Picture, 1000 Words

Today's Obozo's 140th golf-game of his reign, by the way.

HT:  AOSHQ

Compare and Contrast

This should be easy, except for Tom Barrett and his Chief of Cops.

HHS' Husbandry

Oh, they're careful with those tax dollars.

The Homeland Security Department spent $600,000 apiece to build houses in Arizona that would have gone for less than $100,000, according to a report in the Arizona Republic that’s raising questions in Congress.

Six to one.  Pentagon toilet seats, DHS houses, and ObozoCare.  What a Country!!

...Homeland Security officials repeatedly refused to answer the newspaper’s questions about the project, the Republic said....

Well, silly, it's a "security" thing.  Right there in the Department's title, stupid. 

And besides, the housing if Gummint-Approved Triple-A Wowzer!!

“These homes have been constructed in line with federally mandated requirements, designed for long-term use with minimal maintenance in a harsh climate,” Mr. Friel said.

He said the homes were built as Energy Star-rated homes and are 75 percent more efficient than the average homes in the area.

Oh.  OK, then.  No problem.  Sorry we brought it up.


HT:  Protein

HooCouldaNode?

the pResident's very own study of gun problems reveals:

Between the years 2000-2010 firearm-related suicides significantly outnumbered homicides for all age groups, annually accounting for 61 percent of the more than 335,600 people who died from firearms related violence in the United States

....and....

The study said that “interventions,” such as background checks and restrictions on firearms and increased penalties for illegal gun use, showed “mixed” results, while “turn-in” programs “are ineffective” in reducing crime. The study noted that most criminals obtained their guns in the underground economy — from friends, family members, or gang members — well outside any influence from gun controls on legitimate gun owners.

Curses!  Foiled again!!

HT:  Zippers

Sums It Up

Jonah Goldberg, found at Cold Fury:

...But there’s a simpler reason for American reluctance to intervene in the Middle East that plays a much bigger role in peoples’ attitudes about foreign policy. It can be summed up with the words “to hell with them.”...

Yup.  After about 20 years of watching armed squabbling (i.e., waves of murders, torchings, and beheadings) and sending US troops into Bill Murray-land, the time has come to just walk away. 

Christie Flips: Now He's "Pro-Gun"

Despite an anti-gun background, Christie allows .50-cal shooting in New Jersey.

NSA and ObozoCare Enforcers

After the NSA has gathered the information, HHS will raid your home.

The Health and Human Services’ website states that your family will be targeted if you fall under the “high-risk” categories below:

• Families where mom is not yet 21.
• Families where someone is a tobacco user.
• Families where children have low student achievement, developmental delays, or disabilities.
• Families with individuals who are serving or formerly served in the armed forces, including such families that have members of the armed forces who have had multiple deployments outside the United States.

There is no reference to Medicaid being the determinant for a family to be “eligible.”

Now you know why HHS is sucking up all that ammo.

Who the Hell Do These Creeps Think They Are?

This happened under the Obozo/(D) regime, folks.

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by law and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.

... In another case, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has authority over some NSA operations, did not learn about a new collection method until it had been in operation for many months. The court ruled it unconstitutional.

Now we'll hear again from Sensenbrenner that 'we certainly didn't MEAN to give the spooks this....'

Right-O, Jimbo!  Whatever you say, Jim.  Do you really think we're as stupid as you appear to be?

HT:  Hit/Run

Disabled? Really?

Walker has quite a ways to go to re-write Wisconsin disability-pay practices for public employees.

Stephen Heimsness was exonerated in a shooting death in November, but he could have faced termination stemming from accusations that he violated several policies.

Heimsness is seeking early retirement due to post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from the November shooting of Paul Heenan.

If his request for disability benefits is approved, he could get $57,200.04 annually, a Wisconsin Reporter analysis showed.

What used to be called "battle fatigue" has become PTSD, and now only a couple of gunshots "trigger" this horrible result in this poor widdle cop.  Compare his "trauma" to that of the survivors of D-Day, or of Iwo, or Pork-Chop Hill, or even of

One wonders if Heimsness is a man, or a mouse.

IMHO, if he is awarded disability, he should be confined to his home for the rest of his life.  Poor fellow could suffer again--horribly--if he heard a horn honking or a firecracker.  Can't be too careful, ya'know.

Bloomberg's Tattered Terrycloth

Seems that the NYPD's "Terry stop" license will be terminated.

Belling rants on about the decision; in his view, it was wrong.

Really?

During the period in question, only 12% of the detainees were arrested or issued a summons.  Further, only HALF of the detainees were patted down, and only 1.5% of those were found to be armed.

This while justifying the Terrys as "gun-related" only?

Pipe down, Mark, or find statistics that support you and Czar Bloomie.

Is Ryan Serious About Higher Office?

If Paul Ryan is serious about running for President, he's not going to have a free pass from Conservatives.

Ryan has been toying with amnesty in the usual Double-Talk fashion, underlining "border security" but forgetting that NO recent President or Congress has bothered with "security" at all.  He also propounded a new economic theory:  that more supply (of cheap labor) will necessarily drive the price of labor UP.

Ryan bent over and went with "leadership" to continue NSA funding of domestic spying, which (of course) he would categorize as "necessary intel-gathering."  Not even the author of the original Patriot Act--Sensenbrenner--could stomach this abuse of the Constitution by the Statists-in-Charge.

And Ryan has artfully voted against ObozoCare when it NEVER MATTERS--but is now, along with RoJo, mumbling about a "shutdown" --the language of the (D) party--instead of "defunding Obozocare", which is exactly and ONLY what the citizens of this country want.

Really, Paul?

Eydie and Friend

We agree:  Eydie was a great one.

Here she appears with another great one.  The talent displayed here eclipses an entire season of "America's Got Talent"--and then some.

Let's Talk About "Defunding"

The Second Circuit slaps Obozo--but the "defunder" is Harry Reid.

In a rebuke to the Obama administration, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been violating federal law by delaying a decision on a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada.

By a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the commission to complete the licensing process and approve or reject the Energy Department's application for a never-completed waste storage site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

Blahblahblahblah....

Anybody who has paid attention to Yucca knows that the blockage comes from Harry Reid, who "defunds" Federal laws any damn time he wants to.  Harry laughs at the Court:

...Reid, a Democrat, called the appeals court decision "fairly meaningless," noting that Congress has nearly eliminated funding for Yucca and is unlikely to restore it.

"This isn't even a bump in the road," Reid said. "This, without being disrespectful to the court, means nothing."...

Yet the cowards of (R) cannot bring themselves to "defund" ObozoCare--a far worse agenda-item than Yucca Mountain could ever hope to be.

Thus the whimper-not-bang end of the Stupid Party.

It's "The Stupid Party" for a Reason

Ace notices that the Stupids are displaying their colors.

...So the GOP says it's willing to shut down the government unless Obama agrees to spending cuts, which the public supports when you ask them but not when you ask them twice.

One of the few areas the public would like to cut spending is on... ObamaCare.

And yet that's the thing the GOP will definitely not shut the government down over.

AOSHQ also notes that (R) Congresscritters are cutting back on "town hall" events this August.

Prolly the heat., right?  But not from the kitchen, where the Ruling Class does NOT work.

Rumor Fun, Complete With Conspiracy!

This will be fun, if it actually happens.  InfoWars is not exactly the perfect source.

