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March, 2012

SUCKERS IN THE WHITE HOUSE ... FOOLISHNESS AT THE FED ...
N.Y. TIMES AND ITS MOMENTS IN HISTORY

Taken in -- again. Again we're sending food to North Korea. Again they're promising to behave like a civilized nation. They won't.  How many times and how many U.S. presidents have to be suckered in this game before they figure it out? Is a defective North Korea gene a pre-condition for getting elected president of the Unites States?

- - - - -

From the "What a Crock!" department ...
     Yesterday on Fox News a diplomat and a high-ranking military officer were being interviewed. They were in Afghanistan and sounded like Jay Carney parrots reciting, telling us everything was fine there and we were winning and all was well between us and the Afghans.  They dispensed enough fertilizer in three minuets to to assure a bumper corn crop in the entire Midwest.
     Lying, of course, is the official policy of the Obama administration, and woe betide anyone on the government payroll who doesn't toe the party line. How embarrassing for these two willful dupes.  

- - - - -

Another slimy Democrat congressman, Moran of Virginia, complains about people "disrespecting" the president. Too damned bad about the First Amendment thing, isn't it, creep? Of course, give the tyrannically-inclined Chicago pol enough time and he'll abolish it.

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John Podhoretz, NY Post, summarizes Romney's position, post-Michigan ...
     "Romney did worse than he should, and that happened not because Santorum is such a contender, but because Romney keeps shooting himself in the foot he has put in his own mouth.
     "After his stunning victory in Florida, he said he 'didn’t care about the poor.' After his commanding victory in last week’s debate, he spoke about his wife’s 'couple of Cadillacs' and his friends 'who own NASCAR teams.' These are mistakes he can’t afford, especially now that it appears he is gaining momentum among Republican voters.
     "Don’t improvise, Mitt. Don’t relax. Don’t go off the cuff. Focus. Focus. Focus."

And somebody needs to tell him: If you're going for the NASCAR vote -- the FANS vote -- their admiration is for the drivers, not for the rich guys who own the teams. That stupid remark makes you sound like a country-club snob. And the "two Cadillac" revelation should have been limited to, "We have GM cars."

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Ben Bernanke is a fool (cont.) ...
     The idiot-in-charge at the Federal Reserve says he plans to hold interest rates at record-low levels at least until 2014, even though there's little indication that those levels have done anything significant to improve the economy.
     One major aspect of such low rates that is always overlooked by the media goo-goos. They always focus on the purported benefits, while ignoring the painful reality for many retirees; the reality that many of those folk depend on interest from CDs to improve their standard of living. Under the puerile policy perpetrated by Bernanke, they are suffering.
     Near the top of the "to-do" list for the next president should be, "Find a way to get rid of Bernanke." His appointment stands as one of George W. Bush's worst mistakes. Having such a fool in charge of the Fed buttresses the argument of those who think the entire institution should be consigned to the trash heap.

- - - - -

More bungling bureaucrats in action ...
     Fannie Mae will request another $4.6 billion in US government aid after posting a $2.41 billion loss in the fourth quarter.
     And the Obama administration has been giving bonuses to the cretins who run this gigantic fraud!

- - - - -

Jay Leno --
      "Due to the rising price of oil and gas, the Obama administration announced that they're considering dipping into our national strategic re-election reserves. I mean, I'm sorry — strategic OIL reserves."

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And the current leading contenders for the title, "Biggest Idiot / Liar in Washington" --
Kathleen Sebelius, Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services, who continues to lie and obfuscate about Obamacare and Obama's mandatory "free" birth control ...
     ...and...
Steven Chu, Obama's Secretary of Energy, who at least told the truth when he said his goal was NOT to reduce gasoline prices. He'd prefer them to be around $8 a gallon, as in much of Europe.

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David Harsanyi of the Washington Examiner unloads on Obama's "load of you-know-what" ...
     "Speaking before the United Auto Workers union in Washington, Obama, champion of the working man: 'They're out there talking about you like you're some special interest that needs to be beaten down,' Obama told cheering union members. And those who claim that bailouts were just a labor payback are simply peddling a 'load of you-know-what.'
     "I do know what, Mr. President.
     "Because actually, the United Auto Workers union IS a special interest. Like other unions, the UWA regularly lobbies Congress, funds Democratic candidates across the country with millions, and advocates public policy that undercuts competition and free trade. And, as The New York Times recently reported, the UAW and other unions will 'put their vast political organizations into motion behind Mr. Obama.' (Nothing like a few strategic taxpayer 'investments' to get labor inspired.)"

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Another illiterate who doesn't know the difference between "criterion" (singular) and "criteria" (plural) mouths off again ...
     "My CRITERIA in any decision I make ...  is what is going to best protect our folks and make sure that they can accomplish their mission."
     -- Harvard graduate Barack Obama, yesterday --

- - - - -

Where's the 400 grand, Barack?
     The Chicago Observer breaks the story: Daniel T. Frawley, a former business partner of Antoin “Tony” Rezko, claims he gave Rezko $400,000 that Rezko gave to then U.S. Senator Barack Obama. This claim comes through Frawley’s emails to, and conversations with, Robert “Bob” Cooley, former Chicago mob lawyer turned government informer and author of the book on Chicago corruption entitled “When Corruption Was King”. Cooley was the star witness in a series of trials in the early 1990’s as part of an F.B.I. investigation named Operation Gambat.

I know; corruption in Chicago politics. Hard to believe ...

- - - - -

     "This must be the most blame-deflecting White House in our nation’s history. This is truly the Eddie Haskell presidency, so named after the bratty 'Leave It to Beaver' character who always made a mess when adults’ backs were turned and then blamed Wally and the Beav.
     "For a while, President Blameless could shirk responsibility by pointing fingers at his predecessor. That got old, though I can’t say in a hurry. As late as last July, the White House sought to prove that Dallas resident George W. Bush was still responsible for all the nation’s budget troubles."  -- Charlotte Hays, Washington Times --

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Why only fools take the New York Times seriously ...
     The leftist rag established its institutionalized deception in 1919 when one of their "star" reporters, Lincoln Steffens, wrote while reporting from Russia in 1919, "“I have seen the future and it works.”  He was writing about communism, after viewing the slaughter of millions by adherents of that insane ideology.
     The Times further compounded its commitment to leftism by assuring its gullible readers repeatedly that Fidel Castro's 1950's lie that he was "not a communist" was to be believed.
     Very recently the ex-executive editor and now columnist Bill Keller admitted that the Times doesn't even pretend to be an unbiased news source. Gee, Bill, who'd' a'thunk it?
     And ... who's dumb enough to believe that David Brooks, the Times' in-house alleged "conservative" columnist is, by any definition, conservative?

- - - - -

Advice for the age of Obama ...
     THE SUREST WAY TO LOSE YOUR LIBERTIES IS TO ASSUME YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE THEM.
     -- Thanks, Arthur --

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Mr. Eason is steamed ...
     "I just saw a clip on TV that woke me up...
Miz Pelosi was hearing testimony from a Georgetown LAW student. She can't afford to pay for her own 'women's health' insurance...birth control, etc.  Pelosi was properly sympathetic.
      "Question:  Why is this young law student asking US to pay for it? (She can afford law school, and if she gets a loan, and becomes a GEORGETOWN-TRAINED lawyer, can't she pay it back on her income?
     "Question:  Hasn't anyone ever considered ABSTINENCE?  I would think a law student wouldn't have a lot of time to ..... you know ..."

- - - - -

Victor Davis Hanson reminds us of the recurring American fantasy ...
     "We repeatedly seek to remake the world in our image, become frustrated that we cannot, then start to disengage and disarm, retreat home and promise to stay there -- before starting the cycle over.
     "After World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and, more recently, our wars in the Middle East, we said 'never again' -- only to lecture others and, in schizophrenic fashion, intervene once more. At times, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush all thought they could make the world safe for democracy. Calvin Coolidge, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama assumed we had neither the money nor the virtue to try."     -- Townhall.com --

- - - - -

More language-mangling ...
     I often hear or read something along the lines of, "What he says today doesn't JIVE with what he said last week," meaning it's at odds with the previous statement; doesn't conform.
     The correct word is JIBE. JIVE is, in street vernacular, to talk bullfeathers, as in, "You talkin' jive, dude!"

- - - - -

Message from a retiree ...
     "These days about half the stuff in my shopping cart says, 'For fast relief.'"
     ... also ...
THE SENILITY PRAYER :
     Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

- - - - -

Conan O'Brien --
     "Rick Santorum will be assigned Secret Service agents. This is the first time Santorum has agreed to use any kind of protection."
PETROLEUM PREVARICATIONS ...
OBAMA--DOMESTIC OR IMPORTED?
DUMMIES DON'T KNOW THEY'RE DUMB

Let's see if I have this right ...
     Our maybe-Muslim, probably-Marxist, possibly-alien president now tells us the high cost of gasoline is all the fault of -- ta-da!! -- the evil oil companies! This comes only two days after his chosen head of the Energy Department, an utter goofball named Steven Chu (another University of California-Berkeley crackpot) announced that Obama administration policy was NOT to try to lower gasoline prices and who is on-record as having said that what the Obamunists wanted to do was RAISE gasoline prices to European levels -- i.e., $8-$10 a gallon.
     Yes, I think I've got it ...

- - - - -

A simple question every Republican voter must ask him/herself:
Which is more important? "My guy" winning the nomination ... or beating Obama?
If in doubt, study the meaning of the term "pyrrhic victory."
Wishful thinking has no place in this year's election. Too much is at stake. Obama is so widely disliked and his record so awful, only Republican stupidity can lose the election. But who doubts that possibility? Obama, after all, does have one of the most durable human emotions going for him. Envy.

- - - - -

Yes, I believe Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, and his team of legal experts who maintain that the Obama "birth certificate" is fake. Anyone with the initiative to take a look on YouTube at Obama's statements about being born in Kenya, also stated by his wife, would have to concede the likelihood that the Arpaio report is correct.
     If that's the case, just what do we do about the more-than-half of American voters who are gullible idiots? I don't have an answer to that.
     What do we do about a Republican Party that nominates stumblebums like John McCain? I don't have an answer to that, either.

One point that is not at all debatable is the fact that, to Muslims, Obama IS a Muslim. In Islam, if the father is a Muslim -- and there is no doubt that Obama's father WAS -- then the child is Muslim. Forever. In Islam the penalty for renouncing the faith is death.

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Show of hands, please. All who are surprised that the Big Media, starting with the decrepit alphabet networks, are doing their damndest to bury the Sheriff Joe story on Obama's fake birth certificate.
     The lying SOBs wouldn't know the truth if it hit them in the face. I worked among them for decades; I know whereof I write.

- - - - -

From Doctor L. W., medical research that confirms something many of us have suspected. Stupid people don't even KNOW they're stupid ...
     "A growing body of psychology research shows that incompetence deprives people of the ability to recognize their own incompetence. To put it bluntly, dumb people are too dumb to know it. Similarly, unfunny people don't have a good enough sense of humor to tell.
     "This disconnect may be responsible for many of society's problems.
     "With more than a decade's worth of research, David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, has demonstrated that humans find it "intrinsically difficult to get a sense of what we don't know." Whether an individual lacks competence in logical reasoning, emotional intelligence, humor or even chess abilities, the person still tends to rate his or her skills in that area as being above average.
     "The ultimate takeaway of the research is the reminder that you really may not be as great as you think you are. And you might not be right about the things you believe you're right about. And if you try to joke about all this, you might not come off as funny as you think."

Which relates to the next item.

- - - - -

One enduring lesson from long years in the media ...
     When someone with a strong opinion tells me, "I know I speak for many (or millions) when I say blah-blah-blah ..."
     My immediate reaction is, "No. At most you speak only for a few friends or acquaintance, but more likely only for yourself."

In such instances, I'm reminded of the quote attributed to longtime New York Times film critic Pauline Kael whose elitist lifestyle led to a quote attributed to her after Richard Nixon was elected: she "couldn't believe Nixon had won," since no one she knew had voted for him.
     A perfect example of the proclivity to assume that, because our own circle of friends holds a particular view, it's widely-held. The reason, of course, is that most of us choose to associate largely with people who DO share our views. Thus we tend to lightly-regard unbiased polls when we disagree with their results.

All of which explains why my reaction to people who develop an irrational affection for a politician -- any politician of whatever party -- is one of total, utter contempt. When I see or hear a bunch of hyenas cheering mindlessly for any politician, I regard them as ... at best ... no more intelligent than a bunch of pre-pubescent children reacting to the latest teen-idol who'll be forgotten next year. (And where IS Herman Cain today?)

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Jay Carney, Obama's pathetic spokes-parrot whose mendacity is almost laughable, insists that his boss is not in a campaign mode. Last night he attended his 100th fundraiser since announcing that he would stand for re-election. As the Daily Caller points out, during that same period he's had only about 25 meetings with his Secretary of Defense. Priorities, priorities ...

By the way, Jay, now that a couple more American soldiers have been killed by hysterical Afghans, tell us again how Obama's degrading apology has "calmed things down."

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London Dave, who observes the silliness in Washington from across the Atlantic, has news from the Obamster ...
     "In El Commandante-in-Chief's alternate looniverse of 'green' energy, he seems to think solar panels are advanced technology. To adopt the vernacular...
      "Dude... when the Chinese are popping them out at 3 bucks  a panel -- at least a dollar less than a gallon of gas -- it ain't ADVANCED freakin' technology. Solar panels were first conceived in 1839. A mere 173 years ago. Martin van Buren was then the 11th President. As a product they've been around since 1889! That's only 123 years ago when Benjamin Harrison was the 26th President."

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Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune considers our entanglement in Afghanistan ...
     "Afghans are rioting, American soldiers are regularly murdered by their allies, the Taliban are hanging in, and civilian casualties in Afghanistan set a record last year. But a Pentagon spokesman assures us that 'the fundamentals of our strategy remain sound.'
     "When Afghans erupted in rage over the careless burning of Korans at Bagram Airbase, the upheaval was not just about Muslim holy books. It was also about the grossly dysfunctional relationship between us and them -- a product of the huge cultural gulf, our outsized ambitions and the irritant of our presence.
     "Afghanistan is a medieval country that we can barely begin to understand. Yet we presume that with all our money, technology, weaponry and wisdom, we can mold it like soft clay."

One word: Hubris.

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Andrew Breitbart. Gone far too young. He was important.
     The fact that media leftists are actually gloating over his death tells us nothing we didn't already know about the scumbags. Andrew probably wouldn't be surprised.

- - - - -

More liberal hysteria in the news. There's (another) outcry from the thumb-suckers demanding that Rush Limbaugh be "fired" for statements he made about government-mandated "free" birth control for women.
     These idiots are so dumb, they don't know that Rush can't be "fired". Rush works for ... well ... Rush.  His program is distributed by a division of Clear Channel Media, but no station or network "owns" him. They PAY for the right to carry his program. And in a market of any size, a station that chooses not to buy the program is instantly replaced by another station that will. And in cities where Clear Channel owns some of its hundreds of stations, they sometimes choose to put him on one of their own rather than collecting revenue from another outlet.

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The Washington Free Beacon carries news about a current contender for the title "Craziest Person in Washington" ...
     Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is facing criticism for her upcoming appearance at a fundraiser hosted by an American Muslim leader who was placed on the Federal Terrorist Watch List.
     Wasserman Schultz is set to keynote an annual fundraising dinner for EMERGE USA, a Muslim community group led by Khurrum Wahid, a controversial attorney with a track record of defending accused terrorists and associating with Muslim Brotherhood-backed groups.

- - - - -

We all know them. Big-city liberals who shrug off drastic gasoline price increases because, "I take public transportation, so it means nothing to me."
     Wrong.
     Generally, they're so dumb they see no connection between the cost of goods they buy every day -- like food -- and the cost of transporting it. Or they're so dumb, they don't think that cost will be passed along to them.

- - - - -

Professor Walter Williams addresses the bete noire of liberals, "inequality" ...
     "Female doctors earn only 64 percent of the income that male doctors earn. What should be done about that? It turns out that only 16 percent of surgeons are women but 50 percent of pediatricians are women. Even though surgeons have many more years of education and training than do pediatricians, should Congress equalize their salaries or make pediatricians become surgeons?
     "Wage inequality is everywhere. With all of the excitement about New York Knick Jeremy Lin's rising stardom, nobody questions league domination by blacks, who are a mere 13 percent of our population but constitute 80 percent of NBA players and are the highest-paid ones. It's not much better in the NFL, with blacks being 65 percent of its players.
     "Colleges have made diversity their primary calling, but watch any basketball game and you'd be hard-put to find white players in roles other than bench warming.
     "There's inequality in most jobs. According to 2010 BLS data, the following jobs contain 1 percent female workers or less: boilermaking, brickmasonry, stonemasonry, septic tank servicing, sewer pipe cleaning and working with reinforcing iron and rebar.
     "Females are 97 percent of preschool and kindergarten teachers, 80 percent of social workers, 82 percent of librarians and 92 percent of dietitians and nutritionists and registered nurses.
     "One remedy that Congress might consider is to require females, who are over-represented in fields such as preschool and kindergarten teaching, to become boilermakers and brickmasons and mandate that male boilermakers and brickmasons become preschool and kindergarten teachers until both of their percentages are equal to their percentages in the population."
     -- Townhall.com --

- - - - -

Ron Paul is wrong on a lot of things, starting with his assumption that Iran represents no nuclear threat. But he's probably right when he observes that the Fed -- the Federal Reserve Board, run by the boob Bernanke -- will self-destruct.

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The wily Burt Prelutsky revisits a fundamental fact of human nature. People lie. Even to themselves.
     "When people insist they are turned off by negative campaigning, they lie. They can't help it. It sounds like something they're expected to say, just like they're supposed to be turned off by sex and violence in movies and TV. But without screen violence, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Richard Widmark, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Matt Damon and Russell Crowe, would have wound up pumping gas or selling insurance for a living.
     "As for sex, if people disapproved of it the way they always claim, pornography wouldn't be one of the five largest industries in America, the bathing suit issue of Sports Illustrated wouldn't sell out every year and Hugh Hefner would be a retired shoe salesman living quietly in a Chicago suburb.
     "The fact is, negative campaigning works. Mainly it works because it's fact-based, unlike the pipe dreams the politicians try to sell us when they promise to cut the size and power of government. As any sane person realizes, it goes entirely against human nature for a person to seek the presidency or a Senate seat and actually want to have a smaller staff, a tinier office and less influence than his predecessor."

- - - - -

From Philadelphia comes the story of 14-year-old Alyssa Kramer who has a remarkable ability. She can talk backward.
     Ladies and gentlemen, we have found a young lady with a limitless future in politics.

- - - -

     From Marv ... a compendium for lexiphiles ...
To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.
The professor discovered that her theory of earthquakes was on shaky ground.
The batteries were given out free of charge.
A will is a dead giveaway.
In a democracy it's your vote that counts; in feudalism, it's your Count that votes.
When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she'd dye.

We're telling your mother about this, Marv ...

- - - - -

Jay Leno --
     "The new cast of "Dancing With the Stars" has been revealed. They're leaving one spot open for whoever loses on Super Tuesday next week."

- - - - -

Jimmy Fallon --
     "Bill Nye the Science Guy is suing his ex-girlfriend for more than $50,000 in legal bills. Legal experts were shocked — they were like, 'Bill Nye the Science Guy had a girlfriend?'”


WATTS THAT? NO VOLTage? ...
SANTORUM SINKING, OHIO IN DOUBT...
COSTA'S CAPTAIN Cruuuunch
         

By most accounts, the Chevy Volt is a piece of crap that isn't selling, so it's no surprise that late yesterday, in the "Friday news dump," GM announced it was stopping production "for now" and laying off 1,300 workers.
     Another Obama triumph at Government Motors! His answer to the near-nonexistent sales of this dog is to offer another ten-grand tax break for committed lefties who do deign to buy it.

The joke is ... the Obamunists are blaming "the media" for pathetic sales; the dung-brained suck-ups who've been shamelessly whoring for their Dear Leader since he first emerged from the sewer of Chicago politics.

- - - - -

Unrealistic Fantasies Department ...
     The four-year cycle repeats. Virtually every election year there's a competitive scramble for the presidential nomination by the out-of-power party. And by this stage we inevitably hear from some of the competitors and their supporters, "My opponent should get out of the race because he's dividing the party, etc."
     How can any rational, adult human being possibly believe that a person whose ego is so large that he looks in the mirror every morning and imagines he sees the only person qualified to lead the free world looking back at him is going to give up that goal until he is soundly defeated?
    The visceral reaction is as predictable as sunrise: "ME get out?!  No! YOU get out!"

- - - - -

Rasmussen shows the once large (18 points two weeks ago) Santorum lead in Ohio fading fast. Latest numbers have his lead over Romney down to two points, 33%-31%.
     Nationwide, Romney's now up, 40%-24%. Ohio may determine whether Santorum has staying power, or was just the latest non-Romney to rise ... and fall. You know, like Perry and Cain and Newt and ...

- - - - -

An inefficient or incompetent campaign organization may cost Santorum dearly in Ohio. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the major newspaper in the state, reports that he failed to qualify for any district delegates in three Ohio congressional districts because he didn't turn in delegate names there. But his delegate troubles go deeper. According to the Ohio Republican Party tonight, the former Pennsylvania U.S. senator filed incomplete delegate slates in six additional Ohio districts. Altogether, this means Santorum, who until this week had a fair lead in polls in the Republican nominating race, could be ineligible for 18 Ohio district delegates.
     An Ohio win may not seal the deal for Romney, but a loss could effectively end Santorum's chances.

- - - - -

As could have been expected, Democrats are now pushing the phony proposition that Republicans want to ban birth control.  Such nonsense was predictable from the moment Santorum stupidly opened his mouth on the subject. And liberals just can't grasp the reality that many conservatives agree with Rush's essential position: if you want to get laid, pay for the protection yourself.

- - - - -

The London Daily Mail reports that the Costa Cruise Line Captain who ran the "Concordia" aground and killed more than thirty people in January crashed another cruise ship into a pier in Germany less than two years ago. This obviously leads to the question, what kind of idiots run Costa? Carnival Cruise Lines, which owns Costa, had better perform a major house-cleaning or the brand that is already seriously stained may suffer a terminal image problem..
     Between the recession and bungling boobs like this obviously-incompetent captain, the cruise industry is in big trouble already, hence the blizzard of discounts being offered to fill ships that would otherwise sail half-empty. Tip to cost-conscious cruisers: Shop the online discounters in the last few weeks before you want to sail. By then, they're REALLY scrambling to fill cabins. If they only break-even on the cost of operating the ship, they want the (virtually compulsive) tip money to pay the cabin, dining room and other staff. Otherwise, they lose them.  

- - - - -

Wes Pruden of the Washington Times evaluates Obama's bungling of the Afghanistan debacle ...
     "The president could have offered a simple explanation, not an apology, of why and how the Korans, mutilated by Muslim prisoners, were burned. The defaced Korans were inadvertently included in the refuse of the jail, and when the American soldiers dispatched to supervise the burning of the refuse saw the Korans they tried to retrieve them.
     "He could have reminded President Karzai and like-minded Muslims that respect is a two-way street, that if Muslims expect Americans to respect the content of their belief—as opposed to their right to believe it—they must show similar respect for the rights of others. No more beheading of 'infidels,' no more banning of Bibles, no more encouraging imams like Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Iraq to describe 'infidels' as equivalent to 'urine, feces, semen, dead bodies, blood, dogs, pigs, alcoholic liquors.'”

- - - - -

Jeffrey Kuhner (also Washington Times) looks at the ongoing results of Obama's "foreign policy" ...
     "He has encouraged Arab street revolts against corrupt autocracies. Long-standing American allies, such as former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, were abandoned. Yet, contrary to his simplistic narrative of freedom fighters battling tyranny, Mr. Obama has helped pave the way for the triumph of Shariah democracy - the drive to establish a global Islamic caliphate. At his core, Mr. Obama is a radical secular progressive. Like all multiculturalists, he believes in one seminal myth: Mass poverty and oppression in the Third World is America’s fault. Hence, he champions anti-colonial 'liberation movements' - the uprisings of repressed peoples, especially those in the Muslim world, chafing under authoritarian rule. Yet he never bothers to ask: What comes next? What kind of regime replaces the previous one? The results are often even worse."

- - - - -

Considering how we've been "repaid" for helping Muslims throw off the shackles of tyranny (e.g., Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan) who would wonder that most Americans are very wary of getting involved in a sewer like Syria? Especially since the "Arab spring" in Egypt and Libya appears to be merely exchanging one band of cut-throats for another -- and possibly even worse?

- - - - -

Hubris redefined ...
     ""Around the world, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, what they did was hard. It takes time. It takes more than a single term." -- Barack Obama ... Thursday ... identifying his peer-group.

- - - - -

Seriously ... I would be more inclined to expect Saudi Arabia to side with Israel in a war with Iran than have such expectations of the Obama administration. Counter-intuitive that may be, but the fact is the Saudis have solid reason to fear a nuclear-armed Iran -- more, even, than their indigenous fanatic Wahabi Muslim sect.

- - - - -

Since Korrupt Karzai of Afghanistan thinks American GI's should be tried in their courts, perhaps we should begin by putting HIM on trial in one of OUR courts.
    By the way ...
What did this numbskull Ryan Crocker do for Obama that got him the job as ambassador to Afghanistan, where he is clearly making an ass of himself?

- - - - -

     Leftist half-wits regularly accuse me of being anti-union. Just for the record, that's incorrect. I have no problem with unions in the world of private industry, so long as membership is not coerced. I am a member of two unions, myself; the American Federation of TV & Radio Artists (AFTRA) and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG).
     I DO strongly object to government-employee unions, because the work in fields where the government -- and therefore the union -- has a monopoly on a taxpayer-paid service. And I particularly detest the teachers' unions, not because of their effort to get better remuneration for teaching, but because those unions protect incompetent teachers and forever demand greater reward for deteriorating results. In the real, competitive world, you get rewarded AFTER you achieve results.

- - - - -

Housing hassles in the news ...

An Idaho couple refused to obey an eviction notice to vacate their rented house, so the owner acted expeditiously. He tore the house down with them inside.
     ... also ...
A man who lived in his trailer in a Florida trailer-park didn't pay his rent and tried to avoid eviction by locking himself inside. The owner of the facilty hitched the trailer to his truck ... and towed it all the way to Georgia.

- - - - -

What ever happened to ...
     Britney Spears?

- - - - -

Dan Sorkin has some good news for O.V. and golfers everywhere ...
     A recent study found that the average golfer walks about 900 miles a year.
     Another study found that golfers drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year.
     This means that, on average, golfers get about 41 miles to the gallon!
Kind of makes you proud. Almost makes you feel like a hybrid.

- - - - -

From a distraught reader ...
     "You may not believe this... I accidentally mixed up my medications last night with Rogaine and Viagra! This morning when I got up my hair was too stiff to comb!
OBAMA'S "STRATEGIC" NEED ...
MORE TSA TYRANNY ...
HATCHING TROUBLE IN UTAH          

Democrats are largely too dumb to know it -- even their so-called "leaders" -- but the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is maintained for genuine emergencies. Like, say, our military needing fuel during a time of crisis. It it NOT held for purposes of deluding the public when some Democrat president wants to pacify them when he's under pressure politically for stupid policies that raise gasoline prices. It is akin to treason to lie about it.

- - - - -

Burt Prelutsky's view of the Republican race ...
     "I don’t object to the contenders going after each other with axe handles. That’s what primaries are for. Every contender should have ample opportunity to besmirch the other guy’s generally sleazy reputation. How else will we be able to find out the awful truth before the general election rolls around and we hear it from the opposition?"
 
I concur. Anything negative about your favorite that you'd prefer not be discussed in intra-party attacks will certainly be brought out in the general election campaign.

More wisdom from Mr. P. on the incoherent primary scheduling ...
     "Only a Party of dunces would punish major states such as Michigan and Florida for moving up the dates of their primaries by slashing their number of delegates to the national convention in half.
     "By the time the election rolls around, I guarantee we’ll all be far more interested in the vote totals in Florida and Michigan than those coming out of Iowa and New Hampshire.
     "This is especially the case after Iowa proved that they can take two weeks to count up a handful of votes and still manage to get it wrong."

- - - - -

When do we start firing -- and jailing -- some of the little-league Nazis of the TSA, the goons who hassle people air airports?
     Latest case of out-of-control TSA thugs ...
In Hawaii, a breast-feeding mother was forced to use her breast-pump before onlookers in a rest-room to satisfy some agency pervert that the device was, in fact, a breast-pump.
     Anybody want to bet that this creep will be fired? And shouldn't Janet Napolitano, the dope who runs this ridiculous agency, be accorded  treatment similar to that imposed upon the woman in Hawaii? Perhaps on national TV?

- - - - -

Ken Blackwell (Townhall.com) evaluates Obama's evaluator of Iran ...
     "Dennis Ross, who is forever counseling administrations of both parties on how to make nice with Israel’s not-so-nice neighbors, assures us that Iran will not be able to “surprise” the West during any negotiations. He says Iran is not like Japan.
     "Really? How does he know that? Aggressive. Insular. Driven by a sense of the superiority of their own culture and religion. Willing to engage in suicide bombings. That’s an apt description of the pre-Pearl Harbor Japan, or Iran under the Mullahs today.
     "What kind of reassurance can Israel take from the statements of Mr. Obama’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Gen. Martin Dempsey said Iran is a “rational actor” on the world stage. If you assume that that means they have taken this president’s measure and will act accordingly, the general may actually be right."

Indeed. If "rational" means they've decided he's a spineless, pro-Muslim nothing.

- - - - -

Why should Netanyahu tell Obama the truth about Israel's plans for Iran, when he has every reason to suspect that Obama will immediately whisper it into ears that will pass it on to Tehran?

