So are you still a global warming believer?

Then how do you explain this...........

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.

read the rest of this real science and then tell me how global warming isn't a religion.....

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Decline is a Choice

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Russian snub

Someone forgot to tell these Russians Obama was going to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Brooks and Marcus

Here's two people who get all wobbly just talking about Obama discussing his Nobel Peace Prize.

Barack Obama Wins 2009 Nobel Peace Prize and...

This just in

Apparently, The Downtown Athletic Club just announced that this year's Heisman will be awarded to Barack Obama for watching the Miami (FL) - Florida A&M game this weekend.

Details to come.....

Thanks to Doug Ross for the love.

Peter Beinert, racist

I didn't know Peter Beinert was a racist until I read this column ciritical of our first black president.........

George W. Bush launched a “preemptive” war. Now the Nobel Committee is trying for “preemptive” peace. I had always thought the way these things worked was that you helped bring peace or democracy to some corner of the globe first, and then you won the Nobel Prize. But this year, the Nobel Committee has turned that logic around: It clearly likes what Obama is trying to do: on nuclear disarmament, climate change and Middle East peace—and so, in a “preemptive” strike, it’s giving him the award now, in hopes that doing so will boost his chances of success later. It’s an interesting idea. Perhaps next they’ll start giving Oscars not to the people who have made the best movies of last year, but to the people who have the best chance of making the best movies next year. After all, once you’ve already made the movie, you no longer need the encouragement.

I like Barack Obama as much as the next liberal, but this is a farce. He’s done nothing to deserve the prize. Sure, he’s given some lovely speeches and launched some initiatives—on Iran, Israeli-Palestinian peace, climate change and nuclear disarmament—that might, if he’s really lucky and really good, make the world a more safe, more just, more peaceful world. But there’s absolutely no way to know if he’ll succeed, and by giving him the Nobel Prize as a kind of “atta boy,” the Nobel Committee is actually just highlighting the gap that conservatives have long highlighted: between Obamamania as global hype and Obama’s actual accomplishments.

But Obama will survive this award. The damage to the Nobel Committee itself will be greater. They’ve clearly fallen in love with celebrity, and with the idea of shaping the course of history—in other words, they’ve fallen in love with an absurdly grandiose conception of their role. The Nobel Prize Committee should be in the business of conferring celebrity on unknown human-rights and peace activists toiling in the most god-forsaken parts of the world; the people who really need the attention (and even the money). It should be in the business of angering powerful tyrants by giving their victims a moment in the sun. Choosing Barack Obama, who practically orbits the sun already, accomplishes the exact opposite of that. Let’s hope Obama eventually deserves this award. And let’s hope the Nobel Committee’s decision meets with such a deafening chorus of chortles and jeers that it never does something this stupid again.

Stealing from commenter, wow, where's Kanye West when you need him?

He must be The Messiah

So the Big O won the Nobel Peace Prize.

What's most interesting to me was that the nominations for the prize ended on February 1, 2009.
The Big O's inauguration was on January 20, 2009. Meaning that in 11 days in office the guy was able to achieve such heights.

I'm pretty sure that it took Jesus longer than 11 days to achieve immortaility.

Welcome to socialized medicine

Meet the product of socialized medicine......

Torron Eeles is a plumber in England who fell down some stairs in December and broke his left arm.

Well, that nifty free health care in England should take care of it. This happened in December. Was the arm repaired in…

A. One day.
B. One week.
C. One month.
D. One year.

The answer is D, maybe. It has been 10 months. The arm still has not been repaired.

The London Daily Mail reported:

Mr Eeles claims his first two operations at the Queen Elizabeth II hospital in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, were canceled due to a lack of beds and operating time respectively.

His third operation in February was postponed after he was found to have high blood pressure, while the fourth, scheduled for May, was abandoned because of concerns about his smoking.

So, 10 months later, Eeles left arm still dangles uselessly at his side. No one wants a one-armed plumber. So at 50, he is out of work and he could lose his home.

That last item actually makes medical sense. Smoking complicates anesthesia.

More......

Kill the Golden Goose

A few weeks ago, I asked the Lovely Mrs. Gekko (my no drama mama) if she had noticed how more and more TV series we watch are done outside of LA.