Journalist Michael Hastings was investigating CIA director John Brennan before his untimely death in a suspicious car accident it has been revealed, with the report set to be published posthumously by Rolling Stone Magazine within the next two weeks.

Why Brennan?

...Dvorak [ ... ] cites a Stratfor email hacked by Wikileaks and first published last year which names Brennan as being, “behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists learning information from inside the beltway sources.”

“There is specific tasker from the WH to go after anyone printing materials negative to the Obama agenda (oh my.) Even the FBI is shocked,” states the email.

Good thing that those journalists weren't the OTHER objects of Brennan's attention:

...Brennan was a counterterrorism advisor for the Obama administration and helped compile the “kill lists” for the White House’s drone assassination program....

But you don't know if there was one more 'kill list' which has yet to become operative. Did anyone check Hastings' car for drone-sized holes, for example?

Is He Stupid, or Worse? The Obozo Mystery

I'd thought of titling this post 'Dumbass President Tricks' but then I remembered that his mentors and pals are first-rate anti-Americans.

So the charitable interpretation is that he's really, really, really stupid.  The other one...well....

In the continuing saga of Benghazi--which DOES matter now, despite the bleating of Gorgon Hildebeeste--Owens sums:

...I’d like to remind you that Obama refused to give cross border authority to a force of 100 Recon Marines spinning up at Sigonella NAS, told Green Berets in Tripoli to stand down, and refused to call the region’s elite Delta CIF force to come to the rescue of more than two dozen and perhaps as many as 40 Americans under attack.

He had his campaign narrative of “al Qaeda is on the run” to preserve, and the destruction of a U.S. consulate and the possible over-running of a CIA position in a dusty desert version of Custer’s Last Stand is what he was willing to gamble. That he was also negligent enough to deliver al Qaeda hundreds of the exact weapons they’ve most wanted is a clear sign of the dangerously arrogant incompetence that permeates this White House....

I wish it were merely "arrogant incompetence."

Another Wheel Comes Off ObozoCare: You're the Victim, Again

So far, Obozo has taken care of businesses (no deadline!!) and insurance companies (no stop-loss!!!!!)

In another setback for President Obama’s health care initiative, the administration has delayed until 2015 a significant consumer protection in the law that limits how much people may have to spend on their own health care....The limit on out-of-pocket costs, including deductibles and co-payments, was not supposed to exceed $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for a family. But under a little-noticed ruling, federal officials have granted a one-year grace period to some insurers, allowing them to set higher limits, or no limit at all on some costs, in 2014...

I know.  ObozoCare was designed to fail so Shrillary could "fix" it.

Looking forward to that?

HT:  AOSHQ

Clowns Everywhere in Missouri Gummint

It's clear that Missouri is governed by idiots.

...The Missouri State Fair imposed a lifetime ban on the rodeo clown whose depiction of Obama getting charged by a bull was widely criticized by Democratic and Republican officials alike....

The clown has competition from at least three other clowns:

...Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill called it shameful and unacceptable....

...Gov. Jay Nixon’s press secretary, Scott Holste, said in a statement, “The governor agrees that the performance was disrespectful and offensive, and does not reflect the values of Missourians...

...Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder weighed in in a series of Twitter posts. Kinder said he loved the fair and planned to attend but said the clown’s performance reflected poorly on the state. “I condemn the actions disrespectful...

One suspects that there will be a run on Obozo masks.

Shrillary's Slither Begins

Another lawyer without any ethics or morals and with all the wrong friends begins slithering towards the White House.

Prissy Writer of the Year?

This squeal written with estrogen as ink is easily one of the Prissy Scribbles of the Year.

So I Consulted With My Pals: Screw Taxes This Year!!

How does Obozo break the law??

...I didn’t simply choose to delay this on my own. This was in consultation with businesses all across the country...--Obozo, quoted at HE

Well.  In consultation with a lot of friends and family, many of whom are in business across the country, we've all decided not to pay taxes this year. 

After all, we have EXACTLY THE SAME authority to ignore the IRS Code as Obozo has to ignore the ObozoCare law.

Defund ObozoCare? Si, Se Puede!

Somewhat involved argumentation, but von Spakovsky reminds us of the ADA (Anti-Deficiency Act), which the cojones-challenged Congresscritters would rather forget.

...No one disputes that Obamacare would stay on the books and that defunding would not change the existing law. But all federal funds already appropriated for the implementation and enforcement of Obamacare could not be used by any federal agency to take any action—whether it is issuing new regulations or filing an enforcement action against an individual or an employer for not complying with the new health insurance mandates. The termination of all “entitlement to benefits” would stop the automatic appropriation of new entitlement spending for things like the law’s Medicaid expansion. The rescission of “unobligated benefits” would return to the Treasury appropriated funds that have not yet been spent on items such as the payment of outside contractors—navigators—for enrolling participants in Obamacare, although it would probably not relieve the government of the contractual obligation to pay for services already rendered.

There is no question that such a defunding bill can stop entitlement spending....

No question, except in the minds of the demi-Statist (R) folk (read:  McConnell, Boehner, Cantor) and their easily-swayed (R) followers.

HT: PowerLine

Define the Enemy, Then Destroy It

When one conducts a proper war, the first thing is to define the enemy.  The next thing is to destroy that enemy.  (Cartago delenda est.)  That's the way of war.

Thus when we read Kennedy's decision in Windsor, a bell should be ringing.  The bell could be inscribed "Dred Scott."

...Justice Scalia rightly identified as particularly outrageous the Court’s assertion that the purpose of the definition was a “‘bare … desire to harm’ couples in same-sex marriages.”...

Could Kennedy really believe that?  Yes, he could:

...from what counts as serious discussion by serious people in our country it is clear that most well-placed and influential Americans have come to believe that opposition to same-sex marriage can only be a matter of ignorance and bigotry. They are convinced that a social institution that involves sexual differentiation can have no legitimate function or right to exist, and the point is so obvious that no rightly constituted mind could possibly believe otherwise....

IOW, the Ruling Class--the Elites--have come to the conclusion that Kennedy used as an assertion:  those opposed to same-sex marriages are Hating Bigots, devoid of rational thought.

The Enemy has been defined, folks.

Such views [that were expressed by Kennedy here] are considered an obvious demand of reason and justice. To reject equal fulfillment as the highest standard and technology as the model for putting it into effect can, it is thought, only be a matter of greed, bullying, sadism, or irrationality. After all, the alternative to giving people what they want equally is preferring some people and their desires to others, the alternatives to technology are passivity on the one hand and magical thinking on the other, and the alternative to equal respect is suppression of some people and what they want for the sake of a scheme that other people want to impose on them. How can any of that be justified?

Since it is all so obvious, or so it is thought, resistance is not merely misguided or wrong but an expression of gross irrationality that can only be motivated by gratuitous hatred. It is evidently for some such reason that the Windsor majority treats those who disagree with it, in the words of Justice Scalia, as hostes humani generis: enemies of the human race.

If this is a war, the "define-the-enemy" stage is now accomplished.  All that remains is to destroy that enemy.

Kennedy is a tool; we saw that in his infamous Lawrence obiter dicta when SCOTUS overruled Bowers.  It's clear that he is easily influenced at cocktail parties.  But this simple tool has a black robe--and friends--and his blather will have effects.

Should the logic of the war analogy prevail, we have just seen the second Dred Scott decision.  Let us hope that what follows does not resemble 1861.

