YNN Carrying Obama's Water

YNN this morning continues to do Obama's dirty work, carrying water for the Democrats. They're still making the foolish claim that the government could default if no 'agreement' is reached by 8-2 despite the fact that no one that has a clue thinks that could happen and Obama himself is hinting that the date is could be moved.

Also, and much MUCH worse, they're now pushing his hideous demagogic lie that Social Security checks might not go out, scaring seniors, even going to the streets and interviewing people on Social Security to get their scared reactions if they don't get their check. Even socialist Bernie Sanders of VT has noted that Obama was lying when he said that SS checks might not go out.

Shame on YNN.

The Party Of No

Remind me again which is the 'party of no', as in 'no compromise'?

Is it the party that has produced a number of plans, only to see the Democrats in the Senate vote as a bloc against them and/or refuse to even hold a vote for them? Or the party that refuses to work with them on plans, votes against everything they work hard to come up with, and then whips out a version of their opponent's plan with lots of military cuts added in and says, 'pass this'?

Bias

Times Union top headline for Friday 7/29/11 -

"GOP adds uncertainty to crisis"

Yeah? Unlike the Democrats that 1) refuse to come up with a plan; and 2) promise to vote against anything the GOP does pass? Unlike Obama who 1) refuses to come up with a plan; 2) promises to veto anything the GOP comes up with; and 3) is now moving around the 'deadline' data again?

Good thing none of those things are adding uncertainty, only the GOP by coming up with and passing like 3 plans and/or budgets this year so far vs. the Democrats closing in on THREE YEARS without proposing a budget.

Party Of No

House approves debt bill; Senate rejects it

In an unforgiving display of partisanship, the House approved emergency legislation Friday night to avoid an unprecedented government default and the Senate scuttled it less than two hours later...

"We are almost out of time" for a compromise, warned President Barack Obama as U.S. financial markets trembled at the prospect of economic chaos next week. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average was down for a sixth straight session.

The House vote was 218-210, almost entirely along party lines, on a Republican-drafted bill to provide a quick $900 billion increase in U.S. borrowing authority — essential to allow the government to continue paying all its bills — along with $917 billion in cuts from federal spending.

Soooooo, the Republicans approved ANOTHER plan...and again the Democrats vote No and provide no alternative.

And do you think, just maybe, the market dump today had something to do with the fact that 2nd Q growth came in a pathetic sub-1.5% growth and 1Q was revised down to a humongously pathetic 0.4% growth?

Embarrassed To Be A NYer. Again.

We didn't even have time to get over the embarrassment of being Weiner'd and now here comes Congressman Jerrold Nadler:

"That’s the real crisis – the unemployment, not the deficit. We don’t have a deficit problem right now. In the long term, we have a deficit problem – we’ve got to get it under control but not right now," said Nadler at the Capitol on Wednesday.

"Right now we’ve got to get unemployment under control. If we got unemployment down to 7 percent, down to 5 percent, which is what it was in 2005, and 2007 rather before the recession hit, if we got it down to 5 percent, half the deficit would be eliminated just by that – half the deficit without cutting a nickel from the budget. So, we have to address the real problem. The real problem is we are not taxing properly."

Right. We just need to get back to where things were under Bush. By raising taxes. Because that's how we'll duplicate what happened under Bush.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the federal budget deficit will reach $1.5 trillion by the end of the fiscal year 2011. The current national debt limit is $14.29 trillion.

Rep. Nadler supports a higher corporate tax rate...

He continued, "When we talk about, ‘we’ve got a budget deficit crisis’ no we don’t. We have a tax crisis, we have a crisis that we’re not taxing properly and we have a recession and an unemployment crisis.

The only reason we have a deficit is because we're not confiscating enough wealth from businesses and "the rich". Despite the fact that confiscating 100% of their wealth doesn't give enough to pay the bills Obama and Nadler's party have rung up. 100%.

"The way to get out of that unemployment crisis is to spend money on more food stamps and on aid to states and local governments so they don’t lay off people and on infrastructure so we can be competitive and put people to work and if we did that, unemployment would go down, tax receipts would go up and we’d be well on our way out of this so-called crisis."

Sorry, I know that you feel stupider for having read that. All of NY is stupider for this man. We'll lower unemployment by spending more on food stamps. Figure that one out. Under Obama more Americans are on food stamps than at any time in history...and unemployment has been below 9% for exactly 3 months in the 2 1/2 years he's been in office. I'm missing how this is supposed to work, I guess. And didn't we ship billions to state and local governments two years ago and last year...which is why they're all failing to meet their budgets now, when those payoffs have dried up? Because they didn't do anything about unemployment and economic growth for the past 2 years. I guess I can't see how that's supposed to work. And didn't we already shell out a trillion dollars to turn things around? That didn't work, either. I'm really not sure how this is supposed to work, Mr. Nadler. What year is this from? 2008?

Let's recap - to fix the 'deficit' we don't need to spend less, we need to spend more and tax more, so that we can get things to be like the mid-2000s when taxes were lower than he wishes. We will lower unemployment by putting more people on food stamps even though more are on food stamps now than ever before and unemployment is over 9%. We will lower unemployment by sending more money, again taken from businesses and "the rich", to states and localities so that they don't lay off the employees they can't afford - despite the fact that unemployment didn't go down in the past 2 years when we did exactly that and keeping people in jobs that are currently in jobs doesn't actually lower unemployment. And, finally, we will lower unemployment by good old Keynesian "infrastructure" spending - despite it not working for FDR or Obama.

Let's just hope he doesn't have a Twitter account.

Obama's Done

I fail to see any scenario, given today's GDP report, that gets Obama re-elected short of a total fail by the GOP and Republican primary voters. Of course he owns this fiscal nightmare and must be forced to give account by his opponent.

The economy expanded at meager 1.3 percent annual rate in the spring after scarcely growing at all in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said Friday.

The combined growth for the first six months of the year was the weakest since the recession ended two years ago. The government revised the January-March figures to show just 0.4 percent growth -- down sharply from its previous estimate of 1.9 percent.

High gas prices and scant income gains have forced Americans to pull back sharply on spending in the spring. Consumer spending only increased 0.1 percent this spring, the smallest gain in two years. Government spending fell for the third straight quarter...

Government spending fell because it had been sharply and unsustainably increased recently by Obama and the Democrats, having it then fall was predictable, inevitable, and merely delayed recovery. In essence, at the expense of our grandchildren, Obama and the Democrats went wild with spending in order to keep government from having to eat its peas two years ago.

The weaker data will also add pressure to already-tense negotiations between President Barack Obama and lawmakers over increasing the debt limit. Any deal will likely include deep cuts in government spending. That could slow growth further in the short term.

Sometimes you just gotta eat your peas.

But if Congress fails to raise the debt limit and the government defaults, financial markets could fall and interest rates could rise.

At this time there is no scenario under which that would happen. At this time there is no chance of the press reminding you of that fact.

"It is hard to see the economy getting much stronger," Paul Dales, an economist at Capital Economics, said in a research note. "In fact, if the debt ceiling is not raised ... we could well have another recession on our hands."

Ummm...in case you haven't noticed, we already have. In fact, the first one never really ended.

Earlier this year, economists thought that a Social Security payroll tax cut would accelerate growth in 2011. But most of that money has gone to pay for higher gas prices.

Thanks to Obama and a sustained, deliberate effort to further choke off American supplies of oil, further increasing our dependence on foreign oil sellers who have restricting supplies in response to lowering prices to artificially prop prices up.

Consumer spending on long-lasting manufactured goods, such as cars and appliances, fell 4.4 percent. Many auto dealers reported shortages of popular models after Japan's March 11 earthquake, cutting into auto sales.

Thanks to Obama bailing out/buying/stealing American automakers that continue to churn out unpopular, expensive cars.

Employers have pulled back on hiring after seeing less spending by consumers. The economy added just 18,000 net jobs in June, the fewest in nine months and a steep drop from the average of 215,000 jobs per month added from February through April.

How's that 8% unemployment promise by Obama working out?

Those who have jobs are seeing little gain in their incomes. After-tax incomes, adjusted for inflation, rose only 0.7 percent, matching the previous quarter and the weakest since the recession ended.

