Quickies

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

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Here's some of that new civility we've been hearing so much about:

Calypso Louie Farrakhan brining it earlier this week at LeMoyne-Owens College in Memphis, TN.



Wonder to whom Louie was referring in that "started off good but got corrupted..." clause at the end of the clip.






Dude...









How do you know when a scandal is potentially hugely damaging to a sitting (Democrat) President? The legacy media virtually ignores it. While everyone is rightly up in arms over the shameless wastefulness of the GSA/Las Vegas dust-up and the sleazy unprofessionalism of the Secret Service hooker-gate down in Columbia, we don't recall anyone dying in those scandals in which there were no direct ties to the administration. We were not aware that lavish conferences in Vegas nor hiring prostitutes in Columbia were official administration policies as was the case in Fast and Furious, the widely successful gun-running scheme that put arms into the hands of drug cartels and which cost the lives of 2 U.S. officials as well as hundreds if not thousands of Mexicans.

One must imagine, then, the administration is actually breathing a sigh of relief seeing GSA and hooker-gate splashed across the front pages of the dead tree media. As if you haven't figured it out by now, this administration has been reduced to governing by distraction. The President admits that the Buffett Rule (which wouldn't even apply to Warren Buffet) to which he is hitching his campaign wagon, won't do a damn thing to lower the debt or deficit (distraction).
He admits his $52 million scheme to crack down on oil speculators won't actually lower the price of gas at the pump and in fact may actually backfire and raise the price of gas as this plan may serve to drive down the number of speculators in the market causing a monopoly effect (counter-effective distraction). And now these two latest non-administration-related distractions. Keep 'em coming says the administration and its water carriers.

And while governance by distraction is the current M.O., B-Daddy reminds us that it is merely a result of a mindset of resentment in the DNA of the Obama administration:

Scratch the surface of leftist complaint and you always seem to find resentment, whether about the general unfairness of society or the indifference to the harm done to the powerless. While unfairness and harm exist, the almost exclusive focus by the left on these perspectives stems from a psychology of resentment and learned powerlessness. Because most Americans are self-reliant and optimistic, the left does not usually win elections. 2008 was an anomaly, because the blatant unfairness of the bailouts and Republican duplicity made it logical for Americans to turn to the Democrats.

Ultimately, I think that Obama has chosen the politics of resentment as the key to electoral success. I may be wrong, but since he has launched attacks on Pau l Ryan and on the rich with the Buffett rule, his poll numbers already seem to be slipping. I believe that it is important to defeat him, but more important to educate Americans on the virtues of our positions.

Please do get to the link as B-Daddy does an excellent job on bridging the gap between the tea party/freedom coalition and liberals on several key policy issues


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So, what has Shane Atwell been up to? Reading. Reading and sharing:

I read Oleg Atbashian's Shakedown Socialism almost two years ago now. I remember it being an enjoyable short read on the evils of communism. I don't remember many details. But one quotation comes back to mind over and over, everytime I hear about the Left's supposed support for due process, or freedom of the press, or closing Guantanimo, or transparency in government (from the bottom of page 8):

In the words of prominent Party theoretician Nikolai Bukharin, "We asked for freedom of the press, thought, and civil liberties in the past because we were in the opposition and needed these liberties to conquer. Now that we have conquered, there is no longer any need for such civil liberties."

Shane's right, of course. There does indeed seem to be a certain convenience if not outright hypocrisy when it comes to liberalism circa 2010-2012 vs. liberalism circa 2005 with respect to trashing the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution Act when it came to our involvement in Libya and the indefinite detainment and wacking of U.S. citizens both here and abroad without traditionally recognized due process. Far less egregious transgressions had the left in full-blown garment-rending mode back when dissent was patriotic and it wasn't their guy calling the shots.






As seen on Facebook:

Fifteen years on and dude scores another internet/urban myth meme. Not too shabby.






drozz is naming names and compiling lists. Drop by and leave suggestions on how best to chronicle those who voted for ObamaCare as we ramp up to the elections in November. It's not just the Oval Office that needs turnover.