Jack Ryan Would Go Crazy

Most of you know about Jack Ryan, the fictional CIA operative/Navy veteran who became POTUS in the span of about 7 marvelous and highly-detailed novels written by Tom Clancy (e.g., The Hunt for Red October, Cardinal of the Kremlin, etc.)

Jack Ryan did NOT believe in co-incidence.  Period. 

This essay would have driven him nuts.

No Kidding, Mr. Hillyer!

Hillyer notes the essence of the problem with the Hypocritical Exemption.

This sort of special exemption for government workers is not a merely symbolic annoyance; instead, it feeds a perception that soon becomes an attitude that soon makes itself manifest in various actions. The perception is that government workers are above the law; the attitude that can grow among the federal workforce is that those workers are our masters rather than our servants; and the actions that flow from that attitude can include many abuses, small and large, of privacy or liberty.

Yah, like IRS' squashing of conservative activists, NSA's "total war" infogame....stuff like that, hey.

Leno Is Dead-On

Leno gets it, and broadcast it to a LARGE audience.  Good on him!!


"Congress took the hypocritic oath.....

“Before they went on vacation, Congress voted to exempt themselves from Obamacare. They gave themselves a special exemption, because they thought it was too expensive. So the people who voted for Obamacare for us voted to exempt themselves from Obamacare. See now, doctors take the Hippocratic oath. Congress apparently takes the hypocritic oath,” Leno said. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/jay-leno-congress-took-hypocritic-oath-obamacare-exemption#sthash.NxNuqqqf.dpuf

“Before they went on vacation, Congress voted to exempt themselves from Obamacare. They gave themselves a special exemption, because they thought it was too expensive. So the people who voted for Obamacare for us voted to exempt themselves from Obamacare. See now, doctors take the Hippocratic oath. Congress apparently takes the hypocritic oath,” Leno said. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/jay-leno-congress-took-hypocritic-oath-obamacare-exemption#sthash.NxNuqqqf.dpuf

“Before they went on vacation, Congress voted to exempt themselves from Obamacare. They gave themselves a special exemption, because they thought it was too expensive. So the people who voted for Obamacare for us voted to exempt themselves from Obamacare. See now, doctors take the Hippocratic oath. Congress apparently takes the hypocritic oath,” Leno said. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/jay-leno-congress-took-hypocritic-oath-obamacare-exemption#sthash.Tqi2BR6D.dpuf

“Before they went on vacation, Congress voted to exempt themselves from Obamacare. They gave themselves a special exemption, because they thought it was too expensive. So the people who voted for Obamacare for us voted to exempt themselves from Obamacare. See now, doctors take the Hippocratic oath. Congress apparently takes the hypocritic oath,” Leno said. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/jay-leno-congress-took-hypocritic-oath-obamacare-exemption#sthash.Tqi2BR6D.dpuf

The Sixth Amendment: A Casualty of NSA/DEA Statism

Let us pause and bow our heads in memory of the recently-assassinated Sixth Amendment.

In relevant part:

...to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor,...

...When Edward Snowden alleged that he, as a low level IT technician, could access communications by virtually anyone simply by asking there was a howling from the general direction of Fort Meade, MD that this was not true. Because FISA Courts. Because The Constitution. Subsequent reporting by Glenn Greenwald (or one of his sock puppets. it is really hard to tell… ) indicates that Snowden was more right than wrong.

Reuters....detailed how the Special Operative Division – a unit within the DEA comprising representatives of two dozen agencies including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security – passes tips from wiretaps, informants and a database of telephone records to field agents to investigate and arrest criminals. Reuters reports that, although such cases rarely involve national security issues, the DEA agents using the tips are trained to “recreate” the source of the criminal investigation to conceal its true origin from defense lawyers, prosecutors and judges.

One is reminded of a passage familiar to most:  "Witnesses??  We have no need of witnesses!!"

....followed by a summary non-judicial execution.

Sorta like the line from the Disney song:  "...it could happen to you..." except the song was not about the end of the US Constitution done by a bunch of skinhead power-mad vest-wearing full-auto bearing enemies of the Republic.

UPDATE:  Speaking of summary executions, do NOT visit Delaware.

Not Much Choice in Wisconsin ObozoCare

Seems as though there's no rush to cover ObozoCare exchanges in Wisconsin.

United HealthCare, Humana, and Assurant bowed out.  "Maybe next year"---

Anthem CompCare will provide for the individual, but not small-business, market.

WPS and a startup, Common Ground, will provide for the small-biz market.

There are also a number of small firms which will compete.

Teh Stupid: Krugman

Charles McMillion makes a point.

...Over the past 30 years of lobbying by the financial sector in Washington and support by naive academics for "free" trade, the normal, small U.S. trade surplus in goods and services has turned into an unbroken torrent of 30 consecutive annual deficits that now total an astounding $9 trillion of which $7.7 trillion is for manufactured goods. 

As Detroit demonstrates, production, businesses and jobs lost to imports are not merely "displaced" and automatically moved to other, more productive and higher-wage uses -- as many economic theorists still claim. In fact, the Labor Department has tracked workers displaced by cutbacks and closings since 1979 and most such workers -- especially in manufacturing -- are either permanently forced out of the paid labor force or eventually forced to take sharp cuts in pay, benefits and hours. 

The cuts in compensation for displaced workers reflect the drive to less productive jobs and businesses that are protected from import competition in industries such as health care, education, entertainment, tourism, retail sales and now many levels of "homeland" security. Over the past 30 years of worsening trade losses, all of the net new jobs in the United States are in services. Most all of these jobs have been immune to outsourcing or imports -- although this, too, is changing quickly.

THAT is not what makes Krugman and his fellow-traveler pointy-headed academics stupid, although it's a big part.

HERE is what makes him a Stupid:

...Detroit is ridiculed for not adequately adapting to the low-wage global and subsidized "market," with New York Times columnist Paul Krugman literally raising the cliche of "buggy whips," blithely urging Detroit to find a new competitive advantage. (Who wants to buy autos today?) Like others, Krugman is silent about any new industries, jobs or businesses that could provide good salaries to hundreds of thousands of people in Detroit and millions elsewhere in the country who have been displaced by surging imports.

Krugman and the rest of the Theoretical Class (read:  rulers-with-Ph.D.) haven't a clue as to what will "replace" the jobs now vanished from the auto industry.

Not. A. Clue.  Nonetheless, they pontificate.

RoJo's on the Wrong End of the Cannon

Jerry Bader is sympathetic as RoJo attempts to defend the Boyzzz of D.C..

"Your 80% you 90% your 99% friend is still your friend and what’s happening right now in the conservative movement we are starting to shoot people who are 99% our friend."  --Sen. Ron Johnson

Johnson reiterated several times that conservatives are losing sight of the goal by getting bogged down in strategy; we all agree Obamacare should be stopped, the question is how.  Texas Senator Ted Cruz is a driving force behind the defund movement. Johnson refused to criticize Cruz, trying to live by his own rules. But Johnson made it clear that if Republicans don’t unify they’re doomed. Johnson prefers the delay strategy, mostly because he believes Republicans might get enough Democrats to join in that effort. But what’s the end game in that strategy? Delay for how long? And what happens during the delay? Uncertainty, that’s what.

 

...I’m not sure what the right answer is. But Senator Ron Johnson wants angry conservative voters to know that, in his words, "eating our own," isn’t the answer.

