Ramble for 7/12/11

York, PA– I”m at the ES3 warehouse, here waiting for for the load I brought down from Barilla in Avon to be offloaded. At that point I’ll hit the sack and be up around 6am to run a load of Cereal products to the Albany area. It’s hot here at the moment… my truck’s dash indicates 94 degrees.  I like it on the warm side but even for me, it’s too hot for sleeping.

• But…But… I Thought Social Security Was Solvent: Tammy Bruce, who I link here all too infrequently, brings up a point I actually thought of posting a few days ago. (Yeah, I know, but when have you ever heard me say that before?)
  

  What’s this I hear? If the government can’t borrow more money as of Aug 2nd the President cannot guarantee Social Security checks will be issued on Aug 3rd? I thought the debt ceiling was about paying past debt obligations. More importantly, I’ve been seeing Democrats for years insisting the Social Security system is solvent.

  Then she runs vid sowing exactly that.

  At some point we’re going to learn that the promises of socialism aren’t worth the paper they get printed on.

• Bye, Mitch: Time to replace Mitch McConnell with someone who has an actual spine. How is it possible he’s not getting the message? Regardless, Ive been noting signs of weakness in this guy in the past, and it’s well past time he be shown the exit.
• HUH? Headline: “Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and disabled rights advocate sued for ‘humiliating’ visually impaired aide.” WTH?  How is that possible? Anyone who still works for that nutcase has no shame, and is therefore impossible to humiliate.
•  ANOTHER OBAMACARE LIE: Byron York will be writing, I suspect, tomorrow, about this one. He says, via Twitter,
  

  In ’08 and HCR debate, Obama often said his mother spent her last days fighting insurance cos that sought to deny coverage for treatment.But new book by former NYT reporter shows mother had health insurance that covered treatment…

  So, another lie. Is anyone even mildly surprised?

• PARTING SHOT(s): Florida Cracker says: I’m glad to see Obama is supporting the 2nd amendment rights of Mexican Drug Lords. Its a start.And, Fred Thompson who says:Obama on debt ceiling: it’s time to “eat our peas”. Probably planning to borrow them from China.

Stink Progress attacks liberal, from Stink Progress:

Last week, Inside Health Policy’s Sahil Kapur wrote that negotiators may consider raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 as part of an effort to reach a deal with Republicans on increasing the debt ceiling, and today Sam Stein confirms the report, noting that five separate sources with knowledge of negotiations have said that “the president offered an increase in the eligibility age for Medicare, from 65 to 67, in exchange for Republican movement on increasing tax revenues”:

[…]

If the provision ends up in the final package, however, Democrats won’t only cede the political debate about the efficacy of privatizing Medicare, they’ll be accepting a portion of the Paul Ryan budget and effectively forcing Americans between 64 and 65 years of age to purchase coverage from private insurers in the state-based exchanges.

I assume that is part of Obama bait and switch, massive tax increases now, for supposed spending savings later.  Still it is amusing to see the libards seethe as Obama gores a sacred cow.

FLOTUS the Hippocrite, from Alexa Linn Williams, Daily Caller:

Hat tip: Syllable Soup

Since taking the title of first lady, Michelle Obama has become a champion of better eating habits for Americans. That is why it was a surprise to many when the first lady chose the Shake Shack for lunch Monday.

[…]

Yet her meal at DC’s newest burger joint was over 1,500 calories, the Washington Post reported. Obama enjoyed a ShackBurger, fries, chocolate shake and a Diet Coke

It easy to see, but hard to look at, why the FLOTUS six is so wide.

Fair Lawn, NJ– I’m here piking up a load bound for Avon, NY. Which means I’ll be close to home tonight. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment of sorts to attend to, then back on the road ’till Saturday. Hot here. My truck advises me it’s 107 degrees where I’m parked. Gee, thanks for that.

• LIBERALISM OUT OF A JOB? NOT YET. Richard Fernandez  over at Belmont Club:
  

  People won’t vote based on the unemployment rate, they’re going to vote based on: “How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?”David Plouffe was responding to news that not only was Recovery Summer not in the offing, but that a Jobless Fall stood at the door:

  Today’s Labor Department report shows that many people are still struggling in the current economy: the unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent in June, and the economy generated just 18,000 net new jobs last month — making it the slowest month for job creation in nine months.

  …

  Since World War II, the only president to win re-election when the unemployment rate was over 7.2 percent was Ronald Reagan, and the rate was falling when Reagan won a second term in 1984.

  While the economy will certainly be at the forefront of political debate in the next election, Plouffe said Wednesday that the presidential election will be more forward-looking.

  “Their decision next year will be based upon two things,” he said. “How do I feel about things right now and then, ultimately, campaigns are always much more about the future and who do I think has got the best idea, the best vision for where to take the country?”

  Plouffe was putting the best face on a catastrophe. There was nothing to do but dodge and weave. The president indirectly blamed Congress’ reluctance to increase the debt ceiling for the bad economic news:

  President Obama pointed to the disappointing jobs report out Friday morning to make the case for quick action on a deal to increase the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, saying that “the sooner that the markets know” a deal is done, the sooner they will have “the certainty that they will need in order to make additional investments to grow and to hire.”

  But he must know in his heart of hearts that barring some unforeseen stroke of luck, the “recovery” is finished.

