Albany Media Bias

Your Random Saturday

2012-01-28T06:45:00.003-05:00

Nice sum up of some of Obama's highlight fails here by the uneven John Hawkins:

1) Numerous Mexican citizens and an American citizen have been killed with weapons knowingly provided to criminals by our own government during Operation Fast and Furious. If Eric Holder was aware that was going on, do you think he should step down as Attorney General? Were you aware that was going on and if so, shouldn’t you resign?

2) In 2010 you said Solyndra, which gave your campaign a lot of money, was "leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future." Today, Solyndra is bankrupt and the taxpayers lost $500 million on loans that your administration was well aware might never be paid off when you made them. What do you say to people who say this is evidence of corruption in your administration??...

5) When you took office, gas was $1.79 per gallon. Since then, you've demonized the oil industry, dramatically slowed offshore drilling, blocked ANWR, and killed the Keystone Pipeline. Now, gas is $3.34 per gallon. How much higher do you anticipate driving gas prices?...

10) America lost its AAA credit rating for the first time under your watch. What do you think you should have done differently to have prevented that historic failure?...

14) Your stimulus bill cost more in real dollars than the moon landing and the interstate highway system combined. What do we have to show for all of that money spent?

Sorry, that was long, but worth it, and it's worth checking out some of the other. For a much more stimulating read, here's IBD praising Newt and Mitt for lashing out at Dodd-Frank:

"If you could repeal Dodd-Frank tomorrow morning, you would see the economy start to improve overnight," Gingrich asserted. "It is crushing independent banks" by clamping down on lending for both housing and small businesses...

"The Dodd-Frank Act and the related burdens are threatening not just our industry but our very banks," outgoing ABA chair Stephen Wilson last year wrote to FDIC chief Sheila Bair. "The most conservative estimates that we have seen predict that by the end of the decade there will be 1,000 fewer banks in the United States than there are today."...

He said the head of a large New York bank told him he has hundreds of lawyers working to comply with Dodd-Frank. "Community banks don't have hundreds of lawyers," Romney explained. "It's just killing the residential home market, and it's got to be replaced."

Dodd-Frank is also a job killer. ABA says it threatens to cost the U.S. economy 2.9 million jobs over the next three years alone — and that's without all the rules yet in effect.

Trying something new...just links:

It’s Working in Walker’s Wisconsin discusses the success the GOP reforms have had in WI despite the Chicken Little dire predictions and leftwing, violent, hate-filled protests. Teachers jobs saved, school district costs down, etc.

Can We Quote You On That, Professor Cornelius Hussein Genius?

2012-01-27T18:00:00.000-05:00

Jeff Carter has a pretty awesome 'top 10' sort of list of some of Barry's most memorable speechifications in this column. Read 'em all via the link:

“Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s.”

“I’ve now been in 57 states I think one left to go.”

“On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes, and I see many of them in the audience here today.”

“What they’ll say is, ‘Well it costs too much money,’ but you know what? It would cost, about. It it it would cost about the same as what we would spend. It. Over the course of 10 years it would cost what it would costs us. (nervous laugh) All right. Okay. We’re going to. It. It would cost us about the same as it would cost for about hold on one second. I can’t hear myself. But I’m glad you’re fired up, though. I’m glad.”

“Of the many responsibilities granted to a president by our Constitution, few are more serious or more consequential than selecting a Supreme Court justice. The members of our highest court are granted life tenure, often serving long after the presidents who appointed them. And they are charged with the vital task of applying principles put to paper more than 20 centuries ago to some of the most difficult questions of our time.”

“It was interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There’s a lot of I don’t know what the term is in Austrian, wheeling and dealing.”

“I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.”

Soros-Funded Media Matters Outs Self

2012-01-26T19:00:00.001-05:00

Well, the fig leaf is gone. Media Matters, the liberal hatchet job outfit funded by George Soros meant to expose "conservative media bias" had previously tried to pass themselves off as a 'watchdog' and 'non-partisan'.

Bzzzzzt!

Game over. In an email that seems to have been accidentally copied to the 'wrong' people, the zipper comes down, the mask comes off, the fig leaf falls to the ground:

We are hoping for a big media splash, but – more importantly – we’re hoping that allies will be able to leverage it to gain favorable coverage.

Thanks for playing, George has some fantastic parting gifts, but MM has not been tainted beyond all usefulness as they've exposed themselves of being aligned with leftists in Congress...Democrats. I, for one, will be on the lookout for any use of their 'work' in the local news to ensure that they are not portrayed as non-partisan or independent. Non-partisan/independent groups do not have "allies" who will "leverage" their 'work' in manipulating media reports.

Awesome stuff from Malkin.

Guess Who's Reaping The Rewards Of Obama's Axing Of XL?

2012-01-26T18:00:00.002-05:00

I'm sure you'll be completely shocked at who stands to benefit from Obama axing a project designed to move oil from Canada and North Dakota to processing facilities down south. Wait until you see who Obama has enriched by this decision...

(IBD) Keystone XL was designed to transport oil from the Canadian tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico. It apparently also would have enabled oil producers in the booming oil fields of North Dakota to ship their product to Gulf refineries more cheaply.

Keystone XL would help to advance further development of the oilfields in the Bakken Shale formation, which has led to an economic boom in North Dakota...

Now Bakken producers say they'll be dependent on railway tank cars — Buffett's railway tank cars.

Many of the rail shipments from the Bakken fields are being handled by Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Co., which has more than 1,000 miles of track in the region.

Buffett's holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, has agreed to buy BNSF in a deal valuing the railroad at $34 billion. Berkshire already owns 22% of Burlington Northern...

That's right...liberal buddy and prop for Obama's demagoguery*, Warren Buffet, stands to gain handsomely from Obama's decision not to give the go-ahead to Keystone XL. Enriching the rich at the expense of thousands of (union) construction jobs and further protection from having to buy oil from terrorists.

Did we mention that Buffet's company still owes the government a billion in taxes?

-

*Obama's Big Six State of the Union Tax Myths

• "We need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes."

...As a result, the richest 1% today accounts for 36% of all income taxes paid, while nearly half of taxpayers owe nothing at all, or get cash back. If that isn't fair, Obama owes it to the country to describe just what sort of distribution would be fair.

• "Right now, because of loopholes and shelters in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households."

Even Obama's own Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, couldn't back up this claim when asked about it by reporters...

• "Right now, we're poised to spend nearly $1 trillion more on what was supposed to be a temporary tax break for the wealthiest 2% of Americans."

The fact is that tax payments by the rich went up during the Bush years, despite the intervening tax cut...

• "Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas."

...The real problem isn't some alleged unfair tax break for unpatriotic companies; it's that the U.S. has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, which drives companies to shift operations abroad.

• "We've subsidized oil companies for a century. ... It's time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that rarely has been more profitable."

What Obama is talking about are basic tax credits and deductions available to every other industry...Targeting oil companies for special punishment just because Obama and his environmentalist cronies don't like them is the very definition of unfairness.

How About This?

2012-01-26T13:13:00.002-05:00

How about the GOP implement this in the spirit of 'keep it simple, stupid':

Any time Obama in the next 9 months says anything along the lines of 'do-nothing Congress' or 'gridlock' or anything like that, in any place except Washington, DC, he should be asked how they're supposed to be working with him when he's in Wherever instead of Washington where they are?

Are You Still Paying Attention To The MSM?

2012-01-26T12:24:00.003-05:00

All I've heard on the news since Tuesday is that the GOP challengers should stop focusing on the economy because it's doing so well and people are more optimistic (yea, 30% up from 22%, par-tay!).

I laugh when I hear this.

News out today: New-home purchases fall, 2011 worst ever for sales

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fewer Americans bought new homes in December. The decline made 2011 the worst year for new-home sales on records dating back nearly half a century.

The Commerce Department said Thursday new-home sales fell 2.2 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 307,000. The pace is less than half the 700,000 that economists say must be sold in a healthy economy.

Obama's rockin' that economic message!

And that tax message...oh wait...his White House staffers apparently owe $800,000 in back taxes! Oops!

editoriaLIES

2012-01-25T19:00:00.005-05:00

Kind of funny (not 'funny ha-ha') that on the same day Rex ran a column complaining about those darn lying political groups misinforming the public the Times Union ran an editorial misinforming the public (aka 'lying') about the Keystone XL pipeline. I think we know who you need to punch, Rex, and you don't even need to leave the office. Get out the abacus, cuz the lies fly in this one:

THE ISSUE:

The President rejects a massive oil pipeline.

THE REALITY:

He had no choice.

Of course he did. Lie #1.

The truth is that if anyone is to blame for the fate of the project -- which still could win presidential approval, albeit under more responsible circumstances -- it's the Republicans in Congress.

"The truth is"? That's a good one. It's also a lie. Obama could easily have given the OK that his underlings have already given after an exhaustive 3 year review. Lie #2.

Mr. Obama had no choice but to reject a plan thrust upon him last month during an unrelated debate on tax cuts.

Lie #3, it's been in review for 3 years.

Lie #4, the environmental impact statement came out in August, which is when the GOP, unions, and others began pushing for its approval since there was no major impact cited. One issue in one state was to be dealt with in revisions to the routing. It was not "thrust upon him last month" unless you want to argue that he ignored it for 5 months before being confronted with it again.

more evidence, supposedly, of Mr. Obama's inability or unwillingness to create jobs. Never mind that supporters of Keystone XL are suspected of wildly exaggerating how many workers it would employ.

See this *points at insane grin on face that may be indigestion or insanity*? That's me when I see the liberal media daring to complain about "wildly exaggerating" jobs in the same breath as "Obama", master of "jobs saved or created" and citing the completely unsubstantiated millions of jobs that were "saved or created" by the porkulus, many of which were temporary and cost on the order of $250,000 each. Hypocrites, much?

The GOP strategy backfired. It was apparent that the environmental review of a project of this magnitude could not be completed in anywhere close to the 60 days that the Republicans had demanded.

Ummm...the environmental review is DONE (see link above). There was no requirement for another review - all Obama had to do was agree with the comprehensive/exhaustive one already done...5 months ago...and side with his union buddies over his green buddies. Lie #5.

Mr. Obama's decision Wednesday doesn't preclude further review. But it will require the Keystone XL project's more sincere advocates to abandon partisanship and seriously embrace science.

Lie #6. Doesn't embrace science? Are you kidding? They're going to spend $7 billion on a pipeline they spent years designing and shepherding through reviews without meeting the "science" standards of liberal newspaper editors? This is exactly what is wrong with central planning elitists like the TU editorial staff that think they could do a better job with more "science" than a giant corporation employing (presumably) hundreds of engineers and scientists on multi-billion dollar projects.

Lie #7. Partisanship? The GOP supported it. Leftist unions supported it. The sometimes left-sometimes right Chamber of Commerce supported it. The only ones acting in a partisan manner are Obama and the media defending him for killing a project that had already been reviewed and was ready for conditional approval. All the bipartisanship appears to be on the 'support' side.

Really pathetic stuff.

-

Rep. Barton apparently gave an Obama surrogate a righteous beatdown over their delay and obfuscation of the facts:

“Our concern at this point, sir, is that we did not have time to do the analysis,” said Jones, who heads the Bureau of Oceans and International Environment and Scientific Affairs...

But Barton, who had already pointed out that the administration had 40 months to examine every aspect of the project, rejected the answer, interrupting Jones.

“Well, we fought and won World War II in less time than it’s taken so far to evaluate this project,” Barton said. “I mean, with all due respect, it is an insult to the American people to say that you need more time.

“There are 10 other agencies that have reviewed this project and – correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that the Corps of Engineers approved it, the Department of Agriculture approved it, the Department of Interior approved it, the Department of Transportation approved it, the Environmental Protection Agency – believe it or not – approved it, the Defense Department approved it; the Justice Department approved it, the Homeland Security Department approved it and the Department of Commerce approved it. Only the State Department, which I believe, by law is required to look at the International implications since its trans-Canada -- only the State Department did not approve it.”

Do you need to be told who to punch, Rex?

Anybody

2012-01-25T18:00:00.000-05:00

Anybody recall seeing a "How long does it take millionaire Obama to make your pay?"

Right.

Wanna Bet?

2012-01-24T21:24:00.003-05:00

So I see Obama will be calling for "tax equality".

Interesting.

Will he call for lowering taxes on the rich to be closer to other people, or maybe eliminating them like 50% of American workers?

Will he call for raising taxes on the 50% of American workers that don't pay taxes? After all, is it fair that half of workers don't pay tax and the other half do?

Will he call for a flat tax, the ultimate tax equality?

Wanna bet he'll call for anything except more taxes on those that already pay more taxes?

Nah. Didn't think you would.

If

2012-01-24T20:00:00.001-05:00

Spotted amongst the handful of pro-abortion protesters that showed up to counter the massive annual pro-life march in DC (ludicrously, CBS's local news only covered this handful and completely ignored the thousands of pro-lifers marching as if they didn't exist...which is what they wish, of course):

Now if the tables were turned, how easy would it be to right the script for flailing liberal talking heads, editorials, and mainstream news headlines if they were as pro-life as they were pro-abort? Answer? Extraordinarily easy:

So if you keep your baby you're not a good woman??? How radical and out of touch is that? How utterly neo-Malthusian. What a brave new world.

Despicable Occupiers Booted From Desecrated Churches

2012-01-24T19:00:00.001-05:00

Remember when a pastor's laptop went missing after he took in those noble People Of The Year? Now look what they've done to his church (and others) to get them booted:

In Brooklyn, at another church housing OWS protesters, an occupier urinated on a cross, according to Rabbi Chaim Gruber, who has angrily abandoned the OWS movement.

In a letter last week to OWS obtained by The Post, the rabbi fumed, “The Park Slope church housing occupiers was desecrated when an occupier peed inside the building and the pee came into contact with a cross.”...

At West Park, Rev. Brashear walked into the church for a morning service to find the 18-inch-diameter bronze basin and lid missing from the baptismal font’s 800-pound base. Holy water — straight from the River Jordan — had been poured from the missing basin insert into the base’s bowl...

The artifact vanished just three weeks after a $2,400 Apple MacBook vanished from Brashear’s office. He told the occupiers that even when the 100-year-old Upper West Side church extended help to addicts during the 1980s drug scourge, no visitors touched its $12,500 sacramental instrument.

“Not even crackheads messed with that,” he said.

The pastor and a worshipper finally found the missing basin tossed into a small room connected to the church. The lid is still missing. The pastor has given protesters two weeks to vacate the church.

Do the Democrats still "stand with" these people?

Press Inserts Lie Into Romney Story

2012-01-24T18:00:00.002-05:00

Mitt Romney Reveals His Tax Records, Paid $3M in Taxes in 2010

The only information that Romney had revealed up to today was that he paid a 15 percent effective tax rate in 2010, well below what middle-income Americans pay.

100% horsesh** as pointed out by numerous sources.

Reuters apparently is also lying about it, while USA Today tells the truth.

Obama's 2012 Campaign Slogan Released

2012-01-24T17:15:00.001-05:00

Just in time for his last State of the Union address, Obama has released his 2012 campaign slogan:

VOTE OBAMA
PUTTING DRUNKEN SAILORS TO SHAME SINCE 2009!

A THOUSAND Days (And Counting)

2012-01-24T06:45:00.002-05:00

Congratulations to President Obama and the Democrats in the Senate. Today marks ONE THOUSAND DAYS since they last bothered to submit a budget. Despite:

8+% unemployment

trillion dollar deficits year in and year out

"We can't wait!"

the nation's loss of its perfect credit rating

record number of Americans on food stamps...

despite these, the Democrats and Obama have not found time for the past THOUSAND DAYS to sit down and actually put together a budget for our federal government, choosing instead to spout off to a sym(pathetic) press about the 'do-nothing GOP' and "extremists" that are worried about our nation's financial situation.

Say, how about another "stimulus" or a few cowboy poems?

No, instead Obama will mark the occasion by giving a speech blaming the GOP for our economic problems. And the media will soil their underthings with joy at his words.

I'm not a fan of disrupting the President's speech, but maybe before he starts a chant of "Where's your buuuuuuudgeeeeet, where's your buuuuuuuudgeeeeeet?" from the fiscally sane members? That would be sweet. Maybe just do it while he enters the chamber...extra points if you get a peanut up his uptilted nose.

As Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., points out, going budget-less for so long has devastated our economy as Democrats have spent "$9.4 trillion and added $4.1 trillion to the national debt," plus over $1 trillion in deficits...

A budget, according to the president 1,000 days ago, is necessary "to lay a new foundation for growth." He praised Reid's 2009 budget for its massive new spending, like "new investments in renewable energy that will create millions of jobs and new industries, new investments in health care that will cut costs for families and businesses, and new savings that will bring down our deficit."

Since Obama gave those assurances, the jobs haven't materialized, health insurance premiums have risen significantly in expectation of ObamaCare and the deficit has skyrocketed. (link)

Hollywood Made Him Do It And The Media Said Naught

2012-01-19T19:00:00.001-05:00

I can't even think of an adjective strong enough to describe the level of hypocrisy on display by the left in America whose heads explode when a lone, deranged person shoots a Democrat because maybe (but of course not really) Sarah Palin provoked them, but when someone comes out and admits that a Hollywood leftwing movie prompted them to kill American servicemen, well...*YAAAAAWWWWWWWNNNNNNNN* from the left:The mainstream media will spend ten days losing their ever-loving minds blaming a Sarah Palin campaign map a killer never saw for that killer’s actions, but this news about a confessed terrorist admitting that a clip from Brian De Palma’s “Redacted” “prompted” him to murder two American airmen gets buried at the bottom of a Salt Lake City newspaper article:
[Arid] Uka gave a teary confession as his Frankfurt state court trial opened in August, saying that the night before the attack he had seen a video on Facebook that purported to show American soldiers raping a teenage Muslim girl. It turned out to be a scene from the 2007 Brian De Palma anti-war film “Redacted,” taken out of context.

Uka told the court the video prompted him to do anything possible to prevent American soldiers from going to Afghanistan. Under German law, the court is still required to hear all evidence in the case, even though Uka has confessed.

