Category Archives: Stuck on Stupid

Words for Wednesday

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Somedays it is hard to write a post. The difficulty is caused by a number of reasons, repetitive news cycles, ignorance of the MSM and in many areas the ignorance and apathy of the public. At other times, a lack of motivation or time conflicts conspire to push me to not post.

Today is one such day.

Be that as it may, today’s lead item is about stupidity. John Boehner’s bartender—a man who has been Boehner’s bartender for over five years, is accused of plotting to poison the Representative from Ohio.

The bartender must be an astoundingly poor planner. He had opportunities to shuffle off Boehner’s mortal coil for five years…but he just couldn’t get his act together.

When I read the article, it triggered my disbelief tripwire. After a facing mutiny in the GOP ranks, Boehner and the FBI reveal this incompetent. It just seems to be a misdirection ploy to get some positive media for Boehner. I wonder how many American have trouble with this news item?

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Guns and Taxes

From WMSA.NET…

From the PoliticMO Newsletter for January 14, 2015.

GUNS — ‘Gun groups vow to fight Missouri lawmaker’s bill taxing guns to pay for police body cameras,’ Raw Story: “A Missouri state legislator has drawn criticism from gun enthusiasts for introducing bills that would pay for body cameras for police officers through a tax increase on firearm and ammunition sales… House Bills 75 and 76, which were introduced by state Rep. Brandon Ellington (D), would implement a 1 percent tax raise on gun sales, with the money going to the “Peace Officer Handgun and Ammunition Sales Tax Fund,” to be used to buy the cameras. Officers would then be required to wear the cameras during any interaction with the public, and keep the footage in their records for at least 30 days. Undercover officers and detectives would be exempt from wearing the cameras. …

“The National Rifle Association (NRA) has already come out against Ellington’s proposal. ‘Forcing law-abiding Missourians to pay an additional tax on firearm and ammunition purchases is unmerited. Gun owners and purchasers should not be responsible for funding these projects,’ the group said in a release. ‘The NRA will continue to fight against such misguided encroachments on those who exercise their Second Amendment rights.’” — PoliticMO Newsletter, Jan 14, 2015

We continually hit with taxes and more taxes. A new tax to one thing or another, another hand in our pocket stealing our money under the guise of law. Every tax has some benefit, we’re told. I just don’t believe it. We don’t need a new tax to fund body cameras now, especially one that taxes guns and ammunition.

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The rank and file of our military do not like Obama. Who’da thunk it?

AMERICA’S MILITARY: A conservative institution’s uneasy cultural evolution

The force is changing — often reluctantly — alongside the civilian society it serves

In his first term, President Obama oversaw repeal of the controversial “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Then he broke with one of the military’s most deeply rooted traditions and vowed to lift the ban on women serving in combat.

And the commander in chief has aggressively sought to change military culture by cracking down on sexual assault and sexual harassment, problems that for years were underreported or overlooked.

Obama is an unpopular president in the eyes of the men and women in uniform. Yet his two-term administration is etching a deep imprint on the culture inside the armed forces. As commander in chief, he will leave behind a legacy that will shape the Pentagon’s personnel policies and the social customs of rank-and-file troops for decades to come.

Go visit the Military Times and read the complete article. It confirms the opinions of many now serving and some fears as well.

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It’s done, verdict announced

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The Ferguson verdict was announced last night. To no one’s great surprise, Darren Wilson was not charged. In fact, the prosecutor released all the evidence collected, much more than normal, to the media. The evidence was overwhelming. Michael Brown attacked Wilson, not once but twice. Wilson defended himself and shot Brown.

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Violence erupts in Ferguson: Fire, looting, arrests

But that doesn’t make any difference to those who are determined to riot regardless of the verdict. Before the night was over, thirty-one people had been arrested, numerous businesses were looted, a dozen buildings, along with at least two police cars, were burned, and shots were fired. None of those shots were fired by police. All were fired by members of the mob.

Missouri Govenor Jay Nixon sent members, upwards of 1,000, of the National Guard to St. Louis. However, he didn’t release them to quiet the rioting until almost midnight, well after much of the damage had been done.

I should not be but I’m continually amazed at Nixon’s incompetence and stupidity. What Nixon should have done was to deploy those Guard troops around the expected hotspots well before the announcement. With them in place, with orders to stop any looting and burning at first sight. And, if they were fired upon by the mob, to return fire.

For those of you too young to remember the LA riots of the ’60s, rioters and snipers fired upon National Guardsmen from the roofs and upper stories of buildings. The Guard returned fire with vehicle-mounted machine guns. In some cases turning the buildings into sieves. The sniping and rioting quickly stopped.

