Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Today's items of interest

Some good items today. Thanks to all who sent them. ~Bob

Everyone wants Congress to compromise. So, why don’t they?
Excerpt: Compromise is the name of the political game, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that shows almost seven in ten people believe that it’s more important for politicians to cooperate across party lines than stick to their positions. (If compromise is good, we could have ended WWII in 1943 with a compromise, saving all that bloodshed and death. Hitler gets to keep half of Europe and kill only half the Jews. Often compromise with wrong is wrong. ~Bob.)

Yes, We Do Have a Debt Problem: The president and his supporters try to downplay the continuing crisis. By Veronique de Rugy
Excerpt: After years of bipartisan overspending, public debt today—that’s the money that the federal government owes to domestic and foreign investors—is almost 90 percent higher than at the onset of the financial crisis in 2008. It climbed by $1 trillion dollars between December 2011 and December 2012 alone to its current level of $12.03 trillion, according to the CBO in May. Public debt is now 75.1 percent of GDP, the highest level since 1950, and it is projected to reach 76.2 percent next year. (Every reasonable person knows you can only pay off the MasterCard by charging it to the VISA card for so long, then things go crash. ~Bob.)

The Era of the Psychotic Candidate. By Jim Geraghty, Morning Jolt
Excerpt: Remember Alvin Greene? He was the guy who scraped together the filing fee to appear as a candidate for Senate on the Democratic line in South Carolina in 2010, and who won the nomination, even though almost no one in the state knew who he was. One of his major ideas to improve the economy was making an action figure of himself. We all had fun laughing at the surreal Forrest-Gump-come-to-life, and he was enjoyably crazy candidate, right up until the moment hestarted howling and wailing at a reporter who showed up at his home, and then it started to feel like we were laughing at a man with serious mental-health issues. We can still laugh at Anthony Weiner . . . and we will be laughing at him for a long time. But it is starting to feel like we're watching a man with serious, deep-rooted psychological issues relating to his sexuality, his self-control, his ability to assess risk, his inability to admit the truth unless confronted with overwhelming evidence of his falsehoods, his willingness to see others as objects and God knows how many other issues… (Well, he was a Democrat Congressman. Of course he has problems with “his self-control, his ability to assess risk, his inability to admit the truth…” ~Bob.)

McAuliffe bragged about GreenTech’s cash position while begging feds for faster processing of ‘cash for visas’
Excerpt: At a time when attorneys representing GreenTech Automotive said the green car firm was in financial trouble [3] , company chairman Terry McAuliffe was running for governor – and telling a reporter his business was flush with cash. (If Virginia elects him governor, they will get what they deserve, just as America is today. ~Bob.)

Al-Qaeda claims Abu Ghraib and Taji mass jailbreaks
Remember the good old days, when Obama was running for re-election and assured us he had al Qaeda “on it’s heels”? ~Bob

Excerpt: Amid new revelations about the IRS targeting scandal, the Obama administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said Tuesday that former OMB head Jeffrey Zients’ extended absence from the United States is due to a family vacation. OMB’s statement came after The Daily Caller reported that former leader Jeffrey Zients met at the White House with key figures at the Internal Revenue Service just before news broke that the IRS was targeting conservative nonprofit groups for abusive audits and delays. (South Africa is a dangerous, high-crime place. Hope he doesn’t have an “accident.” ~Bob.)

Profiling. By Walter E. Williams 
Excerpt: You might say, "Profiling is unfair, and individuals should be judged individually!" Taken to the limit, such a position is ludicrous. Suppose police are trying to catch the criminal who just raped a woman in a city park. Would you want them to use sex profiling -- i.e., just round up men -- or should they round up everyone, regardless of sex? I'm betting that most people would view the latter as stupid. But there is a near equivalent in government. Ninety-six percent of the FBI's list of most wanted terrorists are Muslim, and most terrorist attacks in the U.S. have been committed by young Muslim males. Despite this, the Transportation Security Administration people behave as if each person who seeks to board a plane is of equal danger. That's why they search, frighten and inconvenience 5-year-olds and elderly people.

About that Austerity in Spain: There Isn't Any. By Mike Shedlock
Excerpt: When Keynesian clowns point to Spain and say "austerity doesn't work", ask them "where is the austerity?" Also ask "where is the labor reform?" Then ask "where is the pension reform?"

Teachers Union May Sue Over ‘Constitutional Right’ to Wear Shorts to Work!
Excerpt: Big Labor has a new favorite group of victims of social injustice - the teaching staff of Lewis County, West Virginia. Citizens have been complaining to school board members about the “way teachers dress,” according to school board president Paul Derico. As a result, the school board unanimously passed a dress code for teachers, banning blue jeans, faded jeans and shorts.

