No tax inreases for those under $250 k?

As long as you don't use utilities, buy food, clothing, automobiles, TV's, stereos, smoke, drink beer or soda, gamble, etc......

You're good.

Are liberals stupid or mentally ill?

A couple of months ago, I was having beers at my local watering hole when I asked a friend the following question.

"Are liberals just stupid or is it all about power for them?"

Because you really don't have to do a lot of research to figure out that all things liberals run are train wrecks.

For instance, the WSJ has a great piece comparing various aspects of life in New Jersey, New York and California against the rest of the US. They break down the information by government health care, unions, taxing the rich etc. The information is down right ugly. Here is one such example.......

Government spending as economic stimulus. State-local spending per capita is $12,505 in New York (second highest after Alaska), $10,136 per person in California (fourth) and $9,574 in New Jersey (seventh).

Has all this public sector "investment" translated into jobs? Not quite. California had the nation's third highest jobless rate in May (11.5%). New Jersey and New York had below average unemployment rates in May compared to the national average of 9.4%, but one reason is that so many discouraged workers have left those states. From 1998-2007, which included two booms on Wall Street, New York and New Jersey ranked 36th and 31st in job creation. From 2000 to 2007, the New Jersey Business & Industry Association calculates that nine out of 10 new Garden State jobs were in the government.

So let me ask the wiz kids at Plunderbong, Progress Ohio, The Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, etc.

Are you liberals because you are a dumb ass or because you are mentally ill?

Compare the parties

Republicans




Democrats

Life in "Progress" City

From the "progressive" city of Cincinnati, who hasn't had a republican mayor since a mile high ice sheet covered the city.............

Two key witnesses in a Hamilton County murder trial refused to testify Friday.

Jonathan Williams, 18, refused for a second day to testify and was sent back to jail to serve a six-month sentence for contempt of court.

Derrick Johnson, 18, who was arrested Thursday, also refused to testify Friday.

He will be given one more chance to change his mind later today.

Williams told police last year that he saw a gun in Ravea Garnett’s waistband just before shots were fired into a crowd in the West End, killing an innocent bystander.

Garnett faces five charges, including murder and attempted murder.

Now let's chart the future chain of events for this neighborhood......

1) These guys won't testify which will result in a murderer being set free. Now let me ask you, is Mr. Garnett going to honor the people in Redville with his residency? No. He'll be back in one of those crime ridden, "progressive" neighborhoods where he'll be able to victimize the residents again.

2) Mr. Garnett will victimize his neighborhood again.

3) A bunch of rhymin' reverends will march on the streets demanding that the police need to do more to get criminals like Garnett off the streets when the very residents of these neighborhoods won't do their job to keep these scum bags off the streets.

In defense of these clowns who won't testify, they know the deal. Even if they testify and this guy ends up in the can, he won't be there long. And when he gets out who do you think he's going after?

But ask yourself. Is it the big bad conservatives heaping these derelicts on an oppressed neighborhood? Or could it be the policies of "progressives" who believe in light sentences for the criminal scumbag who will go right back to being criminals when they get out.

I have a friend who is really high up the city police force chain of command. In a moment of candor, he will tell you that the city of Cincinnati police force spends over half of their time dealing with criminals who should already be behind bars. When these dolts continue their life of crime with impunity, what does that say to the community?

As I've said hundreds of times, I'm not a conservative for me. I'm a conservative for the least of us. And when Mr. Garnett heads back out into society and kills or rapes someone, you can thank a liberal.

What's so "progressive" about urban blight?

More.......

Deep Thoughts

Deep Thoughts by Gordon Gekko

Apparently, the inflation rate for medical care is 9-10% annually. As a result, liberals want to take it over. Yet public education costs and government spending exceed 10-12% and nary a word.

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We were at war

How can you tell when liberals don't get it?

Read this piece.........

In September 2005, I was sitting in a window seat on a commercial flight from Madrid to Philadelphia. It was mid-afternoon on a Tuesday. The plane was above the clouds in the sunshine, halfway across the Atlantic.

