Monday, April 30, 2012

When is it up?

Keith Koffler at White House Dossier reports:

President Obama today acknowledged to workers and union officials at the Building and Construction Trades Department Legislative Conference in Washington that he has no skills with a hammer.

“I just barely can hammer a nail into the wall,” Obama said. “My wife is not impressed with my skills when it comes to fixing up the house. Fortunately right now I’m in a rental, so I don’t end up having to do a lot of work”

And the lease runs out on January 20th.

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Addendum:  For all those coming over from the link at Pundit & Pundette, thanks for stopping by.  Hope you find some interesting items here and make this a regular stop on your blogging trail.   You can reach the main page of the blog by clicking HERE.

If I Wanted America to Fail

This has been making the rounds, but for those who have missed it up til now - from Free Market America.



This is a message that needs to be repeated again and again. Because we have a president that wants a lesser America.

Quote of the Day

From a post at House of Eratosthenes:
But it’s wrong to spend real money to feel smug. There’s a reason we don’t have a Prius…
Spoken like a true market conservative.

Firing blanks?

Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News posts this report on the CBS News Investigates website:

For more than a year, CBS News has been investigating the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms' "Fast and Furious" operation and related cases that also employed the controversial tactic of "gunwalking." With Justice Department officials refusing all interview requests to date, CBS News requested numerous public documents through the Freedom of Information Act.

So far, all of the requests that have been answered have been denied in part or in full.

This week, we received a partial response to a request made more than a year ago. It asked for communications involving "Project Gunrunner," the umbrella program for Fast and Furious, from 2010 through April 2011. Specifically, it sought any communications to which any of the following top Justice officials were a party: Attorney General Eric Holder; Lanny Breuer, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division; Kevin Carwile, chief of the Capital Case Unit; and Deputy Assistant Attorney Generals Bruce Schwarz and Kenneth Blanco.

The response includes mostly-blank pages.

Attkisson has been the one MSM reporter who has doggedly stuck to working the Fast and Furious story.  Obama's DoJ, including Eric Holder, has been trying everything to make it go away.  Maybe those FOIA responses are written in invisible ink.  Or maybe the other things blank are the brains of those thinking they can make this all go away.  Remember the lesson of Watergate -- the coverup is always turns out worse than the original act.

Hat tip to The Lonely Conservative for the pointer.

Seriously??

Jonah Goldberg, author of the new book Tyranny of Cliches, posted this on National Review Online's The Corner:
I'm Embarrassed

So, I was on Piers Morgan’s show on CNN tonight. It was a shameful spectacle. He pretended to be a serious interviewer and I spent far too long pretending he was one too. My apologies to everyone who tuned in. I will have a more comprehensive response tomorrow on the Tyranny of Cliches blog.
Now, if everyone else on the right will come to that same conclusion.  And apply it to most of the rest of the MSM.

Behar, Beckel and The Five

A fun clip from The Five:




Gutfeld throws out a save, and Beckel gets the escape. One of my favorite shows, along with Red Eye.

One good zinger from the WHCD

John Hinderaker at Powerline has negative thoughts on the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Events like last night’s always leave me feeling in need of a shower. Partly it is because there some truth to Kimmel’s joke, after noting that the room was full of politicians, members of the media and celebrities, that “Everything that is wrong with America is here in this room.” Partly is is due to the sense that everyone involved in the event is pretending. The politicians pretend to engage in self-deprecation that shows they don’t take themselves too seriously. The comics pretend that they are just trying to be funny, lampooning politicians impartially in search of laughs. But, even though some of the lines are indeed funny, the premise of the event is fundamentally false. In fact, politicians, comedians and even the celebrities present are pursuing an agenda that is both self-aggrandizing and political. That is why, I think, such events always leave me feeling unclean.

I have to agree to some degree.  It's just another form of the usual logrolling.   But there was one other good line from Kimmel that had to skewer both Obama and the media.

“Even some of your Democrats think you’re a pushover Mr. President,” said Kimmel. “They would like to see you stick to your guns and if you don’t have any guns, they would like to see you ask Eric Holder to get some for you.”

You see, the elephant in the room is Fast and Furious.  Eventually, this will all come out, to devastating effect on Obama.  The MSM is busy ignoring it, knowing how bad it could be for The One.  At least Kimmel knows. 

More Breitbart

A followup to our previous post on Andrew Breitbart's memory.  From outside the White House Correspondents Dinner.


I like it.  Never let them forget that we are out there.

Green is good for the environment

Green energy....it's good for the environment!  Well, isn't that what they tell you.

Perhaps not quite so.  From San Francisco's CBS Television website:

Three months ago, CBS 5 caught Solyndra tossing millions of dollars worth of brand new glass tubes used to make solar panels. Now the bankrupt solar firm, once touted as a symbol of green technology, may be trying to abandon toxic waste.

It’s a tedious process. Slowly but surely, the shattered remains of brand new solar panel tubes head to a recycling plant in Hayward.

Meanwhile the next phase of the company’s liquidation is under way. It involves getting rid of all the heavy metals left inside the building that were used to make the panels.

The Fremont Fire Department’s Jay Swardenski oversees the cleanup. He said some materials, such as cadmium, are toxic, and hard to dispose of.

“They don’t degrade at all, so we want to make sure we don’t allow these materials to get into the environment,” he said.