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Quick... before the news cycle expires on this: Sir Charles has a round-up of all media/blogosphere-related Obama ate dog goodies.




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Charles Krauthammer on the fall of NASA:

Is there a better symbol of willed American decline? The pity is not Discovery's retirement — beautiful as it was, the shuttle proved too expensive and risky to operate — but that it died without a successor. The planned follow-on — the Constellation rocket-capsule program to take humans back into orbit and from there to the moon — was suddenly canceled in 2010. And with that, control of manned spaceflight was gratuitously ceded to Russia and China.

We're torn on this one. Litterally running a shuttle service is pretty mundane stuff, but space exploration is inherently cool and was, at one time, the exclusive domain of this country, exemplifying our nation's exceptionalism. If there was one thing that could bring this country together, it was NASA and it's manned space flights. Now, we're broke... beyond broke and sadder perhaps than even that is the fact that effectively shutting down NASA is a result of the deficits in resolve, imagination and leadership of our political class.






So does this mean we are finally going to get to see Zeppelin live?


Dead for 16 years, Tupac... or rather a hologram of Tupac makes an appearance with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre last weekend at the Coachella Music Festival (extreme language warning):









Chapman University demographer, Joel Kotkin on the California exodus:

California used to be more like Texas—a jobs magnet. What happened? For one, says the demographer, Californians are now voting more based on social issues and less on fiscal ones than they did when Ronald Reagan was governor 40 years ago. Environmentalists are also more powerful than they used to be. And Mr. Brown facilitated the public-union takeover of the statehouse by allowing state workers to collectively bargain during his first stint as governor in 1977.

Mr. Kotkin also notes that demographic changes are playing a role. As progressive policies drive out moderate and conservative members of the middle class, California's politics become even more left-wing. It's a classic case of natural selection, and increasingly the only ones fit to survive in California are the very rich and those who rely on government spending. In a nutshell, "the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees."

There is an old, ribald saying regarding messing up a really, really good dream that would certainly apply here. Seriously, it would appear to take incompetence and not only incompetence but the Herculean effort of, day after day and year after year of actively applying that incompetence in order to screw up such a good thing as California. By damn, it looks like 35-40 years after it started, the job is nearly complete.


OK, gang. That's it for today. We will see you all tomorrow.

Quickies

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









One would think that during winter hibernation and reflecting upon all the unsanitary, assault-y and rape-y shenanigans of their Occupy camps from last year, these ass-hats would've come up with something cogent, relevant and productive. Nope.

Another #Occupy Fail:





Because nothing speaks to the 99% like making their morning commute that much more difficult and chaotic.

What was the point of this anyway? Isn't being crammed into the shiny metal boxes of mass transit the very epitome of statist social engineering?

God bless ya, #Occupy... if nothing else, you have provided a never-ending stream of blog fodder for this humble little neighborhood blog.








Cave.

Charles Krauthammer on the President's hot mic problem:

"On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved, but it's important for him (Putin) to give me space.... This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility."
— Barack Obama to Dmitry Medvedev, open mic, March 26

You don't often hear an American president secretly (he thinks) assuring foreign leaders that concessions are coming their way, but they must wait because he's seeking re-election and he dare not tell his own people.

Not at all, spun a White House aide in major gaffe-control mode. The president was merely explaining that arms control is too complicated to be dealt with in a year in which both Russia and the U.S. hold presidential elections.

Rubbish. First of all, to speak of Russian elections in the same breath as ours is a travesty. Theirs was a rigged, predetermined farce. Putin ruled before. Putin rules after.

Obama spoke of the difficulties of the Russian presidential "transition." What transition? It's a joke. It had no effect on Putin's ability to negotiate anything.

As for the U.S. election, the problem is not that the issue is too complicated but that if people knew Obama's intentions of "flexibly" caving on missile defenses, they might think twice about giving him a second term.
After all, what is Obama doing negotiating on missile defense in the first place? We have no obligation to do so. The ABM Treaty, a relic of the Cold War, died in 2002.

