Sunday, June 24, 2012

Quick Hits - June 23, 2012

In a deplorable series of actions, gay activists invited by President Barack Obama to the White House, decide to 'flip the bird' to the portrait of the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan - and promote those photos on their facebook pages with titles like 'Yeah, F*** Reagan'...


Last Friday, an attachĂ© of important gay people from Philadelphia made a trip to Washington D.C. as invited guests of President Barack Obama for the White House’s first-ever gay pride reception. There, they danced to the sounds of a Marine Corps band; they dined on crab cakes and canapĂ©s; they hand-delivered letters from concerned citizens like this 18-year old who has had four people close to him gunned down, and noted rhyming raconteur CA Conrad; and some of them took advantage of photo opportunities to give the late President Ronald Reagan the middle finger.

The White House has 'rebuked' these activists in a statement...
"While the White House does not control the conduct of guests at receptions, we certainly expect that all attendees conduct themselves in a respectful manner. Most all do," Shin Inouye, a White House spokesman, said. "These individuals clearly did not. Behavior like this doesn’t belong anywhere, least of all in the White House."
That's it? A rhetorical slap on the wrist? These classless morons need to be called out for the classless morons that they are - but the Administration probably needs their campaign donations too much to take a stronger stance against those juvenile acts. If nothing else, these acts reflect just what utter assholes these activists really are.

If this isn't desperation, I don't know what is...


I wonder if the President made this same request to the daughter of his close advisor, Valerie Jarrett, at her wedding a few weeks attended by the President, First Lady, and 200 members of the Chicago PD on security duties?

What do we expect from the ....



Speaking of gifts, I do like the birthday gift given by the Massachusetts GOP to Democrat senatorial candidate, Elizabeth Warren....
"Since Professor Warren has failed to come up with any evidence supporting her claims to Native American ancestry, we thought this Ancestry.com account would make the perfect birthday gift," said Massachusetts GOP Executive Director Nate Little in a statement. "If she takes the time to log-in to her gift, Warren will see what has been abundantly clear to everyone else for months: she is not a Native American."
Using facts only confuses and angers them....


A jury convicted former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky on 45 counts related to child sex abuse, closing a dark chapter for Penn State.
No, not closed.  This is just the end of the phase where the people hold Jerry Sandusky accountable for his reprehensible actions.  Now he will spend the rest of his life in prison...before he rots in hell for all eternity.  What is still needed is to address the culture and actions of the University, and those at the University, which permitted this to take place over 15 years - and which rightfully tarnish the reputation of the University and those who knew, but didn't speak out until recently.

Wisconsin government workers abandon unions in droves....
Wisconsin membership in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees - the state's second-largest public-sector union after the National Education Association, which represents teachers - fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011, according to a person who has viewed Afscme's figures. A spokesman for Afscme declined to comment. Much of that decline came from Afscme Council 24, which represents Wisconsin state workers, whose membership plunged by two-thirds to 7,100 from 22,300 last year.


A provision of the Walker law that eliminated automatic dues collection hurt union membership. When a public-sector contract expires the state now stops collecting dues from the affected workers' paychecks unless they say they want the dues taken out, said Peter Davis, general counsel of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. In many cases, Afscme dropped members from its rolls after it failed to get them to affirm they want dues collected, said a labor official familiar with Afscme's figures. In a smaller number of cases, membership losses were due to worker layoffs.

The Supreme Court of the United States is going to announce their decision on Obamacare (and on Arizona's SB1070 Illegal Immigration legislation) this coming week - the last in the 2011-2012 session. The announcement is expected either on Monday or Thursday.

Nancy Pelosi, of the 'you have to pass the bill to see what's in the bill' mantra, is now telling us that if the individual mandate is ruled unconstitutional by the SCOTUS, the rest of the healthcare law will not work.


The Wall Street Journal details an aspect of this dreadfully bad economic recovery that rarely is addressed - but reflects one of the major fundamental issues that has this the worst of all post-World War II recoveries, the plight of the middle-aged job seekers...
Much of the attention during the prolonged U.S. employment crisis has been on high rates of joblessness among young people. Less noticed, but no less significant to many economists, has been the plight of the middle-aged. More than 3.5 million Americans between the ages of 45 and 64 were unemployed as of May, 39% of them for a year or more—a rate of long-term unemployment that is unprecedented in modern U.S. history, and far higher than among younger workers. Millions more have quit looking for work or, like Mr. Daniel, have taken part-time jobs to get by.


