From a straight faced Washington Post:

Lawyer: Iran sets $500,000 bail each for 2 American ‘hikers’

The associated article:

TEHRAN, Iran — An Iranian court Tuesday set bail of $500,000 each for two American men arrested more than two years ago and convicted on spy-related charges, clearing the way for their release a year after a similar bail-for-freedom arrangement for the third member of the group, their defense attorney said.

On what planet does the WaPo reside? They put the scare quotes around the word hikers, but not the word bail. The two hikers have been convicted. The supposed  purpose of bail is to ensure that the defendants appear in court.  In this case, there are no defendants, only two convicts

For what Iran is asking, and what she appears to getting, and what the WaPo is attempting to hide in ransom. Essentially Iran has kidnapped two Americans and successfully held them for ransom. Crime does pay.

Hanover,MD– I came in last night arriving here around 5:30 this morning, for an unload. ‘ll be headed elsewhere around noon or so.

I spend most of yesterday eradicating a virus from my home network. Those who have some experienjce with this can see how that takes serious time. We’re still seeing some of the effects from the flooding  ran into the other day.

• Obama’s Uncle Quietly released from Jail: Gee, if this was an uncle of W…. what would be the headlines, just now, hmm? As it is, near silence.
  
• Beer Can: Glenn passes on  some advice on boosting your Wi-Fi signal. We used to do that with CB, as well, though the cans were a bit bigger… taking a couple 55 Gallon drums at the longer wavelength.
• “Let’s Roll”  under Obama Becomes “Let’s Roll Over”. The great Mark Steyn explains, and does it well.
• Why the Stimulus Failed– Right Wing News explains
• Like a Kidney Stone: Saying pass it 14 times in his speech wasn’t enough, White House floods reporters’ inboxes after Obama’s jobs speech. Amazing thing; Obama waits 961 days before getting angry about someone dragging their feet on jobs. Of course, forget that the bill he wants passed doesn’t yet exist as such, any more than the Obamacare bill did.
• When even the NY Times Admits it… I see where the Times is saying Dems are worried that Obama will lose the next election… which is true… but the bigger, largely unspoken worry I see underneath these headlines is  that  he’ll drag them down with him.  Less than six months into this administration I said precisely the same thing.  The reason for this worry has never been clearer;  In Obama, what the left got was precisely what they’ve been having what dreams over for the past several decades; this country has never had a more leftist dominated president.  His policies were exactly what the left asked for.  As an example, Obama has succeeded in tossing all kinds of loan guarantees and outright giveaways to “renewable energy companies”, such as Solyndra.  None of them have panned out, other than providing monetary support for his political supporters , such as the unions for example.  It has become clear to the American people and that those policies are a failure, in terms of providing jobs, and ending the recession. Indeed, the evidence is clear that Obama’s leftist leanings have made our recession that much worse.   That’s true, even if Obama himself doesn’t remember that his policies have so far failed.  For example, that his first stimulus was an absolute flop.  He doesn’t understand anything else, has no other ideas, therefore he’s going to try it again.  Tell me again how this man is not ideology driven.  Therefore, the chances of anyone being reelected who supports those policies and the ideology behind them are not exactly rock sure.
• Krugman: I note David’s comments this morning and Glenn’s comments later in the day…and will echo them here:
  

  Don’t be angry. Understand it for what it is, an admission of impotence from a sad and irrelevant little man. Things haven’t gone the way he wanted lately, his messiah has feet of clay — hell, forget the “feet” part, the clay goes at least waist-high — and it seems likely he’ll have even less reason to like the coming decade than the last, and he’ll certainly have even less influence than he’s had. Thus, he tries to piss all over the people he’s always hated and envied. No surprise there. But no importance, either. You’ll see more and worse from Krugman and his ilk as the left nationally undergoes the kind of crackup it’s already experiencing in Wisconsin. They thought Barack Obama was going to bring back the glory days of liberal hegemony in politics, but it turned out he was their Ghost Dance, their Bear Shirt, a mystically believed-in totem that lacked the power to reverse their onrushing decline, no matter what the shamans claimed.

  Lots of comments at the link, too.

Paul Krugman, New York Times, writes,  via William A. Jacobson, Legal Insurrection:

Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it…

Nine Eleven was part tragedy and part victory. It the date of several battles of long war, which has yet to be won. We American don’t celebrate the outcome of individual battles, Concord, Vicksburg, Bella Woods, or Tet. We commemorate the end of wars.

On the morning of Nine Eleven, I knew our nation was under attack.   I did not know the size and scale of the attack.    However hearing of the New York City fire fighters who willingly entered the World Trade  Center building, know full well they would not be coming out and seeing the passengers of Flight Ninety-Three take back the flight, I knew out nation’s spirit has not been broken.

Shame Paul Krugman is too blind to see it.

Reposted from 9/13/01

Fleet Admiral Yamamoto

It is recorded in our history books that when he looked down at the ship full of smiling, victorious faces… faces of his flyers, just having returned from Pearl Harbor, Japanese fleet Admiral Yamamoto was quiet, pensive, even apprehensive. He later wrote in his private diary,

“I fear all I have done is awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.”

As this column is written, it is the second night after the dastardly attacks on the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, and the Pentagon. In that amount of time, I have heard, on the news channels, and on the internet, a phase batted about several times, in various refinements, when discussing these attacks: “Like Pearl Harbor”.

