Mayor Nutter of Philly Expounds His Insanity

James Taranto of the WSJ has a great post on how the Philly mayor [appropriately named Nutter] has said that racial sensitivities trump The First Amendment. The link has how this certifiable nut job is probably worse than the ineffable boy-bitch Bloomberg.....

Sabato Predicts Dem Problems for 2014 Elections

This link has a good analysis of why the odds are close to overwhelming that the GOP may actually pick up seats in the House and Senate in the 2014 midterms. Hint: getting the Dimmorat slackers and layabouts to the polls is a major problem. The white GOP tends to vote, the crazy-quilt Dimmorats to get out of bed on election day is always a problem.

Campaign by Terrorist Journalists to Smear Pope

A Jewish Communist named Verbitsky leading a campaign by Argentine leftist garbage to smear Pope Francis for alleged complicity with the military regime which happily rid the country of fake militants like its skank presidentissima Kirchner.

....the Kirchner government's pit bulls in journalism—men such as Horacio Verbitsky, a former member of the guerrilla group known as the Montoneros and now an editor at the pro-government newspaper Pagina 12—immediately began a campaign to smear the new pontiff's character and reputation at home and in the international news media.

The calumny is not new. Former members of terrorist groups like Mr. Verbitsky, and their modern-day fellow travelers in the Argentine government, have used the same tactics for years to try to destroy their enemies—anyone who doesn't endorse their brand of authoritarianism. In this case they allege that as the Jesuits' provincial superior in Argentina in the late 1970s, then-Father Bergoglio had links to the military government.

This is propaganda. Mrs. Kirchner and her friends aren't yet living in the equivalent of a totalitarian state where there is no free press to counter their lies. That day may come soon. The government is now pressuring merchants, under threat of reprisals, not to buy advertising in newspapers. The only newspapers that aren't on track to be financially ruined by this intimidation are those that the government controls and finances through official advertising, like Mr. Verbitsky's Pagina 12.

The Montoneros were a collection of marxist garbage swept aside by Peron, although they claimed to be fighting in his name. The traitor Verbitsky is now Presidenta Skank's chief publicist, so that his Pagina 12 is called the 'Official Gazette' sarcastically by the decimated Argentine middle class.

Intellectually honest observers with firsthand knowledge of Argentina under military rule (1976-1983) are telling a much different story than the one pushed by Mr. Verbitsky and his ilk. One of those observers is Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, winner of the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize. Last week he told BBC Mundo that "there were bishops that were complicit with the dictatorship, but Bergoglio, no." As to the charge that the priest didn't do enough to free junta prisoners, Mr. Pérez Esquivel said: "I know personally that many bishops who asked the military government for the liberation of prisoners and priests and it was not granted."

Former Judge Alicia Oliveira, who was herself fired by the military government and forced into hiding to avoid arrest, told the Argentine newspaper Perfil last week that during those dark days she knew Father Bergoglio well and that "he helped many people get out of the country." In one case, she says there was a young man on the run who happened to look like the Jesuit. "He gave him his identification card and his [clergy attire] so that he could escape."

Ms. Oliveira also told Perfil that when she was in hiding at the home of the current minister of security, Nilda Garré, the two of them "ate with Bergoglio." As Ms. Oliveira pointed out, Ms. Garré "therefore knows all that he did."

So even the head of the Argentine Security Ministry ate with Fr. Bergoglio at the time and knows of the cowardly agitprop of the left-wing junta that masquerades as a democracy in Peronista land---a prosperous country ruined by socialism and an object model of the perils of state dominance.

Birth of the Cyprus IMF Monster Policy

The Guardian has this article on the horrors of the IMF as denominated by Joseph Stiglitz:

Here in Washington we conducted exclusive interviews with Stiglitz, for The Observer and Newsnight, about the inside workings of the IMF, the World Bank, and the bank's 51% owner, the US Treasury.

And here, from sources unnamable (not Stiglitz), we obtained a cache of documents marked, 'confidential' and 'restricted'.

Stiglitz helped translate one, a 'country assistance strategy'. There's an assistance strategy for every poorer nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation.

