Thursday, June 7, 2012

POLITICAL DIGEST 06/08/2012 CONSERVATIVE

I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article. Help your friends and relatives stay informed by passing the digest on. In some cases I post things sent to me by readers I might not have posted on my own, to get ideas circulating.

My Book: Advice for my Granddaughter: For When I'm Gone
Give that graduating girl in your life a short guide to making her life happy, safe and successful, and help a good cause at the same time. All royalties go to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation.

D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown resigns after he is charged with bank fraud
Excerpt: D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown resigned from his seat Wednesday night, hours after he was charged with bank fraud, plunging the city government into a leadership crisis. … The charges against Brown came in a “criminal information,” a document that can be filed only with the defendant’s consent and which signals that a plea deal has been reached.

Can Mitt Romney match Wisconsin’s Scott Walker? By Dan Balz
Excerpt: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker provided a template for Republicans looking ahead to the presidential race with his victory in Tuesday’s recall election: big money, powerful organization and enormous enthusiasm among his base. Can Mitt Romney match that in November?

Obama frets after ‘terrifying’ recall vote
Excerpt: President Obama will need to double down on his efforts to keep Wisconsin safely in his column after Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) resounding victory in Tuesday’s recall election. Every Democratic presidential candidate since Walter Mondale in 1984 has won Wisconsin, but the Obama campaign “can’t view Wisconsin as being in the bank for them,” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “They’re definitely going to have to put more effort here than they were initially planning.” (I was a Bush volunteer in Wisconsin in 2004. Actually, an anti-Kerry volunteer, knowing him from Massachusetts,. We gave them a run. It’s do-able. ~Bob.)

Wisconsin recall: Winners and losers. By Chris Cillizza
Excerpt: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) decisive victory against Democrats seeking to recall him on Tuesday amounts to a major moment in national politics due to the massive amounts of national money and attention the race garnered.

Democrats’ delusions: Why Wisconsin loss hit so hard. By John Podhoretz
Excerpt: And yet liberals still managed to look, talk and sound utterly gobsmacked on Tuesday night. And to act like — there is no other word for it — fools. Only 15 minutes before his own network called the race for Walker, MSNBC host Ed Schultz triumphantly tweeted: “All you right wingers . . . a little nervous aren’t you boys? . . . your boy can’t close.”

Scott Walker's big victory bodes well for Republican prospects in November. By Karl Rove
Excerpt: We'll be talking about Tuesday's Wisconsin recall election for a long time to come. The results were a historic setback for organized labor, which failed to oust Gov. Scott Walker in a citadel of modern progressivism. And how it must have stung that 38% of union households voted for Mr. Walker, up a point from 2010 when he was first elected.

The Recall Heard Around the World. By Ann Coulter
Excerpt: President Obama wanted to go to Wisconsin, but he just didn't have time. He's been doing so many campaign fundraisers lately he barely has time to play golf. The left's "outspent" argument is ridiculous. Unions take money by force from members, hire hundreds of political operatives and give them salaries to work on campaigns, then call them "volunteers" so their work isn't reported as a campaign contribution.

Mole helps Rep. Issa whack Justice Dept.
Excerpt: Issa has long been exasperated with Holder, claiming that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been withholding information on a controversial gun-running operation. But through an anonymous source, Issa has obtained information about the initiative that is under a federal court-ordered seal. Giving such information out is a federal crime, raising the question of whether the Justice Department will seek to prosecute what Republicans are calling a whistleblower. (Well, of course they have to prosecute. You can’t have Congress getting the truth about the Obama administration. Who knows where that would lead? ~Bob.)

Cruel June for Obama, Dems – and could get worse
Excerpt: Just one week old, June already is proving a cruel month for President Barack Obama and the Democrats - and it could get a lot worse. The political blows from Tuesday's bitter loss in Wisconsin's gubernatorial recall and from last week's abysmal unemployment numbers, bad as they were, could multiply before the month is out.

When it comes to Madigan, there's no debate: It's time to take out the trash: The Boss' political protection racket stinks. By John Kass
Excerpt: Yet just over the border, here in Illinois, political home of President Barack Obama, there is no political debate. Not really. We have plenty of government. There's so much government in Illinois that it sucks up all the oxygen. But there's just enough left over so that taxpayers can smell the stink of political refuse as they get another slap in the mouth. (And so it goes here in Blagobamaville. Business as usual, and we chumblones just have to pay for it. ~Bob.)

Carmona distances himself from President Obama
Excerpt: Shortly before the victory by Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, democrat claims that Arizona is “in play” for President Obama and his fellow Democrats in 2012, were becoming less credible. Now, Arizona democrats, including Richard Carmona, are quickly distancing themselves from the President. Carmona, who was personally recruited by President Obama last year to run for Senate, in a surprising television interview with KTVK 3 in Phoenix, Carmona is now attempting to distance himself from the president, claiming that he has “no connections to President Obama.”