The defendant had already killed two U.S. airmen when he turned his pistol on Brewer, a 23-year-old from Gray, Tennessee, who was on the bus waiting with others to be taken to nearby Ramstein Air Base to fly to Afghanistan.

Did You Know

2012-01-19T18:00:00.001-05:00

Did you know just how bad the Daley resignation is for Obama? This is the guy he replaced him with:

Jacob Lew, former budget director and Hillary Clinton loyalist, wasn't Obama's first choice to replace Bill Daley, who resigned abruptly as chief of staff...

"My sense is, as someone who has generally been familiar with these trends, the problems in the financial industry preceded deregulation," Lew answered. "I don't believe deregulation was the proximate cause." He blamed "leveraging" instead.

Did we mention he was a Citibank exec?

Did you know who he replaced Lew with at OMB?

Further undercutting Obama's attacks on Romney's background is his appointment of Jeffrey Zients to replace Lew as new acting director of the Office of Management and Budget. Zients and Romney are both alumni of Bain & Co., the Boston-based venture capital firm Romney helped found. The White House conveniently left this part of Zient's resume out of his official bio.

Did you know that Romney doesn't pay less taxes than a secretary?

As CNN put it in the first paragraph of its story, Romney's 15% tax rate means "the multimillionaire pays a smaller percentage of taxes on his income than many middle-income Americans."...

First, it's simply false that Romney's tax rate is lower than "many middle-income Americans." The middle 20% of income earners pay taxes at an average rate of just 2.3%. The next highest 20% pay at an average rate of only 6.1%.

Even when you include payroll taxes, the effective rate for families in the middle of the income spectrum is less than 13%, according to data from the Tax Policy Center.

IRS data, meanwhile, show that families with incomes of between $50,000 and $100,000 paid an average 8.9% in income taxes, while those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 paid an average 12.7%.

IBD also explains the double-taxation of capital gains. Basically, what if your employer was taxed on your salary (not their profits) before they paid you, and then you were taxed on them again. Then the press could talk apples to apples.

Romney pays less than a secretary? Nope, Romney pays more than 97% of taxpayers. Media fail.

Meet The New Tone, Same As The Old Tone

2012-01-19T17:05:00.000-05:00

Very quick refresher on the "old tone" caused by 'conservatives':
Howard Dean intimating that Bush may have been in on 9-11 attacks.

NY's own Charlie Rangel compared fighting terrorists in Iraq to the Holocaust.

Which differs markedly from the "new tone" (now below the fold due to length):

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), on the House floor: "They say it’s a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels...The Germans said enough about the Jews and people believed it–believed it and you have the Holocaust." Cohen would go on to apologize to anyone that was offended by people talking about his comparing conservatives to Nazis, but not for comparing them to Nazis.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), on the House floor: "...this is killing Americans if we take (ObamaCare) away, if we repeal this bill."

Howard Dean, fundraising letter: "...It’s going to be a fight to stop right-wing Republicans...We won’t start wars of choice and then perpetuate them to keep the military contractors in business...a choice between strong communities, security and liberty — or Republican division, greed, and fear...I know we will fight even harder...to make sure no Republican can turn back the clock on the advances we’ve made so far."

Lewis Reed (St. Louis president, board of alderman): "...the growth of the tea party is driven by hate. They are trying to turn our country around. However, we won’t go back. We have to get out every day and fight."

Chris Matthews, MSNBC liberal tool: "Isn't there any minimal, minimal civility left?...I don't know why [Rep. Michelle Bachmann]'s allowed to be an extremist...where she's allowed to be out there as a screamer, and in many cases pretty close to a nut case."
...
and him again:

Albany Times Union 1/19 editorial: "This vote is a good time, too, to hold Republicans' feet to the fire of their own rhetoric..."

Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee (the fundraising group for Senate Dems - you know, the ones that stole Michael Steele's identity a while back when the DSSC was headed by Chuckie Schumer in order to fraudulently obtain his credit report) in a fundraising letter: "The DSCC has set a goal of raising $50,000 by January 31 to ensure they have the resources to beat back mistruths and distortions, hire staff for the next set of races, and support the work of Democrats in the Senate."

Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee (House version of above): "DCCC Launches 'Drive to 25' Ad & Grassroots Campaign in Targeted Districts" - names 'targeted' Republicans.

The death threats that don’t make the nightly news

Matthews again: "I know you don't really think Palin is worth anything."

Leftwing protesters outside a pro-business gathering were asked what should be done about Supreme Court Justice Thomas: "string him up," "hang him," and "put him back in the fields". Also: News reports showed a swastika and cute slogans like: "Quarantine the Kochs" and "Koch kills."

And Matthews again:"I think if you look closely at Newt Gingrich, you see a mortal enemy to our civilization."

The mainstream media-validated cesspool known as AlterNet where Herman Cain, "the former Chairman and CEO of Godfather's Pizza, as well as the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City", is described thusly: a "black garbage pail kid", "a version of race minstrelsy", and "a monkey in the window".

Radical hispanic group "United Front for Defense of Immigrants" sending death threats to lawmakers in Utah featuring "the images of Che Guevara and, separately, a semiautomatic weapon with a banana clip": "It will be established as any other revolutionary changes always have been … by pen and gun, by word and bullet, by tongue and teeth."

The lefty unions shutting down Wisconsin because they might have to pay for some of their benefits (note: does Wisconsin really "neen" teachers that can't spell?):

and good old fashioned death wishes. I'll just link to some others, like here. Of course the media hypocrisy is on full display. More here including violent imagery, threats, and the use of a (presumably) unwitting child in some sort of homosexual vulgarity (I didn't know that people were there rallying against homosexual pedophiles).

Matthews again: "Let me finish tonight with a call to arms."

Rep. Mike Capuano (D-Ma.): "Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary." I knew this guy sounded familiar - he's the one Pelosi put in charge of ethics reform that didn't think Congress needed ethics reform.

Assaults by union members protesting, apparently heeding Capuano's call to "get a little bloody" and Obama's to "get in their face". More here. Thankfully people seem to be pressing charges and not just letting it go.

And right here in Albany on 2/26/11, where George Soros is presumably a hero, but libertarian activists are "enemies of the people":Pssst! What do the Kochs have to do with public unions? Oh, right. Nothing. (the clown nose 'play button' is completely unintentional but completely hilarious)

Wisconsin Democrat Rep. Gordon Hintz to a female Republican colleague: "You are f**king dead!"

Leg Thrill again: "But [Newt Gingrich] looks like a car bomber. He looks like a car bomber. Clarence, he looks like a car bomber. He's got that crazy Mephistophelian grin of his. He looks like he loves torturing."

More union-affiliated death threats in Wisconsin. And more.

Time Magazine: "Wisconsin's Governor Wins But Is He Still Dead Man Walker?...The chalk "dead man" outlines etched with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's name on the sidewalks remained in dismembered parts, incompletely washed away by clean-up hoses."

More at Althouse's blog including hearing discussions about threats of violence, 'new tone' signs, and 'death depiction' signs.

Biden praises the union's "muscle".

Literally, Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) calmy reacts to the GOP's proposal to stop pretending we have money to spend that we don't and also does not apply to anyone over 55: "This plan would literally be a death trap for some seniors."

NY's own Louise Slaughter: "This is probably one of the worst times we’ve seen because the numbers of people elected to Congress...Now they’re here to kill women...It’s sort of like an old German Nazi movie. Show me your papers!"

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) on not using taxpayer money for abortions: “This is the equivalent of bombing innocent civilians.”

PA state Rep. Margo Davidson, during debate on the floor: "If the gentleman from Butler County stood yelling, knowing that he's a gun-toter, and I felt threatened, would I be protected under court law if I blew his brains out?"

That classy DSCC again: "The GOP budget is a dagger in the heart of American families...Many seniors' lives ended in abject, heartbreaking poverty. This is the GOP plan for America's future."

Getting sick of mentioning tools like Maher, but as long as the left still lauds him...: "The good news: they cut all the money out of repairing federal buildings. So there was a slight chance a wall will collapse on Eric Cantor [Applause] or Michele Bachmann."

Ads with a bullseye? No go (for Republicans). Ad showing a Republican throwing an old lady off a cliff? Fine and dandy and lauded by the leftwing media.

Barbara Walters explains that a married Congressman sending lewd sexual pictures to unsuspecting co-eds is morally equivalent to Sarah Palin...existing.

No comment needed here: Wisconsin protesters disrupt a Special Olympics ceremony! Maybe they thought Obama was participating and were just there for the photo op.

Sarah Palin murder fantasies/threats, delivered on a mainstream show to lefty applause.

Sick puppy Matthews again: "But people don't like [Newt Gingrich], and he looks like the devil...He's got all that worldly information. But he is evil."

Ummm...yeah.

Adolph Christie?

The Won himself: the debt ceiling should not “be used as a gun against the heads” of Americans to retain breaks for corporate jet owners or oil and gas companies. This was the day after he said, "I hope everyone leaves ultimatums and political rhetoric at the door."

Newsweek's Tina Brown on the House GOP members refusing to raise taxes in a weak economy/recession: "I think they're the suicide bombers in all of this."

Asshat Matthews: Republicans are, well, "terrorists" and "hostage takers". (note that, in general, I will no longer be bothering with this asshat unless he reaches truly despicable levels, such as here)

HBO political talk show featuring "sex columnist" Dan Savage on Republicans: "I wish they were all fucking dead!"

~~Liberal~~ Straight down the middle, impartial, unbiased ex-"Crossfire" and now radio show host (and author of Toxic Talk: How the Radical Right Has Poisoned America's Airwaves) Bill Press on House Speaker John Boehner: "You know, it's a wonder lightning just doesn't strike people dead on the spot when they say stuff like that." (followed by lightning sound effect)

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman: "...basically the Republicans said we'll blow up the world economy unless you give us exactly what we want..."

Margaret Carlson, Bloomberg News, on PBS: "And it’s because there’s a nihilist caucus which is, “Listen, we want to burn the place down." I mean, they’re not, they’ve strapped explosives to the Capitol and they think they are immune from it. The Tea Party caucus wants this crisis..."

The New York Times editors: Fiscally responsible conservatives are responsible for "hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists", in other words, terrorists. Putting together a spending program, which the Democrats haven't done for about 3 years, is "hostage taking". Duly elected Republicans, elected for just this purpose in what Obama himself called a 'shellacking', are, unlike the trillion dollar deficits as far as the CBO can see Democrats, a "band of radicals". Reducing spending by a pittance, not even enough to counter Obama's deficits in the past couple of years, is "arbitrary butchering". Not spending 40% more than you make is "lunacy" and refusing to do so is "extortion".

New York Times columnist Joe Nocera: The majority of American people that associate with the Tea Party's principles are "terrorists...waging jihad on the American people". In his "apology" he goes on to use the following terms to describe the GOP: "The worst was the way Republicans took a hatchet to Elizabeth Warren..." and "the hand-to-hand combat over spending".

Obama's Vice President Joe Biden, agreeing with PA rep Mike Doyle (despite late denials after being exposed for his words where at best he admits to not gainsaying his party calling their nonviolent political opponents "terrorists" only to declare to the press that such language is inappropriate): Fiscally conservative Republicans and the Tea Party are "terrorists". Voting against raising the debt ceiling, which Biden has done in the past, is a "nuclear weapon".

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.): Fiscally conservative Republicans and the Tea Party are "arsonists"

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D) asserted that Republicans "want to shoot every bullet they have at the president"

Obama's ex-'car czar', briber Steve Rattner, still being invited on talk shows: Fiscally conservative Congressmen demanding that we live within our means - "it's like a form of economic terrorism. I imagine these Tea Party guys are like strapped with dynamite, standing in the middle of Times Square at rush hour and saying, 'either you do it my way, or we're going to blow you up, ourselves up, and the whole country up with us.'

The Arizona Daily Star (need I remind anywhere what state Gabrielle Giffords represents?) produces a 'comic' showing Obama sending the military to kill terrorists...Tea Party Congressmen.

Asshat Matthews: Again, Republicans are baby-kidnapping terrorists.

Joan Walsh of Salon: "These people, the Tea Partiers and their friends and their enablers and their corporate friends like Dick Armey, they have created this shrieking on the right....This game of chicken, in particular, is deadly and it’s wrong and it’s hostage-taking. And you shouldn’t negotiate with hostage-takers."

Nicholas Kristof, New York Times columnist: Wake up to the national security threat. Only it’s not coming from abroad, but from our own domestic extremists..."

Increasingly unhinged Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist: “If sane Republicans do not stand up to this Hezbollah faction in their midst, the Tea Party will take the GOP on a suicide mission.”

CNN's ethically-challenged Fareed Zakaria: Republicans are "un-American" terrorists, threatening to "blow up the economy" if they didn't get their way.

Dem. Senator and ex-Dem. Presidential Candidate John Kerry: Congressmen concerned about the nearly 50% increase in the national debt since Kerry's party took back Congress are 'hostage takers' "willing to literally shoot the hostage" that should be locked out of the media and locked out of Congress and need to be held "accountable to a different standard of behavior" than people like him.

Liberal radio show host Bill Press on the GOP: "These guys are terrorists!...Joe Biden, they say he's getting in a little trouble 'cause he called them terrorists. That's exactly what they are! They've taken us hostage...they're holding a gun to our head. What do you call people who put a gun to your head...I'm going to kill this, kill you or kill this program...Terrorists!"

A "prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House" - "Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney."

Asshat Matthews' portrayal of the GOP to Obama: "We’re going to knock you off here. We don’t care what you think. We’re going to knock you off unless you say ‘Uncle.’"

Peaceful union picketing instructions for striking Verizon workers: "It is open season. Follow them safely, but when you get to a location, torture them, torture them with chants and noise. Be so loud that they can't concentrate and wish they never got out of bed...Understand brothers and sisters, we can never let these [expletive] piece of [expletive] pigs break us. So, we are stepping up our efforts." I'm thinking the managers being "tortured" are dying to get these "brothers and sisters" back on the job.

Andre Carson (D-IND): "And this is beyond symbolic change. This is the effort that we're seeing of Jim Crow. Some of these folks in Congress right now would love to see us as second-class citizens...Some of them in Congress right now of this Tea Party would love to see you and me...hanging on a tree."

Obama's Official Press Secretary Jay Carney: Republicans running for the White House are like "wildlife".

Thom Hartmann, liberal radio host: "There is a powerful strain of anti-Americanism that disguises itself as the Republican party and the so-called conservative movement..."

MSNBC's Richard Wolffe on why the House asked Obama to speak on a different day instead of on the day of a GOP Presidential debate that had been planned for months: "it could be, let's face it, the color of his skin"

Obama/Biden BUF (Best Union Friend) Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. speaking before keynote speaker Obama: "We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They've got a war, they got a war with us and there's only going to be one winner. It's going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We're going to win that war... President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong."

Vice President Biden at a Labor Day Union outing: "This is a fight for the heart and soul of the labor movement. This is a fight for the existence of organized labor. You are the only ones who can stop the barbarians at the gate!"

Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla: "Let's all remember who the real enemy is. And the real enemy is the Tea Party."

Albany Times Union editorial, 9-20-11: Fiscal conservatives concerned about our runaway national debt are "hijackers". On 9-23-11 they're 'hostage takers'.

Albany Times Union's editorial drawer John de Rosier portraying Republicans, depicted by an elephant, wielding a gun as part of political debate, vs. a flower-wielding Obama:

Race-baiting racist and MSNBC host (no, really!), Al Sharpton continuing a seemingly non-stop MSNBC attack on Chris Christie's weight: "So what I think we should do is put Governor Christie in jail for 90 days" to lose weight.

Former Obama car czar Steve Rattner, writing at the Politico: "The [Suskind] book amounts to a drive-by shooting of a president and his key economic advisers..."

More liberal talk radio: "Someone should feed [Michele Bachmann] some listeria-filled cantaloupe."

Racism and anti-Semitism on parade at the media-celebrated, Obama-endorsed, liberal show host-led anarchy rallies known as 'Occupy Wall Street'.

"The Coast Guard in Boston confirmed that a woman in uniform was harassed and spat upon near Occupy Boston protesters."

New York Times reporting on an Occupy Wall Street protest sign: "But the most recent round of Main Street rage has raised the risk factor...Last week, when protesters picketed the homes of some of Manhattan’s richest residents...One sign carried by protesters depicted [Goldman Sachs CEO] Mr. Blankfein’s severed head on a stake."

Vice President, yes Vice President Joe Biden on those that are against Obama's latest stimulus waste: "I wish these guys had some notion of what it was like to be on the other side of a gun, or [to have] a 200-pound man standing over you, telling you to submit."

Hollywood liberal Orlando Jones: "if American liberals want respect they better stop listening to Aretha & kill Sarah Palin". No word on whether black actor Jones will be invited to the White House for a beer to discuss the new tone.

Rolling Stone "Trashes Perry as 'Whore,' 'Hitler' and 'Serial Killer'"

Obama's Labor Secretary Hilda Solis whips out the "vile pejorative that refers to a sexual act" to refer to political opponents: "I’ll be darned if I’m going to set that aside now because a few teabaggers want to somehow muzzle my voice."

I've been trying to ignore the bigoted blowhards on MSNBC, but from time to time it's necessary to point them out, like when MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell calls for the firebombing of a business and its employees: "...then a firestorm should be visited upon the 1200 17th Street Northwest and the members of the National Restaurant Association" while flashing photos of the building on the screen. Despicable.

Ex-Newsweek editor and current (inaptly-named) liberal talking-head Howard Fineman being interviewed on MSNBC: "...Newt [Gingrich]'s main appeal and his main skill is as a guy who knows exactly where to put the explosive device to blow up the bridge."

Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder says everyone criticizing him for a program that fed guns to deadly Mexican drug gangs and resulted in the death of at least one American law enforcement officer with one of those guns and then being caught lying about it in front of Congress are only criticizing him because they're racists.

