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Saturday, January 31, 2009

Corruption, Democrat Style

Breibart provides details surrounding another tax cheat nominated to high office by the "Chicago Virgin" Barack Hussein Obama.

Tax issues emerge in Daschle nomination

Former Sen. Tom Daschle, picked by President Barack Obama to lead the administration's health reform efforts, recently filed amended tax returns to report $128,203 in unpaid taxes and $11,964 in interest, according to a Senate document obtained by The Associated Press.


The White House acknowledged Friday that "some tax issues" had emerged in connection with the nomination, but a spokesman said the president is confident the former Senate Democratic leader will be confirmed as the new health secretary.

Daschle filed amended tax returns for 2005, 2006 and 2007 to reflect additional income for consulting work, the use of a car service and reductions in charitable contribution deductions. He filed the returns after the announcement that Obama intended to nominate him to head the Health and Human Services Department.



Pay attention to the fact that Daschle admitted to cheating on his taxes in only three most recent years. If you believe that he was not fudging the numbers prior to 2005 you are seriously naive.

As John Hinderaker points out in Powerline,
As a life-long politician, Tom Daschle never earned much money. But he retired from the Senate, after being defeated for re-election by John Thune, as a multimillionaire.


How did he do that?
His wife Linda is or was a lobbyist, and she was the one who reported the family's income. (This is inference, since Daschle consistently chose not to make his tax returns public.) Linda Daschle made millions "lobbying" on behalf of various corporate interests. There was no conflict of interest, the Democrats assured us, because Linda Daschle only "lobbied" the House of Representatives, not the Senate, where her husband was either the Majority or the Minority Leader for much of his career.

But wait! If a company hired Linda to lobby House members, the check they wrote went straight into the Senate Majority Leader's joint checking account. It would have been a felony to write the check to Tom in exchange for political services, but a check to Linda, that went into the same bank account? No problem! She wasn't lobbying the Senate! So Tom Daschle became a multimillionaire.

John asks the question:
Is Tom Daschle a crook, or is it fairer to think of him as a low-level tool of various big-time crooks who play the Washington game by the corrupt rules of the Democratic Party?

Well, people go to jail for failing to pay their taxes, so yes, Tom Daschle is a crook – but instead of going to jail he is joining the other tax crooks in the Obama administration.
Still, there is always a silver lining. One good thing about electing a Democrat as President is that, as he nominates fellow Democrats to senior positions in the Executive Branch, millions of dollars in unpaid tax liabilities come to light and are belatedly paid to the IRS, with interest. It is, perhaps, the most tangible advantage of electing Democrats to office.
Elect enough Democrats and pay off the national debt?

The NY Times excuses Daschle this way:
The committee report said, “Senator Daschle filed the amended returns voluntarily after Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate the senator to be the secretary of health and human services.”


Is it necessary to point out that Daschle owed the taxes whether or not he was going to be appointed to the Obama cabinet? The NY Times parrots the Democrat controlled committee report in obscuring the fact that Daschle confessed to being a tax cheat after finding out that Obama was going to appoint him.

It's Not About Rush .... Focus on the Family Gets Militant




[Things my sister sent me]

Friday, January 30, 2009

Ahh, the shared sacrifice. You can just smell it.

From Patterico
It Was Really Bad When Auto Executives Sought Tens of Billions of Dollars and Flew on Corporate Jets

But it’s cool for Obama to celebrate the passage of a trillion-dollar stimulus package with a celebration that includes wagyu steak.

What’s that, you ask? I don’t know either, but it apparently cost $100 for a 16-ounce steak . . . in 2004.

Well, you don’t want it to look like a schlock affair.

Ahh, the shared sacrifice. You can just smell it.


One comment:
Waygu is awesome. Just sayin’

This is hope and change, bitches.

It Takes a Proverb to Run a Village

Iowahawk does it again:

"Give a man a fish, he will eat today. Promise a man a million fish, he will contribute heap big wampum to your tribal election campaign fund."
Iroquois

"While the polar bear bickers with the seal, that fat asshole walrus snarfs all the fish."
Inuit


and my favorite

The lazy monkey mocks the noble lion from the safety of the baobob tree -- until the lion pulls out his surprise chain saw. Who's laughing now, monkey? But it turns out the joke is on both of them, because here comes Marlin Perkins and his surprise tranquilizer darts."
Senegalese


Read the whole thing.

This is how a free state dies

The Democrat coalition is firing on all cylinders. Team Obama is wielding carrots wrapped in $100 steaks and lubricated with adult beverages (vodka martinis are an Obama favorite, reportedly). Congressional Democrats are gathering up a gargantuan pork bill labeled a “stimulus package.” The MSM is acting as the democrats’ cheerleaders, and the rabid Left like the Soros funded MoveOn is using its media organs to call people who oppose this program a traitor.

This is what a Soviet State look like. All that’s missing are the local thugs to hold rallies and beat the opposition into bloody submission. Oh wait, that’s part of the plan.
"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded."

In a way it’s not surprising that one of the clearest call to arms comes from Europe where this process is already far advanced. After all, the people who have been the staunchest anti-communists are those who have experienced the real thing.

Gerald Warner in the UK Telegraph:

GOP has a duty to deny Barack Obama his one-party state


"Include me out!" Sam Goldwyn's dictum was the message sent by all 177 Republican congressmen to Barack Obama when they voted against his so-called stimulus package. The GOP got this one right, for two reasons. The first is that the Republicans have avoided the taint of complicity. When this Raw Deal goes belly-up, they can look their constituents in the eye and remind them: "We voted against it."

It was also crucially important to say "No" to Obama - so few people do these days. The royal visit with which the Man of Destiny honoured his congressional opponents, in an effort to coax them into complicity without making concessions, showed how badly he wanted this big present to himself wrapped in a bi-partisan ribbon. It is a useful rule of thumb for Republicans that anything Obama wants that they have the power to deny, should be denied.

To see the greatest pluralist democracy on earth being herded by its media into a cultish adoration of a man who is determinedly converting it into the successor state of the Soviet Union is thoroughly alarming. As America goes, so goes the world. In that sense, the battered Republican Party is fighting for all of us across the globe who reject socialism. Obama wanted Republican support because totalitarians cannot brook opposition: it offends them morally and even aesthetically.

It is the GOP's responsibility to deny him the one-party state he seeks in the name of consensus. A properly ordered congress would display the unanimity of the Supreme Soviet. Freeborn American citizens, thanks to their media, are as wary of voicing public dissent from the Obama cult as people were of being the first to stop applauding Stalin during one of his 10-minute ovations.

The Senate Republicans may be more of a pushover, but one must hope not, unless in return for some huge concession. This stimulus package is full of thinly concealed bribes, most notoriously the $4.19 billion handout for "neighborhood stabilization activities" that will benefit groups such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), accused of widespread electoral misconduct and already the beneficiary of more than $70 million from taxpayers. At least we know Barack Obama is a man who repays his debts.

It looks as if Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is getting ready to throw another $2 trillion at financial institutions, though it will take $4 trillion to buy up all the US banks' toxic assets. The Republicans have to stay a million light years away from this scheme to bankrupt America. They and Obama are engaged in a culture war as significant as the Civil War, with the entire moral and cultural ethos of America at stake.

In time, the phoney messiah's gold, frankincense and myrrh will give place to tar and feathers. Meantime, media reproaches and taunts of "partisanship" must not pressure the Republicans into complicity with this totalitarian socialist project. Obama is the 21st-century prophet of the Frankfurt School of Marxism. What we are witnessing is the seduction of a nation. "The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force." Who said that? A man who practised his rhetoric in the city of Berlin long before Barack Obama. Be very afraid.

Trifid of the North

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Blago Wants All Tapes Played: 'I'm The Anti-Nixon'

Interesting
"Before they remove a governor who's been elected twice by the people, hear the whole truth, every tape," Gov. Blagojevich said. "Richard Nixon, during Watergate, fought tooth and nail to keep those tapes from being heard because he knew there was something wrong on there. Me? I'm the opposite, the anti-Nixon. I want every one of those tapes heard in the impeachment trial, and every witness called in."

