Category Archives: Politics

The LA Times disconnect

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Reading today’s Los Angeles Times one would not realize there were three major scandals consuming the Obama Administration in perhaps the greatest political meltdown in our country’s history.

We can read of an accident on the 210 Freeway or that North Korea seized a Chinese fishing boat or that Star Trek did well at the box office, and only in the third lede in the politics section does one learn that the Administration is valiantly fighting back against the accusations that it targeted conservatives groups and even individuals through the IRS.

Elsewhere, the Administration is losing with some of its biggest supporters in Glenn Greenwald, Jon Stewart, and even the New York Times. As the scandals have expanded, the coverage in Los Angeles has decreased and the Op/Eds become more outlandish telling us how it’s all really okay. The Times is beginning to verge on “Baghdad Bob” territory.

Los Angeles, as most of who live here know, is a lost cause. There is an alternate political reality in the city where a do nothing mayor has been elevated to a national political figure and two very liberal Democrats running for his replacement have been accusing each other of being conservative or horrors, a secret Republican.

The city is on the verge of bankruptcy and has one of the worst school districts in the nation. Ballots in Los Angeles are available in over 100 languages and you can take your driver’s test in Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Cambodian, Chinese, Croatian, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Persian/Farsi, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Samoan, Spanish, Tagalog/Filipino, Thai, Tongan, Turkish, and Vietnamese. I am not sure if they understand “Yield” or Merge” and the roadways are in fact dangerous. The Times pursues a liberal, white agenda.

Los Angeles has been a one party state for many years now and the Times is our Pravda.

Recently, a rumor arose that the Koch Brothers might buy the paper, prompting a majority of the editorial and reporting staff to threaten to resign. This might be a good thing.

A city as dynamic and vital as Los Angeles needs a dynamic and vital press. The Times is neither. It has withered away and disconnected itself from what makes a great paper. There is a groupthink that allows no dissension that is common to today’s media. The editorial staff have undergone self-hypnosis and report through the rose-tinted glasses of the Left. Maybe it’s the legal pot.

As the paper’s circulation falters and management tries paywalls one week and tearing them down the next they have forgotten that even in a politically liberal city there is still a strong independent and conservative minority who have become alienated by the paper’s policies. Even the funny pages aren’t very funny these days and a newspaper is still a business expected to make a profit unless it is subsidized by “The Party”.

It’s a shame, as Los Angeles went from having several good papers to really, one large and poorly run one.

 

 

 

Benghazi & the FBI wiretaps – the connection

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This morning, the Washington Post reported that the FBI wiretap investigation of the Associated Press was initiated because of leaks of classified information from the government. In the words of the Post:

“The aggressive investigation into the possible disclosure of classified information to the AP is part of a pattern in which the Obama administration has pursued current and former government officials suspected of releasing secret material. Six officials have been prosecuted, more than under all previous administrations combined.”

The Post also reported:

“The two leak inquiries were started after Republicans in Congress accused the Obama administration of orchestrating news stories intended to demonstrate the president’s toughness on terrorism and improve his chance for reelection. The Republicans sought a special prosecutor, but Holder instead named two veteran prosecutors to handle the inquiries.”

If you recall, in June of last year, in the heat of the election, Senators Dianne Feinstein, John McCain, and others accused the White House of leaking information on the highly classified Stuxnet cybervirus program to the New York Times. Of course the Democrats called it politics but it was serious enough to force meetings with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and FBI Director Robert Mueller. Clapper then suggested wider polygraph testing of intelligence officials.

In fact, the suspected source for this leak was at the very top at the White House.

In May of 2012, world headlines reported the arrest of a second underpants bomber in Yemen. It was later reported that the United States government blew the cover of an allied agent in place who tipped off the British intelligence services. Even Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta condemned the leak. A full investigation was supposed to have been launched, but then it sank mysteriously into obscurity. Again, the White House was the prime suspect.

For an Administration that has been more aggressive in policing the intelligence community than any of its predecessors, there is a gaping hole in its narrative.

And so now the important facts are coming out about the Benghazi attack. It was a coverup and it was political.

And the FBI has been caught in delicto flagrante wiretapping one of the Administrations favorite news organizations for vague, unspecified reasons. Again quoting from the Washington Post article.

“This investigation is broader and less focused on an individual source or reporter than any of the others we’ve seen,” said Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists. “They have swept up an entire collection of press communications. It’s an astonishing assault on core values of our society.”

Translated into English, it was a fishing expedition.

So as the Administration has been using intimidation and threats to our intelligence apparatus at every step it has itself been engaging in a Byzantine level of political corruption to forward its narrative.

