Breakfast Scramble (Monday)

What Americans do not need, we don’t need any more elite bastards that somehow thinks the money you earn belongs to the government, from Richard H. Thaler,  New York Slimes:

WANT to give affluent households a present worth $700 billion over the next decade? In a period of high unemployment and fiscal austerity, this idea may seem laughable. Amazingly, though, it is getting traction in Washington.

You can not give what you do not have.   The money earned by the rich does not belong to Thaler to give to anybody.

Obama’s failure,  Kristen Power, Daily Beast:

Does Barack Obama suffer from an “empathy deficit?”

Ironically, it was Obama who used the phrase in a 2008 speech when he diagnosed the United States as suffering from the disorder. In a plea for unity, candidate Obama said lack of empathy was “the essential deficit that exists in this country.” He defined it as “an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother’s keeper; we are our sister’s keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.”

Yet, as president, Obama has demonstrated an almost pathological incapacity to connect with American’s fear and despair over the future

Empathy deficit?  I don’t know, but if I had to bet, empathy is just another long word in the teleprompter which Obama simply does not understand.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. directed a major political fund-raiser to offer former Gov. Rod Blagojevich millions of dollars in campaign cash in return for an appointment to the U.S. Senate, sources said the fund-raiser has told federal authorities.

The allegation by Oak Brook businessman Raghuveer Nayak counters public statements made as recently as last week by Jackson that he never authorized any deal to attempt to buy the Senate seat.

So says the Chicago Sun-Times.

But, look, gang, this should be a shock to nobody at all. Nor should the ultimate lack of prosecution be a surprise, given what we see in the cases of Charlie Rangel and Sheila Jackson Lee.

I will personally guarantee you that the race card is going to get played here.  Jackson is black, and plays the party line, therefore he cannot be found guilty of anything .  As with the other two.  Or, the “Black Panthers” and their intimidation and polling places. After all, the only reason anyone would raise any question about any of these people, is that we’re all a bunch of racists.  Right?

There is little to no doubt in anyone’s mind that there is going to be a massive change in Washington , come November, and probably an even bigger one, come 2013.  There’s also little doubt as to exactly why.  The Democrats and their policies have been a massive failure.  Not because they failed to get their policies enacted, but because they did manage to get their policies enacted.  Trouble was, they were the wrong policies.  They always are, it’s just very seldom that how wrong they were and are gets so clearly demonstrated.  The last time was during the Carter misadministration.  Obama is actually giving Carter, bad as he was, a run for the record of “Worst President Ever. ” Again, this is mostly due to Obama’s undeniable success in getting far leftist policies enacted.

As an example, let’s look at leftist tax policy.  This graphic, courtesy of Heritage Action for America, tells the tale quite well.

Is there anyone who doesn’t think that those kind of numbers aren’t going to damage the already fragile economy?  Aside from the liberal democrats and their true believers, I mean?

On this trajectory, Heritage Action says we will see:

• 230,000 fewer jobs in 2011, 500,000 fewer in 2012, and it only gets worse.
• $500 billion of your money sent to Washington politicians.
• 8 million senior citizens will face huge tax increases on their  investment income.

Welcome to the change Obama and the liberals brought. Yes, I’m quite serious.  This is exactly the change he promised.  That little episode on MSNBC the other day where the Obama supporters stood up and said she was tired of defending Obama and his administration and waiting for change to happen? The cruel joke is the problems of the country have on their plate right now, the joblessness, the high taxation, the reduced stature in the world, and the fear, are all a direct result of liberal Democrat policies, as enacted by the Democrats in all three branches of government.  Here’s the dirty little secret:

This is,  in fact the change that Obama promised us.

Client Number Nine disses Junior.  Disgraced ex-governor Eliot Spitzer calls Andrew Coumo dirty and nasty, from New York Daily News:

ALBANY – Disgraced ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer isn’t buying Andrew Cuomo’s kinder, gentler image.

“Behind the scenes he is the dirtiest, nastiest political player out there, and that is his reputation from years in Washington,” Spitzer told CNN on Thursday.

Tis  amusing.   By dirty and nasty,  does Client Nmbrr Nine mean to suggest that Junior boffed high price hookers with what dirty socks?     Maybe Zoe Lofgren would like Client Number Nine’s testimony.

Still lame, after all these years,  more Lame Stream Media stupidity.   This time from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

The FBI raided the Minneapolis homes of five antiwar activists, including three leaders of the Twin Cities peace movement, Friday morning as part of what it called a probe of “activities concerning the material support of terrorism.”

