Monday, October 4. 2010
Kondratieff has received his $250 bribe check from Medicare, purportedly a penance for the Part D donut. However, since Dr. K's vote is not for sale, he is gleefully endorsing it over to a Tea Party candidate of his choice.
 Sometimes we're lucky to have friends with whom we can have civil conversations, even when we disagree. Fewer times, we're even more fortunate to have a friend whose learning and temperance wakens new thinking in ourself. Such a friend earns the right to be listened to carefully, always.
The Rabbi at my synagogue is such a friend. He is deeply liberal in all the best senses of that term, courageous in stating his views, and in altering them as new information is found. Several years ago, at his High Holiday sermon, the most heard of the year, he called for more openness in our listening to criticisms of Israel, not to pull it down but to get closer to our ideals.
In the meantime, others have gathered force to pull Israel down. So, this year, the Rabbi's sermon confronted those who cross the line from legitimate criticism to delegitimization. "When it comes to Israel’s many faults, there is a bold line between criticism and delegitimization, and that line is being crossed by those whose real agenda is the elimination of the Jewish State."
It is a beautiful and informative discussion. As usual, the Rabbi speaks clearly and covers the pros and cons, resulting in a reasoned conclusion. "To teach our children, to educate our neighbors, and to raise our hands against the slaughtering knife of delegitimization of the Zionist Project."
Read it all for yourself.
Here's how it should have gone down:
"What? You're asking me why after I paid my maid three times the minimum wage, checked her paperwork, paid taxes on her - and she turns out to have defrauded me - I'm the bad guy? Next question."
Defrauded - and betrayed. Unfaithful servant indeed.
What did Meg do wrong? She should not have hired a Hispanic.
The Left is unhinged by the Tea Party partly because they’ve never seen you before. And this isn’t limited to Leftists who are presently, you know, alive.
He makes a good point about the "de-closeting" of Conservatives. Until the last decade, they have mostly been living in the shadows. Now they are out and they are proud.
 Royal Navy Field Gun Competition
Dylan meets Obama. Sort-of.
Megan: Where your tax dollars go
Vid: Al Gore Confronted in Tampa about Global Warming Again!!
Stuxnet update
Bill Maher Calls Republicans 'A Deadly Enemy'. Lost his sense of reality.
Prager: If You Are Not a Leftist, Why Are You Voting Democrat?
The great divide in America. In our experience, one cannot even discuss across that divide nowadays.
Those marchers aren't into America. Angry haters? Or just paid to show up? But I am sure the Commies showed up under their own steam. Who are these people?
Sunday, October 3. 2010
Obama's Top Ten Broken Promises.
However, we continue to believe that he and his folks are very pleased with what they have done thus far.
Saturday, October 2. 2010
What's new about a black market in sperm? Human sperm has been cheerfully donated or sold for a few hundred thousand years, hasn't it? Best way to deliver it is in person, but lawsuits are the problem. I expect at least a nice dinner- and maybe a show - in exchange for my sperm donation. My stuff is in high demand because I am tall, dark, handsome, and smart, I like to have fun, and my sperm injector works fairly well most of the time except when I am nervous.
P. J. O'Rourke: The Virtue of Sharing
Noonan: The Twister of 2010. Riehl says it's not a twister - it's climate change. I think it's "too late."
Caring: Global Work Party Day on 10/10/2010: come up with your own event. Pretend that you "make a difference." It's easy and fun, it makes you feel good, and you might get a date out of it.
Somebody is buying something: Another Record Week for Intermodal Rail Traffic
Krauthammer: Why Is He Sending Them? President Obama lacks the will to fight in Afghanistan. For the Left, America's only enemies are American Conservatives.
Via Insty, The Khmer Rouge: They Did It Because They Were Communists
Maybe the TARP wasn't such a bad idea: AIG plans asset sale to repay bailout
Hennessey says the Prez gets it re the housing mess
Reason: School Money Math Never Adds Up Quite Right
Business 101 — outsourcing. The government forces it on us, if we want to stay in business.
Norwegian Publisher Cancels Biography of Muhammed. We term that "chickenshit." Plenty of interesting bios of Jesus have been written, and nobody minds. Jesus was the original rebel against PC.
A prediction that the O will make a left turn. He does want to be "transformational." He is a true believer. He will never adjust to reality.
Insty via Reb: THE HORROR: “Is there anything more frightening than seas of grandmothers waving American flags and singing ‘patriotic’ songs? I don’t think so.” Patriotic grannies really scare me.
