"Read all about it!"

I know you're dying to talk about  Robert Gates' new book......

FIRE AWAY!!!    I have my own opinions which might surprise you............will try to chime in some time soon...but you go first!

By the way, did you know that when a student gets accepted to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, a lieutenant comes in full uniform and presents the student with a welcoming certificate?   I saw one Wednesday and it made me cry.  The students in the classrooms around were cheering, and our (very liberal) College Counselor, after all had died down, said "And it's FREE!"   I chimed in with "Oh, no it ISN'T, the government does pay!"   heh heh
Funnily enough, the kids roared with my remark!   Maybe they got it?  naaaaaaaaaaa

Z
(oh, and happy birthday to meeeeeeeeeeeeeee :-))

Can Obama Help?

Let us suppose for a moment that you happened to be someone who had never owned a home.  And you happen to be black.  It isn’t quite fair, you know.  White people own homes, so why can’t blacks?  This is exactly the question attorney Barack Obama asked himself some time back in his communist, uh … community-organizing days.  So he riled up a bunch of disenfranchised poor people, 99.99% of whom were black, and they sued Citibank for —oh, I don’t know, maybe loan discrimination.  And then a miraculous thing happened: Obama won his lawsuit, forcing Citibank to offer mortgage loans to 186 black American families.  What a wonderful story.  It almost brings a tear to my eyes.

Almost.

The problem, you see, is that of the 186 families who received mortgage loans they couldn’t afford, only 19 black families still own their homes.  Citibank foreclosed on the rest of those homes.  It is perfectly understandable, of course.  You see, what happens when people lie on their financial statements, when they obfuscate facts, they qualify for homes they cannot afford.  And sneaky pond scum who call themselves communist, uh … community organizers have them sign loan agreements that start off with monthly house payments of around $1,000 a month, which almost anyone can afford.  But then, within eight or so years, those house payments balloon to at or above $3,000 a month, which hardly anyone can afford.  Add to that all the luxuries every family likes to have, diminished cost of living, and staid salaries.  And let's be honest, not every family makes wise financial decisions.

Also, factor in Barack Hussein Obama's unemployment program which disproportionately hurts black workers of all ages [Source].

And this brings us to three essential questions.  First, has Barack Obama’s communist, uh … community organizing efforts helped, or hurt the black community?  Second, given the fact that almost no one can afford Barack Hussein Obama “help,” why are black Americans still lining up behind this lying dirt bag?  Finally, why isn’t Barack Hussein Obama in jail, along with Chris Dodd and Barney Frank?  Okay, I admit that last question is rhetorical.

But yes, those liberals sure do love their black folks.

[Source]

--Mustang Sends

And Obama prepares for the DNC........

Happy Labor Day to everybody at geeeeZ.  :-)

thanks, Imp!
geeeeZ
x

No wonder Pelosi said you can't know about the law until it's passed....

By Henry Blodget of Business Insider:
Well, Obamacare is now official, which means that a lot more people in the United States will have health insurance.  And it also means a lot more people will be paying more taxes.
(You didn't think Obamacare was free, did you?)  HERE is the full article.

Here are some of the new taxes you're going to have to pay to pay for Obamacare:

• A 3.8% surtax on "investment income" when your adjusted gross income is more than $200,000 ($250,000 for joint-filers). What is "investment income?" Dividends, interest, rent, capital gains, annuities, house sales, partnerships, etc. Taxes on dividends will rise from 15% to 18.8%--if Congress extends the Bush tax cuts. If Congress does not extend the Bush tax cuts, taxes on dividends will rise from 15% to a shocking 43.8%. (WSJ)
• A 0.9% surtax on Medicare taxes for those making $200,000 or more ($250,000 joint). You already pay Medicare tax of 1.45%, and your employer pays another 1.45% for you (unless you're self-employed, in which case you pay the whole 2.9% yourself). Next year, your Medicare bill will be 2.35%. (WSJ)
• Flexible Spending Account contributions will be capped at $2,500. Currently, there is no tax-related limit on how much you can set aside pre-tax to pay for medical expenses. Next year, there will be. If you have been socking away, say, $10,000 in your FSA to pay medical bills, you'll have to cut that to $2,500. (ATR.org)
• The itemized-deduction hurdle for medical expenses is going up to 10% of adjusted gross income. Right now, any medical expenses over 7.5% of AGI are deductible. Next year, that hurdle will be 10%. (ATR.org)
• The penalty on non-medical withdrawals from Healthcare Savings Accounts is now 20% instead of 10%.  That's twice the penalty that applies to annuities, IRAs, and other tax-free vehicles. (ATR.org)
• A tax of 10% on indoor tanning services. This has been in place for two years, since the summer of 2010. (ATR.org)
• A 40% tax on "Cadillac Health Care Plans" starting in 2018.Those whose employers pay for all or most of comprehensive healthcare plans (costing $10,200 for an individual or $27,500 for families) will have to pay a 40% tax on the amount their employer pays. The 2018 start date is said to have been a gift to unions, which often have comprehensive plans. (ATR.org)
• A"Medicine Cabinet Tax" that eliminates the ability to pay for over-the-counter medicines from a pre-tax Flexible Spending Account. This started in January 2011. (ATR.org)
• A "penalty" tax for those who don't buy health insurance. This will phase in from 2014-2016. It will range from $695 per person to about $4,700 per person, depending on your income. (More details here.)
• A tax on medical devices costing more than $100.  Starting in 2013, medical device manufacturers will have to pay a 2.3% excise tax on medical equipment. This is expected to raise the cost of medical procedures. (Breitbart.com)

So those are some of the new taxes you'll be paying that will help pay for Obamacare.  Any big ones I've missed?   Note that these taxes are both "progressive" (aimed at rich people) and "regressive" (aimed at the middle class and poor people). The big ones--the 3.8% investment income hike and the Medicare tax increase--only hit you if you're making more than $200,000 a year. The rest hit you no matter how much you're making.  (End of article  written by Henry Blodget, for BUSINESS INSIDER)

Z: More facts and quite a good article on the taxes are available HERE.

