via The Looking Spoon
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After being gone all day, and out for the evening, I found a welcome surprise early this morning as I was reading through my birthday email greetings from friends and readers. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the hit counter rolling over and what I never expected to see so soon.
So I grabbed a quick screen shot ........
Thank you all who visit, and comment here regularly for your support in my little endeavorer. Yeah, you know who you are.....
Jan
"With just 100 days left until the U.S. presidential election, investors are beginning to make bigger bets on which candidate will carry the day."
"The fact that the election is so close now speaks volumes about how much we are concerned about the current economic situation in the United States, the conventional wisdom indicates that Wall Street would rather see a fiscal conservative Republican win. That's sort of a free-market capitalist concept, except for the fact that history doesn't play that out. What's typically better for Wall Street is some sort of gridlock. "At the end of the day, we are not really worried that Europe is going to be 'solved' or that its economy will strongly grow.
"With the polls showing a race still ripe for the taking, the economic picture of the last four years and the next four years likely will come down to 100 days' worth of news."Read More
The words “freedom of belief” do not appear in the First Amendment. Nor do the words “freedom of worship.” Instead, the Bill of Rights guarantees Americans something that its authors called “the free exercise” of religion.
It’s a significant choice of words, because it suggests a recognition that religious faith cannot be reduced to a purely private or individual affair. Most religious communities conceive of themselves as peoples or families, and the requirements of most faiths extend well beyond attendance at a sabbath service — encompassing charity and activism, education and missionary efforts, and other “exercises” that any guarantee of religious freedom must protect.
Jesus didn’t limit his ministry to the four walls of the church and there seems to be a great deal of confusion about this point in the leadership today.
You can see this confusion at work in the Obama White House’s own Department of Health and Human Services, which created a religious exemption to its mandate requiring employers to pay for contraception, sterilization and the days-after pill that covers only churches, and treats religious hospitals, schools and charities as purely secular operations. The defenders of the H.H.S. mandate note that it protects freedom of worship, which indeed it does. But a genuine free exercise of religion, not so much.
Now we have the great Chick-fil-A imbroglio, in which mayors and an alderman in several American cities threatened to prevent the delicious chicken chain from opening new outlets because its Christian president told an interviewer that he supports “the biblical definition of the family unit.” Their conceit seemed to be that the religious liberties afforded to congregations do not extend to religious businessmen. Or alternatively, it was that while a businessman may have the right to his private beliefs, the local zoning committee has veto power over how those beliefs are exercised and expressed.
Of course every freedom has its limits. We do not allow people to exercise beliefs that require, say, forced marriage or honor killing.
It may seem strange that anyone could look around the pornography-saturated, fertility-challenged, family-breakdown-plagued West and see a society menaced by a repressive puritanism. But it’s clear that this perspective is widely and sincerely held.
It would be refreshing, though, if it were expressed honestly, without the “of course we respect religious freedom” facade.
If you want to fine Catholic hospitals for following Catholic teaching, or prevent Jewish parents from circumcising their sons, or ban Chick-fil-A in Boston, then don’t tell religious people that you respect our freedoms......
Say what you really think: that the exercise of our religion threatens all that’s good and decent, and that you’re going to use the levers of power to bend us to your will.
There, didn’t that feel better?
Now we can get on with the fight.
Mitt Romney’s plan of blatantly lying about President Obama’s “you didn’t build that” speech is clearly drawing blood. But what makes the attack work so well is not so much the lie itself but the broader subtext of it. Watch Obama’s delivery in the snippet put together by this Republican ad[.] ...
The key thing is that Obama is angry, and he’s talking not in his normal voice but in a “black dialect.” This strikes at the core of Obama’s entire political identity: a soft-spoken, reasonable African-American with a Kansas accent. From the moment he stepped onto the national stage, Obama’s deepest political fear was being seen as a “traditional” black politician, one who was demanding redistribution from white America on behalf of his fellow African-Americans.So desperate to reelect Obama he's unafraid to embarrass himself, that's a flailing Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine and this is the ad he's attempting to declare racist.