But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank's 'investigation' involves little more than close inspection of five-star hotels. It concludes with a meeting with a begging finance minister, who is handed a 'restructuring agreement' pre-drafted for 'voluntary' signature.

Each nation's economy is analysed, says Stiglitz, then the Bank hands every minister the same four-step programme.

Step One is privatisation. Stiglitz said that rather than objecting to the sell-offs of state industries, some politicians - using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics - happily flogged their electricity and water companies. 'You could see their eyes widen' at the possibility of commissions for shaving a few billion off the sale price.

And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest privatisation of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. 'The US Treasury view was: "This was great, as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We DON'T CARE if it's a corrupt election." '

Stiglitz cannot simply be dismissed as a conspiracy nutter. The man was inside the game - a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet, chairman of the President's council of economic advisers.

Most sick-making for Stiglitz is that the US-backed oligarchs stripped Russia's industrial assets, with the effect that national output was cut nearly in half.

After privatisation, Step Two is capital market liberalisation. In theory this allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money often simply flows out.

Stiglitz calls this the 'hot money' cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation's reserves can drain in days.

And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation's own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%.

'The result was predictable,' said Stiglitz. Higher interest rates demolish property values, savage industrial production and drain national treasuries.

At this point, according to Stiglitz, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: market-based pricing - a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls 'the IMF riot'.

The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, 'down and out, [the IMF] squeezes the last drop of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up,' - as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots.

There are other examples - the Bolivian riots over water prices last year and, this February, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You'd almost believe the riot was expected.

And it is. What Stiglitz did not know is that Newsnight obtained several documents from inside the World Bank. In one, last year's Interim Country Assistance Strategy for Ecuador, the Bank several times suggests - with cold accuracy - that the plans could be expected to spark 'social unrest'.

That's not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to make the US dollar Ecuador's currency has pushed 51% of the population below the poverty line.

The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and tear gas) cause new flights of capital and government bankruptcies This economic arson has its bright side - for foreigners, who can then pick off remaining assets at fire sale prices.

A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers but the clear winners seem to be the western banks and US Treasury.

Now we arrive at Step Four: free trade. This is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank, which Stiglitz likens to the Opium Wars. 'That too was about "opening markets",' he said. As in the nineteenth century, Europeans and Americans today are kicking down barriers to sales in Asia, Latin American and Africa while barricading our own markets against the Third World 's agriculture.

In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade, which is just as effective and sometimes just as deadly.

Stiglitz isn't simply a conspiracy nutter. He is a marxist @$$hole as well, and a publicity freak along the lines of another freak named Paul Krugboy.

Creep-in-Chief Flies 747 to Chicago to Campaign for End to Fossil Fuels

The First Hypocrite has once again proved himself the worst POTUS in US history. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot...!!!

Ted Van Dyk Laments Long Lost Dimmocrat Insanity

Ted Van Dyk is a gentleman and a scholar, I learned over a long lunch one-on-one with him before I defected from the Dimmocrat morons now infecting the Party of Jefferson & Jackson. He was Hubert H. Humphrey's troubleshooter and would have had a high position were HHH elected in '68. Here is what Ted thinks of Obama and the other parasites attaching themselves to the US government.

Obama Kisses Hem of Putin's Robe

The cowardly loser in the WH fulfilled his onstage promise to Medvedev last year to cut back missile defense after he was re-elected.

Sen. Warren a Stalinist...

Sen. Warren makes the usual starving or sick baby arguments pro regulation. She is a Stalinist bitch and a stain on the state of MA where I'm trying to sell property in a stagnant economy.

Viva Gov. Walker!

Governor Walker from my native state of Wisconsin [and from my last place of residence in Wauwatosa] may run for POTUS. I'm all for him after he cleaned out the union racketeers in WI & roundly trounced the big national outside-agitator propaganda assault.

"The Bible" Gets Better Basic Cable Ratings than

History Channel's Epic 'The Bible' was the biggest mini-series since The Hatfields and The McCoys last year.

