Who'da thunk it??

Well, the House of Representatives finds Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.  But when it comes to actually prosecuting Holder, well....that's a different story.  From Fox News:

The Justice Department moved Friday to shield Attorney General Eric Holder from prosecution after the House voted to hold him in contempt of Congress.

The contempt vote technically opened the door for the House to call on the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to bring the case before a grand jury. But because U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen works for Holder and because President Obama has already asserted executive privilege over the documents in question, some expected Holder's Justice Department to balk.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole confirmed in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner that the department in fact would not pursue prosecution. The attorney general's withholding of documents pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious, he wrote, "does not constitute a crime."

"Therefore the department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the attorney general," Cole wrote, in the letter obtained by Fox News.

Yeah, let's go ahead and prosecute the boss.  All of which means that the calls for a special prosecutor were so important.  And, of course, so ignored by Obama.

Al Sharpton and Holder

Yes, this is parody.  But damned good parody, because it actually sounds like what Revered Al might say.  It's best read aloud - add in your own Sharpton dialect for maximum effect.  It's a bit long, so be sure to follow the jump by clicking the "Read More".  From The Daily Rash, via I Own the World.


Al Sharpton Grills Attorney General Eric Holder on MSNBC

WASHINGTON – Last night on MSNBC, news anchor Reverend Al Sharpton grilled Attorney General Eric Holder on everything from Fast and Furious to racism. Following is a transcript of that interview:

AL SHARPTON:  Welcome Mr. Secretary General of Defense. It’s a pleasure to sponsor you on my show.
ERIC HOLDER:  Thank you. It’s a pleasure being here.
AL SHARPTON:  I’m going to start off the show by saying two words and I want to get your response.
ERIC HOLDER: Sure.
AL SHARPTON:  Racism.
ERIC HOLDER:  (Looks confused)
AL SHARPTON:  Now, what does your judicated mind think when you hear those words?
ERIC HOLDER:  Uh, that we still have work to do fighting for civil rights?
AL SHARPTON:  Don’t those words define the biased white interlopers who’ve chosen to scrapegoat you, a premature African American man of power?
ERIC HOLDER:  Uh, yes, I am aware that my skin color may play a roll in the ceaseless attacks from the right side of the aisle.
AL SHARPTON:  Not just that Secretary Holder, but isn’t it true that President Obama is provocated from the aisle by the same Jim Crow fronts that would be clarified as abomable in a more just world?
ERIC HOLDER:  As you know Reverend Sharpton, I think the United States is a nation of cowards when it comes to race.
AL SHARPTON:  Not only cowards Secretary General, but isn’t the nation also a composite heap of partisan divide that threatens the very fabric of African American detrimentation?
ERIC HOLDER:  Well, uh, we do still have a lot of work to do.
AL SHARPTON:  And that leads me to my next question, General. With the issues of the Fast and Frisky gun profanities, isn’t it in the best interest of the country that the president intercept on your behalf to restrain matters of secrets in the attorney client prophecy?
ERIC HOLDER:  Uh, there is no question that certain information pertaining to Fast and Furious is privileged and should not be made public until after the election.

Two from Ramirez

Michael Ramirez has long been a favorite of mine.  His cartoon from yesterday:

And one more, found over at I Own the World:

Unfortunately, it's all true.  Obama wants to erase that border and thinks government is the answer to everything.

The Day American Died

Those of us above a certain age can remember Don McLean's "American Pie".  Recorded in 1971, it describes the 1959 plane crash that killed Bubby Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper as "The Day the Music Died".  Today was the day America died.

No, not that the country died like the Soviet Union.  Or the Holy Roman Empire.  Or so many other ruling institutions.  What died was America as a concept, as a vision for mankind.  America was not so much a matter of geography but of spirit and intent.  It was the bastion of liberty and the home to dreams and ideals.  That America died today.

The Supreme Court of the United States declared today that there is no limit to what the federal government can do, so long as it wraps itself in the taxing power of the Constitution.  We now can only rely on the restraint of elected politicians in Congress, which is a false and foolhardy reliance.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the government is supreme over the individual.  That the interests of the state are superior to the interests of the individuals.  That government doesn't receive its powers from the consent of the governed, but rather by the decree of itself.

America died.

Environmentalism

I think I have found a reason why I might have to become an environmentalist.  Save the planet!!

Hey...it's Obama that drove me to drink!!

Stolen from The Feral Irishman.

Damager in Chief

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline has a insightful piece on Obama's pandering to the Hispanic vote.  One takeaway:

The overriding damage is to our system of government and to respect for the law. In the topsy-turvy world created by Obama’s pandering, the president abdicates his responsibility to enforce the law, leaving states holding the bag. And when states that try to fill the breach, Obama not only punishes them as entities – by ending all meaningful federal cooperation – but also encourages attacks on state law enforcement personnel as individuals.

All of this because Obama needs the votes of Hispanics.

and

What additional benefits and exemptions from obligations would future Obamas confer on Hispanics if they become an even larger portion of the electorate? What new lawless decrees would future demagogues in the Obama tradition issue to satisfy this politically powerful underclass?

The answers should be sufficiently frightening to cause Republicans (and Democrats with a decent regard for our traditions and our system of government) to vow never to grant illegal aliens a path to citizenship.

The Democratic party ceased to be a party to represent the interests of American citizens.  What it has become is an ad-hoc amalgamation of special interests and voting blocs, with the goal of getting enough groups to make up 51% of the electorate.

Sad that it has come to this.

Outsourcer in Chief

One of the campaign mantras of the Obama campaign is that Romney is a "serial outsourcer".  Turns out that a proven outsourcer lives at 1600 Pennsylvania:

The Obama campaign spent nearly $4,700 on telemarketing services from a Canadian telemarketing company called Pacific East between March and June, a Washington Free Beacon study of federal election filings shows.

Pacific East is not the only foreign telemarketing firm raking in cash from the president’s reelection campaign. Obama paid a call center in Manila, Philippines $78,314.10 for telemarketing services between the start of the campaign and March

Scratch a Democrat, find a hypocrite.  Too bad the MSM won't bother to report this.

Thanks to the Washington Free Beacon for the story.

Just another day at the office

From Keith Koffler at White House Dossier comes this schedule for The One's day.

Obama Schedule || Tuesday, June 26, 2012

9:05 am || Departs Boston
11:15 am || Arrives Atlanta
1:25 pm || Delivers remarks at a fundraiser; Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel
2:10 pm || Appears at a fundraiser; Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel
3:35 pm || Departs Atlanta
5:10 pm || Arrives Miami
5:45 pm || Attends a fundraiser; private residence
8:30 pm || Delivers remarks at a fundraiser; The Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater
9:45 pm || Departs Miami
12:10 am || Arrives Washington
All times Eastern

Koffler reported that Obama had already been to over 100 fundraisers already this year.  And another four on this day.  Would someone please tell our president that there's a country to run?  On the other hand, if he's out on the road, there's less chance for him to screw something up again.

Turning the Arizona decision around

Found this graphic at I Own the World.

We all know how well that would work.

Kimberlin update

Lee Stranahan  reports:

Another conservative blogger has become the victim of a "swatting," where a false report of a murder sends the police, armed and ready, to a victim's home. The victim this time was blogger Aaron Walker, who had just this morning won a legal victory against convicted felon and leftist activist Brett Kimberlin.

May the full force of the law come down on those who are perpetrating these swattings.

Racist!!

Dana Loesch reports at Breitbart:

At a recent Obama rally in Ohio, prospective attendees were told to brandish their photo IDs if they expected admittance to the rally. No word yet on whether Attorney General Eric Holder plans to file suit against the Obama campaign for infringing upon Ohioans' right of peaceful assembly by way of a racist photo ID rule.

