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.