March 29, 2013

Unmatched hypocrisy...

Who said this?
Here’s what you need to know. First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future. (Applause.) I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period. And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize. (Applause.) Now, part of the reason I faced a trillion-dollar deficit when I walked in the door of the White House is because too many initiatives over the last decade were not paid for — from the Iraq war to tax breaks for the wealthy. (Applause.) I will not make that same mistake with health care.
Sound familiar? That quote is right off of whitehouse.gov, from a speech to Congress in September of 2009.

"I will not sign a plan that adds ONE DIME to our deficits." What brazen hypocrisy! What unmitigated gall! What a world-class, in-your-face liar!

Now who said this?
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.
Oh come on, you already know, right?

I mean, who else would have the gall to say something like that just two years before taking control of decisions that would increase U.S. debt exponentially--more debt in six years than in all the rest of our nation's history?

Can you say "unmatched hypocrisy"?

Can you say "unmatched, brazen opportunist"?

It may be that most of the folks who voted for this guy did so for the most noble of reasons--not because he was a Democrat or black, or because they wanted more taxpayer-funded freebies.  But if you people who voted him in--twice--have kids, I hope it finally dawns on you what you've done to them by electing this guy.

The statement above was made by then-senator B. H. Obama in March 2006--roughly a month before he began his campaign for the White House.

March 24, 2013

Obama quietly "unblocks" half a billion in aid supposedly frozen by congress; MSM ignores

You may have heard that the U.S. is facing financial disaster due to huge debt.

It's so bad that *someone* in the Obozo administration--they still haven't said who--ordered that tours of the White House be cancelled.

So imagine my surprise when I ran across an overseas paper that said that when Obama visited the leader of Hamas during his recent trip to Israel, he "unblocked" $480 million in U.S. aid funds that congress had supposedly "frozen" in response to Palestinian actions.

This struck me as odd.  If congress had indeed "frozen" those funds, how was Obozo able to "unblock" them? Did Harry Reid secretly sign off on the deal and no one bothered to report it? Or was the congressional "freeze" merely a non-binding resolution that the president was free to ignore?

To find out I searched "palestinian aid unblocked."   22,000 results.

And I noticed something interesting:  All of the stories were either from foreign networks or publications--"Russia Today" and a swarm of middle-east newsies--or from conservative U.S. bloggers.  There was virtually no mention in the mainstream U.S. press.

My first thought was that this meant the story was almost certainly a hoax.  After all, you'd think that if it were true the Obozo administration would have made some big announcement, to show his leadership in championing the cause of helping the palestinians.

But if there was an official announcement, google seemed to be hiding it way down the list of hits.

Finally a blogger quoted State Dept PR rep Victoria Nuland, during the normal daily press conference two days ago (Friday) in D.C, responding to a reporter's question near the end. (If you click the link, do a Find on that page for "palestinian aid.")  Here's the whole exchange:
Q: Can I ask on Palestinian aid? There’s reporting out of the region that the funds have actually been unblocked kind of a bit quietly over the last couple of weeks, the 200 million that was held up in Congress, and that’s now been received by the Palestinian Authority.

Nuland: Jo, I don’t – I’m just finding it here. I did go through this about a week ago in some detail. I can do it again for you. [This is a subtle "shoo-way": "Do not ask about this, because I'm telling you I already briefed everyone on this, so you'll look slow if you persist."] To date, we have moved $295.7 million in Fiscal Year 2012 money, 200 million of that – see, this – numbers don’t – oh, and 200 million in Fiscal Year 2013 assistance. So breaking that down again, 200 million in FY2013 ESF money was direct budget support for the Palestinian Authority; 195.7 million in FY12 Economic Support money went for development and humanitarian assistance implemented by USAID; 100 million in FY2012 for International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement; and then in February – at the end of February we notified Congress about another 200 million that we’d like to move.

Q: So you’ve moved the 295 --

Nuland: Total of 295.7 in FY12 and 200 in FY13. Why don’t we go through it again afterwards if you need to?  ["...if you need to" is a not-so-subtle hint:  Translation:  If you persist in asking about this you'll be ridiculed by all the cool kids, as they'll think you're 'slow'.]

Q: That’s been moved, okay.

Nuland: Mm-hmm.

Q: And then 200 is still – you want another further 200?

Nuland: Correct. We’ve notified.
"We've notified."  Gotta wonder, if someone had pressed Nuland on what the rest of that "we've notified" fragment actually meant, how she would have responded.