CIA Director David Petraeus was humiliated on a national stage 2 days after the election. This wasn’t an accident. It was an act of political destruction. The Benghazi coverup wasn’t an accident. The FBI investigation was a political fig leaf meant to both show Congress that something was being done on the larger scandals while being used as a tool to quash the Administration’s enemies.

Machiavelli and Boss Tweed and the Borgias have got nothing on this bunch of treasonous crooks.

 

The Smoking Gun in Benghazi

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Ambassador StevensWe are still being fed a narrative by the media on Benghazi. The problem runs much deeper than they are willing to admit.

First we were told it was a protest against a video. Then, after weeks of lies, we were told the Administration was looking into it. Then there were Congressional hearings where State Department officials were pilloried. Then Hillary Clinton faced Congress and said:

hillary-clinton-testifies-on-benghazi-2

” The fact is; we had four dead Americans! Was it because of a protest? Or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?”

Then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said:

Panetta covers ass

“The United States military is not and should not be a global 911 service capable of arriving on the scene within minutes to every possible contingency around the world,”

General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff denied that there was time to send a response team or for that matter any support until hours after the attack was over. The attack went on for at least 5 hours.

Panetta then went on to say:

“You can’t willy-nilly send F-16s there and blow the hell out of place. … You have to have good intelligence.”

And yet in later testimony it was acknowledged that there were drones broadcasting real time data back to Washington and to other sites almost all through the entire attack. The defenders of the Consulate were lasing targets in the expectation of strike aircraft support. We had good intelligence and we had specific targets.

The resignations at the State Department after the hearings were another smoke screen. State has been underfunding security around the world partially because their embassy construction budget is insanely high.

Our new embassies look like and are fortresses, which projects a terrible image across the world. But that is the policy of the our government these days.

The crisis on 9-11-12 was a multi-jurisdictional crisis. DoD, CIA, NSA, and all the other alphabet agencies were involved and the manager was supposed to be the DNI, James Clapper, who has very little actual authority.

Every agency involved fell flat on its face either through incompetence or the orders of the political masters running the show. Obama checked out at 5:00pm, and Hillary and Panetta and even Petraeus shortly thereafer. No one with authority was on-line to hear the screams or watch the tracers and RPG’s that finally ended this debacle. There was clear dereliction of duty.

Someone at the very top pulled the plug and let these people die and in all likelihood it was Obama and his minions. The 5:00PM checkout is a smoking gun.

It’s like one of those bad movie devices when they turn off the computers and the phones and the lights and the last person out of the room closes the door and the screen goes black.

And the next morning the lies and the coverup began. And even now the media are doing their best to cover up the truth.

Obama’s Middle Finger to America

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Obama FingerSince when has an Administration given the finger to virtually the entire American People?  And since when has there been an almost complete silence on the issue by the media?

The President badly misjudged  the effects of Sequestration on the American political landscape. The first few weeks had been a non-event despite the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth by everyone from the President himself to the Cabinet to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

So now the President has ratcheted the game up, Chicago-style.

The Sequester represents a 2% cost reduction from the increased budget for this year and the next 10 years. This year’s portion is approximately $85 Billion (2%) from a budget of $3.8 trillion, 40% of which is being borrowed. In most families and companies, this would mean a few less nights out for pizza or movies. To the Federal government under President Obama, it means war.

Consider the following:

White House tours cancelled. White House parties continue.

Aircraft carrier deployment cancelled. Military exercise with Morocco cancelled. Air shows cancelled. Worthless programs continue.

Government threatens the most vulnerable; education, HIV patients, Meals on Wheels; HeadStart

. Government threatens closure of  national parks.

Government orchestrates air traffic control slowdown.

In other words, the leadership in government wants you to feel the pain while they continue to spend beyond all reason.

When he was selling Obamacare to the American people, the President said that he had identified $65 Billion in waste and fraud in the Medicare program that would offset higher costs for wider coverage. Not a thing has been done about that fraud since. Even some reform would have mitigated the cuts.

The Federal government has added hundreds of thousands of additional jobs, year after year until it has become a bureaucracy more bloated that any in the world. Federal unions have some of the most generous pension plans and benefits in the country as well. Taking care of your special interests is vital to crony capitalists. Think of the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted on green energy projects.In a time of lean, one must consider anything that is peripheral to the common good, but not this government. Not now.

And when one tries to discuss greater efficiency or common sense solutions, the reply is crickets. They don’t want the problems solved.

