Worse Than It Appears

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Writing in the Washington Examiner, Michael Barone explains why the Dems are in even worse shape heading into the 2010 elections than it may at first appear from polling data: Obama's job rating among black voters is 91% positive. A lttle back of the envelope arithmetic suggests that Obama's job rating among the 88% or 89% of non-black respondents is about 39% positive and 54% negative. That's pretty weak - a whole lot more negative than the numbers you usually see for all voters. This is hugely relevant to the 2010 elections. Most of the states with seriously contested Senate races or Democratic seats that seem almost certain to go Republican have below-national-average black percentages. Exceptions: Arkansas (where polls show Democrat Blanche Lincoln well behind), Florida, and Illinois.

Son O Frank

clipped from canadafreepress.com Liberals, evidently, have not yet been brought up to speed on the Venona project and other new information.  Obama refers to McCarthyism as “cowardice” in Dreams.  McCarthy didn’t vote “present” on matters of national security. In 1995 the CIA released decoded Soviet communiqués known as the Venona cables which turned out to be most revealing.  After decades of liberals savaging the reputation of Senator Joseph McCarthy, almost no one other than authors Ann Coulter and M. Stanton Evans are talking about the Venona discoveries which vindicate McCarthy. Following the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, enormous amounts of data became available, including the Venona papers:  coded messages from the KGB and other communist intelligence agencies about communist agents in the United States   (Evans, M. Stanton.  Blacklisted By History:  The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies). That would be the  CPUSA of Frank Marshall Davis.

The Captured Estate

clipped from www.doczero.org Just the other day, I was discussing the challenge of maintaining cordial relationships in a highly politicized society with a friend of mine.  When politics have infused every aspect of our lives, right down to the menus at fast-food restaurants, our political opinions are often interpreted as judgments of character.  The conservative sees a diehard Obama supporter as an accomplice to tyranny, while the Obama supporter sees the opponents of socialized medicine as accessories to the murder of the uninsured.  No matter which side of the debate you come down on, it’s easy to see that the stakes are high, and participation has become mandatory.  The option to stay out of the argument no longer exists, because regardless of your station in life, this vast and activist government is not going to leave you alone. I found myself thinking along these lines while watching JournoList, the electronic locker room for liberal reporters, collapse beneath the weight of Dave Weigel’s spleen.

See The Previous Post

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. “Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour,” Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill. To protect against the possibility that its equipment wouldn’t capture all the oil gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch also offered to prepare for the U.S. a contingency plan to protect Louisiana’s marshlands with sand barriers. Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. Read the whole thing.

No Questions Asked

clipped from www.moonbattery.com

U.S.A. R.I.P.: Do Your Job Edition

clipped from hotair.com Via the Right Scoop, proof positive that Palin’s not the only Republican governor who knows how to spin populist gold out of Obama’s failings. The necessary materials? An extremely popular Arizona immigration law, soon to be challenged by the federal government; freaky deaky reports of parts of the state turning into no man’s land thanks to weak border enforcement; and of course a broken promise by The One to send at least token reinforcements to help out. Weave them all together and voila — you’ve got an incumbent who was struggling three months ago on her way to re-election with 55 percent. Well played, Jan Brewer. Very well played.

The Geniuses Of New York

clipped from www.moonbattery.com How could a left-wing fool at best ambivalent as to whether he sides with America against Islamic terrorists get elected POTUS only 7 years after the horrific atrocities of 9/11 — winning by an overwhelming majority in New York, home of Ground Zero? This video explains it:

Boots On The Neck

clipped from www.sodahead.com “Goldman Sachs wasn’t alone either in its astute “foreknowledge” of the collapse of BP’s stock value due to the Gulf disaster as BP’s own chief executive, Tony Hayward, sold about one-third of his shares weeks before this catastrophe began unfolding too. But according to this FSB report the largest seller of BP stock in the weeks before this disaster occurred was the American investment company known as Vanguard who through two of their financial arms (Vanguard Windsor II Investor and Vanguard Windsor Investor) unloaded over 1.5 million shares of BP stock saving their investors hundreds of millions of dollars, chief among them President Obama. Important to note is that none of this wealth Obama, Goldman Sachs, and other American elites is acquiring would be possible without this disaster, all of whom, as the evidence shows, “somehow” knew what was going to happen before it actually did

Here It Comes

clipped from www.numbersusa.com Dear President Obama: We understand that there’s a push for your Administration to develop a plan to unilaterally extend either deferred action or parole to millions of illegal aliens in the United States. We understand that the Administration may include aliens who have willfully overstayed their visas or filed for benefits knowing that they will not be eligible for a status for years to come. We understand that deferred action and parole are discretionary actions reserved for individual cases that present unusual, emergent or humanitarian circumstances. Deferred action and parole were not intended to be used to confer a status or offer protection to large groups of illegal aliens, even if the agency claims that they look at each case on a “case-by-case” basis. Such a move would further erode the American public’s confidence in the federal government and its commitment to securing the borders and enforcing the laws already on the books.

