BREAKING: NYC Announcing Break Up Of Terror Plot
—DrewM.
Above the post update:
Bloomberg says the suspect is "an Al Qaeda sympathizer" who planned to bomb police cars, Post Office and troops returning home.
Jose Pimental, 27 from Manhattan, is being described as a lone wolf and not connected to a larger plot.
Pimental is a native of the Dominican Republican who is a US citizen, and a Muslim convert.
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly is talking about this guy. It sounds like he's been on their radar for awhile (years).
Original Post:
Mayor Bloomberg is going to be doing a presser in moments.
The case was "terror related" but there was no imminent threat because the suspect was under arrest, a law enforcement official said, declining to be identified before the official announcement at 7:30 p.m.CNN said the man learned how to build a pipe bomb from the al Qaeda online magazine "Inspire" and planned to target soldiers returned from overseas, police and post offices.
The bomb would have worked if the suspect succeeded in assembling it properly, CNN said, citing unnamed sources.
Conservatives Win Landslide Victory in Spain
—rdbrewer
Conservatives won 187 of 350 seats in the parliament. Socialists won 110, their worst evah. From the Washington Post:
Spanish conservatives won a historically large mandate at the polls Sunday, freeing them to make deep austerity cuts as they struggle to pull the country�s economy out of a tailspin.In an election marked by bitter disappointment and desperation over the euro zone�s highest unemployment rate, the Socialists who have led the country since 2004 were cast out from office as many of their staunchest supporters turned elsewhere, according to a national TV exit poll released after the polls closed.
Left-leaning, high-tax, big-regulation, big-government states and countries are suffering the most. Maybe it's starting to dawn on these people that bureaucrats are not that smart, that they can't be trusted, and that putting them in charge of everything isn't such a good idea.
In related news, the EU bans claims water can prevent dehydration.
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Submitted
—CAC
Three years ago, Obama won blue-collar Macomb with 53% of the vote to Republican John McCain's 48%. At this point, a Free Press poll conducted last week by Lansing-based EPIC-MRA shows all three of the top Republican contenders -- Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain -- with a lead on Obama in the county.The poll's sample of 600 likely voters statewide includes only a sliver from Macomb County, meaning any results there come with a whopping 14-percentage-point margin of error. But even controlling for that, the Republican contenders still lead the president. Romney, who grew up in Bloomfield Hills, would still lead by at least 20 points.
(h/t to Dave Ivers)
Sunday NFL Thread
—Dave In Texas
Wow. Big surprise in Waco last night, huh?
Hope you're having a great weekend you goofballs.
CAC's Poll Dump (Updated Every Sunday Through Election Day 2012)
—CAC
Consider this a go-to source for later when you want to "quote" a poll (or when you want to catch another moron making shit up).
If you catch wind of a poll (complete with crosstabs), feel free to shoot me an email to theoneandonlyfinn at gmail.com.
The initial edition will be short, but that won't last. If a state has more than 3 polls, older polls will be abbreviated to a URL link. After 6 polls per office per state, oldest will be dumped to keep this somewhat readable. You can thank me later.
I will update this post throughout the week, bumping every Sunday as a recap of data collected. Ace and the rest of the co-bloggers will have posts on particularly damning polls, this thread will be updated throughout the next year to keep all available data in one spot.
***NOTE- If you are sending me polls, I will NOT be listing polling published days and weeks before this thread started. So data from, say, a primary poll in September is not going to be listed.***
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Sunday Book Thread: Kindle Fire Review
—Monty
Okay, so here it is: my review of the Amazon Kindle Fire.
I'll give you the conclusion first: I like it. I don't love it, but I like it. (You can jump to the end of the review for a fuller qualification of this judgement.)
This is a nicely built but very plain unit. It's meant to do one thing: access your digital content on Amazon. (And to surf the web a bit.) It's really just an electronic window into Amazon's store; it's not meant to be a fully-fledged tablet computing device.
I've had a few days to use the Fire, and one thing stands out above all -- I got exactly what I expected to get. The Fire is a dense little monolith of black plastic and glass (with a rubberized back) that is featureless except for three little indentations along the bottom edge that expose a headphone jack, a mini-USB port (for both data and power), and a power button. That's it. [EDIT: There are also two little speakers set into the top of the unit.]
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Sunday Morning Open Thread
—Monty
"Beware of endeavoring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed. These are fearful odds." - Benjamin Disraeli
Overnight Open Thread
—CDR M
I guess the positive out of the above photo is that the kitteh at least knows where to go, unlike the OWS crowd.
Well, this quite likely will kill the SCOAMF hopes for reelection. The End Of Cheap Coffee Is Near! Man oh man, if you thought the OWS protests were bad, wait until people are jonesin' for their coffee. About the only thing worse than that would be a zombie outbreak. Or a mass, simultaneous visit from Aunt Flo.
This threat comes from two sources. The first is the ever-growing demand for coffee all over the world, especially as more countries develop a strong, robust middle class that requires coffee to function.Second, there have been a number of impacts to the supply of coffee. Weather causes, possibly fueled by overall climate change, have led to lower crop yields. On top of that, there have been outbreaks of new pests and fungi, as well as some very unstable labor issues in coffee-producing companies. The overall effect is that, as Stone notes, �supply has gone down and demand has gone up.�
This is particularly the case because the coffee beans that produce the best flavors are also among the hardest to produce, because they require particular weather systems to reach a productive peak.
Great, just great. Speculation driven by climate change is causing some of the price fluctuations. Damn you Owl Gore. It's not climate change you dopes, it's called having a bad crop year or two. It has happened a few times in history.
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Free Stuff
—rdbrewer
Below the fold is an excellent old movie on YouTube TV HD, Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Click on full screen. The director, Byron Haskin, was the same guy who directed War of the Worlds and several other things I like, like Captain Sindbad, my all-time favorite Sindbad (note, spelled with two d's), and From the Earth to the Moon. He also worked on Star Trek, The Menagerie and a couple of other Trek things, I think. He started out in art direction and special effects and cinematography.
