The Virginian

Forget about Economic Recovery: Obama Is Toast

2012-01-25T07:25:00.000-05:00

People are hurting, and badly. The official unemployment rate may have fallen, slightly, but the real unemployment rate — the number of working-age Americans who aren’t working — rose from about 12% before the 2008 crisis, to about 23%, and hasn’t come down. That includes people who have retired early because they can’t find work, spouses who used to earn a second income but have gone back to homemaking because work isn’t available, self-employed people whose businesses have collapsed, young people who live in their parents’ basement because they can’t afford tuition and can’t find work.

White House Flack Carney on Rand Paul: “The passenger was not detained"

2012-01-24T06:59:00.000-05:00

Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

Sen. Paul told TheDC that he certainly felt like he was detained. “If you’re told you can’t leave, does that count as detention?” Paul asked.

“I tried to leave the cubicle to speak to one of the TSA people and I was barked at: ‘Do not leave the cubicle!’ So, that, to me sounds like I’m being asked not to leave the cubicle. It sounds a little bit like I’m being detained.”

Soros predicts riots in the streets

2012-01-24T06:47:00.000-05:00

—“it’s already started,” he says

With a little help from him this prediction may come true. Spooky guy.

Chevy Dealers Turn Down Volt

2012-01-24T06:41:00.000-05:00

Why would you tie up any of your precious inventory dollars in a car that doesn't sell and will catch fire?

DETROIT -- Some Chevrolet dealers are turning down Volts that General Motors wants to ship to them, a potential stumbling block as GM looks to accelerate sales of the plug-in hybrid.

For example, consider the New York City market. Last month, GM allocated 104 Volts to 14 dealerships in the area, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Dealers took just 31 of them, the lowest take rate for any Chevy model in that market last month. That group of dealers ordered more than 90 percent of the other vehicles they were eligible to take, the source said.

In Clovis, Calif., meanwhile, Brett Hedrick, dealer principal at Hedrick's Chevrolet, sold 10 Volts last year. But in December and January he turned down all six Volts allocated to him under GM's "turn-and-earn" system, which distributes vehicles based on past sales volumes and inventory levels.

The solar flare.

2012-01-24T06:33:00.000-05:00

The Absolute Moral Authority of Being Black

2012-01-23T17:07:00.000-05:00

Charles Blow

In today's column, The Genetic Fallacy, James Taranto does what Newt Gingrich did to Juan Williams in reacting to NY Times columnist Charles Blow who asserts his moral authority to call Gingrich a racist because, to quote his tweet:

"Don't need Newt 2 tell me abt blk ppl, work and food stamps. Ancestors worked 4 free, nearly starved 2 death & were branded w cattle stamps!"

This is reminiscent of Maureen Dowd’s anointing of Cindy Sheehan. Because she had a son who died in Viet Nam, Sheehan had “absolute” moral authority. In Dowd’s words:

“ …the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.”

Today, the Left anoints black people, especially those whose ancestors were slaves with the absolute moral authority to call people racists who believe that - fifty years after the civil rights act was passed - it’s time to treat everyone equally.

Taranto reflects the views of many of us, especially the young when he says:

Nonetheless, to those whites for whom white guilt is not rooted in experience--those, including this columnist, who are too young to remember a time when full citizenship for blacks was a cruel fiction--the culture of white guilt can seem unfair and irrational, and can be a source of irritation and anger. Why is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People respected while a National Association for the Advancement of White People would be considered racist? Why did Obama get away with calling his grandmother "a typical white person," when a white politician who made the same statement about a black person would be pilloried?
There are reasonable answers to questions like these--answers that are obvious to those who are old enough to remember Jim Crow or who have a sufficiently deep understanding of American history. What is not a reasonable answer is a hectoring assertion of one's own moral authority, either as a black person or as an enlightened white.

As with many unexamined attitudes, it may take the passing of a generation to eliminate old prejudices.

One cannot go backward. White supremacy is as good as dead, and white guilt is dying along with guilty whites of older generations. Both these developments constitute progress toward racial equality. The election of a black president was the most compelling dramatization this country has seen of the death of white supremacy. In our view, it is also hastening the demise of white guilt.

The question for people like Charles Blow is what kind of blowback the stoking of racial animosity that he specializes in will generate from a generation that doesn’t feel guilt because it isn’t guilty. The answer may be found in the reaction of the audience when they rose to their feet to applaud Newt when he said:

"I believe every American of every background has been endowed by their Creator with the right to pursue happiness, and if that makes liberals unhappy, I'm going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job, learn how to get a better job, and learn someday to own the job."

For Blow to denounce these words that echo the promise of a better America is very, very troubling.

Egypt's Islamists win 75 percent of parliament

2012-01-22T13:45:00.000-05:00

How's that Arab Spring working out for ya?

The Salafi Al-Nour, which was initially the biggest surprise of the vote, wants to impose strict Islamic law in Egypt,...

While the Muslim Brotherhood lies about its objectives ... except the part about destroying Israel.

Gingrich Beats Media in South Carolina, 54 to 14

2012-01-22T13:32:00.000-05:00

Well, yeah ... that's why he won. Duh!

A bunch of Mesoamerican coneheads

2012-01-22T10:19:00.001-05:00

For reasons that are explicable only to Liberals, the predictions - of people who had not developed the wheel or metal tools, practiced human sacrifice on a really massive scale, and who shaped their heads to the point of imbecility - are believed by many who regard Christianly as mere superstition.

This essay answers the question: “Who the heck were the Maya?”

Per capita, a person was at least nine times more likely to be murdered in Chihuahua last year than in Afghanistan.

2012-01-21T16:39:00.000-05:00

According to the reported numbers, the drug-related murder rate was about 67 for every 100,000 inhabitants in Chihuahua last year, while in Afghanistan the civilian killing rate was an estimated seven for every 100,000 people living there.
There were more drug-related killings in Chihuahua than in any other Mexican state, according to the government figures. Chihuahua, the largest state in Mexico, includes Ciudad Juarez, a border city located across from El Paso, Texas. It is the deadliest city in Mexico and is considered one of the most dangerous places in the world.

I visited Juarez once. It must have been over 40 years ago. Two things I remember from that visit: (1)I don't like chicken mole, and (2) we were approached by an elderly man in a military uniform when we parked our car who asked for a little money to watch it and make sure nothing happened to it. We paid.

The Puppet's Court

2012-01-21T16:26:00.000-05:00

Secretary of State Project.

2012-01-21T16:05:00.001-05:00

There is a chilling undercurrent that is shaping our elections: the Democrat’s Secretary of State Project. What’s it purpose? To elect Democrats to the office of Secretaries of State in each state. Why? The Secretary of State of each state certifies the election results for that state. Other than the pay, why should anyone care about the party affiliation of the Secretary of State? The answer is simple, in close elections, especially where there are disputed ballots or recounts, the Secretary of State can make the difference between the winner and the loser.

Here is how Al Franken defeated Norm Coleman.

Then, in Minnesota’s November election for U.S. Senate, Republican incumbent Norm Coleman finished 725 votes ahead of Democratic challenger Al Franken; the thin margin of victory, however, triggered an automatic recount. With Mark Ritchie [who credited the Secretary of State Project for his win] presiding over the recount process during the ensuing weeks, Coleman's lead gradually dwindled due to what journalist Matthew Vadum describes as a long series of “appalling irregularities” that invariably benefited Franken.

For example, during the recount process a number of ballots were found in an election judge's car; one Minnesota county suddenly discovered 100 new votes for Franken and claimed that a clerical error had caused them to previously go uncounted; another county tallied 177 more votes than it had recorded on Election Day; and yet another county reported 133 fewer votes than its voting machines had tabulated. “Almost every time new ballots materialized, or tallies were updated or corrected, Franken benefited,” writes Vadum. In addition, at least 393 convicted felons voted illegally in two particular Minnesota counties.

By the time the recount (and a court challenge by Coleman) ended in April 2009, Franken held a 312-vote lead. In June, Franken was officially declared the victor.

Loosely translated, Stalin is quoted as saying:

"I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”

There is now a growing body of evidence that the Democrats are going to make a concerted effort to steal as much of the upcoming election as possible. The regime’s “Justice” department under Eric Holder wants to make sure that no one will be asked for identification when voting; opening the process to fraud on a massive scale because they know that there will be no effort by the Feds to stop it. Election fraud has been given a green light.

Meanwhile the Secretary of State Project has committed a grave blunder by trying to frame the surprise Republican winner of the Iowa Secretary of State’s office.

A Des Moines man has been arrested after police say he used, or tried to use, the identity of Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz in a scheme to falsely implicate Schultz in perceived unethical behavior in office.

Remember Stalin’s maxim, the people who count the votes make the most important decisions. We are entering a lawless time where the unthinkable suddenly becomes entirely possible.

UPDATE: Democrats try to hide the trail. Fire Edwards.

Biographical information on Edwards found on the Link Strategies website says that Edwards worked in new media for the Obama campaign beginning in September 2007 after joining the campaign as an intern organizing in the Las Vegas area.

Jeff Link, president of Link Strategies, confirmed Saturday that Edwards no longer works for the company.

“I am greatly disturbed by the charge brought against Zach, and understand the pending legal action will run its course,” Link said.

He added that within hours “of learning of this situation, I met with Zach and notified him he was no longer employed with Link

'Find Out Who Obama's Drug Pusher Was'

2012-01-21T08:19:00.000-05:00

Mark Levin:

I also want to know more about his relationship with Reverend Wright. I want to know about his girlfriends, and ex-girlfriends; his classmates because that will tell me about the man behind the mask. I want to know what courses he took and grades he got in college because we are told by his groupies in the press how brilliant he is. Perhaps he keeps that brilliance hidden for a reason.

We are in the middle of a new election season and there is still time for us to learn about the man behind the teleprompter.

Gingrich opens the debate.

2012-01-20T08:02:00.001-05:00

If only Mitt Romney had it in him to do the same thing, this election would be over. Could we have a Romney - Gingrich slate for 2012?

Rush Limbaugh: “Are journalists monogamous?”

2012-01-20T07:28:00.003-05:00

More: Drudge Screwed Up ABC's Plans for the Marianne Gingrich Interview

Even more Limbaugh: Barack Obama is the Problem

The things that I do know are that this country is precariously balanced on an edge -- and if it goes the wrong way, the country as you and I know it is finished. What I know is, as I said yesterday: Whatever Mitt Romney's tax rate is, he's not responsible for that.

Mitt Romney nor Newt Gingrich nor Rick Santorum nor Rick Perry have anything to do with the economic misery in this country. That is traceable to one man and one location: Barack Obama and the Oval Office. Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Santorum have not played over 90 rounds of golf in three years while everybody's suffering. Gingrich, Romney, Santorum, the Republican nominees have not flown all over the world on the federal government's dime. They're not having lavish parties and concerts on the public's dime. They're not living like kings on other people's money.

Obama sends his wife on government jets four hours ahead of him to the same destination, or she decides to take the jet herself. The Republicans are not doing that.

Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich will be taking a pay cut. For Obama winning the White House was a path to wealth. For the Republican nominees all except Santorum, now, it will be a pay cut. Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Santorum. None of the Republican candidates are responsible for the 16% real unemployment in this country. They are not responsible for the increased fuel and food costs. They are not responsible for any of this. That would be Obama, who pretends to care about the middle class but lives like a king at the public trough. Mitt Romney's not the problem. Newt Gingrich is not the problem. Rick Santorum is not the problem.

