**Bumped for UPDATE with message from the band**

While performing at the inaugural ball honoring America’s military veterans, some wounded vets are reported to have walked out on funk Musician George Clinton over a perceived on stage insult to George W. Bush.

The Washington Times is reporting that during the Heroes Red, White and Blue Inaugural Ball a white towel with the word “[Expletive] GEORGE” spelled out on it was displayed by band members of George Clinton and the P. Funk All-Stars.

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Terrorists, murders, oppressors and Islamofascists understandably were not very fond of George W. Bush. Neither were the fellow travelers of the aforementioned lowest rung of the human ladder in Europe, those in the offices of the ACLU and the Democratic Party fond of our late president. This is well understood. But what does the ascension of Barack Hussein Obama mean to them? More importantly, what will what it means to them mean for us?

We have been told by our sycophantic Old Media establishment that Obama is a gift to the world, “our” gift to the world. We are told that he is the one we are waiting for. The L.A. Times, for instance, featured a purportedly heart warming, post inaugural story of three complaining immigrants to the US that seem to imagine that Obama’s presidency will bring them a new era. One complained that we didn’t let him into the U.S. soon enough from the terror producing country of Pakistan. One said we are hated in the world, but Obama lifts that veil. Another whined that working here was no longer a key to success because the country is a failure compared to what it was for immigrants 30 years ago. All three are Muslims.

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The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has been in a struggle with its sister union, the United Healthcare Workers (UHW), for quite some time over the eventual disbanding of the UHW and its absorption into the larger SEIU based in Washington D.C. Needless to say, the local folks of the UHW in California are not pleased to lose their local control of their own union affairs to the far off Washington offices of the SEIU.

The clash has been growing increasingly heated with UHW officials speaking out in dismay at the combined unions yearly convention in Puerto Rico last year after which both sides began to file lawsuits against each other for various offenses real and imagined. It’s a real donnybrook and this week the situation took one more step toward vitriol and turmoil.

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With the disingenuous premise that the majority of Republican voters are actually pro-abortion, Republican Majority for Choice is celebrating President Obama’s repeal of the policy that prohibits federal money from flowing to foreign abortion mills — variously called the Mexico City Policy, the family planning gag rule, or the global gag rule.

This group forms a sort of enemy within that, while small, has great appeal to the far left in America when they are looking to promote what they consider “reasonable” Republicans — and by “reasonable” they mean Republicans that don’t actually believe in anything other Republicans believe in. This being the case, there is no surprise that this group’s largest success is found in the quixotic state of Colorado they having garnered the support of long-time Colorado Republican Hank Brown — former Senator and late president of the University of Colorado.

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On January 22 the Associated Press posted an interesting little tidbit of news about how Team Obama is treating the press. Apparently, the Obama White House is trying to force news agencies to use Obama’s own, special, ostensibly “official” photographer’s photos taken at Obama press conferences instead of allowing news agencies to have their own photogs present to record the event. As a result of this attempt by Obama to control his image, the AP and Reuters are a bit miffed that Obama is trying to control the press with such an iron fisted move like this.

All I have to ask is: NOW they get worried that Obama is not too dedicated to freedom of the press? After Obama is fairly elected, NOW the Old Media is beginning to question The One on his treatment of them?

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There used to be a saying in the vaunted counter-culture days of the 1960′s that went: “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” This bit of instant doggerel was used to justify all sorts of aberrant, self destructive behavior by the hippie generation like drug use, sexual promiscuity and a rampant anti-intellectualism. Thankfully, that foolish era has passed us… more or less. Unfortunately a new era has dawned turning the USA into an Obamanation that may end up reviving the worst of the 60′s era. The new phrase might be considered to have now become “Turn O, give in, bail out.”

Well, at the very least drug dealers in New York have signed on wholly to the new Obamanation and they have found the most suitable product to represent the new age. The Sullivan County Sheriff’s office have busted a drug ring selling “Obama heroin.”

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On January 22, Representative Mike Pence (R-Indiana) introduced H.R.614, an amendment to Title X of the Public Health Service Act that would eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the controversial organization that operates abortion mills across the country.

Barack Obama should be well known for his constant votes supporting the most outrageous form of “abortion” during his tenure as a State Senator for Illinois. I put abortion in quotes because Obama’s vote against BAIPA, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, in Illinois amounts to his support of outright infanticide and not mere abortion.

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So, where exactly did the communist graphics inspired artist Shepard Fairey get the image of Obama for his ubiquitous “Hope” poster featuring a confident, young Obama intently staring off into the distance for glorious leader’s future, anyway? Turns out the celebrated artist stole it from an Associated Press freelance photographer and never bothered to acknowledge where he got it in the first place. I guess the word “ethics” didn’t fit as easily on that iconic Fairey poster, eh?