Robinson Crusoe on Mars rates a 92% at Rotten Tomatoes. Not bad for a cheapy sci-fi thing from the 60's. You can tell he knew how to get a lot of bang for the buck. Look at what he was able to do with the sets and special effects. For example, near the end, there is "ice" melting very quickly. I have no idea how he did that. I don't even think animal fat melts like that. The snow appears real in every scene but one where they had to bury a monkey. Maybe the other snow was real. I can't really tell. There is an ash fall that is well done. He even went to the trouble of piling the snow and ash in drifts in a very realistic, windblown way in corners and in sheltered areas. All of the spaceship and gadget tech looks great. All the exposed rock and mineral formations are plausible and a little odd--exactly what you'd expect on another world. Nice touch on the way the alien ships flit around in a freaky, unnatural (alien) way.
For the time period and the money? Awesome. The special effects work doesn't make the movie, though; it just enhances it. It doesn't get in the way. It helps in the suspension of disbelief. All that, plus a good story and passable acting makes for a great adventure movie.
I tend to focus on money at times: Could they have done it cheaper, or could they have done it better for the same amount of money? And did that [whatever expensive thing] actually make the movie better? I do the same thing with buildings and architecture. "They could have done the same thing for a lot less money" is the acid-test, kiss of death judgment. Even worse: "I could have done that better for less money."
In that regard, btw, Moon (2009) still blows me away. They made that movie for five million.
And talk of money reminds me of an excellent A&E; documentary, Halloween: The Inside Story. It's great because it tells you a lot about making movies in a short time, and because John Carpenter is a very interesting man. You can tell he's a no-bullshit, very practical person. For example, his chief concern regarding the Halloween sequels is whether he gets a check. He also appears to be a man of few words, laconic. Just enough speech to get the job done. He doesn't appear deal in lofty ideas about art; he's more of a three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust kind of director. In Halloween, he found ways of using the money available to him in the most efficient way possible. And talk about getting bang for the buck. The movie cost about $300 thousand. It made something like a hundred million.
Really, it's one of the best documentaries I can recall ever having seen. It's tight, well put together, and loaded with information. It's embedded below too.
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Christopher Walken Did Not Call Up A Show To Say "There Was a Tragedy"
—Ace
The other day I wrote "imagine the WalkenVoice saying 'There was a tragedy.'"
I was, unconsciously, on to something. A WalkenVoice did say that, and the AP did report a WalkenVoice saying that.
But the AP is stupid. It was a Christopher Walken impressionist calling a sports show (as he does every week), but the AP thought it was real, and also didn't do much to verify if it was real or not.
College Football Thread UPDATED
—Dave In Texas
Congrats to Iowa State for pulling off the huge upset over Oklahoma State (2) last night in a double overtime crazy thing. Tough night for the Cowboys, who learned that morning that the OSU girl's basketball head coach Kurt Budke and assistant Miranda Serna were killed in an airplane crash Thursday evening.
Lots more football today, including Nebraska (17) and Michigan (20), USC (18) at Oregon (4), and OU (5) in Waco to take on Baylor (25).
And by "take on" I mean beat the Bears like they owe em money.
The other top 5 games, LSU (1) at Ole Miss, and Alabama (3) vs. Georgia Southern.
Have a good weekend you goofballs, and kind thoughts for the OSU folks.
UPDATE: As noted by the first few commenters, Lee Corso drops an F-bomb on ESPN's College Gameday (video at the link, also warning, for, you know, an F-bomb)
Warren "Tax Me More" Buffett's Company Sues IRS Over "Illegal" Taxation
—DrewM.
NetJets, a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., this week sued the Internal Revenue Service over what it called an "illegal" $643 million tax assessment.The IRS had determined that NetJets had failed to collect a "ticket tax" from its customers�the same tax that's paid by passengers every time they fly on a commercial flight.
...
"The IRS's assessments in this case improperly extend application of the ticket tax beyond commercial airline and charter passengers, to persons who own the aircraft on which they fly," the company said in the suit.
NetJets also claimed that the IRS hadn't attempted to assess such taxes on rival fractional-jet businesses, placing the company "at a significant disadvantage."
Now on the face of it it seems Buffett's company is right. Why should people who own the jets pay a "ticket tax"? You don't buy a ticket to ride on something that you own.
But "corporate jet owners"? Aren't they the lowest of the low or something? And Buffett is suing to keep their costs down and protect them for unfair taxation?
Oh and remember when Obama wanted to change how evilllll "corporate jet owners" were taxed? Yeah, Buffett opposed that too.
Buffett and his management team have a fiduciary obligation to fight this on behalf of their clients. But the idea that Buffett then will turn around and say other people (presumably including most of these same clients) should be taxed at higher levels to satisfy his moral vanity is an amazing twist of logic.
Hypocrisy thy name is Liberalism (and always has been).
Joe Paterno Filled with Regret for Not Reporting Child Molestation and a Treatable Form of Lung Cancer, but Mostly a Treatable Form of Lung Cancer
—Russ from Winterset
Per CNN (story originally found at CycloneFanatic.com)
Actually, the CNN article contains a minor mistake. This cancer was NOT first diagnosed last week. A lab technician actually noticed the spots on an MRI image back in 2002, but didn't relay that information to the Paterno family. The technician told Paterno's doctor, and the doctor called a meeting with hospital administrators a week later and told them that the tech had seen "somehing of a cancerous nature, possibly cancerous horseplay". The doctor's son reportedly told reporters this morning that the whole hospital community is sorry for not telling Paterno about the cancer at the time, but they are convinced that the doctor did nothing wrong because he relayed the information to his superiors per hospital policy. Supposedly, hospital employees and former patients are going to riot tonight and destroy some news vans in solidarity with their beloved doctor.*
(*These statements may or may not be true. I'm still a little woozy from no sleep after that game last night, so I'm not sure what really was said and what I just made up.)
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Barnhardt Capital Management Closes its Hedge Fund; implicates WH, Corzine [Truman North]
—Open Blogger
We've discussed this in the open threads and so forth over the last couple days, and Ace recently posted something tangential here, in case you would like to know more.
Ann Barnhardt, who is apparently an anti-Jihad crusader and blogger at Barnhardt.biz among other places, takes as her vocation the manager of a hedge fund. Citing her lack of faith in the market and specifically the uncertainty introduced by an increasingly-lawless government and regulatory regime, she has voluntarily closed her hedge fund, Barnhardt Capital Management, and gone out of business.
Her resignation (?) letter was posted on Zerohedge. A couple of choice excerpts:
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Iowa State 37, Okie State 31
—Russ from Winterset
Just got home from Ames a few minutes ago. Great game, probably the best college football game I've ever seen in person. Double overtime, with the ISU defense holding one of the most prolific offenses in college football to 24 points in regulation. The best part of the night was that Iowa State beat a team that I respect so much, with a coach who would be at the top of my "wish list" if ISU were in the market for a coach to replace Paul Rhoads.
