It is so sad to see a petty, underhanded, small man as President. Obama Attempts to Trump GOP Presidential Debate

Obama Attempts to Trump GOP Presidential Debate - By Andrew C. McCarthy - The Corner - National Review Online

August 31, 2011

As Rush has been saying today, President Obama has told congressional leadership that he wants to come to Capitol Hill to address a joint session of Congress on September 7 at 8 p.m., to announce this year’s plan to rescue the economy (apparently on the anniversary of last year’s plan to rescue the economy). The requested date and time just happen to coincide with the previously scheduled date and time for the next scheduled GOP presidential candidates debate — the first in which the current frontrunner, Gov. Rick Perry, will participate. The White House says that politics played absolutely no part in its choice of a date. Of course not.

There is no reason why Obama needs to make his announcement before a joint session of Congress — any more than there was any reason why, if he really has a cure for what ails us, he needed to delay it for a couple of weeks while he went on his Martha’s Vineyard vacation. He could have announced it on the 18th hole. In any event, it will be up to House Speaker John Boehner whether to grant the president’s request.

Obama sure knows how to help business and jobs - the Stalinist 5 year plan jammed into 4 years

NJBIZ

August 31. 2011 1:30PM

AT&T says it could be socked with $3B penalty if merge with T-Mobile is blocked

By Martin C. Daks

A federal Department of Justice lawsuit filed today to blockAT&T's proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA Inc. could trigger a $3 billion breakup fee, according to AT&T. ...

In a previous interview with NJBIZ, J. Michael Schweder, mid-Atlantic president for AT&T, said the company would allow T-Mobile customers to keep the lower-cost plans the provider currently offers its subscribers.
"We are surprised and disappointed by today's action, particularly since we have met repeatedly with the Department of Justice, and there was no indication from the DOJ that this action was being contemplated," said Wayne Watts, AT&T senior executive vice president and general counsel. "We plan to ask for an expedited hearing so the enormous benefits of this merger can be fully reviewed. The DOJ has the burden of proving alleged anticompetitive effects, and we intend to vigorously contest this matter in court."...

"The stock purchase agreement contains certain termination rights for each of the (companies) and (T-Mobile parent)Deutsche Telekom," AT&T said in a statement. "In the event that the stock purchase agreement is terminated because of the failure to obtain regulatory approval, the company may become obligated to pay Deutsche Telekom $3 billion in cash," among other penalties. ...

... -read on at above link-

Admit it, wasn't there a sense of vengeful satisfaction here...

Aug 31, 12:44 AM EDT

San Diego boy throwing rocks hit by crossbow

News from The Associated Press

short post=

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- San Diego police say a 16-year-old boy throwing rocks at a sport utility vehicle was struck by a crossbow arrow fired by a passenger.

Police say the shirtless boy and a friend were throwing rocks at a black Toyota RAV4 in the Linda Vista neighborhood Monday afternoon when a passenger fired a crossbow out the window.

The boy was shot in the right side and was taken to a hospital. The San Diego Union-Tribune says his injuries are not life-threatening.

His name wasn't released.

Nobody has been arrested.

Inverted Thinking Strikes After Every Disaster - Business Sees Silver Lining in Natural Disasters

Look how (outside of the French Quarter for tourism) wonderfully New Orleans rebuilt--- ask anyone still living there in a government trailer.

Money to fix Hurricane Irene's damages has to be diverted from savings or credit, away from where it was planned or saved for originally. It has no "Silver Lining," just a Dry Hole!

Will the press and politicians ever learn about Bastiat? ♘

Business Sees Silver Lining in Natural Disasters | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty

8-31-11

“For a region that has been rocked by an earthquake and slammed by a tropical storm in the space of less than a week, Mother Nature may be providing a silver lining in the form of a business stimulus package…. Business leaders contend that natural disasters can push a depressed economy forward by encouraging companies to dip into their savings and spend on rebuilding efforts. Also, relief supplies such as food, clothes and construction materials tend to be purchased from stores near disaster zones.” (Washington Times)

The Broken Window Fallacy strikes again.

FEE Timely Classic
“What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen” by Frédéric Bastiat

Global Warming and Racism

Global Warming and Racism - By Victor Davis Hanson - The Corner - National Review Online

8-29-11

Al Gore has employed a lot of widely reported expletives in damning opponents who he suggests are not just wrong, but immoral and dangerous. In that vein, he recently compared those with growing doubts about man-made global warming — doubts arising from serial exposés about questionable scientific ethics in a few global-warming studies — with racists.

