Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky says that she wants to ban all handguns.

Look at Our Dead Dictators!

So there are plans now to embalm Hugo Chavez’s body and put it on permanent display. What is it with awful dictatorships and creepily displaying dead bodies of their leaders?

DRUDGE: Feb Job Numbers

Notice that the more you vote for Obama, the worse off you are?

Or is it that the worse off you are the more you vote for Obama?

FEB JOBS NUMBERS...

+236,000...

7.7%...

WHITES: 6.8%...

HISPANICS: 9.6%...

BLACKS: 13.8%...

TEENS: 25.1%...

Santelli: 'Are We THAT Far Down the Hole?'

Washington as "Hunger Games"

"I really think American politics today has migrated from an NFL atmosphere to 'Hunger Games,' " he pointed out. "Even in the NFL, an athlete will reach down and lift their opponent back up. In 'Hunger Games,' you make sure your opponent is never ever capable of getting up again."

A perfect example of this is the relentless destruction of Sarah Palin, a talented politician and effective Governor who was ruthlessly mocked for the way she talked, for things she never said and things she never did.

 

I think that politicians are beginning to see that they are turning the country against them. It's why Rand Paul's filibuster was such a huge hit: it was a stick in the eye of the Ruling Class.

But Washington as the capitol of the Hunger Games is much more that members of the Ruling Class conspiring to destroy those who presume to speak up.

Right thing to analogize, but wrong analogy. The analogy is how Washington DC is the gleaming rich capital city in the Hunger Games and the rest of us live in the ever poorer provinces paying ever growing tributes to those in the capital. Like in the Hunger Games those tributes of course are also paid for by our children in that it is they that will be getting the bill for the last four year's trillion plus borrowed and printed deficits for which the political class is constantly clamoring for more "revenue".

The ostentatiously and glittering parties that Obama throws,  the golfing, the vacations, Air Force One, the $40 million Hawaii estate, the servants and guards are more reminiscent of the court of Louis XVI than the president of a republic. It's not all Obama's fault, the Imperial Presidency has been accreting the trappings of royalty for some time, but the Obamas have taken it to a new level at precisely the time when the rest of America is suffering, income is shrinking, people are cutting back and the evidence is all around us that political connections are the key to wealth for many.

Global warming ... errr ... climate change explained.

Al Gore has clarified that the issue isn't just about global warming, but about climate change. Human activity is responsible for warming, cooling, or staying the same, and we must DO something -mostly funnel money into Al's investments - before it becomes unbearably warmer, or cooler or overly the same.

Prager University: The Middle East Problem

Virginian Pilot: Why can't the UVA Oversight Board be more of a rubber stamp?

The Virginian Pilot has a problem with an oversight board actually, you know, overseeing. Especially true when it comes to education.

Read this editorial and see if you find in it any indication that the people appointed to the UVA Board of Visitors has a role other than to be cheerleaders for the University or provide unqualified support for it's administration. At U.VA., a return to tense leadership

Perish the thought that they should act as a Board of Directors instead of a pep band.

In the field of education, the Virginian Pilot believes that the issues should be left to the professionals; you know, the ones who manage the institution. Skyrocketing costs? No problem, have the State chip in more because everyone knows that the state doesn’t get its money from people’s paychecks; it has a secret stash.

Academic fraud? Don’t be silly, academics don’t lie or make stuff up and if you want to check it out you are a threat to academic freedom.

Academia is a bubble whose costs have gone ballistic and whose results are cratering but the Virginian Pilot demands that those who are appointed to oversee should be fired and the inmates running the asylum be given free rein.



Until the collapse, when we confidently predict that the Virginian Pilot will be there to shoot the wounded.

Obama: Gun Grabber

Despite Obama's statements since becoming President "I have said consistently that I believe that the Second Amendment is an individual right." Most people remain unconvinced. It is most likely that Obama's position on gun confiscation is much like his position on homosexual marriage. He ran as an opponent on this issue and after it was "safe" to pivot, he told claimed that his positon was evolving. This bit of bullshit convinced only the terminally stupid, but was unbelievable to both his supporters and opponents.

