Quotes of the Day:
“Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own,”…“Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you.”-Il Duce Douche Barack Obama
“MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: President Obama is “doing what Reagan did.” Yeah – making people not want to re-elect a Democrat President.”-Fred Thompson
“In much the same way as the Vikings thought they had the right to pillage Anglo-Saxon monasteries, those on the Left think they have a Self-ordained right to take from the productive elements of our society to further their own agenda. They might not wear horned helmets, but what they do is, in the end, every bit as barbaric.”- Russ from his post Inside the Mind of the Far Left Fringe Read the whole thing!
Poll of the Day comes from the Ace of Spades “Liveblogging the Whiner-in-Chief”
Graphs of the Day: Two simple graphs, updated daily, that show exactly how screwed the federal government’s finances really are.
Photo of the day: The Three Amigos-Larry, Curly and Fuzzbucket waddle into the sunset
Japan and the softly glowing world…
- BBC
- NHK in English(Live feed in upper right corner)
- Telegraph of London
- Kyodo Wire
- Japan Times
- Asahi Shimbun
- The Daily Yomuri
- Japan Today
- ImTranslator – Online Translator, Dictionary, TTS add on for Firefox (It comes in handy)
- Japanese government list of nationwide radioactivity concentration
- Japan Geigermap
- Ibaraki Prefecture Geiger Counter Readings
- US National Radiation Map (updated every minute)
- Via Soylent Green: Radiation Exposure in Daily Life
- Radiation Dose Chart
- Radiation Converter
- ZeroHedge commenter Max2205′s excellent post about radioactivity including a list of radioactive elements and their half lives.
- Donations to the American Red Cross that are being designated to Japanese Earthquake relief are already getting to the folks in Japan and are most helpful.
Fukushima Reactor Cooling Was From Outside the Shroud
Here I thought they’d been injecting water directly above the melted fuel or where the fuel had once been.
TEPCO in its daily press conference on July 26 said the cooling of the three reactors at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant has been done by cooling the core shrouds from outside. The shroud is a cylinder inside the Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) that surrounds the reactor core
Contaminated Water Treatment System Is Stopped, Nth Time, at Fukushima I Nuke Plant
I totally lost count. So much for the successful “step 1″ of stable cooling using the treated water. Instead of the performance improving after the initial kinks of a hastily assembled system, it has gotten worse.
No surprise to anyone who didn’t trust the Japanese government.
World News:
As Spanish, Italian Treasury Auctions Come In Weaker Than Expected, Nerves Return
GDP figures mean Britain will miss its economic growth targets
“Breivik came to attention of intelligence services in March “
Norway has really cushy ‘prisons’, too. They are more like vacation resorts then a prison…Norway: Kill 94, serve 21
“21 years in prison is the maximum,” Professor Per Ole Johansen told The Daily Caller.
“The max punishment may — theoretically — be increased, but not for crimes which are already committed,” he said, when asked whether it was possible for the punishment to be increased considering the scale of this specific mass crime.
“[I]f the prisoner behaves, he or she will probably be released several years earlier,” Professor Nils Christie told TheDC while also confirming that 21 years is the maximum penalty in Norway.
As Jim Treacher says, “So that’s about 82 days in prison per murder victim.”
Anders Behring Breivik is 32. He’ll be out before he’s in his mid-fifties.
Random CT Lesson from Norway #2: Carry Weapons
Whether Officer Berntsen tried to stop the gunman is still being debated. But facing a man carrying multiple guns and ample ammunition, there was little he could do. Like most other police officers here, he had no weapon.
By law, Norwegian police officers must have authorization from their chief to gain access to a firearm, but they have rarely needed to ask, until recently.
We have much more gun violence here, but an atrocity of this scale is unthinkable in the US. Even if there were no feckless and unarmed police around had this a$$hole tried this anywhere in my neck of the woods he would have found a well armed citizenry ready to protect themselves and their children.
It’s tragically ironic that this nutjob correctly identified and then exploited the socialist faith in the state taking care of all of the citizens’ needs — including the essential function of defending against evil, which many in Europe have ceded entirely to their limp-wrested governments.
UNREAL: Britain joins France is saying Qaddafi can stay!?
Hamas Executes Two Men Convicted Of Spying For Da Joooos….
Iran: ‘We Have No Option but to Destroy Israel’
Suicide Bomber Who Killed 9 Yemeni Soldiers Was From Saudi Arabia…
Yemen: Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula Pledges Oath of Allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri…
Piracy off West Africa Now: Italian Oil tanker seized off coast of Benin
Ingratitude, Thy Name Is South Korea
Here is a suggestion: The South Korean government should conduct a national plebiscite on whether America should withdraw its troops from that country. Before the South Korean people vote, the United States should make it clear that if it withdraws its troops and North Korea later invades the South, we will send no troops to die again for South Korea — but we will vote to condemn North Korea’s aggression at the United Nations.
If a majority of the South Korean people wants us to leave, we should.
The beauty of such a plebiscite is that if a majority of the South Korean people wants American troops out, we have no moral obligation to stay there. And if a majority wants us to stay, the South Korean left and other ingrates in that country should shut up.
The world’s biggest armed forces
2 Days After the Accident, Chinese Authorities Already Buried Derailed Bullet Train Cars
Chinese beat Japanese in burying the evidence. But then, at least they are not radioactive.
In case you are not aware, the Chinese version of “Shinkansen” (bullet train) collided on July 23, 4 train cars fell off the bridge and killed at least 43, injuring at least 192.
Either they were so quick in determining the cause or they didn’t want to know the cause, the Chinese authorities have already buried the derailed train cars. They dug a huge hole (15 meters wide, 5 meters deep) and bury them, according to Yomiuri Shinbun (7/25/2011).
The local residents told Yomiuri that the front car was smashed into pieces and buried. The authorities have also been busy deleting any message on the Internet critical of the government’s handling of the accident.
You read about it previously on Reuters, now here, as per your 1st amendment protected right, is the full text of the statement issued by the Chinese Propaganda Department seeking to prevent broad dissemination and distribution of the news of the two high speed trains from Saturday. To wit: “The latest directives on reporting the Wenzhou high-speed train crash: 1. Release death toll only according to figures from authorities. 2. Do not report on a frequent basis. 3. More touching stories are to reported instead, i.e. blood donation, free taxi services, etc. 4. Do not investigate the causes of the accident; use information released from authorities as standard. 5. Do not reflect or comment.” Obviously, that failed spectacularly, and as was reported earlier, has generated a broad wave of discontent among the population for this glaring attempt to put bureaucratic incompetence and corruption over human life. One thing is certain: at least America’s own version of the DOT(ruth) is modestly more subtle… For now.
New Zealand is hit by the worst snowstorm in 15 years.
- Snowstorm ‘shuts’ south
- Effects of cold snap continue
- Snow means Cantabrians could leave quake-damaged homes
- Calves caught in winter blast
- Wellington power cut
- Wellington’s coldest day on record
- Christchurch suffers coldest day since 1918
- 250 skiers stranded
- Passengers left to sleep on Wellington Airport floor
- There is someone besides the skiers who is loving the snow and cold…Weather perfect for Happy Feet
Meet the only creature in Wellington who doesn’t think it’s cold enough.
While most people were snuggling up in front of fires and heaters, emperor penguin Happy Feet was jumping and diving in an icy swimming pool at Wellington Zoo.
Sleety rain and a chilly 3 degrees Celsius yesterday prompted zoo staff to dump wheelie bins of ice into a 9C saltwater pool to give the juvenile penguin his first dip since arriving at the zoo.
Vancouver police preparing to charge hundreds in Stanley Cup riots
Smuggling Drugs in Unwitting People’s Car Trunks
A few miles away across the Rio Grande, the FBI determined that Chavez and Gomez were using lookouts to monitor the SENTRI Express Lane at the border. The lookouts identified “targets” — people with regular commutes who primarily drove Ford vehicles. According to the FBI affidavit, the smugglers would follow their targets and get the vehicle identification number off the car’s dashboard. Then a corrupt locksmith with access to Ford’s vehicle database would make a duplicate key.Keys in hand, the gang would put drugs in a car at night in Mexico and then pick up their shipment from the parked vehicle the next morning in Texas, authorities say.
