New Conservative Media Shames the Shameless

Dave Weigel has an objective piece on the new conservative media. Thank God for recanting liberals who leave the pacifiers like Salon & Slate!

Fr. Bill Neenan S.J. Now in Heaven.

Fr. Neenan was a friend of mine since the early '60s when I met him in Minnesota. Then I reconnected with Bill at the University of Michigan where we were both in graduate school. I last saw him while accompanying my daughter Niki at Boston College where he had been Vice President of that distinguished educational institution. Bill was a brilliant economist who also served as a sort of campus "Mr Chips," recommending 100 books [which he had read!] to the students with school-wide messages encouraging wider reading. Bill was a true Ignatian with a wonderful personality and wit, who hopefully resides now in Heaven, which he earned many times over.

Is an Obama Immigration Amnesty for "Undocumented Aliens" legal?

Ross Douthat won't be keeping his Op-Ed slot in the tabloid NYT for long, as he commits the heresy of constitutional common sense on its ridiculous lapdog statist nonsense site. Ross convincingly argues that Obama will be ignoring the will of the electorate [because only one-third showed up at the polls!], making Nixon's "Silent Majority" argument---a fact that the elitists probably haven't even figured out. Sadly, Mitch McConnell has already stolen a page from Obama's preemptive capitulation script by saying what the new Senate WON'T do. [At least Mitch is not drawing a "red line" that he will ignore like Obama did on gassing Syrians---which has convinced the world that Obama is the fraud that cannot be feared.]

Walter Russell Meade on US Foreign Policy

Peter Beinart has a good summary of the several types of US foreign policy as described by Meade.

Anne Applebaum on Eastern Europe's Concerns about Putin

Anne Applebaum wrote Gulag for a Pulitzer Prize and is married to the Polish Foreign Minister.

She speaks fluent Russian and Polish, among other languages and has dire warnings about the extreme nationalists in Russia calling for the use of nukes on Warsaw and the Baltic members of NATO, all to demonstrate the flimsy Potemkin Village that NATO is compared to its projection of over-the-horizon force.

Read the above and contemplate how our witless President answered Romney in one of the debates that regarding Russia as an opponent was "so last century."

Obama, welcome to the 20th century.

Obama's GEICO impersonates Loners Hafta be Alone….

The NYT surprises us occasionally and here is one the rare occasions the lapdog nips the ankles of its Lord & Master Messiah Hussein.

Looks like Jesse's gonna be shot off his high horse, if you can catch the allusion.

Here's more from Howie Kurtz.

Packers Boast Best Fan Base in NFL

Forbes has a good article on NFL fan bases.

As a Packer fan since 1952 [I remember Tony Canadeo as QB], I can hardly differ.

ESPN names the other top four [Broncos, Saints, Ravens & Patriots.]

Terrorist Suicide Bomb Instructor Blows Up Self, 21 Aspiring Suicide Trainees.

Islam, the so-called Religion of Peace, lost 22 of its most aspiring devotees recently in an ISIS training base north of Baghdad.

Nowadays, good news is hard to find, so ENJOY!

Robin Williams and Me: Synchronicity

Valentine's Day 1981 I was in LA at The Comedy Store on Melrose and was sitting by myself having a drink at a small round bar table with a Variety rolled up in my back pocket. I got up to go to the men's room and was asked by a voice behind me, "Is this yours?" and handed me the Variety, which had fallen out of my pocket. It was Robin Williams all by himself, with a friendly smile on his face. [I know it was Valentines Day because as I went in, Tommy Smothers came out of the bathroom wearing an outsized button saying "Mom loved you more than me." Remember The Smothers Brothers?]

Flash forward three short months or so and I am with my fiancé at Williams College in Massachusetts seeing a Greek play starring Superman star Christopher Reeve in the lead. There is no room in the theater except at the very back row and I slide into a seat. Sitting next to me all by himself is Robin Williams! [I find out later that Reeve and Robin were roommates in NYC when they both started out in their acting careers.]

Bumping into Williams on both sides of this vast country and at Williams College no less!

Both times he was quiet [and friendly] and had a sort of solitary look about him that one wouldn't expect.

Requiescat in Pace.

