BOEHNER BUSHWHACKS BARACK;
PUTRID POLLS FOR THE PREZ
The Big Zero caved. Now he'll deliver his usual shopworn leftists cliches on TV opposite the opening game of NFL football. He's also embarked on a desperation campaign to "run against Washington," as if he (or any) president isn't the very epicenter of what IS Washington.
Obama's cave-in is being played in some media as "bowing to Boehner." Well, why not? He's bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia and half the Muslim dictators of the middle-east, so why not the Speaker of the House?'
One wonders what the broader public reaction had been if he'd tried to stick with the date opposite the Republican presidential debate and no Republican House or Senate members even showed up and let him speak to a half-empty chamber. Of course, it would show a "lack of respect". But who's kidding whom? They don't respect this phony, anyway.
Let's see ... I can watch Obama blather liberal -- and failed -- economic cliches, or I can watch the Packers vs. the Saints. It may take me as long as one second to decide ...
This dyspeptic dude is the very antithesis of Churchill's classic description of an old British political hack as "a modest man, with much to be modest about." He flunks the first part, anyway. The second, he fills abundantly.
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After taking $535 billion of taxpayer money from Dopebama, Solyndra, a major manufacturer of solar technology in Fremont, California, has shut its doors. Another idiotic "green jobs" scam fails ... another thousand-plus "green" workers out of jobs. And the moron in Washington babbles on.
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WSJ reports ...
"Second quarter productivity was revised down to a decline of 0.7%, the biggest drop since the fourth quarter of 2008, from a first reading of -0.3%. It has fallen for three quarters in a row, for the first time since 1979."
In other words, the worst since the Carter era.
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Terry Jeffrey of CNS News points out another facet of Obama's staggering failures. He appears likely to be the first president in the post-World War II era during whose term real gross domestic product never grew in any quarter at an annual rate greater than 4 percent.
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A new CNN poll ... CNN! ... finds that, despite Obama's incessant whining about the economy he inherited from Bush, two-thirds of Americans now think HE's failed on economic matters. Even the suckers are finally awakening.
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The women's vote historically leans more left than their male counterparts, but now Obama's even losing that support. Although he beat McCain 56% to 43% among female voters in the 2008 election, the Gallup poll now shows only 41% of women approving his performance in office ... down from 70% early in his presidency.
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Hilda Solis, Obama's Labor Secretary who flouts immigration laws in her obsession with protecting the "rights" of illegal aliens, has bought a new car. An SUV, actually. A Chevy Equinox. Built in Canada ... from Canadian-made parts ... by Canadian workers. Another left-wing hypocrite. But ... who's surprised?
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The dry numbers from the Census Bureau provide this revealing look at where more and more Americans want to live. From 2009 to 2010 the five biggest losers of population caused by out-migration were the liberal bastions of California, New york, Illinois, Michigan and New Jersey. The states that gained the most were Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia ... all under the governance of Republicans.
Look back over ten years, and the big gainers have been ever more conservative: Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho and Texas. (Full disclosure: I was one of those who forsook the liberal zoo of California for gun-totin' Arizona. Even loose-screw McCain looks sane next to Nancy Pelosi.)
Know-it-all, tax-hiking libs never figure out that people with the smarts to get ahead are also capable of looking up the phone numbers of moving companies.
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Obama has ruled out using withholding of Libyan funds from whatever new regime emerges there as a tool for forcing them to turn over the Lockerbie bomber. Just what you'd expect from the spineless nothing disgracing the White House.
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Steve McCann on the American Thinker website with a concise portrait of our Dear Leader ...
"The portrait of Barack Obama's presidency is that of an egocentric -- not only incapable of leadership, but someone who views the office as a vehicle for the satisfaction of his delusion that the world not only owes him a living, but a sumptuous one. A trait common to many who espouse socialism, inclusive of dictators and Democrats, is an insatiable appetite for self-indulgence. "
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Whatever your view on abortion, today's American Thinker piece by Dr. Mary Davenport provides serious food for thought. It's reporting on a study undertaken at Bowling Green University showing that women with an abortion history have an 81% increased risk of mental health problems and 155% increased risk of suicide. This is not based on a study of an isolated few. It combines 22 studies of 877,181 women, 163, 831 of whom have had abortions.
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A grim warning from Lawrence Sellin in Canada Free Press ...
"The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is out there again in full race-baiting mode. By threatening race riots, Obama has intimidated the entire US Government from questioning his Constitutional eligibility for the Presidency and investigating his forged birth certificate and Selective Service registration and his stolen Social Security Number.
"The race riot strategy has worked so well keeping him in office, Obama intends to exploit that threat to get himself re-elected. The recent racially-motivated flash mob attacks on non-black US citizens have provided dry runs for 2012 and have served as a warning to anyone considering opposing the empty suit."
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The California crazies are at it again! Nevada County's "The Union" newspaper reports that parents will be expected to provide workers' compensation benefits, rest and meal breaks and paid vacation time for … babysitters.
Assembly Bill 889 (authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco) will require these protections for all “domestic employees,” including nannies, housekeepers and caregivers.
The bill has already passed the Assembly and is quickly moving through the Senate with blanket support from the Democrat members that control both houses of the Legislature – and without the support of a single Republican member. Assuming the bill will easily clear its last couple of legislative hurdles, AB 889 will soon be on its way to the Governor's desk.
... and Governor Jerry Brown will, of course, enthusiastically sign it.
As stated above, I moved from California to Arizona several years ago, and this is why newcomers from California are viewed with deep suspicion by many 'zonans until they demonstrate they're not as crazy as those represented by the likes of Ammiano and his fellow Democrat nutcakes. Sedona, which is infested with loonies from the West Coast, is an exception. They come to worship crystals and the "vortex." Most 'zonans avoid them like the plague they are.
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Let us try to contain our tears over this news item from San Diego, where a 16-year-old punk was amusing himself by throwing rocks at passing cars. The fun stopped when a passenger in one vehicle expressed his annoyance by shooting the vandal with a crossbow.
He'll live, but he may be reconsidering his pastimes.
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Self-criticism taken to the extreme: A man from Chicago went to visit his ex-wife in Yorktown, Virginia. Apparently the reunion turned sour, because after spending the night he got into his SUV with a cable tied around his neck and the other end attached to a tree. Firefighters arrived because a trailer he was pulling was on fire.
They tried to persuade him to give up. Instead, he gunned it and his head was pulled completely off his body. He now takes a ... detached ... view of his situation.
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Maybe her Russian background didn't prepare her to deal with economic issues. Oksana Grigorieva. actor Mel Gibson's one-time squeeze, has gotten a court settlement for their period of mattress tango; a settlement of $750,000. Last year, she turned down his offer of $15 million.
No reaction from the former MRS. Gibson, but late at night one can hear gales of laughter in the distance.
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Mike passes along this example of governmental logorrhea ...
** Pythagorean Theorem:...............................................24 words.
** Lord's prayer:............................................................66 words.
** Archimedes' Principle:................................................67 words.
** 10 Commandments:..................................................179 words.
** Gettysburg address:...................................................286 words.
** Declaration of Independence:...................................1,300 words.
** US Constitution with all 27 Amendments:............. 7,818 words.
** US Government regulations on the sale of cabbage:.26,911 words.
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Jay Leno --
"The rhetoric is heating up between Republicans Rick Perry and Mitt Romney. These two do not like each other. Perry has opposed many of Romney's positions – but to be fair, so has Romney."
SLIDING DOWN THE POLL;
DOWN 'N DIRTY DEMS
Rasmussen Report has heartbreaking news for the Republican RINO insiders. Perry beats Obama, 44%-41%. That's the Rick Perry those insiders are recommending be dumped because "he can't win." They favor RINO Romney, 2-1.
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Memo to Rick Perry: you only have one chance to make a first impression. In the eyes of many voters, that chance is next week's debate. Romney is on the ropes. It's up to you.
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Among the toughest questions for Perry during this campaign will be, "Where do you stand on border control and illegal immigration?" He has a spotty record on this. Opposition to a border fence is one example.
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From the, "Ho hum, what's new?" department ... another major poll, Quinnipiac, shows Obama on the wrong side of public approval-disapproval, 42%-52%.
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Anybody timing this politico/sports event? The race to see which Democrat pol seeking re-election can run farthest, fastest, from Obama.
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The bungling Obamunists, AHEAD of next week's ill-disguised campaign speech, are already announcing that they expect unemployment to run at 9% or above all next year. Can anyone with a functioning brain even imagine voting to perpetuate the idiocy -- or evil -- of this bunch for another four years?
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The one promise conservatives should demand from the ultimate Republican nominee is this.
You will review every bill passed and every executive order issued during the Obama administration, reverse all the latter and do your utmost to repeal the former. Nothing less is remotely acceptable.
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Democrat media shill Howard Fineman says the Democrats are going to run a down-and-dirty presidential campaign. Of course they are. When they have nothing to sell but the Marxist maunderings of a failed leftist ideologue, what else have they got?
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Victor Davis Hanson suggests some things that we shouldn't expect during next summer's presidential campaign, given what was put off-limits by the Democrats in 2008 and later...
"There is much talk about what some are perceiving as the fringe religiosity of possible Republican primary candidates such as Michele Bachman and Rick Perry. But the media established the precedent four years ago that no candidate can be held responsible for his church. Barack Obama's pastor of more than 20 years, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was an unapologetic racist and anti-Semite, and a raving conspiracy theorist whose parishioners gave him standing ovations for his hate-filled "G-d damn America" rants.
"Prior education and college preparation should not be 2012 issues either. Recent articles have referred to a leaked Texas A&M undergraduate transcript of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, showing some dismal grades. But in this regard, Obama has never released either his Occidental or Columbia transcripts."
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If you want to be politically correct in the Obama era, you no longer refer to the federal government. It's "the federal family."
As Dave Barry says, "I am NOT making this up."
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Jonah Goldberg offers a clue as to the content of next week's Obama speech ...
"The White House insists this address will have nothing to do with partisan politics and everything to do with getting Americans back to work. Well, suspend your own disbelief as best you can. But one thing is certain: The president will enter the chamber “shovel ready,” as it were.
"One can expect Obama to repeat certain verbal tics. He will quote himself a lot (“As I’ve said before . . . ”). He will insist that it’s time to put aside partisan differences, by which he means everyone should agree with his ideas."
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Earlier this week Muslims rioted at an amusement park in Rye, New York, because women were forbidden to wear the head-scarf on certain rides. It was a safety issue, but the oh-so-sensitive Muslims claimed discrimination.
Now, the London Daily Mail reports that a young Muslim woman died after her burkha -- the scarf -- became snagged in a go-kart.
The 24-year-old woman died when a fluttering part of her burkha became caught in the wheels of a go-kart she was driving near the town of Port Stephens, north of Sydney.
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Government agents have raided the Gibson Guitar company and seized the wood used in their instruments. It is the same imported wood used by Gibson's major competitor, Martin. The wood is an exotic import controlled by government regulation.
What's behind these destructive raids on Gibson? It is believed by knowledgeable people that the raids have taken place because Gibson's management is politically conservative, while Martin management supports Democrats.
Makes you proud to be a taxpayer, doesn't it?
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A new book by South American writers reveals some unpleasant aspects of various regimes on that continent.
Among the revelations: Evita Peron stashed away jewelry and other treasures stolen by the Nazis from Jews they exterminated in the death camps during World War II.
Who should be surprised? How else would anyone think Nazi murderers like Mengele and Eichmann were able to gain sanctuary under her husband 's fascist government? That would be the evil demagogue, Juan Peron.
Yet millions of Argentinians worship the memory of this creep, the former hooker, and her husband's idiotic fascist economics still dominate the country; a country so rich in natural resources and so poor in common sense.
How can we be sure that the present economic path of ever-larger government being pursued by President Christina Kirchner (who succeeded her husband and is known to require two hours each morning to put on her makeup) is foolish? Because the New York Times, a media apostle of ever-larger and more intrusive government, approves!
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Where are the safe drivers -- and the bad drivers? Allstate Insurance surveyed accident statistics from 193 cities, and found Ft. Collins, Colorado, safest for the second year in a row, with the average driver being involved in an accident once every fourteen years. Washington, D.C., came in at the bottom. Los Angeles was only slightly better, with the prototypical Average Driver bending metal once every 6.6 years.
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There is a fad among many young people that involves getting a tattoo in Chinese or Japanese characters, usually on an exposed part of the body. What many of the customers of this art don't know is that a lot of tattoo "artists" are setting them up for a lifetime of ridicule by people who can read those characters. Let's just say that what the customer may think says, "I am powerful" may actually say, "I am an idiot." Or worse.
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Nominee for the title "Most Schizophrenic Person in Media": Joe Scarborough, the in-house RINO on the absurd leftist shill-mill, MSNBC. The punishment, of course, includes having to sit beside Mika "Attila the Hen" Brzezinski.
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Yesterday I received my diploma, graduating from the University of Arizona Medical Center's Cardio Rehabilitation program. Feel free to send gifts -- the more lavish, the better.
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I have never written these words before and probably never will again. Nevertheless ... Maya Angelou is right. The Martin Luther King memorial statue makes him look arrogant. It is a stupidly-conceived piece of "art" that comes right out of the Mussolini-Stalin school of sculpture. And WHY would the contributors to the project have it done in China?
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Odd-wad criminals in the news ...
The Tucson Star newspaper reports that a 20-year-old has been arrested and charged with breaking-and-entering. It seems he broke into a number of houses in the upscale La Reserve neighborhood and ... rearranged the furniture.
HGTV, take note: a future star is born.
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I love football. However, even understanding the motives involved (for the big school, a cheap win before seats already sold on a season-ticket basis; for the little school, a paycheck for sending their under-talented youth into a football factory meat-grinder) I'm still repulsed that the college season-opener on ESPN was a Wisconsin blowout of UNLV.
I have much higher regard for two other football factories, LSU and Oregon. Instead of pounding a patsy, they're opening the season this weekend against each other, knowing that hopes for a national championship will expire for the loser.
Message to Wisconsin and the many other powerhouses with their semi-professional athletes: pick on somebody your own size.
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Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed are getting married October 1. Those who care know what this is about.
Those who don't ... never mind.
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Dan presents this heartwarming little tale ...
A six year old goes to the hospital with her grandmother to visit her Grandpa. When they get to the hospital, she runs ahead of her Grandma and bursts into her Grandpa's room.
"Grandpa, Grandpa," she says excitedly, "As soon as Grandma comes into the room, make a noise like a frog!"
"What?" said her Grandpa.
"Make a noise like a frog - because Grandma said that as soon as you croak, we're all going to Disneyland!
THE ECONOMIC NEWS WORSENS. IS IT
RACIST TO REPORT IT?
The latest report card on the Obama economy comes from the government's own Labor Department.
For the first time since 1945, the nation added ZERO jobs in the month of August.
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Black Americans will make of this ... well, whatever they will ... but unemployment in that demographic hit 16.7% in August, its highest level since 1984, 27 years ago. That's the OFFICIAL rate; the unofficial rate, consisting also of people who are under-employed or have just given up on finding a job, is much higher.
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Victor Davis Hanson sets the record straight ...
"The growing refrain from the Congressional Black Caucus and other quarters — for example, some guests on MSNBC — that much of the opposition to President Obama is racially driven can be logically refuted.
" Is the treatment accorded Obama in the popular culture and by the opposition comparable to that accorded to George W. Bush when his approval ratings were likewise about 38 to 40 percent? I think not — because Bush was treated far more harshly (New York-published novels and prize-winning docudramas contemplating his assassination; an entire corpus of Nazi/brownshirt slurs, some from major figures like Al Gore and John Glenn; smears like stupid, idiot, liar, chimp, etc.) than Obama, and because Obama himself and his associates have been far more savage in reference to Bush than Bush has been to Obama."
Did anyone expect anything other than charges of racism over any attempt to fire our affirmative-action president? Many employers have learned what it's like to "hire someone you can't fire."
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Turned-up heat from Republicans and the business world achieved what many believed to be impossible. Obama stopped the EPA fascists from pressing a new rule that would have substantially cut electricity production and led to failures in our power supply. Even a "community organizer" can figure what kind of public outrage that would have brought about.
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Draw your own conclusions.
Jimmy Johnson, Denny Hamlin, Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch, Clint Bowyer, Jeff Burton and Matt Kenseth will attend a White House ceremony Wednesday honoring NASCAR's top drivers.
Greg Biffle, Kurt Busch, Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick and Tony Stewart – will not be attending due to "schedule conflicts."
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James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal corrects the latest liberal media hysteria ...
"Much of the media have been running with the claim that a president's request to speak to Congress has never been rejected until this week. Various Capitol Hill "historians" have been quoted saying that House Speaker John Boehner took unprecedented action when he cited the difficulty of hosting President Obama on the president's requested date of Sept. 7. We're not so sure.
"The truth is that you don't have to go back that far in the nation's history to find a similar circumstance. And unlike the current speaker, who quickly agreed to host the president on the following day, Sept. 8, a previous (Democrat) holder of the gavel, Tip O'Neil, refused to grant the White House request, regardless of the date and time.
"The June 24, 1986, edition of The Wall Street Journal featured a story headlined, "President's Bid to Address the House On Nicaragua Is Rejected by Speaker." That's right, no quibbling over the date and time, just a flat-out rejection."
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You want to know what happens when a coalition of union leaders and Democrat politicians is given control of a city? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ... Detroit! The sewer of North America!
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The Chicago Tribune reports on another example of what happens when a city is governed by a corrupt team of Democrats and unions ...
"Every month, Thomas Villanova gets a $9,000 reminder of how lucrative it can be to serve as a union leader in Chicago.
"The sum is part of a city pension that comes on top of the $198,000 annual salary he is paid to represent the interests of thousands of city workers.
"Villanova last worked for the city in 1989 as an electrical mechanic with the Department of Streets and Sanitation, making about $40,000 a year. Yet in 2008 he was allowed to retire at age 56 with a $108,000 city pension. That's because, under a little-known state law, his pension was based not on his city paycheck but on his much higher union salary."
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Rich Lowry of National Review dances on a "green" grave ...
"We have seen the future, and it went bankrupt.
If the praises of high-ranking Obama-administration officials were a viable business plan, the solar-panel maker Solyndra would be an industrial juggernaut. Vice President Biden insisted that the jobs created by the California-based firm would “allow America to compete and to lead like we did in the 20th century.”
In a visit to Solyndra in May 2010, President Obama called it “a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism.”
Obama and Biden were literally invested in Solyndra’s success. The company got a half-billion-dollar federal loan guarantee, the first in a highly vaunted Department of Energy green-jobs program, as part of the stimulus.
"President Bush was flayed for the Enron bankruptcy, based on his tenuous ties to the firm. If the same media rules applied, Solyndra would be Obama’s Enron, given his active promotion of the company and his lavish funding of it. A prodigious Obama-Biden fundraiser is a major backer of the failed concern."
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Lauren Bush, granddaughter of Presisdent George H. W. Bush (a/k/a Bush #1) is getting married tomorrow. The groom is David Lauren, son of legendary designer Ralph Lauren.
Let me be the last to point out that the wedding will make her new name ... Lauren Lauren.
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I'm often asked if I miss being on the air. Surprisingly -- especially to me -- no.
I did it for a long time and enjoyed it, but have absolutely no urge to return to it.
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FYI, an updated scorecard from the TSA ..
2011 Year-to-Date statistics resulting from enhanced airport screening by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security…
Terrorist Plots Discovered 0
Transvestites 133
Hernias 1,485
Hemorrhoid Cases 3,172
Enlarged Prostates 8,249
Breast Implants 59,350
Natural Blondes 3
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Jay Leno --
"President Obama's uncle has been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. Remember when the most embarrassing person in the president's life was Joe Biden?"
STOP THEM, BEFORE THEY KILL AGAIN! --
AND THEY DO
You let the rats go and the consequences are predictable.
NATO and Afghan forces have (finally) killed a former Guantanamo detainee who had become a key al-Qaida affiliate after returning to Afghanistan. Sabar Lal Melma, who was released from Guantanamo in 2007 after five years of detention, had been organizing attacks on Americans and Afghans in eastern Kunar province.
With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight -- especially in a situation so foreseeable -- he should've been shot instead of released. The same has applied -- and will apply -- to many of his fellow "detainees". This kind of bloody stupidity -- releasing terrorists -- is the inevitable consequence of deliberately handicapping yourself and fighting a half-assed war. Sadly, that seems to have become an American habit.
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A reality-check on Social Security from Glenn Bogart in The Daily Caller ...
"Texas Governor Rick Perry has been criticized for saying that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. But he’s absolutely right, and he is hardly the first guy to notice.
"A Ponzi scheme is an investment program where there are no real dividends. It is able to make payouts to early investors only as long as there are enough new investors to pump money into it. Once the new investments decline, the payouts decrease, and eventually there are no more payouts.
"When a private party sets up something like this and gets caught, we put him in prison (Bernie Madoff, for example).
"But when the federal government does it, it’s different. It’s not a crime at all. It’s a “contract” and a sacred obligation. Even so, when the money runs out, “investors” in it should expect to get exactly what the Madoff investors got: screwed.
"Rick Perry has simply pointed out the obvious."
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Congressional Democrats, as unprincipled a bunch of gangsters as ever hung out with the Hole-in-the-Wall gang, are now determined to push thru another idiotic Obama "green jobs" scam aimed at funneling more money to political contributors. They've attached "green" grant-money to legislation to help victims of the recent flood and minor earthquake. In other words, if Republicans don't go along with this boondoggle, they're being mean to victims of a natural catastrophe.
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Liberal columnist Eugene Robinson asks in the liberal Washington Post, re Obama's performance as president, "I wonder who could have done better?"
A reasonable question. It is equally reasonable to ask, "Who could have done WORSE?"
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You might consider passing this message along to any Democrat friends ...
Don't you dopes get it? The things you want to do with government (A) don't work and (B) are unsustainable.
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When even ultra-liberal Maureen Dowd of the New York Times headlines her column "One and Done?" you know that her hero, the Big Zero, is truly in serious trouble.
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Obama and his minions are upset because several prominent NASCAR drivers chose not to attend a ceremony in their honor Wednesday at the White House. Perhaps some of those drivers recall that during the 2008 campaign NASCAR invited John McCain and Obama to attend a race at Loudon, New Hampshire. McCain did. Obama didn't.
You can file that under, "Screw me? No -- screw YOU!"
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Michael Goodwin of the NY Post spares you the bother of listening to Obama's hot-air barrage Thursday ...
"Get out the marshmallows and gather ’round the campfire, boys and girls, President Obama is about to give another speech. Whoopee.
"OK, so the idea doesn’t exactly send a tingle up your leg or make you swoon with visions of Hope & Change. In that case, you don’t have to wait a minute longer for him to actually declare how he’ll create jobs. Here’s what he will say next week.
“Folks are hurtin’.”
“We have to invest in the future.”
“We need a balanced approach.”
“My hope and expectation is that we can put country before party and get something done for the American people.”
"The first three are boilerplate arguments for ever-more government spending and ever-higher taxes. Whatever else he says, that will be the heart of his “pivot” to jobs.There’s nothing new in the approach because it’s exactly what he’s said and done since he took office."
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Although I've worked a bit in both TV and print, I'm a radio guy at heart. Grew up loving it and wanting to be part of it. And I'm saddened to see what the industry has done to itself -- or what owners and managers have done to it.
With a limited few exceptions, they have drained it of its life's blood. Personality. This is especially true in music-based radio, where stations cling to a music format that can easily be surpassed by I-pod, satellite radio or simply the music-channels on cable TV (my own has about thirty varieties). When the commercial-free alternatives are so readily available, why would anyone listen to radio with the attendant commercial load if only the music is the attraction?
The only thing radio can provide, but largely doesn't, that is not available via those other music sources is a living, breathing person with something interesting or entertaining to contribute. Instead, we get pedestrian voices reading cliche promotional lines from 3 X 5 cards. Where is the present-day Don Sherwood, Dick Whittinghill, Howard Miller, Wally Phillips, Dan Ingram, William B. ... ?
As a one-time programming manager, I always took great pride in the personalities we developed and presented. Far more than a music play-list which any high-schooler could emulate. I was especially pleased to give an outlet for the creativity of Dale Reeves, whose voice you've heard on many movie soundtracks, cartoons and commercials, even if you don't know the name.
Dale was so good, he took a previously-unknown New York FM station from nothing to #1 in the crucial morning commute-time in a matter of months ... as the ONLY white personality on an otherwise all-black station! And nobody knew it!
It's a sad commentary on the kind of people who run the radio industry today that several years ago he gave up in frustration and quit it entirely. This is what corporate hacks have done to creativity and talent in an industry they are (not so) slowly strangling to death. I'm saddened, but profoundly glad to be out of it.
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A love letter in the sand from Pat Boone ...
"We're no longer a Christian nation." - President Barack Obama, June 2009
"America has been arrogant." - President BarackObama
"After 9/11, America didn't always live up to her ideals."- President Barack Obama
"You might say that America is a Muslim nation."- President Barack Obama, Egypt 2009
Thinking about these and other statements made by the man who wears the title of president. I keep wondering what country he believes he's president of.
It seems increasingly and painfully obvious that you (Mr. President) are more influenced by your upbringing and questionable education than most suspected. If you consider yourself the president of a people who are "no longer Christian," who have "failed to live up to our ideals," who "have been arrogant," and might even be "considered Muslim" - you are president of a country most Americans don't recognize.
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I'm a football fan. When I lack any kind of connection or commitment to either college team in a match-up, I just naturally root for the underdog. It's the American way.
Thus, while I have no reason to root for or against either Auburn, the defending national champion, or Utah State, which was scheduled to provide cannon fodder for the home team in Alabama, I was excited by the prospect of an upset. It appeared to be in the making when Utah State held a ten-point lead with about two minutes remaining. Then they proceeded to blow it and lose the game, largely because they went into the infamous (and almost invariably failing) "prevent" defense.
Auburn cut it to ribbons, scored two touchdowns and won.
If/when I become Athletic Director at a major football power, I will insert the following clause into the contract of every football coach:
"If you ever, EVER, resort to a 'prevent' defense, you will be expected to go to mid-field, on the fifty-yard line, and immediately disembowel yourself with a hara-kiri knife."
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From Doug, a historical bulletin ...
Evidence has been found that William Tell and his family were avid bowlers. Unfortunately, all the Swiss league records were destroyed in a fire ...
... and so we'll never know for whom the Tells bowled.
(Doug, go to your room!)
