Chickens come home to roost - or maybe burn up

POSTED BY BILL

As you probably know, NASA has warned that the space station (ISS) may be "termporarily" unmanned later this year if the Ruskies can't get their act together and figure out why an Progress supply capsule launch failed recently.  Much of the same technology is used in their Soyuz manned capsules.  THESE CAPSULES ARE NOW THE ONLY WAY to move crew to and from the ISS.

Bush, Obama, and Congress are all to blame for this.  Bush prematurely set in motion the Space Shuttle retirement, Obama cancelled its replacement, and Congress does what Congress does - argue.

So now, shortly after being completed and fully staffed, a orbital complex representing the best technology and highest aspirations of our species is in jeopardy.  The ISS is designed to be unmanned - for a time - but things break and many times astronauts have performed needed on the spot repairs.  If the ISS loses its abilty to maintain stability, it will lose its solar power and if it begins to tumble will be very hard to control or ever dock with again.  Unstable, it would also experience more atmospheric drag and without the ability to reboost its orbit, could make a fiery re-entry one year soon.

A small percentage of the money we've wasted on "stimlulous" programs could have easily kept the shuttle up and running indefinitely - while "saving" real jobs.  NASA lost the funds, didn't get the replacement, and we have to pay the Russians high fees to orbit our astronauts - if they can.

Drill, Baby, Drill

POSTED BY BILL

Minnesotans for Global Warming with another funny video.

"The One" in a terminal dive?

 POSTED BY BILL

Things are not looking good for Obama.  Still 14 months to go.  Real Clear Politics averages all the "major" polls to get a smoother, more reliable look.  Gallop is worse than this - minus 17 points.  Ouch!

Cops need to stop some actual crime and leave lemonade stands alone

Having put a stop to all gang violence, murders, rapes, B&E's, assaults, meth labs, drunk driving, and jay walking, the local and state police are being dispatched all over the nation to once and for all put an end to the scourge of the scofflaw lemonade stands that pollute the serenity of law-abiding suburban neighborhoods from Palo Alto to Poughkeepsie.

If food permits are the problem, why not send out smarmy, humorless bureaucrats who didn't get breast-fed as children to rough up and disappoint the young entrepreneurs? Why waste cop time on lemonade stands when people are being raped and murdered everywhere? Is it because 12 year olds selling lemonade don't shoot at cops when confronted? It's a lot safer to roust kids doing what kids have done for generations rather than actually stop someone from being brutally assaulted or stop somebody's kid from getting hooked on crystal meth. Stopping actual crime is dangerous work and the union thugs might not approve.

Good grief! What has this country become?

This time around, will Geraldo actually weep again?

With hurricane Ilene bearing down on the east coast and the 50million or so residents in her path, I wonder how dumb celebrities and media will contort themselves to blame Obama for directing the storm against white people, the way they blamed Bush for Katrina? When urban residents fail to leave their homes and get stranded or drowned, will there be looting, cannibalism, and Geraldo literally crying about the plight of America's poor downtrodden?

Surely the mayors of DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York will have plans for evacuating their respective "chocolate cities", that don't involve school buses. Let's at least hope this guy hasn't relocated to the east coast or there'll be a shortage of Heineken in the aftermath.

A distinction without a difference

The media still don't get the Tea Parties. We are the square peg that doesn't fit their round-hole paradigm of political movements. That's why we'll always surprise them.

Over at Slate David Weigel wrote an article entitled: Why Tea Party candidates won't win any elections next year: because mainstream Republicans now spout the same ideas.

That's precisely why the movement began, not only to force the beltway GOP further toward true conservatism and away from the big-spending, compassionate conservatism with which Bush-43 nearly drove the country over the cliff, but to primary any old-school republicans who favored "big-government conservatism"....an oxymoron in our book.

Clearly it worked and the 2010 midterms scared the hell out of vulnerable republicans who saw their colleagues lose the jobs they thought were their God-given birthrights and others brought to the brink of career disaster. So if GOP encumbents are toeing the tea-party line and spouting small-government, low tax, regulatory-repeal platforms, then our efforts were hugely successful. We don't care who's in office as long as they return the US government to what it was intended to be in the Constitution.

The media will declare the Tea Parties dead when we don't kick to the curb, enough sitting republicans as in 2010. But we're still here waiting for them to step out of line again and then we'll primary them just like their buddies in 2010.

We will rebuild

What, too soon?

MLK's memory debased by his embarrassing excuse of a family

This is nothing short of profoundly embarrassing.....

From NYPost -- WASHINGTON -- The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s family has charged the foundation building a monument to the civil-rights leader on the National Mall about $800,000 to use his words and image -- and at least one scholar thinks that Dr. King would find such an arrangement offensive.

