Radio KBwD is on the air: the covers edition

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Yeah, yeah... we know. It's the last Friday of the month rather than the first but we're calling the shots around here so just relax.


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First out of the box, from Kingsland, Arkansas, it's Johnny Cash performing "Big River":

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And now for the cover, from deep in intergalactic space, it's the Grateful Dead doing it live in 1991:




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Yes, that is Bruce Hornsby on the piano.


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A few words regarding this "War on Women"...

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...Including this tweet from @Iowahawkblog:

Remember gals, the GOP hates women. That's why President Obama treats you as hysterical, hormone-addled walking uteri.

And it's not just the President that views them in this light, also his staunchest defenders.

Behold the flappy folds of Code Pink going all Spirit Week at the Republican National Convention:

Ed Morrissey, writing for the Fiscal Times, notes the potential folly of the Democrats playing the "WoW" card thusly:

But it’s even worse than that. The strategy segregates women from other issues as if they only have deep concern in this election over the status of their genitalia. This theme came to ludicrous fruition in demonstrations by Code Pink at the Republican convention in Tampa, when activists showed up dressed as gigantic labia. The scene provided an unintentionally revealing portrait of just how progressives see women in modern American society.

That is the true risk for Democrats who pursue this strategy. After three nights of watching successful and accomplished women in the Republican Party discuss economic policy, job creation, and reform of the federal government for deficit and debt reduction, viewers will tune in the following week to see women considered as interested in little more than sexual reproduction. Voters might well conclude that there is a “war on women,” but that it’s not the Republicans who are waging it.

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Seriously. We don't get it. All that "You've come along way, baby" and "Keep your laws off my body" defiant, feminist sloganeering from decades past has been reduced to simpering pleas to a domineering, paternalistic super-state to provide free birth control. Correction: simpering demands to a domineering, paternalistic super-state which will pass that cost on to U.S. citizens whether they like it or not. Nice work, ladies.


And don't allow yourself to be deluded: this isn't about "access" - this is about "muscle". This is a power play, pure and simple. What better way to prove your bona fides as a true believer in soft-authoritarianism than to force institutions to violate their conscience by forcing them to provide contraception, gratis? And you don't even have to be a person of faith to realize the absurdity of all this and wonder why it is you are footing the bill for someone else's sexual habits.

So, color us confused. All this time we were told that what happens in the bedroom was strictly the business of the consenting parties. No longer. Now that we're all vested interests, what happens in the bedroom is not anymore a private matter but that of public policy and that does not sound like a feature of a constitutional republic devoted to the ideals of personal privacy and civil liberties.

heh. Paying for your own Pill: It's the civil rights issue of our time.


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Cartoon image of the day

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They were going to raise $1 billion dollars. Not going to happen. They were going to walk away with this race. Polling indicates it's within the margin of error. They were going to demonize the top of the ticket and whoever it was that Romney selected as his running mate. He picked their worst nightmare. They were going to exploit the GOP's alleged "War on Women". The Republic National Convention unleashes their "War of Women".


It's panic time, gang, and if the media's behavior over the past few days is any indication, they leave no doubt as to where their sentiments lie. Not like there was any doubt but the naked shamelessness of it all almost makes us feel sorry for America's main stream media.



Michael Ramirez summing up the current state of affairs:

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Once again, lowering the bar

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Every time we take a heart-hearted vow to stop reporting out on media bias, they do something so astounding and so unhinged from any sense of decency, we feel compelled to wade back into the cesspool.




Forget Chris Christie, Ann Romney, Mia Love or Artur Davis. The story of the Republican National Convention is becoming not the folks on stage but the people reporting on them.


Yahoo News Chief David Chalian got hot mic'ed and wound up disgracing himself during an ABC News livecast:

(Via Breitbart.com):

"They are happy to have a party while black people (in New Orleans) are drowning"

The laughing afterwards is a very nice touch, dontcha think?



In what sort of sick, twisted and demented reality does this guy exist that he would utter something so spiteful and clueless? Oh, yeah. That's right. This horse's ass is a member of the bubble-wrapped, insular, group-think collective known as the American mainstream media, aka the hallelujah chorus for the statist ruling class of this country. What a sicko. And what an absolute indictment of that aforementioned pack of soulless jackals.

He has since been let go by ABC/Yahoo. Good riddance.

Before he gets picked up by MSNBC, however, to cover the Democratic National Convention, we're curious if he will offer up similar trenchant observations should any other Act of God befall the Gulf Coast next week. Short of that, I'm sure he has a rational explanation for why the President is campaigning in Virginia today while New Orleans is getting hammered.



And speaking of MSNBC:

MSNBC wants you to think the Republican Party hates minorities. So much so that the liberal news network cut minority speeches from it’s convention coverage.

When popular Tea Party candidate Ted Cruz, the GOP nominee for Senate, took the stage, MSNBC cut away from the Republican National Convention and the Hispanic Republican from Texas’ speech.

MSNBC stayed on commercial through former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis’ speech, as well. Davis, who recently became a Republican, is black.

Then, when Puerto Rican Governor Luis Fortuno’s wife Luce’ Vela Fortuño took the stage minutes later, MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews opted to talk over the First Lady’s speech.

And Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval? Noticeably missing from MSNBC, too.

Mia Love, a black candidate for Congress in Utah, was also ignored by MSNBC.

Will MSNBC conveniently manage not to show Governor Luis Fortuno’s speech tomorrow (Wednesday night) as well?

Obviously, MSNBC will go to any and all lengths to make you think that the Republican Party is as lily-white as, well, as lily-white as MSNBC's line-up of talking heads.


While playing "spot-the-Negro" amongst the delegates on the floor of the RNC may be a fun way to pass the time for the liberal-Left, they may have a point.

Below is a shot of the convention floor just yesterday:

Oops. Our bad. Rather a picture of the Obama re-election headquarters in Chicago just a few months ago.


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More great moments in the history of crony capitalism

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The gift that keeps on giving...


Not everyone lost out in that train-wreck that was Solyndra; the now-bankrupt solar panel firm that received a $537 million loan guarantee from the highly suspect Department of Energy green loan program back in 2009.

Via the Free Beacon the Wall St. Journal reports:

Argonaut Ventures I LLC—a private-equity fund linked to George Kaiser, a fundraiser for President Barack Obama—and Madrone Partners LP are set to pilot a reorganized shell company out of the wreckage of Solyndra, part of a Chapter 11 plan that promises scant repayment of a $528 million federal loan.

The reorganized shell company could be a vehicle to transform the money Solyndra lost in the solar-panel-manufacturing business, losses that total “significantly more than one-half billion dollars,” into future tax breaks for the private-equity firms, according to the DOE and IRS.

Bankruptcy filings reveal that Argonaut and Madrone could potentially write-down the Solyndra losses saving themselves hundreds of millions of dollars of future income taxes.

And similar to the GM and Chrysler bankruptcy cramdown, private investors, like Argonaut, will be given priority status over the tax-payers in a loan restructuring deal worked out between Solyndra and the DOE back in 2011.

Please remember this sort of shenanigans that have been rampant with this administration when you hear about the success of their green energy program next week.

