More Apologies from O-bow-ma

You begin to wonder if, perhaps, this apology-making is genetic or something.

Consider his November 23 contention that Asian countries “want our [export] products,” and that American sales to the region are subpar “partly because we just haven't been as aggressive as we need to be.” These remarks rank among the most egregiously inaccurate, manipulative, misleading, and downright whacky statements ever to come out of any recent free trade-loving White House.

Yes, that statement was......ahhhhh.......'fact-challenged.'

If the Asians really are interested in buying U.S. exports, they have a funny way of showing it.  U.S. goods exports to Pacific Rim countries – the vast majority of total U.S. exports – were indeed up about 75.50 percent from 1998 to 2008, before plunging 24.9 percent on a year-on-year basis so far in 2009.  During the same period, however, U.S. goods exports to the world as a whole grew faster – by 84.31 percent – and their 2009 fall-off was only negligibly greater (25.0 percent).

Has nothing.....nothing.......nothing at all to do with restrictive import policies in the Far East.  Nothing.

Happy Thanksgiving

Stolen directly from P-Mac's blog:

"Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour, [let us render] unto him our sincere and humble thanks -- for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation -- for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence

...for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed -- for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted -- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us."  --George Washington

God also gave us our families and our friends, our health, joys, and sorrows--for all of which we owe gratitude.

We should be grateful even for Jay and Capper.  (I'm working on Schmitz...)

Obama and SEIU: Parallel Paths

The author of this article, Randy Shaw, is described as 'very' progressive.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) held a boisterous picket line in San Francisco last night, but their chants targeted a surprising adversary: labor leaders and their political allies.

...SEIU’s threat to labor hero [CA Sec'y Labor] Burton, and its reported statement to the United Teachers of Los Angeles (sponsor of tonight’s NUHW fundraiser) that it would seek to organize charter school teachers in retaliation for UTLA’s pro-NUHW stance, reflects a union increasingly at odds with the labor movement.

This split is not all that different from the one ongoing between Obama and the radical Left.  I'm not going to accuse Obama of becoming a moderate--but you get the idea.

And labor is increasingly going public with its criticisms of SEIU’s tactics. For example, on October 27 the 19,000 member IBEW Local 1245 joined UNITE HERE Local 2 in submitting court papers challenging SEIU’s blocking of over eighty NUHW petitions affecting over 27,000 California healthcare workers seeking to choose their union.

It is noteworthy that SEIU and ACORN are joined at the hip.  Thus the thuggery and pure dirtball power-grabbing tactics of SEIU are echoed in the slightly more 'white-bread' tactics of ACORN; but the objective is the same:  grabbing and keeping power by any means necessary.  It is also noteworthy that Andy Stern is one of the most-frequent White House visitors since Obama's election.

And once again "Big Labor"--the AFL-CIO, Carpenters/Joiners, Plumber's (etc.) are the 'conservatives', just as they were in the housecleaning of the old CIO when the Communists had gained control of that organization.  It's fair to guess that "Big Labor" is not all that enthralled with ACORN, either.

This will be interesting to watch.

Getting Nuked on Black Friday

You like electricity?

We hear from a well-placed source that the Obama administration will use the holiday Friday news blackout to announce that it is definitively pulling the plug on the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste repository.

The move has been in the cards since the ’08 election, and an internal memo leaked from DOE [Department of Energy] on November 7 has already drawn Congressional ire by indicating the Administration would not only withdraw the Yucca Mountain license application from the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] earlier than anticipated but also terminate all work on maintaining Yucca Mountain as a policy option.

Good. That allows the possibility of using the Capitol as our nuclear dump.

Nuke waste........Members of Congress.........

Perfect match.

No Experience Necessary for ObamaLand

The Cabinet positions surveyed exclude a few departments: Postmaster General, Navy, War, Health, Education & Welfare, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security

Note the last four (D) Presidents' level compared to O-bow-ma's.

HT: ZeroHedge

The Chicago Way and the End of the Obama Dream

Instructive narrative from Tom Roeser.

...Take the case of Paul Vallas. An outstanding Democratic public official he served as chief budget adviser to the president of the state Senate, chief budgeter for the city of Chicago under Mayor Daley. Daley took over the job of running the city's public schools by legislative fiat to replace a system where the schools were run loosely by a board of education not directly under the mayor's control.

The Chicago public schools had been called the worst in the country by William Bennett, Ronald Reagan's secretary of education. This led Daley to name Vallas, a no-nonsense administrator, as superintendent of schools. Vallas decided to let nothing stand in his way to improve the condition of the schools. During his tenure from 1995 to 2001 he led the way to reform the school system, his work being cited by President Bill Clinton for hiking test scores, balancing the out-of-kilter schools budget, developing new programs including mandatory summer school, after-school programs and expanding charter, alternative and magnet schools. Devoutly Greek Orthodox Vallas favored vouchers but was powerless to implement them. Nevertheless he achieved a national reputation for his reforms.

He was particularly welcomed by African Americans who were enthusiastic that their kids were showing all kinds of improvement. He was a veritable pop idol in the eyes of many blacks.

But in trying to improve teaching standards, he trod on the toes of the powerful teachers' union, a key source of voter nutrients for The Squid. The union commanded that Vallas had to go. It passed the word to Daley and The Squid. Daley was mum-and stayed mum.

Vallas resigned and Arne Duncan took over. Arne got along well with the teachers' union...and had nothing whatsoever to do with any improvements in the Chicago schools. In fact, performance of the schools declined under Duncan, who is now Sec/Ed for Obama.

Roeser posits that exactly the same thing happened to Greg Craig--a Clintonista who didn't fit into the Chicago Way mold. So he was dumped.

That motivated a few Lefties to muse that perhaps Obama is just another slimy Chicago politician (the term "FIB" is not au courant in DC--yet.)

You'll know it's over for good when that Wisconsin appellation sneaks into a Beltway column.

Reform Starts With a Wrecking Ball

Interesting.

“America’s most-famous superior urban schools are virtually always new starts rather than schools that were previously underperforming. Probably the most convincing argument for the fundamental difference between start-ups and turnarounds comes from those actually running high-performing high-poverty urban schools...

Seems as though the best way to get a high-performing school is to simply start from scratch. urban renewal, redefined.

Wow.

DA Chisholm Is Absolutely Right

Interesting interview with Milwaukee County DA Chisholm on the issue of handguns. The unmentioned name, by the way, is James Doyle, Ideologue/Idiot.

Chisholm: I want to make concealed carry a felony offense. In order to do that you would have to create some form of a permitting system so someone could legally carry a concealed weapon and those who did [illegally carry a concealed weapon] would face felony consequences.

Shepherd: Why should concealed carry become a felony offense?

Chisholm: Now [as a misdemeanor] you could get caught 100 times and you could still walk into a gun store and buy a gun. From my perspective, we prosecute 350 to 400 people every year for carrying concealed weapons. Every single one of those individuals would be prohibited from owning a firearm in the future if it was a felony offense.

Not unreasonable at all. Of course, he has a hair-on-fire-Liberal red-screech-alarm proposal, too: the State must allow concealed-carry permits.

Shepherd: You recently proposed a firearm reform package that includes a concealed carry permitting system. As a prosecutor who has long been concerned about gun violence, why would you want to allow concealed carry in the state?

Chisholm: The package that I am advocating for is based on 10 years of really focused firearm violence prevention strategies. The reality is that Wisconsin’s CCW [carrying concealed weapons] statute, 941.23, has always been one of the most overbroad and constitutionally challengeable statutes in the country. At the same time, it’s been paired with one of the weakest penalties for committing the offense of CCW. So you’ve got really the worst of all worlds.

Umnnnhhhh...yah. Chisholm was reading this blog.

Chisholm: In the [Hamdan] Supreme Court decision, the court upheld the constitutionality of the CCW statute, but barely so. What [the court] basically said was [that the Legislature] needs to start looking very closely at this law and figure out what [it is] going to do with this in the future. But what we’ve done is nothing. So we’ve been living on borrowed time. And that time is up now.

...I’m going to make a prediction right now because I don’t know if we have the will and the foresight to do this but I predict that nothing will happen and that Chicago vs. McDonald will hold that the Second Amendment is incorporated into the 14^th Amendment [and call into question other state and local gun laws]. Then 20 seconds later the NRA will file a challenge to [Wisconsin’s concealed carry statute] and they will win. And at that point in time we will be left with no CCW and no regulatory scheme at all. That’s what I think will happen

He's absolutely correct. James Doyle, Governor of Wisconsin, has enforced his ideology on the State, and the State will LOSE its case against concealed carry. Worst, when the NRA wins its suit, anyone.....ANYONE......will have the Constitutional right to carry a concealed weapon.

You can bet that Chisholm thinks Doyle is a bozo. Too bad he won't say so directly.

HT: FoxPolitics

ObamaSavior---AND Military Genius

This guy is careening out of control.

“After eight years, some of those years in which we did not have, I think, either the resources or the strategy to get the job done, it is my intention to finish the job,” Obama said at a news conference...

This is either the very definition of hubris or the very bottom of the barrel of political scumbaggery.

He says that as though GWB's military advisers were friggin' idiots.

Really?

HT: Jo Egelhoff

Red Cross Exec: "Yup, They Are Death Panels"

Technically, Bernardine Healy, MD, is an EX-Red Cross official...

The bill takes all sorts of choices out of patients' and doctors' hands. Even mammograms and prostate-specific antigen tests would be similarly restricted by the government for millions of people, and they actually serve as better examples of what happens more broadly to personal medical decision making in the new system.

The ground is being laid already, with the announcement by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government-appointed body, of new guidelines for mammograms just days ago. Such a board of experts, composed mainly of primary care, prevention, public health, and epidemiology experts, would recommend the list of preventive services covered in the post-health-reform insurance plan that all would have no choice but to buy. Until now, the government's task force has been one voice among several medical groups issuing sometimes conflicting prevention guidelines, leaving room for patient-doctor choice. But in an elevated role under health reform, the federal preventive task force's declarations would carry greater force and have an economic impact on everyone.

We'll remind you that David Obey (D-Potatohead) wrote the enabling legislation for Death Panels in the budget. He also believes that WWII terminated all of FDR's New Deal programs and that VietNam ended the Great Society.

So far, Obey has not commented on the demise of the Easter Bunny, but you can bet he'll postulate that Bush/Cheney and Blackwater were in the background. After all, they have guns, or something.

HT: Confederate Yankee

Silly Season in WI Legislature: SB174

The silly season commences. Here are a few names for you to note:

Senators Coggs and Taylor; cosponsored by Representatives Young, A. Williams, Turner, Berceau, Grigsby, Colon, Richards, Kessler, Sinicki and Pasch.

That's the masthead from SB174. The bill, if passed as written, will ban sales of new handguns in Wisconsin sometime after 1/1/11.

You read that right. It will BAN sales of new handguns in Wisconsin.

This bill prohibits a gun manufacturer or a firearms dealer from transferring
a semiautomatic handgun that does not produce an identifying code (microstamp)
on each cartridge case it expends if both of the following apply: 1) the handgun was
manufactured on or after January 1, 2011; and 2) the handgun has not previously
been transferred to a person that is not a manufacturer or dealer (new handgun).
This bill also prohibits a manufacturer in this state from manufacturing, on or after
January 1, 2011, a semiautomatic handgun that does not produce a microstamp.

The bill also requires manufacturers and dealers who transfer a handgun that
is required to produce microstamps to certify that the handgun, if it is a new
handgun, produces microstamps and that the manufacturer of the handgun will
disclose to a law enforcement agency that has collected a microstamp from an
expended cartridge during a criminal investigation the make, model, and serial
number of the handgun that expended the cartridge.

Since "microstamping" technology is not proven, and since no handgun manufacturer uses it, the language will simply stop new-gun sales in the State.

And, of course, any damn fool with a file can delete 'microstamps' in short order.

Microstamping technology has not been developed. Even if it were, it is easily defeated, and only those who believe in the Tooth Fairy would offer this legislation.

The list of those believers is above.

Test

Dah deedle dah dum

Sen. Conrad (D-ND) Flips You Off

Well, it's the season for birds, right?

Since Attorney General Eric Holder announced on Nov. 13 that five suspects in the 9/11 attacks would be tried in a civilian court in New York City instead of a military tribunal, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) told CNSNews.com that civilian courts are well-suited to prosecute al Qaeda terrorists and that "if people don't believe in our system, they ought to go somewhere else.”

And then he adds the usual Half-Truth:

“We have tried terrorists in our courts and done so very successfully in the past and that is our system."

....forgetting to add that those 'others' were either US citizens and/or caught on US shores by LEO's who followed the usual criminal procedure (Miranda, etc.)

Senator, consider this post to be a return-flip of the bird to you. Eat THAT for Thanksgiving.

The Papal/SSPX Conversations and Patrick Kennedy

Weigel really gets this right.

The issues to be engaged in these conversations do not involve liturgy; the pope has addressed the legitimate pastoral needs of SSPX clergy and SSPX-affiliated laity by his decree allowing the unrestricted use of the 1962 Roman Missal. The real questions have to do with other matters. Does the SSPX accept the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on religious freedom as a fundamental human right that can be known by both reason and revelation? Does the SSPX accept that the age of altar-and-throne alliances, confessional states, and legally established Catholicism is over, and that the Catholic Church rejects the use of coercive state power on behalf of its truth claims? Does the SSPX accept the Council’s teaching on Jews and Judaism as laid down in Vatican II’s “Declaration on Non-Christian Religions” (“Nostra Aetate”), and does the SSPX repudiate all anti-Semitism? [That might be a bit more provocative than necessary.] Does the SSPX accept the Council’s teaching on the imperative of pursuing Christian unity in truth and the Council’s teaching that elements of truth and sanctity exist in other Christian communities, and indeed in other religious communities?

The red-highlighted series of questions is of particular interest. First off, the SSPX is hardly the only group which looks back fondly at "altar-and-throne" confessional States. Others can be found (easily) and while they are less vocal about it--and draw much less attention--they are out there.

More of interest, however, is Weigel's summary that 'the Church rejects the use of coercive state power on behalf of its truth-claims.'

Why?

Because of Patrick Kennedy.

The Know-Nothings/Rabid Abortionists Alliance would have you believe that the Church is "imposing its will" on US healthcare policy by insisting, loudly, that abortion is NOT healthcare--and that requiring taxpayer funding of abortion is an affront to religious liberty.

But in fact, the Bishops are expressing an admiration for religious liberty which the Rabid Abortionists will never express. To them, you see, Abortion is THE sacrament of their religion. And they will impose that religion and its sacrament on you, whether you agree or not.

Rome is the real 'civil liberties' defender here, folks.

"Paste" Died...Went Mozilla Firefox

To hell with IE8.

Took Firefox this morning. Some typeface-stuff to get used to, but on a tip, downloaded Adblock Plus.

No more grape-jelly stains all over McIlheran's blog!!

And "paste" works!

Stupak-ification of the Left

Heh.

Only a few months ago, the Left was telling us unqualifiedly that ObamaCare would NOT have any effects on private health insurance.

You can look at our BayView Banjo guy's blog for evidence...

Anyhoo....

"The treatment exclusions required under the Stupak-Pitts Amendment will have an industry-wide effect, eliminating coverage of medically indicated abortions over time for all women, not only those whose coverage is derived through a health insurance exchange." --S Rosenbaum, GW study.

Goodness gracious! Was the Left just kinda kidding?

HT: CMR

The Liars at East Anglia

Headless does public service.

...this computer program adds up to 2.6 degrees Celsius to temperatures starting in the 1970's and continuing until 2000 to give the appearance of GLOBAL WARMING! That's over 4 degrees Fahrenheit, and is a huge "fudge factor" (their word, not mine) made to show a false correlation of rising global temperature to rising carbon dioxide levels...

We hope that the above is understandable language. Headless did his best, folks.

