BYE-BYE, BOBBY ... TA-TA, TIMMY ...AND
VOTER MOTIVES, i.e., LOCO-MOTIVES
Retiring Defense Secretary Robert Gates says Iran is supplying the weapons that are still killing American troops in Iraq. This simply bolsters the argument some of us have made: that the Iranian regime should have been decapitated by a major U.S. missile attack on 9/12, 2001. A lot of the murderous insanity that's ensued might well have been preempted.
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Tim Geithner quitting as Treasury Secretary? Perhaps he'll have more time to prepare -- and pay -- his income taxes. (News-hounds will recall that Tardy Timmy had a problem with that.)
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The battle cry of (many) American voters that scares the daylights out of most politicians:
"I WANT SOMETHING FROM THE GOVERNMENT, AND I WANT SOMEBODY ELSE TO PAY FOR IT!"
"Who is the 'somebody else'?"
"Rich people."
"Define 'rich'."
"Anybody who makes (or has) more money than I do! They CAN'T have earned it, so they must have stolen it!"
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The Democrats must be afraid of Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The left-leaning Public Policy organization has a poll out showing that Texas would go for Obama if their own governor is the presidential candidate. Suuure ...
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Dumb, gullible Democrats still buy the class-warfare bull(bleep) that the big-money Wall Street crowd supports the Republicans. That ... is ... a ... lie. In the 2008 race, almost twice as much Wall Street money went to Obama as to McCain. Goldman Sachs was Obama's second-largest contributor (after the University of California) and two other big Wall Street firms, Citigroup and J. P. Morgan-Chase, were in the top ten.
The reason was the same as always: big-money interests want to buy influence with the ultimate winner, and they placed their bet that Obama would beat the hapless McCain.
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The Des Moines Register reports on hard but vital advice from the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Thomas Hoenig, who delivered a scathing rebuke of U.S. monetary policy, Congress, and the American consumer.
He said the economy has been artificially inflated by low interest rates and will face further crises unless policymakers and consumers shift their focus to saving and investing instead of debt-driven growth. And he added that the longer interest rates remain low, the more the economy will suffer when rates inevitably rise.
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I watched part of a TV interview with a young Iowa woman who said she was eager to vote for someone she could really admire, respect, etc., etc. She clearly wanted to "fall in love" with a presidential candidate. This is the height of naive foolishness; the kind that put an incompetent, anti-American buffoon in the White House. One of life's lessons -- never learned by many people -- is that a healthy skepticism the only way to view any political candidate.
Let's all repeat the mantra: "Never fall in love with a politician ... they'll break your heart every time."
It's an expansion of the ancient dictum, "Blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed."
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The short-and-sweet on unions and the economy, from Investors.com ...
"The business world is abuzz over the National Labor Relations Board's complaint vs. Boeing's new South Carolina production line. For NLRB critics, the case boils down to one thing: "right-to-work" laws.
"Right-to-work states have generally lower unemployment, higher job growth, lower taxes and better business climates. They have growing populations and have been attracting businesses from other states."
Just contrast, say, California vs. Texas. Those union "benefits" don't look so juicy when there's no job to be had.
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Jamaica is a former British colony that's had years to flirt with socialism, Castro-love and other assorted political nonsense. Michael Manley was the apostle of that foolishness.
It appears the Jamaicans have had an epiphany. POWERLINE newsletter reports on a poll taken by the biggest newspaper on the island, which finds that by a margin of 60% to 17%, Jamaicans now say they'd be better off if they were a colony again. Poverty, drug wars and other criminal activity have turned Jamaica into one of the most dangerous places on earth.
In 1962, Jamaica and nearby Cayman Islands voted on whether to remain colonies or take independence. Jamaica took independence and it's been a disaster. The Caymans chose to retain colonial status and are a huge success, with a healthy economy and a very low level of crime. All this with none of the natural resources that bless Jamaica.
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For all their effectiveness (re the story about the Nigerian boarding a JFK-LAX fliight with fake ID and a day-old boarding pass) the TSA might as well have its airport Gestapo replaced by the Taliban. Would their boss, Janet Napolitano, even know the difference? The woman with a vacant lot for a brain may be the most embarrassing of all Obama's many idiotic appointments.
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From Britain's Telegraph newspaper ... what the government there says about its own predecessor to Obamacare, the National Health Service:
"Almost 100,000 terminally ill people do not get proper care, according to a Government review."
You might want to show this to some deluded neighbor/acquaintance/relative who's infatuated with the idea of a government-run system.
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USNews reports on a new Harvard University study finding that July 4th parades energize only Republicans, turn kids into Republicans, and help to boost the GOP turnout of adults on Election Day. "Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation's political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party," said the report from Harvard.
To clarify the point ... Democrats have no reason to celebrate the anniversary of this nation's birth. Is anyone surprised?
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Victor Davis Hanson with a Fourth of July reminder ...
"For the last 235 years, on the Fourth of July, Americans have celebrated the birth of the United States, and the founding ideas that have made it the most powerful, wealthiest and freest nation in the history of civilization.
"There is no rational reason why a small republican experiment in 1776 grew to dominate global culture and society -- except that America is the only nation, past or present, that put trust in the individual rather than in the state and its elite bureaucracy. Such confidence in the average free citizen made America absolutely exceptional -- something we should remember more than ever on this Fourth of July."
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The White House, source of endless nonsense about how the administration wants to deal with the fiscal debacle in a bi-partisan way, has turned down an invitation from Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to meet with him and other Republican leaders. As Obama's spokesparrot Jay Carney put it, "That's not a conversation worth having." So ... the Big Zero trots off to more fund-raisers and a vacation.
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The spendthrift Greek government is a dead weight on the European Union, economically. Now Denmark is re-installing border control checkpoints that vanished during the "open borders" era. The whole, stupid house-of-cards that tried to pretend that so many diverse cultures could be joined is falling apart.
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George McGovern, one of the biggest losers in American presidential election history, is flapping his aging (left) wing to fly down and visit his old buddy, Fidel Castro. No word as to any plans to visit Castro's thousands of political prisoners.
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When Bill Maher has his head examined, is the procedure performed by a proctologist?
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From reader Tom in Santa Rosa, CA ...
Illinois is unique. The Governors make the license plates.
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Conan O'Brien --
"Newt Gingrich says he does not support gay marriage. He says marriage is a sacred sacrament that should only be between a man and his first, second, and third wives."
ANOTHER OBAMA POWER-GRAB? NANCY
SAGGING (in the polls) AND MORE
Sen. Chuck "Where's the camera?" Schumer, other Democrats and their media lackeys are talking about the possibility of their beloved Dear Leader just ignoring Congress on the debt limit. The very fact such a thing should even be considered is a clear indication that this Marxist bunch is power-mad, and legitimately raises the question as to whether the nation can survive the remainder of ONE Obama term, much less a second. And if he should be around for an additional four years, expect a Supreme Court that will be irreparably packed with leftists.
BTW, Obama's already demonstrated his contempt for the law by giving grant money to the ACORN scam-artists who are simply running the same operation under a new name, Affordable Housing Corp.
If Congress and the courts won't stop this flouting of the law, who will? The Pentagon? I know -- it's unthinkable ... isn't it?
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Robert Tracinski of TIAdaily.com with a reality-check on Obama's demagogic anti-private-jet rhetoric --
"So I heard the latest economic bulletin from President Obama: that the whole problem with the economy and the federal budget is because of a tax break for corporate jets. Really? We're in economic and fiscal trouble because we haven't raised a tiny little tax on corporate jets? Does the president have any concept of how irrelevant this is? The tax accounts for less than one tenth of one percent of the deficit reduction his negotiations with the Republican are supposed to achieve.
"Of course, we can suspect Obama of a certain degree of hypocrisy on these issues. Take corporate jets. Obama raised about $750 million for his 2008 campaign. Did he fly regular commercial airliners during his campaign, or did he spend some of his enormous fund-raising haul on private jets? And didn't his own stimulus package contain a tax break for private jets, in an attempt to stimulate the airplane manufacturers?"
It might also be remembered that most of those corporate jets are made in America, by American workers.
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What do you think of this idea, expressed in a question in the Rasmussen Reports survey:
Sixty-five percent (65%) of Likely U.S. Voters believe individuals should have the right to select their own retirement age. Those who want to retire earlier could pay more in Social Security taxes now. Those who would prefer lower taxes today could pay less in taxes and retire later.
Rasmussen also finds that the Queen of the Loonies is not aging well in the view of voters. Thirty percent (30%) of voters nationwide have a favorable opinion of Nancy Pelosi, while 60% have an unfavorable impression of her.
Doubt and resignation are evident in contemplating the nation's future. A plurality of Likely Voters (46%) think America’s best days are in the past. Just thirty-seven percent (37%) feel the country’s best days are ahead. Yessir, that "hope and change" childishness is really paying off, isn't it?
Also ... opponents of capitol punishment are still in a (shrinking) minority. The Rasmussen survey shows that a rising 63% of American adults favor the death penalty, while 25% oppose it.
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If you have in your circle of acquaintances some simple-minded dope who believes socialism and big-government spending work, suggest that he/she spend just a little time checking the news out of Greece. And if we don't stop Obama and his followers, we're looking at our own future when we see what the misguided people in the "cradle of democracy" have done to themselves. Big government unions with overly-generous salaries and benefits like early retirement and bountiful pension plans, etc., have destroyed the economy. That squawking you hear from the streets of Athens is the sound of chickens coming home to roost.
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Even the liberal Washington Post seems to be getting fed up with Democrat lies. Like the whopper told by Sen. Barbara Boxer, who said, “I think we ought to go back to the people and the party that was the only party and the only people to balance the budget in 40 years. I hate to break it to my Republican friends, but that is the Democratic Party. We are the ones who did it. We did it when Bill Clinton came into office. We did it after hard work. We did it after painful cuts. We did it with smart investments.”
Babsie's a liar. Repeat: a liar. As the Post goes on to recapitulate, it was a Republican congress elected in the middle of Billy Jeff's first term that FORCED him to balance the budget. But election results show that there are more than enough California voters will to buy whatever fantasies she wants to peddle.
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Must-reading ... RealClearPolitics.com ... Friday postings ... Jonah Goldberg ... "Obama's Focused-Group, Class Warfare Rhetoric"
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Big fund-raiser for Obama: David Cohen, Exec VP of Comcast, which owns NBC and MSNBC.
A million-two at a fund-raiser held at his home Thursday night.
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The lying Democrats are exposed again. Investors.com --
"Democrats thought they'd dammed up the truth about government's role in the financial crisis. But the levies are breaking, thanks to a spate of rogue new books on the subject.
"The latest, "Reckless Endangerment," shreds the narrative carefully constructed by Democrats and the liberal media that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were only bit players in the crisis and followed Wall Street into subprime lending.
"It details how the federally chartered mortgage giants in fact led the way in relaxing underwriting standards for the entire industry — thanks to relentless pressure from Democrats, who used them as off-budget piggy banks to fund their social crusade to boost minority homeownership (and shore up their voting base)."
And one of the biggest promoters of this colossal scam was Congressman Barney Frank.But, after all, he needed a place to settle his boyfriends in cushy jobs.
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Point to ponder: wonder how many candidates for the Republican presidential nomination are going easy on front-runner Romney because they want a shot at the vice-presidency slot if he wins? Obamacare and his flip-flops are big targets, but the rest of the field seems reluctant to attack.
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An indicator of what the real world thinks of Communist economics as practiced by the likes of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. When news broke that the dictator has cancer, Venezuelan bonds (i.e., the government's debt instruments) rose in price. In other words, the country is more credit-worthy without him.
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Conan O'Brien is a funny guy, but his attempt to bring a late-night audience to a basic-cable channel is not working. His TBS show is losing in the ratings to Chelsea Handler on the "E" channel, and doesn't even come close to the numbers run up by Leno, Letterman and Kimmel.
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They've had a long run-in-the-sun, but is the curtain coming down on the career of two veteran movie stars? The new pic starring Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks, "Larry Crowne", isn't exactly burning up the box office. It appears the youth market, the major element in today's audience, just isn't buying them.
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From the e-mail ... Sheila forwards this succinct political platform --
Obama: Gone!
Borders: Closed...
Language: English only...
Culture: Constitution, and the Bill of Rights!!!
Drug Free: Make a drug screen mandatory for anyone on welfare and/or food stamps!
NO freebies to Non-Citizens!
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Rich contributes the following --
"They said I was an insensitive and ingrateful and was also a 'racist'.
They sent my census form back. In answer to the question, 'Do you have any dependents?' I put ...... 'Asylum seekers, illegal immigrants, crack heads, unemployable on Welfare and recipients of food stamps, the cast of The Jerry Springer Show, 211,108 inmates - (people in our Federal penal establishments), most of the state of New York and California, all of the state of Michigan, especially the city of Detroit'.
"I also added, '- the folks who no longer live in my state whom I still support from Katrina, half of Mexico, the Island of Haiti, Puerto Rico, The United Nations, OPEC, The IMF, World Bank, The IRS, The Federal Reserve Bank, Acorn, The World Wildlife Society, Sierra Club, GreenPeace, Save the Whales, ACLU members, employees of PBS radio and TV stations, AMTRAK and Postal Services, a whole host of Federal Judges, one hundred Senators and 535 Congressman, and a Muslim President!'
Apparently this wasn't an acceptable answer."
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From All Comedy Radio --
"MSNBC analyst Mark Halperin suspended indefinitely for saying the President acted like a “d**k” during his press conference. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow asked, 'What’s a d**k?'"
ONE-FOURTH OF AMERICANS DON'T KNOW
WHAT THE 4th IS ABOUT
Call it another monument to the failure of America's "education" system. A new Marist poll finds that one-in-four Americans don't know from what country the U.S. declared independence in 1776. The younger cohort (18-29) scored worst. Thanks to our so-called "educators", we are growing a nation of ignorant buffoons.
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We've known for a long time that there is no direct correlation between education budgets and education results. An illustration from the Sacramento Bee --
"It's a trend that would seem to defy conventional wisdom: As public school spending has declined in California in recent years, student achievement test scores have gone up.
"Statewide, school districts spent 6 percent less from 2008 to 2010, but the percentage of second- to seventh-grade students scoring proficient on the state's standardized English test rose from 48 percent to 55 percent."
(Mike--thanks for the link.)
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Our demagogue-in-chief has decided that attacking the use of corporate jets is a fine way to snooker the poor, dumb, deluded oxen who make up a great part of his base. If you know any of these dummies, you might remind them that in 2009, as part of his "stimulus plan", Obama supported accelerated depreciation for corporate jet aircraft.
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Barron's, the business newspaper, says by autumn we can look for another jump in oil prices. And yet the Marxist clown in the White House and the quacks at the EPA still won't permit more use of our own oil. How much longer can the country survive being run by crazy people?
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The American University is located in Washington, D. C. The UN-American University is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It used to be called Harvard, until it put out a "study" showing that celebrating the 4th of July was a plot to promote conservatism.
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Victor Davis Hanson on liberal immigration mythology --
"Either federal law will be enforced and immigration will return to an orderly, legal process — where merit, education, and skill sets are used as litmus tests for would-be immigrants without regard to ethnic or racial background — or else Arizona, New Mexico, and California will soon become a dysfunctional region, where one class flees and quite another enters, and soon even illegal aliens seek a new, more northern border to cross. Open borders, non-assimilation, ethnic separatism, and tribalism lead to the Balkans or Rwanda — not, as envisioned, to a society patterned after the boutique diversity of the faculty lounge."
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Several readers have forwarded this list of some of the programs funded by your tax dollars. It should help you arrive at conclusions about Democrats' reluctance to cut government spending. This is a partial list of Republicans' suggested cuts:
Corporation for Public Broadcasting Subsidy. $445million annual savings.
International Fund for Ireland . $17 million annual savings.
Community Development Fund. $4.5 billion annual savings
Cut Federal Travel Budget in Half. $7.5 billion annual savings.
Department of Energy Grants to States for "weatherization", $530 million annual savings.
New Starts Transit. $2 billion annual savings.
Applied Research at Department of Energy. $1.27 billion annual savings.
Economic Assistance to Egypt . $250 million annually.
Subsidy for Washington Metropolitan Area Transit, $150 million annually.
No funding for federal office space acquisition. $864 annual savings.
Require collection of unpaid taxes by federal employees(!). $1 billion annually.
Prohibit taxpayer funded union activities by federal employees, $1.2 billion over ten years.
Legal Services Corporation. $420 million annual savings.
National Endowment for the Arts. $167.5 million annual savings.
National Endowment for the Humanities. $167.5 millionannual savings.
Hope VI Program.. $250 million annual savings.
Amtrak Subsidies. $1.565 billion annual savings.
Eliminate duplicative education programs, savings of $1.3billion annual savings.
Trim Federal Vehicle Budget by 20%. $600 million annualsavings. (The Obama administration has bought more new limos than any administration in history.)
Exchange Programs for Alaska , Natives Native Hawaiians,and Their Historical Trading Partners in Massachusetts. $9 million annual savings.
Intercity and High Speed Rail Grants. $2.5 billion annual savings.
Title X Family Planning. $318 million annual savings.
U.S. Agency for International Development. $1.39 billion annual savings.
Sell excess federal properties the government does not use, $15 billion total savings.
This is only a partial list. The total adds up to $2.5 trillion over ten years.
Notice there is no mention of the cost of supporting ILLEGAL ALIENS, which is estimated at between $350Billion and $600Billion ANNUALLY.
See anything on the list you just can't do without?
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The cost of a greedy, fat-cat White House: 454 White House staffers are paid a total of $37,121,463 per year.
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From Mike ... the wisdom of Pat Paulson --
"All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indians."
JULY, 1776
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
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The political rumor-mill is abuzz with "'bye-'bye Biden" gossip from political insiders who expect The Big O to dump Joltin' Joe from the ticket next year, perhaps for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who would then be positioned (if they win) to be the leading Democrat candidate in 2016. Of course, some wishful-thinkers see the presence of Biden as Obama's best insurance against impeachment, should Republicans regain control of the Senate, although the likelihood of that happening IF Obama is re-elected would appear remote.
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Have you heard ANY Republican presidential candidate, declared or otherwise, use the term "compassionate conservatism"? I didn't think so ... That RINO-ism is as dead as GWB's pastureland in the Texas drought.
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When politicians don't want the public to notice a piece of bad news they're required to release, when do they put it out? Late Friday, of course -- and even better, a Friday leading into a holiday weekend. Thus, obscured by 4th of July fireworks, we get the latest quarterly report from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, which summarizes the success -- or lack thereof -- of Obama's "stimulus" program. Conclusion: the jobs that it DID save, or add, came at a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.
Obviously, simply GIVING the money to the same number of people over a five- or six-year period would have been more cost-effective. But ... what do we expect from a government-run program?
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A reader sends along this letter written by a returning GI regarding the most useless, annoying, stupid, incompetent bureaucracy in the entire United States government, utterly devoid of common sense. But ... draw your own conclusions.
"As the Chalk Leader for my flight home from Afghanistan, I witnessed the following:
When we were on our way back from Afghanistan, we flew out of Baghram Air Field. We went through customs at BAF, full body scanners (no groping), had all of our bags searched, the whole nine yards. Our first stop was Shannon, Ireland to refuel. After that, we had to stop at Indianapolis, Indiana to drop off about 100 folks from the Indiana National Guard. That's where the stupid started.
First, everyone was forced to get off the plane-even though the plane wasn't refueling again. All 330 people got off that plane, rather than let the 100 people from the ING get off. We were filed from the plane to a holding area. No vending machines, no means of escape. Only a male/female latrine.
It's probably important to mention that we were ALL carrying weapons. Everyone was carrying an M 4 Carbine and some, like me, were also carrying an M 9 pistol. Oh, and our gunners had M-240 B machine guns. Of course, the weapons weren't loaded. And we had been cleared of all ammo well before we even got to customs at Baghram, then AGAIN at customs.
The TSA personnel at the airport seriously considered making us unload all of the baggage from the SECURE cargo hold to have it re-inspected. Keep in mind, this cargo had been unpacked, inspected piece by piece by U.S. Customs officials, resealed and had bomb-sniffing dogs give it a one-hour run through. After two hours of sitting in this holding area, the TSA decided not to re-inspect our Cargo - just to inspect us again: soldiers on the way home from war, who had already been inspected, re-inspected and kept in a SECURE holding area for 2 hours.
This is probably another good time to remind you all that all of us were carrying actual assault rifles, and some of us were also carrying pistols.
One of our Soldiers had his Gerber multi-tool. TSA confiscated it. Kind of ridiculous, but it gets better. A few minutes later, a guy empties his pockets and has a pair of nail clippers. Nail clippers. TSA informs the soldier that they're going to confiscate his nail clippers. The conversation went something like this:
TSA Guy: You can't take those on the plane.
Soldier: What? I've had them since we left country on the way over.
TSA Guy: You're not suppose to have them.
Soldier: Why?
TSA Guy: They can be used as a weapon.
Soldier: [touches butt stock of the rifle] But this actually is a weapon. And I'm allowed to take it on.
TSA Guy: Yeah but you can't use it to take over the plane. You don't have bullets.
Soldier: And I can take over the plane with nail clippers?
TSA Guy: [awkward silence]
Me: Dude, just give him your damn nail clippers so we can get the f__k out of here. I'll buy you a new set.
Soldier: [hands nail clippers to TSA guy, makes it through security]
To top it off, the TSA demanded we all be swabbed for "explosive residue" detection. Everyone failed, [go figure, we just came home from a war zone], because we tested positive for "Gun Powder Residue". Who the f__k is hiring these people?
This might be a good time to remind everyone that approximately 233 people re-boarded that plane with assault rifles, pistols, and machine guns - but nothing that could have been used as a 'weapon'.
Can someone please tell me What the hell happened to OUR country while we were gone?"
THANK YOU, SOLDIER. WHAT HAPPENED? THE COUNTRY HAS BEEN TAKEN OVER BY A BUNCH OF LEFT-WING, KNOW-IT-ALL CRAZIES, THAT'S WHAT!
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Today's guide to misused words, especially for media illiterates --
FLOUT vs FLAUNT.
You flout the law by showing disdain for it. You flaunt your new car/outfit, etc., to arouse envy in others.
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Irredeemably sexist, but funny tongue-in-cheek advice for men --
If you wonder who loves you more, your wife or your dog, try this: lock each in the trunk of your car for an hour, and see which is happier to see you when you open it.
ALL HAIL THE NEW CAESAR! ...
PLUS, THE TEACHERS' UNION SHAKEDOWN GROWS
Another step toward economic disaster looms in the increasing likelihood that the next Obama power-grab will take the form of his refusal to recognize any limit on government debt. And the treasonous Democrats in Congress will be happy to go along with it, assuming that such blatant irresponsibility would hoodwink a gullible public into giving them more years in office -- and to hell with the long-term consequences.
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This tells you all you need to know about Obama's failed presidency. The teachers' union, the very core of our joke of an educational system, the NEA, has endorsed him for another term. Only an institution as evil as the NEA would dare to repeatedly tell the taxpayers, "Give us more money and we'll do a better job of educating your children." In any field of truly competitive work, the philosophy is, "We'll do a better job, THEN expect more money."
The union will also be assessing its members an additional $10 annually for a "crisis fund", the crisis evidently being worry that Obama might lose next year.
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A San Francisco Bay Area teacher, whose identity I withhold because the union's more deranged members have been known to attempt retribution against those who don't toe-the-line, offers these thoughts ...
"I found your comment that "there is no direct correlation between education budgets and education results" very much on the mark. As a teacher and only one of two conservatives at the school in which I teach, I have gotten the cold shoulder a few times from my colleagues when I said that the greatest determiner of a good student is not the teacher but the parent(s). My best students have always had parents that have taught their kids right from wrong, placed limitations on their behavior, shown them a respect for authority, fostered a love of reading (this cannot be overstated) and kept constant supervision over what their kids are doing. You show me a good school and I will show you a good community with strong families; show me a bad school and I will show you a chaotic community with broken families.
"As a result, the money that government spends on its schools has little impact on the quality of education for kids. A good student will do the work, a bad student will not -- government money has little to do with it. Good students can overcome bad teaching as long as they have a decent textbook they can read for information. However, good teaching seldom overcomes bad students because there is no legal way to force a kid to learn. So when the government says that we must spend more money on our schools, how does that affect the decaying family structure in the community? No at all. It is, in many cases, wasted money.
"Why does this go on? There is money to be made on the school side of education. The unions want more money for teachers and the unions have political sway in many states and at the federal level. Publishers make tens of billions of dollars selling novels, textbooks, and support materials to schools. Individuals and companies get paid thousands of dollars a day for seminars delivered to administrators and teachers. There is a lot of money to be made on education and powerful forces to keep the gravy train rolling."
