Quick Hits - August 18, 2012

GOP Vice President candidate Paul Ryan made a campaign appearance earlier this morning at the Florida retirement community, 'The Villages', appearing with his mother and touting the Romney-Ryan plan for reforming Medicare will save the system - and not use it as a 'piggybank' for Obamacare as President Obama's plan does.

The National Review hosts this video of the campaign appearance to a large and enthusiastic crowd...

Another Obama sycophant writing at 'The Hill', Niall Stanage, writes a piece today evaluating Paul Ryan's first week on the stump as the GOP VP selection.  Stanage notes that Ryan was 'broadly successful' thanks to 'an unexpected assist from his opposite number, Vice President Biden, who muscled into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons...'.

In his 'analysis, Stanage focuses on a slate of partisan Democrats who demonstrate their bias particularly when the discussion turns to Medicare and entitlements.  His primary GOP source?  The tedious Ed Rollins who offers a backhanded compliment towards the Ryan pick - before tossing Mark McKinnon in the very last sentences as a last stab at 'balance'.

The mainstream media is becoming a real story at this point of the campaign cycle - and not all of it is good for President Obama.

Appearing on PBS's Inside Washington program Friday night, Evan Thomas from the left-wing site Politico, invokes 'death panels' when it comes to healthcare and advocates that America will have to stop 'spending so much money' on people who are near death as well as the U.S. needing to emulate the European healthcare systems...

And here's the big one: death panels. There is no way that we're ever going to solve this problem if we keep on spending so much money on the end of life. Europe doesn't do it. Other countries don't do it. We, as a society, sooner or later, I think we'll do it not through the government but through the marketplace, confront this issue of how much money are we going to spend on people as they get ready to die.

In a campaign race where healthcare, and in particular Obamacare, being a major issue, having a leftist advocate for 'death panels' and 'rationing' of care, does little to support the President or his unpopular signature healthcare legislation.

But a far bigger press concern for President Obama is that he appears to be working excessively hard to turn  one of his biggest allies, the mainstream press, against himself.  President Obama has erked the White House Press Corps by not taking any direct questions from members of the press in about two months.  He's not held a full fledged press conference since March of this year.

One would think that in the midst of a tight campaign, the President would seek to use and leverage the sympathetic pinheads of the press to promote his cause - but instead, we are now seeing friendly media elements like Politico taking the President to task as he 'trolls for softer press questions'...preferring to give interviews to MSM outlets like 'Entertainment Tonight' or a morning zoo radio program where even the fluff questions are less substantial than usual.

Hot Air is reporting that President Obama's team has even turned down an interview with the one whom Obama sends tingles down his leg - the ever friendly to Barack Obama, MSNBC's Chris Matthews.  Rather than submit to the questioning of 'tingles', the White House instead offered 'Clueless' Joe Biden.

CNN anchor, Soledad O'Brien, perhaps attempting to prove that she isn't the left-wingnut that she's been pointed out to be, has found an Obama talking point that she is quite comfortable slamming - Joe Biden's 'Chains' comment.  She's going on the record to declare that the Campaign spin that Vice President Biden didn't mean anything by his 'put y'all back in chains' comment a bit hard to swallow.

But when he's lost MSNBC / NBC's Andrea Mitchell?

Andrea Mitchell is shown in this clip taking the Chair of the Democrat National Committee, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to task for President Obama's dodges of serious media outlets and interviews...

Andrea Mitchell: Doing this kind of radio interview occasionally is fine I'm sure but what about answering the really tough questions that experienced political journalists who cover him all the time or who are members of the White House press corps are going to ask him.

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz: Uh, Andrea, casual chit-chat aside, the President does do local interviews across the country as he's traveling around the nation and it's important for local reporters to be able to get a chance to ask him questions beyond how good the local food is...

There's 30 more seconds of filibustering from DWS at which point, Mitchell interjects by flatly rejecting Wasserman-Schultz argument:

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz: The DC press corps gets plenty of opportunities to grill President Obama and also to grill Jay Carney, his spokesperson.

Andrea Mitchell: Not lately.

As Mitchell noted in the interview, the morning zoo radio interview follows an interview the President gave to Entertainment Tonight. That wasn't just an brief interview, Nancy O'Dell was given "unprecedented access" to the campaign for a day and a half.

How good the local food is?  How about some more of these other 'serious' questions -like 'if you could have any super-power, what would it be'?

The President is almost looking like he's entering a 'bunker mentality' state of mind when it comes to the campaign - apparently frustrated that more American people are seeking to hold him accountable for the state of the economy and not reprising his 'Messiah' campaign of 2008 based on 'Hope and Change'.