What we've been Facebooking

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One of our many, many liberal friends who is very active on Facebook posted on his wall a link to a piece from liberal-Left sweetheart and MSNBC host, Rachel Maddow with a lede that went as follows:

Where has the real GOP gone? You know...the GOP that independent, progressive, rational thinking people could vote for? Should we now call it the GOTP? The Grand Old Tea Party?

To which we responded:

I'm old enough to remember reading very similar articles back in 1980 when Reagan rose to prominence as the GOP candidate for President. "The once sensible and pragmatic GOP has been taken over by that right-wing wack-job, Ronald Reagan" or so we were told. People of Maddow's ilk absolutely reviled Reagan and for people like her to hold him up as some sort of admired figure is laughable on its face.

Remember, it was Reagan who was the original "tax cuts for the rich" guy when he slashed the top rate from around 70 down to 30-35 percent. And it was Reagan, according to people like Maddow, who was going to get us into a nuclear war with Russia. I remember all this stuff.

With respect to the alleged tea party takeover of the GOP: if that means the GOP is going to initiate some adult conversations with respect to our unsustainable entitlement programs (a' la Paul Ryan) and address the amassing of power at the executive level that started in earnest with Bush and was put into hyper-drive under Obama via executive orders and signing statements, then so much the better.

And with respect to social issues, the tea party-as-social-cons is a largely misleading narrative. Yes, many tea partiers happen to be social-cons but we had this internecine battle after the 2010 midterms and the fiscal hawk/limited government wing of the "party" won out. There is no contradiction in personally believing in socially-conservative values while at the same time believing your government ought not to dictate them. I happen to be one of those types.

As for the notion that Reagan would be considered an apostate by today's tea party, I don't believe that as priorities change: Reagan was charged with getting the economy back on its feet after the malaise of the seventies and with defeating Communism which was the existential threat to freedom and liberty around the world at that time. He succeeded on both counts.

As dead-set against entitlement reform as the vast majority of elected Democrats are (and many Republicans, also) when we really are staring at a fiscal cliff, currently, just think of the non-starter of a discussion of the same would be some 30 years ago when the Democrats controlled both the House and Senate. You can only pick fights you believe you have a chance at winning.

Again, times and priorities change.

Federal government: not down with this whole "self-reliance" schtick

Dear Rubes, why are you depleting your savings and leaning on family members when your Big Daddy Warbucks in D.C. is waiting with open arms? Seriously. The welfare state: you didn't build that - we did and we demand kindly request you use it.

More Americans rely on their families for assistance than the government, so federal officials have undertaken an effort to help people to apply for federal assistance.

“Given that only 15 percent of you turn to government assistance in tough times, we want to make sure you know about benefits that could help you,” USA.gov announced today. The ”government made easy’ website has created a “help for difficult financial times” page for people to learn more about the programs.

The government got that statistic from a poll asking Americans what helps them the most during tough times. Here are the results:

Savings 44%
Family 21%
Credit cards/loans 20%
Government assistance 15%
“Government assistance comes in different forms—from unemployment checks and food assistance to credit counseling and medical treatment,” USA.gov reminded readers.

This leg of the financial assistance push has ended. “Although our campaign to highlight Help for Difficult Financial Times has ended, we know that your struggles may continue,” said USA.gov today. “We will keep updating the tools and information we provide to help you get back on your feet.”

This represents precisely why it is you don't want the government operating like a business. You see, relying on stuff you built, like your savings, or loved ones in your family is competition for the government and as the federal government has just freely admitted, that sort of competition is unacceptable and must be eschewed.

We assume the federal government is astounded that nearly two-thirds of the assistance Americans receive during tough times comes from vested parties in your life given the clear competitive advantage enjoyed by the government over these forms of assistance. You see, it's because that assistance is free to you, hell, it's free as far as the government is concerned, as well, as long as they have access to the printing presses which they always will.

From a set of people that believes food stamps are an economic stimulus, should we expect anything else?

Quote(s) of the day

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Given the state of the economy and persistent unemployment, we'd certainly want to talk about something else... anything else... so we can't really blame the Democrats for wanting to turn their convention into a rally for providing free birth control to 30 year-old Georgetown law students.

Here's Mark Steyn on the contraceptive mandate, Obamacare and who it is upon which war has really been declared:

So we can’t fight a war in Afghanistan, but we can fight a “war on women” that only exists in upscale liberal feminists’ heads. We can’t do anything about exploding rates of childhood obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, but, if you define “health care” as forcing a Catholic institution to buy $8 contraception for the scions of wealth and privilege, we’re right on top of it. And above all, we’re doing it for the children, if by “doing it” you mean leaving them with a transgenerational bill unknown to human history — or engaging in what Boston University’s Larry Kotlikoff, speaking at the International Institute of Public Finance in Dresden last week, called “child fiscal abuse.”

If that sounds a trifle overheated, how about . . . hmm, “legitimate fiscal rape”? No? Then let’s call it a “war on children.” Unlike the “war on women,” it’s real.

And here is what we wrote regarding L'Affaire Fluke back in February when this whole thing first blew up (linked above):

There you have it, folks... the logical conclusion to radical secular redistributive statism: taking the position that free contraception is somehow a right, or liberty interest, that others must pay for.

This is a perfect example of how making a good or service a "right" will necessarily entail the involuntary confiscation of property or wealth of others who will not enjoy the benefit of that "right", unless, of course, they are Biblically aquainted with, say, Ms. Fluke.

So gone is Ms. Fluke down the statist black hole that she seems unwilling to even hit up her partner for some help. Would it be too much to ask that if they go "dutch" for dinner that they do the same later on in the sack?

And what of this young lady's heartless and cruel parents that they would force their child to possibly cut out a pizza a week in order to properly finance her dalliances?

We appreciate, however, Ms. Fluke and her plight as no theoretical argument we could ever devise would illustrate perfectly the absurdity contained within ObamaCare. We thank you, Ms. Fluke for providing this invaluable service.

We're pretty confident millions upon millions of out-of-work Americans are thinking the same thing.

Quickies

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





Don Draper, where have you gone?

A glass of something fizzy over lunch with an American executive now means sparkling water. The three-Martini lunch fell into decline in the 1970s, the victim of sober economic times that demanded clear-headed executives, and also of political pressure: Jimmy Carter made it an issue in the 1976 presidential campaign. Morgan Stanley’s New York bankers, for example, were instructed to avoid the drinks cabinet except when entertaining European clients (who could hardly be expected to make it through the day without a snifter). Many modern contracts expressly forbid the consumption of alcohol.

After years of having an occasional beer with lunch on a Friday, say, our organization instituted a zero-tolerance policy on booze. It certainly would appear that the kill-joys have beaten booze entirely out of the American work place.

Was it Oscar Wilde who said: work is the curse of the drinking class?






You may not have heard of George Lakoff but he is an academic and the architect of the President's "You Didn't Build That" campaign battle cry.

Sir Charles of DooDoo Economics has an excellent take-down, here, of a piece he wrote for The Huffington Post.

