It’s been a long 8 years.

In that time, we’ve witnessed the worst of humanity, and the best.
And during that time, President George W Bush (a man I twice voted for) has been (all in all) a decent leader.

Correct – I don’t agree with some of the things he’s done.
Correct – I think the beginning of OIF was not handled well by those in his administration.
Correct – I’ve come to realized he’s NOT a fiscal conservative.

Yet, for all his faults, what I’m truly thankful for is:

–> He’s a man of decent character.
–> He loves our country.
–> He is compassionate (sometimes to a fault).
–> He holds a sacred and deep respect for our military, and he isn’t afraid to show it.

As to the last one on that list, take for example the speech he gave at Ft. Campbell KY just this week. Here’s a link:

Note the expression on his face at different times during this vid.

He loves our military.
And judging by their reactions…they love him.

And as we head into the long Thanksgiving weekend…I am truly thankful for this.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, from Nos, Talismen, and everyone at The Nos Blog.

As predicted, Obama supporters are beginning to furrow their brows, as they slowly come to the realization that their “messiah” really can’t deliver on all his promises to them.

Despite the fact that they were sold a bill of goods that no politician could ever deliver, they obviously still expected him to bring about the “change” they supposedly could only dream of. So now, “the one” is beginning to lose his luster, and those of us who knew he wasn’t all he was cracked up to be are considering taking up a collection to buy a cork for the whine starting to come from his supporters:

First, we had his campaign workers crying about not being paid what they were promised.
See this article at Jawa. Here’s a snip:

“They gave us $10 an hour. So we added it. I added up all the hours so it was supposed to be at least $120. All I get is $90,” said Charles Martin.

“I worked nine hours a day for 4 days and got paid half of what I should have earned,” said Randall Waldon.

Now there are reports of those in the so-called “anti-war” movement (I can think of a better name for that “movement”) crying over what looks like a more hawkish assembly of cabinet members for the incoming administration.

Case in point, here’s a bit of news from an LA Times article (written by Paul Richter). The “anti-war” (read “anti-American”) crowd is pouring out some of their own whine as well:
(snip)

Antiwar groups and other liberal activists are increasingly concerned at signs that Barack Obama’s national security team will be dominated by appointees who favored the Iraq invasion and hold hawkish views on other important foreign policy issues.

The activists are uneasy not only about signs that both Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates could be in the Obama Cabinet, but at reports suggesting that several other short-list candidates for top security posts backed the decision to go to war.

“Obama ran his campaign around the idea the war was not legitimate, but it sends a very different message when you bring in people who supported the war from the beginning,” said Kelly Dougherty, executive director of the 54-chapter Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Ahhh yes. Obama didn’t know what he was getting into, when he bent over and grabbed his ankles for the extreme left.

So, in an effort to get these “brow-beaters” off his back, Obama has dispatched members of his team to lower expectations for the dear “messiah”, in an attempt to calm his “beloved peasants” (apologies to Carol Burnett). See this article from CBS2Chicago (written by Mike Flannery):
(snip)

President-elect Barack Obama and his inner circle fear that some voters expect him to turn around the economy, wind down the war in Iraq and, perhaps, cure cancer — all by the Fourth of July.

They know they must manage and lower those expectations, CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports.

A top economic advisor to Obama had a glum warning for the rest of us Thursday morning: Neither the job market nor the stock market will be turning around any time soon.

“This might be a long haul,” said Robert Reich, who was President Bill Clinton’s secretary of labor. “2009 is going to be a very hard year. Some economists say we won’t be out of this for two years, others are saying it may be three, or four, maybe five years.”

Now on Obama’s transition team, Reich worries about what happens after the new president is sworn in Jan. 20.

“We all have to be very careful about the expectations that we are putting on this man, our president-elect,” Reich said. “If we all assume it’s going to be the first 100 days, we’re going to be disappointed.”

But….but….I thought this man’s election would “slow the rise of the oceans”?
I thought he would begin to “heal” the planet?

Hmmmm????

The “Blue Dog” Dem coalition has (formally) been around since 1995.

Back in 2004, just after George W Bush won his 2nd term and many new “Blue Dogs” were elected to the house and senate, I said then that they may be the “death” of the extreme lurch to the left for the democrat party.

Well, according to the election results from a few weeks ago, the “Blue Dog” coalition upped their members by two (and possibly one more, depending on a still undecided seat in the south).

If there’s one thing conservatives of all stripes can be thankful for (as we head into Thanksgiving week), it’s the fact that “Blue Dogs” tend to stick to their “fiscally conservative” mold. And with that in mind, Obama/Pelosi/Reid may have a huge fight on their hands for at least the next 4 years:

Newsmax has a nice article on this, here:
(snip below)

The left may still be crowing about its resounding Election Day victory, but it’s the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats who are emerging as a significant force in the upcoming Congress.