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My First Teleprompter |
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Let's Play Golf |
"With more and more American institutions becoming inclusive and even openly gay-friendly, the Boy Scouts of America has just reaffirmed its unregenerate straights-only status: a special committee, formed in 2010, recently announced the organization's intention of sticking with the 2000 Supreme Court decision that it is within its constitutional rights to exclude gays from leadership roles. All this is richly ironic in view of the fact that the founder of the Boy Scouts, Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell (raised to the peerage as Lord Baden-Powell) was in probability a gay man himself — though closeted, of course, considering the circumstances."
"A Victorian military hero who skyrocketed to fame after his valiant defense of the besieged city of Mafeking during the Second Boer War, Baden-Powell was one of the British Empire’s most adulated soldiers, looked to as the very model of muscular Christianity. Baden-Powell, the author of the hugely popular and influential “Scouting for Boys” (1908), inspired a national cult of manliness even as he entertained serious worry about his own sexuality....."[SNIP]
So, Team Obama wants to slander Mitt Romney with false felony charge over Bain documents. I have a long list of laws Obama has broken with all his executive orders to not enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, No Child Left Behind Law, Immigration laws and Welfare Reform laws. But one that nobody seem to be pointing out is that Democrat Joe Sestak claimed Obama’s White House offered him a job if he didn’t run against Republican, turned Democrat, Arlen Spector. Spector’s switch gave Democrats a filibuster proof Senate.
Spector’s payoff for switching parties was to run unopposed and to make this happen, the White House offered Sestak a job bribe. Sestak slipped up and revealed the felony bribe, so the White House went into spin mode until eventually Bill Clinton saved them by admitting he was the go between that offered Sestak the White House proposed job. Clinton must have received a bribe himself because he also admitted he wasn’t the go between. No matter what the story is, it’s still unconstitutional (Article 2, Section 4) and a felony (18 U.S.C.Section 201) even if it was an “indirect” bribe (18 U.S.C. Section 600).
There was no investigation into the admitted job bribe due to the Democrat controlled House Judiciary Committee blocking it.
Then we had the Andrew Romanoff job bribe. Team Obama, led by Obama puppeteer Jim Messina, offered Romanoff a job with USAID, if he didn’t run against Obama-supported Michael Bennett for the Senate seat.
Obama-crony, Eric Holder, refused to investigate these admitted felonies
Then we have the Romanoff job bribe.
There’s a long list of bribes associated with the ObamaCare law. The Cornhusker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase are just a few examples of bribes that were used by Team Obama. Obama approved the bribes.
Last time I checked, offering bribes is a felony. Ask Obama’s buddy Rod Blagojevich. Another felonious bribe scandal involving Obama.
So, let’s open the discussion of potential felonies Mr. President.scottystarnes.wordpress.com
"When I look at the campaign, I wonder, really, whether there has ever been an event quite like it in presidential politics before.
The Obama campaign is offering up a narrative that has so little connection to reality, but seems to be working so well, that I am pondering if it is possible for Romney to wage anything resembling a normal campaign at all.
Obama and his operatives smear Romney, accuse Republicans of racist intent, claim that George W. Bush is responsible for the current economy, declare Romney unqualified to be president – when Obama himself had not a single qualification to be president – I simply cannot believe the things I’m hearing and seeing.
I’ve come the conclusion that there is no way to avoid an unmitigated mud fight. This is going to have to be the most vicious campaign since 1828, when Andrew Jackson’s wife was accused of committing adultery with him and John Quincy Adams was said to have pimped out a servant girl to the Russian Czar.
Recognizing reality, I offer my advice to each of the campaigns on how to conduct themselves, or rather, misconduct themselves.
You think this is tongue in cheek? It might be, but I’m not so sure....."
Denise Rich, the wealthy socialite, former wife of pardoned billionaire trader Marc Rich and big buck contributor/fund-raiser for the Democrat party has given up her U.S. citizenship - and, with it, much of her U.S. tax bill. She's leaving her citizenship behind in order to escape taxes, hot on the heels of Eduardo Saverin, Facebook billionaire, doing the same thing.
Rich, 68, a Grammy-nominated songwriter and glossy figure in Democratic and European royalty circles, renounced her American passport in November, according to her lawyer.
Her maiden name, Denise Eisenberg, appeared in the Federal Register on April 30 in a quarterly list of Americans who renounced their U.S. citizenship and permanent residents who handed in their green cards.
By dumping her U.S. passport, Rich likely will save tens of millions of dollars or more in U.S. taxes over the long haul, tax lawyers say.
