Saturday, October 29, 2011
Wall Street's Message to OWS
Via Jim Treacher:
We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, it’s not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.
Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.
Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work until 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.
For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime, and double time and a half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.
So now that we’re going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.
The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it’s really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.
We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?”
Labels: occupy wall street, Wall Street
MSNBC's Karen Finney on Herman Cain
What we're seeing here is Liberals finally expressing their opinion of black men and the main reasons they voted for a junior senator with no experience instead of Hillary Clinton. In the Liberal world race trumps gender. They voted for the black guy who made them feel good and now they feel liberated to express their racist views and project them on their opponents.
"A black man who knows his place?" Why yes, this black man belongs in the White House not because he is black but because his ideas and his philosophy is sound.
Labels: Cain, Liberalism, Race
Friday, October 28, 2011
The Left Defends States Rights!
Ordinary garden variety hypocrites should hang their heads in shame; you have been outdistanced by the Liberals at the Virginian Pilot (but I repeat myself) who now claim the trophy as “Most Hypocritical” and retired it.
Remember how States Rights has always been characterized by the Left as a dog whistle for racism? That’s only until they find a state law that restricts its citizen’s rights under the second amendment to the constitution. All of a sudden, states’ rights are sacrosanct and who are those people in Washington to tell us what we can do to keep ourdarkies … uh enforce our restrictive … uh common sense gun laws from being overturned.
The next time you read some Left wing editorial writer talk about states’ rights as an argument for bringing back Jim Crow, trot out this delicious little tidbit of doublethink and laugh.
Remember how States Rights has always been characterized by the Left as a dog whistle for racism? That’s only until they find a state law that restricts its citizen’s rights under the second amendment to the constitution. All of a sudden, states’ rights are sacrosanct and who are those people in Washington to tell us what we can do to keep our
The next time you read some Left wing editorial writer talk about states’ rights as an argument for bringing back Jim Crow, trot out this delicious little tidbit of doublethink and laugh.
Labels: Constitution, Guns, Virginian Pilot
Thursday, October 27, 2011
"And Glenn Beck is the Crazy One?"
That’s one side of what people want, right, cause that’s not the only thing people want. they also want to take the bank out of his fucking tower and string him up in the public square.. That’s not that’s not just the crazy left, that’s everyday folks talking about their experiences.
And here's Mediaite making fun of Glenn Beck:
In case you hadn’t heard, Glenn Beck isn’t a fan of the Occupy Wall Street protests. However, unlike some others in the media he isn’t just laughing them off as silly hippies. On the contrary, the protesters should be comforted to know that Beck respects them a great deal. In fact, he respects them enough to think that they’re this close to dragging rich people into the street and murdering them.
Now, whether the OWS gangs will actually hang bankers from lamp posts is still an open question and it looks as if the police are finally hearing from the neighbors and enough video is showing up on the Internet to show people just how how radical, how hateful, how despicable (and for the most part how stupid)these people are. But it's not for the lack of will and its not for the hatred that's exhibited by the core of the people who are responsible for organizing these rallies.
Just once I would like the media clowns with their multi-million dollar contracts and their compounds in the Hamptons who rhapsodize about the OWS gang get surrounded by the mobs, their precious necks fitted for nooses and their feet leave the ground, hung from a tree limb or a lamp post. That's how the French Revolution proceeded; the revolution always eats its young.
Labels: Glenn Beck, media, occupy wall street, The Press
"Recovering from amoebic dysentery will be part of your education."
Via small dead animals, Bill Whittle
"These kids are upset because the $100,000 of debt they took on to get a degree in bitterness studies isn't paying off with a six figure job and a car and full benefits at an organic farm collective."
Labels: Liberalism, occupy wall street
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
The Dirty Wall Street Crooks and the People They Give To.
Rajat K. Gupta, the highest-ranking corporate executive to become embroiled in a push to root out insider trading, was accused of leaking confidential information while serving as a director at Goldman Sachs and P&G.
And sure enough, he's a major Democrat donor.
We can only assume he didn't buy enough protection.
I blame the Democrat Culture of Corruption™
Labels: crime, Democrats, Wall Street
“Who lost the world?”
Remember that "Arab Spring" and Obama's "Smart Diplomacy?"
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. summarizes.
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. summarizes.
Well, look what's happening in Libya (Sharia the basis for law), Tunisia (Islamist party takes over), Egypt (Muslim Brotherhood/killing Christians), Afghanistan (Karzai sides with Pakistan in any conflict with the US), China ascending, Russia under Putin, supplying arms to Mexican drug cartels in an undeclared civil war and upcoming budget cuts gut the military.
This is a foreign policy mess on top of a domestic economic mess. The next president will have his hands full.
Labels: Economy, Islamofascism, Obama, War
Obama Losing His Base
Better late than never.This is a significant drop since August when a majority of young voters (52%) approved of the way the president was handling his job, 42% disapproved. That is a net 26-point decline in two months."
Vehicle automation as a way to save gas.
Cars that drive themselves would not only save gas, but save lives and make people happier. Imagine telling your car where you want to go and it navigates itself. That’s not an impossible dream because the technology is near at hand. This, not cockamamie plans for windmills or super-expensive solar cells that only provide power when the sun shines, could have been a worthwhile way for the government to bring America closer to energy independence.
But no, the environmental movement is caught in a time warp, embedded like an insect in amber, in concepts that were developed decades ago and have never been updated or re-examined. If today an endless pool of pure oil were found in the middle of the Mojave Desert that burned with zero emissions, the Greens would still demand the that we proceed to power civilization with wind and sunlight. They will cling to that like Linus clings to his security blanket. There is nothing intellectual about it, it’s a psychological bond, and like substance abusers, most find it impossible to break.
H/T: Instapundit
Couple Faces Criminal Raps For Sex On City Bus
Caught on tape.
Scratch an anti-capitalist, and a Jew-hater bleeds.
The Other McCain: #OWS and the Socialism of Fools
To the Leftists who occupy Wall Street and the other town squares its always the Jooooos!
To the Leftists who occupy Wall Street and the other town squares its always the Jooooos!
Labels: anti-semitism, Jews, McCain, occupy wall street
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Herman Cain tops Mitt Romney in latest CBS/NYT poll
CBS/NYT poll
Cain 25%
Romney 21%
Gingrich 10%
Paul 8%
Perry 6%
Cain is showing remarkable staying power despite an almost universal MSM attempt to marginalize him. Exhibit "A" today:
Here's C-BS: Bizarre Herman Cain ad features chief of staff smoking
Here's the ad.
Cain 25%
Romney 21%
Gingrich 10%
Paul 8%
Perry 6%
Cain is showing remarkable staying power despite an almost universal MSM attempt to marginalize him. Exhibit "A" today:
Here's C-BS: Bizarre Herman Cain ad features chief of staff smoking
Here's the ad.