Terror Victim's Family "Resolved to Fight Injustice"
Excerpt: Just before the explosion, Yekutiel Wultz saw the man flash "an evil smile." Wultz, known as "Tuly," was eating with his son Daniel outside a food stand at Tel Aviv's Central bus station in April, 2006. The smiling man, Sami Salim Khamad, was sent by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and blew himself up an instant later.

Excerpt: As I’ve noted here (apropos of Wisconsin) and elsewhere, the best way to understand the modern Democrats is as the unholy love children of 1930s big-city political/gangster machines and 1960s Alinskyite Communists — now out and proud. But Obama, their chosen candidate, only had first-hand experience with the Alinsky crew; he’s too young to remember Tammany Hall and the heyday of the Daley Machine in Chicago. Oh, he’s got the brass-knuckles part down, all right (that’s part of Alinskyism) but he’s twice now violated the first rule of gangsterism: respect your elders.

What You May Have Missed As Scott Walker Rolled Over The WI Recall Movement. By Repair Man Jack
Excerpt: I make few denials about being partisan. I enjoy it at times like last night. In fact, I haven’t enjoyed watching a bunch of people from Wisconsin administer a condign beatdown on a deserving opponent this much since Brett Favre was playing in The Super Bowl. All gloating aside, a lot went into last night that goes far beyond just Wisconsin State-Level politics and provides possible direction as America moves forward. (Good post. Includes the funny video of Hitler learning about Scott Walkers victory, linked also below. ~Bob.)

Walker Victory Bash Short On Blacks. By Lloyd Marcus
Excerpt: While I am elated and very grateful for our victory which has huge national ramifications, something still troubles me. How long will a majority of my fellow black Americans keep hangin' with the brain dead partisan idiots?

Gulf Oil Spill
Worth watching and sharing. ~Bob

First Lady Requires Photo ID for Her Book Signings; Voter ID Law-hating Media Fail to Note Obama Hypocrisy. By John Bates
Excerpt: The Obama administration has done its best to oppose states from instituting new, stricter voter ID laws, complaining that many minority voters lack photo identification. But those same folks it wants voting in November are apparently not welcome anywhere near the First Lady's book signings. Something tells me that the same media outlets comparing voter ID laws to the Jim Crow Laws, however, won't see any hint of hypocrisy here, if they even report the story at all. (Apparently it’s fine to have illegals vote for Obama, just not to let them near his wife. ~Bob.)

Dysfunctional Washington
Excerpt: Within one year of being elected, Governor Scott Walker (R) reformed the state's public sector pension system, eliminated a $3.6 billion budget deficit without raising taxes, saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, and helped create the conditions that have allowed Wisconsin's economy to grow again. Meanwhile, thanks to the dysfunction in Washington, America continues to suffer high unemployment, out-of-control spending, and faces a historic tax hike that could send the country over a fiscal cliff.

Save the Squirrels--Countdown to disaster
Worth passing on. ~Bob.

Recall jokes from Twitter
Jim Treacher: "Why did the lefty cry himself to sleep? He can't recall."

Iowahawk: "Wisconsin unions don't understand the aftermath. In fact, they don't understand any kind of math."

Big Obama Spending Fails To Move The Needle
Excerpt: $25 million in ads and what does President Barack Obama campaign have to show for it? Stagnant or sagging poll numbers, an opponent who’s finally showing fight, and dissension in the ranks. In May, the Obama campaign devoted $25 million to campaign ads, most of it to a slew of positive spots highlighting his record on issues from health care to the auto-bailout.

Worth Reading: Team of Mascots
Excerpt: Four years ago, Barack Obama said he wanted a Lincoln-esque “team of rivals” in his Cabinet. Thanks to his own temperament, the modern White House, and the 24-hour news cycle, what the president has created is something that doesn’t look Lincoln-esque at all. … So it hardly matters that Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, is widely seen as quietly capable; she was not front and center in Obama’s public push for health-care reform, a topic that another former senior administration aide now calls the Lord Voldemort of policy questions, the issue that must not be named.

Obama's Cabinet members mix policy, politics
Excerpt: Democrats have accused President Barack Obama of locking his Cabinet in a cabinet — but now he’s turning them loose for fundraisers and taxpayer-funded trips that meld policy and politics, and sometimes fall into the gray area between the two. A half-dozen Cabinet members have made more than 85 trips this year to electoral battlegrounds such as Colorado, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to a POLITICO review of public speeches and news clippings.