"GOING POSTAL" NOW MEANS GOING BROKE;
DEMOCRAT THIEVES
Another government-run "business" is on the verge of going kaput. The Post Office, losing billions, is faced with the need for a taxpayer bail-out or having to shut down entirely in a matter of months. It will, of course, be kept alive by Congress, but a big part of its problem is a unionized work-force which was foolishly given a "no layoffs" clause in their contract. Result: too many employees for the volume of work required.
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This item may make some contributors to Democrat politicians a bit uneasy. The Orange County Register reports that a prominent Democratic campaign treasurer who works for federal, state and Orange County (CA) lawmakers including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Loretta Sanchez has been arrested by the FBI on suspicion of mail fraud.
A U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman confirmed that Kinde Durkee was arrested by the FBI in connection with her position as a Democrat campaign treasurer.
AND... the New York Daily News reports that ten years after the Sept. 11 attacks, ex-city worker Natarajan Venkataram says he’s sorry he stole millions of dollars meant for identifying the remains of 9/11 World Trade Center victims.
He’s just not sorry enough to turn over $400,000 still sitting in his bank account in India.
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Michael Goodwin (NY Post) summarizes our Obama problem ...
"America has faced worse before, but the difference this time is that our government, under the guise of liberal compassion, wealth redistribution and environmental justice, is pursuing job-killing policies. President Obama's anti-capitalist fervor is taking a devastating toll that could take a generation to repair.
"The centralization of power in Washington has produced a skewed economy. Underserved and unaffordable perks are lavished on the well-connected few, especially government unions, while opportunities for most workers are snuffed out. If the best social program is a job -- and it is -- then the Obama administration is guilty of malpractice."
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Given fanatical Muslims' predilection for celebrating the anniversaries of their mass murders of "infidels" (i.e., us) with more mass murders, one views with understandable trepidation the upcoming ten-year mark since 9/11.
One might also wonder how long the civilized western world can survive against a medieval political party disguised as a religion whose adherents regularly scream that only their way of life will endure, while we have leaders such as (A) Bush, who babbled nonsense about "Islam is a religion of peace" and (B) his successor, who is blatantly pro-Islam, if not a Muslim himself.
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Show of hands, please, from all those who deeply believe that the "Arab spring" (and summer) will bring about anything we in the western world would identify as democracy in those ancient hotbeds of Islamic fanaticism and oppression.
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Further notes from the "Arab spring": thinly-populated Libya has for years imported migrant workers from black African nations to the south. Now, because some blacks were also imported as mercenaries in Khadafy's army, the rebels are rounding up ALL blacks, with reports of summary executions. There is further word from our intelligence sources that Muslim fanatics, "jihadists", have plans to take over the new government. Anyone surprised?
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Reader Betti with a few musings ...
Regarding the fall of Rome: in his lectures on lessons of history, J. Rufus Fears says that one of the problems was that Rome was mired in wars in the middle east, and the lesson of history there is: don't get mired in the middle- east.
Also ...
When did the rule about taking private vacations on the public dole change? Last I heard, the president funds his own vacations. Only state and public functions are funded by the government. My husband says Obama probably shook hands with a public official on each private junket to make it public.
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Within the limits of their liberal mindset, I have no doubt that there are some Democrat politicians with the sort of ability that should be expected of presidents. Clearly and based upon results, Barack Obama is not one of them. And, based on her own (limited) record of achievement, why should anyone believe that Hillary Clinton is such a person?
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The e-mail brings this piece entitled "A Texans Answer To Welfare" . . .
No cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho's, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away.
If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.
Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I'd do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then, we'll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine and document all tattoos and piercings.
If you want to reproduce or use drugs or alcohol, smoke or get tattoos and piercings, get a job.
Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your "home" will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.
You will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a "government" job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, and whatever we may find for you.
We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good.”
Before you write that I've violated someone's rights, realize that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules. Before you say that this would be "demeaning" and ruin their "self esteem," consider that it wasn't that long ago that taking someone else's money for doing absolutely nothing WAS demeaning and lowered self esteem.
If we are expected to pay for other people's mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.
AND ... while you are on Gov’t subsistence, you no longer can VOTE. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. If you want to vote, get a job.
(Thanks, Rick)
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Another clear sign of how California has become one big governmental disaster: a new poll commissioned by the LA Times finds Obama with a wide lead over any prospective Republican opponent. Let us hope that the next presidential campaign guru is smarter than Karl Rove, who spent millions on the fantasy that George W. Bush could win the nuttiest state in America, where the lunatics are running the asylum.
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Reader Mike recalls the (belated and insufficient) wisdom of a liberal icon ...
In an analytical moment, Bertrand Russell examined the faults of those who marched with him in favour of liberal causes, and concluded that they had an unerring ability to fall for "the fallacy of the superior virtue of the oppressed". They could not just say that oppression was wrong, and leave it there. They had to imagine that the oppressed were virtuous; that their noble struggles raised them above the mass of compromised humanity; that their poets were geniuses and their leaders were the most principled statesmen on earth.
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Sky-guy with a classic ...
A Jewish grandma and her grandson are at the beach.
He's playing in the water, she is standing on the shore not wanting to get her feet wet, when all of a sudden, a huge wave appears from nowhere and crashes directly onto the spot where the boy is wading. The water recedes and the boy is no longer there...he was swept away.
The grandma holds her hands to the sky, screams and cries: "Lord, my GOD, how could you? Haven't I been a wonderful grandmother? Haven't I been a wonderful mother? Haven't I kept a kosher home? Haven't I given to charity? Haven't I tried my very best to live a life that you would be proud of?"
A voice booms from the clouds, "All right already!"
A moment later another huge wave appears out of nowhere and crashes on the beach.
As the water recedes the boy is standing there, smiling and splashing around as if nothing had ever happened.
The voice above booms again. I have returned your grandson. Are you satisfied?"
She responds, "So, where's his hat? He had a hat...!"
THE LEFTIST BARBARIANS ARE INSIDE THE
GATES
"President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of bitches out."
James Hoffa, Jr., President of the Teamsters Union ... thug and son of a thug ... clearly advocating killing Republicans in introducing Obama's Labor Day speech. One must assume this is the more civil discourse the Great Pretender in the White House advocates. He did not repudiate Hoffa's threat.
Time for Fredo to go fishing, Barack ...
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A news hack at work: after Hoffa's speech, John King interviewed him on CNN ... and somehow didn't bother to ask him a single question about his despicable remarks. Who's worse? King, or that ape-faced dope on NBC?
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A Labor Day news item heralds battalions of union workers proudly marching thru the streets of Detroit. Have these morons LOOKED at the city they and their Democrat political cronies have created?
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Even the poll commissioned by the liberal Washington Post and liberal ABC-TV have Obama at new lows in public opinion of his overall performance and especially on the economy. And the public isn't buying his latest round of "stimulus" nonsense.
He's also hit record lows in the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
Try to figure this: an LA Times poll finds that almost three-quarters of Californians think Obama has the country headed in the wrong direction ... yet another poll finds that an overwhelming majority of Californians would vote to re-elect him over any Republican! Does this bespeak irrationality, or what?
And even poor liberal Robert Redford is "disappointed" in the Big Nothing. Awwwww.....
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While Obama was blathering Labor Day nonsense about Ford, Chrysler and GM making "the best cars in the world in America" -- both lies, by the way; they're NOT the best by any objective study and they mostly AREN'T made in America -- Toyota was quietly moving the rest of ITS Camry manufacturing INTO the United States.
With Obama, of course, it's always hard to tell whether he's (A) stupid or (B) outright lying.
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Ask any (remaining) Obama supporter two questions:
Where are those millions of "green jobs" the Marxist phony promised?
Why is gasoline twice as costly as the day he took office? Could it possibly be related to his unwillingness to allow exploitation of our own petroleum resources?
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If you communicate primarily by telephone and e-mail and send packages and vital documents by UPS or Fed-Ex, how much difference would it make to you if the Post Office DID go out of business? Most of my snail-mail is made up of advertising circulars, catalogs, etc. I love my local letter-carrier, but this is insane. The post office has become largely a cut-rate advertising vehicle.
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The indefatigable Victor Davis Hanson gets to the root of Obama's failure in National Review Online ...
"Obama “went big” on the stimulus, giving a number of speeches about the “historic” size of his “investments” and why we should not worry about the timid naysayers. At the time, he was widely praised for his audacity. He also went big on Obamacare, despite worries from party centrists. Again, he was praised for forcing through such a radically new program. In other words, few Democrats have tried so eagerly to advance the liberal domestic agenda. His appointments, the politics at the Department of Justice and the EPA, and his use of executive fiat to circumvent bothersome laws bear that out.
"If Obama were enjoying a 60 percent approval rating and the economy were humming at 5 percent annual growth and 5 percent unemployment, the Democrats would be singing his praises despite his stumbles. The problem Obama poses to Democrats is not his policy but his popularity — in their ‘what-if’ minds, he is sinking because he did not do enough rather than far too much."
And thus idiocy maintains its place as the prime liberal guidepost.
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The beginning of the end for Bachmann? Her campaign staff is falling apart either from firings or quittings.
How can Ron Paul supporters align themselves with his stated belief that a crazed Iranian government deserves to have nuclear weapons and that we brought 9/11 on ourselves? In his urge to be a contrarian, does he share the belief of radical Islamists -- like those in Tehran -- who believe the rest of the world should submit to their medieval fanaticism? Or is he just plain nuts? I vote for the latter.
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Perry is ahead of Romney in poll after poll of likely Republican voters. Is it Perry charisma, with many questions still unanswered, or the widespread concern among R-voters that Romney's a weenie?
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Life in the big city ...
Forty-six people shot and killed or wounded in New York over the weekend.
Seven murders in Chicago over the weekend; six shootings, one knifing.
In big city after big city, the savages are running wild.
How would we deal with a plague of rabid animals? The question answers itself.
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Herbert Meyer in The American Thinker ...
"The more President Obama calls for a second stimulus spending spree to create those jobs the first spending spree failed to create, the more he sounds like the grocer in that old joke about the lady who wants her money back because the dietetic ice cream the grocer talked her into buying hasn't helped her lose weight. The grocer thinks for a moment and says, "Eat more of it."
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Are the Brits finally facing the reality that their government-run health care system is a disaster? The Guardian, the big liberal paper, reports that the government is in negotiations with a private German company to take over their hospitals.
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Lawrence Sellin in the ever-feisty Canada Free Press ...
"The United States Government has been hijacked by hopelessly corrupt men and women, who have violated the Constitution and undermined the rule of law in order to pursue personal power and profit at the expense of the American people and future generations.
"There is a symbiotic relationship between the fabulously wealthy and our politicians-for-life. The political establishment, both Republicans and Democrats, use taxpayer money to fund special interests in return for kickbacks in the form of campaign funding and other benefits to remain permanent fixtures in Washington, D.C.
Politicians buy votes with our money, then steal our wallets, then repeat the process. It is not capitalism, but socialism for the wealthy."
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Not a prediction, but a concern. As more and more investors feel effectively forced into a quavering stock market by interest rates held artificially low by Boob Bernanke of the Fed, there looms the threat of a possible market crash that could devastate millions.
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Forbes Magazine reports on a steamy case ...
"Susan Clements-Jeffrey, a 52-year-old teacher, used a stolen laptop to exchange explicit photos with her boyfriend and those photos wound up in the hands of a theft-recovery company and a couple of detectives.The laptop belonged to another school district and had been reported stolen by a student who had checked it out and was using it at a public library.
"The laptop had theft-recovery security software installed on it. The software was called 'LoJack for Laptops'.
Clements-Jeffrey told police she hadn’t realized it was stolen. The charges against her were eventually dismissed, but she sued the police department and Absolute Software for invasion of privacy."
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Edward, a broadly-experienced teacher from Connecticut, has an explanation for the deterioration of the English language ...
The teaching of grammar is concrete and objective. A student correctly identifies nouns, or not. The student can diagram a sentence or not. Both the teacher and the student can be clearly evaluated as to instruction and learning. When the curricula shifts to literature, the evaluation becomes far more subjective. Simply put, many teachers of English have discovered that by emphasizing literature and “creative writing” over grammar, it is far harder for supervisors to evaluate their work.
A second and more insidious reason for this change to literature over grammar lies in the material selected for study. My experience in dealing with many teachers of English in Connecticut and nearby New York is that almost all are philosophically on the far left of the political spectrum. The literature chosen for students to read very often promotes their political and social ideals and rarely, if ever any opposing works.
Thus, teachers of English have created a curriculum in which evaluation of their performance is more uncertain, the demands of the work is reduced and they gain an opportunity to have students read works that are designed to convert young minds to their world view.
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Today's lesson for media would-be's:
The word is jub--I--lant, not jub--U--lant. You're welcome.
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Wes in Mesa, Arizona, challenges us to consider this ...
“Fathom the hypocrisy of a Government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured……but not everyone must prove they are a citizen.”
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Dr. Herb passes along this collection of highly appropriate signs ...
In a Podiatrist's office: "Time wounds all heels."
At a Proctologist's door: "To expedite your visit, please back in."
At an Optometrist's Office: "If you don't see what you're looking for, you've come to the right place."
At a Towing company: "We don't charge an arm and a leg. We want tows."
On a Maternity Room door: "Push. Push. Push."
Outside a Muffler Shop: "No appointment necessary. We hear you coming."
At a radiator repair shop: "Best place in town to take a leak."
Sign on the back of another Septic Tank Truck: "Caution - This Truck is full of Political Promises"
COMING TOMORROW: BABBLE FROM
BABYLON-ON-THE-POTOMAC
Look for some (many?) empty seats in the House of Representatives tomorrow night when Obama re-runs more of his failed nonsense about the government "creating jobs" and "job training" along with ill-disguised socialist schemes for more "stimulus programs". Several Republicans have announced already that they have no plans to attend what amounts to a campaign speech for Obama's pet lemmings -- the poor, stupid creatures that, in mythology, follow their leaders off a cliff.
Of course, Obama still has the whimpering liberal media, as sorry a collection of gutless nothings as ever despoiled the landscape, trying to keep his sagging fortunes alive (see NBC story below). Have your video recording device running on election night next year. Unless the Republicans find some creative way to blow the election, the media moaning should be one of the most entertaining spectacles of the decade.
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Care for a straight dose of media bias? NBC political reporter Chuck Todd on NBC's "Nightly News" with word of more bad poll news for Obama: "Our pollsters are concerned that’s the kind of numbers you have when the public starts to give up on a president as a problem solver."
NBC's pollsters are CONCERNED for Obama? What else do you need to know about their slant on the news?
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As if Obama didn't have enough problems, the Hoffa "take the sons-of-bitches out" speech presents yet another dilemma. If he doesn't condemn it, he clearly condones the very kind of "dialogue" he's previously said is unacceptable. If he does condemn it, he risks annoying the thug element in the unions that form much of his shrinking support. Either way, it's opened the gates for the majority that oppose and/or detest him to loudly call him and his sycophants anything they please. Expect many to take full advantage, since it's obvious the fool is floundering without a shred of an idea what to do.
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So Joe Biden has now signed onto Hoffa's "war" theme. Did anybody doubt that the buffoon was already crazy? Let us be grateful that under President Ego, the vice-presidency has reverted to its status once described by one of FDR's nonentities in the job, Cactus Jack Garner, as "not worth a pitcher of warm spit." Only he didn't say "spit".
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Which Republican candidate will be first to revive the defining question from the Reagan campaign? You know ...
"Are you better off today than you were four (or three) years ago?" Except for freeloaders -- either the individual or politically-favored corporate variety -- who could answer in the affirmative?
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The government's own Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that the REAL rate of unemployment, which includes people who are either working at part-time jobs because they can't find anything else or have simply given up on finding a job, is not the 9.1% official rate of unemployment, bad as it is, but is actually now up to 16.2%.
You don't have to be a mathematician to figure out that means about one in every six Americans is out of work. It takes colossal gall for a president to even attempt to run for another term in office when he has so bungled the economy. An honorable person would step away and say, "I tried ... I failed ... let's give someone else a chance." But we're not talking about an honorable person, are we?
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Fremont, California-based Solyndra, one of Obama's proudly-hailed "green" companies, got a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. government ... never made a penny ... and has announced layoffs of 1,100 workers and plans to file for bankruptcy. Any remaining jobs will go to China. Now, Andy Breitbart's "Big Government" reveals that George Kaiser, the man behind this debalce, not only raised large sums for Obama but made multiple visits to the White House in the months before the company was granted that $535 million loan of taxpayer money from the government.
Try to contain your shock and amazement.
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The Rasmussen Reports poll finds that a generic Republican (i.e., ANY Republican) beats Obama, 49% to 41%.
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The word-never-to-be-spoken among Nancy Pelosi and her cowering House Democrats is ... "stimulus".
They've finally figured out that it's a dirty word, synonymous with failure in the eyes and ears of most Americans.
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Political favoritism cuts both ways, usually at taxpayer expense.
For example, the NASA's Mission Control Center was placed in Houston, far from the actual launch site at Cape Canaveral, Florida, because Lyndon Johnson, a Texan, wanted it there.
Now, Houston is denied the tourist attraction of a space shuttle because ... it's in Texas, which Obama & Co. despise.
BTW, don't hold your breath waiting for lavish federal aid for victims of the disastrous Texas wildfires -- for the same reason. Texans must pay for the sins of the evil Bush, the threatening Perry, etc.
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Just to correct a gigantic lie liberals propagate ...
Barack Obama was NEVER a professor of law, any more than the fact that I lectured in a Kansas University extension course in communications inside Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary made me a KU professor.
It did, however, enable me to meet a better class of people than many of my broadcasting peers.
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I fear it's game-over for Sarah Palin. When she stretched her latter-day will-she/won't-she version of Mario Cuomo's "Hamlet on the Hudson" routine of the 80's beyond this just-past Labor Day weekend, she killed whatever remaining small chance she had.
In the immortal words of Dusty Springfield, "Wishin', and hopin', and thinkin', and prayin'... " won't make it happen.
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Unlikely as it seems, the New York congressional seat vacated by Democrat Anthony (See my) Wiener may very well go to the Republican contestant. Bob Turner leads his Democrat opponent by four points.
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Thanks to Rush for the mention yesterday.
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Since the 1920's and the reformation of Turkey under Ataturk and the end of dominance by the Islamic caliphate, Turkey has moved toward modernization and Westernization. That trend has ended. Now, Turkey has broken ties with Israel and moved toward the Jewish nation's adversaries under a pro-Islamic presidential regime. Don't be surprised at further bad news from this nation that straddles east and west.
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Here's a classic example of public ignorance and failed education in action. According to Rasmussen polling, the good news is that 60% of likely U.S. Voters think it’s at least somewhat likely that the level of activity on the sun, including solar flares and sunspots, has an impact on the long-term heating and cooling of the earth’s atmosphere. No kidding?! The SUN affects the level of heat on our planet?! Okay, they have some vague idea of how the universe works.
But then we have the Moron Factor coming into play ... because 44% think human activity has a bigger impact on the long-term heating and cooling of the Earth’s atmosphere than solar activity does. Yes, they believe we puny humans have more impact than the sun! Talk about hubris!
Let us hope that all of these dopes in the latter group invest every penny they have in some Al Gore scam. As "duh boys" used to say in my one-time hometown of Chicago, "Suckers shouldn't be allowed to walk around with money."
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Sports interviews are almost invariably exercises in inanity. While I enjoy NASCAR racing, their interviews are the worst. Predictable questions, predictable answers, with all parties involved obviously fearful of the giant business operation that IS NASCAR and therefore acting as obsequious shills. Embarrassing.
And speaking of NASCAR ... what a rare treat when some race-tracks occasionally have a singer of real talent performing the national anthem. Country and rock singers mostly just can't handle it, and disgrace themselves.
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... speaking of sports ...
We now have a lead-pipe cinch winner of the title vacated by the University of Oregon football team, "Most Hideous Uniforms". The new University of Maryland outfits have a lock on it.
I fear some viewers may obey the biblical injunction, "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out."
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If Amanda Knox manages to beat the rap in the current -- and last -- appeal of her murder conviction in Italy, let us hope she'll be a helluva lot wiser in her choice of friends and companions in the future.
She seems to have succumbed to the same delusion I've seen many times over many years in the travel industry; the delusion that, because she's American, she's immune to legal troubles in a foreign country. In fact, especially in these days of widespread dislike of our country, you're MORE likely to get into trouble. If you travel abroad, keep your mouth shut and your nose clean.
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An ongoing liberal delusion that is apparently incurable: the naive belief that passing more laws against gun ownership will somehow persuade criminals who, by definition, don't obey laws ... to turn in their weapons.
This virtually defines thumb-sucking wishful thinking.
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A lurid thought, unworthy of a gentleman ...
... but is it possible that Florida Congresswoman Debbie was conceived by someone who'd flunked a ...
Wassermann test?
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Making the rounds on the web ...
THE REAL PROBLEM WITH OUR GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM - - - -
The folks who are getting free stuff don't like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff, can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff, and the folks who are paying for the free stuff want the free stuff to stop, and the folks who are getting the free stuff, want even MORE free stuff on top of the free stuff they're already getting!
Now..... The people who are forcing the people who PAY for the free stuff have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff that the people who are PAYING for the free stuff are being mean, prejudiced, and racist.
So .... the people who are GETTING the free stuff have been convinced they need to HATE the people who are PAYING for the free stuff by the people who are forcing the people who are PAYING for the free stuff and GIVING them the free stuff in the first place.
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Sheila forwards this story from a Kansas State Highway Patrol officer ...
I made a traffic stop on an elderly lady the other day for speeding on U.S. 166 Eastbound at Mile Marker 73 just East of Sedan , KS . I asked for her driver's license, registration, and proof of insurance.
The lady took out the required information and handed it to me. In with the cards I was somewhat surprised to see she had a conceal carry permit. I asked her if she had a weapon in her possession at this time.
She responded that she indeed had a .45 automatic in her glove box. Something---body language, or the way she said it, made me want to ask if she had any other firearms. She did admit to also having a 9mm Glock in her center console.
Now I had to ask one more time if that was all. She responded once again that she did have just one more, a .38 special in her purse. I then asked her what was she so afraid of.
She looked me right in the eye and said, "Not a damn thing!"
PERRY VS. ROMNEY, THE REST -- AND MSNBC
Reader Rick offers this ...
"Having the GOP debate on MSNBC is like having a Ku Klux Klan rally on the Black Entertainment Network."
Perfect.
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All participants seemed sharper this time around. It was clear that the NBC questioners had the knives out for Rick Perry, with the leftist from Politico (a left-wing newsletter, if you aren't familiar with it) playing the role of self-appointed prosecutor.
Perry was up to the task and it is increasingly clear that the race is evolving into Perry vs. Romney, even though the other candidates acquitted themselves well except for the usual flailing by the hopeless Ron Paul.
Perry's direct handling of liberal quavering over his accurate characterization of Social Security as a Ponzi scheme was refreshing, as was his confrontation with the goo-goo gasping about the death penalty. Liberals can't accept the ongoing reality, reflected not only in laws but in every opinion poll ever taken on the subject, that most Americans DO believe in the ultimate penalty for heinous crimes, realizing that whacking the scum reduces the recidivism rate to zero.
Romney can't bring himself to admit that his Massachusetts health-care scheme was misguided, but he repeated his pledge to grant every state an exemption from its linear descendant, Obamacare. He obviously believes it better to deny the truth about Social Security out of fear that Americans can't handle the truth (thank you, Jack Nicholson). Since he has alienated himself from Tea Party folk, if he should get the nomination he might be well advised to invite Bachmann to be a running mate to bridge that gap -- but won't. He is what he is: a vast improvement over the poseur in the White House today, but still a RINO at heart.
Cain was powerful again. Huntsman came across as condescending. His nonsense about "98 of a hundred" scientists believe the human-caused global-warming myth was, in the face of growing evidence to the contrary, an outright lie. If he were a real contender, the old anti-Nixon line, "Would you buy a used car from this man?" might have a comeback. The libs running the show clearly love him, but he'll never sell his act to most Republicans. So the media mutts will settle for Mitt.
Newt was, as usual, the most adept debater and one wishes he had fewer other flaws as a candidate. Santorum, like Paul, is wasting his time, however sincere he may be.
Unless he makes a serious mistake -- and telling the truth about Social Security shouldn't be so defined -- it's a good bet that Perry will (A) lose the New Hampshire primary to Romney, then (B) steamroller him the rest of the way.
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I have no comment on any post-debate programming on MSNBC, the leftist propaganda cable operation. As soon as I saw that Maddow guy, I was out.
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This you can take to the bank. If Democrat operatives and their lib-media stooges say they'd be happy to have Perry as an opponent next year, but fear Romney, they're lying.
While any rational person would vote for either Republican over the empty suit now in the White House, the attitude and expressions of Obama's shills should be seen in a mirror; i.e., reversed.
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Why is the Obama administration keeping perfectly good firefighting aircraft grounded in California ... aircraft that are desperately needed to fight wildfires in Texas? Is it just plain old ... spite?
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Gallup poll numbers for the month of August show our failed president continuing to decline, even among blacks and Hispanics. Only 48 percent of Hispanics said they approved of Obama's job performance. The racial solidarity factor slipped slightly among blacks; 84 percent approval.
He's lost the white support that put him in office. His approval rating in that group is down to 33%.
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Joel Kotkin in FORBES dissects Obama's manifest failures ...
"Over the past three years, President Obama has done a remarkable job of undermining three very different ideals: progressivism, capitalism and moderation. Progressivism, his own brand, has taken the biggest blow, which may be why so many progressives — particularly environmentalists — have been so critical of their chosen candidate.
"Obama’s stimulus did not seek to increase productivity capacity or create good blue-collar jobs. It largely missed the recession’s biggest victims: minorities, the working class and the young who are well represented of the 1 in 5 Americans now not working. The president instead chose to service the needs of organized constituencies such as public sector unions, large research universities and “green capitalists.”
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Defining ineptitude: the U.S. government "negotiating" with Iraq over troop numbers, clearly overlooking the very real fact that multitudes of Iraqis (those who weren't being fed into shredders) used to cheer wildly when Saddam Hussein threatened America, firing his guns in the air and being a total ... rectal orifice. They loved it when he invaded Kuwait. Remember?
Negotiate?! With a crooked, corrupt government that's already in bed with Iran?!
The very (stupid) idea is representative of a nation -- ours -- that's forgotten how to conclude even wars that it's won. Time to repeat the mantra. We truly DO "live ... in a land ... run by morons."
