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, columns, articles and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.






Glenn Reynolds presents his own Occupy cirriculum:

2) Bourgeois vs. Non-Bourgeois Revolutions: A Comparison and Contrast. The Occupy movement left its major sites—McPherson Square in D.C., Zuccotti Park in Manhattan, Dewey Square in Boston—filthy and disheveled. By contrast, the tea party protests famously left the Washington Mall and other locations cleaner than they found them, with members proudly performing cleanup duties.

This unit would note that social-protest movements are sometimes orderly and sometimes disorderly as a matter of approach, and it would compare the effectiveness and ultimate success of such relentlessly bourgeois movements as the tea party, the pre-1964 Civil Rights movement, Women's Suffrage activists, and the American Revolution, against such anti-Bourgeois movements as the post-1968 Black Power and New Left movements, and the French Revolution.

Which accomplished more lasting good? Is Max Weber's Protestant work ethic applicable to social movements?

Southern talk:

We have utilize a few, uhh, coloquialisms of our own but being native Southern Californians, we don't know if the following accounts for regional-speak:

Busy? "Busier than a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest."

See you tomorrow? "Lord willing and the river don't rise."

Someone forget or srew-up your name upon a subsequent meeting? "Call us what you want, just don't call us late for dinner."






Spinsters.com on capitalism and charity:

Capitalism, aka the free market, is the best assurance of individual and societal prosperity. Turns out, capitalism is also the best spur towards charity and generosity to the less fortunate. People are most generous to others when their own needs are secure. Capitalism provides the economic security necessary to inspire charity. The cold-hearted businessman is a tired Marxist myth.

B-Daddy has a round-up of news events himself and which includes this take-down of the faith-based global warming climate change community from the Wall Street Journal:

The Trenberth letter tells us that decarbonization of the world's economy would "drive decades of economic growth." This is not a scientific statement nor is there evidence it is true. A premature global-scale transition from hydrocarbon fuels would require massive government intervention to support the deployment of more expensive energy technology. If there were economic advantages to investing in technology that depends on taxpayer support, companies like Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar, Solar Millenium, SpectraWatt, Solyndra, Ener1 and the Renewable Energy Development Corporation would be prospering instead of filing for bankruptcy in only the past few months.

B-Daddy has long claimed that the warmers rejection of a carbon tax in return for dropping the income tax is proof of their purely statist intentions and we believe him.






Terrific: We're No. 1!...

... in per capita debt.

It's come to this: Asian American Journalists Association releases guidelines on Jeremy Lin media coverage.






Headline: Exclusive: State Department quietly warning region on Syrian WMDs

The State Department has begun coordinating with Syria's neighbors to prepare for the handling of President Bashar al-Assad's extensive weapons of mass destruction if and when his regime collapses, The Cable has learned.

This week, the State Department sent a diplomatic demarche to Syria's neighbors Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, warning them about the possibility of Syria's WMDs crossing their borders and offering U.S. government help in dealing with the problem, three Obama administration officials confirmed to The Cable. For concerned parties both inside and outside the U.S. government, the demarche signifies that the United States is increasingly developing plans to deal with the dangers of a post-Assad Syria -- while simultaneously highlighting the lack of planning for how to directly bring about Assad's downfall.

Who wants to bet that we will find quite a bit of Hussein-era Iraqi WMDs should this come to pass? However, we're glad we are thinking this issue through ahead of time vs. supporting a completely haphazard and unauthorized kinetic military action in Libya to protect civilians take out military targets take out a foreign leader and which resulted in thousands of RPGs going unaccounted for. There has been pretty much zero media coverage of this circumstance in the past 4-6 months.




Gotta run... may be back with more fun later today.

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Rick Santorum and his false strawman

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In just over a minute and a half, Rick Santorum pretty much disqualifies himself for consideration for the G.O.P. nomination.




He just doesn't get it with earmarks. It's not that earmarks were a signficant part of spending with respect to the entire budget, it is that they were an integral part of the vote-buying culture of Washington D.C. They were the lube for the whole corrupt machine back there and we don't specifically recall McCain claiming that solving the earmark problem would solve the budget problem.


And if this guy lacks the fortitude to address earmarks, what does that say about his resolve to address the real budget problem: entitlements. We have a sneaking suspicion this "compassionate conservative" has no real desire to tackle this issue.



H/T: Temple of Mut via The Liberator Today

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Quotes of the day

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Some quotes we ran across the past couple of days that caught our attention:


Here's Mike Huckabee who won the Iowa caucus back in '08 assessing the rhetoric of the current G.O.P. candidates:

“One of the reasons that I was so frustrated and decided not to get in the race was because it appears to me, and it still does to a large degree, that many of the Republicans are more interested in just defeating Barack Obama than they are in rebuilding America. Well, defeating somebody without a plan to really resolve problems, to me, is a worthless endeavor. You know, I want to see us really focus on how to get the country back to work. We’ve got 15, 16 million people that don’t have jobs that would like to have them. Let’s talk about that, not: ’Let’s spend our time talking about what’s wrong with one of the candidates we’re trying to defeat,’ and that’s unfortunately been the focus of this primary.”

Huckabee always seems like a nice enough guy while being interviewed or when he is part of a discussion panel but there has always been something that seemed a tad odd to us about the guy. To wit, is he saying that the reason he didn't enter the race is because he didn't like the campaign strategies of the other candidates? That's patently absurd as that, from a political standpoint, is precisely why you would want to enter the fray. I'll be the alternative to what the other candidates are offering. Isn't that precisely the message every candidate attempts to convey? Again, odd.

And while Huckabee has a good point with generating a message that conveys a positive way forward, there is an awful lot of overlap in that Venn diagram between defeating Obama and rebuilding America suggesting those two concepts are far from being exclusive of one another.







Here's KT on the canard of money in politics:

Getting the money out of politics assumes that money is somehow corrupting what the government does, that there is some best solution to whatever set of problems we're trying to drown with three-and-a-half trillion dollar bills. If we got the money out of politics, then our political leaders would make wise decisions that were best for all of us.

