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Which is thoughtfully, carefully, and soberly make the hard decisions to set real priorities into reality by actually doing their jobs in setting budgets.  So, in celebration of doing nothing except to flip on the Federal Government financial auto-pilot once again, they congratulate themselves.

Sad, really sad – this is worse than almost any entertainment “congratulate ME!” awards show – with us paying their freight for, in effect FAILING TO DO THEIR JOBS!

Breaking news: The White House and congressional Republicans actually agree on something.

The Obama administration officially backed Wednesday a continuing resolution to keep the government funded this fall.

“The administration appreciates the strong bipartisan effort that produced the amendment that provides authorities that are essential in equipping the administration with the tools necessary to provide a comprehensive and sustained counterterrorism strategy to address the growing threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” said the Office of Management and Budget.

That’s right – wrap the failure up in 

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So true, so true:

Along with the above story, there’s this from Powerline digging into the lies the watermelon environmentalists tell themselves in order to keep working to impoverish everyone….except themselves.

There’s an old line that environmentalists are “watermelons”–green on the outside, red on the inside. A lot of environmentalists will take great offense if you say this: No no! We like economic growth and capitalism just fine! We just want it to be “sustainable,” whatever that means. And don’t ask for specificity about what “sustainability” means in detail, unless you have a lot of time and a full bottle of hootch handy. Before long you’ll figure out that “sustainable” is just a code word for green things we like, and that it has no rigor whatsoever aside from old-fashioned factor-efficiency, which economists figured out over a century ago at least.

But anyway, environmentalists resist being called socialists.

Yet that is exactly what many of them are. They’ve just donned camouflage by using the environment as an excuse to institute socialism by a different means

WP is a mandatory

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“Today’s guest is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who will be interviewed by our panel of Jim VandeHei of Politico, Nia-Malika Henderson of the Washington Post, and…Rush Limbaugh.”

That was a line from a post that really kinds was smacking MTP’s new host, Chuck Todd, for effectively living up to Won’s notion that he has to be the center of attraction even as pre-taking over the show, the NBC News head said it shouldn’t be:

“…new vision for “Meet the Press” includes adding a regular panel of journalists who will question guests, something of a return to the venerable show’s original format. “The show needs more edge,” she said. “It needs to be consequential. I think the show had become a talking shop that raked over the cold embers of what had gone on the previous week. The one-on-one conversation belongs to a decade ago.”

Gosh, a better brand of TV opinion journalism?  They’d actually be

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[Adam] Smith’s chief concern was not so much with what man might occasionally achieve when he was at his best but that he should have as little opportunity as possible to do harm when he was at his worst.  It would scarcely be too much to claim that the main merit of individualism which he and his contemporaries advocated is that it is a system under which bad men can do least harm.  It is a social system which does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running it, or on all men becoming better than they now are, but which makes use of men in all their given variety and complexity, sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes intelligent and more often stupid.

– F.A. Hayek (economist, author, Professor)

The Founders were similar in their…

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And it all stems from Obama’s worldview and where America fits into it; the problem of ISIS brings it into focus again:

The Obama personal hesitation stems, unfortunately, from reasons unrelated to the military and political issues. Part of his problem is that he cannot bring himself to acknowledge that he was wrong to oppose the Iraqi surge in 2006, and wrong to pull out American troops from Iraq as President. A strong president learns from his past mistakes, but Obama does not.

One reason for his dogged persistence lies in his flawed world view, which deep down, regards the United States (and Israel) as akin to colonial powers, whose actions should always be examined under a presumption of distrust.

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When Pres Obama says I hv pen and ph if Congress won't I will he's like the Roosevelts he considers Constitution a nuisance

— Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) September 15, 2014

And the Roosevelts and Obama are not the only ones; from my Progressives and the Proper Role of Government post, let me remind you that we can see the disdain for it rolling down their chins:

• NH State Rep. Debra DeSimone (R): “The Constitution is a guideline”
• NH State Rep. Sandra Keans (R, now D): “I don’t try to justify anything by the Constitution, it’s not my job and I don’t want to do it”.

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Yes, I will be casting a vote for NH Governor and for the US Senator from NH in the General Election.  More later on whom.  It is very important that you all come to the polls and vote.  Given how the value of our American Citizenship has declined these last 6 years, our Vote is one of the last (and I contend) most valuable artifacts that accrue to we citizens (and even that is under attack, with California and New York rushing along the track that would allow illegal aliens to vote in elections in those states).  And when you vote, I urge you to consider the philosophy of NOT voting from the top down (e.g., Federal candidates, then State candidates, etc.) but, rather, bottom up.  It seems in many ways that our control of our Government may be slipping away (from we ordinary folks to the folks referred to as the Ruling Class); thus, raise the importance of your local races over those higher up: town, county and then onto the “higher level” races.  After all, you can hold the local folks FAR more accountable than you can those in Concord or DC.

And often, they make decisions that affect you faster and deeper than those further away.  And another thing…

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Read carefully and slowly

One year ago, our dedicated military and civilian personnel at the Washington Navy Yard were targeted in an unspeakable act of violence that took the lives of 12 American patriots. As we remember men and women taken from us so senselessly, we keep close their family and friends, stand with the survivors who continue to heal and pay tribute to the first responders who acted with skill and bravery. At the same time, we continue to improve security at our country’s bases and installations to protect our military and civilian personnel who help keep us safe. One year ago, 12 Americans went to work to protect and strengthen the country they loved. Today, we must do the same – rejecting atrocities like these as the new normal and renewing our call for common-sense reforms that respect our traditions while reducing the gun violence that shatters too many American families every day.