The real world works like this: I whip your ass in a war ... YOU do not tell ME what to do.
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You can't blame restaurant operators for making the effort to get in on the food-stamp largesse being ladled out by the government, but what does it say about the way things are going that there are (A) so many people receiving them who are (B) dining out at restaurants?
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Make of this what you will. New government statistics show that Hispanics make up 16% of the U.S. population, but in the first nine months of this fiscal year made up more than half of all federal felony criminal offenders.
Imported crime -- it's a growth business.
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Mika "Attila the Hen" Brzesinski, the left-wing echo chamber on RINO Joe Scarborough's MSNBC gabfest, has a brother who's also advancing in lib-world. The White House announces that Mark Brzezinski will be nominated as ambassador to Sweden. He's a partner in a D.C. lobbying shop and has recently written op-ed columns for the New York Times and the ultra-liberal POLITICO website. He and Mika are the children of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to Jimmy Carter. And we know how effective HE was.
- - - - -
The Slut Report --
The Enquirer says Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton's semen receptacle, is living the life of a lonely outcast. I weep.
- - - - -
Am I just having bad luck, or are the airlines' mileage programs a giant scam? I have piles of miles, but every time and place I consider using them for some R & R either there are no seats available, or there are -- but only for double or more the mileage they advertise. Or they offer to route you thru three stops for even a short trip.
Example: American's website had seats available, Tucson to Oakland for a December visit -- IF I would first fly east to Dallas ... then northwest to Portland ... then south on Alaska, a mileage partner airline. Total time -- more then twelve hours. I've DRIVEN it in thirteen.
Yes, I've decided, it IS a giant scam. And the food, when available, still sucks. And don't get me started on the TSA Gestapo at the airports.
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Common error, seen in a newspaper yesterday ...
A person who operates a restaurant is not a restaura N teur; the correct term is restaurateur-- no "n".
The "n" ... is out.
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Governor Rick Perry, in response to a question about his position on gun control:
" “I am actually for gun control. Use both hands.”
- - - - -
Jimmy Fallon--
"A Southwest Airlines passenger was arrested after he refused to turn off his cell phone during landing. He was taken from a Southwest flight to jail — or as most people would call that, “an upgrade.”
HAS HE STOPPED TALKING YET?
For the first time in many years, I avoided a presidential speech. It's a medical thing. I've been advised that I've already reached my annual quota for intake of bull(bleep).
I've read the transcript. Best capsule description: old wine in new bottles.
Biggest blatant lie: "Everything in this bill ($450 billion) will be paid for. Everything." No, it will not.
Humongous hypocrisy: Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of GE whose company paid ZERO taxes -- got a rebate, in fact -- on billions in profits ... head of Obama's "jobs" braintrust ... seated with Mrs. O.
And will he EVER shut up about Warren Buffett, whose companies are delinquent by millions in income taxes?
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I'll settle for Victor Davis Hanson's concise summary ...
"Obama must be in a time warp — he thinks the content of his speech is new, or can be made new by more soaring cadences. It’s almost as if he is oblivious to the fact that, before calling for nearly half a trillion dollars in government borrowing to jumpstart temporary job creation tonight, he already oversaw a failed $800 million stimulus, “shovel-ready” jobs that were later admitted to be not so shovel-ready, “millions of green jobs” talk leading to sweetheart loans to now-bankrupt crony companies, nearly $5 trillion in new borrowing, and massive new financial and environmental regulations. Been there, done that."
- - - - -
Let me be the first to announce the subject and content of the next Obama speech.
"Let me do my socialist thing, or I'll just ... HOLD MY BREATH!"
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A Ponzi scheme, by definition, is an investment that generates no real income for an enterprise, thus can pay "dividends" to previous investors only by using the money from new investors.
Social Security is funded exclusively by revenue from new "investors"; i.e., the younger people who are paying the payroll tax and not yet collecting.
Obviously, as the population ages, this scheme becomes unsustainable. Anyone with an IQ above the moron level knows this.
Herman Cain wisely pointed out the success achieved in Chile with their re-make of the system, but the other candidates, and the MSNBC lunkheads, were too obtuse or ignorant to pick up on it.
Bottom line: Rick Perry is correct, and anyone who denies it is either stupid or a liar.
- - - - -
This survey may indicate that more Americans are ready for somebody to tell them the straight, hard truth ("Social Security is a Ponzi scheme") rather than doing the usual politicians' act of hiding fearfully behind weasel-words.
When it comes to key national issues, 73% of Likely Voters nationwide trust the American people more than their political leaders. Rasmussen Reports found that 10% trust the judgment of their political leaders more than the people.
Of COURSE they distrust them! Lying and cowardice are their standard hallmarks.
- - - - -
Credit to John McCormack in The Weekly Standard for this reminder ...
In his book “No Apology: The Case For American Greatness”, which was published just last year, Mitt Romney compared those managing Social Security to criminals, saying:
“Let’s look at what would happen if someone in the private sector did a similar thing. Suppose two grandparents created a trust fund, appointed a bank as trustee, and instructed the bank to invest the proceeds of the trust fund so as to provide for their grandchildren’s education. Suppose further that the bank used the proceeds for its own purposes, so that when the grandchildren turned eighteen, there was no money for them to go to college. What would happen to the bankers responsible for misusing the money? They would go to jail. But what has happened to the people responsible for the looming bankruptcy of Social Security? They keep returning to Congress every two years.”
Mittens flip-flopping again? Now he's afraid to repeat his own words about the biggest government scam of all.
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Wednesday night, Herman Cain referred to the Social Security system that's served Chile so well. Linette Lopez of the Business Insider outlines how it works --
" Workers are given the choice as to whether they would like to stay in a pay-as-you-go plan (like we have in the U.S.) or a new system in which they can put their entire payroll tax into a retirement account. That way, they can benefit from compound interest. 93% of Chileans elect to participate in the new system. It's run by 15 private companies.
"Here's how the country's former Secretary of Labor, Jose Pinera explains what has happened: We guaranteed benefits for the elderly -- we told those people who had already retired that they had nothing to fear from this reform. We also told people entering the labor force for the first time that they had to go to the new system.
"Today, all workers in Chile are capitalists, because their money is invested in the stock market. And they also understand that if government tomorrow were to create the conditions for inflation, they would be damaged because some of the money is also invested in bonds -- around 60%. So the whole working population of Chile has a vested interest in sound economic policies and a pro-market, pro-private-enterprise environment.
Not only that, but the savings rate in Chile went up from 10% to 27% of GNP. There's no payroll tax, and with full employment and that great savings rate, the economy has blossomed."
- - - - -
I note with bemusement that some media mushheads still refer to Mitt Romney as the "front-runner" in the Republican race.
Hey, dopes! Read any polls in the last few weeks?!
- - - - -
It may be appropriate to repeat my statement made frequently for many years. "Never fall in love with a politician. They'll break your heart every time."
- - - - -
Let's be clear. To question the foundation of the argument that says humans cause global warming is NOT "anti-science". It's anti FAKE science.
Didn't any of these Gore crazies -- like Huntsman -- ever consider the influence of that large, bright object in the daytime sky?
- - - - -
So Britain's Prince Chuck buys into global warming. Another sad result of all those years of European Royal inbreeding.
- - - - -
Reviewing the transcript of Wednesday night's MSNBC sabotage effort disguised as a debate ...
Among the many really dumb blatherings from Ron Paul were some crackpot nonsense about not paying for air conditioners in the tents in which our troops are housed in Afghanistan (and I agree that the war is a waste) and some silly suggestion that a fence on our southern border might prevent US from escaping to Mexico. Soon ol' Ron will need to be housed in a facility with soft walls so he doesn't hurt himself. He is so stupid, he discredits Libertarians, who DO have some sound arguments.
... but DO keep that hate-mail coming!
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Michael Goodwin, NY Post --
"President Obama is really in trouble. He’s losing the Sundance Kid.
"Robert Redford, one of Hollywood’s many uber-lefties, is fuming over Obama’s environmental policies. Redford wrote on The Huffington Post that, “like so many others, I’m beginning to wonder just where the man stands.”
"Holy head scratcher! To those of us who know exactly where Obama stands, this is a puzzle. The widespread notion that his domestic policies are not sufficiently liberal is almost crazy enough to make you feel sorry for the president.Almost.
"Obama is by far the most liberal president since FDR, with a competence level to match Jimmy Carter’s."
- - - - -
Obama's illegal alien uncle who was long ago ticketed for deportation has been freed from jail in Boston, with no one accountable for keeping track of his whereabouts. Surprised?
- - - - -
As Wednesday's debate passes into history, we should add a note of appreciation for the job done by lead questioners Brian Williams of NBC and the clown from Politico. It couldn't have been easy for them to keep their lips moving for almost two hours after their prolonged attachment to Barack Obama's buttocks.
- - - - -
Interesting, is it not, that the same media mush-heads who were obsessed over President Reagan's arranging for guns for the Contras in Nicaragua who were fighting a communist dictatorship ... now show so little interest in the Obama/Holder gun-running to Mexican gangs?
- - - - -
Biggest non-surprise of the week: a new book of interviews with Jacqueline Kennedy, in which she's quoted as saying that her husband and Bobby were contemptuous of the very idea of Lyndon Johnson ever becoming president.
- - - - -
A friend passes along this health warning ...
"When you drink Vodka over ice, it can give you kidney failure.
When you drink Rum over ice, it can give you liver failure.
When you drink whiskey over ice, it can give you heart problems,
When you drink Gin over ice, it can give you brain problems.
Apparently, ice is really bad for you.
- - - - -
Dan Sorkin reminds us of the wisdom of economis Milton Friedman ...
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand."
YET ANOTHER "DAY THAT WILL
LIVE IN INFAMY"
As 9/11 approaches, we're told of a threat from three men -- two of them U.S. citizens -- who may be plotting to set off a dirty (i.e., radioactive) bomb. We know, say our intelligence people, that the men travelled to Pakistan for training at a terrorism school. All of which prompts a hugely serious question. Since we've known for years that Pakistan is a hotbed of terrorism schools, why are people -- young men, especially -- who travel there allowed back into this country?
If you have relatives there and miss them so much ... MOVE BACK THERE!
For that matter, we still have no answer as to why a young Barack Obama spent time in Pakistan. That's just one of many mysterious parts of his very, very shady past. It certainly feeds into the "Manchurian Candidate" conspiracy theory.
- - - - -
It's becoming an old story. Obama and/or Bernanke talks ... and the markets go down.
The Dow dropped over 300 points yesterday ... worldwide markets also went down.
We can't (for now) keep these two from doing stupid things, but can't they at least shut up about it?
- - - - -
Just how corrupt IS the Obama administration? This bogus "green" company, Solyndra, goes bankrupt and takes with it over half-a-billion dollars of taxpayer money. Where the money went remains an unanswered question. However, for some reason Obama's Energy Department had agreed to an unusual deal in which, if the company failed, the private investors could recoup their losses before the taxpayers. Did somebody EXPECT the company to fail and a pile of taxpayer money to ... disappear? Al Gore has gotten rich off enviro-nonsense ... why not Obama?
Why was such a provision guaranteeing investors against loss part of a deal with a company that was supposed to represent the Obama policy of "owning the future"? Why were Obama's people sitting in the company's board meetings, why was Obama himself meeting with the managementof this fraud operation headed by one of his major contributors and why were Solyndra people regular visitors to the White House?
Finally, where are all the Democrats who were so indignant about Enron?
- - - - -
Meantime ... gasoline still costs twice as much as when the Marxist moved into the White House and his response is to give your money to "green, alternate-energy" scams like Solyndra.
How stupid could American voters have been to elect a nothing like Obama? And how stupid could the Republican Party have been to put up, in opposition, a RINO like McCain?
All of which re-introduces the more basic question, "Is this country too stupid to survive?"
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The London Daily Mail remembers what most of America's weenie media try to forget, headlining it:
"The 9/11 victims America wants to forget: The 200 jumpers who flung themselves from the Twin Towers who have been 'airbrushed from history'.
"Almost all of them jumped alone, although eyewitnesses talked of a couple who held hands as they fell.
One woman, in a final act of modesty, appeared to be holding down her skirt. Others tried to make parachutes out of curtains or tablecloths, only to have them wrenched from their grip by the force of their descent.
"The fall was said to take about ten seconds. It would vary according to the body position and how long it took to reach terminal velocity — around 125mph in most cases, but if someone fell head down with their body straight, as if in a dive, it could be 200mph. When they hit the pavement, their bodies were not so much broken as obliterated.
"Nothing more graphically spells out the horror of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers than the grainy pictures of those poor souls frozen in mid-air as they fell to their deaths, tumbling in all manner of positions, after choosing to escape the suffocating smoke and dust, the flames and the steel-bending heat in the highest floors of the World Trade Centre."
But the pathetic wimps who largely run our media think it too "disturbing" to show the video and photos of what the murderous Muslim scum did.
- - - - -
Note to liberals who are horrified at the idea of executing criminals: you lost this argument with the American public long ago. Specious attempts to link the fate of heinous murderers with utterly innocent unborn children under the rubric of "right to life" are not only transparently fake, but despicable.
- - - - -
Another note to liberals about the attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo: what do you think of that "Arab spring" bullfeathers now?
- - - - -
Yet another note to liberals who now says we "over-reacted" to 9/11: what do you gutless wimps use for brains? We have mass murder of more Americans than were killed at Pearl Harbor and launched us into World War 2 ... we DIDN'T do what we should have done, which was decapitate terror-supporting snakepits like Iran on 9/12 ... and you think we've "over-reacted"? Any fool who harbors such nonsensical beliefs should be locked in a room with the families of 9/11 victims and have the facts of life explained to them. Forcefully.
We are in, whether liberal mush-heads want to admit it or not, a fight to the death with radical Islam. And the goo-goos will NOT be spared by the objects of their sympathy.
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From the "What Goes Around, Comes Around" department ...
Word out of Chicago that Obama's former White House hatchet-man, often in support of union power, has been accused by the president of the Chicago Teachers Union of, quote "exploding" at her.
Karen Lewis says Mayor Rahm Emanuel pointed his finger in her face and unleashed a barrage of profanity during a debate over a longer school day.
- - - - -
Jeffrey Anderson in The Weekly Standard on the incredible shrinking Obama ...
"I find it truly comforting that some things never change — and two of those things are President Obama’s ideas and rhetoric. Obama’s long-awaited jobs speech offered his usual mix of hyper-partisanship (no longer convincingly masquerading as post-partisanship), class warfare, and thinly veiled resentment that, in our form of government, he cannot simply do whatever he wants.
"His disconnectedness from most Americans’ concerns, and from their way of thinking, becomes clearer by the day."
... and Lawrence Selling in Canada Free Press adds this ...
"His vision of America was shaped by Marxist anti-colonialism, the radical philosophy of unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, the avarice of predatory financier George Soros and the corrupt politics of the Chicago machine. Obama, his mentors and acolytes seek not a strong, prosperous and free America, but a weak, fragmented, subservient and pitiful remnant as his testament to and trophy of the last gasp of Western democracy."
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Burocrats (okay, if you insist, bureaucrats) are the same everywhere.
Even though ten years have passed since Fredrik Jansson, who lives in northern Sweden, had his leg amputated because of cancer, he must still waste an entire day every year talking to a government paper-shuffler in order to renew his handicapped parking permit.
That's right. He has to prove that his leg hasn't grown back.
- - - - -
Last weekend several college football games were interrupted by thunderstorms and stadia evacuated because of fear of lightning strikes. Yet television pictures showed many of the evacuees gathered UNDER TREES outside. Apparently they went thru the labyrinth of our education system without ever learning that seeking shelter under a tree in a thunderstorm is the WORST thing you can do. And maybe their own parents were too dumb to pass this fundamental fact along to them.
- - - - -
Born too late ...
In an earlier time, wouldn't Wolf Blitzer have been perfectly cast as a mad scientist in an Abbott & Costello movie?
Speaking of TV-types ... is not Scott Pelley a great cure for insomnia?
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From Arch, a useful dictionary ...
ADULT: A person who has stopped growing at both ends and is now growing in the middle.
BEAUTY PARLOR: A place where women curl up and dye.
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AIRLINE PILOT PHILOSOPHY
- An airline pilot is a confused soul who talks about women when he's flying, and about flying when he's with a woman.
- Experience is gained through making mistakes. Mistakes are caused by lack of experience.
- Most airline crew food tastes like warmed-over chicken because that's what it is.
- Everything is accomplished through teamwork until something goes wrong.... then the Captain gets all the blame.
- An FAA investigation is conducted by non-flying experts who take six months to itemize the mistakes made by a crew who had six seconds to react to the emergency.
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Art contributes this piece of word-play ...
An English teacher was quizzing a student on antonyms. He asked, "What is the opposite of 'sadness?' "
"That would be 'happiness,' " the student replied.
"And what is the opposite of 'depression?' "
"That would be 'elation.' "
"And the opposite of 'woe?' "
"I believe that is 'giddyup.' "
REMEMBER THE VICTIMS -- AND THE
MURDEROUS "RELIGION" BEHIND 9/11
Desecrating the memories of 3,000 Americans murdered ten years ago today: Barack Obama and Michael Bloomberg, the idiot mayor of New York, with their "guidelines" on commemorating the biggest mass slaughter in American history.
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Call it paranoia, but if I were a Muslim terrorist bent on destruction in New York or Washington, I might wait a day or two AFTER 9/11, watch the security measures being relaxed, and then ...
- - - - -
Caroline Glick summarizes our root problem at Townhall.com ...
"Since September 11, 2001, the US has steadfastly refused to admit the identity of the enemy it seeks to defeat. US leaders have called that enemy al-Qaida, they have called it extremism or extremists, fringe elements of Islam and radicals. But of course the enemy is jihadist Islam which seeks global leadership and the destruction of Western civilization."
"Their refusal to acknowledge the nature of the enemy has paralyzed their ability to confront and defeat threats as they arise. For instance, US Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was not removed from service or investigated, despite his known support for jihad and his communication with leading jihadists. Rather, he was promoted and placed in a position where he was capable of massacring 12 soldiers and one civilian at Fort Hood, Texas."
- - - - -
With its neighbors turning increasingly hostile in the wake of the "Arab spring", one might wonder just how far Israel can be pushed and threatened by Muslim crazies before it feels compelled to use the ultimate military advantage it possesses -- nukes -- surrounded as it is by an ocean of bloodthirsty enemies determined to destroy it.
- - - - -
I have enormous respect for pollster Scott Rasmussen, but this headline from RASMUSSEN REPORTS is, I believe, a case of belaboring the obvious:
"73% Say Media More Interested in Controversy Than Where Candidates Stand on the Issues"
No kidddding ...
- - - - -
Democrats are expressing concern that their problem going into the 2012 election is based on "not getting our message out."
Wrong.
The problem is not public failure to comprehend the message.
The problem is a belated realization by that public that your presidential candidate is deeply flawed and either incompetent or deliberately destructive and your policies are stupid.
Perhaps a reading of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" would help focus your thinking, especially the passage in which Cassius says, "Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus; and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings."
- - - - -
Stella Paul in The American Thinker ...
" ... from the ashes of the World Trade Center arose Barack Hussein Obama -- the One who would redeem us, floating above the world like a multicultural Messiah. He bore a miraculous name, redolent of our two worst enemies, which seemed to promise some sort of divine intervention. He offered us the Muslim heritage of his father as a magical shield, deflecting the homicidal rage of seething hordes in scary, far-off places, and preserving our peace with no price to pay. His jutting jaw, tilted upwards a la Mussolini, would be our amulet, as all the world marveled at the Lightworker, the brilliant new god America had made.
"The hysteria that accompanied Obama's campaign -- the fainting at his rallies, the Il Duce-like graphics, the Styrofoam Greek columns, the singing of his praises by glassy-eyed students led by enraptured cadres of apparatchik teachers -- bore no resemblance to anything that had ever happened in mainstream American politics. We tried to create a god to defend our freedom, because it was easier than the hard work needed to defend it ourselves."
- - - - -
I suspect that, at some level, the appeal of Rick Perry for many is their realization that a man who loses no sleep over his state's execution of more than 200 deserving murderers is a subliminal confidence that he could/would deliver a message like this to terrorists, "Mess with us, and I'll kill you without batting an eye."
I'm too much a realist to expect that Mr. Perry is a candidate without flaws, but it may well be that most Americans, having seen the sycophantic Obama bow before Arab tyrants, would prefer a leader with a backbone.
- - - - -
Of all the dumb tactics repeatedly employed by Republicans in many elections of the recent past, one of the most useless is the lame attempts to be politically correct and appeal to liberal constituent groups. The reality is that these blocs -- like those dependent on government welfare programs -- are rock-solid Democrat votes and it only makes Republican candidates look weak and foolish when they attempt to pander to them.
- - - - -
Having worked as a broadcaster in both San Francisco (long-term) and Seattle (one year), I've always been amused by people who express the belief that San Francisco's more colorful leftists are more radical than their (usually) quieter counterparts in the Pacific Northwest. I believe the criminal goons in the Longshoreman's union up north have proved my point.
- - - - -
Obama a "great orator"? The whole notion is laughable. Great orators were --and are -- people who could hold an audience without so much as reference to notes. The idea of someone who can read a Teleprompter being a "great orator" is beyond absurd. If that's the standard, even a lame, small-town TV station has "great orators".
- - - - -
Readers of the forthcoming book "Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy" based on taped interviews she did with friend, historian and Kennedy Administration official Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., may find it difficult henceforth to simultaneously worship both the memory of the late First Lady and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the interviews, she makes clear her distaste for the civil rights leader, calling him "tricky" and a "phony" after hearing about FBI tapes of him and a woman in his hotel room, while noting that JFK had urged her not to be judgmental. She was also displeased as she heard tapes of him planning orgies. She's heard to say, "I just can't see a picture of Martin Luther King without thinking, you know, that man's terrible."
- - - - -
Anybody taking bets on how long the latest Notre Dame football coach will last? It's been a long, rough road since Leahy ... or Lou.
- - - - -
How the real world works:
IF YOU CROSS THE NORTH KOREAN BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU GET 12 YEARS HARD LABOR.
IF YOU CROSS THE IRANIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU ARE DETAINED INDEFINITELY.
IF YOU CROSS THE SAUDI ARABIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU WILL BE JAILED.
IF YOU CROSS THE CHINESE BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU MAY NEVER BE HEARD FROM AGAIN.
IF YOU CROSS THE CUBAN BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU WILL BE THROWN INTO POLITICAL PRISON TO ROT.
IF YOU CROSS THE U.S. BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU GET:
A JOB, A DRIVERS LICENSE, SOCIAL SECURITY CARD, WELFARE, FOOD STAMPS, CREDIT CARDS,
SUBSIDIZED RENT OR A LOAN TO BUY A HOUSE, FREE EDUCATION, FREE HEALTH CARE, A LOBBYIST IN WASHINGTON, BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PRINTED IN YOUR LANGUAGE,
THE RIGHT TO CARRY YOUR HOME COUNTRY'S FLAG WHILE YOU PROTEST THAT YOU DON'T GET ENOUGH RESPECT. AND, IN MANY INSTANCES, YOU CAN VOTE!
- - - - -
From Sheila, a classic about enormously popular Mexican-American golfer Lee Trevino ...
One day, shortly after joining the PGA tour in 1965, Lee Trevino, a professional golfer and married man, was at his (very nice) home in Dallas, mowing his front lawn, as he always did.
A lady driving by in a big, shiny Cadillac stopped in front of his house, lowered the window and asked,
"Excuse me, do you speak English ?"
Lee responded, "Yes Ma'am, I do"
The lady then asked, "What do you charge to do yard work ?"
Lee said, "Well, the lady in this house lets me sleep with her".
The woman hurriedly sped away.
WHOSE SIDE ARE THEY ON?
Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York. Barred clergy from the 9/11 observance, while helping a Muslim group with terrorist connections that is attempting to build a mosque -- to them, a symbol of triumph -- near the site of mass murder. An utterly contemptible creep.
The adage applies: it IS possible to be so open-minded, your brains fall out.
How any Jew could support this apostate cretin is totally incomprehensible.
Ditto Obama supporters -- especially Jewish supporters.
- - - - -
Never, ever forget the sight of Muslims around the world and including many American cities dancing in the streets in celebration on 9-11-2001. They are sworn to the destruction of western civilization and the dominance of their repressive medieval "religion" over all human beings. To forget that fundamental fact is to participate willingly in a suicide pact.
- - - - -
We had visitors yesterday. A wonderful, thoughtful, hard-working couple who managed to escape from the Soviet Union during the dark days of the Cold War. Contemplating the foolishness that put Obama in the White House, a feckless Congress, a corrupt legal system and a population increasingly consisting of freeloaders who demand ever more from the shrinking minority of people who pay more in taxes than they, themselves, receive in benefits ... in dismay they asked, "What has happened to this country? This is not the America to which we came more than twenty years ago."
I had to concede that it also no longer resembles the America in which many of us grew up.
- - - - -
Perhaps the commentary by George Scaggs on The American Thinker website will provide some clues ...
"It is becoming increasingly difficult to figure out what America's younger generation is thinking. Perhaps they ... fail to notice that the freedom and prosperity Americans have enjoyed for generations is quickly evaporating.
"Given what our education system has been teaching (or not teaching) for the last several decades, perhaps they do not understand that freedom and prosperity are inextricably intertwined. Maybe they genuinely believe that government exists to provide for them and that government's ability to do so could never possibly be threatened.
"Maybe they are blinded by idealism, unable to see that the concept of "big government" is a failed notion -- that every time it has been tried, in any and all manners, at any place on earth during any time in history, it has resulted in widespread misery and brought once-great nations to their knees."
- - - - -
So Tim Pawlenty, failed Republican presidential candidate, has now joined the Romney bandwagon (trio wagon? A band would be larger).
This is akin to putting a flat tire in the trunk as a spare.
- - - - -
If the Republicans win the overwhelmingly Democratic New York Congressional district vacated by Anthony (See My) Weiner -- and the polls make that appear to be the likely outcome -- It will be a grim message, indeed, to the Democrat lemmings still willing to follow their Marxist leader over a cliff.
- - - - -
Obama's "jobs" bill reduced to its essence: whoring for the small minority of American workers who belong to favored unions. Not IN a union that pours campaign cash into his coffers? Don't expect much.
- - - - -
The apple, as they say, doesn't fall far from the tree. Sean Stone, son of radical movie director Oliver, is just back from Iran and stating that, "Iran has a right to nuclear weapons."