Sort of like Mussolini did. There wasn't much money in politics in fascist Italy.

But the best set of decisions depends on what you're trying to achieve. Over in Greece, they've pretty much done the things that Robert Reich has been suggesting for years and they're now starting to throw their poor and elderly out into the street. So much for finding wise political leaders who can make your decisions for you, eh Robert?

And what does "getting the money out" even mean? The government contracts out to private companies for much of its work. If there's a customer out there with $3.5T to spend it's utterly childish to think that marketing dollars aren't going to gush forth in pursuit of that prospect. (You can solve this problem by nationalizing all industries so that everyone is inside the government and no one outside. See also: Union, Soviet.)

The only way to get the money out of politics is to get the money out of the government. Given the track record of geniuses like Alan Blinder and Robert Reich, that's probably a good idea for lots of other reasons, too.

A favorite refrain of ours (which, honestly, we don't know whether or not we came up with or stole from someone else) goes something like this:

You will never remove money from politics until you remove power from government by corresponding degrees.

And here's B-Daddy at The Liberator Today on differing views of and just how to combat the near-universally loathed effects of crony capitalism:

The left sees crony capitalism and concludes that more regulation of business is required to prevent business from seeking ill gotten gains from government intervention. They forget problems of regulatory capture and the fact that regulation favors the entrenched business interests of today, against the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

The right calls for less regulation, forgetting to tackle the problem that government is enriching corporations in the first place. The tea party answer, is for government to be stripped of the power to enrich corporations in the first place. In my opinion, such a theory is incomplete, because some opportunities for mischief, especially in financial markets are so great that after the fact prosecution is an insufficient deterrent.

Go to the link for some hopeful news that Western democracies will get this figured out.


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Quickies: the 2011 year-end edition

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A round-up of news items, columns, article and blog posts that caught our eye this past (two) week(s)


It's our year-end edition so we may just roll with updates and make this a "Farewell to 2011" open thread sort of thing. Please feel free to chime in with your thoughts on 2011 or anything else for that matter in the comment section.






Strangely enough, troops not impressed with Biden's Taliban not our enemy comment.




Syrian dissenters apparently not huge fans of "smart power".

More O > W:

The rapid expansion of the drone program has blurred long-standing boundaries between the CIA and the military. Lethal operations are increasingly assembled a la carte, piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House to toggle between separate legal authorities that govern the use of lethal force.

In Yemen, for instance, the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command pursue the same adversary with nearly identical aircraft. But they alternate taking the lead on strikes to exploit their separate authorities, and they maintain separate kill lists that overlap but don’t match. CIA and military strikes this fall killed three U.S. citizens, two of whom were suspected al-Qaeda operatives.

No one, most of all, worthless Bush-hating Obamabot "civil liberties" hypocrites want to have the conversation regarding the legality and morality of whacking U.S. citizens abroad without due process.




North Koreans are completely insane.








Finally... we can put those Obama-is-a-Muslim rumors to rest.

I realize the Obamas are wealthy people, and that wealthy people have the right to drop $260 of their disposable income on chow. But if you’re going to invite Associated Press photographers along to capture your trip to Target and stage photo ops at PetSmart and Best Buy, then I’m going to write about your unpublicized excursion to Alan Wong’s.

The press pool was not invited in to take photos this time. In fact, others were discouraged from doing so too. From the pool report:

Diners have been trying to takes pictures of POTUS, only to be chased off by advance staffers.

Since when are people not allowed to take pictures?

According to the pool report, the Obamas and their friends dined on the five-course “tasting menu” that was tasty to the tune of $75 a person, $105 with wine. Among the highlights were “Sassey Salad” and bacon wrapped pork loin.

(italics, ours)



Not as much snark as you may think. Truthers, Birthers and the like really annoy us as they distract from the real issues of unhinged Muslim extremism and absolutely horrible executive branch policies, respectively.







Where's Olbermann who hasn't done a live broadcast on Current TV since Dec. 22?

“Countdown” on Current draws just a fraction of the one million viewers that Mr. Olbermann routinely had on MSNBC; his ratings are not reported on an overnight basis, but in his first months he was known to be averaging about 200,000 viewers a night. (Current is expected to start receiving overnight ratings in January, according to a person with knowledge of the ratings.)

His program also draws less media attention than it once did, though it was credited for early coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement in the fall.

In early December, Mr. Olbermann suddenly started to broadcast from a darkened studio, with nothing but a black backdrop behind him. The Web site Mediaite first noted the change, which was due to a series of technical difficulties at the studio that Current rents for “Countdown.”

Despite whatever snark Olbermann can be mustering for the current GOP field, who wants to reside over, nay, be the spokesperson for the progressive crack-up that Obama's second term promises to be? The man (Obama) best politically positioned to do something about the greatest domestic issue of our time (entitlement reform) will instead shrink from this responsibility and busy himself with god knows what.






Here's B-Daddy over at The Liberator Today opining upon Iran and securing your base in a tyrannical regime:

Consider the bearded ones' positions. Despite years of work, they still seem a ways off from achieving their goal of building a nuclear warhead that can be delivered at a distance. Clearly the U.S. and/or Israeli campaign of sabotage and assassination has been successful in slowing their nuclear progress. It seems that the mullahs are in a race against time; they feel the need to fulfill their nuclear ambition to secure their base and to increase their popularity before popular discontent with their failing socialist economy causes the government's collapse. This is why the threat to close the Straits of Hormuz is so telling. It is an almost credible threat, but reveals that they are nervous about the impact of economic sanctions.

Those mysterious explosions at Iran's nuclear facilities may wind up being the President's most significant foreign policy achievement when all is said and done.






2011's best local news bloopers...









Via Hot Air...

In 2008, the youth vote helped sweep Barack Obama into office. Americans 18-29 spread the word on social media, energized fundraising and went to the polls.

In 2012, the youth vote is moving on and throwing those omnipresent “Hope” bumper stickers and t-shirts in garbage bins.

