Fiscal Cliff; Deal or NO deal? Let the blame game begin!

Late news that may supercede the links following the others in this post:  A ‘fiscal cliff’ deal is near: Here are the details   "On the spending side, the Democrats’ headline concession will be accepting chained-CPI, which is to say, accepting a cut to Social Security benefits. Beyond that, the negotiators will agree to targets for spending cuts. Expect the final number here, too, to be in the neighborhood of $1 trillion, but also expect it to lack many specifics. Whether the cuts come from Medicare or Medicaid, whether they include raising the Medicare age, and many of the other contentious issues in the talks will be left up to Congress."

WaPo; As ‘fiscal cliff’ looms, Republicans have no political incentive to make deal with Obama
"Yes, Obama won the election and did so quite convincingly. And, no, he doesn’t ever have to worry again about being reelected, which should, in theory, embolden him. But he is the only person involved in the fiscal cliff talks who has that luxury. Everyone else needs to keep one eye (at least) on their next race.
"That mentality means that for the vast majority of Republicans in Congress, a deal is more dangerous than no deal. A deal creates the possibility of a primary challenge from their ideological right in districts and even states that, by and large, went heavily against Obama in November. No deal means they might — with the emphasis on “might” — face some blow back from constituents who want them to get something done for the good of the country and put the partisanship and politics aside.

Rick Moran; GOP sets record for quickest surrender in history  "In a matter of hours, Republicans went from standing for entitlement reform - however small - to caving in to the Democrats. This, despite the fact that Obama himself supported the idea of chained CPI earlier.
"These guys couldn't negotiate their kids' allowance, much less a deal on taxes and spending." Via Lucianne

 

What do the pundits mean when they refer to politics as "Kabuki Theater"?

After posting the Ramirez cartoon in the post above, I began wondering about this term that one hears often.

From Slate; It's Time To Retire Kabuki; The word doesn't mean what pundits think it does.
"Judging from op-ed pages and talk radio, American pundits know a lot about Kabuki, the 400-year-old Japanese stage tradition with the Lady Gaga get-ups. Health care reform recently brought Kabuki to mind for both Rush Limbaugh—"what you have here is 'Kabuki theater' "—and New York Times columnist Frank Rich: "[I]f I were to place an incautious bet on which political event will prove the most significant of February 2010, I wouldn't choose the kabuki health care summit." For The New Yorker's George Packer, all the capital's a Far Eastern stage, and all its men and women merely players. "I looked for answers outside the Kabuki theatre of Washington personalities." "

In other words, pundits do not know what the term means, they just know using it makes them sound well-educated. Kind of like throwing in an occasional French or Latin word .
 Et tu, Mr. Krauthammer?

Media Blackout: Air Force General Blows Whistle on Obama

General William Shelton, the
commanding officer of U.S. Air
 Force’s  space command

Examiner.com   “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
“If an Air Force general blows the whistle on the Obama White House, does anyone in the media hear the corruption?
...."According to a source familiar with the Lightsquared probe, many officers at the Pentagon are highly suspicious of the President, the White House staff and even Obama's appointees at the Defense Department."
...." "First of all, we know what motivates politicians and big business. In the middle you have a career officer who is a four-star general. Whom would you believe? What's in it for General Shelton to make up stories?" Baker asks.
" "Let's hope General Shelton sticks to his guns and that more Pentagon and Justice Department officials decide enough is enough from this administration," Baker added."  Hat tip to The Right Planet

Victor Davis Hanson; An Anatomy of a Most Peculiar Institution

  PJ Media   A Campus-full of Contradictions

"Almost everything about the modern university is a paradox. It has become a sort of industry gone rogue that embraces practices that a Wal-Mart or Halliburton would never get away with. It is exempt from scrutiny in the fashion that the Left ceased talking about renditions or Guantanamo Bay once Barack Obama was elected, or a Code Pink goes after a NRA official in the way it would never disrupt a hearing on Fast and Furious. In other words, the university is one of the great foundations of the Left, and so is immune from the sort of criticism that otherwise is daily leveled against other institutions.