Specifically, the number of shows done in Miami (Dexter, Burn Notice, CSI Miami, (we always watch Caruso's tacky intro)).

I had theorized that production had shifted due to union rules and/or tax purposes. Well, my observations appear well founded, as noted by this article.....

Is Los Angeles finally trying to become a film friendly city?

Don't hold your breath. But the city council this morning unanimously approved a series of modest recommendations aimed at slowing the disturbing migration rate of TV and film production to other cities and states.

The 17 recommendations include having the city evaluate a business tax credit for building owners that make their properties available for filming at "reasonable rate," and a sales tax refund for purchases made for filming when at least 75 percent of the shooting is done within the city. The council also agreed to offer city parking lots for free to film crews that shoot after hours or on weekends to increase the availability of power nodes downtown that film production companies could use in lieu of generators.

The steps come amid mounting evidence that LA is losing jobs in film and TV to other cheaper locales. More than 40 states offer tax credits and rebates. The city's wake-up came last year when ABC moved its sitcom "Ugly Betty" from LA to New York, to take advantage of tax credits there. Earlier this year, California adopted its first ever film tax credits, which have helped keep some productions from leaving but are considered too narrow in scope to compete with what other states offer.

Wow, when you leave LA for NY because of "tax reasons", what does that say about your tax structure?

But hey, what happened to all those "I love taxes" California liberals? Surely they would change locales for a few dollars, would they?

Where is John Galt?

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Who did they vote for? #918

A slight twist to this one.

Below is a list of people who signed the set Roman Polanski free petition along with campaign contributions they made this past election cycle.

Ariel Dorfman: $4,100

Martin Scorsese: $3,300

Larry Levine: $2,500

Darren Aronofsky: $2,300

Brett Ratner: $2,300

Richard Pena: $1,000

So who do you think these contributions went to; The Messiah or The Maverick?

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Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) Caught Off-Mike Swearing !!!

Civil discourse democratic style

Quote of the day

"In my wildest dreams, I never thought it [stimulus] would work this well,"

Joe Biden

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'Peace Prize to Obama - big mistake by Nobel committee'

How conservative think tanks kill conservatism

This is really a must read piece for any conservative.......

Hayward joins the conventional wisdom of Washington in missing the real story about the Right’s struggles in recent years — missing it in a profound way which exemplifies the inside-the-beltway thinking that continues to cripple conservatism. As my colleague Pejman Yousefzadeh summarizes it, Hayward “points out that there is a serious imbalance between intellectuals on the Right, and activists on the Right. There are plenty of the latter, but not nearly enough of the former.”

This strikes me as exactly the opposite of the truth. When one surveys the organization lists and attendees inside the Beltway and in most states outside it, you find scads of policy experts and think tank scholars. While state activist organizations have struggled on small budgets, and while conservative writers and pro-market bloggers can barely keep the lights on, national-level opinionmakers and opinionsharers remain plentiful, saturating the market, the panel circuit, and the cable news with their wisdom — which can be had for pennies, and if it’s a wannabe intellectual, for even less.

More.........

A must watch

You tell me. Which one sounds reasonable and which one sounds like an ex-wife?

For some reason the code won't copy so link here.....

Who did he vote for? #16

Meet Mark Korb. Why is Mr Korb in the news?

There might be tears in the beers of a Sayler Park man who has interesting facial tattoos on display during his recent arrest mug shot.

Mark Korb, 25, was arrested after he allegedly broke into the same car twice in the same week.

Cincinnati police say he broke into the car on Revere Avenue on September 28 and stole a credit card. On Monday, police say he attempted to use the stolen credit card but it was declined. After that, according to police, he went back and broke into the same car.

On Tuesday, Korb, who has beer bottle tattoos under each eye, was arrested and charged with two counts of theft and one count of misuse of a credit card.

So last November did Mr. Korb vote for Hope and Change or four more years of Bush?

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Kill Bush

You know how so many libs have their panties in a bunch because some wackos show up at tea parties with kill Obama signs and such.

That never happened at liberal rallies now did it?

For the record, I'm not a proponent of these ding dongs but I find ignoring them rather than giving them an audience is the best policy.

Here's a link to all the Bush assassination and Bush = Hitler photos.

We want these guys to run health care

From taxprof.......

