Right, Wing-Nut!

Another Archbishop Takes On Obama...

2012-02-15T14:29:00.001-05:00

I'm impressed at how well these guys are calling the president out. I've probably gotten so used to the rabbis bending over and taking whatever offense Barack decides to dish out to the Jews that I thought it was typical of religious leaders of all faiths.

My mistake, I apologize. New York's Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan made his disgust clear (I would have to think in the Catholic canon, "betrayal" is a pretty strong word), and now Chicago's Archbishop Francis Cardinal George calls it as he sees it:

This week I’ve been with the bishops of Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana on pilgrimage to the tombs of the apostles Peter and Paul in Rome. After praying at the tombs and celebrating Mass, we went to visit the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI.... Because we were on pilgrimage in Rome, there was occasion to strengthen the unity of the bishops of our region with the Holy Father.

Even in the midst of this strengthened unity, news of attempts to weaken the unity between the bishops and the faithful have been reported. This is the first time in the history of the United States that a presidential administration has purposely tried to interfere in the internal working of the Catholic Church, playing one group off against another for political gain. What isn’t always understood is that the Bishops of the Church make no attempt to speak for all Catholics; they never have. The Bishops speak for the Catholic and apostolic faith, and those who hold that faith gather around them. Others disperse. That dynamic is clear in history and became clear also in the official visit to Rome that the Bishops of our region made this week.

Our visit has reminded us that the Church enjoys divine assistance even when she is being attacked....

That last word is the one politicians have been afraid to use, despite it being the most accurate adjective of the president's recent actions in regards to the Church, and State. Our officials tremble in fear of Caesar, but the men of faith know when they are seeing a pretender to the throne, the new rising of the Morning Star, and appear to be sharpening their spears for the battle ahead.

Not a moment too soon. Looks like God may still smile upon America after all.

ObamaCare: The (Too) Graphic Novel !

2012-02-15T07:55:00.001-05:00

Always one to take a tip from Glenn Reynolds, I followed his link to Amazon to check out the list of top-selling graphic novels. An while I was certainly not surprised to see Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Walking Dead crowding the top spots, I was quite taken aback by #5:

Written by a man who proudly proclaims his involvement in creating ObamaCare on seemingly every other page, it is described thusly:

You won’t have to worry about going broke if you get sick.
We will start to bring the costs of health care under control.
And we will do all this while reducing the federal deficit.

That is the promise of the Affordable Care Act. But from the moment President Obama signed the bill into law in 2010, a steady and mounting avalanche of misinformation about the ACA has left a growing majority of Americans confused about what it is, why it’s necessary, and how it works. If you’re one of them, buy this book. From how to tame the twin threats of rising costs and the increasing number of uninsured to why an insurance mandate is good for your health, Health Care Reform dispels false fears by arming you with facts.

Surely, I thought, this is camp. Or kitsch. Or parody. But shockingly, it is serious.

It is #1 in a number of Amazon categories. But is really being purchased by people who wish to "educate" themselves about the health care system? Or is it being bought up by the Left, to evangelize, the way missionaries snap up bibles?

Another possibility: Is this too-graphic novel actually being grabbed by farsighted memorabilia buffs, who see the value of a "We Like Ike" pin or a "Whip Inflation Now!" button, and want to invest in a piece of what is about to be America's socialist past, before it goes away forever?

And yet the reviews are fairly positive for this piece of pulp propaganda, although there are a few who refuse to get with the program and insist on resisting Dear Leader:

But rather than illuminate, Gruber demagogues the most critical issues by recycling - without challenge - virtually every canard employed by advocates of so-called "progressive" health care reform in the guise of fearsome monsters ultimately defeated by PPACA. In doing this Gruber reveals that, far from being the objective purveyor of fact, he is at best a cheerleader for the form of government-driven health care reform in which he has been an active participant....

To paraphrase another reviewer, if Leni Riefenstahl wrote a comic book, it would be along the same moral lines as Jonathan Gruber's egotistical work.

Added bonus for haters: Look who makes a cameo...!

CNN Goes Full-Propaganda On Obama's "Budget"...

2012-02-14T08:29:00.000-05:00

...hey, even the AP had the common courtesy to call it what it was: A political document. But maybe in fact CNN did in fact see it the same way. But instead of pointing out the inherit flaws in the document, they jumped to the defense of their ideological doppelganger by lying about the budget's bottom line. Via the Daily Caller:

On CNN’s Monday broadcast of President Barack Obama’s speech about his budget proposal in Annadale, Va., the network’s chyron said that the president would cut $4 trillion in spending and raise $1.5 trillion in taxes over 10 years, suggesting $5.5 trillion in deficit reduction.

However, the White House doesn’t even make that claim. Obama says his proposal makes reductions of $4 trillion — $1 trillion agreed upon last year and $3 trillion in this budget. But since only $3 trillion are in this budget (including the $1.5 trillion in tax hikes), the CNN interpretation falls short by $2.5 trillion ($5.5 trillion – $3 trillion = $2.5 trillion off).

And that’s based on the Obama administration’s numbers.

However, if you base it on analysis from the Senate Budget Committee Republicans, there’s only $273 billion in deficit reduction, not $3 trillion or $4 trillion, making the CNN report incorrect by $5.2 trillion...

Well, hopefully the people stuck in airports waiting for connecting flights - CNN's primary viewing audience these days - weren't too confused. CNN was simply doing their master's bidding. Hey, lying on behalf of the president and the Democratic party has worked wonders for NBC...

Obama's Budget: The AP Seems Rather Unimpressed....

2012-02-13T19:47:00.000-05:00

...wonder how this got through the standards filters at the AP. Someone must be asleep at the switch. Would be surprised if the verbiage holds through the night. Still, for a moment, accuracy and sanity peers out from beneath the madness:

Obama's budget: Government still getting bigger

Taking a pass on reining in government growth, President Barack Obama unveiled a record $3.8 trillion election-year budget plan Monday, calling for stimulus-style spending on roads and schools and tax hikes on the wealthy to help pay the costs. The ideas landed with a thud on Capitol Hill.

Though the Pentagon and a number of Cabinet agencies would get squeezed, Obama would leave the spiraling growth of health care programs for the elderly and the poor largely unchecked. The plan claims $4 trillion in deficit savings over the coming decade, but most of it would be through tax increases Republicans oppose, lower war costs already in motion and budget cuts enacted last year in a debt pact with GOP lawmakers...

Obama's budget blueprint reprises a long roster of prior proposals: raising taxes on couples making more than $250,000 a year; eliminating numerous tax breaks for oil and gas companies, and approving a series of smaller tax and fee proposals. Similar proposals failed even when the Democrats controlled Congress.

So it's a...politcal manifesto? The AP almost comes out and says it.

Wow.

You Know What's Better Than A "Jobs-Training" Program"?

2012-02-13T09:22:00.002-05:00

Actual jobs.

The government can't create those, however - as Barack Obama has finally learned, almost a trillion dollars too late - so they do what they feel, sadly, is the next best thing:

President Obama will announce Monday an $8 billion commitment to forge partnerships with community colleges and businesses to train two million high-skilled workers, the White House said.

The President will discuss the program at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va. The plan will provide funding to community colleges and states to partner with businesses to train workers in areas such as health care, transportation and advanced manufacturing.

Driving around New York City, you'll see an occasional "job training" facility. They are usually newer buildings, named after that particular district's congressperson. And they are uniformly empty. Much like the storefronts of the buildings around them, or the eyes of the occasional passer-by.

But hey: If they won't cut taxes and/or give us a "refund" of what is already ours, they have to show they are doing something with the money, right?

I feel like we're living in Blazing Saddles, with Barack Obama as Governor William J. Le Petomane, and Valerie Jarrett as Hedley Lamarr:

Governor William J. Le Petomane: We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen! We must do something about this immediately! Immediately! Immediately! Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!
Governor William J. Le Petomane: [pointing to a member of his cabinet] I didn't get a "harrumph" out of that guy!
Hedley Lamarr: Give the Governor a harrumph!
Politician: Harrumph!
Governor William J. Le Petomane: You watch your ass...

Are We "Extremely" Brainwashed?

2012-02-13T08:13:00.003-05:00

I found this, ah, extremely disconcerting:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 35% of Likely Voters say it would be more accurate to describe the agenda of Republicans in Congress as mainstream, while 52% feel extreme is a more accurate description.

Have the American people been so conditioned by the media and the Democrats to associate any type of "Republicanism" as extremism that all thought in this matter is no longer necessary, that any notion put forth by the Republicans is de facto "extremist", and thus they require no thought or examination whatsoever, only condemnation?

If that is the case - if a simple attempt to balance the budget in 20 years is now an extremist agenda - then the Right is marooned in an ideological Dunkirk, surrounded by our advancing foes on one side and the deep blue sea on the other.

We can go backwards, and drown. We can surrender, and work with our adversaries to see to it that our nation is destroyed. Or we can fight like we have never fought before, voraciously, challenging every argument against us as if it may be our last, with new tactics and weapons, knowing that should we lose, there will be no safe haven for us to fall back to. We can work to gain converts to our cause along the way, convincing them through word and deed that our course is true and just, and that the "extremism" lies on the other side.

If we fail now, America as we know it is gone forever.

I hope General Romney has the stomach for the fight...

UPDATE: In the same vein, see this piece from RS McCain...

Because A "Command Economy" Worked So Well For The Soviets...

2012-02-12T12:13:00.001-05:00

...that their empire collapsed, and its people have never recovered, subsisting on vodka and third world services while crony capitalists make billions by paying off the right people in a not-quite-democratic government.

This is the model, incidentally, that Barack Obama and the Democratic party are so eager to follow. And trust me, they know where it will lead. That's the point, of course.

The Wall Street Journal gently reminds us of a little flaw in Obama's compromise on the HHS mandate forcing religious organizations to pay for "birth control"- you know, the compromise that says employees of these organizations can/must receive free "contraception" coverage from their insurer if their employer refuses to cover it:

There is simply no precedent for the government ordering private companies to offer a product for free, even if they do recoup the costs indirectly.

Ah - so now we see what "transformative change" really is - working for free to fulfill the agenda of the Obama Administration. Incidentally, when other nations engage in this practice, it's called "forced labor"...

The Weekly Standard:

...what would give the federal government the authority to order private companies to offer a products for free? Could such a mandate really be justified under Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce? Is there really no difference between regulating commerce and mandating that it be free?

Moreover, of all the products or services that companies could feasibly be required to provide for free under such an extraordinary conception of federal power, why birth control and abortifacients? Why not bread, or books, or actual medical care for actual diseases?

Good question. The mind reels at the potential answers, none of which are comforting...

Tangent/rant:
But given the way a command economy works, I can see Obama passing a decree that the medical community must cure cancer by November 2012, and then claiming credit on the campaign trail for eradicating the disease. Sounds crazy, but as a precedent, the Administration is bragging about "raising fuel economy standards" when all they did was "order" that it be made so. In response, car manufacturers are making vehicles lighter, stripped down, and more expensive. Which will cause more death, disability and (economic) destruction as cars become less affordable. Which will lead to another Obama directive demanding that Americans buy more cars, with government subsidies being offered for people below a certain income level. Which will be paid for by raising taxes on those people who make too much money to afford a subsidy but not enough to buy a new car. Which will lead to more economic disruption....

Which brings us full circle back to the Soviet model, and its outcome...

Scarlett Johansson: Deep Inside The Mind Of A Liberal

2012-02-11T10:04:00.001-05:00

...yeah, I know, like searching for bacterium in a cave. But her mentality, mindset, worldview, and moral judgement are so typical of the genus "Liberal" that they are worth examining, despite their overall ickiness. Hand-washing is mandatory afterwards.

Scarlett spoke the other day on Rick Santorum's now-iconic sweater vests:

'Oh gosh, so sad,' the actress said when asked about the former US Senator for Pennsylvania's favourite fashion item. She added that 'my dad wore them.'

But wait, it gets better...is there anything more out-of-touch than the second part of this sentence?

Johansson continued: 'I mean, sweater vests are, I guess, charming for family photos and dinner with the grandparents... But I think you (can) wear a sweater vest ironically, right? Just go to the Lower East Side!'

Dude?

Because Americans off all stripes debate whether to rock an "ironic" style, no doubt. Or in other words, if you wear huge glasses, drink Pabst Blue Ribbon, and smoke "American Spirit" cigarettes in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn you are unbelievably hip; but if you do it in downtown Des Moines, you're unbearably "sad".

Hipster trap. Not humane...

These are the people who run the country, by the way. Does the ruin around you make sense now?

Johansson made these remarks while doing a fashionista fund-raiser for Barack Obama. When the RNC pointed out the intellectual disconnect of the Democrats -the party claiming to be for "the little guy" - holding a 'ritzy' and 'celebrity-filled' event while 12 milion Americans were out of work, Scarlett replied with all of the depth at her disposal:

Johansson responded to the RNC: 'Why would they say that? They are all so unfashionable. Let them say what they want!'

Style over substance. A bit too revealing, perhaps?

Paging Mr. McCain? Hello, Rule 5!

More from Scarlett:

President Obama and his wife, however, were in a different league, she felt. 'I think they both have a casual cool about them.

Fascists always seem to have that. Or at least it is attributed to them, so that each generation's tragically hip have an excuse for embracing the hate.

That's why they get emblazoned on t-shirts, I suppose, and we never do...

In Which Barack Obama Betrays Israel (Again)

2012-02-10T08:51:00.001-05:00

Oh, what a headline it was yesterday:

Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran's nuclear scientists, U.S. officials tell NBC News

Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign but has no direct involvement.

Two senior U.S. officials confirmed for NBC News the MEK’s role in the assassinations, with one senior official saying, “All your inclinations are correct.” A third official would not confirm or deny the relationship, saying only, “It hasn’t been clearly confirmed yet.” All the officials denied any U.S. involvement in the assassinations.

So NBC's sources were multiple senior officials. No doubt then that this information was a planned release to a left-leaning media outlet with the president's blessing. NBC does their master's bidding well here, smearing the Israelis at every turn while going through a litany of the MEK's past abuses, even stooping so low as to question whether or not Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually ever called for Israel to be wiped from the Earth. (Video here, with Mahmoud sating they will be "wiped off the map". NBC, apparently, went with the Arabists distortions and lies instead)

Gary Fine in the Minneapolis Star Tribune points out the double-standard:

If the Obama administration can publicly pride itself for assassinating Bin Laden as a non- US state sponsored terrorist action, then how can the US administration rightfully encourage the media to infer that Israel’s unconfirmed antiterrorist actions in assisting the elimination of Iran’s nuclear scientists,(thus reducing Iran’s nuclear bomb capacity) borders on state sponsored terrorism?

With full knowledge of the repercussions, why did the Obama Administration purposely out Israel to a negative media attack?

Oh, it could be for any number of reasons. Because the president is an academic anti-Semite, hiding his loathing of Jews behind detached sympathy for the Palestinian "cause". Because he has been made to look the fool on numerous occasions by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Or perhaps because he so egotistical, so determined to see "his way" in "dealing" with Iran succeed (negotiations, sanctions, talks, and when all else fails and Iran gets the bomb - containment mixed with appeasement), that he is willing to risk the security of the entire Middle East, and that of our closest ally, on the alter of his self-gratification and personal fulfillment.

Whatever the reason is, it has nothing to do with America's national security, our America's best interest. That is such a Republican way to look at the world, after all. Just ask the Canadians...

In Which Barack Obama Betrayed The Archbishop (and still expects no comeuppance)

2012-02-09T14:03:00.001-05:00

I mean, lying to the American people is one thing - we expect it from our politicians, even as Barack Obama has set records of quantity and quality - but to lie to the face of a popular American Archbishop, soon to be named a Cardinal? That takes balls. Or a total lack of any morality whatsoever. Combined, of course, with a complete lack of belief in any punishment afterwards.

Let's here Archbishop - and Cardinal-designate - Timothy Dolan's side of the story:

Speaking on ”CBS This Morning” Dolan said he met with the president weeks ago in the Oval Office to talk about the law. Dolan said the president gave his promise the provision would go away, but it hasn’t.

“It seems to be at odds with very sincere assurances that he gave me, that he wanted to continue to work with the church in these endeavors and views and projects he shared a passionate interest in, so I can’t figure it out,” Dolan said.

“When I left the Oval Office, where I was very grateful for his invitation to be there, I left with high hopes. That nothing his administration would do would impede the good work that he admitted and acknowledged in the church,” Dolan said. “And I’m afraid I don’t have those sentiments of hope now.”

Sources close to the Cardinal-designate tell CBS 2 that Dolan feels betrayed...

Don't worry, Archbishop, you'll figure it out soon enough. It takes quite a man to lie to and betray one of America's highest-ranking religious leaders... it takes a man who has absolutely zero respect for religion whatsoever, and who will manipulate it and its representatives in an attempt to force it to serve him and his own ends. Thankfully, we don't see many of these. But, as Peter Wehner posits:

....a stronger case can be made that this act — which is so aggressive, so indefensible, and so at odds with the American creed — is a window into the mind and soul of America’s 44th president...

Evangelical pastor Rick Warren - who gave the invocation at Obama's inauguration - has had the scales removed from his eyes:

I’d go to jail rather than cave in to a govement mandate that violates what God commands us to do. Would you? Acts 5:29

The verse he references:

But Peter and the other apostles replied: "We must obey God rather than men!

Obama has put himself above the Throne of God. To whom will America kneel? Thus will our fate be determined....

"Dogma:"

Loki: My God... I've heard a rant like this before.
Bartleby: What did you say?
Loki: You sound like the Morning star.
Bartleby: You shut your fucking mouth!
Loki: You do! You sound like Lucifer, man! You've fucking lost it! You're not talking about going home, Bartleby, you're talking about fucking war on God! Well, fuck that! I have seen what happens to the proud when they take on the Throne!

Obama About To Find Out The Answer To Stalin's Greatest Question

2012-02-09T09:57:00.000-05:00

“How many divisions does the Pope of Rome have?”
-Josef Stalin, 1944

No longer can insurance companies discriminate against women just because you guys are the ones who have to give birth... They have to cover things like contraception as preventive care, no more out-of-pocket costs. And while it will take a couple of years for all the reforms to fully take place...
-Barack Obama, October 2011

More:

President Obama “reinforced” his stance on the controversial contraception mandate while speaking at the Democrats’ annual retreat at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. today, Senate Democrats said.

The retreat was closed to media.

“The power to decide whether or not to use contraception lies with a woman – not her boss,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. “What is more intrusive than trying to allow an employer to make medical decisions for someone who works for them?”

Oh, I don't know - forcing them to comply with government diktats that are against their strongest-held religious beliefs, on the threat of being forced into bankruptcy, personal ruin, public humiliation, and every other plague a vindictive government can assault them with?

We are about to find out the answer to Stalin's famous question, by the way. The battle is set for November 6th, 2012, and the forces of both sides will be arrayed against each other, with the battlefield tilted towards Stalin's ideology, thanks to a non-stop carpet bombing by his (media and "intellectual") allies. The Pope's forces, should they be large enough and committed enough, can overcome the built-in disadvantages of the terrain.

We'll see soon enough...

NJEA Head Sneers At Poor: "Life's Not Fair - No Vouchers For You!"

2012-02-08T13:41:00.001-05:00

Vincent Giordano, the head of the New Jersey Education Association, let his guard down in a moment of frustration, and let the truth slip out. He's on the New Jersey Capitol Report, with the issue being school vouchers for the poor who wish to get out of failing New Jersey public school. Can't have that, as Giordano explains (video at the link):

Host: The issue of fairness, I mean this is the argument that a lot of voucher supporters make. People who are well off have options. Somebody who is not well off and whose child is in a failing school, why shouldn't those parents have the same options to get the kid out of the failing school and into one that works with the help of the state?

NJEA boss Vincent Giordano: Those parents should have exactly the same options and they do. We don't say you can't take your kid out of the public school. We would argue not and we would say 'let's work more closely and more harmoniously' …

Host: They can't afford to pay, you know that. Some of these parents can't afford to take their child out of these schools.

Giordano: Life's not always fair and I'm sorry about that.

Funny how liberals always talk about fairness as it relates to their policies of shaking down the upper and middle classes in order to redistribute funds to their politically favored groups. But when fairness involves giving the poor an option to take their education to a non-union school, well...it seems like liberals don't really care much about the poor, do they?

Guess they agree with Mitt Romney. Although I'll doubt highly that this revelation will get 1/1000th of the coverage of Mitt's honest response...

Want to see how a conservative views the relationship between the poor and their schools, and how a liberal sees it? Compare and contrast Chris Christie with Vincent Giordano:

Via MoreMonmouth Musings...