Our government has never set out to oppress its own people until now. Now, we are all pawns in the President’s battle to assert his will. Never before has a President been so arrogant as to do so. He is directly confronting us with his power and daring us to respond.

And to date no one has directly responded.

This is clearly the president’s crisis. He was the one who recommended and campaigned for sequestration in the first place and now he is reaping what he has sown. And in his vindictiveness he is giving the finger to all of us.

 

Failure Analysis – Asking the hard questions on the Boston bombings

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It has been one week since the Boston Marathon bombing. We now know that the perpetrators were two brothers acting in jihad. A primary and a secondary device were planted to maximize casualties.

The perpetrators went to ground for 3 days before they surfaced. One of them, Dzhokhar Tsaraev, went back to his dormitory room and acted as if nothing had happened. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary to those who knew him. None of those who knew him seem to have any recollection of anything out of the ordinary leading up to the bombings.

The trail of the other brother, Tamerlan, is much more clear. At a certain point he turned towards a very conservative Sunni interpretation of Islam. His family was concerned. From what little we know of his wife, a convert, she adopted the hijab and lived as an observant Muslim in a small town in Rhode Island. Not the most normal state of affairs in small town New England.

Tamerlan began to follow ultra conservative imams and posted their sermons on his web page. He also posted jihadi videos taken in Syria and elsewhere.

According to Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, the FBI visited him at some point. According to Tamerlan’s father the visit was a warning. “We know where you live. We know what web sites you are frequenting. We know who you are talking to” was the message.

And yet this week the FBI reported that the U.S. government was asked by Russia to investigate Tamerlan, did so, found nothing amiss, and were legally required to close the file.

The United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars building a security apparatus that includes the most sophisticated surveillance systems; that allows for an unprecedented invasion of the privacy of its citizens, and that has access to virtually every database on-line.

When speaking with a FBI Agent based in the Santa Ana, CA office recently, I was told that the office had become one of the largest in the country because of the ongoing programs monitoring the Muslim community. Mosques have been bugged, imams are regularly interviewed, and close attention is paid to anything out of the ordinary.

And yet we find this week that Tamerlan Tsaraev was thrown out of his mosque in Massachusetts because of his radical and aggressive actions.

We also found that he spent six months in Dagestan, a known region for Islamist unrest, and may never have been questioned about his stay.

The UK’s Channel 4 reported that Tamerlan was under surveillance for 5 years. So said his mother. The Dail Mail reported:

The FBI said in a statement released Friday that it had investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaeva in 2011 at the request of a foreign government. The FBI did not reveal which country’s government that was.

‘The request stated that it was based on information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups,’ the FBI statement said.

The FBI said that in response to the request the bureau culled through its databases and interviewed both Tamerlan Tsarnaeva and members of his family, but were unable to find any evidence that he was connected to a terrorist organization.

It would seem that the Wall Street Journal’s account and that of the FBI differ, or perhaps there was more than one meeting. Tamerlan’s father mentioned no questioning by the FBI.

Regardless, it now seems obvious that Tamerlan Tsaraev should have been on the terror watch list at least 2 years ago. The question is why was he overlooked? The press does not seem to want to ask that question yet.

The press has also been remarkably forgiving of an administration that stonewalled on both Fast & Furious and on Benghazi. Will they ask the hard questions now?

1 – What are the full and complete circumstances of Tamerlan Tsaraev’s interactions with our government?

2 – How and where was he radicalized?

3 – How, where, and why did he take the steps to become a terrorist?

4 – Why did his family know and his mosque know he had become radicalized and the FBI not know?

5 – How and why did the FBI and other agencies, especially Homeland Security drop the ball?

6 – Could this have been prevented by better tactics and strategy?

The carnage was minimized through the heroic actions of many and a lot of luck. The apprehension of the perpetrators is still murky, but after the largest lockdown in American history, it was a citizen who made the final link. It was ordinary Americans who finally solved the case; a dead cop in Cambridge led to the chase to Watertown and a bloody exchange with the terrorists. Some guy who noticed a tear in his boat cover.

Did we need every SWAT cop within 100 miles out there marching around and searching without warrants? Did we handle the lockdown properly? Was it an intrusion too far on civil rights?

We need answers to all of these questions and we cannot afford to have bureaucratic or political agendas keep us from the truth.

Islamist Terrorists Bomb Boston

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10 days ago,, the Associated Press removed the term “Islamist” from its style book as a perjorative term for Muslim extremists. This morning we woke up to find that Islamist terrorists bombed the Boston Marathon on Monday.