This attack works because 1) there’s a database of keys available to lots of people, and 2) both the SENTRI system and the victims are predictable.
The Debt Ceiling Kabuki Theatre:
Tonight’s Drudge Ku on the Debt Ceiling Kabuki Theatre:
Obama Threatens Another Veto...
Just hours after urging compromise...
Carney Admits Obama Has No Plan...OBAMA SECRETLY SIGNALS BANKS: 'NO DEFAULT'...
WH to FOXNEWS: 'Tell your viewers there's nothing to worry about'...
BORGER: 'Nobody today is talking about tax increases -- except Barack Obama'...
TWT: Liberals hijacking Reagan to raise taxes...
PANIC: WH'S PFEIFFER SAYS DEFAULT COULD LEAD TO 'DEPRESSION'...
House GOP revolts against Boehner plan
Mr. Boehner’s bill would reduce future discretionary spending by $1.2 trillion, grant an immediate debt increase of $1 trillion, and set up a committee to work on trillions of dollars in future deficit reduction either through more spending cuts or tax increases, which would then earn another future debt increase. It would also require both the House and Senate to hold votes on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
But conservative Republicans in the House, many allied to the tea party movement, said they don’t just want votes on the amendment, they want an assurance it will be sent to the states. Mr. Jordan and other conservatives said they would prefer the Senate vote on the debt increase the House passed last week, that includes deeper spending cuts and requires both chambers approve a balanced budget amendment and submit it to states for ratification before any debt increase happens.
The Cost Of A US Downgrade: $100 Billion Per Year, Offsetting All Deficit “Reduction” Efforts
Simply said: the US downgrade alone, now virtually taken for granted by everyone, will offset any beneficial impact from any deficit reduction that will have to happen for the debt ceiling to be increased. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why cash flows matters.
Business Owner Rant Sums Up How Many Feel About Deficit Impasse: “Are all of You Completely Crazy?”
Here is a video rant with no answers from a self-proclaimed “average guy”. Nonetheless, the video adequately conveys the frustration that many feel regarding the nation debt and the debt ceiling impasse.
He asks a few questions of the president and Congress, the first being “Are all of you completely crazy?”
Because they don’t have one.
Chuck Todd: “Release your plan” Jay Carney: “We’ve shown a lot of leg” Todd: “Why not just release it?” Carney: “You need it written down?”
Yes, yes we do. It’s an old old old negotiating trick to force the other side to make their starting offer first. The one who speaks first defines the outer parameters, the best case scenario, of what they seek. The deal will get no better for them from there.
But Obama has gotten the Republicans to speak first, and second, and third, and fourth. He continues offering no solutions himself, no proposals, because politically he doesn’t want to take ownership of anything that happens; he wants to claim that he merely presided over a negotiation between Senate Democrats and House Republicans.
But that’s a lie, of course. Reid and Boehner were actually making progress on a plan until Obama blew it up, by speaking up for the leftwing Congressional caucus and making fresh demands.
Video: Press Corps Gets Testy With Prince Obama’s Spokesman
Really worth viewing. It’s interesting that media is finally starting to chafe under Obama’s arrogant reign. Really, really worth watching. The press (particularly Todd and Jake Tapper) will not ease up on Carney over the administration’s utter failure to produce a plan.
Hmmm… Obama insists that the debt deal must carry him to January 2013, and here Carney repeats that the President also insists that no tax hikes will go into effect before January 2013.
Is there some economic importance of this January 2013 date?
Seems pretty political, doesn’t it?
Even as the Congressional Budget Office has just released its score of the proposed Boehner plan, the president’s spokesman Jay Carney was out earlier hemming and hewing for about 9 minutes in front of reports before it was made clear that Obama does not even have an actual plan to paper which the CBO can score. Yet surprisingly enough, as the National Review Online presents, even without actually having any plan, Obama is still happy to announce he will veto Boehner’s plan. It is one thing to veto one plan over another, if one believe the “another” is better. But vetoing something on purely ideological grounds, in the complete absence of “another”… well that we have no idea how it can possible be spun aside from pure ideological demagoguery.
White House stokes debt-ceiling crisis
A Republican aide e-mails me: “The Speaker, Sen. Reid and Sen. McConnell all agreed on the general framework of a two-part plan. A short-term increase (with cuts greater than the increase), combined with a committee to find long-term savings before the rest of the increase would be considered. Sen. Reid took the bipartisan plan to the White House and the President said no.”
If this is accurate the president is playing with fire. By halting a bipartisan deal he imperils the country’s finances and can rightly be accused of putting partisanship above all else. The ONLY reason to reject a short-term, two-step deal embraced by both the House and Senate is to avoid another approval-killing face-off for President Obama before the election. Next to pulling troops out of Afghanistan to fit the election calendar, this is the most irresponsible and shameful move of his presidency.
Obama Addresses The Nation Over The “Debt Ceiling Stalemate”
My fellow Americans… blah blah blah… stalemate…. blah blah blah… runaway spending… blah blah blah… all Bush’s fault…. blah blah blah… compromise…. saving money from ending illegitimate wars…..blah blah blah… ceiling must be raised or America will be destroyed…blah blah blah… no more social security for anyone… blah….god bless you all… is the camera off? Where are the Camel lights?
Obama speech: lots of words, no solutions
Beyond the I’m-still-here theme of the speech, Obama sought to strike the larger themes of his 2012 campaign, aimed at independent voters who have only now begun tuning into the debt debate: the need for compromise, his disgust with partisan Washington and his determination to make the rich pay their fair share. If his campaign-style rhetoric was persuasive, it came at an awkward time, during the final days when a reasonable debt ceiling compromise can still be struck.
Awkward indeed. Obama repeatedly blasted Republicans for not agreeing with his approach while providing no plan at all, and modeled the need for compromise with … a campaign speech. Anyone listening to Obama’s fifth foray in front of the cameras this month — by far the most intense public-relations campaign Obama has conducted in more than a year — could be forgiven for wondering why the President didn’t spend at least some of that time actually developing and presenting his own plan.
The simple answer: Obama doesn’t want the responsibility for raising the debt ceiling, cutting spending, and/or raising taxes. This is what passes for leadership in the era of Hope and Change — voting present.
Obama has worked hard to make himself irrelevant over the last few weeks, and he’s about to get his wish.
President Obama likes to present himself as the only adult left in Washington, but last night’s televised address to the nation had more than a whiff of childish desperation about it.
It’s clear: The only thing that matters to him right now is not the fate of the country but his re-election.
Discussing the looming Aug. 2 deadline to raise the debt ceiling — the subject of fierce debate and negotiation for the past few weeks — the president last night once again (a) blamed Bush, (b) demonized the successful, (c) denounced “tax breaks” for corporate jets and oil companies, (d) threatened the country’s seniors, veterans and contractors with the chimera of “default” and (e) dredged up the ghost of Ronald Reagan to try and cast himself as the great compromiser.
In short, he was hoping the country mistakes bluster for a negotiating position. For demanding a “balanced” approach to solving the crisis (read: massive tax increases) is so yesterday. Events have already passed Obama by.
*snip*
Obama won’t be running against Boehner in the next election, but last night’s dueling speeches starkly laid out the choices of the 2012 election: The blame game or fiscal sobriety? More irresponsible spending in the name of “social justice,” or a return to first principles?
Obama: Blather, rinse, repeat; Boehner: Reduce, reuse…retreat?
If you missed the president’s umpteenth speech last night, you didn’t miss anything.
It was the same old, same old, same old, same old, same old stalling, fear-mongering, and blame-shifting.
Seriously, if his debt demagoguery gets run through the spin cycle again, the drive belt is going to snap.
As for House GOP Speaker Boehner’s plan to increase the debt limit and create another in a long line of endless do-nothing commissions, Erik Erickson calls it “Punt, Kick, and Pass.”
In fact, there is only one plan ready to go that meets the credit agencies’ demands for substantial cuts. It is called “Cut, Cap, and Balance.” It is only four votes shy of a majority in the United States Senate.
John Boehner has succeeded in dividing conservatives, even though many of them acknowledge Boehner’s plan will cause a credit downgrade.
