Memorial Day, 2010

Why Bully Breeds are so Awesome

Because there's a party in their heads.

Remeber When Bush Ran the World?

Yea, me neither. Creepy-but-true part 1:

A love of autocracy often lurks beneath the liberal veneer. There’s this idea that the right answers are known and the people are just too deluded and distorted to see what they are and to vote for them.

Creepy-but-true part 2:

Every murderous totalitarian government of the 20th century began with some insulated group of faux-intellectuals congratulating each other on how smart they are, and fantasizing about how, if they could just install a dictatorship-for-a-day, they could right all the wrongs in the world.

It is the ultimate fantasy of the narcissist. And we’ve got whole generations of them, in control of our media and our government, all intent on “remaking America.”

Oh, Like Anyone's Paying Attention

Why would that pesky, pesky Pittsburgh Tribune keep paying attention to stuff like this?

Just weeks after taking office, President Obama signed an executive order encouraging use of project labor agreements (PLAs), which require contractors to agree to union representation and work rules. A federal rule implementing that order took effect May 12, benefiting the 15 percent of construction workers who are unionized -- and hurting the 85 percent who aren't.

This, in an industry with 27 percent unemployment. And with study after study showing PLAs hike costs 10 percent to 20 percent -- and the rule essentially ending open, competitive bidding for federal construction contracts -- taxpayers will feel plenty of pain, too.

Nothing More EVIL Than Free Enterprise

Bad Guys Win Again

I use the term 'guys' since, you know, women are lucky to ride in the back seat of the same car.



From the story's comment section:

Islam is nothing more than fear. Fear generated by unseen devout Muslim believers willing to commit violence in the name of Islam. A larger Muslim population equals more fear. Look at it here, in little old Seattle. Molly Norris has now been silenced, by fear generated by unseen religious thugs. In NYC South Park has now been silenced by unseen Muslim religious thugs. In Western Europe the newspapers, museums, artists, Theo Van Gogh and more have all been silenced by a growing number of unseen Muslim religious thugs. The greater the Muslim population, the greater the number of potential Muslim religious thugs - the greater the fear. And here it is - right here in Seattle. Isn’t multiculturalism a great thing?

As With Any Common Gang, Control is Everything

"Sometimes people (engaged in free enterprise and open commerce) don't do what's best for our society unless congress holds hearings."



Who is this freak? Meet Cass Sunstein. He's the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration.

But wait; there's more! There's always more, unfortunately.

Politics is Showboating

And too often it's sad-clown, leap-without-looking, head-up-ass showboating:

The Los Angeles City Council voted to boycott the state of Arizona over its new immigration-enforcement law, and now the Arizona Corporation Commission has responded. Gary Pierce, one of the commissioners chosen in state-wide elections to the utility regulation panel, notes that Los Angeles gets about 25% of its power from Arizona producers. If the City of Angels really wants a boycott, Pierce offers his services to help, as he explains in a letter to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Read it all, it's quite a call-out.

No Sence Steering Now

Can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, the insurance companies will learn, but one can still examine it. This exam is from a doctor:

Under any system of mandatory insurance, the government must necessarily determine what constitutes an "acceptable" policy. This creates a giant magnet for special interest groups seeking to include their favorite benefit in the mandatory package. Under the similar Massachusetts system of mandatory insurance, insurers must offer (and residents must purchase) numerous benefits that consumers may neither need nor want, such as in vitro fertilization, autism therapy, and chiropractor services. This raises costs for everyone to benefit the politically favored few with lobbying clout.

When insurers recently pointed out that ObamaCare did not actually require them to immediately offer coverage for certain children with preexisting conditions, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius immediately threatened to issue regulations forcing them to do so -- regardless of the actual letter of the law.

Although it is tempting to take delight at the insurance industry's self-caused plight, the inevitable collapse of the private insurance market would also leave millions of Americans without coverage. Even though this crisis would be caused by government policies, liberals would gleefully portray it as a "failure of the free market" and demand that the government "rescue" health care. The end result would be a "single payer" socialized medical system like Canada's or Great Britain's, with rationing and long waits for medical care.

