Back to the world….

Posted on September 7, 2011 by

I spent a few days with Sister Mary Penguin and we spent those days generally ignoring the world and indulging in a couple ‘guilty pleasures’-‘spa-ing’, chocolate cupcakes, lots of coffee, baby back ribs, chicken salad and a “Project Runway” marathon. It felt good to take a break from the world…we needed it! We saw wonders while ignoring the world-a huge meteor fireball with a teal tail that started to break up into pieces as we watched and a blood red sunset through the smoke of wildfires.

Quotes of the Day:

“We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war.”…

“President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.” -Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa

The actual impact of environmentalism seems to involve moving jobs offshore and increasing U.S. vulnerability to hostile nations, rather than actually helping the environment. –Glenn Reynolds

“This action alone will prevent more job losses than any speech the President has given” -U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell from McConnell on the President’s Decision to Withdraw Job-Killing Regulations

Once NASA reached for the stars. Now it employs militant luddites who would have us traveling by bicycle. -Dave Blount from James Hansen Jumps the Shark

Must Reads of the Day:

Next year marks the bicentennial of the War of 1812, when a fledging nation successfully defeated the British Empire for the second time. The “War” of 2012 will not result in the burning of the White House and Capitol building, but it may shape up to be quite brutal.

This will be an uncivil war, comprised of mini-wars fought viciously on various fronts. Thankfully, it has a predetermined November 6 end date, though recent history shows that can suffer a continuance.

The battlegrounds on which the War of 2012 will be waged…

“Always remember. Never forget.” The phrase is now emblazoned in red across the U.S. Department of Homeland Security website. But as the Obama administration disseminates its talking points to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 jihadist attacks, the White House remains stone-silent about the president’s Uncle Omar problem.

The refusal to deal with Uncle Omar tells you everything you need to know about the emptiness and impotence of Washington’s 9/11 platitudes.

“Omar” is Onyango Obama, the illegal alien deportation fugitive who is the long-lost Kenyan half-brother of President Obama’s father. The president mentioned him in his best-selling book, “Dreams from My Father.” But these days, he’d undoubtedly prefer to whitewash him out of the public eye. Last week, Uncle Omar was arrested for drunk driving in Framingham, Mass., and held on an immigration detainer.

The liquor store employee — yes, he was apparently drinking the inventory that legal Americans weren’t drinking — nearly crashed into a police car and belligerently demanded to ring up the White House. Few in the neighborhood are laughing it off. Just two weeks ago, an illegal alien drunk driver with a mile-long rap sheet mowed down and killed a 23-year-old Milford, Mass., man.

Obama’s recent rescission of ludicrously high standards for “parts per billion” of ozone in this country, where even the air above our national parks might not meet the standards, got me to thinking, what would individuals who want to “save the earth” be willing to give up personally to make improvements in air quality that are nearly too small to measure?
(Think: Al Gore with his limo idling outside one of his global warming speeches, so he doesn’t have to get into a cold car, to drive to airport where a private jet is waiting to take him back to his mega mansion with all the lights burning while he’s gone, but on a smaller scale.)
And I thought, what can a good, honest (stop laughing!) green weenie do personally to improve the environment?

Obama’s recent rescission of ludicrously high standards for “parts per billion” of ozone in this country, where even the air above our national parks might not meet the standards, got me to thinking, what would individuals who want to “save the earth” be willing to give up personally to make improvements in air quality that are nearly too small to measure?

(Think: Al Gore with his limo idling outside one of his global warming speeches, so he doesn’t have to get into a cold car, to drive to airport where a private jet is waiting to take him back to his mega mansion with all the lights burning while he’s gone, but on a smaller scale.)

And I thought, what can a good, honest (stop laughing!) green weenie do personally to improve the environment?

Congress requested documents related to the Solyndra loan from the Office of Management and Budget. After three months and zero documents produced, a hearing was scheduled. An OMB deputy director was asked to attend but didn’t show up, claiming a scheduling conflict. Finally, OMB allowed that congressional staff could view some of the requested documents on site, but when they arrived in mid-July not all the documents were available and some that were made available had been redacted. Specifically, the information on risk ratings had been lined out. Given that this was exactly the information congress had been looking for the entire exercise was becoming a waste of time. At this point the committee held a hearing to consider issuing a subpoena for the documents. The argument seems to have broken on partisan lines with Rep. Waxman arguing against a “fishing expedition.” Now that Solyndra has gone belly up, perhaps a little fishing is a good idea.

There was a net gain of zero jobs in August despite the president’s promise again to “focus like a laser beam on jobs.” Many people are blurry on the exact meaning of zero. Let me try to explain the concept of what zero means.

Zero is 5 less than the number of rounds of golf President Obama shot in August.

Zero is 7 less than the number of days President Obama spent in Martha’s Vineyard in August.

Zero is 2 less than the number of planes the Obamas used to get to Martha’s Vineyard.

Zero is 71,500 less than the number of dollars per couple people paid to attend Barack Obama’s fund-raiser in the Hamptons hosted by Harvey Weinstein.

Zero is 8 less than the number of fund-raisers President Obama held in August.

Zero is 86 million less than the number of dollars Obama had raised at fund-raisers in the previous three months.

Zero is 1 less than the number of credit rating services that downgraded the U.S. credit worthiness in August….

“The line between fascism and Fabian socialism is very thin. Fabian socialism is the dream. Fascism is Fabian socialism plus the inevitable dictator.” John T. Flynn

Numerous commentators have raised alarming comparisons between America’s recent economic foibles and Argentina’s fall “from breadbasket to basket case.” The U.S. pursues a similar path with her economy increasingly ensnared under the growing nexus of government control. Resources are redistributed for vote-buying welfare schemes, patronage style earmarks, and graft by unelected bureaucrats, quid pro quo with unions, issue groups and legions of lobbyists.

In Argentina, everyone acknowledges that fascism, state capitalism, corporatism – whatever – reflects very leftwing ideology. Eva Peron remains a liberal icon. President Obama’s Fabian policies (Keynesian economics) promise similar ends. His proposed infrastructure bank is just the latest gyration of corporatism. Why then are fascists consistently portrayed as conservatives?

Yes, the world must change, and soon, if our principles are to survive. But, for this to happen, we must change first. Instead of looking up, down, and all around us for some magical all encompassing answer, we have to question our very assumptions and world views. No weapon of steel or of law will ever undo the tragedy we live in day to day while we lack the conviction to confront our own biases and failings. We have always been the greatest obstacle to a truly freedom based society, not the elites, who are nothing but parasites feeding off our willfully perpetuated inadequacies.

 Tweet of the Day!

Charts of the Day:

Prove It: the Bumper Sticker o’ the Day

Must See TeeVee! US Debt Crisis Global Economic Collapse

Sister Pat Penguin said I needed to post a couple LOL Penguins to give our fellow Penguins something to laugh about so here goes…

<Wherez teh Flour?

Do not fly

Huge Feet

Japan and the softly glowing world…

Tokyo told to prepare for massive earthquake

Strange flash in Fukushima Nuclear plant (Video)

TEPCO: Unknown amount of ‘radioactive materials’ leaking from Reactor No. 3

Nuclear Engineer: I find it very strange there’s been no photos of Unit No. 3 fuel pool for months

“Blind” – A Disturbing Short Film Set in Near-Future Tokyo

trying to tell you what could happen if you “don’t see it” now.

Locals: Talk of Fukushima area being a testing ground for international experiments on radiation — Many families want to leave but can’t

Radioactive Chestnut from Fukushima, 2,040 Bq/Kg

The harvest season is starting, and one by one minor food items that most people can do without are being found with high levels of radioactive cesium.

We’ll see soon enough if Professor Kosako’s “chaos” in the harvest season occurs when they start harvesting the major crop – regular rice (not the early varieties) in Tohoku.

Plutonium-238, 239, 240 detected at Fukushima playground on August 15 — TEPCO admits they consider it to be from triple meltdown

Radioactive Iodine in Sewer Sludge in Oshu City, Iwate

Oshu City is located 187 kilometers north of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

The city announced the latest survey of radioactive materials in sewer sludge in a sewage treatment center in the city, and it shows iodine-131 being detected in the sludge cake since August 25.

Cesium-137 found in urine of child near Tokyo, despite mother’s stringent efforts at radiation protection — “Mixture of shock and a feeling that of course this is the case”

How much you want to bet they will blame it all on smoking and ‘second hand smoke’? Lung cancers in Northern Japan will increase by 20-30% in 3-5 years as a result of Fukushima, according to estimate — Other cancers to follow

Pregnant Mothers Going Back to Minami Soma City to Give Birth

I just don’t know what to say.

NHK’s program “Close-up Gendai” aired the episode on August 31 (which you can view at the program’s site here) about a 72-year-old obstetrician and over 50 pregnant mothers coming back to Minami Soma City to give birth.

The reason for coming back to their homes in Minami Soma City, even if the radiation level remains elevated, is that they were totally stressed out in the evacuation centers. When asked why she came back to the city, one young mother coming to see the obstetrician says, “Well, it was very cold sleeping on the hard floor of the gymnasium, and we thought our home would be better.”

While the national government created the evacuation-ready zone in Minami Soma City and advised small children and pregnant women to stay out of the zone, there was no actual support as to where they, particularly pregnant women, can stay comfortably outside the zone.

Tweet: Cesium detected in well water @ 31 becquerels — Almost 200 km from meltdowns; 40 km from Tokyo

More on “Second Fukushima” in progress for Japan and Pacific Northwest

At 25:40 in (Transcript Summary)

What I see now is a second Fukushima occurring from burning radioactive waste… Basically the radioactive gases that settled on the ground are going to be thrown into the air and waft into other places in Japan and across the Pacific to British Columbia, Oregon and Washington…

Over 350 pCi/kg radioactive cesium detected in Sacramento, CA manure sample collected August 16

Um…If it was from ‘nuclear tests 50 years ago’ wouldn’t one think that they might have noticed it before April, 2011? Highest Yet: Cesium-137 levels in Northern California soil hits post-Fukushima peak — UC Berkeley blames nuclear weapons tests 50+ years ago

I am putting this up here because it will get lost in all the other US news… North Anna: Officials unsure whether control rods fell into reactor core due to shaking or loss of power

Black smoke seen rising from North Anna nuclear plant after Virginia quake

Officials change story about why North Anna reactors went into automatic shut down after quake — “There were multiple trip signals coming in”

Bloomberg: Crack in reactor containment structure at quake-hit Virginia nuke plant — Press tour not taken to see in containment or spent fuel pool building

World News:

Stocks Rally in Yet Another Futile “We are Saved” Trade; Greek 1-Yr Yield hits 97%, “No Blank Checks”; Gold Decouples

Take A Step Back And Look At The Macro Picture

we are looking at potential Nations defaulting, plus augmenting further austerity measures to try and reduce debt (which will stifle any growth for years to come), the spiral of banks coming close to nationalisation across the developed world, consumer deleveraging, rising unemployment, falling house prices and a rising loss of faith with government along with discontent and civil unrest. Why on earth would you sell gold when the outlets for safe havens are being radically reduced since the SNB move and the threat from Japan to intervene? Plus the fact that currencies offer less in the form of stores of value also. A massive shift from currency investment to precious metals could take place.

Currency wars will exacerbate this and whilst the SNB move is from a small nation, what happens if one of the big boys like Japan join in? Carnage basically and trade wars and border issues will ignite and G20 could implode. Just what the world is ill-prepared for but it looks like it is brewing. Civil unrest and regime changes around the world will add to the soup.

The Future of the Capitalist World is Controlled by 2 Students of Marx

The leaders of two of the largest economies in the world are faced with a Constitutional crisis, financial crisis, and re-election issues which will dominate the next twelve months. Neither has ever held a position of part time or full time employment in the private sector. Neither have punched a clock. Neither of them have ever reviewed a P&L statement, submitted a company budget, signed the front of  a check, nor ever created a single job in the private sector. The inescapable conclusion is that this is by design to destroy the Western way of life and cripple the economies of these two nations and continents for decades to come. If not this, then it is a classical blunder of history where coincidence has allowed this much power to be retained by the most unqualified leaders in history who should never have been promoted beyond the level of regional bureaucrat and our nations are damned to failure and decades of misery.

Italian PM Calls Vote of Confidence; 70,000 Protest in Rome Against Austerity; Strikers Shut Down Transport; European Stocks at July 2009 Levels

Gold Falls 2% in Minutes In Asian Trade – Global Currency Wars Resume and Markets Digest German Decision

GERMAN CONSTITUTIONAL COURT SAYS GREEK BAILOUT IS LEGAL

La Ligne Maginot has been Breached! Euro at 1.3989 and looking weak

Here Is How Switzerland Caught Up To The Rest Of The World In Devaluing Paper Currencies Against Gold

Thank You Swiss National Bank For $2000+ Gold

IMF Agrees To Shove Head Deep In Sand, Will Lower Eurobank Capital Needs

When all else fails, change the rules, and shove your head even deeper in the sand:

  • IMF has agreed to substantially lower initially estimate for European bank sector capital needs according to Eurozone sources
  • Private sector expected to meet bank recapitalisation needs, according to Eurozone sources
  • Eurozone has no plans for public support for banks over and above money in bailouts for Greece, Ireland and Portugal according to Eurozone sources
  • “We have discussed this with the IMF in detail and the IMF has agreed that this initial figure will be revised downwards and the revision will be quite substantial,” a euro zone official participating in the talks said.

Of course, this won’t change anything about the fact that Eurobanks are insolvent, that the ECB is undercapitalized, that the Greek bailout is falling apart. But what matters is that the IMF, or the world’s former bailout, and now completely irrelevant, organization courtesy of China, will allow banks to proceed far further undercapitalized than prudent, until it has to bail out not one, but all, and at the same time. As a reminder, the IMF expected a need of $200 billion, which the eurocrats say is goign to be far lower… Even as Goldman’s report, first released on Zero Hedge, said that the full amount will be 5 times bigger, or $1 trillion. As much as Goldman is blasted left and right, they at least know how to use that HP12C. Which is far more than we can say about the idiots from Luxembourg.

“The European Financial System Is Finished” In Quotes

The PIIGS Fleecing Of Europe Continues Even As Italy Promises To Implement Another “Austerity” Package Imminently

Two-Thirds of Germans Oppose Expanding EFSF, Believe Merkel has “Lost Grip” on Euro Crisis; To Hell with Taxpayers, Merkel Worried about Her Legacy

Is the Current Crisis Worse Than the Lehman Collapse?

Let’s hope that the voters in the upcoming elections in the United States, France, Germany, and elsewhere will keep in mind the huge gap between the platitudes emanating from politicians and the reality of the systemic crisis that has returned in 2011.

Did Greece Crush Keynesianism?

Bottom line, in attempting to do things half-assed, Europe may have just destroyed the entire credibility of the one primary economic theory driving global “growth” (or stated better, borrowing from the future) since the beginning of the 20th century.

Spain Joins Tea Party: Works to Add Balanced Budget Amendment to Its Constitution

Remember, this is extremism, even terrorism, according to US progressives. Socialist Europe seems to find it less so.

Saab Auto Seeks Protection From Creditors

British Judge Says Home Squatting is Good for Society

Her name is Judge Fiona Henderson:

Squatters should be encouraged because they bring empty homes back into use, a judge said yesterday. Fiona Henderson ruled they were not criminals and there was no evidence they carried out more anti-social behaviour than rent-paying tenants. Her judgment is a blow to the thousands every year who see their homes invaded – and struggle through the courts to win them back.

Yet the judge dismissed claims that squatting victims faced high costs and that those occupying council or housing association properties were queue jumpers.

She ordered a list of empty homes in North London to be made public to the Advisory Service for Squatters, an East London-based organisation known as the ‘estate agency for squatters’.

Libya rebels: Gadhafi surrounded, forces ready to capture or kill

A Scottish Professor Responds to “Boycott Israel” on Campus

Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those member of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby. Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I’m not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel. I’m speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a “Nazi” state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel, precisely because the Jews more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for. It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews ‘Nazis’ and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.

Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled things in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is. That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country’s 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha’is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world centre; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population). In Iran, the Baha’is (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren’t your members boycotting Iran?

Why the Muslim Beard Bodes Trouble

While Egyptians instinctively understand how fealty to the Muslim beard evinces fealty, or at least acceptance, to all those other things Muhammad commanded, even in fuzzy Western op-eds the connection sometimes peeks out. Consider the following excerpt from a recent New York Times piece titled “Behold the Mighty Beard, a Badge of Piety and Religious Belonging”:

[A]ll over the Muslim world, the full beard has come to connote piety and spiritual fervor. It is such a powerful cultural signifier, in fact, that it inspires non-Muslims, too. … Of course, the beard is only a sign of righteousness. It is no guarantor, as Mr. Zulfiqar [a Muslim interviewee] reminds us: “I recall one gentleman who came back from a trip to Pakistan and remarked to me, ‘I learned one thing: the longer the beard, the bigger the crook.’ His anticipation was people with big beards would be really honest, but he kept meeting people lying to him.” [emphasis mine]

The italicized portion speaks for itself. Whereas the Muslim beard represents piety, some people, mostly Westerners, are shocked to find that those who wear it are often “crooks” and “liars.” In Islam, however, outer signs of religiosity on the one hand, and corruption and deceit on the other, are compatible. After all, the same source — Muhammad, as recorded in the hadith — that tells Muslims to grow a beard also advocates deception and all sorts of other practices antithetical to Western notions of piety.