Obama's Lack of Social Skills Reflected on the Golf Course

POLITICO has an excellent piece on why Obama has golfed 180 times during his failed presidency versus 24 for GWB.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Obama's brief tenure as a Senator did not supply him with negotiating skills and schmooze ability that ex-Governors Reagan & Clinton & GWB, for example, had to learn to get things done. Like Nixon & Jimmy Carter, Obama has a loner gene in his DNA that confines his golf partners to WH staffers for the vast majority of outings. His one round with golf fanatic John Boehner left him with deep distaste for a partner who didn't agree with this evident solipsistic and autistic social-skill lacking autocrat.

One of his advisors was quoted on background that Barack thinks dissent and dialogue is "messy."

At least he is not a serial cheater like LBJ or Billy Jeff Clinton, famous for his "Billigans" which were extensions of Mulligans.

He is most reminiscent of classical loner and non-golfer Jimmy Carter, whose retreats to Camp David and elsewhere symbolized his out-of-the-box essentially eccentric qualities.

How Iraq Fell Apart

That's Obama's urban legend. The Status of Forces Agreement was being haggled over by Al-Maliki, but Obama saw the [temporary] to-and-fro of this agreement as an excuse to make a quick exit. The US could have had the 11K residual soldiers there & a SoFA. And 11,000 might have been enough to stiffen the backbones of the cowardly Iraqi generals and also encourage peace between the Sunnis & Shi'ites. Now we'll never know, and the exit of a US presence gave Al-Maliki more leverage to play his divisive political games.

Dogs Versus Cats

Cats predominate in the densely-populated New England & Atlantic North as well as the Upper Middle West.

Dogs predominate in Texas and the Deep South----except for Florida.
I am slightly biased, as we have six housecats and two dogs.

Egypt, Jordan, UAE & Saudi All Distance Selves from Hamas This Time Around

The New York Times has an interesting piece by David Fitzpatrick that the mainstream media herd has declined to comment on. This time around, the Arab Levant of Jordan Saudi UAE & Egypt are onto Hamas terrorist gambit, and unlike simpletons like Kerry & the EU herd, just ain't buying it. As an FSO Arabist who has lived in three Arab countries [Lebanon, Saudi, & Egypt] and travelled to all but a couple Arab League members, this does not surprise me. After a year of Morsi and his autocratic ways and lack of any personal politics, no compromises led to the Egyptian Army reasserting its paramountcy. As I had written all along was going to happen. It would happen to Al-Maliki were his 60% majority not fireproof. Or at least he thinks, and never compromises. Over 1300 years, the Arabs have either ruled by tyranny or seen anarchy. Tsisi in Egypt is a tyrant replacing an anarchical situation Morsi caused. And Hamas is a member of the Ikhwan just as the Muslim Brotherhood is. With Morsi gone as a mediator, it's no wonder sensible Arabs are staying away and even silently urging Israel on by their thundering silence.

UN Human Rights Chief Yammers Endlessly About Israel, Mentions Hamas Parenthetically

A UN Political Hack named Pillay ragged heavily on Israel for its being a meany while those poor Hamas dudes get a rap on the knuckles for venial sins.

Last nite on BBC, the UN UNRWA Commissioner blamed Israel endlessly while not even citing Hamas' provocations amidst crowded neighborhoods in Gaza City. [Note: I was short-listed for this job in 1999, but thankfully missed the final cut.]

The nasty UNRWA [German] freak was screeching about Israeli attacks, the nasty dude didn't bother to mention that rockets were found in THREE of his UNRWA schools and a booby-trapped tunnel entrance under one of UNRWA's medical facilities.

Any wonder why the Israelis regard the UN as a Hamas ally and that the media are totally biased pro-Hamas?

Western newsmen in Gaza like the unctuous weepy fraud Barry Petersen are NOT ALLOWED any photos of Hamas terrorist "militants" and shepherded to hospitals where children are shown in terrible pain.

The Fatah rep to Washington let the cat out of the bag last night when he noted that 80% of the Palestinians killed were civilians, meaning of the 1300 dead Palestinians, close to 300 were Palestinian Hamas terrorists.

May dogs eat their bones!

Media Trackers Discovers Secret Cabal of Senior Left-Wing Politburo Members

A University of Wisconsin Professor somehow got busted as a member of a secret network of left-wing conspirators artfully hidden and consisting of more than 1000 members, including senior journalists and faculty on its membership rolls.