Thanks to the teacher who submitted those thoughts.
The painful bottom line is that the education establishment, starting with the teachers' union, gives us endless noble platitudes about their mission. But mostly, it's about keeping the bucks coming in from a gullible public.
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More on the liberal scum: Britain hailed a 4th-of-July unveiling of a statue of Ronald Reagan in London. Who DIDN'T attend the ceremonial dinner following the unveiling, despite being invited? Obama's political hack ambassador, a cretin named Louis B Susman. It's apparently of a piece with Obama's many previous instances of being deliberately rude to our longtime ally.
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If Charles Krauthammer is correct in his assumption that, given economic trends, many middle-aged Americans may never find jobs again ... a grim prediction: we will see an unprecedented wave of suicides in that demographic. It will happen because among many -- men, especially -- they see their worth as human beings directly tied to the ability to be productive. While many men are happily retired in their 50's, many are desperately UNhappy over being sidelined so early, income considerations aside. Check any community with a large retiree population for confirmation in the form of even economically-secure men leading lives of quiet desperation and frustration.
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Operating on the reasonable assumption that a person wearing a mask might very well be an outlaw, police in Australia's state of New South Wales (that includes Sydney) have been given authority to remove the burka face-covering from Muslim women if identification is needed. In short: take it off, or go to jail for a year. It's another overdue recognition that fundamentalist Islam cannot be assimilated into western culture and is no more to be tolerated than wearing a cross into, say, Saudi Arabia (which WILL get your arrested). Take in a bible, and you are in for a world of grief. But, of course, we in the west are expected to "respect" the Quran and tolerate all the manifestations of belief in a medieval madman whose message basically revolves around hate and murder.
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US Airways, arguably the worst airline in America, forced a woman photographer off a flight out of Philadelphia on the grounds that she was a "security risk". Why did the boobs at the airline reach such a conclusion? Because the woman took a picture of a flight attendant who was being rude to passengers in the gate area; a photo which she intended to use accompanying a letter of complaint to the airline.
I've flown this airline a few times, myself. Greyhound is an upgrade.
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Memo to the folk at Fox News: feel free to continue quoting this daily blog. No attribution necessary.
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Peter calls my attention to points made in Charlie Reese's last column (he's retiring) --
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The President does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
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When so many judges render so many decisions that are clearly motivated by politics rather than law, why should they be treated with any more respect than any other hack politician? Wearing a robe makes them no more wise or just than any other parasite on the public payroll. An outstanding example of group idiocy disguised as jurisprudence is to be found, for example, on the 9th District Federal Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco. It does not, however, have a claim to exclusivity in the field of political pawns on the bench. The entire system is permeated by that most basic of political transactions, the bribe. Raise money for a politician with the power to appoint a judge ... you get the job!
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Every time you think TV can't get any worse ... it gets worse. My cable company just "rewarded" me with expanded service; channels I didn't even know existed. Bruce Springsteen's song is more apt now than when he wrote it: "Ninety-Nine Channels and Nothin' On".
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I am not technology-averse, but despite occasional inquiries I have no interest in opening a "Twitter" account that would enable people to "follow" me. First, I wonder how empty one's life would have to be that they'd want to "follow" me. Secondly, to enable such behavior seems to me an invitation to an electronic version of stalking. So ... no, thank you!
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From the grandparents' answering machine ...
We are not at home but, please Leave your message after you hear the beep.. beeeeeppp ...
If you are one of our children, press 1.
If you need us to stay with your kids, press 2
If you want to borrow the car, press 3
If you want us to wash your clothes and do the ironing, press 4
If you want the grandchildren to sleep here tonight, press 5
If you want us to pick up the kids at school, press 6
If you want us to prepare a meal for Sunday or to have it delivered to your home, press 7
If you want to come to eat here, press 8
If you need money, dial 9
(Thanks, Dan!)
MITT'S MONEY, ANOTHER OBAMA DUMB-ISM,
ETC.
Mitt Romney is the leader among Republicans in the big-money sweepstakes for political contributions. It figures. While he's certainly preferable to the leftist now in the White House, his RINO inclincation is just what the country-club Republican establishment likes. Michele Bachmann is also an effective fund-raiser, and her numbers are awaited with interest.
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Gallup Poll shows a consistently high (60%) level of support for Obama among American Jews. Given his overt hostility to Israel, one can only assume an equally high level of secularism among those supporters, and an utter lack of interest in the fate of the Jewish homeland. Have they never heard what just one of Obama's mentors, the crazed preacher in Chicago, has said about Jews?
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The leftist Big Media, ever on the alert for a misstatement by a conservative, paid no notice to this one. It was unveiled by BigJournalism.com.
Speaking to some of the addled, brain-dead cattle who support him, Obama stated that Abraham Lincoln (you know -- that REPUBLICAN president) had built the transcontinental railroad.
No, dummy, he didn't. That feat wasn't achieved until years later, in 1869.
Maybe Barack should've gone to a real school, instead of that leftist Potemkin Village at Harvard. You know: where they've discovered in a "study" suggestions that 4th-of-July celebrations are some sort of conservative plot.
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Texas Governor Rick Perry had better be careful to avoid slip-ups, verbal or otherwise, if he does (as expected) enter the Republican race. It's clear that the liberal media, Obama's lapdogs, have their knives sharpened and will be alert for any opportunity to distort and attack. Their fear of him is clearly manifest already.
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Things I learned while looking for something else ...
Michele Bachmann worked in the presidential campaign of ... JIMMY CARTER?! Yes. But we DO live and learn. oad.
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In all the corrupt, deceitful world of political PR is there any sight more revolting that the Obamas pretending to be respectful -- and fond of -- our military people? As committed leftists, it's a certainty that they'd be happy to have our entire military disbanded.
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The recent legalization of same-sex marriage in New York proves that it's no longer an issue in the United States, right? Gay marriage will eventually, but certainly, become widely accepted everywhere, right?
Not if the American people have anything to say about it.
So far, the question has been put directly to American voters 31 times, and 31 times voters have said marriage is a one-man and one-woman deal, according to Maggie Gallagher, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage. Most notably was the Proposition 8 referendum in which California voters overrode a state supreme court decision ratifying same-sex marriage.
-- Dennis Byrne in the Chicago Tribune
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Was the Casey Anthony jury cloned from the same jurors who found O. J. Simpson not guilty?
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Bloomberg,, the business news service, reports that the highest paid California state employee was paid $838,708 last year. His name was withheld by the state. What does he do? He's the chief psychiatrist for the state prison system. Now, if he were chief psychiatrist for the governor and state legislature, it might be a worthwhile investment ...
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The gasoline with a higher ethanol content (15%) that the government plans to soon shove down your throat could void your car's warranty. The Omaha World Herald reports that the threat comes from dozens of car companies.
Ford, Toyota, Chrysler and others criticized the federal government's moves to allow the sale of the 15 percent ethanol blend and said warranties on the cars and trucks they produce might be voided if owners use it. But so long as there are whores in Congress who want those big bux from the producers of the junk, you'll get it whether you want it or not.
FYI, it also lowers mileage and contributes to the rapidly-increasing cost of food because so much corn goes into ethanol -- subsidized by your tax dollars, thanks to the same bunch of corrupt politicos.
Reminder: you're paying almost twice as much for gasoline as when the Marxist was inaugurated. How's THAT for ... "change"?
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From John Stossel at RealClearPolitics.com --
"What do Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Mark Cuban have in common?
They're all college dropouts. Richard Branson, Simon Cowell and Peter Jennings have in common?
They never went to college at all. But today all kids are told: To succeed, you must go to college.
Hillary Clinton tells students: "Graduates from four-year colleges earn nearly twice as much as high school graduates, an estimated $1 million more." We hear that from people who run colleges. And it's true. But it leaves out some important facts
Richard Vedder, author of "Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much," says, "There are 80,000 bartenders in the United States with bachelor's degrees,17 percent of baggage porters and bellhops have a college degree, 15 percent of taxi and limo drivers."
Honorable work, but was that degree necessary for them?
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The slow-motion disintegration of the European Union continues. Portugal's bonds (debt) have been downgraded to junk status. Someday the Euro may be a collectors' item curiosity.
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The death march is playing for TV as we've known it. An industry group says about half of all new flat-screen TV's sold in the next four years will have internet capability. That means viewers can simply bypass networks and local stations, and watch whatever they want to see via the internet.
(By then we'll probably have "Real Housewives/Sluts of Palatka, Arkansas")
I've spent most of my adult life in broadcasting, both radio and TV, and I well recall the disdain for the older medium shown by TV people who never suspected that their time for technological obsolescence was coming.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls ...
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Readership of this daily diatribe hit a new high yesterday. Please spread it around further by forwarding either the column or the link to everyone on your e-mailing list.
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Pete offers this in response to the Harvard "study" finding that celebrating the 4th of July promoted Republicanism:
Since Harvard and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- a REAL brain school) are neighbors in Cambridge, Mass., this could have some basis in fact.
Two students, one from Harvard, the other from MIT find themselves at the urinals in a local bar. The MIT student finishes first and heads for the door. The Harvard student speaks up: "At Harvard, they teach us to wash our hands before leaving the restroom". The MIT student replies as he pushes at the door, "At MIT, they teach us not to pee on our hands".
CHEATERS NEVER PROSPER.
OKAY, MAYBE SOMETIMES ...
CASEY AT THE BAT, LIKELY HITS A HOMER WITH DOPES
CASEY AT THE BAT, LIKELY HITS A HOMER WITH DOPES
Your education dollar at work! The Atlanta school system has found 178 teachers and school administrators helping students cheat on tests. Eighty-two have already confessed. Why? To keep more money flowing from taxpayer pockets into their own. Better test scores bring bonus money to many "educators".
What are the chances your own local district has thieves doing the same?
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Ms. Coulter with another angle on the Casey Anthony story ...
"If you were the victim of a crime in Orlando, Fla., between July and December 2008, you should be enraged that the police couldn't prevent or investigate your crime because they were too busy looking for a missing child whose mother already knew the kid was dead.
"As long as we're looking for new revenue streams, how about billing these white trash low-lifes for their massive consumption of police resources?"
BTW ... it's being reported that Ms. Anthony wrote a note to a fellow inmate about her plans to become rich and famous by writing a book. She'll probably succeed. One reaches that conclusion based on the timeless wisdom of H.L. Mencken, who said, "Nobody ever went broke UNDER-estimating the American public."
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From the liberal (owned by the New York Times) Boston Globe ...
The elder Barack H. Obama, a sophomore at the University of Hawaii, had come under scrutiny by federal immigration officials who were concerned that he had more than one wife. When he was questioned by the school’s foreign student adviser, the 24-year-old Obama insisted that he had divorced his wife in his native Kenya. Although his new wife, Ann Dunham, was five months pregnant with their child - who would be called Barack Obama II - Obama declared that they intended to put their child up for adoption.
“Subject got his USC wife ‘Hapai’ [Hawaiian for pregnant] and although they were married they do not live together and Miss Dunham is making arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away,’’ according to an Immigration Deptartment memo describing the conversation.
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Obama and his ultra-leftist Attorney General, Eric "Gunrunner" Holder, have chosen to extend all the rights of a U.S. citizen to a captured terrorist from Somalia by removing him from military custody for a trial in a civilian court. They clearly show greater concern for the well-being of murderous terrorists from third-world countries than for the defense of the United States.
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Investors Business Daily reports that your dollar is now worth 12% less since The Big Zero was inaugurated. Have you made it up in interest on your CDs or money-market funds? I didn't think so ...
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A dozen years ago, George W. Bush was ridiculed in the media for referring to the "internetS", plural. Obama just did the same thing. Expect to hear his media suck-ups even mention it? I didn't think so ...
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From The American Thinker website, observations by Lloyd Marcus -- who is black.
"Due to liberal media manipulation and guilt, America elected an incompetent black guy as leader of the free world to prove that we are not racist. Obama's black skin has made him untouchable, the left's dream tool to further their socialist agenda."
The voters made the error that's terrorized emplyers for years as they asked themselves, "Have I hired somebody I can't fire, no matter HOW incompetent he is?"
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The downgrading of Portugal's government bond-rating to junk status quickly had the effect of raising the interest rate on a ten-year Portugese government bond above 12%. Of course, that rate reflects the very real risk that the Portugese government won't repay its debts.
This obviously will be followed by similar interest increases throughout the economy, providing a foretaste of what could happen here if that bunch of lunatics in Washington don't get our own government's outrageous spending and debt under control in short order.
Footnote. One of the unhinged leftists in the U.S. Congress, New York's Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, says liberals will demand more money for government-funded construction jobs. The obvious ploy is to buy union votes for next year's election.
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The irresponsibility of parasite nations is evidently incurable. Just one day after mooching a huge bailout from other European countries, Greece's Prime Minister George Papandreou called on the European Union nations to lend Greece another $173 billion.
It's just possible that Greece operates by the philosophy first enunciated by the businessman who said, "When you owe the bank ten thousand dollars (pick a figure), THEY own YOU. When you owe that bank $100 million, YOU own THEM."
Such is the price for loaning money to deadbeat individuals -- or nations.
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More distressing news for the gullible Greenies.
Ian Rutherford Plimer is an Australian geologist and professor at the University of Adelaide.
He has this sad fact for those folk:
"The most recent volcanic eruption in Iceland, since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just FOUR DAYS, negated every effort you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions." And more volcanoes around the world are rumbling and spewing constantly.
I know ... it's just a shame how Ma Nature won't cooperate with poor little humans trying to manipulate her.
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Every day brings more news of mob attacks on individuals in major cities,obviously inspired by nothing more than racial hatred. That factor is studiously ignored by the big media and local government goo-goos. But security video at a Milwaukee 7-11 store which was the scene of another criminal mob action made clear the racial makeup of the perpetrators, which doubtless dismays the NAACP.
Perhaps the services of a "community organizer" are needed. Oh-- I forgot. A certain prominent person in that field did much of his organizing in Chicago, which has had one such gang attack after another ... one of the worst records in the nation.
Until society as a whole and especially law enforcement personnel decide to treat savages LIKE savages, this horrifying trend will only worsen and America will accelerate its headlong rush toward third-world status. In the meantime, it's a mark of rational thinking for people to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms.
If more innocent victims had shot a few of these goons, would-be perpetrators might have second thoughts before attacking.
It may only be coincidence, but I've yet to hear of such attacks in my home state of Arizona. One might conclude that is a result of so many people here being armed, thus reducing the odds considerably.
Oh, I KNOW! I'm SO un-PC ...
Let's discuss it over my Smith & Wesson.
JUSTICE PREVAILS -- MURDERER'S LIGHTS
TURNED OUT
Texas executed convicted illegal alien murderer Humberto Leal, whose guilt was established beyond doubt in the rape and killing of a 16-year-old girl. He was executed despite protests from the Mexican government and the White House.
Good.
Liberal media are trying to play the execution of this lowlife as a potential political problem for Texas Governor Rick Perry. They are full of bovine excrement. Every public opinion poll shows Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of capital punishment, and the percentage is growing.
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Sen. Harry Reid, Democratic leader in the Senate and perpetual demagogue, said, “Democrats believe all Americans, including those who can afford private jets and yachts, should contribute to the collective effort to reduce the deficit.”
As if upper income Americans weren't already shouldering a huge majority of the tax burden. When might he suggest that the (nearly) half of Americans who pay no income taxes at all pay THEIR share? We have already become a nation so tilted in favor of freeloaders that the trend may be irreversible.
Reid, of course, knows that the top-income 5% of Americans pay 95% of all income taxes collected, but that doesn't fit his political goal of sucking in the gullible dummies.
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If Obama agrees to any real cuts in government spending, you can bet they'll only kick-in full-force after 2016.
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Casey Anthony, newly-acquitted mother of a slain child, confided to a fellow jail inmate that she hopes to have more children, or even adopt.
We now have a new contender for the title, "Mother of the Year". Of course, some would nominate Obama, Biden, Reid, Schumer ...
BTW ... Casey's defense lawyer admits that the weasels at ABC essentially paid for her defense by paying her some $200,000 for exclusive rights to photos, videotape, etc. Another proud moment for American media.
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I live in southern Arizona, which is generally a wonderful place. However, yesterday I had an alarming moment when a dark, sulphurous cloud seemed to briefly overhang the region. Then I learned it was just the presence of Janet Napolitano, head of the Homeland Security Department, passing through on some bogus mission to annoy the hamstrung and under-appreciated men and women of the Border Patrol.
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Interesting poll numbers from Rasmussen. Three-out-of-four Americans say the American military forces should only be used overseas when a vital U.S. interest is at stake (and why DO we still have some 28,000 Americans in South Korea, a prosperous nation that can afford to defend itself?)
And ... fewer than a quarter of Americans (23%) have confidence that the policymakers (start with Obama) know what they're doing in dealing with the economy. Those 23% are obviously the ignorant optimists.
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From the indispensable Victor Davis Hanson --
"Recently, in symbolic fashion, spectators of Mexican ancestry in Pasadena's Rose Bowl did not merely cheer on the Mexican national soccer team in a game against the U.S. national team - such nostalgia would be natural and understandable for recent immigrants - but went much further and also jeered American players and, indeed, references to the United States.
"Which was the home team?
"Was America to be appreciated for accepting poor aliens, or resented for not granting them amnesty? Is the idea of the United States to be conveniently booed or opportunistically thanked - depending on whether you are watching a soccer match or, for example, entering a Los Angeles emergency room with a life-threatening injury?"
Has this nation ever had so many sullen, hostile ingrates from anywhere as those from Mexico? Many seem eager to turn this nation into the misbegotten third-world country they left behind.
At the risk of being accused of jingoism (it wouldn't be the first time) I strongly suggest this: if you don't like it here, go the hell back where you came from!
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Ron Bloom was a high official in the Treasury Department and the man who orchestrated the General Motors bailout-cum-takeover. Now a congressional committee wants to know if he actually DID tell a reporter that he "did this all for the unions." Now he denies it. Of course, we'd all be SHOCKED if it were true -- wouldn't we?
I mean, that would require believing that Obama destroyed the value of GM stock for all the shareholders who owned the company, just to curry favor with the union that had made the company uncompetitive in the market-place, and we KNOW he wouldn't do that -- don't we?
BTW ... just how many of those overpriced Volt electric cars HAS the new GM actually sold? Have they hit the one thousand mark in sales yet? Do we expect an admission from the politicized management of GM that the whole project was a stupid idea? Let's not hold our breath.
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The TSA Gestapo at airports obviously includes a criminal element that ... Well, this headline from a Florida paper summarizes it: "TSA Agent Caught With Passenger's iPad in His Pants; Allegedly Took $50,000 in Other Goods, Cops Say".
The guy was stealing stuff out of passengers' luggage at Ft. Lauderdale airport and selling it online.
Perhaps these arrogant TSA bullies would be more tolerable if there was evidence that they'd actually prevented a terrorist attack. Instead, there have been repeated instances of their parent bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security, having its own people smuggle all kinds of weapons aboard planes in test runs. The whole stupid department should be disbanded and all involved dumped from the government payroll.
You want to cut government spending? The TSA would be a good place to start. Then call in somebody with experience in Israel's airport security, which has an impeccable record. And how do they do it? They (GASP!) PROFILE! (Somebody revive Janet-the-idiot Napolitano)
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Today's scum report: The Smoking Gun carries the report of a 46-year-old New Mexico woman copping a plea on charges of twisting off her daughter-in-law's nipple during a drunken brawl.
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Wonder if Obama will have his terrorist buddy Bill Ayers do another ghost-written updated edition of Obama's (?) book, "Dreams of my Father", now that it's been made public that dear ol' dad planned to have his white wife give the baby (Barack) away for adoption?
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Some Republicans in Congress and in the media, as well as think-tanks, believe that if Obama were to continue to increase the national debt without Congressional approval, it would be an impeachable offense. Perhaps. But the fact remains that removal from office would require a two-thirds super-majority vote in the Senate -- which still has a Democrat majority. This fantasy is highly unlikely to be realized.
Only those ignorant of how their government actually works -- and demagogue politicians who want to appeal that cohort -- waste their time on such nonsensical ideas.
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Why are Democrats having a hissy-fit over some states requiring voter identification? Let's see if we can follow their thinking. "We like to rig elections by getting ineligible people (like maybe illegal aliens) to vote, so we don't want any strict ID requirements."
Yes, I think we've got it.
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Ah, the irony: liberal CNN under attack from the NAACP for "lack of diversity in prime-time." Fear not, Mr. Jealous (that IS the name of the President of the organization); it's a good bet that CNN will cave.
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A day that will live in infamy. December 3, 1970. The day the Nixon-created Environmental Protection Agency opened for its economically depressing, bullying, job-killing mission.
Truly, the road to hell IS paved with good intentions.
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If you ever suspected that actor (?) Ben Affleck was a pretty-boy HIMbo, you may have been right.
The NY Post reports that Affleck was taken for $400,000 by Universal Studios president Ron Meyer in a poker game.
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"Change the makeup, but not the actor?" CBS seems to plan a variation on that plot by transferring its ratings-challenged morning show to a new set. Suuure ... THAT'LL work!
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Every state except Colorado at 19.8% has a percentage of obesity among the population above the 20% line. Not a problem. My dear old dad always advised, "If you want to be happy, marry a fat woman with tatoos. That way you'll have warmth in the winter ... shade in the summer ... and moving pictures all year 'round."
REPUBLICANS: TIME TO FISH OR CUT
BAIT
Congressional Republicans are about to face a gut-check that may signify a turning point for the nation on the issue of responsibility in the handling of taxpayers' money. While closing some loopholes and tax preferences is acceptable, any revenues gained thereby must be accompanied by tax savings elsewhere.
If the Republicans cave in on taxes, it's time for the party to go out of business and make way for people of courage and principle. The Democrats have put this nation on a course leading to national suicide. Accommodating such foolishness would -- and should -- label any congressperson a co-conspirator.
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March 16, 2006 -- A Democratic senator denouncing George W. Bush’s request to raise the debt limit: “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. . . . Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.” -- So said then-Senator Barack Obama, who now admits it was said for "political purposes". What has this poseur ever said that WASN'T for "political purposes"?
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Obama's latest platitude re the economy: "I'm ready to roll up my sleeves."
Wow! And just what has this Marxist nothing been doing for the past two-and-a-half years?
His economic hocus-pocus no longer fools anyone except stupid, committed leftists who are failures themselves and want to see the rest of the country brought down to their level. It should never be forgotten that liberalism runs on the fuel of plain old envy. Of course, the Pied Pipers of the left who lead the lemmings over the cliff -- think Nancy Pelosi -- themselves prosper.
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Could Obama's plan for this nation be clearer?
(A) Make more and more people dependent on the government in order to (B) destroy the capitalism he's abhorred since his childhood upbringing by a bunch of communists. Only those who deliberately blind themselves to reality could fail to recognize this.
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Wonder if legendary investor Warren Buffett yet regrets his support for Obama? Or has he gone totally senile? I have extended family in Omaha who tell me Mr. Buffett is NOT well-liked by many of his lifelong neighbors. Maybe they figured him out long ago.
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The Boston Herald excavated this Obama quote. Obama told TV's Matt Lauer during a Feb. 1, 2009, MSNBC interview that he would be “held accountable” to improve the economy by the American public and, “If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”
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Here's a Democrat politician being ... well ... a Democrat politician. Mark Dayton is Governor of Minnesota. He's shut down the state government in the Republican vs. Democrat argument over spending and taxes. BUT ... he's kept his taxpayer-paid personal chef on the job!
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The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (a joke in intself, considering the UN's domination by tyrants) has condemned Texas for executing that murdering rapist who was in the country illegally.
Texas' appropriate response to this: "(BLEEP) YOU!"
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The gun-running debacle orchestrated by the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) may just bring about the demise of that agency, which last achieved notoriety 18 years ago when its agents burned out the Branch Davidian complex outside Waco, Texas, killing 74 people including burning to death 20 babies.
This government agency (under Attorney General Eric Holder) may have embarked on a crazy scheme one too many times. And what have you heard from Janet Reno lately? -- you know, Clinton's idiot-in-charge at Justice.
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At the conclusion of the current space shuttle mission, we join such national powerhouses as Sierra Leone and Paraguay on the sidelines of space exploration. Scratch another element of national pride.
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A glimmer of hope in the field of media literacy. In coverage of yesterday's launch on Fox, both the newscaster and the NASA narrator referred to it as "A historic moment", instead of the often-used but totally incorrect formulation "AN historic moment."
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Unemployment up. Again. Obama's disconnected political chief says unemployment won't be a factor in the election. These buffoons are not only ignorant, they're crazy.
