Quickies

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A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.


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By using the tactics Harry Reid employed on Mitt Romney during the campaign when Reid insisted Romney release more of his tax returns because Romney was “hiding something” , we are going to demand that Reid prove his innocence in this matter otherwise we will just assume his guilt.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid broke days of silence on Sunday evening to deny any knowledge or involvement in a Utah case in which a man claims to have funneled money to others in an attempt to get the Nevada Democrat to intervene in a Federal Trade Commission case.

“Senator Reid has no knowledge or involvement regarding Mr. Johnson’s case,” a statement from Reid’s office said. “These unsubstantiated allegations implying Senator Reid’s involvement are nothing more than innuendo and simply not true.”

(italics, ours)

Days of silence? Again, not our tactics but Reid's: What's Harry hiding? He's certainly behaving like a guilty man.






Remind us again of why we are giving these creeps our tax dollars in the form of foreign aid?

Earlier this month, the Middle East Media Research Institute posted video taken in 2010 of Egypt's current president, Mohamed Morsi, calling Jews the "descendants of apes and pigs."

The Jerusalem Post provided this summary of his remarks:

"... Morsi denounced the Palestinian Authority as a creation of "the Zionist and American enemies for the sole purpose of opposing the will of the Palestinian people." Therefore, he stressed, "No reasonable person can expect any progress on this track."

"Either [you accept] the Zionists and everything they want, or else it is war," Morsi said, "This is what these occupiers of the land of Palestine know - these blood-suckers, who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs." (You can watch Morsi deliver these remarks here.)

Richard Behar, at Forbes, watched what happened once these atrocious remarks were made public:

I studied the Pigs-and-Apes story's journey and trajectory through America over the past week with Sue Radlauer, the Director of Research Services here at Forbes. We gave it seven days to see if any of the so-called "mainstream media" -- a pejorative phrase that too-often obscures more than it reveals -- bestowed the hate speech even a few sentences of back-page ink. Nothing.

You see, in the West, anti-semitism is the only acceptable form of bigotry and will be protected as such by Western media.









Mission Accomplished? Home of gun owner whose name and address were published by New York state newspaper has home broken into and what do you think the crooks went looking for?

Just days before Christmas, the Journal News out of New York published a story headlined, "Where are the gun permits in your neighborhood?" The Journal News thought it was important to publish the names and addresses of every gun permit holder in Westchester and Rockland counties in the name of public safety and the public's right to know. Turns out, they accomplished the opposite by treating lawful gun permit holders like convicted sex offenders. The story received national attention and put gun permit holders and their non-holding neighbors at risk. Ex-convicts said the Journal News story was a gift and served as an extremely useful tool for criminals interested in stealing valuables, including guns. One ex-con called the story "insanity."

Over the weekend, a home on the map published by the Journal News was burglarized and the crooks went straight for the guns.

A White Plains residence pinpointed on a controversial handgun permit database was burglarized Saturday, and the burglars' target was the homeowner's gun safe.

Check out the video at the link and you'll find that the paper's idea of transparency is a one-way street.









Commie-apologist who made millions in Hollywood is back in the news again:

Action star Jackie Chan has once again sparked controversy by branding America the world's "most corrupt" country in a TV interview.

His comments were slammed by The Washington Post's foreign affairs blogger Max Fisher as "anti-American" and a reflection of China's insecurity about itself.

Chan told Phoenix TV that China has been bullied by international powers for a long time and only began making progress in recent years.

Chan added that while China has a corruption problem, so do other nations, including America.

"If you talk about corruption, the entire world - America - has no corruption?" said the actor.

He went on to say America is "the most corrupt [country] in the world" - not China. "Where does this great breakdown [of corruption] come from? It started exactly from the [rest of the] world, the United States … If our own countrymen don't support our country, who will?" he said.

It's a false argument as if forced abortions and sterilizations are official state policy as they are in China, then where is there room for corruption?







The miserable hack that runs the Justice Department pretty much equates gun owners with criminals.







Here's B-Daddy of The Liberator Today on defense budgets in our age of ever-expanding entitlements:

Ultimately, America is going to have to decide if it wants fewer soldiers and sailors, because the big bill comes from the cost of labor. Defense isn't immune to the same analysis that face many other businesses. Fewer soldiers mean we can't put boots on the ground again like we did in Iraq. That may or may not be a good thing, depending on your point of view. But we are going to have to live with toppling dictators, if we choose, but not controlling the outcome, like in Libya. Rather than shaping the post-war landscape, like in Iraq. Given the expense of the latter, one might argue that boots on the ground are a luxury we can no longer afford. However, adversaries are going to notice, and it will change the calculus of world politics. If you think America is the source of all that's wrong in the world, you might like that. I think it will make the world more dangerous; but I also think we never thought hard enough about what force composition and programs were necessary for our national security strategy and ended up wasting a lot of money as a consequence.

Why isn't ObamaCare about improving the healthcare system of this country? Because enforcement of ObamaCare compliance will be carried out by the IRS.

Alternately, the IRS warns employers that using clever schemes to get around a law crafted by clever schemes will not go unpunished:

The Internal Revenue Service warned employers in a new regulatory proposal not to come up with clever schemes to avoid Obamacare’s employer health insurance mandate.

The IRS said it would soon issue “anti-abuse rules” to discourage employers from taking advantage of any regulatory loopholes.

“The Treasury Department and the IRS are aware of various structures being considered under which employers might use temporary staffing agencies (or other staffing agencies)… to evade application of section 4980H [the employer insurance mandate],” the IRS said in a proposed regulatory announcement issued December 28.

The IRS said it would issue a so-called “anti-abuse rule” in an attempt to prevent employers from using temp agencies to circumvent the mandate, essentially writing into law that even though an employer hires temporary workers and therefore is not technically under the mandate’s jurisdiction, the IRS would fine them anyway for not providing health insurance.

Anti-abuse rule? How about the anti-staying in business rule?

Punishing employers for looking out for their businesses best interests. That's pretty much what this boils down to.






Here's KT on the liberal contention that blue states are the "makers" and red states are the "takers":

So the red states are "takers." So what?

Budgets and spending have to deal with what is, not what should be or what would be in a perfectly just and fair world. If your neighbor earns twice what you do, but happens to be a worthless sloth, that doesn't absolve you of managing your finances. It's irrelevant.

If blue states are fiscally irresponsible, it's because blue policies aren't coping with reality. Neighboring states aren't forcing the blue states to spend more than they bring in. That's a choice the blue states make for themselves. If there's a correlation between political leanings and fiscal performance, it's a pretty good indication those policies are inferior.

OK, gang, that's it for today. We'll see you all tomorrow.


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