- - - - -
Just so you know ... when you buy insurance from Progressive, the company that advertises heavily in commercials with the goofy woman in white, you are supporting a very leftist company. The Chairman of Progressive is a big contributor to organizations like MoveOn.org.
When you buy from Geico you're buying from Warren Buffett, the man who wants you to pay higher taxes.
Just so you know.
- - - - -
After some spectacularly bad QB play against the Jets last night, should we suspect that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is already plotting to get rid of quarterback Tony Romo by season's end -- or sooner? Ol' Jer isn't known as the most patient of owners.
- - - - -
Serena Williams: as obnoxious as her father?
- - - - -
Paul Krugman of the leftist rag New York Times is called a sociopath by NewsBusters. Would you argue with that assessment?
- - - - -
What DON'T you know? Sheila provides this test.
No piece of paper can be folded in half more than seven (7) times. Oh, go ahead...I'll wait...
Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes or shark attacks. (So, watch your Ass )
American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one (1) olive from each salad served in first-class.
The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer. So did the first ' Marlboro Man'.
It is possible to lead a cow upstairs ... but, not downstairs.
So....................... now you DO know everything.
- - - - -
From Bob W., some accumulated wisdom ...
Learn from your parents' mistakes. Use birth control.
Red meat is not bad for you. Fuzzy green meat is bad for you.
Money isn't everything, but it DOES keep the kids in touch.
ANOTHER NIGHT, ANOTHER DEBATE
One wonders how many debates must occur before the voters say, "Ho-hum, I've seen this circus before."
Mitt Romney was at the top of his game, although his Massachusetts health-plan experiment continues to dog him. Having called Social Security "a criminal fraud" in his own book inhibits his attacks on Rick Perry's attitude toward the program, reducing him to complaints about Perry telling what is, after all, the truth.
Rick Perry is evidently -- and understandably -- wearying of being the pinata at the party and having to repetitiously defend some of his actions as governor. His stance on in-state college fees for illegal aliens didn't go down well with the Tea Party audience, but his point that it should be up to individual states should meet their approval. The Texas plan was passed by a huge state legislative majority. Nevertheless, the campaign is probably even less fun than he expected.
Michele Bachmann, obviously desperate, grows increasingly shrill. As she repeatedly badgered Perry about the "mandatory" vaccination of young girls in Texas, after being repeatedly told there was an "opt-out" for parents, she gave the impression she'd memorized her attack and wouldn't be deterred by facts.
Herman Cain was sharp, befitting a man with a solid business background and time as a radio talk-show host. He won't win, but his presence adds to the value of the debates.
Newt Gingrich made valid points. One wishes he brought less personal baggage to his uphill campaign.
Jon Huntsman only remains in the race in the (probably vain) hope that both of the other governors will stumble badly and give him an opening.
Rick Santorum, striving to escape his nonentity status, seems -- even by the low standards of politicians -- downright unseemly as he hectored us endlessly about his "courage".
For the first hour, Ron Paul made some serious points from the Libertarian perspective, especially regarding the Federal Reserve, then couldn't resist setting sail on the Sea of Silliness. Can the man truly believe he can be elected president by telling Americans the 9/11 slaughter was our own fault?
Finally, credit where it is due: Wolf Blitzer did a very solid job as ringmaster. The best so far. One wonders, however, if it was just coincidence that CNN scheduled the debate against the opening of Monday Night Football.
We know the candidates' stated stance on most major issues by now. The only incentive to watch further debates is the off-chance that one of them will implode. For those with a taste for the macabre, maybe that's reason enough.
- - - - -
If Congresswoman Michele Bachmann wants to take Governor Rick Perry to task for calling Social Security a "Ponzi scheme", she may need to be reminded of her words on Fox Business channel in February 2010, when she called Social Security "a tremendous fraud ... one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on the American public," and said that anyone who ran a business on such a basis would be "thrown in jail."
- - - - -
Social Security correctly defined as a "Ponzi scheme"? Of course.
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Social Security, itself, we get the numbers.
Last year there were only 1.75 full-time private-sector workers in the United States last year for each person receiving benefits from Social Security. How long can anyone believe this statistical absurdity can last?
Next November we will learn if a politician can survive telling the American public the truth.
- - - - -
Rick Perry was once a Democrat. It pains some Republicans to recall that so was ... Ronald Reagan. Mr. Reagan memorably said, "I didn't leave the Democratic Party. It left me." Perry might say the same -- if he hasn't already.
- - - - -
Watch the special congressional election in New York City today. If the Republican wins in the overwhelmingly Democrat district, we are going to see other Democrat politicians running away from Obama so fast it'll look like a Wild West buffalo stampede.
The fact that the race is even close is a reflection of disenchantment with The Won, an even worse failure than the despicable Carter.
- - - - -
Since his inauguration, Obama's proposed tax increases would have been limited to people earning more than $250,000 a year. Wealth seems to have been devalued in the latest incarnation of Obamanomics. Now, his latest top figure is $200,000.
Since many small business operators file their income tax returns as individuals, this ceiling would render even more of them unwilling to hire additional employees.
Obama, never having run so much as a lemonade stand, is either a fool or deliberately destructive. His entire platform is based on that old leftist standby, envy.
- - - - -
James Bovard in the Wall Street Journal reminds us that government "job training" programs are a sham ...
"The federal government has experimented with these programs for almost a half century. The record is one of failure and scandal.
"In 1962, Congress passed the Manpower Development and Training Act (MDTA) to provide training for workers who lost their jobs due to automation or other technological developments. Two years later, the General Accounting Office (GAO) discovered that any trainee in this program who held a job for a single day was counted as "permanently employed"—a statistical charade by the Department of Labor to camouflage its lack of results."
- - - - -
From Angela ... a tee-shirt for our time ... captioned:
"A million people attended Obama's inauguration ... and only fourteen of them missed work"
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Musings of the wise Burt Prelutsky ...
"It's hard not to appreciate the irony of the man who promised that with his election, 'the rise of the oceans would begin to slow and the planet would begin to heal' having to cut his vacation short because of Hurricane Irene. Apparently Mother Nature doesn't like this guy any more than I do.
"It occurred to me that between them, George Bush and Barack Obama have spent most of the past decade telling us what a great religion Islam is. It makes me think that if an American Muslim soldier made his bed, cleaned his plate and refrained from killing anyone in his unit for, say, two consecutive months, Obama would probably see to it that he received the Congressional Medal of Honor."
- - - - -
The Taliban bombings in Kabul should -- but probably won't -- remind us of the futility of fighting wars under restraints and with half-measures. It's fundamental, but apparently forgotten, that wars should be fought all-out ... or not at all.
The "hearts and minds" goo-goo nonsense didn't work in Vietnam and it won't work anywhere else.
- - - - -
Former Vice President Dick Cheney tells Newsmax's Ron Kessler that he has no doubt Israel, if necessary, will launch a military strike on Iran to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons.
I suspect, as has often been the case, Mr. Cheney may well prove to be correct and his many detractors wrong.
- - - - -
The impending default of Greece and Germany's unwillingness to repeatedly bankroll the deadbeat nation may be bringing to a conclusion the doomed experiment of trying to unite the economies of nations so culturally different under a flimsy construct called The European Union.
The idea that nations as dissimilar as industrious Germany and lackadaisical Greece could share a common currency was absurd from the outset, as my late longtime partner and friend -- of Greek descent with ties to the country -- often said.
- - - - -
Human Events summarizes the ongoing debacle that IS the TSA -- Transportation Security Administration ...
"They’ve been accused of rampant thievery, spending billions of dollars like drunken sailors, groping children and little old ladies, and making everyone take off their shoes. But the real job of the tens of thousands of screeners at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is to protect Americans from a terrorist attack.
"Yet a decade after the TSA was created following the September 11 attacks, the author of the legislation that established the massive agency grades its performance at “D-minus.”
“The whole program has been hijacked by bureaucrats,” said Rep. John Mica (R. -Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee.
As for keeping the American public safe, Mica says, “They’ve failed to actually detect any threat in 10 years.”
- - - - -
Marvin speaks up for precise language ...
I hear the phrase "Lost their Lives" a lot when referring to murder victims who died a horrible death; especially on 9/11.
If a person is attacked, beaten, stabbed and has his money stolen from him, I supposed you'd say he "lost his wallet".
- - - - -
While the words "drivel" and "dribble" do have some interchangeability, the word for someone speaking or writing nonsense is DRIVEL, not DRIBBLE.
- - - - -
Sheila B. provides fodder for Lexophiles -- word-lovers. Apologies in advance ...
A will is a dead giveaway.
A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.
A boiled egg is hard to beat.
When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.
If you jump off a bridge in Paris, you are in Seine .
When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she'd dye.
A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
... and finally ...
Don't join dangerous cults: practice safe sects.
- - - - -
Rick gives us this warped view of a summer romance ...
You appeared from nowhere and shamelessly, without any reservations, you laid on my naked body...you sensed my indifference, so you applied your hungry mouth to me without any guilt or humiliation, and you drove me near crazy while you drained me. Finally, I drifted off to sleep.
Today when I awoke, you were gone, I searched for you but to no avail, only the sheets bore witness to last night's events. My body still bears faint marks of your enthusiastic ravishing, making it all the more difficult to forget you.
Tonight, I will remain awake, waiting for you........ you (bleeping) mosquito!!
OBAMA: "WHERE DID MY JEWISH SUPPORTERS
GO?"
While Democrat leaders publicly decry their losses in both of yesterday's congressional special elections (NY, NV) have nothing to do with public attitudes toward Obama, the private hand-wringing is abundant and ill-concealed. When you lose a district as overwhelmingly (3-to1) Democratic -- and Jewish -- as the one vacated by Anthony (See My) Weiner in New York City, it's undeniably a referendum on a failed and duplicitous president.
The long overdue awakening of the American public has begun. Now watch Democrat pols nationwide distance themselves as far and fast as possible from the walking disaster they have in the White House.
- - - - -
The other big loser(s) yesterday: labor unions, who poured millions into the New York race ... down the drain with the defeated Democrat.
- - - - -
While the Republican win in the overwhelmingly Democrat congressional district in New York City was clearly a thumbs-down referendum on Obama, that seat, in itself, may not matter much in the not-so-long run. That district is probably going to be redistricted out of existence in a couple of years. New York, like California, Michigan, Illinois and some other Democrat-dominated states, has been losing population and therefore congressional representation.
- - - - -
Even media lefties sometimes forget that their words live on in tiny electrical impulses.
November 5, 2007:
The late Tim Russert in conversation with "The Tingler", Chris Matthews, discussing the Democrats' race for the nomination. Hillary was leading at the time.
RUSSERT: Everyone knows Social Security, as it’s constructed, is not going to be in the same place it’s going to be for the next generation, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives.
MATTHEWS: It’s a bad PONZI SCHEME, at this point.
Full credit to Newsbusters for exhuming this little gem.
- - - - -
Jimmy Carter supports the Palestinian bid for a UN seat.
Of course he does.
What else would be expected from the disgraceful grinning geek hypocrite?
- - - - -
The sorry Solyndra episode may be the lasting hallmark of our affirmative-action president and his willingness to steal from taxpayers to promote the fantasies of the enviro-nuts. Even the liberal Washington Post is disturbed ...
"August 2009 e-mails, released toThe Washington Post, show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB (the government's Office of Management and Budget) reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal. In response, OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to the e-mails, which were provided by Republican congressional investigators…
“We have ended up with a situation of having to do rushed approvals on a couple of occasions (and we are worried about Solyndra at the end of the week),” one official wrote. That August 31, 2009, message, written by a senior OMB staffer and sent to Terrell P. McSweeny, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, concluded, “We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews.”
The White House has been insisting there was no Obama administration attempt to influence the process. Obviously, that is a lie.
- - - - -
Now that the blooming Solyndra scandal has tarnished the very concept of "green jobs", notice how that term has vanished from Obama's vocabulary?
- - - - -
Liberal-enviro craziness on view: their dogged support of electric cars, while simultaneously opposing the development of the resources -- coal, natural gas, nuclear -- necessary to produce the power to run them.
In two words ... they're nuts.
- - - - -
Thomas Sowell rips away Obama's bogus packaging of his "jobs bill" ...
"Once we get past the glowing rhetoric, what is the president proposing? More spending! Only the words have changed -- from "stimulus" to "jobs" and from "shovel-ready projects" to "jobs for construction workers."
"If government spending were the answer, we would by now have a booming economy with plenty of jobs, after all the record trillions of dollars that have been poured down a bottomless pit. Are we to keep on doing the same things, just because those things have been repackaged in different words?"
"Construction jobs" has replaced "shovel-ready jobs" in the Obama lexicon, since -- as he admitted -- a lot of those "shovel-ready jobs" he promised in the first stimulus plan turned out not to be so ready, after all.
- - - - -
Pity the poor (literally) suckers who thought Obama would change things for the po' folks. He did. Now there are more of them than ever. And the percentage of statistically-defined poor is higher than at any time since '93, at the end of the Clinton era. The number is 15.1% of the population; 22% of children. And middle-class income has also declined. Yessir, that "Hope and Change" stuff really worked!
- - - - -
At times during the Monday debate, especially during the second hour, Rick Perry looked disturbingly like a rookie quarterback suddenly thrown into an NFL game unprepared. A repeat of that performance, and his chances are going to rapidly shrink. Conservatives don't generally care much for Romney, but aren't inclined to support a candidate who stumbles badly in debates. Ronald Reagan was awful in the first presidential debate during his re-election campaign, but recovered brilliantly in the next. Perry had better have a similar rebound.
- - - - -
Whoever finally emerges as the Republican candidate had better be prepared on Day One to (A) have a real and concrete plan to get the upward business cycle re-started and (B) NOT have a plan that remotely resembles Obama's socialistic big-government nonsense.
A revisit and thorough study of the Reagan recovery is strongly advised.
- - - - -
The non-partisan ... NON-PARTISAN ... Congressional Budget Office expects the unemployment picture to improve little if at all, thru 2012. The CBO has also lowered it's already-feeble economic growth projections.
... meantime ...
Obama's "jobs" speech, a rehash of failed liberal nostrums, didn't improve his approval rating by a single point. The Gallup Poll finds him stuck at 43% (still more optimistic than other polls) while his disapproval rating went up a notch, to 50%.
- - - - -
It is sometimes useful to see ourselves -- and our politicians -- thru foreign eyes. Some observations on the Monday debate from Toby Harnden of Britain's Telegraph newspaper ...
"Perry flagged after an hour or so (as he did, to a lesser extent, at the Reagan Library) and seemed at times like he was trying to wing it. He needs to prepare better for these things.
"Romney was well-prepared, slick, careful and repeated faithfully what his advisers have been coaching him to say. I know this because most of what he said (in the debate) I have heard almost verbatim from his aides. Message discipline is good but there's a slightly soulless element to his performances – he still has a way to go to get GOP voters to like and, more importantly, trust him.
"Bottom line: not a great night for Rick Perry. But it was by no means a disaster. He is the frontrunner. There is a long way to go but in some respects this contest is his to lose."
- - - - -
Why some otherwise-conservative voters are wary of the Tea Party, which sponsored the Monday debate:
When Ron Paul was asked if people without insurance should just be left to die if stricken with a potentially fatal medical condition, before he could answer some hyenas in the crowd CHEERED at the prospect.
One might wonder just how many votes that stupid outburst cost.
- - - - -
By every indicator of public opinion, Sarah Palin cannot be elected president. It may not be fair, it just ... is. The next question for the declared candidates for the Republican nomination, starting with Perry, is: while her endorsement and support would bring a sizable voting bloc with it, considering the widespread hostility to her, how closely should she be embraced? Is ... a ... puzzlement. (Thank you, Yul Brynner.)
- - - - -
Michele Bachmann is discrediting herself by sounding increasingly hysterical over the HPV vaccine which was the basis for her debate attack on Rick Perry. Now she's repeating disproved rumors that the vaccine causes mental retardation. Her obsession with what she apparently -- and mistakenly -- believed was a winning issue is making her sound wacky and irresponsible.
- - - - -
Notes from the "Arab spring" ...
The London Daily Mail reports that Libya's interim leader has said Sharia (Islamic) law will be used as the basis for new legislation.
And the march backward to the tenth century continues ...
- - - - -
Jonah Goldberg dissects the "Arab spring" ...
"So far not a single democracy has dawned. Spring has turned to summer and fall, and not a single flower of freedom is visible, contrary to the New York Times and Barack Hussein Obama. Just the opposite.
"Muslim radicalism is more powerful today than when Obama took over. In every country where it was suppressed, Muslim radicals are now in the open and making a serious grab for power. That goes for Turkey, Egypt, the PA (Palestinian Authority), Jordan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco -- not to mention those 53 million Muslims in Europe."
- - - - -
David Harris in the Jerusalem Post with a message to Jews worldwide ...
"Look at what Israel faces today. Iran is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear-weapons capability. That's the assessment of the world's leading powers. Couple that with its drive to develop long-range missiles. Add its calls for a world without Israel.
"Then there's the Palestinian Authority. For an actor deemed to represent Israel's best chance for a peace deal, the PA has a strange way of behaving. Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, it's spurned every offer - from left-of-center, right-of-center, and centrist Israeli governments - for a two-state deal, the only logical political outcome of this conflict. And now it's walked away from the negotiating table in favor of a reconciliation agreement with Hamas and an end-run at the UN."
- - - - -
Reader Craig forwards this info that reminds me why my favored major good-deed group is the Salvation Army ...
The United Way President receives a $375,000 base salary along with numerous expense benefits.
UNICEF CEO Caryl M. Stern receives $1,200,000 per year (100k per month) plus all expenses including a ROLLS ROYCE.
The Salvation Army's Commissioner, Todd Bassett, receives a salary of only $13,000 per year (plus housing) for managing this $2 billion dollar organization. Ninety-six percent of donated dollars go to the cause.
The American Legion National Commander receives a $0.00 zero salary. 100% of your donations go to help veterans and their families and youth.
- - - - -
Teenage hearthrob Justin Bieber reportedly likes to wear women's clothes. I am reminded of the daughter of a friend who was once one of the throng of teeny-boppers infatuated with Michael Jackson. Some girlish fantasies are, alas, doomed to be unfulfilled.
- - - - -
Am I mistaken, or did I see AFL-CIO Pres. Richard Trumka in "The Sopranos"? Type-casting ...
- - - - -
As if we didn't have enough to worry about ...
In Honghu, Hubei Province, China, Mr. Zhang Nan had to have a tiny eel surgically removed from his bladder.
It seems the creature entered by way of ...
... never mind. It's too painful to even discuss.
- - - - -
Dan Sorkin passes along some current British humor ...
I was devastated to find out my wife was having an affair but, by turning to religion, I was soon able to come to terms with the whole thing. I converted to Islam, and we're stoning her in the morning!
-----------------------------------------------------------
The wife suggested I get myself one of those male organ enlargers, so I did. She's 21 and her name's Gwyneth.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Went to the pub with my girlfriend last night. Locals were shouting "pedophile!" and other names at me, just because my girlfriend is 21 and I'm 50. It completely spoiled our 10th anniversary.
THE TURNING OF THE TIDE --
AGAINST OBAMA
Now that the most Jewish congressional district in the nation (in New York City) has gone Republican in a clear repudiation of Obama, one must wonder how long it will be before other "locked-in" Democrat constituencies realize they've been sold a bill of goods. Since collectively black Americans have suffered the most under this failed administration, is it possible that even a sizable part of that constituency will figure out that there are things more important than racial solidarity?
- - - - -
American liberals fantasize about Arabs and Jews living peacefully, side-by-side, in the middle-east. Such fuzzy-minded folk -- Christian, Jewish or whatever -- may delude themselves about such an outcome. But the people running the Arab side of the equation have no such hopes or objectives. The PLO has now stated, loud and clear, that when they get their own state, NO Jews will be allowed to live there.
The only place in that wretched part of the world where such coexistence takes place is ... Israel, where Arabs even serve in the Knesset (parliament) and have done so since Israel's first election in 1949.
- - - - -
Get your bets down early. As the Solyndra scandal unfolds, replete with obvious participation in the half-trillion-dollar scam of American taxpayers, what are the odds any of the participants on either the government or corporate side will be prosecuted under Obama or his wild-eyed leftist stooge Attorney General, Eric Holder?
Race-based justice, government gun-running to Mexican drug gangs, ACORN criminality, hard-left fanatics staffing the Justice Department ... the list lengthens. And the next Republican administration had better be prepared to do a thorough house-cleaning to rid us of the stains left by our affirmative-action president.
- - - - -
Obama strikes again. Yesterday he was at WestStar Precision Company in North Carolina, heaping praise on the company owned by a Democrat politician. Apparently nobody told him the company has outsourced half its jobs to Costa Rica.
- - - - -
As sure as liberals can dream up another government giveaway program, scam artists will be there to rip it off.
The former chief financial officer of a Knoxville nonprofit group that promotes energy from renewable sources has pleaded guilty to skimming federal funds. Cameron J. Potter worked for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
The U.S. Attorney's office said Potter concocted a scheme in 2006 to skim $400,000 in Department of Energy grant money by creating phony invoices - a plot that he carried out for three years.
- - - - -
A poll taken in Europe finds that a vast majority of citizens there like Obama. It should be remembered that, even though we saved their butts in two World Wars and protected them from the Soviet menace for decades, there has always been a large segment of the Western European population that dislikes America for the most basic of reasons -- sheer envy. Therefore, a trashed U.S. economy under the incompetent -- or evil -- stewardship of a quasi-Marxist president fulfills a deep emotional need in America-haters.
- - - - -
The classic Reagan query, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" has been answered in the negative by the government's own Census Bureau. In fact, the economy is so sick that, after adjustment for inflation, the average American's income is right back where it was in 1996.
- - - - -
In the wake of Tuesday's special congressional election disasters for the Democrats, the liberal website Politico offers this ...
"On a high-level campaign conference call Tuesday afternoon, Democratic donors and strategists commiserated over their disappointment in Obama. A source on the call described the mood as “awful.”
“People feel betrayed, disappointed, furious, disgusted, hopeless,” said the source."
- - - - -
Many presidencies have been marked by scandals, greed being the usual root cause. Teapot Dome ... Watergate ... Enron being outstanding examples. As evidence rapidly mounts that Obama was knee-deep in the Solyndra ripoff of taxpayers, it appears we'll have another name to add to the list.
While Clinton has accumulated great wealth, his tenure is more likely to be remembered for one of his bimbos whose very name is now synonymous with oral sex. Rumor has it that "Monica" is now on the menu at certain establishments in Nevada.
- - - - -
The attacks on Republicans by Democrats -- and on Perry by Romney -- attempting to raise fears among Social Security recipients appeals to one basic human emotion. That is the unspoken desire among many older folk that the present system hold together until they've passed from this vale of tears, after which it's no longer their problem.
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Today's recommended reading: INVESTORS.COM ... THOMAS SOWELL ... "Best Way To Aid Economy Now? Just Do Nothing"
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Prescience ... or whistling past the graveyard? This headline from RealClearPolitics --
"Despite Everything, Obama's Still a Lock in 2012" - Timothy Noah, TNR. (The New Republic, liberal publication.)
- - - - -
What??!! Even from the chic, liberal VANITY FAIR??!!
“Obama promoted his jobs bill in North Carolina on Wednesday, the third stop on what White House press secretary Jay Carney has called a ‘campaign’ for jobs.
Not for the first time, Obama called back to an audience member who shouted ‘I love you’ with ‘I love you back.’
On Wednesday he added, ‘But if you love me you’ve got to help me pass this bill.’”
Oh, Obama and his demands! “If you love me, you’d read every word of my e-mails.”
“If you love me, you’d also consider it cheating every time you even think about Rick Perry.”
“If you love me, you’d stop bringing up those promises I made three years ago.”
“If you love me, you would have watched my thing instead of the stupid football game.”
“If you love me, you’d love me even if we had no money.”
- - - - -
A bow to CNS News for uncovering another dirty little secret ...
Cecilia Munoz, the White House director of intergovernmental affairs, compared the federal crime of being in the country illegally to jaywalking.
"If you were running the police department of any urban area in this country, you would spend more resources going after serious criminals than after jaywalkers. DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) is doing the immigration equivalent of the same thing," Munoz told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) conference.
Then comes the endlessly repeated lie: ""We have 10 million, 11 million undocumented people in this country and it's abundantly clear to anybody who's paying attention that we're not going to deport that entire population."
Only the willfully stupid could fail to recognize that a government-organized deportation would be totally unnecessary if our law-evading officials would simply enforce the already-existing laws against hiring illegals, and stop the ridiculous practice of giving them government benefits.
- - - - -
... further ...
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) thanked President Obama for circumventing the Legislative branch when it comes to immigration law.
“We had a president of the United States that recently was speaking at National Council of La Raza who said during his speech, ‘There are those who simply wish me to bypass Congress when it comes to immigration,’ and many in the audience clapped, saying, ‘Yup, bypass Congress…’” Gutierrez told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) conference.
“He (Obama) said, ‘But I can’t bypass Congress,’ and people in the audience said, ‘Yes you can,’ and you want to know something? They were right -- he could and he did."
- - - - -
This is what passes for thinking among Democrats. Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky said on WLS that Americans don't deserve to keep all of their money because we need taxes to support our society. Schakowsky also says one reason the 2009 stimulus bill did not succeed was because it was not large enough.
Of course! To a Democrat, ALL money belongs to the government, and you should be grateful for whatever portion they allow you to keep!
- - - - -
A reality check from Victor Davis Hanson ...
"Amid the talk on 9/11 of a few about American leaders hyping the threat of radical Islam, there were lots of disparate events that suggested that they live in an alternate universe.
"An alien from distant parts might see a common denominator that many of our elites missed on the ten-year anniversary of 9/11 — namely that lots of Islamic zealots despise constitutional government, freedom of the individual, and secular justice — and all those whom they identify with these values, and they want very much to make that a reality through violence.
"In these depressing times, there are only three constants: the U.S. cannot for a moment let down our guard in this long cold war against radical Islam; any effort to distance ourselves from a democratic Israel will neither make us safer nor appease radical Islam, but only encourage radicals to renew their efforts to destroy it on the premise the U.S. cannot or will not do anything to prevent it; and it is abject insanity not to develop as quickly as possible our growing fossil fuel reserves to stop hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars leaving our economically depressed country straight into the boilers of radical Middle East Islamism."