As you will see, Lakoff is firmly in the camp that our individualism springs forth as a result of the efforts of the collective. There is no starker contrast to the ideals of freedom and individual liberty and initiative than what is represented by this guy. We commented to Charles as such:

The contention that we don't become "individuals" until we build enough roads and bridges or something would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerous.

It confounds me that the ideas of someone who is so ignorant of our founding documents can inform the philosophy of this country's president.

Be sure to check out Sir Charles' site and pick up some cotton while your there.






We know it's the dog days of August but... dude.

The shocker among all the films was Rocky Mountain Pictures’ political documentary 2016 Obama’s America which opened July 13th in very limited release and expanded into theaters across America this weekend. It wound up in 4th place Friday and 8th place for the weekend. That’s stunning because it was playing in 2/3 fewer theaters across North American than the other wider release films. (See below for more details). Due to its hot pre-sales, the pic proved frontloaded which explains why its ranking started out #1 and then fell steeply by end of Sunday. But the doc’s new cume of $9.2M makes it the #1 all-time biggest-grossing conservative political documentary, besting Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed’s $7.7M. And the 6th all-time biggest political documentary behind liberal docs by Michael Moore and Al Gore.

It's coming after you, fat boys!




And speaking of cotton:

Also related: from Iowahawk: "Paul Ryan represents Obama's most horrifying nightmare: math."


Math wins. Math always wins.






W.C. Varones has some thoughts on a readers' poll from the San Diego Union-Tribune asking them to pick the five greatest Americian Presidents.

We won't give it away but the readers also picked the worst Presidents: Obama, GW Bush, Nixon, Carter and LBJ.






How about a visual?

Yep.



Totally related:

Seagate Technology Plc (STX.O), maker of hard drives and storage devices, has agreed to pay $90.3 million for the former manufacturing plant and headquarters building of bankrupt Solyndra LLC, which was financed by a controversial government loan, according to bankruptcy court documents.

Seagate's offer will be considered an initial bid, or "stalking horse," which could be topped by a competing offer of at least $1 million more when an auction is held, according to court documents filed late Wednesday. A hearing to set the terms and date for the auction and declare Seagate's offer the stalking horse has been set for September 24.

Solyndra's Fremont, California, building cost more than $300 million and was completed in 2010, according to prior court documents.

How can we be blamed for piling-on Solyndra when they keeping giving us this 30 cents on the dollar awesomeness?



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


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Stat graph of the day

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Tax the rich!

... uhh, sure.

(click to enlarge)

image courtesy: TaxProf Blog

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Radio KBwD is on the air

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As much as this song was part of our growing up, we can't believe we've never featured it before.



Without further ado, from Glendale, Arizona, it's Marty Robbins performing "El Paso".


(from the wardrobes and that of the fans in the audience, we're guessing that this performance took place not too much before his passing in 1982)


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What we've been tweeting

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After thinking that the Democratic Party ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden had no campaign strategy as there is no way in hell they were going to run on their record, it appears things have changed

The Democrats have seized upon Republican candidate for Senate for Missouri, Todd Akin and his insipid remarks on rape and will turn their national convention into an Abortion-fest.


From the Washington Examiner:

With an eye on Rep. Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" comments and the GOP's mad dash away from the sinking Missouri Senate candidate, the Democrats are turning their upcoming presidential convention into a pro-choice assault on the Republicans with the help of major abortion supporters.

Just as the Akin crisis was reaching a crescendo, the Democrats on Wednesday announced that three starlets of the pro-choice movement will be featured at the convention, an event that will now drive the liberal charge that the Republicans are anti-women.

Democrats said that they will feature Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parent Action Fund, Nancy Keenan, president of the NARAL Pro-Choice America and Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University student whose plea for federal birth control funding drew the ire--and a subsequent apology--from Rush Limbaugh.

What's more, the Democrats are expanding their list of women ready to assail the GOP on women's issue, adding Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski and actress Eva Longoria to the list that already includes Sen. John Kerry and Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren.

Democrats led by party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz believe that the Akin controversy--and his refusal to leave the Missouri Senate race--has revived their chances of winning a majority of women in the presidential race, key to re-electing President Obama. On Wednesday, for example, the party turned their homepage over to the affair with the headline: "The GOP is dangerously wrong for women." And with a devilish move, they included pictures of Mitt Romney, running mate Paul Ryan and Akin.

We'd like to add that NARAL is dangerously deadly for the unborn.

To the Democrats, though: good luck with that strategy.

Abortion never polls very high on the list of priorities when it comes to Presidential elections and it may not even be a blip on the radar considering the rampant unemployment, exploding deficits and the anemic GDP growth of this election cycle

But forget the general populace for a moment: is this strategy even going to work with women? We know an awful lot of women out there that are in charge of their family's finances and an awful lot of single women that collectively just might be a tad more concerned with their own job prospects and that of their husbands' and the fate of the economy than any fear-mongering as practiced by the Democrats with respect to their reproductive rights.

Its a good bet that many of these women remember the two-term Presidency of a social conservative, George Bush, who had Republican majorities for 6 years in those two terms and they might also remember that there was no real weakening of abortion "rights".

Along with that is the pander factor. Here's Barka Herman explaining (h/t: KT:

I own my own business, travel and entertain a lot, have many hobbies that I don't always get enough time for, and am considering writing a memoir. I donate money and time to causes I believe in. Birth control has never occupied more than one percent of my time ever in my life. I suspect the actual lifetime number is much lower than that.

So what is up with the entire birth control debate? Am I just a walking vagina? Is this insulting just to me or others?

We can totally see how many woman would feel demeaned by the politicization of one of their body parts. Excuse us: the cheap, crass politicization of one of their body parts.



Oh, almost forgot...

Our Tweet:

In order to drive the point home, the #Dems should prematurely terminate their convention on the 3rd and final day. #trimesters

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Link of the day

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B-Daddy had a great post, here, on why it is that libertarians need conservatives and visa-versa. Here's the money paragraph on why it is that conservatives need libertarians:

It is less obvious that conservatives need libertarians, but they do. First, their votes and energy are necessary to do battle with the forces of statism. On any individual issue, the pressure for government to "do something" often seems compelling. Only a firm adherence to principles, which libertarians seem better equipped to do, can beat back these impulses. Second, conservatives forget at their peril that the use of government to achieve their desired social ends usually ends badly for them. From the death of the church because it was identified with the monarchy in old Europe to Republicans becoming identified as the party of big government before the 2006 elections, marrying conservative social ends to the coercion of big government has been a loser. Further, funding big government conservative programs undermines the principled arguments for limited government.

What B-Daddy speaks of is the "compassionate conservatism" that was peddled by the Bush administration for the entirety of its two terms and which led to the Democratic take-over of both houses of Congress in '06 as the Democrats were successful in both their "culture of corruption" and "corporatism" lines of attack.

We hated the term "compassionate conservatism" and its practical application being completely oxymoronic as there is nothing "conservative", i.e., "limited government" about a hyper-active government attempting to achieve limited government.

