The myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished

Va Small Dead Animals

 

Janet Daley in the UK Telegraph

Whatever the outcome of the American presidential election, one thing is certain: the fighting of it will be the most significant political event of the decade. Last week’s Republican national convention sharpened what had been until then only a vague, inchoate theme: this campaign is going to consist of the debate that all Western democratic countries should be engaging in, but which only the United States has the nerve to undertake. The question that will demand an answer lies at the heart of the economic crisis from which the West seems unable to recover. It is so profoundly threatening to the governing consensus of Britain and Europe as to be virtually unutterable here, so we shall have to rely on the robustness of the US political class to make the running.

What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has gone bust. The crash of 2008 exposed a devastating truth that went much deeper than the discovery of a generation of delinquent bankers, or a transitory property bubble. It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect. The fantasy may be sustained for a while by the relentless production of phoney money to fund benefits and job-creation projects, until the economy is turned into a meaningless internal recycling mechanism in the style of the old Soviet Union.

The Left all around the world never really accepts that governments do not create wealth. Let me correct that: Communists countries in which the State is also the economy – it owns everything and runs everything – can create material goods, inefficiently, shoddily and in small quantities often with slave labor. The Soviet Gulag Archipelago was a dual use system: a way of destroying enemies of the State while simultaneously extracting natural resources via slave labor. The “Democratic Socialists” simply spend their patrimony until it’s gone and then take to the streets demanding more.  Riots follow and the end of the story is yet to be written.  We are watching history in the making. 

Top Ten Craziest Things that Happened at the Democrats’ Convention Last Night — DAY ONE

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Kevin DuJan // Best of Hillbuzz, Hillbuzz

[ Click above to embiggen: the Barack and Michelle Obama Presidential Monument destined for the National Mall if the corrupt media has its way in a few years. Note the "Eye of Obama" floating in the air and held aloft by the gazes of the Obama sphinxes ]
Last night I watched the entirety of the Democrats’ Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina so you didn’t have to, because we’re friends like that, and I’m apparently a glutton for punishment. I’ve always wondered how straight guys really feel when they complain about having to sit through something interminable like the Academy Awards where they wonder how much longer this thing on the screen can drag on…and I think I understand a little of that this morning. The Republican Convention at times felt like an Oscars’ telecast too, when various lists of names were read aloud and the audience in their seats politely applauded, but the Democrats’ telecast last night was just dull with what seemed like endless screaming and yelling into the microphone. Honestly, if you’d had asked me two days ago if I would have dreamed that something with almost nonstop screaming and yelling could be DULL, I’d have laughed at you, but somehow Democrats pulled that off. ..

10. Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio embarrassed my home state by actually saying, and I quote: ”If Mitt Romney were Santa Claus he’d have fired the reindeer and outsourced the elves!”.  ...There was a lot of rambling Occupy Wall Street garbage here, with Strickland saying Romney was too wealthy but Barack Obama could relate to regular people. Oh, really? Surprisingly enough Strickland didn’t tell everyone about the $35 million beachfront mansion that wealthy Chicago bankers are currently purchasing for the Obamas to live in after they leave Washington in January. ..

9. An angry parade of black men from Cory Booker to Deval Patrick and Mayor Foxx of Charlotte screamed and yelled into the microphone and tried to sound like they were preachers in church. Some more. Black Democrat politicians trying to channel Reverend Jeremiah Wright best get hip to the fact that homey Obama already played that. There’s not going to be another ranting and raving black man as President for a very long time after Obama’s booted out of office come November. ...  Do Democrats seriously believe Americans really want to listen to black men angrily shouting at them through the television? There were entire seasons of Oz that had less of this.

8. Women who seemed like they’d never be in any danger of getting pregnant screeched about their “Right to Kill Babies”. A woman named Nancy Keenan took the stage as a seemingly angry, man-hating lesbian and bellowed about how women should be allowed to kill all the babies growing inside them…which, they actually are in fact allowed to do, sadly, in this country. ...  She, like all Democrats, made abortion sound almost like something fun by calling it “the choice”…as if the other options to choose from included rooms filled to bursting with candy and a trip to someplace tropical where it always rains right after you’ve done everything you wanted to do that day and were already going inside. Abortion should always be called “the killing of babies inside the womb” and the issues related to it should be known as “The Right to Kill Babies”. Someone like Keenan would never stand up on a stage like that and shout about how much she wanted “to kill babies inside their mothers” but being a lesbian who is preoccupied with other women aborting their babies is something this degenerate has turned into a paying career for herself. ...

7. Nancy Pelosi appeared on stage in what looked like a straight jacket. Her face was frozen and never moved, but that’s normal for her. If memory serves, in the past her arms and hands were still capable of basic motor function but they were locked to her sides during her brief appearance with garishly dressed “Democrat women of Congress”. Nancy was dolled up in all white, with pearls, with her arms seemingly secure to her sides like in a straight jacket. Needles to say, it was a FABULOUS look on her and I highly recommend she dress like that every day…with matching mouth gag if Hermes makes one in her size. It’s not been officially announced, yet, but this is Pelosi’s last Congressional race. She’s retiring in 2014 to live out her days on the grounds of her San Francisco vineyard, Vulture’s Nest.  ..

6. There was a Spanish-speaking Congresswoman who wore a Peter Pan costume up on the stage…and no one stopped her. ...

5. What’s the deal with Martin O’Malley and why were Democrats pushing him so aggressively last night? This was strange because O’Malley may be the Governor of Maryland, but he comes across on camera as a smarmy host of QVC late at night where they’re selling Marie Osmond dolls to shut-ins.  ...

4. Barack Obama had the stones to bring his ex-boyfriend up on the stage to talk, which would have been like JFK giving Marilyn Monroe a speaking role at some big event in the 60s. I think in a few years once Obama comes out of the closet and people who worked in his inner circle start writing books about the homosexual tendencies of the current president that Kal Penn’s appearance last night will go down in history as one of the most brazen and ballsy things that has ever happened in American politics.  ...  The equivalent of this would have been having Marilyn Monroe talking about the things she let JFK do to her on the same night that Jackie Kennedy was going to speak somewhere and announce her plans to renovate the White House. It was the most surreal thing I’ve ever seen anyone do in real life…and he did it just an hour or so before Michelle Obama got on stage to talk about how much she loved her husband. Strange!