According to the latest Nielsens, released Tuesday, Sunday night’s telecast of “The Bible,” produced by husband-and-wife team Mark Burnett and Roma Downey for basic cable’s History channel, managed to attract more viewers than anything on broadcast network NBC … during the entire week.

Of course, NBC's ratings are in the tank as a law of the Universe, but read the link above for a good read-out on the low ratings the critics gave "The Bible," no surprise to those who are aware of the atheistic paganism the Hollyweirdos affect when exerting their questionable analytical skills.

Pope Francis Rides Bicycle or Public Transportation

The first Jesuit Pope is a man of deep humility and pastoral leanings, as reading this link will attest.

How Bill Clinton Inspired The 47 Percent Filmmaker

Not that it matters to the serial scofflaws that are the Democrats & their political hacks, but recording a person without their permission is against the law in the state of Florida. And it is doubly significant that the president who continued to lie under oath to the American people for six months is the one who inspired this illegal activity.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Makes Major Miscalculation Politically on Tax Hikes

Obama has dropped the ball big-time and his precipitous slide in the polls shows that the American public believes that he's been overplaying his hand badly. Read Jim Vandehei & Mike Allen's POLITICO piece on BHO's arrogant folly.

NYT Peter Baker on Doldrums of WH Press Beat

Glamour has left the job in the White House Press Corps' existence serving largely as lapdogs and stenographers to Jay Carney and other purveyors of the Party Line.

Obama Meets with Arab-Americans Before Trip

Around 1982-3 I was a consultnt for NAAA, the National Association of Arab-Americans. NAAA was a completely Lebanese Christian group, with a sprinkling of Christian Palestinians. George Salem of Ramallah is Greek-Orthodox, i believe, and I knew James Zogby whom I had lunch with on occasion. GWHBush was interested in NAAA and other Arab-American groups, but nothing ever came of it.

Ashley Judd Senate Run: Actress, Activist Planning To Declare Candidacy, Sources Say

Ashley has a lot of strange stuff in her baggage, not the least being her participation in the 2012 Dem POTUS campaign as a delegate at the Charlotte Convention from the state of TENNESSEE!!! And there is a YouTube out there where she proclaims that she's a 'great daughter of the Volunteer State,' not that that will deter the low-information voters in the Dem sheeple herd from following their nut-job get-out-the-vote minders. I hope McConnell's sniper squad gets the YouTube stuff with her full frontal movie shots out there for the uncommitted voters to ponder. She's a lot like Al Franken without the looks....!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

UN Rebukes WaPo & BBC for ignoring Hamas Killing of Baby

The Muslim-leaning journalistic dogs supporting the Hamas terrorist path have been mentioned in a UNHCR report which states that a widely-circulated photo and story of a Hamas baby falsely reported as killed by an Israeli rocket was actually killed accidentally by a Hamas rocket exploding on the ground---another clue that these animals can't handle modern ordnance, let alone PR.

AP's List of the Papabilii

AP has an interesting list of papal 'candidates' who are widely regarded as having a long shot at being Benedict XVI's successor.

The Last Word on Chavez

The Economist sums up the utter failure of the Chavez demagoguery that for fifteen years [1998-2013] hampered and ultimately destroyed Venezuela's democratic institutions as well as its economy.

BACK in the 1990s Latin America seemed to have turned the page on military rule and embraced democracy and free-market economics, with the sole, beleaguered exception of communist Cuba. And then along came Hugo Chávez, a bumptious Venezuelan former lieutenant-colonel who, having staged a failed military coup against a democratic government, got himself elected as president in 1998.

Mr Chávez proceeded to dominate his country for more than 14 years until his death this week from cancer. His secret was to invent a hybrid regime. He preserved the outward forms of democracy, but behind them he concentrated power in his own hands and manipulated the law to further his own ends. He bullied opponents, and encouraged the middle class to emigrate. He hollowed out the economy by mixing state socialism and populist redistribution with a residue of capitalism. And he glued it all together with the crude but potent rhetoric of Latin American nationalism. Mr Chávez claimed to be leading a “Bolivarian revolution” against the “empire” (ie, the United States). It did not seem to matter that Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan hero who liberated much of South America from Spanish colonial rule, was an Anglophile conservative.

