DUMBEST PERSON OF THE MONTH: Maxine Waters: 'Over 170 Million Jobs Could Be Lost' Due To Sequestration

This one speaks for herself! m/r

Maxine Waters: 'Over 170 Million Jobs Could Be Lost' Due To Sequestration | Jobs | Fox Nation
2-28-13

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) claimed today that "over 170 million jobs" could be lost due to sequestration. Later in the presser, Rep. Waters corrected herself, saying it was only "750,000 jobs" that could be lost.

Starting at around 0:30… 

Yesterday we did have Mr. Bernanke in our committee and he came to tell us what he’s doing with quantitative easing and that is trying to stimulate the economy with the bond purchases that he’s been doing because he’s trying to keep the interest rates low and jobs – and he said that if sequestration takes place, that’s going to be a great setback. We don’t need to be having something like sequestration that’s going to cause these jobs losses, over 170 million jobs that could be lost – and so he made it very clear he’s not opposed to cuts but cuts must be done over a long period of time and in a very planned way rather than this blunt cutting that will be done by sequestration. As you know in this committee we have all of HUD and HUD is responsible for so many programs that determine the quality of life for women and families. CBDG, a form of grant programs will be cut by $153 million dollars, these are grants that help with cities and children and low-income programs. We also will cut the Home Program by $52 million if sequestration takes place, Native American Housing grants by $34 million, House and Choice grants $113 million, Public Housing – mostly single women in Public Housing – another $304 million, and homelessness, everybody claims to be concerned with homelessness and the growing number of women and children who are out their homeless but look they will take a $99 million dollar hit and on and on and on. We are here today, one more time, talking about women and children and families and how we can protect our women, children, and families and have a decent quality of life – sequestration will set us back, all of the gains that we have made will be lost with sequestration. 

-go to link for her dumb video-

Abolish the Department of Education, Please! And the EPA, Energy and Homeland Security Too!

The American Spectator : Abolish the Department of Education

By Jeffrey Lord on 2.26.13 @ 6:11AM

Will House GOP have the courage to tackle Reagan’s unfulfilled promise as sequester looms?

The Washington Post was alarmed.

And House Republicans seem to be asleep.

On Monday’s front page was the latest Obama horror story of what lay ahead for the fifty states if the sequester went into effect.Wrote the Post:

The White House on Sunday detailed how the deep spending cuts set to begin this week would affect programs in every state and the District, as President Obama launched a last-ditch effort to pressure congressional Republicans to compromise on a way to stop the across-the-board cuts.

…. Lawmakers instead were planning for a lengthy round of political jostling ahead of another budget showdown in late March that could determine whether the $85 billion in cuts to domestic and defense spending this fiscal year stick.

Catch the magic number? The terror is about finding “…$85 billion in cuts to domestic and defense spending…”

Somewhere Ronald Reagan is rolling his eyes.

Remember this Reagan pledge (bold emphasis mine) — as recorded in the 1980 Republican Platform?

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Why do we support the Worthless UN?

OK, there is one reason to support it, Obama could be offered the Secretary General Post in the next year and he would accept it. Then he would, with any luck, resign from the presidency. Stranger things have happened, but not usually good ones like that. m/r

The Rosett Report » A Rocket from Gaza, and UN as Usual
By Claudia Rosett On February 26, 2013

Last year, for month after month, as hundreds of rockets from Gaza hit Israel, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, wrote letter after letter ^[1] to the UN, asking for ^[2] urgent, serious action to stop this terrorist bombardment. The UN did pretty much nothing. Finally, on Nov. 14, Israel moved to defend itself by launching Operation Pillar of Defense ^[3], targeting terror sites in Gaza. That produced great furor in the “international community,” with urgent calls for Israel to desist, an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, and, within the month, an internationally brokered ceasefire.

Now, Ambassador Prosor has had to take to his keyboard again, writing on Feb. 26 to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, to inform him that “After only three months of relative quiet, the citizens of Israel awoke again this morning to discover the horrific reality of terrorism from Gaza.” Writes Prosor: “Earlier today, a rocket was fired at the Israeli city of Ashkelon. This is the first rocket that has been launched from Gaza since the conclusion of Operation Pillar of Defense last November…. This attack is an unacceptable breach of the ceasefire that ended our campaign against Hamas last year.” ...

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_____________________________

On other UN fronts, Fox News reports ^[9] that the UN (which says its sanctions lists are “updated regularly”) has just removed Osama bin Laden from its Al Qaeda sanctions list… almost two years after he was killed. Let no one say the UN can’t get something done when it really wants to.
More: 

Gaza Militants Celebrate Hagel Confirmation 

There is just so much of a Scam Anyone can take! Green fatigue sets in: the world cools on global warming - Climate Change Hoax

Cap and Trade, Carbon Taxes, Solyndra Graft Scandal, Al Gore's lies and hypocrisy, LEED EcoScam... the only climate change was generated from the heat of phony rhetoric. m/r

Green fatigue sets in: the world cools on global warming - Climate Change - Environment - The Independent

Worldwide concerns about climate change have dropped dramatically since 2009 

Sam Masters 

28 FEBRUARY 2013

Public concern about environmental issues including climate change has slumped to a 20-year low since the financial crisis, a global study reveals.