Her husband, the Belgian-born Mark Rich, who became a multimillionaire commodities trader in the 1960s, fled the United States in 1983 after he was indicted on charges of tax evasion related to his oil-trading business, as well as violating the US ban on trade with Iran. Bill Clinton ultimately pardoned Marc Rich in the last days of his presidency.
An interesting side note, the Deputy Attorney General at the time for Clinton, was one Eric Holder. It came up as an issue during the Holder confirmation hearings. Even the New York Times in 2008 questioned the merits of the pardon and Eric Holder's role in it.
Meanwhile president Obama continues to excoriate Mitt Romney for supposedly offshoring jobs while his party and his policies, are offshoring wealth, and wealthy citizens.
It amazes me that Democrats continue to get away with painting a picture that Republicans don't care about the middle class and Democrats are the protectors of the middle class. Clearly the Democrats have disdain for the middle class. They only care about protecting what they themselves have. They are the party of the wealthy, unscrupulous elite, and they have duped half the country into seeing things completely backwards.Read More on the Eric Holder Implication Here
The writers of antiquity tell us that Spartan Mothers -- the original Obamaesque Julias -- would send their warrior sons into battle with just this admonition ringing in their ears:
Come back from battle with your shield...or on it.
In other words, do your duty and bring victory for your country, or die in the attempt, and never, ever dishonor yourself in any way. So, what does this have to do with Mitt Romney and the NAACP? Hang out a few, and I'll explain it to you.
The Big News of Romney's address to the NAACP is not, as the press has been quick to point out, that he got himself heckled and booed. This is par for the course when any Republican addresses the General Motors of Official Blackdom in America; no, the Big News was that the NAACP has proven itself, again, to be something other than what it claims to be, and in the process, proves for the umpteenth time that while the claim that the "last vestiges of Racism" in America are still felt in many quarters just might be true, it would appear that those last few strongholds are not to be found in so-called "White America" circles.
Now here I must stop and explain a thing or two. When I say "Official Blackdom", I do not mean that to be some sort of racial code; there is, sadly, a division in African-American Land which pits the bulk of African-Americans against a self-selected elite, mostly composed of the Old Guard Civil Rights leaders and organizations spiced with a smattering of individuals who enjoy status as the favored pets of the democratic party, i.e. the Official Blacks. This is a form of self-segregation which is harmful, in the long run, to us all, regardless of race.
Why? because organizations like the NAACP are trapped in a romantic past. The organization still lives off the notoriety and moral standing it assiduously built up during the struggle for equality, and rightfully so, but there is also an emotional attachment to that past within the "leadership" that...ahem...colors... it's advocacy on just about every other subject under the Sun. It's as if the NAACP leadership, and most of it's rank-and-file, have been living in a bubble: having won the war for equality, they are content to continue fighting the old battles over and over, as if they live in a real-life version of Groundhog Day.
The rhetoric of the NAACP is still the same. One would think listening to the likes of the NAACP leadership that nothing in America has changed since 1954. That people are still being denied basic human rights and subjected to the worst of Jim Crow and poll taxes, segregation and degradation, inequality in hiring, housing, education, and before the law, and this is simply not true. And even in those rare cases where an injustice does occur, the legal system in this country does it's level best to right the wrong.
No, the NAACP is not about "advancement" because if it was, it would have moved forward with the rest of us. It's all about using the past to beat Whites up with the memories of days gone by, and in doing so, to ensure that there's enough guilt-by-association, enough intimidation, enough sheer whining to ensure that whatever idiocy Official Blackdom advocates today gets a fair hearing -- for better or for worse -- in the corridors of American Power.
EASLEY, SC --Those grieving the dearly departed at Robinson Funeral Home in Easley will soon have a little something extra to soothe the pain: a cup of Starbucks' joe.
The fourth-generation funeral home and crematory is adding a new section to its existing facilities which includes business offices, a chapel, and a special wing aptly named "Coffee Corner," where soon a Starbucks will open.
The owner, Chris Robinson, explains how coffee has always been part of the family business, saying his great-grandfather started the funeral home inside a main street general store, where people would gather and drink coffee.
Robinson, who's a bit worried people will get the wrong idea about the coffee shop, says it's simply one more service for people to choose, but one that's certainly not mandatory.