Everybody knows the dysfunctional King family are money-grubbing bastards with little else on their minds except enriching themselves personally off the life of their famous relative. That's embarrassing enough, but then to find that the actual stone used by the communist Chinese sculptor was quarried in China, is even more astonishing and humiliating for the US. Are there no black sculptors in the US competent enough to do a bust of King for the DC monument? Must we outsource everything including our art?

At least taxpayer money wasn't used for this. The foundation that got the outrageous bill from the King family was supported entirely by donations, but still.

I'm no copyright lawyer, but I would think that as long as no profit was being sought, the use of the likeness and words of Dr. King would surely be public domain by now?

California

POSTED BY BILL

Ed has asked me to help out with posts - I hope this is the right week, Ed.

Anyway, I visited the coast of California with my wife for the first time ever a couple of weeks ago.  She had always wanted to drive down the Pacific Coast Highway, and it lives up to every bit of its billing for spectacular scenery.  Wow!

We also drove back to catch our plane through the Salinas Valley.  In case you don't know, much of the fresh produce you see in your grocery store comes from there.  Imagine mile after mile of fertile fields, irrigated by a vast underground aquifer, and ideal climate.  Plus, oil wells!

California really has a lot going for it.  Climate, resources, tourism.  Forget the earthquakes for now.  So, the question is, why are the state's finances in dire straits (nautical term), even by the standards of the Obama economy?  The answer of course is that liberals run the place lock, stock, and barrel (that's a firearms term by the way).  Just this past year, voters there returned the egregious Barbara Boxer (call me Senator) over the well respected businesswoman Carly Fiorina.  They returned the retread Jerry Brown to the governors office over talented Meg Whitman, who had made e-Bay into a powerhouse.  The Democrats run every aspect of California politics.  The projected 2011-12 deficit is $19 billion.  Taxpayers are fleeing every higher taxes, and everyday people find it hard to afford to live there.

They used to say California was the future of America.  I pray it isn't true.

If you know more about California than I - and you probably do, please let me know where my analysis is wrong.

Verizon thugs lose

After two weeks of loafing, 45,000 thankless Verizon employees will return to work without having their outrageous demands met by management. The union was upset that Verizon wanted to freeze pensions and asked that employees contribute something to their health benefits coverage, kind of like most workers around the country have to do. In order to extort what they wanted, unions scared the crap out of the neighbors by protesting at the CEO's house, they threw feces at workers who crossed the picket lines, and they used their own kids to force vehicles to stop so they could berate the drivers. Why didn't Verizon fire their asses and hire all new workers at a reasonable wage and benefits level?

You'd think they would be happy to have jobs at all given the national employment situation. Moreover, they should be thankful to still be working at all, since they work in the archaic and shrinking landline division. Let's hope this union defeat portends others like it in the months to come. Unions are bad for America.

The plusses and minuses of the 19th amendment

On this date in 1920 the US ratified the 19th Amendment which moved womens' right forward by giving them the right to vote, but it set sandwich making back by generations.

Bachmann bows out in 3.....2.....1

I like Michelle Bachmann for the most part, but she's going to quickly marginalize herself in the presidential race by making outrageously outrageous claims like this....

From CNN -- "Under President Bachmann you will see gasoline come down below $2 a gallon again," Bachmann told a crowd Tuesday in South Carolina. "That will happen."

It is easily demonstrated that no matter how much oil we pump here in the US, it will have little or no effect on the price at the pump because the Saudis will likely decrease their output to offset what we pump. So the world crude balance will stay more or less the same. Plus, even if you buy the argument that we can affect the price of gas at the pump by drilling domestically, the most we could produce would affect the price by no more than $.03. It fluctuates that much daily anyway.

The next time she gets interviewed, the person will ask her to explain how she'll decrease the price as President and whatever her answer is will be wrong because she can't. By promising something she can't deliver, she makes herself look like just another populist politician.

The radical Islamization of Egypt

It begins....

From Haaretz.com -- Several killed, at least 26 wounded after armed gunmen fired on bus traveling near Eilat, close to Egypt border; IDF and trades fire with gunmen; mortars are fired from Egyptian border; IDF kills several terrorists.

The Arab Spring, we were told by our betters in government, will rise up in country after country, abandon the barbaric cult known as Islam, and the middle east will moderate because all they want is freedom, opportunity, and access to wifi-powered social networks. Turns out, not so much. The same backward, Muslim extremists who infest Gaza, Syria, and Jordan are now in Egypt. Israel is now entirely surrounded by armed, aggressive enemies willing to kill its civilians.

Israel needs to ignore the Islam-centric US government, put foot to ass, and handle these terrorists with extreme prejudice.

Blacks abandon The One

There are three truths in life....death, taxes, and blacks voting for democrats by a margin of 10:1. And when you have a black democrat the numbers go up from there. To save my life I don't get this, but that's how it is. But even the most stridently racist member of congress, Maxine Waters is softening her blindingly loyal support of Obama over jobs for blacks.....