It’s not just the leftover hazardous materials, but also the machinery used to apply them to the glass tubes. “Certainly those tools will need to be decontaminated, cleaned up, handled correctly as they are taken apart,” he said.

Swardenski told CBS 5 the disposal process is going smoothly in Fremont, but what about nearby Milpitas?

Solyndra leased a building on California Circle for the final assembly of its solar panels. But the cleanup at the leased building in Milpitas is in limbo, because Solyndra doesn’t want to pay.

CBS 5 found the building locked up, with no one around. At the back, a hazardous storage area was found. There were discarded buckets half filled with liquids and barrels labeled “hazardous waste.”

The building’s owner, a company called iStar, claimed in court documents, “there may be serious environmental, health and safety issues” at the premises. According to the documents, they include, “numerous containers of solvents and chemicals…and processing equipment contaminated with lead.”

“Essentially it looks like they left a pretty big mess behind,” San Jose State Assistant Professor Dustin Mulvaney told CBS 5.

Green? Really? The only green was the color of the taxpayer's money that went down that rat hole.

Thanks to I Own the World for the pointer.

Too much cultural sensitivity

From Gatestone Institute:

The largest university in London plans to impose a ban on the sale of alcohol on campus to accommodate the "cultural sensitivity" of its Muslim students.

London Metropolitan University's Vice Chancellor, Malcolm Gillies, says it would be unwise to "cling" to a "nostalgic" view where the vast majority wants alcohol to be available. Instead, he says that he believes the university should take account of diverging views, namely those of Muslims, who now comprise 20% of the university's 30,000 students.

"Many of our students do come from backgrounds where they actually look on drinking as a negative. We therefore need to rethink how we cater for that 21st-century balance," Gillies declared in an interview. "What we don't want is the tyranny of a majority view," he added.

Gillies' proposals to re-engineer social life on campus have, not surprisingly, generated a mostly negative response from students, many of whom say a ban on alcohol smacks of politically correct pandering run amok.

Muslims, too, are unhappy with Gillies. Far from thanking him for his multicultural activism, Muslims say they are "offended" by his "generalizing about their beliefs."

You see, it doesn't matter.  If you don't abide by their wishes, you are wrong.  And if you do, you are wrong for generalizing.

The article goes on with these gems (among many others):

In Nottingham, the Greenwood Primary School cancelled a Christmas nativity play because it interfered with the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. In Scarborough, the Yorkshire Coast College removed the words Christmas and Easter from their calendar not to offend Muslims. In Scotland, the Tayside Police Department apologized for featuring a German shepherd puppy as part of a campaign to publicize its new non-emergency telephone number.

Meanwhile, in South Yorkshire, an elderly woman in a nursing home died after she suffered a fall and was left lying on the floor bleeding because the Muslim nurse, Abdul Bhutto, said he had to finish his prayers before he could help the woman.

And finally:

At the same time, the British government has spent thousands of pounds of taxpayer money to rebuild prison toilets so that Muslim inmates do not have to use them while facing Mecca. Islam prohibits Muslims from facing or turning their backs on the Kiblah -- the direction of prayer -- when they visit the lavatory. After pressure from Muslim, who claimed they had to sit sideways on prison WCs, the Home Office agreed to turn the existing toilets 90 degrees.

Muslims attending the 2012 Olympic Games in London will be relieved to learn that toilet facilities at London's Olympic Park are being built so they will not have to face Mecca while sitting on the loo.

Heaven help us.  Read the whole story for much, much more.

Thanks to I Own the World for the link.

Missing details

While there is media attention on the situation in Beijing, it might be difficult to know why Chen Guangcheng is a political dissident in China.

From Tim Carney at the Washington Examiner:
Is Chen Guangcheng a rebel without a cause?

Chen Guangcheng is a Chinese “dissident” and a “lawyer” who was jailed by the Chinese government and held in house arrest after his sentence, until he escaped over the weekend, presumably to U.S. custody.

You’ll learn all that from this 1300-word Washington Post story today, but you’ll never learn why the Communist Chinese regime wanted to silence him -- that he has exposed the horrors of China’s one-child policy, including forced abortions and forced sterilizations.

Honestly. Search the article. “Abortion” never appears. Nor does “one-child” “family-planning,” or “sterilization.”

Of the five Post news articles I found discussing Chen, only one of them has the word "abortion."

The Post wasn’t the only one to make this weird omission. CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell doesn’t mention abortion, sterilization, or the one-child policy at all.

Others simply buried this detail, making sure to describe Chen generically as a “legal activist”
Thanks to Pundit & Pundette for the link.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Boot-licker??

There is a lot of party loyalty in the US Congress, but this video clip must be seen.  Australian legislator Bill Shorten gave this interview on Australian Sky TV.



I love the questioning.

"I haven't seen what she said, but let me say, I support what it is that she said."

"Hang on, you haven't seen what she said?"

"But I support what my prime minister said, so."

"But what's your view?"

"My view is what the prime minister's view is."

"Surely you must have your own view on this Bill Shorten?"

"No."

and that ending....

"I support what our prime minister has said."

"But you don't know what that is?"

"I'm sure she's right."

Again, you can't make this stuff up.  Nice to see we haven't got a lock on stupid politicians.

Hat tip to the Gateway Pundit.

Breitbart is Here

As you might notice, we proudly keep alive the memory of, and especially the inspiration from Andrew Breitbart.  The Breitbart is Here badge will stay at the top of the OC sidebar for as long as we are around.