With the tragedy that happened last night where OSU lost their women's basketball coach and three other passengers in a small plane crash in Arkansas, football seems like such a trivial pursuit in comparison. Thoughts and prayers go out to the OSU family, who had to deal with a similar plane crash about 10 years ago that decimated their men's basketball program. That's just awful, whether they're coaches, teachers, or just friends and family.
Of course, despite the tragedy.........Iowa State doesn't knock off the #2 team in the country every day, so I'm going to celebrate just a little bit here. Since this is the AoSHQ, I think you know how that celebration is going to unfold.
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Overnight Open Thread
—CDR M
Evenin' fellow morons. So y'all like your guns right? Well, this is pretty funny. Top 10 Reasons Men Prefer Guns Over Women.
#5. A gun doesn't take up a lot of closet space.
Of course, turnabout is fair play. There is a Top 10 Reasons Why Women Prefer Guns Over Men at the same link above.
8. A gun never complains about the fit of its holster.
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Evening Open Thread/Open Blog
—Ace
Over at Verum Serum, more Occupy stuff.
Any time your organization's name frequently appears with the words "human feces" you're probably not going to win the narratie.
Tim Tebow Leads Broncos on Game Winning Drive
—Ace
I know this is old. I'm late to the party.
I like the idea of Tebow. I'm bored with the NFL's current hegemonic offensive style. It's all the same.
I'm rooting for schemes, not teams. I want some wildcat action or something different.
Media Puts Blind Trust In John Kerry's Claim of Blind Trusts
—Ace
Kerry says that the various accounts in which he mad lots of trades armed with nonpublic information could not possibly be a cause for scandal, as these accounts were in blind trust.
The media reliably parrots this.
[Quoting an old, pre-2004 election article in the LAT:] Leon E. Panetta, White House chief of staff under President Clinton, agreed that although the amount of Heinz Kerry�s wealth was not a campaign issue, it could cause problems if Kerry were elected.�They will have to seriously consider putting it in a blind trust,� Panetta said. �All of us who have served in government have had to do that. In the end, it is the better way to go, because it removes any suspicion that a decision is self-serving. You have enough problems just making a decision, without dealing with the concern you may be putting money in your pocket.�
Yet Mr. Panetta�s quote should have made it clear to anyone reading�and especially to journalists at the Los Angeles Times�that Mr. Kerry did not, in fact, have a blind trust. So why did the media fail to properly vet a presidential candidate�s investments?
For conservatives, the answer is simple: liberal media bias. But Schweizer says he finds the media�s glaring oversight disheartening.
�The fact that it took a Tallahassee-based policy wonk working with a team of college student researchers to uncover the �honest graft� by Democrats and Republicans and publish it all in a book like Throw Them All Out is, I think, a little depressing,� he says. �The media play an important role in vetting our leaders. When they fail to do so, it hurts us all, regardless of our political views.�
I mentioned earlier: there are two aspects of media bias to the media's determination to tank this story.
The first is simple political bias. Democrats have been robbing us stupid for decades, and they want to protect their beloved socialist thieves.
The other bias is due to institutional turf-protection and defensiveness over incompetency.
The media could have had this story. But they were too lazy and/or too biased to report on it. It wasn't fed directly to them by a prosecutor making a case, so why bother doing any digging?
Laziness and incompetence.
Because they missed a big story, and yet they are supposedly in charge of Discovering Big Stories, it must be the case then that this is not a big story at all. It must be a tiny little story, easily poo-pooed.
Because if it's big, and the media missed it... what purpose do they serve, then? What justification is there for their social status?
And 1%-level salaries? (Well, the top ones are 1-percenters, anyway.)
The One Percent Media
Protecting our Socialist Overlords through our profound political bias and simple inability to serve as anything other than palace stenographers.
More: On John Kerry's aristocratically-pointy nose for hot medical stocks.
Larry Elder Gives Chris Matthew First-Rate Butthurt
—Ace
You can read the quotes here, but based on the ones at the end, I'm just listening before I post it.
MATTHEWS: This is an embarrassment. This is why this country is being torn apart, with this kind of hatred.ELDER: It�s called a disagreement. You perceive it as hatred, just like you perceive that the Republicans want people to die on gurneys, and they don�t care about illegal aliens, and all the other silly things that you�ve said. That�s hatred. That�s hatred, Chris.
Audio at the link.
Thanks to JohnE.
Perry Rips Administration On... Fast & Furious
—Ace
He called Fast and Furious a �bureaucratic bungling� that had made guarding the border �substantially more dangerous.��Our own federal government provided more than 2,000 firearms to some of the most dangerous criminals in North of America, many of which are still unaccounted for,� Perry told the audience at the annual Federal Law Enforcement Foundation luncheon, held at a hotel in New York City.
�Federal law enforcement officials deserve an attorney general who displays the same courage and the sense of responsibility with which they serve,� he added. �And America deserves a president and a Congress willing to give law enforcement officials the support they need to truly secure our borders.�
People following the story closely probably won't be happy that he called it "bungling," as many people seem convinced that there was some kind of They Meant This To Happen plot. (But bear in mind the Prosecutor's Rule: It's not about what I believe, it's about what I can prove.)
But, still. It can't hurt to have a candidate pushing this, as well as the case against Eric "Pardon Me" Holder.
Thanks to Ben Domenech and his daily political intelligencer, The Transom.
Oh Dear: Boat Captain Says He Lied In 1981 and That He Believes Actor Robert Wagner Was Actually Responsible For His Wife Natalie Wood's Death
—Ace
This isn't pop culturally relevant to Meghan McCain, but I remember this story, and some thick suspicions about Natalie Wood's drowning. Ultimately cops ruled it an accidental drowning and closed the file.
The boat captain, aboard with Wood, Wagner, and Christopher Walken (!! -- please don't be involved in this!), now says he lied to homicide cops back in 1981.
A boat captain said Friday that he lied to authorities about the case and that Wood's husband, Wagner, was to blame for her death.Police said Wagner was not a suspect and that they had new information that warranted a reopening the case.
Walken says he went to bed and then woke up to be told (imagine the WalkenVoice) "there was a tragedy."
The boat captain doesn't say Wagner murdered her, leaving open the possibility that his (claimed) story is that Wagner caused her death in an accidental fashion.