  I’d not be so sure, Richard. You can get yourself into some very serious trouble attributing logical thought to liberals, in whose domain logic accounts for naught. As an example, how many cars…. Japanese cars, Volvos and such being prevalent) are still sporting Obama/Biden bumper stickers, even after all the damage the ideology currently figureheaded by Obama has caused our country?

  (Personally, if I see such a bumper sticker, I do try to keep well clear of the car and driver it’s attached to…. anyone still wearing their overt support for Obama and his politics, in spite  of the clear evidence,  is clearly incapable of any thought at all, much less the complex and sometimes dangerous task of driving.)

  Take, as another example,  that blithering moron, Matthew Yglesias who can always be counted on to defend the left no matter how nonsensical and self-contradicting his arguments get. The question then, is not “has the case against what passes for liberalism, which is in fact socialism, been proven?” … since it’s been well proven many times over, both historically, and currently…. but rather, “Is there enough people with a brain in their head, to turn the tide at the next election?”

  That, my friends, remains an open question.

• BETTY FORD: I was sad to note her passing the other day. I gather her memorial will be held tomorrow.
• SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE: Such as racists. Reverend Wright tells church youth that all whites are liars — http://dld.bz/afUwT
• OBAMA’S WELFARE REFORM MOMENT:jimgeraghty points up:
  

  For Obama, big nondefense spending cuts would be what welfare reform was to Clinton in 1996. But Obama isn’t Clinton, so he won’t go for it.

  Well, Jim, look, it’s really simpler than that, even. When is the last time a Democrat actually cut a non-defense program? I suggest it’s never happened. And no, the aforementioned welfare reform wouldn’t have happened without the Republicans. Clinton likes to claim credit, but I suggest that by two means may a lefist be in front of a crowd… he may like you to think it’s a parade he’s leading, but chances are better than 50/50 it’s a lynch mob, chasing him.

• GUN RUNNER: Allen West says Obama must remove Eric Holder from office, or he’s complicit with Fast and Furious cover-up – http://ht.ly/5AMVF Actually, he’s complicit either way. Whose ideology are we talking about, here, after all?
• STUPID? REALLY? Steve Benen calling Reince Priebus “dangerously stupid, melts my Irony meter. — http://dld.bz/agaTv
• Parting Shot:Delivered by Jim Treacher: Hugo Chavez has colon cancer. You’d think Sean Penn would’ve noticed a change in its flavor.

Barack Obama child-man,from Kelly O’Donnell Canada Free Press:

Is there any mindset which defines Obama’s default attitude better than to say it is simply “adolescent?” No, for the following reasons. Barack’s interactions with the real world evokes from him responses which can be described as: angry; superior, haughty, dismissive, dishonest, petulant, cocky, petty, vengeful, mocking, holier-than-thou, and full of faux-insights and dishonesty. In other words, Barack acts like a big kid pretending to be someone he’s not, everyday on the job. This is not only aggravating to observe, and depressing to consider, but worse—extraordinarily dangerous for a leader

Spoiled, immature and petulant, go long way to explain Obama obsession with major tax increases.

The spirit of the Gipper lives, Speaker Boehner walking away from bad deal from James Pethokoukis, Reuters:

So in the end, it was bit of a Ronald Reagan moment for John Boehner on Saturday. Just as the U.S. president walked away from a bad arms control agreement with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986, the House speaker passed on President Barack Obama’s mega-debt reduction deal in Washington.

In both case, the asking price was just too high. For Reagan, it was lethal limitations on his Strategic Defense Initiative. For Boehner, it was a trillion-dollar tax distraction from America’s true fiscal threat: spending run amok: “Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes.”

More from Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post:

On Saturday afternoon a Capitol Hill source let it be known that “we’re hearing the White House is demanding major, unambiguous tax hikes. To get spending caps and entitlement tweaks, greater economic pain appears to be the White House’s asking price. It is increasingly likely that we aren’t going to see a ‘big’ deal if the White House doesn’t budge. [The]Speaker looks to be holding strong.”

And indeed, early Saturday night, Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) released a statement indicating: “Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes.

Bravo Zulu Mr. Speaker.

George Will fires back at metaphor abuse, video:

Hat tip: Newsbusters.

Why did so many apparently smart people for a moron, with no relevant experience, from Virginian?

Dumbo knee deep in his own poop, Jennifer Rubin explains that it the policies stupid.    That is an lame speech,  the only kind of speech Obama can deliver, can not paper over a failed economic policy, from Washington Post:

It is then not so much a lack of “message discipline,”as the punditocracy likes to obsess over, but rather the failure, complete and glaring, of the economic policies of this president that is the problem. Until the White House figures out how to fix its economic agenda it should keep the president inside and under wraps. He does himself no good by revealing that he’s got no clue what to do about the dreadful economy.

More, Peter Wehner, Commentary:

There was not a single bit of good news in the Bureau of Labor report. And watching President Obama this morning try to explain this mess and offer solutions to our predicament was painful. He was reduced to listing as one of his policy recommendations streamlining the patent process. That underscores just how intellectually exhausted the Obama presidency is. They have no more arrows left in their public policy quiver.

[…]

This is very corrosive stuff for an American president. And with every passing month, it seems, the news gets worse, our decline seems to accelerate, and the impotence and incompetence of the Obama presidency grows.