Here's a new music video to the memory of Andrew.



Stay through the credits to hear the closing line. One that will resonate in the blogsphere again and again.

Campaigner in Chief

Sure....Osama was killed during his term.  But what Barack Obama can really do is fundraising.  He's more at home on the campaign trail than in the White House.  From the UK Daily Mail:

Barack Obama has already held more re-election fundraising events than every elected president since Richard Nixon combined, according to figures to be published in a new book.

Obama is also the only president in the past 35 years to visit every electoral battleground state in his first year of office.

The figures, contained a in a new book called The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign by Brendan J. Doherty, due to be published by University Press of Kansas in July, give statistical backing to the notion that Obama is more preoccupied with being re-elected than any other commander-in-chief of modern times.

Doherty, who has compiled statistics about presidential travel and fundraising going back to President Jimmy Carter in 1977, found that Obama had held 104 fundraisers by March 6th this year, compared to 94 held by Presidents Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Snr, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush combined.

Since then, Obama has held another 20 fundraisers, bringing his total to 124. Carter held four re-election fundraisers in the 1980 campaign, Reagan zero in 1984, Bush Snr 19 in 1992, Clinton 14 in 1996 and Bush Jr 57 in 2004.
And on our dime.  Air Force One isn't cheap.

Hat tip to The Lonely Conservative.

Schooling the Secretary

Kathleen Sebelius seems to be a nanny scold who wants to impose her social vision on America.  Not that something like the Constitution matters.  Watch Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina school her on the Constitution, religious liberty and constitutional law.



We need more like him in Congress.

The Cool One

American Crossroads has been producing some great ads for this election season.   Enjoy this look at The Cool One.



Share it with your friends.  Especially those who drank the Kool-Aid in 2008.

Hat tip to Pundit & Pundette.

Friday, April 27, 2012

The List

For those of you old enough, you can remember the outcry over Nixon's "Enemies List".  Well, it's back.  No, not Nixon's.  Take three guesses who has that kind of list and the first two guesses don't count.  From Kim Strassel at the Wall Street Journal:
Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check.

Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. His campaign brands you a Romney donor, shames you for "betting against America," and accuses you of having a "less-than-reputable" record. The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.

Are you worried?

Richard Nixon's "enemies list" appalled the country for the simple reason that presidents hold a unique trust. Unlike senators or congressmen, presidents alone represent all Americans. Their powers—to jail, to fine, to bankrupt—are also so vast as to require restraint. Any president who targets a private citizen for his politics is de facto engaged in government intimidation and threats. This is why presidents since Nixon have carefully avoided the practice.

Save Mr. Obama, who acknowledges no rules. This past week, one of his campaign websites posted an item entitled "Behind the curtain: A brief history of Romney's donors." In the post, the Obama campaign named and shamed eight private citizens who had donated to his opponent. Describing the givers as all having "less-than-reputable records," the post went on to make the extraordinary accusations that "quite a few" have also been "on the wrong side of the law" and profiting at "the expense of so many Americans."

.......

The Obama campaign has justified any action on the grounds that it has a right to "hold the eventual Republican nominee accountable," but this is a dodge. Politics is rough, but a president has obligations that transcend those of a candidate. He swore an oath to protect and defend a Constitution that gives every American the right to partake in democracy, free of fear of government intimidation or disfavored treatment. If Mr. Obama isn't going to act like a president, he bolsters the argument that he doesn't deserve to be one. 

We don't have a president.  Will we have one next year?  Read the whole story.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Just like us

The following was posted to a comment thread on IMAO, then reposted as as standalone post.  It seemed to resonate with me, and I hope it dries home an important point.

Maybe Obama can convince people he’s just like them by writing another memoir.”

Yes, Obama’s just a typical American.

It’s a typical American story of a white communist mother who married a drunken, black, anti-American, communist foreigner who already had other wives he didn’t tell her about. Just like the rest of us, Dad left when he was very young to go chase skirts at Harvard before getting kicked out of the university for basically being too annoying. Then Dad was sent out of the country and died in a drunken car accident, just like most of our dads have.

Then, Mom found some even more radical boyfriends who introduced him to even more typical American traditions like killing and eating dogs and continuing his studies of the Muslim religion in typical American Indonesian schools.

Then, just like most Americans, foreigners and anti-American radicals helped him get into Harvard and paid his way before graduating and living in expensive houses bought for him by anti-American radicals with a political agenda.

And so, when you’ve lived to adulthood without ever having a single accomplishment the obvious next step is to write two autobiographies (or, better yet, have someone else ghost write them for you), just like the rest of us do. Then, after finding legal loop-holes to force his opponents out of the race, his fellow Americans voted him into his corrupt state senate.

And, finally, his typical American life climaxed with the backing of George Soros, a billionaire foreigner who made the bulk of his wealth by causing and investing in the downfall of entire countries’ economies, who bought him the presidency.

What average American couldn’t relate to such a person?

And yet already the campaign machinery is making Romney out to be having a strange upbringing and background.  Was it Vince Lombardi for said the best defense is a good offense??

And some music too

Along with the graphic in the previous post, let's have some music from Ray Stevens.




Ray's got a number of politically incorrect (but factually spot on) videos out there, both on his website and on YouTube.  Give him a listen.


The One for Everyone

Nope, not that "The One".  Instead, it's the graphic below.  Stolen from Reaganite Republican, it's the one picture that every voter needs to see before November.  And then again.  And then again.