Where's Eric Holder?  Oh, yes, now I remember.  He's in the Justice Department building - where you have to show your photo ID to enter.

Little Debbie

From the Florida-based blog Shark Tank:

Back in April, the Shark Tank floated the likelihood that Democratic National Committee Chairwoman (DNC) Debbie Wasserman Schultz was perhaps on her way out as DNC Chairwoman. We now have learned that Wasserman Schultz will not be back as DNC Chairwoman after the November elections.

According to our source within the Democratic Party, who is also a close associate of Wasserman Schultz, the arrangements have already been made for her to leave DNC  regardless if President Obama wins re-election or not.

This same source believes that Wasserman Schultz will be forced to resign behind closed doors and then stage an press event in which she tells Americans that her job as the DNC chair was a temporary one and that she is moving on with her congressional career.

Too bad.  DWS is always good for a "throw the shoe at the TV" moment. Unfortunately, the Democrats might actually pick a chairman for the DNC who knows what to do.

Fundraising

John Hinderaker posts at Powerline about the status of fundraising in the 2012 election.  One of his observations:

Democrats are odd: they think it is a fine thing when unions extract dues from members against their will and use that money to advocate for liberal ideas with which many union members disagree. On the other hand, they think it is dirty pool when conservatives spend their own money to advocate the ideas that they believe in.

There's more in the story on the absurd conclusions of the Democrat fundraisers.  Read it.

Today's Bumper Sticker

Found at the Feral Irishman.

Afterburner on fire

I've been a big fan of Bill Whittle ever since his days at Eject, Eject, Eject!  This episode of Afterburner finds Bill giving Fast and Furious the one-two, and then a couple of more KO blows.



Whittle is, in my opinion, one of the best communicators in the new media, as well as in the conservative
sphere.  He knows how to talk, how to get his message across, and how to relate to his audience.  And here, he's as persuasive, and pissed off, as I've ever seen him.

Combine Fast & Furious with a complacent media and you have all the reasons in the world to be enraged.

Share this with your friends.  And buy a beer for Whittle if you see him.

Headline of the Day

Stolen from I Own the World.

I have long wondered....how many of these types of headlines are intentionally funny and how many are just the product of not thinking??

In any case, I had a good chuckle.

Congressional video of the day

Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina has the hands-down winner, definitely for today and maybe in the all-time top 10.  After hearing the Democrats try to stall and delay, Gowdy lays it all out on why the contempt citation must go forward.  And then he later responds to the well-worn claim that "Republicans did it too".



Can you picture him as a replacement for Lindsay Graham?  I can.

Thanks to The Right Scoop for the video.

The South End of a horse facing north

Neil Cavuto, who has MS, takes the critics of Ann Romney to the woodshed for criticizing her horseback riding.  Take that Larry O'Donnell.




Well done Neil.  Along with Santelli, it seems financial commentators can get their dander up.

Fast and Furious Flashbacks

From The Right Scoop comes this video of a 2009 White House press conference.  Listen carefully.



Paging Woodward and Bernstein?  And from October 2011:



Thanks to The Last Refuge for the video links, and for this closing thought:

How can President Obama possibly assert executive privilege over internal deliberations he has previously claimed didn’t exist?

Good question.

The Obama Presidency

Summed up in just one word.

Via The Looking Spoon.

The College Years

From Theo Spark

Houston, you have a problem

And her name is Sheila Jackson Lee.  Where does the Democratic Party find these people.   In a previous post, the OC said that Fauxcahontas would likely end up blaming Bush for her Cherokee problems.  SJL has beat her to it....Fast and Furious is all George Bush's fault.



H/T to The Gateway Pundit.

Warren and the VRWC

John Nolte at Breitbart has the latest on Liawatha.

Somewhere lurking out there is a Right-Wing Extremist who, decades ago, foresaw the possibility that Elizabeth Warren would be a rising Democrat star – their only hope to unseat a Republican and hold on to the majority in the U.S. Senate. The plot was a dastardly one, and this Right-Wing Extremist executed it perfectly. In the dead of night, he would sneak into Little Lizzie's room and whisper over and over in her delicate ear: You're Cherokee. You're Cherokee. You’re Cherokee.

and

In a bizarre statement released by the Warren Camp yesterday, rather than come clean about her heritage or even agree to meet with Cherokee activists who have requested a meeting with her, Warren lashed out and blamed a solitary "right-wing extremist" for all her woes:

The people of Massachusetts are concerned about their jobs, the future for their kids, and the security of their retirement. Scott Brown would rather talk about anything else. The out-of-state group in question is being promoted and supported by a right wing extremist who is on the record supporting and contributing money to Scott Brown. It is past time we moved on to the important issues facing middle class families in Massachusetts – even if Scott Brown won’t.

You see, it's those nasty right-wingers.  It's all their fault.

Pretty soon, it's going to all be George Bush's fault.

The bow parade

The latest in a series of Obama bows:

Saudi Arabia, China, Japan and now Mexico.  Obama still has a lot of the world to bow to before November.

An interesting thought

Posed by Victor Davis Hanson over at The Corner:

Would that the Obama administration had cared as much about protecting the security secrets involving the Predator drone program, the bin Laden raid, the operations on the Afghan border and in Yemen, and the cyberwar against Iran as it is does about protecting the unknowns of Fast and Furious.

Guns and F&F

Joe the Plumber Wurzelbacher has this new campaign video:




Go back to the 1:24 mark and hear Holder say: "We need to do this every day of the week, and just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way."  That's right, the Attorney General saying we need to brainwash citizens.

Regardless of whether or not you think Fast and Furious was a backhanded attempt to influence gun control legislation, those words are chilling.

Hat tip to I Own the World.

Translating Holder

Paul Mirengoff reports on the Fast and Furious executive privilege claim:

In requesting that Obama assert executive privilege, Holder said he is “very concerned that the compelled production to Congress of internal Executive Branch documents generated in the course of the deliberative process concerning its response to congressional oversight would have significant and damaging consequences.” This, he added, “would raise substantial separation of powers concerns and potentially create an imbalance in the relationship” between Congress and the White House.”

 Let's translate folks.

"Would have significant and damaging consequences" means "If the truth comes out, Obama loses and I go to jail".

"Create an imbalance in the relationship between Congress and the White House.” means that Obama won't be able to just do what he wants, irrespective of what the Constitution says.

Obama and Holder have upped the stakes.  Unfortunately for them, they hold the losing hand.  That is, as long as Issa and Boehner don't fold.  Issa won't, but I'm only 50-50 on Boehner.

Who is Barack Obama?

The folks at Breitbart have made vetting of Obama a priority for this year.  But they aren't alone. Paul Mirengoff at Powerline has a story about a 2007 piece in the New York Times.  In it, he quotes from The Times which wrote:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 23 — The peers who elected Barack Obama as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review say he was a natural leader, an impressive student, a nice guy. But in the 1990 Revue — the graduating editors’ gleeful parody of their elite publication — they said quite a bit more.

“I was born in Oslo, Norway, the son of a Volvo factory worker and part-time ice fisherman,” a mock self-tribute begins. “My mother was a backup singer for Abba. They were good folks.” In Chicago, “I discovered I was black, and I have remained so ever since.”

After his election, the Faux-bama says, he united warring students into “a happy, cohesive folk,” while “empowering all the folks out there in America who didn’t know about me by giving a series of articulate and startlingly mature interviews to all the folks in the media.”