We find ourselves in the mess that we are in, precariously balanced on the edge, because of Barack Obama.

Germany's solar power plants don't produce power when the sun doens't shine.

2012-01-19T08:02:00.000-05:00

Via Instapundit:

#GREENFAIL: Der Spiegel: Solar Subsidy Sinkole: Reevaluating Germany’s Blind Faith In The Sun. I’ve lived in Germany. They have faith in the sun because for most of the year it never actually appears . . . . No really. We went from November to May in Heidelberg and I think we saw the sun, like, once. So how can this possibly be a surprise?

Der Spiegel: Re-Evaluating Germany's Blind Faith in the Sun

A good place to begin the ridicule. Some ideas are so ridiculous that only a highly credentialed person would believe them.

Subverting the consensus

2012-01-19T07:54:00.003-05:00

I have peeked around the corner and seen a little bit of politics as it is actually practiced, and it’s described well here.

From Sultan Knish

Politics is a profession with a practice that runs completely counter to its ideals. The best politicians believe nothing they say. Whatever commitments they make to the voters are left behind once they enter the white halls of government. Like police officers who are forced to become criminals in order to do their job right, they discover that the practice of their profession requires the comprehensive corruption of their ideals. Only by discarding their principles and commitments can they actually get the things they want to do done.

The successful politician does not believe in absolutes except when he is delivering a speech intended for the ears of the voters, what he knows to be true is that everyone has a price at which a bargain can be made. ...

"Forty billion dollars for clean energy subsidies? Ridiculous. My family will starve and my children will have to beg in the streets! Forty-two billion? Now that's more reasonable. Make it forty-three and I'll give you that cowboy poetry festival and steel tariff you wanted."

Think of Washington D.C. and every state capital and every local bunch of elected officials as a Middle Eastern bazaar and you come close to the truth. And while this system works well enough when stocks are limited, when the merchants can dispose of unlimited assets that they don't own and drive their constituents deep into debt to pay for their latest deals, then the real nightmare arrives.

The fact is that politicians operate within a consensus that is created outside of the halls of congress.

Politics is based around a consensus. The left does not operate on a consensus, it is a revolutionary movement and it works by subverting the consensus and presenting its revolutionary position as the new consensus. All that is left for the politicians then is to affirm the new consensus. This has happened over and over again in the lifetimes of even the youngest person reading this article and the process has been accelerating lately because it s a revolutionary process.

There are two types of conservative politicians. Gatekeepers and revolutionaries. The gatekeepers are consensus builders, they talk a great deal about traditional values, and are elected to keep change out. This defensive strategy is a dead end because the real changes are happening outside the direct purview of the gatekeepers, who usually lack the imagination and courage to do anything about them. When the left pushes hard enough, the gatekeepers fold and add the new order of things into their panoply of American values.

The gatekeepers will put up a vigorous show of fighting gay marriage and then ten years later they will proclaim gay marriage as the embodiment of our family values. They will make a great show of fighting Global Warming legislation, and then five years later they will say that our courage to confront climate change is the deepest sign of our values of responsibility for the world around us.

If you are a conservative, support the revolutionary.

There are few things more powerful and liberating than spitting in the face of authority, tearing down the sacred symbols and violation the taboos of those in power. In a democracy political power is based on a consensus. Defying that consensus, trivializing that consensus and walking all over it gets you called an extremist, but if you do it right then you have weakened the psychological power of the establishments over the minds of men.

Defiance is the fundamental virtue of the revolutionary. The left defied the accepted norms and values of America, and that defiance paved the way for a cultural revolution. The power of the left will never be broken until the right defies their values and norms the same way. Until it publicly destroys, mocks and violates everything that they consider sacred in the spirit of revolution.

Revolutions begin as culture wars against the established order and they connect cultural defiance to political change. The fundamental message of every revolution is a defiance of authority and if the revolution succeeds then those in power are forced to give way and accede to change. It can be done. That populist spirit is out there, it is abroad in the Tea Party, it is there in blogs and social media, and even occasionally on talk radio. But all that goes to waste empowering a political establishment of gatekeepers who sometimes talk like revolutionaries, but don't act like revolutionaries.

Why is the Tea Party revolutionary while OWS was not?

The answer is transparently obvious. Because it is the left that is in power. Why bother demanding an activist and progressive government when we already have one of those? At most the left can demand a "more" activist and progressive government, but how enthusiastic can protesters be about calling for more authority and more power for the existing system? That is why OWS was basically incoherent, it was little more than a loincloth for the naked emperor already sitting on his throne and looking for the plebes to cry out for more chains.

The revolution of the left is the stratified revolution of Barack Obamas and Elizabeth Warrens, greedy political activists feeding at the watering hole of government and crying out for more. More power. More laws. More chains. Parse the rhetoric and all you get is the powerful demanding that we give them more power. This revolution of the greedy and corrupt would already be dead if it had not used the momentum of its ideological fervor to embed itself into every institution and seize control of the educational system and the cultural dialogue to program succeeding generations to give it even more power.

Rush Limbaugh keeps pointing out that the establishment Republicans tell us that we can’t be mean to the Democrats because that will scare away the all-important “moderates.”

The time is ripe for a true cultural and political revolution of the right, but that revolution has been hijacked over and over again by the gatekeepers who warn us that it's time to play nice, that we must think of the long game, that some issues have already been lost and we need to fight only for the core issues that matter to them lest we alienate people. The long march never ends in a last stand, only another tactical withdrawal on issue after issue.

Let's show some contempt and ridicule ...

Revolutions begin with an open contempt for and anger at the existing order. The left knows that. It is why it fears talk radio and populism more than it fears the latest set of dapper gatekeepers we send to the Senate. The contempt and anger are here, the more they go public, the more the power of the left is shaken.

No quarter.

Thanks for the link Glenn.

The attraction of Newt Gingrich is that – when he defies the MSM, when he spits in their faces – he’s the cultural revolutionary that people want. They are afraid that Mitt Romney will be the caretaker who “fixes” some of the problems while staying within the consensus. That’s his M.O.

Mitt, Ron Paul, Santorum, and all the rest all want good press. Gingrich at his best knows that “good press” is a pact with the devil. The vast majority of the people who are not Obamabots know this deep down and rise to their feet when someone who is vying for leadership shows he’s not afraid. “Fight the power” was once a slogan of the Far-Left, it’s now owned by the people.

UPDATE: Bill Whittle also likes what Newt has to say to Juan Williams.

Obama Kills Keystone Pipeline, Blames Republicans.

2012-01-19T07:20:00.000-05:00

In other news, sun rises in the East.

DRUDGE:

Obama kills Keystone pipeline; Blames Republicans...

Says more jobs in jobless benefits...

GOP calls Hillary to testify...

More - KEYSTONE CALAMITY

ntelli On Piracy, Protection, And Policy Amendments

2012-01-19T07:11:00.002-05:00

Keystone Calamity

2012-01-19T07:02:00.000-05:00

Obama has made his choice: Barack Obama chose Venezuela and Saudi Arabia over Canada.

"It's an American disgrace."

Europe is no longer running a civilisation it's running a retirement home.

2012-01-19T06:50:00.000-05:00

Employees at Just One Paris Hospital Are Owed 2 Million Vacation Days.

Just to put 2 million days into perspective, that's 5,475 years of vacation time. There's no indication of how many employees are sharing that pool of vacation time, but if it were just one, they'd just be finishing a stint of paid time off that started in B.C. 3467, that is just around the time when the Sumerians invented writing and the Sahara started turning into a desert.

Chris Matthews, the Larry Craig of Political Punditry.

2012-01-18T20:35:00.000-05:00

Poor Larry Craig. The Left really enjoyed bringing him down because he had a reputation of being a pro-family and anti-gay marriage kind of guy. So there was a lot of enjoyment on their part when he was caught trolling for gay sex in a Minneapolis airport bathroom. “Anti-gay guy is gay” was the theme of a lot of the stories.

There are a lot of others versions of this theme in popular culture. American Beauty comes to mind where a macho guy is in reality homosexual.

I was reminded of this odd bit of history when I saw Chris Matthews on Andrea Mitchell Reports. Matthews is famous as a fan of Barack Obama who claimed that a “tingle” ran up his leg when he gave speech. Matthew also claimed: "I forgot he was black tonight for an hour."

To burnish his non-racist credentials he imagined that when Newt Gingrich called Juan Williams “Juan,” Gingrich was being racist.

The exchange between Williams and Gingrich during the South Carolina debate was a classic. It was a home-run for Gingrich who received the only standing ovation for any speaker during the Republican debates. See it here:

Note that Gingrich used expert timing when he addressed Williams as “Juan,” pausing just half a beat and giving the audience a moment to react –which they did.

The problem was that Matthews – like many liberals who are marinated in racism – perceived this to be a slight of a black man. Instead, it was a slight of the media, and done with exquisite finesse. The racism of Matthews who comes to the defense of Obama because he’s black and makes a point of “forgetting” that he’s black are great examples of a man overcompensating for his inner feelings.

Matthew is racist just as Larry Craig is homosexual; both are finely tuned to perceptions of their own particular idiosyncrasies. Craig sees tapping the foot of the man in the next stall as a sexual come-on. Matthews sees a mild put-down of a member of the press who happens to be black as a racist “dog whistle.” Larry Craig denies to this day that he’s gay; Matthews denies his racism. Two peas in a pod.

The Food Stamp President

2012-01-18T08:14:00.000-05:00

What are the facts? The Left (see Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews) is trying to tell us that the reason we have more people are on food stamp because there are more people.

But here are the numbers, via Powerline: the money spent on food stamps has DOUBLED since 2008.

The population hasn’t doubled. Sure, we are in a recession; a recession that the Obama administration has had three years to fix and at which it has failed miserably. The answer of Team Obama is not to get America working again, but to pay people to be unemployed for 99 weeks and to give them food stamps.

The Obama administration sees Detroit and likes the model. "Prolonged Death Spiral."

Newt tackles race card -slams it into ground.

2012-01-17T07:31:00.002-05:00

THIS is the reason Newt Gingrich is still in the race for the Republican nomination. He is willing, and able, to give it back to the Liberals in the media in a way that people can understand, and enjoy. Who with a trace of red blood in his veins does not enjoy watching Newt cram the ball down Juan Williams' throat?

Going North for the Winter.

2012-01-13T20:37:00.008-05:00

Snowbirds.

There is an entire culture, mostly retired people, who go south for the winter. Getting too old to shovel the driveway or go to the market in sub-zero temperatures, or drive on slick roads they go to Florida ... or Arizona from December to April.

I have lived in Virginia for a quarter century. Virginia has an “in between” climate: it’s winters are not terribly cold – last Christmas we got a magnificent (if unusual) layer of snow.

But mostly our winters are in the 40s with a mixture of sun, partly cloudy … to rain. For someone who grew up in Michigan, the winters in Virginia lacks conviction.

For over a decade my wife spent the first few months of the year that the Virginia legislature’s in session in Richmond.

On my own for about 10 weeks, I decide that I wanted the kind of winters that I remembered as a kid growing up on the shores of Lake Michigan. So I trekked to my home town to enjoy the snow in an inn that is mostly deserted in winter, except for the few couples spending the weekend away from the kids.