I suppose if you are a New York metrosexual and are more familiar with public homoerotica than with public smoking, you would consider the end of the video bizarre. Note how the image of the man smoking is followed by the image of Cain breaking into a grin. You are being treated to an inside joke. It works for people in flyover country and is totally lost on the beltway boys and the people who swarm in the media hive. They think Modern Family is edgy. They think Occupy Wall Street is revolutionary.
It's not.
By this time we've been there, done that and got the T-shirt.
Men smoking in a commercial for a political candidate is edgy. How can you tell? It outrages the media boys. It flips them the bird.
Their hero, Barack Obama, hides his smokes. Mark Block does what Obama's afraid to do.
While the media is writing stories about the inevitability of Mitt Romney, Herman Cain is breaking out of the pack, breaking the mold and the media don't understand it. He doesn’t fit the template in so many ways that they convince themselves that he's the flavor of the week. It's an illustration of the old adage that when theory and reality collide, ideologues discard reality.
Labels: Cain
Women for Campus Sex
A lesbian PhD candidate re-thinks campus sex.
Once upon a time, feminists were hot to trot … to ostracize male professors for sex with students. Now women academics have found the benefits of sex between students and faculty is positive and empowering. According to the new dispensation, the entire issue of campus rules against sex between students and faculty gets in the way of
“…being generally positive and reasonably friendly, arising out of mutual desire for sex and intimacy rather than an abuse of power by the teacher.”
What is a "moderate Islamist" party?
How do you define a “moderate Islamist “ party and who gives it this title?
We know what Jane Harman thinks of the election: It’s better than the elections in this country.
We know what Jane Harman thinks of the election: It’s better than the elections in this country.
Nine-term U.S. congresswoman Jane Harman, who helped lead a team of observers from the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, said the vote was "hands down the best, the most promising election I have ever witnessed, including those I have seen in the United States."What do we know of the party? It seems to have plenty of money, which in the Middle East is an indication that it’s bankrolled by the oil kings and sheiks.
If they are bankrolled by the Saudis, we can conclude that these “moderates” belong to the branch of Islam that brought us 9/11.Outside Nahda party's headquarters—a sleek, glass-fronted six-story building that dwarfs the more cramped and shabby accommodations of most of the country's other top political parties—victorious candidates greeted well-wishers on Monday.
"Our party is very clear, we are not a religious party,"said Islamist Nahda Party spokesman.
Party officials have suggested they will look to strengthen Tunisia's political and economic ties with fellow Arab-Islamic states in the region and perhaps legalize Islamic banking systems that proscribe interest and relies instead on fees.
Labels: election, Islamofascism, Middle East
Obama Brings USAJobs.gov In-House; Government Servers Crash.
This is the smartest bunch of people ever to occupy government office. From the WSJ Error: USAJobs.gov
Example:
A comment by a professional IT guy who has been called up to active duty:
Welcome visitors, please look around.
Americans in search of federal employment can go to a website called USAJobs.gov, which matches openings with applicants. Since 2004, the feds have outsourced the site's operation to Monster.com. Good call by whoever was in charge in 2004. Monster.com is the private company that pioneered employment websites and is today the largest job search engine in the world.There is a Facebook page on which frustrated job-seekers are complaining.
But 18 months ago the "smart" Obama Office of Personnel Management decided the federal government could do a better job of running USAJobs.gov. It spent some $6 million developing a new in-house version of the site, promising to improve the job-search experience. It unveiled its creation two weeks ago. It's a monster all right.
The volume of requests instantly crushed government servers, slowed the system and locked out thousands of applicants. Naturally, the site has a Facebook page. Naturally, the comment queue is boiling over. Examples:
"Why am I having to do the same search 3 times before anything shows up?" "Over one week now and I still haven't received my password reset email!!" "USAJOBS WEB SITE IS A DISASTER!" "I entered Delaware and got Germany jobs and all of the Forest Service."
Example:
still can't get through. I can't even get to my old profile to update anything. What's up with the new program? "Sorry to make you wait-if you try back in a few minutes, we should be good to go." At least this time it wasn't a blank page.Time after time a plaintive reply comes back from the Team Obama:
[name], please send us an email to outreach@opm.gov so we can help. Thanks!
A comment by a professional IT guy who has been called up to active duty:
I am a mobilized Army Reserve officer serving on active duty in a US-based headquarters. Before being mobilized I had a 20-year IT career in the productive sector. I am continually astonished and dismayed by how completely incompetent our IT support is. Anything they do (or try to do) is invariably slow, inefficient, and usually broken for long stretches. The people who work in IT support are a mixture - some are good and some are idiots, but none of them has anything like the work ethic expected in the productive sector, and nobody is accountable for anything. No productive sector company could ever tolerate our level of outages and stay in business. In any decent productive-sector company, these people would be fired in a heartbeat. Which is probably why they work here....And here's the real problem for disappointed job seekers, even if they get through they are unlikely to land a job. Why? The entire search is mostly eyewash designed to meet regulations for advertising the job openings. The people who are going to be hired are already waiting in the wings.
What the government does not tell you is, most of the openings posted on USAJobs are already filled. They are going through the search “EEOC” motions to check off a bureaucratic box and people who go through the laborious process of applying are SOL. I worked at a certain government agency while still in uniform and saw this first hand. It is a true waste of time and resources. But heck, it’s the federal government, its intentions that count, not results.
Welcome visitors, please look around.
Labels: Government waste, jobs, Obama
Murtha in Scheme Funneling Funds to Benefit Friends, Ex-Staffers
Last week’s release of FBI documents finally put in writing what nobody had ever said on the record: The FBI suspected that former Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and lobbyists close to him were running a scheme to funnel earmarks to sham companies and nonprofits to benefit the lawmaker’s friends and former staffers.
Read the whole thing.
Here's the infuriating thing:
The Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation into Murtha and some of the lobbyists in his orbit, a fact that never leaked while Murtha was alive.
In part, the probe never leaked precisely because he was alive.
The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Justice Department files on Murtha and other Members of Congress. Its requests have been denied for the living Members on the grounds that they have a right to privacy,
There was not just one instance of money being funnelled to cronies and assistants, but a whole network of companies, organizations and lobbying groups that collected payoffs. Need more evidence that it was all a grand Murtha money laundering scheme? The network disappeared when Murtha died.
So it seems that if the government doesn't want to prosecute a congressman or other public official, that person skates, and not matter how corrupt he is, he gets to die in bed as long as the Feds cover for him. That's a rather cozy arrangement.
So it seems that if the government doesn't want to prosecute a congressman or other public official, that person skates, and not matter how corrupt he is, he gets to die in bed as long as the Feds cover for him. That's a rather cozy arrangement.