Share it and pass it around.  The message of the massive debt of the Obama administration is a true Achilles heel for "The One".  And, once again....it's OPM buying votes of favored constituencies.

As Reaganite Republican wrote: " Your credit card's been stolen".


Hat tip to Ace of Spades for the pointer.

Sunday Morning Humor

A couple of funny pictures for your enjoyment:





Saturday, April 21, 2012

The hypocrisy over gas prices

Hypocrisy....Democrats.....go together like a horse and carriage.  No, that's not the song lyric.  But it is the song being sung in Washington and by the MSM.  Give this video a look see.



You know, at some point in time, the Democrats are going to run out of things to blame on George Bush.  But I'm not holding my breath.  In fact, Mrs. OC and I have a running joke.  When something goes wrong at home, or when out, or whatever, we say "It's all George Bush's fault".  And we knowing look at each other and have our own laugh at the MSM spin machine.  Because we know....it's not GWB's fault.

It's actually GHWB's fault.  (Just kidding, not really).

Sunny Saturday

Actually, it's a bit overcast, but here is Sunny with some thoughts on taxes.  And compulsion.




Saturday Steyn

I wish I had a way with words like Mark Steyn.  Probably the greatest gift to American from Canada since hockey (surely better than Celine Dion, but a close race with Leslie Nielsen), Steyn is a delight to read and a joy to listen to.  Some of this thoughts on Columbia, hookers and spending from National Review Online:

Unlike the government of the United States, I can’t claim any hands-on experience with Colombian hookers. But I was impressed by the rates charged by Miss Dania Suarez, and even more impressed by the U.S. Secret Service’s response to them.

Cartagena’s most famous “escort” costs $800. For purposes of comparison, you can book Eliot Spitzer’s “escort” for $300. Yet, on the cold grey fiscally conservative morning after the wild socially liberal night before, Dania’s Secret Service agent offered her a mere $28.

Twenty-eight bucks! What a remarkably precise sum. Thirty dollars less a federal handling fee? Why isn’t this guy Obama’s treasury secretary or budget director? Or, at the very least, the head honcho of the General Services Administration, whose previous director has sadly had to step down after the agency’s taxpayer-funded public-servants-gone-wild Bacchanal in Vegas.

All over this dying republic, you couldn’t find a single solitary $28 item that doesn’t wind up costing at least 800 bucks by the time it’s been sluiced through the federal budgeting process. Yet, in one plucky little corner of the Secret Service, supervisor David Chaney, dog-handler Greg Stokes, or one of the other nine agents managed to turn the principles of government procurement on their head. If the same fiscal prudence were applied to the 2011 Obama budget, the $3.598 trillion splurge would have cost just shy of $126 billion. The feds’ half a billion to Solyndra would have been a mere $18 million. The 823-grand GSA conference on government efficiency at the M Resort Spa & Casino would have come in at $28,805.

Chaney-Stokes 2012! Grope . . . and Change! Red lights, not red ink.
Read the whole story HERE....and smile.  Hat tip to Pundit & Pundette for the pointer.

Taxes are for the other guy

In other posts, I've written about how progressives are all about OPM.  Taxing the money of others.  Using the money of others.  Asserting a moral claim on the money of others.  But when it comes time to pony up their own cash....just ask Tim Geithner, or Kathleen Sibelius, or Al Sharpton.  Now comes news from Massachusetts:

Having criticized her Republican opponent for voting against a millionaires' tax measure, U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren said here Friday that she opted not to pay a voluntary higher tax rate in Massachusetts.

"I paid my taxes, and I did not make a charitable contribution to the state," Warren, who worked with the Obama administration to create the new consumer financial protection bureau, said when asked if she paid a 5.85 percent state income tax instead of the standard 5.3 percent -- a choice given to Massachusetts taxpayers.

The likely Democratic challenger to Republican Sen. Scott Brown told reporters at a press conference that "the key issue" is about "the 'Buffett rule' and whether or not millionaires and billionaires ought to pay their fair share in taxes, or should they be permitted to have a free walk and just pay a much lower tax rate than secretaries.” She was referring to the proposed minimum tax rate on those earning at least $1 million per year; earlier this week, the Senate failed to advance a bill creating the new rate. When pressed on the Massachusetts tax, Warren again said, “I paid the taxes that I legally owed. I did not make a charitable contribution to the state.”
When given the opportunity to pay more to help out her overwhelmingly blue state, Warren takes a pass.  Better to use the force of the state on everyone else.

Brown’s campaign called Warren a hypocrite for not checking the optional higher tax rate on her personal income. “The problem with running a campaign based on self-righteousness and moral superiority is that you had better live up to the same standard you would impose on everyone else," said the incumbent's campaign manager, Jim Barnett, in a statement. The Brown team said Warren earned over $700,000 in 2011, adding, “This is the sort of hypocrisy and double-speak voters are sick and tired of hearing from politicians, especially those who can't keep their hands out of others' pocketbooks."
Remember.....it's all about OPM.  Keeping their own, spending yours.  Just like a GSA employee.

Hat tip to Flopping Aces for the link to Real Clear Politics.


Holocaust Rememberance Day & Iran

Holocaust Remembrance Day was Thursday in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech regarding Iran’s nuclear program; a subject that should have far more Americans concerned than are.  For Israel, it is more than just a foreign policy question.  In his speech, Netanyahu finished with these words:

I will continue to speak the truth to the world, but first and foremost I must speak it to my own people. I know that my people is strong enough to hear the truth.

