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Archive for July, 2009

Morning Round Up.

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

NYC Mayor Bloomberg is pissed at both Hillary Rodham Clinton and our Dear Leader. While breaking his campaign promise and jacking the taxes of Americans through the roof, HRC, likely acting on orders from BHO, exempted foreign diplomats from paying property taxes that have been in place since 1873. This will cost NYC, which is having budget problems like most Americans & American businesses, $260 million. This is on top of the $66 million the State Department owes NYC for providing police security for United Nations missions. I’d feel bad over this, but NYC voted overwhelmingly for both HRC as a carpetbagging Senator and for our Dear Leader. The residents of NYC are getting what they asked for, good and hard.

It also appears that our Dear Leader is getting tired of having to answer pesky questions from the American people, like “Why did you screw the pooch on the economy?” He canceled a “Town Hall” style meeting, that would have included questions from the American people and replaced it with a teleprompter driven speech with no questions. No pesky citizens either, since the venue for the speech is closed to the public. No Sunshine here.

House democrats are seeking a $540 Billion Tax increase in order to pay for what idiots on the left are calling “free health care.” The policies of congressional democrats and our Dear Leader have driven a bad economy even worse, and now they want to put a crippling tax on the American people. Hardly surprising, this latest bit of idiotic behavior is being driven by tax cheat Charles Rangel.

While the government is under the control of democrats, the federal deficit has reached a new record, $1 Trillion dollars. Given that most of our Dear Leader‘s staff doesn’t pay taxes, it’s up to you to foot that bill. Oh, and expect that to go much higher. They are out to radically change the American government, and they really don’t care what it costs.

I’ve been writing about the President’s war on Inspector Generals, the people who’s job is to find corruption and waste in the federal government. That story isn’t going away as fast as our Dear Leader and the MSM would like it too.

Monday Book Pick: A Hymn Before Battle

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

A Hymn Before Battle by John Ringo

John Ringo’s first novel, and the first in his Posleen War Series, also know as the Legacy of Aldenata series. A ripping good yarn. It has back stabbing alien “allies”, really bad bad aliens, and ends with a massive battle on an alien planet.

Ya, I know it’s Tuesday. I’m late.

Monday Book Pick Archive.

Evaluating the Stimulus effect

Monday, July 13th, 2009

Our Dear Leader and his democrat cronies are backpedaling and trying to lower expectations on their massive porkulus program funded by skyrocketing massive federal debt.

The fact that the pork ladened democrat driven stimulus bill is not stimulating the economy or creating jobs shouldn’t be a surprised.

Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw pointed out back in January that almost two thirds of the stimulus money is not scheduled to be spent until after 2010. For Americans suffering under the Obama Economy, that is not good news. It is clearly designed to delay economic benefit until the beginning of the 2012 election cycle.

It isn’t helping the economy now, because only 8% of the one trillion dollar porkulus program is scheduled to be spent in 2009! We are now learning that the money is being spent much more slowly than planned, and appears to be directly funded to areas and organizations that were strong supporters of our Dear Leader. Yup, hardly surprising that there is more than whiff of corruption associated with the democrats porkulus program.

It’s interesting to look back at what the Congressional Budget Office had to say about the economy back in February. They projected an unemployment peak of 9.2% hitting in early 2010. That was if the federal government kept its mitts off the economy. Given the liberal democrat meddling, we hit 9.5% at least six months early. The CBO predicted that the economy would be on the mend by late 2009. So it is clear that our Dear Leader‘s meddling has made things worse for the American people.

The important thing to remember is that Obama’s goal is not to fix the economy, but to fundamentally change the role of government in the United States of America.

Update: Keith Hennessey has an excellent fisking of our Dear Leader’s statement on the economy.

Death of Transparency at the Obama White House

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

Remember how our Dear Leader promised more “transparency” and “sunlight” to government? Well, that was just smoke and mirrors (a polite term for Bullshit) to get the rubes to vote for him.

Here is the reality of the Obama regime. “A few weeks ago, the Obama Administration officially abandoned the President’s “Sunlight before Signing” campaign pledge that the White House would post all legislation passed by Congress for at least five days before the President would sign it.”

Jim Harper, of the Cato Institute points out, nine new pieces of legislation have been signed into law by the President and yet, as of Friday July 10, 2009, not one had been posted on the White House web site.

Yup, the stench of hypocrisy in the Obama White House is getting pretty thick.

Gov. Palin to fundraise for Conservatives, democrat & Republican

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

The Washington Times has the scoop on this one.

Brushing aside the criticisms of pundits and politicos, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said she plans to jump immediately back into the national political fray — stumping for conservative issues and even Democrats

The former Republican vice-presidential nominee and heroine to much of the GOP’s base said in an interview she views the electorate as embattled and fatigued by nonstop partisanship, and she is eager to campaign for Republicans, independents and even Democrats who share her values on limited government, strong defense and “energy independence.”

Bingo! It’s fiscal conservative values that will save this country! Better a Blue Dog democrat who is a strong fiscal conservative and supports RKBA than a leftist, anti-Civil Rights, big government Republican.

Honesty from the Press, after the deed was done

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

Via Newsbusters, White House reporter Carl Cannon, admits that the majority of the MSM was hostile toward Gov. Sarah Palin and “seriously failed to scrutinize Joe Biden, especially his fact-mangling and odd statements in the vice presidential debate.”

