HO HUM, IT'S DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN
The "deal" appears to be what most realists expected: just another exercise in "kicking the can down the road" with minimal real changes in insane government spending. The Tea Party contingent did exercise sufficient influence to restrain -- slightly -- the liberal inclination to spend as if there were no tomorrow, but the dent made in spending is minor, at best. Nine hundred billion dollars cut over (theoretically) ten years? Puh-leeze!
And count on it: most of the projected future cuts will never materialize unless the voters surprisingly get in touch with sanity, vote out most of the Democrats and thus isolate the remaining crazies like Pelosi, whose lunatic San Francisco supporters will never remove her from office.
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Obama gets his primary goal, pushing the borrowing lid beyond next year's election and giving him ample time to put the sheeple back to sleep by promising more freebies. Boehner's reaping praise from media liberals, which is a sure clue that he's become a nonentity.
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The Consumer Confidence rating is at its lowest level in more than two years. CNBC says ...
"Confidence in government economic policies reached a new low under the Obama administration."
Hardly a surprise, when you have people making economic policy who've never so much as run a lemonade stand.
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A compact civics lesson recommendation: rent "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" and watch Charles Durning's performance of "Sidestep". It's a musical interpretation of bottom-line political thinking among most of our "leaders".
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We are going to sell 36 jet fighters to Iraq. How long do you figure it will be before they're used against us, flying the Iraq flag ... OR ... the Iranian flag? The Iraqi government is already in the pocket of Tehran.
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This, more than any action by our ridiculously incompetent government, is reversing the traffic in illegal immigration from Mexico. It is summarized in two numbers:
U. S. unemployment--9.4%
Mexico's unemployment--4.9%.
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Now that real science has knocked the props out from under Al Gore's "global warming" scam (greenhouse gases AREN'T locking in heat -- NASA; the pseudo-scientist who made up the drowning polar bear story is exposed as a fraud) surely we can soon expect another Gore documentary, this time entitled, "An Inconvenient Lie".
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How the gun rights law has played out in one state ... from the Detroit Free Press --
Ten years after Michigan made it much easier for its citizens to get a license to carry a concealed gun, predictions of widespread lawless behavior and bloodshed have failed to materialize.
Today, nearly 276,000 -- or about four out of every 100 eligible adult Michiganders -- are licensed. That's more than twice the number predicted when the debate raged over whether Michigan should join the growing ranks of so-called "shall issue" states. Any nominally sane adult without a felony record qualifies.
During the debate, opponents of the change warned of gun-toting, trigger-happy citizens loose on the streets. But violent crimes have been rare among carrying a concealed weapon license holders. Only 2% of license holders have been sanctioned for ANY kind of misbehavior, State Police records show.
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The utterly deranged Nancy Pelosi said, regarding the Obamacare law, "We have to pass it to see what's in it." A Texas judge examined the minutiae in the bill and found such jewels as these:
** Page 50/section 152: The bill will provide insurance to all non-U.S. Residents, even if they are here illegally.
** Page 58 and 59: The government will have real-time access to an individual's bank account and will have the authority to make electronic fund transfers from those accounts.
** Page 65/section 164: The plan will be subsidized (by the government) for all union members, union retirees and for community organizations (such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - ACORN).
** Page 203/line 14-15: The tax imposed under this section will not be treated as a tax. (How could anybody in their right mind come up with that?)
** Page 241 and 253: Doctors will all be paid the same regardless of specialty, and the government will set all doctors' fees.
** Page 272. Section 1145: Cancer hospital will ration care according to the patient's age.
** Page 317 and 321: The government will impose a prohibition on hospital expansion; however, communities may petition for an exception.
** Page 425, line 4-12: The government mandates advance-care planning consultations. Those on Social Security will be required to attend an "end-of-life planning" seminar every five years. (Death counseling.)
** Page 429, line 13-25: The government will specify which doctors can write an end-of-life order.
No wonder the depraved Democrats didn't want it examined before passing it!
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Gene forwards some of the frightening possibilities we've faced in the financial crisis ...
Beltway policy experts begin living by own wits; after 45 minutes there are no survivors.
Roving bands of outlaws stalk our streets, selling incandescent bulbs to vulnerable children.
We could have unregulated mohair prices at the whim of unscrupulous mohair speculators.
Cowboy poetry might be utterly lacking in metre.
General Motors unfairly forced to build cars that people want.
Chaos at Goldman Sachs, who no longer knows who to bribe with political donations.
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A reader offers this ...
A new way to avoid any alcohol issues while driving:
I went out with some friends last night and had too many drinks. Knowing that I was way over the limit, I did something that I have never done before. I took a bus home.
I arrived home safe and warm, which seemed really surprising as I have never driven a bus before.
A TRAIN-WRECK ECONOMY: Not IMPOSSIBLE
Many -- perhaps most -- Americans think economic disintegration propelled by out-of-control inflation can't happen here, despite the fact that history is replete with examples of such events. When a people foolishly choose leaders who pander to their worst instincts, it is inevitable. Take a look at the chart below and decide for yourself just how close we may be to teetering on the brink of national suicide. Read closely the chart below.
Here's what 2 1/2 years of Obama has done for us:
Jan. 2009 Today Chg Source
Avg.. Retail price/gallon
gasoline in U.S. $1.83 $3.44 84% 1
Sugar, cane, raw, world, lb. $13..37 35..39 64.7% 2
Unemployment rate,
non-farm, overall 7.6% 9.4% 23.7% 3
Real median household
income $50,112 $49,777 -0.7% 4
Number of food
stamp recipients 33,983,716 43,200,878 35.1% 5
Numberof unemployment
benefit recipients 7,526,598 9,193,838 22.2% 6
No.of long-term unemployed 2,600,000 6,400,000 146.2% 3
U.S.Rank in Economic
Freedom World Rankings 5 9 -- 7
National debt, in trillions $10..627 $14..052 32.2% 8
Sources:
(1) U.S. Energy Information Administration; (2) Wall Street Journal; (3) Bureau of Labor Statistics; (4) Census Bureau; (5) USDA; (6) U.S. Dept. Of Labor; (7) Heritage Foundation and WSJ; (8) U.S. Treasury.
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Peter (reader) offers this piece of common sense ...
Only In the nation's Capitol. Nowhere else would supposedly responsible people lift the limit on a credit card to solve problems caused by its excessive use.
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Joe Biden, an ultra-phony in a political world where phonies are thick on the ground, calls Tea Party folk ... people who believe an insane government must be brought under control ... "terrorists". In a just world, self-obsessed fools like Biden would learn what REAL terrorism is.
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Whatever was or wasn't accomplished by the budget deal, it did bring one measure of satisfaction. It infuriated the New York Times' Marxist-tinged "economist", Paul Krugman. He's incensed taxes weren't raised.
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Quid pro quo? Our government accuses China of keeping the value of their money artificially low so as to increase sales to other countries, especially the U.S. China can -- and does -- say that's only fair, since we're devaluing the dollar, thus reducing the return on the U. S. governments bonds they've bought, supporting our wasteful government.
And then we have this food for thought: "The country (U. S.) is living in debt. It is not living within its means, shifting the weight of responsibility on other countries and in a way acting as a parasite." -- Vladimir Putin.
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How pervasive is the goo-goo, soft-on-terrorism mentality in our liberal bastion of higher learning? This will provide a clue: A Harvard Summer School economics instructor is facing calls for his termination after publishing an article calling for strong political action to combat Islamic terrorism in India.
Imagine! Counseling resistance to mass murder is possible grounds for firing at Harvard!
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Survey says ... (Gallup, that is)
Americans' political ideology at the midyear point of 2011 looks similar to 2009 and 2010, with 41% self-identifying as conservative, 36% as moderate, and 21% as liberal.
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Another idiot media liberal heard from ...
Ann Curry on NBC: "...do you think that members of the Tea Party Caucus know how to govern or are they – do they understand that standing up for a cause is not the same as governing?"
This pathetic airhead obviously starts from the position that the walking blunder called Obama DOES know how to govern.
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Weather is local ...
The Atacama desert of northern Chile is the driest place in the (inhabited) world. Yet, while parts of the U. S. midwest and Texas are in drought, this arid region is having record rains, with roads closed and events cancelled because of flooding.
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Public Policy Polling, a Democrat operation, finds that little more than half of Americans say they approve of God's job performance. I kid you not. In their survey, only 52% of voters said they were pleased with how God seemed to be handling the universe.
Does this presume that God is subject to political defeat? Who's the opposing candidate? Oh -- we KNOW, don't we?! Some, looking at our "leadership", would say the opponent has already won.
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Just asking ...
That war in Libya that Barack and Hillary said would be over in a couple of weeks: is that still going on?
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The TSA, those annoying airport security folk, will now try to emulate the very effective security operation at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport by basing judgments on an evaluation of each passenger's response to questions. And they expect to do this with a four-day classroom course and 24-hours of experience?! It's the Napolitano Funny-farm in action once again.
And, predictably, the ACLU is whining about "profiling". If only ...
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The Obama administration, speaking from atop Washington's Mt. Olympus, says health insurance plans must cover birth control as preventive care for women, with no copays. Does anyone seriously believe this WON'T raise the premiums for EVERYONE in those plans?
"Free" birth control?
Who's really getting screwed here?
Next we'll be paying for freeloaders to get laid. After all, they have "rights".
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In today's language lesson, Gene offers these translations of California Euphemisms to Texan -- or most of America:
CALIFORNIA TEXAS
Arsenal of Weapons Gun Collection
Delicate Wetlands Swamp
Undocumented Worker Illegal Alien
Heavily Armed Well-protected
Your Fair Share (taxes) Coerced Theft
Non-viable Tissue Mass Unborn Baby
Equal Access to Opportunity Socialism
Multicultural Community High Crime Area
Fairness or Social Progress Marxism
Upper Class or "The Rich " Self-Employed
Homeless or Disadvantaged Bums
Investment For the Future Higher Taxes
Victim or Oppressed Criminal or lazy good-for-nothing
Accepted Facts Horse pucky
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Conan O'Brien --
"The government's latest plan (to raise revenue) is to see how much cash they can get for John McCain on 'Antiques Roadshow.'"
EUROPE HAS A LESSON FOR US ABOUT
FOOLISH GOVERNMENT
What kind of willful blindness possesses spend-and-spend liberals that they can't look at Europe, with disaster looming in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and elsewhere ... and see the very policies at the root of their problems that they want to pursue here? Spoonfed government employee unions ... failed "stimulus" plans ... bigger government with more programs to promote government dependency.
It's tragic to have to admit that a diehard communist like Vladimir Putin of Russia is right when he points out that we have become a parasite nation, propping up our prosperity with money borrowed from the likes of China.
That flapping of wings you may be hearing is the sound of chickens coming home to roost.
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Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who understands fiscal responsibility, on the debt deal --
"In spite of what politicians on both sides are saying, this agreement does not cut any spending over 10 years. In fact, it increases discretionary spending by $830 billion.
"I voted against this agreement because it does nothing to address the real drivers of our debt. It eliminates no program, consolidates no duplicative programs, cuts no tax earmarks and reforms no entitlement program. The specter of default or a credit downgrade will still hang over our economy after this deal becomes law."
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... and ... from the erudite Tony Blankley --
"The debt deal, if it sticks, is a triumph for the bipartisan, status quo-clinging Washington establishment. Here is a prediction: Between now and January 2013, total actual spending cuts will be minimal. That will result from the following: (1) The $900 billion deficit reduction is almost all back-loaded to the years beyond 2012. (2) The select committee created by the budget deal will fail to pass a "second tranche" deficit-cut package of an additional $1.5 trillion. (3) The "trigger" will be pulled that will identify an additional $1.2 trillion. (4) The pulled trigger won't require any more deficit reductions to go into effect until 2013, when a new Congress and either a new president or a re-elected President Obama will be able to re-decide (or repeal) all these decisions. (5) The debt ceiling will not need to be raised until 2013.
"It is true that the Tea Party has "won" within the context of what constitutes a political win in Washington. But have they accomplished enough to change our future? No, by this deal, they have not."
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Rasmussen poll finds that a generic Republican would beat Obama, 47% to 42%. We still await the dark-horse Republican candidate with the imagination to change his/her name to "Generic".
More from Rasmussen: just 32% of likely U.S. Voters think America’s best days are in the future, down from 37% in June . Just over half (51%) say the nation’s best days are in the past.
Ancient Rome looks more and more like our role model.
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... and ... the Quinnipiac poll of voters in an Obama must-win state, Pennsylvania ... voters think, by a margin of 52% to 44% that he doesn't deserve re-election.
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What Obamunism has done to your dollar: the Swiss Franc, the world's strongest money, is up 22% versus the U.S. buck in just the past few months.
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From Richard Cohen, one of the in-house liberals at the Washington Post --
"Obama would be a good White House chief of staff, but as a president he lacks political savvy."
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Liberals are scared to death of a Rick Perry presidential run. The evidence? The pasted-on smiles of Obama's media spokesparrots as they claim Perry would be easily defeated.
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More freebies for freeloaders. In Pennsylvania, welfare recipients will now get free cellphones and 250 monthly minutes "free" -- which means paying subscribers will have to pay for the deadbeats.
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Here we go again ... from the "total lack of common sense" department ...
In Coralville, Iowa, local authorities closed down Abigail Krutsinger's sidewalk lemonade stand.
Abigail is four years old.
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The poster kids for "Dumb Jurors" are the dozen folk in Washington County, Vermont, who acquitted Isaac Turnbaugh of murder in 2004. Now he's called police and admitted he DID shoot the victim in the head -- and there's nothing to be done about it. The prohibition against double-jeopardy means he can't be tried again.
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From Founders Quote Daily --
"But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 1789.
...and more from Mr. Jefferson; wisdom lost by today's Democrats ...
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes, a principle which if acted on, would save one-half the wars of the world.
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 deprived the use of arms.
To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
(Thanks, Bob)
Jefferson is regarded as an icon of the Democratic Party, but they've clearly lost his message.
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From a reader --
I saw this bumper sticker that sums it up: "If guns kill people, do pencils misspell words?
... AND THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU
FREE
Let's cut thru a few transparent examples of political bullfeathers.
1.) The idea of taxpayers subsidizing airlines to fly to tiny towns that generate next-to-no traffic, often flying in and out empty, is and always has been a stupid waste of money. Any political scumbag who supports such silliness should be horsewhipped -- with a real horse.
2.) Our Marxist-in-chief continues to babble nonsense about how "we all have to chip in" to "raise revenue" -- i.e., pay more taxes. But the "all" obviously doesn't include the half of Americans who pay ZERO income taxes. He's lying to the leeches, and the freeloaders love so soak it up.
3.) The government's forcing of financial institutions to loan money to people who will obviously never be able to pay it back, even if they have the will, has resumed under our Marxist administration, willfully blind to the fact that such loans (mostly for houses) were a root-cause of our present financial debacle. Remember: when banks loan money, it's not THEIR money they're putting at risk, it's YOUR money.
4.) It's an eternal truth. Democrats are in business to steal money from people who earned it to buy the votes of people who didn't.
5.) We've elected crazy people who have spent the nation into such a credit hole that the time-tested political reaction to the situation is virtually inevitable, and it's this: more money will be printed, with each dollar worth less and less. Inflation, contrary to popular opinion, is not based on rising prices for goods. The rising prices are the result of inflated currency, i.e., more printed, making each bill worth less and less. When we get to the $10 loaf of bread, try to remember it was caused by the election of politicians who are either stupid or liars.
Continue to keep tabs on the news from Greece and other failing economies in Europe. You are looking at our own future. And all the "hope-change" childish nonsense in the world won't change it.
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The Obama administration borrowed another $239 BILLION on Tuesday. In one day. A new record.
This from a president who'd said only a few days earlier, "Just raising the debt limit doesn't mean we'd spend more." Riiiight ...
Always remember and never forget. All that politicians (and their bureaucrat flunkies) do is spend other people's money. And what's more fun than that?!
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More on the bogus budget deal, from the "Heard on the Street" column, WSJ, by David Reilly --
"For all the angst over the debt-ceiling deal, the projected $1 trillion in initial spending cuts may have little to no impact on the deficit. Why? Because the numbers rely on economic-growth projections that now look unachievable."
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Give yourself a laugh as you reflect on the PC-BS about "green jobs" and "energy independence via alternative fuels", blah, blah.
The Weekly Standard reports the embarrassing -- for Obama and the greenies -- truth about sales of Goverment Motors' Chevy Volt electric car. Total sales for the month of July, 125. Total sales since the introduction of this subsidized fantasy-car early this year, 2,700.
This is what happens when idiots run (A) the government and (B) a car company.
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A reality check on bogus mileage claims and plans from Jerry Hirsch of the Los Angeles Times --
"The government will require new cars and trucks to meet a fleetwide average fuel economy standard of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.
"Fat chance.
"Many motorists know they can't expect to get the mileage they see on the window sticker if they drive too fast or don't keep the car in optimal condition. But what most of them don't know is even if they do drive like highway saints, they still won't get the Environmental Protection Agency-rated results.
"Under rules announced Friday, tough new mileage standards will be phased in starting in 2017. But critics say those mileage ratings are notoriously unreliable, even under optimal conditions.
"That's because the mileage tests are conducted with professional drivers inside of laboratories using better-performing fuel and with air conditioning turned off for most of the ride."
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Consider the hypocrisy. The Obama crowd early-on stopped the use of the term "war on terror". It was deemed "too provocative". So now we have the Party of Treason calling conservative Republicans -- what else? -- "terrorists"!
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Florida, another must-have state for Obama, is against his re-election by 50%-42% in the latest Quinnipiac poll. That's bad news for the Big Zero in a state whose southern portion is largely inhabited by brain-dead Democrat transplants from New York.
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Democrats tried to find cheer last week in a jobs report showing new unemployment filings under 400,000 for the first time in four months, as if that were something to be proud of. Ooops! The numbers have required correction. To 401,000. And the Obama recession rolls on.
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Our Vice-Sleazeball, Joe Biden, is charging the Secret Service $2,200 per month rent for the cottage next to his home where his agent-protectors stay. Even the money-grubbing Clintons didn't do that when the Secret Service provided agents for their protection at their Chappaqua, New York, home.
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Historical insight from Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online --
"After Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency changed. As he put it in 1943, “Dr. New Deal” had to be replaced by “Dr. Win the War.” It was a colossal policy switch, but it wasn’t an extreme makeover politically. He was still the same FDR, and the public understood the need for change.
"And it saved his presidency. As President Obama’s former economic adviser, Larry Summers, said recently, “Never forget . . . that if Hitler had not come along, Franklin Roosevelt would have left office in 1941 with an unemployment rate in excess of 15 percent and an economic recovery strategy that had basically failed.”
We might deduce from this that what Obama needs to save his butt politically is a new and bigger war.
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It becomes more apparent with every passing day that, barring blockage by the army, Egyptian Muslim militants are going to seize control of that country and place it firmly in the Iranian fundamentalist camp. So much for the wildly optimistic views of our liberal media and their sophomoric "Arab spring" nonsense.
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An officer of the fanatical Iranian Republican Guard is the new head of OPEC. And our Dear Leader STILL won't clear the way for more drilling of our own oil. Stupid is as stupid does.
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Where do old liberals go when their brains cease to function? To CNN -- and change their names to Jack Cafferty.
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Maria Sharapova, the Russian tennis player, has to love capitalism. She's the highest-paid woman athlete in the world. According to Forbes magazine, she holds that title for the seventh year in a row. She racked up an estimated $25 million in the last year, mostly from endorsements. Shows what you can do with fair talent (she hasn't won a major tournament in a couple of years) and a great set of wheels.
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Spread enlightenment. Forward this column to a friend. Or an acquaintance. Or a pained liberal.
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Dan Sorkin passes along the Dead Horse Theory.of management ...
The tribal wisdom of the Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount." However, in government, education and often in corporate America, more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:
1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
4. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.
5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse's performance.
10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.
11. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
And of course....
13. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.
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Ultra-lib David Letterman isn't thrilled with Obama's performance on the debt deal --
"Obama achieved the same kind of compromise with the Republicans that Custer reached with Sitting Bull."
SING ALONG ... "THE PARTY'S OooVER ..."
Most of us have opinions. Those in a position to back their views with serious money -- their own or funds from investor clients -- have to be taken, well, seriously. The stock markets, not just here but around the world, have spoken and delivered the collective opinion of those investors about our much-debated budget deal. Their message is clear: not good enough. They see through the smoke and mirrors and recognize that the spending controls simply aren't sufficient to get our economy back on track. For the promise of saving dollars in the (far) future, our "leaders" have simply unleashed another spending barrage now.
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Of course, the important thing is: while the economy continues to crash, the Big Nothing and his showbiz airhead friends had a WONDERFUL party.
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If, as is the case, Spain and Italy are deemed too large to bail out of their own economic miseries, what can investors conclude about our own plight as the props fall out from under the world's largest economy? And yet the fools who have accelerated, if not precipitated, this mess continue to cry out for more "stimulus" -- the big spending by government that exacerbated our plight. Liberals believe in their perverted economic views, no matter how often their nostrums fail.
All of the troubled nations, including our own, have the roots of their economic problems planted in the same soil: citizens -- voters -- being rewarded too richly for little work ... or none at all. It is a demonstrable fact that many unemployed somehow find work as their government checks expire, proving over and over that there are some people who'd rather get paid for doing nothing than show up at a job.
Note: I didn't say ALL, but a considerable number.
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Here's something new in the political analysis field; something that gives superficiality a bad name.
Michelle Obama says her husband’s ever-graying hair is “proof” -- PROOF, mind you -- that he’s handled his the job well, and deserves re-election in 2012.
Have friends with an abundance of gray hair? Urge 'em to run for the Big Job! They're obviously qualified. (Funny how it didn't work for John McCain.)
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Do Democrats, deep in their hearts, secretly crave a dictatorship? Here's one who apparently does: Jonathan Capehart, writing in the liberal Washington Post. Consider his words --
"The president will have to be more aggressive in his use of presidential power. In short, I want him to use everything the bully pulpit has to offer to get what he wants, including shutting down the government if he must."
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A major British newspaper is running a (so far) very successful petition drive for a national referendum vote on withdrawing from the European Union, a continent-wide adaptation of the ridiculous "world government" concept.
It is failing and falling under the weight of national differences that cannot be erased by platitudes-on-paper from idealists unattached to reality. How long, for example, can industrious Germans be expected to support a more lackadaisical lifestyle common to Mediterranean nations?
A personal recollection: Several years ago, I spent a few months wandering from island-to-island in the South Pacific. I recall watching bemusedly as local island folk ate canned fish while surrounded by an ocean full of finny friends being harvested by fishing boats from Japan. The boats took the fish back to Japan where they were canned, then transported back to the islands to be sold to the locals for their welfare-check money.
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The thrust of Obama's campaign for a second term has taken shape thusly: since he has no accomplishments to boast about (his signature Obamacare program is detested by most voters) and the economy is a trainwreck, he's left to the lowest of all political devices, demonizing the opposition. When you hear the crazed Sen. Charles Schumer ranting about Tea Party (i.e., Republican) "terrorists" and "hostage-takers", you are hearing the Obama campaign.
Now, the question is how the Republicans will fight back. There is always the forlorn fear that they'll somehow stage a re-run of the futile Dole and McCain candidacies, or Bush Senior's futile run for a second term, which was a textbook example of how NOT to do it. Breaking his "no new taxes" pledge and ostentatiously checking his watch during the key debate, as if to say, "When is this over so I can leave?" were just two outstanding examples of major foul-ups. The result, of course, was that he turned over the White House to the ol' Hillbilly Whorehopper.
Whoever is the standard-carrier for the Republicans in this race had better be a much smarter campaigner than any of those three, because an endless series of traps will be laid by the left-wing media. Today's mangled misstatement is tonight's headline news.
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Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg, who worked with James Carville to craft the former president's campaigns, has some advice for Obama (in the New York Times) summarized this way:
Stop government from rewarding the irresponsible over the responsible, crack down on illegal immigration and get tough on border enforcement, stop illegal immigrants from being hired over legal citizens.
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Those 70,000 workers supposedly idled by the Federal Aviation Administration shutdown (now ended) were a figment of liberal imagination. The real number was less than a third as many, because Democrats padded the figures to include, for example, waitresses at diners who might have had less work because the eating establishments were occasionally patronized by FAA personnel.
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Only an administration that is either (A) utterly idiotic or (B) profoundly anti-American would do what the Obama bunch is doing to "combat terrorism". They're inviting American Muslim organizations, including some known to sponsor their co-religionists committed to international terror, to join in our own domestic anti-terrorism campaign. Talk about putting the mice in charge of guarding the cheese!
