Quote Of The Day

From our good friend Dan Collins

Expect the White House to claim Executive Privilege and privacy rights while pursuing policies that would open all of your medical records to the government, even as they track your Internet doings.

Perfectly sums up this Administration, no?

If You Just Went By What The NewsHour on PBS Had to Say About It Last Night

…you’d think those pesky old Fast and Furious guns were being counted like salmon swimming up river at Rock Island Dam. Someone’s cell phone goes off, they turn their head for TWO FRICKIN’ DISTRACTED SECONDS and WHOOPSIES!

You miss, like, sixty damn fish! It happens…supposedly.

…JUDY WOODRUFF: The president was also pressed on a Justice Department operation called Fast and Furious.

It targeted gunrunning along the U.S.-Mexico border, but it lost track of many of the weapons.

The responding quote from the President to whatever the interrogatory was at the presser also gives you NO indication WHATSOEVER that his Attorney General stands accused (thanks to five early emails contacting him by NAME) of lying to Congress about his personal knowledge of the clandestine DoJ gun-PURCHASING-for-gunrunning program that has left death and destruction scattered across the American Southwest and Mexico. No, the President is confident the AG wouldn’t know if someone had answered a phone and that fishies were swimming past the window uncounted. It would make them both very unhappy to think that a clicker in the window wasn’t being clicked at fishes and that thought’s really beyond the pale, so it obviously didn’t happen that way.

BARACK OBAMA: I have complete confidence in Attorney General Holder in how he handles his office. He’s indicated that he was not aware of what was happening in Fast and Furious. Certainly, I was not. And I think both he and I would have been very unhappy if somebody had suggested that guns were allowed to pass through that could have been prevented by the United States of America.

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

With friends like THAT at publicly funded media, who needs a lawyer and a PR firm, right?

Oh, and I think you’ve got the fishy part covered, pal.

Occupy This!

A friend just told me that, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street folks, there was a group yesterday who decided to “Occupy Cleveland.”

So it was gladly (and quickly) given to them.

hehehe

There Is Some Honor Among Thieves

Just don’t call it “burglary”, though; think of it more as a “warrantless search”

(CNN) — A central California man has been arrested for possession of child pornography, thanks to a tip from burglars who robbed the man’s property, authorities said.

Last month, a juvenile and a 19-year-old illegally accessed the property of Kraig Stockard, 54, of Delhi, California, according to a statement from Deputy Tom MacKenzie of the Merced County Sheriff’s Department. They broke into Stockard’s barn and stole approximately 50 CDs they believed were blank.

Stockard filed a police report on the incident on September 12, according to MacKenzie.

But the young people who stole the CDs were in for a surprise. When they began putting the discs into their computer, they discovered that some of them contained pornographic images of children, the statement said.

Despite having obtained the CDs under decidedly shady circumstances, the pair decided to report Stockard to the police.

The kiddie porner is a total scumbag, of course, but the only way that I see this holding up is that he reported the stolen material to the police, so if they “recovered” it there is reasonable cause to look at it to ensure that it is his. Otherwise I don’t see how the warrant the police subsequently got to search his property is legal.

Shocka: Even The AP Says Obama Is…

…well, full of it

WASHINGTON (AP) — Are President Barack Obama’s ideas for job creation really bipartisan as he claims? Not when the means for paying for them are put in the equation.

The president dodged various facts and and left some evidence in the dust in his latest challenge to Republicans to get behind his jobs program or offer a real alternative.

…OBAMA: “The answer we’re getting right now is: Well, we’re going to roll back all these Obama regulations… Does anybody really think that that is going to create jobs right now and meet the challenges of a global economy?”

THE FACTS: Well, yes, some think it will.

Ouch.

Of COURSE You Realize

…this means war.

Reid triggers nuclear option to change Senate rules and prohibit post-cloture filibusters

In a shock development Thursday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) triggered a rarely-used procedural option informally called the “nuclear option” to change the Senate rules.

The surprise move stunned Republicans, who did not expect Reid to bring heavy artillery to what had appeared to have been a hum-drum legislative knife fight.

