Friday, July 19, 2013

More than a few items for your weekend

Collected a bunch (thanks to all who sent formatted items) before taking off for Madison to help the bride unpack the shipment from the Des Plaines condo, so nothing over the weekend. I can’t carry boxes, but guess I can shelve books. If I rest every couple of books to get my breath back. ~Bob

Boom: Judge rules Detroit Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing unconstitutional
Excerpt: A circuit court judge in Ingham County ruled that the City of Detroit’s Chapter 9 bankruptcy filed on Thursday violates the Michigan constitution, according to court orders she issued in three separate cases involving city pensioners.
Detroit goes bankrupt, largest municipal filing in U.S. history
Excerpt: Detroit has become the largest city in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy. State-appointed emergency manager Kevyn Orr on Thursday asked a federal judge permission to place the city into Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection. (Detroit: The Progressive Future of Obama’s Fundamentally Changed America. ~Bob. Let me see... who has run Detroit for the last 2,000 years? Oh, yeah, Democrats. –LLW. Actually, I think there was a GOP mayor in 1951—probably all his fault. ~Bob.)

It's almost like turning your city over to the SEIU doesn't work out very well long-term.

Older but timely: Detroit Gave Unions Keys To The City, And Now Nothing Is Left
Excerpt: While the city population has shrunk (from a peak population of 1.8 million in 1950 to 714,000 in the last census), it has hardly reduced the government that serves it. All you really need to know about Detroit, which is facing a $327 million budget gap, is that last year it was discovered to still be paying for  a “horseshoer” (or farrier) on the Detroit Water & Sewer Department (DWSD) payroll. This individual costs some $56,000 in pay and benefits, despite the city not having any horses to shoe in his department.

Detroit: How the Motor City went bust
Excerpt: The city's unemployment rate has nearly tripled since 2000 and is more than double the national average. The homicide rate is at historically high levels, and the city has been named among America's most dangerous for more than 20 years. Detroiters wait an average of 58 minutes for police to respond, compared with the national average of 11 minutes. An estimated 40% of the city's street lights didn't work in the first quarter of 2013. Roughly 78,000 city structures have been abandoned.

All over twitter: “They said if I voted for Romney Detroit would go bankrupt. They were right.”

Old Satire: Detroit Sold For Scrap

Tweet from RB ‏@RBPundit
Capitalism created Detroit. Progressivism bankrupted it.

The Next Detroit: Chicago Blues: Tenured Teachers Laid Off. By Walter Russell Mead
Excerpt: It’s an interesting web the union has spun for itself: its power to negotiate lavish pensions for teachers has helped bankrupt the city, which is now forced to sack teachers. And with Chicago’s budget deficit at $1 billion and revenue declining, there’s no end in sight, and no tenure and no pension is safe. How teachers react to the declining ability of unions to secure their interests in one of America’s great blue cities will tell us a lot about the blue model’s current bill of health.

For Love of Marines, Corps and Country. By Andy Weddington
Excerpt: This week I learned our Marine Corps home library has been missing a book - an important, terrific book. Now I've a sense of duty to offer a comment or two as well as suggest that it's missing from your shelf(s), too.

Older but excellent Hanson column. ~Bob
Modern Wisdom from Ancient Minds. By Victor Davis Hanson
Excerpt: In the Roman state, those who borrowed unwisely periodically needed a clean slate — paid for by those who mostly did not, albeit always dressed up in the sense of the noble poor and the rapacious rich. “Pay your fair share,” “fat cat,” “you didn’t build that,” “at some point you’ve made enough money,” etc. are right out of the demagoguery so brilliantly chronicled by Aristophanes, Plutarch, and Sallust. Debt relief and redistribution were not quaint classicaltopoi, but inherent in the human condition. For now our would-be Gracchus in the White House seems a lot more like a Publius Claudius Pulcher (author of the expansion of the grain dole), an upscale elite who chose demagoguery as the best route to power, fame, influence, and riches — and who can’t finish a sentence without blasting “millionaires and billionaires” as the source of all our woes. How did it happen that those in government, with higher than private sector salaries, with access to free perks, with better than normal pensions and benefits, so often talk about the need for higher taxes without anyone replying that they were selfish in asking the worse off to subsidize the better off?

Excerpt: With open enrollment in Obamacare’s exchanges set to start in fewer than three months, the law’s supporters are attempting to change the subject from Obamacare’s many delays and glitches. Instead, they're mounting a campaign to sell the unpopular measure to the public. President Obama yesterday gave a speech on Obamacare, trying to justify the fact that premiums continue to rise, violating his 2008 campaign promise to lower them by $2,500 per family per year. The Kaiser Family Foundation even released a video that attempts to simplify and explain the 2,700-page measure. But there’s another helpful chart that shows how Obamacare will work, and it’s taken from an official report released by government auditors. Click on the image below to see how the Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration explained the Obamacare enrollment process, in testimony before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday:

Obamacare's Cruel Legacy: Fewer Jobs, Fewers Hours Worked, And A Lot Fewer Employers. By Donald Lambro 
Excerpt: While just about every poll in the country is telling the administration that Americans care more about finding a job and getting the weak economy back on track, President Obama is out promoting his signature social welfare law: the government's de facto takeover of the nation's health care.