The two terrorists, for they admitted that they did commit the act; in fact they bragged about it, were from Chechnya, one of the most violent places on earth 15 – 20 years ago. Chechnya experienced one of the most devastating civil wars of the past 100 years between the Russian state and Muslim separatists. As the war which began in 1994 expanded, brutality begat brutality. The First Chechen War ended in 1996, while the Second Chechen War ended in only 2009 after a 10 year insurgency.

The Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002 where 170 died and the Beslan School massacre, where 380 people lost their lives in 2004 were perpetrated by Islamist terrorists. Grozny, the capital of Chechnya looked like Stalingrad 1943 after the first Chechen War. This is the reality of being Chechen.

Chechen fighters today are considered the shock troops of Islamist armed struggle from Bosnia to Afghanistan to Syria. mention Chechens to a jihadi and it is like mentioning the Navy SEAL’s or the pro’s from Dover to an American.

The Tsarnaev brothers were escaping that part of the world, it is clear. They were brought to this country and given refugee status. The elder brother, Tamerlan, came here when he was approximately 16. The younger brother was probably 9 when he arrived. At those ages, young men are very impressionable. And instead of dreaming of becoming firemen or cops or other American dreams they were isolated and insulated.

Somewhere along the way they became radicalized. One does not simply think to assemble and place improvised explosive devices one day. It is a process.

The press tells us that jihadi web sites such as Al Q’aeda’s have the manuals and instructions for the pressure cooker bombs used at the Boston Marathon posted.

Djohar Tsarnaev had Jihadi and Islamic devotional videos on his VK profile and linked it to a Chechen web site.

When confronted by a MIT campus policeman, Sean Collier, they shot and killed him. They then robbed a 7-11 and carjacked a man who stated that they had admitted to the Marathon bombing. Tamerlan died in a hail of bullets and may have detonated a suicide vest.

The cops are calling it terrorism, but not Islamist terrorism. At least not yet. Our government is deathly afraid of labeling it for what it is, just as at Ft. Hood.

But when it walks like an Islamist and quacks like an Islamist and smells like an Islamist, I think AP might want to reconsider the changes in its style guide and our president and his government their disconnect from reality.

There is a faction of Islam at war with us. On 9/11. In London. In Madrid. In Yemen. On a Christmas Day flight to Detroit from Amsterdam. At Fort Hood, and now in Boston.

Al Q’aeda was never an organization with clear lines and uniforms and unit patches. And Al Q’aeda is just one part of Salafism. You can go out and say you’re an AQ without having a membership card or you can go out and blow up innocent civilians and not affiliate yourself. But the motives and results are the same. Death to infidels. That’s why the term Islamist was used in the first place.

All Muslims are not Islamists, but all Islamists are Muslim. The president “vanished” the Global War on Terror. It disappeared from the lexicon. But it never disappeared. Not in Benghazi nor in Boston.

The Tsarnaev brothers are simply the latest link in a chain of Islamist terrorism that will continue until the Muslims themselves extinguish this fanaticism.

One sentence that captures the Left’s position on Abortion

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In an article in this morning’s Washington Post entitled

“Will Kermit Gosnell change the abortion debate?”

, author Juliet Eilperin captures the Left’s position with pellucid clarity. She writes:

“Can the allegedly egregious acts of one provider shift the broader abortion debate?”

That Dr. Gosnell is an abortionist has been established by his license from the State of Pennsylvania. That he performed late-term abortions was advertised by the doctor. The results of those abortions have been entered into evidence and are unquestionable.

That Ms. Eilperin uses the terms “alleged” and “egregious” is clearly indicative of her perspective regardless of the Post’s style manual. They are a semantic smoking gun.

This is the position of the Left and of this Administration specifically. Late term abortion is perfectly legal to this faction. 10 days ago in Florida, a representative of Planned Parenthood endorsed post delivery abortion or as most of us call it, murder.

This is the logical extension of the eugenics policies advocated by Margaret Sanger when she founded Planned Parenthood in 1916. Eugenics, the policy of selective breeding and culling of human beings to establish a superior genetic stock was the policy of Adolph Hitler as well, if you recall.

Sanger and her allies, who included Theodore Roosevelt, wanted to eliminate defective traits and populations and specially targeted African-Americans. Abortion rights are part and parcel of the Progressive agenda, and that includes Ms. Eilperin, the President of the United States, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services.

You see, the President’s has been very clear on his support for late-term abortion. He was interviewed in 2003. And in 2007

“Obama sharply criticized the Supreme Court for its 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart decision upholding the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. He said, “I strongly disagree with today’s Supreme Court ruling…I am extremely concerned that this ruling will embolden state legislatures to enact further measures to restrict a woman’s right to choose, and that the conservative Supreme Court justices will look for other opportunities to erode Roe v. Wade, which is established federal law and a matter of equal rights for women.”