Yes, Obama, we should raise taxes more on businesses so that they give you more money instead of more to their employees. And, of course, all the hedging against Obamacare.

The drop in government spending was driven by cuts at the state and local level. Those governments have slashed spending in seven of the eight quarters since the official end of the recession.

Thanks to Obama and the Democrats artificially extending the crisis by propping up government spending, which, SURPRISE! is now ending...completely as predicted.

Idiots

Unbelievably, the old guard GOP idiots in DC are actually acting afraid of this incompetent, unqualified, failed demagogue.

Gee, I dunno, John, I think we'd better do as he says!

Wait, What?

Let me get this straight. The GOP now has so many different plans that they have competing plans, people supporting one over the other, plans being modified, things going over to CBO and back to be scored, etc.

Obama has no plan. He promises to veto whatever the GOP passes should it actually pass the Senate - but not to worry, Reid promises that not a single Democrat will vote for GOP plans.

The Democrats, finally, have proposed one plan - which is nothing but one of the GOP plans with some imaginary defense spending cuts in it.

Yup. The media is right, the problem is completely the GOP's, the party of 'no' and obstructionism.

And yet, somehow, the GOP keeps trying to please Obama and the press.

Weep for America's children.

1.3%

1.3%. Unexpectedly, the economy grew at a negligible 1.3% in the 2nd quarter, a good half percentage point worse than expected.

We need 5% growth, sustained, to lower unemployment. Faced with pathetic growth the White House apologists started claiming we needed much less than that to reduce unemployment. Even they aren't claiming, yet, that 1.3% is going to do it.

Oh, and the first quarter? Revised down to a painful 0.4%. They lopped a full 1.5% off of their initial estimate of 1.9%. The 3rd and final revision later in the summer will probably show a bit higher.

Recovery summer?

Double dip this summer has nothing to do with ice cream.

Political Gamesmanship

Why haven't the Dems agreed to the inadequate spending cuts the GOP has proposed?

Seriously. Think about it. As we go along, not necessarily on this magical August 2nd date, but as we go along the US, currently borrowing about 40 cents of every dollar it spends, with no debt ceiling increase is going to have to, well, stop spending that 40 cents (let's say 40%) it is currently spending above what it takes in. Think of it as depositing your paychecks every month and then spending about 40% more than that every month on your credit card.

If the ceiling isn't raised the government will only be able to pay for about 60% of what it's spending now. Debt, entitlements, military, that sort of thing.

If the ceiling isn't raised the government is, almost overnight, going to shrink by about 40%. As I've said before, Obama (unless he chooses not to pay out Social Security benefits or military paychecks) is going to have to close 40% of the federal government or cut everybody's budget by 40%...bringing it back to pretty much the draconian levels unseen since...like when he was elected. Sorry cowboy poetry festivals. Sorry Mexican drug gangs hoping for more guns.

If the ceiling isn't raised the federal government will see a shock to the system that well-to-the-right conservatives have been craving for a long, long time...true, real cuts in size and scope. Obama, of course, will wail about what has to be cut - funding for cancer research, puppies for orphans, Cupcake Tuesdays at the old folks home, food safety inspections...that sort of thing. Of course he could choose to cut those things, like he could choose to stop paying Medicare bills. And that is what he will threaten to do. Because the alternative, the more realistic alternative, would be to slash the wasteful, useless Department of Education, moronic research like stuffing menstruating monkeys full of drugs, NASA's 'make muslims feel better' program, NPR, public television, NEA grants for ridiculing Christians, EPA foolish and dangerous overreaches, a couple of dozen of Obama's "czars", massively wasteful handouts for failing "green" companies making things no one will buy unless their neighbors pay for most of it, etc. Or, again, pull out the budgets from the last GOP-controlled Congress and set budgets to about those levels (and, for good measure, still get rid of the Dept. of Ed).

So, with that starting them in the face, why haven't the Democrats said "Deal!" instead of opening another suitcase? The freshmen and fiscally conservative Repubs in Congress can get what they want by, well, just saying 'no' (unless, again, the Dems side with the wishy-washy GOP and overwhelm them - thereby further swamping their numbers in Congress come 2013).

Why is it "No deal!" from the left? Well, they've staked their futures, and the future of the USA, on crashing the economy so they can swoop in and rebuild it in their image of perfection...sort of a Soviet Union without all the military buildup and taking over Canada and Mexico (at least to begin with). There's really no other way to explain why they decided it would be a good idea to spend 40% more than they take in. It's not like that happens by accident. They blame Bush for their need to trash our credit rating and steal from their grandkids, but the last Bush/GOP budget had a deficit of about $150 billion and had been cut in half in less time than Bush said it would be. In rush the Democrats like Black Friday shoppers at Best Buy with a stolen credit card and suddenly we have $1 trillion+ deficits each and every year for as far as their planning reaches (at least 10 years). Mind you, most of that spending started after the recent recession "officially" ended and the economy had bottomed (or so we thought before Obama really got rolling). How else to explain it?

You don't accidentally spend $1.5 trillion more than you have coming in, that doesn't just, you know, sort of happen, like you sent 15 trillion text messages over your plan limit by accident or went to the supermarket hungry a few times and picked up some Fig Newtons that you hadn't planned on. I mean, unless it's intentional you sort of go, 'whoa, let's think about where this is going to come from for a minute'. Of course it's much easier to not think about how you're going to pay your bills when you don't sit down and do a budget FOR TWO YEARS. Easy for Obama to say he's going to comb through the budget for waste with a scalpel when his party promises not to actually put one in front of him. Easy to keep on spending when you don't bother sitting down and comparing one side of the ledger to the other.

Annnnnnnnnd I've gone off topic. Sort of. Anyway, that's why they can't cut a deal and control spending. So, instead, they're playing games and trusting to the press to do their dirty work and scaring Gramma while they pretend they're doing something other than just saying no. In the past 30-40 years it's been enough. I'm not sure it is anymore. And I think a significant chunk of the GOP realizes that by not cutting a deal that actually helps our nation control spending, they get what they want by default...inartful choice of terms :) I don't mean they get it by the USA defaulting, since they know that won't happen unless Obama intentionally fails to pay the bills even though he has money in the account for it.

The media, given polls in the past 5 years or so, is a pretty shaky platform to rest your hopes upon, but it looks like the only card the Dems have left to play having already whipped out the race, Nazi, terrorist, and granny-killer cards.

Who's More Honest?

Heard a Dem Senator on NPR this morning, blithely passing along lib talking points, unchallenged, of course.

His line? The House Repubs are willing to risk a credit downgrade in the name of politics.

Yeah?

Problem: His leader, Harry Reid, has sworn that every Dem in the Senate will vote against the bill if it reaches the Senate.

Problem: The potential downgrade from credit raters is if the USA defaults, which, of course, will not happen since we have plenty of money to pay interest on the debt.

Problem: The other threatened credit downgrade is if the government doesn't make efforts, now, to trim $4 Trillion in spending. This bill would trim $1 Trillion.

Problem: The only group pushing for cuts that would meet that goal and allow the USA to avoid default is the group he was attacking along with establishment Repubs...the economic conservatives in the House, particularly the freshmen.

All shot from his rear with my tax dollars on NPR without challenge.

YNN Still Misinforming Viewers

At least as of this morning, YNN's newsreaders are still falsely claiming that the 8-2 deadline will trigger a default if no deal is reached.

Suddenly Newsworthy

Sort of like Suddenly Salad, whipped up just when you need it for a party, this is Suddenly Newsworthy for the leftwing media:

The Fast Fix: Has Wall Street abandoned Obama?

Yabut...the GOP is the party of Wall Street!

Yabut...Goldman Sachs is the 'independent' company cited so often when Obama and the left was trying to justify their failed stimulus nightmare.

Yabut...Obama is fighting Wall Street for us!

Suddenly, just when they need it to paint Mitt Romney as the darling of Wall Street, do they discover that for the past 3 years Obama (and before him the Clintons) was the darling of Wall Street. Suddenly Newsworthy!

Employees at Goldman Sachs, one of Wall Street's most high profile companies, donated nearly $250,000 to the former Massachusetts governor over the past three months. President Obama raised $127,000 from Goldman for himself and the Democratic National Committee over that same period. In 2008 Obama raised more than a million dollars from Goldman, the single biggest corporate donor to his campaign...