Labels: congress, corruption
Monday, October 24, 2011
The HONDAs (hypertensive, obese, non-compliant, diabetic, alcoholics)
PJ Tatler discusses the OWS "poor." Except they're not poor.
These are poor.
These are not:
Neither are these fit, bejeweled and spiritual at OWS
But they are dangerous because they can be made violent by the same groups that deprived them of education and morality.
These are poor.
These are not:
Neither are these fit, bejeweled and spiritual at OWS
They have been sold a bill of goods by a Liberal society, a Liberal educational system, a Liberal media and now they are coming face to face with reality and they have no way of coping. Instead they spout slogans that they have heard repeated in one college class after another by professors who took their money and cheated them of an education they thought they were getting.But in a peculiar way, those non-starving, non-homeless, non-refugee young people playing at being poor in cities across America have a point. They represent some very specific — and sad — types of poverty.
To begin with, there’s the sense of poverty created by utterly ludicrous expectations. We promised these kids that they were all “good enough, smart enough and, gosh darn it!, that everyone would like them.” We promised them that they were all number one, and that they would never need to make any actual effort to achieve that blue ribbon status. We taught them, through MTV and computer games, that a 3 minute attention span is sufficiently long to be awesomely cool and win the game. And, God help us, we taught them that a Womyn’s Studies, or Africana Studies, or GLBT Studies, or Oppressed People’s degree from some big name university would assure them the kind of job that would enable them to pay off $25,000 or $100,000 or even $250,000 in student loans. We, the older generation, created this wealth of stupidity.
But they are dangerous because they can be made violent by the same groups that deprived them of education and morality.
Labels: occupy wall street
NBC Unable to Shake Slide in Ratings
The old alphabet networks:
Awwwwwwww.
On the other hand:Through the first four weeks of the TV season ending Oct. 16, about 3.3 million adults under 50 years old have been watching prime-time TV shows on NBC, according to the latest figures from Nielsen Holdings NV. That is down 9.3% from the same period a year earlier.
Through four weeks, Walt Disney Co.'s ABC is down 5.8% among viewers 18-to-49 in prime-time, CBS Corp.'s eponymous network is down 2.3%
News Corp.'s Fox Broadcasting is up 11%...
Awwwwwwww.
Labels: media
Steve Malanga on why public-sector workers report such higher level of work-place injury than their private-sector counterparts.
[T]he Bureau of Labor Statistics released 2010 rates of injury and illness in the American work force, and once again state and local government workers on average missed far more days from illness and injury per worker than workers in the private sector. . . .
Some of these higher rates might be attributable to more dangerous jobs in the public sector, especially public safety jobs. And indeed, the BLS' detailed tables do show much higher injury and absentee rates for workers engaged in "justice, public order and safety activities." But even construction workers working for local government have a much higher rate of injury and illness (9.5 cases per 100 workers) than private construction workers (4.0 per 100 workers). So do public school education workers, who record 4.9 injuries and illnesses per 100 workers, compared to just 2.2 per 100 among private education workers.
Of course, in some places, public sector workers enjoy more generous sick time and richer disability benefits than private workers, which may explain some of the difference. Incentives matter, including those that pay you not to work.
Labels: Economy, Government waste
High tech runs three times faster than normal businesses. And the government runs three times slower than normal businesses. So we have a nine-times gap.
Sometimes stupid is not repairable. Silicon Valley continues to support the Left, even after it sees the results.
"So we get hauled in front of the Congress for developing a product that's free, that serves a billion people. OK? I mean, I don't know how to say it any clearer," Mr. Schmidt told the Post. "It's not like we raised prices. We could lower prices from free to . . . lower than free? You see what I'm saying?"
Labels: government control, technology
Quote of the day.
[G]reen thinking represents a challenge to the status quo? That's a laughable idea. From schools and universities to every corner of the Western political sphere, the climate-change outlook is the status quo. It's the new conservatism, its aim being to conserve nature at the expense of further developing and transforming society.
Labels: Greens; Liberalism
“It’s amazing to see that the ‘occupiers’ of Wall Street are basically white kids, and they’re dressed fairly well — there are some out there who are kinda scruffy — but I don’t see the media bringing up the fact that there are no black folks in it,”
Labels: Obama, occupy wall street, Race
Is the US Declaration of Independence illegal?
Which leads us to ask a more basic question: is the law an ass? We have seen questions like this asked in law blogs that seem to be so far removed from reality that we question whether lawyers and people are really members of the same species.
Labels: Law
"Smart Diplomacy:" Iraq withdrawal outcome of Obama negotiating failure
How do you get to a situation that neither side wanted? "Smart Diplomacy" Obama style.This morning, the New York Times makes clear that neither side wanted a full withdrawal from Iraq, and that the collapse in negotiations came as a result of bungling by the White House.
So what's the next step for Mr. Smart Diplomacy? Bring the troops back next year? You're kidding, right?
Not kidding!
Possibilities being discussed are for some troops to return in 2012, an option preferred by some Iraqi politicians who want to claim credit for ending what many here still call an occupation, even though legally it ended years ago.
"Smarth Diplomacy": Afghanistan would back Pakistan in war with US, claims Hamid Karzai
Glenn Reynolds comments: THIS MUST BE MORE OF THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WE WERE PROMISEDIf fighting starts between Pakistan and the US, we are beside Pakistan," Mr Karzai said is an interview with private Pakistani television station GEO that aired Saturday. "If Pakistan is attacked and the people of Pakistan need Afghanistan's help, Afghanistan will be there with you."
Labels: Afghanistan, Obama
Libyan rebel: I killed Gaddafi
The rebel, who identified himself as Senad el Sadık el Ureybi, said: "We grabbed him, I hit him in the face. Some fighters wanted to take him away and that's when I shot him twice, in the head and in the chest."
Labels: Libya
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Madonna's homeless brother
We don’t know the details of the relationship between Madonna and her homeless brother. We can be fairly certain that they do not get along and that Madonna does not believe that he is a proper recipient of her charity.
The interesting thing about this situation is this: Madonna is a fairly typical Liberal who advocates government programs to help the poor and down-and-out, like her brother. Government programs, unlike private charity are not allowed to differentiate between what was once called the “deserving” poor and the “undeserving” poor. When our tax dollars are used by government to spend money on people like Madonna’s brother we are not allowed to ask if he deserves our support; he simply gets it because he qualifies. The government is not allowed to get as granular as that. And, frankly, I don’t trust the government employee to make those distinctions. But to the Liberal, the government program is “good” and ever more of it is demanded.
On the other hand, Madonna has determined that her homeless brother does not deserve her help for some reason. Getting fired from a family business gives us a clue, but is not definitive. Madonna is using her knowledge of her brother to decide whether to support him or not. She is familiar with the details of his situation; her decision is based on her determination that he does not deserve her charity.