"You walk in the front, and it's off to the side," Robinson said. "It's not like it's right up front."
Robinson has hired staff to run the Starbucks franchise which will be open to the public, not just to those attending services.
Starbucks will install equipment and menus at the end of July, and Robinson expects the shop to open sometime in August.[Snip]
I wonder if it will come with the usual Starbucks loud annoying music and perverts on their laptops using the free Wi-Fi??
"According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt’s Great Pyramids—or, in the words of Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi‘i, those “symbols of paganism,” which Egypt’s Salafi party has long planned to cover with wax. Most recently, Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs” and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Morsi, to “destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what the Sahabi Amr bin al-As could not.”
"This is a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad’s companion, Amr bin al-As and his Arabian tribesmen, who invaded and conquered Egypt circa 641. Under al-As and subsequent Muslim rule, many Egyptian antiquities were destroyed as relics of infidelity."
"Now, however, as Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sheikhs” observes, and thanks to modern technology, the pyramids can be destroyed. The only question left is whether the Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt is “pious” enough—if he is willing to complete the Islamization process that started under the hands of Egypt’s first Islamic conqueror."Read More
Middle Finger News Service - During the dark days of the Monica Lewinsky Affair President Bill Clinton, fearing democrats losing womens votes in the next election, was rumored to have convinced one of his senior advisers we will call "Lil' George" to submit a centerfold layout to PLAYGIRL MAGAZINE in an attempt to head off some of the damage from the fiasco.
Come to find out, despite it all Clinton remained popular and Al Gore just turned out to be a turkey. But in the long run the poor adviser Lil' George, wound up getting the ultimate Middle Finger - a rejection letter.
Middle finger News believes we have uncovered that letter while perusing the dark recesses of the Clinton Presidential library archives.
Watching the news lately it becomes painfully obvious as to what the Obama re-election strategy is: simply to deny, deny, deny the facts of failure, and to continue to push a false narrative, more fairy tale than reality. There will also be a concurrent campaign to paint Mitt Romney, and republicans in general, as a bunch of reckless, patrician douchebags, lacking in both basic common sense and human compassion.
This idea came to me, yet again, while watching our Commander-in-Chump make a series of stump speeches -- in between mega-million-dollar fundraisers with the very same reckless, patrician douchebags of the sort he's supposed to be running against -- where the old, Obamaesque, tingle-up-the-leg-inducing lofty rhetoric has been replaced by a constant drumbeat of outright lies.
Obama talks up the Economy, Part One: the the private sector keeps adding jobs, neglecting to point out that the private sector is hiring at a snail's pace. The supposed continued stream of anemic, yet always just perceptibly upward, movement on employment in private business is supposed to represent a steady, if slow, indication of economic recovery. The truth is that if we're talking a healthy economy, these employers would be hiring by the hundreds of thousands each month, and not at the average of about 70k a month. All the while, even more unemployed simply drop off the grid as their benefits run out, or they get discouraged.
Obama talks up the Economy, Part Two: Green Energy is still the wave of the future, despite the fact that it doesn't work, and so far has only proven that as an industry the only thing it can produce is government subsidies which mysteriously disappear. The jobs created -- so few of them, to begin with -- largely turn out to be temporary in nature, for as soon as the subsidy money dries up, so to the companies that depend upon it for survival.
Obama talks up the Economy, Part Three: Obama "saved" GM, much in the same way that Peter Arnett once described a Vietnam-era debacle by saying of a certain village that "it was necessary to destroy it in order to save it.". GM is not "saved"; auto workers are being laid off just as they were before the government "bail out". The stockholders have been shafted. the bondholders were blatantly robbed in broad daylight with the blessing of the courts. The concept of a free market was well-and-truly pissed upon. GM now builds cars that no one wants, can't be supported by the present infrastructure (gas stations abound, recharge stations, not so much), and which are so expensive that even the few that have been purchased came with a large, taxpayer-funded bribe attached.
Obama talks up the Economy, Part Four: According to President Odoofus, there's more oil being pumped, there's more exports, there's a higher stock market, and all of that is, somehow, his triumph, and yet, employment is at a record low since anytime after the Great Depression. The Keystone Pipeline remains in limbo. Gulf Coast Oil drilling has, for all intents and purposes, ceased after the oil spill.
