THE PAIN OF MR. CAIN ... MITT, BIT BY
BIT? ... NO GO, TEBOW
I don't know -- and YOU don't know -- what, if anything, Herman Cain may have done to make a couple of women "uncomfortable". Maybe their "comfort" threshold was extraordinarily low. We've all known such people. Maybe it was a plain old shakedown. Many companies/organizations have paid off accusers, knowing they were lying, to avoid the cost and aggravation of a trial. It's a not-uncommon form of extortion.
Granting those possibilities, Mr. Cain has not handled his response well, gradually admitting throughout the day yesterday that he DID know more about what transpired than his first statements indicated. He may have cost himself his chance at the nomination, already limited by not having a well-organized campaign and a late-start in fund-raising.
It must be recalled that presidential elections usually aren't settled by either the ardent supporters or vehement "aginners", but by the swing vote in the middle. Their "take" on the Cain story may well be decisive.
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The ferocious Ann Coulter on the allegations that Herman Cain said something naughty in the presence of a sensitive lady ...
“Liberals are terrified of Herman Cain. He is a strong, conservative black man. Look at the way they go after Allen West and Michael Steele, and they’re not even running against Obama. They (liberals) are terrified of strong, conservative black men. What’s being alleged here isn’t even genuine harassment. Like I say, it isn’t touching, it isn’t groping; it’s ‘Ooh, he said something and we thought it was inappropriate.’”
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It becomes more likely all the time that the three-quarters (by virtually every poll) of Republicans who don't like or trust Mitt Romney will grit their teeth in frustration and vote for him over the (pick your adjective or body part)) now in the White House. This will be something akin to allowing a visiting and slightly disreputable uncle to stay for dinner -- but you WILL count the silverware afterward.
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The view by a realist -- or cynic:
We will be fortunate if even a tiny fragment of either Cain's 9-9-9 plan or Perry's flat-tax ever comes to fruition, even if either becomes president with Republican control of both houses of Congress. Any voters who choose based on such fantasies are doomed to disappointment.
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The thieves have struck again. A Massachusetts "green" company, Beacon Power, that hornswoggled a $43 million loan guarantee (i.e., your tax money) out of the crackpots at Steven Chu's Energy Department and the Treasury Department's Federal Financing Bank, has followed Solyndra into bankruptcy.
The Democrats were ecstatic when some Enron biggies went to the Graybar Hotel; let's see if they're similarly enthused about jailing some of these crooks who include Obama buddies/bankrollers.
Intolerable stupidity or blatant criminality: take your choice!
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... and yet another "green" company dangling by a thread. New York-based Ener1 got a $118 million "grant" from the idiots at the Energy Department and is in such bad shape that NASDAQ has dropped their stock.
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Jon Corzine, former U. S. Senator, Governor of New Jersey and CEO of Goldman Sachs ... one of the Big Thinkers in the liberal universe ... has taken the company he leads, MF Global (?!), into bankruptcy. The Wall Street commodities and derivatives trading company ... how can we put this delicately ... made too many utterly stupid investments. The Wall Street Journal says this debacle looks like the eighth-largest bankruptcy ever.
But don't worry about Mr. Corzine. For his trouble spending two years running the company into bankruptcy, he'll walk away with an estimated $12 million.
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It's accepted reality that two of the biggest culprits in the housing-loan insanity that's been a major factor in our wrecked economy are the federal mortgage boondoggles called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As a taxpayer, it must warm your heart that these screwed-up operations whose management obviously doesn't quality to run a lemonade stand have executives who have been given $12.79 million in bonus (!) taxpayer money spread among ten of them.
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A woman "Occupier" quoted in the NY Post about rapes in their demonstration compounds says they don't tell the police about the crimes ... "We prefer to handle it ... internally."
Am I the only one who cringes at that sentence construction?
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House Speaker John Boehner says he understands the "Occupiers" frustrations.
Mr. Boehner ... shut up. Is Harry Reid writing a script for you? Stop the "compassionate conservative" bull-durham. That is sooooo over.
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Now Syria is threatening us? Can you imagine such a thing if we had a real president instead of a gutless, pro-Muslim charlatan?
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Michael Barone illuminates the Obama foreign policy foul-ups ...
"We were told that the election of Obama would make America more popular in the world and that his readiness to negotiate without preconditions with the leaders of countries like Iran and North Korea would make their leaders more willing to see things our way.
"'He was naive how much his star power,' (Thomas, NY Times) Friedman admits, 'or that of his secretary of state, would get others to swoon in behind us.' 'Naive' is a kind way to put it.
"Obama seemed to think that the replacement of an uncouth Texan by a nuanced African-American would convert determined enemies of the United States -- a supposition that is one of those irritable mental gestures that pass for thought in the faculty lounge."
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Worth repeating ... from Chris "Tingle" Matthews on MSNBC ...
“The problem with Barack Obama is [he’s] not taking lessons lately, is he? I think he knows he’s got the formula, and that’s the problem … He doesn’t think that he needs to learn at this point. … He would probably look at you and me and say, ‘Look, I’m president, and you’re not. I did something right, and I’m going to keep doing it. Obama doesn’t ask us to follow him … He asks us to watch him, ‘Look how smart I am.’"
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Another self-proclaimed "climate expert" scientist, this one from UC-Berkeley, has been caught fudging the data (okay, lying) in an increasingly futile effort to make the failed case for "global warming". Wonder what would happen to this shrinking coterie of pseudo-scientists if it were possible to force the lying scum to foot the bill for all the taxpayer money wasted on their anti-human fantasies?
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The Washington Examiner did a followup on this story ...
The Democrats are keeping really quiet about this. Is there any wonder why Obama stayed away from Wisconsin on his bus tour even though he was right next door?
Remember the violent demonstrations over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker doing away with collective bargaining for Teacher's unions? The results are in. Some school districts went from a $400,000 deficit to a $1,500,000 surplus as a result. They are even hiring new teachers, not firing like the Liberals said would happen. Why?
It seems that the insurance company that provided all the "so-called" benefits to the teachers was an insurance company owned and operated by the teacher's union. Since the outfit was guaranteed to get the insurance business from the teachers, and the State had to pay for it (not the teachers) the insurance company was increasing annual costs every single year to become the most expensive insurance company in the state. Then the company was donating millions and millions of dollars to its favorite democrat politicians who, when they got elected, guaranteed to keep funding the union's outrageous costs. In other words, the insurance company was a "pass through" for Wisconsin taxpayer money directly to the democrat politicians.
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The Greek problem in a nutshell: too many Greeks want to continue to live beyond their means, and do it on other people's money. Those "other people" -- western European nations -- are fed up with providing that money. Greece can't -- or won't -- pull its weight.
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With the growing dependence on satellite navigation systems in cars, wonder how many Americans will be unable to find their way home if a nuclear explosion in space, or even an astronomical phenomenon, renders such devices useless? Map-reading is still a worthwhile skill.
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Liberals are in a tizzy because a South Carolina sheriff recommends that women get a concealed-weapon permit and arm themselves. The subject came up regarding a recent rape.
The sheriff recommends a .45, not notably accurate but powerful and more than sufficient for close-up use.
Of course, gun-grabbers are apoplectic. "How awful! A poor rapist might have to stop to consider the possibility he'll get his head blown off by a mere woman?!"
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A grandfather explains why he carries a gun ...
I don't carry a gun to kill people. I carry a gun to keep from being killed.
I don't carry a gun because I'm paranoid. I carry a gun because there are real threats in the world..
I don't carry a gun because I'm evil. I carry a gun because I have lived long enough to see the evil in the world.
I don't carry a gun because I hate the government. I carry a gun because I understand the limitations of government.
I don't carry a gun because I feel inadequate. I carry a gun because unarmed and facing three thugs, I AM inadequate.
Police do not protect you from crime, they usually just investigate the crime after it happens and then call someone in to clean up the mess.
A LITTLE GUN HISTORY
In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million educated people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
SWITZERLAND ISSUES EVERY HOUSEHOLD A GUN. SWITZERLAND'S GOVERNMENT TRAINS EVERY ADULT THEY ISSUE A RIFLE. SWITZERLAND HAS THE LOWEST GUN RELATED CRIME RATE OF ANY CIVILIZED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.
- - Thanks, Joan - -
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Tony LaRussa: Well done!
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If Sunday's game is any indication, the doubters win: Tim Tebow, a great college football player, has little potential to quarterback a pro team. Wonder how he'd do as an H-back, which has been an alternative for some great players who didn't fit into the convention niches?
One reality is unavoidable: Tebow is not even close to being a pro QB. I am reminded (as a sportscaster working major-college games for several years) of many others who came out of powerhouse programs and flopped as professionals. The power of their college teams concealed their flaws. Notre Dame history is replete with examples. My lamentable "local" NFL team, the Arizona Cardinals, signed Matt Leinart out of USC, whose college team crushed most opponents, and found that they'd given a lot of money to a guy who simply couldn't do the job.
Tebow came from such a powerhouse at Florida. Now we ask, "Was it Tim ... or team?"
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Phillip Rivers (Chargers) is a great quarterback. I remember when, as QB at North Carolina State, he almost pulled an outmanned team to a win over Ohio State. But he's likely to be remembered longer for last night's fumbled snap from center that cost his team the game with Kansas City.
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It's lamentable, but it's sadly true. Local radio is lingering between near-death and decaying oblivion.
Clear Channel Broadcasting, with hundreds of stations, has fired hundreds of on-air people and backup staff in the past week.
The industry is becoming more and more homogenized, with the same few syndicated programs running all over the country with no local reference points. Recorded voice-tracks done in a studio far away provide what little "content" there is on most music stations. At least half the radio stations in America could shut down tomorrow and nobody would miss them, because they provide nothing remotely unique. In fact, many ARE shutting down.
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If you had "72 days" in the office pool on how long before Kim Kardashian's upcoming divorce was announced ...
CONGRATULATIONS! Can the gullible groom possibly NOT have known she'd done a porno video?
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Today's word-fix ...
"Methinks" is one word, not two. It's a middle-English, going back centuries before Bill Shakespeare used it in "Hamlet" more than four hundred years ago. Much earlier, Geoff Chaucer was familiar with the archaic term.
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The Sky Guy provides some Halloween leftovers ...
Q: What is Dracula's favorite kind of coffee?
A: Decoffinated.
Q: How can you tell twin witches apart?
A: You can't tell witch-witch, is witch?
ISRAELI ATTACK ON IRAN IMMINENT? ...
ARAB SPRING = AL QAEDA AUTUMN?
So Washington is concerned that Israel may launch a pre-emptive attack to put Iran out of the nuclear weapons business. Who's surprised? Does the dolt-in-charge in Washington really expect Israelis to meekly await the carrying-out of Iran's oft-repeated threat to annihilate them?
Just to spread the blame around ... if we'd done the logical thing and decapitated Iran's government on 9/12/2001, this would no longer be a problem.
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There it is. The black flag of Al Qaeda flying over government buildings in Libya. Liberal dupes, please tell us again what wonderful things the "Arab spring" has brought about.
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Still awaiting an answer: why did the accusers of Herman Cain wait all these many years after getting their payoff to express their disturbed state? Was it an all-too-common shakedown, perhaps promoted by an unscrupulous lawyer? How much of the reported year's salary in bye-bye money went to a lawyer? Is there corroboration of their stories?
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Longtime Republican mover-and-shaker and political strategist Charlie Black says the party doesn't need a Sarah Palin on the ballot this time because "the candidates are already conservative."
Say what??!! I wonder if establishment insider Black has ever looked at the actual track record of Mittens. Conservative??
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The London Telegraph newspaper today asks "Will Barack Obama betray Britain again over the Falklands?" when The Great Pretender in the White House meets with Argentina's demagogue president Kirchner Friday. The answer is obvious, if three years of history is any guide. Of COURSE he will. His modus operandi is consistent: backstab friends and allies, support their enemies. And OUR enemies.
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Prof. Walter Williams takes an eyes-wide-open look at liberal fantasies about the "Arab spring" ...
"In Libya and most other countries in the Arab world, what we know as personal liberty is nonexistent. Most North African and Middle Eastern countries are ranked either "repressive" or "not free." Moreover, I believe that there's little prospect for Arabs ever being free and that Western encouragement and hopes for democracy are doomed to failure and disappointment. Most nations in the Middle East do not share the philosophical foundations of the West. It's not likely liberty-oriented values will ever emerge in cultures that have disdain for the rule of law and private property rights and that sanction barbaric practices such as the stoning of women for adultery, the severing of hands or beheading as a form of punishment, and imprisonment for criticizing or speaking ill of the government.
"What should the West do about the gross violations of human rights so prevalent in North Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere? My short answer is to mind our own business. What they want to do to one another is none of our business."
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Ben Shapiro on where Obama's pro-Muslim foolishness has led ...
"The Arab Spring, it turns out, wasn't a nice, happy democratic socialist revolution. It was an Islamist revolution of the worst sort, toppling brutal dictators with whom we could deal with in favor of populist Islamist movements that we cannot.
"Obama stands behind all of it. It started with his invitation to members of the Muslim Brotherhood -- the supposedly moderate group that stands behind Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaida and virtually every other terrorist entity in the region -- to attend his speech in Cairo in 2009. His words in Cairo emboldened Islamists; his appeasement rhetoric suggested that the conflict between Western civilization and radical Islam is a mere misunderstanding, and just a few days before that, his statements calling America "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world," told Islamists that they had nothing to fear from the United States."
- - Townhall.com - -
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Two absurdities of the position Cong. Ron Paul and others have taken vis a vis the Iran-Israel confrontation are the moral equivalence argument and comparing the situation to the Cold War between the U.S. and Russia and the "mutually assured destruction" -- MAD -- standoff.
The comparison is so fundamentally flawed it's hard to believe Paul and others can't see it.
The U.S.-Russia balance-of-destructive-power restrained the then-Soviet Union because they, like Americans, wanted to LIVE. That is the missing factor in the Iranian side of the equation. A fanatic who believes death is a desirable outcome, and may even believe the 72-virgins fable, is an entirely different adversary because the threat of his own extinction is a factor not to be feared. Can even Ron Paul be so dumb as not to understand that?
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The defacto debt default by Greece puts some American banks at risk, which means the executives of those banks have been risking depositors' money in loans to a country whose instability has been obvious for years. The current spate of riots and demonstrations in Greece is far from unprecedented.
At what point is such irresponsibility adjudged so flagrant that some of the greedy fools who approved such loans go to prison? (A hint: if you get a higher-than-normal interest rate, it just might be a risky loan.) A few examples of such punishment might be sufficient to discourage others in the banking business from behaving so stupidly.
The lesson for both individuals and nations is obvious: Don't loan money to deadbeats.
Lest we feel superior to mismanaged Greece, our own debt crisis should inform us that a chaotic economic collapse in our own country is an ever-present threat, and for the same reason: a government that's led freeloaders believe that unearned goodies can flow forever.
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I wonder if Obama's Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis, is so dumb she doesn't know that the term "tea-bagger" is a gay-male insult, or is so stupid she uses it in public to describe Tea Party people who have the audacity to demand fiscal responsibility on the part of government? This walking embarrassment has to be one of the first to go!
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Here's what the Obama "recovery" has brought us. The Census Bureau reports that while real income for Americans was down an average 3.2% during the recession, it's down another 6.7% during the "recovery".
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The Daily Caller blows the whistle on some of the phonies amusing themselves with their "Occupy" bullfeathers ...
"For each of the 984 Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested in New York City between September 18 and October 15, police collected and filed an information sheet recording the arrestee’s name, age, sex, criminal charge, home address and — in most cases — race. The Daily Caller has obtained all of this information from a source in the New York City government.
"Among addresses for which information is available, single-family homes listed on those police intake forms have a median value of $305,000 — a far higher number than the $185,400 median value of owner-occupied housing units in the United States.
"Some of the homes where “Occupy” arrestees reside, viewed through Google Maps and the Multiple Listing Service real estate database, are the definition of opulence.
"Using county assessors and online resources such as Zillow.com, The DC estimated property values and rents for 87 percent of the homes and 59 percent of the apartments listed in the arrest records.
"Even in the nation’s currently depressed housing market, at least 95 of the protesters’ residences are worth approximately $500,000 or more."
Poor babies!
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Since word got out that Michelle Obama was to be the main guest for an Obama fundraiser at the home of a former Enron executive in Houston, "scheduling conflicts" have arisen and Madame Guillotine won't be there, after all.
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If you want a simultaneously amusing and frightening look at the sheer ignorance of the dopes who still worship the Obama myth, take a look at YouTube and the video entitled "Obama is not a Keynesian, he's an American."
And to think people as stupid as these lunkheads actually VOTE!
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Asked whether they're Republican or Democrat, 47% of surveyed Americans now say Republican, 42% say Democrat (Rasmussen). People regularly lie in response to this question, but it does give an indication of which way they think the wind is blowing.
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Insightful Townhall.com columnist Mona Charen isn't ready to declare Herman Cain totally innocent, but recalls that ...
"... ever since the orchestrated, scurrilous character assassination aimed at Judge Robert Bork, conservatives have been perpetually on edge, waiting for the next slander of public figures who represent a threat to liberal power. In a remarkable (and frankly, brave) acknowledgement of this history, liberal New York Times columnist Joe Nocera wrote recently that Judge Bork was a 'legal intellectual' and that "whatever you think of (his) views, they cannot be fairly characterized as extreme . . . The Bork fight, in some ways, was the beginning of the end of civil discourse in politics."
"Liberals, Nocera writes, knew that Bork was not an extremist. They knew that he just happened to disagree with them on abortion, affirmative action and other matters, and they feared that he would swing the court in a more conservative direction.
"But liberals couldn't just come out and say that. So instead, the Democrats sought to portray Bork as 'a right-wing loony.'"
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In their passion for a particular candidate, many confuse their hopes with their predictions of victory. Let's hope they don't bet their money on the same basis if they visit a casino. If hope equated with result, Las Vegas would still be an empty desert.
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The LA Times reports that the estimated cost of the California "bullet train" projected to run over various earthquake fault-lines from Southern California to San Francisco has (surprise!) more than doubled, with the projected completion date shoved back from 2020 to 2033. And who's the idiot who's going to loan bankrupt California the money to build this boondoggle?
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Teen idol Justin Bieber is on the wrong end of a paternity suit. Fortunately, fake charges in such matters can't stand up to scientific evidence, so it should be readily resolved.
When is Justin's birthday? I must visit the drugstore and purchase a gift for him ...
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Just to set the record straight, John F. Kennedy did not originate, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask instead what you can do for your country." It was plagiarized from a speech by a much-reviled Warren G. Harding.
The genesis, differently worded, goes back at least to Cicero (the Roman, not the Chicago suburb.)
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Today's column is dedicated to Zan Addison Funkhouser Kriegel, who finds the name Dabo Swinney ... undistinguished.
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A Samuel Johnson quote that somehow reminds me of Sen. Harry Reid ...
"He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others."
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Jay Leno --
"President Obama invited trick-or-treaters to the White House and they had a very scary party. They sat in a circle, turned off all the lights and the kids read the president his poll numbers."
THE PAIN FOR CAIN ... "OCCUPY"
DEMONSTRATORS CHILL IN CHILLY WEATHER
The alleged Herman Cain "scandal" is turning into a real whodunit story. Rick Perry? Romney's organization? Rahm Emanuel, acting for Obama? Whoever's behind it botched the timing. The usual way of delivering this sort of "gotcha" is to do it just before an election, be it a primary or general, so the target doesn't have time to react. Unfortunately for Mr. Cain, given ten days' warning that the sexual harassment charges were looming, he still has not handled his reaction and rebuttal well. He has to make a believable case that the allegations are unfounded, otherwise the situation may be fatal for his presidential hopes.
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When will we hear Democrats echo their excuse for Billy Jeff Clinton's rampant womanizing applied to Herman Cain? You know ... "It's only sex."
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Key public opinion polls to watch to see whether Cain's presidential run is impacted by the sexual harassment rumors will be those taken in South Carolina. The Iowa caucuses are largely a bought-and-paid-for exercise ... New Hampshire belongs to Romney, the former Governor-next-door ... South Carolina will be the first real test.
Then comes Florida's primary, which will drastically trim whatever's left of the field after South Carolina.
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Re last night's riots in Oakland, California ...
As a (former) twenty-five year resident of the Bay Area, I am sympathetic to efforts by Oakland citizens to promote a better image for their city. In all truth, however, with the exception of a few nice neighborhoods, Oakland is largely a criminal-dominated, drug-infested ghetto run by a crooked, ultra-leftist political machine with pronounced Leninist tendencies.
Only a fool walks Oakland's streets at night or, in much of the city, in broad daylight.
It's a shame, because the port is a vital national asset and the weather has been adjudged the most salubrious in the entire nation.
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The Big Government newsletter carries a totally unsurprising report ...
"Lee Stranahan and Brandon Darby have released the latest video clip from their visit to Occupy Wall Street. In the video, an activist named Channing, who has been at the Occupy Wall Street protests from the beginning, volunteers the information that the former ACORN organization – through its new front group, New York Communities for Change – is paying $10 per hour and $100 per day to homeless people to attend the demonstrations."
From government grant money, no doubt.
After living twenty-five years in San Francisco, where the newspapers regularly carry help-wanted ads for paid demonstrators, I am not remotely surprised. It's standard leftist tactics.
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Alicia Colon in the Irish Examiner USA, has a serious question for parents footing the bill for much of what passes as "higher education" ...
"What will it take for parents to finally realize that it's a waste of time and money to save for their children's college education? Occupy Wall Street protesters over the nation are looking for forgiveness of their nearly one trillion dollars in student loan debt yet most of them can't find a job. Interviews with those protesters seem to illustrate that many don't even have basic skills to express a cohesive thought."
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Investors Business Daily dug into Census Bureau numbers and came up with some interesting statistical facts related to Obama's recent complaint that income inequality between the middle-class and the wealthy has increased over the past three decades. It has. It increased most during the Clinton presidency, with the middle-class suffering the loss while the wealthiest saw their income increase by 45% ... declined under George W. Bush ... and has increased again -- to the benefit of the wealthiest -- under Obama.
But lies and demagoguery still work with the sheeple!
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Colorado is a "purple" state, a mixture of red and blue political tendencies; a "swing" state. The "education" lobby pushed for a "slight" increase in taxes -- "for the children". That's the standard smokescreen for another "gimme" for the teachers' union.
They got their heads handed to them. The scam was resoundingly rejected by the voters. This may be a sign that voters nationwide are figuring out that the endless demands by the union have done nothing to improve education results. It's just disguised pocket-picking by a bunch of privileged scam artists.
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This is what passes for thinking in the fevered little brain of Cong. Nancy Pelosi. In a discussion of the Boeing plant in South Carolina, she tells Maria Bartiromo of CNBC that it's better to have NO job than a non-union job.
As columnist Dave Barry says, "I am not making this up."
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The liberal Washington Post, which may have an axe to grind, reports that nine years ago Mitt Romney was openly assuring abortion rights advocates that as Governor of Massachusetts he'd be in a good position to advance their case among Republicans because he would rise to national prominence. He's also reported to have made similar promises about gay rights and the environment.
And that's how you develop a reputation as an unprincipled flip-flopper.
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"Educators" and "Journalists", Thomas Sowell (Townhall.com) has a few words for you ...
"In various cities across the country, mobs of mostly young, mostly incoherent, often noisy and sometimes violent demonstrators are making themselves a major nuisance.
"Meanwhile, many in the media are practically gushing over these "protesters," and giving them the free publicity they crave for themselves and their cause -- whatever that is, beyond venting their emotions on television.
"Members of the mobs apparently believe that other people, who are working while they are out trashing the streets, should be forced to subsidize their college education -- and apparently the president of the United States thinks so too.
"But if these loud-mouths' inability to put together a coherent line of thought is any indication of their education, the taxpayers should demand their money back for having that money wasted on them for years in the public schools."
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Speaking of education ... an economics professor had a class that insisted Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.
- - Thanks, MIke - -
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Greece is called "the cradle of civilization." Given the growing possibility of its economic irresponsibility bringing down the world's financial structure, historians may someday also call it "the graveyard of civilization."
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Charlie Leonard in the Aspen Times says Greece should be a warning to us ... U.S. ... about the hazards of ever-extending national debt ...
"In simplest terms, this tiny country, with an economy of about one one-hundredth of the United States, went down a road of government spending that far exceeded its tax revenues until it racked up a debt approaching twice the size of the entire annual economic output of the country.
"In the United States, our national debt is about to hit $15 trillion, or 100 percent of our GDP. If our debt didn't go any higher it would remain a drag on our economy, but most experts think we could continue to pay our obligations and still maintain most government services. The problem is that our debt is going up every year at an astounding rate — about $1.5 trillion annually at the current pace. In fact, if all we did was continue with current policies, we would find ourselves with a Greek-sized debt, relatively speaking, within the next 20 to 25 years."
Repeat the mantra: If your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall."
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It is a rare day when I don't hear from one or more readers, former listeners, asking if I plan to return to broadcasting. I appreciate it, but the short answer is: no.
When Citadel Broadcasting bought -- and ruined -- ABC Radio (they eventually took the company into bankruptcy, the very definition of "ruin"), they later abrogated my contract on grounds that I was making more money than they wished to pay, despite the fact that I brought millions in advertising into the company. I believe the appropriate expression is, "Penny wise, pound foolish." I refused their demand to renegotiate, left and their ratings declined drastically along with advertising revenue. I took them to court and won.
I was immediately approached by the producers of Rush Limbaugh's program about being his primary backup when he vacationed or took time off for other reasons, if I wanted to just work occasionally. It was flattering, but my answer was, "No, thanks."
I had a long, successful run -- twenty-five years at ABC, plus other major stations like WIND, Chicago, then the radio station with the largest audience of any one station in America ... KIRO in Seattle and WGBS in Miami. It was and is flattering to be inducted into the San Francisco Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame and look back upon years of enormous success in the ratings, the measuring-stick of broadcasting.
I had already moved to Arizona ten years ago, intending to retire then. Susan and I built the southwestern house we'd always wanted. ABC persuaded me to continue on-air in a reduced (four-day) work-week, so I did my program for eight-plus years from here via audio and video links that allowed me to see my colleagues and vice-versa. (I do miss watching Melanie put on her makeup while delivering the 5AM news!) My commute became forty feet. I was the only air talent at ABC anywhere in the nation ever allowed the luxury of a four-day week.
While I enjoyed doing radio and TV and annoying leftist crazies -- especially in San Francisco -- I've done it for many years and have no urge to return.
I write this daily collection of observations because so many longtime listeners asked me to do so. I enjoy it, but this is and will be my only media effort. I am still rehabilitating from 5 1/2 months of hospitalization during which I barely escaped the Grim Reaper. Doing well, thank you; I hit the gym for a serious workout ... or swim ... or both ... just about every day.
I am pleasantly surprised that I miss broadcasting so little, having spent most of my adult life in the industry, but I don't. It's provided an interesting -- and highly rewarding -- career, but enough is enough. And life is good in southern Arizona! I can almost literally roll out of bed into my pool and I no longer have to start my workday in the middle of the night, preparing for a morning commute-time broadcast. I figure I've earned it.
I hope you'll continue to enjoy the column, but I have no interest in returning to the airwaves.
Thanks for asking!
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"Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." -- John Adams, letter to John Taylor, 1814
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A few gems from the book "The Stupidest Things Ever Said" ...
• HOWARD STERN ASKING ACTRESS TORI SPELLING what the capital of New York Is. Tori replied: New Jersey?
• SEN JOE BIDEN AT HIS FIRST CAMPAIGN RALLY WITH THEN SEN BARACK OBAMA:
"A man I'm proud to call my friend. A man who will be the next president of the United States - Barack America!!
• MODEL-TURNED BUSINESSWOMAN KATHY IRELAND: Who is Yom Kippur? Is that the name of the new Japanese designer?
• JERSEY SHORE REALITY STAR SNOOKI: I don't eat lobster or anything like that cause they're alive when you kill it.
"I WILL STAND WITH THE MUSLIMS" -
Obama ... PAID TO FAIL
Heartwarming. At the G-20 summit meeting, Obama went beyond the usual handshake with Turkey's Islamist Prime Minister Erdogan, who is swinging his country more and more toward a replica of Iran. He got the full Obama hug. Our Islamophile president never changes. Yes ... heartwarming ...
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Chutzpah is a very useful Yiddish word that has gradually become part of the larger vocabulary. It means "audacity", or as frequently applied, "sheer gall". Thus it is appropriately applied to the appointed heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two quasi-government agencies that are largely responsible for creating the mortgage mess that has our economy teetering on the brink of disaster.