…The maneuver is highly arcane but momentous. If a simple majority of the Senate votes to uphold Reid’s appeal, the Senate’s rules will have been changed by the unilateral action of one party.

Republicans had considered using this maneuver, dubbed the “nuclear option” in 2005, to change Senate rules to prohibit the filibuster of judicial nominees. Democrats decried the plan and the crisis was resolved by a bipartisan agreement forged by 14 rank-and-file senators known as the Gang of 14.

Ho. Lee. Flock.

UPDATE: On Twitter, an explanation:

Reid’s parliamentary power grab was NOT done to advance bills, but to protect weak Dem senators from awkward votes. *Not* abt lawmaking.

PJ Tatler has more.

UPDATE: What a snake. From Drew over at Ace’s:

…Reid’s maneuver works. The precedent has been set that Senate rules can be changed by majority vote.

This means the Senate rules can be changed by majority vote and the minority can’t offer amendments without majority approval.

I Just Find This Little Line Number in Their Budget

…disturbing.

Komen Gave $569K to Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz in 2010

Yes, that’s the SAME “Susan G. Komen”, little pink ribbon, breast cancer, “race for the cure”, etc., ad nauseum, over and over, that you see bombarding you at certain times of the year. Enlisting every can of soup, small appliance manufacturer, or NFL linebacker to think pink and you to BUY pink, so money flows into their coffers in the “race to cure” breast cancer.

And what sort of heartless beast could take exception to THAT, right?

Until you see the fundraising, heartstring tugging juggernaut handing out money it’s collected through the earnest, often emotionally charged efforts of others to enterprises perhaps not in line with the heart and soul of the original donation. Planned Parenthood gets this money from them, ostensibly, “for mammograms”. Only Planned Parenthood isn’t licensed to do any more than a Level 1 breast exam ~ the same exam a woman does in her shower at home, or in a doctor’s office. And, according to the article, $3.3 million dollars raised in the name of breast cancer research has already gone to Planned Parenthood in just the years 2004-2009. This year will take the total to almost $4 million. While a miniscule portion of the overall amount the charity rakes in, when the Komen foundation has reported bringing in less revenue, whether the factors are economic or increased scrutiny and boycotting by pro-life groups, doesn’t this bring their committment to BREAST CANCER research funding as their priority into question?

I don’t know. But I thought you all should, just in case you didn’t and would want to know.

I am inherently skeptical of a “charitable” organization that comes out of the seeming blue to become the go-to umbrella for ALL the money there is to be had concerning as universal a malady as breast cancer. Especially one that goes for the emotional jugular, where so many of the participant fundraisers are doing it “in memoriam”. It almost seems obscene that those dollars to help create the next cancer survivor might be passed to an organization the complete antithesis of the cherished victim’s very devout beliefs. Abstractly, I’m sure most like to think they’re helping fund a gleaming new lab, a bank of exciting new, multi-colored gene trial vials or a comfortable new hospital wing with soothing, homeopathic accutrements to help you through treatment.

At the very least, before they pin on their little ribbon or pull that 24-hour race pink t-shirt over their head, they should be fully aware of WHERE those dollars they’re walking for could wind up.

The check might go elsewhere.

This Is Why He’s A Super Genius…

…and I’m a neanderthalic moron

11:10 a.m. ET – Obama says The greatest source of unemployment has been layoffs.

Who knew?

An Important And Timely Essay

Via Allah here is a well-written piece on some of the real problems, and the real solutions, that we face

It is time to face reality. I am not nearly well-informed enough to offer even an educated guess as to the immediate cause of the market crash and subsequent recession/depression. But it seems painfully clear at this point that a substantial portion of the economic growth we enjoyed in the years prior to 2007 was entirely illusory and funded by ill-advised and unsustainable lending practices. This is a problem that doesn’t solve itself overnight. And moreover, when it is “solved,” a substantial portion of us will nonetheless have to accept a lifestyle that is much less comfortable than the ones we enjoyed 5 years ago.