Listen To The Generals

clipped from pajamasmedia.com UPDATE: Flashback: Media Promoted Military Criticism Of President Bush. Well, sure. Under a Republican President, it’s listen to the generals. Under a Democratic President, it’s all about civilian control of the military. Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 2:01 pm

Bush!

clipped from pajamasmedia.com PELOSI EXCUSE FAILS: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., recently blamed Bush appointees who “burrowed in” at the Minerals Management Service for the regulatory failures that led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. But as it turns out, not one of the officials responsible for overseeing the exploded rig was a Bush political appointee. The Washington Examiner has obtained biographic information on the MMS officials responsible for overseeing BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig at the time it exploded, from the Gulf Region Director to the last inspector to set foot on the rig. Most of these federal employees started with the agency decades ago. Not one was a presidential appointment of George W. Bush, although one longtime MMS employee in question was promoted to his current position during the Bush Administration. I blame Sarah Palin. Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 9:46 am

Surrender Moi

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Some residents of Paris wanted to have a little cocktail party last Friday with wine, cheese, and sausage. But, the Muslims... whom we are told are not at all in control of Europe's urban areas, but are just a loyal tile in the beautiful multicultural mosaic that is 21st Century Eurotopia... threatened violence because it was their "holy day," and sausage and wine offend their religious dietary proscriptions. The Police sided with the Muslims, and shut down the party before it even happened. Later, a minor seismological disturbance was recorded as Charles Martel started spinning in his grave. The Charles Johnson "I See a Nazi Behind Every Bush" crowd is claiming that the group throwing the party were just Euro-Fascists who deserved to have their party shut down. But if the authorities can shut down a cocktail party they deem hateful, what's to stop them from shutting down a blog they also deem hateful?

Unravelling

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk And are we any safer now that the EU has failed to restore full confidence with its €750bn (£505bn) "shock and awe" shield, that is to say after throwing everything it can credibly muster under the political constraints of monetary union? This is the deep angst that lies behind last week's surge in gold to an all-time high of $1,258 an ounce. The World Gold Council said on Friday that the central banks of Russia, the Philippines, Kazakhstan and Venezuela have been buying gold, and Saudi Arabia’s monetary authority has "restated" its reserves upwards from 143m to 323m tonnes. If there is any theme to the bullion rush, it is fear that the global currency system is unravelling. Or, put another way, gold itself is reclaiming its historic role as the ultimate safe haven and benchmark currency. It is certainly not inflation as such that is worrying big investors, though inflation may be the default response before this is all over.

February 13th

clipped from www.foxnews.com 1. It appears, Mr. President, that you were informed by BP about problems on Deepwater Horizon on February 13 and the company wanted your help. What did you say? 2. Given this new revelation,  Mr. President, how can you can sleep at night knowing that your inaction cost the lives of eleven men in Louisiana? 3. Did you inform the victims' families about these facts when you invited them to the White House for last month's photo op? 4. You've said, Mr. President, time and again, that the buck stops with you. Doesn’t that statement seem like something bordering on propaganda when you follow it up with what appears to be a false sense of outrage by telling Matt Lauer that you're looking for rear ends to kick? 5. Does the buck stop with you… or not?

Because We May Need The Skimmers Someplace Else!

clipped from hotair.com Remember, this is a guy who wants us to get started on “clean energy” today, even though it could take decades to develop, because there’s no time like the present to begin work. And yet the Jones Act remains in effect almost 10 weeks after the rig blew, presumably because it’ll “take too long” to get skimmers in there. As for the theory that Obama’s keeping foreign ships out to protect American unions, see Bluey’s piece for a debunking of that.

Good Lordy Lord Lord. Un-be-liev-a-ble.