A working definition of ignorance and stupidity: ignorance is not having information. Stupidity is having it, but not knowing what to do with it.
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If Barack Obama wants to make a gesture toward healing the racial divide that's become a chasm under his leftist presidency, one thing that might have some impact would be a public firing of his in-house Marxist and racist hatchet-man, Attorney General Eric Holder. (Don't hold your breath.)
Holder now claims he didn't know about the thoroughly botched "Fast and Furious" gun-runner program to arm criminals in Mexico, but at its inception he boasted of his role in creating it.
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Count among the many liberal idiocies that have gone from conception to obsolete in near-record time ... "cap and trade", the environmentalist scam. Do you hear ANYBODY speaking favorably about it now? It's another piece of sophomoric silliness that richly deserved the quick death it's gotten.
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The federal government has been paying for abortions in Washington, D.C. This might be acceptable if it could be made retroactive for certain inhabitants of the nation's capitol. I'm sure you could compile a list of potential candidates.
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Most likely wasting time and money by running for the Republican presidential nomination: Santorum, Pawlenty, Huntsman and -- #1 on the list -- Newt Gingrich, who's long past his "sell by" date and has become an embarrassment. Yes, there are others, as well.
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As a rule, blogs such as this see a decline in readership on weekends. We'd like to be an exception. Please forward the column, or the link to it, to anyone/everyone on your personal mailing list.
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Jay Leno --
"Casey Anthony was found not guilty. This means that President Obama's economic team is only the second-most clueless group in America."
TREATING CANCER WITH A BAND-AID;
YOUR GOVERNMENT IN ACTION
YOUR GOVERNMENT IN ACTION
Politics is, as they say, the art of the possible. Thus gutlessness, short-sightedness and a propensity to "kick the can down the road" (i.e., leave the problem for somebody else to deal with later) are the usual way our "leaders" deal with problems.
And so it apparently is in the case of our gigantic debt problem.
The single most illuminating moment in the entire 2008 presidential campaign came when the young woman in Florida was asked why she planned to vote for Obama.
"'Cause he's gonna make my house and car payments," she enthusiastically replied.
"And where's he going to get the money?"
"I dunno and I don't care! But he's gonna do it!"
And so the fruits of liberal politics are delivered: freeloading and irresponsibility. And it may be irreparable. Don't we all wish we'd long ago exchanged all our dollars for, say, Swiss francs?
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Demand of any politicians who use terms like "fair share" and "special interests" that a definition be provided. These terms are simply part of the BS language used to obscure reality and real agendas.
And when are the free-riders who pay NO income taxes -- almost half the population -- going to cough up THEIR "fair share"?
Let's be blunt about it: my special interest is ... me! And anyone who says otherwise is lying.
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From "Atlas Shrugged" --
“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
Are we there yet? Yes.
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Eric Holder, Attorney General and one of Obama's many in-house Marxists, is now pressuring banks to relax (again) lending standards for minorities. This is being done in the holy name of anti-discrimination. This, of course, is exactly the kind of irresponsible stupidity that got us into the banking and credit crises in the first place.
Spencer Bachus, Republican from Alabama, is Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. He should immediately launch an investigation into this flagrant abuse of power by Holder, as should the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Republican Lamar Smith of Texas. One or the other should be capable of putting a stop to this insanity. If not, they should be forced out of their leadership positions.
It's no secret that one excuse bankers use for the pathetically low interest rates they pay on CDs goes like this: "We have to keep rates down to make up for our losses on loans the government FORCES us to make to deadbeats."
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And speaking of Holder ... does anyone expect the Big Media to go after him because he's been lying about his role in the stupid operation to sell guns to Mexican gangs? Guns that killed people in the endless gang-wars of Mexico? No, of course they won't! The lying SOB's are too heavily invested in Obama and his Marxist mob.
My ... "intemperance" ... is occasioned by a glance at a bronze motto made for me thirteen years ago by a listener named David Crosslin. It says, "It is far past time for decent people to wake up and realize that, when dealing with scumbags, civility is nothing but a self-imposed handicap." Dated April 27, 1998. He was correct then, even more-so now.
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"Strategic Planning", Obama-style: get us into a THIRD war, but propose massive cuts in military spending. Can anyone be so stupid as NOT to believe he's out to destroy the country?
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State and local governments laid off 25,000 employees in June. Unlike the ostriches in Washington, state and local officials can't hide their heads in the sand. They HAVE to balance budgets. Meantime, Nancy Pelosi is saying Obamacare will immediately "create" 400,000 new jobs. Uh-huh ... all paid for by taxpayer dollars.
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From the New York Daily News --
"A close examination of their finances shows that the Obamas were living off lines of credit along with other income for several years until 2005, when Obama’s book royalties came through and Michelle received her 260% pay raise at the University of Chicago. This was also the year Obama started serving in the U.S. Senate…
In April 1999, they purchased a Chicago condo and obtained a mortgage for $159,250. In May 1999, they took out a line of credit for $20,750. Then, in 2002, they refinanced the condo with a $210,000 mortgage, which means they took out about $50,000 in equity. Finally, in 2004, they took out another line of credit for $100,000 on top of the mortgage.
Tax returns for 2004 reveal $14,395 in mortgage deductions. If we assume an effective interest rate of 6%, then they owed about $240,000 on a home they purchased for about $159,250.
This means they spent perhaps $80,000 beyond their income from 1999 to 2004."
Would you let people so silly take charge of your own budget?
So, America's gullible voters put in charge of the country a man whose own history of dealing with his family's finances shows him to be utterly irresponsible. Why should we be surprised at the result?
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An annoyed reader forwards this insightful analysis of Obamacare ...
"We're going to be "gifted" with a health care plan that we are forced to purchase and fined if we don't, which purportedly covers at least ten million more people, without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that didn't read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a President who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, for which we'll be taxed for four years before any "benefits" take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare,all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's broke!!!!!
What could possibly go wrong???"
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A Pennsylvania restaurant has banned children under the age of six. Good. Who needs to pay the price for dinner at a quality restaurant only to have the occasion destroyed by screaming brats whose rude parents can't control their offspring and don't have the decency to take them and leave?
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Royal-watchers in the media reported that the new Duchess of Cambridge, a/k/a Kate Middleton, bride of Prince William (wonder if his buds call him Bill?), was decked out as Calamity Jane for her visit to the big rodeo and wild-west show in Calgary. May I bask in reflected glory? One of my relatives, deeply immersed in genealogy, discovered that one of the ancestors in our family tree was -- Calamity Jane!
Stand tall, Katie! Now you have a REAL reason to be proud!
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The liberal goo-goos need to be regularly reminded of the timeliness of the following observation: a liberal is a person so open-minded, his/her brains have fallen out.
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An elderly man is stopped by the police around 1 a. m. and is asked where he is going at this time of night.
The man replies, "I am going to a lecture about alcohol abuse and the effects it has on the human body."
The officer then asks, "Really? Who is giving that lecture at this time of night?"
The man replies, "That would be my wife."
RE THE DEBT CEILING DEBATE:
BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO EXPECT NOTHING ...
FOR THEY SHALL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED
BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO EXPECT NOTHING ...
FOR THEY SHALL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED
The tricky point to observe during these "budget cutting" talks: "over a ten-year (or whatever) period". Do the math. In ANNUAL cuts, its minuscule. And such sleight-of-hand is how we got to our present state of being the biggest DEBTOR country in the world.
Most Americans must enjoy being deceived. Otherwise, why would they elect so many liars?
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Timely Sarah Palin quote: "The Sugar Daddy Has Run Out of Sugar".
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Even liberal Joe Klein of TIME admits that one bogus liberal nostrum doesn't work, and never has --
"It is now 45 years later. We spend more than $7 billion providing Head Start to nearly 1 million children each year. And finally there is indisputable evidence about the program's effectiveness, provided by the Department of Health and Human Services: Head Start simply does not work."
"According to the Head Start Impact Study, which was quite comprehensive, the positive effects of the program were minimal and vanished by the end of first grade. Head Start graduates performed about the same as students of similar income and social status who were not part of the program. These results were so shocking that the HHS team sat on them for several years."
To put it plainly, Head Start has never been anything other than a liberal boondoggle to enrich the teachers' unions.
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Kelly O'Connell in Canada Free Press with a succinct analysis of the Walking Personality Disorder masquerading as a president --
"Is there any mindset which defines Obama’s default attitude better than to say it is simply “adolescent?” No, for the following reasons. Barack’s interactions with the real world evokes from him responses which can be described as: angry; superior, haughty, dismissive, dishonest, petulant, cocky, petty, vengeful, mocking, holier-than-thou, and full of faux-insights and dishonesty. In other words, Barack acts like a big kid pretending to be someone he’s not, everyday on the job."
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This comes from black minister and retired attorney E. W. Jackson --
"The question is whether Obama, given his Muslim roots and experience in Farrakhan's Chicago, shares this antipathy for Israel and Jewish people. First, the President was taught for twenty years by a virulent anti-Semite, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. In the black community it is called “sitting under”. You don't merely attend a church, you “sit under” a Pastor to be taught and mentored by him. Obama was comfortable enough with Louis Farrakhan – Wright's friend – to attend and help organize his “Million Man March”.
"The classic left wing view is that Israel is the oppressive occupier, and the Palestinians are Israel's victims. Obama is clearly sympathetic to this view. In speaking to the “Muslim World, “he did not address the widespread Islamic hatred of Jews. Instead he attacked Israel over the growth of West Bank settlements. Surely he knows that settlements are not the crux of the problem. The absolute refusal of the Palestinians to accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is the insurmountable obstacle."
Obama's behavior SCREAMS "Muslim and Marxist". His election is indicative of a majority electorate with a national suicide wish.
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This is how Obama's friends/co-religionists behave in the real world --
Dr Arieh Eldad is a professor and head of the plastic surgery and burns unit at the Hadassah Medical Center hospital in Jerusalem. He provides this account of one Arab patient.
"I was asked to supply skin for graft for an Arab woman from Gaza after her family burned her. She was successfully treated and was invited for regular follow-up visits to the outpatient clinic in Beersheva."
"One day she was caught at a border crossing wearing a suicide belt. She meant to explode herself in the outpatient clinic of the very hospital where they saved her life."
"It seems that her family promised her that if she did that, they would forgive her."
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Victor Davis Hanson on some of Obama's outbursts of demagoguery --
"The president knows full well that the American-Mexican border is only one-third fenced and the influx of illegal aliens is still considerable. He must appreciate that the vast majority of doctors, in this age of promiscuous malpractice suits, do not insist on dangerous and unnecessary surgeries to gouge the patient. And corporate depreciation schedules for personal aircraft reflect a minuscule cost to the Treasury, one analogous perhaps to the tab for personal jet aircraft for those in federal and state government."
"Divisive language like “bring a gun to a knife fight,” “get in their face,” and “make them sit in the back seat” is always juxtaposed with lofty appeals for no more red-state/blue-state rancor."
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An unprincipled politician in action: August 2009 ... Elkhart, Indiana ... Obama interviewed by NBC's Chuck Todd. Responding to a question from the audience: “Explain how raising taxes on anyone during a deep recession is going to help with the economy.”
Obama: “First of all, he’s right. Normally, you don’t raise taxes in a recession, which is why we haven’t and why we’ve instead cut taxes. So I guess what I’d say is – his economics are right. You don’t raise taxes in a recession. We haven’t raised taxes in a recession.”
This is the Obama who now wants -- guess what! -- higher taxes.
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Current definition of a cockeyed optimist: anybody who believes Obama's a cinch for re-election when one of six American workers is unemployed or under-employed, meaning working only part time or at a low-pay level well beneath demonstrated skills. There is, of course, always the possibility that the Republican party will find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, a la Dole, McCain.
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China says we're spending too much on our military. So says the nation that's rushing headlong into a military buildup clearly aimed at intimidating its neighbors, many of whom are U.S. allies. How helpful of them to offer their advice.
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One might wonder why the U.S. media are so interested in a British newspaper scandal (tapping phones of crime victims) ... until one realizes it's really an attack on the owner of the paper, Rupert Murdoch, who is also the owner of the detested (by liberals) Fox News. Which is why any indirect way of attacking that news service is more important to them than covering, say, the Attorney General of the United States being involved in a gun-running debacle that placed more firearms in the hands of Mexican gangsters or the depredations of a power-mad Marxist in the White House.
Also ... why do we hear nothing these days about Obama's Chicago criminal buddy Tony Rezko?
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As a longtime denizen of the media world, I'm often asked, "Why are most media people liberals?" Here's my conclusion. The field historically has attracted young idealists, people who want to "change the world". Such folk are usually of a liberal activist mind-set. Recall Churchill's observation that "if you aren't a liberal at 25, you have no heart. If you're still a liberal at 35, you have no brain."
Journalists, given their activist inclinations, also largely personify another time-honored shibboleth: "Some people grow up ... others only grow old." Look at the New York Times and its writers for confirmation.
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Recommended reading (if your blood pressure can stand it): The American Thinker website ... "Tyrannus Obama Rex" ... by Jay Clarke. ALSO ... The Washington Times ... "Barack Obama: The Affirmative Action President' ... by Eric Golub. ALSO ... Townhall.com ... Home and Away ... Mike Adams.
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Loooser! Tim Pawlenty, whose campaign is struggling already, for at least the second time attacks the Congresswoman from his own state of Minnesota, Michele Bachmann. Pawlenty? Puh-leeeze!
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Goin' south ... Obama's popularity rating among Hispanics. Gallup says Obama’s support among Hispanics fell almost a third in the last 18 months, down from 73 percent in December 2009 to 52 percent in June 2011.
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Is it not appropriate that France, the recognized leader among nations in the field of losing wars, is now asking Libyans rebelling against the murderous Khadafy (Gaddafi, take your pick) to negotiate with him on a "political solution"?
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Coming soon to a liberal town near you: higher pay for gay municipal employees. The precedent is being set in Cambridge, Massachusetts (home to Harvard), where that policy is newly-established. Because gays in a homosexual relationship put their significant-others in their health plan coverage, the value of that coverage is considered taxable income by the federal government. Thus, higher salaries to compensate for the taxes. Clear?
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The TSA bullying continues. KING-TV in Seattle reports on a six-year-old boy singled out by the airport Gestapo for a hand-search. Twice. How much longer must we tolerate these government thugs?
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Sports news ...
A 100-mile ultra-marathon race in Montana has been canceled because of snow. In July. And how is it where you are?
That darned global warming acting up again ...
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Having been a victim -- along with many other conservatives -- of scurrilous and deceptive attacks by the left-wing Media Matters propaganda mill, I wish Fox success in destroying their tax-deductible status. But lefties need not fear the demise of their MM attack dogs; no one doubts that George Soros will continue providing the bucks, deductible or not.
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A piece of tricky advertising to look out for in real estate advertising: "Olympic-size pool". More often than not, it isn't even CLOSE to Olympic size ... which is 50 meters (164 feet) in length.
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Also in the headlines ...
Something Went Wrong in a Jet Crash… (no kidding!)
Crash Probe Spokesman says the Plane Was Too Close to the Ground ...
(we pilots have to watch that!)
War Dims Hope for Peace ( ... and what a surprise)
Strikes Not Settled Quickly Will Last a While (seems likely)
Couple is Slain; Police Suspect Homicide ...
(the things we learn from TV cop shows)
High School Dropouts Are Cut in Half… (... THAT'LL SHOW 'EM!)
DADDY KNOWS BEST
How's this for elitist arrogance? Barack Obama said that "professional politicians" understand the debt crisis better than "the public." His assumption of public stupidity may be well-founded; after all, they elected him.
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Obama's spokesparrots insist that the economy is recovering, albeit slowly. Since small businesses are the acknowledged leaders in new jobs created, draw your own conclusions from this:
A U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey of small businesses finds that 64% of the executives surveyed have no plans to add workers ... 12% had plans to CUT jobs. And just 19% said they planned to add employees.
When you're running a business and don't know what the government is going to do to you next, in terms of either taxes, required health benefits or some sophomoric regulations, you simply don't make expansion plans.
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Barack Obama, July 6, 2011, at his Twitter Town Hall campaign event: ""People who work in the White House, they've had their pay frozen since I came in, our high-wage folks. So they haven't had a raise in two and a half years, and that's appropriate, because a lot of ordinary folks out there haven't either."
That is a bald-faced lie, as previously noted here.
The average salary increase for the 146 White House staffers who got raises was 16%.
And how did YOU do in the raise department last year?
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The latest Iowa poll has Cong. Michele Bachmann in the lead, four points ahead of Romney.
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Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne is reviving a futile campaign against capital punishment, which most Americans support. I recall having the dubious pleasure of meeting Mr. Dionne while covering the 1992 Republican convention in Houston and thinking after a few minutes of conversation, "Who is this snotty little b-----d, anyway?"
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How to editorialize in a news report headline. Newsweek carries this one: "Sarah Palin Plots Her Next Move". PLOTS? A hint of skullduggery implied? What about using "PLANS" instead? Or, conversely, the more sinister "SCHEMES", which would at least make the bias even more obvious.
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From Rasmussen Reports ...
Survey says ... 72% of likely voters say a free-market economy is preferable to one managed by the government. Only 14% think a government-run economy would be better. They obviously never heard just how that worked out in the old USSR. And 14% have no opinion; i.e., they have a vacant lot where the brain should be.
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Another TSA failure. They don't know how it got there, but it DID get there. Onboard a JetBlue airliner, that is. A stun-gun found in a seat-back pocket after passengers disembarked a flight from Boston to Newark. These idiots couldn't find a locomotive in a roundhouse.
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An interesting experiment performed by the Big Government website. At a huge Chicago book fair, a questionnaire was handed out to attendees with a list of authors whose books they would choose to ban. The list contained names like Adolf Hitler and Karl Marx, but the author most of these good Chicago liberals chose to ban was ... Sarah Palin. And only a small minority of these -- liberals? -- said that NO book should be banned. Obama must be so proud of his home base.
... and speaking of liberalism in action ...
Douglas Schoen of Fox News, a Democrat, was told by Democrat Senator Chuck "Where's-the-camera" Schumer that any Democrat who appears on Fox has an obligation to speak only the Party's talking points as articulated by pols like ... well ... Chuck Schumer.
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Who is Barack Obama? In his own words ... IN CONTEXT ... from "Dreams of my Father" -- assuming, of course, they aren't actually the words of his terrorist friend Bill Ayers, widely believed to have ghost-written the book:
"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neo-colonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints. We weren’t indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated. But this strategy alone couldn’t provide the distance I wanted, from Joyce or my past. After all, there were thousands of so-called campus radicals, most of them white and tenured and happily tolerated. No, it remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names."
Ideal qualifications for a president? Sounds like any other dope-addled sixties hippie, doesn't it?
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The longer the killing of Americans continues in Iraq, the turmoil in Afghanistan pervades and Pakistani treachery continues ... the more I'm convinced that my long-stated position was correct, despite denunciations from all sides.
I said on the air years ago that we should destroy Iraq's war-making ability, hang Saddam and get out, leaving a parting message: "Don't give us any reason to come back, because if we DO, we'll kill every damned one of you."
A lot of dead Americans would now be alive, we'd have saved billions and our strategic situation would be no worse than the chaotic mess we face in that part of the world today. Such a policy would not have been isolationism, but common sense.
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Healthy-eating advocate Michele Obama's lunch at the Shake Shack in D.C.: a ShackBurger, fries, a chocolate shake and a Diet Coke. All in all, 85% of a full day's recommended caloric quota.
Of course, the Diet coke makes the rest of the meal nutritionally acceptable ...
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So your folks sent you to college so you could get a good job? Good luck. Latest employment numbers show that 17% of the job-seekers in the 16-24 age group, which obviously includes a lot of recent college grads, can't find work.
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A Longview, Texas, woman has given birth to a 16-pound, 1-ounce baby. We are unable to confirm reports that her first words to her husband afterward were, "Never touch me again, you horny SOB!"
The lad's name is JaMichael Johnson. Look for it on the Texas Longhorn roster in about 2030 under "offensive tackle".
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Prince William -- we buddies call him Bill -- and cutie Katie flew back to Britain on a commercial airliner. We assume, of course, they flew coach.
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Notice how seldom failed president Jimmy Carter is invited to appear at big Democratic Party events?
Just how often do you expect that, in future years, the presence of Barack Obama will be requested?
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From Tom, a few timeless quotes by Thomas Jefferson ...
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
It should be remembered that this is the man whose birthday is celebrated -- if you can call fund-raising events a "celebration" -- every year by Democrats. They remember his name, but they've clearly forgotten his wisdom.
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Lest we forget ...
A belated Happy First Anniversary to Anthony and Huma Weiner, celebrated over the weekend.
We assume congratulations also came from the various women who'd received Mr. Weiner's unsolicited photos.
We wonder if they reciprocated by sending a ... uh ... "package".
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Jay Leno on the debate over raising the debt ceiling --
"You know what the scary part is? Not that the government will cease to function, that they think this is actually the government functioning. They think it is working well."
PRESIDENT THREATENS TO BURN SECURITY
BLANKET
Unless Americans have collectively lost their minds (always a possibility) Obama's threat not to send out August Social Security checks may be the final over-reach that dooms this misbegotten presidency. This is nothing more than a piece of political grandstanding and should easily be recognized as such by all but the most devoted butt-kissers of our Marxist Muslim president.
At root, he simply exemplifies the basic spendthrift, childish proclivity of Democrats to spend irresponsibly with no thought for tomorrow.
A lot of Democrats in Congress (both houses) had better be thinking long and hard about whether they want to follow this bullying lunatic off a cliff.
If Americans were taught anything real about history -- and that hasn't been the case for decades -- Obama would have long since been hooted out of office.
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Re the Mitch McConnell plan to allow Obama to raise the debt ceiling without a vote of congress, and be responsible for it: is the Republican Senate leader outsmarting Obama ... or himself? Many conservatives are furious at him.
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Charles Hurt in the Washington Times --
"It has taken three decades, but Americans are finally living through Jimmy Carter’s second term. Now we’ve got Jimmy Jr. barking at us from the White House about eating our peas and ripping off our Band-Aid. He might not even let us have our Social Security checks. These are just the latest in a long line of nagging lectures. One of the most unpleasant things about Mr. Carter was the condescending disdain he could barely disguise for struggling Americans and their irritating malaise. Increasingly, Jimmy Jr. is having difficulty concealing that very same disdain for us."
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As you're subjected to political deceptiveness and media madness over the attempts to control government debt and spending, always be aware of this:
Obama and his Democrat lackeys want any part of a deal that subjects any significant constituency to discomfort to take effect ONLY AFTER the 2012 election. Need we wonder why?
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From James Robbins, Senior Editorial Writer, Washington Times --
"The Obama administration is facing a major embarrassment at the hands of the Palestinian Authority. A vote of confidence from the General Assembly would in theory give the Palestinians increased diplomatic momentum and cap two years of failed White House peace initiatives."
American Jews are largely liberal, perhaps because most have family roots in Eastern Europe, where the philosophical plague called socialism was born. One wonders just how strenuous -- and obvious -- the Obama efforts to render Israel helpless must become before this element of the Democratic party wises up to the threat he represents. Israel is an island of civilization in one of the most barbaric parts of the world. Obama's support for those barbarians should be seen through the clear lens of reality rather than the rose-colored lens of leftist fantasies.
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Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, is one of Obama's stooges blathering about the economy.
Last year, GE made over $14 BILLION in profits, but not only paid NO taxes, but got over $3 billion in tax CREDITS. Would anyone regard him as a reliable source for touting Obama's economic wizardry?
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From Rasmussen Reports: survey says ... 58 percent of black voters think America is moving in the right direction. Only 24 precent of Hispanics and just 20 percent of whites agree that the country is going in the right direction.
Race is becoming the last thing the Big Zero has going for him. When he's defeated, we can expect an outpouring of black rage insisting he's a victim of racism, despite all the white voters who put him in office in the first place. I would not want to be living in Chicago, my old hometown, or any other city with a large black population when he's ousted by the voters.
Rasmussen also has a generic Republican beating Obama, 48% to 43%. So when does one of the Republican candidates make the obvious move and change her/his name to "Generic"?
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America, look at your future. It's on display in Greece, Ireland and now Italy. As a result of government spending of money it didn't have -- just like here -- interest rates are soaring in those countries, led by government bonds ... and it's all because of fears that these irresponsible governments won't repay the money they've borrowed (i.e., the bonds) or will repay it with a flood of newly-printed currency that will have a much-diminished value. You know -- like the American dollar that's already down in value by over 12% just in the two-and-a-half years we've had TwinkleToes in the White House.
Easy prediction: when the debt and spending of our idiotic government inevitably comes back to bite us on the butt, we are going to see interest rates zoom to levels never before seen in this country.