Jonathan Tobin at Contentions weighs in to remind us who's really running this crooked game:

Obama and his teachers union allies are determined to defend the public school monopoly at all costs and oppose all efforts to allow parents to use state aid to educate as they think best. Their top down model suits the unions and their liberal political allies but not the nation’s children. Their answer to the needs of the poor who are victimized by failing public schools is always a form of the “life’s not always fair” answer given by Giordano even when it is not uttered with such shamelessness.

The question that must be put to them remains the same that advocates of choice have been asking for decades: Are not the children of the poor made in the image of God the same as that of the wealthy? And if so, how dare our nation’s leaders and educators value their liberal ideological prejudices in favor of state schools over the best interests of the children?

Sierra Club Reveals Its True Intentions, New York Times Is Shocked, Shocked...

2012-02-08T09:53:00.001-05:00

Well, better late to the party than staying home, convincing yourself all the cool kids are doing the same, while sipping guilt-free lattes and listening to NPR. Joe Nocera at the NYT gets some truth from the Sierra Club, and all I can say is I wish I could have seen the look on his face when he received it. Must have been cinematic:

As it turns out, the environmental movement doesn’t just want to shut down Keystone. Its real goal, as I discovered when I spoke recently to Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, is much bigger. “The effort to stop Keystone is part of a broader effort to stop the expansion of the tar sands,” Brune said. “It is based on choking off the ability to find markets for tar sands oil.”

This is a ludicrous goal. If it were to succeed, it would be deeply damaging to the national interest of both Canada and the United States. But it has no chance of succeeding. Energy is the single most important industry in Canada. Three-quarters of the Canadian public agree with the Harper government’s diversification strategy. China’s “thirst” for oil is hardly going to be deterred by the Sierra Club. And the Harper government views the continued development of the tar sands as a national strategic priority.

Thus, at least one country in North America understands where its national interests lie. Too bad it’s not us.

Well, if Joe wanted to be completely honest, he would say that it's not the country that doesn't get it, it is their president, one Barack Hussein Obama. But baby steps, baby steps...

Abyss

2012-02-08T08:15:00.001-05:00

If the federal government can succeed in forcing people to violate their faith, it will have the power to force anyone to do anything.

Read that here.

Obamacare, passed in the dead of night, sloughs foward towards its destiny. And ours, as a nation.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

And takes your measure...

Barack Obama's Last Prayer (Breakfast)

2012-02-07T14:15:00.000-05:00

It's part of Obama's War Against The Throne (of God): Force the Church to kneel to him via government dictate (using the regulatory power of HHS mandates, for instance, to coerce Catholics into renouncing the tenets of their faith), while simultaneously trying to seduce its more public faces.

That's what Obama was attempting to do at his appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast last week, where he he made his much-mocked claim that his faith in Jesus compelled him to tax the rich. But less reported on (actually, barely mentioned anywhere, and you'll soon see why) was the keynote address given immediately prior to the president's speech. It was delivered by author, scholar, and philosopher Eric Metaxas, and it was a brutal take-down of Barack Obama's twisted view on faith. In reading through excerpts presented by Mark Foster, it almost seems as if Metaxas had already read through Obama's speech, and wrote a pre-rebuttal to the president's false claims of religious fidelity:

Standing no more than five feet from Obama whose binder had a speech chock full of quotes from the Good Book, Metaxas said of Jesus:

“When he was tempted in the desert, who was the one throwing Bible verses at him? Satan. That is a perfect picture of dead religion. Using the words of God to do the opposite of what God does. It’s grotesque when you think about it. It’s demonic.”

“Keep in mind that when someone says ‘I am a Christian’ it may mean absolutely nothing,” Metaxas added for good measure, in case anybody missed his point.

More truth to power:

Surrounded by three of the most powerful supporters of the right to choose, Obama, Vice President Biden, and former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi — two Catholics and a Protestant — Metaxas said:

“Wilberfoce suddenly took the Bible seriously that all of us are created in the image of God, to care for the least of these.”

After carefully describing the inhumane treatment of both Jews and Africans by those claiming to be Christians, he asked then answered a question:

“You think you’re better than the Germans of that era? You’re not,” adding: “Whom do we say is not fully human today?”

Obama then went on to speak...and claimed to be a Christian, while throwing out bible verses and saying what's the big deal - Judaism/Christianity/Islam - it's all the same thing.

But back to Metaxas:

...one got the feeling that this was a modern-day, and perhaps more humorous version, of what Old Testament prophets regularly did to Kings of Israel: deliver brutally honest messages from Yahweh with little regard for their personal safety. Only this time, there were no beheadings, only the difficult-to-watch spectacle of seeing a president forced to uncomfortably read a speech which had just been shredded to pieces by a man who couldn’t possibly have known what was coming. And as he did so, the audience in that room likely left with Metaxas’s four-word condemnation, intentional or not, of the 44th president of the United States ringing in their ears:

“God is not fooled.”

And neither are the American people. As Metaxas notes, Obama is not the first to toss around bible verses in the service of things far less than holy...

Will Andrew Cuomo Turn New York Into Pyongyang?

2012-02-07T09:08:00.000-05:00

For a brief time, New York's governor was seen as the heir apparent to the 2016 Democratic presidential throne. Now that he's gone back on every word he's ever spoken about fiscal sanity and "getting tough on unions", he's been demoted back to the status of "liberal governor v1.0", and talk of his ascendancy to national leadership has pretty much ceased.

Deservedly so. For the governor is about to take the state of New York - struggling already - and its flagship city and drive it down to third-world status, in order to placate the environmental lobby. Via the Washington Free Beacon:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is hard at work ensuring the closure of the Indian Point nuclear power plant that helps power New York City – and some of his closest political allies stand to profit significantly from the deal.

Records show that Cuomo has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from individuals funding a competitor to the nuclear power plant, as well as from individuals who object to its existence on ideological grounds.

Indian Point, owned by the Entergy Corp., is applying to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for renewal of its reactors’ operating licenses, which expire in 2013 and 2015. Though the plant provides roughly 25 to 30 percent of New York City’s energy, Cuomo wants the site closed because of “safety concerns".

But there are no safety concerns, as the article lays out, save for the meltdown fantasies that are both the fantasy and fetish of the environmental Left. What will happen for sure, should this plant close, is the loss of millions of tax dollars, thousands of jobs, and most importantly, the lack of a power supply to run the state:

The New York Times reported that it would “take years and require a long-term energy strategy” to replace the 2,000 megawatts of private-sector energy that Indian Point provides to homes and businesses throughout New York City and Westchester County.

A leaked preliminary draft of a report by New York City’s Department of Environmental Conservation predicts dire results stemming from the plant’s closure: The city’s energy costs would rise up to 10 percent and citywide reliability problems would begin within a year of the second reactor’s expiration.

Despite these concerns, the governor refuses to back down.

Because this is not about reason, or rationality - it is about one man's greed, one man's ambition, one man's desire to keep the money flowing - to himself. And the destruction of the city of New York will merely be collateral damage in his rise to power.

While he preens for the Left, New Yorkers will suffer brownouts and rolling blackouts as the state frantically searches for power sources. The financial giants will leave downtown, ending the free ride for New York's welfare state. A declining quality of life - long waits in stalled subway trains, stifling nights with no air conditioning, lack of business or industry - will send the population fleeing. Huge segments of the city will be simply abandoned and the tax base will plummet, leaving the poor to fend for themselves, as the government they have lived off of for so many years will no longer have the means to care for them.

Alas for Andrew, destruction of a great city does not quite qualify one for higher office. Otherwise, we'd be picking our next president from Detroit's City Council....

Congress Pays For Two-Month Payroll Tax Cut With Ten-Year Mortgage Fee

2012-02-06T15:10:00.001-05:00

Does this not say it all?

"Your pocketbook is being raided in order to pay for a tax policy issue decided at the last minute by probably people who didn't understand fully what they were legislating on."

The details are ugly. It's a crime scene, with the heinous act perpetuated by those who have sworn to represent us, who have chosen instead to loot us, as part as the gang-rape and pillage of what little wealth remains in the United States of America:

Just before Christmas, American workers got a rare gift from Washington politicians - the current payroll tax cut would be extended for two more months.

At the time, both President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner lauded the move to avoid a tax increase for millions of working Americans.

But there's something the politicians weren't bragging about - the fact that they're paying for the two-month tax cut with what has turned into a brand new fee on home buyers.

The new fee is a minimum of one-tenth of 1 percent on Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-backed loans, and is likely to go much higher.

It will be imposed for the next 10 years on most mortgages and refinancings and it lasts for the life of the loan.

For every $200,000, it amounts to an extra $15 dollars a month.

It's bad news for Patty Anderson, who's buying a home in Virginia.

Anderson will save a couple hundred dollars from having her payroll tax cut extended but her mortgage broker told her the new fee would cost her almost $9,500.

"I was absolutely startled that it would add up to that much," she said.

The $35.7 billion collected in fees won't go into the Social Security fund to replace the lost payroll tax. It goes to the general treasury where Congress can spend it however they please.

How is this in any way, shape or form defensible? I expect this from Democrats, but if Republicans were complicit...

Tar. Feathers. NOW...

Why People Hate Politicians: Exhibit A - Loretta Weinberg

2012-02-06T13:50:00.002-05:00

She's a Jersey Democrat, and leader of the state Senate - NJ's own Nancy Pelosi, as it were -so you know where this is going...

Bob Ingle at the Asbury Park Press reports on her latest liberal tomfoolery:

...she introduces a bill to change the lyrics of Rutgers’ school song, “On the Banks of the Old Raritan.” She wants the 139-year-old song to change lyrics that say “My father sent me to old Rutgers, and resolv’d that I should be a man.” She points out half the student body is women. There are numerous serious problems faced by New Jersey, one of them being it’s harder for young folks to afford a college education. Weinberg should work on that. And if the students and faculty at Rutgers really have a problem with the lyrics, let them work it out amongst themselves.

Agreed - this is a Rutgers issue, and a relatively minor one at that. The fact that Loretta Weinberg is getting involved is maddening enough - as Ingle notes, it's not as if Jersey is in any kind of great shape whatsoever. But the fact that she feels entitled to get involved, to believe the situation warrens her interference, the idea this "issue", if it even is one, cannot be resolved without Loretta Weinberg and the Democrats writing new laws to address it - well, that's what makes citizen grit their teeth, grab their pitchforks, and start lighting their torches...

Judging by the comments on the Scarlet Nation message board, the Rutgers student body seems smarter than those who claim to be their citizen leaders:

Are you kidding me? With all of the problems in NJ this is her focus? I'm a die hard independent, but I guess I should not be surprised that this is coming from a democrat

...at what point do forsake all tradition to become 100% PC? Let's modify Kennedy's speech to eliminate 'mankind'

...I understand our society has changed... and in many cases for the better. But is this REALLY that offensive? I just don't see why certain individuals feel so compelled to take away harmless traditions so that they can prove some point. I mean it’s not like we are the Rutgers Redskins doing a Sentinel chop.

....I'm a big time liberal but I have two major problems with this:
1. How about worrying about higher education is funded and now how it's sung. Anyone who actually believed in education and not political grandstanding would see that.

2. What's wrong with the alma mater as is. It's a song about the history of the university. Historically it was a men's school.

...if the ....0001% of females are offended they can say their own words in replacement. In the meantime, they will spend money on focus groups and meeting in the Rutgers student center using student fees on such a trivial subject

Along with some suggestions for replacing the "offending" lyrics:

The lifeguards sent me to Old Rutgers,
And resolved that I should get a tan….

The A Team sent me to Old Rutgers,
And resolved that I should have a plan….

Wolves sent me to Old Rutgers,
And resolved that I should kill a lamb….

Chi-Chi’s sent me to Old Rutgers,
And resolved that I should eat some flan….

Rutgers was originally chartered in 1766, one of nine pre-Revolutionary "colonial colleges". It has withstood natural disasters, war, and all of the ills New Jersey could throw its way. But can it withstand Loretta Weinberg, and political correctness?

The founders - ministers of the Dutch Reform Church - are spinning in their graves. Probably under exit 14A on the New Jersey Turnpike...

Obama Tries To Reclaim His Lost Youth

2012-02-06T08:40:00.000-05:00

Since Inauguration Day, the president’s approval rating with the 18-to-29 crowd set a record for the most precipitous drop in Gallup Poll history, from 77 percent approval to 48 percent.

Ah, youth. You think it's going to be there for you forever, but one day you wake up and realize it's gone. Sure, you can still see vestigial traces of it when you gaze at your reflection, but suddenly you have to look harder and harder and peer closer into the mirror to convince yourself you still are who you thought you were.

And this is the point, of course, when some men will buy a new sports car - a convertible, in flaming red. Or a woman will take a younger lover (half her age plus seven, right?). Or, if you're a president, it's a moment when you offer silly proposals to your former paramours, hoping that with it, youth will return.

It is as awkward as it sounds:

No recent promise is more disingenuous than Summer Jobs+. The labor Department of Labor purports to have “180,000 job commitments” from private-sector companies, but only 38 percent (70,000) of these “jobs” pay money. The rest are unpaid internships — a category that Nancy Leppink, an Obama appointee at Labor, declared not “in compliance with the law” as recently as 2010.

The abrupt reversal doesn’t make these positions “jobs.” The 70,000 paid positions offered by the private sector won’t be nearly enough to employ the 1.7 million students who will graduate from college this year.... These 70,000 or even 180,000 new positions promised by the Obama administration wouldn’t even employ 5 percent of the young people now seeking work.

Then there’s the Obama call to expand the student-aid program — mostly through a massive increase ($1 billion to $8 billion) in the Perkins student-loan program.

Making it easier to get a student loan now is as devious as making it easier to get a mortgage a decade ago — the government is encouraging people to take on more debt than they can handle.

Many recent graduates face the same situation as the people who took out subprime loans from 1998 to 2007; the government encouraged them to take out massive loans that they now can’t afford. Student-loan defaults hit a record-breaking 8.8 percent last year. Growing the student-loan program means dooming more graduates to this same fate...

And the Millennials say to Obama: No thanks, and keep moving, creep, before I call campus police...

Barack will not recover his Lost Youth. They may not flock to Mitt Romney, either, but they are smart enough to have learned their lesson, and they won't go back to the man who has already betrayed them. They'll probably stay home on election night instead. Which - once he realizes it - will age the president even further, and push those bygone days of "young love" even further into the rear-view mirror...

Giants vs. Patriots: Who's Got The Hotter Chicks?

2012-02-05T13:05:00.001-05:00

(updated at bottom with Madonna's s*&%$#...)

Well, the New England Patriots do have cheerleaders, unlike the Giants.

But some would say that is just having to"pay for it", while the Giants get it for free:

Gotta go with the Jints, I think...!

UPDATE: The Giants win, proving the best things in life are free...or maybe not. Or perhaps proving there is nothing more unseemly than a 50 year old woman flashing her cooz at 50 million people? Ladies and gentlemen, straight from the Super Bowl, we bring you....Madonna's Vagina:

Newt Gingrich: Ugly In Defeat

2012-02-05T10:41:00.001-05:00

I know there's not a lot of blog traffic in knocking Newt, but I am a big believer in following the masthead on RS McCain's blog: "One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up."

Newt came in like a lion, and is going down like a bitch. Victor Davis Hanson:

Newt Gingrich’s post–Nevada caucus speech included about three minutes of inspired moments about issues and ideas in his usual imaginative and intellectually robust style. So why does he not just stay with that? Instead, he now turns ad nauseam to the tired reasons why he loses — yes, including lots of Mormons in Nevada — and ends up as Richard Nixon not going to get kicked around any more.

But whether he knows it or not, Gingrich is becoming a caricature of petulance: no concession in Nevada, no call to Romney, no awareness that his inability to raise money at levels of a political rival or to match a competing campaign organization is not necessarily unfair. That’s politics, and Gingrich knows it...

And lest you think the link to The Corner is indicative of my link to the establishment (although I think Mr. Hanson bona fides as a genuine intellectual are unimpeachable), here's Jonathan Tobin at Contentions:

...after watching Gingrich’s bizarre 11 pm presser, it would appear that the new positive Newt bears a strange resemblance to the old nasty Newt. Gingrich spent most of his session with the press venting his bitterness at Mitt Romney. While vowing to continue his presidential campaign, the main focus of his remarks was not his differences with President Obama but the anger he feels toward the GOP frontrunner.

As he did after losing in Florida, Gingrich again failed to congratulate Romney for winning in Nevada. But, if anything, his rage about being beaten in the pre-Florida primary debates has only grown. Calling Romney a liar, Gingrich piled on the abuse...

And while I would never accused the tenacious Professor Jacobson of adopting a Gingrichian (hmmm..."patent pending" on that verbiage!) manner, I am surprised to see his ire raised by this:

The big story was the revelation in The NY Times that the Romney campaign, both directly and through Jewish emissaries, has been trying to convince Sheldon Adelson to cut off further funding of a pro-Newt SuperPAC...Romney apparently is deeply hurt by the negative ads the SuperPAC has been running with Adelson’s funding...You have got to be kidding me. It’s not enough for Romney to outspend Newt several times over, he has to try to cut off Newt’s funding?

With all due respect, this is, as Hanson says, politics. I have no doubt that donors like Sheldon Alderson are being wooed all the time by their candidate's competitors, explaining why his man can't win but their man can, while offering the opportunity to "invest" early with the winning team, and perhaps reap large dividends down the road.

Won't Obama be doing the same thing in the general? I'd rather have a guy who will fight on Obama's chosen turf and defeat him with his own weapons, than sport a candidate that will lose with respect, like Senator John McCain. But if all Gingrich can do is complain, it certainly conveys the impression that he's already run low on serious body-piercing ammunition.

I'm not saying Newt should step out, but he should step forward. Whining is not a winning strategy, and lately, it seems as if it is all Gingrich has left...

Nevada Caucus Results

2012-02-04T17:50:00.001-05:00

Jon McNaughton's "The Forgotten Man" Draws Ire And Fire From The Left

2012-02-04T09:35:00.002-05:00

Mr. McNaughton is an artist, and here's one of his works that's causing quite a stir on Rachel Maddow's site:

Virtually all the comments agree one one thing: This work of art is the product of a racist mind, and it takes the sharp minds of the progressive community to see through it.

Seriously:

Just one person with dark skin abusing / ignoring the plight of white people.
Difficult for intelligent people to understand what racists are talking about.
Racist gibberish sounds confusing and odd...

I've learned some things about what racist people tell their children to instill hatred and fear. It makes my head bend. Such vile filth.

Well, nobody said today's young progressives were employable, but they did get a great four-year education in spotting the racist motivation in every single object - live and inanimate - around them. Not quite sure if it was worth the $100K investment, though...

Plenty of liberal hatred for their fellow Americans in there as well:

I thought it was the NASCAR standings and Jeff Gordon didn't make the list.

And I do like this one, even if it is sarcastic in intent:

I do not understand the juxtaposition of Obama with dollar bills. I was led to believe that he only deals in food stamps...

Another one of McNaughton's works: One Nation Under God:

Go to the site and scroll over the image, each character is identified. Can you find the politician, the smug professor, and "Mr. Hollywood"?

Signed prints can be had for a reasonable price. Mr. McNaughton, if you should get an order for a signed & framed 12" x 18" from New Jersey, do not be surprised. Fortunately, I waited a day before sending my check to Susan B. Koman...

More here.

Rosanne Barr To Split Anti-Semite Vote With Barack Obama?

2012-02-03T11:54:00.000-05:00

She's planning to run for president in 2012 on the Green Party ticket:

It's official: Roseanne Barr really is running for president.

The TV star has filed for candidacy with the Green Party with their convention looming in Baltimore this July.

"The Democrats and Republicans have proven that they are servants -- bought and paid for by the 1% -- who are not doing what's in the best interest of the American people," Barr said in a statement.

Barr wrote on her Green Party candidate questionnaire she "will barnstorm American living rooms.

Oh, the humanity!

More:

"Mainstream media will be unable to ignore me, but more importantly they will be unable to overlook the needs of average Americans in the run-up to the 2012 election."

They will ignore her. Obama's position heading into 2012 is tenuous at best; the last thing the media wants is to highlight someone who might siphon off votes a la Ralph Nadar. Now if were a celebrity running as a Libertarian, well...they'd get more coverage than poor Ron Paul.

Oh...and about Roseanne Barr's anti-semetism? It's classic European-style, a hatred of Jews lying behind a hatred of Israel. But Roseanne lets it all hang out:

The jews are raised to be suicide bombers too, and that abusive cult-programming that is done to jewish children, beginning with genital torture, remains strong even after the religion itself is abandoned.
There is no israel really, and there will soon be no jews...