It need not be this way. House Republicans could hold the line. They’ve compromised enough. Why not fight instead? Fight for cut, cap, and balance. It’s the only plan to avoid a credit downgrade.
The House GOP need not compromise. President Obama cannot afford to be the first President in American history to witness a default or credit downgrade. We’ve had 17 commissions in 30 years to cut our debt and the debt has gone up $13 trillion. What the House GOP is proposing is more of the same.
I interviewed Donald Trump last week and he pointed out the House Republicans are terrible negotiators. He said if the House GOP were fighting the revolutionary war, we’d still be British.
Instead of compromising with themselves, Republicans should hold the line on cut, cap, and balance and fight on.
This is a rush transcript. Any errors are solely the responsibility of my dogs, who kept barking at Obama.
Obama Debt Talk – First Thoughts
After watching the most recent speech from President Obama on the debt and deficit, I can honestly say that there is no depth to which he won’t sink. It is stunning to see the president talk about compromise, when the Administration has yet to put forth its own plan. Stunning when you realize that the Senate, under Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) would not allow Cut, Cap and Balance to have an up or down vote. Stunning when he calls on Americans to call the Senate and House members to demand compromise, but walks out on those same negotiations.
This didn’t seem like a president who was effective. It looked like a panic-stricken leader who was now hoping the like-minded ideologues across America can place enough pressure on Washington to enact nonsensical tax increases. It seems obvious, based on the president’s words, that he is incapable of moving the nation forward based on his “rigid” ideology.
FAIL: Emperor Bystander Obama Blames Bush, Wars & Tax Cuts… Still Has No Debt Plan
Mark Steyn: Planless Dems
Obama has done his best to pretend to take them seriously. He claimed to have a $4 trillion deficit-reduction plan. The court eunuchs of the press corps were impressed, and went off to file pieces hailing the president as “the grown-up in the room.” There is, in fact, no plan. No plan at all. No plan whatsoever, either for a deficit reduction of $4 trillion or $4.73. As is the way in Washington, merely announcing that he had a plan absolved him of the need to have one. So the president’s staff got out the extra-wide teleprompter and wrote a really large number on it, and simply by reading out the really large number the president was deemed to have produced a serious blueprint for trillions of dollars in savings. For his next trick, he’ll walk out on to the stage of Carnegie Hall, announce that he’s going to play Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 2, and, even though there’s no cello in sight and Obama immediately climbs back in his golf cart to head for the links, music critics will hail it as one of the most moving performances they’ve ever heard.
The only “plan” Barack Obama has put on paper is his February budget. Were there trillions and trillions of savings in that? Er, no. It increased spending and doubled the federal debt.
How about Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader? Has he got a plan? No. The Democrat Senate has shown no interest in producing a budget for two-and-a-half years. Unlike the president, Senator Reid can’t even be bothered pretending he’s interested in spending reductions. But he is interested in spending, and, if that’s your bag, boring things like budgets only get in the way.
It seems reasonable to conclude from the planlessness and budgetlessness of the Obama/Reid Democrats that their only plan is to carry on spending without limit. Otherwise, someone somewhere would surely have written something down on a piece of paper by now. But no, apparently the Department of Writing Down Plans is the only federal expense the president is willing to cut. You begin to see why the Europeans are a little miffed. They’re passing austerity budgets so austere they’ve spawned an instant anti-austerity movement rioting in the street — and yet they’re still getting downgraded by the ratings agencies. In Washington, by contrast, the ruling party of the Brokest Nation in History has no spending plan other than to plan to spend even more — and nobody’s downgrading them.
Well, don’t worry. It’s coming. The domestic media coverage of this story has been almost laughably fraudulent: To the court eunuchs, a failure to raise the debt ceiling by a couple of trillion would signal to the world that American government was embarrassingly dysfunctional. In reality, raising the debt ceiling by a couple of trillion without any spending cuts would confirm to the world that American government is terminally dysfunctional.
Our Petulant and Inept President
The first is the president’s angry and narcissistic press conference on Friday badly damaged the president, even with those, like David Brooks, who have been sympathetic to Obama’s substantive position.
It’s been clear to some of us for a while that Barack Obama is a man of uncommon self-admiration, quite thin-skinned, and increasingly consumed by his grievances. Obama has masked these traits pretty well so far, but on Friday his mask slipped more than it ever has. And that is bound to hurt him.
Second, Democrats on Capitol Hill are rapidly losing confidence in the president’s competence as a negotiator. Obama’s conduct during the debt ceiling negotiations – from his flip-flops to his irrelevant deadlines to his backtracking on his agreements with various parties – has been so erratic and uneven that his own party has decided the best hope of reaching an agreement is to sideline him.
And third, conservatives in the House, by holding firm rather than folding, have succeeded in shifting the debate away from tax increases, “grand bargains,” and Gang of Six compromises to spending cuts in exchange for an increase in the debt ceiling. How serious those spending cuts are remains to be determined, and there will be enormous pressure for Republicans to agree to Potemkin Village budget cuts, including from GOP appropriators. That pressure needs to be resisted. The cuts Republicans must agree to have to be real.
Speaker Boehner, by contrast, was a refreshing surprise, much better than expected. He got off some excellent lines. My favorite was this: “The president has often said we need a ‘balanced’ approach — which in Washington means: we spend more. . .you pay more…..the president wanted a blank check six months ago, and he wants a blank check today. ” He went on, “right now, we have a government so big and so expensive it’s sapping the drive of our people…There is no symptom of big government more menacing than our debt. Break its grip, and we begin to liberate our economy and our future.”
Where it all goes from here is anyone’s guess, but my bet is that it will be some time before Mr. Obama agrees to go on television in prime time if he knows the Republicans are going to have a chance to reply afterward in the same prime time.
WINNING!… Speaker Boehner’s Website Crashes After Debt Plan Speech – Too Many Hits
Obama’s website appears to be doing fine.
After all, we’ve all heard his cynicalBush-bashing speech for a few years now.Here is John Boehner’s 5 minute speech – a refreshing alternative to Obama’s dirge.
From Charles Krauthammer: “I thought I was cynical until I heard that speech. It was purely partisan. It was meant as a campaign speech. And I think it was a speech from yesterday.”
As I said on July 9, who needs Obama.
The budget deal will not be made until the real deadline, which is August 15, when the government truly runs out of money.
He wants default.
He is that crazy.
The entire premise of Obama’s speech tonight was we must have tax hikes and Reid’s plan contains no new revenue. So we have Boehner, Reid and Pelosi all in agreement and Obama on national TV saying the exact opposite. Savor this moment, my friends.
Obama: After 2 1/2 Years, A Has-Been
Obama’s performance was, in my view, awful. Why? Because, as the president has revealed himself to be inept on one issue after another, the lingering question has always been: is he, nevertheless, some sort of political genius? After all, his one undoubted talent is fundraising; he is the greatest money-machine in the history of American politics.
But tonight–and this is the point I really want to make–Obama dispelled any idea that lurking behind his incompetence on matters of policy and administration is a gleam of political shrewdness. This was, I think, the key moment in Obama’s speech:
The only reason this balanced approach isn’t on its way to becoming law right now is because a significant number of Republicans in Congress are insisting on a cuts-only approach….
Obama went on to demagogue corporate jet owners, etc., in his predictable–and frankly stupid–way. But what he apparently didn’t realize is that most of his listeners were saying, Yes! Let’s have a cuts-only approach! We don’t need more taxes, we need the federal government to start living within its means!
Obama’s speech no doubt went down well in tony D.C. precincts where “revenue enhancement” means “money in my pocket.” But most of the relative handful of American voters who still care what Obama says perceived, no doubt, that he is on the wrong side of history.
Maybe Obama’s Stale Talking Points Would Poll Better If They Made Sense
Consider the condescension implicit in the president’s statement—“a term that most people outside of Washington have probably never heard of before.” These “people outside of Washington” are not little children being lectured on an obscure subject by a worldly adult. These people outside Washington are … citizens. Judging by the polls, most of us have opinions about whether, and under what conditions, the debt ceiling should be raised. We don’t seem to be as ignorant as Obama thinks we are of the term or concept of a debt ceiling. But the president assumes we’ve never bothered our pretty little heads about such a thing.