Eric rambled:

Casey Anthony, meanwhile, is a despicable excuse for a human being as well for different reasons, but the similarity is that being such does not make one in a legal sense, guilty of anything. Sorry, it just doesn’t.

Casey Anthony is one sorry excuse for a person. I suspect had her jury consisted of twelve mothers, they would have hung her, personally. She appears to have violated every sacrament of motherhood.

Anthony is about to inherit from O.J. Simpson the dubious mantle of the most detested person acquitted of murder.

If I were Hugo Chavez, and made the laws up as I go along, I’d somehow find a one jail cell for Ahthony, Nancy Grace, Janice Hahn. and one of Hahn’s gang intervention specialists.

As for DSK, yes this accuser is less credible than Miss Andrea Sullivan on pregnancy.    There physical evidence of sexual activity.   I’d make the jury sort this out.  Even whores can be raped.

Derek Jeter does in style:

NEW YORK (AP)—Derek Jeter(notes) homered for his 3,000th hit and raced right past the milestone in a scintillating performance Saturday, going 5 for 5 with a tiebreaking single in the eighth inning that gave the New York Yankees a 5-4 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays.

Jeter doubled and had three singles while starting a pair of Yankees rallies and finishing off their last one. He bounced a single through the left side his first time up to give him No. 2,999, then sent a no-doubt drive into the left-field seats off Rays ace David Price(notes) in the third inning.

Call it spiking the baseball.

I’d like to offer up a re-post of mine from a tenth of 2009. I post this with an eye toward the argument over the debt ceiling limit. I submit to the reader that had we not been holding the Republicans feet to the fire we wouldn’t have gotten this close to real spending cuts. Rather, we would be dealing with cutting the growth by a certain percentage, and still wallowing in more debt.

The message to the GOP has been made clear in recent days. No more spending. No more compromise with the Democrats who have never cut a government program, save defense. Not one. (All they’ve done is cut a percentage of the growth off, and they call it a cut…) It’s time for us as citizens to act as adults would when the kids have overspent their limit as the democrats have by a factor of 10,000 or better. I say, it’s well past time to cut up the credit cards.

-1-

Melissa Clouthier makes an argument at Pajamas Media that I’ve been making,…. both here and there… for quite some time, now:

I’m tired of Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Tom Ridge, and the rest of them. I’m tired of the pontificating. I’m tired of the holier-than-thou bearing. I’m tired of the self-important smugness. Most of all, I’m tired of losing big elections and being lectured by the losers about how to win.

And I’d just like to say this to moderates feelings tweaked in the current Grand Old Party: get over it.

…

I might disagree with Glenn Reynolds on social issues, but as long as he’s fighting tooth and nail against big government intrusion, taxation, and pork barrel spending, I consider him a friend and ally.

I might disagree with Ann Althouse on nearly everything (actually we agree more often then not), but as long as she values the security of America and values America for it’s own sake, I consider her a fellow patriot. (After the pain of having voted for Barack Obama, I hope she’ll come back into the Republican fold.)

Allahpundit and James Joyner might be agnostic/atheist, actually, but as long as they promote freedom, small government, and security, they are full members under the big tent.

This in fact is the reason behind my support, such as it was, for example, for George Bush. (Either one) Their politics by definition is at best centrist, but to the degree that they are traveling along with me on my political road, they are welcome. To the degree they are not, they will hear from me. This is also the thrust behind my comment about Mike Huckabee, yesterday.

For the sake of completeness I’ll throw this in here.

(CNN) — (Political Ticker) Days after national Republicans launched a new campaign to broaden the party’s outreach, former upstart presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says the GOP is at risk of becoming “irrelevant as the Whigs.”

In an interview with the California newspaper The Visalia Times-Delta, Huckabee said the GOP would only further decline in influence should it alienate social conservatives — largely considered the most energetic and loyal faction of the party.

“Throw the social conservatives the pro-life, pro-family people overboard and the Republican party will be as irrelevant as the Whigs,” he said in reference to the American political party that largely disbanded in the mid 1800s.

“They’ll basically be a party of gray-haired old men sitting around the country club puffing cigars, sipping brandy and wondering whatever happened to the country. That will be the end of the party,” he said in the interview published Thursday.

That’s exactly right, and it’s what I‘ve been singing in several articles on several different web sites. Parties… and individuals… that don’t stand for something, tend not to get elected. I‘ll say it again; asleep while we lost in 2008. Huck seemingly had the right idea here.

There may well be issues in the politics of the people mentioned here. I tend to take those piecemeal, pretty much as Melissa describes it.

This goes to David’s comments on my Huckabee quote of yesterday, as well:

I“ve had it with RINO’s. Mike Huckabee, save for being pro-life, is a liberal. Huckabee thinks that there no problem that can not be solved with intervention by the state and with sufficient taxation.

Not to pick on David, because there’s a good deal of me that is admittedly sympathetic to his statement. Clearly, Huckabee expressed those views over the course of the last cycle, and that’s an issue. Going forward, he will have those statements hanging over his head. That said, so too, do these others, each to their own degree. The thing is, when they speak the truth, and to the degree they speak the truth, those statements deserve our support.