Not only are ten high officials of these two boondoggles being given $12 million-plus in bonus money for their performance (!), now the vultures who run Freddie Mac want another $6 billion in bailout money to cover their botched "work" in addition to the $66-billion-plus of taxpayer money they've already blown.
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The Wall Street Journal explains why Europe's Greek-inspired fiscal crisis spells danger for us ...
"Americans must not be smug about the suffering of Europeans—our financial system is thoroughly integrated with theirs. Moreover, the International Monetary Fund will most likely be involved in the event of future bailouts and will likely need large funds from its members, which ultimately means the (U.S.) taxpayers.
"And, of course, the U.S. has its own large and growing public debt burden. We have not gone as far down the road to entitlements, but we are catching up. If you want to know how the debt crisis will play out here, watch the downward spiral in the EU."
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I'll believe that Barack Obama knows what God wants regarding government spending of taxpayer money (as he says) the day after I start believing some crazed preacher's proclamations that he knows when the world is going to end.
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Anybody surprised that Detroit, the municipal symbol of how thoroughly Democrat politicians and labor union allies can screw up a city, is running out of money?
- - - - -
Who could possibly be so dumb as to trust Democrat politicians in California to handle taxpayer money responsibly at either the state or federal level when they couldn't even safeguard their own party campaign treasury? Senator Dianne Feinstein, for example, admitting that somehow $4.5 million of her campaign stash disappeared. (Looked under the sofa cushions, Di-Fi?)
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Wishful thinking quote of the week, from Marwan Muasher In the New York Times ...
"Islamist parties will, however, become more moderate if they are included in government."
Sure. Just like in Iran?
Where does the Times get these idiots?
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Quin Hillyer of The American Spectator has been a solid supporter of Herman Cain. Now, however, he writes ...
"... if you are running for president and you know that two such allegations (even if totally untrue) were lodged against you, you darn well ought to have not only been prepared to discuss them but also to pre-emptively air them out -- and if there is truth to them, you have no business running for president.
"Meanwhile, the list of subjects on which Cain has not just made gaffes, but actually sounded ignorant (NOT stupid; ignorant: There's a big difference) or inane keeps growing by the day. The latest is his apparent lack of awareness that China already is a nuclear power, and has been so for more than 40 years."
The gaps in Mr. Cain's knowledge are at least as alarming as his totally contradictory statements on such matters as abortion and negotiating with terrorists. Alarm bells are ringing, and not about the legitimacy of sexual harassment charges. It is insufficient to say, for example, that Obama is so ignorant he thinks there are 57 states.
We need better than that. MUCH better.
Peter Wehner of the conservative COMMENTARY magazine and website ...
"If the Cain campaign is not the most amateurish of any presidential campaign in decades, I’m open to suggestions as to which ones were worse.
"This is beyond embarrassing; it has now entered the land of Saturday Night Live parody. And that’s never a good place for a presidential campaign to be."
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Reader Terry passes along this course entitled "Economics for Idiots" ...
If you are borrowing 1.4 trillion dollars every year to pay for your entitlements and costs of operation, you will fail.
If you strive to create a majority voting base dependent on your largess, you will fail.
If you are housing illegal aliens and giving them free healthcare, free food and free educations, you will fail.
If 30% of your prison inmates are illegal aliens, you will fail.
If you are giving your public employees far more in pay and benefits than their taxpaying private sector counterparts, you will fail.
If you are giving unemployable slackers benefits for not working and paying all their healthcare, you will fail.
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For your consideration ...
Do you know the park in NYC that the Wall Street protesters are occupying? It's Zuccotti Park.
Did you know this park is not owned by the city of New York? It is owned by Brookfield Properties.
Who was just hired by Brookfield Properties as an attorney? Vice President Joe Biden's son.
Who sits on the board of Brookfield Properties? Mayor Bloomberg's live-in girlfriend, Diana Taylor.
Now, guess what company just received some of the last of the Obama Stimulus $$$$$$$.
That's right, Brookfield Properties.
On a completely unrelated note, Wisconsin is shaping up to be the swing state in the 2012 presidential elections.
Not Florida. Not Ohio. But Wisconsin.
Now, guess who owns the company that will be tabulating the electronic votes in Wisconsin.
The biggest contributor to Obama, the puppeteer George Soros.
Remember what Stalin said. "He who votes does not have the power. He who counts the votes has the power".
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A disguised ACORN operation pushing the "Occupy" riots? Why should anyone be surprised?
You remember ACORN, the disreputable scam outfit running on your tax dollars and dispensing advice to undercover reporters they believed to be a pimp and his underage illegal alien prostitutes, telling them how to rip off the welfare system.
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Meantime, the racist "Reverend" Jesse Jackson likens the "Occupy" mobs to civil rights demonstrators of fifty years ago.
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Re the "Occupy" leeches ... Phil offers this ...
Do you think years of "teaching self-esteem", getting rid of dodge ball and not keeping scores in athletic events is coming home to roost?
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Victor Davis Hanson wonders who "they" are ...
" A few months ago, we began hearing of the '1 percent' who are responsible for the current economic mess. 'They' apparently make all their money at the expense of the other 99 percent.
"Did Johnny Depp really have to earn $50 million last year alone — or Leonardo DiCaprio $77 million? Couldn’t they have settled for $2 million in salary in 2010, and thereby passed on a little bit of the savings to their ticket-buying fans? What kind of system would allow Oprah Winfrey or the late Michael Jackson each to accumulate nearly $1 billion? Is left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore — reportedly worth $50 million — a one-percenter? Why does such an enemy of capitalism need so much capitalist largesse?
"Are liberals like Sens. John Kerry and Dianne Feinstein — among the richest in the U.S. Senate — in that elite group? Is George Soros a “corporate-jet owner”? He nearly broke the Bank of England by shorting the British pound and was convicted in France of insider training."
- - National Review.com - -
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Mariah Yeater, the baby-mama who claims teen idol Justin Bieber contributed the seed, says their encounter lasted about ... THIRTY SECONDS?!
I've heard of quickies, but ...
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A federal appeals court says the FCC shouldn't have fined CBS for (inadvertently) showing Janet Jackson's nipple during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. Perhaps overbearing action by the agency will now be ... ahem ... nipped in the bud.
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A look back ... to 1911 --- One hundred years ago.
The average life expectancy for men was 47 years.
There were only 8,000 cars in the entire nation and only 144 miles of paved roads.
Fuel for automobiles was sold in drug stores only.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour; the average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year. A dentist might earn $2,500 per year,
More than 95 percent of all births took place at home.
Ninety percent of all Doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION! Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press AND the government as "substandard."
Sugar cost four cents a pound; eggs, fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
The population of Las Vegas was ... 30.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write and only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school. (And probably knew more than many of today's college graduates.)
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores.
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U.S.A.!
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Sheila offers a cautionary item about the danger of making assumptions ...
A TV news reporter called the local airport to charter a flight.
He was told a twin-engine plane would be waiting for him at the airport. Arriving at the airfield, he spotted a plane warming up outside a hanger.
He jumped in with his bag, slammed the door shut and shouted, 'Let's go'. The pilot taxied out, swung the plane into the wind and took off.
Once in the air, the photographer instructed the pilot, 'Fly over the valley and make low passes so I can take pictures of the fires on the hillsides.'
'Why?' asked the pilot.
'Because I'm a photographer for TV news," he responded, 'and I need to get some close up shots.'
The pilot was strangely silent for a moment, finally he stammered, 'So, what you're telling me, is . . . You're NOT my flight instructor?'
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Words to live by ...
"Life is short. Drink the good wine first."
- - - - -
Jay Leno --
"California passed a new law today. There is now a 5-day waiting period before Kim Kardashian can get married again."
THE PAIN OF CAIN ... OBAMA THE RUDE
... BITTER PILL FROM BILL
The admission is painful, but nevertheless ...
Herman Cain is finished as a presidential candidate. Not because of the sexual harassment allegations, which may amount to nothing or nearly so, but because of the bungled and amateurish way he's handled it.
It avails nothing to say that the media are largely against him. Every Republican entering a national race has to realize that fact of life going in and be prepared for it. Dribbling out details to support his side of the story lends credence to charges of a "cover-up". And as political history has repeatedly demonstrated, the cover-up exacts a higher price than whatever misdeed is alleged.
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Troubling question from Kevin Williamson in National Review Online ...
"If you are running for president of the United States and have a sexual-harassment complaint or two in your background -- no matter how specious -- what possible excuse can you have for not knowing how those complaints were resolved, well before you announce that you are running for president? Especially if the resolution reflected well on you? How can you possibly justify your not being in command of basic facts about your own career -- the career that is the centerpiece of your campaign?
"Let's say you're not even running for president. Let's say you're interviewing for a job as CEO of IBM. You go to meet with IBM's board. IBM's general counsel says, "You know, we're really proactive on workplace standards here. Have you ever been the subject of a sexual-harassment complaint? And, if so, how was that handled?" If you could not quite answer that question, how much confidence would you inspire in the board?"
The accusations against Herman Cain may well be a hatchet-job, but that should not be taken on hope and faith. The facts need to be ascertained as soon and as thoroughly as a "he said, she said" case can be resolved to avoid an October surprise that could return the worst president in history to office four more years.
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Can't anyone on the White House staff tell the Presidential Clod to (A) stop his now-repeated rudeness of waving his hand in the face of foreign dignitaries during the obligatory group photos and (B) keep his feet off priceless Oval Office furniture? Or is this behavior a natural outcome of his Communist upbringing?
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Clinton (Bill) slipping the shiv to Obama? Early leaks from Billy Jeff's new book, "Back to Work", indicate that his barely-suppressed contempt for Obama is being unleashed. Among his complaints: that last summer's political fight over raising the U.S. debt ceiling made the nation look 'weak and confused' abroad. Clinton wonders in print why Obama didn't take care of that when he had majorities in both houses of Congress.
This could get VERY interesting.
And ... whither Hillary?
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While millions of Americans are victims of unemployment, the government's own Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the number of federal employees has grown 12 percent since the official start of the recession in December 2007.
Clearly, the trend of an ever-expanding government is toward turning the private sector and its workers into serfs working to support a privileged government-employed heirarchy.
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Survey (Rasmussen) says: "64% Say Middle Class Americans Pay the Largest Share of Their Income in Taxes." Thus, 64% of people surveyed don't know what they're talking about.
Facts: The top 1% of earners pay 38% of all federal income taxes. The top 5% pay 58%. The top 10% pay 70%.
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Investors Business Daily has this comment about the sheer stupidity of Nancy Pelosi ...
"Pelosi-nomics holds that having workers receiving unemployment checks is good for the economy. 'It injects demand into the economy,' Pelosi said while still House speaker. 'It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name.'"
One of many reasons why I don't miss San Francisco, for all its charms, is the fact that the voters there re-elect this fool over and over. But Nancy (maiden name, Annunciata D'Alesandro) does know how to milk the taxpayers for big bux for herself and her family! Coming from a family of old Democrat machine pols in Maryland, it's not surprising.
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Front-runner for the title "Dumbest Mayor in America": Jean Quan of Oakland, Ca. Even a cursory glance at the news from that wretched city will make it clear she is richly deserving of the title.
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"You don't even have to be vehemently opposed to abortion to cringe at this report picked up by Jay Nordlinger of National Review
Online ...
"According to a Philadelphia grand jury, one Dr. Kermit Gosnell “regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy — and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors.
"Dr. Gosnell is not one of the two who have pleaded guilty. Adrienne Moton is. And I will quote from the article: The grand jury said that a clinic co-worker of Moton’s testified that a woman gave birth to a large baby at the clinic, delivering the child into a toilet. The jurors identified the newborn as ;Baby D.” The jurors said the co'-worker told them that the baby was moving and looked like it was swimming.'Moton reached into the toilet, got the baby out and cut its neck,' the grand jury said in its report."
Just how hot IS that corner of hell reserved for murderous creeps like this?
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Courtesy of Human Events ...
An elderly senator, exhausted and ill from enacting Obama's health-care plans, goes to the doctor. Doctor says: "I have bad news, good news, and bad news, Senator. The bad news is that you only have six months to live. But the good news is that there's an operation that is 100 percent successful in curing this illness."
"That sounds great. So what's the other bad news?" asks the senator. Replies the doctor: "The Department of Health and Human Services says the first available slot is SEVEN months from today."
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LSU at Alabama, this year's college football "Game of the Century", unfolds tonight. The de facto national championship game. Yes, Stanford, I know ... but you barely got past a USC team that Arizona State beat handily.
Both 'Bama and LSU are genuine powerhouse teams, although neither they nor anybody else is ever likely to break the 47-game winning streak record set by Coach Bud Wilkinson's Oklahoma teams of the mid-1950s.
One of the most delightful broadcasting experiences I ever had was working as "color" commentator on a national game-of-the-week schedule with the late, great sportscaster, Merle Harmon, whose "FanFare" sporting goods stores were later a fixture in many American cities.
We worked several games at Oklahoma and shared the view of many sportscasters and writers that the Oklahoma press box was one of the great eating venues for us media freeloaders. Great steaks were the standard fare for the pre-game luncheon.
The steaks were provided by the Sooners' booster club. Part of the price of membership for that august body, made up largely of wealthy oil-men, ranchers, business tycoons and assorted professionals, was a steer to be provided annually for the athletes' training table. We undeserving media wretches also shared that bounty on game days..
It was widely agreed that the steaks provided in the press box at Oklahoma and Nebraska and the more varied fare served by uniformed waiters at Rice University in Houston were numero uno in the chow department.
The winner of the dubious distinction of worst press box food was Notre Dame, hands down. Greasy rotisserie hotdogs. Period. The evident attitude was, "You're lucky to be at a Notre Dame game." They were correct. There is no football experience like attending a game at ND with the campus trees aflame in autumn colors, the band playing the Notre Dame Victory March and "Touchdown Jesus" looming above the north end of the stadium on the wall of the library.
During Oklahoma's winning-streak years the university was trying, with little success, to mount a fund-raising drive for a new library. The school president approached the most important person on the campus, Coach Wilkinson, and asked for assistance.
Coach Wilkinson, ever the gentleman, arose at the next booster-club meeting and made a brief statement about the need for the new facility and concluded with, "Gentlemen, what we're trying to do here is build a university the football team can be proud of."
The checkbooks immediately came out ... and the library was built.
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From a just-received press release: "30% of Divorced Women Admit They Knew They Were Making a Mistake as They Walked Down the Aisle". That FEW?
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The Sky-guy passes along this story from a San Francisco doctor ...
A man comes into the ER and yells . . .'My wife's going to have her baby in the cab.'
I grabbed my stuff, rushed out to the cab, lifted the lady's dress and began to take off her underwear.
Suddenly I noticed that there were SEVERAL cabs - - - and I was in the wrong one.
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Bette Midler --
'I haven't left my house in days. I watch the news channels incessantly.
All the news stories are about the election; all the commercials are for Viagra and Cialis.
Election, erection, election, erection -- either way it's about getting screwed!'
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Jay Leno --
"I like Halloween. It gives you a chance to dress up like something you're not, you know? Like when the Miami Dolphins put on football uniforms."
HERMAN & NEWT CHAT ... 'BAMA GETS
NO KICKS ... WHAT TIME IS IT?
Don't bother Coach Saban of Alabama today. He's out scouring the countryside in search of a kicker.
By the way, look for that LSU defensive back who made the great interception to be playing for money on Sunday next year.
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Breathe a sigh of relief at getting back that hour you lost when Daylight Saving Time began last spring. If you had departed this vale of tears between then and now, you'd be forever owed an hour.
I am fortunate to live in a state, Arizona, that does not observe daylight saving time. There is one exception: for some reason unfathomable, the Navajo Nation reservation in northeast Arizona DOES change its clocks twice a year.
I don't care if it's DST always, or never. But set it once, one way or the other, and leave it alone!
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People can't be reminded often enough for the next year to compare what they're paying to gas-up the car now, compared to pre-2009, because it's subject to a gas-pump confirmation daily or weekly for most Americans.
If they need a reminder ... it's about twice as much, even as the economy continues in a slow-motion collapse.
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More on the Solyndra scam ...
Company executives were given bonuses for their, uh, "performance" in April and July, just before the company declared bankruptcy and took over half-a-billion taxpayer dollars down with it. No wonder Obama wants to keep White House documents about this gigantic fraud hidden. Mr. Transparency doesn't want his role in this ripoff opened to the public!
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President and Mrs. Obama have sent greetings to Muslims commemorating Eid al-Adha, the Muslim festival involving the slaughter of animals in "sacrifice" rituals. They also congratulated the millions of Muslims who are doing the pilgrimage to Mecca.
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An apt response to the "Occupy" mob demonstrating outside the Chicago Board of Trade. Mediaite reports that traders inside opened windows and showered the useless slugs below with copies of ... McDonald's job applications.
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Jonathan Tobin with more troublesome Cain issues in the conservative COMMENTARY magazine website ...
"Herman Cain has had as bad a week as any presidential contender can have. Not only has the public finally been told that he was the subject of sexual harassment claims while he was CEO of the National Restaurant Associations, but both the candidate and his campaign have suffered what can only be termed a meltdown in terms of their inept responses to the scandal. More charges are now starting to surface, and Cain and his handlers have only made things worse by not keeping their story straight, lashing out at his rivals and making bogus threats about suing the Politico website that broke the story.
"Voters who don’t want to admit they are being influenced by the media may also think differently when they are in the privacy of the ballot booth.
"Republicans now need to find every skeleton that is in Herman Cain’s closet, before they get any closer to anointing him as their standard-bearer. As we learn more about him, his bulletproof persona may prove to be as porous as his knowledge of foreign affairs."
If Mr. Cain had ascertained all the facts during the minimum ten days' lead-time before he addressed the issue publicly and stated his case plainly and completely, the whole affair might have been a minor ripple except among leftists who deeply yearn for a scandal to discredit a black conservative.
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To repeat the oft-stated position of this commentator: There's only one way to look at a politician. Down.
Further ... never fall in love with a politician; they'll break your heart every time.
And ... any time a candidate for any office says, "I'm not a politician," he's lying. By definition, when he/she became a candidate, that certified the individual as a politician.
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We clearly live under a government that makes telling the truth punishable by loss of your job. Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller, deputy commander of the NATO training mission in Afghanistan, had the audacity to object to the sham-president of Afghanistan, Karzai, saying that in the event of a conflict between the U.S. and treacherous Pakistan, he would side with his fellow Muslims there.
The general got fired for it.
We have poured billions into Karzai's rat-hole of a country ... made it possible for the lying leech to be president ... and an American general gets fired for criticizing the two-faced SOB.
Time to repeat the mantra: We truly do live in a land run by lunatics.
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It was an interesting and useful chat between Newt and Herman, but to call it a "debate" was/is absurd.
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Give the late Andy Rooney credit for this. He recognized the liberal bias of most media people -- including himself. He said, for example, that media folk were almost evenly split in 2004 – “half of them liked Senator Kerry; the other half hated President Bush.”
I was never particularly a fan of Mr. Rooney, but he did keep alive the essay as a form of expression and communication. For that, we should all be grateful.
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Shawn passes along an item about one of life's little lessons from the San Francisco Chronicle ...
Oakland developer Phil Tagami is used to working behind the scenes to broker some of the biggest deals in town. Late Wednesday, he was using different persuasive skills – holding a loaded shotgun to scare away rioters trying to get into a downtown building.
“We had people who attempted to break into our building,” the landmark Rotunda Building on Frank Ogawa Plaza outside City Hall, Tagami said Thursday. He grabbed a shotgun that he usually keeps at home, went down to the ground floor and “discouraged them,” he said.
“I was standing there and they saw me there, and I lifted it – I didn’t point it – I just held it in my hands,” Tagami said. “And I just racked it, and they ran.”
Lesson absorbed.
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Terry contribues this sequel to "Idiot Economics" ...
If you somehow believe that money coming from the Government is not money being supplied by taxpayers, well, you’re not just an idiot, you’re a flaming loon.
If you think taking from the working and giving to the slackers and deadbeats is good, then you’re an Idiot.
If you accept that stealing from the rich and giving it to the poor, the lazy, the drug and alcohol addicted, the self-inflicted unemployable and professional scammers is a good idea, you’re an Idiot.
If you are certain unemployment compensation and welfare stimulate the economy, you’re most certainly an Idiot. (See: Nancy Pelosi)
If you believe “redistributing” wealth makes everyone rich, you’re an Idiot.
If you have concluded that government is more efficient than the private sector, you’re absolutely an Idiot.
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So former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura is leaving what he calls "the Fascist States of America" and moving to that paradise on earth, Mexico. While I share his views of Ms. Napolitano and the Airport Gestapo, was that his best choice for relocation? Muslim congressmen, wrestlers for governor ... those Minnesotans can really pick 'em!
When I was co-owner of a chain of Chicago-area travel agencies, one of our largest clients was a Japanese company with large U.S. operations. Their executives traveled often between Tokyo and Chicago, the top brass in First Class, the second-level -- generally younger -- corporate officers in Business Class.
The top men always flew Japan Airlines, which has excellent service. The lower-level, younger man usually flew Northwest, which frankly didn't approach JAL in cabin service. A senior executive once smilingly told me the reason for the choice of airlines by junior-level men. Northwest, based in Minneapolis, usually had a high percentage of flight attendants hired from their home area, which has an abundant supply of lovely tall blondes.
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Note for Tuesday morning at 6:28EST: Duck.
An asteroid with a diameter larger than four football fields is going to whip past us only 201,000 miles up.
- - - - -
It COULD be true ...
A nice, calm and respectable lady went into the pharmacy, walked up to the pharmacist, looked straight into his eyes, and said, "I'd like to buy some cyanide."
The pharmacist asked, "Why in the world do you need cyanide?"
The lady replied, "I need it to poison my husband."
The pharmacist's eyes got big and he explained, "Lord have mercy! I can't give you cyanide to kill your husband. That's against the law! I'll lose my license! They'll throw both of us in jail! All kinds of bad things will happen. Absolutely not! You CANNOT have any cyanide!"
The lady reached into her purse and pulled out a picture of her husband in bed with the pharmacist's wife. The pharmacist looked at the picture and said, "You didn't tell me you had a prescription."
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Craig Ferguson --
"A Los Angeles woman claims she has Justin Bieber’s love child. The woman will have to take a paternity test, then everyone will know once and for all who the real father is: Arnold Schwarzenegger."
WHY-O, OH WHY-O, WILL THEY SCREW UP
OHIO? ... ISRAEL, IRAN -- WHEN?
Election to watch tomorrow: Ohio, where Republican Governor John Kasich's effort to rein-in the power of labor unions to bleed the taxpayers echoes the recent successful campaign in Wisconsin. Big Labor, recognizing this as their last-ditch effort to hang on to the power to extort money from the taxpayers, is spending big bucks to defeat it, despite the multi-billion dollar shortfall in the state budget.
Ohio voters face a choice of sides: out-of-control labor unions trying to continue to move the state toward backwater, rust-belt status (Cleveland--the next Detroit) or dealing with an intractable budget situation.
The polls indicate big labor will win this one, taxpayers be damned.
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Will Israel hit Iran? Previous history indicates Israel doesn't talk before attacking enemies that threaten them (Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, Syria's in-progress nuke facility in 2007); it hits first and talks little, if at all, afterward.
Now, Israel is quite communicative about preparations to put Iran out of the nuclear weapons business unless (A) Iran stops first or (B) somebody (U.S.) takes much tougher action than more "sanctions" that accomplish nothing beyond amusing Iran's leaders.
So the world holds its breath, awaiting events.
Some informed folk believe this time Israel is making a last-ditch effort to warn Iran out of the nuke business and, if that doesn't work, then hit for real. The recent testing of an Israeli missile that could reach Iran's bomb-building facilities obviously was meant to demonstrate both seriousness and ability.
Iran's Arab neighbors (Iranians are Muslim, but not Arab) have to be hoping Israel succeeds; they both fear and detest the Iranians.
We've long known that Iran supports the kind of terrorism that calls for suicide bombers. Soon we may well find out if that suicidal fanaticism includes that country's leadership. Judged by their words, it does: the stated necessity to create Armageddon so the "hidden Imam" can rise up out of a well somewhere. On the other hand, professedly devout Muslim Muammar Khadafy's last words were reportedly, "Don't shoot me!" That suggests he was one Muslim who was willing to wait a lot longer before collecting his 72 virgins.
- - - - -
Let's see ... Europe is facing financial crisis because the prosperous countries have loaned too much money to deadbeat nations that can't or won't repay it ... so they want us, a broke nation because of its own stupid "leadership", to bail THEM out for bailing out THEIR deadbeats.
How fast could a sane congress (I know--daydreaming) pass a law stipulating that any legislator or bureaucrat advocating anything so utterly idiotic should be stripped of citizenship and deported?
Must we forever be solving even the problems of enemies?
- - - - -
Must read: NY Post, under U.S. News ... a condensation of the new book about what really happened in the Osama Bin Laden raid under the headline "Real story of SEAL Team 6’s mission to kill bin Laden".
It reveals that much of the official White House version puffing-up Obama's role was bullfeathers. And who'd be surprised?
- - - - -
Reader Bill reminds us of words to remember ...
"I hope that no one present will suspect me of offering my personal criticism of the Western system to present socialism as an alternative. Having experienced applied socialism in a country where the alternative has been realized, I certainly will not speak for it. The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.
- - Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, "A World Split Apart". From an address at Harvard Class Day Afternoon Exercises, June 8, 1978.
- - - - -
A conundrum ...
Isn't it amazing that, within only one week of Tiger Woods crashing his Cadillac Escalade, the press found every woman with whom Tiger has had an affair during the last few years? They even uncovered photos, text messages, recorded phone calls, etc.!
Barack Hussein Obama has been in office for almost three years, yet this very same press:
· Cannot find any of his childhood friends or neighbors;
· Or find any of Obama's high school or college classmates;
· Or locate any of his college papers or grades;
· Or determine how he paid for both a Columbia & a Harvard education;
· Or discover which country issued his visa to travel to Pakistan in the 1980's;
· Or even find Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis on racism.
They just can't seem to uncover any of this. Yet, the public still trusts that same press to give them the whole truth!
( - - Thanks, Captain! - - )
- - - - -
Dan Sorkin forwards this terrifying dispatch datelined Saskatoon, Saskatchewan ...
Screams of utter terror resonated throughout the streets of Saskatoon last weekend after a heartless group of individuals broke up the “Occupy Saskatoon” protest by offering the protesters jobs.
“In the name of sweet Gaia, SAVE US FROM THESE EVIL CORPORATIONS!” screamed an ‘Occupy’ Protester as he tweeted and facebooked the developments on his iPhone.
Many of the protesters scattered at the first sight of “THE MAN”, some of them dropping their digital cameras, video cameras, iPhones, iPods, iPads and various other cell phones. What was not dropped, however, were bags of weed, hackeysacks and bongo drums.
“We have our priorities,” said a fleeing Occupy protester as she desperately clung to her Eddie Bauer bag, “My parents can always buy me a new phone or camera but you just can’t put a price on some good weed. Now, let’s get the hell out of here before I’m given some responsibilities!”
- - - - -
A reader provides an example of why some people are unemployed and others who are -- shouldn't be ...
My daughter went to a local Taco Bell and ordered a taco.
She asked the person behind the counter for 'minimal lettuce.'
He said he was sorry, but they only had iceberg lettuce.
- - - - -
Rick, who is shameless, sent this ...
Grandma and Grandpa were visiting their kids overnight,when Grandpa found a bottle of Viagra in his son's medicine cabinet, he asked about using one of the pills.
The son said, "I don't think you should take one Dad; they're very strong and very expensive."
"How much?" asked Grandpa. "Ten dollars for each pill," answered the son.
"I don't care," said Grandpa, "I'd still like to try one, and before we leave in the morning, - I'll put the money under the pillow."
The next morning, the son found $110 under the pillow.
He called Grandpa and said: "I told you each pill was $10, not $110."
"I know," said Grandpa, "the hundred is from Grandma!"
WHO'S THE BLONDE WITH THE HAIR
EXTENSIONS? ...
BARACK SAYS BIBI BE BaaaD
BARACK SAYS BIBI BE BaaaD
The Chicago Sun-Times, one of the two major newspapers in Sharon Bialek's hometown, reports that Amy Jacobson, an on-air personality at WIND Radio, relates her observations of a recent encounter between Herman Cain and Ms. Bialek at a Tea Party event in suburban Schaumburg.