I was returning from a long trip in Europe. It was typically frenetic--six countries in five days, visit after visit with politicians and businessmen, diplomats and soldiers. I was tired, but marveling at what a great job I had. It's like being the chief legal officer of a medium size country. Any conceivable legal issue conjured up by the Department's more than ten thousand military and civilian lawyers could end up in my lap. I remember my head buzzing with those possibilities as I began to doze.

And then it hit me with a jolt. I knew this flight. It was the same flight that we had tracked four years earlier on September 11, 2001.

More.......

Thanks to reader Tim for the tip.

Make your travel plans now

Looking to get to that tropical paradise but you don't have the cash to make that flight to Bermuda or the Caribbean?

Here's an idea. Go out and try and kill some innocent US citizens and the Obamunists will take care of all the travel arrangements.........

Bermuda and Palau may not be the only beautiful tropical islands to host illegal Islamist combatants being released from US custody at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station. If a Hawaii County Councilman and a Kauai County activist get their way, some would get a new home—and complete freedom--on two of Hawaii’s most beautiful islands.

Thanks to reader Jeremy for the tip

More here........

Life in "Progress" City

From the "progressive" city of Detroit, who hasn't had a republican run the city since Hitler was an aspiring artist.....

City Council member Monica Conyers, the wife of powerful Democratic congressman John Conyers, pleaded guilty Friday to accepting cash bribes in exchange for supporting a sludge contract with a Houston company.

Conyers, a fiery 44-year-old first-term council member, admitted in federal court to a single count of conspiracy to commit bribery, responding quietly to questions from Judge Avern Cohn.

She faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when she's sentenced.

A coincidence that Conyers stopped his investigation of ACORN right at the exact same time his wife made her plea deal?

The real question though is this; when dear Monica gets out of the slam will she be reelected?

Thanks to reader Becky for the tip.

More.....

Sure why not

Ahmadinejad Demands Apology From Obama


Hey, he's apologized for everyone else for everything else, how about apologizing for something he's done for a change........

A libertarian dilemma

As a libertarian, I have no problem with casinos in the state of Ohio. As far as I'm concerned anyone who wants to waste their money on gambling; go for it. After all, I waste more than enough money on beer.

However, each and every casino initiative we get in this state is nothing more than a real estate cartel masked in a gambling statute.

And here we have another one coming down the pike; making it number 6 or 7........

Supporters of an initiative to bring casino gambling to Ohio want to take their case to the voters.

Petitions will be filed Friday asking that the Ohio Jobs and Growth Plan be placed on the November ballot.

The plan is a proposal for an amendment to the Ohio constitution that would allow casinos in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo.

They argue that casino gambling has the potential to bring up to 20,000 jobs to the state, as well as more than half a billion dollars in tax revenue.

Now here's my beef with these deals.

Why can't Lorain, Canton, Akron, Youngstown, Marietta, my home town of Lancaster, Springfield, Dayton, Athens, Portsmouth, etc. have a casino?

Why is it OK for these other cities to suck revenue from outlying communities for benefit of the four "chosen" cities? Why can't Nelsonville Ohio have a shot at building a casino if it deems that they could use the jobs.

And how about the states race tracks where authorized gamblig activity is already zoned and taking place? Why can't Beulah Park, Scioto Downs, River Down, Thistledown et al have gambling in their establishments?

Instead, what we get is a half ass attempt to line the pockets of some rich guys who own the land these casinos are allowed to inhabit. Of course, no one in the rest of the states want to support these bills because they get no benefit out of them.

When will anyone in the state legislature take the initiative and write this law the way it should? After all, isn't that their job?

More.....

Did he get his health care?

From yesterday's Enquirer.........

Two Cincinnati men were arrested in a hotel room early today and charged with the shooting Monday of a 22-year-old man at a Lockland business.

A fugitive task force and Lockland police took Fonta Whipple, 26, and Jashawn Clark, 25, into custody about 12:30 a.m. at the Holiday Inn, 600 W. 3rd St., Covington police said. The men were located in a room with two other people.

