The wealthy man child has a bad reelection plan

So we read at Politico that Obama is going to be framing himself as the ""adult in the room," in his campaign to win the presidency a second time:

One of President Barack Obama’s 2012 themes will likely revolve around what his aides call “the contrast” — a portrayal of Obama as a responsible, moderate adult harassed by infantile Republicans who favor the wealthy.

  It was difficult not to grind teeth while watching the latter portion of that news conference yesterday, just as it is becoming increasingly difficult to take seriously anything this administration says.
  While Palin's children are ridiculed and she herself is called crude names, Michelle Obama has the luxury of saying that she and her husband have had help protecting their children from the media.
  Help from the media.
  Meanwhile Michelle Bachmann has been told by Stephanopolous that the press will be going after the 23 children she and her husband took into their home as foster children. 
  Hey, media. If a kid has had such a rotten life that he or she needs a foster home, the chances that those kids are already messed up and perhaps continue to be messed up are pretty good, which is exactly the scenario the media is looking for.
  The current royalty in the White House figures all this okay, obviously, since when Palin was attacked for the Gabby Giffords murder attempt, nothing much was said to tamp down the horrific attacks left wingers and the MSM (but I repeat myself) heaped on her and Rush and everybody else on the right.
  What seems somewhat out of sync is that the royalty in the White House seems so comfortable citing their children for such ludicrous examples as the king did yesterday, comparing his responsible children to the irresponsible adults in the Congress.
  The truth is that if the children are supposed to be off limits (unlike Palin's and Bachmann's children), then the Obamas need to not mention them so frequently, certainly as paragons of virtue compared to political opponents.
  The condescending attitude of Mr. Obama at the press conference has been much addressed around the web, to much greater deftness than this column. 
  What is most frustrating is that this infantile spoiled man child continues to lie to the American people, to demagogue, to demand talks with the Republicans and then have his spokesman complain it's not worth the time to do so. 
  What's frustrating is he feels comfortable criticizing people for flying around in jets, right before he gets in his. What's frustrating is his calling for everyone to sacrifice, just as he and his wife fly around the world at the cost of millions of dollars to the American taxpayer, once even flying his dog in a separate plane.
  What's frustrating is that, just when you want to like him, he does something like complain people aren't working hard enough but he is, right before he goes to play golf or to another fundraiser.
  What's frustrating is that an honest approach to government does not seem possible with this individual.
  The petulance of the current administration is pretty remarkable, but the frightening aspect is the monkey business that is going on overseas. If you dare, read Andrew McCarthy's concern over the fact that the Obama administration is opening talks with the Muslim Brotherhood, who are at the heart of terrorism around the world.
  It's pretty obvious at this point that this guy is not only going to change, but that he is doing really damage to the future of this great country.
  Many people have speculated that either Obama is doing this damage intentionally or he's clueless.
  The truth is that it doesn't really matter which one it is anymore.
  The damage is the same.
  The man child's weaknesses were all too apparent yesterday.
  He's not moderate.
  He's not responsible.
  And he's certainly not an adult.

New evidence emerges about safety of TSA scanners

  There have been numerous reports that the backscatter scanners the TSA uses are not safe. Now new evidence has emerged about their safety, as numerous TSA agents who stand near the scanners have developed cancer, strokes and heart attacks.
  The government claims there is no problem with the scanners but will not allow independent testing of the machines.
  It might be noted again that President Bush's first TSA director, Michael Cherthoff, was an investor in the company that developed the scanners. It might also be noted that he continues to profit from their use across the country.
  Infowars (admittedly a paranoid site) has links and a video report, seen here:

  From an earlier report:

For Rez, the real danger occurs if the machine stops in the middle of a scan, allowing the beam to focus on a tiny area for several seconds. Given that the backscatter works with a wheel rotating at a high speed, and that the agency plans to use the scanners continuously 365 days a year, mechanical failures are likely, he said.

   There's more here and here

Eh,  a scientist is raising something really awful about the scanners at the airport, those machines that will be proliferating all across the country in numerous airports. There's concern about the efficacy of the scanners, including 

• who will check their accuracy?  

• How will we know if they're malfunctioning? 

• What happens if they fail and no one knows it? 

• How will this radiation affect children? 

• What is some folks are susceptible to cancer genetically? How will these machines react to those people?

  Popular Mechanics doubt anyone will even be caught by the scanners anyway. 
  The alternative to the scanner is, of course, a body cavity search, including sexual organs. Read more here and here.
  That link is about the invasion of personal privacy and body cavity searches, which are expanding to include other forms of transportation.

Whistleblow the govt, get fired

  That's the way it works, right? It's SUPPOSED to work that way.
  The pre-president Obama said this about whistleblowers: Such acts of courage and patriotism . . . should be encouraged rather than stifled."
  But now even those on the left are noticing that the POTUS like to pay back and ultimately fire those who expose the underbelly of HIS governance.
  The latest to be fired is the ATF agent who revealed much of the gunrunner operation, which has since been verified by numerous agents. His name is Vince Cefalu and he's been fired by the government for his testimony: his infractions? swearing and "personal hygiene." 
  Fox:

Cefalu first told FoxNews.com about the ATF’s embattled anti-gun smuggling operation in December, before the first reports on the story appeared in February. “Simply put, we knowingly let hundreds of guns and dozens of identified bad guys go across the border,” Cefalu said at the time.