 

RoJo happens to be standing at the wrong end of the cannon; in fact, he was not even born when the problems began--with Wilson--and he's not the proximate cause.  But he, Ryan, Sensenbrenner, and the execrable Boehner/McConnell Gang are at a moment in history where the center may no longer hold.

 

Most of the tools the Obozo Regime is using were handed to them by Republican and Democrat Statists of the past:  the IRS, EPA, Dept. of Education and NSA being prominent in the band.  The Bank Bailouts, the GM/Chrysler Bailout, the cronyism, the inane effort to 'install democracy in the Middle East'....shall we go on?

 

But Obama has taken the next step of  simply ignoring law and doing whatever the Hell he wants to do.

The opposition party (which was, I remind you, complicit in all but the law-breaking) now discovers that it has become The Enemy.  The light-bulb and toilet-regulators, the unnatural-sex-and-abortion pushers, the Corn-a-Holers, the War Party--all are populated with (R) names.

And the people have had enough of this.  The frustration boils over; and RoJo happens to be standing in the middle of the tracks between two high-speed freight trains approaching from opposite directions.

I'm sympathetic, too.  But RoJo said that he would take down ObozoCare.

And he damn well better DO it.

The "Dumb Babes" Gambit

This ......ahhh........*politician* ........from Texas has a few words for women.

T[he] W[eekly] S[tandard]: What do you make of polls showing that a majority of women support these late-term bans? There have been a few polls–Washington Post, Huffington Post, different polls–that show women support this. What do you think of those polls?

DAVIS: I again think that a lot of people don’t really understand the landscape of what’s happening in that arena today...

That's Wendy Davis, who is a blonde.

HT:  PW

Don't Want Surgery? Cops Will Kill You.

The Cop-as-Infantry "mentality" at work.

...On July 26, a doctor reportedly told Wrana if he survived surgery, he would likely be put on life support. The elderly man refused the operation, and paramedics attempted to involuntarily transport him for medical treatment. He was sitting in a chair, holding a cane and a shoe horn when police arrived at the Victory Centre senior living facility located just south of Chicago.

The Cook County medical examiner reported that Wrana bled to death internally from injuries caused when the elderly man was shot in the stomach with a 12-gauge shotgun that fired a bag filled with lead shot. The death has been ruled a homicide, according to reports....

According to the Park Forest police account, Grapsas had threatened officers with a two-foot-long metal shoe horn and cane.

95-year-old armed with cane!!  The cops are endangered!!!!!  Time to open fire!!!!!!!!

But first, they had to have an excuse for homicide, right?  So here it is:

...“Attempts were made verbally to have the resident comply with demands to drop the articles, to no avail,” the police statement said. “The resident then armed himself with a 12-inch butcher type kitchen knife.”

But Grapsas told the Tribune the staff and Wrana’s family said they never saw a butcher knife in his room. 

“So where did the knife come from?” the attorney asked.

I'm surprised they didn't plant a kilo of cocaine and a couple of rifles on the old dude.

There's the Right Way and the Illegal Way (Obozo's)

Obozo does not have the legal authority to 'suspend employer obligations' under ObozoCare.

He does not have the legal authority to 'suspend verification of income' for ObozoCare applicants.

And he does not have the legal authority 'pay premiums for Congressslime and their aides'.

...the White House is suspending the law to create a double standard. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that runs federal benefits will release regulatory details this week, but leaks to the press suggest that Congress will receive extra payments based on the FEHBP defined-contribution formula, which covers about 75% of the cost of the average insurance plan...

...This latest White House night at the improv is also illegal. OPM has no authority to pay for insurance plans that lack FEHBP contracts, nor does the Affordable Care Act permit either exchange contributions or a unilateral bump in congressional pay in return for less overall compensation.  --WSJ quoted at AOSHQ

Fauntelroy needs a few lessons.

The Wonders of Socialism

The Obozo socialist economy!!

...Since January 2009 the country has added a net total of 270,000 full-time jobs, but it has added 1.9 million part-time jobs, according to the House Ways and Means Committee....

So to make it all better, Paul Ryan will add 14 million illegal immigrants to the mix.

Helluva deal, Paul.

Franciscans Allied With Illegals

Not surprising at all.

...This past year, 23 year old Kathleen Shea of New Jersey served as the New Sanctuary Coordinator for Voces de la Frontera via the Capuchin Franciscan Volunteer Corps and AmeriCorps. Shea’s position served the New Sanctuary Movement, a campaign sponsored by Voces to organize churches and faith groups together in service of "a more just immigration policy in our country and asking ICE to uphold the basic human rights of all people."....

Blah, blah, blah.

So the Franciscans take Federal money to launch and maintain opposition to US immigration law--and to attempt to destroy a local business.

Nice.

HT:  Sykes

It's What's for Dinner!!

We expect Moochie, HHS, and EPA to be wildly enthusiastic (using your tax dollars) about this.  But we don't expect the czars and czarinas to actually lead by example.

“Black soldier flies themselves do not eat, they just drink. And they do not transmit any disease to humans,” Unger explains. “Unlike normal house flies they usually do not sit on food and they do not sting or bite, either. They also fly very slowly, so in case one should escape it is easy to catch them.” [...]

The larvae have a nutty, almost meaty flavor, Unger says, and her favorite dish is a tomato larvae risotto. But as tasty as it may be, and as well as Farm 432 may work, Unger admits that the design challenge is only part of making such an idea a success.

“With my design I am proposing a new lifestyle,” she says. “It’s about a potential new Western culture of insect eating and breeding. It’s about making people aware that there is a great variety of food on our planet that we rarely consider.”  --quoted at Protein Wisdom (cough)

And you thought that boiled spinach was bad.....

Only Gummint Builds the Roads, Eh?

The inanity in pictures.

Not hard to tell which one is Tommy "RoadBuilder" Thompson, is it?

HT:  Dollar Vigilante/Last Ditch

60 Years Old, Even More Worth a Read Now

Yes, I read it; yes, I still have it around.  Mine's at least second-hand with a bookplate from someone in Indiana (!)

A decade ago, Regnery issued the 50^th anniversary of Whittaker Chambers’ Witness, honoring its corporate motto that reads, “it is our purpose to publish good books where we find them.”  Witness is not simply a good book, but one of the most profound studies of human nature published in at least the past hundred years. It rips apart the media and cultural narrative about the early Cold War in the United States.  At a very basic and human level, the book also lays out Chambers’ own tortuous navigation of the spirit.
Chambers is one of the most complex and unremembered of important American historical figures.  Like many other writers between the world wars, such as John Dos Passos, he embraced Communist leftism as the only possible savior of humanity.  Most of these men and women flirted with the international Communist movement as fellow travelers.

Not ever content to flit at the periphery of events, Chambers slid into an even deeper ensnarement.  He ended up managing part of a Moscow based spy network that used journalists, artists, and technocrats to extend its poisoned tentacles into the world’s most important capitals.

By 1937, however, Chambers made “the decision to die, if necessary, rather than to live under Communism.”  Unlike the slow climb from Communism to conservatism made by some contemporaries, again, such as Dos Passos, Chambers moved quickly. First, he decided to mentally abandon Communism as a set of beliefs.  That not being sufficient, he walked into the home of Assistant Secretary of State Adolph Berle in 1939 and gave a full confession.  To him, the break was a “personal, intellectual, and religious act” that had much less potential consequence for himself and his family than deserting a Soviet spy apparatus.  Time editor Henry Grunwald later related that Chambers told him that Communism equated “slavery and spiritual night.”