Flynn, Barrett Resignation Call?

Channel 4 News reports that "Milwaukee TEA Party" has called for the resignations of Ed Flynn and Tom Barrett.

Apparently, these folks think Flynn should resign over a morals issue.

I don't know who "Milwaukee TEA Party" consists of, and frankly, I don't care what Ed Flynn does in his spare time, although it seems that he has a lot of time away from his wife and children.

That's sad for the wife and children, but not exactly a compelling reason for him to resign.

I hope that "Milwaukee TEA Party" restricts itself to ending Big Gummint and Big Taxes. That's stuff we can all support wholeheartedly.

Doyle the Vengeful Dictator

Democrats don't like Doyle, either, which is the thrust of this article from WI (HT Sykes).

This vignette, significant in itself, tells you all about Doyle's modus operandi: pure "punish your enemies." Pigheaded, stupid, and to Hell with the public interest.

Take, for example, WMC's questionable decision late in the 2006 election to dump a ton of issue money attacking Doyle even though most polling showed Green on the fast train to Palookaville. Whatever WMC's logic, Cullen says the Doyle team overreacted.

The governor, he says, "tried to use the power of the office to get even with WMC instead of saying, 'You guys made a bad bet. I tried to work with you. Now I'm going back to my base and pursue my legislative agenda'."

"But there was no legislative agenda," he says. "The Doyle people spent their time trying to dismantle WMC. Some people might get a kick out of that, but it doesnt accomplish anything."

He didn't have much use for Legislators--which did not help him. To Doyle, being Governor is being Dictator.

Think not? Then explain Doyle's decision to shut down the longest-operating auto racing track in the entire USA. He achieved that by ordering his State Fair Board to unilaterally change a critical portion of the agreement language.

Doyle simply could not stand giving John Menard (and his partners) a 'win,' even though that 'win' was also a 'win' for Milwaukee.

The Vengeful Dictator struck again.

So Kennedy Should "Represent His District," Eh?

There's a lot of High Dudgeon emanating from the Lefty Hive about how Rep. Kennedy should "represent the wishes of his District" regarding abortion.

Yah, well.

S'pose that the US Congress will "represent the wishes of the people" on ObamaCare now that only 38 percent of the population approves of it?

No. The position of the Democrats on that question is "Screw YOU, citizens!" And the Democrats are perfectly happy, because they have the Higher Moral Ground.

Herbie Kohl may actually be in Milwaukee for a while. Or perhaps he's at his zillion-acre ranch in Wyoming. That's high ground too, you know.

Dave Obey: Aborto-Facilitating Historical Ignoramus

Kinda nice for Ed to provide us with a clear picture of Dave Obey's ultra-Left "mind."

Strange. Obey tells us that the cost of Afghanistan is SO onerous that the country will 'run out of money,' while his pet Porkulus is NOT onerous?

Hmmmmm.

Then Obey engages in historical fantasy. Maybe Obey learned history from Oliver Stone or Michael Moore movies.

He certainly didn't learn it from verifiable sources.

Landrieu: Out of My Price Range

Now that it is decided exactly what Sen. Mary Landrieu IS.........

.....it's clear that her price ($300 million) is a bit high for me.

My question: does Reid really expect he'll get 'full value' for his our money?

MS Update Blows Off "Paste"?

Hey.


Downloaded an MS IE8 update over the weekend, and "paste" went away.

Still investigating.

UPDATE: Remove the MS update, "paste" works fine again.

UPDATE TWO: 60 minutes pass, "paste" dies again.

Spendulus, Indeed

OK, so who said this:

"The kind of budget shortfalls we are looking at in the future dwarfs anything we've ever seen. There are two ways to close the fiscal gap--cut spending or increase revenues. ....the level of taxation required to meet projected spending needs is far higher than anything the country has either seen-slash-tolerated.

Hint: he ain't no Conservative.

Answer: Scott Winship, writing on the Progressive Policy Institute's blog......

HT: Examiner

The Manhattan Declaration

We mentioned this on Friday.

150 Catholic, Orthodox, and Evangelical religious leaders signed a manifesto which committs them to civil disobedience if laws force them to accept abortion, same-sex marriage, or interfere with religious freedom.

This is large. The list includes Abp. Dolan, Abp. Wuerl, Chuck Colson, Robbie George, Tony Perkins, and Cdl. Rigali.

The Attack From the Left: "Shut Up. You're Mean!"

The passive-aggressive game is on, and Patrick Kennedy is a fine example.

Kennedy told CNS News that 'he can't understand how the Catholic Church can be against the biggest social-justice issue of all time' when referring to the USCC's strenuous objection to forcing taxpayers to fund abortions. Kennedy is lying, of course--but it's the tactical lie.

"You mean to tell me that the Catholic Church is going to be denying these people life-saving healthcare? I thought they were pro-life."

This is the "They're MEAN!" gambit. Kennedy intends to silence the Church and others who object to ObamaCare by attempting to pin the "Meanies" label on the Church (which points out that there are serious moral problems in ObamaCare legislation.)

Individuals who voice and exercise principled positions on the question are now or will be similarly targeted.

And it's not just on this issue. The game is exactly the same regarding the faked-global-warming-data scandal now blowing up, where the Left whines that "The emails were STOLEN!", as though that affects the veracity of the evidence.

At its root, this line of attack springs from the Left's most sacred belief: that only the Left occupies the Moral High Ground. Thus, any opposition to the Left's agenda is from Moral Defectives, or Mean People. (In economic debates, the usual position is that the objector has a profit-motive.)

No, Patrick, the Church will not shut up on this issue. Nor should the Right accept your rules of the game. Some things are far too important.

The USCC's Second Letter, Distributed!!

The Catholic parish in central Brookfield distributed the USCC's second letter on Obama/Aborto-Care this weekend.

Happy to see it. Let's hope the parishioners take the Bishops' suggestions seriously.

No More ObamaCare Prison Terms! (Aren't You Happy?)

Ace discovered that PelosiPrison is not present in the Senate version of BigAbortion/BigLabor/BigSwamp money-for-you bill.

SNL: Hilarious Obama Skit

Oh, yah.

Obama's time is over.

Prayer for the President Is Good!

New bumper sticker:

"Pray for Obama: Ps. 109:8"

See Grim's place for the rest of the story.

Round One to the Eagle Scouts

The dipwad count:

Nick Balzano has stepped down as head of the local Service Employees International Union. Balzano was roundly criticized for crying foul over a Boy Scout's effort to clear a walking path in a park in Allentown. He said the project was taking work away from union workers. Six other high-ranking members of the union have also resigned.

Andy Stern must be proud.

HT: MoonBattery

This Is What Is Called Dumb

JS today:

Rex M. Ballinger was wounded when a rifle being unloaded by Daniel Z. Kassees, 36, of Dousman, discharged, the Sheriff's Department said.

Kassees was unloading the gun next to his pickup truck on private property about 8:15 a.m. in Glen Haven Township. The shot went through the rear passenger compartment, exited the right side of the vehicle and struck Ballinger in the back of both thighs, the department said in a news release.

Chambered round, safety off, finger on the trigger......that's three strikes.

Be an Illegal for FREE Healthcare: Reid

In what should come as an unpleasant surprise to the US Bishops' immigration-pleaders, ObamaCare/Senate version has a nasty provision.

Under Leader Reid’s amendment, in the year 2019 about 16 million U.S. citizens would be uninsured and be forced to pay a penalty tax of almost $800 per year. About eight million illegal aliens would be uninsured and would owe no penalty tax. Both groups would get their health care through a combination of out-of-pocket spending and use of uncompensated care in emergency rooms and free health clinics.

Oh, what the Hell.

ObamaCare: Friend of BigBiz

Wonder why big businesses are not adamantly opposed to ObamaCare?

Because it will enormously burden, or eliminate, small businesses.

...2,074 pages are just the beginning. It is fair to say there will several times that number of pages of regulations delineating who must do what, when and where. There will be dozens of new bureaucracies created generating hundreds of new forms and reports which must be filled out.

A glimpse at the future is the current structure for retirement plans under ERISA. It is almost impossible to do the calculations and prepare the tax filings without the help of a specialized benefits administrator. [Hell, I know of CPA firms which have to use outside consultants to fill out ERISA and 'high-earner' pension plan paperwork.] The cost is in the thousands of dollars even for a small employer.

Under Reid's bill, and the House version, employers of all sizes will have to hire someone -- either on staff for larger companies or third party vendors for small employers -- to navigate the new health care regulations, reporting requirements, and tax provisions. This bill will create jobs, but in the least productive sectors of our economy.

When the Doyle-ites tell you that 'the tax burden is NOT high' here (for corporations), they say that for a reason. Leave aside the relative value of "high."

It's the REGULATORY burden, imposed by both the State and the Feds, which kills small business, and drives up costs for larger ones. DNR, Wis. D of Rev (which does not 'Federalize'), UC filings, local permits, all add up. Fast and large.

The USCC's ACORN Problem, Milwaukee and Chicago Ties

History counts. It also helps to understand ACORN-ism's methods, one of which is to operate under different names. Confusion is good, to ACORN-ites, and confusing Catholic Charities with the Campaign for Human Development is just fine. Except that they are VERY different organizations with a somewhat-common history.

************************

Waaaayyyyyyy back when, there was the National Catholic Welfare Conference, which had a "Social Action Department." Mgr. John Ryan was the first director of that department.

But even before the Conference, there was the Nat'l Catholic Welfare Council, of which Rome disapproved. Why? Because in the Catholic church, Bishops are responsible to the Pope. There are no 'intermediary' organizations, at least in matters of teaching and governance of Dioceses. Organizing a "Council" which would purport to "teach" in the name of the Bishops was a slippery-slope matter--and Rome's concerns have proven to be justified.

Mgr. Ryan was a bit controversial, to be kind.

On October 8, 1936, Monsignor John A. Ryan urged millions of listeners to his nationally broadcast radio speech to reject the advice of fellow Catholic cleric Father Charles Coughlin and vote for President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the upcoming election. The Democratic National Committee had prodded a reluctant Ryan to step into the fray of national politics because it feared that Catholic voters might be swayed by Coughlin's weekly insistence that FDR was a communist who no longer deserved the support of Catholics.

Interesting, because Coughlin was even more radical than was FDR...

In contrast, Ryan's thoughts were not radical; he understood and acknowledged sin.

Ryan never wavered from his support of an economic system based squarely on the sanctity of private property and capitalism, but one that also distributed wealth and power more equitably. Excessive individual greed, Ryan argued, created a morally and economically unhealthy misdistribution of wealth.

Who could argue with the thought that vice breeds social problems? I certainly won't.

Another prominent priest-thinker of the period was Mgr. Haas.

Perhaps the most nationally prominent and active Catholic progressive in the Ryan tradition was Bishop Francis J. Haas. A student at CUA in the early 1920s who was profoundly influenced by Ryan, Haas played a pivotal role in Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal as a public representative on several Government boards in the 1930s and as one of the busiest and most respected labor arbitrators in the country...Born in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1889, Haas was ordained as a priest in 1913 and worked as a parish priest at Holy Rosary Parish in Milwaukee until he began graduate studies at CUA in 1919. (One wonders if the "mandated labor course" for Wisconsin kiddies will include this name.....)

Haas, however, had an ideological fixation, which led to regrettable statements like this:

..."every worker has a duty to himself and to his fellow men to join his union and to be proud of membership . . . Given two men of equal ability, one a union man and the other non-union, unquestionably the union man is the better. He recognizes his obligations to himself, his family, and his country."

Perhaps Haas didn't know about the Communists in the C.I.O., who were eventually purged by the A.F.L.'s genuinely-patriotic leadership in the 1950's.

(For that matter, there were allegations about Communist ties to the UAW at Allis-Chalmers. Haas was a key player there.)

He arbitrated the Minneapolis truckers' strike in 1934, a conflict that left two strikers dead, and difficult and trying strikes at Allis-Chalmers in Wisconsin in 1939 and 1941. The strikes at Allis-Chalmers pitted the militant left-wing United Automobile Workers Union Local #248 against an equally obstinate management team. The 1941 Allis-Chalmers strike seriously threatened America's wartime production...

Clearly, these guys (particularly Ryan) were more progressive than some. But Ryan's acknowledgement of the Fall is critical. Without that nod, Ryan's theories would be merely secular humanism.

But that's not the end. Too bad...

**************************

Bp. Jos. Bernardin was the creator of the Campaign for Human Development.

That's how ACORN-ism crawled into the Catholic charities business. Bernardin was the Big Kahuna at USCC (formerly NCCB/USCC) for a number of years--both as General Secretary (1968-1972) and later as President (the late 1970's). Before Bernardin was GenSec, the NCCB/USCC had faded into the background as something of an administrative swamp, not being active in 'social causes.' To remedy that, Bernardin established the "Campaign for Human Development" which is the focus of today's controversy.

Bernardin, who was VERY controversial inside the Church, pushed the influence of NCCB to new heights, and along with that the influence of the Campaign for Human Development.

Its stated purpose is both to raise funds to support organized groups of the poor to develop economic and political power and to educate the public with a new knowledge of contemporary problems. Since its founding, the CHD has funded more than 3,000 self-help projects developed by the poor.

It is critical to note that CHD 'funds ....organized groups.' That is NOT the same as what Catholic Charities does. Catholic Charities is a hands-on, largely volunteer-run series of outfits (usually in each Diocese) which directly distributes money and goods to those in need (think food-distribution after Katrina.)

CHD, on the other hand, was organized specifically to fund "community organizers" in the mold of Alinsky. But attaching that 'Catholic' name to CHD has been beneficial for the Left, ain'a?

And that's the embarassment. The Bishops are stuck with another Bernardin/Lefty legacy and haven't the courage to simply shut it down, because the Bishops are in their "circle-the-wagons" mode, defending the dead Bernardin's legacy. It's reminiscent of the 'circle-the-wagons' mode surrounding the ordination of homosexuals.

St Catherine of Siena, pray for them.

This post inspired by the good-hearted Prot, McCain.

Delicate Story-Writing

Here's a delicate way to put it.

Milwaukee-area Muslim Religious Director Zulfiqar Ali Shah was not allowed to partake in a trip to Israel which would have been paid for largely by Milwaukee-area Jewish donors. As a result, the Muslims have quit the Interfaith Council.

(We'll leave aside the question of chutzpah for a moment and go to the whitewashing job.)

...Jewish leaders said Israel would refuse entry to Shah.

Some Jewish groups have accused Shah of associating with people of extremist or anti-Semitic views. He worked briefly for Kind Hearts, a Muslim charity whose assets were frozen by the U.S. government, which accused it of funding Hamas. An Ohio judge later ruled the charity's right to due process was violated.

And why, exactly, were those "assets frozen"?

NOT because "Jewish groups" accused Shah of associations. Not because "Jewish groups" accused Shah of anti-Semitic views--although each of those might have had something to do with it.

Shah was refused because "Kind Hearts", his employer, was FUNDING HAMAS TERRORIST ACTIVITY, "due process' or not. That's a charge leveled by the US Government, not "Jewish groups."

Mr. Shah now resides on the southwest side of the City of Milwaukee.

The Zoo Interchange: It's Still Doyle (and Barrett's) Potential Manslaughter

No matter how Tommy Barrett's flack tries to spin this article, here's what counts:

Republicans in control of the Legislature in 2005 sought to move the Zoo Interchange project ahead by putting $38 million for engineering into the 2005-'07 budget, but Doyle vetoed all but $3 million. He then changed course, first seeking money to start the Zoo project in 2012, then pulling back on the funding when the transportation finances dried up in the last budget cycle.

"The governor made the decision," Kanavas said. "He made the call on it, and it was a bad call."

Tommy-the-Highway-Engineer Barrett was scared to death of a woman named Gretchen Schuldt--an ex-JS reporter--who endlessly screeched about the "destruction of Story Hill." So Tommy-the-Highway-Engineer told us that 'the bridges would be just fine until 2020.'

