From Mike Lester (click for full-size):

From Steve Breen.  (Click for a larger version.)

Yeah, and racists.

But good examples of what, exactly?

From Mike Ramirez (click for a larger version):

Shire Network News #167 has been released. The feature interview is with Charles Winecoff, a contributor to the Big Hollywood blog for conservatives working in the creative arts. He says coming out as a conservative was harder than telling people he was gay. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News asking you to "Consider This!".

Candidate Barack Obama said that we needed health care reform in the US, but blasted fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton for proposing a mandatory insurance requirement.  President Obama now thinks this is a feature, not a bug; a benefit that we just need to get on board with.  But there’s more, much more!  If you act now…  (Oh, sorry, I was channeling Billy Mays for a second there.) 

Anyway, while there are many positives to the proposal, here are the Top 9 Benefits of ObamaCare(tm):

9 – No more pesky Canadians crossing the border to avoid their long waiting lines.  Ours will be just as long.

8 – We’ll be the envy of the third world.

7 – Health insurance will be just like car insurance; you have to have it, it’ll cover less as you get older, and your children can trade you in during our Cash for Clunkers program.

6 – Getting rid of of Grandma & Grandpa sooner means cost savings to you, not including the Christmas & birthday presents you don’t have to buy anymore.

5 – Electronic records means that your medical history will soon have its own Facebook page.

4- Medicine will no longer be prescribed subject to, as Scott Ott has called it, "diagnosis discrimination"; simply based on a doctor’s opinion.  Government bureaucrats will now be on a level playing field.

3 – It’ll make David Letterman forget all about Sarah Palin.

2 – Cost-cutting measure: close rural hospitals.  It’s OK that farmers will be travelling farther for health care, because we’ll mandate they buy an electric car.

And the #1 benefit of ObamaCare(tm):

If we had already had it, Michael Jackson would still be alive.

Yes, and Christopher Reeve, too, I imagine.  Consider this.

From Chuck Asay (click for a larger version):

No, really, nothing’s changed at all.

Shire Network News #163 has been released. Instead of an interview this week, "Tom Paine" in Australia joins Meryl Yourish in Richmond Virginia, and "Brian of London" in Tel Aviv for a three-way discussion about life, politics, Jihadi’s attacking on every front while Obama sits back, peers hawkishly in the opposite direction and says "War? What war?", how to get one’s political comedy mojo back and the vitally important topic of moat-dredging. It’s a LOT more relevant than you might think.  Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News, asking you to "Consider This!"

That scourge of the world, that Auschwitz of the West, the human rights debacle commonly known as "Gitmo", the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, is going to be closed, much to the relief of anti-war activists everywhere.  It was on January 22nd of this year, 2 days after taking office, that President Barack Obama signed an order to shut it down within the year.  With 9 months left on the clock, how’s that going?

This past week, the fiscal year 2009 spending bill included Obama’s request for money to handle this.  However, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, a Democrat, stripped the $80 million from the bill because the administration had not actually presented a "concrete program" to close it.  In short, Obey … didn’t.  So it seems that Barack Obama doesn’t really have an "exit strategy" for dealing with this problem; he’s just throwing money at it, something the Left is exemplary at.  And while cooler heads in the Democratic party are prevailing, one would think, one would hope, that the coolest head ought to be at the top.  Well, just keep hoping.

At the same time he signed the order to close Gitmo, Obama also suspended the proceedings of the Guantanamo military commission for 120 days.  He’s said during the campaign that, “by any measure our system of trying detainees has been an enormous failure,” and declaring that as president he would “reject the Military Commissions Act.”  So how’s that going?

Well, now the administration is becoming more open to using tribunals because of the difficulty in trying these cases in the federal court system.  Some may still be, but one administration official said that the more they looked at it, the more the tribunals didn’t look as bad as they did on January 20th.  Apparently, he was the spokesman for other officials who were busy putting out the fires they’d set on their bridges behind them.  If things look much different "the more you look at it", that sounds like you should have been looking at it a bit more in the first place, before shooting your mouth off and throwing red meat to your supporters.  You’re the President, or you were running for it then, and cooler heads ought to have … well, you know the drill.

No, what we have is a pandering President proclaiming pompously panaceas promoted primarily by pernicious panels of people.  Pathetic.  We can only hope that, going forward, the leader of the free world will take just a little more time to consider this.

From Michael Ramirez:

(Click on the cartoon for a larger version.)

Until Hamas is willing to alter their charter, calling for the destruction of Israel, is there any reason to think they’re negotiating in good faith?

From Chuck Asay:

(Click on the cartoon for a larger version.)

He’s just going to introduce efficiencies into the system, that’s all.  No, really.

All that’s left for the economic stimulus bill is for President Obama to sign it.  A round-up of reaction:

Dan Spencer at RedState notes an Obama quote from the day before the bill passed, “We are not going to be able to perpetually finance the levels of debt that the federal government is currently carrying.”  The accompanying graphic is the ultimate irony.

CBS news reports that the President is going to convene a “fiscal responsibility summit” on February 23rd.  Again with the irony.  The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

And finally, satirist Scott Ott engages in some wishful thinking:

President Barack Obama said today that “after a restless night’s sleep” he will veto the $787 billion economic stimulus package passed by Democrats in Congress on Friday.

“I had a dream,” said a visibly shaken Mr. Obama. “that my daughters, Sasha and Malia, were trapped under the 1,100-page legislation. In the dream I saw my girls as women in their forties and they were still paying for this. I woke up, and did the math, and realized that it wasn’t just a dream. Has anybody read this thing yet?”

Read the whole thing, even if Congress won’t.

This is a meme that blazing through Facebook; you write 25 random things about you and tag 25 other people to do it themselves.  Usually these are short, 1-sentence items, but, hey, I blog; I can’t just do a quick list.

For your information, here’s what I wrote:

Personal note: This is probably longer than the usual response to this meme. I’m like that (and it’s one of the 25 items below).

I’m a Christian, I love Jesus, and I don’t apologize for it. I won’t beat you over the head with it, but I certainly won’t hide it, either. If you ask, I’ll answer.

The way I met my wife Susan is one of those small-world stories. While working at a summer camp after my senior year of high school, I met her sister, Joy, who was also a counselor. She was going to be a senior at the same college I would be a freshman at; Asbury College. So I got to know her to find out more about Asbury. Then, my senior year, as I was bringing my sister to the school (her freshman year) I saw Susan and though, “I either know her, or someone related to her.” They looked very much alike. Separately, I got to know a guy named Kevin who was also a freshman and was taking computer classes (as was I). Turned out that Susan and he went to the same missionary boarding school in Malaysia (Dalat International School).

My first car was a 1976 Dodge Coronet Crestwood station wagon, which was already rather old by the time I purchased it in 1983 from Zikakus Chevrolet (Ithaca, NY). It was so big, I named it the Battlestar Galactica. Its size came in handy, from carting a carload for camp staff breaks, to hauling all the luggage back to school after a van accident at an Asbury College SASF retreat, to hauling everything I owned in the world to my first job in Atlanta, GA. Sometimes, in order to start it, I had to take the air filter cover off, put something in the “butterfly” flap to keep it open (like a stick), and then it would crank up. Susan and I went on our honeymoon in it because the Ford Escort I had purchased in Atlanta was stolen shortly before the wedding. More and more started going out on it (power steering pump, radiator) that, in 1987, I finally gave it to the auto mechanic who’d worked on it for so long so he could scrap it for parts.

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