"They hugged each other backstage in a full embrace like old friends. She grabbed his arm and whispered in his left ear. She kept talking as he bent to listen, and he kept saying 'Uh, huh. Uh, huh.' I don’t know if what she was giving him was a sucker punch, but he didn’t put his arm down while she was talking to him. I had no idea what they were talking about, but she was inches from his ear.”
Ms. Jacobson says : “It all began when I took a convention break and joined my pals at the hotel bar. Sharon was drinking Mimosas with them. She said she was a Republican, a Tea Party member, had once dated [White Sox sports announcer’ Steve Stone] and had worked at WGN radio.”
Bialek has since applied for employment in sales at WIND radio and is scheduled for a second interview Thursday. Her employment record is ... unimpressive. Nine jobs in seventeen years, plus a bankruptcy.
...and the plot thickens ...
- - - - -
There is much to admire about Herman Cain. Nevertheless, some of us have concerns about his viability as a presidential candidate, especially the obvious blank-spots in his knowledge of world affairs. Those concerns are not alleviated by protests from his admirers that he's "at least as qualified as Barack Obama."
If the goal is not to elect Obama's equal but someone far better qualified, questioning Mr. Cain's preparedness should not be regarded as either subversive or mean-spirited. Defeating the poseur presently disgracing the White House is the real priority, even if it's replacing him with finger-in-the-wind Mitt Romney.
Of COURSE the slanted leftist media will attack Mr. Cain. They will attack the ultimate Republican nominee, no matter the name. Poor, dumb John McCain learned that lesson the hard way by sucking up to them until he got the nomination. Then he found out just how genuine their admiration was. Or wasn't.
- - - - -
Retaining Hollywood hotshot and headline-chasing attorney Gloria Allred makes it certain that one of Herman Cain's accusers, Ms. Bialek, will get abundant media attention to the charges of sexual harassment. Gloria, who usually wears -- what else? -- all-red, is catnip for the liberal media.
Ms. Bialek, by the way, says Allred is not taking a fee for representing her.
Ultra-lib Ms. Allred, however, certainly knows the value of hours and pages of media exposure.
- - - - -
Reality check. However logical and desirable it may be, we are NOT going to get a flat-tax and we are NOT going to get anything that remotely resembles Cain's 9-9-9 formula. To some unmeasurable extent voting is always based on unrealistic hopes ("Hope and Change" have become parodies of Obama's presidency) but a leavening of logic is useful.
- - - - -
James Corum in Britain's Telegraph newspaper with the shameful truth about Obama's firing of a U.S. General ...
"President Obama’s policy of appeasing Islamic dictators has resulted in another setback for the United States and its allies. On Friday, on the orders of the US government, Major General Peter Fuller, deputy commander of the NATO mission to train the Afghani forces, was removed from his post. Fuller’s crime: telling the truth about a serious problem for NATO forces in Afghanistan.
"Fuller responded to Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s recent statement that he would readily join with Pakistan in a war with the United States if he had to choose sides. This is not the first time Karzai has publicly made virulent anti-American statements.
"Hamid Karzai owes his position as president of Afghanistan to the sacrifice of thousands of US lives and billions of US dollars to prop up him and his regime. It refrained from challenging an obviously rigged presidential election and has long looked away from the behavior of Karzai’s incredibly corrupt and incompetent regime.
"For some time Karzai’s behaviour has provided plenty of evidence that he is thoroughly unhinged. The other possibility is that he truly despises the people who fight and die for him, and would sell the US, NATO, and many of his own people out for a political settlement with Pakistan and the Taliban that would leave him in power."
But the Muslim-loving fool, Obama, protects him.
- - - - -
Attila the Hen, a/k/a Mika Brzezinski, says she doesn't understand why Republicans mostly don't care for Jon Huntsman. Simple, Mika. They don't want Obama-light. And take that any way you want.
- - - - -
Ron Paul thinks we should "extend the hand of friendship" to the fanatics who run Iran. I don't know if Congressman Paul noticed, but our resident White House mush-head has already tried that and became the object of their ridicule. The fact that a dope like Ron Paul can still round up enough brain-dead types to sandbag these silly "straw polls" where people pay to vote -- or their favored candidate pays FOR them -- is enough to startle even a cynic like me.
- - - - -
Wily Wes Pruden of the Washington Times evaluates the Iran-Israel situation thusly ...
"The window of opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapons program is swiftly closing, Western intelligence sources say. The Israelis, who have everything to lose, understand that if they’re going to do something about a foe building a nuclear weapon while boasting that it will “wipe Israel off the map,” the time to act is soon upon them.
"The Iranians deny everything, naturally, with usual blah, blah, blah that nobody actually listens to. Mahmoud Amahdinejad, the president of Iran who is in charge of purple rhetoric but who defers to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to make the important decisions, such as when to actually build a bomb, says the United States started all the talk because Iran is now the military equal of the United States and Israel. The Americans fear the prowess of the Iranians, the president boasts."
They are no doubt correct in believing that Obama has weakened our military, and may yet weaken it further if given another term in office. But to believe Iran is anywhere near our equal redefines the term "delusional".
- - - - -
Israel's Y-Net News picked this up from a microphone inadvertently left on at the G-20 summit meeting in France.
The microphone caught a private conversation between the US and French presidents. Sarkozy admits he 'can't stand' Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu . Obama replies, "You're fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day!"
Yes, count on our anti-American president to be annoyed by the leader of a small nation who takes seriously repeated threats of national extermination by crazed fanatics in Iran and has the audacity to prepare his military to do something about it. Would anyone really believe that Obama would listen for years to the anti-Semitic rhetoric of his "spiritual advisor", the Rev. (?!) Jeremiah Wright and NOT hold similar views?
- - - - -
A possible clue to the shrewd political judgment of the Clintons: If Bill and Hill think Obama has a real shot at a second term, she may make the much-rumored move to replace Biden as running mate with an eye toward a 2016 run. If she turns it down, it'll be kept very quiet that such an offer was made, but it would certainly indicate the Clintons think he's toast.
- - - - -
Will the child molestation charges against a former assistant coach tarnish the reputation of legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno? No doubt. Will the scandal uproot the football program at Penn State, as some alumni are demanding? I doubt it. Too much big, big money involved.
- - - - -
Distressing news from Zimbabwe, where 28-year-old Sunday Moyo told the judge that he'd paid the hooker he met in a nightclub $20 and was stunned when, during the ... uh ... act of love ... she suddenly turned into an animal. Not the stimulating kind.
And that's why, said Mr. Moyo, he was having a good time with a donkey when the police suddenly showed up and arrested him.
And what, we wonder, would Gloria Allred do with THIS case?
- - - - -
Perry Marshall, one of the genuine good people in broadcasting and for many years a talk-show host on KDKA in Pittsburgh, has died at age 86. When I was a youthful rookie in big-time broadcasting Perry followed my time-slot on WIND in Chicago. I will never forget his veteran's kindness to the new kid.
- - - - -
Lindsay Lohan, sent to jail for thirty days, out within a few hours.
Just wondering ...
When Lindsay leaves the Graybar Hotel, so they just stamp her hand so she can get right back in?
- - - - -
More from the medical files ...
A woman and a baby were in the doctor's examining room, waiting for the baby's first exam.
The doctor arrived, and examined the baby, checked his weight, and being a little concerned, asked if the baby was breast-fed or bottle-fed.
"Breast-fed," the woman replied.
"Well, strip down to your waist," the doctor ordered.
She did He pinched her nipples, pressed, kneaded, and rubbed both breasts for a while in a very professional and detailed examination.
Motioning to her to get dressed, the doctor said, "No wonder this baby is underweight. You don't have any milk."
" I know," she said, "I'm his Grandma. But I'm glad I came."
- - - - -
Conan O'Brien - -
"The New York Mets are planning to move the walls of Citi Field in order to increase the number of homeruns they hit. Call me old fashioned but isn't that what steroids are for?"
THE PLOT AGAINST CAIN IS THICKENING
(says Bugs Bunny)
... CAN'T TAKE A JOKE?
... CAN'T TAKE A JOKE?
Hmmm ...
I know Chicago pretty well, having lived there for thirteen years. I'm puzzled. Sharon Bialek, the latest Herman Cain accuser, has gone thru nine jobs in the past seventeen years and has a history that includes two bankruptcies and running from debts. Yet at one time she lived at 505 North Lakeshore Drive. That's a 70-story luxury condo building on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Hmmm ...
Different families have different standards, but some will wonder why she was telling her 13-year-old son that a man was feeling-up her crotch. The son that apparently inspired a paternity suit against her by an ex-husband.
Hmmm ...
Then there's another Cain accuser who works in the Treasury Department ... and filed another workplace complaint while working at the Immigration service about an internet joke that was circulated that most would find harmless. She demanded a payoff.
Hmmm ...
- - - - -
This is the above-referenced joke that she chose to regard as "sexual harassment": "Men and women are like computers. Men because in order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.' Women are like computers because 'even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.'
Ooooh, the poor BABY! She's OFFENDED!
- - - - -
Mr. Cain earlier said the harassment charges were sparked by the Rick Perry campaign. Now he says it was the Democrat political machine. Which, if either, was it? Best not to make charges unless and until you have proof. Otherwise, you're in the same league as the women making the sexual harassment allegations.
And ... Cain's campaign manager, Mark Block, stated that Karen Kraushaar, the latest accuser, has a son who works for POLITICO, the liberal news source that began the series of stories about the Cain allegations. Wrong. Same name, but unrelated.
Mr. Cain and his campaign people seem to have a tendency to make allegations as unsubstantiated as those launched by his accusers. Disturbing.
- - - - -
Mitt Romney gave an all-too-typical (for him) mealy-mouthed response to the charges against Cain. Every time Romney opens his mouth, he gives conservatives more reason to find him utterly repulsive. If he's nominated, only the dismal prospect of four more years of Obama would be sufficient for many conservatives to vote for him -- with great misgivings.
- - - - -
It was a split in Ohio. Conservatives won big on the issue of NOT being forced into Obamacare. The millions poured in by big labor preserved government unions' privilege of extorting more from taxpayers until, inevitably, Ohio's tax base shrinks to the point where there aren't enough payers left to subsidize a rotten system.
I once lived briefly in Ohio. Briefly was more than enough.
- - - - -
In Virginia, Republicans have won complete control of the state government for only the second time since the Civil War.
- - - - -
Excuse me, but WHAT THE HELL ARE OUR SO-CALLED "LEADERS" DOING BUYING SOPHISTICATED ELECTRONIC DEVICES FOR SOME OF OUR MILITARY WEAPONS FROM -- CHINA??!!
Big surprise. Some turned out to be counterfeit. Picture it: a multi-million-dollar missile malfunctions because of a piece of junk (deliberately?) created in China.
We truly do live in a land run by morons!
Further fuel for the argument that this nation is too stupid to survive, long-term.
- - - - -
Thomas Sowell, the Enlightened One, explains what should be obvious, even to the "Occupy" nut-jobs ...
"Households headed by someone 65 years old and older have more than 15 times as much wealth as households headed by someone under 35 years of age.
"But these are not different classes of people, as so often insinuated in runaway political rhetoric. Everybody who is 65 years old was once under 35 years of age. And most people under 35 years of age will someday be 65 years old.
"Differences in age are just one of the reasons why the insinuations about income and wealth that are thrown around in the media and in politics are often remote from reality"
But the media whores continue to whine about the "wealth gap" between younger and older Americans.
- - - - -
Obama is adding a fifteen-cent tax to all Christmas trees to -- get THIS! -- "support a new federal program to improve the image of Christmas trees." Christmas trees need their "images" improved??!! Perhaps among Muslims ...
- - - - -
One comment only on the Penn State scandal: Joe ... go.
You knew what was going on. You covered it up. Just ... go. And count yourself lucky if you don't face charges.
- - - - -
Make no mistake, Democrat objections to a requirement for voter identification have nothing to do with "protecting the rights of minorities." It has everything to do with the common Democrat practice of collecting votes from illegal aliens and repeat-voters.
Take it from a former Chicagoan who knows that the joke-saying, "Vote early and often" is based in truth.
- - - - -
I had an interesting talk with a friend who is a longtime -- and successful -- stockbroker.
You may find his insights useful.
First, he holds that one standard piece of advice from brokers, investment advisors and mutual fund sales people is worse than useless. It comes down to one word. "Diversify."
Carried out logically, it means a stock portfolio that reflects the market as a whole. Which means you will do no better than the market as a whole -- plus, will be paying commisions that will reduce even that result.
He doesn't go as far as advocate the position variously attributed to Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie and others:
"DO put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket very carefully."
He does, however, suggest a few investments limited to those companies or industries that have been thoroughly researched by someone who knows them well, not those recommended by a stockbroker who knows little and applies the scattershot "diversity" approach.
- - - - -
Peter passes along an oldster's response to a young "green" air-head ...
The supermarket cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."
The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment."
He was right -- our generation didn't have the "green thing" in its day.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.
We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. But that old lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
Back then, we had a radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. If and when we got a TV it had a small screen the size of a handkerchief, not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.
Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. But we didn't have the green thing back then.
- - - - -
The White House has issued a statement denying the existence of extra-terrestrials. And yet, there's Harry Reid ...
- - - - -
Lindsay Lohan was released from jail after 4 1/2 hours because of California jail "overcrowding".
Let us reduce the situation to essential elements.
If you have a fence with guard towers manned by people with guns, you have a prison.
Everything else is ... optional accessorizing.
Consult Arizona's Maricopa Count Sheriff Joe Arpaio for details.
- - - - -
How long before Kim Kardashian hooks up with Justin Bieber? Enquiring minds want to know ...
- - - - -
This note from a reader may even be true ...
"I work with an individual who plugged her power strip back into itself and couldn't understand why her system would not turn on.
- - - - -
Jay Leno --
"President Obama had his annual White House physical and the doctors say that President Obama is in such great shape that he can actually start smoking again."
PATERNO GONE; ASSISTANT COACH GOING
FROM PENN STATE TO THE STATE PEN?
There is an argument to be made that not stopping evil when you are in a position to do so is as bad -- in some instances, maybe worse -- than committing the deed(s). The sex criminal, especially, may be obeying urges he cannot control. The person who permits the perpetrator to avoid or evade justice has no such excuse.
Firing Joe Paterno at Penn State was not only just, but necessary.
The response of a bunch of privileged brats -- rioting and destroying property -- should not be tolerated. If college-age kids who have no greater sense of priorities and morality than to place football games above the anal rape of small children, clearly such "higher" education is wasted on them. All participants in last night's violence who can be identified should be (A) expelled from Penn State and (B) prosecuted.
It's one thing to be a sports fan. It's another appalling matter entirely to get your personal sense of worth wrapped up in athletic contests IN WHICH YOU ARE NOT A PARTICIPANT. It bespeaks a deficiency of self-worth that no football score will remedy. How does it really affect a person's life if the New York Yankees, San Francisco Giants or the Penn State Nittany Lions win or lose?
A further post-script. The first time a university allowed the idea to fester among students that "this school belongs to us" planted the seeds for the kind of barbarity that took place last night at Penn State. The proper response from administrators has always been (especially in state-supported institutions), "No, it does NOT belong to you. It belongs to taxpayers whose work paid for it. You no more OWN it than a person renting a hotel room owns Hilton Corp. You are a paying guest, no more, no less.
- - - - -
The hope that Governor Rick Perry raised among many is ... gone. Anyone who's ever had stage-fright -- and I remember the sheer terror the first time I faced a crowd AND a microphone -- can sympathize with his on-stage disintegration in last night's debate. Nevertheless, a politician with his experience and background should be better able to focus under pressure.
I assumed South Carolina's primary would begin the first serious weeding-out of candidates, and Florida finishing the job. I was wrong. Governor Perry had better call it quits and go home.
If you don't think so, try to envision his performance last night happening in a debate with Obama.
- - - - -
Note to soreheads who can't get used to the idea that rough-edged media scrutiny goes with the territory for any Republican presidential candidate: it wasn't leftist media who made Perry look (pick a word) last night; he did it to himself.
As they say in the circus, "This act isn't ready for the center-ring."
- - - - -
With Cain's increasingly evident unpreparedness (without reference to the possibly-specious charges aimed at him) and the Perry implosion, the race is looking more and more like a contest between Mr. 25% -- his present poll ceiling among Republican voters -- Romney and ... is it possible? ... the Lazarus of the Republican Party Newt Gingrich. Newt's the best extemporaneous speaker of the bunch, by far, but his personal history would be ripe pickings for the Democrats.
It serves no purpose for Republicans to wail that This-or-That Democrat did this-or-that evil deed. Nobody, least of all their core supporters, EXPECTS better of Democrats. That core support obviously includes most of the media swine.
- - - - -
Erick Ericson of the RED STATE commentary site condenses the worries many conservatives harbor about Mitt Romney ...
"Mitt Romney ... is a man devoid of any principles other than getting himself elected. As much as the American public does not like Barack Obama, they loath a man so fueled with ambition that he will say or do anything to get himself elected. Mitt Romney is that man.
"To beat Barack Obama, a candidate must paint a bold contrast with the Democrats on their policies. When Mitt Romney tries, Barack Obama will be able to show that just the other day Mitt Romney held exactly the opposite position as the one he holds today.
"Voters may not like Barack Obama, but by the time Obama is done with Romney they will not trust Mitt Romney. And voters would rather the guy they don’t like than they guy they don’t trust."
That's one conservative commentator's opinion. Others ask, "Where's the alternative?"
- - - - -
If only more politicians could summon up the not-very-high level of courage to do what Newt Gingrich did on Fox News and simply say of his 2008 ad with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) calling for action to address climate change, “That is probably the dumbest single thing I've done in recent years.”
Mitt Romney might alleviate some of the concerns about his flip-flops if he'd do a similar mea culpa.
- - - - -
In the smallest surprise of the year, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has confirmed what we already knew. Iran is in the process of building nuclear weapons.
Now, the life-or-death question: is Barack-the-Faint-Hearted going to try to "lead from behind" on this one? Or will he "stand with the Muslims"? (His own words.)
One thing is certain. Given the obvious fanatical willingness of the Iranian leadership to use any form of terror weapons, including chemical and biological agents, when we have a leader who has the guts to do what's necessary, it had better be a complete, total, finishing job. The ancient wisdom is still valid: Never leave a snake injured.
- - - - -
Jews giving Muslims a Christmas present? London's Daily Mail says its sources find it likely that Israel will deliver a military package to Iran by December 25.
- - - - -
From Britain's liberal Guardian newspaper ...
"Reports emerging from Brussels said that Germany and France had begun preliminary talks on a break-up of the eurozone, amid fears that Italy would be too big to rescue."
Only the witless are surprised.
It applies to nations as well as individuals: given the opportunity, the freeloaders will drag down the productive. Now look around at what's happening in your own country.
- - - - -
Amazing. Anyone with any interest in what's going on in the world beyond their own doorstep can see Greece collapsing, with Italy, Spain and Portugal not far behind ... all as a result of the coddling of government employee unions ... and not demand that such idiocy be stopped in this country. (A message not received in Ohio.)
We have an unbelievably stupid electorate, especially on this issue, largely because they've been educated by THE outstanding example of such a parasitic organization, the teachers' union.
- - - - -
The White House said the many discussions between big-time investor George Kaiser and Obama and/or his lieutenants only involved Mr. Kaiser's charitable work -- not his contributions to Obama or any connection to the blown half-billion-dollar-plus tax dollars "guaranteeing" loans to Solyndra, the "green" boondoggle in which Mr. Kaiser was heavily invested.
Now the e-mails are out and they reveal what most of us knew all along, anyway. They were lying.
As more scandals are revealed, the "transparency" presidency may well go down in history as one of the most corrupt ever.
- - - - -
How would you like to have Jay Carney's job -- White House Press Secretary -- and go out and lie in your teeth for these crooks?
- - - - -
The reaction to Obama's stupid Christmas tree tax was quick in coming. Now the fool has called it off.
- - - - -
Comedian/social commentator Chris Rock has this insight about America's Affirmative Action president:
"I believe wholeheartedly if he’s back in, he’s going to do some gangsta sh—.”
Further ... "We want revenge; we don’t want justice."
Please -- share this with any liberal friends.
- - - - -
Conservative columnist John Podhoretz shares his view of his fellow "journalists" ...
"Iran is going nuclear. Europe is melting down financially and politically, with the prime ministers of Greece and Italy resigning within days of each other. The White House chief of staff just got demoted.
"But the journalists who populate America’s newsrooms were interested on Monday and Tuesday in one thing and one thing only: Did a man who is not now and was never going to be president grope a woman in a car 15 years ago?"
- - - - -
Ginger reports on a friends' encounter with the government bureaucracy ...
"A friend of mine dealing with a courthouse, court clerk's office and similar, asked an employee to put a signed legal paper in a judge's box and as she started to leave, looked back to see the employee putting the paper in the trash. She immediately yelled "in the judge's box" and the twit finally and reluctantly put it there."
Want to bet that employee is protected by a government union?
- - - - -
In Aurora, Colorado, a 31-year-old man threatened to blow up a Best Buy store and shoot the employees because they didn't have in stock a video game he had ordered.
Are we clear on this? The man is 31 years old and obsessed with a video game!
- - - - -
Doing anything interesting at 11:11AM tomorrow? If you're into numerology, you probably should. After all, it'll be 11:11 on 11-11-11. Nothing like it until next December when we'll have a 12:12 on 12-12-12.
- - - - -
London Dave forwards this item from the Daily Mail newspaper ...
When 19-stone (266-pound) rugby player Chris Birch suffered a stroke during a freak training accident, his family feared it would be a life-changing injury.
Yet while his recovery certainly brought about a transformation, it seems to have been in a way no one could have expected.
For when he regained consciousness, the 26-year-old – who was engaged to his girlfriend – claimed he had become gay.
Mr Birch’s astonishing change saw him break up with his fiancée, ditch his job in a bank to retrain as a hairdresser and lose eight stone in weight.
He has now moved in with his 19-year-old boyfriend.
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"From the halls of Montezuma ... " To my uncle Marvin and all Marines past and present -- HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
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The diary of a perfectly rotten day, from start to finish ...
You want to put on the clothes you wore to the party last night ... and there aren't any.
You turn on the morning news and they're showing emergency routes out of the city.
The bird singing outside your window is a vulture.
On the way to work, the horn on your car gets stuck while you're following a group of Hell's Angels.
When you arrive, the boss tells you not to bother taking off your coat.
At the end of the day, your internet blind-date turns out to be your ex-wife.
THE STATE OF THINGS AT PENN
STATE ... JOBS IN THE PIPELINE?
Any defenders of the Penn State cover-up, before embarrassing themselves, should read the grand jury report on what Joe Paterno and others were protecting. Tip: Don't read it before mealtime.
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Let's cut thru all the sentimental BS and call this Paterno case what it is: an old guy trying to protect his otherwise admirable "legacy" from the dirty truth about his knowledge of a pervert buggering little boys. A situation he knew about, and covered up to save his own reputation.
The only question is whether he should face charges for engaging in a criminal conspiracy. He has hired an attorney, so he must suspect his own vulnerability.
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More on Paterno ...
Both Pennsylvania U.S. Senators, Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Pat Toomey, put out this statement:
“In light of the recent events in State College, we are rescinding our support for the nomination of Joe Paterno for the Presidential Medal of Freedom. We hope the proper authorities will move forward with their investigation without delay. Penn State is an important institution in our commonwealth. We should turn our attention to the victims of these atrocious crimes and ensure they get the help they need. Our hearts and prayers go out to them and their families.”
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The Penn State football program took in $72.7 million from football last season, the fifth highest of any college program in the country, according to a CNNMoney analysis of figures reported by each school to the Department of Education.
Penn State football's profit of $53.2 million was second only to the University of Texas' total of $71.2 million.
Wonder what the attorney for a child-abuse victim might make of that?
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The angle to watch on the Paterno-Penn State case is that of the mysteriously missing prosecutor, known to be tough on child abuse cases, who disappeared a few years ago.
Also ... the young then-student assistant coach who reported (to Paterno) that he had come upon Sandusky molesting a young boy in the football locker-room ... is getting death-threats.
This could get even uglier before it's over. Possible motive: see the numbers in the story above.
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A LUCIANNE.COM contributor offers this bit of dark humor ...
"How do you separate the men from the boys at Penn State? With a crowbar."
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The Republicans on the idiotic congressional "Super Committee" offered a $500 BILLION tax increase.
The Democrats blew it off. In the Obama "stimulus" era, what's HALF-A-TRILLION taxpayer dollars?
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Did anybody really expect the spineless nothing in the White House to decide on the big pipeline project that has pro-job forces on one side and environmental fanatics on the other? Of course not! His whole history is one of evading difficult decisions and playing the old political game of "kick the can down the road" so the next person in office has to deal with it.
Here's a pipeline project to deliver badly-needed fuel from Canada, funded by private investors, and Mr. "We Need Jobs Now" stalls it. The duplicity and incompetence of the man is just ... stunning.
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A Supreme Court Justice is required to recuse him/herself from sitting in judgment on any case in which the justice has compromised his/her impartiality. Any pretense of impartiality regarding Obamacare on the part of Justice Elena Kagan is absurd, considering the e-mails uncovered under the Freedom of Information act on the day Obamacare was passed in 2010. In an e-mail from then-Solictor General Kagan and ultra-liberal Harvard Professor Lawrence Tribe, she wrote, “I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing.”
She had also written, on the day of the vote, “... fingers and toes crossed today!”
Tribe has denied he had any contact with Kagan about the health plan. Suuure ...
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Sen. Charles Grassley sounds a warning ...
"For 50 years the (U.S.) national debt was about 35 percent of gross national product. Today it’s at 100 percent. But more importantly it’s on path to go to probably 125 percent in just a few years.”
As Newsmax points out, "The United States’ total debt is about to surpass $15.21 trillion, marking the first time in modern history that the debt surpassed the nation’s economy. The country is joining a short list of nations, including Greece and Italy, whose debts are larger than 100 percent of their economies."
Most Americans will ignore this ... until the sound of the crash is heard and the gullible and ignorant shout, "What happened?"
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Leon Panetta was once a Republican. He became a Democrat. Now that he's been Secretary of Defense for a few month, he seems to be shedding his liberal blinders. He's saying that the defense-spending cuts being discussed put us in real danger of being attacked. He may be finding it frustrating that his party is concerned about government employees OTHER than those who use weapons, risk their lives and protect us.
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When the question of why Newt Gingrich was paid $300,000 by Freddie Mac, the utterly screwed-up federal mortgage loan-backing debacle, to consult them in 2006, his answer at the latest "debate" was, " ... my advice as a historian, when they walked in and said to me, 'We are now making loans to people who have no credit history and have no record of paying back anything, but that’s what the government wants us to do,' as I said to them at the time, this is a bubble. This is insane. This is impossible."
Correct. It was. They gave -- and he took -- $300,000 of taxpayer money just to point out the obvious stupidity of the whole operation?
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Point to ponder. What are the chances the upcoming Iowa caucuses will render that whole charade forevermore irrelevant?
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A few words from Victor Davis Hanson about the problem with going by party labels ...
"Richard Nixon went to Red China with political impunity. Had a Democrat tried that, he would have been branded a commie appeaser.
"To this day, liberals cannot conceive that during the two world wars, progressives like Woodrow Wilson, Earl Warren and Franklin Delano Roosevelt trampled on civil liberties in a way unimagined by Dick Cheney.
Ronald Reagan signed the most liberal illegal immigration amnesty bill in history, and ran larger yearly deficits than had Jimmy Carter.
"'Read my lips' George H.W. Bush agreed to huge tax increases. And George W. Bush ran up the largest debt of any eight-year president, outspending Bill Clinton more than fivefold. The latter, remember, bombed Belgrade without either congressional or United Nations approval -- and without antiwar protests.
"In other words, right-wing presidents can sometimes act left-wing, and left-wing presidents can act right-wing -- to the embarrassed silence of their respective bases, but to the private delight of their green-light opponents"
-- Townhall.com --
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A clip from the new book "Shockaholic" by actress Carrie Fisher (Princes Leia in "Star Wars"; daughter of Debbie Reynolds):
She was on a date in 1985 with former Sen. Chris Dodd in Washington, D.C. The two were joined for dinner by the late Kennedy, who proceeded to ask some rather frank questions. Like, "Do you think you’ll be having sex with Chris at the end of your date?’”
Fisher, being the actress she was, responded, “Funnily enough, I won’t be having sex with Chris tonight. … No, that probably won’t happen. … Thanks for asking, though.”
“’Would you have sex with Chris in a hot tub?’ Senator Kennedy asked me, ‘Perhaps as a way to say good night?”