Obama on Health Care: He wins, and yet, he still loses. Primarily because the Supreme Court figured out a way to make the Affordable Care Act legal for him, primarily by pointing out that what Congress euphemistically calls a "fee" and the Obama administration calls "a penalty" is rightfully defined as "a tax". In fact, the entire ACA, when fully activated, will be the largest tax increase in American History.It is a great indication about how inept, how devious, how dysfunctional the Obama administration is, that even their victories invariably carry with them the seeds of defeat, whether it's healthcare, stimulus, bail-outs or giveaways.
Obama talks up his Questionable Foreign Policy Achievements, Part One: Iran is still arming itself with nuclear weapons, sending weapons and extremists across the border into Iraq, and threatens to close the Straits of Hormuz, while Obama lets the Europeans talk for us in front of the Ayatollahs. The opportunity to really stick it to the Iranian regime, perhaps to even change it, was squandered as Iranian protesters died under Islamic-terror-sponsor bullets. Russia is flexing it's muscles in Eastern Europe and Syria, and Obama caves on missile defense so that Vladimir Putin will like him again. The Arab Spring, supposedly a harbinger of nascent democracy (even if it was infected with theocrats) turns out to be a Khomeini-lie exercise in fundamentalist stupidity. After decrying the Iraq and Afghan wars for a decade, Obama starts a third -- with no clear American interest at stake -- in Libya. As for Afghanistan, the Taliban might as well be back in charge, since we're no longer fighting anyone, the only purpose behind keeping this sham going is because one must burnish one's anti-terror credentials, because even after shooting Bin Laden in the fucking face, no one believes you're serious about cracking down on terrorists.
Obama talks up his Questionable Foreign Policy Achievements, Part Two: there's still a dictator in North Korea building missiles and nuclear weapons, selling them all over the planet, and thumbing his nose at Uncle Sam. China has made it clear that it considers itself to, finally, be a power on par with America, and even arrests a dissident inside the American Embassy. Pakistan is not our friend, and has become more hindrance than help in the War on Terror, and yet, Obama will not call out whichever Kim is in charge of Munchkinland, not deploy an aircraft carrier to make the Chinese think twice, or cut off all the American aid to Pakistan. We are universally laughed at in the United Nations, where President-Won-the-Nobel-Peace-Prize-for-being-Half-Black is eager to sign away American sovereignty over the fake threat of Global Warming, Sea Treaties, Nuclear non-proliferation agreements which we assiduously keep and no one else does, and Human Rights commissions chaired by the worst sorts of despots. The Obamabots talk a good game, but reassure their enemies in vague, ineffectual statements and non-action that they are, indeed, weak.
Obama Talks Up Questionable Foreign Policy Achievements, Part Three: Obama blames much of the American economic malaise on Europe. Mostly because the old litany of excuses -- republicans, George W. Bush, Japanese earthquakes and tsunamis, bad horoscopes, bad hair days, Michelle being on the rag just before a certain key economic report is issued -- have worn thin. The economic genius who spent a trillion dollars on a stimulus package which produced something like 37 jobs nationwide, and ensured that turtles can cross busy interstates with safety -- assuming they can follow the signs to the new underpasses built specifically for their use -- now lectures Europe on the need for "austerity'.
The man who believes that pouring half-a-billion dollars into a company which produced useless solar panels at $6 per, and sold them for $3 retail (Solyndra), is now handing out economic advice to the leaders of the countries that produced Hayek, von Mises and Smith. The man who promised to cut the federal deficit in half, and then planned to borrow another $5 trillion to fund an expanded welfare state, is going to tell Greeks and Spaniards that they must do with a smaller welfare state, so that Wall Street can recoup it's loses, or at least slow it downward slide? Fat fuckin' chance, bub!
And yet Barack Obama would have you believe that not only is his way working, and bettering, our lives, but that a reversal of his policies (which have only served to bankrupt us, make us look stupid in the eyes of the world, and confuse the ever-loving fertilizer out of us) would be the next-best-thing to child rape, is out there stumping for a second term? On what planet, one wonders, does this incredible idiot live on?
This is all you will hear for the next four months: under Obama everything is better, or soon will be; under his opponents, things will only go back to the way they were. Which, in retrospect, bearing current experience in mind, doesn't seem to be all that frightening a proposition.