I will be in Haiti working on Project Leogane for the next ten days.  I will return at 5pm on Friday, March 19.  I won't be blogging here on Panzramic, but I will be blogging about my experiences in Haiti at Two Weeks In Haiti.

Wish me luck...

I showed up around 8:30 am and a small crowd had gathered to greet President Obama to convey our disgust with the current plan meant to begin the socialization of our healthcare system.  The crowd grew as the minutes past.  We got alot of supportive honks, and alot of jeers from enraged liberals.  It was interesting to see the rage in their eyes as they hung out of their cars with both middle fingers in the air.  We were not allowed on the campus of the school so we had to stage our rally in front of the Arcadia Arch.  The crowd grew to 200-300 people by the time I had left.  Here are some photos from the event:

I'll be staying in the internationally displaced persons camp at Belval Plaza, Leogane, Haiti:

View Larger Map

"You know, say what you want about Bill Clinton, but at least he knew when to take his foot off of the gas when he proposed ClintonCare.  If Obama’s hitting the brakes, he must be in a Toyota, because he’s not stopping.  If anything, he’s just picking up speed."

Over the last year, I've told people that I am involved with the Tea Party Movement.  In the beginning, they had a perplexed look on their face, as if they didn't know what it was.  I'd say, "Are you familiar with that?" and they would usually say no.

Now, you'd have to be living under a rock in order to be ignorant of the Tea Party movement. 

Yes, this post is purely anecdotal, but I think there are alot of people out there who hear about the Tea Party movement every day who didn't have a clue about what it was 6 months ago.

The beautiful Hannah Giles just asked him to make her dinner.

The Democrats say they plan to inflict "pain" on Republicans if they obstruct reconciliation: 

Democrats plan "pain" for Republicans who seek to slow or block passage of healthcare legislation, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said Wednesday night.

Brown said that if Republicans try to offer amendments and use parliamentary maneuvers to grind out the legislative process, Democrats would retaliate with all-night sessions and other methods of fighting back.

"I think they're going to try to do amendments, as many as they can get away with," Brown said Wednesday evening during an appearance on MSNBC. "I think we keep them here all night -- tonight, the next night, the next night, the next night."

"If they're going to try to filibuster in the traditional sense or the more modern sense that they do, they're going to have pain, too," Brown added.

So your plan against an endless stream of Republican amendments designed to draw out the process and paralyze it as long as possible is to...make them tired?  Uh, I think they already planned on being tired, Senator Brown.  In fact, I think they already are tired. 

I think the American people are tired, too, Mr. Brown.  We are tired of having to think about the prospects of having government healthcare shoved down our collective throat.  Whats a few more weeks of blood and guts politics to a battle hardened citizenry?

This really pisses me off, to put it crudely:

Mayor Nutter, balking at cutting "core services" and running out of ways to raise money, is expected to balance next year's budget with a steep tax on sugary drinks and a $300 annual residential trash fee, sources familiar with the plan said yesterday.

City Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr. said he anticipated a 2-cent-per-ounce tax on sweet drinks as part of Nutter's 2010-2011 budget, to be presented tomorrow. That's $2.88 on a 12-pack of soda cans. In addition, the nearly $4 billion budget is expected to include a fee of about $300 annually for trash service. Lower-income residents could qualify for an annual fee of about $200.

Though the administration could change its plan before tomorrow's budget address, the mayor is scheduled to brief City Council and the media on the budget today. Nutter would not comment on details of the budget yesterday, but did say: "The major tax sources are not really available."

I'm certainly not considered a low income resident, but even I can't afford an extra $200 a year to have my trash picked up.  I pay a couple thousand a year for my property taxes and 3.5% of my income is taxed just for being a resident of the city.  I understand the city is hurting for revenue, but that could have been alleviated by SPENDING RESPONSIBLY OVER THE LAST DECADE!

Addtionally, I will now have to spend an extra 40 cents on every twenty ounce bottle of Diet Mountain Dew that I buy in the morning to get my caffeine fix.

Luckily, I live right on the border of Montgomery county so I can go elsewhere to get whatever soda I want.  I'll vote with my feet (or wheels).  So the City of Philadelphia (and the 7-11s and WaWas) will now lose the money that I normally spent.  Smooth move, Mayor Nutter.  I thought that anything would have been better than John Street, but Mr. Nutter just obliterated that notion for me.  I'm not suggesting that Mayor Nutter is even close to being as corrupt as John Street, but he just made a decision to substantially increase my living expenses purely because the City overspent and underserved for the last decade.  Can Chris Christie occupy the New Jersey Governor's mansion as well as City Hall?  I sure could use some fiscal sanity.

Flush it all down the toilet.

