Joey's Take: Fur's a Flying

I want the president and all of Congress to know I’m barking angry at the direction our country is going. And it's time for fur to fly. That’s why I’m running for office. Somebody has to nip the heels of this runaway government before it plunges the nation – and the American dream – over a steep cliff to absolute financial ruin.

I also want them to know that my anger has nothing to do with Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and any “vitriol” that duo may or may not be fomenting. I think for myself, thank you. And I can see that cliff getting ever closer.

Speaking of vitriol, I’d like to remind our president of his own vitriolic hate speech. Remember the talk he made on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary – the one at a private fund-raiser in Pelosi’s San Francisco? The one in which he accused people in small towns in Pennsylvania and across the Midwest of being “bitter.” Because of that bitterness, he said, “they cling to guns or religion or antipathy.” (I guess if you're not bitter, you don't need God!)

He didn’t get it then – he and his campaign staff made “bitter” an internal code word for the middle-class (Game Change).

And he doesn’t get it now. In his comments to Harry Smith on CBS’ Early Show Friday, the president tried to minimalize and marginalize those who disagree with him. He also tried to frame "demonizing" as a conservative phenomenon, conveniently ignoring the hate speech – and the damnations of America – that spewed from behind the pulpit of his Chicago church, the vitriolic hatred that continues to flow from the left whenever Bush or Cheney is mentioned and the spiteful trash that is daily heaped on non-liberals in blogs, chat rooms and other social media sites. He also ignored that he fans the rhetoric with his own arrogance and dismissive attitude toward any view but his own.

On another note: The White House ripped into Israel for “embarrassing” Vice President Joe Biden by announcing a new settlement on the West Bank during his visit to Jerusalem last month. What Biden forgot is that in a land where history is measured in millennia rather than a few centuries, memories run long – very long. It was payback time for when then-Sen. Biden tried to belittle Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin who was testifying before the Senate Finance Committee in 1982 about Israeli settlements. Raising his voice and banging on the table with his fist, Biden demanded that Israel immediately end its settlement program or the U.S. would cut its aid to the country.

Begin’s response: “This desk is designed for writing, not for fists. Don’t threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the U.S. lends us money, it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats.”