There could not be a more peaceful way to unwind than to sit by a fireplace reading a book while outside the snow if falling. Or going outside to walk to a coffee shop through several inches of snow.

Or to see ducks paddling around in open stretches of water in an ice choked river.

Or driving out to the Lake Michigan shore to see the icebergs building up, and see no-one else around.

It’s the solitude as much as anything. Most people head south for the winter. If you want to be alone with your thoughts and your memories, you head north.

It also helps to have family close.

Mark Meckler: NYC Gun Charges Dropped. Now I Can Speak Out.

2012-01-13T07:42:00.000-05:00

Mark Meckler, taking a plane from New York City has his personal firearm in a locked case inside his luggage. He is asked to sign a form at the ticket counter saying he has a gun in his luggage. The police are called, arrest him and take him to jail.

On December 15, 2011 at approximately 5:15 a.m., I was at LaGuardia International airport preparing to check in for a flight out of the city. During a routine check-in, I requested a firearms declaration form from the ticket agent. It was my intent to declare and check my unloaded firearm.

I purchased this firearm legally, and I have a valid concealed carry permit for it issued in California. The unloaded gun was locked inside a TSA-approved travel case, and the case was locked inside my checked luggage. I carry the firearm for my personal safety, having received numerous threats due to my role in the Tea Party Patriots. I have checked this firearm at airports dozens of times before, all across the country.

As I traveled through LaGuardia that morning, I passed TSA signs telling me I had the right to check this unloaded firearm in my luggage, and that I am required by law to declare the firearm to the ticketing agent. This is exactly what I did.

The ticketing agent provided me with the declaration form, and I signed it and returned it to her. She advised me that she would need to call Port Authority police to inspect. This is not unusual when traveling with a firearm. Procedures vary from airport to airport, from airline to airline, and even from day to day, and as a law-abiding citizen, I have always been happy to cooperate.

Unfortunately, that day, I didn’t realize that I was about to cross paths with New York City’s anti-Second Amendment stance. Upon showing my case and the weapon to the officer who arrived on the scene, and after a few brief questions, she advised me that she was placing me under arrest for violating New York City’s firearms laws.

...

I was subsequently transferred, in handcuffs, to the Queens Central booking facility in New York City. I was charged with felony possession of a firearm with intent to do harm. I spent the day in Queens…in jail.
...

Now free and the charges dropped, they refuse to give him his gun back.

The real story about what happened in Gaffney, SC.

2012-01-13T07:23:00.002-05:00

Bain Capital bought a money losing family owned firm that made photo albums and merged it with a company that made picture frames. They hired a management consultant to head the company and built a plant in Gaffney. The plant eventually employed 150 people. The company continued to lose money. To save the company the management streamlined it and – 4 years after opening the plant in Gaffney – closed the plant. The company became profitable and was later sold to Rubbermaid. It’s successful business today employing thousands of people.

Let’s review: Bain capital buys a company that’s sinking, builds a plant that hires 150 people and gives them jobs for four years. Is forced to close that plant to save the company from bankruptcy and makes it successful employing thousand.

Sounds bad to you?

Me neither.

Where did the money go that went to Haiti to rebuild after the earthquake?

2012-01-12T07:53:00.000-05:00

Where those billions went following the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that left a government-estimated figure of 220,000 people dead — and at least 1.6 million more homeless — remains a confounding mystery. Inside of the recovery effort, however, are unquestionable successes along with the failures. And, to be fair, because the money came in so quickly and in such great volume, much of it has been wasted or lost like so much rice spilling on the docks. Or stolen, like the sacks of rice from here which will end up in Haiti’s black market for food.

At the Port-au-Prince dock we see a ship unloading rice to feed the hungry people of Haiti but ...

But the economy of rice in Haiti says everything about the condition the country is in. The U.S. government subsidizes and “donates” ton after ton of rice in Haiti and in so doing has through the last several decades completely undercut Haitian rice farmers and left them destitute and migrating into cities where they live in hovels that were destroyed by the quake.

The answer to where the money went:

But, really, over the last two years, the effort to assist post-earthquake Haiti has mostly benefited — or at least subsidized — the aid and relief institutions and private corporations that nominated themselves to help Haiti in its 2010-based time of need.

And Land Cruisers for the NGOs.

And if you really want to see the face of humanitarian spending post-earthquake in Haiti — the financial clout of the NGOs — there’s only one place to go: the Toyota dealership in Port-au-Prince.

As with any cataclysm or war zone, a white Toyota Land Cruiser is perhaps the ultimate symbol of international interventional power. And in and around Port-au-Prince, the vehicles are omnipresent. At the dealership, a modern and well-tended building on the city’s airport road (with mirrored-glass windows from floor to ceiling and a perfectly buffed showroom floor).

Inside the dealership, we finally run into nice woman in some sort of managerial position, (don’t use my name, she asks). We ask her how sales have been.

“Oh,” she says. “We buy a lot of Land Cruisers for sale to the NGOs. But, you know what? A lot come from Gibraltar, too. Loaded off cargo ships that the NGOs bring for themselves. You can tell those, they say Gibraltar on the back, sort of near the license plate. I’d say — here?— the numbers are probably 50 percent from us and 50 percent from Gibraltar.”

But business is good?

The woman is leaning against a desk in the sales office. “I’d say that, for us, 95 percent go to the NGOs, some go to rental agencies, which then rents them to the NGOs and others. But, you know, for all of the Land Cruisers in Haiti now, we also do the maintenance and repairs, if they get in accidents we fix them.”

How much does one cost?

“Each one, with taxes, is $61,100,” she says. “If you have tax-free status, you can get them for less, but then you have to take them with you or give them away here. If you pay the taxes, you can just sell the car.”

And how many do you sell a year?

The woman holds up her hand, right index finger pointed to the ceiling. “One second,” she says.

She disappears into an outlying office, then returns a minute later. Smiling. “This year, we sold 250 of this model. But, you know, right after the earthquake, for several months, we were probably selling that many Land Cruisers every month. Maybe twice that many.”

I start doing the math in my head. Let’s see: 250 Land Cruisers at $61,000 each is, like, upward of $15 million dollars. So even if they sold only a few more Land Cruisers in 2010 after the first few months (and you have to assume they did) plus the 2011 sales numbers so far (it is December as we’re reporting this), well, conservatively speaking that’s a gross cash influx in the neighborhood of $100 million in the last two years (though of course, some will have to go to taxes). Add to that the repair and maintenance fees, and you’re looking at maybe $110 million. Maybe $150 million. And that’s a conservative estimate.

"Helping" people is very ~~lucrative~~ err .. rewarding.

Who Wouldn't Enjoy Firing These People?

2012-01-12T07:27:00.001-05:00

Ann Coulter:

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that, after a spate of burglaries at a veterans hospital in California several years ago, authorities set up video cameras to catch the perpetrators. In short order, nurse's aide Linda Riccitelli was videotaped sneaking into the room of 93-year-old Raymond Germain as he slept, sticking her hand into his dresser drawer and stealing the bait money that had been left there.

Riccitelli was fired and a burglary prosecution initiated. A few years later, the California Personnel Board rescinded her firing and awarded her three-years back pay. The board dismissed the videotape of Riccitelli stealing the money as "circumstantial." (The criminal prosecution was also dropped after Germain died.)

But surely we'll be able to fire a government employee who commits a physical assault on a mentally disturbed patient? No, wrong again.

Read the whole thing.

What if you gave a jobs summit and nobody (except the press) showed up?

2012-01-12T07:25:00.001-05:00

Something must have come up at the last minute.

See how easy it is to vote in New Hampshire when you're dead.

2012-01-12T07:16:00.000-05:00

That’s old news. Move on.

2012-01-10T20:42:00.001-05:00

One of the keys to the Clinton administration’s success in dealing with bimbo eruptions and other scandals was to tell the press that they were talking about old news, it’s time to … “move on.” There was an entire movement that went by the name “Move on” that not only helped Bill Clinton weather his political scandals but helped elect Barack Obama.

Suppose that George Romney learned a lesson from Move On?

Stay with me here. The "Move On" concept was tremendously useful not just to Clinton but also to Obama. The skeletons in Obama’s closet: Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, even Tony Resko were quickly dropped by the MSM after receiving just enough mention to deflect the accusation that they never mentioned them at all.

“Sure” the media big feet would say, we wrote about Wright's “God damn America” ... once; Ayers was just a guy in Obama's neighborhood and Resko was a guy that the Obama's bought a lot from. We covered it. And that was it. When the media wants to cover something they remember the secret of advertising: repetition. A single ad doesn’t work; repeat it often enough so that everyone can sing the jingle and it sells ... big time. That’s the way it works and the MSM knows it. When the New York Times decided that the Augusta National Golf Club should admit female members - a story that no one cared about - they ran over 50 stories, as did the Los Angeles Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Washington Post and USA Today only ran over 40 stories, all to help a feminist with an axe to grind. They almost got that venerable club to cave, and the only people who cared were the editors at the MSM. The rest of the country still doesn't care.

So pivot to Newt Gingrich and the rest of the team trailing in the wake of the Romney coronation. It should be obvious by now that unless Mitt Romney commits suicide, he will be the Republican nominee. Why would reasonably intelligent men like Gingrich continue to attack him when the best strategy would be to drop out and seek a place in the Romney administration? No one is angry enough to run through millions of dollars just for revenge unless he's a lot richer than Gingrich. Here’s where the strategy could get very, very deep. Suppose they are raising the issues that the Obama campaign is going to raise so that Romney can call them “old news” and tell the media to “move on.”

To use a medical analogy, the attacks that Romney’s opponents are mounting are like an inoculation, designed to give Romney a slight fever but to allow his system to create the antibodies to ward off the much more vicious attacks that Team Obama is preparing. I believe that’s what some other commentator are implying when they say that these attacks are actually good for Romney. I would go further and suggest that Gingrich and some of the others are actually deliberately in cahoots with Romney. We’ll see if that’s true by his response.

Of course the MSM will not move on for Mitt Romney; he's a Republican. But by the time the general election rolls around the public will be supersaturated with "Mitt, the Wolf of Wall Street." He just doesn't look the part, or act the part. And the public will be ready to "Move On." Is he that many moves ahead? We’ll see.

Women prefer rock climbing to marriage?

2012-01-10T08:03:00.001-05:00

The sociology of a credit card commercial from Citi.

Marriage does not work for women, now, because they assume the stability and power of the West is eternal. Never threatened, always "boring." This is a poor bet, and likely to work out disastrously in fairly short order. Food, oil, and other resources are tight globally, and an external shock (and there is ALWAYS an external shock) in the global system will push everything over. Not aliens invading, or zombie apocalypse, or Mayan prophecies, but a corn harvest failure in Brazil, or a Wheat harvest failure in Russia, the Ukraine, and Australia. The closing of the Persian Gulf to oil shipping for six months or longer. The Euro collapsing. Perhaps all of these, are enough to send the economy into a nose-dive and mobs of hungry people from the urban centers into looting marches on the suburbs. With a paralyzed and inept bureaucracy unable and unwilling to use force to stop it. In other words, the LA Riots writ nationally.

Islamic terrorism is the most democratic and representative form of war there is.