The Minneapolis office of an antiwar organization was also raided, protest leaders said. No one was arrested in any of the raids

Hat tip and more,  John Powerline:

During the Vietnam era, the “antiwar” movement was misnamed. Its leaders, for the most part, were not against war at all; they were just on the other side.  Today a series of raids in Minneapolis and Chicago suggested that the same might be true of today’s antiwar movement. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports: “FBI raids homes of several Twin Cities war protesters.”

Does journalism school teach that anti-war is synonym for anti-American?

Why do we call it the Lame Stream Media? From the totally irony challenged Chicago Tribune:

[Bill] Ayers co-founded the Weather Underground, an anti-war group held responsible for a series of bombings during the Vietnam War era, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.

Bombing military targets is an act of war.   The  same group, to wit the Weather Underground,  can not both be  anti-war while engaging in acts of war.

Hat tip and more:  Michelle.

And more Lame Stream Media d, George Stephanopoulos should be good at this.   After all, he worked  for one pervert, B.J. Clinton.   Now Stephanopoulos purpors to interview another, from ABC:

And Elmo told me today that he wants to sing with Perry again.

“We’ll have another one. Elmo loves Ms. Katy and we had a good time,” Elmo told me. “So we’ll have another play date.”

He also signed an autograph for my 5 year old, Harper, so I’m a hero at home

Forget Perry’s cleavage, for what is worth.  Elmo is clearly staring up Perry’s hemline, video:

Stephen Colbert makes the Donkeys look like asses, video:

Hat tip: Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit.

I loath congresscritter’s habits of loading up hearing with the testimony of celebutards.  As if being a celebrity actually imparts knowledge.   To Stephen Colbert’s credit, he knew being called as if he were an expert witness  was a joke, and  Colbert played as a joke., all very well.   Well done Mr. Colbert.

As for the congresscritter  Zoe Lofgren, (CA – 16) can anybody really be that stupid?   Lofgren can’t know the way to San Jose.   In fact, I wonder, why Lofgren can  even find the ladies room.

One dumb idea, Shikha Dalmia, Forbes:

Don’t Ask, however, will eventually go given the growing and overwhelming public opposition to it – even in the military’s own ranks. That is not the case with the Dream Act on which Republicans have inflamed public opinion almost to a point of no return. They called the Dream Act – yawn! – amnesty, an accusation that Democrats deny. They shouldn’t. The Act, which would give children of illegal aliens who sign up for military service or obtain a college education a shot at citizenship, is amnesty. And there is nothing wrong with it.

As a society, the way to get more a certain behavior to reward it and to get less to punish it.  The DREAM is intended to reward illegal immigrants, and those would only encourage further illegal immigration.   The last thing we need.

More over, Harry Reid’s pet DEEAM act would treat illegal immigrants better than some legal immigrants and citizens.    For example, who more deserviing in state tuition rates say in New York States, a child or family which lives in New Jersey but works in New York or a citizen of Mexico?

One dumb blond, Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) proves that some stereotypes are true.   Sanchez is both blond and dumb, video

Hat tip: Fausta

Darleen Click, Protein Wisdom, also points out that Sanchez is racist:

Behold Democrat Loretta Sanchez forgetting that some people might take offense at her wearing a white hood, even if she states her racist views in Spanish.

Darleen does not quite call Sanchez, Sheets Byrd in a skirt, but I will.    Judging from Darleen’s comments, Sanchez has just turned up the volume for the get of the vote drive, for our Vietnamese Americans.

Oh yeah, Sanchez does lend credence to the theory that when liberals talk about immigrants they only refer to illegal Hispanics.   What say you?

Governor Christie sends an Sicilian shiver down my leg, video:

Hat tip: Ace.

And I thought that Governor Christie said he was only half Sicilian.  It seems all Godfather to me.  And you?

Who would have thought that six weeks before a cliffhanger election, President Obama would have to reach down to the D list to fill a room to listen to him? Most of us low rollers arrived early to see President Obama up close and personal. Our tickets for the general reception at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York were only $100. Some thought the email invitation was a joke. Some bought tickets for $50 from their desperate Democratic committeeman. Some bought the same day.

Gail Sheehy, Daily Beast

It hard for Dumbo so see with his head stuck up his ass.

Franklin D.Roosevelt did say:

“Yesterday, December Seventh, was a day which will live in infamy.”

President Barack Hussein Obama might have  said if here was president in 1941:

“Yesterday, December Seventh, was a day which made us collectively stronger.

From the Washington Post via Nice Deb:

During an interview with Woodward in July, the president said, “We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger.”