If you believe the narrative that the tea party came into existence solely because of the policies of President Obama, you have been mislead as the seeds of the groundswell of frustration were planted during the Bush administration and what was viewed as a pissing away of a golden opportunity from 2001-2008. Remember, it wasn't Obama that signed the $700 billion TARP (Wall Street bailout) into law but it was Obama who used that same money for programs of his own like the Chrysler and GM bailouts.

It was as if Bush was playing the role of John the Baptist hailing the arrival of the statist deity in Obama to complete what had been started, otherwise known as in '08 campaign-speak, the "transformation of America as we know it".

And, boy, don't we know it.


Go ahead and link to the article - we think you will enjoy it.

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Video clip of the day

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For all the unseriousness displayed in Washington D.C. with respect to reigning-in spending and, more impoortantly, having a plan for dealing with the current unsustainable state of our entitlement programs, there is one person who stands apart.

Bill Whittle on Afterburner discusses Paul Ryan and why it is the Democrats are completely freaked-out by him.


(Video approx. 5-1/2 minutes long. You can skip, thank god, the expletive-laden commercial after just a few seconds. Why is Youtube sponsoring this garbage?)





Ryan: Not old, stupid or dumb, the 3 characterizations with which statists have pegged Republicans/conservatives over the past 30-40 years.

Whittle explains how this is a barometer election for America and that if Romney/Ryan loses, America, like say, much of southern Europe, has not yet faced up to the waste, greed and corruption of our government at the state and local levels.

Adults, not rock-stars nor addled, blithering idiots.




Addendum #1: Hey, did you know Paul Ryan once had a black girlfriend?

Yep, that's the sort of vetting we can expect from today's media.

How do we know they have nothing to run on?

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They've more or less said so.

Here's former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright speaking at a campaign rally in Colorado and really making the case for Team O's track record:





Now, she may have been speaking tongue-and-cheek but the enthusiasm exhibited by the crowd certainly suggests, "Hell yeah, we've got nothing to run on. Let's keep blaming Bush."

Bush Derangement Syndrome: more and more evidence like witnessed above surfaces that shows the possibility that BDS may simply be incurable.



How do we know they have nothing to run on (Pt. II)?


Because Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said so:

Back in February, Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner was responding to questions raised by House Budget Committee Chairman, Paul Ryan, and specifically what the broadly outlined Obama budget made public via an Obama speech was going to do with respect to our long-term debt problem. Geithner's response:

“We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours (Ryan's budget proposal.)”

Everything you need to know about the shameless cynicism, small-mindedness and lack of seriousness possessed by this administration is summed up in that quote. But you better get used to it because that quote will represent the emotional and intellectual rigor behind everything else you will hear from now until November.

The depth and extent of the aforementioned unseriousness we wrote about above earlier this spring is frightening if not totally beyond description.

They have nothing to run on so they continue to blame Bush. They have no plan other than savaging yours.



A supposed strength of Team O back at the beginning of the administration was it's "competence". Seriously? Is the campaign they have been running suggest they collectively have anything resembling competence?

They had trouble finding anybody for their top Cabinet positions that didn't have tax problems. And before that, the President, the smartest man in the room in his first big decision as a would-be President chose as his running mate, the person "one heart-beat away", not just a loose-cannon but as he has proven over and over again during the course of his political career, a certifiable wack job. That's the guy whom Obama thought would be a prudent and wise choice for a running mate. He built that.

And when the economic fortunes of this country did not turn around despite promises to the contrary with the continuation of the Bush-era TARP bailout, the Chrysler and General Motors bailouts and the $800 billion American Recovery Act (Porkulus), we were told that the underlying problems were "worse than assumed". Got it. We have the smartest kids in the room from Christine Romer and Timothy Geithner to Peter Orszag and Larry Summers, Ivy Leaguers all, and all they can summon is a feeble "shit's worse than we thought, man" before beating it back to academia and Wall Street.

That's competence?

A cabinet that can't keep its yapper shut with respect to the details of the killing of bin Laden.

A president that gives cover to his BFF, Eric Holder, by on one hand extending executive privilege to details surrounding the highly successful federal gun-running scheme, Fast and Furious, but on the other hand, claiming he knew nothing about it.

And let's not forget that both the President and Holder in pushing for a civilian trial for terrorist master-mind KSM, reassured the country that even if KSM were acquitted, he would never see the light of day. Huh?

An administration whose Department of Energy green loan program that is more kiss-of-death than the job-creator and green energy innovator they promised it would be such is the number of companies that have gone bankrupt resulting in the laying off of thousands of workers and the loss of billions of tax-payer dollars. And we're supposed to be horrified of Romney's record while at Bain Capital.

Please stop us at any time, if anything you are reading here resembles "competence".

If the media were playing this straight-up Romney/Ryan would be up 10 right now and cruising. But they aren't which is the only, the only reason this thing is as close as it is.

No time for weak knees, now. Let's keep driving. November's right around the corner.

Photo images of the day

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The monsoon-driven heat and humidity wave that has gripped much of Southern California for about two weeks appears to have broken but that doesn't mean we still don't have massive cloud formations out over east county.

Four different photos of the same thunderhead towering over the mountains and desert of San Diego's great big ol' backyard.

Photos were taken with our Samsung Galaxy SII.


(click to enlarge)

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Crime, smog, traffic and graffiti and all they have to show for it is this crappy newspaper

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One in a series where we take a look at what's going on with the L.A. Times.


We stopped picking up the Times down here in San Diego about this time of year 8 years ago. We understand every paper has a right to an editorial slant but we expect that slant to be confined to the Op-ed section of the paper. The Times, however, felt compelled to promote their Op-ed section to the front page of their rag during that election cycle and we decided to vote with our wallet.

You could pretty much set your clock on Sunday to the Times having at least two anti-Bush and/or anti-Iraq war feature on the front page of that day's edition. Pops would tell us that sometimes a paper will editorialize by what it chooses to omit as a straight new story. While this is certainly true, the Times had chosen to drop any pretext of subtlety and went in head-long for the hit pieces.


There at it again this election cycle with no fewer than 3 anti-Romney/Ryan pieces on the front page of today's electronic edition.


The article that stuck out for us, though, was the one on Republican candidate for Senate from Missouri, Todd Akin, who claimed the "legitimate rape" seldom makes woman pregnant. He has refused to step out of the race for his reckless and uninformed comments and here is the title of the Times' article documenting this dust-up:


Tea party rogue: Todd Akin defies GOP bosses by staying in race


Now, we know that the Times will never miss an opportunity to bash conservatives and/or the tea party but there is an inconvenience about this title: Akin beat the tea party candidate and the one endorsed by Sarah Palin, Sarah Steelman in the primaries.

That doesn't seem to matter to the Times. And they wonder why they're bankrupt.


As for Akin: 20-25 more years of saying stupid and offensive stuff may just get him elected Vice President.

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Great moments in the history of the DOE's green loan program

Via Hot Air

We dumped over a half billion dollars into Solyndra only to see that company go bankrupt in 2011 taking 1,100 jobs with it. So, you are probably asking yourself, "Well, what about the assets that got left behind? What about the machinery, the tools and whatever solar panels they produced."


Fear not, o intrepid tax-payer as it seems that 1,368 glass tubes that were to be components of Solyndra's tubular solar panels found their way to a UC Berkely interpretive art exhibit where they transmit light and cool air into a darkened chamber.