2012-01-10T07:50:00.000-05:00

The commitment to non-violence depends on the assumption that while small numbers of fanatics might seek war, the vast majority of people do not. And even if they do want war, they want a humane war, not a genocidal war of extermination. Therefore even when such wars are fought, they do not reflect the will of the people, only that of a small group of fanatics.

That such a manifestly absurd belief that flies in the face of human history could be so widely held among the decision makers of the world's dominant civilizations is itself apt testimony to the decline and fall of those civilizations. Nevertheless this belief remains unshakeable.

Atrocities are attributed to a dictator and a few of his cronies. Remove the dictator, roll in the voting booths and then we need make war no more. But the rise of Islamic terrorism presents an explosive challenge to that worldview. There is no Hitler or Stalin of Islam. No small group holding power on which everything can be blamed. In the age of terrorism, it is the ordinary Muslim who acts as the killer. Who sheds his guise of humanity and kills.

Islamic terrorism is the most democratic and representative form of war there is. There is no draft. No government mandate. And no compulsion but that of the Koran. Of course in territories under their control, becoming a Jihadist sometimes is compulsory. But that certainly isn't the case in the West. While Western diplomats chatter about democracy, the Muslim votes with his bomb vest. And his vote is the decisive one.

From: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2012/01/compromise-impossible.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20FromNyToIsraelSultanRevealsTheStoriesBehindTheNews%20%28from%20NY%20to%20Israel%20Sultan%20Reveals%20The%20Stories%20Behind%20the%20News%29

A real page turner

2012-01-10T07:43:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Vanderleun

The famous Obama Halloween party

2012-01-09T21:27:00.000-05:00

Pictures of the private party compliments of PJ Tatler.

Know what’s really weird?

2012-01-07T17:35:00.005-05:00

Know what’s really weird?

Amid all of the accusations from the usual Lefty suspects about how weird Rick Santorum is to bring his dead son home, there is something weird going on. It’s not new, but it has been building. And it’s really bugging the hell out of me.

In Friday’s Wall Street Journal Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, wrote “What Iowa Says About the Religious Right.” What he had to say was simple and correct. I’m not sure that anyone can disagree.

When Iowa caucus participants were asked to identify the most important quality in a candidate, 31% said "Can Beat Obama," 25% said "True Conservative," and 24% said "Strong Moral Character."…

These polling responses clearly lay out the upcoming challenges for Messrs. Romney and Santorum. Mr. Romney needs to convince Republican primary voters that he can be trusted with crucial responsibilities such as judicial nominations. Mr. Santorum, on the other hand, needs to convince voters that he can appeal to independents and win a general election campaign against President Obama.

That's dead-on right. With the exception of deep-dyed ideologues, mostly in the Ron Paul camp, the number one objective of everyone I know is replacing Obama, even if it means voting for Glenn Reynolds’ Zeeba The Syphilitic Camel.

What was interesting were the comments that his article received. There were over 260 responses and very many were from people who identify themselves as “fiscal conservatives and social liberals.” The very first one was by Jonathan Murray who writes:

The problem with the religious right is that it scares people away from the Republican Party who would otherwise belong there. One of the most missed stories in the media is that fiscal conservatives--particularly college educated ones and women--can't stand the sanctimoniousness of evangelicals and are, in some cases, frightened by them.

Reagan had the mix exactly right: he paid lip service to evangelicals, but spent no political capital fighting for their social issues. We are a diverse, heterogenous society. We don't always agree. But it is a legitimate conservative position--perhaps the only legitimate conservative position--that government has a limited role in our private lives.

Many of the people in the so-called middle aren't actually in the middle: they are more conservative than most Americans on everything except social issues. They're really closer to libertarian. These are the people who voted for Ron Paul.

Elaine Fleeman replies:

As a member of the so-called "religious right' I am sad to hear that we scare anybody.

At which point Murray comes back with:

Where evangelicals lose people is when they convert "principles to voluntarily live by" into rigid "rules for living," sit in judgement [sic] of others, and try to force others to adhere to their rules for living. This tendency towards fundamentalism is what happens in Iran and other Muslim countries and is directly contradictory to the lessons and teachings of Jesus.

So Murray compares Christians in America to Muslims in the Middle East, effectively calling Christian evangelicals un-Christian. That would be news to the apostles who were compelled by their faith to spread the “Good News” of Christ, and were martyred for their testimony. Since 9/11, the “socially liberal” members of the culture have found a new club with which to beat Christians. Realizing that the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades were getting a little long in the tooth, and Hitler’s Christian credentials were not all that compelling, 9/11 and Muslim fanaticism came as a – forgive the word – “Godsend” to people for whom genuine religious belief was weird and crazy.

If you think that Murray is alone in his attack on Christians, please read the comments.

Roy Fassel tells us that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson scared “many Americans.”

William Ledsham tells us that religion, like sex, should be committed in private.

Peter Venetoklis calls the “religious right” authoritarian. It seems to me that he has it exactly wrong; the dominant Liberal culture is attacking the people of faith who don’t see the analogy between the practice of religion and a sex act. It seems that most religious people want to be left alone to practice their faith without being told that what they do in public is obscene.

Barbara LeBey tells us that social conservatives are so scary that Democrats would vote Republican if only those social conservatives would just stop all their “religious ranting.”

Thomas Yason “I view any religious fundamentalism as a threat. Holier than thou types who are sure of divine forgiveness for any act are not to be trusted.”

Michael Closter believes that the "religious right wants to destroy the rights granted by the US Supreme Court."

Brian Jones: "The Religious Right is politically motivated and have the opportunity, if elected in mass, to affect my individual rights. That is not a phobia but a rational fear."

Michael Alessi:

Religion poses a threat to freedom regardless of its promises to the contrary. Once in control, theocrats embrace the use of force to achieve 'divine will' on earth. Recall the Dark Age and witness Iran's descent into barbarism today.

Let us be clear, the Wall Street Journal is not some fringe website with kooks as followers. People post under their own names. This is a fairly sedate and restrained example of Christian bashing, but like anti-Semitism, it’s going mainstream in a big way. Fear of the believing Christian – or the Jew - is used as the lever to make people of faith shut up and hide their beliefs.

The irony of course is that the history of the last 100 years should have taught the lesson that Christians and Jews have more to fear from atheists than the reverse. Hitler, Stalin and Mao between them killed more Jews and Christians than all the religious bigots in history if only because technology made their murderous intent more effective.

We don’t even have to go back to the murderous reigns of these believers in the religion of man as superman. In this country we have a President who believes that people cling to religion (and their guns) "as a way to explain their frustrations." We have schools that prohibit their valedictorians from expressing their faith and universities that find religious belief a disqualifier for professors. We have “social liberals” who characterize Christians as anti-science and all that we hear from the Christians – who in many cases are scientists and engineers – is a bleat of “What? No we’re not.” In Egypt Christian churches are being burned, believers are murdered and services are held during the day because it’s too dangerous at night. In Nigeria the story is similar with Christians bombed and shot while the “caring” international community averts its eyes. It is hard to name a country where Christians are not under either physical or legal attack – simply for being Christians: places like Iraq, Syria, Indonesia, China, Viet Nan, India and even Merry Old England.

The only thing missing from this picture to bring back the good old days of the Roman Empire is Christians being thrown to the lions or crucified. Perhaps that is due to a shortage of lions and crosses.

Christianity remains the dominant faith in America, by long shot. We have to ask ourselves what the turning point was; the pivotal moment that made it respectable to bash Christians to their faces? It was not that long ago that we saw Bill Clinton, in trouble over a dalliance with an intern, carry an oversized Bible to church. Barack Obama still insists he’s a Christian, so there must be some political benefit to the profession of faith. Maybe it’s OK with the "social liberals" for Clinton and Obama to profess their Christianity because we all know they don’t mean it.

Santorum means it and that allows the atheists and the agnostic to openly declare their fears and their hates. The fear strikes me as weird. During most of this country’s history, religion has played a much larger part in public life than today yet at no time could this country have been considered a theocracy. I’m old enough to remember a time when most stores were closed on Sunday, when liquor sales were restricted, when porn could only be bought from under the counter and abortions were rare and mostly illegal. Did those times really make America the same as Saudi Arabia or Iraq under the Mullahs?

There is no question that this country has thrown off the moral code of Christianity. Are we better people for it? In "flyover country" lots of people still ask the question.

Mark Steyn has it right when he concludes his column The Left’s So-Called Empathy with:

Two weeks ago I wrote in this space: “A nation, a society, a community is a compact between past, present, and future.” Whatever my disagreements with Santorum on his “compassionate conservatism,” he gets that. He understands that our fiscal bankruptcy is a symptom rather than the cause.

The real wickedness of Big Government is that it debauches not merely a nation’s finances but ultimately its human capital — or, as he puts it, you cannot have a strong economy without strong families.
Santorum’s respect for all life, including even the smallest bleakest meanest two-hour life, speaks well for him, especially in comparison with his fellow Pennsylvanian, the accused mass murderer Kermit Gosnell, an industrial-scale abortionist at a Philadelphia charnel house who plunged scissors into the spinal cords of healthy delivered babies. Few of Gosnell’s employees seemed to find anything “weird” about that: Indeed, they helped him out by tossing their remains in jars and bags piled up in freezers and cupboards. Much less crazy than taking ’em home and holding a funeral, right?

Albeit less dramatically than “Doctor” Gosnell, much of the developed world has ruptured the compact between past, present, and future. A spendthrift life of self-gratification is one thing. A spendthrift life paid for by burdening insufficient numbers of children and grandchildren with crippling debt they can never pay off is utterly contemptible. And to too many of America’s politico-media establishment it’s not in the least bit “weird.”

Update: The Santorum baby story has brought a lot of people out who are now telling their own story and are making those who criticized him even smaller in my eyes.

Racist Cartoon Appearing In Leftwing Blog Based on "Gone With The Wind"

2012-01-07T09:23:00.002-05:00

Ace of Spades shows how the racists at the LA Times really feel about black women.

Rubio: Obama turning America into a 'deadbeat nation'

2012-01-07T09:17:00.000-05:00

Who's "Weird," The Santorums or the Abortionists?

2012-01-07T09:09:00.000-05:00

It seems that Santorum is not alone. Even Lefty Charles Lane of the Washington Post is there to defend him from the haters and Race pimps for whom the Culture of Death is a sacrament.

I regret that, unlike the Santorums, who presented the body of their child to their children, we did not show Jonathan’s body to our other son, who was six years old at the time. When I told him what had happened, his first question was, “Well, where is the baby?” I tried to explain what a morgue is, and why the baby went there. It was awkward and unsatisfactory -- too abstract. In hindsight, I was not protecting my son from a difficult conversation, I was protecting myself.

LA Times: Michelle Obama is "Uppity Negro."

2012-01-07T08:54:00.000-05:00

Via Breitbart's Big Journalism:

Christopher Knight writes for the “Culture Monster” a column over at ”The Incredibly Shrinking L.A. Times,” and guess what our progressive friend sees when he looks at this innocuous and obvious political cartoon of First Lady Michelle Obama: Believe it or not, Mr. Knight sees an “uppity Negro.” Those aren’t my words, those are his:

The caricature of Obama as a profligate queen relies on the racist stereotype of an “uppity Negro[.]“

The Dead Baby Pile On: Jezebel Says Karen Santorum Had An Abortion

2012-01-07T08:46:00.000-05:00

Breitbart's Big Journalism describes

Jezebel, the site where self-obsessed women celebrate unprotected promiscuity, is smearing another woman’s loss of child for politics.