- - - - -

Absurd. Obama's feigned outrage over Limbaugh's coarse attack on a woman who wants somebody else to pay for her birth control.
     This from a man (?) who had no problem with Bill Maher's crude references to Sarah Palin and who, himself, referred to Tea Party Republicans as "tea baggers". That's a reference to a particularly lewd and degrading practice of some male homosexuals.
     Sandra Fluke, the law student at the center of this latest manufactured controversy, is thirty years old ... a feminist activist ... and enrolled at Georgetown University knowing full well that the university's health plan did not include contraceptives.

- - - - -

"Women's Rights" hysterics are trying to turn church-supported abortion and birth-control into something other than the constitutional issue it really is. If they want it that way, then it should be made clear to them that, while they have every legal right to have as much sex as they want, it's a helluva stretch to expect either the taxpayers or, especially, a morally-opposed church, to foot the bill for preventing unwanted pregnancies.

- - - - -

Who HASN'T listened to some of the hysterical pro-abortion activists, especially those who believe it perfectly acceptable to kill babies that have survived abortions (the so-called "partial birth" abortions) and thought, "Too bad abortion can't be retroactive in YOUR case."

- - - - -

I wonder how much attention is being paid in Britain to the possibility that their own financially-stressed nation just might need to consider the possibility that the money they're pouring down the rathole of welfare for Muslims bent on the destruction of the nation may well be needed to administer another butt-kicking of the demagogues in Buenos Aires who are trying to hide their failures behind another crusade to take the Falkland Islands.

In such a case, we -- us, U.S. -- may at least take a detached view from afar.

- - - - -

We breathlessly await the showing of the film of college student Barack Obama discovered by the late Andrew Breitbart.

- - - - -

Attorney General Eric Holder has appointed to the #3 position in Justice Department heirarchy Taliban defender Tony West, who raised $65 million for Obama's presidential campaign. West was the defense attorney for John Walker Lindh, "the American Taliban."   -- (credit--WNYW-TV, New York)

- - - - -

Rich Lowry of National Review with a view of Obama's anti-oil position ...
     "President Obama looks down on drilling almost as much as he does on people clinging bitterly to their guns and religion.
     "At a recent campaign event, he mocked Republicans for their alleged three-point energy plan, every point of which he said is a call for more drilling. When the hilarity died down, he assailed all this prospective oil and gas exploration as 'not a plan,' but 'a bumper sticker,' a cynical and witless attempt to demagogue soaring gas prices. Pity the fools who propose such asininity and the simple-minded souls who believe it.
     "We deny ourselves access to oil and gas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, off about half the Gulf Coast, and in and around Alaska. We could be sitting on as much as 1.4 trillion barrels of technically recoverable oil.
     "Oil companies will pay the federal government for the privilege (of drilling). Imagine if Solyndra had given the feds $500 million to build its solar-panel plant in California, rather than the other way around. At the same time the Obama administration has thrown billions of dollars at green energy — the president’s latest enthusiasm is algae — it has denied the government billions of dollars of revenue from new leases."

- - - - -

"In an effort to boost name recognition, GM is changing the name of its beleaguered electric car to the Chevy Slut." -- Jim Treacher.

- - - - -

Longtime Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah is in trouble with conservatives in his home state. Perhaps he should've considered that possibility during all those years when he was so publicly buddy-buddy with Ted Kennedy.

- - - - -

The kindness of communism ...
    The government of North Korea has announced that anyone caught trying to leave the country during the long period of mourning for the late Dear Leader, Kim Jon Il, will be executed. And so will every member of their family for three generations.

- - - - -
 
Samuel Gregg (The American Spectator) reveals the disaster liberals try to evade ...
     "In recent years, American liberals' love-affair with all things contemporary Western European (sans Margaret Thatcher and Benedict XVI) has acquired an increasingly desperate edge. As evidence for the European social model's severe dysfunctionality continues to mount before our eyes, the American left is acutely aware how much it discredits its decades-old effort to take America down the same economic path."

- - - - -

While Obama is cutting our military, China is increasing its own military budget by more than 11%.

- - - - -

Prescient ...
     "Reason will be replaced by Revelation. Instead of Rational Law, objective truths perceptible to any who will undergo the necessary intellectual discipline, Knowledge will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions … Whole cosmogonies will be created out of some forgotten personal resentment, complete epics written in private languages, the daubs of schoolchildren ranked above the greatest masterpieces. Idealism will be replaced by Materialism. Life after death will be an eternal dinner party where all the guests are twenty years old … Justice will be replaced by Pity as the cardinal human virtue, and all fear of retribution will vanish."
      -- W. H. Auden, "For the Time Being" written in the early 1940's.  -- (Thanks, Gordon)

- - - - -

Sign on a repair shop door:
     WE CAN REPAIR ANYTHING.
     (PLEASE KNOCK HARD ON THE DOOR -
      THE BELL DOESN'T WORK).

- - - - -

Jimmy Kimmel --
     "Now that Justin Bieber is 18, I don't have to feel weird about having his posters all over my bedroom anymore."
 
PUTIN POWER PREVAILS  ...
PERVASIVE PRIMARY PROGNOSTICATIONS ...
MORE LIBERAL HYSTERIA

Putin's back on top in Russia ... and count on it: in any encounter with Obama, the new Russian czar will eat the Community Organizer alive. The Russian election was so crooked, you'd think it was being held in Chicago.

- - - - -

For the poll-cats ...
     Nationally, Rasmussen's poll of likely Republican voters has Romney over Santorum, 40%-24%, with Gingrich at 16% and Paul at 12%. The wide lead Santorum had over Romney in Tennessee has shrunk to four points. Tennessee is a Super Tuesday state, voting tomorrow. After Ohio, it's probably the most important. And a Reuters News poll now has Ohio a dead-heat race between the two top contenders.

- - - - -

David Paul Kuhn takes the historical perspective on the presidential race ...
     "Incumbent presidents have won nearly three-quarters of their re-election campaigns since the Civil War. The economy is trending in the right direction, providing gas prices level off. The electoral map favors Democrats. Obama has a route around losing Florida and Ohio, however difficult that would prove. Republicans cannot lose either state and win.
     "Romney is the least-flawed option for Republicans. But his flaws are significant enough to matter. They did for Kerry. Yet he still made a race of it. Shift 60,000 votes in Ohio and it would have been President Kerry."

- - - - -

The redoubtable Thomas Sowell looks to Super Tuesday with trepidation ...
     "It may clarify  the future of this nation and of Western civilization. If a clear winner with a commanding lead emerges, the question then becomes whether that candidate is someone who is likely to defeat Barack Obama. If not, then the fate of America -- and of Western nations, including Israel -- will be left in the hands of a man with a lifelong hostility to Western values and Western interests.
     "President Obama is such a genial man that many people, across the ideological space, cannot see him as a danger.For every hundred people who can see his geniality, probably only a handful see the grave danger his warped policies and ruthless tactics pose to a whole way of life that has given generation after generation of Americans unprecedented freedom and prosperity."
     -- Townhall.com --

- - - - -

The liberal Washington Post calls for "more civil" discourse in politics, since Limbaugh ruffled liberal feathers. Their concern for niceties seems not to have been awakened by the coarseness that abounds on, for example, the cretinous MSNBC propaganda mill.
     Thus, in deference to their newly-discovered sensitivity, I offer this response to the Post: "(BLEEP) YOU!"

The scabrous Post, by the way, is calling the replaying of Energy Secretary Steven Chu's own words about the administration's goal NOT being to lower gasoline prices ... a "cheap shot" by Republicans. Typical liberals -- can't stand the truth.

- - - - -

Have you seen the video circulating on the internet? The one showing the Libyans NATO helped save from Khadafy's regime during the "Arab spring" enthusiastically desecrating a World War 2 British military cemetery containing the graves of soldiers who died fighting the Nazis. The vandals are obviously taking a special delight in kicking over headstones with the Star of David displayed, indicating that the dead soldier was Jewish.
     Another reminder that one of the most absurd political utterances of this young 21st century was the George W. Bush quote that, "Islam means peace."

- - - - -

Shouldn't someone break the word to the greenies who pursue the endless quest for a practical electric car that such vehicles have been around since the 1830's -- and they still haven't found a serious market? Which is why Government Motors, suffering from low VOLTage, has suspended manufacture of the latest dud of that genre.

- - - - -

Michael Goodwin of the NY Post gets to the bottom line regarding this week's Obama-Netanyahu meeting ...
     "A friend who recently met with top Israeli officials says the bottom line they will explain to Obama is that there are two things no Israeli government can ever do. First, it cannot allow a mortal enemy to get a weapon of mass destruction or the ability to make one. Second, it cannot entrust its survival to a third party, including the United States.
     "The policy that flows from those principles is obvious. Israel will attack when it feels Iran is close to getting the bomb. And Israel is more likely to reach that conclusion sooner because it doesn’t trust Obama’s resolve or time line."

If would be the height of foolishness for Israel to trust the manifestly pro-Muslim Obama.

- - - - -

One of the rare businesses that Obama HAS helped: gun sales. Firearms are selling at record rates because of the well-founded suspicion that, given a second term, the Obamunists will make strenuous efforts to ban private ownership, Second Amendment be damned.

- - - - -

Robin Gibb of the BeeGees is reported to be in remission from liver and colon cancer. His twin, Maurice, died nine years ago at the age of 53.

- - - - -

We'll soon find out just how serious the NFL is about serious player injuries, depending on the punishment meted out to Gregg Williams, the defensive coach who organized bounty-payments to players who managed to injure opponents sufficiently to put them out of games.
     He was not unique in what is necessarily a violent game and there's never been a shortage of players at every level eager to participate in such a scheme. Is it even possible to eliminate such practices? Perhaps not. But with the NFL now facing lawsuits by former players living with permanent damage to their bodies, there's going to be severe pressure on the commissioner to hit somebody, or several somebodies, with serious penalties -- perhaps up to even a lifetime ban from employment in the goldmine that is the NFL.
     It is not in the nature of many players to look at a deliberately-injured opponent and think, "Next time, it could be me writhing on the ground."
     Some purists, of course, will protest sanctions imposed upon intentional injury. They also likely favor the return of the flying wedge.

- - - - -

Happy birthday (one day late) to the city of Chicago, 175 years old. It was for several years my hometown. A great city, but sunk in a cesspool of crime and corruption under years of Democrat politicians.
      I was the first tenant in Marina City, the corncob-shaped twin towers that, for years, were the city's landmark. Walked one block thru the now-gone Sun Times building to my broadcasting job in the white terracotta Wrigley Building, another landmark building. I hold fond memories of the London House, Mr. Kelly's, the Pour House and assorted other Rush Street watering holes that both fulfilled -- and probably shortened --my youth.
     I unknowingly dated a Chicago mobster kingpin's girlfriend until she decided it would be wiser if we terminated our friendship. It doubtless improved my life expectancy, since Milwaukee Phil Alderisio had worked his way to the top level of the Chicago mob heirarchy as a hitman and enforcer.
      If only Chi-town had been located in a more felicitous climate; those winter blizzards, fed by Lake Michigan, are ferocious. When I later lived in Miami, I was forever being surprised by wintertime visitors from the Windy City whose names I barely knew. My guest bedrooms got a lot of use.

- - - - -

A fervent, albeit vain, plea to all sports organizations. Stop using people who can't sing to perform the national anthem before your events. NASCAR is probably the worst. PLEASE, for the sake of the ears of all who aren't tone-deaf, stop the caterwauling by these no-talents!

- - - - -

Conan O'Brien --
     "A man in Albuquerque has registered his dog to vote. Apparently the dog likes the current administration but he's not sure he wants another 28 years of Obama."
   (See, in dog years ... never mind ... )
GIVE AN INCH ...
BIRTH CONTROL BATTLE NO, uh, FLUKE ...
      REPUB RACE SETTLE ON THIS SUPER TUESDAY?

Let us consider lessons to be learned from the following ...
Obama makes a virtual career of apologizing to Muslim mass-murderers. What do we get? More murder.
Rush apologizes to an obviously-planted activist for "free" birth-control? What's the response? Even greater liberal outrage.

Conclusion?

Sniveling RINOs, take note. Feeding a frenzy only encourages more.

- - - - -

Media Research Center also found another interesting tidbit about Sandra Fluke, the center of the Georgetown University birth control controversy: She also, apparently, believes that it is discrimination deserving of legal action if "gender reassignment" surgeries are not covered by employer provided health insurance. She makes these views clear in an article she co-edited with Karen Hu in the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law.
     In other words, she believes sex-change operations should be covered.

- - - - -

The Weekly Standard summarizes the double-standard of Democrats ...
     "In response to the media firestorm surrounding Rush Limbaugh's insulting comments about Democratic activist Sandra Fluke (comments for which Limbaugh apologized), Kirsten Powers writes about the liberal men who have used misogynistic rhetoric without facing the same outrage. Powers notes that "the grand pooh-bah of media misogyny is without a doubt Bill Maher—who also happens to be a favorite of liberals—who has given $1 million to President Obama’s super PAC." She continues:
     "Maher has called Palin a 'dumb twat' and dropped the C-word in describing the former Alaska governor. He called Palin and Congresswoman Bachmann 'boobs' and 'two bimbos.' He recently made a joke about Rick Santorum’s wife using a vibrator. Imagine now the same joke during the 2008 primary with Michelle Obama’s name in it, and tell me that he would still have a job. Maher said of a woman who was harassed while breast-feeding at an Applebee’s, 'Don't show me your tits!' as though a woman feeding her child is trying to flash Maher.
     "Former White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton, the man who runs Obama's super PAC, did not reply when asked if he will be returning Maher's $1 million donation."

And don't hold your breath waiting for THAT to happen.

- - - - -

If Santorum wins Ohio today, he's probably still alive in the Republican race; even more so if he wins Ohio and Tennessee. If Romney wins both, Santorum's probably history.
     But you knew that.

- - - - -

Sorry, Newt, but a guy with a half-million dollar line of credit at Tiffany for jewelry is in no position to take pot-shots at anyone else, including Romney, over their wealth or spending habits.

- - - - -

Burt Prelutsky with a pertinent question for Democrats ...
     "Why would any American vote for Obama after he put the kibosh on the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that would have simultaneously provided us with a friendly source of oil and 20,000 jobs? I mean, even if you’re one of those environmental zealots who feel that jobs and energy should take a back seat to the comfort and well-being of insects and rodents, wouldn’t you be the least bit annoyed that he merely delayed a final decision until 2013 so that you and your kind will continue to donate to his re-election campaign? Doesn’t it bug you the least little bit to be played that way? Why don’t you folks just stamp SUCKER on your foreheads and be done with it?"

- - - - -

Quoth Barack Obama, "I do not have a policy of containment. I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I’ve made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.”
     I doubt that Benjamin Netanyahu is impressed. Who, after all, DECIDES when that defense is necessary? Why, um, I believe that would be ... Barack Obama!

As Wes Pruden observes in the Washington Times, "Through word and lack of deed, Mr. Obama leaves the inevitable impression that he regards the standoff between Iran and Israel in terms of moral equivalence ... It’s Mr. Obama’s insistence that he prefers diplomacy that reassures the mullahs in Tehran, that he is counting on his eloquent bluster, boasting and bombast as the weapons that will make the Iranians and their like-minded friends repent and behave themselves. The president’s rhetoric only persuades them that he wears an empty scabbard."

- - - - -

When Obama says, as he did to the Jewish audience at AIPAC, "I've got your back," better check and see if there's a knife in his hand.

So Obama's made his speech to AIPAC, replete with empty promises. Come November, we'll see just how gullible millions of Jewish voters who supported him for years ago  really are.

- - - - -

A painful but increasingly obvious truth from Live Science ...
     "David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. For example, if people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments. As a result, no amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them."

Yes.

- - - - -

I've gotten many inquiries about my reaction to George Will's recent doom-saying.
I'll simply repeat what I've said for many years.
George has been wearing his bowtie just a little too tight for a long time; cuts off circulation to the brain. Mr. Pomposity is as much a part of the Eastern liberal establishment as Crazy Joe Biden or any of hundreds of others, and hides behind his pseudo-intellectual fake "conservative" label.
     In other words, I see him as just another Washington bull-bleep artist. I've talked him a few times and quickly learned that he's the same pompous prig we see in print. And I think his oft-professed obsession with baseball is just an act to present himself as an everyman.

- - - - -

Message for the dumb punk who's suing a movie theater because he thinks prices at the concession stand are too high: Nobody forces you to go to movies, you stupid rectal orifice!

Little-known business reality: Movie theaters don't make money from the showing of films; their profit-center IS the concession stand.

- - - - -

Jim Eason unearths some great quotations from sports people.....
     Doug Sanders, pro golfer:  I'm working as hard as I can to get my life and my cash to run out at the same time. If I can just die after lunch next Tuesday, everything will be perfect.
     Harry Neale, Vancouver Canucks coach: Last year we couldn't win at home and we were losing on the road ... I couldn't think of anyplace else to play.
     E. J. Holub, Kansas City Chiefs linebacker, regarding his 12 knee operations: My knees look like they lost a knife fight with a midget.
     Rick Venturi, Northwestern football coach:  The only difference between me and General Custer is ... I have to watch the films on Sunday.
     Tommy John, NY Yankees on his 1974 arm surgery:  When they operated, I told them to put in a Koufax fastball. They did – but it was Mrs. Koufax's.
     Walt Garrison, Dallas Cowboys fullback, when asked if Tom Landry ever smiles:  I don't know. I only played there for nine years.
     John Breen, (then) Houston Oilers:  We were tipping off our plays. Whenever we broke from the huddle, three backs were laughing, and one was pale as a ghost.
     Lou Holtz, (then) Arkansas football coach:  I have a lifetime contract. That means I can't be fired - during the third quarter - if we're ahead and moving the ball.

- - - - -

It's been a long time between blonde jokes ...
     Two blondes were going to Disneyland . They were driving on the Interstate when they saw the sign that said "Disneyland LEFT". They started crying and turned around and went home.

- - - - -

Jay Leno --
     "The new cast of "Dancing With the Stars" has been revealed. They're leaving one spot open for whoever loses on Super Tuesday."
SUPER TUESDAY (to be continued) ...
DENNIS THE MENACE OUT ...
HEAVEN HELP A "HOMELESS" POLITICIAN

Super Tuesday summary ...
Nothing settled.
Romney wins Ohio, where Santorum had once led; edges further ahead in the delegate count.
Santorum and Gingrich won where they were expected to win.
Gingrich will stay in the race, as will Paul, continuing to split the anti-Romney vote with Santorum.
Romney's task now: keep Santorum at bay but emphasize attacks on Obama rather than primary opponents, because he'll need their supporters in November if he does hang on for the nomination.  

- - - - -

Troublesome facts about both Santorum and Gingrich, at least in the view of anyone who thinks a president must have organizational ability ...
     Santorum failed to get delegates on the ballot in parts of Ohio, a self-imposed handicap. He also failed to get on the ballot in Virginia. As did Gingrich, even though he LIVES in Virginia. Not good.
     Despite the fervor of her admirers, Sarah Palin is not going to be the nominee under any foreseeable circumstances.
     And despite the fervor of his admirers, Ron Paul isn't even really running for president. He's running for the opportunity to propel a movement with a serious delegate-trading position at the convention. Perhaps he sees himself as the new Barry Goldwater, going down in glorious defeat for a higher cause.

- - - - -

What does "home state" mean to a politician? Romney campaigned in Michigan as his "home state" but, while he was born there, he lives in Massachusetts. Or Utah. Or Southern California.
     Newt called Georgia his "home state" but lives in Virginia -- where he failed to get on the ballot, so he couldn't even vote for himself yesterday.
     "Home is where the heart is?" No. "Home is where the VOTE is."

- - - - -

The polls are in agreement: Most people believe Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee, despite doubts about him. Doubts fed by such incidents from the Ohio campaign trail as this one reported by Robert Costa of National Review Online ...
    "Romney was twice asked about health care. One elderly woman wanted to know — to really know — whether he would repeal President Obama’s federal health-care law.  I need an emphatic ‘yes’ from you that you will repeal Obamacare, she demanded.
     "'Why would I not?' Romney asked."

Is that really an answer? No. It's an evasion. How hard is it to say "yes," unless something deep inside prevents him from making such a commitment? And therein lies the crux of the Romney problem that continues to feed distrust of him. AdMITT it: it was a mistake. Or AdMITT that it opens the gate for the government to force us to buy other products/services. Like, say, a Chevy Volt from Government Motors.

- - - - -

Whatever one thinks of the ultimate Republican nominee, two words need to be in the forefront of the mind of the most reluctant voter: Supreme Court.
     Four more Obama years will likely lead to at least two appointments to the court, which will irreversibly turn it to the left. Presidents come and go. Justices come and stay.

- - - - -

One largely overlooked piece of good news from Super Tuesday. At last we are rid of the nutcake nuisance, "progressive" Dennis Kucinich, in Congress. He was redistricted in Ohio, and lost to fellow Democrat (and former friend) Democrat Rep. Marcy Kaptur.
     His left-wing admirers should have been in Cleveland -- as I briefly was -- when he was mayor. It was a daily disaster, staggering from one colossal screw-up to another. He eventually found his niche for eight terms in Congress from a heavily left-wing district.

- - - - -

The ignorance of ranting liberals never ceases to astound. They shriek that Rush Limbaugh should be "suspended" or "fired" over his remarks about the woman seeking paid-for (by somebody else) contraceptives.
     These people are so stupid, they don't realize that there IS nobody to "suspend" or "fire" Rush because ... Rush works for ... RUSH!  He doesn't work for some corporate bean-counter or would-be censor. He OWNS the product he produces, which is his radio program. The silly lefties can't figure out the simplest solution to their annoyance: If you don't like it, don't listen!
     It's a key to the "liberal" mentality. If they don't like something they hear or read, it isn't sufficient for them to simply avoid it. They want to deny everyone else the right to hear or read it. "Liberal" or "Progressive" is just another name for a disguised oppressive-minded fascist.

- - - - -

I neither know nor care what a company called Carbonite is, does or sells. But the Daily Caller reports that its stock has fallen 12% since the company dropped its advertising on Rush Limbaugh's radio program. Threated boycotts can work BOTH ways.
     John A. Public says, "I won't buy your product because you advertise on a program I hate."
     John B. Public says, "You drop advertising on my favorite program, and I won't buy your product."

- - - - -

Mona Charen (NRO) gets to the bottom line on the contrived contraceptive controversy ...
     "For no discernible reason, the Obama administration has decreed that all contraceptives must be provided 'free' to those who want them (which of course means that everyone else's insurance rates must rise). "The administration demands this despite the fact that 1) most Americans can well afford their own contraception (it's less than the cost of a weekly trip to Starbucks); 2) inexpensive contraceptives are widely available at every supermarket and pharmacy; 3) Medicaid recipients already receive them free; 4) the feds also spend another $300 million annually to provide free contraceptives to those who are low-income, uninsured, or otherwise do not qualify for Medicaid; and 5) Planned Parenthood and state and local public health clinics distribute contraceptives free around the nation."

- - - - -

CNS News reports that although Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke testified to the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee last month that contraception can cost a law student $3,000 over three years and that some of her fellow students could not afford it, a Target store only 3 miles from the law school currently sells a month's supply of birth control pills for only $9 to people who do not have insurance plans covering contraceptives.

Would it have been more acceptable to sensitive libs if Rush Limbaugh had simply called her a liar?

- - - - -

When he was running for the Big Job, candidate Obama said lobbyists, “will not run my White House.” Bullbleep. He just hired one of the biggest lobbyists in Washington.

- - - - -

You don't need a degree in marketing to analyze the latest Obama/Government Motors flop.
Here it is, in short form:
    1.-The Chevy Volt is an overpriced (even with huge government subsidies) piece of junk, which ...
     2.-Not many people want, even with a fake sales boost by fleet purchases by another Obama suck-up company, GE.

Could the Wall Street Journal better summarize this debacle?

- - - - -  

Drew Brees is a great quarterback who's had the misfortune to play in the NFL under really stupid team owners. The San Diego Chargers dumped him for Philip Rivers, who's pretty good but has never done for them what Brees did to rescue to ridiculous New Orleans Saints. Now, Saints' management is stonewalling him on a new contract. They are idiots and I hope he finds a way to leave them to a re-run of their historic failures and resume their historic identity as the New Orleans AINTS.

Re Peyton Manning: It'd be a big gamble for any team to pay big bucks to sign him, but if there's anything left in the tank, he could turn a pretty good team into a real contender. Jets, Cardinals ...

- - - - -

It's getting worse. The misuse of  "begs the question."
No, the term does NOT mean "suggests or leads to or prompts the question"; it specifically means, to EVADE a question.

But the illiterates are winning in one of the most ill-educated "advanced" nations in the world.

- - - - -

A couple of nights ago I watched -- again -- the classic old crime-caper movie "Topkapi" (Melina Mercouri, Maximilian Schell, Robert Morley, Peter Ustinov) about the attempt to steal the famous emerald dagger from the sultan's palace that is now a museum in Istanbul.
     My late and longtime travel industry business partner, Stamatis Tsalikis, was casually acquainted with Mercouri when he worked at the U.S. embassy in Athens. They both frequented a restaurant that served the world's best ice-cream, and I indulged every time I made my (then frequent) trips to Athens. It's Zonar's, just off Syntagma Square, and I caught a glimpse of it in video of some of the recent rioting in the Greek capitol.
     The rioters have destroyed some of Greece's classic heritage. I hope Zonar's hasn't met such a fate.

A few years after the movie was made, I was in that palace museum, gazed upon the emerald dagger, and couldn't help but wonder, "What if I got a team of thieves together ... "

- - - - -

Medical news ... reported by Cindy Adams, NY Post ...
     Gallbladder operation. Patient comes home. There’s pain. They’d left a clip inside him. Another surgery to remove the clip. Patient comes home. There’s pain. They’d left a sponge inside him. Another surgery to remove the sponge. Patient comes home. There’s pain. They’d left the sponge — and the clip — inside.

- - - - -

You KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2012 when...
      You accidentally enter your PIN on the microwave.
      You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.
      You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of three.
      You e-mail and text the person who works at the desk next to you.
      You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

- - - - -

Reader Joan submits this billboard ...
     "WINE! CHEAPER THAN GASOLINE! DON'T DRIVE -- DRINK!"

- - - - -

A blond woman goes to the Post Office to buy stamps.
She says to the clerk, "May I have 50 stamps please?"
The clerk says, "What denomination?"
The blond says, "Give me 6 Catholic, 12 Presbyterian, 10 Lutheran, 22 Baptists." (rimshot!)


OBUNGLER'S BUNCH STRIKES AGAIN ... DON'T PICK #2 ...
CLOCK TICKING ON IRAN

Only an administration as confused and incompetent as Obama's pathetic pastiche could, on the same day, get caught paying a highly-promoted green-icon windpower project NOT to produce its higher-cost electricity because the same region was getting an excess of cheap hydroelectric energy ...
     ... while it's contemptible that a Defense Secretary and an obviously brainwashed general were stumbling thru an explanation to congress that they required approval of "international legal authority" (i.e., subject to veto by Russia or China) but NOT that of the U.S. Congress to act with military power.
     Stupid, subversive ... where does one begin?
     If the actions of this bunch were portrayed in a movie script, it would appear so silly as to be regarded as satire. Fortunately for the leading characters in this burlesque, they're dealing with an American public that has the collective IQ of a herd of goats.
     One is reminded of the wise cynic, H. L. Mencken: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

- - - - -

There is often a clamor in competitive election years for the eventual nominee to choose a primary campaign  rival as a running mate to "unite the party."
     Wrong.
     Mistake.
     People driven by ego and ambition to seek the most powerful office in the world (at least until Obama devalued it) are unlikely to be comfortable in the #2 role and may, overtly or covertly, seek to undermine the Maximum Leader.
     A lesson from recent history. John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson made a marriage of convenience and detested each other. Kennedy's assassination prevented their internecine rivalry from reaching a conclusion, but after the tragedy bitterness in the Kennedy camp led them to suspect that, somehow, LBJ was involved in the plot. And Johnson's contempt for the Kennedy clan was evident from the start.

- - - - -

Democrats' hopes for retaining the Senate seat of retiring Ben Nelson, lifted by former Senator Bob Kerrey's announcement that he'd run for it may be dampened by the first Rasmussen poll of Nebraska voters. It has Republican Don Bruning ahead of Kerrey, 55%-35%.

- - - - -

As supporters of Ron Paul are being reluctantly forced to learn, the enthusiasm of the cheering faithful who attend rallies often has little relation to the outcome of elections. A fervent crowd of thousands often means little in an electorate of millions. Backers of all losing candidates should take note.

- - - - -

Who wouldn't pay to see it? Barney Frank and Jeb Hensarling. Steel-cage, bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred. It would be a satisfying resolution after Frank's outburst at his fellow Congressman yesterday. The outburst that got ol' Barney ousted from the floor of the House for the day.

- - - - -

Thomas Sowell with just a few examples of why it would be foolhardy for the Israelis to trust Obama ...
     "The track record of Barack Obama's pronouncements on a wide range of issues suggests that anything he says is a message written in sand, and easily blown away by the next political winds. Remember the 'shovel-ready projects' that would spring into action and jump-start the economy, once the 'stimulus' money was available? Obama himself laughed at this idea a year or so later, when it was clear to all that these projects were going nowhere.
     "Remember how his administration was going to be one with 'transparency'? Yet massive spending bills were passed too fast for the Congress itself to have read them. Remember the higher ethics his administration would practice -- and yet how his own Secretary of the Treasury was appointed despite his failure to pay his taxes?
     "If you were an Israeli, how willing would you be to risk your national survival on Obama's promise to stand by your country?"   
     -- Townhall.com --

- - - - -

On Israel-Iran, some other views on how Obama's vacillations may lead to war ...