Melissa makes the point in her article that there is an issue of brand clarity, if you will. And that’s certainly true. That said, I suggest there is a similar issue in the opposite direction; that being clarity in exactly what the GOP rank and file is demanding of its leadership. What kind of messages are sent to the Republican leadership, and thereby what kind of people do we nominate for election, if we reject people, even when they speak the truth? We end up with John McCain. Arlen Specter. Lincoln Chafee. And of course, we end up with more muddled messages being sent the electorate.

My objection to the brand of center -ism and “big tent” -ism being offered by the Republican leadership these days, is that it is not so much cooperation as capitulation. Make no mistake; I do not propose capitulation. There is one reason and one reason only for the capitulation to exist; we have people elective office supposedly as part of the Republican party who are more interested in simply getting elected and staying elected then they are in the application of traditional GOP principles, as Melissa lays out, here:

• Freedom and personal liberty: As in, “I know what’s best for me more than the government knows what’s best for me.”
• Small government: Small government means small taxes, which also means economic freedom. If a Republican does not believe this tenet, why is he a Republican?
• God, Family, Country: That is, traditional values. The building blocks of society. Patriotism. No apologies for the greatness of America, etc.
• Life. Protecting and promoting it — from the weakest unborn child and the equality of minorities to the protection of democracies everywhere.

Here we are again, with the comparison to Reagan and how he handled the “big tent”. He stuck to his guns, stuck to his principles, and convinced others to come around to his way of thinking by the sheer weight of his arguments. He was willing to support people when they spoke the truth and chastise them when they did not. To my way of thinking, that is the ‘big tent’ we should be aiming at.

Are people like Huckabee simply making the proper noises because it’s politically expedient or are they making noises because they’ve seen the weight of the arguments?

Those are the two choices before us, in that case. Either he has been swayed by the arguments and will act accordingly, or sees the way the wind is blowing politically speaking, and will implement those wishes as expressed above. If the Reagan years showed us anything, it’s that properly handled, such disconnects don’t really matter to the final outcome. Either way, conservative principles as laid out above are furthered. I submit that where we as Republicans fell down is that we stopped holding the feet of people like Specter and Huckbee and anyone else, for that matter, to the fire. We were not vocal enough in supporting the conservative point of view. We were not forceful enough in getting the GOP leadership to stay in line. The winds since have shifted, however. I submit that what we’re seeing out of the likes of Huckabee is the reaction to the political realities imposed by the grassroots .

It is down to us, the grass roots, now, keeping a death grip on the tiller, and directing the good ship GOP, as we have been these last few months.

Addendum: In the E-mail conversation resulting from this post, I tell Mellissa, essentially, that the failure in dealing with moderates is on our part, not theirs.

We’re talking about human nature, here. We’re always going to be dealing with such people. The attraction of power is just too strong to keep such divergences from the original purpose of their holding office, from happening . Their elections , or more correctly, their reelection becomes more important than the principles they went into office to represent.

The only way that we are going to be able to keep such people from being destructive is to hold their feet to the fire. We have to keep reminding them of the principles that they’re supposed to be representing. Of the people they’re supposed to be representing. Our failure has been that we haven’t done that. Assuming that we manage to keep the pressure on, such people as Huckabee may even be useful, within limits. Without such pressure, they are a danger.

Hope goes Plouffe from Ian Swanson, Hill:

President Obama’s senior political adviser David Plouffe said Wednesday that people won’t vote in 2012 based on the unemployment rate.

Plouffe should probably hope that’s the case, since dismal job figures aren’t expected to get any better for Obama and the economy on Friday.

[…]

The jobs report released on Friday showed the economy added only 18,000 jobs, much less than anticipated. The unemployment rate creeped up to 9.2 percent.]

Take home points:

• One, the Obami are out of ideas on how to revive the economy.
• Two, the Lams Stream Media can not longer be depended on to parrot the Obami’s rosey recovery scenarios.
• Three, the voters no longer believe the Obami

How to Gipperize the Economy, while the Obami are up a stump on the economy Fred Barnes reviews on Ronald Reagan repaired an economy, from Wall Street Journal:

So here are the two relevant lessons for the ongoing discussions on raising the debt ceiling between Congress and the White House: 1) spending does little to spur economic growth and job creation and 2) cuts are fleeting and quickly overwhelmed by more spending. Thus the solution to the spending problem is straightforward: Rather than temporary cuts, what’s needed are a permanent cap on spending and structural changes in entitlement programs.

Team Romney’s quick counterstrike, video:

Hat tip: Allah Pundit, Hot Air.

Newburgh, NY– As this is posted, I’m new Newburgh, taking a break after having run a load up out of Mountain Top PA to here. As it happens, I’m directly across the street from the Orange County Choppers headquarters…. the new place, not the old one… a rather impressive looking building. As usual, while on the road, I have my ears wide open. Here’s some what what I’ve been hearing, and what I think about it.

• KAYLEE’S LAW? JUST STOP IT, WILL YA? We are about to see much in the way of flurry from politicians about enacting a Kaylee’s law.   This is exactly the kind of thing one would expect from someone… or several someones… who think that government is the answer to everything, that creating a law solves problems, and that that unintended consequences never happen from laws and government.