Whipple was charged with felonious assault and is accused of being the gunman who pumped 10-15 bullets into Derryan Holland of Lincoln Heights just before 2 p.m. Monday at Bad Boyz Car Wash and Detailing on North Wayne Avenue, Lockland police said.

snip

The victim suffered life-threatening injuries and remained at University Hospital Wednesday.

So here's my question.

When the Emergency Squad took Mr. Holland to University Hospital did the hospital ask him for his insurance card before they pulled the 10 - 15 bullets from his body?

Is it actually possible he's sitting in a hospital room with no coverage?

How is that possible?

Ha ha Ha Ha ha

This was so funny I spit my diet Dew all over my keyboard when I read this headline.

Congress Must Pay for What It Spends

Democrats won't be the party of deficits.

Read the hilarity here

Is it real or is it The Onion?

Congressman Offers Preemptive Apology For Extramarital Affair

Morons, idiots and liars aka Democrats

Remember a few weeks ago when Barney Frank dressed down a questioner who challenged his role in the housing debacle?

Well, how is it that no one in the mainstream media has the balls to challenge this.....

Back when the housing mania was taking off, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank famously said he wanted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to "roll the dice" in the name of affordable housing. That didn't turn out so well, but Mr. Frank has since only accumulated more power. And now he is returning to the scene of the calamity -- with your money. He and New York Representative Anthony Weiner have sent a letter to the heads of Fannie and Freddie exhorting them to lower lending standards for condo buyers.

You read that right. After two years of telling us how lax lending standards drove up the market and led to loans that should never have been made, Mr. Frank wants Fannie and Freddie to take more risk in condo developments with high percentages of unsold units, high delinquency rates or high concentrations of ownership within the development.

Fannie and Freddie have restricted loans to condo buyers in these situations because they represent a red flag that the developments -- many of which were planned and built at the height of the housing bubble -- may face financial trouble down the road. But never mind all that. Messrs. Frank and Weiner think, in all their wisdom and years of experience underwriting mortgages, that the new rules "may be too onerous."

More.....

Socialism 101.... ask California

From reader Bernie

Congressman Tim Bishop Encounters Angry Citizens at Townhall Meeting

Deep Thoughts

Deep Thoughts by Gordon Gekko

Another politician admits to spooning with a skank. Here's my question. I can barely manage the one relationship I have with the lovely Mrs. Gekko. Where do these guys find the time, money, and energy to juggle multiple relationships? Maybe I should give these guys some of my yard work......

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The National Debt Road Trip

HT Porkopolis

Deep Thoughts

Deep Thoughts by Gordon Gekko

Obama says that under his plan you'll be able to keep your doctor. But, under his plan, will your doctor want to keep you?

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The science is settled

The American Thinker has a piece abut the perils of implementing a public policy based on bad science.

Here's a time line they've put together on "the science" of global warming....

Read the piece here......

Tapper calls Him out

Jake Tapper, outside of Major Garrett, the only DC press member who doesn't pack a set of knee pads as part of his job description.

Deja Vu all over again

So if we're going to shore up the housing market, what we need to do is relax lending standards; right? Despite the fact that is what aided our current economic straights.

If you're Barney Frank, the rainbow dinosaur, that's the answer...........

Back when the housing mania was taking off, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank famously said he wanted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to "roll the dice" in the name of affordable housing. That didn't turn out so well, but Mr. Frank has since only accumulated more power. And now he is returning to the scene of the calamity -- with your money. He and New York Representative Anthony Weiner have sent a letter to the heads of Fannie and Freddie exhorting them to lower lending standards for condo buyers.

You read that right. After two years of telling us how lax lending standards drove up the market and led to loans that should never have been made, Mr. Frank wants Fannie and Freddie to take more risk in condo developments with high percentages of unsold units, high delinquency rates or high concentrations of ownership within the development.

Once again, I ask the question; are liberals mentally ill or dolts?

More.......