Not because of apathy. Not because another candidate generates more enthusiasm. Not because of his character. Not because they think voting is pointless. The 18-29 vote is up for grabs in 2012 because youth can’t afford cars to put bumper stickers on and those t-shirts are worn out from too many days sitting on the couch unemployed.

But for those that still can afford a car, there is hope:









Sir Charles, an apparent Clinton supporter on voter fraud:

Despite my voting history a shocking phone call reaching my mother prior to the 2000 Presidential election. My mother was called to confirm that I had voted for Bill Clinton in November 1996 in the State of Indiana. Initially, we viewed the call as a prank, but now that call has been revealed as no joke.

I am currently investigating the extent by which I have been the victim of voter identification fraud. There is a good chance that my vote has been counted for every Democratic candidate in Indiana from 1996 to present day. My name may have helped put Barack Obama on the primary ballot in Indiana. In the coming weeks, I will get to the bottom of this and my hope is to bring attention to the theft of the American political system.

MSNBC, the Department of Justice and progressives around the country are currently waging a publicity war against Voter Fraud reduction measures. This war is being waged despite repeated examples of voter fraud by ACORN, the Indiana Democratic Party and the Black Panther Party. My hope is to gather proof and present it as widely as possible.

OK, gang. That's it for now. We hope everyone enjoys a safe and happy New Year's Eve. We'll see you all on the flip side.

Quickies

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






Yeah, we suck:

Look at what Obama did to try and get our economy going. He had this big, hundreds of billions of dollars stimulus that was designed by all the great economists who work in his administration — the top minds. It should have worked. The economy should be roaring right now and unemployment a thing of the past. America should be a utopia. So what was missing from the equation? That the people the stimulus was used on are a bunch of lazy dimwits. Obama did everything he possibly could, but apparently Americans just aren’t very good at running businesses and creating jobs. Obama has given us so many advantages that even chimpanzees should have been able to create jobs, but we just sit there like useless blobs while our companies crumble around us. We’re failing the country. We’re failing him.

As Frank J. Fleming suggests, we don't deserve him so in 2012 let's elect someone else so he can go on to bigger and better things.






With respect to the stark incuriosity displayed by Big Media regarding scandals like Fast and Furious and the wacking of U.S. citizens overseas, Glenn Reynolds suggests:

. . .fans of civil liberties should always vote for Republican presidents, since they’re the only ones that get press scrutiny.

HuffPo author shocked... shocked and dismayed to learn that Wal Mart makes big profits.

Commenters less so.

Awww.... Charlotte looking to ban Occupy encampments during the Democratic National Convention.

It's starting to look an awful lot like 1968.

The NY Times suddenly very concerned about the stifling and corrosive effects of cronyism and over-regulation of the private sector... in China.

After more than a decade in which private companies have been the prime engine of China’s economic miracle, the Chinese government is eager to control more of that wealth — even if that means running roughshod over private companies.

Chen Zhiwu, a professor of finance at Yale University and a harsh critic of the state’s dominant role in the economy, says the Chinese government is smothering the private sector. “When the government is involved in business, it’s hard for private companies to compete,” Professor Chen said.

The usurping of private enterprise has become so evident that the Chinese have given it a nickname: guojin mintui. That roughly translates as “while the state advances, the privates retreat.”

Really bad idea of the week...

The unveiling of pictures of planned luxury residential towers scheduled to be built in Seoul, South Korea, has sparked instant controversy. The reason is obvious. The towers, which include a so-called “cloud” feature connecting them around the 27th floors, clearly resemble the World Trade Towers in the process of collapsing following the 9/11 attacks.

What ever happened to the good ol' days of government-sponsored witch hunts to get to the bottom of automobile-related issues?

Apparently, way back in June, General Motors heard about a Volt fire that happened three weeks after said vehicle was crash tested, yet it wasn’t until November that the company, or NHTSA disclosed there was a potential problem, urging both dealers and customers to drain the battery pack immediately following an accident.

As a result the public relations nightmare surrounding Chevy’s halo vehicle appears to be deepening, though a good deal of the blame in this case also rests with NHTSA.

Joan Claybrook, a former adminstrator at NHTSA believes part of the reason for the delay was the “fragility of Volt sales.” Yet she also believes that “NHTSA could have put out a consumer alert, not to tell them [customers] for six months makes no sense to me.”

Oh, it makes perfect sense to us. Despite the furious spinning from the administration, the government's owenership stake in General Motors is an albatross and any bad news, especially approaching the 2012 elections can and will be suppressed.

And speaking of which, last time we checked, GM stock was trading in the low 20s, a drop of around $10/share from the initial public offering. So, here's Team O's dilemma: do they just dump the stock as soon as possible, take the PR hit in front of the elections or hold on to it and risk it being a thumping point for the GOP nominee? The stock needs to get into the low 50s for the government to just break even so they are pretty much screwed either way.





Sir Charles at Doo Doo Economics has a nice write up on the suppression of the Little Ice Age.

Information on the Little Ice Age is not widely known due to academic censorship and climate change propaganda. Using Google's NGRAM technology the above graph shows how "Little Ice Age" has been suppressed by publishers in two key time frames. First, between 1985 and 1987 a sudden dip in books discussing the "Little Ice Age" coincided with the launch of "Global Warming." This suppression of discussion allowed global warming to get off the ground without typical scientific review.

The Little Ice Age contributed to the fact that we are a beer-drinking nation instead of a wine-drinking one. We should be celebrating this fact, not censoring it.





And speaking of celebrating, B-Daddy took the family down to Naval Station, San Diego for the Navy's Holiday Lights festival.

Check out more of the pictures at the link.





Dueling Barstools on the gay marriage pledge signed 3 of the GOP Presidential candidates.

Sigh.... While we believe in the traditional definition of marriage our passion level for it would definetely prevent us from signing any sort of pledge. Where our passion lies, rather, is in the politicization of the debate where judges are fashioning rights out of thin air and where opponents of gay marriage are called hate mongers.



OK. That's it for today. We'll catch up with you all tomorrow.

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Quickies

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





Hack writer at the Associated Press, while breathlessly celebrating a drop in unemployment from 9.0% in November to 8.6% in December, waits 14 paragraphs to acknowledge the drop is due in large part because over 300,000 people simply gave up looking for work and thus were no longer counted among the unemployed.