From Dhimmitude.org:

Dhimmitude: the Islamic system of governing populations conquered by jihad wars, encompassing all of the demographic, ethnic, and religious aspects of the political system. The word “dhimmitude” as a historical concept, was coined by Bat Ye’or in 1983 to describe the legal and social conditions of Jews and Christians subjected to Islamic rule. The word “dhimmitude” comes from dhimmi, an Arabic word meaning “protected”.  Dhimmi was the name applied by the Arab-Muslim conquerors to indigenous non-Muslim populations who surrendered by a treaty (dhimma) to Muslim domination. Islamic conquests expanded over vast territories in Africa, Europe and Asia, for over a millennium (638-1683). The Muslim empire incorporated numerous varied peoples which had their own religion, culture, language and civilization. For centuries, these indigenous, pre-Islamic peoples constituted the great majority of the population of the Islamic lands. Although these populations differed, they were ruled by the same type of laws, based on the shari’a.

Tin pot tyrants , like Fidel Castro, and wannabes  like Dumbo, has an unshakable that their nation can be made strong if but only enough of her people are killed.    Those Joe Stalin waged war on his Kulaks, Mao Zedong waged his Cultural Revolution and Barack Hussein Obama support, abortion, infanticide and dhimintude.

You gotta have Hart.  Honorary  Swamp Stomper, Velma Hart, sends tingle down Chrissy Matthew’s leg, video:

Hat tip: Ed Morrissey, Hot Air.

Professor Thomas Sowell – 1, Dumbo – 0, Obamcare meets Basic Economics, loses, Patteico’s Pontifications:

So what do you think might happen if you sought to make health insurance more widely available for children — by simply mandating that companies with child-only policies make those policies available to children with pre-existing conditions?

So were the staffers who wrote Obamacare in secret too stupid to understand basic economics, or were trying to dupe the public?

As  minimum wage laws demonstrate, you can not force a business to purchase a commodity on which it does not expect to earn a profit.   Likewise business sells services with the expectation of earning a profit.    No business can expect to stay in business offering services at which they will lose money.    So if give a insurance company the option of selling insurance policies at a loss or simply not sell such policies, what choice do you think they will make.   Unlike the federal government, business can not simply print money to cover operating losses.

Honorary Swamp Stomper of the Day:  Velma Hart:

Quite frankly, I’m exhausted – I’m exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now. I have been told that I voted for a man who said was going to change things in a meaningful way for the middle class. I’m one of those people and I’m waiting, sir. I’m waiting. I don’t feel it yet. And I thought while it wouldn’t be in great measure, I’d feel it in some small measure.  I have two children in private school and the financial recession has taken an enormous toll on my family. My husband and I have joked for years that we thought we were well beyond the hot dogs and beans era of our lives, but, quite frankly, it’s starting to knock on our door and ring true that that might be where we’re headed again, and, quite frankly, Mr. President, I need you to answer this honestly. Is this my new reality?

Well done, my lady.

The recession is dead, long live the recession, MSNBC.

The “Great Recession” has ended, officially.

At least, that’s the official word from the private research organization that calls the beginnings and endings of recessions, the National Bureau of Economic Research. The NBER said Monday that the recession which began in December 2007 ended in June 2009.

That marked the beginning of an expansion, the NBER said, so that any new downturn would be a new recession

This is going to make the Blame Bush card just a wee bit harder to play, but  I fully expect the LSM  to continue to play the card anyhow.

See I told you so, Nice Deb version:

In the wake of that poll, some pundits (including me) predicted that a visit to church would be in Obama’s near future.

Confusing Pee with Pee, from Babalu:

Dictators, like Castro, are not interested in their people but only their personal power.   If keeping the Cuban people in perpetual power is the what is takes to keep Castro in power, then poverty is what it will be.

Declaration of Independence, Cliff  Notes version, video:

Is Dumbo too dumb to read a teleprompter, or is just allergic to the word Creator?  The important, and revolutionary, thing about the Declaration of Independence is not that right did not emanate from God.  Kings had long claimed reign under the divine authority of a god.  Rather the Declaration so boldly asserts that Men, and not governments are endowed with rights.  In the King George, and Barack Obama, version power flows from God, to regent to the people.  In the Thomas Jefferson version rights flow for God, to the People, to their government.  You would fully expect a professor of constitutional law to aware of this.  So why did Obama butcher this detail?

What is wrong with to so-called climate science, from Bill Frezza, Real Clear Markets:

Kerry Emanuel and Daniel Rothman at the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at MIT.

Kerry and Dan are neither climate change zealots nor global warming deniers. In fact, they are not even in the business of making climate predictions. In their view the wildly varying climate forecasts spit out by hugely complex black-box computer models have not only become disconnected from sound science but have drawn all the money and talent away from the critical challenge of trying to understand how basic climate mechanisms work.

As your grandfather might have said, and should have said, is that it matter of putting the cart before the horse.    You can not make dependable predictions of climate models is you do not know how the model should work.    As your computer science professor said, “Garbage in, garbage out.”

