Radicalization of Dem lawmakers surprises COMMUNISTS

but not Tea Partiers.

Our president: lightning in a bottle

  Our president traveled to Brazil the other day, bragging about the American taxpayer investment in the oil industry in Brazil.

  While on one hand we have a wholesale destruction of the American oil industry, we're all happy to know that we're investing in the oil industry in Brazil and looking forward to being great customers of Brazil, furthering our foreign oil dependency rather than using American taxpayer dollars to build the American oil industry.

  So all that crap about being concerned about global warming and greenhouse gases really doesn't mean squat, since all, ALL the people claiming it have bigger carbon footprints than any of us out here in the hinterlands. 

  I don't want to hear one more admonition to unplug my phone charger while at work if they can't at least fly coach once in a while or maybe even conduct Skype interviews.

  But don't worry.

  Captain Lightning is here, oh he who will turn back the tides, slow the oceans, the Planet Healer.

  We have a guy named Barack Hussein Obama in the White House, who recently commented that he's "lightning in a bottle."

"The first time around it's like lightning in a bottle. There's something special about it, because you're defying the odds. And as time passes, you start taking it for granted that a guy named Barack Hussein Obama is president of the United States. But we should never take it for granted."

  Believe us.

  We don't take you for granted.

  We're eager to open the lid on that bottle and let you out.

Pension protesters are unrealistic-duh

  Thousands of union supporters hit the streets of Los Angeles, we're told.   
  Demonstrators appeared, yet again, in Madison, Wisconsin.
  They're protesting the loss of jobs and/or the possible decrease in pay and benefits, not to mention union busting.
  They want their pensions.
  It's hard to believe that so many people cannot see beyond their own immediate needs to save the future.
  Investors discusses the dangerous territory Florida is in and the measures being suggested to boost the returns, maintain the integrity of the funds:

The decision to avoid the extra upfront expense was, in effect, a government decision to borrow each dollar at a 7.75% rate, says American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Andrew Biggs. [SNIP]

Though Gov. Scott sought the study on the impact of lower return assumptions, he's not proposing a cut in Florida's assumption. The point was to show how much taxpayer money is at risk and to back his pension reform push. He wants 401(k) plans for new public employees and to require current staff to contribute 5% of payroll to their pensions.

  They may have to pay 5% of their salary for their pensions. Wisconsin union members were worried about having to pay 5% also.
  Note that in Ohio teachers' and state workers' pension plans are funded by 10% of the worker's salary, soon to be boosted to at least 13%. Employers contributed 14%.
  In California, employees have had a great deal in the past. At Calpensions:

The government employer pension contribution often is much higher than the employee rate. For most state workers the employer currently contributes 17 percent of pay and the employee 8 percent, changed from a 20-5 split by a recent labor agreement

  An increase in pension contributions will definitely hurt, considering how much it costs to live in California and all the, uh hum, non-contributing individuals who draw benefits from the state.
  But the truth is that thousands of government pensions are underfunded. 
  Make no mistake. 
  Let me be perfectly clear. 
  From the Washington Examiner, which declares that union members aren't being told the truth about their pensions (as if the truth would make a difference to the protesters):

Almost half of the nation’s 20 largest unions have pension funds that federal law classifies as “endangered” or in “critical” condition due to being underfunded, an Examiner review of federal actuarial reports shows.

Pensions with less than 80 percent of the assets needed to cover present and projected liabilities are considered “endangered,” while those that fall below a 65 percent threshold are classified as “critical” under the Pension Protection Act of 2006.

    From Northwestern/Kellogg and Reuters, we learn that many pension plans have rosy earnings projections which have enabled administrators to put off reform; the tsunami is coming.

Rauh estimates taxpayers will bear a large share of the financial burden of the $3 trillion in unfunded legacy liabilities associated with state pension plans. 

“This hidden debt will eventually force states and localities to choose among the unpalatable options of cutting services, raising taxes, attempting to reduce benefits owed to public employees, defaulting on other obligations, or seeking a federal bailout,” Rauh testified.  