Buy a clue, Tommy.

Story Hill figured into the Zoo disaster because an I-94 widening would have impacted her neighborhood, according to Gretchen, who held a zen-spell over Tommy the Highway Engineer. (Selfishness is supposed to be the province of Eeeeeeeeeevil Suburbanites, not oh-so-lefty City residents, remember?) So Barrett actively opposed any Zoo interchange work. All for the greater good, you know.

...Patrick Curley, chief of staff for Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, said any lobbying from the mayor's office focused on protecting homes and businesses without influencing the timing of the projects. Barrett also has joined the race for governor, potentially lining up against Walker in 2010.

Trying to pin the current crisis in the Zoo Interchange on a political push from the mayor's office is misguided, Curley said.

In fact, Barrett's opposition to an improved I-94 was driven by the same mentality which drove Henry Maier's and John Norquist's opposition to an improved I-94. It's the same mentality which inspired the East Germans to build the Wall. They want to trap people in the City of Milwaukee. To them, suburbs are cancers on Their Fiefdom.

This mess is VERY serious.

Aside from doubling-up the costs--replacing the bridges now and replacing them again before 2020--there is a real possibility that chunks of a bridge could fall through car windshields or roofs.

Or a catastrophe: a bridge-sector could collapse, dropping trucks and cars onto active lanes of I-94. It'll look just like Minneapolis, or San Francisco.

Now you know why Tommy and Jim Doyle are running away from their decision. Dead and mangled bodies impact elections and popularity. Accountability? They don't want that.
Manslaughter looks bad on the resume.

Kohl, Feingold to Ruin HSA, HRA Plans

Since these plans work well, the Democrats Kohl and Feingold will ruin them. By no co-incidence, they will also smash the knuckles of middle-income, diligent, consumers of healthcare.

Thanks, you two twerps!!

'Flex' accounts let employees set aside some portion of their pre-tax pay for out-of-pocket costs or medical services that their insurance plan doesn't cover, such as a child's orthodontics or testing supplies for diabetics. The Reid bill caps these now-unlimited accounts at $2,500 per year and imposes new restrictions on qualifying medical expenses, raising some $5 billion by exposing income above the non-indexed cap to taxes.

But why stop there? Kohl and Feingold will also vote to destroy HSA's!!

The Reid bill also assaults health savings accounts, or HSAs, which allow individuals to accumulate tax-free funds for future medical expenses when coupled with low-premium, high-deductible insurance. The Reid bill changes tax provisions to make HSAs less attractive, but the real threat comes via increased regulation.

These insurance products will likely be barred from the insurance "exchanges" that will demolish and supplant today's individual market. Employers will also find them more difficult if not illegal to offer once the government has new powers to "define the essential health benefits" that all plans must eventually offer.

Each of those plans helps "bend the trend" of insurance premiums down.

Each of them is a target for Statists like Feingold and Kohl.

Seems to me that we have a target problem here.

So. Who's hurt?

...about 40% of tax filers with HSAs earn under $60,000, according to the IRS. The Employee Benefit Research Institute reports that 4% of adults with private insurance have an HSA this year—up from 1% in 2006—and about 9% are enrolled in some form of consumer-directed health plan. It also found that beneficiaries are evenly split between those with health problems and those without.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, whose members dominate the HSA market, says that enrollees are more likely than those with traditional insurance to be better consumers. They're more likely to track expenses (63% to 43%), save for the future (47% to 18%), and search for information on physician quality (20% to 14%). They're also more likely to participate and see results from wellness programs like weight loss, fitness and smoking cessation.

Ironic. The only "choice" that Feinie and Herbie vote FOR is the "choice" to kill babies in the womb.

Like I said, we have a targeting problem.

Tax Money, Hush Money, All the Same in DC

Yah, well. It's only tax money.

A congressional investigation of the volunteer organization AmeriCorps contains charges that D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee handled "damage control" after allegations of sexual misconduct against her now fiance, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA star and a prominent ally of President Obama, The Washington Examiner has learned

...Walpin was looking into charges that AmeriCorps-paid volunteers ran personal errands for him, washed his car, and took part in politicalactivities. In the course of investigating those allegations, the congressional report says, Walpin's investigators were told that Johnson had made inappropriate advances toward three young women involved in the St. Hope program -- and that Johnson offered at least one of those young women money to keep quiet.

So what's another $1K/month for a little nookie?

Ban the Gun, Not the Terrorist

The usual idiocy.

More than two dozen anti-gun violence groups have asked President Barack Obaman to ban further importation of the type of handgun used in the Fort Hood massacre.

In a Thursday letter to the president, the group takes aim at the FN Herstal Five-seveN armor-piercing semiautomatic pistol. The letter suggests that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms could take action immediately to effect the import ban.

According to the letter, the Belgian-made gun "is one of the most popular with traffickers supplying Mexican DrugTrafficking Organizations (DTOs) who have nicknamed the gun the “mata policia” or 'cop killer.'”

Jeri Bonavia, executive director of the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort Educational Fund, is one of the 27 signatories on the letter.

The FN in question fires a bullet which is about .26" in diameter and has a pointed nose, not the more typical rounded-nose found in 9mm, .40, 10mm, .45 (etc.) That's why it's "armor-piercing"--the shape of the bullet allows it to slip through many vests.

However, it's simply not as effective as a man-stopper. Yes, if you put enough of those rounds through someone, they will die (and there's always the well-aimed shot.)

But banning the weapon merely requires a determined killer to use another weapon (an AR-15 will do, clumsily--or its short cousin, the M-4.) And banning the FN in the USA only deprives US citizens of the weapon. It's ludicrous to think that drug-cartel money can't buy FNs in some other place. But then again, ludicrous is the default-position for gun-banners' alleged minds.

Better to have added 2+2 with Hasan and put him where he belonged a long time ago.

Doyle Kills the Racetrack

Belling reports that Doyle killed off the Milwaukee Mile, through apparently bad-faith bargaining by his State Fair Board. The report states that the Board chaircritter changed a critical term of the agreement unilaterally......

That Board includes a woman named Wickhem-House, named as a "superlawyer" who practices at Foley & Lardner. Haaaaahvaaaahhhhrd, and all that.

Another member of the State Fair board is a sheep farmer. There's a painting contractor, a wife of another lawyer, and the Chaircritter is with WE Energies.

"Superlawyer" and bad-faith bargaining?

The JS Blog reports:

"Apparently, Sue Crane and her board just simply don't understand business, business protocol or good faith contract negotiations," Frank and Dominic Giuffre wrote in a letter to the board.

"We now have no intention of going anywhere with Sue Crane and her board, because you quite simply can't be trusted," they wrote.

Last one to leave, please turn off the lights.

Abp. Dolan Steps It Up a Notch!

Wow.

Here's the link to a declaration recently formulated and signed by 148 luminaries, including Abp. Tim Dolan of NYC.

...We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities. We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image...

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

Lots more at the link. Other signatories, we are VERY happy to state, include a number of other RC Cardinals and Bishops from around the USA--and a lot of other prominent thinkers, religious leaders, and business figures.

More Climate "Science" Lies?

Hot stuff, yet to be verified...but really, really damning if it's real.



The details on this are still sketchy, we’ll probably never know what went on. But it appears that University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit has been hacked and many many files have been released by the hacker or person unknown...



(Sample):



Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,



Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.



Shocked! Shocked, I say!!

UPDATE: More from Morrissey. Like this:

Phil,
Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip. If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know).

So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean – but we’d still have to explain the land blip. I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips—higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.Removing ENSO does not affect this.It would be good to remove at least part of the 1940s blip, but we are still left with “why the blip”.


Why the blip, indeed....

HT: Headless

Pure Corruption in PelosiCare/ObamaCare Bill

Besides all the usual stuff, there's more.

The House resolution establishes a scenario that would effectively exclude non-union employers from eligibility to work on program-funded contracts. It also requires participating health care providers to pay wages and benefits that have been collectively bargained or that union-friendly appointees determine are competitive. This is plainly a move toward coerced unionization. With guaranteed seats at the table, unions are poised to control many newly formed oversight posts and/or committees, formed in connection with new employer mandates and cooperative health care associations.

Yet another provision would establish lucrative state training partnerships that contain little or no opportunities for non-union employee organizations. Provisions in Senate proposals would exempt union-negotiated health care plans from taxes on “Cadillac” health plans.

That's not all. There's also a TEN BILLION DOLLAR BAILOUT of union-health plans which are going BK.

HT: LaborPains

NYT Circulation Office Raid? Mob-Union Problem

Most of you noted that the circulation offices of the NYT (and other papers) were raided.

Wanna know why?

Investigators in the city raided offices for some of the nation’s largest newspapers Tuesday as part of a corruption probe into a powerful union that has long faced accusations of ties to organized crime, a law enforcement official said. Police officers working with the Manhattan district attorney’s office searched for paperwork related to the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union in circulation, production and delivery offices of The New York Times, the New York Post, the Daily News and El Diario, said the official, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

That's a relief. Here I thought they were just inflating their circulation numbers or something.

Timmy-Boy Gets All Pissy

Geithner evades, sidesteps, and Blames Bush!

UPDATE:

Lots more at PowerLine, but another Congresscritter is doing the questioning.

Secretary Geithner, you were referencing in your answer to an earlier question about when the financial catastrophe started in September, October of last year, if I understood you correctly, you said that this country did not have the tools to manage that panic. But the inference that I took from that was that there were countries overseas that did have such tools.

Now, I recall a phone call with your predecessor in late October of 2008, when it became public that the United States was pumping monies into the central bank in Europe, and other places. And I suggested that was not the correct thing to be doing. And he said, if the United States is not helping these countries, then they will collapse....

GEITHNER: Congressman, there is no country that came into this crisis with the tools to manage it effectively. And the basic failure I described here was a common failure.One thing you saw around the world was...

BURGESS: Well, let me ask you a question. Then how did George Bush cause those countries to be unprepared for a financial crisis?

Timmy-Boy did not have a coherent answer. Nor was he able to dribble forth an answer when he was reminded that Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall (pushed there by a wrong-headed (R), yes.) Nor to the BawneeFwank rapes of Fannie/Freddie/Ginnie/FHA.

buh-bye, Timmy. Take the Marxist/Statist President with you.

Another FINE Job by Your Government

Your Government at work.

The decade-old battle to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes might be over.

New research shows the fish likely have made it past the $9 million electric fish barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, a source familiar with the situation told the Journal Sentinel late Thursday.

TEN YEARS they've known about this damn thing.

The fish that can grow to 50 pounds or more are a big deal because they are voracious feeders, overwhelming native species, and they pose a huge hazard to recreational boaters because of their habit of jumping out of the water when agitated by the whir of a boat motor.

Next up: your healthcare.

What could possibly go wrong?

Book Title for Paulson

Best line of the day, from Mark Hemingway:

It seems that former Treasury secretary Henry Paulson has a new book coming out. It's supposed to be an inside account of the collapse of the global banking system. [However], the book might run into some legal trouble, as I believe O.J. Simpson was the first to use the title "If I Did It."

Hey, Henry! You should call to see if Jim Doyle's hideout has space for two.

Zoo Interchange Bridges Falling Down, so Spend Money on KRM!

Talk about potted plant IQs...

The regional transit authority charged with overseeing the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail project will get back on track with a meeting on Monday.

The reformed nine-member RTA board will meet on Monday morning to discuss its budget, future plans for the KRM project and Gov. Jim Doyle’s proposal to let governments in Kenosha, Racine and Milwaukee counties form local RTAs with the ability to levy new taxes

Hell's Bells! THAT'S the ticket! Spend $270Million on choochootrains in Racine while the State's most critical interchange bridges fall down and go boom.

Is Reaganomics Enough?

Ryan and Hensarling's essay in today's WSJ has a few interesting facts.

Exhibit A is the economic stimulus package signed into law by President Barack Obama in February. Even among previous stimulus efforts, the 2009 stimulus stands out for its ineffective targeting and sheer size. With interest, it is $1.1 trillion, double the size of Roosevelt's New Deal spending as a percentage of GDP.

That was listed as one of the impairments to an imminent economic recovery. There are others, each significant in itself. (ObamaCare, Cap-n-Tax, and the tax-increase scheduled for 2011, not to mention the GM/Chrysler bailout-fiasco.)

Beyond instilling tremendous political uncertainty into economic decision-making, these policies ensure that deficits will shatter all previous records. In the Office of Management and Budget's 2009 Mid-Session Review, the administration projects a decade of deficits averaging 3.3 times the postwar norm of 1.8%. Yet its projections assume that interest rates will be less than half the postwar norm for interest rates, and that economic growth will be almost 10% higher than the high-growth 1980s. Never in the postwar era have such high deficits, low interest rates and high growth rates occurred simultaneously.

You could just say "Fantasyland" to describe Obama's economic projections. (The same name applies to his foreign policy, by the way.) Maybe he watched too much Disney while living in Indonesia?

Ryan and Hensarling make the case for Reaganomics.

Frankly, I don't think that's the solution any more, although it is a PART of a solution.

The solution lies in the 10th Amendments, folks. Reagan only did half the job he should have done. The other half lies in summary execution of about 40% of the Federal monster.

#10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people

Is It Getting Dark in Here?

No, it's just your "energy-saving" lightbulb.

Energy-efficient light bulbs lose on average 22% of their brightness over their lifetime, a study has found.

In some cases they emit just 60% as much light as traditional models which are being phased out of shops, it says.

The study in Engineering and Technology magazine concluded that consumers were being misled by the bulbs' packaging.

Does ObamaCare cover replacement eyes??

No Money, Honey: Wisconsin Sinking

No wonder Jim Doyle is running away from his office. He's like the 8-year-old kid who knows he'll get caught after busting the picture-window at the neighbor's house.

Here's the Wisconsin tax-revenue picture through October.

Individual Income: OFF 5.7% Y-T-D, 09/10

General Sales Tax: OFF 9.9% Y-T-D, 09/10

Corporate and Excise Taxes UP 8.5%, 6.6% respectively.

Net/Net Total Tax Revenues: OFF 6.4% Y-T-D 09/10

Did Jimbo tell you about the State's cost-of-Medicaid under ObamaCare?

Didn't think so.

ObamaCare, Senate: Neutron Rx

It's a neutron bomb aimed directly at the country.

Taxpayer-funded abortions.

Medicare funding cuts.

30 million remain un-insured (20 million citizens or legal immigrants).

States get socked with Medicaid bills.

$980 Bn Federal spending.

It'll kill anything it gets close to, including health-insurance companies.

What's not to like?

Harry Wants to Push It? That Would Be VERY Foolish

Reid seems to think that he can Rahma-Jahma the Abortion Enablement act through by Saturday night.

That would be very foolish, Harry. The poll-numbers on that are WAY against you now, and Russ Feingold, "Mr. Civil Liberties" hasn't weighed in to pull the aborto-language out. You don't want to encourage......umnnnn......unrest, do you, Harry?

Don't you have an economy to worry about, Harry? Or million-degree Earth-core temps?

Games of Unrest for Obama

Don't know much about this online game stuff, but this is interesting.

Where's the Wisconsin "Stimulus" Money?

Rich Zipperer would like to know where the Wisconsin "stimulus" money's being spent.

News accounts the last several weeks by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and others have drawn attention to multiple errors and exaggerations in the reports released by the White House of the number of jobs supposedly created by the federal stimulus spending, including jobs allegedly created in non-existent Wisconsin Congressional Districts.

Zipperer and Montgomery have been advocating for legislative oversight of the stimulus spending results since the data became available in early October, and Assembly Republicans have called for enhanced legislative oversight of the stimulus program since January.

Democrats, of course, have ZERO interest in 'oversight.' You get only one guess as to why...