"So let’s take a 10-minute stroll through the campus and learn why costs soar even as students are ever more poorly educated."

Mr. Hanson expounds on each of these next subjects:

The Curriculum:  Many subjects "tend to foster the two most regrettable traits in a young mind — ignorance of the uninformed combined with the arrogance of the zealot."

...."Is there a provost or a dean in America that can say to faculty, “That is not a real course, and so won’t be taught at our real university”? Does the shop foreman let the welder choose his own project?"

Tenure:  ..."How odd that tenure ensured a monolithic faculty, as well as undesirable traits in matters of work habits and comportment."....

Part-time Exploitation: ...."Does Safeway have one check-out clerk that makes $40,000 and another who earns $20,000 in side-by-side aisles, each about the same age, with the same education, experience, and amount of time on the job — the part-time clerk with a solid record while the “tenured” Safeway clerk is a no better employee?"....

Student Loans: ...."and thus they cynically avoid Professor X’s path-breaking class on transgendered renaissance females. "

The Value of a BA Degree:  ..."I am reluctant to make the argument for the humanities on the basis of financial planning, but then the humanities are not quite the humanities of 50 years ago."


Diversity:..."There is no diversity of thought on the vast majority of university campuses. The classes, the administration, the campus culture, the professors — all accept the man-made destructive heating of the planet, the rape of the environment, the toxicity of free market-capitalism, the racist-sexist-homophobic narrative of the U.S. past, the need for unquestioned abortion on demand, gay marriage, legalization of drugs, etc."...
Then Mr. Hanson sums it up thus:

When we read of the world’s great centers of learning, American — and Californian — universities are always at the top: Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, Yale, etc. But almost always, on closer examination, this is because of our superior medical schools, business schools, engineering schools, and science and math departments. The liberal arts have piggybacked on the reputation of American professionalism and science, and therefore have not come under the scrutiny that they so richly deserve.

NRO: The Professors; David Horowitz writes up the faculty. 

"Lopez:  Who should be a household name but isn't?

Horowitz:  Professors Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, leaders of the WeatherUnderground; convicted torturer and inventor of Kwanzaa, Professor Malauna Karenga; and oh so many others.
Lopez:  What's your goal in naming names?
Horowitz:  I don't "name names," as I am accused of doing by my leftwing antagonists, nor is The Professors a "list." It is a 450-page book and 112,000-word text. More than 100 professors are profiled not by way of identifying 101 individuals but by way of providing a collective profile of a radical cohort on university faculties that has corrupted higher education from coast to coast."
                                                                                     Amazon photo at right.

Low-information Obama voters

All of the above produces all of this:  "College students chant for ‘Karl Marx’ free Obama Phones, “gay rights” abortion and ‘socialism’ in front of White House at Obama"

"Thousands of college students from across Washington D.C. spontaneously gathered in front of the White House to celebrate President Obama’s reelection.

"Those students were among thousands from colleges across Washington, D.C. who spontaneously gathered in front of fences around the north lawn of the White House to celebrate President Obama’s election victory."

Much more on this at We The People, if you have the stomach for it. Language advisory.

Bad guy with a gun stopped by a good gal with a gun

The point here being that the press didn't cover the fact that the guy wasn't stopped by the cops or other responders; he was stopped by an armed off duty policeman at the theater. I'm just sayin'.

CBS News  ...."Antu says the man headed toward the theater and shot a male in the lot. The age and condition of the victim wasn't immediately known, but Antu says his injuries did not appear life-threatening."
"The gunman entered the theater, Antu says, where he fired a shot but did not hit anyone. An off-duty sheriff's deputy working security then shot the gunman."

WNDU, South Bend reports this:  "The suspect proceeded to continue to run from police and entered the bathroom of the "Santikos Mayan Palace 14." An off duty Bexar Co. Sheriff's Deputy was working security at the theater and followed the suspect into the bathroom and shot him."

The Blaze reports: "An off-duty deputy reportedly spotted the shooter and followed him into the theater where he shot him. One female witness told the local news station KSAT that she heard "multiple shots" fired, as people ran for the exits."  More here

Hat tip to Robert Hope, Sacramento

Just for debate, what about this guy who was packing legally with the intent to shoot up a theater?

Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, has 11 security officers

and is seeking to hire a new police officer as we speak.

NBC's David Gregory Mocks LaPierre for Proposing Armed Guards, but Sends Kids to High-Security School  "The Gregory children go to school with the children of President Barack Obama, according to the Washington Post. That school is the co-ed Quaker school Sidwell Friends.

"According to a scan of the school's online faculty-staff directory, Sidwell has a security department made up of at least 11 people. Many of those are police officers, who are presumably armed.
"Moreover, with the Obama kids in attendance, there is a secret service presence at the institution, as well."

So the Secret Service is for the Obama children; the 11 armed guards for the school in general? 

Civil disobedience beginning to sprout? (UPDATED)

Is it time to consider civil disobedience?  "Americans can sit by and watch government ignore the Constitution and all the principles that made the country great.
"Or they can take action, like they did in 2010.
"Americans can get out into the streets and let the government know, in no uncertain terms, they will not accept the imposition of Obamacare, they will not accept the endless spiraling debt, they will not accept unlimited government, they will not accept intrusions into our personal liberties, they will not accept rogue government doing what it pleases, when it pleases and to whom it pleases."

Hobby Lobby to defy Obamacare mandate  "Hobby Lobby, the Christian-owned company that provides hobby, arts and crafts supplies to tens of millions of customers across America, will defy the Obamacare mandate that health insurance for its employees cover “abortion-inducing drugs.”

"The confirmation is from a statement released by an attorney, Kyle Duncan, who said in a website statement that, “The company will continue to provide health insurance to all qualified employees. To remain true to their faith, it is not their intention, as a company, to pay for abortion-inducing drugs.”"

Update, Sun, Dec 30: Obama Administration: We Can and Will Force Christians to Act Against Their Faith  "The first argument the administration makes against the owners of Hobby Lobby is that Americans lose their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion when they form a corporation and engage in commerce. A person’s Christianity, the administration argues, cannot be carried out through activities he engages in through an incorporated business."
...."The second argument the administration makes to justify forcing Christians to act against their faith is more sweeping. Here the administration argues it can force a person to act against his religion so long as the coercion is done under the authority of a law that is neutral and generally applicable—in other words, as long as the law was not written specifically to persecute Christians as Christians, the government can use that law to persecute Christians."

Hobby Lobby and the Loss of America's Soul  "Sounds like Hobby Lobby's David Green believes verbatim the Scripture verse that asks "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?""  Read more...

Great American Reading List

Some of these links have videos with them, but this computer goes bananas if I paste imbed codes in a post. This issue will be addressed as soon as my new Windows 8 laptop has an email program installed, should that ever happen. TD

Filed under schadenfreude :  ASPCA Pays Circus to Settle Suit  "An animal rights group will pay Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus $9.3 million to settle a lawsuit the circus filed after courts found that activists paid a former circus worker for his help in claiming the circus abused elephants."

Worst Reporters Of Year - The Obamagasm Award!  I prefer Obagasm, but...
"Watching Tingles have an Obamagasm makes me want [to] barf. Blaaaa!!!"

C-SPAN Caller - Can Constitution be Fixed so Obama Runs 3 Terms?  "Unfortunately for the caller, Doherty said, "I don't see any grassroots support to let a president serve a third term." He also answered Lawrence's second question in the negative, telling him he believed chances were "slim" for Democrats to "take the House back." "

Hot Air’s Top 40 for 2012: 31-40 " Every year at this time, we like to look back at our most-read posts and take a trip down Memory Lane. Which topics got the most traction? What really burned up the wires? As one might imagine, the top 40 posts in terms of traffic include a number of election topics, but it wasn’t just the election that kept Hot Air readers riveted in 2012. We’ll take a look over the next few days at the top 40 most-viewed posts, starting with slots 40-31 today:"..

This Is What Teachers Learning to Shoot Guns Look Like  "If only this had been the last thing the Newtown shooter saw before he entered that office and first classroom."  Related:

BEST WORDS EVER SAID Regarding Gun Control and the 2nd Amendment -Ted Nugent

Video at this link.

