Ramble for 6/22/11

Denver, PA– Hot here today. My truck’s info center advises me it’s 90degrees out here in the parking lot. Like I needed that info, thanks very much, Truck. From here to Carlisle, PA, I think.

• UNEXPECTEDLY? There’s that word again in today’s headlines.
  

  In a report, the U.S. Department of Labor said the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits in the week ending June 18 rose by 9K to a seasonally adjusted 429K, confounding expectations for a decline to 410K.

  We keep seeing this word from the Lamestream Media, when talking about the economy. Tell me, how many times must you be shocked and surprised by Obama’s leftist policies not working before it becomes a given? Apparently, the number is greater than listed here.

  There’s another point to be made here. We keep seeing ‘Revised” figures. Reynolds says it well:

  Plus this: “The previous week’s figure was revised up to 420K from 414K.” Meaning that last week’s “good news” — a slight drop — was essentially bogus. More here, including this: “A Labor Department official said technical problems had resulted in claims for six states being estimated last week.”

  The Technical problem is the occupant of the White House who desperately needs to be seen as a success…. so once the big headlines come out telling us how rosy everything is, the truth sneaks out when nobody’s watching. It’s been going on for two years, now. The public knows it’s being lied to. Why can’t the lamestream media admit it? You know why… the trth doesn’t support the liberal agenda.

• GRIN: Geert Wilders won his case. The sad part here is that I’d not expect a ruling of this sort in today’s US.
• Private emails detail Obama admin involvement in cutting non-union worker pensions post-GM bailout Says the Daily Caller
• ATTENTION AL GORE: If you’re still believing that crackpot “overpopulation” theory, why are you still part of the problem? Kill yourself and be part of the solution.

Jon Huntsman, stalking horse, Jennifer Rubin explains why the newly launched Jon Huntsman campaign so  hyped by the media, and so dead in the water, from Washington Post:

From the mainstream media’s standpoint, he is the McCain 1980. He’s a “good Republican” — not too conservative, not too loyal to his party and infatuated (at least he was) with cap-and-trade. And unlike McCain, he’s running to the incumbent president’s left on foreign policy. So it’s not surprising he is lavished with praise. A political reporter asked me the other day, “Don’t you think Huntsman will eat Bachmann’s lunch?” Umm. No. But the total ignorance about the conservative movement is telling and will infuse the mainstream coverage of his race.

As does Michelle:

My syndicated column today dissects the media-manufactured candidacy of Jon Huntsman. While liberal reporters swoon, New Hampshire voters gave him thumbs down as he tried to gin up support yesterday. Here’s his pathetic explanation for calling Obama a “remarkable” leader. And via Allahpundit, check out the insipid, condescending Huntsman ad touting his “good,” “calm” demeanor. As opposed to the rest of us bad, angry conservatives who need to pipe down and get with the Obama/kumbaya program

And Roger Stone, Daily Caller:

One thing Donald Trump’s flirtation with a presidential bid showed us is that you have to take Obama on frontally to compete with him. The John McCain tactic of praising Obama as a great American and great senator “with whom I disagree” is a loser. You’ve got to call him out as what he is — a fraud and a disaster. He doesn’t understand economics, has no business or free-enterprise experience, and is spending billions in Libya and Afghanistan without having a goal other than re-election.

I’m not sure which Republican candidate can do this, but I know Jon Huntsman can’t

And  Michael Falcone ABC News:

It’s not that Huntsman isn’t throwing red meat to the base, he’s asking them to eat tofu. In just the past day, he’s advocated a bigger, faster draw down from Afghanistan than even the president wants and said he won’t attack President Obama directly. A staple of primary voters’ diets is a healthy serving of hard hitting rhetorical punches at your opponent, and according to Huntsman, they should be looking somewhere else for that

The Obami are the problem.  Not the solution.    Jon Huntsman was part of the Obami team.

Media versions of liberals, such as John McCain and now Huntsman lose every time.  Our country needs a leader who stand up and reverse the inane policies of Barack Obama, and not a stalking horse meekly endorses Obama.    If Huntsman lacks the fortitude to take on the nations  Number Won problem, to wit Barack Hussien Obama, he lacks the fortitude to be trusted to lead this country.  But you already knew that.

Who did not lack the fire in the belly and the intellectual heft to take to the ‘rats, the Gipper, Ronald Reagan, video:

Wal-Mart in a nutshell, from Walter Olson, Philadelphia Inquirer:

The message of this ruling is simple: Employees have to prove that they have been legally wronged, not just cash in because somebody else was.