Inhofe Calls Gore's Climate Message 'Desperate'

From The Hill blog
Inhofe called Gore's message "desperate," and noted the irony of it being delivered on such an icy day in D.C. "They almost had to cancel it because of freezing weather, and last year they did cancel it because of cold weather," Inhofe said. "I'd say he has a real serious problem. But he's already made his $100 million, so I don't think he needs to worry too much about it. But the science and logic are on our side, and we are winning."

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Limbaugh is now the BMOC

Am I the only one who noticed this? Do the chattering classes get their transcript of the Rush Limbaugh program from Media Matters? If you don’t listen, you have no idea of what animates the Right, and the rump group of legislators that calls itself the Republican Party in Congress.

Obama’s stimulus bill passed the House without a single Republican vote. Since polls show that Obama has an approval rating that far surpassed Mohammad in Riyadh, what’s going on?

This afternoon, the lone Republican, Phil Gingrey, who criticized Rush Limbaugh in an interview with the Politico appeared on his show and practically crawled asking for forgiveness. Gingrey apologizes over Limbaugh

Gingrey not only called in to Limbaugh to apologize, he put out a press release.


As long as I am in the Congress, I will continue to fight for and defend our sacred values. I have actively opposed every bailout, every rebate check, every so called “stimulus.” And on so many of these things, I see eye-to-eye with Rush Limbaugh. Regardless of what yesterday’s headline may have read, I never told Rush to back off. I regret and apologize for the fact that my comments have offended and upset my fellow conservatives—that was not my intent. I am also sorry to see that my comments in defense of our Republican Leadership read much harsher than they actually were intended, but I recognize it is my responsibility to clarify my own comments.

Ever magnanimous, Rush gave his absolution and suggested that the best thing for Republicans to do is to remain united in opposition to the Obama stimulus bill.

RUSH: I know that you don't know how it's all going to end up. But what is your thought? Let's say not one Republican votes for this. See, I happen to think... It's a leading question. I happen to think that would be perfect for the future and your reelection efforts. What's your thought on that?


Gingrey indicated that there might be a few Republican defections.
GINGREY: Rush, I agree with you completely. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen because, as you know, on the Senate side there are some rather moderate-leaning Senate Republicans --

RUSH: Oh, but I meant in the House.

GINGREY: -- up for election in 2010, and you know their names and there are few in the House and they're going to tend to go along with this, but it's going to be a very, very small percentage. But I agree with you. It would be the best possible message for this country for every single Republican to vote against this.


Rush persevered, noting that the Democrats did not need any Republican votes, that Republican votes would provide cover, that they could be interpreted as giving a veneer of bipartisanship to the bill.

The message got through. Not one Republican voted for the bill.

Amazing.

The Republicans are so bereft of elected leadership that the leader of the loyal opposition is an unelected talk show host on AM radio.

I am a big fan of Rush Limbaugh. Perhaps in this time and in this place, someone who is not elected can be the most effective voice of political opposition until Republicans regroup.

Does anyone know where John McCain is? Does anyone care? This is the man who the media and the Rockefeller Republicans wanted as their standard bearer; the man who could attract the “independent” and Democrat vote. How's that working out for the Republicans?

He’s so far in the background he’s not even wallpaper.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin is beginning make her move for leadership. I’m confident that Rush would be happy to pass the baton to her.

Blagojevich Trial Day 2: The Gun That Didn't Smoke

Let us stipulate that sometimes politics is a dirty business. And let us further stipulate that Illinois politics is particularly dirty. And let us finally stipulate that many political contributions are simply bribes.

However …

I am beginning to become confirmed in my belief that Rod Blagojevich is being railroaded. I listened briefly to some of the taped evidence that was played on the media that was supposed to be so damning and – frankly – it was not.

From Legal Insurrection
I listened to much of day two of the Illinois Senate impeachment trial of Gov. Rod Blagojevich. This was the day when the smoking gun would be revealed, in the form of four audio tapes just released by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. Despite the claims in some of the television and print media, the tapes were no smoking gun.

The tapes purport to show Blagojevich extorting a campaign contribution from a horse race track owner in exchange for Blagojevich signing legislation favorable to the race track. But all the tapes actually show is Blagojevich's chief of staff urging Blagojevich to pressure the race track owner to pay up on a previously promised campaign contribution, and Blagojevich trying to confirm that the payment will be made. Nothing on the tapes states that Blagojevich would refuse to sign the legislation, already passed by a substantial majority in the legislature (including many of the Senators voting on impeachment), if there were no payment. You may be able to make the connection, but these tapes don't do it. We would need much more evidence to show extortion or even conspiracy to extort.

The only real value of the tapes was to finally hear Blagojevich's voice. I say "finally" because Fitzgerald has not released the other tapes quoted in the criminal complaint affidavit. When you hear the media say "we have heard the tapes" and Blagojevich must go, what you really are hearing is the media saying "we have read transcripts of excerpts of the tapes chosen by the prosecutor" and we'll suspend our normal distrust of prosecutors to believe that the excerpts are accurate, complete, and not misleading.
...
Although not the first time I noticed this, when hearing the affidavit read out loud it became clear that much of the "evidence" against Blagojevich is double and triple hearsay based on questionable witnesses. Something along the lines of "John Smith, who is under investigation and trying to cut a deal for himself, testified that Mary Jones told him that Rod Blagojevich wanted a campaign contribution in exchange for ...."

The other thing that jumped out when listening to the tapes and hearing Cain's testimony in response to questions from Senators, is how truncated are the excerpts. With an Assistant U.S. Attorney at his side, Cain repeatedly refused to answer questions as to how the excerpts were selected, what else was on the tapes, or who else (including Senators voting on impeachment) was on the tapes (Transcript, 292-293) When Cain refused to answer if any other Senators were on the tapes, the transcript indicates that an unidentified person at the Senate trial said "Thank God." (Tr. 293) So we may have potential targets of, or witnesses in, Fitzgerald's investigation voting on whether that most famous target, Blagojevich, stays in office. Great.

Cain refused to answer whether the excerpts in the affidavit put events in "the proper context" (Tr. 293) or whether he has learned anything in the seven weeks since he signed the affidavit which "would make any of the statements in your affidavit untrue?" (Tr. 299).

The Senators' questions and Cain's repeated refusals to answer were extremely damaging to the Senate prosecution, not that anyone seems to care. The Senate is relying almost exclusively on the Cain affidavit to prove the criminal allegations against Blagojevich. Yet Cain will not testify to anything other than what is in the affidavit, will not verify that the tape excerpts in the affidavit are in proper context, will not reveal what else is on the tapes, and will not even state that his affidavit is true and accurate based upon what he knows today as he is testifying.

I have doubted the wisdom of Blagojevich in not showing up, and I still doubt that wisdom as it pertains to challenging the Senate Rules and procedures. As to witness Cain, there is nothing Blagojevich could have gained by cross-examining Cain, so there really was no reason to try.

Any fair-minded person would be moving towards the conclusion that the Senate Rules, which do not allow Blagojevich or the Senators to challenge the evidence selected by Fitzgerald, are resulting in a trial which in fact is unfair. But there don't seem to be many fair-minded people around when it comes to Blagojevich's Senate trial.


I have been critical in the past about Fitzgerald, (Fitzgerald's Feet of Clay) and this case – which should have been a slam dunk – seems to be the sort of sloppy, innuendo filled trial by media that characterizes his other prosecutions.

Democrats Launch Petition Against Rush Limbaugh

From CNS News
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has launched an online petition for readers to express their outrage at conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh for saying last week that he wanted President Barack Obama to fail.



In response, the GOP is taking the approach of any defeated enemy, they hope that they won't be punished too severely.

From the Politico
House GOP member to Rush: Back off


Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., did not take kindly to this assessment in an interview with Politico Tuesday.

“I think that our leadership, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, are taking the right approach,” Gingrey said. “I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party. You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of that thing. But when it comes to true leadership, not that these people couldn’t be or wouldn’t be good leaders, they’re not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell."

Asked to respond to Gingrey, Limbaugh, in an email to Politico, wrote: “I'm sure he is doing his best but it does not appear to be good enough. He may not have noticed that the number of Republican colleagues he has in the House has dwindled. And they will dwindle more if he and his friends don't show more leadership and effectiveness in battling the most left-wing agenda in modern history. And they won't continue to lose because of me, but because of their relationship with the grassroots, which is hurting. Conservatives want leadership from those who claim to represent them. And we'll know it when we see it.”


