health care”
  • “relief for working families”
  • “job creation”
  • “inherited” as in “I inherited this mess”

And some I’d be interested hearing him say:

  • “Constitution”
  • “Founding Fathers”
  • “Individual liberty”

I might have to come up with a set of Bingo cards that would follow the same theme, kinda like the Buzzword Bingo made famous by Wally & Dilbert. Would it not be hilarious if in the middle of his speech someone in the gallery (a Senator?) shouted out, “BINGO!”?

Actually, I won’t need to have the speech ‘perked up’; my challenge, if I listen to it, will be keeping my blood pressure down, as Obama will surely say plenty that will get under my skin.

Edit: Just a quick search reveals that I’m definitely not the first one to come up with State Of The Union Bingo. Lots of options are already out there, like this multipage pdf that you can print out and share with your friends, an online version that will allow you to generate a different version with the click of a button, or this interactive online version that you can play in your web browser (no printing required!) And in case anyone sees this as an unfair slam on our illustrious President, let me point out that the Democrats did it first.

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The Pathological Narcissist

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Saw this in today’s Patriot Post Digest; classic.

This Week’s ‘Alpha Jackass’ Award

“That I do think is a mistake of mine — I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”
— Barack Obama on his proposed health care takeover.

Got that, folks? Even when he’s admitting a “mistake of mine,” he’s throwing the blame onto others. His failures are your fault because you just don’t get it. That’s called pathological narcissism.

Next week’s State of the Union address ought to be interesting… Interesting to see how often the blame for the country’s problems will be cast on Bush, the Republican obstructionists, the populace who just doesn’t get it, the Tea Partyers, etc… But I doubt he’ll blame the true culprit; his teleprompter.

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Don’t Blame Martha

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

2010-01-20-chronicle-cartoon

The Massachusetts Senate seat vacated with the death of Senator Ted Kennedy should have been a slam dunk for the Democrats; it was theirs to lose. And lose it they did. But now, if DNC leaders are to be believed, it’s all Martha Coakley’s fault. Poor Martha isn’t taking this blame game sitting down though; days before the election she was pointing right back, saying she didn’t get the national support she needed to beat Scott Brown in yesterday’s election. While she also acknowledges that the mood of the voters played a part as well, her diagnosis of that anger is a bit off; she said that the people are, “… frustrated, concerned… They are angry about healthcare issues, and they are angry about our two wars, our inability to properly care for those who return home after fighting… “

True enough that people were angry about healthcare, but my take is that the anger is directed more at the designs of President Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress concerning our healthcare system. Yesterday’s vote was less a commentary on how each candidate ran their election, and more a referendum on how the President and Congress are doing. This election was nothing short of an angry middle finger thrust out at them. Obama ran on the mantra of “Hope and Change”, but the kind of change people had in mind seems to be a far cry from the fundamental changes he and the leftists running Congress are trying to implement, and yesterday’s vote in Mass. was just a sampling of how people across the country feel about that. And if blue-as-blue-can-be Massachusetts, on the tails of a decades-long Kennedy dynasty, can send a Republican to the Senate with a five-point margin, Just watch for what will happen in November.

Obama, Pelosi & Reid all promised that things would be done in the most open and transparent and ethical manner possible, but the last year has shown us nothing of the sort; if anything they’ve stepped up their shenanigans with all the back room deals and pork payoffs. But public anger doesn’t seem to faze these politicians; they are right (just ask them) and will do what they think is right in spite of the will of the people. As columnist Cal Thomas said in this morning’s radio commentary, “The voters don’t like arrogance from either party and this election again proved it.”

The DNC took Massachusetts for granted, assuming an easy win and a continuation of their 60-vote majority. Now the Republicans can at least put the brakes on, maybe putting truth to the Democrats’ lies about Republicans holding things up in Congress. Whether they’ll learn anything from yesterday’s defeat is anybody’s guess. My take? They are too arrogant to understand where things went wrong, and they’ll continue digging their own political graves.

Edit: Had to add the editorial cartoon above; just too good to omit. One good line that I wish I had come up with…

“Voters in the often wayward Cradle of Liberty looked danger in the eye, stood up, and said, ‘Enough.’ Tuesday’s takeaway is this: if Obama & Co. can’t sell their agenda there, it’s an epic fail everywhere.”
— columnist Tom Blumer

And finally, one gem found at the site of a trainwreck of a blog, this interpretation of how Adolf Hitler would’ve reacted to the news of Brown’s win in Massachusetts… Simply, hilarious!

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Voting Democrat Is Bad For You

Saturday, January 16th, 2010

I’ve known for a long time that voting Democrat is a bad idea for the country, but didn’t realize that doing so would have a negative impact on health, but now there’s a study to prove it: Voting Democrat Causes Cancer. In this first map, red indicates an area with high cancer rates and blue indicates low ones.