“’I'm no good in water,’ I told him.”
Ol' Teddy ... a slimeball if ever there was one ...
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Veterans' Day seems to be a lightly-regarded occasion in much of the nation. I'm proud to live near two towns -- Tucson and Sierra Vista, Arizona -- that observe it with parades and proper attention.
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Some gun wisdom, forwarded by Karl ...
It is always better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
Cops carry guns to protect themselves, not to protect you.
Never let someone or something that threatens you get inside arm’s length and never say "I’ve got a gun".
If you feel you need to use deadly force, let the first sound they hear be the safety clicking off.
The average response time of a 911 call is over 23 minutes, the response time of a 9mm .357 or .44 magnum is 1400 feet per second.
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Joe Scarborough. Every Democrat's idea of a "good" Republican.
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How much sleep have you lost since you learned that Eddie Murphy won't be the host for the Oscar Awards on TV?
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In wine there is wisdom,
In beer there is freedom,
In water there is bacteria.
-- Benjamin Franklin
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Conan O'Brien --
"According to a new poll, 42 percent of Americans say they are uncomfortable with the idea of having a Mormon president. When asked why, the people said, 'We're still getting used to having a Muslim president.'"
PENN STATE ASS'T COACH'S PROFITABLE
"CHARITY" ... SPONSORS VANISHING
It gets worse and worse at Penn State. ESPN reports that many football players who had committed to that institution have renounced their scholarships and will play elsewhere. Holy Joe's ill-advised and utterly immoral cover-up effort seems on the way to trashing the football program that he obviously valued over the safety of children.
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The "charity" Ass't. Coach Sandusky was running -- for the benefit of children, of course -- paid him $457,000 in "consulting" fees over an eight-year period.
If he's convicted of all the (present) charges against him, Sandusky faces a possible sentence of 460 years in prison.
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Cars.com has already dropped out of today's telecast of the Penn State-Nebraska football game. Others may follow, as the Penn State brand becomes poison to advertisers.
From the NY Post: "Advertising Age ... pointed out the 'sponsorships' page on Penn State's athletics website, which usually lists more than two dozen sponsors -- including Pepsi and Nike -- was now blank."
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A person whose judgment I value suggests that one reason for some idiot Penn State students to riot in support of Paterno and the cover-up of child abuse may be rooted in the cheerleading for "alternative lifestyles" that is so prevalent in today's academic environment.
Liberal attitudes toward activities by "consenting adults" seem to blur the lines in some minds when it comes to callous activities imposed upon children by evil adults.
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John Hinderaker in POWERLINE summarizes Obama's latest economic destructiveness ...
"President Obama’s announcement that he will delay a decision on approval of the Keystone Pipeline until after the 2012 election typifies his feckless presidency. Torn between the need to create jobs, reduce the cost of energy and get our economy going on one hand, and the emotional biases of his environmentalist base on the other, Obama punted. I assume that if and when the time comes–post-election–Obama will do what he has wanted to do all along, and kill the pipeline.
"We have written about Keystone a number of times. In this post, we quoted a study that concluded the pipeline would moderate the price of oil and create between 250,000 and 553,000 permanent American jobs.
"If China does indeed replace the United States as the world’s pre-eminent economic power, the foolishness of American voters in electing Barack Obama president will be a major contributing factor."
This latest (pipeline) foolishness comes from the same Obama who has recently decried our national inability or unwillingness to do big things like Hoover Dam of the Golden Gate Bridge. This pipeline IS big!
"Environmental concerns"? Bull(bleep)! There are already pipelines running all over this country!
We are fortunate to live in a nation that has demonstrated its resiliency in the past. Nevertheless, there are serious reasons to doubt that the U.S. can survive four more years of the insanity going on in the White House without sinking to second-rate status -- or worse.
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Talk about morons taking advice from morons! Jon Corzine, the former New Jersey governor who so screwed up that state it eventually elected a Republican, Chris Christie, to fix the mess ... was also a top advisor to Obama on fiscal policy.
Not only is the company Corzine headed, MF Global, now in bankruptcy, all of the firm's more than one thousand employees have been fired.
I think I've figured out what the "MF" stands for, by the way. It's Corzine's other initials ...
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The clock ticks down to your government's deadline for -- again -- running out of (borrowed) money on November 18. The Obamas will be vacationing in Bali at that time. On your money.
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Is anyone surprised by this? Longtime super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, now out of prison, spills the beans on many members of Congress getting rich on the stock market, thanks to insider information.
Abramoff says he never got involved in stock-trading: "I viewed it as a big gamble because of the fact you don't have all the information you need. The casino has all the information, and you don't."
Words to be considered by amateur investors.
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Leave it to Mark Steyn to clarify what the crooks in Congress are up to now ...
"Have you been following this so-called Supercommittee? They’re the new superhero group of Superfriends from the Supercongress who are going to save America from plummeting over the cliff and into the multi-trillion-dollar abyss. There’s Spender Woman (Patty Murray), Incumbent Boy (Max Baucus), Kept Man (John Kerry) and many other warriors for truth, justice and the American way of debt. The Supercommittee is supposed to report back by the day before Thanksgiving on how to carve out $1.2 trillion dollars of deficit reduction and thereby save the republic.
"But I underestimated the genius of the Superfriends’ Supercommittee. It turns out that a committee created to reduce the deficit is, instead, going to increase it. As The Hill reported:
“Democrats on the supercommittee have proposed that the savings from the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan be used to pay for a new stimulus package, according to a summary of the $2.3 trillion plan."
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As if my endorsement mattered, I'm nevertheless being asked if I have a favorite in the Republican field. I have clearly stated that I would vote for any of them over the detestable fraud now in the White House. That does not mean, however, that I am consumed with admiration for any of them.
The fact that I have raised questions and issues that some ardent supporters of various contenders may find uncomfortable simply means that I believe people should not give their allegiance blindly to a politician.
While I find something to admire about most of them, I follow my own advice to "never fall in love with a politician; they'll break your heart every time."
So my limited admiration for any of them is exceeded only by my utter contempt for our Affirmative Action president. Therefore I shall support the Republican nominee, whoever it may be, without any great expectations.
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Robyn Blummer of the Chicago Sun Times gives a condensed explanation of how Mitt Romney's Bain Capital built his reputation for being an astute businessman ...
"Private equity firms operate through leveraged buyouts. They create limited partnerships to buy companies, usually pretty healthy ones since it’s the only way to attract financing, and then they burden the companies with debt while trying to make the balance sheets look good, often by cutting costs such as workers or their benefits, to flip the companies within five years for a profit.
"Private equity firms put a relatively small amount down, say, 20 percent, and the companies they are buying borrow the rest from banks making them responsible for repayment. Suddenly, a company that had a reasonable debt load, if any, is subjected to crushing repayment obligations."
I can see the Obama campaign commercials already.
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Burt Prelutsky on the left's preoccupation with obfuscation ...
"One of the amazing things about those on the Left is that they switch words around so often that it’s hard to keep track of what they’re blathering about. People got so upset with ACORN once they discovered that the group was quite happy to help fund a brothel that was going to be populated by underage Guatemalan girls that they insisted that their tax dollars no longer be allocated for their loathsome activities. No problem. ACORN simply changed its name.
"When the scandal at East Anglia revolving around scientists destroying evidence that suggested that “global warming” was a hoax came out, Al Gore and his enablers, reluctant to allow their favorite cash cow to be slaughtered, simply started referring to climate change'.'
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One reason I wouldn't even consider owning an electric car: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigated a fire that occurred this spring, after the Volt extended-range electric vehicle underwent a 20 mile-per-hour, side-impact test for its five-star crash safety rating. The crash punctured the Volt’s lithium-ion battery, and after more than three weeks of sitting outside, the vehicle and several cars around it caught fire.
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I wonder how many "Occupy" idiots have seen the photos of the mansion owned by their hero, multi-multi-millionaire Michael Moore, who's gotten very, very rich, thanks to suckers like them.
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Yes, inflation and its evil partner, the cost of living, are in the house. You'll feel it when you shop for the Thanksgiving chow-down. The American Farm Bureau Federation says the average cost for this year’s meal for 10 people is $49.20. That’s an increase of $5.73 from last year’s average of $43.47.
So clean your plate!
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Broadcasting has had thousands of jobs cut this year as corporate consolidators continue to homogenize the industry. Now it's hit cable-casting. CNN chopped fifty people yesterday. CNN, of course, long ago lost the ratings war to Fox.
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With Eddie Murphy canceling out, Billy Crystal will emcee the Oscars show. Says he's doing it "so the young woman in the pharmacy will stop asking my name when I pick up my prescriptions,”
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True story from the office of my dog Calvin's veterinarian.
This week a Border Patrol agent brought in his drug-sniffing German Shepherd with lacerations on her leg. They'd been inflicted by a knife-wielding drug smuggler who was being arrested. The BP agent said that, in the encounter with his dog, the criminal got far the worst of it.
The dog will be okay. But who could fail to be charmed by a ferocious German Shepherd named ... Rosie.
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From Wichita, Kansas ...
"The stoplight on the corner buzzes when it's safe to cross the street. I was crossing with an intellectually challenged coworker of mine. She asked if I knew what the buzzer was for. I explained that it signals blind people when the light is red. Appalled, she responded, 'What on earth are blind people doing driving?'"
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Imponderables ...
Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are getting weak?
Why do they use sterilized needles for lethal injections?
Why does Superman stop bullets with his chest, but ducks when the bad guy throws a piston at him?
Why do people repeatedly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized?
How do those dead bugs get into enclosed light fixtures?
How come you never hear FATHER-in-law jokes?
-- from a distant (well, about 800 miles) relative --
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Jay Leno --
"The people beat Bank of America, who withdrew their $5 (monthly) debit fee. Instead, the bank is going to replace that with a $60 annual fee."
PAY-TO-PLAY. IT'S THE OBAMA WAY
... PRE-"OCCUPIED"
Smallpox was eradicated worldwide in 1978. Should it ever reappear, the U.S. government already has a billion dollars' worth of vaccine stored, enough to vaccinate the entire nation.
Yet the Obama administration has approved the buying of $433 million worth of smallpox vaccine that (A) isn't needed and (B) without knowing that it would even work ... and approved the contract on a "no-bid" (i.e., no competitive vendor offers even considered) basis.
Why? This may explain it. The company that produces it is owned by Ron Perelman, one of the world's richest men who also happens to be a huge contributor to the Democrat party.
Solyndra ... other solar-energy scams ... the scams add up as the Obama adminstration continues to throw billions of dollars at its contributors. The next attorney general, after Obama's crony Holder is gone, is going to have a full plate of projects to investigate -- and prosecute.
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The British Telegraph newspaper reports that President Obama demanded that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu promise to inform him before any attack on Iran's nuclear weapons site.
Netanyahu refused to make such a promise.
Why should he, knowing that Obama was picked up just last week by a live microphone talking about his dislike for Netanyahu and knowing that Obama is pro-Muslim?
You think Netanyahu doesn't know Obama would rat him out in a minute?
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I tremble in fear when I see Senator Patty Murray of Washington on her way to a meeting of the "Super Committee" which is supposed to resolve our financial crisis.
In a long career of interviewing movers-and-shakers in the political world, she is the dumbest single individual in whose company I have wasted an hour of my life. All this fraud knows how to do is mindlessly spend other people's money.
As wacky Nancy Pelosi exemplifies the political culture of San Francisco, so does Murray personalize the slightly-quieter-but-just-as-crazy body politic of Seattle.
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Perhaps you've seen the photo that contains the essence of the "Occupiers'" problem ...
The young woman holding up a sign that says, "$96,000 for a BA (college degree) in Hispanic transgender gay & lesbian studies and I can't find work!"
No KIDDDING!!
Perhaps she should have invested in a license to drive a taxi.
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Just in the realm of speculation ...
If the whining, wimpy leftists REALLY got their expressed wish for a showdown with conservatives ... whiners versus the people who defend their Second Amendment rights to bear arms ... does anyone doubt the outcome?
I can almost hear the plaintive cries. "Pigs! Come back and protect us! I want my mommy ..."
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Bruce Walker exposes the frailty of the "Occupy" nut-jobs in The American Thinker ...
"The Occupy Wall Street goons, along with the copycats in other cities, expose just how dependent the left is upon a powerful establishment. Without mainstream media support, without indoctrination in academia, without organizations like ACORN and labor unions providing muscle and organization, the left is a lazy, dull clod. That is why so many members of this "movement" cannot express a cogent thought or discuss genuine grievances.
"What is true of Occupy Wall Street is also true of all the other appendages of leftism. So-called "reporters" simply mimic other members of their herd and utterly ignore all news which doesn't fit into their tunnel vision. That is why none of these lackeys ever go into ACORN offices in sting operations and why ex-Congressman Weiner was able to lie without worry about his misbehavior for so long."
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If CBS hoped last night's debate would enhance the image of their new evening news anchor, Scott Pelley, they -- and he -- failed spectacularly.
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We've just had our first cool spell of the season in southern Arizona. Highs in the 60's and low-70's ... lows dipping into the 40's. This makes it easy to tell locals (like me) from the snowbirds who move in to spend the winter here.
We locals wear jackets when we hit the gym in the pre-dawn darkness. The snowbirds dress in shorts and tee-shirts and say, "Cold? What cold?"
The old-timers must be right. After a few years in sunshine country, the blood thins. But we love the snowbirds. They come ... spend money (keeping our taxes down) ... and go away in the spring, just in time to miss the most beautiful season, when the cacti are in bloom.
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Mad Mike sent this little monument to tastelessness -- but funny ...
A dog lover, whose dog was a female and in heat, agreed to look after her neighbors' male dog while the neighbors were on vacation. She had a large house and believed that she could keep the two dogs apart. However, as she was drifting off to sleep she heard awful howling and moaning sounds, rushed downstairs and found the dogs locked together and unable to disengage, as frequently happens when dogs mate.
Unable to separate them, and perplexed as to what to do next, she called the veterinarian. Although it was late, he answered in a very grumpy voice. After having explained the problem to him, the vet said,"Hang up the phone and place it down alongside the dogs. I will then call you back and the noise of the ringing will make the male lose his erection and he will be able to withdraw."
"Do you think that will work?" she asked.
"It just worked for me," he replied.
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Jay Leno --
"The stock market plunged because of financial news in Italy. They're calling this the worst Italian disaster since Olive Garden introduced that fettuccine alfredo."
B.O. SAYS, "LET'S MAKE NICE WITH OUR
ENEMIES" ...
CBS MAKES CLEAR WHAT THE "B S" PART STANDS FOR
CBS MAKES CLEAR WHAT THE "B S" PART STANDS FOR
In the news ...
President Barack Obama says the interrogation technique known as waterboarding constitutes torturing, disputing Republican presidential candidates who say they would reinstate the practice. Obama called waterboarding "torture" and said it was "contrary to America's traditions" during a news conference at the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Thus ignoring the fact that all our special forces military personnel undergo it as part of their training!
He apparently equates war with a TV game-show.
And you would depend on this mush-head to defend you in a war???
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It is a widely-held view among Republicans that CBS made a total botch of the latest "debate". It must be remembered, however, that nobody forces any of the candidates to take part in these political hog-wallows. And realistically, who really expected better of CBS, which has been shading the news leftward since the avuncular Walter Cronkite?
Check your dictionary and see if Scott Pelley's photo is now next to the word "dope".
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Ann Coulter probably has it right in assuming that the Democrat attacks on Herman Cain have less to do with his chances for the presidential nomination -- which she doesn't think he'll win under any conceivable circumstances -- but rather to kill his chances to run as a candidate for VP.
More likely, it's all aimed at preventing him from having a key speaking role at the Republican National Convention. In the eyes of liberals, such a role might -- gasp! -- actually convince some black voters that their slavish allegiance to the Democrat party is not serving them well.
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Who says there's no GOOD news?!
The Israelis are developing an airport security device that eliminates the privacy concerns that come with full-body scanners. It's an armored booth you step into that will not X-ray you, but will detonate any explosive device you may have on your person.
This would eliminate any concerns about "profiling".
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Valid question posed by a reader ...
Wonder how much money OPEC is giving to "environmentalist" groups trying to stop the building of the pipeline that would bring oil into the U.S. from Canada?
I repeat myself: The so-called "environmental concerns" are propagandist nonsense. There are already pipelines running all over this country, probably bringing -- among other products -- the gasoline you burn in your car every day. The entire anti-pipeline campaign is bogus, serving only to keep the price of imported oil at levels unjustified by the marketplace.
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“... we’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted -- well, people will want to come here and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America.”
... says Barack H. Obama, who's busily turning the U.S. into an increasingly UNfriendly place to do business with taxes and endless -- and pointless -- regulations imposed by a busybody government.
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A few statistics about how "hope and change" are working ...
According to the US Census Bureau, the percentage of “very poor” rose in 300 out of the 360 largest metropolitan areas during 2010.
Last year, 2.6 million more Americans descended into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the US government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.
Back in 2000, 11.3% of all Americans were living in poverty. Today, 15.1% of all Americans are living in poverty.
The poverty rate for children living in the United States increased to 22% in 2010.
One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.
Today, there are over 45 million Americans on food stamps. Tthe number of Americans on food stamps has grown by another 8 percent over the past year.
-- Thanks for the reminder, Art --
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Catching up on my reading ...
Columnist and author Burt Prelutsky has no difficulty containing his enthusiasm for our Dear Leader.
"Looking back on the first three years of this administration, I can’t decide which I’ve found more repulsive -- Obama’s loony policies or his unmitigated arrogance. After all, he was the guy who vowed to heal the planet, lower the ocean and make America everybody’s sweetheart. And yet, in spite of a trillion dollar stimulus, this oaf has seen unemployment and underemployment soar; has seen nation after nation treat us like a toothless, foul-smelling, tiger; has seen his party lose one election after another; has seen his own approval numbers approach Jimmy Carter’s; has overseen the loss of our triple-A credit rating; and spent nearly two years twisting arms and bribing politicians to pass an unpopular 2,000-page health care bill that, in the end, is likely to be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court."
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Michael Goodwin of the NY Post with a perspective on the Penn State disaster ...
"To Pennsylvanians and millions of football fans everywhere, the fall of the House of Paterno is like the collapse of an empire. It crashed without warning or mercy.
"In truth, the core values rotted away over the years, the work done secretly in the dark, like that of termites and cancer. The end only seemed sudden.
"It could be a long time before we know the full extent of the pedophilia horror allegedly perpetrated by a former coach and the outrageous silence of many, perhaps dozens, of people. But already the most important lesson is clear.
"Civilizations, from single universities to national cultures, must be defended with relentless vigilance and courage, or they will not survive. Only the details of their demise will differ.
"A sage, perhaps Edmund Burke, once said, 'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.'”
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The Post also carries an editorial warning that, face it, most of our "leaders" won't heed ...
"Unless Washington changes course -- sharply -- it one day may be staring at much the same kind of fiscal turmoil that’s gripped that troubled nation, Italy. Doubt it? Big mistake.
"For the past week, Italy has scrambled to stay afloat: Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was forced to resign after lawmakers rushed through an emergency “austerity” plan meant to rein in debt.
"DC’s on the hook for more than $15 trillion -- more than 100% of output last year -- and the nut swells daily. Italy’s debt, by comparison, is 120% of GDP (gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced in the entire nation annually), not much more than here."
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Herman Cain said in an Atlanta speech over the weekend that God wanted him to run for president. Mrs. Rick Perry has, I believe, made a similar claim regarding her husband's candidacy. Sounds as if the Almighty is as confused as many of the rest of us.
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My list of heroes is limited, and usually doesn't include marquee names. Here's one.
Morgan Shepherd. NASCAR race-car driver. Still driving in the hard world of the NASCAR Nationwide Circuit at age 70.
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A friend is dying.
Juan and I worked together twenty years ago at ABC. I was on-air, he as producer.
I learned a lot from him. He was wise in ways I wasn't. Military intelligence background, then theater and a rich, varied life. He took to heart -- and still recalls in his lucid moments -- things I barely recall telling him about my handicapped daughter, among other minutiae.
Knowing that his lifespan is now counted in days, or hours, he still jokes about life's ending. He says, regarding his terminal brain cancer, "This is the way to go. When it's over, it's over."
He laughs and jokes with friends, like Jim Eason, ABC legend, and me.
He is dying. He knows and doesn't deny it.
He is a great man.
I hope ... we should all hope ... to face ... the inevitable end ... so well.
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Reader Rick excavated this one ...
In 1952, Armon M. Sweat, Jr., a member of the Texas House of Representatives, was asked about his position on whiskey. What follows is his exact answer taken from the Political Archives of Texas:
"If you mean whiskey, the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean that evil drink that topples Christian men and women from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness, and hopelessness, then, my friend, I am opposed to it with every fiber of my being."
“However, if by whiskey, you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the elixir of life, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer, the stimulating sip that puts a little spring in the step of an elderly gentleman on a frosty morning; if you mean that drink that enables man to magnify his joy, and to forget life's great tragedies and heartbreaks and sorrow; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into Texas treasuries untold millions of dollars each year, that provides tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitifully aged and infirm, to build the finest highways, hospitals, universities, and community colleges in this nation, then my friend, I am absolutely, unequivocally in favor of it."
“This is my position, and, as always, I refuse to compromise on matters of principle."
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Jay Leno --
"You know what you call a Democrat who makes as many verbal gaffes as Rick Perry? Vice president."
OBAMA IS DEATH ON INVESTMENT IN U.S.,
NO MATTER WHAT HE SAYS
You've heard about Obama-the-Gutless caving in to the environmentalist wackos -- probably subsidized by OPEC -- and delaying the construction of the pipeline from Canada that would mean upward of a half-million jobs as well as relieving our dependency on middle-east oil. That's 20,000-plus jobs in the actual building, plus ancillary employment.
The blowback hasn't taken long. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada won't wait for any more silliness from Washington and will start selling more of its energy products to Asia.
Aaron Goldstein covers the basics of this story in The American Spectator ...
"The Keystone XL Pipeline, which would transport crude oil from the oil sands in northern Alberta into the United States as well as U.S. domestic oil, is being built by TransCanada, which is based in Calgary. The last time I checked Canada is a foreign country. Ergo this would constitute foreign investment. Apparently, President Obama's appetite for foreign investment isn't as insatiable as he would have us believe. Talk about chutzpah in its crudest form."
That concluding line refers to Obama whining about our not pursuing foreign business investment in the U.S. while he personally kills this enormous project.
And that's another reason why we who aren't among Obama's gullible sheeple doubt that the nation can stand four more years of his idiocy.
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Rich Lowry of National Review addresses Obama's dismay over this "lazy" nation ...
"Obama’s “lazy” comment is one of a series carrying an undercurrent of disapproval of the country he is so luckless to govern. A few weeks ago, he observed that Americans had gotten “a little soft and we didn’t have the same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades.” At a San Francisco fund-raiser, he lamented that “we have lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam.”
"Obama is prone to the posture of the dispassionate critic, floating above America’s foibles. It never seems to enter his mind that he might’ve disappointed us, but he certainly seems to think that we’ve disappointed him."
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Star Parker understands the big, big problem ...
"The Wall Street Journal calls the economic implosion now taking place in Europe 'a crisis of the welfare state.'
"When the Republican presidential candidates were asked in the most recent debate if the United States should help bail out these bankrupt European nations, the consensus response was 'no.' This, I believe, is the correct answer for two very basic reasons.
"First, the way to deal with irresponsible behavior is not to find new ways to finance it but to demand responsible behavior.
"And second, we are on the same path here and we need to wake up.
"Projections show that, continuing on the path that we’re currently on, in a little over ten years, our national debt as a percentage of our total economic output will be exactly where Italy is today.
"We’ve simply got to change and the big question is if we’re up to the task."
-- Townhall.com --
The problem, as Greece and others are re-learning, is that few things are more politically difficult than to take away government-granted goodies from an inherently selfish public.
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Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a Senator who actually does his job, calls attention to a list put out by the General Accountability Office. While Obama demagogues for the gullible with whining about corporate jets, you might take note of some rich celebrities who are getting big chunks of your tax dollars as government subsidies.
Jon Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen and Ted Turner have collected farm subsidies.
Names on the list include Bon Jovi, who paid property taxes of only $100 last year on his extensive real estate holdings in New Jersey that he uses to raise bees. At the same time, Bruce Springsteen received farm subsidies because he leases his property to an organic farmer, the report explains.
The GAO report shows those with an adjusted gross income greater than $1 million per year) receive benefits worth more than $30 billion from the government each year including tax giveaways and federal grant programs.
The National Endowment for the Arts awarded two $25,000 grants to legendary Grammy award-winning producer Quincy Jones and songwriter Johnny Mandel, whom the NEA “regarded as the top of their respective artistic fields.”
The NEA is another government giveaway program that should be immediately abolished.
By the way ... I wonder if retired reporter Sam Donaldson is still getting the mohair subsidy for his goat-ranch in New Mexico. Still vital for producing those World War One uniforms, you know ...
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This is what passes for unbiased news reporting by CNN.
At the APEC summit in Hawaii, CNN White House correspondent Dan Lothian actually asked Obama if the GOP candidates were "uninformed, out of touch, or irresponsible".
Way to pose a question, CNN!
Did you take your panties off first, Danny? Did he at least buy you a drink?
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California's economy is a mess. Cox & Malanga explain why in the LA Times ...
"For years, California could rely on its temperate climate and a talented workforce to attract and keep businesses even as taxes and regulations increased. No more. In surveys, executives regularly express the view that California has one of the country's most toxic business environments, and they say it is one of the least likely places they would open or expand a company.
"Between 2000 and 2008, some 80,000 more jobs left California for other states than came here from other states. The leading destination of the job migration was Texas, with Oregon and North Carolina running second and third."
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Gene Healy of the Cato Institute explains in the Washington Examiner why conservatives should be cautious before crowning Newt Gingrich as their anti-Romney ...
"Gingrich's campaign nearly imploded this summer when he dismissed Rep. Paul Ryan's, R-Wis., Medicare reform plan as "right-wing social engineering." But that gaffe was a window into Gingrich's irresponsible approach toward entitlements.
"In 2003, Gingrich stumped hard for President George W. Bush's prescription drug bill, which has added about $17 trillion to Medicare's unfunded liabilities. And in his 2008 book 'Real Change,' he endorsed an individual mandate for health insurance (meaning you'd HAVE to buy it).
"In a 2006 piece for Human Events, Gingrich ... proposed a Solyndra-on-steroids industrial policy devoted to 'developing more clean coal solutions, investing in a conversion to a hydrogen economy' and more.
" ... the Washington Post described a 2007 global warming event Gingrich headlined with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. (A coosome twosome, for sure.)
"In 2009, the ethanol lobby paid his firm $312,000, and in 2006, the former speaker scored a $300,000 fee from Freddie Mac, one of the government-sponsored enterprises that helped pump up the disastrous housing bubble."
Two words: Caveat emptor.
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Herman Cain's floundering response to a question about our actions in Libya echoed the brain-freeze of Rick Perry. Mr. Cain, a charming chap to be sure, continues to give evidence that he is woefully unprepared for the White House. He clearly hasn't thought much, if at all, about serious world events.
In that same interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Cain said he supports the "right" for public employees to bargain collectively. In other words, he is in favor of government unions on the issue that Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker fought so hard and won. Cain also said federal workers have unions, meaning the right to collectively bargain. No, they don't. But Cain said he supported the right of public employees to bargain collectively.
Herman Cain? No. Not even CLOSE to ready.
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Did Mitt Romney really say "FLAUNT the rules" in the Saturday night "debate"? Oh, Mittens, you're an educated man. You should know it's FLOUT.
Flaunting is showing-off, as in "The Producers": "Way to go, baby ... if you've got it FLAUNT it."
To FLOUT the law is to disobey and disrespect it.
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Rocking out ... Gene Simmons of "Kiss" on Andrew Breitbart's invaluable Big Government website ...
"This (economic) mess is our fault — corporations have no responsibility.
"Capitalism is the best thing that ever happened to human beings. The welfare state sounds wonderful but it doesn’t work.
"Governments hand out more money than they have to support welfare and they land in debt.
"Then they have to borrow money — and then there’s interest on top of that.
"That’s bad business. And it has created a culture of entitlement.
"When I was growing up my mother went to work. There was no welfare. If you worked, you made money.
"If you didn’t work, you had to figure it out — you’d go and wash dishes.
"The new breed of 20-year-olds don’t want to do those jobs."
... and for good measure ...
"People say things like: 'Oh, you make so much money. What do you need any more for?'
"Well, actually, b*tch, I never asked for your opinion. I’ll let you know when I have enough money."