James Robbins, the senior editorial writer for the Washington Times, e-mails this ...
     "The White House keeps waiting for crippling sanctions to have an impact on Iran’s nuclear program. It will be a long wait.
     "It is unlikely that sanctions have driven the mullahs to the bargaining table. Iran’s new offer for talks is a delaying tactic, a means of forestalling the use of force. Tehran’s best move is to begin an interminable round of negotiations to blunt the momentum for military action. As diplomats congratulate themselves on fictional victories for peace, Iran’s nuclear program would continue. That’s the reality of nonmilitary solutions. The only thing sanctions are crippling right now is movement toward an effective solution to Tehran’s nuclear aspirations."

Michael Goodwin of the NY Post finds two things he doesn't like about Obama: his face ...
     "There he goes again. Even before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left Washington, President Obama shed the cloak of resolve against Iran and returned to spouting the mixed messages that have failed for three years.
     "If the mad mullahs celebrate with high-fives, now would be the time. As for the Israelis, it’s good they didn’t give up their right to self-defense. They’re clearly on their own.
     "He mentioned the military option only as a pivot to snarl at critics. He accused them of a “casualness” about war, of “beating the drums of war,” of “bluster” and “big talk.”
     "The approach sounds familiar because it is. Most infamously, it’s what Europe tried with Hitler."

- - - - -

Another sign the country is going to hell, thanks to liberals' anti-American diversity madness. Katie Pavlich of Townhall.com reports on an incident in San Antonio ...
     Alamo Heights Head Coach Andrew Brewer said he was proud of his team.
     Then came the chant from fans after the trophy presentation: "USA, USA, USA," they chanted.
     San Antonio Independent School District officials took the chant as a racial insult to a school with all minority players from a school with mostly white ones.

One must assume that this means minority students are NOT to be considered Americans.

It won't save you from being arrested, but you'll have my applause if you belt in the mouth the next airhead who dares utter the word "diversity."

- - - - -

How is this so hard to figure out? Flight attendants complain of increasing problems with passengers who refuse to turn off electronic gadgets when the pre-departure request is made. Simple solution for the dunces who run America's most consistently mismanaged industry: After the initial request, violators should be given one warning. ONE. Then removed from the plane -- forcibly, if necessary -- and prosecuted.

- - - - -

Crime news ...
     A suburban Los Angeles man has been arrested on charges of smuggling almost 40,000 counterfeit erectile dysfunction pills into the U.S. through LAX in his golf bag.
     Enquiring minds want to know: If convicted, will he have to do ... hard time?

- - - - -

By all accounts, Andrew Luck is not only a great college quarterback but a fine young man. He'd also better be lucky and good right from the get-go as the successor to Peyton Manning as QB for the now-pathetic Indianapolis Colts. Otherwise, Colt fans will make his life a living hell, albeit a well-paid one. The cliche is true in sports as well as many other lines of work: It's often not good to replace a legend. Far better to replace the person who DID replace the legend. It's the second mouse that gets the cheese.

- - - - -

I don't know whether to be flattered or annoyed, but my e-mail every day is filled with quotes and material I've used in this screed.

- - - - -

Dan Sorkin forwards Susan Blackburn's observations about older folk ...
     • Old People are easy to spot at sporting events; during the playing of the National Anthem. Old People remove their caps and stand at attention and sing without embarrassment.  They know the words and believe in them.
     • If you bump into an Old Person on the sidewalk he will apologize. If you pass an Old Person on the street, he will nod or tip his cap to a lady.
     • Old People hold the door for the next person and always, when walking, make certain the lady is on the inside for protection.
     • Old People have moral courage and personal integrity. They seldom brag unless it's about their children or grandchildren.
     • It's the Old People who know our great country is protected, not by politicians, but by the young men and women in the military serving their country.

- - - - -

The ecclesiastical Sky-guy reports from Up There ...
     A blonde died and went to Heaven.  When she got to the Pearly Gates, she met Saint Peter who said, "Before you get into Heaven, you have to pass a test."
     "Oh no!" she said, then Saint Peter said, "Not to worry he'd make it an easy question. Who is God's son?"
     The blonde thought for a few minutes and said, "Andy."
      "That's interesting....what made you say that?" said Saint Peter.
      She began to sing.... "Andy walks with me!  Andy talks with me!  Andy tells me...."
NO REAL NEWS IN OBAMA "BOMBSHELL" VIDEO ...
OVERDUE FOR A CHU-ing OUT ...
 DEAD WOMAN'S COMEBACK

So the Breitbart tapes show that Barack Obama has a long history as a racist.
     Sorry, but that won't change things.
     His backers don't care; his opponents, if they were paying attention, knew it all along.
     So what's new? If people didn't recoil from his long association with that crazed racist preacher in Chicago, does anyone believe this will come as a shock?
     If anything will awaken the "moderate middle" from their stupor, it will have to be the manifest failure of his idiotic leftist policies that have already been put in place, with far worse to come.

It has been said that a politician can survive almost anything other than being caught in bed with a live man or a dead woman. Of course, that was said before the Barney Frank era.

- - - - -

Hooray for the leftists! Now they have their own George Wallace -- in the White House, no less!

- - - - -

We can only wonder if, in their private moments, some -- or all -- of the Republican candidates secretly think, "I'd rather Obama get re-elected than (Mitt/Ron/Newt/Rick) get the job."
     Only the hopelessly naive would believe such thoughts never cross any of their minds.

- - - - -

The Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. agencies are investigating allegations that some officials in the Afghan Air Force, which was established largely with American funds, have been using aircraft to ferry narcotics and illegal weapons around the country.

And who's surprised? Especially when President Karzai's brother is widely believed to be heavily involved in drug trafficking.

- - - - -

Burt Prelutsky summarizes the Obama re-election strategy ...
     "When you’re in the Oval Office and you turn on the TV and see Greece going up in flames, the inevitable result of a country living beyond its means, and you decide that’s going to continue to be your economic role model, the best that can be said about you is that you’re stubborn, ignorant and irresponsible.
     "When you decide that the best way to go about getting re-elected is by pitting Americans against each other on the basis of race, class and religion, cynically turning this noble nation into a banana republic, you go from being just another Chicago hack with a leftwing agenda to joining the putrid ranks of demagogues and dictators."

- - - - -

From the  "Why is This Creep Still in Office" Department ...
     Obama's leftist ideologue Energy Secretary Steven Chu, from the nut-farm branch of U.C.-Berkeley, refused to tell Congress how many "green"companies that have received loan guarantees might go bankrupt, nor would he promise to provide the list of companies at risk to Congress.
     He told House Subcommittee on Energy and Power lawmakers who wondered how many companies might follow Solyndra into bankruptcy. that taxpayers have the right to know -- but refused to promise that he would have his staff give the committee a list of the companies that have received loan guarantees from his department.
     Chu, who's been praising the white elephant Chevy Volt, doesn't even own a car. This is the man implementing the policies that determine how much it costs you at the gas pump.
 
- - - - -

Another overpriced electric car -- excuse me, "alternative energy" vehicle -- bites the dust.  Fisker Automotive sells an electric plug-in luxury sports car for $100,000.
     Consumer Reports took one through it's usual test procedure. Rather, took it part-way through the rest routine. Then it just ... died. The hundred-grand "green" car had a total life-span of 180 miles.

- - - - -

It's a bitter pill that liberals will refuse to swallow, but take it from a longtime broadcaster with management experience and a student of audience patterns: Rush Limbaugh's poorly-worded (he says so, himself) remarks about the career agitator who deliberately set out to undermine Georgetown University's health-care plan because it excludes coverage for birth control ... won't cause any measurable listener loss. People who like what he has to say will continue to listen, no matter how liberals whine and writhe.
     Sponsor loss? He has thousands of "sponsors," in that most buy commercials on only one or a handful of stations. And those that have bought commercials on the entire national feed will be quickly replaced by others.
     Unlike Don Imus, whose comments about a women's basketball team got him bounced from the airwaves a few years ago, Rush works for no particular station or group; he's a self-contained entity who simply lets Premiere, a division of Clear Channel Media, syndicate his program for a piece of the action.  A handful of "tea-kettle" (low-power, small market) stations have dropped his show. Yawn ...
     FYI, there really is no "E I B Network"; it's a showbiz construct equivalent to scenery on a stage. When I was approached about being Rush's back-up (vacations, illness, etc.) the contact was made by Premiere, not E I B.
     (For the record, the interest on their part was flattering, but I was tired of broadcasting, and the work-load and commuting was more hassle than I wanted to take on.)

- - - - -

I am but a simple country lad, so forgive my venturing this opinion.
     If you don't want to pay what you regard as an exorbitant price for an electronic book ... don't buy the damned thing! (Prompted by prospective government action to force prices down.)

- - - - -

Victor Davis Hanson looks at the scoreboard and sees ...
     "In the last 10 years the United States has spent more than $1 trillion and has lost thousands of American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both places seem far better off than when ruled by the Taliban and Saddam Hussein -- at least for a while longer.
     "Yet the Iraqis now bear Americans little good will. They seem friendlier to Iran and Syria than to their liberators. In Afghanistan, riots continue over mistaken burning of some defaced Korans, despite serial American apologies.
     "How about the choice of bombing the bad guys and then just staying clear?
     "Military assistance or punitive intervention without follow-up mostly failed. The verdict on far more costly nation-building is still out. Trying to help popular insurgents topple unpopular dictators does not guarantee anything better.
     "What have we learned? Tribalism, oil and Islamic fundamentalism are a bad mix that leave Americans sick and tired of the Middle East -- both when they get in it and when they try to stay out of it."

"Is ... a ... puzzlement!" -- Yul Brynner, "The King & I"

- - - - -

Today's survey question ...
     If you've been holding your breath waiting for Obama's "sanctions" to change minds in Tehran ... how long HAVE you been dead?

- - - - -

Henceforth, any politician who dares use the word "stimulus" in any context other than derogatory should be horse-whipped (with a real horse), deprived of citizenship and immediately deported.
     Or am I overreacting?

- - - - -

Li Xiufeng, 95, of Guangxi Province, China, didn't awaken. Her grandson failed to arouse her, and it was determined that she was not breathing. Her body was laid out in a coffin so relatives and friends could pay their respects. (You see the end coming, don't you?)
     Six days after her death, the family was astonished to awaken and find the coffin empty. She was cooking breakfast for herself in the kitchen. Said she woke up after a long sleep, had to pry the lid off the coffin to climb out, was hungry ... and wondered what all the excitement was about.

- - - - -

Which leads to the classic ...
The minister asks a member of his congregation, Mr. Smith, how he would like to have said at his funeral.
    "I'd like someone to say that I was a good husband, a good father, a good neighbor."
     In answer to the same question, Mr. Jones replied, "I'd like it said that I was an honest, decent man."
     And Mr. Brown responded, "I'd like someone to say, 'Look! He's moving!"

- - - - -

And then there's Maureen McCloskey, 84, of Fall River, Massachusetts, who showed up to vote Tuesday and was told she couldn't. Because the official records listed her as being dead.

- - - - -

Cousin Mike forwards a collection of signs found in various saloons ...
     "If life is a waste of time, and time is a waste of life ... then let's all get wasted together and have the time of our lives."
     "No matter how good she looks, some other guy is sick and tired of her."
     "Make love, not war. Or do both -- get married!"
     "You're too good for him." (over a mirror in the ladies' room)
     "If it has tires or testicles, you're going to have trouble with it." (same restroom)
    
- - - - -

Mr. Hill contributes a domestic tragedy in one brief conversation ...
     Daughter : "I am in love with the neighbor next door, so I am  running away with him."
     Dad : "Thanks, you have saved me lots of money and time."
     Daughter : "Dad, I am reading the letter left by Mom."


NEW MUSICAL GROUP?  "BARRY AND THE NUTJOBS" ...
     WHERE THE CHEVY VOLT BATTERIES WENT ...
OBAMA TO ISRAEL: "MY ELECTION TAKES PRIORITY"

Now that the late radical racist law school professor Derrick Bell's name has become widely known because of the release of video obtained by the late Andrew Breitbart ... video in which Barack Obama effusively praised him ... the Heritage Foundation dug into the White House visitor’s logs. They found those logs show that Derrick A. Bell visited the White House twice after President Obama took office.

Barry Soetoro just can't break his ties to his old radical-crazy buddies.

- - - - -

Warren Buffett is Obama's rich-guy shill who wants us all to pay more taxes, but he seems reluctant to pay up what's owed by NetJets, the business jet leasing operation owned by his Berkshire Hathaway company. He sued the government, charging that the IRS was overcharging NetJets. Now, the IRS is counter-suing for $366 million.
     Mr. Buffett seems to be of the "Do as I say, not as I do" school of thought.

- - - - -

When Richard Nixon ran (successfully) for his second term, some Congressional Republicans complained that the Nixon people were interested only in his run and were scooping up all the political contributions.
     Some Democrats now have the same complaint about Obama. Seems when it comes to campaign cash, he also has a case of the screaming "me-me's."

- - - - -

Reader Tom passes along this bulletin ...
     There's finally some good news!
     GM has halted production of the Chevy Volt, and the leftover batteries are being donated........
     for Georgetown coeds to use in their vibrators!

- - - - -

Interesting list of winners of the raffle of the "Dinner With Barack" by making a five-dollar contribution to his campaign fund. One is a retired school administrator, another a former social worker and the third works for a non-profit organization of some sort. Nobody from the world of free enterprise.

- - - - -

Several major news sources report that Obama promised Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that he'd provide military aid to Israel for an attack on Iran IF they'd postpone action until after our November election.
     Consider the implications of such an offer. He sees an Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities as a threat to his re-election process. Thus, he is willing to ask that small nation risk its very existence for his political benefit.
     What else does a person need to know about the character of Barack Obama?

- - - - -

Reader Pat offers this pertinent observation ...
     Has anyone besides the Israelis figured out that Iran is playing rope-a-dope with Obama?  You must remember when Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali played rope-a-dope.
     Someday the Iranian mullahs are going to quit playing rope-a-dope.  They will have the bomb, and the rest of us will be dopes.

- - - - -

Survey says (Gallup) ... 50% of American adults think Obama has been a failure as president.

- - - - -

The Daily  Caller reports that the U.S. Air Force is pulling nine cargo aircraft from military operations to support President Barrack Obama’s stepped-up visits to campaign events. The five C-130s and four heavyweight C-17s will be used to ferry security vehicles, armored limousines and communications gear into cities ahead of Obama’s campaign appearances.

In short, your tax dollars will be paying an even larger share of Obama's campaign expenses, while our already-shrunken military will be deprived of equipment.

- - - - -

The sheer lack of basic business smarts by the Obamunists continues to amaze.  Government Motors, already a monument to that ignorance, has now invested more than $400 million in the stock of the French auto company, Puegeot Citroen -- which just came off a 2011 during which it lost $123 million.  But, hey! -- the newly-invested $400 million is only taxpayer money, so who cares?!

- - - - -

John Podhoretz (NY Post) looks ahead to the real race ...
     "For Republicans mired in despair and Democrats awash in joyous disbelief, a note of comfort to one and warning to the other: There will come a time when the 2012 election will cease to revolve around the GOP nominating process and begin to focus on the accomplishments — or lack thereof — of the incumbent president.
     "The Republican Party has not conducted itself well over the past few months, to put it mildly. And the conservative movement has been far too easily diverted into unserious nonsense and pointless controversies.
     "One virtue of the contraception lunacy, for example, is that since it happened now, it’s going to be old news later.
     "A re-election will be a validation of Barack Obama’s first term. That is, ultimately, what voters will have to decide they want to do. And he hasn’t made the sale — not remotely."

- - - - -

Tuesday's Alabama Republican primary looks unlikely to bring any resolution to the race. The top three contenders, Mitt, Newt and Rick, are thisclosetogether in the Rasmussen poll.

- - - - -

Rick Santorum's "we're jes' po' folks" act is brought into question by the Washington Examiner's revelation of how he came to own (via a trust that hid his identity) a $2,000,000 mansion in a Virginia suburb. The financing revealed nothing illegal, per se, but the kind of sweetheart deal rarely found beyond the boundaries of political insiders.

- - - - -

Dennis (the Menace) Kucinich lost his primary race in Ohio, so he's coming to the end of his career in Congress. That career spanned sixteen years. And what did the little darling of the left actually accomplish in all that time? Alex Koppelman summarizes in The New Yorker ...
     "A bill 'to make available to the Ukranian Museum and Archives the USIA television program 'Window on America,’   a bill 'to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 14500 Lorain Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio as the ‘John P. Gallagher Post Office Building' and a bill 'proclaiming Casimir Pulaski to be an honorary citizen of the United States posthumously.'”
     In the past two years, he's gotten one more bill passed. It named another post-office building in Cleveland.

I tell you, the dude was a real mover-and-shaker!

 - - - - -

Just so you aren't misled by liberal gloating over dead air or missing commercials on Rush Limbaugh's internet feed ... a dose of radio reality:
     Except for sponsors who buy the entire national feed of a syndicated program, there are ALWAYS "holes" in the feed, usually filled with public service announcements or promotional announcements.
     My own programs were fed to/thru the internet, but union rules (AFTRA) prohibited the placement of the commercials on the internet unless they were specifically bought for that purpose and appropriate fees paid to the on-air talent or the people who recorded them.
     This is also the time when local stations can insert their own commercials.
     Liberals, as usual, don't know what they're talking about.

- - - - -

Oprah Winfrey thought putting her pal Rosie O'Donnell on her failing cable TV network would save it. Not working. Miserable ratings, and word out of Chicago is that the two aren't such good friends anymore.

- - - - -

Crime news ...
     From Sweden comes word of an inept bandit who robbed a woman on the street ... was pursued by witnesses ... and, in his rush to escape, didn't notice the sign above the door of the building he ran into. The sign said ... "Police Department".

- - - - -

A few vignettes from an elementary school classroom ...

TEACHER:    Maria, go to the map and find   North America    ..
MARIA:         Here it  is.
TEACHER:   Correct.  Now class, who discovered America ?
CLASS:         Maria.
____________________________________
TEACHER:  Glenn, how do you spell 'crocodile?'
GLENN:      K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L'
TEACHER:  No, that's wrong.
GLENN:       Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it.  
__________________________________________
TEACHER:   Winnie, name one important thing we have today that we didn't have ten years ago.
WINNIE:       Me!
__________________________________________
TEACHER:     Millie, give me a sentence starting with '  I.  '
MILLIE:         I  is..
TEACHER:     No, Millie..... Always say, 'I  am.'
MILLIE:         All right...  'I am the ninth letter of the alphabet.'      
________________________________
TEACHER:    Harold, what do you call a person who keeps on talking when people are no longer  interested?
HAROLD:     A teacher.
SAVING ANY TIME? ...
WATT? -- ANOTHER ELECTRIC CAR FLOP! ...
KENNEDYS' "NON-PROFIT" PAYOFF

Today brings the return of Daylight Saving time. One of the dumbest contrivances ever concocted by delusional politicians, based upon the theory that you can cut one foot off a 24-foot rope, tie it to the other end of the rope, thereby making a longer rope.
     I don't care how the clocks are set, but why not set them and leave them alone -- year-around?
     One of the many blessings of living in Arizona is ... WE DON'T OBSERVE DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME!  
     Well, except for the Navajo reservation ("The Navajo Nation") in the northeast corner of the state, which is self-governing in some matters and chooses to participate in the annual DST charade. For the rest of us, the time today is exactly the same as the time yesterday. Admit it: you envy us.

- - - - -

More adventures in the electric-car industry ...
     “We buy about 80 cars a year and this is the first time in memory that we have had a car that is undriveable before it has finished our check-in process,” quoth Consumer Reports on its attempt to test-drive the Fisker Karma, built to sell for over a hundred grand and which died and had to be hauled away only 180 miles into its life.
     The cars are being built by a company that got over a half-billion dollars in loan guarantees (your tax dollars at work!) plus a taxpayer subsidy consisting of a $7,500 tax credit to anybody rich and dumb enough to buy this joke-car.
     Another grand Obama "alternative fuel" project.

- - - - -

If Democrat socialists seem a little twitchy today, it may be because the latest Rasmussen national numbers have Romney beating their Dear Leader by five points. And Santorum beats the Czar of Czars by one point.

- - - - -

Rasmussen numbers on Tuesday's Mississippi primary: Romney 35% ... Santorum and Gingrich each at 27%. Any win in the south would be a breakthrough event for the man from Massachusetts/Utah/California ... y'all.

- - - - -

We are drawing ever nearer to the time when all elections will be decided on a dependent majority population making choices based solely on which candidate they expect to give them the most,  making somebody else pay for it. The freeloader-nation is closer than ever to reality. Eventually election posters can be reduced to one word: "Gimme."

- - - - -

Kennedy-worship is very profitable. For Kennedys. We're indebted to the Kennedys' bete noire, Boston columnist Howie Carr, for unveiling these numbers from IRS Form 990 filed with the state attorney general for 2010.
     Former congressman Joe Kennedy, father of the likely inheritor of Barney Frank's House seat, runs a much-applauded (by liberals) operation called Citizens Energy.
     Citizens Energy is a so-called "non-profit."
     As CEO, Joe made $708,198 for the year. As Director of Marketing, Mrs. Joe made $261,825.
     Total annual take for the two: $970,023.
     Not a bad haul for a "non-profit" operation.

- - - - -

Burt Prelutsky addresses the Fluke-flake ...
      "By this time, anyone who’s interested knows that Sandra Fluke wasn’t just another young law student at Georgetown, but in fact was a 30 year old left-wing political activist who enrolled at the Catholic university in order to crusade on behalf of publicly funded contraception and abortion.
     "The tuition at Georgetown runs $45,000-a-year, meaning that three years of Law School is running her, or, more likely, her folks, $135,000, not counting room and board. Whatever your politics may be, it’s pretty hard to imagine that whoever is writing the checks to Georgetown can’t also afford to pay for her birth-control pills.
     "After doing a little research, I found that a six-month supply of Yasmin, a popular generic birth-control pill, runs $89.98, plus shipping. Which means that, instead of $1,000 a year, the cost would be $179.96.
     "In other words, while Ms. Fluke is probably not a slut or a prostitute, as Limbaugh suggested, she is certainly a great big fibber. And if I were her parents, I’d certainly want to know why she is leading such an active sex life when she should be hitting those expensive law books".

By the way, Bill O'Reilly learned that she's the girl-friend of a political operative who works for the PR firm that's been on the Obama campaign payroll. The plot thickens ...

- - - - -

Reality-check on Iran ...
     It is highly unlikely that the U. S. government has any real idea of the state of Iranian progress toward building a nuclear weapon. Let's face it: In recent years ... decades, actually ... the track-record of American intelligence agencies in foreseeing cataclysmic international events is not impressive. It didn't anticipate the collapse of the old Soviet Union, it hadn't a clue about 9-11 ... the list is long and dismaying.
     By every account, Israeli intel work, especially on matters involving their neighbors in the middle-east, is far more impressive. In evaluating the Iranian threat, only a fool would trust the U. S. government's word over that of Israel.
     And only a hopeless idiot would take the word of Jimmy Carter, who now says he believes the Muslim Brotherhood because "they told him so." One wonders how a person so stupid and gullible ever got to be president of the PTA, much less the USA -- until one  beholds the present occupant of the office, chosen by a stupid and gullible electorate.

- - - - -

Now's the time of year when even a casual basketball fan can get interested. Conference tournaments, then March Madness.  Who'd have believed Florida State beating Duke twice in one season? And Nawth Cahlina once, as well?

- - - - -

Reader Neal shares my annoyance at some more language-mangling ...
     "There is a trend even among so-called newscasters to use phrases nearly empty and greatly expanded when  a single word would do.  Don't believe it?  Try 'at this point in time,' a five word jargon which merely says 'now.'  Three letters convey the idea precisely and concisely.  But then these self-designated elitists, who have managed to infect the modern broadcast media, presume to be much smarter than the lowly peasants whom they address.  Another of their errors is to say such as 'very unique' by which they probably mean 'different.'  'Unique'means "one of a kind.' There are no degrees of uniqueness.  A thing either is or is not."

- - - - -

Translations for husbands ...
     (1) Fine : This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

     (2) Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

     (3) Nothing : This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

     (4) Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don't Do It!

      (5) Loud Sigh: This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to # 3 for the meaning of nothing.)

      (6) That's Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. "That's okay" means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

      (7) Thanks : A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you're welcome. (I want to add in a clause here - This is true, unless she says "Thanks a lot" - that is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you at all. DO NOT say "you're welcome".. That will bring on a "whatever").

     (8) Whatever : Is a woman's way of saying...Go get stuffed;;;;;;;.

      (9) Don't worry about it, I got it : Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking "What's wrong?" For the woman's response refer to # 3.

- - - - -

Words to live by ...
     Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Give a man a welfare check, a forty ounce malt liquor, a crack pipe and some Air Jordan's and he votes Democrat for a lifetime.
EVEN LIBERALS (RELUCTANTLY) SEEING THE LIGHT ...
  ARLEN'S ANGST ... CONFESSION OF A COVER-UP  

Maybe it's a wakeup call for media liberals. Even the poll sponsored by the liberal Washington Post and liberal ABC-TV now finds -- however they worded the questions -- public approval of Obama has gone south. His negatives outweigh the support on overall handling of the economy, and two-thirds disapprove of his handling of gasoline prices. And this from a poll by two of his biggest media cheerleaders.

- - - - -

Arlen Specter, one of the most despicable two-faced creeps ever to disgrace the United States Senate with his very presence, is now complaining that Obama, who persuaded him to switch parties in order to provide the deciding vote for the widely-hated Obamacare socialized medical plan, dumped him immediately after the vote. I'm sure we're all stunned, shocked and amazed -- aren't we?

- - - - -

About Barack Obama's videotaped expression of great admiration for the radical leftist and racist late Prof. Bell of Hahvuhd  ...   
     Damned right there was -- and is -- a media coverup. As Investors Business Daily reports ...
     "The media knew it existed four years ago and conspired with academia to hide it to get Obama elected. 'We hid this during the 2008 campaign,' confessed Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree. PBS had it then, but cut both the audio and the hug in a report on Obama's Harvard days. The footage served as wallpaper. Now that Breitbart.com has put the entire video online, the major media have gone into damage-control mode for Obama"
     The coverup includes lefty Soledad O'Brien, Andrea Mitchell and virtually the entire array of Big Media names and faces. Just how radical was this Bell? So nutty, even Harvard eventually fired him.
     Now the Obama media suck-ups are trying to bury the story with the line that, "We have more important things to talk about."  Really? Like what? Whether leftist activist women at Georgetown University should have someone else -- like the Catholic Church -- pay for their birth control if they want to get laid?

- - - - -

Regarding Obama's war on the Catholic Church over providing birth control to employees, David Catron has a history reminder in The American Spectator ...
     "During a recent conversation about the HHS anti-conscience mandate, a friend who is neither Catholic nor particularly religious asked the following rhetorical question about the Obama administration: Do these people know who they're messing with? Her point, of course, was that the Church has spent nearly two millennia crushing attempts by secular rulers to dictate the way it carries out its charitable ministries. Commanding Catholic hospitals to fund sterilizations, contraceptives, and abortifacients isn't like twisting the arm of some roundheel congressman. It's going to take more than the usual Chitown chicanery to cow a venerable and well-funded organization that has brought more than one emperor to his knees."

- - - - -

The "Stockholm Syndrome" dates back to an incident in the 1970's in which employees at a Swedish bank, held captive by bandits for almost a week, began to identify and sympathize with their captors.
     It is recalled when reading the accounts of  Louis Farrakhan's speech at UC-Berkeley Saturday in which he lectured on a fantasized version of "black history" and alleged that Jews had run the slave trade.
     We need not dig back into history to find the people who used to run that evil enterprise; they still do. Black African people are still being sold into slavery by the same people who've always done it. Muslims. Today slaves are sold largely to middle-east Arabs and North African Muslims, and the "business" is run by Muslims, just as has historically been the case.
     Which makes it all the more odd that black Americans embrace Islam.

Going deeper into history, slavery has always blighted every region of the globe. Rare is the society that has not, at one point or another, indulged in the practice. As one example that originated in southern Europe, the Slavic people are called Slavs, which gave birth to the very word "slave" because they were repeatedly subjugated by other ethnic groups.

- - - - -

To cut thru the self-deluding nonsense that seems to have taken control of what passes for the thinking process in many quarters ...
     Who, after giving any attention to the history of Islam and the outspoken threats that come from Muslim fanatics, could possibly believe that either negotiation or sanctions can deter them from their clearly-stated goal of world domination, including killing or subduing anyone who doesn't share their religion (or aggressive political movement disguised as religion)?
     When people both say and demonstrate that they are willing to die for those goals and whose own holy book proclaims that lying to infidels -- i..e, any non-Muslim -- is noble, just how stupid do you have to be in order to believe their purposes can be altered by either kind words or economic pressure? This is suicidal nonsense.

- - - - -

Who wins the "Most Contemptible" race between these two? George Soros, who funds left-wing causes with millions of dollars, or Brazilian actress Adriana Ferreyr, who's suing ol' George for $50 million on grounds that he broke his promise to buy her a $1,900,000 apartment in New York? He's trying to pay her off to drop the suit with an offer of $250,000.
     Should the award be given 81-year-old Georgie for being a cheapskate with the South American hottie ... or the 31-year-old girlfriend who seems to have been playing hide-the-weenie with him? Or ... was it true love on her part?
     Enquiring minds want to know.

- - - - -

A classic ...
     Three old fellows are out walking.
     First one says, "Windy, isn't it?"
     Second one says, "No, its Thursday."
     Third one says, "So am I, let's go get a beer."
OBAMA'S WORDS TO LIVE BY ...
BRITISH P.M. VISITS; MISERY LOVES COMPANY ...
'LIBERALS' ADVOCATE CENSORSHIP

“I live to harass white folks.” -- The motto of the late Derrick Bell, Barack Obama's hero at Harvard.

Harry Truman's desktop motto was "The Buck Stops Here." When will Obama place HIS idol's words there?

