THE GREAT DIVIDER DIVIDES AGAIN

Posted on July 14, 2012 | Leave a comment

By his inferences and claims that Mitt Romney may be a criminal the Great Divider has divided once again.  But this time he has underestimated the intelligence and character of the American people.  His hardest core followers, the Republican haters, will have one more ostensible justification for their hate.  The division will become deeper but not broader.

The vast majority of the American people can see the allegations for what they are – slanderous, deceitful, desperate attempts to divert attention from Obama’s record in office and beneath the dignity of a sitting president.  In short, it will backfire against him.  Barack Obama is hoisting himself by his own petard with this one.  It will fail just as the ridiculous attempt to paint Republicans as waging a war against women.

One complaint frequently heard from conservatives is that Republicans tend to pull their punches, remaining too reserved when responding to false charges.  Signs are developing that this will not be the case with the Romney campaign.  When Howard Cosell asked Mohammad Ali whether he aimed his punches at the jaw or the side of the head, Ali answered “I aim for the back of the head”.  Romney knows what he is up against and, like Ali, will not stop short when he punches back.

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IMAGINE THIS VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE – CONDI RICE vs JOE BIDEN

Posted on July 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

The debate would be like the New York Yankees taking on the Chicago Cubs, except funnier.

A very wise man teased me with a question about 3 months ago.  What attributes would the ideal VP candidate have?  He suggested the ideal candidate would be someone who is black, a woman, well known, experienced in government and not from the Northeast.  He had Condaleeza Rice in mind of course.

It didn’t take a lot of culling to find this very brief video of one of Uncle Joe’s Bidenisms.  It is from a speech he made yesterday declaring that “Children should be educated to the degree they are educable.”  It was a minor error of course, but it was a mistake Condi wouldn’t make because Condi is fully educablated.

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MY POLICIES ARE GOOD, IT’S JUST THAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THEM

Posted on July 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

“The mistake of my first term – couple of years – was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right.  And that’s important.  But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.

It’s funny – when I ran, everybody said, well he can give a good speech but can he actually manage the job?”  ~  Barack Obama, July 2012

But he did tell a story to the American people, lots of them.  And he brought a sense of unity as well, unity of the public against the energy companies and banks, of the poor against the middle class and unity of blacks against whites.  The President’s problem is not that his message isn’t getting across; it’s that his message  is  getting across.

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SOFT TYRANNY AND THE POWER OF THE PURSE

Posted on July 12, 2012 | 1 comment

Apple computers are in the process of becoming banned from purchase by employees of the city of San Francisco.  The ban is not because of any safety issues; it is not because Macs are made in China; it’s not because of any shortcomings in Apple products and it’s not because Apple has broken any laws.  It is because the company chose to drop out of an environmental program that is the ideology du jour of city officials.

San Francisco’s 50 departments and 28,000 employees will no longer be able to use city funds to buy Apple desktops, laptops or monitors because the Cupertino, California-based company dropped out of a rating system called EPEAT to track the environmental impact of computers.

To borrow a phrase from Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny, the move by the city is an act of soft tyranny.  The impact on the company’s sales was made possible not by law but simply by the power of the purse.  Located just 30 miles to the south, Apple is a local boy to the City by the Sea.  Apple was the little company with the better product battling the rich and powerful Microsoft that that represented the establishment.  Like Volkswagens and Starbucks, the Mac took on some of the aura of the left.  But now many on the left are eyeing all that cash the company accumulated and thinks it’s Apple’s moral duty to spend it.  The conditions of the employees at the factories in China that build the computers have not escaped notice either.  Once a favorite, now Apple is a whipping boy of the left.

Apple dropped out of EPEAT because they were denied a favorable green ruling for a new product line.

At the heart of the controversy is the company’s newest MacBook Pro with Retina Display, which Apple designed in such a way that it’s difficult to disassemble for the sake of repairs, upgrades, and recycling.

So an international agency that rates a company on its greenishness gives an unsatisfactory rating to Apple because some of its new computers are hard to take apart. What’s next, a ban on Oreo cookies because a Swedish cookie rating agency says they are black on the outside, white on the inside and can be used as hate filled analogies?

Apple can survive a city ban; the impact will not even be noticeable.  But if a city can bring this off on such a frivolous basis, who is to say the federal government could not do the same?