So...the State Department confirms--albeit way deep in a press conference instead of with an up-front announcement--that the story is true.   So my question stands:  If congress "froze" the funds, by what authority did Obama "unblock" 'em?

You might ask your senator or representative.  But why bother, eh?  Even if Obama defied an actual *law*, it's not like congress can actually *do* anything about it.  Members of congress can vote to hold the Attorney General in contempt, and it has as much effect as spitting into the wind.

We are no longer a nation of laws.  And ALL of you--even liberals--know that's true.

March 23, 2013

Government report says Mexican gunrunning was totally created by low-level people

Absolutely no one will be surprised by this:   A report by the inspector general of the Dept of Homeland Security concluded that although "many" in the agency's Arizona division knew "for a long time" that officials with DHS and the former BATF helped criminals smuggle guns to Mexican drug cartels, no one in D.C. knew anything about it.

Yep, the IG's report said word of the gun-running operation "never traveled beyond Arizona," and claimed Immigration and Customs Enforcement director John Morton and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano were never informed of the government's scheme to sell high-powered weapons to Mexican drug cartels.

The report said "on numerous occasions" ICE and Border Patrol agents stopped vehicles smuggling guns to Mexico but were ordered by the ATF and U.S. attorney's office to let the vehicles proceed. Even after "suspects admitted to having transported weapons across the border five or six times" they were still not arrested.

The report was especially critical of senior management in Arizona who oversaw the Fast and Furious case and assigned a full-time agent to the task force running the operation. That agent conducted surveillance, wrote and received reports, and was aware the government was allowing the guns to be smuggled into Mexico, but claimed "senior leaders did not read (his) reports."

Yeah.

In every gummint office, low-level munchkins routinely plot and carry out illegal, potentially embarrassing ops all by themselves, without telling their boss. That way if an op blows up, the low-level munchkin can take the rap all by himself, protecting the top dogs.

Yeah.

If you believe this report you are officially too stupid to breathe, let alone reproduce.

Oh, and the report repeatedly uses phrases like "agents in Arizona knew this was against policy"--thus exonerating everyone higher-up--but it's conspicuously silent on exactly how it came to the conclusion that no one outside Arizona knew, since no one testified under oath and subject to cross-examination.

Typical government bullshit whitewash. Does anyone really think a government report would ever accuse the political officials of anything illegal? It's CYA all the way.

Democrat state senator: "Flip a coin to vote" on amendment

If you liked the way the Democrats in NY rammed their gun bill through in secret, suspending the legally-prescribed 3-day waiting period between a bill's introduction and passage, consider a Colorado Democrat state senator named Evie Hudak:

A state senate committee she was chairing was considering an amendment to an education bill that would have raised taxes on Colorado residents by a cool Billion dollars.  The amendment had just been introduced, and none of the Republican committee members had even had time to read it, let alone discuss its provisions or analyze the likely effects on Colorado residents.

Nevertheless, Hudak said she wanted to finish up "nice and quick" and instructed the staff to immediately call for a recorded vote on the amendment.  At that point senator Owen Hill demurred:  How, he asked Hudak, could any senator rationally cast a vote on an amendment they hadn't had time to read, let alone to analyze or discuss.

Hudak's reply is straight out of Saul Alinsky:  "Here's a coin you can flip," she sneered--and directed the staff to proceed to call the roll for the vote.

When Hill's name was called, he again declined to vote, saying "I didn't knock on 20,000 doors to flip a coin."  Hudak cut him off, saying "You'll pass for now," and again offering him a coin to flip.

Dunno about y'all but I find this both absolutely outrageous and utterly unsurprising.  Can you imagine the breathless lead stories in every paper and on every newscast if the committee chair demanding that a legislator flip a coin for a billion-dollar vote had been a Republican?  

But I'm pretty sure this story will get almost no coverage in thoroughly Democrat-run Colorado.

What utter contempt this creature Hudak apparently has for voters and citizens, to direct that a vote be taken before the minority members of the committee had had a chance to read and discuss the amendment!  Where in the world did she get the idea that this is how legislators were supposed to vote on legislation?

Oh, wait, that's right:  This is exactly how Obamacare was passed.  Even then-speaker of the House Pelosi was caught on video saying--literally--"We had to pass the bill to see what's in it."  If you're looking for proof of Democratic sickness, look no farther than that quote from Pelosi.  Which she never explained or disavowed.

