Breakfast Scramble: Watermelon Special

You know what a watermelon is?  It is green on the outside but red on the inside.

Big Green flops, a clearly flummoxed Bradford Plumer wonders why the watermelons movement, the so-called green movement has laid such massive big egg, from New Republic:

Just about everyone in the green movement has a theory for why the climate fight sputtered out. Some activists blame their all-too-powerful foes. The oil and coal industries, as well as groups like the National Association of Manufacturers, all vehemently opposed cap-and-trade and shelled out millions lobbying Congress. The cranks who deny that global warming is manmade were way too effective at spreading their disinformation. And gullible reporters were too willing to give these skeptics airtime. Call this the “we were outgunned” theory. Bill McKibben, for one, has argued that enviros need to spend more time targeting the “the guys with the money who pull the strings,” like the Chamber of Commerce and the Koch brothers. Some climate scientists, meanwhile, have argued that they need to get better at swatting down gibberish from the skeptics. Shortly after the midterms, some 40 climatologists around the world banded together to form a “rapid response unit” on key climate-science questions. (It’s still too early to judge the end result.)

Why should have rational person accept the theory of anthropogenic global warming as true?   Its loudest and  most vocal disciples don’t accept the theory.   Algore is an energy glutton who lives in mansion large enough to billet a battalion.    United Nations diplomats fly private jet to so-called climate conferences held at luxury resorts.

Doctor Krauthammer nails the loony left, video:

Hat tip and more: Nice Deb:

O’Reilly is perplexed by the repellent vitriol and outrageous behavior we witnessed in last weekend’s counter-protests to the tax day tea parties. What is the left’s strategy, he wonders.  Sir Charles has obviously thought this out:

The left is stuck in the midst of Coen brothers plot and does not know what to do.

More Dope from Hope, Mike Huckabee continues to show why he is too stupid to be president, from Rebecca Stewart:

(CNN)- Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has a bone to pick with Glenn Beck. The current Fox News host isn’t pleased that Beck, a departing Fox News host, has called him a progressive, a term which Beck has also previously likened to cancer and the Nazi movement.

Huckabee is too stupid to realize that he is a liberal.

How Dumb is Dumbo, Barack Obama, or as I call him Dumbo, is clearly confused by the cause of the 2007 Interstate bridge collapse, from via Ed Morrissey, Hot Air:

Remember when that bridge in Minnesota collapsed with all those people on it? And there was a big hue and cry, “How can this happen in America?” Well, the National Society of Engineers — they looked around and they give us a D when it comes to infrastructure.

Mr. Morrissey:

But being from Minneapolis, the implication that the St. Anthony Falls bridge collapse in August 2007 had to do with infrastructure spending isn’t just ignorant of basic civics, it’s downright false and offensive (via Greg Hengler):

[…]

The bridge collapse occurred because of a design defect, a conclusion reached by the National Transportation Safety Board. The bridge was designed and built in an era when engineers thought that redundant systems were both unnecessary and inefficient.  Gusset plates installed at the time of the bridge’s building were too thin, and without any redundancy to account for a major failure on a single point, it was a tragedy waiting to happen from day 1.  It had nothing to do with any lack of maintenance, and in fact collapsed because of scheduled maintenance to the deck that inadvertently destabilized it to the point of collapse.

Obama asserts a cause of the bridge collapse which differs from the finding of the National Transportation Safety Board.  Is Mr. Obama so dumb or so poorly educated that he is incapable or reading and comprehending the NTSB report?  You tell me.

Madison on the Potomac, The irony challenged citizen of the day.  The Washington Times‘ Kerry Picket gets confronted by a citizen who accuses her of hostility.  Yet the unnamed citizen is clearly the only party in the conversation who is hostile.  Whatever verbal message Mr. Starched Shorted was attempting to convey was negated by his hostile attitude.  With a wee bit more practice Mr. Shorts might have a stand-up routine..  Without further ado roll the video:

Hat tip and more: Ed Morrissey, Hot Air:

I’d call this a classic case of projection.  Kerry isn’t sure who this might be; perhaps a tourist from Madison, Wisconsin?