Thanks to DRUDGE

NY Times wants to turn itself into a non-profit foundation

They have already achieve the non-profit part. Now where are they going to raise the 5 billion dollars to fund the foundation?

Hat tip to Mark Finkelstein.

A Partial Eclipse Over Manila Bay

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Nominate The Virginian for the Nobel Prize

Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Prize for associating global warming with an increase in carbon dioxide. The fact that CO2 went up about 800 years after the earth warmed was found immaterial. The people who gave the Nobel prizes decided that if CO2 increased after the earth warmed, it meant that CO2 caused the earth to warm and Al Gore deserved to be recognized for making that assertion.

If the assertion above confuses you, it merely shows you are not Nobel Prize material.

So I have just demonstrated that Barack Hussein Obama caused the global economic melt-down and have even demonstrated that his candidacy caused the economy to crater following this ascendency rather than following it. Like Al Gore, I have graphs (or at least one graph) and can generate tables if they absolutely demand it. If they want pictures of starving women and children, I’m sure that we can get Michael Moore to go through this video archives.

But do you think those Swedish bastards have called me to tell me that I have won their stupid prize?

NO!

Well for those of you who missed it, here is my proof.



The Obama Market
Has anyone else noticed a curious correspondence? The date that Barack Hussein Obama clinched the Democrat party nomination for president (June 3, 2008), the stock market (S&P 500) was at about 1400. It is now at about 840, a horrifying 40% decline which has wiped out the retirement plans of a generation.

Coincidence? I think not! As Al Gore would say, it’s an inconvenient truth.



Call the King of Sweden and tell him to put my name in nomination right now.

Thanks to Obama, I could use the money.

I Don't Know How to Succinctly Headline This, But Let's Just Say Paul Krugman is a Lying Asshole

Another well-crafted headline by Ace of Spades.

Noted Tax Evader Wins Confirmation as Top Tax Collector, 60-34

Loved the headline from Ace of Spades.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Viriginia's Tax Dollars At Work

The Obama Market

Has anyone else noticed a curious correspondence? The date that Barack Hussein Obama clinched the Democrat party nomination for president (June 3, 2008), the stock market (S&P 500) was at about 1400. It is now at about 840, a horrifying 40% decline which has wiped out the retirement plans of a generation.

Coincidence? I think not! As Al Gore would say, it’s an inconvenient truth.

Carlos Slim And The New York Times

Carlos Slim, by some accounts the world's richest man, has pumped 3,497,100,000 Mexican pesos ($250 million) worth of liquidity into the varicose veins of the Grey Lady. The New York Times needed the infusion: By some provocative accounts, contested indignantly by the Times, the newspaper was--is--plummeting toward a swift death.


HEH

Greg-alogue: Osama bin Olbermann?

Homage to the Left.

WHEN THIS HAPPENS, boo loudly.

Glenn Reynold has some good advice.

From "Safe Zones" By Jay Nordlinger about a concert he attended
Members of the quartet talked from the stage, talking from the stage being an epidemic of our times. And on the program was a new piece, by Kevin Puts. Before the quartet — the Miró Quartet — performed the piece, the composer gave a little lecture (bien sûr).



He explained that the Miró folks had asked him to write something optimistic about America — something lighthearted. But this was hard to do in 2007: because those were dark, terrible days. You remember, he said: like all days “before three days ago” (meaning, before the inauguration of Barack Obama). The audience erupted in a sustained cheer — just as always: in perfect, herd-like conformity. Not a dissenting mind in the bunch.



Or were there?


Glenn Reynolds suggests
WHEN THIS HAPPENS, boo loudly. Then buttonhole them unpleasantly later and complain about “insensitivity.” Don’t worry what they think about you, or whether you actually convince them of anything, just make sure the interaction is personally unpleasant enough that they’ll want to avoid such in the future. That’s how this sort of thing is done . . . .


I'm waiting for the opportunity.

Height of Power: The Washington Fiefdom Looms Larger Than Ever

Washington gathers in the reins of power over everything and everyone.

For more than two centuries, it has been a wannabe among the great world capitals. But now, Washington is finally ready for its close-up.

No longer a jumped-up Canberra or, worse, Sacramento, it seems about to emerge as Pyongyang on the Potomac, the undisputed center of national power and influence. As a new president takes over the White House, the United States’ capacity for centralization has arguably never been greater. . . . The contrast between Washington and most of the United States has gradually become more pronounced. In good times and in bad, lawyers, lobbyists and other government retainers have continued to enrich themselves even as the Midwest industrial-belt cities have cratered and most others struggled to survive. “The vision of generations of liberals,” admitted the New Republic in the mid-1970s, “has created a prosperous and preposterous city whose population is completely isolated from the people they represent and immune from the problems they are supposed to solve.”


[Via Instapundit.]

For some reason, I was reminded of Paris and the court of the "Sun King."

In connection with that, read Obama’s Graciousness Deficit.

It's change and you can believe it.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

The Desiccated Remains

We are in a battle we may not win, but it's a fight we must not shirk.

From the Book, The American Tradition:
[W]e are told that there is no need to fear the concentration of power in government so long as that power is checked by the electoral process. We are urged to believe that so long as we can express our disagreement in words, we have our full rights to disagree. Now both freedom of speech and the electoral process are important to liberty, but alone they are only the desiccated remains of liberty. However vigorously we may argue against foreign aid, our substance is still drained away in never-to-be-repaid loans. Quite often, there is not even a candidate to vote for who holds views remotely like my own. To vent one's spleen against the graduated income tax may be healthy for the psyche, but one must still yield up his freedom of choice as to how his money will be spent when he pays it to the government. The voice of electors in government is not even proportioned to the tax contribution of individuals; thus, those who contribute more lose rather than gain by the "democratic process." A majority of voters may decide that property cannot be used in such and such ways, but the liberty of the individual is diminished just as much as in that regard as if a dictator had decreed it. Those who believe in the redistribution of wealth should be free to redistribute their own, but they are undoubtedly limiting the freedom of others when they vote to redistribute theirs.

Effective disagreement means not doing what one does not want to do as well as saying what he wants to say. What is from one angle the welfare state is from another the compulsory state. Let me submit a bill of particulars. Children are forced to go to school. Americans are forced to pay taxes to support foreign aid, forced to support the Peace Corps, forced to make loans to the United Nations, forced to contribute to the building of hospitals, forced to serve in the armed forces. Employers are forced to submit to arbitration with labor leaders. Laborers are forced to accept the majority decision. Employers are forced to pay minimum wages, or go out of business. But it is not even certain that they will be permitted by the courts to go out of business. Railroads are forced to charge established rates and to continue services which may have become uneconomical. Many Americans are forced to pay Social Security. Farmers are forced to operate according to the restrictions voted by a majority of those involved. The list could be extended, but surely the point has been made.

And this:
Over the next four years, the "desiccated remains" of Americans' traditional freedom will come under ever more intense assault. This is guaranteed by liberals' assumption of their moral superiority and the steadily accumulating evidence against the beneficence and benevolence of liberal policies. Conservatives and libertarians must expect harsher and harsher attempts, both within and without the law, to silence them and to defraud them of victories at the polls. Violence will be involved more and more often as liberals' failures mount.

Read the whole thing.

The Hockey Stick Hoax

From Powerline;

More recent scientific work has thoroughly debunked the Mann "hockey stick" analysis. It has been shown to rest on "collation errors, unjustified truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, incorrect principal component calculations, geographical mislocations and other serious defects," as well as "incorrect mathematics." There are indications, at least, that some of the errors on the part of Mann and his collaborators were deliberate--an instance of the corruption of science by politics and perverse financial incentives that underlies the entire global warming movement.


Politicization of science? Who said that?

Chris Matthews Underwear?

A Free Pass for the Indispensable Man

We have to throw billions at the banks or they'll fail.

We have to throw billions at the car companies or they'll fail.

We have to throw billions at the porn industry or they'll fail.

We have to confirm a tax cheat as Treasury Secretary cause he's the "indispensable man."

Jonah Goldberg disagrees.

