Nothing like being a government 'insider' - MF Global client money feared gone

What does "MF" stand for?

MF Global client money feared gone - NYPOST.com

Two tier shopping, Target for the Public and Madison Ave. for Michelle Antoinette

Agent Provocateur sales boosted by US First Lady Michelle Obama - Telegraph

Michelle Obama has risked the wrath of cash-strapped Americans by indulging in a $50,000 shopping spree at Agent Provocateur.

He got off too easy - The 'Injustice' Done to Joe Paterno

I could not disagree with this article more. I am fed up with the gods of sports trumping every aspect of our modern life, including the sacrifice of common decency!

Just call it state and popularly sanctioned pagan sacrifice of virgins to school athletic departments and pro-sports and be done with it!

The Injustice Done to Joe Paterno - Michael Novak - National Review Online

Sebelius and Obama appear so normal and are so delusional

Our founders learned how not to govern from the Classics.

This administration just governs as in the unlearned Classic way.

Free Birth Control vs. Freedom of Religion - Wesley J. Smith - National Review Online

1-30-12

When Pliny the Younger was a provincial governor in the Roman Empire, he wrote a letter to Emperor Trajan asking whether he should execute Christians who refused to burn incense in worship of the emperor. Pliny, in keeping with the customs of the empire, did not care about forcing Christians to believethat the emperor was a god. But in public they had to behave as if they did. Thus, the Christians were in the dock not so much because of their faith in a risen Christ as over their willful refusal to declare themselves part of the reigning social order.

I thought of Pliny when I read that the Obama administration, in creating specific rules to implement Obamacare, will require all employers (with a very narrow exemption discussed below) to offer their employees health insurance that provides FDA-approved contraception, female sterilization, and other “reproductive” services free of charge — even if the employer is a religious organization and doing so violates its doctrine. I also recalled the times that President Obama and other members of his administration have supported “freedom of worship.” However, as in Pliny’s time, “freedom of worship” is not the same thing as “freedom of religion.” The former means that one may believe whatever one wants and worship privately without interference, whereas the latter allows one freedom to live in the world at large consistent with one’s faith tenets, even if they are not endorsed by the state. -more at link-

So True - Too bad most flow charts don't work this well

Thanks Gags

Fifteen Years of World Cooling Reported, and Another Green Energy Stimulus Recipient Hits the Skids (the third this week!)

Drip, Drip, Drip: Yet Another Green Energy Stimulus Recipient Hits the Skids (the third this week!)

by WILLIAM YEATMAN on JANUARY 27, 2012

Earlier this week, Stimulus beneficiary Evergreen Energy bit the dust. Then, Ener1, a manufacturer of batteries for electric vehicles and recipient of Stimulus largesse, filed for bankruptcy. And today, the Las Vegas Sun reports that Amonix, Inc., a manufacturer of solar panels that received $5.9 million from the Porkulus, will cut two-thirds of its workforce, about 200 employees, only seven months after opening a factory in Nevada.

-go to link-

Amonix, a California-based solar power company, laid off 200 at North Las Vegas

Solar flare-outs!

Some 200 laid off at North Las Vegas Amonix solar plant - Las Vegas Sun

Just seven months after California-based solar power company Amonix Inc.opened its largest manufacturing plant, in North Las Vegas, the company’s contractor has laid off nearly two-thirds of its workforce.

Flextronics Industrial, the Singapore solar panel manufacturer that partnered with Amonix to staff the new $18 million, 214,000-square-foot plant, laid off about 200 of its 300-plus employees Tuesday.

Amonix’s director of manufacturing operations, Eric Culberson, said the layoffs are part of “retooling” the factory as the company prepares to roll out its next-generation product.

-more at link-

The Real State of the Union

This is the straight forward skinny that politicians avoid too often. That includes Mitch Daniels.

The Real State of the Union | FrontPage Magazine

By Ben Shapiro On January 30, 2012

I watched Mitch Daniels’ response to the pathetic state of the union address by Barack Obama – and then I fell asleep. It was boring, uninspiring, and unwatchable.

Here’s what Mitch Daniels should have said.

“Good evening, my fellow Americans. I’m not going to take an hour of your time, or half an hour of your time, or even fifteen minutes of your time. I’m going to take less than ten minutes to explain the state of our union, how we got here, and how we get out.