And he doesn’t want us to start bothering our pretty little heads about it now
Obama Shameless as Debt Crisis Looms
Krauthammer on Obama’s Address: “I Thought I Was Cynical Until I Heard That Speech” (Video)
President Obama says no to a bipartisan debt limit plan
It appears the three key Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle reached a tentative agreement yesterday and the President blew it up.
Fifth-colmnists united.
Fred Thompson: An Open Letter to the House GOP
Yes, perhaps S&P and Moody’s are being manipulated and apparently have newly found religion regarding our long-term fiscal prospects. But by their own criteria, they should already have downgraded the United States, because until now, we have not shown the political will to address entitlements. No one knows what a downgrade will cause. The behavior of bond and stock markets is based in large part upon perception. Historically, even relatively small financial events have had unforeseen consequences. So have large ones. Conservatives, especially, should be mindful of unintended consequences.
Finally, you might point out that things are still in flux. The final deal could come in one phase or two, and we don’t know the exact numbers. My point is, it does not matter that much. A deal will incorporate your — our — fiscally conservative principles, and set us on the right path for our country’s long, necessary journey.
There is only so much you can do in this deal. Put it into perspective. Right now we are on a path to a $26 trillion debt in ten years, and this is using bogus assumptions about growth and interest payments. The federal government spends over $10 billion a day. We have over $70 trillion in unfunded Medicare liabilities. A problem of this size can be dealt with only by persuading the American people what must be done on a consistent basis over a long period of time. It can’t be done with fits and starts and silver bullets. The issue is not where we will be when the debt-ceiling bill is done, it is where we will be in ten years.
We will never achieve entitlement or tax reform with a doctrinaire liberal in the White House. Any agreements to do so in “out years” would probably be unenforceable even if agreement were achieved. And we can only do so much while controlling one half of one branch of government.
Paul Ryan Throws Up All Over Reid $1 Trillion Budget Gimmick
It’s one thing to include, as the House-passed budget does, information about savings relative to the CBO’s current-law baseline as part of an effort to be comprehensive and transparent. It’s another to claim, as supporters of the Reid plan are claiming, that such “savings” represent a major commitment to cutting spending. It simply isn’t true.
It is encouraging to see Senate Democrats acknowledge that job-destroying tax increases are a bad idea – and that they are ready to work with House Republicans to cut government spending. Yet it is critical for policymakers to maintain credibility as they work together to deal responsibly with the debt ceiling. Senator Reid’s misleading claims will not pass muster with credit markets. Such gimmickry does a disservice to the American people, who deserve responsible, honest leadership.
Ryan: My Budget Didn’t Count Money Not Spent on Unfought Wars As Savings At All
So, shock, the Democrats lied, and the media trumpeted their lies around the world, before the truth had time to get its shoes on.
GOP Rep. Allen West Throws His Support Behind Boehner’s Debt Ceiling Plan…
One hell of an endorsement.
Steve King on default: Obama could be impeached
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said Monday that President Barack Obama “would be impeached” if the nation falls into default.
“STOP talking about default,” he wrote on Twitter. “The 1st dime of each $1 of revenue services debt. Obama would be impeached if he blocked debt payments. C C & B!”
We have a $14 trillion deficit and she’s claiming there’s no crisis?
Nice job working in the Obama-approved talking points, Harry.
Pathetic: DCCC Fundraising Off Obama Speech
If you had any doubt the Democrats have been politicizing the debt crisis, realize it took little more than an hour after John Boehner’s rebuttal to Obama for DCCC Chairman Steve Israel to send out a fundraising solicitation.
Just pathetic.
Conservatives bridle at trillions in ‘phony’ cuts
Talk like that is not going to inspire much faith among skeptical conservatives, many of whom prefer the Cut, Cap and Balance approach that would require immediate cuts, a limit on government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product, and the passage of a balanced budget amendment. “The members have said that the reason we should fight for Cut, Cap and Balance is that our leaders will pass a bad deal with phony spending cuts and the possibility of tax hikes,” says a GOP aide. Add to that a newly appointed commission to decide on future deficit reduction and you have the classic Washington nonsolution to the problem.
Well aware of conservative skepticism, Boehner and other GOP leaders inserted a provision that would call for a vote on a balanced budget amendment later this year. It didn’t fly. “Why do we need to increase debt $2.4 trillion just to schedule a vote on the BBA?” asks one GOP aide. “It’s a pretty lame attempt to appease the Tea Party that gave Boehner the majority — not a serious effort to pass a balanced budget amendment.”
The commission is no more popular. “We’ve already had 17 commissions over three decades and $13 trillion in new debt,” tweeted Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, a leading supporter of Cut, Cap and Balance. “No more commissions.”
Twelve Republican senators and 39 Republican representatives have signed a pledge not to vote for a debt-ceiling increase without the key elements of Cut, Cap and Balance. When a Senate GOP aide was asked whether it will require 60 votes to pass the debt bill, he responded, “I think one of our guys who signed the Cut, Cap and Balance pledge would force it to be 60.” In other words, Republicans might end up filibustering themselves.
The Budget Crisis Explained to a Nineteen-Year-Old
Let’s say you earn an even $100,000 per year, part of the 52% of Americans who pay taxes. You’ve got too much to qualify for food stamps or the Earned Income Tax Credit and other goodies, but you’re not rich either, driving an old car, definitely no corporate jet waiting for you at the airport.
But wait, why are you driving an old car? Why not a BMW? You deserve it. And a Lexus for the missus? And a vacation in Hawaii? Cruise in Europe? You’re wonderful, you deserve it all. Soon you’re spending $150,000 per year. It’s not hard, because you, not the bankers, set your own credit card limit.
After a couple years the missus gets nervous, says maybe, just maybe you should cut back. You’re indignant: you have to have transportation, are you expected to drive an old clunker? And you need to relax; you’d be a nervous wreck without getaways to far-off places.
OK, you tell her, how about we cut back on our tips when we eat out? That’ll save $10 per year. (This is the equivalent of eliminating the tax deduction for corporate jets, which was part of the Stimulus Bill and which Obama has hammered mercilessly, oh those fatcats in their private jets.)
The missus says that $10 is really, kinda, sorta insignificant compared to the $50,000 in new debt you’re taking on every year. So at last you tell her you can embezzle $4,000 per year from your employer and cut your spending by $8,000, so you’ll only slide $38,000 into the hole each year. You say all this with a great scowl, moaning about how hard it’s going to be to reduce your standard of living so drastically. Then you tell her it was so much work calculating all those terrible cutbacks that you deserve a night out on the town to celebrate your newfound sobriety and prudence.
LOLOLOLOLOL! The first ‘fat lady’ of the Dempocalypse has piped up, soon to be followed by Mikey “Mr. Cresote” Moore and Rosie O’Doughnut….Al Gore: GOP “Encouraging Ideological Extremists To Construct Their Own Alternative Version Of Reality” On Deficit Debate…
The Goracle with his factually challenged money-making global-warming scam is the last person who should criticize anyone for living in an “alternative version of reality.”
It’s all just a little bit of history repeating…Caius Caesar Caligula Read parts XXXVII through XLII.
Not to mention particulars, he spent enormous sums, and the whole treasures which had been amassed by Tiberius Caesar, amounting to two thousand seven hundred millions of sesterces, within less than a year.
Having therefore quite exhausted these funds, and being in want of money, he had recourse to plundering the people, by every mode of false accusation, confiscation, and taxation, that could be invented.
Yes, Barack. We know.
It’s too bad you weren’t elected president in a tinpot dictatorship. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about these minor legalities – like a Constitution.
US News:
Drought Withers Smallest Hay Crop in Century to Boost Beef Costs
Market Gets Indigestion Into Close As Stocks Close At Lows Of The Day
While it is unclear if something said in the Paul-Hoenig hearing is what spooked the market, one thing is clear: something spooked the market. As of a few minutes ago, with an increasing average block size, the ES has just slid to fresh lows after levitating almost in the green earlier. Oddly enough the sell off in stocks is not being replicated anywhere else, as both the DXY, the 10 Year and Crude are all at levels last seen at the start of the sell off. Are stocks, with just 2 days to go until Thursday, finally starting to get tired of pretending that all is well with America? And while the dump accelerates we are awaiting the inevitable headline from Boehner in which he will make it all too clear that he refuses to compromise with a president who has threatened a preemptive veto on his “debt ceiling” plan. The soap opera is once again up front and center.
