Tag: politics

More Democrat Flee-Bagging

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Reader Grumpy Old Fart left a link in a comment to this story:

During the second portion of a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing about Benghazi Thursday on Capitol Hill, the majority of Democrats on the Committee left the room and refused to listen to the testimony of Patricia Smith and Charles Woods. Ms. Smith is the mother of Sean Smith, an information management officer killed in the 9/11 Benghazi attack. Charles Woods is the father of Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, who was also killed.

Here’s the picture:

photo flee-baggers.jpg

The far side of the room, shown empty in the photo, belongs to the Democrats. The only Democrats who stayed were Ranking Member Elijah Cummings and Rep. Jackie Speier.

Had enough yet?

9/11 – Does it Seem Like Twelve Years?

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Twelve years ago, I was in a car traveling to the Ford plant in Hermosillo, Mexico when the first airliner struck the World Trade Center.  When we arrived at the facility and entered the lobby, a security guard came up and asked if we were aware of “what is going on in the States?”

Needless to say, our meeting that morning was cancelled, and we immediately headed back for the border.  During the entire drive we kept trying to tune in radio stations to get more information.  We heard the report of the Pentagon impact, and then the collapse of each WTC tower.  We weren’t sure if we’d get across the border that day, or even that week, and since we’d only planned on a day trip, this wasn’t encouraging, but by the time we arrived, the border had reopened.  The line was an hour long, but it did move, and we got home.

My reaction was surprise that it had taken as long as it did before we were hit, and shock at the effectiveness of the attack.  I knew that the reaction to the attack would be swift, and probably severe.

I did not expect a decade-plus of war.  I certainly did not expect said warfare to extend into the second term of our current President, much less expansion of that warfare.

Last year’s attack on the Benghazi consulate?  Not a shocker, but the total lack of reaction from Washington was.  “What difference does it make?”  Seriously?


And now Obama wants to strike Syria?


Awhile back on Facebook, someone asked for a one-word description of the Obama presidency.  Most all of the responses were derisive, scatological, or merely angry.  My response was descriptive:  “transformational.”  After all, the man said in October 30, 2008 that we were “five days away from fundamentally transforming” the United States.  Five years into his Presidency, I’d say that’s the one campaign promise he has most definitely kept. 

Play with the Bull, Get the Horns

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It looks like Colorado’s recall efforts have been successful.  The Denver Post is reporting that Senate President John Morse has been unseated in the recall election.  State Senator Angela Giron lost her seat by an even wider margin.

Looks like Bloomberg wasted a bunch of money. The linked Mother Jones piece from Monday states:

The idea that bucking the NRA meant an almost-certain political death has always been a myth. With all eyes on Colorado, people might just finally take notice.

Not so mythical after all.  Perhaps now more politicians will take notice.

Good on ya, Colorado!

Obama Lied, Privacy Died

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Well, it looks like there are cracks starting to form in the media dike.  David Sirota writes in Salon:

I guess it’s possible Obama has merely been “wrong” but has not been lying. But the implications of that would be just as bad — albeit in a different way — as if he were deliberately lying. It would mean that he is making sweeping and wildly inaccurate statements without bothering to find out if they are actually true. Worse, for him merely to be wrong but not deliberately lying, it would mean that he didn’t know the most basic facts about how his own administration runs. It would, in other words, mean he is so totally out of the loop on absolutely everything — even the public news cycle — that he has no idea what’s going on.

I, of course, don’t buy that at all. I don’t buy that a constitutional lawyer and legal scholar didn’t know that the FISA court is secret — aka the opposite of “transparent.” I don’t buy that he simply didn’t see any of the news showing that spying is happening in the United States. And I don’t buy that he didn’t know that there is evidence — both public and inside his own administration — of the NSA “actually abusing” its power.

I don’t buy any of that because, to say the least, it makes no sense. I just don’t buy that he’s so unaware of the world around him that he made such statements from a position of pure ignorance. On top of that, he has a motive. Yes, Obama has an obvious political interest in trying to hide as much of his administration’s potentially illegal behavior as possible, which means he has an incentive to calculatedly lie. For all of these reasons, it seems safe to suggest that when it comes to the NSA situation, the president seems to be lying.