Shocker

clipped from pajamasmedia.com SHOCKER: Sunday Talk Shows All Start With BP Hayward’s Yachting, Ignore Obama’s Golfing. On the other hand, a reader sent this:

The Return

clipped from www.ft.com The US remained the world’s biggest manufacturing nation by output last year, but is poised to relinquish this slot in 2011 to China – thus ending a 110-year run as the number one country in factory production. The figures are revealed in a league table being published on Monday by IHS Global Insight, a US-based economics consultancy. Last year, the US created 19.9 per cent of world manufacturing output, compared with 18.6 per cent for China, with the US staying ahead despite a steep fall in factory production due to the global recession. If China does become the world’s biggest manufacturer, it will be a return to the top slot for a nation which – according to economic historians – was the world’s leading country for goods production for more than 1,500 years up until the 1850s, when Britain took over for a brief spell, mainly due to the impetus of the industrial revolution.

Green Fuel

clipped from www.latimes.com one thing becomes incandescently clear: Fossil fuels have been one of the great boons both to humanity and the environment, allowing forests to regrow (now that we don't use wood for heating fuel) and liberating billions from backbreaking toil. The great and permanent shortage is usable surface land and fresh water. The more land we use to produce energy, the less we have for vulnerable species, watersheds, agriculture, recreation, etc. "If you like wilderness, as I do," Ridley writes, "the last thing you want is to go back to the medieval habit of using the landscape surrounding us to make power." The calamity in the gulf is heartrending and tragic. A thorough review of government oversight and industry safety procedures is more than warranted. But as counterintuitive as it may be to say so, oil is a green fuel, while "green" fuels aren't. And this spill doesn't change that fact.

Know Democrats, Know Despair

clipped from www.redstate.com On June 18, 2010, Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl told the audience at a North Tempe Tea Party town hall meeting that during a private, one-on-one meeting with President Obama in the Oval Office, the President told him, regarding securing the southern border with Mexico, “The problem is, . . . if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’” [Audible gasps were heard throughout the audience.] Sen. Kyl continued, “In other words, they’re holding it hostage. They don’t want to secure the border unless and until it is combined with ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’” Sen. Kyl also said he reminded President Obama that the President and the Congress have an obligation, a duty, to secure the border. Know Democrats, Know Despair. No Democrats, No Despair.

Oooh

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com In the past weeks I have relived this moment over and over, on television and radio, in newspapers and blogs. I've listened to a constant stream of commentary. And my sharpest impression is this: Where before I saw a foggy anti-Israel, anti-Jewish link, it's now clear. This feeling is not about statehood. It's about an ingrown, organic hate. It's a sentiment that bears no connection to history, dates, passages or verses. Erase the facts, the dates and the lore. Erase the Jew. Incredibly, even the Nazis said to the Jews, "Go home to Palestine." But Thomas and a babbling stream in our world and country dictate to Jewish people to "go home to Poland and Germany." Yeah, I said "oooh." Christianity believes in the Jewish ancestry. Islam believes in the prophets Moses and Jesus. Can we just rip away the history of Jews in Israel like a Band-Aid, one quick motion across the centuries? Oooh.

Stilled

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com Britain’s biggest wind farm companies are to be paid not to produce electricity when the wind is blowing. The first successful test shut down of wind farms took place three weeks ago. Scottish Power received £13,000 for closing down two farms for a little over an hour on 30 May at about five in the morning. Dr Lee Moroney, planning director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, a think tank opposed to the widespread introduction of wind farms, said: “As more and more wind farms come on stream this will become more and more of an issue. Wind power is not controllable and does not provide a solid supply to keep the national grid manageable. Paying multinational companies large sums of money not to supply electricity seems wrong.”

DisastO Ho

clipped from www.qando.net Obama has been a foreign affairs disaster to this point, and as Zuckerman points out, this has sent a very clear message to many of those out there who wish us ill as well as those who count themselves as allies: America right now appears to be unreliable to traditional friends, compliant to rivals, and weak to enemies. One renowned Asian leader stated recently at a private dinner in the United States, “We in Asia are convinced that Obama is not strong enough to confront his opponents, but we fear that he is not strong enough to support his friends.” I think at this point, that’s a perfectly defensible and accurate assessment. This is why I continue to say that there are some pretty heavy storm clouds brewing on the international horizon. US leadership is seen as missing or weak – a perfect time for those who take advantage of power vacuums to step forward and make their particular grabs for power. Don’t be surprised to see it happen soon.

Taxed

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com The anti-Obama ads for the 2012 campaign are beginning to write themselves. During the debate over Obamacare, the president insisted that the requirement to purchase health insurance, and the imposition of a penalty for not purchasing it, does not constitute a tax. Here he is doing so (see around 3:20 and 4:00) and, when challenged, suggesting that it's somehow unfair to apply the dictionary definition of "tax" (see around 5:00)!: But now, in response to a lawsuit by various state attorneys general challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare, the Obama Justice Department has described the penalty on those who don't purchase health insurance as a tax. It employs that description to support the government's contention that it has the right to impose the penalty as part of its power to tax.

