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Sunday, 30 September 2012
Obama Fiddles While American Embassies Burn
"Barack" writes to me in an fundraising email that "We're on the brink of a milestone," referring to his campaign's goal of "10 million grassroots donations in one election year."
Meanwhile, our country hit another, more consequential milestone today:
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A firefight broke out between U.S. forces and their Afghan army allies in eastern Afghanistan Sunday, killing two Americans and three Afghan soldiers and pushing the number of U.S. troops killed in the long-running war 2,000.
We have a commander in chief who is AWOL in a global war against America, a commander in chief who talks in bumper snickers about killing Osama bin Laden while hundreds of rioters in countries across the Middle East attack our embassies, burn our our flag,replace it with flags of Islamic jihad, and chant threats, directed to him by name:
"Obama, Obama, We Are All Osama."
Our ambassador is assassinated in an attack on 9/11, and before he is even buried, the commander in chief is fundraising in Las Vegas? This is obscene.
If presidents were subject to court martial, this one could be tried for negligence of duty, but they are not. And there is no time for impeachment. We simply must repudiate his failure at the ballot box.
If we cannot do that, I see little hope that our republic might ever be restored.
WV's 'Culture of Corruption' Quote of the Day
Darrell McGraw, the specialist in barratry who has served profited as West Virginia's Attorney General for nearly twenty years, recently made headlines when he assaulted a staffer from the opposition campaign.
McGraw had this to say when challenger Patrick Morrisey invited him to a public debate on the issues:
"I don't get into debates about how to enforce the law."
Ironically, McGraw's official Dot-Gov biography says "He is known for enjoying a good philosophical debate and a good joke."
The joke, I'm afraid, is on the citizens of West Virginia. McGraw explained the way he sees his job in a meeting with the editorial board of the Charleston Daily Mail:
"Ultimately, the Attorney General’s Office is involved in protecting consumers in a financial transaction. It is what we do."
So for the better part of two decades, McGraw has been participating in lawsuits in order to raise revenue (which the state then pours down its benefits hole), and it is on this basis that he's running for a record fifth term.
The Daily Mail, continued:
.... McGraw said his office has brought in more than $2 billion from consumer protection actions since he was first elected in 1992.
.... McGraw's office plans to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars this year advertising its services to consumers and much, if not all, of that advertising will bear McGraw's name. A large portion of the money will come from a national mortgage settlement that attorneys general from across the country entered into earlier this year.
McGraw said if cases are settled, the services the settlements offer West Virginians have to be advertised. He said he believes a lawyer's name needs to be on ads that advertise such legal services.
"The election and the settlement coincide - and guess what?" McGraw said. "I'm glad."
WV's Democrat governor, Earl Ray Tomblin, only narrowly won election in 2011, by a two-point margin.
According to JudicialHellholes.org (where WV ranks No. 3 among all such hellholes in the nation), state Attorney General McGraw "has frequently come under fire for ... teaming up with private personal injury law firms and using settlement money collected on behalf of the public to fund his own pet projects."
A recent report by the Manhattan Institute called McGraw a “pioneer in suing pharmaceutical companies” and noted that he has “courted an army of ‘special assistant’ attorneys general,” i.e., private personal injury lawyers, who take a significant share of any recovery, along with a considerable interest in McGraw’s reelections.
West Virginians are paying the price. A federal appellate court in July ruled that the federal government may withhold Medicaid funds from West Virginia because McGraw owed the feds $446,607 from a 2004 settlement as reimbursement for amounts the federal government spent on Medicaid in the state that year. Rather than put the settlement funds toward healthcare funding, McGraw gave the bulk of the money collected in a settlement with a pharmaceutical firm to the Public Employees Insurance Agency and retained a portion in his office’s consumer protection fund. The ruling is expected to have a similar effect on a pending claim by the federal government that McGraw shortchanged them $2.7 million from a $10 million settlement he reached with another drug company for “aggressively marketing” Oxycontin. McGraw unilaterally decided to donate those funds to substance-abuse programs around the state and to the University of Charleston for a pharmacy school. In both instances, McGraw avoided giving the money to the state’s Department of Health and Human Resources in an attempt to prevent the federal Medicaid program from collecting mandated reimbursements.
Handpicked personal injury lawyers hired to represent the state received substantial fees in both cases. For instance, as the Manhattan Institute documents, McGraw hired four private firms that had given $47,500 to his campaigns to handle one such case. These firms collected $3 million in fees from the state’s recovery.
West Virginians have become used to having crooks on the ballot. Maybe that's why Keith Judd's strong showing against Obama back in May didn't shock as many people here as it did elsewhere.
I would be negligent, however, if I didn't mention that there are still many good people here who are devoted this beautiful place and are fighting hard to clean up our politics, election after election.