Fewer people now consider issues such as CO2 emissions, air and water pollution, animal species loss, and water shortages to be “very serious” than at any time in the last two decades, according to the poll of 22,812 people in 22 countries including Britain and the US.

Despite years of studies showing the impact of global warming on the planet, only 49 per cent of people now consider climate change a very serious issue – far fewer than at the beginning of the worldwide financial crisis in 2009.

Worries about climate change first dropped in industrialised nations but they have now also fallen in developing economies including Brazil and China, according to the survey by GlobeScan Radar.

The declining interest in climate change comes amid a backlash against costly green energy investments in an age of austerity. 

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4th Amendment? What 4th Amendment? Gov’t Requesting Record Amount of Google Email Data: Judge Napolitano Explains

The U.S. Government Agencies seem to think that the Constitution of the United States of America doesn't apply to them! m/r

Gov’t Requesting Record Amount of Google Email Data: Judge Napolitano Explains Why You Should Be ‘Aggravated About This’

February 28, 2013

Google says it received a record 13,753 requests for email data from federal, state and local government agencies in 2012. Most of the requests for information contained in Gmail or other Google services were made without a search warrant, Google reported.

Fox and Friends asked Judge Andrew Napolitano whether this is constitutional. He explained that “gradually the government has worn away at the constitutional protection,” which requires criminal investigators to obtain a search warrant by showing a judge sworn evidence of probable cause.

Napolitano said that currently, “federal agents can write their own search warrants to get your emails,” meaning messages that are stored on an outside server, like Google’s, not on your hard drive or computer. The government is allowed to see the sender and the recipient, but not the body of the email.

“If the government wants the wording of the email itself, it has to go to a judge and get a warrant,” Napolitano said, going on to explain why he’s “aggravated” about this situation and why you should be too.

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Eric Cantor is a Fool!

The Senate's Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is another over-regulating, PC Federal law that can make merely expressing a contrary opinion as a crime, Canter talks out of both sides of his mouth, not because he is a conniving politician, but because he really is the fool he appears to be. m/r

In Closed-Door Meeting, Cantor Warned of ‘Civil War’ - By Katrina Trinko - The Corner - National Review Online

By Katrina Trinko  February 27, 2013

[Republican] House majority leader Eric Cantor is increasingly frustrated with a group of House Republicans who are working against the leadership, and he’s not afraid of voicing his dismay.

In a closed-door conference meeting on Wednesday, Cantor told one GOP member that if they blocked the Senate-passed Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) from coming to the floor, they’d cause “civil war” in the ranks.

Cantor’s comment irked some Republican aides, who told National Review Online that such strong language is inappropriate. In recent days, some conservatives have been upset about the Senate’s version of VAWA, saying that parts of the bill are unconstitutional.

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Good for Her, this crap has to stop! Texas student punished for refusing to recite Mexican pledge of allegiance

Now there is a Federal (er.. Ferderale) Lawsuit. Wasn't this field plowed years before as well?
It is especially nice to see Mexico given the National Socialist salute. m/r

Texas student punished for refusing to recite Mexican pledge of allegiance

Texas student Brenda Brinsdon, daughter of a Mexican mother and an American father, refused to recite the Mexican pledge as required by her teacher. For this she was disciplined. Her family is now suing the school. February 27, 2013

Just as the 2011 school year began, Brenda Brinsdon, then a 15 year-old sophomore at Achieve Early College High School (AECHS) in McAllen Texas, was thrust into the national spotlight after she refused to stand up, extend her arms straight out with palms down and recite the Mexican Pledge of Allegiance and sing the Mexican National Anthem.  Reyna Santos, the Spanish 3 teacher, required all her students to recite this allegiance to Mexico. 

When the time came for the students to stand up and recite the Mexican pledge, Brenda Brinsdon refused.   Brenda, born in the United States, is the daughter of a Mexican immigrant and an American father.  Brenda is fluent in Spanish and English and is proud of her Mexican heritage, but she is a true blooded American.  So to Brenda, the words of the pledge have a deep meaning. Her conscience and patriotism would not allow her to participate in the assignment.  She believed it was ‘un-American’ and she was exercising her constitutional right not to be forced to pledge allegiance to Mexico.  The school punished her for her refusal.

As a result, the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Michigan, along with local Texas attorney Jerad Najvar, filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Brenda and her father William Brinsdonclaiming that school officials violated Brenda’s  constitutional rights. Click here to read the federal lawsuit.