The influential Blue Dog coalition of House Democrats saw their ranks increase on Election Day, and they’re likely to gain even greater power on Capitol Hill with an ally in the White House.

Just a few days after his victory, President-elect Barack Obama tapped his chief economic adviser, Jason Furman, to consult regularly with the Blue Dog leadership on economic issues.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, acknowledged the new power of centrists when she said, a few days after her party gained at least 20 House seats, that “the country must be governed from the middle.”

Blue Dogs, for their part, say they’ll hold Obama’s feet to the fire.

When we consider what’s going on with the “Mother Of All Bailouts”, the more fiscally conservative” leaders there are, the better.

Pass the turkey please.

You want proof that the big three (GM, Ford & Chrysler) have put themselves in the bind they are in now? See the story linked and quoted below.

Combine the fact that the big three haven’t been producing cars Americans want, but rather producing cars that they want to sell, along with the fact that big unions and their “gimmie” contracts have totally cut ANY profit the companies have been making….and you have the mess we see today in the auto industry in this country. If the big three management regimes had stood up to the unions and said “yes, we’ll pay you a comfortable wage, but a line must be drawn somewhere”, they might not find themselves in the mess they are in. And now they (and most democrats and a few RINO republicans) expect the U.S. taxpayers to bail them out?! I don’t think so.

The best thing they could do is file for bankruptcy, which will then allow them to tear up the existing union contracts and start over.

There’s a reason why the Toyota, BMW and Honda plants in the United States make more profit….
It’s because they don’t cow-tow to the unions.

Here’s the link to that story, and here’s a bit of quoted material:

Monday, November 17, 2008

$73/Hour Bailout

Posted by: Amanda Carpenter at 10:57 AM

Detroit hasn’t been making cars people want to buy and was catering to Big Labor demands long before the mortgage crisis hit. It’s no wonder why they aren’t competitive anymore. (I say this as a Flint, Michigan native.)

Mark Perry of the wonderful Carpe Diem blog put together this chart showing the inflated wages the Big Three automakers pay over their competitors. Big Three union workers, with their gold-plated health care plans, make about $73 an hour in total compensation. And, now they’re begging Washington for a bailout before they even think about negotiating with the UAW.

(Fantastic chart courtesy of Mark Perry @ Carpe Diem blog)

Maddening, isn’t it?
If you think so too, see the story Michelle Malkin has posted, here.
She’s got embedded links in there, so be sure to check those out as well.

Well well well…it seems Bill Ayers (unapologetic terrorist)…the man Barack Obama said was just “a guy in my neighborhood”…is now saying that he and Obama are “family friends”. Read here.

(snip)

Ayers: Obama was ‘family friend’
New afterword to 2001 book, Ayers describes Barack Obama as ‘family friend’

November 13, 2008

BY KARA SPAK and ABON PALLASCH Staff Reporters

In a new afterword to his 2001 book, Bill Ayers, former leader of the 1960s radical group Weather Underground, describes President-elect Barack Obama as a “family friend” and denies he wished his group had set off more bombs in the 1960s.

Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, adds few new details about his relationship with Obama in the afterword to Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist. The book is being reissued this month.

“We had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fund-raiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign,” he writes.

So – 52% of voters were duped.
Well….that would actually be a smaller percentage than 52%, since there were some that never heard of the Obama/Ayers issue, and still others who refused to live up to their responsibilities as voters and investigate everything they can about the candidates.

Either way – over at Confederate Yankee, they’ve posted this note to the “52″ percent:

Dear 52,

It seems the man you entrusted with your vote lied about his relationship with domestic terrorist and attempted mass murderer Bill Ayers.

Many of you either didn’t hear about Ayers, or accepted Obama’s evolving explanations that Ayers was “just a guy in his neighborhood,” or someone that he thought had gone through some sort of terrorist rehabilitation—perhaps at the Yasser Arafat wing of the Betty Ford Clinic.

But now that Ayers has come out and admitted that their relationship is very close—”family friends” is how he put it—how does that make you feel?

I ask, becuase as Malcolm once explained, you’ve been hoodwinked. You’ve been had. You’ve been took. You’ve been led astray, led amok. You’ve been bamboozled.

You’ve been conned in to voting the family friend of a known terrorist into the White House.

How does that make you feel?

My guess is…they don’t care.
Or at least…they will not care until the disillusionment begins…which will not take long.

(*chuckle)