Still, this is just Salon.com. Now, if the New York Times publishes something like this, the remainder of The Won’s term would be interesting – in the Chinese curse meaning of the word.

Quote of the Day – Samizdata Edition

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(N)ever in human history has there been a smaller percentage of humanity living one failed harvest away from communal starvation. Is the divide between rich and poor actually increasing and more extreme than, say, in the eighteenth century? Or any time before then actually? In reality never has a larger percentage of humanity been, by any reasonable definition, middle class, than right now.

The fact large areas of poverty exists at all in our technologically advanced age is a dark miracle wrought largely by state imposed impediments to trade, disincentives to employ, insecurity of private property title and many other government policies of the sort Matt Damon (that tireless supporter of state education whose children are in a private school) strongly approves of.

Perry de Havilland, Neill Blomkamp must be living in some parallel universe

Quote of the Day – Prophecy Edition

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As mentioned in the post below, reader John Hardin has taken the download I got from JS-Kit/Echo when they discontinued their commenting function, and has reconstructed many of the comment threads that were previously lost including the one to my February, 2008 post Human Reconstruction, the Healing of Souls, and the Remaking of Society. Today’s QotD comes from that recovered comment thread, by reader “James”:

Anyone who has listened to anything Obama has ever said and who thinks he is going to do anything that even remotely resembles defending the Constitution is simply delusional.

He will keep everything passed by the current administration and add more of his own. He will then turn in inwards in ways that Bush could never get away with, and get nothing but applause for it. Same goes for Hillary and the Manchurian Candidate. There is simply no way to impliment and administer their socialist program without it.

And five years later on, he proves to be absolutely 100% accurate with the exception of the “applause” comment, at least with regard to things like expanded drone strikes, NSA spying on American citizens, IRS-Gate, etc.   

Silence, yes.  “Applause” not so much.

I have the BEST readers, I swear.

So Much To Do, So Little Time…

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Still working 10-12 hour days.  Lots going on out in the real world, and no time to analyze and write about any of it. 

Nobody shows for a “Climate Change Rally” in  Washington.  The snark and schadenfreude just ache to be written.

Obamacare’s implementation of a 30-hour “full time” workweek has spawned an “unintended consequence” – hour cuts to avoid having to provide health care.  “Unintended” my ass.  Everyone who saw that provision KNEW what the result would be.  But the White House says there’s no there, there.  In other Obamacare news, first there was the delay of planned Medicare cuts, then delay of the “employer mandate” for companies with 50 or more employees, and now the cap on out-of-pocket expenses has been delayed by proclamation.  And they’re still telling us that our premiums will go down.

A rodeo clown gets “lifetime ban” for un-PC political speech, and calls for “federal involvement” are raised. 

Jesse Jackson, Jr. and his wife get jail sentences, and CBS doesn’t find his party affiliation newsworthy.  (Hey, the New York Times put it in the first SENTENCE of their story.)

The Federal Government is still running at a loss, but the National Debt has remained at $16,699,396,000,000 since last month.  Truly, if a private business was run like the .gov, it would be shut down in thirty seconds and every officer would be sitting in prison alongside Rep. Jackson, Jr.  And the regular media has nothing to say about this accounting sleight-of-hand, I guess because “the right people” are in charge.

In other money news, apparently while the Fed can create money electronically with ease, the Mint can’t actually PRINT money worth a damn.

Egypt is coming apart at the seams.  Syria isn’t doing any better.  Or Iraq.  That “smart diplomacy” sure is working wonders, no?

Still no motion from the media on IRS-Gate, Bengazi-Gate, or any of the other myriad Obama scandals.  Of course not!  He’s not George W. Bush!

Yeesh.  Maybe I should be happy that I’ve got three more weeks of  busting my ass at work, and at least another month when I get back from Reno.

Please enjoy yourself in the comments and the archives, and a BIG thank you to reader John Hardin who has been making MASSIVE efforts to make available the old JS-Kit/Echo comment threads for a lot of the older posts, like this one.  Thank you, John.  It’s much appreciated, and if I’m ever in your neck of the woods, I owe you a beer or twelve.