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I've never cared much for Hawaii as a vacation destination, with it's phony "culture" as prepackaged as anything ever dreamed up by the Disney drones.
But having (maybe) spawned the plague that IS Obama, I have decided to take my meager portion of revenge. May my late friend Don Ho forgive me, but I have decided to ban poi from my diet for the rest of my life.
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A doctor in Seattle makes this contribution to the medical file ...
"At the beginning of my shift I placed a stethoscope on an elderly and slightly deaf female patient's anterior chest wall.
'Big breaths,'. . . I instructed.
'Yes, they used to be,'. . . replied the patient.
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Leno --
"A guy named Reggie Love is leaving the White House to get a degree at the Wharton School of Business. I guess he realized you can't learn anything about economics in the Obama White House."
THE MADNESS PROLIFERATES ... INSIDERS
AND BIG BUX
Is the Barack Obama I hear now demanding that Iran stop building nukes the same guy who, only a few years ago, was saying that Iran was a tiny country that would never be a threat?
Mr. President, can you spell "unprincipled"? Or should it be "witless"?
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Say WHAT?? department ...
House Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi calls the "Sixty Minutes" investigation of her business dealings "a right-wing smear." Something on CBS a RIGHT-wing smear?! Prepare yourselves, brothers and sisters! The end is near!
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How to fail your way to success ...
The top five executives at Fannie Mae received $33.3 million of your tax dollars in 2009 and 2010, while the top five at Freddie Mac received $28.1 million ... for running two agencies that nearly wrecked the financial system.
Makes you feel good all over, doesn't it?
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Just so we're clear on this ...
When you cut thru all of Eric Holder's deceptions, the purpose of that "Fast and Furious" gun-running operation was to gets guns delivered to Mexican criminals ... which would eventually be found at crime scenes ... and used to buttress the Obama administration argument that more gun control laws were needed in THIS country to prevent those MEXICAN gangs from getting guns from the U.S.
In short, it was all a rigged, politically-motivated scheme to deprive Americans of their right to own guns.
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If you suspect the veracity of some of the announcements put out by the Environmental Protection Agency to justify more and more business-killing regulations, you are correct to do so.
Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris and Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun have found that it appears the EPA just ... made up! ... a lot of their "scientific" studies. And, of course, the gullible dopes (i.e., liberals) among us swallowed everything that burocracy put out.
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A bow to Frank Friday in The American Thinker for uncovering another piece of Obama market-rigging.
Canada aside, the huge Bakken Field in North Dakota contains enormous amounts of oil. Without a pipeline connection, such as the project proposed Keystone XL which would run thru the area, the transport available is -- rail. At thousands of dollars per tank-carload. Who serves the area, with lines also running up to Canada? BNSF Rail. And who OWNS BNSF? Why, good Obama buddy Warren Buffet!
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Don't be surprised if you hear more disturbing news about big bucks -- much bigger than the originally-reported $300,000 -- being paid to Newt Gingrich by the gigantic government housing-financing operation called Freddie Mac.
He's also a suck-up to the ethanol fraud, a pure political sell-out to the farm lobby, led by the big producers of the stuff. It pollutes the air, damages engines, delivers worse mileage and has driven up the price of food because of the greed to turn corn into auto fuel. A stupid idea that should never have gotten off the ground. Who pushed it? Companies like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill. Think maybe they have serious political influence?
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So Rick Perry proposes to cut congressional salaries in half. Dilemma. Would lower salaries attract people who genuinely want to serve their country ... or create a greater temptation to use the position to attract bribes? (Not that some aren't doing it very well at today's salaries.)
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As wretched as Obama's White House performance has been, his willingness to tell outrageous lies, coupled with the gullibility of a largely uninformed or misinformed public keeps alive the frightening possibility that he could be re-elected.
Thomas Sowell on why Obama might still win ...
"We may lament the number of people who are unemployed or who are on food stamps today. But those who give the Obama administration credit for coming to their rescue when they didn't have a job are likely to greatly outnumber those who blame the administration for their not having a job in the first place.
"An expansion of the welfare state in hard times seems to have been the secret of FDR's great political success in the midst of economic disaster. An economic study published in a scholarly journal in 2004 concluded that the Roosevelt administration's policies prolonged the Great Depression by several years. But few people read economic studies."
P. T. Barnum was right. Except they're obviously born at a faster rate than one-a-minute.
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For whatever credence you invest in a poll with CNN's name on it ...
The politician who was going to heal the racial divide ... hasn't. His approval among white folk -- negative, 61%-36%. Among non-whites, positive 67%-32%.
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Many well-intentioned people who are skeptical of Obama give him the benefit of the doubt and accept the possibility that he's simply mistaken; "doesn't understand the situation", etc.
I strongly suggest that between now and next November's election, they give serious consideration to the possibility that his intentions toward this nation are, in fact, totally malign.
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The dark question looming over Republicans: Will Ron Paul launch a third-party campaign in protest if he fails to get the Republican nomination? -- and he WILL fail. Such a move would guarantee Obama's re-election.
- - - - -
Obama-the-idiot flunks geography -- again. The man who thought he'd campaigned in 57 states, "with one more to go", making a speech in Hawaii, said, "Here in Asia ..."
- - - - -
Feel free to ask anyone who's been sympathetic to the anarchic and ridiculous "Occupy" movement how they think it's working out for them.
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ESPN reports that Joe Paterno, ousted coach at Penn State, stands to collect a pension of upward of half-a-million dollars.
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Does it appear that Paterno recently sold his house to his wife for one dollar in anticipation of possible lawsuits?
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Wes Pruden of the Washington Times on why there's no reason to expect a real clean-up in college sports ...
"The Southeastern Conference, which stretches across the football-obsessed South from Arkansas to South Carolina and whose teams have won the last five national championships, last year collected a billion dollars in athletic receipts, most of it from television. The Big Ten teams (actually 11, the college presidents being not necessarily better at numbers than their semi-literate coaches and players) followed by collecting $905 million."
In short, college sports is big business at the power schools and too many of the people who run it are going to cover up anything that threatens it.
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As the Penn State scandal continues to unfold, Burt Prelutsky has this observation ...
"What I found most disgusting in the aftermath of the Penn State scandal was the fact that hundreds of students rioted on behalf of Mr. Paterno. Just because he kept turning out winning teams year after year, decade after decade, these young pinheads felt compelled to rally on his behalf, looking and acting exactly like the scumbags who comprise the Occupy Wall Street mob. But, unlike those unwashed morons, the students actually knew why they were out there creating mayhem in the streets. They were, by god, showing their unflagging support for a man who had kept a child rapist on his coaching staff!
"But when it comes to corruption, unfortunately it’s not limited to Penn State and our nation’s capital. It seems that in New York, by the time they retire, 90% of railroad workers -- including those who only held desk jobs -- have applied for disability, which just happens to add $36,000 a year to their pension payments. In California, 82% of state troopers retire with some sort of disability."
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Reader Rick reminds us of this moronic quote from our Vice-President ...
Joe Biden says that Jon Corzine is the smartest guy he knows.
You probably know that Corzine was the architect of the MF Global commodity collapse, one of the biggest bankruptcies in history.
Joe Biden is one of the sick jokes Obama has inflicted upon the nation.
- - - - -
Re Obamacare: The easiest way to decide your position on it is to simply ask yourself one question. Has any enterprise ever operated better and more cost-effectively with MORE government involvement?
- - - - -
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." --James Madison
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John Rosenthal in National Review Online provides what may serve as an epitaph for the "Arab spring" ...
"Mustafa Abdul Jalil’s announcement last month that Islamic sharia would form the basic source of legislation in the new Libya, and that all laws contradicting the sharia were immediately null and void, came as a surprise for Western observers.
"Western observers had always been determined to see the anti-Qaddafi rebellion in Libya as a 'democracy movement.' They were encouraged to do so by English-language NTC statements replete with soothing — if not indeed downright soporific — boilerplate that had undoubtedly been composed with the aid of Western advisers or PR agencies."
And the suckers bought it.
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Re-writing history ...
China has awarded their Confucius Prize, a version of the Nobel Peace Prize, to ... Russia's Vladimir Putin.
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I have received an e-mail from some misinformed folk who credit Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard with a quote which originated with her predecessor, John Howard, who told immigrants they must adapt to Australia instead of expecting the country to adapt to them. He was, in fact, voted out of office by his countrymen.
To the deluded who have taken this bogus missive as an indication of her political leanings, I recommend a visit to LUCIANNE.COM and the item from the Daily Mail, a Brtish newspaper, entered at 6:11:07 this morning.
(The time is posted at the end of each headline.)
The photos will reveal a relationship between Obama and Ms. Gillard that looks almost ... romantic.
I have visited Australia many times and have a message for folk who think it a conservative country. It is not. For all its many charms, Australia, outside of the state of Queensland, is largely liberal. So if you're looking for a place to emigrate in the event Obama is re-elected, Australia probably isn't it. And they probably wouldn't let you in, anyway.
New Zealand also won't let you in, unless you have a skill the country specifically needs. Their message is, "Visit, but don't stay." They, like most sane countries, base their immigration policies on the needs of the nation, not the desires of would-be immigrants. Just because an American wants to move to another country doesn't mean that other country wants THEM. And the only country that's easy to sneak into ... and stay ... is -- guess what! The USA!
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Sheila forwards this news clip ...
In a Purdue University classroom, they were discussing the qualifications to be President of the United States. It was pretty simple. The candidate must be a natural born citizen of at least 35 years of age. However, one girl in the class immediately started in on how unfair was the requirement to be a natural born citizen.
In short, her opinion was that this requirement prevented many capable individuals from becoming president. The class was taking it in and letting her rant, and not many jaws hit the floor when she wrapped up her argument by stating, "What makes a natural born citizen any more qualified to lead this country than one born by C-section?"
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I'm sure we're all happy that Chelsea Clinton is now with NBC News. Of course, we can be certain that her presence will balance the blatant leftward tilt of that operation.
Brian Williams of the putrid Peacock network has already compared her to Tim Russert ... who is probably revolving in his grave at 78 RPM.
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An actor named Bradley Cooper has been named by People magazine as "Sexiest Man Alive". Still another disappointment for Michael Moore ...
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A bride of some years past recalls her mother's best advice ...
"Never do deep-fat frying in the nude."
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Conan O'Brien --
"In New York, two Occupy Wall Street protesters got married at the protest. They are registered at Bed, Bath, and Seriously, You Need to Take a Bath."
DROWNING IN DEBT ... YOUR MONEY GIVEN
TO LIBERAL SUCK-UPS
You heard the news. Yesterday our incredibly mismanaged government managed to pass the $15 TRILLION dollar debt level. Consider the fact that the largest creditor is ... no, not China. The U.S. Federal Reserve bank system. Do you think the Fed will allow the government to default? Absurd! And who has the power to print MORE money via "created" funds in order to make sure a default DOESN'T occur? The Fed!
And as the Fed inevitably floods the country (via the Treasury Dep't.) with more printed dollars, what will happen to the actual value (i.e., purchasing power) of each dollar, old OR new? It will decline.
There is one word for this kind of fiscal irresponsibility. Inflation. Bigtime ... and inevitable. Plan accordingly. The first and obvious plan for most people: do NOT tie up your money longterm at today's low rates of return. When inflation inevitably hits 10%, or even worse, a 3% return on money committed long-term is going to look ... pitiful.
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Do we need -- again -- to re-state a much-misunderstood economic fact?
High prices are not the CAUSE of inflation. They are the RESULT of inflation.
- - - - -
Oil prices have spiked above $100 per barrel. It can hardly be coincidence that this happens immediately after Obama made it clear the Keystone XL pipeline to move oil from Canada to our Gulf Coast refineries will be delayed and maybe not built at all. Which means that oil will move much more expensively on Warren Buffett's BNSF railroad tank cars.
And America-the-gullible gets ripped-off again by the Marxist in the White House.
Never miss an opportunity to remind friends, relatives, neighbors and co-workers that they are now paying twice as much for gasoline as when the Big Nothing came into office.
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The liberal mafia, at it again ...
The new book by investigative reporter Peter Schweizer, "Throw Them All Out" reveals another sweetheart liberal insider deal. Robert Kennedy, Jr., headed another bogus "green energy" company called Brightsource. It was deep in debt and losing millions. But fear not! Here comes the Department of Energy with a $1.4 billion bailout!
More taxpayer money peed away to another politically-favored lefty.
Can it be clearer? If you pay taxes, you have to be an utter moron to vote for anyone connected to this gigantic fraud run by Obama & Co. via Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who is about to get his butt ... uh ... Chu'd ... by Republicans in Congress.
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Talk about a late wake-up call. A congressional committee has announced that, after ten years of providing us with their annoying, ineffective airport Gestapo, the Transportation Security administration is "a bloated bureaucracy" and -- oh yes -- "ineffective".
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Want more of how the Obamunists have blown your money? The Treasury Department now says it expects to lose $23.6 billion, up from its previous estimate of $14.33 billion, on the General Motors bailout.
Are the people running this country stupid ... or crooked? Your call ...
- - - - -
Once again liberals are whining about the "wealth gap" between younger and older people. The only rational response is, "Of COURSE older people have, on average, more money ... because they've had more time to earn and save it!"
Does any rational person expect that a 30-year-old is going to have a net worth equal to a 60-year-old?
- - - - -
Obama's hidden message to the sick and elderly: "Shut up, die and get out of the way."
The Weekly Standard reports ...
"Last year, Obama nominated Donald Berwick to head Medicare and Medicaid. Now he’s nominated Henry J. Aaron to head the Social Security Advisory Board.
"Berwick, to whom Obama issued a dubious recess appointment to circumvent the usual Senate confirmation, has become notorious for statements like, 'The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open' — and, in progressive-speak, 'The social budget is limited.'
"Aaron, a recent Obama nominee, has expressed similar views. He wrote a piece earlier this year called, 'The Independent Payment Advisory Board — Congress's ‘Good Deed.’ The IPAB, one of the most underreported of Obamacare’s myriad of liberty-sapping features, would have the power to cut Medicare spending each year — if Obamacare isn’t repealed first."
No matter how it's dressed up in public relations blather, the underlying message is the same. Older folk should quietly die and not annoy the bureaucracy. "You! Old person! Shut up and eat your dog food!"
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What do the men and women who put their lives on the line for this country think of their Commander-in-Chief? The Military Times Poll finds only 25% approve of his job performance.
Doesn't your stomach grind at the mere reading of the words "Commander in Chief" attached to Obama? And then there were the Clintons who, in Hillary's own words, "LOATHED the military."
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Congressman Allen West of Florida has a message for the media weenies ...
"“For 22 years I served in the United States Military and I’ve been on the battlefields in the Middle East, where the funds we are sending to these countries (many foreign aid recipients) are in turn being turned on our young men and women in combat.
“It’s about time that I asked this from the media: Stop being afraid of this president. Stand up to him and call him out on the shirking of his duties and responsibilities. The House Republicans are passing pieces of legislation, after pieces of legislation about jobs. And here we got a president that’s gone off to Australia, playing golf in Hawaii, and you guys allow him to make this decision to shut down this Keystone XL project. The media needs to call out this president and stop coming over here to the House Republicans and telling us what we’re not doing. We’re the ones taking action. The guy sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is destroying this country.”
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One wonders how long it will take working members of the Teamsters' Union to wise up. Their leader, Hoffa, pours their dues money into Obama's campaign fund ... Obama repays them by killing the pipeline project that would provide thousands of jobs for their members. Dumb, dumb, dumb ...
- - - - -
If you ever wonder how dictators rise to power with the approval of masses of people, you have only to look at the Rasmussen Poll that finds 27% of Americans surveyed want President Obama to act alone, without the consent of Congress, to "create" jobs.
Let's call it what it is: the mentality of unthinking beasts who want the proverbial "Man on a white horse" to be their daddy and make all decisions FOR them.
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The "Occupy" movement is already becoming a sorry footnote to the excesses of the political left. Thomas Sowell puts the foolishness into perspective ...
"The Occupy Wall Street movement is the best illustration to date of what President Barack Obama's America looks like. It is an America where the lawless, unaccomplished, ignorant and incompetent rule. It is an America where those who have sacrificed nothing pillage and destroy the lives of those who have sacrificed greatly.
"It is an America where history is rewritten to honor dictators, murderers and thieves.
"Barack Obama has brought more destruction upon this country in four years than any other event in the history of our nation, but it is just the beginning of what he and his comrades are capable of."
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Newtie, you got some (more) 'splainin' to do ... (thank you, Ricky Ricardo) ...
Acccording to the company's own tax return, Growth Energy, an ethanol lobby, paid $312,500 to Gingrich's consulting company in 2009.
Another ethanol shill ...
- - - - -
Jonah Goldberg has a fix on Newt Gingrich's goal ...
"In each debate, he keeps mentioning how he wants to challenge the president to as many Lincoln-Douglas-style debates as possible.
"It's a brilliant tactic. Watching Gingrich walk onto the debate stage, it's like seeing a great beast returned to its natural habitat. They should play "Born Free" whenever he comes out from behind the curtain.
"The tactic works because the unifying conviction among hard-core Republican voters is that Obama is both overrated and full of it, a man pretending to be presidential and intellectual rather than the real thing. Gingrich's promise to goad Obama into a fair fight is beyond tantalizing."
-- Townhall.com --
All true. But Newt's history, both personal and political, would provide a happy hunting ground for Obama's ad-makers.
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If it was fair -- and it was -- for conservatives to point out, as one of the many gaps in Obama's knowledge, that he referred to "the Austrian language" (there is no such thing; Austrians speak German) ... it is equally fair to point out another example of Herman Cain's abundant international ignorance in referring to "the Cuban language." There is no Cuban language. Cubans speak Spanish.
Obama was clearly unprepared for the Big Job; so's Cain, who is rapidly on his way to trivia-question status.
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** HELP LIFT THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE. FORWARD THIS COLUMN TO A FRIEND **
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There's POOR, then there's poor, American style. Prof. Walter Williams elucidates ...
"Heritage Foundation researchers Dr. Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield laid out some facts about the poor in their report "Understanding Poverty in the United States: Surprising Facts About America's Poor" (9/13/2011). Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more. Two-thirds have cable or satellite TV. Half have one or more computers. Forty-two percent own their homes. The average poor American has more living space than the typical non-poor person in Sweden, France or the U.K. Ninety-six percent of poor parents stated that their children were never hungry during the year because they couldn't afford food.
"Income measures fail to capture important components of economic well-being, such as wealth and the ownership of durables, e.g., houses and cars. For example, official measures would consider a retired couple who owned their car and mortgage-free $700,000 home and lived on $20,000 savings to be poor. Clearly, their income does not reflect their material well-being."
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Today's recommended reading: The American Spectator website ... "The New Welfare Swindle" ... Christopher Orlet.
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Longtime ABC colleague Jim Eason and I were exchanging notes on the writings of Ernest Hemingway.
I always found Hemingway ... turgid. Nevertheless, he was one inspiration that led me to believe that every young man should see at least one revolution. I was a callow youth and wondered what was going on in Cuba. So I went. Strictly as an observer. Watched Castro & Co. roll into Havana.
I figured the whole thing had a bad aroma when some of Castro's young lieutenants invited me over to Morro Castle to watch the executions. I refused the invitation, but could heard the gunfire from the balcony of my hotel room at the Havana Hilton, where the "Hilton" sign was being taken down and replaced with one reading "Hotel Revolucion". Even as Castro was duping gullible American media, starting with the New York Times, I already knew this was just a gang of criminals taking over from a different gang of criminals.
They refused for a few weeks to let me leave the country. When I was finally told I could leave for Miami on Cubana airlines late one evening, I saw at the airport one of the saddest scenes imaginable and another indication of just what was in store for Cuba.
The Cubana Viscount propjet was packed. We taxied onto the runway, prepared for takeoff, when a military vehicle came out, parked in front of the plane, and the door was opened. Some of Castro's thugs came aboard and began pulling people off the plane, separating families -- husbands, wives, children.
It was clearly done to add a measure of cruelty to the proceedings, allowing people to believe they and their families would be allowed to leave then tearing them apart when their escape was almost complete.
The plane finally left, half-empty, with sobbing passengers. I have frequently since wondered what awaited those who were forced off the plane, many screaming. I believe their fate was ... awful.
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Here is the kind of thing that I believe happens more often in small towns than big cities -- and I've lived most of my life IN big cities. Chicago, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle ...
A couple in my little Arizona town just learned that the husband has terminal bone cancer. Two months to live, the doctors say.
They have adult children and other relatives who've long planned a Thanksgiving vist -- some from far away. Now they face this. They want the family get-together, but preparations obviously present a challenge for the wife.
Susan -- my wife -- and others in the neighborhood have spontaneously organized a help-out project; preparing the meal, the before-and-after cleanup, etc., as well as helping in other ways to lighten the woman's burden in a time of crisis.
Susan and I know a bit about crises. When I was hospitalized for more than five months, neighbors were always supportive. And when I finally came home, their big "Welcome home, Lee!" banner on the house was a real heart-warmer.
Our Thanksgiving will be better for knowing the holiday for this other couple is slightly more ... bearable.
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Anybody heard from Demented Dennis Kucinich lately? I miss the congressman ...
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Why I may have to have my friend Mike beaten senseless. He sent this ...
"There is a clerk at the butcher shop. He is five feet ten inches tall and he wears size 13 sneakers. What does he weigh?"
Meat.
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Wanda Sykes ...
“Thanks to Jerry Sandusky, Larry King is officially not the creepiest old man in America.”
MORE CITIES UnOCCUPIED ... RUSSIAN
NUKES ... WHAT'S NEW WITH CHU?
The news is now replete with stories and pictures of "Occupy" heathens being carted off to jail as police and mayors finally respond to demands to oust the bums from a fed-up public. On your way, kiddies -- time to end your tantrum.
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Except for the blindly slanted papers like the New York Times and its imitators and the old alphabet TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) the news is also increasingly filled with stories about obvious corruption in the Obama administration. The lurking question, however, is ... how many of these crooks, frauds and swindlers will ever do time in the Graybar Hotel? Chu ... on that for awhile ... (I know. Subtle.)
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Wake-up call ...
We and/or our leaders may think the use of nuclear weapons unthinkable. The top Russian general doesn't. Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, cautioned against NATO’s expansion eastward and warned that the risks for Russia to be pulled into local conflicts have “risen sharply.”
Makarov, Russia’s top military officer, said his country is facing a heightened risk of being drawn into conflicts at its borders that have the potential of turning nuclear. Makarov added, according to Russian news agencies, that “under certain conditions local and regional conflicts may develop into a full-scale war involving nuclear weapons.”
Our leaders once thought Adolph Hitler was just kidding, too.
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It's easy to be fed-up with Iran's arrogance and lying as it builds nuclear weapons, a fact now admitted by even the spineless International Atomic Energy Agency. One consequence of an attack, however, is virtually certain to be a sudden -- and large -- spike in oil prices.
Of course, as long as we're burdened with an Obama administration that thwarts every effort to become less dependent on imported oil, whether by blocking domestic drilling or killing pipelines to deliver Canadian oil, that Sword of Damocles is always hanging over us. By electing "leaders" like this, we seal our own fate.
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Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal lays out the stark facts for working Americans ...
"The decision by the Obama administration to "delay" building the Keystone XL pipeline is a watershed moment in American politics. The implication of a policy choice rarely gets more stark than this. Put simply: Why should any blue-collar worker who isn't hooked for life to a public budget vote for Barack Obama next year?
"The Keystone XL pipeline would have created at least 20,000 direct and indirect jobs. (Ed. note -- this total would not include the thousands more ancillary jobs serving people employed directly by the project.) Much of this would have been well-paid work for craftsmen, not jobs as hod carriers to repave the Interstate.
"Within days of the Keystone decision, Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, said his country would divert sales of the Keystone-intended oil to Asia. Translation: Those lost American blue-collar pipeline jobs are disappearing into the Asian sun. Incidentally, Mr. Harper has said he wants to turn Canada into an energy 'superpower,' exploiting its oil, gas and hydroelectric resources. Meanwhile, the American president shores up his environmental base in Hollywood and on campus. Perhaps our blue-collar work force should consider emigrating to Canada."
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Chu on this. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who engineered the $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra despite warning signs that the company was headed for bankruptcy, now tells us we taxpayers shouldn't expect to get back much of the money he, Solyndra's management and Obama cronies squandered or stole.
And no one expects Chu, his Energy Department liberal hacks or the crooks involved in this blatant scam to pay any real price for their misdeeds.
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Which do you find more upsetting? The fact that General Electric made more than $14 billion in profits last year and paid NO taxes ... or the fact that our idiotic tax code is so complex that their tax return ran to 57,000 pages ... or the fact that GE's CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, who's been exporting American jobs overseas, is Obama's chosen top advisor on AMERICAN JOB CREATION?!
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Most easily predicted AP headline of the week: "Penn State abuse scandal likely to spawn lawsuits".
Gee ... ya' THINK?
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Liberals are aghast that Rick Perry, the fading conservative hope in the Republican primary race, has run a TV commercial in which he actually calls Obama a (gasp!) socialist.
Actually, of course, Obama defined himself in his October, 2008, encounter with an Ohio plumber who quickly became tagged by the media as "Joe the Plumber". Obama's exact words: "I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody." In short, take from those who've earned it ... give it to those who haven't. Pure socialist thinking.
As a result of that encounter, the big media cemented their roles as Obama collaborators. They began a frenzied exploration of every aspect of the life and work of Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher ("Joe the Plumber"). If the same love-blinded media had been a tenth as diligent in exploring the still-mysterious background of Obama, the nation would be much healthier today and the Obama Disaster would not have occurred.
By the way, whether or not you're tarred by the media as a "birther", a cursory bit of research will show that Hawaii's "Certificate of Live Birth" is not even approximately the same as a birth certificate. But fools will continue to blind themselves deliberately about the media-created myth called "Obama" and even as the economy collapses, continue to place blind faith in childish nonsense about "hope" and "change".
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Ann Coulter addresses some uncomfortable facts in Human Events ...
"Although Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- the institutions most responsible for the nation's current financial crisis -- were almost entirely Democratic cash cows, they managed to dirty up enough Republicans to make it seem like bipartisan corruption.
"By contrast, Republicans came cheap. For the amazingly good price of only $300,000 apiece, Fannie and Freddie bought the good will of former Reps. Vin Weber, R-Minn., Susan Molinari, R-N.Y., and Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.* Former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., was even cheaper at $240,000. [*Correction: After Gingrich admitted last week to receiving $300,000 from Freddie, we found out this week that it was actually closer to $1.6 million.]
"There may be better ways to stop Obamacare than Romney, but, unfortunately, they're not available right now. (And, by the way, where were you conservative purists when Republicans were nominating Waterboarding-Is-Torture-Jerry-Falwell-Is-an-Agent-of-Intolerance-My-Good-Friend-Teddy-Kennedy-Amnesty-for-Illegals John McCain-Feingold for president?)"
"Instead of sitting on our thumbs, wishing Ronald Reagan were around, or chasing the latest mechanical rabbit flashed by the media, conservatives ought to start rallying around Romney as the only Republican who has a shot at beating Obama. We'll attack him when he's president."
Of course if Romney runs -- and wins -- many conservatives will ask, "WHAT have we won?" Is the removal of the plague called Obama sufficient, in and of itself? Yes.
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Here's more of what you can expect to hear about Newt if his rise in the polls continues. The liberal Washington Post is reporting on his connection to something called The Center for Health Transformation, which opened in 2003, brought in dues of as much as $200,000 per year from insurers and other health-care firms, offering some of them “access to Newt Gingrich” and “direct Newt interaction,” according to promotional materials. The biggest funders, including firms such as AstraZeneca, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Novo Nordisk, were also eligible to receive discounts on “products and workshops” from other Gingrich groups.
The health center advocated, among other things, requiring that “anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year must purchase health insurance or post a bond,” the kind of mandate that has kindled fierce resistance from many conservatives.
Rasmussen Report polling finds that 69% of Americans surveyed are opposed to such a mandate.
As Mr. Cain and others have learned, the spotlight also brings heat.
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The NY Post reports that the Arab slumlord who wants to build a mosque next to the Ground Zero site in New York owes $1.7 million in back rent to the Con Ed utility, which has asked a judge to evict him.
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I feel festive. The giant reflective snowflakes, illuminated at night by solar lights, have gone up on the fig vines that cover the wall around the patio and swimming pool. Our only view of snow otherwise here in southern Arizona is when we get an occasional bit of accumulation on the mountaintops that fill our rear windows, going up to above 9,000 feet.