More from New York Daily News:

[C]laimants presented personal stories from a total of three women who worked in a total of three stores plus disputed statistical evidence of widespread disparities plus the testimony of a supposed expert who said Walmart’s management style could have led to inequities in all of the company’s 3,400 individually managed stores.

Based on those flimsy contentions, a leap to certifying potential victimhood by a class of women equal to the population of Philadelphia was too great to make for a narrow court majority.

And well it should have been – especially when the proffered expert acknowledged that he could not hazard a guess as to whether less than 1% or as many as 95% of Walmart’s employment decisions might be infected by bias.

The plaintiffs lawyers had what three real defendants    They purported to represent what one and half million women.   If you believe that, you will believe that

Stink Progress:

This week, the Supreme Court dealt a blow to 1.5 million women by throwing out their charges of comprehensive gender discrimination by retail behemoth Walmart in a 5-4 decision

What one and half million defendants?   I guess being libtarded means you are
expected to count.

Keeping the lights on in Texas, via Physorg:

State lawmakers have passed a bill that allows Texans to skirt federal efforts to promote more efficient light bulbs, which ultimately pushes the swirled, compact fluorescent bulbs over the 100-watt incandescent bulbs many grew up with.

The measure, sent to Gov. Rick Perry for consideration, lets any incandescent light bulb manufactured in Texas – and sold in that state – avoid the authority of the federal government or the repeal of the 2007 energy independence act that starts phasing out some incandescent light bulbs next year.

Let the Gorebots have their mercury contaminated light bulbs.

Hat tip and more:  Political Junkie Mom @ Pundit & Pundette.

So this is how it’s done, right? Since the sole remaining incandescent bulb factory closed last fall, will an enterprising upstart create manufacturing jobs in Texas to allow customers to choose? Will American-made incandescents win back consumers? Will black market bulb runners use existing drug networks to smuggle incandescents to the other 49? Will the disgraced ATF be in charge of lightbulb networks since they shouldn’t be allowed near weapons?

I’m willing to run the border for bulbs, how ’bout you

It is a bit far me to drive to Texas.  However I would like to see New York State go pro-choice like Texas.  Freedom is a wonderful thing.

So who is the dumb one? Video:

Hat tip: Ace.

Glenn calls Van Jones a socialist, video:

Hat tip: Nice Deb

[Van Jones] challenged Glenn Beck to a debate at Nutroots Nation, and now, his attorney has sent a cease and desist letter to Beck, accusing the talk show host, who likes to back up his claims with video, of making “sensational and inflammatory charges”.

Environmental wackos, like Van Jones, green on the outside, but red on the inside.

Middle Village, NYC– I’m here dropping off yet another load. I’ll be headed for Bethlehem PA, shortly. Middle 80’s outside. Looks like we’re building for that storm I spoke of yesterday.

• John Huntsman in: He tried invoking Reagan. And trust me, Huntsman is no Reagan. Reagan was an unapologetic conservative.  Huntsman is not. Example:
  

  The campaign would take “the high road,” Huntsman promised during his speech. “I don’t think you need to run down anyone’s reputation to run for president,” he said, decrying what he called the “corrosive” nature of today’s political debates.

  Now, let’s look at the man whose name he tried to steal, in a speech delivered in the same spot back in 1980:

  “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.

  Huntsman is incapable of the kind of unapologetic, in your face conservatism Reagan won his elections with, and got our country moving again with. He thereby disqualifies himself at the get-go. Republicans need a go- for- the- throat candidate. Not John Q Milkqetoast Huntsman. Is there a way I can make my feelings any more clear, here? And is it any wonder the leftist dominated press is so enamored with the guy?

• HOME SALES HIT NEW LOW: As an example, Huntsman could have, and I think should have commented on this little stat:
  

  Fewer people purchased previously occupied homes in May, bringing sales down to their lowest level of the year. Home sales sank 3.8 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.81 million homes, the weakest pace since November, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. Economists say that’s far below the 6 million homes per year sold in healthy housing markets.”

  Back in 1980, the Carter White House was trying mightly to pass off gloomy stats like this as good news… just as the New Jimmy Carter …. Obama…. is today.  With the help of he leftist press, of course.