From WashingtonExaminer -- The problem, Waters said, is that Obama is not paying enough attention to the problems of some black Americans. The unemployment rate for African-Americans nationally is a little over 16 percent, and almost twice that in Detroit. And yet, Waters said, the president is on a jobs-promotion trip through the Midwest that does not include any stops in black communities.

When are blacks going to figure out that democrats dismiss them and their interests entirely between elections because they know they can count on their vote no matter how bad things get. If there is a rich white person around to blame things on, blacks will believe what ever lying democrats tell them. That's why the war on poverty has done nothing but expand poverty. Democrats need blacks to be downtrodden, poor, unemployed, and dependent on them for housing, food, and medical care. That's how democrats keep getting elected, by fooling blacks into thinking they are fighting to get the stuff whites took from them, when it's the democrats who intentionally created the very situation in which black toil and suffer.

Maybe blacks are finally getting wise to the fact that even Obama takes them for granted when it's not within 6 months of an election.

Afghanistan is a dark, money pit for US taxpayers

As most of you know, there is a long running debate between regular-reader Bill and me regarding the usefulness and wisdom of our military misadventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. I've known Bill for 30 years. We served in the USAF together and admittedly his excellent debate points have moderated my positions on US invading foreign countries. That said, today I'll try to drag him a little bit back toward the dark side. Here's my latest debate point....

From the Toledo Blade -- WASHINGTON — After examining hundreds of combat support and reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan, the U.S military estimates $360 million in U.S. tax dollars has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has spent nearly a decade battling: the Taliban, criminals and power brokers with ties to both.

If I've said it once I've said it dozens of times, we cannot and should not afford to go around the world destroying countries(or in the case of Afghanistan, the country where we believe our enemies are hiding) and then burden taxpayers for the money to rebuild it, better than it was before. Worse, the money we're hemorrhaging in Afghanistan is not even going to nation building. It's being funneled into the hands of our enemies, but the political class in the US won't lift a finger to stop it. Such a colossal waste of resources and men I've never seen.

You cannot nation build in a God-forsaken desert where 13th century nomadic tribes rule, corruption is rampant, and drugs are the single source of revenue for the entire country. It can't be done. Why we're attempting to believably apply the Bush doctrine of preemption to Afghanistan is a complete mystery to me.

The UK riots summed up nicely in one poster

This encapsulates perfectly the inevitable, pathetic end result of the nanny-State. Heh heh....the formerly great Britain will never live these riots down.

5 Rules of Life

‎I borrowed these from my FB friend Terri.....

5 RULES OF LIFE


1.Money cannot buy happiness but it’s more comfortable to cry in a Beamer than on a bicycle.

2. Forgive your enemy but remember the bastard’s name.

3. Help someone when they are in trouble and they will remember you when they're in trouble again.

4. Many people are alive only because it’s illegal to shoot them.

5. Alcohol does not solve any problems, but then neither does milk.

#3 is my favorite.

Obama micro-manages the economy

Centrally planning the economy is plank #1 for liberals....

From TheHill -- The country’s automakers should ditch their focus on SUVs and trucks in favor of smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, President Obama said Monday.

“You can’t just make money on SUVs and trucks,” Obama said during a town hall forum in Cannon Falls, Minn. “There is a place for SUVs and trucks, but as gas prices keep on going up, you have got to understand the market. People are going to try to save money.”

Who is Obama to say on what you can or cannot make money? Consumers determine what makes money and what doesn't. It's none of the governments business. And it certainly isn't up to a politician to dictate which products are brought to market and which ones aren't.

When the national government is involved in regulating every aspect of the lives of the citizenry, then what's the purpose of having a country at all? The cost of compliance with federal regulations is 1/10th GDP. That's like taking the entire Canadian or Indian economy and throwing it down the toilet every year. With every new regulation and mandate from government, the US inches closer and closer to collapse.

Iraq, an utter waste of time

Nothing's ever going to change in Iraq....

From MSNBC -- Bomb blasts ripped through more than a dozen Iraqi cities Monday in apparently coordinated attacks that killed at least 60 security forces and civilians.

It was in the worst attack this year, and one that highlighted al-Qaida's resolve and ability to wreak havoc. There have been at least 23 separate bomb blasts since late Sunday night.

Civilians die by the scores in Iraq as the smug political class in the US fantasizes that we've actually accomplished anything at all there. All we've done is donate 10 years, countless billions of dollars, and thousands of lives to an utterly lost cause. We've been bragging as recently as last month about how decimated Al Qaida has become as a result of our military presence and then they coordinate the killing of 60 civilians right under our noses. We've done nothing in Iraq but waste time, treasure, and blood.

My God, what are we still doing there?