B-Daddy on Newt Gingrich's immigration reform plan and specifically what is to be done with long-term illegals:

I'm not sure what those who oppose Gingrich's plan would do with the current illegals. They need a legal status and deporting 11 million people is frankly impracticable. Do conservatives really want a government powerful enough to round up 11 million people for deportation? Do we really want the federal government getting practice at interning that many people? If not, then we better deal with the situation at hand. We need these people out of the shadows and paying taxes and drawn into a law abiding culture. Isn't that a worthwhile conservative or libertarian goal?

At same link there is this from Thomas Sowell touching the cultural third rail of, uhhh, culture.

When you import people, you import cultures, including cultures that have been far less successful in providing decent lives and decent livelihoods. The American people have a right to decide for themselves whether they want unlimited imports of cultures from other countries.

Nativist or a simple, real-world acknowedgement that we, as Americans, have a constitutionally-engrained culture of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, free markets, universal suffrage and respect for property rights that is absent or found lacking in commitment in other cultures?

We believe it's the latter.

It's important to remember that being an "American" is not tied to ethnicity as is being a German or Filipino rather a belief in the shared values stated above.






How's that whole "Arab Spring" thing working out?

Judges overseeing the vote count in Egypt's parliamentary elections say Islamist parties have won a majority of the contested seats in the first round. The judges spoke on condition of anonymity because official results are expected to be released later Thursday.

They say the Muslim Brotherhood could take 45 percent of the seats up for grabs. The liberal Egyptian bloc coalition and the ultra-fundamentalist Nour party are competing for second place.

More on this below.







John Nolte on the 6 signs that the establishment liberal-left (but we repeat ourselves) has left #OWS (Obama's White Squatters) out to dry.

Don’t get me wrong; this doesn’t mean I’m going to stop ridiculing them, but as you look over the lay of the land, it’s hard not to feel a little sorry for Occupy Wall Street. They’re really just useful idiots and aggrieved Frankenstein monsters raised on promises their statist creators never intended to keep. And now that they’ve raped, pooped, and vandalized themselves into a political liability for their creators, they might actually have to take a bath and get a job.

It bears repeating that like the #OWS movement, we too are vehemently opposed to the corporate bailouts, subsidies and the crony capitalism that is the hallmark of the current administration but we have seen enough to also know that not far below the surface of OWS rhetoric is not opposition to the bailouts on principle but rather an annoying whine that they did not get a bailout themselves.

On the business end of this whining is a Marxist redistributionism which represents the involuntary confiscation of others' wealth and property which, of course, runs counter to the free market/limited government principles of the tea party.

The scene from San Diego's Balboa Park's Christmas Festival December Nights and the "Santa Lucia Procession", a Swedish Christmas tradition.






Amnesty Interational continues to beclown themselves calling for the arrest of Bush:

Amnesty International is calling for the arrest of former President George W. Bush while he is traveling overseas in Africa.

The human rights group issued a statement Thursday calling for the governments of Ethiopia, Tanzania or Zambia to take the former president into custody. According to Amnesty, the 43rd president is complicit in torture conducted by the United States during his administration and should be held pending an international investigation.

"International law requires that there be no safe haven for those responsible for torture; Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia must seize this opportunity to fulfill their obligations and end the impunity George W. Bush has so far enjoyed," said Amnesty senior legal adviser Matt Pollard in a statement.

Don't hold your breath waiting for any calls for the arrest of the sitting President as AI apparently has no problem with the assassination of U.S. citizens as ordered by said Commander-in-Chief.

Far from being the aloof and disengaged personality he is criticized for, he certainly becomes quite a locked-in and focused individual when it comes to rubbing people out, be it foreign dictators or his fellow countrymen. It's the Chicago way!

And don't be holding your breath waiting for any full-throated outrage from his outrageously hypocritical supporters that certainly would've greeted his predecessor should he have committed the same acts.




The Sunshine State dominates the list of America's saddest cities.





#OWS planning a west coast port shutdown on December 12?

Or just more evidence that #OWS has been high-jacked by labor unions?

Given the similarities of their ideologies, does it really matter?

Because nothing says sticking up for the 99% like shutting down day-to-day commercial activity at our nation's sea ports.

The Occupy San Diego crowd is set to convene in Chicano Park early on the 12th. We work just a few blocks from that locale so we may swing on by to see what's happening.


Sarah B. at Lipstick Underground adds this:

Anyone remember when the Longshoremen went on strike in 2002, shortly after 9/11? Shutting down our ports was a painful kick in the teeth to our already fragile economy. Everything from oil to bananas was stranded off our coast for weeks. Big corporations may have felt the pain a bit, but it was main street and working families that suffered in the wake of supply shortages and price instability.

And it looks like port workers are threatening to strike again...just when we are hurting most.

This must mean Newt is the GOP front-runner...

WaPo writer crowd-sourcing for dirt on Gingrich.

Shame this intellectual curiosity didn't extend to the Democratic front-runner back in 07/08.






Similar to our skepticism of the hacks in the establishment media cheerleading a drop in the unemployment rate from 9.0% to 8.6%, B-Daddy notes the labor participation rate dropped from 64.2% to 64.0%.

He adds this regarding our chronic long-term unemployment numbers:

This is a big problem for the long term, as these folks start to see themselves, and employers see them as unemployable. We have some serious problems with entitlements starting to be a huge drain on the federal budget. One way to alleviate part of the problem is for people to work longer into retirement. But the large number of long term unemployed and the declining labor force participation rate makes that outcome less likely.

KT with more on that Arab Spring, the Egyptian election results and the problem with Marx's Historical Evolution.

It was a fair election and he lost. Maybe next time, we could actually try, you know, like understanding the people we're dealing with rather than fitting them into our own personal fantasies.

And tens upon tens of million dead people and we still don't have that class-less society to show for it?




OK, gang, that's it for today. We'll catch up with you all tomorrow with some Fast and Furious news.