Here's the audio clip of Hudak. Look at the face of Democratic party governing policy.

Mugger fatally shoots baby in stroller--MSM uninterested

At 9am last Thursday morning in the small town of Brunswick, Georgia, a woman put her baby in a stroller and went out for a morning walk.  While doing so she says she was accosted by two teenagers--one with a gun--who demanded money.

When she said she didn't have any with her, the attacker threatened to shoot her baby.  When she screamed and moved to protect her son, she says the teen started shooting.

One shot grazed her ear, a second hit her in the leg.  She tried to shield her baby but the shooter pulled her away and...shot her 13-month-old baby in the face, killing him.

You heard about this on the Thursday evening network news, right?  Cuz, you know, it had all the hot buttons for a lead story:  gun crime, innocent victim killed.  I mean, if much of the horror of the Sandy Hook killings was because many of the victims were seven years old, you'd think the cold-blooded murder of a 13-month-old baby in a stroller would have the networks in full "tragedy" mode, eh?

So if you missed the Thursday evening news, maybe you caught the replay Friday.

No?  Wow, that's odd.  Why would the national TV networks not give this story even 30 seconds of airtime?

Ah, it's prolly because the nets consider a mass murder like Sandy Hook newsworthy but regard a single killing--even of a baby in a stroller--as merely a local crime, of no national interest.

Yeh, maybe that's it.

But wait...that can't possibly be the reason, because the TV networks made the Trayvon Martin shooting their top story for, geez, seemed like three months at least.

Wait, I got it now:  The Martin shooting was national-newsworthy because of the racial angle involved--shooter and victim were of different races.  Also the shooter had been *watching* Martin and thought he was behaving suspiciously.  Yeah, that must be it.

But wait...Thursday's baby-shooting also involved a killer of one race and victim of another.  So seems to me it had all the hot-buttons to be a lead story on all the networks.  And can you imagine the extra outrage if Trayvon Martin had been just 13 months old and in a stroller, being pushed by his mom at 9am when he was fatally shot?  One shudders to think how high the outrage level would have been.

How...odd...that the national TV nets haven't uttered a peep, eh?

Maybe the gunman didn't really mean to shoot the baby--maybe he was grappling with the mother and his gun went off.  Oh wait...according to the AP interview with the mother, she said the assailant said, `Do you want me to kill your baby?' and then walked around to the front of the stroller and shot the baby in the face.

So according to the mother the shooting was intentional.

People, if Travon Martin's death was worth covering, wouldn't you think this murder would be even more newsworthy, and should get at least as much national coverage? 

But of course it won't.

And you already know why.  Here's the link.  But to be candid, it's to a fringe source known for slanting news to stoke the fires of anger, to push policies it supports.

Yes, it's that goofy cable "news" outfit, CNN.

Huffington Post posted an AP story that was *very* circumspect:  The headline reads "Teens allegedly kill baby in front of mother."  See, the baby's killing has only been *alleged*--I guess the liberals at HuffPo aren't 100% sure that the baby was actually killed.  Or if they concede the baby is in fact dead, perhaps they're implying that it didn't happen in front of the mother.  Or maybe the mother shot her own baby and is just inventing the part about the teenage shooters as a cover. 

Ya gotta love that meticulous interest by the headline writer at HuffPo in not jumping to conclusions on this story.

You may also notice that the AP piece doesn't have a single mention--not a word--about the races of the killer and the victim.  Cuz, y'know, that's not important.  Unless it's a 17-year-old black teen shot in self-defense by a half-Mexican guy.  Then it's *critical* to the story.

Okay, I fully agree that in a big population, every day someone will do something outrageous.  I'm also clear on the fact that the alleged shooter in this case is no more a fair representative of blacks than Adam Lanza is of whites.  What I'm trying to show here is simply the ghastly, outrageous, extreme liberal bias of the AP and all the liberal-run networks, in that Travon got endless national air- and print coverage, while this far greater outrage will get zero national coverage.

Oh, and since none of the nationals will show this, here's a picture of the 13-month-old murder victim:


March 22, 2013

It's coming. Faster than you think.

How fast is the train closing on us?  Consider this:

Just nine days after New York's governor rammed through a new gun-control law-- in the dead of night, behind closed doors, before the statutory three day waiting period had run, and with no member of the public allowed to watch-- NY state cops ran a "sting" to see if some resident would sell 'em the newly-banned guns and mags.

Benjamin Wassell did, and was charged with three felonies that could jail him for up to seven years.  Wassell has no prior convictions.