He was a phony then, a phony now.  Read both the Poweline and NYT stories at the links above.

You've got enough

Western societies have enough.  We don't need anything more.  And we need to do more to help others, not ourselves.  That's what a high level UN official thinks:

Environmental concerns have caused one high-ranking UN official to declare that “the West” does not need more cars, televisions, and other consumer luxuries.

United Nations Development Programme head Helen Clark told AFP in an interview: “So the issue is how to get human development that will see it continue to rise for the world’s poorest people and people in developing countries. Because frankly human development in the West – we don’t need more cars, more TV, whatever. Our needs are by and large satisfied, although the recession has put a lot of strains on that.”

Clark, the former prime minister of New Zealand, also stressed the responsibility of richer countries to reduce their environmental footprint: "There is, in my opinion, a very heavy responsibility on the countries of the north to look at how they sustain their living standards with a much lower environmental footprint."

So, according to her, I have enough.  I don't need any more "luxuries".  Because she and her cohorts know better.

Why do I have a sneaky suspicion that she and the rest of her cronies at the UN haven't restricted their own consumption?

Thanks to CNS News for the story.

Executive Privilege

For me, but not for thee.

Sherman, fire up the Wayback machine and let's listen to The One as he talks about executive privilege and Congress.



Hypocrite.  But then, what's new for the administration.

More details in another post.  Thanks to Drudge for the pointer.

Most Arrogant

Riffing off the Dos Equis beer commercials, we have this from Right Change.



Hat tip to Theo Spark.

Hecklers

Mitt Romney had some hecklers at a campaign stop in Michigan.  And he did a great job of turning the tables back on them:



I like the spirit.  During the primaries, I kept feeling that Romney was playing defense - trying not to lose.  And so the fire wasn't there.  Now, he's playing to win and you can see that he wants to take it to his opponents on the Left.

I wonder what the president's teleprompter would have said in the same circumstance?

Hat tip to Katrina Trinko at The Corner.

Follow the money

More crony capitalism, this time from New York City.  From the New York Post:

Here’s an inconvenient truth: New York is greening the wallet of Al Gore.

Embattled city Comptroller John Liu has delivered a $16.56 million contract to the former vice president’s environmentally friendly investment firm, Generation Investment Management, to help manage hundreds of millions of dollars in city pension funds, The Post has learned.

The Comptroller’s Office had previously awarded Gore’s firm $12.8 million in pension-fund business under Liu’s predecessor, Bill Thompson.

Since 2009, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has approved $6 million in contracts to the firm, co-founded and chaired by Gore. Generation now manages nearly a half-billion dollars of state pension-fund investments, records show.

In total, that’s more than $35 million in greenbacks to Gore’s firm.

Liu’s office proposes investment-management contracts to the board of trustees of the city’s five major pension funds. Generation is an investment manager for two of them: the New York City Employees Retirement System (NYCERS) and the Police Pension Fund.

But the Gore connection has been a closely held secret.

One NYCERS trustee said he didn’t even know Gore’s firm was a city investment manager.
“That’s been way under the radar. I was unaware of it,” said NYCERS trustee Gregory Floyd, head of Teamsters Local 237.

So not only does Algore get the management fees from the contract, he also gets to use those pension fund assets to prop up "green investments".  Moving the money around can make it seem as though the companies have genuine market interest.  I'll even bet there may be some "rob Peter to pay Paul" going on in pumping up "values".

All that matters is that you have the right friends.

Hat tip to I Own the World pointing to Michelle Malkin.

The start of "flexible"?

From Jim Hoft, the Gateway Pundit.  Back in 2007, candidate Obama said:

I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons; I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material; and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals.”

Now it appears that in addition to changing immigration law with just a wave of the hand, the same thing will be happening with our nuclear deterent:

The Obama Administration announced yesterday that the U.S. military – under Barack Obama’s orders – is going to seek to gut the U.S. nuclear arsenal to as few as just 1,000 warheads.

We have an anti-American president, with a desire to punish the United States and its citizens at every turn.
 

Toe the line, or else

News out of California and that bastion of truth, UCLA.  A respected academic is being forced out for speaking the truth about environmental issues.  His "crime":

Dr. James E. Enstrom’s peer-reviewed research challenged California’s status quo by contending that exposure to fine particulate matter, like diesel particles, does not kill. The majority of his colleagues believe the particles cause lung cancer and death, a popular belief that Enstrom said ignores evidence to the contrary.

Pulling back the curtain:

Enstrom charged in 2008 that his colleagues exaggerated the adverse effects of particulate matter in order to justify expensive diesel fuel regulations to the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Enstrom testified in the same year to the state Senate that the lead contributor to the CARB report, Hien T. Tran, paid $1,000 for his Ph.D. from a fake university, and members of a CARB panel had exceeded their mandated three-year term limits by decades.

Shortly after Enstrom revealed the misconduct, UCLA began sending him notices of termination and has refused to compensate him for more than a year’s worth of work.

You see, only true believers are allowed.  Otherwise you are banished to the hinterlands.

“The facts of this case are astounding,” said David French, senior counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice and one of Enstrom’s lawyers. “UCLA terminated a professor after 35 years of service simply because he exposed the truth about an activist scientific agenda that was not only based in fraud, but violated California law.”

Interestingly, there's support for Enstrom within the university, just not at the top:

The UCLA’s Academic Freedom Committee, made up of professors and students, unanimously expressed concern in 2011 that the School of Public Health’s decision to lay off Enstrom “may represent a violation of academic freedom.”

Read the whole story at the Daily Caller.  H/T to Moonbattery.

Security versus Liberty

Dennis Prager gives the hard truth about many of our fellow citizens:

Sadly, most people prefer security to liberty…. I will give you a lot of my dignity and a lot of my liberty. You give me security. You make sure that I am taken care of and all I have to worry about is where I travel this year.

Sad is the word for it.  Stop and think about the people you know.  Which group do they fall in?

Thanks for Peter Robinson and Uncommon Knowledge, through NRO's The Corner.

Editing skills

Once again, creative editing skills are showing up at the MSM.  From The Corner:

Turns out that video of Mitt Romney gushing about Wawa was edited by MSNBC in such a way that some crucial context was lost, per blogger SooperMexican. Romney wasn’t just talking about the touchscreen at Wawa being “amazing”; he was talking about it being “amazing”  in light of his anecdote told just before about how inefficient government bureaucracy was.

Watch yourself.  MRC has put the MSNBC edit alongside a raw footage video of the event.  You can see how the critical part was removed to give a completely different spin to the clip.



Can there be any, any doubt that they are in the tank for The One?

Kimberlin Update

The Other McCain has updated info at THIS LINK.

He also posts about Kimberlin associate Neal Rauhauser at THIS LINK.

Sharpening progress

Loved seeing this one - it clearly shows how the difference between Western and Islamic progress.  As Moonbattery says: "Watch the progress in the West and in the Islamic world as the images grow more clear":

From Red Square at The People's Cube, with a pointer from Moonbattery.

Next up?

From Fox News:

WASHINGTON –  Roger Clemens was acquitted Monday on all charges that he obstructed and lied to Congress in denying he used performance-enhancing drugs to build his long and brilliant career as one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history.

Time now to prosecute the real offenders.  Defendant Holder has a nice ring to it.

The Justice Department stonewalls the American public but has the time and resources to pursue "drug users" in professional sports.  Just like Obama interjecting himself into the question of a college football championship, this too brings up one simple question:

Do you have so much time on your hands that you can be worried about this while the economy goes to hell??

Just where are the priorities of our leaders?