(I tried to find some links for the Guard responding to the Watts riots, but couldn’t find any that reported the events accurately. I remember those 1965 riots quite well. I was in college at the time taking a modern history class. We analyzed the riots closely. Now, some fifty years later, little can be found on the internet about the riots in Los Angles, the Watts Riots, that hasn’t been tainted with liberal viewpoints. The use of National Guardsmen has been painted as a counter-riot when it was not.

I remember watching live TV when a Guard jeep driving slowly down a street on patrol was taken under fire by several snipers on rooftops. The Guardsmen returned fire using their personal arms and the jeep-mounted machine gun. The sniping quickly ended with the snipers dead or having fled. The rioting ended soon after the arrival of the National Guard. Many of the Guardsmen were also combat veterans.

That real story can’t be found today. It’s been censored by the left.)

The bottom line is that the liberal government of St. Louis and Ferguson, abetted by Governor Jay Nixon, allowed the rioting to happen. Most of the damage was to locally-owned residents of Ferguson, minority owners. The liberal politicians of St. Louis and Jeff City, the leaders who were obligated to act and prevent violence, did nothing.

Al Sharpton and other thugs are on the way to Ferguson. They have no intention of quieting the situation. They will do anything and everything to cause the situation to get worse. The greater the disturbance the more their agenda will be enhanced. If Nixon and the St. Louis Police Chief were smart, they’d meet these thugs at the airport gate and put them on the next plane out from St. Louis to any destination.

But, they won’t. The trouble in Ferguson will continue until someone in authority gets fed up and deals with the situation. In the end, Ferguson will be a burned-out hole in St. Louis County. It will be area where no business will come, where insurance companies will not insure existing businesses and without insurance, no business can survive. Jobs will be lost, more than have already been lost, and Ferguson will turn into another blighted area, with no jobs and no hope of jobs.

In the coming months and years, residents will leave. None of them will return. Ferguson and the surrounding area will turn into another Detroit littered with abandoned buildings amid weeds, debris and crumbling infrastructure.

Why did this happen? Because there exists a culture of self-destruction that is dependent on the largess of government, governments, local, state and federal that really does not care what happens to the residents as long as they vote for democrats, a party that keeps them enslaved. Just look at the history of Detroit for the last fifty years and you will see the future of Ferguson and probably St Louis.

The Ferguson situation isn’t whites oppressing blacks. There are more blacks in Ferguson, by a large majority, than whites. No, the residents of Ferguson chose their government, did it to themselves. There is a lesson there in full display. Few in Ferguson and elsewhere, will learn from it. It isn’t politically correct.

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What could you do?

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South Kansas City was aroused yesterday afternoon to the sound of sirens, police and ambulances. In an upper-middle class neighborhood, five people were shot, three fatally in the quiet of the afternoon. The shootings occurred, if I understood the reports correctly, in five different homes. The five people were victims of a single invader, so we’re told.

It is a tragedy and it leads to a number of questions.

  1. Could it happen here, where I live? Yes, it could. No neighborhood nor home is invulnerable.
  2. Can the police protect me? No. I have no doubt the police desperately wish they could but there aren’t enough to post a cop in every home. The old adage, “When seconds count, the cops are minutes away,” is still true. I live only a few hundred yards from the police station and it would STILL take minutes to reach my home.
  3. I don’t like guns, isn’t a phone call to 911 sufficient? No, see #2 above. First, you must have your phone on you, second you must dial 911…and wait for them to answer, and third, you must be calm enough to tell them what is happening. Few people, in a personal emergency, can do all that in the few seconds they have.
  4. I have a gun in the house, that should be enough. No, it isn’t. Do you know where it is? How quickly can you get it in your hands? Is it loaded? Many families with small children won’t keep loaded weapons easily on hand. Is it in a safe? Can you open the safe in a few seconds, absolutely in less than a minute?
  5. Well, what can I do? Carry a weapon and either keep it within arms reach or on your person at all time. Practice with it, get training in how to defend yourself and how to use your weapon, practice until you needn’t have to think in an emergency, you react.

I hear so many women claim, “I couldn’t shoot anyone!” Stop and think of the consequences. Could/would you shoot someone to protect your children? Your husband or family?

Some men say the same, with all the usual responses. The actual answer for both men and women is that you will do whatever is necessary to protect your family and yourself—or you and they will die.

It’s a harsh statement but that doesn’t change the reality. The world is not safe. It has never been and never will be. We can prepare ourselves for the reality. We can train, teach our family to prepare and train them how to defend themselves and others even if it is nothing more than to train your children to flee and seek protection. Know your neighbors, communicate with them, ask if your neighbor will watch out for you, your children and family, watch your home when you’re away and be a place of shelter if necessary.