The truth is that a nuclear-armed Iran is an existential threat of the State of Israel.

The truth is that a nuclear-armed Iran is an political threat to other countries throughout the region and a grave threat to the world peace.

The truth is that Iran must be stopped from obtaining nuclear weapons.

It is the duty of the whole world, but above and beyond, it is OUR duty.

The memory of the Holocaust goes beyond holding memorial services; it is not merely a historical recollection.

The memory of the Holocaust obligates us to apply the lessons of the past to ensure the basis of our future.

We will never bury our heads in the sand.

Am Yisrael Chai, veNetzach Yisrael Lo Yeshaker [The Nation of Israel Lives, and the Eternal one of Israel does not Lie].

I ask you to take a minute and seriously consider the world with a nuclear armed Iran.  Whether it is Ahmadinejad or the mullahs, neither should be allowed anywhere near "The Button".
 
Netanyahu's office has posted the full text of the speech here

Thanks to Powerline for the details.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Reagan schooling Obama

An enjoyable video to ease you into the weekend.



Supposedly, a professor actually did this. Would love to know if that's true or just urban legend.

Hat tip to the Grouchy Old Cripple in Atlanta.

Juxtaposition

The Canadian blog, Small Dead Animals, also provides great commentary on USA issues.  In addition, they often love juxtaposing items to highlight the contrasts.  The most recent is:

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!

Rigzone, April 17th - President Barack Obama on Tuesday called for increasing penalties on oil speculators and boosting oversight of U.S. energy as part of a plan to crackdown on an "irresponsible few" who rig oil markets.

Rigzone, April 17th - President-elect Vladimir Putin outlines a highly favorable tax regime for offshore drilling in the Arctic in an attempt to attract foreign companies. The proposals from the Russian government includes abolishing export duty on petroleum products extracted from new offshore fields on the Arctic shelf...

Can Americans see what Obama is doing to our energy industry?

More Dogs

Proving that the Obama dog story has legs, we have this spoof of the classic National Lampoon cover:


From Proof Positive.

Scary words from a member of SCOTUS

CNS has the following about one of The Brethren:

Describing her move from serving as President Barack Obama's solicitor general to serving on the Supreme Court, Justice Elena Kagan said last week that “sometimes I think that the job doesn’t really change at all.”

As solicitor general, Kagan’s job was to advocate the Obama administration’s position in cases brought to the Supreme Court. As a justice, Kagan's job is to judge cases brought to the Supreme Court.

“So, sometimes I think that the job doesn’t really change at all--that as solicitor general my life was spent trying to persuade 9 people and now it’s just trying to persuade 8 people,” said Kagan.

Boy, is that scary.  In Kagan's view, her job isn't to rule on the law, it's to persuade her fellow justices.  She's not a referee, she's still one of the players.

Read more about this, including a link to the video of Kagan, in the post at Patterico.


Friday One-Liner

From Patterico:
Finally, to paraphrase iowahawk on Twitter: what’s more important? That Romney made millions of his own money? Or that Obama has spent $5 trillion of ours?
That, my friends, will be a central question this fall.

The Best Sentence

Over at House of Eratosthenes, there's a feature called "BSIHORL (Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately)".  The most recent one (noted to be three sentences, but worth it) comes from Thomas Sowell:

In politics, few talents are as richly rewarded as the ability to convince parasites that they are victims. Welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic have discovered that largesse to losers does not reduce their hostility to society, but only increases it. Far from producing gratitude, generosity is seen as an admission of guilt, and the reparations as inadequate compensation for injustices – leading to worsening behavior by the recipients.
 The post goes on to say:
This has a tie-in to the Flukers, Mmes. Fluke and Frank who, it should be noted, are not asking for anything. They and the others in their class are demanding things. That is what is so objectionable about what is taking place; if they were simply charity cases, those who are sympathetic to their plight would pony up (three grand for Fluke’s birth control, 20 to 200 dollars to clear up Ruthelle Frank’s birth certificate problem) and those who are not-so-sympathetic would be left out of it.

That scenario has absolutely nothing to do with what they’re doing.

What they are doing, is introducing a new form of legal tender into the economy. It’s an old story; due to this problem or that problem, or a birth defect or some handicap, so-and-so can’t do such-and-such. And the deficiency hardens into a claim on the time and resources of others, exactly as if it was money. In a way, it does become money. It becomes a new coin of the realm. Helplessness. I’m more important than you are, because I have a need.

In this case, though, the “can’t” has metastasized into a “won’t.” This is a significant change that we are seeing unfold before our eyes. The behavior is easing off on the pathetic, and bearing down on the thuggish.

More in the HoE post - do give it a read.

Not one dime

Senator Jeff Sessions puts it to the Senate Democrats with this slam from the Senate floor:

I can’t imagine that they would want to go to the American people and ask for higher taxes when they refuse to comply with the plain statutory law that says they should have a budget to tell where that money is going to be spent. If you won’t tell the American people where you’re going to spend the money, how much debt you’re going to run up, how much spending you’re going to cut or not cut, then I don’t think the American people ought to send another dime to this place. Not another dime!
Here's the video:



That's the kind of message we need to hear between now and November.

From The Right Scoop.