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Go to the Head of the Enemy's List - Bob Woodward Tears Into Obama With Veiled Nixonian Criticism

Ironic, isn't it? The co-author of "All the President's Men" is now being threatened by similar tactics from another lying president and his crooked administration. Obama has been caught in the past, when he thought the cameras were off, threatening reporters. The president's reactions and instincts are right out of his training derived from the combination of community organizer, Saul D. Alinsky, and Chicago gangster politics. Woodward is restrained in his reporting of the threats from the White House as he discusses them with Obama sympathizers "rino" Joe Scarborough and socialist Mika Brzezinski. m/r


Bob Woodward Tears Into Obama With Veiled Nixonian Criticism - YouTube

Published on Feb 27, 2013

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's ongoing war of word with President Barack Obama's White House escalated on Wednesday when Woodward took to the set of MSNBC's Morning Joe to slam the president's handling of the sequester fight. Woodward said that the president has displayed a "kind of madness" in his decision to make those cuts as painful and deleterious to the nation's war fighting capability as possible.

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YOU ELECTED THE SEQUEL! Klavan on the Culture: Night of the Living Government

FOOLS! This from 2009, nothing changed except it's worse! m/r

Klavan on the Culture: Night of the Living Government - YouTube

All BS - 5 Sequester Facts to Know Before Committing Suicide

All we get is BS from the Administration! Make some real cuts, especially to Obama's programs. And while we try making cuts (good luck), lets get rid of some truly wasteful and redundant, regulatory Departments: Energy, Environmental Protection, Education, Commerce, Labor, Homeland Security to Start! m/r

5 Sequester Facts to Know Before Committing Suicide - YouTube

full post Published on Feb 26, 2013

To hear President Barack Obama tell it, the impending $85 billion in spending cuts to the federal budget known as the sequester are the worst disaster since Seth MacFarlane hosted the Academy Awards.

But before you dive deep into depression, here are five facts that should take the sting out of the sequester.

1. The Cuts Are Tiny!

The actual cuts in fiscal year 2013 are only $44 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The rest don't even take place until 2014 or later. Whether you use $44 billion or $85 billion we're talking about 1 or 2 percent of total government spending.

2. Spending is Still Going Up!

Even with the sequester, the federal government is expected to spend more this year than it did last year. The government spent $3.5 trillion in 2012 and i expected to spend $3.6 trillion in 2013 (see Summary Table 1).

3. The Pentagon Won't Starve!

The largest chunk of cuts will come out of the defense budget, which has doubled over the past decade. The Pentagon will still have about $500 billion at its disposal, not counting war-related and emergency appropriations.

4. You Can't Cut Nonexistent Programs!

The White House's Office of Management and Budget says the sequester will cut a whopping $2 million from the $20 million budget for the National Drug Intelligence Center. That sounds pretty bad - until you realize the Drug Intelligence Center closed its door in June 2012.

5. It Was All Obama's Idea!

The whole damn sequester was the Obama administration's idea. As the Washington Post's Bob Woodward has reported, despite Obama's denials to the contrary, "the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House" as part of the deal to raise the debt limit back in August 2011.

So as members of the president's cabinet and party rail against the draconian nature of the sequester and the unfairness of it all, it's worth keeping in mind that these cuts are genuinely puny.

And that the president has nobody to blame but himself.

About 2 minutes.

Produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie, who also narrates.

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Fright Makes Right: Obama's Sequester Scare Tear - The Hair Line Rate of Nothing

We are just being lied to! m/r

Fright Makes Right: Obama's Sequester Scare Tear - YouTube

Feb 26, 2013

President Obama is taking to the airwaves in an attempt to terrify Americans about budget cuts that he proposed. Is it working, and if so, why can't the GOP fight back against Obama's scare tactics? Find out as Tammy Bruce visits the Trifecta gang.

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Leftist School Indoctrination is Ubiquitous

A mentality is fostered that is receptive to domestic and foreign policies predicated on American guilt and the need to make reparations for historical crimes, whether by foreign aid, global retreat, or the surrender of sovereignty to international organizations. That’s why a pure embodiment of the leftist historical drama like Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech did not evoke outrage over its historical lies and slanders. It was no different from what most people under the age of say 50 had been hearing in school for years.

Is Leftist School Indoctrination Unstoppable?

By Bruce Thornton On February 27, 2013

Rush Limbaugh weighed in recently on the Republicans’ on-going debate about what went wrong in November. Elaborating on his earlier comment that he was “ashamed of America,” Limbaugh said, “The Left has beaten us. They have created far more low-information, unaware, uneducated people than we’ve been able to keep up with . . . I’ve always had a Civics 101 view of the country: People get what they want, they vote what they want, and they get the way they vote.” He added that the Democrats “control the education system . . . pop culture, movies, TV and books” and use that control to create “dependency” among voters.
Some may think this is a dog-bites-man observation, but it’s worth looking more closely at the most important item in Limbaugh’s list––the educational system. Everything else Limbaugh mentions is made possible because of the deep corruption in public education from kindergarten to university.
We often focus on the ideological biases of the university, where the more lunatic examples of political correctness get the most attention. But in education as in economics, there is a trickle-down effect. The grandees at the elite universities train the PhD’s who go on to second and third tier institutions, where they in turn train the students who get high school and grade school teaching credentials. They also write most of the textbooks that end up in K-12 classrooms. Thus the progressive ideology metastasizes throughout the educational system, determining the curriculum, the textbooks, and the point of view of the teachers. At that level the ideas may be garbled, half-baked, incoherent, and a collection of clichés and slogans. But they are still toxic and effective at transmitting a world-view to impressionable minds.
When my kids were in public school I witnessed this process over and over. Questionable leftist ideas I had to sit through in graduate seminars turned up regularly in my kids’ English and history courses and textbooks. In the Marxiste interpretation of history, for example, traditional historical narratives reflect the “false consciousness” of capitalism’s academic publicists justifying and “mystifying” a history marked by oppression and atrocities in service to a dehumanizing capitalist ideology.
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Fresh out of "David Copperfield" - Uriah Heep Obama: I've 'Become More Humble'