"This is not a tax,"  Barack Hussein Obama, 2012.  At least not until his lawyers argued it WAS a tax to the Supreme Court. 

z

Obama uses demonstratable LIES in his TV ad...and keeps them running

Here is an Obama campaign ad saying that Romney, through Bain Capital, was responsible for sending many jobs overseas.  They cite the Washington Post as a reference.  Oops.

The Washington Post gives the Obama people FOUR PINOCCHIOS for LYING...yes, not ME, but the Liberal Washington Post. When the Romney folks saw what Obama was doing, they tried to get the truth known.  HERE is the article about that....read that carefully, you'll be amazed at what Obama tried to pull....until The Washington Post's OWN "Fact Checker" did their homework and came up with the truth.
Here's some of that.............
A better source for Romney’s behavior as an investor might be someone who actually worked on Wall Street, such as former Obama auto czar Steven Rattner. “Bain Capital is not now, nor has it ever been, some kind of Gordon Gekko-like, fire-breathing corporate raider that slashed and burned companies, immolating jobs wherever they appear in its path,” Rattner wrote in Politico this year.    Yup, Steve Rattner, OBAMA's auto czar.
Regarding the outsourcing claims, we have frowned on these before. The Obama campaign rests its case on three examples of Bain-controlled companies sending jobs overseas. But only one of the examples — involving Holson Burns Group — took place when Romney was actively managing Bain Capital.
 Regarding the other claims, concerning Canadian electronics maker SMTC Manufacturing and customer service firm Modus Media, the Obama campaign tries to take advantage of a gray area in which Romney had stepped down from Bain — to manage the Salt Lake City Olympics — but had not sold his shares in the firm. We had previously given the Obama campaign Three Pinocchios for such tactics.
The Modus Media case is also not an example of shipping jobs overseas. The company closed one plant in California and transferred the jobs to North Carolina, Washington and Utah. At the same time, it opened an unrelated plant in Mexico. The Obama campaign once trumpeted the fact that we had dinged a conservative Super PAC for making the same leap in logic.

The claim that Romney outsourced jobs as governor is equally overblown.

You see, that Romney was a 'corporate raider' is false.    So, Obama has an ad using the Washington Post as a source that Romney sent jobs overseas, but the Washington Post's own Fact Checker ends its exposure of the lie with:

The Pinocchio Test

The Obama campaign fails to make its case. On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue, from the use of “corporate raider” to its examples of alleged outsourcing.  Simply repeating the same debunked claims won’t make them any more correct. 

Think most Americans will only see the ad and not the truth?    You can bet on it.  And then they vote.

(thanks to Elbro for the footwork on this story)
 z

Obama "Punching above his weight!" ?

If I haven't blogged this before, I meant to....Please watch most of it, you will crack up.  Except it's an American president and so this is rather embarrassing.   


I have to admit I seriously had higher hopes for Obama because they tell us how intelligent and well educated he is......I also figure that it gets tough figuring out something fresh and new to say to each dignitary as they roll through the White House, but this seems curious to me.......Really?....the same exact and rather peculiar, memorable adjectives and descriptions for every smallish country?  I don't think this sends a great signal to the world, but I don't think Americans know about this, of course....the Danes do.

Z

Obama call for campaign money.......

I believe THIS is an excellent way for Obama to raise campaign cash...... Just have the media get the news out that he's fearful of being outspent and needs more money.  It's a terrific way to squeeze  money out of his base without his campaign spending any money, don't you think? 

I also got to thinking about how Obama can pretty much say what he wants about all of this and nobody's really checking, nobody holds his feet to any fires.

But, my main point here being his mentioning the Koch Brothers with the clear and obvious disdain all leftwingers show while the best kept secret ever is  George Soros' probable enormous support of Obama.   Yet, when Conservatives mention George Soros and any connection to Obama, the Left goes into overdrive ridiculing, asking how we're sure of any connection, etc., etc., etc.   (I even have to say 'probable' because very little information comes out of Soros or the leftwing causes he supports with very big money....with the groups Soros is known to report, it's not a leap to think he's not supporting Romney!)

A troubling thing is that Obama, in that linked article above,  mentions the Koch Brothers by name...Does that strike you as unseemly and a little unpresidential?  He also knocks FOX fairly often and particular conservative pundits by name, which seems like a new 'presidential habit' and one I think which demeans the office of the president.   In italics are particular sentences I wanted to address:

"We just can't be outspent 10 to 1," Obama said. "That's what happened in Wisconsin recently. The Koch brothers and their allies spent more than the other side's entire campaign, our side's entire campaign.

Z:  How about admitting that maybe the people who voted gave a lot more money in pursuit of success?

An Obama campaign official confirmed the veracity of the recording to ABC News, describing the meeting as a "routine finance call." (Obama uses a non-taxpayer-funded phone for political calls from the plane, the official said.)

