The Department of the Interior — in the wake of the tragic Gulf oil spill — has created a new government agency to oversee offshore drilling.
Sorta.
Actually, what it did is rename an old agency. An agency that has been cited for its utter incompetence and corruptness. [Read more →]
Bugs Bunny knew. Perception is reality. Or at least it is as close to reality as you may need to get. Who cares if it is Wabbit Season? That is merely the arbitrary designation of some bureaucrat somewhere who probably never held a shotgun in his life. The problem is Elmer Fudd. If he thinks it is Wabbit season then Bugs is skinned and fried. If he thinks it is Duck season, well, then it is time for a larf and the relish of the crackle of roasted duck.
The President currently suffers in part from a similar problem to Daffy Duck. [Read more →]
“He was supposed to be competent,” declared no lesser a luminary than Peggy Noonan last week. Welcome to the party, sister.
More appropriately, a brief overview of the current Oval Office occupant’s record reveals a staggering inability to rise to the level of presidential performance. [Read more →]
Earlier this month, the New York Times published a typically incisive piece entitled Democrats Skip Town Halls to Avoid Voter Rage. It contained a sympathetic portrayal of the put-upon politician in fear of a potentially violent electorate, and the ways in which they were choosing to deal with a difficult political climate:
With images of overheated, finger-waving crowds still seared into their minds from the discontent of last August, many Democrats heeded the advice of party leaders and tried to avoid unscripted question-and-answer sessions. The recommendations were clear: hold events in controlled settings — a bank or credit union, for example — or tour local businesses or participate in community service projects.
But it turns out that the voters aren’t the only ones who are angry. The elected officials themselves are pretty riled up, and have the potential to become violent when asked questions about their positions:
So, maybe we should thank the representatives and senators who are choosing to forego appearances at these town hall events, with their finger-waving, overheated crowds. After all, the citizens need protecting.
Video link via reason, from Big Government.
Up until last week, 2.1 million gallons of crude oil per day had been pouring into the Gulf of Mexico. Since then BP and the Coast Guard have done some to siphon the leak, yet millions of gallons of oil, in hundreds of thousands of patches, float throughout the Gulf. They hurt and threaten tourism, fishing, and ecology. BP suggests that the leak might be almost completely stopped within a month. However, nothing is really certain of the future of the leak or the spill and its effects. [Read more →]
We could really, really, really stand to cut the DoD’s budget. And I’m talking about serious, drastic cuts of like 50% in one year and probably 75% further cuts in the following fiscal year. Let me explain.
We’re having trouble with our internet out here in BFE, so my online time has been severely curtailed. As such, I will state only two more things: 1) The Democrats asking for Mr. Alvin Greene to step down are, essentially, asking for a mulligan after chipping one into the drink, and 2) it’s not gonna happen in a game with that much money on the line.
A man named Alvin Greene won the democrat senate primary in South Carolina on Tuesday, for the right to take on the republican incumbent Jim DeMint in the fall. The man is, according to this Yahoo! news story, a “Mystery SC nominee with a pending felony charge.”
Greene, a 32-year-old unemployed military veteran who lives with his parents, defeated Vic Rawl on Tuesday for the Democratic Senate nomination despite having run essentially no public campaign – no events, no signs, no debates, no website, no fundraising.
The result has baffled political observers, who had heavily favored Rawl – a former state legislator, attorney and prosecutor who had the edge inasmuch as he actually campaigned and tried to win.
Dramatis Personae
Helen Thomas, former columnist
Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona
Reporters
BREWER: It’s with great honor that I introduce this woman — who, as I’m sure you all know — has been a victim of Washington PC gone amok. A woman who won’t have to worry about political correctness here in Arizona. Or any correctness. A woman, who, in the last few days, has shown herself to be an expert on immigration. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Arizona’s new immigration minister, Helen Thomas. [Read more →]
Federal officials have finally gotten a handle on the oil catastrophe. No, not the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, but an apparently much more important catastrophe — the olive oil catastrophe. [Read more →]
Helen Thomas, Jews back to Auschwitz!
Thank you, Helen Thomas! This semi-retired muppet made from old painters’ rags is not a hag, but a haggis. However we see the consoling virtues that compensate the aesthetically, chronologically and temperamentally challenged in her forthright statement of principles that speak for the Left generally on Zion. What is the problem in the Middle East? The Jews. What is the solution? As Ms Thomas, White House press corpse, states so succinctly, “get the hell out of Palestine!” And go where? asks the unseen and unnamed interviewer… well, back where they came from, Poland, Germany…. you know, Jewland. Or as the radio operator of the Hate Boat put it more bluntly, back to Auschwitz. You see here the power of not caring. The seasoned Ms Thomas is above petty concerns like decency or even the appearance of decency and does a real public service. She demonstrates that “peace activists” are no such thing. Rather than being anti-war on principle these 60s style radicals like Bill Ayers, one of the organizers of this New Nazi Navy, are a-okay with war but are on the other side. [Read more →]
Like many Americans, I’m a life-long Beatle fan who was offended by Sir Paul McCartney’s insult to former President George W. Bush last Wednesday when the singer, songwriter and former Beatle accepted the Gershwin Prize from the Library of Congress.