But perhaps a better way of making the comparison between racism and heating the planet would be to invoke the metaphor of the career of his distinguished father, the late Sen. Al Gore Sr., who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and, once out of office, was a well-compensated chairman of a coal company.

How can you tell? - Obama's Big Lie—Illegal Alien Deportations Have NOT "Shattered Records" | VDARE.com

National Data | Obama's Big Lie—Illegal Alien Deportations Have NOT "Shattered Records" | VDARE.com

by Edwin Rubenstein on August 30, 2011

There’s a Main Stream Media meme, much cited in defense of President Obama’s just-acknowledged Administrative Amnesty, that illegal alien deportations have skyrocketed since he took office. For example, the appalling Bill Ong Hing in the equally appalling Huffington Post:

“Whatever its justification, Obama's DHS has been shatteringBush era deportation and detention records.”

[One Hand Clapping for Latest Obama Deportation Reforms, August 23, 2011. Link in original, to a story by the Houston Chronicle’s gullible Susan Carroll (email her)]

This source of this MSM meme, is quite simply, an Obama Big Lie. There is just no massive increase in deportation, as I pointed outover a year ago.

In recent years the U.S. has been removing nearly 400,000 illegal immigrants annually—about 3% of the 12 million or so illegals living in the U.S., if you believe official estimates. (Others suggest20 million or higher). At that rate it will take 30 years to remove the illegal aliens already here. By then, of course, millions of new arrivals will have entered.

And 400,000 removals per year is hardly a record. In 1954, for example, Operation Wetback is reported to have sent about 1.3 million illegal farm workers back to Mexico,...

And that is just to Grant Street - A Billion per Mile

The American Spectator : A Billion per Mile

By Ralph R. Reiland on 8.30.11

President Obama's constant refrain about the government's unprecedented levels of red ink points to "millionaires and billionaires" as the problem, not the massive amounts of waste, fraud, and inefficiency in government operations.

Remember when a million per mile seemed like a crazy price for a new road? Now it's a billion per mile for a transportation project and the politicians are just fine with it, even if the project is totally unnecessary, even if we're already broke.

To make it allegedly easier for people in San Francisco to get in and out of Chinatown in a hurry, a new 1.7 mile subway line is in the works.

The original projected cost was $647 million. Now it's $1.6 billion, and growing.

There's already bus and light-rail service that covers the same route -- plus roads for cars if you're still the un-green and independent type who enjoys riding alone and listening to the radio and maybe even downing a good hoagie while driving between points A and B.

The 1.7 mile subway line "misses connections with 25 of the 30 light-rail and bus lines that it crosses, and there's no direct connection to the 104-mile Bay Area Transit line or to the ferry," stated the Wall Street Journal in a recent editorial.

There's also the problem of going eight stories underground to get to the new super-short subway -- not a good underground place to be during an earthquake, or during a terrorist attack.

And then there's the red ink, of course - read on at above link-

A Lot of us feel the same way! 'I Didn't Change. The World Changed'

Daniel Henninger: 'I Didn't Change. The World Changed' - WSJ.com

Opinion AUGUST 30, 2011

By DANIEL HENNINGER

In an interview, Dick Cheney says 'It's important to have people at the helm who are prepared to be unpopular.'

No one should have expected that Dick Cheney's memoir would be anything but frank. Make that brutally frank. Such as this characterization of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's description to President George W. Bush of her proposed nuclear-weapons agreement with North Korea. It's on page 487:

"Looking for a way to explain this situation, Rice said, 'Mr. President, this is just the way diplomacy works sometimes. You don't always get a written agreement.' The statement was utterly misleading, totally divorced from what the secretary was doing, which was urging the president, in the absence of an agreement, to pretend to have one. . . . "

[Read on at above link.]

Why Don't We Just Quit and tell them to GO AWAY!?

Republicans to Unveil Bill to Force Major Changes at the UN - Bloomberg

By Nicole Gaouette and Bill Varner - Aug 30, 2011

House Republicans are planning to introduce today legislation that seeks to force major changes at the United Nations, using as leverage the U.S.’s 22 percent contribution to the world body’s operating budget.

The bill by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, would require the UN to adopt a voluntary budget model in which countries selectively fund UN agencies rather than according to a set formula. It would end funding for Palestinian refugees, limit use of U.S. funds to only purposes outlined by Congress and stop contributions to peacekeeping operations until management changes are made.