Beware of Politicians and Lawyers bearing Humility. 
Learning the Classics before the PC crowd took over the Universities has its rewards. m/r


Obama: I've 'Become More Humble' | The Weekly Standard
FEB 26, 2013 • BY DANIEL HALPER
Barack Obama admitted today in a Virginia speech that he's "become more humble":
"But in order for us to make that happen I'm going to need you. You know, the one thing about being president is, after four years, you get pretty humble. You'd think maybe you wouldn't but actually you become more humble--you realize what you don't know," said Obama.

NO TRANSPARENCY IN A BLACKOUT - Freedom Of The Press? - No Access Allowed! - Obama Clears Reporters To Take Questions

CLEAR OUT THE PRESS SO WE CAN TAKE SOME QUESTIONS!??!

Freedom Of The Press? - No Access Allowed! - Obama Clears Reporters To Take Questions - YouTube

Feb 26, 2013

Transparency Problems - President Breaks Promise Of Open Government
Freedom Of The Press - No Access Allowed! - Obama Clears Reporters To Take Questions

CPAC: Chris Christie’s not invited this year « You Couldn't Keep Him Away if Springsteen Was There (fat chance)

He stinks on Gun Issues and his is full of hot air on limiting property taxes, but the the alternatives are much worse! m/r

CPAC: Chris Christie’s not invited this year « Hot Air

February 25, 2013 by Allahpundit

I have my issues with him just like you do, but c’mon. Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush are conservative enough to speak at CPAC but not Christie? He’s the current vice chair of the RGA and will be chairman next year for the midterms. He’s headed for a landslide reelection victory in a deep blue state, where his approval rating is currently the highest for a New Jersey governor in the 17 years since Quinnipiac started tracking that. He’s one of the few members of the party with a national profile who’s reasonably well liked by voters across the board. Leverage his popularity, if only for a day.
I understand wanting to punish him for slobbering all over Obama after Sandy, but how do you find a spot for Chris Hayes and not for this guy? For cripes sake, Joe Scarborough’s spoken at CPAC. David Frum could probably get on a panel if he really tried. Their definition of “conservative” isn’t strict.
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Lying for Gun Control? Would Obama stoop to that? Obama using fake Twitter messages in fight over gun control

Stockman also added that only one of the six tweets from real people is a constituent of his in Texas.

GOP lawmaker: Obama using fake Twitter messages in fight over gun control - The Hill's Floor Action
"Obama's anti-gun campaign is a fraud," Stockman said. "Obama's supporters are panicking and willing to do anything to create the appearance of popular support, even if it means trying to defraud Congress," he added. "I call upon the president to denounce this phony spam campaign."

Stockman said that in response to Obama's call for people to tweet their congressman in support of gun control legislation, he received just 16 tweets. But he said all of these messages were identical, and that a closer look at them revealed that only six were from real people.

"The other 10 are fake, computer-generated spambots," his office said in a press release. As evidence, he said these 10 tweets use default graphics and names, and have not engaged in any interaction with other people. Two of the tweets were sent at nearly the same time, and both follow just one person: Brad Schenck, Obama's former digital strategist.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/284679-gop-lawmaker-says-obama-using-fake-people-to-flood-twitter-with-gun-control-messages#ixzz2M0jXmigY 
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

How can we tell the difference? Napolitano: Sequester cuts will make US more vulnerable to terrorist attack

More phony threats to us from 'our' government. The head of America's new Gestapo threatens us with less boarder security. That is interesting when she refuses boarder enforcement and not arresting illegal aliens now. Does this mean the incompetent and waste of money TSA will go away? No!  Will Napolitano stop targeting groups on the right that she considers as the only real terrorists? No!
The DHS could evaporate and we would not notice, except that is at airports, as we catch our flights on time. m/r

Napolitano: Sequester cuts will make US more vulnerable to terrorist attack - The Hill's Video
By Justin Sink - 02/25/13

Allowing the $85 billion sequester to go forward will make the United States more vulnerable to a terrorist attack, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned Monday.

Napolitano added that the blunt nature of the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts set for March 1 “makes it awfully, awfully tough” to mitigate threats faced by the nation.

“I don't think we can maintain the same level of security at all places around the country with sequester compared to without sequester,” said Napolitano, whose agency includes the Transportation Security Administration.