Chavismo turned out to be a remarkably successful formula: Mr Chávez won four elections by margins ranging from sweeping to comfortable and lost only one of his six referendums. In October he won a new six-year term even though campaigning was restricted by his illness, which was graver than he admitted. He spawned imitators elsewhere in Latin America, financing an anti-American alliance of like-minded leaders and client states. And he was the saviour of communism in Cuba, his aid keeping the Castros in power while slowing the transition to capitalism in a bankrupt island.

Chavez's buffoonery was occasionally coarse and crude, but it was politically effectve, if one considers theatrical gestures a substitute for building a long-term viable democracy. The long sad road that he led Venezuela along like a barnyard animal will soon lead to a fiscal cliff, and the reckoning will be something his followers will use to start another necrophiliac cult ala Peron.

Scarier Job Chart Topped by SCARIEST!!!

The SCARIEST Job Chart posits that compared to past recessions, by this time our economy should have THIRTEEN million more jobs than we have now. That's 13 million jobs less because of the 2007 crash and the BUFFOON in the WH who isn't doing jack-shit about new jobs.

Remember when the FIRST-CLOWN [or is it CLOWN=IN-CHIEF?] promised to have the jobless rate down to 6% if the stimulus or porkulus package was inflicted on the US economy?

Now the lapdog MSM stenographers are claiming 7.7% [in reality over 15% were the Bureau of Labor Statistics honest] as a great and pleasant surprise.

The low-info voter probably has forgotten what good times are all about, but real Americans understand that we are sliding into the kind of decades-long recession-slump-depression that Japan suffered in the late-80s.

America may be fading economically as productivity wanes with taxes mounting because the elites want to turn the US into Europe.

How's Europe working out lately?

Why I Love The Packers

A Short Dalliance with the Redskins while I lived in DC for fifteen years did not keep me from always following the NFC North's Packers. As a WI native, I can say that my loyalty is the result of the Pack giving back. Check the ESPN link above that I got from a Bill Simmons article---Bill actually was in the running [hypothetically] for the job of Bucks GM and claims to have always liked and wanted to live in Milwaukee. After a twenty-year sojourn there, I can understand.

Peggy Noonan on Dr Doom in the White House

Noonan in the WSJ sums up the abiding metaphor of the Obama years thusly:

Barack Obama really is a study in contrasts, such as aloof and omnipresent. He's never fully present and he won't leave. He speaks constantly, endlessly, but always seems to be withholding his true thoughts and plans. He was the candidate of hope and change, of "Yes, we can," but the mood of his governance has been dire, full of warnings, threats, cliffs and ceilings, full of words like suffering and punishment and sacrifice.

It's always the language of zero-sum, of hardship that must be evenly divided, of constriction and accusation.

It's all so frozen, so stuck. Just when America needs a boost, some faith, a breakthrough.Mr. Obama is making the same mistake he made four years ago. We are in a jobs crisis and he does not see it. He thinks he's in a wrestling match about taxing and spending, he thinks he's in a game with those dread Republicans. But the real question is whether the American people will be able to have jobs.

"Aloof and omnipresent" is an apt description of this absentee POTUS. He is like Clinton---an eternal campaigner. Yet he has no close confidants, except perhaps Valerie Jarrett and Reggie Love, his "body man." More Noonan:

On the plane home I read a piece by Mort Zuckerman, who's emerged as one of the most persuasive and eloquent critics of the president's economic policy. The unemployment picture is worse than people understand, he explained in U.S. News & World Report. The jobless rate, officially 7.7%, is almost twice that if you include those who have stopped looking, work part time, or are only "marginally attached" to the workforce. "The labor force participation rate . . . has dropped to the lowest level since 1984," Mr. Zuckerman noted. "It is harder to find work today than it has been in any previous recession."

Meanwhile, the president is stuck in his games and his history. He should have seen unemployment entering a crisis stage four years ago, and he did not. At that time I was certain he'd go for public-works projects, which could give training to the young and jobs to the experienced underemployed, would create jobs in the private sector and, in the end, yield up something needed—a bridge, a strengthened power grid. He instead gave his first term to health care. And now ObamaCare is being cited as a reason employers are laying people off and not hiring, according to a report from the Federal Reserve.

