Friday, October 3, 2014

California’s next big political fight: Plastic grocery bags


WaPo  "Go to a grocery store in California and buy all the milk, eggs and vegetables you want. But there’s one thing you won’t find at the checkout line, beginning July 1, 2015: Plastic bags to carry your stuff home.
"Gov. Jerry Brown (D) on Tuesday signed into law a ban on single-use plastic bags, making California the first state to prohibit stores from using the ubiquitous carry-alls. Shoppers will be charged 10 cents for every paper bag and heavy-duty plastic bag they use."

Charles Krauthammer: The real reason winning the Senate matters

Washington Post
 
... "The Democratic line is that the Republican House does nothing but block and oppose. In fact, it has passed hundreds of bills only to have them die upon reaching the desk of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He has rendered the Senate inert by simply ensuring that any bill that might present a politically difficult vote for his Democratic colleagues never even comes to the floor.

"Winning control of the Senate would allow Republicans to pass a whole range of measures now being held up by Reid, often at the behest of the White House. Make it a major reform agenda. The centerpiece might be tax reform, both corporate and individual. It is needed, popular and doable. Then go for the low-hanging fruit enjoying wide bipartisan support, such as the Keystone XL pipeline and natural gas exports, most especially to Eastern Europe. One could then add border security, energy deregulation and health-care reform that repeals the more onerous Obamacare mandates." ...

As the Obama administration crashes and burns, insiders begin to blame Valerie Jarrett.

John Fund

... "So how has she survived? Not only has she been close to the first couple for nearly a quarter-century, but she clearly makes the president feel even better about himself than he would anyway. Consider this quote from her...
I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. . . . So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. . . . He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.
"Journalists who contacted the White House this week and asked to speak with Jarrett didn’t get very far. Maybe she’s decided to follow the advice of Greg Hinz and lie low for a while. But if journalists really want a fuller explanation for how the Obama administration has reached its current low ebb, perhaps they should continue to follow the threads of the Jarrett string that were revealed this week and see where those lead."

VIDEO: Cartoonist Michael Ramirez says cartoonists have gone soft in the Obama era….

Political Cartoons by Michael Ramirez

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit
"The Flipside with Michael Loftus offers a fresh perspective by taking on the flipside of the news, commentary, and pop-culture that America now calls the status quo. This episode features Michael's inaugurating Michael Moore into The Flipside Capitalist Hall of Fame with special guest political cartoonist Michael Ramirez."
Zoom ahead to the 11:00 minute mark for the interview with Michael Ramirez.

The evolution of the New York skyline

 
Hat tip to Walt Stier; Santa Maria, CA

Watters’ World : ACLU Edition

Jim Campbell   The folks at the ACLU may not have been representatives of the entire organization but it’s likely they are.  A great interview with Waters.
Make America a better place, send ACLU Lawyers to Syria or Iran.

Fox News’ Jesse Watters showed up at the recent ACLU conference in Princeton, New Jersey, to find out what members of the left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) think about not only ISIS, but the war on terror in general. The answers were predictable. Here’s a sneak peek:

 
"Watters: “These ISIS members that are beheading Americans, what would you do with them?' ”
Entire transcript below.

ACLU member: “Nothing.”
Watters: “Do you think that America deserves being attacked by terrorists?”
Another ACLU member: “How else are they going to get our attention?”
"Watters played along:"
“Do you think if we listen more to ISIS, then maybe some of the terrorism wouldn’t be happening?”
"ACLU member:"
“They’ve got their own very extreme agenda. But we have people in this country who have their own very extreme agendas, very fundamentalist Christians.”
 

U.S. and Israel: An Icy Meeting

Patriot Post; National Security 
"On Wednesday, Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met for the 12th time, at the White House. The topics of discussion: ISIL and the prospect of a nuclear Iran."
...
"But in his United Nations speech this week, Netanyahu also pointed out that Hamas and ISIL have a shared philosophy, making them “branches of the same poisonous tree.”...
The only person Iran truly has to fool is the president of the United States, and over the last five-plus years it’s become clear that the survival of the lone functioning democracy in the Middle East isn’t a priority for our president.

In Praise of Benjamin Netanyahu
psaki_harf_netanyahu_9-30-14-2
"Not exactly a head-scratcher: spot the grownup."
 
... "This man, whatever his failings, is better able to articulate the global situation than any political leader currently in a position of power in any country by yards.  In fact, virtually no one else is even attempting to do it. (Tony Blair did for a while before he turned, but he’s not in Bibi’s league.) Netanyahu may not be Churchill when it comes to courage, but he is Churchill, or close, when it comes to a precise mastery of the English language, ironic since he is the prime minister of a Hebrew-speaking nation.  He is able to tell the truth about the important issues, when all others, including, notably, our president and secretary of State, are prevaricating or spinning, trying desperately not to offend the reprehensible, and he did it again the other day at the United Nations. (Full text here.) " ...
 

Krauthammer: ’2014 Will Be Remembered As The Surrender On Iran’

Michael Ramirez Cartoon

Charles Krauthammer    'Jewish history relies on Netanyahu making the right decision'
 

 
"Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said 2014 will be remembered as the year that the U.S. “surrendered” on preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

"Reflecting on Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the UN General Assembly on Monday, Krauthammer said the Obama administration’s weakness in its nuclear negotiations with Iran will put the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the Israeli Prime Minister.

“ '[Obama] weakened the sanctions even before this round of negotiations,” Krauthammer said.
“So he weakens his hand. When sanctions were the only thing that went around the table in the first place.”

"Krauthammer said if negotiations do not succeed and Israel has the capacity to set the Iranian nuclear program back another two to three years, Netanyahu will act on his promise to take military action to do so.