New York's new anti-gun law was rammed through by Cuomo and the legislature under an emergency clause that suspended the statutory 3-day waiting period between a bill's introduction and passage.  The wait is designed to give citizens a chance to know what the hell the legislature and governor are about to do, and to have a chance to make their views on proposed laws known.

You'd think that in a functioning republic, it'd be good for citizens to know the details of bills being considered for passage into law.

Oh, and to add to the insult and irregularity: the vote on the bill was done behind closed doors, with the public excluded.   No chance to voice an opinion or watch how "your" representative debated for or against the bill.

But it's all quite, quite legal, see?  Cuz Cuomo and the legislature invoked an "emergency clause" that made it legal to do that.  And after all, America was at one time touted as "a nation of laws, not men."  Talk about radical ideas!

Oh, and no one outside of Cuomo and the Dems bothered to specify what the "emergency" was that made it necessary to abrogate the normal process.  But no matter.

Democrat-run gummint at its finest.

The brand-new secret law made it illegal to sell magazines holding more than seven rounds. Such mags don't exist (except for a couple of specific guns that just happen to have been designed to use 'em). Wassell sold the standard mag used by the long guns he sold.

They did the sting operation nine days after the secret, closed-door, no-public-comment passage of the new law.

If you don't think the goal of so-called "progressives" is to outlaw all gun possession, you're too naive to breathe.

March 21, 2013

"Republicans are obstructing our efforts to keep government running. Wait..."

If you read any national papers you know that a staple of the MSM is griping about how *awful* those Rethuglicans are, cuz they're just such *obstructionists!*  I mean, the Dems are trying their best to move the country along but those awful, awful Rethuglicans just won't help!

Ever heard that bullshit song and dance?

Well let's see what's really up:  You know that "sequester" deal--the one Obammy blamed for forcing the gummint to eliminate tours of the White House and cut services at popular national parks? Republicans criticized those decisions, saying Obama was deliberately trying to make the sequester cuts as painful as possible for American families during the busy D.C. tourist season. 

So to solve that problem Senator Tom Coburn introduced an amendment to the trillion-dollar budget bill being debated, that would have cut $8 million from a fund that allegedly gives "Elvis cruises, wine trains, and Ukrainian Easter egg workshops," and would have used $5 mill of that to reopen tours of the White House.

“President Obama has called on Congress to take action to avoid the harmful effects of sequestration,” Coburn said. “This amendment uses the administration’s own recommendations to reduce funding for lower-priority Heritage Areas and shifts those funds to protect and restore access to the White House and our national parks and monuments.”

Sounds like a pretty reasonable, popular shift, eh? I mean, what would you consider more important? So you'd probably guess that it would have passed by a wide margin, right?

Hahahahahahaha! New to politics, are ya?

True to form, the amendment was defeated virtually on straight party lines yesterday, with members of one party voting almost unanimously to keep Americans from visiting the White House despite Coburn finding a way to make that happen at no net cost to the government.

Aaaaand...that party was...[drum roll]: the Democrats. Who of course have majority control of the senate.

You may wonder why in the world Democrats would want to keep Americans visiting DC from touring the White House. Well guess what? They ain't sayin' (and good luck getting a straight answer from the notoriously combative Harry Reid). But the best guess is that the Dems couldn't let the Republicans be seen as easily fixing this painful cut that Obama and the Dems were wailing about but apparently were totally unable to fix.

That is, it would show Obama and the Dems to be incompetent poseurs, and the wailing over the sequester to be political theater contrived by those unworthies to pressure the Repubs into rolling over.

Thus the amendment is defeated and the White House remains closed to Americans.

If you're a taxpayer visiting DC this summer you just got a giant Fuck You from the Democrats. In an ideal world you'd remember that before the next election.

Kickbacks to state employees in California. MSM yawns.

For those in flyover country, CALPERS is the huge state-run retirement system for state employees in California. It's charged with investing and monitoring something like $285 Billion in the state's pension fund.

Three days ago a former member of the fund's board of directors--one Alfred R. Villalobos--was indicted by the fed dept of Injustice, along with a former CEO of the fund--Federico Buenrostro. Between 2005 and 2009 a company owned by Villalobos was paid $48 Million by a single investment management firm, to secure the placement of $3 billion in Calpers funds with that company.

Again, the guy collected $48 mill from a single firm, to "place" Calpers funds.

Can you say "pay to play"?