Still, Obama isn't doing too bad among Wall Street types. One in three of his top bundlers -- the men and women collecting hundreds of $2,500 checks for his campaign -- make their living in the financial sector...

Funny how this sort of thing wasn't Yahoo frontpage newsworthy for the past 3 years as Obama attacked "Wall Street greed" of fat cats not "paying their fair share". Right?

Is It Over Yet?

This is really getting tiresome. If Congress refuses to raise Obama's credit limit, he might have to *gasp* reduce his spending to levels unseen since...

just before he was elected.

Back when the government was the size of James Madison's kitchen table, orphans starved in the streets, blacks were enslaved, and dinosaurs roamed the earth.

It's just all so pathetic. The government is no closer to 'defaulting' that it was 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 30 years ago...but there weren't continual articles in our papers exploring the many ways life would end on earth if it did as there are now.

Then again, 5, 10, and 30 years ago there wasn't The Won to re-elect and a resurgent, popular, principled GOP to destroy.

Open And Transparent? Or Fast And Furious?

IBD continues to lay out the case...why does Holder still have a job?

According to court records reviewed by Fox News, two of the 20 defendants indicted in the Fast and Furious investigation — and, yes, there have been indictments — have felony convictions. Jacob Wayne Chambers and Sean Christopher Stewart obtained more than 360 weapons despite criminal records that should have prevented them from buying even one gun.

When asked about the breakdown, Stephen Fischer, a spokesman for the NICS System, said the FBI had no comment. We are not surprised. Since day one, you could here crickets chirp every time the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or the Department of Justice was asked about an operation that got two U.S. agents killed.

We suspect the FBI was ordered to look the other way just as ATF agents were told to every time they had a chance to interdict weapons going to Mexico, allegedly the whole purpose of the operation. That order could only have come from Attorney General Eric Holder...

Both President Obama and Attorney General Holder have disavowed any knowledge of the ATF's actions, though we have documented how Holder boasted of the program to Mexican officials and a deputy attorney general said things were done as "the president has directed us."...

The lies, the intimidation of witnesses, the administration denials — all are part of a cover-up strongly reminiscent of Watergate except for one thing: Nobody died at Watergate.

Reality Going Mainstream?

If so, it's about time.

Meme Go Boom

Anders Behring Breivik is not a Christian, but we already knew that

Contrary to early reports, Anders Behring Breivik is not a Christian. In fact in his 1,518 page manifesto, the perpetrator of the atrocities in Norway has specifically disavowed any real commitment to Christ. In his own words:

...Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian (p. 1307).

Uh....yeaaaaaahhhhh....mmmm'kaaaaaaayyyyy.....one of those...."moral platform Christians"....yeaaaahhhhh....

==

Update: more here

Coming Soon To New York

Despite all the lies assurances given to Senators that sold out their constituents, we know full well that the parade of litigation that flies directly in the face of 'freedom of religion' will soon be visiting NY, a state already hostile to religion - unless, of course, NY is so very special that it will be different than, oh, everywhere else that this happened:

ACLU Sues ‘Family-Friendly’ Inn for Refusing to Host Lesbian Wedding Reception

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing a small, family-owned Vermont inn for allegedly refusing to host a lesbian couple’s wedding reception.

The Wildflower Inn is owned by a "devout, practicing Catholic family who believes in the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman," its Facebook page says. "We have never refused rooms or dining or employment to gays and lesbians."

The ACLU says the Vermont Human Rights Law prohibits public accommodation -- hotels and small inns included -- from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation...

It's never been about 'equality' and anyone that tells you differently is mocking you and insulting your intelligence, to be perfectly blunt.

Obama Trying To Bring Down Markets To Win In 2012, Hike Taxes?

It certainly looks that way...even to more honest parts of the press!

But it’s not fear for fear’s sake. The White House is employing the same cynical, irresponsible political strategy to force Congress’ hand that it started in January, using Wall Street as its foil. This morning, NPR—as usual and unsurprisingly—had the zeitgeist of the Obama White House just right. Cokie Roberts, its long-time commentator, said:

[T]here’s a certain element of waiting for the markets to weigh in and show Congress that they have to get serious here…You see the Administration almost kind of, almost daring the markets to respond, yesterday saying that the Congress had to act by 4:00 yesterday afternoon before the Asian markets started to open.

...The attempt by senior members of the Administration, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, to make markets even more nervous than they are was noticed by other journalists. Veteran financial journalist Charles Gasparino vented his frustration on ABC’s This Week with Christian Amanpour by saying “it’s irresponsible for Geithner to go out there to talk about default. If he’s worried about the Asian markets tonight, why does he mention default? We are not going to default. We have cash on hand to pay bond holders.”

But that is the political game the White House is playing—and it’s a dangerous one. Investment adviser James Rickards wrote to Politico‘s Playbook, “Geithner and Obama are foolish to try to ‘scare’ markets over the debt ceiling. Markets are already scared. They’re looking for reassurance and a more mature dialogue.”

Is Obama Actually Insane?

I mean, yeah, I know it sounds all hyperbolic and nutty like something a leftist would say about, well, anyone more conservative than Hillary Clinton...

But some of the stuff he says...

Is he simply mentally ill?

President Barack Obama said that Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) – the president best known for establishing a welfare and regulatory state in America – was “fiscally conservative,” in response to a question about how to keep the economy going.

Understanding, if you will, that being a pathological liar would count.

Dept. Of Ed Insanity

What the fuuuuuu...

In Today's 'Wall Street Journal': University Finds Student Guilty of Sexual Assault While Police Charge Accuser for Lying About It

In a stark demonstration of the failure of campus judicial procedures, the University of North Dakota (UND) has found a student guilty of sexual assault despite the fact that local police refused to charge him with a crime and instead charged his accuser for lying about the incident. Former student Caleb Warner has been banned by UND from stepping foot on any state public campus for three years. Meanwhile, his accuser has been wanted by the Grand Forks Sheriff's Department for more than a year on the charge of making a false report to law enforcement. Warner has turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) to help remedy this injustice...

"Caleb Warner's accuser has been charged with lying to the police about the facts, but if even this isn't enough to reopen the case, what hope does anyone at UND have for a fair hearing?"...

In finding Warner guilty, UND used the weak "preponderance of the evidence" standard (50.01% certainty) to determine guilt or innocence—an evidentiary standard recently imposed upon every federally funded college in the country under a new regulation from the federal Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights...

"UND does not seem to care that the very evidence that it believed made it 'more likely than not' that Warner had committed sexual assault was seen by the police and courts as reason to charge his accuser with lying to them," said FIRE Senior Vice President Robert Shibley. "Now that the federal government has required all colleges to use the nation's lowest possible standard of proof, how many other students will be put in the same Kafkaesque situation?"

Inescapable

Even in a 'not terrible' story about the debt baloney, language like the following is almost inescapable in America today apart from talk radio, some parts of FoxNews, the rightweb, and, of course, discussions with actual Americans:

Boehner's taking flak on his right. Now, Obama's depicting House Republicans as stubborn, small-minded, and willing to risk default, higher interest rates, and stock market volatility just to block higher taxes.

What you don't see is:

Obama's taking flak on his left. Now, House Republicans are depicting Obama as stubborn, small-minded, and willing to risk default, higher interest rates, and stock market volatility just to get higher taxes.

It's there. It's almost always there. And once you know what to look for (thank you, Bernie Goldberg!), it's so obvious.

Confused

Well, we know how this is going to play out. White Norwegian dipshit nutjob apparently known for being anti-muslim goes utterly batshit crazy and blows away children by the dozen.

Naturally it's Sarah Palin's fault. Etc.

Obviously this rightwing Christian bastard was finally forced into action by anti-muslim sentiment running rampant.

Right?

Well, this is a tailor made narrative for the worldwide leftwing press...except...

He didn't go nuts on muslims. He just went nuts and started killing random people.

Muslims seem to regularly and with great vigor murder other muslims...but not when they go on a random killing spree in the name of 'god'. When they do that they kill westerners or jews.