What scares me – I mean, truly terrifies me – about this entire situation is not what I am going to do about my own predicament (although I would be lying if I said it did not cause me substantial amounts of stress). It is that no Presidential candidate who stands a chance of winning can afford to say anything like the preceding paragraph. It would be political suicide for any candidate – Republican or Democrat – to suggest aloud, “You know what? As a candidate I can fix things around the edges and start us on the road to recovery, but if we’re being perfectly honest with each other, it’s going to be a long time (if ever) before things get back to the way they were.”

Read the whole thing.

What built America, what allowed us to grow into the most free, most successful republic the world has ever seen, was in large part a simple belief: I will work, I will struggle, I will sacrifice, I will put up with less now so that those that follow, be they literally my children or not, can have more. Generation after generation built thankfully upon the shoulders of those that came before, striving ever upward to add their own humble contributions to the base, broadening and strengthening the core. And then, starting in the 60s mostly and accelerating in the years hence, the focus shifted from working for the future to living for today. We went from building to servicing in both the physical structure of our economy and more importantly in our outlook; a tectonic shift that has led to where we are today.

The only way out is for us to realize that all the promises that politicians made us can’t be honored. We all can’t have vacation homes and new cars and unlimited free health care and lives in which everyone is always a winner. Government can not legislate away old age, disease, poor sports teams or bad luck no matter how the demagogues may rail against these things and try to claim they are in someway somehow someone’s fault.

We need to stop expecting and demanding that the government will cushion our fall, because the easiest way for them to do that is stop us from standing up.

6.2 Quake In Argentina

Pretty shallow, too. Hopefully not too much damage.

Thursday Morning At 5 O’Clock As The Day Begins

Well, ok, it was 5:30 actually but that didn’t fit in with the Sgt. Pepper’s allusion I was groping for.

Speaking of groping: so, at 5:30 am on a Thursday morning I’m “asked” by a very polite policeman to show id to walk down the public street where I work.

The public street where I work.

Thanks, Occupiers.

Thanks a bunch.

There’s a irony that’s probably lost on most of these folks: they chant and babble and scream about the evils of Corporate AmeriKKKa and how only misery has come from capitalism…while texting on their cell phones and listening to their iPods.

Update: Here’s your future:

“We are the 99 percent, you know, and it’s not fair that people don’t have to pay taxes, that corporations don’t have to pay taxes and like we do. It’s like my mom pays more taxes than like Walmart does,” Helen Curran, a student at Pace University, told Young.

Like, you know, totally.

Updated Update: inspired by ricki’s comment, what has Wall St. and capitalism ever done for us?

A DunkinDonuts Chocolate Creme Filled to the Swiller Who Can Decipher

…any single ONE of the eleven incomprehensible, OccupyWallStreet statements in the slide show.

It would be hard to pick a winner. Would it be this from the young guy…

…“You probably hear the more cliché answer, ‘I want change,’ but I want change in the ways that change is possible. I want change that is most practical as possible,” he said. “I want to see new policies that give us a real freedom, I want to see less corruption, but I want to see less corruption done practically. It’s a free market, it’s a free capitalistic market, but not a direct democracy.”

…or THIS from the 57 yr. old (?!) “Vietnam vet”?

…“Your government is in two wars right now, but there wouldn’t be any homeless people right now if there weren’t any wars would there?…”

Oh, what to choose, what to choose! It is, as they said in Top Gun, a “target rich environment”.

Or, if I wanted to be a true subversive and a real cub reporter, I could eschew these online, New York opinions and gather my own.

Yes, ladies and germs. I have learned that Pensacola is to be subjected to it’s own version of OccupyWallStreet, called “WeRCleverCopyCats”

WeOccupyBoringAssPensacolaHotBedofRepublicansandWhataBurger

And the local fishwrap* is fanning those FaceBook flames to help!

…The group Occupy Pensacola, which formed around the event, had 577 supporters late Tuesday on Facebook.

“I was amazed to find out how many people were interested in this once the word got out,” Heyer said. “I thought we would have fewer than 30 people. … I was totally floored by it.”

But when your target audience is 99 percent of Americans, you can’t help finding support.
The “99 percent” is something of a mantra among Occupy Wall Street protesters, a reference to the other “1 percent,” super-rich Americans who control most of the nation’s wealth.

(*Like the sooper-rich Gannett EE-VILLE CORPORATION which OWNS the Pensacola News Journal? Surely they must mean other evil-doers.)