The legislation represents the leading edge of Republican moves against the world body at a time when the Obama administration is increasingly building its foreign policy around multilateral institutions, making the alliance-based approach central to its stance on Libya. The bill may advance in the Republican-controlled House but is likely to hit opposition in the Senate and from President Barack Obama.

Fatal bear attack in Yellowstone is the second this summer

Not your average bear.

Fatal bear attack in Yellowstone is the second this summer - latimes.com

August 29, 2011

A Yellowstone National Park hiker whose body was found last week was mauled and killed by a grizzly bear, authorities confirmed Monday.

The hiker was identified as 59-year-old John Wallace of Chassell, Mich. He was traveling alone and had pitched his tent in a campground along the Mary Mountain Trail on Wednesday.

His body was discovered Friday morning by two hikers. An autopsy conducted on Sunday confirmed that Wallace died of traumatic injuries from a bear attack.

Killer Spray needed for Swarms - Teens Target Cyclists In ‘Knockout’ Game

Teens Target Cyclists In ‘Knockout’ Game « CBS St. Louis

August 29, 2011

ST. LOUIS, MO. (KMOX) — There’s an alert out about recent assaults on bike riders in south St. Louis.

Trailnet.org, an organization that promotes hiking and biking, is cautioning riders to be on the alert for roving bands of teenagers who swarm and attack riders.

Trailnet says the latest attack was last Thursday (8/25) afternoon near Missouri Botanical Garden where a group of 10 to 15 African-American teens charged and attacked a cyclist.

ADA Frankenstein! Tab on ramp for SF supervisors' chamber adding up ( or is it just friends and relatives)

Graft Built it before the 1906 Quake and still things don't seem to have changed much.

Tab on ramp for SF supervisors' chamber adding up

August 29, 2011 Matier & Ross SF Chronicle Columnists

What costs more: a home in San Francisco's Sunset District, or a wheelchair ramp in the Board of Supervisors' chambers?

If you picked the house, you're wrong.

By the time the final tab comes in, the cost of designing and installing a ramp to the president's chair at the Board of Supervisors - a project now under way - is expected to top out at $699,413.

That is about $50,000 more than the median cost of a home in the Sunset.

Why so much for a 10-foot ramp?

First, it took two companies, at a total cost of $132,205, to come up with a design that passed architectural muster for a designated historic landmark. The cost in city staff time to oversee the planning hit $38,434. That's $170,639.

Then came the job itself....

ONE VOICE OF SANITY, RARE IN SF-

Supervisor John Avalos - the lone "no" vote on the project when the board approved it in February- said the political math just doesn't add up.

"This is a tremendous amount of money being spent on something in City Hall that rarely or may never even get used," Avalos said.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/28/BA7I1KMRO0.DTL#ixzz1WR1NwZmN

"People see that and assume we can predict everything," Al Gore can predict Global Warming!

My Way News - Irene forecasts on track; not up to speed on wind

Aug 28, 2011

By SETH BORENSTEIN and CHRISTINE ARMARIO

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hurricane Irene was no mystery to forecasters. They knew where it was going. But what it would do when it got there was another matter.

Predicting a storm's strength still baffles meteorologists. Every giant step in figuring out the path highlights how little progress they've made on another crucial question: How strong?

Irene made landfall Saturday morning at Cape Lookout, N.C. - a bull's-eye in the field of weather forecasts. It hit where forecasters said it would and followed the track they had been warning about for days.

"People see that and assume we can predict everything," National Hurricane Center senior forecaster Richard Pasch said.

But when Irene struck, the storm did not stick with the forecast's predicted major hurricane strength winds.

If the Hurricane Ctr. didn't accurately predict Irene by satellite, how is Global Warming predictable? Irene is Obama's punishment - Washington Times

EDITORIAL: Irene is Obama's punishment - Washington Times

Shop owners say police abandoned them during London riots

Their Country abandoned them over a decade ago by taking away their guns as the last means of self protection.

Shop owners say police abandoned them during London riots - Washington Times

I guess the Major US Papers must have missed this story. Obama's uncle has been arrested and held as illegal alien

Almost like Billy Carter.

Barack Obama's uncle has been arrested and held as illegal immigrant | The Australian

James Bone and Catherine Philp

From:The Times

August 29, 2011

The arrest ends a mystery over the fate of a relative that the US President wrote in his memoir had moved to America from Kenya in the 1960s, although the circumstances of his discovery may now prove to be an embarrassment for the White House.