CNN analyst Ron Brownstein decides that the appropriate way to categorize Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign is "murder-suicide".

NBC special correspondent Tom Brokaw chooses to describe the Republican primary as "the Republican Party equivalent of a jihad".

A muslim in Germany confesses that a scene from the Hollywood movie "Redacted" caused him to murder American airmen.

updated as warranted

That's The Best He Could Do?

2012-01-18T20:00:00.002-05:00

"They rushed me!"

That's the best reason Obama could come up with for choking off yet another source of North American (aka non-terrorism affiliated) oil? This is the same guy that had to "sleep on it" on whether not to implement a planned raid to kill bin laden.

Fresh off his taking a year to listen to his generals on Afghanistan (only to go against their advice) and appointing committee after committee to propose reforms to get the economy going (only to ignore their advice), Obama now claims that he had to stop an oil pipeline and the thousands of jobs associated with getting some North American fuel flowing in our system.

Pathetic. Just pathetic.

President Obama announced Wednesday that he will deny a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, blaming Republicans for imposing a "rushed and arbitrary deadline" which he said did not give officials enough time...

For three years, the State Department has been reviewing the initial proposal to run a pipeline from Canada down to Texas through a sensitive Nebraska aquifer -- authority it has because of the transnational path the route takes.

King of failing to **it or get off the pot.

Mind you, this is the same jerk running around screaming about how he has to ignore Congress and the Constitution because JOBS JOBS JOBS WE CAN'T WAIT!!!! JOBS JOBS JOBS!

Did You Know

2012-01-18T19:00:00.001-05:00

Did you know this?

The claim that America disproportionately executes blacks is a falsehood, disseminated on virtually every Left-wing website from the ACLU to all the anti-death penalty sites. The only way it can be regarded as true is if the disproportion is in relation to the entire population of the country: Blacks make up about 12% of the population and since 1976 have been about 35% of those executed for murder. But this is a statistic that tells no truth because it is meaningless in terms of determining alleged racial bias.

This is very easy to prove. Males make up about 50% of the American population but make up about 99% of those executed. Is the American justice system wildly anti-male?...

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death penalty organization, between 1976 and January 2012, 441 blacks (35% of the total) and 717 whites (55% of the total) were executed. Given that blacks committed more than half the murders during that time (52% vs. 46% by whites), if we are to assess racial bias based on proportionality of murderers executed, the system is biased against whites, not blacks.

Because this fact is both obvious and irrefutable, virtually none of the anti-death penalty sites note it. Instead they focus on the race of murder victims and even the race of prosecutors – in other words, the race of just about everyone except those convicted of murder.

And did you know that at the giant memorial just completed for the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., whose entire struggle he himself called a Christian cause, there is not a single overt mention of his religiosity, that in fact quotes were edited to remove mention of his faith?

"I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are Christian people," King said. "We believe in the Christian religion. We believe in the teachings of Jesus. The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest."

King, a Baptist minister and American patriot whose organization would be called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, wanted the nation to know that the civil rights movement was rooted in fidelity to Judeo-Christian morality and to America's founding documents...

The words "God," "Jesus" and "Lord" -- ever-present in King's speeches and sermons -- are carved nowhere in the stones of the memorial dedicated in his name.

King's name is repeatedly carved into the memorial. But none of these carvings refer to him as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In all cases, he is called simply "Martin Luther King Jr."...

"This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with," King said. "With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope"

On the right side of the granite statue of King at the memorial, the last half of this last sentence is carved in stone: "Out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope." The first half of the sentence -- "With this faith, we will be able to hew" -- is missing...

The Rev. Martin Luther King was a Christian clergyman who became an American hero by standing up for the God-given rights our nation was founded to protect. It is a shame the name of God cannot be found at his memorial.

No, No, No, No, NO!

2012-01-18T18:00:00.000-05:00

Time to Purge the Republican Party

ENOUGH already.

But what the Republican Party does need is a housecleaning. Call it a purge, if you must. But do it.

That's what the Democrats did after their shocking defeat in 2004. John Kerry was a flip-flopper, a wishy-washy liberal who made liberals squeamish. So they responded by moving to the left, bringing in Nancy Pelosi to run the House and the anti-Kerry, Howard Dean, to run the Democratic National Committee. The result was a Democratic victory in 2006 in the House, and the victory of the most far-left candidate in American history, Barack Obama, in 2008...

More Democratic rule is the highway to hell; more Paper Republican rule is the slow road to the same destination. It's time for the Republican Party to present a true conservative alternative. Anything else is suicide by inches.

No, no, no and a thousand times NO!

1) People are stupid.

2) America may lean conservative, but it is NOT 'solid' or 'far-right' conservative or whatever you want to call it. America is moderately conservative.

3) Lies are effective (see #1).

What true believers like this want us to believe that is that the GOP should go as hard right as the Democrats went hard left and reap the rewards from a 'conservative' electorate now and forever amen hallelujah.

Fail. Fail, fail, and fail.

Democrats did not have success by going hard left. Democrats had success by going hard left but lying about it at every turn, acting like moderates. Obama did not run as a socialist. The Democrats did not run as socialists in 2006, they ran as moderates that would rein in the 'hard right Bush' (he wasn't, again, they LIED) and stop the Iraq War (again, lies). And it worked.

The problem with implementing this in mirror image is that conservatives WILL NOT LIE the way liberals will. A staunchly pro-life Republican is not going to tell a debate moderator that abortion is "above my pay grade" and then promptly ramp up abortion funding, they're going to say it's wrong and follow through on that. And lose. They're not going to smile and bullshit America, telling them to their face that they're going to increase services, give everyone more everything, and do it all WHILE CUTTING SPENDING!!! No, a conservative is going to say, you know what, we can't afford it all, we're going to have to do some cutting and then do it.

Alternative 1: Find a conservative that will lie and poison the well for years.

Alternative 2: Find someone that is conservative on enough issues to please enough conservatives and moderate enough on enough issues to attract moderates.

Alternative 3: FAIL.

Bush and his "compassionate conservatism" came across as moderate enough on enough issues. Reagan came across as moderate enough. Clinton lied about how liberal he was and was only reined in by Newt and a GOP Congress after 2 disastrous years. Obama, well, no one has ever lied like Obama.

Time to grow up, conservatives.

Right Wing Making Me Uneasy

2012-01-17T20:00:00.000-05:00

I have to say, now that (sorry, it's true) Romney is looking pretty inevitable, I'm dismayed and disturbed by the reactions of the true-believer right wing. It's not often I say that, and I'm not talking about cuckoo right, but your run-of-the-mill rightweb right.

Their attacks on Romney are starting to go too far.

Their claims that Romney is unelectable/guarantees Obama's re-election are childish, moronic, and downright stupid in light of Romney's excellent polling vs. Obama as opposed to the other candidates they prefer who "have a better chance" against Obama. Not to mention whomever this phantom stranger they're expecting to gallup in during the last act and claim the nomination and the hearts of 70% of America doesn't seem to even have a horse or know they're supposed to be doing that.

I really think this needs to start stopping. Certainly if Romney crushes in Newt's backyard in SC it has to stop. There is one goal in this election and one goal only - stopping Obama and his radical destruction of America. He has successfully quashed economic recovery for three years, America cannot stand much more of it.

Is Romney the ideal candidate? No, probably not. But he's not a bad candidate. Rick Perry is a bad candidate. Would Rick Perry make a bad president? Maybe not, but we'll never know because he's a bad candidate. He's Algore bad, he would likely lose as an incumbent VEEP, he's that bad. Gingrich was a good candidate for like a month, sandwiched between being an abysmal, Trump-level ball of confusion and his current state of flailing away for not getting his way. I read one column today ludicrously claiming that the GOP would be better off running Huntsman than Romney. Seriously? That's what I mean, they're losing their minds they are so distraught that some tall, dark, and handsome challenger has not arrived to sweep them off their feet to conservative wonderland.

It's not like America is new. Things take time. It took Obama years to cripple us to the point of causing a credit downgrade. Even if we put in conservative presidents for a decade it's not like the deficit is going away any time soon, your vote in 2012 is not taking the yoke off your grandkids' backs.

If there is a scale it might go like this:

[----------|----------]

Obama (O) is like this:

[-O--------|----------]

The magic man (M) these people seem to want would be like this:

[----------|--------M-]

Ain't going to happen.

Is it really that bad, for a start to use Romney (R) to get us here:

[----------|--R-------]

Hell, McCain toyed with running with JOE LIEBERMAN! Romney is unlikely to do anything so stupid, his veep (V) will be more likely:

[----------|--R---V---]

and we can start moving that lever. For crying out loud, we need to get the left end out of the depths first and get it level before we can worry about tipping it right. These people that think we can just go from a radically leftist socialist president to a far-right one are kidding themselves and need to spend more time talking to people outside their bubble...because Superman isn't coming, but maybe, for right now, Mormonman is enough.

As for the left in America, especially the press, gloating over the infighting and thinking it means the GOP is doomed? I guess you've forgotten that all the way until the Democratic nominating convention there was impassioned cries by Clinton supporters to rig things to get her the nod and it wasn't until basically the day of that she put that party division to rest by supporting the Won.

Picking Up

2012-01-17T16:45:00.003-05:00

Boy, things are starting to look better and better!

"Companies have spent the last several years being very cautious about their hiring, but now with the baby boomers retiring, they realize they have to fill their pipeline," said John Challenger, chief executive of the firm. "They just can't afford to wait any longer."

The need even includes slots for liberal-arts majors "who've done well in school, especially for sales and marketing and relationship-oriented jobs and various other functions in companies where they need entry-level people," Challenger said.

Accounting graduates will see average starting salary offers increase 5.4 percent to $46,188, according to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

Average starting salary offers for business-management majors are up 3.9 percent to $40,976 and 5.3 percent for economics/finance graduates to $45,058.

Nearly 38 percent of the association's survey respondents said they expected to hire more new college graduates for full-time, entry-level positions this fall compared with last fall.

Ron Butler, a partner in the Phoenix office of Ernst and Young in charge of recruiting, said the accounting giant has increased hiring 100 percent during the past three years.

Well, that's great news...Oh, wait. Yeah, sorry...that was 2006...a couple of year out of the Clinton/9-11 recession after Bush and the GOP cut taxes.

This year's 1.4 million college graduates are entering the best job market since 2001 as employers are ready to hire 14.5 percent more graduates than in 2005, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas, an outplacement firm based in Chicago.

With much of the United States, including Arizona, hovering at full employment, newly minted grads can basically pick their employer and bargain for higher salaries as well as signing bonuses, especially if they have business, science or computer-related degrees.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled 8+% Obama unemployment levels he blames on the people that have actually passed budgets and jobs bills and only took over after things were 2 years in the toilet.

Happy Hypocrisy Day

2012-01-16T07:00:00.003-05:00

Well, hopefully a lot of you have today off to celebrate hypocrisy. Feel free to take part in some hypocrisy celebration at libraries, etc. Yes, the smell of hypocrisy is ripe in the air.

Today the left pretends to celebrate the notion that we should be judged by who we are, not what color we are...despite the left's intransigent obsession with color and determination to categorize everyone by color and give special preference to some of one color because they do not think they can do as good as their own white noble selves without help, but not those of another color, etc.

Hardball Matthews Thinks Only About 4,500 Employed By Federal Government

2012-01-13T18:00:00.000-05:00

Just when you think they can't get any dumber at MSNBC, they smash themselves over the head with a hammer and kill a few more brain cells...

Chris "Leg Tingler/Boob Drooler" Matthews actually claimed with an on-screen graphic that the federal workforce for a federal government that spends trillions of dollars a year only employes about 4,500 workers and goes on to berate people that complain about the size of the government.

W.T.F.?

Somehow someone actually managed to notice this slight error, so they hid their epic stupidity by redoing the graphics and re-recording it to cover it up.

Well, here's the numbers, by the way, about the size of government. According to the U.S. Office of Personnel, the federal workforce totaled 4,430 people in 2009 when Obama took office. In 2010, a year later, the number increased to 4,443, a difference of only 13 people. And local government during that time has gotten smaller dramatically. In 2009, it was 14.9 million people were working for state and local governments.

But, the number dropped to 14.7 in 2010, according to the Census Bureau. So, you know, John Heilemann, I know it's always great rhetoric to say the government is ballooning, exploding with people. The government is getting bigger and bigger to this leviathan. And it's not. And if anything, there's been the reality of the economic reports to come out every first Friday of every month, which are government jobs have been depleted.

First reaction - simple mistake. Reading a report given in thousands and forgetting that.

Second reaction - are you kidding me? To say that and not realize what you're saying? That's like, I dunno, saying there are 57 or 58 states. But no, it's worse. Because they put together a GRAPHIC showing only 4,500 federal employees! Michelle Obama has more 'personal assistants' that that!

Hardball! With Mr. Gumby!

Hypocrites

2012-01-13T07:17:00.001-05:00

Exhibit A: "Placement of a public government display of a religious message in a place with impressionable young students has not been upheld," she said.

How come "young students" are only "impressionable" about conservative-y type things...but not when being taught how to have sex in class?

No Tea Party-ish Electoral Bang, Just A Whimper

2012-01-12T20:00:00.001-05:00

Thus ends the occupation...a small band of wandering homeless, those not (necessarily) addicted to drugs or mentally ill, just sort of...homeless...and wandering...

Anyway, the portmortem is basically here: Occupy Wall Street Dissolves Into Band of Homeless Protesters

Personally, I think this should be the lead in to the article, not something buried at the end:

"It's a sort of sink or swim situation," he said. "I think, long-term, they have to make a decision about what, exactly, their movement is about."

Yeah, it's about time for that, don't you think?

It was only a few nights after the Occupy protesters began sleeping in his church sanctuary when Pastor Bob Brashears realized that his laptop was missing...

This is what the Occupy encampment has become: A band of homeless protesters with no place to go. Amid accusations of drug use and sporadic theft, they've been sleeping on church pews for weeks...

"We walk around the church with flashlights, making noise to wake these people up and making sure they're good," he said. "No sex in the church, no drinking, no smoking, no shooting, no sniffing."

Ah, yes. I remember the Tea Party gatherings and how they had to self-police to stop the exhibitionist sex, abandoned children, rampant drug use...

...Even some of the church dwellers themselves are fed up with their fellow pew mates. Chris Allen, 36, is working on a backup plan in case they get kicked out.

"I feel people are messing up the church and we're not gonna have it much longer, so I'm worried about putting money in my pocket," said Allen, an unemployed construction worker from Long Island who lives here with his wife. "Because when it snows and I have nowhere to go, I'm not gonna be stuck on the streets like everyone else for being idiots."...

The church dwellers believe they are carrying the torch for the lost encampment -- and that, someday, they will form the foundation of a new one.

"We really have been calling it the `occupiers army' that we are building," explained protester Jason Harris, a teacher from Massachusetts.

Ummm...schools are in session in Massachusetts and he's squatting in a church in NYC. "Protester Jason Harris" is currently a hobo. I mean, if you want to get technical. And his "army" seems to be suffering from severe attrition.

Obey-Won and the Debt-i Knights of the Democrat Table must be thrilled they so publicly tied themselves to these people.

Fear Not

2012-01-12T19:00:00.002-05:00

I guess I could be all cool and summarize this, but IBD pretty much nails it:

As Townhall columnist Guy Benson noted, contrary to repeated assertions to the contrary, "voters turned out in record numbers yesterday, setting a new GOP primary turnout record in the Granite State by eclipsing 2008's tally by several thousand votes."

Not only that, but Romney beat his total vote count from 2008 by almost 20,000 votes — clearly a sign he's grown in popularity...

Again, in New Hampshire, Romney actually received more votes from evangelicals than Rick Santorum, supposedly the darling of the evangelical movement.

Meanwhile, Romney, supposedly detested by the fiscally conservative, small-government Tea Party, won their support by double-digits against his challengers.

And, indeed, among all those who said the economy was the No. 1 issue, Romney won 45% of the vote. Voters know he gets it.

The Amazing Plans Of President Planitall Boondoggle

2012-01-12T18:00:00.001-05:00

I posted before about the amazing work Charles Feeney has done with his accumulated wealth - wealth that, if seized 100% by the federal government, would keep them running for less than a day.

Doug Powers over at Michelle Malkin's site has a related note on liberal hypocrite Warren Buffett, who has pledged to give the government money (but still not pay the taxes his company owes, presumably) to pay down the debt, but only if it's to match contributions from GOP lawmakers. Note the punchline at the end:The American billionaire investor, in the new issue of Time magazine, says he would donate $1 to paying down the national debt for every dollar donated by a Republican in Congress. The only exception is Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell – for whom Buffett said he would go $3-to-$1.
Just for fun though, let’s assume every member of Congress took up Buffett on his offer and kicked in his or her entire net worth in order to reduce the national debt. That would be about $2 billion. Buffett would match (in actuality Buffett would get out of about half of this on a technicality because he only said he’d match Republican contributions, but let’s pretend that’s not the case). That would make the total debt-busting haul $4 billion. Enough money would have been raised to keep the government running for maybe half a day...
Doug goes on to note that this amount could also be squandered on 8 more Solyndra and their whistling robots...whistling robots, you say? Yup - this is where your tax dollars went - defended to this day by Obama. Bloomberg reports on the boondoggle we now own (when it comes time to collect, The Little Mermaid and Beauty And The Beast have good soundtracks nudge nudge wink wink):

It wasn’t just any factory. When it was completed at an estimated cost of $733 million, including proceeds from a $535 million U.S. loan guarantee, it covered 300,000 square feet, the equivalent of five football fields. It had robots that whistled Disney tunes, spa-like showers with liquid-crystal displays of the water temperature, and glass-walled conference rooms...

“When you don’t have the demand, you can’t go into something with the attitude, ‘Build it and they will come,’” Misra said. “You have to make sure the customers are already there when you build it.” [Translation: this is what happens when the government picks winners and losers instead of the free market]...

