Photo image of the day

We were granted this award for coming closest in predicting the midterm election results (out of the SLOBS - San Diego Local Order of Bloggers) and which was created and presented by our friend Leslie of Temple of Mut at the latest SLOB confab a couple of weekends ago.

Thanks, Leslie!


P.S. The imagery of Don Draper from "Mad Men" perhaps needs an explanation. In the run-up to the midterms, the House minority leader John Boehner, became the target of attacks from the Democrats, obviously, but also an anonymous Republican who called Boehner "a lazy bar hopper". Lumping this together with the fact that Boehner smokes and (in another pre-midterm smear) is an alleged womanizer to go along with his rakish good-looks, it hit us like a bolt of lightning - this idea that Leslie was working on at the very same time...














We implored America to embrace its dark side and indeed it did. And we were just grateful to play a small part in fabricating a new American folk hero and role model for aspiring pols everywhere.

Telling the story (Updated)

(please scroll down for the update)

If you are anything like us, you are familiar with your parents' past perhaps not in a chronological sense but rather in a narrative form... stories and remembrances of friends, co-workers, neighbors and loved ones from their past that help develop the story arc of their lives.

"Pops", while doing a Christmas play for the church, based upon the events at Pearl Harbor, penned the following for his fellow cast members:

When I was about six weeks old, my Daddy was killed in an industrial accident. Fortunately, we had a great uncle who was an attorney and a high mucky-muck in Toledo civic affairs who was able to secure a generous (for those days) settlement for Mom, money to purchase a home and $19 a week for ten years to raise my brother and me.

When I was about five, Mom saw that she needed to be prepared for when the ten years were over - she had graduated at the top of her 8th grade class but her father saw no reason to send a girl to high school. Mom decided to go to beautician's school in Toledo, which meant finding a place for me to stay. I went to my father's parents on their farm a few miles away where I lived for the next three years. There was cornmeal mush when there was nothing else to eat, no plumbing, no electricity, but lots of love.

Before supper, it was my job to walk back to the woods to call the cows for milking. On one evening, I ran a thorn into my thigh. I tried to pull it out but couldn't. As I limped back to the house, the thorn worked its way further into the flesh. Grandma tried to remove the thorn but had no success. We had no car so Grandma walked across the road to the Zalesak's for a possible ride to the doctor in town. Their youngest son, Tommy, about 17, was delighted for an excuse to drive the family car. I don't remember the drive into town or Dr. Scheidemann removing the thorn but remember that Grandma and Tommy laughed and joked all the way home.

A few years later on a summer evening, we were sitting on the front porch, probably doing something exciting like counting fireflies. A figure came out of the darkness from across the road. We quickly recognized Mrs. Zalesak coming to see us. She was a native of Prague who loved her adopted home. She studied the Constitution at night by kerosene lamp for her naturalization test. I have always remembered her saying proudly in her badly broken English, "when I go up to that judge, I tell him the Constitution in American."

But this particular summer night she had two small boxes in her hands, one contained a Purple Heart and the other a Silver Star for bravery in action. Tommy's lieutenant had been wounded and was trapped between the lines, pinned down by enemy fire in the Philippines. Tommy volunteered to try to bring him back. He crawled out into enemy machine gun fire and died from his wounds in a field hospital.

Grandma said what she could to comfort Mrs. Zalesak and she walked, sobbing, back into the night.

Doing the play brought back these memories as clear as yesterday and gave me a chance to reflect upon them. I have heard so much of bravery and heroism during the war. But as I thought of Tommy, I don't think he had any thoughts of bravery or heroism when he volunteered to try to save his lieutenant. I think it was love that motivated Tommy, the love for his fellow man. Tommy performed the ultimate act of love by laying down his life for his fellow man, a powerful reminder of what was done for us nearly 2000 years ago. I pray that this message of sacrifice will be clear to everyone who is here for our presentation the next few nights.

