There They Go Again

William McGurn: The Stephanopoulos Standard - WSJ.com:

Good article on how Republicans need to handle the obvious press bias. Reagan tended to do a good job of not confronting Carter's obvious attempts to build off the press picture of him as some sort of "dangerous, wacko" and to calmly let people realize what Carter was trying to do. Thus Mitt with Stephanapoulos ... no need to get ones undies in a bundle, just calmly point out that it is "silly" to be asking questions about something that is on no agenda anywhere.

I question the wisdom of having so many Republican primary debates. We know the MSM / Democrat establishment approach will be to do their best to make sure that EVERY Republican candidate is "damaged goods" by the time they get through the debates and step up to face their guy BO. Why make it so easy for them??

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BO Campaign Literature as "News"

Poor, but feeding the rich - CNN.com:

This was the center CNN headline this AM, it was "news". A few points:

-- The "poor" have been feeding "the rich" since Biblical times. I suspect that the "poor" will ALWAYS feed the rich ... and work for them, and wait on them in restaurants, clean their homes, park their cars, etc, etc, etc ... this is "news" in the sense that the sun rising in the east is news. When "the rich" are Democrats, they love to have the folks taking care of them be illegal aliens ... that is why they want open borders.

-- One thing that has changed over history is that the "poor" didn't get poor after divorce/re-marriage, living in a home that cost 2.5 times their yearly income and having hi-tech stents put in their hearts. These guys would call me "rich", and I never paid 2.5x my yearly income for a house.

-- The "poor" in the past -- and in not very many places today, get heart stents put in. They also typically didn't and in most of the world yet today, don't get enough to eat to have enough cholesterol in their arteries to even need a stent. The 2.5 Billion ACTUAL POOR in the world TODAY that have no sanitary facilites usually die in smelly ways way before they need stents. Oh, and their buck a day lifestyle means that there aren't any of their cardboard "homes" that are 2.5x their income.

-- Ruth's Chris Steakhouse is for "the 1%" only in the dreams of CNN. I've not been to one since I get to go to IA and have steaks nearly as good for $10 ... so it just isn't cost effective, but I know plenty of people that are maybe "upper 20%" who have been to one more than once.

-- He serves "the 1% of Americans who have enjoyed nearly 60% of all gains in income over the last three decades.". Well, this couple was poor, "sort of made it" with a $100K home and $40K income in the last "15 years", and now they are "poor". Doesn't that tell anyone anything??

Fortune top 10 1980 --- Exxon, GM, Ford, Texaco oil, Chevron oil, Gulf Oil, IBM, GM, Amoco oil

Fortune top 10 2010 -- WalMart, Exxon, Chevron, GE, Bank of America, Conoco Phillips Oil, AT&T, Ford, JP Morgan Chase, HP

Guess what? They aren't the same. Oil, Cars and tech are still there --- but many of the names are different, and banking/finance has become more important. The retail giant WalMart has become top of them all.

So the "top 1%" enjoys a lot of gains (and losses), but THEY ARE NOT THE SAME PEOPLE OVER 30 YEARS!!!!! My guess would be that there is virtually nobody that was top 1% in 1980 that still is in 2010. It is like being the top 1% of anything -- QBs, hitters, etc ... your time at the very pinnacle is SHORT, and then someone else takes over in the 1% spotlight. The top 1% of hitters did some high percentage of the hits in the last 30 years as well -- thing is, NOT ONE of the top 1% of hitters from '80 is still playing at all!!! Talking about "gains of the 1% over 30 years" is like talking about "percentage of beer drank by the top 1% of beer drinkers over the past 30 years". I GUARANTEE you that not a single top 1% beer drinker from 1980 was still in that category by 2010!!!

So the bottom line is that this headline and article is the equivalent of an Obama ad, since we know he is going to run on "the wealth gap". CNN figures that they need work hard so that everyone is suitably angry about how HORRIBLE this "gap" is ... even though the gap is pretty much 100% a fabrication just to produce more polarization in our society -- of course since this is polarization that the Democrats and the MSM want, this is GOOD polarization!!

Democrats are just so completely incensed about the SCOTUS ruling on "corporations being able to contribute as people" ... it means "more money" that they believe is going to go to Republicans -- of course,  Google, Apple, most of the Banks / Stock houses, etc contribute to DEMOCRATS, but never mind. Even if they didn't, it would take INFINITE money to counter the MSM doing campaign literature as "news".

We have a LONG way to go before a significant number of the sheep figure this out.