This is a fascinating case of the Liberal mind. The inability to see that there are no “people” only persons. Each has a story and a problem. For some, a helping hand financially may be the answer. For others the gift of faith may be worth more than all the money in the world. The old adage about not being able to see the forest for the trees, can also be turned around; many cannot see the trees for the forest.
Labels: Charity, Liberalism
NEW LIBYA TO INTRODUCE 'RADICAL ISLAMIC LAW'
Libya: First Liberation Then Submission
These things rarely turn out well.Libya's interim leader outlined more radical plans to introduce Islamic law than expected as he declared the official liberation of the country.
Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of the National Transitional Council and de facto president, had already declared that Libyan laws in future would have Sharia, the Islamic code, as its "basic source".
Labels: Islamofascism, Libya
GREED IS GOOD: Occupiers battle over $500,000 bankroll...
If someone tells you it's not about the money ... it's about the money.
Labels: occupy wall street
Obama Offers Saudis Condolences From the Golf Course
Has anyone seen any of Obama's golf scores? He gets out more often than Tiger Woods and has to be pretty good by now.
Labels: Obama
Phil Hamilton, Barack Obama and Maurice Jones
It was not all that long ago that the Virginian Pilot, Maurice Jones Publisher, was inveighing against Republican Delegate Phil Hamilton. Hamilton, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates had managed to get a grant for Old Dominion University. In return for which grant, Hamilton was hired by Old Dominion to teach a course at a salary of $40,000 a year. The result: Phil Hamilton has been sentenced to nine and a half years in prison, for which the Virginian Pilot claimed credit.
Barack Obama, when he needed extra income, got his wife a job.
After Barack Obama became an Illinois state legislator, his wife moved up as well, scoring a job as 'vice president of community relations' at the University Of Chicago Hospital for a very generous salary of $121,910. When Obama became a senator in 2005, her 'salary' leapfrogged to $316,962 for the same job...and one of Senator Obama's first acts in office was to see to it that the hospital received over a million dollars of your tax dollars as an earmark.
You say this could be sheer coincidence? After all, Michelle Obama was filling a vital role at the hospital, right?
Well, Michelle has moved on, and guess what...that vital job of hers, worth a salary of over $300 K has been quietly eliminated.
Phil Hamilton came a lot cheaper than Michelle and took the job himself. Michelle got a “no-show” job and the Obama family finances got much better, in fact she was the family’s primary breadwinner. Obama himself earned $58,000 a year as an Illinois state senator which was supplemented by an $8,000-a-month retainer to give legal advice to Robert Blackwell Jr. owner of Electronic Knowledge Interchange (EKI). A few months after receiving his final payment from EKI, Obama sent a request on state Senate letterhead urging Illinois officials to provide a $50,000 tourism promotion grant to another Blackwell company, Killerspin. With support from Obama, other state officials and an Obama aide who went to work part time for Killerspin, the company eventually obtained $320,000 in state grants. Hamilton needs to study up on how the big boys and girls do it.
Maurice Jones was recently nominated by Barack Obama to be deputy secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Jones is part of the apparatus of the famous revolving door between government employment and private industry, where one hand washes the other. No word yet on whether Maurice Jones has a problem working for someone who did the same thing as Phil Hamilton, selling his office for cash. This time the Virginian Pilot didn't care.
Labels: corruption, Virginian Pilot
Under Fire, The Washington Post Quietly Scrubs Their Marco Rubio Hit-Piece
Via Big Journalism
Rubio himself:
Washington Post Downplayed Obama's Big Embellishment about Mother's Health Insurer
From the Miami Herald:First, the Miami Herald came out swinging against WaPo’s embellishment of Rubio’s so-called embellishments, then the Senator himself hit back, then we learned the troubling back-story of the WaPo “reporter” who wrote the piece, and now the once-legendary newspaper has taken to quietly scrubbing the original story in order to make it look like something closer to the truth.
Compare and contrast:But the top of the story suggests Rubio himself has given this “dramatic account:” that “he was the son of exiles, he told audiences, Cuban Americans forced off their beloved island after ‘a thug,’ Fidel Castro, took power.”
However, the story doesn’t cite one speech where Rubio actually said that.
Not long ago The Washington Post was digging up rocks from 30 years ago to find dirt about Rick Perry.
If you look close enough, you can see The Matrix:
1.The Washington Post desperately wants to see Barack Obama re-elected in 2012.
2.In order for Obama to get re-elected he needs to win a large portion of the Hispanic vote.
3.Rubio is, obviously, Hispanic and a rising star within the Republican party.
4.If Rubio is the pick for VP in 2012 he’ll attract Hispanic votes.
5.The Washington Post has decided to try and take Rubio down now.
Rubio himself:
“What’s important is that the essential facts of my family’s story are completely accurate,” Rubio said, adding that Castro’s ascension to power meant that his family would not be able to achieve their dream of returning to Cuba.
Rubio said his parents, Mario and Oriales Rubio, and his brother, Mario, arrived in the U.S. in 1956 on an immigration visa, prepared to live there permanently but hoping to return to Cuba one day.In 1961, he said, his mother and older siblings returned to Cuba while his father stayed behind in the U.S. to wrap up the family’s matters.
“After just a few weeks living there, she fully realized the true nature of the direction Castro was taking Cuba and returned to the United States one month later, never to return,” he said.
They were exiled from the home country they tried to return to because they did not want to live under communism,” he said. “That is an undisputed fact, and to suggest otherwise is outrageous.”
Washington Post Downplayed Obama's Big Embellishment about Mother's Health Insurer
The 1,610-word Rubio story was on the front page, and the headline clearly implies Rubio is guilty of wrongdoing: "Marco Rubio’s compelling family story embellishes facts, documents show." The Post's 486-word report on Obama's mother's health insurance was on page A-06 on July 15, with the headline: "Obama’s mother had health insurance, according to biography."
Why is it news that Obama's mom had health insurance? Oh, right: To help win a presidential election and pass his health care overhaul, Obama claimed that his mother's insurer tried to not pay for her cancer treatments by claiming her cancer was a "pre-existing condition." In fact, her insurer covered all medical treatments but denied her coverage for a "disability insurance policy" because that policy was picked up after she was diagnosed with cancer. (But no need to indicate in the headline that Obama fibbed.)
Labels: biased reporting, The Press
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Asking people who have a lot of money to pay just a little bit more in taxes.
Math is hard, and if you are Joe Biden, Barack Obama or anyone on the Left, it's best not to ask them to go behind their slogans and bumper stickers and find out if they're full of crap.
Luckily for us, Mark Steyn has a friend who can do math.
Luckily for us, Mark Steyn has a friend who can do math.
No problem, says the vice president. We're going to "ask" people who have "a lot of money" to "pay just a little bit more" in taxes. Where are these people? Evidently, not in York, Pa. But they're out there somewhere.