For the good of the people

From Nathaniel Botwinick at NRO's The Corner:

Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a Taliban commander in northern Waziristan, has banned polio vaccinations in his region until CIA drone strikes cease. Over 161,000 children were due to be vaccinated in the coming days.

Of course, the families that will be hurt by this move will never know that the Taliban will be responsible for pain, suffering and deaths from polio.  It will just be Allah's will.

Catching up on the Euro

The Euro crisis continues, with no positive end in sight.  As we posted before, this more and more looks like nothing more than moving the pea around in a high-stakes game of Hot Potato.  Richard Fernandez makes this observation:

The problem as Nigel Farage and Daniel Hannan point out in the videos below is that everybody is bust. Nobody is in a real position to help anybody else out. The bailouts aren’t real because the problem is simply being recirculated through an organism settling into toxic shock.

Farage is that kind of clear-thinking, straight-talking leader that appeals so much to the OC.  He doesn't give you the sugar coated version; he hits you upside the head with undeniable truths. Too bad that he's not running against Obama this year.

Here are the videos:

Light blogging

Due to travel, there will be light blogging until Sunday. But be sure to tune in later, as we'll be catching up then. Excuse me while I go to turn off The One who's delivering a speech on TV right now. Would that it be that easy in real life.

Support for Romney

Smitty at The Other McCain has this thought:

So let that be a lesion to you: Mitt may not have been your first choice out the door for a candidate, but the first rule of survival is recognizing the wolf closest to the sled.

I love that imagery.  I can see the Obama administration as that pack of wolves, with The One at the forefront.  Just remember to focus - there's a big difference between the best possible result and the best result possible.  We have to deal with the latter.

Kimberlin updates

The Camp of the Saints has updates.

Another blogger under attack.  LINK HERE

Congressmen writing to Holder.  LINK HERE

Kimberlin claims to be a SWAT victim.  LINK HERE

Kimberlin, the whiner.  LINK HERE

The Pain in Spain

Stole that title from Richard Fernandez, along with links for this post.  So read his full analysis.

Anyhow, it seems that huge bailout for Spain wasn't the answer after all.

MADRID (AP) — Euphoria over a lifeline of up to €100 billion ($125 billion) to rescue Spain's hurting banks morphed into a financial markets rout in a matter of hours Monday, as investors digested the still-undefined plan and became concerned the country may be unable to repay the new loans.

"Plenty of risk still remains in place, with question marks over the ability of Spain to repay the debt, especially, if the country fails to get back on the growth path, the outcome of the upcoming Greek elections and the perception of situation in Italy," Anita Paluch of Gekko Global Markets wrote in a note to clients.

So, let's see.  The bailout is because the banks have loans outstanding that won't be repaid.  So, having made that error, they are now getting bailed out from their folly.  But it now appears that the markets are figuring out that, if the original loans can't be repaid, and there are no structural changes happening, how will this new $125 billion be repaid?  Can anyone say "throwing good money after bad"?  Why is this so elementary to the man on the street (aka OC) yet international finance wizzes think it's something different?  I guess it's the number of zeros.  I mean in the loan amount, not the people involved.

 Fernandez continues:

In the video below Nigel Farage finds that even Red Ken Livingstone now agrees with him. Godzilla’s footsteps are now audible outside London. Livingstone says what everyone knew all along. The Euro was nothing but a set of handcuffs designed to bind countries to a “United States of Europe” project which Livingstone claims was meant ‘end war’ — and probably to end racism, stop climate change, foster gender equality, promote gay rights and all that good stuff as well. But handcuffs they were and they are pulling the countries towards disaster.

The bitter truth is that the European collapse is simply the consequence of Leftist fantasy politics.  It is what happens when people realize that the ‘paradise’ they’ve been building is nothing but a deconstructed, demographically collapsing, hollowed-out and bankrupt shell of lies.

At some point, the German populace will rise up and say "Enough is Enough".   How much damage will it take to their economy to drive home the point that they are being used?

10 Facts - Only in America

No, not the tune from Jay and the Americans.   These ten:

1) Only in America could politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a $35,000 a plate campaign fund raising event.

2) Only in America could people claim that the government still discriminates against black Americans when we have a black President, a black Attorney General, and roughly 18% of the federal workforce is black. 12% of the population is black.

3) Only in America could we have had the two people most responsible for our tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.

4) Only in America can we have terrorists kill people in the name of Allah and have the media primarily react by fretting that Muslims might be harmed by the backlash.

5) Only in America would we make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege while we discuss letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally just become American citizens.

6) Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the budget and sticking by the country's Constitution be thought of as "extremists."

7) Only in America could you need to present a driver's license to cash a check or buy alcohol, but not to vote.

8) Only in America could people demand the government investigate whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when the return on equity invested in a major U.S. oil company (Marathon Oil) is less than half of a company making tennis shoes (Nike).

9) Only in America could the government collect more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded history, still spend a trillion dollars more than it has per year for total spending of $7 million PER MINUTE, and complain that it doesn't have nearly enough money.

10) Only in America could the rich people who pay 86% of all income taxes be accused of not paying their "fair share" by people who don't pay any income taxes at all.

Hat tip to Every Blade of Grass.

Who you gonna believe?

During an interview with KTIV, Obama says that Obamacare doesn't impact and hurt businesses.



The transcript:

 KTIV-TV (Sioux City, Iowa) reporter Matt Breen: "One of those businesses that I mentioned said very specifically when they said they needed to close up shop and move their jobs back to Wisconsin was that it was a direct result of the health care reform that you initiated, that Congress passed. How do you react to that?"

President Obama: "That would be kind of hard to explain, because the only folks that have been impacted in terms of the health care bill are insurance companies who are required to make sure that they’re providing preventive care, or they’re not dropping your coverage when you get sick. And so, this particular company probably wouldn’t have been impacted by that. I know that there’s a perception sometimes that there’s all kinds of regulations coming out of Washington, the truth is actually we’ve seen fewer regulations coming out of my administration than the previous administration. But obviously, you know it’s tough running a small business no matter what. And we’re going to make sure that we continue to provide whatever financing help that we can provide.”

How out of touch with reality can you get.  I guess it's part of the continuing narrative from the White House that everything is someone else's fault.  That only sweetness, light and wonderful comes from The One.

And what about the whopper that fewer regulations have come out of the Obama administration?  Straight from Pinocchio himself.

Hat tip to RCP via Weasel Zippers.

Still doing fine

Following up on their earlier ad focusing on individuals and Obama's "fine" comment, the Romney campaign released another video, this time using members of the media to tell highlight the bad jobs situation.



Keep hammering.  This is the campaign McCain should have run.  Henry Clay said he'd rather be right than president.  McCain must have wanted to be polite and liked rather than president.  I just hope Romney would rather be president than just about anything else.

Hat tip to Ace of Spades and The Right Scoop.

Voter ID

Jeffrey Ellis at The Thinker has it nailed, in my view:

What is the real motivation behind opposition to voter ID laws?

I don’t normally like to speculate on a person’s or group’s motivations, because it can lead to violating the principle of reciprocity and imputing bad motivations on someone. I will just note that leftists claim it is discriminatory towards the poor, and towards minorities in particular, to require a photo ID in order to vote, but we don’t hear them making similar complaints when it comes to requiring a photo ID to buy alcohol, to buy a gun, to travel internationally, or to do about a hundred other things a photo ID is required for. The only time they are concerned about photo ID’s being discriminatory is when it comes to voting. This makes me wonder if it’s really the votes, and not discrimination, that they are concerned about.