Actor Robert Wagner waited hours to call the Coast Guard after his wife, actress Natalie Wood, went missing from a yacht in 1981, the vessel's captain said Friday.Wagner also told those on board the boat what to say to authorities about the incident, the captain said. Wood was later found drowned.
Dennis Davern, the former captain of the yacht Splendour, said he first searched the boat to check whether Natalie was anywhere on board. He said he then wanted to turn on the searchlight to see whether she was in the water, but that Wagner told him not to.
"We don't want to do that right now," Wagner allegedly told Davern.
Wood's sister says she heard a loud fight between Wagner and Wood before she drowned. The sister also says Wood was not a swimmer, and would not have gone swimming on her own, especially not, as Wood apparently was, dressed in a nightshirt and socks (!!!).
Plus... bruises on the body.
Actually, I think that CNN article is just worth reading in full.
There's a hint that maybe Walken and Wood were... well, doing something that Wagner was jealous about. Walken and Wood had costarred in a sci-fi thriller called Brainstorm. I think she died before shooting wrapped, resulting in her disappearing out of the movie, and probably some Rescue Editing that didn't wind up rescuing it. (I have a dim recollection of the end of the film not making much sense, and feeling incomplete.)
New Bachmann Ad Targets Every Rival (Except Santorum, Huntsman, and Johnson)
—Ace
Kind of a good ad, though. I've got no problems with it. She's using what she's got, and what she's got is dissatisfaction with the other candidates.
Bonus insult to the non-attacked candidates for not even rating.
I'm still suspicious of Bachmann's soft handling of Romney. Yes, she hits him on abortion. But this is so baked in the cake I wonder what possible good it could do to remind people.
Why not his continuing defense (by proxy) of Bachmann's bete noir, ObamaCare?
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Interesting: Can Anyone Attack Gingrich At The Debates?
—Ace
Because Gingrich is now a front-runner, you'd expect him to be on the receiving end of attacks by other candidates, as all previous front-runners were.
Captain Ed considers:
The other reasons pertain to specific qualities and skills Gingrich has in debates. He has a much better grasp on policy and data than most of the other candidates on stage, which means that attacking Gingrich entails a considerable risk of looking ignorant and ill-informed when he responds. Perhaps more importantly, Gingrich has been very disciplined in debates this year, mostly refraining from attacks on other candidates. Only Ron Paul has had fewer (7 to Gingrich�s 8, and Cain next at 9), and that could be a function of getting less air time in a couple of recent debates. It�s difficult to come off well when attacking the one candidate who had professed the need for party unity and who consistently lauds the qualities of the other candidates on stage; in fact, it�s easy to look churlish and ungracious.
Those are good points. If you attack Gingrich, he's going to attack you back, and he is very good in this format. Does anyone have the guts to do it?
Bachmann does, I think.
The other thing is that Gingrich has really done a clever makeover, from Mean Mister Mustard to The Sun King. He's unfailingly complimentary towards his fellow candidates -- and was so even when he was so far behind them he couldn't even see them. (By the way: Kudos to Gingrich's political guess here. This seemed like a sure loser strategy -- how can you advance from behind when you never, ever take a shot at the leaders? In fact, it was so ill-calculated to win the nomination I suspected, with Ann Coulter, he really wasn't even running for the nomination, but just to keep his profile "pop culturally relevant," as a DC sage once said. But now it looks... well, pretty damn clever. All that was needed was a huge amount of dumb luck.)
How do you attack the guy who's actually defended you from media attacks in the past?
I suppose the only way to do this is to be very complimentary towards Gingrich yourself while, nevertheless, pointing out deviations from conservative economic doctrine.
But you can't imply, for example, he was corrupt in working for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. After all the Nice Newt performances, that would backfire badly. You have to keep it only on policy, and ideology, and in the most respectful terms possible, as a personal matter.
Plus, if you gin up the compliments towards Newt (while skillfully questioning his conservative bona fides) you reduce the chance that he'll feel comfortable gutting you in return.
Tricky.
Jennifer Rubin: The Mouth of Sauron Romney
—rdbrewer
Leon H. Wolf has a great piece at RedState today, Kneel Before Romney and Despair. It sheds light on the way the Romney campaign operates and how their modus operandi dovetails with Jennifer Rubin's approach to reporting. "Apparently tonight, Mitt Romney wants you to think Newt Gingrich is an idiot," Wolf writes, because of her post yeserday, Gingrich: The Phony Intellectual. Wolf explains:
What I do want to do is to shed a little light on something that is not a secret to literally anyone who has interacted with the Romney campaign. See, during the 2008 campaign I worked for Sam Brownback. During the course of the campaign I became friendly with someone who worked in the Romney campaign�s communications department. After Brownback pulled a Pawlenty and bowed out after Ames, I reluctantly became a Romney supporter (viewing him as a far better choice than McCain). When I announced my support for Romney on the front page, I started receiving a steady deluge of emails from this friend pitching stories that were� well, pretty much exactly like the Newt Gingrich attack piece Jen Rubin wrote today.
Much more at the link.
After I read the Drudge headline yesterday about Gingrich going ahead in Iowa, I posed a bet to Ace and the co-, open-, and guest-bloggers. I bet them $5.00 Rubin would have a Newt bashing piece up by 10:00 a.m. the next day (today). Ace wrote back about a minute later, "RD, she has a piece up now calling him a 'Phony Intellectual.'" Zoinks. So I replied that it was too obvious and posed a second bet: "Okay, $5.00 says she'll have another Newt bashing piece by 10:00 a.m. tomorrow." No takers.
Well, if someone had gotten-in on that action, they would have been $5.00 richer. Because Gingrich: How Can He Rehabilitate Himself? came out at 10:15. I missed it by 15 minutes.
When you can set your watch by Jennifer Rubin posts that target the latest Romney threat, well, there is a problem.
Guest-blogger Moe Lane also has an item about Rubin today at RedState, Is Jen Rubin using Andrew Ferguson to sneak an anti-Perry sneer in? Moe says, "[W]hile I was reading this Jen Rubin Washington Post article targeting the latest anti-Romney� excuse me, I meant to type out 'Newt Gingrich,' there�" He goes on to examine some apparently overheated rhetoric about Ferguson's coverage of Perry.
Thanks to Ben Domenech. Follow me on Twitter.
Update: Others are noticing. Jeffery Lord at American Spectator. Scott Galupo at USNWR.
