I’m off to San Francisco on business, so posts may be scarce until next week. Or forever if the pilot screws up. ~Bob
Free PDF Copy of The Coming Collapse of the American Republic.
Hill Poll: Voters willing to see US attack Iran over nuclear weapons
Excerpt: Nearly half of likely voters think the United States should be willing to use military force to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, according to this week’s The Hill Poll. Forty-nine percent said military force should be used, while 31 percent said it should not and 20 percent were not sure. (I wonder what the polls will be after we lose NYC or Washington DC? ~Bob.)
CBO score could blunt momentum for Senate Postal Service reform bill
Excerpt: Supporters of a Senate measure to overhaul the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) operations are pushing back on a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) cost estimate that found the bill would lose $6.3 billion over a decade.
The Flub Watch Never Stops for Obama’s Team
Excerpt: Both moments were perceived by the Obama re-election campaign as another gift from Mr. Romney — now dubbed “the gift that keeps on giving” by some on the Obama team.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: The Global War on Christians in the Muslim World
Excerpt: In recent years the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries. (For those—and, there are some—who think TOJ places too much emphasis on Muslim crimes against Christians and the MSM’s reluctance to report on them and the Obama administration’s flat refusal to acknowledge that crimes have even been committed, this article is from that bastion of left-of-center Obama-supporting thought, Daily Beast. Think about how bad a situation has to get before that could happen. No doubt the NYT will either publish a ringing rebuttal blaming all the world’s troubles on Western, capitalist, and/or Judeo-Christian policies in the next few days, or they’ll just ignore the whole issue, hoping we’ll all be distracted by the Pats losing to the Giants again. Then again, perhaps the finger of the Almighty will crush the NYT building and scatter its people to the four winds. Oops, just day-dreaming, I guess. Ron P.)
Clint Eastwood It's Halftime America - Chrysler Commercial
Super Bowl ad. Given how debt, unemployment and America’s enemies have run up the score in the first half, I hope they are talking about a new quarterback in the locker room. ~Bob.
Great Column: First, Kill All The Burmese Pythons By Jonah Goldberg
Excerpt: This amounts to blanket amnesty for illegal immigrant giant snakes.
The Hell, I say: We nearly wiped out the buffalo in this country because a bunch of guys made money off of buffalo hides. Thousands of years before that, mankind eradicated the woolly mammoth with spears. Spears! Give me five thousand Ted Nugent fans and all the weapons they can carry and the waters of the everglades will run red with Burmese snake blood.
Numbers Don't Lie, Liberals Do By Burt Prelutsky
Excerpt: Republicans are worried sick that the Democrats will be able to use all the nasty sound bites from the GOP debates in the general election. I'm not too concerned for a number of reasons, but the main one is that the GOP will merely have to produce ads in which we show Barack Obama saying, "I'm pledging to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office" and "If I don't get the unemployment rate under 7%, I deserve to be a one-term president."
Bailing an Ocean With a Thimble By George Will
Excerpt: The worst day of Sugar Bear's 55 years was one of the days -- there have been many of them -- when he got out of prison. In the early 1990s, in a prison where persons whose sentences have ended and are being released, and who see those whose sentences are just beginning, he saw one of his sons coming in.
A Battle the President Can't Win By Peggy Noonan
Excerpt: What a faux pas, how inept, how removed from the essential realities of America. Yes, I'm referring to President Obama. But let's do Mitt Romney first. He's taken heavy fire for his interview with CNN's Soledad O'Brien, in which he said, "I'm not concerned about the very poor. Every criticism has been true. It was politically inept, playing into stereotypes about Republicans and about his own candidacy.
Romney rips Obama on birth control, attack on 'religious liberty' http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/208845-romney-crusades-against-obamas-attacks-on-religious-liberty-obama-campaign-fights-back
Excerpt: Mitt Romney launched a petition on Monday against a new birth-control mandate by the Obama administration. Romney blasted the recently announced requirement demanding contraceptive coverage in healthcare plans as part of a series of “attacks on religious liberty” by the administration. “If you’ve had enough of the Obama Administration’s attacks on religious liberty, stand with me & sign the petition,” he wrote on Twitter.