The concept resembles Ezra Klein's secret Journolist of a few years ago. Guess those lefties just love to conspire.

As Mark Rudd confided in me as my houseguest in Ann Arbor decades ago while he smoked my dope: "Dave, always remember, dare to cheat, dare to win."

The Economist has an article summing up the left-wing mindset perfectly!

Obama's Fatuous Foreign Policy as seen by WaPo Editorial Writer

Fred Hiatt enumerates a short version of the list of Obama's many miscalculations in foreign policy, leaving out major blunders such as [still] not arming the Ukraine government in Kiev with DEFENSIVE armaments to combat the well-equipped Separatist Insurgency being run out of Donetsk with much Russian help.

As for the famous "pivot" to East Asia, China seems to regard it as two years & change to throw its military weight around while the feeble, limp-wristed CEO of the USA displays a fatuous mindset concentrating on continued withdrawal from foreign commitments while demonizing his domestic opponents.

Meanwhile, he undertakes a strenuous tour of endless golf cum fund-raising in Air Force One, courtesy of the US taxpayer.

Obama "Floods the Zone" with Cloward-Piven Tactics to Destroy American Economy

Obama's Border Gambit with tens of thousands of teenage & younger Central American "refugees" seems to reflect two professors who devised a strategy to force America into huge government statist socialism by increasing entitlements and generally swamping the economy with rules, regs, and unnecessary supervision.

Several Congressmen as well as John Boehner have remarked on the fact that Obama studied [as a veritable never-seen "phantom" student according to classmates] the chaos theory propounded by Cloward & Piven, both Columbia professors, while he ghostly no-showed his way through undergraduate studies at Columbia---with a disappeared senior thesis on the USSR & no sign of his GPA.

Washington Post Editorial Board Condemns Hamas to Hell

The Post is avoiding the PC cowardice of the tabloid NYT & the PBS/NPR & old alphabet networks.

In 1999, I was personally short-listed to run UNRHWA in Gaza. Al Hamdililah, I didn't get the job. This was years before Hamas was elected over the PLO in Gaza, due to Condi Rice's insistence that the election be truly democratic.

Few are aware that during the Camp David Talks, the Israelis begged Sadat to take over Gaza, but the wise old Egyptian refrained. Gaza was and is a byword for ungovernable chaos, even before the criminal gang of terrorist thugs took over.

Israel tried to run the place for a decade or so and then let it go. Now Gaza is imploding as a powerless population lets itself be used as a human shield. So it can be a weapon for the nihilistic rage Islamic terrorists reserve for everyone.

Including other Muslim terrorist groups…!

How Putin Has Become Ensnarled by the Web of Lies the Russian Media is Propagating

The New Republic has an interesting summary of the "tangled web" of deception that is turning into a trap for Putin, who now finds himself a victim of "a combination of PTSD & The Stockholm Syndrome."

Perhaps it's no wonder that Russian natives are flocking to EXIT the Russian Federation just as non-Americans are flocking to ENTER the USA illegally.

Russia is beginning to look a gigantic insane asylum full of fearful paranoids. Drunken paranoids with Putin losing control of the direction of the avalanche of lies that he started.

Ex-Commies suffer from moral decadence and a tendency to LIE

The Economist has a short article telling us what the intelligent & perceptive among us already knew.

Being brought up as a socialist gives a person TWICE the propensity to lie, cheat and steal. Click on the link to get the details.

Of course, this explains why the US socialist media lies without cease to the American People!!

Czech Editorial Sums up Chowder-Head Obungler to a Tee

This Czech editorial sums up the legion of Democrat voters without a clue.

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting an inexperienced man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama Presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their President. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their President."

No Global Warming Since 1996, More COOLING in the Long-Term Forecast

Climate Depot delivers some sunspot facts that are spot-on.

Read the above link to discover more examples on how the AGW hoax is beginning to sputter out.

Die Mannshaft Wins the World Cup

Germany rightly is named die Mannshaft, "The Team," because more than almost any other nation at the Cup, they WERE a team.

Not to put too much weight on the analogy, both Brazil and Argentina depended on three or four superstars whereas Germany's winning goal was a volley from Shuerrle to Goetze, two VERY late substitutions.