Since then, Cefalu’s claims have been vindicated, as a number of agents with first-hand knowledge of the case came forward. The scandal over Project Gunrunner led to congressional hearings, a presidential reprimand – Obama called the operation “a serious mistake” – and speculation that ATF chief Ken Melson will resign.

  But Cefalu isn't the only or first to be retaliated against by this "transparent" administration.
  Remember Gerald Shelton? He's the special investigator Obama fired a couple years ago. From the Washington Examiner:

Walpin learned his fate Wednesday night.  He was driving to an event in upstate New York when he received a call from Norman Eisen, the Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform.  "He said, 'Mr. Walpin, the president wants me to tell you that he really appreciates your service, but it's time to move on,'" Walpin recalls.  "Eisen said, 'You can either resign, or I'll tell you that we'll have to terminate you.'"

At that moment, Walpin says, he had finished not only a report on the Sacramento probe but also an investigation into extensive misuse of AmeriCorps money by the City University of New York, which is AmeriCorps' biggest program.  Walpin says he told Eisen that, given those two investigations, neither of which was well-received by top Corporation management, the timing of his firing seemed "very interesting."  According to Walpin, Eisen said it was "pure coincidence."  When Walpin asked for some time to consider what to do, Eisen gave him one hour. "Then he called back in 45 minutes and asked for my response," Walpin recalls.

  Then there's Thomas Drake, who was prosecuted for his part in an NSA expose, quoted here at Salon:

Thomas Drake is a hero who deserves a Medal of Freedom Honor.  Instead, the Obama administration seeks to imprison him for decades while steadfastly protecting from prosecution -- or judicial review of any kind -- the high-level government officials who systematically broke the law.  Put another way -- from the last paragraph of Mayer's article:

  Read more at the New York Times article to which Salon refers here.
  Indeed, leftists are so angry about Obama's lack of transparency that they have banded together to protest the behavior and publicly denounced the $10 billion Obama has spent on secrecy. While still blaming Bush for initiating the policies, the leftists are outraged that Obama has not only continued those policies but rather exceeded them. From Yahoo:

The group claims that petitioners have filed more Freedom of Information Act requests made during Obama's first term--with fewer responses--than have been logged in previous years; that the administration has squashed "legal inquiries into secret illegalities more often than any predecessor" and "amassed the worst record in U.S. history for persecuting, prosecuting and jailing government whistleblowers and truth-tellers," including WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning. The letter also notes that the White House has refused to make its visitor logs public, while overseeing a 15 percent spike last year in budgetary outlays for classifying secrets 

  The anger extends, of course, across the leftist board to Bradley Manning.
  In fact, leftists are demanding that the transparency award Obama received in secret in March be rescinded.
  HuffPo says Obama's lack of transparency is even worse than *gasp* Bush's. 

TSA: so do we not have a right to drive either?

  Attention, all tea partiers and swarming disregarded masses!  
  So you think the TSA is becoming calloused and intrusive? So you're hoping they'll change their methods because of the outcry of its citizens?
  Not so.
  Outrage over a dying 95 year old Caucasian woman who was forced to remove her Depends to prove she wasn't a terrorist elicited a, "Meh. We're just doing our job," response from the TSA. 
  For obvious reasons, they don't like to be videotaped doing "their job."
 Scientists have expressed some serious concerns, as recently as this year, regarding the backscatter scanners the government is using to scan the bodies of citizens. If you've been in a security line lately, you know it's like a Twilight Zone episode, where everybody just lines up and does what they're told.
  It's reasonable that people do NOT want to go through the radiation exposure of the scanners, regardless what the government says, so they may choose to take the patdown rather than the radiation.
  But what about the patdown, recently enhanced?
  There's concern about the unsanitary methods the TSA uses regarding not changing their gloves from individual to individual. More reports are emerging about the so-called "enhanced" patdowns the TSA is using.
  Here follows a particularly appalling incident recently experienced by advice columnist Amy Alkon. Be warned. It's pretty awful, but it is what's happening in our country.

Basically, I felt it important to make a spectacle of what they are doing to us, to make it uncomfortable for them to violate us and our rights, so I let the tears come. In fact, I sobbed my guts out. Loudly. Very loudly. The entire time the woman was searching me.

Nearing the end of this violation, I sobbed even louder as the woman, FOUR TIMES, stuck the side of her gloved hand INTO my vagina, through my pants. Between my labia. She really got up there. Four times. Back right and left, and front right and left. In my vagina. Between my labia. I was shocked -- utterly unprepared for how she got the side of her hand up there. It was government-sanctioned sexual assault.

  This is not an anonymous account and it isn't the first to report this humiliating behavior.  
  There are more reports here. 
  And here:

She felt along my waistline, moved behind me, then proceeded to feel both of my buttocks. She reached from behind in the middle of my buttocks towards my vagina area.

She did not tell me that she was going to touch my buttocks, or reach forward to my vagina area.