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration yesterday released Evaluation of the Planning, Computation, and Issuance of the Recovery Rebate Credit (2009-40-129), reporting that:

• The IRS issued more than $96 billion in advanced economic stimulus payments (up to $1,2000 for married couples filing jointly) to more than 119 million taxpayers in Calendar Year 2008 and approximately $8.5 billion in payments to almost 21 million taxpayers as of April 17, 2009.
• 259,000 taxpayers did not receive $84.6 million in payments due to various IRS errors.
• 141,000 taxpayers received $60.6 million in payments for which they were ineligible due to various IRS errors.

Unfair and unbalanced II

Kind of funny that Time magazine finds it newsworthy to note that Sarah Palin had a ghost writer for her auto biography despite the fact that was never a secret to anybody.

Well, there's also this: Palin had help. Editorial sidekicks are par for the course in political memoirs, though ghostwriters say many pols are heavily involved in the writing process. Palin's assist came from Lynn Vincent, a writer for the Christian news magazine WORLD who has co-authored several other books.

We're still waiting on the expose on who ghost wrote Dreams of My Father.

It's a similar curiosity the Washington Post had on Bob McDonnell's (VA candidate for governor) 20 year old college thesis, yet seemed to have little interest in The One's thesis that no one can seem to find.

Or his college transcripts.......

Or his employment history........

Media bias?

Unfair and unbalanced

Media bias?

The news director of a university-owned radio station referred to one of Sen. Blanche Lincoln's opponents as a "nimrod" in a note sent from his state e-mail account.

Greg Chance of KASU-FM thought he was sending the e-mail to Lincoln's office. Instead, he sent it to the Republican candidate he was criticizing.

Conrad Reynolds is one of several candidates challenging Lincoln, a Democratic two-term incumbent. His office said it was troubled by the Sept. 29 e-mail, which was first reported Wednesday by Roll Call.

Article here.....

Ohio election fraud

A few months ago, I went to the blog Ohio Election Fraud to see what they had on, well, Ohio election fraud.

Well, it seems that the only fraud they're interested in is bogus fraud from the 2004 presidential election because you won't find this article anywhere on their site........

The activist group ACORN, which has long worked with criminals as it preys on the weak and the troubled, is on the verge of yet another public relations catastrophe.

That's because a cross-dressing Ohio male escort whom ACORN registered multiple times to vote was convicted of full-fledged vote fraud in addition to the lesser crime of voter registration fraud. A spokesman for Cleveland prosecutor Bill Mason confirmed yesterday that a local investigation of ACORN remains wide open.

The conviction of Darnell Nash, apparently known by several aliases including Serina "Sexy Slay" Gibbs, is hugely significant for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that ACORN has long maintained that vote fraud, as opposed to the lesser crime of voter registration fraud, essentially never happens.

ACORN's Project Vote affiliate has tried to get rid of the problem of vote fraud by defining it out of existence. Lorraine C. Minnite, a political science professor at Columbia University's Barnard College, argues in an ACORN/Project Vote report called "The Politics of Voter Fraud" that "[t]he claim that voter fraud threatens the integrity of American elections is itself a fraud." Minnite is also a senior fellow at the liberal think tank Demos.

While ACORN has not yet been charged in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, the fact that an individual voter registered by ACORN has been convicted of actually casting a fraudulent ballot appears to be a historic first for the embattled radical advocacy group.

I'd say that should be something of interest for a blog entitled Ohio Election Fraud. Wouldn't you?

Read the rest.....

This guy shouldn't be prosecuted, he should be a school czar

Let's see if he has the qualifications to be Safe School Czar......

1) Understanding of children's health - The guy's a pediatrician, check

2) Has an active interest in children - Again, pediatrician, check

3) a member of NAMBLA - check..........

Prosecutors are expected to call several alleged victims of Mark Blankenburg's to the witness stand. It's the second day of the trial of the Hamilton pediatrician accused of paying former patients for oral sex with money and drugs and then bribing them to keep quiet about the abuse.

Wednesday, the first of Blakenburg's alleged victims testified, saying he was molested when he was a patient of the pediatrician. The man, who asked that his testimony not be recorded, said Dr. Blankenburg took him into an exam room, pressed on his belly, and then performed oral sex on him when he was 13. He said Blankenburg gave him $200, and told him not to talk about what happened

More...