You think?  Stacy wonders, from Other McCain:

Just taking a wild guess — a shot in the dark — Mr. Hissy Self-Righteous will turn out to be a long-time public-school employee and/or a teachers-union activist. Nothing is more ironclad in the minds of such people than their inalienable right to employment at taxpayer expense. Because school-choice threatens to deprive them of their monopoly of feasting on the government teat, Kerry Picket’s questions about Gray’s opposition to vouchers were like garlic to a vampire.

That self righteous indignation, sense of entitlement and all out attempt to defend the status-quo certainly fits the pattern of public employee.  Anybody want to wager that Stacy is wrong?

Obama Justice Department nixes Congress, from Johnathan Strong, Daily Caller:

For the first time since Republicans took control of the House and gained the power of congressional subpoena, the Obama administration has declined to comply with a subpoena issued by top GOP oversight official Rep. Darrell Issa.

More, Michelle:

Yesterday, I brought you up to speed on GOP Sen. Charles Grassley’s fight with DOJ over its Project Gunrunner stonewalling.

Today, GOP Rep. Darrell Issa warns that DOJ’s intransigence could lead to contempt proceedings

Later.

Rice, PA— (Along I-81, near Scranton at a rest area) Foggy here today. Accidents because of the fog, and driving is not fun, really, as a result. Oh, well. Goes with the territory.

I’m headed for the Albany, NY area, then who knows?

• Me at OTB just now:
  

  Let’s imagine, as a data point, that as a governmental fiat, we could take all the money… and I mean every last dime of the income of the rich. Every farthing of it. Even at that level, it wouldn’t make a dent in the deficit. Not even close. So, what is accomplished by “soaking the rich” other than punishing people for being successful?

  

  Your author

  And of course the larger question… do we as a people WANT to punish success? And that’s really what we’re doing when we soak the rich. I’ve complained often about the intentional use of the tax code to alter citizen behavior…. the tax to discourage people from doing something.  Does anyone think that punishing the rich will NOT make people less inclined to succeed?

• Hey Glenn: Of course it matters. We need t be opposing, at volume ten, the left… hitting them with both barrels, at every single opportunity. They are far too wel entrenched to let even the small stuff slide without vocal opposition. To not do so allows them to rule the narrative….
• … and on the other hand when New England Democrats start calling for spending cuts we know that a vocal opposition has them running scared… which is exactly as it should be. Now, of course it’s a matter of making sure they go beyond lip service to the idea.  And trust me, without being continually broadsided by the truth, they won’t.
• 'MISSING RECORDS IN HAWAII, MISSING RECORDS IN KENYA, MISSING RECORDS IN INDONESIA'... So says Drudge. To which I respond, again, that if Obama could have produced such birth records, he would have instead of spending so much money and effort to make it all go away. He could have silenced and discrediited detractors with a single stroke, if he’d produced the birth cert. He has not, because he cannot. The country has been scammed, people. This is huge.

Dumbo gets riled, is Barack Obama a moron?  I don’t know.  What intellectual credentials Obama may have remain hidden from public view.  I do contend, that Obama is a man of  very modest abilities who has been lied to all his life and who is simply not able to handle being challenged.   One such example, from Abby Phillip, Politico:

When the even-keeled and cool President Obama gets prickly in public, it never goes unnoticed.

For Obama, who has carefully cultivated a reputation of easily managing confrontations with people who disagree with him, these moments are as rare as they are revealing of the person behind the presidency.

So it’s no surprise that Washington took notice when after a tense interview with a Texas TV reporter on Monday, Obama unclipped his microphone with no smile in sight, and tersely warned, “Let me finish my answers next time we do an interview, all right?”

More from the interview, from the honorary Swamp Stomper of the Day, Brad Watson, WFAA:

However, the president inferred that his election meant Texas politics was changing.

“We lost by a few percentage points in Texas,” Obama said. That was followed by a gentle reminder that the figure was closer to 10 percent

Obama is long on narrative but short on accomplishment.  Woe to the poor reporter who dares challenge Dim Won’s narrative.   Byron Preston passes on this snippet from the White House, from Pajamas Media:

[White House communications director Dan] Pfeiffer was asked by Time reporter Michael Scherer, “So will WFAA’s Brad Watson get another interview one day?”

Instead of quickly taking the high road, Pfeiffer suggested that Watson may truly be out in the cold after irritating the president. And he did it by revealing yet another trick of Washington communications: playing one news outlet against its rival.