In his new book, At the Brink, economist and author John R. Lott Jr., assesses the presidency of Barack Obama and recalls conversations regarding gun laws they had while working at the University of Chicago.

In Chapter Three, Mr. Lott discusses gun-control and takes the reader back to his time at the University of Chicago, where he and then-professor Barack Obama spoke on numerous occasions about guns in America.

"I don't believe people should be able to own guns," Obama told Lott one day at the University of Chicago Law School.

Lott explains that he first met Obama shortly after completing his research on concealed handgun laws and crime.

"He did not come across as a moderate who wanted to bring people together," Lott writes.

After he introduced himself to Obama, Lott suggested that they have lunch one day to discuss their views on guns. According to Lott, Obama "grimaced and turned away." That was the way many conversations with Obama ended, Lott says.

Although the Law School was famous for the openness of its faculty and friendly engagement, Lott says, "Obama...preferred silent, scowling disdain to collegiality."

 

What makes Lott's claims believable is not only the fact that Obama's gun-grabber position is in line with the Left's position on guns, but he has Obama's manner exactly right. 

Meanwhile, In Louisiana, a conservative backlash against gun control. It's easy to fool the glitterati (see Dennis Rodman in North Korea or any Hollywood celebrity on Hugo Chavez), but it's harder to fool the people in flyover country. They have a nose for lying charlatans.

Why a Founding Father of Postwar Capitalism Spied for the Soviets

Harry Dexter White, Soviet Spy.

In the essay, hazily titled "Political-Economic Int. of Future," White describes a postwar world in which the Soviet socialist model of economic organization, although not supplanting the American liberal capitalist one, would be ascendant. "In every case," he argues, "the change will be in the direction of increased [government] control over industry, and increased restrictions on the operations of competition and free enterprise." Whereas White believed in democracy and human rights, he consistently downplayed both the lack of individual liberty in the Soviet Union ("The trend in Russia seems to be toward greater freedom of religion. . . . The constitution of [the] USSR guarantees that right") and the Soviets' foreign political and military adventurism ("The policy pursued by present day Russia [is one] of not actively supporting [revolutionary socialist] movements in other countries").

In the essay, White argues that the West is hypocritical in its demonization of the Soviet Union. He urges the United States to draw the Soviets into a tight military alliance in order to deter renewed German and Japanese aggression. But such an alliance, White lamented, faced formidable obstacles: "rampant imperialism" in the United States, hiding under "a variety of patriotic cloaks"; the country's "very powerful Catholic hierarchy," which might "well find an alliance with Russia repugnant"; and groups "fearful that any alliance with a socialist country cannot but strengthen socialism and thereby weaken capitalism."

After sweeping away internal politics, religion, and foreign policy as honest sources of Western opposition to the Soviet Union, White concludes that the true foundation of the conflict must be economic ideology. "It is basically [the] opposition of capitalism to socialism," he writes. "Those who believe seriously in the superiority of capitalism over socialism" -- a group from which White apparently excluded himself -- "fear Russia as the source of socialist ideology." He then ends his essay with what, coming from the U.S. government's most important economic strategist, can only be described as an astounding conclusion: "Russia is the first instance of a socialist economy in action. And it works!"

It seems that friends of White are now in control of the American government, academia, entertainment and the press.

Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and his legacy of plunder

Miami Herald editorial

Hugo Chávez’s folksy charm and forceful personality made him an extraordinary politician. His enviable ability to win a mass following allowed him to build a powerful political machine that kept him in office from February of 1999 until his death on Tuesday. But as a national leader, he was an abject failure who plunged Venezuela into a political and economic abyss.

Dead at 58, Hugo Chávez leaves behind a country in far worse condition than it was when he became president, its future clouded by rivals for succession in a constitutional crisis of his Bolivarian party’s making and an economy in chaos.

A former paratrooper, Mr. Chávez had a radical vision for “21st Century Socialism,” which was never fully explained. His skillful rhetoric, which filled supporters with utopian dreams, was used to justify the methodical destruction of Venezuela’s democratic institutions and the free market.