  So they march in the cities, crying about changes  to their earning power and pensions. Can they retire at 52? Can they have the cadillac health care plans? 
  (The best example of what unions WON'T do for the country, particularly construction, can be found here.)
  Who's being mature here? Who's looking to the future? Who's more concerned about pension plans, the protesters or those trying to save the plans?
  Seems like if you really cared about the future, not only yours but your children's, you'd want the money to be there when you're old.
  Let me be perfectly clear.
  There's no more money.

Breitbart, Breitbart, Breitbart

  As the Tea Party movement has rolled over the country, one of the most vocal supporters of the movement has been Andrew Breitbart, who began speaking out vociferously against the guerilla tactics of the left. In fact, Breitbart is using many of the same tactics the left has used for many years. 
  A few days ago, Breitbart, who helped create Huffington Post, was dropped from the front page of the Huffpo, with much scolding and pious declarations of objectivity because of some nasty comments he made about Van Jones at the Daily Caller.
  Patterico has a rundown of the situation, which really does reveal the hypocrisy of the Huffpo:

Andrew Breitbart has been among the more unfairly vilified people on the Internet in recent memory, and is a perpetual target for those on the left who wish to silence speech. Their commonly used tactics include distortions, lies, and attempting to squelch speech by hitting their enemies in the pocketbook — such as mounting boycotts, contacting employers, and circulating petitions to influence the publishers of content they don’t like. In Andrew’s case, Media Matters for America and similar goons got Andrew banned from ABC News commentary on election night. They have succeeded in booting him off of the HuffPo front page. In every case, the attacks reveal a blatant double standard which is their hypocritical hallmark.

  Now the right is fluttering with excitement and salivating at the prospect of dragging up every nasty thing any front page Huffpo writer has ever posted. 
  Lots of commenting on this topic this a.m.
  From the Daily Caller:

his is great news for fans of comedy, because now people get to dig up examples of all the HuffPo front-pagers who’ve indulged in vicious ad hominem attacks over the years. Nelson follows up with a good recap of ad hominems by HuffPo contributors like John Cusack (Republicans are “a league of bastards”; Iraq war supporters are “human scum”), Alec Baldwin (Cheney is a “lying, thieving Oil Whore”), and others. Mickey Kaus looks at HuffPo writer Jason Linkins, who by their own rules should be thrown off the front page. And of course, Breitbart’s Big Journalism site is getting in on the action, pledging to help HuffPo enforce their “ad hominem” rule and providing evidence of such from none other than Van Jones. Remember this one?

  Lots of links at the articles. What fun.
  A cause dear to Breitbart is the Pigford scandal, in which numerous people showed up to claim they had been discriminated against by the government as black farmers. So many people claimed discrimination that the number exceeded the number of black farmers actually farming in the US.
  Corruption has been exposed on a deep government level, exacerbated by Obama's extending the deadline from the initial lawsuit. Each person "discriminated" against will receive $50,000 taxpayer dollars. 
  John Stossel had an amazingly awful special on this last night about freeloaders. He interviewed the lawyer Pires who represented many of these people (and who benefited financially from the "arrangement") who said something like "The majority of people won't cheat and wouldn't want to falsify a federal form." He also said something like white men cannot be discriminated against and didn't need any help. This lawyer is white with flowing white locks. And, needless to say, a very smug attitude.
  Fox News has a little article about the "Real Shirley Sherrod Scandal" here:

Want to get a check from the government for $50,000? If you’re black and willing to say you once “attempted to farm,” the money could be yours.

Why? In the 80’s and 90’s, some Black farmers were allegedly discriminated against by the Agriculture Department. Department loan officers supposedly did the opposite of what Shirley Sherrod was accused of:   they granted government-subsidized farm loans to whites but not to blacks.

  Oh, and Rand Paul?
  Don't run for president. Please. 
  Get some experience first.
  We have someone in office now who has no experience with leadership.
  It hasn't been a good feeling for us out here in the hinterlands.