I carry a weapon. It is something I put on when I dress in the morning, and it is next to me on the nightstand when I go to bed at night. If someone breaks in to my home, I have a weapon within reach in seconds. I am determined I will protect myself and my family. So can you. You needn’t be a victim waiting to be found.

If one of those five victims had a weapon close at hand and knew how to use it, perhaps one or more of the others would have remained unharmed. More and more police chiefs and sheriffs are admitting they are powerless to protect anyone. The first responder for your personal defense is you.

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I wrote an article a week or so ago about the parallels with current events in the Ukraine and China to those just prior to WW2. Obama, like the bungling Chamberlain, is placing the United States into harm’s way and our military is woefully unprepared, undermanned, undertrained and underequipted. The democrats/liberals/socialists have been all too successful in emasculating the US armed forces.

Obama Authorizes Sending Additional Troops To Iraq

Posted: Updated:

President Barack Obama has authorized a State Department request for additional troops in Iraq.

Obama ordered approximately 350 additional military personnel be sent to Iraq “to protect our diplomatic facilities and personnel in Baghdad,” according to a Tuesday statement from the office of the White House press secretary. The statement notes that the troops will not be serving in a combat role upon arrival.

The Defense Department confirmed that 405 troops will be deployed to Iraq, allowing for 55 military personnel who have been in Iraq since June to redeploy outside of the country and resulting in a net increase of 350 troops on the ground.

“This action was taken at the recommendation of the Department of Defense after an extensive interagency review, and is part of the President’s commitment to protect our personnel and facilities in Iraq as we continue to support the Government of Iraq in its fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” according to the White House statement.

The numbers being sent are too few to be effective. In reality, all they can be…are targets. There are few good troops in the Middle-east. None of them are in Iraq.

But Obama isn’t placing our troops in harm’s way only in Iraq, he’s sending them to the Ukraine as well.

U.S., allies to stage exercises in West Ukraine as battles rage in East

By Peter Apps. WASHINGTON Tue Sep 2, 2014 1:41pm EDT

(Reuters) – As fighting between the army and Russian-backed rebels rages in eastern Ukraine, preparations are under way near its western border for a joint military exercise this month with more than 1,000 troops from the United States and its allies.

The decision to go ahead with the Rapid Trident exercise Sept. 16-26 is seen as a sign of the commitment of NATO states to support non-NATO member Ukraine while stopping well short of military intervention in the conflict.

The annual exercise, to take place in the Yavoriv training center near Ukraine’s border with Poland, was initially scheduled for July, but was put back because early planning was disrupted by the crisis in the eastern part of the country.

“At the moment, we are still planning for (the exercise) to go ahead,” U.S. Navy Captain Gregory Hicks, spokesman for the U.S. Army’s European Command said on Tuesday.

NATO stepped up military activity in its eastern member states after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March, and is expected to agree at a summit in Wales this week to create a new rapid reaction force of several thousand troops.

In addition to staging air force exercises, the United States is moving tanks and 600 troops to Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for joint maneuvers in October, replacing a more lightly armed force of paratroopers.

But Rapid Trident will entail the first significant deployment of U.S. and other personnel to Ukraine since the crisis erupted.

President Barack Obama will visit Estonia on Wednesday to reassure the former Soviet Baltic states of U.S. support, and Estonia’s prime minister on Tuesday called for a more visible NATO presence in eastern Europe.

Washington has promised Ukraine $52 million in non-lethal security aid and has already provided combat rations, body armor, radios and other equipment. Pentagon leaders have met with Ukrainian counterparts to discuss a range of cooperation, but, for now, arms supplies have been ruled out.

“It is very important to understand that a military solution to this problem is not going to be forthcoming,” Obama told reporters at the White House last week.

Once again, Obama is acting, or rather reacting, too late with too little. Our troops in the Ukraine will be nothing more than targets, just as they are in Iraq.

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Second Class…or Third

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Obama and his democrat/liberal cohorts continue to push the country into mediocrity. Increasingly, we see our military weakness exposed before the world. Democrat policies have severely damaged our capability from worn-out troops, worn-out equipment, worn-out aircraft and worn-out ships.

While this is going on, Putin is deploying new nuclear ICBM missiles and China expands its deep-water navy. Obama wants to reduce our nukes to only 300 all the while allowing Russia and China to expand their stocks.

China is expanding their fleet of nuclear missile subs—built with stolen US technology while our ships lie in the shipyards waiting for funding to make repairs. And where are those funds? They’ve been diverted to pay for some of Obama’s schemes.