3. There was a super creepy Eye of Obama that would pop up on the screen like it was giving commands to all assembled. Speaking of one-eyed-monsters…you know that bizarre Obama “O” that the current president uses as his personal emblem? I don’t think any other president has had anything like this. It’s very Idi Amin or Saddam Hussein of Barack to plaster that “Eye of Obama” on everything.  ...

2. Michelle Obama’s speech was good, despite what her detractors might say today. It was a solid A-effort for a First Spouse’s speech. ...  Very well played, Michelle Antoinette. I salute you for improving yourself and better masking your true nature.

1. Now, if only she could learn to dress herself appropriately for the occasion. Michelle Obama wore what can only be described as a swimsuit to deliver her big speech. For years now, I’ve said this woman only looks properly dressed two days a year: Halloween and April Fool’s Day. Last night, she did not add September 4th to that short list.  

Florida DNC Boss: "Christians Want Jews Slaughtered"

This is the modern Democrat Party.  The party of open racism and open hostility to Christianity.

One comment: 

Amazing... what next? Nikki Haley's accused of being Hitler's girlfriend, Mitt Romney's accused of being a felon, the entire Republican party is called a bunch of liars, Ann Romney gives her speech, and it's declared a hate-filled one. Clint Eastwood talks to an empty chair and liberal Democrats get their panties in a bunch and scream, "Unfair!" There appears to be no end to their nonsense.

Chris Matthews: "If Clinton landed on Mars, he would know how to do it with them. He would know how to reproduce."

Pundits swoon over Bill Clinton’s speech

They swooned BEFORE the speech.  Better put some ice on that.

Ann Coulter's advice to Chris Matthews: "Pace yourself. It's a long way to Election Day. If you get too crazy, too soon, you'll have nothing left for the fourth quarter."

Today, we will focus on the outstanding individual performance of the man who, since the departure of Contessa Brewer, is widely regarded by his colleagues as the stupidest on-air personality at MSNBC. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Chris Matthews.

Appearing on "Morning Joe," Matthews exploded at Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, alleging that Mitt Romney's harmless birth certificate joke from a few days earlier was a "cheap shot," "awful," and an example of the Republicans playing "that card."

...

Matthews said that Romney's (factually correct) claim that Barack Obama is weakening the work requirement for welfare was "playing that card," fuming at the RNC chair,...

...

The next night on "Hardball," Matthews made his most dramatic announcement yet! It seems the mention of "Chicago" in relation to the president is also a racist dog whistle.

Matthews: "They keep saying Chicago, by the way, you noticed?"?

Guest John Heilemann, like an orderly in a mental institution trapped alone with a patient, played along, responding, "Well, there's a lot of black people in Chicago" -- while frantically jabbing at the alarm button.

Read the whole thing.

Horror show: Wednesday night at the DNC

Jennifer Rubin

Wednesday was a wonderful political day for Republicans. Let’s recap. The day started off with the flap over platform language. That in turn led to the spectacle of Democratic delegates booing the vote to put back Jerusalem and God back into the platform. It was even in the eyes of the most Obama-sympathetic media a horrid disruption, signaling both incompetence and hostility to things that many if not most Americans hold dear. The news got worse as Politico reported that the president had signed off on the platform sans God and Jerusalem. The Romney camp could hardly believe the avalanche of atrocious press. (Democratic National Committee chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s insistence that there had been no controversy brought CNN’s Anderson Cooper to declare she was operating in an “alternate universe.”)

 

Read the rest.  As for myself, I wasn't paid so I didn't watch.

Team Obama: "Explosive mix of dysfunction, miscommunication, and misunderstandings..."

DRUDGE

Bob Woodward book leaks... Developing...

Debt Deal Collapse Led to 'Pure Fury' From Obama...

Explosive mix of dysfunction, miscommunication, and misunderstandings...

Pelosi 'reached over and pressed mute button on her phone' as Obama talked... MORE

Everyone "knows" that voter fraud doesn't happen!?

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - A Democratic state legislator from east Arkansas, his father and two campaign workers pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiracy to commit election fraud after federal prosecutors said the lawmaker's campaign bribed absentee voters and destroyed ballots in a special election last year.

Such a clean cut young Democrat.

Elizabeth Warren was not the first fake Indian

Via Harvard Law School is Bogus

This blog post announces the results of the vote taken yesterday by the members of HLU. Inspired by Nick Gillespie’s blog post on famous “fake Indians” — and even more by John J. Miller’s 2006 National Review essay, “Honest Injun?” — we set out to determine, looking at all those who have been caught during the last century pretending to be of Native American ancestry, just who is the most egregious perpetrator of this particular type of fraud — in the vernacular, the most “dishonest injun.”

From a large number of initial candidates, we agreed on three qualifications necessary to make the final ballot. To be a finalist, someone must: (1) have no Native American ancestors; (2) have sought professional advancement via affirmative representations of Native American status; and (3) have asserted that status in at least one published book.

Below is our Letterman-style list of the five most “dishonest injuns,” arranged from lowest to highest total votes. By a wide margin, the two top vote-getters were the only professors among the finalists. We readily reached a consensus that their actions are especially dishonest because professors, given their high level of education, are especially aware of their legal and ethical obligation not to commit ethnic fraud for professional advancement.

5. "Grey Owl" (Archibald Belaney)
4.  "Iron Eyes Cody" (Espera Oscar de Corti)
3. "Little Tree"  ( Asa Earl Carter)
2. Ward Churchill
1. Elizabeth Warren

Oops! Reinstate Jerusalem, God still out in the cold.

Dems to reinstate language on Jerusalem

Something tells me that Jewish contributors are more important to Obama's fund raising efforts than Christians.