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Scratch New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as a potential Republican presidential candidate. He's just appointed a Muslim to a judgeship and proclaimed that the very legitimate public concerns about Muslim support for Sharia (religious) law are "crap" and the people who are concerned about it are "crazies".
Perhaps the governor should pay more attention to demands from Muslims around the world for Sharia law, first in their own communities, then for entire nations. Britain today provides an excellent example.
Christie is a fool, and a warning to hot-blooded Republicans about jumping aboard a fad bandwagon. You'd think they'd learn from Schwarzenegger, but they don't.
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Victor Davis Hanson sheds light on our unprincipled President, the man who now decries partisanship --
"In 2006, then-Senator Obama voted against the Bush administration's request to raise the debt ceiling -- when the national debt was about 60 percent of what it is now. He did not show up for similar votes in 2007 and 2008. In that regard, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid opposed every request when Republicans were in control of the Senate to raise the debt ceiling. Of course, such an unthinking party-line voter is exactly the sort of partisan senator or congressman that President Obama now deplores.
"In fact, in 2007 the National Journal found that Obama's voting record was the most partisan in the entire U.S. Senate -- further to the hard-line left than the Senate's only self-described socialist, Bernie Sanders."
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Ever read opinion pieces by liberals? There is a growing and recurring theme; a hunger for Hillary to run against Obama in the Democrat primaries.
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The public has seen through the bogus "global warming" claims made by many so-called "scientists".
The latest Rasmussen Reports national survey of American Adults shows that 69% say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs and 40% say it's VERY likely phony claims were made.
Some of these "scientists" clearly would have fit nicely in Adolf Hitler's mad genetics experiments. The agenda is obviously more important to them than the truth.
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The utter craziness is obvious even from thousands of miles away. A British reader offers this --
"I have absolute proof that we now live in BIZARRO WORLD.
The head of the DNC is... DEBBIE WASSERMAN SHULTZ (Debbie Does Ditzy)
She is being "interviewed" on a national cable news network by the anchor... AL SHARPTON. Who sits atop an MSNBC caption that proclaims... "FACTS MATTER"!
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The incomparable Mark Steyn, writing about ...
... the spate of lemonade-stand crackdowns by this once great republic’s depraved regulatory class. This is not a small thing. A land in which a child requires hundreds of dollars of permits to sell homemade lemonade in his front yard is, in a profound sense, no longer free: It is exactly the kind of micro-regulatory tyranny of which Tocqueville warned two centuries ago.
The proper response of any self-respecting seven-year-old girl on being told she needs the state’s permission to sell homemade lemonade is, “You’ll never take me alive, copper!”
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Now HERE'S compassionate government at work. New South Wales, the most populous state in Australia (Sydney is therein located) is transporting and escorting disabled men under government care to brothels as part of their therapy. The horny-but-handicapped pay for the hookers, but taxpayers pick up the tab for the transportation and escorting personnel. The brothel visits are authorized under the Department of Aging, Disability and Home Care's Sexuality and Human Relationships policy and that policy is backed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
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Gerry contributes this classic ...
The pastor asked if anyone in the congregation would like to express praise for answered prayers. Suzie Smith stood and walked to the podium. She said, "I have a praise. Two months ago, my husband, Tom, had a terrible bicycle wreck and his scrotum was completely crushed. The pain was excruciating and the doctors didn't know if they could help him."
You could hear a muffled gasp from the men in the congregation as they imagine the pain that poor Tom must have experienced. "Tom was unable to hold me or the children," she went on, "and every move caused him terrible pain.." We prayed as the doctors performed a delicate operation, and it turned out they were able to piece together the crushed remnants of Tom's scrotum, and wrap wire around it to hold it in place."
Again, the men in the congregation cringed and squirmed uncomfortably as they imagined the horrible surgery performed on Tom. "Now," she announced in a quivering voice, "thank the Lord, Tom is out of the hospital and the doctors say that with time, his scrotum should recover completely." All the men sighed with unified relief. The pastor rose and tentatively asked if anyone else had something to say.
A man stood up and walked slowly to the podium.
He said, "I'm Tom Smith." The entire congregation held its breath. "I just want to tell my wife the word is STERNUM."
MUCH ADO ABOUT ... WE'LL
SEE
It was bad news about the nation's credit rating so, naturally, it was released after the market closed Friday. There is the expected backlash from Obama & Co., saying Standard & Poor's judgment as a bond-rating firm is flawed. Whether their judgment is worse than Obama's is debatable. It matters not. Ultimately, the world's financial heavy-hitters who put money into government bonds will make their own decision about the risk involved. But this is undeniable. The lying clowns to whom American voters gave the key to their government have botched the job, big-time. And whether the downgrading of our national credit-worthiness bites incrementally or all at once remains to be determined. One unalterable fact remains: people of the left will not abandon Obama over his fiscal irresponsibility. The only concern they show is over his inability (thanks to a Republican House) to be even more irresponsible in handling the taxpayers' money.
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From the Standard & Poor's summary ...
"The outlook on the long-term rating is negative. We could lower the long-term rating (again) to 'AA' within the next two years if we see that less reduction in spending than agreed to ..."
How clear does a warning need to be?
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Stanley Kurtz in National Review Online summarizes the idiotic mess in which we find ourselves ...
"As America teeters on the brink of a second financial crisis, I think back to 2008, and the irony of a sub-prime mortgage fiasco propelling to the presidency a man who’d spent a career abetting the folks who’d caused the crisis to begin with. Despite releasing an Internet ad on ACORN, Obama, and the subprime meltdown, the McCain campaign was unwilling or unable to pursue the issue. The Clinton administration’s gutting of credit standards in the name of fair housing, in close cooperation with ACORN and Fannie Mae, laid the foundations of the mortgage crisis of 2008. Yet in the second presidential debate, McCain did nothing to combat Obama’s claims that the crisis was strictly a product of under-regulation. In the third debate, Obama flat-out lied about his longstanding ties to ACORN. The media, of course, let him get away with it."
... so we're still paying for the foolishness of the Republicans' 2008 nominee, "Reach-Across-the-Aisle" McCain, who was and is an incompetent dunderhead. Admirable personal fortitude exhibited in a POW camp has zero to do with political smarts.
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The downgrading of the nation's credit rating came three days after the incompetent head of the Treasury Department, Tiny Timmy Geithner, assured Americans there was "no chance" of such a thing happening.
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We borrow more money from China than any other source. The Chinese have said it, loud and clear: we have to tighten our belts and get over what they accurately call our "debt addiction". That's why they've been unburdening themselves of some of America's debt, i.e., U. S. government bonds.
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How it looks from across the Atlantic; the British Telegraph newspaper has this clear-eyed analysis ...
"The decision by credit agency Standard and Poor’s to downgrade America’s AAA credit rating for the first time in 70 years is a massive blow to the credibility of the Obama administration, and a damning indictment of its handling of the economy. No doubt the White House will pathetically try to blame the Bush Administration, Republicans in Congress, and of course its favorite target, the Tea Party, for the move by S&P. But without a shadow of a doubt, responsibility for the country’s financial mess and staggering levels of debt lie with the current US president and his administration."
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“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 cannot 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
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Obama-inflicted poverty continues to plague more Americans. The Department of Agriculture, which runs the program, says almost 46 million people are now receiving food stamps. That's up 34% in two years of Obama. The question is ... will the people most-impacted by Obama's stupid economic policies be wise enough to vote to rid the nation of this plague next November?
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Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, writing in NRO, defines poverty in America ...
"The Census Bureau reported last fall that 43 million Americans -- one in seven of us -- were poor. But what is poverty in America today? The most recent government data show that more than half of the families defined as poor by the Census Bureau have a computer in the home. More than three of every four poor families have air conditioning, almost two-thirds have cable or satellite television, and 92 percent have microwaves. How poor are America's poor? The typical poor family has at least two color TVs, a VCR, and a DVD player. One-third has a wide-screen, plasma, or LCD TV. And the typical poor family with children has a video-game system such as Xbox or PlayStation.
"The typical news story about poverty features a homeless family with kids sleeping in the back of a minivan. But government data show that only one in 70 poor persons is homeless."
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Nutty Nancy Pelosi, going where she thinks the wind is blowing, is now using job creation as her main talking-point. Thing is, Nancy's talking about jobs that are almost wholly dependent on the goverment spending more money to "create" them. In other words, more and bigger "stimulus" programs. You know -- the kind that failed us right into a credit crisis. Tell us again about those "shovel-ready" jobs, Nutball!
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Officials and the local media in Milwaukee say they have no evidence that unprovoked attacks by black teenagers on whites at the state fair were "racially motivated". The victims say otherwise. Have such officials and "reporters" willfully blinded themselves to the motivation of such savagery? Of course.
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Herb passes along this tragic tale from a bewildered Texan --
"While hiking down along the border this morning, I saw a Muslim extremist fall into the Rio Grande River. He was struggling to stay afloat because of all the guns and bombs he was carrying. Along with him was an illegal Mexican who was also struggling to stay afloat because of the large backpack of drugs that was strapped to his back.
"If they didn't get help, they'd surely drown. Being a responsible Texan and abiding by the law to help those in distress, I informed the El Paso County Sheriff 's Office and Homeland Security. It is now 4 PM, both have drowned, and neither authority has responded. I'm starting to think I wasted two stamps."
HE WON'T JUMP, HE'LL HAVE TO BE PUSHED
-- IN NOVEMBER, 2012
An exercise in futility. The agonized demands in letters-to-the-editor, political websites and talk shows for Obama to resign. The idea that he would do that is so absurd, such demands are a hopeless cry in the wilderness. For the remainder of Obama's one term in office, the Republican House needs to use the limited clout they have to risk the wrath of the liberal media by simply stonewalling anything and everything our failed president tries to do beyond the absolute minimum necessities.
Of course, such firm and responsible behavior might cause many of them to lose their jobs as a fickle free-loading public whines over some of their toys being taken away, and how many of the political class willing to take that risk is highly questionable.
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As the futile Obamunists flail around seeking nostrums to appease a restless public, I suggest -- again -- a little reading-up on the history of Argentina, a large country blessed with abundant natural resources that lurches from catastrophe to catastrophe because a mindless public repeatedly elects politicians based on irrational promises that cannot be fulfilled and the bribing of government unions that turns them into goon-squads for whatever thug is in power.
Knowledge acquired from such a reading of history may not help you bring about a solution as we descend into the abyss of economic chaos, but at least you'll better understand why your world is going to hell.
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How bad is this mess we've allowed -- and encouraged -- our "leaders" to create? As Mark Steyn observes, the INTEREST charge for U.S. taxpayers will be greater than the military budgets of China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, Turkey, and Israel ... COMBINED. And by about 2015, the People’s Liberation Army of China will be entirely funded by U.S. taxpayers. Does that give you a nice, warm glow? We have become a nation of leeches.
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A further dire warning from the irreplaceable Mark Steyn in National Review Online ...
"Unless things change, the man (or woman) elected in 2012 will be the last American president to preside over the world’s leading economy. If things get really bad, he will find himself presiding over the early stages of American collapse. Not “decline” but “collapse.”
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Note to Republican aspirants to the Big Job: you'd better have a well-thought-out plan to implement, beyond just getting the key to the White House.
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The formation of the so-called "super-congress", a dozen members of the House and Senate to develop a budget plan that their colleagues will have to vote upon, yay or nay, is another pure abdication of responsibility by the 535 people elected to represent us in Congress. If they vote for it and a constituent complains about some aspect of the "plan", they can disclaim any blame by saying, "I didn't have any choice, it was all or nothing." If they vote against it, they can rationalize to objectors with a line like, "There were things in it that could hurt this-or-that group, and it was a take-it-or-leave it bill."
In other words, they'll all have the opportunity to emulate Obama's own record as a legislator, disclaiming responsibility for any serious legislation by just voting "present". It's a cowardly way out.
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Obama leading a conga line dancing through the White House at his birthday party, right after the nation's credit rating has cratered ...
... Nero fiddling (or playing his lute) while Rome burned.
Are the parallels obvious enough?
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A perceptive observation from reader Peter ...
Did anyone else notice that when Obama wasn’t getting his way on raising the debt ceiling, he threatened the base of the Republican party?
He threatened to not pay social security retirees, military retirees, social security disability and federal retirees.
This is despicable!!!
He did NOT threaten to stop payments to illegal aliens, he did not threaten to take frivolous benefits such as internet access away from violent inmates.
He did not offer to fire some of the thousands of unnecessary federal employees that he hired.
He did not offer to cut down on his or his wife’s frivolous gallivanting around.
He did not threaten to not pay the senators and representatives or any of their staff.
He did not threaten to take benefits away from people who are just too lazy to work.
He did not threaten to take benefits away from welfare recipients.
He did not threaten the food stamp programs.
He did not threaten to not pay foreign aid.
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How's this for a novel approach to Afghanistan?
Either (A) fight the damned war doing whatever it takes to WIN it, then get out or (B) just -- get out!
We have not conclusively won a major war since WW 2. Every time we get involved in one of these half-assed operations, we waste billions of dollars and get a lot of young Americans killed without really resolving anything. Iraq is now more dangerous than ever as we play footsie with a double-dealing government that's stealthily crawling into bed with Iran. Will we NEVER learn?
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A helicopter used to transport ill and injured people to the hospital was fired upon in Columbus, Ohio, by somebody on the ground. This is so scurrilous, in the unlikely event the perpetrator is found, he absolutely should not be taken alive and given the benefit of our court system. If identified with certainty, the scumbag should be shot on sight.
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From Herb ...
"The economy is SO bad ...
-I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.
-CEO's are now playing miniature golf.
-Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen.
-Angelina Jolie adopted a child from America .
-A picture is now only worth 200 words.
-They renamed Wall Street "Wal-Mart Street" ."
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... and from Gerry ...
When everybody on earth was dead and waiting to enter Paradise , God appeared and said, "I want the men to make two lines. One line for the men who were true heads of their household, and the other line for the men who were dominated by their women. I want all the women to report to St. Peter ."
Soon, the women were gone, and there were two lines of men. The line of the men who were dominated by their wives was 100 miles long, and in the line of men who truly were heads of their household, there was only one man.
God said to the long line, "You men should be ashamed of yourselves, I created you to be the head of your household! You have been disobedient and have not fulfilled your purpose! Of all of you, only one obeyed. Learn from him."
God turned to the one man, "How did you manage to be the only one in this line?"
The man replied, "My wife told me to stand here."
HAS MITT PEAKED? plus "WHAT WE
HAVE HERE IS ... FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE"
While any rational person would find almost any Republican candidate preferable to the crafty but incompetent Obama, the Romney camp must be worried about their man's "shelf-life". He's been a candidate for a long time and thus unlikely to suddenly strike a new spark of interest. In short, he probably has as much support among Republicans as he's going to get, and it may not be sufficient. Much depends on public response to Rick Perry. If anti-Romney sentiment coalesces around the Texan, Romney is toast. And he must regret the day he contrived the ill-fated Massachusetts health plan that is now regarded as the progenitor of Obamacare.
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The latest attempt by the Obama claque to find some way to excuse their stumblebum hero is to claim that his policies are good, but somehow he hasn't been able to, well ... COMMUNICATE them to the public. This about the most TV-saturated president in history.
No, little lefties, it's not a "failure to communicate" (thank you, Strother Martin), it's that his Marxist economic thinking is ... what's the word? Oh, yes -- STUPID!
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I am wary of politicians who feel a "calling", thus I do have reservations about Governor Perry. Nevertheless, no Democrat who has ever supported Jimmy Carter has any right to recoil from Perry's religiosity, because no president ever flaunted his bible-toting more ostentatiously than Carter.
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Re Obama, we still have two choices: #1, believe he is as stupid as his "leadership" indicates or #2, believe that he is smart and is pursuing a political agenda to weaken, if not destroy, America.
- - - - -
No matter how thoroughly he's bungled the job -- and Barack Obama has set a new low in that regard -- a President has huge built-in incumbency advantages when he runs for re-election, starting with the reality that millions of not-very-attentive Americans have come to regard him as somehow above competitors for the job, even if he's performed like an utter fool.
Thus we have this from Rasmussen: "Fifty-four percent (54%) of likely U.S. voters feel the president is at least somewhat likely to be reelected in 2012. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 40% disagree and think the president’s reelection is unlikely."
Go ahead -- join me in tearing your hair out.
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While the blundering Obamunists play the old game of "kill the messenger" re the Standard & Poor's downgrading of U.S. credit-worthiness, this headline in the London Daily Mail may be a signpost on the road to our future:
"Will the world's last communist state now have to bail out the capitalist West?"
Of course, they mean ... China.
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So our tax-dodging Treasury Secretary Timmy Geithner is staying on, despite having made a total botch of the job. He is an exemplar of the Peter Principle at work.
- - - - -
Notice that gasoline prices are up, higher than before Obama "helped" by releasing fuel from the national petroleum reserve? It was a ridiculous move, designed solely as a sop to the ignorant masses who make up the bulk of his dwindling support.
- - - - -
Here is the kind of thinking that got us into our economic mess. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan ... quote: ""The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that."
Was he always this scatterbrained, or does it come from spending time with his wife, the sultry and fetching Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, another media apologist for Loser Obama?
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Recommended reading for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who thinks people who are concerned about Muslims' determination to establish Sharia (religious) law are "crazies":
The London Telegraph newspaper reports that a group of fundamentalist Muslims put up signs last month in the London boroughs of Waltham Forest, Tower Hamlets and Newham informing people that they were entering a “Sharia-controlled zone” where Islamic rules were enforced and gambling, alcohol and music was banned.
Any Republicans who fantasized about Mr. Christie as a presidential candidate can forget it. The man is a fool.
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It is a tragedy that our laws do not allow for the forced exile of any politician who uses the words "fair" or "fairness". What is or is not "fair" is a totally subjective personal view. The use of such terms is in the province of political demagoguery.
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Tony Blankley gets it right, as usual ...
"It is true that the Tea Party has "won" within the context of what constitutes a political win in Washington. But have they accomplished enough to change our future? No, by this deal, they have not.
"To have a chance at actually changing our future, Washington would have to risk shocking and unpredictable change that might rock, temporarily, the financial prosperity of the nation. The establishment is not ready for that."
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While I have done television in Miami, San Francisco and smaller markets, as the masthead of this column indicates, I'm a radio guy. I always preferred it as a more personal medium where the man or woman before the microphone is not so dependent on directors and makeup people and cameramen and the other people required for TV, most of whom are far more concerned about the "look" of the show than content.
Therefore, I'm not happy to observe that radio is a dying medium. No happier than blacksmiths were to see cars replace horses. But reality is reality. Music-based radio has fallen victim to technology. The I-pod, largely. Even more, it has been victimized by giant corporate radio run by bean-counters who don't care about the product, other than cranking out homogenized programming as cheaply as possible, preferably run by computer automation. It is antithetical to the development of the personalities that always defined good radio. What listeners get is largely a synthetic form of programming, where somebody in, say, Birmingham has recorded generic "voice-tracks" that will be aired in Omaha and Rochester and San Jose and ... Thus, it is of necessity devoid of personality.
Over the weekend I had a lengthy conversation with one of the great radio personalities. Dale Reeves had enormous success in places like New York and Chicago. You've heard his voice on hundreds of TV commercials and emulating the voices of famous people in movies and TV shows. He is the best voice-man I have ever heard. He loves radio, but he quit on the current, corporatized version years ago.
He's of the opinion that radio had it's Golden Age -- the early days when CBS and NBC dominated with stars like Bob Hope, Burns & Allen, Jack Benny and the first real radio personality to become a power in both media, Arthur Godfrey. Then there was the Silver Age, which kept radio alive and vital in the TV era with the development of the Top-40 format in music radio and the flowering of politically-oriented talk radio.
Music radio has already largely succumbed to other delivery systems and top management of the companies that operate talk stations is hysterical because not enough younger people listen to it. It's never occurred to them that most younger people don't get seriously interested in politics unless -- for example -- reviving the military draft becomes an issue. In their simple-mindedness, today's corporate radio managers seem unable to grasp the fact that the over-50 crowd has far more discretionary income than struggling 20-year-olds.
When radio/TV companies were allowed to own a maximum of seven of each (AM, FM, TV) in the nation, they all competed fiercely, turned out a superior product and were highly profitable.
How do you succeed in top management now? Here's one example I know about personally. You incur huge debt to buy an existing group of stations in cities across the nation, then you (A) precipitate a ratings decline among previously successful stations by cheapening the product, then (B) drive the company into bankruptcy, but (C) by selling out both employees and stockholders, you walk away with upward of $30 million! It's as simple as ... ABC!
Television faces the same future. Anyone can see that today's TV product is a pale shadow of the legendary shows that used to fill the airwaves. Where are the Carol Burnetts, the Dean Martins, the Steve Allens? As happened to music radio, technology is carving huge slices from the TV audience. The internet has become the growing delivery system for programming.
Broadcasting as a whole, in which I have spent most of my life, is probably the worst-managed industry in America, rivaled only by -- maybe -- the airlines.
BTW, this is not a complaint based on my personal situation. I had a long run in the major markets and ... took the money and ran!
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Mike contributes this insight into the gender wars ...
MEN.....socialize by insulting one another, but they don't really mean it.
WOMEN.....socialize by complimenting one another, and they don't really mean it either.
MR. INEPTITUDE STRIKES AGAIN
Obama speaks and while he's blathering his usual nonsense, the market kept going down yesterday. What a snapshot of futility and irrelevance!
- - - - -
If there were any investors, small or large, who didn't already know what would happen when we put the economy in the hands of an inexperienced neophyte whose only background was a lifetime of absorbing Marxist nonsense and rabble-rousing as a "community organizer", they've certainly learned now.
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The astute Jennifer Rubin, token conservative at the Washington Post, finds the hidden number that negates the latest Obama jobs claim --
"The White House and much of the chattering class cooed on Friday when unemployment dropped to 9.1 percent and 117,000 jobs were reportedly created in July. But these numbers, upon closer inspection, show no progress on the jobs front.
"Buried in the job stats was a number — 193,000 — that dwarfed all the rest. That is the number of workers who left the job market. If 193,000 left and only 117,000 jobs were added, we lost 76,000 jobs."
- - - - -
Congressman Allen West on the announcement by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that he does not plan to resign:
“Having had Timothy Geithner sit before us and testify in a small business committee and I had an opportunity to query him, when you open that refrigerator door, the lights don’t come on, so I really think he should move on . . ."
- - - - -
Think the Democrat-controlled Senate was smart to kill -- without consideration -- the Republican-backed budget bill that contained a provision for a balanced-budget amendment? Okay, maybe it IS just coincidence that since they shot it down, the Dow has drooped 2,000 points.
The moral: never let a Democrat balance your checkbook!
- - - - -
It speaks volumes about the totalitarian instincts of some so-called "liberals" that Michael Moore, who's kept a low profile now that he's a multi-millionaire with a mansion (and I'm sure he's grateful to the suckers who made it possible) offers the opinion that the President should arrest the head of Standard & Poor's for expressing the opinion that our national credit rating should be downgraded.
Think about it: the PRESIDENT arresting someone for an OPINION. Now THERE'S your liberal mentality reduced to its essence!
And to think there are people who took this idiot seriously ...
- - - - -
Victor Davis Hanson in National Review Online looks at the decaying "elite" ...
"We are witnessing a widespread crisis of faith in our progressive guardians of the last 30 years. These are the blue-chip, university-certified elite, employed by universities, government, and big-money private foundations and financial-services companies. The best recent examples are sorts like Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, Robert Rubin, Steven Chu, and Timothy Geithner. Politicians like John Kerry, John Edwards, and Al Gore all share certain common characteristics of this Western technocracy: proper legal or academic credentials, ample service in elected or appointed government office, unabashed progressive politics, and a free pass to enjoy ample personal wealth without any perceived contradiction with their loud share-the-wealth egalitarian politics."
- - - - -
Here's how a third-world president of a first-world country (USA) thinks. Obama has okayed $105 million of money (borrowed by us from China and others) to go to foreign aid for Somalia, where much of it will doubtless be stolen and sold by the Muslim fanatics who effectively run the country.
- - - - -
The Wall Street Journal observes, "There remains one principle on which all Americans are agreed: Any comparison to Jimmy Carter is always and everywhere a put-down."
- - - - -
Investors Business Daily places much of the blame for our fiscal mess squarely where it belongs ...
"We've told the sordid history of recent American housing policy many times. One lesson is absolutely clear: The crisis had its origins in federal government policy, not the private market.
"This is contrary to the mainstream media's false take — based largely on Democratic Party talking points — that "greed" or "deregulation" brought us low.