Even as Chu, Gronet and Schwarzenegger were thrusting their shovels into the dirt, market forces were working against Solyndra. The price of polysilicon, the main ingredient in competing traditional solar panels, had plunged. By the time the plant opened last January, the price would be down about 40 percent from when Solyndra got the loan guarantee. Chinese companies were ramping up production of their ever-cheaper competing flat panels...

“A significant percentage of the product we built went into a dumpster because it was defective,” said Craig Ewing, 55, a former maintenance technician. “It seemed like the company accepted that,” he said.

Perhaps the most amazing part of this whole head-up-posterior boondoggle? But piling money into trucks and dumping them into solar money-losing operations, Obama's "stimulus" actually just stimulated Chinese manufacturers, who entered the market and drove down costs so much that places like Solyndra, already on shaky financial ground, went under. So Obama gave Solyndra truckloads of taxpayer cash...and then used other taxpayer cash to destroy Solyndra.

Just In Time Econonomic Turnaround

2012-01-12T17:45:00.000-05:00

Quick to jump on unsubstantiated claims that holiday shopping was brisk and fraudulent reviews of the unemployment picture improving just because more people stopped looking for work, the media was practically soiling themselves with glee at what the BIG TURNAROUND in the economy was going to do for Obama's re-election chances (namely, in their minds, go from an easy win to a landslide).

Channeling Bill Murray from Stripes..."Then depression set it." and the real numbers started to show up.

Briefing.com pops the rosy bubble:

Retail sales during December increased by just 0.1% while sales less autos actually fell 0.2%. Neither was as strong as what had been widely anticipated.

Initial weekly jobless claims unexpectedly climbed to 399,000 and continuing jobless claims climbed to 3.63 million from 3.61 million.

Sorry, junior. No, as a matter of fact we're not happy that the economy hasn't turned around, thank you very much, but the fact that Obama's epic, I mean EPIC economic failure for the past 3 years continues to open the eyes of people every day.

The oh-happy-day December retail sales actually fell and after all that hyperbolic excitement, jobless claims are back to 400,000. Note to media, you can't lose for winning on this one - the more you try to hype Obama by saying the job market is coming back (it's not), the more people he's forced to abandon hope will return to find that job market still sucks and will simply start driving the unemployment rate back up.

Boy, times sure were happier for the media when they could harp at Bush about his "jobless recovery" and "Where are the jobs, Mr. President?!" when unemployment was under 5%, eh? When was the last time a 'reporter' asked Obama "Where are the jobs?"

"Where's the jobs?"
"When are you going to get the jobs?"
"Why aren't you getting the jobs now?"

Oh, Fat Snuffleupagus! I will say good day to you, sir!

Be Not Afraid

2012-01-11T20:00:00.001-05:00

Continuing on a theme, whether Mitt Romney is who I would like to see as the GOP candidate or not (given my druthers), I can at least explain why I'm not afraid of him as the candidate who will crush Obama in November.

1. He's not BooooobDoooooole.

Whether you think Romney's a career this or that, he is demonstrably not a career senator. He's certainly not a career senator that came up during the days when there was actual respect and comity between parties in Congress. We were afraid he wouldn't be up to facing a slick, corrupt, smooth-talking incumbent. He wasn't.

2. He's not John McCain.

See above. Additionally, we were afraid he wouldn't be up to facing Obama's blank slate, lie-anything-to-win campaign. We were afraid of what would happen when Mr. Comity Overly Moderate Get Along met the teeth bared Democrat dominated Congress. We were right.

3. He's not John Kerry

Say what you want about Mitt, he's not a fake. Oh, you can say he's wishy washy and rides the winds a bit like a typical moderate, but it's not like he usually struts around on the deck of his (wife's) luxury yacht in an ascot and ironed white shorts and then decided to put on fatigues and run as Captain America. C'mon, is anyone unaware at this point that Mitt runs a little down the middle? While he is trying to appeal to conservatives, has he been pretending to be the most conservative candidate in the race?

4. He's certain not Algore.

I haven't heard him claiming that he built Old Ironsides whilst governor of Massachusetts or that he led the original tea party.

Mitt simply isn't facing some of those issues. Obama hasn't got enough of the people behind him like Clinton. In fact, over the past 2 years the middle has fallen downright out of love with him as evidenced in numerous mid-term elections. His support, with the full weight and support of the media behind him, is in the realm of Bush's after 8 years of full media assault. For all the talk of 'nose holding' to vote for Mitt, think of the independents and squishy right - after several years of vetting through two primary seasons, what has come out to tar Mitt with those people? Exactly. Are they going to 'hold their nose' and vote for Obama to keep from having Mitt elected? Exactly.

The House is GOP-held with enough fiscal conservatives that they can dictate to the old guard GOP, like Boehner, what will happen with spending or they'll make things ugly. It's possible it might go a bit more GOP if candidates ride Mitt's coattails. It's more like to be similar in makeup to what is there now. The Senate has an excellent chance to flip to the GOP. At this point it would be a surprise if it didn't. That means we don't have to be afraid of a President Mitt being faced down in his office by a Democrat Speaker and majority leader telling him how it's going to be. It's more likely that he's going to be faced down by a GOP Speaker and majority leader telling him how it's going to be. And, again, with enough new fiscal conservatives, how it's going to be is how we need it to be right now.

I don't think we need to worry about rookie/stupid mistakes. No unscripted, taped interviews with gotcha liberal media blowhards that can edit the tape to make him or his running mate look like an idiot. In fact, his calm responses to the early media attempts to distort his words have been quite reassuring and his own media wing, which McCain never had, has been ably assisting him in pushing back against the lies along with the 3rd party sources like the MRC. McCain would have been running in circles in a panic after getting a wedgie from the press over their maliciously edited "I like firing people" quote. You're already seeing the artificial furor dying down as a calm, organized campaign makes sure the full quote is available for people to see for themselves. The best part, of course, is that the early attempts at political assassination by lie do nothing but make the mainstream liberal media lose even more face with America, and every percentage point they lose control over is a percentage point in America's favor. You know what, I like 'firing' people that provide me services, also, and I bet most Americans do. You don't like the service at a restaurant, you stop going. You don't want someone telling you that you have to eat there. You don't like your accountant, get another one. You don't like your wireless provider, get another one. Mitt's comment, that he'd like to see the same flexibility with health care, is one that will reverberate with a lot of people, not turn them off. I would, however, like to see just a dash of Newt in there, when turning back these BS attacks, I would like it made quite clear that they are what they are, don't just say 'that's not all I said', say 'that's not all I said, you and the media have deliberately edited my words to make it sound like I said something which I did not, I think a lot of Americans agree that they want to have the freedom to 'fire' a medical provider that isn't meeting their needs and find a new one, something my opponent is against'. Be upfront.

Same with this idiotic 'laying people off' thing from the capital group he worked with. His response to that is, and will continue to be, devastatingly effective. Too bad he had to show his hand before debates with Obama (thanks, "real conservative" Newt!)

“In the general election I’ll be pointing out that the president took the reins at General Motors and Chrysler — closed factories, closed dealerships laid off thousands and thousands of workers — he did it to try to save the business,” Romney said Wednesday on CBS.

I disagree, as you might have guessed, that this is a 'liability'. You're being fooled by the leftwing press if you think that America is all angry about capitalists and bankers and investors. Yeah, look at all the support from 'America' that the Occupy slobs got. People don't want government teaming up with willing businesses to screw them, but that's a long way from someone that can point at a record of investing in businesses so they can succeed, make money for people, and get people jobs. You know, things America cares about.

So, really, I'm just not that afraid. If Obama was popular with independents? Maybe. If Congress was heavily Democrat-run? Probably. If he was so new on the scene that you were just waiting until the skeletons started tumbling out of the closets? Yeah.

I don't see those elements in 2012. Is Mitt my dream date candidate? No, probably not. But do I think it's the end of the country if he's elected (over Obama)? Hell no.

Biased? Who? Us?

2012-01-11T19:00:00.000-05:00

Nobody here but us impartial journalists.

NBC correspondent Savannah Guthrie: "I hope the Democrats are furiously taking notes if this is the line of attack they plan to pursue against Mitt Romney."

I'd like to spend a few hours trying to figure out, if I can, which party she might conceivably support if I can penetrate her ironbound veneer of impartiality...but I think it would be a waste of time, no clue how I'd be able to puzzle that one out. They're too wily for us dumb conservatives. No wonder she works for NBC, someplace like FoxNews, filled with blatantly GOP-loving journalists, would never hire someone as straight-down-the-middle as her.

Angry Again

2012-01-11T18:00:00.003-05:00

Perhaps a blue ribbon panel of investigators can figure out how this whole thing came about...

Mrs Obama: Tired of 'angry black woman' stereotype

Hmmm...it's enough to set one off...

stereotype: something conforming to a fixed or general pattern

OK...hmmm...where, oh where are people getting this from...

Hmmmm....
Speaking in Milwaukee, Wisconsin today, would-be First Lady Michelle Obama said, "for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback."
Nope. It's no good. I don't know where people get these "stereotypes" from. I guess it's just because she's black.

Sunday, October 30, 2011
Michelle’s back, and she’s madder than ever. She was already pretty angry, seemingly unhappy with just about everything...A few months into her job as first lady, her French counterpart asked how she liked the gig: “Don’t ask!” she reportedly spat. “It’s hell. I can’t stand it!”...

At a massive mansion on the bay, filled with the wealthiest of the wealthy, America’s first lady launched into a tirade about “them” - the Republicans...

Yes, Republicans hope to regain the White House so they can install Supreme Court justices who will trample Americans’ privacy, ignore the nation’s security, crush free speech and persecute the religious.

Oh, and they’re rich and racist to boot. “Will we be a country where opportunity is limited to just the few at the top? Who are we? Or will we give every child a chance to succeed no matter where they’re from, or what they look like or how much money their parents have. Who are we?”

That’s right, rich people (white, of course) certainly don’t want black people to succeed. They want to squelch success based on what people look like, how much money they have. “Are we going to let them succeed?” the first lady yelled. “Nooo!” the rich white people screamed.
The world may never know...

Of course if she's going to persist by demanding TV access to be all angry about it...wait, did we just figure this thing out?

Stick With It

2012-01-11T17:45:00.001-05:00

As far as I'm concerned, Mitt Romney can stop thinking of campaign slogans, I don't see how he's going to top this one:

“This president is a nice guy who just doesn’t get it," said Romney. "I spent my career in the private sector. I’m not perfect, but I do get it, and I’ll use what I know to get America to work."

Just stop right there, you've got it. Rinse. Repeat. Over and over and over. At the start and end of every media interview, every newspaper interview, every public appearance, every commercial. Over and over and over. Perfect tone - not mean to offend the 'poor Obama' crowd. Perfect focus - on the economy. Perfect disarming of Obama - he just doesn't get it. Perfect pledge - vague but in a truthful way, he's going to use what he knows to get things working again after Obama promised to use his lack of knowledge to make everything wonderful for everyone all the time everywhere...and failed.

Our Heroes!

2012-01-10T19:00:00.000-05:00

Another arrow in the quiver for those that are serious about stopping those *cough Obama cough* that want to turn the US into western europe.

However, for those looking to see just how good a government can be at throwing money away, this tale of already WAY bankrupt Greece makes a trillion dollar stimulus that didn't stimulate anything look positively quaint:

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greek disability groups expressed anger Monday at a government decision to expand a list of state-recognized disability categories to include pedophiles, exhibitionists and kleptomaniacs.

The National Confederation of Disabled People called the action "incomprehensible," and said pedophiles are now awarded a higher government disability pay than some people who have received organ transplants.

The Labor Ministry said categories added to the expanded list — that also includes pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists — were included for purposes of medical assessment and used as a gauge for allocating financial assistance.

Unbothered By Their Hypocrisy

2012-01-10T18:00:00.000-05:00

For a leftist, believing the following will not cause you to pass out:

1. Voting is a right, therefore, requiring ID to vote is wrong.

2. Health care and/or welfare is a right, but there's not problem having to present ID to get benefits/prescriptions/etc.

All He Said

2012-01-10T13:22:00.002-05:00

Liberal Media/Democrat version: Mitt Romney: "I like firing people."

The rest of what he said:

"I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don't like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If - if, you know, if someone doesn't give me the good service I need, I want to say, you know, that I'm going to go get somebody else to provide that service to me."

Here We Go Again

2012-01-09T19:00:00.000-05:00

For the 2006 elections:

I'll tell you my impression. We really in this last election, when I say we...the Democrats, I think pushed it as far as we can to the end of the fleet, didn't say it, but we implied it. That if we won the Congressional elections, we could stop the war. Now anybody was a good student of government would know that wasn't true. But you know, the temptation to want to win back the Congress, we sort of stretched the facts...and people ate it up. -Paul Kanjorski (D-PA)

For the 2012 elections:

Marking the one-year anniversary of Republican control of the House of Representatives, Minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) charged during a Democratic press conference Thursday that “no major job agenda” had been advanced over the past year...

House GOP leaders, however, maintain that the House has passed 27 job-growing bills since the Republicans assumed control following the 2010 midterm elections – and that they are currently awaiting action in the Senate.

Among them is House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan’s sweeping budget for 2012, which included Medicare reform...

The House passed 27 bills that include tax relief, regulatory reform, and jobs and energy production, but all are awaiting Senate action.

Last month, Ryan and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) put forward a bipartisan proposal to reform Medicare, creating a voucher program to allow private companies to compete with Medicare plans, beginning in 2022.

Chance of the media calling them out? More than 1%? I doubt it.

Yawn. Double Standards

2012-01-09T18:00:00.000-05:00

GOP tries to "redefine rape" to bring it into conformance with existing law. OUTRAGE!

Obama's DOJ actually radically redefines rape? YAWN.

Your Random Saturday

2012-01-07T06:45:00.003-05:00

Recapping what a success (read 'failure') 2011 was:

In January, a deranged madman killed a bunch of people in Arizona and horribly wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. It was a true tragedy, disgustingly exploited by liberals who saw it as the perfect opportunity to demonize political opponents...The Tucson tragedy also let Barack Obama deliver perhaps the best speech of his presidency -- on the need to tone down the extreme rhetoric on both sides...By summer, Democratic operatives and liberal New York Times columnists alike (a subtle distinction, I know) were decrying Republicans as "hostage takers" (Obama) and "terrorists" (Joe Biden) and the Tea Party as "the Hezbollah faction" of the GOP (NYT columnist Tom Friedman) with nary a peep of protest from the champions of civility...

The Occupy movement's meager tangible accomplishments (We recycled our own urine!) are inversely correlated with their lavish press coverage. The protesters were named Time magazine's person of the year. Though in fairness, Time diluted its sycophancy by including the Arab Spring protesters who've (so far) ushered in a glorious new era of Islamism in places like Egypt. Winning!...

Back home, Tea Party politicians who truly won historic midterm election victories are cast as dangerous losers. The Occupiers lost their bongs and yurts to bulldozers in cities across America, but museums around the country are nonetheless desperate to acquire authentic Occupy movement artifacts to commemorate their glorious but unspecified successes. Unfortunately, the tea parties cannot work the refs of history this way, because they clean up their mess after they get together...

And so it goes. The economy continued to languish while the president declared victory over a Depression that never was and touted himself as the most legislatively successful president ever -- with the "possible exceptions" of FDR, LBJ and Lincoln.

Meanwhile, we are approaching the third year of the long winter Obama once celebrated as a "recovery summer." Its chief selling points are an unemployment rate statistically lowered by more Americans giving up hope of finding a job, and the claim that millions of jobs have been "created or saved." This bogus locution allows Obama to claim every job he doesn't destroy as a win.

Is it that hard to vote? Nope:

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson rejected Perez’s math and explained on Fox News why the law is necessary. The state Department of Motor Vehicles audited a state Election Commission report that said 239,333 people were registered to vote but had no photo ID. The DMV found that 37,000 were deceased, more than 90,000 had moved to other states, and others had names not matched to IDs. That left only 27,000 people registered without a photo ID but who could vote by signing an affidavit as to their identity...

Like other states, South Carolina provides photo IDs if a person cannot afford one...

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s 2005 photo ID law, which the Democratic Party and several interest groups had challenged as a “severe burden.”
But, as American Civil Rights Union attorney Peter Ferrara noted in the ACRU’s friend of the court brief:

“No one has been denied the right to vote by the Indiana Voter ID Law. The record clearly establishes without challenge that 99% of the Voting Age Population in Indiana already has the required ID, in the form of driver’s licenses, passports, or other identification. Of the remaining 1%, senior citizens and the disabled are automatically eligible to vote by absentee ballot, and such absentee voting is exempt from the Voter ID Law.”...

In 2005, a bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III found no evidence that requiring photo IDs would suppress the minority vote..

How Often?

2012-01-06T18:00:00.000-05:00

How often does someone with a brilliant idea that will change our very lives happen, at the moment of invention, find that the government is ripe at just that moment for pouring a bucket of $1,000's down their pants?

How often does someone with a brilliant idea that will change our very lives think, "You know, I'd like a one-time payoff on this - yeah, everyone will want one and I could be rich beyond Steve Jobs' wildest dreams, but I'll take a few mil to develop it from Uncle Sam and then give him the rights to it!"?

How often do the eager investors that are still out there, ready to, indeed, stuff $1,000's down the pants of someone with a million dollar idea, say, when presented with an obviously good idea, "Get stuffed!"?

Ah.....

But how often does the government stuff $1,000,000's down the pants of enterprises that no private investor in their right mind would sink a dime into...indeed, has been turned down by said private investors?

Think about it.

Snap Out Of It!

2012-01-05T20:00:00.001-05:00

Dear GOP and fellow Americans,

I went after you a bit here: link.

It wasn't worded strongly enough.

I heard a "political strategist" this morning on 810 going on about what a disaster it would be for the country if the GOP puts a moderate in the White House, that the only way we could move forward is to elect a far-right conservative.

Would you all just snap the fu** out of it? 80% of you have completely forgotten the main lesson Newt Gingrich tried to keep us mindful of - the #1 goal MUST be to replace the cosmically far-left socialist currently in the White House.