For example, the LA Times reported that Villalobos also collected at least $12 million in additional placement fees during that period from other investment funds that managed Calpers money. Any bets that he really collected ten or 20 times that amount that they just haven't discovered yet?

But hey, where's the harm, right? I mean, the constitution of California doesn't specifically prohibit a state fund manager from taking kickbacks...uh, sorry, "placement fees"--to direct state funds to companies that pay him?

Oh, well, there is that little matter of Villalobos giving tens of thousands of dollars in "gifts" to CEO Buenrostro while the latter was still head of the agency.  But that's hardly anything at all.  And they were gifts, so it's not like it was explicitly prohibited.

I mean, hey, that's the excuse Obama's ICE director used for why his agency released repeat DUI aliens from ICE custody without so much as a wink, so it must be a sound reason.

A lawsuit filed in 2010 by then-Attorney General Jerry Brown alleges Villalobos took Buenrostro and another CalPERS board member to London, Dubai and Hong Kong, paid for by Villalobos.  The suit also claims Villalobos promised Buenrostro a job with his group and a free condo in Lake Tahoe after he left Calpers--promises he delivered one day after Buenrostro retired.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/03/19/5273721/two-former-calpers-officials-indicted.html#mi_rss=Our%20Region#storylink=cpy


Villalobos was not just an excellent "placer," he also excels at defensive law:  When this started coming to light he quickly filed for bankruptcy, with all his companies.  At the time the bankruptcy petition was filed the assets of this former state employee included a Lake Tahoe mansion and 15 other residences, 21 bank accounts, a fleet of luxury automobiles, artwork and a collection of French wine.

The bankruptcy also had the serendipitous effect of temporarily staying a lawsuit filed against him by Calpers--which presumably would have revealed a lot of incompetence or corruption, and certainly would have involved lots of messy sworn testimony under cross-examination.

Very clever of him to know how that could all be put on extended hold.

But seriously, click on the link if you want to be chilled. And recent history suggests that if the two are convicted of anything, they'll simply do a few months at Club Fed and pay back a fraction of what they "earned." No penalty for offering bribes to a govt employee--and certainly no penalty when a govt employee accepts one.

Besides, if you're a Democrat, there are different standards.  For example John Corzine--a huge Dem "bundler" and former senator and gov of a key Dem state--hasn't ever been indicted after billions in supposedly segregated investor accounts at his firm simply "vanished."  Not "became worthless due to collapse of the company they were invested in," but merely..."vanished."

I like that defense.  Very innovative, very trendy.  Very...Alinsky-esque.

But heaven help you if you take a pic of your ten-year-old holding a *gun*.

NY Times: Ending ethanol subsidy is causing misery, so...

I get such a kick out of the NY Times. Never can decide whether their reporters and editors are really as clueless about the world outside NYC as they seem, or if the seemingly clueless articles they run every couple of days are really just paid advocacy pieces.

Case in point: A story that ran just five days ago titled "Days of Promise Fade for Ethanol." The story's 'hook' was how the closing of "nearly 10 percent" of the nation's ethanol plants--located, of course, in midwestern farm states--has hurt people in those towns.

Of course that's extremely sad for the folks who lost their jobs in those plants--just as it is for Americans who lose their jobs due to a powerplant or mine being forced to close by the administration's war on coal. But you won't see any articles in the Times about how hard *that* is on Americans--because it doesn't fit the narrative.

But ethanol--now *there's* an idea Leftists can love: In theory it could eventually replace that dirty, nasty *oil* industry (shudder!).  Also, it requires huge government subsidies and mandates in order to work.  If you're a Leftist, what's not to love?

Well for one thing the federal mandate for ethanol use, and subsidy for same, caused the price of corn (the main input) to skyrocket (which I realize is good for farmers--and I'm delighted for their good fortune, seriously). This was because the government-mandated, taxpayer-funded subsidy artificially increased the profitability of making ethanol, which in turn gave operators of ethanol plants an artificial incentive to bid more for corn.

Not only was this a completely normal and expected outcome of subsidizing and mandating ethanol, but independent economists explicitly warned congress that this would happen. But not surprisingly congresswhores listened instead to their Left/Green supporters--who saw ethanol as something that could eventually replace oil--and to the huge contributions given to them by big corn marketers like Archer Daniels Midland.

Gee, what a surprise.