Not a retouch/PhotoShop, alas - Roseanne thinks "Dead Jewish Children Cookies, Straight From The Oven" is a comedy bit both funny...

And this ugly incident:

Rabbi Arthur Waskow had heard enough.

The left-wing activist and Jewish Renewal rabbi was slated to face off via telephone with media personality Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on comedian Roseanne Barr’s radio show last week. But after a lengthy lead-in during which Barr and her co-host/boyfriend, Johnny Argent, let loose a torrent of invective against Judaism, Jewish identity and religion in general, Waskow decided he was no longer interested in participating.

By the time the pair tried to put Waskow on the air, the rabbi had hung up

...and yummy!

More here...

I dunno..maybe this is all a ploy by Roseanne to become Barack Obama's running mate in 2012? Everyone knows the president is bored with Old Joe, and while it may not diversify the ticket, it would certainly strengthen it with the liberal base...

Michael Bloomberg: Green For Thee, Private Jets For Me!

2012-02-03T09:07:00.000-05:00

New York's nanny-in-chief is pretty big on making New York City a "sustainable" city (which means whatever one wants it to mean, as long as it includes higher taxes and greater inconveniences): he's built miles of bike lanes (which are injuring pedestrians left and right), introduced hybrid cars to the NYPD (allowing suspects on foot to unrun them), and dreams of a harbor where "when Lady Liberty looks out on the horizon, she not only welcomes new immigrants, but lights their way with a torch powered by an ocean wind farm..."

But how devoted is Mayor Bloomberg to living the green life? Turns out he's just another poseur, putting on a show for the press monkey while living la vida loca he denies everyone else:

Mayor Bloomberg and a host of highfliers will pack private jets Sunday to head to the Super Bowl.

Arik Kislin’s private charter firm JFI Jets has five planes booked from New York this weekend, costing $19,000 per plane for a round-trip.

When Bloomberg and gal pal Diana Taylor touch down, Hizzoner will head to Lucas Oil Stadium, sources say, where “Meet the Press” is shooting remotes on the field. The mayor will be a guest along with Indiana GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels.

Many New York jet-setters are hitting Indy just for Sunday. “The city doesn’t have enough luxury hotels,” sniffed one VIP.

Betcha Mayor Mike will be home in time for hot chocolate Sunday night. But what is the price to his poor, precious planet?

...while jets are making life easy for the rich, they’re making life miserable for the rest of the country. The reasons include pollution... An hour of flying a private jet burns as much fuel as an entire year of driving a car, the report says, contending that four passengers flying in a Citation X from L.A. to New York will each contribute five times as much CO2 as a commercial-airline passenger.

And what about two passengers, which is all the Mayor's flight is carrying? Well, we can do teh math, and it always adds up the same: The cost of green, "sustainable", living must be borne by the people so that the elite do not have to change their mega-consumption lifestyle. Now open wide, and take it:

Obama Takes On The Throne...With Muslims As His "Useful Idiots"?

2012-02-02T14:24:00.002-05:00

Quite a gauntlet thrown down by Barack Obama before the Church: Put thy government before thine God, or suffer the penalties of the here, now.

Liberals are besides themselves with joy that the president is attempting to force Catholic organizations to provide free birth control for their employees, regardless of whether or not it violates key tenets of their faith.

NARAL, NOW, Ms. Magazine and the Feminist Majority Foundation all cheered the administration's abuse of the Obamacare law to ram abortion down pro-life medical professionals' throats.

...The ultimate goal is to shut down health care providers -- Catholic health care institutions employ about 540,000 full-time workers and 240,000 part-time workers -- whose religious views cannot be tolerated by secular zealots and radical social engineers.

Is it any surprise their counterparts in the "Occupy" movement have moved from protesting "Wall Street" to harassing pro-life marchers in Washington, D.C., and hurling condoms at Catholic school girls in Rhode Island?

Not to anyone who's paid any attention. But it got me to thinking about liberal's strong support for Islam. I've always found it strange - the left loudly profess anti-religious beliefs as evidence of their intellectual superiority, mock the Church mercilessly, and trade in anti-semetic commentary without flinching. Why, then, this rush to the defense of Islam, whether it be to their wars overseas or their attempts to make cultural inroads here in America?

It dawned on me, when I saw the title of this particular blog post - Liberals and Obama’s War on the Church.

Who else has been waging war against the Church? Why, Islam. While most of the Middle East outside of Israel is already Judenrein, Christians are now being chased out of their ancestral homeland as well. While the Crusades are part of our ancient history, in Islamic lands the battle still rages.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, no?

The liberal-Islamic alliance makes perfect sense now, as they both share the same aim: the destruction of Catholicism and its institutions. And should they succeed, what then?

Do Muslims believe they will get better treatment from the Left than Christians received? Are they playing the role here of Stalin's "useful idiots"?

Do the liberals believe that, once victorious, hey can leave their erstwhile allies in the dust, and force upon them the same compromises and conversions they forced upon Catholics? And do they believe that the followers of the Prophet will take it meekly?

Someone is under a great misconception here. Hopefully, American Catholics will rise up in rebellion against this man who has proclaimed himself our new God, as well as his armies of Darkness. Otherwise, prepare to worship before a huge glossy photo of The One. Oh, I'm sure Jesus will still be in church somewhere...maybe in the back...

Did Obama ever see "Dogma"? Two fallen angles discuss their next move, as they head to Jersey:

Bartleby: ...by passing through that arch, our sins are forgiven, no harm, no foul.
Loki: My God... I've heard a rant like this before.

Bartleby: What did you say?
Loki: You sound like the Morning star.
Bartleby: You shut your fucking mouth!
Loki: You do! You sound like Lucifer, man! You've fucking lost it! You're not talking about going home, Bartleby, you're talking about fucking war on God! Well, fuck that! I have seen what happens to the proud when they take on the Throne!

Obama, apparently, has not...

Susan B. Komen: The Target Of Today's Two-Minute Hate!

2012-02-02T09:21:00.000-05:00

In Orwell's predictive 1984:

It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT, they were dragging the chairs out of the cubicles and grouping them in the centre of the hall opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for the Two Minutes Hate....

The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck. The Hate had started...

Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room....In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices...The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish...The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out 'Swine! Swine! Swine!' and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen...

In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in....

And here's Howard Dean, once a wanna-be Big Brother, now just today's host of The Hate, as he screeches about an "evil" charitable foundation that has decided to stop giving donations to a group that is under federal investigation. Alas, said group is an ally of Big Broth - I mean, Howard Dean and the liberals - and an enemy of the abortion mills is now an enemy of the state:

The Komen Foundation has abandoned hundreds of thousands of women who rely on breast health services like mammograms — over a hundred and seventy thousand through its partnership with Planned Parenthood in recent years. By caving into pressure from the far right, the Komen Foundation has demonstrated that they lack courage.

Organizations which lack courage eventually fail. I support calls for the corporate donors to re-evaluate their support for Komen so that consumers aren’t forced to re-evaluate buying their products. I urge continued support for Planned Parenthood and the work they do to provide women’s health services and organizations who will continue the fight against breast cancer without endangering women’s lives for political purposes.

Howard Dean wants us to boycott the Susan B. Koman Foundation, which gave over $93 million dollars last year to women's health causes. Dean understands his call to action is irrational: How can you ostracize a group or individual based on how they distribute charity? If the Koman Foundation can be pressured to give donations to a group they do not wish to support, can't we all be pressured to generously "donate" to the causes that liberals favor?

Well, that's the point. But the fascist bent is obvious to even the most casual observer. So Dean cloaks it in Hate, and claims Komen's decision is based on their dealings with a shadowy conservative cabel, steeped in the blood of women, and must be reversed by all and any means necessary. Nothing less, Dean assures us, than the freedom of the female gender is at stake.

And the media, as well as Democratic politicians - both the intended audience for Dean's Hate - reacts much as Orwell expected:

...And you don’t make good on a “promise” to your dead sister by selling out women who need you most. (Salon)

"I was perplexed and troubled to see the decision to cut off funding for lifesaving breast cancer screenings through Planned Parenthood because of a political witch hunt by House Republicans," Boxer said in a statement. "I truly hope that they will reconsider this decision and put the needs of women first." - Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

The Komen foundation’s decision to pull $600,000 in annual grants for cancer screenings and mammogram referrals from Planned Parenthood is callous pro-life politics as usual.

The breast cancer charity’s move leaves Planned Parenthood scrambling to make sure thousands of mostly low-income women who can’t afford doctors don’t lose those basic services (NY Daily News)

Seems to me a common thread in all of the criticism is a failure to grasp the nature of the Koman Foundation:: They are not a government controlled entity, they are a private charity, and they can do what they please with their money.

For now. But the Hate has been issued, the Faithful have been called, and the torches are being lit...when will Boxer and her filthy socialist liberal ilk step in and start investigating Koman, I wonder? Is it noon yet?

Me, I'm writing a $50 check to the Susan B. Koman foundation. Sometimes the truth doesn't travel well on its own, especially when the producers of Hate control the media. Money, however, tends to help it flow quicker...

Mitt Romney Doesn't Care About The Poor? Guess What: Neither Do I

2012-02-01T13:40:00.003-05:00

Oh, they're gonna crucify Mitt over this one, but that's what he gets for going on CNN and talking to the reprehensible Soledad O'Brien:

Romney says, "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair , I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich.... I'm concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling."

O'Brien asked him to clarify his remarks saying, "There are lots of very poor Americans who are struggling who would say, 'That sounds odd.'"

Romney continues, "We will hear from the Democrat party, the plight of the poor.... You can focus on the very poor, that's not my focus.... The middle income Americans, they're the folks that are really struggling right now and they need someone that can help get this economy going for them."

What, exactly, is wrong with this assessment? OK, his verbiage is awful, but hasn't the last half-century of American government been geared toward the eradication of poverty? And what has been accomplished? A massive expansion of government, a tremendous diversion of the nation's resources, and a warping of American morality. Oh, and the poor? They are still with us, in ever-increasing numbers (if you believe the Obama administration). So maybe this Jesus guy had a point all those years ago?

Over at Contentions, it is pointed out that welfare benefits kick in at wages below $44,000 for a family of four (99.4% of which own at least one television, BTW). A family at this income level would be eligible for approximately $28,000 worth of federal and state welfare benefits per year. And perhaps the right way to think about this particular inequality is to compare this $28,000 to what the average middle class American receives from the government in comparable subsidies, $0.

And Mitt is right: It is the middle class that is dying. And he needs to move the government in a direction that will help the Great Middle - really, just getting it out of our way would be a great start. The poor will not vote Romney anyway, they know Republicans (w/the help of Bill Clinton) took the welfare crack pipe away once before, and they'll do it again. But our candidate - be it Romney or Gingrich - cannot be afraid to speak honestly and openly, for fear of being jumped on and criticized by a hyper-partisan media. Jonah Goldberg reprints an email:

Any excuse will serve a tyrant, and when it comes to campaigns, the press is a tyrannical master. So if Romney hadn’t said these things, the press certainly would have found something else he said and made use of that. When the simple utterance of a person’s name can be cause for two days of coverage about whether it was a racist slight, anything is up for grabs. One of these days, Romney is going to say something like “Obama just doesn’t understand how the real economy works, partly because he’s never had a job.” And the New York Times will run a front page story, quoting Al Sharpton and a bevy of psychologists, about how that is racist code. Make book on it.

I would...if I could find a taker. Meanwhile, the middle class slowly dies, and the American dream dies with them, as gas and food become exponentially more expensive, income and job mobility have ceased, and the dream of owning a home has become an unaffordable one. All while the president, his party, and the media continue in lockstep to make priority #1 "helping" the class of people who have proven to be the most resistant to change, especially by the liberal's preferred method of lavishing cash upon them. Meanwhile, we all become poorer in the process, and the middle class, slowly deprived of its lifeblood of mobility and opportunity, wither on the vine...

"That's the problem with being middle-class. Anybody who really cares will abandon you for those who need it more..."

-Mr. Bergstrom's parting remarks, ``Lisa's Substitute''

Maybe we are tired of being abandoned by bleeding hearts? We'll find out soon enough...

Florida & "The Romney Rout": Which Pollsters Called It?

2012-02-01T09:50:00.006-05:00

For future reference, when we are biting our nails and looking at polls for a glimmer of hope...here's how last night's totals in the Florida Republican primary tallied out:

Romney , Mitt 771,842 46%
Gingrich , Newt 531,294 32%
Santorum , Rick 222,248 13%

Final score: Mitt by 14...

And here are the polls, 24 hours before election day:

A Quinnipiac poll in Florida shows Mitt Romney has a 14 point lead over Newt Gingrich, 43% to 29%, with Ron Paul and Rick Santorum both at 11%. Just 7% are undecided, but 24% say they might change their mind by tomorrow's primary election.

A SurveyUSA poll finds Romney tops Gingrich by 15 points, 41% to 26%, with Santorum and Paul at 12% each.

A We Ask America poll shows Romney crushing Gingrich by 22 points, 50% to 28%, with Santorum at 12% and Paul at 11%.
A Public Policy Polling survey shows Romney leads Gingrich by seven points, 39% to 32%, with Santorum at 14% and Paul at 11%.

A InsiderAdvantage poll says the race is down to just five points with Romney leading Gingrich, 36% to 31%, followed by Santorum and Paul each at 12%.
A Suffolk University poll finds Romney ahead of Gingrich by 20 points, 47% to 27%, with Santorum at 12% and Paul at 9%.

Quinnipiac hit the nail on the head. Survey USA got the margin right as well. Insider Advantage and PPP were off wildly, projecting a Gingrich surge that never happened. Whereas We Ask America and Suffolk University both overshot the Romney margin by over-counting (oversampling?) Romney support at the expense of Gingrich.

It's not like anyone called it for Gingrich. But PPP and Insider gave false hope to the legion of Gingrich-ites of a "late break" for their candidate. Just something to keep in mind for the general election in November, when we will be studying polls the way the old masters studied the I-Ching, desperately using all our tools of divination to get a clue to our onrushing fate...

And before January expires, let me say...

2012-01-31T23:48:00.006-05:00

...thanks to my readers for making this month the best ever for Right, Wing-Nut! in terms of visitors and page views. Maybe it's because I wrote about an equal amount of Romney sucks / Gingrich sucks posts?

I'm humbled. Thanks again for stopping by. But now that you know our address, stick around. We got a fun ten months ahead of us. Oh, Lordy, do we ever....

MF Global: How Does $1.2 Billion Dollars Freakin' "Vaporize"?

2012-01-31T14:15:00.001-05:00

Ah, the innocent days when Jon Corzine's MF Global first went under, and "missing monies" we being tallied in the hundreds of millions...

Soon to be tabled in billions. But we're not there yet. We are here:

As the sprawling probe that includes regulators, criminal and congressional investigators, and court-appointed trustees grinds on, the findings so far suggest that a “significant amount” of the money could have “vaporized” as a result of chaotic trading at MF Global during the week before the company’s Oct. 31 bankruptcy filing, said a person close to the investigation.

Many officials now believe certain employees at MF Global dipped into the “customer segregated account” that the New York company was supposed to keep separate from its own assets—and then used the money to meet demands for more collateral or to unfreeze assets at banks and other counterparties as they grew more concerned about their financial exposure to MF Global.

OK - first? How the f*ck does customer money vaporize? Tyler Durden goes off:

i) the "vaporization" is merely the phrase that so called investigators use to avoid the far more troubling sounding "stolen" as it would imply guilt, something which the former NJ governor and Goldman CEO (and not to mention JP Morgan which most likely was on the receiving end of the $1.2 billion + transaction) will, under guidance from counsel, sternly disagree with, or ii) the capital markets are such an unprecedented and manipulated fraud, that nobody has any clue at any moment, where any client money is...So when someone asks what happened to stock market volume, and to investor confidence in the "stock market" feel free to use just that phrase: "it vaporized."

Funny - isn't one of the most ironclad laws of physics that of the conservation of matter, which states that matter can not be created or destroyed, but only can be changed in form? No wonder Jon Corzine was so full of himself - apparently, he was able to overwrite the laws of the universe with a single trade.

But is seems as if the money did merely change form. And that nobody has the will to chase it:

As money poured out of MF Global, much of it likely passed through J.P. Morgan Chase and other banks where the securities firm had accounts, as well as trade-clearing partners such as Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. and LCH.Clearnet Group Ltd., people familiar with the matter said.

Those companies have denied being knowingly in possession of any missing MF Global money, and any efforts to make them fill the hole would face daunting hurdles....

I am sure this is of great consolation to the small investors who had handed their life savings over to MF Global in the hope it would be cared for honestly. And whatever happened to "Yes, We Can"? I suppose when we are investigating the economic rape and pillage waged by a friend of Barack Obama's, the tagline becomes, "Oh No, We Can't"!

And speaking of vaporizing:

Jon Corzine, former governor and former financial wizard, has his penthouse in Hoboken up for sale at 11 percent less than he paid for it. Bloomberg reports it comes with one parking space and a $1,700 monthly maintenance fee. And only $38,003 in taxes on what he bought for $3.26 million in ’08. Hoboken is an Abbott district so people across the state pay for the schools.

Sounds like someone is in anticipation of upcoming legal bills...

I've begged the Republican party to make this a campaign issue - Corzine was a huge fundraiser for Barack Obama, and Biden has bragged about Corzine being the go-to guy when it came to designing the stimulus. But no. We'll argue instead about building Moon Base Alpha, and who served who kosher meals, while the criminals get off scott-free...

Chris Christie Calls NJ Democrat A "Numbnuts"

2012-01-31T09:39:00.002-05:00

...personally, I think he's going way too easy on this dumb-as-a-doorknob Democrat.

Here's the offending press release, from Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer/Hunterdon), another liberal who, having missed the moral clarity of the civil rights battles of the 60's, is desperately trying to re-create it by demanding equality for those who practice perverted sex:

SEGREGATIONISTS WOULD HAVE FOUND ALLY IN CHRISTIE

(TRENTON) - Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer/Hunterdon), sponsor of marriage equality legislation (A-1) in New Jersey, released the following statement Thursday on Gov. Chris Christie's comment that, "People would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South.":

"Is Gov. Christie actually saying the civil rights gains this nation saw in the 1960s should not have been legislated? If so, that's very disturbing.
"James Meredith wouldn't have gotten into the University of Mississippi any sooner if it were up to Chris Christie.
"And Govs. Lester Maddox and George Wallace would have found allies in Chris Christie over efforts by the Justice Department to end segregation in the South.
"It took a lot of bravery by a lot of people, including elected officials, to stand up for what was right and protect equal rights in this nation. Governor, it's time for you to follow their brave example when it comes to marriage equality."

And via Hot Air, here's Chris Christie's rebuttal to this bit of liberal stupidity:

Like I said...too easy on him...

A Vote For Gingrich Is A Vote For Obama

2012-01-31T08:45:00.002-05:00

Sorry, "purists". Go ahead, unfollow me on Twitter or my blog. Whatever. Actually, some of the vitriol I have received for strongly questioning Gingrich's campaign and/or persona here has been greater than or equal to the commentary left by illiterate angry liberals. We can disagree, and I do understand what the case is for Gingrich (understanding not being the same as agreeing), but let's be fucking civil here, OK? Sweet Zombie Jesus, it's not as if this blog has endorsed Mitt Romney, either. Instead, I'm beginning to embrace disappointment, hopefully not as a precursor to despair, and defeat...

Anyway. William Galston makes a point over at TNR:

If Obama were running against Gingrich this fall, he’d win—barring outright economic or military catastrophe—because the former speaker will never be able to persuade a majority of the people that he has the right temperament and character to occupy the Oval Office. Pitted against Obama in January 2011, Gingrich was supported by 37 percent of the people, versus 55 percent for Obama. A year later, after introducing himself to a new generation of adults and refreshing the memories of their parents, he enjoys the support of … 37 percent of the people, versus 55 percent for Obama.

Barack and Michelle - or Mr. & Mrs Crankypants, as Michelle Malkin so delightfully dubs them - are equally temperamentally unfit to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But while the media covers for or defends the president's lack of civility, they will eviscerate Gingrich and his pugnacious tenacity on a daily basis, getting under his skin, which is not much thicker than Barack's. Gingrich will erupt, and the election will be over before the convention breaks, leaving the country in the hands of the looters for four more years.

And while I'm in a bad mood, somebody tell Mitt Romney - who's going around talking up an Obama "economic recovery" - that even the Dems are smarter than that:

Most important, the economic horizon for 2012 has darkened....Consumer spending outpaced growth in disposable income, meaning that households spent more only by saving less. This can’t continue indefinitely: Over the past year, real actual tax incomes actually fell by 0.1 percent. Meanwhile, business investment grew at the slowest pace in two years. And as the Fed recently noted, the modest growth predicted for 2012 would not be enough to reduce unemployment significantly from current levels.