The Rainmaker: Occupy Wall Street lawyer in dash for Sandy Hook cash   "An attorney seeking to sue Connecticut for $100 million on behalf of a Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting survivor who heard Adam Lanza’s murderous rampage on a loudspeaker also serves as the official lawyer for Occupy New Haven, WND has found"
Newtown First Grader Seeks $100 Million Compensation 
His lawyer claims he was traumatized by the sounds over the loudspeaker. I hope this lawyer doesn't get one dime. How many lives were saved because that loudspeaker was turned on to warn students? One more argument for tort reform!

But remember, our president is not only petulant and juvenile but is obtuse as well; French court rejects 75% millionaires' tax  "France’s Constitutional Council on Saturday rejected a 75 percent upper income tax rate to be introduced in 2013 in a setback to Socialist President Francois Hollande’s push to make the rich contribute more to cutting the public deficit."

Catastrophic Obamacare Welcomes in the New Year  "The taxes, such as the insane medical device taxes (on every imaginable device, including canes, wheelchairs, everything), will hit before us before many of the services are launched. (Emphasis added) 

"The taxes were timed to launch after Obama’s re-election.
"It takes 10 years of taxes to pay for six years of services (Obama math).
"This year will begin with the unrolling of the 13,000 pages of rules and regulations which our insurance companies are supposed to instantly figure out. The costs of plowing through this morass of a mess and implementing it will bring premiums up for some by 20%, 30%, 50%, and as much as 100%."

Is it time to consider civil disobedience?  "While I’d like to see millions of tea-party activists back out in the street as we saw in 2010, perhaps we need to do more than hold placards and sing songs. Maybe we need to stage sit-ins like Martin Luther King did. Maybe we need to submit ourselves to arrest by the tens of thousands, overwhelming the injustice system."
This deserves a stand-alone post instead of disappearing into a reading list.

Obama asked to retaliate over Russia adoption ban

Obama only retaliates against Americans who disagree with him. He will give the shirt off his back to the Arab world and America's enemies, but at the same time just watch Obama's attempts to crush Republicans and Fox News.

Jewish World Review   "Tens of thousands of petitioners are urging President Barack Obama to respond in kind to Moscow's plan to bar Americans from adopting Russian children, amid a diplomatic tiff sparked by US adoption of the so-called Magnitsky Act.

Minneapolis Star Tribune.

"At least three petitions on the White House website are calling for US sanctions against Russian lawmakers who backed a bill that one of the documents says will "jeopardize lives and well-being of thousands of Russian orphans."
"Moscow sees the ban on adoptions as retaliation for a US human rights law that allows the seizure of assets from Russian officials implicated in the 2009 death of a Russian lawyer."....More...

Krauthammer on The roots of mass murder

Charles Krauthammer   "Every mass shooting has three elements: the killer, the weapon and the cultural climate. As soon as the shooting stops, partisans immediately pick their preferred root cause with corresponding pet panacea. Names are hurled, scapegoats paraded, prejudices vented. The argument goes nowhere."
"Let’s be serious:"....
...."That’s a lot of impingement, a lot of amendments. But there’s no free lunch. Increasing public safety almost always means restricting liberties.
"We made that trade after 9/11. We make it every time the Transportation Security Administration invades your body at an airport. How much are we prepared to trade away after Newtown?"

Ben Garrison

Republicans Set to Cave?

Power Line  "Byron York passes on what he is hearing from Senate Republicans on the fiscal negotiations in DC. What he is hearing isn’t good:

The word among some Senate Republicans is that a fiscal cliff deal is likely to be struck by Sunday, or Monday at the latest. …

Those Senate Republicans hope the final deal will make permanent current tax levels — Bush tax cut levels — for everyone who makes below $500,000.

The $500,000 figure is not set in stone. It could be $400,000, as President Obama is reportedly willing to agree to, or it could be higher, as some Senate Democrats have suggested in the past. … In addition, big spending cuts, the sequestration cuts scheduled to go into effect in the new year, would not be affected and would go forward as planned.