Rather simplistic, but still a demonstration of why the seamless tissue of teamwork almost always beats brilliant solo performances.

Christie Blasts Obama for Careless Foreign Policy

Gov'r Christie is ahead in early NH polls for 2016 and is shrugging off the ridiculous McCarthyism of the Left-wing NYT & media over a supposed bridge repair "scandal."

Why doesn't the media examine the criminal in the White House and his fellow miscreant at DOJ, the ineffable mobster Eric Holder?

The US is the New Old Europe

Matt Continetti makes a lot of cogent points about the USA, or what he calls The New Old Europe, a category this ahistorical administration is defining all by itself.

Clemens Wergin expatiates on the decadence of the USA & how much the Euros are starting to get nervous.

Mario Rubio

The Economist MARCO RUBIO’S shoulder is sore. The junior senator from Florida has just had a cortisone injection to ease the pain from an old football injury. Congress is not short of square-jawed jocks. Given that politics often resembles a professional sport for the over-40s, this may be no coincidence. Mr Rubio, who won a college football scholarship, is an extreme case: his autobiography contains 26 references to the Miami Dolphins (apparently the first draft had many more). This mania for running back and forth can overshadow another, distinctly un-jock, interest of Mr Rubio’s, which is in social policy.

Over the past few months, while many of his colleagues have devoted themselves to mauling the president, he has proposed a series of government interventions to improve the lot of cash-strapped Americans. His aim is to have bills ready to go if Republicans take control of the Senate in November. This is not the first thing people associate with Mr Rubio, who came to national prominence when he defeated Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist, in a Senate race in 2010. At the time he was described as the first Tea Party senator, which implied a desire to burn down government and pour salt on the ashes. This was mistaken.

Though Mr Rubio fitted the description of a young insurgent, his background is not that of an anti-government crusader. He first ran for public office aged 26, becoming a member of the city commission in West Miami, a town of 6,000 people. His tenure is remembered, if at all, for the introduction of a bicycle-mounted policeman. When Alberto Gutman, a state senator of distinctively Floridian heritage (he described himself as “Jewban”: ie, Jewish and Cuban) was indicted for a distinctively Floridian crime (Medicare fraud), opening up positions further down the food chain, Mr Rubio was elected to the statehouse aged just 28. His nine years there were mostly spent turning the agenda of Jeb Bush, a centrist Republican governor, into law. He also showed a wonkish streak, travelling around the state holding rather earnest-sounding “idea-raisers”: 100 proposals that emerged from them were subsequently turned into a book.

When he arrived in the Senate Mr Rubio was hailed as a future saviour of a Republican Party struggling to appeal to Hispanic voters, on the basis that his parents had left Cuba in 1956. An already difficult task was made harder when he had a fight with Univision, the biggest Spanish-language network, in 2011. It became impossible when House Republicans declined to consider an immigration reform bill that Mr Rubio, along with three other Republicans and four Democrats, had put his name to. He has since concluded that a law to address the 12m undocumented migrants in the country will be impossible until the border is secure and the criteria for deciding who gets to come change from prioritising family reunification to favouring workers.

This will not win over the voters that the GOP had hoped Mr Rubio would magically deliver: even young Cubans, who have long stood out among Latinos for their attachment to the Republican Party, have started to switch their loyalties to the Democrats. On climate change, too, Mr Rubio is hardly a breath of fresh air. Most scientists, he says, agree that man is to blame, but he sees no point in imposing heavy economic costs on Americans for uncertain benefits.

If Mr Rubio is going to rescue his party from anything it is from an overly narrow view of what government ought to do. Both Mr Rubio’s parents worked at low-wage jobs—his father as a bartender, his mother at Kmart—but were able to provide a life for him and his siblings that was within touching distance of the middle class. In the years since then, he argues, a mixture of globalisation and automation have held down wages for low-skilled workers, making it harder for people without university degrees to repeat what his own parents managed to do.

Mr Rubio has various proposals for addressing this, including a federal wage subsidy to top up the incomes of the low-paid. He wants to help more students go to college, but also thinks the federal government should experiment with hiring people without degrees for white-collar work, as an example to other employers. Some of these ideas are unlikely to fly, such as a scheme to allow students to sell a share of their future income in exchange for money to fund tuition up front. But they show an urge to innovate that the GOP’s Congressional wing has been missing.