Greta Destroys Lib Hack Gloria Allred: “Gloria, This Is Almost Delusional”
From Wkly Std: The Obamacare Follies - Don’t let Obamacare reach its third birthday:
Obamacare is less popular than it was on the day it was born, and it wasn’t popular then, either. Practically the only Democrats who mention the law in campaign ads are those who brag about voting against it. Large numbers of Americans, including a majority of independents, would like to see the law repealed. No wonder the pro-repeal GOP maintains an edge in the congressional generic ballot. As much as the public continues to distrust Republicans, it understands that the first step in undoing this harmful law is giving John Boehner the speaker’s gavel.
Friday, October 1. 2010
In just three months, on January 1, 2011, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves.
On January 1, 2011, here’s what happens... (read it to the end, so you see all three waves)...
Continue reading "Your looming tax disaster"
Thursday, September 30. 2010
Stratfor: "European Terror Threat Overstated".
Although it seems to have been overlooked by the media, it is hard not to conclude that Islamist acts of terror are not usually preceded by specific threats, and Islamist threats are not usually followed by attacks. This is basic psychological warfare, and usually works well – authorities in target states must not ignore the threats, and defending against the threat of attack for an indeterminate time frame is costly as well as stressful.
An excerpt from the book, at NRO. Quite entertaining, clever and, I think true. A quote:
Principles are what counts. So stop trying to outdo us by rushing to the microphones with a silly plan to solve every social ill this side of halitosis whenever our pet frogs in the media croak about a new “crisis” in the daily news feed. In fact, forget about programs completely. Just say no! And if we call you out and demand to know — which we will, you can bet on that, it’s part of the playbook — the details of your “plan,” laugh and tell them to shove it and start talking about principles.
To do otherwise is to accept our premises, which means you have already lost. Instead, stick to the big picture: liberty, self- reliance, faith, freedom. Those concepts are to us like a crucifix to a vampire, but heed not our squeals. Instead, keep brandishing your integrity and have the satisfaction of watching us collapse, writhing, on the floor into a puddle of putrescent malefaction, just like Christopher Lee in all those great Hammer movies.
Fierce feminist lobbying
Neo on mixed political marriages
The Kombucha kerfuffle
A look at auto-tuning. I need that for my church singing.
Horrible. Far Left Fabricates Maid Sob Story to Smear Meg Whitman
The horrible Grayson looks like he's on the ropes
Dems refuse to vote for tax increases...at the moment.
Islam in France (video is in English)
Related: Multiculturalism in Germany
Driscoll on the myth of Hoover and laissez-faire
Not Again! Obama Takes Roadshow to Iowa – Gets Earful
A review of Communist political goals
Re the O at Univ of Wisconsin:
"The enthusiasm gap is real," said Rodd Freitag, UW-Eau Claire political science professor. "I think younger voters may be experiencing the frustrations of seeing our political system at work, of not getting everything you want immediately. The euphoria has gone away."
Where's my pony?
Times Devotes Entire Editorial Page to Attacking 'Pledge to America'
McDonald's Corp. has warned federal regulators that it could drop its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 hourly restaurant workers unless regulators waive a new requirement of the U.S. health overhaul.
The move is one of the clearest indications that new rules may disrupt workers' health plans as the law ripples through the real world.
Does Linda McMahon Stand a Chance in Connecticut?
Here's a new term: "fundamentalist Constitutionalists". Seems like it is meant to be an insult.
Wednesday, September 29. 2010
 We have no "insurgency" in the US now. What I think we have is a reaction to governmental overreach - an overreach which, as I posted yesterday, will only with time ratchet ever upwards until it breaks.
What did the guy say? "Tighten the bolt until it breaks, then back off a little."
Being a Constitutional Conservative is a depressing role.
From Protein's One Party Washington? No-Party Insurgency:
The American government has become a gigantic regulatory juggernaut. It decides the fate of individuals, businesses, whole industries, and entire regions. A few lines in a statute, or a paragraph in one of the many administrative codes that enmesh our productive lives, can mean wealth or ruin. This is a huge, unchecked, and increasingly unaccountable power. Where there is such power, as our Founders knew, it will be abused. Picking better people won’t solve the problem, because where such power exists, it will corrupt the people who have access to it. This is a political law almost as universal as those of Newton and Maxwell in the realm of physical phenomena. A regulatory state this powerful will necessarily be corrupting, venal, and suffocating.
