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MSNBC has hired Abby Huntsman, a host/producer on HuffPost Live and daughter of former GOP candidate Jon Huntsman, as a co-host of the political panel talk show, The Cycle.

“I am excited to bring a dose of moderate, rational conservatism to The Cycle,” Huntsman said on HuffPost Live on Wednesday. “I think that’s needed today in the political discourse.”

That would be Jon Huntsman, former GOP PRESIDENTIAL candidate (yes, it does make a difference).  Who governed, when a Governor, in a fairly conservative manner but then decided that the differential for him was to run (and certainly talk) as a moderate Republican.  Which, in the end, turned out badly as far as the primary results were concerned at the end of the trail (his stop in Laconia when he first started running was a disaster – I was there; a complete nothing burger compared to “the game” that the others brought.  Didn’t help his “first impression” that his aide-de-camps couldn’t spell his name right on the literature).

Now, I know Establishment Republican.  I know grassroots Republican.  I know political operative Republican. 

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It’s been a while since folks have mentioned Baghdad Bob – the Iraqi Information Minister who seemingly, during the 2003 Iraq War, wanted to be an actor (and used Kevin Bacon’s character from Animal House as a model “ALL IS WELL!”) official spokesperson in the green uniform that defended Saddam Hussein.  The funniest time was when speaking to the Western press in Baghdad, telling them that the US led allies were on the run – and a US Abrams A1 tank roared by a few streets in the background.

Well, is another press flacker, Obama Press Secretary Jay Carney, in a slow motion version of a Baghdad Bob moment?  CNSNews reports that he denies that the impending implementation of Obamacare is having any negative effect on the economy – like that it is skewing the jobs picture in that many more part-time jobs are being created at the expense of full-time jobs:

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that the suggestion that Obamacare is reducing full-time employment is “belied by the facts.”

After reports that businesses are shifting to employ more part-time workers in light of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Carney was asked if the White House is considering making changes to the requirement that employers with more than 50 employees must provide full-time workers with health insurance. A full-time worker is defined as a person working at least 30 hours per week.

“Well, I would say broadly that if you look at the economic data, the suggestion that the ACA is reducing full-time employment is belied by the facts,” Carney said…”what I can say is the data reflects that there is not, there is not support for the proposition that businesses are not hiring full-time employees because of the Affordable Care Act,” he said.

“ALL IS WELL!”  Well, sure it is, pardner!  Oh, that “tank”?  From the same post:

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OK, the Attorney General of the United States Eric Holder just spoke to the NAACP convention.  Just before this, we saw:

• The Sanford, FL police Chief decides not to charge George Zimmerman for lack of evidence
• His Department of Justice sent down folks to “persuade” the the City Fathers to oust the Chief
• With further “prodding”, Zimmerman is arrested (much to the satisfaction of the DoJ)
• The DoJ sent down members of its Community Relations Division to “counsel” community activists
• The DoJ seemingly applied pressure to the Republicans Governor (Rick Scott) and Attorney General Bondi (whom we have interviewed) to appoint a special prosecutor Angela Corey (who had also ‘been in communications” with the DoJ).
• Corey then overcharges Zimmerman, and is now coming out, withheld evidence from the Defense team (illegally, I might add)
• Put a bad strategy in place (what can you do with a paucity of evidence to support the overcharges)
• Loses the verdict, and then blithely stokes the racial fires by ignoring the jury verdict and calling Zimmerman a murderer.
• DoJ is on site, again.

So, when all is said and done, the verdict in, what does Holder say?  Which, in context with the above, could be construed as opening up a Fast and Furious V2.0?  Manufacturing another “man-made disaster”?

Race was not an issue in the courtroom when it came to the actual legal issues – the Law strictly defines murder, manslaughter, and hate crimes levels and both sides and the Judge agreed on the jury instructions as they they pertained to the legal points.  Certainly race has been an issue in the court of public opinion as well as the discussion of self-defense on both sides.  However, the argument of “Stand Your Ground”, valid in FL and here in NH, was NOT used during any arguments.  Nada, no way, nein – it was not brought into the courtroom as part of the defense strategy.  Yet, what does Holder say?

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Conservatives believe that the best government is a limited one and the closer to to the Citizens it is supposed to serve, the better.  That way, it is much easier for Citizens to correct the actions and decisions made by their public servants. After all, local is where life is lived and when things go wrong, best to fix it when problems are small.