Z:  If it's "routine," why the article?  Using a non-taxpayer-funded phone is the appropriate thing to do.  Is it the Obama campaign officials who should 'confirm the veracity' of that or is this more of Holder assigning his own guys to investigate himself?   These days, the media hears anything from Obama's White House and says "oky doky!" 

The Romney campaign is expected to report raising more than $100 million in June. Obama campaign officials said they don't expect the president to match that number, but declined to offer specifics on their monthly haul.

Z:  But they'll mention to the penny what Romney has brought in and, remember, Romney raised a heck of a lot of money in the first few hours after the Supreme Court decision......Obama's saying his numbers went up then, too, but his campaign won't say how much.    They're never accountable but they'll hold Romney to it.

"We might not out-raise Mitt Romney," Obama wrote Saturday morning in an email with the subject line "This is important." "But I am determined to keep the margin close enough that we can win this election the right way."


And then there's THIS article which starts with:  George Clooney has signed on for another special guest appearance as the Barack Obama re-election campaign takes its summer fundraising tour across the Atlantic in pursuit of Euro-cash.   By the way, will Palestinians be operating phone banks for Obama this time around, too?


Is THAT what's meant by "the right way?"    Right way versus..............???

z

Obama and crack cocaine

Check out the president's nose in this picture that illustrated one of the articles dealing with my subject below....After I printed this here, I noticed that the plaque on the painting behind him reads as if his nose is growing.......I'd say that's fairly appropriate for our Pinnochio in Chief!?   Sorry, but I thought that was funny!   Now to the point of my post regarding the president and crack cocaine:

The words in italics below are from an article from EDUCATION NEWS:  
Valerie Jarrett makes unreported remarks in meeting with media:
President Obama’s top aide, Valerie Jarrett, reportedly boasted to the black community that the administration sharply reduced the sentencing disparity for possession of crack cocaine instead of powder.

Jarrett made the remarks at a meeting of black journalists and columnists last weekend clearly aimed at Obama’s re-election efforts. Mainstream media outlets covering the event did not report on her comments regarding crack cocaine.

On Saturday, Jarrett engaged in a wide-ranging interview session with a group of journalists at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in New Orleans.

The Root, a website owned by the Washington Post aimed at the black community, reprinted a blog report by the Maynard Institute’s Richard Prince on Jarrett’s appearance at the convention. (Z: You'll want to read that in its entirety)


Prince reported that at the meeting Jarrett outlined “what she considered the Obama administration’s successes.”    Continued Prince: “Among them funding for historically black colleges and universities; health care reform, which she said will disproportionately help African-Americans; and reducing disparities between penalties for possession of crack and for powdered cocaine.”  

Before anyone starts in how The Root must be a Conservative rag, please know it's a Black-focused paper owned by The Washington Post.   I have to salute this venue for having admitted that, after Jarrett's talk, "Some rolled their eyes. "Why not just send a [campaign] video?" one said. "That was out of line," said another afterward." I particularly honor THE ROOT because most outlets completely overlooked the part about cocaine.  Another media cover-up of something Americans should hear.  Is this really a good thing for the Black community or is it actually true racism at its core?

z

Clintons for Obama......

Obama and the Clintons are banding together....you must have heard Clinton's new ad for Obama recently.  Suddenly, the hard feelings are gone and they're UNITED BIG TIME.  Here's a bit from the linked article:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Once a tense rivalry, the relationship between President Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton has evolved into a genuine political and policy partnership. Both sides have a strong incentive in making the alliance work, especially in an election year.

For Obama, Bill Clinton is a fundraising juggernaut, a powerful reminder to voters that a Democrat ran the White House the last time the economy was thriving. For the spotlight-loving former president, stronger ties with the White House and campaign headquarters mean he gets a hand in shaping the future of the party he led for nearly a decade.

Obama's re-election campaign has put Bill Clinton on notice that he will be used as a top surrogate, further evidence of how far the two camps have come since the bitter days of the 2008 Democratic primary between Obama and Hillary Clinton, now his secretary of state.

Here's the most important bit:

"It makes absolutely clear that, to the extent that there were different wings of the Democratic party, there is now one wing of the Democratic party," said Chris Lehane, a Clinton backer. "And it's the president's party."

Yup.........meanwhile, Conservatives are suggesting Gary Johnson or some guy from The Constitution Party named Virgil Goode should run and really good Conservatives will write their names in or something?

Republicans think, Republicans examine, Republicans weigh....and then they eat their young.  Even in a year when they KNOW their vote will put Obama back in the White House and further solidify America's slide.  Even when they know that the Supreme Court's in peril.....They even think America deserves that!  
Democrats will not criticize each other in public, they come together.......winning is everything to them.

It needs to be that for us, too.  Particularly this year.  I don't really want another "I'm voting my conscience and you aren't" conversation here, please..I think there's not much more that can be said here about that, we GET IT...please..........What I am curious about is this:

Is this unholy alliance between the Clintons who seemed to despise the Obamas in 2008 (and the feeling was mutual) all about Hillary in 2016?   Or just Democrat ideology and that it MUST come out ahead no matter who's in charge?  And how effective do you think Bill Clinton's campaigning for his new best friend will be?