“Right around the time we do our next interview with @TIME. I am kidding … or am I. @Newsweek is on the other line,” Pfeiffer responded.

For those bitterly clinging to the notion that Dumbo,  b/k/a Barack Obama is somehow smart, I give you Clarice Feldman,  of the 27 May, 2009 edition of American Tbinker:

I do not believe that someone with such a consistently weak understanding of economics, history, and the guiding legal document of our nation and its language merited admission to Columbia University or Harvard law school. Nor can I imagine how anyone could have merited graduation from these institutions (let alone edited the Harvard Law Review, the most prestigious legal publication of its kind) with these deficiencies.

I am only citing Clarice’s conclusion.   Follow the link to see her evidence.

Trump plays the Clown, L. Donald proves Karl Rove’s point,  from Matthew Boyle, Daily Caller:

Potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump lashed out at longtime GOP consultant Karl Rove on Tuesday morning, saying he, “should be ashamed himself” for attacks he’s made on Trump’s potential candidacy.

The Washington Times’ John McCaslin asked Trump about Rove calling him a “joke candidate” on America’s Morning News. Trump responded to Rove’s charges by saying he’s the reason Barack Obama won the presidency, and played up his business history

Rove didn’t do too bad.   He managed two successful presidential campaigns, and increased the republican majority in the 2002 elections.  More over, the senile old fart,John McCain was actually tracking ahead of Dim Won, b/k/a Obama until the Bear Sterns collapse.

Dumbo and L. Donald share a few traits in common.  Among they both enjoy a tail wind, but get testy with any head wind.

Playing the Trump Card on L. Donald

First, Club for Growth, via Matt Lewis, Daily Caller:

Club for Growth President Chris Chocola is not a fan of The Don.  In a release, Chocola blasted Trump.

[…]

The Club cited Trump’s penchant for protectionism, including opposing NAFTA, supporting a 25 percent tax on China, and rooting for a “trade war” with China.

Second, C Edmund Wright, American Thinker:

Without a doubt, Trump has done the country a favor by taking President Obama down a peg or two.  Moreover, he has proven to our potential candidates what many of us have known all along — that there is nothing to fear in attacking Obama.  In fact, it’s the way to go.  I just hope the voters take a close look at the mushy underlying philosophy of this man with the wonderful messaging tone.

You’re fired Donald.

Racism thy name is liberal, video:

Hat tip: John, Power Line

Fighting like a girl, video:

Hat tip and more, Ann Althouse:

What a tough kid! Impressive to have built up such strength and nerve so young.

Concur Professor.  Stacy thinks he knows how Ms Willoughby got so smart, from Other McCain:

When I saw this video at Ann Althouse’s blog (hat-tip, Instapundit), I did some quick searching and learned that Tricia Willoughby is a home-schooler and debate champion, one of three daughters of Wisconsin pro-life leaders Bret and Nancy Willoughby.

Then it goes without saying, that if you abort your baby, he will not win any debates.

Altoona,PA– The last several times I’ve come down to this Central PA town,  it was to visit the rail lines running through here. The place is famous for “Horseshoe Curve, and it’s true this is the biggest attraction for railfans in the east. This time, I actually have freight.  Arrived here early this morning. Not a bad trip, really. A fairly short hop of around 6 hours from the home base. Rain and a little snow mixed in, in the upper elevations. Typical spring… A spring which is coming on fast, by the way.  I note with no small amount of pleasure, the forsythia and willow trees are already blooming along with the various fruit trees, down in Southern New Jersey.My home, up in Rochester can’t be far behind.

