Monday, January 31, 2011

Egypt and the Failure of the Obama Doctrine

I love the Heritage Foundation:

Morning Bell: Egypt and the Failure of the Obama Doctrine
Posted January 31st, 2011 at 9:39am in American Leadership

The Obama Administration has been slow to embrace calls for liberty in Egypt is completely consistent with the Obama Doctrine as applied in the Middle East. When the Iranian people rose against the regime in Tehran in the wake of a disputed national election, Obama offered virtually no support for the cries for freedom. He was too committed to his engagement strategy with the Iranian regime, believing his “charm offensive” would be enough to deter them from pursuing nuclear weapons. Those efforts have completely failed. Nevertheless, the “playing nice initiative” with Tehran fell flat.


To give Egyptians the greatest possible prospects for liberty, the Obama Administration should change course and press any government that emerges to:

Pledge to minimize the use of force and the loss life in its efforts to restore order;
Agree to open up the political system to allow meaningful participation by Egyptian citizens in forming a representative government; and
Restore Internet service and access to the world.
The Obama Administration should review U.S. assistance to Egypt and make further assistance contingent upon undertaking these actions.

No explanation needed...

Just watch all the way to the end.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

How do you respond to insanity....?

I dare you to try and read this without wanting to scream obscenities....

Opinion: Winning the Future With Health Care Reform
Jan 28, 2011 – 8:29 AM
Sec. Kathleen Sebelius
Special to AOL News
My Response:

However easy it would be (and it would be easy), it would be a waste of time refute point by point the complete and utter falsehoods outlined in this commentary. I do not know whether Ms. Sebelius really believes government can reduce the cost of healthcare or whether she is simply part of a larger conspiracy. Regardless the outcome in the same. A nation of citizens forced under threat off imprisonment to participate in a government run healthcare system which will require rationing of healthcare.

Instead, I'd like to make two simple statements:

1) The unintended consequences of laws and regulations are proportional to the size of the bill. At 2400+ pages we (as San Fran Nan said) to pass the bill to find out what is in it. We are finding out he easy stuff now, but the real awful parts are still years in the future... Just and the new "Food Safety and Modernization Act" will make food more expensive (with little or no effect on food safety), the Obamacare will make healthcare more expensive with little or no effect on quality of life.

2) Look at anything government controls and show me where costs are contracting. Costs of everything from postage, to Amtrak, to college tuition, to you name it increases dramatically as government’s role increases. Now that Obama has completely taken over student loans, the cost of colleges will increase at a rate beyond anything any of those "smartest people in the room" people predicted.

You can call me a prophet when it happens, but it only takes a keen sense of the obvious to figure it out.

Friday, January 28, 2011

How's that "green economy" workin' out for you...?

Spain's jobless rate surges to 20.33%
by Katell Abiven – Fri Jan 28, 7:06 am ET

MADRID (AFP) – Spain announced Friday its jobless rate surged to a 13-year record above 20 percent at the end of 2010, the highest level in the industrialized world, as the economy struggled for air.

Madrid estimates 70 percent of the two million jobs which were lost in Spain since the start of the economic downturn were directly or indirectly related to the construction sector.

Last year the government introduced a hotly contested labour market reform that cut the country's high cost of firing workers and gave companies more flexibility to reduce working hours and staff levels in economic downturns -- changes that he argued would boost job creation.

For a more detailed analysis see this study.

What temperature should the earth be?

Here we go on the Global Warming Hoax, opps... sorry - Climate Change Hoax, once again. When will anyone ever ask the question which needs to be asked, "What is the correct temperature for planet earth?"

My prediction? Never. I grew up in the state of Wisconsin (USA). I was in grade school when I learned about the "Wisconsin Glacial Episode". Without going into a lot of mind numbing detail, a large part of Wisconsin was covered by glaciers many, many years ago. The result is an particularly weird landscape in central Wisconsin where towers of rock clearly eroded by water jut up from the center of otherwise flat fields.

So, I have to ask, "Was the temperature of the earth cooler then?" Presumably so. Which leads to the next question (for those of us who dare ask such things), "So what caused the glacier(s) to melt?" Was it global warming (sorry, I keep forgetting), I mean, climate change? Who caused that warming? I think it was well before Henry Ford started manufacturing the automobile.

Hmmm... If anyone sees Algore, would you please see if he could check into this on that internet thingy he invented
?

In the meantime:

Himalayan glaciers not melting because of climate change, report finds
Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing rather than retreating, claims the first major study since a controversial UN report said they would be melted within quarter of a century.
By Dean Nelson, New Delhi and Richard Alleyne
The Telegraph
6:00AM GMT 27 Jan 2011
Will those crazy 'lil "climate changers" ever catch a break? It seems lately every time they release a report on "CG", someone comes along behind them and actually checks facts. Damn those fact checkers!!!!

Monday, January 24, 2011

The Hell You Say....

Correction: The real snow job in D.C.: Obamacare waivers skyrocket to 729 + 4 states; 4 new SEIU waiver winners

I stand corrected....