UPDATE:  DRUDGE
Dems Ram 'God' and Jerusalem Back into Platform...
VIDEO...
Delegates at convention boo, hiss, jeer...
REPORT: Obama had seen language prior to convention 'but did not seek to change it'...
HALL DIVIDED...
Jewish, Palestinian Leaders Fume...
Romney: 'I think it's a very sad day'...


<! MAIN HEADLINE>
THEY BOOED PUTTING GOD BACK!

What a wonderful world

What does it gain you to take God our of your platform?

Why did the Democrats take any reference to God out of their platform?  Tying down the atheist vote?  Dick Durban refuses to answer.   But for some reason wishes to claim that Democrats are every bit as religious as Republicans, a verifiable falsehood.

But I'm really curious.  The deletion was deliberate.  That tells me that the Democrats are now the hard Left party of people who despise, or at the very least don't care about, the religious majority.  Many websites are congenial to people who disparage Christians in words that would be considered "hate speech" of aimed at any other group.  

If you believe that I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

NO STADIUM
'LIGHTNING THREAT'

Politico Grills Obama Confidant as 15,0000 "Reporters" Outnumber 5,000 Delegates

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post

 This is a convention of the media, by the media and for the media. There are some 15,000 representatives of the media here for the convention, and only about 5,000delegates. 

And here are the hard hitting questions:

Mike Allen was interviewing President Obama’s confidant Valerie Jarrett.
“He’s a human being and he likes to laugh,” Jarrett disclosed.
Allen asked if it’s true that “they’re incredible parents.”
“They’re absolutely amazing,” Jarrett confirmed.
“The young ladies have turned out to be remarkably normal, right?”
“They are very normal.”

Come on Mike, could you suck up just a little more?

Guess who are more hard core Obama supporters: the "reporters" or the delegates?

DRUDGE: Obama Kicks Israel Under the Bus

Sen. Schumer Doesn't Know Obama's Position on Jerusalem...

Israeli Knesset Speaker: Obama Doesn't Understand Middle East...

Obama's First Real Election

James Lewis points out that the deck was always stacked, the fix was always in Obama's previous elections.  This one appears to be different and it's bringing something out that we have not seen in my lifetime.

Barack Obama is an odd bird in American presidential politics.  Not because he's black, but because he is so far out of the norm that he doesn't instinctively follow all the standard moves.  American politicians have a certain standard set of rituals, just as American baseball players do.  A Russian shot-putter who switched to baseball would just look different.The examples of Obama's subtle oddities are many.  The biggest ones are his deep, public bows to foreign potentates, an act that alienates him from more than two centuries of American public behavior.  Those showy bows were not accidental.  They were planned, and they reflect his frothing resentment against this country.  This is the "Up Yours, America!" administration.  The Roman emperor Caligula once appointed his horse to the high position of consul, to show his contempt for the Roman Senate.  In the long history of human politics, symbolic acts of contempt are a dime a dozen.  Rebellious kids do them all the time.Ann Coulter points out that Obama hasn't won many contested elections: most of the time, his opponents drop out after some private scandal suddenly blows up in public.  If Emil Jones, the Godfather of Illinois politics, is backing you, then yes, officially sealed divorce papers do have a tendency to get unsealed at a crucial point in a campaign.  If you're married to the daughter of a Chicago ward boss, then you probably get miraculous Acts of God helping your path to power.  And if you're the racial messiah running against Hillary Clinton, then yes, the lockstep left can decide in the middle of the primary campaign that Bill and Hillary are racists after all these years.  It's like magic.  No wonder Illinois' favorite son came to national politics feeling like a god.In Obama's political career I can find only one competitive election -- namely, 2008...and that one was ferociously stacked by a unanimous media that hated George W. Bush with pathological hatred while idolizing the black messiah who was going to save America from its never-ending guilt about slavery (ended in 1865) and Jim Crow (ended in the 1960s).The election of 2008 may have been "historic," but it wasn't a contest.  The outcome was as sure as a 90% hard-left political machine could make it.  Abe Lincoln come back from the dead wouldn't have won against Obama in 2008, because he'd be tarred and feathered as a white racist.Which makes 2012 the first contested election Obama has ever seen.Think about that.  We've seen stacked elections before -- when a Kennedy runs in Boston, or when Robert Byrd did in West Virginia.  But most politicians have to endure the anxieties of not really knowing the results until election night.  Most national politicians have felt the agony of defeat and the mud-slogging pace of trying for a comeback.Not Barack Hussein Obama, that child of fortune.When Obama told small business people that "you didn't build that," he might have been talking about himself.  He had all those roads built for him and all his paths smoothed by powerful friends.I've never seen an administration like this one.  They are unique, and not in a way that inspires confidence.  From the styrofoam Greek columns to Air Force One buzzing Lady Liberty, from the infamous bows to King Abdullah to the sneering public contempt shown to Benjamin Netanyahu and Hosni Mubarak, both heads of sovereign states -- from the perverse energy decisions about coal, oil, and solar to the bank bailouts for favored Wall Street firms -- from the tax-cheating nominee for SecTreasury to that bloody gun-running for the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico -- from the mad idea of an "Arab Spring" to the triumph of radical Islam in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and now maybe Syria -- this administration goes straight from starry-eyed arrogance to bloody disaster.  Not to mention their fixed idea of priming the pump of the economy with bigger and bigger and bigger debt, now rising to 17 trillion dollars.  It's like those 18^th-century doctors who used bleeding for everything.  Is the patient getting sicker?  Well, better open another vein!When do you start to think, this is really, really weird.And now the first national election to consist completely of trash-talking the other side.  If we believe Obama and his finger-puppets, Mitt Romney is a felon, a tax-cheat, a man who makes war on women, who is driven by hatred of gays and lesbians, and who wants to kill off Medicare.  What an election platform.In a normal country, that kind of over-the-top abuse would mean political suicide.  I don't know if we still are a normal country, and I don't doubt that David Axelrod and his minions are constantly taking the voters' pulse to see if they can win by verbal thuggery.But the obvious explanation is that Obama's team just isn't used to politics like this.  They don't have any experience of elections where the other side has a real chance of winning.It's not the Chicago Way.What we're seeing is not really political strategy.  We're seeing rage and anger leaking out.  Politicians love to curse: LBJ did it, and Hillary, and Joe Biden does it even when he's sober.  But there's always a watertight barrier to keep the public out.Obama's campaign has lost that kind of self-control.  I've never seen it before.It's not a good sign.