• PERRY pt 2: I made positive comments about Rick Perry yesterday. Katie Thompson does so today.
• Hey, Glenn: I note this:
  

  ANOTHER DAY, another shameless smear of Andrew Breitbart. “With the Anthony Weiner scandal, the story within was the lack of integrity of the MSM in their attacks on Breitbart and defense of Weiner. Here, we have several people associated with Netroots Nation showing the same lack of integrity, trying to tear down … the exact same man.” 

  Well, look, here’s a thought; Maybe the mentality behind the leftist press and the nutroots is the same? Destroy conservatives at any cost?

The election in black and white. Barack Obama’s inept economic policies have hit the black population hard, from Michelle Miller, CBS News:

The economy and jobs will be big issues in Washington again this coming week.

While unemployment among the general population is about 9.1 percent, it’s at 16.2 percent African Americans, and a bit higher still for African American males

Yet it is the working class white voters who are poised to throw Obama out of office, from Ruy Teixeira, New Pepublic:

Obama will have little to no room for error among his other constituencies. For example, even if, as expected, the share of minority voters increases from 26 to around 28 percent in the next election and Obama receives the typical 75 percent of that vote, while the share of white working class voters declines by another 3 percentage points, a 30 point hole in Obama’s white working class support would mean that the overall support he needs to win the election was teetering right on the knife’s edge. In such a scenario, Obama would have to hold essentially all of his white college graduate support from 2008 (47 percent, a historic high for Democrats) to be assured of victory.

Hat tip:  Stacy McCain, Other McCain.

Go figure.

Ft Lee, NJ– Taking a quick break from from driving, and thought I’d toss a ramble together. Hot down here, and getting hotter. Supposed to be thunderstorms around here soon. Figures. I just washed the truck, right?

• Wow… I forgot all about this. I was reminded in looking through some inbound links, that BitsBlog was listed in Virology’s top ten Political Bloggers a couple years ago. I don’t think I ever mentioned it at the time.  I must admit it gave me a bit of a smile.
• What will unions do now? So asks Ann Althouse. Answer, though, is simple; THe same kind of violence and intemidation tactics that they used the last time they were on the outs. And given that out union dominated classrooms refuse to tell the truth about unions, we’ll be forced to repeat that history at some point.
• SITYS: Seems some people are starting to come to the same conclusions I came to two years ago about Bush’s policies in the war on Militant Islam. And remember, now…. what else I said this would lead to:
  

  In fact, I predict Obama’s approval ratings will be staggeringly low in four years. Already, there are strangled screams of betrayal coming from the far left. They see what’s coming, though they won’t yet say as much because the honeymoon isn’t over. There’s a rather nasty reaction coming, however, which I predict is not long off. We’re about to see it in its full-throated roar.

  And so it is. Does anyone think this duplicity won’t be mentioned in the upcoming campaign?

• We’ll miss you, Clarence. Clarence Clemons is gone.
• PERRY, PERRY, PERRY: Rick Perry is apparently getting the message.
  

  “It saddens me, sometimes, when my fellow Republicans duck and cover in the face of pressure from the left,” Mr. Perry said, urging activists not to separate economic and social priorities. “We need to redouble our efforts to elect more conservative Republicans.” 

  About blinking time someone came out swinging.

  His scathing broadside against the Obama administration, which he called “a mix of arrogance and audacity that is an affront to every freedom-loving American,” is precisely the message that many Republican activists say is missing from the field of candidates. “Americans voted for hope and got nothing more than greater economic misery,” he said. 

  His campaign pitch, should he decide to run, would be rooted in an equal measure of inspiring economic growth and preserving social values. He did not mention that Texas ranks near the bottom on several measures, including among the lowest in education funding per student and spending on the environment. But he sought to highlight legislative accomplishments like requiring voters to have ID cards.

  “Our loudest opponents on the left are never going to like us, so let’s quit trying to curry favor with them,” Mr. Perry said

  Amen and Amen. I’ve said exactly that here more times than I can count

Obama-speak, from Peter Kirsanow, National Review, via Clarice Feldman, American Thinker:

“The real problem with ATMS . is not so much that they destroy jobs, but that in at least 50 of 57 states you can’t conduct transactions in Austrian, making it difficult to withdraw enough cash to spread the wealth around to Midwesterners, who then become bitter and cling to guns and religion and antipathy toward people who aren’t like your doctor, who you can keep (if you like him) but you probably won’t because for extra cash he unnecessarily performs tonsillectomies and amputates the feet of people from Kansas, where a while back 10,000 were killed by a tornado that also air-raided villages and killed civilians in Afghanistan, from which we need to begin withdrawing troops by July so we can use the funds to save or create jobs for people who don’t use air pressure gauges to keep the tires on their cash-for-clunkers car properly inflated, requiring them to buy more gas than they otherwise would at $3.84 a gallon and thereby reducing their disposable income and causing them not to buy consumer products, resulting in slower GDP growth that can only be jumpstarted by another round of stimulus spending so the economy won’t go into a double-dip recession that would result in layoffs and a higher unemployment rate than we had even after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that everyone knows was George Bush’s fault.