So, yeah, this is indeed a ready made script from central casting if he had gone to a muslim center and started blowing away muslims...

but he didn't. Hard to make the argument that he was prompted by the narrative being built around him when he didn't actually take action against the very people everyone will so soon be eager to say he was motivated by hatred of.

Right?

--

See?

"While the main terrorist threat to democratic societies around the world still comes from Islamist extremists, the horrific events in Norway are a reminder that white far-right extremism is also a major and possibly growing threat," said James Brandon, research head at London's Quilliam think-tank.

But this is crap. He didn't attack muslims, he didn't attack leftist politicians, he didn't attack anyone in power...he was shooting down children. Are they seriously arguing that "white far-right" extremists are anti-children and secretly want to gun down kids? And if his "plan" was somehow to murder children in order to stop the islamization of Norway, then how the hell does anyone with a straight face argue that his plan makes sense to any "white far-right" people or that his "plan" is anything but bat-shit craziness.

Sorry, doesn't make any sense.

Your Random Saturday

Walter Williams on a subject dear to my own heart, the increasing stupidity of our populace thanks to the idiotic liberal education system that has been allowed to flourish:

The ignorance about our country is staggering. According to one survey, only 28 percent of students could identify the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Only 26 percent of students knew that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are called the Bill of Rights. Fewer than one-quarter of students knew that George Washington was the first president of the United States...

Ignorance and possibly contempt for American values, civics and history might help explain how someone like Barack Obama could become president of the United States. At no other time in our history could a person with longtime associations with people who hate our country become president. Obama spent 20 years attending the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's hate-filled sermons, which preached that "white folks' greed runs a world in need," called our country the "US of KKK-A" and asked God to "damn America." Obama's other America-hating associates include Weather Underground Pentagon bomber William Ayers and Ayers' wife, Bernardine Dohrn.

The fact that Obama became president and brought openly Marxist people into his administration doesn't say so much about him as it says about the effects of decades of brainwashing of the American people by the education establishment, media and the intellectual elite.

Exactly:

Karl Rove tried to explain it to us back in 2008, but he narrowly missed it.

"Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove said, per Christianne Klein of ABC News. "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

No; [Obama]’s not that guy exactly.

He’s that guy’s son.

Larry:

The U.S. Justice Department argued that as an illegal alien the accused should have been advised that he had a right to go to the Mexican consultant to obtain an attorney. Since the accused didn't reveal he was an illegal alien when arrested, the Obama administration sued Texas for not asking the accused about his status...Meanwhile, the administration obtained an injunction against Arizona to prevent law enforcement, during a lawful stop, from inquiring about legal status.

Praise for the GOP House:

Only one group of public officials has behaved in recent weeks as the elected representatives of the people in a great republic should: the House Republicans. The federal government has a problem. We're hitting a debt ceiling limit passed into law last year by the Democratic Congress, and signed by President Obama. We're doing so because of appropriations passed by that same Democratic Congress, and signed by that same Democratic president...

And they are the only ones who've done their duty. Having failed to pass a budget for two years, Senate Democrats have done nothing to deal with the debt limit either. President Obama has in effect withdrawn his January budget proposal, and hasn't submitted a new one. So the morally bankrupt leaders of our fiscally bankrupt federal government meet feverishly behind closed doors, out of sight of the public they're supposed to represent, to figure out how to paper over the mess they've created. Gangs of senators occasionally emerge from their hideouts to announce deals that would raise taxes and gut defense in response to a crisis caused by domestic spending and entitlements. The gangs roam the halls of the Capitol, invading television studios in order to terrorize the citizenry with the prospect of default and mayhem. They then retreat to their lairs, while Beltway insiders shower them with praise while scorning the actual legislation produced and passed by House Republicans in accord with the norms of democratic government.

Enough! No more gangs! No more deals! Gangster government is unworthy of a democratic republic. We elect leaders, not dealers. They are responsible for the fiscal future of the United States. They're not negotiating with foreign enemies, where secrecy is often necessary. They're not authorizing covert intelligence operations, which have to be planned behind closed doors.

Local Papers On The Wrong Side Of The Tracks

Here are some recent examples of the idiocy that our local press is wallowing in over the magical, mystical, futuristic glory of....dum dum duuuuummmmm - HIGH SPEED RAIL!

Times Union 2-24-11

The Stakes: Shortsightedness elsewhere makes for opportunity here...In Florida, just like Wisconsin and Ohio before it, the central characters are short-sighted politicians who have rejected available federal funds to develop high-speed railroad service...

Daily Gazette - 4-5-11

...The state does want the money (actually, some of the $2.4 billion Florida rejected) -- and should want it. That's because high-speed rail, besides being an efficient, environmentally friendly alternative to planes and cars, could be a boon to upstate's economy.

New York state should aggressively go after that money, with commitments to spend some of its own on a dedicated new passenger rail track between Albany and Buffalo and a commuter train in the Capital Region. Unlike debt to paper over deficits, this is infrastructure that will benefit us now as well as future generations, and worth borrowing money for.

Times Union 4-6-11

Money is that much more readily available, thanks to the Obama administration's determination to invest more in modern railroad technology and the rash decisions by states like Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin that such federally subsidized projects soon enough will be boondoggles...

Their insistence that faster trains are something New York can't afford is puzzling...

Times Union 5-11-11

Wow, thanks, Florida. Especially you, Gov. Rick Scott. Thanks a million. Ah, make that $354 million. The Sunshine State's blunder is, literally, a gravy train for the Empire State.

Demonstrating the sense Mr. Scott so clearly lacks, Governor Cuomo, cheered on by New York's congressional delegation, applied for the state's share of the $2.4 billion in federal money that suddenly was available after the Florida governor rejected funds for an ambitious high-speed rail project...

For a welcome change, New York is among the true beneficiaries of federal policies that determine where money from Washington goes. So, too, are Connecticut, Massachusetts and 12 other states as well. The states that have embraced President Obama's commitment to a bold expansion of rail service with workable plans of their own can reap the spoils of victory in a potentially momentous transportation policy struggle...

Thanks, too, to state governments in Ohio and Wisconsin, which also rejected federal funding for railroad projects that could lead to a future encompassing everything from a more sensible consumption of energy to a more robust economy.

The prevailing attitude in those states, driven by some of the most cynical politics imaginable, is that such money from Washington, for railroad improvements and similar initiatives, doesn't pay off.

Fear won out over hope, in anticipation that those states would be on their own to cover costs that exceeded federal grants...

Times Union 7-15-11

...an epic disaster is an opportunity to slash a forward-looking high-speed rail program, divert blue state money to red ones and keep stoking the flames of divisive politics...

Never mind, it seems, building the kind of modern mass transit that would help this country reduce its use of fossil fuels and the pollution that goes with it.

--

OK, to summarize, according to the transportation experts tapping away at keyboards at the Times Union and Daily Gazette, those that oppose wasting money on these rail projects are:

shortsighted
making rash decisions
puzzling
afraid of boondoggles
blundering
cynical for thinking it won't pay off
pushing fear over hope

Whereas the geniuses in NY and similar are:

looking at a boon to the economy
jumping on the gravy train
ambitious
have workable plans
reaping the spoils of victory
going to get a more robust economy
forward-looking

Really?

OK, knowing how the opponents have been portrayed (as NOT looking ahead correctly and thinking it won't go well) and the proponents (geniuses that know it will be a massive success and economic slam dunk of glory who think ahead), let's look at the reality of high speed rail elsewhere and see which group has looked at reality (based on past efforts) and which is being short sighted, thinking only of the current gravy train they can wallow in:

President Obama won't put high-speed rail on the block to ease the debt crisis. He insists we need to keep up with China. But its rail has become a $300 billion boondoggle.

Yes, that's billion with a b. China's Railway Ministry continues to lose money and is now an eye-popping $267 billion in the hole.

With its grandiose bullet trains, which largely run empty, Beijing has created a hidden debt bomb threatening its banking system...

This is the system Obama praises and wants America to model. In his infinite wisdom, he has called for a six-year, $53 billion spending plan for high-speed rail...

Even China's peasants don't want to ride theirs. Ridership is so low, the ministry recently had to slash ticket prices to attract passengers.

The lack of use should come as no surprise. High-speed rail is a money loser everywhere in the world it's been tried...