She then moved in front of my and touched the top and underneath portions of both of my breasts.

She did not tell me that she was going to touch my breasts.

She then felt around my waist. She then moved to the bottoms of my legs.

She then felt my inner thighs and my vagina area, touching both of my labia.

She did not tell me that she was going to touch my vagina area or my labia.

  Former Miss America's report of an identical experience is here.
  And we all remember the guy who yelled, "Don't touch my junk!" and who has been since subjected to investigation by the TSA.
  We can't wait for the TSA to become unionized. We're sure the unions will have the best interests of the public in mind, rather than just the union members. Right?
  But don't worry.
  John Pistole, the director of the TSA, says he has only your privacy rights in mind. And, hey, much more invasive procedures are used around the world, right? That's what Pistole says, althoughznever seem to hear of it and in other countries they like to report the salacious details of THIS country's TSA procedures.
  Though Pistole said if you're not willing to submit to a patdown, you should know you don't have the right to fly.
  But now that the TSA, as the ultra liberal Mother Jones reports, is expanding its authority to any form of transportation, including ferries, subways, cars, trains, does this mean you also don't have the right to drive your car, which you can do all by yourself, as opposed to public transportation? 
  Already it's been reported that TSA has stopped random autos.
  Are these car drivers subjected to these intimate enhanced patdowns?
  And now that I think of it, walking is a form of transportation. Does this mean you don't have the right to walk, with a reasonable expectation of privacy?
  So what if you're walking along (or driving) minding your own business and someone (read: TSA) stops you and demands to search your person? And what if that person demands to put her or his hand up into your personal area?
  Will that, too, be legal, in the name of public safety? Wouldn't we call that assault?
  Where does it stop?
  Wouldn't it be interesting to be in the meeting where Pistole and Napolitano decided that sexual organ inspections were to become the norm during TSA's Orwellian termed enhanced patdowns? Did they giggle when they made this decision? Were they titillated by the prospect? Why weren't they horrified at the decisions they were making?
  Didn't they read 1984 when they were in high school?
  So what do we do about this? Do we weep and lament that our freedoms are lost?
  In 1984, the working class are called the proles.

"If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated."

- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 7

And so indeed it does appear that the hope lies within those of us with "low sloping foreheads" who live in the "middle places." 

An Unkind Cut

If you thought this blog was unkind to Al Gore, savor this barb from James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal.


"It goes on and on in this moronic vein. Now we don't read Rolling Stone, and indeed often get it mixed up with High Times. Maybe this Gore piece is well tailored to the intellectual level of the readership, Still, you would think that left-liberals with above-average IQs would be embarrassed by this sort of boneheaded Manichaeism, especially when it is being offered in the name of science--oh, excuse us, 'Science.'"

Great Moments In Medicine-HHS To Spy On Doctors

Not enough terrorist to spy on? Apparently not. The Obama administration is planning a stealth survey of physicians to see if doctors give different answers to callers depending on whether they have public insurance, like Medicaid, or private insurance, like Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

Federal officials provided this example of a script for a caller in a managed care plan known as a preferred provider organization, or P.P.O.:
Mystery shopper: “Hi, my name is Alexis Jackson, and I’m calling to schedule the next available appointment with Dr. Michael Krane. I am a new patient with a P.P.O. from Aetna. I just moved to the area and don’t yet have a primary doctor, but I need to be seen as soon as possible.”
Doctor’s office: “What type of problem are you experiencing?”
Mystery shopper: “I’ve had a cough for the last two weeks, and now I’m running a fever. I’ve been coughing up thick greenish mucus that has some blood in it, and I’m a little short of breath.”

In separate interviews, several doctors said that patients with those symptoms should immediately see a doctor because the symptoms could indicate pneumonia, lung cancer or a blood clot in the lungs.

Other mystery shoppers will try to schedule appointments for routine care, like an annual checkup for an adult or a sports physical for a high school athlete.

To make sure they are not detected, secret shoppers will hide their telephone numbers by blocking caller ID information. Eleven percent of the survey will receive a third call where the caller will identify himself as an employee of Health and Human Services and check for answers different those given the spy callers. More