Herman Cain Gets Secret Service Protection To Protect Him From...The Media? UPDATE: Cain's Camp Denies
—DrewM.
If agents are going to jump on Cain every time he says something stupid, they are all going to spend a lot of time on the ground.
Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon said Thursday night that the campaign asked for the protection after The Washington Post posted an article online that morning detailing a series of physical skirmishes involving journalists at Cain rallies...
On the campaign trail, Cain �draws anywhere from a dozen to 50 media at his events," Gordon said. "When he gets out at a rally or a campaign stop, it has been increasingly common for media to be physically putting themselves and others in danger by trying to follow him with a lot of heavy equipment and cameras in close quarters like we saw yesterday."
Maybe there's a more sinister and legitimate reason for this. After all, I doubt the Secret Service would agree to this just to protect Cain from himself.
But again this just shows the amateurish nature of Team Cain. Why give people this talking point? All they had to say was, "A request was made for Secret Service protection for Mr. Cain. We thank the members of Congress and the administration charged with making the decision for agreeing to our request. We look forward to working with the dedicated professionals at the Secret Service who do so much for our nation. Beyond that, the campaign will have no comment on matters of security". See? Not so hard.
Update: What they should have said yesterday, today.
Herman Cain's campaign is pushing back against the suggestion it requested Secret Service protection as a way to keep media at bay and limit the access reporters will have to the candidate."It has nothing to do with the media, it has nothing to do with reporters," campaign spokesman J.D. Gordon said of the request for Secret Service protection.
Gordon said the campaign had requested protection "a couple weeks ago" after having received a series of threats. But Gordon said he would not comment on the nature of the threats or any specific instances.
For me this story wasn't about the protection itself. If Cain needs it and the Secret Service agrees, then give it to him.
The issue, as it so often is with Team Cain, is basic competence. Even if they did want it to manage the press, don't say it out loud.
People were under the impression the request was because of the media not from thin air but from Cain's spokesman. That's on them, not the people who listened to them.
President Clocking Persistent 9% Unemployment Rate Kills Another 200,000 Jobs
—Ace
From Hot Air -- just kidding, Truman, I know it's in the sidebar; I just wanted to see the vein in your forehead -- the Obama Job Slaughter continues.
President Obama's United States Department of Agriculture has delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio for up to six months by cancelling a mineral lease auction for Wayne National Forest (WNF). The move was taken in deference to environmentalists, on the pretext of studying the effects of hydraulic fracturing.�Conditions have changed since the 2006 Forest Plan was developed," announced WNF Supervisor Anne Carey on Tuesday. "The technology used in the Utica & Marcellus Shale formations need to be studied to see if potential effects to the surface are significantly different than those identified in the Forest Plan." The study will take up to six months to complete.
Apart from the obvious -- another 200,000 jobs delayed, and probably delayed for longer than six months; plus the general signal to business that Obama will attempt to make every endeavor your attempt extremely costly, so don't even bother -- this reinforces my belief that liberals celebrate the abstract over the concrete.
When you think about jobs liberals like, versus jobs conservatives like, you will generally find the that the more abstract a job is -- and here I mean "abstract" to mean "removed from the physical, the concrete, and the dirty by one or more steps" -- you'll find that they tend to be soft jobs. Media advisor, writer, designer. One of the more concrete jobs they favor is the law, but that itself is far removed from actual production of goods -- law does intersect with business, but far away from the actual production of goods. Where law intersects with business it does so in a paper way -- businesses are referred to in court filings, but of course the businesses are abstracted, as the law just deals with them as legal actors. Not as real companies, with real workers and real management, producing real goods.
This is why liberals with something of a pragmatic streak go into politics. On one hand, politics does intersect with people's lives in tangible ways. On the other hand, what makes politics attractive to this psychological type is that it's a no-dirty-hands occupation. Everything is position papers and talking and media-type stuff.
As I've noted before, this all goes back to the Victorian fiction that a carpenter, who actually did a great deal of mental work, including creativity, in his job, was just a "hand worker" and therefore lower class while a drudge at the Bank of England, who merely did third-grade-level summing of accounts all day, was a "mind worker" and therefore middle class.
The liberal mindset is bewitched by this fiction -- this daft, stupid fiction -- and declares that everyone working in liberal-type fields must be of a different intellectual class than those lowly businessmen who merely manufacture goods that people wish to voluntarily buy.
And ergo, only they can make the proper decisions about whether these mentally-lower-class individuals can ply their dirty working class trades.
You don't have to be a liberal to recognize that any time you take oil or coal or shale out of the ground, it's going to have an adverse impact on the immediate environment. Not so much as the hysterical environmental lobby claims, of course, but some.
But liberals seem to live in a fantasy world in which, ideally, all of us would just be passing around pieces of paper to each other. That is, they seem to believe the world, if they got it all set up properly, would consist of only work in the soft, abstract, "clean" fields liberals prefer (clean, because they tend to be pushing paper back and forth, rather than digging and building and sweating), so, that being the ideal State of Man, there's really no problem trying to hurry that along and penalize those dirty hand-workers who want pump some oil out of the ground.
But because they are, mentally, so removed from the concrete, they are free to believe in magic. The magic in this immediate case is the magic of electricity. They seem to want a steady power supply for their MacBooks and their editing software and their Media Centers with Bose speakers, but they don't really want to think much about how that vital spark actually makes it into their homes' copper wires.
In their own minds, they've neatly cleaved the real, vital, vigorous, and dirty from their own existences, which they have endeavored to make as abstract, sedentary, and "clean" (except for those trees) as possible, so they just don't see the connection between energy production and their own energy consumption.
The electricity is magic. It will always be there, as it has always been there before, right? So, no problem killing every industry that actually tries to make some electricity.
Solar power is the perfect Magic Beans Solution for this problem with reality. It's technically not magic; it actually exists. Sort of. So it's the perfect Pretend Energy Source. Just pretend that it's an efficient source of energy, just pretend it doesn't cost far more than any other source, just pretend there's not a whole lot of environmental impact caused by the production of all those exotic chemicals required to produce the cells -- just pretend enough, and you've got your Magic Power Source, where your iPad works but not a puff of smoke rises into the air.
There's a real childish mentality here. Kids like burgers, but they will get very emotionally upset when they see a cow being butchered. I can't blame them. They're kids. And I think even I'd be shaken to see a cow pulled up by its hind legs and electrocuted, or killed by a hammer-blow to skull.