The hijab, or headscarf, which cloaks Muslim women, also on Muhammad’s command, produces the same symbiosis. Tawfik Hamid, a former aspiring jihadist and acquaintance of al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri, accurately observes that “the proliferation of the hijab is strongly correlated with increased terrorism. … Terrorism became much more frequent in such societies as Indonesia, Egypt, Algeria, and the UK after the hijab became prevalent among Muslim women living in those communities.”

More Than 100 People in Poland March for an End to Anti-Semitic Attacks

The “March of Unity,” which was organized by lawmakers from the governing Civic Platform party, walked in silence from the city center to a monument of Ludwik Zamenhof, a Jewish doctor born in Bialystok, who invented the Esperanto language. The protesters gathered signatures under a manifesto calling for an end to a “wave of thoughtless hatred.”

On Wednesday, a monument to hundreds of Jews who were burned alive by their Polish neighbors in Jedwabne village during World War II was desecrated. Vandals used green paint to spray a swastika and “SS” – the name of special Nazi German force – on the monument, along with the hostile phrases of “I don’t apologize for Jedwabne“ and ”They were flammable.”

Other recent anti-Semitic or racist attacks in Poland have targeted a synagogue in the village of Orla, a Muslim center in Bialystok, and the Lithuanian minority in the Punsk region.

Religion of Peace has been Busy in Multiple Attacks in the MENA region

Senior Official in Egyptian Islamic Jihad: If We Come to Power, We will Launch a Campaign of Islamic Conquests to Instate Shari’a Worldwide: ‘The Christian is Free to Worship His God in His Church, but if the Christians Make Problems for the Muslims, I Will Exterminate Them’

The Battle for Sirte

For now opposition forces have held their positions to the east and west as they wait for tribal elders to negotiate with Gaddafi fighters. But Shamsiddin Ben-Ali, a spokesman in the rebel city of Benghazi, said 800 people had been killed in the past three days.

“Many of the people of Sirte are on our side now and want to be part of the revolution,” he said. “The people with guns though are still resisting.”

The death toll raises a bloody conundrum for the country’s new leaders: rushing in could spell a military disaster but waiting is costing a very high price in civilian casualties.

A one-man Lincoln Brigade?

“It is the end of my summer vacation, so I thought it would be cool to join the rebels. This is one of the only real revolutions” in the world.

One of the quotes from Chris Jeon, a 21-year-old student at UCLA, in this story. Others include:

“How do you fire this thing?” he asked on Wednesday as a bearded rebel handed him an AK-47.

This comes as no surprise… Report: Libyan Islamist Rebels Rounding Up Black Africans

Hope and change, Libyan Islamist style.

Iranian Islamic Police Cracking Down On Squirt Gun “Rebels”…

Obama Administration Teams Up With Saudi-Based OIC To Combat “Islamophobia” By Implementing U.N. Resolution Against Defamation Of Islam…

Scary stuff.

CORRUPT LEFTISTS at Lancet Now Say 108,000 Iraqis Were Killed in War Not 655,000

Wikileaks Bombshell: New Israel Fund Official Endorses End of Jewish State

During the past decade, as the New Israel Fund and European governments have funded and fueled the delegitimization war on Israel, critics have argued the NGOs they support have no real constituency in Israel; that they represent foreign interests; that they are funded — all told, the sum is around $100 million per year — almost entirely by foreign foundations and European governments seeking to impose their agendas; that they seek to overturn the democratic choices of the Israeli people; that they foment external pressure and “lawfare”to prevent Israel from protecting herself from threats; and that the groups’ activism is motivated not by the claimed values of human rights and international law, but by varying degrees of anti-Zionism and solidarity with Arab interests and leftist anti-Israel activism.

At every turn, the NGOs have angrily denied these charges and smeared those who made them as being (take your pick) anti-peace, anti-human rights, anti-democracy, or extremist right-wingers attempting to silence dissent.

It is a remarkable moment in this battle to see the NGOs admit in private the same things they slander their critics for saying about them in public.

There is something very ugly about this attempt to ghettoise Israeli musicians

No matter how much activists try to present this as a political campaign, designed to challenge Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, there is no doubting its visceral component. Modern-day Israel-bashers bring to mind those loopy people who claim to suffer from Chemical Sensitivity Disorder and who thus never wear deodorant or perfume or certain kinds of clothing and only eat organic foodstuffs lest they get poisoned by pesticides. Only middle-class radicals suffer from what we might call Israel Sensitivity Disorder, where they fight tooth and nail to ensure that they – and the whole of Britain – are never subjected to any idea or item that has its origins in poisonous Israel.

This has gone way beyond a normal political boycott, of the kind used by radicals in the past to put economic or political pressure on a section of the authorities. Rather, the aversion to everything Israeli has become a weird way of life for some people, where the aim is not so much to achieve any political goals as it is to achieve an inner sensation of super moral smugness.

Muslim Youths Leave Eid-El-Fitr Prayers – Butcher Christian Pastor & His Son

Putin: I Saw Jesus in Iran’s Leader

Recently, the Iranian state-controlled TV for the first time publicly announced that Khamenei is really the mythical figure Seyed Khorasani, who, a centuries-old hadith (saying) states, will create the circumstances for the end of the world and the reappearance of the last Islamic messiah, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, who will conquer the world under the banner of Islam.

Several high-ranking clerics in Iran have publicly announced that Khamenei is the deputy of the Shiite’s 12th Imam on Earth and that refusal to obey his orders would be to refuse Allah. Some have also stated that Khamenei once a year travels to the sky and meets with the 12th Imam and confers on needed actions. During one such meeting, according to the clerics, he was told to continue on with the Iranian nuclear program despite widespread world objection.

The media in Iran have credited the supreme leader with predicting the economic turmoil in Europe and the global awakening of Islam in the “Arab Spring.” They have also been adamant about an important prediction of the leader: the destruction of Israel, which they believe is imminent.

Seyed Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of the terrorist group Hezbollah, is quoted as saying, “Certain qualities of Iran’s supreme leader and aspects of his wisdom, prudence and spirituality are secret and sealed and unfortunately cannot be talked about in public.” He adds: “Though I cannot reveal much of what I know about Ayatollah Khamenei, I can tell with utmost certainty that the leader truly believes the destruction of Israel is … imminent.”

Terror blast at Delhi High Court; 11 killed, over 80 injured

Pakistan: Two Christian Men Beaten With Iron Rods For Refusing To Convert To Islam…

Why the world essentially ignores the plight of Christians living in Islamic lands I will never know.

Abrupt Iran Decision To Move Nuclear Production Deep Underground Dubbed “Provocation” By US

Another Released Gitmo Detainee Returns To The Battlefield, Killed Fighting In Afghanistan…

I love a happy ending.

Malaysia Hails Obama’s Policies On Islam, Says Bush’s Were “Very Worrying”…

Muslim woman strangled by her burkha in freak go-kart accident

Australia Bans Christ From Textbooks…

Another country flushing its Judeo-Christian heritage down the toilet.

Air France jet ‘seconds from disaster’ after autopilot fails in drama with chilling echoes of Brazil crash

Another severed human foot washes up on Canadian shore making a total of 12 in four years

What seemed initially like a bizarre coincidence has over the years become the subject of a major investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and British Columbia’s coroner’s office.

Nobody, however, has been able to offer a definite explanation as to what is happening – or identify who all of the feet belong to.

US News:

I wonder if he got his AK-47 from the Obama regime via Gunwalker/Fast and Furious/Castaway? If you have been following that story (you should be if you haven’t)  it would fit in with Obama’s war on America… Carson City massacre: Were National Guardsmen deliberately targeted?; Update: A third Guardsman has died

Earlier today, a lone gunman — described as Mexican-born with a “valid U.S. passport” — barreled into a shopping mall parking lot, stormed an IHOP, and marched to the back where a table full of uniformed Nevada National Guardsmen were dining. The Guard’s headquarters are about four miles from the restaurant.

Eduardo Sencio shot nine people, killed three people total including 2 Guardsmen, and then turned his AK-47 to his and committed suicide.

On the back of the minivan he borrowed from his brother? A yellow “Support Our Troops” sticker.

I would add another thing to this list-the coordinated Democrat/MSM Orwellian propaganda attack of branding any and all who oppose them as ‘terrorists’, ‘racists’, ‘extremists’, etc. It is another page out of the NSDAP playbook…. Coincidence

I’m sure that the timing of all this is just coincidence.

  • The big flashmobs in Britain this summer
  • The flashrobs
  • The flashriots in Wisconsin and “urban” rallies elsewhere
  • It’s Overin the Eurozone.  You know, when a 9.0 earthquake hits, a tsunami often follows.
  • Zero private sector jobs added last month
  • Pres__ent Obama waiting to give his “jobs” speech (as if another layer of Simoniz can help the turd to shine better)
  • And Jimmy Hoffa offering up his “Army”, ready to march and “take these son of bitches out.“

Updated:

  • Project Gunwalker
  • And now Project Gangwalker – walking guns to criminal gangs inside the US.

Why . . . it’s like it’s all building up to something. 

It is all building up to… Obama and the Democrats Officially Declare War on America:

New tone.

Moments after Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa’s violent profanity-laced threatening Labor Day speech, Barack Obama went on stage and praised Jimmy Hoffa.

Great.

They’re calling for open violence against tea party activists at Obama’s rally and at Biden’s rally they’re calling the opposition “barbarians.”

It must be more of the new tone we were promised.

Vice President Joe Biden told supporters today at his AFL-CIO rally,
“You are the only folks keeping the barbarians from the gates.”

As Ace points out, Carney wants a double standard where any Democrat can say anything, and not be called out for their “uncivil” discourse, but, if a Republican says something, well, the GOP politician will be held responsible.

Poor Jay. His conscience was so bothering him today. Finally, he pleaded:

Can we move on?

As Obama’s popularity has slipped, he has become more openly hateful. The vindictiveness that was hidden away has been put up for display in the store window. What Clinton might scribble on a memo or tell an aide—he delivers in a speech. And the worse his numbers have fallen, the uglier his words have become.

Obama was never graceful, but the spitefulness is no longer camouflaged. The petty insults have become common as his persona has grown charmless. The scowl hides less deeply behind the practiced smile. Often it no longer hides at all. The small bag of tricks which he used to get this far has been exhausted. There’s nothing left now but the angry manipulative child underneath.

Having failed as the Messiah of Hope and Change, he is swiftly becoming the Messiah of Hate. With a country in a state of severe economic decline and his own popularity further down the toilet than a burning Koran, there is no other choice left to him. And it’s an approach that suits his temperament.

Reuters’ Caren Bohan (via Weasel Zippers) alerts us to another judicious use of taxpayer dollars: employing Air Force One to fly a bunch of overfed union bosses to a Labor Day rally in Detroit. These are the same lugs who feed at the troth of the taxpayer and then declare all-out-war on us “sons-of-bitches”.

I’ve been reporting for more than a year about how Big Labor will benefit from Obama’s new government infrastructure bank/public construction slush funds — and how feckless U.S. Chamber of Commerce officials in Washington are going along with the union-exclusive project labor agreements that punish taxpayers, employers, and non-union workers. Pay special attention to those goodies in Obama’s jobs speech. The jackals at Teamsters headquarters in D.C. can’t wait to tear up more of your tax dollars on government projects doled out by the crony-in-chief.

As usual, Jimmy Hoffa Jr.’s Tea Party-bashing is a calculated distraction from his festering ethics problems and internal Teamsters strife. According to the FBI via the Center for Union Facts, four of the last eight Teamsters presidents have been criminally indicted and since FY 2001, racketeering investigations have yielded more than 2,000 indictments and awarded more than $3 billion in fines and restitution. In past union elections, Hoffa’s team was caught laundering union funds for electioneering and for polling. Hoffa now faces a new challenge to his union presidency from his own far Left flank this fall. Make sure to read about the latest election corruption he’s embroiled in below.

Barry and Jimmy: Birds of a feather.

Here’s a flashback from May 2008 that you may remember.

Sen. Barack Obama won the endorsement of the Teamsters earlier this year after privately telling the union he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption, according to officials from the union and the Obama campaign.

…John Coli, vice president for the Teamsters central region, who brokered the Teamsters endorsement, said Sen. Obama was “pretty definitive that the time had come to start the beginning of the end” of the three-member independent review board that investigates suspect activity in the union. Mr. Coli said that Sen. Obama conveyed that view in a series of phone conversations and meetings with Teamsters officials last year.

…Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor confirmed the candidate’s position in a statement to The Wall Street Journal, saying that Sen. Obama believes that the board “has run its course,” because “organized crime influence in the union has drastically declined.” Mr. Vietor said Sen. Obama took that position last year.

You probably heard Jimmy Hoffa’s attack on the Tea Party at the Labor Day speech in Detroit and Obama’s praise of Hoffa afterwards. Everybody says, “Well, when is Obama gonna refute Hoffa?” Hell, Obama wrote it for Hoffa. Obama suggested it. Before we get to what was said, don’t you just love the irony? Here we have James Hoffa and Barack Hussein Obama, mmm, mmm, mmm, commemorating Labor Day in Detroit, a city that epitomizes the disaster brought about by the alliance of labor unions and government. Here is a city that is crumbling. They are bulldozing parts of the city. It’s a city run by Democrats and unions for 50 years.

Remember, this is the same administration that lectured America about civil discourse just a few months ago.

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz appeared on “FOX & Friends” this morning and ducked answering a question about Jimmy Hoffa’s “take these son of bitches out” comment.

Host Gretchen Carlson asked several times for a response to what Hoffa said, however Wasserman Schultz kept saying that the American people want us to focus on “working together.”

However, eventually Wasserman Schultz got fed up and asked “are you kidding me?” She continued: “Really Gretchen? How many times have you called out the coarse language at tea party rallies? Almost never,” she said.

Wasserman Schultz never directly addressed Hoffa’s comment.

Right now, unions are fighting to preserve unions, and that might be best for workers. But the individuals who work — or want to work — may very well think their interests lie elsewhere. I’d like to think that the vast majority of people who work resist the assertion that there is a “war on workers.” It’s quite clear that every serious politician in America cares about what happens to individual citizens. They’re not aligned in an army against the citizens! They have different ideas about how to improve things. Hoffa announces that there are 2 sides aligned in a fight against each other, and he would like anyone who has or wants a jobs to perceive himself or herself as a “worker” and thus a foot soldier in his army, with no independent mind.

That’s quite repulsive.

And by the way, the constant use of this word “workers” reinforces the notion of the collective. You can see that for Hoffa, “workers” mean “soldiers” — and obviously, soldiers take orders. They don’t think for themselves.

Fast forward eight months and here’s the president of the Teamsters coloring his own turnout plea with a bunch of war metaphors and a call to start taking “sons of bitches” out, oblivious to the possibility that Loughners might exist on his side as well. How’s that post-Tucson rhetorical standard working out for you now, liberal friends? Is that bed you made for yourselves comfortable?

The Rockford tea party called Hoffa’s comments “incendiary and dangerous.”

“If even one member of the Tea Party is harmed by anyone after Hoffa’s call to violence, then Hoffa should be held accountable by the Justice System and Charged appropriately,” the group said.

Though Obama wasn’t present when Hoffa Jr. made his incendiary remarks, Obama noted the presence of the Teamsters union president during his speech. Other union bosses joining Obama at the rally were United Auto Workers President Bob King, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and SEIU President Mary Kay Henry.

A spokesman for the AFL-CIO has not answered multiple requests from The Daily Caller as to whether Trumka supports Hoffa’s comments.

Meanwhile, Real Clear Politics notes that the event didn’t go very well for the president, either, who had a classic Kinsleyesque gaffe: “I think putting money back in the pockets of working families is the best way to get demand rising because that then means business is hiring. That means the government — that means that the economy is growing.”

Hoffa’s words were inexcusable. One tea party group said it sounded like a “call for violence on peaceful tea party members” and – really – that hit the nail on the head.

Hoffa could have at least had the decency to add he wanted the SOBs taken out at the ballot box.

Obama, as of this writing, hasn’t condemned the remarks or even commented on them, including in his Labor Day speech.

That failure makes Obama look hypocritical, because he’s been among national leaders correctly calling for a more reasoned approach in Washington in trying to solve all of the nation’s very serious economic and political problems.

What I say now, I say as a proud former union member and the wife, daughter, and sister of union members. So, as a former card-carrying IBEW sister married to a proud former Laborers, IBEW, and later USW member, please hear me out. What I have to say is for the hard working, patriotic, selfless union brothers and sisters in Michigan and throughout our country: Please don’t be taken in by union bosses’ thuggery like Jim Hoffa represented yesterday. Union bosses like this do not have your best interests at heart. What they care about is their own power and re-electing their friend Barack Obama so he will take care of them to the detriment of everyone else.

To the same degree Americans are concerned about irresponsible, greedy corporate execs who got cushy bonuses from taxpayer-funded bailouts, we should also be concerned about greedy union bosses who are willing to tank our economy just to protect their own power. As union history shows, power and greed corrupt. Just because you claim to represent union members doesn’t mean you are on the side of the angels. The greed of too many of these union bosses has all but destroyed the labor movement in this country, helped chase away our jobs, and is killing the American dream.

To see where this leads, look at what’s happening to the working class in our industrialized cities. These cities are going to hell in a hand basket thanks to corruption, crony capitalism, and the union bosses’ greed. The union bosses derive their power from your union dues and their promise to deliver your votes to whichever politician they’re in bed with. They get their power from you, and yet their actions ultimately hurt you. They’re chasing American industry offshore by making outrageous, economically illogical demands that they know will never work. And now that they’ve chased jobs out of union states, they’re trying to chase them out of right-to-work states like South Carolina, so eventually the jobs will leave America altogether. But these union bosses will still figure out a way to keep their gig, and so will their politically aligned corporate friends. As long as these big corporations have a good crony capitalist in the White House, they can rely on DC to bail them out until the whole system goes bankrupt, which, I am afraid, is not very far off. When big government, big business, and big union bosses collude together, they get government to maximize their own interests against those of the rest of the country.