Excerpt: Let's try to imagine Obama governing with the same attitudes, the same tone in which he campaigned in 2008!  You remember!  It was Kumbaya, where there were no red states or blue states, no class warfare, no race warfare, no demonizing a fellow cause he's got more money in the bank.  The Obama who spoke kindly of both the rich and poor, spoke not of individual mandates, spoke in favor of deporting illegals who invaded us, spoke kindly of his predecessors, was in favor of civil unions for gays but advocated strongly for the marriage between a man and a woman as central to the advances of American culture.   Hell, he even praised Ronald Reagan as a transformational leader!

Damascus Countdown? White House about to use military force in Syria. That would be a catastrophic mistake. The focus should be Iran.
Excerpt: The countdown to U.S. intervention in the mess in Damascus appears to be nearing the zero hour. The Obama administration is actively considering using military force to bring down the Assad regime in Syria. Specifically, the White House and Pentagon are analyzing the idea of running a 24/7 “no-fly zone” over Syria, as well as training and arming rebel forces to defeat the Assad forces. But the costs would be high — upwards of $1 billion a month — and might not even be successful. (And if Russia intervenes militarily to support their Syrian ally, as they did their Serbian ally in 1914? ~Bob.)

Syrian Rebels Target Hizballah. By John Rossomando
Excerpt: A string of bombings, rocket attacks and assassination attempts has brought the Syrian civil war into Hizballah's Lebanese stronghold. Hizballah has found itself unable to keep Syria's rebel factions from attacking its assets deep inside Lebanon. The group became subject to reprisals ever since it began fighting alongside forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad earlier this year. (I’m hoping for a long war of attrition, ending in a draw. ~Bob.)

In the name of diversity, social engineering coming to communities everywhere. by Katie Pavlich
Excerpt: With the recent bankruptcy filing by Detroit, you'd think governments everywhere would take a step back a re-evaluate central planning. Instead, the federal government is doing the opposite through a new social engineering program that will map every community in the country, all in the name of diversity.

America versus Mark Steyn and the National Review Online: What are the chances? Laura Rosen Cohen
Excerpt: My late Bubbie Molly Rosen (pictured with me) always told us “If you want a helping hand, look to the end of your arm.”

President Obama & the Race Issue. By Bill O’Reilly
Excerpt: They blame guns, poor education, lack of jobs, but rarely do they define the problem accurately. The reason there is so much violence and chaos in the black precincts is the disintegration of the African American family. About 73% of all black babies are born out of wedlock. The lack of involved fathers leads to young boys growing up resentful and unsupervised. But when was the last time you saw a public service ad telling young black girls to avoid become pregnant? (In case you missed it. Most people know I'm not a fan of Bill O'Reilly, for reasons I won't go into, but he nailed it last night. – LLW)

Two Presidents? Two Monarchs? By Mark Steyn
Excerpt: As I wrote in the early weeks of the Duchess of Cambridge’s blessed event, the “First Family” (a concept unknown to the Constitution) now costs taxpayers more per annum than all European royal families combined. The whole lot could comfortably fit in the 40-car motorcade accompanying the Obamas to Martha’s Vineyard — which I trust will be renamed Trayvon’s Vineyard for the duration.

America's best-educated kids don't go to school. By Jack Kelly
Excerpt:  With public school students at the 50th percentile, home schoolers were at the 89th percentile in reading, the 86th percentile in science, the 84th percentile in language, math, and social studies.

The Shale Boom and Income Mobility. By Walter Russell Mead
Excerpt: Looking at that NYT map, we can see that North Dakota and eastern Montana are the most upwardly mobile areas in the country. It’s no coincidence that those blue shaded areas overlap the Bakken formation, one of the largest shale oil and gas plays in the United States. And energy-rich Texas, home to the oil-rich Permian basin and the Eagle Ford shale formation, is also relatively upwardly mobile.

Should the Third Amendment Prevent Government Spying? By Glenn Harlan Reynolds.
Excerpt: When the Framers drafted the Third Amendment, they had a specific evil in mind: The quartering of troops "upon" a population by the English crown. As the term suggests, this wasn't just about getting a cheap place for soldiers to stay. Forcing citizens to put up troops in their homes was expensive and the troops -- then drawn from the jails and gutters, for the most part -- were likely to rob, rape and assault members of the household at the least provocation.

How Adding Iodine to Salt Resulted In A Decade's Worth Of IQ Gains For The United
Excerpt: Iodized salt is so ubiquitous that we barely notice it. Few people know why it even exists. Iodine deficiency remains the world's leading cause of preventable mental retardation. (Wait, I thought it was a Communist plot? ~Bob.)

Excerpt: My recent post on ObamaCare’s War on Men discussed the fact that ObamaCare’s elimination of gender-based insurance premium differentials unfairly penalizes men. It generated 128 comments, many of which speculated that pregnancy generated the cost differential. As the following data show, women appear to use more health care even after their childbearing years are over. It is unlikely that babies are responsible for the entire cost differential. Even if they are, a price system that does not reflect differential usage will do a poor job of allocating resources.