The Triple Digits Welcome Back Crude: WTI Back Over $100 Once Again
Dollar Drops to Record Versus Franc as U.S. Struggles With Debt Deadlock
I hear the DOOM a-comin’, it’s rollin’ ’round the bend…
Complexity works beautifully as self-preservation, because it actually expands the bureaucratic power of fiefdoms and widens the moat protecting cartels. Once the fiefdom expands to manage all those new rules, only a handful of corporations can possibly afford the regulatory reporting burdens. They are thus free to exploit the populace as an informal cartel.
Put another way: in the competition with the private sector for scarce capital, the State and corruption always win. That’s why kleptocracies and banana republics are characterized by bloated, unaccountable State bureaucracies and systemic corruption: sweetheart deals, no-bid contracts, shadow banking, shadow governance by Elites, inefficient workforces that cannot be fired or held accountable, and so on…The single goal is preserving the revenue and reach of concentrated power centers: State fiefdoms with large constituencies and headcounts, and cartels with no competition and stupendous profits. The two are hand in glove. But complexity does have an eventual cost: collapse. Keep adding decks to the ship and eventually it capsizes and sinks. One the ship is sufficiently top-heavy, all it takes is a small wave.
The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire
I don’t know what you call it when you use a credit card to pay off your other credit cards – but I do know that you don’t call it “paying your bills”.
That is all.
Great news: Downgrade could come as soon as Friday
So it’s not the debt ceiling that’s triggering a potential ratings change — it’s the trajectory of debt generated by the federal government. This explains why the White House abandoned its “clean debt-ceiling increase” demand so early in the process. It wouldn’t have done anything to avoid a downgrade anyway.
The debt-ceiling debate does impact the ratings agencies’ decision in one way: it forced Congress and the American people to confront the problem of escalating deficits and runaway entitlements. That’s the debate we need to have, and the debate that Obama has been hoping to avoid. Unfortunately, any significant restructuring of debt and future liabilities has to involve restructuring the programs that by far generate the worst of both. Obama knows this, but doesn’t want to lose his party by participating in the inevitable reform of Medicare and Social Security. Instead, he refuses to offer anyplan, and hopes that Congress will rescue him from himself.
As I wrote earlier, that’s leadership in the era of Hope and Change.
May Case Shiller Composite Misses Expectations, Yearly Drop Biggest Since November 2009
Government Unemployment Watch: USPS To Close Up To 3,700 Post Offices
A USPS spokeswoman said the post offices were chosen because they get the “least amount of foot traffic and retail sales,” The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.” Trust the bureaucrats to try spinning this bad news as good: “They also were selected because there may be local businesses that could provide some postal services to the community, spokeswoman Sue Brennan said.” Well by that logic there are private businesses that cover every aspect of the government’s “job” much better, and much more efficiently, up to and including that of the Fed (sorry, that already is private). Does that mean we should outsource every aspect of the bloated centrally planned economy that America has become? Of course the answer is yes, but that just does not jive with the current iteration of kleptofascist socialism.
RIM adjusts to new reality by slashing 2,000 jobs
National Association of Realtors downsizing by 10%
Obama’s Chief Advisor on Job Creation GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt is creating more jobs….in China: GE moving X-ray business to China
General Electric Co.’s health care unit, the world’s biggest maker of medical imaging machines, is moving the headquarters of its 115-year-old X-ray business to Beijing.
As for the reason for the change: “Soros’s sons said they took the decision because new financial regulations would have made it necessary for the firm to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission by March 2012 if it continued to manage money for outsiders. Because the firm has overseen mostly family assets since 2000, when outside money accounted for about $4 billion, they decided it made more sense to run it as a family office, according to the letter.” Expect to see many more hedge funds based on family capital, for whom external investors are merely a nuisance, do the same thing.
FHA May Be Next in Line for Huge Bailout
As it was, all we heard from these same democrats now pushing for deep defense cuts during the Iraq war was how ill-equipped our military was for war … a military that had been gutted by the previous democrat administration. So how would we then come to the rescue of our European allies, and Israel’s defense, if we, the United States, cut back our military to the likes of the “Once-mighty Britannia’s Boer War“-like levels? And even worse, with China holding massive amounts of our debt and salivating at the thought of cashing in the paper, and Russia pining to return to an imperialistic neo-Soviet stance in the world, exactly who would come to our defense? Our enemies have not disappeared … They have increased and see us now as weak. And the people in power in Washington DC seek to gut our defense in order to drag us into a neo-European form of a government-run existence within our own nation while Europe is about to proverbially disappear under the failure of the same socialism.
Perhaps it is the plan to take us back to that militarily primitive era of The Boer War … and the primal dawn of Marxism/communism/socialism. But where we will end up is the Dark Ages.
How Will Welfare Recipients Spend Benefits If There Is No Country?
TSA Abuses Cancer Survivor For Second Time
Hey, Congress, isn’t it high time you reformed the TSA so that situations like this stop happening? We should be able to fly without being subjected to what would be considered assault in the private sector. How many times have people been subjected to these indignities and not have their story told in the news? I’ve mentioned before that I was subjected to these enhanced procedures at LAX in June 2010. Sheesh, they knew where they metal was: the hand wand only went off on my lower right leg, which has a stainless steel rod implanted in the bone. At least the TSA agent looked embarrassed and chagrined to have to do the search.
And let’s not forget all the theft that the TSA has been involved in.
In Barack Obama’s July 2, 2008 speech calling America to national service, Obama proposed “a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as our military… This has prompted some in the blogosphere to raise the specter of a huge new domestic paramilitary organization…
[Obama said] “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”
Curiously, the official transcript of the speech omitted those last two sentences.
After the last two-and-a-half years, can there be any real doubt as to what Obama meant?
And whatGeorge SorosJohn Podesta is after?The Left used to enjoy calling Bush a fascist, but the closest thing we’ve ever had to a dictator — from the iconography to the vicious language to the unconstitutional power-grabs — is Barack Obama.
Now that our future is behind us and America is through with all that outer space stuff, NASA can zero in on what director Charles Bolden calls its primary mission, helping Muslims feel good about their alleged scientific accomplishments. Maybe this will allow us back into space after al
The Non-Energy Generating Department of Energy and the Smart Grid
Smart Meters are digital electricity consumption readers that are installed under the guise that the old ones are either cracked or not reading properly. Most people acquiesce, without realizing that they have just allowed the installation of a personal surveillance device.
This device will tell a distant data server to whom they do not have access, how many watts they consume, when they turn off and on every lamp in their home, how many computers they have, electric gadgets, when they sleep, when they are on vacation, when they are not home, their living pattern in general, basically a search of their life and home without a warrant.
The information recorded can and will be sold to anyone who is willing to pay. Pirates can intercept the wireless signal and constant data streaming from your home. The one-watt licensed by the FCC device will aid and abet the punishing of people for doing things in the privacy of their own homes, big brother watching all the time. Furthermore, electricity can be cut off from a remote location during peak usage time, middle of summer and middle of winter.
Tapping into someone’s home is illegal in all 50 states and federal territories. The DOE affiliates use “implied consent” when they change the meter. People should be aware and send notices that they do not wish to have their meters changed, the old ones work just fine.
The totalitarian nutjobs now want you to get a prescription for Walnuts…FDA Moves to Regulate Walnuts as a Drug
Big Government no longer has to pass the laugh test before expanding its power, which means any bureaucracy can regulate most anything that catches its attention. For example, the FDA is now cracking down on the “drug” we know as walnuts
Another Year of Blistering Supreme Court Reversals in the 9th “Circus”
Is there any way we can get a “do-over” on Jimmy Carter nominees??
Allen West Challenges Republican Party
The GOP leadership had better stand strong with Tea Party patriots like Allen West close behind, ready to jab it in the seat of the pants with a pitchfork
Debbie Wasserman Schultz’ Anti-Allen-West Screed: FAIL! The Public Loves Him
You see, Wasserman Schultz is not used to having Republicans toss her garbage back in her face as West has just done. This has scared her so badly that instead of debating him, she’s trying to remove him. She’s backing former West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Franke for West’s seat.