.... After decades of Democratic dominance, West Virginia voted for the Republican candidate in the last three presidential elections....
The ... question is: [W]ill state-level races, where Democrats still dominate, begin to shift and match the state’s Republican preference in presidential elections?
According to history professor Robert Rupp, “You can’t have a two-legged stool. At some point West Virginia is going to change.”
If you'd like to help steer my state in a desperately needed new direction, I urge you to contribute to the Patrick Morrisey for Attorney General campaign, Bill Maloney's campaign for Governor and/or West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse.
We could certainly use the help.
Also please note the campaign of our friend Allen Loughry, who is running for State Supreme Court. Allen wrote the book on West Virginia's political corruption -- literally.
Friday, 28 September 2012
Outrages continue to come fast and furious...
The outrages of this administration, headed by Presidential Eye Candy, continue to come so 'fast and furious' that it's beyond documentation. Who can even make a list, when several times a day you find out something even more outrageous than the last?
The FBI has yet to arrive at Benghazi. That's an outrage. Does anyone really think there's any point in "securing the crime scene" 17 days after the fact? But it's also an outrage that as far back as ten days ago, Obama spokesperson Jay Carney asserted to the press corpse that an "active" investigation was ongoing. It was a LIE.
There has been so much going on, that I never even get around to blogging most of it. (I know, I should quit, but I can't bring myself to stop before the election.) A couple of days ago I was infuriated by the fact that because Michelle Obama wants to run the lives of our children, they are going hungry at school. Can you imagine... American children are hungry in our government schools? It's an outrage, and all because we have allowed the unelected Missus Presidential Eye Candy to determine both the number of calories our children ingest during the school day, and in what forms those calories are allowed to appear.
- The standards — which cap meal calories at 650 for students in kindergarten through fifth grade, at 700 calories for middle school students and 850 for high school students — also dictate the number of breads, proteins, vegetables and fruits children are allowed per meal. (Daily Caller)
- Under the new regulations, cafeterias are required to serve twice as many fruits and vegetables while limiting proteins and carbohydrates. For an average high school student, that means two baked fish nuggets, a cup of vegetables, half a cup of mashed potatoes, one whole grain roll and 8 ounces of fat free milk is the fuel that served to get them through their last four hours of classes.
- It is so bad that one teacher posted a photo of her lunch--one cheese breadstick, a small spoonful of marinara sauce, three apple slices and some raw spinach. (News.Gather.com)
When she asked why there was no meat in the marinara sauce, she was told that the protein quota had been met by the cheese in the breadstick.
Compare and contrast with the choices available in the private school attended by the Obamas' daughters, where the $34,000 annual tuition entitles students to "free" hot lunch:
Lower School
Snack: Local Zucchini Bread
Beet, Fennel & Orange Salad
Grilled Cheese Variety
Spicy Lentil Chili
Steamed Fresh Broccoli
Brown Rice Pilaf
Orange Wedges
Middle School - Upper School
Tomato Soup
Arugula, Fennel and Parmesan Salad
Atomic Tuna Salad
All Natural Beef Chili
Vegan Spicy Lentil Chili
Homemade Cornbread
Steamed Fresh Broccoli
Brown Rice Pilaf
Orange Wedges
The problem for us is that the US Department of Agriculture doles out some of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars along with some monies borrowed from China, to pay not only for food stamps, but also for free lunches for poor kids. Schools risk losing that funding if they don't toe the Gubmint line. So get this. In response, the Gubmint had this to say (in the person of Janey Thornton, a USDA Deputy Undersecretary):
- "One thing I think we need to keep in mind as kids say they're still hungry is that many children aren't used to eating fruits and vegetables at home, much less at school. So it's a change in what they are eating. If they are still hungry, it's that they are not eating all the food that's being offered." (ibid)
Outrageous.
Now our domestic policy is horrendous enough, but in foreign affairs it's really frightening. Thomas Lifson tells us that "Susan Rice blew off Netanyahu's UN speech."
Our UN ambassador, last heard from selling the lie that Benghazi was a spontaneous response to an internet video on 5 Sunday shows, was simply too busy to honor the Prime Minister of Israel's speech to the UN General Assembly with her attendance. This body language amplified Obama's snub of Netanyahu when both men were at the UN, communicating a clear message to the mullahs in Tehran and the rest of the world:
The US is backing away from its relationship to Israel. And after the election, Obama will have a lot more flexibility.
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speak before a meeting at the Regency hotel, Thursday, Sept. 27, 2012 in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
In addition, there are of course the "free" cell phones, "free" colonoscopies, "free" 'morning-after' abortifacients, Solyndra Redux at SoloPower, the closing of the Campbell's soup plant, and various free speech getting shut down.