Maybe this is something we ought to be talking about instead?

So Now Ferris Bueller Drives A Honda CR-V?

2012-01-30T14:35:00.000-05:00

OK, I realize 25 years have passed since he took Cameron's dad's red 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California out for a day of fun in the Chicago sun, but still...can you imagine our man Ferris going from this:

"It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up..."

To this:

I don't know if life moves pretty fast in a Honda CR-V. And I have no interest in finding out...

It's Not That Michelle Went On Another Shopping Spree That Bothers Me...

2012-01-30T11:24:00.002-05:00

...it is how she spent the money that makes me sick:

British lingerie label Agent Provocateur have seen annual sales jump by more than 12 per cent in a year which also saw First Lady Michelle Obama joining their list of elite customers.

Mrs Obama, is said to have spent $50,000 (£31,794) in the one shopping trip to the boutique which closed down part of Madison Avenue when she visited with the Queen of Qatar, Sheikha Mozah.

Beyonce Knowles and Christina Aguilera have been seen at their stores in recent months, presumably purchasing unmentionables which can run ladies as much as $1,990 for a single French lace nightie.

While Americans are starving, Michelle Antoinette spends $50K on...underwear? While shopping with the monarch of a nation famous for its grotesque anti-semetism?

I'm sure if Eva Braun were still alive, Michelle would have no problem shopping with her for panties that might turn on the notoriously weak-penised Fuhrer...

But I guess this is what gets Barack's game on - seeing his wife's over-fed, fat ass wrapped in $2,000 panties, as they frolic within their White House bedroom.

Socialism and Big Government have certainly been good to them, to enjoy such extravagant decadence. No wonder they are so defensive of it. But the rest of us...well, we might just tire of living in poverty to pay for their perversions...

Income Inequality: Should We Blame The Poor Instead Of Vilifying The Rich?

2012-01-30T09:16:00.000-05:00

OK, tongue-in-cheek post title, for sure. But James Q. Wilson makes a valid point (not that Democrats pay much attention to those things):

We could reduce income inequality by trying to curtail the financial returns of education and the number of women in the workforce — but who would want to do that?

The real income problem in this country is not a question of who is rich, but rather of who is poor. Among the bottom fifth of income earners, many people, especially men, stay there their whole lives. Low education and unwed motherhood only exacerbate poverty, which is particularly acute among racial minorities.

Making the poor more economically mobile has nothing to do with taxing the rich and everything to do with finding and implementing ways to encourage parental marriage, teach the poor marketable skills and induce them to join the legitimate workforce. It is easy to suppose that raising taxes on the rich would provide more money to help the poor. But the problem facing the poor is not too little money, but too few skills and opportunities to advance themselves.

So why can't Barack Obama campaign on giving the poor the social and institutional skill set they need to take advantage of the financial opportunities that present themselves in a capitalistic society?

Because he's not a capitalist? True that, but simplistic. He's campaigned on plenty of things he hasn't believed it.

Because he's scared of being seen as criticizing minorities, a la Bill Cosby or Spike Lee, and thus alienating a crucial base he must have in order to be re-elected to a second term?

Ah. More likely. Conservatives and center-right independents might agree with him, but would still likely vote Republican, offering him few new votes to replace the many he would be risking.

But the real reason why he won't touch this difficult truth with a ten-foot pole? It's because Obama has nothing to run on in 2012 - the fact that he barely even mentioned his record in his SOTU speech last week (besides repeating, ad nasuem, how "he" got bin Laden) means he realizes how hostile most Americans are to it. And certainly, Obama cannot run on "more of the same" in 2012; that's why his popularity is scraping bottom in the first place. And besides, "Completing the march towards our glorious Socialist future!" is not a winning campaign slogan either.

So he has to run against something, and as a "protector of America" from something. In a different time a leader would blame it on/run against the Jews, but Obama needs their money, and thus picked a group that is almost synonymous with them and seem as equally evil: The Rich. Even if, as Wilson makes clear above, they have nothing to do with "income inequality" and may in fact have everything to do with bringing the nation back from the brink.

For what it is worth, I will give the president notice that this might not quite be a winning strategy. Salena Zito, writing about the rising Jacksonian streak in American voters:

Class warfare is not winning populism. Jacksonians are about being for something, not against success.

Liberals have historic memories of populist violence (i.e., World War I), so their intellectuals just can't get "masses arise" out of their minds, (Eldon Eisenach, University of Tulsa political science professor emeritus) says. "So the populism of 'Occupy' or the attempt of Obama to capture a populist strain in Republican progressivism just won't work.

"The one theme (independents) have that is Jacksonian is to get the federal government off their backs and out of their pockets -- hardly what Obama or Occupy have in mind."

Today, we're all political Whigs to some degree, seeking respectability...

Except the president, who will cover himself in mud, and attempt to divide us as a nation by telling us our problems can be solved by seeking vengeance against those who achieved success while we did not.

Doesn't sound like much of a plan. But then again, if Obama does go down in 2012, one will have to believe, in a thin-skinned pique of rage, he will try to take as as much of the nation down with him as he can...

Really: Just How Bad Is America's Debt/Spending Problem?

2012-01-29T12:05:00.004-05:00

If you don't already know, maybe this little piece of napkin economics will make it clear how f*cked we truly are:

And if you're feeling like shrugging this all off with the old "Well, it's bad, but in comparison to everyone else, we look good", well...I still think that maybe you ain't quite getting the gravity of the situation. They do, though, over at the New York Post:

....measured as a percentage of GDP (the value of all goods and services produced in a country over a year), our budget deficit is roughly a quarter larger than France’s. In fact, among European countries, only Greece and Ireland have larger deficits this year than we do.

The debt figures paint an even grimmer picture. If one includes all the unfunded liabilities of pension and health-care systems, Greece’s total debt equals 875% of its GDP. France, the next-most insolvent country in Europe, owes 570% of GDP. The United States, however, now owes 885% of GDP, more than any other industrialized country.

We have been able to avoid disaster so far only because, as the world’s preferential currency, other countries have been willing to lend us money cheaply. But that is not going to continue forever. And if our creditors begin to hike interest rates, we will be facing the same economic consequences facing so much of Europe today.

But don't worry. That will never happen here. Because Barack Obama will save us by..."investing" money in green energy projects while stopping the construction of oil pipelines, by "investing" more money in "education", by spreading broadband internet to barns and corn fields, by raising taxes on the rich, not-so-rich, almost rich, and lower-upper-middle class, and...by killing Osama bin Laden. Again and again, if necessary.

Yeah. We're in touch with reality, all right...

Lego Man In Space: How Much Has Changed

2012-01-28T10:22:00.005-05:00

This pretty is pretty viral, so you likely have seen it, or read the story: Canadian teens Mathew Ho & Asad Muhammad spent five months and $400 creating a jury-rigged platform - using a weather balloon, some Styrofoam, a few Canon cameras, and Asad's mom's sewing machine - with which they sent a Lego man, holding the Canadian flag, into outer space. And precisely calculated the trajectory of the landing so that all the material was recoverable, and postable online:

This is the kind of ingenuity American kids used to be famous for, right? Seems like our youth are more interested in making videos of people getting the sh*t kicked out of them then actually doing anything more...inventive.

Starting this past September, the duo spent their Saturdays at Ho’s kitchen table in Scarborough, drawing up plans and building the balloon.

What? Not playing Halo online? Why, that's positively un-American!

Exactly, some would say.

Two other things jumped out at me from the Toronto Sun piece linked above:

The two met in middle school. Muhammad’s family had just immigrated emigrated from Pakistan, and he spoke no English. When other students were ignoring him, Ho walked up and made friends.

Didn't talented people used to come from foreign lands to America in order to have a chance for themselves and their families to succeed? Sure, we get plenty of Mexicans, I suppose, but one gets the feeling more and more of them are coming here for the blue-state welfare checks and food stamps than to actually build a better life as Americans.

And then there's this - a little delay in (literally) launching the project due to a less-than-friendly neighbor:

The pair discovered a website that calculates a weather balloon’s estimated landing spot based on input launch coordinates, prevailing winds, and balloon specs...

The site kept spitting out Rochester, N.Y., as their balloon’s final landing spot. Muhammad and Ho didn’t like their chances with U.S. Homeland Security.

But one Saturday morning, Ho tried again, and saw the balloon would land near Peterborough...

What would Homeland Security have said if an Asian kid and a Muslim kid named Muhammad had tried to scamper across the border to pick up an object with cameras that had shot through the Earth's atmosphere? The story of their intellectual ingenuity would never have gotten out, nor the video, or the photos, nor they - from some type of maximum-security lockup.

Look at how we are perceived. Look at what we've become. Look at who we are, and what wastrels our youth is becoming.

Used to be that Lego man whould have proudly been holding an American flag...

How much has changed.

Climate Change Hysteria: Who Benefits?

2012-01-27T14:12:00.000-05:00

Easy: Liberal-dominated governments who want to redistribute private-sector cash to themselves and their cronies (while impoverishing their subjects), and greedy scientists who sell their soul and diminish their profession for a few pieces of silver. They will prosper from climate change, while the masses, ironically, will shiver and freeze...

Sound like something out of the rough birth of Western Civilization? It's is, in fact,a regression from our Renessiance and Enlightenment, complete with witch hunts. But first, the WSJ reiterates what we know: High-tech global warming scare tactics are extremely profitable to those in the game:

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet...

Much like the Church, Kings and Feudal Lords made out pretty well in the Dark Ages.

So who loses? Anyone else who dares to want to live a life made more comfortable by progress:

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

And the witch hunts:

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position....

I would love for someone to read this to Mitt Romney, and ask him where he stands on this perversion of our intellectual evolution. And ask Newt if he still sits with Nancy...

Did Romney "Pack The Room" Last Night? I Hope So....

2012-01-27T08:44:00.000-05:00

Jonah Goldberg comments on last night's debate, a rather flat one for Newton and a fairly successful one for Romney:

I don’t know whether he did or not, but it seemed obvious to me that the room had a lot of Romney supporters in it....There were definitely moments when Romney deserved the applause and cheers he got. But he also got applause and cheers for lines that have elicited no such response in the previous 8,000 debates. If Romney did pack the room with ringers, it was smart if also devious. Gingrich exposed a key vulnerability to his debate superpowers: he feeds off the energy from the audience. If Romney and his team figured that out and tampered with his energy source, that’s smart politics.

It is. And in the general election, faced with a choice between the smug, bombastic, pedantic, know-it-all professor they know and the one they are only slightly less familiar with, well...you just might see Barack Obama re-elected, based upon this rationale offered by the president himself.

But if a Republican candidate can get under the president's (extremely) thin skin and expose him as the punk-ass bitch he is without lowering himself to Obama's childish level, you just might have a winner. And it seems as if Romney, actually possessing the "cool temperament" the president's supporters tried to own, may very well likely be able to tinker with Barack's mojo and pull off the innocent "who, me?" routine while the whiner-in-chief flips his lid.

Not an endorsement of Romney, by the way. I'm just saying. Both his technocratic urge to "tinker & fix" rather than "destroy & rebuild" (which is what is necessary), and his obvious affection for state-run healthcare, are extremely troubling.

So that's why we need to make sure we elect a Congress and Senate that is as ideologically conservative as possible. If he does get the nomination, and wins the big prize, we'll need to keep President Romney's feet as close to the fire as possible. lest he stray off the path he was appointed to...

Rumble On The Runway: Obama Making Jan Brewer Rich

2012-01-26T16:27:00.002-05:00

Obama's reverse-Midas touch in full effect....he publicly and rudely bitches about what he claims is a mis- characterization of him in her book, Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America's Border and it goes from 285,568th place in overall sales to 29th.

Check that. That was five minutes ago. It's up to #21.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#1 in Books> Politics &Social Sciences >Government >Public Policy
#2 in Books > Biographies > Memoirs > Leaders > Notable People> Political
#2 in Books >Politics >Social Sciences >Government >State > Local Government

Can I get the president to throw a Barack Bitch-fit about Right, Wing Nut?

"You're just digging yourself in deeper....and making me much, much richer. Of course, with Republicans running the show in 2013, your precious federal government will never see a dime of it...Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha !!!"

Finally: A Plausible Reason To Re-Elect Barack Obama!

2012-01-26T14:52:00.001-05:00

Seth Mandel takes this from the president's State of the Union/2012 Campaign Kickoff Speech aired this past Tuesday:

The implication was that he hadn’t really done anything, but jobs were somehow coming back anyway so he should be re-elected because if the American economy is strong enough to withstand a first term of his, it can probably withstand another one.

Probably. Unless he actually fulfills his promise to, ahem, "finish the job he started". But based on his record of actually keeping promises - as opposed to simply making them - I think we'd manage to survive.

Or one might just say the president leads the same way Homer Simpson parents:

Homer: I make you kids lots of promises, that's what makes me a good father

Lisa: Actually, keeping promises makes you a good father

Homer: No, that makes me a great father...

Why Does Joe Biden Hate Indians?

2012-01-26T13:40:00.002-05:00

First, there was this:

"I've had a great relationship. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking."

It's OK. He's a Democrat, so he's earned absolutions from the media (as opposed to Rick Perry, who was crucified for the scribbling on a rock his grandfather once walked past...)

And just today, in Rochester, New Hampshire, we have this - sneering mockery of an Indian accent as part of a complaint about American jobs going overseas:

But that's OK, he's a Democrat. Biden could walk on his hands like a chimp while speaking in "Ebonics" and still get a pass from the media...

Jan Brewer vs. Barack Obama: One's A Whiny Little Bitch...

2012-01-26T08:47:00.001-05:00

...and the other is the governor of Arizona.

Almost a fistfight on the tarmac, when Jan Brewer went to greet Barack Obama as he deplaned. What happened? Jan tells the tale:

“He was a little disturbed about my book, Scorpions for Breakfast. I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read the excerpt. So.”

Asked what aspect of the book disturbed him, Brewer said: “That he didn’t feel that I had treated him cordially. I said I was sorry he felt that way but I didn’t get my sentence finished....

She said the president brought up the book.

“I thought we probably would’ve talked about the things that were important to him and important to me, helping one another. Our country is upside down....

He appeared to walk away from her while they were still talking, and she confirmed that by saying she didn’t finish her sentence.

So he turned on his heel and spun off while the lady was still speaking. Stay classy, Baracky...

Not the first time he threw a hissy fit on the tarmac. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal tells a similar tale out of the bayou:

I was expecting words of concern about the oil spill, worry about the pending ecological disaster, and words of confidence about how the federal government was here to help. Or perhaps he was going to vent about BP’s slow response. But no, the president was upset about something else. And he wanted to talk about, well, food stamps. Actually, he wanted to talk about a letter that my administration had sent to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack a day earlier.

The letter was rudimentary, bureaucratic, and ordinary. . . . We were simply asking the federal government to authorize food stamps for those who were now unemployed because of the oil spill. Governors regularly make these sorts of requests to the federal government when facing disaster.

But somehow, for some reason, President Obama had personalized this. And he was upset.

There was not a word about the oil spill. He was concerned about looking bad because of the letter. “Careful,” he said to me, “this is going to get bad for everyone.

Not the oil spill. President Food Stamps was concerned about...well, you know...

Why does this president have such deep-seated hostility to women and minorities, anyway? Oh, I suppose the racial/gender makeup of his anger victim here is likely irrelevant - when Obama's fragile, delicate, feminine ego is bruised, no one is safe, regardless of whether they have what might be defined as a normally protected status.

And the next time the media tries to tell me about his "cool, even, temperament"...I think I am gonna lose mine...

Chris Christie Outfoxes New Jersey Democrats...

2012-01-25T14:18:00.000-05:00

...which, granted, is not saying much. But still so much fun to watch. State Senate President Stephen Sweeney, usually a union thug, now a gay lover (as in a lover of all things gay, especially same-sex marriage), said publicly he would not consider Christie's appointees for the New Jersey State Supreme Court unless they were minorities. Spending most of his time surrounded by like-minded fellows and reading the Newark Star Ledger, Sweeney made almost an understandable mistake: he assumes that all blacks and gays were liberal Democrats, and would vote thusly.

How's that nuanced line of thinking work out for Sweeney? Ah..not well:

On Monday Christie nominated Korean-American Phillip Kwon and Bruce Harris, the openly gay black mayor of Chatham Borough. Kwon, who worked with Christie when he was U.S. attorney, is currently First Assistant Attorney General for New Jersey.

Christie delivered a body blow to Democrats prepared for a fight over high-court nominees. It puts Democrats on the defensive and gives Christie latitude in bringing more conservative voices to the court. Democrats wanted minority candidates, and they have them.

First Assistant Attorney General Kwon's resume is stellar:

Prior to joining the Office of the Attorney General, Mr. Kwon served for more than ten years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey. As part of the Criminal Division, he focused on prosecutions involving drugs, gangs, counterfeiting, white-collar fraud, and immigration fraud. Mr. Kwon also served in the Special Prosecutions Division where he worked specifically on corruption cases and trials, including those involving Robert Janiszewski, Nidia Davila-Colon, William Braker, Zachary Turner. Mr. Kwon was also a prosecutor on the trial team that convicted Sharpe James and Tamika Riley in their federal corruption case.

In 2005, Mr. Kwon was named as the Chief of the Violent Crimes Unit where he supervised the Office’s gang prosecutors. In 2006, Mr. Kwon was named as the Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division where he directly oversaw the Commercial Crimes Unit, the Terrorism Unit, and the Violent Crimes Unit.

Tough on crime, tough on corruption, and a minority. How are the Democrats going to fight that, and simultaneously keep the state's substantial Asian vote in 2012?

Admittedly, Bruce Harris' record is a bit less clear:

Age: 61
Hometown: Chatham, Morris County

Party: Registered Republican
Education: Graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College in 1973; graduated with honors from Boston University Graduate School of Management in 1979 and from Yale Law School in 1992.
Professional experience: currently of counsel at the law firm Greenberg Traurig, and previously at Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland and Perretti, with a focus on lending, real estate and construction financing and bond transactions.
Political experience: Elected mayor of Chatham Borough in 2011; appointed to fill a vacancy on the borough council, and elected to two terms, making him its longest-serving councilman
Other activities: served on Chatham Planning Board, Environmental Commission, Historic Preservation Commission; former member of the Morris County Open Space Preservation Trust; trustee of the UMDNJ and the New Jersey Health Foundations; trustee of Eric Johnson House Inc., a transitional housing program for people with HIV/AIDS, including five years as president.
Family: partner of 32 years, Marc Boisclair
Honors: New Jersey Super Lawyers 2005-2007
Quote: Stuart Lederman, a partner at Riker Danzig who is president of the New Jersey State Bar Foundation, said Harris "brings an intellectual curiosity to the bench, but balancing that with an understanding of issues facing government and individuals."

Seems like a guy who has tried to balance the concerns of the community with the needs of business. Although certainly not a "constitutional originalist", He's worked closely with Christie in the past, and the governor likely knows his way of thinking.

Of course, the timing is sweet and well-planned. As the New Jersey legislature works to pass laws legalizing gay marriage, it now becomes harder to paint Christie as a hateful bigot, which was likely the primary reason the Democrats were pushing the same-sex marriage bill so hard.

So those so-much-smarter-than-thou Democrats are now in a box of their own making. They can't oppose Christie's nominees without confessing it's not minorities that matter to them, it's liberal ideology (and how honest and refreshing would that be?). They can't paint Christie as a gay-basher, not with the Harris nomination and his declaration that the gay marriage issue should be decided at the ballot box by statewide referendum and not by a small majority of lawmakers.

The Democrats are screwed and will likely have to submit to Chris Christie's will.

Just imagine what this guy would have done to Barack Hussein Obama...

Obama Still Thinks He's Lincoln?

2012-01-25T08:28:00.000-05:00

Money quote from his campaign speech - sorry, State of the Union Address - last night:

“I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed,” he said, “that government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.”

But where the Great Emancipator diverges from the once-Great Orator is that Barack Obama thinks the government can do everything better than the people themselves. From health care, to eating habits, to the illumination of their homes, to the cars they drive and what devices they use inside them. If there's a sweet spot where Obama believes the private sector can do a better job than government, I haven;t heard him mention it yet...

It doesn't mean that Obama wasn't honest in his statement above. He simply has a much, much lower opinion of the American people than the great leaders he claims to channel...

Is Tim Thomas As Brave As, Say...Sean Avery?