A New Low… Obama’s Job Approval on Economy Slides Below 40%
The MSM can no longer find anyway to spin things with their ‘push polls’ so they try to candy coat them. I am surprised that they did not use the word ‘unexpectedly’… More Americans unhappy with Obama on economy, jobs
New polls confirm Obama’s Democratic base crumbles
But here’s the breaking news for hopeful Democrats: George W. Bush isn’t running for anything except exercise.
“More than a third of Americans now believe that President Obama’s policies are hurting the economy, and confidence in his ability to create jobs is sharply eroding among his base,” the Post reports.
Strong support among liberal Democrats for Obama’s jobs record has plummeted 22 points from 53% down below a third. African Americans who believe the president’s measures helped the economy have plunged from 77% to barely half.
Obama’s overall job approval on the economy has slid below 40% for the first time, with 57% disapproving. And strong disapprovers outnumber approvers by better than two-to-one.
Could The Left Toss Obama Under The Bus?
However, Sanders and others of his ilk, stormed into power in 2006 and 2008 in waves. They expected to close Gitmo, end wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, tax The Iniquitous Rich, nationalize American medicine, naturalize by fiat 10 million illegal aliens, and regulate carbon dioxide under laws similar to those we used to ban lead paint. The Progressives wanted all that and probably 10,000 other ideas that would scare the average tax-paying American into become a tax-paying Canadian, Mexican or Australian instead.
Could Obama do this? No he couldn’t. Now Bernie Sanders is mad and wants to use Barack Obama as a blame toilet. If someone would just explain all of Bernie Sanders’ brilliant ideas to the stupid ‘Murican Peebles, they would all be enacted into law by now. In Sanders’ warped and ineluctable mind, this should have taken days; not weeks.
Of course Sanders has a problem here. He isn’t a Democrat himself, and would look like a carrion bird if he suddenly became one just to grandstand on the same debate stage as a sitting Democratic President. Before Sanders can get his way, and mount this quixotic primary challenge to force Barack Obama a little further to the port side of Che Guevara’s poltergeist, he needs to find someone to bell the big, fat cat.
What Obama Won’t Tell Latinos at La Raza Conference
Here’s what you won’t hear from the President when he addresses the largest Latino advocacy organization’s annual conference today:
- Latino unemployment is in double digits following a failed stimulus bill.
- Nearly one out of every two Latinos will fail to receive a high school diploma, despite the federal government’s control over education policy in the past 50 years.
- Unfettered government spending has led the national deficit to balloon to nearly $13 trillion, jeopardizing American economic security and quality of life.
Instead, President Obama is likely to use this opportunity before the receptive audience at the National Council of La Raza to recycle stale excuses and promises. The President will blame the previous Administration for the country’s pathetic economy and seek to portray conservatives as the enemy. The President will ask the Latino community to continue supporting his policies of increased taxing in order to pay for more government programs we cannot afford, all the while racking up even more debt.
Rather than looking to empower Latino communities, the President will encourage the audience to depend more and more on the government. From education to health care to energy policy, the President’s remarks will largely center on how the government is best suited to run more and more aspects of our lives.
Humor: Proposed Law Rattles Washington’s Elite
A Washington D.C. think-tank today proposed a controversial new law named, ‘No Politician Left Behind’, which would pay congressmen and the President solely on the basis of performance.
Predictably, the idea of merit pay drew howls of protest from mostly Democrat party lawmakers, many claiming that if the law was pasted and enacted it would result in their financial ruin. Appearances on Sunday morning talk shows, flying around on government planes or blowing smoke up the taxpayers ass on C-Span will not be considered as real work.
The law, which was proposed by the Bo Bo Braniganskie Institute of Government Policy, “would make a serious dent in the Federal spending because few if any politicians would ever have to be paid,” said the Institutes director, Davis David. “Right now, the President or Congressman can get paid even when they storm out of budget negotiations in a hissy fit. Under this new law, the rule would be, no budget, no paycheck.”
Exiting the sinking ship? Ark. Dem. US Rep. Mike Ross won’t run again
Democratic Rep. David Wu: I “done nothing illegal” when I stuffed that teenager’s turkey
Because it’s perfectly legal for a 55-year-old politician to engage in “consensual” sex with their friend’s daughters on Thanksgiving.
Dems grapple with Wu sex scandal
Democrats are grappling with a new ethics scandal surrounding allegations that Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) sexually assaulted a young woman.
The explosive claims are damning for the party, which was beginning to recover from the tarnished wake former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) left when he resigned last month, after initially denying that he sent sexually suggestive pictures of himself to young women over social-media platforms.
Rep. Louise Slaughter (N.Y.), a senior Democratic lawmaker, told The Hill she is calling for Wu’s resignation. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Monday officially requested that the House Ethics Committee investigate the allegations.
Dem Rep. Wu Says He Won’t Seek Re-election
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called for an ethics investigation of Representative David Wu.
Wu was accused this week of an unwanted sexual encounter last Thanksgiving with a young California teen and daughter of a longtime friend.
Earlier this year Wu shocked his staffers by sending them pictures of himself posing in a tiger costume. (NY Daily)
Rep. David Wu (D-OR) announced today that he won’t seek re-election.
Sunday at the South Central LA Black TEA Party
Ever since the inception of the Tea Party, those of us who reject Barack Obama’s failed policies, big government, reckless spending, outrageous unemployment, Obamacare, Marxism, etc. have been viciously attacked by the left and called “racists” for no reason other than that we disagree with our far left liberal friends. Of course, those of us actually in the Tea Party know that the “racist” meme is nothing but the pathetic shouts of those who can’t address our legitimate concerns with fact, logic or reason. But regardless of the Black Tea Party members even holding press conferences to stop the “racism” lies from the left, the left refuses to stop their assaults on those who are exercising their rights to believe as they choose.
I have such admiration and respect for the Blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities who have faithfully attended the Tea Party Rallies and, despite harassment and abuse, support the conservative cause wholeheartedly. They take more grief than ANYONE, and I thought I had it bad being a conservative in Hollywood. It always amazes me that the so called “party of tolerance” doesn’t “tolerate” Blacks who have a mind of their own, calling them “Uncle Tom” or “Sellout” or “House Negro.” They have threatened to hang Clarence Thomas, and kill Rep. Allen West and his family, all because they are Blacks that didn’t get the message that they are to cooperate with Obama’s destructive agenda, or suffer vicious attacks. I am always stunned by the hypocrites on the left, who would light their hair on fire if we threatened Obama the way they threaten Black conservatives.
*snip*
In my opinion, THIS is what REAL “Hope” is. There were a lot of young kids running around, and at the end Reverend Peterson brought them all up to the podium. They were Black, White and Mixed Race children, all there waving flags, certainly sure that their futures have been threatened and destroyed by big government spending policies. These children are at a crossroads, and it’s time we start teaching our children the truth so their futures are bright ones.
God bless our Black Conservative brothers and sisters. They are the ones who have studied real American history, and have dissected the truth about who are the “racists” in this country. I highly encourage everyone to support Reverend Peterson and his cause, as well as the National Black Republican Association.
Black Tea Party Protesters Called “Sell-Out Negroes” & Harassed Outside NAACP Meeting in LA (Video)
The new racism.
A group of black tea party patriots protestedthe NAACP in Los Angeles yesterday.Political Christianhas a report.
There were no media reports on this protest.
But, P/Oed Patriot found this…
The black tea party protesters were called “sell out negroes” by NAACP supporters at their protest.
“These “sell-out negroes” wish they were white… They have no business speaking for and joining with racists who want to kick them back into slavery.”
Gunwalker/Fast & Furious/Castaway
Obama Regime intimidating witnesses to keep silent on Fast & Furious
Community Organizing 101.
“Fast and Furious:” Drug Cartel Plot to Overthrow Mexican Gov’t Using American Guns
Guns from U.S. sting found at Mexican crime scenes
At least 122 firearms from a botched U.S. undercover operation have been found at crime scenes in Mexico or intercepted en route to drug cartels there, a Republican congressional report issued on Tuesday said.