- - - - -

The Big Media are trying desperately to sell the idea that Obama's re-election is inevitable. Contrarily, the Rasmussen poll finds that only 37% of likely voters say their views are more aligned with the president, while 53% say they share the views of one of the Republican candidates.
     Perhaps the Great Awakening has begun.

- - - - -

British Prime Minister David Cameron is visiting the U.S. for a "summit" meeting -- and a basketball game -- with Barack Obama, just as the Brtitish people and pols are loudly demanding they end their participation in the increasingly unpopular (both here and in Britain) Afghanistan war.
     Republican presidential candidates should be emphasizing that Obama, in his virulent criticism of the Iraq war in 2008, was proclaiming that Afghanistan was where we should really be making our military effort. He should be confronted and challenged on the consequences of this war -- and they aren't pretty. Other than our incompetent ambassador and a few politicized generals, the conclusion of other Americans on the scene is that we're really accomplishing nothing and fighting a hopeless war. So now the ball is in your court, Mr. President. Tell those thousands of bereaved Americans just what the lost lives of their loved ones have accomplished.

By the way, while you're schmoozing the British PM, perhaps you could explain to him why you disdainfully removed the bust of Winston Churchill, a man with courage and skills you will never have, from the Oval Office. And why a historic ally that you've repeatedly insulted should give you political cover for your own bungling. If Mr. Cameron were less of a gentleman, he might tell you to kiss his British backside.

- - - - -

It's a revelation that only liberals could ignore. Rush Limbaugh says things with which millions agree, the libs become hysterical and demand censorship in clear violation of the constitution. But Barack Obama shreds the constitution with his actions and they offer not a whimper.
     One of those shrieking loudest is Jane Fonda, the propagandist for communist North Vietnam, seated astride one of their anti-aircraft guns in Hanoi while almost 60,000 Americans were dying in that war, more than 150,000 wounded.

We may be heading for a confrontation in which it will take more backbone and fewer words to deal with the "Occupy" rabble mentality that increasingly possesses the mentally-defective wing of the Democratic party. Continual concessions to the lawless and the crazy leads to a conclusion that is not pleasant to contemplate. It is far past time to stop it.

- - - - -

Remember this sad relic of the Jimmy Carter years, the Misery Index? It was the combination of the inflation rate and the unemployment rate as an indicator of the real state of the economy. As financial reporter Terry Keenan advises ...
     "Fortunately, the folks at the American Institute of Economic Research have resurrected the idea. Their Everyday Price Index (EPI) strips away the cost of big-ticket items, like homes and cars, and looks at the cost of things that consumers encounter on a daily or monthly basis, such as groceries, prescription medicine, and telephone and cable bills. By that measure, the Everyday Price Index shows inflation galloping ahead at an 8.1 percent annual rate, a reading that would put the current Misery Index at a Carter-like 16.4 percent — not a good recipe for re-election."  -- (NY Post)

- - - - -

Delusional Democrats have managed to convince themselves that unconstitutional attempts by the Obamunists to coerce the Catholic Church into providing abortion and birth control for their employees will reap a rich reward of female voters. Yet the liberal Washington Post's own poll numbers show support for Obama declining since he launched this war thru a female activist disguised as an innocent little college student.

- - - - -

Speaking of what she calls "extremists" at a feminist gathering, Hillary Clinton said, "They want to control women. They want to control how we dress, they want to control how we act, they even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies." The last was a reference to the unwillingness of the Catholic Church to subsidize abortion and birth control, which would contradict church doctrine.
     In other words, it is her view that it is repressive NOT to force the church to violate its own principles.
     This might suggest that it's easy to take other people's principles lightly if one has none of her own.

A novel thought: How's this for an answer to those who demand "free" birth control or other goodies subsidized by somebody else ...
      "By any realistic standard, this nation is already bankrupt. A lot of people want a lot of "free" stuff. We can't afford it. If you want it, pay for it yourself. And if you can't get the job you want, take the job you can get and stop the freeloading."

- - - - -

Jed Babbin (The American Spectator) looks past her sex life and concludes that Sarah Flake is, to put it bluntly, just another parasite ...
     "Sandra Fluke is the model Welfare Queen for the 21st Century. Upper middle class to start, going to a very expensive (and very liberal law) school on scholarship, and now (as we know from news reports) a tool of the White House media shop. She won't have kids like the old-style welfare queens. Instead, she will first absorb all the government benefits she can while in school, and then work for a liberal law firm or political organization as a political activist. Or she may become another trusted lieutenant of Eric Holder at Justice."

- - - - -

I have no problem with Mike Huckabee; he's a capable media schmoozer. However, I will be very surprised if Rush Limbaugh doesn't eat him alive in the ratings when Cumulus Broadcasting, owner (and destroyer) of ABC Radio, launches Huck's show in opposition.

- - - - -

Burt Prelutsky with an observation and a question ...
      "I sometimes think that Republicans are genetically compelled to bring water pistols to a gun fight. I really am sick and tired of hearing Mitch McConnell referring to “Our friends on the other side of the aisle.” Harry Reid is not your friend. Charles Schumer, Patrick Leahy and Dick Durbin, are not your friends. What’s more, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray and Dianne Feinstein, are not going to the prom with you. Get over it.
     "I’d like to know why no Republican in Congress ever accuses Obama of anything worse than incompetence. When, at the very same time that China, North Korea and Iran, are all building up their armies and increasing the stockpile of nuclear bombs in the hands of madmen, Obama is gutting the U.S. military and promising to reduce our nuclear arsenal by 80%, that can’t be explained away as mere incompetence. Let’s face it, if a foreign power had the ability to lower our defense capability that easily, they’d leave us no option but to declare war on them."

- - - - -

Has there ever been a more obvious oxymoron than the media term, "guest host?"

- - - - -

ALLYSIA FINLEY takes up the cause of mandated employee benefits with a tongue-in-cheek letter in the wall street journal ...
"Dear President Obama,
Can you believe the nerve of employers? Many of them still seem to think that they should be allowed to determine the benefits they offer. There are still many essential benefits that the government must mandate to make the U.S. the freest country in the world.
    • Fitness club memberships. Most doctors agree that exercising is one of the best ways to prevent disease. However, gym memberships can run between $240 and $1,800 per year. Such high prices force us to choose between exercising and buying groceries. While we could walk or jog outside, many of us prefer not to.
    • Massages. Stress raises the risk of heart disease, obesity, depression and a host of other maladies.  However, since few of us can afford massages, it is imperative that employers be required to cover weekly massage treatments or hire in-office masseuses.
    • Yoga classes. Like exercise and massage, yoga reduces stress and can relieve back pain, osteoarthritis and even menopausal symptoms.
    • Coffee. Studies show that coffee can ward off depression, Alzheimer's disease, type 2 diabetes and sleepiness—which makes it one of the most powerful preventive treatments. Oh, and workers must also be able to choose the kind of coffee regardless of the price.
    • Salad bar. Studies also show that eating a lot of salad helps people maintain a healthy weight, which is key to preventing diabetes, heart disease and hypertension.
      I'm sure Attorney General Eric Holder, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and your political adviser David Axelrod could produce a legal memorandum explaining why they are necessary. Besides, if you can justify a mandate on individuals to buy health insurance, this should be a piece of cake.

- - - - -

"The biggest reason that our government has turned into a nanny state is because so many American adults act like spoiled, petulant children. This is not about being a conservative as opposed to a liberal; it's about being an adult as opposed to a child. You want to be a man? Act like a man, not a boy. You want to be treated like a woman? Act like a woman instead of a little girl playing with her dolls. Ultimately, if you want the respect that comes with being an adult, you have to do more than reach adulthood. Instead, you have to actually embrace the responsibilities that come with being a man. Until you can do that, you'll forever be an unworthy child, no matter what age you reach." -- John Hawkins, Townhall.com

- - - - -

Reader Barbara wonders about the imponderables (shades of Steven Wright) ...
How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?
Why does a round pizza come in a square box?
How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage?
Why are you IN a movie, but you're ON TV?
Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?
Why is 'bra' singular and 'panties' plural?

REPUB RACE MORE CONFUSING THAN AMUSING ...
CHU'd OUT? IT'S TIME ...
WHO'S REALLY UNEMPLOYED?

Santorum had a good day in both 'bama and Mississippi, although the vote was a close three-way split. Romney just can't get the traction to pull away, although the math still favors him in the long-run. Thanks to being organized in territorial outposts like American Samoa, Romney still won the most delegates yesterday
     I wonder if anyone in his campaign organization has the cojones to offer this advice:
     Mitt, stop sounding stupid! In an interview with Neil Cavuto, the leading contender referred to the chaotic Afghanistan war and its accompanying blood-letting as a “kinetic activity.” You know ... the Obama obfuscation of war. Perhaps the Massachusetts Mauler should emulate the 1880's campaign of Pres. Wm McKinley and confine himself to campaigning with a few remarks from his front porch. It worked then; perhaps Obama's presidency is lame enough to enable it to work again.
     Mittens, just sit on your porch, posit a few platitudes, and shut the hell up!

- - - - -

Another example of how politicians get in the habit of talking in a language many people don't understand is Gingrich's constant references to "we're going to Tampa."  Try this: ask the next ten people you meet if they know where the Republican convention will be held.
     It reminds one of how Bob Dole always talked in insider terms, with endless references to "HB 237" or "SB 932", leaving listeners scratching their heads and wondering, "What the hell is he talking about?"

- - - - -

Obama operatives are doubtless enjoying watching three Republicans continue to drain the wallets of contributors in their internecine warfare. The more money spent fighting each other, the less available for the general election.

- - - - -

So Obama is "generally proud" of our troops.  What a ringing endorsement from a Commander-in-Chief.

- - - - -

Jay Leno --
     "They say gasoline could be $6 a gallon. But the good news is the White House says President Obama is aware of the problem, and will continue to talk about it between fundraisers."

- - - - -

Now that Obama's Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, has renounced his own oft-repeated statement that he wanted to see U.S. gas prices rise to European levels, it reveals him to be not only stupid, but a gutless weasel.

- - - - -

While Obama apologists and the totally deluded babble about the improving economy  it should be remembered that a key indicator, unemployment statistics, is based on a bureaucratic lie. Those numbers do not take into account people who have simply given up on finding work; they also count as "employed" people who formerly had meaningful jobs at decent pay, but now are working only part-time for much lower wages.
     That is the glaring difference between Obama propaganda and the observed reality that most Americans see for themselves.
     All the eventual Republican nominee need do is recycle the cutting question Ronald Reagan asked of Americans so successfully during his triumph over the pathetic Jimmy Carter: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"
     Only the freeloaders and fraudsters subsidized by Obama's Chicago-style political machine will answer in the affirmative. In fact, we have a number from the poll sponsored by the liberal CBS/New York Times poll: only 20% say they're better off.

- - - - -

Obama has already reneged on his pre-election vow that if he didn't have the economy back in order within two years he'd be a one-term president. We might also wonder if Gingrich would give us a deadline-date by which gasoline would be $2.50 a gallon or he'd otherwise withdraw and not run again.

- - - - -

Obama took British Prime Minister David Cameron to a basketball game. In Dayton, Ohio. Between Western Kentucky University and Mississippi Valley State. Why or whether Obama or Cameron had any special rooting interest in either fine institution is unknown. What IS known, thanks to the Washington Times, is that they spent $365,000 of your tax money just on the cost of flying Air Force One to Ohio.

- - - - -   

Rasmussen poll finds the most-disliked (by the public) member of Congress is -- ta-da! -- Nancy Pelosi. Followed closely by the handsome and charming Harry Reid.

- - - - -

The nutball quote of the week:
     “These guys don’t have a sense of the average folks out there. They don’t know what it means to be middle class.” -- VP Joe Biden, speaking at a (minimum) $10,000 per couple fund-raising dinner.

More high-living freeloading:
     Bloomberg Biznews reports that the Cabernet Sauvignon wine served at a recent White House Dinner cost $399 a bottle; $100 per glass. And guess who paid for it.    

- - - - -

Newsbusters exposes -- again -- the liberal bias/fraudulence of CNN. While a newsreader was stating the old news that the Senate has gone well over 1,000 days without fulfilling its constitutional duty to enact a budget, it showed photos ONLY of Republican Senators -- despite the fact that that body is controlled by Harry Reid and the Democrats. CNN--Propaganda, Inc.

- - - - -

     "The Education Department released a study last week showing that black school kids are disciplined at higher rates than whites. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said that these disparate outcomes were evidence of 'fundamental unfairness.' Not surprisingly, the press largely reported the story on Mr. Duncan's terms.
     "Of course, blacks are the principal victims of black criminals, and black kids who attend school to get an education have the most to lose if schools start easing up on bullies. If only the administration cared as much about actual human beings as it does about pie-in-the-sky racial parity." -- Jason Riley in WSJ's Political Diary.

- - - - -

Thomas Sowell takes on the absurd premise of the joint crusade of the Department of Education and the Department of Justice against schools that discipline black males more often than other students ...
     "If black males get punished more often than Asian American females, does that mean that it is somebody else's fault? That it is impossible that black males are behaving differently from Asian American females? Nobody in his right mind believes that. But that is the unspoken premise, without which the punishment statistics prove nothing about 'equity.
     "What is the purpose or effect of this whole exercise by the Department of Education and the Department of Justice? To help black students or to secure the black vote in an election year by seeming to be coming to the rescue of blacks from white oppression?
     "What they are more fundamentally trying to protect are the black votes which are essential for Democrats. For that, blacks must be constantly depicted as under siege from whites, so that Democrats can be seen as their rescuers."

- - - - -

Now another poll sponsored by liberal media is forced to recognize that Obama's support is thinning. It's the CBS/New York Times poll that finds 41 percent of respondents express approval of the job he is doing and 47 percent saying they disapprove.
     The numbers must be truly awful if both this poll and the ABC/Washington Post poll show the public figuring out that this would-be emperor truly has no clothes.

- - - - -

     "“Whether one believes in a large, very active government or something more limited, mathematically, the amount of debt we already have and the terrifying rate at which it is accumulating will lead to national ruin. There’s no other outcome arithmetically possible.” -- Gov. Mitch Daniels, who got Indiana's budget and finances in order but decline to run for the Republican presidential nomination.

- - - - -

My admiration for longtime political operative (for both parties) Dick Morris is limited. However, I believe he's right when he says that a "brokered" convention and selection of a nominee only two months before the election would be disastrous for the Republican Party. It appeals to the fantasies of fervent anti-Romney voters,  but draws smiles from Obama campaign organizers.

- - - - -

One poll finds a majority of Americans think Rush Limbaugh should be fired for his remarks about the Georgetown University student-activist.
     Ignorance runs deep. Rush can't be fired, because Rush works for ... Rush!
     This "public" reaction is another manifestation of the kind of stupidity that put Barack Obama in the White House.

- - - - -

Wes Pruden has suggestions for other "gimmes" from -- or forced by -- the government ...
     "The president has cleverly transformed the contraception issue from a Democratic attack on freedom to act on religious belief to a Republican ravishing of women. Fear of a shortage of contraceptives can now be exploited to make everyone forget about jobs they don’t have, the nation in hock to the Chinese, and the building of an Islamic bomb in Iran.
     "Mr. Obama should expand his contraceptive mandate. It doesn’t go far enough. To put it delicately, so as not to offend in our age of dignified reticence to declaim endlessly and openly of what used to be called sex, what’s the point of a free contraceptive if there’s no opportunity to use it? It’s only fair that the government guarantee opportunity where the rubber meets the road. A mandate for opportunity, so no bachelor or spinster need stay home on date night is an idea whose time has clearly come."
     -- Mr. Pruden has other recommendations. The list is on the Washtimes.com site --

- - - - -

California's chaotic financial problem in a nutshell ...
     With 12% of America's population, California has one third of the nation's welfare recipients.  -- (source -- WSJ)

- - - - -

Dan Sorkin forwards a few quotes from America's Founders deserving of recollection and consideration ...
     "If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." -- Samuel Adams
     "The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." -- Patrick Henry, American colonial revolutionary
      "The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." -- Patrick Henry

- - - - -

Jim passes along this word from Larry the Cable Guy ...
     "My cousin won't even let his 14 year old daughter have a beer...in front of HER daughter."

- - - - -

The Sky-guy strikes again ...
     A couple drove down a country road for several miles, not saying a word.  An earlier discussion had led to an argument and neither of them wanted to concede their position.
     As they passed a farm barnyard with mules, goats and pigs, the husband asked sarcastically, "Relatives of yours?"
     "Yep", the wife replied, "In-Laws!"
NO OBAMA PLAN FOR AFGHANISTAN ...
MUSTN'T LET A PANETTA BE AT RISK ...
NO NOOKIE NUM-NUMS?

Afghanistan. It's the war Obama said we SHOULD be fighting, while he was carping about a messy but undoubtedly more successful war in Iraq. Now, our Afghan effort is collapsing in chaos. Gee, wonder where Obama will place the blame now? After all, he's had more than three years to demonstrate how it should be done.

- - - - -

What does it say when U.S. military personnel are ordered to leave their weapons outside before entering the tent where their penultimate boss, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, was visiting an American base in Afghanistan?
     The official word is that American personnel should be unarmed to be on an equal footing with Afghans. Considering that Afghan "allies" have been shooting their American "colleagues", just what kind of idiot made THAT stupid decision?

- - - - -

Timeless advice applicable to Iran's endless threats ...
     After World War 2, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's death camps was asked what he had learned from the whole horrible experience.
     He said, "I learned that when a man tells you he's going to kill you ... believe him."

- - - - -

Jonah Goldberg (NY Post) on Obama's falling public-approval numbers ...
     "The polls say gas prices are a huge part of the story, especially given how the last 30 days haven’t exactly been great for the GOP.
     "No wonder Obama is desperate to get out in front of the issue. The dilemma is that he’s invested so much of his prestige in his energy policies that he can’t admit those policies have been an abject failure."

- - - - -

You have to be naive not to realize that Obama's policies have put us on a road to economic ruin. You have to be gullible not to believe it's not a deliberate choice to achieve exactly that end.
     Given everything we know about his mentors and his ingrained race-hatred, it all unfolds as "Get Whitey" writ large.

- - - - -

A Jim Eason observation: "Since the government's report on the unemployment numbers does NOT include people who have given up searching for work... let's have EVERYONE quit working, and just go home.  Then there would be NO unemployment, right?"

- - - - -

"If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check." -- Thomas Jefferson  (In what could be a cautionary note to today's Republicans).

- - - - -

Economist Walter Williams' take (Townhall.com) about why Americans are willing to put up with so much crap from an idiotic, oppressive government ...
     "Because Americans are so compliant and willing to suffer silently at the gasoline pump, the Obama administration is willing to press on as handmaidens of environmental extremists who want to halt the exploration of our country's vast oil supplies, which are estimated to be triple those of Saudi Arabia. The Obama administration would rather pour more taxpayer dollars into risky alternative crony energy suppliers and electric cars. The OPEC nations have to be laughing at us, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were revealed that they are making under-the-table payments to environmental wackos."

- - - - -

If you have deluded acquaintances who rely on Media Matters for information, let them know that the whole operation is a left-wing propaganda mill financed by George Soros, and suggest they do their own internet search to learn more about that Sugar Daddy of the Left. His work for the Nazis occupying his native Hungary in WW 2 and their treatment of his fellow Jews would be a good place to start.

- - - - -

"Feminists are declaring a sex strike for Obamacare-subsidized birth control. The group Liberal Ladies Who Lunch is organizing 'Access Denied,' a week-long exercise in self-denial starting April 28. The strike is supposed to motivate men to stand up for government-funded birth control 'because when we lose our reproductive choices, so do they.' This is akin to protesting welfare cuts by getting a job.
     "Highlighting opposition to Obamacare-subsidized birth control by abstaining from sex is a bit off-message for the feminists. This isn’t exactly Lysistrata trying to stop the Peloponnesian War. In this case, activists are abandoning the activity that causes their supposed need for the birth-control handout." -- Washington Times editorial.

- - - - -

Obama picks North Carolina to win the NCAA basketball tournament.  Really a reach, dude! B.O., Fearless Champion of the Overdog. (Maybe he's figured out that he has no chance to win Kentucky's electoral votes.)

- - - - -

The sensitive, caring Islamic culture in action ...
     Amina is a 16-year-old Moroccan girl. She was raped by a man ten years older. But a Muslim judge ruled that she must marry her rapist, which would absolve the man of his crime.
     Instead, she committed suicide by taking rat poison.

- - - - -

A company called Carbonite was one of the handful of sponsors to denounce Rush Limbaugh. Since doing so, its stock has dropped some 20%.

- - - - -

A reminder: Never go to the bathroom in the dark. Turn the light on and check the toilet bowl.
     A man in Staten Island, New York, was having his morning shave when he noticed a snake staring up at him. A plumber was called and began pulling on the snake -- presumably with some sort of tool -- and it kept coming. All four feet of it.
     How it got there? A mystery. But it happens often enough to call for caution. Otherwise, you might someday have a very interesting story to tell in the Emergency Room.

- - - - -

Good news. Orlando's Sanford Int'l airport, which is the #2 facility serving the city and Disneyworld, is getting rid of the TSA Gestapo and replacing them with a private security service.

- - - - -

New and apt label: Soledad O'Brien, News-twit.

- - - - -

Looking ahead to St. Patrick's Day tomorrow, Sheila forwards the wisdom of the irrepressible Maxine ...
     "It's okay to pretend we're Irish on St. Patrick's Day. We pretend we're good on Christmas, don't we?"

- - - - -

The SHINE website reports that Jennifer Aniston spends over $140,000 a year to "stay beautiful."  Sorry, babe; it ain't working. There are at least two better-looking women serving food at my local Mexican restaurant.

- - - - -

Craig Ferguson on the growing drive for a healthier diet --
     "I actually tried to grow my own food but I can't find any Twinkie seeds."

- - - - -


A cultural item from reader Rick ...
     Billy-Bob and Bubba were sitting in the back of a trailer, drinking a beer and talking about life.  Billy-Bob said: "If I snuck over to your house while you were out fishing and had sex with your wife, and she got pregnant, would that make us kin?"
      Bubba scratched his head for a bit and said: "I don't think so. But  it sure would make us even!"
PRIMARY-FATIGUE SYNDROME ...
INTOLERANT "TOLERANCE" ...
GAS PAINS ...

Next Tuesday is yet another "one more chance" for Romney to open a significant gap in his lead over (primarily) Santorum and Gingrich. It's the Illinois primary, and unless tons of money spent on advertising between now and then does the job, it looks unlikely. But the Romney rollercoaster moves steadily forward.

- - - - -

A Romney-Santorum ticket? Don't think so. In fact, I'd bet ... oh ... $1.35 it'll never happen. (That's why they call me a "high-roller" in Vegas.)

- - - - -

Victor Davis Hanson looks at the Obama scoreboard in National Review Online ...
     "During the 2004 campaign, the Kerry camp derided 5.5 percent unemployment as proof of a “jobless recovery.” Today 8.3 percent is deemed a sign of a real rebound. In 2008, when George W. Bush had borrowed $4 trillion over eight years, the deficits were termed by candidate Obama as “unpatriotic”; trumping that total in just four years is now called much-needed “stimulus.”
     "The price of gasoline has more than doubled since January 2009, and the rise is not over yet. This summer might still see the price triple in less than four years.
     "If a president is to take time out from a bad economy and a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran to offer commentary on a radio-show host’s use of a slur against a female student, how can his campaign affiliates take a million dollars from a humorless comedian who so trumps Rush Limbaugh that his style of misogynist attack requires asterisks even to be quoted?"

- - - - -

Dialogue at the gas pump ...
     "These prices are Obama's fault."
     "No they're not! It's because the dollar is worth less and less."
      "And whose fault is that?"
      (silence)

- - - - -

James Robbins, senior editorial writer for the Washington Times, takes note of the left's intolerance, even as they preach "tolerance" ...
     "A new study confirms the general lack of tolerance for diversity on the left. A Pew Research Center survey of behavior on social media sites found that liberals are the most likely to have blocked, unfriended, hidden or otherwise muted a person on a social media site who posted political content they did not like. Apparently even in the relatively benign online universe, liberals simply cannot stand being exposed to ideas they don’t agree with and have to shut them out. If this type of blatant hypocrisy and general incivility upsets you, you might just be an American."

- - - - -

Can anyone explain -- seriously -- just what it is we are (A) accomplishing or (B) even hope to accomplish in Afghanistan?

- - - - -

Jimmy Fallon --
     "A new report found that Hawaii has the best quality of life of any state in the U.S. You know, just in case you thought it sucked living in Hawaii."

- - - - -

Bert Prelutsky muses over odd behavior ...
     "It has been apparent for months that Obama, who ran as a man who would unite all of us, intends to drop the camouflage this time around and run a presidential campaign that divides Americans by race, religion and income. The question that comes to mind is why, with a Republican House and what is expected to be a Republican Senate, Obama even seeks a second term. Can it be that he and Michelle are so enamored of the presidential perks of free travel, paid vacations to exotic locales, galas with celebrities at the White House and never having to stand in line to shoot a round of golf, that nothing else counts?'

Yes, it is possible that is a major motivating factor.

It is also possible that millions of Americans by now viscerally realize that they voted for a viciously anti-American demagogue for president but can't bring themselves to acknowledge it, comforting themselves with the knowledge that "he can't be TOO awful, because millions of others did the same." Every idiot, failure and tyrant who ever achieved leadership throughout history has had followers who gave in to the same impulse. They can't admit to having made a horrible mistake, secure in the knowledge that they have abundant company in their stupidity.

- - - - -

Jay Leno --
     "Not a good week for President Obama. His approval rating has dropped 9 percent in the last month to an all-time low of 41 percent. In fact, if this keeps up, the White House said they may have to fish out bin Laden and shoot him all over again."

- - - - -

Reader Dennis offers a reconnection to logic ...
     "Our Dear Leader has lately been fond of saying that the US has merely 2 per cent of the world's oil, but consumes 20 per cent of the world's oil and that because of that we have no hope of producing enough oil to meet our demand, so why bother to produce more oil.  Putting aside the factual incorrectness of this statement, there is a bigger problem with this particular piece of Obama idiocy.  It is like saying that the US produces zero per cent of the world's bananas, but consumes a vastly greater amount of bananas annually, so we should all quit eating bananas."   

- - - - -

Cindy Adams --
     “A good guy’s like coffee.  Best rich, warm and can keep you up all night.”

- - - - -
 
One more for St. Patrick's Day ...
     Mick and Paddy are reading headstones at a nearby cemetery.
     Mick says, "This is amazing, this bloke was 152!"
     Paddy says, "What's his name?"
     Mike replies, "Miles from London!"
        (thanks, Mr. Hill!)


PRESIDENTIAL PREVARICATIONS ...
SANTORUM: "NO HABLA ESPANOL" ...
JOHN KERRY BAINFULLY INVESTED


It's hard to briefly summarize all Obama's lies in his latest laugh-fest for dumb college students, but today's recommended reading is Mark Steyn's column, available at  his own website or the Orange County Register website, among other places. It illustrates again that the Dear Leader is either a pathological liar or outright ignorant in his sophomoric nonsense about backward Republicans. It's frightening that he believes, perhaps accurately, that the American public is so ill-educated that it swallows his fabrications.
     We do, after all, live in one of the dumbest countries in the so-called "first world" -- as repeated competitive tests vs. students from other countries demonstrate.

- - - - -

It is the tragedy of our time that while the nation is cursed with arguably the worst president in history, the out-of-power adversaries have produced a collection of such deeply flawed alternatives to contend for the position. Calvin Coolidge would stand like a giant among them.

- - - - -

Rick Santorum and his supporters may be on a fantasyland journey when they assume that a drop-out by Gingrich would benefit them. Gallup Poll finds Newt's followers would split between Santorum and Romney just about evenly, with a slight edge to Romney.
     By the way, English is already an official language in Puerto Rico, along with Spanish. Santorum's remarks on the subject were clearly intended to have an impact among English-only advocates on mainland USA; he never had a chance at getting the handful of delegates from that territory, anyway. A cynic might even call it ... cynical.
     The trip made for a nice quick vacation, though.

- - - - -

One might wonder if Newt Gingrich sees himself as a sort of biblical Samson of today's Republican party, with his recurrent pledge/threat to "go to Tampa," site of the Republican convention in August.  Perhaps he does envision himself, in his determination to destroy Romney, pulling the temple down upon himself and the Republicans he regards as Philistines.

- - - - -

A message to file away. A message to the supporters of whichever candidates fail to win the Republican nomination. It is essential to remember that a contestant who can't even win his own party's selection process -- primaries, caucuses, etc. -- has NO chance to win the general election against an entrenched, determined, well-financed incumbent. None, zip, zero. To believe otherwise is delusional.

- - - - -

Who's a bigger investor than Mitt Romney in Bain Capital, the private equity firm? DEMOCRAT Senator and former presidential candidate ... John Kerry. This comes from the New York Times, no less.

- - - - -

Wonder why we don't have job growth? Consider this. As of April 1, Japan will lower it's tax rate on corporate profits from 39.5% to 36.8%. At that moment, the U.S. becomes the country with the world's highest tax rate -- 39.2% -- on the businesses that create jobs. And yet we wonder why more jobs are being created in other countries.
     We truly do live in a land run by lunatics. The entire Obama administration isn't capable of running a hamburger franchise.

- - - - -

Jonah Goldberg offers this insight ...
     "The notion that the president "runs" the economy is fairly ridiculous. The president doesn't have a Create Jobs' button on his desk he can press.
     "But he does have a whole bunch of monkey wrenches he can throw into the economic machinery. Like a drunk blind guy with a blowtorch: there are infinite possibilities for making things worse, far fewer for making them better."

A reasonable view. And Obama has been hurling those monkey wrenches at an unprecedented rate. Unless you want to go back to FDR, who turned a recession into the worst depression in the nation's history -- then got credit from dunces for "fixing" it.
     By contrast, Ronald Reagan fixed a depressed economy in record time by letting the immutable laws of economics work, instead of trying to contort them like his predecessor, the hapless Jimmuh.