As wonderful as a natural coincidence is San Diego Beer Week, the Marine Corps' birthday and Veterans' Day all falling on the same week, remembering and honoring those who have given that full measure should be a year-round exercise.


Update #1: We didn't plan it this way but there was a Congressional Medal of Honor ceremony today at the White House.

Yesterday, President Obama spoke with Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta to inform him that he will be awarded the Medal of Honor for acts of gallantry at the risk of his life that went above and beyond the call of duty. Sergeant Giunta will be the first living service member to be awarded the Medal of Honor for service in Iraq or Afghanistan. The President thanked Sergeant Giunta for his service and extraordinary bravery in battle.

Further information about the date and time of the ceremony will be released at a later date.

ACTION FROM WHICH THE MEDAL OF HONOR WAS EARNED:

Then-Specialist Salvatore A. Giunta distinguished himself by acts of gallantry at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a rifle team leader with Company B, 2d Battalion (Airborne), 503d Infantry Regiment during combat operations against an armed enemy in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan on October 25, 2007.

When an insurgent force ambush split Specialist Giunta's squad into two groups, he exposed himself to enemy fire to pull a comrade back to cover. Later, while engaging the enemy and attempting to link up with the rest of his squad, Specialist Giunta noticed two insurgents carrying away a fellow soldier. He immediately engaged the enemy, killing one and wounding the other, and provided medical aid to his wounded comrade while the rest of his squad caught up and provided security. His courage and leadership while under extreme enemy fire were integral to his platoon's ability defeat an enemy ambush and recover a fellow American paratrooper from enemy hands.

Here is a video of the ceremony (if embed no worky, please go here)

(Doggone it! We can't get the correct video to load so, yes... please go there.)


When the President said he was looking forward to this "joyous occasion", we fully take him at his word as we can imagine being in the presence of heroism and bravery is pretty much the exact polar opposite of what the typical day in Washington D.C. is like. Also, please remember this clip the next time you hear some pol drone on about making "brave" votes that may not sit well with the electorate. Child, please.

And when you wonder just what institutions in this country contribute to American exceptionalism, this is certainly one of them.

1099 a' go-go (continued)

The ObamaCare provision that would have businesses submitting 1099s to the IRS for business transactions with other entities totaling over $600 and which has those same businesses justifiably freaked-out over the resulting admin. nightmare, is getting a closer look by this current Congress. (Previous posts on how that was all going to work can be found, here).

The Senate Finance Committee Chairman (Max Baucus) said Friday that he plans to introduce a bill to repeal the 1099 tax provision in response to small business’ outcry over the provision. His office did not release the text or how the repeal would be paid for. Republicans have said the provision would likely have been one of the first ones they would try to repeal in the next Congress, when they’ll have control of the House and a larger minority in the Senate.

(italics, ours)

The 1099 provision was tucked into ObamaCare as a footnote in hopes of raising $17 billion over ten years to help pay for ObamaCare and to bolster the claim that ObamaCare was deficit-neutral.

This provision actually had the votes to get repealed back in August but Speaker Pelosi rigged the rules to require a two-thirds vote to repeal rather than a simple majority in order to both save the provision and protect Democrats voting for the repeal.

And we have never seen any justification for that $17 billion figure as that represents the amount of money American businesses are apparently bilking the federal government. So, as for paying for the repeal of this wildly unpopular provision, how about not having to hire those thousands and thousands of IRS agents needed to monitor the massive paper mill that will be created by the 1099 provision?

Question of the day

We now have a new question to add to the lineup that measures, on an individual basis, America's cultural zeitgeist.



Ford or Chevy?


Beatles or Rolling Stones?


John or Paul?


Snickers or Milky Way?


Ginger or Mary Ann?


Digital or vinyl?


Episodes IV-VI or Episodes I-III?


Ice cream or frozen yougurt?


Rare, medium or well-done?


Dale Jr. or Jeff Gordon?


Shaken or stirred?


And now, ladies and gentlemen.....


.... full body scan or crotch pat?

The Secretary of Health and Human Services can lead those with pre-existing conditions to water...