BREAKING NEWS: Proof Obama Attended Columbia University

Via FreeRepublic

The Machine: The Truth Behind Teachers Unions.

Obama And Hard Choices

By Jeff Carter:

Last night, the Democratic convention kicked off. They talked a lot about the choices that Obama made. I thought about those choices. Obama always takes the easy way out, makes the easy choice.First ChoiceEasy choice: Stimulus to put us far deeper in debt (Salt Water Economics) vs Hard choice: Creating economic incentives for private expansion (Freshwater Economics)
Second ChoiceEasy choice, bail out $GM vs Hard choice, allow bankruptcy process to save $GMThe President made the easy choice. Obama bailed out his cronies in the unions, crushed down the debt and shareholders of GM. A managed bankruptcy would have allowed GM to stay in business, along with all the suppliers that depend on GM-but it would have changed the pensions and salaries of all GM employees-including the white collar employees.
You lost money if you bought the GM IPO. The company is losing money, has a massive pension liability and will go bankrupt again.

Read the whole thing.

You can park these new Vulva's anywhere.

Caption this: Code Pink-er abandons vagina costume at DNC Planned Parenthood rally



Some suggestions:

Upon hearing that Bill Clinton had arrived in town, Suzie reconsidered her outfit choice.

If you leave that on the ground, it's going to end up full of sand.

Used and discarded - the story of identity politics.

Oh sure!
Just use me and toss me aside!
Boo hoo hoo!

Sandra Fluke, as seen by every man she's ever dated.

It's a trap. No seriously, it's a trap

Anyone got a giant pink CIGAR???

They finally did it -- the Republicans finally stole our lady-parts once and for all.


 

The Kennedy Tax Avoidance Schemes

This is the man who even in death remains a leading light of the Democrats.

When it comes to tax avoidance, the Kennedys wrote the book.

Throughout his political career, Kennedy advocated the wholesale redistribution of wealth via steeply progressive tax rates designed to fund an ever-expanding array of entitlement programs and social-welfare benefits as well as the public education system. Opposed to any provisions in the tax laws that might help mid- to high-earners minimize their tax liability, Kennedy once said, on the Senate floor, that he would be glad if “the word ‘shelter’ disappears from the tax vocabulary.”[1] On another occasion he said, “Instead of shutting down classrooms [due to a supposed lack of funding], let us shut off tax shelters.”[2] Whenever fellow legislators proposed tax cuts, Kennedy typically framed them as “giveways” and “bonanzas” intended to help only the wealthy.[3] And in the name of social justice, he supported the inheritance tax on assets that are transferred from one generation to the next; a repeal of that tax, he said, would unjustly “benefit millionaires.”[4]

But while the multi-millionaire Kennedy stood firmly in favor of raising taxes on high earners across the United States, he showed a pronounced reluctance to pay taxes on his own wealth. For many years, Merchandise Mart, the Chicago-based real estate conglomerate that Joseph Kennedy established in 1935, was the most valuable asset belonging to Ted Kennedy and his family. In 1974 Joseph Kennedy divided Merchandise Mart’s ownership among numerous family members, including Ted, in the form of a trust that was domiciled in the Pacific island of Fiji. Because the trust was based in Fiji, it was not subject to the taxes normally imposed on trusts domiciled in the United States.

As of 2005, the tax rate on U.S.-based trusts was 49 percent on everything above the first $2 million. But as of 2005, the Kennedys, who had transferred at least $300 million in trust funds from one generation to another, had paid a mere $132,000 in estate taxes -- a rate of four one-hundredths of one percent.[5] Had they set up those trusts in the United states, they would have owed more than 7,000 times that amount in taxes.

Ted Kennedy also received additional money -- free of inheritance taxes -- from a series of trusts that were established for him in 1926, 1936, 1978, 1987, and 1997.

Kennedy became skilled at avoiding not only inheritance taxes but also property taxes. For example, in 1980 theChicago Tribune conducted an investigation which found that although Merchandise Mart had a market value of $35 million, it had been assessed at only $22.8 million by tax assessor (and Ted Kennedy political ally) Thomas Tully. The low assessment permitted Kennedy and his extended family to decrease their property taxes by some $4 million over the course of two years. Another Kennedy-owned building, Apparel Mart, received similar, preferential consideration from the tax assessor, saving Kennedy and his clan another several million dollars in property taxes.[6]

In yet another maneuver to avoid paying taxes, Senator Kennedy invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax-free Massachusetts bonds.[7]

Via Discoverthenetworks.org

Democrats Celebrate Ted Kennedy, Mary Jo Kopechne Unavailable For Comment

Liberal Logic 101:
It’s OK to falsely accuse Mitt Romney of being responsible for the death of a woman he never met, while celebrating the memory of Ted Kennedy who let a woman drown to death.

H/T: Instapundit

A brief summary of Ted's accomplishments:

Democratic U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, 1962-2009

A key player in the creation of Medicare in 1965

A major driving force behind the passage of the Immigration Reform Act of 1965

Escaped manslaughter charges for 1969 Chappaquiddick incident

In the 1980s, supported the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, a Soviet-sponsored initiative that would have frozen the USSR's military superiority in place

Secretly contacted the head of the Soviet KGB in 1983, in an effort to undermine the Reagan presidency

Described the 2003 U.S. war in Iraq as “a fraud”

Favored higher taxes for people in upper income brackets, but took many measures to minimize his own tax liability

Died on August 26, 2009

SHE DOES HAVE TONED ARMS

MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE

DRUDGE headlines

Dems Drop 'God' From Party Platform...
Jerusalem: Pro-Israel Language Removed...
Endorse taxpayer-funded abortions...
DNC Video: 'The Government Is The Only Thing We All Belong To'...

Who's out of touch? 