Life in "Progress" City

From the city of San Francisco, who hasn't seen a republican since man invented time......

San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris' office on Monday defended allowing about a half dozen first-time drug offenders to clear their records by going through a job-training program, even after prosecutors learned they were deportable as undocumented immigrants.

But Harris' aides said they have since made changes in the program that would prevent a recurrence of instances in which illegal immigrants got their criminal records cleared by going through the Back on Track jobs program, which trains offenders for jobs that undocumented immigrants legally would be prevented from holding.

The Los Angeles Times first reported Monday that illegal immigrants had been enrolled in the program and that Harris' office had let several graduate and go free even after learning of their status.

What's so "progressive" about giving benefits to illegals over Americans?

More......

Thanks to reader Jeremy for the tip. How he lives out there, I'll never know.

Mr. Polite

at Hope n' Change Cartoons:


HT Doug Ross

Major Garrett - What took so long?

The only reporter who dares question The One.

Surprise, surprise, surprise

In, what should be a surprise to no one, the three major networks evening news ratings are hitting all time lows.....

TVNewser has learned the CBS Evening News has once again set an all-time low last week with 4.89 million Total Viewers and 1.42 million A25-54 viewers. But it was also the lowest (since records began in the 1991-'92 season) for ABC's World News with Charles Gibson. The Gibson program drew 6.42 million Total Viewers and 1.77 million A25-54 viewers.

Here's an idea for CBS, NBC, and ABC.

If you intend to just do Obamamercials, go hire Billy Mays and/or the Shamwow guy; they're a lot more entertaining.

Read the rest......

Yep

No one can put this any better....

He places personal and party ideologies over what is best for America. I thought when appointing justices, it was supposed to be "the best person for the job" and "justice is blind." Affirmative-action policies and "empathy" aren't part of the requirements for appointment.

He fits the definition of being a narcissist perfectly. This makes him extremely dangerous for the country. He only cares about what is best for him, not the country.

He is ashamed of our country (as was his wife until Barack won his party's nomination) even though it has given him immense amounts of opportunity. He constantly feels the need to apologize for our country's history of perceived repressiveness.

Sorry, Barack, we are the greatest country in the history of the world. No country has done more for other countries where there has been suppression of human rights, and Americans are unmatched in raising money and supplies for others when natural disasters hit.

You have been hanging around the Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers too long.

You have been going around (the Muslim world in particular), speaking of "the promise of a secular nation." How much more arrogant and ignorant can you be?

Even though you think highly of your rhetorical skills, you are not going to change the fact that a vast majority of Americans believe in God.

Why do you keep implying to other countries that our country was not founded on Judeo-Christian principles?

Your history of duplicity is unmatched. This was illustrated numerous times throughout the campaign. You carry it forward into your presidency.

You incur the largest-ever budget deficit and then insist that we operate on a pay-as-you-go principle from now on. Of course, shortly thereafter, you exempt your government-run health program costs from this rule. You are great with smoke and mirrors, Barack. You are the ultimate flim-flam man.

You are a corrupt man. You appoint tax cheats and disreputable people to positions of power. You promise no lobbyists in your administration, yet no other administration had close to the number you now have.

You fire people who uncover very serious issues of impropriety by organizations run by individuals who are close friends of yours. You had your Justice Department cancel a criminal suit against goons, representing your friends ACORN and the Black Panthers, involving voter intimidation tactics at election polls.

read the rest.......

Life in "Progress" City

From the city of New York, where the public schools haven't seen a republican since Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery..........

Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that's what they want to do.

Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its "rubber rooms" — off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.

The 700 or so teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues — pretty much anything but school work. They have summer vacation just like their classroom colleagues and enjoy weekends and holidays through the school year.

"You just basically sit there for eight hours," said Orlando Ramos, who spent seven months in a rubber room, officially known as a temporary reassignment center, in 2004-05. "I saw several near-fights. `This is my seat.' `I've been sitting here for six months.' That sort of thing."

What's so "progressive" about educators not in class?

Read the rest.........