Rolling Thunder 2010

clipped from www.youtube.com

Edison Retrieved

clipped from www.timesunion.com In one of the recordings, Edison spoke about the creation of the incandescent light bulb on its 50th anniversary. In his remarks for "Edison Light's Golden Jubilee" program on Oct. 21, 1929 in which he shared the stage with Hoover and Ford, Edison offered a stirring, emotional oratory even though he was nearly completely deaf and in declining health. He died two years later, nearly to the day, at 84. "I am told that tonight my voice will reach out to the four corners of the world," Edison said, his voice squeaky and thin, as he occasionally stumbled and lost his place. "It is an unusual opportunity for me to express my deep appreciation and thanks to you for the countless evidences of your good will. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Hitler And Christianity II

clipped from www.godlikeproductions.com During the first years of the regime, and just prior to it, Hermann Rauschning recorded Hitler's conversations with his inner circle. According to Rauschning, a conservative in the ranks of the Nazi party who became the president of Danzig, Hitler said of Christianity: --- "Leave the hair-splitting to others. Whether it's the Old Testament or the New, or simply the sayings of Jesus, it's all the same old Jewish swindle. It will not make us free. A German church, a German Christianity is a distortion. One is either a German or a Christian. You cannot be both...... The very doctrines of National Socialism and Christianity are antithetical. Christianity was held to be the forerunner of Bolshevism, and both were revolts against Nature herself, with the Jews to be behind each. Bormann records Hitler as stating : "Christianity is a religion against natural law, a protest against nature. taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure.

Hitler And Christianity

clipped from www.godlikeproductions.com Hitler commented of Minister of Religion Kerrl’s effort to identify Nazism with "positive Christianity" that it was "the noblest of intentions, but I don't believe the thing's possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself." "As for the men close to me", he stated, "who, like me, have escaped from the clutches of dogma, I've no reason to fear that the Church will get its hands on them. We'll see to it that the church cannot spread abroad teachings that conflict with the interests of the State. We shall continue to preach the doctrine of National Socialism, and the young will no longer be taught anything but the truth." "In the long run National Socialism and religion will no longer be able to exist together. The ideal solution would be to leave the religions to devour themselves, without persecutions." "The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion has to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble."

Have You Been Brainwashed?

clipped from constitutionalistnc.tripod.com "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." --Adolf Hitler (Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, 1976, p. 306) Hitler was intent on having a community of mutual interest that desired mutual success instead of one that was divided over the control of money or differing values. THE COMMON INTEREST BEFORE SELF-INTEREST - THAT IS THE SPIRIT OF THE PROGRAM. BREAKING OF THE THRALDOM OF INTEREST - THAT IS THE KERNEL OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM.

I think so...

The Same Way

clipped from pajamasmedia.com DOCTOR ZERO: The Helpless Titan. “It’s not necessary to ignore the misdeeds of British Petroleum to criticize the appalling performance of our massive super-State. Big Government and Big Business have become so entwined that any disaster on the scale of the Gulf oil spill, or the subprime mortgage crisis before it, will have both public and private agencies to blame. Suggesting that government cannot be criticized until every one of its private-sector ‘partners’ has been bankrupted or nationalized is a recipe for tyranny. We should study the example of BP and understand that only one half of the government-business alliance can call press conferences at will, addressing a media prepared to extend them unlimited credit for their good intentions. The politicians who brought you the subprime crisis are richer and more powerful than ever before. The Gulf oil crisis may well end the same way.” Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 2:05 pm

The Bind

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com The welfare state's death spiral is this: Almost anything governments might do with their budgets threatens to make matters worse by slowing the economy or triggering a recession. By allowing deficits to balloon, they risk a financial crisis as investors one day -- no one knows when -- doubt governments' ability to service their debts and, as with Greece, refuse to lend except at exorbitant rates. Cutting welfare benefits or raising taxes all would, at least temporarily, weaken the economy. Perversely, that would make paying the remaining benefits harder. Greece illustrates the bind. If only a few countries faced these problems, the solution would be easy. Unlucky countries would trim budgets and resume growth by exporting to healthier nations. But developed countries represent about half the world economy; most have overcommitted welfare states.

Absolutely Safe!