Think Hoffman Lost NY-23? Think Again

Breaking:

The computerized voting machines used by many voters in the 23rd district had a computer virus - tainting the results, not just from those machines known to have been infected, but casting doubt on the accuracy of counts retrieved from any of the machines.

Cathleen Rogers, the Democratic Elections Commissioner in Hamilton County stated that they discovered a problem with their voting machines the week prior to the election and that the "virus" was fixed by a Technical Support representative from Dominion, the manufacturer. The Dominion/Sequoia Voting Systems representative "reprogrammed" their machines in time for them to use in the Nov. 3rd Special Election. None of the machines (from the same manufacturer) used in the other counties within the 23rd district were looked at nor were they recertified after the "reprogramming" that occurred in Hamilton County.

Obviously a Cheney/Bush plot, or something.

Or maybe the several-million-degree core-temps of the Earth escaped through narrow tunnels to the machines.

Or something.

HT: AmSpecBlog

Hypothetical, Of Course: Manslaughter Charges for Doyle?

Hmmmmm.

State transportation officials moved Thursday to replace three bridges in the Zoo Interchange by June, through a unique emergency construction effort that would limit full road closures on the spans to three weekends.

The deteriorating bridges carry traffic northbound on I-894/45 through the interchange and serve as the connecting ramps for traffic moving from northbound I-894 to westbound I-94, and from southbound I-45 to eastbound I-94.

Based on recent inspections, the State Department of Transportation determined those 40-year-old bridges need to be replaced immediately, for safety reasons

We all know that James Earl Doyle, Governor of Wisconsin, in conjunction with Tom Barrett, Mayor of Milwaukee, has delayed the rebuild of the Zoo Interchange from the day he assumed office. It's parenthetical that he also stole the trust-fund money needed to PAY for the replacements.

So if one of those bridges collapses and a bunch of people die, should Doyle (and maybe Tommy) be charged with manslaughter?

Why not?

Reid's ObamaCare Tax Hits

Oh, yah....there are tax increases.

40% excise tax on health coverage in excess of $8,500 (individuals) / $23,000 (families). Amounts are indexed for inflation by CPI-U + 1% – begins in 2013 – $149 B tax increase

(It will be a very close call for most Wisconsin public-employee union members as to whether these taxes will fall on them. VERY close.)

Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of branded drugs – begins in 2010 – $22 B tax increase

Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of certain medical devices – begins in 2010 – $19 B tax increase

Impose annual fee on manufacturers and importers of certain medical devices – begins in 2010 – $60 B tax increase

There are others, affecting high-end earners (NOW defined as >$200K, not $250K.)

YOU will pay those increased fees mentioned above.

Health-care inflation, anyone?

HT: Hennessey

"I Do Solemnly Swear.......To Be a Photo-Op"???

That wasn't part of the oath I took on entry to the Armed Services.

Now it is!

Obama arrived on the base 3:19 p.m. local time (1 a.m. Eastern Standard Time), and received a rousing welcome from 1,500 troops in camouflage uniforms, many holding cameras or pointing cell phones to snap pictures.

“You guys make a pretty good photo op,” the president said.

--WaPo via Gateway

Want to Reduce Your Muni Budget? Fuggedaboutit

The Unions absolutely, positively, OWN Jim Doyle and the Leggie-slime majority.

Starting in 2010, a city or village that wants to operate its police or fire departments more efficiently and save tax dollars will first need permission from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.

I know it sounds crazy, but I am not making this up. The new requirement is called “maintenance of effort for emergency services.” It appears in Section 79.07 (3) of the Wisconsin statutes

...The politics of the new law, however, are perfectly clear. The police officers union and the firefighters union lobbied hard to persuade Gov. Jim Doyle and legislative leaders to include “maintenance of effort for emergency services” in the 2009-11 state budget, signed into law on June 29 as Act 28. The union goal is to prevent city councils and village boards from reducing the number of police officers and firefighters on the municipal payroll

The most-featherbedded jobs in the country: union-represented municipal jobs.

HT: FoxPolitics

Holder, the DamnFool

Holder can't help himself if he opens his mouth.

HERB KOHL (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) woke up and asked a question. Holder's response is a jaw-dropper of the first water. Actually, it's a fire-able offense.

KOHL: "....taking into account that you never know what happens when you walk into a court of law, in the event that for whatever reason they do not get convicted, what would be your next step? I'm sure you must have talked about it

The DamnFool responds:

HOLDER: What I told the prosecutors and what I will tell you and what I spoke to them about is that failure is not an option. Failure is not an option. This -- these are cases that have to be won. I don't expect that we will have a contrary result.

Actually, Eric, you ARE the failure, and your option should expire.

Today would be fine.

HT: PowerLine

Another Royal, Another Bow

Think it can't happen?

Think again.

HT: Moonbattery

Palin Derangement

This captures it, I think.

Why is she [Palin] so popular in the heartland?

Because she is us. A good-hearted ambitious American doing her best to offer her best. If they -- and who are they, exactly? -- hate her so much, then it has to be the case that she's only a symbol of the hatred they feel for all the rest of us.

The best short take on what Grim now calls "Palin Derangement Syndrome" I've seen.

Who's Eric Holder Trying to Fool?

Our current Attorney General, like his boss Obama, are doing their damndest to make lawyers look really, really, bad.

Successfully, we should add.

The Bozo-Lawyers want us to believe that:

A non-US citizen
Who committed war crimes
As a non-State actor
Who was captured on foreign soil
By US military

....deserves a civilian CRIMINAL trial rather than the customary military-tribunal (or my favorite, summary execution.)

In other words, he thinks that the public is a bunch of damn fools.

Sorry, Eric, we didn't go to law school--so it's possible that we are NOT fools.

Courtesy Sykes, we learn that even Senator Graham gets it:

Not only does Graham have to tell him that there’s no precedent for trying battlefield detainees in civilian court, but Holder’s emphasis on how we don’t need a confession to convict Bin Laden completely misses the larger point Graham’s trying to make. The real worry in a district-court trial isn’t what’ll happen to archterrorists like Osama or KSM, whose perpetual detention is assured; the worry is that those trials will establish precedents that’ll be exploited by lesser jihadis at their own trials later on. KSM won’t be released because the political consequences to the administration are too dire, but what about some other terrorist who’s less well known to the public and whose guilt, while certain to the CIA, is less provable under normal evidentiary rules? A confession in a case like that might be critical — but what if he wasn’t Mirandized before he confessed? What then? That’s Graham’s point, and Holder seems to want nothing to do with it.

It won't be long before the title "lawyer" becomes a spiteful curse rather than the quasi-giggle it is today.

Maybe that's what Holder wishes for--to bring about the end of the Rule of Law in the US.

He'd better hope that he doesn't effect that. We're not fools, Eric. And we don't cotton to your condescension and stupid games with our families' safety on the line.

And let's not mention the conflict-of-interest problems. Ethics, schmethics. Rule of law or rule of money?

No-brainer.

Good News, for a Change

Here's a happy thought for Waukesha County voters.

State Rep. Mark Gundrum (R-New Berlin) said Friday that he is running for Waukesha County circuit judge and will challenge incumbent Judge Richard Congdon in the April 10 election.

Why?

Congdon was appointed to the bench in January by Gov. Jim Doyle

Key words: Jim Doyle.

Besides that, Gundrum is eminently qualified, smart, thoughtful, and has the right temperament.

Pedro Colon's Handwriting Problems

Maybe it was a really, really, cold day or something, eh?

From the State D of J memorandum (P. 4 in the PDF here):

"Mr. Colon's signature on two of these certifications appears markedly different from [his] signature on the other two pages. Handwriting analysis [State Crime lab] further questioned whether the signatures [were all of Pedro Colon]."

Pedro, who attemped to skewer St. Anthony's School--the largest Choice school in Milwaukee, and part of his district--during budget sessions, is most certainly an honest man.

Right, Pedro??

Hey, Tommy! Here's Another "Just One Name"

Tommy Barrett's going to be really convincing when he goes out-State and talks about the wonderful things he's doing with the City of Milwaukee's governance.

Including the City's Election Commission, of course.

Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced that on November 18, 2009, attorneys for the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ), acting as special prosecutors for Milwaukee County, filed a criminal complaint in Milwaukee County Circuit Court against Yadira Colon (age 42) formerly of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, alleging two counts of election fraud and two counts of falsification of nomination papers, occurring in March and June, 2008.

The charges result from an investigation by the DOJ Department of Criminal Investigation, with assistance from the Milwaukee Police Department, into allegations of irregularities on nomination papers filed for Representative Pedro Colon for the November, 2008 election.

See that name in RED, Tommy? That's "just one" (of at least a dozen or so found so far) of those vote-fraud folks.

A Test for "Mr. Civil Liberties," Russ Feingold

The Senate ObamaCare bill oozed out from under the rock yesterday, and included tax-supported abortions.

This is an opportunity for our "Mr. Civil Liberties"--Russ Feingold--to demonstrate that he's actually honest. For what "civil libertarian" could possibly force all taxpayers to pay for what most people believe is murder pure?

That's not to focus merely on the murders, of course. The entire bill is a misbegotten spawn of Progressive pizza-fueled dreams which will bankrupt the country AND erode or dispatch, over time, the excellence of our current healthcare environment.

We don't expect "Mr. Civil Liberties" to recognize the larger problems. He's made it clear that Statism is just fine and dandy with him.

But 'point-of-a-gun-you-will-pay-to-murder-babies'?

A good test, indeed.

Welcome to OUR World

White-by-exclaustration?

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill.

“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

I'll let James T Harris make the comments.

HT: CMR

Oh, Yeah. But It's Just Cord Blood

Sorry, folks, it's not news because it's not ESCR.

The Levines were in luck: Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg, a professor of pediatrics and pathology at Duke University, was conducting a study where children with cerebral palsy were injected with their own cord blood cells. On May 28, 2008, at the age of 2, Chloe received a 15-minute re-infusion of her stem cells…Within four days, her parents saw a noticeable difference, although Kurtzberg said most kids show benefits three to nine months later. The rigidity on Chloe’s right side loosened up and her speech started to improve. She was able to ride her toy tractor, which in the past had been too difficult for her to pedal. “Her life is completely normal, she doesn’t drag her right foot, she can use her right hand,” Jenny Levine said. “She rides a bike, a scooter…we’re taking her skiing this year. She’s fabulous.” At this time, Kurtzberg said she does not know how long the effects of cord blood will last on kids like Chloe, but if there is a good chance it will be “durable and last indefinitely.” This is essential, since most babies have enough cells for only one infusion.

Ho-hum

HT: Secondhand Smoke

Delphi Plant Goes Down Soon

Another unique-to-Milwaukee building goes away.

The [Oak Creek] Common Council on Tuesday approved an agreement that requires the remainder of the former Delphi Automotive Systems plant to be demolished by Oct. 31

Somebody--Gurda would be best, of course--should do an article on the Delphi (Delco) plant.

It was built to manufacture guidance systems for satellites and missles. Therefore, the entire concrete floor was built on top of massive springs which insulated the floor from the effects of Lake Michigan wave-action. The floor was also separate from the walls of the building.

You read that correctly. Even though Lake Michigan was a few miles from the plant, the delicacy of the guidance systems was so great that the tiniest "twitch" from wave-action on that lake during systems assembly could be extremely harmful.

They also had a North Star-oriented lightbeam running around the floor of the plant.

Probably one of the highest-tech plants in Milwaukee at that time, and likely still is.

A MILLION Degrees, or Something

That's the ticket.

Drill a really deep hole, down to where AlGore says 'it's a million degrees.' (Insert a really really really tough drill-bit that AlGore personally invented which won't melt, or something.)

Then you bring the million degree stuff up and make steam. Push the steam through turbines. Make electricity sufficient to power the entire solar system, which is also heated to a million degrees.

Or something.

Who Needs Waterboarding? We Have Obama!

Mass-murderer-worshipers, tax-cheats, ethically-challenged, "world-gummint"-admirers, bozo-science idolaters, and anti-child/anti-life bigots.

Those are just Obama's nominees and appointments--not to mention the A.G. who would destroy the Federal criminal justice system. Or his nonchalant attitude about 40,000 US troops he's left twisting in the Afghan wind.

Every day, a new and sometimes un-imaginable offsense to American sensibilities.

Waterboarding is a picnic in comparison.

Doyle's Political Bombing Run Starves People

Smooth move, Jimbo.

Thousands of poor people in Wisconsin have waited months for food stamp benefits because of a backlog of applications at a state processing center.

The Hunger Task Force of Wisconsin estimated that the federal FoodShare benefits left undelivered totaled more than $11.7 million from May to October, while nearly two-thirds of applications filed since mid-June were not processed within the 30-day time requirement. FoodShare is the name for the old food stamps program.

Doyle, whose concern for actual people ranks 10th on a scale of 1-5, decided to make Scott Walker the scapegoat. THAT'S the move here, folks, not some "humanitarian" objective. It was a payoff to AFSCME, pure and simple.

...In Milwaukee County, more than 9,300 of 16,200 applicants failed to receive either their FoodShare benefits or a denial of their application within the 30-day requirement. Nearly 1,400 cases languished for more than three months.

For those seeking emergency benefits, those with incomes of less than $150 per month, the federal regulations require benefits or a denial within seven days. More than 4,700 of those applicants were waiting more than 40 days for a decision, according to state numbers

Great work, Jimbo. When you retire, are you leaving the State?

Please!!!

Deprive US Citizens to Punish Mexican Gangs!

Yah, that's the ticket. (Another damnfool lawyer/member of the Party-In-Government speaks). Fuggedabout all that "shall not be infringed" foolishness...

The former head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection called Monday for the U.S. to reinstitute the ban on assault weapons and take other measures to rein in the war between Mexico and its drug cartels, saying the violence has the potential to bring down legitimate rule in that country.

Former CBP Commissioner Robert C. Bonner also called for the United States to more aggressively investigate U.S. gun sellers and tighten security along its side of the border, describing the situation as "critical" to the safety of people in both countries, whether they live near the border or not.

Mexico, for its part, needs to reduce official corruption and organize its forces along the lines the U.S. does, such as a specialized border patrol and a customs agency with a broader mandate than monitoring trade, Mr. Bonner said in an exchange of e-mails.

The way to resolve corruption in Mexico is to disarm US citizens. Gee. Why hasn't any other Deep Thinker thought of THAT?

Oh, wait! We forgot about D. Feinstein, Deep Thinker of California...

The federal assault weapons ban was passed on Sept. 13, 1994, during the Clinton administration and prohibited the sale to civilians of certain semi-automatic firearms, so-called assault weapons. The law expired on Sept. 13, 2004, and an effort by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, to extend it for another 10 years was defeated 80-9.

There was a reason for that vote. The AWB had nothing whatsoever to do with "assault" weapons--mostly because the term is vague, and Di-Fi's inane methodology was based on the color of the weapon (black is bad, wood is good.)

That's Deep Thinking in California. By no coincidence, this ex-Bushie, Bonner, is a California lawyer.

Cancer Screens and Politics? Oh, My!

Gee.

What a difference six months — and a health-care overhaul proposal — can make! Just six months ago, the U.S Preventive Services Task Force, which works within the Department of Health and Human Services as a “best practice” panel on prevention, sounded a warning signal over a slight decline in annual mammograms among women in their 40s. In fact, they warned women of this age bracket that they could be risking their lives if they didn’t get the annual preventive exam ... --Ed Morrissey, quoted at ProEcclesia

Now, with a massive cost-problem arising, it's que sera...

These Questions Are Above Holder's Paygrade

PJB:

Are we at war—or not?

For if we are at war, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed headed for trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York? Why is he entitled to a presumption of innocence and all of the constitutional protections of a U.S. citizen?

Is it possible we have done an injustice to this man by keeping him locked up all these years without trial? For that is what this trial implies—that he may not be guilty.

And if we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that KSM was complicit in mass murder, by what right do we send Predators and Special Forces to kill his al-Qaida comrades wherever we find them? For none of them has been granted a fair trial.