"In 2007, as the housing crisis erupted, there were roughly 55 million U.S. mortgages in the U.S. About half of those — 27 million — were subprime, Alt-A or other highly risky loans, a direct result of government policy.
"It only took a downturn in the market to make those loans go bad — and fast — dragging banks, Wall Street investors and even average Americans down with them."
Whether it's individuals or government, only the stupid loan money to people who are clearly going to be unable to repay it -- a principle liberal politicians have tried to ignore.
- - - - -
The weenies at ABC-TV are protesting release of information that the secret audiotapes of Jackie Kennedy, which provide the framework for a forthcoming documentary, contain such tidbits as the late First Lady talking about her affair with actor William Holden. It's been common knowledge for years that she did, in fact, play bouncy-bounce with Holden -- and at least one other man -- as an act of revenge for Jack's perpetual tom-catting.
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Britain is paying a terrible price for admitting so many third-world folk from the (former) Empire; people who cannot or will not assimilate into the culture. So now the nation is torn with riots. Yet this same Britain, upon turning over Hong Kong to the tender ministrations of the People's Republic of China, refused entry to the hard-working, law-abiding people of that former colony.
BTW, fellow Americans, pictures from Britain today give us what may be a dismaying snapshot of our own future if/when our bogus minority President is denied another four years to wreck this nation. He has likely done more to worsen race relations than any Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
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Add this to the file of stupid things Obama has said. On the anniversary or the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, he sent a message about his goal "... of realizing a world without nuclear weapons".
A little basic common sense, please. Nothing that has ever been invented has ever been UN-invented, and the idea that a world populated by both tyrants and those nations that are opposed to tyranny will ever surrender all nuclear weapons is beyond absurd.
- - - - -
What is wrong with this picture? Bloomberg business news finds that hay, vital to the beef and dairy industries, can be shipped from Southern California to China for $30 a ton. It costs $53 per ton to ship the same hay by truck from Southern California to Central California, where the cattle are hungry.
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No matter how it turns out ... no matter what influence it has on the ultimate nomination for president ... the Iowa "straw poll" is a gigantic fraud which reflects only how much money a given candidates campaign can funnel into it. Only two of the last five winners have eventually won the Republican nomination.
Here are some details on how the Ames poll has not reliably predicted the winner of Iowa’s caucuses five months later, and how the caucuses have been an uncertain trumpet regarding the winner of the nomination. In 1979, George H.W. Bush won the poll and the subsequent caucuses but lost the nomination to Ronald Reagan. In 1987, Pat Robertson won the poll, Bob Dole won the caucuses and Bush won the nomination. In 1995, Phil Gramm and Bob Dole tied in the poll, then Dole won the caucuses and the nomination. In 1999, George W. Bush won the poll, the caucuses and the nomination. In 2007, Romney won the poll, Mike Huckabee won the caucuses and John McCain won the nomination.
As a moneymaker for the state's Republican or Democrat party (depending on which is out of the White House) it's a rip-roaring success. As an element in the selection of candidates, it's a joke.
George Will with a bit of history: The poll, first staged in 1979, occurs Aug. 13. It will record the presidential preferences of persons transported to Ames by competing candidates, who will also buy their supporters’ $30 tickets. It would be naughty to compare this to a poll tax, but it does purchase the right to vote. Supporters will be fed, flattered and entertained in spaces the candidates rent for that purpose, this year paying a minimum of $15,000, and up to $31,000 for the best one.
THIS is a way to choose a president?!
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For those who remember one of the greatest phonies to ever occupy a place on the political stage ...
Al Gore, patron saint of crazy people, is reliably reported to have once told his dope-smoking kid that he had to do better in school, "Otherwise, you'll end up like these guys." He was pointing at the Secret Service agents who were charged with protecting his useless -- but large -- ass.
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Andrew McCarthy in National Review Online dissects New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's claim that concerns about Muslims trying to install Sharia law are crazy:
"This “sharia-law business is crap . . . and I’m tired of dealing with the crazies!” So blustered Chris Christie.
" If Americans examined the classical interpretations of sharia, core tenets of which are antithetical to Western liberalism, you wouldn’t need to pass a law against it; it would be discredited. But that is an examination government officials like Governor Christie — taking their cues from the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations — seem determined to make sure we never have. 'It’s a religion of peace; now move along, there’s nothing else to see here.'"
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Has any sports career ever crashed more spectacularly than Tiger Woods'? In golf and tennis, the big money is in advertising endorsements rather than prize money.
And Tiger has just lost another big one. Tag Heuer, the Swiss watch company, has dropped him. They'd long since stopped using his image in their advertising after the revelations of his Parade of Bimbos.
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The scene is an upscale bar. The woman turns, faces him, looks him straight in the eye and says,"I will screw anybody, anytime, anywhere, their place, my place, in the car, front door, back door,on the ground, standing up, sitting down . . . It doesn't matter to me. I just love it."
His eyes now wide with interest, he responds,
"No kidding... I'm in Congress too. What state are you from?"
SING ALONG! "ON, WISCONSIN, ON
WISCONSIN ..."
Despite multi-multi-millions spent by organized labor to take over the Wisconsin State Senate in rebellion against the governor limiting government unions' power to extort ever-more money and benefits from the taxpayers, they failed. Even liberal Wisconsin has evidently wised-up to the bullying tactics of government unions and said "enough".
Next: two Democrats have to face the voters in a recall election.
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Re the bargain-hunter rebound in the market yesterday: was it a sign of a market recovery, or just the proverbial "dead-cat bounce"? (Drop even a dead cat from high enough and it'll bounce.) Time will tell. And that's today's profundity.
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The lament of ultra-lib Eleanor Clift in The Daily Beast ...
"Right now, Obama is facing his toughest challenger, and that is the Obama of 2008 who inspired a nation with his call for “change you can believe in.”
"Disappointed liberals are among Obama’s harshest critics. They feel he’s given away too much to conservatives, and they don’t understand where his gifts of intellect and oratory are now that the country is looking to him for a bold plan forward that can take the economy out of the doldrums."
... poor baby ...
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"Gift of oratory?" The political term "stump speech" has its roots in the days before electronic amplification, when campaigning politicians would stand atop a tree-stump to address crowds. To those who are silly enough to believe Obama is a "great orator": how do you think he'd do standing on a stump, with no Teleprompter?
You want to hear oratory, listen to the recordings of speeches by the late Winston Churchill.
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So Bernanke (Fed Chairman) promises low interest rates through 2013. Which means the government will print more money, making every dollar you have -- or get -- worth less. It is, as predicted, the usual government response to a financial squeeze: inflate the currency and steal from the public with that form of "hidden" tax.
Bernanke makes Ron Paul's call for the abolition of the Fed look more credible -- and desirable -- with every passing day. We have a deranged fool running a destructive quasi-governmental element that has a huge impact on our economy.
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In the New York Times, Helene Cooper has this lament ...
"It was a year and a half ago when President Obama told Diane Sawyer of ABC News in an interview that he would rather be a good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.
"Now, coming off one of his worst weeks since taking office, Mr. Obama is nearing a decision on whether he really meant that. Is he willing to try to administer the disagreeable medicine that could help the economy mend over the long term, even if that means damaging his chances for re-election?"
Hmmm ... a "good president" or a second term ...
You think he's trying to collect a billion dollars in campaign money to be a "good president"?
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The invaluable Thomas Sowell in National Review Online ...
"In Don Marquis’s classic satirical book, Archy and Mehitabel, Mehitabel the alley cat asks plaintively, “What have I done to deserve all these kittens?”
"That seems to be the pained reaction of the Obama administration to the financial woes that led to the downgrading of America’s credit rating for the first time in history. There are people who see no connection between what they have done and the consequences that follow. But Barack Obama is not likely to be one of them. He is a savvy politician who will undoubtedly be satisfied if enough voters fail to see a connection between what he has done and the consequences that followed."
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Ah, the irony. The same Standard & Poor's bond-rating service that is being excoriated by Obama was one of the larger contributors to his 2008 presidential campaign.
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Poor Al Gore. His gigantic "global warming" fraud is dying and he's become a raving, cursing wacko.
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After Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot by a lunatic, a man so mentally messed-up he's been found by psychiatrists to be so crazy he can't be tried, Obama and the Democrats bemoaned harsh language in our political dialogue.
Fast-forward to ... now ... when Obama's strategists are saying they have to -- quote -- "KILL Mitt Romney."
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No surprise here. The San Francisco Chronicle's website reports that the estimated cost of California's high-speed rail project is rising by billions of dollars.
Environmental impact studies released Tuesday put the cost of building the initial segment at anywhere from $10 billion to $13.9 billion.That's sharply higher than the $7.1 billion estimate from 2009 for the Merced-to-Bakersfield section.
Imagine that! A pie-in-the-sky enviro-nut boondoggle is running billions higher than estimated before a single shovelful of earth has been turned!
Don't you want to be aboard a 200-mile-per-hour train traversing the San Andreas fault when it inevitably cracks?
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An overlooked piece of reality from reader Greg ...
One item that no one calls Obama is his statement that we need to borrow money so we can build road and bridges because the housing market is so bad. Guys that build houses are not qualified or trained to build bridges. They are different skill sets.
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A message to rioting, looting black teens:
“Pull your pants up and buy a belt ‘cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt. If you walk into somebody’s office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won’t hire you? They don’t hire you ‘cause you look like you’re crazy."
-- Michael A. Nutter, BLACK mayor of Philadelphia, Pa.
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Daniel Greenfield in Canada Free Press on young thugs ...
"The flash mobs in America or the Blackberry mobs in London have one thing in common. It isn’t race, though they tend to predominantly be minorities. It’s identity.
"The counterculture has not changed dramatically since the 70s, but it has tossed aside any appearance of idealism. Their goals are purely materialistic -- looted iPods and government subsidies for housing, education and anything else they can think of.
"These are the children of the welfare state. Neither the entitled white university brat or the posturing ghetto teenager has any interest in working. And that covers everyone from municipal unions to thugs driving around BMW’s."
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Unarmed Bobbies ... "minimum force" in dealing with mobs; British policies overrun by rioting mobs. The Brits badly need a Sheriff Joe Arpaio. For that matter, so do many American cities.
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Deny people the right to defend themselves with firearms against rampaging mobs -- as the British do -- and here's what you get. Citizens arming themselves with American baseball bats, going for about $40 apiece. But just how effective can that be in the hands of most women or elderly people confronted with the crazed mobs running wild in London and elsewhere? On the other hand, your basic snub-nosed .38 ...
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Big political question for this weekend: which will get more attention ... the Iowa Straw Poll, or Rick Perry's (probably) coming-out speech in South Cahlina? (Don't miss the she-crab soup, Governor. That alone will make the trip worthwhile!)
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Government Motors is going to start building Cadillacs in China next year. Yessir, bailing out GM really expanded employment!
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A historical reminder from the redoubtable Maxine of cartoon fame ...
"BAIL'EM OUT!!! ???? Hell, back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it..
"They failed and it closed..
"Now, we are trusting the economy of our country, our banking system, our auto industry and possibly our health plans to the same nit-wits who couldn't make money running a whore house and selling whiskey?!
What the Hell are we thinking"
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Is leftist propaganda outlet MSNBC joking, giving a fraud like Al Sharpton a TV show? Wonder what that other guy on their little cable network, Something-Maddow, thinks about it?
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... and in the GOOD news, this item from St. Petersburg, Florida, where Mr. Raven Smith and Lesley Tanner were walking from a parking lot into a restaurant. They were confronted by 17-year-old Anthony Hauser who was armed with a handgun. Thanks to a Florida law permitting law-abiding citizens to carry weapons, Mr. Smith was also armed and shot the punk several times.
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Take a shower tonight. I mean, take IN a shower tonight. The annual Perseid Meteor Shower begins tonight, so take a look. If you see one coming toward you -- DUCK!
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Jay Leno --
"On this day in 1861, the federal income tax went into effect. Actually, what happened was, back in those days there were lots of armed robbers and thieves, so the government rounded them all up – thus forming I.R.S. as we know it today."
WHAT'S FAIR? and OBAMA KEEPS
SLIDING DOWN THE POLL
Obama, Pelosi, Reid & Co. keep talking about a "fair share" of taxes.
Reality check:
The richest 1 percent of Americans earn 20 percent of all income in America but pay 38 percent of income taxes.
The top 5 percent earn slightly more than one-third of U.S. income while paying nearly 59 percent of income taxes.
At the same time, roughly half of Americans pay no federal income tax at all. One might suggest, therefore, that the wealthy already pay their fair share, and then some.
... so what's "fair"?
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The news just keeps getting worse for the Great Pretender in the White House. A poll commissioned by Reuters news service finds that a large majority (73%) of Americans say the United States is on the wrong track ... and nearly half believing the worst is yet to come.
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Make of this what you can -- or will. A Gallup poll run by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center, run jointly by Gallup and the Crown Prince Court of Abu Dhabi, finds that 80% of American Muslims approve of the job Obama is doing. Some may find it ironic that the same poll finds that 65% of Jewish Americans also approve.
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... and speaking of polls ...
Democrats try to find comfort in polls showing Congress held in even lower regard by the public than is the president. There is a major fallacy in this analysis. Unlike presidents, Congress is not voted upon as one entity. To the dismay of many voters, polls have shown for years that while voters may hold the FULL Congress in disrepute, they demonstrate overwhelmingly -- even in the Republican landslide of 2010 -- that they mostly like their OWN representative ... which is why the large majority of incumbents are re-elected.
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Today's dose of utter bull(bleep) from Obama. Speaking last night to a Muslim crowd as he hosted his annual White House Iftar dinner as part of Ramadan, he said, "This evening reminds us of both the timeless teachings of a great religion and the enduring strengths of a great nation. Like so many faiths, Islam has always been part of our American family, and Muslim Americans have long contributed to the strength and character of our country, in all walks of life."
BULLCRAP! Not true ... never was.
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Jay Carney, the president's press spokes-parrot, vigorously defends the upcoming Obama vacation.
Matt Drudge carries a Time Magazine flashback from 2001, when Jay-bird was a reporter there and wrote harshly condemning President Bush for going on vacation in times far less troubling than today.
Hypocrisy has never had a bigger field-day than under the present administration.
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Just how well will Ben Bernanke's pledge of "no interest rate increases through 2013" hold up when inflation, already happening, REALLY takes off? Who's going to LOAN money at such low rates?
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Reminder to the willfully blind or naive who think Ben Bernanke's pledge (the Chairman of the Fed speaks!) to keep interest rates low through 2013: Japan has tried this tactic for years following their economy's drop into the doldrums ... interest rates as low as ZERO ... and it didn't work.
It's nothing more than a smoke-and-mirrors quick-fix for the gullible.
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The whole stupid idea of negotiating with the Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan has fallen apart. Now who saw THAT coming?
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Jay Cost in the Weekly Standard explains the bogus Democrat attempt to blame the Tea Party for the problems they, themselves, created --
"Democrats are in desperate need of a red herring. If Obama goes down next year, a whole slew of congressional Democrats will go down with him – especially in the Senate, where the Democrats must defend 22 seats, 9 of which are from states that George W. Bush won in 2004.
"So, party leaders are in a full-blown panic, and rightly so. They are desperate to turn the public’s gaze away from their own shortcomings, and no doubt some too-clever-by-half pollster or focus group hack suggested blaming the Tea Party."
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Sen. Harry Reid has appointed Washington Democrat Patty Murray to be co-chair of the 12-member (six Republicans, six Democrats) of the debt reduction committee that's supposed to plot a course for larger cuts in government spending.
In a long media career, I have interviewed thousands of politicians. I state unreservedly that Ms. Murray is the dumbest single office-holder I have ever met.
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For this cartoon caption, we don't need the picture. Obama is saying, "I won't allow the half of Americans who pay NO taxes to bear the burden of the OTHER half who aren't paying their fair share."
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It must be genetic in the Bush family. Now Jeb, Jr., son of the former Florida governor, has endorsed the purest RINO in the Republican race, Jon Huntsman. Huntsman, of course, served as Obama's ambassador to China and is on record with a political love-letter extolling Obama's many virtues.
While in retrospect, George W. is head-and-shoulders above the current occupant, nobody named Bush should ever again be allowed near the Oval Office. And be on the alert for Jeb, Sr., now or four years from now, babbling about "compassionate conservatism".
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The politically-correct corruption of the language continues to spread, even in the military. Yesterday the commander of our forces in Afghanistan told of the dropping of a bomb on the man who shot down the Seals' helicopter as a -- so help me -- "kinetic action".
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The cry is rising among Democrats: "We should have chosen Hillary!" Of course. She could have balanced the budget just with income from her cattle-futures-trading expertise.
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London Dave checks in from his riot-torn city ...
"Re: The British Mob...
Five words that I hope describe what's going on for my American pals...
THE LUMPEN DOLETARIAT GOES SHOPPING.
PS--
Regarding Tina Brown...
This awful British woman (who famously rose in the media on her back, if you get my drift) is a vociferous member of the SOCIALIST Labour Party.
Not content with being part of the entitlement state mind-set that created a country sliding into 3rd world violence, she now wants to do the same to the US.
Like you don't have enough quasi-commie nutjobs already.
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The London Daily Mail summarizes the madness over there thusly --
"So now the chickens have well and truly come home terrifyingly to roost. The violent anarchy that has taken hold of British cities is the all-too-predictable outcome of a three-decade liberal experiment which tore up virtually every basic social value. The married two-parent family, educational meritocracy, punishment of criminals, national identity, enforcement of the drugs laws and many more fundamental conventions were all smashed by a liberal intelligentsia hell-bent on a revolutionary transformation of society."
In other words, their liberals are just as crazy as our own home-grown variety.
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Spread the word. Suggest to friend, colleagues, et al, that they might like to have a look at RADIORODGERS.COM
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Wonder if the Sony movie about the killing of bin Laden, scheduled for release shortly before next year's election, will show that the Dear Leader had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the decision to whack Islam's mass-murderer?
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Another Obamacare "oopsie". Investors Business Daily finds that the latest cost overrun associated with ObamaCare is a $500 billion "error" associated with insuring the spouses and children of new entitlement recipients. That's $500 billion in additional deficit spending — although it didn't stem from an "error" so much as it was the result of a deliberate miscalculation. The Congressional Budget Office was specifically told NOT to include cost of the dependents of new recipients that would be added to the rolls. It was a $500 billion (half-trillion) "error". Expect plenty more. When was the LAST time any government program met its projected budget? Medicare has outrun early projections of cost more than ten-times-over.
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The tragedy for Obama supporters is that he didn't turn out to be the new Lincoln ... he's just a lame re-run of Jimmy Carter.
The tragedy for Obama is ... blame for big failures attaches to the man at the top, whether deserved or not. But you WANTED the job!
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Former Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado, who led the (failed) fight against illegal immigration, has a warning about Texas Governor Rick Perry. Despite Perry's widely-publicized opposition to "sanctuary" cities, his whole record is PRO-illegal immigration. Just so you know.
Perry wishy-washy on border control ... Romney spawning Obamacare ... other candidates with other flaws. The decision will be difficult.
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More language corruption ...
Repeated misuse has caused many Americans who don't speak Spanish to use the term "mano a mano"as if it meant "man to man". It doesn't. "Mano" is Spanish for "hand", therefore "mano a mano" literally means "hand to hand". Adding an "o" to the end doesn't turn "man" into a Spanish word.
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A 28-year-old Brazilian soap opera star is taking rich ultra-leftist George Soros to court on charges that he reneged on a promise to give her a $1.9 million apartment and smacked her around. Sounds like ol' George did to her what he's trying to do to America.
Of course, he HAD to assume that it was true love on her part. What 28-year-old hooks up with an 80-year-old for any mercenary purpose?
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Let's hear it for optimism! Eighty-three-year-old Marie Kolstad of Santa Ana, California, has had breast implants to boost her 32-A's to 36-C's. She's vacationing now on the beach in Hawaii, and doubtless WILL hear those deathless words, "Look at the rack on THAT one!"
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Jay Leno --
"It turns out that Texas Gov. Rick Perry got a 'D' in Principles of Economics at Texas A & M. So he can't be president, but he CAN get a job on President Obama's economic team."
IT DIDN'T SETTLE ANYTHING, BUT IT
WASN'T BORING
It's impossible to predict the outcome of this weekend's Iowa Straw Poll, since most of those casting ballots are bought-and-paid-for participants. Nevertheless, a few snap judgments based on last nights debate:
There were more fireworks than usual for such rituals, largely because panelist Chris Wallace struck the match that lit the simmering feud between the two Minnesotans, former Governor Tim Pawlenty and Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann. Whether the position of either was improved is open to question, but they did provide entertainment.
Herman Cain repeated his largely impressive, business-oriented performance of the first debate, and Mitt Romney carried himself appropriately as a putative front-runner. He failed to explain, however, why individual states should be allowed to force people to buy health insurance but not have their own marriage laws. His argument for the latter was persuasive; his argument for the former, less so. Is the race likely to come down to Romney vs. Rick Perry? Looks likely, depending on Perry's coming-out party.
Newt Gingrich, as always, was sharp with debating points, especially about the idiotic congressional committee on the budget, which was obviously constructed to help other members of Congress evade their responsibilities. However, his position in the race seems unlikely to improve.
Rick Santorum was eloquent on social issues but probably scored no breakthrough.
Jon Huntsman left as he arrived -- a nonentity.
Whether by design or not, the Fox coverage gave abundant exposure to Ron Paul and his boisterous claque in the audience and thereby revealed him to be the political equivalent of the crazy uncle kept locked in the basement when company comes. His chances as a contender for the presidency bring to mind certain analogies involving a snowball in Lucifer's domain.
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The Washington Examiner dug into their competition's own poll and found more distressing news for our Marxist-in-Charge --
"Buried deep in the internals of The Washington Post's latest poll, and not reported at all in their front-page write up, is some troubling news for President Obama's re-election prospects. Forty-four percent of American adults, and 46 percent of registered voters, told The Post they definitely will not vote for an Obama second term. Only 20 percent of respondents said they definitely will vote for Obama in 2012."
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Texas Governor Rick Perry, ready to leap into the Republican race, says he'll be competitive with Obama in California. As a longtime Californian (no longer), I respectfully suggest Mr. Perry get his head checked for dung.
George W. Bush and his guru, Karl Rove, thought the same thing in 2000 when they left Florida at the end of the race to expend millions and precious time in California. Any school child could have told them it was a waste of time, which it was -- and nearly cost them Florida, launching us into the era of "hanging chads". Perry, get over it. It ain't gonna happen. California is a lost cause for Republicans.
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Frightening item. A survey by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, or NFCC, found that 64 percent of Americans don't have enough cash on hand to cover an emergency expense of $1,000. Paid for, say, a trip to the Emergency Room lately? Or a sick transmission in your car? Or ...
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A succinct summary of our economic ailments from Sher Zieve in Canada Free Press --
"Are you as exhausted as am I from hearing ‘journalists’ and supposed expert talking heads telling us “If only Obama would X (you fill in your own solution) he would put us back on the right track toward beginning to save our economy” or asking “Why doesn’t Obama do “Y” to help the economy?” The problem with these comments and questions is the presupposition that the dictator-in-chief actually wants to save the United States of America. That assumption is false."
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Survey says ... 32% of Democrats want to see a challenger to Obama for the nomination. The name most prominently mentioned, of course, is Hillary. Which prompts this question: precisely what has she ever done that qualifies her to be president?
Of course, to most Democrats, qualifications are a non-issue in choosing a potential president, as witness the present occupant of the White House.
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"We saw within a few days that this President was going to be heavy-handed, he was going to implement his agenda and pay back his political allies, and it just went on from there to ObamaCare and then to Dodd-Frank. It has been the most anti-business and I consider anti-American administration in my lifetime. Things that are just so anathema to the principles of freedom, and everything he has come up with centralizes more power in Washington, creates more socialist-style, collectivist policies. This president is doing something that’s so far out of the realm of anything Republicans ever did wrong, it’s hard to even imagine."
-- Senator Jim DeMint, (R) South Carolina
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Here's how one-party politics works in Illinois, dominated as it is by the Chicago Democratic machine -- the same machine that gave America Barack Obama: the state is now so broke, it can't even afford to bury the penniless poor. This Dickensian nightmare has come about purely as a result of a crazed system built around buying the loyalty of government employees and their unions. You know -- like Obama would like to install at the national level.
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An American response to British citizenry's apparent unwillingness or inability to fight back against the thugs ravaging their cities: anyone who tries to invade my property had better be bullet-proof.