Obama is awesome

  At last I'm able to articulate it. 
  Obama is awesome.
  We all, of course, knew that Obama was awesome when he was elected. He promised to roll back the tides, after all. 
  Someone said the other day that he had realized that much of what was the hype of Obama's election was really more like a cult.
  Certainly that creepy video those movie stars made repeating his name prayerfully over and over was cultish. 
  Others are still trying to hang on to their dream. In fact, it's really funny to see them justify action in Libya (He's a terrible man! He tortures people! It's a humanitarian mission!) when they couldn't see Iraq that same way. Instead, Iraq, a mission which took 18 months to put together and whose mission was clearly defined, was an abomination against mankind, a trick offered by Bush to invade an Arab country for the sake of oil.
  Huh.
  Really?
  Okay, if you've been anywhere on the web today, you've already seen this, but we'll see how this shakes out.

A third war on a Muslim country

  Over at AOL "news" is an article about our current "kinetic military action." 
  Are our military leaders so naive that they didn't know this would happen?

Lines of authority were unclear Thursday night, but it appeared the NATO decision sets up dual command centers and opens the door to confusion and finger-pointing. U.S. commanders would presumably be chiefly responsible for ensuring that the NATO protective flights do not conflict with planned combat operations under U.S. command.

  I think not. 
  I think we can figure out who's the problem here, as the AOL "news" article notes that nobody wants control of the "kinetic military action" taking place in Libya. 
  Apparently the "allies" see this as war.
  Huh. Imagine that. 
  We bomb a country and some people confuse it with war.
  What rubes.
  We're definitely not at war because we don't have troops on the ground there.
  Oops.
  Well, except for the Marines.
  And the Illinois National Guard.
  National. Guard.
  Yeah. This sounds like a formula for success.
  Meanwhile the horror of the thing starts to creep into consciousness.
  They really don't know what the hell they're doing.

Principles rooted in sand

  The Daily Beast has a predictable hit piece on Michelle Bachmann today. 
  Let's imagine the liberal warroom for defending liberal candidates for president

Har, har, har. 

Another conservative (insert sexual slur for female here. Refer to Bill Maher vocabulary.) running for president?

We know how to deal with (sexual slur accompanied by demeaning adjective).

We put a few articles in online magazines about how stupid she is. We already got Chris Matthews on it; he's on top of every conservative female already. Harharhar.

She's good looking, too, so that'll make this easier. We'll make obscene remarks, snickering about her (insert sexual slur) and her (sexual slur).

  Ain't we funny? The Daily Beast author takes great glee in playing up a supposed spelling error by Bachmann, mentioning only in passing her twenty three foster children, in addition to her five biological children, mocking her son for his belief in his mother.
  We can flail all we want against liberal duplicity and hypocrisy; it won't change anything.
  The important thing to remember is that liberal beliefs are rooted in sand. Whichever tidal wave that comes along will whoosh those beliefs to the next beach, principles be damned.
  Anti war? Meh. When it works for me.
  Anti women? Meh. No problem.
  Anti big spender? Horrors.
  Just like the duplicitous wording our arugula president employs to invade other countries, principles are needed only to defend whichever position the wind has blown us to.

Great idea! Let's meter and tax driving

  Figuring we don't pay enough in gas taxes (and ignoring the fact that Obama's budget suggests that we start paying an additional 25 cents a gallon in tax, rising to 40 cents in a few years), the feds are exploring the idea of attaching some kind of little robot monster to all our cars to monitor how many miles we drive and then assessing us for it. 
  Note how some of the extremely intelligent commenters on the page of this article get down and nasty about truckers having to pay more. Apparently it doesn't occur to these bozos that that cost will be passed on to them, as truckers are merely transporting goods everyone's going to buy. Hey, truckers are just family guys on the road, wishin' they were home.
  Over at The Hill:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) this week released areport that said taxing people based on how many miles they drive is a possible option for raising new revenues and that these taxes could be used to offset the costs of highway maintenance at a time when federal funds are short.

The report discussed the proposal in great detail, including the development of technology that would allow total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) to be tracked, reported and taxed, as well as the pros and cons of mandating the installation of this technology in all vehicles.