When the Justice Department sets up a task force to wage war on a crime organization like the Mafia or MS-13, no U.S. official has a right to shoot Mafia or gang members on sight. No one has a right to bomb their homes. No one has a right to regard the possible death of their wives and children in an attack as acceptable collateral damage.

Yet that is what we do to al-Qaida, to which KSM belongs.

We conduct those strikes in good conscience because we believe we are at war. But if we are at war, what is KSM doing in a U.S. court?

Since they are above Holder's paygrade, we know who made the decision to play patty-cake in New York City.

And PJB thought about that, too:

In America, trials often become games, where the prosecution, though it has truth on its side, loses because it inadvertently breaks one of the rules.

The Obamaites had best pray that does not happen, for they may be betting his presidency on the outcome of the game about to begin

2012.

A Little 'Counter-Intuitive' Economics on PRC

Interesting.

...While some fret about liquidity-driven inflation, Justin Lin, World Bank chief economist, said the greater danger is that record levels of idle plant almost everywhere will feed a downward spiral of job cuts and corporate busts. "I'm more worried about deflation," he said

By holding the yuan to 6.83 to the dollar to boost exports, Beijing is dumping its unemployment abroad – "stealing American jobs", says Nobel laureate Paul Krugman. As long as China does it, other tigers must do it too.

Western capitalists are complicit, of course. They rent cheap workers and cheap plant in Guangdong, then lobby Capitol Hill to prevent Congress doing anything about it. This is labour arbitrage.

At some point, American workers will rebel. US unemployment is already 17.5pc under the broad "U6" gauge followed by Barack Obama. Realty Track said that 332,000 properties were foreclosed in October alone. More Americans have lost their homes this year than during the entire decade of the Great Depression. A backlog of 7m homes is awaiting likely seizure by lenders. If you are not paying attention to this political time-bomb, perhaps you should.

Well, there are also a helluvalotta more Americans now than during the Depression, meaning that that "foreclosure" stat is un-contexted.

Quoting Krugman doesn't make Pritchard's case; on the other hand, the PRC's problems are significant:

The reality is that much of Beijing's $600bn stimulus has been spent building yet more plant and infrastructure so that China can ship yet more goods, or has leaked into property and stocks.

Credit has exploded. Allocated by Maoist bosses for political purposes, it has become absurd. China is rolling as much steel as the next eight producers combined. It is churning more cement than the rest of the world. Fixed investment is up 53pc this year. Once you know that Hunan authorities have torn down two miles of modern flyway so that they can soak up stimulus by building it again, or that the newly-built city of Ordos is sitting empty in Inner Mongolia, you know what must come next.

Pivot Asset Management said lending has touched 140pc of GDP, "well beyond" levels that have led to crises in the past. With the revolution's 60th birthday out of the way, the central bank has begun to tighten. New yuan loans halved in October. So be careful. Pivot said a hard-landing in China could prove as traumatic for world markets as the US sub-prime crash.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

HT: Big Picture

The 2A Explained

Think that the Second Amendment is dated?

Then watch the Commies work over a cameraman in Fort Lauderdale.

HT: PowerLine

Is Our President a Complete Tool?

Bowing to a foreign Emperor is nothing compared to this idiocy.

"Japan serves as an example to the world that true peace and power can be achieved by taking this path. For decades, Japan has enjoyed the benefits of peaceful nuclear energy, while rejecting nuclear arms development -- and by any measure, this has increased Japan's security and enhanced its position.” --Obama

Moron puts this into perspective, albeit it's unlikely that ObamaTwit will get the connection.

Likewise, the Amish seem to have similarly solved the dilemma of how to live a pacifist lifestyle absent offensive or defensive weapons of any kind, and yet still thrive in safety and security.

You never hear anything about nuclear-free Lancaster County being overrun by invaders now do you? Coincidence? We don’t think so.

2012.

What's Going On With Elections?

Barone--a very astute observer:

Sometimes a poll result slaps you in the face. That was the case for me when I saw Public Policy Polling’s results in the 2nd congressional district of Arkansas. PPP has the incumbent, Democrat Vic Snyder, leading three unknown Republicans (two-thirds to three-quarters of respondents could not describe their feelings toward them) by margins of 44%-43%, 44%-42% and 45%-42%. No, it doesn’t matter which Republican got the best score. The news here is that a seven-term Democratic incumbent, an intelligent man (he has earned an M.D.) with no disqualifying personal characteristics or accusations of scandal (so far as I know) is running significantly below 50% and is essentially tied with three unknown Republicans.

...Arkansas 2 is part of what I call the Jacksonian belt, the swath of counties from southwestern Pennsylvania along the Appalachian chain and extending to Oklahoma and Texas which were largely settled by the Scots-Irish immigrants that streamed into America in the dozen years before the Revolution and their descendants...

If Vic Snyder is in trouble, it’s a good bet that many other Democrats from the Jacksonian belt are too. Arkansas 2 is not the most anti-Obama district in the Jacksonian belt; John McCain won it by a 54%-44% margin, and Obama carried Pulaski County which includes Little Rock and its close-in suburbs...

Heh. By all means, let's do ObamaCare. And Cap-n-Tax. And Immigration Reform.

Let's do 'em now!!

Twin Targets: NYC and Bush

Holder maintains that Obama "knew nothing" about Holder's decision to prosecute non-citizen murdering terrorists (non-State enemy combatants) in NYC.

Right.

The actual target of Holder's utterly insane decision: GWBush, whose Administration will be 'found guilty' of all sorts of 'violations' of 'human' rights (assuming that the non-State murderers/terrorists are actually human).

That way, GWB, Cheney, et.al. will be eligible for trial in other countries, or by the World Court.

Yup.

The other result will be the targeting of NYC for additional terrorist/murdering folks--non-State actors, of course--who will do everything possible to disrupt the proceedings. That's not my opinion--it's the opinion of the Governor of New York State, a Democrat.

Holder has always been a political animal, despite all the rah-rah about his 'integrity.'

Nothing changed, and his feckless lying about Obama's involvement doesn't change that.

By the Way, Bp. Listecki...A Little Housecleaning Is In Order

Welcome to Milwaukee!

Now there's this little problem you can address...

Seems that our local Campaign for Human Development has a rather strange bedfellow, given that we're Catholic.

Voces de la Frontera – Wisconsin - $50,000

Promoted homosexual campaign “Gayneighbor.org” for ally group Equality Wisconsin in Oct. 2009 newsletter

Listed as member of “Health Care for America Now”

Health Care for America Now firmly stated:

“When we say health care for all, we also mean preserving the reproductive health care coverage women currently have.”

(Richard Kirsche) “Unfortunately, the House legislation included a provision that will deny some women access to abortion services, a standard benefit now available on the insurance market. We will work to see that women have access to comprehensive health coverage in the final bill that passes.”

A central promise of health care reform is that if you like the health care coverage you have, you can keep it. Today in America, millions of women who buy health care on their own or who get it through the small business employer have abortion care coverage. Congressman Stupak's amendment would strip them of that coverage, breaking that central promise.Stupak wants to outlaw abortion coverage in the new health insurance Exchange, where individuals and small businesses will purchase their coverage. Instead, women would only be able to purchase abortion coverage in a "abortion rider" plan - a single-service plan that covers abortion only. Such an "abortion rider" is discriminatory and illogical. Women do not plan to have unintended pregnancies (or pregnancies in which a complication will arise that will require ending the pregnancy). In fact, about half of all pregnancies are unintended. Abortion is simply not something that women plan to insure against.

Fifty grand?

We previously mentioned the Alinskyite bunch.

Housecleaning time, Your Grace.

Guess What: Banks' Christmas Bonus Was On You!

These are the people who Know What's Best. Remember that as they work to take over all of healthcare and the planetary climate.

Officials managing the multibillion dollar bailout of insurance giant American International Group Inc. bungled the first rescue and may have overpaid other banks to wind down AIG's business relationships, a government watchdog says.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York--headed at the time by now Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner--paid AIG's business partners face value for securities so they would cancel insurance-like contracts AIG had written and ease the firm's liquidity crunch. But at least one of those partner banks would have canceled the contracts for less...

...The initial bailout "was done with almost no independent consideration of the terms of the transaction or the impact that those terms might have on the future of AIG," the report says.

As a result, billions more than necessary went to U.S. banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc.; Merrill Lynch, now part of Bank of America Corp.; and Wachovia, now part of Wells Fargo & Co.; and European banks including Societe Generale, Deutsche Banke, UBS and Calyon, it says

It's easy to understand why Goldman Sachs is going to pay ultra-mega-biggie bonuses this year; a sane Government may just decide to take the money back.

But then, "a sane Government" is now an oxymoron.

Bishops Assert Moral Imperative in Healthcare

Unnnnhhhhh....

Chicago Cardinal Francis George, the conference president, said that the prelates must ensure that "issues that are moral questions before they become political remain moral questions when they become political." Roman Catholic prelates believe that "everyone should be cared for and that no one should be deliberately killed," he said.

The second part of the red-highlight is unexceptionable except to the Brave New World Progressives of Planned Parenthood (and Red China).

But as we pointed out below, the first part is a bit more problematic. The Bishops attempt to transfer a personal moral obligation to the State, which requires making the State an actor. However, being 'an actor,' strictly speaking, requires free will, which is not a property of the State.

Consistent with this transference, the Bishops also ignore the principle of subsidiarity with their eagerness to bless a Federal plan.

I'm sure that USCC will issue a paper which justifies their position through a right application of moral theology.

Just as soon as USCC issues a paper justifying its love of Alinsky operations.

So ObamaCare IS a Tax?

Sen. Merkley (D-OR) tells us that the authority to force purchase of health-insurance lies in Article 1, Section 8:

"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States."

He apparently thinks ObamaCare is 'general welfare.' It's a theory which has eluded every other MC and Senator asked the same question to date--and that question has been asked since HillaryCare was proposed.

OK. It's his theory.

But it's not a duty, nor an impost, nor an excise.

So it's a tax.

Gee. That's never been mentioned so far. I wonder why?

Will EPA Write "Cap-N-Tax"?

It's clear that Obama doesn't have the votes for Cap-n-Tax in the Senate, or he would not have hinted that it's off the table late last week.

Perhaps that's because Browner's gang will simply regulate us to the Promised Land instead.

...In an obvious administrative overreach, EPA wants to rewrite the 1970 Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases. The agency just released a proposed rule that would allow them to “tailor” the Act to regulate greenhouse gases from stationary sources that have the potential to emit more than 25,000 tons per year. This rule is a clear violation of the black letter law of the Act, which states that major stationary emitters are classified as “stationary sources with the potential to emit 250 tons or more of any pollutant.”

EPA is in a bind because if they enact their long-sought greenhouse gases regulations as the Clean Air Act actually instructs, they will have to regulate 1.2 million businesses, manufactures and farms, this according to a study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This regulation would place a crippling burden on the country ...

...Ever since the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that the agency had to make a greenhouse gas determination based on the language in the Clean Air Act, EPA has been trying to find a way to bend over backwards to shoehorn it in. But what Massachusetts v. EPA and today’s EPA backflips really show is that the Act is poorly suited for greenhouse gases regulation...

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the author of the original Act, has been clear that he never envisioned it being used for greenhouse gases. The fact that EPA has to illegally ignore the plain language of the Act to avoid regulating churches, schools, farms and warehouses all across the country is evidence to this point.

Congress is engaged in a healthy and heated debate over the proper role of the federal government in regulating greenhouse gases. The House has already passed a cap-and-trade scheme and Senators Boxer and Kerry released their version of the bill this week. It is an unthinkable administrative overreach for EPA to issue new regulations that are in clear violation of their statutory authority while Congress is in the midst of addressing the issue...

Even if one ignores the "greenhouse gas is destroying the Earth" fallacy--i.e., that the thesis is scientifically erroneous--it is simply preposterous to allow EPA to extend its regulatory tentacles to the extent they propose. There are 50 States which regulate emissions. Overlaying a new Federal scheme on those regulators (and extant regulations) will be a nightmare, and duplicate expenses for several years to come.

But the most important discussion IS the 'greenhouse gas' fallacy, which is properly the domain of Congress. Allowing EPA to get into this game absent legislation is ruinous.

Stimulus in Simulated Districts. Right.

Joe Biden may have thought this up...

Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.

When it comes to stimulus spending, could the wheels of government bureaucracy be grinding too quickly for once? There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.

...For example, the government's Web site says $34 million in stimulus money has been spent in Arizona's 86th congressional district in a project for the Navajo Housing authority, which is actually located in the 1st congressional district.

Oh, no. That's hardly all.

In Oklahoma, recovery.gov lists more than $19 million in spending -- and 15 jobs created -- in yet more congressional districts that don't exist.

In Iowa, it shows $10.6 million spent – and 39 jobs created -- in nonexistent districts.
In Connecticut's 42nd district (which also does not exist), the Web site claims 25 jobs created with zero stimulus dollars.

In Chicago, they only count tombstones as voters. In DC, they graduated to making up entire DISTRICTS from random numbers.

FACT-Based Polls: ObamaCare Sinks

Surprise, surprise, Gomer!

When poll questions were framed broadly, the answers seemed to indicate ample support for Obama’s goals. When required trade-offs were brought into the equation, opinions shifted — sometimes dramatically…

“These trade-offs really matter,” says Robert Blendon, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health who follows opinion trends. “The legislation contains a number of features that polls have shown to be popular, but support for the overall legislation is less than might be expected because people are worried there are details about these bills that could raise their families’ costs.”…

For example, asked if everyone should be required to have at least some health insurance, 67 percent agreed and 27 percent said no.

The responses flipped when people were asked about requiring everybody to carry insurance or face a federal penalty: 64 percent said they would be opposed, while 28 percent favored that.

And,

The poll found a similar opinion shift on employer requirements: 73 percent agreed that all companies should be required to give their employees at least some health insurance.

Yet when asked if fines should be used to enforce such a requirement on medium and large companies, support dropped to 52 percent. Uninsured workers are concentrated in small companies

--AP

HT: Hot Air

An Album NOT To Buy

One graf tells it all:

So there you have it: Gregorian chant meets Hollywood meets the Standard Tandoori, with the enthusiastic participation of the Roman authorities. The Catholic Church may have abolished the Inquisition, but it still knows the meaning of torture.

To find out which album that might be, go to the link. (Great offhad bitchslap of the Royal Philharmonic, too...)

Newman on Form

Acute observations which are applied to liturgical stuff.

...There is no such thing as abstract religion. When persons attempt to worship in this (what they call) more spiritual manner, they end, in fact, in not worshipping at all. This frequently happens. Every one may know it from his own experience of himself. Youths, for instance (and perhaps those who should know better than they), sometimes argue with themselves, "What is the need of praying statedly morning and evening? why use a form of words? why kneel? why cannot I pray in bed, or walking, or dressing?" they end in not praying at all. Again, what will the devotion of the country people be, if we strip religion of its external symbols, and bid them seek out and gaze upon the Invisible?

...no one can really respect religion, and insult its forms. Granting that the forms are not immediately from God, still long use has made them divine to us; for the spirit of religion has so penetrated and quickened them, that to destroy them is, in respect to the multitude of men, to unsettle and dislodge the religious principle itself. In most minds usage has so identified them with the notion of religion, that the one cannot be extirpated without the other. Their faith will not bear transplanting.

...In these times especially, we should be on our guard against those who hope, by inducing us to lay aside our forms, at length to make us lay aside our Christian hope altogether. This is why the Church itself is attacked, because it is the living form, the visible body of religion; and shrewd men know that when it goes, religion will go too. This is why they rail at so many usages as superstitious; or propose alterations and changes, a measure especially calculated to shake the faith of the multitude. Recollect, then, that things indifferent in themselves become important to us when we are used to them. The services and ordinances of the Church are the outward form in which religion has been for ages represented to the world, and has ever been known to us. Places consecrated to God's honour, clergy carefully set apart for His service, the Lord's-day piously observed, the public forms of prayer, the decencies of worship, these things, viewed as a whole, are sacred relatively to us, even if they were not, as they are, divinely sanctioned. Rites which the Church has appointed, and with reason,—for the Church's authority is from Christ, — being long used, cannot be disused without harm to our souls.