- - - - -

The soldier who's being charged in the massacre of Afghan civilians turns out to have had both a head injury and lost part of a foot in that stupid, futile war and had been told he was to be sent home (after three combat tours of duty) only to have the army reverse that decision at the last minute. It doesn't excuse his action, but may have precipitated it. It will certainly be emphasized by his defense attorney.
     Now it is time to ask what kind of decision-making process in our over-politicized military led to a man missing part of his foot being told one day that his war was over, only to be told the reverse the following day? Has our military leadership gone as crazy as the (ugh--pains me to write it) Commander-in-Chief?

- - - - -

Reader Peter asks a pertinent question ...
     "After reading the headlines today about the US soldier who shot up Afghanistan civilians, I couldn’t help noticing an irony.  There is all this clamor (among Afghans) to try this guy quickly and execute him, never mind his having suffered a traumatic injury.  Yet this Major Hasan, who shot up Fort Hood while screaming "Allahu akbar," still hasn’t stood trial, and they are still debating whether he was insane, even with the clear evidence regarding his motive: slay as many infidels as possible.
     "So we have a guy in a war zone who cracks, and he must be executed immediately.  But this Muslim psychiatrist who was stateside in a nice safe office all day murders 13, wounds 29 of our own guys, and they try to argue the poor lad suffered post-traumatic stress syndrome, from listening to real soldiers who had actual battle experience.  Two and a half years later, they still haven’t tried the murderous bastard."

- - - - -

Since repeated apologies from our Apologizer-in-Chief apparently aren't sufficient for that two-faced crook in Afghanistan, Karzai, when does Barack Obsequious grow some cojones and demand that HE apologize for all the Americans murdered by our so-called "Afghan allies"?
     It's disgusting that an American president would put up with this humiliating bullcrap. He'll argue with the leader of a worldwide church, but suck up to a Muslim dictator. Amazing ...

- - - - -

Obama's White House now says colleges have to provide birth control in their student health plans.  Well, since they're already getting screwed on tuition ...

- - - - -

If the Tennessee Titans succeed in signing Peyton Manning, it'll likely be because they had the foresight to offer him something beyond his playing career. A lifetime contract with some team management responsibilities. It's astonishing that the Colts' ownership didn't make some sort of similar offer to keep their icon in place. Denver did it with John Elway, their longtime hero QB.
     NFL players, like other pro athletes whose careers end while still young, must -- or should -- wonder, "What am I going to do when my playing days are over?"
     Even if -- unlike many athletes -- plenty of money has been stashed away, the question recurs.

- - - - -

Perhaps it's inherent in the nature of a high-speed game, but basketball seems especially susceptible to having games decided by bad calls on the part of officials, the "block or charge" calls being the most frequent examples.
     I'd watch a lot more basketball if something were done to speed up the last two minutes of games. Far too many time-outs are allowed so coaches can strategize. Let the players play!
     Anyway, yesterday's small-school knockouts of some Big Boys were enjoyable. Of course, top-level college basketball simply serves as a minor-league for the NBA, even more than football is the prep-school for the NFL.

- - - - -

STEPHEN MOORE of the Wall Street Journal with a lesson for California ...
     "Williston, North Dakota, sits atop the Bakken Shale, which will later this year be producing more oil than any other site in the country, surpassing even Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, the longtime leader in domestic output. This once-sleepy town is what the Gold Rush might have looked like had it happened in the time of McDonald's, Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Every night, hundreds of workers sleep in the hulls of their trucks or in temporary housing encampments like soldiers in a war zone. New homes are popping up at breakneck speed. McDonald's is offering workers $18 an hour plus a "signing bonus." In Williston, certainly, America remains the land of opportunity.
      "All this is thanks to the technological leap forward represented by hydraulic fracking, a process that allows drillers to blast through underground shale rock and pump out oil and natural gas.
     Now contrast this bonanza with what's going on in another energy-rich state: California. The Golden State's oil production has fallen by a third in the past 20 years.
     "California's problem is politicians—at the behest of their green-energy allies—deciding to wall off the state from developing evil fossil fuels.
     "The Census finds that North Dakota led the nation in job and income growth in 2011. It has the nation's lowest unemployment rate, at 3.3% (California's is 11.1%).
     "Gov. Jerry Brown is sponsoring a ballot initiative this year to raise taxes yet again.He'd be better off leading a fact-finding delegation to North Dakota to learn how to pay bills, create tens of thousands of jobs, and balance a budget. Mr. Obama might want to come on that trip too."

- - - - -

From the Friday news dump ...
     Oprah Winfrey, who hired her pal Rosie O'Donnell to do a talk show on her cable network, OWN ... has dropped the show. Usual reason. Awful ratings.

- - - - -

Since I've been asked ...
     Do I believe Sheriff Joe or the Presidential Prevaricator?  
     Surely you jest ...
     (I know the punchline: "I'm not jesting and don't call me Shirley ...")

- - - - -

The GPS (global positioning system) in your car is not to be 100% trusted. Ask the three Japanese tourists visiting Australia who followed the device's directions, drove their rented car into the ocean at low tide and found themselves stuck in mud. Then the tide rolled it ...
     They're alive and well, but perhaps they'll learn to read a map.

- - - - -

Scoutmaster Sky asked his troop, "What good deed have you done before you came to the scout meeting tonight?"
     One of the scouts stood up and said, "Well, Mom had only one dose of castor oil left, so I let my baby brother have it."

- - - - -

From a reader ...
     This had most of the state of Michigan laughing for two days and embarrassed a news anchor who will, in the future, likely think before she speaks.
     What happens when you predict snow but don't get any? We had a female news anchor who, the day after it was supposed to have snowed and didn't, turned to the weatherman and asked:
     "So Bob, where's that 8 inches you promised me last night?"

MITT NEEDS RIGHT VEEP CHOICE ...
CAUCUS CHAOS ...
THE ABSENT PRESIDENT

With (very) rare exceptions -- Dick Cheney being one -- vice presidents historically have been inconsequential if they have not succeeded to the Oval Office upon the death of a president.  The position is valued by politicians because, in recent times, it has often been a springboard to the next nomination.
     In the short term the vice-presidential choice has been a campaign tool; "balancing" the ticket, as if it were possible to balance a powerful presidency with an office that has only whatever influence the president chooses to give it. Usually that isn't much, as the anonymity of FDR's choices would indicate. Most Americans had never heard of Harry Truman until his boss died in office.
     Given the reluctance of many Republicans to embrace Mitt Romney, his choice of a running mate may be more important than usual, at least symbolically.  Paul Ryan is one possibility who would enhance his credibility.   

- - - - -

If the Republican Party wants to convince voters it is capable of running the country, it needs first to demonstrate greater organizational ability in it's candidate-choosing process. It took them two weeks to pick a winner in the Iowa caucuses, and we still don't know for sure that they got it right.
     I just heard from a friend who attended one of the caucus gatherings in Missouri; he tells me it was a chaotic mess. In some caucuses (or cauci?) police had to be called in as some participants behaved like barroom brawlers. Some obstreperous Ron Paul supporters had to be forcibly ejected.

- - - - -

We should probably be grateful that Obama is spending most of his time these days milking contributors on the fund-raising circuit. The less time he spends on what's supposed to be his "real" job, the less mischief he causes. And better he be entertaining silly college kids and liberal ignorami in Hollywood than cooking up more crises with his illiterate economic proposals and his (choose one: naive, or wilfully destructive) foreign policy disasters.

- - - - -

The (liberal) Washington Post reports that documents found when Osama bin Laden was whacked show the Al Qaeda honcho wanted Obama assassinated so the "totally unprepared" Joe Biden would replace him.
     Which suggests Osama, himself, foolishly believed that Obama WAS prepared for the job of president.

- - - - -

What kind of childish mentality has been allowed to develop in this country that suggests that their fellow Americans owe people, male or female, "free" birth control? The mere idea is beyond absurdity.

- - - - -

Assuming there are still people so stupid and naive that they actually believed Obama would do anything serious about the flood of illegal aliens ...
     Be advised that Obama's proposed budget for next year makes cuts in provisions for catching, detaining and deporting illegals. And yes, Americans workers, some of those illegals WILL be competing for your job. Or competing for government freebies and programs.
     Or all of the above.

- - - - -

Charles Krauthammer (does anyone call him "Chuck"?) in the Washington Post unloads on Obama's ludicrous energy "policy" ...
     "An oil crisis looms, prices are spiking — and our president is extolling algae. After Solyndra, Keystone, and promises of seaweed in their gas tanks, Americans sense a president so ideologically antipathetic to fossil fuels — which we possess in staggering abundance — that he is utterly unserious about the real world of oil in which the rest of us live.
     "High gasoline prices are a major political problem for Obama. They are not just a pain at the pump, however. They are a constant reminder of three years of a rigid, fatuous, fantasy-driven energy policy that has rendered us scandalously dependent and excessively vulnerable."

- - - - -

... and Prof. Victor Davis Hanson (NRO) adds ...
     "Obama’s energy policy mirror-images his other pipe dream of 2008 about the War on Terror, when his long-accustomed demagogic rhetoric about closing Guantanamo, ending renditions, tribunals, and preventative detention, as well as pruning back elements of the wiretaps and intercepts, met reality in January 2009, and was quietly dropped. It’s also reminiscent of the hundreds of exemptions from Obamacare that have been given to favored businesses.
     "Item by item, we are seeing the fantasies of academics and community organizers overtaken by the reality of a quite unforgiving material world — and the reality of wanting to hang onto power by being reelected."

- - - - -

What's even more frightening than the rampant stupidity among our so-called "leaders" is their own assumption of stupidity on the part of the voters. For example, Nancy Pelosi's observation on Obamacare:  "We have to pass the bill so that we can find out what is in it".
     Consider that carefully and contemplate the assumption that led her to believe it would be heard as a credible evaluation.

- - - - -

Perhaps it is time for a refresher course from the dictionary:
"Kakistocracy" -- Government by the worst and least qualified among us.

- - - - -

James Robbins of the Washington Times presents another example of muddle-headed double-standards ...
     "If the pope called for the destruction of all the mosques in Europe, the uproar would be cataclysmic. Pundits would lambaste the church, the White House would rush out a statement of deep concern, and rioters in the Middle East would kill each other in their grief. But when the most influential leader in the Muslim world issues a fatwa to destroy Christian churches, the silence is deafening.
     "On March 12, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is 'necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.'
     "This is not a small-time radical imam trying to stir up his followers with fiery hate speech. This was a considered, deliberate and specific ruling from one of the most important leaders in the Muslim world."

Next time he and Obama get together, expect another presidential bow -- as he did before the king of Saudi Arabia.

- - - - -

Now that Obama's ol' pal, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, is a prison inmate, wonder if the prez will send gifts and keep in touch. Belying the usual Obama falsehoods that he barely knew the man, there are many photos showing them together and apparently having a fine old time .

- - - - -

Who Donates To Whom ...
Some information from  the Center for Responsive Politics ... info about which businesses support Democrats with their political
contributions ...
Price Club/Costco donated $225K, 99% went to Democrats
Magla Products (Stanley tools, Mr. Clean)donated $22K, 100% went to Democrats
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia donated $153K, 99% went to Democrats
Estee Lauder donated $448K, 95% went to Democrats
Guess, Inc. donated $145K, 98% went to Democrats
Calvin Klein donated $78K, 100% went to Democrats
Liz Claiborne, Inc. donated $34K, 97% went to Democrats
Levi Straus donated $26K, 97% went to Democrats
Progressive Insurance donated $635K 100% went to Democrats
Joseph E. Seagrams & Sons
(incl. beverage business + considerable media interests) donated $2M+, 67% went to Democrats
Gallo Winery donated $337K, 95% went to Democrats
Ralphs donated $525K.  100% went to Democrats
     One more: Heinz donated to Republicans $64,000 Democrats $21,300.
Heinz is Sen. John Kerry's wife's company.

- - - - -

Michael Barone surveys liberal media dismay in National Review Online ...
     "You can almost hear the note of surprise in their voices when you read the Washington Post and New York Times reporters’ stories on their papers’ latest political polls.
    "Surprise! Just when they thought that Barack Obama was pulling ahead, with positive job ratings, and just after the mainstream media have been savaging Republicans for two words Rush Limbaugh uttered on his radio program, Obama’s numbers seem to be tanking.
     "His media cheerleaders who thought his February numbers meant the election was over were fooling themselves."

- - - - -

Len, the haiku king, reacts to word that Oprah has cancelled pal Rosie O'Donnell's talk-show on her (Oprah's) cable network, OWN ...
      Rosie O'Donnell.
      Let go by her boss, Oprah.
      Parting of the Weighs.

- - - - -

Now, a biblical moment ...
     It was a quiet day on the Ark and Noah was getting bored, so he told his wife that he was going to relieve the tedium by going off on a fishing expedition.
    "That's a good idea," she said. "You could do with a break."
    Noah collected his equipment and set off, but thirty minutes later he was back and still complaining that he was bored.
    His wife said: "I didn't expect you back so soon. If you're that bored, why did you stop fishing after only half an hour?"
    Noah replied: "I only had two worms."
BARACK LUuuVS YOU ...
HOLDER FOR "BRAINWASHING" ON GUNS ...
SANTORUM'S SILLINESS IN SAN JUAN ...

It's enough to make you lose your lunch.
Michelle Obama, in a fund-raising letter sent to prospective suckers -- er, DONORS -- writes, "Barack is in love with you. He really, really is. (Snip) I see this happen a lot: Someone in a crowd yells at my husband, We love you, Barack.' That's when he interrupts himself, smiles really big, and says, 'I love you back.' And he does.
     Suuure he does. Sounds like a teenage boy trying to extricate a date from her underwear.

- - - - -

Our prevaricating President recently entertained a gullible Democrat audience with tales about the "backward" Republicans, including this jibe: “One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone, ‘It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?’"
     I'n fact, President Hayes was a technology enthusiast and installed the first telephone in the White House. Obama, as usual, was either ignorant or outright lying.

- - - - -  

Is anyone surprised by the Breitbart revelation of video showing our anti-American Attorney General, Eric Holder, advocating a plan to -- his word -- "brainwash" young people into opposing Second Amendment rights to own a gun? Not if they've been paying attention!

- - - - -

Today's (highly) recommended reading: "What the Mailman Knows about Ayers and Obama" by Jack Cashill on The American Thinker website.  
     Key words: "Foreign student." Mrs. Ayers referring to ... guess who.

- - - - -

The largest disconnect in Obama economic policy may be his concern that people who are largely paid by the taxpaying workers in private enterprise keep their jobs while he disdains the businesses and their employees that provide most of the tax dollars. It is akin to starving a cow while expecting it to continue to give milk.

- - - - -

Why would Rick Santorum, fighting an uphill battle for the Republican nomination, make a trip to Puerto Rico, where he had no chance of winning that territory's handful of delegate votes -- he got less than 10% of the votes in their weekend primary -- when his time could have been more effectively used elsewhere?

- - - - -

Ever wonder about the real source of some of the "movements" the Big Media are so eager to publicize and promote?  Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner found the roots of a few ...
     "Standing Up for Families, an activist group touted as Republican by the pro-gay marriage forces in New Hampshire, is being staffed by folks from local and state Democratic committees.
     "Then there’s the national outcry against conservative Talk Radio meister Rush Limbaugh in response to his crude remarks about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University Law student at the center of the HHS contraception coverage mandate flap. A left-wing political activist employed by Media Matters for America was the parade master waiting for Limbaugh to stumble so he could implement a program he created in 2009 for just such a purpose.
     "Remember all those 'citizen protests' against the Keystone XL Pipeline that would bring oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast from Canada and create thousands of new jobs in the process? It was all planned and funded by a bunch of rich foundations and environmental activists, coordinated by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund."

- - - - -

Missing since the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Khadafy: Thousands of  shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles. Perfect for bringing down airliners. Don't be surprised if you next hear about them in some really bad news.

- - - - -

Yet another sign of a sick economy.  NASCAR races at the legendary Bristol, Tennessee, track historically sell out the 160,000-plus seats. Yesterday's race had acres of empty seats.

- - - - -

Dan Sorkin, in addition to a legendary broadcasting career, also has an extensive background in aviation and flight instruction. When it comes to commercial air travel, he succinctly says, "If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going."
     That position is buttressed by word from the major German newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, that the problem found in the giant Airbus A380 -- internal cracks in the wing structure -- may foretell years of ongoing repairs.

- - - - -

Marybeth Hicks, culture columnist and editor of Family Events, addresses realities clearly overlooked by many parents ...
  * Life isn't fair. No matter how you try to "level the playing field," some people have better luck, skills, talents or connections that land them in better places.
  * Nothing is "free."  Protesting with signs that seek "free" college degrees and "free" health care make you look like idiots, because colleges and hospitals don't operate on rainbows and sunshine. Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.
  * Your word is your bond.  When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others.  Loans are made based on solemn promises to repay them.
  * A protest is not a party.  Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun.  You look foolish, you smell gross, and you don't seem to realize that all around you are people who deem you irrelevant.
  * There are  reasons you haven't found jobs.The truth?  Your tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting.  Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn't a virtue.

Ms. Hicks helps clarify why all efforts to achieve "equality" invariably average DOWN the achievements of a society. When excellence is made secondary to the "level playing field" and is not rewarded commensurately with achievement, incentive is lessened. Subsidize mediocrity and you get more of it.

- - - - -

Reader Jerrold offers a new word ...
      "I have coined this term for the type of government which describes Obama's presidency. Ponerosocracy Poneros is the Greek word which describes pernicious evil, that type of evil with the intent to infect, harm and destroy. I think it describes him quite accurately."

- - - - -

From the St. Patrick's Day e-mail collection ... this one from Jackie ...
     Little Zachary was doing very badly in math. is parents had tried everything...tutors, mentors, flash cards, special learning centers.
     Finally, in a last ditch effort, they took Zachary down and enrolled him in the local Catholic school. After the first day, little Zachary came home with a very serious look on his face. He didn't even kiss his mother hello.   Instead, he went straight to his room and started studying.
     Books and papers were spread out all over the room and little Zachary was hard at work. His mother was amazed. She called him down to dinner.
     To her shock, the minute he was done, he marched back to his room without a word, and in no time, he was back hitting the books as hard as before.
     This went on for some time, day after day, while the mother tried to understand what made all the difference.
     Finally, little Zachary brought home his report Card.. He quietly laid it on the table, went up to his room and hit the books. With great trepidation, His Mom looked at it and to her great surprise, Little Zachary got an 'A' in math.   She could no longer hold her curiosity.. She went to his room and said, 'Son, what was it? Was it the nuns?'
     Little Zachary looked at her and shook his head, no.. 'Well, then,' she replied, Was it the books, the discipline, the structure, the uniforms? WHAT WAS IT?'
     Little Zachary looked at her and said, 'Well, on the first day of school when I saw that guy nailed to the plus-sign, I knew they weren't fooling around.'
VOTING FOR A CANDIDATE -- OR AGAINST ...
AFGHANISTAN ANGST ...
SANTORUM'S DISORGANIZATION

Some Republicans are decrying the perceived lack of enthusiasm for any of the remaining candidates for their nomination. Perhaps I'm in a minority, but since I've almost always voted against one candidate rather than become (naively, in my view) overly-enthusiastic about the other, this is not a conundrum for me.
     In fact, this year is one of the easiest choices I've ever faced despite the fact that I'm not all fired-up about Gingrich, Romney or Santorum. But then again, I haven't been optimistic about any candidate since Reagan. And then it was mostly because of the abysmal performance of Jimmy Carter.
     Thus, I am less concerned about the ultimate Republican nominee than about the absolute necessity of removing the worst president in history from office.

Let us repeat the mantra of the sensible voter ...
Never fall in love with a politician. They'll break your heart every time.
Amen.

- - - - -

Once you cut through all the goody-two-shoes obfuscations, the real reason Democrats oppose voter identification is obvious.  Through the long, sordid history of illegal voting ... illegals to dead people ... it is the Democratic Party that has cultivated and had the far more bountiful harvest.

- - - - -

Survey says ...
     ... 53% of Likely U.S. Voters support the complete pullout of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. (Rasmussen). Not surprising when our leaders never convinced the public as to why we're there, then not only fail to win a war while losing lives but concede defeat by announcing a date-of-departure in advance. This is "leadership?"

- - - - -

The Washington Times editorially summarizes the dilemma both parties face re Afghanistan ...
     "Mr. Obama’s challenge in the election year is to make the planned withdrawal from Afghanistan not look like a defeat. His Republican challenger, meanwhile, has to have something more positive and popular to say than 'Stay the course.'”

- - - - -

I hold a deeply-felt suspicion that Obama would be happy if the U.S. military were reduced to the status of the palace guard in Monaco. Armed with unloaded weapons.

- - - - -

Even the liberal Washington Post's fact-checker finds the Tom Hanks-narrated video about Obama rife with half-truths and outright lies. Especially about Obama's mother and the treatment of her terminal cancer.

- - - - -

Easiest prediction of the year: As more people learn from bitter experience, either personally or through mistreatment of family members, what Obamacare means in terms of medical procedures denied, the poll numbers showing dislike of this forced "health plan" will hugely increase. Medical coverage in the abstract is given little attention by most folk; when the shortcomings strike home, the painful reality will induce some serious thought.

- - - - -

Rick Santorum's organizational failures might call into question his ability to handle the responsibilities of the Big Job. He failed to get on the ballot in Virginia ... didn't file delegate slates in some congressional districts in Ohio ... and, going into today's Illinois primary, again has no delegates up for election in some districts and his people may have failed to submit the required number of signatures in others.
     References to inability to organize a one-car funeral procession may be in order. Or a contest of some sort in a brewery.
     And what is this silliness? -- Santorum saying that "the unemployment rate and economic growth are secondary issues." Dumb-de-dum-dumb.

- - - - -

Burt Prelutsky with a reminder about the consequences of irresponsibility and the blind worship of celebrity idols ...
     "A recent study showed that 53% of women under the age of 30 giving birth are unwed. Among black women, the number soars to 73%. One could make a case for the fact that a great many female celebrities provide role models for these women, but the problem is that the ladies who make millions of dollars acting and singing can afford to pay nannies to raise their children. The poor schnooks who idolize these sluts tend to be ignorant and penniless, pretty much guaranteeing that their offspring will wind up equally ignorant, penniless and, more than likely, wards of the state, whether in or out of jail."

- - - - -

So it's Denver for Peyton Manning. Which likely means Tim Tebow gone. To??
Jacksonville badly needs a drawing card after playing before too many empty seats ... Tim Terrific made his reputation at the University of Florida ... so that looks like a strong possibility. Miami? Maybe. They've been playing before thousands of empty seats, also. And Tim's alma mater, the University of Florida, has far more alumni in the Miami area than does the much smaller and more expensive University of Miami, which is private and has tuition on the level of Ivy League schools.

- - - - -

That ludicrous "King" who was the centerpiece of the Burger King commercials didn't get the job done, and BK has fallen behind Wendy's for #2 in the Hamburger Derby.
     Who's #1 -- by a mile?  No need to McAsk.

- - - - -

There will be much media industry speculation about the failure of Oprah Winfrey's cable network OWN (for Oprah Winfrey Network) to gain traction. Rosie O'Donnell, who went from Ms. Likable to one of the most disliked people on television, failed to get OWN off the ground. She's taping her last show today, to be run next Friday. Meantime, 30 more people have been cut from Oprah's payroll.

- - - - -

It compromises my claim to infallibility, but I'm actually proud that my readership includes folk who catch glitches like a misplaced apostrophe in "it's". I know better, but sometimes the thought gets ahead of the fingers on the keyboard. Then an oversight in proofreading ... and then it's on the web and I drown in shame!
     Actually, the over-used and misplaced apostrophe is one of my own pet gripes, so I am doubly humiliated. Now I shall retreat quietly to my sarcophagus and weep ...

- - - - -

Words of wisdom from a long-ago teacher upon hearing a colleague remark that he was spending his weekend "just killing time" ...
      "Wrong. We're never killing time. Time is killing US."

- - - - -

A truism the left never learns ...
     "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." --  Winston Churchill

- - - - -

Reader Rick, taking note of the choice of many Californians to relocate to Texas, offers the following translations to facilitate communication ...

CALIFORNIA                                               TEXAS   
Delicate Wetlands                                            Swamp
Undocumented Worker                                    Illegal Alien
Multicultural Community                                   High Crime Area
Upper Class or "The Rich "                               Self-Employed
Investment For the Future                                  Higher Taxes
Healthcare Reform                                             Socialized Medicine
Exploiters or "The Rich "                                    Employed or Land Owner
THE LYING LEFT ...
BIDEN THE BOOB ...
ROMNEY ROMPS IN LINCOLN-LAND

Debating liberals, as many with my sort of media background could tell you, is a frustrating enterprise because, well, when cornered by the facts, many have a proclivity to simply lie.
     For years I engaged in weekly bouts with a leftwing activist talk-show host whose tactic was so obvious (to me) it was almost laughable. When facts were arrayed against him, he simply made up NEW "facts." He'd had plenty of practice; he'd previously been an aide to an ultra-liberal Congresswoman.
     I mention this because, as we enter another presidential campaign against a president whose list of actual accomplishments could be written on a fingernail, the lying left is already furiously prevaricating. Expect plenty more. And double-check every claim.
     "The end justifies the means" may or may not have first been enunciated by a Democrat politician, but it certainly serves as a creed for many of them. Then there's Obama's Attorney General, openly advocating "brainwashing."

- - - - -

We have a new contender for Stupidest Quote of the Year ...
     ""You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan." -- Joe The Idiot Biden, speaking of the raid that got Osama bin Laden, crediting Barack Obama, who went along with the hit on the terrorist leader only after it was crammed down his throat, then went out to play golf.
     Biden's evaluation of the Dear Leader's "audacity" overlooks, oh ... the invasion of Europe in World War 2 ... the development and use of the atomic bomb to end that war ... George Washington's nighttime raid across the Delaware in the Revolutionary War ... Ray Kroc's expansion of McDonald's ... Lindsay Lohan's shoplifting ...

- - - - -

The hypocrisy is just ... staggering.
Obama, flying around the country on a fuel-guzzling 747 to tell us that high prices for petroleum products aren't his fault. And sending his 13-year-old daughter -- accompanied by two dozen Secret Service protectors -- to Mexico on vacation. A vacation in a country about which his own government warns American travelers.

- - - - -

Romney wins Illinois, as expected. It's a winner-take-all state, so he gets all the Illinois delegates. His bandwagon rolls on, but slowly.
     Santorum tries again to put a hopeful face on another loss, but his misplaced emphasis on issues like birth control and lack of emphasis on the economy, which every poll shows to be THE issue, gives an impression of shrill desperation.
     Barring some sort of cataclysmic event, this race is over. Especially since the remaining southern primaries, where Santorum may do well, are mostly in states where the delegates are awarded in proportion to the vote. Which means even a losing Romney would still add to his delegate total.
     Gingrich is playing his own game, but whatever it's about, it's not about winning the nomination. His campaign is already drowning in red ink.

- - - - -

Just how many screw-ups have state Republican parties hired? Let's see ... Iowa taking two weeks to deliver a still-disputed vote-count from their silly caucuses ... Missouri caucus meetings so unruly police had to be called ... and now, it seem the dopes who run the Republican primary in Illinois got the wrong size ballots for the machines. Shouldn't there be something like a Devil's Island or a leper colony where these stumblebums can be sent?

- - - - -

Dr. Thomas Sowell, a black man raised in poverty, reminds us of the gap between demagogic political rhetoric and reality ...
     "Unemployment among black 16 and 17-year-old males was 12 percent back in 1950. Yet unemployment rates among black 16 and 17-year-old males has not been less than 30 percent for any year since 1970 -- and has been over 40 percent in some of those years.
     "Not only was unemployment among blacks in general lower before the liberal welfare state policies expanded in the 1960s, rates of imprisonment of blacks were also lower then, and most black children were raised in two-parent families. At one time, a higher percentage of blacks than whites were married and working.
     "None of these facts fits liberal social dogmas."

Dr. Sowell's book, "Conflict of Visions," remains the standard for understanding the difference between the liberal mentality vs. conservative thinking. If our colleges were run by rational people, it would be required reading.

- - - - -

According to an American Community Survey, by the U.S. Census Bureau, the top 10 poorest cities with populations more than 250,000 are Detroit, with 33 percent of its residents below the poverty line; Buffalo, N.Y., 30 percent; Cincinnati, 28 percent; Cleveland, 27 percent; Miami, 27 percent; St. Louis, 27 percent; El Paso, Texas, 26 percent; Milwaukee, 26 percent; Philadelphia, 25 percent; and Newark, N.J., 24 percent.
     (We are indebted to the estimable Prof. Walter Williams for exhuming these widely-ignored statistics for Human Events.)    
     "The most common characteristic of these cities is that for decades, all of them have been run by Democratic and presumably liberal administrations. Some of them -- such as Detroit, Buffalo, Newark and Philadelphia -- haven't elected a Republican mayor for more than a half-century. What's more is that, in some cases for decades, the mayors of six of these high-poverty cities have been black Americans."
    And, says Prof. Williams, "None of this is to say that blacks should vote Republican. It is to say that political power doesn't necessarily translate into economic power and well-being for the ordinary citizen."

- - - - -

Is it just me, or does Presidential Press Secretary Jay Carney really come across as the tattletale dweeb who was afraid to go out on the playground at recess out of fear that some of those nasty bad-boys might make fun of him?

