Govt Regs, Taxes Crush Small Business Creation

Subway Founder & CEO Fred DeLuca says that Subway could not exist if it were founded in today's welter of laws, regs, and taxes. Read the link...

UNIVISION Bests NBC in February Sweeps

UNIVISION is a Spanish language network that bested NBC whose procedurals with Law & Order and Jay Leno Show are the only watchable shows on that left-wing outpost.

Cowardly Craven Loser Egyptian Pilot Jumps Airship Without Turning Off Gas Valve

The Egyptian Pilot of the air balloon where 19 of 21 passengers perished yesterday deserted his charges in the TYPICAL cowardly loser Egyptian fashion:

The pilot of a hot-air balloon that caught fire in mid-air and crashed, killing 19 foreign tourists, jumped from the gondola before shutting off the gas valve, Egypt’s Civil Aviation Minister Wael El-Maadawi said. A Briton also managed to escape from the balloon by leaping to safety before it soared into the sky and exploded in a fireball that left many of the corpses charred in a tragic end to an early-morning tour over the famed pharaonic sites in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor early yesterday, El-Maadawi said, according to the state-run Ahram Gate website.

As a frequent visitor to Egypt, I can only attest that this case of irresponsibility and cowardice is typical. The inbred freaks that are Egyptians in general do not deserve attention nor vacation visits.

Why Michelle-Bangs Had US Military At The Oscars

Jennifer Rubin spells it out for illiterate lefties to know.

She declared of the Best Picture nominees, “They reminded us that we can overcome any obstacle if we dig deep enough and fight hard enough and find the courage within ourselves.” Alas, none of the films nor her aides reminded her to mention the military, not those personnel behind her nor those serving overseas, an odd omission for the White House that nevertheless was pleased to have them arrayed behind her like, well, set decoration.

The Eternal Campaign Couple have to fill their emptiness inside with all the glam/glitter BS that lefties [for the same reasons] always do.

She did have time to give a crumb to the gay community, applauding the movies that inspire us ”no matter who we are or what we look like or who we love,” adding that “they are especially important for our young people.” (Except when they contain gruesome violence, traffic in stereotypes or use gratuitous profanity, I guess.) Real heroes, such as our servicemen and servicewomen, inspire us, too, I would think.

I can remember when the First BJClinton went to Deutschland and had the Kanzler Schroeder give him a box of cigars, everyone in Europe and most Republicans laughed at him... Only those comedians on the left didn't get it. But, like Clinton...

President Obama pops up at every sporting event in the nation. Now the first lady feels entitled, with military personnel as props, to intrude on other forms of entertaining (this time for the benefit of the Hollywood glitterati who so lavishly paid for her husband’s election). I’m sure the left will holler that once again conservatives are being grouchy and have it in for the Obamas. Seriously, if they really had their president’s interests at heart, they’d steer away from encouraging these celebrity appearances. It makes both the president and the first lady seem small and grasping. In this case, it was just downright weird.

The White House has been overrun by something worse than rats or cockroaches---an infestation of overthinking and corrupt "sophisticates" who know nothing of what the USA is about. Jenny says it better:

No one, it seems, gets within a mile of the White House with any sense of restraint. No one there would dare suggest nearly half the country didn’t vote for him and doesn’t much like him and might want to be left to their small daily pleasures. (Greta Garbo said it best.) And no one there is apt to explain that the White House, the military and the first lady (not this one in particular) are institutions bigger than the Obamas and their e-mail list.

And Rubin gets the last parting shot at these sleazy pretentious pretenders.

Still, it would have been grand if the lefty-maligned “Zero Dark Thirty” (which showed the nasty interrogation techniques her husband deplored) had won Best Picture. Unfortunately, that sort of perfect karma happens only in the movies.

Amen and Roger That.

Is the Euro About to Collapse?

Bernard Connolly was head of Europe's Monetary Commission 17 years ago and predicted back then that the Euro was not feasible. Read this piece & you might realize he was right:

Seventeen years ago, Bernard Connolly foretold the misery that awaited the European Union. Given that he was an instrumental figure in the EU bureaucracy and publicly expressed his doubts in a book called "The Rotten Heart of Europe," he was promptly fired. Mr. Connolly takes no pleasure now in having seen his prediction come true. And he takes no comfort in the view, prevalent in many quarters, that the EU has passed through the worst of its crisis and is on the cusp of revival.

As far as Mr. Connolly is concerned, Europe's heart is still rotting away.

The European political class, he says, believes that the crisis "hit its high point" last summer, "because that was when there was an imminent danger, from their point of view, that their wonderful dream would disappear." But from the perspective "of real live people, and families and firms and economies," he says, the situation "is just getting worse and worse." Last week, the EU reported that the euro-zone economy shrank by 0.9% in the fourth quarter of 2012. For the full year, gross domestic product fell 0.5% in the euro zone.

Two immediate solutions present themselves, Mr. Connolly says, neither appetizing. Either Germany pays "something like 10% of German GDP a year, every year, forever" to the crisis-hit countries to keep them in the euro. Or the economy gets so bad in Greece or Spain or elsewhere that voters finally say, " 'Well, we'll chuck the whole lot of you out.' Now, that's not a very pleasant prospect." He's thinking specifically, in the chuck-'em-out scenario, about the rise of neo-fascists like the Golden Dawn faction in Greece.

Mr. Connolly isn't just any Cassandra. When he predicted disaster, he was running the European Commission's Monetary Affairs Committee, the Brussels bureaucracy charged with ushering the euro into being. His public confession of fear that the monetary union would inevitably produce an economic crisis not only cost him his job, he says, it also cost him his pension, and he was barred from his office even before his dismissal was official. In the introduction to the paperback edition of "The Rotten Heart of Europe," Mr. Connolly describes how his photograph was posted at entrances to the commission's offices, as if he were a wanted criminal.

Mr. Connolly went on to a career as a private economist. His research notes while at American International Group's AIG +3.14% trading division showed the same flair for bold prognostication. In 2003, as then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan cut interest rates to an unprecedented 1%, Mr. Connolly described the U.S. economy as a debt-driven Ponzi scheme and predicted that interest rates would have to fall even further in the next cycle to keep the scheme going.

Today Mr. Connolly provides his research notes to clients who presumably pay a great deal for his thoughts. He generally doesn't talk to the press. And he doesn't make public pronouncements or market calls, lest he "agitate" his clients.

But with his book back in print, Mr. Connolly agreed to sit down in his publisher's office to explain why the euro went wrong, why nothing has been fixed, and what he expects to happen next.

Superficially, there is some basis for the official view that the worst of the crisis is over: Interest-rate spreads, current-account deficits and budget deficits are down. Greece's departure from the single currency no longer seems imminent.

Yet unemployment is close to 27% in Spain and Greece. The euro-zone economy shrank ever-faster throughout 2012. And—most important in Mr. Connolly's view—the economic fundamentals in France are getting worse. This week France announced it would miss its deficit-reduction target for the year because of dimming growth prospects.

It's one thing to bail out Greece or Ireland, Mr. Connolly says, but "if the Germans at some point think, 'We're going to have to bail out France, and on an ongoing, perpetual basis,' will they do it? I don't know. But that's the question that has to be answered."

The official view is that the bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal—and maybe soon Spain—are aberrations, and that once those countries get their budgets on track, their economies will follow and the bad patch will be a memory. Mr. Connolly calls this "propaganda."