Union tactics turn zoo-like

When labor unions aren't increasing exponentially the cost of doing business in America or getting drunk and high on their lunch breaks, they're crapping in their hands and throwing it at picket-line crossers.....

From LaborUnionReport -- On Friday, a judge in New Jersey granted Verizon some relief from its striking unions by granting an injunction against International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 827–one of the two unions that has pulled 45,000 union members out on strike.

Union thuggery gets more and more disgusting! A judge actually had to write an injunction ordering striking workers not to throw feces at non-striking workers. They're like animals with this behavior, and not much smarter.

Michelle Bachmann proving more resilient than people expect

Tim Pawlenty should have known better than to attack Michelle Bachmann the way he did about her migraines. And while the questions about her lack of executive experience were valid, he persisted to the point of coming across as unfairly picking on her. Why not go after Romney? Or Obama? It's too early in the primary campaign to starting the cannibalism of other republicans.

With every slight by Pawlenty, the Tea Party golden girl Bachmann's support seemed to galvanize and she came away from Iowa stronger. I don't see her being the nominee, especially with Gov. Perry in the race now, but if she can stick around through and after South Carolina without any major gaffes or scandals, she could position herself as a serious candidate for the #2 slot. In the mean time the other candidates should choose carefully their criticism of her. It backfired for Pawlenty.

Warren Buffet, not putting his money where his mouth is

Super-rich Warren Buffet wrote an op-ed over the weekend in which he whined that the super-rich like him should be taxed far more than they currently are. Pat Buchanan on MSNBC's Morning Joe challenged Buffet asking, [paraphrased]"If you think the rich should be paying more in taxes, why don't you go ahead and scratch a $5Billion check to the government and set an example"?

Buffet could easily afford to fork over another $5Billion. He'd never miss it. No word so far on his response....heh heh.

Is this the GOP ticket in 2012?

I've seen worse looking tickets. This could very well be the pairing that kicks Obama to the curb in fifteen months. Romney would be more tolerable with tea-party Bachmann on the ticket.

When are you people going to learn?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you own a pit-bull and trust it not to kill you, you are a retarded moron. Once again we hear a tragic story from Pacifica, California where a pregnant woman was mauled to death by the family's pet pit-bull terrier. Her husband came home to find the dog prowling around the bloody body of his pregnant wife. She had multiple, severe trauma wounds on her upper body and head.

The dog slaughtered a mother and baby. How f-ing stupid are you people? These dogs are bred for one purpose, to kill as viciously as possible. What makes anybody think it won't kill them when the right switch is tripped?

I get why rappers and rednecks like to own killer dogs. By associating the dogs power, dominance, and viciousness with themselves, it makes them feel more powerful and dominant when they really aren't. But rappers and rednecks are stupid, imbecilic, and developmentally stalled at like age 16. Normal people should know better.

A mother and unborn baby slaughtered by a dog....good grief!

Liberals blame everybody but criminals for UK crime

Over at The Atlantic, some nimrod named Derek Thompson posits that if the US implements austerity measures that are similar to those in the UK, we could well see our disgruntled youths resort to violence here. He legitimizes and decriminalizes the violence with the lame rationalization that poor, unemployed youth naturally become violent marauders, looters, and vandals when you try to take away their government support. And you're practically asking for it if you cut generous social programs too much.

No, youths who are criminals resort to criminal behavior when they get cut off from the teat at which they've been sucking at the expense of other people better than them. People aren't natural criminals, criminals are naturally criminal. What government can do to prevent this sort of thing is make the business environment as friendly to business as possible. That way most of these would-be thugs would have jobs rather than sitting around idle collecting a check that they think they deserve. We can easily prevent this from coming to America, but Obama and the democrats won't abandon their dreams of a vast, Soviet-style welfare state with themselves at the top of it. If we stupidly re-elect Obama next year, we'll deserve every bit of what we get....just like the UK deserves what they are getting now.

Barney Frank almost made me vomit a little bit in my mouth

I was just tripping around over on Belchspeak while I ate leftover spaghetti for lunch at my desk when I came across this video of Barney Frank farting on live TV. Obviously a must watch.....



When he farted, I was in mid swallow and seriously, I dry heaved. How disgusting! What a repulsive piece of human waste this man is!

Disappointed NYT journalist retreats to fantasy

So desperate is the left with single-minded concentration on Obama's success that their columnists have resorted to fantasizing about how they'd like things to be. Thomas Friedman of the NYTimes wrote an article pretending that John Boehner poked his finger in the eye of the tea party and joined forces with Obama by becoming a center-left republican. Friedman wonders what would happen if Boehner abandoned the very constituency that handed him the House majority and the Speaker's gavel.