- - - - -

Jonah Goldberg of National Review advocates back-to-basics government. In a word, federalism ...
     "... the process whereby you push most political questions to the lowest democratic level possible.
     "The main advantage of federalism is more fundamental than the “laboratories of democracy” idea. Federalism is simply the best political system ever conceived of for maximizing human happiness. A one-size-fits-all policy imposed at the national level has the potential to make very large numbers of citizens unhappy, even if it was arrived at democratically. In a pure democracy, I always say, 51 percent of the people can vote to pee in the cornflakes of 49 percent of the people.
     "Pushing government decisions down to the lowest democratic level possible — while protecting basic civil rights — guarantees that more people will have a say in how they live their lives. Not only does that mean more people will be happy, but the moral legitimacy of political decisions will be greater."

- - - - -

For California readers ...
Latest ratings on the ABC stations media conglomerates Cumulus and Citadel have destroyed:
KGO, now in 14th place with a 2.7% share of the listening audience at any given time.
KSFO, now in 25th place with a 1.4% share of audience.
     KSTE, seen by some as the conservative-talk alternative, has 4/10ths of 1%.
     KCBS is #1.

- - - - -

Can it be?!  Ferris Bueller fifty?! Yep ... happy birthday to Matthew Broderick.
We all age. Seen any of those Robert Wagner commercials?

- - - - -

Jay Leno ...
     "Mitt Romney is so rich, he taught his dog to roll over . . . an IRA."

- - - - -

Reader Rick submits proof that men have better friends ...

Friendship among Women:
     A woman didn't come home one night. The next morning she told her husband that she had slept over at a friend's house. The man called his wife's ten best friends. None of them knew anything about it.

Friendship among Men:
     A man didn't come home one night. The next morning he told his wife that he had slept over at a friend's house. The woman called her husband's 10 best friends. Eight confirmed that he had slept over, and two said he was still there.


MEDIA MISFEASANCE AND MENDACITY ...
PAYBACK FOR KOWTOWING TO KARZAI ...
SUCKERED AGAIN BY NORTH KOREA

The media scum just can't break the Muslim suck-up habit. Even as, in his last hours, the Muslim crazy who slaughtered Jewish kids and a rabbi in France was shouting to the world that he was associated with Al Qaeda and it was known that he'd attended one of their terrorist training camps, the lying SOBs who dominate media both here and in Europe were peddling the story that he was a neo-nazi from the right-wing party in France.

- - - - -

Mark Steyn, who is not Jewish, traces the predictable pattern of media handling of such incidents ...
     "The story can now proceed according to time-honored tradition:
     "Stage One: The strange compulsion to assure us that the killer is a “right wing conservative extremist.” The insistence that the killer was emblematic of an epidemic of right-wing hate sweeping the planet.
     "So on to Stage Two: Okay, he may be called Mohammed but he’s a “lone wolf.” Sure, he says he was trained by al-Qaeda, but what does he know? Don’t worry, folks, he’s just a lone wolf like Major Hasan and Faisal Shahzad and all the other card-carrying members of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves. All jihad is local.
     "On to Stage Three: Okay, even if there are enough lone wolves around to form their own Radio City Rockette line, it’s still nothing to do with Islam.
     "And then, of course, Stage Four: The backlash that never happens.  “French Muslims Fear Backlash After Shooting.”
         (Full article at National Review Online)

- - - - -

There's always been a sizable segment of the French population that gorges on anti-Semitism as if it were foie gras. But the nation did elect Sarkozy, who is Jewish.

- - - - -

Now our "ally" in Afghanistan, President Karzai, calls the American troops who saved his sorry butt and enabled him to climb to the top of that dung-heap ... "demons." What is the appropriate response? We all know -- don't we?
(Somehow, Saddam Hussein comes to mind ... )

- - - - -

Now that Jeb Bush has endorsed Romney another fantasy about a "brokered" Republican convention fades.
     John Podhoretz, political columnist for the NY Post, has some more bad news for fantasizers:
     "Romney may not be a particularly strong front-runner, but Santorum hasn’t turned out to be much of a dark horse, either.
     "Gingrich? A little-known party rule may take him out altogether. Word flew around GOP circles on Tuesday night that the only way someone’s name can be placed into nomination is if he wins a plurality of the delegates in five states. Gingrich has two, and is unlikely to get more. (Ron Paul has none.)

- - - - -

Has Mitt Romney beaten senseless that aide who made the silly Etch-a-sketch remark? If not, why not?

- - - - -

Former UN ambassador John Bolton is not optimistic about the upcoming "nuclear summit" on terrorism doing anything to deter North Korea ...
     "For more than 20 years, the regime has contemptuously exploited P.T. Barnum’s insight that “there’s a sucker born every minute.” Time and time again, it has promised to set aside its nuclear objectives in exchange for tangible economic and political benefits; and time and time again, it has broken those commitments.
     "The United States, Japan, South Korea and others have consistently fallen for Pyongyang’s ploys. George W. Bush’s administration, for example and to its eternal shame, removed North Korea from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism in hopes it would advance US nuclear negotiations with the North. As so often before, Pyongyang pocketed the concession and moved on to its next objective, leaving the State Department bewildered.
     "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me dozens of times, shame on me."

- - - - -

What's keeping Congressional Republicans from (loudly) demanding the resignation of Attorney General Eric "Brainwash" Holder?  Ah, but we know, don't we? Sheer gutlessness. The pusillanimous party cringes again.

- - - - -

A county board in Virginia wants to regulate the advertising content on billboards in the rapid-transit system after an anti-Obama message was put up and paid for ... the country supervisors in Los Angeles want to control talk radio over the Limbaugh remarks about the "student". Anybody detecting a trend here?

- - - - -

The "hate crime" designation has been around for a long time, but I'm still puzzled by the distinction between that genre of criminal behavior and plain old criminality.  If a bad guy assaults me or even kills me, I would assume that he wasn't exactly crazy about me, so what's the difference?  A crime is a crime is a crime. To embellish it with a politically-correct label is something dreamed up to make the goo-goos feel better, but serves no real purpose.

- - - - -

We shouldn't complain about Obama's endless use of Air Force One, his toy 747. After all, it DOES run on algae -- doesn't it?

- - - - -

Burt Prelutsky on the Obama vs. Catholic Church contretemps ...
     "Although things aren’t nearly as toxic in America as they are in some places, it’s merely a matter of degree. For instance, even though I’m not a Catholic, I was offended at Obama’s attempt to force Catholic-run institutions to provide contraception devices and abortions for their employees. Even Obama’s “compromise,” which would force insurance companies to provide them, is nothing but political sleight of hand. After all, the insurance companies would simply pass along the cost to the rest of us. Included in “the rest of us” are millions of American Catholics.
     "On the other hand, the Catholic Bishops supported ObamaCare, and helped sell the scam to their parishioners, so there is a bit of divine justice in the present cockup. As someone once observed, the Devil’s in the details."

- - - - -

The search for Amelia Earhart is revived. If they find out what happened to her, then attention can be turned to the search for Herman Cain.

- - - - -

Given my long ties to the travel industry, even though I'm now out of it, it's likely that I get more sales pitches from all components -- hotels, airlines, cruise lines -- than would most folk. Nevertheless, it's clear that the hospitality/travel industry is having serious problems, with rampant price-cutting.
     Even the high price of gasoline does have one small plus-side for leisure travelers. It's forced downward many hotel and motel prices. Take a look at Priceline (as one example) for the regular rate, then use their bidding process, beginning by offering about a third of the retail price. If it's not accepted for the category of housing you want, raise your offer in five-dollar increments. The closer you are (in days or even hours) to arrival time, the better the deal is likely to be.
     Between the wretched Obama economy and the Costa troubles, cruise lines are desperate. If they have a lot of empty cabins, the housekeeping and dining-room personnel who make their living on tip money will abandon them, so most are offering huge discounts -- especially as sailing dates near. Vacations To Go has a useful discount website.

- - - - -

Even though they've stuck him with the "franchise" tag, one hopes Drew Brees can extricate himself from the pile of debris that is now the Saints franchise and play for a team whose management appreciates him.

Tebow. Jets? WHY?!  A Rex Ryan ploy to scare Mark Sanchez out of throwing interceptions?
New York activist gays are already attacking Tebow. Why? Because ... you know ... he's one of those RELIGIOUS people.

- - - - -

Evidently paranoia runs deep at the Atlanta headquarters of Cumulus, the media monster that owns hundreds of radio stations, including the former ABC stations (KGO/KSFO in San Francisco, plus KNBR and others).
     Word in media circles is that they've placed closed-circuit video cameras and hidden microphones in lunchrooms and elsewhere at their facilities, so employees can be watched and heard at any time at corporate headquarters.
      I'm very glad to be out of that idiotic business, which used to be fun and profitable, as well as a point of pride. Now broadcasting has taken a place alongside airlines as industries run by the stupidest people in American industry, incapable of looking beyond the next quarterly report.
     Rumors persist that Clear Channel, the largest radio conglomerate, may be ready to sell out its radio division. And it's an open secret that Disney would love to unload ABC-TV, keeping only ESPN, which is the real company cash-cow. You may have noticed that when ABC-TV carries sports events, they're identified as "ESPN on ABC."

- - - - -

Twice upon a time, Norman Mark was a broadcasting colleague. First in Chicago, then San Francisco. He was also an excellent writer. He has died at age 72. Norm, a Chicago guy thru-and-thru, authored this perspective on San Francisco: "A quaint little fishing village run by interior decorators."

- - - - -

Snow globes strike again! This time in Oregon. One of those cute globes that you shake and watch the snow fall was placed on a windowsill. The sun was shining ... the sunlight was refracted thru the globe ... the beam struck a sofa and set it -- and the house -- on fire.

- - - - -

Reader John forwards the good news that the Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.
 ... but ... on the down-side ...
     A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.

- - - - -

Dental date today. I must control the urge to repeat to my dentist the hoary joke about the dentist who married a manicurist, and they've been fighting tooth-and-nail ever since. They hate that ...

- - - - -

Dr. Bud makes this invaluable contribution ...
     It seems a Sally Mullihan of Coral Springs, Florida decided to take one of the jobs that most Americans are not willing to do.  She applied for a job in a Florida lemon grove but seemed to be far too qualified for the job. She had a liberal arts degree from the University of Michigan and had worked as a social worker and school teacher. The foreman frowned and said, "I have to ask you, have you had any actual experience in picking lemons?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, I have. I've been divorced three times, owned 2 Chryslers, and voted for Obama."
THE GASBAG TALKS ABOUT GASOLINE ...
EVEN THE STUPID VOTE; THAT'S DEMOCRACY ...
"SANCTION" SILLINESS FAILS WITH IRAN

“I understand what folks are going through because it wasn’t that long ago that I was having to fill up my gas tank and drive to work, shuttle the kids back and forth to school or events, and it takes a big bite out of folks paychecks.” -- Barack Obama, doing his "just plain folks" act. Even if that's true, Mr. Solar,  you didn't fill your tank with gasoline costing up to (or beyond) $4 a gallon.

- - - - -

Phoniest photo-op of the year" Obama, getting himself pictured in front of an oil well. Mr. Solar, who grudgingly okays building a pipeline HALFWAY up to the Canadian oil, playing the total mugwump role on energy.
(Definition: Mugwump. A bird that sits on the fence with his mug on one side and his wump on the other.)

- - - - -

From Reader Wes ...
With Obama now giving the go ahead to build the pipeline as far as Oklahoma, is it going to be called the "pipeline to nowhere?"

- - - - -

I have been reviled more than once for candidly stating my fear that this nation, as a whole, may be too stupid to survive. I did, and do, fear that to be the case.
    I will consider my argument totally justified if the American electorate chooses to reelect a president whose actions denote a devotion to Marxist economics and either ignorance or an utter disdain  for common sense in the policies he is imposing upon the nation. His policy decisions are based on either foolishness or being deliberately destructive. Or both.
     He is undermining both the national economy and the defense structure upon which we must depend in a hostile world.
     His foreign policy wavers between cowering before avowed enemies and subverting friends.
     He says he's a Christian, but the world's Muslims believe he is one of them. After all, Islam declares all the children of a Muslim father are themselves Muslims. It is not optional.
     It also declares that any Muslim who rejects that faith is to be killed. Has anyone heard of Barack Obama being targeted for being an apostate? Some Muslim leaders may detest him; it's common for Muslims to despise other Muslims whose interpretation of Islam differs from their own. But Obama apostasy -- straying from being a Muslim -- has never been charged. So they DO believe he is one of them.
     His background remains shadowy, but his ties to leftist radicals and black racists are crystal clear.
     Yet a majority of American voters chose him -- admittedly over a Republican candidate who had all the charisma of a fire hydrant. That choice reflects the reality that, while most Americans were busy with other things, the sixties radicals effectively took control of the education system and turned it into the joke of the civilized world.
     If voters behave so irresponsibly a second time, I genuinely fear that the nation is beyond salvation. Stupidity DOES carry a price-tag.
     We've had a long run-in-the-sun. Over two hundred years. But nothing lasts forever. If you have the power to communicate with the departed, ask any old Roman who was around in the year 476. Or just study a little history.

- - - - -

"With President Obama's approval rating hovering at 49 percent according to the latest Rasmussen tracking poll, it is becoming increasingly clear that he is a formidable threat for re-election. Gas prices are through the roof; the economy remains in shambles; the situation in the Middle East has never been so tenuous. And yet nearly half of all Americans think Obama's doing a decent job. Which shows that nearly half of Americans are either dependent on the government or devoid of common sense or both."  -- Ben Shapiro, Townhall.com --

- - - - -

Another farcical Obama threat to Iran is already disintegrating. Trade sanctions? Nonsense! Now Secretary of State Hillary announces exemptions on those sanctions that Obama promised would bring Iran to its senses over building nukes; exemptions to Japan and several European nations. China and India have already said they'll ignore any such sanctions. So how simple-minded would you have to be to actually believe this game of diplomatic patty-cake will be effective?

- - - - -

Ever notice how often Big Media folk refer to concern that Romney may be moving "too far to the right," yet seldom even mention how far left Obama has gone?

- - - - -

Words to live by ...
     Always believe the worst of any politician. Odds are better than even that you'll be right.

- - - - -

Wes Pruden (Washington Times) has a course in political entomology and the loose cannon in Romney's entourage ...
     "It’s not the wasps, bees and mosquitos, though stingers all, that bedevil presidential candidates. It’s the fruit flies. Insignificant in their own right, they nevertheless have the ability to damage and even sink a campaign.
     "That’s the lesson for Mitt Romney, as taught by Eric Fehrnstrom, his once-anonymous 'top aide' who confided to a CNN interviewer that Mr. Romney is not really a born-again conservative, that he’s only pandering to the unwashed crazies on the right. As soon as he locks up the nomination, he’ll hit the re-set button to emerge as the RINO – Republican in name only – he really is, to appeal to independent voters. Mr. Fehrnstrom didn’t say it quite like that (fruit flies never light long enough to make anything clear), but that’s the clear message he intended to send."

Thus the Romney image as a flip-flopper continues to grow. Obama has to go, but one's expectations of a Romney presidency shouldn't be excessive. In his bosom beats the heart of a RINO.

- - - - -

On the other hand ...
     "Rick, it's time to quit." That's the message Santorum, who has bungled his campaign badly in the last couple of weeks, is getting -- even from hardcore conservatives. Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, probably the most conservative member of that body, is now speaking well of Mitt Romney. And anyone who believes that Rick Santorum is a rock-steady man of principle should remember that four years ago he was endorsing Romney as THE conservative in that race. Now he's saying that if HE (Santorum) doesn't get the nomination, then Republicans should vote for Obama. Say WHAT??!!
     Maybe it's time for Rick Santorum to again -- using his own words -- "take one for the team."
     You may have an opportunity later to say, "I told you so," but for now, you're just spinning your wheels.

- - - - -

Jay Leno --
     "According to a new book, President Obama blames Fox News for his political problems and losing voters. How could Fox News lose him voters? If you're watching Fox News, you're probably not voting for him in the first place."

- - - - -

Isn't it comforting to know that Los Angeles has solved all its problems so that the local board of supervisors can now concentrate on censoring the airwaves?

- - - - -

AFP, the French news service, passes along a report on life for women in Muslim Pakistan ...
     “At least 943 women were killed in the name of honor, of which 93 were minors,” wrote the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in its annual report.
     Seven Christian and two Hindu women were among the victims, it said.
     The Commission reported 791 “honor killings” in 2010.
     Around 595 of the women killed in 2011 were accused of having “illicit relations” and 219 of marrying without permission.
     Some victims were raped or gang raped before being killed, the Commission said. Most of the women were killed by their brothers and husbands.

Now, if Sandra Fluke wants to take on a REAL cause ...

- - - - -

I am hearing frequently from people who are alarmed that, upon visiting a doctor, they are asked on a questionnaire if they have a gun in their house. They suspect the motive behind the question. So do I. The only proper answer is, "None of your GD business!"

- - - - -

I was once labeled by Keith Olberman, failed sportscaster-turned-leftwing-propagandist, as "the worst person in the world." I would have worn it with pride if he'd had a larger audience.
     Now I note with amusement -- but not surprise -- this revelation in the DC Caller ...
     "When MSNBC discarded Keith Olbermann, al-Qaida mourned. So reports David Ignatius, the Washington Post columnist who has gained exclusive access to some of the documents recovered from Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
     "In his Wednesday column in the Washington Post, Ignatius reported on the details of a 21-page letter to bin Laden written by al-Qaida media adviser Adam Gadahn. Though the letter was undated, Ignatius says that it was likely written sometime after November 2010.
     "Laying out the current media landscape for the now waterlogged terrorist kingpin, Gadahn, an American-born Jewish convert to Islam, lamented the firing of Olbermann from MSNBC."

- - - - -

R. Emmett Tyrrell of The American Spectator says we're facing a hard reality check ...
     "We in America today live in a country circumscribed by entitlement policies devised by an America that has steadily been disappearing. Those policies established more than a generation ago cannot possibly - in mathematical or demographic terms - support the America of the present, much less the America of the future. That is the stark reality.
     "We need to reform those policies or we shall go bankrupt, and raising taxes on the “rich” will not fix things. Even raising taxes on the middle class will not fix things. Nor will spending a trillion dollars more than we have on hand to fix things. Eventually, those trillion-dollar deficits have to be paid off. Facts are facts; the day of reckoning that our hayseed politicians have said was up the road a piece is here."

He summarizes that we'd better get House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's plan, or something like it, passed into law and crush -- at the polls -- the Socialists-disguised-as-Democrats who oppose it.

- - - - -

Did you know that Progressive Insurance, whose commercials are all over TV with that annoying, goofy lady in white, is the  company created by Peter Lewis, one of the biggest big-money supporters of ultra-left-wing activist groups like Media Matters? He's Soros without the charisma.

- - - - -

What liberals do ...
     At Liberty Middle School in Fairfax County, Virginia, a teacher named Michael Denman gave his 8th-grade students an assignment to do opposition research on Republican candidates -- material that might be used against them -- to be forwarded to someone in the White House who could make use of it.
     Count on it: the teachers' union and the school administrators will protect this scumbag.

- - - - -

Craig Ferguson --
     "When I heard the Republicans were in President Obama's home state, I said, 'They're holding a primary in Kenya?'"

- - - - -

Sheila sends along this modern fable circulating on the internet ...
     Recently, while I was working in the flower beds in the front yard, my neighbors stopped to chat  as they returned home from walking their dog. During our friendly  conversation, I asked their little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up.
     She said she wanted to be President some day.
     Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, "If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?"
     She replied...  "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people."
     Her parents beamed with pride!
     "Wow...what a worthy goal!" I said. "But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that!" I told her.
     "What do you mean?" She replied.
     So I told her, "You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and trim my hedge, and I'll pay you $50. Then you can go over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the  $50 to use toward food and a new house."
     She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"
     I said, "Welcome to the Republican Party."
     Her parents aren't speaking to me any more.

- - - - -

Conan O'Brien --
     "Tim Tebow has been traded to the Jets. When told he was going to be spending the rest of his career in New Jersey, Tebow said, 'There is no God.'"


RACE ENTERS THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE  ...
ANOTHER ReVOLTing DEVELOPMENT ...
RICK RECOVERS HIS REASON

Barack Obama proudly embraced a "Blacks for Obama" campaign organization (one can only imagine the media reaction to a "Whites for Romney or Santorum" organization) and a skeptic might suggest that the furor over the shooting of the black teenager in Florida might be at least partly motivated by political considerations. After all, it's been made clear by both Attorney General Eric Holder and his boss in the White House that they're not above playing the race card.
     It is vital that the facts of the tragic case be examined by the authorities and, if necessary, in a court of law. If a murder charge is justified, a jury will decide.
     In the meantime, the whipping-up of a mob frenzy by the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson resembles all too closely the pack of hyenas in Afghanistan demanding American blood over the burning of some already-desecrated (by Muslims) Qurans.

- - - - -

Mikhail Muhummud of something called the Black Panther Party for Self Defense calls upon President Obama to  "do the right thing while you have the power.” The power to .. what? Lynch the shooter, who is the subject of their "Wanted Dead or Alive" poster?
     Further question: What is the relevance of Trayvon Martin's resemblance to Obama, at least as suggested by the President, himself? Does that increase the tragedy of his death?

- - - - -

The Government Motors' farcical Chevrolet Volt electric car has embarrassed the company yet again. Seems the cord that connects the battery to an electric outlet has a bad habit of overheating and even melting. And this is the car Obama says he wants to buy. Let's check back on that when he is (blessedly) out of the White House.

- - - - -

Now Rick Santorum wants to emphasize that he WILL support the Republican nominee after all and that getting the nomination himself doesn't offer the only feasible alternative to Obama.
     Santorum is clearly losing his grip out of sheer desperation. He managed, in one fell swoop, to make himself look rattled and wacky while taking away eager media attention from the stupid Etch-A-Sketch remark by Romney's top aide.  
     Bye, Rick. Take a seat beside Newt on the losers' bench. Calm down. Pull yourself together. You can always try again in four years. Or eight. Or twelve ...
     Just ask Ron Paul.

- - - - -

Primary prescience ...
     Santorum will win in Louisiana; Romney in much more important (delegate-wise) Wisconsin.

- - - - -

Jim Geraghty in National Review Online summarizes Obama's accomplishments ...
     "Obama passed a stimulus that did not keep unemployment below 8 percent, as projected, but instead unemployment remains above 8 percent in February 2012. The cornerstone of the plan was “shovel-ready projects” and they turned out to not be so shovel-ready after all.  
     "His energy policies have Americans paying more for gas than they’ve ever paid during this time of year. We’ve given millions in taxpayer money to companies to develop alternative technologies, and their products have proven costly and inefficient in a competitive market.
     "He reached out to Iran and was rebuffed; meanwhile, our relationship with Israel has never been more tense.
     "And the signature piece of legislation that he spent most of 2009 and 2010 on, that cost House Democrats their majority, might just turn out to be unconstitutional — and effectively immediately nullified with that ruling.
     "When does the president’s good judgment start?"

- - - - -

Surely it must be more than coincidence that every time Obama makes a flurry of public statements, his approval ratings go down. The more he puts his foolishness (or anti-Americanism) on display, the more he's disdained.

- - - - -

Is the re-election of a president almost an inevitability? Hardly. Only seventeen of the previous 43 have won re-election.

- - - - -

Burt Prelutsky weighs in on the energy debate ...
     "Obama, who despises oil and coal nearly as much as Muslims hate Jews and Christians, has now proposed that $14 million in tax dollars be used to subsidize turning algae into a bio-fuel. He hasn’t explained why if it’s possible to turn pond scum into energy, the private sector can’t be trusted to provide the funds. He has also neglected to explain why they can’t use the likes of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Sheila Jackson Lee, Henry Waxman and Eric Holder, in a pilot project and see if the five of them, after being properly processed, can propel a motorbike down Pennsylvania Avenue."

- - - - -

Rasmussen polling of likely voters finds that 58 percent of voters nationwide think everyone should pay the same share of their income in taxes. So if someone earns twice as much as another person, they should pay twice as much in taxes. Flat-tax advocates seize on such data as proof that voters support their dreams, but that's not really the case.
     ... because ...
A second piece of data shows that 66 percent believe the middle class pays a higher share of their income in taxes than the wealthy do.

Which only proves that 66% are ignorant -- perhaps willfully so.
That is not only wrong, but wildly wrong. It is purely a result of being fed such nonsense by Democrat politicians, starting with Obama. Here are the facts:
     The top 1% income-wise pay 37% of all federal income taxes.
     The top 5% pay 59%.
     The top 10% pay 70%.   
     The top 25% pay 87%.
     The top 50% pay 98%
And the bottom 50% pay 2%.

Yet Democrat demagogues and their ignorant followers continue to babble idiocy about the "One percent" not paying their fair share. And the bottom 50% are?!
     Can you spell F-R-E-E-L-O-A-D-E-R-S?

- - - - -

People far smarter than I on financial matters are predicting that upward-pressure on interest rates is rapidly growing to the point where Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve and Obama are about to lose control with their artificial restraints. The symptoms include a recent drop in the bond market, despite intervention (purchases) by the Fed.
     As always, rising interest rates are bad news for borrowers, good news for many older folk who depend on income from their CD's -- now next-to-nothing -- to maintain their standard of living.

- - - - -

The very word "liberal" has become the biggest lie in the political lexicon. They're "liberal" as long as you don't say anything in opposition to their Marxist, oppressive agenda.  They never stop the effort to silence anyone who disagrees with them, and the anti-Limbaugh campaign proves it again. You don't have to like or agree with the man to realize their effort to punish him for having the audacity to speak out against their policies or tactics represents a threat to all who refuse to march in lockstep with them.

- - - - -

Idle thought ...
     Newt Gingrich could be a great radio talk-show host. The question is ... would he be willing to put in the kind of seventy-hour work-weeks that I and many others have put into the job?
     The show is the least of the work; the standard is two hours of preparation time for each one hour on the air. Unless you're just faking your way thru -- as some do.

- - - - -

Correcting and clarifying French President Sarkozy's family background. I referred to him Thursday as Jewish. Partly true, partly not. The EthniCelebs website has this on his fairly complicated family background: "He is, from his fathers side, just Hungarian (in fact Sarkozy is a Hungarian last name) and from his mothers side, half Sephardic Jewish (from Greece) and half French so totally Sarkozy is 2/4 Hungarian, 1/4 Jewish, and just 1/4 French."
     Easily understood by this part-Cherokee, mostly European-riff-raff writer. If we had a football team, we might call them "The Fighting Mutts."

- - - - -

Reader John contributes the following "how to" advice ...
     HOW TO INSTALL A SOUTHERN STYLE HOME SECURITY SYSTEM
1. Go to Goodwill and buy a pair of size 14 -16 men's work boots.
2. Place them on your front porch, along with a copy of Guns & Ammo Magazine.
3. Put four giant dog dishes next to the boots and magazines.
4. Leave a note on your door that reads, "Bubba, Bertha, Duke, Slim, & I went for more ammo and beer. Be back in an hour. Don't mess with the pit bulls. They got the mailman this morning and messed him up bad. I don't think Killer took part, but it was hard to tell from all the blood. Anyway, I locked all four of 'em in the house. Better wait outside. Be right back. (signed) Cooter"

- - - - -

Conan O'Brien --
     "During his visit) the prime minister of Ireland made President Obama an honorary Irishman. As a result, President Obama awoke the next morning with a hangover and a job at the fire department."
FIRING BACK AT OBAMA'S POWER-LUST ...
STIRRING THE RACISM POT ...
MORE MUSLIM MADNESS

One industry that Obama's presidency has been good for -- perhaps the only one not in some way subsidized by taxpayer dollars -- is firearms. The gun business is booming (take that description either way) for two reasons.  First, millions of Americans have a well-founded fear  that Obama and his stooge Attorney General Eric "Brainwash 'em" Holder plan to do everything in their power, and maybe BEYOND it, to ban private ownership of guns.
     Secondly, they fear a lust for tyranny in this government, fueled by Obama's own pronouncements of intention to achieve his leftist agenda by "executive order" rather than constitutional laws passed by Congress, and his subversion of legitimate government channels with his invariably-leftwing "czars".  

- - - - -

Michael Filozof in The American Thinker asks the following, prompted by the  Trayvon Martin case in Florida ...
     "What would happen if a black man armed with a handgun confronted 'suspicious persons' in his neighborhood? What would happen if the 'suspicious persons' were unarmed white teens, one of them was shot dead, and the shooter claimed self-defense?
     "This is not an exercise in mere speculation. We know what would happen in such a case. There would be no white mobs in the street chanting 'No justice, no peace!' There would be no whites holding a 'million hoodie march' in New York City. There would be no white equivalent of Al Sharpton, the professional race-baiter behind the 1987 Tawana Brawley hoax, leading marches in the streets of the shooter's hometown. There would be no Federal civil rights investigation by the Justice Department. There would be no comments from a president who seems congenitally unable to keep his mouth shut on matters involving left-wing political correctness. And there would be no national media attention from biased, left-wing 'reporters.'
     "We know this because in fact, such an event occurred in 2009 in Greece, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester. Roderick Scott, a black man, shot and killed an unarmed white teen, Christopher Cervini, whom he believed was burglarizing a neighbor's car.
     "There are many similarities between the Scott-Cervini case and the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case in Florida. In both cases, there had been a spate of criminal activity in the neighborhood. In both cases, the shooters called 911 to report suspicious activity, yet chose to confront the unarmed suspects outside their residence and off their own property prior to the arrival of the police. In both cases, the shooters claimed that they felt threatened, and fired in self-defense. In both cases, local law enforcement applied relevant state law.
     "Unlike Florida, New York does not have a 'stand your ground' law. New York law allows a person to use deadly force to defend his residence from home invasion only as a last resort. It does not allow the use of deadly force to prevent a property crime, and requires retreat if possible. Thus, while Zimmerman was not arrested under Florida law, Scott was tried for manslaughter.
     "New York law does allow a person to use deadly force anywhere, including off his own property, if he feels that his life is in imminent danger and retreat is not possible. Despite the fact that he left his own property, confronted, and shot dead an unarmed white person thought to be committing a petty property crime, Scott was acquitted by a majority-white jury after claiming that the Cervini charged at him, putting him in imminent fear of his life."