Economics is hard.”

Cain Can, news conference video:

Hat tip: Nice Deb.

Dumbo asks for, then ignores legal advice, from Tiger Hawk:

Long-standing fans of the back-and-forth will remember the enormous grief that the Bush administration got for following the opinions of the Office of Legal Counsel, particularly on the question of enhanced interrogation (or, if you are a liberal, “torture”). The accusation was, more or less, that the OLC’s incumbent, John Yoo, was turning analytical cartwheels to arrive at the result that Dick Cheney wanted. Well, it turns out that on the question of the Libya war, Barack Obama overruled the OLC.

Paging Nina Burleigh:

She elaborated to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post that “I’d be happy to give him [oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal

from Lori Zagnato, Human Events:

In the deluded minds of “feminists,” at least.  From the story first breaking, through his resignation, ‘feminists’ have lined up on every corner to prostitute themselves for Weiner.  Because, abortion.  Or something.  I can’t be sure because I lost my cuckoo pants to English dictionary.  By doing so, they once again exposed themselves as the utter shams that they are.  They are not for women and they never have been.  In fact, the only thing standing up for women in this case is Weiner’s, well, little weiner, which it apparently does often and in an unsolicited manner.  Let’s see how the feminists stood up for women in this case, shall we?  We should start with the ever-insane Marcotte, of course.  She’s been scrawling up a storm ever since the scandal rose its ugly, gray-underwear-clad head.

I contend it the solemn duty of every Cow, that is to say gender feminist, to get on their knees and render Lewinsky’s however often it needed to keep liberal politicians in line.    The Weiner would not have had to wonder the Internet has the Cows done their proper duty.

Selective Privacy, from Larry Mcshane, New York Daily News:

An angry Massachusetts mom blew up at middle school officials after learning her two daughters were forced to fill out a sex survey with questions about fellatio.

Arlene Tessitore, the mother of seventh and eighth grade students, was outraged to learn that administrators forced her girls to take the survey over their protestations

Funny the Supreme Court premised Roe v. Wade decision on a supposed right of privacy.    So according the Supremes if Ms Tessitore’s minor daughters wanted abortion, Ms Tessitore had no right to even know     Yet while Ms Tessitore’s daughters have a right to hide abortions from their mother, their school has the right to pry in to the intimate nature of any sex life they might or might not have.    That the Tessitore daughters have a right a privacy with respect to their parents, but none with respect to their school.   Once schools were said to exercise the right of the parents.   Now schools exercise rights that even parents do not have.

Dumbo’s Economics, how bad are Barack Obama’s economic policies?  So bad that his own chief of staff, Bill Daley has trouble defending them, from Matthew Boyle, Daily Caller:

White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley took heat from business executives Thursday for the Obama administration’s regulatory expansions. Daley also said he didn’t have any good answers for some of what President Obama is doing and expressed frustration about the “bureaucratic stuff that’s hard to defend.”

“Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible,” Daley said at a National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) meeting.

Daley couldn’t answer basic questions and continually faced criticism from the executives in the room

Hat tip:   Nice Deb.

Geraghty’s Law- 1, Libtards – 0, Netroots runs smack into Geraghty’s Law, from Jim Geraghty, National Review:.

All Barack Obama statements come with an expiration date. All of them.

From John Aravosis, America Blog:

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer told the Netroots Nation blog conference this morning that the Barack Obama never filled out the 1996 questionnaire, when he was running for the Illinois legislature, in which he averred that he supports gay marriage.  The questionnaire – two questionnaires in fact – have been out there for years – 15 years in fact – and it has caused the President, who now claims to oppose marriage equality for gay couples, a good amount of heartburn as reporters, such as the Blade’s Chris Johnson, keep asking the White House it

B.J.  Clinton was called a particularly adept liar.   In contrast, Obama is just a liar.

