Archive for March, 2011

Brett Noel

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Herman Cain

After a jam packed week of nearly 20 speaking and listening events in Texas, Iowa and New Hampshire, I hear a consistent message from people. They are so concerned about the lack of leadership in the White House and Congress that they are now scared for our future.

People are certainly justified in their thinking when you consider a stalled economy despite claims by the administration and the Obama Broadcasting Networks that we are in a recovery. They should go and ask the 15 million people who can’t find jobs because only a few are being created in this economy.

People’s fears are justified when there is no apparent strategy for responding to the crises in Libya and other Middle Eastern countries. Members of the administration have sent mixed signals about what the United States should be doing other than condemning the violence. People do not feel we should try to be the police force for the world, but where is the strategy anticipating these social eruptions?

The thirst for liberty and freedom is exploding in the Middle East! If our intelligence agencies and our State Department did not anticipate these events, then we should be fearful. Good leaders anticipate, respond, and then make corrections.

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David Karki

Captain Rameus: Steer right until this reads three one five.

Capt. Bert Mancuso: [to Ryan] No, that’s wrong! Don’t turn that goddamn wheel!

Captain Rameus: [Ryan looks back] Three…One…Five.

As those who’ve seen The Hunt For Red October know, despite the angry protestation of the American captain, the move turns out to be the tactically correct one. The submarine turns into the torpedo and closes the distance, so it impacts before it’s armed and can explode.

Three. One. Five.

I find much similarity between Sean Connery’s character and Wisconsin’s Captain Rameus, Governor Scott Walker. He also chose a tactical strategy that would seem to be – and is – highly risky. He and his Republican compatriots also face a legion of objectors far worse than Captain Mancuso.  Yet he, like Rameus, is calm and firm in the knowledge that the course he’s chosen is the correct and winning one. All that remains is to stay the course until the ignorant objection is proven false.

That proof is something the left can’t allow to be demonstrated, of course. Once Wisconsin gets its budget under control and the sky doesn’t fall and the world doesn’t end, then the string of state “dominoes” can fall. Indiana, Ohio, Michigan…they’re all lined up, all in the same severe budget crunch due to public union parasites having sucked the their private sector taxpaying hosts dry, ready to do likewise. Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Maistros

Talking point of the day:

National Public Radio Senior Vice President Ron Schiller, in the damning surreptitious video that got him fired:  “The challenge right now is that if we lost it (federal funding) altogether, we’d have a lot of stations go dark.”

NPR: a little behind the times.

NPR media reporter David Folkenflik on the air Wednesday. “The fear is that up to 100 stations could go dark without it.”

Dave Edwards, NPR chairman, to the Associated Press: “It is absolutely true that without federal funding, a lot of our public radio and public TV stations in the system could go dark, and that will happen in some of the smallest communities we serve.”

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D/OR), founder and chairman of the House Public Broadcasting Caucus, quoted (directly and indirectly) in today’s Wall Street Journal: “without federal funding, some stations in smaller communities, where donations are harder to attract, ‘could go dark.’”

Well, at least they have their lines down.

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Brett Noel

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Dan Calabrese

Is there anything funnier than Wisconsin Senate Democrats, who fled their state in the ultimate procedural trick, screaming “This is not democracy!” because Republicans found a better procedural trick?

Oh yes. Wisconsin did it. After last night’s Senate vote, Gov. Scott Walker will soon sign the bill that does not “ban public sector unions” as a Reuters headline hysterically claimed, but takes away collective bargaining rights for public employee unions on the matter of benefits only.

Just the start.

That’s because, as Walker explains today in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, the unions absolutely refused reasonable modifications to their benefit packages. All Walker wants them to do is contribute 5.8 percent to their pensions, and 12.6 percent to their health insurance premiums. The unions’ counteroffer? Status quo all the way, baby. Zero and zero.

The reform not only helps the state balance its budget, it also helps local governments and school districts all across the state balance theirs – and it eliminates stupid union rules that require last hired, first fired in the event of layoffs, allowing schools to make personnel decisions for teachers on the basis of merit rather than seniority.

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Bob Maistros

So once again they’re playing chicken in DC over a government shutdown.

Like a shutdown for a few days, while partisan bickering goes on and the Democrats try to play the media card, portraying Republicans as heartless scum who want to kick Grandma down the stairs, starve children, leave veterans destitute, close parks and halt “vital” services.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Listen here.  They don’t know from shutdowns.

Go ahead. Make my day.

I’ll tell you about shutdowns.  The empty storefronts here even in our relatively affluent Ashburn, Virginia community as restaurants, gyms and retail establishments close their doors for good.  The notices many of my friends are getting that their jobs won’t exist anymore.

Important clients who suddenly disappear – no more emails, no more calls, no more answers to inquiries, no explanations, and no more projects.  Factory gates chained shut as operations and jobs are moved to another part of the country or world.  Planned investments that are simply canceled for lack of funds and market prospects.

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Dan Calabrese

Can anyone make a substantive defense of current federal spending levels? When we’re looking at spending $3.73 trillion and only taking in around $2 trillion, any defense of this is a non-starter, right?

I like honest liberals, because they tell you what they really believe and why, and in a piece yesterday in The New Republic, Jonathan Cohn actually takes a shot at defending the profligate spending that has pushed America to the brink of fiscal insolvency:

Is this how you earn money?

The insanity of this political moment is difficult to fathom. Even if the latest employment figures underestimate job creation, as many experts expect, we’re still in the middle of a slow, tentative economic recovery. At this pace, it will be two or three years, at best, before employment returns to what it was before the recession. Meanwhile, low tax revenues are forcing state and local governments to cut spending, throwing public workers out of work (and onto the unemployment line) while reducing all kinds of public services. Oh, and gas prices are rising. That could undermine consumer confidence, such that it is.

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Missing.

The cousin of conservative columnist Michelle Malkin has been missing since Saturday, most likely in the Seattle area. Here are some details Malkin offers on her blog this morning:

She is a University of Washington undergrad and she has been missing since Saturday afternoon, when she left the Rainier Beach neighborhood headed to the UW Seattle campus. Her parents have been trying to reach her all weekend; she apparently never made it to campus and has not been heard from by phone/Internet. They’ve filed a missing persons report with the Seattle Police Department. Hospitals have been alerted, according to family members, and bus and train routes have been checked. No sign.

Any readers in that part of the country, if you can help in any way, please do. Alert authorities if you even think you might know anything.

More details:

Name: Marizela Perez

Date Missing: March 5, 2011, 12:00-12:30 P.M.

Last Seen: Rainier Beach area, heading to UW Seattle campus to meet friends for lunch or study in the UW libraries

Possible Routes: Sound Link Light Rail stations, downtown/Chinatown areas, UW Seattle campus, U-district

Description – Asian female, 5’5” tall, 110 lbs, skinny build, asymmetrical bob with short bangs and brown/red highlights hairstyle, tattoo on left inner arm with the words ‘lahat ay magiging maayos’, last seen wearing denim jeans, light brown suede laced boots, possibly wearing green eye contacts, possibly carrying a plaid backpack with a Macbook Pro laptop, taking medication for depression.

Brett Noel

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