Someone sent me this. I checked a couple of the accounts and they were real, so I’m pretty sure this is genuine left wing hate. The rants about civility that play under the tweets is a nice touch (see video at link)

Ready for the really scary part? This is all within the last 10 days, most of it in the last week. Yikes! And these people think the Tea Party is scary?

Fearless prediction: If this kicks up a storm of outrage, the defense will be that it’s all in the spirit of good, clean, dumb fun. On that point, do note the zombie in the tattered Klan robes. Uh huh.

We are past the point, obviously, where there is any point in remarking on the end of the purported era of civility. Still, it is a bit chilling to put this “game” together with Jimmy Hoffa’s comments yesterday, in which he declared “war” on Tea Partiers and said, “We’re gonna win that war. … President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son-of-a-bitches out and give America back to where we belong.” The “Zombie” game is all about “taking the son-of-a-bitches out.” President Obama said that he was “proud” of Hoffa after Hoffa’s incitement to violence against conservatives. It is pretty much impossible, at this point, to tell where the respectable left ends and the cesspool left begins; or, more accurately, whether a respectable left exists at all.

So his story is that he’s using his business to promote this viral game as a “personal project.” Yeah, could be that or it could be the people who paid him for it don’t want their names out there. That’s sort of the point of these kinds of campaigns, right? It’s supposed to be cool and only later do you realize it was paid for by Pepsi.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) said she wants Obama to emphasize incentives for domestically manufactured goods and stripping incentives for companies that outsource production overseas.

She also wants Obama to endorse and Congress to appropriate $16 billion immediately for a civilian conservation corps that would be led by unemployed military veterans.

At the rate Obama and the Democrats are going they will have two Americas because the ‘red states’ will eventually decide that it is no longer worth it to be part of the Democrat/Union thug/radical leftist run “union” anymore…

9/11

As New York gears up for the tenth anniversary of 9/11, this footage, taken by rescue workers, shows the eerie scenes in the basements beneath the wrecked skyscrapers.

Workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) spent eight months documenting the scene in Lower Manhattan as they searched the six storeys beneath the complex.

Dallal, 47, had been a photojournalist for 14 years covering war zones across the world. “When you cover a conflict as a journalist you go somewhere prepared psychologically. You are well aware that you are taking risks. But this happened in a part of town that was as familiar to me as my own front yard. It felt like I was watching people I ride the subway with every day going through a living hell. Did I understand that I was shooting something incredible? I wasn’t even thinking about it. I was on autopilot and I was frightened by what I was seeing.”

People jumped or fell from all four sides of both towers. USA Today estimated that around 200 people died in this way. The New York Times ran a more conservative estimate of 50.

It took 10 seconds for each person to fall, it was calculated, as they accelerated at 32ft per second achieving a speed of 150mph. Some who witnessed the jumpers see only desperation. Others see freedom: choosing how to die as a final act of defiance.

Their birthday is supposed to be one of the happiest days of their year.

But for tens of thousands of Americans, 9/11 is marked not by celebrations but a national tragedy.

A group of people born on September 11 have now come together to reclaim the day for themselves and ‘remember the good that was born on this day too’.

I’ve seen several stories over the last couple of days about the heartbreaking 9/11 relics that will be displayed in the memorial, and all have their own story. But one caught my eye, a helmet worn by a construction worker who helped in the ground zero cleanup will go on display as well.

Why did it catch my eye? It has an “Iron Workers for Obama” sticker smack on the top of it.

Now I don’t have a problem if the construction worker in question belongs to the Iron Workers union and supported Barack Obama; that’s all well and good.

But shouldn’t the relics going into the 9/11 museum be placed into the museum in the exact same condition as they were on September 11th, 2001 or in the days following? If I remember correctly, Barack Obama wasn’t even a blip on the radar in the days following 9/11.

Mr. Obama did not explicitly run on an anti-exceptionalism platform.  Yet once he was elected it became clear that his idea of how and where to apply presidential power was shaped precisely by this brand of liberalism.  There was his devotion to big government, his passion for redistribution, and his scolding and scapegoating of Wall Street as if his mandate was somehow to overcome, or at least subdue, American capitalism itself.

Was it last year that Mr. Obama wanted to make 9/11 “a national day of service,” and the Obamas had a photo-op where they were painting a room somewhere and Mr. Obama was photographed hanging curtains — a shot that has been used in innumerable humorous photoshops.  The national day of service thing didn’t go over too well either.

Americans’ thoughts, in remembering that terrible day, probably turn naturally to a little militarism.  I believe I heard on the radio that we have allayed 48 terrorist attacks this year, and instead of a robust effort to defend the nation — like closing down the border, and profiling instead of groping little girls. Or giving the generals the time and equipment they ask for instead of using the troops as a campaign pawn to be moved around to suit the president’s reelection chances.

President Obama clearly does not want us to remember 9/11.  It’s apt to make us remember George W. Bush, and how much we miss him. I printed out a lot of the news and commentary from that period, as a little history, and I think I’ll re-read it all on 9/11.  I don’t want to ever forget.

Since I grew up after World War II, September 11, 2001, was — as it was for many of us — by far the most cataclysmic public event of my life. I may have experienced it staring at a television screen in my Los Angeles bedroom, but watching those planes fly into the Twin Towers like a time bomb from the Middle Ages changed my world view, even altered many of my relationships, forever.

And, although I certainly didn’t know it at that moment, that assault on modernity led inexorably to the founding of Pajamas Media and ultimately PJTV. Pajamas Media is very much a child of 9/11.

Not just because of me, of course. A large number of people banded together online then, realizing that a war of civilizations had been joined. They became known as the “war bloggers” and a good number of those bloggers are still with us now.

The cultural legacy of September 11 is a sprawling landscape, but out of the tumult a few salient facts are visible. Its principal objects at Ground Zero, a skyscraper and a national memorial, are quite respectable, and even commendable, given the enormous burden of expectations placed on them. In creative art, there has been distinctly less interest in strategies to épater les bourgeoisie. If Hollywood behaved appallingly, it did so at its own expense—not merely financially but also in terms of public prestige. The decade was not remarkable for conspicuous artistic innovation but rather for quiet work. In other words, a plucky nation, after a period of shock and mourning, resumed its fateful course.

Anyhow, here we go with one of the dumbest of dumb mainstream liberal memes yet again

The most disturbing evidence of unheeded warnings was the Aug. 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” The report warned that Osama bin Laden was taking actions “consistent with preparations for hijacking or other types of attacks.” Bush, who received the report at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, took no action. Nor, apparently, did anyone else. Rice later told the commission that this PDB “was historical in nature,” and “was not a warning.” She insisted that this PDB (which followed several others about al Qaeda) consisted of “information based on old reporting,” and “did not warn against any possible attacks inside the US.”

Once again, I’ll ask liberals to point out specifically what could have been done with that PDB to stop the attacks? The Islamist animals were not allowed to be profiled at the airports. They were mostly all in the country already. Their plan was in place and ready to be implemented. You know, the plan that really started back on February 26, 1993, with the bombing of the World Trade Center, and the emergence of al Qaeda. Clinton had 3 opportunities to take Bin Laden out, which would have put a big crimp in AQ’s operations and money flow.

And let’s not forget that Sandy Berger had Richard Clarke put together a report showing that al Qaeda was on American soil and ready to attack. That was in early 2000. And part of the documents Berger stuffed down his pants and stole.

Anyhow, there is plenty more blamestorming, attempting to provide some red meat to the unhinged left with 9/11 next Sunday. Obviously, George Bush gets the most, including some whines about his macho stance in NYC when he said “I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon”, a quote that Elizabeth gets wrong, which “produced cheers of, “USA, USA, USA.” You can just picture her sneering at this open display of patriotism, can’t you? She also whines about post 9/11 actions. As one Politico commenter writes: This is a academic hit piece, boarding upon revisionist history writing.

 

Cartoon of the day

Exhausted From Ten-Day Martha’s Vineyard Vacation, Obama Heads To Camp David…

I sense a golf course in Obama’s not-so-distant future.

The Curious Case of Marine One’s Emergency Landing

On Friday, Marine One — the President’s helicopter — was forced to land on its way to Camp David due to inclement weather that no one else could see:

BamBam’s Big Speech on getting more money for the Democrat/Union thug slush fund Jobs:

An already ubercynical Art Cashin chimes in on Obama’s much anticipated, and very controversial (recall the latest Boehner flap on the issue) speech tomorrow and comes out sounding even more jaded than usual. In a word: don’t expect any imminent rise in Obama’s already record low popularity rating as a result of this speech, which if recent history is an indication, will likely generate even further class animosity within US society, now well on its way to confirming some of the more violent teleological theories postulated by Karl Marx.

No, seriously.

The Republicans have decided to not formally rebut the President’s Thursday night speech. I think that’s a bad call myself — always rebut, even if you’re not even rebutting, but merely selling your own ideas and your own credentials as pro-jobs — but that’s what they decided.

Nancy Pelosi is furious.Furious that we’re not rebutting Obama.

Yes, furious. You see, it’s now also disrespectful (by which we mean racist) to not rebut the President’s horse-load.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says that the Republican leadership’s decision to forgo a direct response to President Barack Obama’s jobs speech Thursday is “not only disrespectful to him, but to the American people.”The California Democrat, in a Tuesday night statement, blasted the tactical decision of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) not to take to the airwaves to state what’s otherwise clear: He doesn’t agree with the bulk of Obama’s proposals.

…

A GOP aide quipped: “This is just dumb. The former speaker is criticizing us for passing up an opportunity to criticize the president.”

Some things are so stupid you actually feel kind of stupid in noting that they are stupid.

In related news, Joe Wilson apologized in advance for not planning to shout “You lie!” to President Obama.

a devastating number in a country in which economic concerns top all other issues in voters’ minds.

So Obama has scheduled a Joint Session of Congress to propose two kinds of plans: spending the Republicans oppose, and spending the Republicans really, really oppose. But wait, there’s a third:

To hold down overall federal costs, and to avoid having to go to Congress, Mr. Obama and his advisers have been looking for ways to divert existing government money to purposes that will create jobs, especially in the hard-hit construction industry. School repairs and retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency will be a focus. And Mr. Obama is expected to argue that to the extent that states and local governments are relieved of school construction costs, they must avoid further layoffs of teachers.

So he’s not going to go through Congress anyway. He has no plans to get anything passed in the legislature, he just wants to slam Republicans while the public is watching. And notice the barely-veiled conditionality of that municipal spending: it’s not actually to offset costs, just to boost the teachers’ unions by having districts that agree to take the funds stop firing teachers.

Where is that first-class temperament when we need it?

In what could be a way of lowering expectations for next Thursday’s big economic speech, aides to President Obama are privately spreading word that he will not present his entire jobs plan in his address to a Joint Session of Congress.

Aides say Thursday’s speech will be part of a bigger plan the White House will roll out throughout the fall with the president hitting the road for speeches and town hall appearances. Aides have already confirmed that Obama will be traveling to California, Colorado, and Washington state for one three-day swing later this month that will include economic events as well as some fundraising.

First he floated the laughable idea of establishing a Department of Jobs, then he pledged “a new idea a week.” Then he said he’d have a “detailed plan” to be announced after his Martha’s Vineyard vacation. He made the speech into an even bigger deal with his choice of venue, and with his failed attempt to one-up the GOP with a little hostile scheduling.

Now we learn . . . the dog ate some portion — a third? half? three quarters? — of his “plan” and all he’ll have at his hyped address, so crucial it has to be given ASAP and before a joint session of Congress, is the first installment.

No one has laid eyes on Obama’s college transcripts but I’ll bet they’re littered with I’s for Incomplete.

In this clip from yesterday’s show, Mark Levin goes through some of Obama’s “new ideas” and ends with a lesson in basic economics:

So once again, he takes money out of the private sector and gives it to government. How does taking money out of the private sector, giving it to government, create net jobs? How does that create net wealth? It doesn’t. It doesn’t. It cant. It won’t. Look at the last thirty-two months. So this is what you’re going to get to hear at 7:00 pm Eastern time on Thursday, Obama railing on and proving yet again that he’s economically illiterate and that he is dogmatically attached to irrationality.

That’s from about 10 minutes in. But listen to the whole clip. It’s very instructive. More from yesterday’s Levin show here.

The joint session will also allow the president to give Congress a face-to-face two-minute hate with which, he ardently hopes, Americans will go along. He believes that the flip side of the public’s contempt for Congress is esteem for himself. That ain’t necessarily so; there’s plenty of room in America’s doghouse for Congress and the president.

Yesterday the White House announced that the presidential address would be over before kickoff at 7:30 next Thursday. But NBC was also planning to show extensive pre-game coverage, including some live concerts outside Lambeau Field about an hour before the game.

Many Wisconsin NBC affiliates want the network to offer feeds of both the NFL pre-game and the president’s speech, and let the local channels decide which one to carry. NBC has also sold out its pre-game sponsorships for the NFL opener — money that might be refunded to the advertisers if the broadcast plans change.

Louisiana Senator David Vitter (R) has decided to forgo President Obama’s Thursday night speech, and instead will host an New Orleans Saintsparty for family and friends.

Appearing on Power Play Live with Chris Stirewalt, Vitter called the President’s address “more political speech that substantive” and said, “I have a Saints party…and I am absolutely going to be there for the big game, kick-off of the Saints and the whole NFL.”

Months into the new normal that is routinely called the worst economy since the Great Depression, President Barack Obama gets it. It’s all about jobs, jobs, jobs. And not like it was back in January 2009 (when he promised 3.5 million jobs over the next couple of years) or December 2009 (when he pushed for clean-energy jobs) or January 2010 (when he announced that jobs would be his “number one focus” in his State of the Union address) or even September 2010 (when he promised employment via road-building projects that weren’t undertaken as part of the 2009 stimulus’ stated emphasis on shovel-ready infrastructure projects). This time he means it.

Of course he does. After all, this time, it’s not just about the economic vitality of the nation. His political future rests upon a jobs program so urgently needed that he’s going to announce it mere days after Labor Day weekend. Nothing focuses the mind so much as worries about losing your own job.

But Mr. Ryan chided the administration—which once predicted that the 2009 stimulus bill would hold unemployment under 8%—for now projecting that unemployment would remain higher than 8% for the remainder of Mr. Obama’s current term.

We will little note nor long remember Wednesday’s breathless kerfuffle, with the White House deciding to schedule a speech in front of a joint session of Congress without actually asking Congress first — and planning for it during a long-planned Republican debate.

The White House spin doctors told some fibs, realized they looked petty and unseemly, then backed off and moved it a day. This won’t even rise to the level of a Jeopardy question in a year’s time.

But supporters of President Obama outside the White House have every reason to be terrified by what happened on Wednesday — and I choose the word “terrified” carefully.

For the incident suggests that the White House’s sense of how things work has grown dangerously distorted. And if this White House is broken, it’s not good for anyone.

When given the choice between listening to the wise council of the American people, or to the elite and narrow worldview of Harvard faculty members, Barack Obama consistently chooses to slam the book shut on the American people, and heed the council of his Harvard pals.

Like Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein​; Obama’s hand-picked “regulatory czar.”  Earlier this year, Sunstein “refused to participate in the effort to identify job smothering regulations.”  But not to worry.  While Obama’s Harvard regulatory czar smothers real American jobs under piles of regulations, the regulation business itself is booming.  As reported in Investors Business Daily, “If the federal government’s regulatory operation were a business, it would be one of the 50 biggest in the country in terms of revenues, and the third largest in terms of employees, with more people working for it than McDonald’s, Ford, Disney and Boeing combined.”

Here are some other Harvard advisors in President Obama’s White House.  Harvard President and former chief Obama economic advisor Larry Summers​, who declared in 2009 that “the recession is over” and “predicted that job growth would begin as early as this spring [2010].”  Fellow editor of Harvard Law Review David Ogden went on to become Obama’s Deputy Attorney General, where he helped create jobs for Mexican gun runners through “Project Gunrunner,” otherwise known as “Fast and Furious.”  Former Harvard professor John Holdren, now Obama’s “science czar,” wrote that wealth redistribution is “absolutely essential” and recommended that a “massive campaign” be launched to “de-develop” the United States.  And, of course, we have Elena Kagan​, past Dean of Harvard Law School, whom President Obama placed on the Supreme Court.  The knock on Kagan during her confirmation hearings was that she had a “limited body of academic work” and “appears to have gotten tenure…based on a single article.”

What are the odds that I could get tenure based on this single article?

The total cost for Obama’s “stimulus” will reach $821 billion per the Congressional Budget Office, plus at least $347 billion in interest for a grand total of $1,168,000,000,000.00 — a number too large even to comprehend. It is likely to bankrupt America, which in return for the money received essentially nothing.

In the grandest act of larceny in the history of the human race, liberal looters have stolen not only our money but our future.

  • The Democrats are essentially trying to giftwrap a piece of shit. Unfortunately for them too many Americans have a highly developed sense of smell… Pelosi drops the word ‘stimulus’

Democrats are now being careful to frame their job-creation agenda in language excluding references to any stimulus, even though their favored policies for ending the deepest recession since the Great Depression are largely the same.

Indeed, with President Obama scheduled Thursday to lay out his job-creation plans before a joint session of Congress, liberal Democrats and left-leaning policy groups are pressuring him to ignore short-term deficit spending concerns in favor of sweeping spending initiatives designed to boost hiring.

