Monday, October 31, 2011

Another Bishop Who Gets It, Liturgically

It's all over the 'net; the original with Bp. Slattery of Tulsa is here.

Just a taste:

You’ve made public statements about problems with the liturgy. What changes would you like to see?

I would like to see the liturgy become what Vatican II intended it to be.

So would a LOT of us.

All the rest supports that response--and is very nicely done.

"Nanny" Ain't What You Think

Robert Royal (last half of the essay):

...The first sign was the legalization of abortion. Prior to the 1960s cultural revolution, abortion was widely stigmatized in the West because of our recognition of the sanctity of all human life. The state’s first duty is to protect everyone from internal and external threats. That’s why we authorize deadly force to defend the innocent via the armed forces and the police power. Once the state declared some persons outside that protection – for reasons of convenience – a new article was added to the modern state creed. Euthanasia and physician assisted suicide are next.

But it hasn’t stopped there. The institutions that most directly nourish life – family, marriage, religion – and that, at least in America, still have some capacity to resist state dogmas, have come under heavy assault. Family and marriage were blithely redefined with no recognition of their roots in nature and reason.

We talk fervently about human activities that threaten “fragile ecosystems” and say we want to respect nature. But when it comes to human nature, we think we can remake marriage and family, experiment on human embryos (which is to say experiment on our own offspring), and deny or falsify our religious history, all in the name of humanity, tolerance, and “respect for science” – without consequences.

A single step of this sort might be taken as a mere error to be corrected. But we’re now seeing a coherent body of dogma emerge, a true creed, and with state power to enforce those beliefs. We’ve gotten used to authorities prosecuting “hate crimes” and “hate speech.” Now, even the U.S. military will be re-educating soldiers about homosexuality.

The churches and secular forces that object to this massive reorientation of our public life – in some cases turning what were recently crimes into aggressive new rights claims – are under threat and are being portrayed as sectarians for defending what was once mere common sense. They are likely to be squeezed more and more from the public square.

A Nanny State? Nannies were never so intrusive – or ruthless.

The current picture of 'ruthless' would be a likeness of Ms. Sibelius, although it is not fair to assign all this to her.  The Statists are Republicans, too; the Ruling Class is bi-partisan and quite genteel, you know.

Obama Yawns, People Die

Teh Won isn't even bothering to lie about it.

Christians in Egypt are currently experiencing their worst time in recent centuries. This statement was made by the Coptic Orthodox Bishop Stephanos of Beba and Elfashn to the international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). Christians are being violently killed under the eyes of the international media. Also, for the first time in many years, churches are being systematically burned and destroyed. The police are taking no action and nobody is punished for it.  --CMR quoting ACN

In response,

....it seemed like a pretty big deal when Maronite Patriarch of Lebanon was scheduled to meet President Obama.  Perhaps the President might finally acknowledge Christian persecution?

At the urging of President Obama’s Muslim envoy Dalia Mogahed, the meeting has been cancelled because the Muslim Brotherhood wouldn’t like it.

Can't be bothered.  Have campaigning fundraising to do.

Another "Theologian" Bites the Dust

I guess I won't have to read the book!

The nine members of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Doctrine have reaffirmed their concerns that a 2007 book by Fordham University theologian Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson is "seriously inadequate as a presentation of the Catholic understanding of God."

Good.  More time for Guns & Ammo.

The GIRL Scouts?

Egads.

Is camping a little different these days?

Speak Now Girl Scouts (a group started by 2 ex-girl scouts to expose those links) has issued a report on the featured speakers at this year's convention. & it is clear that the organization has fully bought into the Planned Parenthood pro-pomiscuity, pro-abortion agenda. In addition, 2 of the speakers have publicly attacked the Catholic Church's stand on abortion.

Hmmm.  Pack rubbers with the tent?

HT:  Al

So. It's Warmer! "Why" Remains the Question

For those who thought that the globe was NOT warming, ......well........it appears that it IS.

A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.

The study of the world’s surface temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming disbelievers. He pursued long-held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action because of “Climategate,” a British scandal involving hacked emails of scientists.

Yet he found that the land is 1.6 degrees warmer than in the 1950s.

The larger question--and the far more important one--is "Why?"  Sun?  Oceans?  Cow Farts?

Another:  "So What"?  Warming, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, within some limits.

Those questions have yet to be settled.

MORE:

In fact, Prof Curry [Ga. Tech] said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties – a fact confirmed by a new analysis that The Mail on Sunday has obtained.  --HotAir quoting Daily Mail

Also--from the above essay--remember that correlation and causation are two different things.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Cain Contradicts "Adviser" On Abortion Question

OK, then.

Yesterday, CNN quoted a Cain 'adviser' on the abortion issue, saying that Cain follows the GHWBush model--in effect, kill babies for the sins of their fathers (rape and incest).  He also uses the 'life of the mother' exception, which is most often morally acceptable under the principle of double-effect.  (However, there are VERY few cases where this is necessary.)

Well, that was yesterday.

Today:

Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain stiffened his opposition to abortion Sunday, doubling down on past comments that Planned Parenthood is perpetrating genocide against the black community and insisting that he opposes abortion even in cases of rape, incest and life of the mother.

“I am pro-life from conception, period,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”  --Zippers quoting Politico

One has to give more weight to Cain's own statement than that of his 'adviser.'   But it would be a helluvalot easier if they were on the same damn page from one day to the next.

Unless Cain is deliberately following the Romney School of electoral politics, of course.

Woopsie! Walker Pay-Claim False

Gee.

The Cognitive Dissidence blog said this:

"It is noted that Walker is giving himself a $7,500 raise. Not only is he being overly generous to himself, but he is also lavishing the love on some of his top henchmen like Becky Kleefisch, J.B. Van Hollen and Mike Huebsch."

Another blog, Uppity Wisconsin, made a similar claim, saying Walker "clearly thinks the hard-working, ultra-efficient, super-effective guy who's Wisconsin governor (that would be him, as defined by him) deserves a significant pay raise -- a 5.4 percent raise."


Politifact declared those statements to be false.


Most of us know that in Wisconsin, constitutional officer salaries are NEVER changed during a term in office; thus, as P-fact points out, the Governor's salary (and some others) were in effect on the day he and the rest were sworn in.

Meanwhile, the Real Revolution Is in .......California (??)

Well, well.

The nearly five-hour drive from the Sacramento area to Yreka, in Siskiyou County by the Oregon border, was a reminder not just of the immense size and beauty of California, but of the vast regional and cultural differences one finds within our 37-million-population state. Sacramento is Government Central, a land of overly pensioned bureaucrats and restaurant discounts for state workers. But way up in the North State, one finds a small but hard-edged rural populace that views state and federal officials as the main obstacles to their quality of life.

...These rural folks, living in the shadow of the majestic Mount Shasta, believe that they are being driven away so that their communities can essentially go back to the wild, to conform to a modern environmentalist ethos that puts wildlands above humanity. As the locals told it during the Defend Rural America conference Oct. 22 at the Siskiyou Golden Fairgrounds, environmental officials are treading on their liberties, traipsing unannounced on their properties, confronting ranchers with guns drawn to enforce arcane regulatory rules and destroying their livelihoods in the process.

Green Goddess worshipers with snail-darter/spotted owl side dishes.  The usual Ruling Class scum.

Now for the part that's interesting:

The evening's main event: a panel featuring eight county sheriffs (seven from California, one from Oregon) who billed themselves as "Constitution sheriffs." They vowed to stand up for the residents of their communities against what they say is an unconstitutional onslaught from regulators in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. In particular, they took issue with the federal government's misnamed Travel Management Plan, which actually is designed to shut down public travel in the forests.