We are spending Thanksgiving Day with friends who came as refugees from the USSR more than thirty years ago. They are inspiring and good people who came to this country penniless, entering legally. They have built good and successful lives the old-fashioned American way: with hard work.
I smile every time I think of the anniversary gifts they gave each other a few years ago. To celebrate their American freedom, they gave each other sophisticated, top-of-the-line ... handguns! Just as a symbol of their ability to do so; something that they would never have been allowed in the Soviet Union.
They do retain their tastes in food and beverage from their homeland, so there may be a bit of vodka consumed.
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The Sky-Guy submits this one ...
A man tells his doctor that he is incapable of doing all the things his wife wants him to do around the house that he used to do.
When the examination was over, he asked the doctor,
"So, in everyday English what is wrong with me?"
"Well", said the doctor, "In plain English - you're just lazy!"
The man nods. "Now give me the medical term so I can tell my wife."
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It's official. Demi and her Boy-toy are getting divorced. Will Bruce be there to offer comfort?
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No Bieber-baby ...
Lawyers representing the young woman who said the youth idol planted the seed have dropped the paternity suit, saying her story had serious flaws.
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Disturbing news from Oskaloosa County, Florida, where a criminal was able to smuggle a gun into jail in the rolls of his fat. The rotund rascal was able to conceal a .38 revolver in the folds of his belly.
The deputy who failed to find the gun in his search is on probation. Other officers are warned to be sure they check every crevice.
EVERY?
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For my friend OV and golfers everywhere ...
A good golf partner is one who's always slightly worse than you.
A good drive on the 18th hole has stopped many a golfer from giving up the game.
Golf balls are like eggs ~ they're white. They're sold by the dozen .... and a week later you have to buy more.
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Craig Ferguson --
"President Obama was in Australia. When he’s in Australia, his approval ratings go down the toilet in a counter-clockwise motion."
THE DEBT BET ... B. O. HATES U.S.
...TOUGH STUFF FOR NOMINEE
If the Congressional "supercommittee" or the full body itself fails to come up with a deficit reduction plan, a highly likely outcome will be a worsened rating of government bonds which, in turn, will inevitably bring higher interest rates. Those rates have been unrealistically low for a long time, so it's overdue.
So the housing market would suffer because people won't buy houses at higher rates? They're not buying now.
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More Obama hypocrisy. In Australia, he talked to high school students about how their American counterparts have fallen behind other countries in learning basics like science and math. The two-faced phony DIDN'T tell them that it's the coddling of the teachers' union by his -- and preceding -- Democrat administrations that has allowed our public education system to decline to joke status.
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Jonah Goldberg in National Review Online explains the latest Obama attack on ... well ... you ...
"Congratulations, average American! It’s your turn to be blamed for President Obama’s — and America’s — problems.
"Being the root cause of our dire national predicament puts you in some very august company indeed. You are joining the ranks of George W. Bush, the Japanese tsunami, the Arab Spring, Wall Street fat cats, and other luminaries, both living and merely anthropomorphized.
"In 2008, Obama said Bush’s deficit of $9 trillion was “unpatriotic.” Now he questions the patriotism of those who think the Obama deficit of $15 trillion argues against spending even more money we don’t have."
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One factor to keep in mind as the race for the Republican presidential nomination unfolds is this. Since Obama has done nothing on big issues that wouold provide him with a record of accomplishment, his only hope for re-election will be probably the most vicious attacks we've ever seen on both the political and personal history of his ultimate Republican opponent.
Since none of us can realistically expect a totally untainted candidate any more than we would expect to find virgins in a Nevada brothel, the only sensible course is to select the candidate best-equipped to stand up to the barrage that is bound to come. That means whatever political or personal flaws ("baggage") are on the nominee's record must be explained in a brief and plausible manner.
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If the OPEC'ers don't own Obama, they might as well. His administration has just put the clamps on oil shale development in Ohio, with the usual "environmental" excuse. The region in question, Wayne National Forest, already has nearly 1300 oil and gas wells in operation.
And throughout the middle-east, Arabs are smiling. And so is Dictator Chavez in Venezuela, our largest foreign supplier.
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It's already hit 41 below zero in Fairbanks, well before winter officially arrives. DAMN that global warming!
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The plot is thickening ... and sickening. Mike McQueary, the young (well, 28) then-student-assistant coach at Penn State who told a grand jury that he'd seen Jerry Sandusky sexually assault a young boy, has gotten a measure of sympathy in some quarters. "Panicked youth who didn't know what to do," is the common thread. Now it's reported that a year AFTER he testified, he attended a fundraiser hosted by Sandusky.
What? He hadn't figured it out in a YEAR? And the event happened when he was 28?
Politics ... sports; some never learn that the cover-up often brings worse consequences than the offense that prompted it.
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Nomination for coosome-twosome of the week: Congressman Henry Waxman of California and Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
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An old standard, "Them There Eyes", updated in Saudi Arabia ...
The London Daily Mail reports that women with attractive eyes may be forced to cover them up under Saudi Arabia's latest repressive measure. The ultra-conservative Islamic state has said it has the right to stop women revealing 'tempting' eyes in public. A spokesperson for Saudi Arabia's Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, Sheikh Motlab al Nabet, said a proposal to enshrine the measure in law has been tabled. Women in Saudi Arabia already have to wear a long black cloak, called an abaya, cover their hair and, in some regions, conceal their faces while in public."
Possibly to be banned in the future: any novel or song referring to, "Their eyes met ..."
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What do conservatives find wrong with Mittens? Michael Filozof offers a condensed sample in The American Thinker ...
"Romney is from a high-tax liberal state and has backtracked on almost every position he's ever taken. Why would Democratic voters cross party lines to vote for a white, pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-government health care Republican graduate of Harvard Business and Law Schools when they can vote for a black, pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-government health care Democratic incumbent -- also a graduate of Harvard Law? Answer: they won't. Romney bent over backwards to appeal to left-wing voters in the Senate campaign against Ted Kennedy, and Romney lost.
"Tea Party activists -- whom political scientists refer to as "attentive publics" -- are not average voters. The average schlub will vote for the most ubiquitous political face he sees while channel-surfing between the football game, the porno channel, and Judge Judy after yet another trip to the refrigerator. That means for Obama. Beyond that, the primordial concern of the average American is 'What kind of government freebee can I get, and who's going to give it to me?'"
"The fault, Dear Brutus, lies not in our stars ..."
That Bill Shakespeare was a helluva writer -- and didn't even have so much as a word-processor!
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In case you missed it ...
Thursday afternoon Vice-President Biden held a meeting of -- so help me! -- the Government Accountability and Transparency Board.
That meeting was closed to the press.
TRANSPARENCY!
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The sports "experts" keep saying Tim Tebow can't succeed indefinitely in the NFL with his style of play. Maybe not, but while he keeps winning (Thursday night over the Jets, the second-most-overrated team in pro football after the Eagles) it's certainly fun to watch.
By the way, I hope Jets blowhard coach Rex Ryan rented his housing, rather than buying.
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Are there even liberals who are really so dumb they take "economist" Paul Krugman seriously?
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From reader Greg ... stuff we might not have known ...
Q: Why do men's clothes have buttons on the right while women's clothes have buttons on the left?
A: When buttons were invented, they were very expensive and worn primarily by the rich. Since most people are right-handed, it is easier to push buttons on the right through holes on the left.. Because wealthy women were dressed by maids, dressmakers put the buttons on the maid's right! And that's where women's buttons have remained since.
Q: Why do ships and aircraft use 'mayday' as their call for help?
A: This comes from the French word m'aidez -meaning 'help me' -- and is pronounced, approximately, 'mayday.'
Q: Why are zero scores in tennis called 'love'?
A: In France , where tennis became popular, round zero on the scoreboard looked like an egg and was called 'l'oeuf,' which is French for 'egg.' When tennis was introduced in the US , Americans (mis)pronounced it 'love.'
Q: Why do people clink their glasses before drinking a toast?
A: It used to be common for someone to try to kill an enemy by offering him a poisoned drink. To prove to a guest that a drink was safe, it became customary for a guest to pour a small amount of his drink into the glass of the host. Both men would drink it simultaneously. When a guest trusted his host, he would only touch or clink the host's glass with his own.
Q: Why is someone who is feeling great 'on cloud nine'?
A: Types of clouds are numbered according to the altitudes they attain, with nine being the highest cloud If someone is said to be on cloud nine, that person is floating well above worldly cares.
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It's another re-run of the Woody Allen movie, "Take the Money and Run". That's the one in which Woody bungles a bank robbery because the teller can't read his holdup note and consults with other tellers. "Does this note say he has a GUB?"
Same thing has happened, for real, in West Virginia. His handwriting was so bad, the teller couldn't read his note and the poor bandit was so embarrassed, he just gave up and left.
This guy is as good a bank robber as Woody Allen.
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Conan O'Brien --
"Occupy Wall Street protesters wanted to occupy the subway in New York City. Because if there’s one place to confront the nation’s wealthiest 1 percent, it’s the subway."
HOW THE RICH GET RICHER ... NEWT'S
SEMI-EXCUSE ...
FOOTBALL'S UPSET SATURDAY
FOOTBALL'S UPSET SATURDAY
Good work by BigGovernment.com, which obtained records of Massachusetts Democrat Senator John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz’s stock portfolios that show almost perfectly timed pharmaceutical stock trades during the Obamacare debate, which fattened their already enormous personal fortune. The documents further support allegations of suspicious trading leveled during Sunday’s 60 Minutes report about the explosive new book by investigative reporter and Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer, Throw Them All Out. Sen. John Kerry’s position on the powerful Senate Finance Committee’s Health Subcommittee gives him direct access to critical information regarding health care policy.
This is the same Senator Kerry who's been bloviating again about how rich people should pay more taxes ... and the same Senator Kerry who relocated his new $7 million yacht (made in New Zealand, by the way) from his home state of Massachusetts to Rhode Island to avoid an additional $437,500 in taxes.
Kerry: liberal Democrat and a phony, through and through. And to think: this weasel might have been president.
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The walking embarrassment we do call "President" has been bad-mouthing this country again on his latest combination suck-up tour and vacation in Asia. He decries the (real) fact that our high school students lag most of the developed world in basics like science and math. His solution? More spending, of course.
Anyone who examines the track record will quickly realize that we taxpayers have a long history of listening to the siren song of the teachers' union and being pressured to spend ever more in pursuit of the holy grail of education.
And what has all this extra spending produced? Constantly worsening performance by students. In a rational world of real work, you get more money AFTER you've demonstrated that you can produce the desired results.
Compare that to education spending -- mostly on teacher salaries and bureaucracy -- where more money brings steadily worse results.
It's time to stop the insanity and demand results FIRST.
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Perceptive observation from an outsider. James Delingpole, who covers U.S. politics for Britain's Telegraph newspaper ...
"If there's one thing US conservatives fear far more than having a wishy, washy, flip-flopping lump of corporatist spinelessness (Romney) representing them in the White House, it's this: that Obama will get a second term."
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Gingrich detractors often bring up the point that he was having an extramarital affair at the same time notorious womanizer Bill Clinton was impeached. His website points at a vital difference. Clinton was NOT impeached for playing hide-the-weenie. Here is the relevant quote from his website ...
"What these accusers are ignoring is that the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton were due to the fact that the president committed perjury in front of a sitting federal judge, which is a felony. As the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt felt that he had a duty to uphold the rule of law by pursuing impeachment. He stands by that decision today.”
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Another country learns the fallacy of socialism the hard way.
Spain, running huge deficits and deeply in debt (sound familiar?) and with 21%-plus unemployment, appears to be on the way to voting out the socialist government that created the mess and replacing it with the conservative party.
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Re the pipeline delay (or shutdown) ... an old joke revised:
"Do you believe in clubs for environmentalists?"
"Yes, but only if all other means of persuasion fail."
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I'm always a little surprised when I find someone who is unaware of a simple, useful tool for calculating income and outgo. It's the Rule of 72. Whether you're figuring out the impact of interest income ... or interest expense ... or the rate of inflation. You simply divide the rate of return, or interest expense rate, or inflation rate ... into 72.
The resulting number will tell you how long it will take for cost or income to double. At, say, 6% the number will double in 12 years. At 12%, in six years. If you want to know what you'll gain or lose, divide the number of years into 72 and the result will be the rate necessary to achieve that outcome. If, for example, you'll settle for doubling your money in 24 years, 3% will do it. Good luck with that! And at today's average CD rate of around 1%, it'll only take you 72 years to double your deposit. And that's before taxes.
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A holiday controversy is already brewing over a doll. The "You & Me Interactive Triplets" are the cause, because one of the dolls can be heard saying what appears to be the phrase, "Hey, crazy bitch."
On the bright side, one problem is solved. Now we know what to get Nancy Pelosi for Christmas.
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If you're a football fan -- at least, one whose favorite college team has escaped the upset frenzy that's marked the season -- you have to find it an exciting year.
After last night the arguments will rage about which two teams will reach the BCS championship game. When Oklahoma State's hopes ended Thursday night, Oregon was a hot prospect for a rematch with LSU. Until USC ruined that chance with last night's upset. Which appeared to put Oklahoma back in the driver's seat -- for about an hour. Then Baylor dashed their hopes with a wild finish upset.
So now what?
If, and it's a very big "if", #1 LSU gets past #6 Arkansas Friday ... then beats Georgia in the SEC championship game ... we appear headed for an LSU-Alabama rematch in the season finale. If Arkansas beats LSU, then whips Georgia in that SEC title game, it looks to be an Arkansas-Alabama BCS championship game -- also a rematch.
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It's looking more and more as if Mark Sanchez of the Jets will ultimately be lumped with many other college-star quarterbacks coming out of big-power programs like USC, Notre Dame, etc., and turned out not to be so hot in the pro ranks. Coaches and scouts belatedly realize that powerful teams made the QBs look better than they really were.
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How ironic is it that disgraced Penn State assistant coach, the alleged child molester Jerry Sandusky, titled his autobiography ... "Touched"?
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Some good news ...
We live in a town where a lot of people are dog-lovers. There's a local shelter, supported totally by donations, that runs a "no-kill" operation. It is the major beneficiary in the will of a woman who just passed away at age 89. She left behind five bichon frise puppies she'd recently rescued; neglected little creatures that had been abandoned.
The good news part is ... all five have been adopted, individually, by neighbors within a few blocks. And all five still get their morning walk and playtime together.
I didn't get much sleep last night. My dog Calvin apparently had a bad dream and snuggled up tight against me in bed. Somehow I don't mind. At all.
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Mr. Eason contributes this real-world definition of "gun control" ...
The theory that a woman found raped and dead in an alley, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.
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Dan Sorkin submits ...
I love Christmas lights. They remind me of the people who voted for Obama.
They all hang together; half of them don't work, and the ones that do, aren't that bright.
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Jay Leno --
"Herman Cain is being criticized for his lack of knowledge on foreign affairs, but he denies that he lacks expertise in that area. In fact, today, Cain said when he becomes president, first thing he's going to do is go to Iraq, meet with Saddam Hussein personally, and get this whole thing worked out."
MICHELLE AT THE RACE-TRACK ...
CHRISSY'S DISENCHANTMENT
..... "OCCUPY"ing AT $700 PER NIGHT
..... "OCCUPY"ing AT $700 PER NIGHT
Wondering out loud ... How long before Michelle Obama attends another NASCAR race? I understand the (utterly predictable) booing at the track south of Miami was audible all the way to Key West.
Next week they're throwing a country music bash at the White House. The guest lineup includes ... James Taylor? James Taylor ... country?! Are they kidding?! Hank Williams, return and save us!
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Things continue going south for the Dear Leader. The formerly besotted Chris Matthews of the Obama suck-up cable channel, MSNBC, has lost his tingle and turned against him ... for the dozen people who care.
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Hypocrite, thy name is ... Occupy?? The New York Post opens the curtain on a couple more phonies ...
"A key Occupy Wall Street leader and another protester who leads a double life as a businessman ditched fetid tents and church basements for rooms at a luxurious hotel that promises guests can 'unleash [their] inner Gordon Gekko,” The Post has learned.'
"The $700-per-night W Hotel Downtown last week hosted both Peter Dutro, one of a select few OWS members on the powerful finance committee, and Brad Spitzer, a California-based analyst who not only secretly took part in protests during a week-long business trip but offered shelter to protesters in his swanky platinum-card room.
“'Tents are not for me,” he (Dutro)confessed, when confronted in the sleek black lobby of the Washington Street hotel where sources described him as a 'repeat' guest.
Show this to any gullible unfortunate you know who's gotten caught up in this juvenile "Occupy" nonsense.
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The Newt phenomenon continues to grow. Given the questionable matters in both his personal and political history, many wonder why. How's this for an answer?
In the "debates", he's reminded us that he's fast on his feet, very articulate and comes across -- justified or not -- as the smartest person on the stage. He also swats back hard at the media people who comprise the panels of questioners, always a popular thing with conservatives who largely detest those folk.
As a consequence, Newt is the answer for Republicans who wonder which of the candidates would do a better job against Obama in the televised bullfights that have become our prime forum for making presidential choices, as well as those who just can't stomach Romney.
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Our insane government spending undergoes scrutiny from Jeff Jacoby in the liberal (yes, owned by the NY Times) Boston Globe ...
"When Bill Clinton was president, the national debt rose by an annual average of $193 billion; when the profligate George W. Bush was in the White House, the yearly debt increases averaged $612 billion. On Obama’s watch, by contrast, the federal debt has been skyrocketing by more than $1.5 trillion per year. It took 40 presidents and nearly two centuries, from George Washington to Ronald Reagan , for the US government to accumulate $1.5 trillion in indebtedness. The 44th president - aided and abetted by Congress - enlarges the federal debt by that amount every 12 months."
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Democrat pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen (the former worked for Jimmy Carter, the latter for Clinton) are of the opinion that Obama shouldn't even try to run for a second term and work for a Hillary nomination. Writing in the Wall Street Journal ... “One year ago in these pages, we warned that if President Obama continued down his overly partisan road, the nation would be ‘guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it.’ The result has been exactly as we predicted: stalemate in Washington, fights over the debt ceiling, an inability to tackle the debt and deficit, and paralysis exacerbating market turmoil and economic decline.”
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News reports from India tell of a huge fire at a celebration for eunuchs claiming fifteen lives. The tragedy thus reduced the number of possible applicants for management positions in the broadcasting industry.
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David Patten in Newsmax ...
The administration’s decision to postpone the Canadian XL pipeline despite the price of crude oil jumping above $100 a barrel has led energy-sector executives to suspect the administration “is at war with American energy production,” GOP Rep. Ted Poe of Texas tells Newsmax.TV.
Once fully operational, that pipeline would deliver over 1.2 million barrels a day to the thirsty U.S. oil refineries that blanket the Gulf Coast region.
“That’s as much oil as we get from Saudi Arabia,” Poe tells Newsmax. “Why not trade with a stable partner, rather than relying on Middle Eastern oil? The State Department says, ‘No, we’re not going to do it. We’re going to wait until after the election to make a decision.’”
Poe warned that Canada may simply build a pipeline west rather than south, and offload the crude into oil tankers bound for China.
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Time for the picking of the nits ...
The most abused and misused term in present-day communication is, "begs the question." That phrase does not mean raising or suggesting a question. It means to EVADE or avoid a question. But semi-literates, especially in the media, continue to use it incorrectly.
One more. How long has it been since video recording replaced film in most visual media? Many years. Yet the football analysts still refer to all that "watching of film" by coaches and players. Stop ... it!
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Apocryphal? Maybe not ...
The Montana Department of Employment, Division of Labor Standards claimed a small rancher was not paying proper wages to his help and sent an agent out to investigate him.
GOVERNMENT AGENT: I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them.
RANCHER: Well, there is my hired hand who has been with me for 3 years. I pay him $200 a week plus free room and board. Then there's the mentally challenged guy. He works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of all the work around here.He makes about $10 per week, pays his own room and board, and I buy him a bottle of bourbon every Saturday night so he can cope with life. He also sleeps with my wife occasionally.
GOVERNMENT AGENT: That is the guy I want to talk to - the mentally challenged one.
RANCHER: That would be me.
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Greg reminds us of the timeless wisdom of Will Rogers (no relation) on growing older ...
"Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.
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Herb provides today's monument to tastelessness ...
In 1272, an Arab invented the condom, using a goat's lower intestine.
In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea by taking the intestine out of the goat first.
Herb, go to your room!
"SUPERCOMMITTEE" FAILS, FULFILLS
OBAMA'S WISH-LIST ...
PATERNO'S PATINA POLLUTED
PATERNO'S PATINA POLLUTED
Were it not for the fact that Democrat "leaders" are clearly beyond shame or embarrassment, they would be aghast every time they see that video of Vice President Joe-the-boob Biden proudly announcing that his party and the President turned to Jon Corzine for advice on economic matters. In fact, Corzine was almost named Secretary of the Treasury instead of the incompetent incumbent, Timmy Geithner.
Corzine, of course, is not only a former Senator and Governor of New Jersey, but the man behind MF Global, which somehow seems to have misplaced $1.2 billion of investor money, which the victims may never see again.
Stupid and/or crooked -- the perfect profile of a liberal Democrat pol.
And we DO know what the "MF" in the company name stands for, don't we?
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Speaking of phoniness in the liberal herd ...
It is a fact ... FACT ... that the Republicans on the so-called "Supercommittee" that was tasked with trying to reduce the deficit made a proposal that would have brought in more than a trillion dollars of new revenue to the treasury. The Democrats turned it down simply because, despite their propaganda to the contrary, getting more revenue by eliminating special tax favors and loopholes was NOT their goal. They wanted to raise income tax RATES as a bragging point for the election campaign. And that, of course, was their failed president's goal, as well.
Now they can tell their stupid sheeple flock that they "tried to raise taxes on the rich, but the Republicans prevented it." They have every reason to believe it will work with their core supporters because, whiny little socialists that they are, it's always worked before.
John Podhoretz in the NY Post nails it ...
"The supercommittee wasn’t a failure. It was a success, despite what everybody has said, is saying and will continue to say.
"The supercommittee triumphed in accomplishing what it was truly intended to accomplish.
"It was created to kick the can down the road. The only thing that mattered was that it come into existence, and it did. Its invention made increases in the debt ceiling possible through the end of President Obama’s term."
And Mark Steyn in National Review Online summarizes the whole disgraceful mess ...
"Those who can, do. Those who can’t form a supercommittee. Those who can’t produce a majority vote in a supercommittee sequester. Those who can’t even sequester are telling the world something profound about American inertia.
"The 'automatic' sequestration cuts would over the course of ten years reduce US public debt by only $153 billion. Which boils down to about a month’s worth of the current federal deficit.
"Yet even slashing a pimple’s worth of borrowing out of the great oozing mountain of pustules will prove too much for Washington."
Mark DOES have a way with words! (Best read aloud over lunch.)
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More tarnish on the image of Saint Joe Paterno at Penn State. The Wall Street Journal reports that ...
"In an Aug. 12, 2005, e-mail to Pennsylvania State University President Graham Spanier and others, Vicky Triponey, the university's standards and conduct officer, complained that Mr. Paterno believed she should have 'no interest, (or business) holding our football players accountable to our community standards. The Coach is insistent he knows best how to discipline his players…and their status as a student when they commit violations of our standards should NOT be our concern.'
"The confrontations came to a head in 2007, according to one former school official, when six football players were charged by police for forcing their way into a campus apartment that April and beating up several students, one of them severely.
"Just before she (Triponey) arrived, Penn State faced an episode in which Mr. Paterno had decided to let cornerback Anwar Phillips play in a bowl game, even though he had been charged with sexually assaulting a woman and had been temporarily expelled from school."
This doesn't mean Penn State is any worse than many other football-factories in allowing behavior by athletes that wouldn't be tolerated otherwise. It's simply an indicator that it's no better, either.
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I'm not the first to write it, and I won't be the last, but ... Herman Cain is through.
Not because of allegations about passes made at women years ago and now peddled by people whose motives are questionable, but because his repeated flubs demonstrate that he simply isn't ready for the job. You can only use "I'll ask the experts" so many times to answer serious questions before your own capacity to be "the decider" (George Bush's words) is open to doubt.
Yes, he's certainly better prepared than the Big Nothing now in the White House, but the job demands far more.
It is, of course, hate-bait for some e-mailers to suggest that the charming Mr. Cain is politically dead, but I can't imagine anyone willing to bet their house that he isn't.
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Mitt Romney's dropping a few names as possible running mates. They include a Senator from New Hampshire and the Governor of New Mexico, both women and the latter Hispanic. Highly unlikely either will be chosen because they're from states with few electoral votes, the major deciding factor in most VP selections.
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In their dreams, can you imagine how fervently Obama's people wish for the Republican nomination to go to Ron Paul? Even more than Mr. Paul's most avid supporters.
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Obama yesterday pardoned five criminals and commuted the sentence for another. All the recipients of his beneficence were drug dealers.
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Does the White House Whiner really believe that more "sanctions" -- cheerfully circumvented by Russia and China, among others -- are really going to discourage Iran's nuclear ambitions? The larger question is ... does he really WANT to deny nukes to a Muslim nation, detesting Israel as he clearly does?
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They unveiled a statue of Ronald Reagan in Warsaw yesterday, with Lech Walesa, the man who led the revolt against the USSR, saying that Poland's freedom without Reagan was inconceivable.
Wonder where they'll unveil a statue of Obama someday? Moscow? Tehran? Beijing? Oakland?
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Hey, Nutty Nancy! Now that it's evident most Americans either (A) aren't interested in the adult-delinquents of the "Occupy" movement or (B) detest them ... you still sure you want to embrace the filthy, lazy crackpots? Might not be smart politics! Of course, your wacko San Francisco constituents will re-elect you, but most Americans think you -- and they -- are crazy. And THAT won't help your party!
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It's folk wisdom that, "Whose bread I eat, his song I sing."
Sarah Palin seems to have forgotten or never learned it. Which is why Roger Ailes, honcho at Fox News, is reportedly PO'd. When she finally announced that she wasn't going to run for president, she did so on Mark Levin's radio program rather than Fox News, which pays her.
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The European Union with its common currency, the Euro, was always a Utopian idea. The concept of uniting so many countries so diverse in historical, economic and cultural values seemed to skeptics to be doomed from the start. it appears that skepticism is about to be realized. Business Insider carries this grim report ...
"'We seem to have entered the last days of the euro as we currently know it,' Credit Suisse's Fixed Income Research team writes. 'The fate of the euro is about to be decided.'
"Market pressures are swiftly coming to a head, and EU leaders will be forced to take stronger action to respond to the crisis.Investor fear is causing conditions in the euro area—particularly for Italy and Spain—to deteriorate rapidly, and if EU leaders are to rescue the currency, they probably have to do it by mid-January.
Credit Suisse analysts don't see a euro break-up on the horizon, but they do say 'some extraordinary things will almost certainly need to happen' for the currency and the monetary union to last."
Swiss bankers are not known to be susceptible to Utopian fantasies.
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It is a profound truth that people both individually and in groups could save themselves a lot of grief if they learned from the mistakes of others. Yet no one expects that the American left will benefit from knowledge of the disasters their European counterparts have created, causing voters in country after country (five so far) -- most recently Spain -- to oust the socialist-inclined governments that have wrecked their economies and replace them with conservatives.
They will then, of course, blame the "hard-hearted" conservatives for imposing the necessary fiscal discipline to repair the damage done by the "compassionate" liberals.
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A few random thoughts from the indispensable Thomas Sowell ..
Like so many people, in so many countries, who started out to "spread the wealth," Barack Obama has ended up spreading poverty.
Have you ever heard anyone as incoherent as the people staging protests across the country? Taxpayers ought to be protesting against having their money spent to educate people who end up unable to say anything beyond repeating political catch phrases.
Radical feminists seem to assume that men are hostile to women. But what would they say to the fact that most of the women on the Titanic were saved, and most of the men perished -- due to rules written by men and enforced by men on the sinking ship?
Most of us may lament the fact that so many more people are today dependent on food stamps and other government subsidies. But dependency usually translates into votes for whoever is handing out the benefits, so an economic disaster can be a political bonanza, as it was for Franklin D. Roosevelt. Don't count Obama out in 2012.
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A natural fit. Meghan McCain, Senator John's daughter and the flakiest member of a notably flaky family, is now a "contributing editor" or some such for ultra-left MSNBC. Chelsea Clinton is also on the payroll of parent company NBC.
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Have you ever seen a more uncomfortable person, even with his considerable media experience, as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney? He seems to visibly shrivel every time he has to go out and stammer through the latest round of transparent lies required of him.