“ 'The only thing that would prevent Netanyahu from attacking–this is a man who knows the weight of history is on his shoulders and he’s aware that Jewish history relies on his making the right decision–the only thing that will restrain them is if they think they do not have the capacity,” Krauthammer said.

“ 'I think Israel can do it. I think the assumption is it can do it, but if it doesn’t attack, it will be for one reason only: they thought they couldn’t do it.”
Keep in mind Israel is surrounded by these people   “ 'Here Only,” states the Arabic sign, which also bears a swastika and a picture of the Nazi leader raising the traditional Third Reich salute. “A salute to the respectable Egyptian peoples from the German Hitler.”

“ 'Hitler: Burns Cockroaches,” it reads, according to a translation provided to the Washington Free Beacon. The picture was first posted on the Facebook page of Egyptian journalist Wael Abbas."
10639369_10154695357750220_2718851153706447168_n

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Liberals as Low Information Voters

Roger L Simon
cnn_msnbc_unknown_anchors_9-29-14-2
... " But we are surrounded by a generation of people whose ideas are stuck in 1968, though most of them were just little kids at the time and too young to participate. Nevertheless, being stuck,  they are loath to see what is going on around them. They are terrified of it, lest they suffer from alienation of friends and family, loss of work, even personality disintegration.  So they watch MSNBC and nod when some reactionary nitwit says the decapitation in Oklahoma was nothing more than “workplace violence” when the perpetrator had converted to Islam in prison only months before and posted beheadings to his Facebook page."

Piers Morgan: President Obama this week committed professional suicide.

UK Daily Mail    "Let me explain.
"There is a theory in politics that once a leader has fired 50 or more people from his or her administration, he or she is finished.
"The reason being that by creating so many enemies ‘outside the tent’, the tent itself becomes too deluged with poisonous bile to avoid sinking into a quagmire of back-stabbing ignominy

"Obama went a lot further than firing 50 people.
"He managed to single-handedly alienate 200,000 employees in the American intelligence agencies by going on 60 Minutes and ruthlessly chucking them all under a bus over the rise of terror group ISIS.   Full article

Political Cartoons by Henry Payne
 
:   President Obama is attributing the rise of ISIS to the intelligence community's failures in order to deflect criticism of his own incompetence.
I take issue with much of what Judge Napolitano writes in here, but he hits the topic head on with this last statement:
... "Yet, if Clapper and his spies so miserably failed to educate the president about a threat he now claims is real, why do they still have their jobs? They have their jobs because if the president fires them, they might freely speak the truth, and the truth is the president's enemy. They have their jobs because the president is so bad at performing his."

He can't explain the lapse, so he just keeps talking ; At work we used to call this dazzling 'em with footwork.
 

Reading list: Democrat voters have put a JV team into the White House

 
Obama's Loose Lips    ... "Obama’s policies have made us weaker and more endangered.

"Have there been any Democrats who have criticized Barack Obama’s policy of “loose lips”? Have there been any Democrats who care about American national security enough to buck their leader? There are few hawks or eagles in the Democratic Party but there are plenty of parrots.

"Ponder the damage the President and his enablers have done when in the voting booth. Americans have the future in their hands."

"I am stunned at the immaturity of this administration. ... We elected a man as president who had no experience at anything."    Wynn continues to praise the business climate in China compared to the United States: "The regulatory burden in China is infinitesimal compared to the crap we get in America."   Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn

Lucianne posts these next three: A former intelligence operative pleads with Obama to stop telling our secrets.    "My colleagues still in the field are waiting, waiting for the end of the classified disclosures from this White House. They are waiting for the day when their fears that the Obama administration will reveal their sources and methods comes to an end. They are waiting for this day because this White House keeps putting their lives, their family’s lives and the lives those of those they protect in jeopardy – all to achieve something that does not appear to have any national security objective.

"Let me close with a word for our country’s leader: Mr. President, as commander in chief you are responsible to those whom you command. I humbly ask, on behalf of those who can’t ask for themselves, that you, in a classified environment share your strategic vision with your brave employees and explain to them how these disclosures contribute to it."

He chooses not to know, because he chose not to care.   "After skipping 58% of his daily intelligence briefings in Term 1 and 59% of them in Term 2, he went on 60 Minutes and blamed intelligence agencies for being caught by surprise by ISIS." .
.Michael Ramirez Cartoon

The fact that the president chose to use the word “they” instead of “we” immediately drew condemnation from friend and foe alike, who saw it as the president’s attempt to pass the buck.
Michael Ramirez Cartoon
 
"The most famous of the classic blunders is “Never get involved in a land war in Asia”? I don’t think so. I’d go with Never get involved in a blame war with the CIA. And that goes especially for lame duck presidents saddled with plummeting approval ratings as they head into the last two years of their terms." ...

Explain to me why this man is honored while men like Dr. Ben Carson, Justice Clarence Thomas and Col. Allen West are called "Uncle Toms"?

"The Final Call is a newspaper published in Chicago. It was founded in 1979 by Minister Louis Farrakhan and serves as the official newspaper of the Nation of Islam."


Louis Farrakhan Via Drudge.
farrakhan_justifiable_homicide_10-07-2014.jpg
 
... "Another method is disease infection through bio-weapons such as Ebola and AIDS, which are race targeting weapons. There is a weapon that can be put in a room where there are Black and White people, and it will kill only the Black and spare the White, because it is a genotype weapon that is designed for your genes, for your race, for your kind." ...

I associate these two, but am not sure why I do not hear of NOI people doing beheadings.
Member: Mosque Attended By Oklahoma Beheader Encouraged Jihad Against Non-Muslims….
After reading the above post, what in Farrakhan's teaching would not lead them to do so?  TD