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It is all our fault - Menendez Blames Racism for Sex Scandal

Race pimping from a Democrat, how novel? m/r

Senator Menendez Blames Racism for Sex Scandal

By Daniel Greenfield On February 25, 2013 @

I solemnly swear to be an even bigger embarrassment to the Democratic Party than you, Joe. [referring to Biden]

Bob has a point. Why isn’t Ron Wyden being accused of having sex with Guatemalan call girls? It’s because he’s white, isn’t it?

At a Black History Month event held at a Trenton, N.J. church on Sunday, Democratic Senator Bob Menendez blamed conservatives for his ethics scandals, framing them as a racial attack on him because of his Hispanic heritage. “I have felt the sting of discrimination,” he told approximately 300 worshipers, according to the Bergen Record. ”It has never been easy.”
“Now we face anonymous, faceless, nameless individuals from right-wing sources seeking to destroy a lifetime of work,” Menendez said at Shiloh Baptist Church.
“And their smears are false. I have worked too hard and too long in the vineyards, too long with my hands, for the harvest to be soured.”

This is just embarrassing. Couldn’t the Honorable Gentleman from New Jersey call in Joe Biden to scream, “He’s gonna put y’all in chains”? That would have been more dignified.
So apparently Bob has been working a lot with his hands and he’s afraid that the harvest of Guatemalan call girls will be soured. It’s awful when you’ve spent a long time in the red light vineyards and something about Martin Luther King…

“Dr. King said that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,’” Menendez said. “In the end, I believe that justice will overcome the forces of darkness.”

I’m pretty sure that sound you just heard was King rolling over in his grave. But that’s the sound you hear when any politician makes a speech about him.

“Scriptures — scriptures tell us that he who ‘puts his hand to the plough and looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God.’”

Stop Bob, please just stop.
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Unfit for Duty - Here is Background and insight from the inside the LAPD

Christopher Dorner was nothing except a race mongering murdered. m/r

22 February 2013

Unfit for Duty by Jack Dunphy - City Journal

Christopher Dorner was no “superhero,” and he’s certainly no martyr.

22 February 2013

The electronic media didn’t cover itself in glory during the Christopher Dorner saga. Driven to fill air time with a story about which few actual facts were available, news stations sometimes resorted to wild speculation, erroneous reports, and moral obtuseness about the manhunt surrounding the ex–Los Angeles police officer and his killing spree. Of these, the first two are perhaps forgivable or at least understandable, given the nature of the business. The Dorner story delivered viewers. Failure to cover it, despite the lack of anything new to report, would have sent those viewers elsewhere. We’ve grown accustomed to news programs devoid of news. We’ve even come to expect some moral obtuseness in the media, where criminal behavior is so often rationalized as the byproduct of a deprived upbringing or whatnot.
But on February 13, only one day after Dorner’s murder spree came to a fiery end, viewers saw what may be a new low in a milieu in which lows are routine. Appearing to discuss the Dorner case on CNN was, among others, Marc Lamont Hill, an associate professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “As far as Dorner himself goes,” said Hill, “he’s been like a real life superhero to many people.” Perhaps realizing he had gone too far, Hill added: “What he did was awful, killing innocent people is bad.”
But then Hill doubled down, offering what amounts to a justification for Dorner’s crimes. “But when you read [Dorner’s] manifesto,” he said, “when you read the message that he left, he wasn’t entirely crazy. He had a plan and mission here and many people aren’t rooting for him to kill innocent people. They’re rooting for somebody who was wronged, to get a kind of revenge against the system. It is almost like watching ‘Django Unchained’ in real life. It’s kind of exciting.”
Where does one begin to respond?
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Of Meat and Myth: Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle is pure myth, but it has had a very real legacy.

Upton Sinclair's book "The Jungle" was pure torture to read. Very little of it actually dealt with meat processing plants and its 'shocking scene' was based on an unsubstantiated rumor. It mostly dealt with his own Socialist interpretation of the life for immigrants and his long sob story that tried to prove that the state and collective were needed to create a workers paradise. Paradise was finishing this book and putting it down. Pass on this book. Read "McTeague" by Frank Norris instead. It was a much better written book that dealt with similar poverty and social issues and put a more realistic face on these unfortunate, but small minded, mean people. Erich Von Stroheim based his epic silent film "Greed" on the Norris' novel. m/r

Of Meat and Myth : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education

FEBRUARY 08, 2013 by LAWRENCE W. REED

(The original version of this essay was published in The Freeman in November 1994. This longer version below was originally published by Liberty magazine in August 2006 to mark the centennial of the passage of the famed Meat Inspection Act of 1906. A full version, with citations, also appears in the 2011 book A Republic—If We Can Keep It.)

One hundred years ago, a great and enduring myth was born. Muckraking novelist Upton Sinclair wrote a novel entitled The Jungle—a tale of greed and abuse that still reverberates as a case against a free economy. Sinclair’s “jungle” was unregulated enterprise; his example was the meat-packing industry; his purpose was government regulation. The culmination of his work was the passage in 1906 of the Meat Inspection Act, enshrined in history, or at least in history books, as a sacred cow (excuse the pun) of the interventionist state.