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Memo to the media -- written-word division. It's "strait-laced", not "straight-laced", to describe the rigid, or even prissy, type of person.
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It may not work, but you have to appreciate the cleverness of the turkey who spends the next couple of days strolling around the barnyard going, "Moo ... moo ... moo..."
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Greg contributes quotes from the late Andy Rooney on life's lessons learned.
I have learned ...
That just one person saying to me, 'You've made my day!' ... makes my day.
That you should never say no to a gift from a child.
That life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes .
That money doesn't buy class.
That to ignore the facts does not change the facts.
That a smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks.
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Jay Leno --
"Energy Secretary Stephen Chu testified before Congress yesterday that he thought it was a good idea to lend $535 million of our tax dollars to the solar panel company Solyndra right before they went bankrupt. If he'd taken all of that money, put it in a big pile and set it on fire, it would have produced more energy than Solyndra."
DEBATE FATIGUE ... OBAMA PAL
PRISON-BOUND ... U.N. WHORES
Please! Stop the torture! I can't stand it anymore! I've heard all their talking points over and over. The so-called "debates" are now only about seeing which unfortunate stumbles into a foot-in-mouth embarrassment. There is a limit to human tolerance.
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The Iowa caucuses (shouldn't that be "caucii"?) get a lot of media attention, but before we accord this political circus unwarranted attention, let us recall that it's basically a party fund-raiser. Participants PAY to attend and vote. Or, more to the point, in many cases candidates buy their tickets FOR them and even arrange their transport to the gatherings. It's all great fun, but it's hardly indicative of a national trend. The outcome is more often an indicator of which candidate's organization makes the most effective use of resources to round up his/her herd.
Just for the record, in 2008, Mike Huckabee got 34% of the caucus vote in Iowa and finished first. Romney was second with 25% ... Fred Thompson (remember him?) was third with 13.4%. McCain was fourth with 13.1%. And, uh, how did that race actually turn out?
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Victor Davis Hanson summarizes the tunnel-vision of the simpletons' favorite ...
"I guess Ron Paul did not consider the incineration of 3,000 Americans on American soil on 9/11 — something that neither Fascists or Communists ever achieved, and that by now would have been replicated without the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism protocols, as apparently the Obama administration believed (it embraced or expanded them all) and over 40 foiled plots attest — an act of war. Foreign relations reflect Paul’s weaknesses."
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Why is Jon Huntsman still wasting his time? -- and ours?
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Tony Rezko, the Chicago crook who arranged sweetheart real estate deals for Barack Obama and raised big bux for him, has been sentenced to ten-and-a-half years in Stony Lonesome for fraud, corruption and all the usual excresences that go with Chicago politics.
The question persists: Does Obama even KNOW anyone who isn't a crook, traitor or some other variety of scumbag?
Point to ponder: What're the chances that, as one of his last acts in office, Obama will pardon his pal Tony?
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The prudent Mr. Pruden (Wes) of the Washington Times with his call of the race ...
"...in this Republican campaign ... a succession of men have ridden in on white horses—Rick Perry, Herman Cain and now Newt Gingrich—to save us from the bland and boring villain Mitt Romney. Each of them looked good until someone looked closely, and then it was time to find someone, anyone, else.
"The (latest) flavor will be gone by Christmas. Newt carries enough baggage to require about three weeks to sort through the baggage again—his failed marriages, his messy divorces, his sweetheart lobbying contracts, his misalliances with Hillary Clinton on health care and Nancy Pelosi on global warming.
"But here’s what will happen. The Republicans will nominate a candidate (the betting here is that it will be Mitt Romney, boring and bland notwithstanding). The Democrats and Mr. Obama will proceed with their best shot, a campaign of unrelenting class warfare. Both sides will get behind their man, as they always do. Next November 9 we’ll wake up with ... a newly-elected president."
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A question the goo-goos refuse to answer. Why do we still have some 30,000 troops stationed in prosperous South Korea, which can well afford to defend itself, instead of on the U.S.- Mexico, border where citizens are being threatened and terrorized by Mexican illegals?
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In the words of Yul Brynner in "The King and I" ... "Is a ... puzzlement!" How did states like Kansas and Arizona, known to have largely level-headed populations, elect as governors a couple of wack-jobs like Kathleen Sebelius (Obama's Secretary of Health & Human Services) and Janet Napolitano (Secretary of Homeland Security)?
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The UN has reaffirmed its claim to the title "Biggest Collection of Whores on the Planet".
The slimy SOBs have collectively decided to reappoint Syria -- SYRIA! -- to a committee dealing with human rights.
Given the location of the headquarters building on New York's East River, wouldn't it better serve as a Hilton, or Holiday Inn -- and get this collection of creeps out of the country?
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The travel industry is understandably bemoaning the downturn in tourism. A major factor, of course, is the economy. But another element causing people to avoid travel is the stupidity and abuses by the Airport Gestapo, the TSA flunkies. Most people who travel have stories about watching the Government Goons let young, bearded middle-eastern men waltz right thru the security checkpoints, then hassle elderly women.
The airport aggravation might be understandable if it were more effective, but the Department of Homeland Security itself has had repeated examples of its own tests where all kinds of weapons were smuggled aboard aircraft.
And we mustn't "profile"! Oooo, nooo!! Napolitano-the-numbskull would be horrified!
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The gigantic fraud called "global warming" has been further exposed. The London Telegraph and the BBC report that a further batch of emails has been leaked onto the internet. And as before, they show the "scientists" at the heart of the Man-Made Global Warming industry in a most unflattering light ... once again caught red-handed in a series of emails exaggerating the extent of Anthropogenic Global Warming, while privately admitting to one another that the evidence is nowhere near as a strong as they'd like it to be.
Fess-up, dudes -- it was all a bunch of bull(bleep). And Al Gore got rich on the suckers.
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It's my guess that one reason the vast majority of disgruntled losers after every election don't follow thru on their vows to "leave the country if so-and-so wins" is their discovery that Medicare is no good outside the U.S. and, unlike Social Security, everything they've paid into it is simply lost.
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Candidates for the title "Most Gullible Dope in America": Anyone who actually believed that Obama wanted the "Supercommittee" to succeed. Nobody could do the things he's done to wreck the nation's economy possibly made the choices he's made out of stupidity. Accept the reality that it's a methodical plan to achieve exactly what's being accomplished -- an economic catastrophe. Anyone who doesn't believe he's a Muslim Marxist gets extra points toward the title.
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Thomas Sowell on the madness called liberalism and one aspect of our economic mess it's created ...
"Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the world envisioned by today's liberals is that it is a world where other people just passively accept whatever 'change' liberals impose. In the world of Liberal Land, you can just take for granted all the benefits of the existing society, and then simply tack on your new, wonderful ideas that will make things better.
"For example, if the economy is going along well and you happen to take a notion that there ought to be more home ownership, especially among the poor and minorities, then you simply have the government decree that lenders have to lend to more low-income people and minorities who want mortgages, ending finicky mortgage standards about down payments, income and credit histories.
"That sounds like a fine idea in the world of Liberal Land. Unfortunately, in the ugly world of reality, it turned out to be a financial disaster, from which the economy has still not yet recovered."
-- Townhall.com --
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Perceptive observation in an editorial by Investors Business Daily re the election in Spain that ousted a socialist government ...
"Unlike, say, California's voters, Spain's voters knew enough to stop digging when the hole got too deep."
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The Tonopah Solar company in Harry Reid's Nevada is getting a $737 million loan from Obama's Department of Energy. The project will produce a 110 megawatt power system and employ 45 permanent workers. That's costing us just $16 million per job.
One of the investment partners in this endeavor is Pacific Corporate Group (PCG).
The PCG executive director is Ron Pelosi who is the brother to Nancy's husband.
-- Thanks for the reminder, Don --
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Here's what conservatives can expect from the media/showbiz crowd. When Michele Bachmann went on Jimmy Fallon's late-night show, the show's band tweeted their followers to tip them to an inside joke. When she walked onstage, they played a song called "Lyin' Ass Bitch." Cute.
Wonder if they have Laura Nyro's immortal "Flim Flam Man" in their repertoire to play next time Obama's on? We await ...
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Is this cruel? I would suggest that anyone -- like the Florida woman -- stupid enough to let a fake "doctor" inject her butt full of concrete and flat-tire sealant may deserve the consequences.
With her ass full of that mixture, where did they relocate her brain?
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Burt Prelutsky is amazed at the (low) caliber of people Obama has in his in-crowd ...
"Is it possible that we simply underestimated the man’s uncanny ability to attract vermin? For instance, there is Eric Holder. He’s the knucklehead who kicked things off by accusing white people of being cowards because they wouldn’t honestly address racial matters. But when he demurred from prosecuting the Black Panthers for intimidating voters, and told his Department of Justice staff that under his watch only white people would be prosecuted for such crimes, some of us were dying to have an honest discussion with him. But he was nowhere to be found.
"Then, in the wake of 'Fast and Furious,' he told a congressional committee under oath that he knew nothing about hundreds of guns being sold to Mexican gangsters. When it turned out that he had been receiving memos about the operation for months before his testimony, his response was along the lines of 'I’m the Attorney General. I write memos, I don’t read them.'
"Another of Obama’s appointees is Jeffrey Immelt, the head of General Electric. Because Immelt is Obama’s good friend and America’s Jobs Czar, some of us were confused when Obama started whining about millionaires and billionaires flying on corporate jets and not paying their fair share of taxes. G.E., as we all know, paid no corporate taxes last year. And, really, just between us, does Obama think that when Mr. Immelt commutes to Washington, D.C., he does it on a Greyhound Bus?"
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The very insightful Susan Easton is writing commentary at this website: officialwire.com. Read it. It'll be good for you.
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Just wondering ...
How long before Christmas cards -- and those for other occasions -- are almost entirely replaced by the increasingly-clever electronic cards sent by e-mail? I'm sure somebody at Hallmark is staying up late many nights pondering this.
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** CRUISE TIME! **
After much discussion, here's the plan for the spring cruise, details coming later: April or May ... Miami or Ft. Lauderdale thru the Panama Canal ... concluding in either LA or San Diego. About two weeks aboard ship.
If you've never done a Panama Canal cruise, it's an experience not to be missed!
If you're interested, e-mail me ASAP at: RadioRodgers1@yahoo.com
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Re the earlier item about football folk still referring to "studying film" when it's long since been supplanted by electronic recording, Chris in Lakeport, California, offers the following ...
"When I was a youngster, videotape and "instant replay" was the latest innovation in TV sports. Occasionally I would cross the street to my neighbor's house to play instrumental duets (he on clarinet and I on trumpet) with a man who was well into retirement. One day, as we sat down facing the music stand, a football game was airing on his television, replete with instant replays. He turned to me and said, 'I just can't understand how they can develop that film so fast!'"
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Reader Gordon gets today's "Naughty Boy!" award ...
"Our intelligence agencies believe the Iraqi military has discovered a new use for sheep: Seems they can get wool from them."
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Jimmy Fallon --
"President Obama came home after a nine-day trip to Asia. Well, he got to see some stuff he never sees at home. Like jobs."
GOBBLE-GOBBLE! ... OBAMA'S MENTORS ...
TINY CAR, TINY SALES
Happy Bird-Day! And if you can't think of any other reason to be thankful today, at least be thankful you're not a turkey.
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Call it the non-payoff for sucking up. Survey (Brookings/U. of Maryland) says ... only 4% of middle-east Arabs admire Barack H. Obama. That's lower than Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and less than a third of the admirers of Iranian lunatic Ahmadenijad. Asked what their choice would be if there could be only one superpower, China won by a wide margin, getting 22% support, with Germany, Russia, France and Pakistan following ... all ahead of the U.S.
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Still more news for the poll-cats...
CNN's numbers show 26% of Democrats saying that they would prefer the party to nominate another Democrat for president next year, up from 18% in October. And half of all blue-collar Democrats, the core of the party's support, don't want him to run again.
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Proving that you don't have to wear a pith helmet to make pithy remarks, here's Jonah Goldberg's take on Romney versus Gingrich ...
"It's quite a matchup. Romney has been brutalized for having too little personality, Gingrich for having way, way too much. Romney looks like the picture that comes with the frame. Gingrich looks like he should be ensconced in royal velvet as he gestures at you with a half-eaten turkey leg in one hand and a sloshing goblet of wine in the other. Romney seems terrified of fully committing to any idea. Gingrich speaks as if he just text-messaged with God."
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It you want to understand Obama's politics, here are the lessons he's learned from history ...
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
-- Joseph Goebbels, Chief Nazi Propagandist
"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."
-- Vladimir Lenin
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Are the blinders coming off some Obama acolytes? Victor Davis Hanson thinks so ...
"One of the many paradoxes of the Obama administration is how its advocacy of various -isms and -ologies tended to discredit them. Similarly, Obama enchanted the media to such a degree that it suspended judgment, which has brought journalists all sorts of embarrassment. When columnists write that they were duped, or politicos call for Obama to step aside for Hillary, or when a once-tingling Chris Matthews unloads on the president, one senses the anger of betrayal, of being seen as naive and even sort of foolish.
" In 2008, for a conservative critic to suggest that the former Chicago community organizer was a glib rookie senator — without any experience in national politics, clueless about the private sector, with no prior record of industry or inspired legislation, and with a mostly unknown and poorly researched past — was to earn the charge of racism; in 2011, for a liberal to do the same, I guess, will be seen as sober and judicious bipartisan reflection."
As one of those "2008 conservative critcs" working in San Francisco, I can vouch for the accuracy of that observation.
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Have you seen the Jennifer Lopez commercials for the little Fiat 500 auto? Not only are the commercials fake (she was nowhere near her old New York "Jenny-from-the-block" neighborhood for the shooting -- they used a body-double) but the car isn't selling and the brand's honcho for Chrysler U.S. has been fired.
As Henry Payne summarizes in National Review Online, "Since lecturing Detroit automakers as a candidate in 2007, Obama has fashioned himself an expert on what Americans want in an automobile. His choice of Fiat was inspired by the chance to bring the company’s tiny, 40 mpg 500 to the States. Never mind that gas prices in Europe are $8 a gallon. Or that Americans drive longer distances. Or that Europeans demand smaller cars for narrower streets.
"In March of 2009, Obama initially denied Chrysler bailout funds unless its business plan included more small cars. In October, Chrysler Jeep truck brand sold 35,000 vehicles. The Fiat 500 sold just 2,000 copies.
"The Fiat 500 is more evidence that — like Solyndra and windmills — Obama’s fascination with Europe has little to do with facts and everything to do with ideology. Obama is determined to convert Americans to the Green Church, but they aren’t buying."
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The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office now says what sane people knew all along. The Obama stiumulus plans did little good in the short-term and will be a negative in the longer-term.
Nevertheless, fools will continue to cling to their delusions and fantasies.
- - - - -
What kind of insane federal government opposes state and local law enforcement agencies' attempts to enforce that government's own immigration laws -- which it has failed to enforce?
- - - - -
Michael Goodwin in the NY Post addresses the "income inequality" debate ...
"On one level, income inequality is real, and growing. Yet as a bedrock and urgent political issue, it’s pure hokum, cooked up in the socialist faculty lounges and the back rooms where the government unions pull the strings of puppet pols. The aim is to hijack emotions and grow the government pie so favored voters get a bigger slice.
"Color me skeptical. I see the raging battle as little more than a ploy to get into other people’s wallets."
- - - - -
Here it is again ... the mark of the pretentious illiterate, even in the would-be highbrow Washington Post. An article referring to Newt Gingrich as "an historian". No, dammit! It's not "an historian" or "an historic".
The rule is, if the "H" is sounded -- as it is in these words -- it is preceded by "A", not "AN". Would you say, "I'm carrying AN history book?"
If the "H" is silent, as in "honor", then it IS preceded by "AN".
In short, if you get the "H" out, then use "AN".
Somewhere (well, San Diego, actually) my friend The Wordman, Richard Lederer, is smiling his approval of my rant.
- - - - -
What could you call them other than victims of technology.
That would be the three carjackers in Vallejo, California, who forced the driver out of his car, grabbed his keys and started the motor. And there the drama ended. They had to abandon their criminal project because the car had a stick shift ... and they didn't know how to drive it.
- - - - -
A reader wonders about some apparent oxymorons ...
Why do we say something is out of whack? What is whack, anyway?
Why do "slow down" and "slow up" mean the same thing?
Why do "fat chance" and "slim chance" mean the same thing?
If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
- - - - -
** CRUISE **
If you're interested in joining our spring two-week, Florida-to-California Panama Canal cruise, send an e-mail to
RADIORODGERS1@YAHOO.COM. Soon.
- - - - -
Melissa contributes a list of Naughty Things You Can Only Say On Thanksgiving.................
"Talk about a huge breast!"
"If I don't undo my pants, I'll burst!"
"Don't play with your meat!"
"Just spread the legs open & stuff it in."
"You'll know it's ready when it pops up."
I write clean; you read dirty!
- - - - -
True story. An acquaintance of mine, part of a travel group that happened to be in Istanbul on Thanksgiving Day (not a holiday Turks observe, of course) asked our local guide, "What do you call turkeys?" His reply ...
"Americans".
- - - - -
Why are you reading this instead of worshipping the God of Gluttony! It's Thanksgiving! Be a real American!
EAT!
RESPECT THE OFFICE, IF NOT THE MAN?
... ROMNEY, PRO & CON
I have one word for people who are annoyed at criticism of the Dear Leader and insist, "You must respect the office."
No.
- - - - -
I will not be going near any shopping venue today. I have many character flaws, but masochism is not one of them.
- - - - -
Newt Gingrich has been taking heat for advocating lenient treatment of illegal aliens who have lived otherwise-law-abiding lives in this country for -- his figure -- 25 years. Why not 27 years... or 13? Unanswered.
But he is firing back at the other poll-leader. He posted a Twitter message linking to a clip of Mitt Romney in a 2007 appearance on “Meet the Press,” in which Romney said, “the 12 million or so that are here illegally should be able to sign up for permanent residency or citizenship.”
What?! Mitt doing a flip-flop on another issue?!
- - - - -
The astute Victor Davis Hanson looks at the Romney pros and cons ...
"As a former governor and presidential candidate, Romney has been fully vetted. In these racy times, Mormonism is viewed as more a guarantee of a candidate's past probity than a political liability. So there is little chance in late October 2012 that a blonde accuser will appear out of Romney's past, or that the New York Times will uncover a long-ago DUI charge.
"Although conservatives dub Romney a flip-flopper for changing positions on abortion, gun control and health care, the base knew all about those old reversals in 2008, when it nonetheless praised Romney as the only conservative alternative to maverick moderate John McCain. Apparently the party has moved to the right since then. Tea Partiers worry that, once in office, a moderate President Romney would prove a reach-out centrist -- spending borrowed money like George W. Bush did on No Child Left Behind or the Medicare prescription drug benefit, thereby ruining for good the now-suspect Republican brand of fiscal sobriety."
Was that helpful? -- or are you more confused than ever?
- - - - -
The idiots who run your government (and spend your tax dollars) gave a contract to a company in Detroit to make parts for our military's armored vehicles. They also make parts for the Airbus airliner. In both instances, lives obviously depend on the quality of those parts.
WJBK-TV in Detroit videotaped employees of Tower Defense and Aerospace smoking marijuana and drinking booze on their breaks. An offer to show the video to company management was refused. Now Fox TV (WJBK is a Fox affiliate) has the video and is showing it.
Next questions: when will this company lose its contract and how many people will lose their lives as a result of the employment of these worthless scum?
- - - - -
Wes Pruden of the Washington Times explains why Obama can never bring himself to recognize that our economic travails are in any way his fault ...
"President Obama ... is a true believer in the European model of the welfare state. Everybody who was listening learned that three years ago. The fact that the European welfare states are crashing is irrelevant to him; true believers are never rattled by facts, not even facts that slap them in the face like a cream pie. The opportunity to impose a failing welfare state on America is what drew him to the presidency in the first place. The congressional elections last year, the Republican rout that Mr. Obama rightly called a “shellacking” of his party, made no impression, either. The results were all about cutting taxes and dismantling government, but not to Mr. Obama. Those elections were merely a few pebbles in the road to Utopia."
- - - - -
Here's part of the Arab world mentality at work. It's common for people who are objects of hatred to be called Jews, even if there is no evidence to support such a supposition. Thus we should not be surprised that some people in Libya now insist that their dead, deposed longtime hero, Muammar Khadafy was -- what else? -- a Jew.
- - - - -
Ann Coulter in Human Events points out a vital piece of history ...
(In the latest debate, Wolf ...) "...Blitzer cited Ronald Reagan's statement in his autobiography, "An American Life," that he would happily compromise with Democrats if he could get 75 or 80 percent of what he wanted -- implying that today's Republicans were nuttier than Reagan if they'd refuse a dollar in tax hikes for $10 in spending cuts.
"Wolf should have kept reading. As Reagan explains a little farther in his autobiography: He did accept tax hikes 'in return for (the Democrats') agreement to cut spending by $280 billion,' but, Reagan continues, 'the Democrats reneged on their pledge and we never got those cuts.'
"Maybe that's why Republicans won't agree to raise taxes in exchange for Democratic promises to cut spending.
"For Americans who are unaware of the Democrats' history of repeatedly reneging on their promises to cut spending in return for tax hikes, the Republicans' opposition to tax increases does seem crazy. That's why Republicans need to remind them."
- - - - -
Another Euro-using country is in serious trouble. Fitch, the big bond-rating service, has reduced Portugal's government bond rating to junk status.
- - - - -
Ndamukong Suh, the defensive lineman for the Detroit Lions, has already acquired a reputation as a dirty player. He insists he isn't. Following yesterday's performance, in which he's accused of stomping a Green Bay player after the play was over and ejected from the game, it remains to be seen what the NFL commissioner will do. Fines seem not to have altered Suh's behavior. Is a long, long suspension next?
- - - - -
In a small town in Connecticut, a man who wasn't even running as been elected to the local Taxation Board.
If only something similar could happen in presidential races ...
Ah, but I fantasize ...
- - - - -
** SPRING CRUISE **
Details are being finalized for our annual aboard-ship get-together. It'll be April or May, Florida to California via the Panama Canal, a memorable experience, with port calls in the Caribbean and the Pacific coast of Latin America.
About two weeks long. If you're interested and want details, e-mail: RadioRodgers1@Yahoo.com -- soon.
- - - - -
Sam and Bev forward this clipping from the New York Daily News, November 4, 1949 ...
Father, must I go to work?
No, my lucky son.
We're living now on Easy Street
with dough from Washington.
We've left it up to Uncle Sam,
so don't get exercised.
Nobody has to give a damn,
we've all been subsidized.
But if Sam treats us all so well
and feeds us milk and honey,
please daddy, tell me what the hell
he's going to use for money.
Don't worry son, there's not a hitch
in this here noble plan.
He simply soaks the filthy rich
and helps the common man.
But father, won't there come a time
when they run out of cash and
we'll be left without a dime
when things will all go smash?
My faith in you is shrinking, son,
you nosy little brat.
You do too damned much thinking, son,
to be a Democrat!
From 1949. The more things change ...
- - - - -
Reader Mike wants to know if anyone has the recipe for this Occu-pie he's been hearing so much about.
- - - - -
Jimmy Kimmel --
"This (was) the 14th Republican debate and there are still 12 more to go. The plan, I think, is to keep debating until somebody recognizes Rick Santorum on the street."
OBAMA PUSHING FOR ISLAMISTS' POWER IN
EGYPT ...
BIDEN OUT, HILLARY IN?
BIDEN OUT, HILLARY IN?
This may be the most significant number in the ongoing Rasmussen polling of public opinion. In a long but steady downtrend, just seventeen percent of likely voters say the country is heading in the right direction. No one in their right mind would want to continue with the presidency that created such a sorry situation. However, we ARE talking about U.S. voters, a majority of whom swallowed the Obama myth three-plus years ago, led by a lying media that prostituted itself for socialist ideology.
- - - - -
What kind of idiots are our colleges turning out? Apparently, some who think it wise to go hiking along the Iraq-Iran border and get picked up and imprisoned by the Iranians ... or who get their kicks involving themselves with a kinky crowd in Italy ... or the latest example, three young fools from the U.S. in a "study abroad" program who got caught throwing Molotov cocktails at a mob demonstration in Cairo. They're lucky they didn't get their stupid heads blown off.
Instead, they're being released, leaving us with the ghastly prospect that they will someday reproduce.
A suggested college course for students going abroad: "Mind your own business and don't attend riots."
- - - - -
Some are upset that Obama made no reference to God in his public Thanksgiving message. They might also wonder if, in the privacy of the White House living quarters, he mentioned Allah.
- - - - -
Why do they call it "black Friday"? Because the post-Thanksgiving weekend is so important to retailers that it often determines whether it's going to be a profitable year -- i.e., "in the black" -- for many of them.
- - - - -
Has there ever been a presidential administration so determined to flout the law as this one? Now, the Government Accountability Office has discovered that the Obama administration gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to a group that lobbied to include a pro-abortion provision in Kenya’s new constitution, despite a U.S. law against funding to promote either side of the abortion issue in foreign countries.
- - - - -
One-time presidential candidate Pete Dupont opines in the Wall Street Journal that Obama may, indeed, dump the embarrassing Joe Biden from the ticket in favor of Hillary Clinton. Of course, to any thinking person it's a mystery why voters would attach much importance to the Vice-President position, since that individual has little power other than that granted by the Main Man, and Obama does not seem inclined to parcel out any of his. In that instance, he's much like FDR, whose vice-presidents remained largely unseen and unknown, until his death thrust the previously-invisible Harry Truman into the spotlight.
- - - - -
Always remember -- and always remind children and grandchildren -- when you're in a foreign country, things that might be tolerated in the USA may not be tolerated in somebody else's country. A fourteen-year-old Australian boy on a visit to Bali (which is part of Indonesia) has learned his lesson the hard way. He bought a little over a tenth-of-an-ounce of marijuana ... got caught ... and will be spending two months in jail.
- - - - -
The barrage of BS from liberals and the deranged continues, telling us that the Muslim Brotherhood, which WILL take over Egypt after the election, is becoming "moderate". The truth is nevertheless visible in the crowd of their supporters holding a big rally in Egypt's capitol, with speaker after speaker vowing to "kill all the Jews."
Don't expect to hear any serious response about this from our Marxist, Muslim-sympathizing president, who is pressuring the Egyptian military to hurry-up the turnover of power to a "civilian" government -- which WILL be dominated by that same Muslim Brotherhood.
- - - - -
More Western women reporters have been sexually assaulted by Arab mobs in Cairo. One might wonder just how stupid are the (A) news organizations that assign them to cover such craziness and (B) how silly are the women who accept -- or even ask for -- such assignments.
- - - - -
Some of us have long said a major flaw in the electric-car concept is the danger of being in an accident with the battery incurring damage. It's happened again. A Chevy Volt caught fire when the battery was ruptured during a crash test.
Totally-electric cars have been around since the late 1800's ... they've never succeeded in the mass market ... and given the hazard and their limited mileage, there's little reason to believe they ever will. They're another environmentalist fantasy, kept alive by people who also choose to ignore the fact that the electricity has to be generated somewhere -- primarily by burning coal, natural gas or using nuclear power plants.
- - - - -
The curiosity column ...
The heaviest recorded newborn in Germany arrived weighing thirteen pounds, delivered by a 528-pound mother.
The baby's name is ... Jihad.
- - - - -
It appears inevitable. A college football championship game between LSU and Alabama. A rematch. Given the powerful defenses of both teams, can we expect a 3-0 outcome?
- - - - -
Fighting the uphill battle against media mangling of the language ...
If used in musical terminology, the word FORTE is pronounced "for-TAY". Ditto when applied to the Chicago Bears running back. BUT ... when used to describe an attribute or skill in which one excels, forget the "TAY" at the end. It's pronounced just like the military establishment, "FORT".
- - - - -
A sensitive reader sends this prayer ...
Obama Is the shepherd I did not want.
He leadeth me beside the still factories.
He restoreth my faith in the Republican party.
He guideth me in the path of unemployment
For his party's sake.
Yea, Though I walk through the valley of the bread line, I shall fear no hunger, for his bailouts are with me.
He has annointed my income with taxes,
My expenses runneth over.
Surely, poverty and hard living will follow me all the days of my life, and I will live in a mortgaged home forever.
I'm glad I am American, I am glad that I am free,
But I wish .. I was a dog, and Obama was a tree!
- - - - -
Andy forwards this transcript of a phonecall ...
"Hi. This is the President. Is Senator Lieberman in?"
"Not today, Sir. This is Yom Kippur."