Makes sense to me.  After all, the Justice Department hasn't eliminated the requirement to show ID to enter their building.  Does that discriminate against those who want justice from the government but don't have ID?  And if it does, shouldn't that have be an even higher priority than voting?  Because a key role of government is to protect its citizens through the rule of law.

The Leaker??

Breitbart says that it's a trusted White House insider:

Pat Caddell joined Stephen K. Bannon on the "Victory Sessions" and told him that National Security Advisor Tom Donilon is likely the source of recent intelligence leaks that have prompted calls for an investigation by Democrat Senator Diane Feinstein.

Of course it was someone on the very inside.  And likely at the direction of The One.  Now the question is when he'll be tossed under the bus, just like Obama's "white grandmother", Reverend Wright and all the others.

With the folk

From the wonderful Mark Steyn at NRO:

According to Brendan J. Doherty’s forthcoming book The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign, Obama has held more fundraisers than the previous five presidents’ reelection campaigns combined.

This is all he does now. But hey, unlike those inbred monarchies with their dukes and marquesses and whatnot, at least he gets out among the masses. Why, in a typical week, you’ll find him at a fundraiser at George Clooney’s home in Los Angeles with Barbra Streisand and Salma Hayek. These are people who are in touch with the needs of ordinary Americans because they have played ordinary Americans in several of their movies. And then only four days later the president was in New York for a fundraiser hosted by Ricky Martin, the only man on the planet whose evolution on gayness took longer than Obama’s. It’s true that moneyed celebrities in, say, Pocatello or Tuscaloosa have not been able to tempt the president to hold a lavish fundraiser in Idaho or Alabama, but he does fly over them once in a while. Why, only a week ago, he was on Air Force One accompanied by Jon Bon Jovi en route to a fundraiser called Barack on Broadway.

Read the whole article HERE.

Government math

I've always wondered about government claims of "miles per gallon" for electric vehicles.  Since you don't put in a liquid fuel, how do you figure out a MPG figure?  But, I assumed they were making some kind of reasonable calculation, even though the number seemed wildly optimistic.

From the blog Green Explored and blogger Lindsay Leveen, we now know the EPA uses those same mathematical geniuses who are working on the Euro bailout.

The EPA allows plug in vehicle makers to claim an equivalent miles per gallon (MPG) based on the electricity powering the cars motors being 100% efficient. This implies the electric power is generated at the power station with 100% efficiency, is transmitted and distributed through thousands of miles of lines without any loss, is converted from AC to DC without any loss, and the charge discharge efficiency of the batteries on the vehicle is also 100%. Of course the second law of thermodynamics tells us all of these claims are poppycock and that losses of real energy will occur in each step of the supply chain of getting power to the wheels of a vehicle powered with an electric motor.

I started thinking about all of this last night when my wife asked me how the Honda Fit that is now available as an electric vehicle could get 118 MPG as the equivalent rating from the US EPA? I told my wife that was because the US EPA believes in Political Science and not Real Science and that I would investigate this claim for her. Well it is simple the US EPA uses a conversion factor of 33.7 kilowatt hours per gallon of gasoline to calculate the equivalent MPG of an electric vehicle.

Dr. Chu Chu of the Department of Entropy is instructing the EPA on thermodynamics in coming up with the 33.7 kwh per gallon. On a heating value of the fuel 33.7 kwh equals 114,984 BTUS which is indeed the lower heating value of gasoline. The fit needs 286 watt hours to travel a mile and the Green Machine agrees with this for the 2 cycle US EPA test with no heating, cooling or fast acceleration. Using this amount of energy per mile and the 33.7 kwh “contained” in a gallon of gas, the EPA calculates the Fit gets 118 MPG equivalent.

All of these calculations are in fact flawed as the generation of electricity, the transmission and distribution of electricity, the conversion of the AC electricity into DC electricity, and the charging and discharging of the vehicle batteries all have energy losses associated with these activities. The average efficiency of power generation is perhaps 42.5%, the transmission and distribution efficiency is perhaps 90%, the AC to DC conversion and the battery charge discharge efficiency is about 90%. Multiplying all these efficiencies one can calculate that the overall efficiency is 34.4% to get electric power from fuels at the power station into stored electrons within the plug in vehicle’s batteries.

On this basis the 118 MPG equivalent is 40.6 MPG actual for the Honda Fit which is not much of an improvement to the gasoline version of this vehicle that has an EPA rating of 35 MPG combined for city and highway driving.

Green?  You tell me.  And don't forget, that also is for a Fit with no heat, no air conditioning and no fast acceleration.  And no rational basis for existence.

A government agency cooking data to fit political goals?  To quote Captain Renault, "I'm shocked!"

Hat tip to Breitbart for the pointer.

ACORN is back

Judicial Watch has news of how nearly a half billion dollars of your money is funneling through an ACORN alumnus.

The Obama Administration has given a former director at the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) nearly half a billion dollars to offer “struggling” Illinois homeowners mortgage assistance, a Judicial Watch investigation has found.

It means the ACORN official (Joe McGavin) will go from operating a corrupt leftist community group that’s banned by Congress from receiving federal funding to controlling over $445 million in U.S. taxpayer funds.  The money is part of a $7.6 billion Treasury Department program to help the “unemployed or substantially underemployed” make their mortgage payments.

In this case, JW found that a subcomponent of the state-run Illinois Housing Development Authority, known as the Illinois Hardest Hit Program, received a generous $445,603,557 Treasury infusion. The Obama Administration established Hardest Hit in 2010 to provide targeted aid to families in states hit hardest by the economic and housing market downturn, according to its website.

In early 2011 McGavin was appointed as director of Hardest Hit. Before that he was director of counseling for ACORN Housing in Chicago and operations manager for a Chicago ACORN offshoot called Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA). His strong ties to ACORN make him a suspect candidate to handle such a huge amount of taxpayer dollars.

You see...all the ACORN ban did was force them to change names.  But the money still flows.  Your money.

Now, some may say that the real story is the $7.6 billion being given to bail out two groups....the Democrat voters who borrowed money they could never repay, and the Wall Street bundlers who made those bad loans in the first place.  Both of which give their support and votes to The One.

Rather than ban ACORN from receiving money, stop giving the money in the first place.  If there's no federal funding, there's nothing to steal.

Hat tip to Moonbattery for the heads up.

The old shell game

Richard Fernandez has a great line about the financial situation over in Europe:

Perhaps the deep dark secret of the financial crisis is this. Nobody is bailing anybody out. They are simply moving the debt around like a pea under a shell, keeping just one step ahead of the crunch. Maybe this explains why, despite the trillions of dollars in disbursements, rescues, restructuring packages and bailouts, the water in the European hold is just as high as it was before. Just as high and rising.

Or is it just a high stakes game of hot potato.  At some point, the music stops and someone will be left holding the bag.  Of course, the bag will be filled with worthless IOUs, but hell....let's just keep bribing the orchestra to keep playing.

Kimberlin update

Rather than try to summarize, I say go right to the sources (pages open in new windows). 

The Other McCain has an extensive post HERE.

Ace of Spades has a plea to Congress HERE.

Patterico has info HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

This is getting bad.  I continue to pray that no one gets hurt.

The 52nd Percent Problem

The OC just finished reading a very though provoking post over at House of Eratosthenes.   It talked about something that I had never heard of, nor thought about.  Yet it made so much sense.  For definition:

Here it is, phrased as concisely and precisely as I can manage:

Visionaries within our political class can be sorted out into two groups. Not conservatives vs. liberals, but rather, leaders versus dictators. Our ability to recognize the difference between them, is invested in our opportunity to watch how they conduct their election and re-election campaigns. Leaders value the inspiration within the constituency, the collective will, to become a part of the vision. A dictator cares only about his power to compel the constituency to come along, regardless of, in that moment, whether or not they would choose to. The leader therefore wishes the virtues of his plan to become evident to as many people as possible; a dictator only concerns himself with securing the allegiance, at some critical moment, of a majority.