Roby: US Military has been ‘cut to the bone’ by Democrats

by , 14 Mar, 2014

Rep. Martha Roby, R-AL02, today called on Senate Democrats to abandon what she described as a “misguided” plan to divert defense spending to fund aid to Ukraine and reform the United States’ relationship with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

It is absolutely senseless to strip funding from the U.S. Military and send it overseas to prop up the IMF. I agree that we must stand strong in support of the Ukrainian people, and that’s why the House passed a simple, responsible package that uses funding already allocated for diplomatic purposes.

Our military has already been cut to the bone. The additional cuts proposed by Senate Democrats would further inhibit our readiness and send the wrong message internationally.

Now is a time for the United States to project strength in the world, not further erode our military capabilities. I urge Senate Democrats to abandon this misguided plan and work together with the House in a bi-partisan manner to provide responsible assistance to Ukraine.

Last week, the US House of Representatives passed a Ukrainian aid bill, H.R. 4152, that would provide loan guarantees to the Ukrainian government. The House bill does not appropriate new funds, but instead redirects existing funding from within State Department.

A separate Ukraine aid package passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday includes an additional provision taking $157.5 million from the Department of Defense to pay for reorganizing the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The House passed its Ukraine aid bill last Thursday by a vote of 385 to 23.

Roby’s comments come only a day after her House colleague Rep. Mo Brooks, R-AL05, issued a strongly worded statement saying he was “flabbergasted” by the idea of dolling out cash to Ukraine and the International Monetary Fund while slashing defense spending at home.

“Further cuts to national security, on top of the cuts imposed by sequestration and the Budget Control Act, embolden Russia’s Vladimir Putin and America’s other geo-political foes while making America weaker,” Brooks said.

The events today are remarkedly like those events between the World Wars, of the 1920s and 1930s. European and Eurasian dictators, Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini, were rebuilding their militaries. The Japanese  were expanding theirs and had invaded Manchuria, expanding their empire to seize resources needed for Japan’s expanding economy, industry and military. The Europeans dictators were field testing their weaponry in the Spanish Civil War.

While these events were happening, what was the west—the winners of World War I doing? Disarming and reducing their armies and naval fleets. See: the Washington and London Naval Treaties.

When you combine Obama’s deliberate emasculation of our military with the military expansion of Russia and China, the events of Russian aggression in Georgia, and the Ukraine, along with China’s territorial aggression in the Western Pacific, the similarities of events now, compared to those before World War II, are extremely discomforting.

The democrats between World War I and World War II had drastically cut the US military. For instance, in 1939, the entire US Marine Corp was 19,432 officers and enlisted. That number included the Marine aviation component. The army was similarly cut. When the events in Europe finally lead to warfare, the US had to resort to conscription to rebuild the armed services.

A decade ago, the US Navy had 12 carriers spread around the world. That number has now been reduced to 9 with several in or about to enter dry-dock for repair. Ronald Reagan, in the 1980s, built the Navy to over 600 ships. The number of ships currently in the US Navy, 290, is less than the number of ships prior to World War I. That weakness invites our enemies to act and act they are.

Obama thinks foreign policy is talk, talk being cheap. Russia and China follows Mao’s philosophy, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

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Scooped’em!

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OK, OK, I’m gloating a bit. I scooped the big boys with my post yesterday. I received notices my post yesterday was retweeted and has been shared, linked and reprinted by a number of conservative websites.

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The dems, in particular Harry Reid, see their power waning in Washington. They’ve looked into their crystal balls and foresee a drubbing next year in the mid-term elections. The failure of Obamacare, not just the rollout, but the massive loss of insurance coverage by millions of working Americans will have an impact in the elections next year.

That means it is possible for the dems to lose the Senate. The ‘Pubs can’t pickup enough seat of have a veto-proof majority, there aren’t that many senate seats up for re-election, but Reid may not be Majority Leader much longer. That possibility has created in Reid a sense of desperation, leading him to threaten to invoke the ‘nuclear’ option to block ‘Pub filibusters and pack the federal court bench with liberal sycophants.

Why the threats at is time? Perhaps it is to distract the public’s—and the media’s, attention from the disaster of Obamacare to them and their party. That seems, to me, to be a more likely motive than the dems continuing attempt to pack the federal courts.

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Who is the greatest lawbreaker in the country today? On this question, nearly everyone has an opinion. A growing number of those opinions say: Barack Obama.

Reining in America’s Greatest Lawbreaker, President Obama

By Mark J. Fitzgibbons, November 21, 2013

The Hill reports that Republican members of Congress are contemplating actions to combat President Obama’s lawbreaking methods of ruling from the Oval Office.

“GOP officials have long claimed that the president has violated the law and the Constitution through administrative actions on issues ranging from immigration to nominations to the U.S. military involvement in Libya,” writes The Hill.  Conservative Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah is quoted, “There are a lot of examples of this.”