  Federal gas tax is 18.6 cpg, while Ohio's state fuel tax is 26 cpg, one of the higher taxes in the nation. 

The road not taken

  There are some pretty incredible photos over at the Daily Mail of a Japanese road that was utterly destroyed in the recent events and the way it looks now, six days later. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a trip over there.
  If you've ever waited for a road repair around here (or other states), you know it's months, if not up to a year, to repair a road like this, including all the fat guys standing around watching each other not work. 
  Daily Mail:

The picture of gaping chasms in a Japanese highway demonstrated the power of the March 11 earthquake.

Now the astonishing speed of reconstruction is being used to highlight the nation’s ability to get back on its feet.

Work began on March 17 and six days later the cratered section of the Great Kanto Highway in Naka was as good as new. It was ready to re-open to traffic last night.

  One word: union.

We have met the enemy and he is us

  A name from the past has come back to haunt us. Jamie Gorelick, one of the most devious incompetent individuals from the Clinton administration, is being considered for the head of, wait for it, the FBI. Instapundit has a roundup of her grievances, including the sweetheart loan, the encouragement to lend the subprime loans leading to the bank crashes, and the creation of the infamous law that is said to have enabled 9/11.
  Sounds great.
  We wondered for two years whether the problem in the White House was incompetence or evil. Now we know it's a terrific combination of both.
  Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, the fight against the union busting bill is taking a longer view in the race for Supreme Court. Two justices are fighting for a seat that will flip the court from a 4-3 conservative majority. Millions of dollars are pouring into this single race, as the unions are figuring this is their way to nullify the law that has been passed (but not yet published through shenanigans). If they can't do it through elections, they try to do it through the courts. This race has become blatantly political and it isn't about justice anymore; it's about the unions. The WSJ:

A memo written by liberal groups explains that the left's strategy is to win this race and then "challenge in the courts," nearly every budget reform that Mr. Walker and the Republican majority in the legislature tries to enact. It also appears that if the court challenge to the collective bargaining bill goes all the way to the Supreme Court, this would happen after the April 5th election. That would mean that if Mr. Prosser loses, the votes might no longer be there to uphold the new law.

  And why not have the court fix your problems? 
  Professor Jacobsen deals with the issue of judicial activism in Wisconsin here:

The issue goes to the heart of separation of powers, because Judge Sumi effectively prevented the legislature from making law.  This is quite extraordinary, and contrary to prior Wisconsin precedent.

It is one thing for a court to rule on the legality of a law; it is quite something else for a court to prevent the law from being made.

Think of it this way in terms of the Obamacare health care mandate.  The law came into effect, and now courts are ruling on the constitutionality of the law.  Had a judge felt it was warranted, a judge could have issued an injunction preventing implementation of the law -- but no one ever suggested that a court preemptively should have interfered in the legislative process and issued an injunction preventing Obama from signing the law, or the clerks of the House and Senate from taking whatever ministerial steps they take to pass the law along to the President.

  Unlike the health care law which was extremely unpopular and opposed by many taxpayers, a smart a@# judge in New Jersey has just told Governor Christie that he can't, wait for it, cut the budget with regard to schools.
  In fact, the governor was told by this judge to, wait for it, spend more on schools, even though the state is flat busted broke. 
  Here's a link to a nasty little piece about the subject.
  Take a look at what happened in Portugal when opposition parties would not pass the debt reform the prime minister was trying to pass. The prime minister quit. Refuting the big spenders costs a great deal in money and capital. The entitlement mentality is so entrenched that it takes a giant to pull it out by its roots.
  In Ohio, Governor Kasich is running into a buzz saw of public disapproval as he tries to right the ship of state. 
  If you're unfamiliar with SB5 (but how could you be?), Karl Rove has the background of what SB5 will do to state and local government employees, read this article at Rove.com:

Ohio would limit bargaining on health insurance and reduce sick leave and holidays to what's allowed for nonunion government employees. Wisconsin has no similar provision.