And here we get to the heart of Mr. Connolly's rotten-heart argument against the single currency: The cause of the crisis, according to the "propaganda," he says, was "fiscal indiscipline in countries like Greece and financial-sector indiscipline in countries like Ireland." As a consequence, "the response is focused on budgetary rules, budgetary bailouts and rules for the financial sector, with the prospect, perhaps, of financial bailouts through the banking union, although that remains unclear."

But even if the Greeks were undisciplined, he says, "both the sovereign-debt crisis and the banking crisis are symptoms, not causes. And the underlying problem has been that there was a massive bubble generated in the world as a whole by monetary policy—but particularly in the euro zone" by European Central Bank policy.

The bubble formed like this: When countries such as Ireland, Greece and Spain joined the euro, their interest rates immediately dropped to near-German levels, in some cases from double-digit territory. "The optimism created by these countries' suddenly finding that they could have low interest rates without their currencies collapsing, which had been their previous experience, led people to think that there was a genuine rate-of-return revolution going on," he says.

There had been an increase in the rates of return in Ireland "and to some extent in Spain" in the run-up to euro membership, thanks to structural reforms in those countries in the pre-euro period. But by the time the euro rolled around, money was flowing into these countries out of all proportion to the opportunities available.

"And what kept the stuff flowing in," Mr. Connolly says, "was essentially the belief, 'Well, yes, there is a high rate of return in construction.' " That in turn depended on "ongoing expectations" about house appreciation "that were in some ways not dissimilar to what was happening to the United States in the middle of the last decade. But it was much bigger."

How much bigger? "If you scale housing starts by population, then the housing boom in Spain and Ireland was something like three or four times as intense as the peak of the boom in the U.S. That's mind boggling."

That torrent of money drove up wages far faster than productivity improved, while cheap borrowing led to major deficit spending. After the 2008 financial panic, the bubble inevitably burst.

So what's needed now is not simply a fiscal retrenchment, or even a retrenchment along with banking reform. Wages and prices have to adjust to something like their pre-bubble trends, Mr. Connolly says, to make these economies competitive again. One way to accomplish that would be a massive depreciation of the euro—"really massive."

If that's not feasible, he says, Europe can try to "recreate the bubble" by bringing back the conditions that allowed Spain to borrow so cheaply. That is "essentially what [Mario] Draghi"—the European Central Bank president—"appears to be trying to do: to recreate a bubble." Mr. Draghi, by threatening to intervene in the sovereign debt markets, has driven interest rates in Spain down substantially. But because the banking system is distressed, and because house prices continue to fall, even these lower rates are not driving investment into the country the way they did before. And even if Mr. Draghi were to succeed, Mr. Connolly says, the ECB president would merely be "recreating exactly the dangerous, unsustainable situation that we had in the middle of the last decade."

Which leaves Europe with the last option: Germany pays. As Mr. Connolly puts its: "You can say to a country like Spain: 'No need to adjust your competitiveness, you don't need to have full-employment trade balance. You can still have full-employment current-account balance because we will give you transfers instead.' And by definition, if the point of that is to avoid adjustment, you have to do it this year, the next year, the year after, and every year, forever."

That is not how Brussels and Frankfurt see it. In their view, a little help now will simply ease the transition back to a stable future, when the transfers will cease. Of all the countries that have been bailed out so far, Ireland comes closest to realizing this goal. But Ireland, Mr. Connolly notes, "is a much more flexible and much more open economy than Spain, Greece, Portugal, France, Italy." The less flexible economies have been slower to adjust, with the consequence that wages, instead of dropping to a sustainable post-bubble level, remain high—resulting in mass unemployment.

Which brings us back to the politics of the euro crisis. At some point, the people in the affected countries presumably will call a halt to the pain and sweep in a government willing to think the impossible—leaving the euro, for example.

To avoid that, Germany could well agree to pay for a transfer union, either believing that the transfers needn't be permanent, or hoping they'd be less expensive than a euro break up. But, Mr. Connolly warns, once a mechanism is in place to transfer money from Germany to the current-account deficit countries, it's only a matter of time before Germany is faced with the question of adding France to its list of dependents—something even Berlin may not be willing or able to afford.

German reunification has cost the former West Germany about 5% of GDP a year, with no end in sight. The expense has proved politically tolerable, Mr. Connolly says, because there was a strong sense that "they were reuniting their country." But such solidarity does not exist within Europe.

"There is no European demos, and you're not going to create a demos by setting up a system in which you say, 'We will give you money, you will follow these rules,' " says Mr. Connolly. "It simply will not work."

And there is no such thing as a free lunch, unless it's on Germany's tab, so it seems.

Woodward Calls Obama and Lew LIARS

Here is a Washington Post article that puts the lie to Obama's claim that Congress initiated the sequester idea when in fact, it was the lying POTUS and his Treasury & WH Staff henchmen who did.

At the Feb. 13 Senate Finance Committee hearing on Lew’s nomination to become Treasury secretary, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) asked Lew about the account in my book: “Woodward credits you with originating the plan for sequestration. Was he right or wrong?”

It’s a little more complicated than that,” Lew responded, “and even in his account, it was a little more complicated than that. We were in a negotiation where the failure would have meant the default of the government of the United States.”

“Did you make the suggestion?” Burr asked.

“Well, what I did was said that with all other options closed, we needed to look for an option where we could agree on how to resolve our differences. And we went back to the 1984 plan that Senator [Phil] Gramm and Senator [Warren] Rudman worked on and said that that would be a basis for having a consequence that would be so unacceptable to everyone that we would be able to get action.”

In other words, yes.

But then Burr asked about the president’s statement during the presidential debate, that the Republicans originated it.

Lew, being a good lawyer and a loyal presidential adviser, then shifted to denial mode: “Senator, the demand for an enforcement mechanism was not something that the administration was pushing at that moment.”

That statement was not accurate.

On Tuesday, Obama appeared at the White House with a group of police officers and firefighters to denounce the sequester as a “meat-cleaver approach” that would jeopardize military readiness and investments in education, energy and readiness. He also said it would cost jobs. But, the president said, the substitute would have to include new revenue through tax reform.

At noon that same day, White House press secretary Jay Carney shifted position and accepted sequester paternity.

“The sequester was something that was discussed,” Carney said. Walking back the earlier statements, he added carefully, “and as has been reported, it was an idea that the White House put forward.”

This was an acknowledgment that the president and Lew had been wrong.

Why does this matter?

First, months of White House dissembling further eroded any semblance of trust between Obama and congressional Republicans. (The Republicans are by no means blameless and have had their own episodes of denial and bald-faced message management.)

Second, Lew testified during his confirmation hearing that the Republicans would not go along with new revenue in the portion of the deficit-reduction plan that became the sequester. Reinforcing Lew’s point, a senior White House official said Friday, “The sequester was an option we were forced to take because the Republicans would not do tax increases.”

In fact, the final deal reached between Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2011 included an agreement that there would be no tax increases in the sequester in exchange for what the president was insisting on: an agreement that the nation’s debt ceiling would be increased for 18 months, so Obama would not have to go through another such negotiation in 2012, when he was running for reelection.

So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts. His call for a balanced approach is reasonable, and he makes a strong case that those in the top income brackets could and should pay more. But that was not the deal he made.

Once again, The First Fool lies, cheats and steals his way to tax increases while Boehner neglects to stand up like a man.

Commander-in-Criminality Originated Sequester

Bob Woodward exposes the FIRST LIAR do his POS strut on the GOP coming up with the idea of the sequester thus:

On July 26, 2011, Jack Lew, then the White House budget director, went to Harry Reid’s office for a budget strategy session. According to Bob Woodward’s book, “The Price of Politics,” Lew told the Senate majority leader that they had come up with a trigger idea to force a budget deal.

