Month: September 2012

Obama Releases Al Qaeda Killer of U.S. Soldier

Omar Khadr was recently released from Gitmo.  What did he do again?

Khadr killed Sergeant First Class (SFC) Christopher Speer. Khadr’s advocates said this wasn’t true because Khadr was incapacitated during al Qaeda’s firefight with American troops. But they were wrong. Khadr ultimately admitted that he killed SFC Speer.

While Khadr killed one American medic, his life was saved by others. Khadr would not be alive today if U.S. medics had not saved him from extensive wounds.  …

A videotape recovered in Afghanistan showed Khadr assembling improvised explosive devices (IEDs) for al Qaeda.

via The Weekly Standard.

What can ya say?  I mean really!

This piece of garbage is going to go right back to killing U.S. troops and civilians.  Perhaps this is Obama’s plan to screw things up for the next guy.  Release all the lunatic haters back into the wild; after all, he got a Nobel Peace Prize and then went on to kill dozens and dozens people  — including American citizens — with drones.

There is something very very wrong with a situation whereby the president is alone deciding who gets set free and who gets targeted for death.

But putting the policy aside… why the hell did we release this killer?

MSM is a Fundamental Threat to Democracy

In case you don’t know, Pat Caddell was part of team Jimmy Carter.  He is no right-winger or tin-hat wearer.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBR4g6cBYeA?rel=0]

It’s safe to say if you were not aware that U.S. embassies all over the Middle East and Northern Africa we under attack then the MSM is pretty much carrying water for Obama.

If you have never before heard about David Plouffe taking $100k from some shadowy Middle East group the MSM has failed in it’s mission.

Damning stuff.

Problems in Pennsylvania Schools

Well over 100 educators will eventually face state disciplinary charges for cheating that could lead to the revocation of their professional certificates, Tomalis said. But that could take years, and the results of state disciplinary board hearings in Harrisburg would be disclosed only if educators were disciplined.

In Philadelphia, 53 district-run schools and three charter schools are still under investigation for allegations of cheating in past years.

via Philly.com.

Charter Schools do NOT perform any better than Government Schools.

Failing test scores.  Cheating teachers.  And general poor performance all around.

Pathetic.

Jimmy John’s Leaving Illinois, Florida Bound

Jimmy John Liautaud is moving part of the sandwich chain that bears his name to Florida next year, making good on a threat issued in 2011 after Illinois hiked its corporate tax rate.

The founder of Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches said during a Sept. 18 panel discussion in Chicago that he will relocate the company’s licensing division to Florida, where he plans to move in early 2013. Mr. Liautaud said in January 2011 that he applied for residency in Florida out of anger when Gov. Pat Quinn raised the corporate tax rate to 5 percent from 3 percent.

via Crain’s Chicago Business.

Ya see!!  This is what happens when you raise taxes.  It’s called the Laffer Curve and it’s a real phenomenon.  Illinois is in the down portion of the curve where when you raise taxes you get less income.  Can someone explain that to Gov. Quinn, Michael Madigan, John Cullerton, Rahm, and the rest of The Machine?

Raising taxes — especially on “the rich” — only shifts the actual tax burden further down into the middle class.

What we need is a wholesale rewrite of the tax code.  But that’s a much, much longer post.

China Crushes Man by Steamroller

A villager in northern China attempting to resist a forced government relocation by remaining on his land was brutally crushed to death by a road flattening truck on the orders of a Chinese government official.  …

The victim, He Zhi Hua, refused to accept a paltry payment from the government which has forcefully evicted Changsha Village locals in order to re-appropriate their land for commercial use.When Hua began a protest by lying down on the spot through which construction vehicles had to pass, the local Vice Mayor ordered workers for the state-owned company to murder Hua by driving over his body with a huge road-flattening truck.

via Infowars (Warning — Graphic Photos!)

Why is this not front page of the NYT?  I’ll tell you why; because it doesn’t fit with their agenda.  It’s about not doing anything to embarrass not only China but Obama.

Obama has bent over backwards for China.  Even when they stopped buying bonds and so the Fed had to take over, Obama refused to hold China accountable for any of it’s bad behavior.  (BTW, if you need a list of China’s bad behavior then you’re too dumb to vote.)

It’s time we held China accountable for it’s actions.  Everything from human rights violations to unfair trading policies.  They wrongfully hold their money constant to the dollar instead of letting it float (like all other industrialized nations) making their goods cheaper the marketplace.  This costs Americans jobs.  It’s not only unfair; it’s bad for America and Americans.