Finally...... Democrats who get it

From the state of Maine, who just reduced their top marginal rates to make their state income tax more flat....

This month the Democratic legislature and Governor John Baldacci broke with Obamanomics and enacted a sweeping tax reform that is almost, but not quite, a flat tax. The new law junks the state's graduated income tax structure with a top rate of 8.5% and replaces it with a simple 6.5% flat rate tax on almost everyone. Those with earnings above $250,000 will pay a surtax rate of 0.35%, for a 6.85% rate. Maine's tax rate will fall to 20th from seventh highest among the states. To offset the lower rates and a larger family deduction, the plan cuts the state budget by some $300 million to $5.8 billion, closes tax loopholes and expands the 5% state sales tax to services that have been exempt, such as ski lift tickets.

This is a big income tax cut, especially given that so many other states in the Northeast and East -- Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York -- have been increasing rates. "We're definitely going against the grain here," Mr. Baldacci tells us. "We hope these lower tax rates will encourage and reward work, and that the lower capital gains tax [of 6.85%] brings more investment into the state."

These changes alone are hardly going to earn the Pine Tree State the reputation of "pro-business." Neighboring New Hampshire still has no income or sales tax. And last year Maine was ranked as having the third worst business climate for states by the Small Business Survival Committee. Still, no state has improved its economic attractiveness more than Maine has this year.

One question is how Democrats in Augusta were able to withstand the cries by interest groups of "tax cuts for the rich?" Mr. Baldacci's snappy reply: "Without employers, you don't have employees." He adds: "The best social services program is a job." Wise and timely advice for both Democrats and Republicans as the recession rolls on and budgets get squeezed.

Do you think the thought has ever crossed Governor Ted's mind?

More.....

The "progressive" Utopia of California

They called it paradise
I don't know why
Somebody laid the mountains low
While the town got high


From the Golden State..............

California has exerted a weird, hypnotic pull lately, as Americans have watched the Golden State roll toward what might just be financial Armageddon. The state government is facing a $24 billion deficit, but Democrats and Republicans in Sacramento are showing very little ability to get the problem solved.

As a result, California is “less than 50 days away from a meltdown of state government,” the state controller said last week.

It’s hard to know whether to stare in horror or avert your eyes.

Our advice: Stare. Because in California’s example, there are lessons for Minnesotans and North Dakotans to learn.

One such lesson has to do with public-employee pensions and a state’s fiscal health. California faces unfunded public employee retirement benefits of somewhere between $300 billion and $1 trillion, a panel discussion at the Milken Institute’s State of the State Conference concluded in May.

Joel Kotkin, presidential fellow at Chapman University in Orange County, Calif., and a popular writer on public policy, agrees. “The item that is most killing the state budget is the huge pensions for public employees,” he said in a recent CNBC interview.

“We have to figure out what we’re spending, how we’re spending, and to begin to make the public employees live by something close to the rules that the rest of society does.”

Basically, California governments let many workers retire early and collect generous pension and benefits for life. In Vallejo, Calif., for example, “base pay for firefighters is more than $80,000 per year, and employees can retire at age 50 with a pension equal to 90 percent of their salary,” Governing magazine reported last year.

Vallejo declared bankruptcy in 2008, citing pension benefits it no longer could afford.

More..

The Law of Unintended Consequences

How have attempts to encourage home ownership in this country worked out?

In December, the New York Times published a 5,100-word article charging that the Bush administration’s housing policies had “stoked” the foreclosure crisis—and thus the financial meltdown. By pushing for lax lending standards, encouraging government enterprises to make mortgages more available, and leaning on private lenders to come up with innovative ways to lend to ever more Americans—using “the mighty muscle of the federal government,” as the president himself put it—Bush had lured millions of people into bad mortgages that they ultimately couldn’t afford, the Times said.