Something in that phrase struck a deeper chord with me. It was, at the same time, unsettling, and reassuring. And about 20 minutes ago, my memory finally coughed up that quote from Yamamoto, and with it, my entire thought process about these events crystallized. In that revelation, it occurred to me I’d already written about what I was feeling.

In that column, I wrote of my worry that our influence on the world stage had suffered seriously, under the weight of Bill Clinton’s international bumbling. Well, Bumbling isn’t the right word. Bullying, is perhaps more accurate, yet still not spot-on.

I said, then:

“From Oslo to Camp David, Clinton has pushed Israel to the bargaining table, and pressured her to give up vital strategic and cultural assets she has no business giving away, if survival is at all on her agenda. Ehud Barak, by his giving into Bill Clinton (who, along with his staff including Jim Carville, did much to put Barak into office), has done little more than demonstrate just how empty the Palestinians’ peace talk really is, and how desperate Clinton was to be seen as a good President, his crimes against his oaths not withstanding. Consider….

At Clinton’s insistence, Barak offered Arafat the keys to the kingdom; just about all of the West Bank and Gaza, plus East Jerusalem and even Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount. How do the peace loving Palestinians respond? Yasser Arafat turned it all down, and gave us another few nights of headlines, filled with kids in the street throwing stones, and being shot, occasionally. He also sent his armed forces, (You recall, they’re supposed to be policemen?) to fire at the Israelis, apparently hoping for an excuse to tell the rest of the world how Israel is a war-mongering nation.

Of course that should have been a signal to about anyone with a brain that he didn’t give a damn about peace. All he and his followers are interested in is the destruction of Israel. It should have also been a signal that Clinton’s attempt at a legacy backfired, big time, and more, that it didn’t have a chance to start with…. something that Clinton should have known, did he have any understanding of the
situation at all. You will recall, perhaps that back in 1992 , Clinton more or less bragged he had no understanding of matters of foreign policy. This was never quite so clear as during this monstrosity Mr. Clinton unleashed on the world.

For Israel’s part, all of this has been laid at the feet of Ehud Barak, perhaps unfairly. No, I don’t think he was the man for the job, and clearly was only in the PM’s position because Clinton’s people worked so hard to get him there, apparently hoping to set up Clinton’s brokering a of peace deal. Easy to do when you have the PM of Israel owing you his election. But Barak apparently was under pressures he had no control of, having nothing to do with politics at home, or the Palestinians… both of which were quite out of his control to begin with, in any event.. He was concerned with Israel continuing to get support from the US. In this concern, he saw Israel as being on the controlled end of the puppet’s string… and knowing that if he did not capitulate to Clinton’s demands, that vital US support would wither as quickly as Benjamin Netenyau’s prime ministership did, when it became clear he wasn’t going to buckle to Clinton’s concession demands.

And Barak wasn’t alone, nor was the left in Israel, in this perception of US control versus Israel’s survival. Yitzhak Rabin, hardly a liberal even by American standards and certainly not under Bill Clinton’s extortion based control to the extent that Barak was, saw the same problems. His longtime friends, according reports I’ve seen,
tell us he was deeply troubled over the prospect of losing US support… and therefore bought into the ‘land for peace’ deals being brokered by the liberals in the US. This was something I predicted he wouldn’t have done.

Israeli voters, seeing this happening, and clearly annoyed with the US control over Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians, trounced Barak in the polls. Unless one considers this anger, the election of Ariel Sharon, his replacement, is hard to fathom, since he has never been overly popular, as best I can tell. But perhaps the people of Israel are finally figuring out what the real story is.. that in truth, there is no dealing with the Palestinians, and Arifat.

One hopes that they’ve not been too late in coming to this conclusion. If they are, world war seems fairly certain to me… possibly nuclear in nature.”

When I re-read that, I knew I’d found what I’d been feeling, and why the Yamamoto quote had been nagging at me. I was feeling a deep anger. Justifiable, deep and abiding anger. Anger not only at the terrorists who arranged and executed the events of September 11th, but anger at the policies which here at home led us to this pass.

I said, back in February:

“Others learned the lessons, painful as they tended to be. Chaimberlin’s England, for example,along with the remainder of the free world, learned about appeasement of a mortal enemy the hard way. The American left, apparently not having leaned the lesson taught by the infamous socialist, Hitler, was taught the lesson again, by another band of socialists, as Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan 40 or so years later. “

What’s this leading up to?

Well, dear reader; the conclusion that we are now paying the price for Clinton’s presidency. One can only hope we have paid the full price…. But I doubt it.

A rash statement, say you? I think not. Consider the timing of this attack on the US.

Clinton, far from being firm with the Arabs, was giving them just what they wanted, following the World Trade Canter bombing in 1993; legitimacy, to use as a tool against us. Ironic; he’s supposed to be representing US. And to boot, we were ripping Israel apart for them.

I have stated several times, that Clinton’s sole purpose here was to save his legacy. But how to achieve his goal? By bowing to Arab terrorists, and bullying Israel into giving in. So, while that’s going on, everything is sweetness and light. America decides to elect George W Bush, who will (rightly) support Israel and the Arabs aren’t too happy.

And since Clinton also decimated our military, you ability to mount a credible defense is so laughable as to encourage attack…

Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
And, splat.

Likely 20 thousand people dead, and as many injured, all in one afternoon, along with the likelihood of many more to follow.

