If you know who Rush Limbaugh is and how the president recently took a personal shot at him, the title of this post might sound like a joke to you. Well, it’s not. And if there’s anybody out there actually reading this I’d like to call your attention to it. First, the setup:

Despite all his talk about listening to the other side and being willing to consider any idea that might work, our new President has shot down Republican talk of tax cuts with lines like “I won. I’m going to trump you on that.” Translation: “we’re not even considering conservative tax cuts, so shut up about it.” Rush has also observed that the “conservative leaders” Obama met with a couple of weeks ago are actually moderate conservatives, which means: liberal-lites. The people who tend to compromise or give in with those who stand for the exact opposite of what they’re supposed to. These, apparently, are the people Obama wants the public to regard as the leadership of the opposition, rather than anyone who actually, y’know, upholds conservatism.

Obama makes a lot of noise about being bipartisan, but Rush notes that his definition of bipartisanship appears to be Republicans caving in and doing whatever Obama wants. Rather than just rail against it, however, Rush has decided to take Obama at his word - or call Obama on his bluff, depending on how you look at it - and make a genuinely bipartisan proposal:

I love this.  Obama is unlikely to go for it, as Rush himself admits.  But I think it’s brilliant, because it leaves Obama with only losing options:

1) Accept the plan.

The tax cuts will strengthen the private sector and also provide evidence that liberal-style stimulus plans don’t work, which would make it harder for them to grow government.  Since growing government and securing political power for themselves is what the Democrats are really after, this would be a disaster for them.

2) Pretend to consider the plan.

This is dangerous, because it legitimizes Rush as a true voice of conservatism in America.  Obama wants to deal with liberal-lite, not real ideological opposition.

3) Refuse or ignore it.

This will reveal Obama’s claims of bipartisanship to be a lie.  There’s nothing else that’s truly bipartisan being considered, and if Rush extends the olive branch and offers a compromise even after the personal swipe Obama took at him and Obama rejects it, well…  What is the noise he makes about being willing to listen and work with the other side really worth? 

And if he tries to go the “ignore it” route, it might even create a rift between him and his PR machine  the mainstream media.  They’ll want an answer from The Messiah, and he tends to get a bit snippy when they lob anything other than softball questions at him.

I can’t wait to see how this plays out.

Cort Wrotnowski’s application to SCOTUS has been denied.  I don’t know why at this point, but legally or not Obama will be the next POTUS.

The Supreme Court decided not to hear Leo Donofrio’s case.  However, the issue that case raised is still live.

There was one other case - by a man named Cort Wrotnowski - presented to the SCOTUS based on the same issue.  Donofrio helped Cort work on his case and, by Donofrio’s own admission, Cort’s case is better written (it wasn’t produced under as tight a deadline) and is free of legal complications that emerged in the lower courts.  Donofrio speculates that the SCOTUS may have rejected his own case not because they didn’t want to consider the issue, but because they prefered to officially address it via Wrotnowski’s case instead.

They discussed Wrotnowski’s case in conference on Friday the 12th.  We’ll probably find out what they decided sometime in the next day or two.

By the way, Donofrio has moved his blog to Wordpress (and it seems to be working much better for him).  You can find it here: http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/

Having only lately begun to have much interest in political history, I didn’t know until recently that Reagan was known as “The Great Communicator.”  Via a YouTube link provided by Tidestemmer, tonight I know why:

This is the man liberals called “an amiable dunce?”  If the same mentality is behind the mocking of Sarah Palin’s intelligence today, then simply pointing that fact out qualifies as high praise of her mental prowess.

Cross-posted to both of my blogs:

We all know how torture goes in children’s cartoons: you get tickled with a feather rather than poked with a hot iron.  We can’t show our little tykes real torture methods - no matter how much they have it coming - so instead we give them something more akin to Mel Brooks singing about the Inquisition than the Inquisition itself.  But you’ve always thought “it doesn’t happen in real life,” right?

Think again.  Via Michelle Malkin, I learn that Fort Lupton Municipal Judge Paul Sacco deals with noise ordinance violators by making them listen to sounds they don’t like.  That’s right, get too loud on Mr. Sacco’s turf and he’ll sentence you to listen to Barry Manilow.  For real.  Apparently he doesn’t get many repeat offenders, but oh dear God:  So.  Many.  8th Amendment.  Jokes.

We have got to get this judge into the Supreme Court.  I will donate money to this cause.  And I will read Vogon poetry to anyone who opposes me.

Via Michael Leeden at The Corner on National Review Online I learn that 30 Marines were ambushed by about 250 terrorists - excuse me, “insurgents” - in Shewan, a city in Afghanistan: http://www.military.com/news/article/marine-corps-news/marine-makes-insurgents-pay-the-price.html

The results?  Forgive me for the gaming reference, but if this had been a CRPG I’d have said that the Marines were massively over-leveled.  Despite the bad guys having tremendous advantages in numbers, surprise and home-field advantage, our troops killed or wounded dozens and routed the rest without taking a single serious injury in return.  One corporal - who had coolly sniped about 20 of the enemy while under fire himself - demonstrated that the Corps had trained him in the use of litotes as well as weaponry by remarking, “it was a good day for the Marine Corps.”

No @#$%.  Can you imagine how much faster the war in Iraq could have been won if our troops had just been allowed to fight properly from the beginning?

Carry on, you magnificent, elite sons-of-bitches.

UPDATED: SEE END OF POST

Holy crap.

I’ve just learned this morning that Barrack Obama may be ineligible for the presidency for reasons that have nothing to do with his birth certificate.  Regardless of where he was born, his father was a Kenyan national.  Therefore Obama could legally be claimed by two different nations at birth, which means he does not qualify as a “natural born” citizen of the U.S.  And that’s one of the Constitutional requirements for becoming the POTUS.