Plumas County Sheriff Greg Hagwood related the stir he caused when he said he "will not criminalize citizens for just accessing public lands." Siskiyou County Sheriff Jon Lopey reminded the crowd that county sheriffs are sworn to uphold the Constitution "against all enemies, foreign and domestic." These are fighting words.

Sheriff Dean Wilson of Del Norte County said he was "ignorant and naïve about the terrible condition our state was in." He came to believe that people were being assaulted by their own government. "I spent a good part of my life enforcing the penal code but not understanding my oath." Wilson and other sheriffs said it is their role to defend the liberties of the people against any encroachments – even if those encroachments come from other branches of government.

Gee.  A rich, greedy, haughty, overbearing demi-regent living several thousand miles to the East decrees that the serfs will either pay up or move out, and there's a 'rebellion'?

Sounds vaguely familiar.

Added, from Ticker:

A recent Rasmussen poll disclosed that only 21% of the voters in this country believe that the government enjoys the consent of the governed.  Put another way, only 21% of the voters in this nation consent to what Washington is doing

More ominously, 61% say the government does NOT have consent.  The remainder (18%) are not sure.
May I remind you that in 1776 less than that 21% of the population (19%, actually) were loyal to Britain?

HT:  Cold Fury

Driving By Occupy

Althouse drives by the new occupy-Madistan site.

Went past it early this AM.  There's not much 'there' there any more.  Too cold for self-love?

WI Unemployment Gets Worse

Umnnhhhh......

A well-informed pal in Madison tells me that in the last two weeks, WI unemployment jumped up again.

No real surprise; but it's not encouraging.

Bob Schieffer, Your New Nanny

Always nice to know that some twit will be watching out for you, eh?

Clinton, the Parse-able

Billyboy Clinton observed that "No country on earth believes that Government is the problem."

Which brings us to the meaning of "is."

See, whenever Billyboy's on the campaign trail (and he is, just ask Hillary), he's very careful to make statements which are completely non-sensical but sound jus' wunnerful.

So with the above.  There were a lot of people in Egypt, Libya, and for that matter, the Colonies who believed that "Gummint IS the problem."

But does a "country" believe that? 

Not if you ask its Ruling Class.

Obama Lied, People Died

Gee.  Besides knifing the Constitution with his Adventure in Libya, Obozo also caused some 'collateral deaths.'


EVIDENCE IS now in that President Barack Obama grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya. The president claimed that intervention was necessary to prevent a "bloodbath'' in Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city and last rebel stronghold.
But Human Rights Watch has released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.
--AmSpec quoting A. Kuperman

No, Obozo's not the first President to lie like Hell about mythological 'enemies of humanity.'  It would be very nice, however, if he were the last.

So President Obama's most successful foreign policy has been an illegal war started on a lie which may end up creating an unstable Islamist-oriented state with jihadists in positions of power.  Along the way, noted Kuperman, U.S. intervention "prolonged Libya's civil war and the resultant suffering of innocents."  Truly an extraordinary achievement!

And the asshole promised "Change."

Translating Lefty-Isms

AOSHQ found this, and it's pretty good.  It's a "Leftism-to-English" translation aid.

Compassion: Feeling good about yourself for wanting to give away money you didn’t earn to people you hope will vote for your side.

Guns: Vicious weapons that force people to kill each other.

Jesus: Someone who shouldn’t ever be brought up in schools, other government buildings, or politics in general unless you’re claiming he was really a liberal who’d be in favor of gay marriage and abortion.

Tolerance: Something that justifies going on hate-filled rants against people who don’t share your view of the world.

Unfair attack: They quoted me.

More at the link.  Helpful, eh?

Saturday, October 29, 2011

The WaPo Hit-Job on the New Translation

Saw this earlier, but didn't register with WaPo.  Fortunately, Fr. Z did.

Very subtle, sly, use of the term 'traditionalist'--a pejorative.  Also: the 'whiplash' header is pure speculation, and another negative.  And, of course, the meme is "Vatican II effected all the liturgical changes in the '60's."  That's wrong.  The changes were made, wholly and entirely, by a small bunch of people with an agenda, NOT the bishops of Vatican II.

Oh, well.

Hillary's Mid-Game Gambit

Owens sees that the chess game of '(D) primary-'08' continues.

By denying that State played any role at all in Operation Fast and Furious, Hillary Clinton has thrown Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano under the bus at highway speeds.

“How?” you may be asking. Simple.

According to the Arms Export Control Act, only the State Department can authorize the export of weapons. Every weapon that the multi-agency strike force made up mostly of Department of Justice and Homeland Security personnel sent over the Mexican border should equal a felony, for at least 2,020 felonies in Operation Fast and Furious alone.

Eric Holder’s December 8 agreement to appear in front of Congress under oath just got a lot more interesting

D'ya think?

I've been waiting for HRC to make a move on Obozo, the SCOAMF.  If she takes down Holder and Napolitano, it will be the equivalent of a neutron bomb:  the buildings remain, but all the people are gone.

Are the Anarchists Running #Occupy?

Verum Serum thinks so.

And for Perfesser Esenberg:  this Graeber fellow used to teach at Yale.

Wis Dems: "To Hell With One Man, One Vote!!"

That's not exactly the way Perfessor Esenberg phrased it, but that's exactly what's going on with the GAB decision.

Shouldn't be a surprise.  (D) folk haven't really liked all them thar' votin' rights things since the Civil War.  Uppity voters, and all that.  Same reason the (D)'s prefer "gun control," by the way.  Too many of them thar' uppity voters with guns, and pretty soon the KKK might just disappear in a cloud of.........gunsmoke.

PPP "Recall" Poll, By the Numbers

Steve, the Statistical Egg, takes down the PPP 'recall' poll.

...I do have to discuss the partisan split in the poll, specifically the 37% Democrat/32% independent/31% Republican split. It is the biggest D-to-R split over the series of polls dealing with a possible Walker recall, with Democrats holding a 37%-34% advantage in the mid-August poll taken immediately after the Democrats failed to seize control of the state Senate, a 37%-32% advantage in May, and a 33%-32% advantage in February. Most other pollsters not only have a far closer D-to-R split (with some recent polls having a slight R advantage), but as a nod to Wisconsin’s lack of party registration, they have the independent portion a bit higher than either party. Given the trend of the recalls against the Republican state Senators ultimately falling short, a more-reasonable split would be 36% I/32% D/32% R....

And that's just for starters.  More at the link.  As you can imagine, the PPP poll may have overstated the 'recall' movement's strength.

The Backstory on Sibelius' Bloody Kansas

Malkin sums up the case.

...Former GOP state Attorney General Phill Kline’s investigation turned up massive discrepancies in reported child rape statistics compared to Planned Parenthood and the late late-term abortionist George Tiller’s bogus claims. Planned Parenthood of Overland Park and Tiller together performed abortions on 166 girls aged 14 and under and only reported one each to authorities. So, 164 cases of underage rape or statutory rape went unreported and were not investigated by authorities....

...A Kansas district judge found probable cause of criminality in the abortion providers’ records; another district judge found probable cause to believe Planned Parenthood committed 107 criminal acts. Sebelius’ response? A bloody ideological soul mate of Tiller’s, she launched a vengeful witch-hunt against Kline.

But the Statist dictator wasn't finished yet.

...Under Sebelius’ watch as governor, an inspector general also reported that her appointed health policy board had “applied pressure to alter an audit report, restricted access to legal advice and threatened to fire her for meeting independently with legislators,” according to the Topeka Capital-Journal.

This Sibelius creature is--in the end--just another Obama camp-follower.  But she has power and is willing to use it, ruthlessly, to further baby-killing and other atrocities.

And Kline?

Kline was cleared of all ethics violations. In fact, for 20 full months, the state’s disciplinary board for lawyers suppressed an internal investigative report concluding there was zero probable cause to justify the ethics complaints.