“What’s the idea?” Reid asked.

“Sequestration,” Lew responded.

Reid folded himself over with his head between his knees, as if he were going to throw up. Then he came upright and gaped at the ceiling. “A couple of weeks ago,” he exclaimed, “my staff said to me there is one more possible” enforcement method: sequestration. Reid said he had told his staff at the time, “Get the hell out of here. That’s insane. The White House surely will come up with a plan that will save the day. And you come to me with sequestration?”

Sequestration may have seemed insane back then. But politicians in both parties are secretly discovering that they love sequestration now. It allows them to do the dance moves they enjoy the most.

Democrats get to do the P.C. Shimmy. Traditional presidents go through a normal set of motions: They identify a problem. They come up with a proposal to address the problem. They try to convince the country that their proposal is the best approach.

Under the Permanent Campaign Shimmy, the president identifies a problem. Then he declines to come up with a proposal to address the problem. Then he comes up with a vague-but-politically-convenient concept that doesn’t address the problem (let’s raise taxes on the rich). Then he goes around the country blasting the opposition for not having as politically popular a concept. Then he returns to Washington and congratulates himself for being the only serious and substantive person in town.

Sequestration allows the White House to do this all over again. The president hasn’t actually come up with a proposal to avert sequestration, let alone one that is politically plausible.

He does have a vague and politically convenient concept. (Tax increases on the rich!) He does have a chance to lead the country into a budget showdown with furloughed workers and general mayhem, for which people will primarily blame Republicans. And he does have the chance to achieve the same thing he has achieved so frequently over the past two years, political success and legislative mediocrity.

Republicans also secretly love the sequester. It allows them to do their favorite dance move, the Suicide Stage Dive. It was pioneered by Newt Gingrich in 1995 and has been repeated constantly since.

In this dance, the Republicans mount the stage and roar that they are about to courageously cut spending. In this anthem they carefully emphasize cuts to programs the country sympathizes with, such as special education, while sparing programs that actually created the debt problem, like Medicare.

Then, when they have worked themselves up into a frenzy of self-admiration, they sprint across the stage and leap into what they imagine is the loving arms of their adoring fans. When they are 4 feet off the ground, they realize the voters have left the building in disgust and they land with a thud on the floor.

Sequestration allows the Republicans to do the Suicide Stage Dive to perfection. Voters disdain the G.O.P. because they think Republicans are mindless antigovernment fanatics who can’t distinguish good government programs from bad ones. Sequestration is a fanatically mindless piece of legislation that can’t distinguish good government programs from bad ones. Sequestration carefully spares programs like Medicare and Social Security that actually contribute to the debt problem. Sequestration will cause maximum political disgust for a trivial amount of budget savings.

The Permanent Campaigner is a LIAR without peer. The GOP is led by a pious chain-smoking ex-bartender mumbler.

With a pair of losers in the top two jobs in the land, a sequester makes perfect sense.

And for the Dimocrats to lie about who suggested it at first is not surprising due to it being led by The Father Of Lies.

Data versus Intuition

David Brooks has a nice little philosophical/pragmatic excursion through the enigmas of data versus intuition versus "trust equals reciprocity coated with emotion."

....the strengths and limitations of data analysis. The big novelty of this historic moment is that our lives are now mediated through data-collecting computers. In this world, data can be used to make sense of mind-bogglingly complex situations. Data can help compensate for our overconfidence in our own intuitions and can help reduce the extent to which our desires distort our perceptions.

An interesting piece to check out.

Obama Golfed With Oil Men As Climate Protesters Descended On White House

Ha ha ha. Obama does a round of golf with Carroll & Crane, two directors of a company with links to Anadarko, one of the largest oil & gas firms in the USA. Just like Gore sells his unwatched Current TV to AlJezira for a $100mm personal payback, Obama preaches fighting climate change at the SOTU and then golfs with those frackin' folks to figure out how Carroll & Crane can help him as gasoline prices rocket past $4/gal. Hypocrisy, thy name is Democrat...
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Marco Rubio: The Electable Conservative?

Nate Silver has an NYT article that is mildly praiseworthy of Marco Rubio's chances to win the 2016 GOP nomination for POTUS. [Yes, the handicapping has already begun now that The Emperor Jones has been constitutionally ruled out of a third term.]

Some commentators have expressed surprise upon learning about the very conservative voting record of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who delivered the Republican response to the State of the Union address last week.

Since winning his Senate seat, Mr. Rubio has generally sided with other Republicans as part of a party that has steadily grown more conservative over the last three decades. (Mr. Rubio’s recent support for immigration reform is more of an exception than his usual rule of sticking to the party line.)

Being reliably conservative, however, is hardly a liability for someone who might hope to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Indeed, one reason to watch Mr. Rubio carefully is that, among the candidates who will be deemed reliably conservative by Republican voters and insiders, he may stand the best chance of maintaining a reasonably good image with general election voters.

But how does Senator Rubio hold up among the other notables in the Senate? Believe it or not, Rubio sits between Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, with five major GOP standouts more conservative than himself.

Silver concludes:

...in 1980 the average Republican member of Congress had a score of 30, the average Republican in the most recent Congress had a score of 48, very close to Mr. Rubio’s. Thus, my contention that Mr. Rubio is a good representative of the Republican Party as it stands today.

This is a potentially advantageous position for a Republican competing in the presidential primaries. In both parties, nominees have usually come from the center of their parties, rather than from the moderate or the “extreme” wings. There are exceptions: Mr. Reagan, although he would fit right into the Republican Party today, was much more conservative than most of his contemporaries in 1980. But in general, Mr. Rubio is pretty close to the sweet spot of where a presidential nominee might want to be.

There are some viable candidates to Mr. Rubio’s right. The 2012 Republican vice-presidential nominee, Representative Paul D. Ryan, rates a score of 55, slightly more conservative than Mr. Rubio. Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, rates a 57.

But the most important thing about Rubio's chances is his popularity.

Silver thinks that this likeability and Hispanic background are crucial.

Mr. Rubio's most persuasive pitch to GOP insiders may be that he is more popular than other, ideologically similar candidates. Some of those candiidates, like Mr. Ryan, can probably offer a richer intellectual defense of conservatism, or can claim to have been better vetted. Several others, like Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, have more executive experience. Mr. Rubio’s relatively favorable public image represents his comparative advantage. (There are also the facts that Mr. Rubio is Hispanic and is from Florida, but these advantages boil down to electability as well: the possibility that he might help Republicans make gains with Latinos, and that he could give them a lift in an especially important swing state.)

What makes matters tricky for Mr. Rubio is that, at the same time he is hoping to persuade Republican party insiders that he deserves their support, he will also need to maintain a reasonably good image with the broader electorate lest his electability argument be undermined. This may lead to some strange positions, such as when Mr. Rubio recently critiqued President Obama’s immigration proposal despite its many similarities to his own.

When the wider electorate learns that Mr. Rubio’s positions are in fact hard to differentiate from those of other conservative Republicans, will his favorability ratings turn mediocre, as Mr. Ryan’s now are?

This is not meant as a rhetorical question. One measure of political talent, and something that characterized both Mr. Reagan and Mr. Obama, is the ability to sell ideas to voters across a wide range of the political spectrum. Perhaps Mr. Rubio will prove to be such a talent. Otherwise, if Mr. Rubio holds a fairly ordinary (and conservative) set of Republican positions, his popularity ratings may wind up being ordinary as well.