  Allow me to suggest that the Anthony case down there in Orlando is an object lesson in the differences between law and justice. As I suggested the other day, if we were expecting the jury to render justice, we need to remember that they were first bound not to justice, but to the law… and rightly so. They couldn’t convict based on the evidence presented. The government didn’t prove it’s case.

  The same thing applies to the DSK case, as we also discussed recently. Given the quality of the witness, the government’s case has fallen apart. Was this justice? No, not really. As I suggested, DSK is a despicable excuse for a human being, and the woman involved knew it, and so played him as such. That doesn’t make DSK guilty of rape, in the legal sense, but it does demonstrate a pattern we generally dislike in society, unless one is Larry Flynt or some similar microscopic stature, (Flynt, who runs an “adult entertainment” empire, for the record, is another despicable excuse for a human being.)

  Casey Anthony, meanwhile, is a despicable excuse for a human being as well for different reasons, but the similarity is that being such does not make one in a legal sense, guilty of anything. Sorry, it just doesn’t.

  There is a major and thankfully insurmountable gap between what is legal and what is just. Here it is, gang… these are matters which cannot be dealt with by means of law and the judiciary.  Justice, I’m afraid, does not come from law. I strongly suggest it’s time we disabused ourselves of that fantasy. This statement is in the same vein as “Government is not thee answer… government is the problem.”    Oh, certainly… The law can serve the cause of justice and often does, but often enough it does not. As in these cases. Therefore, adding more law is kinda like adding junk food. It might taste good, but it really doesn’t serve the real need. Am I suggesting vigilante justice? No, hardly. But let’s keep these things in perspective, OK?

  I mean, let’s learn the lesson these cases teach and stop assuming government can fix any ill, and right every wrong. Passing a law may make you feel good, but in the end it does very little to the stated end…

• UNEMPLOYMENT RISES AGAIN, WELCOME TO HOPE AND CHANGE: Unemployment now stands, officially, at 9.2%… which as I’ve been saying for two years, does not even come close to the reality of it, since a goodly chunk of jobless have removed themselves from the job market or gone Galt.Jeff Carter describes it this way:
  

  

  Jeff Carter

  This number was outside the standard deviation of expectations. I really can’t stress how ugly it is. There is no way to sugarcoat it. The economic policies used since October of 2008 are an abject and total failure. Not only that, but they have put the finances of the country in a precarious position that was not unforeseen.

  Exactly. There’s only one conclusion to draw, folks… the Democrats are intentionally crashing this economy. An interesting way of getting ‘economic justice’ (there’s that word again) and putting the US in a less prominent role in the world… a stated objective of the Obama campaign, remember? Cater issues a warning:

  Progressive/Liberal/Keynesian Economists will call for more stimulus. This will make it worse. Government spending, and activist government policy at all levels are putting a chokehold on private expansion. The competition for an investment dollar between government and the private sector is being won by government. That’s why T-bill rates are so low.
  This number puts a huge focus and pressure on politicians debating the debt ceiling. What is obvious is that gridlock is not good. The other obvious point is that Keynesian economics is a total fail.

  The solution is to put real conservatives in control. Absent that, I fear, the situation will never improve.  And oh, by the way…. Obama’s people are now saying unemployment won’t be an issue for the 2012 election. Whistling in the dark, per chance?

• GAS AND OIL PRICES ON THE WAY UP AGAIN: Here we see the fine hand of Obama and the left again. The war on reliable cheap energy is part and parcel of why we’re in such trouble. Removal of the left Obama being the figurehead at the moment, is the answer… and the only answer.

Fast and Furious, from Michael A. Walsh, New York Post:

Don’t look now, but the real action in Washington this week isn’t the parti san wrangling over the debt ceiling but something — literally — even more incendiary: Operation Fast and Furious, which seems about to explode right in the face of Attorney General Eric Holder — and maybe other administration officials, too.

Also known as Project Gunrunner, the Arizona-based operation was supposed to be a sting, under which the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is part of the Justice Department, allowed “straw purchasers” to transfer weapons from gun shops in Arizona to Mexican drug cartels to trace and halt crossborder arms-trafficking.

Is there a Mexican jail cell in Eric Holder’s future? From Confederate Yankee:

If it is confirmed that the worst suspicions are true—that the Obama Administration supplied weapons to narco-terrorists, in order to undermine U.S gun laws—there will not be a stonewall big enough for them to hide behind, and both impeachment and jail time must not be just possible, but probable for those involved. They are, after all, accessories before the fact who aided and abetted the murders of two U.S. federal agents, and an estimated 150 law enforcement officers and soldiers, and an unknown number of civilians, in Mexico.

The administration has been trying to stonewall Gun Runner. Is just force of habit or does Eric Holder have good reason to be nervous?

If Gunrunner was meant as a political operation to garner public support for yet more restrictions on Second Amendment Rights, then the trail leads to the Oval Office.   Will Holder throw himself on to his figurative sword to protect Dim Won?

Janice Hahn get the treatment, video:

Hat tip R.S. McCain. Other McCain

Healthy  Americans:

Hat tip: Syllable Soup

F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2011

Adult obesity rates increased in 16 states in the past year and did not decline in any state, according to F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2011, a report from the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Twelve states now have obesity rates above 30 percent. Four years ago, only one state was above 30 percent.

F is also in FLOTUS, that is Fat Lady of the United States.

