Mr. Punky Kitten

an orchestra

2012-02-10T07:23:00.001-05:00

I work in private industry, and in the private business world it is exactly like an orchestra. You have a boss, and your group is like an orchestra, exactly like Dudamel describes. Companies thrive and the system works. Congress and bureaucracies will never operate as efficiently as private business or an orchestra -- too bad.

"An orchestra is a model for an ideal global society—a symbol," [Gustavo Dudamel] says..."You have to create harmony. Everyone has to listen to each other, this large, complex group of people with different personalities that has to communicate. You have to have discipline. This is where The System works! The point is not to build better musicians. It's to build better citizens, to see children building their lives from music." (from this week's Newsweek).

Occupiers want more gov, tea party wants less

2012-02-01T09:52:00.001-05:00

Let's talk about the fact that Chris Matthews is more scared of this:

than he is of this:

Why is that?

Because the Tea Party people were fighting to limit the power of the elites. They threatened the power centralized in Washington.

The Occupiers aren't trying to limit government power. They fight for it. They want more of it.

http://www.allamericanblogger.com/19653/in-interview-chris-matthews-inadvertently-exposes-why-elitists-fear-of-the-tea-party-support-ows/

Draft Warren Buffett’s Secretary for President!

2012-01-26T09:21:00.001-05:00

We should draft Warren Buffett's Secretary for President! But on the Democrat primary to run against Obama, she might beat him.

Forbes reports that Ms. Bosanek makes between $200,000 and $500,000 a year…

Warren Buffet's secretary, Debbie Bosanek, served as a stage prop for President Obama's State of the Union speech. She was the President's chief display of the alleged unfairness of our tax system – a little person paying a higher tax rate than her billionaire boss.

Bosanek's prominent role in Obama's "fairness" campaign piqued my curiosity, and I imagine the curiosity of others. How much does her boss pay this downtrodden woman? So far, no one has volunteered this information. [snip]

Taxpayers earning adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 to $500,000, pay an average tax rate of nineteen percent. Therefore Buffet must pay Debbie Bosanek a salary above two hundred thousand.

We must wait for further details to learn how much more than $200,000 she earns. The tax tables tell us about average ranges. For all we know she earns closer to a half million each year, but that is pure speculation.

According to The Smoking Gun, Warren Buffett's poor poor secretary just bought a second home!

Despite a heavy tax burden, Warren Buffett's secretary last year was able to purchase a second home in Arizona, a residence complete with a swimming pool and a "professional PGA putting green," according to real estate records.

Debra Bosanek, 55, and her husband Gerald bought the 2100-square-foot home in Surprise, a city outside Phoenix. The Bosaneks paid $144,000 for the four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath property (the purchase was financed, in part, by a $115,200 mortgage).

Good thing the media is obsessed with Mitt Romney's tax returns, huh?

Linked from:

http://americanglob.com/2012/01/25/meet-warren-buffetts-poor-secretary/

Food Stamp President!

2012-01-24T12:39:00.001-05:00

Re: Change Is

2012-01-23T12:00:00.001-05:00

Change is . . . S&P AA credit rating (down from AAA).

Change is . . . 8.9% unemployment rate.

Change is . . . 13 million Americans out of work.

Change is . . . $4 a gallon gasoline, double what it was when he was inaugurated

Change is . . . High food prices.

Change is . . . all I'm going to leave you with.

Change is . . . an extra $6 Trillion in debt.

Change is . . . greater energy dependence on the Middle East.

Change is . . . first President to violate the War Powers Act.

Change is . . . first President held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Change is . . . first President to defy a federal judge's court order to cease implementing the Health Care Reform Law.

Change is . . . first President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.

Change is . . . first President to spend a trillion dollars on shovel-ready jobs and later admit there was no such thing as shovel-ready jobs.

Change is . . . first President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.

Change is . . . first President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.

Change is . . . first President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.

Change is . . . first President to terminate America' s ability to put a man in space.

Change is . . . first President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly speak-out on the reasons for their rate increases.

Change is . . . first President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state they are allowed to locate a factory.

Change is . . . first President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).

Change is . . . first President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.

Change is . . . first President to appoint 45 Czars to replace elected officials in his office.

Change is . . . first President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half years in office.

Change is . . . first President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.

Change is . . . first President to win a Nobel Peace Prize after doing NOTHING to earn it.

Change is . . . first President to coddle American enemies while alienating America's allies.

Change is . . . first President to publicly bow to Americas enemies while refusing to salute the U.S. Flag.

Change is . . . first President to go on multiple global apology tours.

Change is . . . first President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends, paid for by the taxpayer.

Change is . . . first President to allow weapons to go to Mexican drug cartels (Fast and Furious, gunrunner).

and last but not least:

Change is…..a mindless slogan used to manipulate mindless lemmings.

On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 11:25 AM, dude <dude@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> nonsense..he even funded that failed non-oil venture as a possible path to eliminating our dependence...too bad it was not managed properly
>
> From: me
> Subject: Change Is
>
> Yep, you guessed it, that's Obama's 2012 campaign slogan.
>
> That's it. I guess he couldn't think of anything else.
>
>
> "When I am President I am immediately going to direct the full resource of the American government and the full energy of the private sector to single overarching goal – in ten years time we are going to eliminate the need for oil from the entire middle east and Venezuela" – Barack Obama, 2008 campaign promise
>
> He changed his mind on keeping his campaign promises.
>

Change Is

2012-01-23T11:17:00.000-05:00

Yep, you guessed it, that's Obama's 2012 campaign slogan.

That's it. I guess he couldn't think of anything else.

"When I am President I am immediately going to direct the full resource of the American government and the full energy of the private sector to single overarching goal – in ten years time we are going to eliminate the need for oil from the entire middle east and Venezuela" – Barack Obama, 2008 campaign promise

He changed his mind on keeping his campaign promises.

Just the facts

2011-12-29T12:53:00.000-05:00

As we enter 2012, the presidential candidates would do well to wrap their minds and messages around these seven mathematical facts:

Every day, the U.S. government takes in $6 billion and spends $10 billion. This means that every day the federal government spends $4 billion more dollars than it has.
The real unemployment rate is a jaw-dropping 11 percent.
Every fifth man you pass on your way to work is now out of work.
College graduates are now 34% less likely to find a job under Obama than they were under President George W. Bush.
Every seventh person you pass on the sidewalk now relies on food stamps.
The ravages of the Obama economy now mean that more Americans live under the federal poverty line than at any time in U.S. history since records have been kept.
Under President Barack Obama, every fifth child in America now lives in poverty.

These are not partisan jabs, manufactured statistics, or ideological swipes. These are mathematical facts.

debate-newt-slams-obamas-energy-policy

2011-12-17T16:27:00.001-05:00

Just wow! Now that's how a president should speak and act!

http://www.therightscoop.com/debate-newt-slams-obamas-energy-policy/

Newt Slams Obama's Energy Policy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xdh97eGR2IE

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/

omg

2011-12-12T10:57:00.001-05:00

Lowe's parking lot in Nashville:

Here's the 1 percent

2011-12-12T09:19:00.001-05:00

The Top 3 Google Execs Have How Many Jets?

Obama is my co-pilot

2011-12-06T14:46:00.001-05:00

Obama is my co-pilot

Newcandescent 100 watt bulb to be produced after ban

2011-12-06T12:57:00.000-05:00

A South Hackensack, NJ company seems to have found a loophole in the upcoming ban — "rough use" standards.

Larry Birnbaum, owner of the Light Bulb Store in South Hackensack, thinks he has a bright idea. He developed the Newcandescent bulb, an incandescent bulb that meets new federal standards for so-called "rough" use (like in a moving car or truck) but that he wants to sell for everyday use. He compared it to a doctor prescribing a drug for one condition, even though it was originally developed for another.

He hopes to start selling the new bulbs in January. They will go for about $1.65 each, compared with about 60 cents for current incandescents and about $2.25 to $3.50 for compact fluorescents that give the equivalent of 100 watts of light.

Birnbaum made a few changes to the typical "rough-use" incandescent to meet new federal standards, including using krypton gas to make it last 10 times longer. But he acknowledged that they're not as energy-efficient as LEDs and compact fluorescents.

"People want a choice," said Birnbaum, whose family has been in the lighting industry for three generations (his grandfather knew Thomas Edison). Along with selling light bulbs in his small store, Birnbaum also imports, develops and manufactures them. His company employs six people in South Hackensack and 60 at a factory in Indiana.

Of course we want a choice!.

SWING! ROMNEY TO OBAMA: 'Hands-on Doesn't Mean Better Grip on Golf Club'...

2011-12-06T10:24:00.001-05:00

SWING! ROMNEY TO OBAMA: 'Hands-on Doesn't Mean Better Grip on Golf Club'...

via Drudge Report Feed on 12/6/11

SWING! ROMNEY TO OBAMA: 'Hands-on Doesn't Mean Better Grip on Golf Club'...

(Second column, 1st story, link)

The only candidate NOT to DISPARAGE the other Rs: Newt

2011-12-05T13:54:00.001-05:00

He continually goes after Obama, and the D's.

No wonder he's risen to the top!

Douglas Bauman

Pittsburgh, PA

MERKOZY TO THE RESCUE

2011-12-05T09:25:00.000-05:00

Now that's funny - twice funny, the picture and the headline - three times funny, also the fact that they have no chance to rescue anyone.

MERKOZY TO THE RESCUE

via Drudge Report Feed on 12/5/11

MERKOZY TO THE RESCUE

(Main headline, 1st story, link)

Go Newt !

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

Newt Gingrich has taken the lead for the GOP nomination in virtually every poll being tracked. In the latest Rasmussen Poll, Newt has the lead over Mitt Romney by an astounding 21 points.

Here's the latest line from Newt about Barack Obama that is ruffling some feathers: "You can either be incompetent or radical, but if you're both incompetent and radical it's probably more than the system can bear."

just update my facebook status first..

2011-11-28T09:47:00.001-05:00

enter it again

2011-11-23T12:04:00.001-05:00

Newt for president!

2011-11-11T08:41:00.001-05:00

Gotta love Newt!

JIM CRAMER: Mr. Speaker, how about to you, can corporations do both?

NEWT GINGRICH: Sure. Look, obviously, corporations can and should do both. And what is amazing to me is the inability of much of our academic world and much of our news media and most of the people on Occupy Wall Street to have a clue about history.

GINGRICH: In this town, Henry Ford started as an Edison Electric supervisor who went home at night and built his first car in the garage. Now, was he in the 99 percent or the one percent?

Bill Gates drops out of college to found Microsoft. Is he in the one percent or the 99 percent?

Historically, this is the richest country in the history of the world because corporations succeed in creating both profits and jobs, and it's sad that the news media doesn't report accurately how the economy works.

(APPLAUSE)

BARTIROMO: Mr. Speaker- I'm sorry, but what is the media reporting inaccurately about the economy?

GINGRICH: What?

BARTIROMO: What is the media reporting inaccurately about the economy?

(LAUGHTER)

GINGRICH: I love humor disguised as a question. That's terrific. I have yet to hear a single reporter ask a single Occupy Wall Street person a single rational question about the economy that would lead them to say, for example, "Who is going to pay for the park you are occupying if there are no businesses making a profit?"

Read more: http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2011/11/10/newt-mocks-money-honeys-funny-defense-liberal-media#ixzz1dP6kHJVZ

Such nice and peaceful Occupy Folks

2011-11-04T07:40:00.001-05:00

More ugly Occupy Oakland pictures that won't make MSM front pages

By Michelle Malkin • November 3, 2011 02:19 AM

Massive damage at downtown Oakland Wells Fargo Bank:

"Fuck the bank:"

Source: Twitpic

Chase Bank:

Source: Twitpic

"We are better than this." Not really. Anarchy speaks louder than whitewash words:

Source: Twitpic

Bank of America:

Destruction at Whole Foods. A photographer writes: "So @WholeFoods got what they asked for from #occupyoakland. Sort of. Not really:"

Source: Twitpic

Vandalism, graffiti, and malicious defacement of both public and private property were widespread:

Source: Twitpic

"Fuck the police." Nope, didn't see anyone of those signs at Tea Party protests:

Source: Twitpic

From the Port of Oakland blockade scene late tonight…nope, this looks nothing like a Tea Party either:

Source: Twitpic

From reader X, a resident of Oakland who snapped scores of photos from the protest. Yes, they do hate capitalism:

And yes, they do heart communism:

Get the picture yet?

Oakland teacher's union hacks in the house:

cap http://twitpic.com/7a1htg

Teamsters representing:

Source: Twitpic

Kiddie human shields:

Source: Twitpic

And as I noted in my column yesterday, one of the leaders of the parade of destruction, rapper Boots Riley, is author/"songwriter" of "5 million ways to kill a CEO," among other hateful ditties:

Source: Twitpic

Just like the Tea Party? Bull.

occupy this

2011-11-03T11:08:00.000-05:00

oh those peaceful occupy protesters, what will they think of next...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2056887/Occupy-Oakland-protesters-run-cops-use-tear-gas-violent-night.html

Anatomy of an Occupation

2011-10-28T10:50:00.001-05:00

Miki, I think you, like Robin of Berkeley, are shifting, and will soon see the light!

As for me, I somehow snapped out of my leftist trance a few years ago, and, since then, have realized that everything that I thought was wrong. I thank my lucky stars every day that I finally saw the light.

By Robin of Berkeley

If you're wondering whether I was at Occupy Berkeley on October 15, the answer is no. I didn't have to attend; every day around here is Occupy Berkeley.

Because every moment of every day, I am surrounded by people who believe the insanity spewed by the occupants of Occupy. When I listened to the well-crafted video produced by three intrepid, Bay Area tea partiers at Occupy Oakland, none of what I heard surprised me. I thought, "Just another day in Berkeley or Oakland.

Around here almost everyone thinks like these Marxist spewing militants. While in your neck of the woods random strangers may comment, "Nice day if it doesn't rain," around here the words would be, "Nice day for a revolution."

While the video didn't shock me, it did disturb. What troubled me wasn't just how widespread is the diatribe, but that up until a few, short years ago, I believed all of it. Before Obama came on the scene, I could have been interviewed, mumbling and bumbling, just like those other frothing-at-the-mouth leftists.

I would also have parroted the Third-World loving party line. I too would have angrily and self-righteously proclaimed that the US was the root of all evil in the world.

To me, capitalism was bad, communism good (which I discovered after watching the handsome Warren Beatty in the sweeping thriller, Reds). I envied Cuba, home of the finest health care system in the world (thank you, Michael Moore). And I, like our current occupiers, ranted and raved about the racist, patriarchal, capitalist system with its millionaire fat cats (which I learned from reading books by those millionaire fat cats, Noam Chomsky, Al Franken, Gloria Steinem and the late Howard Zinn.)

I believed all of this despite the now glaring inconsistencies in my argument. For one, I (like most leftists) had mutual funds that invested in the horrible corporations. While I was never flush with money, I wouldn't have minded being so. And just like those demonic capitalists, I got a kick out of procuring a big-ticket item, such as a car with that wonderful new car smell.

So how did I fall so deeply into the progressive chimera? Given that I am (I hope) an intelligent person, with the potential to see the light, why did I drink the Kool-Aid for so long? In the service of shedding some light on our current occupiers, I offer the following observations:

Monkey see, monkey do: Leftists follow the leader. Since most progressives believe the anti-capitalist nonsense, the majority will follow in lock step. In liberal areas, there is groupthink -- cult-like behavior, where people must chant the same old tired mantras. To step out of line will undoubtedly bring social condemnation and shunning.

Indoctrination: While I thought I was an independent thinker, it never occurred to me to look outside the moveon.org box. All of my media was leftist; the so-called independent bookstores (the ones that celebrate "Banned Books Week") ban conservative books. So while Noam Chomsky is always welcome to give a book reading, Ann Coulter would never be invited within 50 miles of here.

The programming is particularly acute in the schools. In Berkeley, we have Malcolm X Elementary School and Malcolm X Park. Just to make sure that the kiddies get the message to emulate Mr. X, public school students (and all city employees) get Malcolm X's birthday off (same with Indigenous People's Day, aka Columbus Day, and International Women's Day).

While most areas aren't so extreme, there are hard-core activists all over this nation's school systems with union jobs for life. It's not a coincidence that Bill Ayers is a tenured professor of education; he knew the power of brainwashing kids when knee-high. With youth and their parents subscribing to the Party Line, it's not difficult to lead the progressive sheep to slaughter.

Of course, leftists are badly misguided about what a revolution actually entails. They weren't told, for instance, that Che Guevara, whose handsome face is emblazoned on their fashionable t-shirts, was actually a psychotic killer. Che got such a thrill from watching executions that he had a picture window installed in his office, and had the butchery conducted below.

And then there's another historical fact that eludes our gullible revolutionaries. After a revolution, the activists and militants themselves often get offed. Of course this would be the case; why would the regime want troublemakers and insurrectionaries in the populace?

The Cool Factor: Obama was elected, in part, because he was viewed as cool (though most of us on the right saw him not as cool, but cold). Being a leftist/revolutionary/radical type is viewed as hip and trendy. Simply consult your thesaurus to see the negative words associated with being a "conservative" versus a "liberal." And aren't we a society enamored by anything and anyone who is considered cool?

Alienation and the Search for Meaning: People of all ages, but particularly youth, have an inherent need to find meaning. With spirituality shunned, people look to the secular religion of progressivism to fill the existential void. By fighting against "The Man," capitalism, and America, the radicals believe that they are good people who live lives of value in an otherwise nihilistic world.

An increasing number of people feel alienated in this culture. They are Americans, yet are told that America is bad. They may have a hunger for God, and yet turn away because believers are mocked.

This sense of alienation from God and country compels many people to look to political movements for their raison d'etre . Being leftists offers the lost souls a sense of belonging and identity.