In the 2008 election, we took sides, straight and simple, particularly with regard to the vice presidential race. I don’t know that we played a decisive role in that campaign, and I’m not saying the better side lost. What I am saying is that we simply didn’t hold Joe Biden to the same standard as Sarah Palin, and for me, the real loser in this sordid tale is my chosen profession.

First off, thanks for admitting the glaringly obvious. Secondly, it’s pretty cowardly of Cannon to come out with this nine months after the election. Saying this publicly back in October 2008 would have show real guts and journalistic integrity. Cannon goes on to point out just how much of a free ride the press give Joey Biden, the Gaffe Master.

Sen. Biden, however, was in a place by himself when it came to bogus claims, absurd contentions, and flights of rhetorical fancy. He threw out several assertions that were so preposterous that – had Palin made them – they would have prompted immediate calls for McCain to dump her from the ticket.

The good senator from Delaware warmed up slowly, erroneously claiming that McCain voted with Obama on a budget resolution, and asserting wrongly that Obama wanted to return to the Reagan-era marginal income tax rates. He also embarked on an appallingly wrongheaded monologue about the constitutional history of the vice presidency. But when the talk turned to national security, presumably Biden’s purported area of expertise, he went completely off the grid.

To me Biden’s most discordant claims concerned his Animal House-like history lecture about the office of the vice president. It came while Biden was dressing down Dick Cheney, who was not present, for supposedly being unfamiliar with the Constitution. “The idea (that) he doesn’t realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States – that’s the executive branch – he works in the executive branch,” Biden said. “He should understand that. Everyone should understand that. And the primary role of the vice president of the United States is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and, as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there’s a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit….He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he’s part of the legislative branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive, and look where it has gotten us.”

Lord, would Tina Fey have had fun with this jumble of misinformation – if only Palin had said it! Article I defines the legislative, not executive, branch. The vice president is, indeed, mentioned there. What Biden finds “explicit,” hasn’t been so to previous vice presidents or to most constitutional scholars. Prior to the 20th century, vice presidents didn’t even have offices at the White House compound – they were housed in the Capitol. The notion that a veep’s constitutional authority is to provide advice to a president springs from Biden’s brow; it certainly isn’t mentioned, or even contemplated, in the Constitution, which doesn’t even say whether the vice president should receive a salary.

Should Joe Biden have known this stuff? Since he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, you’d hope so. But even if he didn’t, you’d think it would be news when he unleashed a veritable fount of misinformation to impugn Palin’s knowledge of the federal system while attacking a sitting vice president. It barely rated a mention in the collective mainstream media.

This isn’t “news” to anybody paying attention, but it is interesting to see a member of the DNC/MSM out his profession for blatant unprofessionalism. Of course, he is doing nine months after the election, and well before the next election cycle. Either way, I don’t think readers of the New York Times will ever know of Cannon’s confession.

Here is an impression of Gov. Palin from “Saturday Night Live” senior producer Marci Klein, that is more accurate than any mocking satire from Tina Fey, “This is the most confident person I’ve ever met.”

California banks say NO to state government IOUs

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

Major banks in California, including Wells Fargo and Bank of America, have announced that they will no longer accept IOUs from the bankrupt, spendthrift, California state government.

While Gov. Schwarzenegger may have slowed the pace of California’s decent into the third world, the reckless spending habits of the hard far left liberal democrat majority in the state legislature has predictably brought this once prosperous state to ruin.

The rest of the country should take note.

What is Joey Biden hiding from the American People?

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Vice-President Joe Biden is joining our Dear Leader in a widespread effort to hide what they are doing from the American public.

The LA Times reports:

We’ve especially noted Biden’s innumerable “private meetings” that are closed to the press because, well, they’re private.

And we’ve wondered aloud how this Democratic VP’s private meetings with unnamed people on unnamed subjects differs from the private meetings with unnamed people that his evil predecessor had that got so many Democratic senators and representatives worried about nefarious secrets.

Ya, the hypocrisy is pretty thick.

According to the White House schedule, Biden will not spend the remainder of the workday in private meetings that are closed press.

Instead: “The Vice President will spend the remainder of the day in meetings that are closed press.”

You get the difference, right?

What are those meetings about? What could the Obama administration hiding from the American people? What happened to the “transparency” our Dear Leader was supposed to bring to the federal government?

Friday B-Movie Pick: Rio Bravo

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Rio Bravo

A great John Wayne Western. It’s now fifty years old, and is still a great movie. Good cast, besides the Duke himself, you have Dean Martin, showing that he really is a good actor, and Ricky Nelson as the cool as ice gunfighter and guitar player. Quentin Tarantino is a big fan of this film. If you haven’t seen it, check it out.

Friday B-Movie Archive

The World’s First floating nuclear power plant

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

It’s not the one the Russians are building. Given the Russian’s record of failure with nuclear reactor’s and generally poor environmental record, any buyer’s are doing so at their own risk.

The world’s first floating nuclear power plant was built in the early 1960s by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. It was the MH-1A Sturgis, a converted WWII Liberty ship. The BBC falsely reported that the Russians were building the first floating nuclear power plant back in 2006, and other news agencies are still repeating their mistake.

Also posted at Urbin Technology.