Portlandia

2012-01-07T08:39:00.000-05:00

I have not watched it but it got good reviews on Breitbart's Big Hollywood and the sketches are funny.

Example:

Devastating criticism of the IPCC from a guy who contributed to all five IPCC Assessment Reports.

2012-01-03T07:33:00.000-05:00

It wasn't "science" but advocacy. They knew the results they wanted and found the data to support their pre-determined conclusion.

I feel rather unconfortable about using not only unpublished but also un reviewed material as the backbone of our conclusions (or any conclusions)...
Essentially, I feel that at this point there are very little rules and almost anything goes. I think this will set a dangerous precedent which might mine the IPCC credibility, and I am a bit unconfortable that now nearly everybody seems to think that it is just ok to do this.

Foreign billionaires are hiring front groups to stop Canada from developing it's oil reserves.

2012-01-03T07:19:00.000-05:00

Public hearings into a proposal for an energy pipeline from the oil sands to Canada’s west coast are being manipulated by foreign special interests. Foreign billionaires are hiring front groups to swamp the hearings to block the Northern Gateway pipeline project.

Glenn Reynolds remembers how some people cheered when Reagan was shot.

2012-01-03T06:59:00.000-05:00

Instapundit

I was at the time a doctoral student at Rutgers Medical School, and my mother called me at the lab to tell me that Reagan had been shot. Knowing that there was a TV in the medical students' lounge, I walked over to the other building to watch. A group of black medical students were also watching, and cheered and clapped at early (and thankfully erroneous) reports that Reagan was not expected to survive.

But the media tell us that the hatred is only on the Right.

"Occupy" uses Nazi Images ... Media Turns a Blind Eye

2012-01-03T06:54:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the Internet, we see the stories that the MSM gatekeepers don't want us to see. From American Power:

Are people so afraid to stand up against the hatred, public hatred broadcast for the entire world to see? The image of the octopus has been used in attacks on the Jews for over a century.

It's not "the people" it's the media, and they are not afraid, they agree with the OWS crowd and do everything they can to build it up and airbrush it's flaws. Flaws like

"Thousands of arrests, rapes, rape tents, murders, arson, Jew-hatred -- the stuff of left wing lunatic love."

Fearless Forecast for 2012

2012-01-02T07:37:00.002-05:00

It’s 2012 and there are a few things that will happen this year with almost perfect certainty. The European Union will continue to dissolve; not all at once but in parts and pieces. It was predictable. Forget the headlines referring to emergency meetings of heads of state. Look for “root causes” as they say when referring to cultural rot. Germans, Greeks, Italians and Spanish have never been a great team and forcing them into a political and economic union only made sense to people who believed that humans, like mechanical parts, are interchangeable. They are not, and the differences are nowhere more starkly illustrated by this comment:

When I give a small bag of garbage to my hotel owner’s 14 year old son and he simply drops it out a window into the high rise window well from 8 floors up I ask “Why?” and his answer word-for-word is “Anything is possible in Egypt.”

When I am in Varanasi, India (possibly the filthiest place I’ve ever been) and constantly ask what to do with my garbage by way of a wrapper or paper the answer 100% of the time is “Throw it in the river.”

When I see building construction crews I go by every day in Rio de Janeiro sitting around on their asses I am amazed – the first 5 times.

The second thing that will happen is that Iraq will quickly revert to a one-party state. Saddam is still dead, but the country is Arab with no history of democratic government. Once the American military presence evaporated, it reverted very, very rapidly to the natural condition of Arab states. The dust had not settled on the parade ground after the last American troops left before an arrest warrant was issued by the Iraqi President for his Vice President and rival. This happened as suicide bombings resumed in the capital and elsewhere. Religious and tribal hatred does not die in a brief year or two, it takes a generation or more. We will now see the rapid unraveling of the gains made at great cost by the military under the direction of the previous administration.

To cover the failure of Obama’s policy, not just in Iraq but the entire Middle East, the blame will be placed on the Bush administration for starting the war in the first place. The roots of 9/11 and other attacks on Americans globally by the agents of resurgent Islam are airbrushed from current events. The history of Middle Eastern violence will begin with Bush; Obama’s decision to place politics over policy, destroying the fragile equilibrium in that unhappy country will not be allowed to enter conventional thinking. As we enter the fourth year of the Obama regime, it’s still and always will be Bush’s fault, world without end, Amen.

The birth of Jesus as reported by the NY Times

2012-01-01T15:38:00.001-05:00

H/T Gerard VanderLeun

Election 2012: Romney 45%, Obama 39%

2011-12-29T09:57:00.000-05:00

Rasmussen:

Mitt Romney has now jumped to his biggest lead ever over President Obama in a hypothetical Election 2012 matchup. It’s also the biggest lead a named Republican candidate has held over the incumbent in Rasmussen Reports surveying to date.

The latest national telephone survey finds that 45% of Likely U.S. Voters favor the former Massachusetts governor, while 39% prefer the president. Ten percent (10%) like some other candidate in the race, and six percent (6%) are undecided.

The Ron Paul surge is bigger trouble for Barack Obama than Mitt Romney.

2011-12-29T08:48:00.003-05:00

Conventional wisdom has the Ron Paul boomlet in Iowa spelling trouble for Republicans. I suggest that it’s actually more trouble for Obama. Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal seems to have a glimpse of the reasons behind this, but swerves back to looking at it only from the perspective of the Republican field. Here is part of his article:

The first [problem] is a cranky congressman from Texas named Ron Paul who won't disown a third-party spoiler candidacy. The second problem is the Ron Paul vote, which as we'll see has little to do with Ron Paul.

Exactly.

The Ron Paul vote is a separate matter. In June, polling put the familiar Mr. Paul at about 5.5% for the Iowa caucus and 8% nationally. That would be his normal ceiling. Suddenly, Ron Paul is the Iowa front-runner at over 22.5% and is up to 12% nationally. Why?

Is this surge a vote for the congressman named Ron Paul? Impossible. It's in fact the Republican Party protest vote. Since summer, this block of votes has jumped from one candidate to another, desperate for an anti-Obama champion whose anti-Washington intensity matches its own….

The Paul candidacy is of course doomed. But the Paul vote won't die. This vote has been building in the depths of the American political ocean since the spending spree of the second Bush term. These people see the upward spending trend in annual outlays and accumulated commitments not as a "problem," as the Beltway prefers, but as a threat to their well-being.

Here’s the point that I believe Henninger misses. “These people” who are fuelling the Paul boomlet, and before that the Bachman/Perry/Cain/Gingrich boomlets, are not just the Republican protest vote. Since Obama has no Democrat rivals, there’s no real opportunity for a Democrat protest vote. The only way for Republicans and the unaffiliated middle-of-the-roader who voted for Obama in 2008 to show their opposition to Washington policies is the Republican primary. And who are they? They are the broad middle class who are unemployed or have family members, neighbors and friends who are losing their homes, their jobs and their hope for a better future while Washington lives it up on their dime.

They read stories on the Internet - stories their newspapers won’t print - about billions lost on “green energy” boondoggles while they pay $40 to $50 dollars for a tank of gas. They are losing their houses to foreclosure after Obama promised to fix that problem. They see trillion dollar deficits while their living standards erode and are demanding to know where the money’s going.

They are that virtual mob with pitchforks that are desperate to anoint someone as their leader who will help them storm the castle and evict the ogre holed up there. Mitt Romney doesn’t look like the kind of guy who is comfortable handling a pitchfork, but if he’s the last man standing after all the others fail, he’ll be appointed to that role.

In 2008 the people went to the polls before the full impact of the financial melt-down had sunk in. They voted for Mr. HopeN’Change because they thought Obama didn’t really mean it when he promised to fundamentally change America. They though that they were electing a President who would fix the problems and set the country back on its accustomed course. The Three Years of Obama taught them just how wrong they were. HopeN'Change is now replaced by Change it Back. Obama is now viewed with fear and loathing. Those who did not like him now despise him and those who were on the fence are joining the opposition. Many see Obama as the ogre in the castle who has taken America hostage. The middle class is in danger of losing its grip on their part of the American Dream, and this time the mob with pitchforks is for real. That is the real meaning of the Paul vote.

UPDATE: Thanks Glenn, Ace, and others.

Obama promised to cut spending.

2011-12-28T08:51:00.001-05:00

Bob Shieffer once thought that Barack Obama would add $200 billion to the deficit ... over his term in office. It would really be interesting to see how he excuses Obama for making $200 billion a rounding error. Is there anyone who thinks that he would not?

Barack Obama : "I will go though the Federal budget line by line, page by page."

How's that working out for you?

H/T Instapundit

Obama once thought that adding to the national debt was unpatriotic.

2011-12-28T08:42:00.001-05:00

H/T Instapundit

Corzine; the smartest guy that Biden knows.

2011-12-28T08:39:00.001-05:00

H/T Instapundit

Gun Owners Against Illegal Mayors

2011-12-28T08:35:00.000-05:00

A link to all the criminals who occupy the mayors offices and joined Bloomberg when he formed Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

Gun Owners Against Illegal Mayors represents Americans united to fight the Bloomberg Gang, a band of organized criminal politicians. Originating in New York City, the Gang has recruited criminal mayors across the United States.

Some of the Gang's members have been convicted of assaulting officers and constituents, corruption, extortion, theft, obstruction of justice, bribery, perjury, tax evasion, child porn, battery, and child molestation. They have attacked constituents and police officers, destroyed houses with sledge hammers, and even stolen gift cards donated for the poor. No crime is beneath them and no enormity beyond them.

Warning, if you see these mayors, don't try to apprehend them yourself, call the police and flee the area.

Rich Statists Exposed as Complete Hypocrites

2011-12-27T16:18:00.000-05:00

I'm a cow... and sometimes I write about cow related things.

2011-12-27T16:11:00.000-05:00

I don't think EBL likes Althouse.

Get a job!

2011-12-27T08:42:00.000-05:00

What’s wrong with this picture?

2011-12-27T08:29:00.000-05:00

The Republican House and the Democrat Senate recently had a fight over taxes. The House wanted to extend the social security tax “holiday” for a year, the Senate bill ended the tax holiday after two months. When the House declined to go along with the two month holiday in favor of the 12 month holiday, the Democrats accused to Republicans of wanting to raise taxes. The MSM, the print and broadcast arm of the Democrat Party, trumpeted the charge that lowering taxes for two months was better for hard pressed workers than a 12 month cut. Let me repeat that: a two month cut in the payroll tax means that you are a tax cutter and love the working class, a 12 month cut in the payroll tax means that you are a tax raiser and hate the working class. Rarely has George Orwell’s “Newspeak” been so evident.

All of this obscures the fact that the payroll tax holiday is a bad idea. It’s bad for two reasons. First, the “payroll tax” is actually a worker’s contribution to the Social Security system. It’s what the government collects to pay current social security recipients. Social Security was designed to be self-funding. It’s what distinguishes it from a welfare system. It has a “trust fund” invested in government bonds that are theoretically there to pay recipients when social security pays out more than it takes in. That time has arrived, and the system is going broke. The “payroll tax holiday” brings the collapse of the social security system closer.