Oh, I hear you squirming already… particularly those on the left… those who have always defended Clinton before, regardless of any fact. I hear you saying:

“Shouldn’t we be concerned with catching, and dealing with the people who ordered and financed all this? And as Americans, shouldn’t we be sticking together?”

Oh, certainly. String them up. Cut off all relations with the Palestinians, and do it now. No question. And Military action isn’t out of the question, either.

And yes, I think we all as Americans should stand together in times like these. And, no, I’m not trying to gain political points, here… this problem affects every one of us.

Logic dictates that actually solving a problem, necessarily includes that both the problem, and the causes of that problem which can be controlled, be identified, so that action can be taken to ensure that such problems cease to exist.

Now, like it or not, we can’t do much about extremist causes. But we CAN control them to the point where they don’t cause us nearly the concern, by not acceding to their demands, as Chamberlain did, and as Clinton did. We can support our longtime friends in the world. Clinton ran fast and loose with that requirement, in an effort to be remembered for something better than the long list of shady dealings and downright criminal acts, and what happened to be running down his leg at any given moment.

Trouble was, and remains, that Clinton was dealing with Yassir Arifat. Arifat’s comments, following the attack, as compared to the reactions of his people, (dancing in the streets at our losses) show him to be a liar of the first order, or that the Palestinian people are not under his control, or both. As a result, Arifat’s commitments were useless to us, and yet useful to the Arabs who wish and work for the destruction of America,her citizens and her friends.

Would it not have been simpler, would it have not cost less life, I ask, to elect a president who can keep his pants on, rather than get us into international trouble because of half-baked efforts at obscuring his own history? Something we should consider at the next election. As I said in February; Our future, assuming we have one, depends on it.

In any event;

My heart and my prayers go out for the persons lost, the persons yet trapped, and their families and loved ones.

My great respects go out to those rescue workers, paid and otherwise, who carry on the fight that all will not be lost. Your wounds from this, I fear, will be greater than the wounds on those you struggle to save, because it is a cold fact that you will not succeed in saving all of them, and you know it going in. To you falls the task from which no sane person could walk away unaffected… and yet you go in, willingly. And that is a wonder to all Americans, and most people in the rest of the world.

My respects also go out to the many law enforcement and military officials who are working to gather information toward the capture of those who ordered and executed this attack… at times risking THEIR lives.

We each, all of us, need to take out own kind of action in times of crisis. We feel we have the need to accomplish something to help to solve the issue. The people I mention above are doing that, certainly.

But my personal resolve is to work hard toward making sure we have Presidents who actually respect and want a strong Israel. As a start, that means making sure we never again have a president of the lowly in-the-gutter presence of a Bill Clinton.

Yours should be as well.

I only hope it’s not too late.

Editor’s note: That was written in one of the very first posts on this blog. It was that event which caused me to start this blog, in fact, and so today marks the start of Bit’sBlogs’ 10th year of operation as such. The older post I refer to was one of a weekly series I did at one of my old websites, and that text was echoed at the time on Usenet, though I doubt many of us have access to that anymore. Still, that old post still reflects my hope that we are not too late to prevent such slime from entering the White House again. But in looking at the statements and the track history of Barack Ovama, I am again reminded that the chances are always high that we’ll fall under the spell of such people again.

That can only happen, however, when we forget the lessons of that terrible day. Which is why Obama and his supporters invest so much time and effort into separating that day from the people who gave it to us, and their at best misguided, pacifist policies.

I can only urge us to Never Forget, knowing that all too many have. Well, here’s a reminder.

08:37am—

I’d come into work just like any other morning.

Where I was working at the time is closed, now, and so is the department that I was working for. But I can see he layout of the place in my mind, and can even taste the coffee I was drinking that morning, from the Seattle’s Best down on the second floor. ( French Roast so strong you could stand a fork up in it.) Oddly, I remember too about the conversation with the guy running the place about how I was glad I didn’t have to fly to get to work. You know the kind of meaningless nonsense people engage in to pass the time. Little did I know.

By about a half hour ago, I had grabbed two new HP 8150 printers …huge boxes…and was installing them on the 4th floor printer room. My cell phone went off; my boss.

” Eric”, he says, “how you doing on those printers?”

“Just about physically installed”, I told him, “though I’ll have to tell the servers about them.”

“Fine.” he says. “That was fast… By the way, you may want to come up here, to the meeting room; someone just flew a plane into the World Trade Center”.

“Oh? OK…. be up in a few”.

I went up to my office on the 7th floor, firguring some small private plane had made a course error or some such thing. I got up there in time to see the scope of the issue, and was there only a few minutes when we noted a second plane hitting the second tower.

It was of course at that point that my vauge understanding that this was no accident became a full-on conclusion that it most certainly wasn’t.

I remember calmly going back to my desk, and checking the internet connections to the outside world, and noting that my traffic indicators were screaming that internet traffic was peaking pretty wildly… and making appropriate notes to my supervisors, since the workflows would be affected… my gates to the west coast for example were well into the red, and the POP in NYC was apparently not responding at all. My supervisors of course being occupied with the news, would never read them.

Looking back, I suppose I was looking for some rational way to respond…. some way to apply normalcy to all of what I’d just been witness to. Of course, my response was more mechanical than rational. But you fall to the mechanical, I guess, in situations like that. All you can do is continue, while you sort things out.