The Democrats’ signature “Make it in America” platform aims to create jobs by increasing infrastructure spending, providing financial help to struggling states and expanding tax credits for businesses, all of which were key elements of their 2009 economic stimulus bill.

As we struggle with Obama’s banana, Kahn comes to mind in connection with Nancy Pelosi’s latest brainstorm. The Hill reports: “Pelosi drops the word ‘stimulus.’”Hill reporter Mike Lillis explains: “Though the House minority leader and her caucus are still pushing an economic stimulus agenda to save the economy, they’ve radically changed their rhetoric with the hope of winning over voters who saw ‘stimulus’ as close to a dirty word.”

How little do Pelosi and her fellow Democrats really think of the American people? In their heart of hearts Pelosi and company can hear the voters calling Kick me again, I’m stupid!

 

 

Ignoring the officers on the ground

“We can’t secure everybody with only 3,000 on the ground nor can we do what we need to with the Iraqis,” one source said. Another source said the actual total could be as high as 5,000 when additional support personnel are included.

A senior military official said by reducing the number of troops to 3,000, the White House has effectively reduced the mission to training only.

This is a totally political decision rather than a military decision. He wants to have the numbers down and the expenses down so that he can start the election year bragging about how he’s brought the numbers down. But he is endangering the troops that we have there with such a small number. He’s risking giving back what we have gained in Iraq and having it return to sectarian violence and Iranian influence because he wants to make a splash with the left-wing of his party in an election year.

Think of this, he is planning to have less than one-tenth of the numbers of troops in Iraq that we presently have in South Korea which is now at 37,500 including all personnel. We have close to 80,000 in Europe. Are the military needs in Iraq so much more less than what they are in South Korea or Europe?

Somehow he thinks he knows more than the commanders on the ground about what is the minimum necessary to keep what we have achieved there.

Obama Green Jobs Con Job and the Ill Wind That Blows from Spain

Those green jobs we have been promised have been a mirage.  They are often temporary in nature and come at an extraordinary high price.  Loan guarantees, mandates, feed-in tariffs, outright gifts of taxpayer money and other assorted goodies from the government have gone to bolster the prospects of profiteers and not the paychecks of workers.  Often the money eventually flows to China to buy products (solar panels, wind turbines, rare earth minerals).  The billions for green energy buried in the stimulus bill and the budget of the Department of Energy have been a stimulus all right: to China.  But not only have the Chinese benefitted.

Obama’s spending has also enriched various venture capitalist supporters in Silicon Valley and other enclaves where Barack Obama is still popular. The billions that have flowed out of Washington  (that is, from us) have brightened the prospects for such Green Entrepreneurs as Al Gore, the political prospects of the Biden family in Delaware (the electric car company Fisker Automotivegot hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from Uncles Barack and Joe Biden to open a factory in Delaware of all places — despite the fact that most new car factories now are located in right-to-work states; but the Biden political dynasty needs all the help it can get back home).

The billions tucked away here and there in Obama’s trillion dollar budgets serve as a slush fund to enrich people under the Democrats’ “friends and family program”  (such as the Carnahan political dynasty in Missouri, enriched by stimulus money poured into a wind farm owned by a prominent member of that family; and the Kanjorksi clan in Pennsylvania — the nephew of then Congressman Paul Kanjorski worked for companies, including a Spanish solar company, that received hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks and grants for green energy ventures). These billions have also been a way to pay back donors and Bundlers for Barack.

We do not have a space program anymore. NASA is now a ‘Muslim outreach program’ and global warming propaganda manufacturer… Will NASA Abandon Ship?

That NASA doesn’t seem to be considering any of these things, and is instead contemplating abandoning our only orbital outpost on which we’ve spent tens of billions over decades, even if only temporarily, speaks eloquently about our national perceptions of its importance, and trivializes it. It would say that unlike commercial fishing, coal mining, construction, and liberating peoples, opening up frontiers, even the harshest one, isn’t worth the risk of a human life. But I’ll bet that there are plenty of people in the astronaut office who’d be willing to take that risk, and in the unlikely event that there aren’t, there are plenty of people fully qualified who are. It’s what our ancestors would have done and how they created this great nation that once put men on the moon. What has happened to us?

Ten Enduring Myths About the U.S. Space Program

FAIL: Government Motors Sells a Whopping 302 Chevy Volts In August…

The official car of the Obama administration.

“Permanent, Political Class”

Because, you see, this is why there’s this red ink all over the place. The people who build things that actually might command a willingly-paid price, haven’t had a voice in Washington. They haven’t been trudging to the Potomac to make themselves heard. They’ve been too busy; they’ve had work to do. Even now, when they’re participating, it’s only under protest and it’s only with the time they can spare as they try to continue making things that generate real wealth for themselves & others. The rest of the country needs them, more than they need the rest of the country. And so we have been leaving the rule-making to people who don’t know how to build working valuable things, and don’t care to learn how. We have been making rules that destroy wealth, because we have been allowing the rules to be made by those who do not respect the creation of real wealth.

I keep hearing from the Palin-haters “What exactly is Palin’s plan to fix what’s broken?” The question, it seems to me, is what exactly is going to be done by anybody else, to wrest the power out of the grasp of those who consume and destroy, building nothing, and get it into the hands of people who know how to build things? Who else do you Palin-bashers have in mind to get that accomplished?

Obama Featured In Pro-Palestinian State Ad

Obama’s leftist base is rabidly anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, as are many at the United Nations and around the world, so Obama’s little UN speech was designed to elicit accolades from those people, yet, once again, Obama forgot that he was no longer candidate Obama, but President of the United States of America Obama, and his words have actual meaning. Then, when the Palestinians actually pushed for their own state as part of the UN, some advisers surely came to the White House and said “this is a really bad idea“, and the reality of being POTUS reached up and smacked the campaign speech out of him.

Your ‘surprisingly unexpected’ economic news of the day:

Fed ponders another intervention

Businesses aren’t expanding from a lack of access to commercial loans — they’re not expanding because investors can no longer reliably calculate risk in the current US regulatory environment.  The Obama administration’s whimsical and aggressive push to rule by decree in ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, the EPA, and other areas has capital rightly sitting on the sidelines.

Home buyers are also not sitting out by choice.  We already have one of the best buyer’s markets in a generation, or perhaps generations.  We have a glut of foreclosures keeping valuations down and the lowest mortgage rates in decades — for qualified buyers, and that’s the problem.  We don’t have enough qualified buyers, and with the glut of inventory and the foreclosure epidemic, current homeowners aren’t selling and looking for new digs, either.

Hope and Change™! US falls to 5th in global competitiveness, survey shows

Dear American, You Owe the U.S. Gov’t $31,871

DOOM: Fiat justitia ruat caelum

The September Calender of Potential Doom & Disaster by Date and Event (Updated)

In even the most “normal” of times, September can turn out to be an extremely turbulent month for economies and world equity markets without warning. This time around, we have plenty of warning and an actual schedule which indicates trip wires and land mines which could bring the entire world to its knees with little warning.

Tullett Prebon CEO Is Latest Entrant In Rapidly Growing Anti-Keynesian Bandwagon

Needless to say, Keynesians around the world are not happy: after all it takes away from their voodoo punch that just doing more of the same insane things over and over should eventually help. Because if not, then all the BS that is taught in Ivy League is just that… BS. Today, none other than the CEO of Tullett Prebon takes such floundering voodoo economists as Ed Balls, Samuel Brittan, Paul Krugman, George Magnus and Barack Obama, and Keynesianism in general, to task by finally saying what we have been claiming for years: Keynesianism, as applied in modern soceity, is ultimately doomed to failure, but not before we transform from an FX war to a trade war to its final state – shooting war. Because there is nothing like spilling human blood in the name of a false economic religion in its last hurrah before it is finally wiped out from the face of the world.

Summary Of Wall Street’s View On The Upcoming Operation Twist

As Chazz Evans just noted, QE3 can not come soon enough, and it can certainly not be big enough. Wall Street, bonuses entirely contingent on this fiction becoming fact, is therefore more than happy to shape Fed opinion, and confirm that QE3 is now priced in to such a degree that a disappointment will raise the terrifying specter of bloodthirsty, demonic hyperdeflation once again. Below, via Bloomberg, is a summary of what the various Wall Street “strategists” also known as groputhink lemmings, because none of these said Op Twist was coming as recently as a month ago, think is coming out of the Fed as soon as 2 weeks from today…

Charting SOMA Twist: Here Is What The $55 Billion In Monthly POMO Purchases Will Look Like Starting Shortly

But since the Fed has zero practical world experience, one can only hope, knowing full well the end result will be yet another TARP to bail out the banks. From SocGen: “The next step from the Fed will almost certainly be for more easing and it will almost certainly be duration extension. The only question is September or November? Prior to the August employment report, the market was split 50/50 on the timing of the announcement. The report pushed the odds in favour of September which is our central scenario.We estimate that at the upper limit, the extension could amount to as much as $420bn in duration purchases, which would make it comparable in size to QE2. However, the Fed may not announce the full amount up front but instead give a monthly run rate and reevaluate at each meeting. Matching the previous run rate, we would expect the Fed to do roughly $55bn per month. This could take the Fed as far as April 2012, at which point inflation should have receded enough to put QE3 back on the table.”

We are not too sure just who will buy the 1.5-4 year bonds at current yields, but certainly some greater fool than us does and always will exist. What is important, is that dry powder for about $55 billion in POMO recycling will suddenly allow the banks to flip assets to greater fools yet again. As to whether this will work, like last year, we very much doubt it, especially since everyone will be buying gold and crude.

Deja Vu All Over Again: Total US Debt Passes Debt Ceiling… In Under One Month Since Extension

“The Stimulus Worked!” The Latest Junk Chart and Why It’s Junk

Obama’s Recovery A Flop Of Historical Proportions

According to the NBER, in the 60 years prior to Obama’s tenure, we had 10 recessions.  In the two years following those respective recessions, average real (inflation-adjusted) quarterly GDP growth was 5%, according to federal government figures. In the two years of Obama’s “recovery,” average real quarterly GDP growth has been just 2.4%, less than half of the historical norm coming out of a recession.

What’s the difference (in more practical terms) between 2.4% and 5% growth over two years?  According to Obama’s own budget, this year’s GDP will be about $15 trillion.  (It’s running neck and neck with the national debt.)  A 2.6% shortfall, therefore, equals about $780 billion over two years.

If you divide that evenly among the U.S. population of 312 million people, that works out to a shortfall of $2,500 per person — or $10,000 for the average family of four. Call it the Obama penalty.

The Obama Depression: More than a Million New Food Stamp Users in One Month

Which begs the question: will Obama be the first president under whose rule total foodstamp usage hit 100 million? Surely, by then there will be a Nobel price for destroying one’s middle class better and faster than any communist in the history of the world, so at least there will be something to memorialize it with.

Labor Day Blues

Still, high joblessness’ harshest effects fall on the jobless. “We’re creating a bifurcated society,” worries Harvard economist Lawrence Katz. “We’re talking about a lost generation of younger workers and displaced workers.” Younger workers have a harder time starting careers. Because many skills are developed on the job, long unemployment spells can lower lifetime earnings. The same is true of older workers. Even when those who lose a stable job get new work, they often suffer a 20 percent earnings loss for 15 years or more, reports economist Till von Wachter of Columbia University.

Getting ahead is a central part of America’s promise. Unemployment has exceeded 8 percent since February 2009; many forecasts expect it to stay there into at least 2014. Nothing like this has occurred since World War II. Will job fears compound consumer cautiousness, retard recovery and perversely worsen unemployment? How many workers will cling to jobs they despise because they can’t find anything else? Will economic frustrations feed a populist backlash? Of left or right? Can America’s leaders cope? On this Labor Day, questions are clearer than answers.

Economy knocks self-employed out of business

Employer businesses – those that provide work for individuals including the founder – “have been starting in fewer numbers, with fewer workers and growing at a slower pace than in the past,” according to Robert Litan, a vice president at the Kauffman Foundation, which supports research on startups. “Therefore, these entrepreneurs are generating increasingly fewer new jobs for the U.S. labor market.”

The number of new employer businesses dropped 24 percent to 505,473 on an annual basis in 2010 from 667,341 in 2006, according to Litan, who co-wrote a report published in July on small-business job creation.

This has contributed to high unemployment as the economic recovery slows. The rate has remained above 9 percent for 25 of the past 27 months, falling to 9.1 percent in July from 9.2 percent in June, Labor Bureau statistics show. August data will be released today.

NFP Misses, Prints At 0 As In Unchanged! Unemployment Rate 9.1%

Key Highlights:

  • At 0, the NFP number is a plunge of 85K, from a downward revised July, which was previously at 117. This is the biggest drop since September 2010
  • The Household Survey saw an increase of 331K in the number of employed
  • Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls decreased by 3 cents, or 0.1 percent, to $23.09. This decline followed an 11-cent gain in July. This is the first time the avg hourly earnings have been negative MoM since January 2008
  • Underemployment, U-6, rose to 16.2%, from 16.1% in July
  • The labor force rose to 153.6 million in August.
  • Ironically the only good news in the report, was what many have been indicating is a negative for months: namely that the Labor Force Participation rate actually rose for the first time in months from the nearly 30 year low of 63.9% to 64.0%

ØMG: Reax to the ‘No Jobs’ Report

Birth Death Adds 87K To Today’s NFP Miss, 491K Jobs In Past Year Due To “Statistics”

Take Green (i.e. double zero), and subtract from it the Birth Death adjustment and presto: you have reality, or what we predicted earlier today- a negative NFP print. Also, for the seasonal sticklers Birth Death has added 491k jobs in the past year: no seasonality here.

Latest Jobs Report Shows the Economy Went on Vacation in August Just Like the President

And there’s this “Ack!” factor:

It’s the first time since February 1945 that the government has reported a net job change of zero.

We’ll now await Jay Carney’s afternoon “blame Bush” press conference.

Don’t worry though, I’m sure Obama’s “jobs speech” next week will make everything better by recommending the application of the same remedies that have been proven to do nothing except perpetuate the ailment.

FAIL. NO NEW JOBS IN AUGUST – Unemployment at 9.1%

Nutty Nancy needs to take a look at the above chart. The ‘Obama Years’ were her years as Speaker of the House with a supermajority in the legislative branch. If she wants to blame anyone she should take a good, hard look in the mirror… Oh Brother… Crazy Pelosi Blames GOP for Jobs Numbers

This poor woman is sounding more and more pathetic by the day.

President Zero

It’s not a “new” nickname. It’s just been re-confirmed.

In response to the dismal zero-growth news and jobless rate stuck at 9.1 percent, President Zero’s Labor Secretary Hilda Solis told a cable news anchor this morning:

“I do feel like we’re going in the right direction…”

Right off the cliff…

Nation Suffering from Obama-Induced Irregularity

The danger is that we as a nation may come to accept our administration-induced chronic irregularity as the way things will be indefinitely, or as what Obama cheerleaders in the establishment press try to tell us is “the new normal.” If we do, we won’t recognize our country in several years — which is why the irregularity must be stopped in seventeen months

Bank of America Could Slash Up To 30,000 Jobs

Democrat Maxine Waters: “We Need a Jobs Program of a Trillion Dollar or More” (Video)

She’s a true democrat.

We all know the democrat solution to every problem is to spend more taxpayer dollars. Rep. Maxine Waters believes we need to blow another trillion dollars to jump-start the economy.

More Obamanomics… Barack Obama: “The Historic Steps We’ve Taken Will Save Tens of Thousands of Lives Each Year & Produce Hundreds of Billions of Dollars of Benefits to the American People”

Over the last two and half years, my administration, under the leadership of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, has taken some of the strongest actions since the enactment of the Clean Air Act four decades ago to protect our environment and the health of our families from air pollution. From reducing mercury and other toxic air pollution from outdated power plants to doubling the fuel efficiency of our cars and trucks, the historic steps we’ve taken will save tens of thousands of lives each year, remove over a billion tons of pollution from our air, and produce hundreds of billions of dollars in benefits for the American people.

Of course, there’s about as much proof of this as there is that he created or saved a dozen jobs.

The Epic Fail, “unexpectedly,” of Green Jobs.

The federal government has no business attempting to be venture capitalists. They, unlike real venture capitalists in a free market, are playing with other people’s money. Real venture capitalists are putting up their own money and consequently take due diligence investigations very seriously indeed.

Governments cannot pick winners and losers. When they attempt to do so, they make messes for the rest of us.

Whoops! Even David Brooks Notices Green Jobs Are A Farce

Alas, it was not to be. The gigantic public investments in green energy may be stimulating innovation and helping the environment. But they are not evidence that the government knows how to create private-sector jobs.

Well, shocker. Government dumping massive amounts of money into a sector that is only a tiny player in the private market, one which has little, if any return on investment, and probably is a money loser in most cases.

Is It Ironic That This Is Labor Day?

It is also ironic that more time has been spent trying to figure out the impact of 45,000 Verizon strikers on NFP, than has been spent on trying to figure out what sort of a system we have where 45,000 employees feel comfortable going on strike when there are NO jobs, and management caves in to their demands. Maybe Obama should address that sort of mentality in his jobs speech next week. Maybe the problem is more at the core of what this country has become than what some new tax incentive to hire can fix. If anything, the tax incentive will likely be good for lawyers who will be paid by big corporations to figure out how to get the most benefit for the least amount of actual change.

Precious Metals Surge As QE3 Now Merely A Formality

Goldman Justifies The Need For More QE3, And Even More Record Wall Street Bonuses

Surprise, surprise, surprise… In His Activist Days Obama Sued Banks to Ease Lending Practices… Now He’s Suing Banks For Risky Mortgages

New plan: Let’s sue all the banks!