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You say you want your all-electric car? The one created with "green jobs" ... the wave of the future?
It's here. The luxurious Coda, on the market for $44,900. From China.
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Thank you, Garret Lewis, KNST, for taking on-air note of these daily observations.
- - - - -
"Since the end of World War II, in both the United States and Western Europe, the best way to win a national election has been to be the incumbent political party. But that 3-generation-old predisposition of the public in Western democracies may be coming to an end.
"We may well be entering a political epoch in which the best way to win a national election in the West is not to be the party in power." -- Tony Blankley, Washington Times
- - - - -
How tax law adjustments work: If it benefits ME, it's an "incentive". If it benefits YOU, it's a "loophole".
- - - - -
Today's mixed-up media word usage: confusing "flouting" and "flaunting".
- - - - -
Mike offers this timeless wisdom (stop and think about it) --
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
- - - - -
From All Comedy Radio --
The seat of disgraced New York Congressman Anthony (See My) Weiner is now in Republican hands. Said winner Bob Turner, “I just hope he wore pants when he sat in it.”
- - - - -
Media mixed-up words that sound the same but have different meanings: Discreet ... discrete.
- - - - -
Jay Leno --
Jay Leno --
"Since Rick Perry has been governor of Texas, 234 criminals have been executed. That's the difference between Texas and California: In California, those criminals would have been given tryouts for the Raiders."
... and more Leno --
"In his speech President Obama called his plan the 'American Jobs Act.' It sounds a lot better than the original title, the 'Save My Ass Act.'"
“HONEY, IF YOU REALLY LOVE ME, YOU'LL … “
That embarrassing Obama performance before a crowd of silly sycophants, during which he shouted, "If you love me, you'll help me pass this bill," sounded like nothing so much as the plea of a horny teenage boy trying to get a date out of her underwear. "If you love me, you will ... "
- - - - -
The government's own statistics show
inflation up, consumer prices up and unemployment claims up -- again.
Is there any part of the economy
the Marxist Mob in the White House HASN'T screwed up?
- - - - -
The combined Obama/Media myth machine
is trying to defelect criticism of the half-billion-dollar Solyndra
scam by saying it was begun under Bush.
That ... is ... a ... lie.
Solyndra filed its application for the
loan while Bush was still in office.
The application was denied.
That SHOULD be the end of the story. It
won't be the end, because to the Obamunists and their fellow
travelers in the media, lying is as natural as breathing.
- - - - -
Solyndra isn't the only “green”
company to fail and take billions of taxpayer dollars down with it.
Four other similar companies that
benefited from Obama's “stimulus” plan have also gone bankrupt.
- - - - -
Solyndra paid $187,000 to a lobbying firm in Washington. If you're one of the fools/crooks (take your choice) who ran that outfit, that was a pretty good investment, since the return was $537 million in taxpayer money.
- - - - -
Fodder for the poll-cats ...
Numbers from Public Policy Polling
show Perry leading the Republican field with 30% over Romney's 18%.
Then come Paul at 11% and Gingrich at
10%, followed by the rest of the field in single digits.
Reduced to Perry vs. Romney, it's 49%
to 37%, favor of the Texas governor.
- - - - -
The Big Zero hits a new low in the Gallup Poll approval rating. He's now at 39%.
- - - - -
The "right track-wrong track" question regarding the direction the country is being taken is one of the more reliable predictors of elections. Rasmussen's polling shows only seventeen percent (17%) of likely U.S. Voters now say the country is heading in the right direction; 75% say we're on the wrong track.
- - - - -
Bloomberg Survey says …
Nearly two-thirds of Americans hold a favorable view of Hillary and one-third are suffering a form of buyer’s remorse, saying the U.S. would be better off now if she had become president in 2008 instead of Barack Obama.
- - - - -
James Carville,
quintessential Democrat,on CNN ...
" People often ask me what
advice I would give the White House about various things. What should
the White House do now? One word came to mind: Panic.
"We
are far past sending out talking points. Do not attempt to dumb it
down. We cannot stand any more explanations. Have you talked to any
Democratic senators lately? I have. It's pretty damn clear they are
not happy campers.
"This is what I would say to President
Barack Obama: The time has come to demand a plan of action that
requires a complete change from the direction you are headed."
- - - - -
Downright creepy.
The Obamunists creating a website where their would-be Gestapo
informers can rat-out anyone who says or writes disparagingly of the
Dear Leader.
It's already become the
biggest joke on the internet, and is being deluged with phony items
and outright ridicule.
- - - - -
With friends like this …
Jimmy Carter tells that Maddow guy on MSNBC that he'd be very happy to see Mitt Romney win the Republican presidential nomination.
- - - - -
The University of Wisconsin is run by people as wild-eyed crazy as their counterparts at the University of California. Linda Chavez of the Center for Equal Opportunity finds the University's own statistics reveal that a black or Hispanic undergraduate applicant was more than 500 times likelier to be admitted to the taxpayer-supported institution than a similarly qualified white or Asian applicant. PC run amok.
- - - - -
- - - - -
Ford is running new commercials that have real customers bluntly stating that they bought Fords because it's the only one of the U. S. Big Three automakers that didn't take taxpayer money from Obama's “stimulus” program, but solved its own problems.
- - - - -
Iranian President Ahmadenijad says the
fabled "12th Imam" will return before he leaves office.
His term concludes at the end of 2013.
The 12th Imam's return is to
be presaged by Armageddon-like catastrophic events.
Iran is building nuclear weapons.
Draw your own conclusion.
- - - - -
If I were Joe
McGinniss, author of the lurid new book alleging scandalous behavior
by Sarah Palin, I would NOT want to see Todd Palin waiting for me on
my doorstep.
- - - - -
A must-read.
Quin Hillyer's piece on rampant corruption in Eric Holder's Justice
Department. It's on the American Spectator website under Thursday's
postings. No excerpts posted here because it needs to be absorbed in
its entirety.
- - - - -
Perceptive insight
from Melanie Sturm in the Aspen Times ...
"Winston Churchill famously quipped, “However beautiful the
strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” What could
be more beautiful, never mind seductive, than the strategy to promote
renewable energies and a “green economy,” heralded as cure-alls
for America's greatest challenges, most particularly economic
stagnation?
"But a funny thing
happened on the way to green utopia. High-paying, clean-tech jobs
were a cornerstone of the 2009 stimulus bill, which appropriated $80
billion to promote the “green economy.” Yet, instead of putting
us on the green-brick road to recovery, we've learned that
subsidizing industry merely results in lost jobs, squandered taxpayer
resources, scandalous bankruptcies and diminished prosperity. “Green”
proponents whose policies produced these shameful outcomes should be
red-faced and prepared to Think Again."
- - - - -
Wonder how many of today's Democrats would like to emulate the tax brackets Sweden had in the 1970's?
At that time, the top bracket was 105% of income. Which is any a lot of Swedes of accomplishment found Monaco very attractive for reasons other than the salubrious climate.
- - - - -
“Weekend at Bernie's” – for real. Two Colorado men have been arrested for taking their dead friend out for an evening of bar-hopping.
- - - - -
Australia now offers three choices
under the “gender” heading on passport applications.
Male … female … and
“indeterminate”.
- - - - -
Keyboard slip apology. The reference to the Solyndra scandal should have said "over a half-BILLION dollars." More accurately, $537 million.
- - - - -
Carrie contributes a
blonde joke ...
A blonde & her
husband are lying in bed, listening to the next door neighbor's dog.
It has been in the backyard barking for hours & hours.
The blonde jumps up out of bed and says, "I've had enough of
this".
She goes downstairs.
She finally comes back up to bed and her husband says,”The dog is
still barking, what have you been doing?"
The blonde says, "I put the dog in OUR backyard, let's see how
THEY like it!
- - - - -
Conan O'Brien --
"A man wearing an Obama mask robbed a bank. Either that or Obama
has an exciting new plan to reduce the deficit."
THE OBAMA SCANDALS KEEP PILING UP
Most of our Big Media, Obamunized to the core, are laying off this story. Along with Fox News, Britain's Daily Mail newspaper is
on top of it --
A four-star Air Force general told a classified Congressional hearing he was pressured by the White House into changing a political briefing to favor a Democratic-backed firm. Air Force Space Commander General William Shelton was speaking about a wireless project by Virginia satellite broadband company LightSquared. The Pentagon believes it could interfere with GPS - but the firm’s majority owner happens to be Democratic donor Philip Falcone’s hedge fund.
Wonder what the talk is about these days in the upper ranks at the Pentagon, and how often the words "idiot" or "crook" come up?
Democrats prefer, of course, to recall the halcyon days of Enron and Halliburton, when they could pretend to be scandalized by far less questionable government behavior.
- - - - -
No matter what he says, Obama does NOT want his "jobs bill" passed by Congress. He says he wants the WHOLE bill passed, packed as it is with re-run garbage from his previous failed "stimulus" effort plus tax increases. If he wanted to accomplish any worthwhile goals, he would allow separate votes on each component. Instead, despite his constant bewailing of those awful Republicans putting politics ahead of the national interest, that is precisely what HE is doing by insisting on an all-or-nothing vote. He knows the bill won't pass; he doesn't WANT the bill, he wants a campaign issue to sell the gullible dopes.
During his first two years in office, he had both houses of Congress run by Democrats, and could do whatever he wished -- like force-feeding the nation his crazed "health care plan" that most Americans didn't and don't want. Now that his policies are bringing the the nation to the brink of ruin, the pompous fool wants to blame the House of Representatives, where Republicans only assumed leadership early this year.
- - - - -
Mark Steyn on Obama's $447 billion "jobs bill" ...
"Simply as a matter of humdrum reality, there is no bill, it won’t “create” any jobs, and it will be paid for with money we don’t have. But the smartest president in history has calculated that, if he says the same four monosyllables over and over, a nonexistent bill to create nonexistent jobs with nonexistent money will be yet another legislative triumph in the grand tradition of his first stimulus.
"This $447 billion does not exist, and even foreigners don’t want to lend it to us. A majority of it will be “electronically created” by the Federal Reserve buying U.S. Treasury debt. Don’t worry, it’s not like “printing money”: we leave that to primitive basket-cases like Zimbabwe. This is more like one of those Nigerian email schemes, in which a prominent public official promises you a large sum of money in return for your bank account details. In the case of Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, one prominent public official is promising to wire a large sum of money into the account of another prominent public official, which is a wrinkle even the Nigerians might have difficulty selling."
- - - - -
Survey says ... consumer confidence in the future has dropped to the lowest point since 1980 -- the last year of the Carter presidency. Jimmuh, you are about to relinquish the title, "Worst President in History".
- - - - -
... and more grim news for the Bamster. The CBS News poll (yes, CBS!) finds his overall approval rating down to 43%. More importantly, since independents are the swing vote in a close election, their approval rating has him at 37%.
- - - - -
The Daily Caller uncovered this additional piece of news about the costly Solyndra debacle:
Failed solar panel maker Solyndra’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings show that seven months after the Obama administration’s Department of Energy approved a $535 million federal loan guarantee, Solyndra applied for a second one valued at $469 million.
“On September 11, 2009, we applied for a second loan guarantee from the DOE, in the amount of approximately $469 million, to partially fund Phase II,” Solyndra wrote in a report it filed with the SEC on December 18, 2009.
Barack Obama's presidency. Chicago-style politics, writ large. And only the gullible didn't expect it.
- - - - -
You can't fool all the people all the time, but if you can fool just over half of them, that's good enough for a politician. One wonders what has possessed a population that can make Hillary Clinton the most popular political figure in America, according to a Bloomberg survey.
Aside from serving as Obama's echo-chamber while playing the role of Secretary of State, what are her actual accomplishments?
Let's see ... partner in a shady Arkansas law firm, a position handed her because her husband was governor ... making a quick buck in a probably-rigged cattle-futures trade ... and playing the dumb, obedient wife to her tomcat husband.
Yes, indeed! Great qualifications for a political "leader"!
- - - - -
Most likely to take permanent possession of the trophy for the most startling "deer in the headlights" look: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who always looks as if he's afraid of imminent arrest for tax evasion.
- - - - -
As a former aerobatic pilot -- not very good, but cautious -- I've always enjoyed air shows, either as participant or spectator. But the tragic crash of a P-51 Mustang into the grandstand crowd at the big Reno Air Show is a bloody reminder that proximity to fast airplanes flying on the edge of performance capabilities is inherently dangerous.
Although I've found few things as downright fun as flying upside-down in an open cockpit aircraft, I don't do it anymore because I don't have time to practice. Doing exotic maneuvers in a high-performance plane is NOT something you want to do if your flying skills have accumulated some rust.
I am still grateful, however, to Bill Dodd, a former national aerobatic champion, for teaching me just how exhilarating the sport could be. Bill owned five aerobatic airplanes, but seldom piloted a craft on an actual trip. He limited his flying to the airspace needed to perform apparently-impossible maneuvers; otherwise, he took a seat on a boring airliner.
- - - - -
Cliff May, a frequent guest on my broadcast over the years, reviews (in National Review) the new book by another frequent guest ...
"For more than 30 years, Bat Ye’or, a refugee from Egypt, has been writing about dhimmis — Christians and Jews living under oppression in Muslim lands. Now, she has a new book, "Europe, Globalization, and the Coming Universal Caliphate", that looks at Muslims living in lands that once were Christian but today call themselves multicultural. She predicts Europe will not remain multicultural for long. She is convinced that Europe, sooner rather than later, will be dominated by Islamic extremists and transformed into “Eurabia” — a term first used in the mid-1970s by a French publication pressing for common European-Arab policies.
"Immigrants can enrich a nation. But there is a difference between immigrants and colonists. The former are eager to learn the ways of their adopted home, to integrate and perhaps assimilate — which does not require relinquishing their heritage or forgetting their roots. Colonists, by contrast, bring their culture with them and live under their own laws. Their loyalties lie elsewhere."
Multi-culti mush-heads, take note.
- - - - -
Jon Huntsman's frail campaign for the Republican presidential nomination got a questionable boost as he was endorsed by former Pennsylvania Governor -- and first Secretary of Homeland Security -- Tom Ridge.
Mr. RINO, meet Mr. RINO.
- - - - -
Ironic, is it not, that Greece, regarded as the cradle of western civilization, could also become its graveyard -- at least for the European Euro-market component -- because of being a deadbeat nation?
I hold a long-term lease on a small piece of property on the Greek island of Samos, just outside the town of Pythagorio. It is now populated by some local squatters. What are my chances of reclaiming it? Let's see ... me versus Greek citizens in a Greek court ...
This, by the way, is a small object lesson for anyone tempted to buy property in a foreign country. Of course, on the evening the deal in Greece was reached the ouzo was flowing freely and I was young and foolish ... a beautiful Greek girl across the room had distracted me ...
- - - - -
Information, please. How long does it take to alter one's circadian rhythm -- the body-clock that regulates sleeping hours?
After many years of doing morning-commute-time broadcasting, which required rising before midnight to begin the necessary preparation work, I still awaken around 2:30AM. This mean I'm an incredibly boring dinner company.
Dan Sorkin, who retired several years ago after a stellar radio career in Chicago (WCFL) and San Francisco (KSFO), much of that time spent doing a morning show, tells me he still regularly awakens about 4AM.
Morning drivetime is the center-ring of the radio circus, but we who have occupied it pay a price!
Care to compare notes on this, if you've also had a close brush with the Grim Reaper? After a prolonged hospitalization during which several doctors were of the opinion I had little chance of survival, every morning when I do awaken, I am a bit ... surprised.
- - - - -
Cathy contributes a brief course in Understanding Engineers ...
To the optimist, the glass is half-full. To the pessimist, the glass is half-empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
- - - - -
Apologies for the tardiness in posting yesterday's column and a couple of minor spelling errors. An essential computer program decided to take a vacation for a few hours. The computer program has been chastised.
- - - - -
The Sky Guy offers this ...
"The problems we face today exist because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living."
- - - - -
Jimmy Kimmel --
"President Obama is determined to help the unemployed because it’s looking increasingly likely that in a year, he’ll be one of them."
"I DIDN'T DO IT, MOMMY!
IT'S NOT MY FAULT!"
In their desperate flailing attempt to obscure the failure of the Obama circus, Democrats and their media playmates dwell upon the low approval rating of Congress as if the Republicans controlled BOTH houses.
Reminder: Congress consists of both the House AND the Democrat-controlled Senate.
This is totally irrelevant to electoral politics, since people don't vote for the WHOLE Congress, as they do for the one president, or presidential aspirant.
Election records will reveal that in election after election, the overwhelming majority of congressional incumbents are re-elected, despite polls that may show the whole body to be held in wide disrepute.
It's like public opinion about the schools: "The schools (congress-persons) are terrible ... but MY local school (congress-person) is just fine."
- - - - -
In retrospect, even liberals must be embarrassed to recall that they were snowed by such blatant bullfeathers as Obama's ridiculous campaign statement that his election would mark “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
Really, Democrats, can you believe you actually swallowed such utter nonsense?
Of course, even a once-major newsmagazine editor, Evan Thomas of fast-failing Newsweek, said "Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God."
And who can forget Chrissy Matthews' tingle at the very sound of Obama's voice.
So if you're embarrassed -- and you should be -- you have plenty of company among some of the silliest people ever to disgrace American media..
By the way ... have we "won the future" yet?
- - - - -
Rex Murphy in Toronto's National Post on the whoring of the U.S. Big Media ...
Much of the Obama coverage was orchestrated sychophancy. The media walked right past the decades-long association of Obama with the weird and racist pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Every doubt they hid from themselves about Obama, every potential embarrassment they tucked under the blanket of their superior sensibilities.
As a result, the press gave the great American republic an untried, unknown and, it is becoming more and more frighteningly clear, incompetent figure as President. Under Obama, America’s foreign policies are a mixture of confusion and costly impotence. Its debt and deficits are a weight on the entire global economy.
To the degree the press neglected its function as watchdog and turned cupbearer to a styrofoam demigod, it is a partner in the flaws and failures of what is turning out to be one of the most miserable performances in the modern history of the American presidency.
- - - - -
The cascading scandals of the Obama crowd should remind us:
Nothing is more fun than spending other people's money. And that's what politicians and bureaucrats do ... all day, every day.
- - - - -
Let us hope that Michele Bachmann, who has grown hysterical in her uninformed criticism of the HPV vaccine, takes a few minutes to get to know about Heather Burcham.
Heather was 31 when she died of cervical cancer. Rick Perry came to know and befriend her as she wasted away. She was a nanny who worked for a friend of his. Her dying wish was to save girls from the cervical cancer that ended her own life, and that was his motivation for his later-rescinded order for HPV vaccination, the order (with an opt-out provision, which Bachmann chooses to ignore) that so disturbs the desperate Ms. Bachmann, whose campaign is disintegrating. By the next presidential election, she will likely be the answer to a trivia question.
Whatever else Perry may be, he is deserving of credit for not using the story of Heather Burcham to defend himself. It is -- dare we use the word? -- manly.
- - - - -
The Chicago Sun Times reports that a man filed a lawsuit Friday claiming he was fired from the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition because he is gay.
Tommy R. Bennett claims Jackson fired him unjustly and the civil rights leader forced him to perform “uncomfortable” tasks, including escorting various women to hotel rooms to meet Jackson for sex, according to a suit filed in Cook County Circuit Court.
The Jackson camp denies the charges.
- - - - -
Government Motors has reached a new sweetheart deal with the United Auto Workers' union.
Of course it has.
Buying union votes was what the bailout of GM was all about in the first place.
The results are predictable. Higher costs and GM cars even less competitive than the superior imports that have largely driven them out of the marketplace. And the beat goes on ...
Next priority for Obama's political machine: protecting and rewarding incompetent unionized teachers who have made U.S. public education the joke of the industrialized world.
- - - - -
An ongoing puzzle: how did presumably sensible middle-Americans in Iowa come to elect and repeatedly re-elect a leftist nut-job like Tom Harkin to the U.S. Senate?
- - - - -
Why do Democrats oppose state laws requiring voter ID, i.e., proof of citizenship? Wait -- we know the answer, don't we?
- - - - -
Beware, beware ... of any politician who is infatuated with the use of the word "policy".
- - - - -
Only dopes take dope. And a lot of them are dead dopes.
The LA Times reports that drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the United States.
Drugs exceeded motor vehicle accidents as a cause of death in 2009, killing at least 37,485 people nationwide, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- - - - -
Nominee for the most colorful name among college football coaches: Clemson's Dabo Swinney.
- - - - -
Mike poses this query ...
I have a football question.
Last year after the Packers / Bills game, Buffalo released quarterback Trent Edwards.
During the Packers / Eagles game, the Packers injured Philadelphia quarterback Kevin Kolb. Philadelphia then had to play backup quarterback Michael Vick.
During a playoff game against the Eagles, the Packers injured Michael Vick and another backup was needed.
After the Packers / Cowboys game, Dallas fired Wade Phillips and most of his staff.
After the Packers / Vikings game, Minnesota fired Brad Childress and most of his staff.
Four weeks after losing to the Packers, the 49er's coach Mike Singletary and most of his staff were fired and replaced.
During the Bears Playoff game, the Packers injured Jay Cutler and backup Todd Collins forcing the Bears to go with 3rd string quarterback Caleb Hanie.
Question: Is it just me, or did the Packers create more jobs than Obama last year?
- - - - -
It's a classic. Reader Don takes note of British funnyman John Cleese's report on various nations' reactions to the ongoing terrorism threat ...
The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France 's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability.
The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Libya and have therefore raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross." The English have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.
The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's get the Bastards." They don't have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.
Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."
The Germans have increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbor" and "Lose."
Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels .
The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.
Australia , meanwhile, has raised its security level from "No worries" to "She'll be all right, Mate." Two more escalation levels remain: "Crikey! I think we'll need to cancel the Barbie this weekend!" and "The Barbie is canceled." So far no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level.
- - - - -
Conan O'Brien --
NASCAR is trying some new initiatives to go green, including planting trees and using ethanol fuel. Most controversial is the idea of having NASCAR drivers carpool in the race.
OBAMA WANTS HIGHER TAXES? HO-HUM
... plus THE MARCO METER
To the surprise of exactly no one, our resident White House Swindler is proposing huge tax increases, knowing very well such a plan will never get through Congress. He doesn't care. The idea -- and it may not be entirely irrational -- is to appeal to the half of the population that mooches off the other half; i.e., the non-tax-paying who live off the taxes paid by the productive half.
As has been astutely observed, we now live in a country where half the people work for a living and the other half vote for a living.
- - - - -
Senator Marco Rubio is the new shining jewel of Republican politics, a much-heralded vice-presidential prospect. He has held himself out of consideration for the job, but whether he accepts or rejects such an offer from the ultimate nominee is a serious clue as to his evaluation of that nominee's prospects. If he thinks the nominee a likely winner, he'd have to be tempted, knowing that success in the White House would hand him the next nomination on a silver platter. If he sees the nominee as a loser, he'd be better positioned to keep his distance and prepare to run for the top job four years later.
- - - - -
Wonder what kind of talk Bill and Hill have had (if they talk at all) about HIM announcing to the world that SHE won't run against Obama? Is she still playing the role of the dutiful "little woman"?
- - - - -
Demonstrators on Wall Street over the weekend believe that our economic problems are caused by the banks. It apparently is beyond their comprehension that banks have contributed to the crisis because the very kind of socialistic government the rabble-rousers want FORCED the banks to make loans to people who didn't come close to qualifying by any reasonable standard and were thus stuck with non-performing mortgages; i.e., the debtors weren't paying, and mortages went into default.
Then, to protect those banks from becoming insolvent and causing a nationwide panic, the Federal Reserve collaborated in flooding the nation with inflated money, which enabled banks to reduce the interest paid to savers to record-low levels.
Instead of placing the blame on political "leaders" who created this mess, it's just more fun to wave placards and raise hell in the streets.
We live in a country over-populated by stupid simpletons.
- - - - -
Where are the protestors circling the White House, demanding answers from the corrupt administration that peed away over half-a-billion taxpayer dollars in a scam called Solyndra? (With more to come.)
- - - - -
Warren Buffett. Obama's Heidi Fleiss.
- - - - -
None dare call it racism, but the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressman Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, tells the Miami Herald that if someone other than Obama were president, his organization would “probably would be marching on the White House.”
He tells the Miami Herald, "There is a less-volatile reaction in the CBC because nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president."
In other words, racial solidarity -- blacks supporting a black president -- is more important than protesting a presidency that's destroying the economy and hurting black people most of all.
There's a word for this. Idiocy.
- - - - -
Gallup Poll finds that 18.5% of Americans are either unemployed or underemployed, meaning working only part-time and seeking full-time jobs. That's two of every eleven workers still wondering what "hope and change" really meant.
- - - - -
Liberals wonder why, if crime rates are down (per FBI reports) why we have so many people behind bars. They ignore the obvious: crime rates are down BECAUSE we have more criminals locked up.
- - - - -
Presidential libraries would be a lot more interesting if they contained only outsider-vetted information about insider deals, payoffs, etc.
- - - - -
Jay Nordlinger of National Review Online notices that the Associated Press carried a report with the title “Libyan children start school year without Gadhafi.” A sample: “Euphoria filled the halls, but teachers admitted a lot needed to be done to overhaul an educational system where a main goal for nearly 42 years was to instill adoration of Gadhafi and what he touted as the greatest system of rule in the world — the ‘Jamahiriya,’ a utopian ‘rule by the masses’ that in reality boiled down to rule by Gadhafi.”
We might well be concerned about how long it will take to eradicate similar bullcrap that's been force-fed our own children about the Dear Leader presently occupying the White House.
- - - - -
Keep reminding yourself, for purposes of clear thinking, "A tax break for ME is an 'incentive', while a tax break for YOU is a 'loophole'." Rinse and repeat.
- - - - -
Noticing the scores of two horrendous losses by the Kansas City Chiefs to open the NFL season, I was reminded of the recurring argument among language purists over whether they shouldn't be called CHIEVES.
I was a young lad living in K.C. at the time the Texans of the AFL, owned by Lamar Hunt, son of the very rich and eccentric H. L. Hunt, were persuaded to move to the city from Dallas, where they were losing the war for fans to the Cowboys.
They -- and the Philadelphia Athletics baseball team, later the Oakland A's -- were persuaded to move to Kansas City by the then-mayor, a charismatic chap named H. Roe Bartle. So powerful were his powers of persuasion in political matters that he was nicknamed "The Chief". So Lamar Hunt re-named his football team after the mayor, not for leaders of Indian tribes.