By 2pm that afternoon, though, what became this blog had been fully registered at Blogspot, and I was writing. As it turned out, BitsBlog wasn’t made public until the next day, due to an error on my part. But I didn’t much mind. I was writing for ME, that day. An outlet for what I’d seen. What I was feeling. It’s a cold fact that I became an activist for my own viewpoint, that day. By the way Blogdom increased that week, I’d say I wasn’t alone.

But you know… It’s the big occasions you recall with that kind of clarity. The morning JFK was killed for example, I remember being annoyed that the family TV… an old RCA black and white monster my dad had bought used somewhere, took so long to warm up. I wanted to know what was happening, right NOW, beep it, and this thing wasn’t helping.

It’s right that we remember.

“The White House Press Office has vomited all over my inbox.”

From Callie Schweitzer, Talking Points Meme. via Twitter.

Hat tips: Chris Moody, Ticket and Karen, Lonely Conservative.

from Eugene Robinson, Washington Post:

The war our enemies began on Sept. 11, 2001, is long over. Perhaps now, after 10 years of anxiety and self-doubt, we can acknowledge our victory and begin the postwar renewal and reconciliation that the nation so desperately needs.

It take some real talent, and a real ignorance of history to get some much wrong in but one sentence and a mere twelve words. But Robinson succeeds.

From Goodreads:

Andrew C. McCarthy takes readers back to the real beginning of the war on terror–not the atrocities of September 11, but the first bombing of the World Trade Center in February 1993 when radical Islamists effectively declared war on the United States. From his perch as a government prosecutor of the blind sheik and other jihadists responsible for the bombing,

Al Qaeda attacked the United States during the first year of the B.J. Clinton administration and every year there after.   The fact that Clinton choose to largely  ignore the attacks and to pretend  they were criminal and not war acts,  did not make it any less of a war.

Reax to Obama’s State of the Union, jobs, campaign speech:

Obsms goes Green

Michelle Malkin

Liberty Township, PA– Yes, I’m still here. The roads around here opened up last night,  but in all the excitement of the floods and road closings and such I must have kicked up a bit of road junk. I’ve got an issue with a brake slack adjuster in one wheel. I’m waiting to get fixed so I can be on my way. I’ll head to Jersey with my load, and then to home.

• The Speech: Long on angry rhetoric, and short on actual fixes for the economy, seems the consensus on the long touted speech last night.  No shock there, and the comments are already flowing that way.The only surprising thing is that anyone expects anything else from him even after long exposure to it.Let’s make this simple: When you make enemies of the corporations, the rich, and the profit motive,  and tax the hell out of anything that moves, why would anyone be shocked when the economy ends up in the crapper? The fix is a fairly obvious one and it’s one Obama will never even suggest. And see my Ramble of yesterday for a fairly radical idea that would really get things moving. He won’t do that, either. Oh… and of note… even his own party is having trouble being his cheering section anymore. Telling, that. Who could blame them? The speech, simply put was “It’s not my fault, good night”. We waited nearly a thousand days for Obama to blame Congress for his lack of leadership? Please.    And here’s the thing; You may recall I mentioned that this speech was being  very obviously set up as a part of the Obama re-election campaign. That cool a reception by his own party, even, is a solid indicator of 2012’s election.
• Indication: PMSNBC scored it’s best numbers in a long while, not with it’s usual lineup of leftie nonsense, but with…. wait for it… The GOP debates.  I wonder if the ratings starved network will react accordingly? I doubt it. GE, Jeff Immelt, etc.
• Attention Al Gore: Read Ann Althouse lately? You should.
  

  You know, when you’re calling somebody “a flat-out moron,” you’d better be sure you’re not missing something. It’s extremely common to portray environmentalism, as practiced in present-day America, as the equivalent of a religion. Just the other day, for example, I wrote: “enviromentalism is the religion taught in public schools, and it’s the kind of religion done with shaming young people.” Here’s a World Net Daily article from back in 2008 called “The Climate Change Religion.” The Freakonomics blog had an item in 2009: “Is Climate-Change Belief a Religion?”(“Actually, yes…”). Here’s a piece in Forbes from last April: “Climate Change As Religion: The Gospel According To Gore.”

  And of course we’ve been calling it a religion here for some time. In fact, I made the point back on the old GT network that environmentalism was a religion replacement. Gaia, and all that. Made the same point on a talk show I did in Rochester, in the 80’s as well. Amazing how the left still hasn’t caught up to that one. Oh… and should I note that Galileo was repressed bythose who suggested the science was settled? LOL…. Those who don’t learn from history, probably shouldn’t try to use it as a wedge.

•  Fast Food Stamps: I see where Pepsico (KFC, Taco Bell, etc, etc) and McDonalds are among those trying to get Food Stamps to be accepted at their eateries, One can understand why. They recognize that given the growth of government handouts, it’s the only place they’re goin to see any growth in their businesses, anymore. Dan Mitchell has a comment or three.

Liberty, PA– I’m along Interstate 80, as I write this.  I started down from Rochester, last night, bound fpr Monroe Township, NJ.  I never made it.  As I got to the PA border, I started getting word that just about everything south and east was closed. I came down US15, which was the only road open to the south, hoping to catch I-80 and run to Jersey. It’s now closed, too.  So, here I sit. I’m not making any money this way. Sigh.