2012-01-24T15:25:00.000-05:00

Well, now that Glenn Reynolds has written about Bruins goalie (and 2011 playoff MVP) Tim Thomas refusing to join his teammates at the White House yesterday to be congratulated on their Stanley Cup victory by Barack Obama, I'm sure we'll see a lot more commentary on his bold stand in the upcoming days/hours/minutes. That's good. But it's the commentary from the left, and the sports-writing media, that I'm most interested in...

If you haven't heard the story:

Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli confirmed that Thomas had told him months ago he would not attend the White House event due to his political and ideological differences with the Obama administration. Chiarelli said he had tried to convince Thomas to attend the event "over the last couple months" to no avail.

While his politics aren't common knowledge among many hockey fans, Thomas hasn't hidden his political leanings. He's a fan of former Fox News channel host Glenn Beck, once saying he aspired to appear on Beck's talk show as a guest.

Big Government, a website founded by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, celebrated Thomas as a "true Tea Party patriot" for having "In God We Trust" and the Gadsden flag on his mask.

Here's why I am curious to see what comes from the sportswriters and blogs: Tim Thomas is not the only hockey player in recent months to make an open political stand. Rangers forward Sean Avery did the same thing last year, when he appeared in TV advertisements supporting gay marriage in New York State. Avery was lauded for his stand, being called "unafraid", a "true leader", and "inspiring". This, despite a well-deserved reputation as the dirtiest player in the NHL. Think Ty Cobb without the skill. Click the link if you want to see videos of Sean "in action" (including a pregame fight with, ironically, Tim Thomas. Hmmm....).

So my question is: Will Thomas - a clean living, blue-collar, working -class hero from Flint, MI. - get the same respect for standing up for his beliefs as Avery got when he stood up for gay marriage?

Sportswriters tend to be frustrated opinion columnists - dying to get the serious respect of their newsroom peers, they'll often launch into judgmental tirades whenever the opportunity presents itself. Tim Thomas' stand against a corrupt president certainly leaves him open to controversy. Will he be weighed on the courage of his beliefs, or condemned due to a differing value system than that held by the mainstream media?

Should be interesting...

UPDATE: By popular demand - here's Avery fighting with Thomas. Watch Avery hit Thomas on the back of his head with his stick, while Tim is on his knees. Time takes exception to typical liberal chicken-fighting:

UPDATE II: As expected. The Boston Globe's Kevin DuPont orders Thomas to turn in his 2012 Olympic medal and sweater, if he's so ashamed of his country. Whatever happened to dissent being the highest form of patriotism?

A reminder from The Corner:

Notably, no one at the Boston Globe complained when Red Sox owner John Henry and general manager Theo Epstein, both dyed-in-the-wool Democrats, opted out of the invites to the Bush White House after the 2007 World Series.

it is all about the double-standard. TSN's Gord Miller:

For those wondering, Tim Thomas will be in uniform in Washington tonight, as soon as he dumps the last crate of tea into Boston Harbor.

But no jokes about Sean Avery bending over in the shower, of course...

Another Boston lefty whines:

Two words: embarrassing and classless....The only thing I knew about Thomas until yesterday had to do with phenomenal hockey playing. Here’s what I suspect today: He’s a spoiled brat.

Others, with more nuanced minds, think otherwise:

One can argue Thomas could have just as easily played along with everyone else, shaken Obama’s hand and enjoyed his private tour of the executive residence. I believe he could have done so without compromising himself, but he thought differently, chose to make a statement about his principles and risked the opprobrium of the liberal press. For that he deserves our respect as a citizen and a man.

No way. He's a Republican....!

More here.

Newt Gingrich Ought To Be Thanking Sarah Palin Right Around Now...

2012-01-23T17:09:00.000-05:00

You know, Sarah Palin hadn't said boo about the Republican primaries until just a few days before the most recent primary, when she mentioned that she would vote for Gingrich "if I were a South Carolinian".

William Kristol:

First time she has expressed herself in the race and her candidate wins by 12. If she really comes out for Newt, look out.

Sarah is the nuclear submarine of the 2012 Republican primary. She's running silent and running deep. But should she decide to surface, or perhaps let loose a salvo of Tomahawks, well...let's just say the landscape will be permanently altered. As if it had been struck by...a salvo of Tomahawks.

She's been quiet, but she is still out there - watching, observing all, calculating. And when she appeared, ever so briefly, and dipped her toe in the water....the seas parted.

When you can't see her, and don't hear her, that's when she's at her most dangerous. Certain primary candidates ought to be very nervous right around now...

TSA Detains Rand Paul, Further Shreds The Constitution In The Process...

2012-01-23T13:47:00.004-05:00

Yeah, I know, the Constitution is already so torn and tattered - not unlike the Sacred Parchment of the Stonecutters- that it is hard to believe it can be ripped apart any further. But by detaining Senator Rand Paul, the TSA has managed to do just that. Amazing in its own way, I suppose...

First, the salient facts:

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was blocked from boarding a flight Monday by the Transportation Security Administration in Nashville, Tenn., after refusing a full body pat-down, POLITICO has confirmed.
“I spoke with him five minutes ago and he was being detained indefinitely,” Paul spokesperson Moira Bagley said. “The image scan went off; he refused patdown.”

Paul’s father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), tweeted out news of the incident, saying that there had been an “anomaly” with a body scanner.

“My son @SenRandPaul being detained by TSA for refusing full body pat-down after anomaly in body scanner in Nashville. More details coming,” wrote the authenticated Twitter account of presidential candidate Ron Paul.

So where does a breach of the Constitution come into play? A-ha!

The Speech or Debate Clause is a clause in the United States Constitution (Article I, Section 6, Clause 1) . The clause states that members of both Houses of Congress

...shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

The intended purpose is to prevent a President or other officials of the executive branch from having members arrested on a pretext to prevent them from voting a certain way or otherwise taking actions with which the President might disagree.

A dangerous precedent has been set, if Senator Paul can be detained by a quasi-governmental agency without charge. This is an event that should even have those constitution-hatin' liberals up in arms: Can you imagine an evil, despicable, black-hearted Republican president (aren't they all?), working in secret with government officials to stop a Chuck Schumer, or a Debbie Stabenow, from arriving in Washington while the Senate votes on overturning ObamaCare? Or - perish the thought - defunding NPR?

Finally, a bipartisan injustice. I'd chant "Free Rand Paul!", but he's already on the next plane out of town. How about "Hey! Hey! TSA! How many Americans you detain today?"

OK, they both suck. But somebody ought to instruct the TSA in the finer points of constitutionality. Or is that an oxymoron, given what the TSA - and Homeland Security - are all about?

Best Mocking Of That "Dumb" Newsweek Cover...

2012-01-23T10:10:00.000-05:00

...via Reaganite Republican:

Barack Obama Knows Exactly What He Is Doing - To America...

2012-01-23T08:15:00.016-05:00

I posted yesterday on Maureen Dowd's little smackdown of the president's inflated sense of self-regard. Although I am sure she meant it in a cautionary way, not critical, and certainly did not intend to accuse them of being "uppity" - exactly the accusation levied at conservatives who have written the same exact thing about the president and the missus.

But I wanted to revisit her piece, and highlight one line in particular. It's an excerpt from the Jodi Kantor book on the Obamas, and it resonates. And illuminates exactly what is going on:

...when the president met with Democratic members of Congress who had lost their seats in the midterms...he did not seem to comprehend the anxiety that had spawned the Tea Party, or feel any regret. Jim Oberstar, who lost his long-held Minnesota perch, recalled Obama’s saying, “In the end, this is for the greater good of the country"

And that, my friends, is what Obama thinks today when he sees the long unemployment lines, the spiking fuel prices, the ever-expanding amount of Americans that must go on the public dole. It is why he spiked the Keystone XL project, and why he insists on melting down the upper class, and the business class, of American society.

That this is for the greater good.

For it will eventually create the type of America that Barack Obama want to see: Government-dominated, with a third-world standard of living, and the equality of misery for all. An America run by a select few elites pulling the levers of power (including Obama himself, of course, and his wife, and a few of their friends), primarily working to redistribute it - and what little wealth remians - back to themselves.
Obama has a vision, all right...and that's why he's on the campaign trail, saying he needs to "finish the job". As long as we still have money, freedom, and the ability to choose our paths, his work is not yet done.

It gets clearer every day, doesn't it?

Is Maureen Dowd Calling Barack and Michelle "Uppity"?

2012-01-22T14:00:00.002-05:00

Better watch it, old girl. That's dancing on the racist side of the line. Oh - my mistake! You're a liberal Democrat! Therefore your criticism of the Obamas is constructive, not destructive. And/or racist.

MoDo will surely vote for Obama in 2012, but she warns them here against the perception that they are getting a bit too...big for their britches, we'll say. OK, uppity.

It doesn't matter, 'ol Dowdy will get behind the Obamas full-bore by the time election season gets into full swing, and will train her attacks strictly on his Republican opponent, but at the moment, she's supplying us with some good ammo:

Despite what his rivals say, the president and the first lady do believe in American exceptionalism — their own, and they feel overassaulted and underappreciated.

We disappointed them.

As Michelle said to Oprah in an interview she did with the president last May: “I always told the voters, the question isn’t whether Barack Obama is ready to be president. The question is whether we’re ready. And that continues to be the question we have to ask ourselves.”

They still believed, as their friend Valerie Jarrett once said, that Obama was “just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

...the Obamas, feeling misunderstood, burrowed into “self-imposed exile” — a “bubble within the bubble” — with their small circle of Chicago friends, who reinforced the idea that “the American public just did not appreciate their exceptional leader.”

She reports that Marty Nesbitt indignantly told his fellow Obama pal Eric Whitaker that the president “could get 70 or 80 percent of the vote anywhere but the U.S.”

The Obamas, especially Michelle, have radiated the sense that Americans do not appreciate what they sacrifice by living in a gilded cage....

Not uppity. Just classic self-involved, self-absorbed, closed-minded limousine liberals. Dowd's got it right, although she herself would never admit it...

Thomas Friedman: So Far Left, He Thinks The Center Is...Far Left...

2012-01-22T12:37:00.000-05:00

This is a Friedman classic, in which he decides, for all Americans, exactly who should be president.

First, he sets forth his bona fides to be named the nation decider:

...voters are still casting about for a leader with a winning message. I can save both parties a lot of money. I am one of those voters, and I can tell you exactly for whom I want to vote — and I don’t think I’m alone.

Well, Thomas, you're right about that. You have about 33% of the American people with you. They are called "the Democratic base".

For check out what Friedman feels are the "winning platform" for 2012:

I want to vote for a candidate who advocates an immediate investment in infrastructure that will create jobs and upgrade America for the 21st century — ultrafast bandwidth, highways, airports, public schools, mass transit

So point one is: Another stimulus, even larger than the first failed trillion-dollar attempt.

Second, I want to vote for a candidate who is committed to reforming taxes, and cutting spending, in a fair way. The rich must pay more, but everyone has to pay something.

Point two: Soak the rich, but everyone must have skin in the game. Obama campaigned on this, then once in office limited it to "soak the rich". Fool me once, Tom...

Third, I want to vote for a candidate who has an inspirational vision, not just a plan to balance the budget.

Point Three: Friedman wants a demagogue. Or Obama redux. Same difference, except, as point two mentions, it involves fooling us twice.

Finally, I want to vote for a candidate who supports a minimum floor of public financing of presidential, Senate and House campaigns. Money in politics is out of control today...
It sure is, especially when Republicans are occasionally the beneficiary. Point Four: Overturn Citizens United!

Isn't this really the Obama agenda? Friedman admits it is:

Any candidate with that four-part agenda would win... I hope it is Obama, because I agree with him on so many other issues...

Obama won in 2008 because he advocated many of the positions Friedman outlines above. The problem is, he either abandoned them, used them as Trojan Horses to advance less popular parts of his radical agenda, or implemented the aforementioned policies, only to see them fail in spectacular fashion.

So Friedman wants Obama to re-run the 2008 campaign, convinced he can fool us all twice. Shame on you, Tommy boy, the American people are simply not as dumb as you are...

About Mitt Romney's Record....

2012-01-22T10:05:00.002-05:00

...no, I'm not talking about his governing record, or his record at Bain Capital. I'm talking more basic here - election wins versus election losses. Elections of all stripes...

The man who claims to be the "most electable" Republican is now 1-2 in the 2012 primaries, his one win pretty much coming before a very partisan "home crowd" in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, in the general election, you only play one game at home, two tops, and the remaining 48-49 are all played on the road, in front of indifferent, if not openly hostile, "fans", who want to see something first before they start cheering you on...

Add that 1-2 primary record to his lifetime won/loss stats, and you come up with a horrific...6-20 record in elections.

Think about that. 6-20. How bad do you have to be to lose like that? Are we going to allow "the party establishment", and the media, to coronate Romney as the Republican presidential candidate, when a player of his ilk would have been rejected by the 1962 New York Mets?

Any reader of this blog knows that I believe nominating Newt Gingrich would be a disaster. But our adversary, Barack Obama, is one mean, miserable, tough SOB, and both he and the media will take a "nice" Republican candidate, chew him up, and spit out his bones.

Here's the crux of the problem:

“Why is Mitt ashamed of having a lot of money?...how come Mitt can’t explain coherently why it’s OK to pay a 15 percent capital gains rate on money you’ve already paid the top 35 percent income tax rate on when you first earned it?

If he can't defend himself on this issue (where a smart, explanatory answer would open America's eyes to some of the warped reality of the tax code), then he will be unable to articulate any defense of conservative principles. Which will make him dead meat.

In which case, we might as well drag Rick Perry back into the race and nominate him. Sure, he can't get more than a few dozen coherent sentences out in a row, but at least he knows in his gut what is right and what is left, and will always act with conservative instincts, should he be elected president. And any man that would shoot a coyote dead for looking the wrong way at his dog is nasty enough to take on the reigning champ. And for all of his (many, many) faults, at least Newt can do nasty.

But Rick ain't coming back. Which puts me almost in the same position as Jennifer Rubin: On my knees, begging one of the guys who claimed they couldn't play at this level to gather up their cojones and step up to the plate...
I used worry that Mitt, after a few weeks in the Oval Office, would be fretting over negative New York Times editorials. I don't worry about that any more. Because he has about as much chance of getting elected as any 6-20 pitcher has of winning a big game against the other team's best and most ruthless players...

Obama's New York Marathon: How Many 1%-ers Can He Hit Up In One Night?

2012-01-21T11:20:00.001-05:00

The answer, apparently, is plenty. The New York Post reports on Barack Obama's shameless dash for cash among the cream of the economic crop:

Obama raced through the city on Thursday, appearing at two events at Upper East Side restaurant Daniel, then at a dinner for 40 at Spike Lee’s townhouse, followed by a fundraiser at the Apollo.

The media highlighted Obama's Apollo stop by airing footage of him singing (look! he likes to do the same things you rubes do!), but failed to report on this little goody:

A witness tells us Rangel “passed out” at his table at the Harlem venue’s “A Night to Remember” event and, “His wife Alma was shaking him to wake him during the president’s speech.”

The 11th commandment of the media: Never speak ill of a fellow liberal...

...nor mention the creepy, messianic merchandise being sold at the event...

Another stop had him meeting up with some billionaire Jews, who - living comfortably in their Manhattan penthouses - no doubt agree with the president that a little adversity is just what Israel needs. But prior to that little get-together, Obama engaged in his second favorite pastime (after golf) - hobnobbing with celebrities:

Before the discussion, there was a private reception where Obama met with Harvey Weinstein and Showtime’s Matt Blank. Sources tell us Obama “congratulated [Weinstein] for Meryl Streep’s best actress win for ‘The Iron Lady’ at the Golden Globes.” Obama also congratulated Blank for “Homeland,” his network’s counter-terrorism thriller, which took the Golden Globe for best drama series.

And check out the haul:

The event, attended by up to 100, raised about $500,000 for Obama’s reelection campaign.

Who says the 1% have an outsized advantaged in today's society? The President, you say? Well, he should know...

Final celebrity sighting:

At Lee’s townhouse, guests included Mariah Carey, decked out in jewels, Nick Cannon, “Fela!” producer Edward Tyler Nahem, MWW CEO Michael Kempner and Bobbi Brown.

Presenting the future cause of inner-city robberies, shootings, and tramplings....

Ah, the bejeweled royalty, playing host to the King, and awarding him with an "honorarium" of sorts, so that he remembers their gracious hospitality and support, and perhaps returns again to grace their halls once again.

You know, I don't envy these people, not a bit. I'm happy with what I have, as I have earned every meager bit of it. Nor do I deny a politician his right to fund-raise, and I do not profess shock that he goes where the money is, Willie Sutton-style.

But I am revolted by the brazen hypocrisy of a president who relishes the opportunity to rub elbows with, and take the money of, the people he labels "the 1% , then immediately turn around and publicly blame them for all that ails America.

If they are that horrible, Mr. President, stay away from them, and don't take their money. $500K from 100 people is vulgar enough, but taking it from folks you hate in order to destroy them is more morally ugly than tactically brilliant, isn't it? Are you simply not man enough to look them in their eyes and tell them why you loathe them so? Or do you so desperately need their money that you are willing to whore yourself - and your nation - out, in order to get your hands on some of it?

Or is it possible that this whole 1% rhetoric just a subterfuge, a lie, a way to bitterly divide the American people deeply enough so that you may squeak through with an election victory in 2012, and thus ensconce yourself and Michelle in the White House for four more years of living like feudal lords, while you denounce society's...feudal lords?

You can crawl all over Manhattan for cash as long as you want, Barack, and I won't fault you. Just be honest about who your supporters are, and square it with your re-election campaign. Because even the dimmest con-man knows that you can't keep running the same scam forever, the center simply will not hold, and sometimes you need to just collect your winnings and get out of town before the whole thing collapses on your head, and everything gained becomes lost...

"Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close": Just Because Hollywood Never Understood 9/11 Doesn't Mean They Can't Exploit It For Profit

2012-01-20T14:22:00.000-05:00

(spoiler alert...)

If you watch any TV at all, you've probably seen the commercials for this movie, that assure you that your betters have declared it to be The Movie of the Year, and you are surely less of a human if you skip it: "The reviews are in...Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is the most touching, moving, heartbreaking,fulfilling movie of your lifetime..."

Every ad has a reference to the 9/11 attacks: "My dad was in the building" says an unseen but plaintive voice, with strategic shots of a revamped New York skyline. It sounds, at first listen, heartrending: Who is this boy, what emotional damage has he suffered, and how were the events of that horrific day instrumental in shaping his life?

Well, those would be valid questions to ask, if we had men and women of integrity and imagination producing movies. Instead, apparently, it is a mere plot device to make us sympathize with what is apparently an unsympathetic character. Andrea Peyser in the New York Post writes Extremely, incredibly exploitive:

It stars a weird 11-year-old overprivileged Manhattan boy, Oskar Schell (“Jeopardy” whiz kid Thomas Horn), who’s afflicted with a form of autism, likely Asperger’s syndrome. His condition is presented as nobly as the disability of the John Nash character in “A Beautiful Mind” — minus the brilliance and charm.

The movie concerns the boy’s quixotic attempt to hold on to his dad (Tom Hanks), who was murdered in the Trade Center. Yes, I wrote “murder.” But you won’t hear that word uttered by anyone in the film, because 9/11 is presented here as a kind of cosmic accident. Like lightning.
The message isn’t “love one another.” It’s “sh-t happens.”

Nothing is spared in the quest for emotional blackmail, cheap thrills and a naked ploy for an Oscar.

But the most outrageous falsehood promoted in the film is the thing it leaves out. The word “terrorist” is consciously never said. Nor is “murderers,” “butchers” or “Muslim extremists.”
In a climactic scene, Bullock tells her son that 9/11 “made no sense.” This is the biggest lie of all.
For 9/11 made perfect sense. It was an act of barbarity committed by people bent on destroying this city, this nation.

The movie ends in true Hollywood style. The boy, however improbably, finds the lock he seeks. But it has nothing to do with him or his father. Just another cosmic accident.

It's Oscar time...for Sandra....and Tom Hanks! Winter...for truth and...respect..." (sung to the tune of "Springtime for Hitler")

And how's this for an ad: "Critic Kyle Smith calls Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close the most irritating movie of the year!"

I walked out of the movie in more or less of a cold fury and I still think some critics and wets might fall for this shameless work...

The film amounts to a celebration thrown by author Jonathan Safran Foer for an unbelievably obnoxious little genius meant to be a sweetly heartbreaking charmer.

What’s additionally galling is that the kid really has nothing to do with 9/11, which barely interests the author except as a means for ginning up interest in and sympathy for his little hero. 9/11 is cannily deployed to bestow a completely unearned gravity on this twee creation.