A century later, American schoolchildren are still being taught a simplistic and romanticized version of this history. For many young people, The Jungle is required reading in high-school classes, where they are led to believe that unscrupulous capitalists were routinely tainting our meat, and that moral crusader Upton Sinclair rallied the public and forced government to shift from pusillanimous bystander to heroic do-gooder, valiantly disciplining the marketplace to protect its millions of victims. 

But this is a triumph of myth over reality, of ulterior motives over good intentions. Reading The Jungle and assuming it’s a credible news source is like watching The Blair Witch Project because you think it’s a documentary. 

Read more: http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/of-meat-and-myth#ixzz2LyN9iU6i

Look at FEE (Foundation for Economic Education)

FEE is one of the best places for Economic Education. m/r

Reason.com

Crony Capitalists vs. Value Makers: Q&A w Max Borders

Published on Feb 25, 2013

"We have a huge problem in this country with the difference between makers and takers," says Max Borders, "between crony capitalists and actual value creators.... You've got people who have figured out how to game the system. They go down to the brothels of K Street and figure out how to change the rules to benefit them[selves], and we get massive transfers of wealth from middle class and poor people to rich people."

Borders is the director of content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and editor of its flagship publication, The Freeman. His new book, Superwealth: Why we should stop worrying about the gap between rich and poor, argues that many conventional measures misrepresent large and contining gains in widespread well-being and material progress for virtually all Americans.

In an interview with Reason's Nick Gillespie, Borders says that focusing on the gap between rich and poor has become a "fetish" in which people are consumed with the idea that America is no longer an economically mobile society. Borders argues that mobility and income growth remain strong - and that the extent they've been dampened, it's due to policies that reward politically connected operators rather than businesses that generate truly popular and affordable goods and services.

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Return to the Road to Hell

Andrew Klavan: The Highway to Hell, Leftist Remix Edition

Jan 27, 2011

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
But shouldn't it be paved with bad intentions?
Andrew Klavan investigates.

A reprise of what has gotten worse since 2011.

Sign Of The Day: Background Checks

You got that right! m/r

Sign Of The Day: Background Checks » Common Sense Evaluation

Let us look at this as cutting unnecessary FAT-heads! Federal employee unions brace for sequester furloughs

Can it be done every month or at least every quarter?  None of programs that are planned as cuts to be inconvenient for the people (not the politicians) are "worth a warm bucket of spit." m/r

Federal employee unions brace for sequester furloughs | WashingtonExaminer.com
Sean Higgins  
February 24, 2013

With the across-the-board cuts looming, public sector union leaders are seeking ways to ameliorate the pain to their members. Their proposal? Let the employees do triage among themselves, according to the Washington Post:

Union leaders cannot stop the furloughs or determine who in each agency must take them. They say their best option is to soften the pain of unpaid days, which could slash federal pay by up to 20 percent this fiscal year. They are demanding that employees be able to choose when to take days off and volunteer for more to help financially strapped colleagues. They want guarantees that no one will be penalized when work does not get done and assurances that managers cannot choose favorites to spare.

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Take No Prisoners - Women demand big ammo clips to fight attackers

Go away you worthless government gun control fools. No infringement of 2nd Amendment. m/r

Women demand big ammo clips to fight attackers | WashingtonExaminer.com
Feb 25, 2013 Orig. from Jan. Paul Betard

Pistol-packing women are demanding that the administration forget it's plan to ban high-capacity ammo magazines, claiming it robs them of their best weapon to fight off attackers: multiple shots.

The conservative Independent Women's Forum joined the battle Thursday said President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden's goal of limiting ammo clips to just 10 bullets "merely disarms the good guys."

Several women pundits who are familiar with guns or own pistols have gone on TV to argue that when under attack, nerves often undermine accurate shooting. Thus, more bullets are needed to ward off attackers.

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The Annual Pep Rally for Democrats. Sucking Up to White House? Politics is Just The Script - Another Oscar Night Wasted

Land in OZ and get the Wicked Witch from the East! 
Thank goodness I was spared this. I haven't watched the Oscars in years.
I grew up in Hollywood and my father was in its business. It never held much awe or glamor for me. It is nasty, mean and boring for the most part and most of the stars are empty vessels without a script. 
It is ironic that the finest president of the modern era emerged from this mess. m/r

The American Spectator : Another Oscar Night Wasted

by BEN STEIN on 2.25.13 
Maybe Seth McFarlane should be footman to Mrs. Obama, our own Evita.

SundayI am not quite sure who Seth McFarlane is, but he must be important, because he was the host of the Oscars show last night. He managed to be the most offensive host I have ever seen on an awards show. He looks sane, but there is something wrong with him, or maybe it’s that the producers asked the writers to be really offensive, and the writers produced offensive material, and Seth McFarlane just blithely read it.