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The Wall Street Journal reminds us of the final and telling blow Ronald Reagan landed on Jimmy Carter as their presidential campaigns reached a climax --
"When you make your decision to vote next Tuesday (he said to voters) it might be well if you would ask yourself: Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was?"
The American public gave a resounding answer and the hapless Carter was crushed. It would be disastrous if the next Republican candidate doesn't use the same approach to the current White House impostor.
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California has been ranked by Chief Executive magazine as the worst place in America to do business for seven years. And the pace of businesses leaving the once-Golden State has increased. According to one survey, five times faster than just two years ago. Exiting business traffic is unlikely to slow unless and until the crazies who run California are driven from office. Meantime, the state continues its evolution toward a populace consisting of a relatively few multi-millionaires and movie stars, surrounded by a largely poverty-stricken alien culture, many of whom are in the country illegally.
Such is the price of surrender to liberalism. And other states -- Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Utah and more -- will continue to prosper, thanks to their ability to lure businesses away from the Nuthouse on the Coast.
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Meantime ... NBC in the Bay Area reports prostitution is booming in San Jose after cuts to the police vice squad. What?? Is it possible California will have more whores on the streets than in the state capitol or local city halls?
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Catherine Becker of Garden Grove, California, is in jail ... accused of tying up her (estranged) husband while he was asleep, cutting of his penis and feeding it into a disposal.
Authorities assume she was annoyed about something.
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So the IRS wants money from the baseball fan who caught Derek Jeter's 3000th hit, a home run, because he was given some prizes by the Yankees for returning the ball to Jeter. Let us hope that he (A) tells the IRS to go to hell and B) forces the issue to a trial. Can you imagine a New York jury convicting the man for what most people see as a sportsmanlike good deed?
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From Sheila ...
The car in front of us had an Obama bumper sticker on it. It read: "Pray for Obama. Psalm 109:8.
Psalm 109:8 - "Let his days be few; and let another take his office".
Look it up - it is word for word! Let us all bow our heads and Pray.
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Reader Tim reminds us of this piece of enduring wisdom --
A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose Your job. A recovery is when Obama loses his job.
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Hank offers this suggestion for Janet Napolitano, who's in charge of that legalized bunch of thugs at the TSA --
"I think we should replace Big Sis at the TSA with Dominique Strauss-Kahn. I think he is available and he is very well known among the molesters. With his background it would not take much for him to learn any groups he has not groped. Being very sophisticated he would bring some European style to the job, no gloves. Perhaps he could suggest we get cake to eat instead of peas, its a French thing. Very sophisticated."
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The estimable Dan Sorkin provides this food for thought --
Fathom the insanity of a Government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured ... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen.
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For my old friend Officer Vic: take note of the Yahoo Sports item about the six-year-old girl who made a hole-in-one on a golf course in Bloomington, Illinois. And you have how many so far?
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Craig Ferguson --
"(Rupert) Murdoch shut down News of the World, which was almost 160 years old. It's always sad when something that old comes to an end. It was like the last episode of 'Larry King Live.'"
THE PETULANT PUNK PRESIDENT
Walking out on a meeting HE called? Challenging Republicans, "Don't call my BLUFF!"? Is this not a clear admission that his threat to stop Social Security checks IS a bluff? This plastic phony is nothing more than an overgrown, arrogant teenager who threatens to take his marbles and go home if he doesn't get his way.
Feeling the pressure, "organizer"?
The pompous fool also said, "This may bring my presidency down." Let's hope so! The country can't survive much more of this self-aggrandizing Marxist Trojan Horse.
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Take heed of this. Our Marxist-in-charge has decided -- and said -- that the government should take away any more income than people "need", and he's just the guy who decide how much they DO need. Chew on THAT for awhile.
It's just another enunciation of the basic Democrat politician's belief that ALL money belongs to the government and those who actually EARN it should be grateful for whatever portion the all-wise in Washington allow them to keep.
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Unless we're missing something, the plan by Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican Senate leader, essentially amounts to this: Obama gets to spend all the (borrowed) money he wants; in return, Republicans get to claim they tried to stop him but couldn't.
If the Republican majority in the House goes along with this, they'd better have alternative career plans ready.
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In 2009, Congress voted to cut off funds for the crooked, thuggish outfit called "Acorn". Despite the law passed by Congress, the Obama administration continues to send checks to this criminal enterprise because it represents a reliable black vote. And what is Congress doing about it? Your guess is absolutely correct ...
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It's stunning. The fact that there are Americans so gullible, they still believe the fairytale that there's a Social Security "trust fund", a "lockbox" stashed away somewhere with all their payments into the system. There is no such thing ... never has been.
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In a new book called “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” author Janny Scott -- a New York Times reporter, no less -- says Obama's oft-repeated story about his mother's abuse by a medical insurance company is an outright lie. The White House doesn't dispute the facts of the case, saying only that the "central point", whatever THAT is, is valid.
One is reminded of the fraud perpetrated by 1992 Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala who related her life of hardship. Her book turned out to be totally bogus; she was from a well-off family who suffered none of the deprivations described in the book. But liberal goo-goos were so taken with her that they maintained that her story was valid, even though it was a total lie.
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Wes Pruden in the Washington Times --
"What we’ve got is war — a war between the taxpayers and the tax-eaters. The tax-eaters can’t understand why the taxpayers won’t shovel out the swag, salute as usual, and shut up. This time the taxpayers are fed up and they’re not going to take it any more.
Mr. Obama has never met a tax he didn’t want to kiss and cuddle, and can’t give up his itch to cuddle these new trillions. Adding trillions of dollars in new taxes, an Associated Press analysis reveals, will fall hardest on small-business owners and low- and middle-income families trying to reach for more prosperity. The president does not speak of this, focusing instead on the very few of the very rich.
He berates “tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, oil companies, hedge-fund managers and corporate jet owners.”The president can’t understand why a baron of Wall Street would settle for a little Grumman or Falcon, even with a tax credit. The president has a Boeing 747, equipped with all the gadgets Silicon Valley can dream up, standing ready to take him and Michelle to Gotham to shed tears for the poor over a $400 dinner."
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Ben Bernanke is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Arguably, he is the dumbest, most incompetent person ever to hold that post, and he is enhancing that evaluation by telling Congress that he stands ready to print more increasingly-worthless dollars to enable the marauder in the White House to embark on another "stimulus plan".
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. . which relates directly to the potential downgrading of U.S. government debt by Moody's, the bond-rating service. That would include the borrowings of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Banks and other socialistic constructs of a government gone mad.
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Washington, D.C. is, of course, the one American city that is directly under the control of the federal government. Their constant bungling of that job should be a clear warning to anyone willing to accept more federal control of our daily lives.
This is how bad it's gotten in D.C.: the city is assigning firefighters to protect youth workers with summer city jobs on payday, because muggings are so frequent as to be routine. In short, put the federal government in charge, and you get a city terrorized by savages.
Recall the words of one-time mayor of D.C., the dope-consuming Marion Barry, who said, "Except for the killings the crime rate in Washington isn't too bad." Except for the killings!
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The "Arab spring" has done even less for Obama than for Arabs, themselves. The Zogby poll finds the following:
When President Obama came into office in 2008, positive opinion about the United States in the Arab world was on the rise. In some places favorable attitudes more than doubled, after Obama took power. But a new poll conducted by Zogby International for the Arab American Institute Foundation finds that favorable ratings have plummeted in the two years following Obama's landmark speech to the Arab world in Cairo.
This is how bad it is. In Egypt and Jordan, Iran's policies are ten times more popular than those of the U.S. under Obama.
To summarize; Obama's popularity ratings among Arabs are now worse than George W. Bush's at the end of his presidency. Such is the price of raising expectations that can't be fulfilled.
BTW, for what it's worth -- maybe nothing -- Mr. Zogby is of Arab descent.
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More ammunition for those who believe our criminal justice system is insane.
KIRO in Seattle reports that Marc Gilbert, accused of using money and booze to lure more than a dozen boys to his home and molesting them, wants child pornography available to him in jail.
He'll get it. The court's justification being that he's acting as his own attorney and is therefore entitled to review the evidence. Which in part consists of ... child pornography.
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The Big Media are still reluctant to dwell on the "Fast and Furious" Justice Department program that knowingly shipped more than 2,000 guns to criminals in Mexico; guns used in murders, including the slaying of a U. S. federal agent. Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, claims he knew nothing about the scheme. He's lying. In 2009, he BRAGGED about it.
And somewhere in hell, Felix Dzerzhinsky is smiling. (And there's today's research project!)
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Democrats once were enamored of New York Governor Mario Cuomo as a prospective presidential candidate. His reluctance to commit to the race for the nomination earned him the title "The Hamlet of the Hudson". Is Texas Governor Rick Perry emulating him? "The Reluctant Republican from the Rio Grande"?
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Wonder how soon Obama's demagogic attacks on private aircraft would stop if his Air Force One toy was taken away and HE had to fly on commercial airlines? Preferably in coach ...
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Obama, you want us to eat our peas? Well ... peas on you, dude!
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Memo to Jon Huntsman: your fifteen minutes of fame (?) are over. Pack it in.
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Some parents are complaining about a Pennsylvania restaurant owner's decision to ban children under six because they're often unruly and disturb other customers and the parents refuse to control their little heathens.. Good for him!
Parents of uncivilized brats apparently believe they have an unlimited right to invade other people's peaceful enjoyment of a restaurant meal.
The same debate has expanded to airlines, some of which have banned children from First Class. Again, good! If you've ever had a screaming brat kicking the back of your seat, I know where you stand on that one, as well.
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Dan Sorkin calls my attention to an "Investor's Business Daily" article quoting a survey by the United Nations International Health Organization. This should give pause for thought to those who think government-run health care, which they have in both Britain and Canada, is the way to go:
Percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years after diagnosis:
U.S. 65% ... England 46% ... Canada 42%
Percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received treatment within six months:
U.S. 93% ... England 15% ... Canada 43%
Percentage of seniors needing hip replacement who received it within six months:
U.S. 90% ... England 15% ... Canada 43%
Number of MRI scanners (a prime diagnostic tool) per million people:
U.S. 71 ... England 14 ... Canada 18
...AND..
If you wonder why your government has made such a botch of the economy, consider the following:
The percentage of each past president's cabinet who had worked in the private business sector prior to their appointment to the cabinet. You know what the private business sector is.a real-life business, not a government job. Here are the percentages.
T. Roosevelt..........38%
Taft......................40%
Wilson ....................52%
Harding.................49%
Coolidge................. 48%
Hoover ..................42%
F. Roosevelt.........50%
Truman..................50%
Eisenhower.............57%
Kennedy................30%
Johnson................47%
Nixon.....................53%
Ford........................42%
Carter.....................32%
Reagan....................56%
GH Bush............... 51%
Clinton ....................39%
GW Bush................55%
...and ...
Obama................ 8%
This helps to explain the incompetence of this administration: only 8% of them have ever worked in private business! Most have spent their time in academia, government and/or non-profit jobs or as "community organizers."
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Reader Tom provides us with this Jeffersonian quote --
"Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading".
BENNY THE BOOB, "EXPERIENCE" AS A
QUALIFICATION & MORE
So Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke doesn't think gold is money. Ask anyone with an IQ larger than his/her shoe size which they'd rather have -- gold, or Bernanke's paper -- and see what response you get!
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Big Media chutzpah at work. An excellent example is the charge that Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is too "inexperienced" to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. From people who support the fraud now in the White House? A man whose "experience" consisted largely of ducking votes on even mildly controversial issues during his short term as a nonentity in the Senate? Get serious!
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Memo to Cong. Bachmann: if you don't know how to pronounce the word chutzpah, don't use it. Speaking Yiddish isn't a requirement for the presidency, anyway.
Just trying to be helpful. Could I have a bagel, please?
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The pusillanimous panderers at CBS News are playing Obama's hissy-fit as "bravely risking his presidency".
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Even the Gallup poll now has a Republican -- ANY unnamed Republican -- clobbering Obama by a margin of 47% to 39%. America seems to finally be awakening to the reality that a horrible mistake was made in electing an incompetent anti-American to the White House.
Gallup has more bad news for the Obamunists. Only 16% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the country ... and only 12% of white Americans express satisfaction.
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El Presidente is throwing a big birthday bash for himself in Chicago to celebrate his 50th. He'll be charging attendees $35,800 per couple -- for his campaign fund, of course. It'll happen August 3rd. Irony: that's the day AFTER the government theoretically goes into default on its debts. Great timing, dude!
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Ronald Bloom was one of the supervisors of the government bailout/takeover of General Motors, which stripped the stockholder-owners of GM of all value in what had been, for decades, a "blue chip" investment. Mr. Bloom is now a self-admitted liar. Just a few weeks ago, in sworn testimony before the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, Bloom denied four times that he said "I did this all for the unions" at a July 2009 party attended by most of the bailout team. Now he admits he DID say that. Hardly a surprise; anyone who cared KNEW the whole deal was a payoff to the United Auto Workers for their Obama support.
Now we await word that, as an admitted liar, Mr. Bloom's position with the Obama administration has been elevated to new heights.
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True story from within my circle of relatives, one of whom went to his local home-improvement store and purchased soil to grow a few plants in the yard. On the bag of soil, it stipulated that it came from Mexico.
He planted ... waited ... and new plants finally sprouted and grew tall and strong. That's when a neighbor inquired, "When did you go into the marijuana business?"
It seems the soil came bearing a gift from south of the border in the form of seeds for the Evil Weed.
Fortunately it wasn't a DIFFERENT neighbor, the sheriff, who first noticed the plants.
Now an investigation is underway to find out if Mexican dealers are using this huge home-improvement chain as a way of smuggling their product into the U.S. in dirt.
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Max Fleck of Chicago is stupid. That's the only possible conclusion after Mr. Fleck got himself arrested upon reporting to police that two pounds of marijuana had been stolen from him.
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Draw your own conclusions, but a study published in the journal Annals of Epidemiology finds that black men in prison live longer than black men on the outside. In fact, the study discovers that in any given time period, black inmates are half as likely to die as their counterparts outside. Among the factors: healthier diet, better medical care and a far lower likelihood of being murdered by fellow blacks.
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A new California law signed by Governor Jerry Brown requires teaching of public school students about the contributions to society made by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. That requirement includes children in kindergarten. The legislation was introduced by a state senator from San Francisco.
Just what this course will do to prepare students for future careers is ... unclear.
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Today's recommended reading, especially for Californians --
The City Journal website ... Heather MacDonald ... "Less Academics, More Narcissism".
A guide to where a lot of your tax dollars are going, thanks to the crazies running your state.
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The TSA Gestapo strikes again ... this time at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, where Napolitano's goons forced a 94-year-old woman to get up out of her wheelchair and stand upright for ten minutes -- a real hardship -- while they mauled her. If the Republican House majority really believes in the personal freedoms they espouse, they should be raising total hell until this bunch of legalized criminals' outrageous behavior is stopped or, better yet, the whole TSA put out of business. This kind of thing has nothing to do with security ... and EVERYTHING to do with a bunch of thugs given authority to bully people.
....MORE....
At Chicago's O'Hare, the TSA polyester-patrol forced former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to undergo a hand search. Is there anyone on the planet stupid enough to believe THAT was for "security purposes"?
Do any of these TSA idiots EVER get fired?
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From David Limbaugh's column --
"Why is it acceptable for Obama to be overtly uncompromising but express outrage that his GOP opposition is unyielding? It's as if he's saying, "How dare you be as intransigent as I'm being."
Obama also warned Congressman Eric Cantor, "Don't call my bluff." Notice all the I's and my's in Obama's threatening language. Did anyone ever tell this narcissistic man "no" before he became president?
He acts as though the United States is his personal chattel to do with as he pleases, and no one (including members of the coequal legislative branch) and nothing (including the Constitution) dare get in his way."
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Reader Jon offers this thought --
"This is one of those “Why didn’t I think of this before? “ moments. I’m building a time machine and will use it to travel back to the 18th Century where I will strangle Rousseau in his cradle. Then I will return to the present and if my plan works, I will not have to travel back in time to strangle: Marx, Trotsky, Jean Paul Sartre, Woodrow Wilson, Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Saul Alinsky, Hugh Hefner, Barney Frank, Pol Pot, Jimmy Carter, the city of Berkeley CA, Rob Reiner, George Soros, Keith Olberman, the idiot who made all those insipid-cloyingly stupid “Billy-Jack” movies, Rachel Carson…and so on."
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Jimmy Fallon --
"A lawmaker in California is pushing for 13 counties to break away and form a new state called South California. Meanwhile, residents are pushing for a more fitting name: 'North Mexico.'"
PRESIDENT OBAMA vs. SENATOR OBAMA
and PLAYING
THE RACE CARD. SURPRISED?
Senator Barack Obama, voting AGAINST raising the limit on government debt in 2006 --
"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."
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It's not even surprising that Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas should be the first member of that august body to play the race card and blame opposition to his insane borrowing and spending on his color. Cong. Lee, with a reputation for being abusive to her own staff, is the camera-hogging woman in red who, at every state-of-the-union speech, stations herself next to the aisle where the president enters so she can be seen on TV with him. She even did it every year at the speeches delivered by George W. Bush, a man she -- being an ultra-left radical -- detested. The woman is a continuing embarrassment but her constituents continue to embarrass themselves by re-electing her.
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Does -- or SHOULD -- Senator Mitch McConnell's plan to give the President total authority to lift the limit on the national debt cost the Kentuckian his post as Republican leader in the upper house?
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Obama says 80% of Americans want a tax increase. Your choice: this Marxist goofball is full of -- WHAT?
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After the Obama debacle(s), any politician who uses the word "stimulus" in anything other than a derogatory context should be dismissed by sane people as ever being qualified to hold office again. Such politician should be forced to read the idiotic outpourings of Paul Krugman every day, forever, getting relief once a week with an hour of comedic entertainment from Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, i.e., Krugman Lite.
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Amazing. Obama's Justice Department gets caught selling guns to Mexican gangsters, and the response is -- MORE GUN CONTROL LAWS to keep guns from winding up in Mexico!
Liberals are apparently genetically incapable of learning this lesson: criminals, by definition, do not obey laws ... and they certainly aren't going to obey more laws that would deny them guns! The only net result of such sophomoric thinking is an unarmed citizenry that DOES obey the laws.
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Is there a more useless, overpaid body in government than the U.S. Senate? The Congressional Record shows that, in terms of legislation, the current Senate is the most slothful on record; records that go back to 1947. Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, et al, are a standing argument for term limits to put these old goats out to pasture.
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The Big Media, liberal to the core, are joining Democrat politicians in trying to use the stupid overzealousness of staffers at one of his British newspapers to trash Rupert Murdoch's Fox News operation.
This may be of interest to those wondering who's the "good citizen" of the media, and which is free-loading on the taxpayers.
The parent company of Fox News — News Corp. — paid the U.S. government $4.8 billion in taxes over the last four tax years (2007-2010). GE, which owned NBC and most of MSNBC until late last year, paid zero taxes in 2010. In fact, GE received a $3.2 billion welfare check, i.e., tax "credit", from Washington.
NBC is now owned by Comcast, the cable company. Interestingly, one of their first moves was to hire a new head of their entertainment division, the person who makes decisions about what shows to air in the endless quest for ratings. And they hired ... Jennifer Salke. From ... Fox.
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The wisdom of Burt Prelutsky --
"The reason I believe we're in Libya is because Obama and his minions decided that the enemies of our enemy -- in this case, Gaddafi – must be our friends. It was a similar mistake that FDR made during WWII, when he took the Soviet Union to his bosom, ignoring the fact that the biggest difference between Stalin and Hitler was the size of their mustaches.
"When Obama attacked 'millionaires and billionaires' in the speech in which he seemed to suggest that if we would only get rid of those tax deductions on corporate jets, all of our financial woes would be over, I couldn't help wondering if any of his millionaire and billionaire chums took his remarks to heart. I mean, Warren Buffet, Ted Turner, Bill Gates, Jeffrey Immelt, George Soros, Barbara Boxer, Steven Spielberg, Dianne Feinstein, Michael Bloomberg, Barbra Streisand, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Paul McCartney and Oprah Winfrey, are the richest people I can think of off the top of my head, and they are all rabid liberals. Just who the heck was Obama talking about?"
- - - - -
Congressman Ron Paul does the nation a service by calling attention to serious issues, but he has earned the title "Modern Day Harold Stassen" by repeatedly running for a Republican presidential nomination that he's never won -- and won't.
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Are there really police with this lack of judgment and common sense? In Georgia, another case of police closing a sidewalk lemonade stand run by three little girls who wanted to make enough money to visit a water park. Has nobody told these officers that running a kiddie lemonade stand is the iconic symbol of American entrepreneurship?
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Bad luck for people who bought riverfront property on the Guacalito River in Costa Rica. There was an earthquake, and the river is ... gone. Totally ... gone. The forecast for water-skiing on the river: difficult.
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From reader Thomas, timeless thought --
"The mission of the law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even though the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit. Its mission is to protect property."
Fredric Bastiat
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Jay Leno --
"A report says that a growing number of Americans are worth $1 million. The bad news: last year they were worth $5 million."
CASEY HAS STRUCK OUT ... ON HER OWN
Casey Anthony. Out of jail ... ready to begin a new life. What KIND of life? Where is the person, male or female, who would ever trust a woman who at the very least lied about knowing the whereabouts of her dead baby? It's easy to predict that Ms. Anthony is likely to be in the news again in the future -- and it won't be GOOD news.
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It is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Democrat mentality to believe they will ever agree to serious, substantive cuts in government spending that has us hell-bent for economic catastrophe. Instead of telling voters, who have a natural inclination to protect their own government goodies, "We have to make cuts to save the nation," it's much easier to demagogue the issue and pretend that "corporate jets" are the cause of all the problems. The ONLY way the Republicans will ever get the kind of major overhaul of the budget that is necessary will be to win not only the White House, but both houses of Congress. Then they must be willing to accept the slings and arrows that will inevitably follow serious budget-cuts in the knowledge that many of them will lose in the next election after the usual Democrat charges that they've been mean to the poor and minorities, etc., etc.
We may have crossed the tilting-point at which more people benefit from government largesse than are required to support the insane government spending, so the only hope is that the freeloaders vote in fewer numbers than the bearers of the burden.
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Goldman Sachs, the big financial house, has revised its economic forecasts for the nation; revised economic growth expectations downward and presented a gloomy longterm unemployment prediction. Since Goldman Sachs' people contributed mightily to the campaign fund that put the nation in such irresponsible hands, one can only wish they would pay the price for that piece of stupidity. It's about time the chickens came home to roost for the Wall Streetwalkers (a new word I just invented for the whores of high finance who paved their own road to hell.)
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Our Marxist-Muslim president had intended to appoint his radical-leftist friend Elizabeth Warren (out of UC-Berkeley via Harvard) as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Apparently opposition was strong enough that he's withdrawn her name from consideration. Perhaps he's found someone whose left-wing tendencies have been concealed well enough to survive congressional scrutiny. And why do we need yet another duplicative federal bureaucracy, anyway? Oh -- I forgot! -- Obama still may have friends who want to get on the government payroll!
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Even the Gallup Poll, which historically has been slow in picking up public opinion trends, now has The Big Zero's approval rating down to 42%. It remains to be seen if the Republicans can find a way to once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but at least Jimmy Carter no longer holds the title of Worst President in History.
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Something liberals never figure out. People, like companies, can and do move out when taxes become too high. Britain's Sunday Express newspaper reports on a survey of 500 British millionaires, only 44% of whom state that they plan to stay in their highly-taxed home country.
Personal footnote: when I moved from San Francisco to Arizona, just the difference in state taxes was more than enough to pay the annual operating cost of the house I built near Tucson. Taxes, insurance, utilities, maintenance, etc. My view of San Francisco Bay was lovely; so's my view of the Santa Rita Mountains. And much less expensive, with fewer crazy people as neighbors.
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Just speculating ... How surprised would you be to wake up some morning soon to the news that Israel had attacked Iran and dealt a crippling blow to that maniacal nation's nuclear weapons program? The Israelis may well decide that, unlike the wimps of Western Europe and a spineless America led by a Muslim sympathizer, they can't afford the luxury of waiting for proof that Iran's threats to destroy them were serious. And Netanyahu has a spine where Obama has Jello.
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Just asking ... has the "two-week war" (per Obama, H. Clinton, etc.) to oust Gaddafi succeeded without my noticing?
With this kind of leadership and expertise, Hannibal would have attempted to cross the Alps on the backs of Chihuahuas.