A lot, indeed, and not just recently.  As reported at American Thinker last year in March, nine GOP state attorneys general issued a report on Obama’s unprecedented officious lawbreaking.

Obama has now reached the tipping point, however, with his illegal “fix” of Obamacare designed to overcome his lie that Americans can keep their health insurance.  The president’s open lawbreaking following his notorious lying puts Democrats’ electoral prospects at risk.  It frustrates the unquestioning goodwill and endless love of some members of the political establishment.

Obama has lied to the American people many times, which is unbecoming of his office.   But his unilateral actions in violation of the Constitution and even statutory law are so brazen that they seem calculated to undermine our very system of government, even to the point that they can be called “un-American” from the perspective of our heritage.

British Member of Parliament Daniel Hannan has a marvelous essay at The Wall Street Journal adapted from his new book, “Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World.”   The topic of his essay helps us understand why Barack Obama is actually the greatest lawbreaker in American history.

If you consider that claim hyperbole, factor this:  No person, corporation, union boss or corporate CEO — no criminal — who has violated the law could count every American as their victims.  President Obama can.

Hannan’s essay describes how Americans and the British share an exceptionalism that has its origins in the law — the common law, to be precise.

We share a view of law that protects individual liberty and property rights through ideals and notions guaranteeing due process of law, jury trials, freedoms of speech and of publication, and so on.  The law punishes and remedies the wrong, of course, but this view of the law is that its purpose is also to protect our liberty and property rights.

That view of the law is contrary to the one held by progressives, which is that the law is to be used to coerce behavior of the people even at the expense of individual liberty and property rights.

As Hannan writes:

Above all, liberty was tied up with something that foreign observers could only marvel at: the miracle of the common law. Laws weren’t written down in the abstract and then applied to particular disputes; they built up, like a coral reef, case by case. They came not from the state but from the people. The common law wasn’t a tool of government but an ally of liberty: It placed itself across the path of the Stuarts and George III; it ruled that the bonds of slavery disappeared the moment a man set foot on English soil.

There was a fashion for florid prose in the 18th century, but the second American president, John Adams, wasn’t exaggerating when he identified the Anglosphere’s beautiful, anomalous legal system . . . as the ultimate guarantor of freedom: “The liberty, the unalienable, indefeasible rights of men, the honor and dignity of human nature . . . and the universal happiness of individuals, were never so skillfully and successfully consulted as in that most excellent monument of human art, the common law of England.”

 These ideals are of law emanating from the people to govern government itself — a republican form of government with controls on those who govern.  When the law governs government — when our government is bound down by the law — our liberty is best protected.

No list of the greatest documents of liberty is complete without the Magna Carta, wherein the King was told by the people that he would be ruled by law while he simultaneously ruled his people.  The Magna Carta established these principles, and the common law further evolved. 

The United States Constitution incorporates these common law principles and ideals, and affirms and institutionalizes even more such as checks and balances, and the separation of powers.  It is through these structures, institutions and ideals of law governing government that liberty is best protected.

And that is the purpose of the Constitution.  It is a law that doesn’t merely constitute or form our government; it governs government.  Violators of the Constitution are violators of law.

It is by the law that governs and controls government that we have the greatest liberty and equality under the law.  That is why America is exceptional.  Freedom breeds the most opportunity for the most people.  Opportunity allows for the greatest level of achievement. 

We are exceptional not by national origin, but because our national origin guarantees that we have law that rules the government that rules us. 

That is our English heritage.  President Obama is hostile to this view of the law, believing he can fundamentally transform America by undermining this law. 

Under Obama, we have ‘trickle-down lawbreaking,’ as with former IRS official Lois Lerner who read signals from the White House to violate the very laws she was supposed to enforce.  The signals for government bureaucrats to violate the law are everywhere in the Obama administration.

How, then, will congressional Republicans rein in Obama’s lawbreaking?

For all the criticisms directed at Senator Ted Cruz and other constitutional conservatives purportedly over tactics, establishment GOP leaders have demonstrated that they are not up to the mission.  Real leaders will stand up and call out President Obama as America’s greatest lawbreaker.

In six years, the democrats have changed this country from one of laws, to a country of lawlessness. The White House itself—Obama, his staff and all the agencies that report directly to the White House, engage daily in lawlessness. That was advantageous for them as long as they maintained power. Now, with the Obamacare fiasco affecting nearly everyone in the country, they foresee the possibility of them to losing power, leaving reams of regulations and liberal court decisions that could be used against them if/when the ‘Pubs, or anyone not a liberal, gains the White House and controls Congress.

That is what the dems and liberals fear: What goes around, comes around.