Quickies

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





You think Congress is "gridlocked" and/or "dysfunctional"? Occupy Wall Street (the Zuccotti Park chapter) has 79 different working groups. What could possibly go wrong?






We've seen how the housing bubble set up. How about an impending education bubble...

... which the President, in shameless pandering to the OWS set, is intent on worsening by, uh, exectutive order. Here's how it works under the Obama plan:

If Suzy Creamcheese gets into George Washington University and borrows from the government the requisite $212,000 to obtain an undergraduate degree, her repayment schedule will be based on what she earns. If Suzy opts to heed the president’s call for public service, and takes a job as a city social worker earning $25,000, her payments would be limited to $1,411 a year after the $10,890 of poverty-level income is subtracted from her total exposure.

Twenty years at that rate would have taxpayers recoup only $28,220 of their $212,000 loan to Suzy.

The president will also allow student debtors to refinance and consolidate loans on more favorable terms, further decreasing the payoff for taxpayers.

B-Daddy breaks it all down, here.

As holders of a Bachelor of Science degree (mechanical engineering) and being gainfully employed because of it, we're big believers in the advantages of higher education but we're beginning to think that we, as a nation, are becoming absolutely obsessed with higher education.

Related anecdotal side note: On the occasion we have to call in our plumber, it always seems like he's just getting back from or about to leave to Cancun or Hawai'i... like how is it that we ever get a hold of this guy?

Related anecdotal side note Pt. II: Given that much of the political class of this country of late possesses Ivy League degrees, please give us some good reasons as to why we should give so much deference to that Harvard law or business degree? How has that been working out?






Here's some more of that new civility we've been hearing a lot about...

MSNBC analyst on Herman Cain's appeal with conservatives with the GOP:

"One of the things about Herman Cain is, I think that he makes that white Republican base of the party feel okay, feel like they are not racist because they can like this guy," Finney said. "I think he giving that base a free pass. And I think they like him because they think he's a black man who knows his place. I know that's harsh, but that's how it sure seems to me."

Know his place? As in, the President of the United States of America, the most powerful position on the planet... that place?

It's blatantly obvious that Beltway libs-types are absolutely horrified that a black man, wildly successful in private industry and who is running for President, has strode off the plantation, resoundingly rejecting the paternalism of standard Great Society Democratic party policy.




How do you know that a tax payer-funded government operation is of no longer any benefit to the country? When it will take 6 months to look into the following:

The Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights confirmed that it is investigating allegations that Catholic University violated the human rights of Muslim students by not allowing them to form a Muslim student group and by not providing them rooms without Christian symbols for their daily prayers.

The investigation alleges that Muslim students “must perform their prayers surrounded by symbols of Catholicism – e.g., a wooden crucifix, paintings of Jesus, pictures of priests and theologians which many Muslim students find inappropriate.”

A spokesperson for the Office of Human Rights told Fox News they had received a 60-page complaint against the private university. The investigation, they said, could take as long a six months.

Catholic University is a private... catholic institution. If the Muslims there feel offended by the pervasive and omni-present catholic imagery and iconography, perhaps they should decamp Catholic University and locate a destination more to their liking.

We don't like putting words into anybody's mouth but we feel as we have just done a service to the American public free of charge that will apparently take this Office of Human Rights 6 months to perform.

By the by, the Office of Human Rights falls under the watch of the Justice Department and of course, that miserable hack that runs Justice. Just sayin'.





Here's some more of that tea party civility we've been hearing so much about:

Flyer at Occupy Phoenix rally asks: When Should You Shoot a Cop?

An Olympics without black athletes?

Go here for an excerpt from Olympian John Carlos' book, The John Carlos Story and of a boycott of the '68 Olympics by American black athletes that almost was.

And finally, from the Hygiene Department of BwD: News you can use:

The germiest place in America

Take a guess before going to the link. It may surprise you.

Quickies

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




So, about that jobs bill that we absolutely have to jump on right now... right now!

Well, damn that John Boehner

President Obama is still pressing Congress to pass his jobs-stimulus bill immediately, but Democratic Party leaders in the Senate once again have delayed taking a vote on the legislation and instead will take up a bill to punish China over its currency valuation.

Senators late Monday passed a bill to keep the government open into the next fiscal year and then adjourned for the rest of the week, but Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said when they return they’ll take up the China measure rather than Mr. Obama’s jobs plan.

“I don’t think there’s anything more important for a jobs measure than China trade,” said Mr. Reid, who is the chief Senate sponsor of Mr. Obama’s plan, but who said taking on China is a bigger priority right now.

You know, considering the abject failure of the original $800 billion Porkulus "jobs bill" which is mirrored by half, the son of Porkulus, perhaps the Senate Leader is doing the President a favor.





Here's some more of that post-partisan civility we've been hearing so much about.

“Some of you here may be folks who actually used to be Republicans but are puzzled by what’s happened to that party, are puzzled by what’s happening to that party. I mean, has anybody been watching the debates lately? You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change,”

Wild fires as causal evidence of climate change. Interesting.






If you've been reading this blog for a while, it probably won't come as a surprise that we are not entirely unsympathetic to the Occupy Wall St. crowd given our common gripe of the bailouts and corporatism/crony capitalism that have been the hallmarks of the Bush and Obama administrations. However, at the end of the day, you don't have to scratch too far beneath the surface to find a virulent anti-free market, anti-capitalist Marxism that is driving this movement and it is there where we must part ways.

"Greed", they cry...

.... and speaking of greed, it always reminds us of this guy:

A conversation no one seems willing to have: Executing alleged terrorists who are U.S. citizens.

Let's get this straight: We have a Justice Department and an Administration that still very much appear to desire to close Gitmo and bring suspected terrorists to civilian trials, essentially affording them the same rights as U.S. citizens. Yet, we just whacked Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan, U.S. citizens, in a drone strike in Yemen this past week.

And just so you know our hearts in the right place, we commend the President for his aggressive pursuit of terrorist ring leaders and continuing many of the policies of his predecessor. But killing U.S. citizens without due process? We need to talk about this.