There is no mention of the savages who ruthlessly and with perfect internal logic carried out this act of mass murder. The events of 9/11 are treated as just a random tragedy, like an earthquake or a lightning strike, instead of the result of meticulous evil planning by sworn foes of the United States of America and everything it stands for...

Is Hollywood so unaffected by the horror, so untouched, so filled with cynicism that they see nothing wrong in treating 9/11 as a mere sideshow plot device sure to garner sympathy from stupid flag-waving Middle Americans? Or is this Hollywood's way of intentionally minimizing the savagery of that day, changing the nature of the event to fit their fictional needs, and thus beginning a long struggle to reclaim the narrative for what really happened on 9/11 ? (spoiler: it was all George Bush's fault).

If there is any way to fight back, it is through the power of the movie ticket. Want to show your disgust? Don't buy one. In fact, stay away from the theater all together for a week or two (or four). After all, if there is any great truth in Hollywood, it is that the words of the profits hold a greater claim to the soul of the city than any truth or reason can ever hope to...

Mitt Romney Ain't Gonna Cut It....Will Mitch Daniels Join The Fray?

2012-01-20T14:19:00.000-05:00

I've already stated my reasons - on numerous occasions - why Newt Gingrich couldn't, and shouldn't, get the Republican nod. Rick Santorum is another guy who never really governed anything, s more closely associated with social issues than economic/security issues, and excites no one besides the religious right. Ron Paul is a joke, Rick Perry wasn't but became one, and thankfully we're rid of the thoroughly obnoxious Jon Huntsman, who will likely run again - as a Democrat - in 2016.

Leaving us with...Mitt Romney. Oh my God. With it all on line, this is the best we got? A 5-18 pitcher in the political equivalent of the 7th game of the World Series?

Mitt is a technocrat, when we need a bulldozer. He's cautious when we need reckless abandon and bold new thinking. He's moderate when we need a toe-the-line conservative. Our system must be broken down and rebuilt as a smaller, more efficient, less intrusive one, not tinkered with to extract an extra 0.01% of savings and productivity.

But that's what you'll get with a technocrat. And with a moderate, who is so scared by the bullshit headlines he reads in the mainstream media that he says exactly what the Left wants to hear:

"And [President Obama]'s going to say the economy is getting better," Romney said. "Thank heavens it's getting better. It's getting better not because of him, it's in spite of him and what he's done."

hey Mitt - In what way, shape or form is the economy getting better? Because unemployment is down due to people quitting the workforce and going on the permanent f*cking dole, British-style? Jim Geraghty lays out the doom and gloom:

More than 13 million individuals are out of work—and millions more are stuck in part-time jobs—as the unemployment rate remains high at 8.5 percent. In 2011, wages didn’t keep up with inflation, prompting many consumers to dip into savings and, more recently, to step up borrowing. The housing market, which has weighed on the economic recovery, has much ground to regain. A Commerce Department report Thursday showed that home construction fell 4.1 percent in December, capping what one forecaster called one of the “worst years on record” for the home-building industry.

Oh, and there's this:

Gasoline prices have been climbing. The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. rose to $3.45 this week, increasing for the fourth straight week.

Geraghty entitles his post Next Week, Obama Will Try Fiddling. But he won't be alone. He'll have Mitt Romney and the Republicans there with him, blowing on jugs, slapping their knees, and tapping their toes, while we all burn in the fire Obama ignited and the Republicans cannot see.

Is there an option? The Weekly Standard claims to have a draft of Mitch Daniel's State of the Union rebuttal, in which he will announce the possibility of (re)entering the fray:

The candidates for the Republican nomination are my friends. I like and admire them. But I must say I’ve increasingly come to share the doubt that any of them would be likely to win, or would be likely to govern successfully.

So I want to announce tonight that I am open to reconsidering my decision not to seek the presidency in 2012. I have not wanted to run, for family reasons among others. I have hoped someone else would prove up to the task. But my family and I have now decided that country must come first. I am considering joining the race.

If I run, I will be a reluctant candidate, in the sense that I did not plan on seeking this position. But let me assure you of this: if I do run, I will not run a reluctant campaign. I will run full out. I will compete in those primaries where I can still get on the ballot, I will go all out to win at the convention where the nomination will likely be decided, and I will take the fight to President Obama in the fall. If I run, I will run to win—because this country deserves leadership that will fundamentally remodel our government and restore our nation.

At this point, why not? It ain't fair to Iowa, but they can't even count ballots right. 47 states still need to have their say...

This could be a little joke, or a nudge, from Bill Kristol, author of the piece. But his point, like Casey Stengel's, is valid: Can't anyone here play this game? And if not, can we get some guys who can?

ABC Runs Interference For Barack Obama

2012-01-19T14:02:00.001-05:00

Personally, I think the NFL analogy works best as a definition here:

...the act of a teammate or of teammates running ahead of a ball-carrier and blocking prospective tacklers out of the way.

Gee, what's in the news today that would require "interference"? Oh, yeah, the cancelled Keystone pipeline project, in which Barack Obama sacrificed 20,000 jobs, our national security, and the likelihood of reduced oil prices - while simultaneously pushing Canada into a closer relationship with China - all in order to placate a small but wealthy group of Democratic donors.

The media can't let their teammate get sacked, Lord no, not with the end zone only ten months away, and a swarm of Republican tacklers swarming down the field to lay some pipe up the president's ass. So ABC sacrifices the body, and runs interference:

Newt Gingrich lacks the moral character to serve as President, his second ex-wife Marianne told ABC News, saying his campaign positions on the sanctity of marriage and the importance of family values do not square with what she saw during their 18 years of marriage.

In her most provocative comments, the ex-Mrs. Gingrich said Newt sought an "open marriage" arrangement so he could have a mistress and a wife.

She said when Gingrich admitted to a six-year affair with a Congressional aide, he asked her if she would share him with the other woman, Callista, who is now married to Gingrich.....

And that's the last we'll hear about the Keystone Pipeline. But you can bet when the Republicans pin the blame on Barack Obama for the non-recovery of his first term, the media will be the first to run to his defense, claiming that he "inherited the problems", and that he "can't fully control the economy", while repeating the false-on-its-face claim that he saved us all from another Great Depression.

ABC: A Wholly Owned Subsidiarity of the Democratic National Committee? Oh, you betcha....

Man, I wish Jack Tapper would ditch this chickenshit "news" operation....

Barack Obama Lays Some Pipe(line) To The American People

2012-01-19T08:47:00.002-05:00

...but only in the crude, euphemistic sense. Sayeth the Urban Dictionary:

...laying pipe is simply f**king the hell out of a girl.

But in this case, Barack Obama simply continued his rape of the economy while simultaneously screwing the American worker. That's a lot for one man in one day, so one can certainly say the president laid pipe to us, but good..

But this is no surprise. He told us back in December he was gonna f*ck us good, and we would be the better for it. Because his favorite position for the American people is on their knees:

"However many jobs might be generated by a Keystone pipeline," he said, "they're going to be a lot fewer than the jobs that are created by extending the payroll tax cut and extending unemployment insurance."

Barack Obama wants us bitches at home, living in squalor, awaiting what meager crumbs he tosses us, and repaying his generosity by...

Well, you know....

Viewing Tim Tebow From Down Under

2012-01-18T14:16:00.001-05:00

...and learning that liberals in the Southern Hemisphere are equal to, or greater than, their douchebag brethren here in the USA.

Peter FitzSimons from the Sydney Daily Herald:

ONE-KNEED FANS

''Tebowing''. This new word in the American lexicon refers, no kidding, to people who kneel on one knee with head bowed - a la Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow - every time they want to thank their god for allowing them to do something so fabulous on the sports field. The closest Australian word is probably ''public wankery''.

A view also held by American Left, who are too cowardly to come out and say it, preferring to snipe from the sidelines like the perennial bench-warmers that they are.

What a wanker...

I like the phrase "their god" (small "g"). Not his, FitzSimon assures us. Which reminds me of a part of the Passover Seder, where four metaphorical sons of differing temperament ask questions about the ritual meal:

The Torah spoke about four sons, one wise, one wicked, one simple and one who cannot formulate a question....

What does the wicked son say? "What does this Avodah (worship) mean Lakhem (to you)"? "To you" [meaning] and "not to him". Since he excluded himself from the community, he has denied the basic principle. You should also set his teeth on edge and say to him: "It is on account of this that Hashem did for me when I left Egypt" "for me" and not "for him" - had he been there, he would not have been redeemed.

FitzSimons, in mocking Tebow and "his" God, excludes himself from one community and closets himself within the cold embrace of another. He's entitled, of course. But should he ever need to look up to heaven and ask "please", well...he should not be surprised if "their" God does not recognize his cry...

SOPA & PIPA, And a Nation Hanging In The Balance...

2012-01-18T09:15:00.000-05:00

Every time Congress meets, and with every bit of legislation they pass, the American people lose a little more of their freedom. Regardless of who controls it, BTW...

Proponents of SOPA say it is a necessity in the cyber-age, a must-have to protect intellectual copyright. Taking a broad look at the proposal, we can see the vagueness written into it, like a huge black hole between the lines - a hole where our usage of the internet as we know it will almost certainly disappear. As will our freedom, and our identity as a nation. From the one page of Wikipedia that is up today:

The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.

How far can this be stretched? As far as the government wants it. And that remains true no matter who is in charge.

Over at Ricochet, Daniel Frank asks an interesting question:

As PIPA and SOPA make their way through the cloaca of the legislative process, I pause to wonder why Congress is only interested in protecting private property when it belongs to Hollywood studios, media companies, and publishing houses? What about the property rights of the Chrysler bondholders, or of property owners brushed aside by eminent domain, or the small businessperson shaken down by lawyers wielding Federal private action statutes?

Those rights, once enshrined in law, have now become arbitrary. And arbitrary law is the hallmark of the banana republic. Frank quotes Duke Economists Mike Munger:

Federal IP protection statutes are entirely motivated by and written for the benefit of rent seeking corporations. Congressmen and Senators don't care about private property. They care about the cash and in-kind contributions of entertainment and media companies, and in return for those contributions they will eviscerate your First Amendment rights without a moment's hesitation.

Once enacted, SOPA/PIPA will never be undone; politicians will see the value that so many of their fascist predecessors have in restricting the freedom of speech. What will be lost here will never be recovered again by the citizens - soon to be subjects - of the United States of America.

SOPA/PIPA must die, so that this nation may continue to live. Go to the above Wikipedia link and read it all.

And for historical posterity, should the bill pass, I wish to post what I believe will be the biggest lie of this entire debate:

An aide to Rep. Lamar Smith (R) said, "This bill does not make it a felony for a person to post a video on YouTube of their children singing to a copyrighted song. The bill specifically targets websites dedicated to illegal or infringing activity. Sites that host user content—like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter—have nothing to be concerned about under this legislation.

Bullshit. And can we get a primary challenger to this guy, please?

Where have We Seen That Newsweek Cover Before? Ahhh...

2012-01-17T15:05:00.000-05:00

There was something naggingly familiar about this Newsweek cover:

And no, it's not the picture of Obama that we've seen so many times - head tilted upward in sneering superiority, so he may better look down upon us, his ungrateful subjects to whom he has given so much. And it's not his surprising remarkableness to the recently departed Kim Jung Il, in his latter days. It was the "dumb" comment. When was the last time a major magazine insulted the intelligence of the majority of the American people like that? I was sure I had seen its ilk before...

Thankfully, we have Tim Blair to remind us:

But did you know that the publisher of the Mirror was one Piers Morgan? Yeah, the very same. Although not at the time that the above piece was published; he had been sacked just months before for falling for a crude Photoshop hoax involving British soldiers, water torture, and a few other leftist hotspots.. But the tree still bears the same fruit:

The Mirror's front page on 4 November 2004, after the re-election of George W. Bush as U.S. President, read "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?". It provided a list of states and their average IQ, showing the Bush states all below average intelligence (except for Virginia), and all Kerry states at or above average intelligence. The source for this table was The Economist, although it was a hoax.

And they call us stupid...

Captian Francesco Schettino: A Profile In Cowardice

2012-01-17T13:49:00.004-05:00

One can argue whether the mad rush of crewmen and other males on board to get on the lifeboats of the Costa Concordia were acting simply with what some claim are classic Italian "manners", or the result of a lifetime of feminists telling us women and men were equals. But there can be no excusing the behavior of the Concordia's Captain Francesco Schettino, who abandoned all semblance of courage, humanity, and responsibility - left to sink with his ship into the murky deep, along with what passengers those lost traits may take with them - so that he could save his pathetic, sorry ass.

The transcript would almost be funny, if people did not die due the incredible cowardice of one pathetic man:

Port authority: "You go on board. It is an order. You cannot make any other evaluations. You have declared abandoning ship. Now I’m in charge. You get on board. Is it clear?"

Schettino: "Commandant..."

Port authority over captain: "Are you not listening to me.."

Schettino speaks over Port authority: "I’m going..."

Schettino: "Call me immediately when you get on board. Our rescue officer is there."

Schettino: "Where is your rescue officer?"

Port authority: "My rescue officer is at the stem…Go …(can hear captain saying OK)…There are already bodies, Schettino."

Schettino: "How many dead bodies are there?"

Port authority: "I don’t know. I know of one. I’ve heard of one. You are the one to tell me how many there are. Christ!"

Schettino: "Are you aware that it is dark here and we cannot see anything?"

Port authority: "So? Do you want to go home Schettino? It is dark and you want to go home? Climb the ladder and get on the stem."

Port authority: "...and tell me what can be done, how many people are there, what do they need. Now."

Schettino: "Commandant, we are with the second in command…"

Port authority: "Then both of you climb up. What is his name?"

Schettino: "Dimitris Christidis."

Port authority: "You are your guard. Go on board, now!"

Schettino: "Commandant… I want to go on board, it is just that the other lifeboat here…there are other rescue operators... it has stopped and it is stuck there... now I’ve called other rescue operators..."

Port authority: "It is one hour that you are telling me this. You go on board. On b.o.a.r.d (says the word slowly almost spelling it out). And you immediately tell me how many people there are"

Schettino: "OK."

Compare and contrast to, say, the men who stormed into the World Trade Center on September 11th. And some say there is no such thing as American exceptionalism...

More:

Italian Coast Guard Capt. Gregorio De Falco: Where are you? On the lifeboats? All the officers?"

Schettino: "Yes, we are with the second commander…"

De Falco: "Forgive me, but before you were only with a sailor. If the officers managed to get down, it means that they could still move."

Schettino: "Yes...in fact...

De Falco: "Then why don’t they get back on board? To monitor the operation and then they can tell us. Thank you."

Schettino: "No it is not possible…"

Schettino: "We abandoned the ship…the ship turned ..."

De Falco: "...and with one hundred people on board you abandon the ship? (expletive)"

Bloomberg Closes Brooklyn Store For Selling A Toy "Sheriff's Set"

2012-01-17T08:36:00.009-05:00

That's right, folks! The same toys that you and your imagination lived on for about a half-century are now criminal to sell, and punishable by the loss of livelihood.

Welcome to Michael Bloomberg's New York:

The owner of a discount store in Brooklyn says the city is holding him up for $30,000 in fines he can’t afford — all because he stocked six toy sheriff sets that included plastic guns.

And now the .44-caliber fines for the orange-tipped, obvious fakes are forcing him to close for good.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Khaled Mohamed, 23, manager of 99¢ Target in Flatlands, which has been ordered to pay a staggering $5,000 fine for each gun offered for sale — the maximum under the law.

The store “cannot pay that fine at all,” said Mohamed, arguing that the punishment imposed on the Utica Avenue odds-and-ends shop is way out of proportion to the violation.

“They’re stopping us from doing any business,” he said

See that bright orange tip? Notice the obviously plastic lamination? Shoot (can I get arrested for saying that?), I'm just wasting my breath here. The endgame of the policy here is complete abolition of firearms, whether it is arresting tourists for not knowing the law, or shutting down (minority-owned! ahem!) business for even selling toys that barely resemble a 21st century weapon.

Well, not complete abolition. There will still be guns in the hands of criminals, of course. And I'm sure the political elite will still be able to get permits. And law enforcement, of course, who answer to Bloomberg, and the folks on his Consumer Affairs Bureau.

But don't worry. I am sure they all have your best interests in mind...

Life as a citizen(?) in Michael Bloomberg's New York...

Income Equality: What Is It Good For?

2012-01-16T10:44:00.000-05:00

Only as a weapon for the Left to bludgeon the American people with, so that they will be guilted into giving up more of their hard-earned money to the government:

The hyperventilating on the left over income inequality is almost entirely self-interested: an excuse for transferring the new wealth from the people who created it (and made us all richer thereby) to politicians who will use it to buy votes...

Why is income inequality all the rage nowadays? Because the previous cudgel - racism - was swung so often that it became a soft, useless weapon, now openly mocked rather than feared. And it is hard to make a society feel guilty about "leaving the poor to starve" when the majority of its middle-class citizens feels they are only minutes away from that fate themselves.

So now we have the liberals and the media pushing "income inequality" as our latest, greatest sin, only solvable by - you guessed it - government intervention. Looks like they are planning to put spikes on this mace and swing it wildly during the 2012 election season, counting on it both as an offensive weapon and as a defensive one ("who will call for the income less-abled, if not us?").

It's just another class-warfare offensive, waged asymmetrically by the Democratic party's irregulars in the mainstream media. Barack Obama and the Left are counting on the fact that people will look at their shrinking incomes, their rising costs, their lowering standards of living, and blame...someone who makes a few bucks more than them. And so empower the government to wrest it from their neighbors by force, and redistribute it back to them.

Orwell was right...and the pigs are upon us...

Fat chance. Of the government ever redistributing more than 1% of what they heist, I mean. And of the American people ever turning on themselves like that. Barack Obama is hoping for Keynesian results from Keynesian stimulus - fear, loathing, and rioting.

UK riots, summer 2011

He simply does not understand the people he pretends to lead. But Barack Hussein Obama never has, nor has he cared to try. It's irrelevant, actually, to what he intends to accomplish...

Standards of Beauty: Women Fight Back Against The Hollywood / Media Hate Machine

2012-01-15T19:13:00.001-05:00

A follow-up, of sorts, on a post I wrote some eighteen months ago, and sporadically gets a ton of hits, entitled The Media's Hate Crime Against Beautiful Women. I'll quote myself here:

...I am talking about the media's bastardization of the ideal of female beauty. In the days of the great masters of the Renaissance, women of beauty were depicted as full-figured, full-bosomed and wide-bottomed, with a glass of wine in one hand and a bunch of grapes in the other, in case you didn't get the point.

Now, the only women that can be considered "hot" are size zeros or less. No hips, no curves, no bountiful bosoms allowed. More girl-ish, than woman-ish (and you wonder why the entirety of the Hollywood/MSM remains in full-throated support of Roman Polanski?). Should some young late-teen/early 20's starlet put on ten pounds as they are filling out from an adolescent (girl's) figure to an adult (woman's) figure, they are pilloried by the media as becoming "fat", complete with unflattering photos taken while said starlet shleps in sweats to grab the morning paper.

And thus, we have a generation of women who are attuned to a body style that is both unnatural, and, to many men, unattractive...

But perhaps something is beginning to slowly change here. Recently, Christina Aguilera showed up at a Micheal Jackson tribute concert looking some 15-odd pounds heavier, and the knives, as usual, came out. The ugly and miserable Kelly Osbourne, on E!'s 'Fashion Police' show, went for the Aguilera's throat:

"Maybe she is just becoming the fat b---- she was born to be. I don't know. She was a c--- to me. And she bought my house!" Osbourne ranted.

Jeez, Kelly, didn't you used to be quite rotund until about fifteen minutes ago? Regardless, Christina responded with maturity and grace:

"I've been in this (business) for a long time. I came out on the scene when I was 17 years old. You can never be too much of anything. You can never be too perfect, too thin, too curvy, voluptuous, this, that. I've been on all sides of the spectrum as far as any female in this business...
"As long as I'm happy in my own skin, that's all I need. I'm happy with where I'm at. I have a boyfriend that loves my body. I love my body.

Which promptly shut up the nay-sayers, and left the few remaining haters looking and sounding meaner and bitchier than usual. Look at Christina then, and now. Which body does a mature male enjoy better? And is it surprising which figure a depraved, pedophile-choked Hollywood prefers?

PLUS Magazine is fighting the media's skinnier-is-better meme as well, by graphically illustrating what a runway model looks like next to a more nornally sized/shaped women:

Most runway models meet the body mass index criteria for anorexia, according to an editorial pictorial in the January issue of PLUS Model magazine.

Twenty years ago, the average fashion model weighed 8 percent less than the average woman. Today, she weighs 23 percent less, it said...