And yet, I know that my burger relies on just this process. There are no magic burgers. If I want to eat a burger -- and I do -- I have to accept that there are going to be some cows killed and butchers.
The liberal mentality has a very powerful capacity to deny reality, to escape uncomfortable facts like this through a combination of training -- they teach themselves to pretend -- and a lack of a real, hard intersection with the real, hard world.
It causes all sorts of problems. Currently we have one of them in the White House.
Midday Open Thread
—DrewM.
This just in: Obama is still a SCOAMF.
Top Headline Comments 11-18-11
—Gabriel Malor
FRIDAY! Woooooo!
Overnight Open Thread
—Maetenloch
33 Years Ago Tonight: It Happened
And what was it? Well a 3 word hint: Worst. TV Special. Ever.
That's right - on November 17th, 1978 the Star Wars Holiday Special aired on CBS for the first (and last) time. A night that will live in infamy:
The Star Wars Holiday Special is legendary amongst Star Wars fans. Created to bridge the gap between the first Star Wars movie in 1977 and its 1980 sequel The Empire Strikes Back, The Holiday Special only aired once in America and immediately rocketed to infamy by being so notoriously bad that it swings back over to good, ninja-kicks it in the groin, leaves good in a crumpled heap, and moves all the way back into shockingly horrible. ...The awkwardly-inserted musical numbers and endlessly boring live-action scenes combine to create a perfect storm of awfulness.
And how awful was it? So awful that George Lucas vowed to never let it be seen again and swore that he would track down every single copy and destroy it. So terrible that all the Holiday Special-related toys and merchandising plans (and Lucas sure loved himself those merchandising rights) were permanently canceled lest they remind anyone that it had happened.
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Who Are These Republicans? UPDATED
—Dave In Texas
Joe Walsh (Ind Ill.), John Mica (Fla.), Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.), Dan Burton (Ind.), Walter Jones (N.C.), Paul Broun (Ga.), Mike Pompeo (Kansas), Cynthia Lummis (Wyo.), Connie Mack (Fla.), Jeff Duncan (S.C.), Todd Akin (Mo.), Tim Huelskamp (Kansas), Jeff Landry (La.), Tim Murphy (Penn.), Steven Palazzo (Miss.), Dennis Ross (Fla.), John Carter (Texas), Ted Poe (Texas), Vicky Hartzler (Mo.), Kenny Marchant (Texas), Lynn Jenkins (Kansas), Quico Canseco (Texas), Charles Boustany (La.), Alan Nunnelee (Miss.), Diane Black (Tenn.), Ann Marie Buerkle (N.Y.), Allen West (Fla.), Blake Farenthold (Texas), John Culberson (Texas), Frank LoBiondo (N.J.), Steven Pearce (N.M.), Lynn Westmoreland (Ga.), Trent Franks (Ariz.), Louis Gohmert (Texas), Denny Rehberg (Mont.), Bob Latta (Ohio), Rodney Alexander (La.), Gus Bilirakis (Fla.), Blaine Luetkemeyer (Mo.) and Tom Graves (Ga.).
They're the 40 Republicans who called on Obama to demand Eric Holder's resignation over "Fast and Furious" today.
�In intentionally letting over 2,000 firearms �walk� across the border into Mexico,� it continues, �the [ATF] � under the leadership of Attorney General Holder � carried out an operation that left a U.S. Border Patrol agent dead, broke federal law and attempted to build a case for gun control. Operation Fast and Furious has proved to be one of the most serious errors in judgment carried out in recent history by a federal agency.�
From a "realistic" POV, there's no chance Obama even gives this a glance. Too early in the process, and there's an ongoing "Nixon-like" fight underway (SWIDT?) over documents subpoenaed by Issa's committee.
From a "politics" POV, it's perfect. Keep the pressure on Holder and the DoJ, keep F&F; in the spotlight, hammer them relentlessly on this. Don't. Let. Up.
UPDATE: Mexican Attorney General Marisela Morales (oh my) seeks extradition of six suspects "accused of participating in a plot to arm Mexican drug cartels with guns from the United States." via adamsbaldwin
UPDATE2: 46 now. [via WilliamAmos]. Not sure who the missing 4 are.
I shall call them, "The Forty, Forty-Six ok The Gang of At Least Forty-Six And Counting"
Sheriff Joe Biden: When Our Economy Was Crumbling, I Knew The Man I Had To Call -- Jon Corzine. And When $600 Million of Investors' Money Was Essentially Embezzled From a Hedge Fund... Just Hit Redial, I Guess
—Ace
Joe Biden sings the praises of Jon Corzine, who would later be investigated by the FBI for "borrowing" investor money to place huge bets on European sovereign debt (subsequently lost, in a major bankruptcy).
Have these imbeciles and thieves made a single right step?
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OWS: We Really Need To Boost Our Public Relations Profile. Hell's Bells, I've Got It! Let's Terrorize Small Children On Their Way To School
—Ace
Tommy Christopher just emailed me to say this only proves the OWSers are interested in education.
They were caught in the middle of madness.Some grade school students were forced to walk a gauntlet of screaming �Occupy Wall Street� protesters just to get to school on Thursday.
It was a wild day in lower Manhattan for most everyone involved, including elementary school children who had to brave the mayhem just to get to class on the other side of Wall Street.
In the middle of thousands of protestors yelling and chanting � some kicking and screaming � CBS 2�s Emily Smith found little school kids trying to get to class. Nervous parents led them through the barriers on Wall Street. The NYPD helped funnel the children, anything to ease their fears while some protestors chanted �follow those kids!�
�These guys are terrorists, yelling at little kids,� one father said.
Infiltrators, I assume.
If I were mayor, right about now I would be passing out real ammunition to selected people.*
* This does not mean I endorse violence, it means that I'm against it. Citation: Tommy Christopher.
Thanks to @iowahawkblog.
If You Had "By 6:00 PM, First Day" In The "When Will They Throw The Racism Flag" Pool, Congratulations, You Doubled Your Money
—Ace
That's racist. Everyone knows one of the deepest, darkest stereotypes about blacks is that they grow up rich and privileged.
"That's the dog whistle that Rick Perry is going for. The president was not raised privileged. He wasn't handed anything. He absolutely had to work for everything that he got. But for Rick Perry to say that President Obama was privileged and didn't have to work for what he got, the code is, he got into Columbia University, he got into Harvard University not through merit, not because he's smart, but because he took the place of someone else through affirmative action, that someone else being someone white," Mr. Capehart said on Martin Bashir's MSNBC show.