And I think that an article by Silver this early in the game is a dog whistle to those salivating foaming at the mouth far-left sites like Media Matters and TalkProgress and dozens of other mindlessly mentally-disturbed commissars to burrow into everything Rubio and elevate anything like Marco's 'Watergate' into a tempest in a teacup.

Supreme Court Takes Campaign Finance Case, Will Rule On Contribution Limits

Our Emperor Jones is sitting in his digs on Pennsylvania Ave. plotting how many ways he can overthrow the Constitution and you complain about a few rich guys who make bigger contributions than most? Guess it takes all kinds.
About Campaign Finance
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Supreme Court Takes Campaign Finance Case, Will Rule On Contribution Limits

This case is a logical and entirely sensible extension of Citizens United. It seems that Roberts is donning sackcloth and ashes to demonstrate to the conservative Justices that he has not entirely gone squishy soft after he called The Affordable Care Act a legal tax. Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson are going to be two happy and huge donors if the SCOTUS rules to diminish campaign finance regs... Soros just pulled off another arbitrage coup and might want to spread his largesse to the Dems, so everybody [including Apple's Tim Cook] might be happy with that.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Mike Allen puts a New Gambit in His Playbook: Useful Morons Reply

POLITICO has removed its nose from Obama's nethermost orifice [note reference to tiny Schwannstueke] and sent their masterminds to decry the terrible treatment this White House is giving them---and after all they've done for HIM! His Most High Solipsist has benefited from the Band of Brothers/Sisters who avoided Solyndra, Fast and Furious, Benghazi [during the election, no less] and [and many other gaffes too numerous to name] not even the NYT can get access to a one-on-ONE with His Most High Narcissist. Of course, sniveling sycophants like Brian Williams, Scott Pelley, Diane Sawyer and the House Poodle from 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft, all get their face time with The Emperor Jones.

"The balance of power used to bemore in favor of the mainstream press,” said Mike McCurry, who was press secretary to President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Nowadays, he said, “The White House gets away with stuff I would never have dreamed of doing. When I talk to White House reporters now, they say it’s really tough to do business with people who don’t see the need to be cooperative.”

McCurry and his colleagues in the Clinton White House were hardly above putting their boss in front of gentle questions: Clinton and Vice President Al Gore often preferred the safety of “Larry King Live” to the rhetorical combat of the briefing room. But Obama and his aides have raised it to an art form: The president has shut down interviews with many of the White House reporters who know the most and ask the toughest questions. Instead, he spends way more time talking directly to voters via friendly shows and media personalities. Why bother with The New York Times beat reporter when Obama can go on “The View”?

Piers Morgan has adequately replaced Larry King, but his reputation as a fugitive from a British newsie scandal would tarnish the shining armor of the Commander of the Faithful,[Rais al-Mu'mineen to his Arab confreres whom he bows and kowtows to as much as it isn't seen as dreadfully impolitic]. The usually compliant Ann Compton bleats thusly:

“The way the president’s availability to the press has shrunk in the last two years is a disgrace,” said ABC News White House reporter Ann Compton, who has covered every president back to Gerald R. Ford. “The president’s day-to-day policy development — on immigration, on guns — is almost totally opaque to the reporters trying to do a responsible job of covering it. There are no readouts from big meetings he has with people from the outside, and many of them aren’t even on his schedule. This is different from every president I covered. This White House goes to extreme lengths to keep the press away.”

No more interviews of nominees when there might be a chance to slip up and ask a real query:

When Obama nominated Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court, she gave one interview — to White House TV, produced by Obama aides.

The GREAT ONE or is it WON still has a choir of clowns like the alcoholic whore Charles H. Pierce over at the unread broadshit called Esquire roars that POLITICO has always been unreliable. The WaPo's in-house sod hole Greg Mitchell calls Vandehei and Allen "Crybabies" when he himself is a victim of perpetual buggery and submission by the White House, the DNC, and the far-left conclave of covert communists like little Ezra Klein. But there's more:

“They use every technique anyone has ever thought of, and some no one ever had,” New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker told us. “They can be very responsive and very helpful at pulling back the curtain at times while keeping you at bay at others. And they’re not at all shy about making clear when they don’t like your stories, which is quite often.”

Peter is actually the very best foreign reporter in the NYT stable. In the past, the "newspaper of record" was given special treatment. But now Twitter, Facebook, Google+, legacy lefty TV broadcasters like NBC, CBS, ABC and especially 60 Minutes along with many other communication outlets are employed by this White House to undermine the GOP and ignore the traditional media. Some of Obama's techniques are:

* There’s the classic weekend document dump to avoid negative coverage. By our count, the White House has done this nearly two dozen times, and almost always to minimize attention to embarrassing or messy facts. “What you guys call a document dump, we call transparency,” the White House’s Earnest shot back. If that’s the case, the White House was exceptionally transparent during the Solyndra controversy, releasing details three times on a Friday.

* There is the iron-fisted control of access to White House information and officials. Top officials recently discouraged Cabinet secretaries from talking about sequestration. And even top officials privately gripe about the muzzle put on them by the White House.

* They are also masters of scrutiny avoidance. The president has not granted an interview to print reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, POLITICO and others in years. These are the reporters who are often most likely to ask tough, unpredictable questions.Kumar, who works out of the White House press room and tallies every question a journalist asks the president, has found that in his first term Obama held brief press availabilities after photos ops or announcements one-third as often as George W. Bush did in his first term — 107 to Bush’s 355.

* While White House officials deny it is intentional, this administration —like its predecessors — does some good old-fashioned bullying of reporters: making clear there will be no interviews, or even questions at press conferences, if aides are displeased with their coverage.

And the press had a good time with an old pic of Obama shooting a skeet shotgun, but got slapped on the wrist by Carney and Plouffe, demonstrating the essential silliness of the sandbox toddlers in the West Wing when someone criticizes their toys.

A number of these techniques were on vivid display two weekends ago, when the White House released a six-month-old photo of the president shooting skeet, buttressing his claim in a New Republic interview that he fires at clay pigeons “all the time” at Camp David.

Obama and his team, especially newly promoted senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, often bemoan the media’s endless chase of superficial and distracting storylines. So how did the president’s inner circle handle the silly dust-up about whether the president really did shoot skeet?

Pfeiffer and White House press secretary Jay Carney tweeted a link to the photo, with Pfeiffer writing that it was “[f]or all the skeeters” (doubters, or “skeet birthers”). Longtime adviser David Plouffe then taunted critics on Twitter: “Attn skeet birthers. Make our day - let the photoshop conspiracies begin!” Plouffe soon followed up with: “Day made. The skeet birthers are out in full force in response to POTUS pic. Makes for most excellent, delusional reading.”

The controversy started with an interview co-conducted by Chris Hughes, a former Obama supporter and now publisher of The New Republic. The government created the content (the photo), released it on its terms (Twitter) and then used Twitter again to stoke stories about conservatives who didn’t believe Obama ever shot a gun in the first place.

Methinks that David is delusional.

And I'm sorry Neil Monroe of the Daily Caller wasn't mentioned when he supposedly "heckled" THE MOST HIGH during a sheeple only exposition in the Rose Garden.

The brave White House reporters literally and figuratively chased him out of their cozy coterie. Look where that got the herd of suck-ups....

Is Chuck Hagel a Terminal Dud & Why does BHO Like Chuck So Much?