Shortly after coming to office, he rewrote the constitution to his liking and aggressively set out to rig elections and stifle adversaries in the legislative branch and the courts. Unable to brook criticism, he turned his fire on the independent news media, eventually silencing most voices of opposition by bully tactics and economic intimidation.

His Bolivarian regime rewarded supporters and punished opponents, giving rise to enormous corruption and the creation of a new class of greedy oligarchs with political connections. Unfortunately for Venezuela and for all his political skills, the president was both an incompetent executive and a worse economist.

In an energy-rich country that once knew no blackouts, electrical shortages are frequent, the result of Mr. Chávez’s plundering of the country’s public oil company. In a country that once enjoyed a thriving free market, prices are controlled and food items often scarce.

In recent weeks, while Mr. Chávez was hospitalized, Venezuela was once again forced to devalue its currency, this time by one-third. This was the inevitable outcome of a series of disastrous economic decisions that included nationalizing the telephone company and other utilities, which scared off foreign investors and spurred capital flight.

For Venezuelans, the worst aspect of the Chávez years was the soaring crime rate. Venezuela has become one of the most violent countries in the world, with nearly 20,000 murders recorded in 2011 and a homicide rate that some experts say is four times greater than in the last year before Mr. Chávez took power.

On the international front, Mr. Chávez eagerly accepted Fidel Castro as his mentor, providing Cuba with cut-rate oil and making common cause with Iran and other rogue regimes. His departure leaves the anti-American front leaderless on a hemispheric level and could eventually threaten the subsidy that Cuba relies on to keep its economy barely functioning.

As a result of all this, Venezuela today is a polarized society divided between the intolerant supporters of Mr. Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution and a democratic opposition that, against all odds, has waged a courageous fight for a democratic alternative.

The president’s death means a new election must be called soon. Under Hugo Chávez, the electoral machinery was stacked against the opposition and that will doubtless be the case again, but the United States and democracies throughout the hemisphere should insist on a fair and transparent electoral process to select the new president.

The Organization of American States, which was once seen as a defender of political and civil liberties in the hemisphere but has made itself largely irrelevant in recent years, could regain some of its stature by taking a prominent role in ensuring that the people of Venezuela can make the most of this opportunity to restore their democracy.

None of Mr. Chávez’s would-be successors, including Nicolás Maduro, his vice president and designated political heir, possesses the fallen leader’s forceful personality or political skill, though his popularity may extend beyond death to give the regime’s official candidate an edge in the next election.

But without discarding “Bolivarian” principles and restoring the country’s democratic institutions, no one will be able to stop the downward spiral of Venezuela that began the day Hugo Chávez was elected president.

When you create the machinery of control and corruption, there will always be someone who wants to get rich and powerful who is willing to grab the reins and using age-old demagoguery, is willing to grind the faces of the poor ... all in the name of the poor.

Democrats try to disarm Blacks .... Again.

Via Gateway Pundit:

On September 28, 1868, a mob of Democrats massacred nearly 300 African-American Republicans in Opelousas, Louisiana. The savagery began when racist Democrats attacked a newspaper editor, a white Republican and schoolteacher for ex-slaves. Several African-Americans rushed to the assistance of their friend, and in response, Democrats went on a “Negro hunt,” killing every African-American (all of whom were Republicans) in the area they could find.

 

The blacks didn’t have guns. Democrats took them.

With that in mind, The Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE) created this video: Never Again

Hugo Chavez Dead

Listening to NPR mourn Chavez’ death this morning I was struck by a comment made by a reporter for the New Yorker who once interviewed Chavez and asked him why he came to Socialism so late. Since socialism and its sibling, Communism, has led to so much poverty, misery and death throughout the world the question why anyone would come to Socialism - late or early - is baffling to me. But the question itself reveals something about the questioner. It would not have occurred to the reporter to ask a Fascist dictator why they had come to Fascism “so late.” The question would have been phrased to ask why he was a Fascist, that discredited political movement, at all. But asking a Socialist thug about a political philosophy that was destroying his country seemed to this reporter to be as normal as asking him why he became a Presbyterian so late in life.