Never mind that there’s nothing small about the belief that paying taxes in an honest fashion is a minimal requirement for the job of treasury secretary. What’s absurd is that Geithner, who helped regulate Wall Street as head of the New York Fed, is the indispensable man now. He may indeed be qualified to be treasury secretary, but is he really the only man who can do the job? Really? Everyone said the same thing about Hank Paulson not long ago. How’d that work out?

I thought the Democrats believed the financial implosion was caused by arrogant and greedy men who thought the rules didn’t apply to them because they were so important. I guess they didn’t mean it.

Sex and Obama

Will Trade Sex For Obama

Fox News Runs Obama Rally Video During Sex Offender Story

Gays, lesbians hopeful despite inaugural pastor

And there's always this bodice ripper by Mark Steyn:
"Oh, yes, yes, yessssssss, we can!" I whimpered, as his smoldering eyes bored deep into the very core of my being and our souls met and I knew he was the only man who would ever win my heart, a heart beating so fast and loud I could barely hear what he was saying – something about executive orders, I think. "Oh, yes, give me one right now!" I cried, as my palpitating bosom burst the ties of my bodice causing my leg to vibrate so much my bustle fell off.


Just so you know.

Limbaugh Responds to Obama

That didn't take long.

Team Obama is going to try to destroy Rush Limbaugh. Without him, they will again have monopoly control of the public airwaves and print media.

I was going to say that it will be interesting to see who wins, but ....

I have a dog in that fight.
Your publication and website have documented Obama's ties to the teachings of Saul Alinksy while he was community organizing in Chicago. Here is Rule 13 of Alinksy's Rules for Radicals:

"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."


From the UK Telegraph: Barack Obama picks a fight with Rush Limbaugh as bipartisan spirit crumbles

From the NY Post: PREZ ZINGS GOP FOE IN A $TIMULATING TALK

Global Warming Update: Snow falls in United Arab Emirates for only second time in recorded history...

Via DRUDGE:

DUBAI (AFP) — A blanket of snow has covered a mountain in a part of the United Arab Emirates, a rare phenomenon for the desert Gulf country, according to local media report.
...The emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai also had heavy rains on Friday and Saturday, in a spell of rare chilly weather in a desert state where summer temperatures can reach 50 Celcius (122 Fahrenheit).

Dictators Mock Obama's Ignorance

Via FreeRepublic:

Mark Steyn: Obama raises heart rates, lowers expectations

I could not help contrasting the pretty good essay Krauthammer (Leaving the People Hungry) wrote about Obama's inaugural speech and this perfectly polished gem from Mark Steyn:

Subhead:
His boring inaugural doesn't diminish his hotness in the eyes of his usual acolytes.


Steyn shows you the dagger:
How dazzling is President Obama? So dazzling that he didn't merely give a dazzling inaugural speech. Any old timeserving hack could do that. Instead, he had the sheer genius to give a flat dull speech full of the usual shopworn boilerplate. Brilliant! At a stroke, he not only gently lowered the expectations of those millions of Americans and billions around the world for whom his triumphant ascendancy is the only thing that gives their drab little lives any meaning, but he also emphasized continuity by placing his own unprecedented incandescent megastar cool squarely within the tradition of squaresville yawneroo white middle-aged plonking mediocrities who came before him.


Plunges it in:
At a stroke – OK, that's two strokes, like an Italian moped, but that just shows how cosmopolitan he is – anyway, Obama artfully charted a middle course between the Scylla of unmeetable expectations and the Charybdis of his own charisma and chugged instead in the placid rhetorical shallows of "gathering clouds," "raging storms," "icy currents"… In a speech on climate change, this would send the crowd fleeing in terror to hole up in the hills and forage for berries. But, in an inaugural address, this was Obama's most inspired gambit yet. Only a truly great leader would have the courage to reach for the skies in such leaden and earthbound prose.


Twists the knife:
Oh, well. So much for the consensus of the expert analysts. Meanwhile, The New Yorker put him on the cover dressed as George Washington – a Founding Father for a new America! Disdaining such insulting and belittling comparisons to discredited old slaveowners with bad teeth and wigs even more obvious than that Illinois governor's, the actress-activist Susan Sarandon compared him with Jesus. "He is a community organizer like Jesus was," she said, "and now we're a community and he can organize us." What sort of community should we be? Surveying the "rapt eyes" of the congregation, Ethan Baron, writing in the Vancouver Province, said he hadn't seen anything like it "since a guy I used to work with brought me to visit his weird sex cult in California." And he meant it as a compliment.


The prose does not get any more purple:
But don't worry, the sex isn't gonna be weird or anything. "Oh, yes, yes, yessssssss, we can!" I whimpered, as his smoldering eyes bored deep into the very core of my being and our souls met and I knew he was the only man who would ever win my heart, a heart beating so fast and loud I could barely hear what he was saying – something about executive orders, I think. "Oh, yes, give me one right now!" I cried, as my palpitating bosom burst the ties of my bodice causing my leg to vibrate so much my bustle fell off.

"Aye, you're a comely lass," said Squire Barack, as my tresses tumbled over my stays and his riding crop fluttered teasingly up my thigh. "But I don't need to go a-wenchin' in the White House Press Room…"

"No, please, good sir," I begged, as he glided past me and gave a saucy wink to the chamber maid from The Washington Post…


The man is a genius.


From Texas Eagle at FreeRepublic:
Steyn should write romance novels. I can almost see the cover. Fabio Obama carrying a half-dressed Chris Matthews out of the surf...

America as Wet Clay

Follow me into the Wayback Machine, Sherman, to a time when schools had the youngsters make things out of clay to show their parents. In my time, the most common thing made was a vaguely dish-shaped thing that was usually called an ashtray. In these enlightened times, I’m sure they are not called ashtrays any more.


(Are little kids still allowed to make things out of clay today?)

They were taken home, ooohed and aaahed over by doting parents and put away, to be taken out on infrequent occasions to show the kids as they were growing up what their little hands once made.

As I remember, we were not told to make an ashtray, it’s just what came out … it’s easiest to take a piece of clay and make a flat, round shape with edges that curled up. Some of my classmates aspired to something else and made figurines. I opted for an ashtray, but a nice one … with scalloped edges.

What does that have to do with America, Sherman? Give me a moment to switch the focus of my analogy.

The Left in America is in ascendance today. And the Left has always been an admirer of uniformity. After all, what good is knowing what is best for people if you don’t tell people what is best for them? And get them to do what you want? And once we know what's right, shouldn't everyone get on board? The efficiency of making one kind of suit, one kind of car, one kind of diet, one size of toilet flush, one kind of medical care, one kind of school is obvious to the organized mind.

Despite popular myths to the contrary (cf. “The Organization Man”), Americans have traditionally been diversified, much more so than other cultures. Some call it rugged individualism; others believe that we should be left alone to do our own thing. That approach to life leaves open the possibility of individual inequality and failure.

The Left in America has traditionally admired other countries and other governmental structures which directed the lives of their people a great deal more than our government did. Most of them have been oriented toward socialism. For quite a while the Left admired the communist system, and quite a few still carry a torch for the Cuban model.

There were plenty of admirers for Stalin’s and Mao’s rule, even after the bloody abattoirs were exposed. The New York Times has received Pulitzer prizes for covering up mass murder. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

Even our founding fathers were admirers of some species of tyranny. Jefferson was an ardent admirer of the French Revolution and the attendant Terror. It’s an admission of the truth of Stalin’s observation that for some people “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.” I hope not to be part of that group of people.

The Left sees that United States as a piece of wet clay that they finally have the power to mold into the shape and form they would like. Their midway model seems to be socialist Europe, but the ultimate goal is Communism without Stalin or Mao. They believe they have the wisdom to so regulate the lives of men that history will end.

What’s interesting is that the fluidity of America, with its relatively undirected economy and culture can change and adapt without fracturing. Each of us can mold our own lives just as the young once did with their little pieces of clay. But once the clay is dried, it cannot be re-shaped. The more structured a culture is, the more brittle it becomes. Like an ash tray … while it was soft, it could be anything. Once it’s formed and structured, it can only broken. What are we going to do with that beautiful ash tray that the children of the Left are designing once we find out that smoking is not good for you? It’s too late to make a figurine. The only thing that we can do is break it; and that makes a hell of a mess.