Jennifer Rubin wonders why Sens. McCain & Graham are starting to get cold feet on filibustering the Hagel nomination:

Republicans are in this fix because Democrats won’t act responsibly. Recall what happened when President George W. Bush nominated the hapless Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. The opposition party was pushing for her, figuring she’d be a dim pushover. But following in-person meetings on Capitol Hill, it was Republicans, unlike Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and his Democratic friends, who came out not to vouch for her but to say they were concerned and unsatisfied. Republican senators and a grass-roots conservative movement organized against their own president. (We can do better. This is an insult to the institution. She’s in over her head.) And sure enough the White House found a graceful way to end the nomination, saying it couldn’t provide documents needed for confirmation because of executive privilege.

Now, however, it is Democrats who cheer for an inept nominee. According to Bob Woodward, some Democrats have called the White House to see if Hagel is withdrawing. And yet none will publicly admit their qualms; none have hinted that they will vote against Hagel. There is no graceful exit from the White House because President Obama doesn’t give a darn whether Hagel is an incompetent fool. He’s not backing down. He’s going to stick it to the pro-Israel community and to Israel. He’s going to stick it to the Republicans.

There is no other way to read his determination to go forward with such a flawed nominee. And Democrats, unlike their Republican counterparts in the Miers nomination, don’t have the nerve or the concern for the institution in which the nominee would serve to force the president’s hand.

Let’s recap. The president doesn’t care about an inept nominee. The Democrats don’t care about an inept nominee. But Republicans are supposed to defer to the White House’s judgment? This is, frankly, nuts.

Hagel's tenure on the Hill showed that behind that crusty and idiosyncratic persona was and administrative nightmare---according to former staffers. Obscenities and nasty insults were hurled at terrified staffers.

Hagel accused the State Department of being "an adjunct to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. During my tenure as an Arabist FSO working in NEA, the Near East Asia Bureau, the support of the State Dept. was only on the Seventh Floor and that because of political reasons. A solid phalanx of FSO's on the fifth floor in NEA and our Ambassadors in the 22 Arab countries were neutral or very much opposed to Israel's policies.

I would have agreed with Hagel during Kissinger's tenure, but Cyrus Vance and Jim Baker were instructed by the White House to moderate policies towards Israel.

The inside skinny on the entire American/Israeli/Arab saber dance is that the Democrats supported Israel's left-wing Labor Party until in 1978, Likud ousted them from power. The Dems abruptly changed their attitude and policies toward Israel when the right-wing Likud kept Begin, Shamir, Rabin in power until Rabin's assassination by a far-right settler.

The Dems hate Netanyahu and Hagel is Barry Soetero's pet anti-Israeli thumb-in-their-eye. Iran, Syria, Egypt would all be boosted if Hagel were confirmed.

Obama is angry that the GOP is not bowing to his narcissistic sense of self-entitlement.

I'm hoping some less controversial nominee oversees the painful cutbacks the imbecile in the White House is gleefully overseeing as he continues to geld America through economic and political incompetence and dishonesty across the board.

Ted Cruz Isn't The Problem With The Senate: Salon.com

Pareene's story is both fair and balance, although he blames "narrow-minded Tea Party extremists" while ignoring the 800-lb. gorilla of narrow-minded left-wing extremism that the majority of Senate Democrats are guilty of protecting in spite of disagreeing with their more fervent colleagues. Ted Cruz is a man who believes strongly in his principles and fearlessly enunciates them, which is another problem most GOP & Dem Senators have with him. And Cruz is relatively open to unpopular programs to some GOP Senators, like Immigration Reform. In this case, give the devil his due and admit that Cruz may say things people disagree with, but he disdains the Kabuki theatre that passes for normal Senate "comity."
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Ramesh Ponnuru's NYT OpEd Misses Some Points

Ramesh Ponnuru got a Sunday Times OpEd, which means he's probably sold his birthright for a bowl of porridge.

The Republican economic program of the 1980s also fought against government-imposed restrictions on economic activity: decontrolling energy prices, for example. Today we should target different restrictions. Software patents have become a source of unproductive litigation that entrenches large tech companies and inhibits creativity. Republicans shouldn’t support those patents. Economic growth has to trump corporate executives’ campaign donations.

My 92 year-old father-in-law argued the case before the SCOTUS in 1979 for software patents while he worked for Honeywell as a patent lawyer and WON. He gave me the yellow jacket Honeywell gave him---not even a pay raise. Nick Prasinos is a great fellow and he was in my home today singing Greek songs. I gave him one of my sweaters as a protection against the 44-degree cold snap here in Boca tonight.

I would have liked Ramesh to have mentioned quantitative easing, a fancy name for buying 70% of our own US Treasuries by the Fed.

And perhaps the fact that the US is skating by some of the EU's difficulties because the dollar is still the world's reserve currency.

Ben Franklin's face is on more foreign cash than Queen Elizabeth's, at least in denominational value.

And Ponnuru might mention that gold is being bought at an alarming rate.

Gold is the Punxatawny Phil of world markets. It may hibernate now, but a lot of people think the dollar is due for a pounding. [No pun intended.]

Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain Opens My Eyes

I always knew that the Soviet Union was a collection of brutal savages, but Anne Applebaum recounts some real horror stories in her chapter on the victory of the Red Army over the Wehrmacht and its consequences:

One anecdote with footnote recounts a German communist who comes to the local Red Commissar to declare his affiliation only to come home to find Soviet soldiers had gang-raped his wife.

The Red Army rape squads were indiscriminate and after leaving Soviet territory to reach German-occupied Poland would rape Polish women with gusto, although they were greeted warmly by many Poles.

The Germans were due to suffer a more thorough desecration of their womenfolk, including mere five-year olds killed by relentless rapes.

But Soviet girls released from Nazi slave-labor camps suffered similar fates. Raped by Red Army soldiers despite being so-called Soviet "citizens."

One story has a bunch of [probably drunken] soldiers spotting a beautiful Soviet blonde girl happy that she had just been released from Nazi slavery and who had just written a letter to her parents that she would be home soon sprayed in the back with an AK-47 by a savage yelling, "Hey Fritzie, where are you going?" She lasted a couple of hours before dying continually asking "why, why, why?"

When Stalin was informed of this rapine and pillage by Soviet soldiers, the savage warlord only said "After seeing what the Germans did to our Motherland, what is the comparison to see our brave men get their revenge and take some trifles?

This conforms to the old Soviet proverb that "The road from Socialism to Communism goes through Alcoholism."

The Com-symps in the USA are savages with advanced degrees in many cases and would never read a book short-listed for the National Book Award like Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956.

LA Village Idiots Protest Dorner "Persecution!"

Local leftists, including a couple with Guy Fawkes masks, protest the LAPD 'corruption' in not following through with Dorner's grievance with another cop. What a bunch of fools inhabit the nut capital of the planet!!

New York Times follows DNC "Agitprop" Party Line

NYT puts up its little 'political stunt.' as Sen. McConnell calls it with all seriousness. It bemoans the defense cuts that it ordinarily welcome---but doesn't whine about drones. It says 70k Head Start students will be deprived, but that program has proved to be ineffective and a waste of money anyway----ditto about 40k teachers who probably belong to the unions which leech pension and other funds from taxpayers. Read the rest to see how the left is treating the sequester.

Oh, and check out the NYT gobbledegook for tax hikes. They call them 'revenues' to trick low-information voters and citizens who populate the vast majority of 'useful idiots' on the left....

Is Demography Destiny?