Unnatural Selection; Abortion And Gender Imbalance

Since the late 1970s, 163 million female babies have been aborted by parents seeking sons
Mara Hvistendahl has written a troubling book. Her book Unnatural Selection, details the worsening gender imbalance that plagues much of the developing world. Parents prefer to have boys. Well not exclusively, but as Ms Hvistendahl points out enough to the point a marked gender imbalance is occurring in the developing world. Normally there are 105 boys born for every 100 girls. In India it is now 112 boys to each 100 girls and in China the number 121. In many Chinese villages the number may be as high as 150. But the imbalance is not only in Asia. Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120. World wide the ratio is 100 to 107.
In the mid-1970s, amniocentesis, which reveals the sex of a baby, became available in developing countries. As parent now knew beforehand the sex of the child, the decision to abort or not to abort was increasingly determined by the gender of the unborn. "Better 500 rupees now than 5,000 later," reads one ad put out by an Indian clinic, a reference to the price of a sex test versus the cost of a dowry.
But oddly enough, Ms. Hvistendahl notes, it is usually a country's rich, not its poor, who lead the way in choosing against girls. "Sex selection typically starts with the urban, well-educated stratum of society," she writes. "Elites are the first to gain access to a new technology, whether MRI scanners, smart phones—or ultrasound machines." The behavior of elites then filters down until it becomes part of the broader culture. Even more unexpectedly, the decision to abort baby girls is usually made by women—either by the mother or, sometimes, the mother-in-law.
Parents demand boys. Take South Korea. In 1989, the sex ratio for first births there was 104 boys for every 100 girls—perfectly normal. But couples who had a girl became increasingly desperate to acquire a boy. For second births, the male number climbed to 113; for third, to 185. Among fourth-born children, it was a mind-boggling 209. Even more alarming is that people maintain their cultural assumptions even in the diaspora; research shows a similar birth-preference pattern among couples of Chinese, Indian and Korean descent right here in America.
So what will the future look like? Maybe something like the American wild west in the 19th century. Here migration was the culprit. Young men did indeed go west. In 1870, for instance, the sex ratio west of the Mississippi was 125 to 100. In California it was 166 to 100. In Nevada it was 320. In western Kansas, it was 768. Logically though not pointed put in the book, east of the Mississippi must have been inhabited by "spinster" women. If it was the gender imbalance that made the west so wild, the coming century might be one most of us would not want to see.

Great catch, soldier!

Cocaine addict/NYT columnist mocks Heartlanders

  Is part of WTF (Winning The Future) mocking flyover country? I mean, seriously? Is it possible to be more obnoxious, condescending and absolutely so full of yourself that you need an enema to release all the crap?
  This writer works for the nearly moribund NY Times which, of course, nobody reads anymore, as he appeared on the always disdainful and unfunny Bill Maher show, where all the leftists sun themselves on the rocks, along with a couple wannabe Republican strategists.
  In case you haven't heard, he claims people in Ohio and Indiana, et al, have "low sloping foreheads." This tres amusant fellow is a (former?) cocaine addict.
  
  Update here from Driscoll: The truth is that there will always be at least two distinctive and polar opposite sides. It'd be nice if we could learn to live with each other peaceably, without trying to control each others' lives.

Attacks on the court/s continue

  All the hubbub this weekend is about the scuffle at the Wisconsin Supreme Court a week ago. There's much suspicion about how the information leaked out about an incident in which one of the justices approached the other justice in a threatening manner.
  Althouse points out that the mysterious incident, in which no charges hve been filed, was reported on by a left leaning reporter of a group who seeks to oust Prosser, the conservative they thought they had rid themselves of.

  I agreed with Millhiser that "if it's true Prosser reached a breaking point and started strangling Bradley, he should go." But I wanted to know the whole story. It seemed to me that Lueders had given us "just the snapshot of one hard-to-comprehend instant within the longer event."  I was skeptical about the version of the story Lueders had put out, because there had been no arrest and because I found it hard to picture an elderly, dignified man suddenly grabbing a (somewhat less elderly) woman by the neck.

  Jacobsen applies the Weiner smell test to this incident, wondering why, if this incident was so dramatic as the liberal justice is crying now, she didn't have charges pressed against the nearly 7 decade old Prosser:

In the hours and days after the photo surfaced of a crotch-shot sent from his Twitter account, Weiner claimed that he was hacked, a criminal offense.  Yet Weiner refused to file a police report or notify various federal agencies that a crime had taken place.  Weiner apparently recognized that lying to the federal government was a crime, and he didn’t want to put himself in that position, so he simply lied to the public, which was not a crime. 

  It's obvious, at this point, that leftists are willing to do anything they can to "win," as they call it, although this kind of "winning" is usually referred to as cheating and, in some cases, illegal.
  But Volokh cites a Spectator article that proposes a very clear pattern is emerging on a national level, which is surely being mimicked on a state level:

The attack is being led by left-wing activist groups, talking heads, and a group of liberal congressmen. It is born of unhappiness about the Court's recent and prospective decisions impacting the Obama agenda, as well as paranoia about a corporate cash-fueled, vast right-wing conspiracy headed by the Koch brothers. And it is maintained by cobbling together tenuous suggestions of conflicts and misconduct involving Scalia, Thomas, and Alito in the hopes of creating an ethical cloud.

  It is surely true that the leftists who are attempting to hijack this country, its industries and its judicial organizations will do anything they can, including lying, bribing, and stalling our democracy in any way they can to get their grimy fingers around the treasure this republic represents.
  They're so freaked by the tea parties that even Van Jones, who is trying to start a populist liberal tea party movement, which, of course, cannot be replicated.
  The right needs to be vigilant, to remain on top of the falsehoods, and donate to causes that support the patriotic causes of this country.
  Just as the Al Gores of the world have harped repeatedly that the 2000 election was illegitimate, beginning with the repeated claim that the Supreme Court "appointed" Bush president rather than his having won the election by every recount (even the LSM's recount), these people will stop at nothing, including tearing down confidence in every institution of this country.
  Fortunately most people in this country aren't willing to accept this bilge.