Excerpt: Yesterday we saw a prime example of Obama's Justice Department's absolute refusal to enforce our immigration laws, and have now carried it one step forward by choosing not to enforce felony I.D. theft laws as well. It seems a restaurant chain (appropriately called Uncle Sam's) had been hiring as many as 121 illegal Mexicans with full knowledge that these Mexicans were illegal invaders.  Sheriff Joe Arpao, after a nine-month investigation prompted by an insider employee tip, raided two of the restaurants in Phoenix yesterday, arrested ten illegal Mexicans and pursuing the rest of them.  Because Obama has ordered his Justice Department not to accept any illegal prisoners from Sheriff Joe arrests, the prisoners have been taken to the 4th Avenue county jail and held there.

The Cheney in Waiting. By Gail Collins
Funny liberal column. ~Bob. Excerpt: But a couple of problems with that statement. One is that Cheney only moved to Wyoming last fall, so people were apparently begging her to represent them while she was there on vacation. Lately, we’ve had a lot of politicians explain that they’re running for office because folks kept coming up and begging them to go for it. Generally, these are people whose plans are deeply unwelcome by the other members of their party. But nobody ever says, “I have decided to heed the clarion call of my insatiable need for attention.” Instead, they blame it on random pedestrians.

Ivy League Prof Calls God a 'White Racist' for Zimmerman Verdict
Excerpt: God ain’t good all of the time. In fact, sometimes, God is not for us. As a black woman in a nation that has taken too many pains to remind me that I am not a white man, and am not capable of taking care of my reproductive rights, or my voting rights, I know that this American god ain’t my god. As a matter of fact, I think he’s a white racist god with a problem. More importantly, he is carrying a gun and stalking young black men. (Typical. I'm getting really tired of hearing about TRAYVON.  – LLW. It’s not God stalking young black men. It’s young black men. ~Bob.)

Excerpt: President Obama spoke publicly for the first time Friday on the acquittal of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in the killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, calling for an examination of 'Stand Your Ground" laws nationwide. "Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago," Obama said, adding that "it's important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away." (And Christopher Cervini, an unarmed 15-year-old who was shot dead by Roderick Scott, who was acquitted, could have been me. It happened in NY in 2009, a state without a stand-your-ground law. No statements from the President, Sen. Reid or the black leadership, no outrage in most of the media. Maybe because Cervini was white and Scott black? How about the fact that blacks are twice as likely to kill whites as the other way around, or that the 13% of the population who is black commit 53% of the murders, mostly of fellow blacks. Could any of those black victims killed by black thugs have been Obama? ~Bob http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/03/what_if_trayvon_had_been_white_and_the_shooter_black.html#ixzz1qBLNnX9L

Long Beach Residents Warned About Friday ‘Bash Mob’
From the video, the members of the mob could have been Obama 30 years ago. Waiting statement from the President. ~Bob.

Zimmerman Verdict Defies The Tyrant in The White House
Excerpt: A six person jury found George Zimmerman not guilty in defiance of the King in the White House & the liberal media. Wild Bill weighs in. (Trayvon Martin died a violent death. The case was investigated, the man who shot him was exonerated by a jury of his peers. We call that the rule of law. Across the land, those offended by the verdict have rioted and attacked whites "in memory of Trayvon." We call that mob rule. –TH)

Eric Holder won't give George Zimmerman his gun back because he's already sent it to Mexico. And lost track of it.

George Zimmerman needs to change his name to George Benghazi--he will never be mentioned by the President again.

Brad Thor offers to buy Zimmerman a gun

British Reconsidering Decision to Arm Syrian Rebels
Excerpt: A leader of the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Free Syrian Army (FSA) has accused British Prime Minister David Cameron of betrayal in the wake of confirmation that the British will not be arming the rebel group.

Egypt's New Cabinet Contains Women And Christians, No Islamists. By awr Hawkins
Excerpt: Egypt's new 34-member cabinet has "prominent figures from the country's liberal and secular forces," including three women and three Christians, but zero Islamists nor any "ministers from [Mohammed] Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood."  Morsi supporters are not happy. (The new Cabinet in EGYPT was sworn in on July 16. The European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton is already in Cairo dealing with the interim cabinet as a legitimate government. NOTE THE NEW CABINET CONTAINS WOMEN & CHRISTIANS and it should be noted who isn't in the cabinet. If the US is to accept anything in Egypt it should be the new cabinet and do it quickly. Yes, I am biased, I am for women and CHRISTIANS to be a part of every government. Now what will Obama do?  --RB. He won’t be happy. ~Bob.)

Pakistan Taliban fighter asks Malala to come home
I hope she isn't foolish enough to return to Pakistan. They'll make sure she's dead next time. – LLW. Oh, they just want to kiss and make up. Religion of Peace, you know. ~Bob.)