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Doug Patton in the Tampa Tribune --
"Without any risk of overstatement, it is axiomatic that the United States of America as we know it cannot survive a second Obama term. The country will resemble something more akin to a socialist European welfare state by 2017 if this man is re-elected. In addition to a trillion-dollar failed stimulus package, multi-trillion dollar budget overruns, a health care plan on which no one seems able to put a price tag, and a complete sellout of our most loyal ally, Israel, in favor of the radical Muslim elements in the world, this president has now presided over the first-ever downgrade of America's credit rating."
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Gutless local politicians in cities around the country where mobs of black teenagers have attacked white people, beating them and robbing them, are asking if such attacks are "racially motivated".
What kind of moron would believe they AREN'T?
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I'm sure Ely, Nevada, is a perfectly nice little town. It has also become symptomatic of the crazed spending fever that's gripped the nation far too long, in this case, the taxpayer subsidy for air service that very few people use. Why anyone, even a liberal politician, should complain about killing this boondoggle is beyond understanding.
Here are the raw facts. Your tax dollars pay for the difference between the cost of operating scheduled flights out of Ely, which is only the worst of several similar cases. Planes fly out with one or two passengers -- or none. But the subsidy for the flight is paid, regardless. As a result, while the few passengers pay $70 to $90 for a ticket to Las Vegas (the nearest airport with plentiful service) the government pays -- for each ticket sold -- a subsidy of $4,107. If a government can't stop this kind of lunacy, how can it be trusted to deal with anything?
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A reader contributes the following --
"We had to have the garage door repaired. The repairman told us that one of our problems was that we did not have a 'large' enough motor on the opener. I said that we had the largest one Sears made at that time, a 1/2 horsepower.
He shook his head and said, 'Lady, you need a 1/4 horsepower.' I responded that 1/2 was larger than 1/4. He said, 'No, it's not..' Four is larger than two.'
This recalls the actual and factual failure of a Wendy's hamburger introduced several years ago containing a one-third-pound meat patty. It didn't sell, because so many products of the ignorance factories we call schools believed that the McDonald's QUARTER-pounder was larger than one-THIRD of a pound.
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Eternal truths we all learn, sooner or later ...
Part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.
Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.
How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?
Bad decisions make good stories.
I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lite than Kay.
I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.
The first testicular guard, the "Cup," was used in hockey in 1874 and the first hockey helmet was used in 1974. That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important.
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Conan O'Brien --
"Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman announced that he received the endorsement of Jeb Bush, Jr., who is the son of the brother of the former president. Analysts say he's sewn up the crucial 'guy you didn't know existed' vote."
OBAMACARE GOES TO THE HIGH COURT;
CARTER-ERA CONFIDENCE
It had to happen. Now that one federal appeals court has ruled that Obamacare's mandate forcing Americans to buy medical insurance IS constitutional, and another has ruled that it ISN'T, the Supreme Court will make the final decision in the not-too-distant future. The irony of the Atlanta court's ruling against that provision of Obamacare: the third and deciding vote was cast by a Clinton-appointed judge.
For another reason Obamacare is an unworkable farce, see the next item.
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Re Obamacare --
Here it is in terms so simple even a liberal should be able to understand.
You ... CANNOT ... force ... bright young people ... to become ... DOCTORS.
Obama and his demented crowd believe they can "squeeze" doctors' fees to provide care for an ever-growing patient load. This presupposes an adequate number of doctors.
That is a fantasy.
Virtually every young doctor begins his career with an enormous debt-load. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Medical school is expensive.
I have previously recounted in this space how my nephew was preparing for a medical career with stellar grades in a prestigious med-school. After Obamacare was introduced, he and many of his classmates had an hours-long discussion about their likely future ... decided it was a losing proposition ... and simply -- quit. About half the class. Chose other careers, instead.
This is a young man whose brother was born with a serious birth defect, and who always wanted to be a doctor. But he's not stupid. He considered his options under the socialist fantasyland the Obama crowd foresees ... and ... just ... quit. He and many classmates have two words for Obama, a verb and a pronoun.
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Survey says ... consumer confidence nationwide is at its lowest level since Jimmy Carter was president. Jimmuh, could you loan Barack a hammer? Perhaps he could join you in photo-op "home-building" for the poor. He must have SOME hidden ability.
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Another "It had to happen". Even as people get nervous about the Big Casino, a/k/a the stock market, they're also wary of U. S. government debt. Financial Times reports that yields on 30-year US Treasuries increased by more than 27 basis points to 3.75 per cent following a $16bn auction with the poorest demand in nearly three years. Investors balked at buying long-term notes that yielded just a bit more than inflation and dealers were left with inventory to sell.
3.75% for thirty years? Sounds like sucker-bait to me!
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Passion propels many to vote, thus the importance of the Rasmussen poll as of yesterday showing voter sentiment lining up this way: 20% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of minus-22.
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What?? Even ... NEW YORK??!! The latest poll (Quinnipiac) gives the Big Nothing a negative voter rating in the Empire State, a bastion of Democrat politics. Approving of Obama -- 45% DISapproving -- 49%.
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A quote attributed to the late Norman Thomas, six-time presidential candidate of the Socialist Party, is making the internet rounds again. Here it is:
"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism', they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation without knowing how it happened. I no longer need to run as a socialist candidate for president. The Democrat party has adopted our platform."
The source of the quote is disputed by some. The veracity of the content is manifest.
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Only creatures as inherently stupid as liberal Democrats could misconstrue Mitt Romney's remark that corporations are people. Not only are corporations owned by shareholders (people) but for legal purposes are treated as -- people.
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Investors Business Daily with some significant statistics about Texas, whose governor is entering the presidential race ...
Texas is one of only eight states to have seen a net gain in jobs since Obama took office.
The U.S. overall has lost a net 2.4 million jobs since January 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Since the recession ended in June 2009, Texas has added 298,600 jobs, accounting for 52% of U.S. net job growth.
Texas has seen wages climb faster than the country overall. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average wage for employees in Texas rose 7.4% between May 2008 and May 2010 (the latest data available).
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The insightful Victor Davis Hanson neatly summarizes the "what ifs" of a committed Marxist, Barack Obama --
"Ever since he began campaigning for the presidency, Obama has hectored the private sector – talking nonstop of higher taxes, "spreading the wealth," "fat-cat" bankers, paying your "fair share," "millionaires and billionaires," "corporate jet owners" and "unneeded" income.
"But imagine that the president had instead promoted profit-making – by cutting red tape, praising entrepreneurs, promising no new taxes or burdens on businesses, and offering incentives to open new plants inside the U.S. In other words, what if small businesses and large corporations believed Obama to be a friend and partner, a leader who wanted them to make big profits, hire millions of workers and enrich the country in the process?"
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The Obama disenchantment on the left continues. Here's the liberal Richard Cohen in the liberal Washington Post:
"He is the very personification of cognitive dissonance—the gap between what we (especially liberals) expected of the first serious African American presidential candidate and the man he in fact is." Cohen goes on to say of Mr. Obama, whom liberals hailed as a great orator, "... he lacks even "the rhetorical qualities of the old-time black politicians. I cannot even recall a soaring passage from a speech."
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The fiery Ann Coulter gets to the root of the British riots --
"Those of you following the barbaric rioting in Britain will not have failed to notice that a sizable proportion of the thugs are white, something not often seen in this country.
"Not only that, but in a triumph of feminism, a lot of them are girls. Even the "disabled" (according to the British benefits system) seem to have miraculously overcome their infirmities to dash out and steal a few TVs.
"With a welfare system far more advanced than the United States, the British have achieved the remarkable result of turning entire communities of ancestral British people into tattooed, drunken brutes."
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Has any superstar athlete ever collapsed as quickly and completely as Tiger Woods, short of a career-ending injury? He failed to make the cut in the PGA, with a wretched ten over-par first two rounds that included five double bogeys, 22 shots that landed in bunkers and five balls hit into water hazards. No reaction heard from Elin regarding her ex's disintegration. Nor, for that matter, from any of his ... bimbi (plural for bimbos).
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This may annoy the overly-sensitive, but truth is truth. In referring to nude people, the term "butt-naked" is often used. This is a politically-correct evasion. The original term, in use for decades, if not centuries, was "buck-naked", a term coined by America's politically-incorrect pioneers to describe young male Indians -- "bucks" -- who were often light in the clothing department in warm weather.
I feel free to violate politically-correct boundaries on this subject because I'm one-quarter Cherokee. My grandfather, however, always kept his clothes on.
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Reader Bob passes along a classic of Irish humor ...
Mary goes up to Father O'Grady after his Sunday morning service, and she's in tears.
He says, 'So what's bothering you, Mary my dear?'
She says, 'Oh, Father, I've got terrible news. My husband passed away last night.'
The priest says, 'Oh, Mary, that's terrible. Tell me, Mary, did he have any last requests?'
She says, 'That he did, Father.'
The priest says, 'What did he ask, Mary?'
She says, 'He said, Please Mary, put down that damn gun.....'
SWING YOUR PARTNER, DOH-SEE-DOH!
IT'S TURKEYS IN THE STRAW!
IT'S TURKEYS IN THE STRAW!
To summarize: Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul ran 1-2 in the straw poll that represented the paid-for views of a minuscule percentage of Iowa voters. Ms. Bachmann has a (very) slim chance of being somebody's running-mate. Ron Paul has become the new Harold Stassen, running repeatedly with no result other than the cheers of a relatively few fervent followers.
Please send the hate-mail to the address at the bottom.
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Tim Pawlenty finished a distant third. With fund-raising prospects dim, he's quit the race.
Neither Romney nor Perry will be discouraged; Romney's effort, except for the debate, was limited and Perry chose not to take part. Romney has plenty of campaign money, and Perry will find it easy to raise large sums.
The Iowa straw poll did provide media fodder, which -- along with raising money for the Iowa Republican Party -- is the primary purpose of the exercise in political frivolity.
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Barack Obama is spinning his wheels if he thinks more government "stimulus" money blown on creating government jobs will sell to the voters. The Rasmussen poll finds that 62% of likely voters believe cutting taxes is better than increasing government spending when it comes to creating jobs. Only twenty percent (20%) say increased government spending does more to create jobs.
More proof of liberals' inability to learn from real-world experience: the data also show that the president earns approval from 96% of black Democrats and 76% of white Democrats. The much-talked-about "revolt of the left" seems not to have penetrated the rank-and-file lemmings.
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Clarice Feldman in The American Thinker reflects how Obama's performance would have made him a non-person in an earlier era ...
"In ancient times, a leader who failed as greatly as Obama has was simply erased from the history of his people. Craftsmen were engaged by his successors in power to chisel his name off all the temples, archives, and monuments. The statues that had been erected at the outset of his reign, which had depicted him as a wonder-working colossus, were toppled, and their facial features mutilated to obliterate him from the record and memory."
We should be so lucky ...
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Suggestion for Obama. While you're on that bus tour, it may be useful to learn to drive it. Job alternative, you know?
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A view of Obama from abroad. Marc Hujer in German's Der Spiegel ...
"All that remains of the great hopes Americans and the world had pinned on Obama, inspired by his stirring campaign speeches about change and renewal, is a battlefield of unsatisfactory and contradictory compromises. Obama, who just turned 50 and was once a symbol of youthful change, suddenly seems old and worn out, as gray as his hair has become. Obamaland has turned into the Land of the Tea Party."
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The NY Post reports on the peregrinations of Madame Michelle ...
She spent 10 days on Martha's Vineyard last August and 17 days in Hawaii for Christmas. She also took trips to Panama City, Fla., Latin America and South Africa, where she also conducted official business.
Last week, she visited her brother in Oregon. The figures don't include the first family's scheduled trip back to Martha's Vineyard this month.
Taxpayer dollars pay most of the cost of transporting the first lady and cover her security.
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Here's an object lesson in why the Big Media are NOT ... EVER ... to be trusted.
General Nguyen Giap was a brilliant, highly respected leader of the North Vietnam military.
The following quote is from his memoirs currently found in the Vietnam war memorial in Hanoi:
"What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. If you had pressed us a little harder, we were ready to surrender. It was the same at the battle of TET. You defeated us. We knew it, and we thought you knew it. But we were elated to notice your media helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields."
General Giap has confirmed what most Americans knew. The Vietnam war was not lost in Vietnam — it was lost at home.
Fact: The NLF (VietCong) and the NVA (North Vietnamese army) lost around 35,000 men killed, 60,000 wounded and 6,000 POWs sacrificed for no military success. The US and ARVN dead totaled around 3,900 (1,100 US). But this was not the conflict as the US public saw it. The media, led by "the most trusted man in America", Walter Cronkite, presented it as a catastrophe for the U.S. side.
BY THE WAY ... A colonel in the North Vietnamese army, a battlefield commander, said the same thing as General Giap shortly after the Tet offensive. Following that battle, Cronkite, leftist to the core, solemnly lowered his glasses and told us the war was a good as over. The North Vietnamese colonel said his people thought we'd gone mad. We won the battle, shredded the enemy -- then quit!
I would argue that we were foolish to get involved in Vietnam in the first place, but the fact remains that our "leaders" snatched defeat from the jaws of victory under the pressure of a leftist media.
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A piece of historical trivia from Sharon --
In George Washington's days, there were no cameras. One's image was either sculpted or painted. Some paintings of George Washington showed him standing behind a desk with one arm behind his back while others showed both legs and both arms. Prices charged by painters were not based on how many people were to be painted, but by how many limbs were to be painted. Arms and legs are 'limbs,' therefore painting them would cost the buyer more. Hence the expression, 'Okay, but it'll cost you an arm and a leg.' (Artists know hands and arms are more difficult to paint)
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Diminishing radio, redux ...
Have you driven on a cross-country trip of any length lately -- meaning within the past five years or so?
There was a not-so-long ago time when listening to radio stations from city-to-city not only brought you refreshingly different entertainment but gave you a "feel" for the local culture, itself.
If you listened to KMPC or KHJ, you'd probably realize you were listening to Los Angeles radio, even if the station's location wasn't mentioned. Ditto KSFO or KGO in San Francisco ... WNEW or WABC in New York ...WGN or WIND in Chicago ... KVI or KJR in Seattle ... and on and on.
Today you get essentially undifferentiated, homogenized, sounds-the-same product, with the bulk of airtime occupied by the same handful of syndicated shows. When did you last hear something truly different on a local station? -- the kind of thing that might cause you to think, "If I lived here, that would be my station"?
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Dan Sorkin passes along these pieces of timeless wisdom ...
Money cannot buy happiness but somehow, it’s more comfortable to cry in a Mercedes Benz than it is on a bicycle.
Forgive your enemy but remember the bastard’s name.
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
Many people are alive only because it’s illegal to shoot them.
Alcohol does not solve any problem, but then neither does milk.
SINK, SANK, SUNK
That's the Obama story in a nutshell as the Gallup poll finds him at a new low in public approval, with 39% holding a positive view of his performance, 54% negative. After a brief bounce following the killing of Osama bin Laden, he's been sliding steadily downhill.
The RealClear Politics average of several major polls shows that almost 74% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track.
And Rasmussen finds 20% of likely voters strongly approve of the Big O, while 42% strongly disapprove.
Obama's place in presidential history is assured. "The experiment that failed."
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Also from the bin Laden raid ... our "good friends", the Pakistanis, are reported by the Financial Times to have given China access to the advanced stealth helicopter that our forces had to leave behind after whacking Osama bin Laden. In spite of all the evidence that Pakistan is an enemy nation, we continue to pour aid into that treacherous sinkhole. Yes, I realize that Pakistan provides the only land route to supply our troops in Afghanistan -- when the Paks choose to leave the route open. Another reason to end the fools errand in Afghanistan, as well.
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Which reminds me ... has our costly involvement in the war in Libya ended yet? I mean, our Dear Leader promised us it would be successfully concluded in "days, not weeks" -- didn't he? Last time I looked, the Transvestite Terror was still running the place from his digs in Tripoli.
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What is a president of the United States doing, running around the country on a bus? That kind of juvenile nonsense is for candidates, not presidents.
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Time to resurrect the Reagan query about Carter's presidency: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"
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So Senate Democrat "leader" Harry Reid expects the Tea Party to fade in influence. Sure. I mean, after all, the government is in such good hands, a model of moderation and efficient management ...
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The recent history of Republican presidential candidates is that the next-in-line is the most likely nominee, even if it guarantees such losers as Dole and McCain. Thus many regard Mitt Romney as the likely winner of the nomination. But Texas Monthly magazine reminds us of what he's up against:
"Forget about death and taxes. Today, there are only two sure things in life: Every few years Rick Perry will run for office, and every few years Rick Perry will grind his opponents into dust. Since 1984, the man once derided as “Governor Good Hair” has participated in ten contested elections and won all of them. "
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A serious question for likely Republican voters. Which candidate presents the more likely prospect of a McCain re-run, which would be disastrous?
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A serious question for Democrats. While presidents have the power to send our military people into combat, how many recent Democrat presidents actually had the respect of those people whose lives were put at risk? Carter ... Clinton ... Obama? You think?
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The gun-grabbers made the usual apocalyptic predictions of mass bloodshed when Virginia became the 43rd state to allow people with permits to carry a concealed weapon when they patronize establishments that serve alcohol with their weapons onboard. Real-world result: in the first year of the new law, crimes in such establishments involving firearms were DOWN more than 5%.
As they used to say in the Old West, "an armed society is a polite society". Then there's the obvious factor of a potential robber not being sure if there's an armed customer in the place.
Further thought. If Britain allowed law-abiding citizens to be armed, there would be a sudden and precipitous drop in the anarchic violence that has been taking place in its cities. And the gene-pool would likely be improved.
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There is nothing one generation can do or endure that is so stupid, brutal and dehumanizing that a subsequent generation won't somehow, in an addle-brained state, find worthy. That is all that need be said about the current wave of nostalgia among some (mostly) young leftists in Germany regarding the Berlin wall. They attempt to justify it. Yes! They say it was a good thing!
Such people are so utterly stupid, reason is of no avail.
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Recommended reading: Arnold Ahlert ... "Give Me a Flat-screen TV, or Give Me Anarchy" in Jewish World Review, from which ... the following:
"If one believes, as most progressives do, that men will always aspire to their higher angels if given enough government kindness to tide them over the rough patches, the violence in London requires one to assign blame to forces other than the rioters themselves. After all, if one lives in government-subsidized housing, eats government-subsided food, and gets a government-subsidized disposable income — all in preparation for the leap to self-sufficiency welfare-staters envision as the end result of such programs — the ingratitude demonstrated by the recipients of such 'benevolence' becomes problematic.
"Perhaps among the terminally twisted tenets of progressive thinking, the wholesale looting of such items as flat screen TVs, booze and high-end training shoes qualify as necessities. And perhaps the muggings, the torching of businesses and police cars are considered a 'reasonable payback' for the 'stinginess' of the welfare state's underwriters and distributors."
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Is somebody in authority at NBC so deluded as to believe the sophomoric David Gregory is actually smart?
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Every good reporter/interviewer is constantly editing himself in this way. You risk being accused of belaboring the obvious if you explain facets of a story that are already widely known in order to make it clear to those who are not always overly-attentive to the news ... or you risk alienating those who ARE attentive and resent having explained to them things they already know. "Is ... a ... puzzlement!" (Yul Brynner, "The King and I")
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Does anyone on the left note the sheer, stupid hypocrisy of a president who excoriates oil companies, while advancing billions of taxpayer dollars to Brazil, thus supporting those same oil companies furiously drilling in their offshore waters?
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Reminder: still stocking up on real light bulbs, pending the day when the government know-it-alls tell us we can't buy them? Our ridiculous, gutless Congress failed to kill this example of government manipulation of our lives. The price of widely-used standard 60-watt incandescent bulbs, slated to be the first banned, is skyrocketing.
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A reminder that weather is local and should not be interpreted as "climate change".
While parts of Texas and the midwest continue to bake in a drought, New York City and vicinity got record rainfalls and flooding yesterday.
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The indispensable Thomas Sowell reminds us that statistics can be misleading --
"The media seized upon the statistics published by the Pew Research Center to show that whites averaged far more net worth than blacks, and that this disparity was now greater than it was in years past. But what is even more revealing is that the net worth of blacks in 2009 was less than half of what it was in 2005.
"What happened to cause such a sharp loss in such a few years? After all, the Republicans controlled both the Congress and the White House in 2005, and the Democrats had control by 2009. There was now a black President of the United States, with much of the media celebrating the beginning of a new era in race relations.
"What happened was that the political words had no relationship to the economic reality. But few people judge any administration's effect on blacks by what actually happens to blacks under that administration.
"A finer breakdown of the data on the net worth of blacks shows that the most drastic loss of net worth was in the value of the homes owned by blacks. This occurred after years of both Democratic and Republican administrations pushing policies designed to enable more blacks to buy homes.
"In fact, it worked so well that many blacks got loans that they could not have gotten otherwise. Now the statistics tell us, belatedly, that blacks lost out, big time, from this 'favor' done for them by politicians."
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Ken contributes these famous last words ...
It's just a rash.
I wonder what this button does?
These are the good mushrooms.
Niiice doggy!
Just watch this!
OBAMA-INSPIRED BUSINESS FOLDS;
PERUSING PERRY
The "Yes We Can" social club in suburban St. Louis, a name possibly inspired by a prominent political figure, has been shut down by police. Seems their real business was booze, dope and whores.
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Whatever Gov. Rick Perry's flaws -- and they will be intensively scrutinized by a mostly-hostile media -- one angle of attack that is totally based on misinformation and flawed logic is that he's a clone of George W. Bush. Not only are they as dissimilar as Republican governors could be, there is a long history of simmering dislike between the two.
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One predictable line of Democrat attack on Texas Gov. Rick Perry is dropping broad hints that he's not too bright. It's the usual liberal snide remark about anyone who doesn't share their childish Utopian views.
Just for the record, dumb people don't learn to fly complex airplanes. There are few things more mentally strenuous than learning to fly by instruments. (Been there, done that.)
Upon graduating from Texas A & M, Mr. Perry went straight into the Air Force, piloted the C-130 transport and left the service five years later as a captain.
And the community organizer did what, exactly?
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The slanted media are making much of Perry's remark that, “If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in history is almost treasonous in my opinion.”
He was speaking of Ben Bernanke, the stunningly incompetent chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Media mush-heads are apparently incapable of perceiving that many Americans might agree with Mr. Perry.
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Predictably, the Big Media salivated over Warren Buffett's recommendation that "the rich" pay higher taxes. So says the man who's leaving most of his fortune to the Gates (Bill, as in Microsoft) Foundation .. TO AVOID TAXES!
And how many media biggies even mentioned the glaring fact that upper-income Americans bear the largest share of the tax burden, while HALF of Americans pay no income taxes at all?
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Tim Carney (not to be confused with Obama's spokes-parrot, Jay) in the Washington Examiner explains other motivations of Obama fundraiser Warren Buffett's repeated calls for higher taxes on the rich --
"Buffett regularly lobbies for higher estate taxes. He also has repeatedly bought up family businesses forced to sell because the heirs’ death-tax bill exceeded the business’s liquid assets. He owns life insurance companies that rely on the death tax in order to sell their estate-planning businesses.
"Buffett made about a billion dollars off of the Wall Street bailout by investing in Goldman Sachs on the assumption Uncle Sam would bail it out. He also is planning investments in ethanol giant ADM and government-contracting leviathan General Dynamics."
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Cutting to the chase ...
The Big Phony's bus tour is basically about one message: "Let me borrow more money and raise taxes so I'll have more to blow on my silly, sophomoric socialist projects."
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All other controversial issues aside, Ron Paul's stupid, misbegotten championing of Iran's "right" to have nuclear weapons renders him unacceptable as presidential material. He bases his view on the idea that if others, like Russia and the U.S., can have nukes, so should Iran. That ignores a fundamental reality. As different as we may be in many respects, we and our Russian (formerly Soviet) adversaries share a common wish to live.
Muslim fanatics, on the other hand, worship death -- their own as well as that of enemies, as evidenced by their backing of repeated suicide-bombings. Cong. Paul's refusal to recognize that fact makes his very sanity questionable.
Only simple-minded fools could fail to see this. Ron Paul is a menace. Fortunately, his noisy campaign isn't going anywhere, anyway. A handful of howling hyenas in Ames, Iowa, doesn't pre-ordain his future.
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Thomas Sowell has this reaction to pussy-footing media coverage of black rampages around the country; violence facilitated by the electronic so-called "social media" --
"All around the country, people in politics and the media have been tip-toeing around the fact that violent attacks by blacks on whites in public places are racially motivated, even when the attackers themselves use anti-white invective and mock the victims they leave lying on the streets bleeding.This is not something to ignore or excuse. It is something to be stopped."