Did you catch what I did?

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From a post I did back in 2010:

“How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual… as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of.”

– Suzanna Gratia-Hupp (survivor of the Luby’s cafeteria massacre)

More on Dr. Gratia-Hupp later.  Moms Demand Action, the astroturf group funded by former NYC Mayor Michael “I will tell you how to live better by MY rules” Bloomberg’s billions are all crowing about that Panera Bread has now been bullied by their Progressive actions.  Not content to let law abiding folks live their own lives peacefully, and knowing that getting the disarmament of civilians legislation will not happen, MAD (and they certainly seem to be just that), they are bullying private companies using Alinsky’s Rule #1 “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.”  They can’t even PAY to have reasonable turnouts to their events but have touted “success” as they “persuaded” Target, Chili’s, and Starbucks to ask their patrons to leave their guns at home.  Low bar success – they have only asked politely and not outright bans (“don’t come in”) with only Jack in the Box actually prohibiting firearms (and then had the predictable results of the now “gun free zone”).

Now Panera Bread has done the same – their CEO announced on MSNBC that he was asking his customers to

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I have been commenting about this kind of stuff for years now: journalists that aren’t.  Members of the MainStream Media (MSM) that have “progressed” past the traditional “who, what, when, why, and how”, past the “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” to “make the world a better place”.

The first is reporting the news – straight up and down and as unbiased as possible.

The second started the trot towards advocacy and away from what most want – a faithful reporting of the news.

And now for the last few decades, we have seen the bias in the MSM to the point where it is rather antagonistic towards the half of the US population that is not Liberal (much to the profit of Fox News that was built to service this “under-served” market sector – and has gone on to clean the other MSM outlets’ collective clocks). And now, we see one of the Liberal uber-start, Chuck Todd (newly anointed to ascend to the MSM’s version of Nirvana: host of Meet The Press) perhaps now figuring that out:

In his “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit on Friday, Todd seemed to realize the disconnect between Boomtown and the rest of the America.

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Well, that would be a good start.  In fact, it shouldn’t even be controversial – this should be a given for pretty much the Republican President next elected in 2016 given how much Obama has pushed the boundaries of Executive Imperialship (putting both Bush II and Nixon to shame). 

Roll it back should be heard in a constant din from November 7th onward in the process of making government smaller and Citizens Larger.  You know, the way it used to be (and the way it was supposed to be). 

Big Government talks about US Senator Rand Paul coming to NH and who talked with the NH Chapter of Generation Opportunity (Twitter: @GenOppNH) (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Paul’s comments came to the New Hampshire chapter of Generation Opportunity, a national grassroots conservative group with a libertarian appeal with thousands of young liberty-minded activists nationwide engaged through it.  Paul focused much of his remarks on executive overreach by President Barack Obama, saving some of his most interesting points for a question-and-answer session at the end….“I know, it’s crazy,” the young man followed up. “You spoke for a bit on the executive orders tonight. If you were to receive the presidency would you repeal previous executive orders and restrain the power of the presidency?”

“I think the first executive order that I would issue would be to repeal all previous executive orders,” Paul replied to resounding cheers

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(H/T: AEIdeas)

“Every year the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) publicizes its “Equal Pay Day” to bring public attention to the gender pay gap. “Equal Pay Day” this year fell on April 14, and allegedly represents how far into 2014 the average woman had to continue working to earn the same income that the average man earned last year. Inspired by Equal Pay Day, Iintroduced “Equal Occupational Fatality Day” in 2010 to bring public attention to the huge gender disparity in work-related deaths every year in the United States. “Equal Occupational Fatality Day” tells us how many years into the future women would have to work before they would experience the same number of occupational fatalities that occurred in the previous year for men.“

It does show that talking about equal pay often doesn’t take into account the danger factor of the jobs that the different sex gravitate to.  And while most people will agree that equal skills, equal experience, and equal education should receive equal pay, what is not oft discussed is the differences in motivation, drive, and persistence.  Why?  IMHO, those things are much harder to quantify and thus, harder to compare.  Yet, they do have much to do with the compensation that one receives – not matter what the “least common denominator” arguers want to say. And another is the relative danger of a given job and the risk that someone is willing to accept.  Thus, the data tends to show the difference – will the equal pay folks start to demand not that women get paid more but that they take on more risk and put themselves into more dangerous positions and earn the same as the men in those riskier careers? Courtesy of CNN, is a list of the jobs with the biggest risk of fatalities (job, median pay, deaths / 100,000 workers):

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Oh yeah, let’s also add “Free Stater” to that list, too!  Take those words out of their lexicon, all you’d have left would be jaws going up and down.  Without those adjectives (hurled as epithats), they’d have nothing to say and no one to excoriate.  And that would suck for them.  Listen to Ray Buckley, the head of the NH Dem Party – stripped of the ability to go ad hominem, what would he have left?  Or Zandra Rice-Hawkins?  Or Silver Spoon Harrel Kirstein, for that matter (just for a few).

Drew Cline, the Editorial Editor of the Union Leader has a great piece on this topic demonstrating exactly that (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Ironically, in trying to portray Republican primary winners as bought-and-paid for, New Hampshire’s top Democratic elected officials on Tuesday exposed themselves as party-controlled tools. Behold the hackery.  Annie Kuster (to WMUR-TV): “It is clear that voters are going to have a choice in the 2nd Congressional District for the election between a right-wing, Tea Party opponent and myself.”

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