• I spoke last week of the tragedy in Newburgh, New York where in a distraught wife and mother drove her mom-van off this boat ramp into the Hudson river killing herself and two of her three kids …. and at least seriously mentally injuring the third.  It turns out that the problem was the father of two of the kids, had a couple of girlfriends on the side.  So, the locals tell me, anyway.  The pattern is fairly easy to detect, and fairly predictable in results.
• This is precisely why I’ve never signed on with Rand Paul. I dare to suggest to you that compromise of principle is precisely how we ended up in this situation of crisis to begin with. We compromised on our constitutional principles when we as a nation started such a redistribution of wealth by fiat of government.    More compromise is certainly not going to be a solution for the problems we face.  That Rand Paul is mouthing such things now, justifies my lack of faith in the man.  Let’s put some meat in this stew: Just because I happen to have these numbers to hand, let’s look at the 2007 federal budget, shall we? 58% of Federal Income is Spent on wealth redistribution Social Security, Income Security, Medicare and Health;. I note with interest that defense only constitutes 20% of the Federal budget.  And of these, is the only constitutionally mandated the expenditure. These social redistribution programs came about by ignoring the principles as laid out in the constitution, by our founders. Putting these on equal footing when budget cut time rolls around, is at least hypocrisy. In truth, what Rand Paul is now calling for is more of the same. If he doesn’t have the stomach for his principles, or for at least ours, perhaps we should find another spokesman….  One more suited to the task of actually holding to the principles which he claims to espouse.  I said last week, that  it’s time to refocus the debate on the individual. The Tea Party… indeed ANY party, would do well, I think, to ask of it’s followers and people that the party supports for elective office: “What have you done to remove government from our backs, and what have you done to enhance the rights and liberty of the individual?” If Rand Paul is willing to compromise those rights, he deserves neither our support nor our vote. Can I make this any clearer?
• Want a clear picture of how racists operate? Here you are. By the way, the black guy is a tea party member. The thugs as usual, are leftists.. Oh, and lest white females feel left out, how’s the abuse of a 14-yr old girl sound? These anti-tea party thugs are so very brave, you know.
• Jon Kyl wonders why Obama is silent on Syria. Actually, he knows. The answer of course casts serious question about the motivations of the Obama Administration… as if we needed more questions.

It snowed yesterday, and none dared call it global warming.

Dumbo’s Plan, from Doug MacEachern, Arizona Republic:

I thought about that on Wednesday as President Barack Obama delivered his speech about the country’s precarious finances.

[…]

And after each declaration of grave concern, including his speech last week, Obama just sort of went ahead with plans to spend as he pleased. It was as though he knows there are untapped bins of bullion out there underneath the mansions of the rich that will pay the country’s bills, like thousands of Scrooge McDucks. As though tapping them, which is his primary answer to sealing the deficits, won’t have any adverse consequences at all

Dumbo’s Planners, Dumbo has no plans and neither do his planners, at least as so far as protecting American jobs, video:

Hat tip: Ed Morrissey, Hot Air.

If you plan on keeping your job,  better plan on the Obami losing theirs.

Fire versus wind. I tried one of Dumbo’s forty-two dollar fill-ups this morning.   I am ready for a better plan.  And you?

The speech, video:

Hat tip: Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit.

You now know what it must feel like to be a moose in Alaska.

• I’ve updated the core to WordPress 3.11
• I’ve update the plugins that needed it, including an update to QuickCache which seems to have aided the speed.
• Auto-database backups are still running and doing well.  The database is backed up every few hours and sent to the big file server at Casa de Bit, along with complete copies of the PHP files. I’m working on a fallback routine which will at the push of a button, drop the site into Maint mode and put the last backup of all files into place. Test runs have gone well, downtime less than 15 minutes for a complete replace. Not too shabby.
• I’ve noted a drop-off in the hits per day, mostly based on the new way Google is doing things. Given the leftist tilt of Google Management, this isn’t a shock. I’ll be taking action later this week on the matter.

The Trump Principal, don’t accept your opponent’s narrative at face value.

Palin plays Trump card, Sarah Palin demonstrates that you don’t have to named Donald Trump to play the Trump Card, from Clay Barbour and Doug Erickson, Madison.com:

Wearing a skirt and no hat or gloves, she [Sarah Palin] didn’t seem bothered by the weather, saying, “I feel like I’m at home.” She said she came to Madison because “this is where real courage and real integrity can be found.”

Palin lit into Obama, calling his financial stimulus package “useless” and several of his initiatives, including “really fast trains” and solar shingles, “cockamamie and harebrained.” She mentioned 2012 repeatedly, at one point saying, “The 2012 election begins here.”

More Sarah, from Andy Barr,  Politico

“We didn’t elect you just to rearrange the deck chairs on a sinking Titanic,” Palin said during a rally in front of the Wisconsin statehouse in Madison. “What we need from you, GOP, is to fight.” Pointing to the national champion University of Wisconsin women’s hockey team, Palin said the GOP could learn from its resolve and “needs to learn how to fight like a girl.”