And how much were taxpayers subsidizing ethanol? According to Walter Russell Meade, in 2010 it was over $6.6 billion. The 45-cent-per-gallon subsidy ended at the end of 2011, but the government is still propping up the price by forcing gasoline producers to blend X billion gallons of the stuff into gasoline--and will fine them astronomical sums if they don't. So the market distortion is still there.

The Times--always sooo sympathetic to the plight of ordinary Americans in flyover country--takes pains to explain the devastating effects ending the ethanol subsidy have had on residents of the small towns that have ethanol plants:
Not only do the plants employ residents of these small communities, but they also provide a market for farmers to sell their crops and buy grain to feed their livestock. They attract a steady flow of trucks whose drivers use truck stops and patronize other local businesses. Contractors visiting the plants stay in local hotels. And the plants hold large accounts with local banks.
Didja get that? The plants actually provide a thing called a "market" where farmers can go and sell their crops! That is so...innovative! And the plants attract trucks whose drivers "use truck stops" (amazing!) and spend money in the local economy! Will the wonders never cease?

And to think this only costs taxpayers six or seven Billion bucks a year! Why, it's as successful as Lord Obama's "Stimulus" program!

Oh, and lest you think the Times reporter is out of touch with the common man, consider this:  Have you been thinking the price of gasoline was rising rather dramatically? Not so, citizen! Read for yourself:
The value of ethanol has also sagged. Its price is created in part by the price of the gasoline it displaces, and gasoline prices have been relatively modest for the past few months.
Maybe they're "modest" in Manhattan--where most of the residents don't even own a car--but out here in flyover country we were paying damn near four bucks a gallon a few weeks ago.

And didja get the line about "[ethanol's] price is created in part by the price of the gasoline it displaces"? Cute--it's "created" by a federal law that forces refiners to use a certain amount of the stuff regardless of how much it costs. Thus the price is "created" by government mandate, and realistically has nothing whatsoever to do with the price of oil-based gasoline.

But I suspect at least a few people at the Times know this.

Can't decide whether this article was simply paid for by Archer Daniels Midland, or whether reporters John Eligon and Matthew Wald are really as clueless as they sound. When the NYTimes starts bemoaning the hardships of folks in flyover country it's not unreasonable to think there's an agenda being floated.

And also time to keep a hand on your wallet.

March 20, 2013

Administration release includes repeat DUI offenders; MSM yawns

You may already know that Obama's appointees released a slew of illegal alien immigrants from U.S. detention recently.  Just let 'em walk out without a bond or GPS bracelet or anything.

Okay, let's stipulate that "slew" means just over two thousand.

Turns out among those 2,228 aliens were quite a few with DUI convictions.  A few even had more than one.  But no biggie--after all, U.S. and state laws are generally very lenient about letting people busted for DUI walk out.  I mean, it's not like they pose a *danger* to anyone, right?

Amazingly, a handful of congresscritters found this a bit unsettling, so they asked ICE director John Morton to explain what they did and why.

As you may recall, the administration originally blamed the mass release on the two-point-five-percent budget cut known as the sequester.

Before congress, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) asked Morton, "“Did you release any recidivist drunk drivers?”

“Yes,” Morton said.

“How many?” Gowdy asked.

“I don’t have the exact number, but we have released many individuals who had DUI offenses,” Morton said.

“Repeat offender DUI,” Gowdy asked.

“Repeat offender DUIs,” Morton agreed, adding that most of those released were “single offenders” but admitting that some were repeat offenders.

Then in a move that demonstrated the stand-up responsibility that characterizes this administration (Hillary on Benghazi, Holder on Fast & Furious, Obama on who came up with the sequester), Morton added that Congress has not insisted that illegals guilty of drunk driving be deported or kept in detention.

Because, you know, the Obama administration is SOooo good about deferring to the will of congress, eh?

But wait, did Obama bother to *notify* congress that he was about to release 2,228 illegals from ICE custody?  As I recall, the release was planned and carried out with no notice to congress whatsoever.

Oh well, probably no big deal.  It's not like anyone in the U.S. really cares about such archaic things as laws anymore anyway.

We need to ban cops and private cars!!

In some cities, police brutality has been a problem.  So here's an idea:

Why not eliminate police?

Voila!  Problem solved!

What's that you say?  You think that would cause more problems than it would solve?

You must be some sort of raacist or lunatic wacko!

While you're considering that, here's another:  Automobiles with drunk illegal aliens behind the wheel kill roughly nine-thousand innocent Americans a year--including lots and lots of innocent children.  You know what we need to do?