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EV CASSAGNERES — FLOWN WEST AT AGE 84

Posted on July 10, 2012 | 1 comment

EV 1928 – 2012

I have lost a good friend, a fellow pilot, a UFO and a bodhran player.  A UFO? And what’s a bodhran player, pray tell?  I will explain but first a word or two about Ev.

Ev was a seven-time Connecticut state cycling champion; and a national undefeated 200-mile record holder.  He served honorably in the U.S. Army’s First Cavalry Division, infantry, on the front lines in the Korean conflict, and was awarded two Purple Hearts.  He loved cycling and dancing but flying was his passion.

Ev knew Charles Lindbergh and the family personally very well and authored two books comprising the complete history of the Spirit of St. Louis from its conception to its place in the Smithsonian.  Ev wrote three books and was the pre-eminent authority on classic Ryan airplanes.  He was proud of his flights in the rare 1936 Ryan ST, the only survivor of five that were built.  A model of the Ryan hangs from the ceiling in his kitchen.

Ev performed as “Solo the Flying Clown” in air shows around the northeast.  His was the first flying clown comedy act at the world famous Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in New York.  He flew several of Rhinebeck’s early aircraft.  For one summer, Ev performed as a wing-walker atop the wing of a 1941 Stearman PT-17 biplane.

A UFO in this case is a United Flying Octogenarian, a member of an international society of pilots who are, or were, active licensed pilots at the age of 80 or older.  I believe his last flight as pilot in command was one I flew with him earlier this year in his 1953 Cessna 170B.  Now about the bodhram.  It’s a celtic tympanic instrument.  I hope you enjoy the video.  Do go full screen.

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FORTY-ONE STRAIGHT MONTHS OVER EIGHT PERCENT

Posted on July 10, 2012 | 1 comment

Unemployment has been 8% or higher for the last 41 months and Barack Obama said in Ohio on Friday that the country is headed in the right direction.  If that’s the case, I have to ask just where it is he thinks we should go?

The U6 number which includes would-be workers who have given up and dropped off the stats is pushing very close to 15%.  The country hasn’t experienced such economic malaise lasting this long since the Great Depression, literally.

Increasing taxes on the rich won’t create jobs.  Adding an immeasurable cost of doing business with a health care plan when we still don’t know what’s in it won’t create jobs.  Blocking energy programs like the Keystone Pipeline and placing moratoriums on drilling in the Gulf doesn’t create jobs.  Subsidizing green energy programs like Solyndra hasn’t created any net jobs.  The Joint Economic Committee led by Congressman Kevin Brady issued a report saying that the Obama recovery now ranks dead last in modern times.  Spending stimulus, housing bailouts, auto bailouts, financial bailouts, cash for clunkers, extending unemployment benefits and $5 trillion in deficit spending left the Obama recovery dead last in modern times.

If you are a President, how do you create jobs?  You don’t.  Business creates jobs; you clear the road stand aside and cheer.  You don’t stand in the middle, over-regulate and jeer — and then blame the lack of progress on your predecessor.

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RADICAL-IN-CHIEF BOOK REVIEW ON THE WAY

Posted on July 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

When Barack Obama first came onto the national scene the public asked, who is this man running against Hillary Clinton and the other candidates in the Democratic primaries.  What does he stand for?  What are his visions and objectives?  The answers were elusive.  In fact, they still are.  Radical-In-Chief by Stanley Kurtz sheds some light on what the answers to these questions might be.

The book carries the sub-title Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism.  Indeed, the author does cover the socialist movement in the United States very comprehensively.  Here is a sample from our synopsis of Chapter 6.

ACORN’s assault on the banking industry is not as well known. The plan was to confront banks publicly for failure to lend money to applicants who were poor credit risks and force the banks to lower their standards.

Targeting banks was one half of a two part strategy outlined in a paper entitled “The Case for Transitional Reform written by Peter Dreier. The overall strategy was first to establish quasi socialist institutions in the heart of capitalist society; then through these institutions inject “unimaginable strains into the capitalist system, strains that precipitate an economic and/or political crisis” which would lead to an “evolution of rising entitlements” that “cannot be abandoned without undermining the legitimacy of the capitalist class”. Dreier continued, “The process leads to expansion of state activity and budgets, and to fiscal crisis in the public sector” opening the door to socialism as the solution.