After their first year in Kansas City and a loss of substantial money, a reporter approached daddy H. L. and asked him, "Do you realize your son lost over a million dollars with his football team this year?"
"Well," replied a smiling H. L., "He can only do that for another 178 (or thereabout) years."
Three years later, Lamar's Chiefs won Super Bowl 4. He also founded the American Football league and engineered the merger with the older NFL.
I had met Mayor Bartle and the legend was true. He was a man who, as they say, could follow you into a revolving door and come out in front of you -- wearing your pants. And make you like it.
- - - - -
Doug offers a real groaner ...
King Ozymandias of Assyria was running low on cash after years of war with the Hittites. His last great possession was the Star of the Euphrates, the most valuable diamond in the ancient world. Desperate, he went to Croesus, the pawnbroker, to ask for a loan.
Croesus said, "I'll give you 100,000 dinars for it."
"But I paid a million dinars for it," the King protested. "Don't you know who I am? I am THE KING!"
Croesus replied, "When you wish to pawn a Star, makes no difference who you are."
- - - - -
The readers ... write ...
"A reporter did a human-interest piece on the Texas Rangers. The reporter recognized the Colt Model 1911 the Ranger was carrying and asked him 'Why do you carry a .45?' The Ranger responded, 'Because they don't make a .46.'"
OBAMA'S DECLINE ACCELERATES; LIES
ABOUT TAXPAYERS
A sign of the times. The Las Vegas Review-Journal carries the following item:
One Nevada Democratic Party insider offered this tip for candidates running for public office in 2012: “Don’t get your picture taken with President Obama.”
- - - - -
Political civility, to the extent that it's still observed -- at least by Republicans -- probably prohibits the most rational response to BO's pitch for higher taxes. That would be the words of W.C. Fields, upon being told by his housekeeper that a movie studio boss he disliked was at the door: "Tell him something evasive ... tell him to go (bleep) himself."
- - - - -
The Associated Press did some fact-checking on the Buffett BS about millionaires paying less in taxes than lower-paid working folk. Buffett wrote in a recent piece for The New York Times that the tax rate he paid last year was lower than that paid by any of the other 20 people in his office.
This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average of 29.1 percent of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes and payroll taxes.
Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay 15 percent of their income in federal taxes.
Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5 percent of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7 percent.
The latest IRS figures are a few years older — and limited to federal income taxes — but show much the same thing. In 2009, taxpayers who made $1 million or more paid on average 24.4 percent of their income in federal income taxes, according to the IRS.
Those making $100,000 to $125,000 paid on average 9.9 percent in federal income taxes. Those making $50,000 to $60,000 paid an average of 6.3 percent.
Not to be forgotten is the fact that HALF of Americans, mostly in the lower-income brackets, pay NO income taxes at all. But Obama and Buffett seem reluctant to discuss the fairness of that situation.
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So the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Emanuel Cleaver, admits that if Obama weren't black his members would probably be circling the White House and protesting.
And this is the group that dares to call the Tea Party "racist"!
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Rahm Emanuel, Obama's former hatchet-man, now mayor of Chicago and apparently as charming as ever makes news again.
Democratic state Rep. Greg Harris, a longtime acquaintance who represents Emanuel's North Side neighborhood, opposed a piece of legislation Emanuel wanted passed. So ... Emanuel cussed him out and threatened to burn down is house if he didn't vote as Mr. Charm wanted.
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The Solyndra investors' formula, reduced to essentials:
"Heads we (investors) win; tails you (taxpayers) lose."
It came up tails, i.e., the business failed. And the taxpayers are stuck with over a half-billion dollars in lost money.
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Today's word to beware: instantly distrust any politician or political shill who uses the word "optics", the latest fad-word for how something might appear to the public.
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One is almost sorry for desperate liberals who've convinced themselves that opposing the death penalty is the way to beat Governor Rick Perry in a presidential campaign. With years of polls repeatedly showing that about two-thirds of Americans support the execution of vicious criminals, the liberal position is akin to peeing into the wind.
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Four words of advice for the once-promising Michele Bachmann: Shut up. Go home.
The congresswoman is making a fool of herself.
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I wonder how Senator John McCain can sleep, knowing that he lost to the likes of Barack Obama.
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A Bank of America economist warns that U.S. banks have so much money loaned to Greece that the seemingly inevitable Greek default could tip us deeper into recession.
This demonstrates again the (lack of) wisdom of loaning money to deadbeats, be they individuals or nations. The difference being that the U.S. government didn't force banks to loan money to Greece, unlike the federal pressure to make mortgage loans to people who were patently unprepared to handle the burden of repayment.
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Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune on why BO might be well advised to drop out ...
"His approval rating is at its lowest level ever. His party just lost two House elections — one in a district it had held for 88 consecutive years. He's staked his future on the jobs bill, which most Americans don't think would work.
"The sputtering economy is about to stall out, unemployment is high, his jobs program may not pass, foreclosures are rampant and the poor guy can't even sneak a cigarette.
"But there is good news for the president. I checked the Constitution, and he is under no compulsion to run for re-election. He can scrap the campaign, bag the fundraising calls and never watch another Republican debate as long as he's willing to vacate the premises by Jan. 20, 2013."
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Reaction to Ron Paul's winning of another straw-poll (this time in California):
"Swing your partner, doh-see-doh ..."
They're playing "Turkey in the Straw".
And keep that hate-mail coming -- but only if you're willing to bet your house that he'll win.
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Just as Republicans have to worry about a vote-draining challenge from Ron Paul in the general election, Democrats now have to contend with cries from their left-left-wing for a challenger to Obama because he's regarded -- by them -- as too conservative.
In the chorus calling for such a primary challenge, Ralph Nader, Professor Cornel West and radio's Tavis Smiley.
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Thomas Sowell on the phony "fright" over Rick Perry calling Social Security what it is -- a Ponzi scheme ...
"Although many act shocked, shocked, as if Rick Perry had said something unthinkable, Governor Perry is not even among the first thousand people to call Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Not only conservatives, but even some liberals, have been calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme for decades.
"Moreover, neither the media nor the politicians who are carrying on over the use of the words "Ponzi scheme" show the slightest interest in any hard facts that would tell us whether Social Security is or is not a Ponzi scheme. It is a "gotcha" moment, and that is apparently what some people live for.
"What makes this nonsense become fraud is the insinuation that calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme means advocating that people who are depending on Social Security be abandoned and left with nothing to live on in their retirement years. That is the big scare -- and the big lie."
Of course, in the real world of crime, a Ponzi scheme is more humane than Social Security. At least the government doesn't force you to buy into it.
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Hall-of-Fame suck-up media question of the year. Matt Lauer on "TODAY" to Bill Clinton: "One of the things that's always impressed me....you're really good in a closed room. I mean you get people to commit to things, to invest money....Are you surprised at how good you are at that?"
And how DO the Clinton buttocks taste, Matty?
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“I have more power than anybody other than the president.” Bill O'Reilly in Newsweek.
If we're talking media clout, Mr. O'Reilly, meet Mr. Limbaugh. His audience is several times larger than yours.
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A test for your luck. Or unluckiness.
When that big space vehicle crashes to earth this week, the odds against it hitting a person are calculated at 3,200-to-1. Of course, if you're REALLY unlucky ...
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Seventeen-year-old Corey Webb of Tyler, Texas, was in enough trouble when he found himself in a courtroom charged with shooting a police officer.
His troubles have been compounded since he expressed his annoyance with the judge by peeing in His Honor's wastebasket.
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Herewith, a test of both morality and rationality.
What, exactly, is "economic justice"?
As I get it, the formula is ... I work. You don't. But I have to give part of what I earn to you.
Justice, right?
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Offered without comment, this news item from North Carolina ...
"Long time Anti-Gun State Senator R.C. Soles, Democrat, 74, shot one of two intruders at his home just outside Tabor City , N.C. about 5 p.m. Sunday, the prosecutor for the politician's home county said.
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Memo to sportscasters ...
It is not necessary to refer to the New York FOOTBALL Giants.
There are no OTHER Giants in New York.
The baseball team moved to San Francisco more than 53 years ago.
Get used to it!
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Dan provides a classic of Jewish humor ...
Three Jewish women got together for lunch. As they were being seated in the restaurant, one took a deep breath and gave a long, slow, "oy." The second took a deep breath as well and let out a long, slow, "oy" The third tooks a deep breath and said impatiently, "Girls, I thought we agreed that we weren't going to talk about our children."
DHIMMITUDE FOR THE DIM;
PALESTINIANS PERPLEX THE PREZ
The Grand Opening of the Islamic Center near the 9/11 World Trade Center site in New York is underway. This may be taken as yet another indication that, on the whole, this nation is too stupid to survive. Most Americans are too dumb to know that, to Muslims, the building of a mosque -- or a mosque disguised as an "Islamic Center" -- is a clear sign of triumph over a region or locality.
The time will come -- perhaps not as rapidly as in much of Europe, but it WILL come -- when liberal Americans, so proud of their "tolerance", will realize in personal terms what the words "dhimmi" and "dhimmitude" really mean. To save the unknowing a trip to the dictionary, it means infidels living in a state of servitude under Muslims, and Muslim law. If you are not a Muslim, "infidel" means ... you.
As long as America has "leaders" as stupid as, say, the (Jewish!) mayor of New York, who encouraged the building of this mosque -- oops, Islamic Center -- the journey to dhimmitude status is shortened.
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That whirring sound may be chickens coming home to roost for our oh-so-Muslim-tolerant president. U.S. diplomats are in a state of panic over the Arab Palestinian movement at the UN for recognized status as a nation.
Sept. 23, 2010, speaking before the U.N. General Assembly, Obama said he hoped that "when we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the United Nations - an independent, sovereign state of Palestine, living in peace with Israel."
How clear do the Palestinians have to make it that they have no intention of "living in peace with Israel"? Their oft-avowed goal is the elimination of Israel and killing every Jew they can get their hands on, but we -- or especially our Dear Leader -- pretend that they're just kidding.
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What a dilemma for Obama. The Jewish vote is a significant part of the Democrat "base" and even more significant as a fountain of financial support. Yet the Muslim nations' push for Palestinian statehood puts to the test his clear pro-Muslim sympathies. How can he placate his Muslim friends without losing (more) Jewish votes and campaign contributions? One side or the other is going to be seriously angry.
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Biiiig surprise (sarcastically)! The CEO and Chief Financial Officer of that Solyndra outfit that went under, taking over half-a-billion taxpayer dollars with it, have decided not to testify before the congressional committee investigating the scam. They're taking the fifth. Or, for today's drinkers, the 750ML.
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Let's see ...
Obama invests in this LightSquared company.
Now, a second government official comes forward with testimony that the Obama administration tried to influence testimony for the benefit of the company as it pursued a government contract.
Thus ...
2 + 2 = ?
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The Solyndra scandal ... LightSquared, in which Obama has money, trying to influence testimony about a government contract ... gun-running to Mexican criminals ...
Before it's over, this Obama bunch is going to make Richard Nixon look like Little Red Riding Hood.
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It's now known that Warren Buffett is in arrears on his tax obligations.
Buffett has been very supportive of Obama's proposed tax legislation.
A reader, Hank, in Sacramento, suggests we keep a close eye on ol' Warren's tax situation to see if his outspoken support of Obama results in favorable treatment of his own taxes.
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James Carville says, “Don’t you think Ralph Nader has done enough damage to the country? I mean, he was probably single handedly responsible for electing George Bush.”
That was his reaction to being asked about Nader's possible run against Obama.
I don't recall him expressing similar concern when Ross Perot's entry into the race put Carville's old boss, Billy-Jeff Clinton, in the White House.
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The Great Awakening continues. So many Americans are finally wising-up to the fraudster in the White House that the new McClatchy (newspapers, broadcasting) Poll finds even the hated (by liberals and many independents) Sarah Palin, who routinely trailed him by twenty points or more in public opinion, is now only five points behind.
And most Americans now say they believe ANY Republican will beat him.
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Noemie Emery in the Washington Examiner has a great set of analogies to describe the Republican field ...
"Add Mitt Romney and Rick Perry together, and divide them by two. Then (Republicans) would have "Mick," their dream of a candidate. On policy, the two seem to think the same things, but who they are and how they would do them remain very different: Mitt is the head and Rick is the heart; Mitt is Al Gore, and Rick is Bill Clinton; Mitt is Clean Gene, and Rick is Robert F. Kennedy; Mitt is Ashley Wilkes, and Rick is Rhett Butler."
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Obama keeps playing his scratchy recording of upper-income people not paying "their fair share" of taxes. In the real world, outside the Washington cocoon, he'd be called out and called a liar to his face.
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Mona Charen in National Review Online gives her reasons for liking the rich folk ...
"In the process of earning their wealth, the rich have created products, services, and whole industries that have dramatically improved my work life, my family life, and my health. I’m so grateful to them for the GPS, iPads, non-drowsy antihistamines, smartphones, XM radio, and The Teaching Company courses — to name only a few advances of the past decade or two.
"I’m for the rich because nearly all of the rich people I’ve met are extremely public-spirited. They volunteer. They form committees to improve things in their communities. And they are incredibly generous with their money. As Arthur C. Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute notes, “The top 10 percent of households in income are responsible for at least a quarter of all the money contributed to charity, and households with total wealth exceeding $1 million give about half of all charitable donations.” In general, I think they probably make wiser choices in their charitable giving than the federal government would make if it took their money and spent it."
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Opinion is divided as to whether Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is stupid -- or evil. I'm a tolerant optimist on the subject, so I vote for stupid.
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Americans have a right to know: what was the source for the million dollars to buy the freedom of the two idiots (one a "freelance journalist", the other an "environmental activist") who got their miserable butts thrown in prison in Iran after their "peaceful hike" along the Iraq-Iran border?
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America's public education will continue to deteriorate unless and until the stranglehold of the teachers' union is broken. That union sells to a gullible public the proposition that their prime interest is the education and welfare of children. They're lying.
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Wonder how many of the hysterically frightened who tremble at the very words "Tea Party" have the slightest idea of why that term and title were chosen?
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There's reason to doubt that the growing demand among Democrats that Obama step aside for another candidate to carry the banner into the election will bear fruit.
After all, there are other luxury vacation spots in the world that Michelle may wish to visit.
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Send this column, or the link to it, to a couple of friends. It couldn't hurt.
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Distressing news from Cadelbosco Sopra, a town in Italy where local wives have begun a petition campaign demanding that the barmaid at a local drinking establishment be fired.
Their complaint is that their husbands are leaving too much of the family income in tips for Loredana Pepesciue, a 27-year-old immigrant from Romania.
Without further elaboration, let it be stated that the lovely Loredana would make most of the ladies behind the bar at a Hooters look like undernourished pre-adolescent boys.
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The following questions were in last year's GED examination
These are genuine answers (from 16 year olds). They WILL breed. Weep for the future.
Actual answers given by those taking the GED exam:
Q. Name the four seasons.
A. Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.
Q. How is dew formed?
A. The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire.
Q. In a democratic society, how important are elections?
A. Very important. Sex can only happen when a male gets an election.
Q.. What happens to your body as you age?
A. When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental.
Q. How can you delay milk turning sour?
A. Keep it in the cow. (Simple, but brilliant)
Q. What is the fibula?
A. A small lie.
Q. What is a seizure?
A. A Roman Emperor.
Q. What is a terminal illness?
A. When you are sick at the airport.
Q. What does the word 'benign' mean?
A. Benign is what you will be after you be eight.
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Now, out to the pool! Our houseguests are John and Trisha Parker, co-authors of "The Best of Our Lives"
(see website of the same name for great blogs) directed to people who could use a reminder that there's more to life than youth.
Personally, I take comfort in the time-tested adage that, "You're only young once -- but you can be immature forever."
OBAMANOMICS: CHAOS, CORRUPTION &
CRISIS
"The Lawyers Always Win" department can add this to the file. The Washington Times reports that before the ill-conceived Solyndra "green jobs" company went bankrupt and its headquarters were raided by the FBI, law firms that worked on the loan-guarantee package received millions of dollars in legal fees, according to payments disclosed through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Morrison Foerster, which represented the Department of Energy as the loan guarantor, received more than $1.9 million for legal services. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, which represented Solyndra, received more than $2.4 million.
Cheap at the price for the beneficiaries who got out largely unscathed, with the taxpayers left holding the bag.
Makes you proud to be a taxpayer, doesn't it?
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From U. S. Census data, some sorry conclusions:
In record-setting numbers, young adults struggling to find work are shunning long-distance moves to live with Mom and Dad, delaying marriage and buying fewer homes, often raising kids out of wedlock. They suffer from the highest unemployment since World War II and risk living in poverty more than others - nearly 1 in 5.
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This is how bad it is for the Big Zero. A poll commissioned by the LIBERAL Washington Post and the LIBERAL ABC-TV finds that his support among black voters has dropped from 83% five months ago to 58% now.
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There is one question that will nag at some of us throughout the presidential primary season. "Which of the two leading Republican candidates do I distrust less?"
It is naive and wildly unrealistic to expect an unblemished party standard-bearer, but Perry's stance on illegal immigration (not outlawing "sanctuary cities", for example) is troublesome to many. Romney's flip-flops and health-care silliness (in Mass.) continue to dog him.
Many of us may have to grit our teeth and stand firm on the position that either would be a vast improvement over the incompetent and/or corrupt charlatan now occupying the office.
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As the bodies continue to pile up, victims of the Justice Department's stupid, possibly criminal gun-running scheme that put weapons in the hands of Mexican criminals for purposes still unclear, Eric Holder, Obama's ultra-leftist Attorney General continues to stonewall and insist he knew nothing about the whole ridiculous operation.
Riiiiight ...
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Dr. Milton Wolf neatly summarizes in the Washington Times the debacle the Obama presidency has become ...
"Obamanomics has become its own parody, a disastrous amalgam of wildly increased deficit spending, central planning, bailouts, takeovers, unconstitutional mandates, over-regulation, crony favoritism, debased currency and increased taxes. The “smartest guy ever to become president,” as pundits used to call him, knows only one solution to every problem: Grow the government. Now his proverbial chickens have come home to roost and the landscape is littered with the results: Unemployment. High gas prices. Deficits. Food stamps. Poverty. Uninsured people. Foreclosures. Bankruptcies. Layoffs. Phony green jobs. Downgraded America. This is Obamanomics."
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As if we needed more evidence that Ron Paul has a screw loose ...
He now says he might put wild-eyed lefty Congressman Dennis Kucinich in his cabinet if elected.
Ron is obviously off his meds again.
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Congress largely consists of a bunch of immoral political whores. Proof? The fact that today they (both parties) are honoring Congressman Charles Rangel, New York Democrat, with the unveiling of his official photo as longtime chairman of the House Ways & Means committee, which is the starting point for much legislation involving government spending.
This is the same Rangel who had to give up that position last year and was censured for not paying his taxes.
And to think: our ancestors fought to be free from English royalty only to replace it with people like this!
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Reader John in Napa, CA, raises a pertinent question about Obama's proposed tax increase on "millionaires" ...
"Was this not the purpose for the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax) which I don’t think has ever been adjusted for inflation?"
True. And the absence of any such adjustment means it's biting more and more people that were never intended to be targets.
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You've doubtless heard by now about Joe McGinniss' scandal-mongering book about Sarah Palin, so sleazy it's even been slammed by liberal critics. Now, Andrew Breitbart has uncovered an e-mail sent by McGinniss to the proprietor of a now-defunct anti-Palin website who had passed along -- or generated -- salacious gossip about the former Alaska governor.
The very first line of McGinniss' message tells us all we need to know about his trashy book. It says, "Legal review of my manuscript is underway and here’s my problem: no one has ever offered documentation of any of the lurid stories about the Palins."
But the book was published, anyway. Made-up gossip can be profitable.
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Big Brother will keep watching you if you have Government Motors' OnStar system in your motor vehicle. Even if you drop the "service", it will continue to track your speed, location, seat belt use, etc. For what purpose? Who will get the information?
Reasonable questions -- and GM isn't saying.
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Those with good memories and sufficient years behind them will recall that Democrats went nuts complaining about Nancy Reagan buying new china for the White House dining room -- even though it was paid for with private donations and was to stay at the White House after the Reagan's departure. Yet they find nothing wrong with Michelle Obama loading up a couple of big government jets with friends, relatives and security people to run all over the world at taxpayer expense.
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You may also recall that Democrats were aghast at the idea of the Reagan administration providing weapons for Nicaraguans to fight Red Danny Ortega and his communist dictatorship. Yet they seem singularly complacent about Obama's regime sending guns to Mexican drug gangsters.
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Steve McCann in the American Thinker website on how Obama delivers Fascist economics ...
"Barack Obama and his minions in the administration as well as many Democrats in the Congress are often described as Socialists, or in the extreme as Marxists. However, their actions and strategy are straight out of the fascist economic playbook. They have become the modern reincarnation of the fascist mindset, without the militarism of Italy and Germany, that dominated Europe in the 1920s and '30s.
"The Obama regime has thrown out the rule of law when it comes to the rights of private investors by their actions against the bondholders of Chrysler and General Motors, as well as forcefully taking over and operating both companies and others as quasi-private entities. They have chosen which businesses will succeed or fail by the taxpayer financing of companies such a Solyndra among a score of others, others of which have failed. The Obama appointees to the National Labor Relations Board are now dictating to companies where they can locate and are attempting to force their workers into unions without secret ballots."
Has it been forgotten that the name of Adolf Hitler's political movement was The National SOCIALIST Party?
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This may explain why so many African nations stagger between poverty and corruption. The NY Post reports that Rwandan President Paul Kagame is living in luxury during the United Nations General Assembly, staying in the $16,000-per-night presidential suite at New York's Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Rwanda’s average annual income last year was $1,150.
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From the mouth of a moron:
"People who enter the United States ILLEGALLY show "gumption" and "courage" and are “the best other societies can send.” -- Henry Cisneros, Secretary of Health and Human Services under Bill Clinton.
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Retiring the trophy for Biggest Phony on a Minor Cable TV operation: Joe Scarborough, the in-house RINO sellout for MSNBC. He makes Heidi Fleiss look like a model of rectitude by comparison.
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Jimmy Kimmel --
"The military’s controversial "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy was officially retired. I think this will have an effect on our enemies. Be warned, evildoers. First we will defeat you, then we will redecorate your entire country."
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Conan O'Brien --
"Chaz Bono was spotted shirtless on the set of “Dancing With the Stars.” There were no survivors."
THE BAIT-AND-DEBATE GAME;
BERNANKE'S FARCICAL FED
The Republican debate was a bit more ... spirited (i.e., argumentative) ... than its predecessors, but there was a large measure of deja vu involved. We heard the same things we've heard before, if enunciated more emphatically.
Lingering impressions: Perry has not improved his game and looks likely to dip again in the polls. He may be a fading shooting-star ... Romney was feistier ... they basically called each other liars repeatedly. They may both be right.
Perry is the presumed conservative alternative to Romney, but his credentials are being effectively challenged -- especially on illegal immigration. Romney's RINO tendencies remain apparent. A typical Romney dance-and-dodge evasion came when asked if he'd describe Obama as a socialist. His response was, "Let me tell you the title that I want to hear said about him: that is, former President Barack Obama." Uh, yes ... but that wasn't the question.
Michele Bachmann appears deliberately deaf to Perry's repeated statement that his controversial vaccine program had an "opt-out" provision. It's unlikely to be an issue that will swing many votes, anyway. She's over.
Gingrich and Cain delivered most of the best lines, but former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson got the most laughs with his line, "My next-door neighbor's two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this current administration."
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Obama won Florida in 2008, a turn of events some of us attributed to an outbreak of mass senility among the state's huge retiree population.
According to the new Quinnipiac poll, the pendulum has swung. Approval stands as 39% ... disapproval at at 53% among Floridians.
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Re the game-show type question asked about which of the other candidates each might pick as a vice-presidential running mate, here's the real answer. None would pick any of the others.
Somewhere, Senator Marco Rubio was smiling.
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If a Republican president is elected, it is to be hoped that he/she will have the clout to follow through on pledges such as those to shut down the Education Department and the EPA, and leave the parasites in those agencies free to find honest, legitimate work. They could hardly be more destructive if they were enemy agents.
- - - - -
Tip to all debaters, present and future: references to the Second Amendment or the Tenth Amendment or this-or-that legislative bill should not be presented with the assumption that the audience knows what you're talking about. It's a sad comment on American education that most DON'T. Therefore, a brief explanation is in order.
A longtime talk-show host learns this in the most direct way. Audience feedback. If they don't know what you're talking about, you can't engage them.
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The surprise in the Gallup Poll showing 55% of Americans distrust the media is that 44% DO trust the media.
That leaves 1% who may ignore the media entirely. Not a totally bad choice.
- - - - -
Make no mistake. Obama's latest "jobs" sermon, to the extent that it has any substance at all, is about trying to convince union workers, who make up only a small minority of the non-government work-force, that he's still deserving of their support.
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"Companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.” -- Barack Obama, "green jobs" charlatan, May, 2010.
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Our hopey-changey incompetent White House dunce has done the near-impossible. He's managed to simultaneously alienate our only ally in the middle-east, Israel, and infuriate his spiritual brethren, the Arabs.
If the rest of his tired 2008 slogan were revised to reflect reality, it would say, "No, we can't."
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The Chicago Tribune reports another episode from the political culture that spawned Barack Obama ...
" For former labor leader Dennis Gannon, the keys to securing a public pension were one day ... ONE DAY ... on the city payroll and some help from the Daley administration.
"And his city pension is the highest of any retired union leader: $158,000."
No wonder Illinois joins California (#1) and New York on the list of Top Three Worst States for Doing Business.
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Is there reason to suspect that the stock market has been holding at an artifically high level, supported primarily by traders operating on the theory that they could dump their stock on another buyer before the underlying reality of the economy triggered a major drop?
Yes.
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Memo to Ben Bernanke: Salvage what little self-respect you have left, and quit as boss of the Federal Reserve. You are stupid, and an utter failure. No sane parent would allow you to handle their child's lunch money.
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Did this lunkhead (Bernanke) learn NOTHING from the experience of Japan? When their economy went into recession some years ago, the revolving-door government kept cutting interest rates, believing that to be the solution. They were eventually cut to zero. It wasn't effective ... and the recession lingered to the extent that their economy, even with an industrious and well-educated work force, is still in the doldrums.
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How many more remakes of the old Amateur Hour show does television need? Gee, you think they're doing them because the "talent" is free, or virtually so?