KOPEL: Rocky, Post go all out for inaugural

Dave Kopel does a little research to see how previous inaugurations were covered by two newspapers in Denver.

There is no comparison.

Has there ever been such a frenzy of Denver newspaper attention to a presidential inauguration?


The answer is no. Read the article.

Time will tell whether Obama will win the hearts and minds of the American public and the world. But he is surely the greatest favorite of the mainstream media within living memory.

Annular Eclipse: The Ring of Fire

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Robert Reich’s Racist Comments

“I am concerned,that these jobs not simply go to high skilled people who are already professional or to white male construction workers.”


How interesting that this man is a highly influential member of the first black president's administration.

Halbrook Testimony

Murtha-Funded Firms Busted

Two firms funded with over $100 million in earmarks from the Democratic Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, John Murtha, were raided and temporarily shut down yesterday by the FBI and IRS. Surprised that you didn't hear about such big news? Well, it did manage to hit page A6 of the Wall Street Journal today (U.S. Raids Contractors Aided by Murtha):

Read the rest.

The Goodwar begins.

Mudville Gazette notes the lightining speed with which the Bad War has morphed into the Good War.

The Post also has reassuring advice for those who worry about "collateral damage" from such attacks - don't.

The LA Times may not have gotten the word:
Deadly U.S.-led raid in Afghanistan prompts new dispute
Afghan village elders say the early-morning strike left as many as 22 civilians dead. But U.S. military officials say 15 were killed, all Taliban fighters.

Obama Kills Innocent Women and Children!

But some of the attacks have also killed civilians, enraging Pakistanis and making it harder for the country’s shaky government to win support for its own military operations against Taliban guerrillas in the country’s lawless border region.

...In the second attack, missiles struck a house near the village of Wana in South Waziristan, killing seven people, according to local accounts and Pakistani news reports. The reports said three of the dead were children.


Environmental Republican visits the Left and gauges their reaction.

First, we have this quote from Code Pink about the murder of innocents who has vowed to keep an eye on Obama:


...Ok, what about International A.N.S.W.E.R? They must be appalled and had this to say:


...What about Not In Our Name? They hate war. Oops, their website is gone inactive.

Hmmm...OK, you know that Iraq Veterans Against the War had something to say about the murderous attack by the Obama administration:
...Er, what about
Veterans for Peace, they have a nice Yes We Can! pic on their front page but they say nothing.

Alright, someone has to have actually stuck by their convictions and is calling out the new President for doing exactly what George Bush did.

United for Peace and Justice, the Campus Anti-War Network website is off back up but says nothing and no other groups thought it important enough to even post anything about the deaths of children at the hands of the military industrial complex.

I had one last option to find someone, anyone from the anti-warrior side who was not a complete hypocrite and would actually come out and challenge the new President. It should be easier now that they don't have to worry about the secret surveillance, secret detention centers and oppressive policies of the Bush administration anymore.

I googled Medea Benjamin--founder of Code Pink--in Google News and found...nothing. She found more than enough time to post every single atrocity allegedly committed by Israel (truth was not a paramount concern in the postings either) against the Gazans but just could not find time to criticize The One.

So what can we surmise from this little investigation? How about the left-wing of this country is populated with hypocritical ideologues who not only hated Bush but had a severe dislike for America. Now that they have a leader who they feel a kinship with, well, it's all good.



The curious incident of the antiwar movement in the night-time.
You shouldn’t be surprised: the terrorists that got attacked weren’t Europeans - which is my polite way of saying that they weren’t sufficiently white and Western for the groups running the antiwar movement to particularly care, especially since caring might embarrass a President who isn’t a Republican. Was that too harsh? No? OK, let’s try again: the antiwar movement is run by racists who only like brown people when they can be used as clubs with which to beat anybody to the antiwar movement’s Right.

Well, anyone to their Right, and Jews. A quick perusal of the major players in question indicates that they’re all really upset that Israel isn’t baring its collective neck for the knife.

Unsuccessful Iowa Legal Writing Faculty Candidate Sues, Claiming Discrimination Due to Her Conservative Views

I have no doubt it's true. I wonder if it will be successful?

Ha! Sort of like getting the Communist Party to vote Stalin out of office.

GREAT DIVIDER DEPARTS

Tim Blair:

In 2004, George W. Bush continued dividing America with his divisive policies by divisively winning the election with 50.7 per cent of the vote. In 2008, Barack Obama united the entire world in a unifying spirit of unity by winning with 52.9 per cent of the vote.

That 2.2 per cent makes a massive difference, apparently. What the media actually means with all this talk of Obama uniting everybody is that a majority of voters finally supported the media’s candidate; you can feel the unity in every US newsroom, from the New York Times to the Chicago Tribune.




Hat Tip: Small Dead Animals

The Obama Plan On Torture - Define it Away

Obama, Democrats and the Left in general have been busy during the Bush administration defining torture as pretty much anything that terrorists don’t like.

Now that Bush is no longer in office and Obama is in line to be blamed for any attacks on the country, the same people who defined waterboarding as torture (how many people have been permanently scarred by waterboarding?) are now busy re-defining torture again.

These same people are now saying that nothing that the Obama administration allows in interrogation is torture, by definition.

How convenient.


Via Glenn Reynolds: ACTUALLY, I THINK THAT’S PRETTY MUCH THE POLICY: “Is he also going to end torture, except where it might yield useful information?”


The MSM leads with the headline (from Knowxnews)

Sources: Obama ready to end harsh interrogations

Except for
Still under debate is whether to include a loophole that would allow exceptions in extraordinary cases.


Oh, did the AP writers think that harsh interrogations were the first thing that the Bush administration did? The writers for the paper are such dicks. In their imagination, Dick Cheney gave instructions to the CIA “Before you question them, don’t ask if they know anything; tear out their nails and teeth first.”

And how about this for the anti-"harsh interrogation" crowd?

The proposed loophole, which could come in the form of a classified annex to the manual, is designed to satisfy intelligence experts who fear that an outright ban of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques would limit the government in obtaining threat information that could save American lives. It would also preserve Obama's flexibility to authorize any interrogation tactics he might deem necessary for national security.

But the Obama administration is adamant. No torture. Nothing we do is torture. No way, no how.

The Bubble Nebula

Friday, January 23, 2009

The Idiossey

Iowahawk turns Obama's journey into the Odessey.
From the land of Kenya beyond Nile, came Obamacles the Elder
To the grad school at Oahu, where Ann of Kansas bore him a son.
It would prove to be a hassle, thus he left his baby’s mama,
who then won favor with Soertoro, who brought them to his far-off island nest.
Young Obamacles was growing, and they shipped him back to Gramma,
And the prep school on Oahu. There he trained and studied boldly,
Drinking beer and smoking weed: Maui Wowie, paca lolo, sensimilla,
blunts and chiva, Thai and chronic, just enough to hone his mellow,
in the back of Kyle’s TransAm, a line or two of coke on weekends.
Read the whole thing.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Who is Edgar Bergen?

There was much made of the Obama swearing-in flub, in which the new president repeated the words given to him by the Chief Justice. But that was in the script. That's what was supposed to happen: repeat after me: “I, Barack Hussein Obama … I, Barack Hussein Obama.”

What was supposed to happen after that was that this bright, articulate, handsome man would find his own words.

So it was a little strange today, to hear the newly minted President of the United States in his first official act, repeat the words of his White House counsel. There is a transcript available on the Limbaugh website, but I was listening to the announcement and this is what was actually said. Limbaugh’s transcript – of course- includes the verbal pauses and tics that most of us throw into our conversation.

OBAMA: …In order to effect the appropriate disposition of individuals currently detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo, uh, and promptly to close the detention facility at Guantanamo consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and interests of justice, I hereby order. And we then we will then, uh, provide the process whereby Guantanamo will be closed no later than, uh, one year from now.


At this point, Obama addressed Greg Craig:

OBAMA: We will be... Uhhh.... Ummm.... Is there a separate executive order, Greg, with respect to how we're going to dispose of the detainees? Is that it, eh, uh, what we're doing?

CRAIG: We'll set up a process!

OBAMA: We will be, uh, setting up a process whereby this is going to be taking place.


