It’s as if all this went down a memory hole, but this is the first in a series of reasons that I believe prove that Barack Obama has proven himself unworthy of the office of the Presidency.
Obama’s United Auto Workers Bailout
If the administration treated the UAW in the manner required by bankruptcy law, it could have saved U.S. taxpayers $26.5 billion.
President Obama touts the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler as one of the signature successes of his administration. He argues that the estimated $23 billion the taxpayers lost was worth paying to avoid massive job losses. However, our research finds that the president could have both kept the auto makers running and avoided losing money.
The preferential treatment given to the United Auto Workers accounts for the American taxpayers’ entire losses from the bailout. Had the UAW received normal treatment in standard bankruptcy proceedings, the Treasury would have recouped its entire investment. Three irregularities in the bankruptcy case resulted in a windfall to the UAW. Continue reading →
Coming to a theater near you this summer, “2016,” a major film production that extrapolates what America might look like at the end of Obama’s second term.
Fifty-year old manure spreader. Not sure of brand. Said to have been produced in Kenya. Used for a few years in Indonesia before being smuggled into the U.S. via Hawaii. Does not appear to have ever been worked hard. Apparently it was pampered by various owners over the years. It doesn’t work very often, but when it does it can really sling the manure for amazing distances. I am hoping to retire the manure spreader next November.
I really don’t want it hanging around getting in the way. I would prefer a foreign buyer to relocate the manure spreader out of the country. I would be willing to trade it for a nicely framed copy of the United States Constitution.
Location: Currently being stored in a big, white house in Washington, D.C.
Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves — the “Dean of the Balts” — is not happy about a blog post Paul Krugman put up today snarking on the country’s newfound status as the “poster child for austerity defenders”. The president unleashed on his Twitter account:
Guess a Nobel in trade means you can pontificate on fiscal matters & declare my country a “wasteland”. Must be a Princeton vs Columbia thing [Ilves went to Columbia for undergrad.]
But yes, what do we know? We’re just dumb & silly East Europeans. Unenlightened. Someday we too will understand. Nostra culpa.
Let’s sh*t on East Europeans: their English is bad, won’t respond & actually do what they’ve agreed to & reelect govts that are responsible.
Mr. Krugman has a Nobel Prize in Economics, no doubt for such wonderfully intelligent statements as his recent apology for President Obama’s gaffe on the private sector,”…doing fine.”. Mr. Krugman’s explanation was, “You know, that was an unfortunate line. The president bungled the line. The truth is, the private sector is doing better than the public sector which is not well enough.
“And actually, the real about this economy is the cutbacks of the public sector are what’s hurting recovery. By this point in Obama’s presidency, if we had normal public sector job growth we’d have about 800,000 more people — firefighters, school teachers, police officers. Instead, we have 600,000 fewer. So right there is like 1.4 million jobs that we should have had in the public sector. And, of course, those would translate into more private sector jobs, too. So that’s what he was trying to get at. And, of course, he screwed up the line.”
After all, what Barry was trying to say was,” I take care of my friends.”.
Just in case you were wondering how he passed the time during all those years he spent inside in Abottabad:
The pornography recovered in bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, consists of modern, electronically recorded video and is fairly extensive, according to the officials, who discussed the discovery with Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The officials said they were not yet sure precisely where in the compound the pornography was discovered or who had been viewing it. Specifically, the officials said they did not know if bin Laden himself had acquired or viewed the materials.
So many questions here. Bin Laden’s compound wasn’t hooked up to the internet and he apparently communicated with the outside world by saving files onto thumb drives and having couriers send e-mails and download new messages for him from a distant Internet cafe. Were those couriers also in charge of procuring bin Laden’s porn? Awkward.
Lets take a peek, shall we?
Just what I expected.
Doug, with additional material from John the River.
I’ve, previously, written some annoyed posts about the new wave of telemarketing and political phone calls that have bogus or deceptive Caller ID names and numbers. Today in the news are stories making the rounds on harassment of conservative bloggers and news-personalities.
Watch the Video to see recent and dangerous examples.
Hopefully, (if we’re lucky…do you feel lucky, lately?), no one will get hurt (or killed) by this chicanery. The positive side of all this might be that the regulatory and legal establishment may finally take Caller-ID spoofing seriously as a crime.
How serious can this be? It’s illegal to throw a banana on the sidewalk, its funny if someone slips and falls on their ass, it isn’t if they slip and break their neck.
One last question. Is a conservative blogger more or less likely to react to a unexpected assault in their home by SWAT with or without a weapon? And thereby be killed.
Under the circumstances of the police reacting to a bogus call, designed to excite police interest by introducing the fear factors of guns, and innocent lives at risk or lost.
Entry into a home would probably be done without a warrant. Men in black body armor is not identification, ballcaps with POLICE written on them is not identification, SWAT printed on the backs of jackets is not useful identification. And men screaming at you and pointing guns at you in your own home is not identification. If that homeowner dies, is it murder? And who murdered them, the police or the person who generated the fake 911 call?
By the way, this is NOT wild or irresponsible conjecture…
There is a wide-spread overuse of SWAT or swat-like teams, every department of the Federal government has one. Yes, every department of the Federal Government.
A father was dragged from his home and handcuffed in front of his children by a SWAT team looking for his estranged wife – to collect her unpaid student loans.
A stunned Kenneth Wright had his front door kicked in by the raiding party at 6 am yesterday before being dragged onto his front porch, handcuffed and led to a police car with his three children.
He says he was then detained for six hours while officers looked for his wife – who no longer lives at the house.
Mr Wright was later told by Stockton police that the order to send in the SWAT team came from The U.S. Department of Education who were looking for his estranged wife to collect defaulted loan payments.
When the use of SWAT teams has reached the Department of Education, then its gone to far.
Mr. Walker had 53% of the vote to 46% for his opponent, Tom Barrett, the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee, with 99% of the state’s precincts reporting. Turnout was heavy across the state.
The tea party movement flexed its muscle in Wisconsin, as Gov. Scott Walker handily won a recall vote on Tuesday. Thirty-six percent of voters said they support the movement – and almost all went for Walker.
“While Occupiers and union protesters got the ink, the tea party dropped the placards and picked up clipboards, phones and got out the vote,” writes former tea party activist Dana Loesch, a conservative talk show host, on Breitbart.com. Adds former US Education Secretary Bill Bennett, writing on CNN.com: “The untold story of the Wisconsin saga may be the resurgence of the tea party.”
A quiet but potent force
As Mr. Bennett suggests, the tea party didn’t get mentioned much in this election. That was partly due to a self-imposed quietude after the brand was tarnished in the congressional debt battles of 2011. But it was also true that the role of the tea party was overshadowed by the stakes for public-sector unions, for whom the defeat at the polls may become a Waterloo moment – a stunning abdication of bargaining rights in the state where public-sector unions were born in 1959.
R.I.P. Ray Bradbury, Author of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury — author of The Martian Chronicles,Fahrenheit 451,Something Wicked This Way Comes, and many more literary classics — died this morning in Los Angeles, at the age of 91.
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man.
Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded -- here and there, now and then -- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck." -- Robert A. Heinlein
Wrath Of Gnon
“In an age where the media publish endless stupidities, the cultured man is defined not by what he knows but by what he ignores.” ー Nicolás Gómez Dávila
On the North River 