There's a good case to be made that The Dowager Empress Pelosi tricked Obama into the fraud that is ObamaCare----no committee hearings, no 72 hours to even read the thousand-plus compendium of absurdities that Sebelius and her Orcs compiled for a 218-217 vote which the Senate under doddering old codger Harry Reid rushed through with a "reconciliation" vote which the Senate parliamentarian ruled was technically illegal. Noonan avoids the leaves on the trees and goes straight to a U2's eye view of the forest: What a mess.

Conservative media should stop taunting the president because he spent the past month warning of catastrophe if the sequester kicks in, and the catastrophe hasn't happened. It hasn't happened yet. He can make it happen. He runs the federal agencies. He can decide on a steady drip of catastrophe—food inspectors furloughed on the 15th, long lines at the airport on the 18th, sobbing children missing Head Start on the 20th, civilian contractors pointing to a rusting U.S.S. Truman on the 25th.

He can let them happen one after another, like little spring shoots of doom. And it probably won't look planned and coordinated, it will look spontaneous and inevitable.

And you have to assume that's the plan, because that's kind of how he rolls

Obama rolls toward convincing the 'low information voter' that those Big Bad Republicans are on the prowl to grab back some of the failed programs like Head Start from the spending trough so they can finance their 'executive jets and expensive yachts." He's aiming to take the House from the hapless GOP in 2014.

But what is the sequester about? At the end of the day it's about fewer jobs or fewer hours. In the midst of what is already a jobs crisis.

Right now his attention has turned to dinner with Republican senators and meetings with members of both parties on Capitol Hill. He is trying to show, after a hit in the polls, that he can reach out. He's trying to convince America he's capable of making a deal.

The new engagement may work if in the past few days the president has changed his political style, approach and assumptions. But people don't usually change overnight. On the other hand there's plenty of reason for him to make a cosmetic reach-out in order to show that whatever happens it's not really his fault, and if the sequester causes pain at least the responsibility is shared. He didn't stiff the opposition, he treated them to lamb at the Jefferson Hotel.

But wait, there's an old game still being played at the Casino of Catastrophe orchestrated by careerist adventurers trying to boost their own profile while pretending to speak for the newly-branded centrist people's president.

It is interesting that almost at the same time as the dinner the president's people once again begun warning of doom. A blast email from Organizing for Action, signed by Stephanie Cutter, used these words: "Devastating," "obstructionism," "destructive," "this is real." It claimed 100,000 "teaching jobs" will be cut, along with "70,000 spots for preschoolers in Head Start, $43 million for food programs for seniors, $35 million for local fire department," and nutritional assistance for "over half a million women and their families." All this because of loopholes "for millionaires and billionaires" who want their "yachts and corporate jets."

They aren't dropping the Frighten Everyone strategy.

Their whole approach is still stoke and scare—stoke resentment and scare the vulnerable into pressuring Republicans.

The leopard has not changed his spots. He's just aloof and omnipresent with a slightly different hue of blue.

Filibusters

AP has the longest filibusters on record, making Ron Paul's effort look puny in comparison. Note to self: I used Sen. Proxmire's office when he was back in my native Wisconsin in the early eighties.

The Big Bang Theory Keeps Expanding

USA Today has an article on The Big Bang Theory, one of my favorite TV shows. The audience continues to expand after eight years and many syndication sites.

Chavez: Charismatic Dictator Run Amok

WSJ has a great summary of the disastrous rise and death of a half-wit dunce from the Andes:

The takeaway from Chávez is to beware charismatic demagogues peddling socialist policies at home and revolution abroad.

That's a lesson one would have thought the world had learned by the time Chávez came to power. By 1998, the Soviet Union was a memory, Latin American countries from Mexico to Chile were successfully adopting free-market policies, and Chávez's friend and role model—Cuba's Fidel Castro—was a discredited dinosaur.