I can answer that very quickly. If republican leadership tries to marginalize or ignore the tea party, in 2012 John Boehner and any republican that joined him would find themselves out of work....their political careers well and truly over. But that's exactly what Friedman was fantasizing about. Tea Party people are not GOP loyalists. We're happy to toss out anybody who fails to fight for the core principles of economic conservatism.

Obama golfs while race relations smolder before the explosion

I'm getting tired of posting these stories, but they are happening with alarming regularity and the media are ignoring them for reasons we all know. Somebody has to get the word out. This is from CBSlocal in Philadelphia.

[my account] A white dude was minding his own business riding his bicycle when out of the blue a gang of "youths" (PC code for black youths) stepped out and punched him in the head with brass knuckles causing three skull fractures and severe flesh lacerations. Not once in the article was the ethnicity of the youths mentioned and we all know why.

When a white cop rightfully confronts a black man who's breaking into a house, later found to be his own, who then acts belligerently toward the cops, Obama calls the cop stupid and hosts a beer summit on race relations. But when dozens of instances of black flash mobs loot stores and beat the crap out of hundreds of white people, for no reason but that they are white, Obama ignores it and takes another vacation. You democrats call that leadership?

Wisconsin teachers' unions lose again

Heh heh, distraught Wisconsin teachers are upset that they failed to unseat enough republicans in the 6 recall elections held yesterday to take control of the state senate. What they should be distraught over is their decision to become lazy, entitled teachers who sponge off fellow taxpayers to fund lavish benefits packages and outrageous union salaries.

Let's hope this portends more big gains by conservatives in 2012.

Detestable black racist Van Jones' latest absurdity

Remember Van Jones? Of all the liberals who detest America and proudly express contempt for it, he might be the worst and that Obama made him a czar is more than telling about our President. Here's the new video from Van Jones' "Contract for the American Dream" featuring clueless children demanding that we provide for them a behemoth welfare state in which they provide nothing for themselves.....



This is so transparently absurd as to be laughable. Only the most unhinged liberal socialist could take something like this seriously....well, an unhinged liberal socialist or President Obama, but I repeat myself.

Al "Scoop" Sharpton breaks the news story of the year

After only a couple of weeks on the job, Al Sharpton is already making news by breaking stories that every other news organization missed entirely. Watch and be amazed....



That's right folks, the stock market plunged 630% on Monday following the credit downgrade. And if you think that maybe the good Reverend misspoke....he said it twice. Boy, that MSNBC knows how to get the best and brightest from the bottom of the barrel to represent it against FOX....heh heh.

The Amateur in Chief is just mailing it in now

One could have guessed that the Commander in Chief, on whose watch the US had its credit rating downgraded for the first time...ever, would want to calm and reassure the nation with an afternoon address from the white house. So as the stock ticker trended ever downward, we watched The One glide coolly to the podium on Monday. Then it all sort of fell apart.

Despite having had all weekend to think of something to say and perhaps memorize it, he retreated to the teleprompter and read the tired rhetoric of partisanship, blame, and tax hikes written by what must have been a severely hungover, white-house toady. It was a lame, uninspiring, recycled version of every speech he's given in the past three months.....

[paraphrased] "We need a balanced approach to deficit reduction", "Extremists in the republican party held the nation hostage", and then bizarrely, "we must reduce our debt by spending more on infrastructure and increase revenue by raising taxes on the filthy rich"

As the market tumbled 630points, Obama recited the same old democrat talking points regarding the Tea Party, taxes on the rich, and government stimulus. In a word, it was awful and beneath the office of President. But then Obama the Amateur is himself beneath the office of President.

Showdown in Wisconsin

It's recall day in Wisconsin. Six wise, conservative state legislators stood bravely with Gov. Scott Walker and brought some fiscal sanity to Wisconsin by forcing the absurd teachers' unions to heel. Since the riots by loafing teachers, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been saved, jobs are being created, and they are on a path to solid, fiscal footing for the first time in a long time. You'd think the resentful, greedy teachers would be happy with that. But labor unions want lavish salary and benefits packages to be paid for by anybody but them, and if you mess with their thug racket, they'll recall you.

If you people in Wisconsin recall even one of these legislators then you deserve to have your state go bankrupt and run completely out of money. You can't be that stupid!

Please support anyway you can the six legislators that faced down the dreadful Wisconsin teachers' union. Every state needs legislators like that.

Financial crisis is of our own making

In the wake of the US debt downgrade everybody is pointing fingers at who they want to take the blame. Democrats are trying to damage the Tea-Party by bizarrely linking it to the downgrade. Beltway republicans are blaming Obama and feckless, Senate democrats, rightly so. The media are blaming conservatives in general, just because that's what the media does in any crisis....blame conservatism.

But what's the real case? Taxpayers are to blame ultimately because we continue to demand more and more government services and entitlements and continue to elect representatives who'll give it to us. We demand they provide us with all manner of care while simultaneously demanding that they not raise our taxes. What's wrong with us?