Where will the Weiner go? Anthony Weiner, late of the House of Representatives, has no job and no job skills, from Michelle:

But make no mistake: Weiner has no plans on toiling among the masses. This week’s resignation speech sounded like a future campaign kick-off: “I’ll be looking for other ways to contribute my talents,” he signaled, “so that we live up to that most New York and American of ideals. The ideal that a family, a community, and ultimately a country is the one thing that unites us. The one thing that we’re all focused on. With God’s help and with hard work we will all be successful.”

How, exactly, is a serial liar who antagonized his own liberal media allies by calling them “jackasses,” who countenanced libelous attacks on conservative bloggers, and who threw his own family under the bus to save his political hide in a position to “unite” us all? And what, pray tell, are these “talents” of which he speaks?

Is that CNN I hear beckoning the Weiner?

A postmortem on Weinergate:

Weiner is a victim of web-driven macho partisan cocooning. That is, it was the fight-back partisanship of the Daily Kos community that gave him a group of linked-up followers he could make himself a hero of. This included dozens or more women (real or virtual) who idolized him whom he could contact in the space of a coffee break. Weiner was arrogant enough to think he could get away with recklessly exploiting his fame and status in this Web niche in part because he figured his pack would always defend him in a pinch. He was too essential to the fight. The ingenious instant wisdom of the Kos crowd would be too powerful in a clinch. He was almost right about that, though in the end it proved a delusion-a delusion encouraged and enabled by the cocooning phenomenon itself, by the always-on flock of “Weiner, yes” netizens giving him positive feedback for whatever he thought or did

Sounds a lot like Rush. Is it?

Capitol Heights, MD– As this is written, I’m perhaps 10 miles from the monument district in Washington DC…. The very belly of the beast.  I’m delivering here, and will run to Harrisburg shortly and then to home for the weekend.

• Unraveling the Ethanol Nightmare: I note with interest that the Senate… yes, the Democrat controlled Senate, votes to kill off tax breaks for Ethanol.
  

  The Senate voted 73-27 to end the 45-cent break refiners receive for each gallon of ethanol they blend with gasoline and to scrap a 54-cent tariff on imported ethanol. The subsidy is worth roughly $6 billion a year to the ethanol industry. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates ending it by July would save $2.4 billion over the rest of the year.

  Now of course the Democrats are busy trying to raise taxes, not to create a stable energy policy…. but it does point up the folly of setting up energy infrastructure based on tax breaks, since they eventually go away and any advantage they might have had is lost. David has already pointed up often enough how foolish this push for ethanol in particular was, in any event.  But I can’t help but wonder if we’ll now see large increases of ethanol showing up from Brazil.

• SHUT UP, MITT: With any luck and common bloody sense, Americans will keep him unemployed and actually put someone forward who will act like a conservative.
• I called it: Tim Pawlenty admits he blew it with Romney as I suggested the other day in my initial reax to the debate. He’s got a tweet up saying:
  

  “On seizing debate opportunity re: healthcare: Me 0, Mitt 1. On doing healthcare reform the right way as governor: Me 1, Mitt 0” 

  OK, he’s got a point, but he really needed both points to get anyway. That won’t cut it, Tim.

• WHERE ELSE BUT THE HUFF AND PUFF? A publicly made Job offer to Anthony Weiner from… yep… world class slimeball Larry Flynt. Yeah, that figures.Figures, too that the HuffPo would publish it. Birds of a feather and all that. They all deserve each other. (spit)
• NEW LAYOFFS COMING: Gee, has the lesson about what companies do with profits been learned yet, do you suppose? Not by this misadministration and it’s dim-witted supporters. Hint: when company profits go down, so do the employment numbers.

Dumbo isn’t all there, from Victor Davis Hanson, National Review:

In the world of Barack Obama, inflating tires and “tuning up” modern car engines precludes off-shore drilling. Four-dollar-a-gallon gas prices can be ameliorated by having the average consumer trade in his 8-mpg clunker. Medical bills soar because doctors unnecessarily rip out tonsils and lop off limbs. “Skyrocketing” power bills and bankrupt coal companies are abstractions, and do not involve personal tragedies.

[…]

I think a majority of Americans have now come to the above conclusions (as evidenced in the 2010 midterm election), and those in business, from the small entrepreneur to the captain of industry, have decided that it is wisest to sit out what is left of this administration, and wait to hire, buy, invest, and expand until someone at the top shows a basic knowledge of finance and economics, and some sympathy concerning what those in the private sector must contend with.