Who could have seen this coming? SEIU, McDonalds and 222 other companies (along with many unions) require waivers from Obamacare...

Three SEIU Locals--Including Chicago Chapter--Waived From Obamacare Requirement
Monday, January 24, 2011
By Fred Lucas
CNSNews.com

Three local chapters of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), whose political action committee spent $27 million supporting Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, have received temporary waivers from a provision in the Obamacare law.

The three SEIU chapters include the Local 25 in Obama’s hometown of Chicago. The waivers allow health insurance plans to limit how much they will spend on a policy holder’s medical coverage for a given year. Under the new health care law, however, such annual limits are phased out by the year 2014. (Under HHS regulations, annual limits can be no less than $750,000 for 2011, no less than $1.25 million in 2012 and no less than $2 million in 2013.)

HHS gave a waiver to Local 25 SEIU in Chicago with 31,000 enrollees on Oct. 1, 2010; to Local 1199 SEIU Greater New York Benefit Fund with 4,544 enrollees on Oct. 10, 2010; and to the SEIU Local 1 Cleveland Welfare Fund with 520 enrollees on Nov. 15, 2010.

So far, the Obama administration has issued waivers to 222 entities, including businesses, unions and charitable organizations. Of that total, 45 were labor organizations.

A total of 1,507,418 enrollees are now included in the waivers. More than one-third -- 512,315 – of the enrollees affected were insured by union health plans.

So what about the femi-nazi's obsession with Palin?

Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin.... They can't stop hating her. But, they also can't seem to stop talking about her. Do they realize it them that is elevating her status as a respected states-person? Maybe they want it that way, I don't pretend to understand their motivation. Regardless, the femi-nazi's constant spewing of hatred only goes to shore up Rush Limbaugh's analysis of the entire feminist movement: "Feminism was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society".

This thoughtful article actually seems to confirm that statement:

Sarah Palin and the Battle for Feminism
The ex-governor and her Mama Grizzlies argue that the real women’s issue is our country’s fiscal future.
KAY S. HYMOWITZ
City Journal

But “calm and collected” are not the words that come to mind to describe the feminist response to the governor from Alaska. The young feminist Jessica Grose, writing on the popular website Jezebel just after the Republican convention, was—well, we’ll let her describe it: “When Palin spoke on Wednesday night, my head almost exploded from the incandescent anger boiling in my skull. . . . What I feel for her privately could be described as violent, nay, murderous, rage.” Grose’s readers left more than 700 comments, according to the late New York Sun, including one from a reader who wanted to “vomit with rage.” Other haters damned Palin as a traitor to her sex or an “insult to women,” as Judith Warner spat in the New York Times. “Turncoat bitch!” the comedian Sandra Bernhard railed in a performance caught on YouTube. “You whore in your cheap fucking . . . cheap-ass plastic glasses and your hair up!” Writing on a Washington Post blog, Wendy Doniger, a Hinduism specialist at the University of Chicago Divinity School, topped them all: Palin’s “greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.”


Here is more proof Rush is right (again):
Liberals:

Jessica Grose
Judith Warner
Sandra Bernhard
Wendy Doniger


Conservatives:

Sarah Palin
Michele Bachmann
Michelle Malkin
Ann Coulter

Case.

Rested.

Pajamas Media » Don’t Cry for Olbermann

Well said...

I love it:

And what was the cause of this celebrated breakup? Apparently, it was money, honey. As much as the liberal literati love to hate capitalism, their stars revel in the bread-buttering cashola that buys the mansions, stocks the bars, and pays for the promiscuity. Hypocrite is too mild a word, when one considers the inglorious rants against “greedy” corporations for which Olbermann was widely known.
Pajamas Media » Don’t Cry for Olbermann

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Here's a story that won't go national....

Here's a story that won't make the national news:



I do not believe in "hate crime" laws. Regardless of the motivation of the criminal, the crime is the crime. When we begin to punish people differently based on their motivation we are trying to punish them differently for their thoughts. From there it is less of a stretch to start punishing people for wanting to commit a crime. "He wanted to kill them, so he must be locked up to prevent the crime." I just sayin'....

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Monday, January 17, 2011

What do you get after 60 years of democrat control?

This:

Without aid, DPS may close half of its schools
Class sizes also would swell under proposal filed with the state
Jennifer Chambers / The Detroit News

Detroit — Detroit Public Schools would close nearly half of its schools in the next two years, and increase high school class sizes to 62 by the following year, under a deficit-reduction plan filed with the state.

The plan, part of a monthly update Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb gives the Department of Education, was filed late Monday to provide insight into Bobb's progress in his attempt to slash a $327 million deficit in the district to zero over the next several years. Under it, the district would slim down from 142 schools now to 72 during 2012-13.

Why?

Because the district's contract with the Detroit Federation of Teachers requires payments to teachers for class sizes that exceed specified maximums, the district estimates it would spend $10 million in oversize class pay over four years. Keith Johnson, president of the teachers union, said the proposed class size increases won't work and will never happen.