Progressives, however, believe in the exact opposite – move the locus of power as close to a national level as possible; after all, our Public Masters don’t need to hear from the peons (so as to better formulate how they will tell us how the public will live their lives) – after all, THEY are the experts!  Really!:

First lady Michelle Obama’s signature healthy eating initiative – the plan that’s been pushed onto school lunch menus around the nation — is causing too many problems and demands speedy overhaul, a government watchdog agency found.

One of the biggest recommendations: Give local schools more control over their lunch menus.

THAT must be a hard pill to swallow (or would that be arugula?).  She started this process absolutely convinced that she and her cadre of Smart People had THE answers to all of our school lunch problems that were helping to further the obesity problem caused by junk food lunch times.  Yeah, that single admission should be all that is needed and totally refutes, for this example, that:

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With the verdict of the George Zimmerman / Trayvon Martin trial igniting a sense of rage (fanned by the usual race-baiting suspects who scream “RAACISTS!” even at a simple cross eyed face), Eric Holder (the most politicized US Attorney General EVAH!) has waded in and announced “Thank you, State of Florida – we’ll take it from here”.  I’m no lawyer but after reading and watching legal folks from both sides of the aisle, it would seem to be a Mt. Everest type legal climb to file, persecute prosecute, and win a conviction of civil rights violation (and climbing two Mt. Everest to gain a criminal civil rights conviction).

However – here’s a gimme!  An outright example of religious AND racial discrimination!  Not only that – they’ve got HUGE pockets full of dollars!  Petro-dollars, that is:

Saudi Arabian Airlines reportedly is discriminating against Israeli citizens by refusing to let them fly from U.S. airports.

The New York Post reported that for customers booking on online, the airline’s website has no drop-down menu options for anyone holding an Israeli passport, even though, as the Post pointed out, there is a drop-down menu option for Antarctica citizens. The airline appears to prevent passengers simply looking to transfer in Saudi Arabia to another country, as well.

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As an engineer, I am trained not to treat a symptom of something that has gone wrong – the real job is to find and correct the root problem, that ‘disease’ that causes the symptom to show up in the first place.  Often, in what can be complicated systems, the symptoms show up in a place in which one goes “huh?” and only when debugging has led to the source of destruction (not an easy task, given the many layers of software from multiple vendors each ‘not quite lining up’ with agreed upon protocols and) can one go “THAT was interesting”.  That latter word, interesting, has an “engineer’s definition”: intellectually stimulating, but boy, this is going to hurt for a while.  Interesting problems are fun to work on (if you can stand the stress and heat of “why isn’t this fixed YET!”) because they are interesting.  But when you are told to eliminate a major area of investigation and you know that order is “other than for technical reasons”, it gets real hard to satisfy “why isn’t this fixed YET!”.

It is the same problem in Politics, when a real source must never be discussed because it is Politically Incorrect (emphasis mine, reformatted):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – After fresh criticism of his record on combating HIV/AIDS, President Barack Obama on Monday ordered a stepped up effort to deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States.  An executive order from the White House, which follows renewed criticism of Obama’s AIDS strategy during his visit to Africa in late June and early July, called for better coordination of the national effort. Obama’s order said that recent studies had shown that aggressive testing and early treatment can have a significant impact in preventing transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.

Well, they have two out of the three sources named.  But just like with the ill-named War on Terror (a war on a tactic?  No, but politically correct hacks can’t say Islamists) where the truth can’t be publicly stated, it can’t be done in this issue (for fear of hacking off other special interest groups):

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The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — (…) And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

-Barack Obama

Well, so far, the Feds are STILL not spending wisely nor being held to account

Sidenote: ($17 Trillion in the hole, thank you very much!  Oh, but did you see that the abysmal (according to Progressives) Sequestration helped to give the Fed a SURPLUS this month!  What was that NH saying…something like “low taxes is the result of”….ummm…help me out here….).

Anyways, I saw this $487K waste of our money, and the first thought was “I could have underbid this and save the Feds LOTS of money” and not only that, but doing my part in Saving The Planet! (emphasis mine, reformatted):

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Uttered by Sunny Hostin who is a CNNer. Again, from The BlogLine of the Day:

“So a Hispanic shoots a black and is acquitted by women, but it’s still white men’s fault.”

And add into the mix, Eric Holder’s line of “in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards“.  He took a lot of heat for that last clause, calling the people that he is supposed to serve “cowards” – THAT certainly shows “nose in the air” snootiness about the ordinary citizen.  However, I ask both of them:

Since late 50’s and early 60’s, when HAVEN’T we been talking about race??