The girl knows how to coin a phrase.

Trumping Dumbo, Obama’s  Environmental Protection Agency ignores jobs,  Obama says that job creation is now number one priority, but Obama’s EPA promulgates regulations without regard to impact on jobs, from John Rossomando,  Daily Caller:

The Obama administration has repeatedly said job creation is a top priority, but apparently the memo seems to have missed the bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

This became evident when EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus testified Thursday before an Environment and Energy subcommittee hearing that his agency does not take jobs into account when it issues new regulations.

The only job of the least concern to Obama is is own In November of next year, we need to send Obama a message that American jobs are important to Americans and send Obama searching for a new one.

Trumping Trump, Mark Levin demonstrates that the Trump Card can be, and should be, played on L. Donald himself, from Right Scoop:

Levin rips Donald Trump to shreds

Levin points out many things about Trump that show he is no conservative, but a few of the glaring ones are the fact that he support Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio twice, as well as calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush, accusing him of lying to get us in the war. Oh yeah, and he supported Universal Health Care in America, the Canadian style

Poor, Donny, much like Dumbo, b/k/a Barack Obama, Trump can ‘t keep his story straight either.

Say Goodbye and good night JoAnn, from Mike Johnson and Larry Sandler Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser emerged as the winner Friday over challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg in a heated election that drew national attention because of the fight over collective bargaining and a ballot reporting error in Waukesha County.

A canvass of vote totals from the state’s 72 counties finalized Friday afternoon shows Prosser beating Kloppenburg, an assistant attorney general, by 7,316 votes

The big loser, organized labor.   The big winner, the Wisconsin taxpayers.

Playing the Trump card,

Kyle-Anne Shiver, thinks Donald Trump has a plan, or well two plans, from American Thinker:

Now that we can pretty well assume Mr. Trump is running for president, it’s obvious that he has done a prerequisite full survey of Obamaland.  He has, as all successful builders are wont to do, gotten the plans of the existing structure and knows precisely which cornerstone and support beams are holding President Obama’s house upright.  And as any truly great builder would, Trump has carefully, critically, logically listed every risk/benefit ratio of every strategy we now see him publicly employing.

Every time Donald Trump attacks a piece of the Obama narrative to a dumbfounded interviewer, he knows exactly what he is doing.  He has considered the risk beforehand and calculated its rewards.  He knows the media is most vulnerable because early on in 2008, the collective media declared these Obama truth-searches out of bounds for respectable people, who were obliged (in the media elitists’ minds) to give Obama’s blackness all benefit of doubt in every instance.  For nearly three full years now, the media has held its locked grip on every tidbit of missing or discordant information regarding the Obama narrative and are now shocked — shocked, I tell you — that anyone would dare to broach these media-deemed taboo subjects.

Listen as Trump talks to Rush Limbaugh.    Everything Trump says in intended to both diminish Barack Obama’s stature and to promote Trump’sh, video:

Hat tip: Matt Lewis, Daily Caller.

Given Trump credit, he is very good an promoting himself.

However Trump still have his critics, from E.D. Kain, Forbes:

The Only Thing More Ridiculous Than Donald Trump’s Hair is His Presidential Ambition

There is nothing surprising about Donald Trump’s presidential ambition, or his sudden interest into Obama’s birth certificate. Trump cares about one thing and one thing only: attention. Money is good, too, but only if it gets him his fix. He knows he can’t win the presidency, and he knows that the only way to get the attention he so badly craves is to out-crazy all the rest of the GOP hopefuls

Kain is wrong.  There is something more ridiculous than Trumps purported presidential aspirations,, to wit Bacack Obama’s presidency.

Dumbo’s birth certificate, Dumbo, b/k/a Barack Obama as reported by George Stephanopoulos, ABC New, via ZIP, Weasel Zippers:

“I think that over the last two and a half years there’s been an effort to go at me in a way that is politically expedient in the short-term for Republicans.  But [it] creates, I think a problem for them when they want to actually run in a general election where most people feel pretty confident the President was born where he says he was, in Hawaii.  He– he doesn’t have horns…we’re not really worrying about conspiracy theories or– or birth certificates,” President Obama told me.