But herewith some of his bons mots:

He mentioned various actors who had played Abraham Lincoln — Raymond Massey, Daniel Day-Lewis — and then he added, “But the only actor who ever really got inside the brain of Lincoln was John Wilkes Booth.”

What the hell was that? A sick, evil joke about the murder of Abraham Lincoln on a network TV show? We have really gone way down into the toilet bowl of humor.

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This is Amazing - Scale of Universe - Interactive Scale of the Universe Tool

Scale of Universe - Interactive Scale of the Universe Tool

"C" Cupp and Mugging for the Manhattan Bar Scene

She is attractive and she knows it. She mugs for the camera on TV, but she gives you a creepy feeling the same way Liberace did when he looked directly into the camera lens. Cupp talks and writes, but rarely says much of interest. She writes sophomore essay stuff that would be themed to please her junior editors in what is now journalism. It is now based on college classes instead of on the job street experience. m/r

The American Spectator : S.E. Cupp and the Freezing of the Conservative Mind

Who knew there was a "Modern Drunkard" Magazine (as opposed to the "Old Fashioned Drunkard")?

I guess the Modern Drunkard drinks Watermelon and Peach Vodka fru fru drinks as opposed to just plain old drunks who poured about anything with alcohol down their gullet. That was depending upon what was available as they neared their own alcoholic bottom.

Anyway, here is the quote from "Modern Drunkard" Magazine:
“I was outraged,” says Sharp, a once avid Jack drinker. “They continue to claim in their ads that they stick to tradition. Tradition, my ass. If they think that people will take this sitting down they are sadly mistaken.”
—Modern Drunkard Magazine, on the Jack Daniels watering

By the way, this is outwardly about MAKER'S MARK cutting its bourbon. That was something unscrupulous, shady bartenders did, not the distiller! In reality, it is about things in life that we thought we could rely on, but it turns out we just can't.

When I quit drinking (had to or die) over 30 years ago Light Beer was new to the market, JACK DANIELS was still a good 94º proof sipping whiskey. Daniels made me down right glad I had quit drinking when I was told they had scammed a new generation with watered down 86 proof, then down to 80 proof bourbon. They should be ashamed and boycotted for making a 'girly' drink. Now MAKERS MARK (from Jim Beam) tried the same thing, although conspiracy theorists think they are trying to pull a "New Coke" type of switch and switch back for publicity. So what? I never cared much for Beam. It was a mixing whiskey for ladies' drinks as far as I was concerned and they obviously aren't as concerned about their quality and tradition as they should be.

The bourbon I drank over thirty years ago were 101º proof  Wild Turkey and 100º proof bonded Old Forrester. I hope they haven't succumbed to the scams of this generation of Modern Drunkards. It is too bad there are so few things that can be relied upon for tradition and quality over the course of a lifetime. I had to give them up, but they didn't have to give up, yet they did.
Alas, so has gone America, its culture and its bourbon.


Bourbon : DrinkWire
From The Pegu Blog on Feb 18, 2013

It took about a week.

Maker’s Mark has now completed the legendary and incredibly difficult New Coke Maneuver.

After backlash from customers, the producer of Maker’s Mark bourbon is reversing a decision to cut the amount of alcohol in bottles of its famous whiskey.

Rob Samuels, Maker’s Mark’s chief operating officer, said Sunday that it is restoring the alcohol volume of its product to its historic level of 45 percent, or 90 proof. Last week, it said it was lowering the amount to 42 percent, or 84 proof, because of a supply shortage.

“We’ve been tremendously humbled over the last week or so,” Samuels, grandson of the brand’s founder, said of customers’ reactions.

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Even Bob Woodward is calling Obama a liar on the "sequester"

The "sequester" is a stupid, typical Washington euphemism for taking $85 billion out of future budget increases to be determined at the future. $85 billion is a joke in a year when the Federal Government is expecting to to waste $3.6 trillion, of which over $1 trillion is borrowed. At he same time the Federal Reserve literally prints or electronically fabricates $40 plus billion in paper money, backed in reality by nothing, every month. There is not a true cut in Washington Speak! It is just a term used  for an accounting trick denied for the fools in the suck-up media and Obama sycophants. The Republican "Leadership" is even dumber for not exposing the whole thing in honest terms. But they want to keep their phony budgets filled with their own grafting pet projects as well. Maybe they are not so dumb. They know that any cuts would expose how little their phony, expensive "services and projects" are actually needed by the public at all.
In other words, they are all liars who should not be given any money, ever. A real cut would be the tax payers refusing to pay the trillions extorted from them.

Woodward is a typical D.C. Liberal insider, but the irritatingly oh-so-slow speaking Woodward does not suffer liars lightly, no matter how politically aligned they may be. Here is an example Woodward used exposing Obama as a liar. m/r:

Two Faced

The finger-pointing began during the third presidential debate last fall, on Oct. 22, when President Obama blamed Congress. “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” Obama said. “It is something that Congress has proposed.”