Sir Paul should have taken a lesson in class from the Duke – John Wayne.
War clouds gather in the Persian Gulf; Israel and her muslim, if not islamist neighbors are closer to a major clash of arms, and a more decisive one than has been the case for 30 years. Closer to your hearth and heart, oil pours out of an artery in the Mexican Gulf and even with a tourniquet applied the doctors forbid any further, even measured blood letting. Off-shore rigs are being closed in all American waters. In the most mundane of news; school’s out for summer, lies a mystery. The notorious Summer Driving Season began with the Memorial Day weekend. Additionally there are seasonal requirements for fuels in many states that tend to slow down supplies at the pump, driving up prices. The pros will tell you this was the issue year before last, when we saw $5 and $6 dollars for go- juice. But not this time. Despite international chaos and man-caused disasters at sea and in the Executive gas prices are declining a skooch as are crude prices (dropped 4% yesterday), and this is after a slow decline over a year. Can this voodoo be explained? Yes, quite simply. The market prices always look forward to the future, whether to the annual rush of corpulent families towards modest shore rentals or to the new century needs of manufacturing and shipping. In their torpor the markets signal their grasp of one simple fact: The future has been cancelled. [Read more →]
Former CIA director R. James Woolsey has written an interesting piece for National Review Online in which he draws parallels between present-day Iran and Nazi Germany.
Will Obama and other world leaders respond to the Iranian threat like Winston Churchill or Neville Chamberlain?
Reuters has a disturbing story today about the stock price of BP. It is “plunging”:
BP fell close to 17 percent in London trading, wiping $23 billion off its market value, on weekend news that its latest attempt to plug its blown-out seabed well had not worked sparked fears oil could leak into the Gulf until August.
As long as BP is losing money, it cannot muster the resources necessary to pay for the spill cleanup. And if the spill isn’t cleaned up, I think we all know it’s the children who will suffer the most. Well, that, and our faith in our institutions.
An explosion kills a number of oil workers and BP is accused of causing the tragedy through a mix of indifference and incompetence. Sound familiar? It should, because this happened back in 2005, when a BP explosion killed 15 (the most most recent explosion only killed another 11, so by this measure their performance is improving). BP’s record is filled with incidents where they jeopardized the environment — see Prudhoe Bay — but the truly shocking thing is that they’ve caused so much human death in such a short time. How did they get away with this? As has happened so many times in recent years, props must be given to the Bush administration. [Read more →]
In 1979 it was decided that the decades-old practice of naming hurricanes after women was unfair. Whether it weighed down the moral standing of women to associate them with inchoate and uncontrollable mayhem or if it was man-kind who was shorted by being overlooked, we cannot say but we have long exercised gender-blindness using alternating male and female names alphabetically so it is no surprise that early in the storm season we should be battening hatches against Hurricane Barack. [Read more →]
Sorry for exposing some of you to Glenn Beck. He is a bit fire and brimstone in a Paul Revere – Joe McCarthy sort of way. If you watched the first 10 minutes of Monday’s show you saw him imply that America is in deep peril, and that only a spiritually inspired revolution would revive America. He even asked, “where is our next George Washington,” referring to Peter Lillback’s Sacred Fire, a book about Washington’s faith and it how it seeded a nation.
However, in suggesting that someone (like Washignton) or something (like a religious awakening) needs to jumpstart American prosperity again, Beck perpetuates a misperception that he would probably prefer not to. This misperception is that Americans are the beneficiaries of America and its politics and not the other way around, and it has lead to American mediocreism over the last 20 years. [Read more →]
I’m sick and tired of reading about liberals attacking Rand Paul as a racist ( 1, 2, and 3 ) when his views could just as easily be seen as advocating for the freedom and the rights of Morehouse College, and other historically black colleges and universities, to serve whomever they wish to serve. It’s the kind of hypocritical political nonsense I think we’ve all come to expect from the Two Main Parties. It really makes me want to vomit.
So I’m going to discuss some thoughts I had that were generated by a quote from a book that came up in conversation. It’s from Edward “Father of PR” Bernays’s Propaganda (1928).
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.
I know Mark Souder and have two distinct memories of the former congressman. In the late eighties, when Senator Dan Coats was the only other senator to stand up with Jesse Helms the day he launched the culture wars with his denunciation of the National Endowment for the Arts, Souder was Coat’s chief of staff. As President of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, I was visiting D.C. and stopped by Coats’ office for a social visit. As we were chatting, a sweaty Souder in shirtsleeves came in and handed Coats a newspaper clipping. The look on Souder’s face was glum and vindictive. [Read more →]