How Carter Beat Reagan

Remember when Jimmy Carter beat Ronald Reagan in 1980?  …

In a series of nine stories in 1980 on “Crucial States” — battleground states as they are known today — the New York Times repeatedly told readers then-President Carter was in a close and decidedly winnable race with the former California governor. And used polling data from the New York Times/CBS polls to back up its stories.Four years later, it was the Washington Post that played the polling game — and when called out by Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins a famous Post executive called his paper’s polling an “in-kind contribution to the Mondale campaign.” Mondale, of course, being then-President Reagan’s 1984 opponent and Carter’s vice president.

All of which will doubtless serve as a reminder of just how blatantly polling data is manipulated by liberal media — used essentially as a political weapon to support the liberal of the moment, whether Jimmy Carter in 1980, Walter Mondale in 1984 — or Barack Obama in 2012.

via The American Spectator.

Simply Amazing!  Go read the entire story.

The MSM lacks the ability to be embarrassed at themselves.

U.N. Wants New Global Taxes

A 1 percent tax on billionaires around the world. A tax on all currency trading in the U.S. dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen and the British pound sterling. Another “tiny” tax on all financial transactions, including stock and bond trading, and trading in financial derivatives. New taxes on carbon emissions and on airline tickets. A royalty on all undersea mineral resources extracted more than 100 miles offshore of any nation’s territory.

The United Nations is at it again: finding new and “innovative” ways to create global taxes that would transfer hundreds of billions, and even trillions, of dollars from the rich nations of the world — especially the U.S. — to poorer ones, in line with U.N.-directed economic, social and environmental development.

via Fox News.

The U.N. is proving itself to be a net negative.  I don’t agree much with the U.N. or Ted Turner but the latter made a great point once about how the U.N. gave Nikita Khrushchev the forum to bang his shoe and tell the world how the Soviet Union felt.  It doesn’t really matter whether Khrushchev actually banged his shoe or not.  The fact that he was able to stand up and speak his peace was perhaps enough to avoid another world war.

The U.N. is good at that; a place to permit leaders to go and speak their peace.

It sucks at absolutely everything else.

Huge Increase in Warrantless Electronic Surveillance

Pen register and trap and trace devices now generally refer to the surveillance of information about—rather than the contents of—communications. Pen registers capture outgoing data, while trap and trace devices capture incoming data. This still includes the phone numbers of incoming and outgoing telephone calls and the time, date, and length of those calls. But the government now also uses this authority to intercept the “to” and “from” addresses of email messages, records about instant message conversations, non-content data associated with social networking identities, and at least some information about the websites that you visit (it isn’t entirely clear where the government draws the line between the content of a communication and information about a communication when it comes to the addresses of websites).

via ACLU.

For the record, I agree with the ACLU exactly one time.  This is it.

Our government has taken to spying on its own citizens, that’s us, on an unprecedented level.  As more and more communications go electronic it’s easier and easier to intercept.  That it is done without a warrant is truly frightening.  If these communications are so important then the FBI should present evidence to a judge and get a warrant.

Mind you, this is the same FBI that cannot find hundreds of guns from Fast and Furious.  This is the same presidential administration that refuses to turn over records regarding those guns or the Fast and Furious catastrophe.  The same administration that promised to the “the most open and transparent in history” and has proven to be just as closed and private as Dick Cheney and the Bush years.

When it comes to spying on you but keeping gov. secrets Obama = Bush.

CPS Debt Downgraded

A leading bond-rating agency has downgraded the Chicago Board of Education’s debt in the wake of the settlement of the Chicago Teacher’s Union’s recent strike.

Moody’s Investor Service had already downgraded the Chicago Public Schools’ bond rating outlook to “negative” from stable in July, and cited Thursday the rating agency’s “view that the district will be hard-pressed to make the budget adjustments necessary to close an estimated $1 billion budget gap for fiscal 2014.”

The schools’ downgrade to an A2 rating “reflects a weakened financial profile” born of depletion of reserves, a coming jump in pension payments after three years in which state law was changed to reduce the payments temporarily, slow payment of state money–and the recent strike, Moody’s said in a release.”If progress is not made toward improving the financial condition and liquidity of district operating funds, or if challenges arise in making the required pension contributions, the district’s general obligation credit quality will be impaired,” according to the release.

Strikes by other unions, more delays in state funding or “unmanageable” increases in pension costs could result in further ratings downgrades, Moody’s warned.

A spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools wasn’t immediately available to comment on the downgrade.

via Chicago Tribune.

CPS is falling apart.  The biggest losers here are the poor families generally on the South and West sides that have no other options for their children.  It’s the false choice of failing CPS school A or failing CPS school B.

Rahm caved.  He owns this.  Epic fail.