You can read a summary by the guy who’s pressing the case here: http://www.blogtext.org/naturalborncitizen/article/29493.html

The reason the popular vote wasn’t delayed until the Supreme Court could deal with this is because, apparently, a clerk of the SCOTUS illegally blocked them from hearing of it.  If this is truly the case, may he land in boiling-hot water for it.  Regardless, it has gotten through to Justice Thomas and it looks like the SCOTUS will discuss this on December 5th.  If they back this, Obama is out his new job.

My first thought on learning this was: “that means Biden will be leading, with Nancy Pelosi singing backup.”  That lead directly to my second thought, which was: “God damn it, this country just cannot catch a break.”

But that may not happen.  The Electoral College doesn’t meet and cast their votes until December 15th, giving the SCOTUS time to deal with it.  If Obama is disqualified before then, who knows what could happen?  Could we yet see McCain and/or Palin in the White House this January?

Again, with feeling: holy crap.

But hey, all you leftists look on the bright side - now you’ll have an excuse to give us those riots you promised us if Obama lost.  I felt totally gypped when we missed our chance to have those, y’know.

In case you want to follow this further, here’s the blog of the man behind this: http://thenaturalborncitizen.blogspot.com/

UPDATE: I should point out that Donofrio - the man who put this issue before the Supreme Court - also argues that McCain is not a natural born citizen either.  So if the SCOTUS decides that he’s right, both presidential candidates may be disqualified.  I have no idea what that will mean when the Electoral Collage votes.

Via Michelle Malkin I learn that there may be a conference sometime next year for conservative bloggers to discuss strategy for retaking the government in future elections.  Sounds good.  But here’s an issue I’d also like to see bloggers focus on: practical measures for the protection of free speech.

Many in the new government are going to be hostile to free speech and will want to implement measures such as the misnamed “Fairness” Doctrine to control it.  For an example, see Chuck Schumer’s recent comparison of free speech to pornography.  As far as I’m concerned Schumer effectively makes the case for deregulating pornography rather than regulating speech here, but that’s not how Congress will vote.

And moreover, I’m worried about people in the government attacking critics through other means - everything from nuisance suits to IRS audits - that won’t run up against the First Amendment and may not even appear to be censorship at all.  We need to watch and see if this sort of thing happens disproportionately to those speaking out against the government.

More importantly, we also need effective defenses.  I’ve been following Ezra Levant’s free speech battle up in Canada, and recall that he was working on a defense fund for bloggers.  I’d like to see focus on such ideas, and I’d like to see it very soon; we may be facing censorship before much longer.

My thoughts on the election:

Although he won, Obama did surprisingly bad.  Going by Wikipedia’s numbers his margin of victory over McCain in the popular vote was less than 7%.  I’m also hearing 4% thrown around elsewhere, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and use the larger number. 

Now, you might argue that a lead of six-and-change is solid even if it’s not exactly a Reaganesque landslide.  And normally I might agree with you.  But you have to consider everything this guy had going for him.  Even if you ignore possible voter fraud and claim that race wasn’t an issue, he still had the deck stacked massively in his favor:

He was up against a weak opponent.

He had a manyfold financial advantage.

He was riding a massive wave of resentment against the incumbent party.

The mainstream media threw out any pretense at fair or objective journalism in favor of serving as his PR machine.

And yet, despite it all he got less than a 7% lead.  Where was the predicted landslide?  For that matter, only about 5% more people - 6.5 million - voted in this presidential election than did the last one.  Bush vs. Kerry brought out an increase of about 3 times that in 2004.  Where was Obama’s predicted turnout?

For Obama to merely do adequately when he had so many advantages suggests to me that his victory is precarious.  “Blame Bush” is only going to work for so long - especially since he’ll have Congress in his pocket giving him almost anything he wants - and then the incoming President is going to have to face the heat for his own failures.

And he will have failures to account for.  He can’t possibly keep all the promises he made.  Not only was much of what he said unrealistic, but some of it was also outright contradictory:

 So our President-elect is set up to fall and fall hard.  As his own running mate infamously predicted, I don’t think Obama’s popularity will last long at all.  My only concern is that in the meantime, the new government will be running roughshod over our individual liberties and property rights.  And appointing judges hostile to the Constitution.  And possibly letting Iran go nuclear.

I don’t think the new government will hold power long, unless they try to keep said power illegally by force or election fraud.  They might even set the stage for another Reaganesque turnaround in 2012.  So in the long run this is promising.  But still, are they ever going to leave a mess for the rest of us to clean up.

Prior to this year, I never paid much attention to politics.  After this year, I don’t think I can go back to ignoring it.  I’ve occasionally said things about it on my other blog, but that’s an entertainment blog and not meant for discussion of more serious issues.  Hence, the creation of The Poison Keyboard.

I should probably tell you up front where I stand:

1) I believe in the supremacy of reason.  While you have the right to blind emotion and blind faith, it won’t persuade me.

2) I believe in the morality of selfishness and the profit motive.  As long as a man harms no one else in the process, it is good and right that he should work to improve his own circumstances and he owes no apology for it.

3) I believe that the government’s proper function is to protect a man’s right to decide for himself how to dispose of his own life and property, not to decide these things for him.  Thus, I am an advocate of laissez faire capitalism.

Needless to say, I’m not likely to be a fan of the incoming government (and vice versa).  I admit that I’m very afraid of what the next few years are likely to bring, although I’m starting to find a great deal of hope for the long run.  But I’ll be discussing that in future posts if you care to stick around. 

For now, welcome.