Second, the “payroll tax holiday” was sold last year as a jobs program. The theory was that leaving more money in the pockets of workers would stimulate the economy and lead to job growth. It didn’t work; job growth did not occur. Why? One theory is that the average family is deleveraging, which is a fancy word for paying off its debts and saving for a rainy day. Or perhaps the extra $20 per week went into the family car's gas tank, thanks to the rise in fuel prices. Whatever the reason, it’s foolish to pursue a failed strategy while accelerating the collapse of social security.

The motivations of actors in this farce are only to be guessed. They probably run the gamut from economic illiteracy to partisan blindness to cynicism all the way to a desire to create a crisis (the Cloward Piven approach). Which brings me to my original point: by what mechanism did the Republicans manage to get portrayed as tax raisers? Is it solely the fault of Republican leadership incapable of providing its side of the argument? Is the MSM so far in the tank for the Democrats that it is willing to tell people that a two month tax holiday is better for them than a 12 month holiday? The answers are not mutually exclusive.

Christians are collateral damage

2011-12-26T11:00:00.001-05:00

Richard Fernandez argues that the Nigerian Christians killed in the latest attack are part of the Marxist attack on Western culture. Why does the Pope speak out but the press, after the obligatory article on page 8, move on. A house fire in Connecticut got more and better coverage.

The bombings in Nigeria are not isolated incidents. If they were, perhaps they could be noted and passed over as atrocities that happen in faraway places with strange sounding names. But they are daily occurrences. In America, atheists feel emboldened to act as jerks, not just on the internet, but in public. In Muslim countries, Jews have already left and Christians are planning to leave. Meanwhile the masters of the culture are protecting their allies while demonizing Western culture and Christians and Jews.

Frankly, Western Marxism has entered into an alliance with Islamism everywhere. Under the banner of multiculturalism, under the cover of “hate speech”, under the constant apologia of political correctness, it hopes to use Islam as a battering ram to destroy the last remnants of its domestic opposition. They are in a “united front” with Islam to destroy the Near Enemy.

In this calculus, the Far Friends — if friends they be — count for little. Middle Eastern and African Christians are collateral damage. Not just Christians, one might add, but animists and Buddhists and Hindus, and Jains — you name it — as well.
It makes a good deal of tactical sense from the Marxist viewpoint to regard the “enemy of the enemy is my friend”. But there is no advantage whatsoever among those in the crosshairs of Marxism not to recognize this. The “I am caring” routine just suppresses the gag reaction to the poisoned Kool-Aid. Through this process of speaking on your behalf the caring and concerned they smoothed the way for a Victory Mosque at Manhattan’s Ground Zero; turned an Islamist attack on soldiers at Fort Hood into a “workplace” incident; how they have made it a hate speech crime everywhere to offend certain cultural sensitivities. They did it in the name of being friend to “Christian” and the advocate of caring beliefs.

And while people may have no choice about getting it rammed down their throats by main force they owe it to themselves to recognize it for the scam that it is. Just the latest version of Jim Jones’ magic potion.

It’s an interesting phenomenon that when Christians speak about being persecuted, the Left responds with a “ suuure you are,” (inset eye roll here) relying on the fact that an estimated 75% of Americans profess to be Christians. That may be true, but professing Christians are under-represented in the media, in Hollywood, in academia: places where the broad “culture” is manufactured. Mention a Muslim atrocity and we’re told that the ones who are driving the Copts out of Egypt or plant the bombs in Nigeria are not representative of Muslims in general. Then they bring up Christian Dominionists: the all-purpose boogy-man that’s supposed to be the offset to the Islamic bombers. I don’t know about you but I have been a Christian all my life and I have yet to meet a Christian Dominionist. The term was invented by Leftists like Sara Diamond as a smear term to label Christian Conservatives as dangerous conspirators. If the imaginary Dominionist were the analog of the fanatical Muslims that are killing Christians, there would be a wave of Mosque bombings in the US, and around the world, and Muslims would be afraid to gather in groups. Unfortunately for the Left, the bombs at Mosques are set by other Muslims – you know, the practitioners of the Religion of Peace™.

The Birth of the Christ

2011-12-25T12:20:00.000-05:00

The world is about to be changed.

"No one is suspecting anything. It would not be easy for the world to be making less reference to God than it was making then. No one was on the look-out for a divine interference, unless it were that here and there some truth-stammering oracle perturbed a narrow circle, whose superstition was the thing likest religion of all things in the heathen world. In the palace of the Csesars, who suspected that unborn Caesar in His Cave?"

Organ harvesting of political prisoners

2011-12-24T14:12:00.001-05:00

This is a chilling tale. The Chinese government is not only executing political prisoners by the thousands, it is harvesting their organs in an incredible way. They are shooting them in the chest, and while they are still alive, taking out their organs in medical vans driven to the killing grounds.

Right after the first shots the van door was thrust open and two men with white surgical coats thrown over their uniforms carried a body in, the head and feet still twitching slightly. The young doctor noted that the wound was on the right side of the chest as he had expected. When body #3 was laid down, he went to work.

Male, 40-ish, Han Chinese. While the other retail organs in the van were slated for the profitable foreigner market, the doctor had seen the paperwork indicating this kidney was tissue-matched for transplant into a 50-year-old Chinese man. Without the transplant, that man would die. With it, the same man would rise miraculously from his hospital bed and go on to have a normal life for 25 years or so. By 2016, given all the anti-tissue-rejection drug advances in China, they could theoretically replace the liver, lungs, or heart—maybe buy that man another 10 to 15 years.

Body #3 had no special characteristics save an angry purple line on the neck. The doctor recognized the forensics. Sometimes the police would twist a wire around a prisoner’s throat to prevent him from speaking up in court. The doctor thought it through methodically. Maybe the police didn’t want this prisoner to talk because he had been a deranged killer, a thug, or mentally unstable. After all, the Chinese penal system was a daily sausage grinder, executing hardcore criminals on a massive scale. Yes, the young doctor knew the harvesting was wrong. Whatever crime had been committed, it would be nice if the prisoner’s body were allowed to rest forever. Yet was his surgical task that different from an obstetrician’s? Harvesting was rebirth, harvesting was life, as revolutionary an advance as antibiotics or steroids. Or maybe, he thought, they didn’t want this man to talk because he was a political prisoner.

They call it the Xingjiang Procedure. Read the whole thing.

Admirers of the Chinese like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, Jeff Immelt and Barack Obama were not available for comment.

The MSM averts its eyes and - when those who escaped try to tell their tale - hurry past, mentally preparing the next glowing story about the wonders of China's economic miracle. Just as they did in the 1920s and 1930s in reports from Europe and Russia. When reality and the narrative collide, the narrative always wins.

Three Years Under Obama

2011-12-23T09:09:00.002-05:00

Bill Whittle

Argentine government wins control of newsprint

2011-12-23T07:23:00.000-05:00

Argentina's senate, which is controlled by Fernandez's allies, voted 41-26 to control newsprint's manufacture, sale and distribution to media friends and foes alike.

It brings to mind this quotation by Vaclav Havel:

The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.

Does Obama look like a skinny ghetto crackhead?

2011-12-23T06:51:00.000-05:00

Via Daily Caller

This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies.

2011-12-22T07:48:00.006-05:00

The recent editorial in the Virginian Pilot Pointless fight over light bulbs is a great example of ideological lying. In seeking to deny people the ability to buy incandescent light bulbs, the editors turn reason inside out and truth upside down.

The initiative to outlaw the incandescent light bulb was both a bald faced example of crony capitalism and an act of cheap grace on the part of lawmakers. But it turned out not to sit well with most people. The old light bulb was a commodity that cost less than a dollar and could be made cheaply. Light bulb makers like GE, Philips and Osram Sylvania could not make much profit, so why not lobby to have the old light bulb outlawed so they could sell us bulbs that cost 5 to 50 times more? Legislators, in turn could line their pockets with campaign contributions while pretending to be champions of the environment.

It turns out that the new, more expensive, replacement bulbs were neither as long lasting, much more hazardous and gave off a harsher light than the bulbs we were used to. But “the people who know better” at the Pilot once again tell us to shut up, sit down and do as we’re told. And then they tell us that repealing the incandescent bulb ban is like mandating buggy whips or coal shuttles.

That much of an inversion of logic could not possibly be attributed to stupidity. It brings to mind this quotation by Vaclav Havel:

The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.

The editors of the Virginian Pilot would be right at home in any totalitarian regime where truth is a lie. This editorial is not even the worst example of stretching truth past the breaking point, it’s a typical example of lying in what these people believe to be the “greater truth.” The Virginian Pilot is not just one of the major polluters of the earth via tons of newsprint discarded daily, but it pollutes the civic discourse. And it does not even have the excuse of government imposed censorship. Like a cancer, it kills reason because it can.

UPDATE: Thanks for the link Glenn.

Perjury in the "Justice" Department

2011-12-22T07:13:00.001-05:00

Admitted perjurer viewed as hero.

Holder must go.

Raiding the Social Security Trust Fund

2011-12-21T13:03:00.000-05:00

The so-call "payroll tax holiday" is really a raid on the Social Security trust fund.

All of the money from this "tax" is what funds Social Security. The one-year $120 billion (or two month $33 billion) extension of this reduction of contributions to Social Security will have absolutely no effect on the number one issue facing the American people today: jobs.

To repeat, it failed last year and it will fail this year. What it is certain to do is bring the collapse of the Social Security system very much closer. Is this what Obama is aiming for? The end of Social Security?

Is this what the Democrats are aiming for? The collapse of Social Security?

Is this what the members of the House and the Senate are aiming for? No Social Security checks going out because the system has run out of money?

Is the political establishment in Washington DC so reckless and so insane to actually hasten the demise of the Social Security system on which so many people depend?

The Post Sunday -School Men

2011-12-21T07:40:00.000-05:00

The giants of the age are going. Gone are Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, and Vaclav Havel. Instead we have Barack Obama and dozens like him trying to obscure the cracks in the foundation as edifices crumble.

Richard Fernandez

The men of the hour synchronize their exquisitely accurate watches without having learned to tell the time. They scrutinize the compass, while declaring that East and West are all the same to them.
Is it 3:00 a.m. yet? And if the phone rings what should be said? Since Noam Chomsky once likened Havel’s aspirations to an “embarrassingly silly and morally repugnant Sunday School sermon,” one would guess the answer is “anything.” To open the door but never to step through it; to notice the modern Berlin Wall but never to challenge it; to observe the fact of the slavery and never once mention it since that would be judgmental — that is the hallmark of today’s post-Sunday School Man.

The $4 million dollar vacation.

2011-12-21T07:26:00.000-05:00

It's good to be the king. Shared Sacrifice?

Slate’s Matt "Baghdad Bob" Yglesias

2011-12-21T06:59:00.000-05:00

The truth is never an obstacle to Matt Yglesias when a lying smear will do.