All this was posited long before Bugnini and Weakland. Too bad it was not taken more seriously, eh?

Wiggy Did NOT Write This

We all know that Wiggy is not a fan of the object of this critique:

2009’s most influential author is a mirthless Russian-American who loves money, hates God, and swings a gigantic dick. She died in 1982, but her spawn soldier on. And the Great Recession is all their fault...

But even Wiggy didn't write that. (It's possible that he was too funked-out after yesterday's game.)

Volunteer? Then SEIU Will "Look Into" You.

What a jackass.

In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.

...Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.

”We’ll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails,” Balzano told the council.

Smooth move, Ex-Lax.

By the way, read the rest of the post to see how the Jim Doyle/SEIU Matrix intends to handle forced-unionization of Wisconsin home-health-care workers.

Illinois will serve as the model. Surprise!!

Drat! Manhattan and LA To Remain Above Sea Level

Oh, well.

...if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

Despite fluctuations down as well as up, "the sea is not rising," he says. "It hasn't risen in 50 years." If there is any rise this century it will "not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm". And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up byAl Gore and Co could not possibly come about.

The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on "going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world".

Yah, but mere laws of physics can be repealed by Congress and Obama, no?

Well, actually, by the IPCC--which manages its data to come to its favorite conclusion:

One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC's favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a "corrective factor" of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they "needed to show a trend".

HT: Cramer

Talk to an RN About ObamaCare

Spent a bit of time with an RN over the weekend. Didn't know the person, setting was neutral (it wasn't a BitterClingers party.....)

That RN absolutely despises the ObamaCare/Pelosi plan and isn't real thrilled with the Baucus plot, either.

Major point that he made: there will be a serious MD shortage inside of 10 years--something which hasn't been brought up a lot, but since that RN spends time with a lot of docs, it would seem reasonably authoritative.

Second major point: there's no way in Hell that one can "bend the cost-curve downward" by reducing Medicare expenditures with the large cohort of Medicare-eligibles hitting the program in the next 10 years, short of simply depriving them of care. Hmmmmm. Same-o to forcibly adding ~30 million people to the insurance rolls, under any guise. That won't bring cost down per se; all it does is add future liabilities, at best. (It DOES increase revenues, but that increase will be offset in the intermediate and long-term with increased expenditures.)

There's agreement that the system is almost as sick as its patients. But at least anecdotally it seems that ObamaCare is not the remedy.

UPDATE: More of the same thoughts here, (scroll down to find 'MD shortage' grafs...)

Fact-Checking the AP's Palin-Assassin Squad

When one fact-checks AP's Palin-Bashing Department, AP comes up short.

Again and again.

Interior Department Shuts Down Border Security

Your Gummint's typical modus operandi.

In the battle on the U.S.-Mexico border, the fight against illegal immigration often loses out to environmental laws that have blocked construction of parts of the "virtual fence" and that threaten to create places where agents can't easily track illegal immigrants.

Documents obtained by Rep. Rob Bishop and shared with The Washington Times show National Park Service staffers have tried to stop the U.S. Border Patrol from placing some towers associated with the virtual fence, known as the Secure Border Initiative or SBInet, on wilderness lands in parks along the border.

...The conflict between the environment and border security has raged for the past decade as better enforcement in urban areas has pushed the flow of illegal immigrants into Arizona and straight into some of the nation's most remote and fragile desert

...Wilderness is governed under a 1964 law that imposed strict rules that tie Border Patrol agents' hands, and there is a lot of that land along the border. According to the Congressional Research Service, California has 1.8 million acres of wilderness within 100 miles of the border, and Arizona has 2.5 million acres. New Mexico and Texas have smaller plots.

So, if you're intent on hauling drugs or a truckful of illegals, here's the place:

According to e-mails obtained by Mr. Bishop, Park Service officials at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and at the Denver office that oversees the park said they will not allow the Border Patrol to place electronic surveillance towers on parts of the park that are designated wilderness.

Makes sense, no?

PRC Simply Cut Obama's Feed

What an idea!

The town hall meeting was one of the few unscripted moments on the president's trip. It was supposed to be carried live on Chinese state television but at the last moment, the Chinese government changed its mind and only local stations in Shanghai, and the White House Web site, carried it live.

That's got to sting.

Boz-O-bama

HT: Winning McCain

Jackass-in-Chief, UPDATED

This creature Obama is the flyweight in a world of heavyweights.

Commenting on Obama's obsequious bow to the Emperor of Japan, Powerline:

Obama's breach of protocol is of a piece with the substance of his foreign policy. He means to teach Americans to bow before monarchs and tyrants. He embodies the ideological multiculturalism that sets the United States on the same plane as other regimes based on tribal privilege and royal bloodlines. He gives expressive form to the idea that the United States now willingly prostrates itself before the rest of the world.

It's all of a piece, of course. Obama 'means to teach Americans to bow before ....tyrants' because Obama is a Statist-and-wannabe-tyrant.

Well. If he can bow to the Japanese emperor, he can kiss my ass!

UPDATE:

President Barack Obama says the US “does not seek to contain” China’s rise as a big player on the world stage.

“The rise of a strong, prosperous China can be a source of strength for the community of nations,” Mr Obama said in a speech in Japan’s capital, Tokyo.

Nothing like that old-time ChiCom hegemony. Ask Ho Chi Minh; he thought it was a good thing.

But don't ask the millions of dead PRC babies or anything like that.

"Interfaith" Alinsky-ites? Let's Define "Moral"

There is no little irony in the fact that "WISDOM" is Alinsky-ite, yet brimming with 'people of faith.' Old Saul Alinsky dedicated his book to Satan, the father of lies.

Think Rev. Ellwanger knows that? More important, does he understand why it's important?

More than 100 people gathered outside Our Savior's Lutheran Church on Friday, and led by a veteran of the civil rights movement, raised their voices in a prayer for the passage of health care reform.

"We pray that the people of this nation have the energy and strength to see this through," said the Rev. Joseph Ellwanger, who sees access to health care, like racial equality, as a matter of justice.

..."It's our belief that it's not just a political and economic issue, it's a fundamental moral issue," said David Liners, state coordinator for WISDOM, an interfaith coalition of about 140 Wisconsin congregations working to advance health care reform.

Well, David, you're wrong, but you get style-points for propaganda. Or maybe for artful deception, which is a form of lying.

Let's look at a reliable dictionary (Fr. Hardon's Catholic Dictionary, Image Books, Doubleday, NYC). After all, there's a lot of Catholic money going into WISDOM.

Here we find the following:

MORAL LAW: The norm of human conduct, whether revealed or known by reason. The term is used to distinguish the law as binding in conscience, from mere statutes or directives intended to ensure good order.

Also pertinent:

MORAL ORDER: .....In ecclesiastical and civil law, the legally established body of rights and duties among human beings either in general or in a given society.

Both specifically reference "human" ('beings' and 'conduct') for a reason. "Moral law" or "moral order" applies to humans. While 'moral order' can be established in a society, such order cannot be exercised by the "society;" it can only apply to the humans within that society.

In other words, moral conduct is a property of humans, not societies, nor corporations. Only people can act morally or immorally, since States, societies, (or corporations), cannot "act". States, societies, and corporations are merely structures. They are inanimate.

Therefore, making a State a "moral actor" is impossible.

The "moral obligation" argument is specious because one cannot positively legislate moral action to force people to "be (or do) good". One can only negatively legislate--punishing human actors who violate the moral law or norms.

The debate over health-care is far too important to argue with sloppy or deceptive terms, folks.

Desperately Seeking Relevancy

At some point in time, journalists will discover that they and Gingrich are fighting the last war, not the next one. Newt's become an easy-quote/relevance seeker.

Meantime, we get stuff like this, again and again:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich predicted disaster for his party if the conservative wing of the GOP continues to field independent candidates to the right of the party’s nominee.

“If we get into a cycle where there are tea parties and there are conservative third-party candidates, we will make [Nancy] Pelosi speaker for life,” Gingrich told POLITICO in an interview Thursday, calling the practice “totally destructive.”

OK, Newtie. We'll all just swoon at your maaaahhhhhhhhvelous wisdom.

Welcome Bp. Listecki

Welcome, and good luck.

Obama Goes Skating on the Third Rail

Talk about tone-deaf.

The Obama administration will insist on measures to give legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants as it pushes early next year for legislation to overhaul the immigration system, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Friday.

...With unemployment surging over 10 percent and Congress wrestling with health care, advocates on all sides of the immigration debate had started to doubt that President Obama would keep to his pledge to take on the divisive issue of illegal immigration in the first months of 2010.

Unemployment is "above 10 percent", alright. It's somewhere between 10.5% and 19.5%, depending on which of BLS' measures you use.

I used to think that Obama would get re-elected. I'm not so sure any more.

The Back-and-Forthright Abp. Weakland

Someone who is very familiar with Rembert's locutions told me that he often "speaks to the [particular] audience."

That doesn't always work too well.

Records involving at least one sex-offender priest were maintained in so-called archives at the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, according to a document released Wednesday as part of a pending lawsuit. That would call into question testimony by retired Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland, who dismissed the notion as "antique" and "Old Testament" in a deposition last year.

"I've heard about it, but I've never seen those files, and I don't know if the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has such things," Weakland said in response to a question about "sub secreto or confidential files."

That appears to contradict earlier testimony by Weakland in a 1993 deposition in which he acknowledged the existence of such files and newly released archdiocesan documents - including one addressed to Weakland - that reference the archives.

I've witnessed his forked-tongue tricks, too--not regarding the pervert problem, but instead, the liturgical problem.

HT: Beres

"Deficit Reduction"--Obama's Lies to PRC

Just co-incidence that ObamaMessiah is going to visit our large creditors next week, eh?

[Obama] plans to announce in next year's State of the Union address that he wants to focus extensively on cutting the federal deficit in 2010 – and will downplay other new domestic spending beyond jobs programs, according to top aides involved in the planning.

The president's plan, which the officials said was under discussion before this month’s
Democratic election setbacks,

(That is pure BS.)

Politico also believes that he's ditching "Cap-n-Tax" in his newfound quest for fiscal sanity.

That's pure BS, too. He's ditching it because he doesn't have the VOTES in the Senate.

Woe, Woe, Is NYC!

Evidently the Valley Girls occupy the Hudson Valley, too.....

“If the U.S. dismantles our leading institutions, then it will destroy the American financial center, which is largely anchored in New York,” said Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the New York partnership. “It’s just frightening.”

Wanna know what's frightening, Katie?

TARP money down the porcelain tubes. The total write-off called AIG. The Zombie, CitiBank.

And people like you, Katie, whining.

HT: Ticker, who has lots of other comments on the (sniffle, snurf) AWFULNESS of it all.....

Obama The Purifier of Civil Service (!!!)

The Trotskyite Stalinist influence shows bright red.

OPM is now claiming authority to weed out every former political appointee from being considered for ANY federal positions at EVERY level of the GS Pay Scale, for both the competitive AND excepted service – made RETROACTIVE for the past 5 years! (This is a new, extra layer of scrutiny previously reserved for SES hires.) OPM will now check the recommended hires to “ensure they comply with merit system principles and applicable civil service laws.”

It is well established anti-discrimination law in the Federal sector – the public (political appointees included) may not be excluded from consideration for federal jobs because of their political affiliation.

OPM’s alleged rationale is to keep political appointees from “burrowing in,” but agencies would need to have already considered the applicant the best qualified to even reach this new hurdle.
Stated another way, “but for” the applicant having served as a political appointee within the past five years, all agencies would not be required to seek review from OPM for all agency positions. Effectively, the ONLY reason EVERY agency will now be REQUIRED to consult OPM is to “ask permission” to hire a person based on their political affiliation.

Why make the policy retroactive for 5 years? I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

There's no guesswork involved in the "5-year" marker.

What the Hell, Obama. Save the trouble for OPM and just line 'em up against the wall.

Then find another Muslim terrorist and have him open fire.

Defeating Gay "Marriage" in Maine: MIA

This link takes you to the official campaign-donation records for the Maine defeat of gay "marriage."

Green Bay was in. Madison, Milwaukee, LaCrosse, and Superior were no-shows.

UPDATE: combox claim that LaX was in for $500.00

About Islam

The Jester cadged this from Shea.

...We want very much to believe that Violent Islam is a perversion of the Islamic tradition and Wise and Benevolent Islam is the Real Islamic tradition. But the reality is that Islam is an invented human religion that borrows from fragments of Judaism and Christianity, mixes in Mohammed's own delusional (or lying) claims of revelation, and completes it with a dash of conventional wisdom from seventh-century Arab culture. It is not a magisterial faith with some adjudicating body that defines what is and is not the orthodox reading of the Koran. It is whatever its various adherents say it is.

That means that if you are looking for a sanction for violence in the Koran, you can find it, because it's there. So is the wisdom, almsgiving, and peace stuff, if you want that. So Muslims who commit these heinous acts with such frequency are not "betraying Islam" when doing so out of self-described piety. They are, in fact, implementing one possible interpretation of the Muslim tradition (and often slaughtering a great many other Muslims in the process). Westerners who lie to themselves that these monsters are "not real Muslims" are simply self-deluded fools. They are as Muslim as Mohammed, as are their Muslim victims. There is no Islamic Magisterium to excommunicate them. They don't speak for all Muslims, but they most certainly do speak and act for the disturbingly large percentage of Muslims who either applaud them, remain silent, or complain about being victims of suspicion and distrust by the victims of terror instead of complaining about the thugs who commit the terror in the name of Islam.

That understanding is sorely lacking in the office of our President and (apparently) in the office of the Chief/Staff--Army and the FBI.

I have no confidence that our Attorney General has any understanding of anything at all.

The Starvation Metaphor: Doyle's Governance

P-Mac reports news that his employer couldn't find. Starving people.

Sherrie Tussler is complaining again. She's an anti-hunger activist in a poor town, so this isn't unusual.

Thing is, she's right, again. Hungry Milwaukeeans are calling hotlines and getting nowhere. This time, state government is to blame - an illuminating turn.

..."The state is providing actually worse service than Milwaukee County," said Tussler, who heads the nonprofit Hunger Task Force.

How bad is it? Of people applying for FoodShare, which is what food stamps are now called, only 35% are getting an answer in 30 days or less, viewed as acceptable by the federal government. Thirteen percent wait more than 100 days. Of the particularly desperate cases, only 31% get help from the state within the required seven days; 32% wait more than a month.

Ah, the Progressive Liberals--Doyle and Timberlake--(and their bootlicker, Capper)!

Doyle plans on starving other Wisconsin entities, such as papermaking and manufacturing, too.

Only a matter of time before he completes that task.

Uncle Jimbo is Right, Again

The Dither-in-Chief gets upbraided, deservedly.

...You can't set the circumstances for victory before you commit to trying to win one. You can't set your strategy based on the hope that quality government will just spring up in the midst of chaos with no security. You can't just magic a functional, fighting Afghan Army out of nothing without competent US forces to first beat the insurgency down to a manageable level. Then they take the Afghans to the field for joint operations to build their confidence just like we did in Iraq. If your goal is simply to turn things over to the Afghans, then hand them the goddamn keys right now. Make a couple of passes over the worst Taliban strongholds, bomb the living shit out of them and then bring our troops home.

Whatever decision you end up making, you have shown a complete lack of leadership ability. You have made the job of our military more difficult everywhere as our enemies have seen you are not the strong horse...

While it appears that Obama's Trotskyite Statism will be curbed by a nervous Congress, his foreign and military hand is unstayed under the Constitution.