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The Right of the Left

Newt Gingrich New Hampshire Event Disrupted By Occupy Protesters:

I often hear people get all bent out of shape about "the shout shows", or "the blowhards on conservative radio" -- sometimes they say things like "why do conservatives support that stuff??".

I went to hear Newt Gingrich speak in Rochester about 15 years ago -- not long after the Republicans took over the house for the first time in over 40 years. In order to get in, my friend and I had to walk right through a loudly chanting union picket line being led by a Democrat that ran for the congressional seat here a number of times. We didn't mind, both of us solidly over 6' tall and 200 lbs, we figured they would stop and let us pass without problem, and they did. No question however that they were loudly and directly trying to intimidate people.

Fast forward close to a decade, and it is '02, a Senate debate in Rochester. Paul Wellstone and Norm Coleman are there. The crowd is of course admonished to not demonstrate and not interrupt the speakers. The Republicans followed that with the exception of some clapping and a few cheers. The Democrats??? Even people that I recognized from work or retirees were wildly booing and screaming in a manner that went beyond even what you typically see out of drunk fans at a game. They cheered with such joy for "their guy" and booed and yelled derogatory things at the Republican with such fervor you could tell that the "snake brain" was fully in charge. Their politics was a blood sport of a sort that I have no personal understanding of. I know we are not to talk about "Nazis", but the films of the Germans were the only reference point I had to that level of emotion being attached to politics.

There have been a few other cases over the years where I've observed such things -- even on the media. "Code Pink" for example disrupted both the '04 and '08 Republican conventions. I'm sure that nasty left-wing demonstrators will be heavily in evidence around, and likely breaking into this years Republican convention as well.

I checked around the web a bit. CNN has nothing on the disruption of the Gingrich event. I know when any Tea Party people at all showed up at Obama events -- even though they were quiet and I don't believe there has had to be a single arrest at one of their events,but never the less the media tended to look at the Tea Party as "threatening". This weekend was the anniversary of the AZ Giffords shooting -- we all remember that the media went INSTANTLY to WILDLY blaming Sarah Palin and the Tea Party without a single shred of evidence. They were 100% wrong, but that is so standard for the MSM, it really wasn't news.

The whole "Occupy" movement has been nothing but a stream of ill-formed obscenities aimed at some chimera of "anyone with any money" --- although most of them seem to have smart phones, laptops and other baubles, they do seem committed to a solidly slacking lifestyle. The media certainly has no trouble with them shouting, blocking things, swearing, beating drums, carrying signs that talk about violence, etc. -- from the MSM POV, there is nothing remotely threatening about OWS -- in fact, the most common comparison is "Arab Spring".

It seems that any form of "protest", including wild statements by entertainers at awards shows, shouting down people, blocking people, defacing all manner of property, burning flags, etc is somehow "positive grass-roots democracy in action" as long as it serves Democrats. 

On the other hand, Fox, Rush Limbaugh, etc -- money making media formats with really not very much actual "shouting", and certainly no profanity, calls to violence, etc are somehow "bad / dangerous / childish / liars / etc".

I truly believe that the well reasoned intellectual position of the left relative to the thoughts and speech of the "right" is "SHUT THE F**K UP!!!!" ... and they remain ever more angry that the nasty folks on the right don't just do so. 

Meanwhile, whatever they want to do -- shout down folks, try to intimidate and block people, spend billions of dollars collected by public unions for and against whatever they want, overturn elections via recall efforts ... "whatever", is completely protected and "good news".

No double standard here.

The left has a "right" to pretty much do anything they want to impose their politics from the point of view of the establishment ... the right has the "right" to remain silent, or preferably dead. 

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Beating Up IA

In Iowa, a foreign country called the GOP - PostPartisan - The Washington Post:

Having grown up in heaven (WI) and then moved to MN for a 34 year career, I often feel about IA as I once did about my younger siblings. I'll beat them up all I want, but if you try, you are toast.

Full disclosure, my wife is from deepest darkest IA. Couple of my favorite IA jokes:

Did you hear that IA put in artificial turf in their stadium? ... They were having too much trouble with their cheerleaders grazing ...

Do you know why IA doesn't have any professional sports teams? Ans ... Because then MN would get jealous and want to have some as well. (that one is really good considering my background)

But I digress ... here we have Rochard Cohen, from the Washington Post, declaring IA and Republicans to be "foreigners". SOMEBODY is a "foreigner" in what was once America. That is exactly what this election, and indeed all the elections since the '30s have been about. The "liberals/progressives" believe that "Nation" means "United States of Europe". Pay no mind to the fact the Europe is in danger of collapse on an even more rapid timetable than the $15T in debt and $60-200T in unfunded liabilities bankrupt US. The "progressive" answer is Mo-Bigga Government ... and abortion on demand, and smaller families, and no religion, and everything an entitled right, and ...