Let's just stipulate for the record that anything we say about the Pampered Princeling is racist, and move on.
Guys?
By your definition of "racism," we're going to have a lot of "racism" this campaign. Because your definition is "anything that isn't super-positive esteem-boosting about a black person!," and, I hate to break this to you, but we've got some negative things to say.
Brace yourselves and pace yourselves, is I guess what I'm trying to say. I don't want you to have aneurysms.*
* Well. Actually, I stand in solidarity with any aneurysms that should befall you, and Tommy Christopher tells me that's okay to say.
Thanks to RD.
Perry Gets Cunning: Says Obama Had a "Privileged" Background, Can't Relate To Real Workers
—Ace
Why is it cunning? Because let's face it, we wanted to hear that, and now he's in a spat with the entirety of the pinched-face liberal media.
"He grew up in a privileged way," Perry said while explaining his ad attack that decries President Obama's description of America as being "a little bit lazy over the last couple of decades."Obama made the comments Saturday in Hawaii during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit as he explained the nation can do a better job of selling goods outside of the U.S.
"You know, he never had to really work for anything and he never had to go through what Americans are going-you know, there's 14-plus million Americans sitting out there, some of them watching this program tonight that don't have a job," Perry said in an interview on Fox News.
"The president has never felt that angst that they have in their heart."
Smart. Look, in terms of primary politics, you really can't go wrong busting on Obama in a personal way and starting a headline-grabbing feud with the media.
Which isn't to say he doesn't believe it.
Just that sometimes what you believe turns out to be advantageous to say.
I'm not sure what kind of a hardship tale Obama had as a youngster. It probably is wrong to say, as a youngster, he was "privileged."
But for the entirety of his juvenile and adult life, he's been pampered, and endlessly promoted without actual achievement based on his promise alone.
Yes, that is privilege. It just kicked at around age 15.
Honored Hero of Occupy San Diego Charged With Attempted Assassination of the President
—Ace
Hardest hit: Poor little Tommy Christopher, the hapless hack, who spins his little heart out claiming that of course its natural and right to hold a moment of solidarity for a would-be presidential assassin.
It�s an odd moment, and one which reinforces liberal stereotypes about compassion and inclusion (what conservatives call �bleeding heart�),
Wrong, asshole. It reinforces stereotypes about the left's "bi-curious" attitude towards political violence.
They romanticize it. They excuse it and support it... when the right people are murdered.
And even when one of their own is shot at. The important thing is to preserve the left's general monopoly on the allegedly-legitimate use of violence in political agitation.
... but conservatives are asking questions along the lines of Ace Of Spades� rhetorical overreach: �If anyone in the Tea Party expressed solidarity with Jared Loughner (and if a group of Tea Partiers than bowed their head in respectful silence for him), do you imagine the media would have been interested?�If there was a way to go back and make it so that Loughner (the shooter in the tragic Tucson massacre earlier this year) only managed to ding a pane of bulletproof glass, I bet we would all take that deal. It�s a hideous comparison, variations of which are all over the conservative Twittersphere.
It�s silly, too, because their point, that this exact moment would have played very poorly against the Tea Party, is completely valid. Why undercut it by comparing Ortega to monsters like Loughner and Timothy McVeigh?
So Tommy Christopher's heart pumps piss for poor little Ortega.
The difference between mentally deranged Jared Loughner and mentally deranged Ortega seems to be only that Ortega chose a harder target -- both had the will to kill. It's just that Ortega happened to want to kill the most protected man on the face of the earth. Whereas Loughner's victim was a barely-protected-at-all Congresswoman who, like most Representatives, mixed freely in crowds with only a body man or two as (weak) security.
But Tommy Christopher knows which side his sad bread is buttered on, and that's on the side of defending the left at all costs, and always finding some fault in the right.
I thought political violence was bad -- and encouraging it, or sympathizing with it, is likewise bad.
Not so, says Tommy Christopher. The left is permitted to do it. Only the right shall be attacked for it...
When it happens -- and it almost never does. That's the funny thing, Tommy Christopher dreams up fantasies and criticizes the right for things that they actually didn't do ("targeting symbols!"), while giving a complete pass to the left for actually standing in solidarity with a would-be assassin.
Sometimes people get on my ass for not defending this or that conservative enough.
Sometimes I just find things unspinnable. And I think you'd look pathetic and dishonest and cheaply whorish to even try.
So this is the reason I don't do that -- I don't want to end up like the pathetic, execrable Tommy Christopher.
I can't go down that road. It's not about integrity, per se. I don't have a huge amount of integrity. Just the ordinary amount.
It's about shame. I do not have the shamelessness of a hack like Christopher, or Dave Weigel, the willingness to play the retarded lie-monkey for a left-wing Community-Based Reality that wants to be lied to.
Cop Injured In OWS Clash
Must Watch: Brutal Jon Stewart Piece Rips Class Divisions, Elitist Condescension Within OWS
—Ace
A laceration to the hand. I'm guessing this was due to cops shutting down Zucotti -- no one in or out -- because the guy doing this Livestream said there were two arrests during the park shut-down.
There are no riots that I can see in the feed, though. I put the feed back up (after shutting it down, because it was boring) looking for breaking riot footage, and instead got the videographer saying he was going to take a break and get a smoothie.
So, if he's getting a smoothie, there aren't any riots. Only, as JammieWF would say, mostly peaceful sporadic assaults.
Related: Via RD, who says this is brutal, a reporter from Jon Stewart reports on the hypocrisy of class divisions in the OWS movement.
The reporter asks an upper-crust "economically downtrodden" protester about "those shiftless hoboes from BumTown."
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Rasmussen: Gingrich Ahead In Iowa
—Ace
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Iowa Republican caucus-goers shows Gingrich with 32% followed by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney at 19%. Georgia businessman Herman Cain, who led in Iowa last month, drops to third with 13% of the vote. Texas Congressman Ron Paul draws 10% of the vote in Iowa, while Texas Governor Rick Perry and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann each grab six percent (6%).
I know people are sick of the Cain-bashing, but this is a character flaw. I'm sorry, if you're running for president, a good man takes that seriously and bothers to read a briefing book.