"Hidden" mortgage fee paying for payroll tax cut
Excerpt: Just before Christmas, American workers got a rare gift from Washington politicians - the current payroll tax cut would be extended for two more months.
At the time, both President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner lauded the move to avoid a tax increase for millions of working Americans. But there's something the politicians weren't bragging about - the fact that they're paying for the two-month tax cut with what has turned into a brand new fee on home buyers.
The Week That Was: 2012-02-04 (February 4, 2012)
Excerpt: …[C]limate science as interpreted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is largely a normative science. Critical assumptions used in the models have not been rigorously tested, thus the results are projections, not predictions. These include the assumption that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are the major driver of climate change. The models used by the IPCC failed to predict the current decade-plus long trend of no temperature increase. As Vincent Gray of New Zealand, an IPCC expert reviewer since the beginning, writes: "It is the total absence of satisfactory prediction, instead of the IPCC 'projections' which leads me to state, unequivocally, that there is no scientifically based evidence that climate has been shown to be affected by emissions of trace gases into the atmosphere."
Excerpt: You know we have entered the silly season when a major national debate gets underway over whether people should be given something for free that they could easily pay for out-of-pocket. Take the decision of the Obama administration to force Catholic universities, hospitals and charities to provide health insurance that includes free contraceptives. … What makes this so amazing is that it is déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra might say. Do you remember the death knell for HillaryCare? I bet you can’t.
What's Wrong With the Buffett Rule
Excerpt: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) plans to introduce a "Buffett Rule" bill in the Senate, requiring anybody making over $1 million to pay at least a 30 percent tax rate. This is more than a simple amendment to the existing income tax brackets, as it would also drastically raise taxes on capital gains -- a source of substantial income for millionaires, says Josh Barro, the Walter B. Wriston fellow at the Manhattan Institute. However, the true problems with this policy option are not grounded in a certain point of view, but rather are seen in three objectively observable inefficiencies. First, by failing to treat equally corporate equity and corporate debt, a Buffet rule will further encourage companies to overleverage their positions. (Since few politicians and even fewer voters have a grasp of basic economics, never mind more complex issues, politicians are always willing to win votes by screwing up the economy for the populist-minded voters. Ignorance carries a high premium. ~Bob.)
Thanks goes to the teachers’ unions for giving us these future informed citizens. ~Bob.
Syria crisis: Army steps up Homs shelling
Excerpt: Heavy artillery fire has been rocking Homs, as Syrian troops step up an assault on the restive city. A BBC correspondent there describes almost constant blasts, in the fiercest attack in the 11-month uprising. US President Barack Obama said it was important to resolve the conflict without outside military intervention. (Huh. How come he didn’t feel that way about Libya? ~Bob.)
Conservative Wins Finland Presidential Vote
Excerpt: A former finance minister won Finland's presidential election Sunday and will become the country's first conservative head of state in five decades. (As an honorary Suomalainen—which entitles me to be itsepäinen—I was pleased to see this. My senate district had a large Finnish population. ~Bob.)
Egypt Defies U.S. by Setting Trial for 19 Americans on Criminal Charges
Excerpt: Egypt’s military-led government said Sunday that it would put 19 Americans and two dozen others on trial in a politically charged criminal investigation into the foreign financing of nonprofit groups that has shaken the 30-year alliance between the United States and Egypt. (Heavy bowing and groveling warning. Avert your eyes. ~Bob.)
Qaddafi’s Weapons, Taken by Old Allies, Reinvigorate an Insurgent Army in Mali
Excerpt: In life, he delighted in fomenting insurgencies in the African nations to the south. And in death, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi is doing it all over again. Hundreds of Tuareg rebels, heavily armed courtesy of Colonel Qaddafi’s extensive arsenal, have stormed towns in Mali’s northern desert in recent weeks, in one of the most significant regional shock waves to emanate directly from the colonel’s fall. (You see, Mr. President, when you poke something here, over there…~Bob.)