From PJ Media:

“SOL Grotto”, by Ronald Rael & Virginia San Fratello, was a delightful meditation on perception. Situated above Strawberry Creek, the dark wooden bunker is pierced with hundreds of glass pipes cozened from local ex-company Solyndra. Tiny snippets of the world outside can be discerned through the tubes, making one feel like they’re inside the compound eye of an insect.

For those of you in Placentia, California, SOL is a euphemism amongst the hep cats out there for "S#%t Out of Luck".



So, what happened to the other 24 million unused Solyndra solar tubes? In a word, they were destroyed. Follow the link for a local CBS News report on how workers were simply throwing these tubes into dumpsters when Solyndra shut down operations.


As sad as it is, we can think of no better metaphor than the DOE's failed and corrupt loan program than dumpster after countless dumpster filled with shattered glass and a few of the solar tubes that were spared this fate to be featured in a hippie quiet room.

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Video clip of the day

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Something smooth and easy to start off the week: Ben Stein talks gun control.


(clip approx. 2 minutes long after 30 second advert)

The whole problem of guns and killing is complex and saying "gun control" and being angry at the NRA simply does not get us very far.

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What we've been tweeting

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Tweet: Can we just assume #Obama is projecting when railing against failed "top-down" economic policies? #GM #bailout

And he's asking us for four more years to finish what we started.


(click to enlarge)

He built that.

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We'll preface the following with an observation of those painful interviews executed by network sports play-by-play announcers in the broadcast booth of the stars of shows that said network is attempting to promote.

We can't find the YouTube clip but we recall an interview of actor Christian Slater on Monday Night Football a few years back that made us want to gouge out our eyeballs.


Parlor discussion with our boy, Max: which celebrity/public figure exhibits the best and most in-depth knowledge of sports?


We forgot his first response but it was followed up very quickly with, "The President". We couldn't agree more. Dude does know him some sports. ESPN falls all over themselves each March when he makes his bracket picks and where he has some solid takes on the tournament.

Unfortunately, it would appear that time taken to bone-up on one's football picks has taken its toll on the nation's economic fortunes if one is to believe there are only so many hours in the day.

It's as if Harvard offered-up Bracketology 101 instead of Econ 101. No, it's no longer "as if". We're pretty much convinced of it.


And speaking of celebrity interviews:






8 weeks since he took answers from the White House press corps.

Radio KBwD is on the air: the covers edition

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It's the first, second, third Friday of the month so it's gotta be, right?


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First up, from Newcastle upon Tyne, it's one of the greatest voices in rock'n'roll Eric Burdon and The Animals performing "Don't Bring Me Down".

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And now, stateside, hailing from Gainesville, Florida, it's Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers from FarmAid in 1985 doin' it live.




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"Wait. We bailed out these guys, also?"

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Remember, gang, General Motor's sagging fortunes aren't just a result of weak sales here stateside; they've got an entire European operation that is an additional millstone around its neck.

Three years into their forced marriage with GM, the American taxpayers have seen the value of their investment in GM deteriorate by approximately $24 billion, largely due to continuing European losses. Exposure in Europe has contributed to crushing the value of GM's stock due to its chaotic and failing Opel unit in Germany. While government, journalists and Wall Street sympathizers have given the Obama Administration and GM leadership an almost incomprehensible pass on this value destruction and massive loss (presumably due to the macro-economic nature of the crisis), it's time to call for the accountability that this new Board was supposedly going to deliver.

At one time, General Motors had an opportunity to sell off GM Europe so they could consolidate, trim some non-essentials, focus on core competencies, you know, the stuff that corporations do when they are in bankruptcy. Didn't quite happen that way:

Overlooked is the value-destroying, cash-sucking disaster that is GM Europe was packaged and ready for sale to new European buyers in 2009 before the new Obama GM Board of Directors slammed the brakes on the deal, throwing GM into its current value free-fall. In fact, the decision to not sell the Opel operations (which has not been profitable for more than a decade) in 2009 after GM cleared bankruptcy was the very first major decision of the new Obama Board. Had Opel been sold, GM stock would be much higher than it is today.

So, we weren't merely content to bailout an under-performing U.S. manufacturer, we were going to bail out those of Europe as well.

But the "new and improved" Obama Board of Directors, working mostly at the persistent lobbying and urging of the UAW's appointee, Steve Girsky (in photo), were naively convinced that Opel was simply a rough jewel in need of some new leadership (Opel fired its third leader in as many years a few weeks ago) and TLC from the brain-trust in Detroit. With his persuasive lobbying, the union's man Girsky convinced all but two of the Board members to vote to ditch the planned sale and hold onto this "gem" that has now contributed to the loss of about $24 billion of the American taxpayers' forced investment. Beyond the sheer magnitude of the value losses, fixing Europe has become an all-consuming distraction that is draining GM of vital and scarce resources.

Linked article describes how GM CFO Dan Amman hemmed and hawed during last quarter's earnings coference call and never came clean with respect to how much American taxpayer money was going towards the failing Opel and Peugot operations.

Your anger would be totally understandable given that a public-private entity is mum on how much of your scratch is being thrown around an entirely different continent let alone here in our own backyard.



So, with such dismal news for General Motors, what's in the offing? Another bailout?

President Obama is proud of his bailout of General Motors. That’s good, because, if he wins a second term, he is probably going to have to bail GM out again. The company is once again losing market share, and it seems unable to develop products that are truly competitive in the U.S. market.

This wouldn't surprise us. If their bailout efforts failed the first time around, by their reckoning, a second bailout is fully warranted. We hate to say it, but contrary to what you may have been told, these aren't terribly smart people. They just aren't. Smart people learn from their mistakes and there has been nothing in these last 3-1/2 years that has demonstrated that they have learned anything from their miserable failures in the U.S. economy.

This can work on a few different levels

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Zowie. No grenade-throwing here but Americans for Prosperity makes a Vaselined-lens soft-focus appeal to squishy moderates and independants who voted for the Light-worker back in 2008.






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Can we borrow this general approach for the next time we break up with a romantic interest?

"It's not you, it's me. No. Wait. It is kind of you"

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Video clip of the day

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Back in October of 2009 we went to a buy-cott of Whole Foods to support its CEO John Mackey, a "soft-core" libertarian, who had horrified his Prius and Volvo-driving patrons because of his opposition to ObamaCare.

Matt Welch of Reason.com sat down with Mackey at FreedomFest 2012 for a chat.

(video about 6-1/2 minutes long)





0:30 : Welch: (Liberals can be awfully illiberal when it comes to other people's choices.)

0:50 : Mackey: "Some people aren't happy unless they're telling other people what to do."


2:25 : Mackey: "You have to understand the narrative that many people have about capitalism and corporations that they are fundamentally selfish and greedy and exploitative, that corporations are sociopaths, that they don't care about anything or anyone but themselves and want to make as much money as possible... that they are fundamentally evil."

3:35 : Mackey: "Business is the greatest value-creator in the world."