I will endeavor to keep this sinus condition raging in order to protect myself against the smells associated with protestors of this ilk and, if I also remember batteries, perhaps I’ll venture out into the great, unwashed Pensacola hordes…oh, that’s a bit melodramatic. But I WILL take bets on how many Rick Scott effigies I see. He’s, like, the favoritest Leftie target of them ALL in these parts!

If I have a chance, I’ll go see what sort of brain baffling crap they’re peddling.

I mean, Pensacola? REALLY?

Spam Of The Day

Can I simply state exactly what a relief to find someone who really is aware what they are discussing on the internet. You certainly understand how to provide a concern for you to gentle and make the idea crucial. More and more people must see this and see why side in the account. My partner and i cant feel you happen to be less common since you undoubtedly have the present.

I’m less common because I have the present.

Finally someone understands.

Lord In Your Wisdom Don’t Let Costco Upgrade Their Hazlet Store

because if they add booze and gas like they have at the store in Edison then I am doomed.

Doomed

For example, the price of Regular Unleaded at the various stations near Chateau Bingley is averaging $3.35 to $3.41. At the Costco it was $3.03

Hell, that makes me want to drive around aimlessly for hours just so I can go there and fill up!

And did I mention they sell booze?

As in “proof that there is a God and he wubs us” booze?

They sell beer, liquor and wine. And being Costco, they have their own “Kirkland” brand of hootch. The neat twist that they do is that their brand is not a cheap generic brand but they aim for a premium quality at a discounted price, and in most cases they hit the mark. Whether it be a simple thing like milk (their brand is at least $1/gallon cheaper than at the supermarket) or coffee (they sell an excellent 100% Colombian product at a price that is not much higher than your mass-market brands (and as an aside I should mention that they are a client of mine in this regard)) or EVOO their products tend to be pretty darned good. I’ve bought a lot of their Kirkland products, and I have to say that basically the only one I thought was not great was their sharp cheddar cheese, which was neither sharp nor of the proper texture.

Anywho, booze. They don’t have the largest selection, of course, and the prices are mixed. Some wines are cheaper than my usual Bottle King and others are a tad more expensive, so as always know your prices. They have a Kirkland-labelled mixed case of “artisan” beers: a pale ale, an india pale ale, a belgian wheat and an amber ale all for only $19, which for 24 bottles is ok in my book, and the beers are all pretty good. They have their own brands of tequila, vodka and bourbon, none of which I’m a big consumer of, so I can’t report on them. They have a Kirkland scotch, a 15 year old single malt which is distilled by Macallan fer gosh’ sake and at $50 I’ll take a gamble on a bottle on my next trip.

I did pick up some vino.

The 2009 Delas “St-Esprit” Côtes du Rhône which Parker rated a 90 was priced at $10. It was delicious. Smooth raspberry/cherry flavor, soft tannins. A lovely very drinkable wine and a great value.

And speaking of great value

This was under $7 ($6.89 to be precise) and has a deeper golden color and somewhat more body than a lot of pinot grigios in my Cheap Bastard price range tend to have. Smooth melon/apple flavors with a soft acidity. A very nice, easy drinking wine at an excellent price.

What’s not to love?

Shockingly I did buy many more bottles, so if I’m able I get a chance I will post some more Booze Muse thoughts, and i do apologize that I’ve been so sadly remiss in this department of late.

Another Hero Sells Out

Oh, well. I should be used to it.

**sigh**
I don’t give a shit.

Don’t Call It Doom!

We prefer the term “Differently Recovering.”

I noticed an odd way the business news was reported on Newsradio88 yesterday. I got in the car at oh 5:15 or so and I wanted to hear where the Dow finished up; when I had left the office at 3:30 it was down 200-ish and I was understandably curious how it had ended up.

Imagine my surprise when the business report (and the main news report at the bottom of the hour) didn’t actually say “the Dow fell 258 points today” but rather only said that the “Dow was off 2%.”

I mean, it’s almost as if the MSM decided that saying “2%” sounds better than saying “250 points.”

Why, a cynical person might even think they were doing some PR work for the Administration.