This coming Monday, I will be hopping a flight to Port Au Prince, Haiti to assist in Hands On DIsaster Relief's Project Leogane.  I will be living in a tent camp for ten days and assisting in demolishing already destroyed homes, clearing the debris and making the home sites hospitable for tent camps.

It should be an adventure.  I'll be keeping a blog called Two Weeks In Haiti.  I'll be posting pictures, videos and blogs detailing my experiences.

I look forward to my trip.  It should be very interesting. 

Check out his speech to NJ mayors here.

I really like this guy, assuming all of this rhetoric is actionable.  He's speaking in very strong language, so I think it is actionable.

Suddenly, MTV's The Jersey Shore isn't the coolest thing in NJ...Chris Christie is.

Powerline talks about the demolition of Al-Qaeda strongholds in Pakistan.

Arlen Specter leads Pat Toomey 49-42?

I'd like to see some corroboration from another poll or two to confirm this.  Pat Toomey was up big last week.  What is this attributed to?

It seems our little movement has jumped across the pond to the original antagonist of the first ever tea party.  Who woulda thunk it?

This is a beautiful thing.  Although this comment may come across as premature, the civili(s)ed world is rejecting socialism.

The "healthcare summit" is simply political theatre, but it is political theatre that should have happened a year ago, if not for political expediency. If Obama had involved Republicans from the get go, he would have had more political capital to work with and might have already passed a bill.

Victor Davis Hanson has more:

Obama also just invited the Republican opposition to a summit at the White House to iron out differences over his stalled health-care legislation. Such a “let bygones, be bygones” group discussion likewise sounds like a good idea — given the climbing cost of health insurance and the millions who cannot afford it. But the problem again is that such outreach is too little and comes too late — more than a year after Obama began his unilateral effort to have the government assume much of the nation’s health-care system.

A year ago — with a supermajority in the Senate and basking in the swell of the November 2008 election — Obama didn’t worry much over the lack of Republican input. Instead, in partisan mode, he issued a series of deadlines for his party to ram through his own preferred reforms — first by the August 2009 vacation, then by the Thanksgiving recess, then by the Christmas break, and so on.

A couple of fence-sitting Democratic legislators, who by themselves could block passage, were to be bought off with awards of multimillion-dollar earmarks. Meanwhile, the president himself reportedly ridiculed angry tea-party protestors as “the teabag, anti-government people.” He, it appeared, did not worry too much about the opposition.

Recently, a petulant Obama blasted Washington partisan politics, the media, and congressional inaction. In his January State of the Union address, Obama deplored “the partisanship and the shouting and the pettiness” by “politicians (who) tear each other down instead of lifting this country up” and “TV pundits (who) reduce serious debates into silly arguments.”

...So fairly or not, it seems like a panicked President Obama is abruptly scrambling to do what he should have done over a year ago.

But the problem is that a now jaded public believes that Obama is changing both course and tone not because he wants to for the country, but because he is forced to for his own survival. In other words, the “hope and change” of last year’s messiah has devolved into this year’s “whatever it takes” of a cynic.

A common question around this time of year with my friends is "what are you giving up for lent?" 

This is interesting given the fact that most of us are either recovering Catholics, agnostic, atheist or non-Catholic.  Of the five people I've talked to over the last week about what they are giving up for lent, not one of them is a practicing Catholic.  There's an atheist, two agnostics, one non-practicing Catholic and a Hindu.  Yes, a Hindu.

Although this is purely anecdotal, I still think it is worth mentioning.  It isn't necessarily a fad.  I think the motivation behind these "lenten" sacrifices is purely in the spirit of self-renewal.  It is also a result of having grown up in Catholic culture.  One friend will only be eating raw fruits and vegetables for lent.  Another has given up meat, soda and auto-erotic behavior.  Another has given up consuming alcohol.  I've given up beer and snacks between meals

I may or may not return to the Catholic church, but I will always give up something for lent.  There is value in depriving yourself of things that you like.

In our culture, it is easy to "lose" yourself in whatever you are involved in.  Lenten sacrifice serves as sort of a re-mooring and re-centering of yourself, to yourself.

The Root has a cute little feature whereby they attempt to ex-communicate certain "undesirables" from the black community.  Deserving folks like Robert Mugabe, Idi Amin, O.J. Simpson, John Allen Muhammed, and Haiti's Papa Doc are grouped with Michael Steele and Clarence Thomas.

One must conclude that this website equates a belief in limited government and a colorblind constitution with tyranny, mass murder and terrorism.  This isn't surprising, but it is still disgusting to see.