Mackey, who is pimping a new book, returns to the narrative that we latched onto at the link above; that champions of capitalism and free enterprise have done a horrible job of making their case against statism and collectivism.

Mackey explains that defending rational self-interest and the profit motive has to be balanced against making the case for how capitalism generates what we will call "best value", not for just the owner who reaps the profits but for the employees, the customers and for society at large as well.



Here is what we wrote 3 years ago after attending the buy-cott:

One of his criticisms of the freedom movement is that he believes it to be overly-provocative and he goes all the way back to Ayn Rand’s seminal Atlas Shrugged for deliberately conflating selfishness and self-interest and fast forwards to the 80s movie Wall Street and Gordon Gekko’s famous line, “Greed is Good”. He believes the freedom movement has allowed themselves to be painted into a corner as evil corporatists because of Rand’s original sin which was manifested in popular culture by Oliver Stone’s movie (Wall Street) 30 years later.

And here is what Mackey said at a FreedomFest from a few years back:

I believe that business has a much greater purpose. Business, working through free markets, is possibly the greatest force for good on the planet today. When executed well, business increases prosperity, ends poverty, improves the quality of life, and promotes the health and longevity of the world population at an unprecedented rate. This audience understands these truths, but how many people in our greater society comprehend it? The freedom movement has also poorly defended the social legitimacy of both business and free markets. A new paradigm for business and the free market is necessary — one that accepts the importance of profits, of course, but also one that recognizes that business has legitimate social responsibilities that go far beyond merely maximizing profits.

We might try to pick up Mackey's book (we admit to being at a loss for the title of said publication) because we have been coming around to his thoughts on re-structuring the narrative and, yes, (sigh) working on the messaging.

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

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We didn't want to news chase but this was just too rich to pass up. Accused of being a felon, then of being responsible for the death of the wife of an out-of-work steel plant worker, is anyone surprised they waited until the 3-hole to play the race card in the next major smear of Team Romney?

Here's Joey Choo-choo Biden in North Carolina Virginia, ummm... appealing to the base?

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: They've said it. Every Republican's voted for it. Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they're proposing. Romney wants to let the-he said in the first 100 days, he's going to let the big banks once again write their own rules-unchain Wall Street. They going to put y'all back in chains. He's said he's going to do nothing about stopping the practice of outsourcing.

(italics and emphasis, definitely Biden's)

Color us alternately appalled and amused by these comments. After all, it is this country's crazy Veep Uncle who escapes the basement every once in a while to make our eyes roll at the dinner table. Just a heartbeat away, America, just a heartbeat away. Now, in this era of the new civility, if Team O didn't have a problem with Mitt-as-murderer, they sure as hell weren't going to have a problem with Biden going all racialist. Armed with the fact that no one knew a damn thing about him 4 years ago, it was so much easier to stay above the fray and not be such a sleaze-ball Chicago pol that America is increasingly finding him to be.

Oh, and the tweets:

@EWErickson The party that gets upset when you call Obama a Marxist is cool claiming the GOP will enslave black people. @deanriehm Joe Biden doesn't need know stinking dog whistle. @iowahawkblog If the GOP uses a racist dog whistle, Joe Biden uses a racist kazoo. @deanriehm Signs that your campaign is tanking: your 70-something white running mate from Delaware goes minstral #JoeBiden. @deanriehm #Biden sounding "blacker" than the President. Somewhere, #HarryReid is smiling. @iowahawkblog President Obama won't let Romney & Ryan destroy Medicare as we know it. He appointed time to do that job. (so, "time" is the CMS czar?) @deanriehm The only things missing were a top hat, a megaphone, the bearded lady and 3 rings. #assclown #JoeBiden

(Apologies for the formatting of last two paragraphs. Blogger not responding well to the heat)

Just a reminder, gang...

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...Paul Ryan is going to end/kill/destroy/whatever Medicare as we know it, except for everyone in Florida, DNC chair's Debbie Wasserman Schultz's home state, 55 and over... well, 55 and over in every other state of the union as well.

We think we may have figured out why the Democrats picked Schultz to lead the Democratic National Committee as this clip with Wolf Blitzer will ably demonstrate: message discipline.

On the issue of changes to Medicare for folks over 55 which the Ryan plan does not effect, she has her talking points and, by damn, she's going to stick to them.





At 2:10 she effectively concedes the 55 year-old cut off line before declaring that unacceptable and then moving right back into her talking points narrative of how Paul Ryan is going to end/kill/destroy/whatever Medicare as we know it.


The intellectual heft being displayed here gives a glimpse into the reason why many on the left are cringing at the thought of a vice-presidential debate.





Related: The Onion gives Paul Ryan the treatment. Boy, do they:

(language warning)

When Mitt Romney selected me as his running mate, I knew the Democratic attack dogs would come out in full force. They would say I’m a right-wing ideologue. They would say my views on entitlement programs are far too radical. They would say putting me on the ticket immediately kills Mitt Romney’s chances of becoming president because I’m a liability. But if we’re being honest with each other—if we’re able to put aside the talking points for a few minutes and say what we’re all actually thinking and feeling—I believe we can acknowledge the real truth here.

I’m young, I’m handsome, I’m smart, and I’m articulate. And that scares the ever-loving shit out of you. You can pretend like you have this thing in the bag, but you know good goddamn well that this race just got real interesting, real fast.

It’s okay to admit it. You’re frightened to death of me. It might actually be healthy for you to face your fears now rather than later, when Mitt and I are leading by a few points in the polls and it looks like this thing might end badly for you. Face it: I’m not some catastrophe waiting to happen, like a Sarah Palin or a Dan Quayle. On the contrary, you have the exact opposite fear. I’m a solid, competent, some might say exceptional, politician.

Read the rest of this amazingly non-ironic bit here.

Tales from Bailout Nation and a Friday evening dump

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We are little late to the party on this but last week, the President was in Pueblo, Colorado calling for what we can only assume a blanket nationalization of all U.S. industries:

President Obama, while villifying Mitt Romney for opposing the auto industry bailout, bragged about the success of his decision to provide government assistance and said he now wants to see every manufacturing industry come roaring back.

“I said, I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back,” he said. “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.

“I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China, I want those jobs taking root in places like Pueblo,” Obama told a crowd gathered for a campaign rally at the Palace of Agriculture at the Colorado State Fairgrounds here.

(He's letting his Peronism show and we don't think he cares because that's who he is. Apparently, green loan programs for not-yet-market-ready technology isn't nearly enough, these days.)




We think we get it: The President wants to sink tens of billions of tax-payer dollars into the manufacturing sector with scant hope of ever seeing it returned dollar-for-dollar while giving the shaft to non-union pensioners as he did to the Delphi retirees who are in process of suing his administration's ass for their trouble. That's kind of the playbook, right?


And we're glad we held off on blogging about this because we are seeing more evidence of the "success" of the General Motors bailout as the Treasury Department released some rather impolite news on Friday:

The Treasury Department says in a new report the government expects to lose more than $25 billion on the $85 billion auto bailout. That's 15 percent higher than its previous forecast.

In a monthly report sent to Congress on Friday, the Obama administration boosted its forecast of expected losses by more than $3.3 billion to almost $25.1 billion, up from $21.7 billion in the last quarterly update.