Look, the fact that there were some completely odious financial instruments floating around out there is beyond question. It also goes without saying that the problem metastasized because such instruments require insurance and a strong credit rating to sell them, so companies like AIG were dragged into the whirlpool when the whole show began to go down the crapper. In that regard, one could argue that the entire system was not “too big to fail” but, in some ways, designed to fail. But doesn’t it seem curious that the same institutions which were deemed so critical to the national interest that the taxpayers would have to bail them out are now suitable pockets to pick in a law suit?

Returning to the previous point, we come to the exit question. Does anyone honestly think that Fannie and Freddie were somehow “innocent victims” in all of this? If you’re going to be looking at suing somebody… Oh wait. That’s silly. We can’t go around suing ourselves, now can we?

Illegal Aliens Got $4.2 Billion in Refundable Tax Credits Last Year

It’s an Obama World.

Not only do illegal aliens not have to worry about being caught and deported – they even get billions in tax credits.

A Hell-of-a-Loophole: Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway,Owes $1 Billion In Back Taxes

Perhaps Mr. Buffett should read his own annual report before he tells rich people to pay more, since he looks a bit foolish when his own company is not paying enough.

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy (except for the UN, of course):

The Worst Use of Taxpayer Funds Ever?

One organization involved in the suit, the Environmental Defense Fund, has a long history of taking the EPA to court. In fact, a cursory review finds almost half a dozen cases in the past 10 years.

The odd thing is that the EPA, in turn, has handed EDF $2.76 million in grants over that same period, according to an IBD review of the agency’s grant database.

From where does all this money come? From we, the people, so that the EPA can in essence sue itself to fund its real allies while getting what they wanted in the first place.

The EPA bureaucrats subvert the will of the people to impose their own desires through judicial mandates they engineered. Environmentalist groups and their fellow travelers not only achieve their anti-American, anti-progress goals but are actually paid by the very people they are suing. And leftist lawyers benefit handsomely from this arrangement.

The American people, whose tax dollars will be wasted, whose energy costs “necessarily skyrocket,” whose businesses close, whose jobs are lost, whose food prices stratospherically rise, end up in every way poorer and with less trust in the government that is supposed to exist only to serve them.

Federal bureaucrats should never exceed their legal authority, and they should never waste taxpayer dollars for any reason, particularly to pay special interests to assist them in exceeding their legal authority. The EPA deserves your scorn, and a dismantling.

EPA’s rules may force power failures

The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, when combined with another proposed regulation (the Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology or “Utility MACT” rule), will cost the country $17.8 billion a year and put 175,000 jobs at risk each year, as well. Now, that’s nowhere near as expensive as the proposed ozone regulations — which would have cost the country up to $90 billion a year, with as many as 7.3 million jobs lost by 2020 — but I’d say 175,000 newly employed is nothing to sneeze at. Plus, the two regulations would increase electricity rates by more than 23 percent in some areas of the United States that rely on coal for electricity. In addition, consumers will be paying more than $8 billion a year in higher natural gas prices because of these proposed rules.

POTUS who “opposes regulatory burden” about to create emergency condition in Texas

After the president’s announcement this week about ozone level regulations, clearly Texas has no cloud on their horizon. The president will doubtless roll back those regulations any day now. Or at least right after he finishes his speech next Thursday night.

Unfortunately, nobody has clued in the Environmental Protection Agency on the latest presidential guidelines. When asked about the distress call, they were almost dismissive, saying that Texas “has an ample range of cost-effective emission reductions options” for complying with the rule “without threatening electricity reliability or the continued operation of coal-burning units.”

I hope President Obama finds out about this. These EPA guys are positively going rogue.

Change! Obama “Requests” The EPA Withdraw Job Killing Proposed Ozone Regulations

Expect liberals to go nuts over this stuff. They’ll see it as giving in to Boehner and the GOP who will only be emboldened to demand more. And they’ll be right. Obama’s promised his TRILLION plus dollar, so-called “stimulus” would have unemployment under 7% by now and that without it we’d be at 8%. Well, we got it and unemployment is over 9% and the White House itself says it’s going to be there for the next year at least. By their own lights, Obama’s approach has made things worse, so you’re damn right the GOP is going to try and move him, kicking and screaming if need be, to policies that will not only improve the GOP’s electoral chances but improve the nation’s economy. As the old saying goes, you can do well while doing good.

Yes, the Department of Education Is Unconstitutional

The Department of Education, along with so much else the federal government does, is unconstitutional. The only things that are constitutional for it to do are those things enumerated in the Constitution. Hence, if something is not listed there, it cannot do that something, period. That’s the whole point of enumerated powers.

Tina, I think a second “update” is in order!

Oh, and the feds have manifestly failed to achieve anything with their involvement over the decades.

Lawlessness Is The Rule

The Obama administration’s campaign to suspend the deportations of illegal aliens has been subject to intense scrutiny since 2010, when the press uncovered a USCIS memo that contemplated various “administrative alternatives” to bypass Congress and implement stealth amnesty for illegal aliens. A subsequent Houston Chronicle story exposed an effort by the administration to suspend the deportations of illegal aliens who supposedly have not been convicted of any “serious” crimes. Documents uncovered by Judicial Watch show that DHS officials misled Congress and the public about the scope of the immigration enforcement policy change, which gave wide latitude to local immigration officials to dismiss illegal alien deportation cases – including the dismissal of charges against illegal alien criminals convictedof violent crimes. The Obama administration announced last week that it would effectively halt any enforcement actions (on an alleged “case-by-case” basis) against any illegal alien who hasn’t committed any other serious crimes. The administration denied that this was a blanket or categorical amnesty, but these new documents show otherwise.

“These documents show the Obama administration is lying about its stealth amnesty activities and its alarming contempt for Congress and the rule of law. Frankly, these documents show that Obama immigration officials don’t even know what the law is! The Obama administration cannot simply pick and choose which federal immigration laws it will enforce. In its zeal to curry favor with the illegal alien lobby and secure Hispanic votes for a second term, the Obama administration is exercising raw executive power to change the law by granting illegal aliens amnesty in a way that strikes at the heart of our constitutional system and the rule of law. This is a festering constitutional crisis,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Very surprising considering the source…. Obama’s illegal move on immigration

In this regard, the Constitution provides that the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” A century before the Constitution took effect, Britain’s King James II was deposed in no small part because he claimed the right to generally suspend laws enacted by Parliament and to dispense with law in individual cases.

James hoped to benefit his fellow Roman Catholics by issuing a “declaration of indulgence,” suspending operation of the religious penal laws Parliament had enacted against Roman Catholics and non-Anglican Protestants. The opposition in Britain was not merely due to religious bigotry. Acknowledging the power to suspend or dispense with laws, even when used to grant religious tolerance, would fatally warp any balance between executive and legislative authority. A legislature has no power to speak of if the executive can simply decide not to enforce its law. Thus, the suspending and dispensing powers were declared illegal in the English Bill of Rights. Knowing this history, the Framers gave the president no choice but to execute laws passed by Congress. As the Supreme Court stated in the 1838 case Kendall v. United States, the power to dispense with laws enacted by Congress “has no countenance for its support in any part of the constitution.”

Obama has not declared his intent to dispense with immigration law, and the point at which permissible executive enforcement discretion becomes suspension of statutory requirements often is one of degree. In this case, however, there is little question that the line has been crossed. The president is entitled to establish enforcement priorities, but the ultimate goal must always be implementation of the law as enacted by Congress. If the president disagrees with that law, he must persuade Congress to change it.

I’m exactly what’s wrong with Barack Obama’s America

My father used to tell me that if I worked hard, it would pay off in the long run. How could he have been so blind? Laziness pays off now!

We all know that the power to tax is the power to destroy. So too is the power to regulate. Equally powerful is the reality that rewarded behavior is repeated. After applying these inescapable truths to the analysis of Obamanomics, a collection of policies designed to reward or deter (or even outright banish) certain behaviors – to ordain winners and losers – it’s all clear to me now. The reason Obamanomics has been such a miserable failure is that I failed to follow its cues. I hope America will forgive me.

First, despite so many communities lacking a village organizer, I chose instead to serve mine. At the time, the practice of medicine seemed like a noble calling, but little did I realize what a threat physicians pose to communities. Surgeons, President Obama warned, will run around lopping off patients’ feet or yanking out children’s tonsils just to pocket a quick buck. I realize that many of you parents who have unsuccessfully pleaded to your child’s pediatrician for a tonsillectomy will disagree, but who are you to judge? The president doesn’t trust you or your doctor to decide such things. Why else would he appoint as the head of Medicare a man who declared that the doctor-patient relationship is “no longer tenable”?

Another Obamacare fable: No, lack of insurance didn’t kill jobless dad with tooth infection

SolarGate

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Solyndra board members donated at least $27,400 to various Democratic campaigns and organizations. Ben Bierman, executive vice president of operations and engineering for Solyndra, donated $5,500 to Obama’s re-election effort. Karen Alter, senior vice president of marketing, put up $23,000 in 2008.

The ever vigilant Christopher Horner notes in a piece for BigGovernment,com that Solyndra is based in the Fremont, Calif., district of Rep. Pete Stark. When he was chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee’s health subcommittee, Stark played a critical role in squeezing ObamaCare through Congress.

That process, with its Cornhusker Kickback and Louisiana Purchase, also involved the dispensation of favors for political support. Was Solyndra a favor to Stark for his efforts? We still don’t know why and how some 1,700 ObamaCare waivers were granted — 50% to unions representing just 7% of the population.

Green Energy Scandal? Solyndra, Despite Sweetheart Gov’t Loans, Closes Its Doors

No One Could Have Seen It Coming… Except For Those Of Us Who DID

People are shocked and outraged to learn that a “green” company that the Obama administration sent half a billion dollars in “stimulus” funds to has gone bankrupt and forced 1100 employees out of work. Had they started reading the Zilla blog a lot sooner, they would not have been so surprised.

Obama Bundler George Kaiser Made Multiple Visits to White House in Months Prior to $535 Million Loan Guarantee to Solyndra

Oklahoma billionaire investor George Kaiser is one. A longtime Democratic donor, he is a big financial backer of a company that in March of 2009 won a $535 million loan guarantee [19] from DOE for a solar plant in Silicon Valley. He had multiple visits to the White House in the months before he was awarded the contract. Kaiser has not responded to interview requests from iWatch News.

This doesn’t look very good considering it was widely known that Solyndra was in deep economic trouble and had negative cash flows since its inception.

Kaiser says he did not use political influence or talk to administration officials about a massive government loan to Solyndra.

GOP wants White House papers on loan to failed solar company

The Republicans are probing the White House role in the 2009 federal loan guarantee to Solyndra Inc., a California solar panel manufacturing company that ceased operations and is filing for bankruptcy, resulting in 1,100 layoffs.

The shutdown is a bit of an embarrassment for the administration, as the company was the first selected to receive the loan guarantee under a stimulus-backed renewable energy program. President Obama visited the company just more than a year ago to tout White House green energy efforts.

Republican leaders of the Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter to White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler on Thursday seeking records of communication between the White House, Solyndra and its investors — including Democratic fundraiser George Kaiser.

Gibson Guitar’s Official Statement on its Persecution by the Government

As an aside, Gibson is a non-unionized shop while its competitors are largely unionized.

And Gibson’s CEO is a Republican donor while his competitors — who import the exact same wood without complaint from the government — are Democrat contributors.

But I’m sure those are all just coincidences.

Big Tobacco, meet Big Hypocrisy

If the government wanted to save lives, it would invest all that $8.5 billion that the federal government alone takes in from the peddling of tobacco into lung cancer research. This is a battle over the First Amendment. Socialists like Sebelius want to strip the First Amendment rights of corporations away and replace them with government-censored advertising.

This is unAmerican. Naturally Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor would rubber-stamp an Obama administration edict such as this. The liberals are going after the least liked product on Earth to establish this censorship. McDonald’s and Frosted Flakes, you’re next. It’s for the children.

This Week in Government Failure

John Kerry: No Blind Trusts, Tax Avoidance, and Conflicts of Interest

Kerry keeps none of his investments in blind trusts. He and wife Teresa own millions in stocks of companies standing to benefit from legislation Kerry voted for. While they can afford a multi-million dollar yacht, they only paid home-state taxes after exposés ran on their berthing the yacht in tax-free Rhode Island. They earned nearly $5M last year in tax-free income alone, separating them from the economic reality experienced by nearly all Americans.

Since the 12-member super committee is supposed to decide America’s financial future, data like Kerry’s highlight the continuing importance of representative government — especially on the issue of taxation without representation — upon which our founding principles exist.

2012: The Fork in the Road…

No surprise…People do not like people who declare war on them. Obama ratings sink to new lows as hope fades

Obama’s Polling Plummet

If the past is any guide, the president will offer more economic nonsense Thursday night, thickly layered with his trademark passive-aggressive partisanship which is marked by demands that his political opposition give up their principles so he can indulge his ruinous ones –again.

The Gang of 12 could revive the economy and perhaps save the president’s re-election, but that would require the six Democrats to give the GOP the green light to embrace pro-growth policies and entitlement reform.  It is a long shot, but it only takes one of the six Democrats to see what the country already does:  The president is a failure and his policies don’t work.

Insiders: Perry is poison. Poll: Perry 44%, Obama 41%

After a headline like that, do you need to read the story? Of course you do because it is always therapeutic to laugh at the combined wisdom of 185 “Washington insiders” who are just plain wrong.

NBC’s Chuck Todd: “Our Pollsters Are Concerned” With Obama Approval

“Now this has taken a hit on the president politically. 44-percent approve of the job he’s doing, all time low of his presidency. A more important number that our pollsters say is in there is this idea that is this a long-term setback for him or a short-term one? 54-percent said long-term. Our pollsters are concerned. That’s kind of numbers you have when the public starts to give up on a president as a problem solver,” NBC’s Chuck Todd said on the “Nightly News.”

Heartbreak for Obama… It’s no longer Obama-land in the Hamptons

Barack Obama has lost the Hamptons.

That sentence is a fat target for ridicule, I know, since the Hamptons are often reviled as the playground of the ridiculously rich and the promiscuously silly — hardly the working-class Democratic base. As is usually the case, there’s some truth to the stereotype, but enough exceptions to that rule to make the White House pay attention. The Hamptons is where the Democratic energy, money and intellectual firepower of Manhattan goes for R&R. It’s just not another beach.

Over the Labor Day weekend, I went to a number of events in the Hamptons. At all of them, Obama was discussed. At none of them — that’s none — was he defended. That was remarkable. After all, sitting around various lunch and dinner tables were mostly Democrats. Not only that, some of them had been vociferous Obama supporters, giving time and money to his election effort. They were all disillusioned.

Let me call the roll. I am talking about are writers and editors, lawyers and shrinks, Wall Street tycoons and freelance photographers, hedge funders and academics, run-of-the-mill Democrats and Democratic activists. They were all politically sophisticated, and just a year ago some of them were still vociferous Obama supporters. No more.

“It’s Over for Barack Obama,” Part II

People are going to start searching lost-and-found bins trying to find Hillary’s cell phone she’s not answering.

WaPo Hack: “Obama Has Lost the Hamptons! Oh, BTW, Perry Isn’t Electable.”

Cohen claims that disenchantment in the Hamptons, like Matt Taibi’s, stems in part from Obama’s failure to be liberal enough(he cites the ever-repeated Krugman line that the stimulus failed because it didn’t raise the deficit enough), but then he writes that these same unhappy folks would consider voting for Mitt Romney or Jon Huntsman, though not Rick Perry.

Huntsman is definitely to the Left of Perry. But Huntsman isn’t to the Left of the President and neither is Romney. It’s amusing that in the midst of his own personal freak-out over Obama’s disillusioned followers, Cohen feels the need to drop in the DNC’s continuing attempt to paint Huntsman and Romney as electable and Perry as not. A fine example of Democratic intellectual firepower this is not.

President Zero Strikes Again… Obama Has Higher Unfavorable Rating Than Republican Leaders in Congress

Memo to Dems: Dump Obama before it’s too late

Where to begin? For starters, Obama has no true constituency. Stephen Moore, writing in The Wall Street Journal, claimed last week that “the increasingly frustrated left” concedes the president has “a virtual lock on the crucial black vote.” But top black leaders feel ignored at best and betrayed at worst — and they’ve said so at their own town hall series.

No one wants to admit that the president’s white and African heritage — non-African-American, that is — matters. It mattered when he parlayed it as a candidate into a successful-feeling act of racial transcendence and healing. It matters now as we strain to understand his inability to connect at a gut political level with black America.

Obama is not really a product of the black experience. He is not really a product of the white experience. An optimist would say he is a product of the American experience, but the emotionally neutral judgment is that — politically, at a minimum — he is a man from nowhere.

And as often happens with presidents at momentous times, his character has colored his country. Increasingly, America seems like it is going nowhere. Increasingly, America seems like nowhere. Much of this is a consequence of the brittleness, drift and rot of our most powerful institutions. But the significant part that matters to Obama is the result of Obama himself — his attitude, his words and the style and substance of his response as a president to this protracted crisis.

Plotting how to deny Obama re-nomination

As Democrats awaken to the fact that President Obama is taking their Party down the path to oblivion, stalwart liberals such as Maureen Dowd are thinking one term. Some leftists even are openly plotting how to deny him re-nomination.

Wasserman Schultz and DNC Unveil New (Weak-Looking) Convention Logo (Updated)

So long hope and change.