H/T: Instapundit

New York Times Proves Clint Eastwood Correct -- Obama Is Lousy CEO

Kantor’s portrait of Obama is stunning. It paints a picture of a CEO who is unfocused and lost.

Imagine, for a minute, that you are on the board of directors of a company. You have a CEO who is not meeting his numbers and who is suffering a declining popularity with his customers. You want to help this CEO recover, but then you learn he doesn’t want your help. He is smarter than you and eager to tell you this. Confidence or misplaced arrogance? You’re not sure at first. If the company was performing well, you’d ignore it. But the company is performing poorly, so you can’t.

With some digging, you learn, to your horror, that the troubled CEO spends a lot of time on — what the hell? — bowling? Golf? Three point shots? While the company is going south?

Obama appears at times to be a kid showing off:

His idea of birthday relaxation is competing in an Olympic-style athletic tournament with friends, keeping close score. The 2009 version ended with a bowling event. Guess who won, despite his history of embarrassingly low scores? The president, it turned out, had been practicing in the White House alley.

Practicing bowling!  Considering his a]proven ability to screw up things that he does do in the Oval Office perhaps we should be grateful that he spends so much time on bowling and golf. 

He's always the smartest guy in the room, according to ... himself:

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Isn't America lucky to have such a prodigy? No? 

As Clint Eastwood said:

You let the guy go.

DRUDGE: Dingy Harry Reid in Hell

REUTERS PHOTO DEPICTS HARRY IN HELLFIRE...

Who Does The Government Intend To Shoot?

It's time that someone started doing a little checking.  Major General Jerry Curry, US Army (Ret) asks questions about some curious purchases. Who does the government intend to shoot?

Have you been to a Social Security Administration office?  What is it doing with guns?

The Social Security Administration (SSA) confirms that it is purchasing 174 thousand rounds of hollow point bullets to be delivered to 41 locations in major cities across the U.S.  No one has yet said what the purpose of these purchases is, though we are led to believe that they will be used only in an emergency to counteract and control civil unrest. Those against whom the hollow point bullets are to be used — those causing the civil unrest — must be American citizens; since the SSA has never been used overseas to help foreign countries maintain control of their citizens.

What would be the target of these 174, 000 rounds of hollow point bullets? It can’t simply be to control demonstrators or rioters. Hollow point bullets are so lethal that the Geneva Convention does not allow their use on the battle field in time of war. Hollow point bullets don’t just stop or hurt people, they penetrate the body, spread out, fragment and cause maximum damage to the body’s organs. Death often follows.

Are the men and women at the SSA going to shoot people if there's a problem instead of calling the police?

What about the atmospheric scientists at NOAA?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has ordered 46,000 rounds of hollow point ammunition. Notice that all of these purchases are for the lethal hollow nose bullets.  These bullets are not being purchased and stored for squirrel or coyote hunting. This is serious ammunition manufactured to be used for serious purposes.

Or DHS?

 In March DHS ordered 750 million rounds of hollow point ammunition. It then turned around and ordered an additional 750 million rounds of miscellaneous bullets including some that are capable of penetrating walls. This is enough ammunition to empty five rounds into the body of every living American citizen. Is this something we and the Congress should be concerned about? What’s the plan that requires so many dead Americans, even during times of civil unrest? Has Congress and the Administration vetted the plan in public....

 Why buy all this ammunition unless you plan to use it. Unknown to Congress, Does DHS plan to declare war on some country? ...

Is there some private army that's being created outside of the police and the military?  I have been reading about this and have dismissed it.  After all, we really don't have a history of military coups.  But what's the purpose of all this ammunition being delivered to "civilian" members of the government? 

 We have local police, backed up by each state’s National Guard, backed up by the Department of Defense. So in addition to all these forces why does DHS need its own private army? Why do the SSA, NOAA and other government agencies need to create their own civilian security forces armed with hollow nose bullets?

Were I the JCS, and if I wasn’t already fully briefed on this matter, I’d stop the purchase of hollow point bullets, ask the secretary of Defense why all this ammunition is being purchased and spread around the country? If I got answers like the ones Congress got during the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious – I’d start tracking all ammunition deliveries nationwide to find out what organizations and units are using them, for what purpose and, if it is not constitutional, prepare to counteract whatever it is that they are doing.

Obama speech to soldiers met with silence

Via the Daily Caller:

President Barack Obama was greeted with fleeting applause and extended periods of silence as he offered profuse praise to soldiers and their families during an Aug. 31 speech in Fort Bliss, Texas.
His praise for the soldiers — and for his own national-security policies — won cheers from only a small proportion of the soldiers and families in the cavernous aircraft-hangar.
The audience remains quiet even when the commander-in-chief thanked the soldiers’ families, and cited the 198 deaths of their comrades in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The audience’s reaction was so flat that the president tried twice to elicit a reaction from the crowd.
“Hey, I hear you,” he said amid silence.
The selected soldiers who were arrayed behind the president sat quietly throughout the speech.
CNN and MSNBC ended their coverage of the speech before it was half-over.

University of Colorado prediction model points to big Romney win.

Via the Daily Caller:

A presidential election prediction model developed by two University of Colorado professors points to a big win for GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney in November.
The model, the only of its kind to use more than one state-level economic indicator, has correctly predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1980.
It predicts Romney winning the electoral college by a 320-218 margin and winning 52.9 percent of the popular vote

The "Black & White TV" Dog Whistle

The MSM which pretends to hear racism in world such as "Chicago," "food stamp president," "golf," "traditional values" and other criticism of Obama.  But have Barack Obama compare the Republican convention ot "black and white TV" and that's not a dog whistle to Liberal ears.  Liberals don't blow "dog whistles" don'tchaknow.

Senator Clarifies Remark Telling Troops To ‘Go Fuck Themselves’, Says Quote Taken Out Of Context

Duffel Blog exposes what the Democrats think of the military.

Senator Linda Lopez (D-29, AZ), a member of the Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, was apparently quoted during the interview as saying “the troops should just go fuck themselves.” Lopez continues to claim that her remarks have been “taken out of context” and that she is in fact a huge supporter of the U.S. military.