... she just can't (dammit!) make them drink.

We were sold ObamaCare on the premise that it would a) bend the cost curve downward and b) it would guarantee coverage for those without insurance, particularly those with pre-existing conditions.

With respect to b), how's that been working out so far?

To judge by President Obama’s rhetoric, the insurance industry’s victims have been wandering the country like Okies in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Thus ObamaCare gave the Health and Human Services Department the power to design and sell its own insurance policies. The $5 billion program started in July and runs through 2014, when ObamaCare’s broader regulations kick in.

Mr. Obama declared at the time that “uninsured Americans who’ve been locked out of the insurance market because of a pre-existing condition will now be able to enroll in a new national insurance pool where they’ll finally be able to purchase quality, affordable health care—some for the very first time in their lives.”

So far that statement accurately describes a single person in North Dakota. Literally, one person has signed up out of 647,000 state residents. Four people have enrolled in West Virginia. Things are better in Minnesota, where Mr. Obama has rescued 15 out of 5.2 million, and also in Indiana—63 people there. HHS did best among the 24.7 million Texans. Thanks to ObamaCare, 393 of them are now insured.
States had the option of designing their own pre-existing condition insurance with federal dollars in lieu of the HHS plan, and 27 chose to do so. But they haven’t had much more success. Combined federal-state enrollment is merely 8,011 nationwide as of November 1, according to HHS.

This isn’t what HHS promised in July, when it estimated it would be insuring 375,000 people by now, and as many as 400,000 more every year. HHS even warned that it would bill private carriers for any claims if HHS decided that they had cancelled coverage to dump costs on the government. That outcome would certainly be in keeping with Mr. Obama’s caricature of rampant discrimination against the sick.

(italics, ours)

By the numbers, that is a success rate of 2.13%, surely a smashing success by anyone's estimation.

So, we have a situation where ObamaCare's attempts to manipulate the health care sector have actually caused health care costs to rise at a faster rate than that which they were already rising (our running post "Nancy's Nuances: a journey of discovery" which helped chronicle such developments has disappeared into a Blogger worm hole but a few recent examples can be found here and here) and now the other half of the sales job looks to be failing miserably as well as the greed and rapaciousness of the health care providers appears to be a myth or, shall we, a smear job perpetrated by Team O.

The two pillars for justifying ObamaCare are falling apart in spectacular fashion a mere 8 months after its passage.

The Friday evening dump

(one in a series that takes a look at some unpopular news coming out of Washington D.C. right before the weekend)

So when the most powerful man on the face of the planet realizes that a civilian trial for KSM, particularly a civilian trial mere blocks from ground zero, was not very popular and re-opening military tribunal proceedings against KSM would disappoint his base, what does he do?

He votes "present", natch.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, will probably remain in military detention without trial for the foreseeable future, according to Obama administration officials.

The administration has concluded that it cannot put Mohammed on trial in federal court because of the opposition of lawmakers in Congress and in New York. There is also little internal support for resurrecting a military prosecution at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The latter option would alienate liberal supporters.

The administration asserts that it can hold Mohammed and other al-Qaeda operatives under the laws of war, a principle that has been upheld by the courts when Guantanamo Bay detainees have challenged their detention.

The White House has made it clear that President Obama will ultimately make the decision, and a federal prosecution of Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators has not been ruled out, senior officials said. Still, they acknowledge that a trial is unlikely to happen before the next presidential election and, even then, would require a different political environment.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said this week that a decision on a trial for Mohammed was close. Other administration officials said that his remark was simply a stock response to a frequently asked question and that it didn't signal that any announcement was imminent.

That last paragraph is just too rich. Translation: don't pay any never mind to whatever Holder says. If he says the sky is blue, hold that contention very much in doubt.

A whole lot of campaign era rhetoric with respect to combating terrorism in keeping with the Constitution is taking a beating right now.