W.C. Varones on corruption, Wall Street and Washington D.C.:

Liberals always paint this as an issue of tax policy and campaign finance reform. But that is a naive view. Where there is money and power, it will find influence. The Wall Street - Washington cabal is far too deep and intertwined to be restrained by campaign finance rules, and they will always find a way to push the burden of higher tax rates onto the middle class while buying loopholes for themselves. The revolving door between Wall Street and Washington is far more pernicious than any campaign contributions. Hank Paulson was a Wall Street multi-multi-millionaire before he came to the Treasury and used his position to bail out his Wall Street buddies. And Timmy the Tax Cheat knows that he'll have a seven-figure Wall Street job waiting for him as long as he does Wall Street's bidding as Treasury Secretary. That kind of giant personal wealth incentive makes any campaign contributions seem quaint by comparison.

Quote(s) of the day:

President Barack Obama on Thursday said the U.S. has lost some of its competitive edge and gotten a “little soft.”

Mr. Obama, in an interview with WESH-TV in Orlando, said his administration has been tough on the country’s trading partners and tried to strengthen U.S. manufacturing.

“This is a great great country that had gotten a little soft and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades,” Mr. Obama said in response to a question about the country’s economic future. “We need to get back on track.”

To which Jonah Goldberg retorts:

Seriously, in 2008 we elected a community organizer, state senator, college instructor first term senator over a guy who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison. And now he’s lecturing us about how America’s gone “soft”? Really?

And whom we might add, his charges believe food stamps and extensions in unemployment benefits are an economic stimulus. Yeah, soft, indeed.




B-Daddy on the GOP field:

I am struck by who is not running in the Republican field, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, and Sarah Palin. It seems that each of these potential candidates has a cache of highly enthusiastic supporters that none of the current crop, Ron Paul excepted seems to bring to the race. The good news is that Republican voters tend to be grown-ups about these choices and are less likely to fall in love with a candidate who is all show and no dough like the incumbent. The bad news is that this will leave the tea party movement split, whose energy will be needed to unseat Obama. Further, since the eventual nominee is unlikely to please the tea party to the extent that Palin might have, the movement may suffer a loss of enthusiasm for participation in the political process. The other bit of bad news is that Republicans have shown a certain trend over the last 20 years. Two Bushes, McCain, and Dole all have that "I'm a conservative, but maybe not one to limit government growth and interference in the markets when it suits my purposes" quality.

Check out here what B-Daddy thinks qualifies the best Republican candidate.




That's it for today, gang. We'll see you all on Monday.

Quickies: the scandals edition

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



Gun Runner/Fast and Furious, Solyndra and now did a four star Air Force General get pressure from the White House to change his testimony regarding the owner of a defense contracting firm and Democratic party donor?


It would appear Team O is having to deal with more than unemployment and the economy in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election.

Oh, and how about that AttackWatch website where you get to turn in people who you think may be spreading false information about Team O? Above and beyond anything else... petty. So, so petty.

Sir Charles of DooDoo Economics thinks he may have uncovered a stunt by Twitter to cover up opposition to Obama in "Trending Reports".

But what is the cause for all this?

Is it sinister, stupid or just naive?


Where B-Daddy sees a darker side to many of the President's actions, KT counters with more of a simpler perspective on the matter:

Here's my take on what happened. The Obama Administration is filled with True Believers in two propositions:

•Government investments can lead to wondrous growth in certain industries.

•Global Warming / Climate Change is an existential threat to our way of life.

Solyndra bundled these two things together in a beautiful way. How could it lose?

So, sinister, stupid or just incredibly naive? Possibly a combination of all the above especially if an amalgam of those causes is in any way synonymous with "power-craving, micro-managing statist who thinks the normal constitutionally-recognized rules of governing a republic just don't apply to him.



Terrific.

The U.S. is coming to Europe's financial rescue.

So far, America's role is fairly limited. But if the crisis continues to grow and the U.S. takes on a wider role, U.S. consumers and taxpayers could feel a bigger impact. The biggest exposure could come from America's status as the single largest source of money for the International Monetary Fund.

The latest round of American financial assistance came Thursday with a promise by the Federal Reserve to swap as many dollars for euros as European bankers need. In the short run, those transactions won't have much impact because the central banks are simply swapping currencies of equal value. If the move helps avert a wider crisis, it could help spare the global economy from another recession.

But over the long term, consumers could feel the impact of central bankers flooding the financial system with cash, according to John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics.

Hey, who's up for some more class warfare?

President Barack Obama, in a populist step designed to appeal to voters, will propose a "Buffett Tax" on people making more than $1 million a year as part of his deficit recommendations to Congress on Monday.

Such a proposal, among suggestions to a congressional supercommittee expected to seek up to $3 trillion in deficit savings over 10 years, would appeal to his Democratic base ahead of the 2012 election but likely not raise much in revenues.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in a tweet on Saturday the tax would act as "a kind of AMT" (Alternative Minimum Tax) aimed at ensuring millionaires pay at least as much tax as middle-class families.

(italics, ours)
Don't we already have an AMT? And what was that about putting country above party... or in this case, re-election?




Did we mention we were big fans of this guy? Here's Mark Steyn on the (P)resident's "jobs" plan:

This $447 billion does not exist, and even foreigners don't want to lend it to us. A majority of it will be "electronically created" by the Federal Reserve buying U.S. Treasury debt. Don't worry, it's not like "printing money": we leave that to primitive basket-cases like Zimbabwe. This is more like one of those Nigerian email schemes, in which a prominent public official promises you a large sum of money in return for your bank account details. In the case of Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, one prominent public official is promising to wire a large sum of money into the account of another prominent public official, which is a wrinkle even the Nigerians might have difficulty selling.

Happy Constitution Day, everyone!

One of the greatest successes of the tea party movement has been to restore a discussion of constitutionality to our national political discourse. The constitution is both a conservative and a libertarian document. It is conservative in that it preserves our political structure through separation of powers and a difficult amendment process. It is libertarian in that it constrains the power and authority of the federal government, guarantees individual rights and in turn constrains the states as well. A political alliance of conservatives and libertarians, fighting socialism and progressives would of course turn to the plain meaning of such a document as the first line of defense against the forced march down the "road to serfdom" that the statists desire for our citizens. (I don't mean to impugn all liberals here; but those that are true believers in leftism have shown their colors over the years.)