The California High-Speed Rail Authority plans to bring the rail through the Mohave Desert's steep Tehachapi Pass, where trucks crawl at 35 mph.

Tunneling under the mountain is the only option. But a train entering a small tunnel in the Tehachapi Mountains at 180 mph — as California's rail ministry has depicted in a laughable video rendering — would be like slamming into a wall. Compressed air isn't forgiving.

To overcome the piston-effect pressure changes, the tunnel would have to be built with cavernous proportions. And there'd have to be two of them, one in each direction, both running some 15 miles long...

Poor construction and safety problems have forced Beijing to reduce top train speeds from 218 mph to 186 mph. It's also slowing construction of new lines until ridership catches up.

More:

The Beijing-Tianjin line, built at a cost of $46 million per mile, is losing more than $100 million a year. Ticket prices are high for a Chinese citizenry with an estimated per-capita income of $4,300, still below the world average despite China's touted economic boom. People still prefer riding buses over these government-mandated bullet trains.

Fact is, high-speed rail, with all its glitz and glamour, sucks up huge gobs of money to build, and even if you attract the planned number of riders, you're lucky to cover just the debt service. Japan had to bail out its trains in 1987, as did Taiwan in 2009, two years after they began running.

And more:

Bullet-train boosters say such a worst-case scenario is highly unlikely. But the math of this project suggests otherwise. The cost of linking San Francisco to the L.A. area is now estimated at about $43 billion. State bond funds would cover less than a quarter of that, and potential ridership and revenues are too iffy to attract private investment.

Which group has looked at real world high speed rail and considered the costs and benefits, the real ones, not the ones to unions? Which group is being short sighted in pushing for federal money we can't afford to start projects that we can't afford to finish that will never work as intended and cost more than expected?

They call this "journalism"?

(with apologies to the Simpsons)

Obama: Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
High-speed
Rail!
What'd I say?

Daily Gazette: High-speed rail!

Obama: What's it called?

California: High-speed rail!

Obama: That's right! High-speed rail!

...

I swear it's America's only choice...
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!

All: High-speed rail!

Obama: What's it called?

All: High-speed rail!

Obama: Once again...

All: High-speed rail!

GOP: But Main Street's still all cracked and broken...

Times Union: Sorry, GOP, the mob has spoken!

IBD Set Straight Some Recent Headline News

First up is the Pigford mess that the press is trying to use to smear Bachmann over because she correctly noted that it's a corrupt scam:

The original Pigford settlement arose out of a 1997 class-action lawsuit by Timothy Pigford and 400 southern black farmers who had apparently legitimate claims of discrimination against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in its allocation of farm loans between 1983 and 1987. At last count, more than 94,000 black farmers had signed up for well north of $1 billion in payments under the settlement.

Based on census data, however, there were only some 33,000 black farmers in existence during the period in question. Based on that number and the number of denied applications, the USDA originally estimated that only 2,000 such claims would be filed...

Under the original settlement, a federal judge ordered $50,000 payouts to claimants using very low levels of "proof." As BigGovernment.com reported, the only "proof" required was a form stating the claimant had "attempted" to farm, perhaps planting tomatoes in the backyard, and to have a family member vouch for that assertion.

Presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has called for a federal investigation of Pigford, saying "the numbers just don't add up."

The other is an attack on another up-and-coming conservative favorite, FL Rep. Allen West. Again, the attempt to single out and destroy conservative 'leaders' is so obvious it's practically laughable - or would be if most people weren't clueless. Imagine the gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes if it was the right singling out women and blacks for personal attacks...no problemo when it's the left, though:

Republican Allen West is refusing to apologize to fellow Floridian and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz for calling her "vile, unprofessional and despicable." His only fault was omitting "liar" and "hypocrite."

The dust-up between the two Florida House members purportedly started when Schultz stood up in the House chamber and, after West left, blasted him for backing Rep. Paul Ryan's Medicare reform...

But the dust-up really began when Schultz led a protest outside West's campaign headquarters last October and depicted the black Army veteran's Tea Party supporters as racist Nazis.

"Our protest is different," she said, "because I don't see any swastikas, or any pictures of the president in blackface or burned in effigy here."

Nothing?

So the obstructionist, do nothing Republicans in Congress have done nothing but slow down Obama, who otherwise would have the economy humming since they took over in January in the House.

Right?

Except...

Who has passed a budget this year? The House GOP. The Democrats in the Senate haven't bothered with a budget of their own and voted against the House's.

Who has passed a plan to deal with the debt ceiling issue? The House GOP. The Democrats in the Senate killed it without offering a plan of their own and Obama vowed to veto it, even if it passed.

Who, exactly, is failing to act and obstructing progress, mainstream media?

Hmmm?

==

update - this sounds so familiar:

Update: Funniest line of the presser: Obama said “Sometimes if you wanna be a leader, you have to lead.” And then in typical Obama fashion, he walked out of the room.

Some leader. We’re seeing what happens when someone with zero executive experience gets elected to the most difficult job in the world. Barack Obama is in over his head.

To recap a bit of history, Barack Obama has been president going on three years. In that time, he has proposed one budget, which was such a fine document that the Democrat-controlled Senate shot it down 97-0. His party has failed to move on a budget for more than 800 days. Even now, they have no plan for the debt ceiling crisis. None. The only real plan has come out of the House, where it passed. The Democrat-controlled Senate killed it on a party-line vote today...

Flaskback: The closest the president has come to having a plan on the debt was a speech he delivered back on April 13. Asked to score it, the Congressional Budget Office reasonably responded that it can’t score a speech.

Tell me now, who’s not serious about dealing with the debt – the president who gave a speech, or the Republicans who delivered and passed an actual plan.

GOP Spent Too Much With Bush, But How Much Did They Really Spend?

Interesting little summary here that not only torpedoes the Democrat argument, but frankly should open some eyes on the rightweb when they think back on Bush II's legacy and how much the GOP spent during that time:

In apportioning responsibilities for annual federal budget deficits and the staggering increases in the national debt, Harkin made the following claim:

"Democrats are willing to do whatever is necessary to raise the debt ceiling, not for future borrowing but to pay the debts that we racked up in the past. Which, mostly was racked up by a Republican House, a Republican Senate and a Republican President in the last 8 years. Yet, they're not willing to pay the bills," Harkin said.

Tom Blumer goes on to obliterate the claim using actual debt totals and finds the following (and he never even gets around to explicitly depantsing Harkin for forgetting that it was his own party that took over both houses of Congress in 2007):

The scoreboard:

- Republican President and Republican Congress -- $2.24 trillion
- All other situations -- over $6.4 trillion

The nitty gritty:

- Year ended September 30, 2001 -- Bill Clinton was president in 2000, and the Republicans controlled Congress. The $133 billion debt buildup during that fiscal year doesn't make Harkin's list. (Gosh, I thought we were running surpluses?)

- Two years ended September 30, 2003 -- George W. Bush was president, Republicans controlled Congress, and Democrats controlled the Senate during from mid-2001 until the end of 2002. The $976 billion increase in the national debt during those two years doesn't make Harkin's list.

- Four years ended September 30, 2007 -- George W. Bush was president and Republicans controlled Congress during calendar 2003-2006. Republicans get full credit for the $2.24 trillion increase in the national debt during that period.

- Two years ended September 30, 2009 -- Bush was president, but Democrats controlled Congress during calendar 2007-2008. The $2.9 trillion increase in the national debt during that period doesn't make Harkin's list.

- Year ended September 30, 2010 -- Barack Obama was president and Democrats controlled Congress during calendar 2009. The $1.62 trillion increase in the national debt during that year doesn't make Harkin's list.

- October 1, 2010 through July 19, 2011 (the day before Harkin spoke) -- Obama was president and Democrats controlled Congress during calendar 2010. On July 19, 2011, the national debt was $14.34 trillion. The roughly $780 billion increase in the national debt during the current fiscal year doesn't make Harkin's list.

Tom goes on to note that the press has utterly (and unsurprisingly) failed to pick up on the blatant dishonesty and/or wild inaccuracy in the Democrat's claim, as Tom notes, had it been a Republican or *gasp* Sarah Palin, it would've been headline news for a week...seriously, can you imagine if Michele Bachmann had claimed that Bush had a Republican Congress for 8 years or that Bush had been president with a GOP Congress for the past 8 years? You can hear them now, braying that not only can they not get American history right, they don't even know who the President was or who controlled Congress in the past decade!