New paragraph. Tying it all together. Litmus test: A dictator cares a great deal more about capturing the votes of the fifty-first percent, than of the fifty-second. He couldn’t give a rat’s rear end about the fifty-second percent.

End definition.

I had never quite thought about it in that manner.  Please read the entire post at the link above.  You will be happy you did - plus, you'll look at elections in a whole new light.

Why in the hell

Is Eric Holder still Attorney General.  E.T. Williams Jr. poses the question.



Smitty at The Other McCain has this answer:

To answer Mr. William’s question, Holder is still the AG because he is both a Reliable Tool and, also, he Knows Too Much. My guess is that Holder has a signed presidential pardon in his safe. Would you exhibit the sort of cheek that Eric Holder offers before Congress without a Get Out Of Jail Free card in hot standby?

Makes sense to me.  I'm thinking about starting a pool among my conservative friends.  Guess how many presidential pardons are issued for administration insiders between November and January 19, 2013.  Closest to the correct number wins the pot.

Claiming credit

Claiming credit for the accomplishments of others is a standard operating procedure for The One.  But the Obama team may have overreached in some of their claims.  A bit of blowback from the Middle East, reported by Israel Matzav:

A group of Mossad agents speaking with Haaretz's Yossi Melman on condition of anonymity have said that the Mossad - and not the Bush administration - developed Stuxnet, and that President Obama is now trying to take credit for it in a bid to help his reelection campaign (Hat Tip: MFS - The Other News via Atlantic Wire). Please recall the David Sanger piece in the New York Times about Stuxnet, which I blogged last week, which claimed that the Bush administration had begun developing Stuxnet, that President Obama had ordered it accelerated, and that Israel had only joined in later. Now, look at what Melman has to say about it.

The Israeli officials actually told me a different version. They said that it was Israeli intelligence that began, a few years earlier, a cyberspace campaign to damage and slow down Iran’s nuclear intentions. And only later they managed to convince the USA to consider a joint operation — which, at the time, was unheard of. Even friendly nations are hesitant to share their technological and intelligence resources against a common enemy.

Israelis know how to punch back.  It's how they've survived.

Drip, drip, drip

The leaks.  Yep, they're becoming a more and more significant story every day the coverup continues.   Mario Loyola at NRO The Corner writes:

The president’s Friday press conference contained this precious gem: “The idea that my White House would purposely release national-security information is offensive.” Aye, Mr. President, ’ tis offensive. That’s why we’d like you to stop doing it.

As Senator John McCain pointed out, the president did not actually deny authorizing the leaks in question. That is the key issue: If the leaks were not authorized, they must be prosecuted. And if they are not prosecuted, we must assume they were authorized.

Lots more in the story.

My bet...there will be no prosecutions.  The "investigation" will slowly last until after the election, at which point it becomes moot.  Let's see how this plays out, but remember the lesson from Watergate.  It's the coverup that causes the damage.

More on "fine"

BigFurHat at I Own the World has created his own video.  For your consideration:

Doing just fine

Following up on Obama's "The private sector is doing fine" statement, the Romney campaign fires back with a great web ad.



I am so impressed with the Romney team's willingness to fire back at Obama, both fast and hard.  Had McCain done so, the 2008 would have been different.  Glad that Romney learned from watching that debacle.

With friends like this

You know the old rejoinder....who needs enemies.  Seems as though the Obama administration is in circular firing squad mode.

After his recent statement that the private sector is doing fine, Obama has been furiously trying to implement damage control.   But hoof-in-mouth disease seems to be contagious from The One.  From Fox News:

President Obama's top campaign strategist said Sunday that the country needs to "accelerate" job creation in the private sector -- by hiring more teachers, police and firefighters.

Let's get this straight...we stimulate the private sector by hiring people into the public sector.  Who cares that it's the private sector that pays for them.

"The private sector, we need to accelerate job creation in the private sector," Axelrod told CNN's "State of the Union," before adding: "One of the ways that we can do that is putting teachers and firefighters and police back to work because those are good middle-class jobs." 

Told that teachers and firefighters are part of the public sector, Axelrod continued to defend his statement. "But that will help accelerate the recovery," Axelrod said.

And these are the people in charge?  You see....it's not about the economy, it's about putting more people into the public sector where they become part of the Democratic - Labor money machine.

Language lesson

Richard Fernandez has a great little foreign language lesson:

Time for a language lesson. “Con mucho gusto te pagaré el Martes la hamburguesa de hoy.”  The English equivalent is “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger to-day”.  J. Wellington Wimpy would feel at home in Madrid.

Now, the question is....how do you say that in Greek?  Or Ebonics. Or Chicagoese?  Fernandez probes how all of these places are on the financial ropes for their own variants of playing Wimpy with the public funds.

Read it.

Day off

The OC takes a short timeout and lots happens in the world.  Is there a causal link?  Stay tuned.

You decide

Kenneth Anderson wrote a post at Volokh Conspiracy about the name of a United Nations "entity".  It is:

Open-ended Ad Hoc Working Group of the General Assembly on the Integrated and Coordinated Implementation of and Follow-up to the Major United Nations Conferences and Summits in the Economic and Social Fields

There's discussion over whether this is a snarky attack on the UN, or if it is a recognition of the diffuse nature of the UN.  And other stuff.

In any case, I just love how that name epitomizes the United Nations.  If that's snarky or sage, I'll let you decide.  Read the post at Volokh.

The wise Victor Davis Hanson explains more about "community organizer":

...when the Pew poll recently revealed that the U.S. is more polarized than at any time in the last 25 years, it provided an answer to Rudy Giuliani’s rhetorical question in 2008 about what exactly a community organizer does. I think we now know the answer after four years of them/us divisiveness: In lieu of trying to find common solutions to shared problems in a fashion that suppresses innate differences, the community organizer seeks to find potential seams of friction and animosity, and then mine and exploit them for political gain– the ultimate aim being to forge together a near majority by piling faction upon faction to obtain compensatory damages for perceived grievances.

He continues with a great analysis of how Obama works the community organizer strategy to try to cobble together enough support for a win in November.

Read the whole story at NRO The Corner.

That Arkansas charm

Rich Lowry has this to say about Bill Clinton:

There’s nothing like being lied to by Bill Clinton. He just has a knack for dishonesties that are so blatant and amusing that it’s difficult to hold them against him

Really?

What planet is he on?  In response to a question, The One lets us know just how the economy is doing and where the problems are.

"The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government, oftentimes cuts initiated by, you know, governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government."

Let's run that one more time.  Obama says that the private sector is doing fine.  Is he reading those falsified labor reports (that keep getting "revised") and believing his own propaganda?  But the telling statement is his view of where the problems lie.  It's that the GOVERNMENTS aren't doing well.  That they have had to cut back.

You see, it's all a matter of priorities.  Government must be served first, government jobs must be preserved and expanded.  Never mind the fact that the private sector, which pays for that government, is going to hell.  Nope, just keep those SEIU drones employed.