• The real solution, unused: I note that in his speech, among the other expected nods to Unions and government make-work projects….exactly what hasn’t worked so far…. the one thing Obama has not offered is the elimination of federal corporate taxes.  In support of such a move, I offer some thoughts; Does anyone really consider that such a move wouldn’t spur hiring? Isn’t that the supposedly all important goal that Obama’s been working on and focusing like a laser on, and etc etc ad nauseum? Why hasn’t he done this?Granted that taxes would of necessity be raised for a while on individuals. But since corporate taxes are invariably passed on to the consumer in higher prices, and to the workers in lower wages, these would be taxes we’re already paying.Secondly, those increases would not last for long as the public finds out for themselves just what they’ve been paying all along. I suggest that revelation would result in a reduction in the size and scope of government unseen heretofore. And therein lies the answer as to why Obama simply won’t do it.

  You see, as has been correctly pointed out there’s a lot of rather popular government programs out there… programs that buy votes. But, they’re popular because of the illusion that they’re not being paid for. Remove that illusion and their popularity will sink nearly as fast as Obama’s has. And this is not a short term process…. Increased sending will become the third rail of American Politics…. as it should be.

  Since reducing the size and power and scope of government doesn’t mesh with Marx, and Frank Marshall Davis, Obama will avoid this solution as if his very life depended on it; From his viewpoint, it does. But now, comes another question; Will the GOP candidate call for such a plan? Certainly, the mainstream GOP’ers won’t. Clue.

• IBD catches on: “Fast and Furious” was a political operation from the word “Gun”.
• Union Thuggery, Part III:Ap News:
  

  LONGVIEW, Wash. (AP) — Hundreds of Longshoremen stormed the Port of Longview early Thursday, overpowered and held security guards, damaged railroad cars, and dumped grain that is the center of a labor dispute, said Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha.Six guards were held hostage for a couple of hours after 500 or more Longshoremen broke down gates about 4:30 a.m. and smashed windows in the guard shack, he said.

  No one was hurt, and nobody has been arrested. Most of the protesters returned to their union hall after cutting brake lines and spilling grain from car at the EGT terminal, Duscha said.

  The International Longshore and Warehouse Union believes it has the right to work at the facility, but the company has hired a contractor that’s staffing a workforce of other union laborers.

  He who has eyes to see, let them see.

Clayton, NY— I’m here dropping a load of Pepsi products, and will run to Rochester, grab another trailer and run it to Monroe Township,NJ before I call it a day. It’s been raining since I left on Sunday night, non-stop. I hear by way of Billy Beck that they’re sandbagging the hospital in Binghamton. I-88 is closed at some point for mudslides. Etc, Etc. Yikes.

• Glenn Nails It: So to speak.
  

  ADVICE FOR GUN-CONTROLLERS: Tip of the Day: A Gun is Not a Penis. And frankly, if you’re constantly confusing the two it makes your enthusiasm for banning guns look a little . . . Freudian.

  And isn’t the “Penis replacement” business the taunt we’ve been hearing for years and years from these morons? I’ll tell you the truth… this goes directly to the argument that the left is trying to make America more effeminate. Do the math for yourself.

• The CEOs want ‘compromise’ myth: You’re about to hear from the White House about how 100 CEO’s are pushing for compromise, and working together. The list of CEO’s the White House is touting, is the CEO of Starbucks. Of course nobody mentions that the list of CEOs involved are all staunch liberals.  What do CEO’s not in on the White House scam think? They say to Obama: Get out of the way. Doesn’t sound much like compromise, does it?
• Walter Russel Mead is wrong for a change:
  

  “As green leaders choke on their locally sourced, organic heirloom vegetables in impotent rage and ponder writing really, really angry letters to NPR, it is interesting to reflect on the political dead end into which they have been driven. Two years ago they thought they were on the verge of sweeping global climate treaty that would enshrine their pet climate change remedies into international law. Wrong: the treaty process collapsed of its own weight into the most embarrassing international fiasco since the Kellogg Briand Pact outlawed war. . . . The United States and the world need a strong and intelligent environmental movement. We won’t get one until and unless the press stops flattering and indulging the pack of incompetents who currently lead it.”

  Um, no, Walter… the “environmental movement” is based upon lie after lie. As with Obama, this is not a case of incompetence, but of outright lies, baked with both a degree of talent for them, and intent. This has been proven beyond any doubt, and it’s time we dismissed the “movement” as the outright fraud it is. Now,

• Speaking of Obama and Lying: He’s been caught in a big one… and by the left of center WaPo. Tell ya what, Gang… let’s say Obama makes news when he tells the truth, all right? That would be worth headlines. And far more rare.
• Union Thuggery part II: I know I mentioned this yesterday, but I have one thing to add to it. I mentioned that Obama never denounced Hoffa for his call for violence. The White House claims Obama never heard Hoffa’s comments. Pretty much like he never heard the racism of Jeremiah Wright, huh? But let’s go one step farther.  Does anyone recall the rethoric coming form the left after the Gabby Giffords shooting?  An example, courtesy of USA Today:
  

  “You can’t say they’re just words; they have consequences,” said South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, a member of the Democratic leadership. He said he worries about the effect of words on “people who may not be clicking on all cylinders.”