"I try not to think that this is the end and I'm just going to have to shut everything down," Mr. Daniel says. "My mind doesn't work that way. I think that if I can get up I'll find something. I've got to keep moving."


The two decades between 40 and 60 are meant to be workers' prime years for earning and building wealth, the period when they buy homes, send children to college and save for retirement. Unemployment, especially for an extended period, can short-circuit that process. The effect can span generations, because middle-age workers are more likely to be supporting retired parents, sending their children to college or supporting adult children.


…Those between 45 and 64 take almost a year on average to find a job, more than two months longer than workers between 25 and 44.

As expected, the new Greek coalition government seeks to extend the austerity deadlines Greece is expected to achieve by 2 years...
While pledging to stick to the country's bailout agreement with other European countries and the International Monetary Fund, all three parties had said they would seek to renegotiate certain terms of the loan agreement.


Greece is mired in the fifth year of a deep recession, and has seen unemployment spiral to above 22 per cent. Widespread anger with rapidly falling living standards led to a massive increase in support for anti-bailout parties in the last two elections.


The new government will aim to extend by at least two years the deadlines for it to impose tough fiscal reforms “to support demand, development (and) employment,” it said.


“This way the final fiscal target can be achieved without further cuts to salaries and pensions or the public investment program, but through curbing waste and the targeted fighting of corruption, tax evasion” and the black economy.

The key issues in Europe remain, for now, Greece and Spain. The Greeks want more time, and the Germans are calculating which is worse - funding the Greeks with more time and more bailout funds or letting Greece default (leave the Euro as a currency / voting member of the EU). The other decision for Germany is if, when, and how to get Spain the more than $400 billion they need to fix their banking system and regional debt issues. Do the Germans really want to run Madrid from Berlin? One question that has to be resonating is - how long can this continue if the underlying structural problems in the Euro-socialist model are really addressed? Addressing them by a new federal bureaucracy or replacing national sovereignty with an EU sovereignty doesn't fix the structural problems or the fact that too many nations in Europe are running out of other people's money.

It seems as if we will shortly be adding France to the list of 'most troubled European nations' - joining Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus, and Italy. This comes from French President Francois Hollande going the 'full Obama' in his plan for French economic 'growth' - which is trebling down on more of the same euro-socialist tax, spend, and entitlements.

This is one of the better recaps of the 'Fab Four' meeting that took place this week in Rome...the meet and fail...
The euro is significantly closer to failure and Europe is closer to a meltdown after the leaders of the four biggest eurozone leaders met in Rome and made no progress whatever. The “Fab Four” (Spain’s Mariano Rajoy, France’s Francois Hollande, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Italy’s Mario Monti) reaffirmed a pre-existing agreement to make some mostly symbolic adjustments to European policy, whomping up an air souffle that the Club Med countries plus France can claim is a “growth” package, but it is mostly made of old money and spin.


Other than that, they seem to have just wasted time repeating the stale old things they have been saying to one another for more than two years. The Latin caucus told Germany how very nice it would be if Germany would pay more money to reduce their borrowing costs and Germany thanked the Latins for the advice but declined to share its ATM card and PIN with its hungry friends.

In other words, nothing.

Wrapping up today is a headline / link that just about completely summarizes the effectiveness of the Obama Administration...

The Environmental Protection Agency (our government) is actively fining people for not using a product that they have mandated, but does not exist.



Today in History

1902 – ‘Mercedes’ is registered as a brand name.

1956 – Gamal Abdel Nasser is elected as the first President of the Republic of Egypt. 99.95% of the ballots cast voted for Nasser. Nasser had toppled Egypt’s monarchy in a 1952 military coup.

1972 – President Richard Nixon signs into law the Higher Education Act which includes the groundbreaking Title IX legislation – barring discrimination in higher education programs. Also – Nixon and WH CoS H.R. Haldeman discuss a plan to use the CIA to obstruct the FBI’s Watergate investigation. One of the main charges of a likely impeachment of the President in 1974 was obstruction of justice - which this was.




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