To be fair, they attempt to ex-communicate Flavor Flav, R. Kelly and Dennis Rodman.  At least they got something right

I called their offices to get a comment and I left a voicemail requesting a call back.  I also emailed their press person with this:

Hello,

I run the blog www.panzramic.com and I came across your website and found it interesting that you equate a belief in a colorblind constitution and limited government with thuggish despots and mass murders like Robert Mugabe, Idi Amin, Papa Doc and cringe-inducing embarassments like Flavor Flav and Dennis Rodman. 

If I am interpreting this incorrectly, please disabuse me of this notion.

Also, I don't know if Condoleeza Rice was in the running to get on this list, but she is an accomplished black woman who happens to be a conservative, so, you know, you might want to get her on there with her colleagues Mugabe and O.J. Simpson (although I suspect you might think that would be insulting to Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Simpson).

I am covering this issue on my website, so I'd appreciate a response.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Regards,

Andrew Monaghan

I hope that I hear back, but I don't hold out much hope.

P.S.-I also find it interesting that Mumia Abu Jamal was not on this list.

The brilliant Thomas Sowell says:

Tiger Woods doesn’t owe me an apology. Nothing that he has ever done has cost me a dime nor an hour of sleep. This is not a plea to be “non-judgmental.” I am very judgmental about all sorts of things, including Tiger Woods’s bad behavior. But that is very different from saying that he somehow owes me an apology.

For all I know, my neighbors may be judgmental when I drive out of my driveway in a 15-year-old car. But they have never said anything to me about it, and I have never offered them an apology.

This is not equating driving a 15-year-old car with what Tiger Woods did. But the point is that any apology he might make should be made to his family, who were hurt, not to the public, who might be disappointed in him, but not really hurt. Public apologies to people who are not owed any apologies have become one of the many signs of the mushy thinking of our times. So are apologies for things that other people did.

Among the most absurd apologies have been apologies for slavery by politicians. For one thing, slavery is not something you can apologize for, any more than you can apologize for murder. If someone says to you that he murdered someone near and dear to you, what are you supposed to say? “No problem, we all make mistakes”? Not bloody likely!

Slavery is too serious for an apology, and somebody else’s being a slaveowner is not something for you to apologize for. When somebody who has never owned a slave apologizes for slavery to somebody who has never been a slave, then what began as mushy thinking has degenerated into theatrical absurdity — or, worse yet, politics.

Slavery has existed all over the planet for thousands of years, with black, white, yellow, and other races being both slaves and enslavers. Does that mean that everybody ought to apologize to everybody else for what their ancestors did? Or are the only people who are supposed to feel guilty the ones who have money that others want to talk them out of?

Alot can happen between now and November, but I think Pat Toomey is the next Senator from Pennsylvania.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TEA PARTY MOVEMENT

Come join Philadelphia Tea Party Patriots this Saturday 27 February 2010 to celebrate the ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the TEA PARTY MOVEMENT - TEA PARTY RE-BOOT

Time: 1:30p.m. to 2:30p.m

Where - South Broad Street and Washington Avenue

Philadelphia, PA

Bring your signs - Remember HealthCare is still a big issue, Bailouts, Stimulus and of course, Happy Anniversary Tea Party Movement!

After our demonstration please reserve your spot for our luncheon fundraiser.

La Fontana della Citta

1701 Spruce Street

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Time 3:00pm to 5-30PM

Please RSVP to philatppatriots@gmail.com

Boy, things do change when you are in power!

If this dude can "have at" Jessica Simpson, there's hope for effeminate men everywhere!

This guy is the man.

I was at Pat Troy's in Alexandria, Virginia on Friday night after CPAC's Friday session.  He did something that I've never seen before:  he made the customers recite the pledge of allegiance.  It was awesome.

Now sit down and get back to yer' drinkin' so I can make some money!

Via the Jawa Report:

Today's tragic event in Austin provides us with a unique opportunity to examine how idiotic and self-serving the typical responses are made by the apologists for Islamic terrorism (Muslim and non-Muslim alike) when one of their co-religionists shoots up an Army base, bombs a building, blows up a pizza parlor full of teenagers, etc.

So here are some of the comments that would have been made by the usual suspects if they were actually operating in standard terrorthink mode:

1) The IRS should ask itself, "Why do they hate us?" (submitted by Fareed Zakaria)

2) This was a desperate act caused by the federal government's continued occupation of Texas. (submitted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations)

3) The NTSB will ensure that the words "taxes" and "audit" are left out of their final report, along with with the perpetrator's name, who they will only identify as "the alleged pilot". (submitted by the Department of Defense)

4) This is clearly the result of Obama's domestic policy. (submitted by Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan)

5) One man's domestic terrorist is another man's tax protester (submitted by Reuters)

Perfect. 

Here's my shot at it:  "The IRS coordinated with Joe Stack to bring that building down.  There is no way that one small plane could have done that much damage"