Dumbo’s economics, the Misery Index is back, from Investor’s Business Daily:

Economy: As if the picture weren’t bleak enough, here’s one more data point to worry about — the Misery Index is on the rise.

[…]

It gained notoriety under President Carter, whose growth-choking, easy-money policies pushed the index to its post-World War II high. Now, under President Obama’s equally disastrous economic policies, the Misery Index is making its return.

Da Mayor speaks:

(Politico) — In a major speech to the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will say the United States risks “national suicide” if it doesn’t adopt a more welcoming immigration policy.

“We will not remain a global superpower if we continue to close our doors to people who want to come here to work hard, start businesses, and pursue the American dream,” Bloomberg says in prepared remarks obtained by Playbook.

Hat tip:   Zip, Weasel Zippers.

i have dreams   I dream of having an American patriot as mayor of New York City and having a nation of no illegals.   If illegal aliens don’t like the way we treat them, they should just go home.

How that new tone working out? Who know organized labor in New Jersey was republican, from Moe Lane:

Yeah.  When the first words out of your mouth include “Welcome to Nazi Germany,” (and you end by threatening to start World War III in your home state) you have a problem with your rhetoric.  Because, generally speaking, the ability to claim that one is in a fascist dictatorship and police state that ruthlessly suppresses dissent and persecutes minorities and get away with it is usually an unsubtle hint that one is in fact not in a fascist dictatorship, etc, etc, etc.  People who are actually in fascist dictatorships, etc, etc, etc, generally don’t bring up the subject in public.  And they certainly don’t do it over a loudspeaker.

Video:

Later.

Albany, NY— I’m herewaiting as usual, to et the trailer unloaded. From here, I’ll go to Horeseheads, NY and then to up around Rochester. I may end up with another run from there but it’ll likely be a simple out and back. Truck’s running well, and all seems well.

• Striving for Mediocrity: Over at The American Thinker, John T. Bennet makes an excellent set of points:
  

  Our educational system is self-destructing because of a fraud known as the “achievement gap.”  One result of that fraud is that public school bureaucrats are taking away opportunities from good students in a misguided effort to help underperforming students.

  When the mainstream media reports on progressive social policies, the results can be astonishing.  A recent Washington Post “Metro” section featured a stunning educational policy: a school policy that ruins opportunities for bright students in order to help the less bright students (“Dumping honors classes for AP,” May 22).  The Post reports that honors classes are being abolished from the curriculum in Fairfax, VA, and many schools across the country.  The purpose of abolishing the honors courses: to help “underrepresented minority students.”  With that article, the Post unwittingly exhibited the core of the problem with education in this country: The flawed system and students’ low culture.  Each factor combines in a downward spiral to give us the bad educational results we have today.

  There’s far more of course, but this story should shock nobody.  I mean, isn’t that what liberalism does at every turn? Look, it’s impossible for there to be equal outcome for all people, given equal opportunity. So, given equal outcome is their goal, how do liberals see the solution? By clamping down on the opportunities for high achievers.

  Now think; How is this any different than progressive taxation?  Or, EEO laws, as they’re now written and enforced? At every opportunity, leftists will assume the only way we can be equal is if we’re all equally stupid, and poor, and dependent.

• I GOTTA STOP AT THE ATM: Do you remember when Bush was supposedly mystified by the complexities of the supermarket check-out scanner? The supposedly unbiased press wet their pants as did the left-o-sphere. But when  Obama starts falling over his own tounge about the ATM, showing how out of touch he is with the people he supposedly understands so very well….. who is the only outlet to make mention of it?  Yep. Fox news:
  

  On the June 14 edition of NBC’s “Today,” President Barack Obama ascribed part of the blame for the high unemployment rate to ATMs, yet most media outlets continue to ignore the gaffe.

  “There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers,” lectured Obama in an interview with NBC’s Ann Curry. “You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.”

  Yes, sir. So the unemployment issue is we’re not waiting in line for a human to do an ATM’s work; it’s all that damned technology, right? And Fox’s competition? Not a sound. And they wonder… can’t understand for the life of them… why Fox is cleaning their clock, in the ratings game.