Kathleen Sebelius, a nominal Catholic, invested her tenure as the Governor of Kansas into the support of late-term abortion. Jack Cashill in The American Thinker connects the dots in the web of corruption and Leftist maneuvering in Kansas in the abortion debate centered around Dr. George Tiller, another late-term abortionist. The story was never reported in the national media. Sebelius led a coordinated campaign for six years to fight for Tiller’s right to abort late term fetuses.

In November of 2012 Human Events magazine reported that the wife of Attorney General Eric Holder, OB/GYN Dr. Sharon Malone Holder and her sister own, through a family trust the building in Georgia housing the offices of controversial abortionist Dr. Tyrone Cecil Malloy. AG Holder’s Department of Justice has been aggressive in targeting anti-abortion groups, not so much the potential violations of abortion laws on the books. There is a clear conflict of interest.

So we have the President, his HHS Secretary, and the Attorney General all far to the left of the American People on reproductive rights. We have spokespeople for Planned Parenthood acknowledging their support for post natal abortion.

And then we have Ms. Eilperin concerned that the abortion debate is turning against late-term abortion definitively, arguing that abortion clinics are overburdened with rules and regulations as it stands. She points out that the National Abortion Rights League (NARAL) has given an “F” to Pennsylvania for the states restrictive abortion policies. She argues that emotion is overcoming reason. But is it?

Is it reasonable to take the life of a viable human being simply for the fact of its existence? Go down to any hospital with a maternity ward and look at the section for premature infants. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent per case to keep these infants alive. How does this dichotomy reconcile itself in any humane society? When does a fetus or in the case of late-term or post delivery cases have its own human rights? Our policies are schizophrenic.

And the Strangelovian rhetoric of the Left must be recognized for what it is. In the newspeak of the Left calls it reproductive rights. Except the product has no rights. Even until the final stages of pregnancy and beyond, if they had their way.

I cannot and would not post the photographs of the souls lost to Dr. Gosnell’s snips, but they are little different from those of healthy, living infants.

Scientifically, life begins at conception. Our society has decided that a life may be terminated prior to birth. Those limits have been legally established and yet the abortion rights movement wants no restrictions whatsoever. How is this just? And how do we reconcile having some of the strongest advocates for those extreme positions writing the rules and regulations and then enforcing, or not enforcing them?

Dear Mr. President, please stop BS’ing us on AGW

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Yahoo today ran photos from across Europe this morning of the effects of early Spring snow. Britain, France, Germany and much of the rest of Europe have been faced with some of the most snow and cold since the 1960′s. I was a miserable winter and at Easter, still a miserable early Spring.

Today’s Telegraph estimates that 30,000 people will have died this winter season from weather related conditions. Earlier this year, a group of Norwegian students made a video mocking both the celebrity driven cause industry and global warming. Radi – Aid, sending radiators to Norway, can be seen here.

This week’s Economist gives another data point. Apparently, the models predicted by AGW advocates such as James Hanson, the NASA propagandist, for global warming are not working out the way they thought they would. Surface temperatures across the planet are at the low-end of the predictions and there hasn’t been any actual, you know, global warming in 10 years according to the numbers. What is emerging is that the climate change advocates really don’t know. Climatology is hard, you see. The weather in most places changes every day.

And those anthropomorphic polar bears the AGW crowd are using as poster bears for climate change? Well, there are a hell of a lot more of them on the planet than there were 25 years ago according to every single study written. It seems that our government has been trying to cover this up as well. ‘When the facts don’t fit the narrative change the facts” is government policy.

We have gone from Global Warming to Climate Change to WTF.

Yes, climates on the planet are changing. Why and how? We do not know. Climatology is a new science. It used to be called meteorology and we didn’t have a lot of faith in the TV weathermen in predicting tomorrow’s weather back in the ancient times oh 20 years ago or so.

Now we have experts with a kernel of data extrapolating some amazing consequences 50 or 100 years down the line. The data does not meet the bullshit test.

But this is what Al Gore and our President believe as gospel, and therein lies the rub. The president has authorized hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars in green energy projects that have failed or for which there is no real financial expectation of a reasonable return on investment, either ecologically or financially.

At the same time, the Administration has done its best to exterminate the coal industry, interfere with oil and gasoline prices, stymie nuclear power, and oppose natural gas. This is all part of their strategy. It is no accident. It is the stated goal of the green energy industry to work with government to raise the price of conventional energy to a point where green energy is competitive. Cheap energy is the enemy.