Until recently, when some other somebody "indicted" the ham sandwich Kline for some BS or other.  No surprise, from bloody Kansas.

Scott Olsen--Hero?

As Paul Harvey used to say......here's the REST of the story.

Scott Olsen is an Onalaska (WI) native who got a bit of attention because he was injured in an #Occupy Oakland (CA) demonstration.  Seriously injured.

The Oakland cop-shop is under pressure--deservedly--to determine how this happened.  Their take: the review of the video makes it entirely possible that Olsen was injured by something thrown AT the cops FROM the crowd of demonstrators.  It's not a settled issue.

But that's not all.  The ex-Marine hates the Corps--and the Jooooooos, too.

Too bad.

"Occupy Madison" Loses License Over Licentiousness

Oh, well.

Occupy Madison has temporarily been denied an extension in their protesting permit because members of the movement violated "public health and safety conditions." The group also did not properly fill out the form.

City officials cited several specific reasons for their decision. The most notable was repeated complains from a nearby hotel, which stated that protesters were "publicly masturbating" in full view of passersby.

Picture at the link (here).  Doesn't point out the specific violators, but it's not hard to guess.

What's surprising is that Madison is offended by that behavior.

"We ARE the Elites" --NYU Prof

Well, yes, we heard.  You repeat it tirelessly.

Here the Elite Prof lectures on how the NYT manages news--or manages not-news, as Belling and Sykes would say.  (At the link below)

HT: AOSHQ

Cain Collapsing

No wonder Mark Block put out his own ad on Cain's dime.

When pressed by CNN on his position, however, a campaign adviser said Cain follows the same policy used by the George W. Bush administration, which said abortions should be allowed in the instances of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at stake.  ---AOS quoting CNN

Uh huh.  Kill the child of a criminal (rape and incest) for the father's act.  Makes all the sense in the world--if you're a babykiller.

"Life of the mother" exception is, arguably, OK; this falls under double-effect.  But that's only a very tiny percentage, given the med-tech available.

Anyhoo, Cain is rapidly working his way to defeat.  Sorry, Stacy. Wrong horse.

Having said that, I still maintain that the Mark Block ad was very smart, indeed.  And the numbers tell the tale:  fundraising leaped after release of the ad.

Where Fed Money Goes in Wisconsin

You've always wanted to spend several hours tracking Fed money spent in Wisconsin, right?

Here's the page.

Since it's ARRA, you'll see a lot of school districts and munis.  The pages also include typical Corps of Engineers contracts.

But that's not really the point.

It should be very clear, after you get "$6 BILLION" through your head, that there are a lot of ways in which the Feds "help" us. 

So long as we do exactly what the Feds tell us to do.

Is the trade worth it?

The Blackrobes v. "Burdensome" Prayer

Going to SCOTUS is a case from North Carolina.

US District judge's opinion?

"Take-all-comers policies that do not discourage sectarian prayer will inevitably favor the majoritarian faith in the community at the expense of religious minorities living therein. This effect creates real burdens on citizens – particularly those who attend meetings only sporadically – for they will have to listen to someone professing religious beliefs that they do not themselves hold."

The judge is nuts.  Frankly, the real burden in any civic meeting is listening to the various aldermen/school board members/county supervisors.  

As to being "burdened" by listening to a prayer?  

Puh-leez.  Get a life.

Who Creates All the Big Bad (National) Debt?

The answer:  Congress AND Presidents who spend more than the US takes in.

That's who.

We could mention Medicare, the Dept of Education, Medicaid, EPA, Housing/Urban Development, TARP, Cash-for-Clunkers, wars everywhere.......makes no difference. 

Here's a chart which shows Nat'l Debt/GDP.  There's a spike which began with TARP, but which also happens to continue upward.

So yah.  It's the Ruling Class bozos--all of 'em--who are happily spending money.

Friday, October 28, 2011

John "The Clown" Banzhaf

This is the kinda guy who makes lawyers look .......well.......like......ahhhh.........

A DC-area legal activist has filed a federal human rights complaint against the Catholic University of America (CUA) for acting “probably with malice” against Muslim students for having Catholic imagery in all of its rooms that would hinder Muslim prayer

...John Banzhaf, a George Washington University Law School professor who has a history of filing suits to promote agendas on such topics as childhood obesity and tobacco, filed the complaint with the Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights...

Perhaps he chose that venue because he thinks that even a Federal judge would simply tell him what I would:

"F*&^ You, Bozo!"

Regulation Cost? Just a Piffle!

(And if you believe THAT headline, we know how you'll vote next November.)

The number of man-hours it took to build every one of the 146 million iPhones in the world is dwarfed by the number of man-hours it takes American businesses to comply with the regulations created by this financial regulatory act, a video introduced by the GOP Committee on Financial Services shows.

While it took 5.5 million man-hours to build every iPhone out there, it takes 10.2 million man-hours annually to comply with Dodd-Frank regulations – every year.

The Wikipedia 'summary' of the damn bill takes 46 pages.

That's just Dodd-Frank.  Let's not forget Sarbanes-Oxley.  Or EPA.  Or SEC.  Or IRS, to name a few other burdens. 

And then there are the State and local regs.

No burden at all.  What--WE worry?

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Umpty-Billion People in 2121? Not Likely

That's the UN population-graphic they didn't send to the press.  It's the "low variant" estimate.

Steve Mosher, who actually studies demographics, essayed on the latest UN bullshit:

...the people counters at the UN Population Division assume that fertility rates in dying countries will somehow surge to 2.1 children per woman.

Now why would aging and dying populations (e.g., the Russians, the Italians, the Japanese, etc.) suddenly start having exactly the number of children necessary to replace themselves. The UN Population Division does not say.

And that's for the "medium variant" graph (available at the link.)

The UN and the BabyKillers are always looking for funding.  Don't forget that.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Wisconsin Owns Guns!

Interesting chart here.

Overall US gun ownership is ~31% of households.

Wisconsin's at 44%.

Little sisters?  DC, Illinois, and Hawaii. (Is it just co-incidence that Obozo has occupied each of those?)

HT:  Arms

Paula Deen Tells All About Mooch

The Mooch will not be pleased.

“She probably ate more than any other guest I ever had on the show! She kept eating even during commercials. Know what (the Obamas’) favorite foods are? Hot wings. Y’know — those kinds of foods that aren’t necessarily top-of-the-list healthy foods.”  --Paula Deen

No wonder the Mooch spent $10 million in taxpayer money for foreign vacations.  No 'member of the press' talks about her selections when she's out of the country.

Judiciary "Rule of Law" Deteriorates, Again

This has been on the radar for several months.

Charging that its activities contributed to his defeat and thus to his "loss of livelihood," Driehaus is suing the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that supports pro-life candidates for Congress and which has been one of the leading and most effective organizations involved in the fight to cut off federal funding to Planned Parenthood.

What is equally curious, however, is why Judge Black has allowed the case to move forward and why he did not recuse himself from it  --AOS quoting USNWR

The "judge" here is an Obozo appointee, a former member of Planned Parenthood Babykillers' Board, and otherwise totally devoted to the First Amendment and stuff like that, yah, hey.

Obamavilles Removed by Cops

Sure, they're just like TEA Parties.  No question about it.

Police said they fired the tear gas on protesters in Oakland, California, after the crowd threw paint and other objects at officers. The crowd of about 500 people defied calls to leave an area of downtown Oakland on Tuesday, according to police.

Also Atlanta ...

HT AOS

Solyndra, Now First Solar?

The CEO of First Solar abruptly quit.

First Solar happens to use the Solyndra technology (crystalline silicon.)  While they're cheap, they are not as efficient as competitive panels--which are ALSO cheap.

And First Solar got $3+ Bn of loan guarantees from the Obozo Administration.

Green Goddess Strikes Again

You expect this from the Obozo-ite/Green Goddess worshippers.