Who has "a lot of money"? According to President Obama, if your combined household income is over $250,000 a year you have "a lot of money." Back in March, my National Review colleague Kevin Williamson pointed out that, in order to balance the budget of the United States, you would have to increase the taxes of people earning more than $250,000 a year by $500,000 a year.
Okay, okay, maybe that 250K definition of "bloated plutocrat" is a bit off. After all, the quarter-mil-a-year category includes not only bankers and other mustache-twirling robber barons, but also at least 50 school superintendents in the state of New York and many other mustache-twirling selfless public servants.
So how about people earning a million dollars a year? That's "a lot of money" by anybody's definition. As Kevin Williamson also pointed out, to balance the budget of the United States on the backs of millionaires you would have to increase the taxes of those earning more than one million a year by six million a year.
Read Kevin Williamson's There Aren't enough Millionaires.
Labels: Economy, Steyn, taxes, wealth
Obama is to jobs what Gore is to weather.
It's been a running joke that if Al Gore speaks about global warming a snowstorm is bound to hit.
It's now becoming commonplace that if Obama talks about jobs, Jobs will disappear. Solyndra is only the most obvious example. But Obama has been touring in his black Canadian bus, talking jobs and what happens?
Days after Obama visit, NC sees jobless rate inch up
And Lowe's announced it was closing its Emporia store the same day Obama visited that small Virginia town.
It's now becoming commonplace that if Obama talks about jobs, Jobs will disappear. Solyndra is only the most obvious example. But Obama has been touring in his black Canadian bus, talking jobs and what happens?
Days after Obama visit, NC sees jobless rate inch up
Days after President Barack Obama stumped in North Carolina for his jobs proposals, officials reported Friday that the state's unemployment rate edged up in September.
And Lowe's announced it was closing its Emporia store the same day Obama visited that small Virginia town.
Killer Angel?
It appears that killing people is easier than creating jobs. Is Barack Obama morphing into the foreign affairs president, having determined that there is no chance of the economy turning around before the next election?
Who is next on the hit list?
Are those war drums beating for Iran part of the Obama re-election strategy? I would not want to be and Iranian - or Syrian - leader right now, a dead Ahmadinejad or Assad could be a great boost for Obama's second term.
THANKS GLENN. For first time visitors, here's a piece of trivia.
More from The Virginian: Obama is to jobs what Gore is to weather.
See the whole ball of wax: The Virginian
More from the Virginian: Dear Don Luzatto, it’s not you … scratch that …. It’s you, not me.
THANKS GLENN. For first time visitors, here's a piece of trivia.
More from The Virginian: Obama is to jobs what Gore is to weather.
See the whole ball of wax: The Virginian
More from the Virginian: Dear Don Luzatto, it’s not you … scratch that …. It’s you, not me.
Nostalgia: "As tears go by"
Friday, October 21, 2011
Why parent love Occupy Wall Street
Why Romney Alarms Me
After listing al the admirable traits of Romney, and they are many, Victor Volsky asks:
So what's my problem?
My problem is that for all Romney's admirable qualities, the president must be a visionary, not just a picker-upper. He sets the course of the country and points it in a certain direction. Running for president, Barack Obama proclaimed his intention of radically transforming America. He has gone a long way toward keeping his promise and done a lot of damage. He has steered the country onto the road to socialist hell, and if his "accomplishments" are not undone, America will find itself in mortal peril.
Assuming that in 2012 Obama goes down to defeat, as seems increasingly likely, it is paramount that the next U.S. president be as much a counter-revolutionary as Obama is a revolutionary. Zeal must be countered with zeal, persistence with persistence. For the U.S. public, ordinarily cautious and wary of dramatic moves, instinctively grasps the gravity of the situation and clamors for boldness. The 2012 election will be that rare instance when the American people will tolerate -- indeed, demand -- decisive, visionary action to arrest the country's seemingly inexorable slide toward the abyss. Tinkering around the edges won't do. What is required now is an all-out counterattack to roll back the socialist onslaught. In short, what the country needs is a transformative president.
Does Mitt Romney meet the specification? I am afraid not. And judging by the fact that his electoral base stays narrow no matter how hard he tries to expand it, a lot of American conservatives share my apprehension, whether consciously or intuitively. Look at the program of action Romney has posted on his campaign site. A slew of corrective or remedial measures -- and not a single truly radical measure, nothing that would really rock the boat. Even on the paramount issue of Obamacare, thoroughly discredited as it is, Romney doesn't dare suggest repealing it; he would simply grant a waiver to all the states, allowing them to wiggle out of its bony grip, without attempting to get rid of it outright. Doesn't he understand that the vampire has to be killed once and for all, with a stake driven through his heart, to make sure he would never rise again? Leaving the legal shell of Obamacare intact for all practical purposes is an invitation to the left to try again after it recovers, regroups, and prepares to storm the ramparts once again. Maybe Romney does understand it, but the deeply ingrained habit of Republican establishmentarians to defer to the liberals as their moral superiors is apparently too strong to overcome.
Like an old janitor called to the frat house to clean up after a wild party, President Romney would dolefully peruse the disgusting scene, heave a deep sigh, and, indignantly muttering under his breath (it will be rude to aggravate the severely hung-over revelers, won't it?), proceed to clean up the gigantic mess left by the Bacchanal. But the country does not need a custodial president who will tweak here and there and apply some Band-Aids, leaving intact the structures put in place by his socialist predecessor. It needs a bold and daring leader who will extirpate the socialist poison tree root and branch.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Romney
Dear Don Luzatto, it’s not you … scratch that …. It’s you, not me.
Tea Party envy was running rampant in today’s Virginian Pilot as editorial page editor Donny Luzatto tried to equate the Tea Party with the Occupy Wall Street movement and it’s bastard offspring. According to Donny, they are both saying there’s something wrong with “the system.”
Wrong, big government breath.
The Tea Party’s focus is on big government, big taxes, big regulation, and big national debt. The Tea Party is a middle-class uprising. It took its energy to change, and in many cases take over, the Republican Party. They entered politics and helped win elections. They are in the process of transforming the Republicans from the party of Democrats-on-a-budget to Conservatives-with-momentum.
Occupy Wall Street is completely different. They are not seeking to change the Democrats. They mean to gain power with political theater. They don’t believe in the political system in which voters decide on who governs. They are in the streets rather than at the ballot box because there is no market for what they are selling:
- Jews are behind the collapse of the economy;
- Capitalism should be overturned;
- I went to college majoring in Angry Wymen’s Studies racking up a hundred thousand dollar debt, I can’t get a job with that major, I am angry that my college loan bills are so big, corporations are at fault, and the answer is more government.