  And that of course was the tamest version of that non-thought I could find. So if that logic applies to conservatives, why not to liberals? Why should the left not be held to the same standard they themselves set in that and so many other cases? Limbaugh, in noting this, today, also says on air today:

  Then Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said that Obama was not gonna be “the speech police for the Democrat Party.” He’s only too happy to be the speech police for everybody else, but he’s not gonna be the speech police for the Republican Party. I mean, here’s Obama — what was it, just nine months ago? — he goes out and delivers that great “civility” speech at the event in Tucson after the shooting of Gabby Giffords. We’ve gotta make everybody proud of us by the way we talk to each other and so forth? Meanwhile, since then, we’ve been called “terrorists,” “sons-of-bitches,” and we’ve accused of holding the nation “hostage.” The list of names that we have been called — “racists” — and the things that have been said to characterize us is longer than I can recall.So Obama’s gonna give his joint session speech to Congress tomorrow night. I would think Obama would be afraid. There are a lot of terrorists, hostage takers, sons-of-bitches and “barbarians at the gate” in the audience. That’s who he’s gonna be speaking to. We’ve been told we can “go to hell” by Maxine Waters — and still, in the midst of all this, we still have people on our side saying (mumbling), “Oh, be very careful! You’re gonna send the independents running right back to the Democrats. They don’t like all this harsh rhetoric. The independents don’t like all this partisanship, the independents don’t like all this hard, heavy, insulting talk.”

  Right. So we offer up a legitimate critique or criticism of Obama, and our side tells us, “Shhh! You better not talk that way! The independents are gonna go running right to the Democrats.” Oh, the guys that are talking about racism and hostage takers and sons-of-bitches and telling us to go to hell and so forth, that’s who the independents are gonna go to?

  Well, exactly.

  And as a side note, there’s a lesson here about kow towing to the supposed moderates; If moderation is so precious to the independents why are Obama’s numbers so low among them today? Further, would Obama, unquestionably the most radical leftist the White House has ever seen, even be in office? He’d not have had independent support enough to gain office. Who was go-along-to-get-along in the last election if not John McCain? Do we really need to remind anyone how that went?

Going green means going nowhere, from David Brooks, New York Times:

New clean-energy sources could address environmental, economic and national security problems all at once. In his 2008 convention speech, Barack Obama promised to create five million green economy jobs. The U.S. Conference of Mayors estimated in April 2009 that green jobs could account for 10 percent of new job growth over the next 30 years.

Alas, it was not to be. The gigantic public investments in green energy may be stimulating innovation and helping the environment. But they are not evidence that the government knows how to create private-sector jobs.

Reax William Teach, Pirate’s Cove:

Whoops! Even David Brooks Notices Green Jobs Are A Farce

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz chokes in the clutch, video:

Hat tip and more, Nice Deb:

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has been less than stellar in her media appearances since she took on the mantle as head of the DNC, last Spring. I’ve covered some of her more risible moments here at Nice Deb. This interview with Gretchen Carson on Fox and Friends was her most pathetic performance to date, as she steadfastly refused to answer Gretchen Carson’s question, opting to jibber about jobs, instead. Note the nervous laughter, and “Are you kidding me?”

Because Wassserman-Schulz can not bring herself to take out Jimmy Hoffa, she it left to a better woman, Sarah Palin to do it, from Face Book:

Welcome, Union Brothers and Sisters

In my speech on Saturday in Iowa, I said: “Between bailouts for Wall Street cronies and stimulus projects for union bosses’ security and ‘green energy’ giveaways, [Barack Obama] took care of his friends. And now they’re on course to raise a billion dollars for his re-election bid so that they can do it all over again.” This was shamefully on display yesterday at President Obama’s taxpayer-funded campaign rally in Detroit. In introducing the President, Teamsters President James Hoffa represented precisely what I was talking about as he declared war on concerned independent Americans and on the freshman members we sent to Congress last November by saying, “Let’s take these son-of-a-bitches out!”

What I say now, I say as a proud former union member and the wife, daughter, and sister of union members. So, as a former card-carrying IBEW sister married to a proud former Laborers, IBEW, and later USW member, please hear me out. What I have to say is for the hard working, patriotic, selfless union brothers and sisters in Michigan and throughout our country: Please don’t be taken in by union bosses’ thuggery like Jim Hoffa represented yesterday. Union bosses like this do not have your best interests at heart. What they care about is their own power and re-electing their friend Barack Obama so he will take care of them to the detriment of everyone else.

Low hanging fruit is easy picking, especially when the ‘rats don’t have the gonads to do it

Allentown, PA– I’m dropping off a load here, having brought it from Avon, NY last night. I’ll be leaving here in an hour or so for Harrisburg,PA, and from there to Rotterdam,NY, outside Albany. It’s raining here… has been raining hard since about 6 last night.  So much for my nice, clean, shiny truck.

• Union Thuggery shown in Stark Relief: I note a blog entry at OTB:New Tone: Jimmy Hoffa At Presidential Rally, “Let’s Take These Son Of A Bitches Out”  Ummmm, no, Doug, it’s far from a new tone.  All one needs do is look at the record of union violence and the no holds barred attitude of the left against Reagan, Bush and for that matter, anyone to the right of Castro.Which in turn is why I’ve always considered that the calls from Dems for bipartisanshipcan be found on any stable floor, though doubtless in smaller quantities.And that by the way brings up an interesting thought; while Obama has been supposedly advocating for civility, he chose not to repudiate or mention that aspect of Hoffa’s remarks during his own remarks on the same stage. Tacit approval?I am reminded of the Brown shirts. And yes, I’m serious. Think…If this was Bush or Anyone to the right of center, we’d be hearing the left screaming exactly that. How many years did we put up with the “bush=Hitler” meme? As it is, silence. When they’re not denying that it was a call to violence, of course.

