News – Politics – Opinion – Podcasts
What! You don’t believe Obama when he says that?? Well, you just watch this: (H/T: Washington Examiner)
”This portfolio is a half-step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and nine-millimeter rounds”
– William Bernstein, investment manager
And that portfolio makeup?
- 21% – real estate
- 14% – cash.
- 0% – bonds / bond funds
- 0.1% – stock funds (all “short,” or make bets against, U.S. stocks)
- 64% – gold and silver mining stocks
Whose?
At 1 trillion frames per second, this camera CAN make light go in slow motion. Remember, light travels (in a vacuum) at 186,000 miles per second (doing the math is 700 million miles / hour), so the word “fast” doesn’t do justice to this new system from the boffins of MIT. The clip is showing … Read more
That would include the Political Class as well. Anyone that says “You owe me simply because I exist” should immediately be cut off. Mean? Which is meaner: demanding that someone take care of them (as most that do the demanding could provide for themselves, at least in part), or demanding that someone take care of … Read more
(H/T: There I fixed it)
Especially when a decision for Freedom has to be made: Update thoughts: He voted “present” when it came to Iran and blew the chance to speak well of that nascent freedom movement. Instead of just giving speeches favoring Freedom over the mullahs, he remained silent – so much for the Obama / Samantha Powers doctrine … Read more
“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”
– President Barack Obama, Inauguration, 1/20/09
Too bad, he didn’t have “and treat our citizens like adults. California – the land of sun, fun, and more stupid politicians that can’t balance their budgets or restrain the public unions, but boy, they can nitpick their voters for not doing the right thing, eh? This time, it is all about harranging drivers that change their oil too often. Yeah, the State is now concerning itself, due to the self-importance of the enviro-wackos, and telling its drivers “Yo, slow down on your car chugging the oil – break that habit, dude!”
From Iraq (NY Times):
BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq threatened on Wednesday to abandon an American-backed power-sharing government created a year ago, throwing the country’s fragile democracy into further turmoil just days after the departure of American troops and potentially tarnishing what has been cast as a major foreign policy achievement for President Obama.
In a nearly 90-minute news conference broadcast on tape-delay, Mr. Maliki defied his rivals and pushed back on all fronts in Iraq’s deepening political crisis, threatening to release investigatory files that he claimed implicated his opponents in terrorism.
He also threatened the Kurds, a valuable ally with close ties to the Americans, warning that there would be “problems” if they protected Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, who fled to the semiautonomous Kurdish region in recent days to escape an arrest warrant on charges that he ran a death squad responsible for assassinations and bombings.
Why should Maliki continue with the “American-backed power-sharing government”? Effectively, Obama has taken the troops out ahead of time and are now leaving the Iraqi field wide open for other-than-American influence – read that as Iran. Obama can now be said to have created a political vacuum in the region (or to be kind, a partial at the least; you and I would not last long breathing it). Sure, with 16,000 personnel stationed at our embassy there we’ll have a presence there but a civilian in a region that loves the strong horse and derides the weak one. Obama has shut the door on the American influence by signaling weakness in an area that will exploit such a sign.
Everyone, seemingly, has had the Primary Pop except for one: Rick Santorum. Of all of the candidates in the race now, I would have to say that he has put the most time and work into his candidacy. Not just since Primary “began” in earnest, but for much longer than anyone else in the face … Read more
Michelle had this little beauty (emphasis mine):
Mitt Romney said today he’s “the ideal candidate” for the Tea Party movement because his stance on issues lines up “pretty darn well” with the movement he says will soon realize that GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich isn’t their best option for president.
“I recognize that the speaker has a big lead here,” Romney said of Gingrich in a press conference in South Carolina. “But I think as people take a closer and closer look, they’ll recognize that I reflect more effectively the positions which they hold on key issues.
Um, okay. Everybody has a different definition of “ideal,” I suppose.
Well, why not? Isn’t being a ex-Senator (and an ex-Governor of an over taxed State), a ex -Democrat Senator, and a Big Spending Liberal enough to have lost $1.2 BILLION? After all, add up all those things means that he’s well experienced at spending lots of other peoples’ money…..for not much of a result. (H/T: … Read more
Essentially, this is the political equivalent of “don’t make me mad or I’ll kill myself!”. Another way of putting it is “I’m Sampson (in my own mind, anyways) – if you make fun of me, I’ll bring down your house!”. Here’s the assertion:
Here is my claim: Republicans have no choice whom they support. They must support Paul. Here is the reason: Paul can defeat Obama. If Paul runs 3rd, the Republican loses. Therefore, Paul is the best choice. What do you disagree with? You can rail on about how you don’t like these realities, but they seem like realities to me. Show me where I am mistaken.
Let me restate it (again):
My response was this:
I will vote for him if he is the nominee – that is clear and cast in concrete. But I reject the premise that only Ron Paul can defeat Obama.