No, the biggest disaster this nation could face is NOT a moderate Republican in the White House (with a conservative Congress, I hasten to add). The biggest disaster, a disaster so big it makes your dreaded scenario look like a picnic in the park on a beautiful day, would be doing ANYTHING to enable the re-election of the nightmare that is currently there - the one that just unilaterally decided that the Senate's 'advise and consent' role doesn't apply to him. The one bragging about reducing our military capabilities (despite the modest amount we spend on the military compared to social programs) as Iraq descends into anarchy, Libya and Egypt spiral into Islamist anti-American hotbeds, and Iran decides that it can choke off oil transport and laugh in Obama's face about it.

Snap the **ck out of it. THAT is the biggest disaster we are facing and if that means voting for a moderate republican that at least loves this nation and believes we ALL deserve a shot at wealth and happiness, even if we happen to be white or have money in the bank, then you'd better damned well get your priorities straight.

The Latest White House Idiocy

2012-01-05T19:00:00.000-05:00

Go ahead, limber up the neck, you're going to be doing a lot of head shaking.

Ready?

Coming Soon: ‘Work Opportunity Summer’

Alternate headline for partisan pessimists: Obama administration to create 110,000 unpaid volunteer jobs

Puttin' America back to work!

While many of these jobs will be unpaid training opportunities, the president says it’s important for teens to learn new skills and develop a work ethic.

*SQUEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLL!*

Gonna need new brakes.

So it's OK for Obama to say we can have kids work at "unpaid training opportunities" to "develop a work ethic"...but it's racist and laughable for Newt Gingrich to say that we should offer kids the opportunity to obtain paid employment to "develop a work ethic"?

"Today’s announcement is the latest in a series of executive actions the Obama administration is taking to strengthen the economy and move the country forward"

Unpaid jobs for teenagers...after 3 years of economic failure, Obama's new plan to "strengthen the economy and move the country forward" is unpaid jobs for teenagers?

Remind me again why anyone isn't better than him?

Say, maybe even in economic downtimes we could afford to actually pay teenagers for some work...if the minimum wage hadn't been hiked up to like $9 an hour!

Poor, Poor Media

2012-01-05T18:00:00.001-05:00

Alas, the poor liberal media has been in Palin withdrawal for seemingly months! Oh, sure, they had a few weeks of fun running with the 'Sarah Palin out of the spotlight', 'Why isn't Sarah Palin everywhere' stories after attacking her for being all over the news, but that itch has just been growing and growing...

Scratch away, my friends! Scratch away! Yes, Sarah's back and you can jump all over the story...SARAH GOT A HAIRCUT!!!!!

STOP - THE - PRESSES!!

Durrrr

2012-01-04T20:00:00.004-05:00

I'm sort of starting to think that conservative voters are a little short-sighted and, well, dumb right about now.

Don't give me 'electability', give me a reeeeeeeaaaaaaaal conservative!

But not that conservative.

And not that one, (s)he's not conservative the right way.

*groan*

A few points. First, and I don't recall (sorry) where I read this - but think about it: 'Gingrich voters' will vote for Romney (see: conservative turnout for McCain was at same levels as for Bush), but will 'Romney voters' vote for Gingrich?

The answer is actually pretty obvious.

Second: Mitt Romney isn't an idiot. His campaign has not been marked by a lack of preparedness at debates, mass firings of campaign staff, failure to qualify for primary ballots - hell, he just won Iowa that went to Huckabee last time. He hasn't had to waste time 'explaining' himself and he hasn't moronically spent time being interviewed by liberal media types (he had plenty of experience with them in MA - look at how easily he keeps Democratic operative Snuffleupagus from laying a glove on him here: link and smoothly sticks to his guns against Soledad O'Bama: link) with no agenda beyond coaxing out something they could misrepresent or twist.

Yeah, he's a bit of a wind twister, but think about that for a moment. As governor of MA he didn't exactly govern as a conservative. Guess what, MA's legislature wouldn't go along with anything he proposed if he did. Assuming America continues it's next great awakening and gives the next president a decently conservative Congress (look what the fiscal conservatives we sent there in 2010 have managed to do to at least start tapping the brakes so far - just think if we can increase their numbers) and voter sentiment will clearly be on the side of fiscal (and, yes, maybe social) conservatism. Well, guess what? The wind that will be twisting Romney will be clearly blowing to the right.

He understands money. He's got plenty of experience there. Unlike Obama and the left, who think that the way to save money is to spend more money, he understands that we cannot continue spending money as we are now. Even if he wanted to be all 'big government conservative', I think he realizes that the money just isn't in the account.

Yeah, we'd all like to see Gingrich obliterate Obama in debates, but I don't think we need to worry about Romney, either. McCain was useless, he's not a talker. Romney is. He can match Obama's eloquence while having the advantage of bringing up Obama's 4 years of failure, broken promises, etc. without jamming a foot down his own throat. Hopefully he'll be smart enough to work into every public appearance, and especially the debates, 'Say, what was our credit rating when you took office?' and 'Wasn't the reason for the downgrade specifically 'overspending' and not 'Bush'?'

Finally, cast your mind back to 2008. McCain. Whoo ha. Boy wasn't the right electrified. But then what happened? He picked Palin as his running mate and absolutely electrified the right and caused the left to absolutely load their Pampers. We're talking blowout. For reasons described above, I think we can be comfortable that Romney would be at least as acceptable as McCain and, not being an idiot, it seems likely that he would choose a solid conservative as his running mate. But, having learned from the left's poop explosion (in more ways than one) over Palin, he'll pick someone less easily targeted than Palin. Of course he must already know who he's going to pick and I would trust that they've already agreed. He's just that organized. I can't believe it's anyone in the race for President, none of them are really veep material with Perry being the closest, but I don't think Perry would want it. Jindal's been awfully quiet lately, but I'm not sure he's not happy for a few more years in LA. We'll see. One thing McCain did do right was keep Palin under wraps for an absolute blindside to the left until the morning of the announcement. I sort of suspect something similar from Romney.

So. No, I'm not 'all in' on Romney or anything like that and, no, in a perfect world I don't think I'd pick Romney if it were just up to me. But it's not. All I'm saying is - Is it really that bad if our candidate is a super-organized, clean-cut, well-experienced in the private AND public sectors, smart, likable, electable, efficient, wealthy guy that we should feel comfortable will govern hand-in-hand with a conservative Congress and set up a conservative veep with him?

Is This What The Founding Fathers Intended?

2012-01-04T19:00:00.000-05:00

So, did the founding fathers intend that, at the end of the day, our lives' paths would be determined by 9 unelected persons with lifetime jobs?

The Supreme Court's Judgment Isn't Absolute (original is very linky, so click through):

In a 54-page position paper, Gingrich challenges the widely held belief that the Supreme Court is the final authority on the meaning of the Constitution. Though nothing in the Constitution says so, there is now an entrenched presumption that once the court has decided a constitutional question, no power on earth short of a constitutional amendment -- or a later reversal by the court itself -- can alter that decision...

But judges are not divine and their opinions are not holy writ. As every American schoolchild learns, the judiciary is intended to be a co-equal branch of government, not a paramount one. If the Supreme Court wrongly decides a constitutional case, nothing obliges Congress or the president -- or the states or the people, for that matter -- to simply bow and accept it.

Naturally this isn't something the courts have been eager to concede. Judges are no more immune to the lure of power than anybody else, and their assertion of judicial supremacy -- plus what Gingrich calls "the passive acquiescence of the executive and legislative branches" -- has won them an extraordinary degree of clout and authority...

Gingrich argues that this is unhealthy, and that the elected branches have an obligation to check and balance the judiciary. "The courts have become grotesquely dictatorial, far too powerful and, I think, frankly arrogant," he said in Iowa last month...Gingrich is far from the first to say so.

"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1820, is "a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy." Abraham Lincoln -- revolted by the Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott that blacks "had no rights a white man was bound to respect" -- rejected the claim that the justices' word was final. "If the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court the instant they are made," he warned in his first inaugural address, "the people will have ceased to be their own rulers."...

Judicial supremacy is eroding America's democratic values. For the sake of our system of self-government, the balance of federal power needs to be restored.

America Is...

2012-01-04T06:58:00.003-05:00

Liberals like to delude themselves into thinking America isn't a center-right nation.

Yet whenever an election rolls around the GOP is "battling for conservatives" and the Democrats are "battling for moderates"...in other words, reaching to the right.

When was the last time anybody worried about capturing the liberal vote?

Green Keeps Turning Brown

2012-01-03T21:39:00.002-05:00

So it seems that California has decided to put the high speed brakes on its $100 billion high speed rail boondoggle (the local papers are going to be so sad).

There's the Chevy Volt, a poor-selling toy for rich elitist liberals that spreads our wealth around (to the tune of government subsidies that pay for most of the $250,000 actual cost of each of them - you read that right). Oh, and it seems to have a bad habit of catching on fire weeks after minor accidents. Whoopsie!

Now this:

Then government-backed Fisker Automotive had to recall all its cars due to a fire hazard.

Late last month, Fisker, the electric car startup that is busy spending its $529 million in Department of Energy loans, announced a recall of its entire fleet of luxury Karmas because of a faulty battery that posed a fire risk.

The battery maker at fault — A123 Systems — is another Obama grantee, having gotten $380 million in taxpayer support to make advanced car batteries...

Although it once promised to be profitably churning out 1,200 cars a month by now, Fisker has so far sold only about 240 — at a price almost 14% higher than promised. And the more moderately priced electric sedan it says it will build in an abandoned Delaware plant is still nowhere to be seen...

Volt sales came in about 30% below GM's forecast for 2011 — in a year when overall retail car sales beat industry analyst forecasts by almost 12% — earning the Volt third place on 24/7 Wall Street's list of worst product flops of 2011.

And that's despite the substantial tax break to Volt buyers and the hundreds of millions in grant money to its suppliers. Meanwhile, sales of Nissan's all-electric Leaf have been flagging — it moved just 672 in November.

Of course it's all in a good cause...namely protecting the planet from imaginary global warming:

Richard Muller, a physics professor at the University of California, said that data from his Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures (BEST) project convinced him that "global warming is real." "We see no evidence," he said Oct. 21, that global warming has "slowed down."

The alarmists, of course, leveraged Muller's statements to suit their agenda.

But Muller's is not the "consensus" position of the team. Judith Curry, a Georgia Tech climate researcher with more than 30 years experience who was also part of the BEST project, has said "there is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn't stopped." She looked at the same data Muller did and noted it shows global temperatures haven't increased since the late 1990s.

Now comes meteorologist Anthony Watts armed with data showing the continental U.S. has not warmed in the last 10 years, and in fact has grown cooler in the summer and colder in the winter. The numbers aren't a collection of weather forecasts from Watts, who runs the website "Watts Up With That," but data from the National Climatic Data Center...

The 2001-to-2011 trend shows a cooling of 0.87 degrees Fahrenheit compared with the 1911-2010 average. Backing up the starting date to 1996 doesn't help the alarmists' case, either. Temperatures are flat over that period.

Bigot? Yup.

2012-01-03T18:58:00.003-05:00

Of all the charges that Carl Strock wants to deny, being called a bigot is the one he should probably just stay away from.

bigot: "a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance"

"obstinately...devoted"? As near as I can tell he's just written his third defense of his latest anti-religion bigotry. Not that he's defensive about it or anything *snicker*.

"intolerantly devoted"? Do I really need to get into Strock's intolerance of those that don't agree with him? Did I mention that he just wrote his third column attacking those that expressed a position that he dislikes?

prejudices? "an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics"

"irrational"? What exactly has anyone done to him re: religion?

"hostility"? In spades.

Yes, Carl. You're demonstrably a bigot. That's not even in question. And it's as easily provable re: conservatives as it is re: religion. You're like some kind of bigoty bigot...bigot squared.

The Tube

2012-01-01T18:08:00.001-05:00

I'm guessing this won't be on "All-American Muslim".

TSO Review Fail

2012-01-01T17:45:00.003-05:00

As usual, the Times Union's TSO review is replete with errors. The review of the 26th show(s) in the paper on the 27th isn't worth submitting correction requests over, but here are the most glaring.

"Founded in 1996 by composer/producer Paul O'Neill, who coaxed Jon Olivia and Robert Kinkel of Savatage..."

It's not "Jon Olivia", it's Jon Oliva. And he was a key player in getting this off the ground with O'Neill.

Robert Kinkel was never in Savatage.

C'mon, this stuff is readily available at allmusic.com.

"Their own "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24" was a highlight..."

It's not "their own", it was originally a Savatage piece.

There's a typo...the word is rubble, not "ruble".

'Occupy' Criminals Expand Their Racket

2012-01-01T13:35:00.002-05:00

Nice to see the Times Union actually reporting on this, I will say. So...who stands with them besides most of the capital region liberals, Obama, Democrats in Congress, the local papers, unions...

Police are taking steps to protect an Albany police officer whose family has received threats after he was publicly identified for using pepper spray to quell Occupy Albany protesters last week.

A "wanted" poster seeking information including the home address, telephone numbers and "map to home" of Officer Richard Gorleski was posted Wednesday on a Facebook page used by Occupy Albany...

"Making harassing phone calls is not something Occupy Albany supports or condones," Mishler said. "Just like any other organization or group or movement, Occupy Albany doesn't control what any particular individual does and certainly doesn't control what somebody who's not involved with Occupy Albany does. ... We're building a movement to address the inequities in our society, political inequities and economic inequities. We're interested in building a movement and making change. We're not interested in making harassing phone calls."

I guess the people of the year had to take a break from moving their bowels on police cars. Lovely people on the facebook page they reference, surely people that would never condone harassing/threatening a police officer:

"It is sickening how many of the apologists for pig violence and murder of citizens are White suburbanites..."

""Occupy Albany opposes any Authoritarian Police State"- and we have witnessed more than our share of that targeted toward us in the past week."

Indeed, big ole "Authoritarian Police State" going after...criminals. Of course they've disappeared the post referenced in the article. What a surprise.

Spinnin'

2011-12-31T23:06:00.002-05:00

soooooo..."Obama caves"?

Your Random End Of The Year

2011-12-31T06:45:00.000-05:00

So long year 3, may year 4 see us steer him towards the door.

In that spirit, let's let John Ransom recall the biggest 9 fails of Obama's, oh, 300 or so fails this year:

9) Sending a budget to Capitol Hill that didn’t get one vote:

Calculate the man-hours that went into presenting to Congress a budget that didn’t muster even one vote in the Senate...Nothing better represents the disconnect between Washington and the rest of the country as Obama’s attitude towards passing a budget. They didn’t even pretend to take the process seriously. And then they thought no one would notice...

8) Predicting the economic recovery...

7) Spiking the “football” on Osama bin Laden:

Obama has made too may references to “getting” Osama bin Laden. He’s done it in such a way that he claims too much credit. The proper thing to have done was to give the US Intelligence Community along with our armed forces all of the credit...The intelligence gathering that eventually “got” bin Laden started a long time before Obama was president. Obama’s never learned the hard lesson, often lost on the “special” child, that no one likes a braggart...

6) Solyndra:

The economic futility of the regime in Washington was best displayed by the decision to “invest” US taxpayers’ hard-earned money in Solyndra, even knowing that the company would fail. This at a time when Obama was lecturing the half who actually pays taxes that we are not paying our fair share. Even after getting caught, then lying and getting caught in the lie about the decisions surrounding the DOE program that made the Solyndra investment possible, Obama doubled down on stupid to put billions, yes, billions more into the program...

5) Fast and Furious:

Admittedly I haven’t been a fan of Eric Holder’s. But even I’m amazed at the breathtaking cynicism shown by our top law-enforcement officer as he lied to Congress about what he knew and when he knew it regarding Fast and Furious. It shouldn’t have taken the death of a federal agent to know arming drug gangs in Mexico would lead to no good...

4) Vacations 1, 2 & 3

I don’t begrudge the president taking his family someplace, you know, once. But $4 million dollars for a Christmas vacation? And despite what some progressives are claiming, yes that amount is the tab picked up by the US taxpayers for Obama’s 17-day Hawaiian vacation with Mary Todd Lincoln Jr. And the money part isn’t the worst of it. This year Obama was notably absent during the start up to the war in Libya and during the aftermath of the debt ceiling negotiations- remember the ones he really didn’t take part in in the first place? He promptly decamped to Martha’s Vineyard while S&P downgraded US debt...

3) Keystone Pipeline...

2) Libya

Nothing cried hypocrisy more than Obama’s decision to start a time-limited, scope-limited kinetic military activity- whatever that is- in Libya over European oil. Up to that point, progressives supported him. After that? Not so much...

1) Debt Ceiling:

It’s hard to pin this completely on the president. But really you have to because here’s the un-get-aroundable fact. In February, Obama presented a budget that called for more deficit spending, more borrowing, more debt. In July he was pretending to be concerned about the deficit. He wasn’t and isn’t. That was just a bid to raise taxes. Super, epic, utter fail, dude. Thanks for playing.

The Road To Hell

2011-12-29T19:00:00.000-05:00

Here's to a better 2012, maybe the geniuses that know better than everyone else, the ones that rely on "science" will get a clue.

How about that ethanol, folks? It's led to huge spikes in food prices as corn has been redirected to making ineffective combustion products, leading to corn price hikes, hikes in things that use corn, and hikes due to shortages in other products because growers switched to gubmint-subsidized corn. Not to mention the engine-destroying factor or the reduced fuel economy (weren't we supposed to be increasing fuel economy?).

This, of course, followed on the heels of the disastrous decision to force the addition of MTBE to fuel, which also led to reduced fuel efficiency (I 'fondly' recall how I could drive one way back/forth to college on a tank of MTBE-less fuel whereas I needed to refill going the other way with MTBE-laden gas) and the terrible health effects and environmental destruction wrought by MTBE that was forced on us by the government. Again, weren't we supposed to be improving fuel efficiency and saving the environment?