  Telling, that.

• H ey Buddy… Got a Light? Wildfires in Texas have consumed 500 homes so far. Where is the President? Remember the pasting he and his minions gave Bush after Katrina? Double Standard? You Betcha.
• New York, We Have a Problem: 46 people shot over the weekend in the NYC area. Of course I’ll hear all about how the problem is guns. For those about to make that argument, until you can explain to me how such violence was concentrated in that area, when the majority of guns are located outside the NYC area, just shut up.
• Another New Low: Obama has reached another new polling record... a low. 81% Say Obama Economic Policies Are Not Working.  Ah, yes, empty promises from the left. Who’d have thought it?
• The Lesson is being Taught:  Walter Russel Mead has been quoted rather a lot here of late…
  

  .Rhode Island is one of the bluest states in the country, and one where public sector unions have long worked with sympathetic politicians to create a true blue system of well paid public employees retiring comfortably on generous pensions with cost of living raises automatically thrown in.

  The only problem is that the state could never afford the beautiful utopia it was crafting, and so politicians and union leaders chose the path of systemic deceit.  Taxpayers weren’t told what the bill for the system would be; public service workers weren’t told that the pension guarantees they’d been sold were worthless because taxpayers would not and could not foot the bill.

  An economic crisis is nature’s revenge on those who make and those who accept false promises; it is a holocaust of lies when the dross is burned away and only what is real and true remains. Think of cotton candy melting and charring in the flame of a blowtorch; that is what is happening to the secure retirements that “caring” blue politicians and “committed” blue union leaders promised gullible state workers.

  Re-read that last Para. Embed it in your memory. Vote accordingly. Oh… and it’s not just there. California, as well.

Good Riddings, at long last a Labor Day without Jerry Lewis, from Ann Althouse:

“The End of the Jerry Lewis Telethon—It’s About Time.”

Da Mayor’s shooting spree. Mayor Bloomberg’s political supporters keep killing and shooting people and all the mayor can do is to all for yet more gun control, from Jammie Wearing Fool:

One would think after a 24-hour stretch that saw 24 people shot in his city, the man presiding over the nation’s strictest gun laws wouldn’t so shamelessly use the violence to promote his anti-gun agenda. But hey, we’re dealing with King Bloomberg here. Rather than step up police efforts in neighborhoods where violence is highest, he looks to Washington to implement more meaningless laws that will do nothing to address the real issue facing him.

Tell Mayor Bloomberg to have his people stop shooting people.

Rochester, NY— I’m home today, but will leave for Allentown PA tonight, for a couple of short hops. Four or five days out., in total. It’ll be a little cooler, and my truck is running well, so it should be a couple of fun days.

Today is “Labor Day”. If you’re looking at your paycheck and it’s smaller because you’re forced to pay dues, thank a union. If you’re thinking that a lot of those dues are going to support the candidacy of liberals you yourself do not support, you’re right…. the USSC’s Beck ruling not withstanding. So much for the leftist respect for the rule of law.

As I look across the nation today, I think perhaps the cruelest of all jokes is the unions participating in labor day parades , marching through the urban blight that they’ve helped cause… a victory lap around the ruins they’ve created.  Places like Detroit for example, where Obama is scheduled to speak today. (No shock for that!)     Look at these pictures from Detroit. Detroit is a prime example of what happens when the unions and the left (Often one in the same)  get their way.   Unions, are to jobs, as Obama is to jobs, and for the same reasons.

There are very few people….  (save union members, of which there are thankfully ever fewer) ….who will even attempt, any more, a logical argument that the unions are not at least partially responsible for the dearth of jobs in the Detroit area.  Between their wage demands, benefit demands, and “work rules”, (Which are really demands for non-work) no sane business owner would have ever signed on to them, absent the force of leftists in government, which is the other proximate cause of our economic troubles today.

And to boot, let’s consider how they managed to get into the position of power that has been so ruinous for our country, shall we?  I note Michelle Malkin’s thoughts on the matter, today, of events just within the last year... With lots of video.

I would suggest to you that instead of honoring unions, we should be honoring work.  Of the two, the latter is far more honorable.

• You missed it, Billy:
  

  

  Billy Beck

  Why should I care? I’ve got a bagful of nice guitars, and when they take them away from me, then I’ll be in the same leaking kayak with the rest of you, with one signal difference: I always told you they were coming, and almost all of you always thought I was out of my mind.Well, I wasn’t. I was way ahead of all of you.

  Billy,  I love ya, but you’ve neglected one salient point. Look back at the Usenet archives and you will find that I suggested to you at least once that when this nonsense occurred it was going to come from the left, and was going to be used as a political retaliation.  I also suggested that the time that it was going to be coming from “environmental” concerns, since green, as I said then, is the new red.

  In my view, identifying where such things are coming from, is crucial if we’re to identify the real problem and solve it. This isn’t just a matter of governmental power, but the abuse of it.  Those who adhere to socialist ideals, simply do not have the integrity required to not abuse power in such a fashion. Indeed the ability to resist such abuse seems to me right on line with the degree to which each tilts left.  That’s the point I’ve made all along. And who, I wonder, will suggest that Obama is not a far-leftist?   Oh, and by the way, have a look at what the president of Gibson had to say about it. 