So they will stay in the streets and get advice from reporters on how to convey their message without scaring the hell out of the people. And if they have sex in public, defecate on cars or their anti-Semitic rants get too loud, if both the Nazis and the Communists join the Occupy Wall Street movement, don’t worry, Donny and his friends will make sure it doesn’t show up in your paper or on the alphabet networks. The Occupy Wall Street movement is the Left’s everlasting yelp against free enterprise; a demand the government replaces business wherever it’s found. It’s why they march on a select few billionaires homes – the conservative ones – and vote for Barack Obama, “President Goldman Sachs.”
We do have a problem. Thanks to Donny and his allies in the MSM the American people were sold a community organizer in the last election. Community organizers don’t know jack shit about how business works but they know how to apply pressure to government bureaucrats. They know how to get government grants, government jobs and how to get their spouses high paying jobs in hospitals in return for directing tax money to those hospitals. In other words, they know how to work the system and when they get to be president, all restraints are off.
So when the economy hits a tough spot, they know that you can’t let a good emergency go to waste. They know that they can flush a trillion dollars down the drain and hand out billions to their contributors, all the while laughing that "shovel ready" was sucker bait for the boobs in the media. Whoops. Too bad you millions of unemployed, suck it up, we'll extend unemployment benefits, now shut up.
Well, the “down the drain” isn’t really true.
Well, the “down the drain” isn’t really true.
Lots of the money was flushed into the pockets of public employees who emptied it into coffers of their unions who gave it right back to Mr. Community Organizer in the form of campaign contributions.
Lots of the money was shipped to banks and favored Wall Street firms who in gratitude send lots of that money back to Mr. Community Organizer in the form of campaign contributions.
Lots of that money was sent to “green energy” firms like Solyndra which promptly declares bankruptcy, but not before its billionaire backers get first dibs on the carcass and who send lots of money back to Mr. Community Organizer in the form of campaign contributions.
Lots of that money goes to luxury sports car maker Fisker motors which builds $100,000 cars in Finland and who is well connected to bundlers for Mr. Community Organizer who got lots of money in the form of campaign contributions.
To say that this is a “systems” problem is wrong. It’s not a system that’s gone astray. It’s a government that has been taken over by a community organizer who believes that every decision he has made is right. Who has taken control of a bloated government – built by Liberals to do just about anything it wants – and is exercising the power to run the country and its finances as his own “stash” (as one of his supporters put it so eloquently after his election) and for his own pleasure.
The Tea Party participant is saying that the government should not have been allowed to grow to its hypertrophied size in the first place BECAUSE of what can happen if anyone like Mr. Community Organizer gets into office.
The Occupy Wall Street camper is saying that the problem is that Mr. Community Organizer hasn’t done enough; hasn't driven a stake through he heart of capitalism, allows the Jews to stay in America.
Donny’s saying that he doesn’t know how to solve the problem and that’s because he doesn’t understand the problem. He thinks that the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Streeters are the same. He doesn’t see that – at the core – the problem is him.
Labels: Greens; Liberalism, Obama, occupy wall street, Tea Party, Virginian Pilot
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Model Hair
Since there was such an interest in model's teeth, I thought I would do an overview of model's hair. Ever notice that the hair in fashion magazines never resembles what you actually see in reality?
Imagine what it takes to maintain these hairstyles for anything except a photo shoot with a stylist off-camera.
Imagine what it takes to maintain these hairstyles for anything except a photo shoot with a stylist off-camera.
It's hard to spend an eveing looking out of one eye.
Don't cross this gal!
Imagine the spray this took
Bad hair day.
Look at the hair! The HAIR!
Labels: pictures
Fisker Karma: Solyndra on Wheels?
This car, which you can buy for a mere $100,000, was brought to you by a half billion dollar loan from the US Department of Energy, made in Finland using batteries and electric motors made in China. But I'll let Andrew explain it:
Our tax dollars at work… a half-billion dollar loan (actually $529 million) from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a hybrid toy for the wealthy and/or celebri-licious (like Leonardo DiCaprio, one of the first customers) that, in real world driving, won’t get much better mileage than your average crossover utility vehicle. Not only that, but the cars are manufactured in Finland — that’s right, Finland – and shipped here for sale, where their purchasers will then receive a $7,500 tax credit for buying one (the “cheap” base model starts at $96,895, with the full-zoot Eco Chic model going for a bargain $108,900).
What is the Department of Wasting Tax Payer Dollars Energy's excuse for this over-the-top extravagance? It runs partly on batteries, getting you 32 miles away from your garage before the turbocharged engine kicks in, delivering 20 miles to the gallon!
That's right! A range of 32 miles on batteries for a six figure car!
I have no problem with a group of entrepreneurs raising money from private investors to build a hundred thousand dollar toy for rich folks who want to flaunt their eco-consciousness. When and if that’s the case, may they have all the mazel in the world. But damn, it steams me up when my family and every family in America are forced to pay for it.
Al Gore is on the list of customers waiting to receive their Fisker Karmas, having put in his order before the DOE signed off on the company’s half-billion dollar loan. Oh, and by the way, it just so happens that several major investors in the company are also major donors to the Democratic Party. And here’s information on John Doerr, an advisor to President Obama who is also a major investor in Fisker Automotive. Can you say, “crony capitalism?”
The people in this administration are showing all the characteristics of the French nobility before the Revolution, exhibiting lavish lifestyles and providing images of wild extravagance as the people were starving. While Americans see their standard of living decline sharply the Obama’s throw lavish parties, take luxurious vacations and underwrite luxury toys for the rich while running up deficits that were unimaginable just three years ago. It’s as if taxpayers were French peasants, our money was Monopoly money and they represent a natural aristocracy.
Labels: crony capitalism, Economy, energy, Greens; Liberalism, Obama
Occupy Wall Steeters
Charles C.W. Cooke:
Is everyone involved like this? No. But there is such a solid supply of them that to walk around the site for twenty minutes with a video camera is to meet a steady stream of bizarro-world characters. I’m afraid that the place is attracting a very healthy portion of New York’s oddballs, some more benign than others.
Labels: occupy wall street
Why Is Class Hatred Morally Superior to Race Hatred?
Class hatred created the killing fields in Cambodia. Class hatred killed millions of Russian farmers in the Great Famine engineered by Stalin. Class hatred is the reason for every Communist dictatorship in the world. Race hatred was behind the Holocaust. So why is class hatred viewed morally superior to rac hatred? Dennis Prager asks a good question.
Read the whole thing.The major difference between Hitler and the Communist genocidal murderers -- Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot -- was what groups they chose for extermination.
For Hitler, first Jews and ultimately Slavs and other "non-Aryans" were declared the enemy and unworthy of life. For the Communists, the rich -- the bourgeoisie, land owners, and capitalists -- were labeled the enemy and regarded as unworthy of life.
Hitler mass-murdered on the basis of race, the Communists on the basis of class.
