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He managed to stop himself before slipping in a “Thank you, come again.”

*And just to be clear, that was a bit tongue-in-cheek. I don’t think Biden is actually a racist. I think he’s an idiot. But we all know what the narrative would be if someone with an R after their name was equally as boneheaded.

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In his antagonistic, petulant, and stale campaign speech State of the Union address, President Obama said, “It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts.”

Oh, what fine rhetoric, Mr. President! Yet earlier in the very same speech, he said this: “On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen.” Just to be clear, he’s talking about his auto-industry bailout.

Beyond the fact that his premise is entirely wrong (the US auto industry as a whole was not on the verge of collapse, but a select few companies were and are still in bad shape despite what he says), it is telling that he deliberately avoided mentioning just what he did with the auto-industry: he bailed it out. More specifically, he bailed out his union buddies who were largely responsible for crippling those companies in the first place. And as for applying the same rules top to bottom, there is an exception again for his unions pals, who have been granted a majority of the waivers shielding them from the destructive impact of the government takeover of the health sector which those same unions supported.

The reason he was not open about his auto-industry bailout was because his intention was to be dishonest and give lip service to opposing bailouts. Like so much of this President’s rhetoric, you have to set aside the lies, and look at his record. Barack Obama is a statist and economic interventionist, and bailouts are an interventionists best friend.

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Some things never change (from Bankrupting America):

Expect more of the same empty rhetoric tonight.

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On the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade (an odd number on which to get sentimental), President Obama released a statement that begins with this extraordinary claim:

As we mark the 39^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we must remember that this Supreme Court decision not only protects a woman’s health and reproductive freedom, but also affirms a broader principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters.

Private family matters such as which car to buy, which doctor to use, or which insurance plan to purchase…well, those are certainly the business of Barack Obama. But whether or not a helpless, arguably human life (depending on when you think such begins) is destroyed, that’s no one’s business! How is this man so widely considered a serious political thinker?

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The latest in a long line of stupid leftwing policies targeting the oil industry:

Six House Democrats, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), want to set up a “Reasonable Profits Board” to control gas profits.

The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a “windfall profit tax” as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what constitutes a reasonable profit.

Of course it doesn’t, because there is no definition they can use that isn’t arbitrary. The only definition for “reasonable profits” that makes any sense is the very one which they reject: whatever the market can bear.

This is nothing but price controls by another name, yet the consequences would be just as disastrous. Moreover, it’s curious the Democrats single out an industry that is not even close to having highest profit margins. One can only conclude that their position is not based on the application of any sort of principle, but rather that of political expediency. This is demagogic red meat for election season, plain and simple.

P.S. The oil industry already typically pays more in taxes than it earns in after-tax profits. Where’s the “Reasonable Thievery Board” to limit such government theft of the private sector to “reasonable” levels?

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Hoplophobia is the irrational fear of firearms. It is a term which describes accurately the mental derangement exhibited by the state of New York, and in particular by New York’s Supreme Dictator for Life Michael Bloomberg, regarding any issue remotely related to guns:

The owner of a discount store in Brooklyn says the city is holding him up for $30,000 in fines he can’t afford — all because he stocked six toy sheriff sets that included plastic guns.

And now the .44-caliber fines for the orange-tipped, obvious fakes are forcing him to close for good.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Khaled Mohamed, 23, manager of 99¢ Target in Flatlands, which has been ordered to pay a staggering $5,000 fine for each gun offered for sale — the maximum under the law.

New York is a classic example of what happens when a population becomes overgoverned.

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I’m in BVI for a conference this week. Unfortunately, the one day I had to myself to lounge around the resort and see the sights has been somewhat marred by the fact that my luggage was not in my possession until 20 hours after I landed (it’s hard to enjoy the tropics in the kind of clothing I had to wear to the airport in DC, where it was 20 degrees when I left). American Airlines decided my carry-on was too large, despite the fact that it fit just fine on an AA plane of the same model which I had just been on, and checked it at the gate.