It's not an easy read, but it is very clear and lucid.  And yes, Chambers 'gets' the human condition, although his work is clouded a bit by his Protestant theo-philosophical meanderings.

HT:  Sipsey Street

Acerbically Yours, Steyn

This guy Steyn is a national treasure.

Any day now, Hillary Clinton, having spent 20 minutes in the private sector, will be needing a new “transition team” to help her transition into replacing President Obama. He’s “smart” and “accomplished,” too. He had a million bucks of elite education — Occidental College, Columbia University, Harvard Law School — and became a “community organizer.” His wife went to Princeton and became a 350-grand-a-year diversity-outreach coordinator, a job so vital to the University of Chicago Hospitals that when she quit to become first lady they didn’t bother replacing her. This is what it means to be “smart” and “accomplished” in the hyperpower at twilight.  --quoted at Cold Fury

Gun Control: Lying WIth Massaged Language

It's not a co-incidence that AG Holder and all the rest sound the same about gun control.

GQR advises gun control groups that in order to be effective in making progress toward their stated goal of restricting gun rights and enacting gun bans, they must use specific terms to counter Stand Your Ground self-defense laws, such as “Shoot First” laws or “Kill at Will” legislation. The objective is to tar and feather sensible self-defense by using such derogatory language every chance they get. And indeed, these phrases have been used repeatedly by Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, and others on the front lines of the gun ban movement.

The firm also advises that gun control advocates avoid using the term “duty to retreat” in support of their position, due to the fact that the term is viewed negatively by the public, not to mention that the Supreme Court and lower courts have ruled over a long period of years that citizens have no duty to retreat if their lives are immediately threatened.  --quoted at Protein Wisdom

There's an 80-page PDF at the link which exposes their entire re-working of logic and English.

Benghazi, Graphically

HT:  MoonBattery

Some Pigs Are More Equal Than Others

You'll all be shocked.......shocked......to read this.

The White House has approved a deal that will exempt members of Congress and their staff from some of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, Politico reported late Thursday.

... without the subsidies they currently enjoy, the members of Congress would have faced thousands of dollars in additional premium payments each year, the report said. However, the Office of Personnel Management now plans to rule that the government can continue to make a contribution to the health-care premiums of the lawmakers and their staff, it said, citing unnamed congressional sources and a White House official...

We could change the headline to this:  Some Pigs are More Equal Than Their Subjects

The Boehner/Cantor/Sensenbrenner Bend-Over of 2011

Just as a reminder to Jim Sensenbrenner, Paul Ryan, Petri, and Duffy:

...After Congress narrowly passed Obamacare in 2010, that year's midterm election became a referendum on the law. Backed by the grass-roots activism of the tea party movement, Republicans won control of the House. John Boehner replaced Nancy Pelosi as speaker.

When the new Congress was seated in 2011, the government was funded by a continuing resolution (CR) that expired on March 18 of that year. Because the Constitution says that "no money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law," Boehner's Republican House had a veto over what the Obama administration would be able to spend money on after that date....

So what did Cryin' John and Paul Ryan do??

...the Republican House passed its first in a series of government-funding deals permitting implementation....

With the money that Boehner, Cantor, and Ryan voted to spend,

Obama and his bureaucrats used the money Boehner's House gave them to implement Obamacare — as they saw fit.

They issued the regulation requiring most health plans to cover sterilizations, artificial contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs — thus violating the First Amendment by forcing Christians to act against their faith.

Obama unilaterally suspended the provision in the law that requires large employers to buy health insurance for their workers or pay a penalty. He thus violated the president's constitutional mandate to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

What you men-without-chests did in 2011 can and should be un-done in 2013.  Don't whine and mewl about "not controlling the Senate".  Don't shovel the s*&^ about "we can't shut down the Gummint"--which only Obozo can do.

Jim:  it's well-known that there are half-a-dozen people lined up to replace you in Congress.

Is it time for them to primary you??

The New Oliver North

Yah, it's Obozo again.

Seems that he was gun-running to the rebels in Syria (which are just another bunch of community organizers when you come right down to right down.)

But since THAT could be embarrassing, Obozo & Co. have lied, loudly and blatantly, ever since.  Shrillary was the most notorious, but Obozo takes the cake.

Survivors of the attack are not only being silenced, complete with threats to their families from "our" guys, but are being given the Witness Protection Program treatment.

They might not like it, but that's their "treatment."  Better than Siberia, I suppose.

Obozo's Alternative Universe

That alternative universe is the one Obozo lives in--you know, the one with golf courses, Martha's Vineyard, world travel for the fam, and fabulous dinners--and the MSM won't, or can't, ask the obvious question.

Obama’s first term, with all its tax hikes, regulations, mandates, subsidies and bailouts, saw stock markets rise, corporate earnings break records and the rich get richer, while median income stagnated and unemployment remained stubbornly high.

Obama rightly calls the last few years “a winner-take-all economy where a few are doing better and better and better, while everybody else just treads water.”

Median household income has fallen by 5 percent since 2009 — when the recession ended and Obama came into office — as the Wall Street Journal pointed out after Obama’s speech. But corporate profits and the stock market keep hitting record highs.  --Driscoll quoting M C Ham

Yup.  ObozoNomics leaves us in a "winner-take-all economy" where "median household income has fallen by 5%" under ObozoNomic programs.

So it's all Bush's fault!!  Because Bush.

Ryan's Budget: Not Bad, Not Great

Despite Paul Ryan's Double-Talk Express problem with immigration reform (see here and here) and his love for NSA snooping, his budget proposal isn't bad at all.  It's not great, but not bad.

However, under Boehner's "leadership" there are problems--mostly because Boehner spends too much time crying, I suppose.

...Moderate Republicans may have all voted for Ryan’s budget blueprint this fall, but now that the reality of those spending cuts are becoming clear, they are balking.

The Transportation and Housing and Urban Development spending bill pulled Wednesday, for example, cut spending on the Community Development Block Grant program from $3.8 billion in FY 2013 to $1.6 billion in FY 2014. The CDBG is a classic big government/crony capitalist boondoggle long objected to by limited government conservatives.

But the “Tuesday Group” of moderate Republicans said they could not vote for the bill unless their districts got their CDBG spending restored, and even after House leadership agreed to put back $350 million of pork back into the bill, the moderate Republicans still walked.

...Spending is not the only area where libertarians have been giving Republican leaders headaches. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., forced a close vote on the NSA’s domestic surveillance program this week...

The Statists, including Ryan, won that vote, but not by much.  No wonder they're getting sweaty palms over at RNC HQ.

1984 Redux: "Public Safety" Unions

Orwell's quip--that 'some are more equal than others'--was not fiction.  Never was, never will be.

The "public safety" unions will make double-damn sure you know it, too, even if it requires a little lying and deception to make it so.

Gov. Scott Walker stirred things up Monday with talk about extending the state ban on public sector union rights to police and firefighters, before downplaying the idea Tuesday.

...At a public event in Milwaukee on Monday, Walker said he would consider expanding the law, and that police and fire workers may now be willing to forgo union rights taken from other government workers — collective bargaining, paycheck dues withdrawals and arbitration to settle disputes with management....

Here's where the fun starts:

...Leaders of two police unions said their members wouldn’t accept any such change, and they believe the governor knows that.

“He understands that there is an absolute difference between public safety and general employees in this regard,” said Milwaukee Police Association president Mike Crivello.

