Ouch

When's the last time you read this in a newspaper endorsement

When Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney promptly criticized the security failures in Benghazi, the White House and its lapdog media jumped all over him for another "gaffe," for speaking out too promptly and too strongly. Prompt and strong action from the White House on Sept. 11 might have saved American lives, as well as America's reputation as a nation not to be messed with. Weakness and dithering and flying to Las Vegas the next day for celebrity fund-raising parties are somehow better?

This administration is an embarrassment on foreign policy and incompetent at best on the economy - though a more careful analysis shows what can only be a perverse and willful attempt to destroy our prosperity. Back in January 2008, Barack Obama told the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle that under his cap-and-trade plan, "If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them." He added, "Under my plan ... electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." It was also in 2008 that Mr. Obama's future Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, famously said it would be necessary to "figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe" - $9 a gallon.

Yet the president now claims he's in favor of oil development and pipelines, taking credit for increased oil production on private lands where he's powerless to block it, after he halted the Keystone XL Pipeline and oversaw a 50 percent reduction in oil leases on public lands.

These behaviors go far beyond "spin." They amount to a pack of lies. To return to office a narcissistic amateur who seeks to ride this nation's economy and international esteem to oblivion, like Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb to its target at the end of the movie "Dr. Strangelove," would be disastrous.

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Obama In WI: "Some Of The Businesses We Encourage Will Fail"

Yep

Who will you choose?

As you consider who you will vote for next Tuesday, consider for a moment the people who you will be aligning with when you vote.

Below is a breakdown between people and who they will be supporting next Tuesday. Go ahead and ask yourself which of these groups will be filling in the dots for Romney or Obama.

Then ask yourself, are these the people who I want educating children? Invite to a party? have as my neighbor? and finally...... run the country?

Let's face it. the values incorporated in each of these groups are ultimately the values incorporated in the people they support.

War Protesters v. Active Military

20 year olds v. 60 year olds

Larry Flynt v. Pat Robertson

Criminals v. Cops

Union Heads v. Corporate executives

Drug Dealers v. Convenience store owners

Alec Baldwin v. Kelsey Grammar

Welfare Queens v. Working women

Michael Stipe v. Ted Nugent

Planned Parenthood v. Right to Life

Sharon Stone v. Bo Derek

ACORN workers v. NASCAR Fans

Joy Behar v. Elisabeth Hasselbeck

Atheists v. Born again Christians

Madonna v. Martina McBride

Vegans v. Hunters

Non repentant terrorists v. FBI agents

Homeless v. Homeowners

College professors v. Small business owners

Urbanites v. Suburbanites

Any network news anchor v. John Stossel

Occupiers v. Tea Partiers

People who sign their checks on the back v People who sign their checks on the front

     

So choose your neighbor....... but choose wisely......

Polling question

To say I've been obsessed with information related to Ohio polling would be an understatement.

Mrs. Gekko is ready to have Gallup tattooed on my forehead.

None the less, I believe there may be some significant party ID issues with any Ohio poll.

Let's take the time machine back to 2008. Remember that in the primary, McCain had already won the GOP nomination which left Ohio republicans with only the democratic primary to vote in.

Many republicans changed their party affiliation to democrat to vote in the primary; some as part of Rush's Operation Chaos and some, like me, who just wanted to vote against Obama.

How many of those registered democrats changed back to republican in the past four years? After all, the GOP nomination was locked up again this year. So unless, you had some compelling reason to vote a GOP ballot in previous elections you're probably still a registered democrat.

The reason I wonder is today I got a call from Sherrod Brown's office asking me where my absentee ballot was.

They called because I've never changed my party affiliation back so they're thinking that I'm a sure democratic vote.

How many guys like me are in the voter pool? How skewed are the party ID figures if there are people who never changed their party affiliation back from 2008?

So when I read this at NRO I'm wondering what factoring has been done for this phenomenon.

As mentioned above, in current Ohio polls, Democrats have a party-ID sample advantage of 6.3 points. In 2008, Democrats had a 5-point turnout advantage in Ohio. That means that while national polls have the turnout advantage down 2.6 points, in Ohio it has actually increased 1.3 points. It is almost impossible to conclude that while the nationwide party-ID advantage of Democrats has dropped since the wave election of 2008, Ohio has actually increased over the last four years.

If that’s not enough, the Ohio polls have actually become more Democratic since the post-DNC polls that gave Obama the significant bounce that led many pundits to declare Romney’s chances in Ohio DOA. Of all Ohio polls from September 7 to September 19, Obama held an average lead of 4.2 points, with a Democratic party-ID advantage of 5.7 points. Today Obama leads by 2.1 points, with a party-ID advantage of 6.3 points. In the last month, while Romney has had surges in polls all over the country, the polling in Ohio has actually found more Democrats even while Obama’s lead was cut in half.

