Immigration, Media, Politics

Reading Is Fundamental, Unless . . .

Unless it works against your spin, lying, and mis-characterization of Arizona’s illegal immigration enforcement law SB1070 and the subsequent amendment to it HB2162.

That is exactly what the president, the attorney general, the director of homeland security AND the president of Mexico have done. Oh, and let me also include Congressional Democrats who gave the standing O to Calderon when, before a joint session of Congress, he said the Arizona law was racial profiling. Quick to pass judgment, quick to demonize, quick to inflame Latinos and further divide America for purely political purposes, none of these people whose responsibility it is to know the truth, utter the truth.

Liberals like videos. It’s easier than having to read things like the stimulus bill or the health care bill, or even these 17 pages of Arizona’s illegal immigration enforcement bill.  Here’s exactly what I’m talking about.

Having perfected lying to the American people, aided and abetted by the willing accomplices in the media, I think we have reached the most dishonest and arrogant administration in American history. When you understand that we are saddled with a group-thought process where the end justifies the means, lying about what you’re doing and what you want to do is no big deal. Hell, it’s expected. Progressives and Liberals have to lie about what they want to do because what they want to do would never be approved if put to a vote.

Start anywhere you want to find a lie: health care reform will cost us less, there will be better care, the stimulus bill will create jobs, GM has paid off May I see your ID?their loan, they don’t want to take over the auto industry, no tax increases for people earning less than $250,000, we need to live within our means and pass this $195 billion dollar bill that is 30% ‘paid’ for, we now have ‘pay-go’ so we’ll no longer be spending money we don’t have,  and if you live in Arizona and you take your kids to buy an ice cream cone and walk down the street with them, you’re going to be harassed by the police.

Today’s reading assignment: Arizona’s bill SB1070, and amendment HB2162.

2010 Election, Economy, Florida, Media, Pensacola, Politics

BP’s $25 Million For Florida’s Panhandle

Gov. Charlie Crist (NPA-FL) visited the Florida Panhandle a few times since the Deepwater Horizon incident. Hearing from residents and industry leaders about how the already weak economy is worsening because of the bad publicity, BP officials agreed to support an advertising fund to help offset the economic damage with an advertising effort to promote business in the Panhandle.

So far, and according to RicksBlog . . .

State Senator Don Gaetz says that, as of Friday, May 21, BP has not given Florida the $25-million block grant for tourism advertising that BP CEO Tony Hayward promised Gov. Charlie Crist on Monday.

According to State Senator Don Gaetz . . .

state officials are still negotiating a ‘memorandum of understanding’, which must be completed prior to receiving the funds.”

Well, that’s how it started. From there it has gone to a gimme-fest by politicos all over the state. Developing a memorandum of understanding over the $25 million seems only prudent. Especially when you have people like Kendrick Meek showboating for $100 million.

Aside from all that, take a peek at how the Panhandle is going to be ‘promoted.’ No, take a long look at it, and a peek is all you’ll see. Links to the proposed ads as produced by VisitFlorida.com are here:

Link to spots: http://www.2150.tv/getpass.html

password: visitflorida (case sensitive)

There are currently 2 versions of the spot – a general Florida version and a more Northwest Florida oriented spot.

Take a look at those ads. If that’s what they call focused on the Panhandle, I think we need to look to another ad agency with a more effective message. VisitFlorida.com’s website is nothing but a glorified Yahoo travel site. You’re lucky to find beach shots with sugar-white sands, and no mention of the timeliness of the ads and the beautiful conditions that exist in this part of the Gulf of Mexico and Florida.

But you will find this . . .

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Update

There continue to be no confirmed oil sightings associated with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on Florida’s shores at this time.

The great majority of the hotels/motels are inland. There is no evidence there of any emphasis placed on fighting the negative impression created by the news media and environmentalists.