The Imperial Presidency

Arthur Schlessinger coined the term in his 1973 book (in which he largely slams Nixon), but our current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania takes it to new levels.  The great Mark Levin has this to say:

Obama, it would seem, wants to deny to others what he will not deny to himself. He wants to deny to the children of others what he will not deny to his own children. He wants to amass riches, but he doesn't want you to amass wealth. He doesn't mind private school for his own children, but he minds it for your children. He doesn't mind eating whatever he wants to eat, but he minds what you eat. He doesn't mind taking that 747 one frivolous trip after another, one self-serving fundraising after another, but he minds what you drive and how much fuel you use. And we can go on and on.

That's the nature of an imperial president. That's the nature of a society in which the president views himself as the sovereign and his wife views him as taking us out of the dark and bringing us into the light, like Jesus if you will. While the rest of us are here to serve. Second-class citizens, got to get skin in the game.

These attacks on Romney and his wealth are attacks on you. I know that you're not worth $200 million. That's not my point. There are attacks on your ability to succeed, to prosper and more importantly, the same for your children.

Is Obama jealous of Romney? Is that what it is? Is Obama jealous that he was incapable of earning the kind of money, of creating the kind of wealth, of creating that kind of prosperity in jobs and businesses that Romney did? Is that the problem?

From Real Clear Politics (video at link), via a pointer from I Own the World.

GSA and waste

For this followup on OPM, we turn to John Hinderaker at Powerline.  He nails it so well, I'll quote his post in full:

We haven’t said much about the GSA scandal. Is it important? The dollars involved are small, by Washington standards, but it illustrates a timeless truth: no one else will spend the money you earned as carefully as you will. When you are spending other people’s money, why shouldn’t you waste it? That is the attitude that generally (although not always, of course) prevails in government.  Michael Ramirez sums it up:


If you don’t want the government to waste your money, there is only one solution: don’t give it to them.

Couldn't have said it better myself.


Watch your wallet

Fox News has a report on the upcoming United Nations Rio summit.  Those world-government do-gooders have a plan and boy will it be coming for you.

The upcoming United Nations environmental conference on sustainable development will consider a breathtaking array of carbon taxes, transfers of trillions of dollars from wealthy countries to poor ones, and new spending programs to guarantee that populations around the world are protected from the effects of the very programs the world organization wants to implement, according to stunning U.N. documents examined  by Fox News.
The main goal of the much-touted, Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, scheduled to be held in Brazil from June 20-23, and which Obama Administration officials have supported,  is to make dramatic and enormously expensive changes in the way that the world does nearly everything—or, as one of the documents puts it, "a fundamental shift in the way we think and act."
Where have we heard about "fundamental transformation" before?  Oh, yes...now I remember.  It was part of that "Hope & Change" thing.

More from the Fox story:
That  huge catalogue of taxes and spending is described optimistically as “targeted investments  in human and social capital on top of investments in natural capital and green physical capital,” and is accompanied by the claim that it will all, in the long run, more than pay for itself.

Pay for itself?  Yep...sure it will.  Just like those florescent light bulbs.  Just like those electric cars.  Just like every other governmental "investment".

Read the whole story.  And remember.  The Obama administration supports these goals of "social justice". These are those folks who know what's best for the world.  Or so they keep telling us.  Do you believe it?

Thursday, April 19, 2012

The Green scam with OPM

OPM - Other People's Money.  It's amazing how many things are done with those three letters.  Solyndra was a scheme with OPM.  The GSA scandal - again, spending OPM.  People are never as careful with OPM as they are with their own.

Today's story via Human Events:

One of the big recent “green energy” epic failures is A123 Systems, which raked in $300 million from the “stimulus” bill, plus another $135 million in Michigan state funding.  They’re currently teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and just got slapped with a class-action lawsuit for allegedly “making false and misleading statements” about manufacturing deficiencies in their products.

One of those products was the electric battery used in the Fisker Karma, a $100,000 electric sports car that literally dropped dead when Consumer Reports took it for a test drive.  A123 Systems was betting heavily on Fisker’s success – so heavily that they pumped $20 million of their own equity and cash into the auto maker.
Fisker got $529 million of your money from the Obama Administration, producing 500 manufacturing jobs.  Unfortunately, those manufacturing jobs were in Finland, not America.  Fiskers executives were quite proud of their wise decision to keep those jobs overseas.

Confronted by this horrific embarrassment, Obama apologists pointed to the Fiskers plant in Delaware, the lovely state from whence our Vice President hails.  They bought an old GM factory (built when the “G” stood for “General,” not “Government”) and planned to build a much more affordable $50,000 car for the common man in their American facility.  It’s called the “Atlantic.”  It doesn’t actually exist, and it probably never will.

That’s because Fisker has begun laying off workers left and right at its Delaware plant, “because it ran out of government loan money,” as USA Today put it.  “Fisker had failed to meet production and sales milestones it had promised in the loan agreement with the Department of Energy, so loan cash was shut off last May.”  They’re up to 66 layoffs now.
Fisker can't make it without OPM propping it up.  A123 is all about taking OPM.  Read the whole story at the above link.

And there's more.  Think of politicians who tout local pork projects with lines like "And 90% of the funding will come from the federal government - we only have to provide 10%".  That 90% is OPM.  But it just doesn't appear from the ether.  Ultimately, with any of these government funding projects, it's the American people who, in one way or another, provide the money that someone else gets to use.