Public employees in Ohio wouldn't be able to negotiate on hours, discipline issues, transfers, equipment and outsourcing of services, staffing levels, and teacher-student ratios—all areas Wisconsin's law doesn't address. Police, firefighters and other public safety personnel would be covered by Ohio's law. They are exempt in Wisconsin.

  And, yes, while Wisconsin is fighting the big one, Ohio's quietly going about its business (with a few loudmouths in Columbus protesting) and doing more to union bust than Wisconsin.
  But Gov. Kasich's popularity rating is suffering. The Governor responds to the poll by saying he's got 4 years to turn it around, which is true. We just have to pass the bill to see what's in it. Ha.
  Trump towers.
  And Sarah Palin keeps pokin' em in the eye. She seems to be the only one with the intestinal fortitude to say the truth.
  The Midnight Truckin' guys say this: while Democrats derisively call Republicans chicken hawks, the liberal Democrats can now be called hawkish chickens.
  Heh.
  G'day.

An honest liberal

One problem with having strong opinions is that you tend to only see, read and listen to information that agrees with your world view.Many of us do this, primarily because we think a certain way and it seems right to us.
Though Tea Partiers tend to be conservative fiscally,there are generally peaceful divergent opinions on a number of things. This is partly because, IMHO, of the libertarian point of view that seems to be growing stronger every year.
One interesting story that's been developing is that of Lee Stranahan, a liberal who has had his eyes opened from working with Andrew Breitbart, who has worked with Stranahan on Pigford, and also has invited Stranahan to explore life on the right side of the aisle, at least on the web.
Stranahan's been finding things aren't so happy when you stray from the liberal reservation; he's been writing about it. Here's an excerpt from his latest post:

The turning point for me was the Jon Stewart’s Rally To Restore Sanity last year. I
thought that event had significant message that got lost – both liberals and
conservatives need to chill. Stewart said in his closing speech…

Not being able to distinguish between real racists and Tea Party-ers, or real bigots and
Juan Williams or Rick Sanchez, is an insult, not only to those people, but to the
racists themselves who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate.

A civility lesson for escaping politicians

  So what the heck is wrong with politicians? They know cameras are everywhere now, and EVERYONE always has theirs, so why don't they understand how to deal with it?
  Let's face it. Most citizen journalists/Tea Partiers aren't Jessie Watters of Bill O'Reilly pestilence fame. 
  Most citizen journalists are just fairly unskilled communicators, harmless people with cameras wanting a statement and to watch some politician squeaminess on camera so we can all laugh at them on YouTube.
  So what would nullify this intent to make you look stupid, which you do such a fine job of yourself? Well, if the escaping politician would 
1) not hold up their hands to block the camera 
2) would not just keep walking and bobbing like a hunted ferret  
3) not scream obscenities and verbal abuse aka/harrassment at the citizen journalist.
  Also, Mr. and Mrs. Politician, try not to be obviously avoiding the stink of the crowd. 
  Try not to withdraw in repulsion. 
  Try not to act like you're just so busy and important that you can't be bothered to smile and say hi. 
  Try not to act like a criminal escaping the police.
  Here're some things you CAN do.
  Be civil. 
  Stop briefly, smile (you know how to do that since you've practiced it in front of the mirror so often) and say something innocuous like, "Hi! How are you! Thanks for your inquiry but, unfortunately, I'm really rushed right now. I'll be glad to set up a time to talk to you. You can bring your camera too!" 
  Then hand the sweaty commoner a card with your office number on it and pleasantly, pleasantly beg yourself away from the camera and sweaty commoner. 
  As you go, say something like, "I so appreciate your interest but I have a group of blah blah blah waiting for me! I'm sure you understand!"
  This would look so much better on camera than running as fast as your fat little sandaled feet will carry you, glancing nervously over your shoulder and panting as if Gabriel himself were behind you.
  But wait. 
  Maybe he is.
  Anyway here's an example of how not to face the sweaty commoner with camera:

God bless our troops

Bullying: a cottage industry

  The current push in education is to not only acknowledge bullying, but to lecture on it, to encourage entire communities to get involved in stopping it, to get teachers to trawl Facebook at night for cyber bullying and to make it a frequent topic of conversation amongst school and community members. 
  A Google scan reveals that this push to stop bullying, started by George W. Bush and continued by the current administration, has spawned a cottage industry of sympathetic advisors, psychologists and former educators who get paid an enormous amount of money to develop materials that identify bullying ("teasing, being excluded, ignored"), write surveys and school educators in the perils of bullying.
  A 2007 Daily Mail UK article cautions against too much coddling:

Police officers warned this year that a target-chasing culture is forcing them to make 'easy' arrests for offences such as bullying.