OBAMA: What we're doing here is to set up a special interagency task force on detainee disposition. They are going to provide me with information in terms of how we are able to deal in the disposition of some of the detainees that may be currently in Guantanamo that we cannot transfer to other countries, who could pose a serious danger to the United States, uh, but, uh, we cannot try because of various problems related to evidence, uh, in a Article 3 court. So this task force is going to provide us with, uh, a series of recommendations on, uh, that. Is that correct, Greg?

CRAIG: That's right. And detainee policy going forward.

OBAMA: And detainee policy going forward so that we don't find ourselves in these kinds of situations, uh, in the future.

CRAIG: And there is clear guidance for the military as well.

OBAMA: And that we are providing clear guidance to our military in terms of having to do with it.


Greg Craig is feeding Obama his lines.

This is not good.

Before the election questions were being asked about Obama’s role in this administration.

That’s right, Obama’s role.

There were questions in some corners, perhaps the paranoid corners of the Right, who wondered whether a pretty, articulate, “clean” black man with virtually no legislative track record (whose votes of “present” had become a joke) was THE MAN or THE FRONT MAN.

In other countries and other times, worse things have happened. This Republic is a little over 230 years old. Are we due?

How old do you have to be to remember Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy?



I like the line: "A stick of wood that talks!"

How Many People Were In that Inaugural Crowd?

Newsbusters again:


Obama's Million Ghost March
By Mithridate Ombud (Bio Archive)
January 22, 2009 - 02:55 ET

I doubt it would surprise anyone here that the media would go to their best lengths to over-estimate the number of people at Obama's inauguration. But just how far? Try a million people.

ASU journalism professor Stephen Doig took it to the satellite image to get an accurate count of the crowd. His tally, after even accounting for those still in route to the event: 800,000. Now let's look at how the working Obamalists portrayed that to the public.

Baltimore Sun: "Inaugural crowd is estimated at close to 2 million"

Boston Globe: " The National Park Service says it will rely on a media report that says 1.8 million people attended President Obama's inauguration."

MSNBC: "Oh, and some guy named Barack Obama. Along with millions of regular folk, celebrities swarmed to DC to celebrate the Inauguration." (from the same page: "Could Inauguration Crowd Reach 4 Million?")

LA Times: "Crowds surged in previously unseen numbers today for the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, making it seem increasingly likely that the gathering would reach the record-setting mark of 2 million."

Here's where it gets good.

Washington Post: "the official estimate released by the District yesterday is 1.8 million, a figure that would make the gathering the largest ever on the Mall."

Backstory on that "official estimate released by the District" that the Washington Post is writing about.

AP: "Park service spokesman David Barna said the agency did not conduct its own count. Instead, it will use a Washington Post account that said 1.8 million people gathered on the U.S. Capitol grounds, National Mall and parade route, he said."

And that is especially interesting because if you follow the jump on the Washington Post story you'll find this nugget of info: "The Washington Post's analysis of the image concluded that about 1 million people were on the Mall." And the first page of the article mentions the parade route "was supposed to accommodate 300,000 people at its height". Fuzzy math, a journalist staple.


So the Washington Post quoted a statistic taken from a source that used the Washington Post as the source.

Another edition of "name that party"

From Newsbusters:

Democrats in Chicago and Alabama in Trouble, Neither IDed as Democrats

Dog bites man.

Judge Obama on Performance Alone

Juan Williams pleads with the MSM to stop patronizing Blacks.
If his presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like everyone else -- fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and patriotism -- then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble of political criticism experienced by his predecessors. To treat the first black president as if he is a fragile flower is certain to hobble him. It is also to waste a tremendous opportunity for improving race relations by doing away with stereotypes and seeing the potential in all Americans.

Yet there is fear, especially among black people, that criticism of him or any of his failures might be twisted into evidence that people of color cannot effectively lead. That amounts to wasting time and energy reacting to hateful stereotypes. It also leads to treating all criticism of Mr. Obama, whether legitimate, wrong-headed or even mean-spirited, as racist.

This is patronizing. Worse, it carries an implicit presumption of inferiority. Every American president must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise.

During the Democrats' primaries and caucuses, candidate Obama often got affectionate if not fawning treatment from the American media. Editors, news anchors, columnists and commentators, both white and black but especially those on the political left, too often acted as if they were in a hurry to claim their role in history as supporters of the first black president.

For example, Mr. Obama was forced to give a speech on race as a result of revelations that he'd long attended a church led by a demagogue. It was an ordinary speech. At best it was successful at minimizing a political problem. Yet some in the media equated it to the Gettysburg Address.

The importance of a proud, adversarial press speaking truth about a powerful politician and offering impartial accounts of his actions was frequently and embarrassingly lost. When Mr. Obama's opponents, such as the Clintons, challenged his lack of experience, or pointed out that he was not in the U.S. Senate when he expressed early opposition to the war in Iraq, they were depicted as petty.

Bill Clinton got hit hard when he called Mr. Obama's claims to be a long-standing opponent of the Iraq war "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen." The former president accurately said that there was no difference in actual Senate votes on the war between his wife and Mr. Obama. But his comments were not treated by the press as legitimate, hard-ball political fighting. They were cast as possibly racist.

This led to Saturday Night Live's mocking skit -- where the debate moderator was busy hammering the other Democratic nominees with tough questions while inquiring if Mr. Obama was comfortable and needed more water.


Will Obama be treated like any other President? Fat chance. As Rush Limbaugh has commented, the press has so much invested in him, he’s “too big to fail.”

Limbaugh’s black call screener, “Bo Snerdly” has been officially designated as black enough to criticize Obama. Is Juan Williams black enough? With a name like Juan, I’m sure his blackness will be called into question. There will be questions about the amount of his “slave blood” as there was about Obama’s by the grievance pimps in the black community. Funny how the “one drop” rule has been ripped from the handbook of white racists and installed in the lexicon of the black racists.

More Boos Than Balls

Ann Coulter reminds us of the press treatment of the Reagan inauguration and compares it to the treatment Obama got.

She has an amazing ability to do research.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

The "Old Country"

What happened to the Dutch?

The answer is, not much since the 1600s.

A very small country, the Netherlands has tried very hard to accommodate its larger and more powerful neighbors. My personal family experience is with the NSB.

The NSB is short for the National Socialist Bond, a party that admired the German Nazis and did much to run the Netherlands during World War 2.

Thanks to immigration from its former colonies in Asia and Morocco, the Dutch are busy accommodating its Muslin population, much as it did its Nazi neighbors in earlier times.

We think of the Netherlands as being a peaceful country of pot smoking hippies and elderly burghers, advanced enough socially to legalize not just drugs but the flesh trade and the duty to be snuffed out if you get too old and sick. As I get older and my memory and hearing isn’t as good as it once was, I’m glad my parents moved me to a country where I don’t have to fear that nice young man in the white coat with the needle.

About that peaceful part, it seems to have more than its share of high profile killings. Van Gogh and Fortuyn were both killed by within a few years of each other, one by a Muslim, the other by a Leftist. The rest of the population is terrified by “youths” with exuberant ideas.

To keep the natives docile, the Dutch political establishment does what it can. And if it means suppressing free speech, keep in mind the free speech is enshrined in the US constitution, not in Dutch common law, which has decided to prosecute

… Geert Wilders … for calling the Koran a ‘fascist book’ because this amounts to inciting hatred..

Richard Fernandez has much more.

The NSB would be so proud.

Lowery Divides Us



The Race Business is alive and well. I was at work, watching the markets dive during the installation ceremonies for Obama, so I did not hear Lowery’s speech (I will not honor it with the appellation “benediction”).

I was beginning to be persuaded by people whose thoughts I admire like David Horowitz who said:

...as conservatives who have been through the culture wars -- we need to get past the mixed feelings we will inevitably have as the nation marks its progress in moving away from the racial divisions and divisiveness of the past. These feelings come not from resistance to the change, but from the knowledge that this celebration should have taken place decades ago and that its delay was not least because our opponents saw political advantage in playing the race card against us and making us its slandered targets.


Despite repeated messages from the black spokesmen that told us they would continue to play the race card … after all, if they can’t do their jobs, they will be unemployed; I saw a glimmer of hope that the corner may have been turned.

How disappointing to have that dream shattered during the inauguration by this brutal reminder:

Lowery on ME and every other white man or woman:

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around...when yellow will be mellow... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right.