  But now, think on this; What kind of a world is Obama envisioning, here? Are we really going back to the 40’s, before there were computers, the net, atm’s, airline kiosks, etc? And what of Tele-prompters? How will this nation ever get any inspiration from fearless leader if we don’t have the technology available for teleprompters?

• GLENN SAYS IT WELL:
  

  SMART DIPLOMACY: Czechs don’t trust US, withdraw from missile defense plans. “Gee, I seem to remember a presidential candidate in 2008 who ran on the promise to improve relations with our allies.”…

Gotta run, they’ve got me unloaded.

FLOTUS lies, the Fat Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama tells lies about her husband, from Politico:

First lady Michelle Obama on Monday told a fundraiser in Southern California of the toll the presidency has taken on her husband Barack Obama.

“I see the sadness and worry that’s creasing his face,” she said to a crowd of about 500 at the Pasadena luncheon organized by the Southern California Women For Obama. She described his worth ethic as “tireless,” according to pool reports.

“He reads every word, every memo, so he is better prepared than the people briefing him,” she said. “This man doesn’t take a day off.”

Reax: Dave Blount, Moonbattery.

Sounds like O’Bammy needs a rest from all the taxpayer-financed golf and vacations. He’s welcome to take off the rest of his life, starting immediately.

More reax, Uncoverag:

As we reported in great detail yesterday, Michelle’s speech to supporters in Los Angeles was hip-deep in hyperbole (my nice way of saying….she LIED.) She actually stood at a podium and said that Barack Obama is working so hard he “never takes a day off.”  It was such a ridiculous claim, immediately refuted by liberal and conservative media, that she removed that sentence during her Tuesday fundraisers in the San Francisco bay area

Dumbo doesn’t know economics, more kicking Barack Hussein Obama while he is down, video:

Hat tip: Ace.

Neither does Blondie b/k/a Debbie Wasserman Schultz on the economy, video:

Hat tip: Jeff Winkler,  Daily Caller. DWS  is what is known as a target rich environment

Palin e-mails, from Professor Althouse:

The fact that there was nothing was actually news, and the journalists should have protected their integrity — appearance of integrity — by reporting the nothing with clarity.

Hat tip:  Moe Lane.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill:  It was not their finest hour.

Dumbo’s Economics, more on yesterday’s Scramble theme of Barack Obama’s economic ignorance.  First up, from Robert R. Baker, American Thinker:

[President Franklin] Roosevelt responded to the recession he inherited with a combination of massive spending on new government programs and sweeping controls over private industry, (sound familiar?).  His thinking was that government spending would get people back to work, and controls over private industry would end deflation.  Rules and regulations over private industry were put in place designed, incredibly, to increase the prices of goods.  The President and his advisors thought deflation was a cause of the recession.  But of course it wasn’t a cause; it was a result.

Next, K.E. Campbell, American Thinker:

According to President Obama, his Administration’s anti-free-market, anti-business, and pro-union policies are not to blame for the high rate of involuntary unemployment.  No, instead we are to believe a root cause of that problem is too much automation.  In an interview on NBC News in response to a question about companies’ reluctance to hire, President Obama said:

“…There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate. So all these things have created changes…”

As a country, we are paying a tremendous price for the economic ignorance of this president and his ilk. Even basic economic principles, Econ 101 level stuff, apparently elude them.

The important economic metric is standard of living, which is essentially the value of all the stuff, or commodities, an individual consumes.    The more valuable the stuff you able to consume, the higher your standard of living.   By raising the cost of commodities, without making them more valuable, to consumer loses ability to consume other stuff.

Note, that four dollar a gallon gasoline, is no more valuable that dollar eighty gas.  It takss  just as far, but just costs more money.    So every time Dim Won acts increase the cost of commodity, the standard of living goes down.

If your income is a dollar a day and potatoes cost a dollar a piece, your standard of living is one potato a day.  On the other hand, if potatoes are two for a dollar,  your standard of living is two potatoes a day.

If you are selling stuff,  at dollar a potato must sell a dollar’s worth of stuff to buy on potato.  However, if potatoes are two for a dollar, you need only sell fifty cents worth of stuff to buy one  potato.

The end result of Obama’s economic policies is that consumers will have less ability to buy stuff and hence have lower standard  of living.    It that the hope for which you voted?