I’d Call It a “Mexican Stand-Off”, But…

…it’s Illinois. “Fat Pat”, as Crusader calls him (more commonly referred to as Illinois Governor Pat Quinn), thought he’d lay off almost 2000 goverment worker bees and close seven state facilities in order to…um…bridge some serious cash flow problems. Not so fast there, you.

Illinois Can’t Lay Off 1,900 State Workers: Arbitrator

….Edwin Benn, the arbitrator, cited a 2010 agreement between Illinois and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 that prohibits the state from laying off unionized employees until fiscal 2013 begins on July 1, 2012. Under that deal, the union agreed to $400 million in concessions in return for a guarantee of no lay-offs through the end of fiscal 2012, the ruling stated.

The arbitrator said the state was liable for wages and benefits lost by the 1,680 unionized workers targeted for lay-offs.

You’d think a Democratic governor in a MOST Democratic of state with a Democratic legislature all wrapped up could get a little love out of his folks in tough times, right? Ah…no.

…Quinn blamed the Democrat-controlled Legislature for sending him a $33 billion fiscal 2012 general funds budget that locks in spending levels for state agencies but did not appropriate enough money to keep some state services operating.

SNEAKY BASTARDS! Poor Fat Pat has to take the fall, while the guys in the Legislature can slide back in their chairs and truthfully say, “Hey, Big Guy! Sent you a budget.”

In an earlier ruling, the arbitrator kinda sorta stuck it to the state just to make sure the union message got across…

…Benn in July ruled that the state was required to hike workers’ pay by 2 percent in fiscal 2012 after Quinn nixed $75 million in raises, contending the budget did not appropriate the money.

…so this really shouldn’t have been a complete surprise. I’m sure all those peeved Illinois voters will hold their miserable representatives accountable.

By the way…

…The cash-strapped state still owes billions of dollars for bills and other obligations incurred in fiscal 2011 despite a hike in income tax rates in January.

Ooopsie.

In a Republican administration, there’s a fair chance someone would have checked the Unicorn and Fairy Dust math before the toiletpaper left the State House for signature, but, then again, that could just be me being a hater.

I Want to Address OUR POS President Asserting the “Whole Debate Audience Booing the Gay Soldier”

He makes me sick. He’s a demagoguing, piece of shit, bald faced, opportunistic liar.

As you all know, I WAS THERE (as a delegate for Escambia County). ONE ~ count ‘em O.N.E. ~ loud, lone male voice, with a tiny sprinkling of quieter, quickly derided down hoots, rang out for a FRACTION of a SECOND from the middle to back of the Covention Center, and we were all HORRIFIED by the behavior.

HORRIFIED.

(In defense of the candidates squinting on stage, they had bright lights, a different noise set than us, we were all distracted by it and I’m not too sure any of them could have had a clue WHAT it, in fact, was.) The surrounding members apparently took care of the jackasses promptly and expediantly.

They would not have DARED to make another peep judging by the combined AUDIENCE reaction. We were out for blood.

That’s the biggest, most pernicious LIE spread by this LIAR in CHIEF of ours ~ that it was the entire audience. It was a tiny three or four individuals in a room of FIVE THOUSAND, every one of whom looked immediately to see who the disgusting cretins were and if anyone needed help getting the situation shut down.

Everywhere this SOB’s vicious slander of us is written, I tell our story, cut and paste this little paragraph. Makes my blood boil.

Thank God I can see 2012 from my house. It’s the only thing keeping me sane…

Despair Not, Oh Ye People!

In these worrisome times people often wonder if those today are worthy to walk in the shadows of our Ancestors. Who today can claim to rise up and rightfully wrap them selves in the mantle of Aristotle, Galileo, da Vinci, Luther, Thomas Paine, Jefferson?

Yes, I too have often felt your worry, your concern that perhaps We as a People have grown too soft, that perhaps we have lost that Spark, that inner fire of inspiration that causes in these most desperate of moments the very creme of human ability and achievement to rise Phoenix-like from the ashes of our deepest despair.

My friends, Rejoice!

We are saved.

(via Ace)

Thrills From Dinner Last Night!

Yes, it’s the pan deglazing action photo!