Considering both ads, if I had to put a percentage to it, as for how much of it is ‘focused’ on the Panhandle and how much of it is generic to Florida, I’d give the Panhandle less than ten percent. And if you don’t live in the area, like 100 percent of the target audience, you wouldn’t recognize anything to do with the Panhandle. It’s a sham.

It seems apparent that Charlie Crist and Alex Sink care more about getting the money to promote Florida than the Panhandle. The place where Florida’s economy is most severely impacted.

Give money to Crist and Sink, and you can kiss it good-bye. Especially in this political season. All the Panhandle is left with is hope. Nothing has changed.

Energy, Media, Pensacola, Politics

The Real Target In BP Class Action Is . . .

The strategy is starting to dribble in as to the so-called real cause of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak, otherwise known as an oil spill. (I hate it when the language gets abused like that.)

A local (Pensacola FL) environmental group called The Emerald Coastkeepers has taken the lead in keeping locals informed on both the progress and criticism of BP and its efforts to stop the gusher of a leak at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Chief spokesperson for them is Chasidy Fisher Hobbs who was published in today’s paper as saying . . .

Did you know that BP’s first quarter profits for 2010 were more than $5 billion? Yet, a half-million dollar investment for an acoustic shutoff valve to protect our Gulf was not worth the investment.

In the interest of full disclosure, did you know that the President of Emerald Coastkeepers is mass tort lawyer, left-wing talk radio  co-host, and FOX News contributor representing ‘balance,’ Mike Papantonio? And did you know that the President of the Waterkeeper Alliance is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?  Kennedy also doubles as co-host with Papantonio on the Ring of Fire radio program, formerly associated with Air America Radio. (Air America eventually went bankrupt for the last time after their listener base dwindled to relatives and employees. That, and a lack of sponsors willing to underwrite their efforts.)

Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that in and of itself. But the big omission here, and not just from Chasidy’s article but from the mainstream media overall, is the fact that both Papantonio and Kennedy are on the class action case against BP and have been from day one.

And on day three Papantonio laid out his cards to another lefty talk radio host, Mike Malloy. Papantonio has a much juicier target when it comes to this case. Bankrupting BP is just a distraction for him. He’s after something BP can’t give him, Dick Cheney and the Bush Administration.

Because you know, it’s all their fault. Cheney and Bush developed an energy policy with energy people. (Oh the nerve.) And then they didn’t make an acoustic shutoff valve mandatory, LIKE OTHER COUNTRIES have. And that’s why there’s oil coming out of the ground. It’s all their fault. That was the sum total of his case as he explained it to Malloy and his several listeners.

Papantonio did not say how he could prove that an acoustic shutoff valve would not and could not also fail.

I have my own theory for why we are seeing oil coming into the Gulf a mile deepwater_horizon_rigbelow the surface, and it has nothing to do with Dick Cheney and the Bush administration. It has to do with the Coast Guard pouring water onto the oil rig for three or four days until it sank. It wasn’t until the rig sank that the pipeline broke, putting oil into the Gulf.

It is also a testament to the failure of BP, the EPA, and the MMS, to have a plan B in the event of just such a catastrophe. It also brings to focus the consequences of environmentalists and spineless politicians seeking their favor of pushing oil and gas drilling off of land and shallow waters where it is more readily available, into deeper waters where the risks are greater.

Leaving the fire burn and surrounding the rig with sea booms, and letting smoke get in the air until a ‘fix’ can be made, sounds like a better choice to sinking the rig, putting oil in the water, and moving the workplace a mile under water.

Update 5/24/2010: And for your video amusement, Papantonio: BP – The Very Corrupt Side of Dick Cheney

Uncategorized

Pakistan Wins M.R.I.O.T.D. Award

The proverbial chickens are coming home to roost in Pakistan, and possibly to a radical mosque near you.

You may recall a few weeks ago, the comedy TV show ‘South Park’ included a character representing Mohammed wearing a bear suit. It was totally in character for South Park to do something like that, since they take no prisoners and pull no punches. They make fun of everyone and everything. Religious figures, political figures, whoever or whatever.