Sing for Obama

Isn't it sweet to see our indoctrinated children...........



Watch here

The UN Blood Libel: The Goldstone Report at the UN Human Rights Council

Watch the UN in action

He's trying to put together a Kennedy like resume

State Sen. Anthony D. Galluccio said he “panicked” when he bolted the scene of a car crash Sunday that left one person injured, but he refused yesterday to discuss where he was in the hours leading up to the 5:30 p.m. hit-and-run.

The Cambridge Democrat yesterday issued a statement expressing regret for fleeing, attributing his getaway attempt to his “prior driving record,” which includes two drunken driving convictions.

But in an interview with the Herald, Galluccio repeatedly refused to discuss his whereabouts earlier that day and whether he’d been drinking.

C'mon, the guy was just padding his record to become a US senator someday.

More......

And we want these guys to run health care?

From Taxprof.......

During the 2009 Filing Season, 75.7 million total dialed attempts were made to the IRS toll-free telephone lines. Through automation and assistors, the IRS answered 35.8 million (47.3%) calls during normal hours of operation. However, 22.4 million calls were not answered during normal hours of operation because the taxpayers hung up, were courtesy disconnected5 by the IRS, or received a busy signal. IRS officials stated that the 22.4 million calls included calls from taxpayers who called back and received service, dialed the IRS repeatedly, or hung up for reasons outside the IRS’ control. The IRS experienced high call demand during the last two filing seasons. Nevertheless, even when the IRS achieves more than an 80% Level of Service, millions of calls are not answered by IRS assistors.

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school promotion concept

Here's a "safe school czar" in his own words

Are you serious?

From the WSJ..........

Federal prosecutors said Monday that they won't seek the death penalty in the criminal case against Ahmed Ghailani, the first detainee from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to face prosecution in the U.S.

In a letter filed Monday, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan said they had been directed by U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. not to seek the death penalty against Ghailani

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Ted Strickland lies

I haven't had a chance to get into this but last week Ted Strickland is requesting "postponing the final year of a state income-tax cut as a way to fill a looming budget hole".

For the record, to say that you are postponing a tax cut is totally dishonest and a flat out lie.

Let me remind everyone out there that this "tax cut" was part of a restructuring of Ohio's tax code to shift the tax burden over to business via a CAT tax. As a result of the CAT implementation, Ohioan's are already paying higher taxes through increase prices passed on by businesses.

The reduction in the state income tax was a way to make the changes "revenue neutral" to Ohio residents.

As a result, the elimination of income tax cuts is a tax increase to Ohioans.

Who could have predicted this debacle when Bob Taft and his band of merry RINO's put this into play?

Anyone with an ounce of brains.

Who did she vote for? #800

Meet Maylesa Cline. Why is Ms. Cline in the news?

A 21-year-old Colerain Township woman will be in a Cincinnati courtroom this morning on a child endangering charge after sheriff's deputies checked out a report that her 1-year-old daughter may have ingested cocaine.

he baby, according to Hamilton County court documents, had white powder on her hands when police arrived at Maylesa Cline's apartment on Endeavor Drive.

They also found powder cocaine on the back of seat of Cline's car right next to the baby's car seat.

Now this past November, did Ms. Cline vote for the Hope and change policies of The Obama or four more years of Bush/McCain?

By the way, no word in the article about the baby's father.

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Life in "Progress" City

From the motor city of Detroit, who hasn't had a conservative run the city since Chief Pontiac commenced the Pontiac rebellion...............

Thousands of people have lined up Tuesday for a chance at millions of stimulus dollars set aside to help Detroit's homeless and low-income residents.The money is available to help low-income residents from becoming homeless and homeless residents to find housing.

Some people in line falsely believed they were registering for $3,000 stimulus checks from the Obama Administration.City officials told Local 4 that Detroit was granted $15 million to help residents pay bills and their rent or find temporary housing for the homeless.

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The cases they won't hear

You may remember the US Supreme Court as those brainy legal scholars who brought us Plessy v Ferguson and McCain Feingold.

But actually the cases the court won't hear may be as important as those they will.

Reader Jeremy with the article......

The term's opening is also the day for the court to turn down litigants. The justices released a list of more than 1,800 appeals that they turned down without comment.