"Well, hello, Yom. Can I leave a message?"
BLACK FRIDAY: BIG SALES, BAD BEATINGS
... HAD ENOUGH OF "OCCUPY"?
As if we didn't already know more than enough about the cretin criminals of the "Occupy" movement, now one of their loudest supporters has become disgraced former Congressman Anthony "See My" Weiner.
If the collaboration of the worst elements of the left-wing media weren't sufficient to make the point that the destructive juvenile delinquents of all ages playing at being Marxist revolutionaries are simply destructive scum, now the walking joke of a politician should emphasize it.
The amazing thing about the "Occupy" nonsense is that there are still many Americans so dumb they don't see a communist-run piece of rabble-rousing for what it is.
- - - - -
From coast to coast ... Black Friday shoppers being beaten, shot, pepper-sprayed. Yessir, that Christmas spirit is really setting in!
- - - - -
Bloomberg biznews reports that the stock market has just had its worst Thanksgiving week since 1932, early in the Great Depression. Since Obama's made a presidential career of complaining about the mess left for him by his predecessor, one can only image what the next occupant will have to say about the debacle created by B.O.
- - - - -
The Gingrich propensity to babble on endlessly when he'd do better for himself to shut up has mired him deep in the immigration controversy. No matter how he tries to explain himself, his proposed policy sounds to most like amnesty. It may cost him whatever chance he had at the nomination.
- - - - -
It's hard to imagine Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County (Phoenix) allying himself with a hopeless cause. Apparently he has. He's campaigning with Texas Governor Rick Perry in what is increasingly and obviously a vain effort.
- - - - -
Mark Steyn in the O.C. Register draws a parallel between our government and a certain famous ship ...
"In the course of a typical day I usually receive at least a couple of emails from readers lamenting that America is now the Titanic. This is grossly unfair to the Titanic, a state-of-the-art ship whose problem was that it only had lifeboat space for about half its passengers. By contrast, the SS Spendaholic is a rusting hulk encrusted with barnacles, there are no lifeboats, and the ship's officers are locked in a debate about whether to use a thimble or an eggcup.
"A second downgrade is now inevitable. Aw, so what? And say what you like about our rotten finances, but Greece's are worse. And Italy's. And, er, Zimbabwe's. Probably.
"The advantage the United States enjoys is that, unlike Greece, it can print the currency in which its debt is denominated. But, even so, it still needs someone to buy it. The failure of Germany's bond auction on Wednesday suggests that the world is running out of buyers for western sovereign debt at historically low interest rates. And, were interest rates to return to their 1990-2010 average (5.7 percent), debt service alone would consume about 40 percent of federal revenues by mid-decade. That's not paying down the debt, but just staying current on the interest payments."
And the Democrats continue to buy votes by pandering to the "Gimme-gimme-gimme" crowd.
- - - - -
The Taliban killers in Afghanistan regularly place themselves in border area positions where air attacks might also kill some Pakistani soldiers. It worked, and now Pakistan retaliates by shutting down the land supply-line for our troops that goes from one of their ports into landlocked Afghanistan.
Naturally, this air attack has stirred more resentment within Muslim Pakistan where antagonism versus the U.S. was always in bountiful supply.
One trusts that our military, despite the obvious leanings of their Commander-in-Chief, have made plans that take into account the likelihood that at some point Pakistan will have to be acknowledged as an outright enemy nation and treated acccordingly.
- - - - -
Beyond shame and embarrassment (they seem susceptible to neither) what awaits the fools who inveigled our government to impose a policy requiring, as of January 1, the replacement of the safe, inexpensive lightbulbs of today with the compact flourescent lights that bring much worse environmental hazards with their mercury-loaded innards? They also (A) cost a lot more, plus (B) are made in China, killing the industry in the U.S. Incredible that the gutless nothings in Congress have prostrated themselves before this absurdity.
- - - - -
The Rodgers Thanksgiving was a good one. The goose was delicious, the company delightful. There was, however, a serious moment.
Our friends, previously mentioned in this space, came to the U.S. as penniless refugees from the Soviet Union during the Cold War and earned their way into a successful life without being a burden on the taxpayers. They are the most patriotic Americans imaginable.
Now, however, they are very dismayed to see the deterioration in the country they love. Dismayed to this extent. They have decided -- and not frivolously -- that if their fellow Americans are so foolish as the re-elect the regime they see as destroying the country, they plan to emigrate again. That's emigrate with an "e" on the front, meaning outbound.
We have all heard people who swear that they'll leave the country if someone whose politics they oppose gets elected. Most of it is nonsense, of course. Only a tiny minority will even attempt to do so. Many who have the will are nevertheless restrained because of family obligations or because their chosen country for relocation does not want them as immigrants.
Our friends are to be taken seriously because they already know from experience what is required to leave one life behind and pursue another in a very different part of the world. I applaud their courage and determination.
- - - - -
From what I've seen with my own beady little eyes, the most impressive quarterback and deserving Heisman Trophy winner is quarterback Robert Griffin of Baylor. Backed by a team not as powerful as those of other contenders, he's turned in incredible performances. His work in the upset of Oklahoma was the stuff of sports legend.
- - - - -
Today's "awwww" story comes from reader Kurt ...
Teacher Debbie Moon's first graders were discussing a picture of a family. One little boy in the picture had a different hair color than the other members. One of her students suggested that he was adopted.
A little girl said, 'I know all about Adoption, I was adopted..'
'What does it mean to be adopted?', asked another child.
'It means', said the girl, 'that you grew in your mommy's heart instead of her tummy!'
THE AMMO SALES RUMOR ... ILLEGAL
IMMIGRATION CURE
So ultra-lib Senator Chuck Schumer and Billy-Jeff Clinton are both speaking out for Newt Gingrich as the Republican nominee.
With friends like this ...
Which, of course, may be the point.
- - - - -
Apparently there isn't enough real stuff going on in the world to worry about; some people have to make up non-existent threats to our freedom. One example is a bogus e-mail rumor that I've been sent by dozens of people claiming that a company called Cerberus is going to control all the ammunition sales in the U.S. and will stop selling ammo to private gun-owners ... and Cerberus is owned by (gasp!) George Soros!
I have ample reason of my own to detest Soros, who tried to silence me on radio when I mentioned the biographical fact that he was an errand boy for the Nazis when Germany occupied his native Hungary. One might also argue that it was hardly an admirable goal when he tried to break the Bank of England.
Nevertheless, the ammo story is untrue, according to the National Rifle Association, which should know.
It is interesting, by the way, how the internet seems to have been largely cleansed of the many revealing and highly uncomplimentary articles written about Mr. Soros. Perhaps one of the richest men in the world has ... influence?
Incidentally, one of the executives of Cerberus is former Vice-President Dan Quayle.
- - - - -
On Thanksgiving morning we drove up north to the Phoenix area (sounds strange, doesn't it? "Up North to Phoenix" ...) and saw one of the clearest, most distressing signs of what Obamanomics has done to this country. Near Casa Grande, where I-8 and I-10 intersect, there is a large mall consisting entirely of outlet stores. In past years, especially at this season, the parking lot would be jammed with customers and business booming. There were no cars on Thanksgiving Day, of course, but one could not help but notice the "For rent" signs and empty stores -- appearing to be about half of all the shops.
- - - - -
We seem to have found a solution to the illegal immigration problem. We're told the inflow of illegals has slowed to a trickle. I live near the border, so I think there's a generous dollop of exaggeration in that evaluation. Nevertheless, if it's even marginally true, the solution if obvious. We simply remain in a permanent state of recession and economic collapse, thus lowering the incentive for job-seekers to come.
Perhaps Obama would like that to be the keynote of his campaign, since he's achieved nothing else.
- - - - -
Colin Powell was interviewed yesterday by one of the coterie of in-house leftists at CNN, Christianne Amanpour. He blamed the Tea
Party (!) along with the media for the "divisive" tone in Washington.
And to think: there were alleged conservatives who wanted this unprincipled piece of Jello to run for President!
- - - - -
Something to consider if you're planning a trip to Europe. The economic turmoil and the impending possible collapse of the Euro could make travel chaotic. Social unrest, strikes (such as recently in Greece) and even riots could have consequences ranging from unreliable communications and transportation to outright physical danger.
Keep up with the news from your intended destination(s) and even read the (usually late) travel advisories on the U.S. State Department website. There are far worse things than losing your deposit on a trip or paying a cancellation fee on your airline ticket.
- - - - -
CTV reports that Canada is dropping out of the ludicrous Kyoto Accords, which pay lip-service to controlling harmful emissions while excluding major polluters like China, India and Brazil.
- - - - -
I continue to be surprised by the numbers of people who don't recognize any difference between broadcast TV (which you can pick up with an antenna) and cable-only stations. Understandable, since most of us get even over-the-air stations delivered by cable.
By definition, cable-only programming is not BROADcasting. It is, literally, NARROWcasting; delivering its product only to those way pay for it, if only indirectly via the cable provider.
This came to mind as a tempest-in-a-teapot developed over Lee Corso dropping the "F"-bomb on ESPN's Saturday morning college football pregame show.
Some misguided folk were saying, "Oh, the FCC will get him for that!" In fact, the FCC has no control over cable-TV program content, as evidenced by the fact that porno movies are a staple of cable for those willing for pay for them.
- - - - -
A communication clarification translation: "I'm a progressive" = (A) "I'm a communist but don't have the guts to admit it," or (B) "I'm a communist but I'm too stupid to realize it."
- - - - -
For a football fan, few things are more entertaining than listening to the "experts" constantly protesting that Tim Tebow can't possibly succeed as an NFL quarterback, even as he and the Broncos continue to win.
- - - - -
Reader Terry opines on the aggrieved freeloaders of the "Occupy" annoyance ...
"We are plagued with the curse of time. Every 20 years, or so, the Commies raise their festering pustule heads to rant and rave about the "evils" of capitalism. We can thank the grade school teachers, who resurrect this social nightmare every few decades, because they have the first 'at bat' with our mush heads leaving the familial pouch.
"It only annoys us because for those of us in our 50's and 60's it's just another rerun. Been there, done that."
- - - - -
Len, the haiku master, contributes the follow in answer to an earlier question about the recipe for an Occu-pie ...
Fill it with food stamps.
Add welfare, loans, grants, and cash.
Call it Occ-u-pie.
- - - - -
Reader Barbara offers words to live by ...
Money cannot buy happiness, but it's more comfortable to cry in a Mercedes than on a bicycle.
Alcohol does not solve any problems, but then again, neither does milk.
- - - - -
From Mad Mike ...
An elderly man on a Moped pulls up next to a doctor at a street light.
The old man looks over and asks, 'What kind of car ya got there, sonny ?'
The doctor replies, 'A Ferrari GTO. It cost half a million dollars ! '
'Why does it cost so much?'
'Because this car can do up to 320 miles an hour!' states the doctor proudly.
The Moped driver asks, 'Mind if I take a look inside?'
'No problem,' replies the doctor.
Sitting back on his Moped, the old man says, 'That's a pretty nice car, all right... But I'll stick with my Moped !'
Just then the light changes, so the doctor decides to show the old man just what his car can do.
He floors it, and within 30 seconds the speedometer reads 160 mph.
Suddenly, he notices a dot in his rear view mirror. It seems to be getting closer!
He slows down to see what it could be and suddenly WHOOOOSSSHHH ! -- something whips by him going much faster !
He takes the Ferrari up to 250 mph. Up ahead of him, he sees that it's the old man on the Moped!
He hits the gas and passes the Moped at 275 mph
And he's feeling pretty good until he looks in his mirror and sees the old man gaining on him AGAIN!
Suddenly, the Moped plows into the back of his Ferrari, demolishing the rear end.
Unbelievably, the old man is still alive. He runs to him and says, 'I'm a doctor.... Is there anything I can do for you?'
The old man whispers, 'Unhook my suspenders from your side view mirror!'
HOUSE AN INVESTMENT? ... CAIN'S
VIABILITY VANISHING
Think Americans are conflicted and confused? Compare these three headlines from the Rasmussen Reports poll:
"47% View Home-Buying As Family’s Best Investment"
"37% Say Their Home Is Worth Less Than What They Owe On It"
"Only 12% Expect Value of Their Home To Increase In Next Year"
- - - - -
From the New York Times, by Thomas Edsall ...
"For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class."
Amazing! Even the New York Times gets a whiff of reality!
Like other liberals, they've climbed aboard the "Occupy" crazy-train.
- - - - -
Republicans who become orgasmic at the thought of Newt debating Barack are kidding themselves. Any such "debate" will consist of the two candidates facing not each other, but a media "panel" which will pepper Newt with endless questions about his personal life and highly-paid government lobbying, while encouraging Obama to tell in detail how he personally killed Osama bin Laden.
- - - - -
Many Republicans are probably going to come down to a teeth-grinding choice for their nominee. The flip-flopping Romney or the question-mark-laden Gingrich with both his personal history and tainted lobbying. They will console themselves with the knowledge that either would be an improvement over the incumbent.
Whatever the choice, they should remind themselves of the time-proven Rodgers Rule: Never fall in love with a politician. They'll break your heart every time.
- - - - -
Regardless of the validity of the latest accusation about Herman Cain's personal life, his campaign was dead, anyway. He's already demonstrated only too vividly that there are huge gaps in his knowledge of world affairs that should and would render him unacceptable for the Big Job.
- - - - -
In terminology borrowed from movie-maker lingo meaning "get to the exciting stuff", Thomas Sowell in Investors Business Daily "cuts to the chase" on immigration ...
"One of the issues that have aroused concern among conservative Republicans is that of amnesty for illegal immigrants, especially after Gingrich said that it would not be "humane" to deport someone who has been living and working here for years.
"Let's go back to square one. The purpose of American immigration laws and policies is not to be either humane or inhumane to illegal immigrants. The purpose of immigration laws and policies is to serve the national interest of this country.
"There is no inherent right to come live in the United States, in disregard of whether the American people want you here. Nor does the passage of time confer any such right retroactively."
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We take our good news where we can. Congressman Barney Frank won't be running for re-election next year.
This is not, however, an unmixed blessing. Replacing him as the ranking Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee is ... Maxine Waters.
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Now Bill Clinton says HE should pay more taxes. Okay. But when do these rich whiners for higher taxes pay more voluntarily? The IRS will be happy to accept whatever additional contribution they'd care to make.
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Max Boot in Commentary gets to the root of the latest U.S.-Pakistan contretemps ...
"The only thing surprising about the latest blow-up between the U.S. and Pakistan is that anyone is surprised about it. It seems that Pakistani soldiers fired on U.S. and Afghan forces operating on the Afghan side of the border. The U.S. forces called in air strikes which reportedly killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers. Pakistan has responded furiously by closing—temporarily one assumes—the supply line from Karachi that carries roughly 40 percent of the non-lethal supplies used by NATO forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan has also curtailed cooperation in the wider war against al-Qaeda, announcing it will kick the CIA out of an airfield that has been used to support drone strikes. In short, instead of cracking down on their own soldiers who are firing on ostensible “allies,” the Pakistani generals are attacking those very “allies” for doing what any other military force in the world would do when fired upon—i.e. return fire."
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James Delingpole in the Wall Street Journal on the latest expose of the global warming fraud ...
"Last week, 5,000 files of private email correspondence among several of the world's top climate scientists were anonymously leaked onto the Internet. Like the first "climategate" leak of 2009, the latest release shows top scientists in the field fudging data, conspiring to bully and silence opponents, and displaying far less certainty about the reliability of anthropogenic global warming theory in private than they ever admit in public.
"The new release of emails was timed to coincide with the second anniversary of the original climategate leak and with the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa. And it has already stirred strong emotions. To Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), for example, the leaker or leakers responsible are attempting to "sabotage the international climate talks" and should be identified and brought "to justice."
"One might sympathize with Mr. Markey's outrage if, say, the emails were maliciously rewritten or invented. But at least one scientist involved—Mr. Mann—has confirmed that the emails are genuine, as were the first batch released two years ago. So any malfeasance revealed therein ought to be blamed on the scientists who wrote them, rather than on the whistleblower who exposed them."
Take note: some presidential candidates, as well as the incumbent, bought into this bogus nonsense. The cretinous Jon Huntsman still does.
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Jim Lacey summarizes the disintegration of the "global warming" myth neatly in NRO ...
"Global-warming skeptics spend much of their time knocking down the fatuous warmist claim that the science is settled. According to the warmists, this singular piece of settled science is attested to by hundreds or thousands of highly credentialed scientists. In truth, virtually the entire warmist edifice is built around a small, tightly knit coterie of persons (one hesitates to refer to folks with so little respect for the scientific method as scientists) willing to falsify data and manipulate findings; or, to put it bluntly, to lie in order to push a political agenda not supported by empirical evidence."
The whole silly farce gathered undeserved attention because there are obviously many people who will avoid worrying about real problems calling for hard solutions, choosing instead to obsess over a fantasy bogeyman.
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Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute spoke last year at a conference in Switzerland and got some alarming news ...
"What made this conference remarkable was not the presentations, though they were generally quite interesting. The stunning part of the conference was learning – as part of casual conversation during breaks, meals, and other socializing time – how many rich people are planning for the eventual collapse of European society.
"Not stagnation. Not gradual decline. Collapse.
"As in riots, social disarray, plundering, and chaos. A non-trivial number of these people think the rioting in places such as Greece and England is just the tip of the iceberg, and they have plans – if bad things begin to happen – to escape to jurisdictions ranging from Australia to Costa Rica (several of them remarked that they no longer see the U.S. as a good long-run refuge)."
-- Townhall.com --
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It may be morbid curiosity, but what kind of people really CARE about Kim Kardashian or her siblings? Are there really people whose heads are so vacant and lives so empty?
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Any mid-level football team in the Southeastern Conference would beat the champion of any other conference.
Funniest sports line of the week: "Other teams are wishing the Western Division of the SEC would be admitted to the NFL."
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Forecast. Within two years, Urban Meyer will have Ohio State back atop the Big Ten (or whatever number they're using this week); within five years, he'll quit.
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First-graders were asked by their teacher to complete a few well-known (to adults) proverbs. First are the opening words, followed by the younsters' responses ...
Don't change horses ... until they stop running.
Strike while the ... bug is close.
It's always darkest before ... Daylight Saving Time.
A miss is as good as a ... Mr.
A penny saved is ... not much.
There are none so blind as ... Stevie Wonder.
Better late than ... pregnant.
-- Thanks, Mr. Hill! --
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Cindy Adams (NY Post) reports on this overheard prayer ...
“Dear Father: Please. For this year a thin body and a fat bank account. Don’t mix them up again as you did last year.”
B.O. LOSING HIS GRIP? ... ANOTHER
INFLATION WARNING
Are Democrat Senators revolting? No, no -- I don't mean THAT way. I mean a shred of common sense overriding whatever remaining commitment some have to Obama, reflected in a 61-37 vote to ensure that our military will have custody of any Al Qaeda terrorists caught in this country, even if they're American citizens. Obama wants them turned over to the Justice Department, run by his good buddy and racist, Eric Holder.
Sixteen Democrats plus independent Joe Lieberman crossed over to vote with Republicans to renounce this example of Obama silliness.
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Does the empty suit in the White House really expect the Iranian government to denounce, much less punish, the mob that stormed the British embassy, when anyone who cares knows that the Iranian government was behind that violation of international law? By the way, the same president who thought we had 58 states ("I've campaigned in 57 states, with one to go") also doesn't know the difference between England, which is one part of the nation of Britain (along with Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales) and the country as a whole. The Hah-vuhd man referred to the "English embassy".
Yet another in a long string of embarrassments ...
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Keep watching for further news that, in order to bail out Greece and Italy, we pump out more inflated dollars to keep those irresponsible governments afloat. After all, why wouldn't Obama do it, since their fiscal policies are only slightly more irresponsible than what he's doing here.
If it happens, it simply means that whatever dollars you have stashed away in banks, mutual funds ... whatever ... become worth less. It's all part of the master socialist plan to wreck the most successful economy the world has ever seen. The "Occupy" nuts will approve -- or would if they even understood it.
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Historical irony abounds in the news that the countries of Western Europe, once conquered militarily by Germany, are now begging that same nation to help bail them out of their catastrophic financial mess. A mess created by the same mentality that motivates the "Occupy" leeches in the U.S. -- penalize the productive to provide a free ride for the leeches.
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Even some liberals were sick of retiring Congressman Barney Frank. Under the headline "Barney the bully: Congressman Frank’s other legacy", Dana Millbank writes in the Washington Post, "Barney Frank, liberal lion, gay pioneer and respected legislator, is also one mean and ornery S.O.B.
"No question, Frank is one of the smartest on Capitol Hill and probably the most colorful. But he is also one of the most notorious bullies, known for berating staff, alienating allies and causing aides to cower in fear of his gratuitous and frequent browbeatings."
Personally, I'll never forget Barney's outrage when I questioned the motivation of gay demonstrators outside the Democrat convention that nominated Bill Clinton. The late Dwayne Garrett and I were interviewing him in the ABC studios, located next to Madison Square Garden in New York, where the convention was being held. I simply asked him if the demands the gay mob was demanding could be satisfied, no matter what his party offered.
The congressman became totally unglued and began waving a finger at me across the table. He REALLY lost it when I said, "I won't be lectured by a man who lets his boyfriend run a whorehouse in his (Frank's) own apartment." It was a story that was in the news for a few days, until the Big Media buried it.
Immediately we -- I almost wrote, "came to blows" -- rose and confronted each other across the table with a strong dose of menace, and I fervently hoped he would give me reason to pop him. He didn't, but the confrontation so amused Dwayne that he turned his chair over backward, laughing.
This all took place during a live broadcast. The shouting ... the threats ... chairs crashing ... laughter; it was a great moment in broadcasting.
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The editors of National Review have composed an epitaph for the political career of Congressman Barney Frank ...
"Rep. Barney Frank will be remembered for three things: First, he was not only the first openly gay member of Congress but the first involved in a gay-prostitution scandal. Second, he said, “I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness” regarding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as exercised with regard to other government-affiliated agencies, preferring, as he memorably put it, to 'roll the dice a little bit.' Third, he was co-author of the Frank-Dodd financial-reform legislation. Which is to say, Representative Frank will be remembered as an embarrassment, a reckless gambler, and a legislative malefactor."
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Last week, long-time, big-time Obama Chicago crony and contributor ... the man who arranged sweetheart real estate deals for B.O. ... Tony Rezko, was sentenced to ten years in prison for bribery, fraud, corruption -- the usual Chicago political cornucopia.
Now. How much did you hear or read about it in the Big Media? Thought so.
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One of the world's great exercises in political tap-dancing and evasion. That summarizes the Mitt Romney interview conducted yesterday by Bret Baier of Fox News.
Then we have Newt Gingrich, trying to extricate himself from his pro-amnesty statement on illegal immigration, which he insists ISN'T amnesty.
Yes, it is.
What choices we have ...
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"Don Berwick at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement has worked for years to spread the word that the same systematic approach to quality control that has worked so well in manufacturing could create a dramatically safer, less expensive and more effective system of health and health care." -- Newt Gingrich on the man whose views on health care, including thinly-veiled support for denying care to elderly with serious diseases, are so radical not even the Democrat-controlled Senate would confirm him as President Obama's chosen director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees Obamacare.
Don't say you weren't warned.
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Here's a truly venomous protest. Two farmers fed up with alleged bribery demands emptied three bags filled with snakes in the tax office in northern India.
The 40 or so snakes of various sizes and species — including at least four cobras — sent clerks and taxpayers climbing atop tables and racing out the door to escape the office in the town of Basti.
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Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal with some relevant comparisons between the "global warming" cult and other religions, living and extinct ...
"Consider the case of global warming, another system of doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen. As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term 'climate change' when thermometers don't oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other 'deniers.' And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit.
"With global warming, we have a religion whose leaders are prone to spasms of anger and whose followers are beginning to twitch with boredom. Perhaps that's another way religions die."
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Nicolaus Mills is professor of American Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and author of "Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America's Coming of Age as a Superpower." He revealed the following in an opinion piece of the CNN website, revealing that Affirmative Action means a lot more than a LEVEL playing field.
"As Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford show in their study of race and class in college admissions, "No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal," selective colleges give blacks a 310-point bonus and Hispanics a 130-point bonus on the SAT test in order to achieve a measure of diversity."
What's that saying? "All I want is an unfair advantage"?
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Even the most rabid liberal can't find any substantive basis for comparing the Tea Party folk to the dirty rabble defecating in public that make up a pungent part of the "Occupy" movement. At every rally and gathering, the Tea Party folk have behaved responsibly and left the venue clean.
The Tea Party movement is about promoting responsible fiscal behavior by the government -- which, of course, is why liberals with their visceral commitment to irresponsible government find conservatives abhorrent.
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It is common for younger people to wonder why most folk get more conservative as they get older. The answer, of course, is that they learned from experience that youthful Utopian fantasies about masses of people working together, sharing equally and thus creating ideal society didn't work in the real world.
A classic story illustrates both that idealistic but misguided thinking and the cure for it.
A rare creature, a conservative on a college faculty, grew tired of having the socialistic nonsense fed to students by the usual left-wing faculty and undertook an objective response.
He told his class that they would form groups of three to study together and would be graded by their group, all three to get the same grade.
They were delighted, since this conformed to the philosophy in which they had been inculcated.
The inevitable happened. In each threesome, the brightest, hardest-working student was soon doing most, if not all, of the studying and preparation ... and got no greater reward than the two others, who had quickly learned that they could coast and get the same payoff in grades as the student carrying the load.
Just as inevitably, the worker-bee figured out it wasn't fair and resolved that if greater work paid no better than free-loading, then the parasitical free-loader life was the way to go! And everyone's grades soon slid downhill.
Therein lies the fundamental flaw in socialism. The idea is that everyone will work and put into the pot -- the needs of a society -- and take only a fair share. "To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability," as Marx put it.
But human nature being what it is, it evolved that some took out far more than they put in the common pot. And thus the collapse of the Marxist system. You know; the one toward which our Dear Leader is clearly disposed.
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Some observations on our political culture by Wes Pruden of the Washington Times ...
"We’ve reduced our presidents since to mere celebrities, making them compete for public attention with the likes of Lady Gaga, Charlie Sheen and the usual assortment of hip-hop “artists”. Moral standards are for sissies. The presidential debates have further reduced the candidates to pretenders to Comedy Central, competing with puns, one-liners and bon mots, often auditioning for cable-TV talk shows. Mike Huckabee didn’t make it to the White House but got a TV show, and he still gets an occasional mention as somebody’s prospective running mate."
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For decades there have been reports that President Roosevelt had ample warning of the forthcoming attack on Pearl Harbor. Some have speculated the he wanted to get us involved in WW2 and wanted to use that attack to rouse the nation from the isolationist lethargy that had been the state of mind since WW1.
Now, a declassified FBI file reveals that three days before the Dec. 7, 1941 Japanese attack, the President was warned in a memo from naval intelligence that Tokyo's military and spy network was focused on Hawaii. In the newly revealed 20-page memo, the Office of Naval Intelligence on December 4 warned, "In anticipation of open conflict with this country, Japan is vigorously utilizing every available agency to secure military, naval and commercial information, paying particular attention to the West Coast, the Panama Canal and the Territory of Hawaii."
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Without further elaboration, I would like to state my view that Froma Harrop, whom I discovered by accident, is nuts.
If you aren't familiar with this person, count your blessings.
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Today's study assignment for reporters is ... learn the correct usage of "different from" and "different than".
It is a continuing conundrum.
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A little story from a reader to help get you into the Christmas spirit ...
On a cold day in December, a little boy about 10-years-old, was standing before a shoe store, barefooted, peering through the window, and shivering with cold.
A lady approached the young boy and said, 'My, but you're in such deep thought staring in that window!'
'I was asking God to give me a pair of shoes,' was the boy's reply.
The lady took him by the hand, went into the store, and asked the clerk to get half a dozen pairs of socks for the boy. She then asked if he could give her a basin of water and a towel.
She took the little fellow to the back of the store and, removing her gloves, knelt down, washed his feet, and dried them with the towel. She put the new socks on him, then bought him a new pair of shoes.
She patted him on the head and said, 'You'll be more comfortable now..'
As she turned to go, the astonished boy caught her by the hand, and looking up into her face asked her, 'Are you God's wife?'
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Sky-guy says he's become more security-conscious since a neighborhood burglary. Realizing that the lock on his door would be insufficient to stop a determined criminal, he placed this note on his front door:
"HONEY, DON'T COME IN. THE SNAKE IS LOOSE"
"...and now, if you'll excuse me..."