OK, sure. But people voted for that stuff. What can anybody undo? Even Ronaldus Magnus could not take on the ridiculous and useless federal Dept. of Education. Megan McArdle mulls over government coercion, and exposes the straw man of Somalia. A quote:
Unfortunately, I don't have a Grand New Theory with which to replace it; I think of "society" as a chaotic system, within which government, like corporations, are necessary evils that will only ever imperfectly perform the idealized roles to which we would like to assign them. As such, I can't generate any neat sound-bytes like "Taxation is theft!" or "Why don't you just move to Somalia, huh?"
Nobody is advocating nihilism. I do have a grand theory, from Thomas Jefferson: "That government which governs least, governs best." A light hand. The Constitution remains a good idea, and it worked pretty well for a long time. We had a country of self-reliant, strong men and women and kids who took nothing for granted except that their lives were in their own hands, and God's.
Stanley Fish urges opponents to engage the Tea Partiers on the merits, instead of name-calling. He is right.
And Matt Taibbi snarkily notes the Medicare Tennessee Tea Partiers in their government-paid scooters. I think that Medicare should have been means-tested, but that fight is long gone. The Liberal youngsters are going to pay my medical bills in a few years - if they can find a job. The joke is on them because, the way things are going, I have far more assets than they will ever have. Too bad it's not a joke.
"My People are New England WASPs." That's my tribe, AVI. You nailed it.
Marriage as a partnership for building a life. Not necessarily a fairy tale.
We'll never know if the electric car industry would have been viable without subsidies. Yes we do, and it wouldn't be.
The beauty of trigonometry
I had wondered where our friendly commenter, Mike from New Hampshire, was. Dead with an MI at 51. RIP.
How stats deceive: The myth of Connecticut's education gap
Neo-communism
Capretta on Obamacare: The Anatomy of a Hostile Government Takeover.
...busy beavers in various corners of the federal bureaucracy are laying plans for new fiefdoms. Thousands of new employees are planned for various offices in HHS, including the new office to regulate private health insurance nationwide. The IRS is gearing up both to enforce with tax penalties the requirement that everyone carry government-approved insurance, and to help administer the massive new entitlement program that will require income verification on tens of millions of applicants. States will also be forced to build new bureaucracies to carry out the scores of tasks the federal government will be ordering them to perform.
Massive bureaucracy. Disinformation campaigns. Blatant power plays.
Malanga: The Unholy public-sector coalition
The Hill: Democrats to stuff 20 bills into post-election lame-duck session. A good bye present?
Grayson is despicable. But when did being a scum ever harm a political career?
Dueling media narratives:
The funny thing is that conservatives are all aware of the power and presence of the old media, where beltway journalists wield influence and pretend objectivity when we all know they are 12-to-1 in the bag for the Democrats. But these same journalists, their fans, and their political allies all seem really perplexed at what’s happened to make a majority of freakin’ moron-Americans so very angry. It’s ironic that the people who believe they possess superior education, knowledge and wisdom seem quite a bit less informed than their adversaries about one of the great societal events of our time.
Congressman Calls For Schools To ‘Promote The Agenda’ Of Climate Change, Population Limitation. Maybe they can fool the kids.
Rent-a-Wolf: Filmmakers Fake Wildlife 'Documentaries'
Via Chicago Boyz:
That’s the ideal sentiment; the truth is that I enjoy the art of killing too much, and playing modern warfare games would reawaken how much I nostalgically miss the wargames, real and virtual, of my youth in Vietnam, as well as how much I envy, truth be told, the warfighting options available to youth today all over the planet…
Men were built to kill, rape, and to create general mayhem. Civilization is a challenge for us. Our only redemption is being touched by God.
Lowry: Democrats in Denial About Unpopular Policies
Vindication of the graph below:
Tuesday, September 28. 2010
Graph above via Government Pay Growth Outpaces Private Pay Growth
Mead: How China's growing power aids US influence in the East
For first time in almost a century, Russian train arrives in Nice. Cool.
Local Tea Party group may have uncovered massive vote fraud in Texas
At Newsmax,
Sen. Patrick Leahy has introduced a bill affecting the Internet that could have a “dangerous impact on freedom of speech,” according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Surber: Guess what the New York Times didn’t like
Who is going to rally in DC next? And yes, they are bussing them in.
Democrats Face Skeptics in Rural Areas
WSJ:
One out of every three dollars earned in the U.S. goes to pay for or comply with federal laws and regulations, and new policies enacted in 2010 for health care and financial services will increase this burden.
Obamacare: The pain begins now
Light rail doesn't work in Phoenix/ It's a city that grew up with cars. NYC has heavily-used subways (light rail) because it grew up with them.