Chávez showed that it's possible to run against the tides of history, at least for a while, and at least if you happen to get lucky with an oil revenue bonanza. When he took power, Venezuelan oil prices were plumbing lows of about $10 a barrel. When he took to the podium of the United Nations in 2006 to compare George W. Bush to the devil, he was high on surging global oil prices that would peak in 2008 at more than $150.

That kind of money can buy a lot of influence, and Chávez was quick to use it to purchase the political support of Venezuela's poor, the army and a loyal nouveau riche. It also allowed him to become a classic petro-dictator. In 1999 he revised the Venezuelan constitution to give him expanded powers. He used a constitutional assembly under his control to appoint a chavista Supreme Court. He stripped independent TV and radio stations of their licenses and intimidated reporters with draconian libel laws.

Though elections were held on schedule, he made sure to tilt the playing field. For his fourth election last October, opposition politicians were limited to three minutes of advertising a day, while Chávez could commandeer the airwaves at any time. He permitted no debates. Public workers risked being fired if they voted against him. It was the sort of election only Jimmy Carter could bless—which our 39th president predictably did.

Yet despite the populism and government handouts, life for Venezuela—and particularly the poor—has only become worse. While wealthier Venezuelans could flee, the less-fortunate now endure routine food and medicine shortages, thanks to price and capital controls. Prices are more than 20 times higher than in 1999. Capital has fled the country. The murder rate in Caracas is one of the highest in the world. Bridges and roads are in disrepair, blackouts are routine, and untreated sewage pollutes drinking water.

Meanwhile, state-owned oil company PdVSA has been all but stripped for parts. Daily production fell by more than one million barrels over the course of Chávez's rule to 2.5 million barrels at the end of 2012.

Chávez made his mark on the world stage by forging alliances with Bashar Assad in Syria and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, giving sanctuary to Colombia's narco-terrorist FARC movement, providing the Castro regime with free oil, and inveighing loudly against the United States. He succeeded in spawning political imitators in Ecuador and Bolivia.

This brought him some adulation, notably from the usual Hollywood suspects. But the reality of what Venezuela became under Chávez is hard to ignore. On Tuesday the Venezuelan government expelled two U.S. Air Force attaches. Heir apparent Nicolás Maduro also accused the U.S. of poisoning Chávez with cancer, suggesting that the combination of buffoonery and thuggery that Chávez pioneered will continue past his grave.

As for Venezuelans, they will have to fight to reclaim the democracy they once enjoyed. Mr. Maduro lacks his predecessor's charisma or military background, but the institutions of the regime are now entrenched, and its beneficiaries will not easily part with them.

The Constitution requires that new elections be held in 30 days, assuming Mr. Maduro honors the law. Let's hope Venezuelans seize the chance to bury the tragic legacy of Chavismo alongside its author's corpse.

Socialist Hero Hugo and his family managed to embezzle $2 billion from the PDVSA revenues, while feigning to help the poor. These sad sacks on the bottom loved Hugo for letting them have some crumbs from the table. Cuba & Bolivian criminals were the chief beneficiaries of this creepy clone of Sean Penn.

The left-leaning Miami Herald has an editorial roundly condemning the corrupt half wit for his stupidity and venality.

Only a total fool like Jimmy Carter and his two soul mates Penn & Oliver Stone can believe that this monstrosity wss good for his country.

Oh yeah, and Chavez' new phalanx of 'Bolivarian revolutionaries' who were bought and paid for by PDVSA cash....

Eric Holder: Voting Rights Act Can't Be Called Unnecessary Yet

"We saw in stark relief the rank hatred, discrimination and violence that still existed in large parts of the nation," the vice president said Sunday, recalling news coverage of the beatings.



The buffoon Biden could have said that these 'parts of the nation' still exist today in at least two 'parts of the nation' that I have lived in. In Chicago, the rank hatred, etc., is largely between the black and Hispanic parts of the city, with the South Side a seething cauldron of violence. In DC, Anacostia and NE/SE are equal to some parts of Chicago, although the homicide rate is nowhere near the Windy City's...



So Joltin' Joe can blow it out of his most productive orifice one more time and be marked as a complete fool. A walking, talking example of Obama's 'Leading from Behind.'
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Truth Is Out: Obama Is a Liar

Obama consciously lied about the sequester during the debates last fall. Romney didn't call him on it, nor did Obama's lapdogs/stenographers in the Lamestream Media.