The gate-worker assured me that my luggage would be there when I landed, but I was dubious. And I was right to be concerned. It was not there when I landed, and with my possessions swept up in a tangled web of bureaucratic incompetence and tropical malaise, I found myself quite perturbed. But then I made a new friend.

The only customer in the airport as I waited to file my claim, a little cat wondered up and, as if he owned the place, sauntered over the weighing machine and behind the ticket counter. Later, as I was waiting an excessively long time for a ride that would end up taking me a distance I could have walked in only a few minutes if anyone had told me, I saw my furry friend again, and this time took a picture.

The next day, after I finally got my luggage, I found out that my tormentors left a calling card:

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The hoodlums and vagabonds of the so-called Occupy Wall Street movement has announced to much fanfare their theft of a man’s home (Hat-tip: Anita MonCrief):

Occupy Wall Street protesters announced with great fanfare last month that they moved a homeless family into a “foreclosed” Brooklyn home — even though they knew the house belonged to a struggling single father desperately trying to renegotiate his mortgage, The Post has learned.

“They’re trying to take a house and say the bank is robbing the people because the mortgage is too high — so contact the owner!” fumed Wise Ahadzi, 28, who owns the home at 702 Vermont St. in East New York.

Occupiers “reclaimed” the row house on Dec. 6 and ceremoniously put out the welcome mat for a homeless family.

But Bank of America, which has been in and out of foreclosure proceedings against Ahadzi since 2009, confirmed to The Post that he is still the rightful owner.

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The real property owner is livid because he could be raising his two little girls, Imani, 3, and Kwazha, 10, in the two-story home instead of in a meager, two-bedroom rental in Brownsville while he tries to sort out his mortgage nightmare.

Police notified him in early December that the vigilante vagrants moved into his East New York digs, he said. He immediately ran over to the house to see for himself.

“Oh, don’t call the police!” an occupier begged him.

Anyone who supports this mindless mob is a disgusting human being, and is betraying every value this country once stood for. Our country is being torn down right before our eyes by a coalition of socialist agitators, mindless lemmings and complicit media.

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While Hollywood is busy projecting non-existent guilt onto Margaret Thatcher for a neglect of private affairs that happened only in the figment of Hollywood imagination, and at the same time glossing over her many accomplishments in public life, it’s a good time to reflect on what the Iron Lady actually did:

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Nine-Tenths is a dystopian tale in sci-fi wrapping paper. Ostensibly a time-travel story, only the very beginning and end of the book actually deal much with science fiction. The meat of the book is what happens in an alternate time-line where the United States has been transformed into a totalitarian state. Like the great dystopian works of1984 and Brave New World, Nine-Tenths draws a frightening picture of a society that is all too plausible.

I found two characteristics of the alternate United States created by author Meira Pentermann to be particularly noteworthy. We get a good look at how important it is for any would be tyrant to control both health care and education.

In the story, government lackeys are brought in to administer health care, while real, qualified doctors are marginalized.  This provides a crucial avenue through which the dictator is able to both keep the population in perpetual fear, as well as dependent upon the state.

We also see how education is used to drive a wedge between generations, and co-opt children for the purposes of the dictatorship. Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union used brainwashed youth in this fashion to report on fellow citizens and keep tabs on their parents. The centralized control of education is an integral part of achieving this ambition. The need toundermine the family unit and substitute for it reliance on the state is also a real-world characteristic of dictatorships accurately captured in the novel. There are many other details in the book which suggest the author has studied the history of dictatorships.

As I’m sure you were able to gather from the items I mentioned above, the actual United States is busy putting together many of the necessary pieces for a dictatorship. With the right (or wrong) combination of personality, circumstances and timing, the world Pentermann paints in Nine-Tenths could become one day become our reality, and this book serves as a much needed reminder of that fact.

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I created the Conservative Reading series to highlight and promote writers telling good stories with conservative views or overtones. The left has long understood that to influence popular culture through entertainment media, you have to tell a good story first and foremost. The right, it seems to me, is only just coming to truly understand this. To help spread the ideas of liberty, I’m sharing through the Conservative Reading series any good stories I have found that also contain right-leaning views, instead of the usual leftism that dominates popular culture.

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