News and Notes,  WRT Casey Anthony, she made be a bad person and a bad parent.   However that is not for what she on trial.    The State of Florida failed to to her job.   The jury did their job.    Well done ladies and gentlemen.

Watertown,NY– A nice day, really, if you like it warm and sunny.Quick one today because OI’m running a little behind.

• Casey Anthony: Lots of comments, today on the Anthony verdict. One such:
  

  What is coming to this world today how could anyone find that b—- h NOT GUILTY

  Another, from Billy:

  

  Billy Beck

  Good luck with the rest of your miserable life, woman. No decent person will ever have anything to do with you.
  …which, of course, will likely play to your advantage in this Endarkenment, because the whole culture is just about as despicable as you are.

  Even if I’m the only one: I see you.

  Well, look, gang…. First, I sympathize with Billy here. I also sympathize with those who think justice ill served by this verdict…. but let’s not let the emotion get away from us, here.  It’s as the WaPo bleats today:

  Yet for all the public loathing of Anthony that the evidence whipped up, for all the vilification she was subjected to in the talk-show arena — the fact is, being a lousy mother isn’t a capital offense. Not seeming to care that your child is dead isn’t punishable by lethal injection. Being seen as despicable, of course, isn’t the same as being legally guilty.
  In the end, the state’s case had a giant hole. There simply was no clear evidence that Caylee was slain intentionally. It was a hole big enough for an acquittal.

  This is not a case of “Jury nullification” as we saw in the case of OJ Simpson. This is a case of the jury not having anything to base a conviction on. No cause of death, no DNA evidence, etc.  Look, I think she knew more, at least than she’s saying,and I agree with Billy, here. My heart tells me there’s lots going on here that the government’s case never included simply because they didn’t have it. But, how would we take a conviction of ourselves or one of our own, sans evidence, as so many seem to have been calling for here?

• DSK, ADDED DISCUSSION: It strikes me as interesting, that this subject of objective fairness should be brought up now, with the DSK case being so recent and indeed ongoing.  There have been many in the sphere who have questioned the practice of trusting the word of the accuser in a sexual assult case, incidental to the DSK case, that alternately held their silence, else brandished the tar and feathers, back in the day of the Justice Thomas show trial…. errr… confirmation.I think the question needs be asked, would someone who wasn’t a socialist, have gotten so many on the left to question the way sexual assault cases have been handled for so long?  You KNOW it wouldn’t go down that way. DSK gets support from the left over his sexual accuser, and gets to question the validity of the accusations in a way that, say, Justice Thomas never got to do Anita Hill, simply because he’s a leftst. We both know the left, and particularly the feminist left, would never allow such credibility questions to surface under any other condition.I should say, too, that Crystal Mangum and the Duke Lacrosse Team put the first leak in that dike. (And yes, I know, bad pun.)There’s this also: The question of where he goes to “get his reputation back”…. Sigh…. Let’s imagine that this was a set-up…. a position with some validity. What then do we have? We have a player who played DSK because she knew how he’d react. How’d she know this? The reputation of the man. She did what she did because she knew he’d play his own part. I’m sorry, gang, but I don’t see as there’s much of DSK’s rep to salvage.

More Warmist bunk, from Richard Black, BBC News:

The lull in global warming from 1998 to 2008 was mainly caused by a sharp rise in China’s coal use, a study suggests.

The absence of a temperature rise over that decade is often used by “climate sceptics” as grounds for denying the existence of man-made global warming.

But the new study, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that smog from the extra coal acted to mask greenhouse warming

I was born, but I wasn’t born yesterday. If the Anthropogenic Global Warming panic mongers actually believed their own theory and actually cared about global warming, they would be screaming more coal fired power plants. They are not.

Now is the time, given the ever rising importance and cost of education,  and the evils of personal, read corporate jets, will President Barack Obama give up his fleet of Air Force jets, for the children, Richard A. Epstein, Hoover Institution:

Recent estimates of the direct cost of flying Air Force One range from about $60,000 per hour on the low side to $181,000 per hour on the high side. None of these figures include the extensive advance planning and immense support services needed to coordinate activity on the ground, both in the United States and overseas. The presidential salary of $400,000 per year would be wiped out many times over if he had to pay, say, 10 percent of the jet’s direct costs.

Just think of the number of college scholarships and food inspection programs this nation could fund if it had the moral courage to make the president fly first-class commercial on international long hauls, take Amtrak for shorter trips, and use Skype for critical one-on-one negotiations. If the president could make this sacrifice for the nation, why can’t spoiled bank executives and industrial tycoons adopt similar cost saving measures?

Mr. President, give up your government jets.   Do it for the children.

How dumb is Dumbo? From Warner Todd Huston, Big Journalism:

Apparently the smartest president in history thought that Abe Lincoln built an intercontinental railroad in the midst of the Civil War.

Video:

Dumbo claims both  bachelor and JD degrees, yet he flunked what he would have studied in high school history class.

Violent death in gun-free Chicago, from Chicago Sun-Times:

It was a violent holiday weekend in Chicago, with six young men dead and at least another 28 people wounded in shootings and stabbings throughout the city between Friday afternoon and early Tuesday. The homicide victims were all men, who ranged in age from 17 to 25 years old.