Everyone on the Dimocrap side of the aisle says they Bush lied about WMD. But THAT is a lie, because EVERY intelligence source on the planet said Saddam had WMD [which he moved to Syria, where it might be used against Syrian citizens---to protect their socialist government, which is what the Ba'ath Party is.]

R.I.P. Nicholas Prasinos [1921-2013]

My father-in-law Nicholas Prasinos, born in Chicago on March 3rd 1921, passed away early today, March 3rd 2013, on his ninety-second birthday. Nick is survived by his beloved spouse Bessie, who just celebrated her ninety-first birthday. Also survived by his daughters Marilyn Mangan, nee Prasinos and Laraine Lippincott.

Nick went to MIT and was one of the first B-29 pilots who flew over Japan, including over the battleship Missouri at the Surrender of Japan on VJ-Day.

He was Honeywell's chief lawyer who argued the case for the proprietary nature of software in front of the SCOTUS in 1979, a landmark case which is today still cited as precedent in legal cases.

Nick and Bess lived in Concord, MA before moving to Florida about five years ago.

During his retirement, Nick published several books of poetry and won a national prize for his poems.

Nick also painted portraits and landscapes and won a prize on Cape Cod for one of his paintings.

Nick was the most generous and loving of parents and in-laws one could wish for.

Nick was one of the founding fathers of the Greek Orthodox Church in Lexington and is well-known in the Greek community in the Boston area and will rest in peace in God's Arms.

He was truly a wonderful representative of America's Greatest Generation.

Noonan Lambastes Obama & Idiot Maxine Waters

This WSJ should be read for much more than the following:

The sequester's impact may be bad. Rep. Maxine Waters of California, a 22-year House veteran and ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, this week warned of "over 170 million jobs that could be lost." That's actually more jobs than America has, and it's little comfort to say, "But she's a famous idiot," because Washington is full of famous idiots who are making serious decisions about how the sequester cuts are to be applied.

Noonan is on her game as she deconstructs the FOOL in the WH.

First Fraud Demonstrates Bvllshitting Stunts re Sequester

The WSJ has a great article on Obama's slow sinking into the slough of despond he himself created.

'Just to make the final point about the sequester," said President Obama at his press conference Friday, "we will get through this. This is not going to be an apocalypse, I think, as some people have said." That's a relief, but it is also a major walk-back, since the "some people" who have been predicting apocalypse are the President and senior members of his Administration.

Normal Americans awoke Friday to find that the veneer of civilization had not fallen away. If the federal government does end up spending $44.8 trillion over the next decade instead of $46 trillion, they may not notice at all. This may explain Mr. Obama's morning-after concession that "what's important to understand is that not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away," and that the gruesome cuts that the President had been invoking are now merely "a slow grind that will intensify with each passing day."

The First Buffoon then kept digging his hole deeper with the usual staccato cadence:

One reason the grind may intensify is that Mr. Obama spurned GOP offers Friday morning to grant him even more executive discretion than he already has to prioritize federal spending. Or as his own Simpson-Bowles commission put it, he could always choose among the "patchwork of thousands of duplicative programs, nearly impossible to track and even harder to evaluate for effective outcomes." This he does not want to do.

What he is trying to do instead is implement the sequester as rudely as possible so that he can extract another tax increase. As the President put it, the problem is that Republicans have adopted "an iron-clad rule that we will not accept an extra dime's worth of revenue."

The Fvck-Up-in-Chief continued his lying Bvllshit:

But not so iron clad that the GOP didn't reluctantly consent to 6.2 trillion dimes in tax increases only this January in return for zero dimes of spending restraint. Mr. Obama wants Republicans to commit political harikiri by doing it again. Asking the other party to commit suicide is not typically a good basis for bipartisan accord.

Mr. Obama pitches his tax increase as "tax reform" and merely cutting "tax loopholes" and "tax breaks for the well off and well connected." He also said he doesn't want to "raise tax rates." But the Senate Democratic bill he endorsed on Thursday included the "Buffett rule" that is effectively a minimum tax of 30%, which means another increase in the tax rate on capital gains and dividends. Real tax reform means reducing rates in return for closing loopholes. Mr. Obama wants to raise rates instead.