That's probably it for today, gang. We'll be back tomorrow.

Quickies

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





Victor Davis Hanson on sitting it out and economic death by a thousand cuts:

Here is the lament I heard: the near $5 trillion in borrowing in just three years, the radical growth in the size of the federal government and its regulatory zeal, ObamaCare, the Boeing plant closure threat, the green jobs sweet-heart deals and Van Jones-like “Millions of Green Jobs” nonsense, the vast expansion in food stamps and unemployment pay-outs, the reversal of the Chrysler creditors, politically driven interference in the car industry, the failed efforts to get card check and cap and trade, the moratoria on new drilling in the Gulf, the general antipathy to new fossil fuel exploitation coupled with new finds of vast new reserves, the new financial regulations, an aggressive EPA oblivious to the effects of its advocacy on jobs, the threatened close-down of energy plants, the support for idling thousands of acres of irrigated farmland due to environmental regulations, the constant talk of higher taxes, the needlessly provocative rhetoric of “fat cat”, “millionaires and billionaires,” “corporate jet owners,” etc. juxtaposed, in hypocritical fashion, to Martha’s Vineyard, Costa del Sol, and Vail First Family getaways — all of these isolated strains finally are becoming a harrowing opera to business people.

This is precisely why businesses are sitting on piles and piles of cash. What incentive is there to invest when you are being harrassed by the feds for opening up a new jet aircraft facility in South Carolina? What incentive is there to invest when you just have no idea what it is that the EPA is going to decide to regulate next? And what incentive do you have as a business to invest or expand when you don't even know the provisions contained in the byzantine new health care law for which you will be charged with covering your employees. Going Galt, indeed.




Awwww... environmental groups totally bummed by Team O's recent actions:

For environmental groups, it was the final hard slap that brought a long-troubled relationship to the brink.

In late August, the State Department gave a crucial go-ahead on a controversial pipeline to bring tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Then on Friday, leading into the holiday weekend, the Obama administration announced without warning that it was walking away from stricter ozone pollution standards that it had been promising for three years and instead sticking with Bush era standards.

(italics, ours)

Except for his enhanced ability to wage war, the last phrase has been a hallmark of his administration.

The man may be an economic illiterate but one thing he does know is political self-preservation and he knows there is no way in hell he is getting re-elected in this current economic climate.

Lose a few votes on his left or rein-in an extra-legal, hyper-active EPA with the hopes of getting the economy rolling and thus secure some independent votes? It's a no brainer even for the most committed redistributionist.





Leslie of Temple of Mut is back from vacation with some thought ranging far and wide including this one on the dismal state of the state:

California is giving me lots of reasons to drink, as usual. It seems some of the Democrats in our Legislature want to “ease regulations”. However, their version is to promote the smaller-scale power grab. This explains why the Golden State has the largest Jobs Gap number compared to the country, which increased rapidly after the passage of one of the most horrendous regulations ever promulgated, AB-32 (Global Warming Solutions Act).

Here's B-Daddy on the (second) Iraq War: nice concept, horrible execution.

I was in the military when Bush was elected and Rumsfeld became Secretary of Defense. At the time, Rummy made it clear that he was out to downsize the military. His vision was for more special forces and aircraft and fewer soldiers, sailors and marines. I remember thinking that this was a risky proposition, because we had learned from Desert Storm that massively numerical superiority along with speed of maneuver could close out a war in weeks, rather than the years we had been bogged down in other ventures. Interestingly, Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense during that first Gulf War and I would have thought he would have drawn the correct lessons from the "Powell Doctrine," as well as the use of overwhelming force.

Looking back, shouldn't we have seen the hand-writing on the wall with the execution of the war in Afghanistan?





Awwww (Pt. II)... Religious groups totally bummed that ObamaCare may force them to violate their own practices.

The Obama administration is taking heat from religious groups, particularly Catholic leaders, upset that new federal health regulations may force them to pay for employees' birth control, a violation of church tenets.

Proposed religious exemptions to the new regulations, unveiled Aug. 1 by the Department of Health and Human Services, are considered so narrow that even Catholic officials considered friendly to President Barack Obama argue that they should be changed.

“I call this the parish housekeeper exemption — that's about all it covers,” Sister Carol Keehan (pictured), president of the Catholic Health Association, a 600-member umbrella group for Catholic hospitals, told The Associated Press.

Ol' Sister Carol helped provide the push to finally get ObamaCare across the goal line with her endorsement of the bill. Perhaps next time, she won't be so enthusiastic about a piece of legislation, the details of which she has no clue or the execution of which are at the complete whim of the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

And as Protestants, we don't want to get too far out of our swim lane but just how Catholic can you be if you are cozying-up to a AAA+ NARAL-rated politician? Just askin'.




Your unauthorized Libyan post-military kinesiology update: What could possibly go wrong?

Rebel forces and armed civilians are rounding up thousands of black Libyans and migrants from sub-Sahara Africa, accusing them of fighting for ousted strongman Moammar Gadhafi and holding them in makeshift jails across the capital.

Virtually all of the detainees say they are innocent migrant workers, and in most cases there is no evidence that they are lying. But that is not stopping the rebels from placing the men in facilities like the Gate of the Sea sports club, where about 200 detainees — all black — clustered on a soccer field this week, bunching against a high wall to avoid the scorching sun.

/sound of media furiously sweeping this bit of unseemliness under the carpet.



Alright, gang, that will probably be it for today. We hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable Labor Day.

Quickies

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





So, unemployment here in San Diego county is at 10.5%. Sounds like a terrific time to go on strike, right? Well, that's precisely what the grocery workers here are considering just as they did 8 years ago.

