I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article. Help your friends and relatives stay informed by passing the digest on.
Worth Reading: While Obama Dithers
Excerpt: Real decisions have to be made with limited information by people whose crystal balls are cloudy. And those decisions need to be made when they can still affect the outcome of events. A Perfect Plan, decided after the action is over, is useless. A timely decision that is only approximately correct, but that is made in time to impact the outcome favorably, is worth at least 1,000 Perfect Plans that are all made too late to change anything. (Ron “Count” Pittenger is one of my longest-suffering friends, a Marine comrade since 1964, a fine writer, a once-great folk singer, and a frequent contributor to this blog. He was even with me the night I ended up in the Navy Shore Patrol drunk tank, but we got separated, and he got away. I shouldn’t have had the 15th drink.)
The sound bite that’s somehow not haunting Obama
Excerpt: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”
The Watchdogs: City Hall hired 139 ex-cons in two years
Cons with clout. They’ll fit right in, here in Blagobamaville. Giving them a second chance means turning away a non-felon looking for a first chance. ~Bob. Excerpt: One of them smuggled cocaine from Jamaica about a decade ago. Another was a carjacker. A third was convicted in the shooting of two Chicago cops in the 1970s, hitting one of them in the face. They are among 139 people who got hired by the City of Chicago over the past two years despite having been convicted of crimes. That’s according to a list of all of the city’s hires of ex-cons in 2009 and 2010 obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. Mayor Daley has said ex-offenders deserve a second chance and has made that his policy at City Hall. Those hired under that policy include one person convicted of a crime who’d been on the “clout list” that was made public during the trial of Daley’s former patronage chief, Robert Sorich. Sorich went to prison after being convicted in federal court in 2006 of overseeing an illegal hiring scheme that gave city jobs and promotions to people with clout. “Of course I needed clout to get on,” acknowledged the ex-con, speaking only on the condition of anonymity.
Ms. Napolitano has set low standards for herself.