"Flexibly". That would be one term for it. Read the rest of the dressing down at the link.






B-Daddy grabs ahold of one our favorite subjects: California's high speed choos-choos and the most massive public works boondoggle in the history of western civilization which it represents. It would appear that before even laying down a single mile of track somewhere out in the middle of the central valley, it is running afoul of its bond provisions.

B-Daddy writes:

It seems that all the changes being made to this boondoggle are violating the terms of Proposition 1A. Some provisions that can't be met and would violate the law:

Any initial segment has to use high-speed trains. Instead, the rail authority has agreed to run fewer trains at slower speeds on tracks shared with commuter rail systems.

Passengers must be able to board in Los Angeles and arrive in San Francisco without changing trains.

The system is supposed to run without taxpayer subsidies. I can't stop laughing at that requirement.

The system running without subsidies is some sort of sick joke. And running fewer trains at slowers speeds? That's called AmTrak. And anyone who has seen a proposed map of California's choo-choo routes knows that there has always been a handful of stops between San Francisco and L.A. Say, a proposed map like this:

This whole thing is a mockery of a travesty of a sham and we will admit to taking a huge degree of glee in watching this whole miserable house of cards come down in rather slow-motion fashion.






Sir Charles of Doo Doo Economics has more on the faith-based global-warming set and their continuing truthiness problems.






What are you waiting for? Click here to vote for Leslie Easterman as Circle of Moms Top 25 Political Moms competition. Currently, #35 with a bullet.











... we said get over there and vote, already. sheesh.






Glenn Reynolds on the Solicitor General's dreadful performance this week in defending ObamaCare before the Supreme Court and why, perhaps it is such a daunting task for which Donald Verrilli should not take such a bad rap:

So last week's Supreme Court arguments over Obamacare weren't exactly a smashing success for the Obama administration. How bad was it? Bad enough that Jeffrey Toobin called the event "a train wreck," Mother Jones called it a "disaster," and constitutional law professor Ann Althouse, amid terrible reviews of Solicitor General Donald Verrilli's performance, wondered if Verrilli had taken a dive, deliberately throwing the argument so that the Obama administration would no longer be tied to the increasingly unpopular health care bill.

But I think that people are being too hard on Verrilli. He may have coughed and stammered a bit, but his real problem wasn't about performance. His real problem was that he was tasked with defending the indefensible.

Indeed.







Object Lesson #592 on why it is you don't mess with this regime:

Today I received a letter from the IRS that my 2007 tax returns are being audited. Less than one month after launching TaxCheatStamps.com.

There's a list of "proposed changes" they want to make to my 2007 return that would require me to pay almost $14,000 in taxes, penalties, and interest. All the "discrepancies" they list are bogus and I have documentation to prove it. I keep meticulous records and always pay every cent I owe to Uncle Sam. We're going to talk to a lawyer ASAP.

There is no doubt in my mind that my family is being politically persecuted for making a mockery of our new Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the Obama administration.

Honestly, we're scared. We haven't done anything wrong (and I've got the documents to prove it in storage) but now the IRS is coming after us and they can destroy our lives with a flick of their pen. I don't want to sound like a coward, but I'm so scared I'm literally shaking. We've got a seven-week-old daughter.

I suppose it's a sort of honor to be persecuted like this. I'd really appreciate it if people would blog about this and link to this post. (And a prayer wouldn't hurt.)

Donations and prayers welcome at the link.


Related: Years ago, our old boss, Bob Kinsella, President and CEO of the 5 employee team at San Diego Tug and Barge asked me to order a "Bullshit" stamp as he could not find his. We asked how it was we were going to get that order filled on the up and up. "Simple", he stated. "It's not a "Bullshit" stamp, per se, rather "Ballast Under Load Line - SHip In Transit".










Change.

As a young labor organizer in Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa worked for the city’s teachers, honing his political skills in the fight for a good contract. The union loved him back, supporting the Democrat’s election to the State Assembly, City Council and, finally, the mayor’s office he occupies today.