But here's what we find curious: Is his lefty base going to be any more pacified that Obama has KSM locked up and effectively thrown away the key than they would with a military tribunal? Sure. Voting present will merely evoke shoulder shrugs and sighs from his already dispirited true believers rather than provoking them to anger by taking actual leadership and ownership of this situation.

The 2012 Republican presidential candidate would be wise to remember all of this.

Video clip of the day Pt. II

Quantative easing made easy... well, explained simply, shall we say.





W.C. , we're looking at you!


H/T: Instapundit

Video clip of the day

Broadcasting from inside one of Teddy Roosevelt's nostrils, Ed Schultz of MSNBC thinks there ought to be something done about all that mean and nasty speech out there on the airwaves.





If there are going to be any laws, the first should be one against Al Sharpton, of all people, opining on racial divisiveness.

"Never any ramifications..."
They're called ratings, Ed - again, a concept lost on this MSNBC employee who should be very aware of their small ones due to the ramifications of their own lousy program content.

Limbaugh has faced boycotts his entire career calling on advertisers to pull their spots to no real avail because the manufactured level of outrage like that which Schultz is displaying never squares with reality.

Big Ed says "I'm not saying there should be a law..." before saying, "... shouldn't there be a law?" A shining beacon of broadcasting competence, he is.

And Sheila Jackson Lee wants to ban any discussion of where the President is born. When does that start extending to discussions of the President's policies, Ms. Lee?

We guess this begs the question of just what does Ed Schultz and his obviously traumatized guests (and we assume, listening audience) think should be banned from T.V. and radio? Because they are going to have to get a whole lot more specific and detailed than "provocative", "insulting", "inciteful" and "denigrating".

This entire segment by Schultz was an exercise in stupidity and was indeed insulting and denigrating towards most Americans opinions of free speech and the 1st amendment.


H/T: Hot Air

Perspective

Uhh... no.


We can understand the image rehabilitation currently underway with the release of President Bush's memoirs "Decision Points" but before everyone starts getting misty for the good ol' days, allow us to remind everybody that it was Bush that fathered Bailout Nation and laid the foundation for the massive explosion of government spending and control over the private sector that we see today with the current regime.

For a nice blow-by-blow airing of grievances, check out Michelle Malkin's take down, here.

College football Saturday open thread

The ranked match ups:

#24 Kansas State at #17 Missouri


#12 (and two-loss defending BCS title-holder) Alabama hosts #19 Mississippi State


#23 South Carolina at the Swamp and #22 Florida


Other games of note:

Penn St. at #9 Ohio State


#1 Oregon and QB Darron Thomas (pictured) take their space-aged offense to California and the Berkeley Bears.


The Irish host #14 Utah who is coming off that 47-7 thumping at the hands of TCU last weekend.


And speaking of which, one half of the BCS-busters, #3 TCU, will be hosting 7-2 San Diego State. After TCU beat Utah at Utah by 40, does installing the Aztecs as only 27 point underdogs show a measure of respect for Coach Brady Hoke's program?


The other half of the BCS-busters, #4 Boise St., played last night and walloped Idaho 52-14.


Georgia at #2 Auburn amid allegations that Auburn's star quarterback Cam Newton's father sought a six-figure payout from Miss St. in order for Newton to play there. An ugly situation that is, unfortunately, the dominant headline in the sport currently.


Texas hosts #10 Oklahoma State.


USC goes out to the desert and #18 Arizona.




No gaming advise this weekend but if you are on your way to Vegas and you happen upon this young lady, grab her, you are going to need her. Ask first, of course.





Chris Jones of Esquire magazine breaks this down and explains why it may not really be te miracle it appears to be, here.

H/T: Deadspin

Radio KBwD is on the air

We've featured these guys before and received positive feedback so we're rolling with them again as we go into a wrap-up weekend that has included San Diego Beer Week, the Marine Corps' 235th birthday and a day in which we honor our Veterans. Not too shabby.


Ladies and Gentlemen... from the North Carolina high country and representing all that is kitschy, greasy and Southern, it's Southern Culture on the Skids performing "Banana Puddin'".
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