Ruin of the country can be accomplished in a number of ways.

Go Ahead. Make Our Day. "Nationalize" the 2010s

Obama and his Trotskyite Brain Trust want to 'nationalize' the 2010 elections.

Hooboy.

For the first time, Republican Rob Portman is inching ahead of the two Democrats in the 2010 race for Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Also for the first time, Ohio voters disapprove 50 – 45 percent of the job President Barack Obama is doing, down from his 53 – 42 percent approval September 16 and 49 – 44 percent approval July 7.

OHIO!!

Ace also mentions that Dodd is dead, dead, dead in CT.

That leaves Bawney Fwank to front for the Banks and GSE's.

There is a God!

One Eyewitness Account of the Muslim Terror/Ft Hood

Via Arms/Law, not authenticated (yet.)

...As I'm walking up to it the gunshots start. Slow and methodical. But continuous. Two ambulatory wounded came out. Then two soldiers dragging a third who was covered in blood.. Hearing the shots but not seeing the shooter, along with a couple other soldiers I stood in the street and yelled at everyone who came running that it was clear but to "RUN!" I kept motioning people fast. About 6-10 minutes later (the shooting continuous), two cops ran up, one male, one female. We pointed in the direction of the shots.

They headed that way (the medical SRP building was about 50 meters away). Then a lot more gunfire. A couple minutes later a balding man in ACU's came around the building carrying a pistol and holding it tactically. He started shooting at us and we all dived back to the cars behind us. I don't think he hit the couple other guys who were there. I did see the bullet holes later in the cars. First I went behind a tire and then looked under the body of the car. I've been trained how to respond to gunfire...but with my own weapon.

To have no weapon[;] I don't know how to explain what that felt like...

Gripping narrative at the link.

Doylent Green: The Final Solution

About a year ago, I reviewed the report of the Governor's Task Force on Global Warming. It's a long post--and I hardly scratched the surface of the report--but what should be recalled is that the most prominent industrialist on the Task Force voted "NO" on its final report.

There was a reason for that, as WPRI tells us in a comprehensive and frightening report.

To produce accurate estimates of the economic impact of the GTF recommendations, BHI utilizes its Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model for Wisconsin. WI-STAMP (Wisconsin State Tax Analysis Modeling Program) identifies the economic effects of a variety of state policy changes.

WI-STAMP is a five-year dynamic CGE model that simulates changes in taxes, costs (general and sector specific) and other economic inputs. As such, it provides a mathematical description of the economic relationships among producers, households, government and the rest of the world. It is general in the sense that it takes all the important markets (such as the capital and labor markets) and flows into account. It is an equilibrium model because it assumes that demand equals supply in every market (goods and services, labor and capital). This equilibrium is achieved by allowing prices to adjust within the model. It is computable because it can be used to generate numeric solutions to concrete policy and tax changes.

Umnnhhhh, yah, so what?

Here's what:

The first set of results, labeled “All Policies,” is based on all 13 policies except for cap-and-trade. This combination of proposals would have significant negative effects on the state economy. The state would shed 43,093 private-sector jobs. Annual investment would drop by about $619 million and real disposable income by $7,908 million. The second set of results, labeled “cap-and-trade,” would eliminate 25,767 private-sector jobs. Disposable income would fall by $1,836 million, and investment would decrease by $561 million in 2020.

The Wisconsin Legislature will soon be making law of all 13 of those policies.

To Doyle, being 'tied for 9th-worst' in State economic/fiscal health is simply not good enough. He and his Democrat Legislative leadership fully intend to overtake Aaaaahhhhhhnold's Golden State.

Full-speed-ahead to Bankruptcy!

Perception of Obama Is Deteriorating--Fast

Hmmmmmm.

When people who voted for Obama in 2008 -- including registered Democrats -- start speaking in normal conversational voices at dinner parties, neighborhood gatherings and PTA meetings that the over-inflated ego from Chicago has it "in for America," then it's clear most reasonable people have reached the same conclusion.

That is not an assertion without foundation. Look at the LeftOWacky Milwaukee blogsites. You'll see an occasional HooRah for Obama, but no 'drumbeat' of happy thoughts and posts. Yah, the national (Kossite) ultra-Lefties (and our local Schmitz), play their fifes and drums regularly--but they are the ultra-Left. The 5% fringe.

Hyman's article in the AmSpec has a lengthy bill of particulars to support his thesis, and he's not the only one who describes Obama this way.

One Hillsdale professor calls Obama 'an America-hater.' Seems that he's absolutely correct.

You can look at Patrick's post for a graphic on Obama; it tells the same tale.

More "Stimulus" Lies

In Wisconsin, 75% of the "jobs saved/created" were for public-payroll employees.

Surprise!!

About the same in the State of Washington.

Surprise!!

New numbers released by the federal government Friday estimate that the federal stimulus package has helped create or save 34,500 total jobs in Washington, making it the state with the third-largest reported number of stimulus jobs behind California and New York.

But there’s a caveat on those job creation numbers: 24,000 of them probably weren’t in danger in the first place.

State officials used a chunk of stimulus money to cover paychecks for 24,000 teachers who were already contracted to finish out the school year.

In Colorado,

The city of Westminster reported that its $150,438 contract for road work on Lowell Boulevard would create 117 jobs. That would equate to $1,286 per job. The city said the estimate is based on anyone who will work on the project, even if it was for only one day. No federal officials told the city to convert to the number of full-time-equivalent slots, an official said

Two child-development centers — one in Colorado Springs and the other in Saguache County — reported they had created or saved more than 292 jobs combined. However, the money — totaling about $650,000, or $2,226 a job — was used to give employees cost- of-living raises. Only three new jobs were created.

Nice to note that the MSM has figured out what's going on, eh?

Corruption? Look at the (D) "Advisers"

This story broke about 2 weeks ago (or more). The NYT has carefully scrubbed the party affiliation of the principal, who seems to have learned his "How To Get Rich" lessons from AlGore, another rent-seeker extraordinaire.

Peter W. Galbraith, an influential former American ambassador, is a powerful voice on Iraq who helped shape the views of policy makers like Joseph R. Biden Jr. and John Kerry. In the summer of 2005, he was also an adviser to the Kurdish regional government as Iraq wrote its Constitution — tough and sensitive talks not least because of issues like how Iraq would divide its vast oil wealth.

Now Mr. Galbraith, 58, son of the renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith, stands to earn perhaps a hundred million or more dollars as a result of his closeness to the Kurds, his relations with a Norwegian oil company and constitutional provisions he helped the Kurds extract.

We are all shocked, SHOCKED, I say........

Cdl George "Approves" ObamaCare?

Let's start where the Cardinal should have stopped.

...noting that the bishops "do not claim or present ourselves as experts on health care policy" and "are not prepared to assess every provision of legislation as complex as this proposal," said George, "health care legislation ... is about human beings and hence has serious moral dimensions."

Because of the role Catholic Church-sponsored health care plays in picking up "the pieces of our failing system," he said, "we believe our nation's health care system needs reform which protects human life and dignity and serves the poor and vulnerable as a moral imperative and an urgent national priority."

One respectfully suggests that before the Cardinal signals 'approval' of ObamaCare, that he damn well OUGHT to 'assess....provision[s] of [the] legislation.'

Like, for example, the prison-time requirement for failure to purchase health insurance. In this country we have a Constitution which does not endorse such a concept.

Or, for example, the complete absence of conscience protections for providers.

Or the possibility that ObamaCare will bankrupt the US and/or a good portion of its citizens. Bankrupts actually don't "provide" much healthcare, Cardinal.

Finally, Cardinal, can you point to the moral law which obligates a NATION to 'provide healthcare' to its citizens? I'm sure you can reconcile your statement with the Principle of Subsidiarity, right?

Who's the Army Trying to Kid?

Caught by Ace:

Investigators would have been "crucified" over First Amendment rights if they had launched a full-scale probe into e-mails Fort Hood massacre suspect Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly sent to a radical imam, a government investigator told Fox News.

The claim comes as the squabble grows among officials in different branches of law enforcement and the military over who knew what, and when, about Hasan's leanings toward faith-inspired violence, and amid charges that "political correctness" prevented officials from taking pre-emptive action.

The government counterterrorism investigator familiar with the FBI's review of the Fort Hood case told Fox News that they simply did not have enough evidence to launch an investigation. Though officials discovered Hasan's e-mails to the imam, the investigator said the messages suggested he was seeking "spiritual and religious guidance."

"Had we launched an investigation of Hasan we'd have been crucified," the investigator said, adding that the communications were shared with the "appropriate chains."

I recognize that my memory of the UCMJ is hazy, and that I was an EM, not an officer.

But my memory of the UCMJ is this: "You are in the Army. You HAVE no rights. If you differ, write your Congressman, and he'll forward the letter to the Army, who will forward it to your C.O., who will inquire of your platoon Sergeant, who will remind you that you have NO RIGHTS--one way or the other, you'll get the message."

But hey. 14 dead is better than a rights-trial, right?

"New" v. "Old" Progressivism

There's really no difference in the praxis.

But there IS a difference in propaganda, or 'clarification' if you will.

"In contrast to the original Progressivism, the new Progressivism does not give clear expression to Progressivism's awkward combination of egalitarianism and elitism. On the contrary, the new Progressivism strives to conceal Progressivism's paradox--the new Progressivism's academic wing has even developed a variety of theoretical and rhetorical approaches that conceal the paradox. Whereas the dependence on elites can be reconciled with self-government, this concealment has disquieting antidemocratic and illiberal implications."

That is to say, "transparency" is dead, dead, dead.

Just in case you haven't already guessed that.

What is that 'paradox'?

On the one hand, it sought to democratize American politics, reforming American political institutions to make them more responsive to the will of the people. On the other hand, Progressives favored the creation of an administrative elite that would exercise substantial state power but without traditional forms of political accountability

To be fair about it, neither the Tommy Thompson Elitism (baseball stadiums for some, paid for by all, with more and more State employees to boot) or the GWB elitism (epitomized by the bailout of GM/Chrysler) escapes criticism.

And both were removed, but actual, triggers for the TEA Parties.

Of course, the paradox(es) remain.

...A populist suspicion of the elitist orientation of the new Constitution had motivated opposition by a number of the Anti-federalists, and was largely manifested in an anti-Federalist, anti-Whig, and eventually anti-Republican opposition party (Jeffersonianism, Jacksonianism, and the populism that motivated the candidacy of William Jennings Bryan). In the 1960s, the Democratic Party - increasingly a party of establishment Washington and educated elites - threw off their traditional blue-collar (and largely Catholic) electoral base in favor of a new coalition of anti-war activists, the college-educated, and feminists. The result was a political vacuum in which the "populist" wing of the Democratic party was without representation - until Nixon developed a strategy to bring them into the Republican fold. While old habits died hard - many still continued to vote Democratic - by the time of the candidacy of Ronald Reagan, many overcame old habits and thus became "Reagan Democrats." The transformation of Republicans as the party of the Northeast and financial elites to that of Joe the Plumber was complete.

But this accretion of populists into the Republican fold was never altogether comfortable: Republicans - the heirs of the old Federalist and Whig parties - had been, and remain, mistrustful of the unwashed masses. The masses were historically the great threat to the sanctity of PROPERTY, the very manifestation of the "diverse faculties of men" that Madison argued was in need of protection in the new Constitutional order. Republicans successfully adopted the old populist strain of American politics by turning its ire toward the pointy-headed professoriate and their dreams of a utopian political order, all the while pretending that the economic policies of Reaganism were friendly to the common man. Even as jobs were being shipped overseas under the new orthodoxy of Free Markets, Reagan cleared brush, George Herbert Walker ate pork rinds, and the Texan yahoo George Walker Bush (Andover, Yale, Harvard MBA) said "nucylar."

HT: Deneen

A Letter to "Catholic" Politicians

So happens this went to one of the Kennedys. It could have been sent to Dave Obey, or Tom Barrett, or Jim Doyle.

Since our recent correspondence has been rather public, I hope you don’t mind if I share a few reflections about your practice of the faith in this public forum. I usually wouldn’t do that – that is speak about someone’s faith in a public setting – but in our well-documented exchange of letters about health care and abortion, it has emerged as an issue. I also share these words publicly with the thought that they might be instructive to other Catholics, including those in prominent positions of leadership.

For the moment I’d like to set aside the discussion of health care reform, as important and relevant as it is, and focus on one statement contained in your letter of October 29, 2009, in which you write, “The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” That sentence certainly caught my attention and deserves a public response, lest it go unchallenged and lead others to believe it’s true. And it raises an important question: What does it mean to be a Catholic?

“The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic.” Well, in fact, Congressman, in a way it does. Although I wouldn’t choose those particular words, when someone rejects the teachings of the Church, especially on a grave matter, a life-and-death issue like abortion, it certainly does diminish their ecclesial communion, their unity with the Church. This principle is based on the Sacred Scripture and Tradition of the Church and is made more explicit in recent documents.

For example, the “Code of Canon Law” says, “Lay persons are bound by an obligation and possess the right to acquire a knowledge of Christian doctrine adapted to their capacity and condition so that they can live in accord with that doctrine.” (Canon 229, #1)

The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” says this: “Mindful of Christ’s words to his apostles, ‘He who hears you, hears me,’ the faithful receive with docility the teaching and directives that their pastors give them in different forms.” (#87)

Or consider this statement of the Church: “It would be a mistake to confuse the proper autonomy exercised by Catholics in political life with the claim of a principle that prescinds from the moral and social teaching of the Church.” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2002)
There’s lots of canonical and theological verbiage there, Congressman, but what it means is that if you don’t accept the teachings of the Church your communion with the Church is flawed, or in your own words, makes you “less of a Catholic.”

But let’s get down to a more practical question; let’s approach it this way: What does it mean, really, to be a Catholic? After all, being a Catholic has to mean something, right?

Well, in simple terms – and here I refer only to those more visible, structural elements of Church membership – being a Catholic means that you’re part of a faith community that possesses a clearly defined authority and doctrine, obligations and expectations. It means that you believe and accept the teachings of the Church, especially on essential matters of faith and morals; that you belong to a local Catholic community, a parish; that you attend Mass on Sundays and receive the sacraments regularly; that you support the Church, personally, publicly, spiritually and financially.

Congressman, I’m not sure whether or not you fulfill the basic requirements of being a Catholic, so let me ask: Do you accept the teachings of the Church on essential matters of faith and morals, including our stance on abortion? Do you belong to a local Catholic community, a parish? Do you attend Mass on Sundays and receive the sacraments regularly? Do you support the Church, personally, publicly, spiritually and financially?

In your letter you say that you “embrace your faith.” Terrific. But if you don’t fulfill the basic requirements of membership, what is it exactly that makes you a Catholic? Your baptism as an infant? Your family ties? Your cultural heritage?

Your letter also says that your faith “acknowledges the existence of an imperfect humanity.” Absolutely true. But in confronting your rejection of the Church’s teaching, we’re not dealing just with “an imperfect humanity” – as we do when we wrestle with sins such as anger, pride, greed, impurity or dishonesty. We all struggle with those things, and often fail.

Your rejection of the Church’s teaching on abortion falls into a different category – it’s a deliberate and obstinate act of the will; a conscious decision that you’ve re-affirmed on many occasions. Sorry, you can’t chalk it up to an “imperfect humanity.” Your position is unacceptable to the Church and scandalous to many of our members. It absolutely diminishes your communion with the Church.

Congressman Kennedy, I write these words not to embarrass you or to judge the state of your conscience or soul. That’s ultimately between you and God. But your description of your relationship with the Church is now a matter of public record, and it needs to be challenged. I invite you, as your bishop and brother in Christ, to enter into a sincere process of discernment, conversion and repentance. It’s not too late for you to repair your relationship with the Church, redeem your public image, and emerge as an authentic “profile in courage,” especially by defending the sanctity of human life for all people, including unborn children. And if I can ever be of assistance as you travel the road of faith, I would be honored and happy to do so.

