Michelle O: No potatoes for you!

  O.M.G.
  Michelle Obama is going after potatoes. She's banned them from WIC and, as I wrote a few days ago, Michelle Obama's war on food is emblematic of the elites' indifference to the people. 
  Obama wrote a long article for the paper of Liberal Record, the NY Times:

Right now, the House of Representatives is considering a bill to override science by mandating that white potatoes be included on the list of foods that women can purchase using WIC dollars. Now, there is nothing wrong with potatoes. The problem is that many women and children already consume enough potatoes and not enough of the nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables they need. That’s why the Institute of Medicine — the nonpartisan, scientific body that advises on the standards for WIC — has said that potatoes should not be part of the WIC program.

  As I discussed here, Michelle Obama's children go to an expensive school that has an award winning caterer prepare their meals, including chilled blueberry soup. 
  And she's highly offended that you would want potatoes when you have too many! and you're too fat!

Michelle has gone on the offensive to preserve her public school restrictions, ruling that it's "unacceptable" to tinker with her masterpiece, with fan Carol Costello even claiming that Mrs. Obama herself has the right to write law, saying Michelle Obama “signed the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act into law."

  Is this not an excellent example of the detachment of the country's elite "let 'em eat cake" mentality regarding most of us out here?

  Of course, you'll notice that potatoes--french fries!!gasp!!--are on her children's lunch menu.

  But none for public school kids and none for women who are on the dole.
  I mean, if you let the government feed you with taxpayer money, I guess you get what you get.

No, Mr President, the problem with VA is not its computers

Barack Obama is certainly the most audacious if not the most creative liar to grace the White House in some time. While trying to explain his and former Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki's inability to deliver a minimum of competence in the management of the VA he wandered off on an extremely ludicrous tangent. The root of all the trouble was outdated computer systems. Presumably the department's computers are beyond the Secretary's purview so there was no one like the ever competent Kate Sebelius to keep an eye on the software.

I just was talking to Rob Nabors, and he described to me, for example, just in very specific detail, how in some of these facilities you've got computer systems for scheduling that date back to the ‘90s; situations in which one scheduler might have to look at four or five different screens to figure out where there's a slot and where there might be a doctor available; situations in which they're manually passing requests for an appointment over to somebody else, who's then inputting them. Right? So you have in many cases old systems, broken-down systems.

Not exactly. The scheduling software in question is VistA and while it was developed and deployed in the '90s  it has been updated and revised and may be one of VA's more positive innovations. There is a new os in the visage called HealtheVet but on the the VA's web site, on a page updated March 4 of this year the Department still lauds VistA.

Each month, VistA Imaging:
Serves more than 1.3 million patients.
Captures more than 39 million new images.
Displays 9 - 11 million images for review.
Displays about 550,000 studies for diagnosis and is used to interpret more than 160,000 studies.

Compared to healthcare.gov I would say that's pretty damn good. The Wikipedia entry on VistA which one must assume was written by someone at VA states;

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has had automated data processing systems, including extensive clinical and administrative capabilities, within its medical facilities since before 1985.[7] Initially called the Decentralized Hospital Computer Program (DHCP) information system, DHCP was enshrined as a recipient of the Computerworld Smithsonian Award for best use of Information Technology in Medicine in 1995.
VistA supports both ambulatory and inpatient care, and includes several significant enhancements to the original DHCP system. The most significant is a graphical user interface for clinicians known as the Computerized Patient Record System (CPRS), which was released in 1997. In addition, VistA includes computerized order entry, bar code medication administration, electronic prescribing, and clinical guidelines.

With friends like Obama the VA has no need of enemies. He slandered about the only thing in the department that works. He should get his head out of his ass.

 

Oh goody! Now the feds will know your complete credit history

If you acquired a mortgage later than 1998 kiss your privacy good-bye. Under the pretext of protecting consumers two federal agencies will collect their complete credit history where it will readily available for the next Lois Learner to data mine.

We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files
We'd like to help you learn to help yourself.

 Reversing their previously stated policy the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau posted an April 16 Federal Register notice of an expansion of their joint National Mortgage Database Program. More alarming, the two agencies a hard pressed to to cite a need for this Orwellian sally into personal privacy. The FHFA claims it must compile this massive database to write a monthly mortgage survey and to help it prepare its annual report to congress. The law they cite, the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 does not require any report to congress which seems to have done just fine without it for the past 7 years.
Adding further to the bureaucratic duplicity, when Senator Mike Crapo expressed concern to CFPB Director Richard Cordray last year the Cordray assured him that they were merely collecting aggregate with no personal identifiers. There has either been a change in plans or Cordray is a liar for now every credit transaction you ever made will be within easy reach of any porn gazing, tax evading, federal bureaucrat with whom the agency decides to share your data. The database will indeed have personal identifiers including the mortgage holder’s entire credit history, including delinquent payments, late payments, minimum payments, high account balances and credit scores. Don't feel violated yet? Not to worry. There will also be a second affront. The two agencies will also assemble “household demographic data,” including racial and ethnic data, gender, marital status, religion, education, employment history, military status, household composition, the number of wage earners and a family’s total wealth and assets.
Why does the CFPB need to know your religion? You educational status? Your work history? Who the hell do these people think they are? If we can believe the Chamber of Commerce this is tantamount to a rogue operation since the creation of the database is not authorized by congress and may be forbidden under Dodd Frank, the same law that gave us the CFPB, the ultimate, uber bureaucracy that was designed to answer to no one. It is not the case that the Chamber of Commerce has gone libertarian but it recognizes the liability its members may face in court after they have divulged confidential information to an agency that has no right to have it.
We have a government that cannot be trusted to enforce immigration law, to fairly administer the ACA law, or to grant tax exempt status without prejudice yet this same government needs to know every place you have ever worked, every credit card purchase you have made, and even your ethic heritage. Enough is enough! A massive reduction in federal power is long past due.

  Coo coo ca-choo, Mrs. Robinson

This is what passes for debate now?

  So.
  You're worried about the dumbing down of the culture.
  You're worried education isn't what it used to be, not only in high school but in college, where millions of people are accumulating unsustainable personal debt to get that degree in drinking.
  You're worried that political correctness has taken an iron hold on this country to the exclusion of western tradition.
  Welp.
  This won't help.
  THIS is what passes for......debate these days.
  Oh, and if you're offended by the N word, you'd better understand only certain people can say that word with impunity.
  Or yell it.
  Try to have another perspective. Think of this as comedy gold.

Hillary- Don't politicize Benghazi

Hillary Clinton, herself a victim of the vast right wing conspiracy, proclaimed that politicizing Benghazi "is just plain wrong". In her book Hard Choices Clinton writes, “I will not be a part of a political slugfest on the backs of dead Americans. It’s just plain wrong, and it’s unworthy of our great country."
I can she why the former Secretary of State would rather this scandal go away but the politicalization began before the battle ended. While Americans were fighting for their lives who did the White House call? Did it call AFRICON? No. Did it call the air command in Italy and scramble F16's? No. It called YouTube. It is becoming apparent that Hillary and Obama hatched the video narrative in a 10 PM phone call while former SEALS Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were fighting for their lives. Did Hillary provide all relevant information to the various committees investigating the raid? No, she stiff armed the committees and hand pick her own so called Accountability Review Board to whitewash the matter away.
“Those who exploit this tragedy over and over as a political tool minimize the sacrifice of those who served our country,” Clinton writes.
Hillary and Obama have shamefully exploited the sacrifices made by the the dead at Benghazi now that the truth may be about to come out she secretly visited the White House yesterday presumably to discuss strategy and get her story straight. Had Hillary and Obama devoted half the effort to save Woods and Doherty that they have expended to deflect well earned blame there would be no scandal.

Don't be fooled on Cantor's new immigration stance

  Tonight on Your World with Neil Cavuto, Cavuto interviewed Eric Cantor, throwing him a number of softballs, including one about immigration.
  Cantor who has been a staunch supporter of amnesty, was outraged, outraged because how could we trust Obama to fulfill any agreement on amnesty and border control when he lies?
  Obama's lies are nothing new, so why is Cantor backtracking on immigration reform?
  The answer lies in the fact that Cantor is being challenged by Dave Brat and running scared.
  So Hot Air is noticing that Cantor has trotted out a previous staunch ally in immigration reform, Democrat Guttierez, to loudly protest Cantor's immigration policies. 
  He's too conservative, Guttierez suddenly claims, which suddenly proves beneficial for Cantor.
  Hot Air:

That’s why, when Steinberg dialed up Gutierrez’s office and asked them if it wasn’t perhaps curious that he would choose to express his upset at Cantor at a time and manner that’s actually really helpful to Cantor politically, they dismissed the accusation as silly — despite admitting that they’re familiar with Cantor’s mailer.

  Cavuto even made the point to ask Cantor if he loves Tea Partiers, to which Cantor responded that he was all lovey dovey with Tea Partiers. Sure, Tea Partiers have a place in his Republican party.
  Sure.
  There's a lot more about Cantor's change of attitude at the Hot Air link.
  Both Boehner and Cantor have stated amnesty is a primary focus for reform this year.  
 

Perrysburg summer camp opportunity

From the Northwest Ohio Conservative Coalition:

VACATION LIBERTY CAMP
"PRESIDENTS OF LIBERTY"
JULY 7-11, 2014    9AM-NOON
577 FOUNDATION
573 E. FRONT STREET, PERRYSBURG OH


CRAFTS, MUSIC AND HISTORY FOR CHILDREN AGES 10-13!
REGISTRATION FEE:  $25
Enrollment limited to 25 children; please fill out  enrollment form and pay fee to reserve your child's spot in this great program.  For more information contact Joyce Hammer (419) 474-6331 libertycamp577@gmail.com.
Sponsored by NW Ohio Conservative Coalition, Jeff Lydy, Treasurer
Thanks for your continued support of the NW Ohio Conservative Coalition.  Visit our webpage at www.nwohiocc.com. A complete list of upcoming events is available at www.toledoteaparty.com.
 
Sincerely,
 
Linda Bowyer, Chair
NW Ohio Conservative Coalition

A perfect example of the ruling class's detachment from the peasants

  Nothing exemplifies progressive privilege more than these articles.
  Public school kids are expected to eat this as an approved lunch by Michelle Obama "healthy lunch":

And this:

 

While the Obama young ladies eat this:

 ...choosing from a menu that includes freshly baked muffins, chilled blueberry soup and tuna nicoise salad.

  Sidwell Friends' tuition runs around $36,000 yearly for each student. They're so patriotic at SF that on "Pearl Harbor Day," Sidwell Friends had Japanese food (???).
  It's probably not necessary to point out that public school students are rebelling against Michelle Obama's lunch menu restrictions including calorie cutting. One might guess there are no such restrictive calorie limitations on Sidwell Friends' meatballs.

  Michelle has gone on the offensive to preserve her public school restrictions, ruling that it's "unacceptable" to tinker with her masterpiece, with fan Carol Costello even claiming that Mrs. Obama herself has the right to write law, saying Michelle Obama “signed the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act into law."

  Is this not an excellent example of the detachment of the country's elite "let 'em eat cake" mentality regarding most of us out here?

  Do these people who fly their private jets around the world for vacations and even bump the public from first class at the last minute for their own convenience have any understanding what it's like to be a peasant, particularly a sick one who is subject to the ruling class's whims and bonuses extracted from the budget?

  Kids aren't eating it. They throw it out. They don't buy it. It's too expensive for public schools.

  And you can guarandamntee it that some kids are making lots of dough selling contraband chocolate bars in the hall.

  Michelle Obama calls making changes to her restrictive lunch menus "playing politics."

  Out here, we call it survival.

Kesha Rogers loses, Tea Party wins in Texas

Dallas dentist David M. Alameel easily bested Kesha Rogers to win his party's nomination for the U.S. Senate. Alameel pulled 72% of the vote in a race that Texas Democrats must not have cared about. With 92% of the precincts reporting less than 120,000 voted statewide. That's is a lamentable 1.2% voter turnout. Republicans managed a 5.14% voter turnout, hardly laudable but 4 times better than the Democrats. Let's hope this trend carries through to November.
In a little watched House race the Tea Party took its first scalp. Rep Ralph Hall, the oldest member of Congress at 91 lost to Tea Party backed former U.S. Attorney John Ratcliffe in the Texas 4th Congressional District. Ratcliffe had endorsements from the Club for Growth, Madison Project and Senate Conservatives Fund.
The grand prize of the evening went to Tea Party backed state Sen. Dan Patrick who defeated incumbent Lt. Governor David Dewhurst soundly, 64% to 36%. The lieutenant governor, first elected in 2002, never really recovered from his primary loss to now-Sen. Ted Cruz two years ago, and was vulnerable to a challenge from the right.

The boor emerges to declare the VA Bush's fault

  So Barack Hussein Obama, the most supremely incompetent "leader" in the history of the universe, trots out the other day in front of his friends running cameras, angry, angry that the VA has been revealed to be a corrupt, inefficient, supremely incompetent organization much in the vein of his own presidency.
  We're all very familiar with the rhetoric: the slightly high pitched voice that reveals Obama is agitated that anyone would try to pin anything on him. 
  The lean forward jutting chin that dares the adoring cowed reporters present to ask any question that might actually reveal more truth. 
  Always Obama shows the oddly unemotional detachment that once was labeled "no drama Obama" but now appears to be, well, psychologically unaffiliated with rest of humanity.
  But we've seen it before, though, have we not?
  There was the underwear bomber, where Obama could barely pull himself off his Christmas Hawaiian golf course to acknowledge the incident.
  There was Fort Hood, where Obama gave a cheerful "shout out" to someone in the audience before he assumed his sad clown face, again only acknowledging the incident as work place violence.
  And way back early in his presidency when oil flooded the wildlife and beaches in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama casually draped himself around the microphone occasionally to act outraged at what was happening while doing absolutely nothing to help fix it, in fact kowtowing to unions pressure to prevent international help from arriving on the shores of the Gulf. 
  Could it be because the states most afflicted had Republican governors? Who knows. We suspect.
  And then the VA.
  Oh, it's been supremely incompetent for many years before Obama arrived on the scene, he squeaked.
  Improving the VA been the cause of his presidency, he insists, which surely is the best parallel evah to his presidency. 
  Obama will undoubtedly continue to insist that his cause d'etre has been the VA until you believe it.
  Because that's just the way Obama rolls.
  He gets caught, claims he'll check into [the scandal], never holds anyone accountable and then querulously whines that there never was such a scandal, it was all those mean Republicans playing politics and you really don't love this country if disagree with him and his ilk.
  It's all so tiresome, really.
  Two more years of nightmare regulations, lies, graft and corruption that rivals anything this country has ever seen, a flagrantly racist DOJ...
  I swear Obama's posturing and whining are the worst of it all. 
  Barack Hussein Obama will certainly go down as history's most supremely incompetent big eared puppet.
  At least Howdy Doody was mildly entertaining
  Obama's just a boor. A stuffed narcissistic supremely incompetent boor.

Did Michigan Democrat sabotage Conyers?

  I listened to Rush a while today, who was cynical that, even though one judge ruled that Conyers' signatures to qualify were invalid for any number of reasons, another appellate judge would ride in and claim Conyers does indeed qualify.
  Sure enough, that is exactly what happened late today with an Obama appointee saying, oh, sure, Conyers can be one the ballot, because they were "good faith mistakes" and also mumbling the word "unconstitutional," which Democrats seem to haul out whenever they feel like it and excoriate when they think it's just too old fashioned.
  The "good faith mistakes" included unregistered voters, inaccurate addresses, and insufficient numbers and a wanted convicted felon gathering signatures. The New York Times:

More than 1,000 of the signatures collected on Mr. Conyers’s behalf were invalidated when it was discovered that hundreds of the names belonged to people who were not residents of his district or not registered to vote.

Even more damaging was the revelation that several petition circulators were not qualified, under the state law that governs elections; at least two were not registered voters. In the end, Mr. Conyers was left with 592 valid signatures, far short of the number needed.

  So all day I was thinking, hm. What's going on with that. 
  Conyers' primary opponent is civil rights activist Rev. Horace Sheffield, who was charged with domestic abuse in February, but, hey! it wasn't the first time he's been charged with assault and other offenses and hey! Conyers' considerably younger wife is was in jail for, you know, corruption and stuff. 
  And Conyers himself is no clean spring chicken, having manipulated through the murky waters of politics in DC for the past 50 of his 85 years.
  But Sheffield is a particularly nasty opponent, which makes one wonder if there's something fishy with such disreputable characters collecting signatures for the odious and seemingly secure Conyers. 
  One might also recall that Thaddeus McCotter was sabotaged in such a manner a short while back and, though Mike Duggan did win the Detroit mayoralty through write in vote, another candidate named Mike Dugeon suddenly appeared on the scene also as a write in when Duggan was bumped for having filed too early. Hm. 
  Sounds familiar, as a reporter from The Hill mentioned tonight. Hm.
  Jeff Gorman, retired airline pilot and Navy veteran, is the Republican candidate and undoubtedly clean as a whistle which will probably disqualify him in the eyes of Detroit's voters.

Obama's faux outrage

Does he forget we have recording devices?
in

Senator Obama missed 51% of Senate Veterans Affairs Committee meetings

Hell of job, Barky! Yesterday Obama reminded the the no longer docile press that as a senator he served on the Veterans Affairs Committee as if that gave him some special insight into the ongoing scandal that has seen veterans quite literally dying for want of proper care. It may have if he had bother to show up. What he neglected to tell the press was that he missed 19 of the 37 meetings the committee held during the 109th Congress which ran from 2005 to 2007 long before he officially began his campaign for the presidency. By my calculation he missed 51% of the meetings. A more partisan blog might suggest that the President has been a major part of the problem for 9 years. Senators who do not care enough about veterans to even learn about their problems when they are paid handsomely to do so are no better than the hospital administrators who mismanage the VA.
Even though he served on the committee of jurisdiction the first black senator form Illinois first learned of the abysmal condition of Walter Reid Army hospital from, where else, the newspaper. I quote from a 2007 post by Susan Hu at the Daily Koz;

Sen. Obama admitted he didn't know anything about problems at Walter Reed before the WaPo's shattering series. And Sen. Obama has missed KEY votes for disabled veterans -- including a measure that would create "common disability ratings."

Seven years later he still only knows what he reads in the newspaper? What a zero!
But Hu was just warming up!

But Sen. Obama has continually skipped hearings on the veterans budget. Chairman Craig opened a hearing Obama missed and said, “we will consider today … legislation touching on veterans insurance, housing, burial, compensation, and employee benefits.” Obama also missed all four committee hearings in a series that focused on the President’s proposed 2007 budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Ranking Senator Akaka noted during the hearings that “we must learn a lesson from last year's budget crisis and do everything we can to ensure that veterans and their family members have access to health care and benefits they have earned.”

Now the administration stumbles and stalls, seemingly breathlessly awaiting the Inspector General's latest report as if reading one more time of the inadequacies, mistakes and malfeasance endemic in the VA will at last yield the final piece to the puzzle. Obama was a lazy senator and is now a lazy to the point of malfeasance President. He is the problem.
 

Dr. Ben Carson: inspiration for all Americans

  I'm a fan of Dr. Ben Carson, whose career I've followed for years after having seen an interview of him on the Today Show.
  His inspirational story is depicted in the movie Gifted Hands starring Cuba Gooding. It's not that that movie is so good; it's that the story of Dr. Carson's life is so good.
  Like any other kid in the early sixties, Carson was fixated more on television rather than school work. His mother, who he later discovers cannot read, was a primary motivator in his life to become an educated, functioning human being in an increasingly hostile inner city Detroit.
  Carson eventually became one of the most successful neurosurgeons in the world, retiring recently.
  Watching Carson's elevation to the public stage has been fascinating, not because of his excellent professional resume, but because his screen presence is evolving into a Reaganesque gentle humor and precision.
  Though Carson has stumbled politically in the past, he is beginning to understand the hazards of and adapting to the slings and arrows of television punditry. In this time of our history, it could not be easier to articulate conservative positions yet no one does. I have hope for Carson's evolution.
  So Carson's appearance on The View was quite remarkable; he handled himself well, supported by an insightful question from Terry Crews who played the "president" in the film Idiocracy, which is well worth watching as our unfortunate destiny if we let the pc Nazis determining our future.
  Carson decries the Obama welfare mentality that infantilizes adults to become dependent on a condescending, plantation infrastructure of bureaucrats.

  I have hesitated to post a link to one of the most disturbing, depressing pieces I have ever read about the black community in America, which is suffering because of Obama's liberal policies and the encouragement of the welfare state by wealthy white Leftists.
  In the article, a liberal public defender says 90% of his clients are black, are completely disconnected from the actual world around them and unfeeling in any pain they may inflict on others. The concept of a social contract is completely lost on a culture that has had federal overlords for many years, and thus takes no familial or personal responsibility for behavior.
  The entire piece is worth reading, though you will not be the same having read it; it is so disturbing--because it's the truth as this public defender has seen it--that I'm not going to include quotes other than his conclusion:

However, my experience has also taught me that blacks are different by almost any measure to all other people. They cannot reason as well. They cannot communicate as well. They cannot control their impulses as well. They are a threat to all who cross their paths, black and non-black alike.

I do not know the solution to this problem. I do know that it is wrong to deceive the public. Whatever solutions we seek should be based on the truth rather than what we would prefer was the truth. As for myself, I will continue do my duty to protect the rights of all who need me.

  Dr. Ben Carson, I believe, is aware of the "the truth" and could be able to take the steps necessary to  change the course of history, not just for black people but for all people in this country. To my mind, one of his most appealing qualities is that he is not a politician, which admittedly can also be a deficit in the current attack/kill political environment that seizes on any word or phrase to discredit conservatives and Republicans and even libertarians.
  Unfortunately Obama's policies, particularly his DOJ, continues to make exceptions for bad behavior, thus delaying accountability and correction.
  Run, Ben. Run.

Senator Ted Cruz grills FBI Director James Comey

Senator Ted Cruz grills FBI Director James Comey about the FBI's progress in the IRS investigation. Comey chose to repeat the administration's stonewalling citing the usual "ongoing investigation " bullshit rather than to assert the independence afforded him by his office. In other words the FBI is as partisan as the IRS so don't look for justice here. Comey refused to even reveal how many victims of the targeting had been interviewed by the FBI. As chairman Leahy attempted to shield Comey, Cruz reminded the committee that Democratic members of the Senate were party to the targeting.

“this IRS targeting correspondence has come out, came in significant regard at the written behest of  Democrat members of this body. So I understand that there is not an interest among some members of this body in learning what happened.”

Should the Republicans gain control of the Senate imagine the mad fun the Director will have as Cruz and Rand Paul play to the Tea Party leading up to the Republican primary.


 

Joni Ernst leads the Republican field in the latest poll

Joni Ernst has surged to the front of the Republican pack. This latest poll from PPP shows the Harley riding, light colonel in the Iowa National Guard leading the Republican field with 34% followed by Mark Jacobs with 18% and Sam Clovis with 14%. Matt Whitaker gets 6%. Not surprisingly she trails Democrat Bruce Braley who is unopposed in his party. That breaks down to Braley with 45% and Ernst 39% with 16% undecided. Of course we would be happier if she were 10 up rather than 6 down but her trajectory is good. It will just take time and a party that is united after the primary.

Democratic Congressman David Scott skewers Obama on House floor

We have waited 6 years to hear a congressional Democrat criticize Obama. Today the dam broke with a vengeance. Congressman David Scott of Georgia's 13th Congressional District not only demanded General Shinseki scalp he blasted Obama for his lack of urgency in addressing the problem at the VA. This is perhaps the harshest criticism Obama has ever received from a Democrat and it can be presumed that there is more to come.
Congressman Scott and the rest of his party know damn well there is a correlation between a president's polling and his party's success or failure at the polls in an off year election and "no drama Obama" is not getting the job done for either his country or his party.

He coached MIT's cock fighting team !

The Washington pundit class will point to Mitch McConnell's lopsided win over Matt Bevin as a loss for the Tea Party. Nonsense! Things have changed since 2010 but in this particular race Matt Bevin was no Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell was no Trey Grayson. There are no polls on the Tea Party's strength in the Kentucky Republican Party but Bevin's lamentable 35.7% share of the vote suggests he did not do well among any group including the Tea Party. Look back to 2010. Rand Paul, the little known son of a nationally known congressman was ophthalmologist in Bowling Green. Grayson was the establishment candidate with supposedly a clear run to the nomination but when the dust settled Grayson had lost 35.4% to 58.8%, almost a mirror image of tonight's results.
Matt Bevin is not exactly the California Chrome of Kentucky politicians. He would struggle in a $2,000 claiming race. He is little more than a snake oil salesman with an Obamaesque arrogance that allows him to think he can lie his way out of everything and his campaign was nothing short of a litany of half truths and patent falsehoods. The voters are not stupid but Bevin treated them as gullible rubes when he listed MIT as his education on his Linkedin profile. Then there was the financial report from his hedge fund that endorsed the TARP bailout and bore his signature. He could has confessed and claimed an epiphany but rather he attempted to pass it off as some pro forma document he signed without reading. Keep that in mind if you are inclined to put money in his fund now that he is probably back in the investment business. Finally Bevin was reduced to trolling a cock fighting rally for votes. When confronted by a reporter he tried to spin it as a states' right issue suggesting that cockfighting was something the Founding Fathers were “very actively involved with…and always have been.”
That may be good enough for Michael Vick fans but not for anyone with an IQ larger than a carrot's.
Rand Paul drew huge crowds of enthusiastic voters. He was new, he was exciting, he was truthful and he did not pander. I remember one perceptive voter remarking that Trey Grayson began every speech with a reference to the Kentucky Derby or to Kentucky Wildcats basketball. Paul never did. He never went for the easy applause. Bevin could not even do that.
Whether Tea Party or mainstream Republican it is hard to be to the right of McConnell. The American Conservative Union gives him a 90% lifetime rating. This Congressional Quarterly index based on 2013 votes gives him a score of of 67 compared to Paul's 69. Tea Party favorites Marco Rubio scores 62, Deb Fischer, 60, and Kelly Ayotte a mere 50.
Having watched Richard Mourdock fumble three congressional and one county councilman's race I was dismayed when the Tea Party endorsed him in his successful campaign against Dick Lugar. In this post, almost a year out from the general election I predicted he would lose to Joe Donnelly if he defeated Lugar. I take no satisfaction in being right but if the PACs and pundits would be a bit more selective with their endorsements McConnell would be the Majority Leader. Bevin was no Tea Party ideologue before the election and he will not be now that he has lost. He was just an opportunist trying to gain entry to the political establishment. Good riddance!
The Democrats have a very attractive candidate in Alison Lundergan Grimes. She would have mulched Bevin and where it not for Obama's war on coal I would make her the favorite but Kentucky voters are not apt to send the President any help.

Update:

I just came across this Survey USA poll that was released May 16. McConnell lead among self identified conservatives 58% to Bevin's 35%. Notice that McConnell did especially well among Republicans earning less than $40,000 per year.

Jarrett: ideal federal employees surf porn

  Well, she didn't exactly say that.
  I deduced it. 
  So the other day Iranian born Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, who appears to be one of the few commencement speakers to have survived the Campus Brown Shirts' activism, said this to her student audience:

But also remember, before I hire anybody, I always check out everything that they’ve been doing online. And believe me, we have ways of finding out everything you’ve been doing online.”

  When the audience laughed nervously, Jarrett explained awkwardly, IMHO, that the remark was funnier than she intended, probably because it never crossed the minds of the naive boobs who wrote her speech how revealing that remark was.
  On the contrary, it appears government employees who commit all kinds of egregious activities, including surfing porn are ideal federal government employees.
  Otherwise, why would they still be employed?
  At the SEC. 
  And National Science Foundation.
  The Pentagon.
  Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 
  Missile Defense Agency.
  The Office of Property Management.
  The EPA.
  Bureau of Public Debt. (Who knew?)
  General Services.
  The Post Office.
  Veterans' Affairs.
  And, naturellement, the IRS.
  And, huh.
  Valerie Jarrett and the gang don't appear to know or care what those already hired federal employees are doing on government time, not to mention actually punishing them.
  Instapundit reminds us that Obama joked about sending the IRS after his enemies.

A long look at Joni Ernst

This interview won Joni Ernst the Des Moines Register's endorsement. She did not retreat to platitudes and talking points when she answered the tough questions. She makes it clear that she would dump Obamacare. She is adamantly pro second amendment and definitely a fiscal conservative. She is self assured but not overbearing. This lady is a class act! As the Register says; "For a politician appealing to Iowa voters, Ernst, 43, has a sterling resume and a compelling biography."
The video length is longer than I would normally post but readers are free to stop when they have heard enough.

Really? Are the Democrats the party of the rich?

To add a bit to my partner's insightful post, Democrats-the party of the rich , in 2010 I did hours of leg work for a state senatorial candidate prior to the primary election. Essentially is was contacting registered Republicans, providing them a handout and asking for their vote on behalf of the candidate. I worked from a precinct list but shortly after beginning I thought it would be fun to guess the home of the Republicans without looking at the address. Remember the house full of kids with the cracked pane in the storm door and the bicycle with the flat tire in the front yard you thought was kind of trashy when you were a kid? That is the home of the Republican voter. Then there was the newly wed couple who lived in an apartment who were hard to contact because they both worked long hours. They were black Republicans. Those several days were a real eye opener.
Some months back I quoted The Economist in a post, The Tea Party has gone international!. It was about the resurgence of conservative parties in multi-party European countries.

But there are common threads linking the European insurgents and the Tea Party. They are angry people, harking back to simpler times. They worry about immigration. They spring from the squeezed middle—people who feel that the elite at the top and the scroungers at the bottom are prospering at the expense of ordinary working people. And they believe the centre of power—Washington or Brussels—is bulging with bureaucrats hatching schemes to run people’s lives.

Does that sound like someone you might know?
It is not just wealthy individual with whom the Democrats have forged alliances. They are the party of the multinationals. Google, FaceBook, General Electric, Comcast, Bank of America, General Motors, Apple are loyal Democrats. Where does support for the senate Gang of 8 immigration bill come from? The US Chamber of Commerce. Which party seems intent on driving wages down through increased immigration and driving prices up with regulation on the energy sector, with mindless and costly energy efficiency mandates on appliance and automobiles and health insurance.
I hope it does all come apart and soon.

The NBA has much to lose in the Sterling-Silver showdown

Donald Sterling is not finished. Not by an long shot. Through his lawyer, Maxwell Blecher, he says he ain' t payin' and he ain' t goin'. First, Blecher argues that he has done nothing wrong and second he was denied due process. The clause ( Article 13.d ) that the league is relying upon states that the owner may not engage in unethical behavior or take positions adverse to the NBA. Sterling maintains what he says in the privacy of his home is his business not the league's. The league argues further that it is a private organization and not obligated to provide Sterling "due process".
What seems to be lost in the hostile sports media is the fact that no one every got wealthy by being stupid. Sterling did not hire just any lawyer. Maxwell Blecher is an anti trust lawyer. The public statement about Article 13.d and due process are side issues. If the NBA wants to pursue its case they are putting it all on the line.
In 1922 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously, in an opinion written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, that baseball was exempt from anti trust laws. That decision has only been revisited once, in 1972 in the Curt Flood free agency case. The Court grumbled a bit about the exemption but let it stand. There is no exemption for the NBA or the NFL. They have been allowed to exist and skirt anti trust laws simply because no one has challenged the status quo. Here is where Clint Eastwood would stare NBA Commissioner Adam Silver in the eye and ask, "Do you feel lucky?"
Would the Supreme Court be willing to expand baseball's anti trust status to include the NBA? In the extreme case the Court could reason that circumstances have change dramatically since 1922 with salaries in the millions and revenues in the billions ergo there is no exemption for sports. They are big businesses not national pastimes. A hell of a mess that would make of some very lucrative careers not only among athletes but also the broadcast media especially ESPN. If as the National Labor Relations Board argues amateur college athletes are employees how can professional athletes be no more than mere practitioners of the national pastime and their employers benign and benevolent overseers?
We would think it strange and unjust, if say, auto companies were allowed to behave like professional sports teams. They could divvy up the country into exclusive territories where one manufacturer was the single seller of all cars. They could set a minimum price on all vehicles and even each particular option. Following the NBA model, GM, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, and the rest could force out the CEO of Ford.
The heated rhetoric that steams from discussions of race and individual privacy will give way to the arcane, sedate, and boring language of anti trust law and for that we can all be grateful. Players who would boycott Clipper games might want to think twice. The present de facto exemption from anti trust law accounts for their extremely handsome benefit packages as well the high net worth of individual team organizations. Both owners and players have a lot to lose.

Democrats-the party of the rich

  Of course, we all KNOW this. 
  Those of us who aren't idiots, that is. 
  Right Wing News, in an article entitled, "7 Filthy Rich Liberals Railing Against the Rich in Quotes" has quotes from some ridiculously wealthy Democrats who always aim at any conservatives, Republicans or Tea Partiers as "the rich":

In actuality, those guys are only the 59th biggest donors in American politics. Just the six biggest union donors in American politics combined give 15 times more money than the Koch brothers have – and, of course, that money went almost exclusively to Democrats.

The rich vote Democrat as well. Eight of the ten richest congressional districts in America are represented by Democrats. Eight of the ten richest counties in America also voted for Obama.

  In actuality, "the rich" who get railed at against so much by the corrupt Occupy types are really the Jay-Zs, John Kerrys, Warren Buffett, Bill Gateses of the country who contribute millions and millions of dollars to the ruling aristocracy to maintain their statuses, salve their tender egos and make sure the downtrodden subsist on government handouts rather than thrive in an environment that encourages entrepreneurship and productivity.
  The rich Democrats just get richer even while complaining that YOU are driving your car too much.
   Just as one example, the article includes a quote from the fabulously pampered and overpaid Elizabeth Warren, whose p.c. but unsubstantiated claims of Native American heritage have ruffled a few feathers and who collects her almost $1 million yearly while repeatedly lamenting that the "system is rigged" against the little people, even while the fabulously pampered and privileged students paid their annual tuition of about $60,000 and who has a reputation for only helping herself to as much as she can get.
National Review:

Last fall, Warren taught only one class at Harvard Law, yet she enjoys an annual salary of $350,000 — this is in addition to nearly $200,000 in royalties and consulting fees she earned while taking a leave from her academic job to help found president Obama’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

  Yeah, so tell me again how Tea Party retiree pensioners like the folks who run this system are gaming the system, are greedy, racist and exclusionary of the poor?
  Yeah, no. 
UPDATE: The American Spectator says it's all "coming apart."

For the past decade the Democrats have managed to defy gravity by bolting together an unlikely coalition of the richest and poorest Americans. It’s no secret. Ever since President Bush’s re-election in 2004, the pattern has been clear. People making above $100,000 and below $40,000 vote Democratic. The people in the middle vote Republican.

But now that top-bottom coalition is about to come apart, or lose its majority status at least. And the issue will be one that may loom larger than the debacle of Obamacare — the Keystone Pipeline.

Single payer VA harbinger of things to come? Not if you get out and VOTE!

  As the VA denial of health care scandal continues to unfold, we await the Democrats' push to put all Americans into single payer health care.
  It's no surprise that that is what they've wanted.
  Jan Schakowsky screamed it to her cult followers over 5 years ago, recorded here even though her cult followers have tried to pull it off the internet numerous times:

As Obama also did over 6 years ago:

  This was the plan all along: to create such a mess of health care that Americans would plead for a government solution (ie banks, GM, numerous business regulations, health care) to FIX IT ALL.
  And, of course, Harry Reid!

  And as did Ezekiel Emanuel, Obama's health care advisor, and Donald Berwick, another advisor and Medicare head who's enthralled with the disastrous British health care system where many of the doctors and nurses do not SPEAK ENGLISH.
  Whether they get this or not will depend on whether you get your a$$ out and vote!!!

They shoot beavers. Don't they?

As if its Obamacare website that never enrolled a single applicant wasn't enough of an embarrassment to the Beaver State, Oregon can point proudly to Beaverton Police Department and Beaverton School District who find themselves in federal court as defendants. The are being sued by the angry father of a 13 year-old boy who was suspended from school and interviewed by the police for, hold your breath, drawing a picture of a hanging. Yeah, everybody is an art critic but until the public gets angry enough to fire the blundering fools who masquerade as public servants educational reform does not have a chance.

Robert Bernard Keller, suing for himself and his son, B.R.K., claims that on May 2, 2013, his 13-year-old son "was interviewed at his school, Raleigh Hills, K-8, by officers of the Beaverton Police Department regarding an alleged threat of harm based on a doodle that was drawn during class. B.R.K. was removed from his classroom and placed in the principal's office of Raleigh Hills K-8 to be questioned about offenses that he was alleged to have committed. At no time did the officers or school obtain a warrant, contact the minor child's parents to obtain parental consent, provide a counselor or attorney to the minor child or advise B.R.K. of his right against self-incrimination or provide an advocate who could explain."
     Keller claims that the principal had interviewed his son on April 30, and suspended him, for drawing the doodle. He claims that he and his wife met with school staff that day for an IEP (individual education program) meeting, "and were told that B.R.K. was doing fine," though at the end of the meeting they were told that he was suspended, "effective immediately, pending a risk assessment."
     He claims that he and his wife told the school that their son "was not to be interviewed alone without a parent present." Nonetheless, he was interviewed alone, by a school psychologist, and then by police, whom the school called in without notifying them, according to the complaint.
     "At no time before or during the interview were the parents notified by Raleigh Hills or the Beaverton Police. Only after the fact did the parents learn of the police interrogation. No criminal charge was filed nor was a petition filed with the department of human services. As a direct and foreseeable result of the events that transpired during this incident, B.R.K. has suffered emotional damages," the complaint states.

A risk assessment? How would these morons have dealt with Frederic Remington?




The lawsuit seeks a minimum of $100,000 for violating the 4th and 14th amendment rights of the younger Keller. I hope they win every penny. This case smells of deliberate malice. Can all the actors be that stupid?

Good-bye Tea Party Express

One of the strengths of the Tea Party movement is its lack of formal leadership. It has its organizers and heroes but very small staff and no national board of directors. The wisdom in having no official spokesperson was driven home by Sal Russo, one of the founders of the Tea Party Express. Maybe we should now call it the Amnesty Band Wagon. In a post at Roll Call " Conservatives Need to Fix the Broken U.S. Immigration System" Russo pours out his heart and and every hackneyed, liberal, talking point leaving one to wonder if he has been sleeping with Chuck Schumer. Russo is Rubio without the charm. He repeats Rubio's Chamber of Commerce poll test rhetoric as if saying it just one more time will stampede the recalcitrant flock rushing to the Rio Grande with open arms and open pocketbooks demanding open borders. As if we are all a bunch of dolts Russo even repeats the "secure borders" bullshit which would achieved sometime in the distant future.
Russo's sole accomplishment is the undercutting of the very real credibility of the Tea Party Express. Mary Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots released her own clarifying statement that did not align well with Russo's post.

“Millions of people have come to America legally and invested the time and effort to become naturalized citizens in pursuit of personal freedom and their American Dream. We admire them for their courage, determination and desire, all of which reflect the founding principles of the United States.
“The position of Tea Party Patriots is clear. We must first fully secure our borders. Immigration reform cannot happen without this necessary first step.
“We support legal immigration and the rule of law, according to the Constitution. There is already a legal path to citizenship for those wishing to come to the United States. Anyone who decides to get off that path and enter the United States illegally should not be given any sort of amnesty because doing so is neither fair nor equal treatment under the law.
“We must also demand the Obama administration enforce our current immigration laws. Those who are determined to have entered the country illegally and are on-track for deportation should be deported. Those who have been convicted of crimes and are serving sentences for their crimes should remain incarcerated until their sentences have been served.
“Conservatives are watching Congress like a hawk and will do everything to make sure immigration reform is done in a manner that respects the law and those who abide by it.”

Good-bye Tea Party Express. See you in my spam trap.

Intolerant Left: tolerance is a one way street

  I know. I know.
  I keep saying it's a good thing that these idiots are exposed but when you actually see it in front of you, like when a college student says firmly it'd be good to put to death all Republicans you get kinda depressed.
  The closer Obama gets to the end of his term, the more wacky Leftist activity is ramping up.
  I remember the same kind of crazy desperation in the Carter years, except he only had 4 years to wreck the country and not 8.
  One MSNBC host thinks if you don't think Leftist, you should be excluded from politics altogether. He sees no problem in doing this:

And I think nowadays it is. I mean, this is an issue that’s – I mean, we’re all threatened by this. I mean, the planet is in danger. Something needs to be done. And I think if you’re just going to deny that this is even occurring, it means that you’re going to be blocking the policies that we need, and it should be a disqualifier.

  Anyway here's a pretty astounding video even for MSNBC courtesy Newsbusters in which an absurd Jonathan Capehart contends that:

[T]olerance, no, is not – it should not be a two-way street. It's a one-way street. You cannot say to someone that who you are is wrong, an abomination, is horrible, get a room, and all of those other things that people said about Michael Sam, and not be forced -- not forced, but not be made to understand that what you're saying and what you're doing is wrong.

  I won't even bother to write the definition of the word "tolerance" here. This should be self evident.

Can they get any more ridiculous? Well, yes, yes, they can.

The point of free speech

...is free speech.
  The point of free speech is NOT to create "free speech zones" in which people can be corraled, circled up and identified.
  Even in Toledo, we've had police protect Neo-Nazi Socialist group marches, yet the government seems intent on establishing "free speech zones," the effect of which is to banish free speech in 99% of the other zones that are not for free speech.
  How hard is it, then, to eventually get rid of free speech altogether?
  University of Georgia has limited free speech zones to 1% of the campus.
  The BLM tried it with the protesting cattle ranchers....in the desert.
  So far, this hasn't been working out so well for the speech Nazis. Though it's understandable why protesters need to be contained in an area in a highly political arena, it's much more treacherous to ban free speech generally on campus or on open "federal land" that supposedly belongs to the taxpayers.
  As Hoosierman has written, campuses have become stinking wells of putrification. Well, maybe he didn't make them sound that bad, but I am.
  Campus Reform covers many of these instances; though conservatives are usually targets of campus protests, even IMF head Christine LaGard has bowed out of speaking at a graduation ceremony because of organized thug protests.
  Believe it or not, The Daily Beast has a critical article for the fragile millennials who can't bear to hear anyone speak anything but Leftist bilge:

Millennials have grown up in a world where you are never forced to see, hear or read anything that you haven’t personally selected. 7,000 TV channels, a DVR to skip commercials, millions of websites—we have been able to curate our own little worlds using technology, wherein nothing unpleasant or offensive can creep in. So when we’re forced to sit through a commercial or, heaven forbid, listen to someone talk who isn’t Mary-freakin’-Poppins, we can’t handle it.

  The author (crudely) mocks these fragile flowers since the point of getting an education used to be is to gather a wide range of knowledge, learn, and be open minded to opinions other than your own.
  An excellent example of Leftist intolerance is the following video in which anarchists shout down a Left wing speaker who simply wanted to make the point that you shouldn't be accusing people of rape if they didn't do anything. The anarchists believe that anyone who accuses another of sexual assault should not be questioned in any way.
  In a graduate class, many years ago I myself witnessed a similar event if which a doctoral candidate claimed if someone is black, it is racist to suggest anything they say is not true.
  **Extreme language alert.**
  I contend it's a good thing that these idiots are exposed for what they are. They are repulsive in so many ways.

Flotus prepares for Operation American Spring

I just hope the people know they have a better First Lady than they deserve. Here the the poor dear goes out of her way to remind people that they need to drink more water. People often forget to drink when not reminded by some one in authority. So whether you're part of the horde from Operation American Spring marching to Washington this week  or just  spending  a quiet weekend at an Overpasses for Obama’s Impeachment  rally it's not the time to become dehydrated.

If you wanna stay active and healthy, you've gotta #DrinkH2O. Just ask Sunny and Bo → http://t.co/fUddCkife3 #SpreadTheWater
— The First Lady (@FLOTUS) May 14, 2014

News that some are projecting 10 to 30 million people to show up in DC on Friday must have the poor dear in a tizzy.
Where will the sleep? Do they expect her to cook for them? Where can she get all that kobe beef on such short notice? What about the cost? The only thing wrong with that girl is that she worries about the deficit too much.

RT to spread the word: You can tour the @WhiteHouse grounds for free this weekend → http://t.co/WdXt41bJS9 #WHGarden pic.twitter.com/S2qsJhCUFz
— The First Lady (@FLOTUS) April 25, 2014

See she is doing her best to make them feel welcome. Is that not noblesse oblige?

 

The low mentality the pervades higher education

Is there some DOE mandate that directs colleges and universities to recruit their police and security administrators from the slow class? Will at some point the public remember Penn State's lack of concern about Jerry Sandusky's showering habits as the golden age of administrative excellence? Will butter knives be deemed a serious risk to the well being of impressionable college freshmen that may be commandeered for use in fratricide? Will future college admission forms ask if the student or any member of his immediate family ever owned a frog gig?
Pray thee, tell me, what sort of a jackass thinks a fencing epee is a weapon and how did he ever get hired into a position more critical than emptying cuspidors? As in the case of many institutions of higher learning at North Dakota State University common sense is confronted by the dim witted and as usual the dim witted win. NDSU's Police and Safety Office Director Ray Boyer cited the school's policy manual and Code of Student Behavior as the authority that forbids the school's fencing team from practicing on campus. How does this dork keep a job? Does he think Monty Python was a documentary series? Why does not the college president simply bounce him to the sidewalk on his goddam ass? You thought the Fargo television was bordered on the absurd? Compared to NDSU it's almost pedestrian.

Valley News Live - KVLY/KXJB - Fargo/Grand Forks

Trying to ruin the VA?

  Leftists are working hard to discredit conservatives and the Libertarian Koch brothers.
  Day after day, year after year we hear disparaging remarks from the Left, especially Obama and Reid, about any citizen who holds opposing views.
  Soft headed milennials appear to be fully brain washed by these political Bozos, regardless the truth or reality.
  (What is so amusing is that those very milennials collectively pride themselves--on their independent thinking.
  Que?)
   Now Bernie Sanders has taken after the Koch Brothers for the scandal at the VA, claiming there is a "concerted effort to undermine the VA."
  Social security, the Post Office, the VA, Medicare are all so popular with people that conservatives--the Koch Brothers and others--want to "radically change" society.
  Because, see, once a government program is in place, we can't change, reduce or improve it.
   Because society.
  Nothing can change, regardless the overpaid, non-working employees and expensive boondoggles that are breaking the back of the country.
  Claiming that you're trying to ruin the _______(government program) because you want to reform it or reign in increased costs is standard procedure for Leftists.
  And it's all YOUR fault, you Tea Partiers who won some races yesterday.
  It's YOUR fault.
 

Sasse win in Nebraska proving the Tea Party is alive and well

No the Tea Party is not dead. Tea Party and Senate Conservative Fund backed Ben Sasse who also enjoyed the personal endorsements of Governor Sarah Palin and Senators Mike Lee and Ted Cruz coasted to an easy win in the Nebraska senate primary. With 12 percent of precincts reporting, the Associated Press called the race for Sasse, who led Sid Dinsdale by a wide 45 percent to 25 percent margin. Shane Osborn was third with 23 percent. Sasse will be a heavy favorite in the general election considering Nebraska's strong Republican tilt. In the previous post  I reported that Tea Party backed Alex Mooney won in West Virginia's second congressional primary.

Alex Mooney wins

I indicated in an earlier post that Shelley Moore Capito was probably not destined to become your favorite senator but the man who could take her seat in congress may become one of your favorite congressman. Alex Mooney, a former Maryland GOP state chairman is running for the Republican nomination in West Virginia's second congressional district. So are 6 other candidates but the home schooling, pro life father of two has won endorsements from Mike Huckabee, the Martinsburg, WV Tea Party, the Tea Party Express and the Senate Conservative Fund.
With 19% of the vote in Mooney leads with 32.7% of the vote. His nearest rival, Ken Reed, has 26.6%.

Update: With 75% of the vote in Alex Mooney has been declared the winner!

I don't care if athletes are gay

  I'm sorry?
  I don't care if athletes are gay or straight. I really don't. Do whatever ya want in your spare time.
  Just please.
  Please.
  No matter your sexual proclivity, please don't subject me and the rest of the world to your open mouthed PDA and fondling.
  Please.
  Y'all are makin' me sick, regardless.

Rep. John Conyers fails to make the ballot

For the first time since 1964 Congressman John Conyers will not be on the congressional ballot unless he runs as a write in candidate. According to Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett Conyers failed to submit the required number of signatures. Under a Michigan law which the ACLU is challenging on Conyers behalf petition-gatherers must be registered voters. In this case two were not. After the signatures gathered by the two non registered gatherers were nullified Conyers had only 592 of the required 1000 signatures.

Congressman, Please don't pick your ears on C-Span

It not unusual for primates to groom themselves but as homo sapiens has evolved social norms often referred to as good manners dictate that grooming should be done privately especially if one wants to eat unwanted bodily secretions. During a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Democratic  Congressman Joe Garcia sat and listened to Congresswoman Suzan DelBene testify about government surveillance programs, all the while picking his ear and eating God knows he dug out.

More Democratic buffoonery- a Benghazi "truth squad"

Former Bill Clinton hack turned Hillary Clinton hack Lanny Davis will form a "truth squad" outside the select committee on Benghazi hearings to put his own partisan spin on the hearings. Good luck with that. I do not expect chairman Trey Gowdy to put on a show. As a prosecutor Gowdy never lost a case which means he knows which cases to dismiss or plead down and which cases to fight. He is ready to fight but not with innuendos or half truths. The public can expect to see a very professional investigation and it deserves nothing less.

Check your privilege then buy life insurance

Check your privilege! This veiled attempt to delegitimize success is but the latest iteration of "you didn't build that". If the reason for success can be delegitimized or stigmatized then the fruits of that success would be unearned and therefore subject rightful seizure by a benign and all knowing government. As one who grew up delivering the morning newspaper when he was 12, who paid every damn dime of his college tuition out of his own pocket pardon me if I look askance at at well heeled academics who have never done an honest day's labor.
Success is about work and the most glaring inequity in the workplace is not some silly made up 77% of what a male makes statistic but rather the overwhelming discrepancy in work place deaths. ( Square this circle. 26% of women earn more money than their spouses while only earning 77% of what a male earns.)
A perusal of the Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 2012 makes it clear that the so called privileged class is honored with an over generous portion of work place fatalities. The academic and political classes see no inequity in the fact that in 2012 of the 4628 workplace deaths 4277 were males. That is 92.4%! Or put another way its about 12.2 times higher than the female death rate and you probably won't hear that from your women's studies instructor.
Shall we look at race too? There are no minority set asides at the mortuary- no affirmative action. White males did most of the dying. White deaths in the workplace totaled 3177, Blacks or African-Americans 486, Asians 147, and Latinos or Hispanics 748.
Before you buy into the leftist argument that they were victims of a evil capitalist system that puts profits ahead of safety you would do well to consider that nearly a quarter of the deaths, 1,057, were those of the self employed. Far be it from me to suggest that we kill too few women and minorities in the workplace but rewards frequently come from risks and those who are willing to take risks reap a disproportionate share of rewards and deaths.

Secret Service dispatched to neighborhood feud

It's hard to think of a federal agency that has burned through an impeccable reputation as quickly as the Secret Service. Two incidents, one involving prostitutes and another involving an agent so intoxicated he could not walk might be excused as the sort of things that happen to all good agencies as over time an occasional bad apple or two finds its way into the basket. Better training and more selective recruitment would be the prescribed bromides. The latest incident to come to light was not the failing of the rank and file agents. In fact the agents were so concerned that the operation in which they were involved was illegal and worried about their own liability that they kept records of their involvement and their superiors’ instructions.
Incredibly agents responsible for patrolling the White House grounds were dispatched to rural Maryland to protect then Director Mark Sullivan's aide, Lisa Chopey after she had a fight with her neighbor. Sullivan has since retired and the present director, Julia Pierson, was supposedly unaware of Operation Moonlight even though she was Sullivan's chief of staff. Sullivan did did not order the operation himself but the two field agents who did have since been prompted by the agency. The duration of the operation is still disputed. One account states that Moonlight lasted only a few days over the Fourth of July weekend while others say it went on all summer. More.
Sullivan defended the action noting that the agency has a tradition of protecting its employees. Yes, everyone should have the protection of a private army when the neighbors are bitchy but to a larger point what agency in the Obama Administration has demonstrated a minimum of competence or respect for the law? From taxpayer funded 6 figure parties described as training seminars at the GSA, to credit card theft at the Postal Service, to viewing porn on the job at the SEC and EPA, to the violations of Tea Party activists by the IRS's tax exempt and audit divisions, to the ATF and the circus that was Fast and Furious are but a few examples of abuse of the public trust and misuse of federal assets. At some point even the most uninformed and partisan will have had enough.

Some good developments on the political front

  After the last presidential election, the writers of this blog moved from quickly posting about recent current events toward--a more infrequent, it's true--perspective on the news.
  From my point of view, this is because the conservative blogosphere is excellently represented by many fine writers, timely and fairly widely read. We are a small blog; there are many excellent blogs with wide readership in the millions.
  After Obama's reelection, many of my compatriots and I went into what must be called a down cycle; limited listening to talk radio, despair at the constant attacks on our liberty and grief over the cynical opportunism of those wacky Leftist loonies who have been running crazy since Obama was reelected.
  And don't even mention the incredible, corrupt media coverage the right side of the aisle receives.
  Personally I've been determined to stay as optimistic as possible, remembering that politics is cyclical and dirty and that there have always been corrupt politicians. 
  But this is difficult, considering the era in which many of us were raised, the period following WW2 in which many of our parents had an urgent need for not only normalcy but fairly dull happy home lives. 
  We were raised with a respect for hard work, observing social norms and a classic education focused on Western Civilization.
  Of course, all that is under attack now. In a most perceptive piece, Daniel Henninger at the WSJ describes perfectly the current Leftist attack on academia:

In the U.S., the politics of the left versus the right rolls on with the predictability of traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge. It's a lot of honking. Until now. All of a sudden, the left has hit ramming speed across a broad swath of American life—in the universities, in politics and in government. People fingered as out of line with the far left's increasingly bizarre claims are being hit and hit hard.

  The entire piece is worth reading, as it is clear that Obama's narcissistic divisive rhetoric has encouraged the loonies to emerge from their ivory towers.
  So this is a different world we are entering. It's  not an easy place to exist, and very unlike the dreamy affluence the country's citizens have known compared to much of the rest of the world.
  Those of us who remember what it was like in those days of harvest now have to fight back, for a change, and respect what this country has given us.
  And that's not all bad.
  You might even call it a winnowing of the chaff.
  And fight back we have, whether we realize the enormity of our collective opposition or not.
  So some good news, for the moment, or at least news with a positive perspective:

•    Hoosierman has faithfully blogged about positive developments in the field of energy, particularly in Ohio. In fact, the US has more energy resources than anywhere else in the world. 
•   Two Tea Party Nation endorsed candidates won this week. 
•   The world has disappointed Barack Obama. This is good news. Maybe he'll go away.
•   Ohio grassroots candidates won 100s of races this past week. Grassroots is where it starts.
•   The controversial Gosnell expose movie surpassed its crowd fundraising goal this week, even though one company rejected the premise. 
•   Crooked Wisconsin prosecutors have finally lost in court against conservative groups and Governor Scott Walker.
•   Some Democrat Black leaders are beginning to acknowledge that the Democrat party isn't very good for Black families or politics. Try MLK III. 
•   There's a civil war on the left side of the aisle, including a union realization that they were screwed by Obama and continue to be screwed. 
•    Harry Reid is absolutely losing his mind, not that we didn't know that before but GEEZ the insanity has reached incredible depths, and all for tv cameras. The more these people are exposed, the better.
•    Racist Democrats are showing their colors against Black Conservatives. Nutbags abound. Tim Scott seems to be a threat to the racist Leftists, who only continue to define and divide the world by color of skin.
• One of Obama's ridiculous "security" advisors revealed his ugly immaturity. What a hoot THAT was. Watching for more to reveal themselves.
•   Rep. John Conyers didn't eve have enough votes to make his primary. Double heh.  HAAAAAAAA!
•   Is tv getting more conservative? (Well, ok, that's a stretch. More like, are there a few conservative leaning shows on these days.) 
•   Two faced Mary Landrieu is circling the drain. HAAAAAAA!!!!!
• Still, idiots abound, apparently blissfully unaware that they're idiots.

  And then there's this great video of a Black GOP delegate standing down a buffoon Democrat gubernatorial candidate who's dressed up in a duct taped suit with a kitchen towel wrapped around his waist to look like a Confederate soldier.
  This woman is magnificent, arguing substance while Mr. Buffoon splutters fantasy, eventually drifting lamely off to talk to "a colleague" rather than explain his stupid outfit and position.