"Conversation": a word signifying nothing, as in "we need to have a national conversation on this"

Robert J. Mack  "So, next time you hear a politician or a news analyst use the word "conversation," be very afraid. That word has become the weapon of choice used by the propaganda specialists in politics and media to bamboozle the American people. You will know that in that "conversation" no one won the debate with a vigorous defense of the facts, no minds were changed, and nothing of significance happened. Oh, and by the way, the bamboozled went away happy."  Read more: American Thinker

For example: How to Have an Unconventional National Conversation about Guns and then there is this: Labor Becomes Part of the National Conversation: The Best and Worst of 2012.

You could call this a national conversation about the use of the term "national conversation".

The New Yorker

Liberal racism made manifest

Big Hollywood; Boston Globe Says 'Django Unchained' Conjures House Negroes like Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain  "Critic Wesley Morris clearly spent hours crafting his thoughts, likely in tribute to the film's artistic excellence. Yet Morris' column contains a paragraph that could be considered even uglier than the violence pulsating through director Quentin Tarantino's genre mashup."  H/T to John LaRosa

Samuel L. Jackson plays crusty, waxen Stephen as a vision of depraved loyalty and bombastic jive that cuts right past the obvious association with Uncle Tom. The movie is too modern for what Jackson is doing to be limited to 1853. He’s conjuring the house Negro, yes, but playing him as though he were Clarence Thomas or Alan Keyes or Herman Cain or Michael Steele, men whom some black people find embarrassing. Emphasis mine, TD 

More at Big Hollywood: "Where many movies about black bondage are diluted by liberal hankie-wringing, this one feels fueled by a black rage that still simmers today. It might be the most savage cinematic depiction of slavery ever made."  Then there is this at Wake Up, Black America: Jamie Foxx gets to live out his fantasy of killing white people in his film. "Tyrone", the author of this site calls the NAACP the "National Association for the Advancement of Colored Progressives". Hey, he said it, not me.

Star Jones Plays Race Card Against GOP  "Former "View" co-host Star Jones is playing the race card against the GOP for daring to disagree with President Barack Obama."

Democrat Racism Against Black Republicans (pdf)   "The following are just a few of the disgusting images of black Republicans produced by Democrats that caused no more than a yawn from the NAACP and other people who self-righteously hurl condemnations at Republicans over real or perceived racial stereotyping ." Images herein are racist and vile in the extreme, but acceptable because they are created by Democrats. As is this quote from a famous black liberal:

"In the days of slavery, there were those slaves who lived on the plantation and [there] were those slaves that lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master ... exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him. Colin Powell's committed to come into the house of the master. When Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture." Harry Belafonte

And this cartoon of Condoleeza Rice by Oliphant:

A book by Kevin Jackson, blogging at The Black Sphere:   The BIG Black Lie "This book helps Americans understand how the Left has wrongly defined our country. It helps parents understand that it’s the little things that can affect their children and build patriotic warriors."

If you are tired of being called a racist, and you need the ammunition to battle the Left, then The BIG Black Lie is a must for your literary collection. Readers will become empowered by The BIG Black Lie, and they will find it a truly enjoyable read!

From Larry Elder: Robert Griffin III, aka RG III, the black rookie sensation Washington Redskins quarterback Gets 'Uncle Tom' Treatment  "...ESPN's Rob Parker, who in addition to the "cornball brother" comment, said: "OK, he's black, he kind of does the thing, but he's not really down with the cause. He's not one of us. He's kind of black, but he's not really, like, the guy you want to hang out with because he's off to something else. ... We all know he has a white fiancee. Then there was all this talk about him being a Republican."

From the Media Research Center comes The Ku Klux Con Job Award for Smearing Conservatives with Phony Racism Charges  Via Newsbusters
Several entries are listed, but the winner is Yahoo! News Washington bureau chief and former political director for ABC News David Chalian talking over a picture of Ann and Mitt Romney, as caught on an open microphone during ABCNews.com coverage of the Republican National Convention, August 28:

“They are happy to have a party with black people drowning.”