At least one Old Media photographer was curious about the source photo that the poster was based on. Philadelphia Inquirer photog Tom Gralish wondered aloud on his phillynews.com blog about just where the heck that original photo came from? Apparently among the shooter set in the Old Media the question had become a nagging one and Gralish decided to put on his sleuthing cap to track down the original source. After a short time at the task he discovered the original, uncredited photo used by Fairey to make the wildly successful poster that made him bundles of cash.

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The dulcet tones of Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Izhak Perlman, pianist Gabriella Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill floated out among the crowd to celebrate the ascension of The One on Tuesday. It was music to soothe the savage beast from some of the best known performers of American classical music. The assembled performers were there to entertain the masses to celebrate the coming. All eagerly strained to hear the delicate work of America’s musical masters.

Unfortunately it was a recording. The classical gas was a mere Milli Vanilli-a-rama.

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WARNING… Video Below Fold

So what do you get when you mix a Canadian TV hostess with the venerable Helen Thomas? An admission of bias so strong that it could ward off a vampire. Just why the image of the undead first came to my mind is anybody’s guess, but there you have it.

On a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation morning TV interview show called “Sun Day,” Thomas was interviewed on how she felt about presidents past, present what was to be future with the Obama inauguration still then days away. She was also quizzed on her profession in which Thomas claimed only liberals should be engaged. And that isn’t all. She also said that conservatives are neither thinking nor caring people.

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In the midst of the Obama coronation in Washington this week, school board member Sheila Patterson of the Jackson Public School System in Jackson, Michigan told teachers in her district that if they don’t show Barack Obama’s inauguration in the class room they should just “go home.” Patterson further told teachers that if they didn’t show the ceremony they “don’t belong in this school district.” Patterson also tsked such teachers sternly alerting them that she was “very, very disappointed.”

The news report of this incident notes that 43 percent of the school district is comprised of minorities. I suppose that means that the 57 percent that isn’t minority either does not deserve to have their opinions known, or is presumed not to have wanted to see the ceremony. Either way, we have what shapes up to be a school board member throwing the race card at what she is trying to paint as racist teachers.

It was later discovered that many teachers wanted to show the ceremony on their class computers, but the Internet of the District was overloaded and many couldn’t get a connection. No word if Sheila Patterson will apologize for her racist outburst and her assumptions that whites hate Barack Obama and didn’t want to celebrate his big day.

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Anne Applebaum said she was reaching for a metaphor to describe the dreamy Barack Obama when she started her Slate piece on January 19. Instead of reaching for a metaphor, however, she only got a handful of absurd hyperbole when she decided that Barack Obama was “just like” Captain C.B. “Sully” Sullenberger, the hero pilot that saved the lives of his entire planeload of people by landing it safely in the Hudson River last week. But, after she went wild with her “metaphor” about Obama, Applebaum ended her piece with some really solid warnings about government overreach.

Still, the first half of Applebaum’s column was so silly that its hard to know where to start discussing its over-the-top nature. But, lets begin at the top with her ill-fitting conflation of Capt. Sullenberger’s excellent job, an “anti-9/11″ she absurdly claimed, and the terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center in 2001. There is simply no logical way to relate the two incidents at all, but Applebaum makes a valiant and risible attempt to do so.

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An extremely liberal co-worker of mine — he’s in the past said that the “rich” should be killed, for instance — asked me a serious question by which he felt he could gauge whether or not I was a “real” American in his eyes during the rise of the age of Obama. He wondered whether I wish success for Barack Obama as our president. After a few seconds of reflection I had to honestly give a qualified “no” in answer to his query. Naturally this fellow went off about how it was unAmerican to wish the president to fail and how it would damage the country. But, after he briefly calmed down, and brief calm is usually all we can expect from him, I gave him a fuller explanation.

I reminded him that it was a qualified no I gave him. Of course every American wants his president to be successful on every count that will benefit the country. No true American wants to see a monumental, destructive, Carteresque failure in the White House. My liberal co-worker is correct on that count. No one wants the next Buchanan, who, Nero-like, fiddled while Washington D.C. and the country burned. We want them all to be Reagans, Washingtons and Lincolns.

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Last Thursday, Barack Obama’s nominee for Attorney General, Eric Holder, admitted during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing that he supported renewing the part of the Patriot Act that allows for the FBI to seek records from businesses, libraries and bookstores as the policing agency investigates suspects in this country. For years we’ve seen news agencies and opinionists rail against the expanded power of the FBI to search such records. But, now with Obama’s AG announcing in his confirmation hearing that he agrees that the FBI should have this power, all anti-Bush administration voices are silent on the matter that had them so exercised for 6 years.