Marine Squadron Again Abandons 'Crusaders' Moniker
Excerpt: Lt. Gen. Terry Robling, deputy commandant for aviation, issued an order April 30 that Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 122 discontinue use of the Crusaders moniker and a logo that featured a red cross on a white shield. The squadron will retain its identity as the "Werewolves," said Lt. Col. Joseph Plenzler, a Corps spokesman. A spokeswoman for MCAS Beaufort said the nickname was not created with religion in mind but instead was a reference to the F8U-1 Crusader aircraft the squadron began flying in 1957. Given how the nickname is now perceived, Robling thought it best to discontinue its use, according to a spokesman for the general at Headquarters Marine Corps in Virginia. (The all new and improved politically correct Marine Corps. Don't want to do anything that might "offend" our enemy, as if dropping a JDAM on their heads isn't offensive. Pure cowardice on the part of Marine Corps leadership. Watch out VMFA-232. You're next on the list. Can't have a bunch of "Red Devils" insulting those who would like to see this country destroyed. I'm gonna go puke now. –MasterGuns. How about renaming them “The Hammers,” after my distant ancestor, Charles Martel, The Hammer, who turned back the first Muslim invasion of Europe at the Battle of Tours in France in 732, long before the crusades were organized to fight back against Jihadist conquest. ~Bob.)

Congressional staffers, public shortchanged by high turnover, low pay
Excerpt: The most powerful nation on Earth is run largely by 24-year-olds.
High turnover and lack of experience in congressional offices are leaving staffs increasingly without policy and institutional knowledge, a Washington Times analysis of a decade of House and Senate personnel records shows — leaving a vacuum that usually is filled by lobbyists. Most Senate staffers have worked in the Capitol for less than three years.

Fast and Furious and Green Jobs
A great video clip from Fox, in which it comes out that the DOJ has been stonewalling on the Gunrunner scandal, and also that the way the Labor Dept classifies new "green jobs" is amazing and nothing short of ludicrous. (E.g., if you're transporting or cleaning portapotties, presto!... you're in a "green job".) Political judgments being made to give the Administration phony statistics to impress the public. Yep, that's the "Chicago Way". –Del. The Chicago Gangbangers shot 40, killing 10 over Memorial Day weekend, They were mostly minorities, but since they were mostly killed by minorities, there was no outcry like over Trayvon. But if a Gangbanger kills an innocent black person, he lowers that person’s carbon footprint a great deal. Doesn’t that make him in a “green job”? ~Bob.

Bain Capital and Mitt in Massachusetts are not what's on voters' minds in 2012.
Excerpt: Five months from election day, the Axelrod-Plouffe-Obama machine already has thrown most of its kitchen sink at Mitt Romney. First came the vampires of Bain Capital and now this week's memo-dump of multiple failures in Massachusetts under Gov. Romney. It's not sticking.

Worth Reading: The Real 'War on Women.' By Thomas Sowell
Excerpt: Among the people who are disappointed with President Obama, none has more reason to be disappointed than those who thought he was going to be "a uniter, rather than a divider" and that he would "bring us all together." It was a noble hope, but one with no factual foundation. Barack Obama had been a divider all his adult life, especially as a community organizer, and he had repeatedly sought out and allied himself with other dividers, the most blatant of whom was the man whose church he attended for 20 years, Jeremiah Wright.

Worth Reading: From Hope and Change to Fear and Smear. By Victor Davis Hanson
Excerpt: Barack Obama lately has been accusing presumptive rival Mitt Romney of not waging his campaign in the nice (but losing) manner of John McCain in 2008. But a more marked difference can be seen in Obama himself, whose style and record bear no resemblance to his glory days of four years ago.

Excerpt: Police investigators in Narowal are siding with men accused of gang-raping a 13-year-old Christian girl and then torturing her family and killing her two unborn cousins, say the girl’s family. Though FIRs of both incidents have been registered, the police have already declared one of the three accused, a retired inspector’s son, innocent in the rape case. In the case for causing two stillbirths, the police are not arresting the accused even though a judge cancelled their interim bails.

LinkedIn, eHarmony suffer data breaches
Social networking site LinkedIn and online dating service eHarmony warned that some user passwords had been breached after security experts discovered scrambled files with passwords for millions of online accounts. (Huh. I wondered why I hadn’t heard from Bubbles and Trixie on E-Harmony. But I only use linked in for one purpose—to link to people who ask to link to me. ~Bob.)

Memorial to Eagles. By Brian Seasholes
Excerpt: The FWS is proposing essentially to exempt, for three decades, the owners of wind farms and solar generating stations from any penalties if bald eagles and other birds were to get sliced-up in turbine blades. This shameful proposal would increase the number of years wind farms get federal permits to kill birds from five to 30. For decades, the dirty secret of wind power is that turbines — especially wind farms that consist of multiple turbines in close proximity — are death traps for birds. (Remember the good all days, when leftists read Silent Spring and were willing to kill millions of black, brown and yellow children in the Third World through Malaria by banning DDT, so they could feel good about saving birds? Now they want to feel good about Green Energy, so they build thousands of eagle-choppers in wind farms. ~Bob.)