At its root comes the fundamental question:  Is it better for the individual or the central planners to decide how to spend your money?  Those who want central planning say they know better and can make wiser decisions.  Look in the mirror and ask yourself "Do I really believe that some bureaucrat or politician knows more about what's best for me than I do?"  If the answer is "NO!!", remember to vote in November.  If the answer is "Yes", why are you reading this blog??  (And by the way, remember to vote in December)


With the dogs

Delving into the Obama re-election machinery, one can find the swag store, where kool-aid swillers can stock up on all kinds of Obama merchandise.

Including this delightful morsel.

Some days you can't make the stuff up.  Thanks to a reader who sent me the link to Sound Politics.

From that Sound Politics page, I also found the page on Breitbart with Obama himself telling of his experience in this culinary choice.  Go listen to The One and remember when the White House tries to spin its way out of this one.

Going to the dogs

Romney may have left his on the roof, but Obama.....well, you know the rest.

But did you know how Hitler felt when he found out??



Thanks for John Hinderaker at Powerline for the video (which seems unavailable through their site).

Monday, April 16, 2012

And just why might that be....

From U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor comes this story.
Kenyan businesses lately are increasingly becoming recipients of U.S. government largesse, as the Obama Administration, among pursuing other endeavors, aims to expand "livestock-related economic opportunities" in that nation. Although this and other recently released presolicitation notices for unrelated programs serve as advance alerts to potential vendors—and therefore do not offer cost estimates and other details— a review of U.S. government contracting actions nonetheless indicates a spike of activity in Kenya in a variety of sectors.
Has there been a spike in stimulus funds to Hawaii?  Just wondering; you can draw whatever conclusions you wish.

Hat tip to Drudge for the pointer.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Travel Agent in Chief??

By now, news that President Obama is out of touch with the American people isn't news.

Just two days after President Barack Obama gave a sharply edged response to news anchor Larry Conners of KMOV in St. Louis after Conners had asked the president about Americans who “get frustrated and even angered when they see the first family jetting around [to] different vacations and so forth,” Obama told a panel at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia that part of his job there was to scout out locations for a future vacation with First Lady Michelle Obama.

Obama was speaking on a panel with Colombian President Juan Mauel Santos and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff when he made the remarks. The panel was moderated by Chris Matthews of MSNBC.

“I want to thank President Santos and the people of Colombia for the extraordinary hospitality in the beautiful city of Cartagena,” said Obama. “We’re having a wonderful time. And usually when I take these summit trips, part of my job is to scout out where I may want to bring Michelle back later for vacation. So we’ll make sure to come back sometime in the near future.”. . .

Yep, you got it.  When the price of gasoline is climbing higher and higher, when a trip to the local swimming pool replaces vacations to Disney, our president is scouting locations to take Michelle.  Not tending to the business of America and our deteriorating relations with our allies.  Not focusing on the job at hand.

And, of course, you know who will be paying through the nose for that vacation to Columbia.  Yep, it's you and me and the rest of America.  In more ways than one.

Sourced from Weasel Zippers, with a hat tip for the pointer to Wirecutter.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Short Hiatus

Blogging will be light....not because there isn't enough to be outraged about, but the OC is on a short vacation with limited internet access.  Back on Sunday.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

It does what??

Speaking at a Department of Justice conference, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said: 
“Violence is also a chronic health issue.  It leads to asthma, it leads to obesity or depression among the youth who are involved,”

What?  Asthma?  Are you kidding me?  Next, it will cause autism, just like those vaccines.  Further, what is Sebelius doing over at Justice?

Now, just what might be the cure for such a condition?  I'm glad you asked, because Sebelius has the answer:

“And what all of you today have recognized is that just as the cost of youth violence can affect the whole community, the solutions to youth violence have to come also from the whole community. And at the Department of Health and Human Services, I’m here to tell you that we are committed to supporting that work, both here with our strategies and policies in D.C. but also through our regional offices and our assets on the ground throughout the country.”
“We think that the solutions start with child care and Head Start programs that we fund in cities around the country. And today we’re working with states and communities to make sure our children are getting the high quality early care and education they need, not only to succeed in school but for the first time, in a pretty historic partnership with the Department of Education, we recognize that social and emotional skills are a critical part of that early learning.”

How that relates to asthma, I'll never know.  But HHS is sticking its nose everywhere.  Even if Obamacare is struck down, it seems that the department is looking for ever more areas to enter.

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

In a nutshell

From a John Steele Gordon article for Commentary:

“It seems there is simply no lie President Obama will not tell in pursuit of his agenda.”

Remember that whenever you hear The One speak.  And remind your friends of that little observation.  You'll be amazed to see how many times you'll nod your head and mutter "Yep".

Hat tip to Powerline for the pointer.

Sunday, April 01, 2012

Life imitates art?

"Cheney gets new heart; nation also hopeful that Biden gets brain, Obama courage and House drops on Pelosi."
-Kim Hedum (@coyotered9)

Stolen from Proof Positive.

Vote early, vote often

First off, let me say that I have been remiss.  I read The Lonely Conservative every day and appreciate both her diligence in finding great stories to post and her own commentary to amplify the posting.  Anyhow, there is an online poll for the top "Political Moms" and though I have been voting, I have not shared news about the poll here on The Old Curmudgeon.  Let me have her tell you directly:

Here’s your daily reminder about the Top 25 Political Moms contest. You may think it’s silly, but it’s important that conservative moms dominate this contest. Here’s why: The top bloggers from the left aren’t your mom’s Democrats. They’re radical progressives. The one in the lead describes herself as “Leftist. Very, very leftist” and has made it her mission to see Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker defeated. I’m sure she has no problem with the vicious way her side has treated Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefish. The website running the contest says they have millions of followers. Do you really want that “very, very leftist” winning and sending the message to millions of moms that her views are mainstream? Don’t you want to do something, no matter how small, to show that there is no conservative war on women?