A smear that prospered far too long

Death of an Atheist

2011-12-20T20:41:00.000-05:00

Christopher Hitchens is dead, and the one fact that is included in every obituary is the fact that he was an apostle of atheism. It was a good way for a writer to make money. There is a big market for it.
Gerard VanderLeun:

This is not to say that Hitchens' heavily touted atheism didn't work well for him. It did. Although I don't know the numbers I suspect that -- between the sales of his books and his speaking jobs preaching the "God Is Not Great" gospel -- Hitchens probably made the most money of his life on the "Lets Get Together and Insult God" circuit. Public proclamations and revival tent meetings of atheists have been oddly popular in the last decade. Hitchens surfed that wave well doing his part in stripping the rubes of their spare cash like some latter day Elmer Gantry of the Fundamentalist Atheians.

The atheists who proclaim their faith in nothing are continually impressed with their own intelligence. And Hitchins cashed in on it.

There's always a fresh crop of American rubes impressed with their own "intellect" ready to hear that their "tough minded" denial of God has a lot of ed-u-crated intellect-u-wells just like them nodding in agreement like the drinking bird over the glass. And in his own tough minded, hard drinking way Hitchens was just the sort of messiah "intellectual" American atheists love. He had, first and last, an upper-class British accent. In America such an accent is gold. Here the orotund Oxfordian tones always make whatever anyone is saying sound somehow more authoritative to the "intellectual" American ear. The result of of that accent piled on top of all the tough talking and tough thinking and hard drinking was, for Hitchens, the sweet clink of coin.
I'll admit that I don't understand the compulsion of atheists to shout out their faith like the worst of the holy rollers; to dragoon whoever pauses to listen to them into a corner and beat them about the brain pan with the "obvious truth" of their oddly Godless religion. Perhaps they feel scant of saints and seek to sanctify skepticism for solace.

I suppose that when you believe in Nothing it's hard to stand pat at zero sans signs and symbols. Instead you've got to slap the icon of your proud puffed self up on your smoke-spun altar of Oblivion where the dark stars dissolve.

I have faith that today Hitchens knows his error. If he was right, he’s still dead.

Why the Proposed Car Cellphone Ban Is Wrong

2011-12-18T07:43:00.001-05:00

Following a multi vehicle crash in Missouri, the nannies at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) want to outlaw using cell phones while driving.

As Frank J. Fleming observes, it's a good thing that cars were not invented today. If they were, the government would never allow them to be built, or allow us to drive them. Too dangerous, too polluting, too much freedom.

But back to the crash that the NTSB doesn't want to go to waste. Glenn Reynolds explains that while the Board places the blame on cell phones, the reality is much different. Let’s start with the impetus for NTSB’s pronouncement: a multi vehicle crash that happened in Missouri in 2010.

A 19-year-old pickup driver rear-ended a truck, and then was rear-ended by two school buses. Two people, including the pickup driver, were killed, and 38 were injured. Although there’s no evidence as to whether the pickup driver was texting at the moment of the crash, he had sent or received 11 texts in the previous 11 minutes.

Texting while driving is dangerous and in my state of Virginia, it's already illegal. But the NTSB wants to go much further including outlawing hands-free phoning.

First, the Missouri crash was largely caused by more mundane safety issues that the NTSB seems to have deliberately downplayed. For all the discussion of the dangers of texting and driving, the NTSB report contains this rather significant finding: “Had the driver of the following school bus maintained the recommended minimum distance from the lead school bus, she would have been able to avoid the accident."

That’s right: Don’t follow too closely, just like they teach you in driver’s ed. And why did the first school bus rear-end the pickup? According to the NTSB, that was “the result of the bus driver’s inattention to the forward roadway, due to excessive focus on a motorcoach parked on the shoulder of the road."

We suspect an agenda that has nothing to do with any particular accident, but the desire to never let a crisis go to waste. There is an hostility to cell phone use despite the lack of persuasive evidence that they have contributed to any meaningful increase in accidents.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a list of things that should be banned before cell phones:

While they’re at it, the NTSB might want to take a look at banning some other distractions to driving, too:
•Screaming children
•Back-seat drivers
•Car radios
•High-beam headlights
•Pedestrians
•Subwoofers
•(Actually, I’ll put subwoofers twice, since I hate those things)
•Make-up
•Food
•Newspapers
•Necking … and worse

He also references a report that shows the a cell phone ban in California has not impacted car safety at all.

The NHTSA report on accidents "involving" cell phones as the cause of fatal accidents is instructive. In the highlights, the report states that ...

Sixteen percent of fatal crashes in 2009 involved reports of distracted driving and ... of those people killed in distracted-driving-related crashes, 995 involved reports of a cell phone as a distraction (18% of fatalities in distraction-related crashes)..

For the mathematically impaired, let me explain: 18% of 16% is 2.9%. So the NTSB wants to ban cell phones in cars to affect less than three percent of traffic related deaths.

Do we see a trend here? It has been said that we can't go a day without breaking the law. This one is for those who haven't broken any of the millions of others yet. The ruling class can always put your in jail for something. You're only exempt if you are a member of the ruling class.

Rules are for the little people

2011-12-18T06:45:00.001-05:00

New Mexico has an unpaid legislature, except for those that are above the law. And they are free to make racist comments. Because Sheryl Williams Stapleton is who she is ...
... a Democrat.

Financial woes plague legislative service: krqe.com

Hey, they still let us drive

2011-12-17T16:36:00.000-05:00

Frank J. points out that if cars were invented today, the government would not allow them on the road ... or us to drive them.

Imagine if cars hadn’t been around for a century, but instead were just invented today. Is there any way they’d be approved for individual use? It’s an era of bans on incandescent bulbs; if you suggested putting millions of internal-combustion engines out there, you’d get looks like you were Hitler proposing the Final Solution.

Unhinged Chris Matthews ...

2011-12-17T15:04:00.000-05:00

... calls Gingrich the Devil.

Well, Matthews was never hinged to begin with so this is more like some pervert in a trench coat opening it up. Same guy, different view.

H/T Liberty at stake

“Prof. Harvey Mansfield of Harvard University likes to say that the big question in American politics is whether the red states can produce kids faster than professors from the blue states can corrupt them.”

2011-12-17T09:34:00.001-05:00

Worth a read.

“Rather than produce smart people, the university system has dumbed America down. After two generations of academic wheel-spinning, the transformation of universities into Maoist re-education camps with beer kegs has ruined their practical value.”

The conclusion ...

Liberalism, like cancer, is a self-liquidating malady. Eventually it kills the patient. Secular Americans, mainline Protestants, loosely-affiliated Catholics, and Reform and Conservative Jews breed like Germans or Italians, with fewer than 1.5 children per female. By contrast, Hispanic Catholics have 3 children, and evangelicals 2.6 children. America is like Schroedinger’s Cat, in a superposed state of being dead and live. And long before demographics catch up with liberal culture and extinguish it, like the post-Alexandrine Greeks or the 5th-century Romans, the economic destruction wrought by liberal education will have impoverished most of a generation of American young people.

A VOTERS' GUIDE TO REPUBLICANS

2011-12-15T19:23:00.000-05:00

Gateway Grassroots Initiative

2011-12-14T17:09:00.000-05:00

In St. Louis.

I wish we had one here in Southeast Virginia.

On becoming slaves.

2011-12-13T15:54:00.000-05:00

Things that came to me on the Internet.

Good morning, brothers and sisters; it's always a delight to see the pews crowded on Sunday morning, and so eager to get into God's Word. Turn with me in your Bibles, if you will, to the 47th chapter of Genesis. We'll begin our reading at verse 13, and go through verse 27.

Brother Ray, would you stand and read that great passage for us? ... (reading) .. Thank you for that fine reading, Brother Ray. So we see that economic hard times fell upon Egypt , and the people turned to the government of Pharaoh to deal with this for them. And Pharaoh nationalized the grain harvest, and placed the grain in great storehouses that he had built. So the people brought their money to Pharaoh, like a great tax increase, and gave it all to him willingly in return for grain. And this went on until their money ran out, and they were hungry again.

So when they went to Pharaoh after that, they brought their livestock - their cattle, their horses, their sheep, and their donkey - to barter for grain, and verse 17 says that only took them through the end of that year. But the famine wasn't over, was it? So the next year, the people came before Pharaoh and admitted they had nothing left, except their land and their own lives. "There is nothing left in the sight of my lord but our bodies and our land. Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for food, and we with our land will be servants to Pharaoh." So they surrendered their homes, their land, and their real estate to Pharaoh's government, and then sold themselves into slavery to him, in return for grain.

What can we learn from this, brothers and sisters?
That turning to the government instead of to God to be our provider in hard times only leads to slavery? Yes... That the only reason government wants to be our provider is to also become our master?

Yes. But look how that passage ends, brothers and sisters! Thus Israel settled in the land of Egypt , in the land of Goshen . And they gained possessions in it, and were fruitful and multiplied greatly." God provided for His people, just as He always has! They didn't end up giving all their possessions to government, no, it says they gained possessions! But I also tell you a great truth today, and an ominous one.

We see the same thing happening today - the government today wants to "share the wealth" once again, to take it from us and redistribute it back to us. It wants to take control of healthcare, just as it has taken control of education, and ration it back to us, and when government rations it, then government decides who gets it, and how much, and what kind. And if we go along with it, and do it willingly, then we will wind up no differently than the people of Egypt did four thousand years ago - as slaves to the government, and as slaves to our leaders.

What Mr. Obama's government is doing now is no different from what Pharaoh's government did then, and it will end the same. And a lot of people like to call Mr.Obama a "Messiah," don't they? Is he a Messiah? A savior? Didn't the Egyptians say, after Pharaoh made them his slaves, "You have saved our lives; may it please my lord, we will be servants to Pharaoh"? Well, I tell you this - I know the Messiah; the Messiah is a friend of mine; and Mr. OBAMA IS NO MESSIAH! No, brothers and sisters, if Mr. Obama is a character from the Bible, then he is Pharaoh. Bow with me in prayer, if you will...

Lord, You alone are worthy to be served, and we rely on You, and You alone. We confess that the government is not our deliverer, and never rightly will be. We read in the eighth chapter of 1 Samuel, when Samuel warned the people of what a ruler would do, where it says "And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day..."

And Lord, we acknowledge that day has come. We cry out to you because of the ruler that we have chosen for ourselves as a nation. Lord, we pray for this nation. We pray for revival, and we pray for deliverance from those who would be our masters. Give us hearts to seek You and hands to serve You, and protect Your people from the atrocities of Pharaoh's government. In God We Trust...

The First Noel

2011-12-12T10:36:00.000-05:00

Fun with Magic Milk and Food Coloring!

2011-12-12T07:46:00.000-05:00

"They also serve who only stand and wait."

2011-12-11T21:50:00.000-05:00

A fitting sermon for this Sunday.

God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."

The God who created the universe in all its unimaginable vastness of suns and clashing galaxies does not need anything from you ... He's not looking for your help ... He's looking for your gratefulness and obedience ...

Hard to understand that "not need" --- but how could it be otherwise? Harder even to comprehend than the notion of an interventionist God; a God that has no needs but yet intervenes in the micro level of His Creation. A God who can from His creation and without need form ....say.... a Beethoven. Form such a soul that Beethoven can -- from somewhere inside himself --- create, in a shadowplay of creatio ex nihilo, a Moonlight Sonata. And then later, if 'later' carries any meaning at all to God, God forms another man -- centuries distant | perhaps intended ages before --previous, previous -- who can see and comprehend black marks on a lined sheet of bleached wood pulp and cause the music, varigated, to bloom on a salt flat half way around the angel-girdled globe; where above such sad and lowly plains they bend on hovering wing.