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Here's our dysfunctional legal system, military version, in operation. On November 5, 2009, Major Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire on his fellow soldiers at Ft. Hood, Texas, and slaughtered thirteen of them. This week, on July 20, he will finally be arraigned. It took over a year-and-a-half for an open-and-shut case like this to even reach the arraignment stage?! What is wrong with this picture?!
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I tell my misguided liberal friends that I'll be be concerned about Rupert Murdoch's media empire, which I am required to neither support nor patronize, when THEY get concerned about the fact that we all DO have to pay the tax dollars that go into NPR and PBS, both of which are clearly slanted to the liberal side.
BTW ... Rick Steves is a nice fellow, but I wonder if anyone at PBS has considered that, in light of world developments, re-running his old shows that are replete with fulsome praise for benevolent Islam isn't at odds with reality. Same for the otherwise-excellent "Globe Trekker" series.
I have visited many of the grand mosques of the world and while impressed with the architecture and detail, I've never lost sight of the fact that they represent the most repressive religion on earth. Steves and the young hosts of "Trekker" seem unable to make that distinction.
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Noemie Emery in The Weekly Standard --
"Ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt linked “freedom from want” to “freedom of speech” and “freedom of worship,” the left has been talking of everything that it thinks would be nice to have in terms of an utter and absolute right: a right to a job and a right to an income, a right to retire in comfort in Florida, a right to the most advanced health care without paying much for it, and a right to have your children taken care of while you work all day at your job. The problem is that these are all goods and services, though of varying importance, and goods and rights are not the same things."
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Bryan Walsh has a right to say (in the slowly but steadily dying Time Magazine) that "Fighting Energy Efficient Light Bulbs is Stupid". And I have an equal right to say Bryan Walsh is stupid.
Opposing a know-it-all government's insistence on telling me what kind of light bulb I have to buy is ... stupid?! I suggest that Mr. Walsh has a serious case of rectal-cranial inversion.
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We're stunned ... shocked ... flabbergasted. Five of the women on North Korea's soccer team, caught using steroids in drug-testing at the World Cup matches. North Koreans ... cheating?! Who'd'a thunk it ...
This criminal enterprise disguised as a nation -- North Korea -- shouldn't even exist, and wouldn't exist had Harry Truman had the common sense to let General Douglas MacArthur finish the job, as he wanted to do, in the Korean War. That's historical fact that the most ardent Truman admirer -- and he did have many fine qualities -- must admit.
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Best PR move by an airline in a long time: Jet Blue's decision to help people needing to travel north-south in the Los Angeles metro area during the closing of the 405 freeway by flying them from Long Beach to Burbank -- or vice-versa -- for $4. Plenty of "good guys" publicity.
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Does a statesman/politician lose status if he's NOT on the list of people Osama bin Laden wanted to kill?
- - - - -
Big surprise (not!). Many movie critics, largely a bunch of liberal goo-goos, don't like the new documentary film about Sarah Palin. Did anybody lose any money betting that they WOULD like it? I didn't think so ...
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Having any luck finding one of those "green" jobs Obama said would be abundant?
- - - - -
J-Lo, I know you and Marc are splitting up, but please -- don't start calling me at home.
- - - - -
Greg forwards some legitimate Obamacare question from one of the world's great philosophers, the redoubtable Maxine.
"Let me get this straight . . . We're going to be "gifted" with a health care plan that we are forced to purchase and fined if we don't ... Which purportedly covers at least ten million more people, without adding a single new doctor ... but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents ... written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that didn't read it but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a President who smokes ... with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes ... for which we'll be taxed for four years before any "benefits" take effect by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare ... all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's broke!!!!!
What could possibly go wrong???
DO AS WE SAY, NOT AS WE DO;
PARTY OF "THE LITTLE PEOPLE"?
PARTY OF "THE LITTLE PEOPLE"?
Irony abounds. There's Hillary, our Secretary of State, applauding the Greek government for the stringent reforms they're trying to put in place to resolve their debt-and-spending crisis. This comes from a representative of a U.S. government that is strenuously trying to avoid taking the same actions to repair the same problem that came about in the same way -- a government resistant to all restraint.
- - - - -
Don't be overly-impressed by Obama's campaign fund-raising. Despite the perennial Democrat claim that they're the party of "the little people", almost half of the $86 million Obama raised in the past three months came from just 244 supporters who bundled contributions from rich friends, and only 634 donations from people giving $30,000 or more make up $23 million of his total.
Gee, you don't think that handful of big contributors expect some kind of payback, do you?
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Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner with revelatory numbers ...
"According to Jim Messina, his campaign manager, through the second quarter of 2011, President Obama now has 552,000 contributors to his 2012 re-election campaign. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that during the same two quarters, the U.S. economy generated 260,000 jobs. In other words, Obama attracted twice as many campaign donors as his economic policies created new jobs."
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With drought gripping much of the nation's midwestern breadbasket, we are all about to pay a (higher) price for the political manipulation and "green" stupidity that's led to much of the corn crop being used to reduce the performance of gasoline. Since corn is not only needed as food itself, but also provides the sustenance for livestock that put the protein on our plates, expect food prices to begin yet another climb. The ethanol scam has already gone on far too long. Besides, if we DID need it, it could be imported in quantity from Brazil -- IF our politicians would remove the tariff barrier that has been erected to enrich our own ethanol-processing industry.
Food prices are up almost 5% over the past year. Expect the trend to accelerate.
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The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco and packed with liberals, retains its record as the most-overturned (by the U.S. Supreme court) judicial body in the nation.
The LA Times reports that the Supreme Court reversed or vacated 19 of the 26 decisions it looked at from the 9th Circuit this judicial term, issuing especially pointed critiques of the court's handling of cases involving prisoners' rights and death row reprieves.
The 9th Circuit was often out of step even with the high court's liberal justices, who joined with the conservatives in 12 unanimous rulings.
So ... it's a good bet that the next time you hear of yet another stupid decision by the Ninth, it'll be overturned. Comforting.
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Something for the bloodthirsty Muslim crazies in the middle-east to think about -- if they're capable of rational thought:
The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel reports that Germany is selling to Israel what will be the tiny nation's sixth nuclear-capable submarine. These vessels are capable of launching nuclear weapons. This means that, even if Israel falls under nuclear attack by, say, Iran, they'll still be capable of massive retaliation.
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What (some) governors and state legislatures can do that evidently CAN'T be done by the dwarves of Washington:
At least a dozen states will end the fiscal year with budget surpluses. The leader of this enviable parade is Indiana, where governor Mitch Daniels managed a state government that ends the year with a $1.2 billion surplus.
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Michael A. Walsh of the NY Post with a reminder of just how credible economic forecasts coming out of Washington really are --
"When Medicare began in 1966, it cost $3 billion; congressional estimates were that, by 1990, it would cost about $12 billion, allowing for inflation. The actual figure turned out to be $107 billion. Today, Medicare's future unfunded obligations total at least $36 trillion."
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A regular correspondent from Britain asked for an explanation of why our government seems to be ... dysfunctional. It may be an over-simplification, but I replied that the crux of the problem lies in two realities about the leadership of our major political parties. By and large, the Democrats are crazy ... and the Republicans are cowardly.
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Re Democrat Congressman Leonard Boswell from Iowa, a Vietnam veteran, whose home was invaded by a criminal ... who, in turn, was driven off when the Congressman's grandson appeared with a shotgun: wonder what his position is on his party's overall anti-gun-ownership philosophy?
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Rick reminds us why it's not easy being a man ...
If you put a woman on a pedestal and try to protect her from the rat race, you're a male chauvinist.
If you stay home and do the housework, - you're a pansy.
If you work too hard, there is never any time for her.
If you don't work enough, you're a good-for-nothing bum.
If you mention how nice she looks, - it's sexual harassment.
If you keep quiet, - it's male indifference.
If you cry, you're a wuss.
If you don't, you're an insensitive bastard.
If you make a decision without consulting her, you're a chauvinist.
If she makes a decision without consulting you, she's a liberated woman.
If you're proud of your achievements, you're full of yourself.
If you don't, you're not ambitious.
If you want to make love too often, you're a sex addict.
If you don't, there must be someone else.
...but it's worth it, isn't it, men? ISN'T IT?!
THERE ARE ONLY TWO THINGS I DON'T LIKE
ABOUT OBAMA
-- HIS FACE.
-- HIS FACE.
‘I’m the president of the United States, and I want to make sure that I am not engaging in scare tactics. And I’ve tried to be responsible and somewhat restrained so that folks don’t get spooked.”
So said Barack Obama June 29, discussing the impending debt crisis.
The same Barack Obama who, within a couple of weeks, was threatening not to send out Social Security checks. "Not engaging in scare tactics." Riiight ...
- - - - -
... AND THEN ...
Obama said during the ’08 campaign: “I truly believe that the day I’m inaugurated . . . not only does the country look at itself differently, but the world looks at America differently.” The candidate went on, “The world will have confidence that I am listening to them, and that our future and our security is tied up with our ability to work with other countries in the world.”
-- Jay Nordlinger, National Review, pointing out the irony that Obama's popularity in the Arab world is now lower than that of George W. Bush when he left office.
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The bottom line is this.
The Gross National Product is the value of all the goods and services produced in the nation each year.
Over many years of recent history, the government has averaged spending about 20% of the GNP.
Obama, Pelosi, Reid & Co. have increased the government's spending rate to above 24% of the GNP.
This is totally consistent with the liberal view that ALL money, all income, all earnings ... are really property of the government and that you should be grateful for whatever portion you are allowed to keep.
An all-wise government, in their view, is much more qualified to decide how to spend it, giving those in charge of the spending a lifestyle the working peasant can only dream about.
What today's Democrat/socialists prefer to forget is that one of their icons, John F. Kennedy, reversed a recessionary trend during his own tenure in office by drastically REDUCING taxes -- which resulted in MORE tax revenue.
But Obama has publicly stated that he would raise taxes, even KNOWING that a higher tax rate would actually bring in less revenue, because his goal is redistribution of wealth. Karl Marx would approve.
So concludes today's course in Economics 101.
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Sports analogies are popular because they often convey easily-understood messages about other fields of human activity. For instance currently, the relative states of NASCAR and the national economy.
Unlike the Big Three pro sports, football, baseball and basketball, NASCAR ticket sales do not go in any great proportion to corporate buyers who use those seats to reward clients. Since no track hosts more than two top-circuit Sprint Cup races per year, and most only have one race, there are no season-ticket sales that provide a financial backbone for those other sports.
Races are held all over the country, thus attendance provides a useful yardstick for the economy as a whole -- especially considering that tickets aren't cheap.
Attendance is down to just under 100,000 per race despite an exciting season. Those are numbers other sports would love to have, but bad for NASCAR events. And since the Sprint Cup circuit races at tracks from coast-to-coast, that attendance is obviously one gauge of the national economy and the unemployment situation.
Just this past Sunday, there were thousands of empty seats for the race at Loudon, New Hampshire. The trend continues.
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Steve Wynn, entrepreneur in hotels/casinos/restaurants AND Democrat, speaking of Obama ...
"The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest, their holding too much money. We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody's afraid of the government and there's no need soft peddling it, it's the truth. And that's true of Democratic businessman and Republican businessman, and I am a Democratic businessman and I support Harry Reid. I support Democrats and Republicans. And I'm telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs."
And Warren Buffett, one of Obama's biggest big-biz suckups, is now annoyed at the President's constant attacks on corporate jets. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Mr. Buffett owns a big business jet leasing company. Note to Wise Warren: one ancient truth maintains relevance. "Go to bed with snakes, and eventually you'll get bitten."
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Gasoline prices are on the way up again -- in the unlikely event you haven't noticed. Now, the nationwide average price is almost exactly DOUBLE what it was when the Big Nothing was inaugurated ... and he's made no real effort to help the situation as worldwide consumption grows and our own resources are blocked from exploitation by him and his idiot socialist, anti-American bureaucrats.
If you voted to put this bunch of heathens in office, do the honorable thing: change your name, leave the country and never return. You have irretrievably disgraced yourself.
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Sure tip-off that a politician is conniving at postponing actually confronting a problem, i.e., "kicking the can down the road": he/she wants to talk about what the scheme will accomplish in "the OUT years".
- - - - -
Victor Davis Hanson gets to the crux of our economic mess ...
"Here in the United States, the 5 percent of the population that pays nearly 60 percent of all the income taxes collected is excoriated as selfish and greedy for not being willing to pay even more. The 50 percent of the population that pays no income tax at all feels that it deserves even more from those who make more.
"The more we have, the more we want, and the more we will feel deprived at seeing others with more than what we have. That is at the heart of the current Western malaise, from Washington to Athens."
And the borrowers, be they nations or individuals, have gotten into the sorry habit of blaming their plights on the "evil" lenders who were foolish enough to loan them money in the first place -- in the case of individuals, loans often made under government pressure.
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Today's recommended reading: The American Thinker website ... Charlie Brannan ... "One Obama Presser, 36 Obama Lies and Deceptions".
Forward it to any poor, misled Democrat of your acquaintance.
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New York Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo, son of Mario, is not lacking in political ambition. The question he might well be asking himself is, "Do I want to run in 2016 following a (probably failed) left-wing Obama ... or might my prospects be better running against a Republican running for re-election after having to make painful choices to get government spending under control, thereby annoying many voters?"
Hmmm.....
- - - - -
Hope Solo, the goalie on the U.S. women's soccer team that lost a shootout in the World Cup finals, was the heroine of a thrilling win over Brazil, then was victimized by Japan in that last game.
She exemplifies an old saying in sports that also serves as a metaphor for life itself:
"That's the way it goes. Chicken today ... feathers tomorrow."
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Why more bureaucrats should be fired -- or better yet, hanged:
James Linlor lives in Nevada. He applied for license plates reading "GOPALIN". The DMV refused. But his application for "GO OBAMA" plates zipped right through.
- - - - -
The woman who grabbed the breast of a TSA agent at Phoenix airport is being charged with "sexual abuse". Yet those TSA people are routinely allowed to grope the private parts of both men and women passengers. What is wrong with this picture?
If they did their job effectively it would be one thing, but tests by their own agency have proved they DON'T, with all kinds of weapons easily smuggled aboard airliners.
- - - - -
Speaking of breasts ... third nipples are rare, but not THAT rare. However, the extra one is usually found above the waist. Anne Boleyn, one of the six wives of England's King Henry VIII, was said to have the extra erogenous zone, which still didn't make her so entertaining as to avoid being beheaded by her husband.
Now, the British tabloid, The Sun, reports that a 22-year-old woman has been found to have a third nipple -- on the bottom of her foot.
We may have found the ideal mate for a foot-fetishist.
- - - - -
My friend John-Juan passes along this profundity --
"There is no abstract art. You must always start with something.
Afterward you can remove all traces of reality." -- Pablo Picasso
- - - - -
Sheila of Arizona sends along this --
During a recent password audit, it was found that an employee was using the following password:
"MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofySacramento"
When asked why she had such a long password, she said she was told that it had to be at least 8 characters long and include at least one capital.
THE HOLE-IN-THE BUDGET GANG
(With apologies to Butch and Sundance)
(With apologies to Butch and Sundance)
Re the "gang of six" tax/spend bull-(bleep) ...
A long-range prediction, i.e., "the out years": our Marxist president plus his own party and a sufficient number of cowardly Republicans will ultimately resolve the economic crisis by doing what most governments have always done. The currency will be inflated -- more money created out of thin air with nothing behind it -- making every dollar worth less and less, rewarding society's parasites by rendering increasingly worthless the savings of citizens who have behaved responsibly.
We live in a kakistocracy -- government by the worst among us ... those who pander to freeloaders and leeches, elected by the ignorant, stupid and irresponsible.
PS: every dollar you have is now worth 12% less than when Obama was inaugurated and began spending money the government doesn't have on such things as his failed "stimulus" scam.
Footnote: debasing the money, i.e., inflating it, is as old as the Roman Empire and perhaps even older. The politicians of those days, instead of printing more currency worth less and less, either shaved some of the valuable metal off the edges of coins and used it to mint more coins of purportedly the same value, or utilized cheaper metals in alloyed coins.
- - - - -
Smallest surprise of the week: former President Clinton says he wouldn't hesitate to raise the debt ceiling as an exercise in presidential power, even if Congress didn't approve, daring the courts to stop him. Of course. Within every Democrat politician lurks the soul of a tyrant, yearning to be unimpeded by Congress or the Constitution.
- - - - -
Jonah Goldberg in the LA Times on Obama's bargaining position re the debt --
" last week, referring to the fact that he is rich, the president said: "I do not want, and I will not accept, a deal in which I am asked to do nothing. In fact, I'm able to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income that I don't need."
"Leaving aside the fact that the man lives in public housing and has a government jet at his disposal, so his definition of "need" might be a bit out of whack — what is pragmatic about this position?
Obama says that Republicans are rigid ideologues because they won't put "everything on the table." Specifically, they won't consider tax hikes. But Obama hasn't put everything on the table either. He's walled off "Obamacare" and the rest of his "winning the future" agenda.
- - - - -
Always remember and never forget: few things in this world are more fun than spending other peoples' money. And that's what politicians and government bureaucrats do all day, every day.
So it's no wonder they're reluctant to give it up.
- - - - -
The redoubtable Thomas Sowell revisits a reality liberals try to ignore --
"Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things. We all recognize this in our daily lives. It is only in politics that this simple, common sense fact is routinely ignored.
"Many of the things advocated by environmental extremists, for example, are things that most of us might think of as good things. But, in politics, they become Good Things whose repercussions and costs are brushed aside as unworthy considerations.
"Even after the risky mortgages that were made under government pressure led to huge bankruptcies and bailouts, as well as disasters for home owners in general and black home owners in particular, home ownership remains a Good Thing. The Justice Department is again threatening lenders who don't lower their standards to let more minority applicants get mortgage loans."
And those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
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Whether the story is fact-based or fabricated by political enemies, the story that Cong. Michele Bachmann is susceptible to being disabled by migraines under stress places another obstacle in her path to the Republlcan presidential nomination. If the report is fallacious, she has to get on top of it and defeat it pronto. If it's true ... she's through as a candidate, fairly or unfairly. And favorable comparisons to the empty suit presently occupying the White House will be to no avail.
Yes, there have been other presidents with serious disabilities, including JFK. But the difference is ... the public didn't know about them. In this information-saturated age, no longer can illnesses such as Woodrow Wilson's incapacitation or FDR's mobility problem be concealed.
- - - - -
Heavily unionized Michigan is a likely must-win state for Obama to have a chance at a second term.
The latest polling shows he'd lose to Romney, 46% to 42%.
- - - - -
Just to be clear, the obsession about the British newspaper scandal on the part of CNN, MSNBC and over-the-air networks has to do with one thing.
Fox, both the broadcast network and Fox News cable channel, is killing them. Rupert Murdoch, owner of the now-defunct London News of the World newspaper, owns Fox. Therefore, anything they can do to discredit Fox, even as indirectly as coverage of a story that carries real interest only for Brits, is avidly pursued.
One does not have to be an admirer of Mr. Murdoch to understand that it's highly unlikely he'd be aware of the day-to-day activities of people at a newspaper that represents less than 1% of his media holdings.
And there's this: nobody is required to read Mr. Murdoch's newspapers (including the Wall Street Journal) or watch his TV stations. But equally, nobody should be unaware that competing media have a very self-interested axe to grind.
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London Dave checks in from Old Blighty with this relevant observation about Mr. Murdoch's
company --
"Contrary to the leftist propaganda -- NewsCorp is NOT the UK's biggest media empire. That would be the institutionally leftist BBC, which is funded by a compulsory TV Poll Tax from everyone with a television. Non- payment of the $300 a year can get you banged up in the clink."
Our own counterparts, of course, are PBS and NPR, which we do not subsidize with direct payments but nevertheless are forced to subsidize indirectly with tax dollars.
- - - - -
Do you know anyone, possibly excepting young children, who looks forward to air travel today?
- - - - -
Here we go again. Another reported image of Jesus showing up in an unlikely place -- this time on a Walmart receipt obtained by a young engaged couple who made a purchase at a store in South Carolina.
I have a recurring question every time a picture of Jesus shows up on the side of a barn, in a dried apple ... wherever: since there are no photos and no contemporary paintings, how can anyone possibly KNOW what Jesus looked like?
This uncertainty reached the height of absurdity when the blue-eyed Jeffrey Hunter played the role of Jesus in the 1961 movie, "King of Kings". A blue-eyed Jesus two thousand years ago? Not likely.
- - - - -
A few kind words about the death penalty.
In the news today, word that a Chicago man has been sentenced to 32 years in prison for dealing the death blow as one of five men who beat a high school honors student to death.
This evil scumbag and his cohorts will NOT be "rehabilitated". They will come out of prison to pursue a life of crime or, at best, be burdens on society for the rest of their lives. Meantime, the taxpayers will be feeding and housing them. For what?
Where guilt is clear and indisputable, the whole appeal process should be streamlined so as to rid the world of these vermin who prey on others ASAP.
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AP reports on more government employees only too happy to throw away your tax dollars --
Ohio officials are investigating allegations that some county Medicaid workers inappropriately advised men posing as Russian drug dealers on how to get government health care benefits. Conservative activist James O’Keefe posted undercover video on his Project Veritas website Monday suggesting workers in three counties helped the men after being told they were illegal immigrants whose young sisters performed sex acts for drug clients.
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As gold climbs toward $1,600 per ounce, I again recall one of the memorably stupid phone calls from years as host of talk-shows for ABC and other broadcasting companies. It came as gold was approaching $1,000 an ounce, and I stated that it would obviously increase in price because our government was -- even then, Bush era -- printing so much money that every dollar ipso facto was worth less.
This outraged young man ridiculed the idea of buying gold on the basis that "you can't buy anything with it." A typical liberal, he was too stupid to understand that the gold could always be exchanged for U.S. currency, if need be. I wonder how happy this idiot would be NOW if he'd bought gold at $1,000 and looked at a 60% increase in its value vs. the sagging dollar?
More accurately, it's not so much the value of gold RISING as the value of the paper dollar decreasing. But that's obviously far too complicated for addle-brained liberals to understand.
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A cautionary note about politicians, commentators and writers of letters-to-the-editor. Be wary of anyone who claims to speak for "thousands ... millions ... X-number of people." The appropriate evaluation of such claims is, "No, you don't. You represent yourself -- and any further claim is pure speculation or wishful thinking."
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Some unthinking parents give their newborns names that will handicap them for life, which is why some countries have governmental bodies that can reject such names. But one that slipped thru the screen in New Zealand was a baby girl named "Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii". The child got so much grief over it, at age nine she had it legally changed.
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From Arnold --
When asked by a young patrol officer "Do You know you were speeding?"
The woman of considerable years gave the young officer an ear to ear smile and stated:
"Yes , but ... I had to get there before I forgot where I was going."
The officer put his ticket book away.
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Katherine offers this updated Harlequin Novel.... 2011 Version:
He grasped me firmly, but gently, just above my elbow and guided me into a room, his room. Then he quietly shut the door and we were alone. He approached me soundlessly, from behind, and spoke in a low, reassuring voice close to my ear. "Just relax."
Without warning, he reached down and I felt his strong, calloused hands start at my ankles, gently probing, and moving upward along my calves, slowly but steadily. My breath caught in my throat.
I knew I should be afraid, but somehow I didn't care. His touch was so experienced, so sure. When his hands moved up onto my thighs, I gave a slight shudder, and partly closed my eyes. My pulse was pounding. I felt his knowing fingers caress my abdomen, my ribcage. And then, as he cupped my firm, full breasts in his hands, I inhaled sharply.
Probing, searching, knowing what he wanted, he brought his hands to my shoulders, slid them down my tingling spine and into my panties. Although I knew nothing about this man, I felt oddly trusting and expectant. This is a man, I thought. A man used to taking charge. A man not used to taking 'No' for an answer. A man who would tell me
what he wanted. A man who looked into my soul and said . . . .
"Okay ma'am, you can board your flight now."
EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY ...
... for we live in a nation in decline. Roman Empire redux. Unemployment continues to rise ... the American era in space has ended with the final landing of the space shuttle ... our "leaders" can't balance a checkbook ... our culture is guided by savages ... we flail away fruitlessly in wars in Afghanistan and Libya ... our borders have become a joke.
Remember the futile France we used to ridicule? We have become ... FRANCE!
- - - - -
“Your migraines occur infrequently and have known trigger factors of which you are aware and know how to avoid.” -- Dr. Brian Monahan, the attending physician of Congress, in a note to, and about, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.
It remains to be seen if the doctor's opinion will abort the media firestorm over her fitness for higher office because of health concerns. The argument can also be made that none of the Republican field could possibly be worse than the conniving Marxist who daily disgraces the White House with his presence.