The biggest explanation for this discrepancy appears to be the prevalence of early voting. Many Ohio polls state that more voters claim to have voted early than the county records show; this inflates the likely-voter pools, with Obama voters pushing the Democrats’ advantage up as a result. It is a big problem for pollsters — many respondents want to say the socially popular thing, which is that they have already voted. When voters say they have voted (unlike when respondents say they plan on voting), pollsters ask no follow-up questions to determine how likely it is that they are telling the truth. Respondents who say they have voted go straight into the likely-voter pool, even though it’s clear that the number of respondents who claim to have voted is much larger than the actual early-voter turnout, based on the county records. From this, it’s reasonable to conclude that Democrats’ party advantage may prove to be lower, which would ultimately cut 
Obama’s lead in Ohio dramatically.

For the record, I told that Brown volunteer to Go Romney.

Chicago......... republicans fault?

Life in "Progress" City - Chicago edition

Probably a bunch of tea partiers with their concealed carry permits............

Chicago surpassed last year’s total of 435 homicides Monday when a man died after being shot, authorities said.

The victim was one of two people wounded in separate shootings that occurred just four blocks and half an hour apart Monday morning in the South Chicago neighborhood.

More................

Who did they vote for? #415

So there's no voter fraud in Ohio.

Then maybe someone can explain this.............

Three Franklin County residents face felony charges of voter fraud after the Board of Elections reported that they had voted more than once in a past election.

Each was indicted yesterday by a Franklin County grand jury on one count of illegal voting. They are accused of voting twice by casting absentee ballots under slightly different names.

Those indicted are:

• Dominique Atkins, 38, of 1532 Barnes Drive E. on the Northeast Side, who is accused of casting a second ballot on Oct. 25, 2010, under the name Dominque Atkins.

• Debbie L. Tingler, 50, of 533 Hunt Valley Dr., Reynoldsburg, who is accused of casting a second ballot on Feb. 27, 2008, under the name Deborah L. Tingler.

• Marian Wilson, 47, of 1922 Kendall Place, Grove City, who is accused of casting a second ballot on Sept. 29, 2010, under the name Marian Toles.

So in this year's election will these babes vote for Obama or Romney.

More.......

Life in "Progress" State - Illinois edition

Maybe one of them really smart liberal types can tell me how conservatives created this mess.............

On Thursday, the Teachers’ Retirement System announced its annual investment returns for fiscal year 2012. You may recall that it was predicting 8.5 percent returns.
So what kind of returns did it actually get? A meager 0.76 percent. For comparison, the S&P 500 grew 7.39 percent during fiscal year 2012, while the Dow Jones Industrial average grew 7.92 percent.

Of course, this isn’t the first time TRS investments have come in below expectations. Even before this year, the 5-year average rate of return was only 4.1 percent, and the 10-year average was just 6 percent. Even its long-term averages are below its projections.
And when investment returns come in under projections, it falls on taxpayers to make up the shortfall.

Ultimately, there are only two numbers that matter: the amount of money the pension fund will pay out for earned benefits, and the amount of money it has on hand. Between now and 2045, TRS will pay $376.5 billion to retired teachers. It has just $36.3 billion on hand. In order for these assets to cover future payouts, TRS would need to see average investment returns of more than 18.5 percent per year.

The simple fact is that TRS is broke. Under new accounting rules, TRS has less than 23 percent of the money it should have in the bank today in order to make its pension payments. The system doesn’t even have enough money on hand to pay out benefits to the people who have already retired. Pension experts and TRS’s own actuaries agree: the fund could soon be insolvent.

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The Future Children Project

An Urgent Message for America

LENA DUNHAM: YOUR FIRST TIME PARODY! #MoreFreeCrap

Lena Dunham: Your First Time

How bad is your ad when the opponents are putting it on their blogs?


For the record, if I had a choice to "do it" with this girl or go home, I'd warm up my cable.

Liberalism = Insanity

A couple of weeks ago, I offered my absentee ballot to the first liberal/progressive/democrat who could tell me why (if liberal policies are so wonderful) is it that every city, state and country they run is swirling down the drain.

It doesn't matter if we're talking about Detroit, California, or Greece. Show me a government entity in financial distress and I'll show an entity run by a pack of "progressives".

On this blog, no one took me up on the challenge. On my facebook page, one liberal decided to call me a name instead of actually answering the question; which is how they usually operate.

So let me throw this out today. Can anyone name one problem that a liberal/progressive/democratic program actually solved?