“My fellow Americans, the state of our union is critical. We are so deeply in debt that within the decade, we will be spending more in interest on the debt than we will on our military budget. That’s just the interest, not the actual debt. By 2015, we will be paying for the entire Chinese military budget, since we owe them so much money. What have we gotten for all this cash? We certainly haven’t gotten jobs – nearly half of all working-age Americans are either unemployed, underemployed, or have dropped out of the labor force entirely. The real unemployment rate is somewhere near 11 percent, not 8.5. The economy, to put it politely, stinks, and we all know it.

“Spending vast quantities of money hasn’t given our children a good education, either. Thanks to the teachers unions, which effectively bribe politicians all over the country to keep bad teachers employed and tenured, American children rank 14^th in the industrialized world in reading, 17^th in science, and 25^thin math. There are plenty of jobs available in America, in places like Silicon Valley – but we don’t have enough qualified people to fill them, because our education system has been bought and paid for by the greedy and perverse teachers unions. And while President Obama talks about everybody needing to stay in school and go to college, if our schools are terrible, all we’re doing is prolonging their ignorance.

“And all that money we’re spending isn’t making the world safer, either. China is building up its military. Russia is actively undermining us. Both those countries are extending their spheres of influence in South America. Our allies like Britain and France are rightly angry at us – and our treatment of Israel has been utterly shameful. In the Middle East, Iran is developing nuclear weapons and threatening to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and we’re pretending that the international community is united behind us, even as Russia and China stonewall all action; Libya and Egypt and Tunis have fallen to Islamists; the Jew-haters in the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have been emboldened; Bashar Assad is murdering his own people en masse; Iraq is spiraling back into chaos; Pakistan is a disaster zone; and in Afghanistan, we’re now negotiating with the same folks we toppled after they provided Osama Bin Laden safe haven. Yes, Bin Laden is dead. But pretending that killing Bin Laden solved the Islamist threat is worse than wrong. It’s reprehensible, because it gives us the same sense of false security that led to 9/11 in the first place. Meanwhile, we slash the military budget.

“And things are slated to get worse. In the next year, if re-elected, President Obama will allow the Bush tax rates to expire; he will vastly increase the burdensome regulations that kill business; Obamacare will kick in, destroying our healthcare system.

-read on at link-

Easy = Voter Fraud - Left Demands James O’Keefe’s Head Over Voter Fraud Exposé

Left Demands James O’Keefe’s Head Over Voter Fraud Exposé | FrontPage Magazine

By Joseph Klein On January 30, 2012

The Left is in a horrible huff. Once again James O’Keefe, the conservative film-maker who exposed ACORN, has demonstrated the duplicity of the Left. This time he proved why strict voter ID laws, opposed strongly by the Left, are necessary.

In more than 10 minutes of video footage, which has gone viral on the Internet, O’Keefe demonstrated how easy it was in New Hampshire for an individual to pose as a deceased voter and still receive a ballot to vote in an election.

New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien, (R-Mont Vernon) called the video “a shocking exclamation point on the need for immediate reform to New Hampshire’s election laws to ensure that voter fraud does not taint the rights of our citizens to have their votes counted in an honest, responsible way and impact our state.”

New Hampshire Governor John Lynch vetoed legislation passed in 2011 requiring photo ID at the polls. Governor Lynch had stated in his veto message that there was “no voter fraud problem in New Hampshire.”

O’Brien begged to differ. He said the House will pass legislation again this year. “Hopefully, this video will shame the Governor into signing it,” O’Brien remarked.

Leftists are trying to divert attention away from the underlying voter fraud issue, which O’Keefe graphically exposed, by going after the messenger.

-read on at link-

"My Message is Simple (minded)": Obama's SOTU Written at 8th Grade Level for Third Straight Year

You expected a Churchillian language level?

"My Message is Simple": Obama's SOTU Written at 8th Grade Level for Third Straight Year - Smart Politics

By Eric Ostermeier on January 25, 2012

Obama's SOTU addresses have the lowest average Flesch-Kincaid score of any modern president; Obama owns three of the six lowest-scoring addresses since FDR.

For the third consecutive State of the Union Address, Barack Obama spoke in clear, plain terms.

And for the third straight Address, the President's speech was written at an eighth-grade level.

In Obama's own words: "My message is simple."

But was it too simplistic?

A Smart Politics study of the 70 orally delivered State of the Union Addresses since 1934 finds the text of Obama's 2012 speech to have tallied the third lowest score on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, at an 8.4 grade level.

Obama also delivered the second lowest scoring address in 2011 (at an 8.1 grade level) and the sixth lowest in 2010 (at an 8.8 grade level)

-read on at link-