The DNC unveiled their new logo for the 2012 convention yesterday. It sort of has that old Soviet feel to it, huh?

The Big Setup

Get ready for the nastiest political campaign season you’ve ever seen. From the people who brought you hope and change.

The Mythical President

Obama’s career has always been based on other people’s fantasies. As reality dawns on the once true believers, the sun sets on the Obama administration.

Great News: Liberals Plan To Run Against Religion In 2012

The only question that remains is whether they’ll focus on the bitters or the clingers.

I guess this means no more media manufactured halo pictures of St. Barack, right?

The slandering of the American conservative movement has begun

Let’s imagine for a moment that Bachmann and Perry are Dominionists. Compare that wild and crazy faith with those held by two Democrats. Hank Johnson is the congressman from DeKalb County in Georgia and he’s a Buddhist. Specifically, he’s a follower of Daishonin Buddhism. Adherents gather regularly in large groups to sit cross-legged and chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo at a portable shrine. The idea is that if they say these divine words while visualising their deepest desires, they’ll get what they’ve always wanted. Like evolution, it’s just a theory – but it’s much, much more cool.

Harry Reid, leader of the Senate Democrats, is a Mormon. Many readers probably won’t know that because the mainstream media oddly doesn’t talk about it. It’s okay to call Mitt Romney a polytheist with twelve wives, but Reid is untouchable because he’s a Democrat. And yet it’s reasonable to theorise that the leader of the Senate wears the magic underwear associated with Mormonism. Is his belief that Jesus walked on American soil, anti-science? Geographers and historians would probably object.

Democratic presidential candidates regularly visit black churches, Nancy Pelosi has invoked her Catholicism so many times you might think she was a nun, and Barack Obama was married by a pastor who actively hates America. Yet Krugman suggests that only the GOP uses and abuses religion every election. More sickening is the innuendo that there is a uniquely violent subtext to conservative faith, as if every Right-winger wants to shoot an abortionist. There is no comparison between fundamentalist Islam and Dominionism: one kills and the other doesn’t. The conflation of the two is ugly and deceitful.

Can a president truly become irrelevant?

And has Barack Obama already achieved that dubious distinction?

If You Were in Obama’s Shoes, Wouldn’t You Be Worried?

Yup. That’s what gets the president outraged. Not the “Fast and Furious” scandal, not Bashir Assad continuing to mow down people in Syria, not the number of Americans on food stamps, not the Gibson guitar raid, not waste in the stimulus bill, not the loss of $500 million or so in that Solyndra… no, having to compromise on speech timing is what really grinds his gears.

Primitive Politics: Is the Problem with the Economy that Obama is a Beta Male?

Before you complain too loudly about this kind of analysis, consider that charisma and a kind of rock star status played a big role in Obama’s ride to the White House. It’s pretty hard to feel sorry for him now when he has benefited so tremendously from this sort of visceral politics in the past. Those who live by the sword…

Anti-Obama Signs: The Maine Edition

Because it’s worked so well for him so far

The Demonizer-in-Chief has been demonizing for years.  Obama’s minions have been falsely accusing the Tea Party movement of racism and violence for years.  His party has developed the Strategy of Crazy.

Keep it up champ, because it’s worked so well for you so far.

Do Blacks Realize They’ve Been Played By Obama ?

It’s quite simple, really. There’s an election coming up. Obama needed to pander for votes to those Hispanics who favor amnestia rather than concern himself about black unemployment, because he figures that he can take the black vote for granted no matter what…especially with shills like AL Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, much of the Congressional Black Caucus and Obama’s pals in the media pushing the narrative that ‘the racist Tea Party did it’.

They cynically figure that enough black voters are stupid enough to believe it. And politicians like Laura Richardson and Maxine Waters, safely hunkered down in racially gerrymandered districts are more than happy to pimp the unwary. It’s worked for years, and they’ve done pretty well out of it. Call it a new form of parasitic slavery, refined and brought up to date for the 21st century.

Rep. Allen West, the only Republican member of the Congressional Black Caucus put this clearly when he advised his fellow blacks that it was time to “get off the plantation” and start voting their interests and referred to Jesse Jackson as an ‘overseer.’

Is Barack Obama dumb?

Last night I was at a meeting when someone asked what I thought of Rick Perry. Then a long time friend of mine declared that Perry is dumb and then went on to say that we could not elect another Texan. I asked him if we should eliminate all people from Illinois from the race too. No reply. I then asked him how a dumb person created so many more jobs in Texas than the President created in the whole country. He laughed hysterically saying that they were all oil jobs. Apparently it never occurred to him that the President could have created oil jobs all over the country if he hadn’t decided to violate a federal order to stop regulating the hell out of them.

We then returned to the ‘dumb’ remark. I asked him why President Obama refused to release his grades from college and law school. He said no one else ever released their grades. I reminded him that President Bush’s grades were better than candidate Kerry’s grades which he refused to release until after he lost the election, all while campaigning on how smart he was.

Next my friend told me that the Tea party is racist. I reminded him that I am the founder of the Sturbridge tea party. He responded that he was talking about the “national tea party”. I let him know there is no “national tea party”. Next I asked him where he read that the tea party is racist. He replied “The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.” The reason we are racist: the tea party wants to see Obama’s grades.

Romney Proves Delusions Aren’t Just For Democrats

You know, I’d have more respect for him if he’d repudiate his piece of crap healthcare law. But noooo, he doubles triples down on it.

Mitt Romney, trying to turn a political lemon into lemonade, predicted that his record of enacting a controversial Massachusetts health care law would be “one of my biggest assets” in a campaign debate against President Obama.

Right, Mitt. It’s such a phenomenal success.

Oh, wait. It’s not.

If You Like Obama’s Economic Team, You’ll Love Romney’s…

ust when you thought Keynesian economics was finally dead among Republicans, Mitt Romney announcestwo prominent New Keynesian academics, Greg Mankiw and Glenn Hubbard, as the heart of his economic team.  So if you loved how Obama has managed to continue the flawed economics of the Bush administration*, you’ll feel pretty safe with Romney.

Sadly the real problem goes beyond Romney and Obama.  The financial crisis and the government’s response to it illustrate the failure of much of mainstream macroeconomics.  Yes, the Romney team would have had its stimulus proposal tilted more toward temporary tax cuts, but it still would have made efforts at government fine-tuning of the economy.  In the grand scheme of things, there is not a dime’s worth of difference between Mankiw, Bernanke, and Romer.

Bachmann: Why do we need a Department of Education, anyway?

This all brings me back to why I love Bachmann as a presidential candidate (if not necessarily as the GOP nominee or actual president): She says what needs to be said to move the public dialogue in a productive direction. Sometimes, she does that by simply speaking truth. Sometimes, as now, she does it by offering up views that can then be debated, discussed, shaped and molded into a more palatable — yet-ever-so-slightly-more-conservative — position in the immediate term — while leaving the possibility of her so-called “extreme” solutions open in the long term.

That Perry sure acts like a leader, says … the Washington Post?

Rick Perry’s decision to head back to Texas to deal with wildfires across his state may have annoyed the organizers of a conference in South Carolina, but it left an impression with some media outlets.  As Jim Geraghty notes, the Washington Post isn’t too likely to give Perry many friendly headlines, but the Texas governor has to like this one — “Rick Perry’s response to Texas wildfires offers glimpse of leadership“:

With wildfires raging across his state, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) assumed a familiar role this week: crisis commander in chief.

His abrupt decision this week to cut short his presidential campaign schedule in South Carolina to oversee his state’s response to the fires offers a glimpse of a central aspect of his leadership style — and a look at what kind of president he would be.

Since Perry took office in 2001, four hurricanes have made direct landfall in Texas. Another, Rita, came by way of Louisiana and caused more than $11 billion in damage. And then there was Katrina, which plowed into New Orleans in August 2005 and pushed hundreds of thousands of evacuees into the arms of Texas.

So what kind of president would Perry make, as demonstrated by his crisis-management experience?

There is perhaps no greater illustration of Perry’s leadership in crisis than his oversight of Texas’s response to Katrina. He took pains to declare the state open to those who would need shelter from the storm, and he toured the Astrodomein Houston to check in with displaced families. And long before the storm struck, cities and counties and state emergency officials had begun preparing to receive evacuees from the Gulf Coast. In the end, the state took in hundreds of thousands of evacuees, found permanent housing for thousands of them, helped with job placement and enrolled children in schools. …

“One of his secrets is he picks really good people and lets them do their job,” said Robert A. Eckels, a Houston lawyer and former county judge who used to lead the county’s emergency response and helped coordinate the sheltering of 250,000 Katrina evacuees from neighboring Louisiana. “People look to the leadership style of a president. He’s going to set the tone and bring in good people and expect them to do their jobs well, and when they don’t, someone else will fill the hole. That’s the kind of leadership style we’ve seen in Texas and you’d see in America under Rick Perry.”

AP MISLEADS READERS ON RICK PERRY: Cherry-Picks His Statement on Border Security & Lies About Audience Reaction

Awful. Just Awful.

But not surprising. The corrupt media will do anything ANYTHING to assist failed President Barack Obama, the worst jobs president since the Great Depression, in his re-election campaign next year.

And, the state-run media is TERRIFIED of Governor Rick Perry from Texas.

*snip*

The AP deleted the part of Perry’s speech that including using “strategic fencing” and National Guard troops on the border.

Anyone who generates as much fear out of the radical left, lawyers, the Democrats (but I repeat myself), union thugs, the race/ethnic ‘warriors’, the MSM and the ‘cocktail party’ of the inside the beltway Republicans ‘insiders’ indicates to me that this is the guy who needs to be President. Why? Because their screeching is indicative that they know that if this person is elected it is the end for all of them and everything that goes along with them. To put it simply these people are the big turds in the government toilet bowl and they are all afraid they are going to get flushed. If America is going to survive that toilet bowl needs to be flushed… Rove Continues Attacks on Perry: Says His Social Security Views Are “Toxic” …(Perry Correctly Says Social Security Is Ponzi Scheme)

Two weeks ago Karl Rove repeated the smear on The Factor that Governor Rick Perryaccused the Federal Reserve Board Chairman of a treason that was punishable by death.

What Rick Perry actually said was that Bernanke “almost committed treason” while discussing the Fed’s money printing Quantitative Easing policy. He never accused Bernanke of treason. But, Rove and the state-run media pounced on the comment anyway.

Calculated Risk

I fail to see how Romney can effectively criticize Obamacare with the Romneycare albatross ’round his neck. I’m willing to take a calculated risk rather than end up with Obama-lite. Romney may be capable of revving the economic engine again, but at what expense? More regulation? More “compromise” with liberals?

No thanks.

The Great Debater

But Kinky Friedman, another former Perry foe who’s recently warmed up to the governor, argues his colloquial speaking style will serve him well at the debate and at Sen. Jim DeMint’s presidential forum on September 5. “He’s genuinely a good sport, and he’s had to handle a lot of slings and arrows in the past, many of which were hurled by me, which he’s done very gracefully.”

Ultimately, Friedman contends, “Unless he resorts to speaking in tongues, I predict Perry wins the debate.”

Texas for Dummies: U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis Doesn’t Know Texas Has Largest Job Growth in U.S. But She Is Sure Texas Has Low Pay, Dangerous Work Conditions and a Lousy Education System

Here are some “inconvenient truths” that ol’ Hilda might want to brush up on before opening her pie hole…

So, about those five amazing facts. Here they are:

  1. Over the past five years, Texas has added 275% more net new jobs than all other job-adding states combined.
  2. Since 2006, Texas has added well over 100 times more net new jobs than New York has added.
  3. Texas is where 537,500, or 73.4%, of America’s net new jobs have been created over the past five years; this figure is nearly ten times greater than the second place Louisiana (55,900, or 7.6% of America’s total).
  4. Since the recession “ended” in 2009, Texas has added exactly as many net new jobs as the rest of America combined.
  5. Texas accounts for only about 8% of the nation’s population but 16.5% of U.S. exports.

Assessing the Palin Nation

It is anyone’s guess as to whether or not Palin announces a run for the presidency.  But it is clear that the decision is all hers.  Yes, she needs to have the fundamentals in place in Iowa, and nationwide, to move forward with a Presidential run.  But, as Robinson and Bila point out, she has made a case – and has politically differentiated herself from the field.  If she should decide, Iowa, and Palin Nation, will follow. They will campaign relentlessly.  They will fundraise constantly.  They will stand in the rain, in the blazing sun, in the bitter cold.  They will make Obama supporters of ’08 look like chumps compared to the work they are willing to do.  Palin Nation, from every indication, will not rest until their Grizzly is in the White Den.  It is an authentic intangible that no other candidate, including President Obama, can engage.  And it may make all the difference.

Enough

As Ann Coulter said, “Fish or cut bait.” Governor Palin has teased us long enough. Most of us are tired of it. She has harmed her own entry into the race and now, even if she got in, would only see a modest rise in polling.

There are many still who are ready to get involved, are sitting on the sidelines, and are growing impatient for Sarah Palin to tell us what she’s doing. There are others who are going to have to be deprogrammed.

I’m tired of the tease. But I’m even more tired of the angry cranks and Palin prophets who swear to know her every move and have shown neither ideological nor political moorings in anything other than their hopes and wishes poured into the vessel of their ambition named L. Ron Hubbard Sarah Palin. That’s exactly what many lefties did with Barack Obama. Like Barack Obama, Sarah Palin is just a mortal politician, just a human of the same sinful flesh as the rest of us passing through this place on her way to eternity just like you and me.

Has Sarah Palin Worn Out Her GOP Presidential Welcome?

Her time for jumping in was back during the Spring. We’re now in September, and Palin is still playing the game, leaving her supporters hung out to dry, hence the Fox News poll mentioned above. It was fun watching her play the media like a violin, but, alas, it has ended up hurting her chances. Consider Mitt Romney: you knew from the moment the 2008 elections were over that Mitt was planning to run in 2012. What’s Palin doing? Anybody? In politics, timing is everything. Personally, I think she’s waited too damned long.

Shock: left-wing Democrat campaign treasurer arrested by FBI

…Durkee also oversaw the political-action committees of the Democratic Party of Orange County and the Democratic Foundation of Orange County, among others… Durkee and Associates says on its website: “Since 1972 we have worked for 5 presidential campaigns, 4 gubernatorial campaigns, numerous senate, congressional, state and local candidates, initiatives, political action committees and many non-profit associates and small businesses.”

Durkee has had enforcement actions taken against her four times by the state Fair Political Practices Commission, primarily for failing to report transactions or information. She has also received at least a half a dozen enforcement warning letters from the commission and stipulated to a violation before the City of San Diego Ethics Commission.

Isn’t this the fiscally responsible Democrat Party in microcosm? Despite repeated reporting and ethics violations, the menagerie of left wing kooks continued using Durkee to handle their money.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of Marxists progressives.

Gunwalker/Fast & Furious/Castaway

Gunwalker Explodes into the Heartland

The biggest difference between the two operations at this early date only seems to be that Gangwalker is a purposeful attempt to create the deaths of American citizens in order to pursue the administration’s fanatical anti-gun agenda.

American deaths, for political gain.

Think about that claim for a minute, and what that would mean.

Operation Fast and Furious (and the suspected operations in Texas and Florida) was reprehensible and more than likely calculated to raise the level of violence in Mexico, sacrificing the lives of law enforcement officers, soldiers, and civilians in order to pursue a policy goal. It wasn’t until an American agent died that whistleblowers finally arose and cried out. It was as if Mexican lives meant less than American lives … and in this sick political calculus, maybe that was exactly the mindset.

But if Gangwalker is what it appears to be, then we are staring down a president, attorney general, secretary of Homeland Security, and key members of the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security gone entirely rogue.

Codrea Exclusive: “Project Gangwalker?” More gunwalking — in INDIANA! FBI manipulated NICS system in favor of felons, AGAIN! What did Traver know?

Fact is, if the the ATF was worried about “crime gun traces,” they WERE in fact actually delivered to the gangs.

Fact is, the principal market for straw-purchased weapons in Indiana is Chicago.

Fact is, Andrew Traver, Obama buddy and still declared heir-apparent to the ATF mini-throne would have known about any such gunwalking operation involving his area of operations. He would have had to have been briefed.

ATF Death Watch 73: Phoenix U.S. Attorney’s Office Implodes Over Gunwalker

Three Fall Guys Won’t Make Fast and Furious Go Away

Folks, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out something isn’t right here.  Even CBS News is starting to talk about the coverups involved with this operation.

This is all one big mess.  It’s a tangled web of death, law infractions and destruction that only gets uglier the more one looks into it.  And to make matters worse, the three people who appear to be taking the fall for the operation—Melson, Burke and Hurley—aren’t even facing criminal charges.

I bet there are a lot of people serving time in prison for far less serious gun-related crimes who wish they’d been able to resign or be reassigned instead of going to the big house.

Botched U.S. Gun Smuggling Operation Let Grenades, IEDs ‘Walk’ Into Mexico

Kingery, who was arrested and released in June 2010, confessed to manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) using grenade components from the U.S. He also admitted to helping the cartel convert semi-automatic rifles into machine guns. Mexican criminal organizations are increasingly using these military-style weapons as the cartels’ escalate their wars against the government and one another.

Despite Kingery’s confession, and over loud protestations from the arresting ATF officers, the U.S. Attorney’s office let Kingery go within hours of his arrest.

Kingery’s release is now the subject of an internal probe by the DOJ inspector general. The findings in the DOJ probe were a major catalyst in the recent staff shakeup that ousted Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennie Burke and Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson from their posts.