Mexican authorities found AK-47 assault rifles, powerful .50 caliber rifles and other weapons as early as November 2009 that were later linked to the U.S. sting operation to trace weapons crossing the border to Mexico, the report said.
Guns from the program, dubbed “Operation Fast and Furious,” were also found at the scene of the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in the border state of Arizona last December. It is unclear if they were the weapons responsible for his death.
Was the FBI complicit in Fast & Furious debacle?
If true, this development is important for two reasons. First, it shows that Operation Fast and Furious wasn’t reallyabout stopping gun trafficking by straw buyers. The NICBCS would have stopped sales to Jacob Wayne Chambers and Sean Christopher Stewart in Phoenix under normal circumstances. Chambers had been arrested for felony burglary the year before buying weapons through ATF’s intervention, and Stewart had a previous record and a warrant out for his arrest when he successfully bought 290 weapons. Since the purpose of OF&F was ostensibly to see where the system broke down as well as how weapons trafficking occurred over the border, an FBI flag on the two buyers would have shown that the system worked to prevent those sales at all.
Second, if the FBI did allow those sales to pass because of OF&F, that strongly suggests that the real responsibility for this deadly debacle wasn’t in the ATF at all, but in the Department of Justice. Coordination between the two agencies can obviously occur without explicit DoJ involvement, but authorizing sales of weapons to felons doesn’t sound like something the FBI would do without orders from above. The other possibility is that both agencies went rogue, which still would point back to the DoJ for responsibility in governing the law-enforcement agencies under their authority.
The war that dares not speak its name…US and Libya:
*crickets*
Obama’s Foreign Policy Is About as Successful as Obama’s Domestic Policy
Just as they don’t teach economics at Harvard Law, I guess they don’t teach military history there, either. So we pissed away hundreds of billions in neo-Keynesian “stimulus” spending without creating a recovery, and now we’ve wasted hundreds of millions in bombs and missiles without defeating the enemy — who, it’s worth pointing out, posed no threat to the U.S. or its allies.
You know who’s smiling now? Jimmy Carter.
Because Jimmy’s well on his way to becoming the second-worst president in American history.
*crickets*
Look for the Union Label/Whackademia/The Badger Rebellion:
Emily Koczela had been anxiously waiting for months for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s controversial budget repair bill to take effect. Koczela, the finance director for the Brown Deer school district, had been negotiating with the local union, trying to get it to accept concessions in order to make up for a $1 million budget shortfall. But the union wouldn’t budge.
“We laid off 27 [teachers] as a precautionary measure,” Koczela told me. “They were crying. Some of these people are my friends.”
On June 29 at 12:01 a.m., Koczela could finally breathe a sigh of relief. The budget repair bill—delayed for months by protests, runaway state senators, and a legal challenge that made its way to the state’s supreme court—was law. The 27 teachers on the chopping block were spared.
With “collective bargaining rights” limited to wages, Koczela was able to change the teachers’ benefits package to fill the budget gap. Requiring teachers to contribute 5.8 percent of their salary toward pensions saved $600,000. Changes to their health care plan—such as a $10 office visit co-pay (up from nothing)—saved $200,000. Upping the workload from five classes, a study hall, and two prep periods to six classes and two prep periods saved another $200,000. The budget was balanced.
University of California Expands Diversity Bureaucracy While Cutting Back on Education
UC San Diego is adding diversity fat even as it snuffs out substantive academic programs. In March, the Academic Senate decided that the school would no longer offer a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering… At the same time, the body mandated a new campus-wide diversity requirement for graduation.
No wonder Comrade Obama nationalized student loans in one of his Hugo Chavez-style power grabs. Nobody is going to want to spend hard-earned money on the increasingly useless pieces of paper granted by these moonbat echo chambers. But coasting along for a few years on someone else’s money that no one expects you to pay back while you listen to professors extol homosexuality and bray about the evils of European lineage is an easy alternative to entering adulthood right after high school.
In Other News…
Wow: Half Of All U.S. Jobs Created During Last Two Years Came From One State — Texas…
With the economy polling by far and away the number one campaign issue among likely voters, Rick Perry could beat Obama on this alone in my opinion.
I am writing you this note in the hope that it will help you avoid the political and sociological clichés that Texas is subjected to every time one of our politicians seeks the national stage.
It’s an experience we’re all too familiar with. A Texan has occupied the White House in 17 of the past 48 years—just over a third of the time. Texas has become an incubator for presidents, as Virginia and Ohio were in America’s distant past. I’ll grant you that the presidents we have sent to Washington, from LBJ to George W. Bush, have not always served as the best advertisements for Texas. Nevertheless, we have endured a disproportionate amount of bad writing about our state from journalists who don’t know very much about the place, and I for one can’t bear to suffer through another campaign of it.
So please, heed this advice. Rick Perry, as you have no doubt already discovered, is not the easiest man to write about. He is secretive and leery of the media (sometimes to the point of hostility), and he has a strategically valuable knack for being underestimated by his critics. I have been writing about him since the eighties, when he began his career in the Texas Legislature. Along the way I have learned a few things, which I have arranged in this handy list of Eight Points to Keep in Mind When Writing About Rick Perry.
*snip*
I would like to request that you please do your best to avoid tin-ear clichés about barbecue, cattle, oil, football, and the Alamo. Remember, this is an urban state of 25 million people. We don’t go to sleep at night dreaming of William Barret Travis drawing a line in the sand. We do admire our rural history, as this month’s cover attests, but our vitality is in the cities. Enjoy your visit, best of luck, and please get it right this time.
Americans for Tax Reform evacuated after bomb threat
Staffers at Americans for Tax Reform, the anti-tax group run by conservative activist Grover Norquist, evacuated their building Monday morning after a bomb threat was called in, according to authorities.
A spokesman for the Washington D.C. police department, Anthony Clay, confirmed to The Daily Caller that officers from the explosive ordnance division were called to the building that houses the organization’s D.C. offices shortly after 9 a.m.
Kerry spokesman stripped of Silver Star
John Kerry was introduced at the 2004 Democratic National Convention by Wade Sanders, a retired Navy Captain and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy who served as a Swift Boat officer in Vietnam. Like Kerry, Sanders was the recipient of a Silver Star for gallantry in action. During the 2004 campaign, Sanders functioned as Kerry lead attack dog against the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, repeatedly denouncing the veterans on the air as liars and comparing them to Nazi propagandists.
Wade Sanders is now in Federal prison, serving a 37-month sentence for possessing child pornography. Now the Navy Times reports that Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus has revoked Sanders’ Silver Star. The highly unusual decision appears unrelated to Sanders’ felony conviction. A Navy spokesman cited “subsequently determined facts and evidence surrounding both the incident for which the award was made and the processing of the award itself.” John Kerry has to be hoping this doesn’t become a trend.
As one might imagine, the media has ignored this story. Even the Navy Times declined to post its own article online.
Update: Here is the Sanders sentencing memorandum. Horrific.
California residents tax dollars at work (those few who actually pay taxes, that is)…Brown signs California Dream Act
Felons to Join the Upper Caste in San Francisco
Under liberalism, America has become a class-based society. Some are born into privilege as a result of their skin color, but you can also enter the favored caste by being in the country illegally, by affirming your homosexuality, or — since 9/11/01 — by being Muslim. If none of those approaches works for you, just commit a felony and then move to San Francisco:
San Francisco’s Human Rights Board wants to add ex-cons to the protected classes list that includes a person’s race and sex when it comes to housing and seeking employment.
Only the lower castes can be denied jobs and housing, not special people like felons.
Washington, DC: Thieves use Facebook and Twitter to co-ordinate ‘flashrob’ raid of Victoria’s Secret store
“80% Chance” By Friday of the Largest Municipal Bankruptcy in U.S.
Jefferson County, Alabama is on the verge of setting a record. Not a record you would want to be known for setting, but a record nevertheless. The county is preparing to declare bankruptcy on $3.2 billion in sewer debt it borrowed in 2008 if a settlement is not reached with JPMorgan and other creditors.
Ohio elections chief clears vote on amendment to opt out of federal health care overhaul
The measure would change Ohio’s Constitution to prohibit any federal, state or local law from forcing Ohio residents, employers or health care providers to participate in a health care system. It also would prevent the state from enacting a Massachusetts-style health care program, where the state requires a minimum level of insurance coverage.