The President also stuck to his line that the sequester cuts will hurt the economy, even suggesting that any slowdown in growth in the months ahead is all the sequester's fault: "As long as the sequester's in place we'll know that that economic news could have been better if Congress had not failed to act."

Investors seemed to take a different view. Stock prices rose on Friday.

On to the next windmill for the Boy of Chicago/Hawaii/Kenya/MANCHURIA

Hit and Run: Obama Regime Most 'Thin-skinned!'

REASON Magazine has a nice piece outlining the neo-fascist operational style of the Obamanation African Dictator Chic:

- There was the time the White House banned a San Francisco Chronicle reporter from the White House press pool for filming an anti-Obama protest at a fundraiser. The White House initially claimed it banned the reporter for using a camera when she was only allowed to write what she saw. Then the White House claimed it hadn't banned her at all. All very confusing and weird.

- There was the time the White House prohibited local journalists from covering a Silicon Valley fundraiser, presumably for fear that they'd be better equipped than D.C.-based pool reporters to recognize major players in the California tech scene.

- There was the time the White House denied the Boston Herald a spot in the press pool because it ran a front-page op-ed from Mitt Romney. While the White House later claimed the Boston Globe got the pool spot because it submitted its request first, that explanation doesn't jibe with this email from a White House staffer: "I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters." Loyalty has its rewards!

- There was the time an Orlando Sentinel reporter was made to sit in a closet at a fundraiser for Joe Biden.

- There was the time Obama agreed to sit down with the editor and publisher of the Des Moines Register, so long as the paper agreed not to quote him or even reveal the topics of conversation.

- My favorite overreaction to a media outlet, however, was one I first wrote about a few years ago after a small-town newspaper editor emailed me to say that the White House had asked her to remove a sentence that "reflected poorly" on First Lady Michelle Obama. The story was titled "Inside Marine One, President Obama's Helicopter," and according to the editor, it contained a single line that suggested Obama was somewhat aloof toward the chopper pilots. “Basically," the editor said in her email, "the reporter said that the First Lady didn’t speak to the pilots but acknowledged them by making eye contact." Shortly after the story went online, the editor received a call from the White House asking her to remove the sentence (she did). Shortly after my story went online, the White House called me, too (I added a denial from the First Lady's office to my story, but didn't remove or retract anything we'd already published).

Those are just a handful of media anecdotes (inside-the-Beltway reporters have many, many more stories about the Obama administration flipping its lid over reporters not following their instructions). But the Obama machine's obsession with image management isn't limited to haranguing and punishing journalists--just ask Desiree Rogers, Carlos Pascual, Hillary Clinton, or Stanley McChrystal.

For more on Obama's promise to lead the "most open and transparent administration in history," see this piece.

"This piece" refers to an hilarious story on a slavishly-deferential cadre of do=gooders lining up to give His Opaqueness [or is it 'Opaquitude?'] an award for transparency. The award presentation was off Oblunderer's schedule and closed to the press. No press pool was allowed after the newsies got wind of the award and no transcripts issued afterwards.

The piece linked immediately above also recounts a whistleblower at FOIA going to Cong. Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight Cte. She alleges that when she complained about illegal redactions in the materials sought under the Freedom of Information Act on several occasions, she was basically threatened by one of Nazi Lesbian Bitch Napolitano's Brownshirts. Even the DHS Inspector General reprimanded UeberHauptmann Napolitano's behavior after he studied the case.

“Obama’s been co-opted by the national security community,” Drake said. “People hoped he would take them on, but he became enamored by all the secret stuff. He’s getting all these cool briefings. It goes to his head. I can send drones anywhere! It’s very powerful stuff. It becomes pathological.”

Yet the LIAR-in-Chief continues to prate constantly about the transparency of his serfs, and the parrots in his cages repeat it constantly. Not even Solyndra, Fast and Furious and Benghazi have made a dent in this Generalissimo's facade.