Mark Steyn's weekly column highlights Barack Obama as 'The Man With No Plan' -

For the record, Obama has already made $716 billion in Medicare cuts to pay for Obamacare. That’s three-quarters of a trillion. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, was in Ottawa last week asking Her Majesty’s Canadian Government to chip in for the euro-zone bailout. The euro zone includes some of the richest nations in history, but it’s still not enough. And the entire euro-zone bailout is $450 billion — or a little over half the cost of the first Obama stimulus. Under Obama’s no-plan plan, there’s not enough money on the planet.

Underneath the poseur narcissism, the half-wit demagoguery, and the 13-figure innumeracy is bleak reality: a flatline economy, underwater property, declining social mobility, half the population getting a check each month from the government and with minimum-wage service jobs as the only alternative to long-term dependency.

If you seriously think this election is about gay marriage or affordable contraception, you’re about to do to America what Gavrilo Princip did to the Habsburg Empire.

Obama has a plan beyond 'Hope and Change'?

One of the elements of the plan is a renewed call for billions to be given to states across the country to avert more teacher's layoffs and rehire the nearly 300,000 education jobs the Administration claims were lost since  2009.

The problem with this is that this already was a major part of the $800 billion + 2009 'Porkulus' stimulus program that has utterly failed.  The other problem is that there is already a solution / model in place that does work to solve this that does not require the Federal Government to spend more billions  - the model established by Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin.

This is fundamentally a state issue.  The state's with the biggest problems are also the one's led by progressives and which have an irresponsible state fiscal plan and excessively powerful public sector and teachers unions.

The solution is to reign in these unions and their excesses, eliminate collective bargaining, eliminate their health benefits scam, and restore the states to programs of responsibility by stopping the funneling of taxpayer funds into public sector union coffers.  As Walker's reforms in Wisconsin have done - doing this will permit more teachers to be hired and more dollars dedicated to improving students.

We're in 'Recovery Summer III' and where are we?  Unemployment is up in 44 states....

New Gallup unemployment data suggest an increase in the government’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for August when it is reported on Friday, Sept. 7. During recent months, Gallup’s measurements have been more optimistic than those of the BLS. Barring a sharp reversal in this relationship, the government’s unadjusted unemployment rate might be expected to stay the same or increase in August…

Unlike the obvious partisan and biased 'Tax Policy Center', real independent economists are starting to flock to the Romney / Ryan economic plan for recovery....

Over 400 independent economists signed a statement at the website Economists for Romney in support of what they call the Republican presidential candidate's "bold economic plan for America."

In another example of a leftard's demonstration of 'cogent debate' we have a senior liberal protester spitting in the face of a senior Romney supporter in Wisconsin....

The vile MSNBC co-host, Toure, who basely played the race card in an attack on Mitt Romney and the GOP, issued a 12 second apology at the end of the broadcast of 'The Cycle' - apologizing only for the use of the word 'niggerization' and not the meaning or point of his racist accusations.

Voter Fraud not a problem?  An AFL-CIO canvasser was booked on 23 felony counts related to voter fraud in Ohio....guess what his political affiliation is?

Speaking of political bias and ideology - No Pasaran has post that hammer's NASA Climate Change fanatic, Dr. James Hansen, who once again got space on the editorial page of the New York Times to promote his political agenda....

Scientists with political agendas use apocalyptic predictions to justify increased government regulation, higher taxes, and redistribution of wealth...

James Hansen is at it again, flogging the dead horse of man-made climate change as a reason to keep Canada’s tar sands petroleum locked up forever. For the past 30 years, Dr. Hansen has issued ever more dire predictions of catastrophic climate change, while actual conditions have not borne out his doomsday forecasts. If anything, as the climate stubbornly fails to conform to Dr. Hansen’s predictions, he becomes even more extreme in his outlook.

Dr. Hansen made a name for himself in the 1980s by warning that computer models predicted that increasing carbon dioxide levels would result in major global warming. In fact, since 1998, after a decade of temperature rise, average global temperatures have been stable or actually declined, according to several analyses. This unpredicted trend underscores the shortcomings of computer models.

Scientists with political agendas like Dr. Hansen use apocalyptic predictions to justify increased government regulation, higher taxes and redistribution of wealth. His latest polemic is no different and would result in major economic impacts on Canadian and American citizens, more government bureaucrats to restrict and regulate fossil fuel production, and reduced living standards.

Looking overseas, we turn today to an area of the world where Barack Obama's foreign policy is either effectively non-existent (leading from behind...without the leading part) or so incredibly counter-productive that the risk of major regional war is at its highest level...  the Middle East.

Leading this - the Islamic fascists who are doing less and less to hide their contempt and hatred towards Israel and the United States.

We have Iran's leader, Ahmahwhackjob, calling Israel's existence an insult to all humanity... and the terrorist organization Hezbollah, Iran's Lebanese based puppet, vowing to turn Israel into a 'real hell' by unleashing thousands of missiles on Israeli civilians.