Until we are willing to take responsibility for our own lives and upkeep and elect fiscally responsible representatives who'll act responsibly while in office, we'll continue to toil in this financial uncertainty. We've no one to blame but ourselves.

Our government operates only with the consent of the governed, and we have consented to this.

London burning

Supposedly the violent riots in London and other UK cities are in outraged response to the killing by police of one dude, who police say shot first. This is as much about that as the looting and violence in New Orleans after Katrina was about poverty and need.

These youths are nothing but opportunistic thugs and criminals....and a stupider group of hooligans I haven't seen since the Rodney King riots in LA. They're destroying their own neighborhoods and looting the stores of their neighbors. What cretins! The cops need to go ahead and start shooting people. That should get their attention.

Hopefully the astonishingly relaxed criminal justice system in the UK might see the light here and start actually punishing people for criminal acts. Their experiment in mollycoddling misbehaving youths has been an abject, utter failure. It's time for the heavy hand of the law to crack some skulls in the motherland.

Department of Innovation logo is a perfect metaphor for government

Have you figured it out yet? How hilariously perfect this logo is for any government agency, but when it's used for the Smithsonian's blog called Department of Innovation, it approaches the sublime?

Three gears interlocked in this configuration cannot turn at all. Much like the government itself, they are locked in position, unable to do anything useful. Plus, the spacing of the teeth on the smaller gears is way off. Even if they could turn, you wouldn't get more than a few degrees of rotation before the machine chewed itself to pieces....heh heh.....perfect!

Lowering the standards

Here's the headline today regarding the pitiful state of eduction in America...Obama Administration Exempting Schools From Federal Law’s Testing Mandate.

I'm no fan of NCLB. It was one of Bush's many mistakes, as it forces teachers to teach to the federal standards test and practically asks for schools to look for ways to cheat. That said, I find it as telling as it is absurd that when a group cannot meet that standards set by the feds, rather than get rid of the bad program, they just lower the standards so that dumb students are now considered smart students. Is there anybody who thinks the students, schools, or America is well served by this preposterous policy?

It's just like with Obamacare. Obama has granted to date 1,500 waivers to businesses who would have to close their doors in order to comply with the program. Here, he's granting waivers from NCLB so that schools(which employ many unionized teachers who slavishly vote democrat) don't have to go on probation.

That's always the democrat answer to failing....lower the standards for failure so that the same performance is now passing.

Al Gore needs to release another chakra

Those of us with brains have never believed in the man-made global warming lies that Al Gore used to manipulate dumb Americans into making him rich beyond belief. We knew all along that the "science" was at best guessed at and at worst wholly made up by this fat pervert.

First it was shown that the Earth had not warmed at all, then all the measurements that "proved" his absurd theory were shown to have been falsified, then the e-mail scandal at IPCC exposed the AGW agenda, then NASA showed the ozone hole didn't exist, then scientists were fired for questionable data collection regarding the put-upon polar bears, now we see the final card in the AGW house of cards has been blown down with the news that the polar ice caps are not shrinking at all, but thickening.

At every turn, Al Gore's disturbed, farcical fantasy that man somehow has any influence at all in the weather, has been proven a pitiful, corrupt charade.

Ha ha....Gore should go back to stuffing his pie-hole with pie and fondling hotel masseuses against their will.

Obama's curious ideas on job creation

Here's Obama on the bleak jobs situation....

From FoxNews[emphasis mine] -- "Extending the payroll tax credit to put a thousand dollars in the pocket of the average American worker. Extending unemployment insurance to help people get back on their feet. Putting construction workers back to work rebuilding America."

I get the construction jobs, but still those are temporary, make-work jobs that end as soon as the money runs out. But if somebody can explain how prolonging a crutch that makes it easier not to work helps get them back to work, I'd sure like to hear it. Unless the idea is that they'll spend the unemployment money and that'll stimulate the economy and some guy might get hired in a few months.

These ideas seem pretty indirect, too long term, and lame to me. If he wants to create millions of jobs almost immediately and guarantee his re-election, cut taxes across the board, impose a moratorium on all federal regulations for 100 years rendering rogue agencies like the EPA pointless, repeal Obamacare, and start drilling for oil all over the country and our oceans. That should do it. 

We humiliate ourselves in Afghanistan

WARNING: this post is liable to offend the delicate. If you consider yourself to be delicate, don't read it.

It's Ramadan in Afghanistan. In case you didn't know, Ramadan is the yearly religious observance by backward Muslims who regard a barbaric pedophile as a god. Fine by me. Who cares what nutty religious rituals are observed by drug-addled nomads in their God-forsaken shit hole of a country? That said, why are our military women required to wear their garb in order to be sensitive? And why are all our soldiers told not to eat or drink during the daylight hours of Ramadan for fear of offending the delicate sensibilities of people in whose country we're currently killing people and blowing things up?