Yet more Obama straw men, as for as I know, nobody is accusing Duumbo of either having horns or being the Devil.   Dumbo’s problem is not extra body parts, rather it is missing or defective ones, such a functioning brain or any gonads.    If Dumbo wants voters to believe he was born in Hawaii all he has to do is to show copy of his birth certificate.    As the Gipper would say, trust but verify.

Does Dumbo even know where he was born?    He certainly can’t remember and unless he has seen an actual copy of his birth certificate, he does not know.    In the spirit of  transparency, Obama should be open about the basis of his purported belief of  to have been born in Hawaii.

Dumbo dithers, Alana Goodman notices Barack Obama’s inability to get serious with any of our nation’s problems, from Commentary:

Obama’s lack of dedication has become as depressing as it is reliable. “We’ll probably be talking in another in six months before another ‘great speech’ from the president who is in love with the sound of his own voice,” Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said yesterday afternoon on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports. “He’s in love with giving speeches . . . but he’s not really in love with following through with his promises and his rhetoric.”

Or maybe Dumbo is just dumb, from Roger L. Simon, Pajamas Media:

But what is it about Obama that makes him so boring? I submit it is something quite simple — he has nothing to say. He is a boring person, the quintessential “hollow man” in the T.S. Eliot sense. He is kind of a socialist, kind of a liberal, kind of a multi-culturalist, kind of an environmentalist, kind of globalist, kind of a budget cutter — but none of them with any real commitment. Basically, he’s a vague and uncommitted person pretending to be otherwise. He is the man that voted “present,” now in the presidency. The fact that he never specified the targets of “hope” and “change” during his election was far from a campaign ploy and more typical than we ever dreamed. There never was a there there. And now, I strongly suspect, there never will be.?

Dumbo seem to think all he needs to do to solve any problem is to give a campaign speech.    That is certainly all that he does,  of what his is capable.   Alas the old adage:   When the only tool you have a a hammer,  all problems look like nails.

Eric rambled:

I spoke of Newburgh, NY, earlier. The big tragedy there just now involves a mother and three kids, in a murder-suicide. Domestic trouble. Mom drives her mini-van off a boat ramp into the Hudson River, killing herself and two of her three kids. The third, a ten year old, climbed out a window.  Sadly, I do understand the things that motivate people to do such things, in a way. Acts of passion are the hardest ones to put any logic to, and I expect this is that.  But how long will it be, I wonder, before we see calls to ban the Mom-van, which was used in this act? How many times will we see domestic disputes turn into mass murder-suicides with these weapons? Now, no, I’m not serious. But what if Mom had used a gun? Why the difference?

That figuring out the world stuff is above my pay grade.    I don’t know why a mother goes off the deep end and does a Senator Oldsmobile.   There as a lot of human beings out there, and some times some of the do strange things.   However I am less a afraid of the occasional  loose screw than I am of an all protective government.

Crystal Mangum to face possible murder charge, from Herald-Sun

DURHAM — The man Crystal Mangum is accused of stabbing has died, Durham Police Department Chief Jose Lopez Sr. said Wednesday.

Mangum already was in jail under a $300,000 secured bond charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury.

“More than likely, we will be upgrading the charge to murder,” Lopez said.

It time to get, and keep, Ms off the street.   Ms Mangum is a thread to public safety.   Put her away and keep her away from the public.

More, La Shawn Barber:

The woman who falsely accused three Duke University lacrosse players of raping and beating her in a small bathroom of a house off campus stabbed a “boyfriend” earlier this month. Before that, she’d fought with a different “boyfriend” and burned his clothes in a bathtub. I was going to blog about the stabbing but changed my mind. The woman is a menace to society, and I didn’t want to waste bandwidth. Well, her latest antics have cost a man his life. News sources report that the stabbing victim has died.

The woman’s got much bigger problems now. What a life, eh? Pray for her children.

Amen.

POTUS speech reax:

From Nice Deb:

It was a grotesque and dishonest speech.

From Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post:

The president speaks, says very little

As I and many others expected, Obama today gave a speech about nothing much at all — if you don’t count attacking the only viable debt-reduction plan out there. He didn’t endorse the Simpson-Bowles plan. He did not propose a Social Security fix. He did not provide an alternative to top-down rationing of Medicare. One wonders how the White House thinks this helps the president

From Jake Tapper, who  compares what Obama said in last year January to what he said yesterday, from ABC News.   Mr. President,  Mr. Google is not your friend.