Steyn's choice

The always wonderful Mark Steyn has a short post at NRO's The Corner, talking about the Canadian Human Rights Code.  It's a must read.  He sums up the issue at hand thus:

I don’t want the state to have a “mandate” to “educate” the citizenry about their thought-crimes. Even if I did not object on principle, one thing I’ve learned during this five-year campaign is that the statist hacks Canada’s official opposition is so eager to empower are, almost to a man, woman and pre-op transsexual, either too stupid or bullying to be entrusted with the task. Mr Garrison himself would appear to be a fine example of the former, at least.

If it’s a choice between an unlovely citizenry with all its flaws or an overbearing state policing their opinions, I know which is the lesser evil.

True words.

Green video

As a followup to our post on the Obama administration's definitions of "green jobs", we bring you a video from Darrell Issa and the House Oversight Committee.



Amazing how simple truths can make a Democrat bureaucrat look so foolish.

No, that's not what I meant

I guess that's what Attorney General Holder was trying to say to Congress.  Even though the plain language belies his contention.  From CNS:

(CNSNews.com) – Attorney General Eric Holder claimed during congressional testimony today that internal Justice Department emails that use the phrase “Fast and Furious” do not refer to the controversial gun-walking operation Fast and Furious.

Under questioning from Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who read excerpts of the emails at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Justice Department oversight, Holder claimed that the phrase “Fast and Furious” did not refer to Fast and Furious but instead referred to another gun-walking operation known as “Wide Receiver.”

However, the emails refer to both programs -- "Fast and Furious" and the "Tucson case," from where Wide Receiver was launched -- and reveal Justice Department officials discussing how to handle media scrutiny when both operations become public.

Why yes....we used the term Fast & Furious, but it really didn't mean THAT Fast & Furious.

Does he really think we are that gullible?   Don't answer that....the country did elect Obama in 2008.

Important?

The MSM spin on Wednesday was that the vote in Wisconsin was just an outlier....that it held no significance outside the Badger State and was solely about Walker vs. Barrett.

My how memories must atrophy over on that side of the aisle.  American Future Fund has whipped up this video to help refresh those memories of pre-election pronouncements from the left.



I hope that many keep repeating those words of Rachel Maddow: "and that will affect every race, in every partisan election, on every ballot, from the race for dogcatcher on up to the race for president."

(Actually, I don't mind the words, but that voice has a similar effect as scratching a chalkboard.)

Thanks to The Lonely Conservative for the link.

Wintour updated

Powerline brings us an updated version, undoubtedly unauthorized, of the Anna Wintour dinner video.



Too damned good.

Photo ID requirement = Racist??

One of the great hypocrisies of the Obama administration (and there are so many to choose from ) is that the Department of Justice requires presentation of photo ID to enter their building in Washington DC, while at the same time declaring that laws requiring photo ID for voting are discriminatory.  Really?

John Hinderaker at Powerline shares a new photo ID requirement:

Here is one more item to add to the list: you can’t get Michelle Obama to autograph her book without “an official photo ID (driver’s license, passport).” So I guess Michelle must be a racist.

Go to the embeded link in the quote for the whole story, via MRC.

Do as I say, union style

We keep hearing from the unions that those evil banks are against the "worker".  Well, Peter Schweizer, has a different story for us from Business Insider:

Big unions are morphing into the kinds of big businesses and banks they decry, hawking to their members everything from high interest credit cards to home loans.

And contrary to Big Labor’s claims, these products offer no real benefit to union members—only to the union bosses.

Consider, for example, the “SEIU New Rewards Visa Card” and the AFL-CIO “Union Plus” card.  With each new enrollment and subsequent swipe of the card, the union bags a fee and a percentage respectively.

This turns into huge money:  In FY2011, according to its LM-2 filing with the Department of Labor, the AFL-CIO received approximately $28,163,266.00 from credit card revenue.

And it's not like this is good for the card holder:

Both the AFL-CIO and SEIU try to give their members the impression that their cards are superior to others on the market, but they’re not.  The SEIU, for example, offers an introductory rate of 12.24% APR to 22.24%, which is consistent with the industry standards the union have labeled “predatory.”  The SEIU card boasts that it doesn’t charge a late fee.  But union members should read the fine print; if they miss a payment, their rate skyrockets to 27.99%.

Nerdwallet, which Money magazine calls the “Best Credit Card Site” on the web, compares the value of more than 1,000 credit cards.  They thrashed the Union Plus card’s slick advertising and complex fine print.

Worse, Nerdwallet points out that many of the card’s so-called benefits are already available by virtue of union membership.  “We are appalled at the popularity of the Union Plus Credit Card,” says Nerdwallet.  “Avoid the Union Plus Credit Card.”

But it's good for the union treasury.  And thus, the Democratic Party.

In light of Tuesday's vote in Wisconsin, we just wanted you to know.  Read the whole article.

Thanks to Powerline for the pointer.

It's just at day in June

At least that's what it must be to The One.  For all the chest thumping of drone strikes and cyber-warfare, Obama has again distanced himself from our military.  From Keith Koffler at White House Dossier:

It’s D-Day and President Obama is hitting the beaches – of sunny California!

Instead of scheduling a brief event to mark the 68th anniversary of America’s brutal landing on the shores of Normandy, Obama is already on his way to San Francisco, where he will hold two fundraisers before moving on to Beverly Hills to stage two more.

Obama failed to mark D-Day with either a speech or a written proclamation both last year or the year before. He did give a speech in 2009, the 65th anniversary of the event.

How disgraceful.  This is our Commander in Chief.  Only until January 20th. 

"Green" jobs???

From Fox News:

The Obama administration on Wednesday acknowledged a wide-ranging definition of  "green jobs" that includes bus driver, bicycle-shop clerk and other unexpected lines of employment, which the chairman of the GOP-led House oversight committee said is being done for "clearly political purposes."

GOP Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, made the assertion during a hearing on how the administration counts so-called green jobs and the Labor Department's recent change to how reporters can access key unemployment reports and other information.

The Labor Department "has jeopardized the integrity of employment data in some cases for clearly political reasons," he said.

Issa suggested the administration is reclassifying such jobs to prove that billions of taxpayer dollars, through the federal stimulus program, have created green, or environmentally-focused jobs, a major initiative for President Obama.

Control the language, control the debate.  Read it all.

Same day registration

One fact about the Wisconsin election is that the state has a system for same-day registration of voters.  Show up and vote.  Iowahawk had this tweet that summed up the practice:

There's a name for people who register and vote in Wisconsin on the same day. "Chicagoans."

Hugh Hewitt would love that.

Walker wins

Now, it's up to voters in November.

This graphic came in the mail....how appropriate.

MSM Assignment

I wonder if, at any time this election cycle, someone from the MSM will track down Peggy Joseph and see how her mortgage payments and gasoline provisioning are going.  And if you don't remember that name, you'll likely remember her breathless adoration of The One.



They vote.  So remember that you need to, just so that we break even.

An OC oversight

The OC took a trip to Prague a while back and completely enjoyed himself.  It was only for a few days, but it was a delightful time.  While reading Small Dead Animals, I discovered that I had missed a very special spot.

This is from the Memorial to the Victims of Communism.  Being a great believer in personal freedom, how could I have not gone to see it.  The key translations of the above:

205,486 Sentenced [for daring to disagree]
248 Executed
4,500 Died in Prison

327 Died at the border trying to escape from Czechoslovakia
170,938 Left Czechoslovakia to escape Communism

I had promised myself that I would get back to Prague, if only to enjoy again the wonderful food and beers.  Now I have an additional reason to return.

More photos and details at Small Dead Animals.

Brett Kimberlin

I've been late coming to the party on this story, and for that I am truly sorry.  This ongoing saga shows the true, vicious side of progressives.  Mark Krikorian at NRO has a good introduction.