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Jimmy Fallon --
"After all the rioting in London this week, officials are worried that it could mean security problems for the Olympics next year. On the bright side, the guy running with the torch will just blend right in."
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Evergreen Solar, a beautifully-named project that got Obama's favor -- and millions of taxpayer dollars -- has gone bankrupt, even after laying off hundreds of employees.
The company's remaining jobs have gone -- where else? -- to China.
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Greenies in New Zealand must be dismayed at having to defend global-warming nonsense in the face of Auckland, in the semi-tropical north, getting snow for the first time in over seventy years and record low temperatures.
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Another chapter in the lingering death of a once-great American city. Police in Detroit no longer respond to burglar alarms. Too many alarms, some of them false. What decades of stupid liberalism and one-party government have done to Motown is the obvious and inevitable fate of other American cities that have chosen the same path.
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David Limbaugh pulls off another veil as Obama continues his "Dance of the Seven Veils" --
"Seeing as President Obama cannot govern, he's had to go back to campaigning — an activity with which he's quite comfortable but decreasingly successful, as evidenced by his falling poll numbers and his endless, repetitive speeches.
"I don't just throw out this governance charge lightly. The Los Angeles Times reports that Obama is no longer receiving daily Oval Office economic briefings. More troubling, he doesn't even appear to have much of an economic team left to advise him.
"Increasingly, people have caught on to the toxic combination of his extreme leftist ideology, his fundamental incompetence, his defiant refusal to accept accountability, and his mean-spirited partisan scapegoating."
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Jay Leno --
"President Obama will begin a three-state bus tour. I believe the three states are confusion, delusion, and desperation."
LIBERAL ECONOMICS REVEALED; WHO'S
MAKING THREATS?
Typical of the upside-down thinking of the Obamunists, his Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, professes to believe that giving food stamps to over 47 million Americans is a form of stimulus. How about this, dope? -- we fire ALL employed, tax-paying Americans and put EVERYBODY on government food stamps. That should REALLY fix the economy!
Where does Obama get these morons?
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Have I got this right? Democrats are perfectly okay with calling Tea Party conservatives "terrorists" ... Obama's staff has no problem saying, quote, "We're going to kill Romney". But when Perry says the stupid, blundering Ben Barnanke's "print more money" policy is "almost treasonous", libs have a hissy-fit!
If Mr. Perry wants to REALLY go after those sniping at him -- i.e., Bush complaining that people were rude for asking aggressive questions of Obama on his bus tour ... being disrespectful to Bernanke, etc. ... he should deliver a message to all the Bushies, starting with Rove; a message consisting of two words, a verb and a pronoun.
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Re Perry's taking verbal shots at Ben Bernanke: The Fed chairman is the idiot who said, before the debt ceiling was raised, that we wouldn't default because, "We can always print more money." If that isn't irresponsible stupidity calling for harsh criticism, I don't know what is. The man's a moron, and it does no credit to George W. Bush that he foolishly put him in the job.
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If you need an even clearer example of what the Obama/Bernanke devalued dollar has done to your cost of living -- even clearer than a visit to the supermarket -- just leave the country and see what your pitiful, puny buck will buy you elsewhere. How about an $8 cup of coffee in Zurich? We're being robbed by these thieves, and no criticism from Rick Perry is too harsh for them.
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The Boston Herald may have captured the essence of Rick Perry in this item --
"While Texas Gov. Rick Perry was campaigning at the Iowa State Fair, a reporter from Politico.com asked him whether he was armed. Perry, a known gun owner and enthusiast, refused to answer the question.
“That’s why it’s called ‘concealed,’ ” Perry told the reporter.
And that’s why — unless there are some Texas-sized skeletons in his closet — we’ll be calling Perry “the Republican nominee.”
Can you imagine Mitt Romney answering the question that way? More significantly, can you imagine Mitt being asked?"
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Unless a giant skeleton falls out of his closet, perhaps the biggest burden Perry will have to bear thru a campaign is the fact that he comes from the same state that gave us two "compassionate conservative" Bushes, northeastern elitists posing as just plain folks.
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How painful it must have been for the liberal Richard Cohen to write the following in the liberal Washington Post --
"Watching the emergence of Rick Perry over the weekend was instructively nostalgic. Here again was a governor declaring for the presidency and some very wise people cautioning us on the air and in print that what worked in Texas might not work in the nation. Perry is too conservative, too much a cowboy, too religious and, while we're at it, too handsome. This, more or less, was what was said about Ronald Reagan. He's nearly on Mount Rushmore.
"The White House now has plenty to worry about. Of course, Perry may turn out to be no Ronald Reagan. But then he doesn't have to be. After all, Barack Obama has turned out to be no Barack Obama."
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Is there an inherent taste for limitless government power in "liberalism"? Consider this --
"As Jonah Goldberg pointed out in his superb book 'Liberal Fascism,' There was an enormous bipartisan consensus that the Depression required dictatorial and fascistic policies to defeat it. Walter Lippmann, serving as an ambassador for America's liberal elite, told FDR in a private meeting in Warm Springs, 'The situation is critical, Franklin. You may have no alternative but to assume dictatorial powers. Eleanor Roosevelt, too, thought 'a benevolent dictator might be the only answer for America.' FDR adviser Rexford Guy Tugwell said of Italian fascism: 'It's the cleanest, neatest, most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious.'"
-- Tony Blankley
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Inflation is the hidden tax that devious governments impose upon a largely unaware public, akin to putting a frog in water and gradually heating it until the poor beast is beyond help.
Here's the proof, from the government's own Bureau of Labor Statistics. In actual purchasing power, one 1970 dollar is now worth only 18 cents.
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David Limbaugh, writing in Human Events, say the savagery in Britain is coming here -- and why --
"We got another stern jolt of reality from across the pond as one of Europe's primary poster nations for the grand socialist experiment implodes into abject violence before our eyes.
"There is just no satisfying liberals. No amount of money thrown at a project can ever be enough, because you can't solve problems by throwing money at them, especially when that money comes with federal demands attached and leads to diminished local control. They'll always demand more -- even when we are wholly bankrupt. Always. No exceptions."
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Dan forwards this piece of 2,100-year-old wisdom ...
"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced,the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled,and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt.People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."
- Cicero - 55 BC (the man, not the suburb of Chicago where Al Capone lived).
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Inescapable reality department. People running for office under the banner, "I am not a politician" do hold a certain surface appeal. But the fact is, the moment they declare candidacy they ARE politicians.
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Just wondering ... which rock star will buy one of the Obama busses when his taxpayer-financed campaign tour is over? The bus, by the way, was built in ... Canada.
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How do you define "hubris"? Barack Obama comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln. (Yes, he did. On his bus tour in Decorah, Iowa.)
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Reader Adam observes --
Obama is continuing his bus tour today. As a reminder, he is in the process of visiting 3 of the 57 states.
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Longtime haiku contributor Len offers this one --
The Poverty Tour.
A bus load of Bad Luck fools.
They're on the Cliff Route.
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Heard not once but twice on TV this week: "This (point or issue) is the CRITERIA for the job." "Criteria" is a plural word. "THESE (points or issues) ARE the criteria for the job." The singular is CRITERION. (Wordman would be so proud ... )
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... and ... Saw it again in print, in an otherwise cogent, literate commentary: "HONING in", as in focusing on one aspect of Rick Perry's persona. No ... it's HOMING in, as in following a radio beacon for navigational purposes. HONING is what you do to sharpen a knife.
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As a fan of the Lee Child novels about big, tough Jack Reacher, I have only one observation about the casting of the movie. Tiny Tom Cruise??!! A 5-7 guy playing a 6-5 hero??!! Puh-LEEZE!! How many phone-books WILL he have to stand on? Who's going to be his antagonist? Gary Coleman?
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Conan O'Brien --
"Tim Pawlenty announced that he's dropping out of the race for president. Pawlenty said he wants to spend more time with his family because even they don't know who he is."
NOT WORKING: OBAMA'S "PLAN" and
MILLIONS OF AMERICANS
Unemployment applications up again last week ... 408,000. Is anybody surprised?
When you have upper-levels of government stocked with academic airheads with little or no real-world experience, it's inevitable.
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Note to Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Democrat, California: there's no point complaining about Obama failing blacks. Why should he pay any attention, when he knows he has the black vote in his pocket, anyway? Failure to understand how blind one-party support has rendered them powerless is a longtime affliction of black folk in America. That powerlessness has only grown under our first black president.
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Michael Walsh in the NY Post summarizes Obama's pointless flailing ...
"The bad news for President Obama is, he’s lost his mojo. The rock star of 2008 has become just another workaday politician. The worse news is, this is all he’s got.
"What else to make of Obama’s three-day “jobs” barnstorm through the Midwest? And now comes the annual Martha’s Vineyard vacation: The president will spend the next 10 days holed up at a tony, 28-acre elite playground called the Blue Heron Farm as the country plummets toward a double-dip recession
"If he wants to really go after the truly rich, instead of simply high-income earners, why not suggest an emergency wealth tax on inherited fortunes that would hit supporters like the Kennedys and the Kerrys right in their yachts and Hyannis Port compounds?"
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Today's recommended reading: The American Thinker website ... Matt Patterson ... "The Affirmative Action President."
Patterson poses the provocative question, has the Obama debacle poisoned the well for black presidential candidates for decades?
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Joe Biden must be finding it increasingly difficult, even as a master of political hypocrisy, to continue lauding the "genius" of his boss, even as the political air is rife with rumors of a growing demand from Democrats that he be replaced on the ticket by Hillary. Of course, it just may have occurred to her, "Why should I settle for #2, when so many want me as #1? I could certainly do better than the dope at the top."
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Some media libs are saying the White House hopes Rick Perry IS the Republican nominee. A brief check of presidential election history will reveal that Jimmy Carter's bunch of clods said the same about Ronald Reagan. And that worked out SO well for them ...
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How much more craziness does Janet Napolitano, head of the joke "Department of Homeland Security", have to exhibit before she is declared certifiably insane and as a threat to the nation? In the latest public service announcement released to TV stations by her department, a well dressed attractive white woman exits a taxi before walking into a subway station. The taxi driver – a white man – then makes a phone call and sets a timer on a device in the trunk of the car. The woman then leaves her bag in the station. The rest is left to your imagination.
This is the kind of "thinking" that guides the TSA people who single out old ladies and little children at our airports, while letting young Arab men waltz right thru the security lines.
This fool will do ANYTHING to avoid portraying the people who are demonstrably (remember 9/11?) the REAL threat of terrorism in this nation.
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Speaking of questionable mental health status ... has a sanity hearing yet been scheduled for Chris "The Tingler" Matthews?
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Not a hope, but a prediction. If Congressman Paul Ryan, who may be the smartest person in the House, does decide to run for the Republican presidential nomination, his candidacy will never get off the ground.
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A further invitation to hate-mail. I was one of the first media admirers of then-Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. She now has no chance of ever being elected president. If she'd continued her excellent work as governor instead of bailing-out early ... if she, as a champion of social conservatives, hadn't had the now-repeated embarrassment of her offspring illegitimately procreating ... she might still be viable.
She didn't, and she isn't.
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From Toby Harnden of the London Daily Telegraph, covering American politics, some of the hidden and not-so-hidden frictions among Republican candidates, maybe-candidates and insiders:
Mitt Romney fears Rick Perry
Karl Rove loathes Perry
Romney loathes Jon Huntsman
Romney loves Herman Cain and Marco Rubio
Mike Huckabee loathes Perry
Michele Bachmann loathed Tim Pawlenty
The Tea Party loathes Romney and Newt Gingrich
Rick Santorum and Sarah Palin loathe Bachmann
Perry loves Palin. It uses to be mutual, but now Palin’s not so sure.
Bachmann fears Perry
Huckabee loathes Romney
Perry and Palin loathe Romney
Romney loathes Palin
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We pay other countries, notably in South America, to fund their programs for eradicating drug-producing crops like coca. Logic might suggest that, instead, we tell them, "YOU eradicate drug production, or you will export NOTHING to the United States." Or is that too complicated for our "leaders", wed to checkbook diplomacy, to understand?
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It's a liberal's nightmare come true. Leftward-tilted David Letterman has been threatened with death by a Muslim fanatic. The Muslim militant has urged American followers to assassinate Letterman, saying his tongue deserved to be cut out.
The SITE intelligence group, which monitors terror-promoting websites, said the death threat was posted on an online website used by militants after the writer became upset by a joke Letterman made about the death of a leading member of al Qaeda killed in an air strike in Pakistan.
Wonder if the threat will make his aging and creaky "top-ten" list?
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What's behind the growing outbreaks of barbarity in cities here and abroad? Consider the words of Thomas Sowell --
"A recent study in England found 352,000 households in which NOBODY had EVER worked. Moreover, two-thirds of the adults in those households said that they didn't want to work. As in America, such people feel both 'entitled' and aggrieved.
"In both countries, those who have achieved less have been taught by the educational system, by the media and by politicians on the left that they have a grievance against those who have achieved more. As in the United States, they feel a fierce sense of resentment against strangers who have done nothing to them, and lash out violently against those strangers.
"During the riots, looting and violence in England, a young woman was quoted as saying that this showed 'the rich' and the police that 'we can do whatever we want.'"
A nation that doesn't arm its policemen and women is learning a very painful lesson.
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A study in generational contrast by Kyle Smith in the New York Post --
"Young adults born in the 1980s and early 1990s leaped out of nicotine- and alcohol-free wombs to be deemed geniuses every time they passed a test, awarded trophies every time they caught a ball and tucked into comfy car seats on the victory ride over to their favorite sushi palace. They took groovy public-service internships at an age when their grandfathers were sweating on assembly lines or being shot at by Nazis, lived with their parents until they were 28, then proceeded directly to their shrinks for marathon weeping sessions every time they messed up a project at work. They're as soft as pudding, and they know it. The Greatest Generation didn't need triathlons or X-treme skateboarding; every Friday night was a thrill ride after manual labor and eight Schlitzes."
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A reminder worth repeating. It is inherent in the very nature of people working in government bureaucracies that are assigned to solve a particular problem to make sure the problem is never solved. It's all about job-preservation. Fix the problem, and they don't have a job any more! Keep that in mind and it's easy to understand why myriad government agencies, bureaucracies, task forces, etc., never seem to finish the job at hand.
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The Air Force said it is discharging a sergeant who refused to report to duty in Germany for a few days earlier this month because he doubts President Barack Obama's citizenship and therefore legitimacy as Commander-in-Chief. Staff Sgt. Daryn Moran expects to be discharged within the next week.
Okay. Just on the outside chance that history should ultimately prove the sergeant correct ... who gets sued?
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The increasing bloodshed in Iraq by both American and local people prompts this observation:
The management at Citadel/ABC Radio, headed by Farid Suleman, was highly disturbed a couple of years ago when I said on-air, "We should have destroyed Iraq's military capability, hanged Saddam Hussein and left -- leaving behind a message like, "We don't care what you do with this rat-hole of a country. Just don't give us a reason to come back or next time we'll finish the job and kill every damned one of you."
I believe subsequent events have proven that, while perhaps hyperbolic in expression (hardly uncommon in talk radio, I was fundamentally right and Mr. Suleman and his management cadre were wrong. Another reason I'm glad to be out of the sewer that broadcasting has become. ABC Radio, the most-listened-to group of radio stations in America, thrived under the original ABC ownership ... under Capital Cities/ABC ... and even under often-clueless Disney, under whose ownership I had made the same observation. Under Suleman (and as soon as next month, Cumulus Broadcasting) it is a dying giant. Pity.
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The world's population will pass the seven billion mark later this year. And you think it's hard to find a parking spot NOW!!
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Peyton Manning is now the NFL's highest-paid player at $90 million for a five-year deal. And to think -- some kids still want to grow up to be president!
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Longtime NFL place-kicker David Akers has seen his nest-egg go down the drain after investing in a Ponzi scheme that also victimized other NFL players.
The NCAA, forever floundering around trying to police off-field rules violations, needs to install one more "must". Athletes who take part in sports that may lead to a professional career desperately need a mandatory course in money management. Many gifted athletes have made fortunes in the professional ranks, then lost it with foolish investments in dubious schemes promoted by con-artists.
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The University of Miami football program is under attack over favors allegedly given players by a rich, crooked booster who's now in prison on a fraud conviction. My wife is a graduate of the "U" and during my five years in the Sun-and-Fun capitol I attended almost every Hurricanes game. Which recalls local anecdotes at that time to the effect that a Miami recruiter would ask a promising athlete, "Have you ever been arrested for assault?"
"No." "Thanks, but we don't need you."
It is entirely legitimate to ask if Miami has done anything that isn't commonplace at other major college football powers, or whether Miami is often targeted because it's a (relatively) small, expensive private university.
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Media illiteracy, cont. ...
There it is, in a news article. "...so-and-so POURING over political records ..." No, you don't POUR over documents, you PORE over them. He was PORING over them.
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Charlie Sheen, late of "Two-and-a-Half Men", booed and pelted with garbage when he tried to do his "Torpedo of Truth" bit at a rock concert.
Face it, dude. You have no message that anybody cares about. It's self-centered whining. Your way to success was paved by Hollywood types infatuated with your dad's liberalism ... you had it made ... and you blew it.
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Reuters news reports that Andy Dick, no stranger to stirring controversy and alienating large groups of people, called shock jock Howard Stern a "shallow, money-grubbing Jew," Tuesday, calling the radio host a "big fat hook nose," and "miserly."
Dick claims he still hasn't been paid for "The S*** Show," a program he has hosted for several years on Stern's Sirius Radio channel, Howard 101, starting in 2006.
Stern responded by saying that Dick's career has been dotted with anti-Semitism.
"Andy's run out of friends," Stern said. "You're not getting paid a dime because your show sucks. Stop blaming the world for your problems. Make yourself valuable, stop looking for the handouts waiting for the Jew to give a job."
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What is a Piers Morgan, and why should anyone care?
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Bumper stickers, from the Sloop John B. --
It 's not whether you win or lose, but how you place the blame.
The original point and click interface was a Smith & Wesson.
LEARN FROM YOUR PARENTS' MISTAKES -- USE BIRTH CONTROL
If at first you don't succeed skydiving is not for you..
We are born naked, wet and hungry. Then things get worse.
Red meat is not bad for you. Fuzzy green meat is bad for you.
The latest survey shows that three out of four people make up 75% of the population
Congressmen should wear uniforms like NASCAR drivers so we could identify their corporate sponsors.
OBAMANOMICS: STIMULUS?
BEEN THERE, DONE THAT
Talk about intellectually bankrupt! Obama's leaked it that his "plan" to fix joblessness is -- guess what?! -- another stimulus program! The great liberal masterstroke failed ignominiously, and the only thing he can think of is -- repeat it!
As the sheer stupidity and incompetence OR anti-Americanism of B.O. and his little leftist playmates becomes daily more evident, some folk on both the left and right are speculating that he might emulate LBJ, another failed president, and decline to run for a second term. I fear they're engaging in wishful thinking. As long as he and Michelle can enjoy vacations on Air Force One and the other abundant perquisites of the office, it seems highly unlikely they'd willingly relinquish them.
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Stephen Moore in the Wall Street Journal applies the scalpel of logic to Obama's absurd Keynesian economics --
"Economic bimboism is rampant in Washington. The Center for American Progress held a forum earlier this summer arguing that raising the minimum wage would create more jobs. For this to be true, you have to believe that the more it costs a business to hire a worker, the more workers companies will want to hire.
"A few months ago Mr. Obama blamed high unemployment on businesses becoming 'more efficient with a lot fewer workers,' and he mentioned ATMs and airport kiosks. The Luddites are back raging against the machine. If Mr. Obama really wants to get to full employment, why not ban farm equipment?"
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The Doomsday Express rolls on. While Obama whines about bad luck and earthquakes in Japan causing the ills that have beset the economy, Gallup Poll finds that only 11% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going.
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Is there a family feud going on between Obama and Senate Democrats? Politico reports that the Senate Dems, the only thing standing between the Dear Leader and the impatient House Republicans, are fed up with his campaign people hogging all the campaign contributions they figure to need as they try to keep their own butts in Senate seats.
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Sucking up to his (fellow?) Muslims isn't getting Obama anywhere in that backwater of humanity called the middle-east.
A July Zogby International survey (for what it is or isn't worth, Mr. Zogby is of Arab descent) of Egyptians found only 5% have a favorable opinion of America, lower than during the George W. Bush administration. And a Pew Research survey taken this spring found that Egyptians overwhelmingly (82%) disapprove of Obama’s handling of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
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There IS good news for Obama. Raul Castro's daughter, devout Cuban communist, endorses him for a second term. With friends like this ...
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Re Obama's Justice Department, headed by the detestable Eric Holder, investigating the Standard & Poor's bond-rating agency that downgraded U.S. government debt: their business IS rating the credit-worthiness of companies AND governments. They are paid for their opinion. Since when is having an opinion a worthy subject of a Justice Department investigation? We have never -- or, at least, since FDR -- had a government with totalitarian, dictatorial instincts to match the Obamunists.
Just one of many examples is the statement by Obama, a man who has never run a business of any kind, telling GM, "You can't just make money on SUVs and trucks. There is a place for SUVs and trucks, but as gas prices keep on going up, you have got to understand the market."
Imagine it! Obama pretending to 'understand the market'!
If anyone at Government Motors was ever foolish enough to think the government bailout wouldn't be accompanied by a heavy hand, this should have disabused them of that foolish notion.
Anyone who isn't concerned about the chosen direction of this bunch of Obama thugs is living in a thumb-sucking fantasyland.
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Robert Reich was Secretary of Labor under Clinton. He now peddles his leftist views as a faculty-member at the University of California-Berkeley while acting as a shill for Obamanomics. He's promoting more government jobs -- taxpayer-paid, of course. I recall my first hour-long conversation with Mr. Reich, well before Clinton's election. I thought then, "This guy is totally full of bullfeathers." I still hold that view. Another dope spawned by liberal academia.
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It is regarded as bad taste by all Democrats and establishment-type Republicans to question Barack Obama's patriotism. Consider his background, nurtured and befriended by America-hating communists and terrorists, along with his actions in office, and some of us have no trouble at all questioning his patriotism. There are two clear choices: either he hates America, or he's utterly, totally incompetent. Of course, he'd respond to anyone taking such a position with the words he used to describe his own grandmother: "typical white person."
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Tony Blankley's response to Obama's whining about Republicans not "putting America first" ...
"In the weeks during and since the debt-ceiling debate, the media, pushed by the Democratic Party, has peddled the propaganda that our government is broken -- because the Republicans in the House of Representatives negotiated a better deal than the liberals wanted.
"While it was President Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner who, during the debate, said they couldn't assure payments of Social Security or interest on the federal debt payments (while Republican leaders guaranteed there would be no lapse in such payments) it was the GOP that the media accused of irresponsible threats."
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From London Dave --
OBAMA'S 3-STAGE ECONOMIC PLAN REVEALED -- MORE KEYNES!
1. Dig hole.
2. Go on vacation.
3. Return. Keep digging hole.
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The political buzz-mill is spinning out speculation that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie IS thinking about entering the presidential race. While I would never, ever, vote for four more years of the frightening clown presently in the White House, snow will be approximately ten feet deep in the southwest corner of hell before I vote for the man who only a few days ago called people who are concerned about Muslim demands for sharia (religious) law "looneys".
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Washington, D.C., has been run by a local Democrat government, backed by a benevolent federal government, for decades. Here's how that's worked out. The poverty rate among D.C. children is 29%.
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Somebody needs to tell the alleged reporter on ABC-TV who said Rick Perry is ignoring "overwhelming scientific evidence of global warming" that such "evidence" is being shot to pieces with revelations of fraud and manipulated "scientific" data that built that bogus edifice in the first place.
In short, the guy on ABC is either a fool or a liar.
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Noticed this? The stupid liberals who infest the Big Media have suddenly stopped rhapsodizing about the "Arab spring."
It's no wonder voters make so many dumb choices. It starts with the fountain of misinformation put out by our media libs.
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Recommended reading for dog lovers: The American Thinker website ... Andrew Bostom ... "Mainstream American Muslim Jurisprudence on Dogs" ... suggesting that Muslims have nothing better to do than give themselves excuses to abuse dogs.
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Warning: alleged comedian Janeane Garofolo is off her meds again. She's now claiming that Herman Cain is a paid stooge.
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Two words of advice for University of Miami president and former Clinton flunky Donna Shalala: get ... out.
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USA Today reports that Burger King is dropping that ridiculous "king" character from their advertising. I suspect the ad-genius who dreamed up that farcical theme will have difficulty finding work.