Since 2002 the debate has raged about the efficacy and Constitutionality of the Patriot Act with the power of the FBI to search bookstore and library records coming in for special condemnation. Even as the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld the law, right to privacy groups, the media and anti-Bushies have pointed to this particular policy and cried Orwell or worse.

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Byron York from NRO’s The Corner Blog noticed an interesting little tidbit in The New York Times on January 18. In the Times’ recounting of all the interesting events going on in the Capitol surrounding the inauguration of The One, the Times seemed very excited that it was suddenly “cool” to be patriotic.

WASHINGTON is suddenly hip again, infused with the heady double-barreled combination of a new crowd of idealistic young political worker bees, who actually believe they can change the world, and the arrival of America’s first black president. It’s even cool to wave the Stars and Stripes. And in the honeymoon months of the Barack Obama presidency, before the country’s marriage to its new president undergoes the usual souring, a trip to the nation’s capital is just the ticket. Why, it would almost be unpatriotic not to visit.

This is far more a revealing and disgusting display of the unpatriotic demeanor of the left than a demonstration of excitement over the Obammessiah’s big day.

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Old Media Talking Out of Both Sides (of Their Mouths) About Palin

As we all know, Governor Sarah Palin has over the last week come out swinging at the Old Media and some far left elements of the new one. With the release of the Palin interview segment by documentarian John Ziegler and the subsequent wheezing attack by Pat Dougherty of the Alaska Daily News, Palin has once again taken center stage in a media maelstrom.

The Anchorage Press has a nice, fair re-cap of this current imbroglio between the Palin hatin’ Old Media and the governor of Alaska. One part of this article, though, is a spot on question that the ravenous Old Media should be forced to answer. If they all hate Palin so much, if they are all so sure she is a has been and is through on the national political scene, why are they clamoring so to get interviews with her, why the constant reporting on her?

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The Boston Globe had an interesting piece on January 19 that pretty much proved that the left is never, ever interested in working with others, only in conquering and destroying others. They aren’t interested in the ages old American system of compromise but only in the Marxian concept of destruction, absorption and recreation.

The occasion of this example was a piece on the foolish outreach to the American left made by evangelical leader Rick Warren. In “Effort to surmount polarizing debates backfires on pastor, the Globe unwittingly revealed the depths of the politics of personal destruction in which the left engages when they find opposing views.

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Los Angeles, California has a new initiative underway called “Measure B” that would basically award a monopolistic, no-bids contract to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union (IBEW), the union that would be given the task to install the things in the city. Campaigners for the initiative have so far raised $267,000 with two-thirds of that coming from the very unions that would benefit from the unfair set asides that would exclude outside companies from being able to bid on the installation.

It’s a bit convenient that the group that would benefit most is almost fully funding the drive to get this measure passed, isn’t it? Especially given the fact that solar cell technology is still far too expensive to install and maintain to be cost effective. A recent study claimed that, for home use, it would take a homeowner 100 years to recoup the costs of installing solar cells. Now, pile on top of that basic fact the many millions that will be wasted by giving the installation job to a union, and pile on top of that the other corruption taxes that a big city adds to any project, and we can easily realize that this is nothing but a giant boondoggle to the tax payer and, of course, another undeserved but giant boon to the unions.

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In his Saturday remarks during his campaign train ride, President-elect Barack Obama issued some soaring rhetoric about the state of the country today. At least the Old Media thought it was soaring rhetoric, anyway. Typically, the media was overawed by his mellifluous tones, of course. But during these remarks in Baltimore Obama made a startling suggestion. He said we need a “new Declaration of Independence.”

Apparently the original one isn’t good enough for the new president, but it also seems a silly rhetorical flourish. After all, what is it that we are declaring independence from this time? Recall that the original one was a declaration of separation from an oppressive monarchy, one that led to a seven-year-long war. Are we in such dire straits now?

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In these tough financial times it is no surprise that school districts all across the country are crying poor and some of them probably even are. Corners are being cut, positions go unfilled by new applicants, budgets are cut; it is an everyday occurrence these days. Justified or not, the same is no less true in Big Hollow School District 38 in Lake County, Illinois (North of Chicago).

Lennie Jarratt of the Education Matters blog has an interesting story of probable influence peddling by the Big Hollow School Board. Like school districts everywhere, for months the school board has turned down hiring a school nurse and has resisted filling other empty positions citing budget concerns. But that didn’t stop the School Board from inventing a whole new position, essentially in secret, and then picking one of its own members to take that position at an undisclosed salary.

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