These statistics accompany nude photos of a plus-size model, who in some images is entwined with a nude runway model.

The editorial — intended to be revealing in both senses — is aimed at the fashion industry, but its immediate audience is ordinary women who are increasingly dissatisfied by fashion’s unwillingness to market to them, the magazine said.

Half of women wear a size 14 or larger, but most standard clothing outlets cater to sizes 14 or smaller, it said.

And I am sure that Barack and Michelle's jihad against "obesity" isn't helping, as the government's standards for "overweight" are akin to a size/shape that most of us would be more than thrilled to possess...

It seems as if the fight against Hollywood's, and the media's, warped and perverted standard of beauty has begun. Not to mention the push-back against the Obamas' obsessive desire to force every American down to what they feel is their ideal body mass. "Normal" girls are taking to the cameras, and showing us what real beauty is all about: Full figures, curves, and wide faces with ear-to-ear smiles. And your average guys - who are actually less worried about who they'll be photographed with and more concerned about getting their both hands on some serious "T", and "A" - are going to start clamoring for more.

What will the media/Hollywood complex do? Can they bear to admit that the waif-like, child-like, skeletal figures they find so alluring are not in line with what the average American sees as beautiful? Or will they just turn the hate up to 11? After all, they have their pedophilia to deal with...

I know what I am going to do: Compare and contrast.

Would you rather have this:

Or this?

Better?

Or worse?

How about...no contest?

Taliban Fighters: Piss On Them!

2012-01-15T10:28:00.000-05:00

These are the people the Obama Administration are so afraid of offending:

Meet the Taliban’s Child Suicide Bombers

The mission was as simple as touching two wires together, the little boy was promised. The resulting blast would obliterate the American infidels – but God would spare him from the flame and shrapnel. Abdul Samat would be unharmed and free to run back to the men who had fitted his bomb vest.

Blindfolded and rigged with his explosive payload, the boy, who was about 13, was driven to his target in the Afghan city of Kandahar, after being plucked from the streets of Quetta in neighbouring Pakistan. Minutes before he was due to execute the attack, however, Abdul realised the lies of his recruiters seeking to turn him into a human bomb.

“When I opened my eyes, I saw it was a very black thing they wanted me to do,” he later recalled. “I began to cry and shout. People came out of their houses and asked what was wrong. I showed them I had something in my vest. Then they were scared too and called the police who took the bombs off me.”. . .

Greg Pollowitz comments:

But did the Taliban handlers urinate on the boys first? Because if they did, then we have a story...

United States military and diplomatic personnel were quick to condemn such cavalier use of civilians in combat:

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called it "deplorable" and warned, “Those found to have engaged in such conduct will be held accountable to the fullest extent." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she felt "total dismay" after hearing the story.

"It is absolutely inconsistent with American values..."

OH! Wait, my mistake....that wasn't Panetta's and Clinton's response to the Taliban's use of innocent children to slaughter innocent adults. Sorry - it was their response to a video of U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters! Clinton and Panetta had no comment on the story above, because when you are negotiating a surrender to your enemies, you cannot risk pointing out what hateful, cruel, sick, soulless people they really are.

"Surrender to my d**k, terrorist dog!"

For perspective, you have to go to Rick Perry:

GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry is accusing the Obama administration of "over-the-top rhetoric" and "disdain for the military" in its condemnation of a video that purportedly shows Marines urinating on dead bodies in Afghanistan.
No one has been charged in the case, but officials in the U.S. and abroad have called for swift punishment of the four Marines.

Perry tells CNN's "State of the Union" that he thinks the Marines involved should be reprimanded, but not pursued with criminal charges.

Perry said "18, 19-year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often and that's what's occurred here."

I believe that is called "perspective". But don't look for it when dealing with an issue that involves liberals and the United States military...

Oh, Rick. What might have been, if only you were able to string together a few coherent sentences...

Michelle Obama Gets Booed By Pre-Teens

2012-01-14T12:13:00.000-05:00

Yeah, well, everyone hates a buttinsky, and kids have a much more accurate and sensitive bullshit meter than the 21+ crowd.

A disclaimer of sorts, first:

A screaming, raucous auditorium filled with elementary and middle school students greeted Obama and the cast of the Nickelodeon TV show “iCarly” at Hayfield Secondary School in Fairfax County.

Were these kids in fact screaming for Michelle Obama? Well, Fairfax is a suburb of DC, one of the richest suburbs in the nation, and houses primarily government employees, albeit of the six-figure variety (which is no longer a subgroup, and more likely the predominant one). So perhaps they should be big supporters of the Obamas, being that Barack and Michelle are looting the rest of the nation to make their parents rich.

Then again, it helps to appear in the company of the stars of the hottest teen show on TV. Were the kids cheering wildly for Moochelle, or for "iCarly" stars Miranda Cosgrove and Jennette McCurdy?

No way to know. But this is revealing:

During a question-and-answer session with students, Obama drew a handful of playful boos when she was asked about school lunches and talked about legislation she and her husband supported to add more vegetables to the school lunch program.

Taking note of the reaction, she said, “But this is for you all. … It’s hard to do what you do if you’re not healthy.”

She concluded with a simple admonition: “Eat your vegetables.”

"Playful"? I suppose we'll have to rely on our unbiased media for that unwarranted description. But no surprise that the kids are revolted by the new "healthy" meals being forced down their throats, and even less surprising that they booed the woman who stood in front of them bragging about coming up with the idea, and scolding them for objecting to her role as an unasked-for surrogate mother.

(Kids, by the way, will go hungry rather than eat food they don't like. So starving them is one way for the Obamas to claim they are winning the "obesity battle", I suppose...)

But I like the kids gut reaction to a government official telling them what is in their best interest. If our future Tea Partiers are being groomed now - albeit unwittingly - in the school districts of the most pro-government suburb in the nation, then our future as a nation might be brighter than we suppose...

Michelle Marie Antoinette Obama Insults Us Again....

2012-01-13T13:58:00.001-05:00

If you don't like Barack Obama's presidency, that you're not entitled to have an opinion on it. So sayeth the Queen, when she graced us with her presence on CBS This Morning, as she spoke to suckup Gayle King:

King: Will it be harder for you this time, because there have been talk -- there are some people who say they're disappointed in Barack Obama's presidency, that it hasn't accomplished all that they thought that it would or all that he said it would?

Obama: Yeah, but they just don't know.

King: Would you--

Obama: They don't know. They don't know all that. So we're going -- this campaign is going to be about making sure that people understand all that's been accomplished. I think people are confused about -- some may be confused about how much has been accomplished. But that's what you do in a campaign.

Pssst.....someone tell Michelle that if you eliminated the people that "don't understand" from the electorate, the Democratic base would likely be cut in half...

Sarah Palin responds here...

And if you can't stand looking at Michelle's smug, condescending mug anymore, well....consider the alternative views:

Queen Booty Shaker, indeed....

The Iranian Assassinations: Is The US A Cringing Chicken?

2012-01-13T09:12:00.001-05:00

So another Iranian nuclear scientist bites the dust, and Iran's dream of dominating the Middle East under the threat of a mushroom cloud recedes, even if only for a moment. And while one would expect the United States, whether involved or not, to keep a cool distance from the fray, our response has been one of more vitriolic opposition, to say the least.

Let's look at these statements:

The assassination drew an unusually strong condemnation from the White House and the State Department, which disavowed any American complicity.

“The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this,” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to expand the denial beyond Wednesday’s killing, “categorically” denying “any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran.”

“We believe that there has to be an understanding between Iran, its neighbors and the international community that finds a way forward for it to end its provocative behavior, end its search for nuclear weapons and rejoin the international community,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Based on Hillary's remark above - almost a plea for forgiveness - the New York Times gives an analysis that is likely spot-on:

The statements by the United States appeared to reflect serious concern about the growing number of lethal attacks, which some experts believe could backfire by undercutting future negotiations and prompting Iran to redouble what the West suspects is a quest for a nuclear capacity.

Looks like the Obama Administration is going the old appeasement route - let Iran continue with their bad behavior, and don't get them angry, or else they may use it as an excuse not to sit down with us in the future and talk about....where to sit at the next meeting.

Don't rule out the president's narcissism, either. He based his entire campaign on being the guy who could get quarreling groups together by the majesty of his words and the force of his will; to use force of another kind is to admit personal failings and defeat. And if Barack Obama is one thing, it is extremely, almost pathologically, non-self-reflecting...

But is it just all a feint; is the US actually complicit here? The harsh denials could be a cover, and a good excuse for the administration's myriad of anti-semites to embarrass and bash Israel (the only other suspect) under the guise of protecting it.

I doubt it. If that were there case, the Israeli denial-style would have been the way to go:

The Israeli military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, writing on Facebook about the attack, said, “I don’t know who took revenge on the Iranian scientist, but I am definitely not shedding a tear,” Israeli news media reported.

Hey Barack - meet a real man...

Too gutsy for our American president, apparently, whether we are involved or not. Sure, the Iranian president is laughing up a storm, denying the Holocaust while building a nuke while making clear that boy-oh-boy, if you want to see a real holocaust, just give me another eighteen months! But that doesn't matter. Barack Hussein Obama has his feelings to worry about....and Hillary Clinton has a process she's ideologically compelled to follow.

And if another six million Jews should die? Well, as long as it happens after the 2012 elections...

ACLU Goes Hunting - For Conservative Heads...

2012-01-12T14:12:00.001-05:00

Fascinating anecdote at Contentions on Obama's Guantanamo bay policy. Faced with reality - that closing the prison site was an impossibility - he called in a bunch of law professors and "civil liberties activists" to break the bad news: That Gitmo wasn't going away anytime soon.

Gasps were uttered, clothing was rent, teeth were gnashed, and a wail went up unto the heavens. But one bit of commentary from the assembled liberal rout stands out in shocking clarity:

But the worst moment of the meeting took place at its conclusion, when ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero repeated his plea for Obama to prosecute Bush officials. Romero said: “Hunt one head and hunt it famously and bring it down to ensure we don’t make the same mistakes again.”

Obama, to his great credit, told Romero he was alone on that ledge and dismissed the meeting.

Good for Obama. But the hatred and zeal of Romero - his virtual lust for blood - paints a clear portrait of who and what the American Civil Liberties Union really is.

One wonders if Romero will be demanding the head of an Obama administration official for the crimes committed by Eric Holder, or the Solyndra financing fiasco, or the sick crony capitalism of Lightsquared, in which a U.S. general was pressured to lie to Congress - and risk national security - in order to help a Dem-donor company. After all, it might insure we don't make the same mistakes again...

Can you say...unlikely? After all, it's always hunting season on Republicans, while Democrats, despite their high crimes and misdemeanors, always seem to be a protected species...

It's a team effort. See here for how the police and the media covered up for Romano when he was recently arrested for drunk driving in East Hampton, after an all-night bender celebrating the passage of New York's gay marriage law...

Ricky Gervais Rips Hollywood Elites

2012-01-12T09:01:00.001-05:00

Oh, it's gonna be a heckuva Golden Globes show, with Ricky handling the hosting duties once again. One of maybe three people in Hollywood that aren't filled with notions of narcissistic glory (the other two being Trey Parker and Matt Stone), Ricky lets loose on the in-crowd:

“They’re the wealthiest, most privileged people in the world,” the comic says of Hollywood’s A-list in an upcoming Esquire interview. “Offense is taken, not given.”

Gearing up for his third time as host, Gervais adds, “Imagine if I had gone out there and said, ‘We’re all in the same gang. Aren’t we brilliant? Us millionaires together’ . . . I’m not a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I’m a wolf in wolf’s clothing.”

“There was a Roman emperor who hired someone to whisper, ‘You’re just a man,’ in his ear as he walked around the crowds,” Gervais says of Hollywood hubris. “Just to remind him, because he knew if everyone tells you, you’re a god, then you are. And so he hired someone to say, ‘You’re just a man.’ ”

I guess that's Rickey's role now. Kudos for him for willing to shoulder the burden. And in return, I'll...DVR the Golden Globes this Sunday. Still can't bear to watch it. But I will fast-forward around and stop when he's doing his hosting duties. Will be the only thing worth watching, and the only thing that won't make the bile rise in the back of my throat...

Chris Christie: What Might Have Been...

2012-01-11T08:15:00.001-05:00

Jon Huntsman thought he could build a moderate-conservative coalition by...bashing conservaties. Big fail there, Jon-boy. Wanna see how it is done? Look East, at the Big Man of New Jersey:

...when New Jersey residents list their favorite things, it seems the governor belongs in the conversation.

According to a statewide poll released Monday by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind, 53 percent of Garden State voters approve of the job Christie is doing, while 37 percent disapprove, a 16 percentage point spread. The poll was released on the eve of Christie’s annual State of the State address.

“That’s the way any office-holder wants to begin the new year,” said Peter Woolley, director of the poll. “But in this economic climate, many aren’t.”
The governor’s approval rating is virtually identical to where it was a year ago...

How does Chris Christie get such positive numbers in a blue state? By being as conservative as he can be, given the circumstances. He cannot go hard-right, but he can go right-center, and slowly turn the good ship New Jersey away from the shoals.

He could have been more than a contender. He would have been The Champ. Whereas Huntsman is no more than pretender, a chump. He should think about what Chris Christie has done, and how he has done it, and give himself 20 lashes for wasting such an opportunity, by taking the advice of the mainstream media instead of following what political instincts he may or may not have had in the first place...

But can you imagine Christie on the trail right now? The soaring excitement, the rhetorical disdain leveled not his fellow Republicans, but at the Naked Emperor occupying the White House? The turnout in the primaries, with voting halls filled with citizens anxious to put their support on record? A movement led by a happy warrior, one who relishes the fight as much as the beer afterward, who can win it all cleanly, based on the merits and not the mud thrown?

We'll get none of that. We'll probabaly get Mitt Romney. But we can look off wistfully in the distance, and wonder at what might have been...

Unicorns Fail To Fly. The Government, In Response, Fines The Oil Companies...

2012-01-10T14:06:00.001-05:00

The inevitable result of the immaturity of the progressive movement, I suppose. Or maybe it's their insanity. Either way, it's a dangerous group of people to give power to. Because when they don't get what they want - even if it only exists in their fevered imagination - they lash out. Usually at convenient cartoon criminals or the enemy du jour, although, in a pinch, Jews will do just fine.

Case in point: Fining oil companies millions of dollars for the failure to use an "environment-friendly" biofuel that doesn't even exist:

When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.

But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.

In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year.

“It belies logic,” Charles T. Drevna, the president of the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, said of the 2011 quota. And raising the quota for 2012 when there is no production makes even less sense, he said.

Penalizing the fuel suppliers demonstrates what happens when the federal government really, really wants something that technology is not ready to provide....

Soon, we'll all be riding him to work! And he'll like it...

Wait until 2013, when the government gets to apply the same rational thinking to your health care. You know, the same health care that will become more efficient and less expensive because progressives say it will?

Typical celebrity privilege, getting all the best forms of motive power...no wonder Sarah Silverman can't get her tongue out of her unicorn's mouth...

The Simpsons Goes After The "Tea Party"....

2012-01-10T09:19:00.000-05:00

Used be a time - oh, for maybe its first ten years - that the Simpsons was the most cutting-edge counter-cultural show on television - an animated version of the Saturday Night Live of the late 70's. Over the past decade, it has de-evolved into a subpar poorly written and executed sitcom, whose writers throw in as many liberal tropes as possible, while taking clumsy shots at conservatives, which may earn them kudos at the water cooler but get them brickbats from open-minded viewers of any political stripe.

Possibly the worst offender was this episode....but coming close was Sunday's entry, where a dim witted Homer takes on the role of a FOX news host, and convinces his dim-witted countrymen to join him on a pointless crusade, in which they all wear gravy boats on their heads. The HuffPo gets the joke:

(they wear them like colonial hats -- *wink wink*)

Yeah, it's mostly the stuff liberals find funny, but there were two things that irked me. One was having the fictional FOX producers essentially call their audience idiots, to which Lisa responds with outrage. Maybe just a case of the writers protecting themselves, as they were depicting the FOX audience as idiots? The second was showing Chris Christie as a gluttonous buffoon, too busy eating chicken to run for president. Consider your lucky that he's biding his time, ladies...

Putting the hate of the Left into the mouths of FOX...

Best takedown is from the owner of the Dead Homer Society blog, who labels all Simpsons episodes past season 10 as "Zombie". He's got a point, they've been stumbling around aimlessly and brainlessly for quite some time now:

The subject matter was stale and the satire was stuff that has been done better elsewhere, but the place you can see it most is in the little tricks they use to make this expired milk seem fresh. They ran current jokes in a news ticker, they had static images of the Republican presidential field on a table, with Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain’s photos crossed out with easy-to-add-late graphics. They know that these episodes don’t work well, but they went ahead and did it anyway because if you can take some potshots at Glenn Beck a year after he was dumped off television and add in some political jokes no one will care about two months from now, then you have to do it.

Watching this, I really can’t help but think the staff would rather be writing for Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show.

Exactly. Is the Simpsons now considered a "minor league affiliate" of Comedy Central, or is it just a home for their rejected writers?

Either way, some good news comes out of it:

Anyway, the numbers are in and they are really, truly awful... a mere 5.11 million people remembered Ted Nugent after the Steelers came back to tie it late. That’s easily the lowest so far this season and is tied with Season 21’s “Million Dollar Maybe” for the second lowest number of all time.... Season 23 is now all but assured of being the least watched season ever. The only question now is how far it sinks.

Oh, with an election coming up in 2012, I'm sure the real digging hasn't even begun...

Tim Tebow: God's Messenger? Hmmm....

2012-01-09T21:48:00.002-05:00

Regular readers of this blog know I like to trot out the occasional conspiracy theory. While Occam's Razor is probably the best starting point for interpreting the universe, truth is often much, much stranger than fiction.

And what else is a conspiracy but a series of related coincidences, tied together to form an unlikely pattern, in order to support an unsteady theory? And yet....

It seems to me that every now and again - and more often lately - The Big Guy is trying to send us a message. Personally, when I read about the limited but very specific damage caused by that very unusual late-summer Virginia earthquake, I felt a chill go down my spine. I just felt it again, in reading some of the Tim Tebow post-heroic wrap-ups:

The fact that Tebow had 316 yards passing and averaged 31.6 yards per pass in the game didn't escape notice on Sunday night. Tebow wore "John 3:16" on his eye black in the 2009 BCS Championship game and has since become identified with the famous Bible message. The coincidental stats caused millions of fans to perform Google searches on the Bible passage in the past 24 hours. Here's one more unbelievable stat: John Ourand of Sports Business Journal reports that the final quarter-hour television rating for the Broncos-Steelers game was, you guessed it, 31.6.

More:

As it turns out, the lone interception thrown in the game on Sunday night came from Ben Roethlisberger. What down and distance were involved when he threw it? Third and 16. Of course.

I don't know what it all means. But just to be on the safe side...

John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

And then, of course, there's always this:

"They say when you talk to God it's prayer. But when God talks to you, it's schizophrenia."
~Agent Fox Mulder (The X-Files: All Souls)

Why So Many "Gay" Questions In The Republican Debate?

2012-01-09T14:10:00.002-05:00

Plenty of well-deserved outrage over the past few days over the debate performances of George Stephanopoulos and Diane Sawyer. Gay rights, abortion, contraception - why in the world would two alleged "reporters" waste the nation's time with such crap?

Yeah, I suppose the easy answer is that because these two asshats are liberals, these issues matter more to them than national defense, trillion dollar deficits, and chronic unemployment. But there is more to it than that. As media liberals, Stephanopoulos and Sawyer see themselves as the vanguard of the elite themselves - they believe they can control the national conversation, and steer it in such ways that it will prevent the barbarians (the Republicans) from storming the gate.

So all the social issue questions that the two "moderators" brought up are really less reflective of America's concerns - or even George's and Diane's - and more of an attempt to use these issue as a cudgel against conservatives, and as a way to create a divide between the American people and the Republican party.

The Left continues its battle for the soul of the nation, if for no other reason than to stamp it out. Via Contentions:

Liberal secularism is a project in its own right that is bent on eliminating any recognized place for biblical faith as the guiding light of the culture. It will not rest content until faith withdraws from playing any public role, direct or indirect. The conflict of secularism and faith is at the heart of the so-called “culture war.”

Mathew Staver, founder of the conservative law group, Liberty Counsel, talks about how the Left is suing "gay rights" as a tool to eliminate the role of a man's conscious in his everyday transactions:

"I believe the greatest threat to religious liberty is the clash between religious liberty and LGBT rights," he says.