In an abortion-related case, the court turned down a pro-adoption group called Choose Life Illinois that said it had a free-speech right to have "Choose Life" license plates. The state refused and said it did not want to get involved in the abortion controversy. (Choose Life vs. White)

The court rejected an appeal from a Florida youth who said he had a right to sit silently during the Pledge of Allegiance at school. Florida law says students can be excused from this ritual only with the parents' permission. (Frazier vs. Smith)

The court turned away a free-speech appeal from high school students in Tennessee who said they had a right to wear T-shirts displaying a Confederate flag. (Barr vs. LaFron)

The court refused a request from the Catholic archdiocese in Bridgeport, Conn., seeking to block the release of files on priests accused of sexual abuse. A state court had ordered the release, and the church argued, unsuccessfully, that this would violate its rights under the 1st Amendment. (Roman Catholic Diocesan Corp. vs. New York Times)

More......

Mike Blowers Prediction Seattle Mariners."The Call Of The Year".09-29-2K9.

This is pretty incredible if you haven't seen it

Graph of the day

From the American Thinker

Way to bastardize the normal market flow

Bob Herbert, racist

It's kind of weird to know that Bob Herbert is a racist, being black and all, but what other motive could there be when one criticizes our first black president.........

The big question on the domestic front right now is whether President Obama understands the gravity of the employment crisis facing the country. Does he get it? The signals coming out of the White House have not been encouraging.

The Beltway crowd and the Einsteins of high finance who never saw this economic collapse coming are now telling us with their usual breezy arrogance that the Great Recession is probably over. Their focus, of course, is on data, abstractions like the gross domestic product, not the continued suffering of living, breathing human beings struggling with the nightmare of joblessness.

Even Mr. Obama, in an interview with The Times, gave short shrift to the idea of an additional economic stimulus package, telling John Harwood a few weeks ago that the economy had likely turned a corner. “As you know,” the president said, “jobs tend to be a lagging indicator; they come last.”

The view of most American families is somewhat less blasé. Faced with the relentless monthly costs of housing, transportation, food, clothing, education and so forth, they have precious little time to wait for this lagging indicator to come creeping across the finish line.

More......

Quote of the day

"Nearly one year ago, on a clear November night, people from every corner of the world gathered in the city of Chicago or in front of their televisions to watch the results of the U.S. Presidential election. Their interest wasn’t about me as an individual. Rather, it was rooted in the belief that America’s experiment in democracy still speaks to a set of universal aspirations and ideals. Their interest sprung from the hope that in this ever-shrinking world, our diversity could be a source of strength , a cause for celebration; and that with sustained work and determination, we could learn to live and prosper together during the fleeting moment we share on this earth.’

B. Obama


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Who did she vote for? #4100

Meet Maxine Smiley. Why is Maxine in the news?

A 41-year-old Price Hill woman is behind bars, accused of hitting a police officer with her car while fleeing a traffic stop. Officer Mike Roth pulled over Maxine Smiley on Monday evening for an open warrant.

Police say she struck Roth as she fled, but was apprehended a short time later. Smiley is now charged with felonious assault.

Now this past November, did Maxine vote for the Hope and Change message of Barack Obama or the four more years of Bush message of John McCain?

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SNL parody - fact or fiction?

If you ever wanted evidence of media bias, you need only read this Yahoo news piece (which I assume is an AP produced piece).

The article assesses Obama's success against his campaign problems.......

1. Close the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay:
2. Pull all troops out of Iraq:
3. Improve the situation in Afghanistan:
4. Reform the nation's health care system:
5. Cut down on global warming:
6. Reform the nation's immigration policies:
7. Changing the military's policies on gay soldiers:
8. Placing limits on executive powers:
9. Prosecute those who facilitate torture:

Reading through the analysis Obama would get a big "F" on all these initiatives, even in today's public schools system.

But the writer's conclusion.........

So, taking all of this into consideration, are SNL's satirical criticisms of President Obama's do-nothingness valid? Probably not, mainly because, as illustrated by the old adage about how one shouldn't watch sausage or legislation get made, the process of "change" and getting anything done in Washington is a long and messy one, and Obama is merely nine months into his term as president. But that doesn't mean that Saturday's SNL skit was humorless, which, for once, it most definitely was not.