Of course, they DO have to pay for all those flashing lights and the rest of the staging glitter, but it's still one of the cheapest forms of entertainment you can put on the air.
The latest entry in the Cheapskate Sweepstakes, Simon Cowell's "The X-Factor", bombed in its debut, attracting about half as many viewers as his previous clone, "American Idol".
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Dan Sorkin forwards this collection of stuff you didn't know you didn't know!
Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.
Coca-Cola was originally green.
It is impossible to lick your elbow. (Go ahead ... I'll wait)
The State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska.
The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28%.
(now get this...)
The percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%.
The cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $ 16,400. (And worth it)
The average number of people airborne over the U.S. in any given hour: 61,000.
Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades - King David ... Hearts - Charlemagne ... Clubs -Alexander the Great ... Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
If a statue of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle.
If the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died because of wounds received in battle.
If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
Q. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of what? A. Their birthplace.
Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser printers have in common?
A. All were invented by women.
Q. What is the only food that doesn't spoil?
A. Honey.
- - - - -
Jay Leno --
"A Chinese businessman bought a bottle of rare scotch for $200,000. The Chinese are buying bottles of scotch for $200,000, and our president is brewing his own beer in the basement."
PERRY, CHRISTIE -- RISING BALLOONS ...
BURST BALLOONS
That satellite has broken up and crashed to earth. If it didn't hit you ... congratulations.
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It is indicative of the suspicion with which many conservatives view Mitt Romney that Rick Perry ascended like a skyrocket in the polls upon his entry into the race.
Also like a skyrocket, he seems to be burning out quickly. There's a broad consensus that he has performed (I use the word advisedly) worse in each succeeding debate appearance. His next debate may well be a do-or-die effort, and he'll need to do a lot better.
Mr. Perry tacitly admits that he didn't do well in this week's Orlando outing by retreating to his fallback position; i.e., the people don't elect presidents based on their debating skills. That assumption may not be fatal, but it is dangerous. They do want at least an appearance of command of the issues, a quality seriously lacking in the Texas governor so far.
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If New Jersey Governor Chris Christie makes a belated leap into the Republican race, he brings with him both a big plus and a big minus. The plus: his success in dealing with the government employee unions in his state.
The minus: his utterly stupid statement that people are loonies if they are concerned about Muslims' obsessive push to incorporate their Sharia (i.e., religious law) medieval views into our secular laws. That makes him a genuine danger. I suspect also that his frequently-abrasive Joisey-guy personality would wear thin in a national campaign.
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Recurrent warning ahead, but necessary.
Never, ever, fall in love with a politician. They'll break your heart every time. Disillusionment is the inevitable result. Participate, but view skeptically.
It's a seasonal affliction: as election campaigns heat up, there's an overwhelming temptation to confuse hope with realistic expectation. Wishful thinking abounds.
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Even those of us who see Romney as pure RINO have to admit that the debates have thus far worked entirely to his advantage.
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"We’re the country that built the Intercontinental Railroad,"said Barack Obama, standing beside a bridge from Ohio to Kentucky.
INTERCONTINENTAL? Does the Hahvuhd man even know what the word "intercontinental" means? We built a railroad to Europe? Or Asia? Why are they hiding it?
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The bad news keeps dribbling out about Obamacare. Higher costs ... longer delays ... more government intrusiveness. If this piece of idiocy isn't repealed and condemned to the trash can, it is easy to predict that more and more Americans will curse the very name "Obama" with their (literally) dying breath.
How long is it going to take the Supreme Court to put a stop to this crime committed in the name of the government?
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The liberal Washington Post has more disturbing news about Obama's Solyndra scam ...
"Former employees of Solyndra, the shuttered solar company that exhausted half a billion dollars of taxpayer money, said they saw questionable spending by management almost as soon as a federal agency approved a $535 million government-backed loan for the start-up.
"A new factory built with public money boasted a gleaming conference room with glass walls that, with the flip of a switch, turned a smoky gray to conceal the room’s occupants. Hastily purchased state-of-the-art equipment ended up being sold for pennies on the dollar, still in its plastic wrap, employees said.
"As the $344 million factory went up just down the road from the company’s leased plant in Fremont, Calif., workers watched as pallets of unsold solar panels stacked up in storage. Many wondered: Was the factory needed?"
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Now the crackpot EPA is banning inhalers used by asthma victims. How much longer is this government agency -- along with others -- going to be allowed to run wild? Congress, wake up! House of Representatives, you have the power of the purse. Use it to de-fund this insane asylum! If legal grounds can be found, the people running this nuthouse should be imprisoned.
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A new low in human cruelty. In Oklahoma, families of National Guard members serving abroad are being warned of men wearing camouflage uniforms (which you can buy anywhere) knocking on their doors and delivering fake messages of the death of the service-member.
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In Texas, another goofy liberal teacher called the head of the local Tea Party chapter a Nazi. The answer to this kind of leftist nutcake behavior is NOT a memo or letter-to-the-editor, but a much ... firmer ... response.
My own policy? Once, during one of our heated on-air debates, a liberal talk-show host, now imprisoned for child porn, called me a Nazi. I warned him then, live on-air, that if he ever did it again, at least one of us was going to the hospital. He never did it again, doubtless realizing that I was not kidding. Intemperate perhaps -- but effective.
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Pakistan warns that if we object to their duplicitous game-playing we'll lose an ally.
Pakistan gives meaning to the expression, "With friends like this, who needs enemies?"
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Thomas Sowell at Townhall.com on the flaws in the televised debates ...
"The whole "debate" format, with far more candidates than have any realistic chance of getting the nomination, means that serious issues cannot get serious attention, because there is just not enough time with so many people. Most of what we learn from those "debates" is who is glib and fast on his feet. We already have a president who is glib and fast on his feet. But he is a disaster when it comes to the economy, among other things. Do we need more of the same from Republicans?
"What would be far more informative would be to have an hour-long interview with each of the candidates who has some serious chance of winning the Republican nomination. That would cut the number down to two or three, and allow us to get some real idea about how deeply those two or three have thought through the weighty issues facing this country."
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Government burocratic stupidity on display ...
The federal government has doled out more than $600 million in benefit payments to dead people over the past five years, according to a report by the inspector general of the Office of Personnel Management.
In one illustrative case, the son of a beneficiary continued receiving payments for 37 years after his father's death in 1971. The payments - totaling more than $515,000 - were only discovered when the son died in 2008.
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Victor Davis Hanson at Townhall.com with reflections on the "Arab spring" ...
"Whatever Egyptian government emerges, it will be more Islamist than before -- and may renounce the peace accords with Israel.
"One thing unites Syrian and Libyan dissidents: They seem to hate Israel as much as the murderous dictators whom they have been trying to throw out.
"The so-called "Arab Spring" was supposed to usher in Arab self-introspection about why intolerant strongmen keep sprouting up in the Middle East. Post-revolutionary critics could freely examine self-inflicted Arab wounds, such as tribalism, religious intolerance, authoritarianism, endemic corruption, closed economies and gender apartheid.
"But so far, "revolutionaries" sound a lot more like reactionaries. They are more often retreating to the tired conspiracies that the Israelis and Americans pushed onto innocent Arab publics homegrown corrupt madmen such as Bashar Assad, Muammar Gadhafi and Hosni Mubarak."
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Kudos to Chris Walton, 45, of Las Vegas. She has won the Guinness World Record for having the longest fingernails, meassuring 10'2" on her left hand and 9'7" on her right. She hasn't clipped them in 18 years.
She's the odds-on favorite to also win the world nose-picking title.
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The Sky Guy offers this one ...
I dialed a number and got the following recording:
'I am not available right now, but Thank you for caring enough to call. I am making some changes in my life.
Please leave a message after the Beep. If I do not return your call, You are one of the changes.'
- - - - -
Conan O'Brien --
"President Obama has proposed a new tax increase called the 'Buffett rule.' At first, Newt Gingrich was for it because he thought it was the 'buffet'."
- - - - -
Jimmy Fallon --
"First Lady Michelle Obama will appear on the season premiere of "Extreme Home Makeover" on Sunday. The good news is, she’ll be refurbishing a house for a new family to move into; the bad news is, it’s the White House."
PERRY POLL-AXED ... RAISING CAIN
... HIGHER TAXES -- "BUT NOT FOR ME!"
The value of political straw-polls needn't be over-emphasized -- they serve largely as media fodder, as Michele Bachmann's Iowa victory and subsequent slump illustrates. But, for what it's worth, here's the outcome of the poll taken at the Florida Republican confab which hosted the most recent debate:
* Herman Cain: 37.11 percent.
* Governor Rick Perry: 15.43 percent.
* Governor Mitt Romney: 14 percent.
* Senator Rick Santorum: 10.88 percent.
* Congressman Ron Paul: 10.39 percent.
* Speaker Newt Gingrich: 8.43 percent.
* Governor Jon Huntsman: 2.26 percent.
* Congresswoman Michele Bachmann: 1.51 percent.
The participants' rapid disenchantment with Rick Perry is evident, since he arrived in Florida a week ago with a big lead in the state's other polls.
It may be premature to say of Perry, "Stick a fork in him, he's done," but his debate performance has been so shabby his chances have doubtless been diminished. The term "electile dysfunction" is being used. He's blaming his sorry effort in the last half of three debates on being "tired". The job of president is stressful. If a two-hour debate is too exhausting ... certain conclusions are obvious.
The poll is hardly good news for Romney. It's another sign that core Republicans still view him with deep suspicion. If there were less contempt for the failed Obama, his chances in the general election would be questionable, indeed. What his "moderate" image might gain for him among independents could well be offset by loss of voters from the Republican base.
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Even the New York Times (!) is reporting that small contributors to Obama's 2008 campaign are so disillusioned that their checkbooks are remaining closed this time around.
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Dwell on this for about twenty seconds.
What kind of stupid nation DOES require positive ID for a bank transaction or to get on an airplane, but will let a person have a voice in selecting our leaders, including the highest office in the land, with no ID at all?
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From the Rasmussen poll ...
Fifty percent (50%) of Americans think President Obama and Congress should consider a mix of spending cuts and tax increases in looking for ways to cut the federal deficit, but nearly two-out-of-three adults (64%) are unwilling to pay higher taxes themselves to reduce that deficit.
"Don't tax you ... don't tax me ... tax that fellow behind the tree." (Ancient folk wisdom)
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Warning. The ever-greedy Obama theft machine has an eye on taxing every bank transaction.
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An illustration ...
You have two families: "Joe Legal" and "Jose Illegal". Both families have two parents, two children, and live in California .
Joe Legal works in construction, has a Social Security Number and makes $25.00 per hour with taxes deducted.
Jose Illegal also works in construction, has NO Social Security Number, and gets paid $15.00 cash "under the table".
Joe Legal: $25.00 per hour x 40 hours = $1000.00 per week, or $52,000.00 per year. Now take 30% away for state and federal tax; Joe Legal now has $31,231.00.
Jose Illegal: $15.00 per hour x 40 hours = $600.00 per week, or $31,200 per year. Jose Illegal pays no taxes. Jose Illegal now has $31,200.
Joe Legal pays medical and dental insurance with limited coverage for his family at $600.00 per month, or $7,200.00 per year. Joe Legal now has $24,031.
Jose Illegal has full medical and dental coverage through the state and local clinics and emergency hospitals at a cost of $0.00 per year. Jose Illegal still has $31,200.
Joe Legal makes too much money and is not eligible for food stamps or welfare. Joe Legal pays $500.00 per month for food, or $6,000.00 per year. Joe Legal now has $18,031.
Jose Illegal has no documented income and is eligible for food stamps, WIC and welfare. Jose Illegal still has $31,200.
Joe Legal pays rent of $1,200.00 per month, or $14,400.00 per year. Joe Legal now has 9,631 .00.
Jose Illegal receives a $500.00 per month Federal Rent Subsidy. Jose Illegal pays out that $500.00 per month, or $6,000.00 per year. Jose Illegal still has $ 31,200.
Joe Legal pays $200.00 per month, or $2,400.00 for car insurance. Some of that is uninsured motorist insurance. Joe Legal now has $7,231.
Jose Illegal says, "We don't need no stinkin' insurance!" and still has $31,200.
Joe Legal has to make his $7,231.00 stretch to pay utilities, gasoline, etc..
Jose Illegal has to make his $31,200.00 stretch to pay utilities, gasoline, and what he sends out of the country every month..
Joe Legal now works overtime on Saturdays or gets a part time job after work.
Jose Illegal has nights and weekends off to enjoy with his family.
Joe Legal's and Jose Illegal's children both attend the same elementary school. Joe Legal pays for his children's lunches, while Jose Illegal's children get a government sponsored lunch. Jose Illegal's children have an after school ESL program. Joe Legal'schildren go home.
Now, when they reach college age, Joe Legal's kids may not get into a State School and may not qualify for scholarships, grants or other tuition help, even though Joe has been paying for State Schools through his taxes, while Jose Illegal's kids "go to the head of the class" because they are a minority.
Joe Legal and Jose Illegal both enjoy the same police and fire services, but Joe paid for them and Jose did not pay.
-- Thanks, Barbara
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Typical Hollywood shallow lib-phony Morgan Freeman says of Obama's rapidly-diminishing reelection chances, "opponents will do whatever 'to get this black man outta here'. Ignoring the reality that many of those same voters put "this black man" IN office -- and found to their dismay that he wasn't up to the job and was virulent in his anti-Americanism.
One wonders how an airhead like Freeman would explain the core-Republican straw-poll victory of Herman Cain in Florida. Good actor, but otherwise a dope seething with racial animosity.
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A quick study of the etymology of the word "Arizona", which I claim as my home state, reveals that the likely source is an Indian word meaning "small spring"-- a source of water.
Another way of interpreting it is a combination of the words "arid zone", which it largely is.
To some, the word "desert" conjures images of endless sand dunes. Not true. The Sonoran desert, which occupies much of the state including my homestead, is largely mountainous and has abundant vegetation. It is plant life that has learned to live with less water that arrives mostly in the summer monsoon season.
It is a lesson Americans in many parts of the country where water is limited will increasingly have to learn.
My home, near Tucson, is located in an area where grass lawns are rare. We are situated over an aquifer with abundant water which is cheap, but nevertheless people have learned the desert lesson that water is never to be wasted. Besides, you don't have to water, fertilize or mow rocks.
Some new arrivals simply are not prepared for life in the desert. There is summer heat, of course, but the cliche is true. It IS a dry heat, which makes it far more bearable than the humid, tropical variety. I speak from experience. Most of my own previous life had been spent in San Francisco, Chicago and that lovely Humidity City, Miami.
There is also desert wildlife in abundance in the area where I live. Javelinas (Hah-vuh-leenas) thrive. Many think of them as wild hogs, which they resemble, but they're actually an entirely different species. During dry season deer, bears, bobcats and the occasional mountain lion wander down from the 9500-foot mountain just outside my rear window in search of water or moisture-bearing vegetation. A herd of deer are regular visitors at my house. Mexican gray wolves wander through the neighborhood. They are not to be annoyed or approached.
Less threatening wildlife is also in evidence. The courtyard outside my office yesterday was abuzz with hummingbirds and the twice-yearly butterfly commute to South America stops over here, filling the air with color. Doves, cardinals, quail, wrens and a dozen other varieties of birds inhabit the mesquite trees that surround my house. My swimming pool is their watering trough. Eagles, hawks and ravens soar overhead constantly.
Rattlesnakes were here first and make their presence known from time to time, throwing a scare into recent arrivals and seasonal transients alike. Their venom is valuable. It is the source of the anti-venin shots, several of which you'll need if bitten. It goes for $1,000 per shot. (Old joke: "How do you milk a rattlesnake? First, get a very low stool ... ")
Many people come to Arizona attracted by the salubrious climate, moderate cost of living, low taxes and a lower level of government intrusiveness than they had "back home" wherever that may be. Unfortunately, some of the new arrivals bring with them the very political views that made their previous home states less attractive and attempt to install them here. In my neighborhood, newcomers (which I was, ten years ago) are looked upon with suspicion unless and until they demonstrate they didn't arrive accompanied by "the California disease" or a similar variety of derangement.
The fact is, some folk just aren't equipped for the desert life. One unfortunate example comes to mind. A few blocks away a couple arrived and immediately had conflict in their marriage. He loves it here; she is highly unsuited for desert life. Prefers New England. The problem was probably exacerbated because they arrived in August, at the height of summer. From Alaska.
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A friend who has led a colorful life sends me this (possibly apocryphal) tale ...
"I would like to share an experience with you all; it has to do with drinking and driving.
"As you know some of us have had brushes with the authorities on our way home in recent months. Well, I for one have done something about it. The other night I was out for a dinner and a few drinks with some friends. So, after having far too much vino, and knowing full well I was wasted, I did something I've never done before. I took a bus home. I arrived home safely and without incident, which was a real surprise, because I have never driven a bus before."
WHAT/WHO IS A POLITICIAN? ... BROKE
PEOPLE, BROKE NATIONS
A cautionary note about being seduced by any present or former campaigner playing the "I'm not a politician" theme. The moment you enter any political race for any office, you ARE by definition a politician.
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" Perry is about one-half a step away from almost total collapse as a candidate.” -- the UN-frivolous Brit Hume.
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Quin Hillyer on Chris Christie in The American Spectator ...
"What is wrong with conservatives today? Why are they falling for a pig in a poke and trying, yet again, to talk Chris Christie into running for president? We still don't know Chris Christie. We've seen him for less than two years. We've seen him do some highly unconservative things. And we have him in his own words saying not just that he doesn't want to run for president this year, but that he "isn't ready" to be president. If he actually gets the nomination, those words will be hung around his neck like millstones. He didn't say them just once, either, but several times."
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Heartfelt congratulations to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. She has bequeathed the title of Stupidest Woman in America to Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida. Maybe.
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This nation is broke. In addition to a long history of wasteful spending in every area of government, it might also be remembered that one administration after another, both Republican and Democrat, has spent countless billions -- or trillions -- sending aid to countries that re not only NOT allies but actively oppose us. We have, for decades, subsidized enemies who cheerfully vote against us in the UN and even support those who kill Americans on battlefields and in terror attacks.
This suicidal insanity has to stop. The new and permanent rule must be, "If you're not on our side, you get nothing."
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You could make a good argument that a major factor in this nation's descent into the swamp of economic stagnation and other examples of national paralysis is the nation's obsession in recent years with liberals' fad concerns.
Excessive angst over unproven concerns like global warming, rising oceans, melting ice-caps and other nonsense pushed by con artists with the collaboration of a willing media has muddled our thinking.
Perhaps the necessity to concentrate on real problems like a failing economy, unemployment, an ailing banking system and the rapid decay in the value of the dollar under an idiotic administration in collusion with a Federal Reserve Chairman with the IQ of a snail will cause some Americans to re-think their priorities.
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Scott Johnson in Powerline reduces Obamunism to basics ...
"Given that citizens of lesser means always outnumber the rich, the classic political philosophers held that government based on majority rule was untenable. They were of the view that it would lead to organized theft from the wealthy by the democratic masses. Thus Aristotle observed in The Politics, for example: “If the majority distributes among itself the things of a minority, it is evident that it will destroy the city.”
"The Founders of the United States were deep students of politics and history, and they shared Aristotle’s concern. Up through their time, history had shown all known democracies to be “incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.” James Madison and others held that the “first object of government” was to protect the rights of property.
"Whatever else might be said about him, President Obama operates on a different philosophy of government from that of the Founders. His credo is reflected in the proposition: “I think at some point you have made enough money.”
"The Founders thought that at some point the government had enough power. Obama, however, is a devout believer in unlimited government."
Worth remembering as you evaluate his recent descent deeper into rabble-rousing demagoguery.
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Is it too much to suggest that many Californians take a certain grim satisfaction in learning that the Democrat politicians who've been ripping THEM off for years are now short of political campaign funds because of embezzlement by their own state party treasurer?
PS--Listed as a creditor in the Solyndra bankruptcy filing: the California Democratic Party. Could it be?! Party funds loaned to a "green jobs" scam?! How fitting. Party donors must be ... dismayed.
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How much longer can Obama propaganda organs NBC and ABC continue to ignore the Solyndra scandal in their so-called "news coverage"?
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Freudian slip? In one of his fire-breathing, demagogic speeches over the weekend, defending his call for the rich to pay more in taxes, the president said he didn’t mind people calling him a class warrior for merely asking a billionaire to pay "the same tax rate as a Jew." He quickly corrected himself by saying, "janitor".
If you listened carefully, you could hear echoes of his Chicago friends, Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright.
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The view from the heartland. Kevin O'Brien in the Cleveland Plain Dealer ...
"President Barack Obama wants to tax the rich, because it might work -- for him.
It doesn't work as a solution to the nation's problems, caused primarily by an overpopulated, overbearing and over-budget government that's hugging the economy to death.
"But it works as a campaign strategy. Or so he hopes. It is, in fact, the only campaign strategy left to him. He can't run on his record. The things he has done have worked not to solve the nation's economic problems, but to exacerbate them.
"Nor can he run on "hope and change" again. He's the incumbent now, and the record he has compiled cedes that theme to his opponent, whoever that may be: Make a change, America, while there's still hope of salvaging the country."
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In terms anyone can understand ...
A Greek default on that nation's debt could bring down the European Union.
What do the Greek financial crisis and our own mortgage mess have in common?
Proof -- again -- that it's insane to loan money to people who can't or won't repay it.
Deadbeats are bad, bad business.
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Once a nation falls into the socialist welfare-state trap, with the government expected to provide cradle-to-grave security even for the slothful, it is difficult to disengage from that parasitic way of thinking. Latest example: the French have voted-in a leftist Senate majority.
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Now the International Monetary Fund may need a bailout. And guess where the world's freeloaders will come for that.
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My friend Sheila, who knows the world, forwards the prescient words of the great man of the 20th Century, Winston Churchill, who saw the Islamic movement for what it was -- 112 years ago.
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
"A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
"Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
"No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."
Sir Winston Churchill; (Source: The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 London ) - 1899 Unabridged, Two-Volume Edition
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Notes from a football fan (me) ...
The Indianapolis Colts lost to the Steelers at the very end, but acquitted themselves well last night. The Kerry Collins quarterback mistake -- an expensive one -- probably is ended, and should be.
The use of replay in college football was supposed to end blatant officiating errors. In Toledo's overtime loss to Syracuse, it didn't. The replay official failed to correct a call of "good" on a Syracuse extra-point attempt that was obviously wide of the goalposts. A later Toledo field goal that should have won the game, but instead only sent it into overtime, tied. Syracuse kicked a field goal to win. That official should never again be allowed to even ATTEND a football game.
There are rumors that we Arizonans have a pro football team. They are incorrect. By no standard of professionalism should the wretched Cardinals be so designated. Except for a brief flirtation with success featuring a recycled Kurt Warner at QB, the franchise has been a consistent embarrassment for as long as the Bidwell family has owned it.
It will never happen, but pro sports need something akin to the British soccer league system, with consistent losers relegated to a second division. Better yet, owners who fail to win even a divisional championship within a certain number of years should be required to sell the franchise to someone else. Get better, or get out. Too many owners treat their operations as nothing more than cash-cows, given the lucrative league-wide TV deals.
Michael Vick is complaining about getting hit so much and officials not flagging opponents. Dude, it works like this: if you are a running quarterback, you will be hit like any other running back -- hard and often. That's why most pro teams don't WANT their QB's running a lot. That's also why the typical NFL running back has a career of less than five years. Vick is exciting to watch, but his style of play IS hazardous.
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Conan OBrien --
"The reading scores on the SATs have reached an all-time low. Or, as the headline put it, “SATs Be Most Baddest.”
MISS CHRIS? ... VIEWING WITH
DISMAY ... OBAMA UNHINGED
Of all the stupid ideas being floated by RINO's, starting with Bill Kristol, the most malignant is the promotion of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie running for the Republican presidential nomination. Except for his laudable -- and necessary -- effort to bring destructive public-employee unions under control, the man has exhibited no conservative tendencies whatsoever.
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A few high (or low)-lights from the latest Gallup Poll ...
A record-high 81% of Americans are dissatisfied with the way the country is being governed.
49% of Americans believe the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.
Americans believe, on average, that the federal government wastes 51 cents of every tax dollar.
...and those are the OPTIMISTS!
When more than half a nation's voters go on a delusional socialist binge, the outcome is inevitably NOT going to be pretty. The hangover has arrived.
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In a footnote to the above item, New York City, perennial Democrat stronghold, has been paying almost $12 million a year in rent subsidies to ... dead people.
Care to make a wager on the chances of anyone going to jail over this?
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Peter Wehner in Commentary writes about ...
" ... Obama’s deep, almost desperate, need to portray himself as the opposite of what he is, to conceive of himself in a way that is at odds with reality. We have seen it in all sorts of areas, including claiming himself to be a voice of civility, portraying himself as a champion of bi-partisanship, lecturing others about profligate spending, and saying he is the only responsible “adult” in Washington.
"This is akin to John Edwards hosting a weekend seminar on the importance of marital fidelity.
"If there has been a president in my lifetime who has felt more sorry for himself – who has laid the blame for his failures on more people (George W. Bush, the Congressional GOP, the Tea Party, conservative talk radio hosts, millionaires and billionaires) and more things (ATMs, Japanese tsunamis, the Arab Spring, Fox News, Wall Street, et cetera) – I can’t think of who that might be."
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A contender for the designation "Most Stupid Statement of the Week": Obama's shot at Rick Perry, "You've got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change."
Are even people dumb enough to follow Obama so ignorant as to believe that arson and lightning strikes are caused by ... climate change?! One must suppose so.
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Nancy Pelosi famously -- and stupidly -- said, "We have to pass Obamacare so we can find out what's in it."
Even Howling Howard Dean, one-time Democrat presidential candidate and party chairman now knows one thing that's in it. A virtual guarantee that many employers' medical plans will be shut down. "Most small businesses are not going to be in the health insurance business anymore after this thing goes into effect," he said.
Got that, Nutty Nancy?
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Obama's blatant demagoguery engages Lloyd Marcus in The American Thinker ... "In his so-called jobs speeches, Obama exploits class envy shrouded in fairness. President Obama continues to escalate his divisive assault on achievers, purposely pitting Americans against each other.
"Obama's "Hate the Rich" campaign appeals to our lower nature and encourages the sin of covetousness. If Obama's despicable campaign proves successful, it will be a sad commentary about who we have become as a people and how far we have fallen as Americans.