Z

Mrs Obama ....a CHOICE choice for the Kids Choice Awards

I don't get into this kind of catty stuff much at geeeZ but I publish this because it says so much for the dignity of the presidency these days.   To Michelle Obama's credit, she presented an award to Taylor Swift, who really deserves credit who raised almost $1 million for tornado/hurricane victims last year.  That's a nice thing for Mrs. Obama to have done.   One site mentioned this was her "first live appearance ever on the Nickelodeon's Kids Choice Awards (as if anybody's ever heard of it...'first ever'  WOW!! :-) , another site RAVED about Mrs. Obama's outfit but, in the text, mentioned that she is 48 years old....which made me wonder if they thought what most of us think when we see this get-up.
I miss dignity that has usually been represented by the White House.
Am I being too hard on her?    

z

Muslims we could use aren't being used

If you don't want to get too upset, don't read the article below........Mr Z and I went to see Zuhdi Jasser speak(I covered that lecture HERE) and thought a lot of him and I'd have thought this kind of Muslim is just the type we need for the position the White House is trying to fill........That he's been taken off the short list stuns me.  Read at your own risk: October 16, 2011 by  R. James Woolsey and Seth Leibsohn Zuhdi Jasser’s Counter-Jihad The administration refuses to utilize a strong opponent of radical Islam. Shortly after 9/11, many thought it was imperative to teach about and promote the heroes of that deadly day. One such hero whose life and example we can never learn enough about was Rick Rescorla. Originally from England, he came to America and distinguished himself as an Army infantry officer in Vietnam. Later he became head of security at Morgan Stanley, and, after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, he knew the terrorists would go after the Twin Towers again. He warned the authorities continually; moreover, he led regular evacuation drills between 1993 and 2001. On 9/11, he successfully led almost every Morgan Stanley employee out to safety. He himself did not make it. His last known words were, “As soon as I make sure everyone else is out.” He said those words to another Morgan Stanley employee who had yelled to him that he had to get out too. Rick Rescorla’s remains were never found. Rick’s life was not wasted; he saved a lot of people. But if the government had listened to him before 9/11, he would have saved even more. Rick was somebody who should have been posted at the top of our intelligence community, but he wasn’t. Today, we are still not listening to the most creative and prophetic thinkers among us. One of them is Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum on Democracy. He is the intellectual Rick Rescorla of our day. Dr. Jasser, a practicing Muslim, is a physician and former lieutenant commander in the Navy — someone who, like Rick Rescorla, served his country with distinction, and continues to do so both in his medical practice and in his public warnings and teachings about the dangers from radical Islam. One of his efforts has been to confront members of Muslim Brotherhood organizations such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), who continually denigrate America. Jasser’s view is that we should promote the virtues of American freedom and tolerance, which American Muslims enjoy, and should also publicize the way our efforts abroad have given freedom to Muslims in other countries. Indeed, while most so-called mainstream Muslim and Arab groups in America feed hysteria and spread conspiracy theories, Dr. Jasser despises the grievance narrative; he loves America. Now more than ever, he is the kind of man our government should listen to — and, more important, he is the kind of man our government should use. But, although Dr. Jasser has offered to serve his country again, this administration has ignored this unique opportunity. Last year, recognizing the need for a shift in our thus-far-ineffective public-diplomacy program, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and others nominated Dr. Jasser to serve on the State Department’s U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy (Z: I believe this was started by Karen Hughes, remember?). The commission is charged with “Appraising U.S. Government activities intended to understand, inform, and influence foreign publics.” There could be nobody better suited to serve in this role. Here is some of what Dr. Jasser said when testifying — extemporaneously — before the House Committee on Homeland Security earlier this year: Until we have an ideological offense into the Muslim communities domestically and globally to teach liberty, to teach the separation of mosque and state, you are not going to solve this problem. . . . . . . Our organization has . . . created a Muslim liberty project that looks at inoculating Muslims with the ideals of liberty, giving them the empowerment to counter imams, to feel that they can represent their own faith. . . . This is our homeland. And we want to begin, if you will, a counter-jihad, an offense to counter these ideas. That, I think, is the best way to use our resources as a nation, and remember that the freedoms that we have don’t come with a cheap price, and we need to give back. This is, simply, Dr. Jasser’s life’s work. This is the kind of thought and talk we need more of, not less. This is the intellectual Rescorlaesque effort we should be promoting and the government should be availing itself of. Upon his nomination, Dr. Jasser submitted reams of information about himself to the State Department and the White House Office of Personnel Management. He spent hours upon hours in interviews. He passed every clearance with flying colors, including receiving confirmation of a top-secret clearance. This is a man, after all, who gave eleven years of service to the U.S. Navy, including some very sensitive assignments. And, now, after 15 months of vetting, he has learned that his nomination has been “removed from consideration,” with no explanation.What explanation could there be? Unlike some commission members, Dr. Jasser was not a donor to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. But something else must have been at work as well. That something might have ranged from a lack of understanding of the dangerousness of jihadism and Islamism to a lack of respect for the muscular advocacy of the ideas of freedom and liberty. And, probably, one other thing was at work too: a political decision based on Dr. Jasser’s open criticism of the administration for its lack of clarity in the war of ideas and its inability to identify the ideology we are fighting. It should be noted, however, that Dr. Jasser is an equal-opportunity critic: He has spoken out against both the Bush and the Obama administrations when he believes they have faltered. Clarity in the war of ideas, the ability to identify the ideology we are fighting, and expertise in the religion of Islam are precisely what we need. It’s ten years late, but not too late. It is a shame we will not soon be availing ourselves officially of Dr. Jasser’s work. It is work that we sorely need. Indeed, it is intellectual and rhetorical courage and heroism. We ignore and spurn it at our continued peril. — R. James Woolsey is the chairman of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and was the director of central intelligence from 1993 to 1995. Seth Leibsohn is a radio host and co-author of Fight of our Lives. Z: This man would have been on our side.........but he won't be. z

Holder lied, people died...........