Chicago has long since disarmed law abiding citizens.   It appears it is now time to disarm the mayor’s campaign supporters as well.

Ronald Reagan goes to Londontown, from Daniel Hannan, Telegraph(UK):

Ronald Reagan assumes his lapidary place in Grosvenor Square today, alongside Franklin D Roosevelt and Dwight D Eisenhower. All three presidents stood with Britain in war; yet Reagan – the man rather than the statue – towers over the other two.

We in this country have particular reason to be grateful to the Gipper. When General Galtieri attacked the Falkland Islands, he did everything he could to support us short of formally entering into hostilities with Argentina. The United States offered Britain immediate logistical and intelligence support. Caspar Weinberger recalled the president telling him to make available whatever military resources the United Kingdom requested without delay.

Yankee Doodle do or die.

Democrat thugs,

Tbug Number One, from American Glob:

Wisconsin Democrat Party Spokesman Calls For Violence Against Republicans, Used To Write For The Washington Post And The Onion

And now… a special message about the importance of civility in politics, brought to you by the same people who continually claim the Tea Party is a bunch of violent extremists. Via Legal Insurrection…

Thug Number Two, from Tom Moran, New Jersey Online:

Senate President Stephen Sweeney went to bed furious Thursday night after reviewing the governor’s line-item veto of the state budget.

He woke up Friday morning even angrier.

“This is all about him being a bully and a punk,” he said in an interview Friday.

“I wanted to punch him in his head.”

Mock a ‘rat today.  Provoke him to violence.  People with small minds are incapable of articulate thought.

Hell no to Amnesty, the line from Field of Dreams is:  If you build it, they will come.    For our illegal immigration problem the line ought to be:   If you continue to reward illegals,  they will continue to come.    We can not solve our illegal immigration problem by continuing to reward illegals.   A clearly demented George Will, via Daily Caller:

Later in the online “Green Room” segment, he explained something would have to be done if these immigrants were to remain in the country and suggested the DREAM Act might be the only solution.

“If we are going to import as we are doing, a portion of Mexico’s poverty, and if we’re going to avoid having a permanent submerged underclass, then we have to do something to put these people on the ladders of upper mobility in this country and the DREAM Act may be part of that,” he said. “What offends some people is they say it’s rewarding illegal behavior. Well they have to make a choice.”

Will in a rare lucid moment, from Newsbusters:

GEORGE WILL: 26 states, more or less, (inaudible) 26 are in various courts around the country in a case absolutely certain to be decided by the Supreme Court.

The question is, has the congressional power to regulate interstate commerce been so loosely construed that now Congress can do anything at all, that there is nothing it cannot do.

Let me ask the three of you. Obviously, obesity and its costs affect interstate commerce. Does Congress have the constitutional power to require obese people to sign up for Weight Watchers? If not, why not?

Video:

Later

(Rochester, NY)– I’m home as this is written, and will be heading for York,PA in a coup0le hours, then to Schenectady New York. about 500 miles worth of driving, but a fairly easy lope, all considered. 

• Thoughts on July 4th: Jeff Jacoby, who I all too rarely link, here, has some excellent thoughts for this July 4th season:
  

  If Nature and Nature’s God intended human beings to be free and equal, then the only legitimate government must be self-government. For if none of us is naturally subordinate or superior to anyone else, no one has the right to rule us without first obtaining our approval. Political power, Locke had written, stems “only from compact and agreement, and the mutual consent of those who make up the community.”

  The Declaration of Independence emphasized the point. Not only are all persons endowed by nature with the unalienable rights of equality and freedom, it avowed, but “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

  No lawful government without consent and self-rule: It was an extraordinary doctrine for its time. . . . July 4 marks more than American independence. It commemorates the great political ideals, rooted in faith and philosophy, that vindicated that independence – and that thereby transformed the world.

  So, what exactly, then, did Obama’s change bring us, but further away from that doctrine and more toward that of Marx? Scott Johnson has some thoughts as well.

• NOW WE SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERRENTIN THE SYSTEM: When Democrats control the system, at least.
• Cuts: JAMES JOYNER:
  

  “Leon Panetta has been brought in to oversee significant cuts to the U.S. Defense budget. Meanwhile, we’re in six wars. . . .  But it’s shocking that we’re in half a dozen kinetic military operations and your average American would be doing well to name three.  Something’s not quite democratic about that.”

  That depends, James…. small D, prolly true. Big D? Well, that’s very much like them. And let’s remember, James, Obama railed against Bush for getting us involved in wars, right?   And isn’t it interesting that the only cuts the democrats are even considering , as during the Carter years, are strictly limited to the military.?  the really annoying part is, that even some who consider themselves conservative, haven’t noticed that point.

• HOUSING AFFORDABILITY: Forgive me, but something seems missing here. Granted that has suggested the price on housing has gone down rather significantly.  But that’s only half the story of affordability.  I don’t care if it drops down to 30¢ per house , if I haven’t got the 30¢ it’s still not affordable.  That, alas, is precisely the situation that our economy finds itself in.
• New York Rider Dies Protesting Motorcycle Helmet Law: Doctor Darwin, call your office.

In order for Americans to get their jobs back, Barack Obama must lose his, from Shannon Travis:

Des Moines, Iowa (CNN) – Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann is getting more creative, and apparently more aggressive, in her political attacks against President Barack Obama.