Moonlight

2011-12-11T20:47:00.000-05:00

Warren Buffett: Crony Capitalist

2011-12-11T15:43:00.000-05:00

Warren Buffett’s reputation is bigger than his ability. How can this person outperform the market for so many years by simply buying stocks and bonds is the question most often asked? What makes him so much smarter than the average investor? It’s really very simple, he has billions of dollars of assets that people will go to extraordinary lengths to borrow ... and he’s a crony capitalist.

The first advantage is that he has lots of money. He uses the money to buy out closely held companies for pennies on the dollar when the family wants to cash out. You don’t, so you don’t get in on this deal. He uses more money to bail out troubled companies who give him special shares of preferred stock (see GS below) with a huge dividend plus an equity kicker. You don’t, so you don’t get to be called the “Sage of Podunk.”

He also designs government bailout plans and then buys stock in the companies he tells government to bail out. All the while he’s grinning his shit eating grin and telling us that with his billions in the bank he doesn’t pay himself a high income so that his secretary’s in a higher tax bracket. Here’s a question of Uncle Warren at the next board meeting: “Why do you bother to pay yourself any salary at all?”

From"Throw Them All Out."

In the wake of the $700 billion TARP bailout, Warren Buffett apparently shaped a plan to clean up toxic assets that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner later adopted–resulting in massive profits for Buffett.

According to Schweizer, after the bailout bill’s passage, Warren Buffett sat down and wrote then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson a four-page private letter laying out a plan to clean up the toxic assets plaguing numerous financial institutions. ...

After Paulson’s exit, incoming Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tweaked the plan and rolled it out in March 2009. But according to quarterly reports from Buffett’s holdings company, Berkshire Hathaway, between the time the billionaire crafted his plan and Geithner adopted it, Buffett quietly purchased 12.4 million shares of Wells Fargo stock and 1.5 million shares of U.S. Bancorp. Once the government unveiled its “Public-Private Investment Program,” bank stocks jumped, resulting in large profits for Buffett.

How much Buffett profited is hard to calculate, since there’s no way to know what his purchase price was. But prior to the government adopting Buffett’s plan, Wells Fargo had been trading at roughly $20 a share. In the weeks after Geithner’s announcement, the stock jumped to $30 a share. Likewise, U.S. Bancorp went from $8 in February 2009 to more than $20 a share by May.

Schweizer’s revelations contradict the image Warren Buffett has worked hard to create as that of a folksy, grandfatherly figure who stays above the political fray and rarely gets mired in the muck of partisan politics. ..

For example, Schweizer examines Buffett’s intense private lobbying efforts and deftly-timed stock buys that leveraged TARP bailout monies to create up to $3.7 billion in windfall profits for Berkshire Hathaway.

In September of 2008, Buffett invested $5 billion in the over-leveraged investment house of Goldman Sachs, having obtained impressive terms: Berkshire Hathaway would receive preferred stock with a 10% dividend yield, and the option to buy another $5 billion at $115 a share.

As the political debates surrounding the proposed $700 billion TARP bailout bill heated up, Buffett maintained an appearance of naivete, an “aw shucks” shtick that deferred to the judgment of politicians. “I’m not brave enough to try to influence the Congress,” Buffett told the New York Times.

Behind closed doors, however, Buffett had become a shrewd political entrepreneur. With his Goldman bet in place, the billionaire exerted his considerable political influence in a private conference call with then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats. During the meeting, Buffett strongly urged Democratic members to pass the $700 billion TARP bill to avert what he warned would otherwise be “the biggest financial meltdown in American history.”

Buffett had a strong financial interest in the bailout’s passage, says Schweizer. “If the bailout went through, it would be a windfall for Goldman. If it failed, it would be disastrous for Berkshire Hathaway.”

Yet Buffett had little reason to worry; his insider political connections afforded him two guarantees. First, many members of Congress were themselves investing heavily in Berkshire Hathaway throughout the bailout talks–a move that may simply have been a good investment in an unsteady time, or else a shrewd exploitation of unique information. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), for example, snatched up $130,000 worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) also bought shares in Berkshire Hathaway, as did Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), who purchased half a million dollars’ worth just days after the Wall Street bailout bill was signed. Second, Buffett knew he had an ally in the surging Barack Obama. Buffett had backed Obama in 2008. And as Obama has himself conceded, “Warren Buffett is one of those people that I listen to.”

When the TARP bailout passed, Berkshire Hathaway firms received a staggering $95 billion in bailout cash from U.S. taxpayers. In total, TARP-assisted companies made up almost a third (30%) of Buffett’s entire publicly disclosed stock portfolio. The payoff: by July 2009, Buffett’s Goldman bet and his congressional jawboning had yielded profits as high as $3.7 billion.

Incredibly, in a breathtaking public relations move, Buffett publicly complained that the government bailouts had put his company at a disadvantage, because funders “who are using imaginative methods (or lobbying skills) to come under the government’s umbrella–have money costs that are minimal.” Rolfe Winkler of Reuters best captured Buffet’s audacity: “It takes chutzpah to lobby for bailouts, make trades seeking to profit from them, and then complain that those doing so put you at a disadvantage.”

"You can get a top job in the administration if you can make a good argument for why the government should borrow vast amounts to invest in companies that lose money."

2011-12-10T11:14:00.001-05:00

Frank J. Fleming summarizing the argument made by Stephen Chu, Nobel Prize Winner, Secretary of Energy in the Obama administration and the guy who lost $500 million of your money in Solyndra. It will also be his reason for losing billions more.

Saddam Was Secular

2011-12-10T10:48:00.000-05:00

The Iraq War Was Wrong Blog

And that's a enough of a reason right there. For The Iraq War to be was wrong. Taht Saddam was secular (not religious). I mean he was hell of secular where do you even get off saying he wasn't. So then (connect the dots) The Iraq War was wrong. I mean do I have to lay it out for you.

KING NFL NEWS: Commissioner Roger Goodell Announces Half-Time Show Special

2011-12-10T10:46:00.000-05:00

Three beers later

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell today announced a special feature for this year's Superbowl halftime show. Prior to the appearance of emigrée demicentarian pop idol Madonna, Goodell himself will appear before the assembled throng — and offer the gathered fans a choice: whether to pardon...Denver quarterback Tim Tebow...or the thief Barrabas?

Death by Penis Enhancement

2011-12-10T10:42:00.000-05:00

The Other McCain

Probably not what he expected on his tombstone:

“Justin Street, 1989-2011: He Thought His Penis Was Too Small.”

A woman was arrested and charged with performing this procedure.

A calendar ain’t nothing but a number

2011-12-10T10:37:00.000-05:00

IMAO

The president is celebrating Hanukkah.

Not “planning to observe Hanukkah beginning December 20th” but IS. As in now.

None of this silly waiting until the Festival of Lights actually begins, but now. Because, it’s not like days … or the number of days or anything … really matter, right?

And, so as to not drag it all out, the president went ahead and lit all the candles. Because, well, you know, why not. It’s not like you need to light one a day or anything, right? It doesn’t, like, have any special meaning, right?....

“NYU To Offer Class On Occupy Wall Street”

2011-12-10T10:33:00.000-05:00

Protein Wisdom

I’m tempted to talk about the irony of kids taking out student loans to enroll in a class that will “study” why irate college grads who can’t get jobs are camped out in tents complaining about the amount they owe on student loans, but then I think ....

Leading actuarial firm: health care premiums to rise up to 85% thanks to resurgence of deadly Bubonic Plague and Obamacare but mostly Obamacare

2011-12-10T10:28:00.000-05:00

Doug Ross

The report, conducted by Milliman, Inc., projects the impacts of the federal health care reform law starting in 2014, when most of the law's provisions go into effect. The report shows significant changes that will increase premiums while expanding government programs.

Specifically, Milliman's report projects that individual premiums in Ohio could increase by as much as 55 to 85% in 2014, not including the current medical trend which has been an average increase of 7 to 8% nationwide each year. Moreover, some individuals may see their premiums increase by 90 to 130% depending on their current health status...

The change you voted for.

With Apologies to Allan Sherman

2011-12-10T10:18:00.000-05:00

Iowahawk

Hello Faddah
Hello Mama
I'm Occupying
Camp Obama
I'm protesting
Wall Street grabbings
And trying to avoid the hobo stabbings

On my iPhone
With my last tweet
I down-twinkled
Jews on Wall Street
Please don't worry
About psychosis
'Cause my Guy Fawkes mask repels tuberculosis

Rush: Quit Taking Ron Paul Seriously

2011-12-10T10:16:00.000-05:00

Ace of Spades

He's terrific, if you support an absolutist, doctrinaire policy of pacifism, which is in fact far more left-wing than Obama's, and may be more left-wing than Dennis Kucinich's.

People who support Ron Paul (and they are legion) turn a totally blind eye to the fact that he inhabits a world without people who want to kill us for existing.

A Fast & Furious state of mind

2011-12-10T09:33:00.000-05:00

Powerline on Holder

“I’m a big guy. I’ve been in Washington for a long time,” Holder said, seeking to create the impression that the controversy over Fast and Furious is sound and fury signifying politics as usual. It’s even possible he believes it.

North America's Energy Resources

2011-12-10T09:28:00.000-05:00

American Digest

They'll tell you we are running out. They lie.

Where is YZP?

2011-12-10T09:24:00.000-05:00

Flight Level 390

Position: Over TOU (Tatoosh)
Altitude: 36,000 feeet
Groundspeed: 441 knots
Equipment: A319
Pax-on-Board: 123

Airborne...

As TOU passes beneath, I note the compass heading leaving U.S. airspace is 295 degrees. The ETP (equatime; half-way point) is still in front of us... PANC (Anchorage) ahead and over the dark horizon. Local time is 2215 hrs.

The center-tanks are almost empty as we go feet wet. Fi-Fi will run the center-pumps an extra five minutes after the last of the fuel is sucked out, just to make sure.

Life on the line.

France Has Second Thoughts About the Euro

2011-12-10T09:21:00.000-05:00

PJ Media

The French have growing reservations about the euro: 36% want to withdraw from the eurozone and go back to the franc, the old national currency; 4% have no opinion, which means that they don’t warmly support the single European currency; 44% say it is a handicap in the present context of a world economic crisis; 45% say it doesn’t serve the national interests of France; and a staggering 62% say it is damaging the average French family’s standards of living and purchasing power.

England's out. Can France be far behind?

Muslim Brotherhood: Next legislature will need to review peace treaty with Israel

2011-12-10T09:18:00.000-05:00

Jihad Watch

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood said that the country's peace treaty with Israel needs re-evaluation by the country's new parliament, in press remarks by a senior member of the group published Friday.

This is not going to end well.

“I simply do not know where the money is”

2011-12-10T09:14:00.001-05:00

Belmont Club: Corzine said he was “stunned” to learn shortly before the firm sought bankruptcy protection at the end of October that MF Global could not account for the money.

However a story from Reuters says the story is simple. Corzine transferred the clients assets to ... London where he could legally bet the money — a bet he lost — and now it’s gone. Poof. Voila!

Modern Democrats learned a lesson from Hillary Clinton who, knowing that being caught in a lie under oath is a crime, simply lied about her memory, which is infinitely harder to prove.