Gunrunner: Cash For Cartels

 Posted 09/27/2011 06:42 PM ET

Scandal: New documents reveal the Department of Justice lied to Congress and show how U.S. officials bought guns with tax dollars and then made sure no one stopped their transfer to Mexican drug cartels.
The funneling of thousands of American guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels in the operation known as Fast and Furious was not a botched sting operation or the result of bureaucratic incompetence. It was not designed to interdict gun trafficking, but to facilitate it.
We now know that it involved not just the use of straw buyers, but also agents of the federal government purchasing weapons with taxpayer money, ordering the licensed dealers to conduct the sales off the books, then calling off surveillance of the gun traffickers and refusing to interdict the transfer of the weapon or arrest the people involved.
According to documents obtained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), agent John Dodson was ordered to buy semiautomatic Draco pistols and was provided a letter by ATF group supervisor David Voth authorizing FFLs (federal firearms licensees) to sell Dodson the guns without filling out the required form.
A copy of the letter obtained by David Codrea of the Gun Rights Examiner tells dealers to "accept this letter in lieu of completing an ATF Form 4473 for the purchase of four (4) CAI, Model Draco, 7.62X39 mm pistols, by Special Agent John Dodson" to be used "in the furtherance of the performance of his official duties."
Scribbled on the letter is this note: "Picked up guns 6/10/10. Paid cash."
According to Fox News, Dodson then sold the guns to known illegal buyers who took them to a stash house. Voth disapproved Dodson's request for 24-hour surveillance and ordered the surveillance team to return to the office.
Dodson stayed behind, against orders. A week later, when a vehicle showed up to transfer the weapons to their ultimate destination, he called for an interdiction team to move in, seize the weapons and arrest the traffickers. Voth refused, and the guns disappeared without surveillance.
Again, Fast and Furious was no botched sting operation. The ATF simply didn't "lose track" of thousands of weapons. We believe this was a planned and premeditated attempt to further the administration's gun-control agenda and its claim that violence in Mexico was our fault.
Voth was "jovial, if not giddy, but just delighted about" such guns showing up at crime scenes in Mexico, according to Dobson's testimony before Rep. Darrel Issa's House Oversight Committee.
"Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals — this was the plan," Dodson testified to the panel. "It was so mandated."
Another ATF agent, Olindo James Casa, said that "on several occasions I personally requested to interdict or seize firearms, but I was always ordered to stand down and not to seize the firearms."
Fast and Furious let members of the Sinaloa Cartel buy in excess of 1,900 weapons over a one-year period starting in October 2009, according to a document dated last January. What information we have comes from ATF documents and agent testimony. The Justice Department has stonewalled Congress on this issue.
Guns linked to Fast and Furious were found at the scene where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in December 2010 at the hands of an illegal immigrant working for the Sinaloa Cartel just 10 miles from the Mexican border near Nogales, Ariz.
Asked by Fox News' Greta Van Susteren about ATF's insistence that this was just a botched sting, Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley responded: "It's a lie — it's a lie — and just to make things clear for your listeners: The ATF ordered this ATF agent to purchase these guns and in turn sell them, and supposedly track them.
"But he was a lone wolf in the operation — they wouldn't give him any help for 24-hour surveillance.
"There's something sinister going on. They're doing everything they can to avoid the issue; they want to stonewall us and string us along," Grassley said of the Justice Department's statements and lack of promised cooperation.
Attorney General Eric Holder's "I know nothing" imitation of TV's Sgt. Schultz long ago evaporated with the discovery of a speech he gave to local authorities in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 2, 2009, giving credit for Gunrunner to himself and the Obama administration.
Holder told the audience: "Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels. My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner, DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion."
A two-year-old C-SPAN video shows Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, who would resign nine months later after less than a year's service, telling reporters at a Justice Department briefing of major policy initiatives to fight the Mexican drug cartels.
"The president has directed us to take action to fight these cartels," Ogden began, "and Attorney General Holder and I are taking several new and aggressive steps as part of the administration's comprehensive plan."
Ogden said the administration's plan, at the president's direction, included the ATF's "increasing its efforts by adding 37 new employees in three new offices, using $10 million in Recovery Act funds and redeploying 100 personnel to the Southwest border in the next 45 days to fortify its Project Gunrunner," of which Operation Fast and Furious would be a part.
The mainstream media have shown little interest in this matter, salivating instead over the recent execution of cop killer Troy Davis while ignoring the government-run operation that killed agent Brian Terry.
Fast and Furious should spark our pursuit of the truth, even if the trail leads to the Oval Office.