A vote last week by federal energy regulators clears a path for utility customers throughout the Midwest to pick up the $5 billion cost for 17 major power line projects across the region.

This has to do with moving wind-power from the Dakotas to New York State. 

The Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group is raising concerns, saying the plan could result in too many power lines being built. It could also force Wisconsin customers to pay for wind projects that aren't needed to satisfy the state's renewable energy standard, the group says.

Precisely.

The JS story says that 'benefits will outweigh costs.'  No word on how much Green Goddess foofoodust is considered to be "benefits."  Trust me, those are numbers they don't want to put out; like EPA's 'it'll save ALL the chilllllllllllllrunnnnnnn' hypotheticals, there's likely less Science than Hope.

Cost?

Wisconsin ratepayers won't be paying as much for three new high-voltage power lines that American Transmission Co. has on the drawing board. But they will be asked to pay for 14 other big power lines proposed from North Dakota to Indiana.

You'd expect at least a kiss from the wind-baggers in North Dakota, no?

Perry Slams Press-Ninnies

Press-Ninnies are the ones who ask ninny questions.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, seeking to jump-start his GOP presidential campaign with a 20 percent flat tax, said “I don’t care” if his plan gives millions to wealthy Americans because he says it will accelerate economic growth.

That response is the economics version of the Mark Block cigarette.

So happens that Perry's plan also reduces taxes on everyone else, too--but the Ninnies don't care about that, do they?

Mark Block, Video Star

Lots (and lots, and lots, and lots) of commentary about the Mark Block ad.

It's actually marketing/advertising genius--and that's all in the cigarette.

That single, short, act says "up yours" to ALL the ninny-nanny-Gummint crap we've seen for the last 40 years, from homosex-ed for 1st graders through dust-regulation from EPA.  It's "Buy More Ammo" but FAR more subtle. 

The close-line "...we can take this country back" is the tell.

Nicely done.

Henry Hyde: Prophet

When GWB announced that the US would 'implant democracy' in the Middle East (and Afghanistan), Henry Hyde called him out.

No one noticed at the time.  Too bad.  Hyde was right.

"Viewed in its more compete historical context," Hyde said, "implanting democracy in large areas would require that we possess an unbounded power and undertake an open-ended commitment of time and resources, which we cannot and will not do."

..."America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," Bush said. "From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights and dignity and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of heaven and earth."

This principle - articulated in our Declaration of Independence and based on an understanding of God and man that traces back to both classical philosophy and the Bible - is undoubtedly true. But the dominant cultural forces in the very lands Bush tried to fashion into democracies deny it.

Four years after Hyde rebutted the Golden Theory, the last Christian church was razed in Condoleezza Rice's Afghan democracy.

Then there's the halving of the Christian population in Iraq, the Egypt problem, and what looks like a coming sectarian war in Syria and Lebanon. 

In short, Bush was a dreamer.  Nice guy, good neighbor, stand-up fella.

But absolutely wrong on this issue.

"Sheriff Joe" Cries to Mommy

You all recall that "Sheriff Joe", the brains of the Obozo Administration, was nonplussed when an actual reporter questioned Joe's use of "rape and murder rising" because Republicans wouldn't push more money out the door.

Well.

Now it seems that BabyJoeBiden wants an investigation of the event, too.

What a loser.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Just Kill Off TSA. It Can't Be "Fixed"

Just kill it off.

The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which oversees the TSA, has asserted that the release of a classified report on TSA security failures will renew calls for the replacement of the agency with private airport security personnel.

“The failure rate (for body scanning equipment) is classified but it would absolutely knock your socks off,” Florida Republican, Rep. John L. Mica told reporters during a briefing Monday.

Mica also asserted that recorded instances of pat downs failing to detect contraband are “off the charts.” This information is also currently still classified, but is due to be released within weeks as part of an upcoming committee report on the TSA’s first decade.

Now you know why TSA will NOT release its records of the tests for the last several years.

What a friggin' total waste of money.

The Democracy of the Dead

So GKChesterton called "tradition."  Here's a reminder:

I heard Mass this morning in the Dominican rite at Leicester: same feast – SS Crispian and Crispianus – (they still keep it), same older Roman rite, same propers as in 1415, as the king and his soldiers waiting for battle would have heard it 594 years ago, with tiny exceptions...

Quoted from a reader at FrZ's place.  What else about St. Crispian's Day?

“He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’ ”
Henry V, Act 4

Yup.  Agincourt.

On Natural Law

Brief excerpt from Arkes' piece on the symposium held this last weekend.

What has been strangely lost among certain Catholic jurists and lawyers is that the natural law finds its ground in “the laws of reason,” not in appeals to faith or “belief” or woolly sentiment. Anyone tutored in those laws of reason may be able to explain then that, from a person’s height or weight or color, or from his disabilities, such as deafness, we cannot draw any moral inferences as to whether we are dealing with a good or a bad man, who should be welcomed or shunned. One may be able then to explain why it could never be right to withdraw medical care from a patient afflicted with deafness or Down’s syndrome on the grounds that he has a diminished life “not worth living.” Judges often find themselves leaning on the canons of reason in this way, but with little awareness that they are “doing” natural law.

At the time of the American Founding, Alexander Hamilton thought it critical to reject the argument of Thomas Hobbes that all morality is conventional; that until laws are made, there can be no clear sense of right and wrong. What Hobbes rejected, said Hamilton, was the existence of that “superintending principle,” that God who is the source of “an eternal and immutable law, which is. . .obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever.” Even when governments break down, there is no “right” to rape or murder or commit any other wrongs, as though there was no right and wrong without the law.

Yup.

Not Even Nixon Would Do This

Dick Nixon was a bad actor.  Not in ALL ways, but in a lot that counted.

But even he didn't make this sort of proposal.

A proposed revision to Freedom of Information Act rules would allow federal agencies to lie to citizens and reporters seeking certain records, telling them the records don’t exist.

The Justice Department has proposed the change as part of a large revision of FOIA rules for federal agencies. Specifically, the rule would direct government agencies who are denying a request under an established FOIA exemption to “respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist,” rather than citing the relevant exemption.

The appropriate response?

Buy.  More.  Ammo.

HT:  FrPhil

Romney: The Establishment All the Way

Egads.

Campaigning in Ohio today, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney stopped by a Republican Party phone-bank making calls in support of Gov. John Kasich's government union reform referendum, but refused to endorse the actual referendum.

Romney.  He's the twenty-five percent.

Walker: No Pay Raises for State Employees

Well, it can't be said that Walker is faint of heart.

Wisconsin state workers will get no salary increases during the next two years under the first pay plan put forward by Gov. Scott Walker's administration after passage of a law no longer requiring negotiations with unions over the deal.

One suspects that the principal reason for this is that the Administration is not optimistic about the State's revenues over the biennium.  Another component may be the realization that some State employees--unhappy about this--will leave for other opportunities, which will reduce the State's headcount and/or its gross payroll numbers.

Here's a part that I do NOT like:

...In addition to no pay increases over the next two years, the plan released Tuesday also removes the ability of separate state agencies to give merit raises and places it instead with the Office of State Employment Relations.

That means that exceptionally-good employees of (say) DMV cannot be rewarded by their superiors unless Employee Relations stamps "approved" on the request.  Again, the Principle of Subsidiarity is violated.  I understand that Walker wants to contain payroll expense; but perhaps a better methodology would be to allow each Department a global-comp figure and let the Departments figure out who gets rewarded.

HT: Patrick

Perry Counter-Punches the 9-9-9

Well, we knew he'd have something to say.

...The plan starts with giving Americans a choice between a new, flat tax rate of 20% or their current income tax rate. The new flat tax preserves mortgage interest, charitable and state and local tax exemptions for families earning less than $500,000 annually, and it increases the standard deduction to $12,500 for individuals and dependents.