ACT for American video
Our Government Employees Skip Paying Taxes
Excerpt: This fear, of course, is part of what propels most taxpayers to turn over their hard-earned dollars to the government. But there appears to be one group of people who don’t seem to exhibit the same level of anxiety: our own federal employees.
The IRS just released its “deadbeat” statistics for the year and our employees owe us big time.
Detroit citizens no longer rely on police as self-defense killings skyrocket
Excerpt: Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as citizens in the long-suffering city armed themselves and took matters into their own hands. The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own.
GOP ends NV vote count; Romney on top with 50%
Excerpt: Nevada Republicans have finally finished counting the votes in their Saturday presidential caucuses. As projected, Mitt Romney won handily, finishing with 50 percent. Newt Gingrich was second with 21 percent, edging out Ron Paul who had 19 percent of the vote. Rick Santorum finished last with 10 percent. (Romney is at 49.6%. Will probably get over 50% once all NV GOP votes are tallied, sometime in 2013. -- Larry Sabato)
Excerpt: I don’t understand why he thinks now losing to Romney in 2012 is solely due to Romney’s innate deviousness in a way McCain beating Romney in 2008 was not — given that Romney was about the same in both 2008 and 2012. Gingrich seems oblivious to the fact that McCain’s style and history gave him advantages over Romney’s money and hardball in ways Gingrich’s own proven liabilities apparently do not. (two words: Brokered Convention. ~Bob.)
@iowahawkblog David Burge Tweet
And now all the New York and New England players will return to their homes in income tax-free Florida and Texas.
Obama Seeks New Ways to Insult the American Warrior Community!
Excerpt: While I understand that only a fraction of the population of this nation is directly affected by what you are about to read, I would never-the-less like to remind you that the remainder of the population is affected coincidentally. While the majority of the American population probably never even considered the Armed Forces as a possible career objective, there are those who never considered life without serving their country, in uniform, on a field of combat.
The Hidden Agenda Behind the Media War on Komen
Excerpt: The issue for the media was that the Komen decision could have snowballed, leading to more scrutiny of what Planned Parenthood is actually doing with the money, including federal dollars, it receives. And some of that money goes into the coffers of liberal Democrats running for office this year.
The Fed Votes No Confidence: The prolonged—'emergency'—near-zero interest rate policy is harming the economy. By Charles Schwab
Excerpt: We're now in the 37th month of central government manipulation of the free-market system through the Federal Reserve's near-zero interest rate policy. Is it working?
Business and consumer loan demand remains modest in part because there's no hurry to borrow at today's super-low rates when the Fed says rates will stay low for years to come. Why take the risk of borrowing today when low-cost money will be there tomorrow?
Excerpt: Talking to The Express Tribune at the police station, Ismaeel said he did not believe he had committed a crime. “My wife and her sister (his brother’s wife) had loose morals. They deserved death. I can’t let my wife talk to other men,” he said. He said he had caught Samina (his wife) talking to a man over cell phone. (Another darling for the leftist “all cultures are equally valid” crowd. ~Bob.)
Father: Beheading plot suspect a dedicated teacher
Excerpt: Nevine Aly Elshiekh is a dog lover who teaches children with developmental disabilities. She is college-educated, well-respected by her neighbors and has no criminal record, not even a speeding ticket. Family members and friends find it impossible to reconcile that woman with the zealot federal prosecutors say paid a hit man to behead three government informants from a recent terrorism trial.
Teen mistress addresses relationship, pol's Cold War fears in memoir
Excerpt: She always called him “Mr. President” — not Jack. He refused to kiss her on the lips when they made love. But Mimi Alford, a White House intern from New Jersey, was smitten nonetheless. She was in the midst of an 18-month affair with the most powerful man in the world, sharing not only John F. Kennedy’s bed but also some of his darkest and most intimate moments. (Damn. Thinking of Interns makes me miss politics. ~Bob.)