I think you will find it to be a very intriguing book.  Our review will be launched with the first chapter on July 15th.  The succeeding chapters will published weekly and added cumulatively to Book Reviews on the main menu.

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RANDOM THOTS

Posted on July 8, 2012 | Leave a comment

Unemployment
Click on over to the Romney campaign’s OIW website (OIW = Obama Isn’t Working) to find out what identical words of advice the Obama administration gave the nation after 32 of the last 38 unemployment reports.

FOX News
I have noticed the rhetoric from the left condemning FOX News as unfit to be on the air has picked up considerably recently and I wondered why.  Silly me.  FOX works and Obama doesn’t.

The left rails against Rush Limbaugh too, of course, but not as much.  The President has made his distaste of FOX well known (“FOX is not a news network”) but hardly, if ever mentions Limbaugh.  Rush has more incite into Democratic strategies and operations than any ten other pundits combined.  But he is bombastic, irreverent and pompous; the hard core love him but he is not going to swing many swing voters.  Rush is little threat.

Swing voters are thinkers.  FOX appeals to thinkers.  FOX is a threat, particularly in this election where facts bode so poorly for the incumbent.

Intolerance
Why is it the left is so tolerant of irresponsible behavior and yet so intolerant of responsible but dissenting opinion?  They cry for the right of felons to vote.  They ask for no bona fides from welfare recipients.  Through the unions the left supports teachers who don’t teach.  They re-elect politicians while they are in prison (Curley – Boston).  They can hold their adulterous leaders in high esteem but will not tolerate a Charles Krauthammer who gives an honest opinion without malice.  Why is that?

Little angers a person more than to be proven absolutely wrong in ones firm beliefs.  Could that be the answer why the left shows more intolerance of diverse ideas than the right?  It was just a random thot.

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JUSTAPHOTO – THE CROCODILE

Posted on July 7, 2012 | Leave a comment

I was listening to a political speech the other day and it reminded me of this photo I had in my files.

WOW! THAT’S A LOT OF CROC.

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OUR LAWLESS PRESIDENT

Posted on July 6, 2012 | 1 comment

Less than 3 weeks ago I penned a post with the heading This President Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Congress To Change The Law.  Judging by his comment this week he thinks he doesn’t need Congress to make new law either.

“I’ll work with anybody who wants to work with me to continue to improve our health care system and our health care laws, but the law I passed is here to stay,” Obama said at a campaign event in Ohio.

It was not a Freudian slip either; it is simply the way the man sees himself and his presidency, Obama the omnipotent.  Remember the presidential like seal he had emblazoned on the seat of his campaign plane, and the Roman columns for the Inauguration?  In one of his early acts as President, he subrogated bankruptcy law to his own dictate by ignoring the legal rights of Chrysler’s secured bond holders and awarding their money the labor unions.  That was June 10, 2008.

A year later Charles Rowley recounts the event.

“June 10 will be a silent anniversary, but one worth noting by those alarmed at the past year’s assault on free institutions.  It was last June 10 when the federal government tossed aside the option of proven workable bankruptcy procedures in order to nationalize Chrysler on behalf of its union allies.” Mitch Daniels, ‘Hoosiers vs. Crony Capitalism’ The Wall Street Journal

The Chrysler intervention by Barack Obama breached the rule of law and categorized his administration as yet another Third World despotism that despises the rule of law and forces discriminatory practices down the throat of a weak and cowardly judiciary. It provides an almost perfect example of state (crony) capitalism at its worst in the hands of an unscrupulous would-be tyrant.

If it’s the law you say, surely the bondholders had their day in court.

Naturally, the secured bondholders started out by defending their legal rights. Obama’s apparatchiks  (notably Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner)  attacked them mercilessly, warning of the serious consequences that would surely  follow from their continued resistance. Large numbers of secured bondholders chose safety over liberty and acquiesced to federal pressure.

The tagline Saul Alinsky used to introduce the Rules for Radicals chapter called Tactics is “We will either find a way or make one.”  When a gangster is holding a gun to your head it does no good to argue with him about the law.  Obama’s gun was the bailout money.

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