60s Fever: There's a hunger to relive the 60s, even though the Hollywood, sanitized version didn't exactly happen. I've heard young people bemoan the fact that they were too young to enjoy San Francisco, adorned with flowers in their hair.

Of course, the Bay Area in the 60s was besieged by drug overdoses, rapes, the gangster Black Panthers, and radical terrorist bombings. But given that the Baby Boomers wax rhapsodic about the good-old days, both grey haired and youth take to the streets to relive a reality that never happened.

Delusion: The radicals misunderstand the nature of reality. They believe that life should be fair, that hierarchy and differences among people shouldn't exist. It is a form of delusion to embrace utopia and perfection in this human realm.

But, again, this secular society has trashed religion and deconstructed history, the realms of which would explain the way life works. Instead, people on the left live in a fantasy world; and they go ballistic on opponents because truth threatens their dreamworld.

Control: Occupying the streets allows participants to feel good about themselves, noble, as though they are saving the world. In contrast, it's a buzz kill to realize how little control one has over this life. To feel insignificant, like a little cog in the wheel, is depressing. How much more exciting to elevate oneself into the role of some revolutionary involved in a movement to radically transform America.

Generation Me: Scores of studies show the same thing: that today's youth are more narcissistic than ever before. While previous generations of the l8 to 24-year-old crowd prioritized family and meaning, today's young want six figures and they want it now. They have been raised to feel special and entitled, particularly those in supposedly disenfranchised groups (which, incidentally, is most of the American population). And if they have to take some of your hard earned dough to live the good life, no problemo.

Greed: Despite the leftists' lofty claims about fairness, isn't socialism all about greed, about coveting thy neighbor's house? Can't the essence of progressive politics be distilled to this: wanting money, money, and more money?

While those on the left profess to be anti-capitalists, they are the real capitalists. They are so preoccupied with capital, and envious of those who have it, that they want it through any means necessarily. Even billionaire Warren Buffet must be less obsessed with cash and the things it can buy than these love-of-money leftists.

The Need for a Scapegoat: Human beings know instinctively that there is both good and evil in the world. But the moral relativism inherent in liberal education tells people that everyone is good. When people are robbed of the knowledge of good and evil, they will create scapegoats.

Of course, Obama, Pelosi, and the left are masters at pointing fingers rightward, and insinuating that conservatives are racist/Nazi-like subhumans. Whenever there's a lunatic out of control somewhere in the world, the left impugns conservatives. It's no wonder that there's such anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and anti-conservative vitriol all over the airwaves. Not surprisingly, a mob mentality ensues, with angry, violent, and demonic mobs taking to the streets.

****

As for me, I somehow snapped out of my leftist trance a few years ago, and, since then, have realized that everything that I thought (and I mean everything) was wrong. I thank my lucky stars every day that I finally saw the light.

But will others wake up as well...will people get a grip and get a clue? Will they realize that while imperfect, capitalist America is the best around -- which is why so many people are desperate to become citizens here?

Sadly, I doubt it. I think that the indoctrination is way too far gone. Further, we have a President who will stop at nothing to keep the masses in an enraged, hypnotic trance.

The best we can do is to dislodge the militants from the streets and restore order. But more than this: we need to expel the number one militant, the one with the secret cabal of Czars and obvious disdain for the Constitution.

Because the biggest danger isn't Occupy Chicago or Occupy Wall Street -- it's Obama himself. What we're seeing is: "Occupy The White House."

Our greatest peril isn't the mobs on the streets of Manhattan; it's having a President who thinks he's above the law. It's having our head of state support violent insurrections here and abroad.

The United States doesn't need any more occupations; what we need is a new occupant in the White House. And hopefully, prayerfully, we will have a new one come next November.

Young Occutards Got Suckered

2011-10-26T09:26:00.000-05:00

These young Occutards ought to admit they made a mistake, and that they were suckered into voting for false hope in 2008.

---------

Speaking of the people who were suckered into voting this Marxist into the White House … look no further than your local Occupy Whatever protest. These are primarily the people who put Barack Obama in the White House. They are young, they are ignorant, and in 2008 they simply didn't know any better. They got caught up in the excitement of this "sort of a God." A 21 year old Occupier in New York by the name of Daniel Rosenfeld says that "the general vibe in Zuccotti Park fills him not only with sixties nostalgia but a reminder of the hopefulness that he and his classmates shared back in 2008," according to the Huffington Post. Rosenfeld says, "Everyone was so happy and hopeful and it really felt like youth and minorities and groups that don't normally vote and whose voices aren't normally heard were finally recognized."

Your voices were finally recognized alright. Look where that has gotten us! Almost 70% of voters under the age of 30 voted for Obama. Even with the current economy, 48% of young voters under 30 still approve of Barack Obama. That is one of the highest approval ratings of any voting group and well above the general population approval rating of 41%.

This article in the American Spectator "Generation 'Why?'" accurately points out: "Rather than see government policy as the reason for the financial meltdown and insipid economic growth, young people are taking to the streets to protest the capitalist system that provides their iPods and designer jeans."

The reason they are not protesting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is because to do that would mean that these kids .. who have always been told how wonderful they are .. would have to admit that they made a mistake. They would have to take responsibility, and you know how much they must loathe the concept of personal responsibility. So instead of blaming themselves for putting an incompetent Marxist hack in the White House, or instead of protesting the hack himself, they find a scapegoat: Wall Street.

http://www.boortz.com/weblogs/nealz-nuze/2011/oct/26/young-occutards-got-suckered/

Did you know Feds will temporarily cut off all Tv and Radio broadcasts on nov. 9?

2011-10-25T08:27:00.001-05:00

Check the LOG!

If you have ever wondered about the government's ability to control the civilian airwaves, you will have your answer on November 9th.

On that day, federal authorities are going to shut off all television and radio communications simultaneously at 2:00PM EST to complete the first ever test of the national Emergency Alert System (EAS). [We anticipate that the test will last approximately 3 minutes. While state and local EAS messages are limited to 2 minutes, there is no time limit for national EAS alerts. To evaluate whether the system properly interprets the national message code in the national EAS test, the message duration must be longer than two minutes.]

This isn't a wild conspiracy theory. The upcoming test is posted on the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau website.

Only the President has the authority to activate EAS at the national level, and he has delegated that authority to the Director of FEMA. The test will be conducted jointly by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through FEMA, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS).

In essence, the authority to seize control of all television and civilian communication has been asserted by the executive branch and handed to a government agency.

The EAS has been around since 1994. Its precursor, the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS), started back in 1963. Television and radio broadcasters, satellite radio and satellite television providers, cable television and wireline video providers are all involved in the system.

So this begs the question: is the first ever national EAS test really a big deal?

Probably not. At least, not yet.

But there are some troubling factors all coming together right now that could conceivably trigger a real usage of the EAS system in the not too distant future. A European financial collapse could bring down U.S. markets. What is now the "Occupy" movement could lead to widespread civil unrest. And there are ominous signs that radical groups such as Anonymous will attempt something major on November 5th- Guy Fawke's day.

Now we know in the event of a major crisis, the American people will be told with one voice, at the same time, about an emergency.

All thats left to determine is who will have control of the EAS when that day comes, and what their message will be.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/did-you-know-feds-will-temporarily-cut-off-all-tv-and-radio-broadcasts-on-nov-9/

We Can't Wait Either

2011-10-24T18:36:00.001-05:00

This was hilarious, I was really rolling on the floor laughing out loud:

This "We Can't Wait" business cuts two ways..
We can't wait to --
- Repeal Obamacare,
- Repeal Dodd Frank financial overhaul bill,
- Cut spending and balance the budget,
- End Democrat Party money laundering schemes,
- Get all facts on Holder's Fast and Furious gunrunning operation,
- Reign in the EPA,
- Cut taxes on job creators,
- Make the radical leftist failed pres a one termer,
- For voter ID laws in all 57 states,
- For Joe Biden to make another speech,
- and we really ca'tn wait for the Occupy Wall Street protesters to bathe and get the stench of urine off of themselves.

http://dailyrushbo.com/obama-we-cant-wait-limbaugh-lists-all-the-things-we-cant-wait-for-either-like-obamacare/

Occupy Math Class

2011-10-24T14:39:00.001-05:00

via Are We Lumberjacks? by lumberjack on 10/17/11

There. Now it's fun again.

Robin Hood vs. the Occupiers

2011-10-24T12:34:00.000-05:00

The original Robin Hood tales of the Middle Ages celebrated a renegade who rose up against property rights violations and taxation abuses. His archenemies were not private traders or bankers, but the local government tax collector, the Sheriff of Nottingham and the power-grabbing ruler, Prince John. Robin Hood, in other words, was far more tea party than flea party.

In any case, if the Occupiers insist on celebrating outright theft from the haves in the name of the have-nots, perhaps they should stop complaining about the pickpockets and looters infesting their camps. Live by "social justice" nursery rhymes. Die by "social justice" crimes.

http://michellemalkin.com/2011/10/21/robin-hood-vs-the-occupiers/

Harry Reid: ‘Private Sector Jobs are Doing Just Fine; It’s the Public Sector...

2011-10-19T16:02:00.001-05:00

Another blatant lie from a leading Democrat, but then, most of what the Democrats say is bunch of blatant lies and malarkey!

Despite the facts – as well as the fact that the public sector is only able to exist through the presence of a prosperous, employed private sector to fund it – Washington Democrats continue to peddle the myths that public sector employment is hurting worse than private sector – a blatant lie based on the data provided by the government itself – and that the job of a union dues-paying teacher is more important to the nation than any form of private sector employment.

Harry Reid: 'Private Sector Jobs are Doing Just Fine; It's the Public Sector Jobs Where We've Lost Huge Numbers'

UPDATE: Jim Geraghty crunches some numbers in this post on the topic.

Via Adam Bitely, that direct quote can be seen in the video below:

For context, here's Sen. Reid's (D-NV) statement from the Senate floor today:

"The massive layoffs we've had in America today-of course they're rooted in the last administration-and it's very clear that private sector jobs are doing just fine. It's the public sector jobs where we've lost huge numbers, and that's what this legislation's all about. And it's unfortunate my friend the Republican Leader is complaining about that. I would also note that my friend said the House passed another bill. Well, they pass lots of bills, but they rarely go anyplace."

Here's a fact that Reid should look over before he opens his mouth again. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, government workers have the lowest unemployment rate of any industry or class recorded, at 4.7%, while the national unemployment rate is 9.1% – nearly twice that of public sector workers.

Further, I seem to recall – contrary to Reid's assertion that the private sector is "doing just fine" but that public sector employment funding has been overlooked – an almost $1 Trillion ($1,000,000,000,000.00) "stimulus" bill being passed and signed into law early in the Obama administration whose major purpose was to fund "shovel-ready" public-sector jobs and to "save essential government services." Now, Harry Reid is telling us that the public sector needs another fiscal shot in the arm, while Vice President Joe Biden (D-DE) is telling audiences that a failure to pass another stimulus bill to follow the first, utterly failed one will lead to mass rape and murder of…somebody.

Via Michelle Malkin, here's a graph from the Mercatus Center's Veronique de Rugy showing just what Obama and Reid's last attempt to implement their version of economic reform has wrought on employment across the board in America:

Here's a video from the Senate Republicans, juxtaposing Reid's statement with financial reporters declaring the private sector to be stuck in a rut of unemployment and growing financial strain:

Additionally, recent Census Bureau figures show that the top median household income in America is now…in Washington, DC. That obviously includes contractors, consultants, and the K Street lobbyists who keep flowing in and out of the Obama administration's revolving door of ultimate government insiders, but it also boasts the highest percentage of government employees to total population in the nation. According to Bloomberg:

The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was $50,046. … . The unemployment rate in the Washington metro area in August was 6.1 percent, compared with 10 percent in San Jose, according to Labor Department figures.

Despite these simple facts – as well as the fact that the public sector is only able to exist through the presence of a prosperous, employed private sector to fund it – Washington Democrats continue to peddle the myths that public sector employment is hurting worse than private sector – a blatant lie based on the data provided by the government itself – and that the job of a union dues-paying teacher is more important to the nation than any form of private sector employment.

Herman Cain nailed Meet the Press

2011-10-18T11:01:00.001-05:00

Here's the transcript and video.

ADDED: I thought David Gregory really lost his cool early on, as he was questioning Cain about 9-9-9. If you watch the video, you can see he's agitated and grimacing in a way that really lacks the usual polished journalist quality. To excerpt the transcript bits that hint of this attitude:

The reality of the plan is that some people pay more, some people pay less.... You're saying [prices] actually go down?... This isn't about behavior, Mr. Cain, this is about whether you pay--if you don't pay taxes now, and you now have income tax and a sales tax, you pay more in taxes.... Mr. Cain, we talked to independent analysts ourselves.... We're not just reading newspaper clips here... They tell us, they've looked at this, based on what's available of the plan, and it's incontrovertible.

Gregory's experts are incontrovertible? What kind of a question is that? How does Cain deal with this barrage of disbelief from Gregory? He stands his ground and explains his program:

Some people will pay more, but most people would pay less is my argument.... Who will pay more? The people who spend more money on new goods. The sales tax only applies to people who buy new goods, not used goods....

This discussion got me thinking about the positive side of switching to sales tax. With a progressive income tax, the political process sets different percentages for different income levels, so, for example, the majority can vote jack up the taxes on other people — "the rich" — and those other people can work on extracting various exemptions and credits and so forth in an elaborate, inscrutable government system. With a sales tax, you control what you pay through your shopping decisions. Every time you forgo a purchase or buy used goods — and isn't that good for the environment? — you pay no tax. And every time you choose smaller amounts or cheaper goods, you pay less tax. Now, you have various needs that you have to meet, but you have far more control, and you aren't at the mercy of the ever-ongoing machinations of the political process.

My point is: After the debate last week, I was thinking about the negative aspects of the sales tax, but as he was talking about it on "Meet the Press" today, I felt open-minded about the potential benefits. And that was while Gregory was going for the jugular.

MORE: Gregory asked about the Occupy Wall Street movement: "Do you empathize, as the president does, with the message of those Wall Street protesters?" Gregory invites him to express empathy, a concept Obama has actively promoted (which Gregory prompts us to recall). Cain homes in on the premise that there is a message and proceeds right to criticism of Obama:

What is their message? That's what's unclear. If that message is, "Let's punish the rich," I don't empathize with that message. They should be protesting the White House. The White House has basically enacted failed economic policies. The White House and the Democrats have spent $1 trillion that did not work. Now the president wants to pass another $450 billion. They have their frustrations directed at the wrong group. That's what I'm saying.

Nice clarity and brevity and excellent sharp perception of the opportunity in the question asked.

AND: Gregory confronted him with an extreme statement he made back in February: "The objective of the liberals is to destroy this country" and followed up with a pointed "You think liberals actually seek to do that, that that's their mission, to destroy the economy?"

Cain stood his ground: "It is their mission. Because they do not believe in a stronger America, in my opinion. Yes."

Gregory let it go at that and moved on to another one of Cain's presumably insufficiently thoughtful statements: "You've also said that stupid people are ruining America.... Who exactly are you talking about?"

MR. CAIN: People who are uninformed. People who will not look at an alternate idea. People who are so dug in with partisanship and partisan politics. Open-mindedness is what's going to save this country. The reason that my message is appealing is because it's simple and people can understand it. You know, a good idea transcends party politics...

Somehow, the next question on Gregory's list was: "Is race a factor in this campaign?" Obviously, Cain's answer is going to be no. I'm more interested in why Gregory jumped from "stupid people" to race. Gregory next displays the new Newsweek cover, which calls Cain "the Anti-Obama," and starts to put together a question: "You've actually talked a bit about race, though, and you've created a contrast between yourself and your experience as an African-American, a term you don't like, by the way."

So suddenly the topic is the terminology of race: African-American or black American, which Cain prefers. Gregory asks why. Cain says:

Because my roots go back through slavery in this country. Yes, they came from Africa, but the roots of my heritage are in the United States of America. So I consider myself a black American.

That's a very rich statement. Slavery is a heritage. But Gregory goes for the implicit distinction between Cain and Obama: "So you draw some distinction between yourself and your experiences as a black man in America and the experience of President Obama."

Cain says:

Absolutely. I came from very humble beginnings. My mother was a maid, my father was a barber and janitor and a chauffeur. We, we had to, we had to learn--do things the old-fashioned way. We had to work for it. I--my parents never saw themselves as a victim, so I didn't learn how to be a victim. I didn't have anything given to me. I had to work very hard in order to be able to go to school and work my way through school....

Notice how simply and vividly he struck a chord — the classic black American experience — and made it resonate for anyone who works for living. There is a quality of nobility, that fits with the idea of heritage. Gregory is at a complete loss, I think, to do anything with this:

MR. GREGORY: You actually said President Obama's outside the mainstream. So you're making a different, more of a social cultural background distinction between you and the president.

MR. CAIN: More experiential. Look at his experiences vs. my experiences. It was more at a contrast of experiential differences than anything else.

MR. GREGORY: Let's talk about foreign policy...

YET MORE: I liked the way, when asked to name his model for the ideal Supreme Court justice, he focused on Clarence Thomas:

I believe that Justice Clarence Thomas, despite all of the attacks that he gets from the left, he basically rules and makes his decisions, in my opinion, based upon the Constitution and solid legal thinking. Justice Clarence Thomas is one of my models.

MR. GREGORY: Has he been targeted unfairly, you think?

MR. CAIN: I think he has been targeted unfairly.

Gregory declines to follow up about what the unfairness was. He moves on to the topic of Cain's wife Gloria, who's been invisible so far. He gave a lovely explanation:

My wife and I, we have a family life, and she is maintaining the calmness and the tranquility of that family life so, when I do get a day off of the campaign trail, I can go home and enjoy my family.

She's his wife, not America's wife. Home is a refuge. That's a good traditionalist message.