FDR brought  Americans the New Deal.

HST gave us:The Square Deal

FDR: The New Deal

JFK:   The New Frontier

LBJ: The Great Society

Barack Hussien Obama: The New Reality?

Hat tip:  Tim Williams and Jim Geraghty, Campaign Spot.

Source and video via RCP.

“I’m one of your middle class Americans. And quite frankly, I’m exhausted.  Exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for,” a woman told President Obama at a town hall.

“My husband and I have joked for years that we thought we were well beyond the hot dogs and beans era of our lives, but, quite frankly, it’s starting to knock on our door and ring true that that might be where we’re headed again, and, quite frankly, Mr. President, I need you to answer this honestly. Is this my new reality?,” she added.

Yes Virginia,  Santa Claus is dead.

What’s scarier: a 9.6 percent unemployment rate and $13 trillion debt? Or the Tea Party?

Mary Katherine Ham, Weekly Standard

Dumbo’s economics, It seems obvious that Dumbo b/k/a Barrack Obama doesn’t know much, if anything, about economics.  Dumbo does seem to know how to play the class envy card. from Matthew Continetti, Weekly Standard:

What’s more, President Obama’s arguments for the tax hike are unpersuasive. He says an extension would add to the deficit, wouldn’t be fair, and wouldn’t help the economy. The deficit argument is laughable. The cost of extending tax rates for the poor and middle class dwarfs the cost of extending them for the rich. A president serious about fiscal austerity would want all of the tax cuts to expire, or propose offsets in spending. Obama doesn’t support either option. He isn’t serious.

Obama isn’t serious because he thinks fairness is more important than fiscal responsibility. What’s fair? Obama says households making more than $250,000 don’t deserve tax relief because the past decade has left them well off. He’s the cop who’s arrived to break up the rich people’s party. But Obama never explains just how the gains at the upper end of the income distribution have hurt the rest of us. Maybe that’s because he can’t. The market is not a zero-sum game. Earning an additional dollar is not the equivalent of theft.

Now I’ll grant you that fair exist as a concept.  The problem is in the political arena, the meaning of fair is impossible to define.   What is the magically property which makes not raising taxes for those making less that two hundred fifty thousand dollars, but raising taxes for those make more than two hundred fifty thousand dollars somehow fair?    How did Dumbo arrive at this figure or did just pull out his elephant sized distal end?

I say the name supporting tax increases for somebody else to pay is not fairness, but rather greed.  What say you?

Dumbo needs some new speech writers, Dumbo’s speeches are more cliche ridden than a John Wayne movie, from Politico:

President Barack Obama on Saturday sought to fire up his most loyal base of support, telling the audience at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual dinner that “the time for action is now” to protect the changes brought by his administration and the Democratic-led Congress, such as health care reform and the financial system overhaul

Pardon me Roy, but I’ve heard this speech before, “Now is the time”, “Never again”, “For too long”  and “Let me be clear!”    Mr. President, find a new speech writer, or three.    The President is boring.

Colin Powell touches base with sanity,  Dumbo’s supposed halo has slipped so much that even Colin Powlel can see the writing on the wall, from Politico:

Powell said the president needed to focus “like a razor blade” on employment, giving the same level of attention to jobs as he did to passing bills overhauling health care and education

I don’t expect Powell to stay on the ranch too long, but nice to see the General drop in for a visit.    I don’t wee why Dumbo would be motivated to worry about creating any jobs.  He has one.     As for a razor like focus, that is rather hard to do with a butter knife like mind.

If there is one thing you need to know about Bernie Marcus is that unlike the entire Obama administration, he has had to meet a payrol,video:

Hat tip: Rick, Wizbang.

Real business experience means that Marcus has personally forget more about business than thee entire Obama adminstration ever knew.

HEY BILLY:

You’ve nailed this one.

I am going to die laughing at one of the most spectacular dumbells of my time on this planet. Andrew Sullivan, you are just darling, you adorable little fireball, you. You’re “radicalized”!

Is that what it is, Andy, when you finally come to the bankruptcy of your under-writing those two blank checks called “Hope” and “Change”? Hmm? You get to be a “radical” just because the fink of your heart’s desire is now clear to you?

Well, look… It is what it always has been, Billy.  The only difference now is he’s begun to recognize the consequences of it all.  Granted that he still trying to dodge them , and thereby this new “radicalization” twist.  But it’s still the same nonsense.  Let’s examine the word radical for just a moment.

1.

of or going to the root or origin; fundamental: a radical difference.

I would add a side comment to this, the even bigger fool is Charles Johnson who followed the lead of  Saint Andrew the Incontinent.  Ponder the ramifications of that for a moment.