Let's take poverty. After all the trillions of dollars spent on poverty programs since the 1960's what is the current state of poverty in this country?

Or let's take homelessness. I think we can all agree that homelessness is a bad thing. The city of San Francisco spends a half a BILLION dollars a year in homeless programs (just city money, not federal, state or private charities). My community of Maineville OH spends zero, zip, nada. Which city has the homeless problem?

Or let's take the grand poobah of liberalism...... secondary education. As a society, we've expanded Pell grants and student loan programs and tax credits all over the place. Is education more affordable today than it was 10 years ago? How about twenty?

What about primary education? Sure, your kid can tell you all about global warming, just don't ask them to make change for a twenty.

What the hell does it say about your thought patterns when the overwhelming evidence says liberalism doesn't solve any problems and turns totally functioning communities into shit holes and yet you still support such programs and policies?

They say that the ultimate definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

So wouldn't it be logical that if you're liberal, you must be insane as well?

Life in "Progress" City - San Bernadino edition

This is just the latest in a string of California municipal fiscal difficulties. Perhaps more troubling, San Bernardino may offer a glimpse of the future for other cities struggling to avoid bankruptcy as varied interests and creditors make demands for limited funds. A lawyer for the state employees retirement system, known as CalPERS, says federal bankruptcy law doesn't pre-empt state control over benefits overseen by the fund, the Journal reported.

But with pension investment returns down and pension costs rising, other troubled cities might follow San Bernardino's lead if the cities think bankruptcy judges will relieve them of pension commitments, Karol Denniston, a bankruptcy lawyer at Schiff Hardin LLP in San Francisco, told Bloomberg news agency. If bond insurers win their argument that pension debts should not be given priority over other creditors, it is an open question whether pensioners could see retirement checks trimmed, or current employee contracts abrogated.

Cities contribute monthly to CalPERS, which manages $229.8 billion in investments for 1,500 cities, counties and other government agencies. It is not common for cities to be delinquent on CalPERS payments. Stockton and the city of Mammoth Lakes, both of which also filed for bankruptcy this year, continue to make their payments.

CalPERS spokeswoman Amy Norris told the Los Angeles Times that delinquent payments would have no immediate effect on pension payments to retirees, but eventually could. "Ultimately if payments are not made, they could be terminated and any available assets placed in our terminated pool," the Times quoted her. "This means no additional contributions would come in, and benefits would be paid from what remained and how that pool is invested. That could possibly impact pensions."

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@ProjectVeritas_ : Jim Moran's (D-Va.) Field Director Conspires to Commi...

What's most disgusting about this video isn't the fact that he's conspiring to commit voter fraud but how easily he's willing to help someone he doesn't even know.

It's like he knows that he's almost immune to prosecution.

Imagine the conversations that go one behind closed doors.

President Obama's Apology Tour?

Sherrod Brown Isn't Working - Give Sherrod Brown The Pink Slip

Millions of subsidized dead windmills

How much electricity is being generated here.

A must read

George McGovern, who died this weekend had a must read piece in Inc Magazine almost 10 years ago.

I am a former history professor, not a lawyer. But it does seem to me that not every accident or fall or misfortune is the fault of the business at which it occurs. Yet lawsuits prompted by such events have spawned a multibillion-dollar industry -- one that drives up the costs of doing business and rendering medical care. Not to mention how it wars against a congenial and humane way of life. We begin to see one another not as compatriots, neighbors, and fellow citizens but as potential plaintiffs and defendants. If we don't stop suing one another for every possible misfortune or alleged negligence, we are going to undermine both the health of our economy and the quality of our society.

The second lesson I learned by owning the Stratford Inn is that legislators and government regulators must more carefully consider the economic and management burdens we have been imposing on U.S. business. As an innkeeper, I wanted excellent safeguards against a fire. But I was startled to be told that our two-story structure, which had large sliding doors opening from every guest room to all-concrete decks, required us to meet fire regulations more appropriate to the Waldorf-Astoria. A costly automatic sprinkler system and new exit doors were items that helped sink the Stratford Inn -- items I was convinced added little to the safety of our guests and employees. And a critical promotional campaign never got off the ground, partly because my manager was forced to concentrate for days at a time on needlessly complicated tax forms for both the IRS and the state of Connecticut.

I'm for protecting the health and well-being of both workers and consumers. I'm for a clean environment and economic justice. But I'm convinced we can pursue those worthy goals and still cut down vastly on the incredible paperwork, the complicated tax forms, the number of minute regulations, and the seemingly endless reporting requirements that afflict American business. Many businesses, especially small independents such as the Stratford Inn, simply can't pass such costs on to their customers and remain competitive or profitable.

Read the whole thing.