Mrs. Clinton has feminism on the brain, from Ben Birnbaum, Washington Times:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton decried the marginalization of women in the Islamic world Tuesday night, calling women’s empowerment key to true democracy in the Middle East.

[…]

“So far, women have been excluded from key transitional decision-making processes,” Mrs. Clinton said. “When women marched through Tahrir Square to celebrate International Women’s Day in their new democracy, they were met by harassment and abuse.”

“You can’t claim to have a democracy if half the population is silenced,” she added

Arab democracies!  On what planet Mrs.  Clinton?

More, Daily Caller:

“You cannot have a claim to democracy if half the population is left out,” she said. “All over the world we see living proof that Islam and women’s rights are compatible.”

There is no evidence that Islam is compatible with either human rights or democracy.

Saratoga,NY— I’m delivering at a warehouse here. I’m writing this on my phone, so sorry I don’t have any pics to show you; I’ve not figured out how to do that yet.

Kind of an active week, though slightly screwed up, schedule -wise. So far, this week, I’ve een to Mountaintop, PA, Carlisle, PA, Newburgh, NY, and Collage Point, NY, (NYC). From here, I go to three stops in the Rochester, NY area then off to Massachusetts.

I’m watching the implosions in Washington … (…and what else can we call the reality that is happening to us under Obama?) …with a somewhat satisfied fear. The fear is obvious. You can’t watch what’s happening with our country without some genuine fear. People are starting to get the idea that they screwed up when they turned absolute power over to the Democrats. The satisfaction, to the degree there is any, is because I called it.

I told my wife, I told my friends, I told you,  starting the very moment the election returns came it, that we were though with America as we used to have it.  I was called an alarmist, a fear monger, a sore loser. Turns out, of course, that I was right to the degree that I understated the matter on an order of scale.

Well, the LA TIMES may actually have a point here but in the end the speech was needed today because what he was offering wasn’t polling well.  Which is kinda like saying  a live volcano is a little warm, I suppose.

Which is not to say that what the new speech offered will poll any better. It seems our whole problem, based on Obama’s comments is that the so-called “Rich” carrying 90% of the tax burden wasn’t enough.

Jen Rubin, also noting the subject, says:

President Obama has promised to speak about his thoughts on the debt crisis. It’s not clear, however, why he didn’t do this at the State of the Union or what, if anything, he is going to accomplish. But as a matter of communications strategy, there’s reason to question sending the president out to talk to the country in these circumstances. An adviser of a senior Senate Republican has this take: “They didn’t think this one through. They’re winging it.” He sees a three-pronged dilemma for the president: “His base won’t let him touch Social Security, Medicare was gutted in ObamaCare, and they couldn’t pass a tax hike with a supermajority Democratic Congress.”

Obviously, he’s figuring that he can sell the American public with what got hm elected. Grandiose Shmooze. He’s doing so because he has noting else left.  He clearly hasn’t seen how Obamacare is polling, and is still in denial about the mid-term elections.

Not that this is going to work. His current polling numbers are dropping like the US’s creds on debt. Anything he does will cost him votes.So, look for the deer in the headlights maneuver. Meanwhile watch as the world becomes increasingly angry with us. Quite an accomplishment for Obama. Not three years in office, and the whole world is pissed at him… including his base.

I spoke of Newburgh, NY, earlier. The big tragedy there just now involves a mother and three kids, in a murder-suicide. Domestic trouble. Mom drives her mini-van off a boat ramp into the Hudson River, killing herself and two of her three kids. The third, a ten year old, climbed out a window.  Sadly, I do understand the things that motivate people to do such things, in a way. Acts of passion are the hardest ones to put any logic to, and I expect this is that.  But how long will it be, I wonder, before we see calls to ban the Mom-van, which was used in this act? How many times will we see domestic disputes turn into mass murder-suicides with these weapons? Now, no, I’m not serious. But what if Mom had used a gun? Why the difference?

I gotta get going. Off to Albany.

Reich come up short,  from Robert Reich, Puffington Post:

I hope the president decides he has to take a stand, and the sooner the better. Last December he caved in to Republican demands that the Bush tax cut be extended to wealthier Americans for two more years, at a cost of more than $60 billion. That was only the beginning — the equivalent of my cupcake.