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Weekend Review for Monday, September 10, 2012

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The local news outlets are having a field day. Cass County Pam Shipley Cleared of Nepotism Charges!  They conveniently ignore the the truth. Shipley was NOT cleared.” Cass County Prosecutor  refused to charge fellow democrat Shipley and chose to ignore the evidence of nepotism.

There is a difference  between being “cleared” and the Prosecutor refusing to file charges.

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Unions are in the news today. Specifically, teacher’s unions in Chicago.  They turned down a 16% pay raise. Why? Because they demanded a 30% raise!  For you in the private sector, how much was your last raise—if you got one?

Chicago Bled Dry by Striking Teachers’ Unions

By John Fund, September 10, 2012 9:16 A.M

The smartest parents in Chicago right now are those whose kids attend charter schools, private schools, or parochial schools. Those institutions don’t employ Chicago’s unionized public-school teachers, who went out on strike this morning for the first time in 25 years.

The coverage of the strike has obscured some basic facts. The money has continued to pour into Chicago’s failing public schools in recent years. Chicago teachers have the highest average salary of any city at $76,000 a year before benefits. The average family in the city only earns $47,000 a year. Yet the teachers rejected a 16 percent salary increase over four years at a time when most families are not getting any raises or are looking for work.

…

But beyond the dollars, the fact is that Chicago schools need a fundamental shakeup — which of course the union is resisting. It is calling for changes in the teacher-evaluation system it just negotiated by making student performance less important.

Small wonder. Just 15 percent of fourth graders are proficient in reading and only 56 percent of students who enter their freshman year of high school wind up graduating.

There’s more info if you follow the link above.  Greed, as always, and the lust for power is what is driving this strike.  If Rahm Emanuel had any integrity, he would respond by firing the teachers. I’ll bet he could fill their slots very quickly.

That won’t happen, however. The unions are in Emanuel’s pocket as much as he is in theirs.

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What do you do if you don’t like the polls?  If you’re Obama, you send your thugs to the pollster and “make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

Obama Thugs Rough Up Gallup For Polls They Don’t Like

By Dick Morris on September 10, 2012

The Obama Administration’s Justice Department announced, on August 22nd, that it was joining a lawsuit by a former Gallup employee and whistleblower against the Gallup Corporation for allegedly overcharging the government on polling work.

The announcement comes on the heels of a confrontation between Gallup staffers and Obama strategist David Axelrod in which he accused the company of using out of date sampling methods which, he said, generated polling data negative to the president.

The whistleblower’s lawsuit has been kicking around since 2009, but the Justice Department joined the suit only after the run-in between Axelrod and Gallup in April of this year.

In a scene right out of a typical authoritarian regime, Fox News reports that “employees at the venerable Gallup polling firm suggested they felt threatened by Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod when he questioned the methodology of a mid-April poll showing Mitt Romney leading the president – according to internal emails published Thursday.”

That poll that sent Axelrod ballistic showed Romney leading Obama 48-43 percent.

The Daily Caller published e mails that started when Axelrod sent a tweet to Gallup saying the tracking poll was “saddled with some methodological problems” and directing followers to a National Journal story in which a professor suggested outdated sampling.

According to the email chain titled “Axelrod vs. Gallup,” the White House in addition asked that a Gallup staffer “come over and explain our methodology,” which was apparently perceived as a subtle threat.

Fox News reported that “a Gallup official said in an email he thought Axelrod’s pressure ‘sounds a little like a Godfather situation.’”

Gallup refused to change its methodology to suit the White House.

The article continues. Follow the link above.  Obama appears to be following the tactics used by his mentors. When you don’t like the news, attack those that published the news.

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Missed the Darwin award by…that much!

Words fail me on this one.  Take it as an object lesson for gang-bangers and others alike.  If you don’t know how to handle a weapon, get some training.  Like the warnings on TV, “Don’t try this at home.”

PORT ST. LUCIE, Florida — A teenager is recovering after
police say he shot himself in the penis and testicle while cleaning a gun he just bought.

It happened Thursday morning at a home on the 200 block of Verada Street in Port St. Lucie.

Police say 18-year-old Michael Smeriglio first lied to police saying someone shot him while he was walking down the street. After being questioned by police he admitted to accidentally doing it himself.

Even will all the advantages of modern medicine, OHSA and liberal nannies, people will still find ways to cleanse the gene pool.

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Friday’s Follies for October 21, 2011

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There’s so much material today that I could write a book just about the TSA’s invasion of Tennessee. I expect we’ll need internal passports soon just to travel on the Interstate Highway system like the restrictions imposed by the communists on the Russian folks of the last century. (You folks in Tennessee need  to work on a good housecleaning and remove whomever thought inviting a federal occupation force into your state was a good idea.) Instead, I’ll limit myself to two topics, OWS and Obama’s continuing stupidity in world affairs.