But now, Villaraigosa, a rising star in the national Democratic party, has a different view. He calls the teachers union “the one, unwavering roadblock” to improving public education in L.A.

Villaraigosa is one of several Democratic mayors in cities across the country — Chicago, Cleveland, Newark and Boston, among them — who are challenging teachers unions in ways that seemed inconceivable just a decade ago.

We've long been of the opinion that because of the realities of big city politics, Democrats were far better positioned to effect any real and meaning full change/reforms within our public education system (the crappiest school systems are almost exclusively the domain of Democrat/Union dominated cities). Also, any Republican mayor or governor who goes messing with the status quo is a knuckle-dragging enemy of the people whereas a reforming Democrat is viewed far less hostily.

No matter. If Democrats are willing to stick their necks out on this one, they have our full support.






No one saw this coming. No one:

Angry lib talking head breaks with channel no one could find.

David Brooks of the New York Times whines about Nathan Fletcher going independent after not receiving the San Diego Republican Party's endorsement for mayor.

Fletcher is tall, good-looking, smart, polished (maybe too much so) and moderate. An article in The Sacramento Bee touted him as a rising Republican star, the kind of Republican who could get elected statewide. It didn’t hurt that his wife has worked for George W. Bush and other Republicans.

The next step was obvious: Run for mayor of San Diego. The city has a tradition of electing pragmatic center-right Republicans. Fletcher ran on some conservative ideas — pension reform and fiscal conservatism — and some less conventionally conservative ones — open space, bike paths and environmental policies. He’s also for comprehensive immigration reform.

He was endorsed by Paul Jacobs, the chairman and chief executive of Qualcomm. Both Mitt and Ann Romney, who have a place in San Diego, maxed out to his campaign, giving $500 each.

But as Scott Lewis of voiceofsandiego.org has detailed, the San Diego Republican Party has moved sharply right recently. A group of insurgents have toppled the old city establishment. As Lewis wrote, “The Republican Party has gone through a fantastically effective effort to enforce conformity around its principles.”

Brooks describes Carl DeMaio, who did receive the party endorsement as "the more orthodox conservative". One wonders if Brooks did any research at all regarding DeMaio, the first openly gay city coucil person and the man who has been at the forefront of public employee pension reform, an issue that has resonated greatly with the voters of the city. If this makes DeMaio the more orthodox conservative and which also represents an enforcing of conformity, then so be it but perhaps Brooks should pause to consider that at 3,000 miles away, he has zero feel for the political ground game here in San Diego before he puts fingers to keyboard to bellyache some more about the extreming of politics in this country.





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


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Kraut' Smack

In a radio interview that aired Monday on Univision, President Obama chided Latinos who “sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.’” Quite a uniter, urging Hispanics to exact political revenge on their enemies — presumably, for example, the nearly 60 percent of Americans who support the new Arizona immigration law.

This from a president who won’t even use “enemies” to describe an Iranian regime that is helping kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. This from a man who rose to prominence thunderously declaring that we were not blue states or red states, not black America or white America or Latino America — but the United States of America

This is how the great post-partisan, post-racial, New Politics presidency ends — not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a desperate election-eve plea for ethnic retribution. Nice.

Perhaps Charles Krauthammer's critique of how HopenChange went southbound and nasty is a tad harsh, after all...





Then again, with this current crop as opposed to what we had over 200 hundred years ago, it's painfully obvious we have to grade on a curve.

Quickies

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


Left Coast Rebel has the details on yet more racism within the tea party movement, here.



So let's get this straight: The Feds raid work places and turn the illegals they find out onto the street without deporting them. Now we have illegals roaming around without any means of supporting themselves. How's that for compassion? B-Daddy has more on the incoherency of our federal immigration policy.



Guardian columnist thinks George Steinbrenner was like the Iraq War or something.



And WaPo columnist whines that we really do need the estate tax because... the government needs the money.




Charles Krauthammer on the Wall St. reform bill:

Well, the place to start when asking what it means is to see what Senator Dodd, the chairman, the author of this said a month ago about the bill: "This is about as important as it gets. It deals with every aspect of our lives." And then he adds: "No one will know until this actually is in place how it works." Well, that gives you a lot of confidence!