Posted by Ann Althouse at 1:11 PM

Is Anyone Dumb Enough to Believe that Obama Supports the 99%?

2011-10-17T14:32:00.001-05:00

Is Anyone Dumb Enough to Believe that Obama Supports the 99%?

via (title unknown) by George Washington on 10/17/11

Obama is pretending that he supports the 99%.

But Obama has raised more from Wall Street than anyone else. He is bought and paid for.

Mr. Obama has appointed the very Wall Street insiders who helped cause the financial crisis to top posts. See this and this.

He thinks that high unemployment is a good thing.

Obama – just like the other pimps in D.C. – has institutionalized fraud as an official (if unspoken) party platform.

Americans want our liberties restored, our troops brought home, and the Fed reined in. But Obama has implemented plans for war throughout the Middle East crafted by the Neoconservatives a decade (or more) ago, and gotten us into 7 (oops …8) wars, attacked our liberties even more than Bush and allowed the Fed to dramatically expand its powers.

Americans didn't want bailouts, but Obama helped to facilitate trillions in direct and hidden bailouts.

Obama doesn't support the 99%. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

As Yves Smith notes:

A saying I learned in Caracas: "A politician is someone who gets in front of a mob and tries to call it a parade."

TSA: US Dept of Tyranny

2011-10-14T11:29:00.001-05:00

House Bill Would Criminalize Satire of TSA

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
October 14, 2011

This parody may soon be illegal.

On September 22, 2011, H.R. 3011 was introduced in the House. It is entitled the "Transportation Security Administration Authorization Act of 2011" and it contains some curious language.

Two thirds of the way through the ponderous bill, in Sec. 295, we find the following:

Whoever, except with the written permission of the Assistant Secretary for Transportation Security (or the Director of the Federal Air Marshal Service for issues involving the Federal Air Marshal Service), knowingly uses the words 'Transportation Security Administration', 'United States Transportation Security Administration', 'Federal Air Marshal Service', 'United States Federal Air Marshal Service', 'Federal Air Marshals', the initials 'T.S.A.', 'F.A.M.S.', 'F.A.M.', or any colorable imitation of such words or initials, or the likeness of a Transportation Security Administration or Federal Air Marshal Service badge, logo, or insignia on any item of apparel, in connection with any advertisement, circular, book, pamphlet, software, or other publication, or with any play, motion picture, broadcast, telecast, or other production, in a matter that is reasonably calculated to convey the impression that the wearer of the item of apparel is acting pursuant to the legal authority of the Transportation Security Administration or Federal Air Marshal Service, or to convey the impression that such advertisement, circular, book, pamphlet, software, or other publication, or such play, motion picture, broadcast, telecast, or other production, is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the Transportation Security Administration or Federal Air Marshal Service .(Emphasis added.)

In other words, if you print a t-shirt or produce a publication with a TSA logo, the government may soon be able to arrest and prosecute you.

The language states that it would be illegal to "convey the impression" that you are representing the TSA, but this interpretation would likely be left to federal prosecutors.

In the past, satire was protected under the First Amendment, but it may soon be illegal to poke fun at the TSA or use its logo or even utter its name. Notice there is no exception in the above language for parody.

Political satire is as old as the Greeks and the Bible. But it may now become a punishable crime if this legislation is enacted.

The TSA and the Justice Department are obviously serious about making sure we don't criticize their Gestapo operation. Since they began irradiating citizens with naked body scanners and shoving their hands down the pants of old ladies and grade school kids, public outrage has reached a crescendo.

Ready For A Washing! - Occupy Wall Street Crowd

2011-10-14T11:23:00.001-05:00

Is Matt Drudge Is Trying To Make A Point Here?

I love Drudge Report.

Sometimes I wonder if everyone fully appreciates Matt Drudge's editorial sense of humor.

UPDATE I: Welcome Instapundit readers!

UPDATE II: Image updated to include the full context. Heh.

usatoday

2011-10-14T07:50:00.000-05:00

A tax increase generates less revenue than expected? Wow! I'm shocked! Are you shocked?

What would Vince Lombardi do?

2011-10-11T08:58:00.001-05:00

Vince Lombardi only respected all-in efforts and single-minded focus on winning. Some of his "winner" quotes :

Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing.
If winning isn't important, why do they keep score?
Winners never quit and quitters never win.
The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work.
Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.
People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.

So, what would Vince Lombardi do?

The ignorance of the masses – Soviet flag at OccupyPhiladelphia

2011-10-11T08:05:00.001-05:00

The ignorance of the masses – Soviet flag at #OccupyPhiladelphia

Posted by William A. Jacobson Monday, October 10, 2011 at 9:00am

We've seen this before, at the celebration of Obama's victory in 2008, where students unfurled the Soviet flag in celebration. I chalked that up to profound historical ignorance, much like the chic wearing of Che Guevara and Mao t-shirts.

The carrying of the Soviet flag at the Occupy Philadelphia protest, by contrast, more likely was knowing, but still ignorant.

It was an insult to the tens of millions who perished under Stalin and who suffered under communist rule; carrying the flag in Philadelphia, the birthplace of liberty, was particularly ironic. (Video here, h/t @FormerDeminTX)

FACT CHECK: Obama claims miss some evidence

2011-10-07T07:40:00.001-05:00

When Obama's state-run AP turns on him, you know he's in trouble...

FACT CHECK: Obama claims miss some evidence

Email this Story

Oct 7, 4:17 AM (ET)

By JIM KUHNHENN

(AP) President Barack Obama smiles during his news conference in the East Room of the White House in...
Full Image

WASHINGTON (AP) - Are President Barack Obama's ideas for job creation really bipartisan as he claims? Not when the means for paying for them are put in the equation.

The president dodged various facts and and left some evidence in the dust in his latest challenge to Republicans to get behind his jobs program or offer a real alternative.

A look at some of the claims in his fast-paced news conference and how they compare with the facts:

OBAMA: "If it turns out that there are Republicans who are opposed to this bill, they need to explain to me, but more importantly to their constituencies and the American people, why they're opposed, and what would they do."

THE FACTS: While Republicans might not be campaigning on their opposition to Obama's plan, they've hardly kept their objections a secret.

In a memorandum to House Republicans Sept. 16, House Speaker John Boehner and members of the GOP leadership said they could find common ground with Obama on the extension of certain business tax breaks, waiving a payment withholding provision for federal contractors, incentives for hiring veterans, and job training measures in connection with unemployment insurance.

They objected to new spending on public works programs, suggesting instead that Congress and the president work out those priorities in a highway spending bill. And they raised concerns about Obama's payroll tax cuts for workers and small businesses, arguing that the benefits of a one-year tax cut would be short-lived. The memo also pointed out that reducing payroll taxes, which pay for Social Security, temporarily forces Social Security to tap the government's general fund. And it opposed additional spending to prevent layoffs of teachers, police officers and other public workers.

---__

OBAMA: "Every idea that we've put forward are ones that traditionally have been supported by Democrats and Republicans alike."

THE FACTS: Obama proposes to pay for his jobs bill by raising taxes, something traditionally opposed by Republicans and, in the form Obama proposed it, even some Democrats. Senate Democrats were so allergic to Obama's approach, which relied largely on limiting deductions that can be taken by individuals making over $200,000 a year and couples making more than $250,000, that they're eliminating it and replacing it with a new tax on millionaires.

In claiming bipartisan support for the components of his proposal, the president appears to be referring just to what the plan would do, not how it's paid for, but that's a crucial distinction he doesn't make.

Some of tax-cutting proposals offered by Obama have received significant Republican support in the past. But some of the new spending he proposes has received only nominal Republican backing. Evidence of bipartisanship provided by the White House includes legislation last year that provided $10 billion to prevent teacher layoffs. It won the support of only two Republican senators - Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine and among the most moderate Republicans in Congress. Another example cited by the White House was his proposal last year to offer tax breaks to businesses that hire new workers - it passed the House 217-201 with six Republican votes.

---_

OBAMA: "The answer we're getting right now is: Well, we're going to roll back all these Obama regulations... Does anybody really think that that is going to create jobs right now and meet the challenges of a global economy?"

THE FACTS: Well, yes, some think it will. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce last month submitted a jobs proposal to Obama that included a call to ease regulations on businesses. It specifically called for streamlining environmental reviews on major construction projects and to delay the issuance of some potentially burdensome regulations until the economy and employment have improved. In the letter, Chamber President Thomas Donohue also called on Congress to pass legislation that would require congressional approval of major regulations. The chamber did not indicate how many jobs such regulatory changes could create, but it said: "Immediate regulatory relief is required in order to begin moving $1 trillion-$2 trillion in accumulated private capital off of the sidelines and into business expansion."

---_

OBAMA: "We can either keep taxes exactly as they are for millionaires and billionaires, with loopholes that lead them to have lower tax rates, in some cases, than plumbers and teachers, or we can put teachers and construction workers and veterans back on the job."

THE FACTS: True, "in some cases" wealthy people can exploit loopholes to make their tax rate lower than for people of middle or low income. In recent rhetoric, Obama had suggested it was commonplace for rich people to pay lower rates than others, a claim not supported by IRS statistics. But on Thursday, Obama accurately stated that it only happens sometimes.

In 2009, 1,470 households filed tax returns with incomes above $1 million yet paid no federal income tax, according to the IRS. Yet that was less than 1 percent of returns with incomes above $1 million. On average, taxpayers who made $1 million or more paid 24.4 percent of their income in federal income taxes; those making $100,000 to $125,000 paid 9.9 percent; those making $50,000 to $60,000 paid 6.3 percent. The White House argues that when payroll taxes - paid only on the first $106,800 of wages - are factored in, more middle class workers wind up with a higher tax rate than millionaires.

---

OBAMA: "China has been very aggressive in gaming the trading system to its advantage and to the disadvantage of other countries, particularly the United States. .... And currency manipulation is one example of it, or at least intervening in the currency markets in ways that have led their currency to be valued lower than the market would normally dictate. And that makes their exports cheaper and that makes our exports to them more expensive."

THE FACTS: While Obama complained about China's efforts to keeps its currency undervalued to gain trade advantages, his administration has repeatedly refused to brand China as a currency manipulator in a report that the Treasury Department is required to send to Congress twice a year.

Such a designation would trigger negotiations between the two countries and could ultimately lead to U.S. trade sanctions against China.

The administration has been reluctant to brand China a currency manipulator, as have past administrations, because the United States depends on China to buy U.S. Treasury securities to help finance America's budget deficits. China owns $1.17 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities, making it the largest foreign holder of Treasury debt.

---_

Associated Press writers Erica Werner, Martin Crutsinger and Calvin Woodward contributed to this report.

#OccupyWhiteHouse2012

2011-10-07T07:19:00.000-05:00

#OccupyWhiteHouse2012 – The hashtag for the rest of us

Posted by William A. Jacobson Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 12:47pm

The silent majority.

The ones who pay the bills, and the taxes, and the tuitions, and the pensions, and the benefits, for the people who falsely claim to be the 99%.

The ones who did not graduate from the school of perpetual expectations and handouts.

The ones who falsely have been called terrorists and extremists and racists because they dared to object to trying the same socialist policies here that have failed everywhere they have been tried before.

The ones who showed up at the polls in 2010.

The ones who will show up at the polls in 2012:

#OccupyWhiteHouse2012

Via The Right Scoop:

Biden said it

2011-09-30T08:06:00.000-05:00

Vice President Joe Biden told Florida radio station WLRN on Thursday that voters should hold President Barack Obama, not former President George W. Bush, accountable for the poor state of America's economy.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/29/biden-voters-should-blame-obama-not-bush-for-economy

Vice President Joe Biden gestures as he talks to fourth grade students during a visit to G.K.E., Gertrude K. Edelman, Sabal Palm Elementary in North Miami Beach, Fla., Friday, Sept. 23, 2011. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

A serious plan to replace Obamacare

2011-09-29T09:08:00.000-05:00

A serious plan to replace Obamacare

Leave Fatty McAwesome! Alone

Pass the popcorn: MA Democrats revolt against Obama

All in: DOJ appeals ObamaCare ruling to Supreme Court

Solyndra's multimillion-dollar white elephant
Solyndra Said to Have Violated Terms of Its U.S. Loan

"Obamacare Has Arrived in the Supreme Court"

Herman Cain: Black Community "Brainwashed" Into Voting For Dems

bbc

2011-09-28T22:09:00.000-05:00

you've been forewarned...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/bbc-speechless-trader-tells-truth-collapse-comingand-goldman-rules-world

Alfred E. Neuman Goes to the UN

2011-09-21T16:07:00.000-05:00

photo of the day..

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/20/7862290-barack-obama-joins-open-government-partnership-for-group-photo

Trapped in Keynesian Twilight Zone

2011-09-19T20:25:00.001-05:00

President Obama's latest jobs speech was like watching the rerun of a bad horror movie. He repeatedly repackages his failed Keynesian economic policies into the next "big" jobs program. In response, our economy crumbles around us. President Obama is clearly trapped in the Keynesian Twilight Zone.

The soundtrack is eerie; the speeches are eerier.

Obama TRAPPED in Keynesian Twilight Zone

www.youtube.com

Fwd: HOPE SKIDS TO LOWEST SINCE 1980...

2011-09-16T14:49:00.000-05:00

Of course there is little HOPE when we all know we are being led by a socialist that has no experience in anything other than community organizing. Obama's leading us in the wrong direction -- he refuses to lower the business tax to create jobs - and we're all doomed unless and until we fire him next November.

HOPE SKIDS TO LOWEST SINCE 1980...

via Drudge Report Feed on 9/16/11

HOPE SKIDS TO LOWEST SINCE 1980...

Attack Watch: We've seen this gestapo tactic before from the Obama regime

2011-09-15T08:22:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Take Your Quisling "Attack Watch" Snitch Site and SHOVE IT!

http://zillablog.marezilla.com/2011/09/take-your-quisling-attack-watch-snitch.html

The Obama administration has launched yet another web campaign to get Americans to betray their friends, families and neighbors by reporting political dissenters to the tyrannical regime, presumably for "re-education" or gulag, whichever they think they can get away with.

Professor Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit asks, "HAVEN'T THEY TRIED THIS BEFORE?"

The answer is, of course, that yes, they have. Snitches were previously asked by the government to rat out people opposed Obamacare to flag.gov, despite the fact that it was illegal for the lawless Obama regime to do so. Eventually the program was allegedly stopped, after much public outcry, but apparently the WTF campaign thinks we've forgotten about it because they are at it again. The PJ Tattler has the content of the mass email sent out announcing the new "Attack Watch" website HERE (h/t Insty). During the 2008 campaign, Obama had a similar site, "fight the smears" which of course was dedicated to vilifying anyone who raised legitimate concerns about his shady past and radical associations as RAAAAACIST.

Liberally Conservative is intimately familiar with the regime's electronic 'enemies list' as that site had been placed on previous incarnations of the new snitch site repeatedly in the past, and surely will be on the new one as well. Here is an excerpt from the LC post about this:

If you question Obama then you're smearing him. This site made it to Fight the Smears at least 27 times and we back up everything here with facts, substantiated with sources and documents. We provide plenty of opinion based on those facts.
The site, a compendium of claims with rebuttals by the president's team, is a throwback to the 2008 campaign's Fight the Smears site.
AttackWatch lists a "news feed" where people can click over to find analyses from liberal groups like Media Matters and Think Progress that offer defenses of the president's position. RTWT

Waznmentobe looks into who is behind the newest version of Obama's Orwellian obsession and, what a surprise, it's Obama for America, also known as Organizing for America, or Obama's 'civilian army' of propagandizing agitators. Last fall we had a lot of fun, here and at the A-C page using the progs' own tools against them for the opposition by using the OfA website to help facilitate the 2010 electoral shellacking of the left. It was glorious. Here's what Whoopie found about OfA:

Here is the poop on Obama for America (aka: BarackObama.com) the official re-election campaign website.
Presented by the Federal Election Commission
Committee ID: C00431445
OBAMA FOR AMERICA
PO BOX 8102
CHICAGO, IL 60680
Treasurer Name:   NESBITT, MARTIN H
Committee Designation:     P (PRINCIPAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE OF A CANDIDATE)
Committee Type:     PRESIDENTIAL
Candidate State:   Presidential Candidate
Link To: OBAMA, BARACK
And here is a link showing which companies, unions and organizations who contributed money for this website.

Whoopie also notes what a cheesy, poorly put together, cheap looking website that "Attack Watch" is. You can see for yourself without actually going there (they have cookies to track you after you leave the AW site) by visiting Lady Liberty who graciously posted some screen shots to spare us the trouble.

Dana Loesch at Big Journalism has a great post about this (h/t Larwyn's Linx at Doug Ross), and says:

This sounds eerily familiar to the Obama Truth Squad we had here in St. Louis.

The White House has been working overtime to gain control of the narrative and save Obama's reelection bid after numerous polls show his approval rating tanking. Recently the administration flooded reporters' inboxes with emails on his jobs address. RTWT

Say Anything's Rob Port wrote:

Apparently, the Orwellian overtones of this sort of thing haven't quite sunk in with Obama and his people. He's asking us to put our ears to our neighbor's keyholes and report that which is inconvenient for the political agenda of the President. If that makes you feel uncomfortable, it should. It's not all that far from there toward targeting critics for intimidation. RTWT

Rob also posted this great video, the "Attack Watch Commercial": Awesome.