In one example, a child in Kent was arrested for throwing a slice of cucumber from a tuna sandwich at a classmate.

The latest Government guidance to schools urges heads to record all instances of bullying and report the findings to their local council.

But Mr Gill, who led the first Government-backed review of children's play areas in 2003, warns against mollycoddling children by describing everyday teasing as bullying.

  It's difficult to find that balance today, four years after this article was written. Since the DOJ is threatening to file lawsuits against schools who are unaware of cyber bullying on such social sites as Facebook, schools are now open to more lawsuits from parents who didn't know their kids were being bullied/bullying online any more than the school did but who need someone to blame.
  Why, one might wonder, might the current people in charge be so focused on bullying when the behavior of adult bulliers is being ignored, all across the nation?
  While Claire McCaskill, like John Kerry and his boat, feels no need to pay taxes on her plane and Eric Holder feels it is his duty to promote Ghaddaffi being removed from Libya, people's lives are being threatened, polling places are being stalked, businesses are being crushed, abusive and sexual insults are being hurled and no one on the whole civility side of the aisle feels compelled to ask them to stop, even while they wail about children being bullied.
  The speak civilly advocates feel absolutely uncompelled to stop any of the vile language and activities going on now; ditto the whole bullying thing.
  Let's face it.
  The bullying IS going on, along with law breaking.
  It's the preferred modus operandi for the speak civilly crowd.
  No one's asking to be coddled. No one's asking to be babied.
  It'd just be nice if the bullies would be civil, once in a while, and enforce the law.

The prophets speak: we prefer the clowns

  The story tonight is that, sadly, Glenn Beck seems to be right an awful lot of the time. Viewership has dropped on his Fox show and, indeed, it is difficult to watch with his solemn intonation of "America..." the sky if falling.
  But today Beck revealed a former union organizer's plan to destroy the US economy. At first blush, this would seem to be ridiculous, but when one considers all that has happened in the last two years, somehow it looks like it could be a reality. Well, it IS a reality for the individual planning it, as he has been caught on tape revealing the skeleton of a plan to create chaos. The Blaze has that story, as does the Business Insider.
  Indeed, some of this has already come to pass.
  Somehow this all seems to fit in with the anonymous Ulsterman's anonymous White House Insider's latest tale, which claims that Obama is clueless, under the control of Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama, who are the powerhouse progressives who haven't lived outside their own sheltered environments to really know how the world around them actually works. In fact, everything they do really IS oriented toward the progressive cause promoted by a cast of disreputable America hating characters. 
  Here's a link and some of the narration. We make no claim to its veracity; it is interesting, however, how it mirrors some of the current criticism about "strong women" controlling the President of the United States:

Most Americans have no idea who Bill Daley is. I’m telling you right now he might very well be the guy who is saving this country – and that is no exaggeration. The president…Barack Obama… is a puppet. Knowing that requires you figure out who’s pulling the-expletive- strings, right? That was almost entirely Valerie Jarrett, with some help from the First Lady. That’s why you see Obama trying so hard to project this masculinity, right? This blackness thing, right? Despite the fact he grew up raised by a white family for the most part – upper middle class Hawaii ain’t exactly the hood, right? (Laughs) Why does somebody do that? It’s a cover. It’s to hide the weakness inside them, and let me tell you, Barack Obama is one weak, -expletive-. So now we have Bill Daley in there pushing back against the bullshit progressive crap of Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama.

  The WHI claims that "Obama understands none of [what's going on]," which isn't hard to believe, considering what we've been watching the most brilliant man in the world doing in the the last few months. 
  This seems to be as reasonable an explanation as any other.
  It certainly would be easier to just laugh at the clowns.
  It's tough when they're proven right.