Talking about race relations has gone on almost non-stop since this nation started to work to get rid of Jim Crow.  I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t part of the national conversation in one fashion or another – and I, and many others, really do resent Holder’s comment highly and, IMHO,  think that Hostin’s says a lot about her internalized sense of racism.  For some people, it seems, that if it wasn’t for racism identity fights, they’d have no identity at all (think: Sharpton, Smiley, and Jackson).

You know, almost all Conservatives are already “with” MLK’s line of “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”  As an engineer, I could care less what you look like – but how good is your code? Now as a political blogger, I don’t care if you are black, white, yellow, red, brown or purple with green polka-dots:  All I care about is how you think and believe with respect to the philosophy of what made this country great. Are you a good person, love your wife and provide for your kids, be nice to others, obey the laws and Constitution, and pay your taxes?  Remember, color IS only skin deep but stupid goes right to the bone.  And I believe that those that hang onto “White Privilege” as a crutch really need to get out of their own little talking group and talk to others.

For that stupidity, and all it implies and accepts as gospel, goes past skin, past bone, and right into the marrow.  DaTechGuy sums it up well:

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When I watched the verdict being declared in the OJ Simpson trial (where a black man was accused of killing a white woman and her friend, and where “if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit” entered the lexicon), I was aghast at how long the trial had gone and how quickly the jury returned its verdict (makeup: 9 Blacks, 1 Hispanics, 2 Whites / 10 Women, 2 Men) of Not Guilty.  I had disagreed with the jury but thought: Justice as been done.  He was innocent before the trial and now he is innocent after the trial.  That is our system.  I had no thought to say: hey, this is not right – we need a trial do-ver simply because I disagreed with it.

Not so much in this trial.  I note that the Left is now using the same incrementalist and unrelenting legislative insistence that if they don’t get the result they wanted, they switch to a mode by which redouble their efforts by any means possible and by “enlisting the mob” and using that intimidation factor of a pure democracy (“mobocracy”)  to override The Rule of Law  (see also Grokster Mike’s post; more on the DOJ ‘double jeopardy’ civil rights announcement here and here even as the DOJ’s Community Relations Division was stirring up trouble ahead of the trial, a la Community Organizers, vs acting oil on water (no match jokes please, even if it may be appropriate)).  They are also not willing to let the system work as it should – they will bring all kinds of “non-partisan” groups to bear and “celebrity rabble-rousers” “community leaders” (like the ever present race-baiters Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson) even if they live thousands of miles away from where an incident took place. Already, the story is starting to come out in how the Martin family decided to make this a political / race baiting process instead of simply letting the judicial process go forward (e.g.,  go read the great citizen journalism of “following the network” done by Conservative Treehouse to get a fuller idea of the machinations of the Left behind the scene).

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Listen Harrell – for we are listing to you, too (even when you aren’t speaking up – you too, Zandra Rice-Hawkins, as the two of you are serial Republican accusers on very little to go on)!  Yeah, I almost made a mistake by mis-identifying the Party affiliation of the Mayor of San Diego, Bob Filner (DEMOCRAT).  His problem?  Well, even more serious than Obama refusing to pay his female staffers – Sexual Harrassement. So, you Harrell (and you too, Zandra) MUST have professional Press Release all ready  Oh, you say that nothing has gone to court or been adjudicated yet, Harrell?  What about that shopworn Democrat attack phrase “It’s the seriousness of the charge” in which the meaning is – “the Republican can actually be innocent but we have to haul his (or her) butt into court – not to find the truth but for the humiliation and bankrupting him”.  So how unbalanced is the New Hampshire Democrat Party in speaking about this elected official abusing women under his responsibility?  C’mon, Harrel – here’s some details.

The week began with news that Mayor Bob Filner’s fiancee ended their engagement and, by Friday, San Diego’s first Democratic leader in 20 years was desperately trying to stay in office amid sexual harassment allegations made public by some of his closest supporters. He apologized, promised to change and begged voters to let him keep his job.

The rapid-fire developments put heavy scrutiny on the personal foibles of Filner, a feisty liberal who was elected in November after 10 terms in Congress marked perhaps most famously by a 2007 run-in with a United Airlines baggage handler at Dulles International Airport that resulted in him pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of trespassing. Filner has long had a reputation for berating employees and been dogged by rumors of making sexual advances on women, but nothing stuck like a former city councilwoman’s comments this week that she had firsthand accounts from more than one woman who was sexually harassed by the mayor.

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