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com On Tuesday, I wrote about the numerous false statements in President Obama's Oval Office speech on the oil spill in Obama's Long Nose. Byron York points out one that I missed: "Who told Obama drilling is 'absolutely safe'?" There was one particularly striking moment in President Obama's widely panned Oval Office speech on the Gulf oil disaster. About midway through his talk, Obama acknowledged that he had approved new offshore drilling a few weeks before the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion on April 20. But Obama said he had done so only "under the assurance that it would be absolutely safe." That is, of course, ridiculous. In the world of engineering, nothing is "absolutely safe"--certainly not deep-sea drilling. It seems obvious that Obama was lying to cover his own rear end. It is inconceivable that any expert told him that deep sea petroleum exploration is "absolutely safe."

Tinfoil Apocalypse Update: The Ollusion

clipped from www.qando.net “I hereby announce that from this point forward, one of the Iranian nation’s main aspirations will be to deliver the American people from [its] undemocratic and bullying government.” Thank goodness someone is going to help us in that regard /sarc. Your guess is as good as mine as to how he plans on accomplishing that but his take on Jews remains about the same as when we had a clenched fist. “…Sixty years ago, they [i.e. the West] gathered the filthiest and greatest of criminals, who [only] appear to be human [i.e. the Jews] from all the corners of the earth, organized and armed them – on artificial and false pretexts, fabricating information and inventing stories [hinting at the Holocaust]. They gave [the Jews] propaganda and military backing so that they would occupy the lands of Palestine and uproot the Palestinian nation…” Rhetoric says, at least to me, that the Islamists are warming up to another run at Israel sometime in the not to distant future.

O Non-Socialist Socialism

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Well, not really. What Bammy is actually doing is taking our tax money and giving it to a car company. We taxpayers don't get any actual ownership or financial benefit from the deal. Tesla plans to spend $42 million to purchase the former New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant in Fremont, Calif., a few months after the IPO. The plant is owned by Toyota and Motors Liquidation Co., which is the remains of the former General Motors Corp. that is in bankruptcy. In other words, the government is forcing Tesla to use shareholder money to buy a factory, but then will pay back the shareholders with taxpayer money. Better yet, the car company builds $100,000 cars. So, basically, he's subsidizing a car company for his rich elite homies. Does this make him a non-socialist?

The Greenspan Pig Flies

clipped from finance.yahoo.com With huge deficits currently having no evident effect on either inflation or long-term interest rates, the budget constraints of the past are missing. It is little comfort that the dollar is still the least worst of the major fiat currencies. But the inexorable rise in the price of gold indicates a large number of investors are seeking a safe haven beyond fiat currencies. The United States, and most of the rest of the developed world, is in need of a tectonic shift in fiscal policy. Incremental change will not be adequate. In the past decade the U.S. has been unable to cut any federal spending programs of significance. I do not believe that our lawmakers or others are aware of the degree of impairment of our fiscal brakes. If we contained the amount of issuance of Treasury securities, pressures on private capital markets would be eased.

Here To Stay?

clipped from hotair.com No foolin’. Sounds like the free market, while still officially verboten, is finally here to stay. Bowing to reality, the North Korean government has lifted all restrictions on private markets — a last-resort option for a regime desperate to prevent its people from starving. The fact that they’re now bowing to the same market they tried to starve six months ago speaks volumes. There’s surely no moral imperative within the leadership to prevent mass starvation, so I can only guess that Kim and company have concluded they’re so weak that another round of famine could actually topple the government. Irony of ironies, the dreaded free market might now actually be the only way to preserve authoritarian rule in Pyongyang, a lesson learned long ago by Kim’s friends in Beijing. Speaking of which, your exit question via WaPo: Is the market-ization of North Korea evidence that China’s suddenly gotten stingy with aid?

Unlikely...

Cold Water

clipped from blogs.reuters.com A simple Okun analysis leads to the conclusion that the unemployment rate rose higher than was warranted given the severity of the Great Recession Why? Perhaps businesses, fearing another Great Depression, panicked and just hacked their workforces to bits. Okun’s Law was suspended, but only temporarily perhaps. If one buys this theory, then eventually there should be some payback for that psychological overreaction. At some point soon, unemployment should fall way faster than what the rate of economic growth would indicate according to Okun’s Law. At least this is what the White House —  and congressional Democrats hope. And if they are right, the job market might well unexpectedly strengthen right into the November midterm elections, helping avert the worst for Democratic House and Senate incumbents. No Republican tsunami. But a brand new study from the economics team at Goldman Sachs throws cold water on all this.