From the Desk of Lady Liberty also has the video along with some must read commentary and the aforementioned screen shots.. LadyLiberty1885 bravely scoured that vile website so we wouldn't have to, here is some of what she has to say about it:

It's rather disgusting and very much in line with the tactics used by the Stasi (Ministry for State Security) of East Germany. Make no mistake folks, this is Obama compiling an enemies list, but it's not one composed of Political or media enemies as in the past. This one includes you and me. Average citizens. He is essentially saying to you or anyone else, 'hey, did you hear something about me? Did someone attack me? Go ahead, tell me about it.' It's insidious on a whole new level – even for this Chicago Thug-in-Chief. I went through the site quite thoroughly and I can flat-out say with 100% certitude that it is nothing more than a propaganda machine. This is of course, a foregone conclusion as we already knew just looking at its Orwellian 1984 color scheme that it would be. What floors me about it is the blatant fact this thing is meant to pit people against each other; neighbor vs neighbor, co-worker vs co-worker and so on. It's meant to induce paranoia about who is listening to you and why they are listening. The part that is already backfiring, as Twitter is showing us already, is that WE DON'T CARE. We've had enough. RTWT

I had a really hard time resisting the urge to paste the Lady's whole post here because it is so awesome, be sure not to miss it. And she's right, we don't care and we have had more than enough of this crap to last a lifetime.

Obama, his despicable regime, every single media hack and all the koolaid swilling ZeroZombies who support this idiocy can report us all they like, it ain't gonna change a damned thing, they still suck and we all know it. So they can take their quisling Attack Watch rat fink snitch site and SHOVE IT!

Update: Obama's juvenile tyrannical idea is backfiring as people are having a field day giving his idiocy the mocking that it so richly deserves. iOwnTheWorld has a great post about the fun we're all having with the #AttackWatch hashtag on Twitter, and Adrienne has collected a few cute ones for our enjoyment at her place. See also Moonbattery for even more fun.

This post is linked at Blazing Cat Fur. Thank you, BCF!

This post is listed in Larwyn's Linx at Doug Ross. Thanks, Doug!

Sarah Palin IS the one liberals have been waiting for

2011-09-13T10:42:00.001-05:00

Sarah IS the ONE liberals have been waiting for!

Sarah Palin may be the one liberals have been waiting for

Posted by William A. Jacobson Friday, September 9, 2011 at 9:55am

I made the point the other day that Sarah Palin's speech in Indianola, Iowa, went to the core of the Tea Party movement:

I don't know what the future holds for Palin, whether she will be a candidate or just a powerful voice against crony capitalism. I also don't know whether the two are compatible. I am not convinced that even the Republican electorate is ready for the message. That's for another day.

What I do know is that in attacking crony capitalism, Palin gave voice to those of us who refuse to buy into the Democratic narrative that the answer to Democratic union pandering is Republican big business pandering. It's not about them, it's about us.

Pigs fly today. Anand Giridharadas at The NY Times picks up on this theme, recognizing that in vilifying Palin liberals have closed their minds to Palin's ideas, which are liberal (in the traditional sense, not the modern Democratic Party sense):

Ms. Palin's third point was more striking still: in contrast to the sweeping paeans to capitalism and the free market delivered by the Republican presidential candidates whose ranks she has yet to join, she sought to make a distinction between good capitalists and bad ones. The good ones, in her telling, are those small businesses that take risks and sink and swim in the churning market; the bad ones are well-connected megacorporations that live off bailouts, dodge taxes and profit terrifically while creating no jobs.

Strangely, she was saying things that liberals might like, if not for Ms. Palin's having said them.

A severe injustice has been perpetrated on the American people not by the vile derangement directed at Palin by the mainstream media, left-blogosphere and establishment conservatives, but by the closing of their collective minds.

The author also hints at possible things to come:

Is there a hint of a political breakthrough hiding in there?

The political conversation in the United States is paralyzed by a simplistic division of labor. Democrats protect that portion of human flourishing that is threatened by big money and enhanced by government action. Republicans protect that portion of human flourishing that is threatened by big government and enhanced by the free market.

What is seldom said is that human flourishing is a complex and delicate thing, and that we needn't choose whether government or the market jeopardizes it more, because both can threaten it at the same time.

Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism.

On one side would be those Americans who believe in the power of vast, well-developed institutions like Goldman Sachs, the Teamsters Union, General Electric, Google and the U.S. Department of Education to make the world better. On the other side would be people who believe that power, whether public or private, becomes corrupt and unresponsive the more remote and more anonymous it becomes; they would press to live in self-contained, self-governing enclaves that bear the burden of their own prosperity.

No one knows yet whether Ms. Palin will actually run for president. But she did just get more interesting.

This probably will not signal a sea change in media coverage of Palin, or among conservative pundits. Liberals and conservatives alike have been played for fools by their media and their parties.

But hopefully it is a starting point of the recognition that Palin stands alone among major political figures in the United States seeking a transformation of the country consistent with its founding principles, not against them, principles which used to appeal to liberals. Palin's anti-statist anti-crony capitalism message has the power to reach across parties, which is why that message gets buried in Palin Derangement Syndrome.

With Palin, liberals will not get their nanny state, but that nanny state is disappearing by economic necessity anyway. But they also will not get a crushing corporatist/unionist state serving the interests of the politically well-connected, which is where we are heading rapidly, and there is no offender worse than Barack Obama.

Oddly enough, Sarah Palin may be the one liberals have been waiting for.

Latest debate

2011-09-13T08:04:00.001-05:00

Perry just said what I've been saying for 3 years... Why does Obama want to keep us fighting in Afghanistan?

Perry surprised me (have I not been paying enough attention?) by essentially arguing, near the end of the debate, that we should remove our troops from Afghanistan now. By the way, the audience was quite generous with its cheers at any suggestion that we should have a more isolationist foreign policy.

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/some-observations-tea-partycnn-debate

Looking

2011-09-12T10:03:00.000-05:00

If you're looking for the economy, you won't find it
up there. What? Oh you're looking for the debt ceiling.

Why liberals fear the ‘Lochner’ decision

2011-09-12T09:25:00.001-05:00

Why liberals fear the 'Lochner' decision

By George F. Will, Published: September 7

Liberal certitudes continue to dissolve, the most recent solvent being a robust new defense of a 1905 Supreme Court decision that liberals have long reviled — and misrepresented. To understand why the court correctly decided Lochner v. New York and why this is relevant to current arguments, read David E. Bernstein's "Rehabilitating Lochner: Defending Individual Rights against Progressive Reform."

Since the New Deal, courts have stopped defending liberty of contract and other unenumerated rights grounded in America's natural rights tradition. These are referred to by the Ninth Amendment, which explicitly protects unenumerated rights "retained by the people," and by the "privileges or immunities" and "liberty" cited in the 14th Amendment. Progressivism, Bernstein argues, is hostile to America's premise that individuals possess rights that preexist government and are not fully enumerated in the Constitution. This doctrine stands athwart liberalism's aspiration to erase constitutional limits on government's regulatory powers.

An 1895 New York law limited bakery employees to working 10 hours a day and 60 hours a week. Ostensibly, this was health and safety legislation; actually, it was rent-seeking by large, unionized bakeries and the unions. Corporate bakeries supported the legislation, which burdened their small, family-owned competitors. The bakers union hoped to suppress the small, non-unionized bakeries that depended on flexible work schedules.

One such was owned by Joseph Lochner, who challenged the law, prevailing in the Supreme Court, 5 to 4. The majority said "clean and wholesome bread" does not depend on limiting workers' hours: Workers are "in no sense wards of the state," and there is no evidence that baking is an especially unhealthful profession, so the law was an unconstitutional "interference" with an unenumerated right of individuals, the liberty of contract.

The main dissent radiated progressivism's statism and paternalism: Government may limit working hours lest workers damage their "physical and mental capacity to serve the State, and to provide for those dependent upon them." In another dissent, ultimately famous and hugely influential, Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose judicial restraint often expressed his dogmatic majoritarianism, defended "the right of a majority to embody their opinions in law." He said liberty should not be construed "to prevent the natural outcome of a dominant opinion."

Princeton's president, Woodrow Wilson, agreed, dismissing "the inalienable rights of the individual" as "nonsense" inimical to government's ability to efficiently work its progressive will. So much for the idea that one of the Constitution's primary purposes is the protection of individual rights against majority tyranny.

Progressives celebrated Holmes's gift to government of almost untrammeled police powers. He said courts should defer to economic regulations because the Constitution does not "embody a particular economic theory." Thus began liberals' distortion of Lochner as expressing the court's commitment to laissez-faire doctrine.

Actually, the decision flowed from bedrock American doctrine: The individual possesses inalienable rights — here, liberty of contract — that cannot be legislated away for casual or disreputable reasons. Hence progressives' frequent denunciations of "individualism" — allowing individual rights, particularly those of property and contract, to impede the administrative state's regulation of society, immune from judicial review.

Bernstein recounts how liberty of contract was invoked — sometimes successfully, usually not — against legislatures that declared women unsuited to practice law or limited women to working fewer hours than men. Labor unions representing male bartenders produced Michigan's law banning female bartenders.

Other laws favored by progressives defended family men from "destructive" competition with female workers who, by working outside the home, "weakened the race." A feminist correctly argued, on Lochner's natural rights grounds, that restricting women's liberty of contract regarding hours of work "amounts to confiscation of whatever amount would have been earned during the forbidden hours." In 1926, Georgia's Supreme Court cited Lochner's affirmation of liberty of contract to overturn a law prohibiting black barbers from cutting white children's hair.

Lochner was successfully invoked against laws enforcing residential segregation by race but unsuccessfully against laws banning miscegenation. Many progressives supported such laws as enabling government to regulate racial friction. And after the triumph of progressive jurisprudence during the New Deal, courts capitulated to legislatures in the name of democratic deference to what Holmes called the "dominant opinion." It became mostly futile to invoke Lochner's logic — that individual rights often trump government's powers to boss people around.

Long execrated by most law professors, Lochner is the liberals' least favorite decision because its premises pose a threat to their aspiration, which is to provide an emancipation proclamation for regulatory government. The rehabilitation of Lochner is another step in the disarmament of such thinking.

georgewill@washpost.com

Re: Newt had the best lines from the debate

2011-09-09T12:00:00.001-05:00

There you go again, blaming the drug manufacturers.

There are way more drugs today than decades ago.

It cost lots of money to produce and test drugs.

So you want your drugs for free, is that it?

In the free market, drugs would cost less than they do today.

Why? Because the government wouldn't be there to artificially make the costs higher.

Competition would make costs come down. Today there is little competition because

government is paying for many of these drugs to be doled out to people who can't pay for them.

What did these people do decades ago when the drugs weren't available?

They exercised, that's what they did. They didn't need the drugs.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Obamacare IS NOT LOWERING THE COST OF HEALTHCARE.

If anything, it is going up. The only thing that changes is that companies are not hiring!

You, more than anyone, should be outraged at Pelosi, Reid, Obama and the rest of the Democrats

for jamming Obamacare down our collective throats when they should have been concentrating instead on the bad economy!

On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 11:33 AM, dude wrote:

Not sure which country you live in buy as an almost absolute certainty, the cost of healthcare has increased steadily each year for at least the last 25 years....and not evenly relative to the provider cost. that speaks to the unchecked greed of drug and medical providers. entities like medicare and va services get to claim what their discount will be...you and i dont.
saying in defense of our high cost healthcare that we are better than everyone else is illogical. we do have sophisticated medical capabilities, but our ability or willingness to get an appropriate treatment is overshadowed by the greedy who push newer, higher priced drugs and procedures for their gain

On Fri Sep 9th, 2011 9:30 AM EDT indi wrote:

>Many of the nations CEOs and company spokesman are saying what Newt Gingrich
>said in the debate the other day: Obamacare isn't the right solution to the
>nation's healthcare downward spiral. In fact, these companies are
>specifically NOT hiring because of the mandates in the law.
>
>Myth: Healthcare is in a downward spiral
>Truth: Healthcare is quite good, the best in the USA as it has ever been, in
>fact the best in the world.
>Truth: The cost of healthcare is in an upward spiral - but then everyone
>wants quality healthcare and that costs quite a lot.
>Truth: Too many people in America want something for nothing. There should
>be a significant cost to using healthcare - period. A copay would be a good
>thing, and not a tiny copay, but something on the order of 20-35%.
>Truth: Healtcare is also expensive BECAUSE of Medicare and insurance. When
>individuals who use healthcare don't share in the cost, then providers tend
>to overcharge because they can. Over decades it spirals into huge costs.
>
>The real problem is that people are becoming increasingly more unhealthy.
>They don't get enough exercise and the overeat.
>
>The solution to the cost of healthcare is not the government taking over the
>whole system.
>The better solution is competition amongst health insurance providers across
>state lines (The Feds prevent that now through previous legislation).
>There are many other provisions as well: Doctor's malpractice insurance
>is ridiculously high because the lawyers always want to bring law suits
>against them. These suits should have an upper limit.
>
>
>
>On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 9:00 AM, dude wrote:
>
>> Increasing the size of gov is not what i would choose...but if the size
>> increases because problems of the nation are finally being recognized and
>> addressed. it is because the obama wh has targeted problems such as the
>> nations healthcare downward spiral that causes even you heartache and
>> applied a solution for which the money grubbing reps were never even
>> concerned with
>>
>> On Thu Sep 8th, 2011 3:54 PM EDT indi wrote:
>>
>> >Sorry, A choice between Obama and Obama is not on the table.
>> >Obama is a clown and has NO EXPERIENCE (except for being a radical
>> leftist).
>> >Obama is a proven antagonist to free markets who is an ELITIST who thinks
>> we
>> >are his subjects.
>> >Obama is only quick on the draw when it comes to INCREASING the size of
>> >government.
>> >Obama is REALLY good at bringing down the economy - that's now proven.
>> >
>> >NOBAMA!
>> >
>> >Prosperity will come as soon as Obama is out of office.
>> >
>> >On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 3:02 PM, dude wrote:
>> >
>> >> good questions...no basis...how about this...
>> >> would I rather have some clown without experience like Palin at the seat
>> of
>> >> the most powerful nation on earth....or
>> >> ... a proven frat boy from texas who is quick on the draw and able to
>> pull
>> >> the nation down to the opposite of prosperity?
>> >> ------------------------------
>> >> *From:* indi
>> >>
>> >> *Subject:* Re: Newt had the best lines from the debate
>> >>
>> >> Who would you rather have:
>> >>
>> >> Obama and the Dems destroying the economy, or
>> >> Any Republican doing nothing, and the economy comes back on its own
>> >>
>> >> ?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 1:32 PM, dude wrote:
>> >>
>> >> rammed through...with the do nothing repubs ...doing nothing good
>> >> ------------------------------
>> >> *From:* indi
>> >>
>> >> Fact: MSNBC is a totally biased organization towards Democrats.
>> >> While NBC representative Brian Williams had more than his share of
>> sneering
>> >> biased questions, it was Williams's co-moderator, Politico editor John
>> F.
>> >> Harris who laid on the snark in his attempts to bait and attack the
>> >> candidates.
>> >> Such unbalanced questioning is par-for-the-course for Republicans
>> >> competing at the national level. More often than not, they take it in
>> >> stride. Tonight, though, Newt Gingrich was having none of it as he went
>> >> full-on after Harris's attempts to insert Gingrich into a non-existent
>> >> debate about an individual mandate to purchase insurance at the national
>> >> level that Republicans simply are not having. Video and transcript
>> follow.
>> >>
>> >> The transcript:
>> >>
>> >> JOHN HARRIS: Speaker Gingrich, it sounds like we have a genuine
>> >> philosophical disagreement. In Massachusetts, a mandate, almost no
>> >> uninsured—in Texas, a more limited approach, about a quarter uninsured.
>> >> Who's got the better end of this argument?
>> >> NEWT GINGRICH: Well, I'm frankly not interested in your effort to get
>> >> Republicans fighting each other.
>> >> (Harris laughs, audience applauds)
>> >> GINGRICH: The fact is—
>> >> HARRIS: Speaker Gingrich, we've got—
>> >> GINGRICH: The fact is—
>> >> HARRIS: We've got—
>> >> GINGRICH: No, no we don't—
>> >> HARRIS: We've got a choice between the individual mandate or not.
>> Anyway,
>> >> go ahead.
>> >> * GINGRICH: You'd have, you would like to puff this up into some giant
>> >> thing. The fact is, every person up here understands Obamacare is a
>> >> disaster. It is a disaster procedurally. It was rammed through after
>> they
>> >> lost Teddy Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts. It was written badly, it was
>> >> never reconciled. It can't be implemented. It is killing this economy.*
>> >> * And if this president had any concern for working Americans, he'd walk
>> >> in Thursday night and ask us to repeal it because it's a monstrosity.
>> Every
>> >> person up here agrees with that.*
>> >> (Audience applauds)
>> >> And let me just say-- since I still have a little time left, let me
>> just
>> >> say—
>> >> HARRIS: Sure.
>> >> GINGRICH: I for one, and I hope all of my friends up here, going to
>> >> repudiate every effort of the news media to get Republicans to fight
>> each
>> >> other to protect Barack Obama who deserves to be defeated. And all of us
>> are
>> >> committed as a team, whoever the nominee is, we are all for defeating
>> Barack
>> >> Obama.
>> >>

Re: Newt had the best lines from the debate

2011-09-09T08:30:00.001-05:00

Many of the nations CEOs and company spokesman are saying what Newt Gingrich said in the debate the other day: Obamacare isn't the right solution to the nation's healthcare downward spiral. In fact, these companies are specifically NOT hiring because of the mandates in the law.

Myth: Healthcare is in a downward spiral

Truth: Healthcare is quite good, the best in the USA as it has ever been, in fact the best in the world.

Truth: The cost of healthcare is in an upward spiral - but then everyone wants quality healthcare and that costs quite a lot.

Truth: Too many people in America want something for nothing. There should be a significant cost to using healthcare - period. A copay would be a good thing, and not a tiny copay, but something on the order of 20-35%.

Truth: Healtcare is also expensive BECAUSE of Medicare and insurance. When individuals who use healthcare don't share in the cost, then providers tend to overcharge because they can. Over decades it spirals into huge costs.