Ledeen was right: the boy president tries to prove himself

  We noticed Michael Ledeen's concerned column the other day. On March 16, Michael Ledeen wrote the following at Pajamas Media in an article called Faster, Please! What would a Desperate Wimp Do?:

And so I asked myself, is there a point at which a president realizes that wimps don’t get reelected? And if so, what might he do to shatter that image? For the next two years I worried that Carter might overreact to some international crisis in order to make folks see that he was really a tough guy.

It never happened, to my relief. But I’m starting to have the same worries about Obama

  So here we are, fairly uncertain what our mission is in Libya, concerned about who's actually leading the military endeavor and wondering what the heck we're doing sending the Illinois National Guard over to Libya.
  So is this it, though some have criticized the latest military action as The One being nagged pressed into action by three women. 
  Most Americans haven't had time to process the current military situation of bombing Libya; at first blush, it seems the right thing to do. But further examination reveals the chaos behind the scenes as there seems to be no plan in place.
  For example, what do we want? 
  Do we want Ghaddaffi removed? The government say no.
  If not, what do we expect to achieve by bombing the country? 
  Just putting the country on notice as to not torture its citizens? But that is current policy for Ghaddaffi. Do we honestly think that is going to change, without other countries' intervention and troops on the ground?
  What is most striking about recent developments are the images coming out of the Obama vacation to Latin America. 
  In another example of complete disconnect and lack of sensitivity, the President of the United States issued the order to bomb a country and then frolicked off to another country, where pictures of him enjoying himself are everywhere.
  How does this look?

"Hey, I just gave the order to bomb a third Muslim country!"

Obama's a reluctant warrior-bwahaha

  And the reasoning for that would be...what?
  The vacation off to Latin America?

  The soccer playing in the face of tragedy?
  The complete and utter lack of concern about the well being of any of the Libyans? 

  The shipping off of the Illinois National Guard to Libya?

  Now The One's defenders are scrambling to "explain" Obama's rationale.         
 They're trying to justify that Obama, who rushed into this, is a "reluctant warrior" but Bush, who had the consensus of numerous nations and the UN, not to mention John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, was a "cowboy."

90 sick days a year?

  I, I, I don't understand this.
  It appears Oshkosh teachers have given up their ninety sick days a year?
  Ninety.
  This is difficult to understand, given that most school districts have a school calendar of 185 school days per year.
  So how is it possible that anyone negotiated ninety sick days a year, presumably to either not come to work or to be given cash when they retire?
  This is pretty incredible. One wonders what other secrets are hidden in those contracts.
  This is from The Northwestern:

-Teachers would no longer receive 90 sick days per year. Instead, they would receive 10 sick days per year that could accumulate up to 90 days. Unused days would not be paid back.

  Ninety. 
  Ninety.
  Reform was needed.
UPDATE: Due to a complaint that this charge was bogus, here is the actual link to the contract agreement:

Article 20 of the collective bargaining agreement summarizes the employee rights to use income protection “sick leave.” All teachers shall be guaranteed ninety (90) teaching days of income protection for each teaching contract year in the event of absences due to sickness or disability. Such income protection shall be prorated for teachers teaching less than full time. Absences of illness in the immediate family shall be covered by this provision, provided such absences are caused by critical illness, a sudden call for suspected critical condition, the necessity of taking a member of the family to the hospital, or the making of arrangements for care due to sudden illness, but shall not apply to cases where the employee’s presence is required as a nurse, or as a caretaker, or to provide for the operation of the family due to sickness or an accident in the family. The Board reserves the right to send an employee to a physician at district expense for an examination when deemed necessary. Such teacher will submit to such examination unless refusal is based on bona fide religious convictions. Teachers shall not continue to draw daily income protection benefits after they become eligible for benefits under the district’s Long Term Disability Plan; however, any unused days shall remain in the teacher’s personal account. ("Personal account" defined as being those unused income protection days remaining of the original ninety (90) days.)