I guess even the most ardent Democrats have blocked Obama's fumbling reign of error for the past 2 years with a Democrat Congress from their memories.

Compomising Positions

The press seems to go on and on about 'what is the GOP willing to give up in a debt compromise?!' (just check through the recent archives at Newsbusters) Because, after all, they keep saying Obama is willing to compromise on cuts (actually slowings) to entitlements.

But let's actually look at it.

GOP doesn't want to raise debt limit.
Obama doesn't want to make cuts.
GOP doesn't want tax hikes.
Obama wants tax hikes.
GOP wants cuts.
Obama doesn't want cuts.

They say the GOP isn't willing to compromise by adding in tax hikes. Everyone knows that Obama has to compromise on cuts, a $1.5 trillion deficit this year just isn't even funny anymore

So is the GOP actually not willing to give up anything in a compromise if they're getting cuts and refuse to give in to tax hikes?

Yes. Yes, they are. They're willing to raise the debt ceiling.

There, so much for the 'GOP isn't willing to give up anything' argument.

You're welcome.

I Spoke Too Soon

When I said the media had started getting things right about the debt dust-up I spoke way too soon:

As August 2, the date the U.S. Treasury will run out of money

No, it won't.

and default on its debt,

No, it won't.

approaches, President Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders are working on a deal

No, he's not, he just went to see Harry Potter, instead and still hasn't actually produced a 'plan' for the Republican leaders to actually evaluate.

Democrats Lying About GOP Debt Bill? Shocking!

I know it's hard to believe that the Democrats, who haven't been able to get around to doing a budget for OVER TWO YEARS IN THE MIDST OF A RECESSION, would lie about the GOP plan that actually balances the budget and gets control of federal spending. Still, here ya go:

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the ranking member on the House Budget Committee, made several inaccurate statements about the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act during a news conference on Tuesday...

“Why do I say that? They’ve embedded two provisions into this constitutional proposal. One, they would make it as a matter of constitutional law that you can cut Medicare, Social Security, [and] education with a simple majority vote, but you need a two-thirds vote to cut an oil and gas subsidy for the purpose of reducing the deficit.”

Van Hollen’s statement is not accurate. Congress already has the constitutional authority to cut so-called non-discretionary programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, with a simple majority vote. Also, under the legislation, Social Security and Medicare are specifically exempt from the automatic spending cuts Congress must make if it exceeds the spending caps set out in the law.

Further, the two-thirds majority Van Hollen refers to is part of the balanced budget amendment included in the legislation. This amendment would require a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Congress to raise taxes. The amendment gives Congress broad discretion to define what would constitute a tax increase, meaning that the oil subsidies Van Hollen points to may not require a two-thirds vote to repeal them as he claims...

Van Hollen’s characterization of the requirement to end certain subsidies also is not accurate. Under the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act, a two-thirds vote is required only if Congress wanted to raise taxes. The legislation does not specify whether ending certain tax expenditures would constitute a tax increase...

“If you look at the amendment that was voted out of the Judiciary Committee the other day, it writes into the Constitution a cap on expenditures of 18 percent of GDP. The United States has exceeded that cap every year since 1966,” he said. “Yet, the bill that was reported out of committee and the bill on the floor of the House today requires that you set an artificial cap -- the one that’s been voted out is 18 percent.”

While it is true that a House Judiciary Committee amendment would have set the cap at 18 percent of GDP, that amendment was not adopted. The actual caps in the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act never go below 19.6 percent of GDP, eventually settling at 19.9 percent of GDP in 2021.

Meanwhile, the press repeats their lies:

Democrats argue that the so-called "cut, cap and balance" measure would impose untenable spending restraints and set spending levels, as a percentage of the overall economy, on par with the mid-1960s — before the advent of Medicare and automatic Social Security cost-of-living adjustments.

Nowhere in this AP "news" article will you see that this "Democrat" argument is, simply put, a flat-out lie. Just stupid? Or intentional and malicious? As anyone paying attention can see, there is much talk of "compromise" in stories and more and more fluffing of Obama and his desire for, as repeated in this AP article, "a big compromise". Yet Obama and his team have not done a budget for 2 years. He made no effort to control the debt for 2 years with a Democrat Congress. He ludicrously claimed that Obamacare would reduce the deficit. And now he wants a "a big compromise" that only involves the GOP compromising...trillions in higher taxes in exchange for a whopping $2 billion in spending cuts this year. $2 billion. It's about time more people spoke up like Charles Krauthammer:

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: [The President] talks a good game. “Oh, I’m prepared to do entitlements, I’m ready to do entitlements.” Not once has he ever enunciated in public - other than all these leaks which I don’t trust for half a second – one structural change in entitlements, and without that, everybody over the age of nine knows we are not going to get a handle on the debt. So let’s hear him say it in public once.

NINA TOTENBERG, NPR: So why is it when he offered the big deal, the $4 trillion deal…

GORDON PETERSON, HOST: The grand bargain.

TOTENBERG: …the grand bargain, Republicans backed away from it?

KRAUTHAMMER: When did he offer that?

TOTENBERG: He offered that last week.

KRAUTHAMMER: Where?

TOTENBERG: In, he did it, publicly and in negotiations.

KRAUTHAMMER: In your leaks? What’s in the $4 trillion?

TOTENBERG: But Charles.

KRAUTHAMMER: Give me a number. Explain to me what’s in it.

TOTENBERG: Why is it, in two, in matter of two days, Republicans backed away from that and said we don’t want it?

KRAUTHAMMER: You accept everything he says, a $4 trillion deal, if you don’t have a single item in it that you can enunciate.

TOTENBERG: Well, I’m not at the table. Perhaps you are, but I’m not.

KRAUTHAMMER: Well then how does he expect America to accept something in which he explains nothing?...

KRAUTHAMMER: My colleagues are demonstrating a point I’ve been trying to make about how you have a completely compliant, pliant, supine press accepting every leak out of the White House. Tell me, we have been told, I’ve heard it again and again that the President’s prepared to do, to make cuts in entitlements. Name me one.

Can We Poll Better

If you poll someone, call them up and convince them not to hang up, you ask them maybe 3 or 4 questions? Would it be so bad to ask one more? What about longer interviews of maybe 7 or 8 questions? How about 2 more?

All I want, if you're going to ask whose position you favor, let's use the debt ceiling debate for instance, if you're going to ask if you favor the Obama non-plan or the Republican plan that has passed the House for example, how about also asking just one more question. Maybe - 'Who is the Speaker of the House of Representatives?' Or - 'Who is the Vice President?' Or - 'Is the projected deficit, the amount the federal government spends over what it brings in, for this year expected to be closer to $1 million dollars, $1 billion dollars, $1 trillion dollars, or $50 trillion dollars?'

Because if the press wants to trumpet some baloney poll showing that they've influenced the debate, I want cross tabs to see whether or not the people that support Obama or the GOP have a clue what they're talking about.

If you're polling someone on who they trust on the economy, I want to know if they have the slightest clue about the economy or the people they're supposed to trust. Question 1 - 'Who do you trust more on the economy, President Obama or the Republicans?' Question 2 - 'How many months has unemployment in America been below 9% since President Obama took office in January 2009 - no months, 3 months, 9 months, or 15 months?' Question 3 - 'Did President Obama's stimulus plan lead you to either hire one or more workers?' Question 4 - 'If you own a business, did President Obama's stimulus plan lead you to retain one or more workers, refuse to hire any more workers, lay off one or more workers, or none of the above?'

If someone's going to throw a poll in my face, I want to know if they have a clue what they're talking about or can be ignored. Let's face it, how valuable is a poll showing 40% of the people polled favor Obama's non-plan and 38% favor the GOP plan where 75% cannot correct state which party controls the Senate or which party controlled Congress for the first two years of Obama's term?