Now wait a minute, some of these initiatives could have been accomplished simply by waving his wand over the process (see don't ask don't tell). In addition, Obama didn't qualify his campaign statements with the caveat of "I will close Guantanamo with the cooperation of congress".

So exactly how would this writer judge "doing something"?

Another Obama fumble

This guy should be a Cleveland Brown the way he's fumbled everything he's had his hand on........

Greg Craig, the top in-house lawyer for President Barack Obama, is getting the blame for botching the strategy to shut down Guantanamo Bay prison by January — so much so that he’s expected to leave the White House in short order.

But sources familiar with the process believe Craig is being set-up as the fall guy and say the blame for missing the deadline extends well beyond him.

Instead, it was a widespread breakdown on the political, legislative, policy and planning fronts that contributed to what is shaping up as one of Obama’s most high-profile setbacks, these people say.

The White House misread the congressional mood – as it found out abruptly in May, when the Senate voted 90-6 against funds for closing the base after Republicans stoked fears about bringing prisoners to the U.S. The House also went on record last week opposing bringing Gitmo detainees here.

Probably the same people who misread the whole Olympics fiasco..........

More.....

But hey, I've got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell.

"The most ethical congress in history"

Of course, when you fail to investigate or punish any ethics lapses, that will ultimately be true. But will it come back to bite Lollapelosi and Co.?

The investigation into Rep. Charlie Rangel's alleged financial shenanigans is probably the most touchy question to pose to senior House Democrats and their aides these days. As the New York Times's Carl Hulse implied over the weekend, if Rangel were not the chairman of the Ways of Means Committee, if he were not a beloved figure among his colleagues, if fears of internal racial politics weren't in the mix, Rangel would be as good as stripped from his position. (Rangel says he's innocent and chides journalists who ask him about the investigation.) Rangel is one of several congressional Democrats who could plausibly become significant albatrosses around the neck of House incumbents next year, not the least of which because of his high-status position as the nation's chief tax writer. Events are conspiring with House Democrats to give Republicans a pretty solid anti-corruption narrative to run on. Of the 15 members of Congress who are under some sort of investigation, according to CREW, 11 are Democrats.

Last week, for example, it was revealed that the Obama administration's corporate compensation overseer, Ken Feinberg, had given his "blessing" to a $10.5 million bonus for the AIG CEO. Republicans already plan to run on the charge that health care reform will result in millions of middle class taxpayers paying more for health care. Even though Feinberg's decision was within social and political norms, it's the type of thing that the party in power gets blamed for, and will therefore make for a great Republican TV ad in the Midwest, in the Rocky Mountains and in the South. Add to this combustible mix a broad anti-government sentiment a frustration with Democratic insularity, solid GOP recruitment and relative fundraising parity.

And who, again, will be overseeing a broader tax reform effort next year? Whose committee will oversee the tax changes resulting from health care? Rangel, who is being investigated for failing to pay taxes on income and property he did not disclose, among other things.

More.......

Richard Cohen, racist

This is Richard Cohen's second column in a week critical of our first black president. I'm starting to think he must wear a hood when he's out with his friends.......

Barack Obama's trip to Copenhagen to pitch Chicago for the Olympics would have been a dumb move whatever the outcome. But as it turned out (an airy dismissal would not be an unfair description), it poses some questions about his presidency that are way more important than the proper venue for synchronized swimming. The first, and to my mind most important, is whether Obama knows who he is.

This business of self-knowledge is no minor issue. It bears greatly on the single most crucial issue facing this young and untested president: Afghanistan. Already, we have his choice for Afghanistan commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, taking the measure of his commander in chief and publicly telling him what to do. This MacArthuresque star turn called for a Trumanesque response, but Obama offered nothing of the kind. Instead, he used McChrystal as a prop, adding a bit of four-star gravitas to that silly trip to Copenhagen by having the general meet with him there.

Wow, you think these questions would have been posed when Obama was running for president instead of waiting until he actually had the job.


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MM MM MMM Barney Frank has got to go

Cash for Clunkers, the epitaph

Remember "cash for clunkers," the program that subsidized Americans to the tune of nearly $3 billion to buy a new car and destroy an old one? Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood declared in August that, "This is the one stimulus program that seems to be working better than just about any other program."