...we will lower the corporate tax rate to 20%—dropping it from the second highest in the developed world to a rate on par with our global competitors.

He also has an energy plan which amounts to "drill, baby, drill"--but also for coal, and not just drill, but frac.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Will MPS Strangle on Its Budget "Cuts"?

The nice accountant-lady over here suggests that MPS is a dinosaur so bloated than when it finally explodes, Detroit, Nashville, and Fargo will be covered with slime.

(Well, maybe those aren't her words, exactly.)

But don't take too seriously the WSJ chart she reprints.

What the WSJ (and the accountant-lady) don't tell you is that only the last two years listed on the chart are Obozo budgets.  Yes, they're horrible--but GWB was President when the FY09 budget was assembled, Congress re-wrote it (per combox entry from Steve.)  

It's Dark. Is Dawn Near?

Had a convo with a consultant friend this morning about whether there would be some deterioration, or deflation,  in salary incomes over the next few years.  I voted (halfheartedly) yes, he voted (halfheartedly) no.  Reason for the not-quite-convinced on both sides?  Lotta variables.  Product cycle, cost inputs in reg/tax/energy (and materials), but mostly product cycle--or 'dominance' if you like--which allows margin maintenance or enhancement.  A decent, not overwhelming, case can be made for either position.

Anyhoo, the case for non-deterioration is made by Ambrose-Pritchard.  We've mentioned a few times that the US is repossessing manufacturing from PRChina for a number of reasons; you'll find a lot of them here.

"Made in America, Again" - a report this month by Boston Consulting Group - said Chinese wage inflation running at 16pc a year for a decade has closed much of the cost gap. China is no longer the "default location" for cheap plants supplying the US.

A "tipping point" is near in computers, electrical equipment, machinery, autos and motor parts, plastics and rubber, fabricated metals, and even furniture.

"A surprising amount of work that rushed to China over the past decade could soon start to come back," said BCG's Harold Sirkin.

The gap in "productivity-adjusted wages" will narrow from 22pc of US levels in 2005 to 43pc (61pc for the US South) by 2015. Add in shipping costs, reliability woes, technology piracy, and the advantage shifts back to the US.  --AOSHQ quoting The Tablet

You could add "J-I-T indigestion" to that 'reliability woes', because if the shipment has a 33% fail-rate, you wait a VERY long time for a replacement shipment.

So.  If you like being a Contrarian, bet on the USA in the 5-10 year period.  Too bad that Obozo will miss it entirely, eh?

"Vatican" Call for "World Bank"? Not Really

Fr Phil has the goods.

Suffice it to say that the headlines aren't exactly accurate.

But the Church does NOT like unfettered utilitarian capitalism.  That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone--nor should it bother any genuine Conservative.

Much more from Fr.Z's place--and the essay closes with a very pertinent observation:

...many of its authors’ ideas reflect an uncritical assimilation of the views of many of the very same individuals and institutions that helped generate the world’s most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression

Indeed.

More BS on BPA

Gee.  By coincidence, more statistical non-sequiturs on BPA, just as the topic arose over the weekend.

A new study in Pediatrics reports a statistical association between bisphenol A (BPA) levels in a group of 244 pregnant women and increased anxiety, hyperactivity and depression in girls (but not in boys) at ages 2 and 3 as measured by parent-reported assessment on two behavioral scoring tests. BPA is used in food and beverage container linings and other consumer and medical/dental products.

Does this actually mean something?

No.

As with any epidemiological study, the results only show a statistical association or correlation — not cause and effect. As noted by the authors, the clinical relevance of the findings is unclear, meaning that there is no claim that the children exhibited abnormal levels of anxiety, depression or hyperactivity behavior.

Matter of fact, boys' behavior was better......so should BPA be prescribed for boys, not girls?

As the authors noted, they made many comparisons and never applied the standard mathematical correction process for multiple comparisons, likely because none of their comparisons would have been significant if they had done so. In short, it is uncertain if any of the claimed statistical associations would have been significant if proper statistical procedures had been applied.

And the hammer goes down here:

[...]  the most relevant human study, that of Teeguarden et al. (Toxicological Sciences, vol. 123, pages 48-57, 2011), which found no free (biologically active) BPA in the blood of 20 volunteers who consumed a diet that contained BPA at a level greater than the 95 percentile level of the US population as measured by the CDC NHANES biomonitoring survey. 

If there is no free-BPA in the blood, then there is no free-BPA to cross the placental barrier and interact with neuro-behavior receptors in the developing human embryo. So BPA cannot be the cause of the changes in behavior — positively or negatively — in 3-year-olds. Based on the results of Teeguarden et al., the statistical associations observed by Braun et al. are not biologically plausible.

The presence of BS does not necessarily indicate the presence of facts.

McCain Endorses Lasee

Yup.  Right here in pixels.

Not a bad call, by the way.

Mortgage Refi's (HAMP) To Get Revised

Obama will announce this in Nevada, we think.

...The plan will streamline the refinance process by eliminating appraisals and extensive underwriting requirements for most borrowers, as long as homeowners are current on their mortgage payments ... Fannie and Freddie have also agreed to waive some fees that made refinancing less attractive for some.

...Loans that exceed the current limit of 125% of the property's value won't be able to participate until early next year. The program's expiration date ... will be extended through 2013. HARP is only open to loans that Fannie and Freddie guaranteed as of June 2009. --CalcRisk quoting WSJ

IOW, if you have a mortgage held by (or guaranteed by) a GSE and you want to re-fi, and the property is not underwater by more than 125% AND you are current, the Gummint will assist.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

The Jindal Machine

Noted at Confidential:

Bobby Jindal was reelected yesterday with 66% of the vote—far more than the absolute majority needed for victory in this multicandidate election. In second place with 18% of the vote was Democrat Tara Hollis; three other Democrats got 10% of the vote. Jindal carried every one of Louisiana’s 64 parishes (the equivalent of counties in other states)...

Wow.

Yes, Esmirelda, Some Bankers ARE Crooks

Specifically, CitiBank.

But then, they weren't indicted; they weren't prosecuted; they aren't jailed.

So........does that mean they are NOT crooks?  Or that it pays to have the right sort of friends?

Crony Capitalist, With Video!

Coyote was nice enough to give us a video of a Crony Capitalist Pig:  Ray Lane.

Not only is he a Crony-Pig; he's evidently a lot less smart than he thinks he is.

If this is what passes for "capitalism," then maybe OWS ain't entirely crazy.

Obama Popularity Going Towards........

That can't be good for Teh Won.

HT:  LegalInsurrection

"Lost Gummint Jobs"--Really?

History counts, folks.

HT:  JustOneMinute

Cain Tries to Repair "Abortion" Damage, Steps Into Another Hole

Herm, old fella....

David Brody: “Are you for some sort of pro-life amendment to the constitution that in essence would trump Roe v. Wade?”

Herman Cain:  “Yes. Yes I feel that strongly about it. If we can get the necessary support and it comes to my desk I’ll sign it. That’s all I can do. I will sign it.”

Ummmnnhhh.....no, you won't.

Islam Plays the Race Card (!?!)

Unbelievable.

Top Justice Department officials convened a meeting Wednesday where invited Islamist advocates lobbied them for cutbacks in anti-terror funding, changes in agents' training manuals, additional curbs on investigators and a legal declaration that U.S. citizens' criticism of Islam constitutes racial discrimination.  --AmSpec quoting Daily Caller

Sadly, what we've seen of Holder's bunch leaves us with doubt that they'll reject 'race' as a farcical demand.

Stupid Crooks # 567,884

This woman is really stupid.

A Washington woman has been arrested for trying to cut her sleeping husband's neck and shoulder with a power saw.