In the war between social and fiscal conservatives the question on everyone's mind is: who (or what) comes first?
we need to fundamentally restructure our economy and re-establish popular control over the private corporations which have distorted our economy and hijacked our government. That’s a long-term job, but one we should start now.
Monday, September 27. 2010
The Stolen Valor Act, which some judges say abridges free speech, will end up before the Supreme Court. Here's the latest case of "free speech". The Denver Post reporter who previously, in her words, "was duped" by the false claims, reports:
Kevin Grimsinger came forward this summer as a special forces veteran who had lost parts of his legs in Operation Enduring Freedom. I wrote about him in July when he led the movement in Colorado to qualify veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder for medical marijuana.
As it turns out, the double-amputee didn't serve in Afghanistan and wasn't injured by a land mine, as he claimed. Records show his military service ended a decade before he said he was hurt fighting in Kandahar in 2001.
He was, in fact, paralyzed as a civilian in a crash on a mountain road in Southern California where, as he now tells it, he was trying to kill himself....
For his aunt in Northglenn — the first to speak out about his history — it's a classic case of stolen valor.
"It's not right that he's living his life pretending to be some kind of war hero," said Linda DeBruyn, whose husband and son are war veterans....
Slingers, as the 42-year-old likes to call himself, moved to Denver some time around 2003. He since has misrepresented himself to the Denver Mayor's office, which appointed him to a special commission. He pulled one over on state lawmakers when testifying earlier this year. And he hoodwinked medical-marijuana advocates who were all too eager to wheel him forward as a valorous poster guy.
He has misled about 200 people participating in a veterans outreach program he runs at Budding Health, a pot dispensary in Denver. Most folks there and at VFW Post 1 — where Grimsinger was a quartermaster — know him as the guy whose legs were blown off in Afghanistan.
"Holy crap. Holy crap," VFW commander Izzy Abbass said when learning Grimsinger's history. "This just detracts from what everybody else endured and suffered."
Hey, judges, no harm done, huh. Influencing legislation, being appointed to a government commission, misleading veterans in need of help, no big thing. How about impersonating judges? Would that count?
A good analysis by Keith Hennessey.
Speaking of unforced errors, Segway inventor drives self off cliff. Sheesh.
 Toon via Theo
High- and low-divorce careers
Update on Dion
Lady Gaga visits a nursing home... dressed as a dominatrix-style Hillary Clinton h/t Schneiderman
Mankiw: How much would the President raise the top tax rate?
Shrinkwrapped: There'll Always Be An England?
Dems plan to extend Bush's middle-class tax rates
Proofiness vs. Truthiness
Young Adults, Health Insurance Is Available for About Same Monthly Cost as A Cell Phone
MA Gov Patrick: “It’s a free country. I wish it weren’t, but . . . it’s a free country.
More revealing Leftist talk, at the NYT: Keeping the money you make is a "present" from the government.
Democratic candidates across the country are opening a fierce offensive of negative advertisements against Republicans, using lawsuits, tax filings, reports from the Better Business Bureau and even divorce proceedings to try to discredit their opponents and save their Congressional majority.
It’s not just a band of flannel-shirted environmentalists any longer; it’s become a big-money, major player in Washington power politics and American elections.
Sunday, September 26. 2010
 Another good GOP Pres candidate: John Thune (pic, with Sen. Thune on the right, via Gateway).
Glass recycling
Google Earth finds recent crater
Asperger's: The Boy Who Couldn't Make Friends
Sen Kerry: Voters are clueless/ But not when they vote for you, Senator?
The Tea Party Movement Is a Women's Movement
The gold bubble
Obama Stimulus Made Economic Crisis Worse, `Black Swan' Author Taleb Says
You Can't Say That: Against its wishes, Europe’s political class is hip-deep in immigration debates.
How California ran out of toilet paper
Via Betsy, The beliefs behind the tea party movement
Bob Shrum: Americans aren't listening to Obama. No. We have heard enough.
Saturday, September 25. 2010
A bedbug at Bloomingdale's. I blame the Jihadists.
The Colorado River runs dry. Without looking it up, do you remember where that river used to run into the sea before it was sucked dry by human needs?
What's all this about cookstoves? Sounds like Cultural Imperialism to me.
Powerline's appeal to Yale alums
From HBS - Stimulus Surprise: Companies Retrench When Government Spends
Where are all these Malik Shabazzes coming from? I've never seen so many of them.
Turtle Bay, Where the Outrageous Is Normal. The UN is a joke.
Spitzer: Cuomo ‘Dirtiest, Nastiest’ Of Politicians. He is not a good person. It would be amusing if he loses.