Question 1 - 'Who is more to blame for the gridlock in Washington, the President and the Democrats or the Republicans?' Question 2 - 'The federal government is facing a debt crisis because there is no spending/taxation plan in place for this fiscal year. Which House of Congress has passed a budget in the past year, the Senate, the House of Representatives, both, or neither?' Question 3 (rotates) - 'Which party controls the Senate/House of Representatives?'

Huh?

Why are they naming a race at Saratoga after Giffords? They know that

1) She lives way over in Arizona; and

2) She's not dead

right?

How about naming races after local soldiers that have lost their lives in combat or Medal of Honor recipients or something?

Why Is A Newspaper Paying Brian Nearing?

I'd love for someone at the Albany Times Union explain why a newspaper, purportedly engaged in journalism, is paying Brian Nearing. His latest sloppy kiss to Algore was on Sunday, writing the following absolute bullspit.

Michael Mann has felt the heat for being part of the international scientific consensus behind man-made climate change.

Which consensus would that be, Brian? The one that the environuts keep claiming exists when you smear anyone that disagrees with a "denier" tag and only keep the subset that agrees with you?

(The American Physical Society, aka physicists) With this issue of Physics & Society, we kick off a debate concerning one of the main conclusions of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body which, together with Al Gore, recently won the Nobel Prize for its work concerning climate change research. There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.

*

In 2001, Mann published a report that showed temperatures have risen dramatically during the previous two decades compared with the previous 1,000 years -- which included a temperature chart known as the "hockey stick" because of its distinctive shape.

Gee, where is the statement that Mann's "hockey stick" has 100% been proved to be absolute BS? I see you managed to leave that out. Funny, you seem to manage to leave out an awful lot of stuff from your "articles" that don't play well to the environutastistic leftwingers. Why do you think that is? Is that how "journalism" is supposed to work, Brian?

But now a shock: Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.

But it wasnt so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.

Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!

Worth mentioning in an article about Mann, Brian? I guess not. That's "journalism" at the Times Union.

Mann is the former UVA professor, whose “hockey stick” temperature chart was used to promote claims that “sudden” and “unprecedented” manmade global warming “threatens” human civilization and Earth itself. The hockey stick was first broken by climatologists Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, who demonstrated that a Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were clearly reflected in historic data across the globe, but redacted by Mann. Analysts Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick later showed that Mann’s computer program generated hockey-stick patterns regardless of what numbers were fed into it – even random telephone numbers; that explained why the global warming and cooling of the last millennium magically disappeared in Mann’s “temperature reconstruction.”

*

Now, conservative commentators repeatedly attack Mann by name, causing his email inbox to swell with angry messages accusing him of being a liar and a fraud.And liberal environuts like Brian Nearing attack conservatives, calling them "deniers", "denialists", and comparing them to Holocaust deniers, demanding they shut up and get out of the way, accusing them of being liars, frauds, and tools of BIG OIL. What's your point, Brian, besides the extraordinarily un-journalistic goal of attempting to conjure sympathy in a "news" article for a character already exposed as a fraud?

*

The attorney general of Virginia, who denies climate change...

Even the New York Times doesn't make this stupid claim:

For nearly a year, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, Virginia’s crusading Republican attorney general, has waged a one-man war on the theory of man-made global warming.

*

A conservative think tank is trying to obtain practically every word Mann has written or received during his six years at Penn State.

Why? Any chance of telling us, Brian? I guess not. So much for "journalism", I guess innuendo and yet more flailing "conservative" labels pass for "journalism".

*

Average global temperatures have risen for three consecutive decades.

Really, Brian? Because noted global warming pusher Phil Jones has said "for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming." I guess Brian knows better than Professor Jones.

All told, Brian manages to use the "conservative" label 5 times in this brief article. Somehow "liberal" does not appear. He also manages, in this brief article, actually in one paragraph, to mention the Koch's three times in some sort of innuendo campaign he and the left are on. Funny, I haven't seen many "journalism" pieces in the Times Union talking about the influence of felonious liberal financier George Soros buying journalists for leftwing outlets. Funny, that. I guess what's good for the goose isn't necessarily any good for the gander for Nearing or the Times Union's brand of "journalism". He even manages to slip in that liberal boogeyman, the scary "tea party".

All in all, what are we told in this Sunday "news" article? Well, pretty much like his last column...damned near nothing of any substance besides lies, smears, half-truths, and innuendo a la a whispering campaign against anyone that disagrees with the liberal left. When you take all that out, this is the information you get from this article that was "newsworthy" enough for the Sunday Times Union:

'Michael Mann produces work purporting to show global warming. Other people, who don't exist because there is consensus, disagree and don't like his fear-mongering. Conservatives that disagree with the theory of anthropogenic global warming are working to show he is wrong so we stop wasting money on it.'

There, I did it in like 3 sentences. And, unlike Brian, what I said was true.

Stupidity Reigns

Yup, it's still going on:



Amazing, isn't it, that anyone could still 'expect' things to get better when faced with like 2 years of very steady, very consistently bad data? Truly a feat of mental self-deception that knows nearly no bounds. Allow yourself, just a brief moment, to consider what the press would be saying if a Republican were presiding over this economy, this moribund, barely growing, 9+% unemployment, inflation-on-the-way economy.

Ok, that's enough.

Look at this ridiculous "report". A "labor market this is struggling to regain momentum"? Yeah? You mean since 2008 or so?

I mean, what is wrong with someone that expects improvement when as far as the eye can see they see "We're just stuck in this trend between 410,000 and 430,000." If you're stuck in a trend then why do you expect improvement? What has happened to make one think that a trend would break? Improvement in housing? Nope.

Improvement in GDP? Nope.

Improvement in unemployment rate? Nope.

New budget bills being passed? Nope.

Aliens from the planet XK-7 showing up and ordering large quantities of American-made products for export? Nope.

Gas/oil prices falling by half? Nope.

Face it, nothing has happened since Obama took office that would lead anyone to think that things should be improving.

What piece of information, any piece of information, would make anyone think anything has changed from the moment Obama took office? Hey, there's a half-black slacker community organizer with no executive experience or useful real-world business experience in office now, boy, now I've got all kinds of hope that things are going to turn around...yup...any year now...

Short End Of The Stick

Temporarily reserving moral judgement, let's consider this for a moment. The left is wailing and gnashing their teeth over the right wanting to, let's be blunt, take things from 'the poor' and give it to 'the rich'. Right?

They say this because the right is proposing controlling spending on handouts and welfare and not raising taxes on the 50% of us that still pay taxes.

They couch this as 'taking' from 'the poor' and 'giving' to 'the rich'.

Breaking down...

'The poor' are 'given' things like handouts, welfare, entitlements. 'The rich' are 'given'...

are given...

are given...

the right to keep more of the money they earn.

Really?

And this balances in someone's mind because...?

Let me rephrase that.

How does that balance in anyone's mind that is not a socialist?

OK, back to the morality. How many of 'the rich' whine about contributing 'their fair share' or even more than those that are less fortunate, temporarily struggling, in need of a hand up, etc? Very few. But what we're talking about is when 'their fair share' becomes ludicrous. Earning 20% of the money and paying 40% of the taxes? Earning 40% of the money and paying 95% of the taxes? C'mon. There's 'fair' and there's 'fair'. And when you couple it all with the easily observed historical examples of lower, more 'fair' rates bringing in more in taxes, well, who's more morally righteous?

And who is simply couching their desire to see a full blown socialist state replace America in the terms of 'fair share' in order to break down the upper class...then the middle class...until everyone is as poor as everyone else (except, of course, the 'elite' that tell us all how wonderful it all is to be 'equal').

Panetta Banana Peels On The Left Again

I'll admit to being hard on Leon Panetta, a career politician with no military or intelligence experience that Obama has put in charge of the CIA and now our military, both of which I find to be massive mistakes in this day and time. Unfortunately for Obama and the left, he seems to keep 'accidentally' telling the truth and they probably like him little more than conservatives.

The right is displeased with an incompetent, unqualified president putting an unqualified, incompetent jurist on the Supreme Court and an incompetent, unqualified person in charge of the CIA and Defense. I mean, c'mon, the guy was bloviating about Egypt based on what he saw on Twitter! The head of the CIA was relying on speculation on CNN about what was going on!

But the left probably isn't all that thrilled with him.