Bjorn Lomborg, the original skeptical environmentalist, wrote in the Wall Street Journal recently that the actual cost of green energy is much higher. The models used by corporations and government do not accurately reflect the energy, materials, and labor input in manufacturing green energy technology, which already relies far too much on government subsidies. I keep on thinking of all of those poor Germans in their worst winter in ages and their commitment to solar power. I wonder what the output of a solar array is in a snowstorm or the fog?

Solar power survives on voodoo economics. They don’t discuss the failure rates of modules or inverters or other components or the fact that dirt will drop the efficiency of a module array by 30-50%. All of the models reflect and unicorn and rainbow logic.

Just this morning, the EPA announced a new set of rules reducing sulphur and its emissions that would raise the price of a gallon of gasoline by a minimum of $0.09/gallon at a time of already record energy prices.The United States consumes 368 million gallons of gasoline per day, so this new tax will cost us $33 Million/day or $12 Billion/year. And who pays? Everybody. Who does it hurt the most? The middle class and poor.

The heavy thumb of government is already being felt in CAFE standards driving the standards for MPG up to a level that will kill the current automobile industry. And by the way, you and I have no voice in the discussion. It is a diktat by bureaucratic fiat. Stroke of the pen, law of the land government.

And the guy at the top of the pyramid is driving this bus. It is one of his core beliefs. The President is willing to use all of these tools because he feels that the United States uses too many of the world’s resources. How he came to that conclusion I am not sure, but it probably has to do with his elitist leftist education and the echo chamber he lives in. Facts, to them, are an inconvenient truth. It is about control.

So as the central tenets of anthropogenic global warming become shakier and the economics of green energy are seen to be a lie what happens? The record of this president indicates that he will double down. It is crucial to his political agenda to be right in all things.He is still in campaign mode. And if one of his core beliefs is challenged he is inflexible. This much we do know after four years.

But facts are pernicious. He has created an edifice based upon inaccurate information, and his policies must be challenged. BS should not be government policy.

The President’s New Policy – A Fable of the Modern Age

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Gather round, children, and I will tell you the story of the President’s New Policy.

Once upon a time, there was a vain president in far off Washington whose only worry in life was to make grand pronouncements and dress in elegant clothes and have parties. He began by making grab bag policy speeches and then holding weekly soiree’s, and then twice per week, and then three times per week. And at each event he loved to show off his new clothes and played with the presidential Teleprompter telling ever more outrageous stories.

His consort, Princess Shopping Cart, would also dress up in the most expensive and outrageous outfits, which disturbed the common folk to no end while the sycophants and hangers-on all cried with joy at her inventiveness. The plebes, however, began to call her Princess Gaga.

The President and his Princess had the most wonderful times eating cake and spending the plebe’s money with their rich liberal friends, who all professed their solidarity with the plebes as they ate cake.

One day, two clever economists from far off Italy named Dolci and Gabbano heard of the vain president and decided to take advantage of him.

They went to the President’s gate dressed in the finest clothes and said to the guards “We are two very fine economists who also happen to moonlight as tailors, and can not only fix your economy, but also weave a policy of whole cloth so light and fine that it looks invisible. We’ll even throw in an extra pair of pants for free.”

The head guard heard the strange story, but did not know what to make of the two outrageously dressed strangers. He summoned the Chamberlain of the Economic Policy Council. The Chamberlain notified the Chief of Staff, who ran to the President and disclosed the incredible news.

The President’s curiosity got the better of him, and he immediately summoned the two economists to his throne room.

“We have done many years of research, and can not only fix your economy, but we have also invented an extraordinary method to weave a policy so light and fine that it looks invisible. As a matter of fact, the policy is so fine and incredible that it is invisible to anyone who is too stupid and incompetent to appreciate its quality.” And we will throw in the pants for free.”

The President gave the two scoundrels a large sack of TARP funds, and said “Just tell me what you need and I shall give it to you”.

They asked for a loom, silk, an Apple MacBook Pro and 100 kilograms of the finest gold thread, and began to pretend to work. They promptly converted the TARP funds into RMB Yuan and transferred them to an untraceable bank account in Austria, which everyone knows is much more secure than Switzerland these days. The gold thread was melted down into bar and hidden in a safe place in case of hyperinflation.

The President thought he had spent his money quite well. He would fix his economy, get a new policy, and find out which of his plebes were ignorant and incompetent, along with an extra pair of pants.