Crivello said he cautioned officers who called him Tuesday not to jump to conclusions. Walker knows public safety workers face personal danger on the job, and that the union has allowed them to advocate effectively for weaponry and equipment that makes them safer, Crivello said....

That was three-card monte in pixels.

You see, "union advocacy" and the militarization of the cop-shop are totally unrelated.  The cops can "advocate" (i.e., demand) "weaponry and equipment" without Crivello and his bush-league rabble-rouser WPPA yappydog Palmer.  If the citizens of a given community think the cops need military-grade weapons and protective equipment, they'll cough up the money.

That's what Crivello and Palmer fear, by the way.  They represent cops, not the 101st Airborne.  Some citizens have reservations about flash-bang grenades, full-auto AR's, and armored cars for their cops.

Actual History on (D) Racism

O'Reilly swallows the Camelot Myth whole, and regurgitates it as "fact."  Coulter takes him down.

...During his otherwise excellent commentaries on race in America, Bill O’Reilly, host of the No. 1 cable news show, claimed on Tuesday night that the one person who tried to help African-Americans more than any other was … Robert F. Kennedy!

No one laughed....

...According to O’Reilly’s Bizarro-World history, Bobby Kennedy was “the guy who was really concerned about African-Americans” and “who really DID SOMETHING. … He went in with the federal government and he cleaned out the rat’s nest that was abusing African-Americans in the South.”

Although this myth has been polished to perfection by the Kennedy PR machine, ...it is simply a fact that helping blacks was not the Democrats’ priority. Even the ones who wanted to, such as Bobby and John Kennedy, couldn’t risk upsetting the segregationists, more than 90 percent of whom were Democratic.

Another world-class history professor, Oprah Winfrey, declares that there were 'millions' of blacks lynched in the South.  Actually, there were 4,700+, and 1,000+ of those were white folks.  Most of the 4,700+ were Republicans, by the way--and the lynch-ers were Democrats.

That's why the Camelot folks didn't act against segregation.

Paul Ryan's Double-Talk Express

We could call it the "Straight Talk Express", but let's cut to the chase:  it's double-talk.

A week or so ago, Paul Ryan proposed a new economic theory that increasing the supply of a commodity will increase the price of that commodity.

It was buried in typical political double-talk, but there it is!  Chairman, Budget, believes in the tooth fairy, unicorns, and pixie-dust.  Because seashells and balloons.

The Ryan Double-Talk Express now requires you to believe this one:

...Bringing these bills to the floor, we’ll find out. It is not, “they don’t come to the floor unless we have a majority of the majority,” because we don’t know if we have a majority until we vote on it....

IOW, Boehner, Cantor, and Ryan are voiding the "Hastert Rule" but not voiding the "Hastert Rule."

Because rainbows and unicorn farts, you see.

NSA & Pals Voted: YOU Are the Lunch Menu

Schneier sums it up very nicely.

...It would be reasonable for our government to debate the circumstances under which corporations can collect and use our data, and to provide for protections against misuse. But if the government is using that very data for its own surveillance purposes, it has an incentive to oppose any laws to limit data collection. And because corporations see no need to give consumers any choice in this matter -- because it would only reduce their profits -- the market isn’t going to protect consumers, either.

Our elected officials are often supported, endorsed and funded by these corporations as well, setting up an incestuous relationship between corporations, lawmakers and the intelligence community.

The losers are us, the people, who are left with no one to stand up for our interests.

It's roughly analogous to the old Big Three automakers and the UAW.  Since the Big Three owned the US market through (roughly) 1970, they were willing to give the UAW a lot.  (It was helpful that the white-collar folks got the same benefits as the blue-collars, too.)  The only one without a voice at that lunch-table was the US auto buyer, and by no co-incidence, the US auto buyer was the lunch menu.

Things changed in the auto biz.  They'll change in that spying biz, too.

Community Organizing a Race War

This fits right into his pattern.

President Obama said that if economic prescriptions of the type he supports to increase economic growth and reduce “income inequality” are not adopted, then race relations in the United State may deteriorate further.

“If we don’t do anything, then growth will be slower than it should be. Unemployment will not go down as fast as it should. Income inequality will continue to rise,” Obama said in an interview published Sunday by the New York Times. “Racial tensions won’t get better; they may get worse, because people will feel as if they’ve got to compete with some other group to get scraps from a shrinking pot. If the economy is growing, everybody feels invested, ” he said.

 --quoted at Gateway Pundit

 Holder's doing spadework on the same project.

There's a reason for that "income inequality", of course.  It's called ObamaCare

Leaky Lois Lerner and the Fifth

It's no wonder that "Leaky" Lois took the fifth before Congress.

Seems like this linked essay points to several criminal violations of IRS law, not to mention several dozen items which fall right into line with typical (D) "ethics."

Obozo's "Economic Growth"

One point seven% GDP growth in 2Q13.

Oh--by the way--the 1Q13 "growth" was revised from 1.8% down to 1.1%.  Yah, that's all "sequester" according to the wonzo Left.

Except that the "sequester" is an infinitesimal percentage of GDP.

The ObozoCare Earnings Trap

SanFranNan strikes again!

...Under the ACA, federal subsidies in the form of tax credits to buy insurance on new state health insurance exchanges will be available to millions of people who can start enrolling on those exchanges Oct. 1. The subsidies are available to people or families whose incomes total 400 percent above the federal poverty level or less, and are designed to cap their insurance premiums at 9.5 percent of their total income.

For a single person, that FPL income maximum is $45,960 per year. The maximums are adjusted upward for couples and families until maxing out at $94,200 for a family of four.

Under a scenario that ValuePenguin.com identified, a couple in Ohio, both age 50, would be eligible for subsidies worth $3,452 to purchase a so-called silver insurance plan—a moderately priced level of benefits under the ACA’s scheme—that costs $9,346 annually if they made up to $62,040 per year.

But if they made just $1 more than that, they would lose the subsidy. Wu noted that the couple then would have to earn at least $65,492 to make up for the lost subsidy...--Quoted at AmSpecBlog

The second highlight is the point of the original article.

But it's worth re-reading the first highlight:  ObozoCare premiums will snatch NINE AND A HALF PERCENT of your income. 

That's "free" health-care, right?

Friend of Barak? "Good" Romney!

There are two kinds of private-equity folks.  Evil Romneys, and Good Friends of Barak.

...Homeowner Schulte deserves special attention. If this deep-pocketed donor and private-equity whiz were a Republican, the Occupy hordes and left-wing super-PACs would have made him a household name by now. The SEIU already would have picketed his private residence. Cher, Bette Midler and Chris Rock would be tweeting furiously about this privileged white robber baron in all caps.

Schulte, you see, earned his money in much the same way the demonized Mitt Romney did: through corporate restructuring and rescuing debt-burdened companies. He and his former partner, Sam Zell, have happily embraced the nickname “grave dancers” since the early 1990s. By 1993, their billion-dollar “vulture fund” based in Chicago had purchased all or part of Jacor Communications, the embattled media conglomerate; Sealy Corporation, the mattress empire; and the distressed Schwinn Bicycle Company.
The duo also scooped up Santa Fe Energy Resources (an oil and gas company) through a partnership and refinanced Revco D.S., the drugstore chain. Schulte called his financial playground “the land of broken dreams,” according to the Los Angeles Times, which described the partners as “bottom-fishing.”...

Nevermind.  B Hussein's staying at his little Martha's Vineyard place later this summer.