A HUD inspector gets it: ACORN Spinoff Smacked Down by HUD Inspector General
Tom Friedman's Totalitarian Temptation:
Last May on "Meet the Press," Friedman fantasized about a government that could implement the "right solutions" without all that bothersome democracy...
Tom Friedman as Dictator for Life. There's an idea. BTW, I think Tom is a pompous ass. Not stupid, but unwise.
Friday, September 24. 2010
Are all Americans entitled to equal protections under the law? Of course, except if relying upon the current leadership of US Department of Justice. Reluctantly, only after misrepresentations were made to Congress by officials of the US Department of Justice, the chief of the DOJ’s Voting Rights Section – with over three decades service in the DOJ -- claimed whistleblower protections to spill the beans to Congress the US Commission on Civil Rights.
In his testimony, Christopher Coates, recounting his direct experiences, summed up “the hostility in the Civil Right Division (CRD) and Voting Section toward the equal enforcement of some of the federal voting laws.”:
What I am pointing out is that I believe that some minorities are just as likely to resort to lawlessness in the voting area as are some whites….In our increasingly multiethnic society, that [ignoring minorities’ breaking of electoral laws] is a clear recipe to undermine the public’s confidence in the legitimacy of our electoral process….We do not have the discretion to decide not to enforce the law based upon the race of the perpetrators or the race of the victims of the wrongdoing. Those discretionary decisions cannot constitutionally be based upon race.
Another Voting Rights Section attorney who resigned to blow the same whistle comments, “My profession has not seen a hero like Coates since the giants of the civil rights movement convinced the courts to eradicate legal racial discrimination. Coates has dedicated a lifetime to following in their footsteps, to ensuring free access to the ballot.”
I just checked Google news. No MSM coverage yet. I just checked another major aggregator of news wires. No coverage yet. Surely there will be, some. That is not enough.
It is up to the voters in November to see that there’s a Congress which conducts proper oversight of the Obama Justice Department, to ensure equal justice for all.
I have to admit, I'm a little upset.
A witch ruined my Maggie's post.
Well, okay, part-time witch and newly-elected Delaware Republican candidate Christine O'Donnell ruined my Maggie's post. It really hurt.
A few days before the Delaware election, I was reading various articles in both the MSM and MSB and, in regards to the Tea Party spirit, was planning on writing an interesting piece on "who gets it" and who doesn't.
From the Left:
David Brooks: Tea partiers are narcissistic, egomaniacal, self-righteous people who distort the truth!
I think it's safe to say that ol' Dave doesn't get it.
Jacob Weisberg: The Tea Party movement has two defining traits: status anxiety and anarchism
Or ol' Jacob.
Continue reading "ProCon: Personally, I blame Christine O'Donnell"
 What are those things on the dam?
"ObamaCare addresses every healthcare problem, with every solution further centralizing power and decision making in Washington. The promises do not come cheap." At The American, Still No Good News for ObamaCare
Michelle Obama’s healthier eating plan runs up against a fat reality: Americans don’t wanna
Powerline: The Central Issue of Our Time: Federal Spending
The Repubs put forth their agenda. So what's the Dem agenda?
Zuckerman: The American Dream of Home Ownership Has Become a Nightmare
Scott Brown blasts Harvard over ROTC ban
Socialism breeds selfishness: I, me, mine.
UN Chief: "...the world still looks to the United Nations for moral and political leadership." Really?
What do you think of this?
Thursday, September 23. 2010
The O cannot fill a ballroom in NYC. That is bad news for him.
Bill Clinton offers advice to the O. Good, sleazy, sneaky, political advice from a guy who never seems to have had a sense of right and wrong or truth and falsehood. Bill Clinton is clever as heck and does think: it's been too bad that he thinks like a criminal.
 Blogger's Brekkie via Theo
The Repub Pledge. No harm in being explicit on what they are "Yes" about.
Great pics of abandoned properties. h/t Doug Ross
Your body is always making cancer. h/t - I forgot
Kudlow: Go back to the gold standard
VDH wonders whether America is becoming a nation of peasants. Like Euroland?
Sowell: The politics of resentment
Fund: The Carter-Obama comparisons
Villainous: Quantifying the Hypocrisy of Lefty Academicians
Related, Q&O toys with An Academic Professional
TNR on Rand Paul
Watch your medical insurance costs rise. More details at Betsy
China-apologist Tom Friedman still loves China
Harper on Canada's gun registry:
“The people of the regions of this country are never going to accept being treated like criminals. We will continue our efforts until this registry is finally abolished.”
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