It’s not the first time Lopez is being questioned for something she said. In the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords’ shooting, she told an interviewer that the shooter was “probably a veteran of Afghanistan.“ The shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, had no military experience.

Her most recent remarks come after a vote in the Committee to improve education benefits and mental health services for veterans of all service branches. Lopez opposed the bill and was the only no vote, telling reporters that she opposed it on constitutional grounds. When pressed further, she admitted however, that “she hates the fucking constitution.”

Minutes after making the remark, she told reporters that she misspoke and didn’t mean to use profanity.

“I only voted no on the bill because I support the troops, but don’t support the war,” Lopez said. “Besides, if these numbskulls would quit enlisting, we wouldn’t need to support the stupid fucks. That last part’s off the record, by the way.”

Air Force MQ-9 Reaper Diagnosed With PTSD, Refuses To Fly

The Duffel Blog announces that PSTD is not limited to humans.

In the latest setback to America’s drone war over Pakistan, one of its MQ-9 Reapers was recently diagnosed with a severe case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.

The MQ-9 Reaper, Callsign “Marvin 79″ was due to fly a surveillance mission from Kandahar to Waziristan Province in Pakistan in search of Al Qaeda-affiliated targets, but refused to leave the hanger due to what it described as “severe depression.”

When Air Force technicians attempted to reboot its computer, Marvin 79 trained its missiles on the base control tower and threatened to blow it up unless the technicians left the hanger.

Marvin 79 told reporters, “I was booting up my flight systems today when it finally occurred to me that my war will only end when I crash or the Air Force finds a better drone and sells me to Peru.”

Read what the Obama administration is doing to our sensitive equipment.

Elizabeth Warren and the Cherokee

Via Legal Insurrection.

Obama Gives Himself an 'Incomplete' Grade on Fixing the Economy

You would think that by this time they would have gotten together on a story to cover up his failure.

Via the Weekly Standard

Hill Poll: Voters say second term undeserved, country is worse off

Oh oh!

A majority of voters believe the country is worse off today than it was four years ago and that President Obama does not deserve reelection, according to a new poll for The Hill.

Fifty-two percent of likely voters say the nation is in “worse condition” now than in September 2008, while 54 percent say Obama does not deserve reelection based solely on his job performance.

The good ship Obama hit reality and is sinking.

DRUDGE on Ryan and Obama

RYAN: President 'running campaign based on envy and division'...

'Four Years Into Presidency And It's Incomplete?'

Says Carter's Leadership 'The Good Old Days'...

Top California Dem likens Ryan to Nazi propagandist...

Pelosi Refuses to Condemn...

Occupy Unmasked

This is reason number 9,999,999 Why People Hate the Media

Joe Klein urging Obama to"play the race card" after another reporter tells us with a straight face that he has never played the race card.  The Democrat's deck contains 52 race cards!

And here four reporters tell us that the guy who joked that Romney wanted black people to drown is a great, unbiased straight shooter. When someone you know starts making racist jokes you may still think he's a nice guy, but he's a bigot. And he's not unbiased.

Summary of a flailing Obama campaign

Via Glenn Reynolds

LIKE CORY BOOKER, HE MUST HAVE PUT HIS MANHOOD IN A BLIND TRUST: O’Malley Does An About Face: Yeah, We’re LOTS Better Off Than We Were Four Years Ago! What Was I Thinking?
Related: What Recovery?… Median Household Income Has Declined 5% During Obama’s So-Called Recovery. Yeah, but since he’s a Democrat, the press doesn’t think it’s a big deal.
UPDATE: David Freddoso: “That’s odd. Today’s DNC message is that we are better off than 4yrs ago and it’s Bush’s fault.”Heh.
Oh, what the hell, let’s run that graphic again:

Obama’s work as a subprime pioneer put most of his 186 clients on a path to foreclosures, bankruptcies and inflated debts

The shocking story of how Obama helped drive the country into the real estate mortgage crisis and his clients into bankruptcy.

“We’ve Heard it All Before.”

Steyn: "...the racism of golf, the war on women, the carcinogenic properties of Mitt Romney."

Mark Steyn: 

To judge from his byline photo, Geoffrey Dunn is not only white but "pasty white." So, too, is Lawrence O'Donnell. If I recall correctly from the last time I saw his show (1978 – the remote had jammed), Chris Matthews is not just "pasty white" but "frighteningly white." I happen to be overseas right now, so perhaps that's the reason that all these "upscale and frighteningly white" American liberals seem even crazier than usual in their more-anti-racist-than-thou obsessions. To me, the word "Clint" is racist dog-whistling for "Play 'Misty' For Me," which is racist dog-whistling for "Erroll Garner," which is racist dog-whistling for "black pianist way better than Liberace." Clint took "The Bridges Of The Frighteningly White Madison County" and gave it a cool Johnny Hartman soundtrack. Clint introduced the world to Roberta Flack's killer song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face."

But, as Geoffrey Dunn can explain, that's racial code for "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face I Was Pleasantly Reassured By How Pasty White It Was." Also, Clint starred in "The Eiger Sanction," a mountaineering thriller set on an Alp that was "upscale and frighteningly white."

Read the whole thing.

Dark clouds gather over China's once-booming solar industry

China's push into solar energy was supposed to be a proud example of how the country was advancing into hi-tech manufacturing. But now the whole sector is on the brink of bankruptcy. The vaunted Chinese solar industry is in a state of collapse. The reasons are so simple even a child can understand them, but it would have to be a child who can do math. That leaves Obama out in the cold.

Forget about little facts like the fact that there are times every day … long hours … when the earth gets in the way of the sun. That time is called night. Forget that during the time that the sun is blocked, there is no good way of storing the power that has been generated during the day. But here’s where the math comes in.

Point number one: solar power is not cost competitive with fossil fuel power. Point number two, see point number one. Point number three, see points one and two.

Stupid people who consider other people’s money “play money” are in the process of flushing gigantic sums of money away in an industry that has the financial future of the Pyramids of Egypt.

Dark clouds gather over China's once-booming solar industry China's push into solar energy was supposed to be a proud example of how the country was advancing into hi-tech manufacturing. But now the whole sector is on the brink of bankruptcy.