I’m in second place. I really don’t care if I win, all I care about is that one of the conservative moms wins. We’ve managed to knock another commie mommie out of the top 5. (That one brags about putting her son in pink girls clothing.) If you think we need to take back the culture from the far left, why not take just a few moments to vote for the conservative moms in this contest? You can vote once every twenty four hours, and you can vote for as many of us as you want. We need every single vote we can get, because every time we make headway, the front runner’s vote tally rises accordingly.

So...go to THIS LINK to vote.  Early.  Often.  And don't forget to tell your friends.

LC's entire post can be found HERE.

Quote of the Day

"Eric Holder is the Chevy Volt of attorney generals."
-Greg Gutfeld

Reposted from Proof Positive.

No groceries for me

News from upstate New York:  The Wegmans grocery chain now has a store in Rochester that features a sharia compliant check out line.  A sign instructs customers with pork or alcohol products to go to a different line.

The Lonely Conservative has an insightful question: 
If it’s okay for Muslims to pick and choose what customers they wait on, why is it also okay to force Catholic institutions to pay for birth control, sterilization and abortion drugs?

Good question.  I'll wait for Kathleen Sebelius to answer, as I know there must be something I'm missing. 

More from Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs.

Liberal media catfight

Piers Morgan delivered this smackdown to hip, urban Touré on CNN:

Piers Morgan concluded the interview saying, "I like to think of myself as a professional journalist, TourĂ©. I think that you are something else." 

See the interview at Breitbart.
 

Steyn on Flexibility

From an interview on Hugh Hewitt's radio show, the wonderful Mark Steyn observes:

Well, I think if you wanted just a single reason to vote this guy out in November, this is pretty much it. It’s part of a pattern. He regretted, a couple of years ago, that he didn’t have the freedom of maneuver that the politburo does in China. And we know that in China, it’s a dictatorship. In Russia, Vladimir Putin rigs the elections. Here, there’s 300 million people who have got all kinds of whimsical ideas about this and that, and they’re getting in his way. And for him to actually be sitting there next to the president of a hostile power, and say oh, believe me, I so envy you, you wouldn’t believe the trouble I have with this crazy democracy business back home, I can’t wait until that’s all behind me, and then I can just do what I want, that alone ought to be a disqualifier for office. 

Yep, that democracy thing can be bothersome.  Being king would be so much easier.  Or Caesar. Or his BFF, Vladimir.

Hat tip to Pundit & Pundette for the pointer.

Pay your share, Al

Tim Geithner isn't the only one who thinks that paying taxes is for the other guy.  From the Daily Caller:

The left-wing National Action Network Inc., headquartered in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, owes at least $1,556,059 in federal taxes and $108,489 in New York taxes, according to the Nexis tax liens database. Tax agencies typically file tax liens only after taxes have become significantly overdue and other collection methods have failed.

Did someone say "social justice"?  Must be something other than that old "equal treatment before the law" stuff we learned in school.

From Wretchard

For the political and international junkies, Wretchard has long been a source of thought provoking material.  His Belmont Club was a leading "stand-alone" blog, and he now writes it at PJ Media under his real name, Richard Fernandez.

Fernandez is on my first page of blogs to read (I organize using the Speed Dial addon in Firefox).  His latest post "The House that Jack Built" gets to the heart of liberal activism.  An excerpt:

The chief problem with money, as Walter Russell Mead observes, is that the Blue Model is running out of it. Once upon a time the money was just out there. The dollars were mooing and lowing like the buffalo on the Great Plains. The only problem was divvying it up. But now that it’s getting harder to come by, a whole host of professions based on the dollar hunting and skinning business is becoming endangered. Mead describes the situation in his vivid prose:
The dream machines of the blue social engineers don’t sail serenely across the azure sky anymore. Think of the various carbon exchanges and environmental planetary schemes; think of high speed rail proposals like California’s $100 billion train to bankruptcy; think of Obamacare. These days the experts, “social entrepreneurs” and smart young blue twenty somethings fresh out of the Ivy League whomp up social programs with as much verve and dedication as their New Deal and Great Society predecessors, but the new Dreamliners don’t take off. At most they roll around the runway, emitting clouds of noxious smoke; wings fall off, windows pop out, turbines misfire and the tires go flat.
The Big Tent is the house that  jack built. And jack has left town.
So don’t be surprised if the the Big Tent is sagging at the edges. The marketing department has been particularly hard-hit. Al Gore’s Current network was paying Keith Olbermann $50 million to attract viewers they hoped to have.  Olbermann was supposed to be its primary liberal voice. But the New York Times explained that Olberman wasn’t attracting anybody, even though he acted like he was:
In his 40 weeks on Current TV, he had an average of 177,000 viewers at 8 p.m., down from the roughly one million that he had each night on MSNBC. Just 57,000 of those viewers on any given night were between the ages of 25 and 54, the coveted advertising demographic for cable news.

He goes on to discuss Rosie, Huffington, Sharpton, and Obama.  Worth the read.  The whole post can be found HERE.