Making Brookfield (and Fox Point) Into Milwaukee

You all recall "smart growth" plots, of course. 

They're back--on steroids--with the Obozo Regime.

...What if Obama’s boldest policy initiative is merely something he’d rather not discuss? And what if that initiative is being enacted right now?

A year ago, I published Spreading the Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. There I described the president’s second-term plan to press a transformative “regionalist” agenda on the country. Early but unmistakable signs indicate that Obama’s regionalist push is well underway. Yet the president doesn’t discuss his regionalist moves and the press does not report them.

...The most obvious new element of the president’s regionalist policy initiative is the July 19 publication of a Department of Housing and Urban Development regulation broadening the obligation of recipients of federal aid to “affirmatively further fair housing.” The apparent purpose of this rule change is to force suburban neighborhoods with no record of housing discrimination to build more public housing targeted to ethnic and racial minorities.

*Ahem*  Remember that every single township, village, and municipality in the USA is a "recipient of federal aid" by one route or another.

Your New Berlin problem is about to become your Brookfield and Fox Point problem.

The skulduggery is operative in the San Francisco Bay area.  (Yes, they deserve it.  Nonetheless....):

...In effect, by preventing the development of new suburbs, and reducing traditional single-family home development in existing suburbs, Plan Bay Area will squeeze 30 years worth of in-migrating population into a few small urban enclaves, and force most new businesses into the same tight quarters. The result will be a steep increase in the Bay Area’s already out-of-control housing prices. This will hit the poor and middle class the hardest. While some poor and minority families will receive tiny subsidized apartments in the high-rise PDAs, many others will find themselves displaced by the new development, or priced out of the local housing market altogether.

A regional plan that blocks traditional suburban development, densifies cities, and urbanizes suburbs on this scale is virtually unprecedented. That’s why the Obama administration awarded the agencies behind Plan Bay Area its second-highest “Sustainable Communities Grant” in 2012.

Tom Barrett is grinning ear-to-ear.

HT:  Cold Fury

"Business Records" or Private Information?

Ticker mentions a disturbing ruling from the 5th Circuit.

You do know that your phone is always communicating with the towers when it's turned on, right?  That's how it works -- it has to occasionally ping back and forth between the tower and device in order for a call to route to you, a text message to be delivered, etc.

Guess what?  There now is a court ruling that since you voluntarily "gave" that information to the cell company even though it would be impossible for you to have such a device and have it work without giving that data to them because your giving that data (your location) was "voluntary" it is not protected under the 4th Amendment and thus does not require a warrant.

Really??

The Miracle at Treasury

It's nothing short of a miracle, right?

According to the Daily Treasury Statement for July 26, which the Treasury released this afternoon, the federal debt has been stuck at exactly $16,699,396,000,000.00 for 70 straight days.

That is approximately $25 million below the legal limit of $16,699,421,095,673.60 that Congress has imposed on the debt.

Since no one in the Obozo Administration would lie or cheat, or massage the numbers, we can take the numbers at face value, meaning that it is a miracle!

Ted Cruz: the Long Game Player

By now it should be apparent that the Men Without Chests--McConnell, Boehner, Ryan, McCain, Cantor, et.al., are playing the 'short game':  get re-elected and to hell with the hindmost, who happen to be the remaining taxpayers.

It's not new; Reagan had to fight his way through a similar pack of cowardly well-manicured fops in the '70's.  Reagan then played his long game and deconstructed the Soviet Union, Carter's "malaise", and some parts of the Progressive State.

Reagan left office, and the well-manicured fops came out of their closets and beauty salons again to dominate (R) politics.

Now comes Cruz, who understands the long game.

...Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that President Barack Obama, congressional Democrats, and the institutional left want to drag out the Obamacare fight as long as possible. ...

If they force Republicans to keep waiting to rid the country of the law, Cruz thinks they will have hooked Americans on the subsidy to the point where it cannot ever be repealed.

“It is why hand in hand with delaying the employer mandate for big corporations, the Obama administration announced it wasn’t going to enforce the eligibility requirements for the subsidies,” Cruz said...

Cruz added that if Republicans choose not to fight Obamacare this September, the left, Obama, and the Democrats win, and Republicans lose....

The only reason that the Progressives have won is that they understand and play the Long Game.  The only reason that Conservatives have lost is because the (R) Party is not Conservative; it is, instead, filled with mirror-transfixed Men Without Chests.

Carry on.

No Kidding! Really??

I don't expect Milk-Carton Barrett or his blue-clad Stooge Flynn to mention this too often.

“Self-defense can be an important crime deterrent,”says a new report by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The $10 million study was commissioned by President Barack Obama as part of 23 executive orders he signed in January.

“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies,” the CDC study, entitled “Priorities For Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence,” states.  --quoted at Captain's place

Who knew?

Next Up: Chicago

You can bet that Chicago's corp-counsel is studying Chapter 9 of the BK code.  It won't happen this year--but it's imminent.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed the books on 2012 with $33.4 million in unallocated cash on hand — down from $167 million the year before — while adding to the mountain of debt piled on Chicago taxpayers, year-end audits show. 

Last week, Moody’s Investors ordered an unprecedented triple-drop in the city’s bond rating, citing Chicago’s “very large and growing” pension liabilities, “significant” debt service payments, “unrelenting public safety demands” and historic reluctance to raise local taxes that has continued under Emanuel.

That "low taxes" thing--at least, low property-taxes--goes back at least 30 years.  Compare like-valued bungalow prop-taxes in Chicago and Milwaukee and you'll be astonished at how little the FIBs pay.

Is De-Funding ObozoCare Our Lexington Green?

Since ObozoCare is designed to fail, what is Obozo actually trying to do?  (Wherein we walk back our Sensenbrenner-bashing but propose another theory.)

Before we get into the technical stuff on ObozoCare, keep some other things in mind:  the politicization of the IRS and its database, the use of NSA and its database for domestic spying (not to mention drones), Obozo's increasingly strident class- and race-war rhetoric, and the rear-guard actions of  Tonto Holder.  It's also very important to recall that Obozo is, and always has been, an Alinskyite revolutionary who ran with a crowd of bomb-throwing Communists.  He's not just a rabble-rouser with a pretty face.  And despite the focus on ObozoCare, this is NOT just about ObozoCare.

...The far bigger portions of the program, including the billions and billions of dollars in subsidies that will start going to Americans on Jan. 1, are mandatory spending, an entitlement funded by an automatic appropriation which is written into law and runs without further congressional action. To change that, Congress would have to change Obamacare.

In the Senate, that would take 67 votes — the amount needed to overcome a guaranteed presidential veto. If the 46 Senate Republicans voted unanimously to end the Obamacare entitlement, they would have to persuade 21 Democrats to go along....Human Events quoting Byron York.

On that point, Sensenbrenner was correct.

But that's not all that York wrote.

...Money to fund Obamacare comes from two sources. A relatively small part of it, including some of the funds used to get the program going, comes from Congress’ regular yearly appropriations. Congress could raise or lower the amounts without changing Obamacare itself. The defund-Obamacare Republicans in the Senate hope to strip out that discretionary funding from a continuing resolution needed to fund the government that Congress will debate in September.

They know they won’t succeed. Democrats, with 54 votes, have enough to pass anything that requires a simple majority, and won’t have much trouble getting to a filibuster-proof 60 votes, either....

IOW, the Pubbies could tug at ObozoCare's cape, but not really derail it.