Which, naturally, brings to mind the hysteria over hydraulic fracturing to extract the cleanest burning fossil fuel available - natural gas, because of an unproven and unlikely fear of aquifer contamination. Where were these people when the government was forcing MTBE on us, a highly mobile contaminant now found in drinking water in all 50 states, a man-made, man-added contaminant the government practically dumped into drinking water aquifers?

Where does it end with these geniuses?

A Simple Solution

2011-12-28T19:00:00.000-05:00

My, my, my. So much fuss.

Priests molesting little boys.

Male teachers molesting little boys.

Now we're on our third(?) scandal where a man employed by high level sports team employee has been exposed (is that the right word? 'caught'?) molesting little boys.

So much fuss about how to stop these men teaching and coaching from molesting little boys when the answer has already been so ably provided by the left, who has assured us they know the reason...

Just let them marry!

What? Doesn't make sense to you? You don't understand why allowing men who are obsessed with having sex with little boys to marry will solve the problem? I'm sure the New York Times can explain it...

What If They Told The Truth About The Weather?

2011-12-28T18:00:00.000-05:00

I know...radical concept. The NY Times tried to ruin everyone's Christmas with a load of ~~coal~~ baloney in our stockings, but they just can't keep a lid on the truth anymore.

The article is pounded into tinsel here: The Worst NYT Story on Climate Ever?

It effectively eviscerates the unsubstantiated, unsourced scaremongering in the Times such as:

-misrepresenting the work and products of NOAA

-the 'rise' in costs from extreme weather

-tornado frequency

Why Fighting Media Bias Matters

2011-12-28T06:57:00.002-05:00

Before the media needed to spin the manufactured "crisis" the Democrat's way:

After the spin was in place:

Notice anything different?

Occupy Blame?

2011-12-27T16:51:00.004-05:00

Channel 13 news: "Police are still searching for the people responsible for causing $30,000 in damage to the Holiday Lights display in Washington Park."

YNN: "An estimated $30,000 worth of damage was done to several light displays sometime between Friday night and early Saturday morning. Corporate sponsorship signs within the display were sprayed with graffiti messages. Some electrical cords were also cut on many displays."

Times Union actually brushes on the facts: "Someone had also spray-painted anti-corporate messages on wood sponsor boards that are also erected at the end of the route in Washington Park."

Fox23News: "Officials with the Albany Police Athletic League tell FOX23 News all the lights at the Hannaford Holiday Lights in the Park have finally been repaired after many were cut and signs were tagged."

Missing from all these stories? The details. Specifically that the holiday display was vandalized to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars with an emphasis on vandalizing corporate sponsorship notices and that the "signs were tagged" with anti-corporation graffiti...days after "Occupy Albany" was dispersed by the City. Fox23News even has a tab for news just about "Occupy Albany". Yet the press, oh so eager to tie anything negative to the Tea Party or conservatives, despite the lack of any and all evidence, is carefully covering up the fact that the park vandalism appeared specifically targeted at corporations and motivated by anti-corporate sentiment - the exact hallmarks of the "Occupy" 'movement'.

Double standard much?

--

I would point out that the print Daily Gazette found a mathematician for Monday's paper and put 2 and 2 together, allowing the beyond obvious connection to at least be raised. The TU's initial reporting also mentioned it.

3 Years Of ObamaFail In Chart Form

2011-12-27T10:57:00.002-05:00

Nice collection of economic charts over at the American Enterprise Institute's blog you should check out here: The 7 most illuminating economic charts of 2011

They include an updated version of the unemployment rate vs. Obama's promised unemployment rate if we spent more than the Iraq War on his stimulus-that-didn't. We're "supposed" to be around 6% by now according to Mr. Off-to-Hawaii-again.

There's also what the unemployment rate would look like if people hadn't stopped looking for work.

Middle-class stagnation is debunked.

Another myth obliterated? Income inequality, specifically how the top 1% aren't hoarding all the assets.

Also, as we already know, just how pitiful Obama's "recovery" has been compared to other recessions where the government didn't "help" so much.

Your Random Saturday

2011-12-24T06:45:00.002-05:00

If you're going shopping today, be safe out there and smile, even when people don't deserve it :)

Why socialists get it all wrong:

Elizabeth Warren, liberal candidate for the senate in Massachusetts, recently declared that nobody succeeds on their own in the country. This is true. There are always many people involved in any success. But she took it one step further, stating that success is a gift from civilized society...

One of my businesses is a 137-room hotel with a restaurant and banquet facilities. Last year this hotel paid quite a bit for roads, fire and police, and schools...That $1 million of local taxes is before I pay any state or federal income taxes and multiple fees...

In fact, Professor Warren’s argument is exactly upside down. My little hotel doesn’t drive on the roads, use the library or send kids to public schools. How do you think these things are paid for, by the household that pays $4,500 a year in property taxes and sends 2 kids to school at $12,000 per year?

Ugh:

I still remember that visit Michelle Obama made to a government classroom here in Atlanta. A picture of her in the classroom interacting with the kids appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. On the classroom wall behind Michelle were the typical alphabet signs; one sign for each letter strung along the wall. Under each of the letters was a word beginning with that letter. Under “M” we had the word “monkey.” Under “N” we had not one, but two words. Those words? “National Government.” They chose not to use “notebook,” something in virtually ever classroom. Maybe the teacher could have used “necklace” or “necktie.” But no. It just had to be “National government.” Never miss an opportunity to keep the federal government foremost in the minds of your children.

Obama's track record devastatingly exposed:

Speaking in Richmond, Va., on Oct. 22, 2008, Obama promised to put millions of Americans back to work; he pledged "real change." Instead, the unemployment rate is 8.6 percent. Or is it? Ed Luce of the Financial Times writes, "According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 percent."...

On CBS, the president said the 2012 election is about his vision, but as CBS News' Stephanie Condon reported last week, "Sixty-six percent of Americans say they do not have a clear idea of what he wants to accomplish in a second term. ... Fewer than half of Democrats say they have a clear idea of what the president wants to accomplish if re-elected." Don't we know? It's taxing "millionaires and billionaires" so the government has more of our money to waste...

The president's housing programs received $50 billion from Congress to help stem foreclosures on 9 million homeowners. As The Washington Post reported in October, only $2.4 billion of that money has been allocated, helping just 1.7 million people avoid foreclosure.

Imagine what Democrats and their acolytes in the media would say if a Republican president had a similar track record. One doesn't have to imagine. With a lower unemployment rate and less debt in the Bush administration, Democrats were relentless in their attacks, promising improvements. Barack Obama assured us he would make things better.

Give 'em the business, Larry:

The Democratic National Committee pounced and immediately put out a video: "Mitt Romney: Simply Out of Touch -- Ten Thousand Times Over."

But which "elite, out-of-touch politician" considers a $172,200 annual salary "relatively modest" -- Republican presidential hopeful Romney or President Barack Obama? Answer: Obama.

Whose $300K-per-year hospital-executive wife traveled to working-class Zanesville, Ohio, and complained about the high cost of her daughters' summer camp, piano and dance lessons? Answer: Obama's.

The then-U.S. senator was making $170K. The 2005-2009 median income in Zanesville: $28,854, almost $13,000 less than the national median...

Obama, on the other hand, is a "man of the people."

But Obama has long enjoyed a very un-Joe Sixpack-like life. His mom had a Ph.D. in anthropology. His father won a graduate scholarship to pursue an economics Ph.D. at Harvard. Obama was raised for a time by his maternal grandparents -- one a successful salesman, the other a bank executive. He attended the most prestigious private prep school in Hawaii, Punahou School. Obama spent his first two college years at the elite private California school Occidental, before transferring to Ivy League Columbia and then to Harvard Law. He met his future wife, Michelle, at a blue-stocking, big-time Chicago law firm, where today first-year associates make the "relatively modest" pay of about $160K.

Obama, to counter this and make himself more relatable, apparently takes a page from The New York Times playbook -- and makes stuff up. On the 2008 campaign trail, for example, he says he and his mom spent time on food stamps -- something that he somehow failed to included in his autobiography. Conveniently, records do not exist to prove or disprove this.

The Spin Gets Stupider

2011-12-23T21:09:00.003-05:00

Reuters turn to spin the payroll tax slapfight is perhaps the most incoherent of them all.

The headline lets you know that things aren't going to make much sense beyond wild spinning for Democrats: "Congress punts hard payroll tax work to 2012"

Yeah? "Congress"? Wasn't it the Democrats and Obama that wanted to punt to 2012? Didn't they get a big "win" (as we'll see) from forcing the GOP to agree to punt to 2012 when it was the GOP that wanted to deal with it now? I mean, this is just classic liberal media bias spin - if you can't just blame the GOP because, well, it's demonstrably the fault of Obama and the Democrats, then say everyone was to blame.

President Barack Obama signed into law a two-month payroll tax cut extension on Friday, capping a year of fierce partisan combat over taxes and spending that will resume in January and play heavily in the 2012 elections.

The rest of the story? ALL caused by the failure of the Democrats and Obama to produce a budget. Again.

"We have a lot more work to do," the president said at the White House.

And I'm sure he won't be doing it, just like his failure to get his party to do a budget for the past 3 years.

Obama heads to vacation in Hawaii with an important political win in his portfolio after he and fellow Democrats prevailed in the message war by backing lower taxes for middle-class Americans in the midst of a fragile economic recovery.

This only makes sense to someone with their head in their posterior. The GOP wanted a year of extended rates, the Democrats wanted 2 months. So Obama's "important political win" is keeping people from having their taxes raised for more than 2 months. Why the GOP isn't pointing this out is beyond me.

While Congress is on a long winter break now and does not return to full swing until late January, newly appointed negotiators are expected to begin work soon on figuring out how to pay for extending the payroll tax cut through 2012.

And why is that going to happen? Because the embarrassed and defeated GOP forced it into the bill against the wishes of Senate Democrats and forced them to agree to it. Yup. Big fail.

Obama scored a victory in the payroll tax struggle over Tea Party conservatives in the House who tried to block the two-month extension. They backed down on Thursday in the face of bipartisan criticism, but they are not going away.

Again, his "victory" was ensuring that workers might be facing tax hikes again in 2 months instead of 12. Nice Christmas gift, workers? Obama and the liberal media think so, they think it's a big win for Obama to get the chance to raise your taxes again in February.

The payroll tax funds the Social Security retirement pension system. If it had been allowed to rise, the increase would have hit the wallets of 160 million working Americans.

The $33 billion needed to pay for the two-month extension will be raised by increasing fees charged by housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for guaranteeing mortgages.

Analysts said the fee hike, which investors will likely pass along to borrowers, could raise financing costs for mortgages, but probably not enough to slow a housing market recovery.

So Obama and Democrats' big victory is ensuring that uncertainty remains over your taxes as soon as February AND they're paying for it by making mortgages more expensive. Yes, indeed, this is all GREAT news for working class Americans!

Also included in it was a Republican initiative aiming to force the administration into fast approval of an oil pipeline opposed by environmentalists and many Democrats. The provision gives Obama 60 days to either approve TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Gulf of Mexico facilities in Texas, or declare it not in the national interest.

Also carefully overlooked by the press in Obama's big victory is that he vowed to veto the bill if it has this provision - but he ended up signing it, take THAT, GOP!

The modest two-month fix drew fire from some businesses that said it will complicate payroll processing and tax planning.

More people satisfied with Obama's big victory!

The payroll situation "could get more confusing," said Robert Gard, an accountant with Gard and LaFreniere LLC in Alpharetta, Georgia. If the tax is not extended at the end of February, businesses will need to reprogram software, he said.

Which, presumably, will be a giant BOON for the economy! Way to go, Obama!

Obama Caves, Signs Bill He Vowed To Veto

2011-12-23T16:45:00.002-05:00

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has signed legislation extending a payroll tax cut for two months. The action concludes an end-of-year drama that split Republicans and threatened a tax hike on 160 million Americans.

So there you go...Obama caved. Remember what he was saying just a few days ago?

Obama threatens veto if pipeline decision is added to payroll tax cut

The battle between the White House and Republicans over the Keystone XL pipeline escalated Wednesday with a veto threat delivered personally by President Obama...

“Any effort to try to tie Keystone to the payroll-tax cut, I will reject,” Obama told reporters Wednesday after meeting at the White House with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Obama said he would not accept a payroll-tax-holiday bill to which Republicans add “extraneous” provisions.

“I don’t expect to have to veto it because I expect they’re going to have enough sense over on Capitol Hill to do the people’s business, and not try to load it up with a bunch of politics,” the president said.

Yes, Virginia, the bill he just signed contains a provision that requires him to act on Keystone - either he nixes it, pissing off, well, everyone including the unions, or he approves it and his head explodes, meanwhile the rest of us stop celebrating the highest gas prices in decades (see that article in the papers about how gas prices as a share of income is higher than in many years?).

Oh, and yeah it contained all those other things that he said he wouldn't accept, too.

Hopes He's Only 4th WORST

2011-12-23T08:06:00.002-05:00

And The Ridiculous Times Union

2011-12-23T07:40:00.004-05:00

The Times Union on Wednesday didn't do any better than the Gazette. They, too, blame Republicans solely, particularly tea party extremists for the failure to pass ANOTHER stopgap bill, a 2-month patch of the Democrat's failure.

1) Why aren't the Democrats to blame and the heartless ones for failing to pass a YEARLONG extension and instead demanded and dug in their heels to only give people another piddling 2-month extension so we can do this AGAIN in February?

2) Why is the President allowed to be all snooty and sneery and act like he won something when all he won was the right to make us go through this again in February instead of giving people some certainty for a whole year?

3) Why the f**k is the paper quoting Nancy Pelosi, without explanation or rebuttal, saying the GOP "didn't want tax cuts"? What kind of la-la land is this?

4) How the hell do they live with themselves talking about this being the GOP's fault and how we have to keep doing this WHEN THE REASON WE HAVE TO KEEP DOING THIS OVER AND OVER AGAIN IS BECAUSE THE DEMOCRATS HAVEN'T DONE A BUDGET FOR 3 YEARS?! WHY CAN THEY EVEN MENTION OBAMA IN THIS DEBATE AS ANYTHING OTHER THAN CAUSE 1 WHEN HE HAS BEEN IN OFFICE FOR 3 F***ING YEARS AND HAS ONLY DONE 1 F***ING BUDGET??!!

The Laughable Gazette

2011-12-22T20:45:00.003-05:00

I thought this editorial was pretty funny from Wednesday's Gazette:

...we can understand House Republicans rejecting the Senate compromise that would have accomplished this for a measly two months. Members of both parties have been increasingly too willing to "kick the can down the road" rather than budge on their positions...

Senate leaders felt a short-term extension was the best they could do, and if they were right it was only because of Republican intransigence in both chambers...

Both parties are to blame, but, uh, it was all the Republicans' fault. Brilliant stuff.

Turning The Tables

2011-12-22T20:00:00.001-05:00

(NotQuiteRealNewsNetwork) Jeremy C. Moneypants, the inventor and manufacturer of worldwide marketing sensation GimmeMoney Sexypants, awoke Wednesday morning to the worst day of his life. His factory was burned to the ground in a freak manufacturing accident. The formula used to concoct the Sexypants material was lost as Mr. Moneypants has a terrible memory and kept the only copy on his computer at work. Aggressively growing his business, he had invested all of his earnings this past year, nearly $450 million, back into the factory. Because of a stroke of terrible luck in planning, the upgrades were being installed just prior to his higher insurance kicking in, so insurance will fall millions and millions short of covering the damage. Mr. Moneypants is expected to file for bankruptcy by the Christmas weekend.

Unconfirmed reports speculate that his dog, Dr. Rufflepaws, ran away.

The 4,500 people employed directly at the GimmeMoney factory have obviously lost their jobs days before Christmas. The extended losses to suppliers will number thousands more, along with GimmeMoney store employees, drivers, etc. Charities to which Mr. Moneypants had pledged money will have a bit gloomier Christmas this year, as well. Three orphans tried to visit Mr. Moneypants and give him their life savings - $4.17, a Barbie head, and a stuffed donkey named Marcus that is actually a silly looking horse but no one had the heart to tell that to the orphan.

Flowing Dirt Springs, MN, the town where GimmeMoney Industries was located, said they have no idea how they will survive and provide essential services without the tax revenue paid by GimmeMoney. Local public schools are expected to be unable to reopen after the Cold Time Of Year School Break.

Such a heartbreaking story, isn't it? Ultra-rich guy reduced to nothing in the blink of an eye.

Meanwhile those liberal hatemongers on MSNBC and other liberal pundits squeal away about "the rich" who never did anything for anyone and who don't pay their fair share, utterly contemptuous and heartless in light of this single, isolated, tragedy that is far from the norm and has nothing to do with "the rich" they routinely rant about...

Best. Blog. Comment. Ever.

2011-12-22T19:09:00.001-05:00

So Steve Barnes posted a brief item on the latest desperate Trader Joe's rumor and it generated what I consider to be the best blog comment ever:

I heard they’re replacing Empire Plaza with one huge Trader Joe’s. The biggest ever! And then they’re building a Whole Foods/Wegmans right on top of it. And on top of that: the biggest Ikea you’ve ever seen.

Sweet. Very Smallbany-y comment :D

The Fantastic, Amazing Fantasy World Of Professor Cornelius J. Obama

2011-12-22T19:00:00.000-05:00

I've nibbled at this tidbit before...Is Obama actually mentally 'all there'? He's said that he thinks every move he's made on the economy has been correct. He rates his performance as President higher than Washington, Reagan, Kennedy...well, all but 3. He doesn't even seem to be considering firing his Attorney General who keeps getting called to Capitol Hill to explain why his agency is killing Americans, helping criminals, and getting caught lying about it.

He just told an interviewer: "We ended up asking the wealthiest Americans to do a little bit more in terms of taxes. Going back to rates that would still be lower than they were under Ronald Reagan, our deficit problems would be solved." His deficits are running at $1.5 TRILLION PER YEAR! TRILLION! The whole United States economy is only like $15 trillion and he thinks a few billion more from "the wealthiest Americans" will "solve" his $1.5 TRILLION "deficit problems".

Forget about re-electing, he needs professional help.