The Phoenix U.S. Attorney’s office denies that it declined to prosecute the case, saying that it wanted to continue surveillance. The office alternatively told investigators that ATF agents wanted to make Kingery an informant, but lost contact with him within weeks of his release.

Prosecutors involved in the case also accuse ATF agents of devising a failed sting that allowed Kingery to take hundreds of grenade parts across the border in the months about six months prior to his arrest.

Obama Scandal Update — “You Realize, Of Course, That This Means War”

The problems in this grand scheme were multitude. The first one was, there was no mechanism to track the guns. They went off with their straw buyers and promptly disappeared — usually not found until they were abandoned by Mexican drug cartel gunners at crime scenes. Remember that when someone talks about this as a “sting” — there was NO plan to actually track the guns.
The second flaw was that no one seemed to notice — or care — that a key element of the plan involved the United States government actively supplying weapons — very nice weapons — to groups that are actively trying to overthrow the Mexican government, without the Mexican government’s knowledge or consent. This is what is known as “an act of war.”

The Obama apologists — when they even bother to acknowledge this growing scandal — don’t like to mention that. And when they do, the emphasize that it was strictly a BATF scandal, that no one outside that one agency has been implicated. They don’t like to talk about how other agencies within the Justice Department were briefed on — at least — the whole stupid mess. And they really don’t like it when you ask awkward questions like “who within the BATF would feel comfortable authorizing an act of war against a neighboring, friendly nation?”

One final point: remember that this whole idiocy began at about the same time the Obama administration started touting just how many Mexican drug cartel guns were of US origin. The original statistics cited — “90% of all guns came from the US” — has been thoroughly debunked, as it turned out to be “90% of all the guns that Mexico thinks came from the US and asked us to check, which actually represented less than 20% of the total guns Mexico seized from the cartels.”

Fast and Furious update: Yes, the White House got e-mails

The three officials who were briefed: Kevin M. O’Reilly, director of North American Affairs for the White House national security staff; Dan Restrepo, the president’s senior Latin American advisor; and Greg Gatjanis, a White House national security official.

The Team Obama talking point: Turn around and blame Congress…

“The emails validate what has been said previously, which is no one at the White House knew about the investigative tactics being used in the operation, let alone any decision to let guns walk,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. “To the extent that some [national security staff members] were briefed on the top lines of ongoing federal efforts, so were members of Congress.”

Like I said earlier this week: Screw up, move up, cover up. It’s the Holder way, the Obama way, the Washington way. And innocent Americans pay.

Gunwalker: Details of Coverup Revealed

Emails reveal attempts to hide that Gunwalker guns were present at Brian Terry’s murder — within hours of Terry’s death.

Hugh Hewitt interviews Rep. Issa: House Gov’t Oversight & Investigations Chairman Darrell Issa on the growing Fast and Furious scandal

Issa, Grassley make good on promise to expand “Fast & Furious” investigation

If AG Eric Holder seriously thought shuffling the players would shush the investigation, he should think again. Issa and Grassley won’t let up until they understand why anyone ever thought it was a good idea to allow straw purchasers to buy illegal weapons, knowing full well that the weapons would end up in the hands of Mexican drug lords and that ATF’s ability to track the weapons would be minimal-to-nonexistent. That AUSA Hurley apparently made it unnecessarily difficult for ATF officials who tried to interdict the weapons to do that job is even more mystifying and rightly investigated at greater length. Go Team Issa-Grassley, go!

Fast & Furious coverup in Arizona.

And now you know why Dennis Burke resigned (and why ATF whistleblower Kenneth Melson was abruptly transferred a few days ago). And why House Oversight Chair Darrell Issa and Senate Judiciary Ranking Member (for now) Chuck Grassley have promptly expanded their investigation to include the Arizona District’s US Attorney’s office. And why questions are being asked about why Burke refused a routine request to designate the family of slain Agent Terry as being crime victims. And why questions are being asked in general, in fact. Questions like “Who authorized this program?” “What was the true oversight chain?” “Who in the White House knew the most about this program?”

No, the answer to that last one is not “Nobody in the White House knew anything about this program.” It’s just come out that the level of communication about Fast & Furious that took place between former ATF Phoenix field office head William Newell and White House national security regional director Kevin O’Reilly was deeper than Newell originally reported. While not a true smoking gun, it does indicate that early assurances that the administration was not involved in this debacle are at best unsupported…

Look for the Union Label/Whackademia/The Badger Rebellion:

Pittsburgh Labor Unions Turn Monday Parade Into Obama-Supporting ‘March for Labor,’ Exclude ‘Hostile’ Pols

In late July, in a move with some similarities to what yours truly has noted in Wausau, Wis. this week (here, here, and here), the Allegheny County Labor Council of the AFL-CIO in Pittsburgh declined to allow the Steel City’s lone Republican candidate for City Council the ability to march in its Labor Day parade.

The differences between Wausau and Pittsburgh are that: a) being picky about who can march is a Pittsburgh parade tradition; b) the Labor Council dubiously claims that it underwrites the event (the city of Wausau has always paid for theirs); c) The Pittsburgh parade has since morphed into a highly partisan “March for Jobs.”

Remember that it is not racism if union thugs do it… Carpenters slam Jay-Z for using nonunion labor at 40/40 club, shout racial slurs: management

Happy Labor Day: Top 10 union thug moments of the year

As the MSM whitewashes Big Labor’s ugly threats, Tea Party smears, and history of coerced dues-subsidized racketeering this Labor Day, what better way to mark the holiday than with an illustrated list of top 10 union thug moments of the year.

Labor Day & The Union Tax: How Unions Kill Jobs

The Labor Day holiday is always a time for union bosses and the media to reflect on the role that unions play in society. Not surprisingly, with a mere 11.9% of America’s workers unionized today (6.9% in the private sector), between the unionized media and press releases issued by union communications departments, the majority of stories about Labor Day center on what used to be or the current ills ailing the moribund labor movement.

Shocker: GM, Chryler owner UAW leans toward Ford strike, “GM, Chrysler emerging as favorites to finish UAW contract talks first”

How exactly is this not racketeering? Obama gave the UAW a big chunk of ownership in GM and Chrysler at taxpayer expense, and now that same UAW is muscling GM and Chrysler competitor Ford Motor Company

Biden To Spend Labor Day Kissing Ring Of Top AFL-CIO Thug Richard Trumka…

Good Grief… Lib Wisconsin Justice Reportedly Assaulted Another Justice in 2008

The crazy liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice who rushed Justice Prosser has a record of physical abuse.

Public Sector Union Perks

The fight over teacher union collective bargaining isn’t “for the children.” It’s about money and political power. Nothing wrong with either, but nothing wrong with laws and regulations protecting the public. Progressives often say that–when they’re not gluing shut school doors or dis-inviting Republicans to their parades.

Political Science Academics Declare Tea Party Members Racist…

The race card is the last refuge of liberal scoundrels.

In Other News…

For Those Who Don’t Know What Racism Is

For the edification of trolls who bullyingly accuse the regulars at Moonbattery.com of “racism,” this is what actual racism looks like

Friend of NFL player found at bottom of pool the morning after drunken Labor Day weekend ‘ninja mask, cowboy boots and Speedo party’

Bob Turner, Seeking to Replace Anthony Weiner, Secures Endorsements of Giuliani, Koch, and… The New York Daily News

Interestingly, Turner says “this is the most irresponsible, ridiculous government that I have ever seen,” to applause (from about half the room).

Bear in mind, this is New York City. Not the most liberal part of New York City, but this is the blue of the blue. And he’s getting applause attacking a Democratic president.

40 shot in NYC last weekend thanks to draconian gun control laws and law-abiding CCW holders, but mostly draconian gun control laws

An outbreak of shootings across New York City over Labor Day weekend – including three at the annual West Indian Day parade in Brooklyn – has left more than 40 people injured and five dead.

The first shooting took place at 6 a.m. Saturday, when a 35-year-old woman was shot and wounded on the corner of Saratoga Ave. and Newport St. in Brooklyn. During the next 24 hours, 23 more people were shot in 13 separate incidents, according to the New York Daily News.

Eight people were shot at a backyard party in the Bronx neighborhood of Williamsbridge on Sunday around 3:30 a.m, the New York Times reports. The wounded included an 11-year-old boy and two girls, ages 13 and 14. Police suspected a 17-year-old was the shooter, and they were looking for him.

Four men were shot at a barbecue in Brooklyn’s East Flatbush neighborhood early Monday morning, NBC News reports. One of the victims, 17-year-old Tyrief Gary, died.

But… but… but… handguns are banned in New York City! How can this be?

The true costs of Obamacare about to hit Wisconsin

Defenders of the law might note that more than half—about 57 percent—of those who get their insurance through the individual market will benefit from the law’s generous health insurance subsidies. But even discounting the enormous public cost of financing those subsidies (which account for roughly half of the law’s $950 billion price tag over the next decade), it’s still not much consolation for the majority of individual market enrollees.

That’s because more than half the individual market will still end up paying more: “After the application of tax subsidies,” the report projects, “59 percent of the individual market will experience an average premium increase of 31 percent.”

And over half of small businesses are going to see their premiums rise as a result of the law. I wonder how many of those businesses will give up their coverage for their employees and throw them onto the state services.

Gee, you might say, that’s not what Obama and the Democrats promised us. Remember all those promises that Obama made about how nothing would change for those of us who are happy with our coverage.

Never mind.

Vermont Enviro’s Love Wind Power, Just Not In Vermont

So, you’re no longer for them, Annette? In fact, she tells us that wind turbines

a) collapse, catch fire, throw ice, throw blades,
b) kill birds like raptors, and endangered bats
c) require cutting bear-scarred beech trees and fragmenting wildlife habitat
d) destroy songbird habitat
e) require hundreds of thousands of pounds of explosives to blast miles of new roads
f) require impervious road construction on highly erodible soils
g) require filling headwater streams and degrading water quality, resulting in fewer fish
h) make noise extending over a mile that can interrupt sleep and make people sick
i) are being permitted less than 200 feet from property lines
j) have blinking lights and industrialize the landscape
k) divide communities; turn neighbors, family members and towns against each other and more, with issues unique to ridgeline development in Vermont.

Annette goes on to tell us “the prudent thing to do is stop, look and listen.” And she has plenty of questions about building wind turbines, especially in HER state. The greenie weenies always advocate for this type of energy, but, as soon as someone actually wants to build it…..

Master Resource points out that much of the turbines are toxic, use rare earths, must have huge concrete plugs, and require deforestation.

The Golden State Is Crumbling

What has happened to my adopted home state of over last decade is a tragedy, both for Californians and for America. For most of the past century, California has been “golden” not only in name but in every kind of superlative—a global leader in agriculture, energy, entertainment, technology, and most important of all, human aspiration.

In its modern origins California was paean to progress in the best sense of the word. In 1872, the second president of the University of California, Daniel Coit Gilman, said science was “the mother of California.” Today, California may worship at the altar of science, but increasingly in the most regressive, hysterical, and reactionary way.

California’s dominant ruling class—consisting of public-employee unions, green jihadis, and Democratic machine politicians—has no real use for science as Gilman saw it: as a way to create prosperity for its citizens. Instead, the prevailing credo of the state has been how to do everything possible to return to its pre-settlement condition, with little regard for what that means to the average Californian.

No Paper Or Plastic? LA Shoppers Wary Of Proposed ‘Nightmare’ Ban

Years Later, Land Seized in Kelo Decision Used for Debris Dump

In 2005, Kelo v. City of New Londonmade eminent domain infamous. The widely reviled Supreme Court ruling gave the go ahead for the city of New London to use eminent domain for taking private property in order that it be given to a private company for “economic development.”

The public response was one of outrage. Facing the potential wrath of voters,  politicians across the country moved to add new protections against such abusive seizures. But that wasn’t enough to save the homes of the folks in New London, whose property never would be developed. Pfizer, the intended beneficiary of the land theft, walked away years ago from their development plans.

Now, to add new insult to injury, the vacant lot is a dump. Literally.

Illinois Unions Vow to Sue Basic Arithmetic

The cuts are coming in the face of a budget deficit that doesn’t leave enough money to pay the workers, the governor says. Quinn also plans to close a prison, juvenile detention center and homes for the mentally ill.

If no cuts are made, several agencies will run out of money by spring, Quinn says…

The state’s largest government employee union, AFSCME, promises to sue if the layoffs are made, much like they did over blocked pay raises…

Why don’t the unions just sue the laws of physics? Or basic arithmetic principles?

Because even if the unions somehow forced the state government to raise taxes to 90%, it still wouldn’t be enough to pay for all of their bloated public sector salaries, benefits, pensions and retiree health care programs.

Which is why, I suppose, Mark Levin says that “liberalism is the philosophy of the stupid.”

Walter Russell Mead: Rhode Island Pension System Collapsing

The only problem is that the state could never afford the beautiful utopia it was crafting, and so politicians and union leaders chose the path of systemic deceit.  Taxpayers weren’t told what the bill for the system would be; public service workers weren’t told that the pension guarantees they’d been sold were worthless because taxpayers would not and could not foot the bill.

An economic crisis is nature’s revenge on those who make and those who accept false promises; it is a holocaust of lies when the dross is burned away and only what is real and true remains. Think of cotton candy melting and charring in the flame of a blowtorch; that is what is happening to the secure retirements that “caring” blue politicians and “committed” blue union leaders promised gullible state workers.

Rhode Island leads the way (into the fiscal abyss)

I know what will solve the problem, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) should give another speech lashing out at the Tea Party movement.

Tax Dollars Used to Open DC Strip Club

Is Greely Colorado full of Damned Anti-American Idiots or what?

What in the sam hell is wrong with you people?

Right before 9-11-11 you allow your school system, an elementary school, to raise the flag of the nation which has supported the killing of more Americans via financial and in the case of 9-11 actual citizens than any other on earth next to Pakistan? Apparently Greeley has been overrun by Islmofacists, terminally stupid people, or worse, the radicals of the Marxist elitist left who have destroyed every aspect of our nation’s Constitution with every opportunity they get.

What’s next Colorado? Honoring Pancho Villa for killing Americans in New Mexico? I know, why not raise the Rising Sun flag over ours so you can honor the Japanese scientists who killed our POW’s during WWII with anthrax and biological warfare experiments.

Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man?

Knowing what it is pedophiles actually do is the reason there are severe restrictions on their movements, on where they live and where they may walk among the rest of society.  Such perversions have so distorted their souls that the likelihood of cure is quite low while the reversion to their vile practices remains quite high.  That is because, as Lewis remarked, “perversions of the sex instinct are numerous, hard to cure, and frightful.

This is a point to remember when you think about other efforts to mainstream behaviors that traditional Judeo-Christian societies frowned upon.  Rather than being less open-minded than we are, those societies might merely have been less innocent.  As the oh-so-sophisticated post-Edwardians said, “Victorians have minds like kitchen sinks.”  It was true, too, because the tightly constrained Victorian era was a response to the unrestrained licentiousness that characterized large segments of late 18th and early 19th century British culture.

Bloody holiday: New York’s Labor Day weekend marked by 24 shootings in 24 hours

Michigan Governor Signs Midwest’s Toughest Welfare Time Limit Into Law

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican, signed the the Midwest’s toughest welfare time limit into law yesterday. The law establishes a four-year lifetime limit on cash welfare benefits.

Los Angeles Unified School District Defers to Union on Public School Choice

So, what’s really going on here? RiShawn Biddle at the Dropout Nation blog argues the board has just handed the teachers union a huge victory, and the decision “simply proves that the district is better at talking about change than actually doing it.”

Biddle notes that, “All but 11 of the 51 schools spun out by L.A. Unified in the past two years have been handed over to groups led by [union] rank-and-file. Given that the [union] now controls the majority of seats on the district’s board after four years of control by a group backed by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, this was also predictable.”

The board supposedly made the policy changes contingent on future contract concessions from the United Teachers of Los Angeles. Nothing is guaranteed, but district Superintendent John Deasy says he wants to implement a teacher evaluation system that factors in student achievement, something the union has generally opposed. Deasy also wants tenure reforms and would like to experiment with some sort of merit pay system.

The Ghost of Obamacare yet to come:

The father, aged 56, said: ‘We have tried very hard to do everything that was asked of us. My wife has cooked healthy foods like home-made spaghetti bolognese and mince and potatoes; we’ve cut out snacks and only ever allowed the kids sweets on a Saturday. But nothing we’ve done has ever been enough.

‘The pressure of living in the family unit would have broken anyone. We were being treated like children and cut off from the outside world. To have a social worker stand and watch you eat is intolerable. I want other families to know what can happen once social workers become involved. We will fight them to the end to get our beloved children back.’

So the children will be confiscated, and the parents will probably never see them again, despite not having committed any crime.

This intolerable tyranny is justified by official statistics claiming that people who are overweight are a burden on the socialized healthcare system.

While it’s still conceivable that we might repeal ObamaCare, we need to ask ourselves: are we willing to live in a country like Britain has become, or are we still Americans?

No place like home: How millions of American families are now living in long-stay budget motels

Facebook page hijacking locks out original admins [VIDEO]

MSM Circus and Celebutard Side Show:

Politico Blames Republicans for ‘Politics’ at Hoffa-Obama ‘Sons Of Bitches’ Rally (UPDATED)

Obama’s speech was political before he delivered it. In a “Labor Day Statement” released earlier Monday, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said, “While the President champions regulations, mandates and tax hikes, Republicans across the country have stood up for American workers by supporting pro-growth initiatives.”

Not to be outdone, Media Matters for America claimed that FOX News “doctored” Hoffa’s speech. FOX did nothing of the sort–as Media Matters’s own post reveals. Yet Media Matters objects to the entirely reasonable interpretation, given the violent historyin which some union leaders take pride, that Hoffa’s language was not just vitriolic but violent.