Does a safety net give people courage to soar? This is daring stuff in the context of today’s Republican Party because it envisages a role for government that many conservatives would find distasteful. Where Republican orthodoxy suggests saving poor people from welfare dependency by mercifully reducing the amount of money they receive, Mr Rubio aims to cut welfare spending by reducing the demand for it, keeping funding at the same level but handing anti-poverty programmes over to the states to figure out what works. “I don’t take my children to the circus very often,” he says, “but when I do I have noticed that acrobats tend to be much more daring when they have a safety net beneath them.” Such support “is essential for the success of the free enterprise system”.

It is hard to imagine some other Republicans with presidential ambitions saying anything like that. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, for example, often give the impression that the only thing standing between America and a restoration of the upwardly mobile society of the 1950s is a more faithful interpretation of the constitution. Mr Rubio is only 43, so he is probably not experienced enough to take on Hillary Clinton in 2016. But right now he is the most effective standard-bearer for conservatives who worry more about reducing poverty and long-term unemployment than about waging culture wars and cutting income tax. Whoever wins in November, these thoughts are worth taking seriously.

VAST Left-Wing Conspiracy Resembles a RICO Crime Spree

Powerline has shone a searchlight onto a highly-secret CABAL on the left, which the Senator from Searchlight, NV, is an outstanding member. Harriet Reid would condemn this network if it were part of the Koch Brothers' donations, but since it's a bunch of Democrats plotting on how to separate Americans from their income through taxes, no problem.

Obama Demonstrates Usual Lack of Decisive Leadership

The National Journal is a good barometer of the MOR political landscape of DC.

The Dear Leader nowadays decides not to decide, IOW, to lead from behind!

No photo ops at the Mexican border with this profile in cowardice!

Harry Reid Lurches From Lunacy Into Incomprehension

POLITICO has an article on Harry Reid's last ride into the sunset on his spavined nag of Senate Majority Leader.

IRCC and NOAA Baffled That Global Warming Is Reversed over last two Decades.

Forbes notes that NOAA, the climate agency of the USG, finally opened its new database on temperature change. Contrary to the Chicken Little brigades of Climate Change Fascists' predictions, the average temp of the USA is down -0.4 degree Fahrenheit over the last 16 years! That's half-a-degree cooler than the temp at the end of the last millennium. That's actually 1998.

And more disturbing to the climate activists, The Daily Mail has its analysts wondering why Antarctic sea ice has INCREASED since the last century.

Could the entire AGW be part of an enormous HOAX?

Read the articles linked above and judge for yourself.

How Obama Lost the Middle East

Classicist & Pundit Victor Davis Hanson put some thoughts forward on how the Bumbling Incompetent the USA must suffer for the next two years in the Oval Office "Lost" the Middle East.

In sum, with Obama politics always trumps policy and ideology reigns supreme.

Ditto for almost every every other obstacle Obama must confront or surmount---the Arrogant Know-It-All in Chief will not consult with Congress & knows that a compliant media will be a lapdog in blaming Congress for not being consulted.

The USA now has a shiftless rhetorician in charge of foreign & domestic affairs and as Dr. Hanson notes, the prognosis is not good.

And this cowardly large child looks around for someone to blame or at least make all these foreign policy setbacks from Crimea through Syria [and his imbecilic "red line" malfeasance] to ISIS or ISIL or IS go away.

In the meantime, this silly arrogant miscreant in the Oval Office misuses his power while trying to lower his handicap on the golf links.

You see, golf appears to this essentially shallow nitwit to be the only action even remotely under his control!

Certainly, sitting down with Mr. Boehner or even Harry Reid would be admitting defeat and this supremely delusional and completely arrogant imbecile knows that once he does that, the avalanche will commence and his presidency will be revealed to be the sham and shambles it already has become.

And admitting this will cause him to hemorrhage power until he is exposed as the classic Emperor without clothes!

Hanson has it right and Obama has lost his presidency.

The Quinnpiniac Poll which has Americans rating him as the WORST president since World War II will proceed backwards in time to Obama's being the WORST president since Woodrow Wilson, in the opinion of the American people, those geniuses who can sniff out a phony from far far away.