Hoven_electoral_cancer_1

The distribution on that map looks a bit familiar, kinda like… This one that shows counties that voted Democrat in blue and Republican in red in the 2008 election.

countymapnonlinr1024

Very similar distribution. There’s got to be some causality there. Right?

No, the correlation displayed here and in the linked article shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Nor should other obviously biased studies that attempt to make ridiculous connections. Unfortunately, people believe them anyway.

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Something He Needn’t Worry About

Sunday, December 6th, 2009

I was listening to the radio just a little while ago (Beyond the Beltway was on) and the host, Bruce DuMont, was commenting on some stories in the news today. He read through part of an article in today’s New York Times…

On the afternoon he held the eighth meeting of his Afghanistan review, President Obama arrived in the White House Situation Room ruminating about war. He had come from Arlington National Cemetery, where he had wandered among the chalky white tombstones of those who had fallen in the rugged mountains of Central Asia.

How much their sacrifice weighed on him that Veterans Day last month, he did not say. But his advisers say he was haunted by the human toll as he wrestled with what to do about the eight-year-old war. Just a month earlier, he had mentioned to them his visits to wounded soldiers at the Army hospital in Washington. “I don’t want to be going to Walter Reed for another eight years,” he said then.

I got a good laugh out of that. I seriously don’t think that’s something he’ll need to worry about.

Of course, once he’s out of office in three years & change (that’s change I can believe in!) he’s free to visit Walter Reed as a private citizen, but realistically, how often will that happen? How often did it happen prior to him being elected to the Presidency?

And one more thing to note in my never-ending quest to find fault in everything President Barack Hussein Obamma (mmm, mmm, MMM!) does, his speech last week not only managed to severely tick off his leftist base, he also preempted the broadcast of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Way to wreck Christmas, dude.

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I’ve Always Liked Bob Hope

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

This line makes him just that much more lovable. He is so right!

From the 1940 classic, The Ghost Breakers.

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The Nobel Peace Prize? Seriously?

Friday, October 9th, 2009

Guess this makes it official; Barack Hussein Obama (mmmm, mmmm, mmmm!) being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize means that the Nobel Peace Prize means absolutely dick. i.e. Zip. Zero. Nada. Nothing.

obama_halo_lr

It was bad enough when the prize was awarded to Al Gore, who at that time was singularly undeserving of such an award, but Barack Obama? What has he done to deserve this prize? Nothing that I can think of, unless he leads a secret life of which the public is largely unaware (oh wait, we still don’t know much about what his work as the editor of the Harvard Law Review, nor do we know anything of the grades he earned at Harvard.) According to one Reuters article, he deserves it for “… offering the world hope and striving for nuclear disarmament”? I guess you could say that his naive striving for nuclear disarmament gives hope to some, like Iran, North Korea, China and Russia (who surely were all laughing in their sleeves at his “… dreams of a world without weapons…” while “… right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.”)

The prize surely isn’t for his leadership at the nation’s capitol when it comes to bipartisan cooperation, nor for his leadership in his dream of universal healthcare… All of that has left the nation even more polarized than when he (mis)took the Oath of Office in January. And the prize can’t be for his leadership in the role of Commander in Chief, as troop morale is at an all-time low in Afghanistan, exacerbated by the lack of clear mission goals and confusing rules of engagement that leave them poorly equipped to even defend themselves in the face of an enemy unafraid to hide behind civilians…

But according to the Nobel Prize Committee, he gets the prize because, “Very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.” So it’s all about celebrity. I laugh, as do many when they first heard this news. The only hope inspired in me by Obama is that his agenda for this country fails, and by the grace of God and the arrogance & incompetence of the Democrats in Congress, thus far it has.

Since the Nobel comes with a cool $4 million bonus, I wonder whether the Obamas will be inclined to “share the wealth” with the country. Something tells me that ain’t happening.

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Is It Real, Or Is It Memorex?

Monday, September 28th, 2009

This is a hoot, and just a little creepy/scary…

Barack Obama’s amazingly consistent smile from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

Ladies and gentlemen, your President is a robot. Or a wax sculpture. Maybe a cardboard cutout. All I know is no human being has a photo smile this amazingly consistent.

On Wednesday, the Obamas hosted a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, during which they stood for 130 photographs with visiting foreign dignitaries in town for the UN meeting. The President has exactly the same smile in every single shot. See for yourself — the pictures are up on the State Department’s flickr (link). And, of course, compressed into 20 seconds for your viewing pleasure.

Music is “Cold Hands” by the Black Lips. Go buy it now!

I saw this first on Neatorama, and some people were calling ‘Photoshop’… But if you look through the State Department’s Flickr set, the photos are for real. It looks like the Vimeo guy (Eric Spiegelman) just cropped the photos so Obama’s face ended up in the same spot in the video… Nothing else. Wonder how much time Rahm Emanuel spent with him getting that look just right…

Hey, another thought; this is just in time for Halloween! Somebody could make some money producing lifelike masks from one of those photos. Maybe an upcoming protest could feature everybody wearing a mask, like in V for Vendetta. Now wouldn’t that be interesting!