There are consequences either way.

Karl Rove...warned he was nervous about the effort because “it gives the President the bully pulpit and a gigantic stick on which to beat us, because all he has to do is say, ‘Look, this law was passed, it’s on the books, I’m going to veto your continuing resolution that doesn’t fund ObamaCare, and it’s on you for shutting down the government.’”

No kidding, Karl.  Really?  Will pResident Divisive really do that?  My stars!

In fact, Karl, that's exactly what he's hoping to do.

Weakening this parasitic system before it takes root is vitally important.  Karl Rove may be overestimating the threat ObamaCare’s failure poses to the grand design.  It’s supposed to fail, and the answer proposed by its authors will be more government control, not less.

Review again:  IRS, NSA, Holder, race- and class-war rhetoric, and then think.

Why is the Gummint buying every round of ammo that it can??

Hayward, our essayist, is subtle, but makes the point and invokes a couple of the right images:

...is ObamaCare really an irreversible mistake?  It’s difficult to repeal a Big Government program with billions of dollars in subsidies and slush funds, but this whole notion of Americans as slaves to political destiny is both offensive to our traditions, and untrue. Everything can be changed.  Even the Constitution can be amended.  The people who say the Constitution is a meaningless old scrap of parchment also claim a law passed in 2010 is chiseled in stone, and hung around the neck of every American for the rest of history with an unbreakable chain. What’s needed to effect meaningful change is determination....Remind Americans that forcing them to finance the propagation of ideas they disagree with is tyranny...

God help us all, because "determination" may not be the only necessity here.

Ruling Class/Country Class Revisited

Angelo Codevilla could smile with pride.  Ross Douthat finally figured out that the good Professor is right.

Douthat references Bolingbroke.  Codevilla could have referenced G K Chesterton's "Hudge and Gudge".

Nothing new under the sun--except the growing and more surly resentment from the ruled.

By the way, Rand Paul owes no small debt to P J Buchanan and Ron Reagan.

Krauthammer Goes All War-Party

Krauthammer is either whistling through the cemetery by pretending that 'the majority' of Republicans are "interventionist," or he's exposing the difference between Republicans and Actual Conservatives.

Either way, K-hammer opened his mouth and reminded us that he's a member of the War Party, just like Billyboy Kristol, John McCain, and a few other fossils-with-megaphones in DC.

As a reminded to Chuckie, "interventionism" is a social disease usually pimped by the military/industrial complex.  Eisenhower warned us about that pimp and its consequences. And Ike was no "isolationist."

Was RoJo Bought Off by McConnell?

It appears that RoJo has been given a shiny object to pursue--"getting a handle on the debt/deficit with Obama & Co."--so that he'd keep his mouth shut and eyes closed over ObozoCare.

(In passing, we heard Jim Sensenbrenner tell us that 'Obozocare can't be de-funded because it's an entitlement.'  Really, Jimbo?  You think we're as stupid as that, Jimbo?)

Here's Protein Wisdom's take on the Senatorial Quislings who have refused to sign onto Lee's proposal:

...What brought Levin to state this so bluntly, using words like “quisling” to describe OK’s Tom Cole, is the reaction of the GOP leadership in the Senate to the Mike Lee proposal, which would fund all the rest of the government, but would ask the House to refuse to fund ObamaCare — the ready occasion for such a brilliant strategic broadside being that Obama continues to re-write the law on the fly, handing out waivers and delays to corporate interests while insisting that private citizens and smaller businesses get no such grace period.  This is law by whimsy, which means it is no stable law at all.  It is lawlessness and imperial diktat.

The Lee plan — which McConnell has remained silent on, but whose position we can glean from Cornyn’s sudden desire to have his name removed from the Lee letter, McConnell being the only Senate Republican who can put pressure on Cornyn — is being actively opposed and publicly criticized by Republicans, who insist that because Obama is President, the measure is nothing more than a “temper tantrum” (Cole, a Boehner Lt.) and “one of the dumbest ideas” Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) has ever heard.

Such outrage!  Such sturm und drang!!  Such asinine remarks!!  Such willful blindness wrapped in a cloak of righteousness!!!

To be clear, the measure would not shut down the government unless Obama and Reid decided to shut down the government.  And even then, the GOP House can pass bill after bill funding all other aspects of the government, leaving the ball in Obama and Reid’s court.

Beyond even that, the strategy is a political winner — not just a Constitutional and fiscal winner.  And that’s because it amounts to the GOP keeping it’s [sic] promise to repeal ObamaCare, not by way of symbolic votes that will always go to the Senate to die, and so are not votes to repeal ObamaCare at all; but rather by using the power of the purse to defund inequitably enforced and wildly unpopular law.

So why all the screeching from the harpies (yes, they're not really masculine) like Burr, and the treachery of McConnell?

This is, as I’ve noted a million times here, the perfect way to pull the veils off of the GOP establishment and its ruling class designs.  It essentially puts an end to the Kabuki theater we’ve all been witness to from the GOP leadership (who I’m convinced secretly salivate over the power and revenue ObamaCare will bring into the government) and forces them to show their faces:  any Republican who does not support the measure is, in fact, voting to keep ObamaCare and see it implemented and taking root.

And RoJo--who GOT ELECTED because he wanted to eliminate ObozoCare--sold his birthright for a mess of pottage:  sitting in the White House, lifting his little finger and having tea over "defining the deficit."

Even Wales would have been better, RoJo.

All Your Privacy Is Ours!!

ObozoCare throws your privacy under the bus.

...The Privacy Act is a general prohibition, subject to narrow exceptions, on disclosure of records between agencies or to the public. The “routine use” exception allows disclosure when the use of a record is “for a purpose which is compatible with the purpose for which it is collected.” Privacy being essential to patient care, it is impossible to justify a “routine use” exception for a system knowingly built in a way that will permit disclosure of intimate health care data. 

In this regard, the administration is not only preparing to violate the law, it is also holding itself to a far lower privacy standard than that to which it is trying to hold the private sector. In announcing the administration’s “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights,” last year President Obama himself said, “American consumers can’t wait any longer for clear rules of the road that ensure their personal information is safe online.”

A June Government Accountability Office (GAO) report gingerly avoided all the significant privacy and operational issues surrounding the HHS system, and did little more than report that CMS admitted it was behind on certain parts of the program but felt it could catch up. Nowhere did our congressional watchdogs show any sign that they had actually tested the system and considered its readiness for public use.

HHS:  your more friendly NSA!

"ObozoCare" Advertising: $700 MILLION

He'll spend $700 MILLION taxpayer dollars advertising "ObozoCare"...but only where (D) incumbents are a threatened species.

It's no wonder that we refer to them as FIB's.

Ryan Likes NSA Snoopers, Too!

One wonders on what platform Paul Ryan will run in '15/'16.

He has never voted to de-fund ObozoCare and never advanced the idea as Chair/Budget.

He is assiduously working for amnesty.

And he doesn't mind NSA's hoovering of every phone call, email, and 'net browse.

Sensenbrenner, Petri, Duffy, and Ribble voted to de-fund NSA's super-snooper, by the way.

Ryan voted with Kind to keep it.

Cat Dumps, China Mfg Dumps, and Coal....

Cat's EPS went south by about $1.00.

Red China's (PMI) manufacturing index cratered.

Coal used to refine metals in the US is down, down, down.

Richmond Fed numbers foretell misery.

ObozoNomics Strikes Again!!!