Ban private ownership of cars.  Now!  We can't afford to wait one more day!  Call senator Diane Feinstein and tell her...

What's that?  You say that's absurd, that it's crazy to ban private ownership of cars just because a few thousand people--illegal immigrants or citizens--decide to drink and drive?

Whoa, you must hate children!

Of course both the above are the kind of "logic" gun-banners use, and no one bats an eye.

If guns scare you, and you think restricting legal purchases will magically keep thugs from getting as many as they want, have the courage of your convictions:  Post a big ol' sign in your yard saying "We hate guns and we do NOT have any in this house."

Take a pic.  And let me know how that works out for ya.

March 19, 2013

Missile-defense? Totally unworkable! And unneeded. Oh, wait....

Remember back when Reagan was president, and proposed a missile-defense system for the country?

Remember how the Left and their friends in the Lying Media fell all over themselves in a rush to ridicule the whole idea?

First they gave it a cutesy, derogatory name:  "Star Wars."

"Can't possibly work," they said.

"Like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet," they opined.

"You'd need five million lines of computer code to run it, which could never be tested," they belched.

Remember all that ridicule and bullshit from the Left?  Yes?

Well now it turns out that the totally crazy folks running North Korea just claimed to have improved their atomic bomb enough to fit it on one of their long-range missiles.

And--whaddya know!--Barack Hussein Obozo has suddenly jumped on the "Hey, don't worry, folks-- we've got a missile-defense system!  So we'll just build two *more* missile-interceptor sites and we'll be ready for anything."

Tell ya what:  I'll bet ten bucks that with Barky in the White House not a *single* network or newspaper or magazine or White House "reporter" will even raise the question of whether a missile-defense system will work.  And no MSM outlet will ever mention that maybe--just *maybe*--Reagan and the Repubs were onto something when they supported research and development of a missile-defense system after all.

Isn't it amazing how often ideas that are derided as totally unworkable, impractical or unaffordable when proposed by a Republican president suddenly become brilliant and obligatory when the prez is a Democrat?  It's almost like there's some sort of hypocrisy at work...

March 18, 2013

Crazy guy kills librarian. Whoops, no story here.

Near Syracuse, New York last week a crazy misfit male carjacked a woman and 10-year-old girl, raped the 10-year-old and killed the woman.

When a clearly-crazy teenager shoots a bunch of kids at a school you hear about it endlessly--it leads all the network news programs for at least ten days.  But you didn't hear about this--and other than this post, you won't--because the murder victim was an adult and the killer used a knife instead of a gun.

A knife??  Whoa, that doesn't fit the narrative!  Cuz, y'know, the official Party Line is that the problem ain't crazies or sociopathic thugs killing people--it's all those darn GUNZ!!  All them wacked-out GUNZ are gettin' out after dark and runnin' amok and shootin' people, all by themselves!

So stories about gun violence get huge play, but horrific knife murders?  Barely a word.

Oh, and one other plot element helped ensure this story got virtually no coverage outside the Syracuse area:  The killer had been wearing a location-monitoring ankle bracelet, which he cut off before going on his deadly journey.

Using GPS ankle bracelets to monitor parolees or low-risk crooks was an idea pushed by liberal pols who saw it as a way to avoid having to spend money to build new prisons.  Problem is, if the person being monitored wants to escape the monitoring it's trivially easy to cut the thing off.

If you click on the link above you'll see the lengths to which the obviously-liberal reporter for the Syracuse paper goes to disguise the glaring flaw in the house-arrest-by-ankle-bracelet idea:  The reporter writes that the perp "outsmarted the ankle bracelet that was supposed to keep the community safe."

Yeah, the reporter actually wrote "outsmarted."  Giving the reader the impression that the killer was unusually clever in being able to "outsmart" the bracelet.

That esoteric knowledge is called "wire-cutters."

I suspect this reporter belongs to the same group that's totally baffled by the fact that a few years after states start locking up career criminals for longer periods of time, the crime rate mysteriously falls.

It's amazing that "progressive"/leftist/Democrats see no connection whatsoever between locking up career criminals and a drop in the crime rate.  But then, these are the same folks who *claim* to truly believe that criminals will obey anti-gun laws.

Not sure if this qualifies as insanity but definitely irrational.

March 15, 2013

How long does it take to fill a hole in California?

A guy in California ran a small campground on a river near the coast.  One day a storm blew a big tree into the river.  Guy wanted to remove the dead tree and fill the hole.