Afghanistan was a lost-cause hell-hole before the US existed and it'll be a hell-hole long after we're gone. Why are we wasting money we don't have on a corrupt, third-world country that hates us and that will never be a functioning, trust-worthy republic?

Black on white crime goes unnoticed by virtually everybody

Can somebody explain the sudden explosion of what is apparently racially motivated black on white mob crimes around the country? This happened at the Wisconsin state fair where "hundreds" of black youths attacked only white people leaving the fair. This is how one witness described it....

From Todaystmj4 -- "I had a black couple on my right side, and these black kids were running in between all the cars, and they were pounding on my doors and trying to open up doors on my car, and they didn't do one thing to this black couple that was in this car next to us. They just kept walking right past their car. They were looking in every body's windshield as they were running by, seeing who was white and who was black."

My question is why don't the media, police, politicians, or race hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton say that this is black on white crime? It's racism straight up, yet they won't say it because it defeats their politically convenient view that all blacks are righteous victims and all whites are minority-hating devils.

This is a perfect use for the second amendment. I'll be damned if I'll let anybody drag my family out of our car and beat us because we're white. Some body's getting shot.

Cops don't appreciate being made fun of....who knew?

Heh heh, in Renton, Washington police are angry at whoever posted animated, Youtube videos mocking and ridiculing their bad behavior. The corrupt police there have been caught having sex while on duty and in uniform, soliciting and receiving unfair promotions, and the list of bad behavior goes on. Nothing in the cartoons is made up. The police did everything that's being made fun of. The embarrassed Renton police chief has even gone so far as accusing the poster of cyber-stalking.

Good luck fellas. Ever hear of the first amendment? It was written specifically to protect citizens from punishment for not respecting the authorities by criticizing them.

Gov. Perry stepped in it

This is a little disturbing about Rick Perry, more for what it says about his willingness to pander to social conservatives than about the issues themselves.

Historically Rick Perry has been an avowed federalist, that is he believes in the 10th amendment to the Constitution which is the states-rights portion of the founding document. Then yesterday, in a blatant pander to the SoCons, he said that he supports federal laws prohibiting gay marriage and abortion.

Now Gov. Perry must clear up which is the most important position because he can't say he believes in the 10th amendment and simultaneously favor federal legislation on issues that constitutionally belong with the states individually. My problem isn't about his positions on gay marriage and abortion. I don't really care because it's not the business of the President to worry about it either way. My problem is his willingness to say anything when it comes to corralling the religious right into voting for him.

Forget the SoCon hardliners, stand on the Constitution and you'll likely get all us Libertarians.

Vancouver welcomes crack heads

The city of Vancouver is planning a program through which that city's crack-heads can get clean crack pipes and a safe, supervised environment in which to get high. I thought Vancouver was better than this, but then it is still Canada, the nanniest of nanny-States.

Here's an idea for a way to recover the cost of the program. Why not do it stadium style where citizens buy tickets to watch government-trained supervisors distribute crack pipes and crack to homeless, degenerate, derelicts and watch them get high, fight with each other, and yell at no one in particular. Plus, when the inevitable OD takes place, we can watch the lazy, government workers argue over whose job it is to perform CPR while the crack head passes away, ridding us of responsibility for his upkeep. It's like a two-fer....top-shelf entertainment and public service all in one.

Some people just need killing

Those a-holes in the Westboro Baptist Church are going to Norway to protest the funerals of the 76 adults and children who were murdered there. I don't know if Norway has similar laws to the US that prevent grieving families from killing people like this, let's hope not. It wouldn't hurt my feelings one bit if a gunman killed every one of them 18 years old or over.

What in the name of Wilber Wright is the Essential Air Service?

Anybody know what the Essential Air Service(EAS) is? Me neither. But apparently this was the big sticking point that caused the FAA to shut down operations over the last few days because of tea-party objections to the waste that it represents.

Here's the 411 on the EAS: in '78 when the airlines were deregulated congress, fearing loss of air service to small towns where voters live, passed a subsidy law stating that any community that had been enjoying service could get government money to coax airlines into continuing to serve that community. The assumption was that in order to be more competitive, airlines would cut unprofitable service to small towns. And why shouldn't they? Airlines are private businesses which exist for only one reason...to make as much profit as possible.

Insufferable democrat Jay Rockefeller made this his pet project 30 years ago and taxpayers are still being raped to the tune of over $100Million a year to pay for people who choose to live far from large airports, to enjoy convenient flight service. I realize that $100Million is a drop on the bucket, but you have to start eliminating the waste somewhere.

This is no different that punishment-gluttons in Florida wanting other Americans to subsidize their outrageous hurricane insurance policies do they can afford to keep living on the beach in the paths of hurricanes.