Having spent years in advertiser-supported media, I have long and often wondered why more businesses -- and their advertising agencies -- haven't adopted a simple and straightforward approach like, "This is my product. It's a good product and gives good value for the price. I think if you try it, you'll like it."
From All Comedy Radio: Burger King is getting rid of its creepy King mascot character. Said a spokesman, “If we wanted a big-headed pervert in our ads we’ll hire Charlie Sheen.”
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Reader Katherine asks ...
Where is Cahoots? I've been to a lot of places but I've never been in Cahoots. Apparently you can't go alone. You have to be in Cahoots with someone.
I've never been in Cognito either. I hear no one recognizes you there. I have, however, been in Sane. They don't have an airport, you have to be driven there.
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Mike passes along this deathless wisdom --
"You come into this world defenseless. That's why God gave us baseball bats. Well, he gave us trees. But we knew what he meant."—Christopher Titus
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Conan O'Brien --
"The White House sent Vice President Joe Biden to China. So now we owe them a trillion dollars AND an apology."
HIS & HERS JETS --
TAXPAYER-PAID
This tells you all you need to know about how the Obamas regard your hard-earned tax dollars. They left only a few hours apart for their luxury vacation on Martha's Vineyard, and took TWO separate taxpayer-paid big jet aircraft with separate security teams for each.
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A would-be dictator. What else would you call an arrogant president who arbitrarily changes our immigration law without consulting Congress as part of his endless pandering to minorities?
He's arbitrarily decided to let 300,000 illegal aliens facing deportation to remain in this country.
And in trying to defend this usurpation of congressional powers, liberals trot out the tired argument that "we can't deport ten or twelve or X-number of millions of illegals."
They totally lack the common sense to realize that if the government does just two things, they will deport THEMSELVES: 1.) Stop all government freebies except for emergency services and 2.) prosecute -- with serious penalties -- employers who hire illegals.
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Arne Duncan, another Obama hack who gets paid to be Secretary of Education, says public education in Gov. Rick Perry's Texas is bad, blah, blah, blah. Where does this piece of flatulence get off, when the government's own assessment shows that 4th and 8th-graders in Texas do FAR better than those in Obama's hometown of Chicago, which he represented in both the Illinois state legislature and the U. S. Senate?
And who was head of that failed Chicago school system? The same Mr. Duncan.
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Among the endless string of excuses Obama has tried to use as an explanation for his miserable performance is the tsunami that struck Japan. Yet a reality-check shows that the big wave seems to have hurt Japan's economy less than our own. How else would one explain the fact that yesterday the Japanese yen hit a new all-time high in value compared to the decaying dollar? For many years, it took 315 yen to equal one dollar. Now less than 75 yen exchange for a battered buck.
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Steve McCann on The American Thinker website summarizes Obama's tired, pathetic strategy to avoid paying the political price for his screw-ups ...
"Barack Obama, the Left and the Democrats are determined to continue their never-ending and over-used drum beat of 'raise taxes on the rich.' While of little practical value in solving the nation's overwhelming debt and deficit problem, this siren song aims to foster class envy, intimidate opponents and foment potential violence. It is the action of a desperate administration and party attempting to obfuscate their abject failure in growing the economy and creating jobs."
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Yet another reason to rid the country of the Obama plague ...
The London Telegraph, a major newspaper, reports that America and Afghanistan are close to signing a strategic pact which would allow thousands of United States troops to remain in the country until at least 2024.
Time to repeat the mantra: "We live ... in a land ... run by morons."
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The U.S. “is living beyond its means and shifting part of the weight of its problems onto the world economy, acting to some extent as a parasite on the global economy ... " -- Vladimir Putin, Russian Prime Minister and former KGB agent.
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How to destroy your corporate image with the public in one fell swoop ...
General Motors is seeking to dismiss a lawsuit over a suspension problem on more than 400,000 Chevrolet Impalas from the 2007 and 2008 model years, saying it should not be responsible for repairs because the flaw predated its bankruptcy. (Reuters news service)
Meantime, GM stock hit a new all-time low yesterday. Coincidence?
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Conservative Republicans need not overly-concern themselves about winning outright in New Hampshire. If voters in other states want to discount Iowa results as being unrepresentative, a tiny New England state is even less representative of a major voting bloc.
South Carolina, the first southern primary state, is another case entirely. While it may be no more representative nationally than Iowa, it is very likely to be the political graveyard for all but one genuinely conservative candidate. Lose there and the hill becomes very steep.
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The (alleged) eagerness among Obamunists to have Rick Perry as an opponent has its roots in the elitist attitude of liberals. They simply can't believe, despite all the polls showing their man to be a smash flop, that Americans would prefer a conservative. They thought the same when Ronald Reagan ran.
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Tick-tock, tick-tock ...
We're now in month six of our involvement in the war in Libya. The war the Big O said we be over "in days, not weeks."
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It must have pained black columnist Charles Blow to write this in the New York Times --
"Barack Obama, the charismatic candidate who electrified the electorate in 2008 and whom many saw as the fulfillment of the dream of the even-more-electrifying Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Yet here Obama is, down in the valley, struggling to connect with the American people and failing, increasingly coming across as dispassionate to some and outright revolting to others."
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Today's liberalese dictionary:
"Social justice" -- the taking of money from people who earned it in order to support criminals and freeloaders.
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John Hinderaker of Powerline addresses the nonentity in the Republican race thusly --
Let’s Put the Huntsman Campaign Out of Its Misery.
I have no idea why Jon Huntsman is running for president, nor do I understand why he is running as a Republican: as I noted last night, Huntsman’s chief strategist says that Republicans are “a bunch of cranks.”
Huntsman has been going after Rick Perry on global warming, apparently thinking that this is the way to curry favor with Republican primary voters. Given that a substantial majority of Americans (let alone Republicans) are deeply skeptical of AGW alarmism, this thinking is puzzling at best.
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According to the French Institute of Public Opinion, there are now more practicing Muslims in France than practicing Catholics. "Practicing" meaning regular attendance at religious services.
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The World Health Organization has some odds you might consider.
Odds that you'll die in a plane crash -- one in ten million.
Odds you'll die of a medical mistake in a hospital -- one in three hundred.
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French actor Gerard Depardieu says he didn't go oui-oui in the aisle of an airliner because he was drunk, Prostate trouble.
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Reader Carrie offers this one --
While looking at a house, my brother asked the estate agent which direction was north because he didn't want the sun waking him up every morning. She asked, 'Does the sun rise in the north?'
My brother explained that the sun rises in the east and has for some time. She shook her head and said, 'Oh, I don't keep up with all that stuff......'
WE'LL KEEP PAYING FOR OBAMA'S G.M.
TAKEOVER
Re the GM refusal to fix a problem with some of the junk vehicles they turned out before their bankruptcy and takeover by the government: Obama said 2 1/2 years ago that the taxpayers are on the hook to make good on any warranties the Motown mob refuses to cover.
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Simpletons -- the kind of people who make up Obama's core support -- like to believe his nonsense about solving our debt problem by "higher taxes on the rich". In fact, the Tax Foundation ran the numbers and found that taking half of the yearly income from every person making between one and ten million dollars would only decrease the nation's debt by 1%. Such nostrums are nonsense for the ignorant.
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Peter Wehner in COMMENTARY has this regarding Obama's attempt to portray himself as a Washington "outsider" ...
"There is a term in psychiatry for what Mr. Obama is attempting to pull off: dissociative disorder. It’s considered to be a coping mechanism, when the person literally dissociates himself from a situation or experience too traumatic to integrate with his conscious self.
"I don’t for a moment think that the president actually suffers from this disorder. But what is revealing is that he’s acting as if he does — and he’s pursuing a strategy that assumes the public will let him get away with it."
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Obama and the Democrats have a dilemma manifesting itself as schizophrenia. While still trying to blame the Obama recession (depression?) on Bush, they're so afraid of conservative Governor Rick Perry that they're simultaneously contrasting him with that "nice" Mr. Bush. You know ... the "compassionate conservative" Bush, known to some Republicans as the RINO because he began the expanded government spending that Obama multiplied many times over.
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“It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected.’’ Democratic Party founder and icon Thomas Jefferson, 1821.
Mr. Jefferson, it seems, might well approve of Rick Perry's goal of "making the (federal) government inconsequential".
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Wondering out-loud ...
When the anticipated rolling blackouts of electric power start sweeping the country in January as new EPA regulations limit the output of coal-fired generating plants, will that spark enough public outrage to put that destructive government appendage out of business once and for all? In a sane world, every responsible executive in that crackpot agency would be imprisoned.
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The boneheads from Berkeley (CA) who thought it would be fun to go for a stroll along Iraq's border with Iran are paying for their stupidity. The two men already held in Iran for more than two years have been convicted as spies and sentenced to eight years' jail.
Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were arrested on July 31, 2009 near Iran's border with Iraq, along with a third American, Sarah Shourd, who was freed on $500,000 bail in September 2010 and returned home.
It remains possible that Muslim clemency could be granted, as is traditional, at the end of the fasting month, which will be toward the end of next week. If they get so lucky, maybe the experience has enlivened their feeble brains.
- - - - -
As if another reason were needed to disqualify New Jersey blowhard Governor Chris Christie from serious consideration as a possible Republican presidential nominee ... he's a true believer in the Al Gore "global warming" fraud. His only asset appears to be his ability to bully state legislators in a state which badly needs such bullying.
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Trivial information useful for boring friends ...
Paradise Island, Bahamas, home to the giant Atlantis resort, originally had a less-glamorous name. Hog Island. The name was changed when development as a tourist attraction was begun by Huntington Hartford, the A & P grocery-chain heir.
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Is Democrat media shill Bob Beckel really, really stupid, or is it just an act he puts on to entertain viewers?
- - - - -
Reader Katherine provides a language lesson.
The English language has some wonderfully anthropomorphic collective nouns for the various groups of animals.
We are all familiar with a Herd of cows, a Flock of chickens, a School of fish and a Gaggle of geese.
However, less widely known are: a Pride of lions, a Murder of crows (as well as their cousins the rooks and ravens), an Exaltation of doves (and larks) and, presumably because they look so wise, a Parliament of owls.
Now consider a group of Baboons. They are the loudest, most dangerous, most obnoxious, most viciously aggressive and least intelligent of all primates. And what is the proper collective noun for a group of baboons?
Believe it or not ....... a Congress!
- - - - -
Martin provides some classics from the era when Burma Shave signs were common alongside our highways. They were small red signs with white letters. Five signs, about 100 feet apart, each containing 1 line of a 4 line couplet......and the obligatory 5th sign advertising Burma Shave.
> DROVE TOO LONG
> DRIVER SNOOZING
> WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
> IS NOT AMUSING
> BURMA SHAVE
>
> BROTHER SPEEDER
> LET'S REHEARSE
> ALL TOGETHER
> GOOD MORNING, NURSE
> BURMA SHAVE
>
> A GUY WHO DRIVES
> A CAR WIDE OPEN
> IS NOT THINKIN'
> HE'S JUST HOPIN'
> BURMA SHAVE
>
> THE ONE WHO DRIVES
> WHEN HE'S BEEN DRINKING
> DEPENDS ON YOU
> TO DO HIS THINKING
> BURMA SHAVE
>
> CAR IN DITCH
> DRIVER IN TREE
> THE MOON WAS FULL
> AND SO WAS HE.
> BURMA SHAVE
"IT'S NOT MY FAULT!" plus DAFFY
KHADAFY, "JOB TRAINING", etc.
The delusional president went on CBS Sunday to make the argument that people are mad at Congress, and that's why HIS popularity is going downhill. Uh-huh ...
- - - - -
A serious question for Republicans to ponder. Which of their candidates (and prospective candidates) is most likely to, out of frustration, decide to run as a third-party candidate and thus ensure the re-election of Obama?
- - - - -
Rex Murphy in Canada's National Post takes note of Obama's virtual abandonment of the greenies and the Al Gore nonsense about global warming --
"Where is President Obama, who promised that on his accession "the rise of the oceans will start to slow and the planet begin to heal?" - surely the most fatuous declaration in the history of politics. Well, he appears to be giving speeches every second day, but none of them feature the retreating oceans or our healed planet.
In fact he's been tooling around in a $2-million bus oblivious of the carbon costs, and there simply hasn't been any signal that his White House is giving the great Gore crusade anything but the barest of rhetorical support. If there were any political value to ardent greensmanship, surely a President who is floundering on the economy and sinking in the polls would have grabbed that raft with a passion."
- - - - -
Obama's latest inspired idea for dealing with his recession: yet another government "job training" program. How many of these scams have we seen, and how many of their alumni have EVER gotten real jobs? These boondoggles achieve just one thing: they put money in the pockets of the politically-favored con-artists who run them.
- - - - -
The uprising in Libya that Obama told us would be over "in days, not weeks" appears to have finally ended after almost six months. Now the question is whether the governance of Libya will resolve in a real democracy or another bastion of Muslim fanaticism.
Senator John McCain and his stooge, Lindsay Graham, say we "should be proud" of our role in Libya. We'll see in a few months if that pride is, in fact, justified. The rebel leadership has already put out a message saying, "Allahu Akbar!" Where have we heard THAT before? Oh, yes -- from the terrorists who flew the planes on 9/11.
You will notice -- again -- that the starry-eyed liberal media are regurgitating less nonsense about the "Arab spring" now that it's clear that democracy as we know it isn't exactly flowering in those nations where expectations (among the naive) were highest.
Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton on Libya: " ... there are many others in the opposition ... that NATO has said publicly who are radical supporters of terrorists — al-Qaeda.”
Meantime, the U. S., the U. N. and NATO leave Assad untouched in Syria. And the difference is???
- - - - -
From Star Parker, black American woman and political commentator:
"Election of our nation's first black president is delivering an unexpected message to our black population. Blacks are discovering that what a man or woman does -- their actions -- is what matters, not the color of their skin.
"It seems ridiculous to point out that this was supposedly the point of the civil rights movement. Purge racism from America. But blacks themselves have been the ones having the hardest time letting it go.
"Now blacks have a dilemma. We have a black president and blacks are worse off. Not just a little, but a lot worse off. Maybe a real bonus that will have come from electing a black president is that blacks will take seriously Dr. King's dream that we judge men by their character and not their color."
- - - - -
The White House dunce may think he can con American voters into a backdoor amnesty for illegals, but they aren't buying it. The latest Rasmussen Reports poll of likely voters shows that 61% say gaining control of the border is most important when it comes to immigration reform, while only 31% say it’s more important to legalize the status of the illegal immigrants who are already here.Of course, to a tyranically-minded president who obviously believes in bypassing Congress on such issues, public opinion doesn't mean much.
What kind of warped mental state would lead a president to believe that, with unemployment rampant, most Americans would be content to see jobs going to illegals who have no right to be here?
- - - - -
Is there anything in the political world more entertaining than watching erstwhile Obama supporters wringing their hands and asking, "What if we'd nominated Hillary instead?"
- - - - -
You think Barack and Michelle are milking their expensive vacation for all it's worth in the expectation that there may not be many more such excesses in their future?
- - - - -
John McCain tells CBS that Sarah Palin hasn't asked him for advice about running for president. Smart move, Sarah!
- - - - -
Is this questionable timing, as many voters sulk over Obama's luxury vacation? The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that Mitt Romney has filed an application to bulldoze his 3000-square foot, $12 million oceanfront house in La Jolla in order to build another one four times larger.
- - - - -
Notice how the liberal media are falling all over themselves trying to hype the moribund campaign of the feckless Jon Huntsman? Of COURSE they like him! He's a pale imitation (take that in both senses) of Obama!
- - - - -
Clarice Feldman on The American Thinker website holds a mirror up to the Democrats ...
"I think sentient Democrats are watching their party's chances in 2012 slip away, and had they not made such a big deal of claiming all opposition to Obama was racist in motivation and effect (see, e.g., this) , they would now be urging him to quit and seeking a new contender for his office. Like Coleridge's ancient Mariner, however, they can only stand on deck with that albatross around their neck watching both the White House and the Senate slip from their grasp just as did so many state governorships and the House of Representatives. In the meantime the Ship of State runs aground on the shoals of incompetence, corruption and laughable idiocy."
- - - - -
What is poverty in the eyes of most Americans? Rasmussen survey asked, and found that 51% believe a family that has two color TVs, a VCR and a DVD player is not living in poverty. Sixteen percent (16%) say a family like that is poor. Thirty-three percent (33%) are undecided ... or suffer from a severe rectal-cranial inversion.
- - - - -
California unemployment is up from 11.8% to 12%, second only to Nevada with its empty hotels and casinos. Yet a voting majority of Californians keep electing crazy people to office and applaud them as they make policies that discourage business and therefore hiring. Maybe it's something in the water ...
- - - - -
How long after dictatorial EPA head Lisa Jackson tries to enforce a regulation that will drastically cut electricity generation (starting January 1) before the head of some power company tells her to go to hell and dares her to do anything about it?
The idea of killing a large portion of the nation's electric power and putting millions more Americans out of work as a result is so beyond stupid, it's almost incomprehensible. These idiotic greenie fantasies MUST be stopped.
- - - - -
Here's a backhanded endorsement of the Tea Party. Maximum Marxist Madwoman Cong. Maxine Waters of California says they can "go to hell". Wonder how many votes that's worth?
- - - - -
A voice from the heartland on the phading phenomenon of Obama --
E. Thomas McClanahan writes in The Kansas City Star ...
"Within the last two weeks, the country seems to have reached a tipping point — a moment when the doubts about President Obama crystallized in the minds of many more voters than those inclined to root for Republicans. This president has begun to lose his base.
"Obama isn’t evil or even especially devious. That would at least make him more interesting. He is more like the pedantic hall monitor you’re tired of seeing, the guy who won’t stop harping on the same stuff."
- - - - -
This is circulating on the web and it provides good reasons to question the competence of an ever-expanding government:
To President Obama and all 535 voting members of the Legislature.
It is now official that the majority of you are corrupt morons:
A. The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. You have had 236 years to get it right and it is broke.
B. Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 76 years to get it right and it is broke.
C. Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 73 years to get it right and it is broke.
D. War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 47 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor" and they only want more.
E. Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 46 years to get it right and they are broke.
F. Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 41 years to get it right and it is broke.
G. The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 34 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.
You have FAILED in every "government service" you have shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars. AND YOU WANT AMERICANS TO BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED WITH A GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM ??
- - - - -
Don't media people owe a debt of gratitude to the late Dizzy Dean? Didn't he, after all, introduce the word "snuck" into our national vocabulary? And aren't more media people using it?
- - - - -
Got a bet down yet on how long Kim Kardashian's latest marriage will last? I'm in for Groundhog Day.
- - - - -
Just asking. What ever happened to Paris Hilton?
- - - - -
Mangled metaphors ...
When writing admiringly of a person who carries on despite difficulties, some write, "He/she is a real trooper." It sounds the same, but the word is TROUPER, as in a member of a theatrical troupe who goes on with the show despite illness or obstruction.
- - - - -
From the dismaying "They Walk Among Us" collection:
"I work with an individual who plugged her power strip back into itself and couldn't understand why her system would not turn on."
- - - - -
Yesterday we had a collection of classic Burma-Shave signs. It brought this response from reader Seth, who saw a derivation of the genre ...
"A shot of tequila
a cold beer on tap
a pretty young lady
to dance on your lap"
It was an advertisement for a whorehouse outside Ely, NV.
PALIN TURNING PALE? WHERE
GOEST KHADAFY? ... and more
Palin fans won't like this, but here it is. Rasmussen, with the best track record among pollsters, finds that if the election were held today (as far as I know, it isn't) Obama would defeat her badly, by a margin of 50% to 33%.That's the biggest projected win over any Republican candidate, present or prospective.
- - - - -
Since more and more Democrats have come to realize that their best -- perhaps only -- chance of retaining the White House is a different candidate in 2012, why shouldn't they grasp an obvious alternative and persuade Jon Huntsman to follow his natural inclination and switch parties? After all, he has absolutely zero chance of winning the nod from Republicans.
- - - - -
The Pentagon says the bill for our participation in Libya runs to (so far) $896 billion -- and still counting. Is it too early to ask if we got our money's worth? Care to bet Libya won't become another hotbed of Islamic fanaticism?
- - - - -
Prospective homes-in-exile for deposed dictator Khadafy of Libya are said to be Cuba and Venezuela. Wonder how our own commie-loving lefties would feel about their heroes, Castro and Chavez, giving shelter to one of the world's most notorious and murderous tyrants? Of course, they've already accepted the principle by their embrace of the two thugs.
- - - - -
How does Sharia law conflict with our own law, aside from abuse of women? Consider what's going on right now in Britain, where Muslim groups are calling for a separate student loan system because the interest due to be charged will conflict with rules of Sharia law, which does not permit interest.
- - - - -
Let's hope that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who thinks people concerned about the attempted insinuation of Sharia (Muslim religious law) into America's courts are "looneys", takes note of this item from the Detroit News. The Detroit area, of course, is the most heavily Muslim-populated region in America.
"Opposition is mounting among Muslims against pending legislation that would ban Michigan courts from considering "foreign laws" — including Sharia, or Islamic law.
"Similar measures are under consideration in 25 other state legislatures, and supporters say the protections are needed."
Clearly, concerned legislators in more than half the states have concluded that the attempts at stealthy infiltration of medieval Muslim law IS a serious concern, and Christie is a fool.
- - - - -
How's this for irony -- or insanity? Just as the White House idiot is hyping all-electric (plug-in) cars, his stupid head of the EPA announces a regulation on generating plants that will cut the nation's electricity supply by 20%. Is there anyone with a functioning brain in this zoo of an administration?
- - - - -
If this doesn't scare hell out of you, it should. Obama is running up the national debt at the rate of $3 million -- A MINUTE!
Either we've given the checkbook to a lunatic, or he IS -- as many suspect -- deliberately wrecking the economy.
- - - - -
Mark Steyn in National Review Online shreds Obama's last week’s pre-Martha (Martha's Vineyard) bit of ersatz presidential theater in the less fashionable zip codes of Minnesota:
Passing trade deals is something that “Congress can do right now,” remarked Obama at a town hall meeting in Cannon Falls, Minnesota.
Really?
The truth is that Congress can’t do anything on free trade agreements “right now,” because the President has yet to send the agreements to Congress for final approval.
Oh.
- - - - -
What's obvious to the public is ignored by politicians.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 71% of American Adults say the bigger problem with welfare programs in the United States is that too many people get welfare who should not be getting it. Just 18% say the bigger issue is that too many people who should receive welfare do not get it.
- - - - -
The Hill newsletter reports that dozens of Wall Street executives who were big-time contributors to Obama in 2008 are giving to the Romney campaign this time. Which suggests the question: does this say more about Obama ... or Romney?
Romney has a disconcerting tendency to tilt politically in ways that remind one of the classic implied slogan of the RINO wing of the Republican party: "We're just like the Democrats, only a little less."
Really worked for John "Reach Across the Aisle" McCain, didn't it?
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The 43rd annual Gallup poll on public opinion of public education reveals why nothing substantive has been done -- or WILL be done -- to fix our generally wretched schools. While most respondents — 79 percent — said they would award an A or a B grade to their own child’s school, an all-time low of 17 percent gave the same positive review of the country’s schools overall.
In other words, it's the same thing they say about their member of Congress: "Mine's fine, but all the others are awful." It's the ostrich, head-in-the-sand attitude which precludes serious action on a serious problem.
- - - - -
Jed Babbin in The American Spectator ...
"From the golf courses of Martha's Vineyard to the shores of Tripoli, President Obama's re-election strategy is running out of steam. As our economy remains stalled and unemployment remains high, it's tougher and tougher for even Obama's closest allies to swallow his 'it's all the Republicans' fault' line.
"If he can't shift the blame, he can't win. But the Teflon has worn off. Unless the media can save him -- or the Republicans nominate another John McCain -- Obama will be 'one and done.'"
- - - - -
Obama's new title: "The Fresh Prince of Hot Air".
- - - - -
Today's recommended reading ... The American Spectator website ... Ron Ross ... "The Liberals' Reality Problem" ... from which:
"There is ...much about human nature that bothers liberals. They do not like the fact that self-interest is the prime motivator in human decision making. This is at the root of why they speak so disdainfully of profits. The profit motive makes them cringe."
- - - - -
Oil prices are down, but gasoline prices up. Hmmm ...
- - - - -
Glenn Beck may find it more difficult to attract a following without the platform of Fox News for support. His latest speech/sermon in Israel only drew about 3,000 -- mostly Americans. This may not bode well for his internet telecast ventures.
In another example of the perils of abandoning your foundation, Oprah's cable venture is dying on the vine.