• Carville: Yes, I’ve seen the comments from that snake in the grass, James Carville.  Let’s remember that there is no love lost between the Obamai, and the Clintonistas.  Thereby, these comments should be no shock at all. Such is the honor among thieves, so to speak. Again, a lack of integrity seems a central point, here.Of course, it’ll be pointed out that the Clintons and their minions are not the only ones distancing themselves from Obama. But why? Simple; Obama is a failure. More correctly, his policies have failed. He has instituted every leftist wet- dream policy and none of it, not one scrap of it, of it has worked. It’s as Geoff Hunt said the other day:
  

  The left are now wringing their hands fearing their agenda is overripe, blaming everyone else for their own spoiled pickling. While Obama’s sinking prospects for re-election are disquieting, the real source of liberals’ despair is their sudden, unexpected realization that the progressive agenda is dead in its tracks and will likely be in full retreat after 2012.

  It’s far easier for leftists to aver that the failure is directly on the shoulders of Obama, that he’s merely inept, that leftist ideas are sound, that he alone is to blame for the failure, and not Liberal Democrat (say it with me…) Socialist policies. So, despite the fact that all Obama has done everything that the left has asked of him, we now see the mass exodus of support for Obama because of the failure of the very policies the left wanted.  . If you want numeric proof of that exodus, but consider the disapproval levels for Obama.  A little less than half of Americans consider themselves Democrats.  Yet, we see his approval ratings running  far below that.  Last I checked… over the weekend, approval hovered around 19%.  Hunt suggests what we’re witness to is the end of the progressive era.  I think he’s right. it’s as I’ve been saying for twenty years in these spaces, including columns that I wrote for the old syndicated column I wrote for the GT network. … The worst thing you could possibly happen to Liberal idealism is the actual implementation of liberal policies.  Such implementation will destroy any momentum Liberal idealism has.

• Jobs: I’m still firmly convinced that the Republicans in Congress should have nixed the idea of Obama making what is essentially a campaign speech to a joint session of Congress.  The speech a stance a bully is aimed at his low approval numbers.  A lot of those low approval numbers are coming from businessmen.  Most of those businessmen, let’s face it, wouldn’t hire Obama because of his lack of business experience.  So why on earth would anyone consider listening to the man when he starts talking about job creation?  Clearly he has no clue as to how to create jobs.  If  he did, the policies he’s already instituted would have worked.  And he’s out of ideas. He”s simply playing the same tune over and over and hoping it comes out differently this time. the  This is what, the ninth speech on the subject?  Maybe it’s time to stop making Fidel Castro-like speeches, and start admitting that his policies are the point of failure.  Proof? Consider this…. if you want job creation, if you want real stimulus, get government out of the way.  Reduce spending, reduce regulation.  It’s the one thing the Obama will not do.
• vs Green Jobs: one of the reasons that we been doing so poorly on job creation lately is Obama fixation on “green” jobs. Fox:
  

  A green jobs program in one of America’s greenest cities is being called a bust 16 months after a $20 million federal grant to weatherize homes in Seattle ended up putting just 14 people to work in mostly administrative jobs and upgrading only three homes in the area.”The jobs are not there,” Todd Myers, who wrote the book “Eco Fads,” told Fox News. “So we’re training people for jobs that don’t exist.”

  Here again, what we have is the unwillingness to admit the that this isn’t just a situation of an inept leader, but rather, bankrupt policy.

• Fast and Furious Resignations: I will let you read the story on your own, for this one.  I strongly advise doing some serious research on the subject, for more than one angle.  What we have here is an attempt by the White House to “prove” that our second amendment freedoms in this country, are what are providing Mexican drug cartels with firearms.  So intent were they on “proving” this, that they provided guns themselves to these drug cartels, which resulted in at least one American death and lots of violence in Mexico as well, as Bruce explains:
  

  

  Bruce McQuain

  This just gets deeper and wider:

  Just hours after the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, federal officials tried to cover up evidence that the gun that killed Terry was one the government intentionally helped sell to the Mexican cartels in a weapons trafficking program known as Operation Fast and Furious.

  The revelation comes just days after a huge shake-up of government officials who oversaw the failed anti-gun trafficking program and Congress renewed its demand for more answers.

  Also late Thursday, Sen. Charles Grassley’s office revealed that 31 more Fast and Furious guns have been found at 12 violent crime scenes in Mexico.

  Additionally, as mentioned, evidence of a cover up has been found:

  In an internal email the day after Terry’s murder, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Emory Hurley and then-U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke decided not to disclose the connection, saying “this way we do not divulge our current case (Fast and Furious) or the Border Patrol shooting case.”

  Nice.  Wonderful.  Your “transparent” government at work.

  …

  Personally, since we already understand clearly that attorney general Eric holder knew of this operation, and its purpose, I want Holder himself  frog-marched across the White House lawn.  Alas, he won’t be arrested so long as there is a Democrat in the White House.  The number of people that will end up under Obama’s  bus on this one, will I think be staggering in the end. Once Obama vacates the White House, that is.

• Feds to Trucking Company: You Cannot Fire Alcoholic Drivers if you want an example of government run amok, I personally can’t think of a better one than this.  
• Bye Bye, George: George Pataki has apparently decided not to run for President.   That’s  just as well.  The one thing this race does not need RINO trying to claim the mantle of Reagan.