- - - - -

Perhaps it's time again to recall the words of Jesse Jackson almost twenty years ago when he said to a meeting of his Operation PUSH, "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."

- - - - -

In a far less publicized case, police in North Carolina are looking for the man who robbed a handicapped 12-year-old boy in a wheelchair who was collecting donations to bring his wheelchair basketball team to play at an elementary school. The thief made off with about $250.
      Police are still searching for the man who took the money. He is described as black male with a tattoo on the back of his left arm. He is between 5 feet 6 inches and 5 feet 8 inches tall, in his 20s, and has very short hair or is bald.
     We await President Obama's statement on this incident.

- - - - -

Recommended reading: LUCIANNE.COM ... scroll back thru articles until you reach 5:59:46 AM ... the Forbes magazine excerpts from "Hope is not a Strategy".  It poses the question, "Is there an imposter in the White House?"

- - - - -

Tomorrow the U.S. Supreme Court begins consideration of Obamacare and its constitutionality. The obfuscation by the Big Media has become a propaganda barrage designed to conceal the fundamental fact that, no matter the presumed good intentions of its supporters, if the government can require individuals to buy this particular product (health insurance), there is no limit on what else it could force you to buy.
     Maybe even the obscene Obama tee-shirts promoting his socialized medicine program with the words "Health Reform -- still a BFD."  That's a reference to Crazy Joe Biden's overheard remark when this legislation passed in a then-Democrat-controlled Congress, 'This is a big (bleeping) deal.'  All class, that Joe!
     The shirts are being sold by the Obama campaign. Typical of the creepy-crowd in the White House.

- - - - -

Muslim inaction ... in action ...
     The London Daily Mail reports that an elderly woman who suffered a fall was left lying on the floor at  a (nursing) care home for up to ten minutes because a senior nurse was praying, an inquest heard.
     Abdul Bhutto, an agency nurse, told junior staff they would have to wait until he finished before he would attend to 87-year-old Dorothy  Griffiths, who died nine days later.
    Mrs Griffiths, who suffered from  Alzheimer’s, was left on the floor while the Muslim nurse continued to pray on his mat.

Wonder what Allah thinks about that?

- - - - -

More from the wonderful world of Islam. The Toronto Sun, major newspaper, reports ...
     "A local bookstore has sold out of a controversial marriage guide that advises Muslim men on how to beat their wives.
     "The store’s owner, whom the manager identified as Shamim Ahmad, refused to comment for the story.
     "In the book’s opening pages, it is written that “it might be necessary to restrain her with strength or even to' threaten her.' Later, its author advises that “the husband should treat the wife with kindness and love, even if she tends to be stupid and slow sometimes.
     "Page 45 contains the rights of the husband, which include his wife’s inability to leave 'his house without his' permission,' and that his wife must 'fulfil his desires and 'not allow herself to be untidy ... but should beautify herself for him ... '
     "In terms of physical punishment, the book advises that a husband may scold her, beat by hand or stick, withhold money from her or 'pull (her) by the ears, but should 'refrain from beating her excessively.'"

Consider it: there are liberal women and women's groups in this country who actually support the "rights" of Muslims to enforce Sharia law in the USA; law which approves of this kind of behavior.

- - - - -

Interested, but not obsessed. That pretty much describes my involvement with basketball; an interest that intensifies at March Madness time -- always rooting for the underdog, of course.
     But pleeeeze, NCAA and NBA officialdom, those of my ilk beg for mercy!
     Pleeeeze put a stop to the seemingly endless round of time-outs that stretch the last two minutes of a game to ten or fifteen minutes of real-time. New rule recommendation: Limit the all-wise coaches to, say, two time-outs in the last three minutes of a game. We want to see players play, not watch coaches repeatedly tear their hair out. By the way, notice how many of those guys ARE bald?
     The entertaining part of a coach's behavior on the sidelines ended with the retirement of Bobby Knight.

- - - - -

Mr. Jim speaks up for the 99% of ... golfers ...
     "I am a member of golf's lower 99%. I am an indifferent golfer, and there's no way I could ever make it to the professional level. I will never put in the practice time to be the best. I will never have the shots, skills, or mental toughness to "make it" in the sport. I just never felt like working all that hard at it.
     "However, I am a part of the golfing community and, as such, feel I should be paid by the top 1% of golfers for what I do. It isn't fair that those players who have worked harder, have studied the game, have better equipment and are more skilled and dedicated should make all that BIG money.
     "Where's my share? I'm a Victim! The top 1% should pay for my club memberships and green fees and lessons, buy me new clubs, balls, clothes and shoes, and pay me some of their winnings. They can afford it. They are 'The Rich.'
     "The whole system should be changed to accommodate people like me. I think we should get together and occupy a golf course and demand that those who are better at what they do, pay for us who generally suck.
     "Whining should get us something - maybe we'll make the cover of Time Magazine, garnish some public sympathy. Hell, during this election year we may even get a law or two passed by legislators who want our votes
     "PS -- Don't mention this to those tennis guys - We thought of this first."

- - - - -

Conan O'Brien --
     "Disastrous news for Walt Disney. They've announced they've lost $200 million on the movie 'John Carter.' This doesn't bode well for Disney's upcoming $250 million epic, 'Jimmy Carter.'"


BLACK TEEN: AGGRESSOR, VICTIM -- OR CAMPAIGN SYMBOL? ...
AFTER ELECTION, MORE OBAMA "FLEXIBILITY" ...
TEBOW'S MULTIPLE ROLES


It's far too early to pronounce judgment, but the Trayvon Miller case just may be as phony as the Tawana Brawley "rape" which launched Al Sharpton on the national scene as a slimy, two-faced demagogue.
     Now witnesses have come forward to say (A) the dead black teenager DID attack the shooter, George Zimmerman and (B) a black friend of Zimmerman says it was Zimmerman's voice screaming for help on the 911 call, and that the Latino Zimmerman was in no way a racist. Further ... does anyone believe he broke his OWN nose?
     In seeking to motivate his black supporters  in the election, Barack Obama may have hitched his wagon to a falling star. In presuming that a Hispanic-American killed Miller without provocation, the Democrat race-baiters just may have alienated -- and motivated -- the Hispanic minority, now larger than the black minority.

- - - - -

How long before Obama shows up at a press conference wearing a "hoodie," the pullover sweatshirt with a hood that Trayvon Miller was wearing?

- - - - -

Beware of a sellout! "After my election I have more flexibility" -- Barack Obama to Russia's Vladimir Putin. Translation: "After the stupid American voters give me a second term, I can do as I please." We've been warned. One might speculate whether anyone at the Pentagon is watching this charade and wondering, "Hmmmm...."

- - - - -

Jay Nordlinger (NRO) recalls an apt quote from Adlai Stevenson, who ran for president -- and lost -- against Dwight Eisenhower: A lady said to Stevenson, “Governor, you’ll receive the vote of every intelligent person in this country,” and he said, “That’s not good enough, we need a majority.”

- - - - -

Dead and desperate. Two words that describe, respectively, the campaigns of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

- - - - -

A dismaying fact ...
     Compare the value of the U.S. dollar today versus any of the world's major countries and you'll find that the buck has declined in value drastically.
     One practical consequence: Many people who would like to get out of this stupidly mismanaged country and move elsewhere simply can't afford it because of that very fact. Your dollars are becoming increasingly worthless.

- - - - -

Needed: Geography lessons.
     Among their many and manifest failures, America's schools have done a lousy job of teaching geography, to the extent that it's taught at all.
      I recall overhearing a discussion of the "Survivor" TV show when the location was Brazil, and one party to the chat referring to one participant being "voted off the island," as if the South American continent were a small speck in the ocean.
     Among the most egregious offenders are sportscasters. I have no disdain for the breed; I've done some of that work myself, mostly major college football.
     But as a former resident of the Miami metro area (specifically, Coral Gables) I cringe when I hear the ESPN lads and ladies refer to the Dolphins, Marlins and Heat playing in "South Beach." First, there IS no such city. It's a small neighborhood largely populated by skinny models at the south end of Miami Beach, which is an entirely separate city from Miami. And NO sports team plays there.  (The neighborhood was previously populated by elderly retirees and was locally called "God's Waiting Room.")
     The Heat play basketball across the bay in Miami. The Marlins are building a new baseball stadium in the southwest part of Miami known as Little Havana. And the Dolphins -- and U. of Miami (located in Coral Gables) Hurricanes -- play in a stadium in the far northwest corner of Dade County, not far from the Everglades and its alligators..
     Now, pass me my meds.

- - - - -

Life is full of surprises Dep't: Saw Lady Gaga's duet with Tony Bennett on his PBS special. She isn't just the showbiz freakazoid act I'd expected. The woman can SING!

- - - - -

Another sign the apocalypse is near ...
     At the Texas Rangers' baseball games this year, there's a new menu item. A one-pound hotdog. For $26. But nobody said health-food is cheap.

- - - - -

New York Jets' management says Tim Tebow will be "more than just a quarterback." Say what? And what else? Team chaplain? Come to think of it, prayer may do more for the Jets than Rex Ryan or Mark Sanchez. They haven't been to a Super Bowl since the glory days of Joe Namath -- more than forty years ago.

- - - - -

Apologies for being late yesterday. Tech problems at the server.

- - - - -

From reader Charleen --
     "True story:  a house not far from ours has two identical Chevy Volts side by side in the driveway. We think they're trying to build the world's largest toaster.

- - - - -

Craig Ferguson --
     "The key way to tell who is a vampire is to remember that they grow older without any change to their physical appearance. In other words, Rob Lowe is a vampire."
OBAMA'S TALKING -- AND TELLING -- MOMENT ...
OBAMACARE: EVEN A WIN IS A LOSING ISSUES ...
TRAYVON CASE MAY BACKFIRE ON RACE-HUSTLERS


Nothing said by any Republican candidate is as damning and justifiably explosive as Obama's overheard (by a live microphone) message to Vladimir Putin, the KGB thug who now runs Russia, that he (Obama) would have more "flexibility" after the election. It was clear message that he expects to do as he pleases in implementing a far-left agenda and cave in on defense matters if the voters are self-destructive and stupid enough to give him another term.

- - - - -

Obama's asking Putin for time (until after foolish Americans re-elect him) sounds more than a little like an echo of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sucking up to Adolf Hitler in their 1938 meeting and coming away from their meeting proclaiming he has achieved "peace in our time."
     Now he's remembered as the most gullible, foolish craven coward in British history.

Ronald Reagan demonstrated the way to deal with aggressive bullies in 1986 at his summit meeting with Gorbachev in Iceland when he told the then-Soviet Union strongman, "You can't win an arms race with us because we won't let you."
     Gorbachev knew he meant it ... and folded his hand.
     I heard the story personally from Marlin Fitzwater, who was part of the Reagan team and was one of the handful of people in the room when the discussion took place.  
     It is a lesson Obama will refuse to learn because there's little doubt that, in his view, the wrong side won that confrontation.

- - - - -

Wes Pruden, editor emeritus of the Washington Times ...
     "President Obama did not commit a gaffe, which is an inconvenient public blunder of candor, but was trapped by the failure of a technician to kill a live mike. The president’s spinners were instructed to avoid panic and make the best of a monstrous mistake. It could be costly because it affirms what many Americans fear is the reckless Obama agenda for an unshackled second term."

- - - - -

... and Brett Decker of the Times points out that ...
     "This isn’t the first time Mr. Obama has tried to cut a backroom deal to push off serious action until after the election. Three weeks ago, he reportedly offered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bunker-buster bombs and other sophisticated military assistance if Israel would agree to wait until after November to bomb Iran. Such wheeling and dealing shows that Mr. Obama is willing to do anything to win re-election. But when national security is subjugated to politics, America loses."

- - - - -

Wonder what the people in countries formerly living under Russian occupation and oppression -- Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, etc. -- think about Obama's obvious plan to sell them out even further than he's already done? No, we needn't wonder ...
     And to think: those formerly-enslaved people once looked to America as their hope for freedom.

- - - - -

As the Supreme Court hears arguments in the Obamacare case, John Podhoretz of the NY Post raises a relevant point about the political impact of this central issue in the presidential campaign, just as Iraq was the key to President Bush's re-election ...
     "When George W. Bush was running for re-election and Iraq was the central issue, support for the Iraq war remained at or slightly above 50 percent throughout 2004. He won 51 percent of the vote. Support for ObamaCare is at 36 percent."

- - - - -

Odd ...
     Howard Dean, former Democrat presidential candidate and party chairman, thinks the Supremes will declare Obamacare unconstitutional.
     Ron Paul thinks they'll find it constitutional.

- - - - -

If Obamacare is upheld by the Court, it's a major campaign issue -- and most voters hate it.
If it isn't, he looks ineffectual as his major "accomplishment" collapses.
Unless the ultimate Republican candidate fumbles it -- always possible -- this is a no-win for Obama.

- - - - -

Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat Senator and biggest camera-hog in Washington, wants to somehow revoke Florida's "stand your ground" law and similar state laws allowing for self-defense. If the largely-spineless Republican House doesn't stand ITS ground and slap down this publicity-seeking crackpot, THEY should be revoked.

- - - - -

     "'White Hispanic.' That's how the New York Times, Reuters and other media outlets have opted to describe George Zimmerman, a man who would simply be Hispanic (or Latino in this newspaper) if he hadn't shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The term, rarely if ever used before this tragedy, is necessary in telling the Martin story in a more comfortable way.
     "What's the comfortable way? It's the way the blame for Martin's death belongs squarely at the feet of 'the system.' And 'the system' is a white thing, don't you know." -- Jonah Goldberg, LA Times --

And the more information that comes out about young Trayvon, the less angelic he looks.
From the Miami Herald: "Miami Gardens teenager Trayvon Martin was suspended from school in October in an incident in which he was found in possession of women’s jewelry and a screwdriver that a schools security staffer described as a 'burglary tool.'”

And isn't it heartwarming to see the mother trademark his name with the obvious goal of profiting from marketing her dead son.

- - - - -

Let's see if we can sort this out. Some race-hustlers who want to make political hay of the shooting of Trayvon Martin object to accused shooter George Zimmerman being referred to as Latino, since his father was Caucasian and his mother a Latina.
     But they proudly claim Barack Obama as black, although one of his parents was white.

- - - - -

A correspondent asks if I am not impressed by Santorum's primary win in Louisiana.
No. It was a given, partly because (A) Louisiana is largely Catholic (they have parishes instead of counties) and (B) the non-Catholic population consists primarily of fundamentalist Christians of the same general sort who gave Rick wins in Alabama and Mississippi. And his net gain in delegates from Lousiana was ... five.

His desperate, almost manic behavior is likely to make him an even less-appealing candidate. He and Gingrich have been conducting a lesson in disorganized campaign ineptitude. No wonder a candidate with as many deficiencies as Mitt Romney has outlasted them.

- - - - -

How Democrat craziness kills job-creating investment ...
     Unless Congress comes to its senses -- if any -- next year the top tax rate on dividends, now 15%, leaps to  43.4% next year.
     We truly do live in a land run by morons.

- - - - -

After our latest suck-up to the lying North Korean regime, Burt Prelutsky observes ...
     "Will we never learn that it doesn’t pay to make nice with tyrants? In exchange for getting us to deprive Poland and the Czech Republic of a missile defense system, the Russians didn’t even have to give Obama a bottle of vodka or a dancing bear.
     "In poker circles, it’s said that you never want to play cards with guys nicknamed Doc, Fingers or the Professor. In world politics, you don’t send amateurs to negotiate with guys named Putin, Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-Un.
     "In other world news, we recently learned that after Obama gave Brazil two billion dollars to develop its offshore oil industry, in which George Soros just happens to have a major stake, the Brazilians are selling their oil to China. So we can add a woman, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, to the list of those with whom our politicians should not be playing international poker."

How long before even the stupidest Democrat realizes that Obama is either the dumbest person ever to occupy the White House or (more likely) on a deliberate course to wreck this nation?

- - - - -

As painful as gasoline prices are -- and they'll get worse before getting better, if ever -- there may be one therapeutic side-effect.  This just might ring a few alarm-bells in the empty heads of fools harboring Utopian fantasies and electing an agenda-crazed leftist to the White House.

- - - - -

Notice how little media attention is being given Obama's 13-year-old daughter and her vacation in Mexico with a dozen friends, requiring a couple of government jets and 25 Secret Service agents? The media are being pressured by the White House to keep a lid on coverage, purportedly to protect Malia's security. More likely to minimize public attention to this latest taxpayer ripoff.

- - - - -

Having a loose-cannon nutball like Joe Biden a heartbeat from the presidency should frighten even staunch Democrats. And to think they used to ridicule Dan Quayle, who was a pillar of sanity and decorum compared to Crazy Joe.

- - - - -

Now Muslim fanatics in Tunisia are demanding an Islamic government there, complete with Sharia religious law from more than a thousand years ago be instituted. This echoes the current trend in Egypt. Let's have a show of hands from all the dumb, gullible American liberals -- especially in media -- who've rhapsodized for the past year about an "Arab spring."

- - - - -

A travel tip from the Daily Caller ...
     "Can you even wait to vacation in the soon-to-be Islamic Republic of Egypt? Of course, you won't be able to see the pyramids (they'll surely be blown up for being un-Islamic.) And the beaches in the Sinai won't be so much fun with the implementation of mandatory burqinis. But if you're the type of person who likes to watch women be stoned to death for the crime of being raped, you may well be in luck."

- - - - -

Some people are just no damned good.
The annual Easter Egg Hunt for the children in Colorado Springs has been cancelled because so many parents jumped the line so make sure their kids got all the eggs, depriving others of a chance.

"The longer I live, the more I'm convinced that most dogs are better than most people."

- - - - -  

Tasteless but timely. Sheila relays this story ...
     An illegal alien approaches a streetwalker and asks her fee.
 "A hundred dollars," she replies.
     "How much for immigrant style?"
     Suspecting something kinky, she rejects him.
"For a thousand dollars?" he asks.
     She agrees.
     The deed done, she says,
 "That didn't seem unusual. What's 'immigrant style'?"
     "You send the bill to the government!"

- - - - -

The Sky-guy strikes again ...
      After being married for forty years, a wife asked her husband to describe her.
      He looked at her for a while ... then said,   "You're A, B, C, D, E, F, G,
H, I, J, K."
      She asks ... "What does that mean?"
      He said : "Adorable, Beautiful, Cute, Delightful, Elegant, Foxy,
Gorgeous, Hot."
      She smiled happily and said ... "Oh, that's lovely ... What about I, J, K?"
       He said, "I'm Just Kidding!"
  The swelling in his eye is going down after a week.
BERNANKE BASICALLY BABBLES BULL(BLEEP) ...
OBAMA'S OBAMACARE PROBLEM REBOUNDS TO ROMNEY ...
JUSTICE KAGAN'S CLEAR CONFLICT OF INTEREST

"We'll see a little bit higher inflation the next few months because of the higher gas prices." -- Ben "The Boob" Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, to Diane Sawyer of ABC News.
     Go read an elementary book on economics, you stupid stooge!
     The first rule of inflation is that it is not a RESULT of higher prices; it is a CAUSE of higher prices, induced by a politicized Fed that keeps pumping out ever-more dollars, each worth less and less.
     This is not a shot at Obama. This Ivy League clown, Bernanke, was appointed to the Chairmanship of the Federal Reserve Board, a virtual fiscal dictatorship, by George W. Bush.
     Somewhere, the brilliant Milton Friedman is revolving in his grave.

- - - - -

However the Supremes come down on Obamacare, Mitt Romney still faces the challenging task of disassociating himself from it and his own medical plan in Massachusetts while he was governor.
     Explaining the fine points of constitutional allowance for individual states to enforce mandatory purchase of health insurance but forbidding such power (whether or not sustained by the court) to the federal government is going to be a hard sell. I can hear snoring from the audience already.

- - - - -

Republican House Speaker John Boehner, referring to Mitt Romney's criticism of the Obama "flexibility" message to Russia's Putin ...
     "While the president is overseas, I think it's appropriate that we not be critical of him or of our country."
     Message to Boehner, who seems to be evolving into a pure RINO: When the president is overseas, many of us think it's appropriate for HIM not to be critical of our country.
     Second message to the Tan Man from Ohio: You ever hear of skin cancer?

- - - - -


In light of Obama's message to Putin about having more "flexibility" after the election, reader Frances calls our attention to this from William Barclay's study from the Book of Romans, 9:14-18.       
     "In the terrible days of the Roman Empire, when no man's life was safe, and when any man might die at the whim of an irresponsible and suspicious Emperor, Galba, one of the Emperors, said when he became Emperor, that now 'he could do what he liked and do it to anyone.'"

- - - - -

In the name of sweet reason, why is Elena Kagan sitting in judgement on the Supreme Court considering Obamacare? As part of Obama's administration, in the role of Solicitor General (top lawyer for the government) she advocated for Obama's socialized medicine and chose the lawyers to defend it. Yet, in the face of this blatant conflict of interest, she is given a vote on the court? Absurd!

 - - - -

Which seems more reasonable: Florida's "stand your ground" law, which empowers you to defend yourself if threatened with attack, or the story out of Chicago about the 80-year-old man who shot and wounded a 19-year-old burglar who broke into his home -- and has been charged with felony use of a firearm?
     Your call.

- - - - -

A few quotes collected by the estimable Prof. Walter Williams, who often described himself in our many on-air discussions, as "a tall, handsome black man" ...
     Twelve years ago, a black Washington, D.C., commissioner warned cabbies, most of whom were black, against picking up dangerous-looking passengers. She described "dangerous-looking" as a "young black guy ... with shirttail hanging down longer than his coat, baggy pants, unlaced tennis shoes." She also warned cabbies to stay away from low-income black neighborhoods. Did that make the D.C. commissioner a racist?
     In some cities, such as St. Louis, black pizza deliverers have complained about having to deliver pizzas to certain black neighborhoods, including neighborhoods in which they live. Are they racists?
     The former Charleston, S.C., black chief of police, Reuben Greenberg, said the problem facing black America is not racial profiling. He said, "The greatest problem in the black community is the tolerance for high levels of criminality."
     Former Los Angeles black police Chief Bernard Parks, defending racial profiling, said: "It's not the fault of the police when they stop minority males or put them in jail. It's the fault of the minority males for committing the crime."

- - - - -

How unfortunate for race-baiting, rabble-rousing Democrats whose eagerness to promote racial conflict on grounds that Republicans are the cause of every guilt-peddling exercise activist blacks can dream up. How unfortunate for them that the accused shooter in the Trayvon Martin case is a registered ... DEMOCRAT.

- - - - -

The question grows louder. Just what does Newt Gingrich think he's doing?
     The master of the one-liner has made himself an object of ridicule by persisting in a clearly doomed campaign.
     Soon the same question will be asked of Rick Santorum, who's also rapidly approaching his "sell by" date.

- - - - -

Noticed how much less nonsense we hear about the "global warming" scam as gasoline prices skyrocket to (and above in many places) four dollars per gallon, headed for five dollars?
     Reality seems to re-order priorities for the gullible sheeple who dabble in such childish fantasies. Perhaps those silly folk are beginning to realize that the skeptics were correct all along. They were taken for a ride such as today's fuel prices make very expensive.

- - - - -

John Griffing in The American Thinker with THE vital question Americans should be asking themselves ...
     "Obama has done what no guardian of America would do: systematically tear down the most vital of America's defenses, all while America's enemies wait with bated breath for the nation that owes trillions in debt to be left standing defenseless.  
     "What happens when America lays down its arms?  It seems Obama would like to find out."

- - - - -

Charles Sykes in the Fiscal Times reflects on the growing national sickness ..
     "A record 46.5 million Americans rely on food stamps, and in 2010 the federal government paid out more money in the form of benefits than it collected in federal income taxes. But perhaps the most striking measure of the success of the entitlement state has been the way it’s eroded the stigma of being on the dole, while spreading dependency as a virtue as widely as possible. In other words: Everybody should buy everybody’s free lunch. And free breakfast too. (Did I mention free dinner also would be nice?)
     "Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House, might have irreparably damaged her standing with her mother’s friends when she produced a brief video for HBO about her recent encounters outside a New York welfare office. In the Pelosi video, a man waiting in line is drinking beer and smoking cigarettes as he admits that he’s fathered five children by four different mothers. “I’m here to get a check … whatever they’ve got to offer,” he explains. “It’s not like they’ve got a checklist … I’m just here to get what I can get.”

- - - - -

Reflections on the Jet Blue incident involving the captain who went nuts in mid-flight ..
     Airlines, like many businesses in many industries, can have people in their work force who've somehow slipped thru the screening process. But when, within a couple of weeks, you have an American Airlines flight attendant lose her grip and start screaming about bombs on the plane, then a captain on Jet Blue goes nuts and races down the aisle shouting similar alarms, it does make one a little more ... apprehensive ... during an airline flight.
     Whatever the cause of their mental problems, not only should these two never work in the air travel industry again, they should never again be allowed on an airliner even as a passenger. There are more than enough nuts running loose, already. The Jet Blue pilot who was taken to a hospital in Amarillo ... when he's released, if he isn't sent to a psychiatric facility, send him home on Greyhound.

- - - - -

More airline bad news ...
     The European-build Airbus 380, the gigantic plane that dwarfs a Boeing 747, now has engine problems on top of the wing cracks that have developed. The Rolls-Royce engines are failing -- one exploded on a Qantas plane -- causing more to be grounded. The plane is a disaster for the airlines that have invested heavily in them.
     Generally speaking, I'm with Dan Sorkin, who says, "If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going."

- - - - -

Then there's the latest report of massive baggage theft at New York's Kennedy airport. Big surprise -- like this hasn't been going on for years.
     NEVER, EVER place valuables in check-in baggage. Even if you don't make that mistake, you shouldn't be surprised that the thieves who infest the baggage-handling department of airlines may still steal anything from an alarm clock to a nice piece of clothing. And the airlines seem unable to cope with it. Of course they're unable; it's historically one of the worst-managed industries in America.

- - - - -

Why is the NFL cracking down on head-to-head hits and "bounty" payoffs for hits that knock a player out of a game? How about money as a motivating factor for the league? The NFL is now being sued by 126 former players who suffered head injuries.

- - - - -

 Wes provides a collection of actual newspaper headlines ...
     "MAN SUFFERS LEG  PAIN AFTER CRANE DROPS 800-POUND BALL ON HIS HEAD"
     "STUDY SHOWS FREQUENT SEX ENHANCES PREGNANCY CHANCES"
     "COUNTY TO PAY $250,000 TO ADVERTISE LACK OF FUNDS"
     "CASKETS FOUND AS WORKERS DEMOLISH MAUSOLEUM"
     "CAMOUFLAGED ARMY VEHICLE DISAPPEARS"
... and this favorite ...
      "MEETING ON OPEN MEETINGS IS CLOSED"

- - - - -

Jimmy Kimmel --
     "Pope Benedict XVI spent the weekend in Mexico. He likes to spend spring break at Señor Frog's."

- - - - -

Nobody can tell a story like the Irish ... and Irish John offers this one ...
     There was a Midwestern phone company that was going to hire one team of telephone pole installers, and the boss had to choose between a team of two Norwegian guys and a team of two Irish guys.
     So the boss met with both teams and said, "Here's what we'll do. Each team will be installing poles out on the new road for a day. The team that installs the most phone poles gets the job."
     Both teams headed right out. At end of the shift, Pat and Mike O'Shea, the Irish guys, came back, and the boss asked them how many they had installed. They said that it was tough going, but they'd put in twelve.
     Forty-five minutes later, Sven and Ole Olson, the Norwegian guys came back in, and they were totally exhausted.
     The boss asked, "Well, how many poles did you guys install?"
     Ole, the team leader, wiped his brow and sighed, "Sven and me, we got three in."
     The boss gasped, "Three? Those two Irish guys put in twelve!"
     "Yeah," said Ole, "but you should see how much they left stickin' out of the ground."
OBAMACARE: WIN OR LOSE, HOW DOES MITT REACT? ...
FOOLS (Congressman) RUSH IN ...
LIBERAL LYNCH-MOB


Although Supreme Court solons have been known to argue one way in public and decide the other, unless Anthony Kennedy does another flip-flop it appears Obamacare is on its way to a well-deserved grave.
     So what does the failed Obama have left as a campaign issue? Maybe provoke a race-riot?

Mittens has the Republican nomination sewn up, but he'd better be very, very careful about how he handles his own reaction to the court decision, however it comes down. His association with the whole stupid idea is his single largest vulnerability in the November election. And if he wins, a Republican Congress needs to keep him on a very short leash. His RINO instincts are not to be trusted.
     If the Democrats and other assorted suckers hadn't placed a wild-eyed leftist with blatant anti-American instincts in the White House, Romney wouldn't stand a chance.

- - - - -

This whole Obamacare exercise before the Supreme Court is a major object lesson in why the power to nominate justices is so important. Presidents come and go. Supreme Court justices come and stay.

- - - - -

The Cong. Bobby Rush, racial activist and one-time Black Panther from Chicago who was removed from the floor of the House for wearing a "hoodie." a rules violation, has this distinction on his political record:
     In the 2000 Democratic primary for the U.S. House of Representatives he -- Rush -- was challenged by State Senator Barack Obama. During the primary, Rush said: "Barack Obama went to Harvard and became an educated fool. Barack is a person who read about the civil-rights protests and thinks he knows all about it."
 
- - - - -

Liberals are gleefully pointing to polls that show Obama beating Romney in swing states like Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania. This is another example of the ancient adage, "Polls are like a string bikini. What they reveal is interesting ... but what they conceal is vital."
     These are polls taken while the Republican candidates are still fighting for the nomination, with all the attacks and counter-attacks that contest demands.
     What REALLY matters is what happens when the voters have the choice of ONE Republican versus the failed Obama experiment.