He promptly held another soirée, where the clothing was the most outrageous yet and the cake was made of the finest ingredients. He invited Princess Oprah and Lord Harry and Nancy of Marin and Princess Shopping Cart outdid herself in a dress made of environmentally sustainable materials including dixie cups and duct tape and lawn clippings and tinfoil.

Once the door closed behind them, the two economists chortled with glee. “Whadda Maroon” said Dolci. “whattan embezzle!” said Gabanno. For days they pretended to work deep into the night at the loom, but in fact were listening to iTunes on their Bluetooth headsets.

Several days later when he had heard nothing from the economists, the President said “I would really like to know how they are coming along with my policy and my extra pair of pants.” But he was a bit uneasy when he recalled that anyone who was unfit for his position would not be able to see the policy or the material. Of course he himself had nothing to fear, but still he decided to send someone else in order to follow White House protocol.

“I’ll send my honest old Treasury Secretary to the economists” thought the President. He’s the best one to see how the policy is coming along and knows good clothing. He is very sensible and no one is more worthy of his position than he. So the honest old Treasury Secretary went into the hall where the two economists sat busily working their empty looms and typing on the computer. They had printed out 1,000 pages of incomprehensible gobbledegook, but the loom seemed empty.

“Goodness, thought the Treasury Secretary, I cannot understand a single phase of this policy and I cannot see a thing.” But he did not say so.

The two swindlers invited him to step closer, asking him if wasn’t the most beautifully elegant policy and if the colors of the pants were not the most magnificent he had seen. They pointed to the empty loom and the thousand pages of gobbledygook and the poor old Treasury Secretary opened his eyes wider and wider. He still could see nothing for nothing was tthere. “Gracious, he thought. Is it possible that I am stupid? I have never thought so. Am I unfit for my position? No one must know this.  No, it would never do for me to say that I am unable to understand the policy or see the extra pair of pants. “

“You aren’t saying anything!” said one of the economists.

“Oh! The policy is magnificent! It will solve all of our problems and will only penalize those with incomes over $250,000 dollars, depending upon how we define it. Peering through his glasses, the Treasury Secretary said ” The patterns and colors of the extra pair of pants are magnificent! Yes, I will tell the president that it is beyond our greatest expectations!”

“That makes us very happy!” said the two economists, and they called the policy and the colors and the pattern by name. The old Treasury Secretary listened very closely so that he would know exactly which words to say when he reported back to the President, and that is exactly what he did.

The swindlers now asked for more money and silk and gold and shares in Exchange Traded Funds, all of which were immediately granted and all of which were immediately laundered. They then continued to weave on empty looms as before and download Latvian folk poetry translated through babelfish and parsed through Lexis/Nexis.

The President then sent other officials as well to observe the economists progress. They too were startled when they saw nothing and they too reported back to the president how wonderful the policy was and how beautiful the extra pair of pants were, advising him to carry the policy and wear the pants in a grand procession. The entire city was alive with praise of the policy and of the pants. “Magnifique!!,  Prima!!!,  Nysseligt!!, Incredible!!” they said in all languages. The President awarded the economists with medals of Nobel, bestowing on each of them the title of Senior Policy Advisor and Master Weaver.

The swindlers stayed up the entire night before the procession was to take place, burning more than 16 compact fluorescent lamps. Everyone could see they were in a great rush to finish the policy and the extra pair of pants. They pretended to take the material from the looms and ordered 3 extra printers and a collating machine in order to print the new policy. They cut the air with large scissors, and bound the policy with the most exquisite bindings of fine Corinthian leather. They sewed the air with needles without any thread. Finally, they said “Behold!

The President’s policy is completed! And while we ran 3,000% over budget, behold the extra pair of pants, along with a frock coat and vest, are finished!”

The President came to them with his most trusted advisors, Congressmen, Senators, and Princess Shopping Cart. The two economists handed the President the exquisitely bound new policy, which he promptly passed to a page as he strode forward to see the new clothes. The two swindlers raised their arms as if they were holding something and said ” Just look at this extra set of pants! Here is the jacket! This is the vest!!” and so forth. “They are light as spider webs! You might think you didn’t have a thing on, but that is the good thing about them!”

“Yes!” said the advisers and Congressmen and Senators and Princess Shopping Cart, but they couldn’t see a thing because nothing was there.

“Would your Presidentness, if it pleases, kindly remove your clothes so that we may dress you?” asked the swindlers. “We will then fit you perfectly with the new ones, in front of this mirror.”