The real problem is that people are becoming increasingly more unhealthy. They don't get enough exercise and the overeat.

The solution to the cost of healthcare is not the government taking over the whole system.

The better solution is competition amongst health insurance providers across state lines (The Feds prevent that now through previous legislation).

There are many other provisions as well: Doctor's malpractice insurance is ridiculously high because the lawyers always want to bring law suits against them. These suits should have an upper limit.

On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 9:00 AM, dude wrote:

Increasing the size of gov is not what i would choose...but if the size increases because problems of the nation are finally being recognized and addressed. it is because the obama wh has targeted problems such as the nations healthcare downward spiral that causes even you heartache and applied a solution for which the money grubbing reps were never even concerned with

On Thu Sep 8th, 2011 3:54 PM EDT indi wrote:

>Sorry, A choice between Obama and Obama is not on the table.
>Obama is a clown and has NO EXPERIENCE (except for being a radical leftist).
>Obama is a proven antagonist to free markets who is an ELITIST who thinks we
>are his subjects.
>Obama is only quick on the draw when it comes to INCREASING the size of
>government.
>Obama is REALLY good at bringing down the economy - that's now proven.
>
>NOBAMA!
>
>Prosperity will come as soon as Obama is out of office.
>
>On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 3:02 PM, dude wrote:
>
>> good questions...no basis...how about this...
>> would I rather have some clown without experience like Palin at the seat of
>> the most powerful nation on earth....or
>> ... a proven frat boy from texas who is quick on the draw and able to pull
>> the nation down to the opposite of prosperity?
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* indi
>>
>> *Subject:* Re: Newt had the best lines from the debate
>>
>> Who would you rather have:
>>
>> Obama and the Dems destroying the economy, or
>> Any Republican doing nothing, and the economy comes back on its own
>>
>> ?
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 1:32 PM, dude wrote:
>>
>> rammed through...with the do nothing repubs ...doing nothing good
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* indi
>>
>> Fact: MSNBC is a totally biased organization towards Democrats.
>> While NBC representative Brian Williams had more than his share of sneering
>> biased questions, it was Williams's co-moderator, Politico editor John F.
>> Harris who laid on the snark in his attempts to bait and attack the
>> candidates.
>> Such unbalanced questioning is par-for-the-course for Republicans
>> competing at the national level. More often than not, they take it in
>> stride. Tonight, though, Newt Gingrich was having none of it as he went
>> full-on after Harris's attempts to insert Gingrich into a non-existent
>> debate about an individual mandate to purchase insurance at the national
>> level that Republicans simply are not having. Video and transcript follow.
>>
>> The transcript:
>>
>> JOHN HARRIS: Speaker Gingrich, it sounds like we have a genuine
>> philosophical disagreement. In Massachusetts, a mandate, almost no
>> uninsured—in Texas, a more limited approach, about a quarter uninsured.
>> Who's got the better end of this argument?
>> NEWT GINGRICH: Well, I'm frankly not interested in your effort to get
>> Republicans fighting each other.
>> (Harris laughs, audience applauds)
>> GINGRICH: The fact is—
>> HARRIS: Speaker Gingrich, we've got—
>> GINGRICH: The fact is—
>> HARRIS: We've got—
>> GINGRICH: No, no we don't—
>> HARRIS: We've got a choice between the individual mandate or not. Anyway,
>> go ahead.
>> * GINGRICH: You'd have, you would like to puff this up into some giant
>> thing. The fact is, every person up here understands Obamacare is a
>> disaster. It is a disaster procedurally. It was rammed through after they
>> lost Teddy Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts. It was written badly, it was
>> never reconciled. It can't be implemented. It is killing this economy.*
>> * And if this president had any concern for working Americans, he'd walk
>> in Thursday night and ask us to repeal it because it's a monstrosity. Every
>> person up here agrees with that.*
>> (Audience applauds)
>> And let me just say-- since I still have a little time left, let me just
>> say—
>> HARRIS: Sure.
>> GINGRICH: I for one, and I hope all of my friends up here, going to
>> repudiate every effort of the news media to get Republicans to fight each
>> other to protect Barack Obama who deserves to be defeated. And all of us are
>> committed as a team, whoever the nominee is, we are all for defeating Barack
>> Obama.
>>

Re: Solyndra

2011-09-08T15:11:00.000-05:00

Solyndra reps made 20 trips to WH before $500M award...

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Douglas Bauman <javadoug@gmail.com> wrote:

I just read that the FBI is raiding Solyndra as we speak.

When the president unfolds his new "jobs creation" program next Thursday lets hope it doesn't boil down to pouring more money into technology that isn't ready for prime time yet. Solyndra, one of our many "investments" just filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy after you and I guaranteed it a $535 million loan earlier this year.

So there's a thousand new jobs that didn't last long. Not that a thousand jobs were a bargain at $535 mil in the first place. See the lady with the box? We could have filled it up with money and just sent her and a thousand others home. Wait, that's pretty much what we did. Except that the workers didn't get the money either.

I'm not even going to say I told you so. I admit that I naively assumed that the "stimulus" would go towards the nation's infrastructure. Bad me for assuming. But not again. People, don't let him con you again.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you, you somanabish.

***update:

OK, this figures:
A solar energy company that intends to file for bankruptcy received $535 million in backing from the federal government and has a cozy history with Democrats and the Obama administration, campaign finance records show.

Shareholders and executives of Solyndra, a green energy company producing solar panels, fundraised for and donated to the Obama administration to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Solyndra

2011-09-08T15:06:00.000-05:00

I just read that the FBI is raiding Solyndra as we speak.

"Oh, they were all good ideas but the money
went bad before we could distribute it all."

When the president unfolds his new "jobs creation" program next Thursday lets hope it doesn't boil down to pouring more money into technology that isn't ready for prime time yet. Solyndra, one of our many "investments" just filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy after you and I guaranteed it a $535 million loan earlier this year.

So there's a thousand new jobs that didn't last long. Not that a thousand jobs were a bargain at $535 mil in the first place. See the lady with the box? We could have filled it up with money and just sent her and a thousand others home. Wait, that's pretty much what we did. Except that the workers didn't get the money either.

I'm not even going to say I told you so. I admit that I naively assumed that the "stimulus" would go towards the nation's infrastructure. Bad me for assuming. But not again. People, don't let him con you again.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you, you somanabish.

***update:

OK, this figures:

A solar energy company that intends to file for bankruptcy received $535 million in backing from the federal government and has a cozy history with Democrats and the Obama administration, campaign finance records show.

Shareholders and executives of Solyndra, a green energy company producing solar panels, fundraised for and donated to the Obama administration to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Nicest, most compassionate crook that George Clooney knows.

So when the photons hit the silicone, dollars flow into my pocket, right?

Re: Newt had the best lines from the debate

2011-09-08T12:14:00.000-05:00

Fact: MSNBC is a totally biased organization towards Democrats.

While NBC representative Brian Williams had more than his share of sneering biased questions, it was Williams's co-moderator, Politico editor John F. Harris who laid on the snark in his attempts to bait and attack the candidates.

Such unbalanced questioning is par-for-the-course for Republicans competing at the national level. More often than not, they take it in stride. Tonight, though, Newt Gingrich was having none of it as he went full-on after Harris's attempts to insert Gingrich into a non-existent debate about an individual mandate to purchase insurance at the national level that Republicans simply are not having. Video and transcript follow.

The transcript:

JOHN HARRIS: Speaker Gingrich, it sounds like we have a genuine philosophical disagreement. In Massachusetts, a mandate, almost no uninsured—in Texas, a more limited approach, about a quarter uninsured. Who's got the better end of this argument?

NEWT GINGRICH: Well, I'm frankly not interested in your effort to get Republicans fighting each other.

(Harris laughs, audience applauds)

GINGRICH: The fact is—

HARRIS: Speaker Gingrich, we've got—

GINGRICH: The fact is—

HARRIS: We've got—

GINGRICH: No, no we don't—

HARRIS: We've got a choice between the individual mandate or not. Anyway, go ahead.

GINGRICH: You'd have, you would like to puff this up into some giant thing. The fact is, every person up here understands Obamacare is a disaster. It is a disaster procedurally. It was rammed through after they lost Teddy Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts. It was written badly, it was never reconciled. It can't be implemented. It is killing this economy.

And if this president had any concern for working Americans, he'd walk in Thursday night and ask us to repeal it because it's a monstrosity. Every person up here agrees with that.

(Audience applauds)

And let me just say-- since I still have a little time left, let me just say—

HARRIS: Sure.

GINGRICH: I for one, and I hope all of my friends up here, going to repudiate every effort of the news media to get Republicans to fight each other to protect Barack Obama who deserves to be defeated. And all of us are committed as a team, whoever the nominee is, we are all for defeating Barack Obama.

Newt had the best lines from the debate

2011-09-08T12:06:00.001-05:00

Best of the night last night from the debate:

Newt:

"Every person up here understands ObamaCare is a disaster…..if this President had any concern for working Americans, he'd walk in Thursday night and ask us to repeal it – because it's a monstrosity. Every person up here agrees with that!"

Another home run: "…I hope all my friends up here are going to repudiate every effort of the news media to get Republicans to fight each other to protect Barack Obama, who deserves to be defeated; and all of us are committed as a team – whoever the nominee is – we are ALL for defeating Barack Obama." (Perry clapping.)

Well said, Mr. Speaker. Excellent!

Dowd in today’s The New York Times

2011-09-06T07:54:00.000-05:00

Maureen Dowd in the The New York Times:

The leader who was once a luminescent, inspirational force is now just a guy in a really bad spot.

His Republican rivals for 2012 have gone to town on the Labor Day weekend news of zero job growth, using the same line of attack Hillary used in 2008: Enough with the big speeches! What about some action?

Polls show that most Americans still like and trust the president; but they may no longer have faith that he's a smarty-pants who can fix the economy.

Just as Obama miscalculated in 2009 when Democrats had total control of Congress, holding out hope that G.O.P. lawmakers would come around on health care after all but three senators had refused to vote for the stimulus bill; just as he misread John Boehner this summer, clinging like a scorned lover to a dream that the speaker would drop his demanding new inamorata, the Tea Party, to strike a "grand" budget bargain, so the president once more set a trap for himself and gave Boehner the opportunity to dis him on the timing of his jobs speech this week.

Obama's re-election chances depend on painting the Republicans as disrespectful. So why would the White House act disrespectful by scheduling a speech to a joint session of Congress at the exact time when the Republicans already had a debate planned?

And why is the White House so cocky about Obama as a TV draw against quick-draw Rick Perry? As James Carville acerbically noted, given a choice between watching an Obama speech and a G.O.P. debate, "I'd watch the debate, and I'm not even a Republican."

The White House caved, of course, and moved to Thursday, because there's nothing the Republicans say that he won't eagerly meet halfway.

No. 2 on David Letterman's Top Ten List of the president's plans for Labor Day: "Pretty much whatever the Republicans tell him he can do."

On MSNBC, the anchors were wistfully listening to old F.D.R. speeches, wishing that this president had some of that fight. But Obama can't turn into F.D.R. for the campaign because he aspires to the class that F.D.R. was a traitor to; and he can't turn into Harry Truman because he lacks the common touch. He has an acquired elitism.

Read the whole thing here.

Obama finally does the right thing

2011-09-02T11:48:00.001-05:00

This is the first correct move by Obama in 2 1/2 years.

He finally realizes "It's the economy stupid".

Especially at reelection time.

Obama halts controversial EPA regulation

By DINA CAPPIELLO - Associated Press,JULIE PACE - Associated Press | AP – 34 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Friday scrapped his administration's controversial plans to tighten smog rules, bowing to the demands of congressional Republicans and some business leaders.

Obama overruled the Environmental Protection Agency and directed administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the proposed regulation to reduce concentrations of smog's main ingredient, in part because of the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and uncertainty for businesses at a time of rampant uncertainty about an unsteady economy.

The announcement came shortly after a new government report on private sector employment showed that businesses essentially added no new jobs last month — and that the jobless rate remained stuck at a historically high 9.1 percent.

The withdrawal of the proposed regulation marks the latest in a string of retreats by Obama in the face of Republican opposition. Last December, he shelved, at least until the end of 2012, his insistence that Bush-era tax cuts should no longer apply to the wealthy. Earlier this year he avoided a government shutdown by agreeing to Republican demands for budget cuts. And this summer he acceded to more than a $1 trillion in spending reductions, with more to come, as the price for an agreement to raise the nation's debt ceiling.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, had muted praise for the White House, saying that withdrawal of the smog regulation was a good first step toward removing obstacles that are blocking business growth.

"But it is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to stopping Washington Democrats' agenda of tax hikes, more government 'stimulus' spending, and increased regulations, which are all making it harder to create more American jobs," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said.

Major industry groups had lobbied hard for the White House to abandon the smog regulation, and applauded Friday's decision.

"The president's decision is good news for the economy and Americans looking for work. EPA's proposal would have prevented the very job creation that President Obama has identified as his top priority," said Jack Gerard, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute.

The withdrawal of the proposed EPA rule comes three days after the White House identified seven such regulations that it said would cost private business at least $1 billion each. The proposed smog standard was estimated to cost anywhere between $19 billion and $90 billion, depending on how strict it would be.

Republican lawmakers have blamed what they see as excessive regulations backed by the Obama administration for some of the country's economic woes, and House Republicans pledged this week to try to block four environmental regulations, including the one on some pollution standards, when they return after Labor Day.

But perhaps more than some of the other regulations under attack, the ground-level ozone standard is most closely associated with public health — something the president said he wouldn't compromise in his regulatory review. Ozone is the main ingredient in smog, which is a powerful lung irritant that occasionally forces cancellation of school recesses, and causes asthma and other lung ailments.

Criticism from environmentalists, a core Obama constituency, was swift following the White House announcement.

"The Obama administration is caving to big polluters at the expense of protecting the air we breathe," said Gene Karpinski, the president of the League of Conservation Voters. "This is a huge win for corporate polluters and huge loss for public health."

In his statement, the president said that withdrawing the regulation did not reflect a weakening of his commitment to protecting public health and the environment.

"I will continue to stand with the hardworking men and women at the EPA as they strive every day to hold polluters accountable and protect our families from harmful pollution," he said.

The decision mirrors one made by Obama's predecessor, President George W. Bush. EPA scientists had recommended a stricter standard to better protect public health. Bush personally intervened after hearing complaints from electric utilities and other affected industries. His EPA set a standard of 75 parts per billion, stricter than one adopted in 1997, but not as strong as federal scientists said was needed to protect public health.

The EPA under Obama proposed in January 2010 a range for the concentration of ground-level ozone allowed in the air — from 60 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion. That's about equal to a single tennis ball in an Olympic-size swimming pool full of tennis balls.

Jackson, Obama's environmental chief, said at the time that "using the best science to strengthen these standards is a long overdue action that will help millions of Americans breathe easier and live healthier."

Obama has scheduled a primetime speech to a joint session of Congress and the nation next Thursday night to outline plans he has made for combating high joblessness and spurring economic growth.

What Liberals Fear More Than Obama Losing

2011-09-01T07:46:00.000-05:00

Great article!

What Liberals Fear More Than Obama Losing

By Geoffrey P. Hunt

The left are now wringing their hands fearing their agenda is overripe, blaming everyone else for their own spoiled pickling. While Obama's sinking prospects for re-election are disquieting, the real source of liberals' despair is their sudden, unexpected realization that the progressive agenda is dead in its tracks and will likely be in full retreat after 2012.

Obama is finished, but the demise of their identity politician is neither the main event nor surprising. He was a lame duck after he returned from Copenhagen empty handed in September 2009, expecting the mere presence of his electro-magnetic glow would secure the 2016 summer Olympics for Chicago.

He cannot claim a single success. His resume is a bibliography of failure. His signature achievement, the dubious namesake ObamaCare, was designed by someone else. Its central feature, the individual insurance mandate, is destined to be overturned by the Supreme Court.

We will have our fill of post mortems, ad nauseam, about how The One broke their hearts; his considerable skills, now considered overrated, were just no match for the enormity of the clean- up needed after Bush's mess; a victim of his opponents' entrenched racism.

Obama was only a convenient vessel, a mere tool. But enough about Obama; even the Congressional Black Caucus is ready to Move On.

The end of the Progressive Era, eclipsing Obama, has come from two places -- one fiscal and pragmatic, the other ideological and visceral. First, the debt crisis and persistent economic woes have made it clear that the progressive agenda is unaffordable and unsustainable. The money pumps in the forms of more borrowing and taxes cannot possibly keep up with the tons of green water spending coming aboard.

"Short-handed" by Lionel Smythe, National Maritime Museum, UK

Second, beyond the limited government ideology now gaining real traction, Americans without an ideology are finding that central planning madness from Washington is making their lives worse, not better.

The tipping point provoking the libs' worst nightmare was contained in Rick Perry's speech announcing his candidacy to be the Republican nominee for president. Perry proclaimed his mission was not to make government more accountable, effective, or efficient -- that's standard issue bromide from populist reformers. No, Perry was bold enough, and as his critics will assert reckless, to suggest government should be irrelevant -- his words "as inconsequential to your lives as possible." This may be the most radical anti-government posture since Calvin Coolidge, leaning on the likes of Lord Acton:

There are many things the government can't do, many good purposes it must renounce. It must leave them to the enterprise of others. It cannot feed the people. It cannot enrich the people. It cannot teach the people.

The liberal press are frightened out of their wits. Whether Perry is an authentic purebred limited government advocate may be debatable. No matter, he's close enough.

Perry's credibility as a governor, his disdain for Washington, his unapologetic and outspoken defense of conservative principles, his jobs and business climate record, all despite occasional lapses and rhetorical excesses -- in short his popularity and substance overcoming his defects -- make him the candidate the Dems fear most. Perry, more ruthless, pragmatic, and plain spoken than any of his rivals is the most likely to lead the coming dismantling of the federal government monstrosity.