What do YOU think of this? Will the truth ever come out?  Why aren't sworn testimonies all over the media? (Ya, imagine ME asking THAT?)
z

obama and Netanyahu................got another caption? :-)

I'm fascinated with the extremely flattering words of Netanyahu toward Obama, especially considering their last meetings. Something may be up behind the scenes, huh? First Ehud Barak was very complimentary, and now Bibi? I wonder what's up. Hopefully, it's something good. After all, Obama is standing up to the Palestinians on Statehood.  Which is kind of surprising.  This is all particularly good for Obama, considering that some think Jews are turning against him in America because of his past treatment particularly toward Netanyahu.  He supported the Israeli embassy in Egypt last week; that's something I'm sure Israelis are grateful for. I think THIS article is a good interview between Stephanopoulos and Netanyahu...it's worth the read.   The picture's worth a caption....funny or not;  give it a shot! thanks!

z

Global Warming....another one bites the dust

Ticker sent me this information which is printed at NewsMax and other sources and I just had to post it.  Mostly, because it supports the truths in my post two posts down, and because Ivar Giaever teaches at RPI, where my wonderful father went to college, and because RPI is very near to dear ol' Troy, New York (where my family first settled when they arrived in America).  But, I digress.  Check this out:

Nobel Prize-winning physicist and erstwhile Obama supporter Ivar Giaever has resigned as a Fellow from the prestigious American Physical Society to protest the organization's promotion of manmade global warming fears.
Norwegian-born Dr. Giaever shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1973 for work at General Electric related to superconductors.
In an email to APS Executive Officer Kate Kirby on Sept. 13, which was obtained by the Climate Depot website, Giaever said:
"Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I cannot live with the [APS] statement below:

"'Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate.
"'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.'"

Giaever goes on to say: "In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degrees Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this 'warming' period."

Giaever was one of Barack Obama's key scientific supporters and joined more than 70 Nobel Science laureates in endorsing him in an October 2008 open letter.
But in March 2009, Giaever was one of more than 100 co-signers of a letter to President Obama criticizing his stance on global warming. The letter stated in part: "We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated."
Giaever, now a professor emeritus at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is one of several prominent scientists to resign from the APS over its global warming position. Among them is physicist Hal Lewis, who wrote to the organization before his death this past May: "Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life." . (end of story)  (Z: I wish it was the end of the story, actually)

The truth's finally coming out.  But, of course, these are just experts in the field; what do they have to lend to the global warming scam, right? :-)  And, if  you gave some of them some bucks, they'll back Gore, anyway, huh?  Let me just add one thing which, in a normal world of informed Americans, wouldn't have to be said.  When Conservatives (and experts in the field) balk against the Global Warming scam, that does not mean we want to destroy our oceans, forests or air. 

z

Obama and JOBS.........OOOOPS!

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack H. Obama's promise Thursday that everything in his jobs plan will be paid for rests on highly iffy propositions. It will only be paid for if a committee he can't control does his bidding, if Congress puts that into law and if leaders in the future - the ones who will feel the fiscal pinch of his proposals - don't roll it back. Underscoring the gravity of the nation's high employment rate, Obama chose a joint session of Congress, normally reserved for a State of the Union speech, to lay out his proposals. But if the moment was extraordinary, the plan he presented was conventional Washington rhetoric in one respect: It employs sleight-of-hand accounting. A look at some of Obama's claims and how they compare with the facts: OBAMA: "Everything in this bill will be paid for. Everything." THE FACTS: Obama did not spell out exactly how he would pay for the measures contained in his nearly $450 billion American Jobs Act but said he would send his proposed specifics in a week to the new congressional supercommittee charged with finding budget savings. White House aides suggested that new deficit spending in the near term to try to promote job creation would be paid for in the future - the "out years," in legislative jargon - but they did not specify what would be cut or what revenues they would use. Essentially, the jobs plan is an IOU from a president and lawmakers who may not even be in office down the road when the bills come due. Today's Congress cannot bind a later one for future spending. A future Congress could simply reverse it. Currently, roughly all federal taxes and other revenues are consumed in spending on various federal benefit programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' benefits, food stamps, farm subsidies and other social-assistance programs and payments on the national debt. Pretty much everything else is done on credit with borrowed money. So there is no guarantee that programs that clearly will increase annual deficits in the near term will be paid for in the long term. --- OBAMA: "Everything in here is the kind of proposal that's been supported by both Democrats and Republicans, including many who sit here tonight." THE FACTS: Obama's proposed cut in the Social Security payroll tax does seem likely to garner significant GOP support. But Obama proposes paying for the plan in part with tax increases that have already generated stiff Republican opposition. For instance, Obama makes a pitch anew to end Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which he has defined as couples earning over $250,000 a year or individuals over $200,000 a year. Republicans have adamantly blocked what they view as new taxes. As recently as last month, House Republicans refused to go along with any deal to raise the government's borrowing authority that included new revenues, or taxes. --- OBAMA: "It will not add to the deficit." THE FACTS: It's hard to see how the program would not raise the deficit over the next year or two because most of the envisioned spending cuts and tax increases are designed to come later rather than now, when they could jeopardize the fragile recovery. Deficits are calculated for individual years. The accumulation of years of deficit spending has produced a national debt headed toward $15 trillion. Perhaps Obama meant to say that, in the long run, his hoped-for programs would not further increase the national debt, not annual deficits. --- OBAMA: "The American Jobs Act answers the urgent need to create jobs right away." THE FACTS: Not all of the president's major proposals are likely to yield quick job growth if adopted. One is to set up a national infrastructure bank to raise private capital for roads, rail, bridges, airports and waterways. Even supporters of such a bank doubt it could have much impact on jobs in the next two years because it takes time to set up. The idea is likely to run into opposition from some Republicans who say such a bank would give the federal government too much power. They'd rather divide money among existing state infrastructure banks. --- Associated Press writer Joan Lowy contributed to this report. Z: There's so much left out of this critique about Obama's plans, but I (And Elmer's Brother...thanks!) thought it was important enough to discuss.  I know my readers can find a lot more wrong even with just the "OBAMA REMARKS" above.........some are so obviously deficient in reasons for why they're bad, that it pains me that I have too much work today to get into depth.  Maybe you can help.  (For instance, does anybody know how much it would help our deficit if every rich person gave all they had? Answer: nearly nothing) If Buffet wants to be used as someone who SHOULD pay more, WHY DOESN'T HE? Is there a law about not sending the IRS MORE?  And, when Barack says we should tax harder those 'more FORTUNATE', does he mean 'fortunate' or 'harder working'?   MANY of those "Fortunate" didn't sit around letting someone else study or earn their money...they EARNED this good fortune.   Saying "FORTUNATE" makes it sound like they're all trust fund babies and who wouldn't rather steal from them than someone who worked hard?   And, please, LET them work on plugging up loopholes:  I'm okay with that. What I'm not okay with is Jeffrey Immelt sending so many jobs to China and planning to send more.  Are you?   (you remember, ol' Jeff, the guy sitting next to Mrs. Obama during her husband's JOBS SPEECH!?  Oh, the IRONY) Thanks!  z