"It was you, it was you," officers heard the man shouting when they arrived at the Everett home Friday night, according to a police affidavit.

"You tried to cut my head off. You're going to jail."

The woman, 43, told cops she was holding the Sawzall power tool because an intruder had escaped out of her daughter's window,

A SAWZALL????  Really??

Kindle and the End of Papermaking

If you've been paying attention, you'll have noticed a few things over the last 20 years.

1)  The number of commercial printers has dropped like a rock.  At one time, Milwaukee and Philadelphia were twin centers-of-the-universe in printing, with behomoths here publishing the phone book, magazines, annual reports, and Golden Books (etc.) for half the country.  Now, what remains are a few 'instant-print' operations which are being shredded by the Kinko's revolution) and Quad--which is also consolidating their print facilities.

2)  The output of those remaining printers has dropped, too.  No longer do publishers order 50,000 of "title X" or "magazine Y" in hopes of selling them, and then eat (or re-cycle) the unsold copies.  Now it's all print-on-demand--meaning that a publisher can literally order 3 copies of "title X" or "magazine Y" and have them shipped to "Location Z" (or your home address, thanks to Amazon) within one day.

3)  Thus, the end of papermaking.  No, it's not really THE end--so long as there are Gummints, paper will be consumed.  Forms, you know.  Your papers, please!  But all those mills up Nort'?  You'll see less of them.  Commodity papers--like for the HP/Epson you have at home--will continue to exist, and be made overseas, where trees, labor, and enviro-regs are cheap, cheap, cheap.  But book-quality, or magazine-quality?  Less and less.

4)  This will be a problem for Gov. Walker.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Sibelius and Nixon

Hmmmm.

The country’s first criminal prosecution of Planned Parenthood was left teetering Friday when it was revealed the state of Kansas destroyed abortion records that prosecutors planned to use as evidence.

That would be in 2005 under the regime of AbortoQueen Sibelius, about 32 years after a some tape recordings were mysteriously wiped clean in another Gummint office several hundred miles ENE of Kansas City.

HT:  Zippers

Your Grandchildren Just Ate the Solyndra $575 Million

Auction of the assets to be held soon.  Auctioneer figures every dime will get sucked  up by Kaiser and his pals, leaving the US taxpayer on the hook for $500++ million.

Of course, that's illegal--but it's what Obozo's DoE decided to do, law or no law.

Pitchforks, rope.....

Sucka!!

It Ain't Your Grampa's AFL-CIO

Somehow, none of this is surprising.  But it is disconcerting.

The AFL-CIO is making headlines by running ads promoting “Occupy Wall Street.” One seriously doubts that members of the working class have much in common with the left-wing professional agitators running these protests and the tent cities they are erecting illegally in private and public parks in New York, Washington, D.C. and other cities. The most interesting part of this story, however, is that one of the AFL-CIO affiliates behind the campaign, the Working America group, is headed by a veteran of the Venceremos Brigades to Cuba, a progressive activist by the name of Karen Nussbaum. Equally significant, her husband works for the public relations firm that represented billionaire hedge fund operator George Soros.

Connections, connections, connections:

The Venceremos Brigades, which are actually still in operation, were the orchestrated “tours” of the communist island, conducted under the authority and supervision of Castro’s intelligence service. They were designed to create a communist cadre on the soil of the United States. The Brigades were organized in 1969 by Bernardine Dohrn

(I highlight that name in red for the obvious reasons....)

Wait, wait!!  The fun's just beginning!!

The violence at Columbia University in 1969 was instigated by Mark Rudd after his trip to Cuba. Rudd was a leader of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and then the Weather Underground. In addition, three members of the “Chicago 7,” the group charged with sparking riots in the city during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, had been to Cuba.

You will recall that post-1968, the Democrat Party effectively 'left' its membership by making a very hard left-turn.  They weren't the only ones who went hard-Left:

Nussbaum talks about how John Sweeney, then chief of the AFL-CIO, and Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer under Sweeney, had worked to “open up” the labor federation to “new constituencies” and had become “more aggressive.” Nussbaum was brought into the AFL-CIO as part of this effort, becoming an assistant to Sweeney and running the Working America affiliate under Sweeney and now Trumka, the current president.

Oh, yes; Nussbaum is married.

Nussbaum’s husband, Ira Arlook, who is also in the photo, works for Fenton Communications, the firm that has represented George Soros, the communist Nicaraguan Sandinistas, and others of that ilk. Arlook, chief of “advocacy campaigns” for the firm, handles the account of the Soros-funded Moveon.org.

If you've paid attention, you'll remember that Fenton Communications is the outfit supplying the Milwaukee JS with content about Bisphenol-A.  The JS has swallowed their crap hook, line, and sinker, despite significant and dispositive evidence that the entire campaign is .........well.......bullshit.

George Meany would be the first to scream "Buy More Ammo!!!" if he knew........

HT:  BearShat via Patrick

Friday, October 21, 2011

A Little More Bad News

Noted at Barry's place.

The gang problem in the United States is growing and there are an estimated 1.4 million members in some 33,000 gangs, the federal government said Friday.

Gangs are collaborating with transnational drug trafficking organizations to make more money and are expanding the range of their illicit activities, engaging in mortgage fraud and counterfeiting as well as trafficking in guns and drugs, according to the national gang threat assessment for 2011.

When one hears of narco-traffickers becoming a problem in Watertown, WI (!!!!??!) and serious gang-banging problems in Middleton/SW Madison, you know this ain't just FBI looking for more budget.

And that 'mortgage-fraud' thing sounds kinda familiar to Milwaukeeans.

The "Occupy" Bunch Goes Nutso

Not too surprising.

In NYC, the noise, smell, and defecations-on-people's-front-stoop are irritating nearby residents.

In Oakland, there's some sort of fetishist, just like in Philly. 

In Portland, there's a gun-brandisher who was irritated by the "N-word"--and knife-brandishers responded.

Seems that the peace-love-dopesmoking crowd is ......not all that.

More on Bp. Finn's Indictment

Catholic League has some clarifying information.

This account is quite different from what is being bandied about in the media. To take one example, there is an editorial in today’s New York Times saying that Bishop Finn “knew of the photos last December but did not turn them over to the police until May.” This makes it sound as if Finn knew about hundreds of photos of child pornography and he did nothing about it. In fact, there was one photo, that was not sexual in nature, that was found. Moreover, a police officer and an attorney were notified immediately. Later, after the priest proved to be recalcitrant, the police were contacted.

I smell a ham sandwich, and the smell is coming from Kansas City.

It is useful to remember that the State of Kansas is the home of Sibelius. 

HT:  FrZ

What Did TARP Save? (Hint: It Wasn't the Taxpayers)

Ticker tells a story which is not a fable.

Yup.  Growth in credit is part-and-parcel of growth in the economy; but there's been a $3T fall in credit (except Federal bonding.)

YOU figure it out.

Romney the CornHoler

Yup.  He's out there whoring himself up to Iowa farmers.

Got Vaseline?  You'll need it.

Think Fiskers Screw-Job Is Bad? Read THIS!!

That $500Mill++ used to hire European workers (not Janesville auto-folks, nope) is disgusting.  But in ObozoLand, that's the New Normal.

But hey!  It gets worse!!

A Labor Department Inspector General report released this week found that $7,140,782 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds went to four Oregon forestry services firms who hired no U.S. workers.

Blatant age and 'language' discrimination--right there in the DOL's report, too.

Dear Herman: First Thing, Repair the Question!

Cain's having problems.  They may or may not be fatal. 

But they're all a result of Cain's reluctance to "repair the question"--phrased another way, "distinguo", in the language of Aquinas.

DISTINGUISH!  Break down the question into its components.  Respond to each part.  Don't let the MSM force you to answer two questions at once, (and within their framing.)  Dis-assemble it, re-frame it, and answer all the components one by one.