When I was a kid, I remember being absorbed by the population of Wisconsin and especially of Milwaukee. This was true even before the Braves came from Boston in 1953, so I was ten or so... Anyhow, back then Milwaukee was the 13th largest city in the USA, far behind Detroit, St. Louis, and other towns with big league teams.

However, Milwaukee has slid from the 750k range to around 600k today. Milwaukee now has just about the 26th place in the USA.

However, I remember that back in the early '50s that St. Louis was a notch or two above Milwaukee in population, around 800k. The last census in 2010, it was at 318k and losing about .4% per annum.

It is even more important to remember that in the year of the Great World Fair in St. Louis in 1905, the "Gateway to the West" was the THIRD city in the country after New York and Chicago, and had TWO major league baseball teams.

Today it is stuck between Santa Ana and Riverside, CA.

I've lived in both Milwaukee and St. Louis [though back in the sixties] and StL was a bustling metropolis famous for its Italian and German flavor [catchers Yogi Berra & another Italian who caught for the Cardinals both hailed from the south side Italian district].

At the time, I remember St. Louis still having a population of around 600k within its urban boundaries [I was dabbling in local politics, so the number comes to mind]

But the great metropolis with a World's Fair that invented the ice cream cone and popularized the hot dog and hamburger is now a husk of a city---tarnished with a population from the Deep South which pays no taxes and truly is an urban blight without many redeeming features.

East St. Louis is across the Mississippi and a true reflection of the misery of much of urban America east of that great river.

Elizabeth Warren Embarrasses Hapless Bank Regulators At First Hearing (VIDEO)

The busted [part-Cherokee] Affirmative Action hero from Harvard [just like Obama] beats down bank regulators, a majority of whom were appointed by the Obama Administration or supervised [in a sense] by their Obamaite betters. Deploying the usual left-wing hypocrisy that the Dems are fighting for the little man, Warren overlooks the fact that Wall Street has as many giant banks supporting the Dems [e.g., Goldman Sachs] as the banks support the GOP [grosso modo].



And her admiration of Aaron Swartz, a criminal caught in the act in open-and-shut felonious conduct, demonstrates again the flippant and mindless support that she and other Democrats usually afford to criminal conduct [e.g., Dorner episode with leftists applauding his murder spree.]
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Snakebit Hagel Chokes & Gets a Filibuster Prize

POLITICO makes a heroic attempt to explain "why POTUS went all-in on Chuck Hagel."

Josh Gerstein & Glenn Thrush are surprisingly neutral about the filibuster, given POLITCO's strong tilt to the left side of the political spectrum.

...an irked Obama is dead set on installing his pick at the Pentagon — even though the bitter battle over his confirmation is likely to leave lasting scars on his nominee at a time of looming military cuts and dangerous new developments in Iran and North Korea.

“We’ve never had a secretary of defense filibustered before … there are only a handful of instances in which there’s been any kind of filibuster of anybody,” the president said during a Google+ chat after the Senate vote.

“My expectation and hope is that Chuck Hagel … will be confirmed as our defense secretary,” he said. “It’s just unfortunate that this kind of politics intrudes at a time when I’m presiding over [a war in Afghanistan].

The NYT blamed Texas Senator Ted Cruz for the debate and filibuster:

Mr. Hagel, a former senator from Mr. Cruz’s own party, was about to be the victim of the first filibuster of a nominee to lead the Pentagon. The blockade was due in no small part to the very junior senator’s relentless pursuit of speeches, financial records or any other documents with Mr. Hagel’s name on them going back at least five years. Some Republicans praised the work of the brash newcomer, but others joined Democrats in saying that Mr. Cruz had gone too far.

Bobo Boxer even obliquely accused Ted Cruz of "McCarthyism," a sign that the NYT is going to launch a full-bore smear campaign against Cruz, whom they consider a mini-Palin.

As long as the attention given to Cruz keeps Marco Rubio away from the left's slash-and-burn character assassinations undertaken by the MSM, this might be a good thing. Dave Weigel in Slate even caps Cruz, but blames Hagel for his own travails:

There is one sucker tonight: Chuck Hagel. He botched up his confirmation hearing, giving Republicans all kinds of reasons to oppose him. (In his "no" statement, Sen. Mark Kirk, who was never undecided on Hagel, continues to pretend that Hagel's "elected" government of Iran gaffe was a window into his real thinking, as opposed to lazy verbiage.) He has to wait 12 days for the Senate to take up his nomination again. In that time, he has to endure more reports and rumors about his past speeches (nothing since the "Jewish lobby" comment has damaged his chances so far), and he probably has to shut up, which seems difficult for him.

But for the first ever filibuster of a national security nominee—the first ever of one of the original Cabinet positions inaugurated in 1789—this thing really split the baby. Everybody seems to win something.

So another vote may take place in 12 days or so. Hagel will have to sweat the Senate recess and Obama will see another national security Cabinet favorite [remember Susan Rice?] in the sauna over unjudicious remarks made many years past.

The only reason Boy Wonder THE WON ever achieved the White House is the brevity and barren quality of his previous record as a State Senator [whose campaign finance records were never found for the MSM beavers to gnaw away on].

Which says volumes about American politics.

CalPERS Eating Up California Budget

The California Public Employees System is a corrupt and unaccountable abscess on the state's chances for future financial stability. Read the whole article, but here's a smidgeon:

”CalPERS’s advocacy for higher benefits and its poor investment performance in recent years have locked in long-term debt in California and driven up costs, problems for which there are no easy solutions. As former Schwarzenegger economic advisor David Crane, a California Democrat, has said of the fund’s managers and board: “They are desperate to keep truths hidden."

Obama SOTU Gun Control Remarks a "Charade"

NRA Chief LaPierre says Obama was offbase in his remarks on guns in the SOTU:

NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre said Obama’s speech exposed the “fraudulent intentions” behind his call for new restrictions on firearms and high-capacity magazines.

“It was only a few weeks ago when they were marking their anti-gun agenda as a way of protecting school children from harm. That charade ended at the State of the Union, when the president exposed their fraudulent intentions. It's not about keeping kids safe at school. That wasn't even mentioned in the president's speech." Speaking at the National Wild Turkey Federation convention in Nashville, LaPierre said proponents of stricter gun laws are really just trying to take guns away from law-abiding citizens.

"They only care about their decades-long, decades-old gun control agenda," LaPierre said. "Ban every gun they can. Tax every gun sold. And register every American gun owner. The president has taken the art of public deception and manipulation to a whole new level."

He vowed that defenders of the Second Amendment would “stand and fight." "We will not be duped by the hypocrisy in the White House, or the Congress, who would deny our right to semi-automatic technology and the magazines we need to defend ourselves," LaPierre said.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/283351-nra-chief-obama-revealed-gun-push-is-a-charade#ixzz2KxlFQ9WU

Marco Rubio On Climate Change: 'The Government Can't Change The Weather'

YOU SAY "China and India, in fact, have cap-and-trade systems to control emissions, while the U.S. does not. A proposed system for the U.S. passed the then-Democratic-controlled House in 2010, while it died in the Senate. China is, of course, the world's leading emitter of carbon dioxide, but it also has a population over four times the United States."

China, of course, burns filthy polluting brown coal and India burns wood [I've been in Delhi twice in January and the climate outside buildings is choking with smoke]. Neither actually ENFORCE their "cap-and-trade" emissions policies.

Last I checked, the US Senate was in the thrall of the Democrats in 2010. Could it be Reid's incompetence or the fact that several Dems thought cap and trade a bad idea?