Ramble back, Eric rambled:

Obama: The latest example of how socialism doesn’t work no matter who’s in front: I note with interest, David’s Scamble, this morning, wherein he posts some quotes which portray Barack Obama as merely incompetent. This does seem to be the more accepted meme, and we’ll doubtless see more of it as it becomes ever increasingly obvious Obama is going to get his head handed him on election day.  I suspect this will eventually be a popular meme of leftists looking to salvage something of their socialist mantra, which is now taking it on the chin with Obama.I, on the other hand am not nearly as inclined to be as generously sympathetic to Obama, as to label him a mere incompetent.

The Sharp Tack, Clarice Feldman, has chronicled Dim Won’s ignorance.  It is hard to say whether Dumbo was born stupid, I doubt it, or plain just uneducated.  I favor the latter theory.  Obama is essentially a credentialed fool, and likely the most uneducated president in our history..  Remember is learning, and not credentialing which makes a person educated.

Kudos to Barney Frank, who’d have thunk, from Mike Lillis, Hill:

Citing his own brush with sexual scandal, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said Tuesday that he’s in no position to judge the lurid actions of colleague Anthony Weiner.

“Given these circumstances, where I was myself engaged in activity I shouldn’t have been … I just don’t think it’s appropriate for me to set myself up as the judge of others,” Frank told reporters in the Capitol Tuesday.

Bitch of the day:  Janice Hahn, the viral video which has California democrats enraged, video:

Hat tips Verum Serum and Other McCain.    The bitch wants a seat in Congress.   I think  a cell with one of gang intervention specialists would be more appropriate.  What say you?

Good news, plumbing still does matter.  Just when you thought the liberal blogo-sphere was past that only quaint traditional notion that a person was defined by his external plumbing and not some mythical, nebulous internal real self, along comes this, Bill Egnor, Fire Dog Lake:

Okay, short, and not so sweet. In less than a week two supposedly gay women have turned out to be middle aged white men. This is tragic for a lot of reasons. I can understand the fun and power of writing as someone else, hell for three years I wrote in the voice a talking dog so I do get it. The thing is if you are a guy, stop freaking writing as a woman and especially as a gay woman

An old-fashioned guy like myself might say that good writing is product of a good thought process.

Brooklyn, NY– I’m at a store, waiting for an offload. I often forget how crowded it gets down here. All it takes is five minutes worth of driving here to remind me.

• Obama: The latest example of how socialism doesn’t work no matter who’s in front: I note with interest, David’s Scamble, this morning, wherein he posts some quotes which portray Barack Obama as merely incompetent. This does seem to be the more accepted meme, and we’ll doubtless see more of it as it becomes ever increasingly obvious Obama is going to get his head handed him on election day.  I suspect this will eventually be a popular meme of leftists looking to salvage something of their socialist mantra, which is now taking it on the chin with Obama.I, on the other hand am not nearly as inclined to be as generously sympathetic to Obama, as to label him a mere incompetent. Remember, gang, this has always been the cry… that socialism can work if we get the right people leading.  That it has never worked makes one wonder under what conditions in the socialist mind such nonsense will EVER work, since no mere mortal has managed it, yet…  That aside, however, what we will see the attempt made to put some gap between Obama and the socialist mantra he’s been pushing. The point must be made in response….and repeatedly and forcefully…  that Obama didn’t work because socialism doesn’t work, not the reverse.
• New Hampshire: Yes, I saw part of it, and hear most of it. A few reactions; First Pawlenty blew it. He should have gone after Romney with both barrels. As it is, he let the guy off easy. Clue: If you can’t go after him Romneycare, how in hell do you expect to be able to take on Obama?For his part Romney was smooth. After four years of Obama being smooth, I suspect that might not carry the weight, anymore. And had Romneycare vs Freedom come up in earnest, he’d not have been as smooth in any event. I’m highly annoyed that didn’t happen.

  Bachman did well during her time, and didn’t do herself any damage.

  Same for Santorum, who for the record, I can’t see voting for. Like Romney, there’s far too much establishment GOP boiled into that carcass.

  Ron Paul got his followers going and few others.

  Herman Cain. Nice guy, but seemed confused as he has been previously on military and foreign policy. Likeable guy and well-founded, but I wonder….

  Here it is, gang…. The nominee will likely not be from the group that debated in New Hampshire, last night.

• WINGNUT? Speaking of New Hampshire, CNN’s “coverage” of the event leaves me asking…. Can we now take as a given that the press, including the most Busted name in Noose, is left-leaning, and has no objectivity whatever? I think we can. No wonder Fox is leading in the ratings game by a few orders of scale.