MSM's Jeff Greenfield nearly soiled his pants describing Perry's brand of extremist limited government:

It is a formulation of a brand of current conservative thinking that breaks radically with two centuries of American history. There is no mission - other than defense against foreign foes - that is the proper task of Washington...

To argue that there is nothing of moment that Washington should be doing marks a version of that argument that is nothing short of astonishing.

Read all of it here. Greenfield seems to believe whatever the federal government does is equally momentous -- fighting wars, ending slavery, enabling westward expansion beyond the Alleghenies, and mandating rules on low flow toilets and energy saving light bulbs. Greenfield commits the increasingly commonplace liberal fallacy of conflating real with surreal. How absurd to suggest that by rejecting job killing global warming taxes and denouncing EPA regulations crippling business expansion and economic growth, Perry would also have opposed the Homestead Act and desegregation.

It doesn't require a PhD in economics or history to sort out the origins of the progressives' inevitable downfall. During the past 60 years we've rung up deficits in 51 of them. Democrats controlled both the US House and Senate in 38 of those years. The Democrats, increasingly dominated by the ideology of redistributive economics, welfare state largesse, and central planning elitism, have simply engorged themselves without restraint, spending us into oblivion.

Spend, spend , spend some more...of someone else's money. Then threaten to take more of it while libeling those who protest financing this bottomless pit.

The liberal vision of the ideal state is fat, sloppy and lazy. Why exert yourself if someone else will buy you food stamps and school lunches? Why bother learning to read, write, do simple algebra, or acquire any employable skills when you'll get free health care and subsidized housing? Why eat right and keep fit when obesity and diabetes is a protected disability?

Americans are finally fed up with the Democrats' value system: no personal accountability; moral equivalence; belief that success is derived from exploiting everybody else; everybody else is a hapless victim; we are all racists and xenophobes, consigned to endless acts of contrition where reparations and open borders would be the only relief.

Here's a story of a public school janitor describing the obscene waste in his school's cafeteria. An apt metaphor for the trillions of social program spending since LBJ's Great Society: taxpayer dollars shoveled onto a compost pile with nothing to show for it. Far from a bed of roses, instead fostering a culture of depravity, dependency, and entitlement. The writer of this piece wonders out loud what many of us think in private. Is poverty real with such bounty? Certainly poverty of spirit is real. We are an impoverished nation when it comes to intellectual honesty, denying that self- reliance and sweat equity, not government handouts, enabled American exceptionalism.

The liberal legacy soon to visit America has been displayed writ large in the London rioting. The consequences of the welfare state combined with illiteracy and a moral vacuum were predicted nearly 50 years ago by Daniel Patrick Moynihan's infamous "Report", The Negro Family: The Case For National Action. Moynihan focused his attention on urban black society, the fatal breakdown of the family unit, and was vilified by the left for doing so. Moynihan's insights should not confined to the black community. His observations would equally apply to Britain today and throughout much of post-modern America.

Today's black unemployment rate ranges from 20-40% depending on who's counting and where. What have the trillions devoted to our welfare state achieved for them? More illiteracy, more broken single parent families, more crime, more dependency, more rage. And now, we're bankrupt. What next?

What next is not more of the same. The welfare, entitlement and central planning state is a perpetual resource sink paying no dividends. Flush Obama and turn out the lights on the Progressive Century. The party is over.

Liberals' view of Darwin unable to evolve

2011-09-01T07:36:00.001-05:00

I love this line:

'Intelligent design scientists look at the evidence and develop their theories; Darwinists start with a theory and then rearrange the evidence.'

Having an open mind means that either theory could be correct or partly correct; it also means putting criticism of having an open mind aside. Skepticism of either theory is a good way to vet the flaws found in the models.

LIBERALS' VIEW OF DARWIN UNABLE TO EVOLVE

August 31, 2011

Amid the hoots at Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry for saying there were "gaps" in the theory of evolution, the strongest evidence for Darwinism presented by these soi-disant rationalists was a 9-year-old boy quoted in The New York Times.

After his mother had pushed him in front of Perry on the campaign trail and made him ask if Perry believed in evolution, the trained seal beamed at his Wicked Witch of the West mother, saying, "Evolution, I think, is correct!"

That's the most extended discussion of Darwin's theory to appear in the mainstream media in a quarter-century. More people know the precepts of kabala than know the basic elements of Darwinism.

There's a reason the Darwin cult prefers catcalls to argument, even with a 9-year-old at the helm of their debate team.

Darwin's theory was that a process of random mutation, sex and death, allowing the "fittest" to survive and reproduce, and the less fit to die without reproducing, would, over the course of billions of years, produce millions of species out of inert, primordial goo.

The vast majority of mutations are deleterious to the organism, so if the mutations were really random, then for every mutation that was desirable, there ought to be a staggering number that are undesirable.

Otherwise, the mutations aren't random, they are deliberate -- and then you get into all the hocus-pocus about "intelligent design" and will probably start speaking in tongues and going to NASCAR races.

We also ought to find a colossal number of transitional organisms in the fossil record -- for example, a squirrel on its way to becoming a bat, or a bear becoming a whale. (Those are actual Darwinian claims.)

But that's not what the fossil record shows. We don't have fossils for any intermediate creatures in the process of evolving into something better. This is why the late Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard referred to the absence of transitional fossils as the "trade secret" of paleontology. (Lots of real scientific theories have "secrets.")

If you get your news from the American news media, it will come as a surprise to learn that when Darwin first published "On the Origin of Species" in 1859, his most virulent opponents were not fundamentalist Christians, but paleontologists.

Unlike high school biology teachers lying to your children about evolution, Darwin was at least aware of what the fossil record ought to show if his theory were correct. He said there should be "interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps."

But far from showing gradual change with a species slowly developing novel characteristics and eventually becoming another species, as Darwin hypothesized, the fossil record showed vast numbers of new species suddenly appearing out of nowhere, remaining largely unchanged for millions of years, and then disappearing.

Darwin's response was to say: Start looking! He blamed a fossil record that contradicted his theory on the "extreme imperfection of the geological record."

One hundred and fifty years later, that record is a lot more complete. We now have fossils for about a quarter of a million species.

But things have only gotten worse for Darwin.

Thirty years ago (before it was illegal to question Darwinism), Dr. David Raup, a geologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, said that despite the vast expansion of the fossil record: "The situation hasn't changed much."

To the contrary, fossil discoveries since Darwin's time have forced paleontologists to take back evidence of evolution. "Some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record," Raup said, "such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information."

The scant fossil record in Darwin's time had simply been arranged to show a Darwinian progression, but as more fossils were discovered, the true sequence turned out not to be Darwinian at all.

And yet, more than a century later, Darwin's groupies haven't evolved a better argument for the lack of fossil evidence.

To explain away the explosion of plants and animals during the Cambrian Period more than 500 million years ago, Darwiniacs asserted -- without evidence -- that there must have been soft-bodied creatures evolving like mad before then, but left no fossil record because of their squishy little microscopic bodies.

Then in 1984, "the dog ate our fossils" excuse collapsed, too. In a discovery The New York Times called "among the most spectacular in this century," Chinese paleontologists discovered fossils just preceding the Cambrian era.

Despite being soft-bodied microscopic creatures -- precisely the sort of animal the evolution cult claimed wouldn't fossilize and therefore deprived them of crucial evidence -- it turned out fossilization was not merely possible in the pre-Cambrian era, but positively ideal.

And yet the only thing paleontologists found there were a few worms. For 3 billion years, nothing but bacteria and worms, and then suddenly nearly all the phyla of animal life appeared within a narrow band of five million to 10 million years.

Even the eye simply materializes, fully formed, in the pre-Cambrian fossil record.

Jan Bergstrom, a paleontologist who examined the Chinese fossils, said the Cambrian Period was not "evolution," it was "a revolution."

So the Darwiniacs pretended they missed the newspaper that day.

Intelligent design scientists look at the evidence and develop their theories; Darwinists start with a theory and then rearrange the evidence.

These aren't scientists. They are religious fanatics for whom evolution must be true so that they can explain to themselves why they are here, without God. (It's an accident!)

Any evidence contradicting the primitive religion of Darwinism -- including, for example, the entire fossil record -- they explain away with non-scientific excuses like "the dog ate our fossils."

COPYRIGHT 2011 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK
1130 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106

Looking for a handy Obama-failure counter? There's an app for that

2011-09-01T07:20:00.000-05:00

Looking for a handy Obama-failure counter?

Hey, guess what?

There's an app for that.

An "Obama Clock" app is jockeying for position with National Geographic's World Atlas atop the iTunes app store's reference best-seller list, partly because conservatives are eager to monitor President Barack Obama's skidding approval numbers and shrinking calendar, says the app's designer.

Liberals don't like the app because it shows Obama's numbers trending down, said Jeremy Ross, even though his app just publishes publicly available data.

Just picked up a copy myself at the Apple Store for my iPad 2:

…I figure that it'll come in handy, although I don't really expect the unemployment numbers to change all that much until we get a functional adult in the White House again. Still, as a snapshot of failure this is pretty good stuff.

Via @jtLOL.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's full speech at the Reagan Library

2011-08-25T09:18:00.000-05:00

WOW! This man should be president now, not in a year and a half.

Marco Rubio reminds me of Ronald Reagan -- totally inspiring (which is not what we get from our current POTUS):

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's full speech at the Reagan Library:

Thank you very much for this opportunity. Gerald, let me thank you for that introduction, you talking about my communications skills, or so called communications skills, I appreciate you not setting the bar too high. Thanks so much.

Mrs. Reagan, thank you for this opportunity. And in a moment I'll talk a little about what this opportunity means to me in general, but let me just say it is one of the highest privileges and honors I've ever had to be able to come here and speak in this place.

And earlier today I was able to walk through here, and not just to see the exhibits, but to meet the people, some from all over the world, that were touched by the extraordinary life of an extraordinary man. The contributions that he made to this country were tremendous, but the contributions he made to the world were even greater.

And in just an hour and a half of walking through here and meeting people who had been touched by those contributions, it reminded me what a privilege it is that I would get to stand here today and speak to all of you from a place like this and I am honored beyond any words that I could use to describe it and I thank you for this invitation. Thank you.

In fact I have a distinct honor because, not many people can say, that the only two people I have ever walked down the aisle with are here today. One is my wife Jeanette and the other is Mrs. Reagan that we just walked down here, so ...

I tell people all the time that I was born and raised in Ronald Reagan's America. I was raised in Ronald Reagan's America. He was elected when I was in fourth grade and he left ... he left office when I was in high school. Those are very important years, fourth grade through high school, they were the years that formed so much of what today what I believe and know to be true about the world and about our nation.

Ronald Reagan's era can be defined, number one in most people's minds, by the Cold War and by the end of it -- and by the strong principles he stood for. Ronald Reagan didn't just believe that the Soviet Union and communism could fail, he believed it was inevitably destined to fail. And that it was our obligation to accelerate that process, that all we had to do was be America and that that would happen.

And that defined his presidency. And that defined Ronald Reagan's America in the time that I lived. The time that I grew up during that era.

There was something else though that defined the Reagan presidency and that was defining the proper role of government. He did that better than any American has done ever before. And I stand before you, it has always been important for Americans and America to do that, but I stand here before you today all of us gathered here today at a time when defining the proper role of government is as important as it has ever been.

The answer to what the proper role of government is really lies in what kind of country we want to have. And I think the vast majority of Americans share a common vision for what they want our nation to be. They want our nation to be two things at the same time.

Number one: they want it to be free and prosperous, a place where your economic hopes and dreams can be accomplished and brought up to fruition. That through hard work and sacrifice you can be who God meant you to be. No matter who your parents were, no matter where you were born, no matter how much misfortune you may have met in your life, if you have a good idea, you can be anything if you work hard and play by the rules. Most, if not all, Americans share that vision of a free and prosperous America.

But they also want us to be a compassionate America, a place where people are not left behind. We are a nation that is not going to tolerate those who cannot take care of themselves being left to fend for themselves. We're not going to tolerate our children being punished for the errors of their parents and society.

So, we are a nation that aspires to two things – prosperity and compassion. And Ronald Reagan understood that. Perhaps better, again, than any voice I've ever heard speak on it.

Now America's leaders during the last century set out to accomplish that, but they reached a conclusion that has placed us on this path, except for the Reagan Administration to be quite frank.

Both Republicans and Democrats established a role for government in America that said, yes, we'll have a free economy, but we will also have a strong government, who through regulations and taxes will control the free economy and through a series of government programs, will take care of those in our society who are falling behind.

That was a vision crafted in the twentieth century by our leaders and though it was well intentioned, it was doomed to fail from the start. It was doomed to fail from the start first and foremost because it forgot that the strength of our nation begins with its people and that these programs actually weakened us as a people.

You see, almost in forever, it was institutions and society that assumed the role of taking care of one another. If someone was sick in your family, you took care of them. If a neighbor met misfortune, you took care of them. You saved for your retirement and your future because you had to.

We took these things upon ourselves and our communities and our families and our homes and our churches and our synagogues. But all that changed when the government began to assume those responsibilities. All of the sudden, for an increasing number of people in our nation, it was no longer necessary to worry about saving for security because that was the government's job.

For those who met misfortune, that wasn't our obligation to take care of them, that was the government's job. And as government crowded out the institutions in our society that did these things traditionally, it weakened our people in a way that undermined our ability to maintain our prosperity.

The other thing is that we built a government and its programs without any account whatsoever for how we were going to pay for it. There was not thought given into how this was going to be sustained. When Social Security first started, there was 16 workers for every retiree. Today there are only three for every retiree and soon there will only be two for every retiree.

Program after program was crafted without any thought as to how they will be funded in future years or the impact it would have on future Americans. They were done with the best of intentions, but because it weakened our people and didn't take account the simple math of not being able to spend more money than you have, it was destined to fail and brought us to the point at which we are at today.

It is a startling place to be, because the 20th Century was not a time of decline for America, it was the American Century. Americans in the 20th Century built here –- we built here –- the richest, most prosperous nation in the history of the world. And yet today we have built for ourselves a government that not even the richest and most prosperous nation in the face of the Earth can fund or afford to pay for. An extraordinary tragic accomplishment, if you can call it that.

And that is where we stand today.

And so, if defining the proper role of government was one of the central issues of the Reagan era, it remains that now. The truth is that people are going around saying that, well, we're worried about – let me just add something to this because I think this is an important forum for candor.

I know that it is popular in my party to blame the president, the current president. But the truth is the only thing this president has done is accelerate policies that were already in place and were doomed to fail. All he is doing through his policies is making the day of reckoning come faster, but it was coming nonetheless.

What we have now is not sustainable. The role of government and the role that government plays now in America cannot be sustained the way it is. Now some are worried about how it has to change, we have to change it. The good news is it is going to change. It has to change. That's not the issue.

The issue is not whether the role that government now plays in America will change. The question is how will it change. Will it change because we make the changes necessary? Or, will it change because our creditors force us to make these changes?

And over the next few moments I hope to advocate to you –- I don't think that I have to given the make up of the crowd –- but I hope to advocate to you that, in fact, what we have before us is a golden opportunity afforded to few Americans.

We have the opportunity –- within our lifetime –- to actually craft a proper role for government in our nation that will allow us to come closer than any Americans have ever come to our collective vision of a nation where both prosperity and compassion exist side-by-side.

To do that, we must begin by embracing certain principles that are absolutely true. Number one: the free enterprise system does not create poverty. The free enterprise system does not leave people behind.

People are poor and people are left behind because they do not have access to the free enterprise system because something in their lives or in their community has denied them access to the free enterprise system. All over the world this truism is expressing itself every single day. Every nation on the Earth that embraces market economics and the free enterprise system is pulling millions of its people out of poverty. The free enterprise system creates prosperity, not denies it.

The second truism that we must understand is that poverty does not create our social problems, our social problems create our poverty. Let me give you an example. All across this country, at this very moment, there are children who are born into and are living with five strikes against them, already, through no fault of their own.

They're born into substandard housing in dangerous neighborhoods, to broken families, being raised by their grandmothers because they never knew their father and their mom is either working two jobs to make ends meet or just not home. These kids are going to struggle to succeed unless something dramatic happens in their life.

These truisms are important because they lead the public policies that define the proper role of government. On the prosperity side, the number one objective of our economic policy, in fact the singular objective of our economic policy from a government perspective is simple -- it's growth. It's not distribution of wealth; it's not picking winners and losers.

The goal of our public policy should be growth. Growth in our economy, the creation of jobs and of opportunity, of equality of opportunity through our governmental policies.

Now often when I give these speeches, members of the media and others get frustrated because there is nothing new or novel in it. We don't have to reinvent this. It's worked before and it will work again and they are simple things. Like a tax code that's fair, predictable, easy to comply with. Like a regulatory framework that doesn't exist to justify the existence of the regulators, that doesn't exist to accomplish through regulation and rule-making what they couldn't accomplish through the Congress.

And it is the proper role of government to invest in infrastructure. Yes, government should build roads and bridges, but it should do so as part of economic development as part of infrastructure. Not as a jobs program.

And government should invest in our people at the state level. Education is important, critically important. We must educate and train our children to compete and succeed in the 21st century. Our kids are not going to grow up to compete with children in Alabama or Mississippi. They're going to grow up to compete with kids in India, and China, all over the world; children who are learning to compete and succeed in the 21st century themselves.

These are proper roles of government within the framework of creating an environment where economic security and prosperity is possible.

And on the compassion side of the ledger, which is also important to Americans, and it's important that we remind ourselves of that. I don't really like labels in politics, but I will gladly accept the label of conservatism. Conservatism is not about leaving people behind. Conservatism is about empowering people to catch up, to give them the tools at their disposable that make it possible for them to access all the hope, all the promise, all the opportunity that America offers. And our programs to help them should reflect that.