And a poll of 'climate researchers' in 2010 overlooks NOAA's frequent press releases that the world's mean temperature has actually gone down since 1998. AGW is the "Cargo Cult Science" that Richard Feynman warned us against in his famous speech at Cal Tech in the early '70s. Lemming-like behavior among scientists is the norm, not the exception....

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

The SOTU Nobody Watched

Obama is already beginning to fade with the electorate, who perhaps has gotten sick & tired of hearing empty promises.

The Obama list of things to do day before yesterday saw only 24 million households tuned in---the lowest number since Clinton's sayonara speech in 2000.

As a possible precursor to Obama's future cascade downwards---the 22 million by the First BS-BJ POTUS in 2000 contrasted with 41 million households in Billy Jeff's 1993 SOTU.

Could be rough sailing ahead for the staccato-voiced Promises-Promises POTUS.

Rush Limbaugh: Obama Will Be Responsible for Nothing

Rush dismantles Obama's SOTU by noting the cognitive dissonance of the low-information voter. It appears from the latest Gallup Poll that the country dislikes the direction the country is going, but it likes Obama's speech...!! Read the piece above & Mr. Shanklin's uproarious send-up of the Obama "leading from behind" mantra...

Gun Control Is a HORRIBLE Idea

Mexico has some of the worlds toughest gun control laws and observe how that's worked out for them, the cartels sure love it. Chicago, DC, some of the nations toughest gun control laws, yet highest murder rates.

Gun Control does not work, and only empowers criminals whom gun control laws do not affect.

The Man Who Shot Bin Laden Tells His Story

Read this Esquire story of Seal Team 6 and the woeful afterlife of a normal Seal graduate after he leaves the service. As a native of Milwaukee and a fellow who was employed as a beer truck driver while in college decades ago, I fell of my chair ROTFLMAO at this:

If "Shooter's" name come out, they were advised that they could go into a witness-protection-like program. Just as soon as the Department of Defense creates one. "They [SEAL command] told me they could get me a job driving a beer truck in Milwaukee" under an assumed identity. Like Mafia snitches, they would not be able to contact their families or friends. "We'd lose everything."

Read more: Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden - Treatment of Veteran Who Shot bin Laden - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/features/man-who-shot-osama-bin-laden-0313#ixzz2KfE6OylJ

Letterman, O'Reilly Square Off

Actually, the two didn't really square off because Letterman didn't challenge Bill-O except to back off as soon as O'Reilly showed a commanding knowledge of every subject the serial dunce-host moron of the eponymous Letterman show dared to raise.

O'Reilly bounced Letterman's noggin around so hard that the dizzy host forgot the subjects he himself had raised at the beginning of the guest's appearance.

When O'Reilly reminded Letterman of the final subject [after showing L's ignorance of Lincoln & every other subject on the agenda] which was gun control, Letterman showed astounding ignorance by accusing the AR-15 of being an AUTOMATIC weapon, when it's a semi-automatic. O'Reilly corrected his dunce-host by reminding DL that ALL automatic weapons are ILLEGAL in the USA.

Letterman asked the question why anyone would want to allow a semi-automatic and O'Reilly answered that he had a home in Starr County, Texas close to the border where narcotics traffickers routinely carry such semi-automatic weapons to protect their drugs. After Bill-O mentioned the 3500 miles of border between San Diego & Brownsville, Letterman stupidly questioned "how many traffickers, a thousand?"

When BO'R responded 'many more than that, in his usual cretinous mode, DL said, well then the Border Patrols can stop them with AR-15s or get the Army to back them up...!

It was totally apparent that DL had no knowledge of the subject of gun control except the rote DNC talking points, which left out the really relevant aspects of the problem.

It's easy to understand now why Letterboy is the darling of the MSM lapdogs and only has Bill-O on once every three months or so to boost ratings.

Crowd Crush Kills 39 at Gigantic Hindu Festival

Flying over India at night in the '70s, I was blessed to wake up and suddenly see millions of fires on the ground as though the whole country were alight. The annual Diwali or Festival of Light was astronomical or rather astrological.

I am reading a book entitled In Spite of The Gods and can understand a wee bit the following:

“We have a dip here and then live happily for the rest of the year,” said Shaish Narayan, 62, a woodworker who first took part in the Kumbh when he was 5. “I put my faith in Mother Ganges.”

“We have a dip here and then live happily for the rest of the year,” said Shaish Narayan, N. K. Auddy, a consulting engineer from Kolkata, was taking part in his first Kumbh because his daughter recently gave birth to his first grandchild, and he was hoping for a divine blessing for the child. “I want him to have a good future,” Mr. Auddy said.

Government officials estimated that 10 million pilgrims were encamped in Allahabad on Saturday night, with 20 million to 30 million expected to bathe by Monday.

If those figures are even close to being accurate, it is as if the entire population of Texas decided to visit an area the size of Savannah, Ga., all on the same weekend.

About 80 million pilgrims — roughly the population of Germany — are expected at some point in the Kumbh’s 55-day run. By comparison, 3.1 million people visited Mecca in Saudi Arabia during last year’s annual pilgrimage, the hajj. Each successive Kumbh breaks the record for the largest gathering in human history.

Many stay in a huge tent city built on riverbanks that were underwater as recently as October. Its inhabitants have access to drinking water, public toilets, good health care and consistent electricity — none of which India has been able to reliably deliver anywhere else.

The precautions and amenities are intended to prevent the stampedes and plagues that have so worried government officials. About 70,000 government employees provide security, sprinkle insecticide, sweep up excrement and spray bleach. But it was not enough to avert a tragedy on Sunday.

The stampede was set off by railway delays, shoddy infrastructure and overcrowding, several witnesses said. Train service was severely delayed during the early evening, they said, leaving more and more passengers stranded in the small station.

I for one lived through four Saudi hajjeneen in Jidda and remember that each year the number of pilgrims would rise another several hundred thousand. The Saudis with their unlimited resources built huge reception areas and an entire city to house the pilgrims, though the Quran enjoins the pilgrims to live in complete simplicity.

I say 'lived through' because the pilgrims came from everywhere between and including China to Senegal---and brought with them the diseases that were on the current epidemic list.

Because they carried germs, microbes, viruses spread from and to their suffering comrades from elsewhere to all ends of the Muslim world and beyond.

Including myself, who survived nasty bouts of flu, heavy colds and a variety of other ills every year.

I can only imagine what the gigantic hordes at Allahabad will carry home with them.

P.S. The trains are about the only public service in India that are punctual.

Perhaps a larger and more commodious railway station might be in order???

Obama Reverts to Bush's Behavior on Foreign Policy

The New York Times does a volte face and admits that the much-maligned [by them and other leftist hypocrites] GWB wasn't so bad after all, or perhaps Oblunder is not as good as the Old Grey Lady likes to think.

For four years, Mr. Obama has benefited at least in part from the reluctance of Mr. Bush’s most virulent critics to criticize a Democratic president. Some liberals acknowledged in recent days that they were willing to accept policies they once would have deplored as long as they were in Mr. Obama’s hands, not Mr. Bush’s.

Even certifiably cuckoo Michigan ex-Gov. Jennifer Granholm admitted more or less as such. In this case, it was a case of a VERY broken clock being right once a day.

NYT Calls for Menendez Chairing of SenForRelCo to Cease

Harry Reid continues to defend Sen. Menendez, who like Rangel Fats, has fallen into the Dominican Republic's political sewage, among other indiscretions. The link has the details.