Another way to put it:  F(*& the MSM.  They're doing their damndest to get you out of the race.  We know it, and you ought to know it.  Smile, be polite, and slice them/dice them.

Lochner: What You "Know" Probably Isn't True

The Lochner decision is despised by the Progressives--which is why it's vilified, despite the fact that it's just common sense.

...Nor was Lochner controversial at the time it was decided. “Of the eight law review articles to comment on Lochner shortly after it was released, seven supported it, some vigorously,” Bernstein explains. “Also contrary to historical myth, newspaper editorial commentary on Lochner was generally supportive.”

That general opinion would change later, when progressives and elite lawyers enamored of government power found the notion of “liberty of contract”—the central finding in Lochner—an unwelcome obstacle to their practical goals. To the progressives, “abstract legal freedom” needed to give way to considerations of “social policy,” and limitations on government power in the name of constitutional freedoms were old-fashioned...

(Precisely the sort of language used by Herb Croly, by the way.)

It is ironic that Lochner's logic also supported blacks and women:

...In methodology and approach, Lochner fits comfortably with all sorts of more celebrated cases, from Dean Milk v. Madison in 1951 (involving protectionism) to Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 (the privacy ruling later used against Robert Bork in his ugly confirmation hearing).

Elsewhere, as Bernstein recounts, advocates for African-Americans’ and women’s rights often made use of freedom of contract as a way to strike down laws limiting those groups’ economic freedom. Freedom of contract was a powerful weapon for dissolving the legal rules that, unsurprisingly, tended to work against those excluded from legislative power. Economic freedom, far from being a tool of the big bosses, was an important way for the underdogs to gain the freedom to compete, and to undermine the legal support that was essential to making Jim Crow and related laws work.

So the Progressives preferred the Klan, directly or indirectly.  Fits right in:  they elected them regularly in the South.

"Conservatives" In WI Legislature Pursue "Feel Good" Legislation

We've commented before on the proposal before the Legislature.  They are apparently going to pass a law which would require coaches to pull kids from play if the kid suffers a concussion.

The folly of the proposal is evident in the first few grafs of this story.

On Oct. 10 after junior varsity football practice, Josh Inhof walked over to an adjacent field to greet his father, Steven, who was coaching a youth football team.

Inhof asked his son, as he did nearly every day, how practice went.

"I really got rocked," Inhof said his son told him. Josh, who is 6 feet tall and weighs 200 pounds, meant that he had taken a hard hit during practice at his school, West Bend East High School.

Inhof says now that he should have been more aggressive in talking to his son.

"In hindsight, I really didn't think enough about it. He said his head hurt, and I told him to take it easy and take an aspirin," Inhof said later.

Look, folks:  concussions are VERY serious, especially with young people.  Nobody wants to see it happen; nobody wants to make it worse if it DOES happen.

But note well:  the player here did NOT tell his coach that he had suffered a concussion--the player didn't know it.  Further, even though he told his father that 'his head hurt,' his father told him to 'take an aspirin.'  Was the father an un-caring jerk?  Not likely, folks.

So the Legislature would make this kid's father a lawbreaker?  And what then?  Put him in prison?

The Legislature cannot write a law requiring kids to self-report concussions.  It's folly.

But it's "Feel Good", ain'a?

"Rape & Murder" Tour to Hit Milwaukee

Joe Biden will bring the "rape and murder" tour to Milwaukee next week.

But since Joe has declared himself to be "the Sheriff," there should be no increase in crime at Discovery World.

By the way, a BIPARTISAN group dumped the spending bill yesterday.

Several hundred new funeral homes will be built next week.

$539 Million US Dollars to Support Finland Industry

Very nice, indeed.  All you Janesville folks should be screaming at Obozo & Friends.

With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.

Not in Janesville?  St. Paul? (a FoMoCo plant which will close this year.)  

"We're not in the business of failing; we're in the business of winning. So we make the right decision for the business," Fisker said. "That's why we went to Finland."

Oh, really

And just who are the Friends of Fisker, (aside from Valmet of Finland)?

Among others, Al Gore.

Fisker Automotive, backed by a powerhouse venture capital firm whose partners include former Vice President Al Gore, predicts it will eventually be churning out tens of thousands of electric sports sedans at the shuttered GM factory it bought in Delaware.

We'll see about Delaware.  There are lots of promises out there--at least $529 million's worth.

Wasting the Fuel Tax: DC Mind # 144,654

Lefties love to whine that 'the gas tax doesn't pay for actual road costs.'  Well, it actually does cover road costs; and it could cover more, except for the 'DC Mind.'

Ten percent of Fed highway aid sent to States MUST be spent on beautification or historical projects.

...The McCain amendment also would have prohibited funds to be used on scenic or historic highway programs, tourist centers, landscaping, outdoor advertising or transportation museums.
 
However, a key conservative objected, saying the provision didn’t go far enough, because it still allowed that 10% pot to be spent on off-road projects such as bike and pedestrian trails. (That's why RINO Petrie's district is covered with bike trails.)
 
Sen. James Inhofe (R.-Okla.) said the entire mandate should be eliminated

The Ruling Class decided to keep the 10% requirement.

Nice, eh?

Homeland "Security"? Not Really

Too bad we can't force an early national election like the (D)'s pull in Wisconsin, eh?

Chris Crane, president of a union that represents Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, testified in the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration last week that ICE agents have been told by ICE headquarters not to arrest illegal aliens who do not have a prior criminal conviction even if they are fugitives who have been ordered deported by an immigration judge or are individuals who have illegally re-entered the United States after being deported and thus have perpetrated a felony.

Big Sis then lied like hell denied it.

However, she did look under her chair and desk in an attempt to find the Iranians who had illegally entered the country, were caught--and then released.

She did not find the Iranians under her chair, even after she called out "Olly olly oxen-free!!"

Thursday, October 20, 2011

"Transparently........Opaque"

The Transparent One's Statist Regime announced that the author of the Solyndra "restructuring" legal memo cannot be interviewed under oath by Congressional investigators.

You recall that the "restructuring" in question subordinated the taxpayers' rights to a group of.....uummmmnnnhhhh.....Friends of Obozo to the tune of $75 million or so.  The USTreasury was not pleased with the "restructuring."

I like Karl's suggestion.

Lies, Damned Lies, and EPA Statistics

Once again, EPA is applying a very heavy finger to the scale.

The Fisker Karma electric car, developed mainly with your tax money so that a bunch of rich VC’s wouldn’t have to risk any real money, has rolled out with an nominal EPA MPGe of 52.

Not bad? Unfortunately, it’s a sham. This figure is calculated using the grossly flawed EPA process that substantially underestimates the amount of fossil fuels required to power the electric car...

...one needs to multiply the EPA MPGe by .365 to get a number that truly compares fossil fuel use of an electric car with a traditional gasoline engine car on an apples to apples basis. In the case of the Fisker Karma, we get a true MPGe of 19. This makes it worse than even the city rating of a Ford Explorer SUV.  --Zippers quoting Forbes

And you can buy a Ford SUV for a helluvalot less money, too.

Underworked? You're Not Alone

Quite a number here:

...almost 26 million Americans are either unemployed, marginally attached to the labor force, or involuntarily working part-time—a number experts say is unprecedented.

14 million are unemployed.  9.2 million are "under-employed"--involuntarily part-time.  2.5 million are 'marginally attached,;' meaning they're available for work, want to work--but haven't formally looked for work in the last 4 weeks.

What They Think of You

You thought we were kidding about that "Ruling Class" monicker?  You think Codevilla doesn't know what he's talking about?