"C'mon, Baby..............vote me out"

Boy, did Bloviating Zeppelin get it right:

The only thing lacking on the Tshirt is "and it's all Bush's fault" :-) That looks to be all Obama has in his coming year's bid for reelection. From the polls, that's not setting him in too good stead.
Now, please read Angel's story below..........I think you'll like it.

z

A Puppet we can believe in?

I've rarely seen this much in one article which so well encapsulates all that we bloggers have TRIED to get Americans to wake up to, so I had to post it here:  Please, if you have the guts, send it to people still believing in the "dummy"(and I use this term because of the terminology in the article) and still not at least wondering who his "ventriloquist" is.  Thanks.

This is an article which has different attributions, so I hesitate to credit one or the other, but it looks like someone named Alan Caruba from THIS BLOG did write it.  Whoever wrote it deserves credit:

"I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he's led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group (George Soros anybody?) took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.

In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? "Dreams of My Father" was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The "Audacity of Hope" followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a "communist with a small 'c'" was the real author.

 

His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial.. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley's formidable political machine at his disposal.

He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital.. How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?

He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed "cool" in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance.

And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole; and then John McCain did something crazy. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska . It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984's Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat.

The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary.

Now, nearly a full 2 years into his first term, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters.

Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to "wish away" some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe, having gained a foothold in Spain ..

The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign "world tour" were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions.

Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party's hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party. It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues.

Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an "obstreperous" Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against "jumping to conclusions" about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted "Allahu Akbar." The absurdity of that was lost on no one. He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber "an isolated extremist" only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot.

He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America . He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame.

 

The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth.

Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual's life.

When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man has spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden.

We laugh at the ventriloquist's dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America ?

Z:  And, believe me, it gives me NO pleasure to feature an article which uses the term 'dummy' for a president of these United States.     But, so many questions..

z

OBAMA: absolutely NOTHING HAPPENED......

This is long but EXCELLENT;
What Happened to Obama? 
Absolutely Nothing.
He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president.

By NORMAN PODHORETZ   
WSJ August 13, 2011

It's open season on President Obama. Which is to say that the usual suspects on the right (among whom I include myself) are increasingly being joined in attacking him by erstwhile worshipers on the left. Even before the S&P downgrade, there were reports of Democrats lamenting that Hillary Clinton had lost to him in 2008. Some were comparing him not, as most of them originally had, to Lincoln and Roosevelt but to the hapless Jimmy Carter. There was even talk of finding a candidate to stage a primary run against him. But since the downgrade, more and more liberal pundits have been deserting what they clearly fear is a sinking ship.

Here, for example, from the Washington Post, is Richard Cohen: "He is the very personification of cognitive dissonance—the gap between what we (especially liberals) expected of the first serious African American presidential candidate and the man he in fact is." More amazingly yet Mr. Cohen goes on to say of Mr. Obama, who not long ago was almost universally hailed as the greatest orator since Pericles, that he lacks even "the rhetorical qualities of the old-time black politicians." And to compound the amazement, Mr. Cohen tells us that he cannot even "recall a soaring passage from a speech."

Overseas it is the same refrain. Everywhere in the world, we read in Germany's Der Spiegel, not only are the hopes ignited by Mr. Obama being dashed, but his "weakness is a problem for the entire global economy."
In short, the spell that Mr. Obama once cast—a spell so powerful that instead of ridiculing him when he boasted that he would cause "the oceans to stop rising and the planet to heal," all of liberaldom fell into a delirious swoon—has now been broken by its traumatic realization that he is neither the "god" Newsweek in all seriousness declared him to be nor even a messianic deliverer.

Hence the question on every lip is—as the title of a much quoted article in the New York Times by Drew Westen of Emory University puts it— "What Happened to Obama?" Attacking from the left, Mr. Westin charges that President Obama has been conciliatory when he should have been aggressively pounding away at all the evildoers on the right.
Of course, unlike Mr. Westen, we villainous conservatives do not see Mr. Obama as conciliatory or as "a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election." On the contrary, we see him as a president who knows all too well what he believes. Furthermore, what Mr. Westen regards as an opportunistic appeal to the center we interpret as a tactic calculated to obfuscate his unshakable strategic objective, which is to turn this country into a European-style social democracy while diminishing the leading role it has played in the world since the end of World War II. The Democrats have persistently denied that these are Mr. Obama's goals, but they have only been able to do so by ignoring or dismissing what Mr. Obama himself, in a rare moment of candor, promised at the tail end of his run for the presidency: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."