Yet almost everything that the Times accused the Bush administration of doing has been pursued many times by earlier administrations, both Democratic and Republican—and often with calamitous results. The Times’s analysis exemplified our collective amnesia about Washington’s repeated attempts to expand homeownership and the disasters they’ve caused. The ideal of homeownership has become so sacrosanct, it seems, that we never learn from these disasters. Instead, we clean them up and then—as if under some strange compulsion—set in motion the mechanisms of the next housing catastrophe.

And that’s exactly what we’re doing once again. As Washington grapples with the current mortgage crisis, advocates from both parties are already warning the feds not to relax their commitment to expanding homeownership—even if that means reviving the very kinds of programs and institutions that got us into trouble. Not even the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression can cure us of our obsessive housing disorder.

More.........

CNBC's Jim Cramer: "Everybody Wishes Obama Would Just Kind Of Go Away"

HT Bizzyblog

Life in "Progress" City

Here's a list of the US's twenty five worst crime ridden neighborhoods in the country.

Congratulations to the 'Nati. They pulled in a big ole number one down in an area straddling Over the Rhine and the West End; or the area these passenger rail freaks want a trolley to roll.

Fact, If you live in that neighborhood, you have a 1 in 4 chance of being a crime victim in the next year.

Not to be left out, a Cleveland neighborhood at Cedar and 55th street made the list at #21.

Just out of curiosity, in these twenty five neighborhoods, I wonder how the vote demographic broke down between McCain and Obama.

That "Progressive" Utopia

They called it paradise
I don't know why
You call some place Paradise
Kiss it goodbye.............

From the liberal Utopia aka California..........

Call it the Dance of Death, the Kabuki or the Summer Follies -- the performance they're about to give in California's Capitol is a necessary ritual. But it shouldn't be taken very seriously by the outside world.

Both houses of the Legislature intend to debate the Democrats' deficit-reduction proposal this week. They're the majority party, but their budget plan has no chance of passing intact. It's doomed by nearly $2.2 billion in additional tax increases, mostly on oil companies and smokers but also on motorists.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Republican legislators have the power through the veto and the required two-thirds majority vote to kill any tax hike, and they'll execute with relish.

Democrats expect to lose but will perform the dance anyway. It's a compulsion, an exercise to reaffirm self-identity and exhibit values to patrons and constituents, such as labor unions. Participants get to preach and shout.

"Everybody dances around the fire. They throw stuff at us. We throw stuff at them. Everybody falls over dead, and we start all over again" is how a senior legislative staffer, Phil Perry, once described the dance to me.

Schwarzenegger calls it "part of the Kabuki." But Kabuki is classic Japanese song-and-dance drama. These legislative act-outs give "classic" a bad name and hold zero drama. Observers will, however, hear some political song and dance.

Around the Capitol, such an exercise is derided as a "drill." The goal of Democratic drill leaders will be to show the party troops that they're fighting hard, even in the face of certain defeat preordained by last month's election.

Exactly how do "progressives" look at California and still believe that their policies are effective. Are you insane or an imbecile?

More.....

Currency issues run amok

Here's a long and involved piece about the condition of our currency.

Border guards in Chiasso see plenty of smugglers and plenty of false-bottomed suitcases, but no one in the town, which straddles the Italian-Swiss frontier, had ever seen anything like this. Trussed up in front of the police in the train station were two Japanese men, and beside them a suitcase with a booty unlike any other. Concealed at the bottom of the bag were some rather incredible sheets of paper. The documents were apparently dollar-denominated US government bonds with a face value of a staggering $134bn (£81bn).

How on earth did these two men, who at first refused to identify themselves, come to be there, trying to ride the train into Switzerland carrying bonds worth more than the gross domestic product of Singapore? If the bonds were genuine, the pair would have been America's fourth-biggest creditor, ahead of the UK and just behind Russia. No sooner had the story leaked out from the Italian lakes region last week than it sparked a panoply of conspiracy tales. But one resounded more than any other: that the men were agents of the Japanese finance ministry, in the country for the G8 meeting, making a surreptitious journey into Switzerland to sell off one small chunk of the massive mountain of US bonds stacked up in the Japanese Treasury vaults.