Guess what:  In Cali, you can't do that without a gazillion permits and environmental studies and impact evaluations.

Story is here, and well worth reading.  This is one of the reasons government is so out of control, and why the economy is doing relatively poorly. 

Of course you don't believe that.  Because MSNBC and the alphabet networks and Jon Stewart and their ilk keep telling you its all George Bush's fault, or the fault of the Republicans who control the House.

Or maybe because of the inherent eeebils of capitalism. [scary music riff here]

Gosh, why can't we just be more like, say, Europe?  Everything over there works so well, ya know?  What we need is more regulations, more bureaucrats.

Yeah, that'll work really well.


March 10, 2013

U.S gov't broke--but can afford $250 mil in new aid for...

Remember that ghastly cut to federal spending called the "sequester"?  How it was gonna be absolutely ghastly--would kill thousands of poor American children, to hear Barry tell it!--but was necessary to rein in gummint spending?

Anyone recall the exact proposed number of dollars to be "cut"?

$85 billion, give or take a couple of percent.

That cut was forcing Obama to eliminate tours of the White House, for God's sake.

Now, how many of you heard that one week ago Obama's hand-picked, clueless, traitorous (post-VietNam) Secretary of State visited Egypt and gave that country's new Islamic gummint--run by the ghastly, throat-cutting Muslim Brotherhood--$250 million in extra "emergency aid", over and above the normal, congressionally-allocated and approved number?

Lemme see if I got this straight:  The feral gummint is SOOoooo broke it has to cancel tours of the White House for tourists, but it can find a quarter of a Billion bucks to give to a bunch of primitive cutthroats in Egypt?

Ah.

March 02, 2013

7-year-old suspended for bad art

Consider the following:
A 7-year-old Maryland boy was suspended from school for two days for shaping a breakfast pastry into what his teacher thought looked like a gun, according to his father.

Local TV station reported that Josh Welch, a second-grader at Park Elementary School in Baltimore, was eating a strawberry tart when he decided to shape it into a mountain.

“I was trying to turn it into a mountain but it didn’t look like a mountain really, and it turned out to be a gun [kind of],” Josh told the station.  Josh said his teacher got mad when she saw that the pastry looked like a gun.

The boy’s dad, who was not identified in the report, was later notified that Josh had been suspended for two days for making the pastry look like a gun, and a
letter was sent home with all students explaining that “a student used food to make an inappropriate gesture,” the station reported.
Did I read that right?  "A student "used food to make an inappropriate gesture”!??  OMG!! Did they force him into mandatory psychiatric counseling?  Put him on Ritalin?  Electroshock?  Cut his nuts off?

Okay, I know it's usually considered meaningless if one wacko somewhere in the country does something nutty, but... Wait, according to the Lying Media and the Democrats, if a certifiably schizophrenic teenager kills a bunch of people that really really reeeealllly means we need to ban guns altogether!  Yes!  Because...you know.

But at the same time the Leftist public-education wackos have instated this goofy principle that if a kid so much as points a finger at another kid--or even,as in this case, fashions a pastry into a shape kinda resembling a gun, they suspend him.  This strikes me as not only a clear case of insanity by the Dems, but also a clear double-standard.

(I know, "double-standard by leftists"--I'm totally shocked.)

See, there's a legal principle--a principle aggressively pushed by the Left--in this country that says you can't involuntarily commit someone who's crazy if they haven't convincingly demonstrated that they're dangerous to themselves or others.  Yet public schools nationwide--almost totally run by left-wingers--have turned this upside-down:  they suspend kids from school not just for "thought-crime" but for shaping pastry into a mountain that's so bad it looks kind of like a gun.  Or for pointing a finger at another student.

I know some lefty will try to explain that this is really philosophically consistent after all.  Because...you know.

If I had a kid in grade-school I'd try this:  Get the kid to draw a figure of the Pope--white robe, wearing pointy white hat with a cross on it--and draw another figure setting the Pope figure on fire.  Do ya think a public-school teacher would so much as bat an eyelash at that?  I don't.

But God forbid any kid fashion a pastry into a vaguely gun-like shape.

You really need to click on this link and listen to the kid tell the story to the cameras. Apparently he was eating a rectangular pastry and had only had time to take one bite out of the corner--which made it look like a very crude gun. That's when the teacher freaked out.

Oh, this happened in Maryland, which has some of the craziest, most absurd gun laws in the country. As well as some really corrupt public officials.