Last night he gave away more than half the sandwich — $39 billion less than was budgeted for 2010, $79 billion less than he originally requested. Non-defense discretionary spending — basically, everything from roads and bridges to schools and innumerable programs for the poor — has been slashed.

I’d call Reich’s cuts a crap sandwich, but crap is tangible and real.   The money that Reich of whining about not being spent does not exists.  The national debt is over a trillion dollars. The nation is broke.   We can afford high speed rail lines that connect nothing to no where.

Rand on a Roll, I find it amusing that liberal pretend to be for choice, but consistently oppose free choice, except when choice is used a euphemism killing an unborn baby.  The junior senator from Kentucky continues to expose liberal hypocrisy, video:

Hat tip: Cubachi.

Geraghty’s Law Redux,  Jim Geraghty, the author law o eponymous law wins yet another convert,  from Micheal A. Walsh, New York Post:

After weeks of warning of the apocalypse, the leader of the Democratic Party, who never met imaginary or borrowed money that he didn’t want to spend, is now celebrating fiscal sobriety?

This about-face should surprise no one. As National Review’s Jim Geraghty is fond of reminding us, all Obama statements come with an expiration date. They are things said in the heat of political battle, not deeply held principles or beliefs.

Welcome aboard Mike    The blog has been on Geraghty’s band wagon since the late presidential  campaign.

Ronald Regan Redux, looking sounding more like the Gipper, from Robert Samualson, RCP:

WASHINGTON — We in America have created suicidal government; the threatened federal shutdown and stubborn budget deficits are but symptoms. By suicidal, I mean that government has promised more than it can realistically deliver and, as a result, repeatedly disappoints by providing less than people expect or jeopardizing what they already have. But government can’t easily correct its excesses, because Americans depend on it for so much that any effort to change the status arouses a firestorm of opposition that virtually ensures defeat.  Government’s very expansion has brought it into disrepute, paralyzed politics and impeded it from acting in the national interest.

Dumbo’s Plan Redux President Barack Obama to unveil yet another plan to again to pretend to tackle the deficit, from Chris Moody, Daily Caller:

President Obama will unveil a long-term deficit reduction plan this week that includes cuts to entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid and raises taxes, White House Senior Advisor David Plouffe said Sunday.

So questions, does Oama understand wither the problem or his own plan?  Not likely.  Will this Obama plan work any better than any of his other previous plans such as Porkulus, Obama Care and Mrs. Clinton’s war on Libya?

Trumping Dumbo, what Donald Trump and Barack Obama share in common is that they both have huge egos without for insufficient reasons.  The difference whereas Dumbo appears intent on bankrupting our nation, Trump has already bankrupted what three companies.

Trump is a publicity whore and playing the Obami like a fiddle.

First from Seth Forman, American Thinker:

[Donald] Trump has achieved something important. His decision to focus like a laser on Obama’s failure to produce a birth certificate has highlighted the absolute corruption of the American media on the subject of Obama, and the dangers of power granted in the absence of an unaligned press.

Second from Lukas I. Alpert, New York Daily News:

The White House stopped just short of dismissing Donald Trump as a clown Sunday – calling him a “sideshow” act with “zero chance” of becoming president.

Chief Obama adviser David Plouffe unleashed a barrage of stinging comments on Trump, who has recently trafficked in fringe conspiracy theories about Obama’s place of birth while taunting America with hints of a presidential run.

If as the Obami assert, Trump has “zero chance” of becoming president why is the Obami’s chief political adviser David Plouffe playing into Trump’s hand?”  If as the Obami allege Trump has zero chance, then Trump could be safely ignored.  The fact that Plouffe is having to take time to deal Trump, means that Trump must be scaring the Obami.

Just think, candidate who claim to fame is running a beauty pageant scares to Obami, what would happen if they had to face a real politicians, with real accomplishments?

None dare call it food, school children forced eat school provided lunches or go hungry, via Michelle:

At his public school, Little Village Academy on Chicago’s West Side, students are not allowed to pack lunches from home. Unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria.

Funny how the liberal mind works.   School children are given the choice to use condoms and freely engage in sex.  Minor females are given abortions without the knowledge of their parents.  But lo and behold, they not allowed to brown bag it from home.   Call it what you will.  It is not freedom.