The fact is there are hundreds of regulations that are going to be as a result of the bill that have not been written. They are going to be lobbied and litigated. The big banks who have the big lobby operations and the big lawyering operations are going to have the upper hand here. Every comma, every adjective will carry hundreds of billions of dollars worth of importance over time.

(itlalics, ours)

If you aren't at the table then you are on the menu.

The more we read of and about this bill, the more we are convinced that it has less to do with actual reform and more to do with the further entrenchment of crony capitalism, corporatism, carve-outs and any number of other alliterative maladies.
A fitting way to end his Congressional career for Chris Dodd, we think we all could agree.




And finally, the question if unions will ever abide by any degree of outsourcing is answered:

Billy Raye, a 51-year-old unemployed bike courier, is looking for work.

Fortunately for him, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters is seeking paid demonstrators to march and chant in its current picket line outside the McPherson Building, an office complex here where the council says work is being done with nonunion labor.

Priceless

Quote(s) of the day

The history of this decision [on Afghanistan] is less important than the fact that the president is agonizing in public. A president ought to think long and hard about a strategy about war. There is nothing wrong with that.

But agonizing in public, leaving allies hanging — as we saw in the NATO meeting today, where all the others are waiting to hear what the United States is going to do — leaving the Afghans hanging, leaving everybody in Pakistan hanging … is a mistake.

If you want to have a private consultation, do it, but it's Obama's own strategy and he's responsible, and if he wants a reconsideration, it should be done in quiet …

- Charles Krauthammer

We don't necessarily agree. Victory in Afghanistan will be subtle and defeat spectacular and either way, we don't think history will remember the public nature of Obama's stalling tactics. Krauthammer's point is well-taken as applicable only to this very moment in time, though.


and...

I think the president could improve his poll ratings markedly if he simply took all the things he has said about Limbaugh, Hannity, Fox News, the town-hallers, and his domestic critics and instead applied that invective to Iran, radical Islam, Russia, and Venezuela, and, in turn, took all the outreach things he's said the latter and applied them to the former.

- Victor Davis Hanson


Hanson is spot-on. One of the most ironic and disappointing things about this administration currently is that the concept of reconciliation, unity and post-partisanship upon which he campaigned and how he and his administration have actually behaved and governed 9 months in are two things speeding away from each other in opposite directions at the speed of light.

H/T: NRO's The Corner

Line of the Day

Don't be fooled by Bob Gates staying on. Obama didn't get elected to manage Afghanistan.
- Charles Krauthammer

For those of you divining the intent of Obama’s cabinet picks, it’s shaping up like this: Since he has no experience nor driving passion for foreign policy (leave the community organizing to the 3rd Infantry Division), he is content to farm-out that role to members of the two previous Administrations so he can concentrate on radically transforming the private/government economic dynamic here at home.

We’ll freely admit that we were one of those that felt a silver lining of the financial crisis and recession was that it would put a check on any of Obama’s grander designs regarding universal health care, not-ready-for-market energy policies and massive Depression-era and Depression-lengthening public works programs. How things change. The events of the last six months or so have leveled virtually any and all preconceived notions regarding what the government will do to save itself from the (excesses) of itself.

The Keynesian model that provides the intellectual fuel behind Obama’s stimulus package is even turned on its ear as it’s supposed to be: run a surplus during the good times to be able to spend during the bad times. Unfortunately, we’ve spent, spent, spent and bailed, bailed, bailed on rainy days, sunny days, good times and bad and thus have effectively eliminated the concept of “pain” from our cultural vocabulary.


Of course, Obama and his $1 trillion spending plan (that David Brooks likens to “This Old House”) had it’s John the Baptist, the man who would set the table, socialize the masses to “change” and herald the arrival of the Messiah. Unfortunately, this person who has been the point man for this new dawn of Fabian Socialism is none other than the man we voted for President in the last two elections. And to think some scoffed when we casually dropped the Bush III term.

H/T: KT