Bob Woodward: Obama’s sequester deal-changer - The Washington Post
By Bob Woodward, Published: February 22 (the AP and Washington Post still have no idea what year it is) - it's 2013


The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive reporting for my book “The Price of Politics” shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.
Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.
Nabors has told others that they checked with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing mechanism they could devise. Nabors has said, “We didn’t actually think it would be that hard to convince them” — Reid and the Republicans — to adopt the sequester. “It really was the only thing we had. There was not a lot of other options left on the table.”
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Taking Back Our Rights and County! Firearms Companies Restricting Sales To GOVERNMENT Agencies In Areas That Restrict Gun Rights

You Sorry Bunch,
we still reserve the right not to serve you!

This is a good start on the long, long road to taking back and keeping our own rights and retrieving what all levels of government have misappropriated from us. This is a well deserved "Felix Unger" to the good-for-nothing regulators. m/r

Firearms Companies Restricting Sales To GOVERNMENT Agencies In Areas That Restrict Gun Rights | CNS NewsBy Gregory Gwyn-Williams, Jr  2-22-13 

A growing number of firearm and firearm-related companies have stated they will no longer sell items to states, counties, cities and municipalities that restrict their citizens' rights to own them.

According to The Police Loophole, 34 companies have joined in publicly stating that governments who seek to restrict 2^nd Amendment rights will themselves be restricted from purchasing the items they seek to limit or ban.

Extreme Firepower Inc., located in Inwood, WV has had a longstanding policy that states:

"The Federal Government and several states have enacted gun control laws that restrict the public from owning and possessing certain types of firearms...If a product that we manufacture is not legal for a private citizen to own in a jurisdiction, we will not sell that product to a law-enforcement agency in that jurisdiction."

York Arms, located in Buxton, ME released a statement following new legislation in New York:

"Based on the recent legislation in New York, we are prohibited from selling rifles and receivers to residents of New York.  We have chosen to extend that prohibition to all governmental agencies associated with or located within New York."-

-go to the link-

Gun Rights with Your Grande: ‘Gun Owners Support Starbucks Day’

No jive Java

Although I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop here... It would be nice if these major chains and all businesses took a stand against, now ever growing, over-regulation and favored the individual rights of their customers over governmental intrusion! m/r

Packing Heat with Hot Coffee: ‘Gun Owners Support Starbucks Day’ « CBS DC
February 22, 2013

STERLING, Va. (CBSDC) — If you enjoy packing heat while sipping a hot cup of coffee, Friday is your day.

Firearms owners and gun rights advocates are heading to local coffee shops to celebrate “Gun Owners Support Starbucks Day.” It’s their way of saying ‘thank you’ to the Seattle-based coffee franchise for — as they see it — not infringing on their Second Amendment rights.

By trying to stay out of the gun control debate, the popular coffee chain has actually found itself in the thick of it. A spokesperson for Starbucks tells the Washington Post that the company’s position is for stores to comply with the local laws where they are located.

“Some anti-gunners wanted citizens such like myself kicked out of Starbucks for carrying a gun and Starbucks said, ‘Hey, we’re here to sell cakes and coffees,’ ” Ed Levine, founder of Virginia Open Carry, told WNEW’s John Domen.

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What Kind of Governments did we end up getting? Top Aide to Cuomo Rebukes State Worker Who Talked to the Press

Top Aide to Cuomo Rebukes State Worker Who Talked to the Press - NYTimes.com

Getting away with Manslaughter, it happened long before Obama Fiddled

In the bag then and ...

More media accomplices after the fact. The press was in the bag to cover-up the killing "tragedy" of Chappaquiddick and they have followed suit in the cover-up of the killing "tragedy" of Benghazi. A pattern of ruin for us, never them (the killers and cover-uppers). m/r

The American Spectator : Obama Fiddled

By Andrew B. Wilson on 2.15.13

While Benghazi burned … and an election approached.

The late Ted Kennedy became known as “the Hero of Chappaquiddick” for leaving a young lady to die after accidentally driving his car off a bridge on the night of July 18, 1969. Kennedy, who swam free, said nothing to police until 10 a.m. the following day.

In the subsequent inquest, John Farrar, a professional diver and the captain of the Edgartown Fire Rescue unit on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts, discovered the body of Mary Jo Kopechne in the well of the backseat of the overturned and submerged car. He said in his testimony:

It looked as if she were holding herself up to get a last breath of air. It was a consciously assumed position.… She didn’t drown. She died of suffocation in her own air void. It took her at least three or four hours to die. I could have had her out of that car twenty-five minutes after I had the call. But he (Ted Kennedy) didn’t call.

President Barack Obama deserves similar obloquy as “the Commander-in-Chief who went AWOL” on September 12, 2012 — during the eight-hour siege in which heavily-armed terrorists burnt the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

To be sure, there are major differences between the two events. Unlike Kennedy, the president did not directly endanger the life or lives of others. Like Kennedy, however, he went missing when he could have tried to mount a rescue mission, or at least weighed the options and seriously considered doing so.

If nothing else, Obama is guilty of excessive passivity … indeed, dereliction of duty … on the night of Sept. 11, 2012. 

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