The senior Iranian commander of the Revolutionary Guard Air Force is welcoming an Israeli strike on his country's nuclear weapon program - saying it would be a reason to get rid of the Jewish state forever...

Senior Iranian Ayatollah Khatami, preaching in Tehran's Friday sermon declared - 'The Islamic world will make Israel 'disappear from the face of the world' and praises the 'Islamic Awakening', what our naive press and politicians call the 'Arab Spring', as a 'testament of Muslim strength in the region'.

This is as the Muslim Brotherhood, having effectively seized power in Egypt, and threatening to end the Egyptian-Israeli 1978 peace treaty, continues to assert it's fundamentalist Islamic views against the West.  [Remember, the Muslim Brotherhood is one of the organizations that was key in the creation of al-Qaeda.]  This is also as the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria is stepping up their efforts to be the power to replace the teetering Bashir al-Assad dictatorship - expanding their alliances and cooperating with the even more radical Hezbollah.

In Gaza, Hamas continues to launch daily rockets into Israeli towns targeting their civilians and now with the blockade from Egypt ended by President Morsi, stands to be able to obtain even more weapons to use in their terror campaign.

Even our so-called friends are showing their real allegiances  - with a Saudi cleric repeating and using the tired and old 'blood libel' to drum up more hatred towards the Jews - claiming 'they consume the blood of children'.

More proof?  Saudi King Abdullah warmly greets and shakes hands with the visiting Iranian malignant dwarf,   President Ahmadinejhad.

Where is Barack Obama on all of this?  Silent.  His sympathies do not lie with either preventing another holocaust or with protecting the only vibrant and successful nation in the region.

Have parts of Amelia Earhart's plane been located in the waters off Nikumaroro Island in the SW Pacific?  HD video taken last month during an expedition to the island are showing interesting signs of an aircraft debris field just off the main reef that could be the missing aviator's Lockheed Electra.  Earhart, and her navigator, disappeared on the longest leg of their 1937 around the world flight.

Last night, New York Yankee shortstop and captain, Derek Jeter became only the second player in Major League history to hit 250 or more home runs, 3,000 or more hits, have 300 or more stolen bases, and 1,200 or more runs batted in.  Hall of Famer Willie Mays being the only other player to reach or exceed those milestones.  Jeter hit his 250th career home run in a win against the Boston Red Sox in New York City last night - a night that was marked by the Yankees hitting 5 solo home runs - including 2 by Nick Swisher, one batting right handed one batting left handed.

The loss drops the Boston Red Sox to 13 1/2 games behind the division leading Yankees, 4 games under .500, and closing in on their second consecutive season of not making the playoffs.  Last August 31, the Red Sox beat the NY Yankees 9-5 in Boston to take a 1 1/2 game lead in the American League East division.  Since then, the Yankees have gone 87-60 while the Red Sox have gone 65-82.  Their historic collapse last September cost them not only their playoff spot, but also cost them manager Terry Francona.

This year, the Red Sox continue to struggle, perhaps more so as new manager, Bobby Valentine, has a strained relationship with his underachieving team.

Finally, a simple public service announcement.  I do hope that all of you use 'protection' on your computer's - a comprehensive and reliable security suite that provides anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall protections.  During my daily tour around various websites on the internet - I depend on the package that I use to protect my system from compromised websites that attempt to load / inject malware onto my system. Combined with ensuring my systems are fully current in security patches - I rarely have a problem.

The thing is, it's not just 'questionable' sites that can be a problem.  There are well known sites that get compromised with malware - or use flash based advertisements that are compromised (accidentally or deliberately) with malware.  There is one very well known site that I used to visit daily - that has, 4 times in the last month, attempted to download to my computer malware that was identified and blocked by my security software.  I've advised the site via their help-ticket system of this - and not heard anything back.  I know these are not 'false positive' reports - and their lack of concern is disconcerting.

Remember to practice 'safe-computing'...and backup your systems!

Today in History

1227 - Genghis Khan dies during a campaign against the Chinese kingdom of Xi Xia.  He was over 60 years old, in failing health, and may have succumbed to injuries from a fall from a horse the previous year.  As the leader of the Mongols, he forged an empire that stretched from the east coast of China into Central Russia.

1920 - The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, is ratified by Tennessee - achieving the 2/3 majority needed to add the amendment.

1938 - The Thousand Island Bridge, connecting the U.S. and Canada across the St. Laurence River, was dedicated by President Franklin Roosevelt.

1991 - Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed under house arrest during a coup by high ranking hard-line / old guard members of his own government, military, and police forces.  The coup would collapse in three days after Russian President Boris Yeltsin stepped in and asked the Russian people to strike and protest the coup.  As they did, Gorbachev was released from house arrest, and returned to Moscow.  He would then launch new measures to lessen communist control of the USSR.