Now Its Flakey Michele Bachmann

Is Michele Bachmann a flake? Good question Chris Wallace! Now that she has answered let's ask all of the other candidates and their eventual opponent the same question. I wish to hell she had just gotten up and walked off his program. The media has delighted in its egotistical and partisan attempts to destroy the reputation of Sarah Palin, Todd Palin, Bristol Palin and even infant and defenseless Trig Palin. Now it begins with Michele Bachman. Supposedly she has made some wild statements concerning members of Congress. Some members of Congress harbor un-American ideas. Damn straight they do. Did not the entire Democrat delegation rise to its feet in rapt adoration when the president of Mexico chided Arizona? Arizona is American Mexico is not. Ergo siding with Mexico against Arizona is un-American. And how many times have we heard Congressional delegation returning from Cuba wax eloquently of that failed and repressive country. How many House members are party to the slander inflicted on honest and concerned Americans, namely the Tea Party. When a class of Americans are vilified by members of Congress that is un-American. The Tea Party loves this country and hates its government. Democrats love the government and too often many of them hate this country.

No Michele Bachmann is not a flake. She did not drop out of high school to play in a rock band. Michele Bachman is not a flake. She did not run up a $500,000 tab at Tiffany's. Michele Bachman knows damn well there are not 57 states in the union. Michele Bachman had no part in creating a sharia compliant housing program in her home state of Minnesota. Michele Bachmann is closer to middle America than Chris Wallace, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman, and Barack Obama.

Rep Mike Kelly At His Best

There are so many great representatives in the freshman class of this Congress that it's easy to overlook some. Congressman Mike Kelly from the third district of Pennsylvania is a man we may want to listen to more. Speaking from the heart and from experience the congressman is a refreshing contrast to the Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Barney Frank.

Sunday's Super Seniors Jack Green and Jeannie Seely

Jack Greene, 81 and Jeannie Seely, 70 teamed up in 1969. Together they toured for ten years performing everywhere from New York's Madison Square Garden to London's Wembley Arena, most often in country music "package shows." Here they sing an Ernest Tubb standard "Waltz Across Texas With You".

Previous Super Senior Posts:
Jim Glaser

Bachmann Surges Go Girl!

While still not an official candidate Michele Bachmann is in a virtual dead heat with Mitt Romney. She garnered 22% to Romney's 23% . Only Romney and Bachmann beat out "undecided" at 14%. Herman Cain ran third with 10% and Pawlenty a dismal 5th with only 6%. Jon Huntsman, the serious candidate according to Washington insiders, ran dead last with 2% .

• Romney 23


• Bachmann 22


• Cain 10


• Gingrich 7


• Pawlenty 6


• Santorum 4


• Huntsman 2

Too Late To Short EU Carbon Credits!

Earlier this week as Greece fought to stave off bankruptcy it began selling assets. It owned 1 million carbon credits or European Union Allowances. It only managed to sell 6000. Why? Nobody wanted to buy them. By dumping 1,000,000 EAU's Greece managed to crash the entire market. Of course not just Greece but everyone owning EAU's is caught up in the crash. Now if Barney Frank were still chairing the House Financial Services Committee he would be blathering about banks holding EAU's, the perils of mark to market accounting (which he thought was a great idea when it was written into Sarbanes-Oxely) and Maxine Waters would be trying to get Ben Bernanke to bailout her favorite bank. Thank God, we had an election in 2010 and Barney Frank is no longer the chairman and we don't have Cap & Trade and a carbon credit exchange or any other new government mandated pitfall.

Hedge Funds Finance Medical Malpractice Claims

An entirely new industry has cropped in recent years as trial lawyers set their sights on making money off physicians, corporations and other targets particularly financing malpractice suits through hedge funds. In 2010,hedge funds invested $1 billion in these types of suits, much of it for medical malpractice cases. In most malpractice suits the physician prevails but usually at a great cost to his insurer, thus driving up tort insurance premiums, resulting in defensive medicine, higher fees and ultimately higher health care premiums. Forbes has a good editorial here.

Unions Lose Big In New Jersy

The above picture come from Trenton; not Madison. The outcomes were similar too. While New Jersey' unions didn't suffer any loss of their collective bargaining rights they did suffer a humiliating defeat. The Christie administration estimated the bill would save $3 billion in health benefits over the next 10 years and $120 billion in pension costs over 30 years. Much of the pension savings are from the controversial elimination of the cost-of-living adjustments for retirees, which unions have threatened to challenge in court.
More than 8,500 protesters poured into Trenton this morning with signs, speeches and their trademark inflatable rat. But most had dispersed by the time Democrats emerged from their hours-long caucus meetings where they debated the bill’s details and a separate budget proposal. The bill passed the Assembly 46-32 and will be sent to Christie’s desk for his signature. Fourteen Democrats voted for the bill, while 32 opposed it. After the vote, protesters in the balcony shouted "Shame on you!"
Christie on Obama and debt ceiling negotiations: He has to show up.

More Murders Linked To Fast And Furious

Mario Gonzalez Rodriguez was the brother of Chihuahua's former attorney general. He was kidnapped last October and found dead in November. When Mexican police arrested the murder suspects, they seized assault weapons. A congressional source reports that some of those weapons were part of the ATF's fast and furious operation.