This is the Black Leadership way. Their reason for being. Their rice bowl. The “when did you stop beating your wife” moment.

And shook me back to reality.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Are Boston firemen scamming the system?

Via Boston Globe:

Between 2003 and 2006, the city paid $43.5 million to hundreds of firefighters on injury leave - all of it tax-free. Among the recipients: 132 firefighters who collected more than $100,000 each during that period. Of those, 20 received between $200,000 and $337,000, according to a Globe analysis of city payroll records.
...
Taken together, nearly 20 percent of the department's payroll goes to fund injured leave and overtime pay.
...
Injured-leave pay is full wages, tax-free. Disability pensions are 72 percent of pay, also tax-free.
...
Fire Commissioner Roderick L. Fraser, who took the post 13 months ago, said he was astonished to learn recently about what he describes as an abuse of the system - that scores of men remained on injured leave status for two, three, or four years before department officials and then the Boston Retirement Board processed their disability retirement applications.

...

Despite claiming he is "permanently disabled," firefighter Albert Arroyo is a bodybuilder.

Thanks to the economic slump, cities will no longer be able to afford this abuse.

Where's the Hope and Change?

I can't figure it out. The Hope and Change President is -according to the AP - all about the old virtues...

New president cites old virtues, familiar comforts


Is this the change we have been waiting for?

US markets tank on Obama inauguration day.

via Bloomberg:

U.S. stocks sank, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its worst Inauguration Day decline, as speculation banks must raise more capital sent financial shares to an almost 14-year low.
...
The Dow’s 4 percent slide was the most on an Inauguration Day in the measure’s 112-year history, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and the Stock Trader’s Almanac.

Looks like Hope and Change are not enough.

Now tell the oceans to recede, Barry.

Thumb sucker by Howard Kurtz, soon to be unemployed.

That Shrinking Feeling: Time, Newsweek Narrow Their Focus

The rival editors are turning out weeklies that are smaller, more serious, more opinionated and, though they are loath to admit it, more liberal. They are pursuing a more elite audience, in print and on the Web, abandoning the old Henry Luce notion of catering to the masses. It is nothing less than a survival strategy.


Having become the official media voice of the Democrat party, Time and Newsweek are trying to find a formula that will keep them in business.

Most of the magazines that do this are charity cases underwritten by wealthy patrons, not magazines that depend on mass readership.

For Another View: David Horowitz: Celebration today, vigilance tomorrow

With this I agree in part:

...as conservatives who have been through the culture wars -- we need to get past the mixed feelings we will inevitably have as the nation marks its progress in moving away from the racial divisions and divisiveness of the past. These feelings come not from resistance to the change, but from the knowledge that this celebration should have taken place decades ago and that its delay was not least because our opponents saw political advantage in playing the race card against us and making us its slandered targets.

If we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday at a time of presidential inaugurals, this is thanks to Ronald Reagan who created the holiday, and not to the Democratic Congress of the Carter years, which rejected it. If Americans now have accepted an African American to lead their country in war and peace that is in part because an hysterically maligned Republican made two African Americans his secretaries of state. And if, after the passage of the Civil Rights Acts, race has continued to be a divisive factor in our politics over the last 40 years that is because the generation of Sharpton and Jackson and their liberal supporters have made it so. What conservatives need to recognize in getting past these feelings (and therefore to celebrate) is that because of this political reality, it is only they themselves who could end it.


Perhaps, in the same sense that only Nixon could have gone to China, only Obama could marginalize the race hustlers on the Left.

Horowitz is hopeful, I am less so.

Bush's Real Sin Was Winning in Iraq

William McGurn in the Wall Street Journal editorial page:

In a few hours, George W. Bush will walk out of the Oval Office for the last time as president. As he leaves, he carries with him the near-universal opprobrium of the permanent class that inhabits our nation's capital. Yet perhaps the most important reason for this unpopularity is the one least commented on.


APHere's a hint: It's not because of his failures. To the contrary, Mr. Bush's disfavor in Washington owes more to his greatest success. Simply put, there are those who will never forgive Mr. Bush for not losing a war they had all declared unwinnable.
...
it's easy to forget what the smart set was saying two years ago -- and how categorical they all were in their certainty. The president was a simpleton, it was agreed. Didn't he know that Iraq was a civil war, and the only answer was to get out as fast as we could?

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- the man who will be sworn in as vice president today -- didn't limit himself to his own opinion. Days before the president announced the surge, Joe Biden suggested to the Washington Post he knew the president's people had also concluded the war was lost. They were, he said, just trying to "keep it from totally collapsing" until they could "hand it off to the next guy."

...

...our new president will learn that when you make a mistake, the keepers of the Beltway's received orthodoxies will make you pay dearly.

But it will not even be close to the price you pay for ignoring their advice and succeeding.

The Dis-Membered States of America

The kids who editorialize in the Virginian Pilot now want us to unite in support of their candidate for President. In Washington, a new day dawns

It is a day when a good man leaves office and an enigma appears. A pretty face spouting empty promises to make everything new and fresh again. And the Pilot asks for something it was not willing to give.
It is a moment of historic resonance that all Americans, regardless of how they voted on Election Day, should both celebrate and hold in solemn regard. It is a moment - one in a precious, steady stream of moments - that draws us closer to our nation's preamble, to our aspiration "to form a more perfect union."


I wish I could join them, but I will not. My conscience will not let me. This nation has been torn apart by the the people at the Pilot, the rest of the MSM and Hollywood. The wounds are too deep and scars too many.

The well has been poisoned and we will not drink from it.

There will be no union until this generation passes away.

Pravda was a beacon of journalistic truth and technical prowess compared with the Virginian Pilot

Mayor Admits to Homosexual Relationship with Intern

Another in a "guess the party affiliation" series.



PORTLAND, Ore. - More than a year after denying it, newly sworn-in Mayor Sam Adams admitted on Monday to lying about a sexual relationship he had with a teenager for several months during the summer of 2005.

In a phone interview with KATU, Adams apologized for not being honest to the public about his relationship with Beau Breedlove, whom he said was 18 at the time they had sex.

"I want to publicly acknowledge a mistake I made, and I want to apologize for it," said Adams, who was in Washington D.C. for Tuesday's inauguration.


Note that the story was first printed in a weekly, not a daily paper.

The statement came after the Willamette Week newspaper broke the story about Adams' untruthfulness Monday afternoon



It's the old "I was only mentoring" story:
At the time, he said he simply acted as a mentor to Breedlove, pictured above.
So what did he say at the time?

He told KATU then that suggesting anything else about the relationship was an attempt at political assassination.

At the time, he also wrote an "Open Letter to Portlanders" to respond to the controversy, calling it simply "ugly politicking."

So how did the relationship develop? It's the old story, boy meets boy, boy waits for boy to turn 18, boy gets boy.

In the phone interview with KATU, Adams gave a candid account of how the two met, saying Breedlove was a legislative intern working at the Capitol in Salem who looked like a professional rather than a teenager. The two had lunch in 2005, during which Adams learned Breedlove was two months shy of his 18th birthday.

Adams said he told the teen he did not date underage people. They stayed in contact and later in the summer went on a few dates once Breedlove was 18, Adams said.
"Looked like a professional?"

But it's all right because he said he was sorry.

"I want to apologize to the people of Portland for my dishonesty," he said. "I should have been truthful from the beginning."

He added that he had asked Breedlove, who is now 21, to lie about the relationship and that was a mistake. Adams said he never told his colleagues, staff, friends or even family about the sex. He added that he remains friends with Breedlove.

"I just hope people will accept my apology and take a whole view of my public service career," Adams said.
His whole public service career includes lying and having sex with an intern. In certain circles that's a resume enhancement. "Make a better mayor having learned from his mistake?"

There is not one, not one, not one party affiliation label. That is a dead give away.

I Pledge to Ridicule Celebrities Who Refuse to Recognize We Are At War With People Who Want to Kill Them, Too

Here the self-important grandees tell us that we MUST all pull together. Count the number of "I"s.

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I

MySpace Celebrity and Katalyst present The Presidential Pledge


Bullshit.

Excerpt:

This video illustrates that the current celebrity class are not citizens but serfs. They need a leader to put their minds in the right place to do the right thing. They are not heroic individualists seeking to extend America’s promise but conformists who chose to sit out and complain during the tough years in order to ensure their guy got in the next go-around.