"I will never agree to any class-size increases," Johnson said. "These increases are antithetical to learning. Secondly, our classrooms aren't even built to accommodate those numbers.

"Johnson said the teachers' contract does not let the district exceed contracted class sizes through 2012. DFT filed an unfair labor practice charge in July to restore class sizes for the upcoming school year.

Complete and utter denial.... As if there are other choices. Who does Johnson think ought to pay for their failure?

I guess you & I....

Friday, January 14, 2011

Who says government work doesn't pay...

Living large: Home going up in Highlandville to be one of country’s largest.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 12:00 am
Brady Brite

The stretch of U.S. 65 between Ozark and Branson has some of the Ozarks’ most impressive scenery. There are lush, rolling hills, distant horizons and, if you look east, one of the biggest homes in the United States.

A house currently under construction near Highlandville spans almost a full acre from wall to wall, on a 500-acre site. The ambitious project, nearly three years in and barely at the first floor, totals 72,000 square feet.

Records show the building is owned by the Steven T. Huff Family, LLC....

The property’s deed says the Steven T. Huff Family, LCC is located in Leesburg, Va. Available online records of political campaign contributions show a Steven T. Huff of Leesburg to be an engineer and chief technology officer of Overwatch Systems, Ltd. According to the Overwatch website, the company “delivers multi-source intelligence (multi-INT), geospatial analysis and custom intelligence solutions to the Department of Defense, national agencies and civilian organizations. ... More than 25,000 analysts in the U.S. Department of Defense and the larger intelligence community utilize Overwatch solutions.”

A company overview of Overwatch on the Bloomberg Businessweek website says Overwatch was formerly known as Sensor Systems.

Overwatch also owns the Medical Numerics company, which, according to its website, “enjoys powerful collaborations with the world’s leading medical imaging research organizations, including The United States National Institutes of Health, Harvard Medical School, Yale University, UCLA School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, and Oxford University.”

The Medical Numerics website says Steven Huff founded Sensor Systems—now Overwatch—in 1993.

Apparently, it does pay to work for the government, at least as a IT consultant to the DOD and NIH...

Pivens of" Pivens & Cloward" infamy...

This needs no introduction. She says it all quite plainly:

With friends like these...

File this in the "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'- Ronald Reagan" file....

City puts a stop to homeless outreach
Couple must have proper permit to continue feeding dozens each day
By BRADLEY OLSON
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Jan. 13, 2011, 11:14PM

Bobby and Amanda Herring spent more than a year providing food to homeless people in downtown Houston every day. They fed them, left behind no trash and doled out warm meals peacefully without a single crime being committed, Bobby Herring said.

That ended two weeks ago when the city shut down their "Feed a Friend" effort for lack of a permit. And city officials say the couple most likely will not be able to obtain one.

Anyone serving food for public consumption, whether for the homeless or for sale, must have a permit, said Kathy Barton, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Department. To get that permit, the food must be prepared in a certified kitchen with a certified food manager.

The regulations are all the more essential in the case of the homeless, Barton said, because "poor people are the most vulnerable to foodborne illness and also are the least likely to have access to health care."

This would be laughable if the results weren't so tragic....

A Billion Dollar Presidency...

And so it begins. The money raising for the 2012 presidential election. A half a BILLION dollars per candidate..... Wow...

Barack Obama's 2012 cash challenge
POLITICO | Congress | Barack Obama's 2012 cash challenge By JEANNE CUMMINGS | 1/14/11 4:37 AM EST

Excerpts:
Bracing for a half-billion-dollar onslaught of outside GOP cash in 2012, President Barack Obama’s advisers are quietly working to bring back together the major donor base that produced a record-breaking fundraising haul in his first run for president.

Ironically, in an article ostensibly about Obama fund raising they still take time to take a poke at the GOP:

In other places, such as Pennyslvania, top donors say Obama has to get in line behind other candidates who need the cash more urgently. And some donors are worried that the party has been slow off the mark in responding to the latest onslaught of GOP fundraising, millions of dollars raised from secret donors by a variety of Republican outside groups, including two associated with former Bush advisers Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie.


And they (thankfully) face a difficult battle due to the midterms:

[An Obama supporter is] considering organizing a fundraiser in the Philadelphia area. But he’s told Obama’s team that it must wait until the re-election committees of Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and others are on solid financial ground.

“In the most important states for the president to win, in every one of them, there is someone up for re-election,” said Buttenweisser, noting Senate contests in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida.

Unlike 2008, Democrats no longer hold the governor’s office in any of those states. So, in Pennsylvania, Casey “offers more to President Obama than the reverse. Anything we can do to strengthen Sen. Casey’s re-election, not only does that, but also helps lay the groundwork for President Obama’s re-election.”

Ain't politics grand?

I'm back...

I have been on a bit of a hiatus....

There was a lot of work to be done in preparation for the Christmas holiday and I was quite busy. I am now back, and thus will be attempting to keep anyone who actually takes time out of their busy day to read my posts informed and entertained (or depending on your perspective: criticized and inflamed).

So here is goes...