In an editorial, Investors Business Daily, wondered if Fast and Furious was more than just a botched operation but rather an attempt by the Obama administration to usher in more stringent gun controls. A year ago AG Eric Holder spoke frequently about American weapons flowing into Mexico. I does seem odd that Holder has had little to say publicly since Fast and Furious became the target of a congressional investigation.

BATF Chief Won't Go

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives chief, Kenneth E. Melson, will not step down and is eager to testify before Rep. Darrell Issa and his House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The committee is investigating the botched undercover operation "Fast and Furious" where some 1700 AK-47 rifles were smuggled into Mexico.
"He is saying he won't go," said one source close to the situation, who asked for anonymity because high-level discussions with Melson remained fluid. "He has told them, 'I'm not going to be the fall guy on this.' "
Added a second source, who also requested anonymity: "He's resisting. He does not want to go."
Melson has an open invitation to appear on Capitol Hill. So far, he has not been given Justice Department approval to appear before Congress.

Misery Index Near 28 Year High

The Misery Index was a political gimmick. While Jimmy Carter was campaigning against Gerald Ford he added the unemployment rate and the rate of inflation to create, what he called, the Misery Index. Carter must have thought of himself as being pretty clever because it helped him win the election. Too clever by half, Reagan used it after it spiked on Carter's watch. It is now approaching a 28 year high and almost double what it was when Obama took office.

Sarah Palin Blamed For MSM Using Unreliable Sources

Mediate explains why there is so much misinformation about Sarah Palin:

One factor contributing to misleading or outright incorrect reports about Palin is the reality that she mostly refuses to speak to reporters unless the interaction is on her own terms, eschewing most outlets in favor of participating in interviews with, say, Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren or Real Clear Politics – in other words, with those who won’t necessarily challenge her or, depending on which side of the fence you’re sitting, attack her.

In the process, some news outlets are left to either speculate about Palin’s plans or refer to unreliable sources, which can and does result to incorrect information. And that certainly benefits Palin, because it reinforces her purported mistrust of the media and her belief that, in many cases, members of the media are less than competent and/or present a clear bias against her.

What ever happened to the idea that of not printing anything unless it was known to be true? Is Sarah Palin to blame for the errors the MSM makes about her?

Harrisburg Prays

One has to think Mayor Linda Thompson and the good people of Harrisburg have their hearts in the right place. Three days of prayer and fasting may help their souls but what will it do for the city's debt obligation? To conservatives Harrisburg, Pennsylvania stands as a textbook example of government venturing into areas where it has no expertise. In the early 1970's the city built an incinerator that would burn garbage and generate electricity. The incinerator had technical problems from the outset and was shut down in 2003 for pollution violations. In a short the city of Harrisburg is $300 million in debt with no foreseeable out short of bankruptcy.

"If you ran at peak efficiency, 100 percent all of the time, just by pure volume, you couldn't process that much waste in a facility of this size to make their debt service," a spokesman said. One wonders how long before bankrupt wind farms and high speed rail lines dot the landscape,

Climate Of Denial: More Hot Air

Al Gore has written a silly article, Climate of Denial, for Rolling Stone due to be on the news stands Friday but you can read it here. Aside from inadvertently raising the public's respect for ghost writers, Mr. Gore accomplishes nothing. Adjectives such as pubescent, sophomoric, and banal will enter the readers mind more quickly than profound, thoughtful, or reasoned. It's just plain juvenile. Emotional? Oh yes, emotional! One can almost hear him pant through his prose. Flood, drought, hurricanes, tornados, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, and so on until the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypses seem like Roy Rogers and friends. Climate change to Gore is dogma not science and unbelievers are to badgered, ridiculed, and slandered. And the media is to do its share of righteous slander. And if there are any back sliders in the media we,the public should;

"... contact your local newspapers and television stations when they put out claptrap on climate — and let them know you're fed up with their stubborn and cowardly resistance to reporting the facts of this issue. One of the main reasons they are so wimpy and irresponsible about global warming is that they're frightened of the reaction they get from the deniers when they report the science objectively. So let them know that deniers are not the only ones in town with game. Stay on them! Don't let up! It's true that some media outlets are getting instructions from their owners on this issue, and that others are influenced by big advertisers, but many of them are surprisingly responsive to a genuine outpouring of opinion from their viewers and readers. It is way past time for the ref to do his job".

Yes, and contact his new employee, Keith Olbermann, and see if he helped him write this article or does he just write this poorly naturally?

Matthews Goes Off The Rails Again

"I hate that so-called evenhanded so-called objective journalism. You know, you know, you can’t say something isn’t true if it’s true in the interest of evenhandedness." So spoke Chris Matthews, the quixotic and excitable MSNBC anchor. Long a disciple of Al Gore, Matthews repeats Gore's idea that it's ok to lie if it reduces carbon emissions. See the video at Newsbusters. It pains me to write it but it's time to consider Rachel Maddow as the responsible adult at MSNBC.