- - - - -
Just so there's no misunderstanding, I will support anyone who runs against the ongoing disaster called Obama.With that on the record, let me share my inherent distrust of anyone, preacher or politician, who tells me he/she has a "calling" to do this or that -- including run for president. And that includes Rick Perry, who may very well be the final Republican choice. Don't tell me you have a "calling", tell me what you would do if you got the job.
One can make a credible argument that the "calling" various people hear for various pursuits comes from their own egos speaking to them.
- - - - -
It is indicative of the sheer thoughtlessness of many Americans that public opinion polls show a majority regard Obama and the Democrats as the responsible-behaving adults in the debate over debt and spending. They are apparently unaware the these same "adults" didn't even submit a budget plan for last year -- or next.
To repeat -- yet again -- the curmudgeonly but correct H. L. Mencken, "Nobody ever went broke UNDERestimating the American public."
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Here's a reality check for those who assume the government is capable of taxing at a high rate those "really, REALLY, filthy rich people". It never seems to occur to these pathetic simpletons that people smart enough to accrue enormous sums of money are also smart enough to know how to keep it out of the reach of the government, or at least smart enough to hire lawyers and accountants who know how to do it.They're also smart enough to know how to have their money multiply in tax-friendly overseas havens.
The late Leona Helmsley, aptly known as "The Queen of Mean", stated a painful truth at her own trial when she said, "WE don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes...".
But Democrat politicians like the VERY wealthy Nancy Pelosi, whose own riches have grown thru the recession, successfully peddle nonsense to the gullible lemmings who follow them. Except for those whose political agenda enriches themselves thru political influence, the rest are so stupid they don't even KNOW they're stupid.
- - - - -
Is Bob Schieffer of CBS trying to replace Chris Matthews as the lead spokesparrot for the ultra-leftist in the White House?
A small anecdote about Matthews, by the way. The "tingling" fan of Obama's redistribution schemes was visiting at ABC's studios in San Francisco when his newspaper base was the SF Examiner. He had only recently gotten his cable-TV slot and was chatting with one of my ABC colleagues who was an ideological soul-mate. Liberal, that is.
The colleague told me later that all Matthews wanted to talk about off-air was how much money he was making with his left-tilted cable show. Ah, those self-sacrificing libs!
- - - - -
American Airlines is buying hundreds of new planes, splitting the order between Boeing and the European Airbus consortium. About time they refreshed the fleet. Their old MD-80s have been fine and durable aircraft, but one of the most uncomfortable birds in the air. It was a linear descendant of the old DC-9 which, in turn, was a clone of the old European Caravelle.
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The irrepressible Mark Steyn in National Review debunks the nonsense about a big budget deal hammered out by the Washington Weasels --
"One of the depressing features of the Republican party is the way they get suckered time and again into playing on Democrats’ terms. The pathetic spectacle of grown men and women sitting around in meetings trying to agree on “grand bargains” to save $43.7 bazillion in federal spending by 2023 before an allegedly looming deadline of August 2nd is almost too perfect a snapshot of Washington stupidity.
"The rest of the world isn’t looking for a grand bargain by August 2nd. And it knows enough about the decadent state of U.S. law-making to know that any such bargain would be voted through unread and begin to unravel by sun-up on the 3rd."
- - - - -
A powerful insight from Robert A. Hall --
"Why Bipartisan Compromise doesn't always work so well: An enemy is determined to shoot you twice in the head. You don't want to be shot at all. Compromise: he only shoots you once. A rapist wants to kidnap a young girl and rape her repeatedly over several days. She doesn't want to be raped. Compromise: he only rapes her a few times. A thug wants to steal all the money in your wallet. You want to keep your money. Compromise: he only steals half of it. If compromise is such a good thing, these folks should all be content with the outcomes here. But the media are fond of demanding compromise. So I'll take half your money now, see you next week for another 'compromise'."
(Thanks, Kevin)
- - - - -
It comforts deluded Democrats to blame Obama's economic problems on Bush, an argument that is growing tired. It might be remembered that Bush's tenure in the Oval Office was hardly a bed of roses, punctuated by the devastating blow of 9/11 and a war in Iraq. Obama has had nothing remotely comparable to either of those to test him. For the most part, he's tried to conduct his administration from the safety of a rabbit-hole, emerging occasionally to either raise money from the (shrinking) faithful or play another round of golf.
Meantime, we skeptics await decades of revelatory books and documentaries about how the American voters were taken in by a shadowy figure with a dubious, clouded past, manipulated by forces yet to be revealed.
- - - - -
Steve Wynn, gambling tycoon and Democrat, has made clear his dissatisfaction with the Obama regime that he helped create. Obama's bad for business? Sure. But Mr. Wynn has gone a long way toward insulating his own interests from the job-killing mess Obama has created. How? Macau. The tiny legal-gambling enclave on the coast of China, an hour or less by hydrofoil from Hong Kong, has long since passed Las Vegas as the gambling capitol of the world and Mr. Wynn is a major player there.
Macau now has a skyline replete with sleek casino hotels, a far cry from the old Portuguese colony I visited several times in the days of my misspent youth. Then the city had smoke-filled gambling halls with dusty potted palms behind which one could imagine Peter Lorre lurking while Sydney Greenstreet slyly worked the tables.
In today's Macau, the Bellagio would be a slum.
- - - - -
Tony Blankley with a clear-eyed view of changing standards --
"In Atlanta, the teachers cheat on exams so the students don't have to. It doesn't raise the knowledge level of our children, but it gets the school system past the next exam -- even as the system continues its death spiral. We will know the spiral has reached its terminal station when there is full unionized teacher employment and complete student illiteracy.
"Now, in this same spirit of treating the symptoms at the price of the patient soon dying, Moody's credit rating agency, according to Reuters, has proposed that the United States "eliminate its statutory limit on government debt to reduce uncertainty among bond holders.
"It's true. Eliminating the legal requirement that limits debt issuance would assure (for a while) the continued issuance of debt -- a classic example of winning the battle and losing the war."
- - - - -
Another peek behind the media screen. Andy Barr, who wrote (often uncomplimentary) stories about Sarah Palin for POLITICO, the political newsletter, has quit to take another job. He'll be working for the Democratic Party in Arizona. Another POLITICO reporter left in 2009 to work for Florida Congresswoman Debbbie Wasserman Schultz. Yes, THAT Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
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Gene offers this one --
An old guy was working out in the gym when he spotted a sweet young thing...
He asked the trainer, "What machine in here should I use to impress that sweet thing over there?"
The trainer looked him up and down and said, "I would try the ATM in the lobby."
- - - - -
Jimmy Fallon --
"A woman in Colorado was arrested for groping a TSA agent last week. On the bright side, today she was offered a job WITH the TSA."
TAXPAYERS VICTIMIZED AGAIN,
LYING FOR A LIVING, etc.
Obama's own Treasury Department now admits taxpayers lost $1,300,000,000 (that's a billion, three hundred million) on the idiotic Chrysler bailout. Have people this stupid EVER before been in charge of the nation's economic fate?
- - - - -
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney: "Well, two things remain incontestably true. The economy is vastly improved from what it was when Barack Obama was sworn into office as president."
Jay, didn't your mother ever tell you it wasn't nice to tell lies?
BTW, when do gasoline prices return to the level when your boss took office? You know -- HALF what they are today.
Of course, Jay's previous career as a Democrat shill for Time Magazine prepared him well for this gig.
- - - - -
The liberal media are stupid bordering on treasonous. How else could they profess to conclude that the current Republican House is mistaken or downright evil by attempting to curtail insane spending by a president who's run up more debt than all previous presidents in history, combined?
- - - - -
Timeless wisdom from Thomas Sowell --
"Implicit in the approach of both academic and media critics of what they call "tax cuts for the rich" and a "trickle-down theory" is a zero-sum conception of the economy, where the benefits of some come at the expense of others.
"When tax revenues rose in the wake of the tax-rate cuts made during the George W. Bush administration, the New York Times reported: "An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year."
"Expectations, of course, are in the eye of the beholder. However surprising these facts may have been to the New York Times, they are exactly what proponents of reducing high tax rates were expecting."
- - - - -
Is it fair to describe New York Mayor Bloomberg as a self-hating Jew? After all, he's pushing for taxpayer funds to build a mosque at the site of the 9/11 destruction. For the benefit of those unaware of this aspect of Islam, building a mosque is a symbol of Muslim triumph. The mayor is either pathetically ignorant or shows tendencies to collaborate in his own demise.
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Even the Democrat-tilted Public Policy poll finds that the Big Zero would lose (to Mitt Romney) if the election were held today. But the election ISN'T being held today, so Republicans have no room or reason to relax pending November, 2012.
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AND ... more bad poll news for the pompous phony in the White House. Rasmussen finds only 21% of likely voters believe the country is headed in the right direction.
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Peter Ferrara in The American Spectator --
"Like a replicating amoeba, America is pulling apart into two separate cultures. One is strongly committed to the birth of an even more robust, pro-growth, entrepreneurial capitalism. The other thinks Che Guevara and Karl Marx had important social insights relevant to America today, and wants to follow the path of Juan Peron's Argentina, if not Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. This is the stark choice facing the American people in 2012."
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How could a woman as bright as Laura Ingraham be so dumb as to pack $11,000 worth of jewelry in her checked luggage, only to have it stolen in the baggage room at Newark Airport?
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Two of the most vile regimes on the planet are now augmenting each other's nuclear weapons programs: Iran and North Korea. How much better off we, and the world, would be if we'd had the leaders with the guts to (A) finish the job in the Korean War instead of settling for a murder-punctuated "truce" and (B) had decapitated Iran on 9/12, 2001.
Hindsight is always 20-20, but was there an American alive at the time who (A) believed North Korea would ever live at peace with its ethnically-identical South Korean neighbor or (B) believed that the demonstrably mad, terror-supporting Islamic regime in Tehran was going to behave in a civilized way? Of course not.
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While channel-surfing this morning, I came across Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri being interviewed on Fox. Besides being borderline nuts, she has one of the most screechy, irritating voices I've ever heard. How did this harridan ever get elected to ANYTHING? Oh, I forgot -- she had Teamster-run St. Louis on her side.
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Chile's longtime Marxist dictator, Salvador Allende, was exhumed and an autopsy performed. It was concluded that, leftist fantasies of a dark CIA plot notwithstanding, he DID commit suicide. Either way, it was good riddance. Now Chile is a prosperous (and prospering) country despite having to deal with the consequences of a huge earthquake.
Their privatized and hugely successful Social Security system should and would provide an excellent model for the U.S., but the Democrat/socialist demagogues would never consider it. And Chileans already know more -- from real experience -- about budget- balancing than Obama, Reid and Pelosi could ever possibly absorb.
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Just so we don't forget as we enter another presidential campaign season ...
When a Democrat (say, Obama) talks about the government "investing" in this-or-that, he really means blowing your tax money irresponsibly on some stupid scam that will mean profit for political friends and contributors. Take, for example, all those government-subsidized "green" projects that have never borne fruit. Ask the local taxpayers in Salinas, California, how they got scammed out of hundreds of thousands of badly-needed dollars by a now-bankrupt electric-car operation.
It's the green movement, with its demand for more efficient light bulbs, that is sending billions of dollars to China, where they're manufactured.
Excepting wars and a few other human endeavors, a good rule of thumb is this: if a private enterprise is unwilling to do it, it may be a dumb idea.
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Reminder to Republicans as they consider their prospective 2012 candidates. The failure of Senator John McCain should reinforce the premise that, given the choice between a REAL Democrat (a leftist like Obama) and a DISGUISED Democrat like McCain, voters will take the real thing every time.
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Professor Paul Kengor poses this hard question for today's Americans as the economic clouds darken over the nation ...
"Isn’t it ironic that with all our scandalously expensive education—far more than our grandparents' schooling — we've learned so little? We can't fix our car let alone shoot, gut, skin, and butcher a deer.
"Think about it: If you lacked income for food, or if prices skyrocketed, or your money was valueless, what would you do for yourself and your family?
"Americans today are a lifetime from their grandparents and great grandparents. God help us if we ever face a calamity like the one they faced—and survived."
(The full article is at Townhall.com)
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The usual liberal nonsense about how the illegal immigration problem can't be solved because "we can't deport millions of people" is a straw-man argument. The solution lies largely in a position taken by 75% of American voters in a Rasmussen survey. They want more enforcement of the laws against HIRING illegals. Couple that with a cut-off of taxpayer-paid freebies (education, health care, welfare) for illegals and they will deport THEMSELVES. We can no longer afford to be the sugar-daddy for every freeloader who shows up on our doorstep.
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Many Chicagoans are upset because Mayor Rahm Emanuel isn't sending his children to public schools. Of course, neither did the Daleys or other predecessors. As a former longtime resident, I would suggest that only an idiot would send his children to a gang-dominated Chicago public school if an alternative were available. Can they possibly be surprised that their ballet dancer Mayor doesn't do it?
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Plan on it. A May cruise up the East Coast to the Canadian Maritime Provinces, then up the St. Lawrence River to Montreal and Quebec City. Keep following this column for details. If you want to be on the early mailing list for details, e-mail me at: RadioRodgers1@Yahoo.com
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Yet another judge issues yet another warning to Lindsay Lohan that she must get on with performing the public service chores which kept her out of prison.
When are these idiot judges going to wake up to the reality that this is a spoiled brat, treat her accordingly, and send her butt off to the Big House?
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From Investors Business Daily --
Bernie Marcus co-founded Home Depot (HD) in 1978 and brought it public in 1981 as the U.S. was suffering from the worst recession and unemployment in 40 years. The company thrived, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and redefining home improvement retailing.
But Marcus says Home Depot "would never have succeeded" if it launched today due to onerous regulation.
On Obama: "His speeches are wonderful. His output is absolutely, incredibly bad. As he speaks about cutting out regulations, they are now producing thousands of pages of new ones."
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The BBC has been conducting a survey of Brits and others about Americanisms that have crept into the language, to the annoyance of many purists. Examples:
When people ask for something, I often hear: "Can I get a..." It infuriates me.
The next time someone tells you something is the "least worst option", tell them that their most best option is learning grammar.
The phrase I've watched seep into the language (especially with broadcasters) is "two-time" and "three-time". Have the words double, triple etc, been totally lost?
The one I can't stand is "deplane".
Is "physicality" a real word?
"I'm good" for "I'm well".
Going forward? If I do I shall collide with my keyboard.
"Reach out to" when the correct word is "ask".
Having an "issue" instead of a "problem". (BRAVO!)
"I got it for free" is a pet hate. You got it "free" not "FOR free".
"I could care less" instead of "I couldn't care less" has to be the worst. (AGREED!)
If you wish to annoy a Brit -- and who doesn't now and again? -- you are now equipped.
OUR POMPOUS, POSTURING PRESIDENT
It was pure Obama. Making a blatantly political speech while pretending to be above such partisanship. The clearest message delivered in his oration yesterday seemed to have escaped the notice of post-speech commentators. It was his demand that, "for the good of the country", Republicans recently elected to Congress should betray the very voters who sent them there and renege on their pledge to reduce government spending and debt. Only a man with no principles would openly demand such unprincipled behavior of others while lauding the "sacrifices" made by his fellow Democrats who can't bear the thought of any limits on their endless campaign to buy votes with other people's money.
Obama's insistence that any increase in the debt limit run to 2013. His motive could hardly be more obvious. If he reads the polls -- and a politician doesn't breathe who ignores them -- he knows that the likelihood of being re-elected is already slim and would become all but impossible if he has to take more heat over his irresponsible borrowing and spending in an election year.
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Your political dictionary: "revenues" is Obama-speak for "higher taxes".
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How painful must it be for House Speaker John Boehner to keep repeating the fib that he "trusts" Obama? He -- Boehner -- can't possibly be that gullible.
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JAMES A. KENNEY,Capt., U.S. Navy (Retired), wants one and all to know that the U.S. Navy now has exactly 278 ships, lowest number in eighty years, i.e., the lowest number since before World War Two.
And Obama wants more cuts in our defense structure!
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Obama wants to cut our defense spending. Anybody surprised? Anybody doubt that he'd prefer a totally defenseless United States?
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A point to be made to wavering friends. When Obama tries to sound moderate by talking soberly about cutting debt, government spending, etc. ... HE ... IS ... LYING.
All his actions prove it, starting with the indisputable fact that, in two years, he ran up more debt than ALL previous presidents, combined!
Render us defensively lame ... wreck the economy. What else does anyone need to know about this anti-American Marxist would-be tyrant?
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Governor Sarah Palin's commentary after the Obama charade yesterday ...
"This is the same president who proposed an absurdly irresponsible budget that would increase our debt by trillions of dollars, and whose party failed to even put forward a budget in over 800 days! This is the same president who is pushing our country to the brink because of his reckless spending on things like the nearly trillion dollar “stimulus” boondoggle. This is the same president who ignored his own debt commission’s recommendations and demonized the voices of fiscal sanity who proposed responsible plans to reform our entitlement programs and rein in our dangerous debt trajectory. This is the same president who wanted to push through an increase in the debt ceiling that didn’t include any cuts in government spending! This is the same president who wants to slam Americans with tax hikes to cover his reckless spending, but has threatened to veto a bill proposing a balanced budget amendment. This is the same president who hasn’t put forward a responsible plan himself, but has rejected reasonable proposals that would tackle our debt. This is the same president who still refuses to understand that the American electorate rejected his big government agenda last November. As I said in Madison, Wisconsin, at the Tax Day Tea Party rally, “We don’t want it. We can’t afford it. And we are unwilling to pay for it.”
"He has been deemed a lame duck president. And he is angry now because he is being treated as such."
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And Jonah Goldberg has this reality-check ...
"Ask almost any Democrat to explain why high taxes are bad, and you will get hit with the velvet fog, minus the velvet. First they'll explain that while they do favor "increasing revenues," they don't favor higher taxes if by "high taxes" you mean taxes that are "too high." They favor "smart" tax rates that are "targeted" (i.e., "higher").
Then they'll explain that they don't want to raise your taxes; they want to raise taxes on your boss, your employer and the companies that sell you gas, cars, cigarettes, clothes, electricity and various "unnecessary" surgical procedures. They leave out that those taxes get passed on to you.
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One observation re the mass murder on the island off the coast of Norway. While the gun-grabbers will inevitably seize this tragedy as a way of trying to drum-up support for more gun control laws (which criminals won't obey, anyway) I would suggest this scenario be considered another way. To wit, this is what happens when the bad guy is the only one around with a gun.
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The camel's nose under the tent ...
A Muslim group in the United Kingdom has launched a campaign to turn twelve British cities – including what it calls "Londonistan" – into independent Islamic states. The so-called Islamic Emirates would function as autonomous enclaves ruled by Islamic Sharia law and operate entirely outside British jurisprudence.
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From a United States Marine ...
The Navy SEALS removed one Muslim threat to America .. It's up to the voters to remove the other!
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It's worth repeating many times over between now and November 2012. If you want to know where Obamanomics is headed, spend a little time on your computer researching the history of Argentina under the Perons and their sycophant successors. They took the richest country in South America into a long -- and still persisting -- era of political and economic turmoil that has largely driven business and entrepreneurship out of the country. One of the key elements in the Argentinian tragedy: an unholy alliance between government demagogues and unions of government employees, who became the storm-troopers of the thugocracy.
And it's always timely to remind voters of this sad fact of life: if you fall in love with a politician, it's almost inevitable that you'll be seriously disappointed. Or as a wise philosopher (me) has said many times ... there's only one way to look at a politician. Down.
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Obama got elected in great part because he presented himself as a blank slate, mouthing platitudes and letting the gullible write on that slate whatever they chose to hope and believe.
There are growing suspicions that Mitt Romney's reluctance to take a strong position on pressing issues is his version of the same deceptive act.
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Unsurprising poll analysis from CNN, about their own poll showing Obama's support down three points, to 45%. What's behind his continued decline? According to blatantly liberal CNN, it's because he's losing the support of the political left ... for not being leftist ENOUGH!
Remember, this is the mindset that informs what CNN chooses to call "news".
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More media bias. Newsbusters kept score of the networks' coverage of the Republican-passed "Cut, Cap, Balance" bill in the House. That's shorthand for, "Cut spending, put a cap on debt and balance the budget". Most Americans find it eminently sensible; polls show it's supported two-to-one by the public. But ... the liberal media largely either (A) ignored it or (B) ridiculed it. It's clear -- again: they have their own agenda and the public be damned.
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The pragmatic Swiss have come up with a solution to red-light district action often taking place in public view. The Zurich city government is building walled drive-in parking slots where patrons of the shady ladies can transact business in their cars. Think of it as an extension of the idea for car-wash fundraisers.
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Add a dash of pity for the 32-year-old Russian man who went into a hair salon with the intention of robbing it ... and found himself on the wrong end of a fight with the 27-year-old proprietor who happens to be at the black-belt level in Karate. She took him into a back room, tied him up and used him as a sex-slave for the next three days, feeding him only Viagra. He told his story while being treated at a hospital for swollen testicles.
I am NOT making this up!
ARE YOU INTERESTED IN ...
INTEREST?
It is widely assumed that even the threat of a government default on paying its bills would result in a rise in interest rates, and that would be tragic. Nonsense. We've had a healthy economy in many years when rates were considerably higher than today's giveaway rates, which are far below the real rate of inflation. Which means savers are losing money every day.
While higher rates would be harmful to some people and businesses, take a look at the other side of the picture which is totally ignored by the media. If you think low rates are an unalloyed good, check with any retired person who depends on income from CD's to supplement that Social Security check and maintain a decent lifestyle.
There's an obvious irony in an administration that professes concern for Social Security recipients, but endorses economic policies that prevent them from getting a fair (to use Obama's favorite word) return on the money they've saved.
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Only a government as stupid as our own, run by a bunch of silly, spoiled brats, could proudly promote electric cars (not hybrids) that have to be charged from an electrical outlet while simultaneously facing overloaded electrical grids that force brownouts during heat waves. "Planning a trip to work, or to the store? Sorry. Your car won't go because electricity's been cut off ... because of too many air conditioners running." In sane societies, they'd put people so dumb in mental institutions.
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The New York Times, proud defender of all things Muslim, has now launched an attack on Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. Why? Because Mr. Cain defends the right of local communities to refuse permission to Muslims to build a mosque in their localities on the grounds that they use those facilities to promote the establishment of Shariah (Islamic) law to replace state, local and federal laws. WHICH ... THEY ... DO. Ask the Brits, who now face Muslim demands for their own self-governing enclaves under Shariah law, including the city THEY call "Londonistan".
One could well wonder if the spineless western world has a collective suicide-wish, with dhimmitude as a step along the way. If you're unfamiliar with the word, get used to it. It means submission of non-Muslims to Muslim authority, complete with additional taxes. The people so subjected will be those remaining after others are beheaded. Doubt it? Read some history.
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Media liberals can't help themselves. As predictable as sunrise, they're off on a tirade about the "right-wing" lunatic who slaughtered over ninety people in Norway. Some are even trying to blame Sarah Palin for the nut's actions! Of course, this was easy to foresee. After Congresswoman Giffords was shot by a brain-addled wacko, Democrats immediately tried to turn the tragedy into a politically-motivated event, which it absolutely was not. The guy was/is crazy; that's the story. The WHOLE story.
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Jeb Bush is in the "never say never" stage of evading questions about any plans to run for president in 2012. Okay. But he should harbor no ambitions about 2012. The very name Bush is still poison to far too many people in the big middle that decides presidential races. It's a reality that the core of supporters in both parties hate to recognize, but the independent voters ARE almost always the deciding swing bloc. They are now, by every survey, disdainful of Obama. That does not mean, however, that they're over their distrust of all things Bush. Plus, many pure Republicans are still feeling burned because George Sr. reneged on his tax pledge, and George II lost whatever conservative bonafides he ever had. Jeb might be a fine man with solid instincts, but for now, his very name is a burden.
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Suggested target for unemployment: the government bureaucrat who decided that prayers could not be said nor God even mentioned in burial ceremonies at military cemeteries. It is long past time for more Americans to grow some backbone and treat these political hacks with the kind of contempt they so richly deserve. Also ... does anyone believe that a functionary in Obama's administration would object if Allah were mentioned at a Muslim funeral?
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Paul Bedard of US News & World Report has word that the Justice Department's Bureau of Prisons is probing so-called "hate sermons" from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, available to most federal inmates, to see if they radicalize prisoners or even turn them into terrorists.
Among the Nation of Islam video titles offered to inmates, with the government's blessing, are "Conspiracy of the International Bankers," "Conspiracy of the U.S. Government," "Controversy with Jews," and "Which One Will You Choose, the Flag of Islam or the Flag of America?"
The Justice Department, headed by the sinister Eric Holder, is going to investigate? Care to make a wager on how THAT will turn out?