Media Matters–creators of the “selective editing” meme–also “selectively edited” the text of Hoffa’s remarks to remove his references to “war.”

Of course, Media Matters exists to “correct” opinions, not facts. Today, at least, Politico “fixed” the facts for them.

UPDATE: Politico has now covered Hoffa’s remarks separately. How Republicans are responsible for Obama’s hyper-partisan accusations remains a mystery.

Why The Bias Matters

Having written hundreds of times on media bias over the last 15 years, and believing the country is ill-served by gatekeepers who let their politics affect their news coverage, we’re pleased to see Groseclose comment as we have that the press is seen as the “fourth branch of government.”

“But if the actual three branches were as unrepresentative of the people as the press is,” he says, it would bring about a “revolution.” “A government that unrepresentative … cannot remain stable.”

Media Silent as Audience Instructed to Applaud Obama

Oddly enough, they were strangely silent when President Obama not only didn’t receive applause (possibly from a mixed audience of military and civilians) but took it one step further than George Bush by having an applause that didn’t spur from following the applause of others, but actually only materialized when, from the stage, someone requested of the audience to do so.

I anxiously await the naysayers to discuss military protocol instead of what this is really about: The press felt no need to make one peep about something that, only a handful of years earlier, three major national media outlets and a self-proclaimed media “watchdog” felt compelled to inform America about.

I suppose there’s always the possibility that they, like me, didn’t realize that it happened, which wouldn’t be altogether too surprising considering the White House YouTube channel conveniently edited out the beginning of the speech.

Figures. Dumbest Website on Internet Defends Hoffa’s Violent, Profanity-Laced Threatening Labor Day Speech (Video)

What a shock.

The dumbest website on the internet Media Matters defended Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa’s profanity-laced threatening speech against conservatives today.

Media Matters insisted that Hoffa’s remarks were taken out of context.

Uh-huh.

Scarborough on the Media’s Urge to “Contextualize” Hoffa’s Comments

By contrast, nearly every major paper and network discussed Palin’s map and her statement “Don’t retreat, reload” at length this January, yet failed to “contextualize” these things by showing comparable Democratic maps and comments. I was very explicit about the need to properly contextualize Palin’s comments in January and called the media out when she received death threats following this biased soul searching. This moment remains one of the most egregious cases of media bias in recent history.

Now as Scarborough notes we see the other side of the coin. The media, excepting Jake Tapper, is either ignoring Hoffa’s comments altogether or offering plenty of context to cushion them on their own initiative. That’s their job of course, but it’s all the more notable that most of them didn’t seem to see it that way back in January when Palin was on the hook.

A reporter in the White House

Jake Tapper of ABC News had Obamanaut Jay Carney for lunch yesterday. Note how Jay Carney is completely oblivious to being set up like a bowling pin…

Jake Tapper Asks Jay Carney to Set the Bar for 2012

I’ve given Tapper a hard time before but the fact is he’s consistently one of the most fair reporters out there. He makes a concerted effort to ask the same tough questions of both sides of the aisle, regardless of whose ox is being gored. In fact, he’s one of a handful of reporters who makes the old media credo about being impartial seem remotely plausible. If we had 10 more like him, a lot of bloggers could retire.

I’m pretty sure I’ll dread Tapper’s questions the next time we have a Republican in the White House. But in his case, you’ve got to respect that.

CNN’s John King Spends 6 Minutes Avoiding Asking Hoffa About ‘SOBs’ Comment

Selective Sensitivity Syndrome can strike when you most expect it.

Ed Schultz Asks Hoffa ‘Do You Think The Republicans Are Sons of B—hes?’

Guerrilla Warriors in the Mist

But as we’ve since seen from the endless smears on MSNBC and CNN of the Tea Party and other Red State-oriented events, those foreign correspondents from the Hamptons either never arrived in Alabama, or much like Margaret Mead in Samoa, if they did, they simply phoned in the wildest lies they could think of, and hoped nobody would ever notice.

Fortunately, in a rather thoughtful gesture, one group of conservatives finally decided to bridge the gap, and dispatched a team of ambassadors into the Bluest Alcove of Deep Blue America: “Some ‘Big’ Sons of Bitches Visit Media Matters’ DC Office.”

Saul would certainly approve.

Another day, another lib bails

The bailing on Obama was as predictable as fall. Those leaves that started out so young and green grow fat and lazy over the summer until finally they change color — turning bright red and gold — until they fall in autumn — usually under stormy skies. The tropical storms this year have spawned storms across the East where most of the liberals live their smug existences. It feels like October not September. Our politics match the weather. Idealists and cynics on the Left race to abandon ship, in an effort to distance themselves from the sad consequences of their beliefs.

The first to go were Maureen Dowd, Kathleen Parker, Peggy Noonan, and the rest of the choir of giggling middle-aged women who swooned over the Audacity Of Hope three falls ago. Now the reality of this mirage of leadership fading away has them preparing themselves for the emotional letdown of their lives.

As I read their whiny columns with the cheesy excuses about how he is not a good communicator, how he lets Republicans walk all over him, and the like, I long for Ellen Goodman to come out of retirement. Yes, she was a corny stereotype: Ivy League feminist. But by golly she would have stayed with him until the bitter end; jumping ship is unladylike.

Krauthammer: Obama Is ‘President Zero – Zero Economic Expansion, Zero Jobs, Zero Ideas’

Look, I think the Republicans have their perfect slogan – President Zero: zero economic expansion, zero jobs, zero ideas on how to cure the economy. The recession ended two years ago. We were supposed to have a recovery summer last summer. In the numbers you showed, the unemployment, the slowdown in jobs started at the beginning of this year. He threw $1 trillion dollar stimulus at the economy assuming you’d have a Keynesian effect, a multiplier effect. It didn’t.

And at the same time he piled up regulation on regulation, spending on spending, Obamacare, EPA, the financial regulations. He has his foot on the economy. And he doesn’t understand that his administration has stopped the recovery in its tracks.

Yes, but Obama still has all of his devoted fans in the media.

So he’s got that going for him – which is nice

Frank Rich: Obama presidency has been “rhetorical and…substantive failure”

I’ve got a better idea Mr. Rich… rather than having Obama “step up to the plate”… let’s have him step down and resign.

It would guarantee an economic recovery.

Obama loses WaPo fact checker

Glenn Kessler gave the president Four Pinocchios, which is the worst grade Glenn Kessler hands out. These times they are a-changing.

The Media Wants To Be Let Off The Hook For Obama

They preached to us. They implored us. They even insulted our intelligence for not accepting their wisdom and professional vetting of then-candidate Barack Obama. Now, they are collectively in CYA mode asking us why the President Obama we have today isn’t the one they insisted we would get.

Al Sharpton Didn’t Know MSNBC Rules Regarding Campaign Endorsements

UNPRECEDENTED!!!1!: The Insult to Obama Is a Wound That Will Never Heal

There are times when the unreality of a situation is such that you just gape in disbelief. Such is my reaction upon perusing the reaction of the institutional left (and I include Big Media in that description) to Obama’s reversal of his former decision to urinate all over the GOP debate next Wednesday.

To listen to the stuck pigs of Big Media, the issue is not whether there is precedent for a President to lift his leg and piss all over the opposition. No, sir: the issue is whether there is precedent for Congress to refuse a President’s wishes regarding the timing of a joint session. They all simply swallow, with a deliberate and premeditated attitude of extreme naivete, the administration’s protests that it was just a coincidence that the speech was planned at the same time as a GOP debate. Sheer happenstance! And so, Boehner’s entirely reasonable request for a day’s delay is UNPRECEDENTED!!!

Palin Undefeated: It’s the crony capitalism, stupid!

Funny how incurious the “intellectually curious” hive mind of the left can be when it comes to all things Sarah Palin. The latest is a classic blinders-on, Journolist-talking-points-in-hand “review” of Steve Bannon’s Palin Documentery “The Undefeated.”

Unreal. New York Times Is Now Promoting Shariah Law

Just when you thought the anti-American New York Times could not get any nuttier they start promoting Sharia Law.

In case you were wondering what exactly they are promoting here.

Under Sharia law, the clothes you wear, music you listen to, and television you watch would all be censored. Behavior in public is legally restricted and controlled. And Sharia is the ideal social system for those that preach Radical Islam. Sharia is an Arabic term referring to a legal framework to regulate public and private aspects of life based upon specific Islamic teachings. Sharia is an intolerant system that threatens the western ideals of “liberty and justice for all”. Sharia views non-Muslims as second class citizens, sanctions inequality between men and women, prescribes cruel and unusual punishments for crimes, and promotes a restrictive business environment that strangles the freedoms of capitalism.

Then again these nuts at the NY Times did support Barack Obama so really anything is possible with these kooks.

What is ‘his family’ going to do? Get a crane to drop his body on him? Lefty Behemoth Michael Moore Threatened Fox News’ Bill Hemmer: “If Anything Ever Happens To Me, Don’t Think My Family Won’t Come After You”…

Tough guy alert.

Brad Friedman, Mother Jones and Alternet Falsely Claim Charles Koch Called Obama “Saddam Hussein” (Updated with MJ Response)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! SUCKER! Hollywood lefty Robert Redford: “Like so many others, I’m beginning to wonder just where the man stands. . .”

Robert, you poor disillusioned soul, Obama stands for himself and he has never changed.

Holding Out For A Hero

Is being gay what it takes to be acknowledged as a hero by today’s media? Perhaps so. Can you think of another explanation for the paucity of stories this week featuring the many heroes who emerged on September 11, and in its aftermath? Including, among others, Bingham’s brothers in arms on Flight 93? Well, they were unarmed, but you get the point.

I personally couldn’t care less about Mark Bingham’s sex life. When it counted, he was not just a man but a hero, and he gave his life for his country. But have we really reached the point in our liberal media culture when a man can only be hailed for his indisputably heroic actions if he also happened to be gay? Someone please assure me that my suspicion is wrong by linking to the many other stories that must have been written about the other heroes of September 11 and its aftermath.

“Soulja Boy:” A self-serving apology to the troops; Update: Troops respond on Youtube

So, the foul-mouthed rapper “Soulja Boy” told American soldiers to go “f**k” off in a new rap video and insulted them for not being real men.

Now, he says he didn’t really mean it — and, in fact, the reason he said “f**k” our “Army troops” is that he cares about them so much and respects them and just wants them home. Really.

NPR Lets Abortion Lobby Smear Pro-Lifers As Potential Terrorists

Global Warmening:

Frozen Global Warming Research

Given the dependence of the US McMurdo Sound and Amundsen-Scott South Pole bases on the availability of an icebreaker to allow resupply by ship, it must have been an unpleasant surprise for our Secretary of State, Hillary R. C., to receive the following missive from the aforesaid perfidious Swedes …

This is unfortunate for the scientific work in the Antarctic, as it will require extensive reshuffling of existing studies and projects. However, it does have its ironic side.

The first irony is that the main thing that is brought in by ship, the one thing that really can’t be brought in by plane, is fossil fuel. Can’t do global warming research without fossil fuel, particularly in Antarctica, and running a couple of US bases through an Antarctic winter takes a lot of fossil fuel.

The second irony is that research into global warming is being curtailed by, of all things, too much ice. Or as Mr. Bildt described it, “transport delays due to vessels having been blocked by ice.”

*snip*

So there’s the final irony—with the laying up of the US Coast Guard “Polar Star” icebreaker, and the decommissioning of the “Polar Sea” icebreaker, the US has only the lightweight “Healy”, not fit for the Antarctic needs. So the US is reduced to renting an icebreaker from a Russian shipping company … and some folks in Alaska are not happy about that state of affairs.

Shocker: Green Energy Will Kill Jobs And Income Levels

The Other Climate Theory

In April 1990, Al Gore published an open letter in the New York Times “To Skeptics on Global Warming” in which he compared them to medieval flat-Earthers. He soon became vice president and his conviction that climate change was dominated by man-made emissions went mainstream. Western governments embarked on a new era of anti-emission regulation and poured billions into research that might justify it. As far as the average Western politician was concerned, the debate was over.

But a few physicists weren’t worrying about Al Gore in the 1990s. They were theorizing about another possible factor in climate change: charged subatomic particles from outer space, or “cosmic rays,” whose atmospheric levels appear to rise and fall with the weakness or strength of solar winds that deflect them from the earth. These shifts might significantly impact the type and quantity of clouds covering the earth, providing a clue to one of the least-understood but most important questions about climate. Heavenly bodies might be driving long-term weather trends.

The theory has now moved from the corners of climate skepticism to the center of the physical-science universe: the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN. At the Franco-Swiss home of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, scientists have been shooting simulated cosmic rays into a cloud chamber to isolate and measure their contribution to cloud formation. CERN’s researchers reported last month that in the conditions they’ve observed so far, these rays appear to be enhancing the formation rates of pre-cloud seeds by up to a factor of 10. Current climate models do not consider any impact of cosmic rays on clouds.

Warmist (And Government Employee) James Hansen Wants To Arrest Obama And Hillary

Hansen receives a lot of money from the federal government as head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which is part of the Goddard Space Flight Center, a major NASA space research lab. NASA is part of the …federal government. So, Hansen wants to arrest his bosses. Man, those “Federal Family” members sure don’t seem to like each other much.

Awful… Obama Scares Crap Out of Kids – Says Junk Science Climate Change Is Biggest Problem They Will Face (Video)

Maybe we should blow half billion on another failed solar plant?

The Climate Scam Marches On

Way back in the 1984 presidential campaign, the eloquent Warren Beatty explained his enthusiasm for Gary Hart thusly: “He stands for ‘new ideas.’  And ‘new ideas’ mean, ‘You pay, mother——.’”  Of course, that is not a new idea at all; it’s perhaps the Left’s oldest idea.

This burst of clarity came back to mind this morning when a new climate policy report from a consortium of European NGO goo-goos came over the transom, The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework.  Now, there’s really nothing new in this report, but it is always helpful to be reminded of the irrepressible nature of these clowns, the essence of which can be found in just one or two sentences of the report, such as this:

To be clear, this does not mean that the countries in which poor people live are not required to cut their emissions, but rather that the global consuming class – both within these countries and especially in the industrialized countries – are the ones who must pay.

Doesn’t take much to decode what this means: it means, for wealthy industrialized nations, “You pay, mother. . .”

Sting’s Carbon Footprint is Ginormous!

Revealing some of the “fabulous” lifestyle of her former employers, Ms Martin said that “opulent extravagance reigned” at Lake House, and that there was “no regard to expense, cost or wastage” where food and drink were concerned.

The cook added that she had often been required to make an expensive rail and taxi journey between London and Salisbury just to prepare a soup and salad meal for the family, even though they also kept two housekeepers, two nannies and a butler on the premises.

[...]

This same paragon of self-denying minimalism who reminds us all not to squander our resources also owns a three-storey mansion in Highgate, North London, a townhouse in Westminster and what’s described as a workman’s cottage in the Lake District.

He also maintains a beach house in Malibu, California, and a 600-acre estate in Tuscany.

And when Sting performs in New York he goes home at night to a £1 million duplex on Manhattan’s exclusive Upper East Side.

That’s the same guy who sang:

We can’t live here and be happy with less
With so many riches, so many souls
Everything we see that we want to possess

He’s a tremendous talent but he really needs to zip it. I don’t need a guy with 7 homes and a full time house staff of six telling me how to protect the earth.

The Sock Drawer:

Happy Feet’s progress

7 September 2011

Our bird has made a gain of 22 kms further toward home over the last 24 hours, a good performance pushing pretty much southward. More pertinently he’s also put an additional 6kms between him and the sandy beaches of Campbell island overnight. He seems to be swimming between 2-3 kph today, a bit slower than yesterday – this includes an hour when he seemed to get distracted and put on no distance at all. Wonder what’s caught his interest?

Happy Feet not finished with Aotearoa?

Returned to good fitness and fitted with a GPS tracking device, Happy Feet had an “excellent chance” of meeting other adolescent penguins and finding his way back to Antarctica, experts say.

But online monitoring on ourfarsouth.org seems to show that he has turned in a north-east direction and is heading back to New Zealand.

Happy Feet heads south, eventually

Haere Ra Happy Feet

“Happy Feet needed some gentle encouragement to leave the safety of his crate that has been his home for six days,” says Ms Argilla. “He slid down backwards but once he hit the water he spared no time in diving off away from the boat.”

21ft Crocodile Caught Alive in Philippines

10 Myths About Introverts

Everything you need to know about Hurricane Forecast Computer Models

Something Wonderful: 2 Dancers, 100 Years of Fashion

MAPS: A Complete Guide To National Stereotypes All Around The World

Top 10 Most Extreme Substances

Astronauts’ tracks, trash seen in new moon photos

Incredible picture of Saturn that runs rings around all the others (and if you look carefully, you’ll see Earth in the distance)

Scientists Discover Remains Of A Giant Ancient Lake On Mars

Canadian Lab Develops Virus Which Targets Cancer

Not such a Pretty Woman: Mother dresses girl aged THREE as prostitute in Toddlers and Tiaras pageant

How I Chose Passion Over Fear and Sailed the World

I’ll regret this in the morning: Boozing moose is rescued after becoming drunkenly stranded up apple tree

Whose bright idea was that? Border between India and Pakistan is so brightly lit it can be seen from space

The sun and the holy ghost: ‘Jesus’ spotted in a cloud on top of volcano

Free at last! Extraordinary video shows lab chimps hugging and laughing as they emerge into daylight for first time in 30 YEARS

Microbes generate electricity while cleaning up nuclear waste

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