"It angers me that Obama's followers think that they are entitled to the fruit of someone else's labor"
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What happened to the Democrat proclamation that Bill Clinton was our "first black president"?
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MTV, which ran the "Rock the Vote" PR campaign in 2008 ... an ill-disguised campaign effort for Obama ... has turned down an Obama request for a repeat performance. So reports the NY Post.
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The next Republican president foolish enough to bring the bi-political David Gergen into the White House should immediately be impeached. Gergen apparently has a boundless talent for sucking-up to whichever party has the key to the executive mansion.
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Cuba's Foreign Minister says the island nation wants to re-establish diplomatic relations with the U.S. for "humanitarian reasons". Translation: "We want to do it so you'll give us free stuff to prop up our dictatorship."
Apparently the support of Sean Penn and a few other Hollywood lefties is insufficient.
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Is there broad agreement that nothing will be done about the development of nuclear weapons by the murderous Iranian regime unless and until Israel acts to stop it? Too bad for us that Israelis couldn't possibly be persuaded to trade Netanyahu for Obama, even-up.
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Voicing a visceral evaluation of the latest Obama incarnation, David Limbaugh ... "Poor President Obama. His leftist backers have momentarily fallen out of love with him for not destroying the country fast enough. Obama must ask himself, "What would Hugo Chavez do?"
"Obama decided to embark on a personal rehabilitation tour. He first stopped by the annual awards dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus and told blacks to "stop complainin'. Stop grumblin'. Stop cryin'." Don't they realize that it's the Republicans' fault that black unemployment is nearly double the national average, at 16.7 percent?"
Let's just call him what he is. A petty, spiteful sociopath.
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An old pol of my acquaintance, an erudite, sophisticated man, used to refer to his technique for appealing to less-educated constituents as "Gettin' down and gettin' with 'em." Contemporary office-seekers use it, as well.
I don't know if it's a deliberate tactic by Governor Rick Perry, who comes from rural Texas, but it obviously IS a chosen approach by Obama. I refer to the practice of dropping the concluding letter "g" from words in their speeches.
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Conundrum. Every election year tens of thousands, perhaps millions, proclaim their intention to leave the country if this-or-that candidate gets elected president. Isn't it amazing how few of them actually do choose the expatriate life?
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Jay Nordlinger poses this in National Review Online ...
"President Obama was raised by his white grandparents in Hawaii. Cain grew up in Georgia with parents who earned their living cleaning. To our mainstream media, which candidate is likely to be the more 'authentically black'”?
Jay also makes this observation, to which I also subscribe ...
"A note to itchy-fingers: When I write critically of Perry, I get mail that says, “Why do you hate Perry?” When I write critically of Romney, I get mail that says, “Why do you hate Romney?” I don’t hate nobody. But, as a journalist — an opinion journalist and critic — I write critically. Those interested in reading only praise of candidates can go to those candidates’ websites."
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The insidious influence of Islam's Sharia Law is manifesting itself further in Britain. Polygamy is illegal there, yet the Times of London reports widespread instances of Muslim men taking as many as four wives.
Consider this side-effect throughout the Islamic world where wealthy men can and do take multiple wives: this inevitably leaves a lot of poor, young men with no hope of ever having a wife and family.
It is impossible to conceive of any more effective formula for creating generations of frustrated, angry young men ready to lash out at the world, seduced by the fantasy that martyrdom will bring them seventy-two virgins.
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What ever happened to Lindsay Lohan? Does anybody care?
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The region of northeastern Spain called Catalonia has banned bullfighting. The decision, of course, was highly controversial.
I have attended one bullfight in Spain, in Malaga, on the Mediterranean coast in the south. It was hazardous to my health because I made a cultural mistake.
I reasoned that the bullfighter was there by choice, pursuing wealth and fame, while the bull was given no choice in the matter. So, when the bull tossed his tormentor over his horns (causing no great injury, to be sure) I couldn't resist the temptation to root for the underdog and cheered.
Immediately, several thousand Spaniards let me know of their disapproval of my attitude and I decided that a hasty exit was in order.
Travel tip: if you're ever find yourself in the Costa Del Sol area, drop in for a beverage at The Fat Black Pussycat on the waterfront in Torremolinos, just west of Malaga. You may find yourself in ... interesting ... company. In times past, I was a frequent visitor.
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Readers contribute a few bumper-stickers, last outpost of philosophers ...
If at first you don't succeed ... skydiving is not for you.
We are born naked, wet and hungry. Then things get worse.
Ninety-nine percent of all lawyers give the rest a bad name.
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.
PERRY, TEXAS AND JOBS -- FOR WHOM? ...
ANTI-DEMOCRACY DEMOCRATS
From the Center for Immigration studies ...
"Texas governor Rick Perry has pointed to job growth in Texas during the current economic downturn as one of his main accomplishments. But in a new report for the Center for Immigration Studies, based on data collected monthly by the Census Bureau, we found that newly arrived immigrants (legal and illegal) have been the primary beneficiaries of this growth between 2007 and 2011, not native-born workers.
"We found that of jobs created in Texas since 2007, 81 percent (225,000) were taken by newly arrived foreign workers (legal and illegal). The Census Bureau asks immigrants to say when they came to the United States, so it is easy to look at new arrivals who took jobs. Of newly arrived immigrants who took a job in Texas, the data show that 93 percent were not U.S. citizens. We estimate that about half of newly arrived immigrants who took jobs in Texas since 2007 were illegal immigrants. This means that about 40 percent of all the job growth in Texas between 2007 and 2011 went to newly arrived illegal immigrants and 40 percent went to newly arrived legal immigrants."
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Two predictions. The first made with a fair degree of confidence; the second with absolute certainty.
A--Unless the Republican Party is even more inept than usual, the Republican will win the White House.
B--If prediction "A" comes to fruition, liberals -- led by blacks -- will hysterically claim their failed god was denied a second term because of racism.
This, of course, overlooks the screamingly obvious fact that many white voters had to cast their ballots for him in order for him to make it to the White House in the first place and would have to undergo a change of mind to vote against him in 2012. That change of mind would have to have been brought about by recognition that he's bungled the job.
Nevertheless, with recollections of the MLK riots in Chicago and the Rodney King race-warfare in LA's Watts neighborhood, serious trouble and even bloodshed seem likely in some inner-cities.
I'm only saying (writing) what many others of varied complexions are thinking. Right?
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Even the pro-Obama New York Times admits his campaign fund-raising is down drastically.
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If you're looking for fuel for your paranoia, you might find it in the statement by Obama's former budget director saying that, in order to solve our economic problems, we need less democracy ... and the Democrat governor of North Carolina's statement that congressional elections should be suspended for the same reason. If these people DON'T have totalitarian instincts, they sure have a way of sounding as if they do. And then we have all these Obama "czars" and executive orders bypassing Congress ...
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A further observation. If we or the Israelis ever have to attack Iran, it has be a thorough job that leaves no opportunity for retaliation on either a small or large scale. Half-measures would be the equivalent of leaving a snake wounded, but alive. We've made that mistake before. North Korea, for example. We'd better not repeat it in this age of nuclear proliferation. It's win, or else. A tie would be insufficient.
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Supporters of government aid to this-or-that technology (Solyndra and electric cars come immediately to mind) might give some thought to one of the greatest single inventions in human history. The electric light.
Did Thomas Edison, inventor of this and many other ground-breaking devices, do it with government assistance? No. He did it with the greatest motivator of all time: the intention to profit from it.
So he did. And so did the world.
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If you assumed that, as a Facebook member, the "social network" stopped tracking you when you logged off the site ... you assumed wrong. They HAVE been watching to see what websites you visited when you WEREN'T logged on.
The company says -- as did GM a day earlier when it was revealed that the OnStar system continued to track people who no longer subscribed -- they'll stop doing it. But how do you know they really DO stop?
This is one of several reasons why I have nothing to do with any of those so-called "social" sites. Privacy is already subject to more than enough invasion.
Yes, GM says it has reversed itself and has no plans to continue to monitor the whereabouts of motorists who've cancelled their On-Star service or simply let it lapse.
Gee, think we should be skeptical of such an announcement from what is, after all, GOVERNMENT MOTORS?
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A reader poses the question, "Where are (some) Muslims happy?" -- and answers it.
They are happy in any other country that is not under Muslim rule!
And whom do they blame for the failings of their home countries? Not Islam! Not their leadership. Not themselves. They blame the same countries in which they are happy to live.
In a democracy they can live comfortably and enjoy the high quality of life which they did not build nor work for. If they choose, they don’t have to be productive and earn a living; they can be wild, and break the law, exploit social services, wear burkhas and make a mockery of our police and courts and bite the hand that feeds them.
So why do they try to bring their failed system with them? Why do they want to turn our country into the country they left for a better life?
One could ask the same question of some immigrants from south of our border.
The old question still pertains: "If you don't like it here, why don't you go back to wherever you came from?"
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Deval Patrick, wacko governor of Massachusetts and close friend of BO, calls the running of fingerprints of suspected illegal aliens a "publicity stunt".
Our borders leak like a sieve, and liberals regard any attempt to stop it as a "publicity stunt". They are fools -- and so are the suckers who vote for them.
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It should not be forgotten that, despite gasoline prices dropping a bit -- largely because of the recession -- it still costs you almost twice as much to gas-up as when the Big Nothing was inaugurated.
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A word-portrait of Barack Obama by Peter Ferrara in The American Spectator ... "President Obama is not an anomaly in today's Democrat party. Quite to the contrary, he represents the party's heart and soul today, which is well to the Left now even of George McGovern in 1972. Witness the reelection of Far Left San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi as House Democrat leader even after the historic voter repudiation of the Pelosi Democrat House majority in 2010. Witness the choice of Far Left screamer Debbie Wasserman Schultz as leader of the Democratic National Committee. Witness Obama EPA Chief Lisa Jackson, Obama Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and the numerous similar, utterly clueless, ideologically rigid, far left appointees throughout the Obama Administration."
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With the re-ascendancy of Vladimir Putin and his imminent rise to near-dictatorship power, it must be asked if there is something in the Russian character that longs for -- indeed, needs -- a strongman tyrant at the top. After all, many Russians still reminisce longingly about the good old days when Stalin reigned. Just as old Nazis mutter regretfully about how it was a shame that Hitler made some miscalculations that cost them the war.
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The crackpot leftist jabberwockys on pathetic little cable network MSNBC like to posture as if they have importance. Here's a reality check based on actual rating numbers: there are INDIVIDUAL RADIO STATIONS in single cities that have a larger audience. I know. I spent many years on a couple of them.
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Andy Rooney makes his farewell appearance Sunday on "60 Minutes". He's just a punk-kid of 92.
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If you had "six years" in the office pool bets on how long the Demi Moore - Ashton Kutcher marriage would last, collect your winnings. Star Magazine reports it's over, accelerated by word that he was playing bouncy-bounce with a bimbette on the night of their sixth anniversary.
TV Review: Last night I played my recording of the second episode of the newly-cast "Two-and-a-Half Men", with Demi's erstwhile boy-toy replacing Charlie Sheen. I give it one season. If that long. I know ... it had boxcar ratings the first time out. Just viewer curiosity, soon to fade as people realize his character is stupidly contrived.
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From John-Juan ...
How you REALLY know you’re a redneck….when:
You take your dog for a walk and you both use the same tree.
You burn your yard rather than mow it.
The Salvation Army declines your furniture.
You have the local taxidermist on speed dial.
Your grandmother has "ammo" on her Christmas list.
Your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.
Your working TV sits on top of your non-working TV.
You think fast food is hitting a deer at 65.
Disclaimer: rednecks are largely good, salt-of-the-earth working folk who got that name because they often labor outdoors in the hot sun.
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Craig Ferguson --
"The man who invented Doritos passed away at the age of 97. Let that be a lesson, kids. Junk food will kill you."
EMETIC ENDORSEMENT ... O-MAN STILL
SINKING ... CHU ON THIS
As if Jon Huntsman's chances for the presidential nomination weren't lame enough ... he's now been endorsed by Michael Moore. (See "emetic" in the dictionary)
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The new Quinnipiac Poll is another head-scratcher. It carries numbers from two key states that went Obama in 2008.
In Pennsylvania, just 43% approve of President Obama's job performance, while 51% say he doesn't deserve a second term.
In Ohio, just 42% approve of his job performance, while 51% say he doesn't deserve re-election.
BUT ... Obama still holds narrow leads over Rick Perry and Mitt Romney in head-to-head match-ups in both states.
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Just in ... Obama's approval rating in New Jersey, down to 47%.
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Are Republicans, at long last, going to recover from the timidity that's induced by fears of charges of "racism" for simply telling the truth?
Just for practice, repeat after me: "Obama is either an incompetent fool, or he's a committed leftist out to wreck the nation."
See? That wasn't so difficult, was it?
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It is unrealistic to expect to find many politicians as pure as Caesar's wife in any grouping of the species, but faced with an opportunity to lock the bungling Democrats out of power potentially for many years, the party leadership should make a public vow along these lines:
"Any Republican politicians we find violating the public trust in the manner of the Obama thugs ... we will make his/her life a career-ending living hell."
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Here we go again ...
Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the department has completed a $737 million loan guarantee to Tonopah Solar Energy for a 110 megawatt solar tower in Nevada, and a $337 million guarantee for Mesquite Solar 1 to develop a 150 megawatt solar plant in Arizona.
The loans were approved under the same program that paid for a $535 million loan to Solyndra Inc., and we know what happened to that scam.
So he won a Nobel Prize? Big deal! Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize before he'd even found the way to the bathroom in the White House! The Nobel Prize has about as much real-world significance as winning a teddy-bear at the county fair.
There is a term that describes Mr. Chu and many of the other diploma-laden dopes that populate the Obama administration: "educated fool". Many university degrees ... no common sense. Mr. Chu needs to return to UC-Berkeley where his foolishness will go unnoticed, surrounded by others of the same ilk. Meantime, he is a menace to the nation.
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Obama will be at a fund-raiser in St. Louis next week. KSDK reports that demand to attend has been so poor, $1,000 tickets are being sold at the discount price of $250. "...and the beat goes on ..."
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It appears that Florida will move its Republican primary up to the head of the pack, January 31. That would lead to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada moving up THEIR primaries to hold place as the "early" states.
It would also mean that any potential candidates who've been waiting for demand momentum to build had better cut the waiting short and make their move to get into the race, if they harbor such intentions.
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With the revelation by the Center for Immigration Studies that the large majority of jobs created in Texas during the Perry governorship have gone to immigrants, many illegal, he is in serious danger of losing his conservative mojo and flaming out.
Conservatives should not delude themselves that Chris Christie is one of them. He isn't.
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Ralph Hallow in the Washington Times has a warning for conservatives infatuated with Governor Christie ...
"The blunt-spoken governor has earned kudos in GOP circles for balancing New Jersey’s state’s budget and for standing up to unions, but critics say he’s out-of-step with his party’s base on global warming, immigration and gun control. Some say he is the quintessential Northeast Republican — and they don’t mean it as a compliment.
"New Jersey pollster Rick Shaftan says Republicans outside the state will be “outraged” once they learn more about Mr. Christie's Cabinet appointments, including Attorney General Paula Dow. The veteran GOP adviser describes her as “Christie’s pro-abortion, pro-gun control attorney general.”
No wonder northeastern RINOs are orgasmic over him.
There's more. It's on the WASHTIMES website.
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If Republicans are to be competitive for the growing Latino vote, they are going to have to enunciate loudly, clearly and often that it's the word "illegal" in "illegal immigration" that primarily concerns them. Law-abiding Latinos have no rational reason to object to that position.
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Before it's dismissed as fantasy or, alternatively, embraced by wishful thinkers, Mr. Cain's 9-9-9 tax proposal needs to be explored in serious detail. The present unfair and irrational system is deeply entrenched and it will take far more than superficial approval of a new approach to budge it.
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Victor Davis Hanson evaluates the racial-gap in politics ...
"In the current racial circus, the president of the United States, in addressing an assembly of upscale black professionals and political leaders, adopts the style of a Southern Baptist preacher of the 1960s. He alters his cadences and delivery to both berate and gin up the large audience — posing as a messianic figure who will “march” them out to speak truth to power.
"Hope-and-change has now sunk into little more than a tawdry spectacle of racial spoils, as the president of the United States desperately cobbles together squabbling special-interest racial, ethnic, and gender groups in lieu of restoring the nation’s prosperity. Before the age of Obama, I don’t recall that some members of the Black Caucus were so ready to invite political opponents to “go straight to hell,” or to allege that they were veritable murderers eager to lynch blacks and restore slavery.
"Unspoken, of course, is the truth that Obama’s statism, deficits, interferences in the private sector, and spread-the-wealth rhetoric have frightened business owners into stasis — and the resulting slowdown hurts blacks most of all."
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Erin McPike in RealClearPolitics addresses a point made previously in this space ...
"If a white Republican unseats the first African-American president, what would happen next?
The stock answer from GOP political professionals is: "Not much of anything, really." The new president, they say, will focus on the issues all Americans care about, including jobs, which is the direst need in the black community now.
"That may well be the technically "right" answer, but it ignores the obvious cultural backlash that would likely arise if President Obama's familiar countenance were to be replaced next year by a white one.
"Like it or not, Barack Obama and his family are symbols of upwardly mobile black achievement -- and a source of racial pride.
“If you look at why African-Americans and Hispanics surged to Barack Obama [in 2008] -- to say there was not a racial element to it is not being serious about the subject,” said Cornell Belcher, a member of the Obama polling team in the last election. “Of course there’s a racial element to it.”
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Obamacare is going to the Supreme Court -- sooner than many expected.
The swing vote, as is so often the case, will probably be Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Such being the case, he will bear on his shoulders the burden of making one of the most significant decisions in U. S. history.
While supporters of Obama's health plan say fairness in sharing the burden of health care costs is the overriding issue, opponents have raised the question of principle; i.e., if the government can force you to buy health insurance, what CAN'T it force you to buy?
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Arrogance defined: Obama lecturing Europe about THEIR debt problems. Their response is, "Fix your OWN!"
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The Euro and the European Union, as presently constituted, are dead -- only funeral arrangements remain. The idea that thrifty, hard-working Germans and laid-back -- not to say indolent -- Greeks were going to share a common currency was silly from the outset.
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File this under "The Lying SOB's Just Can't Help Themselves" ...
CNS News reports that the Census Bureau admits that it has “artificially inflated the number of same-sex couples” in the United States, initially reporting a number that was about 40 percent higher than what it now believes is accurate.
If you listened to many of our "educators," you'd think half the population was gay.
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This tells us all we need to know about the liberal morons (and the people who elected them) who are running California. Eight of the ten cities with the highest unemployment rates in the entire nation are in California, led by pitiful El Centro at 32.4%.
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The Sky-guy reminds us of these words to live by ...
Blessed are those who can give without remembering ... and take without forgetting.
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Reader Rick offers list of how things have changed for many in the past fifty years.
1961: Long hair. 2011: Longing FOR hair.
1961: KEG. 2011: EKG
1961: Acid rock . 2011: Acid reflux.
1961: Moving to California because it's cool. 2011: Moving to Arizona because it's warm.
1961: Seeds and stems. 2011: Roughage
1961: Hoping for a BMW. 2011: Hoping for a BM.
1961: Going to a new, hip joint. 2010: Receiving a new hip joint.
1961: Rolling Stones. 2010: Kidney Stones.
1961: Disco. 2011: Costco.
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Craig Ferguson --
"Andy Rooney is stepping down from “60 Minutes.” Whoever they get to replace Andy will have some big eyebrows to fill.
CRONY CAPITALISM ... OUR PRESIDENTIAL
GUN-RUNNER ...
TRAUMATIZED BY THE TEA PARTY
TRAUMATIZED BY THE TEA PARTY
Is the Obama bunch crazy, corrupt -- or both? Consider the following items, then decide.
ABC News has uncovered this eyebrow-raiser about the latest Obama "stimulus" loans.
Several of Barack Obama's top campaign supporters went from soliciting political contributions to working from within the Energy Department as it showered billions in taxpayer-backed stimulus money on alternative energy firms.
One of them was Steven J. Spinner, a high-tech consultant and energy investor who raised at least $500,000 for the candidate. He became one of Energy Secretary Steven Chu's key loan program advisors while his wife's law firm represented a number of companies that had applied for loans.
Of COURSE they kept their interests separated! Of course ...
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It gets worse. The Weekly Standard reports ...
"Despite the growing Solyndra scandal, Wednesday the Department of Energy approved $1 billion in new loans to green energy companies -- including a $737 million loan guarantee to a company known as SolarReserve.
"On SolarReserve's website is a list of "investment partners," including the "PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund (East) LLC." As blogger American Glob quickly discovered, PCG's number two is none other than "Ronald Pelosi, a San Francisco political insider and financial industry polymath who happens to be the brother-in-law of Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives."
"One of SolarReserve's other investment partners is Argonaut Private Equity.Steve Mitchell and Argonaut Private Equity might have a chance to recoup some of their losses in the Solyndra debacle now that the Department of Energy has given a $737 million dollar loan guarantee to a company backed by Argonaut that also lists Mitchell among its board of directors.
"Mitchell served on the Solyndra LLC Board of Directors. He also serves as Managing Director for Argonaut Private Equity, a company that invested in Solyndra."
The format never changes. A scam artist collects political contributions -- largely from other people ... bundles the loot and gives it to a favored politician ... who returns the favor by paying off with billions of taxpayer dollars.
It obviously doesn't hurt if a scam artist is, say, the brother-in-law of the Democrats' leader in Congress.
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Just to be clear ...
We have a presidential administration that (A) doesn't want law-abiding U. S. citizens to have guns, but (B) is eager to send them to Mexican drug gangs who use them to kill people, including American law enforcement officers. That, after all, is what the insane, government-run "Fast & Furious" gun-running deal accomplished.
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This is how the Obamanuts promote government thrift. They gave the state of Oregon a $5 million BONUS for getting MORE people signed up to receive taxpayer-funded food stamps! And they're giving Oregon even more money to test a "new program" which would give freeloaders food stamps with no questions asked! Just ask ... and you shall receive. Could there be a more effective way to build a nation of leeches?
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Nolan Finley in the Detroit News explains why Democrats hate the Tea Party ...
"You won't hear a Democratic mouth open today without a slur against the tea party spilling out. What are these Republican revolutionaries doing that Dems find so divisive and dangerous? Best I can tell ... the only demand you hear is that politicians stop mortgaging America's future to reckless spending and swelling deficits.
"All they want is for politicians to finally do what both Democrats and Republicans always said they'd do — make the government live within its means — but never got around to doing until the tea party forced their hand. In other words, the tea party is the adult in a roomful of overindulged children who resent the call to accountability."
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This is what you call a "disconnect".
A new Field poll finds that 68% of the same Californians who repeatedly elect soft-on-crime leftists to office ... support the death penalty! California, the State of Schizophrenia.
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The Obama administration is considering building a fence along our border. With Canada.
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More liberal nutjobs at work ...
A state panel advising New York's liberal Governor Andrew Cuomo wants taxpayers to foot the bill for transgender residents to get ''sexual-reassignment surgery,'' allowing them to change their physical characteristics from a man to a woman or woman to man.
Want your penis cut off? -- or one constructed? New York’s costliest-in-the-nation Medicaid program would cover the tab.
The New York Post breaks the story.
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Obama wants to charge airline passengers more for the pleasure of being annoyed and abused by the Airport Gestapo, otherwise known as the TSA.
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Still falling. Obama's Gallup Poll approval rating has dropped again ... to 39%.
Wonder when Democrat Senators and House members ask for a meeting to urge him not to run again, lest he drag them all into the ditch?
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Now that gays can serve openly in the military, the gay rights movement is pushing for similar rights for transsexuals, transvestites, etc.
Count on it: eventually there will be a call for a unionized military. You know ... like that great military power, The Netherlands. ("We demand to elect officers, and we don't fight on weekends, etc., etc.")
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The Obama administration is threatening challenges to four more states' laws that call for enforcement of immigration laws that the federal government refuses to enforce. Arizona and Alabama are already targets of the Obama administration's unwillingness to do its duty; Utah, Georgia, Indiana and South Carolina look to be next.
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Taken as a whole, don't several of today's items add further weight to the argument that we DO live in a country run by crazy people?
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Victor Davis Hanson at Townhall.com on Obama's class-warfare and demagoguery ...
"When President Obama's polls hit 40 percent approval, he fumed at "billionaires and millionaires," "fat cat bankers" and "corporate jet owners." In his sloppy targeting, Obama doesn't care much that a billionaire has 1,000 times more than a millionaire -- or that his new tax proposals will take a lot more from those making $200,000 than from the tiny few making $1 million.
"Instead, the president is in a populist frenzy to rev up his base against "Them," who supposedly "are not paying their fair share." The president's argument apparently is not that the top 5 percent haven't paid enough taxes. Indeed, they pay almost 60 percent of all income taxes collected, while nearly 50 percent of households pay no income taxes. Obama seems angry that the top 5 percent will still have more money after taxes than do others, and so they should pay a redistributive government still more taxes."
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Profuse congratulations to the Little Team that Could, the Tampa Bay Rays, who made it into the baseball playoffs over the Big, Bad Red Sox despite a talent payroll that appears to have been devised by Costco.
Small wonder they have to operate on a threadbare budget; they have the lowest attendance in baseball. Tampa/St. Pete doesn't deserve a major league franchise because of the thousands of empty seats, game after game. Neither, for that matter, does my old hometown of Miami ... unless attendance improves drastically in the new stadium.
For all the fact that Florida produces a lot of baseball talent (much of it Cuban-American) it simply doesn't turn out for the games. Conversely, St. Louis, one of the most depressing cities in the nation, is a great baseball town.
Meantime, football afficionados are wondering how long Jacksonville can hang onto an NFL franchise. Same problem: too many empty seats.
LA would seem a likely destination, except for the fact that the league (i.e., the other owners) want to collect a huge fee for a NEW franchise there. Maybe San Antonio, which once seemed likely to be the new home for the Saints?
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Oh, Mr. Foxworthy ... the "you might be a redneck" lines just keep coming ...
"If you've ever smoked a cigarette during your wedding ceremony, . . . . ."
"If you've ever gone to a family reunion to meet girls, . ."
"If you think the last line to the Star Spangled Banner is Gentleman Start Your Engines, . . . . "
"If you've ever used a weed eater in your living room, . . . "
"If you've ever popped open a beer during a funeral, . . . ."
Thanks, John!
"...and now, if you'll excuse me..."