One of the aspects of the lives of Left wing dictators like Chavez and Castro that the NPR crowd averts its eyes from is that the rulers of these “people’s republics” manage to become ultra-wealthy.

Criminal Justice International Associates (CJIA), a risk assessment and global analysis firm in Miami, estimated in a recent report that the Chávez Frías family in Venezuela has “amassed a fortune” similar to that of the Castro brothers in Cuba.

According to Jerry Brewer, president of CJIA, “the personal fortune of the Castro brothers has been estimated at a combined value of around $2 billion.”

“The Chávez Frías family in Venezuela has amassed a fortune of a similar scale since the arrival of Chávez to the presidency in 1999,” said Brewer in an analysis published in their website.

Beyond the criminal mismanagement and corruption that's a feature of all Socialist states, that's two billion dollars that was not used to alleviate the misery of Venezuela's poor and crime ridden people.  The life of Socialist Leader is the royal road to riches.

 

The New York Times, a reliable cheerleader for Socialism of all stamps tells us that ...

Mr. Chávez, 58, changed Venezuela in fundamental ways, empowering and energizing millions of poor people who had felt marginalized and excluded.

 

Exactly how he "empowered and energized millions of poor people" is not explored.  Exactly what does that mean?  "Empowered" how?  "Energized" how?  In the same way that a large group of people in the US believe that Obama "cares about them" while unemployment, wage losses and poverty among these same supporters increase?   Possibly.  The Times goes on to explain what these empowered and energized people are experiencing in oil-rich Venezuela. 

At the same time, the country struggled with an out-of-balance economy, troubled by soaring prices and escalating shortages of basic goods.

 

Scenes like this must bring back memories to people who are old enough to remember the 1930s.  To others, like the readers of the NY Times, it will seem entirely normal

 

Mr. Chávez’s new six-year term began on Jan. 10, with the president incommunicado in Havana. In his absence, the government held a huge rally in the center of Caracas, where thousands of his followers raised their hands to pledge an oath of “absolute loyalty” to their commander and his revolution. Officials promised that Mr. Chávez would have his inauguration later, when he had recovered.

Random Thoughts: Sequester, Jeb Bush, and Mousetraps

According to his own lawyers, absolutely nothing was preventing Obama from taking out both Kim Jong Un and Dennis Rodman with a drone strike.
 

Also

“Faux-bama.” I just want to get that out there in case there’s a situation where it’s useful so I can claim credit for coining the term.

Obama, the Abusive Boyfriend

Frank J. Fleming explains:

I’ve before compared Obama to an abusive boyfriend, as his whole reelection campaign was based around convincing an America with low self esteem that the horrible state the country was in was what they deserved and that they’d never find anyone better than him. Well, the abusive boyfriend analogy goes a bit further, because apparently Obama has his cronies verbally abuse his sycophants in the press all the time, and I guess the reporters reaction is to work even harder to get his love.

This is ridiculous, people. You people in the press need to just pack up and leave Obama. He doesn’t love you; he loves power. And golf. You have to get away from him for your own good. This starts out as verbal abuse, but the guy has a violent side and access to drone strikes. This isn’t going to end well.

CANCER: "It was a long and tough battle, but I'm happy to announce that doctors have declared me 100% Hugo Chavez free."

Free at last!

Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video: 2nd Attempt

Cleveland. We're not Detroit!

Click on the headline for a link to the 2nd attempt.

Here's the first attempt.




This is the reason that Cleveland celebrates not being Detroit.

Ant Caused Global Warming

Al Hunt's Deceptive Smear of Steve King

Al Hunt has always been a Democrat hack.  Before he retired he was the Wall Street Journal's Washington Bureau chief and made the news pages of the Journal less useful as a guide to Washington than the Editorial pages.

Now the he's "retired" Mr. Judy Woodruff is still smearing Republicans.  Breitbart's Big Journalism calls him out. 