Modern, moderate Dubai: Norwegian woman raped, gets 16 months in jail for sex outside marriage
Excerpt: In Islam the victim of rape is to blame, for she has sullied the family's honor by engaging in sexual immorality. The fact that it was forced upon her makes no difference at all.

Sprechen Sie “Green Energy”? ¡No Más! Throw another shrimp on the parabolic solar reflector, mate. By Steve Maley
http://www.redstate.com/2013/07/18/sprechen-sie-green-energy-no-mas/
Excerpt: As President Obama doubles down on his green energy initiative, maybe it’s time to look around the world and see how the foray into the future of rainbows and unicorn farts is working out for our more progressive and forward-thinking allies. We’ll visit Spain, Germany and Australia and see how their campaigns to replace fossil fuels and nuclear energy in favor of wind and solar energy are working out for their economies.
Scientist tells senators: Global warming not causing extreme weather
Excerpt: In a Senate hearing Thursday, environmental scientist Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado said it’s “incorrect” to claim that global warming is spurring more extreme weather disasters. “It is misleading and just plain incorrect to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally,” Pielke said in his testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “It is further incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.” (Won’t stop them, though. The Democrats are the party of good intentions and emotions, not facts. ~Bob.)

Why Does Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Have So Many Female Fans? By Amanda Marcotte in Slate
Excerpt: Tsarnaev's supporters insist that they have purely intellectual reasons for supporting the young man accused of causing three deaths and 14 amputations. They believe the government set him up. But they sure do spend a lot of time sharing pictures of him on Tumblrsquealing over any behavior of his that can be construed as "cute," and clucking maternally over his well being. On Wednesday, outrage flared up in "Free Jahar" circlesbecause of the unflattering portrayal of him in the court illustrations. The whole thing feels uncomfortably like a Justin Bieber fan squee—bad enough when it's for Bieber, but even worse for someone who appears to be a remorseless killer. 

Freedom of the Press, Vietnam Style. By Pham Doan Trang
Excerpt: Every week in Hanoi, the Central Propaganda Commission of the Vietnamese Communist Party, and in Ho Chi Minh City, the commission’s southern regional office, convene “guidance meetings” with the managing editors of the country’s important national newspapers.
Not incidentally, the editors are all party members. Officials of the Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Public Security are also present. Similar meetings take place in every province, a process emblematic of just how complete the control of the press is in Vietnam. ((A really nice explanation of how the Party controls the media in Viet Nam.  Which is to say, very, very thoroughly. --Del)

Taliban Execute 8 Civilian Workers
Excerpt: The ISAF strongly condemns the murders of eight Afghan workers on their way to work in Logar province July 18. The Taliban forced the workers from their vehicle, then executed them.

Michael Moore to split assets, pants
Excerpt: Flint’s best-known power couple is apparently splitting, with Michael Moore and Kathleen Glynn going their separate ways. Moore filed for divorce from Glynn, his wife of 21 years on June 17, according to a complaint filed in a circuit court near their home on Torch Lake…The divorce is likely to involve millions of dollars, including the couple’s Torch Lake home, which has a taxable value of $1.2 million, according to Antrim County property records. (I feel so bad for him, I’d like to buy him three double bacon cheeseburgers, two large fries and a super size shake. ~Bob.)

Black America's Real Problem Isn't White Racism. By Pat Buchanan
Excerpt: When Holder delivered his 2009 "nation-of-cowards" speech blaming racism for racial separation, Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald suggested that our attorney general study his crime statistics. In New York from January to June 2008, 83 percent of all gun assailants were black, according to witnesses and victims, though blacks were only 24 percent of the population. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 98 percent of all gun assailants. Forty-nine of every 50 muggings and murders in the Big Apple were the work of black or Hispanic criminals. New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly confirms Mac Donald's facts. Blacks and Hispanics commit 96 percent of all crimes in the city, he says, but only 85 percent of the stop-and-frisks are of blacks and Hispanics.

Excerpt: As Obamacare was being pushed through Congress in 2010, the Obama administration and its allies were unequivocal in two claims: If you like your doctor and you like your current health care plan, you can keep them both.  (In 2010, WH fought "smear" that #Obamacare may cause ppl to lose their doctor. In 2013, they embrace the smear: --Guy Benson)

Slavery in America, Saudi-Style. By Michelle Malkin
Excerpt: Meet Meshael Alayban of Saudi Arabia, wife of Abdulrahman bin Nasser bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. She apparently thought we Americans would look the other way at human trafficking and abuse of domestic workers -- you know, the way they do in her misogyny-infested home country. The wealthy Meshael Alayban thought wrong. Last week, Orange County, Calif., prosecutors charged Alayban (who lists her occupation as "princess" on her tourist visa) with felony human trafficking. Enslavement.

“BroChoice:” Man Complains Casual Sex More Difficult if Abortions Banned
Excerpt: This week, Ben Sherman, a pro-abortion boy, took to his blog to explain the #brochoice movement. He wrote that if abortion isn’t readily accessible, especially in his state of Texas, men’s sex lives are at stake. It was the ultimate form of male-chauvinism, yet NARAL and other pro-abortion women’s groups took to Twitter in support of the campaign.

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