The big international news of the day is the death of North Korea’s despot, Kim Jong Ill (yes, the obligatory “no longer ill, just dead”). The Communist regime that has controlled the country since the ’40s with its Stalinist command and control can easily be seen from space at night as the image to the … Read more
an actual or hypothetical agreement among the members of an organized society or between a community and its ruler that defines and limits the rights and duties of each
I have been noodling on the phrase “social contract” for quite some time ever since Elizabeth Warren had her misbegotten rant denigrating capitalism and entrepreneurship and defending taxation as “part of the social contract”. The problem is, who really knows what the “social contract” really is? Let’s narrow it down further – what is it now, what did it use to be, and what should it be in the future?
And who put this contract up for debate, and how come I’m held to it even as others change the rules? What – no choice for an opt out? And why do the Libs
Sort of rhetorical questions, but Warren’s assertion is that “the social contract” allows and demands for all she believes is right, but also holds what the entrepreneur believes is wrong. Thus, it seems, it is a one way agreement: a liberal can claim that it provides for all kinds of social programs (and in effect, pushing that government programs are now necessary for it to be complete, and the wealth extraction from one set of citizens that is necessary to accomplish it). Yet, when a Conservative begins to talk about “the social contract”, they are hooted from the room and there is no discussion that, like Government, the reach of “the social contract” is ever being extended (or over extended)? I used to think that it included (in no particular order) following the laws, paying your taxes, being nice to your neighbors, pay your taxes, be helpful to your community if led to be so (or, at least cause no harm), and that government would excel in what it should do and be frugal (e.g., don’t waste my money). Oh yeah, and leave me alone to make my own decisions instead of telling me what to do all the time (after all, I’m an adult). But remember, to a Liberal, it IS a one way agreement.
Problem is, my sense is now, the social contract is now quantity over quality, the American propensity to throw money at any problem has gone on steroids, and that any attempt to hold those programs accountable for results actually results in jeers thrown to the like of “what, you hate the poor, blacks, gays, browns, Latinos, or <name your least favorite Democrat identity group here>? Shame on you, you cold hearted, uncaring Neanderthal! YOU are stopping us from Progressing forward!”. In essence, they are using the social contract not as an agreement but as a club – with a nail in it that sticks out. And Lord help a Conservative involved in the Legislative process trying to hold to what we thought was the social contract when trying to keep Govt small enough to fulfill our version of “the social contract” – after all, we believe that people can fulfill such a “contract” and does not require an activist, intrusive Govt.
Oh, that compromise word? That brings me to the next point – when a Republican gives the Dems a loophole – and NH GOP Treasurer Robert Scott seemingly has done just that. From the UL’s State House Dome:
The Assertion that was made was in response what I posted here:
You asked the question as to whether we need to wait until American lives are lost to respond….To me, this means that there must be imminent danger—and that is a threshold that I believe none of our recent wars has crossed—and all other options should have been exhausted. Instead, our recent wars have been pre-emptive with no clear moral certainty that an attack was imminent.
Answer: Really?? Crossed a threshold?
My problem is that I believe that Ron Paul IS an isolationist on defense and not just a non-interventionist; and many believe likewise. I also believe that…
And I love the “Grinchification” effect! (H/T: Powerline)
Yes, this is a NH House legislator. Those of you who are “NH political junkies” can probably decode the House Vanity plate and already know whose car this is. For those of you who are not, the answer is after the jump.
The bumper stickers? Revealing:
(H/T: loyal ‘Grok reader, Jean, who nailed this the day of the Right To Work override vote)
Yeah, we’re up and then we’re down. The ‘Grok has been getting hit from both hardware problems with balky disk drives and recalcitrant RAID controllers and some software issues from moving from our old blogging platform. Dontcha just love Murphy’s Laws?? I think we need a healthy dose of boring for a while, but given … Read more
It fits – it is just a minute long so watch it. Since Hayward reprised it, if you liked Reagan’s “Acts like Tarzan, dresses like Jane, smells like cheetah”, you get the idea: (H/T: Powerline) Note: Our new blogging platform is nice enough to show me drafts of stuff that I didn’t actually post…this is … Read more
Drip, Drip, Drip, Attorney General Eric Holder. For the most transparent Administration in history, the necessary FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests are showing, more and more, what many Second Amendment Rights advocates feared – that the Obama Government used Fast and Furious as a tactic to get an outcome that was not possible via the legislative route – an increase of regulations on law abiding citizens to achieve an ideological outcome. Using their own straw purchasing proxies, they spent boatloads of taxpayer funds to buy from dealers they told “Oh, don’t be worried” and let them “walk” into Mexico where the drug cartels snapped them up.
And the main reason d’etre for the operation (officially, anyways) was to track them and get the druggies? Er, no.