Fascist Lesbian Bitch Napolitano Loads Up On Ammo

Pig-faced Cunt Napolitano has acquired 21 million hollow-point bullets to get DHS's armory up to 1.6 BILLION bullets. The fascist Nazi regime spawned by Oblunder & his Brownshit [sic] comrades is getting its takeover apparatus in working order. Read the link above for details.

Paul Ryan Opposes Changing Wisconsin's Electoral College Votes

Ha ha ha.... LOL! The Terkel version puts the 'heavy-handed redistricting and even gerrymandering' as a possible reason the GOP in 2010 was able to have a potential advantage if they did the electoral college allocations by CDs & gave the two Senators to the plurality winner in the state.

Of course, in 2000 when the Dems had the legislative advantage both in state houses and state legislatures, redistricting was totally fair and honest with no bias nor prejudice to either party. [/sarc]

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Menendez Chicanery Exposed

NJ Senator Menendez has more than hookers to be afraid of. It appears that he talked to HHS officials about his eye doctor free air trips to the Dominican Republic's sugar daddy. About a $9 million fine Medicare is about to impose on the crooked doctor.

Hagel Vote Postponed

The Senate Armed Services Committee has postponed its vote sine die on Chuck Hagel's selection as SecDef due to his insisting that his foreign financial dealings not be revealed. Read all about it...!!!

PA Guv Spurns Medicaid while Ohio Guv Caves

Governor Tom Corbett tells Obama to go fish on Medicaid Support from Feds, Ohio Governor Kasich bites the hook and caves....

Krugman Advocates Death Panels & Sales Taxes to Support Obamacare Fiasco

Paul Krugboy admits he's gonna get feedback for advocating death panels. Read it and weep.

MSM Lapdogs Tilt 8-1 In Favor Of Increase in Gun Control

Media Research Center has done its homework on 216 stories on the post-Newtown hue and cry for abolishment of the Second Amendment. The link gives the horrific media bias in great detail...

Liar-in-Chief Accuses GOP of Starting Sequester.

Bob Woodward wrote a book, The Price of Politics, about the First Fool who's now lying once again:

Well, according to our Washington Post colleague Bob Woodward, the idea did in fact originate in the White House.

Woodward’s book about the 2011 debt ceiling crisis says clearly that the idea originated inside the White House, and Woodward later said that Obama’s assertion that the idea was proposed by Congress was “not correct” and that “it’s refuted by the people who work for him.”

The Post’s fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, awarded Obama four Pinocchios for his claim — a rating that denotes “significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions.”

When Woodward says "not correcct," he means Obungler is lying.

Sen. Menendez Caught with Underage Hookers???

Harry Reid swears for the integrity of Sen. Menendez of NJ, which is a virtual condemnation of the NJ Senator, in the eyes of any sane onlooker. The link above has connections to lots of salacious good stuff...!

Global Warming Hoax of AGW Admitted by UN IPCC

"Anthropogenic" is the part of Global Warming that may be seriously undercut by the latest draft of the UN IPCC Report in the works. Alec Rawls has the details, but the Fox Report on the link marked 'anthropogenic' contains the essence of the details.

The report still barely hints at the mountain of evidence for enhanced solar forcing, or the magnitude of the evidenced effect. Dozens of studies (section two here) have found between a .4 and .7 degree of correlation between solar activity and various climate indices, suggesting that solar activity "explains" in the statistical sense something like half of all past temperature change, very little of which could be explained by the very slight variation in TSI. At least the Chapter 7 team is now being explicit about what this evidence means: that some mechanism of enhanced solar forcing must be at work. For those who've noted that the level of sunspot activity correlates to weather and climate shifts on Mother Earth over the last few centuries, this report should be an effective block to any asinine attempts by the First Ass to impose his Imperial Will on poor duped taxpayers.

Sunspots could be the mechanism of enhanced solar forcing" the report talks of.

Of course, the corrupt lazy a$$holes in the MSM will ignore this information and blame Fox for actually reporting it.

That is SOP for the hoaxers at NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN & the cable joke MessNBC.

Scott Brown Not Running For Senate

Too bad that Scott has chosen not to run against the corrupt far-left stooge Ed Markey, the likely Dem nominee. Stephen Lynch would be a nice change from the ideologues and patsies that the Dems have sent to DC as Mass Senators in the past decades. I understand why Scott wants a break from non-stop elections and maybe he could govern the state as a GOP chief with an absolute minimum of the peculation and chicanery that Dem governors alway find in their wake.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tawana Brawley Unearthed in NY Post Search

Al Sharpton was the only winner in the sordid little scandal in 1987 when a skank named TB claimed she was raped by an ADA in Wappingers Falls, NY.

Now Steve Pagones is trying to get the money owed him in the $190K settlement before said skank changed her name and fled South to Richmond, VA.

Lotsa luck, Steve. The pig is worse than her sponsor back then, fat boy Preacher Sharpton.

Minnesota Snowbird Tax: Robbing St. Pete to Pay St. Paul

Taxaholic Democrats swept the table in a state where I spent four years of my life---albeit half a century ago---and still have relatives suffering in the snow there at this moment.

Details are sketchy, but the idea is to tax these nonresidents on their income from stocks, bonds, capital gains and dividends if they spend at least 60 days in Minnesota a year. Income earned in the state is already taxed regardless of residence status, but many retirees or vacationers own a home in the state and live there only for the summer.

The new tax would hit income not earned in Minnesota by those who don't currently spend the requisite six months and a day in the state to qualify as a taxable resident. So, for example, if you returned to the land of 10,000 taxes only for July and August, you'd suddenly have to pay the taxman in St. Paul on dividend checks sent to your main residence in St. Pete.

The state Revenue Department won't say how many snowbirders the new tax would hit, but it predicts the tax would raise $30 million over two years. That's barely an asterisk in Mr. Dayton's new two-year budget of $37.9 billion, especially since it may drive more residents to leave the state permanently.

The hassle factor will be enormous, with the taxmen presumably demanding proof of location during the year via the likes of airline tickets and golf or restaurant receipts. When revenue invariably doesn't meet expectations, maybe Mr. Dayton can require a GPS locator for grandma's cellphone.

But then as the Governor's line about "unfairnesses" attests, raising revenue isn't the point of this exercise. The goal is to punish people for the sin of being able to afford to travel south for the winter.

And escape the frozen north north, at least that part without Oil, Gas, or a first-rate NFL football franchise...!

BTW, Wisconsin & Michigan both elected totally Republican legislatures and governors.

The snowbird smackdown is part of a larger Dayton tax grab proposing to lift Minnesota's personal income tax rate to 9.85% from 7.85% on income above $150,000 for singles and $250,000 for joint filers. Congrats to midlevel corporate types in Edina—the Governor says you're rich. Minnesota's income tax rate would be the country's sixth highest.

Mr. Dayton says his plan would produce "fair, progressive and sustainable" tax revenue, by which he means everyone pays more, because he also proposes lowering the sales tax to 5.5% from 6.875% but collecting more money by expanding its reach to everything from clothing to over-the-counter drugs and business services. The $2.1 billion in additional new revenue would finance a nearly 8% increase in state spending.

Minnesota Republicans were wiped out in November's elections, so the Democrats who run St. Paul will have to decide if they want to define themselves as tax increasers the minute they get all the power. Then again this is what Democrats everywhere do these days.

So in the land of 10K taxes, you have to freeze to avoid a surtax imposed by Emperor Dayton. His Target Store chain makes him not worried about higher taxes on himself, much like Sen. Kerry, who docked his boat in nearby tax-friendly Rhode Island. Rich Dems are arrogant monsters, eh?