The report may still underestimate the losses. The report covers predicted losses through May 31, when GM's stock price was $22.20 a share.

On Monday, GM stock fell $0.07, or 0.3 percent, to $20.47. At that price, the government would lose another $850 million on its GM bailout.

GM stock would need to get to $53/share for the U.S. tax-payer to break even. That's not happening. As it stands now, if the government were to dump all of its shares at the current price, the tax-payer would lose more than $16 billion on the GM bailout. Obviously, not 3 months in front of the election, that's not happening either, so not only are we're stuck with this turkey of an "investment", we have the economic illiterate currently in the White House doubling down on the same stupidity.

Last line of linked article:

GM CEO Dan Akerson told employees at a town hall meeting Thursday that the company was working to take actions to boost the automaker's sagging price.

Gee, can't wait to see what that's going to be and more importantly, how much it's going to cost us.

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Quote of the day

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From Victor Davis Hanson:

From Eliot Spitzer to Elizabeth Warren to Fareed Zakaria — what is wrong with our elites? Do they assume that because they are on record for the proverbial people, or because they have been branded with an Ivy League degree, or because they are habitués of the centers of power between New York and Washington, or because they write for the old (but now money-losing) blue-chip brands (Time magazine, the New York Times, etc.), or because we see them on public and cable TV, or because they rule us from the highest echelons of government that they are exempt from the sorts of common ethical constraints that the rest of us must adhere to — at least if a society as sophisticated as ours is to work?

(italics, ours)

Forgive us our pitch fork-wielding democratic bent, but we've been wondering for years when it was the shine was going to come off that penny of two generations of Americans matriculating through those institutions that have drove this country into a ditch.

Oh, and do yourself a favor and read the whole thing, Hanson is on one.

A few thoughts on the Ryan pick

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We like.

Back in February, Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner testifying before a Congressional hearing chaired by Paul Ryan, provided the perfect juxtaposition between the two campaigns in this presidential matchup.

Here’s what we wrote:

Back in February, Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner was responding to questions raised by House Budget Committee Chairman, Paul Ryan, and specifically what the broadly outlined Obama budget made public via an Obama speech was going to do with respect to our long-term debt problem. Geithner's response:

“We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours (Ryan's budget proposal.)”

Everything you need to know about the shameless cynicism, small-mindedness and lack of seriousness possessed by this administration is summed up in that quote. But you better get used to it because that quote will represent the emotional and intellectual rigor behind everything else you will hear from now until November.

High unemployment? We're going to tax the rich through the Buffet Rule. High gas prices? We're going to investigate oil market speculators or something. Unsustainable long-term debt? You suck.

And if you haven't heard it yet, get ready: Paul Ryan is going to kill Medicare as we know it.

Good.

Because "as we know it" is completely unsustainable and no prominent figure in D.C. from either party outside of Ryan has been willing to acknowlege this let alone put forth a plan on how to save Medicare.

The entire tone and tenor of the campaign has changed with the Ryan pick. Ryan's combination of genial earnestness and his wonkish knowledge of the issues is the perfect counter to the cheap, petty and mindless class-warfare rhetoric that has been the centerpiece of the Obama campaign.

Oh, and good luck trying to demonize a decent, family-oriented Catholic from the Midwest.




And with respect to what Paul Ryan means to this country and our particular generation, Gen-X, here is what we wrote back in April of 2011:

20 years ago, we read a book called Generations which charted 4 recurring generational cohorts through American history.

From the preface:

This book presents the "history of the future" by narrating a recurring dynamic of generational behavior that seems to determine how and when we participate as individuals in social change - or social upheaval. We say, in effect, that this dynamic repeats itself. This is reason enough to make history important: For if the future replays the past, so too must the past anticipate the future.

Obviously, of particular interest to us were the cohort generations (Reactive generations) of the Gen-Xers (in the book, the 13ers, as it was the 13th generation since the nation's declaration of independence). The common trait or characteristic of the cohorts of the Gen-Xers was that though they got off to a rocky start, it was this generation that was asked to make the sacrifices and tough decisions to guide America through turbulent times.

It was interesting to note that the previous cohort to the Gen-Xers contained F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Irving Berlin and Eugene O'Neill of the "Lost Generation" that fought the moral crusades of Prohibition and the Palmer Raids "with bathtub gin and opulent sex" but then matured into the generation also of FDR, George Patton, Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman that guided this nation through the dual crises of the Great Depression and WWII.

As we read this in our mid-twenties as a much popularly-maligned member of Gen-X, we wondered what history would hold in store and what avenue of redemption would be presented for us to lead. 20 years on, we think it's becoming clear what this crisis is going to be if it is not at our doorstep already. To ignore it is to be blind to the facts and to do nothing about it would be simply a massive moral failure.



Folks, the Gen-Xer-in-Chief, Paul Ryan (via KT):

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

That whole 1st amendment thing just ain't what it used to be (UPDATED)

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(please scroll to bottom for update)


This past week, KT posted an article concerning what he thought was the thuggish behviour of one set of people towards another set of people because the first set thought the words and deed of the second set objectionable.

And beyond that, there was the point made regarding elected politicians who not only happened to agree with the first set of people, they were are willing to use their powers at the levers of governance to deny business opportunities to that second set of people.

There is a name for this sort of behaviour and politics that the article ably depicts (warning: singing involved... or else).

Commenters remarked that this was probably nothing more than a one-off, perhaps sensationalized by the press and the pols involved breaking no more laws than shameless self-promotion.

Sure thing.

Bible study leader Michael Salman is sitting in jail today after his home was raided earlier this week by more than a dozen Phoenix, Ariz. police officers and city officials. His offense? The city says people aren’t allowed to hold private Bible studies on their own property.

Salman was sentenced to 60 days in jail, three years probation and received a $12,180 fine for “the crime.” His wife Suzanne spoke with Fox and Friends this morning to express her shock and disbelief at the entire situation.

According to Suzanne, the city told her that her husband was essentially arrested because the Bible study was at a private house .. and that essentially, it’s a church. Since they weren’t zoned for church, they were told they were breaking the rules.

“It defies logic, honestly. I don’t understand … that something so small got so large like this,” Suzanne said. “People do it all over the United States all the time.”

John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute believes the family is being discriminated against because of their faith. “The key is — the Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of religion … the right to assemble and talk to each other wherever you want to be – in public or in your home,” he said. “The thing that I think is so shocking is that you might expect this in Iran or [some place] around the world … but happening in the United States, this is so shocking it’s beyond belief.”

Phoenix City Prosecutor Vicki Hill said in a statement: “It came down to zoning and proper permitting. Anytime you are holding a gathering of people continuously as he does, we have concerns about people being able to exit the facility properly in case there is a fire, and that’s really all this comes down to.”

We have never in our life heard as cock-a-mamie an explanation as the one given by Hill. She should be relieved of her duties. Immediately.

Just last night we were at a backyard pool party hosted by one of our co-workers. It was a glorious affair: chicken skewers and carne asade on the grill, kids running around and playing in the pool, beer iced down in the cooler and couples holding hands and sitting in each other's laps and guess what? The absolute least of our concerns was how it was we were going to get out of that residence should a fire break out.