On Saturday, the Minnesota congresswoman took fresh jabs at the president. In one instance, Bachmann said she hoped to oust him from his current employment, become president herself – and then help Obama find a job. Bachmann also blasted “Obamacare,” saying it would cost American jobs and questioning if Obama “was in his right mind” for championing it.

More  from the Sharp Tack, Clarice Feldman, American Thinker:

I think we’ve reached a similar turning point in this presidency where (a) Obama’s (and Michelle’s) delusions of grandeur have become objects of ridicule; b) Obama’s feet of clay are obvious. He may be the only person left in Washington who has not yet realized how inadequate he is to the tasks before him; (c) the people and the press are beginning to turn on him, and as his failures become even more obvious with each passing day, more people will feel free to attack him and his policies and their attacks will become ever more savage as the gap between the promise and reality grow ever more stark.

Obama entered office on a groundswell of a disconcerting mania, a mania in which voters imagined on this blank slate of a candidate all sorts of truly fantastic abilities and policies, none of which were warranted in his paltry, truly shabby history.

The man with no available school records, for example, was painted as a genius and his brief time as a University of Chicago adjunct (basically teaching assistant) puffed up to a professorship in constitutional law. The guy who cannot speak a logical, coherent, grammatical sentence on his own was pawned off as a literary genius to unsuspecting, foolish voters. It was inevitable that the reality of his time in office could never match the dream. It was unfortunately equally inevitable that he would prove inadequate to the difficult job of the presidency.

Yet more, from Doug Powers @ Michelle Malkin:

Obama’s Economists: Each Job ‘Saved or Created’ by the Stimulus Cost $278,000 (So Far)

As Jeffrey Anderson at the Weekly Standard pointed out, the White House releasing a fiscal report on the Friday before a long holiday weekend can only mean one thing: There’s not much good news in it for the White House, and, ergo, taxpayers.

As Herm said, Dumbo could not run a pizza parlor.

Pinch Sultzberger on shit, from the New York Slimes:

IT turns out that the good times are even better than we thought for American chief executives.

A preliminary examination of executive pay in 2010, based on data available as of April 1, found that the paychecks for top American executives were growing again, after shrinking during the 2008-9 recession.

If I were so stupid as to own shares in the New York Times, is would be my business how much money its publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. made.  As do not, Pinch’s compensation is none of my business.  Way anybody at the Slimes is worried about any executive compensation other than Pinch’s is simply beyond me

Thad is in, video:

Hat tip: Nice Deb.

I’ve seen bigger, noisier crowd.  I have heard more passion.  But I have seldom heard a candidate make more sense, nor be more willing to play with the band.

Fred is back! Well, kind of, sort of.  It no secret that the last presidential candidate we liked was Fred Thompson.  Alas Fred was just not into that campaign thing.  Well now the closest incarnation of Fred has announced.  Thad McCotter is in, from Thomas Lifson, American Thinker:

Not too many people are excited about the news that Thaddeus McCotter revealed this morning on radio station WJR in Detroit he will be filing papers for his candidacy for President.  But I am. Seriously. At least a little.

The GOP needs him on the national stage, making points about the incumbent president and his administration. He will add wit and intelligence to the field.  He is articulate, pointed, and knows how to use humor, delivered deadpan.

If you like your candidates, dry, sarcastic and conservative, this Thad is for you.

How dumb is Dumbo, Robert Tracinski explores the abyss of ignorance that is Barack Obama’s knowledge, or lack thereof, of basic economics, from Real Clear Politics:

Yet on the other hand, President Obama seems genuinely, privately ignorant on these issues. The political gossip going around right now is that the Obama administration is panicking because they sincerely expected a robust economic recovery by now, and they wanted to campaign next year by borrowing Ronald Reagan’s “it’s morning again in America” theme–without actually having to borrow any of Reagan’s policies. We have to presume that if Obama knew how to revive the economy, he would, and he seems genuinely stumped as to why his stimulus is not working.

So what explains the deep-seated ignorance of economics on display in his public comments? Why does he demonstrate such a lack of practical appreciation of how business works?

The answer is that he lacks it because it is forbidden knowledge.

Dumbo, b/k/a Barack Obama may, or may not, be God given dumb.   However is surely the most uneducated president in our history.

About as dumb as Algore, Walter Russell Mead displays what is verboten here at Bitsblog, sympathy for Algore.  Here Algore is used for sport.  In case back to Mead, from American Interest:

The trouble and even the tragedy of Al Gore is that he comes at the tail end of this tradition; he is a living example of what you get when a worldview outlives its time.  He presses the old buttons and turns the old cranks, but the machine isn’t running any more.  The priests dance around the altar, the priestess chews the sacred herbs, but the god no longer speaks.  Like President Obama watching a universal healthcare program that he thought would secure his place in history turn into an electoral albatross and a policy meltdown, Al Gore thought that in the climate issue he had picked a winning horse.  Judging from his Rolling Stone essay he has no idea why the climate movement failed, and no clue at all about how he could re-think the issue.

Even Algore, as dumb as he may be, is not so stupid as actually believe the theory he purports to support, anthropogenic global warming.  If Algore actually believed in AGW, he would not be an energy slut.