The president took off all of his clothes, and the economists pretended to dress him, piece by piece with the new ones that were to be fitted. They took hold of his waist and pretended to tie something around it. They pretended to tie his tie in an exquisitely formed knot just so. Then the president turned and faced the mirror.

“Goodness! Don’t the clothes fit you well! What a wonderful fit!” everyone said. “What a pattern! What colors! Such luxurious clothes!”

“The canopy to be carried above Your Presidentness awaits outside” said the Director of Protocol.

“Yes! I am ready!” said the President. “Don’t they fit well?” Princess Shopping Cart could only smoulder at all of the attention he was getting.

The chamberlains who were to carry the train held their hands just above the floor as if they were picking up the train. As they walked, they pretended to carry the train high. For they could not let anyone notice they could see nothing.

The President walked beneath the beautiful canopy in the procession, the new policy symbolically carried by two carefully chosen members of special interest groups, and all of the people on the street and in their windows said ” Goodness!! The new policy will save us all (except those with incomes over $250,000), and the President’s new clothes are incomparable. What a beautiful jacket! What an exquisite pair of spare pants!” Scribes Krugman and Sullivan and Friedman and Robinson all praised the policy as they were told to do by Journo List. No one wanted to admit that they had not read the policy nor that they could see the President’s new clothes, for then it would be said they were unfit for their position or that they were stupid. None of the President’s clothes or policies had ever received such praise.

“But he doesn’t have anything on,” said a small child in a wondering voice.

“Good Lord! Let us hear the voice of an innocent child!” said the father, and whispered to a reporter what the child had said.

” A small child has said the President doesn’t have anything on!” said the reporter. “And having seen a copy of the policy it seems to be nothing but Latvian folk poetry!” he continued.

Finally, everyone was saying “He doesn’t have anything on! The policy is gobbledygook!”

The President shuddered, for he knew that they were right, but he thought “The procession must go on!” He carried himself even more proudly as the pages of the policy began to come loose from their bindings and dance in the breeze, and the chamberlains carried the train that wasn’t there.

The two Italian economists, Dolci and Gabbano, crept softly into the night onto a G5 bound for the Cayman Islands, where they could not be extradited, and were warmly greeted by Angelo Mozillo, Lloyd Blankfein, Jack Lew, Jon Corzine and George Soros.

The End

All due respect to Hans Christian Andersen.

Stephen King does comedy

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We were blessed by a by a new novel from Stephen King this week; one you can purchase for only $0.99 on Amazon.

He calls semi automatic firearms “weapons of mass destruction” echoing the language of the Left during the Iraq War. For man who has plumbed the depths of the human soul for profit on the scale of Croesus, this is pretty friggin’ funny.

He has animated automobiles, anthropomorphized wolves, and turned hotels into malevolent protagonists, herding his characters wholesale into madness and mayhem.

He has led his readers through the labyrinth of madness like no other modern writer and yet he gets it all wrong on the issue of gun control. Guns are inanimate except in King’s novels and novellas. They just sit there in a closet or a drawer or in a safe.

His book “Rage” spoke of the alienation of young men and was a template for at least three murderous assaults. He is unapologetic.

He does nothing to address the real issue; mental health. Many murders are extemporaneous. Some are premeditated. But those such as Columbine, Aurora, and Newtown were the product of the darkness of the human soul, which Mr. King knows better than anyone.

He mocks the fears of the citizens who buy “assault” rifles characterizing them as “self-serving lies promulgated by fundamentalist religious types and America’s propaganda-savvy gun-pimps”. He sort of epitomizes the Blue State ethos where everyone is crammed together into dense communities. Communities with fears he has in many cases created.

Going back to the math; John M. Browning had some interesting concepts. During the Moro Insurgency in the Philippines, he designed a “knock down” pistol in the M 1911 .45 caliber. A target hit with a .45 stays down. However, just a few years later he designed the Browning Hi Power, a 9mm (.354 caliber) with a 14 round magazine, which also became a global standard. Why? In one word, marksmanship. Many militaries, police agencies and other users around the world felt the .45 caliber was too inaccurate in the hands of non-experts. Mr. King didn’t come across that gem in his research, I guess.

He mocked semi-automatic pistols as only good for killing. I guess he forgot revolvers do the same thing.

I appreciate Mr. King’s concern but bans are not the answer. It is the individual we must examine. State of mind, motive, and then means. If we do not address issues such as mental health we will never be rid of the curse. In England, China, Germany, and elsewhere, a knife has been proven just as efficient, and no one should know this better than Mr. King.

It’s funny in a very dark way when someone as talented as Mr. King misapplies logic and the facts. It’s black comedy, almost. But then again, it really isn’t.