Some Muslim somewhere complained, and surprise! South Park producers caved. (no pun intended) They blocked out the character in repeat showings of that episode.

Then another person put up a Facebook page called ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed Day’ where you could apparently draw or upload your representation of Mohammed.

For those who don’t know, Mohammed for a Muslim is like Christ, God, or Buddah for other people. Except that Mohammed is from this earth and regarded as a prophet by Muslims. I don’t know if he had a job or trade, just that he was a prophet. No miracle birth, wise men, etc.. The other difference is that some Muslims get their shorts in a wad real quick when someone puts up an image and calls it Mohammed. Some get so extreme as to commit murder over it, which, by what I’ve seen in the Koran, is against Mohammed’s teachings. Go figure.

There is an interesting element to this religion in that some-one’s faith can be so shaken by a drawing or a picture that it would cause them to go crazy. This does not happen in any other religion that I know of. These same radicals have drawn stupid pictures of Christ and the Virgin Mary and those whose religion is not referred to as a ‘religion of peace’ just blow it off as a crazy picture drawn by an insensitive bastard and move on with their life. Don’t know why they can not do the same.

So Pakistan, literally facing attack and suicide bombers from the radical elements of Islam on a daily basis, had blocked Facebook from the country. And for that, Pakistan wins the Most Ridiculous Item Of The Day award.

Links: Facebook page that led to Pakistani ban removed |  Mohammed Image Archive |  Virgin Mary South Park Cartoon |  Cartoon wars

2010 Election, Media, Politics

Republicans, Don’t Count Your Chickens . . .

REPUBLICANS ON TRACK TO SNATCH DEFEAT FROM JAWS OF VICTORY

Republican consultants are doing a wonderful job raising expectations sky-high for the November elections, so that now, even if Republicans do smashingly well, it will look like a defeat (and an across-the-board endorsement of Obama’s agenda). Thanks, Republicans!

That’s what happened in the 1998 congressional elections, nearly foiling Clinton’s impeachment. It’s what happened to the Conservative Party in Britain a week ago. And that’s what happened this week in the 12th Congressional District of Pennsylvania, formerly represented by Rep. John Murtha.

Note to Republicans: Whenever possible, victory parties should be held after the election, not before it.

The result of the election in Murtha’s old district on Tuesday was that the rabidly anti-ObamaCare, pro-life, pro-gun candidate won! Yippee!

But the news on Wednesday morning was that the election “dealt a blow to Republicans,” as The New York Times reported.

The reason the Times’ description was not utter madness (in violation of New York Times’ official policy) is because the anti-ObamaCare, pro-life, pro-gun candidate was a Democrat and, for the past two months, every Republican on TV has been predicting a Republican victory in Murtha’s district.

Thanks to all the happy talk, if the Republican actually had won, it would have been Page 16 news. But when the Democrat won, it seemed like an against-all-odds, come-from-behind Hoosiers victory!

Why were Republicans predicting victory in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1? Given a choice between two candidates who both hate ObamaCare, why would lifelong Democrats not vote for the Democrat?

Republicans are playing the same raised-expectations game with the November elections. Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner is ludicrously predicting Republicans will pick up 100 seats in the House in November. Newt Gingrich puts the figure at an equally insane (and weirdly precise) 78. He also predicts the Cubs will win 132 games this season and six games will be rained out.

Keep it up, Republicans, and I’m going to keep naming names. I have Nexis.

For more than half a century, the average midterm pickup for the party out of power has been 24 seats.

Your job, Republicans, is not to go on Fox News and whisper sweet nothings in conservatives’ ears. Your job is to repeal the Obama agenda. Raising expectations so high that a 30-seat Republican pickup will seem like a loss is not helping.

Moreover, we’re not going to pick up any seats this November if Republicans keep chumming around with the Democrats’ pals on Wall Street.