Official records say Onyango Obama, 67, was picked up outside the Chicken Bone Saloon in Framingham, Massachusetts, at 7.10pm on August 24. Police say he nearly crashed his Mitsubishi 4x4 into a patrol car, and then insisted that the officer should have given way to him. A report filed with the Framingham District Court said that a breathalyser at the police station registered his blood alcohol at 0.14mg/100ml of blood, above the state limit of 0.08mg.

According to a local newspaper, Mr Obama was charged with driving under the influence and driving to endanger, as well as failing to use a turn signal. He was detained as an illegal immigrant because the US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has an outstanding warrant for him because he was previously ordered to be deported to Kenya.

The Times has established from his birthdate that Mr Obama is the Uncle Omar mentioned in President Obama's best-selling memoir Dreams from My Father. In the 1995 book, President Obama writes of "the uncle who had left for America 25 years ago and had never come back". [more at link.]

Successive British governments have been nothing if not consistent in their asinine attitude toward firearms - London vs. Olympic Shooting

There was once an armed Home Guard in Britain. Now "Gun Free" Britain has had violent gun crimes double in a decade because criminals know the Queen's subjects cannot protect themselves.

The lack of defence fueled the boldness of their Rioters over the last few weeks.

Officials, like the Mayor of London, advocating total gun control, always seem to have armed guards to protect them.

London vs. Olympic Shooting - Charles C. W. Cooke - National Review Online

8-26-11

The city’s mayor decides that children shouldn’t watch the sport.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a mayor in possession of a problem must be in want of a policy. But not all policies are created equal, and almost none are as silly or as counter-productive as the one that London mayor Boris Johnson announced on Wednesday: Children will be barred from watching shooting events at the 2012 London Olympics.

The restriction is designed to help stem London’s rising gun-crime rate, and to prevent the “glorification” of firearms. But it is predicated upon a farcical misconception, best characterized by the secretary of the British Shooting Sports Council, David Penn. “There is no link between Olympic-level shooting and crime,” he argued. “It is like saying that a thief would use a Formula One car as a getaway car.”

It is absurd and unsurprising in equal measure. Successive British governments have been nothing if not consistent in their asinine attitude toward firearms, and, since the Dumblane school massacre in 1997, official policy appears to have been to irritate the majority of the citizenry as much as is humanly possible, while leaving the source of gun crime — criminals who don’t follow the rules anyway — untouched. And so the British now have a country in which the national shooting team has to travel to France to practice its sport, pentathletes training for the Olympic games have had to waste time facing down a comical plan to replace their air rifles with laser guns, and farmers are subjected to training courses and expensive compliance procedures in order to avoid confiscation of the shotguns on which their livelihoods rely. Meanwhile, the instances of gun violence on Britain’s streets have doubled in number in the last ten years, and rioters have recently proven that they can roam wild, striking blows against civilization with impunity.

[Read on at above link.]

Al Gore| Putz | Global warming flim-flam | racists | All of the Above

And now a word from our Climate Hoaxing Bunco Douche. ♘

Goodnight, Irene

Al Gore | Global warming | racists | The Daily Caller

So, thanks, Steve, for all the insanely great stuff. Steve Jobs: A Legacy

I doff my hat to you. Thank you from we who are eternally grateful.

Steve Jobs: A Legacy

Vodkapundit » Steve Jobs: A Legacy

August 25, 2011

Even most successful entrepreneurs do not change an entire industry. But that’s exactly what Steve Jobs did to personal computing — three times.

With the Apple II, Jobs made personal computers useful. In the mid-Seventies, home computers were build-it-yourself hobby boxes, useful only to the nerdiest nerds. By the time I entered middle school in 1981 there was an entire lab filled with Apple II Plus machines, and lots of fun software to run on them. The first computer “clone” wasn’t Compaq’s copy of the IBM PC — it was a clone of the Apple II. An industry was born.

Three years later Jobs made the personal computer approachable with the Macintosh. He didn’t invent the GUI or the WIMP metaphor but he and his team made them useable and affordable. What most computer users took for granted in 1995 was deemed a “toy” by many critics when the first Mac arrived in 1984.

And last year, Jobs made the personal computer ubiquitous with the iPad. This third revolution is only beginning, yet still many critics deride this “toy” as a “media consumption device.” I do most of my photo editing on my fat, slow, first-generation iPad — and I’m outlining a novel on it, too. Others use it to create music, paintings and video. That’s some “consumption” going on. ...

So, thanks, Steve, for all the insanely great stuff. Thanks also for leaving Apple in such capable hands. But thank you most of all for setting an example that never failed to inspire.