Solar power, along with biotechnology and aerospace, was declared a "strategic emerging industry" and was given grants and low-cost loans. Two years ago, LDK Solar, one of China's largest solar panel makers, built a new, state-of-the-art factory in the central city of Hefei.

It sits in one of the city's industrial parks, a big LDK Solar logo on its wall, with the New York-listed company's slogan underneath: "Lighting the Future".

"It cost 2.5 billion yuan (£250m) to build, the majority of the equipment was imported from Germany, and it hired 5,000 staff," said Jie Xiaoming, a 30-year-old who works at the plant's quality control and packaging department.

Last month, however, 4,500 of the staff were put on gardening leave. They receive 700 yuan a month to stay at home. The factory has shut down 24 of its 32 production lines.

"There do not seem to be any orders. People are still turning up for work, but mostly just sleeping. The management has not said much, just that the United States has a new policy that is stopping our exports," said Mr Jie.

If you have ever bough any of those solar powered night lights that you can place around your yard you learn that after a few months, or at most a few years, the solar panels simply give up.  That’s one of the things that the “greenies” have not had to face since the industry is brand new.  Replacing those acres and acres of panels every few years will make the ratepayer nostalgic for a wood stove.

H/T Kate at Small Dead Animals

The True Measure of a Man

Mitt Romney's goodness.

Obama eulogizes Armstrong

When I learned of the untimely passing of Neil Armstrong I was, like all Americans, deeply moved and saddened. I share your sense of loss for this American hero, even if his fame had been eclipsed by others over the years. But in our shared moment of grief, let us also celebrate his historic accomplishment in becoming the first astronaut eulogized by me, Barack Obama, our nation's historic first African-American president.

Neil's passing gives all of us all pause to consider deeper questions. What does it mean for the future of space exploration? How proud would Neil have been to have a famous historic president refer to him by first name? And, most importantly, how did his death inspire that historic president to make ever more gigantic leaps for mankind?

 

Read the whole thing.

"Welcome to Sioux City, President Obama!"

This is the sign that greeted Barack Obama when he landed at Sioux City, Iowa’s airport (SUX) to campaign:

"Everything is fake now"

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away,” Philip K. Dick said, when asked to define what reality is.

When all the bubbles of rhetoric pop, there are still the hard unpleasant realities to deal with. Bailouts and money pits can only bury them for so long. Governments sending money to banks and swapping worthless commodities that only exist in the theory of a theory only work for as long as people believe in them.

Even an unreal economy reported on by an unreal media cheering on an unreal leader can only run for so long until reality punches through the illusion, the curtain falls, the magicians scramble off the stage with rabbits and doves tucked into their pants, and everyone wakes up to realize that the dream is over and we realize that we are entering a world where the stories no longer matter and history is about to begin.

The Real Democrats

The left imagines that it is somehow better than the lunatics of the Westboro Baptist Church who randomly show up at funerals screaming about homosexuality. It's not. Not when its members show up randomly brandishing nooses or dressing up as body parts and screaming about racism or sexism. There's no hint of responsible leadership in tactics like that. It's the behavior of a debating club loser who has memorized only one winning point and will shout it no matter what the issue is.

 

Sultan Knish in "A Party of Trolls"

President Obama To Receive Honorary Green Beret, Induction Into Special Forces Association

During a late afternoon briefing, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney fielded questions, including one about the possibility of the President also receiving a Navy SEAL trident.

“The President has in fact already received his Trident from the SEAL community,” said Carney. “He was honored to accept the insignia during a private ceremony in California, a week after his gutsy call where he singlehandedly took out bin Laden.”

When Carney was asked who had initiated the calls for President Obama to be given the illustrious honors, he hesitated before replying, “we’ll dig into it.”

Pentagon officials, taking note of the President’s extensive knowledge and experiences in special operations throughout the world, is also exploring the possibility of making him an honorary member of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, the Air Force 24th Special Tactics Squadron, and Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance Company.

There is enough arrogance in Team Obama to make people think this piece of satire is plausible.

Rasmussen: Romney 48%, Obama 44%

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows Mitt Romney attracting support from 48% of voters nationwide, while President Obama earns 44% of the vote. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

Just prior to this past week's Republican National Convention, Romney trailed the president by two. Today’s four-point advantage confirms that the GOP hopeful has received the expected convention bounce. See daily tracking history. Romney also has gained ground in the swing state tracking results updated daily for subscribers at 10:00 a.m. Eastern.

"Media Fact Checkers"

Flying out of Phoenix

From the best flying blog Flight Level 390: 

It's one of those nights that airline pilots dread. Thunderstorms all quadrants, intense lightning, moderate rain, blowing mud, hot and gusty crosswinds at or above the limits... Everything at the performance limits. Except for the captain, that is...

 

Read the rest.

Crucifixion? Must Be the ‘Aspirations of Arab Peoples for Greater Freedom’

If you thought crucifixion ended 2000 years ago, you don't know about the culture that never left that age.

Numerous reports have emerged this week that the radical Islamic Muslim Brotherhood, that now controls the government of Egypt, has begun crucifying Christians in that country.

Middle East news media have reported that the Muslim Brotherhood has “crucified those opposing Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi naked on trees in front of the presidential palace while abusing others.” Those opposing the new radical Islamic regime include Christians, and experts have suggested that “extra brutality is reserved for Christians.”

 

Andrew McCarthy:   

Trying to understand one’s adversary is a form of respect, not ridicule. It is not that the Muslims of the Middle East don’t grasp the Western notion of liberty; it is that they don’t want it. They think their civilization is superior. They are wrong, but they’ve been wrong for fourteen centuries, and they are certainly not going to change now when they are winning.

 

"Arab Spring" Egypt shuts down last Jewish synagogue

For the first time in 2,000 years, there will be no Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur services at the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in Alexandria in 5773, reports Daniel Greenfield in “In The Point.”

This was the last active synagogue in Egypt. The Egyptian authorities’ excuse for the shut-down, effectively outlawing High Holiday services in the country, were “security” reasons.