Roughly since the Harding administration, Wall Street has overwhelmingly favored Democrats. According to a recent report from ABC News, for example, the five largest hedge funds gave “almost all their donations to Democrats.”

For the past year, the Democrats’ Wall Street BFFs have had lower public approval ratings than Hitler. (When I say “Hitler,” I don’t mean Dick Cheney or George W. Bush; I actually mean Adolf Hitler.) While Hitler continues to enjoy great personal popularity, there is a growing dissatisfaction with his policies.

How could Republicans possibly screw that up? We try harder.

No sooner had the news come out that Goldman Sachs (Joseph Goebbels in this metaphor) had given Obama an astronomical $1 million in campaign donations, than Republican John Boehner decided that this was the time to suck up to Wall Street! So Boehner flew to New York to meet with Wall Street bankers and ask them to be Republicans’ friends.

Boehner is like the guy who just got raped in prison and doesn’t know what happened to him. Hey — what was that? Should I have thanked the guy?

As Pat Caddell says, Democrats are whores, but they expect to be paid; Republicans’ names are scrawled on the bathroom wall: “For a good time, call the GOP!”

As depressing as it is to watch the Republican Party dive headlong off a cliff, at least we have Dick Blumenthal.

Connecticut’s attorney general, pompous, freakishly ambitious, self-righteous, hold-a-press-conference-every-day Blumenthal, was a shoo-in to take Chris Dodd’s Senate seat this fall.

After all, he was a Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star and Purple Heart winner from his days as a four-star general in Vietnam. (And captain of the Harvard swim team to boot!)

But now we find out from a front-page article in The New York Times that, despite Blumenthal’s repeated references to serving “in Vietnam” — he was never in Vietnam. He got five draft deferments and then joined an elite unit of the Marine Reserves to avoid going to war, serving in their heroic “Toys for Tots” brigade.

He also wasn’t on the Harvard swim team. (Oddly enough, though, the story Blumenthal likes to tell about owning a necklace of human ears? That one’s actually true.)

Blumenthal may as well have shown up for a press conference in a dress. Suddenly, Connecticut is in play!

Naturally, therefore, Republicans are planning on running a World Wrestling Entertainment “impresario” against Blumenthal. Yes, in Connecticut … a state that is among the wealthiest and most highly educated in the nation … a state that isn’t Minnesota. The average Nutmegger doesn’t even know what a turnbuckle is, and that includes me.

Republicans could run Rob Simmons, a Connecticut legislator with a distinguished record of service in the House of Representatives, the CIA, and as a Yale political science professor — who actually did serve in Vietnam, winning two Bronze Stars and retiring as a colonel.

But defeat is so close! Republicans can almost taste the bitterness of yet another crushing loss!

The above lovingly snatched from Ann Coulter.com

Economy, Europe, Politics, Venezuela

aSide Order

April 28, 2010, Obama was concerned about Greece’s ‘debt problems.’ They’re monitoring it closely.

“This is something that is of great concern to the president and we’re monitoring it very closely,” Burton told reporters on Air Force One, adding that the U.S. Treasury Department and other agencies were “in close contact with folks in Europe about the issue.”

Have you heard anything from the administration since?

What has happened since is this; Obama urged Germany and the EU to go the bail-out route. Why should we be the only country in debt for generations to come? The Euro is falling, Greece is burning, the dollar is gaining at the expense of the Euro. The dollar gaining causes the bolivar to tumble, bringing Venezuela’s inflation up to 30%.

Missed in all of this is the common thread; welfare state economies are not sustainable.

Does watching it closely make it better? Maybe we could refrain from becoming like them? Do ya think?

Scientists in mainly Muslim Kazakhstan have come up with an instant test for the presence of pork in food.

Pork? Our genius politicians in Washington don’t know what it is.

Used copy machines can be a good deal in the wrong hands. Check out this video before you get rid of yours.