- - - - -

Newt's lost his money-man. Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas gambling tycoon who's bankrolled the doomed campaign, admits it's a lost cause.

- - - - -

The crazies in the Obama administration now are outlawing new coal-burning electric power-plants. They're opposed to nukes, too. Time to hitch that bicycle to a generator and start pedaling!
     How did such a bunch of lunatics get so empowered? In a sane nation, they'd be looking at jail time.

- - - - -

The Trayvon Martin shooting is belatedly bringing forth reminders of the black and liberal hysteria over the charges against Duke University lacrosse players that they had abused a black stripper. Even faculty members signed onto a lynch-mob mentality toward them.
     Then, slowly, evidence trickled out about the "victim" and eventually her entire story was discredited. The liberals and race-mongers were left with egg on their faces. But did that case, along with the fake Tawana Brawley rape story, in which Al Sharpton played a disgraceful role, deter the race-baiters? Not a bit. Their tiny minds are set in stone, their great obsession built on an image of black victimization. And no matter how much a society bends to them, their hate and envy will never be satisfied. All the shakedowns they've successfully perpetrated do not and cannot satisfy the Jesse Jacksons of the world.

- - - - -

In the name of Trayvon ...
     Miami Beach police report a Walgreen store ransacked and ripped-off by pro-Trayvon demonstrators wearing "hoodies."

- - - - -

Burt Prelutsky evaluates Obama's racial-solidarity intrusion into the Trayvon Martin case ...
     "Just in terms of public relations, wouldn’t it have been a good idea for Obama to have spoken a few well-chosen words after the 13-year-old white kid, Allen Coon, in Kansas City, was recently doused in gasoline and set on fire while the two black teenagers hollered, 'You get what you deserve, white boy!'”?
     "Isn‘t it odd that neither (Al) Sharpton nor (Jesse) Jackson thought it was worth their time to fly off to Kansas City and admonish the black community to shape up, and to urge the KCPD to arrest those young sadists and send them away for a long stretch? Instead, we had Al Sharpton leading a demonstration, during which he said, and I quote, 'Don’t talk to us like we stupid. Don’t talk to us like we ignit.' He garnered loud cheers from a crowd of black Floridians, who clearly speak his language, even if nobody else does. He went on to say, 'We love our children like you love yours.' Well, not exactly, Reverend Al. Not when three out of four black babies are born to unmarried women."

- - - - -

Spike Lee, the movie director regarded by the Hollywood left as a "genius" for his hate-whitey output, mistakenly gave out the address of a Florida couple in their 70's as the address of the "white-Latino" shooter in the Martin case. They've had to leave their home under a barrage of hate-mail.  Uh, anything to say, Mr. President?
     Now Mr. Lee may have to answer to the besieged couple's lawyer.

- - - - -

The world also awaits comment from Barack Obama regarding the Tulsa, Oklahoma, case in which 20-year-old Tyrone Woodfork has been arrested in the rape of an 85-year-old woman who was beaten to death as her 90-year-old husband was beaten and shot in the face with a pellet gun. The husband is in serious condition in a local hospital, suffering from a broken jaw, broken ribs and severe bleeding.
     The names of the victims are Bob and (the late) Nancy Strait. Listen for their names the next time the race-monger in the White House makes a public statement.

- - - - -

From black columnist Mychal Massie ...
     "The coming months of political life are not going to be pleasant for Obama. Possessed by a self-perceived palatine (definition: "possessing royal privileges") mindset, that in his mind places him above criticism, how long before he cracks in public? Can America risk a man with a documented track record of lying and misrepresenting truth as a basic way of life?"

- - - - -

The London Daily Mail exhumes Brack Obama's argument against Hillary Clinton's health-plan proposal in the 2008 campaign. It's especially interesting since Obamacare demands the so-called "individual mandate" that would force Americans to buy health insurance ...
     "During the 2008 campaign, Obama argued strenuously against the individual mandate. In a debate in South Carolina, he said: 'A mandate means that in some fashion, everybody will be forced to buy health insurance. ... But I believe the problem is not that folks are trying to avoid getting health care. The problem is they can't afford it. And that's why my plan emphasizes lowering costs.'"
     "In February 2008, he said that you could no more solve the issue of the uninsured with an individual mandate than you could cure homelessness by ordering people to buy a home."

That's our president: Lies of convenience as a way of political life.

- - - - -

Obama and his stooges continue to tell glowing lies about the "improving" economy, but reality punches a hole in the falsehoods. Sales of durable goods -- things like household appliances, for example -- continued to decline in February ... another indicator of a sick economy not really getting any better.

- - - - -

How can the government-contrived unemployment rate really be down when the number of employed people has shrunk to the lowest level in decades? Historical wisdom: "Figures lie ... and liars figure."

- - - - -

The latest piece of Obama silliness, his proposed budget, has been defeated in the House, 414-0. Right. Not even one Democrat voted for it. The media have been noticeably quiet about it.

- - - - -

Another electric-car scam is on the verge of collapse. The Boston Herald reports that a battery outfit called 123 Systems of Waltham, Mass., is losing millions and just laid off a hundred employees. Your stake in this failure? The company got $249 million in "stimulus" funds. Coincidentally, just before that gift, the company CEO gave $16,900 to Democrat pols including Sen. Ed-the-Marxist Markey of Massachusetts.
     The fact that Massachusetts voters repeatedly elect people like Markey, Barney Frank and endless Kennedys only adds to Republican suspicions of Romney, their ex-governor. And Senator Scott Brown hasn't turned out to be such a jewel, either, although some Republican hysterics were touting him as presidential fodder immediately after his win.

- - - - -

How dumb are California Democrats?  They elected and re-elected 50 politicians, both state and national, whose campaign funds were swindled out of $7 million by their campaign treasurer. The theft has apparently been going on for years. What kind of fools empower such politicians to handle the public's money when they can't even handle the fruits of their own money-grubbing?

- - - - -

Russia's longtime newspaper voice of the Communist Party, Pravda,  has endorsed Barack Obama for re-election. Are we stunned, shocked and amazed?
     Pravda also condemns Romney. Could he ask for a better endorsement?

- - - - -

Unsurprisingly, Florida's charismatic Senator Marco Rubio endorses Romney ... says he doesn't want the VP slot ... but -- would he turn it down? Ahhh ...

- - - - -

Is it premature to label the entire MSNBC stable of performers a bunch of crazed communists? Not that I'd support silencing them; that's a liberal tactic. I come from the premise that the more exposure they get, the more even their small (read the ratings) clique of viewers is likely to figure out that, collectively, they're nuts.

We can include in that coterie the hideous Andrea Mitchell, who appears primarily on MSNBC's parent, NBC. In a report from Cuba, she calls that communist country's health care system "highly regarded." In the same report a Cuban doctor gives a reality clue when he says of the status of patients, "You sometimes have to change your own bed sheets."

Post-script: Can CNN be far behind MSNBC, as wretched ratings foretell its further fall into disrepute? Both cable operations exemplify a roomful of liberals engaged in mutual masturbation.

- - - - -

What has the leftist crusade against Rush Limbaugh accomplished? Essentially nothing.
     Most of the "sponsors" who dropped out were nothing more than ad-buyers of spot announcements on local stations, not his core of national sponsors. Station losses: two small-market operations of teakettle power. The liberal  BS barrage has likely increased his ratings. As the ancient showbiz axiom goes, "It doesn't matter what they say, as long as they get the name right."

- - - - -

It's wedding bells for the seventh time for rocker Jerry Lee Lewis, who has taken unto himself a bride at age 76. He married his caregiver, who used to be married to his cousin.
     Jerry Lee was once a guest on my long-ago TV show, which featured a couple of adorable teenage twins who did the commercial lead-ins. Ol' Jerry Lee seemed to be under the influence of ... something ... when he arrived and during the live show had to be re-directed several times by stagehands when he followed an impulse to get his hands on them. It was memorable TV.

- - - - -

The cruise industry, perhaps even more than most of the travel industry, is feeling the strain of the Obama economy. My own mailbox and e-mail are filled every day with discount offers from all  the cruise lines. One of the most deceptive come-ons is the "onboard credit"; money that can only be spent aboard the ship, which usually goes for drinks.
     Consider the economics. The biggest chunk of the cost of alcoholic beverages goes to taxes. The cruise lines, operating as they do in international waters, buy their booze tax-free. Which means the ten-dollar drink you buy with your onboard credit has maybe thirty cents worth of liquor in it.
     I recently saw the most modestly-priced champagne on a major cruise line selling for $29 a bottle -- and they get it tax-free. My local supermarket sells it for $5 a bottle. Three dollars when it's on sale.
     I love cruises as vacations, but the far better discount is on the up-front dollar price of the cruise, itself.

Another cruise tip: Most lines no longer allow you to bring alcoholic beverages onboard. You can, to some degree, beat the system by ordering "gift" bottles of wine or booze for yourself, in advance. Still overpriced, but not nearly as much as buying drinks individually once you're aboard. Sitting on your balcony, sucking up a beverage; not bad.
     You're welcome.

Further footnote: I notice in a cruise-industry newsletter that one of the seagoing monster ships will be relocating to Madrid. Interesting, considering that the Spanish capitol is hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. Man those oars!

- - - - -

They found a hundred-year-old lightbulb buried in a time capsule in Ohio that was buried a hundred years ago. It still works. Care to get a bet down (on behalf of your great-grandchildren) that our new EPA-mandated "green" lightbulbs will perform so well?

- - - - -

It's a good thing for baseball that the legendary Dodger franchise appears to be on the road to revival after a chaotic period. Magic Johnson is a good front-man for the new ownership, but the serious money behind it is from the Guggenheim investment operation, which is private and huge. Ancestors have names on such  landmarks as New York's Guggenheim Museum of Art. And one of my life insurance policies.

- - - - -

Jay Leno (offered here in honor of Obama's deep friendship with Jon Corzine, who's possibly going to face charges of stealing $2 billion of investor money in the MF bankruptcy debacle) --
     "Q: What does Barack Obama call lunch with a convicted felon? -- A fund raiser."

- - - - -

From reader Michael --
     While attending a Marriage Weekend, Frank and his wife Ann listened to the instructor declare, It is essential that husbands and wives know the things that are important to each other.
     He then addressed the men. "     Can you name and describe your wife's favorite flower?"
     Frank leaned over, touched Ann’s arm gently, and whispered, "Gold Medal-All-Purpose, Isn't it?

And thus began Frank's life of celibacy.
AFGHAN "ALLIES"? ARE YOU KIDDING? ...
MORE ON SAINT TRAYVON ...
KILLING COAL ...

So now American troops are being allowed to carry weapons to defend themselves against their Afghan "allies." They also will now take turns protecting their comrades-in-arms as they sleep, lest they be murdered by those "allies."
     Just how long will this insanity go on?
     After years of American and allied support, it is obvious that there is insufficient will among Afghans to quell the murderous Taliban. Therefore, is it not equally obvious that, at some point, we're going to have to admit that civilizing this treacherous backwater is a fool's errand and leave the wretched place to its fate -- returning only if necessary to put a permanent end to it using whatever force is necessary with the least risk of American lives?

- - - - -

The Daily Caller has identified a second Twitter handle that was used by the late Trayvon Martin during the last weeks of 2011.  Tweeting in December under the name “T33ZY TAUGHT M3,” Martin sent a message that read, “Plzz shoot da #mf dat lied 2 u!”

For translation purposes, assume that the "m f" doesn't refer to "mama's favorite."

Also from The Daily Caller ... The photo Martin chose to represent himself on Twitter as “T33ZY TAUGHT M3? depicts him in a black Polo cap, looking into the camera and extending his middle finger.
     He appears to have tweeted earlier under the name “NO_LIMIT_NIGGA.”

Model citizen, role-model for today's youth. That was Trayvon.

- - - - -

The Big Media are saying that ABC News video of shooter George Zimmerman shows no head injury, but examination of frozen video stills from that same camera do show a long laceration or scar on the back of his head.
     He was given first-aid by para-medics at the scene of the shooting, so the obvious question is, "First-aid for what?"

- - - - -

Reader Greg takes a grim view of where all this is headed ...
     "Can't you just see what's going to happen? Now all 'true' blacks will be wearing hoodies, and all middle-of-the- road blacks, who never even thought of wearing a hoodie, will be intimidated into wearing them. In fact any black not wearing a hoodie will be questioned for his loyalty. 'What's the matter, don't you love Trayvon? What side you on?' And the whole nation will sink deeper and deeper into a self-imposed apartheid.
     "Diversity will have run it's course. People will now be completely identified by which group or race they belong to. A 'true' individual will be the perfect cog in the wheel. No gears will mesh because each will only obey his own group's unique customs. It will be the conquering of globalism by tribalism. Back to the stone age. But, hey, cheer up, you can say you were there to see it happen!"

- - - - -

Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina considers Obama's message to Vladimir Putin about having more "flexibility" after "my" re-election ...
     "He engineered or oversaw unprecedented federal takeovers of the American auto industry, our financial system, our home mortgage industry, the health-care system, the student-loan industry, and the education system, and attempted a takeover of the energy system. He has run the federal government without a budget for three years. In foreign policy, he appeased anti-American rivals by undermining democratic allies in Israel, Honduras, and Eastern Europe.
     "This record, breathtaking in its hubris and scope, has been the work of Barack Obama, constrained. What could he possibly have in mind if given the 'flexibility' that comes with a second term?" -- Entire article at National Review Online.

- - - - -

Now, thru the crackpot subversives at the EPA, Obama has moved to kill coal mining as an industry and, along with it, our primary source of electric power. Remember this quote from four years ago? "If someone wants to build a new coal-fired power plant they can, but it will bankrupt them because they will be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
     He wasn't kidding. Perhaps people will be reminded when the electric bill skyrockets, as he also promised (or threatened) and the blackouts begin. Perhaps liberals who voted for this leftist fanatic will also be reminded that stupidity has a price-tag.
     You can also take this to the bank: Obama is making sympathetic noises about the price of gasoline only because it threatens his re-election. Philosophically, he supports ever-higher gasoline prices to force you into accepting his fanciful "alternative energy" nonsense. If you're waiting for algae or wind/solar-generated electricity to power your automobile, you're going to spend a lot of time stalled on the road. But your affirmative-action president will be happy as he looks down on you from his taxpayer-supplied 747. Which will not be running on algae.

- - - - -

The entire EPA should be dismantled, every employee fired and the headquarters building turned into a whorehouse. Oh -- wait. It already is.

- - - - -

Hypocrisy on parade. The Obamas have been visiting Las Vegas on -- what else? -- a taxpayer-paid trip. Flashback: 2009 ... Barack Obama ... lecturing corporations using federal bailout money: "You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime."

- - - - -

A billboard in the Cairo airport, photographed by a tourist, displays this quote from Barack Obama: "We must educate our children to become like young Egyptian people." It comes, as I recall, from the suck-up speech Obama made in Cairo shortly after his inauguration.
     Yes, we must teach our children as Egyptian children are taught: To hate and kill Jews and assorted other infidels and, if they're lucky, blow themselves up for Allah.

- - - - -

Dr. Milton Wolf in the Washington Times with a reality-check on Obamacare ...
     "The die is cast: Obamacare will not survive. This is not a prediction of how the Supreme Court will rule on President Obama’s health care takeover, mind you. It’s the harsh reality that if Obamacare does not die a judicial or political death - or better yet, both - it will die an economic death, and if it does, it will take America down with it.
     "Obamacare’s costs are exploding in the land where budgets already have burst. The $900 billion bargain-basement 10-year cost estimate that Mr. Obama promised for his overhaul recently ballooned to $1.8 trillion. Of course, these are still just estimates, and considering that the government underestimated Medicare’s cost by a factor of 10, who really knows how massive the final price tag will be?
     "Welcome to the United States of Greece, where our $15.6 trillion national debt has surpassed the size of our total economy. This debt translates to $138,000 per taxpayer, but that’s just getting warmed up. The unfunded obligations of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are at least $50 trillion - probably closer to $75 trillion - which adds another $450,000 per taxpayer. Pony up."

- - - - -

Now that he recognizes the disaster possibly facing him in the Supreme Court, Obama has taken to calling his health plan "bi-partisan." Another outright lie. Not a single Republican voted for it.

- - - - -

Memo to Nancy Pelosi: Is it possible that the Supreme Court justices DID take a look and "see what's inside" the bill you and your fellow Democrat morons passed?

- - - - -

National Public Radio laments that the possible trashing of Obamacare as being unconstitutional is "unthinkable."  But what else would you expect from a pro-Obama propaganda outlet that you have to support with your tax dollars, even if you realize that it's populated by left-wing crazies -- oh, wait: "progressives" -- making a concerted effort to sound sane and stable?

- - - - -

Recognizing fiscal and demographic reality, Canada's conservative (for them) government is moving to raise the retirement age to 67 by 2013 and cutting federal employee payrolls by almost 5%. Naturally, their left-wing wackos object.
     Could we import some of that common sense -- along with oil -- from north of the border?

- - - - -

I pay attention to prices, especially on big-ticket items. Also, like many people, I feel a certain reluctance to shop around for services like, for example, dentistry.
     Last week I had a routine dental problem. I went to my longtime dentist who now occupies new and very elegant offices. Even the magazines were up-to-date. I got an estimate and scheduled the appointments for next month.
     I thought the price seemed high. I went to another equally-qualified professional and got a second opinion.
     Outcome: The first price was over $3,000. The second professional showed me x-rays and explained why the first recommended procedure contained largely unnecessary work and overcharged for the rest. As a result, the remaining work will cost 95% less.
    
- - - - -

Deep thoughts department ...
     Human beings must be endowed with some innate courage. After all, we are born naked, helpless and crying. Then things REALLY get rough.

- - - - -

Correction: Yesterday I referred to Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts as a Senator. I trust he would appreciate the error. (Thanks, Kenneth)

- - - - -

Now that's fan fervor! The University of Kentucky and Louisville University are bitter sports rivals, as illustrated by a fight between two older men at a kidney dialysis clinic. In an argument about the forthcoming Final Four showdown between their basketball teams, a fan of one flipped the bird to the fan of the other ... who responded by punching him, although he (the punch-ee) was hooked up to a dialysis machine.

- - - - -

A fan to the end. Jesse Hernandez, who strangled a ten-month-old baby to death in Dallas, has been executed in the Texas state prison. His last words: "Go Cowboys!"
     Jerry Jones must be so proud.

- - - - -

Dan Sorkin forwards this Living Will form that some may find useful ...
     I, ____________, being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means. Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of pinhead partisan politicians who couldn't pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it, or lawyers/doctors/hospitals interested in simply running up the bills.
     If a reasonable amount of time passes, and I fail to ask for :  (Check appropriate items)
 ______a Martini ______a Margarita ____ a Scotch and soda ______a Bloody Mary ______a Gin and Tonic _______a Glass of Chardonnay ______a Steak ______Lobster or crab legs ______the remote control ______a bowl of ice cream ______the sports page______ Sex ______Chocolate ... it should be presumed that I won't ever get any better. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my appointed person and attending physicians to pull the plug and call it a day. At this point, it is time to call the New Orleans Jazz Funeral Band to come do their thing at my funeral, and ask all of my friends to raise their glasses to toast the good times we have had.
     Signature:__________________________ Date: __________

- - - - -

Legendary bluegrass banjo player Earl Scruggs has died at age 88. He was half of the team of Flatt & Scruggs. I once jokingly remarked on-air that a female acquaintance and I entertained house-guests with our impression of Flatt & Scruggs; "I was Scruggs, and she was ... "
     Our relationship ended shortly thereafter.

- - - - -

Distressing news from Hudson, Florida, where 32-year-old Marcia Usher called 911 and asked for help because she was lost in the woods and looking for a place to go wee-wee.
   Cops answered her call and found her wandering around her own yard ... drunk.

- - - - -

Jay Leno --
     "A madam in New York City claims that John Edwards was a customer in her brothel. You hear that kind of thing and it really makes you lose respect for prostitutes, doesn't it?"
LIFE, DEATH -- AND THE PERSON WHO MADE THE DIFFERENCE ...
WHERE'S THE JUICE FOR ELECTRIC CARS? ...
OUR EVER-ENTERTAINING V.P.

We are really fortunate if, in the course of our lifetime, we find one person beyond parents and -- perhaps -- siblings, of whom we could honestly say, "I can trust this person with my very life."
     This observation is prompted by the self-reminder that eighteen months ago, I was supposed to be dead. A half-dozen doctors said so after a quadruple coronary bypass that went well was followed by complications that required surgery four more times and almost six months of hospitalization, most of it in intensive care and weeks in a coma.
     Yet I'm alive and quite well, thanks to one person. My wife, Susan.
     When doctors told her there was no hope, she refused to concede the finality.
     She and our dog Calvin slept night after night in our car in the hospital parking lot until the institution's management relented and let her sleep in a chair in my room.
     She insisted on being there at 4AM when the regular lab reports became available; reports that led quite literally to daily life-and-death decisions by medical personnel. Mine were invariably negative, but by the time doctors arrived she was prepared to counter their pessimistic conclusions with argument and pleading based on real information obtained because sympathetic overnight nurses, doubtless in violation of hospital rules, allowed her access to a computer.
     Thus she spent endless nighttime hours researching every word of diagnoses she got from the doctors whom she questioned repeatedly.
     She went far beyond our (quite good) medical plan in search of expertise and medical opinion; reason to hope and reasons to try new approaches to my condition, already adjudged as terminal. And she succeeded.
     She was so effective in asking vital questions and pressing for alternatives that when I was finally released, the hospital asked her to take a job there as their in-house patient advocate on behalf of people not so blessed as to have a family member willing or able ... who could and would do what she had done for me.
     If you ever ask yourself if you have someone in your life that you could quite literally trust to fight for your life, I hope you're as fortunate.

- - - - -

Are we clear on this? Obama (A) wants more of us to drive electric cars, while simultaneously (B) has his crazies at the EPA issue orders that would kill coal-powered electricity generation -- which is MOST of the nation's electricity.
     Just ... brilliant ...

There are only two choices when judging Obama's bungling of the oil/gasoline situation:
1. -- He's stupid. Or ...
2. -- He is deliberately undermining the nation's economy.

- - - - -

Pollster Scott Rasmussen weighs in on the inevitable doom of Obamacare ...
     "There are three ways the health care law could meet its end. The first, obviously, is the Supreme Court could declare some or all of it unconstitutional in June.
     "If it gets past that hurdle, the law also could be ended by Election 2012. If a Republican president is elected, the GOP will almost certainly also win control of the Senate and retain control of the House.
     "But even if the law survives the Supreme Court and the next election, the clock will be ticking. Recent estimates suggest that the law would cause 11 million people to lose their employer-provided insurance and be forced into a government-backed insurance plan. That's a problem because 77 percent of those who now have insurance rate their current coverage as good or excellent. Only 3 percent rate their coverage as poor ... ( and thus create) a pool of vocally unhappy voters.

- - - - -

A moment of candor from Crazy Joe Biden, speaking of the late Mayor Richard M. Daley at a Chicago fundraiser:
""I never had an interest in being a mayor 'cause that's a real job.  You have to produce.  That's why I was able to be a senator for 36 years."
     If avoiding work and evading responsibility for his silliness were his objectives, he has succeeded.

- - - - -

... and still more from Crazy Joe. He wants a "global tax."  Riiiight ...
     Try to summon a mental picture of this goofball tromping around the jungles of New Guinea of Uganda, trying to collect a "global tax." The dude is a total head-case!

- - - - -

Columnist Mona Charen (Townhall.com) reminds us ...
     "About 153 young black men are killed every week in America -- 94 percent of them at the hands of other young black males. Only one of those who were murdered on Feb. 26 has dominated national news coverage -- because his killer was not black."

     Meantime, while Cong. Bobby Rush of Chicago was accepting accolades from his fellow rabble-rousers for wearing a hooded sweatshirt in the House of Representatives, back in his home district, two young black men wearing "hoodies" walked into a convenience store and opened fire, killing one young black man and wounding five others.
     Last week alone there were seventeen murders in Chicago, which leads the nation in that category in actual numbers, not per-capita. The city is well above the 100-mark only three months into the year, the overwhelming majority committed by young black men upon other young black men.
     Instead of show-boating in Congress, Mr. Rush might better devote his time to the slaughter going on in his own backyard.

- - - - -

It was an easy prediction, easily fulfilled. Rush Limbaugh is still on the air ... sponsors are plentiful ... and ratings are higher than ever.
     And liberals, including the deluded dopes who fantasized about killing his career, are still stupid.

- - - - -

Recommended reading ...
     The American Spectator website ... Friday entries ... "The Nation's Top 50 Progressives… and Socialists and Communists" ... by Prof. Paul Kengor.
     Get to know your top communists, many flying the flag of Democrats.

- - - - -

It is no accident that "progressives" want to overturn such laws as Florida's "Stand your Ground." After all, that law enables citizens to use arms to defend themselves when a call to 911 surely would not bring aid in time. Reducing citizens to a state of defenselessness is, to these cretins, a noble objective. Yesterday's Rich Benjamin article in the New York Times proves the point, ridiculing people who live in gated communities for being concerned about "safety" (his quotation marks).

- - - - -

It's hardly surprising that Obama would appoint Jim Yong Kim, president of Dartmouth College, to head the World Bank which sends bushels of American dollars to foreign countries. After all, Kim is anti-capitalism, as is evident in the book he co-edited a dozen years ago, "Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor."
     In it, the dominant theme is that economic growth is bad for the po' folks. Inexcusable stupidity. Where the hell does the think the money that his ilk is so eager to give away comes from?

- - - - -

Burt Prelutsky doesn't bother to hide his disdain for liberals ...
     "Liberals never think for themselves. Aside from plotting how to game the system in order to steal elections, none of them ever has an original thought. Even questioning Barack Obama is regarded as an act of heresy.
     "Every liberal in public life has called for abolishing the Second Amendment. Now why is that? I happen to know a number of liberals who own guns. What’s more, rich liberals who don’t own guns have security people on their payroll who carry them. Even anti-gun advocate Sen. Dianne Feinstein was once found to be packing a heater in her purse, and yet, with a single voice, liberals squeal for the abolition of all firearms. The only reason for all this hypocrisy is because some influential liberal along the way decided it was a divisive issue which could be used as a wedge between them and the rest of us.
     "How else could a Chicago punk at a San Francisco fundraiser be so certain that he would derive laughter, applause and huge campaign donations, from a bunch of limp-wristed fat cats by demeaning his betters as 'those who cling to their guns and their religion'? For good measure, he was well-guarded at the event by a squad of Secret Service agents armed to the teeth."

- - - - -

It was a leak that obviously originated in the White House: word that Azerbaijan, which adjoins the northeastern border of Iran, had given permission for Israeli aircraft to refuel and, if necessary, re-load on their airfields in the event the Israelis decide that an attack on the maddest madmen of the middle-east is necessary.
     Former UN ambassador John Bolton is doubtless correct in his assumption that this leak was yet another effort by Barack Obama to undermine Israel and forestall such an attack -- at least until after our November election.
     The Israelis clearly don't believe or trust Obama, nor should they.
    
- - - - -

Message to those concerned about Romney's Mormonism ...
     Are you seriously worried about a threat from Mormons that remotely equates with the manifest threat from the Muslims that Obama endlessly appeases?

- - - - -

 A sure sign the Republican race is over: The serious discussion is now about the choice of a VP running-mate, not whether Romney will get the nomination.

- - - - -

Yesterday, during a bit of morning channel-surfing, I came across Fox News doing a pointless, silly interview with some clown who supposedly had a formula for winning the lottery. (Old Las Vegas joke: "Find us a guy with a 'winning system' and we'll send a limousine or private jet to pick him up.")
     This interviewee resorted to a tactic that's gotten more than one guest thrown out of the studio during my modest but long career as a talk-show host. In response to a question, he replied, "That's in my book."
     It is understood by all parties involved that there's a quid pro quo regarding talk-show appearances. It works like this: guest appears, expounds on his/her presumed area of expertise and in exchange the guest's book or affiliation is mentioned in the introduction, close and at commercial breaks.
     My own policy was as follows. If a guest resorted to the blatant advertising tactic of responding to any question with "It's in my book" he/she got one on-air warning not to do it again. If they made the mistake of repeating that error, they were told to get out -- also live and on-air.
     It didn't happen often ... but it DID happen.

- - - - -

Smallest surprise of the year. Current TV, the cheesy little cable operation headed up by Al Gore with an audience of dozens, has fired Keith Olbermann. He, in turn, is threatening to sue Al & Co.  
     Gee, wonder if he'll name Al "The Worst Person in the World?" And if he does, who will hear him?

He's being replaced by former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, well-known patron of hookers -- a real step-up in class.

Since Olbermann was adjudged too nutty even for Gore's little leftist playpen, perhaps MSNBC could use him.
Al Jazeera probably has too much integrity to hire him.

- - - - -

Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal on Obama's reaction to getting caught with his "flexibility" message to Russia's Putin --
     "When he knew he'd been caught, the president tried to laugh it off by comically covering a mic in a following meeting. It was all so . . . creepy."

Poor Peggy ... once a brilliant speechwriter ... now demonstrably the last to figure out this phony.

- - - - -

Dr. Bud relates this ...
     "Just thought I'd pass along some advice my broker gave me. I called him this morning and asked him what I should be investing in ... told him I thought we ought to be looking for a safe haven in which to invest.
I asked him, 'Should we move to precious metals, foreign currency or what?'
     "He responded, 'If the current President is in office much longer, canned goods, water and ammunition are probably your best bet.'"

- - - - -

Jay Leno --
     "Newt Gingrich has announced he's laying off a third of his campaign staff. Is that surprising? He laid off two-thirds of his wives."
     "The Pope met with Fidel Castro. As you know, the Pope is the world's most recognized religious figure, not counting Tim Tebow."
Lee Rodgers"...and now, if you'll excuse me..."
radiorodgers1@yahoo.com