This statement, coming on top of his association with radicals like Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Rashid Khalidi, definitively revealed to all who were not wilfully blinding themselves that Mr. Obama was a genuine product of the political culture that had its birth among a marginal group of leftists in the early 1960s and that by the end of the decade had spread metastatically to the universities, the mainstream media, the mainline churches, and the entertainment industry. Like their communist ancestors of the 1930s, the leftist radicals of the '60s were convinced that the United States was so rotten that only a revolution could save it.
But whereas the communists had in their delusional vision of the Soviet Union a model of the kind of society that would replace the one they were bent on destroying, the new leftists only knew what they were against: America, or Amerika as they spelled it to suggest its kinship to Nazi Germany. Thanks, however, to the unmasking of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian nightmare, they did not know what they were for. Yet once they had pulled off the incredible feat of taking over the Democratic Party behind the presidential candidacy of George McGovern in 1972, they dropped the vain hope of a revolution, and in the social-democratic system most fully developed in Sweden they found an alternative to American capitalism that had a realistic possibility of being achieved through gradual political reform.
Despite Mr. McGovern's defeat by Richard Nixon in a landslide, the leftists remained a powerful force within the Democratic Party, but for the next three decades the electoral exigencies within which they had chosen to operate prevented them from getting their own man nominated. Thus, not one of the six Democratic presidential candidates who followed Mr. McGovern came out of the party's left wing, and when Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton (the only two of the six who won) tried each in his own way to govern in its spirit, their policies were rejected by the American immune system. It was only with the advent of Barack Obama that the leftists at long last succeeded in nominating one of their own.

To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass. And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?

And so it came about that a faithful scion of the political culture of the '60s left is now sitting in the White House and doing everything in his power to effect the fundamental transformation of America to which that culture was dedicated and to which he has pledged his own personal allegiance.
I disagree with those of my fellow conservatives who maintain that Mr. Obama is indifferent to "the best interests of the United States" (Thomas Sowell) and is "purposely" out to harm America (Rush Limbaugh). In my opinion, he imagines that he is helping America to repent of its many sins and to become a different and better country. 

But I emphatically agree with Messrs. Limbaugh and Sowell about this president's attitude toward America as it exists and as the Founding Fathers intended it. That is why my own answer to the question, "What Happened to Obama?" is that nothing happened to him. He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president, and it is this rather than inexperience or incompetence or weakness or stupidity that accounts for the richly deserved failure both at home and abroad of the policies stemming from that reprehensible cast of mind.

Do you agree? Z
Mr. Podhoretz was the editor of Commentary from 1960 to 1995. His most recent book is "Why Are Jews Liberals?" (Doubleday, 2009).

Obama's WAR ON FOOD

Here's a president who doesn't like the term WAR ON TERROR, something to really worry about, but he'll back a WAR ON FOOD, as headline in the following underlined link suggests; a war against US.   THIS is a rather perfect example of the sneaky freedom-snatching ways of the Left.  WHAT CHILDREN EAT should not be a GOVERNMENT DECISION.   PARENTS make those decisions.  And LEAVE MY GIRL SCOUT COOKIES ALONE!

Remember when McDonald's had to acquiesce to giving APPLES in Happy Meals?  The threat was "no apples, no toys can be given away" if they didn't.  Have you any idea how many perfectly good apples will be thrown in the trash when they start this practice?  Have you ever heard a kid say "Mommy!  I just have to have an APPLE!" as they drive into McDonald's, or EVER, for that matter?

But, you see, the sneaky part is that the Left can say "Really....?   You don't WANT your children to be HEALTHY?  WHY NOT?"  ("Really, you don't want abortion on demand? You don't care about a woman's 'right to her own body'?"   "Really?  You don't want 'undocumented workers' coming into America, are you RACIST?"   "Really?  You don't believe gays should marry, are you a HOMOPHOBE?"     REALLY?   REALLY?)


EDUCATE the parents and the children.  EDUCATE them, give them choices.  Put an apple in their lunch they take to school but let them have a small burger and fries once in a while!  I stood up here at geeeZ for Michelle Obama when we all heard she'd had a cheeseburger and fries in a place that has particularly good ones.  I got creamed by my rightwing friends who thought she was hypocritical, but her eating a hamburger wouldn't have been like if Nancy Reagan had done CRACK when she pushed  "Just say no" to drugs!    It's a BURGER!  This is a normal woman of normal weight and normal health just wanting a delicious cheeseburger ONCE IN A WHILE...what's the big problem?  I eat very healthily but, I have to say, once in a while my car just drives itself to KFC or Carl's Jr or I find myself ordering macaroni and cheese in a favorite spot for it.   It's not ME, it's the car, it's my cravings :-)  (that's my story and I'm stickin' to it!)  I know better; but I'm HUMAN.

STOP taking away our freedoms, please.  Obesity's apparently on the rise, young children are getting diabetes, nobody wants that, but EDUCATE THE PARENTS......most parents know what's good for their children, anyway.  If your kid's fat, have them eat better, take him for a walk, but let US have the option of treating normal children to something delicious and supposedly so bad for them just once in a while, OKAY?   And please don't start counting how many times I slip up....that'll be the next thing; wait for it.


z