Try Not To Think About It

2011-12-22T18:00:00.000-05:00

In 2008, Obama tried to scare voters by telling them that the GOP was trying to scare them because Obama has a funny name.

Just think, the next president will like either be 'Newt' or 'Mitt'. Take that, Barry.

Truthiness In Reporting?

2011-12-22T16:46:00.004-05:00

You be the judge. The web portal take:

Vs. the details from a story at FoxNews (emphasis by underlining from me):

Republicans and Democrats are trying to broker a potential agreement to resolve the payroll tax standoff which has paralyzed Capitol Hill for a week...

House Republicans seemed to soften their hard-line position Thursday afternoon...

The tradeoff from Democrats in the Senate: Majority Leader Harry Reid would appoint conferees so they could have a genuine conference committee between the House and Senate to negotiate differences.

The Republicans' provision calling for approval of the controversial Keystone pipeline project would remain in the bill...

So. Is it correct to boil this down to "House GOP caves"?

Oh, and by the way, the White House has previously said Obama would absolutely veto the bill if it contained the Keystone Pipeline provision. Will Obama "cave"?

--

Update, Yahoo now has an ABCNews story about it up, it contains such details as:

House GOP appeared to be adopting a compromise suggestion by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who, earlier today, urged the House to pass the two-month extension in exchange for the Senate appointing members to a conference committee, which will negotiate a longer-term extension...

The White House is pursuing an aggressive campaign on social media to highlight the loss in benefits that millions of Americans will incur on Jan. 1 if Congress doesn't act. Americans, on average, would lose about $40 per paycheck if the tax cuts expire. On Wednesday, Obama himself personally took to Twitter asking Americans to share what that loss would mean to them.

"Forty dollars can make all the difference in the world," Obama said today, as he read out stories from Americans who had responded to his request. "Enough is enough. The people standing with me today cannot afford any more games."..

2 quick questions? 1) So the Democrats only want those taxes to go up in 2 months instead of in a year and the GOP are the heartless ones? Don't get that one. 2) Will Obama, pushing for this like a good demagogue, sign it, after vowing to veto it...that is, "cave"? This is what 'leadership' has come to in America - the GOP wants to pass long-term tax relief, but the President only wants to give out 2-months of tax relief, and he and the press get to kick around the GOP as the unfeeling ones, claiming the ones that want to provide long-term certainty for business planning instead of constant gamesmanship every few weeks are the ones playing games. Grow a pair, GOP. Maybe Palin can lend you some of her spares.

I pulled out this unbelievable nugget: "The payroll tax cuts, passed by George W. Bush's administrations are popular on both sides of the political aisle. Washington experienced a similar gridlock in 2010 when the time came to renew the cuts."

Go ahead, read it again. Then read it one more time. The tax cuts are "popular on both sides of the political aisle"...but somehow there was gridlock when it came time to renew them. Hmmm. Seems to me the GOP certainly wanted to renew them. So are they popular with the Democrats or did the Democrats cause "gridlock"? Because these are mutually exclusive explanations.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACISM!

2011-12-22T14:04:00.003-05:00

Falling Back To Failure

2011-12-22T10:28:00.003-05:00

Remember the heady days of 2.5% GDP growth in the 3rd Quarter following 1.3% in the 2nd Quarter? Then it was revised down to 2%? Final revision is in at a whopping 1.8%, barely faster than the 2nd Quarter.

Recovery ~~summer~~ ~~fall~~ ~~winter~~ ~~spring~~ ~~summer~~ ~~fall~~!

Obama: "the economy is not where it wants to be and even though I believe all the choices we've made have been the right ones"

For those that need a reminder, 3% growth is considered 'a healthy economy'.

We're Still Waiting

2011-12-22T09:26:00.002-05:00

What's So Hard To Understand?

2011-12-21T20:00:00.000-05:00

If someone...

was befriended as a child by a known communist,

said they intentionally sought out Marxists at college,

has been enthusiastically supported at every turn by communist organizations,

said that everyone is better off if you spread the wealth around,

said that at some point you've made enough money,

had used their power to greatly expand reliance on government services from food to medical care,

appointed one known socialist/marxist/communist after another to positions of power in his administration,

has pushed programs that increase the government's power while limiting individual rights (especially the socialist bogeyman: private gun ownership)...

Wouldn't you be an idiot to conclude that they're anything but a socialist?

Winner

2011-12-21T19:30:00.000-05:00

And the winner of the "most unfathomable logic award" for 2011 goes to...

John Bender of Johnstown! Yay!!!!

His letter, published in the December 18 Daily Gazette, firmly launches us from point A to point B through a brick wall of Wonderland (as in "Alice In") reasoning!

John nonsensically spews:

Another candidate [Rick Santorum] wants to have a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution while lowering taxes on the wealthy and on corporations. If they lower the taxes on the rich, it follows that they want to lower the income of the poor and the middle class.

Well, John, I'm not logicamatician, but that makes about as much sense as SCUBA gear for a fish to me, so I think you've won this one hands down! Great job!

Deep In Obama's Tank

2011-12-21T19:00:00.001-05:00

Pile of MSNBC Hosts Go to White House for Coffee Talk with Obama

On his blog Political Punch, ABC's Jake Tapper reported "an all-star list of progressive and liberal media folks" had coffee with President Obama in the Roosevelt Room on Monday -- including MSNBC hosts Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Hayes. In the Bush years, it was considered a major scandal for Roger Ailes to send a note to the White House, but MSNBC stars meet with Obama, and it's just another day of "hope and change."...

The list also included Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent, Frank Bruni of The New York Times, Nation magazine editor/publisher Katrina Vanden Heuvel, and “stars of the interwebs Arianna Huffington, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, [and] Faiz Shakir of ThinkProgress.”

Upside Down Media World

2011-12-21T18:00:00.000-05:00

On YNN this morning they noted that it looked like taxes would be going up next year because the House had rejected the Senate's nonsensical 2-month extension of tax rates.

This was relayed to viewers as 'workers will be getting less' next year.

Get that?

If your taxes go up, you will get less. This is, of course upside down from reality in which you earn the same amount but what is happening is that the government will be taking more of it.

Well, There We Go

2011-12-21T07:11:00.003-05:00

Ah, Squat Albany finally produced a document explaining why they are squatting in a public park. And I see it's full of pixie dust and unicorns, guaranteeing that the police will have to forcibly remove them.

They say they should be able to stay because "they have the right to protest". I agree. They absolutely have the right to protest...that's not the same as the right to live in a public park.

They say they won't leave without a return to "true democracy in America". Well, we've never been a "democracy", so that's just ignorant and dangerous. These encampments of squatters haven't even been able to manage "true democracy" amongst a few people squatting in a park.

There was something about wanting "office space" to continue their protest. Um, OK, fine. There's lots of space available in the city and surrounding area, go lease some like everyone else.

TANSTAAFL.

2011-12-20T21:49:00.003-05:00

In fiscal year 2011, the federal government spent $3.6 trillion. That's nearly $10 billion every day.

The Atlantic Wire wants you to "Meet Charles Feeney, Cornell's $350 Million Donor". I'm more than sure they thought the best thing about this supersaver/donator is this line: When Miller asked him why he decided to give everything away, Feeney replied, "I simply decided I had enough money."

Awwww...a man after Obama's own heart. Wipe away that tear, though. Look at what this guy has given away -

The New York Times has unmasked 80-year-old Cornell alum Charles F. Feeney as the anonymous donor who gave the school a $350 million donation to construct a new technology-based satellite campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City. Officials at The Atlantic Philanthropies, the foundation started by Feeney in 1982, confirmed to the paper last night that he was the one who made the gift for the project, which is expected to generate an extra $1.4 billion in tax revenue for the city, plus 20,000 construction jobs and as many as 30,000 new jobs once the facility is up and running...

In 2009, he gave $125 million to build a new medical center for the University of California-San Francisco that would treat women, children, and cancer patients. Over the course of the last decade, he's given more than €46m to the University of Limerick in Ireland...

Schools, hospitals...50,000 jobs just from one donation...

Look at what he has been able to do through direct donations from a private individual. He was worth, what, several billions it looks like?

Look at what he did with that money. Wow.

And just think, had the federal government confiscated all of it, it would have funded it for less than a day.

Aren't They Wonderful, Folks? Let's Give Them A Hand

2011-12-19T19:00:00.000-05:00

Already aglow from ~~lighting themselves on fire accidentally whilst toking up~~ ~~the building they lit on fire~~ from the praise of being named the person of the year for crapping on police cars and having to set up 'rape free zones' to cut back on the, you know...rapes, well now a new accolade has been heaped upon these destroyers-of-lawns:

Fred Shapiro, associate librarian at Yale Law School, has released his sixth annual list of the most notable quotations of the year.

I know what it has to be, that immortal chant...

Everything seems to be possible. You can travel to the moon. You can become immortal by biogenetics. You can have sex with animals, or whatever.

Stirs the soul, it does. Fires the imagination.

If Only It Were Just A Joke

2011-12-19T18:00:00.000-05:00

Alas, it's usually all too true:

The liberal media is an old story, but it's still a big story when it comes to creating the impression of scandal out of thin air.

Most people say, "Where there's smoke, there's fire." I say, "Where there's smoke around a conservative, there are journalists furiously rubbing two sticks together."

A Good Morning

2011-12-19T07:04:00.002-05:00

Ding dong, ill-dong is dead.

I'll take that to start my Monday morning.

Your Random IBD Saturday And More

2011-12-17T06:45:00.001-05:00

Summarizing all the hot topics...

Jet Fuel-Gate Is Obama's New Solyndra

SolyndraGate was no isolated case of corrupt government misspending. The U.S. Navy was just forced to buy 450,000 gallons of biofuels from an Obama-connected firm at an outrageous $16 per gallon...

It's part of the White House's "we can't wait for Congress" strategy as the 2012 election year looms. But JP-5 typically costs less than $4 a gallon. If a family on a budget started filling up with $16-a-gallon gas, it might want to adopt the motto, "we can't wait to go broke."...

As J.E. Dyer noted over the weekend on the Hot Air Green Room, "a member of Obama's presidential transition team, T. J. Glauthier, is a 'strategic advisor' at Solazyme, the California company that is selling a portion of the biofuel to the Navy. Glauthier worked — shock, shock — on the energy-sector portion of the 2009 stimulus bill."

Documents Show Justice's Breuer Misled On 'Furious'

Attorney General Eric Holder insists "nobody at the Justice Department has lied" about the gun-running scandal Fast and Furious. That in itself is a lie, as his deputy's emails prove...

• Lie No. 1: Breuer knew as far back as April 2010 that ATF officials had let assault weapons "walk" — which meant ending surveillance on guns suspected en route to Mexican warlords, and turning a blind eye to criminals illegally buying weapons for trafficking on the border...

That April, Breuer and an aide conspired with ATF leaders to cover up "the bad stuff that would come out."...

• Lie No. 2: When Grassley recently asked Breuer point blank if he reviewed the letter, Breuer suggested he had not looked at it. "At the time," he testified, "I was in Mexico dealing with the very real issues that we are all so committed to."

Of course, he made this statement before investigators had the benefit of his emails. In response to the draft he received while in Mexico, Breuer emailed one of his aides: "As usual, great work."

Dems Prove They're Not Really For Payroll Tax Cut

President Obama tried to get Republicans to oppose a payroll tax extension, but Senate Democrats are the ones now fighting it...

The House tax-cut bill includes a provision that gives the go-ahead to the Keystone XL pipeline, bringing over 700,000 barrels of black gold per day from Canada to Texas. As Heritage Foundation analyst Nicolas Loris points out, "Building the pipeline would directly create 20,000 truly shovel-ready jobs." On top of that, the Canadian Energy Research Institute estimates it would ultimately mean 179,000 new American jobs by 2035...

There are already consequences to the delays. Steel pipe maker Welspun Tubular Co. of Little Rock, Ark., with miles of product ready and waiting to be used, announced the layoff of 60 employees Monday directly due to pipe for Keystone not shipping out.

Inconvenient history:

So in 1982, Reagan struck a deal with the Democrats to raise some business and excise taxes -- though not income taxes -- in exchange for $280 billion in spending cuts over the next six years. As Reagan wrote in his diary at the time: "The tax increase is the price we have to pay to get the budget cuts."

But, of course, the Democrats were lying. Instead of cutting $280 billion, they spent an additional $450 billion -- only $140 billion of which went to the Reagan defense buildup that ended the Evil Empire.

Meanwhile, Reagan's tax cuts brought in an extra $375 billion in government revenue in the next six years -- as that amiable, simple-minded dunce Reagan always said they would. His tax cuts funded the entire $140 billion defense buildup, with $235 billion left over...

Reagan's defense spending crushed the Soviet war machine. What did Tip O'Neill's domestic spending accomplish? (I mean, besides destroying the black family, increasing single motherhood and creating government bureaucracies that can never be eliminated.)

Hypocrites

2011-12-16T19:00:00.001-05:00

Let's see...when Newt (or anyone else) says that kids, poor kids in broken home environments in particular, could benefit from valuable work experience and having role models outside the home when they can't depend on parents as such...well, you know what happens - heads explode, cries of RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACISM split the air, and editorials are depicting Newt as presiding over an army of child slave laborers.

Buuuuuuuuut...

When the President's wife says that "We can’t just leave it up to the parents" when it comes to what kids eat...ahhhh...nods of agreement with her noble wisdom.

Yeah, but Newt's talking about putting little kids to work cleaning toilets!

Well, no he's not, but what about government programs paying to teach "Babies. Little itty-bitty babies" what they should be eating so "they push their parents and their families to be different"?

Cripes is this easy...

More Tales Of Rich Greed, Reverse Robin Hood, And The Rich Getting Richer Off The Backs Of The Poor

2011-12-16T18:00:00.000-05:00

Maybe something to keep in mind when you see unwashed "comrades" attacking those with jobs and doing things to cause more of us to lose jobs while they demand that those that work hard and manage to hold a job pay their debts and give them things.

The young father stood in line at the Kmart layaway counter, wearing dirty clothes and worn-out boots. With him were three small children.

He asked to pay something on his bill because he knew he wouldn't be able to afford it all before Christmas. Then a mysterious woman stepped up to the counter.

"She told him, 'No, I'm paying for it,'" recalled Edna Deppe, assistant manager at the store in Indianapolis. "He just stood there and looked at her and then looked at me and asked if it was a joke. I told him it wasn't, and that she was going to pay for him. And he just busted out in tears."

At Kmart stores across the country, Santa seems to be getting some help: Anonymous donors are paying off strangers' layaway accounts, buying the Christmas gifts other families couldn't afford, especially toys and children's clothes set aside by impoverished parents.

Before she left the store Tuesday evening, the Indianapolis woman in her mid-40s had paid the layaway orders for as many as 50 people. On the way out, she handed out $50 bills and paid for two carts of toys for a woman in line at the cash register.

"She was doing it in the memory of her husband who had just died, and she said she wasn't going to be able to spend it and wanted to make people happy with it," Deppe said. The woman did not identify herself and only asked people to "remember Ben," an apparent reference to her husband...

Dona Bremser, an Omaha nurse, was at work when a Kmart employee called to tell her that someone had paid off the $70 balance of her layaway account, which held nearly $200 in toys for her 4-year-old son.

"I was speechless," Bremser said. "It made me believe in Christmas again."

Dozens of other customers have received similar calls in Nebraska, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana and Montana.

The benefactors generally ask to help families who are squirreling away items for young children. They often pay a portion of the balance, usually all but a few dollars or cents so the layaway order stays in the store's system...

The sad memories of layaways lost prompted at least one good Samaritan to pay off the accounts of five people at an Omaha Kmart, said Karl Graff, the store's assistant manager.

"She told me that when she was younger, her mom used to set up things on layaway at Kmart, but they rarely were able to pay them off because they just didn't have the money for it," Graff said.

He called a woman who had been helped, "and she broke down in tears on the phone with me. She wasn't sure she was going to be able to pay off their layaway and was afraid their kids weren't going to have anything for Christmas."...

Lori Stearnes of Omaha also benefited from the generosity of a stranger who paid all but $58 of her $250 layaway bill for toys for her four youngest grandchildren.

Stearnes said she and her husband live paycheck to paycheck, but she plans to use the money she was saving for the toys to help pay for someone else's layaway.

In Missoula, Mont., a man spent more than $1,200 to pay down the balances of six customers whose layaway orders were about to be returned to a Kmart store's inventory because of late payments.

Store employees reached one beneficiary on her cellphone at Seattle Children's Hospital, where her son was being treated for an undisclosed illness.

"She was yelling at the nurses, 'We're going to have Christmas after all!'" store manager Josine Murrin said.

A Kmart in Plainfield Township, Mich., called Roberta Carter last week to let her know a man had paid all but 40 cents of her $60 layaway.

Carter, a mother of eight from Grand Rapids, Mich., said she cried upon hearing the news. She and her family have been struggling as she seeks a full-time job.

"My kids will have clothes for Christmas," she said.

Plenty of worthy causes to support here in the Capital Region, now at Christmas and all year through, if you're able.

-
apologies to AP and Margery Beck, the writer, for the very lengthy excerpt, but in the spirit of the story I trust they'd be good with it

A hearty 'well done' and 'Merry Christmas' to the AP, and Ms. Beck, for telling this tale I'd heard about in other places in excellent fashion.

Counting The Cost

2011-12-16T11:00:00.000-05:00

And there go 90 jobs, 90 jobs of low-to-middle class workers. Directly responsible? Time's Person of the Year*.

Milk Street Cafe, the restaurant whose business dried up in the face of the Occupy Wall Street barricades, is shutting down...

The restaurant owner, who operates an eatery and catering business in Boston, said he pressed the city daily for their removal, but got nowhere.

Milk Street Cafe’s closure will result in the layoff of 70 workers. That’s on top of the 21 let go in October...

When asked whether he would ever open a restaurant in New York again, Epstein responded, “Never.”

Way to go, geniuses.