This Embarrassing Romney Photo Is Rocketing Around The Internet But It Is A Fake
When you spread lies, you discredit yourself and aid your target. ~Bob.
@MensHumor Joke
I bet Michael Vick watched the Puppy Bowl last night to do some scouting for next season.
Chump State Workers Just Keep Feeding the Pension Thieves By Frank Keegan http://www.hawaiireporter.com/chump-state-workers-just-keep-feeding-the-pension-thieves/123
Excerpt: Every year state politicians loot the pensions of more than 17 million public workers and retirees to "balance" budgets, yet those workers keep putting the looters back into office while fighting the few who try to head off this $4-trillion national economic catastrophe. A look at the latest U.S. Census data shows that over four years the geniuses running state pensions lost almost 20 percent — $552 billion in total investment value — and blew more than $600 billion of income needed to pay benefits. They lost $4.33 for every dollar public workers "contributed."
Worth Reading: Are You ‘Them!’?
I love Hanson. –Ron P. Excerpt: This is proving to be a Manichean administration. It sees the world in terms dark and light, of us/them, and then must create the necessary binaries to divide and demonize—so strange given this was the narrative of the Obama campaign against Bush, not so strange given the Chicago origins. After three years, I realize that lots of us are on the downside of about every one of the president’s new Mason-Dixon lines. Yet I am not a one-percenter like Jon Corzine or Nancy Pelosi.
The U.S. Constitution: A Reader
Fisker Auto’s Delaware Project ‘Delayed’ as Energy Department Freezes Loan
Excerpt: Fisker Automotive Inc., a recipient of U.S. loans to develop electric cars, said it “temporarily” stopped work on developing a plant in Wilmington, Delaware, after the Energy Department froze access to its credit line. Fisker, which fell behind schedule on selling its first car in the U.S., fired 26 people in Wilmington, it said in an e- mail.
Anti-Scott Brown Rethink PAC backed by Massachusetts teachers & service workers unions
Excerpt: The Rethink political action committee, which has come out swinging against Republican Sen. Scott Brown in his reelection bid, has done so with the financial backing of two large unions. The Rethink PAC, which has focused on the incumbent senator through its "Rethink Brown" project, has taken aim at the his voting record since late 2011. It has funded two TV commercials and a recent project it described as an "extensive report" on Brown's record.
Green pee
Excerpt: A Florida school has learned a hard lesson about green technology and green math. The plan was to save water, and the planet, by installing waterless urinals in the boys washrooms. Each green urinal would save the school $100 per year in water utility bills. But things went wrong. (Ironically, the school actually did save water. What they lost was money, sanitation, and credibility. The voters will probably have something to say about the school’s failure to keep focused on the proper goals in the correct priority. Ron P.)
Controller: State to run out of cash in March without action
Excerpt: California will run out of cash by early March if the state does not take swift action to find $3.3 billion through payment delays and borrowing, according to a letter state Controller John Chiang sent to state lawmakers today. The announcement is surprising since lawmakers previously believed the state had enough cash to last through the fiscal year that ends in June.
Status Update on UVA/Mann FOIA
Excerpt: UVA effectively admitted they gave the emails to Mann and in their most recent motion and legal memorandum they argue we are trying to do an “end run” to obtain them from Mann instead of UVA. In light of UVA’s delaying tactics and on the basis of this new information, we are going on the attack. Hence our motion and memorandum of law. We ask the court to find that UVA waived their right to keep the emails secret and ask the court to order UVA to hand them over to us. (UVa—a publicly supported institution—has successfully not complied with the Virginia FOI laws for 13 months so far. The amount of money UVa has spent on this effort has to be in 7 digits by now. Since they have already shared the information with an academic and economic competitor, what could justify this expense if there is nothing to hide in the emails? Or, being publicly supported, they may simply feel the state’s taxpayers don’t need the money for any other use; they are “entitled” to do it. If UVa loses, as I suspect it will, the Virginia Attorney General will have a field day with this. Ron P.)
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Robert A. Hall
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