In the event, late last week American officials confirmed that the notes were forgeries. The men, it appeared, were nothing more than ambitious scamsters. But many remain unconvinced. And whether fake or otherwise, the story underlines one important point about the world economy at the moment: that the tension and paranoia surrounding the fate of the US dollar has hit a new high. It went to the heart of the big question: will the central bankers in Japan, China and elsewhere continue to support the greenback even in the wake of the worst financial crisis in modern history, or will they abandon it as America's economic hegemony dissipates?

Heck, and we still have three plus years of the Obamunist rule to go.

More...

Remember?

Reader Tim with the heads up.......

In September 2005, I was sitting in a window seat on a commercial flight from Madrid to Philadelphia. It was mid-afternoon on a Tuesday. The plane was above the clouds in the sunshine, halfway across the Atlantic.

I was returning from a long trip in Europe. It was typically frenetic--six countries in five days, visit after visit with politicians and businessmen, diplomats and soldiers. I was tired, but marveling at what a great job I had. It's like being the chief legal officer of a medium size country. Any conceivable legal issue conjured up by the Department's more than ten thousand military and civilian lawyers could end up in my lap. I remember my head buzzing with those possibilities as I began to doze.

And then it hit me with a jolt. I knew this flight. It was the same flight that we had tracked four years earlier on September 11, 2001.

You know the story: Nineteen hijackers on four planes murdered almost three thousand innocent people in an atrocity unlike any in American history. What you may not remember as well is that on that day the Department of Defense tracked two suspicious international flights--one over the Pacific, and this one over the Atlantic--suspecting they, too, were hijacked and heading towards an American skyline. And we steeled and readied ourselves to shoot them down.

Read the rest

Welcome to the NFL

As long as it's not Bush, I guess the presidency is a cakewalk..........

There was one small consolation for Republicans amid last November’s shellacking. For at least four years, their opponents would enjoy the dubious pleasure of trying to govern the United States of America. Late on election night, while the confetti swirled in Blue America, more than a few veterans of the Bush years no doubt hoisted a toast to the exuberant liberals: Good luck with that

Oh, it seems easy at first. The press is kind; the Congress is pliant; the country loves you. You’re a breath of fresh air after the previous administration’s excesses. Your first attempts at big-ticket legislation shoulder their way into law. The opposition party looks easily divided, easily co-opted and deeply out of touch.

But eventually the hard part arrives. For Barack Obama, it may have started last week, courtesy of the abacus-wielding wonks at the Congressional Budget Office.

First, the C.B.O. slapped a $1 trillion price tag on Chris Dodd and Ted Kennedy’s version of health care reform — a figure, it noted, that would buy coverage for only a third of America’s uninsured. A day later, the C.B.O. priced the Senate Finance Committee’s more self-consciously centrist draft of health care legislation. The good news: The bill would cover more than two-thirds of the uninsured. The bad news: It would cost $1.6 trillion across 10 years.

These are scary numbers, for a country headed for a fiscal cliff — scary enough to send the Finance Committee scrambling to craft a cheaper version of its bill, and scary enough to give liberals flashbacks to the collapse of Clintoncare.

But they aren’t actually surprising numbers. The current U.S. health care system is, by general agreement, overpriced, bloated and hugely inefficient. And if you expand a bloated, inefficient system, it stands to reason that you’ll end up with billions or even trillions more in bloat and inefficiency.

More....

Father's Day

Happy belated Father's Day. I was out visiting my dad yesterday and didn't get a chance to post.

Let me start by saying that I believe that fathers are the largest missing natural resource to our society.

My dad was far from perfect, as few are. But when I think of what my life would have been like without a father living in my home, it's not pretty.

I seriously doubt there would have been a high school graduation in my future; let alone a college one. Given the neighborhood and friends that I maintained, I'm certain the penal system would have become all to familiar.

If my father had used his father as a role model, I wouldn't have even known him at all.

The fact is, for a guy who never graduated from high school and never knew his own father, he somehow managed to raise five kids who have all become productive citizens.

I think that makes for a good dad.