I've had flurry of hits from this address lately......and me thinks maybe the Pope is a fan of Middle Finger Symphony Theater......and maybe I should tone down my Good Monday Morning post a bit.......
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I've had flurry of hits from this address lately......and me thinks maybe the Pope is a fan of Middle Finger Symphony Theater......and maybe I should tone down my Good Monday Morning post a bit.......
"I seem to recall, back in the early days of the 2012 elections, this unbelievable outpouring of anger towards Mitt Romney because the blueprints for his La Jolla beach-front home had a garage with a car elevator, even though Mitt Romney never claimed he would be playing around on it, moving his Cadillacs up and down while major foreign policy crisis were threatening to engulf the stability of a major world region. Regardless, being rich is probably stupid and makes you do douchebaggy things, like forget to tip a waitress on your Ace of Spades, and completely disqualifies you from holding higher office. And the reason that’s probably an idiomatic campaign idea is because people like John Kerry do, indeed, spend major holidays puttering around on their hundred-thousand-dollar boats and phoning into their jobs from secure cell phone lines. He tried to deny it, but turns out iPhones do have pretty good telephoto capabilities.
"John Kerry’s spokesman has admitted the Secretary of State did go sailing off Nantucket as the Egyptian President was ousted from power after pictures emerged of him out on the water on July 4. The Secretary of State had been criticized yesterday for taking a vacation with his family at his holiday home in Nantucket, as Egypt plunged into crisis. New pictures of Mr Kerry on a kayak and a boat in Nantucket Sound on July 4 have surfaced after his spokesman had forcefully denied he went sailing after an earlier photo was posted to Twitter....."
There’s probably a good explanation for all this. After all, we did spend all that money on Barack’s African vacation. It’s hard to imagine there was any room in Marine One’s line item budget to fly the Secretary of State back from New England for a military coup. And you just don’t mess with John Kerry’s vacation time.Read the whole Story Here
"Late Wednesday afternoon, the silence from the White House about events in Egypt finally ended. In a statement, President Obama claimed that he is neutral on the question of who controls Egypt but wishes to uphold certain principles. The text contains anodyne proclamations about democracy and the participation of all groups in the government of Egypt that are unexceptionable. But it also clearly states that the president is “deeply concerned” about the ouster of Morsi and the suspension of the Egyptian constitution that brought him to power, calls upon the military not to arrest the deposed leader or other Muslim Brotherhood officials, and then pointedly says that he has “directed the relevant departments and agencies to review the implications under U.S. law for our assistance to the Government of Egypt.”
In other words, you don’t have to read too closely between the lines to understand that Obama is angrier about regime change in Cairo than he ever was about the Islamist attempt to remake Egypt in their own image.
President Obama stood by passively for a year as Morsi and the Brotherhood began to seize total power, repress critics and pave the way for a complete transformation of Egypt into an Islamist state without threatening a cutoff of U.S. aid. Now Obama has finally found the guts to use America’s leverage over the country but only to register his protest against the downfall of the Brotherhood.
This will do nothing to help Morsi and the rest of his authoritarian crew that had already topped the excesses of the Mubarak regime in only a year. The Egyptian military knows–despite the attempt of the Brotherhood to sell the West on the myth that a fascist-style movement like their brand of Islamistm is democratic in nature–that the only way to prevent it from fomenting violence is to use the same tactics it wanted to employ against Morsi’s critics.
But by doing so in this manner, the president has made it clear again to the Egyptian people that his sympathies are not with those who want a government that doesn’t wish to impose Islamism on the country or the minority that actually want democracy but with Morsi and the Brotherhood. Rather than repair the damage he has done in the last three years, the president sounds as if he is determined to double down on his mistakes."
* "Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect. . . . In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker's incentive to quickly find a new job. Generous unemployment benefits in some European countries are widely believed to be one of the main causes of 'Eurosclerosis,' the persistent high unemployment that affects a number of European countries."-- former Enron adviser Paul Krugman and Robin Wells (Mrs. Krugman), "Introduction to Macroeconomics," second edition, 2009
* "In general, modern conservatives believe that our national character is being sapped by social programs that, in the memorable words of Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, 'turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.' More specifically, they believe that unemployment insurance encourages jobless workers to stay unemployed, rather than taking available jobs. . . . The move to slash unemployment benefits . . . is counterproductive as well as cruel; it will swell the ranks of the unemployed even as it makes their lives ever more miserable."--Krugman, New York Times, July 1, 2013
"The government will postpone enforcement of the so-called employer mandate until 2015, the administration said today. Under the provision, companies with 50 or more workers face a fine of as much as $3,000 per employee if they don’t offer affordable insurance.
The move addresses complaints from employer groups to President Barack Obama’s administration about the burden of the law’s reporting requirements. The decision pushes the issue past the 2014 midterm congressional elections, as Republicans have sought to make the health law a symbol of government overreach....."Now that's what I call convenient. Pull the wool over their eyes for a while and by the time they see again, we will all ready have our hand in your pocket.
"Two Obama administration officials, who discussed the move before the announcement on condition that they not be identified, said the administration decided to wait until 2015 before enforcing the employer mandate in order to simplify reporting requirements and give businesses more time to adjust their health-care coverage."Translation: we cover our asses.
"The decision by Obama, who was on Air Force One returning from Africa on Tuesday when the announcement was made, to delay a controversial part of the law underscores his willingness to use the power of the executive branch to help to protect the legislation’s image at a defining moment......"
Republicans say they expect dysfunction and higher costs as a result of the law. House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) said the announcement “means even the Obama administration knows the ‘train wreck’ will only get worse.” He added, “This is a clear acknowledgment that the law is unworkable.”Which cup is the ball under now?
"Therein lies a lesson for those who seek to make fortunes out of tax payer subsidies, and for those who want to live in a dream world of "clean energy", the whole renewables industry of solar, wind and biomass is just an artificial bubble incapable of surviving without subsides from governments and tax payers. The Green evangelists who push so hard for these wind farms, as usual have not thought the whole idea through."The problem with wind farms when they are abandoned is getting the turbines removed, as usual there are no Green environmentalists to be seen. The City of Palm Springs was forced to enact an ordinance requiring their removal from San Gorgonio. But California's Kern County, encompassing the Tehachapi area, has no such law.