If that's true, heaven help the other programs. Last week U.S. automakers reported that new car sales for September, the first month since the clunker program expired, sank by 25% from a year earlier. Sales at GM and Chrysler fell by 45% and 42%, respectively. Ford was down about 5%. Some 700,000 cars were sold in the summer under the program as buyers received up to $4,500 to buy a new car they would probably have purchased anyway, so all the program seems to have done is steal those sales from the future. Exactly as critics predicted.

Cash for clunkers had two objectives: help the environment by increasing fuel efficiency, and boost car sales to help Detroit and the economy. It achieved neither. According to Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer, at best "the reduction in gasoline consumption will cut our oil consumption by 0.2 percent per year, or less than a single day's gasoline use." Burton Abrams and George Parsons of the University of Delaware added up the total benefits from reduced gas consumption, environmental improvements and the benefit to car buyers and companies, minus the overall cost of cash for clunkers, and found a net cost of roughly $2,000 per vehicle. Rather than stimulating the economy, the program made the nation as a whole $1.4 billion poorer.

The basic fallacy of cash for clunkers is that you can somehow create wealth by destroying existing assets that are still productive, in this case cars that still work. Under the program, auto dealers were required to destroy the car engines of trade-ins with a sodium silicate solution, then smash them and send them to the junk yard. As the journalist Henry Hazlitt wrote in his classic, "Economics in One Lesson," you can't raise living standards by breaking windows so some people can get jobs repairing them.

In the category of all-time dumb ideas, cash for clunkers rivals the New Deal brainstorm to slaughter pigs to raise pork prices. The people who really belong in the junk yard are the wizards in Washington who peddled this economic malarkey.

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NY Times editorial broad, racist

I didn't know the NY Times editorial board was racist until I read this op ed critical of our first black president............

Hopes for an effective law that would protect the public’s access to essential news from inside government have been dealt a severe setback by the Obama administration.

As a senator, President Obama co-sponsored a robust proposal to protect journalists and their sources who rely on confidentiality to reveal abuses, scandals and other inner workings of government agencies. But, White House officials are now proposing deep revisions to a Senate Judiciary Committee bill that weaken protections against forcing reporters to reveal their sources.

Four more years of Bush...........

You mean the world doesn't really have to like us?

Remember the good old days when gay meant happy, Ayds was a dietary candy and the world hated us because George Bush was president.

Well, despite being told that it was important for the world needed to like us, an op ed in the NY Times suggests that we now ignore being popular with the world community...........

To be sure, opinion toward the United States today is not overwhelmingly negative, thanks to widespread approval of President Obama. A recent survey from the German Marshall Fund suggested that positive opinion of the United States had skyrocketed in Europe. Likewise, a Pew survey showed that approval of America has jumped to 75 percent in France and 69 percent in Britain. But the comparable figures were 63 percent and 75 percent, respectively, in the second year of George W. Bush’s administration, and we all know where the numbers went from there. It merely may be that new American presidents tend to enjoy a honeymoon in foreign opinion.

Given these mixed signals, which surveys should President Obama pay attention to — the ones that suggest approval of his leadership or the more negative appraisals? The answer is neither. His only concern should be whether favorable public opinion abroad will help him achieve America’s own goals, and there is little evidence that that is the case.

Rather, history suggests that there is only one sure way for President Obama to ensure the popularity of the United States abroad: reduce the power of the United States or simply don’t exercise it — either militarily, economically or even diplomatically. The world simply distrusts the big guy on the block, and the only way to address this is to stop behaving like a superpower. A much better option, of course, would be to pay less attention to foreign opinion surveys and more to our own ideals and interests.

I think he's doing both.

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Non partisan Consumer Reports

Is this a Brown's highlight?

Watch the dumbest football play you'll ever see.

About the 1:30 mark

Roman Polanski On To Catch A Predator

Frank Rich, racist

I didn't know Frank Rich was a racist until I read this column critical of America's first black president........

Barack Obama promised a change from this revolving-door, behind-closed-doors collaboration between special interests and government. He vowed to “do our business in the light of day” — with health care negotiations broadcast on C-Span — and to “restore the vital trust between people and their government.” He said, “I intend to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over.” That those lobbyists would so extravagantly flaunt their undiminished role shows just how little they believe that a new sheriff has arrived in Dodge.