In a sane nation, the person who gave the green light for this kind of propagandizing in federal prisons would be imprisoned, himself/herself.
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Mangled metaphors dep't: I heard it again yesterday, from a sportscaster ...
"The heat will PLAY a FACTOR ..."
No. The heat may play a ROLE ... or BE a factor. But not PLAY a factor.
I know ... I'm tilting at windmills. Nevertheless, the uphill battle against language corruption will continue. Sportscasters are among the worst offenders, relying on such crutches as "athleticism" to avoid saying a black ballplayer can often outrun his white counterparts, even though he may be regarded as not overly-bright. Is there anyone who HASN'T recognized this weasel-ism?
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Sheila B. offers this collection of signs in English by people in foreign countries who haven't quite mastered the nuances of the language ...
In a Bangkok temple: IT IS FORBIDDEN TO ENTER A WOMAN, EVEN A FOREIGNER, IF DRESSED AS A MAN.
Seen in a cocktail lounge, Norway: LADIES ARE REQUESTED NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN IN THE BAR.
On the main road to Mombassa from Nairobi: WHEN THIS SIGN IS UNDER WATER, THIS ROAD IS IMPASSABLE.
In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from a Russian Orthodox monastery:
YOU ARE WELCOME TO VISIT THE CEMETERY WHERE FAMOUS RUSSIAN AND SOVIET COMPOSERS, ARTISTS AND WRITERS ARE BURIED DAILY EXCEPT THURSDAY.
Sign in a hotel, Zurich: BECAUSE OF THE IMPROPRIETY OF ENTERTAINING GUESTS OF THE OPPOSITE SEX IN THE BEDROOM, IT IS SUGGESTED THAT THE LOBBY BE USED FOR THIS PURPOSE.
...and a laundry in Rome offers this helpful suggestion: LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND SPEND THE AFTERNOON HAVING A GOOD TIME.
NEVER PUT A LIBERAL IN CHARGE OF YOUR
MONEY;
OBAMA THINKS PARTY ICON FDR WAS A conservative??
OBAMA THINKS PARTY ICON FDR WAS A conservative??
Typical of their muddle-headed thinking, Democrats are now insisting on still more government spending (think stimulus -- yet again) to "create jobs". Be clear: the only jobs government can create are jobs that are payroll-dependent on taxpayer dollars, which only expands the debt problem we already have. How hard is this to understand? Do they think money can be created out of thin air? The obvious answer is ... yes, they DO! Do they think borrowed money must never be repaid? The obvious answer is -- yes, they DO! Their attitude and behavior are those of spoiled, irresponsible children.
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My friend Richard exhumed this timeless quote ...
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America ’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America ’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”
-- Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006, in OPPOSITION to raising the debt ceiling.
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Friday at the University of Maryland, Barack Obama described FDR, the man who created the welfare state in America, replete with boundless government regulation, as a "fiscal conservative". If he really believes that, what does it tell us about his own proclivities?
What many liberals don't know -- or choose not to remember -- is that part of FDR's "brilliant" economic plan was the destruction of crops and livestock while millions of Americans were going to bed hungry every night.
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Monty Pelerin on The American Thinker site raises a disturbing prospect. Would the government -- especially a government headed by a leftist like Obama -- raid your IRA and simply steal part of it? Why not? It would be entirely in keeping with his "spread it around" redistributionist Marxist philosophy, and he's openly said that some people "have more money than they need", with the clear implication that the government -- he -- is qualified to decide how much is too much. We dismiss threats of expropriation by him and his sycophants at our peril.
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Here's some do-it-yourself political analysis. While housing prices across the country continue to decline, with very few exceptions, housing prices in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area are up more than 7% over last year. Gee, wonder if we can figure out why ...
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Gasoline prices nationwide are up almost nine cents a gallon in the last week. America, you elected an anti-American, anti-capitalist lefty as president. I hope those who voted for this boob are happy with the result. And yes, I DO know the alternative wasn't all that great.
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All that's needed to make the Obama debacle of a presidency complete is for Senator John McCain to "reach across the aisle" to him.
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Michael Barone with some overdue attention to a festering problem ...
"When governments want to encourage what they believe is beneficial behavior, they subsidize it. Sounds like good public policy.
"We are still suffering from the bursting of the housing bubble created by low interest rates, lowered mortgage standards, and subsidies to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
"For years, government has assumed it's a good thing to go to college. College graduates tend to earn more money than non-college graduates. Politicians of both parties have called for giving everybody a chance to go to college, just as they called for giving everybody a chance to buy a home. So government has been subsidizing higher education with low-interest college loans, Pell grants, and cheap tuitions at state colleges and universities.
What have institutions of higher learning done with their vast increases in revenues? The answer in all too many cases is administrative bloat.
Take the California State University system. Between 1975 and 2008, the number of faculty rose by 3 percent, to 12,019 positions. During those same years, the number of administrators rose 221 percent, to 12,183.
That's right: There are more administrators than teachers at Cal State now."
To reprise the wisdom of P. J. O'Rourke, "Giving money to politicians is like giving whiskey and the car keys to a teenage boy."
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Okay, I am officially fed up. I heard twice this past weekend some infantile goo-goo blathering about how such-and-such a place had a "fragile environment". I recognize that such simple-minded dopes are the products of an upbringing by stupid parents and a politicized school system, but I have long since become convinced they would describe hell as having a "fragile environment".
It has apparently never occured to these naive innocents that this old rock we call earth has been around for billions of years, surviving volcanic eruptions, uncontrolled fires, floods and earthquakes ... and just keeps on keepin' on, long before any kind-hearted do-gooder human beings polluted the atmosphere with the "fragile environment" male bovine feces.
At every opportunity they are to be challenged, excoriated and ridiculed. Deportation? 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. (Thanks to Bill Shakespeare, who was a pretty good writer, considering he didn't even have a word-processor.)
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Readers Wes and Carlene prompt this one-word response to any misguided goo-goos who think the domination of big American cities by liberals and minorities is a good thing:
Detroit.
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I'll believe whining by the lying hypocrite in the White House about "corporate jets" when I see HIM standing in line to fly coach on the next of his endless vacations.
Of course, he knows what he's doing, serving up this red-herring for the IQ-challenged sheep who make up his following.
Besides, why should any thinking person take tax (sorry, "revenues") advice from a Marxist who put a known tax-evader in the job of Secretary of the Treasury? (Yes, little Timmy, this means you.)
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John Hickenlooper is the Democrat governor of Colorado. He thinks Obama will have a hard time carrying his state next year -- and Colorado is one of the Big O's must-have states. And the scales continue to fall from the eyes of the gullible ...
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MEANTIME ... Obama is desperate to get a debt-ceiling increase beyond next year's election. And we DO know why, don't we?
For the same reason he can't keep himself from being an "accomodating escort" ("whore" is such a harsh word) for the big labor unions, no matter what that supine posture does to the nation.
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Yes, it IS true. The guiding light for the Community Organizer was Saul Alinsky, a crazed leftist who wrote "Rules for Radicals", and he DID dedicate his book to ... Satan.
Here are the exact words of the dedication: “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer."
So those deluded fools who want to follow ol' Saul and his deranged sycophant to hell -- don't say you weren't warned!
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Anybody surprised that longtime (and heavy) doper Amy Winehouse didn't make it past 27?
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The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living.
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Jimmy Kimmel --
"TSA is no longer going to use that scanner that shows passengers in the nude. They made an executive decision yesterday after Aretha Franklin boarded a flight at LAX."
A FLAILING INCOMPETENT BLOWING SMOKE
It was a portrait of demagoguery. Barack Obama, complaining about "partisanship" in politics while delivering yet another venomously partisan speech. It WAS smooth. It ought to be; he's delivered the same speech over and over, so it's well-rehearsed. Again, he was asking congressional Republicans opposed to more government spending to betray the people who elected them, as if their votes were less valid than those of the suckers who sent this hollow nothing to Washington.
He professed dismay and concern that a short-term increase would put the country thru a repeat of this debate next year with disastrous consequences in the bond market, while calmly admitting that President Reagan had asked for (much smaller) debt-limit increases sixteen times in eight years with no resulting diminishment of the country's credit rating OR jeopardizing RR's prospects for re-election.
The impostor is panicking, and his insistence that any increase in the debt limit run past the next election is yet another symptom of his private admission of failure. It's just another chapter in a political career built on avoidance of difficult issues; witness his history of voting "present" regularly in the Illinois state legislature when confronted with tough choices, and his well-established record as being a nonentity in his brief U.S. Senate tenure.
He's been coddled in the bosom of his fellow radicals and nourished by the corrupt Daley machine in Chicago, and doesn't know how to deal with actual resistance to his Marxist fantasies.
And, of course, he certainly doesn't want to discuss his own vote against increasing the debt limit during the last Bush presidency.
One helpful suggestion for Obama's speechwriter. Feed the phrase "corporate jet" into a jet engine. You've done it to death. Or withhold some money from the suck-up government unions and buy a private jet for a bum selected at random from the streets of several major cities.
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If, as many suspect, Obama's plan is to increase dependency on the government thereby ensuring further expansion and endless spending on giveaway programs, he's making progress. Almost one in five (18%) of American families are now receiving food stamps.
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The Harry Reid budget "plan" is filled with the kind of bogus nonsense you'd expect for him. Among the savings, he counts over a trillion dollars that wouldn't be spent on a much larger war in Afghanistan. And who was planning such an expanded venture, anyway? Noooobody!
If lies were feathers, ol' Harry would have the world's biggest pillow.
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Is there unnecessary panic-peddling going on? The chief economist at Wells Fargo securities tells Bloomberg business news that the government can avoid default for at least a month beyond the purported August 2nd deadline.
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Ah, sweet irony! Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the only (admitted) Socialist in the U.S. Senate, thinks Obama is too CONSERVATIVE (!) and should be opposed in Democrat primaries by a more liberal candidate.
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Elise Jordan in NRO on youth's difficult learning experience ...
"Young voters in 2008 were attracted to Obama as a symbol — no one knew exactly what he stood for, but voting for him sure did feel good. Nearly three years later, many of them are increasingly disgusted to learn that he apparently doesn’t stand for much. What’s his position again on gay marriage? On Afghanistan? On Iraq? Health care? The skyrocketing debt? They care little about having a symbolic leader when they can’t find jobs. The Hope and Change he promised have long since become a punch line."
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From the LIBERAL Washington Post --
"The Post-ABC poll found that the number of liberal Democrats who strongly support Obama’s record on jobs plunged 22 points from 53 percent last year to 31 percent. The number of African Americans who believe the president’s actions have helped the economy has dropped from 77 percent in October to just over half of those surveyed."
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... and the LIBERAL Los Angeles Times adds this postscript --
"To be sure, 30 months after he returned to home cooking, George W. Bush still gets majority blame for the economy. But here's the breaking news for hopeful Democrats: George W. Bush isn't running for anything except exercise."
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There's hand-wringing over the reported growing gap in wealth between white Americans and minorities. But little consideration is being given the reality -- and it IS a reality -- that black youth culture largely excoriates those among them who try to learn and achieve in school for being "too white".
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One of the truly crazy people in Congress, Barbara Lee of Oakland, illuminates one of her fantasies thusly --
“The current, so-called ‘debt crisis’ has been completely manufactured by House Republicans attempting to advance an extremist agenda. "
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Is Chrissie Matthews losing the tingle in his leg? He went on Obama's poodle-toy cable network, MSNBC, after the speech last night and after the obligatory attack on Speaker John Boehner, he ventured the opinion that it was unwise for Obama to use network time for a political speech. As if anything else was to be expected?
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Mark Steyn cuts thru the usual cloud of liberal BS surrounding the Norway massacre ...
beginning with the way the story is spun in USA Today:
"Islamophobia has reached a mass murder level in Norway as the confessed killer claims he sought to combat encroachment by Muslims into his country and Europe."
Steyn's response:
"So, if a blonde blue-eyed Aryan Scandinavian kills dozens of other blonde blue-eyed Aryan Scandinavians, that’s now an “Islamophobic” mass murder? As far as we know, not a single Muslim was among the victims. Islamophobia seems an eccentric perspective to apply to this atrocity, and comes close to making the actual dead mere bit players in their own murder. Yet the Associated Press is on board:
"Security Beefed Up At UK Mosques After Norway Massacre."
Steyn: "But again: No mosque was targeted in Norway. A member of the country’s second political party gunned down members of its first. But, in the merest evolution of post-9/11 syndrome, Muslims are now the preferred victims even in a story in which they are entirely absent."
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Wonder if Norway will now revise its laws that restrict their police officers' carrying of weapons? One of the first people killed in the massacre was an UNARMED cop.
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Today's heartwarming story ...
Kenneth Kobobel is a 72-year-old Marine veteran who lives and works in Houston. A robber barged into his office, put a gun to his head and demanded money, hitting him in the head with the weapon. The bandit also robbed his brother, then escaped.
End of story? Not quite. Mr. Kobobel ran out and jumped in his car, caught sight of the fleeing culprit and chased him. The criminal shot at him, but Mr. Kobobel kept coming and rammed him into a fence.
The robber got up and tried to run again ... and Mr. Kobobel gassed his vehicle and hit him again.
The late desperado has yet to be identified.
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Marv offers this distinction between the genders ...
A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need ... but it's on sale.
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Jay Leno --
"Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman has fired his campaign manager, which is kind of sad because the only other person who knew Huntsman was running for president WAS the campaign manager."
"DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO"
Jeffrey Immelt is CEO of General Electric. Mr. Immelt is also Obama's chosen advisor on job creation ... which leads to this eyebrow-lifter: GE is moving it's X-Ray manufacturing operation to ... China. Some local (there) engineers have already been hired ... more are in GE-sponsored training.
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Warren Buffett on the deficit --
"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election."
Excellent, Mr. Buffett. Should that stipulation also include your buddy, the president?
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A Thomas Sowell reality check --
"When all its skyrocketing spending bills were being rushed through Congress without even being read, the Democrats had such overwhelming majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives that Republicans had all they could do to get a word in edgewise -- even though their words had no chance of stopping, or even slowing down, the spending of trillions of dollars.
"Now that the bill is coming due for all that spending and borrowing, Republicans are suddenly being invited in to share the blame for either raising the national debt ceiling or for whatever other unpopular measures will be legislated.
"Many years ago, someone said, "If you didn't invite me to the big take-off, don't invite me to the crash landing." This was Obama's big spending spree, but "bipartisanship" requires Republicans to either split the bill or be blamed if the government shuts down or defaults."
(Full article at Townhall.com)
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Obama has his spokesparrot, Carney, before the cameras talking about a "plan" the administration has, but unwilling to tell us what it is. Yes, it's that renowned Obama "transparency" in action again!
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Democrats continue to use as a fall-back argument the poll numbers showing that Congress is even more unpopular than the president. Dig a little deeper into those numbers (Rasmussen) and you find that the DEMOCRATS in Congress are more unpopular than the Republican members, with 44% of Likely U.S. Voters saying they'd vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate, while 38% would choose the Democrat.
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Oregon Democrat Congressman David Wu, facing serious sex-related charges, is going to resign -- but not, he says, until after he's voted on the debt/spending mess. Just what we need. A depraved pervert and drunk helping decide our nation's fiscal policies.
Nutty Nancy, as party leader in the House of Representatives, do YOU think this is a wise move?
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Before succumbing to hysteria over the heat-wave that's gripped much of the county for several days and embracing "global warming", one and all should be reminded that WEATHER is short-term and local ... CLIMATE is long-term and global.
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Make of this what you (or your investment adviser) will, but be aware that a flood of IPO's is coming on the market. That's Initial Public Offerings of stock in companies previously not open to public investment.
Why now, all of a sudden? Maybe because the corporate strategists who put together these deals figure the enthusiasm for stocks may be at a peak, therefore striking while the iron is hot -- and before it cools off?
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Hmmm. In the midst of a self-described crisis over wild spending, Obama took time to make a political speech to the La Raza (literally "The Race") Latino organization. Coupled with his opposition to a voter ID process aimed at preventing illegals from voting -- illegally -- certain obvious conclusions can be drawn.
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While we've been distracted by the budget debate, Barack Obama has been colluding with the UN thugocracy to bring their version of an international gun control law to the United States. It would be a blatant violation of the Second Amendment right to bear arms and a major intrusion into U.S. law.
Fortunately, at least a dozen Senate Democrats are joining Republicans to stop the plan in its tracks, but that hardly releases our would-be dictator from the attempt.
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If Sarah Palin enters the Republican race, the campaign got a boost last night. Latino alleged comedian George Lopez was on CNN, saying that if she is elected president, he'll leave the country. In one of several utterly stupid quotes, he said, "''I like my politicians to actually have a political background.'' As if serving as governor of Alaska ISN'T a "political background". Or being a "community organizer" (libspeak for "rabble rouser") IS.
Of course Alec Baldwin and other left-leaning celebrities also vowed they'd leave the country if George W. Bush got elected.
He did ... and they didn't. But who expects liberals to keep their word, anyway?
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The childish Chrissie Matthews now compares the views of millions of Americans opposed to insane government debt and spending, i.e., the Tea Party, to attitudes held in South Africa in the days of apartheid.
Fine. As long as he makes liberals look as crazy as they really are, Chrissie is doing a favor for conservatives.
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A Swiftboat flashback, from Thomas Lifson of The American Thinker ...
"John F. Kerry almost became president running on the basis of his alleged heroism in Vietnam. Thanks to the efforts of a group of truth-tellers, the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, the serious holes in the fantasy narrative propounded by the Kerry campaign came to the attention of enough Americans that John Kerry was not the first faux-Irish President of the United States.
"One of Kerry's enablers in propounding his imaginary heroism was a man named Wade Sanders, who himself held a Silver Star, and who introduced Kerry to the Democratic Convention.
" Kerry was introduced at the 2004 Democratic National Convention by Sanders, a retired Navy Captain and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy who served as a Swift Boat officer in Vietnam. Like Kerry, Sanders was the recipient of a Silver Star for gallantry in action. During the 2004 campaign, Sanders functioned as Kerry lead attack dog against the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
"Wade Sanders is now in Federal prison, serving a 37-month sentence for possessing child pornography. Now the Navy Times reports that Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus has revoked Sanders' Silver Star. The highly unusual decision appears unrelated to Sanders' felony conviction. A Navy spokesman cited "subsequently determined facts and evidence surrounding both the incident for which the award was made and the processing of the award itself."
Might there also be an official reevaluation of Senator Kerry's Vietnam "heroism"?
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What kind of stupid dope do we have disgracing the White House who thinks the auto industry can increase gasoline mileage to an average of 56.2 miles per gallon, short of making light-weight rolling coffins with motor-scooter engines? If even such a lame-brain spent half as much time pushing oil drilling as on juvenile nonsense, we wouldn't be paying $3.50-$4.50 a gallon for petrol.
The lower-income dummies who largely elected this phony are the hardest-hit! At least that is justice.
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Old Democrats who wanted Jimmy Carter to get a second term: now that he HAS, under the name of Obama, how do you like it?
John Podhoretz, NY Post --
"In the wild satirical movie "Top Secret," made in 1984, an American in East Berlin meets a beautiful local woman. She tells him she had an uncle who was born in America.
"But he was one of the lucky ones," she says. "He managed to escape in a balloon during the Jimmy Carter presidency."
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James Taranto, WSJ --
"Obama let his frustration over the stalled debt talks seep into an address on Latino issues, confessing that he'd like to 'bypass Congress and change the laws on my own.'
"He told the National Council of La Raza, 'Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you'. But, he had to concede, that's not how our system works.'
"Being a dictator is a relatively easy job. Even junior tyrants like Bashar al-Assad and Kim Jong Il can do it. All a dictator needs to be effective is the ability to instill fear. An effective democratic leader needs to be able to command respect."
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From the "too little, too late" department ...
Newt "Retread" Gingrich now admits it was a mistake to make a TV spot about the global-warming scam with Nancy Pelosi.
In the spirit of "Fredo goes fishing" in "The Godfather" ... isn't it time for Newtie to go jewelry shopping?
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Recommended reading: Texas Monthly ... Paul Burka ... "Dear Yankee". It's everything you wanted to know about Texas Governor Rick Perry.
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Remember the old Tegrin commercial offering relief from "the heartbreak of psoriasis? Kim Kardashian, pin-up queen for the junk-in-the-trunk afficionados, is a victim of the disease.
"Access Hollywood" reports that her response to her dermatologist's diagnosis was, "Psoriasis!? I cannot have psoriasis. People don't understand the pressure on me to look perfect. When I gain a pound it's in the headlines. Imagine what the tabloids would do to me... "
We anticipate a special session of Congress to deal with the crisis.
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Craig Ferguson --
"Last night, I got Chinese food and the fortune cookie said, 'Where's my money?'"
DAFFY, DELUSIONAL DEMOCRATS'
DECEPTIONS
Liberal wackos in action ...
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned Congress that she will fight to block a Republican push to restrict aid for Israel’s Arab neighbors and Pakistan and cut off climate change funds.
Right. We're going to give money to people who hate us to fight a non-existent climate "threat" (see next item). Care to venture a guess on how the money will ultimately be spent in those countries?
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...AND ... in a related story ..
Charles Monnett, a federal wildlife biologist whose observation in 2004 of PRESUMABLY drowned polar bears in the Arctic helped to fire-up the global warming movement, has been placed on administrative leave and is being investigated for scientific misconduct, possibly over the veracity of that article.
WHAT??? You think maybe the whole "polar bears drowning" charade was FAKE???
See if the big media give this story any coverage.
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Where the liberal mindset can take you ...
Americans Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer are scheduled to face trial Sunday in Iran on charges of illegal entry and espionage. Only lib activists of the Berkeley variety would decide, "Gee, let's go for a hike on the border of Iran," and NOT expect to get into serious trouble.
They are paying for their real-world education with the bitter coin of experience.
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One likely way to solidify opposition to Speaker John Boehner's budget plan by Tea Party members of Congress would be for RINO Senator John McCain to demand that they SUPPORT it. And that's what he's doing. As well as denigrating Tea Party Republican congressional candidates.
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My admiration for President George W. Bush is limited (at least until comparing him to his successor) but here is the appropriate response to any whining Democrat who still wants to blame the outrageous government spending and debt on Bush #2:
(1)-- All budget bills must originate in the House of Representatives.
(2)-- Which party controlled both houses of Congress in the late (i.e., big-spending) years of the Bush administration?
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From California Congressman Tom McClintock, who -- if the state had more sane voters -- would have been governor instead of the failed fool, Schwarzenegger --
"Imagine a family that earns $50,000 a year but is spending more than $88,000 with a credit card balance of $330,000. The discussions around the kitchen table are likely to be a little tense. Proportionally, that’s where Washington’s finances are today, and that’s why the national discussion is a little tense, too.
"Fortunately, revenues vastly exceed debt payments, so threats of an actual default are so much flimflam. The President has both the legal authority and Constitutional obligation to prioritize payments to prevent a default. The problem is that a lot of other bills would go unpaid, causing a downgrade to the nation’s triple-A credit, forcing up interest costs, wiping out all of the savings now on the table and jacking up everything from mortgage interest costs to family credit card rates."
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As the Democrats try to bully their way thru the budget debate, it becomes ever more evident that their idea of "compromise" resembles that of the Soviet Union, when their position was, "All we want is the land next to ours."
And, of course, they were certain to return later to demand the land next to THAT.
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If Obama has such an inflated opinion of his powers of persuasion (re the debt, et al), he must wonder why, despite his endless haranguing for his health care plan, he failed to sell it to America. Most still oppose it.
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Democrats in Washington whine about "balancing the budget on the backs of the poor", yet they funded such nonsensical foreign aid programs as ... a National Institutes of Health grant to spend more than $90 million on researching whether prostitutes and their customers would be willing to use a new medication to prevent sexually transmitted diseases -- IN CHINA! Yes. We are paying for medical research on whores and Johns in our biggest creditor nation.
Is this country run by morons, or what?!
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... and then, we have this example of liberal priorities ...
The Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network will get $285,000 of taxpayer money annually for five years to pay several school districts across the country to help keep LBGT students "safe and healthy".
This requires a special program? Shouldn't ALL children be kept "safe and healthy"?
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More crazy people at work ... CNS reports --
Y-PEER, a youth initiative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), has issued a call to make access to abortion and contraception an international human right for children as young as 10 years old.
It further stated: “The rights of marginalized young people, including those who are living with HIV, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, YOUNG MEN WHO HAVE SEX WITH MEN, SEX WORKERS, injecting drug users, disabled youth, young people in crisis situations and other vulnerable youth continue to be violated through policies and programmes that criminalize them and ignore their specific needs.”
--So... according to the UN, it should be perfectly okay for old perverts to use child whores?