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“… Great Only In Power, In Size And In Cost.”

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

Saw this on today’s Patriot Post, and thought it interesting in light of the President’s proposed healthcare ‘reform’. Emphasis mine.

We warned of things to come, of the danger inherent in unwarranted government involvement in things not its proper province. What we warned against has come to pass. And today more than two-thirds of our citizens are telling us, and each other, that social engineering by the federal government has failed. The Great Society is great only in power, in size and in cost. And so are the problems it set out to solve. Freedom has been diminished and we stand on the brink of economic ruin. Our task now is not to sell a philosophy, but to make the majority of Americans, who already share that philosophy, see that modern conservatism offers them a political home. We are not a cult, we are members of a majority. Let’s act and talk like it. The job is ours and the job must be done. If not by us, who? If not now, when? Our party must be the party of the individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group. No greater challenge faces our society today than ensuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society. Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, galloping inflation, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite. Our party must be based on the kind of leadership that grows and takes its strength from the people.

— Ronald Reagan

The speech from which that quote was taken was given on February 6, 1977, but you’d think that he was looking through time to today. I guess what it really means is that the initiatives being promoted by Barack Obama and his sidekicks in Congress are nothing new; it’s all been tried before. One side note: Reagan referred “our party” two times in this quote, referencing of course the Republican Party. These days it seems as though the Republicans are trying harder to be the me-too, “Democrat-lite” party than anything resembling what Reagan envisioned. In trying to build the fabled “big tent” the party has abandoned anything resembling principled positions, running around with one finger in the wind and another somewhere else trying to woo one demographic or another. Reagan was a conservative in principle and in practice, something we haven’t seen in the leadership of the Republican Party for a good decade. Who will be this generation’s Ronald Reagan?

Why is it so difficult to understand that conservatism works every time it’s tried?

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Another Speech From The Golden Teleprompter And Its Talking Head

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

President “Tennis Match” Obama is prepping right now for a speech to a joint session of Congress, which will of course be beamed far & wide for all of us to see. The purpose, according to the President, is to help us all to know…

… exactly what I think will solve our healthcare crisis, they will have a lot of clarity about what I think is the best to move forward. So the intent of the speech is to, A, make sure that the American people know exactly what it is we are proposing, B, to make sure that Democrats and Republicans understand that I am open to new ideas, that not being rigid and ideological, but we do intend to get something done this year.

So, “what I think will solve our healthcare crisis” and “what I think is the best to move forward”… Thus far since taking office, what he thinks is best doesn’t line up very well with what history has proven to be best for the country. I hope he does better than that. And is it just me, or does B contradict A just a little bit? I mean, if he’s gonna let us know exactly what it is that’s being proposed, is it safe to assume that the leaders of the House and Senate are going to get it right and not throw their pet projects in there? I don’t think that’s a safe assumption at all. He seemed to be pretty clueless about what was in HB 3200; will his dulcet tones make all the difference and soothe us into complacency so we’ll just bend over and take it in the rear? Or will those tones convince Congress that they need to just ignore public opinion and pass what he thinks is best for us?

I won’t likely be listening in — I’ll just read the transcript of it later. Listening to that voice for that long will definitely exceed my ewww factor for the day, and besides, what he’s going to say is pretty predictable, judging by what I’ve read from people who’ve been given a preview of what he’s going to say.

The problem is that the guy hasn’t got much credibility left; HB 3200 is the only legislation that has been made public, and there are huge inconsistencies between it and what he says is “in the plan”. I just don’t buy anything he has to say on the subject.

He’s already telegraphed what he ultimately wants to see in healthcare reform legislation, and that’s a state-controlled healthcare industry with a massive bureaucracy overseeing it and huge tax increases to pay for it. I’ll be the first to admit that there are problems with the healthcare system, but it’s not so broken that we need this kind of cure. And he may be telling the truth in saying that he’ll settle for less, but that’s what he and the rest of the statists in Congress will be working toward, if only through small increments. They say there are 40-some million people in the US without healthcare insurance; even if that’s true (and those figures are highly questionable) is it worth screwing up the system that works pretty darned well for the other 260 million of us who do? Even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says they can’t pull it off the way they’d like to; any healthcare reform they pass now will leave more people uninsured in five years than we have now, and will cost far more than Congress and the President say it will; in the end we’ll have tax increases and healthcare rationing. There’s no way around it. And I for one do NOT want some bureaucrat deciding whether my kid is worth the expenditure of the Government’s precious and limited healthcare resources. And the President has the temerity to tell us the idea of “death panels” is ridiculous… It’s only a logical next step down the path he wants us to go.

I think President Obama suffers from a bit of guilt that he wants to assuage on a grand scale; he says that, “… the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough.” I admire his desire to help those who need help, but this plan of his won’t. And there is plenty of evidence to show this plan to be little more than a pretext for other things he wants to accomplish that will work just as poorly, and leave a terrible legacy for us all to endure.

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