He explicitly lied about Bush intentionally sending off prisoners to be tortured, only to be forced to retract his statement and admit it wasn't based on any facts.

He failed to promise that he wouldn't ask Obama to authorize harsh interrogation techniques.

He went against Obama on releasing previously-classified CIA documents regarding interrogations - pushing for greater redactions to protect American interests - this was when Obama was open to prosecuting CIA agents for doing their job (I know it's hard to follow his yes-no-yes-no-yes-no stances on this).

He publicly contradicted Pelosi who falsely claimed she was never briefed on so-called harsh interrogation measures by stating the CIA records clearly indicate that she was briefed.

He bungled the 'ending' of a 'top-secret' CIA program that the left was trying to attack Bush and Cheney over (as usual to distract America from the mess Obama was making of the country) - which only served as an opening for Republicans to explain, without contradiction - was a vague 'plan' someone thought up that was never implemented in any way.

And now? He just gave a speech to troops in Iraq explaining that they are there because of 9-11. The 180 degree position from the howling moonbat tinfoil hat brigade that thought he was a great guy to have in charge of our intelligence and military. Good thing he has government health insurance, he's going to need it to have Obama's shoe removed from his posterior:

He said it, he meant it, and there's no denying it.

On Monday, in a statement carried at the Washington Post, the Associated Press, the New York Times (Page A8 of Tuesday's print edition), and elsewhere, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told U.S. troops at Camp Victory in Baghdad: "The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked. And 3,000 Americans — 3,000 not just Americans, 3,000 human beings, innocent human beings — got killed because of al-Qaeda. And we’ve been fighting as a result of that."

That sound you hear is a Democratic Party meme shattering into teeny tiny pieces. The attempts to put Humpty Dumpty together again, both by Panetta himself and the establishment press contingent following him, have been pathetic and ineffectual, which is what happens when one is up against succinctly stated truths...

Panetta's own attempt at the impossible walkback is as follows:

Pressed by reporters to elaborate, Panetta said: “I wasn’t saying, you know, the invasion — or going into the issues or the justification of that. It was more the fact that we really had to deal with al-Qaeda here; they developed a presence here and that tied in.” His aides then intervened and shooed the press corps away.

Sorry, Leon, yes you were saying that 9/11 justified the invasion.

Obama's Cuts This Year? 2 Billion Of 4,000 Billion. Sweet.

Any chance we'll get to see this on the evening news, morning news, or our front pages?



Obama will gladly promise to cut taxes in some distant future for tax cuts today.

The Truth Comes Out

Looks like the press is now being more honest about the 'debt ceiling' - as in this AP story tonight:

Barring action by Congress to raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit, the Treasury will be unable to pay all the government's bills that come due beginning on Aug. 3, two weeks from Wednesday.

Just a few days ago the press was flat-out lying, repeating the Democrat lie that "the government will default" if the ceiling wasn't raised by 8-2.

Ah, Yes, I Remember It So Clearly

First Person: Why We're Pumped About Our Underwater Home

Yeah, I remember back when Bush was President, or Reagan, both struggling to deal with inherited recessions, and media outlets were running front page stories about how happy people were with worthless homes, homelessness, the joyful lives of the FUNemployed.

Yep. They did that stuff all time time.

Yep.

Question

Why aren't there any Democrats challenging Obama for the Democratic nomination?

Are they that sure he can win?

Are they that afraid of being smeared as a racist for 6 months?

Or...

are they that sure they wouldn't have any better chance 11/12 and figure they've got a better chance against a Republican incumbent in 2014 or, more likely, 2018 against a VP since in 2014 they're likely to be facing a popular president presiding over a growing economy?

I Propose

This stupid media crap makes my head hurt...

Got PMS? New campaign says milk can help with that

It cites a 2005 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine that found calcium improved PMS symptoms in more than 1,000 women. The study received some funding from GlaxoSmithKline, which manufactures calcium supplements.

Well who the fudge do you think would otherwise fund a study on calcium's effects?? The Weather Channel? Orville Redenbacher?

I propose from now on no one gets to use a study unless the study is funded by someone that has absolutely zero interest in the subject of the study. Pancreas drugs? Only valid if studies are funded by the Postal Service. Potato chips? Only valid if studies are funded by the makers of plastic report covers. Paper cuts from plastic report covers? Only valid if studies are funded by orange juice growers.

Studies debunking manmade global warming myths funded by oil and gas companies? Well who the **ck else is going to fund them when the government is feverishly shoving money down the pants of "researchers" that are being paid to "find" the opposite effect and "hide the decline" when they don't? Pringles? Should Exxon/Mobil just sit back and watch their livelihoods smeared waiting for Mr. Peanut to fund scientists willing to do research that doesn't come with the threat that if they find a decline they'd better "hide" it? Should Shell sit on their hands until Michael "fabricated hockey stick" Mann agrees to take their money and do research for them and, oh by the way, instantly be ostracized by his "peers" in the "scientific community" for daring to be funded by people that have funding to spend on studies and want a product studied that they actually produce?

I'm not going to believe any more studies about obesity until they're funded by people that make a living selling beach glass sculptures and eating sand...certainly not by the makers of diet plans, diet drugs, food makers, food sellers, additive makers, seasoning makers, seasoning advertisers, health product advertisers, health product users, health care providers, health insurers (including the government), people that grow food, people that sell food, people that market food, or people that eat food. They're inherently biased.

Flyover Country

Good to know that the elitist leftwing geniuses in the media haven't abandoned their hatred of, distaste for, and cluelessness about "flyover country":

NY Times Mocks Bible Christians, Red-State Righties in 'Saving the Space Program' Cartoon Slides...

– “Take the entire country on a field trip to a science museum.” The guide is saying “Come on, Kansas! I know you won’t believe any of this, but attendance is mandatory.”

Biased? Who? Us?

Who's Pushing Granny Off The Cliff?

I feel I have every right to be confused.

Oh I understand what Obama is doing.

Obama is holding Social Security recipients hostage in order to demand tax hikes. Even though we have plenty of money to pay our debt and send out Social Security checks and pay for Medicare and even some other stuff. But if he doesn't get to raise taxes, Obama says he's not going to send Granny her Social Security check, even with the money to do so in his pocket. What's he going to do with it instead? Send it to ACORN?

And I understand what the left is doing.

They make commercials showing Paul Ryan shoving Granny in her wheelchair off a cliff. Even though the Democrat plan for Social Security and Medicare are bankruptcy, because they have proposed no plan to reform those programs, while it is Paul Ryan that has proposed a plan to strengthen and preserve Granny's benefits, not to mention the fact that his plan explicitly exempts current and near recipients of these programs from any changes.

And I understand what the liberal media is doing.

They pass these things along as fact, even though they're lies, and never question the left on what they're doing - often not even bothering to speak with anyone that disagrees with them or quote them or interview them or give their side at all.

I understand these things.

What I don't understand is why anyone still listens to any of them.

Some Basic Economics

Just the facts.

Clinton and Cuomo used Fannie and Freddie to cause the housing downturn and recent recession.

NYT, 9-30-99, "Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending"

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans (read: subprime). Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration (read: Andrew Cuomo) to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans...

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''...

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (read: Andrew Cuomo) proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups...

Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters notes:

Readers are advised that this was months before the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 was enacted largely deregulating financial institutions to do virtually whatever they wanted, and roughly fifteen months before the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 deregulated derivatives.

****

How's that debt working out for you, America?

Since the Democrats took over Congress in 2007, spending has risen by $1.1 trillion or 41 percent. If we spent this year what we did in fiscal 2007, we'd only have a $160 billion deficit, which just so happens to be what the deficit was in the last budget created by Republicans and signed by George W. Bush.

Even if spending had increased at the rate of inflation since 2007, today's deficit would only be $370 billion and we wouldn't be anywhere near the debt ceiling.

---

The AP reported that "federal taxes, as a share of the overall economy, are at their lowest levels since 1950." That's almost word for word what Obama said at his recent Twitter "town hall" to justify a tax hike.

But it's misleading. Taxes are at a low of 15% of GDP for one reason only: the recession. Just prior to the downturn, taxes equaled 18.5% of GDP — well above the post-World War II average — and they're expected to climb back to that level without raising anyone's tax rates.