Because the Holocaust was unique in its industrialization of death and in its targeting of every Jew, including babies, for death, the post-World War II world has been rightly obsessed with eradicating racism (but not anti-Semitism!), i.e., the hatred of another solely because of race. But the world has not been obsessed with eradicating the other source of genocide: classism, or the hatred of others based on class.
The reason for this embrace is that class hatred is as fundamental to the left as the Trinity is to Christians, and the left dominates the media and education. This is dangerous because there is an ideological continuum from the democratic left to the Communist left. Making the rich into scapegoats for society's ills unites the left.
Labels: class hatred, Liberalism, Race
Obama has brought in more money from employees of banks, hedge funds and other financial service companies than all of the GOP candidates combined
Running a protection racket is VERY profitable.
If you can't get money from people because they love you,
you can get it from them because they fear you.
Labels: Obama, occupy wall street, Wall Street
“How many rapes could Democrats have prevented by giving that $535 million to cops instead?”
“The very first question at the next Solyndra hearing should be, ‘How many rapes could Democrats have prevented by giving that $535 million to cops instead?’”
Labels: biased reporting, Biden, crime
'Occupy Wall Street' [Hearts] Wall Street
Ann Coulter makes an excellent point:
The worst thing about Occupy Wall Street is that it's ruining a good cause: hating Wall Street. Just when opposing Wall Street was gaining momentum, these brain-dead zombies are forcing us to choose between thieving bankers and them.
Look, I have along and intimate knowledge of Wall Street. While I have not actually worked in New York, I have a quarter century experience with their products and how they work. And no, I’m not talking about stocks, bonds and mutual funds; I’m talking about the stuff that Wall Street loves to peddle, packaged products that no one really understands or that are blatantly misrepresented to be sold to a gullible public by almost equally gullible brokers.
And don’t get me started on hedge funds and their managers like Soros who makes literally billions of personal income manipulating currencies and government to rape entire countries financially.
The OWS protesters are not really protesting Wall Street, they are after two things: intimidating financial fat cats so that they will continue to give generously to re-elect Barack Obama, and they are protesting people they don’t like who have nothing to do with Wall Street.
Last week, the great minds of the OWS movement, bored with playing bocce ball and getting stoned, decided to protest at the homes of Wall Street's robber barons. They then proceeded to walk right past George Soros' apartment building in order to protest at the homes of Rupert Murdoch and David Koch.
THEY'RE NOT WALL STREET!
You may not like Koch and Murdoch's products -- fertilizer and media -- but neither one has anything to do with Wall Street. Unlike money manipulators such as John Corzine (Democrat), Robert Rubin (Democrat) and George Soros (Democrat and Obama's biggest supporter), Koch and Murdoch make money from corporations that actually produce something.
They take risks, make things and get menaced by the government. Wall Street schemers take no risks, produce nothing and get bailed out by the government.
Even assuming, for purposes of argument, that Koch and Murdoch are as evil as these morons seems to think, the protesters call their demonstration "Occupy Wall Street," not "Occupy Businesses Whose Products We Disapprove Of."
This would be like protesting the Holocaust by walking past Adolf Hitler's house and protesting at O.J. Simpson's house.
The Flea Partiers try to win good will by pretending to protest "Wall Street" -- but they ignore Wall Street's villains. They claim to speak for 99 percent of Americans, but their sponsor, George Soros, would be delighted if America collapsed and the 99 percent were impoverished. All he cares about is his own power and pocketbook....
Are the protesters aware that the Democrats' 2010 "financial reform" bill provides for future bailouts of reckless banks? Goldman Sachs and Citibank strongly supported the bill.
The protesters don't care -- they have no interest in actual malfeasance by actual Wall Street bankers. They're too busy denouncing Fox News. (Which did not, incidentally, receive a taxpayer-funded bailout.)
And these are the intellectuals of the Occupy Wall Street movement! Never mind the ones who just think stuff should be free and America is the moral equivalent of al-Qaida. They either know that they are benefiting Wall Street looters or are utterly brainless.
Given a choice between Wall Street looters and protesters defecating in the street, throwing rocks at police and chanting "F—k the USA," most people will choose Wall Street.
As always, the mob is serving liberalism.
Labels: Coulter, Obama, occupy wall street
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Glenn Beck: Nazis and Communists and the the Occupy Wall Street Movement
Labels: Glenn Beck, occupy wall street
Andrew Klavan on Glenn Beck
Wealthiest City in the US is Washington, DC
Is this the change you voted for?
The chances for graft are ever better.
When all the important decisions are made by the Federal Government, don't be surprised that government employees make the big bucks.Federal employees whose compensation averages more than $126,000 and the nation’s greatest concentration of lawyers helped Washington edge out San Jose as the wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area, government data show.
The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was $50,046.
The figures demonstrate how the nation’s political and financial classes are prospering as the economy struggles with unemployment above 9 percent and thousands of Americans protest in the streets against income disparity, said Kevin Zeese, director of Prosperity Agenda, a Baltimore-based advocacy group trying to narrow the divide between rich and poor.
The chances for graft are ever better.
Labels: Economy, government control, Government waste
DRUDGE Headline: FLAWLESS
Obama:
I believe all the choices we've made have been the right ones,
Perfection is so rarely achieved in one human being.
God is truly among us.
God is truly among us.
Labels: Obama
Mountain Biker gets taken out by BUCK -...
I had not seen this.
Buck teeth models ... and stylish stubble.
And most of the male models had at least a two day growth of stubble.
What?
Labels: Culture, Entertainment, girls, media, Original reporting, pictures
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Polling the Occupy Wall Streeters
Up to now the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests have been like a Rorschach test; what you saw was primarily a reflection of what you believed. Some have wandered through the protesters and drawn their own conclusions, like James Taranto, who said the people he met were “endearingly earnest,” and “very nice.” He admits that “Possibly there was a selection bias at work” since “disruptive elements” were marching elsewhere when he visited.
So now we have the first actual survey and here’s what it shows.
Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.
The vast majority of demonstrators are actually employed, and the proportion of protesters unemployed (15%) is within single digits of the national unemployment rate (9.1%).
An overwhelming majority of demonstrators supported Barack Obama in 2008. Now 51% disapprove of the president while 44% approve, and only 48% say they will vote to re-elect him in 2012, while at least a quarter won't vote.
Fewer than one in three (32%) call themselves Democrats, while roughly the same proportion (33%) say they aren't represented by any political party.
What binds a large majority of the protesters together—regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education—is a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies to keep American jobs from going overseas.
Sixty-five percent say that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost. By a large margin (77%-22%), they support raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, but 58% oppose raising taxes for everybody, with only 36% in favor. And by a close margin, protesters are divided on whether the bank bailouts were necessary (49%) or unnecessary (51%).
Thus Occupy Wall Street is a group of engaged progressives who are disillusioned with the capitalist system and have a distinct activist orientation. Among the general public, by contrast, 41% of Americans self-identify as conservative, 36% as moderate, and only 21% as liberal. That's why the Obama-Pelosi embrace of the movement could prove catastrophic for their party.