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I like football. A lot. Used to broadcast major college games. It is, however, beyond a rational mind to try and understand -- or explain -- so-called "fans" whose own identity and masculinity are so shallow as to need reinforcement with the kind of shooting and beating that took place after the annual 49'ers-Raiders exhibition game. Which, as a result, won't be played again. That's from ESPN.
Do these savages not realize that professional football players wear the jersey of a particular city because they are paid to do so? That their performance has nothing to do with the real lives of the customers who pay to watch them or with the communities they supposedly "represent"?
I regard the animals who perpetrated those crimes as subhumans who need, at the very least, to be permanently removed from society; perhaps removing them from the gene pool entirely is justified.
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On his visit to Mongolia, VP Joe Biden was given a horse. That was an extravagant gift. All he needed was the front part to complete him.
- - - - -
Dan Sorkin passes along some statistics for the Year 1910:
The average life expectancy for men was 47 years.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.
The average US wage was 22 cents per hour.
The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME.
Ninety percent of all Doctors had no college education. Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were substandard by any measure.
Sugar cost four cents a pound.; eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
The population of Las Vegas , Nevada , was 30.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write and only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
Pharmacists said, 'Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health'.
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U. S. A. !
- - - - -
Reader Art has a followup to the georgraphy lesson of a few days ago ...
" It got me thinking about where I've been over my life.
In my younger years I spend a lot of time in Fatuation. Lots of cute girls and good looking women everywhere you turn.
"After I was married and became more aware of what politicians really do, I spent much more time in Furiated. It was during those years I began listening to you. Coincidence?
"Now that the kids are grown and gone I suspect I will permamently be in Fertile, thanks to my wife giving a Vasec to me.
"And while I wish I could have spent more time being in Credible over the years, I'm glad I'm not spending my senior years in Continent!"
ANALYSIS? ONLY THE FIRST
HALF OF THE WORD APPLIES
In their desperate flailing to try to save a failed president, liberals and their media mouthpieces have resorted to surveys showing Congress OVERALL is even more unpopular than the president. Overlooking the fact that HALF of Congress -- the upper house, the Senate -- is still controlled by the Democrats, this "analysis" violates common sense because every election demonstrates that, however much people dislike Congress AS A WHOLE, they overwhelmingly re-elect their own representative. So, in the real world of election politics, dislike of Congress means nothing. Either the media types who continue to propagate the "Congress is more unpopular than Obama" campaign slogan are stupid themselves, or they assume most voters are. And ... they may be right.
- - - - -
What is wrong with this picture? Obama has Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric, as his advisor on job creation. That's the same General Electric that's still cutting jobs in this country and sending them to China.
- - - - -
The national wake-up call about Obama seems to be getting through.
The Gallup Poll now shows his public disapproval vs. approval rating at 54% to 38%.
...and...
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that 19% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-five percent (45%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of minus-26, a new record low.
And somewhere, Jimmy Carter is chortling, "See? It COULD get worse!"
- - - - -
This NY Post item reminds us of the price of having leftist crazies running the country ...
"President Obama can take credit for a boom in at least one economic sector: Since he took office, employment has surged 13 percent at federal regulatory agencies. The regulators’ budgets are up 16 percent, according to a May report by Washington University and George Washington University. That’s before some major administration regulatory initiatives -- the financial-reform bill and the health-care overhaul -- are fully implemented."
- - - - -
If you follow the news, you know that VP Joe Biden has -- again -- been making an utter fool of himself on his trip to China. This is bound to fuel more rumors that the Bamster will dump him from the ticket by convention-time next year.
- - - - -
“The largest single barrier to full employment of our manpower and resources, and to a higher rate of economic growth, is the unrealistically heavy drag of federal income taxes on private purchasing power, initiative and incentive.” – President John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963.
A message today's Democrats have forgotten.
- - - - -
Aaron Goldstein in The American Spectator reminds us what it's like to be young (or not) and foolish ...
"When Barack Obama was elected President of the United States on November 4, 2008, liberals were literally dancing in the streets. The Anointed One was going to move into the White House to excise the demons cast by the big, bad George W. Bush and bring about a New America. For liberals, it was as if The Messiah had finally arrived.
"We were all young once indeed. But the young usually have to learn things the hard way and so it is with Obama."
- - - - -
A crazed Democrat Congresswoman from Florida named Frederica Wilson went on Democrat shill network CNBC and blamed "racism" for the high black unemployment rate.
I wonder if this stupid nothing has noticed that she shares a complexion with the bad joke President of the United States, under whom unemployment has drastically increased?
- - - - -
While the Virginia quake would have been seen as a minor annoyance by Californians more accustomed to tremors, it did cause the White House to be evacuated. Call it coincidence, but while that plush mental institution was uninhabited. the stock market went up.
- - - - -
Here's what the "Arab spring" has brought: News headline ...
"Egyptian Protesters Outside Israeli Embassy Bear Signs with Swastikas: ‘The Gas Chambers Are Ready’."
Doesn't that make you Obama sheeple and "Arab spring" fantasists just feel warm and fuzzy all over?!
- - - - -
What Obama is too stupid to learn ...
In May 1939, shortly after learning that unemployment stood at 20.7%, Henry Morgenthau, Roosevelt's Secretary of the Treasury, stated: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. After eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . . And an enormous debt to boot!”
And yet Obama has a constituency of economic illiterates, manipulated by devious Democrat politicians, who think endless borrowing is perfectly acceptable. Perhaps they reflect a personal lifetime of living on credit and think it normal and natural.
- - - - -
Today's recommended reading: "The American Spectator" website ... Peter Ferrara ... "The Downward Spiral" ... from which:
"Rising inflation is restricting the Fed's options for keeping the economy high on monetary stimulus crack. The result? Fast-developing market chaos. On account of President Obama's economic policies, the economy never recovered from the last recession. Now it may go back into full scale recession before any recovery occurs. We may soon be living through a reenactment of the 1930s, not the 1970s. If we do not change course, there will be a double dip recession by 2013, directly caused by the economic policies Obama already has in place under current law.
"And now we have riots in Obama's Amerika, kept quiet by the media, echoing the violence in London."
- - - - -
My friend Arlys passes this along ...
The U.S. Congress sets a federal budget every year in the trillions of dollars. Few people know how much money that is so we created a breakdown of federal spending into simple terms. Let's put the 2011 federal budget into perspective:
U.S.income: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000 (about 1 percent of the budget)
It helps to think about these numbers in terms that we can relate to. Therefore, let's remove eight zeros from these numbers and pretend this is the household budget for the fictitious Jones family.
Total annual income for the Jones family: $21,700
Amount of money the Jones family spent: $38,200
Amount of new debt added to the credit card: $16,500
Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
Amount cut from the budget: $385 (!)
- - - - -
Sam offers this one from Scandanavian-America...
Ole was hunting geese up in the slough.
He leaned the old 12 gauge against the corner of the blind to go wee-wee, and as luck would have it, the dog knocks the gun over, it goes off and Ole took most of an ounce of buckshot in the groin.
Several hours later, lying in a hospital bed, he comes to and there is his doctor, Sven.
"Vell Ole, I got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that you are going to be OK. The damage was local to your groin, there was very little internal damage, and we were able to remove all of the buckshot."
"What's the bad news?" asks Ole.
"The bad news is that there was some pretty extensive buckshot damage done to your penis. I'm going to have to refer you to my sister, Lena."
"Well, I guess that isn't too bad," says Ole. "Is your sister a plastic surgeon?"
"Not exactly," Sven says. "She's a flute player in the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra. She's going to teach you where to put your fingers so you don't pee in your eye."
DON'T SIT UNDER what TREE? plus THE
PERRY TSUNAMI
Stock to watch today: Apple. How much, if at all, will Steve Jobs' relinquishing the CEO position affect investor sentiment? He IS the company's identity to many people, yet given his lengthy illness his choice to reduce his workload is hardly a surprise. (This is written at 5AM, Pacific time, long before the market opens..)
- - - - -
We could tag Jon Huntsman as "The Incredible Shrinking Candidate" were it not for the fact that nobody cared much about him in the first place. Nevertheless, he has another endorsement sure to diminish his appeal even more. He's given kudos by former Democrat presidential candidate and party chairman, screaming Howard Dean.
Jimmy Carter has also spoken admiringly of him. With friends like this ...
- - - - -
Rick Perry may have a lot of mud to wade thru on the way to the Republican nomination, but as you hear/read the easily-anticipated hysterical attacks from the leftist media as well as Democrat party flacks, remember this: change his name in every story to Ronald Reagan, and suddenly you're in 1980 again.
- - - - -
It's too early to say if Mr. Perry is -- or should be -- the ultimate Republican nominee, but one thing is already clear. He's put a serious dent in the prospects for the wishy-washy flip-flopper, the darling of the RINO establishment, Mr. Romney. This is not to say that Mittens wouldn't be a vast improvement over the present White House occupant.
- - - - -
NBC, current holder of the title "Biggest Whores in Broadcast Media", despite abundant competition from the other liberal suck-ups that dominate the industry, somehow found it possible -- and desirable -- not to mention that it was Florida REPUBLICAN Senator Marco Rubio who saved Nancy Reagan from a potentially serious fall when she attended a public event. Since Sen. Rubio is a rising star, being prominently mentioned as a possible VP choice, NBC's "reporter" chose to label him as simply the "somebody" who broke her fall.
(Apologies to honest whores for lumping you with the likes of media liberals.)
- - - - -
Liberals in the media are engaged in the usual goo-goo hand-wringing over the fact that Governor Perry holds the record among current governors for the most executions carried out during his tenure. Rational people, of course, look at the violence being perpetrated by youth mobs in many of our cities and conclude the public would be safer if other law enforcement agencies, courts and governors had the cojones to terminate more of these barbarians. We know very well there will be threats to decent citizens and/or parasites on society for as long as they're on the planet, anyway, and the gene pool would be vastly improved by their absence.
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Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch won't have to face his strongest potential competitor in a Republican primary in Utah, after all. Cong. Jason Chaffetz, who was widely regarded as a real threat to Hatch, has decided not to run. This virtually assures the late Ted Kennedy's great and good friend, Mr. Hatch, will be around for another term. The RINO rides again!
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Remember how electing a black president was supposed to improve America's race relations? That was a favorite liberal fantasy. And it hasn't worked out. Gallup Poll finds ... only 35% of Americans think that situation has improved vs. 41% who believed it to be the case in October of 2009. Further ... 23% say things have gotten worse, a notch more than held that dismal view two years ago.
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We have yet another reason to believe that about half of all government bureaucrats should be fired, if not imprisoned. Idle minds at the Labor Department have occupied themselves by writing new and elaborate regulations regarding the working conditions of ... goat-herders.
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Blathering Biden, the joke Vice-President, made a speech to college students in China. Asked about the importance of public speaking, Biden emphasized the importance of brevity -- and took 863 words to do it.
(Thanks to Terry Jeffrey of CNS News for the word-count.)
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Thank Obamacare for this ...
Nearly one of every 10 mid-size or big employers expects to stop offering health coverage to workers once federal insurance exchanges start in 2014, according to a new survey from a large benefits consultant. Towers Watson also found in a survey completed last month that an additional 20 percent of the companies are unsure about what they will do.
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You may recall that media liberals had an ongoing hissy-fit when John Ashcroft headed the Justice Department? My God! He was a conservative! He believed in an Almighty! Yet those same bias-obsessed libs have no interest in the absolute reality that Eric Holder has stocked the department with fanatical lefties from such groups as “Queer Resistance Front,” “Intersex Society of North America,” and of course People for the American Way, better identified as "People for the Communist Way".
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Rich Lowry of National Review defines Obama's conversion to a compromiser ...
"It’s easy to pinpoint the moment when Pres. Barack Obama became a tireless advocate of compromise — when he no longer had the power to force whatever he wanted through Congress. Then, he suddenly switched his pitch from 'Hope and Change' to 'Gee, I Hope We Can Work Something Out.'
"Many of the same commentators who hailed Obama’s voice of righteous purity in 2008 now praise his call for splitting differences in 2011. To them, he’s equally thoughtful and brave whether he’s passionately extolling “principle” and “conviction,” or doggedly insisting that progress is possible only through “common ground and compromise.” By definition, whatever is Obama’s current tack deserves the support of all right-minded people".
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This is an "expose"? Is any car-owner surprised to read in Time magazine that dealer shops usually charge more than independent auto service establishments for the same parts and repairs? Who do you think pays for all those balloons, giant flags and arm-waving inflatable giants?
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Making the rapid rounds on the internet ...
"Scientists have determined the earthquake affecting Washington, D.C. was caused by the Founding Fathers simultaneously rolling over in their graves... "
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The unstated political philosophy of the left: any person who believes in God is disqualified as a political candidate, whereas those who believe in the failed economic "religion" of Marx and Keynes is to be admired.
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The Martin Luther King monument is disgraceful. First because it was done in ... China! Secondly, because -- as Cliff Kincaid accurately points out -- it looks like something out of the Stalin era in the old USSR. If black Americans aren't outraged, they should be.
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Today's recommended reading ... The American Spectator website ... Victor Sperandeo ... "The Fed's Philosopher King" ... from which:
"Meet Ben Bernanke: the dollar's whimsical "Philosopher King," and the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve. He is arguably the most powerful person in the world, with powers far surpassing those imagined when his position was created. Who knew the Fed Chairman could become so influential?
"Well, perhaps there are some who foresaw the potential. In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx listed ten absolute principles for overturning capitalism. Number five on his list is the most relevant when discussing the Federal Reserve: 'Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly'."
The appointment of the ludicrous Bernanke to be the god of America's money will be an everlasting stain on the name of George W. Bush, who appointed the pompous fool, and Barack Obama, who continued the charade.
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Health update for those kind enough to inquire ...
I'm doing well in my rehabilitation from five surgeries in 5 1/2 months of hospitalization. I hit the gym for a strenuous workout four times a week and swim a non-stop quarter-mile almost every day. I'm probably in overall better health than in years. Those years of fourteen-hour days starting before midnight to do a morning drivetime program before the microphone do take a toll, and I have no desire to repeat it. Besides, the industry is now run by a bunch of charlatans. I've been approached with proposals for further broadcasting work but, while flattered, I've rejected them all.
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A friend calls my attention to this purportedly true news item ...
George Phillips, an elderly man, from Walled Lake, Michigan, was going up to bed, when his wife told him that he'd left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light, but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things.
He phoned the police, who asked "Is someone in your house?"
He said "No," but some people are breaking into my garden shed and stealing from me.
Then the police dispatcher said "All patrols are busy. You should lock your doors and an officer will be along when one is available"
George said, "Okay."
He hung up the phone and counted to 30. Then he phoned the police again.
"Hello, I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people stealing things from my shed. Well, you don't have to worry about them now because I just shot and killed them both, the dogs are eating them right now." and he hung up.
Within five minutes, six Police Cars, a SWAT Team, a Helicopter, two Fire Trucks, a Paramedic, and an Ambulance showed up at the Phillips' residence, and caught the burglars red-handed.
One of the Policemen said to George, "I thought you said that you'd shot them!"
George said, "I thought YOU said there was nobody available!"
DEBRIS FROM HURRICANE OBAMA
Status report: America ... the only country in the world where (some) people complain about the economy and $3.50 gasoline while drinking a $5 cup of coffee.
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Let's see ...
The economy in shambles ... unemployment rampant ... foreign policy a disaster ... military preparedness systematically reduced ... our space program dead ...
How'd you like to be a campaign strategist trying to put a good face on all this for an Obama re-election campaign?
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Obama gets poll-axed again. From Rasmussen ... just 14% of voters believe the U.S. is generally heading in the right direction. That’s the lowest level of the Obama Administration.
As you likely know, Gallup Poll has Obama at 38% public approval. Others have him in even worse shape. As the Gallup organization puts it, "Ten incumbent presidents have sought re-election since World War II, and none has won a second term with final pre-election job approval ratings below 48 percent. The last two presidents who lost their re-election bids—George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter—had job approval ratings in the 30 percent range in the fall of the election year. Thus, Obama's challenge is not only to move his rating back above 40 percent, but also to push it close to or above 50 percent."
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Mort Zuckerman in the Wall Street Journal ...
"Fewer Americans are working full-time today than when Mr. Obama took office. We have lost over 900,000 full-time jobs in the last four months alone, and long-term unemployment is at a post-World War II high. The public's faith in his ability to deal with the economy has plunged. As Doyle McManus of the L.A. Times put it, 'Can this president persuade voters to let him keep his job when so many have lost theirs?'"
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Question for Obama voters: what did this man EVER do that led you to believe he was capable of guiding the largest economy in the world?
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Here is an evil government in action. The Obama/Bernanke axis steals from people who have practiced thrift and common sense by cranking out more near-worthless paper money, thereby devaluing savings, while simultaneously ginning up more programs to benefit society's deadbeats and parasites.
If anything, Rick Perry's expressed attitude toward Bernanke, who is nothing more than a legalized counterfeiter, was TOO mild.
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Consider the irony. Obama's top "jobs advisor", Jeffrey Immelt of GE, fires American workers in order to hire more in China, while Obama's idiotic administration tries to prevent Boeing from opening a plant in South Carolina because it makes some Seattle union thugs unhappy!
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The Romney flip-flops continue. Now that the whole boondoggle is being systematically shredded by real science, Mittens is backing away from his support for Al Gore's global-warming scam. His entire persona is that of a Ponzi-scheme promoter. And he will NEVER live down his wreck of a health-care program in Massachusetts.
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If the early polling is anywhere near accurate, the Rick Perry entry into the Republican race has -- as was widely expected -- pretty much killed Michele Bachmann's chances for the nomination. There IS an outside chance of a VP selection for the Congresswoman. However, her frequent outbreaks of foot-in-mouth disease make even that questionable.
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Rick Perry to Laura Ingraham: "I am not an establishment figure, never have been and frankly I don’t want to be. I dislike Washington; I think it’s a seedy place. Our country is in trouble and I don’t have the privilege to sit on the sideline and watch our country be destroyed economically by a president who has been conducting an experiment on the American economy for the last two and half years."
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An Egyptian Muslim fanatic who tore down the Israeli flag from the Jewish nation's embassy in Cairo has been rewarded by the government with a job and a new house. Part of the "Arab spring"?
... AND ...
Iran's own news agency reports that Iranian President Ahmadenijad repeated that the Muslim nation was determined to eradicate Israel.
And to think we have American goo-goos who are so terminally stupid they believe peaceful deals can be made with these crazed barbarians.
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Wonder what A.P. Giannini, the legendary founder of Bank of America, would think of a politically-connected corporate vulture like Buffett buying a major share in the institution he created?
Obama and Buffett talked by phone just before the purchase. Wonder if the Big O gave one of his biggest supporters any hint to the effect, say, that the government would make sure BofA not only survived, but thrived?
Just asking ...
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Just to get libs PO'd to start the day, I state categorically that Dick Cheney was/is smarter in five minutes than Obama, Biden and the whole silly Cabinet will be in their entire lives.
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If you largely agree with the views expressed in this column, forward it to a friend or acquaintance. If you disagree, forward it -- and explain why.
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The Russian space station-bound spacecraft freighter that exploded and crashed is powered by the same rocket that is used to send up astronauts. The same rocket-ride for which our government, having effectively killed our own space program, is going to spend $63 million per seat, per ride, for our astronauts to take the next dozen trips up to the space station. Gives one pause for thought ...
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By now you've seen the photos of the devoted dog who lay beside the coffin of his friend and master at the funeral of the Navy SEAL who died in Afghanistan. Contrast that with the attitude held by many Muslims that dogs are "unclean" and therefore fit objects of abuse and killing. Then draw your own conclusions about which the world would be better off without.
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If we had a real president, his first goal after Khadafy is overthrown would be the recapture and hanging of the murderous Libyan swine who placed the bomb aboard the PanAm flight that went down near Lockerbie, Scotland. The man the British stupidly released because he was supposedly terminal with cancer. It was a lie ... the Brits had to know it was a lie. It would provide a clue as to the future of the Libyans to see if they applauded his hanging as they did his release and return to his homeland. In a sane world, we'd also treat harshly any stupid "journalist" who dares to use the sophomoric term, "Arab spring".
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Romantic item of the week ...
Judging by the photos and other memorabilia he collected about her and notes referring to her as his "darling", the Transvestite Terrorist, Khadafy, had a serious case of the hots for Condoleezza Rice. Unreciprocated, of course.
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Yes, I've seen the photo that purportedly explains a Bill Clinton endorsement of Michele Bachmann. Thanks. That is a fine-looking wiener ...
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Wonder how many American news-viewers would be shocked to learn that for years they got their "unbiased" news from a network anchorman, now deceased, who had once been making "the beast with two backs" with a woman who was the public apologist for Muslim fanatics?
The old and tasteless male adage applied: "He'd (bleep) a snake if somebody would hold its head."
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If TV operations want to save money, might they not simply re-run hurricane video from previous storms? It all looks alike.
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Want to get unhitched and have plenty of company among the newly-single? Then you'll be interested in Census Bureau stats showing that Maine, Alaska, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Nevada, rank at the top for divorces per capita.
On the other hand, people in North Dakota are among the leaders at staying married. May have something to do with those cold winters ...
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Memo to journalists: the term is "SHOO-in", not "SHOE-in".
It comes from the shout of "shoo" used to drive animals. Like chickens.
You're welcome.
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I lived in Miami (well, Coral Gables) for five years and enjoyed it. Miami, however, is not a baseball town.
Wednesday afternoon, the Miami Marlins drew 347 spectators. 347. Total. For a major-league baseball game.
Like Los Angeles, Miami is a winners' town, meaning any sports team had better win, or else. The "else" being ... there are so many other diversions ("It's a good day to go to the beach") people simply won't show up for anything less that a BIG winner.
I recall being in the stands when the Dolphins played after their first loss following their perfect 17-0 season, the only unblemished record in NFL history. There were thousands of empty seats. ("They lost last week, so why bother?")
Ditto the University of Miami. When they were winning national championships, the stands were packed. During losing seasons, maybe 15,000 people would show up to watch the Hurricanes play powerhouses like Texas or Big Ten teams. Putting a major league baseball franchise there was plain stupid.
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Dan Sorkin offers this one ...
At a wedding party someone yelled, "All the married men please stand next to the one person who has made your life worth living."
The bartender was nearly crushed to death.
DON'T ASK OBAMA TO BALANCE YOUR
CHECKBOOK
Reaganomics versus Obamanomics. Stephen Moore compares results in the Wall Street Journal ...
"The two presidents have a lot in common. Both inherited an American economy in collapse. And both applied daring, expensive remedies. Mr. Reagan passed the biggest tax cut ever, combined with an agenda of deregulation, monetary restraint and spending controls. Mr. Obama, of course, has given us a $1 trillion spending stimulus.
"By the end of the summer of Reagan's third year in office, the economy was soaring. The GDP growth rate was 5% and racing toward 7%, even 8% growth. In 1983 and '84 output was growing so fast the biggest worry was that the economy would "overheat." In the summer of 2011 we have an economy limping along at barely 1% growth and by some indications headed toward a "double-dip" recession. By the end of Reagan's first term, it was Morning in America. Today there is gloomy talk of America in its twilight."
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The wising-up process continues ...
The number of voters that trust their own economic judgment more than the president’s is at a new high.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that 65% say they trust their own economic judgment more than the president’s. Twenty-four percent (24%) of voters trust Obama’s economic judgment more than their own, which ties the lowest level of trust in the president to date.
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Obama fading even in Joisey? A poll of registered voters in the Democratic stronghold of New Jersey has more bad news for the Bamster. In answer to the question, "Does he deserve re-election?" ... 47% no ... 43% yes.
No comment yet from Snooki.
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More people applying for unemployment compensation, yet the Obamorons continue to crank out more stupid regulations that discourage potential employers from hiring. The question looms larger: can the nation survive even the remainder of a first term, much less a second?
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Today's recommended reading: National Review Online ... Jim Geraghty ... "Expect the Unexpected". It's about the word that has come to characterize the endless Obama denials of responsibility for our economic debacle. Here's a sample ...
“Sales of U.S. previously owned homes unexpectedly dropped in July,” reported Bloomberg.
“Manufacturing in the Philadelphia region unexpectedly contracted in August by the most in more than two years as orders plunged and factories shed workers,”reported Bloomberg Businessweek.
“Consumer spending unexpectedly fell in June,” reported Reuters.
“Dismal economic data on Thursday pointed to an unexpectedly abrupt slowdown in manufacturing and a pickup in inflation,” reported the New York Times’ business page.
Notice a trend? It's as if nothing "unexpected" ever happened before.
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Remember the adopted baby daughter of Khadafy who "died" when President Reagan had his compound bombed? The Irish Times has found her -- alive -- and working as a doctor in Libya. Gasp! You mean the dictator actually LIED??!!