C0hen's "America" is "Europe" ... probably some gauzy combination of Norway, Sweden, Germany and France. Secular, paternal, snobbish, soft, entitled, smug and opposed to all the attributes that once made American exceptional. To some degree, some of those exceptional American attributes still live on in IA and other "fly-over states" ... TX, ND, SD, etc. and Cohen hates them. He hates them because they ARE very very "foreign" to him -- so outlandish he can barely imagine the form of "lower life" that would cling to guns, God, family and honest work, rather than sneeringly demand "rights".

There really are "Two Americas" ... one is "Europe", where Cohen lives, and yes, the other is out here in flyover country, the remnant of a once-great exceptional nation.

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Frenzied and Futile

Government: The redistributionist behemoth - The Washington Post:

People are less dissatisfied by what they lack than by what others have. And when government engages in redistribution in order to maximize the happiness of citizens who become more envious as they become more comfortable, government becomes increasingly frenzied and futile.

or as I put it, wealth is finite, envy is infinite.

Good one by George -- he hits the salient point that needs to be made OVER AND OVER. The US entitlement state is busily transferring wealth from the poorest Americans -- the young, to the wealthiest Americans -- the elderly, while the Democrats react politically to the only current attempt to remedy that -- the Ryan Plan, with the cynical pushing Grandma off the cliff ad.

It is the partisanship (usually of the right) that is constantly derided in the press. The hypocrisy (mostly of the left) needs more equal time!

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Kumbaya is a Song, Not a Poilicy

A word from “Zeb” Zobenica | Power Line:

Well worth the read. He pretty much nails OWS and unfortunately WAY too close to 50% of our current population for comfort.

A quick listen to the posturing on the straits / gulf out of Iran and the Chinese flexing their airpower, aircraft carrier, space muscles and of course economic power ought to be enough for people to realize that the world is still a very large, competitive and dangerous place.

But as always, it isn't -- until hit up aside the head with some serious lumber, around half of the population stumbles on without any clue ...

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How Heartless Can I Be???

Will false diagnosis cost Minnesota girl her life? | StarTribune.com:

In a nation by and for lawyers, this is an example of something that we have to fight. I don't care how adorable the little girl is -- this is a cancer that is diagnosed 350 times per year!!! So to not diagnose a "bump" on a baby as something that only shows up 350 times a year in the nation as cancer is malpractice?? Do you know what that means??

It means that we add to the never ending set of biopsies and tests to the already bloated list, all to save AT BEST 350 kids per year (and we won't save half that many). SIDs kills about 2,500 every year by comparison -- just as cute, just as dead -- they just don't have to do all the chemo.

We can't just keep rolling up the costs of "defensive medicine" endlessly. We are all going to die, some of us young. As technology gets better the supposedly "preventable" death potentials rise, but if we demand that Doctors test for all possible conditions, no matter how rare, and then sue them if they fail to, our medical costs will continue to grow so much as to bankrupt the system and prevent reasonable care for any of us!!

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WARNING ... Off By One??

Iran warns U.S. over aircraft carrier - CNN.com:

BO assured us he would just sit down and talk with Iran. Gee, I wonder why they would issue us a warning??? Did they forget that "The One" was our leader??? Oops, perhaps we were "off by one" and we are being led by "B ZERO" ???

Perhaps he could just apologize to them?

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Purple Cow New Year

Seth's Blog: The chance of a lifetime:

Seth has written a bunch of books -- a number of which I've read. "Purple Cow" is just a memorable name.

I read his blog most days on NewsFire -- I think his New Years advice is worthy of a wider audience.

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329K or 27K??? PANIC!!

KNIGHT: Voter ID terrifies Democrats - Washington Times:

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson rejected Mr. Perez’s math and explained on Fox News why the law is necessary. The stateDepartment of Motor Vehicles audited a state Election Commission report that said 239,333 people were registered to vote but had no photo ID. The DMV found that 37,000 were deceased, more than 90,000 had moved to other states, and others had names not matched to IDs. That left only 27,000 people registered without a photo ID but who could vote by signing an affidavit as to their identity.

So Mr Fast and Furious, Eric Holder bandies about 239K voters that MIGHT be "disenfranchised", and the real number shows 302,333 potential fraudulent votes -- still registered, but no longer eligible -- and DUH, had no photo ID!!