On the first topic, Dave Ramsey wrote an open letter to the Occupy Wall Street mob.  In it, he had some cogent thoughts to all, not just the unwashed idiots in that New York park and elsewhere.

Dear Occupy Wall Street …

A Message From Dave Ramsey

from daveramsey.com on 19 Oct 2011

By Dave Ramsey
“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Yeah, that’s great. But what do you want? What are your goals? What are your demands? What result are you looking for?

The beauty of being vague is that anyone who has any emotion can get caught up in the excitement and join your crusade. They’ll just get mad at something and assume that you’re both mad about the same thing. Put a few hundred of these people together, and boom. You’ve got a crowd, a headline and a lot of attention … but no message.



A lot of people on Twitter are saying I totally agree with the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) demands and goals. The only problem is that I have no idea what their demands and goals are. And neither does anyone else. If all you ever do is stomp around, yell and hold up signs protesting a million different things, sure you’ll get some attention, but over time, you’ll just look foolish. You end up coming across like a three-year-old having a temper tantrum. 

This is what’s happening to the OWS movement. They’re being discredited because no one has stepped forward and really stated what it is they’re after. The whole group is just coming across like a bunch of jacked-up, jobless, wannabe hippies. That’s not going to change anything in this country. You’ve got to state your goals clearly if you want to accomplish something.

So in the absence of any clear goals, let me comment and offer some helpful advice in some areas that seem to be getting a lot of disorganized OWS attention.

“No Government Bailouts!”

Banks and big companies should not receive taxpayer money for a bailout while their CEOs are making hundreds of millions of dollars. If that’s your gripe, then you’re protesting in the wrong location. Pack up and head to Washington, D.C., to deliver your message to the current administration. Don’t get me wrong—I totally support a company’s freedom to pay their leaders well. I just don’t believe that I, as a taxpayer, should subsidize those huge salaries in the form of taxpayer bailouts. I pay my own team members; I don’t need to pay everyone else’s too.

By the way, you may be shocked to learn that the Tea Party agrees with you on this one—and so do I.

“Down With Corporate Greed!”

Gordon Gekko was wrong. Greed is not good. Greed is bad—very bad. It’s a spiritual disease, and it is a disease that sadly affects a lot of companies across the country. If you believe a specific company is acting purely out of greed, then don’t just get mad—do something. Point out where and how they’re greedy and let the world know. Stop doing business with them. If enough people listen to you, the company will get the message because you’ll hit them where it hurts: the bottom line. If they don’t get their act together, then they’ll go out of business and another business will take their place.

But if you’re saying that all businesses are greedy and that capitalism itself is evil and ineffective, then I’m sorry—you’re just being stupid. You’re being misled and misinformed by some of the louder voices around you. Are you wearing clothes? Have you eaten any food lately? Do you have an iPhone in your pocket to check in with Twitter and Facebook while you’re out marching around? Good. All of those products and services are brought to you by quality companies dedicated to serving you well in a capitalistic system that works just fine.

“Wall Street Is Evil!”

If you have this painted on a sign, well, now you just look ignorant. Wall Street is a street that people drive on. The New York Stock Exchange is a building where people exchange stocks in New York. This is the flea market of the financial world. Don’t turn Wall Street into some terrible monster attacking American citizens. It’s just a road with some buildings on it.

But here’s what happens. Sometimes when people don’t understand something, they start to fear it. And as the fear grows, it turns into anger. But just because you don’t understand something, you shouldn’t see it as bad or frightening or a conspiracy. You should just think of it as an opportunity to learn something new—something that could actually be a blessing to you.

For example, imagine a group of natives out in the jungle in the farthest part of the world. I mean, picture a group of people who have never seen anyone outside of their tribe and have certainly never seen any kind of machine. What would they think if they saw a Red Cross helicopter land near them? And what would they think of the strange-looking men and women who jump out of the chopper and start walking toward them? They’d be freaked out! They wouldn’t know or care if the Red Cross was there to help them with food or medicine. They’d think it was the end of the world or something because their minds would be totally blown!
 
I hate to say it, but a lot of OWS protestors are just about as uninformed as those jungle natives when it comes to how the American financial system works. A road and an office building. That’s Wall Street.

“Wealth Redistribution Is the Answer!”

I’ve heard a lot about wealth redistribution over the past few years, and I’m sure you’ve heard it too. Call it whatever you want, but this is how it usually sounds to most Americans: “We are the 99% of Americans who don’t have as much as the 1%, so we’re mad and think the government should take their wealth and property away so that I can have a piece of it. Wealth inequality is a moral breakdown! We should all spread the money around so everyone gets a fair share!”