D-Day Response
“Not intended to belittle the landings in France, but to illustrate how far the US came since Dec 7th, 1941. This armada and its landing force were as important to the end of WWII as Normandy. Semper Fi, Tim Murphy.” D-Day, June 6, 1944. 160,000 Allied troops land on Normandy France. D-Day in the Pacific June 14th, 1944, 8 days after the landing in Normandy. The Landing Force including over 800 ships and 162,000 men who invaded the Island of Saipan in the Marianas. This was the first landing on the outer defenses of the Japanese empire, which Japan acquired after WW1. The US Marine Corps 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions and the US Army’s 27th Infantry Division conducted the Saipan landing.

Wisconsin and California Show that Local Taxes are a Political Death Trap. By David P. Goldman
Excerpt: Here’s a simple piece of arithmetic to keep in mind after Wisconsin voters overwhelmingly supported Gov. Scott Walker and California voters backed pension cuts for retired municipal workers. I reviewed some of these numbers last October in this space, and add some state-level detail below. Back on Jan. 24 I insisted that “Obama is toast” because of the rotten economy. It’s sure starting to look that way….

The End of Counter Insurgency Operations? Don't Bet on It! By John Bernard
Excerpt: Now that a politically survivable solution has been accepted to end the current conflict in Afghanistan, the discussion of COIN (Counter Insurgency ) doctrinal viability has begun. Even though the debate over this doctrine has raged since it's inception, this last ten year ordeal is forcing the visionaries and philosophers to re-engage in the discussion of strategy.

Drones In America: Where's The Outrage?
Excerpt: For the past few weeks, I have been writing in this column about the government’s use of drones and challenging their constitutionality on Fox News Channel where I work. I once asked on air what Thomas Jefferson would have done if – had drones existed at the time – King George III had sent drones to peer inside the bedroom windows of Monticello. I suspect that Jefferson and his household would have trained their muskets on the drones and taken them down. I offer this historical anachronism as a hypothetical only, not as one who is urging the use of violence against the government.

Fullerton voters clean house, oust three council members
Excerpt: A recall campaign in Fullerton that was driven in part by the death of a homeless man who was beaten by police has ended with the removal of three City Council members from office. The council members, targeted after the violent confrontation between police and Kelly Thomas, were ousted by a hefty margin in Tuesday's election.

Syria accused of new massacre as UN meets
Excerpt: Syrian troops and militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad stood accused by opponents on Thursday of a new massacre of scores of villagers hours before a divided U.N. Security Council convenes to review the crisis.

President Obama’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week. By Chris Cillizza
Excerpt: It’s been a very rough last six days for President Obama. President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign event at the New Amsterdam Theatre, Monday, June 4, 2012, in New York. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)In that time, he has had to weather a disastrously bad May jobs report, Bill Clinton veering off message on the economy, a wider-than-expected loss in the Wisconsin recall election and a $16 million fundraising gap with Republicans in May. (Couldn’t happen to a nicer community organizer. ~Bob.)

Romney outraised Obama in May, $76.8 million to $60 million
Excerpt: Mitt Romney’s campaign and the Republican National Committee significantly outraised President Obama’s reelection effort in May, pulling in $76.8 million to $60 million, according to the respective campaigns. Both months are the best of the cycle for each candidate and reflect a ramping up with Romney’s status as the all-but-official GOP nominee and Obama’s boost in fundraising from both the gay community and a reported $15 million fundraiser hosted by actor George Clooney. (Obama should ask the Wisconsin public employees unions to help—I’m sure they’d be happy to make up the difference, after he sent a tweet in support of Barrett. ~Bob.)

Obama’s Third-Party History: New documents shed new light on his ties to a leftist party in the 1990s. By Stanley Kurtz
Excerpt: On the evening of January 11, 1996, while Mitt Romney was in the final years of his run as the head of Bain Capital, Barack Obama formally joined the New Party, which was deeply hostile to the mainstream of the Democratic party and even to American capitalism. In 2008, candidate Obama deceived the American public about his potentially damaging tie to this third party. The issue remains as fresh as today’s headlines, as Romney argues that Obama is trying to move the United States toward European-style social democracy, which was precisely the New Party’s goal.

Mexican murderer, rapist now on FBI Most Wanted list
Excerpt: A Mexican national who allegedly beat and raped a woman and while out on bail murdered another woman in Chicago before fleeing was added to the FBI...


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Robert A. Hall

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