This is insane. Check that. Not insane rather a system of governance depicted in KT's post.

The it will never happen here receives a beat down in the face of what happened in Phoenix. An isolated incident? To hell with that - it happened to the Salman's so it happened to all of us.

We look forward to the Salman's lawyering up and owning half of Phoenix in the name of the first amendment.


We leave you with the money quote from Ezra Levant* who was aquitted of any wrong-doing by the Alberta Human Rights Commission for re-printing the Mohammed-as-terrorist images in his publication, the Western Standard:

Look at his rationale for acquitting me: because the Western Standard met Gundara’s home-made tests of reasonableness. We published the cartoons in “context”; we published letters that “criticized” them; and my favourite, the cartoons weren’t “simply stuck in the middle” of the magazine. Gundara must have thought for ten whole minutes to come up with that list of journalistic do’s and don’t’s. And – phew! – he likes me. He really likes me!

Sorry again, I don’t give a damn if he likes me. In fact, it rather creeps me out that a whole squad of teat-sucking bureaucrats spent 900 days inspecting me and the Western Standard. I positively want to offend them. In fact, that’s pretty much the only test of my freedom: can I do exactly what Gundara says I shouldn’t? I’m not interested in publishing recipes or sports scores. I’m interested in bothering the hell out of government.

(emphasis, ours)



* L'Affaire Levant was chronicled in these pages at the link above. Our collective sensibility in giving the Canadians the benefit of the doubt as being the sensible and practical folks in this hemisphere isn't holding up so well.



H/T: Dawn



(UPDATE #1):

It appears we may have been bamboozled. This happens about once a year where we are guilty of premature blogging.

We stand by Mr. Salman's 1st amendment rights but there are other issues at play here that we did not vet before we went all fever swamp.

Thanks to KT for providing us that link in the comment section that shed a different light on the situation.



P.S. Ezra Levant still kicks ass.

These aren't the "feminist" you're looking for

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The President was in Colorado Wednesday for a campaign visit featuring Sandra Fluke, the reverse anthropomorphic image of the satist love-child Juila, the Democrats' 21st century Susan B. Anthony.

You see, at one time, there was a set of people known as "feminist" who used to wear t-shirts that said stuff like, "Keep your laws off my body" and "What goes on in the bedroom stays in the bedroom" and stuff like that.

These days, historians will find evidence of "feminist" only in thrift shops, where, along with their principles, they have hocked those t-shirts.

But back to Colorado where Caleb Bonham interviews women acting like "feminist" but as can be seen and heard are clearly imposters or were paid-off by Bonham to look utterly clueless. "Feminist", as far as we can tell, is an extinct species.

(via Hot Air):




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From: "Keep your laws off my body" to "Pay me to have sex"... Yeah, you've come a long way baby.

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Nanny of the month

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Reason.com presents their Nanny of the Month for July:

(video just over a minute long)





0:53 : Wait. What? The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has their own squad cars? That's nanny enough for us.

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Video clip of the day

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Andrew Klavan at PJMedia cuts out the middle man and describes how you too can be a Mainstream Media Reporter.

(video just over 5 minutes)






Though not in the video, at the link, Klavan provides some useful information with respect to a glossary of terms of which will be helpful in navigating your way through the dog days of the election season.

An excerpt:

Let’s begin with the word gaffe. Now and then you may hear a news “person” say something like, “Mitt Romney made a gaffe!” or “Mitt Romney’s foreign trip was full of gaffes!” or “Wow, that Barack Obama, he’s so darned wonderful, he never makes a gaffe!” and you may wonder what that particular word means.

Gaffe comes from the french word for “hook.” A gaffe is something a Republican says that is absolutely true, but that can be twisted like a hook to sound false or embarrassing by the journalist using the gaffe. For instance, when Mitt Romney recently said that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and that cultural differences between the Israelis and Palestinians accounted for Israel’s greater success, he was trying, in his silly, fumbling way, to say that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel and that cultural differences between the Israelis and Palestinians accounted for Israel’s greater success. But even though these statements are not only wholly factual but also obvious, a chronically dishonest PLO official pretended to be outraged, thus giving journalists the opportunity to put in “the gaffe.”

Klavan is spot-on. We followed Romney's overseas trip relatively closely and outside of an impolitic comment on the preparedness of the London Games, we considered said trip an overwhelming success and scratched our head wondering of what all these alleged gaffes he made. We're pretty confident the majority of Americans paying attention were wondering the same thing.

To rif off of Klavan and using some language of the mainstream realm, we suppose that another way of defining a gaffe is when Republicans or conservatives speak truth to power.

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Of Hopenchange, political ads and pension reform

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If Gail Collins of the New York Times lent the legacy media's hand in bringing down the curtain on Hopenchange last week, then a pro-Obama super-PAC did its part with this ad that somehow affixes blame for the cancer and death of a laid-off steel worker's wife to Mitt Romney.

Playing this disgraceful angle is an indication that desperation is in the air as even CNN finds itself somewhat perplexed that the ad was so easy to deconstruct.







Exit question: A man who wasn't even with the company when the layoff ocurred is somehow more responsible for providing healthcare insurance for that family than the man of the house?

Congratulations, sir. You are the male flip-side to Obama's composite statist love-child, Julia; a wholly dependent entity of the state.





Tangentially related: Recall back in June, Delphi, a parts manufacturer for General Motors, finally got their hands on documents from the federal government so that they could proceed with their lawsuit against the federal government for having their pension and healthcare plans terminated.

It would appear from obtained emails, that the Treasury Department was directly responsible for these actions.

From the Daily Caller:

Emails obtained by The Daily Caller show that the U.S. Treasury Department, led by Timothy Geithner, was the driving force behind terminating the pensions of 20,000 salaried retirees at the Delphi auto parts manufacturing company.

The move, made in 2009 while the Obama administration implemented its auto bailout plan, appears to have been made solely because those retirees were not members of labor unions.

The internal government emails contradict sworn testimony, in federal court and before Congress, given by several Obama administration figures. They also indicate that the administration misled lawmakers and the courts about the sequence of events surrounding the termination of those non-union pensions, and that administration figures violated federal law.

Delphi, a 13-year old company that is independent of General Motors, is one of the world’s largest automotive parts manufacturers. Twenty thousand of its workers lost nearly their entire pensions when the government bailed out GM. At the same time, Delphi employees who were members of the United Auto Workers union saw their pensions topped off and made whole.

Testimony from White House officials maintained that the decision to terminate the pensions was made by the rather ironically-named Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), a goverment agency that handles private-sector benefit issues whose charter states it acts independently in the representation of pension beneficiary interests.

(ed. note: how far away from the concept of limited government are you when you have a government agency called a "corporation"?)

The emails suggest that the PBGC was acting at the behest of the Treasury Department and the White House.



Exit question Pt. II: To employ the logic held in the ad above, how many sick and dead Delphi employees are the Obama administration now responsible for?


And all this time, you thought the Obama administration was reflexively opposed to pension reform.


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