In his scathing Wall Street Journal column on The Post articles last week, Thomas Frank crystallized the gap between Obama’s pledge and this reality. “There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery’s version of the Barack Obama ‘Hope’ poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists.” That’s no joke: It was donated by Tony and Heather Podesta.

Obama’s promise to make Americans trust the government again was not just another campaign bullet point; it’s the foundation of his brand of governance and essential to his success in office. At the first anniversary of the TARP bailout of the banks, we can see how far he has to go. Americans’ continued suspicion that Washington is in cahoots with powerful interests in joints like Tosca is contributing to their confusion and skepticism about what’s happening out of view in the battle over health care reform.

The public is not wrong. The administration’s legislative deals with the pharmaceutical companies were made in back rooms. Business Week reported in early August that the UnitedHealth Group and its fellow insurance giants had already quietly rounded up moderate Democrats in the House to block any public health care option that would compete with them for business. UnitedHealth’s hired Beltway gunslingers include both Elmendorf Strategies and Daschle, a public supporter of the public option who nonetheless does some of his “wink, wink” counseling for UnitedHealth. The company’s in-house lobbyist is a former chief of staff to Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader. Gephardt consults there too.

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Half a president

Does Obama cherry pick the easy parts of his job description to do leaving the heavy lifting for others?

It appears that Barack Obama views himself as the head of state only. As such he cannot be bothered with the day to day responsibility of governance. He is, in his narcissistic world, above all that; thus he delegates the writing of the Stimulus, health care and other major bills to Nancy Pelosi, puts off any decisions on Iran and Afghanistan, appoints czars with power to spend and set policy and prefers to spend his time on television speaking to the huddled masses.

His responsibilities as the head of government have been assigned to others, who in many cases are not answerable to the American people. This has created untold chaos in Congress and apprehension among the citizenry. Yet the President appears not to care, as his interests lie elsewhere.

The Presidency of the United States to Mr. Obama is nothing more than a stage so he, pre-ordained by destiny, can act as head of state for the world. He is much too busy enjoying the trappings of royalty, despite his oft-declared disdain for that class, to be bothered about the dismal long term future of the United States if the left wing policies of his government are enacted. It appears President Obama also believes as the world head of state he can, by sheer force of his will, charm and persuasion convince the most brutal of global adversaries to live in peace.

The rest of the world has begun to see through his unrestrained self-absorption. The rejection of the Olympics for Chicago despite his personal intervention, and the published mockery of him by Nicholas Sarkozy are just the tip of the iceberg that is the real consensus of opinion, particularly in Europe.

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Hey NY Times, here's a story

I'd like to think that an organized attempt to politicize the NEA would be a story worth looking into.

So do you think that editor for the Times looking into blogger scoops will advance this one?

As many of you may know by now, my original article, entitled The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?, discussed a conference call organized by the White House and two federal agencies, those being the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) & the Corporation for National and Community Service (The Corporation). In the original article and subsequent series I presented an irrefutable fact – that the federal government encouraged a handpicked, pro-Obama arts group to address politically controversial issues under contentious national debate.

To prove that the government set out to politicize a federal agency, it would take more than one federal employee acting inappropriately during the August 10th conference call. However, once a second federal employee is found acting with the same intentions as the first, by definition collusion is a possibility.

I think it can be shown that Yosi Sergant did not act alone, but namely, Buffy Wicks and Nell Abernathy prescribed to the very same behavior.

On September 24th, the former Communications Director of the National Endowment for the Arts, Yosi Sergant, resigned from his position at the NEA. In a statement issued two days earlier, the Chairman of the NEA, Rocco Landesman, outlined a list of facts regarding the conference call, including that “the former NEA Director of Communications helped organize and participated in an August 10^th conference call to introduce members of the arts community to United We Serve” and that he “acted unilaterally and without the approval or authorization of then-Acting Chairman Patrice Walker Powell.”

Let’s assume for a second that no one at the NEA knew of Sergant’s efforts, which is what it appears Mr. Landesman is saying. We can give the agency that caveat for now. However, the assumption of ignorance must stop there. Why? Because we know from several sources that the White House and The Corporation, a federal agency that promotes volunteerism, also played a role in initiating, organizing, and planning the meeting.

Read the whole thing......

Susan Rice On Afghanistan Can't Answer A Simple Question

Obama's accomplishments

oval office message
by postertube

And we're all better off for it.