There can ONLY be ONE single reason that Democrats are foursquare against photo ID. They are well aware that they run at least 10s and probably 100s or thousands or more illegal votes through key areas of the country that are high percentage Democrat!!! If voters have to have a photo ID, something around 5% of "the vote" in many key areas will suddenly "disappear", and it could be FAR worse than that!!!

At present we have NO IDEA how big the number of fraudulent voters are out there, but every number that I'd seen looks like it is at least 100's of thousands in most states!!

It is little wonder that Democrats are in COMPLETE PANIC on this one!!

Oh, I bought a new iPhone 4 this weekend -- guess what? I had to produce a state provided photo ID!! Hear any complaints about cell phone companies requiring photo ID?? Know anyone with a cell phone?? I rest my case!!

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BO Death Penalty vs Life

Obama signs defense bill 'with reservations' - CNN.com:

"I want to clarify that my administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens," Obama said in a statement Saturday. "Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation."

However he WILL kill US citizens abroad, and HAS already done so .... at least with drones.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/30/national/main20113853.shtml

Do we have a press in this country at all?? They raised holy hell about W detaining FOREIGN fighters at Gitmo. Now they are silent as lambs on Gitmo, and on BO KILLING US CITIZENS abroad ... but are completely willing to support complete BO gibberish that he is somehow holier than thou because he won't hold them "indefinitely". I bet he doesn't claim he supports endless Trillion $$$ deficits as well, but they look pretty darned "indefinite" to me!!!

I guess in this case he is "moral" because he ONLY supports the death penalty.

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Change is Constant

Even the Warmists Don't Believe In Global Warming - Forbes:

Good little summary of the weakness of the warmist position. The most damning to me is that the group would blatantly oppose technology that allowed carbon to be sequestered, even though it may be vastly more effect. Pretty clear that their agenda is "control of fossil fuel use" ... or just "control". Climate related outcomes would be incidental.

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Some Americans Still Moral?

Kickbacks Don’t Always Work | Power Line:

Good little PL post. Democrats are sure that everyone can be bought. Maybe there are still some people with a little more moral fibre than that left in America??

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Physics = Faith

The accidental universe: Science's crisis of faith—By Alan P. Lightman (Harper's Magazine)

Man lives by faith -- we can't even really choose our faith. We can reject God, in which case Satan helps us believe we have no faith at all. Oh, but we do -- we are all play the eternal faith game at the price of our immortal souls.

As I've commented in other blogs, it has become quite well accepted in theoretical physicists that our goldilocks universe is WAY too precise to be anything but directly "created for us", or a happenstance in something like 10 to the 500th universes. So you get to have faith that our universe was the random accident in a huge number of existing universes, and then you believe that over billions of years with no intelligent selection, we happened to evolve here with consciousness, a built in desire to know our origins and a randomly selected meme to postulate an infinite God. You can either believe in that, or you can believe in God ... either way, you have faith in what you believe.

That same uncertainty disturbs many physicists who are adjusting to the idea of the multiverse. Not only must we accept that basic properties of our universe are accidental and uncalculable. In addition, we must believe in the existence of many other universes. But we have no conceivable way of observing these other universes and cannot prove their existence. Thus, to explain what we see in the world and in our mental deductions, we must believe in what we cannot prove.

We're Doomed

The GOP’s Payroll-tax Debacle - Charles Krauthammer - National Review Online

Good coverage of the way politics has trumped any sense of intelligent policy or propriety in the interest of pure politics. Certainly a two month extension makes no sense at all -- but that is the beauty of it-- if all you care about is political theatre and raw political power. Republicans just never quite understand Machiavelli !!! It makes NO DIFFERENCE how foolish, damaging, inconsistent, evil, counterproductive, or any other negative something is. If it wins politically, IT WINS!!

The fact that Charles feels the House Republicans are like the Animal House band shows that in his heart of hearts, he would rather be politically savvy and thus "a winner", than right. I'd like to think that I would stand for the right and allow my self to be fed to the lions as the early Christians did while the Romans laughed and hooted, but I don't know -- the pain of being torn to shreds vs the joy of at least imagined intellectual superiority?? It isn't hard at all to follow the arrow of human nature on that one.

The thing that needs to be remembered is always the longer run. In the long run we are ALL "torn to shreds" (dead) ... and if we continue to follow the kind of behavior of BO, the Democrats, and now capitulated by the House Republicans, we are dead as a nation -- if not already, very very soon.