Not only should the EAS be scaled back, it should be eliminated altogether. And I'll bet there are hundreds of idiotic pork expenditures like this that if eliminated, would make a sizable dent in the budget deficit.

Essential Air Service??? WTH?

Ann Barnhardt sums up the debt deal nicely

This is esteemed conservative Ann Barnhardt. She has an explanation of the charade that is the debt-ceiling bill everybody's celebrating today....

I stole this entirely from our friends over at Moonbattery --(Ann) There are no spending cuts in this plan. It is all accounting fraud. Saying that you are not going to spend money in Afghanistan ten years from now is not spending cuts. Even if you accept the $1 Trillion in cuts over ten years propaganda, that is only $100 Billion per year, which is essentially meaningless relative to the size of the problem. Furthermore, even a minuscule uptick in interest rates, which given the massive debasement of our currency is now a mathematical certainty, will completely consume that $100 Billion per year. It’s all a joke.

(Dave Blount of Moonbattery)... Meanwhile, Comrade Obama has been given the green light to waste another $2 TRILLION over the next 16 months.

Where do you think this money is going to come from — who has two trillion dollars to loan us? China? Nope. Not even close. China’s entire GDP is only $6 Trillion. … This $2 Trillion is going to come from the Federal Reserve. Where is the Federal Reserve going to get $2 Trillion? They are going to print it out of thin air. We are in the midst of the largest currency debasement ever seen in human history. There is only one result that can come of currency debasement: hyperinflation and total economic and societal collapse.

Right you are Ann! It's all a big charade and the media will ignore these facts as they praise democrats for being compromisers and vilify the tea parties for being ideological obstructionists. 2012 is shaping up to be even more important than it was a week ago....that is if the country hasn't gone the way of Greece by then.

Step in right direction or s%@t sandwich?

Members of congress are today congratulating themselves for averting a national crisis(assuming the Senate votes yes), but what have they really accomplished by passing this debt deal? The Congressional Budget Office calculates that the annual spending deficit is now at a staggering $1.5Trillion. In this debt-ceiling bill, there are $1.4Trillion in spending cuts.....over then next 10 years. That only comes to $140Billion a year for those of you who were having your self-esteem stroked in 5th grade instead of learning simple division.
I'm no math whiz, but $140Billion a year in cuts when we're spending over ten times that over what we take in each year is not exactly making progress toward fiscal responsibility.

Imagine that our economy is a bus being driven by Congress and we're barreling toward a cliff at 100mph. This bill doesn't apply the brakes and back us away from the cliff as feckless politicians will claim at election time. It just slows our rate of travel to 90mph, but we're still headed over the edge. This is why our credit rating should be downgraded....we're clearly not serious about fiscal responsibility.

Lost in all the hoopla and self-congratulatory reveling in Congress is that the spending cuts are all back loaded so that no constituencies get seriously cut heading into the 2012 election. The three things you can always count on in life are death, the sun rising in the east, and self-serving politicians always looking toward the next election when writing legislation. They should be ashamed.

Crisis averted? Not so fast

So now that there is a tentative deal to raise the debt ceiling, most brain-dead Americans and the media will return to their reality-TV obsessions and looking for missing, pretty white girls respectively. But is our AAA rating all that safe now?

We were never going to default on the interest payments on our national debt. Those would have been paid first and some other less important stuff would have been sacrificed. Besides, the investment rating we enjoy isn't just based, as the media would have you believe, on whether we pay our debts. It's partially about that, but it's really about our long-term path and whether it's fiscally responsible or recklessly heading us toward the same cliff we just avoided. If the spending isn't reigned in enough for the analysts, they'll still downgrade our rating, and deservedly so. Then the economy will really tank because suddenly interest rates will skyrocket and nobody will be able to afford to borrow money.

Yes, thanks to tea-party pressure, the notion of raising taxes to pay for the revenue shortfall never made it to the discussion table, but the next job is to rid the legislative branch of as many socialist democrats and RINO republicans as possible and of course rid the country of the two-bit, street-corner pamphleteer the media installed into the presidency. The price of fiscal conservatives not taking control of congress is one debt crisis after another....the uncertainty of which will surely cause a downgrade of our credit rating.

MSNBC shows it's populist slant

Here's the headline over at MSNBC, Bank giant posts $11.5 billion profit, then slashes 25,000 jobs

Clearly the message is, "How dare a profitable company cut jobs when they are making so much money? Those jobs belong to those workers and they have a right to employment."

Wrong! Jobs belong to the company. HSBC is pulling out of South America and other Spanish-speaking countries where they are less competitive to concentrate on the Asian markets where they are more competitive. They may be cutting 25K jobs one market, but they will probably create that many jobs in other markets. Where does this socialist liberal mentality come from that assumes workers have a right to the jobs they hold?