Now, yes, there are people that cannot help themselves. And those folks we will always help. We are too rich and prosperous a nation to leave them to fend for themselves. But all the others that can work should be given the means of empowering themselves to enter the marketplace and the workforce. And our programs and our policies should reflect that. We do need a safety net, but it cannot be a way of life. It must be there to help those who have fallen, to stand up and try again.

And by the way, I believe in America's retirement programs. But I recognize that these programs as they are currently structured are not sustainable for future generations. And so we must embrace public policy changes to these programs.

Now, I personally believe that you cannot make changes to these programs for the people that are currently in them right now. My mother just – well she gets mad when I say this. She is in her eighth decade of life and she is on both of these programs. I can't ask my mom to go out and get another job. She paid into the system. But the truth is that Social Security and Medicare, as important as they are, cannot look for me how they look for her.

My generation must fully accept, the sooner the better, that if we want there to be a Social Security and a Medicare when we retire, and if we want America as we know it to continue when we retire, then we must accept and begin to make changes to those programs now, for us.

These changes will not be easy. Speeches are easy. Actually going out and doing them will be difficult. It's never easy to go to people and say what you've always known we have to change. It isn't. It will be hard. It will actually really call upon a specific generation of Americans, those of us, like myself, decades away from retirement, to assume certain realities -– that we will continue to pay into and fund for a system that we will never fully access -– that we are prepared to do whatever it takes in our lives and in our generation so that our parents and grandparents can enjoy the fruits of their labor and so that our children and our grandchildren can inherit the fullness of America's promise.

But you see, every generation of Americans has been called to do their part to ensure that the American promise continues. We're not alone; we're not unique; we're not the only ones. In fact, I would argue to you that we have it pretty good.

And yet I think it's fully appropriate that those of us raised in Ronald Reagan's America are actually the ones who are being asked to stand up and respond to the issues of the day. For we, perhaps better than any other people who have ever lived in this nation, should understand how special and unique America truly is.

When I was a boy, the world looked very different than it does now. I remember vividly how many assumed and believed that Soviet-style communism was destined to at least rule half the world, and they urged our public policy leaders to accept that and to understand that America would have to share this planet with a godless, oppressive form of government that perhaps was destined to overtake us one day as well.

There were many who discouraged our leaders from talking about the inevitability of decline for communism and how it was destined to fail. There were many who encouraged us to simply accept this as the way it has to be, and who told us that America could no longer continue to be what America had been – the world was just too complicated and too difficult, it had changed too much. Sounds familiar, but that's what they told us.

But one person at least didn't believe them, and he happened to be the president of the United States. He actually believed that all we had to do is be America, that our example alone would one day lead to the decline and fall of a system that was unsustainable, because he understood that the desire to be free, prosperous and compassionate, although shared by all Americans, was universal. The desire to leave your children better off than yourself is something we hold as Americans, but so do people all over the world.

Because he understood that the principles that this nation was founded upon was not that we are all people in North America are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights, but that all people are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that transcribed in our hearts is the desire to live in freedom and in liberty, that it is our natural right, and that government's job is to protect those rights, not to grant them to us.

This is the natural state of man, and anything that prevents it is unnatural and doomed to fail and that all we had to do was be America, that all we had to do was be prosperous and be free. All we had to do was live our republic. All we had to do was be a voice for these principles anywhere in the world where these principles were challenged and oppressed, and eventually time was on our side. And how right he was.

When I was in fourth grade, the Soviet Union was a co-equal power to the United States. Before I finished college, the Soviet Union didn't even exist. And so many people born since then have no idea what it even was.

To me, this is extremely special, and I'll tell you why. During the '80s, politically especially, there were two people that deeply influenced me. One clearly was Ronald Reagan, the other was my grandfather, who lived with us most of the time in our home.

We lived part of our life, especially the key years, '80-'84, in Las Vegas, Nev. And my grandfather loved to sit on the porch of our home and smoke cigars. He was Cuban. Three cigars a day, he lived to be 84. This is not an advertisement for cigar smoking, I'm just saying to you that ...

He loved to talk about politics. My grandfather was born in 1899. He was born to an agricultural family in Cuba. He was stricken with polio when he was a very young man, he couldn't work the fields, so they sent him to school. He was the only member of his family that could read. And because he could read, he got a job at the local cigar rolling factory.

They didn't have radio or television, so they would hire someone to sit at the front of the cigar factory and read to the workers while they worked. So, the first thing he would read every day, of course, was the daily newspaper. Then he would read some novel to entertain them.

And then, when he was done reading things he actually went out and rolled the cigars because he needed the extra money. But through all of those years of reading, he became extremely knowledgeable about history, not to mention all the classics.

He loved to talk about history. My grandfather loved being Cuban. He loved being from Cuba. He never would have left Cuba if he didn't have to. But he knew America was special. He knew that without America, Cuba would still be a Spanish colony. He knew that without America, the Nazis and Imperial Japan would have won World War II. When he was born in 1899 there weren't even airplanes. By the time I was born, an American had walked on the surface of the moon.

And he knew something else. He knew that he had lost his country. And that the only thing from preventing other people in the world from losing theirs to communism was this country – this nation.
It is easy for us who are born here –- like me –- and so many of you, to take for granted how special and unique this place is. But when you come from somewhere else, when what you always knew and loved, you lost, you don't have that luxury.

My grandfather didn't know America was exceptional because he read about it in a book. He knew about it because he lived it and saw it with his eyes. That powerful lesson is the story of Ronald Reagan's presidency. It's our legacy as a people. And it's who we have a chance to be again. And I think that's important for all of us because being an American is not just a blessing, it's a responsibility.

As we were commanded to do long ago, "Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."

Well, as we gather here today in this place, that pays homage and tribute to the greatest American of the twentieth century, we are reminded that for him and for our nation, being a light to the world, that's not just our common history, it remains our common destiny. Thank you.

WSJ: A Jobs Program the White House, House Republicans Like

2011-08-25T08:27:00.001-05:00

For once we may see bipartisanship in D.C.

Perhaps encouraging, but not enough.

A Jobs Program the White House, House Republicans Like

via Washington Wire by Laura Meckler on 8/23/11

The White House is working on an economic proposal that House Republicans… wait for it… also support. That may be a man-bites-dog story these days, given the intense partisanship and differing ideologies in Washington.

: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that as part of a larger jobs package, the White House is likely to propose some version of a program called Georgia Works, which allows people receiving unemployment benefits to receive eight weeks of training at private companies in what amounts to a tryout. The service is free to the companies, and offers a new connection to the workplace for jobless workers.

It turns out this program has also caught the eye of House Republicans. In 2009, House Republicans included the program in a letter to President Barack Obama listing their job-creation ideas. In that letter, the Republicans suggested that the federal government require states to adopt Georgia Works-type programs in order to receive federal unemployment funding.

"This has resulted in faster returns to work, less unemployment payments, and thus lower state unemployment taxes," wrote House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) and two of their colleagues.

It's not clear whether the White House wants to require the program for states, or what the scope of the White House plan might be. But there is potential for working together, said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for Mr. Cantor.

"There would definitely be room for discussion. It was something Eric pushed personally with the president at a White House meeting in December 2009," Mr. Dayspring said. "It is a program that produced results, and we are glad the White House has finally taken notice."

A White House spokeswoman had no comment.

Mr. Obama has characterized many of his other ideas as enjoying bipartisan support, such as extending a payroll tax reduction for workers and creating an infrastructure bank to finance road and bridge projects. But Republicans have shown little interest in either one, and in some cases are opposed outright.

Obama adds over $4Trillion to debt in just over 900 days

2011-08-24T17:19:00.001-05:00

Candidate Obama: "The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents - #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back -- $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic." (July 3, 2008)

I smell Media hypocrisy on WMDs

2011-08-24T15:20:00.001-05:00

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) found in Libya...? Who would have thunk it...?

When it's Obama's war, the media causally admits it, and totally condones Obama's war.

But when it was Bush's war, even though WMDs were found in Iraq afterwards, they media said that Bush was wrong to start a war there.

I smell Media hypocrisy.

Libya's deadliest weapons not yet corralled photo
WASHINGTON (AP) - No one can be sure who controls the Libyan government's weapons stockpiles, a stew of deadly chemicals, raw nuclear material and some 30,000 shoulder-fired rockets that officials fear could fall into terrorists' hands in the chaos of Moammar Gadhafi's downfall or afterward. One...

As all of DC leaves work at the same time, the United States experiences a brief economic recovery

2011-08-24T12:35:00.000-05:00

I saw this tweet yesterday:

@Ben_Howe: As all of DC leaves work at the same time, the United States experiences a brief economic recovery.

Dow was up 300 points.

Obama Stays Updated on Hurricane Irene While on Vacation

2011-08-23T12:16:00.001-05:00

Obama Stays Updated on Hurricane Irene While on Vacation

via Fox News by Sarah Courtney on 8/23/11

It may be 75 degrees and sunny on Martha's Vineyard, but President Obama is bracing for the possible U.S. impact of Hurricane Irene. Tuesday Mr. Obama received updates on the storm as well as FEMA preparation for areas that could be in Irene's track later this week.

"This morning at the Blue Heron Farm, John Brennan gave the President his daily national security briefing including an update on Hurricane Irene and how FEMA is supporting territorial response activities in Puerto Rico as well as the Virgin Islands where the effects of the storm have already been felt," White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement.

"That was close, I was afraid it was going to ruin my vacation"

The hurricane was still south of Grand Turk Island Tuesday morning, but the National Hurricane Center predicts Irene will approach the Carolinas and Chesapeake Bay on Sunday. President Obama is scheduled to return to Washington Saturday.

Brennan "also updated [the president] on the steps FEMA has taken in coordination with states that could feel the impact of the storm later this week," said Earnest.

The last hurricane to strike the U.S. was Ike in the summer of 2008 while Obama was running for office. Irene could become a category 3 by Tuesday.

Funny thing about liberals.

2011-08-22T09:05:00.001-05:00

If they have a plan for improving the economy, and after it's implemented the economy improves, this is proof that their plan must have worked. If, after the plan is implemented, the economy suffers — this, also, is proof that their plan is the right way to go, we're just not doing enough of it.

Check out page 59 of Obamacare...

2011-08-22T08:50:00.000-05:00

"That call from Rita. She's reading from page 58, 59 of the health care bill about the government's access to our bank accounts, and she wanted to know why nobody's talking about it -- and I told her everybody did. May I quote from myself, August 4th of 2009? It's just a little over two years ago. Quote: "The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer to pay. Yes, my friends, the federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer, meaning from your account to them. They will be able to debit your account for health expenses. That's on page 59, go get the bill. I'm summarizing here for you. "

This resulted, by the way, in the White House attacking Drudge for reporting certain aspects that were in the health care bill -- and in the process, they call attention to what they didn't want anybody to see. So, again, Rita, I'm really glad you called. It's a golden opportunity to remind people -- and, of course, the tune-in factor here is nuts. There are people listening now that weren't there who are just probably learning this and hearing about it for the first time, because since it did pass there hasn't been nearly as much focus on it, on those kind of details. The focus has been on all the "waivers." What are we up to, over 2500 waivers the regime has granted now to various companies, large and small, who would be out of business if they had to play by Obamacare law right now?

Can't have that before the election! If this thing isn't repealed or if it isn't defunded, after 2012, 2013, 2014, when it really starts to hit, people have no idea. What has happened to this country up to this point is nothing compared to what's in store for us with just this one piece of legislation." --Rush Limbaugh

The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both

2011-08-19T08:37:00.000-05:00

By Neal Boortz

If you watched the discussion with Arthur Laffer in the Nuze item above, you probably heard the mention of a quote by Milton Friedman about freedom and fairness. Consider the fact that Dear Ruler cannot make a speech lately without talking about fairness. Meanwhile, when was the last time you heard him give a speech on freedom? Something to think about as you read these two quotes from Milton Friedman:

"I'm not in favor of fairness. I'm in favor of freedom, and freedom is not fairness. Fairness means somebody has to decide what's fair."
"The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both."

If you click here, you can actually watch a bunch of clips of Milton Friedman discussing everything from fairness to wealth envy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_7fu2...

Also something you might enjoy is this debate between Frances Fox Piven – yes, the Cloward Piven Strategy I've told you about – and Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell, discussing the concept of freedom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQkdSj...

From Hopeless Bus Tour .. to .. Martha's Vineyard

2011-08-18T15:06:00.001-05:00

Obama Saving or creating Canadian jobs

2011-08-18T13:15:00.000-05:00

He said it was a "listening tour" but then they expected Big Guy to listen to them.

Sit down and shut up!

He heard them say they wanted jobs for Americans, but then they got all wee-weed up about which Americans he found jobs for.

Well one thing is for sure: He's created jobs in Canada - that's where those two million dollar buses were built!

Re: Save us Sarah!

2011-08-18T13:03:00.000-05:00

How about this refrain:

Save us, anyone, from Obama!

Obama gave us a peek at his "new" economic plan, to be rolled out after "Labor" Day (kind of ironic) which includes all the usual suspects, including having the rich pay a little bit more. Butt now it even looks like that plan might have a few holes in it:

Source: WSJ

Yikes! Where are all our millionaires and billionaires who can afford to pay a little more going? 39% reduction in people making $1 million or more? WTF? How's that going to work? Bueller? Anyone?

On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 1:50 PM, dude wrote:

The facts...there was only one reason people put those mags out..it was so they could share them....no giant hater of stupid women had a conspiracy under construction. second, sarah looks ok for her age....simply..no better...no worse...nothing amazing enough to continue discussion.....certainly not worthy of a sweaty morning.... bachmann on the other hand, looks bad on her cover.....because she is unattractive..again, nothing further to say more on....but unless she is shoveling snow from my driveway.....she could not hope for a sweaty morning with me either. final thought......imagine the dire straits of anyone to utter 'save us sarah'....they may simply be indiscriminately looking to her for a kidney transplant...or to borrow 20 bucs

On Thu Aug 18th, 2011 12:45 PM EDT indi wrote:

>Oh, this reminds me of the following.
>
>Last week at work there were a few Newsweek magazines that some liberal
>placed on a table by the microwave.
>
>One had a picture of Bachmann which looked terrible - an obvious attempt by
>the liberals at Newsweek to deride her.
>
>Another cover had a picture of Sarah Palin which looked good, but then, it's
>hard to have a bad picture of her.
>
>On the cover some other person, I presume, later wrote with a marker: "Save
>us Sarah!".
>
>I laughed out loud because the liberal who put the Newsweek there to
>disparage Sarah was probably mad at that. Later the next day that issue was
>gone, but the rest still remained - ha ha ha ha ha!
>
>So my refrain is the same: "Save us Sarah!" Save us all from Obama and his
>attempts to destroy the USA.
>
>
>This was written by a Democrat and former Hillary supporter...
>>
>> 5 Lessons Governor Sarah Palin learned from Hillary Clinton's failed 2008

>> presidential campaign<http://hillbuzz.org/2011/08/17/5-lessons-governor-sarah-palin-learned-from-hillary-clintons-failed-2008-presidential-campaign/>
>> Posted on August 17, 2011 by Kevin DuJan // 2012 Presidential Campaign<http://hillbuzz.org/category/sarah-palin/2012-presidential-campaign/>,
>> Best of Hillbuzz<http://hillbuzz.org/category/featured-content/best-of-hillbuzz/>,
>> Featured Content <http://hillbuzz.org/category/featured-content/>,
>> Hillbuzz <http://hillbuzz.org/category/hillbuzz/>, Sarah Palin<http://hillbuzz.org/category/sarah-palin/>
>>

Save us Sarah!

2011-08-18T11:45:00.001-05:00

Oh, this reminds me of the following.

Last week at work there were a few Newsweek magazines that some liberal placed on a table by the microwave.

One had a picture of Bachmann which looked terrible - an obvious attempt by the liberals at Newsweek to deride her.

Another cover had a picture of Sarah Palin which looked good, but then, it's hard to have a bad picture of her.

On the cover some other person, I presume, later wrote with a marker: "Save us Sarah!".

I laughed out loud because the liberal who put the Newsweek there to disparage Sarah was probably mad at that. Later the next day that issue was gone, but the rest still remained - ha ha ha ha ha!

So my refrain is the same: "Save us Sarah!" Save us all from Obama and his attempts to destroy the USA.

This was written by a Democrat and former Hillary supporter...

5 Lessons Governor Sarah Palin learned from Hillary Clinton's failed 2008 presidential campaign

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Kevin DuJan // 2012 Presidential Campaign, Best of Hillbuzz, Featured Content, Hillbuzz, Sarah Palin

Obama's Bus looks like a giant Death Star

2011-08-17T13:33:00.001-05:00

This is the Bus version of the Death Star!

Custom built -- in Canada...

PERRY: 'Actions speak louder than words'...

2011-08-17T13:31:00.001-05:00

In New Hampshire this morning Gov. Rick Perry responded to President Obama's suggestion that he "be more careful" about what he says.

"Yesterday, the President said I needed to watch what I say. I just want to respond back, if I may. Mr. President, actions speak louder than words. My actions as Governor are helping create jobs in this country. The President's actions are killing jobs," GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry said at a breakfast on Wednesday morning.

Obama Commiserates with jobless, then off to the Vineyard...

2011-08-17T13:26:00.001-05:00

OBAMA TO LAY OUT JOBS PLAN -- AFTER VACATION...
Commiserates with jobless, then off to the Vineyard...
TRUMP: 'Takes More Vacations Than Any Human Being I've Ever Seen'...

ROMNEY: 'He frankly doesn't know what to do'...

We've all gone mad!

2011-08-17T10:12:00.000-05:00

Debt Man Driving Tour

2011-08-15T11:27:00.000-05:00

So I think Obama is ready to hit the road with his American Heartland Debt Man Driving Tour (WTF tour). Of course he stole the idea from Sarah Palin who already had a great bus tour last independence day.