Here's B-Daddy with his thoughts on the matter:

I personally crossed the picket line and was interviewed on local TV about why I did so. The answer was simple, we needed groceries for a party and didn't feel excessive sympathy for the worker's position. At the time, Walmart was starting to move into the grocery business and the big grocery chains needed to contain costs in order to compete. I think the problem for the grocery store workers is that it doesn't appear that high levels of education or training are necessary to perform their work. As a result, they will constantly be under competitive pressure. This is not meant as disparagement, I am on friendly terms with many unionized grocery workers and they treat me very well. They work in a field where economists would say there are low barriers to entry into that workforce, unlike health care, for instance. Ultimately, the price I pay for my groceries is a good part of the consideration of where I decide to shop. Regardless of their helpfulness, prices that are too high will send me elsewhere.

I sincerely hope the strike ends soon, but I don't see how the workers are in any better position to win concessions than they were eight years ago. Further, I wonder how they will explain to their unemployed neighbors that they went on strike because their health care costs went up. Isn't that true for almost everyone?

Shane Atwell's totally excellent Regulation Watch round-up, here.





Here's some more of that "new civility" we keep hearing about:

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) came out swinging against Republicans in Congress on Saturday as she addressed the unemployed during a forum in Inglewood.

The event occurred a day after new statistics were released showing that California's jobless rate last month went up to 12%, from 11.8%. California now has the second-highest rate of unemployment in the nation, trailing only Nevada at 12.9%, and its jobless rate is well above the U.S. average of 9.1%.

Waters vowed to push Congress to focus on creating more jobs. "I'm not afraid of anybody," said Waters. "This is a tough game. You can't be intimidated. You can't be frightened. And as far as I'm concerned, the 'tea party' can go straight to hell."

More than 1,000 people attended "Kitchen Table Summit," which was designed to give the jobless an opportunity to vent to elected officials and share their struggles about finding a job.

KABC-TV quoted speakers talking about living without medical insurance and surviving paycheck to paycheck.

"Thank God I am healthy because a medical illness would bankrupt me," said Regina Davis of Inglewood.

Congresswomen Laura Richardson and Karen Bass also attended. Several people urged the representatives to push for a national jobs program.

(italics, ours)

There you have it: the template has been set. The Democrats are going to demand of the President yet another worthless "stimulus" plan, one that this President of such shallow economic intellect will reflexively grant.

And wasn't ObamaCare supposed to ease the medical cost burden? That doesn't seem to be the case now, does it?





Here's Eric Cantor (R-MD) in today's Washington Post:

In fact, the Obama administration’s anti-business, hyper-regulatory, pro-tax agenda has fueled economic uncertainty and sent the message from the administration that “we want to make it harder to create jobs.” There is no other conclusion for policies such as the new Environmental Protection Agency regulations, including the “Transport Rule,” which could eliminate thousands of jobs, or the ozone regulation that would cost upward of $1 trillion and millions of jobs in the construction industry over the next decade. The administration’s new maximum achievable control technology standards for cement are expected to affect nearly 100 cement plants, setting over-the-top requirements resulting in increased costs and possibly thousands of jobs being offshored. There is the president’s silence as the National Labor Relations Board seeks to prevent Boeing from opening a plant in South Carolina that would create thousands of jobs. Such behavior, coupled with the president’s insistence on raising the top tax rate paid by individuals and small businesses, has resulted in a lag in growth that has added to the debt crisis, contributing to our nation’s credit downgrade.

It should be noted that so thorough and comprehensive is Obama's war on jobs, Boeing wasn't relocating a plant from heavily-unionized Washington state, they were merely opening a completely new one in right-to-work South Carolina.




A pretty rough week, last week, for the President optics-wise. You had the two, million dollar-a-piece Canadian-built buses for the Midwest jobs tour that didn't include any jobs plan before zooming off to the toney confines of Martha's Vineyard for vacation. Here is another optic, though, we felt completely lacking.

Because nothing says economic prosperity and dynanism like speaking in front of stacks upon stacks of empty pallets. Barren, idle, empty pallets.





Oh, dear lord, say it ain't so...

Favre to the Colts?

Steyn smack:

Rick Perry, governor of Texas, has only been in the presidential race for 20 minutes, but he’s already delivered one of the best lines in the campaign:

“I’ll work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can.”

This will be grand news to Schylar Capo, eleven years old, of Virginia, who made the mistake of rescuing a woodpecker from the jaws of a cat and nursing him back to health for a couple of days, and for her pains, was visited by a federal Fish & Wildlife gauleiter (with accompanying state troopers) who charged her with illegal transportation of a protected species and issued her a $535 fine. If the federal child-abuser has that much time on his hands, he should have charged the cat, who was illegally transporting the protected species from his gullet to his intestine.

So eleven-year-old Schylar and other middle-schoolers targeted by the micro-regulatory superstate might well appreciate Governor Perry’s pledge. But you never know, it might just catch on with the broader population, too.

Oh, and here's even more of that "new civility" we've been hearing so much of lately:

The Monroe County Sheriff's Department is working to solve a case of vandalism that turned life-threatening.

John King was shot in the arm last week when he surprised a man trying to slash the tires on the truck at his Lambertville home.The word "scab" was also scrawled on the side.

King says he became suspicious when he saw an outside security light outside go on.

When he stepped out of his front door, the man fired one shot and ran off.

King is the owner of the largest non-union electrical contracting company in the area.

Is 'The Help' Hollywood's latest liberal civil rights fantasy?

I can only imagine the emotional roller coaster Viola Davis must have experienced when her agent called to say she'd been offered a juicy part in “The Help,” DreamWorks' adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's bestselling novel. Even though parts for African American women are extremely few and far between, she would be costarring in the movie, enjoying more time on screen than she'd ever had in a major studio film.

Of course, there was an uncomfortable reality: She would be playing a part that many African Americans see as a cobwebby stereotype — Aibileen, a maid in 1960s Mississippi who cleans house for and raises the children of white segregationists, tots who beam at her and exclaim, “You're my real mama, Aibi!”

If civil rights activists want a big, fat target, perhaps they should set their sights on the ranks of Hollywood execs.





OK, that's it for now. May possibly be back later this evening but definiteley tomorrow.