Detroit: The city that is so wonderful that the government is now trying to pay people to live there…Program Offers Cash Incentives To Live Downtown
For $799,000, you can buy town of Scenic
More evil from Google: Street View cars grabbed locations of phones, PCs
Google’s Street View cars collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world, a practice that raises novel privacy concerns, CNET has confirmed.
The cars were supposed to collect the locations of Wi-Fi access points. But Google also recorded the street addresses and unique identifiers of computers and other devices using those wireless networks and then made the data publicly available through Google.com until a few weeks ago.
The French data protection authority, known as the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) recently contacted CNET and said its investigation confirmed that Street View cars collected these unique hardware IDs. In March, CNIL’s probe resulted in a fine of 100,000 euros, about $143,000.
Oh, yeah, like this is really secure! On the bright side you can still play ‘Angry Birds’…Android Passwords are stored in plain text on Disk
Finally: “300″ Author Brings Us a Superhero to Kick al Qaeda’s Ass
I’d say I can’t wait until the movie comes out but, come on, does any one think that Hollywood has the gonads to produce something like this?
The newest of the great religions
Which of the world’s great religions depicted on this version of the iconic Coexist bumper sticker seems most out of place? (Hint, it’s not Islam, Judaism or Christianity.)
MSM Circus and Celebutard Side Show:
Tingles before Obama’s speech…Tingles: Republicans In Debt Negotiations Sound Like Whites In Apartheid-Era South Africa
Tingles after Obama’s speech: Obama Losing Tingles? He “Shouldn’t Have Gone On National TV To Give A Political Address”
Coming from a guy who has said on multiple occasions any criticism of Obama is rooted in racism.
NYT: ‘House Republicans Have Lost Sight of the Country’s Welfare’
This increasingly reckless game has pushed the nation to the brink of ruinous default. The Republicans have dimmed the futures of millions of jobless Americans, whose hopes for work grow more out of reach as government job programs are cut and interest rates begin to rise. They have made the federal government a laughingstock around the globe.
Never mind the main reasons we’re at this juncture are because Democrats haven’t proposed a budget in well over two years and the one the President cynically offered in February was defeated 97-0 in the Senate receiving not even one vote from his own Party.
As for interest rates beginning to rise, they’ve actually done nothing but fall all year.
But facts are unimportant to the Times when advancing an agenda is the goal, and the final line certainly showed this:
It’s hard not to conclude now that dysfunction is the Republicans’ goal — even if the cost is unthinkable.
Actually, the dysfunction began when the Democrats took over Congress in 2007 handed a $161 billion deficit which they quickly turned it into a $1.6 trillion shortfall with trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.
How the New York Times Spins the Norway Horror
What the Left is seeking to do, therefore, as Bawer puts it, is make Anders Breivik a “poster boy” for those who criticize radical Islam. This is similar to the days of Joe McCarthy, when more people began to see the would-be victims of McCarthyism as all innocent, even though by adopting that pose, many actual spies managed to get away without anything being done to them, out of our fear that they might have had their rights taken away unjustly. It became more of a slander to call someone a McCarthyite than to call a Red a Red, which resulted only in charges that one was unfairly Red-baiting.
Finally, does anyone remember the 1978 massacre by the self-proclaimed Marxist leader of the People’s Temple, Rev. Jim Jones, in Guyana? An astounding 918 people, many women and young children, were forced to commit “revolutionary suicide” by the maniacal Marxist, whose project was building a socialist utopia in Guyana and whose Temple in San Francisco had been praised by Rosalynn Carter, Jerry Brown, Walter Mondale, and scores of leftists who were active in the SF area.
Jones’ Temple led to the mayoralty victory of George Moscone, who then made Jones head of SF’s housing authority. Jones regularly read to his members from the works of North Korea’s Kim Il Jong, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, and, of course, the Soviet Union’s totalitarian leader, Joseph Stalin. A self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist, Jones freely borrowed his ideology from those folks and from the later West Coast New Left, including the Black Panther Party.
Then, using Bashir’s ‘logic’, all those who want the GZM are “Not much of a jump” from those Islamofascist Al Qaeda members who flew the planes into the WTC and Pentagon…Martin Bashir And NBC Terror Expert On People Attending Ground Zero Mosque Protests: “Not Much Of A Jump” From That To Norway Attacks…
Bill O’Reilly Obliterates Lib Media Lie that Oslo Killer Was Christian Extremist
The fact that the electorate is wise to the bias does not mean the bias isn’t damaging. It’s just that the damage moves mostly in one direction, leading to differences in perception of bias:
While negative views of the media are common among all sectors of the electorate, some intriguing patterns emerge deeper in the poll’s findings.
Self-described centrists and liberals, for example, tend to hold a less unremittingly harsh view than conservatives.
How about this. Conservatives take control of CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, NYT, AP, Reuters, and so on, and liberals get the Murdoch empire? I’d take that trade in a heartbeat.
The Deep Seated Hypocrisy of Hollywood’s Left
Adam Carolla hosts a weekday podcast that happens to be the most popular onein the world. Recently he has been playing segments of a first person audio recording of his grandfather’s life history.
In this video I put together, you’ll hear his grandfather talking about his time at Ellis Island, NY, after arriving from Hungary. Then you’ll hear Carolla contrast the complete lack of gratitude expressed by so many in Hollywood today.
As is always the case with Adam Carolla, a language warning is necessary
Steven Spielberg and Gwyneth Paltrow fall foul of Italian beach laws
From the Associated Press:
NEW YORK (AP) — The extreme heat that’s been roasting the eastern U.S. is only expected to get worse, and residents are bracing themselves for temperatures near and above boiling point.
The boiling point for water is 212 degrees Fahrenheit.
However, measured in Celsius, the boiling point of water falls 1 degree Celsius for ever 285 meters of elevation, so the boiling point of water could, conceivably, be 100 degrees Fahrenheit at 10 miles above sea level.
Global Warmening:
Y2Kyoto: State Of Aneroxia Envirosa
They won’t be satisfied until we’re all shivering in the dark;
My name’s Ronnie Bryant, and I’m a mine operator. I’ve been issued a [state] permit in the recent past for [waste water] discharge, and after standing in this room today listening to the comments being made by the people…. [pause] Nearly every day without fail — I have a different perspective — men stream to these [mining] operations looking for work in Walker County. They can’t pay their mortgage. They can’t pay their car note. They can’t feed their families. They don’t have health insurance. And as I stand here today, I just … you know … what’s the use? I got a permit to open up an underground coal mine that would employ probably 125 people. They’d be paid wages from $50,000 to $150,000 a year. We would consume probably $50 million to $60 million in consumables a year, putting more men to work. And my only idea today is to go home. What’s the use? I don’t know. I mean, I see these guys — I see them with tears in their eyes — looking for work. And if there’s so much opposition to these guys making a living, I feel like there’s no need in me putting out the effort to provide work for them. So as I stood against the wall here today, basically what I’ve decided is not to open the mine. I’m just quitting. Thank you.
The Sock Drawer:
Snow and ice mean Happy Feet gets a swim
Snow and cold weather has disrupted the plans of many in New Zealand today, but one well-loved bird made hay while the snow fell.
Happy Feet the emperor penguin was allowed out for a swim today as the temperature of the Wellington Zoo pool is now cold enough.
Workers at the zoo had wanted to let him swim but the ambient temperature of the pool was too high.
Air conditioning experts had been brought in to help, but until today Happy Feet was confined to his box room and pile of ice.
Today’s Antarctic weather has turned Happy Feet’s swimming prospects on their head though.
The penguin appeared to appreciate being able to see the sky after being cooped up in his enclosure for so long.
Whataburger! Retired couple to visit 722 restaurants of favourite fast food chain across 10 states
How to Vanish with a New Identity
Killed mountain lion originated in South Dakota, testing shows
The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection said today that results of genetic tests show that the mountain lion killed in Milford in June made its way to the state from the Black Hills region of South Dakota and is an animal whose movements were actually tracked and recorded as it made its way through Minnesota and Wisconsin.
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