Hit the road Jack, don't ya come back no more no more no more no more, don't ya come back no more.

The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain

2011-08-15T10:26:00.000-05:00

I feel bad that a once great country (UK) has been reduced to a socialist nightmare where the fools who demand free stuff riot in the streets.

I just hope the USA doesn't go too far down that socialist path...

More along the lines of Fool Britannia by Peter Hitchens. "The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain." : Sipsey
UK riots: Before-and-after images of the devastation: BBC

The president's new plan to fight unemployment

2011-08-05T16:53:00.000-05:00

I gotta say, I'm finally impressed. The president finally has a plan, and he published it in the Wall Street Journal.
It's about time... Of course the half spend by the Democrats will be wasted, proverbially the flushing of money down the drain, but at least the half spend by the Republicans will spur job growth.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123318906638926749.html

As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with this lingering recession, under a new bipartisan plan I am proposing today, 54% of the remaining funds not spend by the Stimulus of two years ago (about $450 billion) -- $243 billion -- will be spent on infrastructure and projects as defined by myself and a panel of Senate and House Democrats; and the remaining 46% -- $207 billion -- will be directed toward tax cuts for businesses as directed by the Republicans.

...

Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince

2011-08-05T09:17:00.001-05:00

Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.

bwahahahahahaha - Carney is a dope

2011-08-05T08:50:00.001-05:00

ABC News' White House correspondent Jake Tapper prods press secretary Jay Carney for President Obama's plan to foster an environment where jobs can be created. Carney blames the difficulty to create jobs on environmental disasters such as the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan earlier this year. Key part of the 5 minute+ back-and-forth is transcribed below:

JAKE TAPPER, ABC NEWS: I believe the Dow has gone down -- obviously, the day is not over -- but I believe the Dow's gone down now more than during that controversial TARP vote. And analysts are saying that the reason that this is happening is because of uncertainty about the American economy, that we are entering a double-dip recession, or at the very least, a period of real softness and weakness for the U.S. economy. What is the administration doing about that?

JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE: Well, the analysis I saw today did not -- was not about the American economy, particularly, in terms of what's happening.

TAPPER: I'm talking about analysis from the last 20 minutes.

CARNEY: But there are obviously -- there are a lot of global issues that affect the global economy and that obviously affect the American economy. We strongly believe, as I've said, that we will continue to grow and we will continue to create jobs, and we need to take the measures necessary to do that.

We have encountered in this calendar year a number of economic headwinds that could not have been foreseen: the tsunami -- earthquake and tsunami in Japan that disrupted global supply chains; the unrest in the Middle East, which has an impact on oil prices; and the situation in Europe. So, you know, obviously that has hurt the economy globally and has slowed growth and job creation, but we believe that growth and job creation will continue.

TAPPER: Well, what is the president doing? We know that he went to a -- -- he went to fundraisers last night. What's he doing today?

CARNEY: Jake, that is --

TAPPER: What is he doing --

CARNEY: The president -- as the president has worked --

TAPPER: We hear him hectoring Congress about all the stuff that needs to be done to help create jobs --

CARNEY: That's right. And Congress --

TAPPER: -- and then he flew off to Chicago. What is he doing today?

CARNEY: The president is having meetings with his senior staff. The president has called on Congress to move quickly on things that have bipartisan support and are in Congress's lap, the trade --

TAPPER: The same stuff he was doing a couple months ago, calling on Congress to pass things.

CARNEY: Congress has the power to pass legislation that the president can sign. The actions that it can take could create more jobs right now, if it passed the patent reform, if it passed the free trade agreements. And as you know, there are other issues that the president encourages and will push hard for the Congress to take up when it returns from its recess, including extension of the payroll tax cut, which would put -- which has this year put an additional $1,000 in the pockets of every American, or typical American family.

And he believes we need to do that again next year, because that assists those families in having them -- you know, giving them the ability to make ends meet, and puts money back into the economy, which in turn sustains businesses and creates jobs. And he will continue to come up with and propose measures that we in Washington together can take to spur further economic growth and job creation.

TAPPER: Has he called Mitch McConnell? Has he called John Boehner? Has -- is he working on things that they can do? If every --

CARNEY: Jake, I don't -- I know you weren't here yesterday, but I know you were here for most of the days before that, when this president and those leaders and others worked seven days a week to avert a major economic crisis in this country that would have made –

TAPPER: You're the one always saying the president can walk and chew gum at the same time. I'm asking you --

CARNEY: Well, what are -- are you asking me what -- he is -- he is focused --

TAPPER: Other than calling on Congress to pass things you've been calling on Congress to pass for months, what is he doing to help the economy?

CARNEY: He is working very closely with his senior economic advisers to come up with new proposals to help advance growth and job creation. He is working with members of Congress to help advance growth and job creation. And he will continue to do that. There are things that Congress can do now to create jobs, and they should. There are things that Congress will be able to do when they return from recess to help create jobs and spur growth, and they should. And he looks forward to working with Congress to do that.

The New Tone - from the Democrats

2011-08-05T08:37:00.002-05:00

I just wanted to understand what they meant by "the new tone" that we all should be taking in politics.

Dow Jones plunges 512 points; but don’t worry, President Obama’s birthday parties unaffected

2011-08-05T08:28:00.001-05:00

Miki, you of all people should be outraged at our current faux president. He's done everything possible to keep joblessness high.

Dow Jones plunges 512 points; but don't worry, President Obama's birthday parties unaffected

Liberals stretch the truth to try to salvage Obama's failed presidency.

2011-08-05T08:17:00.001-05:00

- Fallacy: the Bush tax cuts cost us revenue. The truth is that because of the Laffer curve type of dynamic analysis that the Bush tax cuts actually caused much more economic activity and in the aggregate brought in more revenue than if we had not done the Bush tax cuts, especially the drop in the capital gains tax.
- Something the chart misses: Obamacare cost the economy big time, although that cannot be factored into the graph except that the revenue has dropped because of Obama caused joblessness directly related to Obamacare.
- Something else the chart misses: Putting gulf oil out of bounds costs jobs and causes inflation.
- Fact: We've got 4 wars under Obama, he's not stopping any of them. So the war budgets can't be compared at all in these charts.
- Fact: Bush's medicare changes actually save money in the long run. Fact: Obamacare strips $500 Billion from Medicare - where's that in the chart?
- Liberals are simply trying to excuse a failed Obama presidency. Just ignore them. The price of gasoline and the unemployment rate are all that matter to his re-election chances. "It's the Economy Stupid" - James Carville

in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing

2011-08-03T09:07:00.001-05:00

When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you...you may know that your society is doomed.
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Stossel: Take a Chainsaw to the Budget

2011-08-02T12:00:00.000-05:00

Take A Chainsaw To The Budget

On my show tonight at 10pm, I lay out a way to completely get rid of the deficit.

I don't claim to be a budget expert. But others, such as Chris Edwards at Cato and Stuart Butler at Heritage, are. They found lots of serious cuts. My staff found a few more, and put together a list that would completely balance the budget:

Defense cut by 2/3: $475 billion (Federal Budget, pg. 58)

Medicare/Medicaid*: $441 billion (Cato Institute)

Social Security Means Testing: $170 billion (Heritage Foundation)

Eliminate Dept. of Education (includes Pell Grants): $106.9 billion (Cato Institute)

Social Security*: $85.7 billion (Cato Institute)

Eliminate Dept. of Transportation: $84.8 billion (Cato Institute)

Tax Amnesty: $80 billion (Rep. Jared Polis D-Co.)

Eliminate Dept. of Labor*: $78.6 billion (Department of Labor and White House)

Eliminate HUD: $60.8 billion (Cato Institute)

Eliminate Dept. of Agriculture*: $33 billion (Cato Institute)

Cut civilian employee compensation: $30 billion (Cato Institute)

Stop maintaining vacant federal property: $25 billion (Heritage Foundation)

Eliminate Foreign Aid: $21.2 billion (Cato Institute)

Eliminate Dept. of Energy*: $20.8 billion (Cato Institute)

Eliminate NASA: $19.6 billion (Cato Institute)

Federal Drug War: $15 billion (White House)

Earmark moratorium: $16 billion (Heritage Foundation)

Eliminate Fannie/Freddie Subsidies: $14 billion (Federal Housing Finance Agency (p. 10))

Eliminate Dept. of Commerce: $13.9 billion (Department of Commerce)

Eliminate Dept. of Interior: $12 billion (White House)

Legalize Pot, Online gambling, Immigrants: $12 billion (Rep. Jared Polis D-Co.)

Privatize Army Corps of Engineers: $10.6 billion (Cato Institute)

Cut federal employee travel budget: $10 billion (Heritage Foundation)

Eliminate National Science Foundation: $7.4 billion (National Science Foundation)

End EPA's State and Local grants: $6.5 billion (Cato Institute)

Repeal Davis-Bacon: $6 billion (Republican Study Committee)

Privatize TSA: $5.7 billion (Federal Budget)

Cut Dept. of Justice's State and Local grants: $5 billion (Heritage Foundation)

Privatize Post Office: $4 billion (White House)

Eliminate Small Business Administration: $1.8 billion (Small Business Administration)

Lease coastal plain of ANWR: $1.5 billion (Heritage Foundation)

Eliminate Federal Flood Insurance: $1.3 billion (CBO, pg. 3)

Abolish SEC: $1.3 billion (SEC)

Eliminate Corporation for National Community Service: $1 billion (Cato Institute)

Suspend acquisition of federal office space: $1 billion (Heritage Foundation)

End subsidies for public broadcasting: $500 million (Cato Institute)

Eliminate the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp: $480 million (Heritage Foundation)

Eliminate the FCC: $439 million (FCC)

Eliminate the Endowments for Arts/Humanities: $332 million (NEA/NEH)

Total Cut: $1,882,619,000,000

Current deficit: $1,645,000,000,000

Surplus Achieved: $237,619,000,000

(Research by Maxim Lott and Charles Couger.)

They don't need to drive us deeper in debt. They choose to. Tune in tonight at 10pm to see how they could choose differently.

*Notes

Department of Energy is eliminated except for Nuclear arms maintenance

Department of Agriculture is eliminated, except for food programs for the needy

Department of Labor is eliminated, except for 26-week unemployment benefits

Defense budget would still be $243 billion, more than twice what the next highest country (China) spends

Medicare and Medicaid savings breakdown:

Block grant Medicaid and freeze spending (226)

Repeal 2010 healthcare law (87)

Increase Medicare premiums (39.8)

Cut non-Medicare premiums (37.7)

Cut Medicare payment error rate by 50% (28.6)

Increase Medicare deductibles (12.6)

Tort Reform (10)

Social Security savings breakdown:

Price index initial benefits** 41.1

Raise the normal retirement age** 31.4

Cut Social Security disability program by 10% 13.2

Romney on record for actual cuts, not the fake cuts in this debt deal.

2011-08-02T11:54:00.001-05:00

Mitt Romney issues a statement on a debt-ceiling deal:

"As president, my plan would have produced a budget that was cut, capped and balanced – not one that opens the door to higher taxes and puts defense cuts on the table. President Obama's leadership failure has pushed the economy to the brink at the eleventh hour and 59th minute. While I appreciate the extraordinarily difficult situation President Obama's lack of leadership has placed Republican Members of Congress in, I personally cannot support this deal."

Good job Romney!

Budget Deal Doesn’t Cut Spending

2011-08-01T13:09:00.000-05:00

Check out the chart - only INCREASES - no actual cuts!

So we, the people, lose again - big government wins.

Budget Deal Doesn't Cut Spending

via Cato @ Liberty by Chris Edwards on 8/1/11

By Chris Edwards

Republicans and Democrats have come together on a "historic" budget deal that cuts federal spending by more than $2 trillion over 10 years. The Washington Post's lead story calls the cuts "sharp" and "severe."

However, the budget deal doesn't cut federal spending at all.

House Speaker John Boehner's bullet points on the deal say that it cuts discretionary spending by $917 billion over 10 years, as "certified by CBO." These discretionary "cuts" appear to be the same as those in Boehner's plan from last week. The chart shows CBO's scoring of those spending cuts (see here and here).

Wait a minute, those bars are rising! Spending isn't being cut at all. The "cuts" in the deal are only cuts from the CBO "baseline," which is a Washington construct of ever-rising spending. And even these "cuts" from the baseline include $156 billion of interest savings, which are imaginary because the underlying cuts are imaginary.

No program or agency terminations are identified in the deal. None of the vast armada of federal subsidies are targeted for elimination. Old folks will continue to gorge themselves on inflated benefits paid for by young families and future generations. None of Senator Tom Coburn's or Senator Rand Paul's specific cuts were included.

The federal government will still run a deficit of $1 trillion next year. This deal will "cut" the 2012 budget of $3.6 trillion by just $22 billion, or less than 1 percent.

The legislation does create a "Joint Committee" to design a second round of at least $1.2 trillion in spending cuts by November. Presumably, interest savings will be included in those "cuts" as well, reducing the amount of actual program cuts needed to about $1 trillion.

Will these Joint Committee cuts be real? This deal's immediate cuts aren't real, nor were many of the cuts in the 2011 budget deal earlier this year. It won't be hard by the Joint Committee to manufacture $1 trillion in pretend savings in coming months.

Spiegel Interviews Mark Meckler

2011-08-01T12:49:00.001-05:00

Wow, can you believe the lies and inverse logic coming from Der Spiegel?

Talk about a biased media. Also, a know-nothing media.

Spiegel Interviews Mark Meckler

by Tyler Durden on 8/1/11

Here is Mark Meckler

SPIEGEL: The world is looking at Washington and sees gridlock and chaos. How much have the negotiations over the United States' debt ceiling hurt America's standing in the world?

Meckler: Saying that these debates have hurt our image is absurd. What you currently see in Washington is one of the most responsible debates ever about the size and scope of government. The world should look at what is going on in the United States as a model for what should happen in all countries.

SPIEGEL: We look at it and see a Congress held hostage by a small group of radical Tea Party members unwilling to agree to any budget compromise and risking a US default.

Meckler: What do you mean by "a small group?" Forty-one percent of voters in the last US election said they agreed with Tea Party values. And the primary values of the Tea Party are about fiscal responsibility.

SPIEGEL: But you are willing to accept a US default if your demands for massive budget cuts and no tax increases are not met. That seems rather irresponsible or even unpatriotic. Most leading economists forecast financial "Armageddon" in that case.

Meckler: Default is a false threat. We take in over $220 billion in revenues every month and our debt service is only roughly $20 billion. The only way we will default is if the President of the United States makes the irresponsible choice not to pay our debts. We Tea Party Patriots put principles first, and we have to understand what America is about. Our country was founded on an idea: liberty. But it requires fiscal responsibility for people to be free. We are becoming slaves to our own government. Every US family now owes $400,000 to $500,000 in national debt. We Tea Party Patriots fight for the future of the nation, and there can be nothing more patriotic than that.

SPIEGEL: Democracy is not just about winning fights. It can only function if all parties are open to compromise.

Meckler: The compromises that we have witnessed on debt have taken our country to the brink of financial collapse. Currently, the American government is spending 44 cents of each dollar on interest payments. We have compromised our way into disaster. None of the budget plans proposed have real cuts in them -- only promises to cut. The reality is that legally one Congress cannot bind the future Congress to cut, so these promises are actually a lie. We need real and immediate cuts.

SPIEGEL: The budget plan proposed by Republican speaker John Boehner contained massive spending cuts. Why were you so unwilling to embrace it?

Meckler: Look closely at the plan: It proposes $22 billion in cuts in the upcoming fiscal year. That is ridiculously little. It is the equivalent in the United States of shutting off the lights on Friday night and reopening at your normal rate of spending on Monday.

SPIEGEL: The plan also rules out any tax increases to close the deficit, though. Even the plan of the Democrats does not mention new taxes. So your movement already won the debate over taxes.

Meckler: This debate is not about taxes. This is a question of spending. There is no amount of taxes that we could raise that would stop our deficit spending caused by politicians who have lied so often.

SPIEGEL: Your movement often refers to Ronald Reagan, the Republican icon. But he raised taxes 11 times and the debt ceiling 18 times.

Meckler: At no time did he control both houses of Congress, so often he had no choice. But Reagan got attacked viciously by conservatives over this, just as we would attack any Republican president in the future if he did something similar.

SPIEGEL: The US economy is still growing very slowly. If you cut government spending drastically now, you will risk having a double-dip recession.

Meckler: That is simply wrong. Government spending is never efficient.

SPIEGEL: But in the short run, the cuts will lead to even higher US unemployment.

Meckler: Possibly on a minimal level. But we have worried about the short term for so long that we have damaged the long-term prospects of our nation. Look at what is going on in Europe: Spain is a complete disaster. It has more vacant homes than we have here, with only 40 million people. Italy is a complete disaster. Europe is going down the same path as the US, only many countries are far ahead and don't take corrective action.

SPIEGEL: Speaker Boehner failed several times to rally Republicans around his plans. Does he need to go?

Meckler: We have polled our membership and 74 percent of our members in our 3,500 chapters said it is time to look at new leadership.

SPIEGEL: And should he be replaced by a Tea Party representative?

Meckler: The ultimate goal is to have somebody in the House who is fiscally responsible. We have changed the debate in the United States, which is a pretty radical thing to do in such a short period of time. The question back then was: "How much more will we spend next year, not how much can we cut?" But you will see much more profound change in 2012.

SPIEGEL: Who could be the Tea Party candidate in the next presidential election?

Meckler: The movement has no clear preference. Our members are taking a cool and careful look at all the candidates on the Republican side. I am actually glad people are not more excited and blown away. The last time we saw that on the campaign trail, the country got Barack Obama in the White House -- and that led to complete economic disaster.