The Vodka is Clear

With a twist of Green:

Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed $12.4 billon in cuts to California’s budget would reduce state spending to levels unseen since… 2008!

Surely, Californians were suffering a from a dearth of government all those years ago.

Bingo.

Saturday Night Blast from the Urban Deck & Backyard

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but
those who torment us for our own good, will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” ~ C.S. Lewis

Hypocrites at the Gate

You really should read all of this:

Last week, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post identified several members of Congress and the Senate who, during the financial crisis, took short positions in the market, betting against the U.S. economy. This behavior is not just hypocritical. It marks yet another breach of the public trust.

In the course of their workday, (elected officials) meet with government officials, captains of industry, and foreign leaders. When these same elected officials phone their Wall Street brokers and take a financial position against the very entity which they are charged with preserving and protecting — the United States — how could it be anything other than a breach of the public trust?

Now why was Sen. Carl Levin so eager to paint Goldman Sachs as a bunch of crooks? To advance the Democrats’ embarrassingly weak and misguided financial reform agenda, naturally.

You Are Not a Molecule. Are You?

“The fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature. Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism. Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility which he exercises in the face of good or evil. Man is reduced to a series of social relationships, and the concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decisions disappears.”

— Pope John Paul II

More here.

Song and Dance Alive & Well

I don't care a lick if he's a savant or a dunce with regard to technology. What I do care about is the continual, audience specific jive and chameleon story telling.

That line about not being able to "know how to work" an iPad or Xbox succeeded in drawing some laughs. But it worked against Obama when the reactions from technology enthusiasts online began pouring in.

Obama "drinks from the 'information overload' Kool-Aid," claimed one blog headline. Having not actually spent time trying to optimize his workflow with a device like the iPad, the president appears to have little basis from which to make such a contentious claim.

So if Obama doesn't know how to use Apple's portable music player -- a product hailed for its ease-of-use, even for a Harvard Law graduate -- was the preelection Rolling Stone magazine article about what's on his iPod a farce?

It reminds me of the heady days when Hilary Clinton was trying to decide who she was, you know, depending on where she was dining.

Whistling Past the Graveyard on the Way to the Congressional Budget Office

It's a story of fiddling and burning and you know the end:

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. They might defuse the dangers by gradually trimming future benefits in a way that reassured financial markets. In practice, they haven't done that; indeed, President Obama's health program expands benefits. What happens if all these countries are thrust into Greece's situation? One answer -- another worldwide economic collapse -- explains why dawdling is so risky.

Abdication of Duty Articulated

It's laid out in Article IV, Section 4. Not that anyone in the Executive Branch cares.

The Quiet is not Better

Ernie Harwell 1918-2010



More here:

So a deal was set up. The Dodgers sent a catcher, Clint Dapper, to Atlanta. And the Atlanta club sent Ernie Harwell to the Brooklyn Dodgers. So Ernie was the first and only baseball broadcaster to be involved in a trade.

Right Proper Spanking

VDH scores with eloquence and reason:

Collate the anti-capital rants of a zillionaire currency speculator George Soros, the green sermons from a late Ted Kennedy who stopped a wind farm from marring his vacation home’s views, a John Edwards of “two nations” fame constructing a Neronian Golden House, a Tom Friedman warning of the consumer habits that lead to a hot, flat earth from a 10,000 square foot English-style estate of the sort that 18^th-century English barons built after successful careers in the Raj, the comic case of Jeremiah Wright moving to a mostly white golf course to dream up more sermons about “white folks’ greed runs a world in need,” or a $5 million a year earning Obama — with all his expenses picked up by the government — lamenting out loud why rich people seem to want ever more money they don’t need. Some spread the wealth around.

We can call this malady Gorism — living not merely at odds with your zealotry, but living entirely against your zealotry.