Columnist Al Hunt smeared Rep. Steve King (R-IA) in an attempt to paint the potential GOP Senate candidate as an intolerant bigot. In a New York Times column last week, Hunt portrayed King this way:

Mr. King has made a name for himself with anti-immigrant rants. Last year, he said Americans should select eligible immigrants the same way they would go about picking a 'good bird dog.' That means choosing 'the one that's the friskiest, the one that's engaged the most, and not the one that's over there sleeping in the corner.' He later explained that he meant this as a compliment - he likes bird dogs.

This statement is riddled with lies. Allow me to break them down. First, watch the one minute statement that is the center of this trumped up charge. It was part of a town hall Rep. King was hosting for constituents and captured on video by a left-wing tracking organization, American Bridge.

 

Read the whole thing.

School Offers Counseling for Students Troubled by Pastry-Gun Incident

The teaches and the people who run this school should be dismissed and run out of town.  Tar and feathers needs to make a comeback.

As you know if you have been following this dramatic story unfolding in Brooklyn Park, Maryland, seven-year-old Josh Welch has been suspended for two days after he allegedly fashioned his breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun.

 

And now that the brutal rampage of Josh with his Pop Tart  is under control, it's time, according to school administrators, to call in the psychologists to council the students traumatized by pastries.

Dear Parents and Guardians:

I am writing to let you know about an incident that occurred this morning in one of our classrooms and encourage you to discuss this matter with your child in a manner you deem most appropriate.

During breakfast this morning, one of our students used food to make inappropriate gestures that disrupted the class. While no physical threats were made and no one [was] harmed, the student had to be removed from the classroom.

* * *

As you are aware, the ... Code of Student Conduct and appropriate consequences related to violations of the code are clearly spelled out in the Student Handbook, which was sent home during the first week of school and can be found on our website, www.aacps.org....

If your children express that they are troubled by today's incident, please talk with them and help them share their feelings. Our school counselor is available to meet with any students who have the need to do so next week. In general, please remind them of the importance of making good choices.

Josh's dad seems to be the only truly sane person in this drama.

But Josh's dad is not happy saying, "I would almost call it insanity. I mean with all the potential issues that could be dealt with at school, real threats, bullies, whatever the real issue is, it's a pastry.., Ya know?"

Benghazi was strictly trouble on training wheels.

More on that book by Vasili Nasr.

We have a president whose self-esteem and regal taste for power is exceeded only by his naivety about the rest of the world. Now the question isn’t whether we’ll face foreign crises — perhaps, disasters — but which crisis will strike first or hit the hardest.

Richard Fernandez remarks that Ralph Peters expressed the same beliefs in the NY Post.

Unfortunately Nasr is writing under the goad of professional self-preservation. He probably knows, better than most, how bad things are. How high the water in the hold of the Titanic is. To mix the metaphors he can hear the powder train creeping ever closer to the magazine and would like more than life itself to make sure than when it blows that someone besides Hillary and Richard Holbrooke are holding the bag.

His account, however self-serving, has the authentic ring of fear. Still it sheds new light on some of the foreign policy mysteries that have puzzled observers. If Nasr right, the administration spends more time infighting than combating America’s enemies. And it spends more time politicking than anything else.

Therefore events in Libya, Syria, North Korea and China ought to be viewed not through the prism of national interest calculus but through the lens of domestic political advantage for President Obama. Only then can they be properly understood. None of that game theory crap. It’s “who sent you?” The foreign policy of a great state is being run not by foreign policy professionals but by political hacks from Chicago.

Which countries and trouble spots can explode?

1. Russia;

2. Venezuela;

3. Mexico;

3. The Arab Spring Revolutions;

4. Afghanistan (“we’ve lost”);

5. Pakistan;

6. Islamist extremism;

7. Syria;

8. North Korea;

9. Iran;

10. China.

And one area that could go up in flames is Europe. Already rioters are in the streets in Greece. Parts of France are no-go zones for French police. Major European cities are now more Muslim than native European. And overshadowing it all is European bankruptcy as the Welfare State model runs out of other people's money. Those American troops in Europe may find themselves besieged before the end of Obama's rule.