Now, people who have no use for capitalism and are ready to go to the barricades to redistribute my wealth may, when you talk to them, be very nice people and endearingly earnest. But at the risk of invoking Godwin’s law we are reliably told that Hitler loved dogs and his secretaries adored him, along with a large swath of the German people. Lots of people who are nice one-on-one are moral monsters when it comes to public policy, taking seriously the reminder that you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
We have seen countless examples of anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, Nazis and Communists joining together, the demand for sex with animals (I kid you not), and simple loonieness on public display as part of a series of nation-wide OWS demonstrations. If these have been exhibited by the Tea Party they would have led the nightly news and spread across the nation’s newspapers. But since they represent the media’s own ideology, they are airbrushed away or left on the cutting room floor.
Thanks to YouTube, Andrew Breitbart and a lot of conservative bloggers the real nature of the OWS activists are being exposed. The result will be the kind of landslide repudiation that followed the Viet Nam war protests in the 1960s which led to Richard Nixon’s election. The only people who actually believe that the OWS protests help the Democrats are those who believe what the protesters believe. Let’s not disabuse them.
Labels: occupy wall street, Polls, protests, The Press, Wall Street
Thieves steal Obama's podium, teleprompter and audio equipment
Is this a sign of things to come?
I can't help it, this is hysterically funny.ENRICO, VA (WWBT) – NBC12 has uncovered one of those stories that makes you think: "How in the world does that happen?!" A truck filled with President Obama's podiums and audio equipment was stolen in Henrico just days before his visit to Chesterfield.
Posing As Banker, O’Keefe Finds Anti-Capitalist Protesters Looking For Some Venture Capital At #OccupyWallStreet
"i'm not a fan of capitalism, I said we'll make money."
But of course.
Labels: Breitbart, occupy wall street
Howard Stern Shows Idiocy Of #OccupyWallStreet Protesters
On Race and Fairness In Education
I would have thought that Dred Scott would have caused thoughtful people to conclude that Supreme Court decisions and morality are not the same. Ann Althouse posted a column about a hearing exploring the use of racial preferences at the University of Wisconsin. Althouse, the law professor, states that the Supreme Court’s ruling on this issue is crucial. From a purely legal perspective she is probably safe. From a moral perspective she is totally wrong. It’s one of the reasons that the legal profession ranks somewhere below used car salesmen in terms of morality.
The comments that follow the column are interesting. One is right on the money:
Contemplate it, savor it, admit it’s true: fast food restaurants are morally superior to American universities.george said...I hate to break this to you but whether Supreme Court standards are adhered to is not crucial in the least. Just because those standards allow you to act indecently and make fools of yourselves by considering race as an admissions criteria doesn't mean you are required to do so. You can always do the right thing and omit such considerations entirely.
To the extent the Supreme Court allows racists in positions of authority to act in this manner the court loses its legitimacy. Luckily, Sandra Day O'Connor said that in a couple of decades there will be some sort of harmonic inversion of morality and such actions will be illegal once again. Judges say the darndest things when they are rationalizing their policy decisions.
Racial or cultural diversity is no more an excuse for rewarding certain groups than racial and cultural purity was for rewarding others. The people who practice either are equally guilty and morally repellant. There is no place for such people in a civilized society.
I am not even sure why universities have admissions offices as gatekeepers. If someone wants the service I offer and is willing and able to pay then I provide the service. In this case if the student is unable to keep up then the financial incentive is there for them to move to a service better matching their abilities. You scale your business up or down to match the demand.
It should be up to the customer to determine if your service is appropriate. It is not for the university to determine who its customers are. That inverts the power structure and causes abuses like we see here.
If a restaurant excluded or included customers based on their race they would rightfully be shut down. What makes universities think they are any different? How did we come to have our academic institutions held to a lower standard than our fast food restaurants?
Labels: Academia, Liberalism, Race
"Christopher Columbus was the first ZIONIST "
John Hinderaker excerpts an e-mail exchange among the OWS leaders, including the identification of Columbus as a Zionist:
Someone leaked a batch of emails that have been exchanged by leaders of the Occupy Wall Street group. I’ve only dipped into them briefly, but some are pretty entertaining. This thread reminded me of my days as a leftist, and the difficulty of accommodating the diverse and sometimes inconsistent varieties of left-wing crackpotism.
Read the whole thing.Christopher Columbus was the first ZIONIST ===don’t you guys get it? The same colonial narrative–genocide. We must endorse the Declaration of First Nation Peoples, in solidarity, for the plight of all people of color. Cesar and Bahareh, i agree–this is most urgent.This exchange strikes me as revealing on several levels, but I will close with just two observations: 1) It is a reminder of the sheer volume of ignorant BS that leftists can generate. 2) The only common denominator that binds together these miscellaneous cranks with their various obsessions is their visceral hatred of the United States.
Labels: Liberalism, occupy wall street, protests
Monday, October 17, 2011
Occupy Wall Street and financing the Obama campaign.
Imagine you are one of those investment bankers who gave and gave to the 2008 Obama campaign. Imagine further that you are less than happy with the results of Obama’s economic policies and don’t think that you ought to be demonized by Obama and his Occupy Wall Street army.
Would you contribute to his 2012 campaign?
You betcha. You would if you know what’s good for you.
Remember that it was earlier in his administration that he told bankers that he was the only one standing between them and the pitchforks of the mob. So now if he senses an reluctance to give him money, he’s got the mobs and it’s only a few blocks from Zuccotti Park to their offices and penthouses.
Labels: election, finance, Obama, occupy wall street, Wall Street
Those mythical federal spending cuts.
When Republicans took control of the House in January, they pledged to make deep cuts in federal spending, and in April they succeeded in passing a bill advertised as cutting $38 billion from fiscal 2011's budget. Then in August, they pushed for a deal to cut an additional $2.4 trillion over the next decade.
Some analysts have blamed these spending cuts for this year's economic slowdown.
But data released by the Treasury Department on Friday show that, so far, there haven't been any spending cuts at all.
Higher Spending, Deficits
In fact, in the first nine months of this year, federal spending was $120 billion higher than in the same period in 2010, the data show. That's an increase of almost 5%. And deficits during this time were $23.5 billion higher.
These spending hikes haven't stopped many analysts from claiming that the country is in an age of budget austerity, one that's hurting economic growth.
A July article in USA Today, for example, claimed that "Already in 2011, softer government spending has sapped growth."
Jared Bernstein, former chief economic adviser to Vice President Biden, wrote over the summer that "government spending cutbacks have been a large drag on growth in recent quarters and have led to sharp losses in state and local employment."
Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argued in September that "the turn toward austerity (is) a major factor in our growth slowdown."
Labels: Economy, Government waste