Patterico outlines a truly shocking campaign of intimidation against him, Stacy McCain, and other bloggers by a leftist convicted felon named Brett Kimberlin, whose non-profit group is funded by George Soros, Teresa Heinz-Kerry, Barbra Streisand, et al. I’d seen references to this creep, but the story was convoluted and posts on it seemed to start in mid-story, which is why I was glad to see Mark Tapscott at the Examiner offer a brief introduction to Kimberlin’s villainy, while Michelle Malkin has aggregated links.

Reading about Kimberlin’s violation of his victims suggests something more reminiscent of Cape Fear than Absence of Malice. The outrage is not that there’s another leftist threatening violence against those who disagree with him, but that the authorities haven’t done anything about it. In the end, this is about the rule of law even more than free expression.

Stacy McCain has been forced from his home, and has a long series of posts in this category link.  Patterico has more here.

The OC promises to stay on this one.

Are we a nation of laws?

That simple question used to be routinely answered with "Of course. That's what makes America America".  But more and more, our laws are being eroded.  From the Washington Times comes this report:

A federal department ruled last week that the Forest Service violated a Spanish-speaking woman’s civil rights by calling the Border Patrol to help translate during a routine stop, saying it was “humiliating” to Hispanics and an illicit backdoor way to capture more illegal immigrants.

The ruling by the Agriculture Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights could change policies nationwide as law enforcement agencies grapple with how far they can go in trying to help the Border Patrol while not running afoul of racial profiling standards.

You have go to be kidding me.  Has someone failed to note that one important word in the first paragraph - "illegal"?  When laws are ignored by those who are sworn to uphold them, the whole system becomes a rigged game.  Whoever can prove the greatest grievance gets the most protected place at the table.

You know, if the whole government other than the courts and military disappeared, it might just be a better day.  That is, unless you are one who's protected by the government.  Like an "illegal".

More on "The Dinner"

The Obama fundraising New York dinner keeps spawning new articles that skewer the campaign. Pundit & Pundette cite John Podhoretz in the New York Post, then add in their own commentary. First up, bits from Podhoretz:

Wearing a hair helmet that makes her look like a Roman centurion with a ’20s bob, Wintour attempts what might pass for a smile on the planet Vulcan and intones Britishly: “I’m so lucky in my work that I get to meet some of the most incredible women in the world — women like Sarah Jessica Parker and Michelle Obama.”

This seems like grading on a curve in a world that includes Aung San Suu Kyi and my mother, but fine, we’ll let that go.

“These two wonderful women and I, along with the president, are hosting a dinner in New York City to benefit the Obama campaign," she continues. Given her relative lack of fame compared to those two women, Wintour seems to be punching above her co-hostess weight here, but we’ll let that go, too.

But why, pray tell, is Wintour informing the nation of a dinner to which the nation will not be invited, and at which, one might surmise from the eating habits of the rich and famous, the menu will include a salad of three lettuce leaves without dressing with a Tic Tac for dessert?

“It’ll be a fantastic evening, and you can join us,” she says. What? Actually dine with Anna Wintour — a woman who, it is said, will have you fired if you dare to speak to her in the Condé Nast elevator? Will she even bother to look at you? In the commercial, she can barely bring herself to look at the camera.

Of course she will! “We’re saving the two best seats in the house for you,” she says — by which she must mean the seats near the kitchen. Either those, or the ones at a table featuring whichever Condé Nast editor is getting canned next.

Podhoretz then gets to the heart of the pitch:

Then comes the kicker: “You have to enter to win. Enter right now at BarackObama dot com, slash New York Night.”

And there we have it. The Obama campaign has become a raffle. The winning prize is dinner with Wintour and those other people (movie star, president, his wife). And as in all raffles, you present something valuable of yours as the means of entry.

In this case, that means personal information about yourself for the Obama campaign to capture and then pester you within an inch of your life between now and November.

Here’s why this is interesting. Sweepstakes contests of this sort are a specific and old-fashioned form of direct marketing. They use a shiny prize to lure in rubes who can’t possibly win for the purpose of capturing their names on a mailing list that can then be turned around and sold to others.

The pitch is off-pitch. The hilariously wrongheaded tone and ridiculous use of Anna Wintour suggest a surprising tone-deafness at Obama HQ in Chicago.

Pundette then adds:

Afterthought: I failed to grasp, until talking with husband as we drove to the bus stop this morning, the most absurd and even insulting aspect of Obama's "New York Night": that it's an attempt to appeal to Women. This is what the Obama campaign believes matters to women voters:

Stylish clothes (and accessories!)
Fashion magazines
Celebrities who wear glamorous clothes (and accessories)
Actresses, especially actresses who star in TV shows about "relationships" and  expensive clothes (especially shoes)

And you thought women cared about kids, jobs, the high cost of gas and groceries, and all that boring stuff.

Too much fun.  Read the full posts.

Imagine Biden

Vice President (and fabulist in waiting) Joe Biden gave a graduation speech to a high school in Florida on Monday.  This report is just so good, I have to repost it in full.  Remember, this is the Vice President of the United States speaking.  The man who's a heartbeat away, as they say.

CNSNews.com)– Vice President Joe Biden told the graduating seniors of Cypress Bay High School in Florida today that they should imagine a world where hunger no longer exists because crops grow without the need of soil, water or fertilizer.

That world will soon be here, Biden told the students. The vice president also said to dream of charging stations for electric cars at local high schools, "solar shingles" on the roofs of their homes--and an end to nuclear weapons.

“That’s my simple advice to you today: Imagine,” Biden said.  “Imagine the progress you will see and achieve in your lifetime.   Imagine the breakthroughs that are on the horizon and just beyond it.

“Imagine by the time you’re in the position to buy your first home, putting a roof of solar shingles that will cost no more than today’s ordinary shingles, will be able to power your home, heating, cooling, running appliances at a fraction of the cost your parents pay today,” he said.

Biden then highlighted advances in modern medicine that are “just around the corner,” from regenerating body organs to a cure for cancer.

“Imagine a day, when in your, doctors are able to regenerate entire body parts and limbs that have been damaged and lost, not only saving tens of thousands of lives, but restoring the thousands of  our Iraq and Afghan veterans coming back in need of prostheses, so they will be able to live a full and ambulatory life.”

“As an aside, in the future, just one example, using 3-D printers, we’re going to be able to restore tissue after traumatic injury or burn; restore it back to its original state. It’s literally around the corner.

“Imagine a world in which hunger is vanquished by crops that don’t depend on the soil, water or fertilizer, or pesticides to thrive; they’re just around the corner,” he said.

“Imagine famine being a memory and with it the end of so much war and conflict that plagues so many parts of the world.”

Biden continued:  “Imagine a world in which nations no longer depend on nuclear weapons for their defense and imagine the day when the lightweight materials, cleaner fuels, advanced engines simultaneously make our air cleaner allowing us to go the equivalent of hundreds of miles to the gallon and maybe most importantly freeing us from our dependence on foreign oil and all that entails foreign nation.”

“And imagine when your senior spots are all charging stations, powering up cars that can go hundreds of miles on a single charge,” he said.

Cypress Bay High School is located in Weston, Fla., 30 miles outside of Miami.

Let's see....crops that don't need water.  How does that photosynthesis thing work without water, Joe?  And those "3-D printers" for tissue repair.  Is that a new HP model, or is it Lexmark?

Of course, the telling line is "Imagine by the time you’re in the position to buy your first home".  Given the debt that the Obama administration has been piling on, that will be way, way far off into the future for these students.  You know, on second thought, given that requirement, the plants and printers may happen first.