2010 Election, Politics

Bu-bye Arlen

Pennsylvania democrats weren’t convinced that they needed more of Sen. Arlen Spector (D-PA) after sending him packing, choosing instead U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) as their nominee.

Dependent on the City of Brotherly Love to carry him to victory, Philly rejected him.

Tonight’s results also has Obama batting 1000 for killing the chances of people he campaigns for. Virginia, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and now Arlen Specter. Seems Obama has inherited the kiss of death from Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Or maybe it’s something more than that?

Link: Specter rejected by Pa. Dems in bid for 6th term

Economy, Venezuela

Chavez Goes After Another Industry

Spelling disaster to an already weak, unproductive, and inflationary economy, the hemisphere’s idiot, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, considers controlling the financial market next.

The failed socialist / Marxist / communist economic system often praised by the Left and Hollywood elites, is experiencing the same shortages on the supermarket shelves and rationing as it always has, only this time the strengthening of the dollar, facilitated by the falling of the Euro under the weight of debt there, has caused the bolivar to lose half its value in one day, increasing the cost of everything for Venezuelans. Not insignificant considering Venezuela has to import half of the products it consumes.

Consumer prices jumped 5.2 percent in April alone, driving the annual inflation rate to 30.4 percent – the highest in Latin America – according to the Central Bank and National Statistics Institute.

The Chavez regime is raiding brokerage houses with the threat of criminal action. Next is the demise of the industry, leaving it under complete control of the government. Sound familiar?

It remains unclear how local brokerages will continue turning a profit. Maria Fernandez, a local banking analyst, predicted the new regulations would lead some brokerage firms to bankruptcy.Many brokerages will be forced to impose “a significant reduction of employees” in order to survive, but others probably will close because the business “is no longer viable” for them.

Step-by-step and not by mere coincidence, the Obama administration is doing its part in usurping one piece of the financial industry after another. And we can expect the exact same result with the private health insurance industry here under Obamacare.

What ought to be disturbing is how, despite the example of Europe and Venezuela, this administration is taking us down the same road? The only thing left to do now is to decide whether President Obama’s political philosophy is more like the socialist Europe or the Marxist Venezuela. Then realize that there is no choice that is good for America.

How’s that hope and change working out for ya?

Link: Venezuela temporarily halts bond trading

Media, Politics, Whiners

Gov. Chris Christy, Honest And Refreshing

2 Comments

In case you missed it, this two minute twenty-five second video is the conservative that replaced years of Democrat control and subsequent debt in New Jersey.

And the funny part is the backwash. The Newark Star Ledger is claiming copyrights to this video. Since those where Gov. Christie’s words and not those of the reporter that got an answer he didn’t expect, to claim so just shows how thin-skinned the liberal media is.

Judiciary, Politics, Supreme Court

Kagan’s Paper Trail

What Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan lacks in the way of academic writing, she (apparently) more than compensates for with her lawyerly output during her time in the Clinton White House Counsel’s Office.  Recalling that former President George W. Bush shared over 50,000 pages of material associated with now Chief Justice John Roberts’s time as a lawyer in the Reagan White House, Byron York of the Washington D.C. Examiner reports which way precedent points in divulging Kagan’s work product.

“There is now a precedent that a White House lawyer’s materials will be produced,” says Bradford Berenson, an associate counsel in the Bush White House. “I think it will be very difficult for the Obama administration, given everything they’ve said about transparency and openness, to withhold these documents.”

Before anyone starts salivating over the thought of reading thousands of legal memos, remember that the current Oval Office occupant is not inclined to share information.  Unlike President Bush, Obama can’t be bothered to take a single question from the press after signing the Freedom of the Press Act.

Constitutional controversy over executive privilege, anyone?

The above is totally lifted from the CFIF website by author Ashton Ellis.

Links: Ashton Ellis: Kagan’s White House Paper Trail |  Byron York: Will the Senate see Kagan’s long paper trail?

Belly up to the counter. Politics are on the menu and Ross is on the grill.