The celebrity decadence during the “oppressive” Bush years was world class. The clubs raged. The boutique hotels rocked. The private jet industry at Van Nuys airport flourished. The party never stopped. And only a precious few (Thank you, dearly!!!) stepped up to support the American troops who have been valiantly fighting for Hollywood’s right to do lines off of each others’ buttocks at $10 million Hollywood Hills mansions.

Moore’s nauseating video — which, like Steven Soderbergh’s “Oceans” franchise, grants a pristine look into the modern celebrity’s sense of self-importance — is not a sign of desire to serve the country under Obama. Watch, by March this pledge like New Year’s resolutions will fall by the wayside. It is a sign that the Democrat is in the White House now. It is a sign that they get to sleep again in the Lincoln Bedroom.


Breibart ends with:
Good luck, President Obama. The rest of you can go to hell.



I agree with part. All of them can go to hell.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Charles Rangel and the Harlem Tax Revolt of ’09. By Evan Coyne Maloney.

Where Hamas Gets Its Money

The $7 billion to $10 billion that the Palestinian Authority has received since 1993 has come from the European Union, the U.N., the U.S., Saudi Arabia and other Arab League countries. France alone has sent more than $3 billion. This influx of cash has done little to advance the development of a viable Palestinian state or of peace in the region. Rather, it has helped to fuel the Palestinian leadership's terrorist agenda, and kept the Palestinian people oppressed and disenfranchised.


This should surprise no one.

The Cost of the Inauguration: A Cold Wind Blows

Over the next few years, we're going to see the traditional DC game of Political Chairs played by Republicans and Democrats, with fervently held opinions and outrages abandoned in favor of new, more convenient opinions and outrages. It's a normal human thing to be captured by convenience, but Washington DC seems especially immune to the idea of categorical imperatives.

Two columns by Media Matters' Eric Boehlert (latest via Steve Benen) capture this "...aaaaand switch!" dynamic quite well. In 2005, Boehlert was outraged at Bush's inauguration.

He wrote, "The D.C. press corps failed to ask hard questions about the inauguration's huge cost and its unprecedented security."
He emphasized a poll that showed Americans would have preferred a smaller inaugural party (did the Washington Post even bother doing one of those this time around?).
He attacked "the costly security overkill" which "clearly plays to Bush's political advantage by keeping terrorist threats at the top of people's minds."
He criticized the media for only reporting confirmed numbers, rather than using the speculative, uncomfirmed numbers that had been named in some places.
He puts "the real cost at closer to $70 million, instead of the media's preferred $40 million."
Flash forward to 2009 and Eric Boehlert is feeling the Change.

Rather than criticizing the huge cost and unprecedented security of the 2009 inauguration, Boehlert attacks the media for using inadequate numbers for the 2005 inauguration, putting Obama's 2009 inauguration in a comparatively bad light.
After spending 2005 criticizing the media for not using the speculative, unconfirmed numbers cited in some places, Boehlert is suddenly aghast that the media is using speculative, unconfirmed (but entirely reasonable) numbers.
The "real cost" of Bush's 2005 inaugural has gone from "closer to $70 million" (Boehlert, 2005) to "$157 million" (Boehlert, 2009).
Not a word about security "overkill".
Mind you, neither of Boehlert's articles is really wrong, per se. You can be outraged about the enormous cost of a party for a politician and outraged about the press' inability to understand the numbers involved.

But the difference between these two articles is certainly instructive about the sincerity of his outrage over unconfirmed numbers, the cost of an inauguration and security overkill.

It's time to pray for global warming, says Flint Journal columnist John Tomlinson


If you're wondering why North America is starting to resemble nuclear winter, then you missed the news.

At December's U.N. Global Warming conference in Poznan, Poland, 650 of the world's top climatologists stood up and said man-made global warming is a media generated myth without basis. Said climatologist Dr. David Gee, Chairman of the International Geological Congress, "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming?"

I asked myself, why would such obviously smart guy say such a ridiculous thing? But it turns out he's right.


The earth's temperature peaked in 1998. It's been falling ever since; it dropped dramatically in 2007 and got worse in 2008, when temperatures touched 1980 levels.


Read the whole thing.

Video: Al Arabiya Studio Used As Rocket Launching Site

Via Little Green Footballs
Al Arabiya reporter Hannan al-Masri is live on the air in Gaza when she is told that Hamas has just fired rockets from inside the Al Arabiya studio building, news which apparently strikes her as quite humorous.

Should America Offer Asylum to European and Canadian Jews?

Via Kenneth Anderson:

I wonder if the time has come for the United States to offer political asylum to the Jews of Canada, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and elsewhere in Europe?


Mark J. comments:

Gee, Hitler must be crowing with glee to his Nazi minions down in the Ninth Circle of Hell.

"Europe will soon be Jew-free and, of all people, it was my enemies who'll have driven them out. A Judenrein Europe took 70 more years than I planned, but I have still won! Never doubt your Fuehrer!"


All the while, Christians continue to be bashed here by the Left and other assorted atheists for wishing to aid Israel for biblical reasons.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Mainstream Media Supports Holder, Thinks He's Learned His Lesson.

The take on Eric Holder's participation in pardons of terrorists and tax cheats.

The American Prospect:
I think Mr. Holder's may actually make him a better steward of the Department of Justice because he has learned a hard lesson


NY Times:
I've learned from that experience. I think that, as perverse as this might sound, I will be a better attorney general, should I be confirmed, having had the Mark Rich experience.


The LA Times:
But that error isn't disqualifying if Holder can demonstrate that he has learned a lesson


Imagine another leader in this situation…

“I have the experience; I have the qualifications having already been a global leader. I have learned from my mistakes.” A. Hitler.

Lessons learned:

o Don’t invade Russia.
o Don’t declare war on the US.
o Treat the Jews better.
o Stop while you’re ahead.

Come on, give the guy a break. We all make mistakes.

Global Warming Update: Ice forming around Flight 1549.

Sonar crews looking for an engine that dropped off the US Airways jet that ditched in the Hudson River faced a new challenge Saturday: thickening river ice.

The Army Corps of Engineers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had two survey boats out on the frigid river Saturday hunting for the lost engine.

They planned to be out until sunset, but were wary of ice forming near the shoreline and flowing down river.

The aluminum boats can't work in ice, and the floes can damage the sensitive electronic devices that send out sonar signals.


Can't wait for Hansen's frantic predictions to come true.

James Hansen Preaches: President 'has four years to save Earth'

From the very Left wing Guardian:
Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama's first administration, he added.

Soaring carbon emissions are already causing ice-cap melting and threaten to trigger global flooding, widespread species loss and major disruptions of weather patterns in the near future. "We cannot afford to put off change any longer," said Hansen. "We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead."


Unfortunately for Hansen, it's getting colder and ice is increasing,, and - trust me on this - that's NOT a good thing.

Obama hosting pricey party in a dicey economy

You know what “CYA” means don’t you? Since this is a blog and the long arm of the censor does not reach – yet – it means “cover your ass.” And that is what the AP is doing.

Having been criticized by some conservatives for failing to note that Team Obama is planning to spend as much as $150 million for his inauguration parties, and having been the megaphone of choice for Democrats and the Left when Bush was criticized for the cost if his inauguration ($40 million), the AP has written a column about the cost. It’s in CYA mode and will claim, “sure, we covered the criticism.”

The price tag for President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration gala is expected to break records, with some estimates reaching as high as $150 million. Despite the bleak economy, however, Democrats who called on President George W. Bush to be frugal four years ago are issuing no such demands now that an inaugural weekend of rock concerts and star-studded parties has begun.

Please don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining. These stories were created and amplified by the MSM who went to the usual suspects to get their quotes.

But the criticism isn’t so much about the cost of the “Big O” extravaganza. It’s about the everlasting double standard the press uses.

That is why the MSM’s role as gatekeeper needs to be destroyed. We don’t need a coterie of people telling the rest of is what the debate should be about; what’s permissible to discuss and what’s not.

And that’s why we cheer when the financial world collapses around these gatekeepers. We don’t wish them ill (well some of us do for all the harm they have done), we want them gone.