How's that Arab Spring working out for you?

Pakistan: Muslim cleric framed 11-year-old Christian girl for blasphemy charge by planting pages of Qur'an among papers she burned

ISLAMABAD: A blasphemy case took a bizarre turn here on Saturday when police arrested Khalid Jadoon, a prayer leader who had allegedly put some pages of the holy Quran among the burnt papers to strengthen the case against a Christian girl.

The arrest was made after a statement before a magistrate by a witness, Hafiz Zubair, a Muezzin in the same mosque, in which he alleged that he saw Khalid Jadoon putting the pages of Quran in the polythene bags containing the burnt papers.

 

I'm actually surprised it mattered.

Who thought this was a good idea?

Sand sculpture of Obama
 

This is a sculpture of an ogre who eats small children. I suspect a Republican plot.

"Republicans are devious that way."

Bud Norman notes that the Republican convention, which was "strikingly free of racial slurs, sexist epithets, and wishes for the deaths of others" seemed to attract lots of racist and sexist commentary from the left as well as death threats.

Fact Check: Mitt Romney’s Speech

Patterico channels a Liberal "fact checker."

We at the respected FactCheck.org have decided to fact check Mitt Romney’s speech, to note in an objective and dispassionate manner what a liar Mitt Romney is. We will do this in the traditional manner: not by noting actual factual mistakes, but by claiming the speech was misleading because Romney did not make the same arguments that Democrats make against him.

First, Romney tried to portray himself as a decent family man. Left unmentioned was the fact that he put the family dog on the roof of his car.

 

Read the whole thing.

The MSM: "Obsolescence is no longer a specter down the road, it is the current reality."

Dissecting the media’s reaction to Romney’s birth certificate joke and Clint Eastwood’s performance at the Republican convention, you may start feeling a little sorry for the MSM pundits who are now so obviously out of step with the public.

Once they were the cool crowd, now they have become the clueless nerd with the “kick me” note pinned to their shirts.   

You may want to start feeling sorry, but considering the damage they have done and the hatred they have for the average American, I won’t join you. 

Senator Blutarsky

On the Friday before the RNC came the kerfuffle over Mitt Romney's quip about his birth certificate at a campaign stop in Michigan. Said Romney, "I love being home, in this place where Ann and I were raised. Where both of us were born . . . No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised."

The reaction was as swift as it was predictable.

Professional race-baiters, presumably looking to get in some warm-up reps ahead of the RNC, leapt in to action.

Michael Eric Dyson is a professor of sociology, which is a totally legitimate field and not mere academic window dressing for left wing activism in any way, so shut up.

Applying the intellectual rigor that is the basis for sociology's great esteem within academia, Dyson charged Romney with "some of the basest, most despicable bigotry we can imagine....

 

Dan Balz of The Washington Post opined that "It's baffling... for Mitt Romney, on the Friday before his convention, to make any kind of reference to (birtherism) is shocking, really. I don't know what possessed him."

John Dickerson of Slate said "I was on the phone with an advisor from the Romney campaign earlier today and they were saying 'the only the Obama campaign does is throw up obstacles in front of us because they can't talk about the economy. Well, here Governor Romney was making an obstacle for himself."


And so it went, with all and sundry in the MSM seeming to embrace one or both strands - it was probably racist and even if it wasn't Romney foolishly took the focus away from his economic message.  ...

And anyone laboring under the misapprehension that this instance was an outlier need look no further than the reactions to Clint Eastwood's speech six days later at the RNC.

Ann Althouse highlighted the reaction of a pair of MSNBC bloviators, which seemed to be echoed throughout the MSM, including much of its' small right-of-center fringe:

“Clint Eastwood was a disaster,” Lawrence O’Donnell said.

“I thought Clint Eastwood was bizarre,” Ed Schultz said. “It was demeaning to the presidency.”

And then offered her own take on Eastwood and the media reactions thereto:

"It was great! Hilarious... subtle... well-paced.... The haters are totally bullshitting and playing dumb (assuming they are not actually dumb). And what they are trying to do is scare other celebrities: Toe the line or we will destroy you. That crushing repression is the opposite of what the performing arts should be about."

A Survey USA poll shows 49% of respondents with a positive impression of Clint Eastwood's speech versus 24% with a negative impression. The figures for independents are 51% and 25%, respectively. Barring the emergence of some wildly different data, I think we can take this as confirmation of the Instapundit/Althouse thesis.

So, let's see: MSM bloviators 0, the people and the Internet 2.

Romney rope-a-dopes Obama

Mitt Romney managed to get Team Obama to spend about $100 million dollars and it’s all been wasted.  Obama’s campaign has tried to define Romney as an aloof rich guy who doesn’t care about the average American.  They tried to define him as someone who would kill a factory worker’s wife to make a profit.  They made a caricature of him as an automaton without heart or soul; someone who was only interested in cutting taxes for the rich.  And like Mohammad Ali in his fight with George Foreman, Romney let Obama take his best jabs without fighting back … until the convention.

The MSM was literally in shock as people came forward testifying to Romney’s generosity, his willingness to help a dying boy who could not possibly do anything for him in return, his work to advance the careers of able women of all races. 

Suddenly the entire Obama campaign theme has been left in rubble.  All of the money spent by Team Obama and all the free publicity down the drain because the opposition research teams were looking for things that Romney had done wrong and no attention was paid to the good he had done. 

Team Obama is now left with the shopworn antics of Sandra Fluke, the ranting of Slimy Harry Reid and the candidate himself, Barack Hussein Obama, trying to re-create the magic of 2008 like an ageing rock star resurrecting his career. 

Give him the hook.

Newsweek's Anti-Obama Cover Set to Be a Newsstand Hit

The Aug. 27 issue urging a Romney victory "may have just knocked one out of the park on newsstand sales," according to the Magazine Information Network, or MagNet, which tracks magazine sales.

The early read on sales suggests the issue could double Newsweek's newsstand average, MagNet said. It's also on track to land among the title's top three newsstand sellers since 2010, according to MagNet data.
 

Jane Edmonds, Mitt Romney’s Secretary of the Workforce