Obama Turns To Comedians To Promote Health Coverage
Excerpt: Who needs jocks when you've got Jennifer Hudson and Amy Poehler? That seems to be the message coming out of the White House following a star-studded meeting yesterday led by White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett. Its mission: Figure out how to help promote the Affordable Care Act. … This comes less than a month after the NFL rejected the Obama administration's plan to recruit pro football stars in the effort.


Quotes from The Patriot Post
"We wonder if Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder is familiar with the case of Marissa Alexander of Jacksonville, a black woman who received a 20-year prison sentence in May 2012 for firing warning shots against her allegedly abusive husband. The judge rejected a defense under Florida's stand-your-ground law. Alexander told police it was to escape a brutal beating by her husband, against whom she'd already taken out a protective order. For defending herself, she went to jail -- as some still wish for George Zimmerman. But by standing her ground with a firearm, she may have saved her life, just like Zimmerman." --Investor's Business Daily

"An illegal alien who's been deported 11 times was caught again, this time with 220 pounds of pot in his car. He's in big trouble -- he was supposed to bring back a receipt for Eric Holder's guns." --Fred Thompson

"Detroit has become the largest city in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy. What happened was Detroit's population dropped something like 70 percent, but the government got bigger. The tax base got smaller, but the government got bigger. Thank God that kind of thing could never happen in Washington." --comedian Jay Leno

POTUS says #Obamacare is "doing what it's designed to do." What? Raise costs? Limit access to care? Kill jobs?

Racists! ~Bob.

Illegal Immigrant Horror
Excerpt: The story reprinted below is beyond horrifying. It's also what happens when the federal government refuses to enforce our borders and when the president and attorney general---the nation's two top law enforcement officers---choose to ignore the rule of law. … "On Wednesday, police in Austin arrested two Mexican nationals who reportedly participated in the gang-rape of a 13-year-old girl on June 29.

Why hasn't America progressed on race? By Newt Gingrich
Excerpt: The tragic truth is that at the end of segregation, the great moment of opportunity for African-Americans, we had a failure of government and a failure of culture. The rise of big bureaucracy in the Great Society starting in 1965 combined with the rise of a counterculture which despised middle-class values and which taught the poor patterns and habits of destruction -- and those two patterns of bad bureaucracy reinforcing bad culture have led to a disaster. Charles Murray captured part of this in an extraordinary book in the mid-1980s called "Losing Ground," which was the seminal work in being able to pass welfare reform, in which he demonstrated that the patterns we were building were actively destructive of the poor.

Ever hear of the “Big Six” during the Civil Rights Era? Democrats Paid Black Leaders to stop Revolution of Younger Black Population
http://newsninja2012.com/ever-hear-of-the-big-six-during-the-civil-rights-era-democrats-exalted-black-leaders-to-stop-revolution-of-younger-black-population-2013-04-07/#axzz2PpRCzVBI

NHS Inquiry: British Healthcare System Caused Up to 13,000 "Needless Deaths" Since 2005
Excerpt: The NHS’s medical director will spell out the failings of 14 trusts in England, which between them have been responsible for up to 13,000 “excess deaths” since 2005. 

Woman Pulls Shotgun Out of Trunk, Stands Her Ground (video)
Excerpt: Pro-tip: If you’re going to rape someone at a gas station with people watching, with an umbrella and a knife… expect that the woman likely has a shotgun in her truck and after you make the mistake of slapping her, she will kill your ass. (Killed a black guy, she can expect the full Zimmerman treatment. Oh, wait, she’s black too. She’s good. ~Bob.)

Obama Promised Lobbyists Won't Run the White House!
The Good Old Days. See next piece. ~Bob

Obama administration packed with lobbyists he vowed not to hire. By Timothy P. Carney 
Excerpt: President Obama has hired more than 100 lobbyists in his administration, a new academic study reports. This doesn't match Obama's campaign promise to exclude lobbyists, or his pretenses of having kept that promise.

USC Student: Police Said I Wasn't Raped Because He Didn't Orgasm
End the war on Women at liberal universities! ~Bob.

Female medic earns Silver Star in Afghan war
Excerpt: A 19-year-old medic from Texas will become the first woman in Afghanistan and only the second woman since World War II to receive the Silver Star, the nation's third-highest medal for valor. Army Spc. Monica Lin Brown saved the lives of fellow soldiers after a roadside bomb tore through a convoy of Humvees in the eastern Paktia province in April 2007, the military said.

After Repeated Controversies, Sharpton is Still Smokin'. By Jonah Goldberg
The long record of Al Sharpton's terrible behaviors is really impressive (and depressing).  How this man could have been so obviously and deeply involved in chicanery, deception, dishonesty, and promotion of violence, and yet still be considered important and someone whose views on various subjects are critical, is both puzzling and another sign of the decay of our society. Del

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