Obama Schedule || Friday, September 28, 2012
9:45 am || Receives the Presidential Daily Briefing
10:15 am || Meets with senior advisers [Valerie Jarrett, David Plouffe]
4:20 pm || Delivers remarks at a fundraiser; Capital Hilton, Washington
6:05 pm || Delivers remarks at a fundraiser; private residence, Washington
8:25 pm || Delivers remarks at a fundraiser; Capital Hilton, Washington
Media Operatives: Liars, Cheaters & Thieves
In the last month of his presidency, George W. Bush received the "strong disapproval" of 43% of Likely Voters. Today, Obama gets the same! 43% strong disapproval.
And yet...
At last, an Adult in the Room
This iconic photo of Bibi made the frontpage of the WSJ and the Washington Post, as well as the fishwrap on the East Coast but not the West Coast. At USA Today, it was small and below the fold. And in all of Europe, it appeared only on the front page of Der Tagesspiegel in Berlin. So much for warning the world.
I watched Bibi speak at the UN General Assembly yesterday, and thought both he and the speech were impeccable -- and his prop, iconic. His delivery was the personfication of what Jabotinsky called "hadar," a Hebrew term that is difficult to translate. Roughly, it is a kind of nobility that is born of integrity and based on an understanding of the Jewish people as descendants of the kings of Israel.
Literally, the word means shine or glow, but as Jabotinsky taught it, it implied a certain chivalry in conduct and life-style, a combination, as he defined it, of "outward beauty, respect, self-esteem, politeness, faithfulness.
For ten or maybe even fifteen minutes after his speech had ended, I felt a happiness I had thought might never return to me. It was a feeling of relief, and safety. There was - at last - an adult in the room, someone who understood the problem in all its complexity as well as its simplicity, someone who knew what to do and will do it. I was proud of Bibi. He took the light of Jewish character into that den of liars, cheaters and thieves, and while he stood at the podium, the darkness receded.
But then, of course, the denunications started almost immediately. Most offensive to me were the comments of treacherous American Jews in the Punditry. I will not repeat them here, in the hope that if ignored, their words will wilt on the vine, never to see harvest.
Meanwhile, the Obamists are downplaying expectations for the upcoming debates. I guess Eye Candy is good for 'The View,' but not so much when it comes to debates on important, even urgent, matters of national policy. David Axelrod "explains" that the debate is slanted in Romney's favor - by way of Alicia Cohn at The Hill:
[D]ebates—and particularly the first debate—generally favor challengers. Five out of the last six challengers were perceived to win the first debate against an incumbent president. Most profit from having debated throughout the primary season, as Gov. Romney will. And it is natural for a challenger to gain simply from standing on the stage, toe-to-toe with the incumbent. Finally, the challenger, unencumbered by the responsibilities of being the President, has more time to prepare—a benefit of which Gov. Romney has taken full advantage.
But what would you call our Presidential Eye Candy, if not "unencumbered by the responsibilities of being the President"? He hasn't been encumbered by his Daily Presidential Briefings, which he prefers to skim on his iPad. He hasn't been encumbered by meetings with world leaders at the United Nations, which he's outsourced to Hillary. And he certainly hasn't been encumbered by his responsibility to tell us the truth, that his administration was unprepared for a yet another deadly 9/11 al Qaeda attack on Americans, from which he failed to keep us safe -- and then conspired to cover up that failure (see "Benghazi-Gate").
Well, the cynic in me has no doubt that his media operatives will leak the debate questions to him in advance, anyway. Of course the honesty and integrity of these debates are way too important to leave in the hands of our distrusted media, but that's exactly where they sit.
It's really too bad that in this country there's no adult in the room... just a bunch of unaddressed elephants.
Thursday, 27 September 2012
His Arrogance Spent HALF of his 30 minutes at the UN on Muslim Grievances
Eye candy?
After Obama's UN speech, stakes higher for Netanyahu
Bits and pieces:
- During the most important general foreign policy address in his annual schedule, [Obama] referred a whopping six times to a single anti-Muslim YouTube “video”...
- The president devoted half of his thirty minutes to the grievances of the Muslim world. “[T]he video…is an insult to Muslims.” “Muslims have suffered…” “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”
- In the course of this exhibition he even managed to insult Holocaust survivors...
- President Obama’s words on Iran reinforced the widely-held belief in Israel that he does not have the political will necessary to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon. The president stood before world leaders, wrung his hands and said this about Iran: “[I]t has failed to take the opportunity to demonstrate that its nuclear program is peaceful.”
Maybe that’s because the Iranian nuclear program isn’t peaceful!
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/09/27/after-obama-un-speech-stakes-higher-for-netanyahu/#ixzz27gnT2Lrg