As for the entrepreneur that opened the business to begin with? The one they hate? He still has a job. And the 90 working class jobs he created in NYC? Gone. Along with the future jobs he'll never create in NYC.

Don't worry, those 90 people can do more good with food stamps and unemployment checks than they ever could with paychecks. Or maybe some hobo will hire them all, since it's not people with money that create jobs.

--

Keep counting...

~400 workers at Portland's port forced to stay home without pay days before Christmas due to these People of the Year.

Food for the needy among that stopped by the People of the Year.

People of the Year block trains by putting little kids on the train tracks.

* Yes, illustrious Time Magazine's Person of the Year is a guy taking a crap on a police car. Can I get a golf clap up in here?

Finally Proven - Kagan Lied

2011-12-15T20:00:00.001-05:00

Well, enough documents have finally been forcefully extracted from Obama's administration to prove that Kagan lied when she, in writing, told the Senate that she had not participated in cases tied to Obamacare. This goes beyond the previous evidence that pretty much showed that Kagan was involved in at least the early stages of planning the Obama administration's defense of Obamacare in court. This is explicit evidence that Kaga, months before she informed the Senate, in writing, that she had not been involved, was notified by her own office that she was directly tied to a case tied to Obamacare.

Put bluntly, Obama's ridiculous appointment to the Supreme Court lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee during their confirmation investigation. Not 'may have lied', 'might have lied', 'wasn't entirely truthful', or 'it was a judgement call if she lied'.

She was involved (of course she knew she was involved) in a case directly related to Obamacare.

Her office, in preparation for this imaginary 'segregation' her office performed whereby they would keep the head of the office from being involved in the biggest piece of legislation in Obama's presidency, judged that she had been directly informed and told her, in writing that she was involved in this type of case.

She was asked, point blank, by the Senate Judiciary Committee if she had been involved in this type of case.

She replied, in writing, 'No', despite the contradictory evidence provided by her office.

And this is one of the 9 people deciding what freedoms we can have.

The tap dancing is over. She lied. She knowingly lied. She must recuse herself and, let's be blunt, this dishonest, unqualified person should resign immediately and give Obama a year to seat a new Justice, an honest one, as is his prerogative. Refusing to answer speculative questions posed by the Judiciary Committee, as practiced by Ginsburg and other, more recent nominees, is one thing. Deliberately lying to the Committee during the vetting process about your past work is something else completely. Must we really be subjected to the whims of these dishonest types who set out to lie a completely inadequate nominee (the existing Justices routinely mocked her performance and abilities when she came before them) onto the Supreme Court? We're talking about deliberate, premeditated dishonesty with this 'segregation' baloney, a segregation already pierced by other emails that showed that the 'wall' was more of a net curtain.

On Jan. 13, 2010, the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan a series of written questions examining the issue of how she would handle recusing herself from cases she might have been involved in as solicitor general if she were confirmed to the Supreme Court...

Among other things, the senators asked Kagan if she had ever been asked her opinion regarding the merits, or underlying legal issues, in Florida’s lawsuit challenging the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)—otherwise known as Obamacare.

In her written responses, Kagan answered: “No.”

Then they asked her a more sweeping question: “Have you ever been asked your opinion regarding any other legal issues that may arise from Pub. L. No. 111-148?” (Pub. L. No. 111-148 is the Obamacare law.)

Kagan again answered: “No.”

Exactly two months before the Judiciary Committee Republicans asked Kagan these questions, however, her top deputy, Neal Katyal, had written her a memo informing her that she had “substantially participated” in Golden Gate Restaurant Association v. San Francisco—a case that Kagan’s own office tied to Obamacare...

In the days immediately after President Barack Obama nominated Kagan to the Supreme Court, Edwin S. Kneedler, the deputy solicitor general handling the Golden Gate case twice alerted Kagan’s top deputy, Katyal, about the connection between it and PPACA and that Kagan had been involved in the case...

“During her Senate confirmation, then-Solicitor General Kagan answered ‘no’ when questioned about whether she had ever been ‘asked about [her] opinion’ or ‘offered any views or comments regarding the underlying legal or constitutional issues related to any proposed health care legislation … or … potential litigation resulting from such legislation,’” Smith wrote. “Yet, documents released by the Department in response to recent Freedom of Information Act requests raise questions about that unequivocal denial.”

The Justice Department has refused to comply with the House Judiciary Committee’s request.

Testifying before the committee last week, Attorney General Holder could not cite a legal privilege to justify his department’s refusal to comply with this congressional oversight request.

Looking, But Not Finding

2011-12-15T18:00:00.000-05:00

AP headline story scream:

Census shows 1 in 2 people are poor or low-income
Nearly half of Americans are low-income as rising expenses, unemployment shrink middle class

Search "Obama". No hits. Search "president". No hits.

3 years, he's had. Think "Bush" would produce no hits if this had been 2005?

Juuuusst A Bit Outside

2011-12-15T07:07:00.003-05:00

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military officially ended its war in Iraq on Thursday, packing up a military flag at a ceremony with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta nearly nine years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein...

President Barack Obama, who made an election promise to bring troops home, told Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that Washington will remain a loyal partner after the last troops roll across the Kuwaiti border.

Yeah, a campaign promise to do it in his first year in office, a promise he broke when he missed it by, oh, two years or so.

Funny that they didn't mention that...

This Should Go Over Well

2011-12-14T19:00:00.000-05:00

Remember "If you hear something bad about ObamaCare, report it to the White House?"

Yeah.

The Obama presidential campaign is launching an effort to collect Republican email addresses by inviting its supporters to submit information about their Republican associates to the Obama 2012 website.

There is simply no reason any Republican cannot win.

Just for fun, I'd like to see Gingrich set up a system and ask his supporters to submit information about their Democrat associates and see what the media reaction is...and then what the media reaction is after a couple of days when he points out that Obama did it first. Oh man, that would be sweet.

'It Wasn't My Fault!'

2011-12-13T20:00:00.000-05:00

Oh, for Pete's sake...

Illinois Teen Learns About Bank Fees the Hard Way

This is just idiotic on so many levels with the Mom looking the dumbest of the bunch, but thanks to 'public shaming' in a newspaper, a bank has to cover what they spent dealing with these clueless people with money invested by other bank depositors.

Melinda Ganziano of McCullom Lake, Ill., wanted to introduce her son to the basics of banking, but he ended up with $229 in fees in two weeks with a balance of just $4.85...

After he put money into the savings account from his job, Daniel Ganziano's balance eventually fell to $4.85 and with such a small amount, he ignored it.

However, TCF sent him a letter on Oct. 12 informing him that it had charged him a $9.95 monthly maintenance fee six days earlier because the account had a low balance. That led to an overdrawn account by $5.10, which then led to a $28-a-day overdraft fee. The account was 10 cents over the $5 threshold for which the daily fee kicks in. Young Ganziano's account was now overdrawn by $33.10...

Ganziano, who banks elsewhere, asked for the fees to be waived, but the bank would eliminate only one of the $28 daily charges.

So, in order to "introduce her son to the basics of banking", when he screws up just about the most basic thing, keeping a minimum balance in his account, she wants them to not treat her son like any other customer abiding by basic banking rules? What is he learning out of this, exactly?

"They would just not cooperate," Ganziano told ABC News. "We were trying to teach him the right thing. If he had overdrawn by himself I would have made him pay the fees, but it wasn't him."

Oh, really? Did someone else take money out of his account that caused it to fall below the minimum? This is the modern "teaching the right thing" - when you screw up you go to the entity you owe due to your screw up and tell them you don't want to be punished, it wasn't your fault, and someone else should cover your bill. Occupy Ganziano!

She also learned that her older son, who had a balance of $0, would also be charged a monthly fee so they closed his account, too. Daniel Ganziano wanted to fight it by not paying the fees.

She's doing a bang-up job teaching these kids about basic banking and responsibility, alright, another one took all his money out of a basic account that we all know has minimum balances and his answer? The same as mom - I don't want to pay for my mistake, let someone else clean up my doo-doo.

Ganziano said her older son learned "banks are not the way they used to be."

"You have to check them out really well," she said.

Yeah? I bet I'm older than her "older son" and banks have always been this way since I've had an account. The days of flopping a couple of beaver skins down on the counter and they lock them up for you free of charge until you want them are long over. Again, just what was she teaching them? Well, apparently she was teaching them that they could avoid their responsibility, ignore the bank rules and fees, and keep a whopping $0 in their account and forget about it because that's the way it was done in the good ole days. As for her parting comment...I don't want to advocate violence, but sometimes people really need to be slapped upside the head, even figuratively. You let two sons open accounts with minimum balances, then they take all their money out and forget about the accounts, and when they get charged fees, fees that I guarantee were presented up front when they opened the account (I can barely go a month without getting new notices from my bank about fees and such), you want the bank to not charge them for their negligence, shifting the burden to people that actually follow the rules and the contract they agree to who have to cover all the administrative expenses your sons triggered through their negligence.

Bravo. Doing a heckuva job teaching them banking basics...assuming they plan to live in a tent in a park for the rest of their life, panhandling and beating a drum and eating donated food if those damned 'real' homeless people don't get to it first.

Who Killed The Deal? Who Caused The Gridlock?

2011-12-13T19:00:00.000-05:00

I can't wait for the stories excoriating the Republicans for gridlock, do nothing, uncooperative, partisan, etc etc...

In Which The Mockery Is So Easy

2011-12-13T18:00:00.001-05:00

I thought I'd let everyone in on something that has been cracking me up for days.

First, here is Newt Gingrich articulating his 'let kids work' concept at the recent debate:

Third, as to schools, I think virtually every person up here worked at a young age. What I suggested was, kids oughta be allowed to work part-time in school, particularly in the poorest neighborhoods, both because they could use the money...if you take one-half of the New York janitors who are unionized and paid more than the teachers, an entry-level janitor gets paid twice as much as an entry-level teacher. You take half of those janitors, you could give virtually-- you could give lots of poor kids a work experience in the cafeteria and the school library and-- and front office, and a lot of different things.

I'll stand by the idea, young people oughta learn how to work. Middle class kids do it routinely. We should give poor kids the same chance to pursue happiness.

Oooohhh...quite sinister! Not a "chance to pursue happiness"! Anything but that!

So, anyway, after this declaration of black-hearted evil, we've been 'treated' to things like this in the Gazette - note, if you please, the double whammy of the editorial drawing and the head-exploded columnist (click to embiggen):

Blam! Slave labor, hypocrisy, "exploitation of child labor". Now, just hold on, we're not even close to the punch line.

For instance, look at this letter from a melting down Karin Henrikson in the Times Union on the 11th:

...along comes Newt Gingrich with his brilliant idea to have poor schoolchildren work as part-time school janitors. In Newt's world, poor children, as young as 9, need to learn the value of work...What kind of person could think that this is a good idea?...Second, Newt has evidently forgotten about child labor laws enacted decades ago to halt the exploitation of children...Newt and "The Donald" should get their heads out of the toilet...

No! Wait, we're nowhere near the punchline! You know this is going to be good, right? Yeah, there's more...bigoted Gazette columnist Froma Harrop also goes there:

Gingrich further explained that he just wanted to help poor kids learn to be responsible wage-earners...Another is that if having students clean their schools is good for character-building, why shouldn't upper-middle-class kids be doing the same? The third is that schoolwork is already work.

Leave alone the fact that Newt is saying middle-class kids already do and her internal confusion over "upper-middle class kids" not working while "schoolwork is already work". So here we are. At the punch line. I think it's a pretty good one. Here we go.

The Times Union. December 11. Reporting proudly on a program supported by the Times Union.

A GARDEN GROWS LIFE SKILLS by Kenneth Crowe

TROY -- An acre of crops hugs the 8th Street hill overlooking downtown.

The Produce Project is an adventure in urban farming with a mission of helping the city's teenagers.

"It's a job training program for at-risk youth from Troy High," said Amy Klein, executive director of Capital District Community Gardens.

"The goal is to provide the youth with job training and life skills," Klein said.

Work and job skills are mixed with learning how to grow produce and how to eat healthy...

Established in 2009, The Produce Project helps about 50 teenagers, ages 14-18, annually. They work with Brian Bender, the program's urban farmer, in the acre of fields and a greenhouse. The students receive a weekly stipend of $50 for about 10 hours of work. They learn the skills needed to raise their crops, to develop work experience and to prepare for finding jobs.

The program costs about $85,000 annually to operate. That's where the Times Union Hope Fund is assisting.

The program was one of the organizations in the Capital Region this year to receive assistance from the Hope Fund, which raises money to help pay for after-school and summer camp programs for at-risk and disadvantaged children in the Capital Region...

"It's a learning experience," he said. "It's a good job to have before you go to a real job."...

A contribution to the Times Union Hope Fund will support after-school programs and summer camps for needy children.

For more information, including how to contribute, go to: http:/timesunion.com/fund/.

Oh, my busted gut. At least the Gazette, Karin, and Froma know where to find the child labor exploiting slave masters...right there in Troy and at the Times Union, which is funding this child slave labor. And look how good they're brainwashed, Karin! These poor minority kids are all set for a job picking crops for their 1% overlords! Have you gone down there to save them from their fate, yet? You know where to find them.

Racist Unions

2011-12-13T12:04:00.003-05:00

Unbelievable. I mean, can you believe those vote-denying racists at the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers have placed the ridiculous burden of requiring people to produce photo ID to vote?!

Needle on Hypocrisy-Meter Breaks Off

Now that's comedy.

Christmas Shopping List

2011-12-12T20:00:00.000-05:00

Places to shop more at:

_ Amazon

Because 99% of the time you can't go wrong supporting what is loathed by the 1% of loafers calling themselves the 99%.

_ Lowe's

Lowe's Home Improvement has found itself facing a backlash after the retail giant pulled ads from a reality show about American Muslims...

A state senator from Southern California said Sunday he was considering calling for a boycott.

Calling the Lowe's decision "un-American" and "naked religious bigotry," Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, told The Associated Press he would also consider legislative action if Lowe's doesn't apologize to Muslims and reinstate its ads...The senator vowed to look into whether Lowe's violated any California laws and said he would also consider drafting a senate resolution condemning the company's actions.

Because the most clever reaction to perceived bigotry is bigotry. Because the best way to deal with someone trying to stay out of a conflict that would result in a boycott is by boycotting them. Because government officials should be dictating who can advertise where. Because it is 'discrimination' to not financially support a television program of someone else's choosing.

This. That.

2011-12-12T18:00:00.000-05:00

Rick Santorum takes down a lefty media drone:

Candy, hold on. Hold on. Stop, Candy. That's just not true. Ask Robert Menendez and ask all the folks in the United States Senate who want to impose the real sanction that will make a difference on Iran and the President has opposed it. Now that's just a fact. He also has recognized the state of Syria, called Assad a reformer, has continued to have an embassy there when in fact this is a real thug that is a real threat to the state of Israel and to the stability of the region.

And again here's the interesting link. It is a client state of Iran. The greatest area he's appeased is Iran which is the greatest threat, and here he is recognizing Assad, setting up an ambassadorship with a client state of Iran who is a great funder of Hezbollah, a threat to Israel and the region. You go to Egypt. Again, he supported the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists as it turns out into overthrowing an ally in Egypt. There is a consistent pattern of contingencies that have come up under this administration where he has opposed the freedom fighters and has gone with the radical Islamists. That is a problem for the security of Israel and our country.

So people around these parts are interested in the ponies, aren't they? Seems that way to me. I think there was even some items in the local news about the reversal of the ban on killing horsies for food. I probably just missed the front page stories and editorials denouncing Obama for breaking a campaign promise to not allow horse eating: Obama Flipflops on Campaign Pledge to Prevent Horse Slaughter, Media Mum

Idiotic On So Many Levels

2011-12-12T07:06:00.002-05:00

Keeping it short, Lowe's decided it didn't want to get involved in the controversy over that new 'Muslims are people too' show, especially after being faced with a boycott, so they pulled ads from the show.

The leftist response is both typical and especially idiotic.

Some of them, because Lowe's was facing a boycott, want to boycott Lowe's.

And others, following the lead of Obama and the Democrat party, want to take legislative action against a private business or prosecute Lowe's for not advertising on the shows they want to advertise on.

Calling the Lowe's decision "un-American" and "naked religious bigotry," Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, told The Associated Press on Sunday that he would also consider legislative action if Lowe's doesn't apologize to Muslims and reinstate its ads...

The apology doesn't go far enough, Lieu said. The senator vowed to look into whether Lowe's violated any California laws and said he would also consider drafting a senate resolution condemning the company's actions.

Pucker up and finish kissing the first amendment goodbye.

Look It Up

2011-12-11T21:54:00.002-05:00

Step 1:

“Some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1 percent,” Obama barked. “That is the height of unfairness.” Except, when the Washington Post asked the White House for evidence to support the claim, an official confessed they “had no actual data to back up the president’s assertion.”

Step 2: Demagogue - "a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power"

Any questions?

Why Are We Still Arguing About Whether He's A Socialist?

2011-12-10T16:21:00.002-05:00

Obama Blocks The Biggest Shovel-Ready Project Ever

In the president's view, extending the payroll tax cuts is more important than adding more people to the payrolls, unless they are making electric cars that catch fire or work for solar-panel makers that go bankrupt...

"However many jobs might be generated by a Keystone pipeline," he said, "they're going to be a lot fewer than the jobs that are created by extending the payroll tax cut and extending unemployment insurance."...

You get back much more than you spend. In their skewed view, joblessness can create jobs...

It's estimated Keystone XL will also create 118,000 spinoff and support jobs. We saw how Gulf Coast communities suffered after the administration imposed its drilling moratorium, which continues to this day in the form of a glacial and restrictive permitting process.

But, the administration contends, only food stamps and unemployment checks create spinoff jobs...

McConnell said that "here's the single greatest shovel-ready project in America, ready to go, and for some reason he's suddenly not interested. ... If this episode tells us anything, it's that the president is clearly more concerned about getting himself re-elected next year than getting somebody in Nebraska or Kansas or South Dakota or Missouri a job today."