Sincerely yours,

Thomas J. Tobin
Bishop of Providence

Precisely.

HT: ProEcclesia

Madison Healthy? Thanks, Suckas!!

Here's the giggle of the day.

The Madison region has been better than any other in the state at sustaining jobs in a difficult economy, according to a study released Wednesday by the Milken Institute.

..."In a period of recession, the index highlights metros that have adapted to weather the storm," Ross DeVol...

Yah. That's because T Thompson and J Doyle increased State employment by .....what....double? at the expense of every other Wisconsin metro area's taxpayers.

If you subtract State and UW employment from Madistan, you'd have an economy sized like that of Rhinelander.

The USCC's Case of "Progressivism"

Under the title "For Whom Does USCC Speak on Healthcare?" we find a lengthy essay, with pertinent questions.

...The “progressive” cause is manifest in the “health care reform” debate. That the USCCB’s domestic policy agenda is progressive and supportive of a magnified and expansive role of centralized government is becoming increasingly apparent, wherein true progressive form the means is the end.

There appears to be a lack of accountability for the policies advanced and legislation supported and the groups funded by the USCCB domestic policy staff. Little has changed since the USCCB through its funding apparatus the CCHD was for many years the benefactor of ACORN and several other Alinsky-type organizations all in the cause of “progress.” While the CCHD ended its long-term funding of ACORN, having misused millions of parishioners’ dollars for radical political organizing, it did so not out of a sense of shame for what it was funding, but rather because it was concerned with the revelations surrounding embezzlement of funds.

It's accompanied by the usual jabberwocky:

Director of Domestic Social Development, Kathy Sailes, assures continuity of the ideologically “progressive” agenda, which is in most ways quite different than the evangelium or pastoral agenda. ...Or, in an ideologically revealing moment of candor, Ms. Sailes captures the heart of the religious left dogma that the political is the spiritual: “And I have felt the sacredness of life at those moments, those sacred moments, when the political was transcended into the spiritual.”

To which the sober observer can only riposte "WTF?"

Well, there will be no rational answer from Ms. Sailes, so we'll move along.

Freedom is messy and sometimes unpredictable. Nonetheless, a continuum of Church teachings from Rerrum Novarum to Deus Caritas Est establishes that true, salvific charity is not something which can be farmed out to government agencies because of our impatience with the adventure of God’s greatest gift to us, freedom.

Precisely why Socialism and Communism (formally defined) is antithetical to Catholicism.

The big questions:

Catholics are entitled to answers. By what authority does the USCCB domestic policy staff fund causes or lobby for legislation which is adverse to many Catholics, ideologically, morally, and politically? By what authority does the USCCB domestic policy staff fund emotional “activism” using the vulnerabilities of less fortunate people to stoke claims and demands on government bypassing the disciplines of process and ordered liberty? By what authority does the USCCB domestic policy staff mask political ideology as a theology and then represent it as authentically Catholic? By what authority does the USCCB domestic policy staff claim as its sovereign and theological position “sacred moments, when the political was transcended into the spiritual” such that “faith becomes the servant of power?”

None, actually. Fuzzy-headed little USCC staffers have arrogated authority unto themselves for decades, although it is fair to say that the late Cdl. Bernardin's political values are accurately reflected by the pronouncements of these gnomes.

Bernardin---Chicago--Alinsky--Ryan--FDR---

USCC staffers are attempting to immanentize the Eschaton because they view that activity as "progress."

Those little chipmunks should consult the history of actual Catholic Bishops vis-a-vis the "progressives," who have always been, and always will be, anti-human.

How Long Can the Fed Prop Up Equities?

That's an overlay showing the relationship between the weakening USD and the strengthening S&P 500.

Looks nice, if you hold equities-----for the time being.

...Even an increase of short-term rates to 2% would stop the carry and restore balance. But the longer the "zero rate" policy goes on the harder it gets to do it, and the more-severe the damage. If The Fed waits too long it will become literally impossible to raise interest rates and withdraw liquidity given the outstanding amount of Federal Debt without causing an immediate failure of The Federal Government...

IOW, at some point in time, trashing the USD will no longer push equities upward. Elliott (Kondratieff) has already called for a dive in DJ/S&P........

HT: Ticker

Remember Kelo?

Yah, the SCOTUS decision which iterated that, basically, your State/Local pols can do anything they damn well WANT to do with your property. That decision was a distant precipitator of the TEA Party phenom, by the way.

Anyhoo.........

While Ms. Kelo and her neighbors lost their homes, the city and the state spent some $78 million to bulldoze private property for high-end condos and other "desirable" elements. Instead, the wrecked and condemned neighborhood still stands vacant, without any of the touted tax benefits or job creation.

That's especially galling because the five Supreme Court Justices cited the development plan as a major factor in rationalizing their Kelo decision.

In fact, Pfizer has decided to abandon the site altogether.

Resistance to State/Local geniuses is not only correct--the intensity should be jacked up a few notches. It'll serve as good practice for resisting the ObamaStatism.

HT: Ace/Laura

Southern-Fried Sagacity

R S McCain comments on Ms. Prejean's dumbest move.

Mamas Don't Let Your Daughters Grow Up to Be Downloads.

Now you know why McCain is a highly-paid Professional Journalist!

The Deficiencies of Stupak and the USCC Compromise

In larger print, Stupak:

Expands access and funding for abortifacient contraception;

Expands funding for Planned Parenthood; and

Ignores the USCC's other "non-negotiable," conscience protection.

Abp. Dolan doesn't like ALL, and didn't like the Wisconsin branch, Pro-Life Wisconsin. Maybe that's because ALL/Pro Life Wisconsin didn't like temporizing compromises, eh?

Since Sgt. Hunley Shot the Guy, Let's Put Women into Combat!

Sometimes it's best to read what the LeftOWackies write. That way it's clear that they are incapable of linear thought.

According to news reports, Munley and gunman Nidal Hassan engaged in intense gunfire while running toward each other. Although officials are unsure if the debilitating shot delivered to Hassan was fired by Munley or Sgt. Mark Todd, a hero in his own right, authorities agree Munley’s actions saved the lives of several bystanders.

There is no questioning whether Munley’s actions were heroic. The answer is a simple yes. On the other hand, there is a question that has been raised time and time again that has once again surfaced as a result of Munley’s courage. Should women in the military legally be allowed to participate in combat to the same extent as men?

There is a difference between combat and police action, no matter how well-executed or courageous.

But that's not the best offering from this naif.

For years we’ve heard debates about whether women are capable of serving in ground troops. One of the main arguments against women on the frontline has been their lack of physical prowess when compared to men.

For years, many women have countered this assertion with the claim if women can handle the pains of childbirth, they can handle anything

Well, sure. Childbirth, war, ........it's all the same.

Oh, there's more!

I had the privilege of taking a class about the history of the Vietnam War taught by Ron Milam. If you have any interest in that subject area, I’d highly recommend the course. Of the many things I learned during the semester, one I remember most happens to also be one many suggest contributed greatly to the North’s ability to defend against the South and U.S. troops. The United States didn’t allow women in the military to engage in physical combat, but the opposition did.

I’m no expert on the war, but common sense would lead me to believe the additional numbers advantaged the northern troops in one way or another.

Maybe you should have sought out a course taught by someone vaguely familiar with actual history, honey. NVA and the VC actually LOST the war--until the (D) majority in Congress cut the legs out from under South Vietnam and unilaterally pulled out of the country.

Other than that, those women were very effective, or something.

Veterans' Day

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall;
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand pains that vision’s face was grained,
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.”

“None,” said the other, “save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.

For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.

Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery,
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.

Then when much blood had clogged their chariot wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now….”

--Wilfred Owen

Cap-and-Tax and Shut Down the Country!

Caught by John Lott:

Both the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade energy approved earlier this year and the version just okayed by Sen. Barbara Boxer’s Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Democrats (Republicans boycotted the vote) contains an obscure but nasty bureaucratic provision that requires President Obama to act like Venezuelan strong man Hugo Chavez.

Here’s how: The bills require a federal declaration of a “climate emergency” if world greenhouse gas levels reach 450 parts per million. Guess what? The Pacific Northwest National Lab says it is a virtual certainty that level will be reached within a few months. The bill then requires the president to “direct all Federal agencies to use existing statutory authority to take appropriate actions...to address shortfalls" in achieving needed greenhouse gas reductions.

When Vitter asked EPA Administrator what would be done in such a situation, she refused to say. So it must be asked: Would the president be empowered to do things like nationalize whole sectors of industry, ban coal use, restrict private automobile use, or anything else the “emergency” requires? . . . .

My suggestion? Close all the Fed, State, and local offices. ALL of them. For about 2 years.

We'll do just fine.

Madistan Notes

Early in the evening yesterday, there was a skunk-smell in Madison, noticeable only 1 block from the Capitol dome.

Just co-incidence, of course.

By the way, regular unleaded in Madison is $2.46/ga--about 13 cents less than at my local PDQ. Another reason that the Madistan crowd doesn't give a rip about stupid EPA regs is that they don't pay for them.

What the Doomsayers Won't Do about BPA

Doh. (And by the way, what's that chemical again??)

Chinese factory workers exposed to huge amounts of bisphenol A substantially increased their risk of sexual dysfunction...

How much is "huge"?

The workers were exposed to BPA at levels 50 times higher than the average American consumer faces...

We've said it before: this campaign is brought to you by the Trial Lawyers (scumsucker) lobby.

Here's the interesting part, folks.

Li pointed out that BPA was first developed as an estrogen substitute.

Oh, yah, estrogen. The stuff that's turning Rocky Mountain trout uni-sex because it's being dumped into rivers.

Estrogen. Yah.

Birth-control pills.

So when will the intrepid Trial-Lawyer-Flak (reporter) start a crusade to ban the birth-control pill??

The Heat's On at Kohl's, Manpower

No big surprise--the religious bunch is trotting out the 'morals' argument.

Thirty-six major corporations are being pressured by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (www.iccr.org ) to denounce the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s principled opposition to health care and climate change legislation. ICCR says that all of the targeted companies previously adopted “health care principles now at odds with Chamber lobbying efforts.”

Since ObamaCare will either: 1) increase employment costs dramatically, thus reducing employment opportunities for marginal workers; or 2) force employers to dump their employees into the "public option" plan which will require enormous tax subsidies, thus severely reducing disposable income, it's fairly clear that the "morals" bunch didn't think too hard about the consequences of their crusade.

The effects of Cap'n'Tax are just as bad--or perhaps worse.

But Kohl's and Manpower?

The companies being targeted are: Aetna; American Express; AT&T; Bristol-Myers Squibb; Cardinal Health; Cisco Systems; Duke Energy; DuPont; Eli Lilly; Exxon Mobil; General Electric; General Mills; Goldman Sachs; Home Depot; IBM; Kellogg; Kohl’s; Manpower; Marriott; McDonald’s; Medco; Merck; Peabody; Pepsi; Pfizer; Safeway; Staples; Starbucks; Target; 3 M; UnitedHealth Group; United Technologies; Verizon; Walmart; Wellpoint; and Xerox.

Kohl's and Manpower both hire a lot of semi- or un-skilled workers, as do Safeway, McDonald's, Staples, and WallyWorld. So the religion-bunch wants those companies to ......what? Kill off their own employees?

(The list of religious-bunch members is informative, by the way.)

HT: The Examiner

McMiller Goes All GooGoo

Gee. Kinda just like it was laid out in the first place. We said that there's a 'neighbor problem,' and gee whiz!!

(There's another 'neighbor problem,' but this one is the stalking horse.)

DNR has plans to spend a bunch of money on McMiller. Or maybe DNR expects the new operator to spend a bunch of money on McMiller. If that is the case, then the new operator will be raising prices, folks.

They managed to find a complaining neighbor, but the reporter never asked how long the complaining neighbor lived in his home.....hmmmm?

Range neighbors have long complained about the noise, and the state is searching for ways to muffle the muzzles, said Paul Sandgren, state Department of Natural Resources forest superintendent at the Kettle Moraine State Forest. It’s the DNR’s fulfillment of a promise made in 1994 to try to minimize the noise whenever there is a project at the range, he said.

The DNR needs to replace the hutches around the shooting areas and is studying the noise as part of the planning.

“This I would classify as an old issue,” Sandgren said, “and I think it was an issue when the range was constructed back in 1974.”

So where was DNR in 1974? 1980? 1984? 1990?

Brookfield Central's Quick Closing

Apparently some juveniles built a small bottle-bomb and let it fly at the final bell at Brookfield Central HS.

The chilluns were evacuated, and pushed back from the building.

Some coughing and hacking from the students.

Middle School Holiday Today

Perusing the comboxes here makes it clear.

For the last couple of days, it's been a middle-school holiday--or perhaps a State/County employee "furlough" day.

(Not that one would know the difference.)

So the comboxes are monitored again.

Catholicism v. Capitalism? Nope.

Fr. Robert Barron.

"Socialism is repugnant to the dignity of the individual....."

"Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus"--an Analogy

Nicely done.

Outside the earth there is no life ... and outside the Church there is no salvation? The answer, of course, is simple: [Astronauts] didn't leave the Earth; they just brought it with them. While they slept and walked on the moon, they were eating Earth's food and breathing Earth's air. Everything they had came from back home. So when we say "outside the Earth there is no life," we are saying that all of the means for survival are found on this planet. And when we say "outside the Church there is no salvation," we mean that all the means of salvation -- doctrines, sacraments, and so on -- are found here, uncorrupted by error. Some of these means can exist outside the visible bounds of the Church. for example, Protestants have most of the Bible, along with two of the seven sacraments. Nevertheless, these things are like the food and water on the space shuttle: they're life-giving, but they came from a place where they're far richer, more abundant and complete

--Kevin Knight, quoted in Happy Catholic

You're Just Plain Stupid!

P-Mac quotes a frequent correspondent:

"If we re-labeled some taxes as fees, this would reduce our taxes and our Wisconsin citizens will be happy as pigs in mud....not knowing any better."

That new electricity "fee," the new phone "fees," (not to mention the other "fees" ALREADY buried in the utility bills, and the passed-on costs of Doylent Green-burdens on utilities, industry, trucking, etc., etc.), one of the largest gasoline taxes in the USA....

You didn't notice those things because You Don't Know Any Better, unlike McIlheran's LeftOWacky interlocutor, who is Really Smart!

Last business to leave, please turn out the lights.....

ObamaCare Drops Like a Rock: Polls

Aw, gee.

Think Kagen, Obey, Kind, and Tammy are nervous?

Forget the number who say “vote against.” Compare the number who say “vote for” to those with no opinion. From +15 to -4 in … one month...

The independents are agin' it, 2 to 1.

HT: HotAir

Screw Scorecards

Erickson's right.

Let me be clear to the conservative movement and the organizations participating in the health care debate: the fight over health care is about freedom, not your ridiculous little scorecards.
The Democrat strategy is going to be very simple.

If the GOP and its outside interest groups raise an issue, the Democrats with a token Republican will hammer out a Grand Compromise (TM) to appear accommodationist and bipartisan.

Actual reform lies in the Ryan--or other Pubbie--plans.

Statism and tyranny is the alternative. And the TEA Parties will heat up, again, but louder.

"Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall........"

Obama is the fairest of them all, by his telling of history.

...Omitted from the remarks, among other things, is any mention of the Soviet Union or Communism, Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher or Pope John Paul. Obama neither decries the villains nor salutes the heroes of the story. Rather, Obama celebrates himself. He is an agent of destiny. He is the fulfillment of history.

Damn good thing Obama's around to tell us that, too!

HT: PowerLine

Cops and Firefighters: Live Long and Prosper!

Well, that's a relief.

Here we've been told that the police and firefighters were all dying young due to stress.

Wrong.

HT: P-Mac