Hoosier Hysteria And Planned Parenthood

Did you hear thousands of low-income Planned Parenthood of Indiana patients were left fending for themselves Tuesday to pay for birth control, breast exams, and Pap tests while a court battle continued over a new state law that eliminated the organization's Medicaid funding.Yes, that exactly what you heard if you listened to Planned Parenthood and read the Associated Press's report. One omission, and of course it was unintentional, is the plain fact that while Indiana defunded 28 Planned Parenthood facilities there are over 800 clinics, doctors, and other healthcare providers that do provide these same service and accept Medicaid. Half a truth is better than none?

Huntsman:Vanilla Lite

If Tim Pawlenty is the vanilla candidate then Jon Huntsman is vanilla-lite. Monday Mr. Huntsman rolled out his candidacy in sight of the Statue of Liberty as did Ronald Reagan when he kicked off his 1980 campaign for the presidency. In doing so he invited the inevitable comparisons between himself and Ronald Reagan and those comparison will not serve him well. Within minutes Rush Limbaugh had a sound track of Reagan's speech delivered at that location. It brought to mind Lloyd Benson's broadside he delivered to Dan Quale. "I knew John Kennedy. John Kennedy was a friend of mine. And you are no John Kennedy." Yes we knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a friend of our's. And you are no Ronald Reagan. Reagan, in a style that Donald Trump would envy, went for Mr. Carter's jugular like a pit bull, saying in effect things were bad and things would not get better until Jimmy Carter was gone. Huntsman let his long winded speech outrun the cable networks' coverage as they went to commercial breaks. Really? The one we've all been waiting for can't even keep CNN interested..

The New York Times weighed in with this :" Mr. Huntsman and his aides are aware that the country’s economic situation will be at the forefront of the voters’ minds during the election. But they are also hoping that Mr. Huntsman can offer a civility in politics that voters say they crave."

Of course that's the New York Times not Jon Huntsman but if that's all the news that fit to print from this much anticipated event then this man needs a speech writer worse than Gingrich needs money. Michelle Malkin has a great post on Huntsman and a video where he is roundly booed at a Tea Party rally for his support of Obama's stimulus program. It might be wise to see what has happened back in Utah. Senator Bob Bennett was replaced with Mike Lee by Republican party leaders and Orrin Hatch will have the fight of his political life to keep his seat away from Jason Chaffetz. Now we find his family donated about $20,000 to Harry Reid in his race against Sharron Angle. No Ambassador Huntsman had the good sense not to smear to Reid but if it had been discovered that Jack Kennedy's father and two brothers had donated to Barry Goldwater's senate campaign we would have heard a lot less about PT109.

Tea party=Salvation

Gingrich: A Second Tiffany's Account

WTF Mr. Gingrich and we don't mean Winning The Future. The Washington Post is reporting Newt Gingrich had a second line of credit at Tiffany's. The account has a zero balance and is now closed. The limit was apparently $1million. Why do the Gingrichs need to raise so much cash from time to time? Most of Mr. Gingrich's personal corruption has been limited to adulterous affairs which, we suppose, is better than being totally corrupt. In the past we have suggested, tongue in cheek, that he has used his credit line to finance dubious business ventures but at some point this "funny money" will have to be explained.

Chris Matthews: the true face of today's media

  The increasingly unhinged Chris Matthews has begun attacks on Rick Perry. Having repeatedly denigrated Palin and Bachmann, apparently Matthews needs a new target, at least one who looks like he could be a successful Republican candidate to run against The One.
  In this video, Matthews rants about Perry's body language and use of hand motions.
  Look, anarchists aside (who have other issues) when passionate about politics, people are either conservative or liberal. This has been this way since the stone age of politics. You either like someone or you don't. Then you write or speak about how much you either do or don't like them.
  What's weird is when people fixate on certain aspects of a politician or event; eg, 9/11 truthers, birthers, Sullivan's fixation with Palin's Trig, liberals' fixation with Palin altogether.
  Chris Matthews can't even pretend to be normal when it comes to talking about Republicans/conservatives. He seems to be the true face of the unhinged liberal media these days: while other media figures sneak in their fixations with Palin through repeated searches for scandal, above the fold placement of even insignificant issues and a tremendous financial expenditure into her life even while the newspaper industry dies in front of them.
  Watch and marvel:

Another Democratic Sex Scandal

Just when the Democrats had thought they had put sex scandals behind them it's being reported that Rep. Alcee Hastings is being investigated for the sexual harassment of a congressional staffer. It began at least a month ago after Judicial Watch, a conservative group, filed a lawsuit as the legal counsel for Winsome Packer, a staffer on a commission Mr. Hastings headed. She alleged that she had been sexually harassed by the congressman and that he retaliated when she tried to report it. Congressman Hastings is truly ethically challenged. He is the sixth federal judge to be impeached and removed from the bench.He was accused of perjury and accepting a $150,000 bribe.

If she's so dumb, why is HE saying all those dumb things?