Staver says as rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people make gains, religious conservatives are having to set aside their convictions. A Christian counselor was penalized for refusing to advise gay couples. A court clerk in New York was told to issue same-sex marriage licenses, despite religious reservations. A wedding photographer was sued for refusing to shoot a same-sex wedding. Staver says these people aren't trying to impose their religious views on others.

"What people of faith don't want to do, however, is be forced to participate in something that literally cuts to the very core of their belief."

But that's exactly what Barack Obama and the Democrats want. A nation where the government can force any person to do what they demand that they to do - regardless of their religious beliefs - under the guise of "the betterment of society as a whole". ObamaCare is an example on a grand scale, but the list grows longer by the day, designed to trip us all up if we don't follow the liberal line, as Staver's examples bear out.

And thus the need for George Stephanopoulos and Diane Sawyer to try to fortify the gates with the LGBT buttress. Either force the Republicans to acknowledge the overwhelming power of government, or try to discredit them by painting their opposition to gay rights as some sort of moral failing itself (the rights of the aforementioned victims of the LGBT crusade do not exist, of course).

Based on the post-debate furor, it seems as if the liberal vanguard was a little less subtle than they might have been with their frontal attack on American religion, and are getting some blowback. Seems like George & Diane forgot that the erosion of America's tradition of religious freedoms was supposed to be a gradual one, conducted on the down-low, not to be noticed or mentioned until they were already gone...

Tyranny Writ Small

2012-01-09T08:51:00.001-05:00

When this sort of thing starts to happen, it is time to start plucking the chickens and heating up the tar. Folks like this need to be run out of government, and convicted of unlawful imprisonment.

And when they aren't, and don't, things only go downhill from here. The New York Post:

A power-crazed Hamptons politician locked a young contractor in his Southampton office and subjected him to a bizarre rant after bilking him out of thousands of dollars for work done on his Hampton Bays home, the angry businessman told The Post.

The contractor, Anthony Prosano, 23, says he managed to audio-record the incident, in which the small-time politician is allegedly heard abusing the little authority he does have.

“You are f--king playing in a pool you don’t belong in!” seethes James Malone, the Southampton town councilman and deputy Suffolk County clerk, after allegedly locking Prosano in his office.

After Prosano tells Malone that he can’t lawfully detain him there, Malone allegedly claims that his political post gives him that right.
“No, I can!” Malone allegedly bellows on the tape. “Yes, I can! I’m deputy county clerk! I’m holding you!”

Sigh. "I'm a deputy clerk!", as if all should quail before him. Gee..ever get the feeling that some of these politicians are not in it for the "public service"?

When confronted with the audio, what did our town clerk have to say?

Malone did not return calls or e-mails for comment.

Maybe he smells that cauldron of boiling tar? Malone is a Republican, by the way...all the more reason to give him the boot. If we start to act like the people we are trying to overcome...

Jon Corzine's "House-Shopping" In The South of France Raises More Questions

2012-01-08T12:35:00.000-05:00

"House'" is in quotations, because he and his wife were really shopping for a chateau on the French Mediterranean. Not exactly a three-bedroom, two-bath in Jersey...Vanity Fair:

“To buy any decent château is at least a couple of million euros,” explains another person who was at the party, “and that is before the renovation with the air-conditioning and the new kitchen. Sharon was very excited. She said she was flying down there on Monday morning.”

This, two weeks before MF GLobal went belly-up, with Crooked Jon putting on his best "who, me?" face as he told Congress he has no idea where the missing $1.5 billion in customer funds went. But shocking lack of concern or utter cluelessness is not the point here. What interests us is that if Jon and his wife were shopping for a multi-million Euro house, he apparently had no concern about his own finances whatsoever. Which leads us to ask: Where was Dirty Jon's cash-stash?

It is almost unanimously mandated by Wall Street that officers of brokerage firms keep their investment accounts at the firm where they work. This is done for compliance reasons.

If Corzine and his inner cadre of lieutenants had their millions at MF Global, were their accounts breached as well?
Are they being treated identically to other MF Global account holders in terms of the massive amounts of their missing money and the lack of access to what’s rightfully theirs?
If Corzine et al. didn’t keep the vast majority of their money at MF Global, then why not?

Good questions. Maybe Congress will ask them the next time he is called to account, assuming he doesn't get asylum in the French Rivera.

Meanwhile, Vanity Fair paints the profile of a man who did, in fact, know what he was doing, even if he wasn't totally aware of why he was doing it:

“On this, Jon became a zealot,” one person says of Corzine’s European-debt trades. “He managed the process soup to nuts,” says a former employee. “He knew every number back and forth. He’d talk to the accountants and the board. He’s not a detail-oriented guy, but on this he knew every detail.”

Sort of puts lie to his previous sworn testimony before Congress:

“Nor was I an expert on the complicated rules and regulations governing the various different operating businesses that comprised MF Global,” he said.

That's not what your (former?) friends are saying, pal. And the rest of the nation is finally getting a clearer picture of exactly who you are - although we in Jersey already knew this when we tossed your sorry ass out:

"He’s very focused on reputation and how he’s perceived. He wants to be perceived as a winner, and he will do what it takes to get there.” Says a former colleague, “He wanted to be in the game, to prove he was back, to prove he was the man.”

“There are a lot of us who consider Jon to be a friend and mentor,” says a former Goldmanite. “That group is horrified [by the scandal].” He continues: “There is another group who thinks this is par for the course.”

“At first I thought, Oh, Jon must be crushed,” says one person who knows him well. “It’s not like he was doing this [playing the accounting games] to earn a big bonus. But he needed to feed his ego that he would be perceived as being successful. And there are lot of people who are paying a much higher price than he is.”

Those of us who knew him know this is, in fact, par for the course. And he has always left a trail of bodies in his wake. Hopefully, this time, he'll be forced to pay the price.

And ironically, if he is metaphorically "strung up", it will be by none other than the torch & pitchfork wielding, anti-Wall Street mobs that his friend and mentor, Barack Obama, let loose upon America.

Sometimes there is justice, after all...

"What have you been doing lately, Jon? Playing the market with the company's money?

....Look at you. You used to be so cocky. You were going to go out and conquer the world... What are you but a warped, frustrated young man? A miserable little clerk crawling in here on your hands and knees and begging for help....."

~Mr. Potter, "It's a Wonderful Life"

Self Destruction Blues

2012-01-07T12:51:00.001-05:00

So here's the first headline that pops up at me when I open up the Yahoo! homepage:

Gingrich claims Romney taxed the blind

And I saw this one yesterday:

John McCain: ‘We Have To Fix Our Problems With The Hispanics’

While underneath the Gingrich headline, Yahoo had these two listed:

U.S. economy gaining momentum, unemployment near 3-year low
Rick Santorum's income has soared since he left Senate

The Republican party is tearing itself apart right now in a vicious nomination fight, and the media is eating it up. Debate after debate has not led to more insight on the candidates but instead has allowed the MSM to highlight various candidate "gaffes", and isolate comments out of context to be then labeled as "extremist".

The candidates have bought into this, trying to build themselves up by tearing the next man down. Newt Gingrich has been playing this game since May, and with his moment in the sun seemingly over, has reverted back to the worst stereotype of a "right-wing bomb thrower". Except, of course, he's throwing them at the right wing. Which is why he's the media's second favorite Republican candidate, behind Jon Huntsman, who also seems to have never met a conservative he hasn't hated. Ron Paul, of course, may be the worst of the lot, but I try not to think about him much...

Watch where you point that thing, Newt....friendly fire kills...

How is this being absorbed into the national consciousness? The public gets non-stop reports on the negative salvos each candidate launches against the other, while they are spoon-fed positive spins on every vile act perpetrated by Barack Obama. His defiance of the Constitution is "bold", millions of people dropping out of the workforce is a "strengthening economy", and slashing our military to the bone to pay for social welfare programs is "strategic re-alignment".

Suicide by a thousand cuts? Oh, you betcha. So how do we save ourselves?

The candidates must stop attacking each other - NOW - and focus their fire on Barack Hussein Obama. And they need to fight the propaganda war being waged on them by media head-on. No more defensive crouches, just pure offense. John McCain buying into the fact that Republicans have a "Hispanic problem" is a sick buy-in to a MSM lie , we need to make it clear that we offer Hispanics hope for a better life, while Obama offers them only permanent welfare. We need not only to fight every accusation of racism, but to expose the liberal racism that permeates the Democratic party. The candidates must not defend themselves against every accusation of "extremism", but instead point out that the real extremists live in the White House. And occupies the mainstream media.

It is time for each Republican presidential candidate to state, often and boldly, what he feels is so objectionable about the reign of Barack Hussein Obama, and what he would do differently. If the argument is strong enough, petty attacks from weakened candidates can be dismissed with a smirk and a wave of the hand, and the media's reporting of such nonsense will carry less weight. But if the candidates continue to tear each other to to pieces, the narrative will be set in stone by the time the convention opens, and it will be an uphill slog from there.

The only way that Barack Obama gets re-elected is if the Republicans self-destruct. And right now, I'm singing...

It was a Monday morning, When the blues came falling on me
Now it's Saturday evening, And still got a hold on me
Oh please, dear Lord, Help me get rid of my self destruction blues...
~Hanoi Rocks, "Self Destruction Blues"

Bob Menendez Blocks Obama Judicial Appointee? What's The Catch?

2012-01-06T14:30:00.002-05:00

Why would a good little liberal like Bob Menendez (D-La Raza) block a nice Jewish Jersey girl's chance to be appointed to United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit? Especially when U.S. Magistrate Patty Shwartz was nominated by lefty godhead Barack Hussein Obama?

Bob Menendez has on occasion done the right thing for the wrong reasons. But Menendez (D-Illegal Immigrants) has only one motivation to block this innocuous appointment.

Vengeance.

Welcome back to Dirty Jersey:

Menendez doesn’t have the guts to say why he is using a federal form of senatorial courtesy. But, here’s a clue: She worked in the U.S. Attorney’s office from 1989 through 2003 — including two stints as chief of the criminal division. Her former boss, Chris Christie, endorsed her. She was close to assistant U.S. Attorney James Nobile who oversaw an investigation of a local charity with ties to Menendez.

[Sidebar: Menendez was cleared of all wrongdoing, after Christie left the Attorney's office, by his replacement, one Paul Fishman. Menendez supported Fishman for the job, by the way. In private practice Fishman represented Jon Corzine’s gal pal/union queenpin Carla Katz, as well as developer Encap Golf Holdings, both of whom also were investigated by Christie's office. Upon taking the U.S. Attorney's job, Fishman declared there was no "culture of corruption in New Jersey, and that it was "demoralizing" to even say such a thing. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, including Chris Christie's 200-0 record convicting public figures of misdeeds while he was New Jersey's US Attorney...]

Normally this would again be a case of Menedez doing the right thing - blocking an Obama appointee - for the wrong reasons. But Shwartz checks out OK, maybe the best you can hope for from the current administration. And one would think that having a local girl, and a Rutgers alum, moving up the judicial ranks could only be a good thing for New Jersey.

Well, it might be. But Senator Menendez has his own personal pique to look out for, first and foremost. Vengeance must be served on Chris Christie, even if it is via an innocent woman. Then he'll move on the serving the people of New Jersey, eventually...depending on their skin color and ethnic heritage, of course.

And as a secondary benefit to Menendez, it puts all current employees of Justice on notice: If you want a career path, don't you dare delve into the corruption of liberal Democrats. Just look the other way, and sue big corporations for hefty settlements that can be disbursed to my friends and allies...

UPDATE: Even the New York Times is a bit stunned by the audacity here:

...the connection has led lawyers and judges in the state to speculate that Mr. Menendez is acting out of resentment, rather than any concern about Judge Shwartz’s qualifications.

“Every lawyer in the world will tell you that she’s extraordinarily qualified, a decent person and an excellent judge, and would be an asset to the circuit,” said Tom Curtin, the chairman of the lawyers’ advisory committee for the United States District Court for New Jersey. “This was going to be words and music for her, then something happened.”

The Huntsman Campaign Hearts Rachel Maddow

2012-01-06T08:55:00.001-05:00

Yeah, OK, I wrote about what an asshole he was just that other day, and to myself, I thought, I'm done with this guy.

But every day he sinks to a new low, in his contempt for the Republican party whose banner he so dearly wants to carry. Via The Weekly Standard, which calls him a Rachel Maddow Republican:

There's no question Jon Huntsman has been praised by more Democrats and left leaning commentators than any of the other Republican presidential candidates. But until now, that praise has gone one way. Earlier this week, however, Huntsman's top fundraiser, Ann Herberger, announced her new “hero” was MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.

How nice that his campaign tweets out love for a vile, radical liberal - a cog in MSNBC's Democratic propaganda machine - who has made a career out of lying about honest, decent people who disagree with "The Agenda". No wonder Huntsman gets so much liberal support. He's one of them, right down to the disdain he shows for his fellow Republicans. Not to mention his fellow Americans.

And yet, some desperate people are giving him a second look. I'm starting to wonder if, after only three years of Obama, Republicans aren't developing a bit of Battered Wife Syndrome.

No, she didn't just get home from "date night with a liberal"...she just voted for Jon Huntsman....

Key thing to remember here:

This might not kill Huntsman in New Hampshire, where Democrats and independents often participate in the Republican primary, but it probably won't help him in South Carolina or Florida.

If Huntsman even finishes third in New Hampshire, the media will elevate him to front-runner status, as he's the closest they'll get to a Barack Obama White House in 2013. Don't fall for the hype, you'll only wind up on the floor again, battered and bruised, wondering why he shows his love for you in such a mean, ugly way....

"The Constitution be Damned...This Is About Power"

2012-01-05T20:05:00.001-05:00

Peter Wehner clearly explains where we are, The Day After Barack Obama declared the Constitution to be subject to his will:

I have argued before that Obama is governing in a post-modern manner, in which what matters isn’t truth but narrative, not rules but will. And that is precisely what this action highlights. It doesn’t matter if what the president is doing is blatantly unconstitutional and in contempt of Congress; Obama has a campaign to run and an election to win. And so the Constitution be damned. This is, after all, about political power. Now in this case the president will argue that he’s violating the Constitution over a small procedural matter. But who exactly is the arbiter of which laws to violate and which laws to abide by? I gather for Obama the answer is Obama. That is not terribly comforting to the rest of us.

It is not a good thing, and it can even be a frightful thing, when we have as president a man who seems to reject the idea (at least when re-election is at stake) that we are a nation of laws, not of men. But that is where we are, given Obama’s casual indifference to our laws and traditions....

It is a terrifying thing, actually. Those freedoms we took for granted for so long? Apparently, we need to fight for them all over again. For every honest Tea Partier, for every concerned citizen, Obama will match them with a union thug or a dangerous "Occupier". And the media will acquiesce in silence - for in their eyes, the end will justify the means.

Welcome to the 2012 election season: The Fight For Freedom...

Obama’s "Jobs and Competitiveness Council" - His Most Epic Fail To Date?

2012-01-05T14:08:00.000-05:00

The fact that Barack Obama is making illegal appointments to out-of control, unaccountable, extralegal federal agencies is bad enough. But what's worse is that his track record of personnel selection to committees, boards, and agencies of all types has been universally brutal. Let's forget Sonia Sotomeyer for a moment, and even (spit, spit) Eric Holder. Instead, let's see how the companies that populate his much-heralded "Jobs and Competitiveness Council" are faring.

It ain't pretty, folks:

When the council’s members were announced February 23, among the concerns raised was that the members would use their status to the advantage of their companies. In fact, what’s happened since then is that the 13 publicly traded companies whose executives were appointed to the council, taken together, have declined in value by about 7% through year-end, worse than the decline of about 4% in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index over the same period.

Eastman Kodak’s stock has lost more than 80% of its value since President Obama named its chairman and CEO, Antonio Perez, to the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Citigroup is down 44% since Mr. Obama named its chairman, Richard Parsons, to the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. The UBS AG shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange are down 40% since Mr. Obama named Robert Wolf, the chairman of UBS Group Americas and the president of UBS Investment Bank, to the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

If these council members haven’t produced much by way of competitiveness, at least as measured by stock price, they haven’t produced much in the way of jobs, either. In April 2011, Kodak announced 48 layoffs in Durham, North Carolina. In August 2011, UBS announced 3,500 layoffs. In December 2011, Citigroup announced 4,500 layoffs.

And Kodak is about to file for Chapter 11 protection. How many jobs will be lost in a bankruptcy? Or what if the best move for Kodak is to simply liquidate? Will Obama step in with a bailout, rather than see a member of his "competitiveness" council auction off the bones of a once-great company?

Foursome of failure...

But that's not the point. The real issue here is the president's utter and complete lack of judgement skills, leading to poor appointees across the board. Which, I suppose, is not surprising, given that Obama himself is a man with no real qualifications for any job he's held, but yet has been pushed ahead of the pack - primarily by others who see him as the perfect vehicle to advance their radical agendas. Given his own "success" without any real bona fides, what basis in rationality does he have when selecting other individuals for key posts and positions?

And thus you get a "Jobs and Competitiveness Council" that is actually under-performing the rest of the economy at large. And you get Supreme Court justices picked by their gender. And Attorney Generals picked based on their skin color. And all sorts of other posts filled by people who Obama selected because someone else told him they were good enough for the job.

See the results? They are all around you...

We have met the Barbarians, and they are us...

2012-01-05T11:21:00.000-05:00

How else to explain this story?

A 36-year-old woman was charged Wednesday after punching, scratching and sliding her buttocks against a painting worth more than $30 million, authorities in Colorado said.

Carmen Tisch is accused of pulling her pants down to rub up against the work, an oil-on-canvas called "1957-J no.2", by the late abstract expressionist artist Clyfford Still.

Tisch allegedly caused $10,000 worth of damage to the painting.

Kimbrough said Tisch urinated after she rubbed up against the canvas at the recently opened Clyfford Still museum in Denver....

And women were once the "gentler" sex. Is this what feminism hath wrought? Or just liberalism, a philosophical genre where nothing is sacred, save for the current moment, and what can be wrung from it? Even if it means the destruction of priceless American art for the pleasurable feeling obtained by rubbing one's bare ass against it, while drunk beyond the control of your facilities?

She doesn't exactly look like a conservative to me....

Obama Shreds The Constitution, Media Whoops With Joy

2012-01-05T08:58:00.002-05:00

Barack Obama, in direct defiance of both the United States Constitution and (on a much, much smaller level) the recently passed Dodd-Frank legislation, made recess appointments to both his newly-created regulatory factory - the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - as well as to the power-mad, job-destroying NLRB.

"Advise and Consent"? The man who swore an oath to protect the Constitution never heard of it, apparently.

And the media? The crew that called for impeachment every time George W. Bush took a shit now cheers wildly for the man who is rapidly creating the very imperial presidency our founders fought a revolution to prevent:

Stymied by Congress, Obama to boldly seat nominees

A defiant President Barack Obama on Wednesday took his boldest action yet to show voters he will confront Republicans, announcing he will bypass Congress and install nominees into politically sensitive jobs...

"Boldly"? "Confront Republicans"? And yet nowhere do I see the word "controversial", which again accompanied coverage of every trip W made to the men's room...

We've thrown around the word "fascist" a lot on this blog when referring to Barack Hussein Obama, and refused to take it back when called on it. Events have borne us out, alas...

And so we see the president's re-election strategy take hold. I created the CFBP to protect you from Wall Street, and when the Republicans tried to block me to protect the rich, I went around them. I supported middle-class jobs by staffing the NLRB when Republicans tried to defang it. And when the Republicanism said no, I still borrowed $1 trillion dollars to pay off all your mortgages anyway!

The media will amplify this message verbatim, while denouncing Obama's eventual opponent as...well, whatever Obama tells them to.

If our Founding Fathers returned to visit the nation they created, I have always thought that out of all the perversions of their dream, one thing alone would make them vomit out of their eyeballs. And it wouldn't necessarily be the massive over-reach of government, or the expansion of the welfare state, or our nearly constant state of war.

It would be the role that the media - the press, back in the day - has taken in American society. Imagined to be the the best defense of the citizen against the encroachment of tyranny, it has instead become a tool of the government itself, used as a cudgel against the very people it was supposed to protect. The lies of the State are printed without reproach, false information disseminated and never retracted, and the enemies of the status quo vilified and destroyed, be they political fugues opposed to the leftist agenda (think Sarah Palin), or simply ordinary citizens who dare ask challenging questions (think Joe the Plumber). The contemporary media has turned their backs on their very purpose in a democratic society, and instead have chosen to take the words of Vladimir Lenin to heart:

“The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses”.

The Founders groan in their graves, while the Republic they built with their blood is frittered away, more rapidly by the day...

So this is how liberty dies...to thunderous applause: