Perry Leads Obama in Rasmussen Poll

For the first time, Texas Gov. Rick Perry leads President Barack Obama in a national poll, by 44 to 41 percent, while his GOP rivals trail in head-to-head match ups against the president. The Rasmussen poll, conducted September 1, shows Romney losing to Obama 43 to 39 percent. Obama leads Bachmann 46 to 38 percent and would beat Herman Cain 42 to 35 percent. Notice no one reaches 50 percent in this poll, indicating a large number of undecided voters. The really bad news for Obama here is most undecided usually break for the challenger and away from the incumbent.

Not Another Speech

Congressman Joe Walsh will miss Obama's jobs speech. There is an element of disrespect here but Walsh is probably a little bit desperate. His district has been reapportioned and he will have to defeat a fellow Republican freshman to get to the general election. The point here is respect for the office and the more one thinks about it that is the only reason anyone would go to this speech. Oh sure, there is the establishment brown nose wing of his party, the Marcy Kapturs and the Jan Schakowskys who dog paddle through raw sewerage for any Democratic president, but the Congressional Black Caucus members and the Dennis Kucinich types probably wish they could go their grand children's piano recital and listen "Mary Had a Little Lamb" 40 times.
Certainly Senator Jim DeMint has better things to do and says as much;
"I'm, frankly, very tired of speeches. I don't want to be disrespectful to the president, but what I want to see is something in writing,"
We are all tired of Obama's speeches because we have endured far too many of them. We haven't been so tired of listening to anyone since LBJ used to come to us "with a heavy heart". He is not William Jennings Bryan he is Jessie Jackson. He is all slogans and demagoguery. His speeches on Obamacare and the debt ceiling should convince everyone that Obama can't convince anyone of anything. Furthermore the voters have every right to demand that the President to put every statement on paper since his truths seems to have a life shorter a gypsy moth's. Yes the upcoming speech will be boring and no I will not be watching. One seriously wonders if the administration has enough competent people left who could actually put together a plan that could be scored by the OBM or the CBO. I doubt if they do.

Government "assistance" ruins people and business

  It's really not a big surprise that we already have an example of a grocery store planted in a "food desert" that is going belly up. So it is with many government projects and socially engineered organizations.
  Michelle Obama's call to furnish the "food deserts" of inner cities, with government funding, has borne fruit, of course.
  Now the Chicago Tribune writes about a wonderful little store that has lots of fresh fruits and vegetables but no customers:

Maywood Market opened with great fanfare, billed as an oasis amid a "food desert" in this west suburb, where fresh fruits and vegetables were hard to find.
Despite the hopes of community leaders and health advocates, one item remains in short supply more than a year later — shoppers pushing carts brimming with food.

  There's an adage that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Thus it is with many people of all colors and classes. Cheetos are easier and more fun to throw in your mouth than carrots. Modern culture has made processed food easily accessible, affordable and satisfying.
  This is what happens when government sticks its nose into the people's business.
  In England, one family with 7 children struggles with obesity, so much so that the government took possession of the family and fed them for 2 years in a "Big Brother" house. Still the children have not lost weight, and so the government is taking custody away from the parents. Daily Mail:

At meal times, a social worker stood in the room taking notes. Doctors raised concerns that the children put on weight whenever they spent time with their parents, a claim they vehemently denied.The couple and their children also had to adhere to a strict 11pm curfew. This involved ‘clocking’ in and out by filling in a sheet held by an employee who lived on site.

  So social workers watched the family eat, monitored the baby as she crawled around (one complaint was that, even though there were no stairs in the flat, the baby was "crawling unsupervised." On and on the complaints go, the objections being normal behavior that normal children and their parents exhibit.  While someone's watching and criticizing, the behavior becomes criminal.
  Here's a picture from the Daily Mail of the family. Do they look morbidly obese compared to other folks, so much so that the government has a right to confiscate the children?

   The parents are on the ends. It's not outrageous to say that the children's body shapes reflect the body shapes of their parents. They're not small people but they're not huge either.
  Didn't the nannies get a clue when they fed the family for 2 years and the kids didn't lose weight? So what makes it any different that they'll remove the children from their parents' care and they'll magically lose weight?

Huh. Who knew. Tea Partiers are racist.

  Soooo it turns out that "academics" have decided that Tea Partiers are racist, didn't affect the 2010 election, and have little "racial empathy" for those who don't work hard because Tea Partiers trust capitalism too much.
  We might remind ourselves that "academics" do little but sit in an office occasionally and write papers, teaching minimally and "studying" the world, according to the statistics and situations they themselves create.
  To suggest that they have great insight into the Tea Party is to suggest they actually know what's going on outside the Ivory Tower.
  So with that in mind, let's look at what their papers' topics were at a recent conference, according to the Washington Times:

But like Mr. Jacobson, Mr. Abramowitz also said they were more likely to harbor racial resentment, which he judged based on their answers to questions such as whether blacks could succeed as well as whites if they “would only try harder,” and whether they agreed with the statement that Irish, Italians and Jews overcame prejudice and “blacks should do the same without any special favors.”
Mr. Abramowitz said tea party supporters were substantially more likely than other voters to question how much effort black Americans are making to advance themselves versus being held back by social factors.

  This is a great line about Tea Partiers trusting capitalism more than social programs:

“This makes it less surprising that nearly all Tea Partiers believe that hard work, rather than luck, drives success. This might also explain their lower levels of racial empathy, as they are less aware for how opportunity may be different for particular groups of people,” she wrote in a working draft paper. 

  Apparently this means that the academic who wrote this that "racial empathy" means that you expect less of someone whose skin color isn't white. Let's be honest. If this "academic" can extrapolate that "racial empathy" is determined by a belief capitalism then a Tea Partier can extrapolate that "racial empathy" means you're supposed to feel sorry for people whose skin isn't white, give them free stuff, expect less and never push them as hard as the average person who works for what they get.
  It is true that opportunities are different for different groups of people but there are lots of Indian, white and Asian kids who don't have much in the way of money or opportunity. It's about time we give advantages to kids based on their circumstances rather than the color of their skin. 
  Basically looking at any group of people, even Tea Partiers, like they're bugs under glass is wrong. Looking at any group of people with a cold eye from the outside will not necessarily yield accurate results.
  And, of course, it all depends on the questions you choose to ask and the way you interpret the answers.
  You'd think those really, really smart academics could figure that out.

Our tax system explained in beer

U.S. Tax System Explained in Beer

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100.
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ‘Since you are all such good customers,’ he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. ‘Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers?

How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’ They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 ( 22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
‘I only got a dollar out of the $20,’ declared the sixth man.
He pointed to the tenth man,’ but he got $10! ”Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man.
‘I only saved a dollar, too.. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I! ”That’s true!!’ shouted the seventh man.
‘Why should he get $10 back when I got only two?
The wealthy get all the breaks!
”Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison. ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!
‘The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man ( the richest) didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

Consumer Confidence Falls Again

On August 24 I posted "The Miserable Voter Guide To Elections". It was a short post containing the above graphic and I noted at that time the present Consumer Confidence Index was 59.5. Today that number has dropped to 44.5. "It was a slap in the face, a shock," said Bart van Ark, chief economist for The Conference Board. According to van Ark the cause of this sudden loss in confidence from its already abysmal level was the debt ceiling debate. Readers will remember the wild stock market sell off but the near hysteria went beyond the stock market to Main Street and shook the consumers' confidence in the government's ability to act when action was needed. It is similar to the sense of disappointment and betrayal voters felt after Hurricane Katrina and 9/11. The employment data released today showed a zero job gain over the previous month. Essentially, businesses have not started to lay off but they have quit hiring.

The dust up between Speaker John Boehner and the White House following Obama's crass attempt to upstage the Republican debate is not apt to engender warm feelings among consumers as far as faith in the government's ability to get things done is concerned. No matter what Obama may propose in his much hyped speech it will do nothing to improve the economy. An administration cannot just pass a jobs bill and expect prosperity but rather it must develop a philosophy of growth that is friendly to business. The average Confidence rating of the losers in the above chart is 99.7 which means Obama 55.2 below the average loser.

Elected officials: shut up and sit down.

  What IS it with these little Hitler politicians who decide they want something and then, regardless of the will of the people, RULE as if they are kings?
  We've had a highly unpopular and destructive health care plan initiated. We've had billions of dollars printed and then dispensed to wasteful projects. We've been accused ourselves of being irresponsible and not sacrificing enough between the politicians' jaunts to exotic and expensive vacations, much of it funded by the taxpayers.
  Now we have Mayor Bloomberg doubling down that no FDNY representatives and no clergy will be allowed to speak at the 10 year anniversary of 9/11.
  It's about the families of the victims, Bloomberg claims, even though many want those representatives at the ceremony.
  And even though many of the victims were FDNY.
  And many of the victims were religious folk.
  No religious representation because our government isn't religious.
  Of course, it's a ceremony and 90% of people in this country bear allegiance to some religion.
  The Anchoress, always eloquent, expresses contempt and outrage for this mentality: the elitist decreeing this or that for the rabble, using his distant and exclusive outlook on the situation, which bears little resemblance to what the majority of citizens think, both left and right:

I don’t know why I should be surprised. Priests and First Responders are, like our troops, front-line folk. They’re like heroes in the cowboy flicks; they ride in, shoulder the burden, help put things to rights, and then — while the elite get on with assuming their power and asserting their primacy –they recede into the background. Only the very few stick around to say ‘thank you’ and wave them off. Sometimes children ask them to come back, or to stay. 

Bloomberg’s priorities are all wrong. He’s thinking like a Baron — or no, he’s not really thinking at all; he’s being pragmatic: mustn’t let the help get get too much recognition, get too full of themselves — they might start getting uppity and making demands on milords purse and time. Mustn’t let the damn clergy murmur their vulgar prayers, or next we’ll have tent-revivalists cluttering up the fairgrounds and making such spectacles of themselves. 

The big crowds for New Years Eve, or for the big parades, are alright, he thinks, but this is not for the riff-raff. Let’s just keep the invite list confined to those who know how to dress and how to behave, and which fork to use, and when. 

You know…all those consequential (and so very, very smart) people who — ten years into this — have not managed to fill the still-exposed, gaping holes in the downtown ground. 

Perhaps that’s because of the increasingly exposed, gaping holes in their own heads and hearts — from which pours out so much that is mediocre, bleak and unhelpful.

  There's a scene in the musical 1776 where a politician struggles with what to do: to sign on to independence or not. The people had sent him as a representative of themselves. Was he to make decisions based on what the majority of people wanted him to do? 
  Or was he to make decisions based on the information he himself had acquired by being a representative of the people, using his own ethos and brain to decide what was best in the formation of a country. 
  We understand this conflict. We understand that our representatives in Washington will not always do what we want.
  But these decisions--health care, taxes, profligate spending, classism, avoidance of any religious reference--are contrary to the will of the people and the decisions aren't made for the betterment for the country.
  They're about what's best for the politician. About their own personal and selfish visions of what they themselves want.
  But we'd better not speak too loudly in disagreement with them.
  They might come for us, with guns.

The current meme: conservatives are "extremists"

  Even FNC is going with the latest meme from the left wing today.
  Now conservatives are "extremists" whose agendas are scary, suspect and dangerous to the country, even though a great number of Americans have exactly the same views on things like outrageous spending, government control, and religious views that threaten people's lives.
  Tea Partiers are, of course, a primary target using the Alinski model of freezing, isolating and attacking a target. Unfortunately for leftists, the Tea Party movement has evolved into a patriot movement. Many have moved past the idea of a "Tea Party" and on to simply becoming patriots who are now active in local and national politics. Community organizers, you might say.
  But the idea that any conservative idea is "extreme" is antithetical to the idea of being conservative. By nature, American conservatives do not intrude where they are not wanted. By nature, conservatives do not speak out against others. By nature, conservatives do not want to control the lives of others because that would entail both snooping and constant intervention.
  Howard Fineman (leftist commentator) talked about leftist strategy at RCP:

Fineman reveals that the Democratic strategy for the presidential and Congressional elections will be "down and dirty." 
"It's not going to be a 'Morning in America' campaign, it's going to be a darkness at midnight campaign about the Republicans. It's going to be about the fact that the Republicans in Congress pushed Paul Ryan's bill Medicare, about how they pushed Cut, Cap and Balance. It's about how Republicans wanted to dismantle Wall Street reform. It's going to be about how the Republican presidential candidates have embraced the Tea Party."

  The reason the campaign strategy is "darkness at midnight" is twofold: it really IS darkness at midnight accelerated by this administration's regressive business policies and regulations. AND these people are so dark themselves that their only option is to paint their opponents as even darker than themselves.
  Hey, dopes. People are depressed enough already.
  Do you really think this is a winning strategy?
  Your policies don't work. Admit it. Change and move on.
  We can hope. 
  But opponents of this administration are stupid, don't forget. Anyone who runs against a Democrat is stupid, according to the elitists among us. 
  Politico accuses Perry of being "dumb":

Another Texas governor who drops his “g’s” and scorns elites is running for president and the whispers are the same: lightweight, incurious, instinctual.
Strip away the euphemisms and Rick Perry is confronting an unavoidable question: Is he dumb — or just “misunderestimated?”

And Bill Keller at the NY Times worries that Christians might try to emulate jihadists:

Surveying those articles, the executive editor of the New York Times, Bill Keller, concludes that "an unusually large number" of Republican candidates "belong to churches that are mysterious or suspect to many Americans." Perry and Bachmann, in particular, are connected to "fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity," which Keller says "has raised concerns about their respect for the separation of church and state, not to mention the separation of fact and fiction." Fearing that Perry or Bachmann could be a "Trojan horse" for a religious takeover of the government, Keller advocates strict questioning of candidates on doctrinal issues.

  Mysterious or suspect to many Americans? That would be Mr. Keller's friends who view all Christians and conservatives as "mysterious and suspect" since they know no one who is one. For those of us out here in the Heartland, Christianity is a way of life, not a mystery.
  So the extremists in the White House are not; those of us who believe in God and the value of this country are.
  Sounds like they're trying to muck us up, if you ask me.

The Gender Gap We Don't Hear About

The gender gap that is never cited is the fatal occupational accident rate. Men are 12 times more likely to be killed on the job.

Solyndra Subject Of Congressional Probe

Solyndra , the Fremont, California based manufacturer of solar panels that went bankrupt after receiving $535 in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy has attracted the attention of House Republicans. Rep Fred Upton of the House Energy and Commerce Committee has sent a letter to White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler Thursday seeking records of communication between the White House, Solyndra and its investors – including Democratic fund raiser George Kaiser.

The letter states:
“We have learned from our investigation that White House officials monitored Solyndra’s application, and communicated with [the Energy Department] and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) officials during the course of their review in 2009 and when those officials were restructuring the Solyndra deal this year. Documents received by the Committee also show that DOE and OMB officials were aware of the White House’s interest in the Solyndra loan guarantee. In addition, we are also aware that a major investor in Solyndra, George Kaiser, was a bundler for President Obama’s 2008 campaign.”

This comes amid a wider GOP investigation of the Obama administration green energy programs and the 2009 stimulus law that enabled the Energy Department loan guarantee for the maker of advanced solar panels.

At Least Three In White House Knew of Fast and Furious

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that three White House official received information on operation Fast and Furious.In a previous post this blog posted two videos showing BATF agent Richard Newell confirming at
least one email to a White House national security official, Kevin O'Reilly. Two other White House colleagues were briefed on reports from the supervisor, according to White House emails and a senior administration official. Earlier we noted it was remarkable that a supervising agent for the BATF would just happened to know someone who worked in the White House.
Senior administration official said the emails, obtained Thursday by The Times, did not prove that anyone in the White House was aware of the covert "investigative tactics" of the operation. Did not prove? Who asked about proving anything?

"The emails validate what has been said previously, which is no one at the White House knew about the investigative tactics being used in the operation, let alone any decision to let guns walk," said the official, who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. "To the extent that some [national security staff members] were briefed on the top lines of ongoing federal efforts, so were members of Congress."

He identified the three White House officials who were briefed as Kevin M. O'Reilly, director of North American Affairs for the White House national security staff; Dan Restrepo, the president's senior Latin American advisor; and Greg Gatjanis, a White House national security official.

"The emails were not forwarded beyond them, and we are not aware of any [additional] briefings related to that email chain," the official said.

Those of us old enough to remember Watergate and Iran Contra have a feeling of deja vu. First the unequivocal denials, then the "well perhaps maybe, but limited to lower administration minions", etc, right up until some is hauled into court.

If Eric Holder though reassigning a few agents and sacking the US Attorney in Phoenix he was mistaken Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley has sent a letter to Ann Scheel, the acting attorney general in Phoenix, basically putting the Arizona district office on notice and demanding e-mails, memos, notes and other documents from six top officials, including Scheel and ousted former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke. The letter went on;

Operation Fast and Furious was a prosecutor-led Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) Strike Force case. The congressional investigation has revealed that your office, and specifically Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) Emory Hurley, played an integral role in the day-to-day, tactical management of the case. In fact, Mr. Hurley served as a prosecutor on this case until very recently.

Witnesses have reported that AUSA Hurley may have stifled ATF agents’ attempts to interdict weapons on numerous occasions. Many ATF agents working on Operation Fast and Furious were under the impression that even some of the most basic law enforcement techniques typically used to interdict weapons required the explicit approval of your office, specifically from AUSA Hurley. It is our understanding that this approval was withheld on numerous occasions. It is unclear why all available tools, such as civil forfeitures and seizure warrants, were not used in this case to prevent illegally purchased guns from being trafficked to Mexican drug cartels and other criminals. We have further been informed that AUSA Hurley improperly instructed ATF agents that they needed to meet unnecessarily strict evidentiary standards merely in order to temporarily detain or speak with suspects.

It is essential for Congress to fully understand your office’s role in Operation Fast and Furious. … In addition, it is imperative that the Committee have an opportunity to discuss the facts above with individuals in your office who are familiar with the details of this operation. It is not our intention to second guess day-to-day decisions of your staff, but rather to make sense of them. The Attorney General has said that “letting guns walk is not something that is acceptable.  … We cannot have a situation where guns are allowed to walk, and I’ve made that clear to the United States Attorneys as well as the agents in charge of various ATF offices.” Operation Fast and Furious is unique in that guns were allowed to walk with the apparent knowledge of, and authorization by, officials in your office.

In other word this case is far from over but don't expect to see Chuck Grassley on the Ed Show just yet.

Just who's mucking who?

  Well, now, the Boy President is between vacations (Bali's the next one, unless he slips away for a weekend or two between now and then) and wants his time in front of the camera.
  And he demands that Congress snap to it! He wants his time to browbeat his opponents present his plan to the world, which is rumored to be just, um, well, more spending on stupid $%^& like teaching Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly on the job.
  Even now, politicians in his party are urging him to spend $2.2 trillion on more stimulus projects like ACORN funding. (Where they got the .2 who knows. It must be already tabulated, just like it was last time.)
  Though the White House now admits they knew the Republican debate had been scheduled for a long time even though they originally professed not to have known, apparently this doofus administration is now angry, OUTRAGED at the effrontery of the peons who refused the Boy King his Wednesday night jutting jaw scolding of the Congress. From Politico:

It seemed like a trivial matter: On Wednesday, House Republicans forced the president to delay his speech to a joint session of Congress by one day.
Who cares? The White House cares. Very much.

  Not only that, but the WH also believes that “This confirms what we all know: They will do anything in the House to muck us up.”
  Highly offended, the rationale is that he has been treated "shabbily."
  Interesting, considering that this monumental speech wasn't that big a deal while *The Prince* was on vacation. He couldn't think of any other date than this one?
  If they were honest up there at the WH, they'd admit that this was an amusing scheme when originally hatched to try to make the Republicans look weak and ineffectual, having to reschedule their own debate to meet the demand. It was politics and Obama's people thought they had the upper hand but it backfired.
  Politico also says:

  The White House is viewing it as very consequential, however. “It is a big deal,” the source said. “It shows the House Republicans will do no outreach, nothing.”

And who does the White House believe was really behind treating the president so shabbily?

  In normal circumstances, two camps would negotiate a date. A call. Would you invite me up this date? Would that work? But instead, the tremendous narcissists occupying the WH picked a date they knew would be unacceptable in the hope of gaining an upper hand politically.
  It didn't work and the house of cards that is this presidency is beginning to tumble down. 
  Maybe the WH will think twice before trying to muck the Republicans up.
UPDATE from Big Journalism:

On Aug 31, President Obama announced as if it were set the date of Sept. 7 for his jobs speech to a joint session of Congress. Of course, he and his staff knew that Sept. 7 was the date scheduled months ago for the next GOP presidential debate. It was clearly an attempt by Obama to overshadow the debate, the first one that Texas Gov. Rick Perry would be a part. 

One problem here is that the protocol of scheduling a joint session of Congress was not observed by this White House. The fact is a president cannot schedule a joint session of Congress on his own hook. He simply does not have that power Constitutionally. He must ask the Senate majority leader and the speaker of the House of Representatives if the date he is requesting will work. Such a date has to be agreed upon by Congress before announcements are made. 

Obama did not do this. He simply tried to decree on what date the speech would be held and announced that date as if it were settled.
This was an unprecedented move.

Lemonade Sellers Strike Back

In an earlier post a video showed people being arrested for selling lemonade. The Washington Capitol police showed visible contempt for those demonstrators while the demonstrators recently arrested outside the White House protesting the Keystone pipeline where treated with gentle kindness. The difference between the two groups of demonstrators is simple. One group, the anti-pipeline crowd, represents a fringe minority of malcontent environmentalists but the lemonade sellers have wide national support and even a new web site to promote the selling of lemonade in cities across the country, from Sioux City, IA to Cleveland, OH.

In Houston there were 50,000 kid-run lemonade stands operating on Lemonade Day - May 1 - and lemonade sales topped $4 million . That must have been a little overwhelming for the "Lemonade Police." Maybe this is a metaphor for Obama's Washington and Rick Perry's Texas.

Maxine Waters Would Tax Banks Out Of Existence

Rep. Maxine Waters introduced an interesting idea when it comes to banks and loan modification. According to her, it’s up to the federal government to make sure people can afford their mortgages. So much so that it’s time the president “bring the gangsters in, put them around the table, and let them know that if they don’t come up with loan modifications and keep people in their homes, that they’ve worked so hard for, we’re gonna tax them out of business.” Presumably wasn't talking extorting loan concessions from her husband's bank.

 

Gaddafi Eludes CNN

Sooner or later our dreadful lack of proficiency in geography had to show up. No wonder they can't find Gaddafi but let's hope this deflect doesn't spread to airline pilots.

75 years in prison for recording the cops????

How is this possible...in AMERICA??

Violence against Tea Partiers continues

  The first thing to remember about the Tea Party is that, as Rush says, it is a frame of mind, not an actual party.
  That having been said, we might also note that Tea Partiers are highly organized and politically active, many for the first time in their lives. There are Tea Party groups all over this nation, many located in Ohio.
  They represent a powerful force, unreachable by the media and leftists since Tea Partying is, in reality, a frame of mind rather than a specific group located in a building somewhere.
  The Tea Party frame of mind originated as a spontaneous reaction to the progressive destruction of the American way of life. No one person is responsible. It's a force that has grown with the deterioration of the economy and the free giveaways that this government has encouraged by redistributing income.
  The fact that the Tea Party is so amorphous scares politicians, both left and right. They cannot be controlled and they are citizens making decisions for themselve, deciding which candidates they will support rather than contributing to national political parties.
  The nebulous nature of the Tea Party frustrates the establishment.
  This is why Maxine Waters first screamed the other day that the Tea Party could go "straight to hell and I'll help them get there," (which could be viewed as a threat). This is also why directly following that comment Waters carefully instructed her audience to adopt passion akin to the Tea Party.
  A significant tactic leftists use is to accuse their opponents of doing exactly what they themselves are doing.
  Freely accusing Tea Partiers of violence and racism, leftists violently attack those with whom they disagree; racism charges are unfounded, so leftists infiltrate Tea Parties with ugly signs and t shirts to make it look like Tea Parties are racist.
  The situation is pretty accelerated, considering how far away the presidential election is. Leftists are accelerating their outrageous and violent behavior, openly and savagely in large groups. Language warning:


  Here's reasoning from a Massachusetts Tea Partier for why leftists' arguments are NOT working and, ultimately, why the violent behavior is ratcheting up:

One of the first rules of making your case is to be able to get the average person to give you a hearing. From what I’m seeing the left in Wisconsin is doing a rather poor job of itwhile the Tea Party in Massachusetts is so mainstream they are hosting events that don’t contain GOP candidates.

  Tea Partiers were physically attacked in Missouri:

That’s the difference between progressive thugs and true Tea Party Patriots, I can go all day in a meaningful exchange using my wit and words. . .yet, when a progressive doesn’t get their way, they turn to violence.  I personally, feel it is never okay to touch ot hurt another person. . .EVER!  They don’t.
What was all that screaming about “peace” and a “new tone”?  Oh, I forgot, that street only goes one way. 

    As a Tea Party leader in Boston says, "The left could take lessons on civility from the Tea Party." 
  And, as Instapundit often says, indeed.

Arizona Gop; Deport Uncle Omar

Everyone knew the people of Arizona had some pretty strong opinions on illegal immigration so it should not surprise the White House that Arizona Republicans are collecting signatures to make sure the President's uncle is deported. From the Arizona Gop:
Whereas, President Barack Obama's uncle Onyango "Omar" Obama is an Illegal Alien from Kenya; and

Whereas, Uncle Omar was arrested last week on Wednesday after he allegedly nearly rammed his SUV into a police car in Framingham, Massachusetts; and

Whereas, Uncle Omar blatantly violated U.S. immigration law and is charged with a DUI; and

Whereas, President Barack Obama has time and time again disregarded and demonstrated contempt for the ENFORCEMENT OF IMMIGRATION LAW

Green Jobs Go Belly Up

So how's that green energy working out for you?

Today Solyndra of Fremont, California closed its doors and announced it would seek protection under Chapter 11. The company received $535 million in loan guaranteed by the Department of Energy in 2009. They produced solar panels.

Evergreen Solar shuttered its manufacturing plant in Devens, Massachusetts earlier this year and now has only 85 employees left.
The financing includes a $702 million project bond, a $150 million term loan and an $83 million letter of credit. The project is backed by a Department of Energy loan guarantee.

SpectraWatt a solar spin-off from Intel, laid off most of its employees and shut its doors. Spectra received millions in federal and state grants and will soon file for Chapter 11 protection.

Clean Burn Fuels, LLC Clean Burn Fuels, has closed its doors and filed for bankruptcy.
It received $35 million in loan guarantees last year from the U.S. Department of Agriculture as an incentive to develop renewable energy sources.

To make matters worse, there are charges that the loans went to politically connected firms.

Secretary Of Labor Drives A Canadian Made SUV

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis is very proud of her new SUV . It's fuel efficient, pleasing to the eye and American made. American made is not the same as made in USA. The Chevy Equinox is assembled in two Canadian plants. It's on the list of approved vehicles that government agencies can lease. How does the Dept of Labor explain this?

"Modern automobile manufacturing is a global industry and General Motors is a company whose reach extends far beyond the boundaries of the United States,” Ok got that? Meanwhile the Obama has encouraged Gibson Guitar to out source some of its work to Madagascar.