I have my toughest critique for those who believe this: You are a thief. When someone takes my money and gives me no say in the matter, that’s called theft—whether they’re using a gun or the government. At the core of this demand is envy. And that’s not the same as jealousy. Jealousy just says, “I want what you have.” Envy is a different beast. Envy says, “I don’t think I can ever have what you have, so you shouldn’t have it either.” Decades of horrible economic teaching and the politics of envy have kept this monster alive and growing and moving forward.

This way of thinking makes you assume that all rich people are evil and have scammed their way into wealth. That may be true in the tale of Robin Hood, but I choose to live in the real world. Sure, there are some scoundrels, but the vast majority of successful men and women got that way by working hard and serving people—lots of people. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates changed the world in ways we’re just now starting to realize. Their positive impact on the world has helped all of us live better lives, and they made fortunes for themselves by doing so. Why is it that you’re holy if you help one person but evil if you help a million? That’s just stupid.
…

When you scream, “I’m in the 99%!” you just look like a whiner. Those of us willing to pay the price to win look at you and shrug. Heck, when it comes to the music business, I’m in the 99% myself! But that doesn’t mean I have to tear Toby Keith, Brad Paisley or even Kanye down. Oh, and a special note just for Kanye: Capitalism has been pretty good to you. I celebrate your success, but you look a little hypocritical protesting capitalism while wearing a $50,000 watch.

Celebrate the Land of Opportunity

This is the greatest country on the planet, but even here, you’re not guaranteed wealth, talent, fame, a full head of hair or six-pack abs. Those things are not in the Constitution. You are, however, guaranteed the freedom to make your life what you want it to be. And when you do that, when you build your life around your dreams and passions and hard work, you’re guaranteed the right to keep it. No one has the right to take it away from you.

So to summarize, I’m not very impressed at the moment. I’m not impressed by your temper fit. I’m not impressed at your lack of goals and focus. I’m not impressed by the fact that the only thing I see about your movement is ignorance, immaturity and envy. Grow up—and get a job.

Yes, there are jobs out there. There are jobs out there that haven’t even been invented yet. Go create the next Facebook or Weed Eater. Go pick up so much dog poop that you can start your own fertilizer company. And stop complaining that companies are TOO RICH while also complaining that they aren’t RICH ENOUGH to hire you! I’ve seen a lot of you guys. I wouldn’t hire you, either. But if you take all of that energy and excitement and pour it into something new and creative, you’ll get the chance to serve a whole lot of people really well, and over a decade or two, you’ll get to become the very thing you’re now protesting: rich people who actually earned their money.

I’ve trimmed the above a bit for space.  I urge you to go to the site and read it in its entirety.

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As I said above, I’m continually amazed at the stupidity of Obama and his White House aids in the area of foreign policy.  In Obama’s latest excursion into this area, he threatens other dictatorial leaders in the mid-east.

Three down, two to go: Obama warns other Middle Eastern dictators as Libyan fighters set their sights on the the ‘germ of Syria’

Last updated at 12:26 PM on 21st October 2011
President Barack Obama hailed Muammar Gaddafi’s death as a warning to dictators across the Middle East that iron-fisted rule ‘inevitably comes to an end.
Obama said the fall of Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya in revolutions dubbed the Arab Spring proved that the leaders of Syria and Yemen should be fearful of similar endings.
Protests that broke out in Syria in March have so far seen more than 3,000 people killed after the leadership’s violent military response.
Washington has demanded that Bashar al-Assad, the country’s leader, halt his crackdown on democracy protests and step down. The White House is also pressing Yemen’s longtime president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to leave office in the face of political upheaval.
In the wake of the death of Gaddafi, Obama threatened the leaders of Syria and Yemen. Bashar al-Assad of Syria has murdered thousands of his countrymen who have and continue to protest Bashar’s regime.  I don’t think anyone actually knows the total number of deaths, but we do know that the dictators of Syria have practiced the Lidice Solution in the past—the Hama Massacre.
 
If these dictators really believe they are in danger, why should they not attack the source of the force that is threatening them—Obama?
 
God forbid that Obama gets assassinated.  We’d end up with Biden as President and the dems and libs would have a field day blaming the ‘Pubs and conservatives here at home for the act rather than the real perpetrators.  Then they’d work like hell for the sympathy vote to remain in power.
 
No, I want nothing to happen to Obama. I want him to remain healthy until we kick him out of office in January 2013.  But, if he continues being stuck on stupid, I fear some foreign leader, who perceives that he has nothing to lose, strikes out. What a mess that would be.
 
Stay healthy, Obama, you worthless…well enough said.  I wait in anticipation of seeing your sorry butt booted out of MY White House.
 
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Enough rant for today. Y’all have a great weekend end.