The end of the animal cracker

  Having ruined so many industries without remorse or concern, the Obama administration is now going after animal crackers.
  Yes, you heard that right.
  The innocent little animal shaped crackers so treasured by children.
  Their offense? Their shape and horrors! trans fats!
  You may have already heard that schools are being forced to change their menus for next year, including gluten heavy emphasis on wheat and the elimination of such offensive foods as the potato.
  Now during a conference given by the White House, it's been announced to the food industry that will be draconian measures taken to force the food industry to make different products, which undoubtedly be taste-free and extremely,um, healthy.
  A report on the conference at Enviromedia:

n danger of being KO’d in the middle of all this? The chocolate Easter Bunny andchocolate Santa. So warned the National Confectioners Association, which said the scope of 20 categories of marketing activities covered in the proposed nutrition principles could endanger the chocolate Easter Bunny. And the Grocery Manufacturers Association agreed, saying, “The marketing the IWG seeks to regulate is not merely marketing directed to children but includes packaging, point-of-sale displays, sponsorships of charitable events, and even the shape of food, such as animal crackers

  You'll notice the health advocates want "more" regulation "faster." 
  Because that's what regulators want. More and faster.
  How will this affect the food industry?
  Well, unless they go along with the requirements, they won't be allowed to advertise. From PMALink:

The effect will be felt far beyond the food industry, including on business partners and promotion partners of food companies; in addition, the proposal sets a very dangerous precedent of what constitutes “marketing to kids” and an even more troubling precedent in its move to restrict commercial speech through nominally “voluntary guidelines” backed up by four powerful governmental agencies. 

  Human Events describes the regulations (voluntary but not really) as a "staggering crackdown." There's much more at this link:

Although the intent of the guidelines is to combat childhood obesity, foods that are low in calories, fat, and some considered healthy foods, are also targets, including hot breakfast cereals such as oatmeal, pretzels, popcorn, nuts, yogurt, wheat bread, bagels, diet drinks, fruit juice, tea, bottled water, milk and sherbet.

Food industries are in an uproar over the proposal written by the Federal Trade Commission, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

  What's so ironic about this unbelievable incursion into individuals' privacy and the devastation of yet another American industry is the size of the behind and belly of the woman who so abhors fat people that she's willing to make slaves of the rest of the country.
  Admired by the LSM as a style icon, Michelle Obama's size is pretty unflattering and considering that every time we see her or her husband in public, she's chowing down on coney dogs and hamburgers to the extent of having people's cell phones confiscated so they couldn't take pictures of her licking her plate.

  Now, seriously.

  Does this woman really have a right to poke her fingers onto our dinner plates?

  Be sure to look really hard at that last pic. It's quite, um, revealing.

  Sure, this post is a little mean.

  But dammit. I like me my animal crackers.

  And I'm sick and tired of these meddlers trying to control every aspect, EVERY FREAKIN' ASPECT, of my life.

The Washington Examiner has a great article Revolutionizing education, Hoosier-style. Many will remember that Democratic lawmakers fled to Illinois in a failed attempt to block this educational revolution. Gone is "the last in first out" layoff policy. The scope of collective bargaining has been reduced to wages and benefits ending cumbersome work rules and, one hopes, curbs the NEA's affinity for injecting propaganda into the curriculum. Also a statewide charter school system is established and a voucher system for parents wishing to send their children private or parochial schools. Congratulations to Mitch Daniels!

Conyers' Detroit house in disrepair

It appears $170,000 yearly salary isn't enough for Congressman John Conyers to maintain his residence in Detroit, as you can see in this video:

Detroit Neighborhood: John Conyers House is an Eyesore: MyFoxDETROIT.com

  This isn't the first time some abuse has taken place.
  For example, Laura Richardson, Sacramento Dem and a whiner of questionable character, let one of her houses turn into a dump. An eyesore.
  Oh, Conyers' son, maybe the one who answers the door in his underpants at 5:00 in the afternoon, was known for driving a fancy government paid Escalade around Detroit.

More Woes For Gingrich

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich suffered another set back in his presidential campaign today when his two top fund raiser left the campaign. Gingrich's "grassroots driven, substantive, solutions-oriented" campaign is reportedly $1 million in the red and contributions have all but stopped.

The departures of fundraising director Jody Thomas and fundraising consultant Mary Heitman were the latest blow for the former House speaker who watched 16 top advisers abandon his campaign en masse earlier this month, partly because of what people familiar with the campaign spending described as a dire financial situation.

More

Stewart, selective editor, complains about FNC "selective editing"

  That's the meme among the lefties. 
  Wahhah it isn't fair that FNC left out a snippet in which, they say, Stewart adequately defends himself.
  Selective editing. This is an art form Stewart and Colbert have developed over the years.
  Apparently we need the waaaaaambulance for Stewart, who sees no bias in the NY Times or CNN or anybody else. 
  DaTech Guy blog:

Stewart plays selectively edited clips for a living, yet Morning Joe ran with the “unedited tape” clip today as they did yesterday with the “uninformed Fox viewer” clip. They however didn’t have room forPolitiFact’s calling Stewart’s assertions about Fox’s viewers False: 

No Pay For California Lawmakers

California state Controller John Chiang is halting pay for state lawmakers, saying their budget plan was not balanced. Now here is an idea that bites! Under Proposition 25 state legislator don receive pay or living allowances if they fail to deliver a balanced budget. Democrats had passed a budget by a simple majority which Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed. More.