Herbert Croly, one of the founding fathers of the progressive movement -- read Liberal movement -- wrote in 1909 in his groundbreaking book The Promise of American Life, "To be sure, any increase in centralized power and responsibility, expedient or inexpedient, is injurious to certain aspects of traditional American democracy. But the fault in that case lies with the democratic tradition; and the erroneous and misleading tradition must yield before the march of constructive national democracy. The national advance will always be impeded by these misleading and erroneous ideas, and, what is more, it always should be impeded by them, because at bottom ideas of this kind are merely an expression of the fact that the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat"

Slugs.

Going to the Range for Target Practice? Watch What You Wear

Oh, wow.

Bristol Tennessee Police Department Officer Chester Emery, 47, suffered multiple injuries from a single round fired from the Ruger MK II .22-caliber semiautomatic handgun that a woman identified as his girlfriend, Kelly Crandell, 46, was shooting.

The round passed through Emery’s wrist and struck him in the chest. He was flown to Johnson City Medical Center for treatment. As of 9:20 p.m., Emery was listed in stable condition.

You read that right.  His girlfriend shot him.

Why?

He said it happened when a piece of hot brass went down the front of Crandell’s shirt as she was shooting down range.

Crandell told investigators she “jerked” when the hot brass went down her shirt, accidentally discharging the pistol.

My chilluns have learned:  ALWAYS wear socks at the range, and NEVER wear low-cut shirts/blouses.

A couple of the kids learned that the hard way.

HT:  Peter

An Excellent Question, Indeed

Trog voices another US oddity.

Hey!! Herm!!! The Holes in Your Feet? They're From Your OWN GUN!

Vox sums it up.

Cain's remark is defensible, of course; the President will not have a say on the issue (aside from some budgetary discretion.)  Really, it's a SCOTUS, then 10th Amendment matter.

But he didn't articulate very well, which is becoming a trademark of his.

The Beginning of the "Bubble Economy": 10/18/87

Barry's place has an entry from Art Cashin which memorializes 10/18/87.

It was a huge crash of the Dow; Greenspan was traveling, and when he got off the plane, an aide told him that 'Dow's down 500.'  Greenspan first mis-understood, thinking that it was "5."

But when he realized what happened, he ran the printing-presses at flank speed--inserting vast sums of cash into 'the system,' which sums sloshed around to being the "dotcom" bubble, and later the "housing" bubble.

The parody-poem is pretty damn good, too!

Codevilla Takes on the War Party

You all recall Angelo Codevilla's outstanding take-down of the Ruling Class.

He has more--this time, with regards its foreign adventurism.

...U.S. policy has made things worse because the liberal internationalists, realists, and neoconservatives who make up America's foreign policy Establishment have all assumed that Americans should undertake the impossible task of changing such basic facts, rather than confining themselves to the difficult but vital work of guarding U.S. interests against them. For the Establishment, 9/11 meant opportunities to press for doing more of what they had always tried to do.

At home, the American people are less free, less prosperous, more bitterly divided, and much less hopeful in 2011 than in 2001 because a decade of the War on Terror brought a government ever bigger and more burdensome, as well as "security" measures that impede the innocent rather than focusing on wrongdoers. Our ruling class justified its ever-larger role in America's domestic life by redefining war as a never-ending struggle against unspecified enemies for abstract objectives, and by asserting expertise far above that of ordinary Americans. After 9/11, far from deliberating on the best course to take, our rulers stayed on autopilot and hit the throttles.

And the "change" from Obama?  Direct orders for assassinations, not just 'spray and pray.'

...This transformation in the structure and mission of our armed forces in the War on Terror was supposed to increase our influence in the world. Instead, our ruling class's penchant for treating its wishes about what foreign realities should be as accurate perceptions of what they are has often made bad situations worse. Immediately after 9/11 the Bush Administration gratuitously assumed that all the world's governments were aghast at what had been done to America, and would cooperate in eradicating terrorism. At least some might have, if we had proved ourselves fearsome abroad and stout at home. Instead, the U.S. government became more pliant than ever in its foreign dealings, while at home it went on a spending binge that indebted it to the rest of the world. Disrespect has been a natural consequence.

Codevilla cites Russia, the ChiComs, and Iran pertaining to the above graf.

About the "Arab Spring," (the monicker Codevilla calls 'silliness':)

Silliness hides what ought to be the basic distinction in international affairs: between regimes antagonistic to American interests and those that respect those interests. It hides the question of what opportunities any situation might offer for advancing those interests. Thus, our ruling class helped overthrow Egypt's regime despite its 30-year alliance with us, but did nothing to overthrow Syria's, whose 40-year record of opposition to America includes using the terrorist group Hezbollah to kill Americans. Nor did our rulers imagine that they could exact prices from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikdoms for U.S. forbearance in the face of their troubles. And when Libya's regime was faced with armed insurrection, our rulers eschewed both a swift coup de grace and dignified quiet. Instead, our ruling class, joined by Europe's, mounted an indecisive military campaign that, whatever else it did, earned contempt for its authors. We can gauge that contempt by noting the new Libyan authorities' refusal to extradite Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the convicted perpetrator of the 1989 Lockerbie bombing.

Then there are the internal consequences:  Big Sister Napolitano.  Codevilla accurately blames Tricky Dick (remember Jerris Leonard??) for the embryo which has now grown to the Jolly Green Giant.

...this official blindness meant that thenceforth the U.S. government would consider any ordinary American to be as likely a perpetrator of terrorism as any actual terrorist or terrorist government. The pretense of value-free, politically neutral security proved to be catnip for politicians eager to evade responsibility. Businesses supported the policy because doing so meant they would be paid for providing the screening equipment to treat millions of Americans as potential hijackers or suicide bombers. For people looking for easy jobs, homeland security was a bonanza. 

Has homeland security prevented something like another 9/11? No. In fact, no one has tried anything of the sort. Had they done so, nothing homeland security has put in place would have stopped them. We do not know of any operation planned and manned by professionals, as 9/11 was, that has been stopped. We do know that American society has countless inherent vulnerabilities to terrorism, which no one has taken even a little trouble to exploit. Nothing could ever stop ten people in ten states from throwing flaming gasoline bottles into ten school buses simultaneously, thus shutting down the U.S. school system. But no one has done it. Homeland security created closely packed lines of people in front of airport security checkpoints—the perfect target for explosive-laden carry-on luggage. But no one has attempted that, either, nor committed any of the other outrages so obviously feasible and requiring so little skill and organization. We don't know why not. In short, homeland security has proven irrelevant to terrorism.

But not to another massive Gummint jobs-program!

And, finally, we have the foundational problem.

The War on Terror has moved American politics and institutions further away from mutual persuasion toward antagonistic assertions of prerogative. Wars for hazy ends prosecuted without clear declaration of purpose did not begin in 2001. But never before were enemies designated by intelligence agencies, which declined to make public the bases for their judgments. Between 2001 and 2007 a bitter debate between the CIA and the Defense Department (backed by Vice President Dick Cheney's office) bubbled to the surface over Iraq's role in 9/11, and terrorism in general. The debate, which really was about whether and on whom we should make war, was settled intramurally by bureaucrats who used sympathetic journalists to discredit their opponents while foreclosing rebuttal. "Security of classified information" in wartime is the official reason why our ruling class thus cut Congress (and the American people) out of decisions on this and other vital matters. By the same logic, the CIA announced in 2010 that the president and his advisers had concluded that one Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen in Yemen, was so involved in terrorism that American forces would hunt him down and kill him. Of what capital crime was he accused? By whom? Who convicted and sentenced him? The experts. On the basis of what evidence? Sorry, can't say. Classified. Wartime necessity, you know

Many 'conservatives' play into the hands of the Ruling Class with their supine agreement with anydamnthingatall the Gummint wants to do--and wants us to pay for, (and send our children, by the way, thankyouverymuch.)

This is not the way to run a representative republic.  It is, however, a good way to fuel a TEA Party-styled rebellion.