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A couple of penetrating observations from Thomas Sowell ...
Class-warfare politics is bad enough when it is for real. But often it is as phony as a three-dollar bill, when the same politicians pass high tax rates on “the rich” to win votes -- and then get financial support from “the rich” to create loopholes that enable them to avoid paying those high tax rates.
At one time, it was well understood that adversity taught valuable lessons, which reduce the probability of repeating foolish decisions. But, today, the welfare state shields people from the consequences of their own mistakes, allowing irresponsibility to continue and to flourish among ever wider circles of people.
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Casey Anthony, acquitted of the charge of killing her two-year-old daughter, is reportedly planning to take a college course via the internet. Gee, does this mean she can't attend the prom?
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The term "trouser snake" has a literal meaning.
Eric Fiegel, a Mesa, Arizona, 22-year-old, was arrested for stealing snakes from a pet shop by stuffing them into his pants.
And the punchline is ... " ...or are you just happy to see me?"
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Some of the winning entries in the Edinburgh, Scotland, "Fringe" competition ...
"I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves."
"Crime in multi-storey car parks. That is wrong on so many different levels."
"I was playing chess with my friend and he said, 'Let's make this interesting'. So we stopped playing chess." "Someone asked me recently - what would I rather give up, food or sex. Neither! I'm not falling for that one again, wife."
"My friend died doing what he loved ... Heroin."
WHICH IS BLOWING HARDER? THE
HURRICANE, OR THE MEDIA?
Sixty-five MPH winds don't even qualify as the lowest-level (Category One) storm.
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And the Oscar for most blatant photo-op politicking goes to ... Barack Obama, for "taking charge at the hurricane command center" and putting his vast expertise to the task of assisting victims.
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Add to "Rules of Nature": Rodgers' Hurricane Corollary --
The media hot air generated by a particular storm varies directly with its proximity to the homes and workplaces of the personnel involved in the coverage.
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Boston's irrepressible Howie Carr (Boston Herald) probably has it right: "My guess is that Hurricane Irene is going to kill a lot fewer Americans ... this year than illegal aliens are."
But we don't expect Obama to do anything about that, do we?
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New York Times RINO columnist David Brooks (if he were a real Republican, would he have a column in the Times?) thinks the proper way for establishment Republicans -- and, by implication, Democrats -- to attack Rick Perry is to portray him somehow as corrupt.
PS -- Just to clarify, for media neophytes who misspell the word for apostate Republicans as "rhino" ...
It's RINO, for "Republican In Name Only".
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If anyone who questions Governor Perry's description of Social Security as a giant Ponzi scheme doubts that characterization, I recommend a brief bit of research on the term. You know, the scheme that put Bernie Madoff in prison. Wikipedia has a concise explanation.
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Several readers have forwarded this historical news item ...
Rome--SEPTEMBER 4, 476AD.
Rome falls. In the centuries preceding, Rome had been overrun with illegal immigrants: Visigoths, Franks, Anglos, Saxons, Ostrogoths, Burgundians, Lombards and Vandals.
They first assimilated, many working as servants, but soon came so fast they did not learn the Latin language.
Though militarily superior and marching on advanced road systems, the highly trained Roman Legions were strained fighting conflicts worldwide, and eventually troops had to be brought home from the frontier outposts, such as Britain.
Visigoth King Alaric, Vandal King Geiseric, Attila the Hun, and finally the barbarian King Odoacer, committed terrorist attacks, wiping out whole cities, until Rome itself was eventually sacked and looted.
Rome had been weakened by a large trade deficit, having outsourced its grain production to North Africa, and when the Vandals captured North Africa, Rome did not have the resources to retaliate.
Citizens of Rome were kept distracted with violent entertainment in the Coliseum and Circus Maximus. The Roman Emperor kept citizens appeased with welfare and free bread.
One Roman commented:"Those who live at the expense of the public funds are more numerous than those who provide them."
Tax collectors were "more terrible than the enemy."
Rome was crippled by huge government bureaucracies and enormous public debt.
...IS THIS STARTING TO SOUND FAMILIAR?
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A question that needs to be asked over and over and over ...
Why are Democrats opposed to state laws insisting on voter identification to make sure no one is voting illegally? The question answers itself.
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The indispensable Victor Davis Hanson summarizes our plight, and the cause ...
"To newly inaugurated Barack Obama and his prime-the-pump technocrats, the logic seemed so simple. America’s problem was a struggling economy. The solution was to spread around even more borrowed government money. The result would be a return to prosperity.
"But after nearly three years and $4 trillion in borrowed “stimulus,” things have only gotten worse. Unemployment is stuck at 9.1 percent. Consumer confidence is approaching a record low.The stock market is tanking. National debt is increasing at a rate of $4 billion a day. Economic growth has almost vanished. America’s creditworthiness has been downgraded. The housing market is still depressed. Food and fuel prices are skyrocketing. In response, only 26 percent of the public expresses confidence in the president’s handling of the economy.
"The same fallacy arises over the rioting in Britain and the flash mobbing in American cities. With food stamps, housing subsidies, unemployment insurance, disability payments, and general assistance at all-time highs in the affluent West, why did looters target mostly high-end stores? Was the criminality really due to a lack of government investment and public caring — or was it perhaps the result of too much coddling and dependency? Yet some observers are talking of renewed “investments,” not of pruning back the destructive programs that seemed to facilitate an angry underclass in robbing electronics and boutique-clothing stores."
I would add this: the liberals' answer to every failure of a gigantic government spending program is invariably, "It wasn't big ENOUGH."
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A puzzler. In Libya and other middle-eastern countries where uprisings against the government have a taken place, the rebels always need assistance. Especially military equipment, starting with ammunition. Yet they constantly fire guns in the air for no particular reason. Seems like a waste of ammo, doesn't it?
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Peter, regular contributor, offers some food for thought ...
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -- Benjamin Franklin
Regarding the presidential panic-peddling during the recent debt-ceiling controversy:
Did you notice who Obama threatened if he didn't get his way?
He threatened to not pay: Social Security Retirees, Military, Retirees, Social Security disability and Federal Retirees. He did not threaten to stop payments to illegal aliens
He did not threaten to take frivolous benefits such as Internet access away from prison inmates.
He did not offer to fire some of the thousands of unnecessary federal employees he has hired.
He did not offer to cut down on his or his wife's record-breaking vacation extravagance.
He did not threaten to take benefits away from welfare recipients.
He did not threaten the food stamp program.
He did not threaten to cut foreign aid ....
...or to eliminate any of the thousands of government programs that serve no purpose other than to benefit politically favored groups and individuals.
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Thru a long media career, I've often been told to people of various political persuasions that "you're preaching to the choir ... liberals won't read/listen to you."
That is correct to a considerable degree. It overlooks the larger purpose. I try to provide important -- and factual -- debating points for people to use when engaged in political discussions with friends, neighbors, relatives, co-workers.
A secondary purpose is to provide provocative food for thought and the occasional bit of entertainment.
BTW, I get occasional requests to "research this-of-that". It's very annoying to get that from people who obviously have a computer, else they wouldn't be sending e-mail ... which tells me they're too lazy to do it themselves. To put it bluntly, I am not the public library.
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When did the word "of" become synonymous with "have"?
Twice recently I have read submissions to websites using such constructions as, "If I'd been there, I would OF done so-and-so." And a politically-involved individual wondered "...if Hillary would OF done a better job."
American education strikes again.
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Readers Wes and Carlene offer this response to the news of discovery of a planet that appears to be one giant diamond ...
"Pack your bags, ladies! A whole planet made of your best friend!"
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Another contributor give us this ...
"The Red Cross knocked at my door asking if I could help toward the recent floods in Pakistan. I said I would love to, but my hose only reaches the end of my driveway."
AN IMPERFECT STORM; OBAMA'S DRUNK
ILLEGAL ALIEN UNCLE
Count on it. Liberal "deep thinkers" will be telling us that the minor tropical storm (as a one-time Miami resident, I say that with confidence) that the East Coast-based media conflated into a "disaster" is going to be a boost to the economy because of clean-up and repairs.
Of course, by that perverted logic, a devastating nuclear war would be a real boon.
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The great disillusionment rolls on. Gallup Poll's three-day rolling average finds Obama's approval still sinking. Latest numbers: 55% of Americans now give a thumbs-down on his performance ... 38% still approve.
Blub, blub, blub ...
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.“I haven’t decided who I’m going to vote for.” Colin Powell on“Face the Nation” on CBS.
- - - - -
Is Mitt Romney's ill-concealed disdain for the Tea Party going to cost him the Republican nomination?
Does anyone believe that either Perry or Romney would choose the other as a running-mate?
Could Florida Senator Marco Rubio's presence on the ticket in the #2 slot be the most important vice-presidential choice in history?
- - - - -
WorldNetDaily reports ...
"Infiltration of the federal government by members of the radical Muslim Brotherhood is worse than some have warned recently, says a former FBI special agent in Washington.
"The agent confirmed that at least three operatives of the Egypt-based Brotherhood - whose credo is 'Jihad is our way and death in the cause of Allah is our dream' - have penetrated the Obama administration."
Not exactly a surprise from a man who's "spiritual advisor" shouted, "God DAMN America." It appears the Obamorons either (A) thought the crazed preacher in Chicago, Jeremiah Wright, was just kidding, or (B) agreed with him.
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Obama's uncle, mentioned in his book "Dreams of my Father" and who has lived in the U.S. illegally for many years, has been arrested. Onyango Obama, 67, was picked up outside the Chicken Bone Saloon in Framingham, Massachusetts, at 7.10 pm on August 24, according to police records. He was nearly double the legally-drunk standard for blood alcohol, and complicated his legal situation by almost driving into a police car.
Mr. Obama was previously ordered deported.
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Smallest surprise of the young week:
The Libyan rebel government will not deport the man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, its justice minister said Sunday. New York senators on Aug. 22 asked the Libyan transitional government to hold Abdel-Baset al-Megrahi fully accountable for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people. They refuse.
From our standpoint, this makes the rebels better than Khadafy how, exactly?
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Debra Saunders, the rare voice of reason in the San Francisco Chronicle, deflates a budding liberal argument vs. Rick Perry ...
"As Texas governor, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry has presided over 234 executions. It's a record number, which, The Washington Post reported last week, bestows on Perry 'a law-and-order credential that none of his competitors can match -- even if they wanted to.'
"Watch how pundits will try to turn that statistic into a political negative -- and paint Perry as the governor with blood on his spurs -- even though American voters overwhelmingly support the death penalty.
"The temptation to tout Texas' status as the state with the most executions will prove too seductive. It won't matter that, as the Post story points out, Perry has overseen more executions than any other governor in modern history because his state is the second-largest in the country and he has served as governor of that state for nearly 11 years or that the late Democratic Gov. Ann Richards oversaw 50 executions during her one term -- and unlike Perry, she never commuted a death sentence.
"The irony here ... is that Texas does not deserve its reputation as the most execution-prone state. Among the nation's 34 states with capital punishment, Texas falls below the mean of 16.5 death penalty sentences per 1,000 murders."
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Liberals -- and some of their Republican cousins -- are trying to revive the old charge that a conservative candidate is "dumb". Their primary target at the moment, of course, is Rick Perry. I offer two names as a counter-argument to their obsession with academic performance as it relates to leadership ability: Jimmy Carter ... Ronald Reagan. Anyone care to compare results as president?
And, of course, liberals cringe at the very (true) thought that George W. Bush had a better college record than the sainted Al Gore.
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The New York Post rips the veil off Warren Buffett ...
"Billionaire Warren Buffett says folks like him should have to pay more taxes -- but it turns out his firm, Berkshire Hathaway, hasn’t paid what it’s already owed for years.
"That’s right: As Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson notes, the company openly admits that it owes back taxes since as long ago as 2002.
“'We anticipate that we will resolve all adjustments proposed by the US Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) for the 2002 through 2004 tax years ... within the next 12 months” the firm’s annual report says.
"It also cites outstanding tax issues for 2005 through 2009."
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The disgraceful spawn of the Reagan family, ballet danseur Ronnie, went on the liberal shill network, the equally disgraceful MSNBC, to declare that Dick Cheney is a "war criminal" for endorsing waterboarding. That's the same waterboarding treatment that is given to all our special military forces as part of their training. The question lingers ... what did this embarrassing punk ever do to deserve attention from even the most flagrantly liberal suck-up media?
Maybe his sister protected him from too many bullies. Go dance in public in your underwear some more, sonny.
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Imagine the media reaction if a prominent Republican had made this glaring error. Bernice King, Martin Luther King's daughter, speaking at the opening of her father's memorial in Washington: "... but as I close, I close with the recognition that daddy is standing, Lincoln is seated. Lincoln remembered for signing the Declaration of Independence..."
Remarkable, considering that Lincoln was born more than thirty years after that event..
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Reader Paul has this to say ...
"So Al Gore is saying global warming skeptics are this generation's racists. I say Al Gore is this generations Joseph Goebbels. The Ministry of Propaganda aim under Goebbels was to ensure that the Nazi message was successfully communicated through art, music, theater, films, books, radio, educational materials, and the press."
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Words often confused and misused: "Diffuse" and "defuse".
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Here's something to share with children and grandchildren.
One secret to success in life is willingness to face your fears and do what you think you can't do.
The first time I faced a real, "live" microphone in a radio station, I was so frightened I could barely speak.
Somehow I did, and began a long career that culminated in twenty-five years at ABC.
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London Dave summarizes the little storm on the East Coast from farther east -- in Britain.
"BREAKING WIND NEWS --
Branch falls off tree in Rhode Island. No casualties."
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Out of the mouths of babes ...
A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales.
The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though it was a very large mammal its throat was very small.
The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.
Irritated, the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible.
The little girl said, 'When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah'.
The teacher asked, 'What if Jonah went to hell?'
The little girl replied, 'Then YOU ask him'.
THE MAN WITH THE PLAN -- NOT ...
plus UNLOAD THE UN?
Does anyone seriously believe that our mentally vacant president would have waited through all these months of watching his approval rating decline to offer a jobs plan, if he HAD a real plan? Look for more failed liberal nostrums, make-work government jobs and yet another variation of his "hope and change" bullfeathers.
While Obama whines about "bad luck" and the Japanese tsunami ruining his grand plans for the economy, do you recall any Democrat cutting Bush any slack re the far more devastating (for us) 9/11 attacks, or the REAL hurricane, Katrina?
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A little history from Thomas Sowell ...
"Some very sharp downturns in the American economy, such as in the early 1920s, were followed quickly by bouncing back to normal levels or beyond. The government did nothing -- and it worked.
"In that sense, this is an unusual recovery in how long it is taking and in how slowly the economy is growing -- while the government is doing virtually everything imaginable.
"Government intervention may look good to the media but its actual track record -- both today and in the 1930s -- is far worse than the track record of letting the economy recover on its own."
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Listen to the liberals go nuts as Republicans push for a revision that would allow nations -- like us -- to specify where their contributions to the UN are spent instead of leaving it up to a stupid, corrupt UN bureaucracy to decide. We pay 22% of all the "contributions" to the UN; liberals, with their goo-goo world view, largely believe we should have no voice in how it's spent.
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Look out! Here comes another Obama egghead with hare-brained ideas. Alan Krueger, Princeton economist, is the newest member of the Big Zero's Council of Economic Advisors. This genius two years ago proposed a 5% national sales tax to rake in another $500 billion a year for the government to waste.
He was also the author of the idiotic "cash for clunkers" program that has driven used car prices so high that people who can't afford new vehicles now have trouble buying the "pre-owned" variety.
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People who expected -- or hoped -- that the Perry phenomenon was a flash-in-the-pan might take note that a new CNN poll has the Texas Governor almost doubling Romney's support among Republicans and those likely to vote Republican. The score: Perry 27%, Romney second at 14%.
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Survey says -- commissioned by CNN, no less -- 27% of Democrat voters want somebody other than Obama as their presidential candidate in 2012.
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There IS good news for Obama. A Pew Research poll finds that 70% of Muslims in America approve of his performance. Are we stunned ... shocked ... amazed?
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Victor Davis Hanson on Obama's clumsy sense of public relations -- or lack thereof ...
"For nearly three years, there has been something strange about the First Family’s ritzy getaway tastes. The annual Martha’s Vineyard rentals were bookended by First Family junkets to Vail, Costa del Sol, and Hawaii. The choice of venues spawned at least three problems for the president that have nothing to do with the First Family’s right, and indeed duty, to enjoy a little well-earned vacation time — or with the fact that other presidents have vacationed in nice places.
"First, Obama’s fiery rhetoric (“fat-cat bankers,” “corporate jets,” “millionaires and billionaires,” “redistributive change,” “at a certain point you’ve made enough money,” etc.) has demonized the better off. Many successful liberal presidents do that, but they finesse the necessary fundraising and schmoozing with Wall Street zillionaires with tact and discretion. Bill Clinton was a past master at gluing a populist veneer atop his deep fascination with old money and hip celebrity. The Obamas are far clumsier in both their class-warfare boilerplate and their overt elite tastes, whose contradictions they apparently either miss or don’t much care about."
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Texas musician/politician Kinky Friedman: "Obama has done for the economy what pantyhose did for foreplay.”
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Is the Gibson guitar company being harassed by the government because a competitor is a big Obama contributor?
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Everything old is new again ...
The Playboy Club will shortly re-open in Chicago, twenty years after shutting down. From what I hear, Hooters has never come up with a serving technique to equal the Bunny Dip.
(Note to the youthful: Bunny Dip is not something served with chips at a party.)
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Nepotism run amok? The NY Post's Page Six column reports that Julie Chen, wife of CBS prez Les Moonves, has been the force behind the firing of some of the women on the network's gabfest, “The Talk.” Insiders say she's warned her co-hosts, “My husband can fire your asses any day.”
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Jeanne Meserve, a 15-year-veteran at CNN, has been chopped by the fast-fading cable operation.
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From Canada's Financial Post ... a message to the Al Gore lemmings ... overlooked by U.S. media shills ...
"The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth.
"The research, published with little fanfare this week in the prestigious journal Nature, comes from über-prestigious CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest centres for scientific research involving 60 countries and 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities and national laboratories."
Condensed message to Crazy Al: Suck it!
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The third of the four preseason NFL games is when the projected starters get their first -- and last -- real work before the games start counting. Unless they have hidden resources, the New England Patriots' long run as a top-level franchise may be ending. The heretofore pitiful Lions systematically dismantled them, offensively and defensively. It's an easy prediction that the Detroit defense is going to bring much sadness to opponents.
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From my friend Michael ... a few tidbits of information everyone should know ...
If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on the right side of your mouth. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on the left side of your mouth.
Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by 'Bayer'.
Tourists visiting Iceland should know that tipping at a restaurant is considered an insult!
Ancient Roman, Chinese and German societies often used urine as mouthwash. (This may explain the existence of non-alcoholic beer.)
The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. In the Renaissance era, it was fashion to shave them off! (They did not, however, know about the Brazilian Wax.)
Peanut oil is used for cooking in submarines because it doesn't smoke unless it's heated above 450 F.
The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.
Nine out of every 10 living things live in the ocean.
When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go. The first sense lost is sight.
The moon moves about two inches away from the Earth each year.
...excuse me... I have a splitting headache ...
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Craig Ferguson --
"In Washington, D.C., thousands of people have been left without power. They’re called Democrats."
OUR FECKLESS GOVERNMENT; BENEFITS FOR
ILLEGALS
As we approach the ten-year anniversary of the 9/11 massacre, the fact that five of the co-conspirators involved in the planning still have not been tried feeds into the legitimate concern that this country is too stupid to survive.
Two bungling, gutless presidential administrations have allowed this absurd situation to simply slide.
Of course, this might even be expected in a nation dumb enough to elect a president who is utterly unqualified and is destroying the nation's economic and military power out of (A) incompetence or (B) a determination to render hapless a country that he was raised and educated to despise. If the latter is his goal, he and his coterie of academic airheads are achieving it.
The people who voted for him deserve no better; the rest of us do.
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Is there any American who ISN'T embarrassed by the Obama administration's recommended "talking points" in recognition of the anniversary of 9/11? Talking points that clearly try to diminish the event as if it had happened to ALL nations?
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Non-surprise of the week: Kenneth Melson, who ran the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms thru the stupid "Fast and Furious" gun-running operation that put loads of firearms into the hands of Mexican criminal gangs, has been removed from that job. But has he been fired?? Are you kidding? He got transferred to another position in the agency -- and his retirement benefits thus protected.
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The latest disgraceful piece of craziness from the Obamaniacs ...
"U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis has signed "partnership" agreements with ambassadors from a group of Latin American nations aiming to protect what she described as the labor rights of both legal and ILLEGAL immigrants working in the United States.
"Solis said the agreements are aimed at educating migrant workers, regardless of how they got here, about their rights under U.S. law and to help prevent them from being abused in the workplace, either through wages, loss of job, or deportation."
Unemployed Americans are sure to share her concerns about protecting the jobs of people here illegally -- aren't they?
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Is anybody REALLY expecting that Obama's illegal alien relatives from Kenya will be deported?
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More news guaranteed to induce a further outbreak of White House flop-sweat: consumer confidence down another 15% in the past month.
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Obamacare was a dumb, unpopular idea the moment it was unveiled, and it's gone steadily downhill in public esteem ever since. A new poll by Kaiser Health finds that only 39% favor this government scam.
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A blogger who passionately supports Sarah Palin thinks it unfortunate that she wasn't elected to higher office "before the public knew too much about her," presumably leading to her diminishing support. By the same logic, the blogger must assume it a good thing that Obama got elected "before the public knew too much about him."
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The global warming scam has been berry, berry good to Al! According to the U.K.'s (liberal) Guardian newspaper, just one of the "green" companies in which Gore has invested has received over half a billion dollars in subsidies from the government's misnamed Energy Department.
Financial disclosure documents released before the 2000 election put the Gore family's net worth at $1 million to $2 million. A mere decade later, estimates are that he is worth $100 million. He's been touted in the press as one day becoming the first "carbon billionaire." That means he's milked the government -- taxpayers -- for major bucks.
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The Muslims who staged a riot at an amusement park in Rye, New York, because women in the group were not allowed to wear their traditional scarves on some rides need to absorb the lesson of the late, great dancer, Isadora Duncan. She was killed when the long scarf around her neck became entangled in the rear wheel of a convertible and strangled her -- almost decapitated her. The park forbids such headgear on certain rides because of the safety hazard. But naturally, the Muslims claim discrimination.
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Gene offers this for our consideration ...
Since when does a wedding band need repairs, along with your watch, for a whole month?
In a press conference last week Obama was not wearing his wedding ring nor was he wearing his watch.
When noticed, his staff said his ring was out for repairs. No reason was given for the missing watch.
So it's just a coincidence that Muslims are forbidden from wearing jewelry during the month of Ramadan? Can't possibly be that, because although he hasn't gone to a Christian church service since entering the White House, we know he's a committed Christian because he said so during his campaign!
*Note: a concensus among several sources is that Muslim men should not wear GOLD jewelry during Ramadan, which just ended. I do not know if anyone is prepared to say definitively whether he wore his wedding ring at all during the month. The watch may or may not be made of gold.
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It's for good reason that presidential press secretaries are occasionally and contemptuously called "the president's liar" ... but has there ever been a more inept one than Jay Carney, Obama's spokesparrot? Of course, trying to put a good face on one of history's most incompetent presidencies IS a challenging task.
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Big Hollywood reports that Oprah Winfrey, who's already burned thru $150 million of investor money trying to launch her cable operation, OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) with a singular lack of success, is now counting on a talk show hosted by the obnoxious Rosie O'Donnell to give her network something resembling a hit.
Wanna bet?
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Something called the Global Liveability Survey has named Melbourne, Australia, as the world's "Most Livable City," replacing Vancouver, B.C. in the top spot. I like Australia ... been there several times ... but I hope Melbourne's changed since my last visit there a dozen or so years ago. At the time, Susan characterized it thusly: "This is St. Louis without the charm."
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Candidate for "Most Mispronounced Word": F-O-R-T-E. It is not "for-tay". It's "fort", just like a military establishment. I know ... it's an uphill battle ...
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WORDS WOMEN USE -- WHAT EVERY MAN SHOULD KNOW ...
FINE: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.
NOTHING: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with "nothing" usually end in "fine".
GO AHEAD: This is a dare, not permission. Don't Do It!
THAT'S OKAY: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That's okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.
WHATEVER: Is a woman's way of saying Forget it, I don't have any more time to waste on you.
(Thanks, Sheila H.)
"...and now, if you'll excuse me..."