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Here's where Obama-style socialized medicine leads. The British system, the template for all other government-run health systems, is now making official what it's been doing all along -- rationing health care. Among the many procedures being rationed are:
* Hip and knee replacements only being allowed where patients are in severe pain. Overweight patients will be made to lose weight before being considered for an operation.
* Cataract operations being withheld from patients until their sight problems "substantially" affect their ability to work.
* Patients with varicose veins only being operated on if they are suffering "chronic continuous pain", ulceration or bleeding.
* Tonsillectomy (removing tonsils) only to be carried out in children if they have had seven bouts of tonsillitis in the previous year.
* Grommets to improve hearing in children only being inserted in "exceptional circumstances" and after monitoring for six months.
* Funding has also been cut in some areas for IVF treatment on the NHS.
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London Dave contributes this financial analysis ...
"In just 30 months Obama has raised the US national debt by 35%.
If the "debt ceiling" is raised it will be 54% by the end of his first term.
Which logically is on line to at least double the national debt, if America was foolish enough to have a national brainfart twice in a row.
I was wondering what if EVERY President had doubled the US debt when in office.
In 1791, the US debt was $75 million.
There have been 44 Presidents.
If all had followed the ruinous path of Obama and doubled the debt from their predecessor, the current US debt would be approximately: $66,500,000,000,000,000,000 -- or 65,500 trillion dollars, give or take a few hundred trillion.
... I think."
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As you would expect, the "paradise" places attract a lot of people who are inclined to live beyond their means. So it's no surprise that the two states with the highest average personal debt are Hawaii and California, where the average debt is over $300,000.
To residents of those states who are drowning in debt: I hear South Dakota is very nice.
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Mitt Romney may ultimately turn out to be THE man for Republicans in 2012, but beware of unrealistic expectations. Not only did Romney-care provide the template for Obama-care, he's a true believer in the Al Gore "global warming" boondoggle.
Don't say you weren't warned. He IS a RINO. Would he be an improvement over Obama? Who wouldn't?! But he IS a RINO.
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From the curvaceous and lovely Jim Eason ...
"I called my stockbroker and asked him what I should be buying.
He said, 'If the current administration is in office much longer, canned goods, water and ammunition are your best bet.'"
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It's a well-known fact that half of the jobs created in the entire nation in the past two years are in Texas.
Why? The short and simple answer is ... Texas doesn't allow a bunch of ignorant, meddlesome liberal goo-goos tell businesses what they can and can't do -- unlike idiot-run states like California, for example.
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If you're interested in just how well some members of Congress are doing financially while the nation wallows in turmoil, take a look at this website: GovernmentGoneWild.org
Take special note of how government life has been rewarding to the Sanchez sisters of Southern California.
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Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm not mentioning numbers, but I'm SO old ... ("How old are you?") ...
I am SO old, I remember when AOL was important in the computer world.
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A piece of folk wisdom from my lifeguard, Richard ...
"An old West Virginia Hillbilly saying: You can't get the water to clear up until you get the pigs out of the creek. "
(Think Washington D.C.)
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The Patriot Humor website has this definition of liberalism --
"The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, can help him or her self."
THE TEED-OFF TEA PARTY
... is taking a lot of abuse from both Democrats and RINOs who, for some utterly irrational reason, keep saying that if Boehner's bill fails, they'll have to accept the Harry Reid smoke-and-mirrors plan. What?! If any bill is to be adopted it has to pass BOTH houses. A House that won't vote for Boehner's scenario certainly won't vote for a Harry Reid bill; they can stonewall IT just as effectively as Reid's Democrat Senate dismisses a Republican-sponsored bill.
Reid said the Boehner bill would be "dead on arrival" in the Senate. Fine. The Republicans can just as effectively put a tombstone on anything the Nevada slimeball sends to them in the House.
Why should Republican members of Congress who were specifically elected to stop Obama's snowball spending be expected to save him -- or Democrats and their voters -- from the consequences of their own wasteful stupidity?
Conservatives have every right to reject any leadership that plays the old, losing game of presenting themselves to the public as, "We're just like the Democrats, only a little less so."
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Obama's Chief of Staff, Bill Daley (of the Chicago Daleys) tells CNN that Obama has a "secret plan" to resolve the budget situation. Secret?? From Mr. Transparency??
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Democrat hysteria is becoming increasingly shrill. Republicans are "killing Christmas"?! Nutty Nancy Pelosi says, "What we're trying to do is save the world from the Republican budget. We're trying to save life on this planet as we know it today." Say WHAT??!
Get a grip, wackos!
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The government's own Commerce Department reports that the economy grew at only a 1.3% annual rate in the second quarter of the year, which means that it's worsening and we're losing ground.
Also ... the black unemployment rate is soaring to all-time heights, and there are definite polling signs that a lot of black voters are recognizing that racial solidarity is a poor excuse for electing an incompetent.
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Barack Hussein Obama got 78% of the Jewish vote in 2008. Given his blatant tilt to the Muslim side on every issue relating to Israel's security, one would think that support would fall off considerably in next year's election. But Michelle Goldberg, writing in the Jewish-marketed TABLET magazine, says it won't happen.
Why? She says it is because so many Jews have a deep-seated fear of Christians, especially those of a conservative political bent.
Let's see. They're afraid of American Christians, among whom they've lived, worked and often prospered ... and that overrides any concern they might have about Muslim extremists sworn to exterminate them? The word "irrational" comes to mind.
A friend, the late Rabbi Arnold Kaiman of Chicago, once told me of his amusement -- or puzzlement -- that so many Jews disliked Jerry Falwell, the Protestant minister, totally unaware that he and his widespread congregation were among the biggest supporters of Israel, both financially and politically. Their bias was so strong that Israeli Prime Ministers, who met with the Rev. Falwell regularly, did so in secret.
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A Muslim soldier wants conscientious objector status because he doesn't want to kill another Muslim, which he might have to do if sent to Afghanistan. But he had no reservations about plotting to murder any number of his fellow American soldiers at Ft. Hood, Texas.
How much longer is this country going to continue to wear Politically Correct blindfolds and avoid facing reality? And reality is ... Muslims in our military (or anywhere else) are NOT to be trusted. If you were in the military, would YOU trust the armed Muslim GI beside you -- or behind you? Not if you have a brain! HE is the servant of an ideology that says, "kill infidels". YOU are -- to him -- an infidel.
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There remains little doubt that Obama and his wild-eyed leftist Attorney General, Holder, knew very well about the idiotic plan to ship guns to Mexico's murderous drug cartels; guns that were eventually used in mass murder, including the killing of an American agent. And ... they were doing it to lay the foundation for more restrictive gun laws in this country! Yet the smug liberal media are doing their utmost to bury the story, and the Republicans aren't raising NEARLY enough hell about it.
What were these fools thinking? -- about anything aside from their political ideology, that is?
To repeat my longtime on-air mantra, we truly DO "live in a land ... run by morons." Evil morons, at that.
This, along with the previous two items, only deepens my darkest doubts. Maybe this country IS too stupid to survive.
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Brian Williams of NBC, continuing his role as spokes-stooge for Obama, used just one question he asked of Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. He demanded: “Why shouldn't rich folks pay more?”
Has he ever asked Obama, or Reid, or Pelosi, "Why are you determined to spend us into bankruptcy?" I didn't think so ...
This network anchor is apparently so ignorant he can't run the numbers and figure out that if the really rich people paid taxes at a rate of 100%, it would still cover only a minuscule portion of our outrageous debt.
The REAL question is, why do half of Americans get away with paying NO income taxes at all? They therefore have every incentive to keep the tax-and-spend ball rolling, because somebody else is paying their way thru life!
It's true: some people work for a living ... others VOTE for a living.
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More true stories from the world of Obama-style government-run health care ...
Britain's Telegraph, a major newspaper reports:
National Health Service managers are deliberately delaying operations as they wait for patients either to die or go private in order to save money, according to an official report. Health service trusts are “imposing pain and inconvenience” by making patients wait longer than necessary, in some cases as long as four months, the study found. Executives believe the delays mean some people will remove themselves from lists “either by dying or by paying for their own treatment.”
Want to see your future under Obamacare? There it is.
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Recommended reading: On The American Thinker website ... a neat piece of satire by Scott Mayer ... "Our Historic Compromise".
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It's time to put Peggy Noonan in a home. She has become a total shill for the country-club Republican establishment.
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The New York Times. How could any serious person place any confidence in the "reporting" of this rag, when the historical record shows that they knowingly covered a Russian revolution that was murdering millions with the immortal and deceptive line, "I have seen the future, and it works." Or that they bought into the lies of Fidel Castro when he took over Cuba while denying that he was a communist. Later he admitted he WAS, but the Times never apologized for misleading their readers. This isn't a NEWSpaper, it's a left-wing propaganda organ.
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Today's language lesson for reporters: "Criteria" is a plural word. The singular is "criterION".
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About radio and TV call letters: while some owners have contrived to turn call letters into acronyms, or get call letters that can be so used (for example, WGN, Chicago ... "world's greatest newspaper", owned by the Chicago Tribune) the fact is that, so far as the FCC is concerned, no call letters stand for anything. They just identify the station on a particular frequency. The FCC is sensitive about call letters that spell out a naughty word. They simply won't approve them. You won't find a WHOR or ... several others.
Similarly, SOS as a distress call doesn't stand for anything. It was chosen in Morse-code days because it was easy to send; dot-dot-dot ... dash-dash-dash ... dot-dot-dot.
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London Dave picks up on my birthday theme of "You're so old that -- "
You're so old you remember Moses dropping the third tablet on Mount Sinai -- The 15th Commandment, thou shalt not eat and drink at the same time. That would have been a very useful one.
You're so old you remember telling Al Jolson he'd never make it till he cleaned his face.
You're so old you remember suggesting to Congress that "Hancock, DC" had a better ring to it than "Washington, D.C."
Thanks, Dave. I feel EVER so much better! Especially considering that last October several doctors predicted this was a birthday I'd never have.
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Jimmy Fallon --
"This debt crisis still isn't solved, but the White House says it's working on a 'plan B.' Unfortunately, the B stands for 'bake sale.'"
OBAMA'S THINKING: "WE WANT YOUR
OPINION, UNLESS WE DON'T LIKE IT"
What kind of lying shyster would do a carnival pitch-man's appeal for people to e-mail, call and Twitter members of Congress, expecting that to change minds, when he and his fellow Democrats totally ignore poll after poll finding Americans overwhelmingly favor -- by two-to-one -- a balanced-budget amendment?
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Obama's shameless panic-peddling knows no boundaries. His summoning leaders of veterans groups to the White House this week to tell them the evil Republicans may cause him to have to cancel payments of veterans' benefits is beyond despicable. He had previously made not-so-veiled threats not to pay our presently-serving military people, as well as Social Security beneficiaries.
The Big Nothing is cementing his place as the most despicable fraud ever to hold the office of President. And the unwillingness of the Senate Democrats to break ranks with this posturing would-be tyrant should doom them all to permanent disgrace. The larger question is ... what kind of voter supports these spineless frauds?
- - - - -
The #3 Democrat in the House, Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, thinks Obama should increase the national debt by Executive Order, a step even Obama says would be unconstitutional. Is Clyburn speaking from principle, or plain old racial solidarity?
Clyburn would be loved by, say, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
And he isn't the only liberal who thinks dictatorial powers held by Obama would be a GOOD thing. Sheep-like voters put the nation on a very dangerous path when they elected this tyrannically-inclined impostor.
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Believing as he does in the efficacy of the Executive Order, why doesn't Obama issue an order forbidding Muslims in the military, since our GI's would be suicidally stupid to trust them? Oh -- I forgot. Barack Hussein Obama wouldn't do that because ... nahhh ... COULDN'T be -- could it? I mean, wouldn't he TELL us? I mean, transparency and all ...
- - - - -
We've had another soldier arrested and charged with plotting more murders at Ft. Hood, Texas. Try to control your amazement that he turned out to be -- a Muslim! Pvt. Nasser Jason Abdo had applied for conscientious objector status in August which was initially denied.
However a military review board this spring finally recommended approval of his request.
In his petition for conscientious objector status, he said: 'As a Muslim, we stand against injustice, we stand against discrimination, and I feel it's my duty as an individual to do this." Of course, he DOESN'T stand against murdering his fellow soldiers.
Reminder: ours is an ALL-VOLUNTEER military. He apparently discovered his principles AFTER milking his service for all possible benefits, and putting himself in a position to slaughter American soldiers.
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If you have a liberal acquaintance with only a modicum of common sense, pose this question prompted by liberal hysteria from Janet Napolitano, et al, that the real threat to this nation comes from ... Christian conservatives!
The question is, "Which do you think more likely to organize, on a continuing basis, plots to massacre thousands of Americans: fundamentalist Muslims, worshipping a man who extolled mass murder, or Christians who follow the teachings of a man who implored them to love, not kill?" Then watch them tie themselves in knots trying to answer.
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Michael Walsh in National Review Online --
By now, the Obama “leadership” style should be blindingly apparent: Do nothing, lie in wait, and then counter-attack. Never present a plan if you can possibly help it, but deal exclusively in bromides and platitudes as you stake out the moral “high ground” and get ready to ambush the other guy. Think of it as the Permanent Insurgency campaign.
Meanwhile, have your media allies, talking parrots, and court lickspittles prepare the ground with standard-issue talking points — “The Tea Party Republicans are terrorists,” for example.
Use the bully pulpit as a bludgeon against your political enemies. Make cheap, demagogic appeals to your dwindling base of supporters to do your lobbying work for you. Say the same thing over and over, no matter how much TV time you need to pre-empt.
Adamantly refuse to be pinned down about the specifics of anything, and have your platoon of Baghdad Bobs continue to insist (as good liberals always do) that up is down, black is white, and wishes are really horses, if not actual unicorns.
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Here's how it is for business in Obama's hometown, Chicago. CME Group is a major commoditites market trading company; been around since the Chicago Board of Trade opened in 1848. They're thinking strongly about moving to another state -- Texas, Florida and Tennessee are possibilities -- because of the overwhelming burden of state and city taxes. Democrats never learn that most businesses ARE portable, and can be driven out by taxes and onerous regulations. Ask any Californian who used to work for companies that are no longer there. Or ask any Texan about the jobs that ARE there.
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The erudite Victor Davis Hanson analyzes Obama's spending predilection ...
"President Obama does not care much about deficits — other than worrying that big debt might matter in his reelection campaign.In his first three budgets combined, Obama borrowed nearly $5 trillion. Currently, the government is borrowing about 45 percent of everything that it spends. The 2012 budget that Obama proposed in February would add nearly $10 trillion to existing U.S. debt over the next ten years.
"The administration certainly has created an additional 100,000 federal jobs and expanded food stamps to nearly 50 million recipients — and in the process enlarged the pool of potentially grateful constituents.
"So why has Obama suddenly turned to deficit reduction? In a word, politics: The downside of massive borrowing finally outweighed the upside of bigger government. The tea-party-inspired midterm election brought Republicans to power in the House of Representatives and scared congressional Democrats silly. That’s why Democrats in the Senate voted unanimously to reject Obama’s record-deficit 2012 budget — the sort of intervention that is the fiscal equivalent of a concerned family forcing a bingeing relative into rehab."
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Rasmussen Reports poll --
Just 17% of Likely U.S. Voters now say the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey taken the week ending Sunday, July 24. That finding is the lowest measured since Obama took office.
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Longtime left-wing activist celebrity Harry Belafonte on Obama --
“When he said ‘Yes, we can,’ it was politically clever, but he never defined what it is we can do. So we filled in those spaces — what we thought he meant — only to find we were disappointed, because none of those points was satisfied.”
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For purposes of providing a historical framework and point of reference ...
Remember how the Iranians coolly took U.S. embassy employees in Tehran hostage, and treated the oh-so-sensitive President Carter with utter contempt? And how quickly they released the hostages the very day Ronald Reagan took office? There's a message in this example that only the dumbest liberal could miss.
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Forbes magazine on the further unraveling of the global-warming scam ...
NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.
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Take a pause for the cause and expend a few moments of your precious time to forward this column to a friend -- or liberal antagonist.
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The drunken lout Democrat Senator Wu of Oregon is resigning, but we taxpayers will still be on the hook for over a million dollars worth of pension and other benefits for him. Is this a great country, or what?
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Oprah's cable network, OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) is not doing well, and she just lost what she expected to be a star attraction. Jenny McCarthy didn't like the way her show for OWN was shaping up under Oprah's people, so she's bailed out and is taking it to NBC. Oprah's magazine has also lost half of its readership.
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This is how blonde jokes get started. A blonde ditz driving a $380,000 Bentley who was trying to park it in front of the casino in Monte Carlo managed to hit a Mercedes S Class, a Ferrari F430, an Aston Martin and a Porsche 911. She will be spending a LOT of time with insurance adjusters.
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Corrupted communication department ... and here we go again. A current news item refers to "AN historic ... " No, dammit! It's "A historic". It's "an" only if the "H" is silent, like "heiress", "herb", "honest", "honor", etc. Think of it this way: how silly would it sound to say, "I'm reading AN history book"?
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Dan Sorkin offers this reminder that predictions are always iffy -- especially regarding the future ...
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
--Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
--Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
--Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
"This ’telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
--Western Union internal memo, 1876.
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
--David Sarnoff’s associates in response to urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ’C,’ the idea must be feasible." --A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
"I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face and not Gary Cooper." --Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."
"We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
--Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
--Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
"So we went to Atari and said, ’Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ’No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ’Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’"
--Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.
NO HOPE ... AND RUNNING OUT OF CHANGE
Obama sycophants are learning -- if they're capable of such -- the painful lesson that fantasies about "hope and change" don't get you much in the real world ... and that a basic economic law ultimately prevails:
If your outgo exceeds your income ... your upkeep will be your downfall.
It was absurd for even the most childish liberal to think we could go on indefinitely borrowing 45 cents of every dollar our foolish government spends.
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Nevertheless, I smell a cave-in coming from the Republicans. The cuts currently being discussed do nothing serious to curb the insane spending. If the Republicans cave on Obama's major issue -- letting him continue to borrow past the next election -- they have no justification for their existence. They have the desperately flailing fool on the ropes; to let him wiggle out would be a total abdication of responsibility to their voters.
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Moody's, the big bond-rating service, says both parties are jacking us around with bogus or inadequate cost-cutting plans. Quote, "Reductions of the magnitude now being proposed, if adopted, would likely lead Moody's to adopt a negative outlook on the AAA rating." Ultimately, of course, decisions about our national credit-worthiness will be made by buyers -- or non-buyers -- of U.S. government bonds and treasury bills. Would you buy a bond that, based on the track record Obama has already established, will be paid back in dollars worth far less than those you've invested? China, our biggest lender (and who ever saw THAT coming?) is already putting on the squeeze regarding the shrinking dollar. Given a choice, would you put your money in U.S. dollars or, say, Swiss francs?
A personal example of how your government has steadily devalued your money: I worked on travel arrangements for the U.S. delegation to the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan. At that time, the U.S. dollar was worth 315 yen. On my last of several visits to Japan, roughly ten years ago, it was 110 yen to the dollar. It is now less than 77 yen per dollar.
Repeat after me: "We live ... in a land ... run by morons."
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Obama has been poll-axed yet again. Gallup, behind the wave as always, now has his approval rating at a new low of 40%. Unless the Republican party finds some way to commit election suicide -- always a possibility (McCain clone, anyone?) -- this foolish experimental failure of a president is toast.
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So Nutty Nancy Pelosi thinks John Boehner has gone to "the dark side". Typical Democrat nonsense by politicians who treat their dull-witted supporters like mushrooms: keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em bull(bleep).
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Raymond Ibrahim in FrontpageMag.com with a reminder about the culture that wants to rule the world --
"Muslim 'child-marriage'—euphemism for pedophilia—is making headlines again, at least in Arabic media: Dr. Salih bin Fawzan, a prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council, just issued a fatwa asserting that there is no minimum age for marriage, and that girls can be married “even if they are in the cradle.”
"Fawzan insists that nowhere does Sharia Law set an age limit for marrying girls: like countless Muslim scholars before him, he relies on Koran 65:4, which discusses marriage to females who have not yet begun menstruating (i.e., are prepubescent) and the fact that Muhammad, Islam’s role model, married Aisha when she was 6-years-old, “consummating” the marriage—or, in modern parlance, raping her—when she was 9".
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More Islamic insanity from Agence France-Presse -- the French news agency --
"A Muslim mob burned churches and clashed with police in Indonesia on Tuesday as they demanded the death penalty for a Christian man convicted of blaspheming against Islam, police said. Two days after a Muslim lynch mob killed three members of a minority Islamic sect, crowds of furious Muslims set two churches alight as they rampaged in anger over the prison sentence imposed on defendant Antonius Bawengan, aged 58. A court in the Central Java town had earlier sentenced the man to five years in jail, the maximum allowable, for distributing leaflets insulting Islam."
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Here is an unpleasant fact about Islam that Muslims would rather not discuss -- and neither would the western world's mush-head goo-goos. It's this: you can get in .. but you can't get out. The exact words of the Prophet Muhammad: “If somebody [among Muslims] discards his religion, kill him.” Clear?
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Get ready to recycle those hair jokes. Donald Trump says he may yet run for President if the economy continues to deteriorate, and if the Republicans pick a candidate that he'd expect to lose.
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The dumb, starry-eyed victims-in-waiting who wrote and babbled endlessly about the wonderful "Arab spring" can take this as a jolt of reality. We pessimists, who know it IS possible to jump out of the frying pan into the fire, predicted it ... and here it is: calls for an Islamic state took over Cairo’s Tahrir Square as the largest demonstration since February was mobilized by the country’s Islamist organizations. Ultraconservative Muslims turned out in force Friday as hundreds of thousands filled Cairo's major central square.
Only the willfully ignorant could be surprised that the mass of Egyptians, given the choice, would prefer murderous, backward Islam. I've been there many times, and seen the seething envy of the western world.
Egypt's tourist industry, the backbone of the economy until sand turns into gold, is dead. Who wants to go to a country where some Muslim wacko may shoot or stab you at any moment?
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Even faced with disastrous ratings, I wonder if anyone in management at CNN realizes just how out-of-touch with most Americans their "news" product really is. Their leftist bias is blatant.
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Is she onto something? A professor of pharmacology at England's Oxford University believes an obsession with Facebook and Twitter and other so-called "social media" among young people is fostering in them a need for immediate attention and approval. In effect, they're become grown-up babies shouting, "Look, mommy, I just went poopy all by myself!"
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Here are the ten poorest big cities in America and the % of people under the poverty level, based on U. S. Census records.
1. Detroit , MI 32.5%
2. Buffalo , NY 29.9%
3. Cincinnati , OH 27.8%
4. Cleveland , OH 27.0%
5. Miami , FL 26.9%
5. St. Louis , MO 26.8%
7. El Paso , TX 26.4%
8. Milwaukee , WI 26.2%
9. Philadelphia , PA 25.1%
10. Newark , NJ 24.2%
What do they have in common? Detroit last elected a Republican mayor in1961... Buffalo in 1964... Cincinnati in 1984... Cleveland in 1989... Miami never... St. Louis in 1949... El Paso never... Milwaukee in 1908... Philadelphia 1952... Newark in 1907. All those years of Democrat administrations have accomplished -- what?
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results." -- Albert Einstein.
(Thanks, Gene)
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Marine Corps Rules, apparently written by a Marine ...
Decide to be aggressive enough, quickly enough.
Have a plan.
Have a back-up plan, because the first one probably won't work.
Be polite. Be professional. But have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun whose caliber does not start with a '4.'
Always cheat; always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.
In ten years, nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.
Navy SEAL Rules: (Apologies, Dave!)
Look very cool in sunglasses.
Kill every living thing in sight.
Adjust Speedo.
US Army Rangers' Rules:
Walk in 50 miles wearing 75 pound rucksack while starving.
Locate individuals requiring killing.
Request permission via radio from 'Higher' to perform killing.
Curse bitterly when mission is aborted.
Walk out 50 miles wearing a 75 pound rucksack while starving.
US Army Rules:
Curse bitterly when receiving operational order.
Curse bitterly.
Do not listen to 2nd Lieutenants; it can get you killed.
Curse bitterly.
US Air Force Rules:
Have a cocktail.
Adjust temperature on air-conditioner.
See what's on HBO.
Request more funding from Congress with a 'killer' Power Point presentation.
Receive funding, set up new command and assemble assets.
Declare the assets 'strategic' and never deploy them operationally.
Hurry to make 13:45 tee-time.
US Navy Rules:
Go to Sea.
Drink Coffee.
Deploy Marines.
Yes, this MAY have been written by a Marine ...
"...and now, if you'll excuse me..."