Cain, who last week stumbled over questions about what he would do in Libya, seemed to know little about Cuba. His campaign kept reporters at bay, and when asked about the Cuban Adjustment Act and the so-called wet-foot, dry-foot policy, Cain seemed stumped. The policy allows Cuban immigrants who have made it to US soil to stay.�Wet foot, dry foot policy?� Cain asked. His press handlers interrupted as Cain diverted his course and ducked back into the building. Later, when he emerged, he was asked again by another reporter. Cain wouldn�t answer. �
Cain, though, wouldn�t talk to reporters there, either. A FOX reporter asked Cain what he thought of President Obama�s easing of travel restrictions to Cuba. Cain said that was a �gotcha question.�
Wet foot/dry foot refers to our odd stance on Cuban refugees: We interdict them if found at sea, on boats, heading towards America, and turn them back ("wet foot"). But if they make our shores ("dry foot"), we grant them asylum.
It doesn't make a great deal of sense but then politics generally does not make a great deal of sense. It's filled with compromises and half-measures and odd gestures towards favored constituencies.
But the point is, like "Right of Return," this is no frigging obscure point of foreign policy. This is in fact something any reasonably well-informed citizen would know. Even if you just watch the presidential races every four years, this comes up. Especially in Florida, for obvious reasons.
Well, those reasons are obvious to me. Not so Cain, who thinks a question about the wet foot/dry foot Cuban refugee policy asked in Cuban-heavy Florida is a "gotcha." He doesn't even know what he doesn't know -- that is, this is all such terra incognita to him he doesn't distinguish between common knowledge and esoterica. It's all esoterica to him.
He canceled his scheduled meeting with the editors of the New Hampshire Union-Leader, after imposing a series of demands that seem designed to make the Union-Leader itself cancel the interview. They obliged him.
A scheduled meeting with the New Hampshire Union Leader's editorial board was canceled about an hour before it was to begin. There was disagreement over whether the meeting would be videotaped. The Union Leader typically allows filming of its meetings with presidential candidates; Cain's campaign refused to allow it.The newspaper is an influential voice among New Hampshire conservatives.
The development came several days after Cain appeared to struggle to respond when questioned about Libya during an interview with a Milwaukee newspaper, which was videotaped and went viral after it was posted on the Internet.Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon said the Union Leader canceled.
Dennis Miller is off the Cain Train, saying he can't win after the Libya befuddlement.
This is from the New York Times, so I understand if you discount it. However, it is sourced to ex-aides of Cain -- well, I guess you can discount that too.
And is it any wonder that Herman Cain has shed a lot of high-level campaign staff members, both within his national organization and in crucial early states like Iowa and New Hampshire? Most of these former staff members have signed nondisclosure agreements, and others would speak to me only off the record. None of them recall their former boss as a sexual harasser. But they do speak of a man so egotistical that careful self-policing would never really enter into the realm of consideration.They also speak � bitterly � of a candidate with zero interest in policy. They speak of events canceled at the last minute to accommodate any available television interview. They speak of unrelenting self-absorption, even by the standards of a politician.
It's the "zero interest in policy" thing I zero in on. Cain is not an unintelligent man -- former math whiz and CEO? He's got brains.
Which is why I put this down to a character problem. If you're running for president, and it requires, as it does, essentially cramming for One Big Test for a month, studying briefing books, etc., and you don't do that, what can I say?
If you haven't taken the candidacy seriously enough to do something you did 40 times before in college, then why should anyone else take it seriously?
Cramming for a test is not exactly climbing Mount Kilamanjaro. It's a pain in the ass, but it can be done. It's done every single day.
To just blow off that basic homework? I don't get it.
This is where I start respecting the character of Mitt Romney for at least taking the job seriously enough to do some homework.
But hopefully it doesn't come to that. Hopefully Perry will start hitting the books himself.
Hey, don't get mad at me. You're either going to hear this now from conservative agitators or you're going to hear this like gangbusters in August 2012 from liberal agitators in the Newspeak Media. Either way, you are going to hear it.
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California Supreme Court Rules Prop 8 Proponents Can Defend State Interests Without State Officials
—Gabriel Malor
The Prop 8 litigation drags on. Today, the California Supreme Court ruled that the proponents of ballot initiatives have special authority under state law to represent the state of California when the governor and attorney general decline to do so.
The official site is having traffic difficulties, I'll get a link up to the decision when I find one that works. Here (PDF); and a mirror (PDF).
The case now goes back to the 9th Circuit, which was stuck on whether the Prop 8 proponents even have standing to appeal. I raised that issue the day of the district court decision and it turned into such a mess the 9th Circuit had to ask the California Supremes for help.
Did this help? Probably. The hold-up for the 9th Circuit was whether the proponents had any injury or interest in the outcome of the litigation that sets them aside from the population at large. The California Supreme Court is saying that they do have such an interest under state law. It is likely that the 9th Circuit will find that they therefore have such an interest under federal law.
It's big news if the 9th Circuit decides to go ahead on the merits of the constitutionality of Prop 8. If the proponents didn't have standing, the case would have been done. California would have gay marriage, but there would be no binding precedent in the 9th Circuit and no chance for possible binding precedent from the Supreme Court.
Both sides, by the way, are saying that they're pleased with the decision.
Oh, and the other litigation is still alive: There are two other parallel track Prop 8 appeals in the 9th Circuit and they don't suffer from any standing questions. They are: (1) whether Judge Walker's decision finding Prop 8 unconstitutional should be stricken entirely because he failed to disclose that he was in a committed same-sex relationship while he was ruling on whether same-sex couples could get married; and (2) whether the video tapes of the trial should be unsealed and available for the public to see.
Proponents very much want the decision below to be voided. They also want to keep the trial videos sealed.
Obama, Unions, Corrupt, Etc. #4,896
—LauraW.
MORE.
It just keeps coming out, bit by bit.
Back to the GM bankruptcy again. Think the bondholders and taxpayers were the only ones that got boned? Oh, no, no no.
Is there a single instance where this administration, when faced with a choice, did not default to screwing people and then giving the proceeds to their friends?
How is this not a brazen daylight robbery?
DAYTON � The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform demanded answers in a local hearing Monday on why pensions for salaried retirees of Delphi were treated differently than pensions for other company retirees.At issue is the fact that salaried Delphi retirees saw cut their pensions cut by 30 to 70 percent when the pensions were transferred to the federally backed Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. in 2009, while General Motors elected to support or �top off� the pensions of retirees represented by three large unions.
Many of these folks worked their whole lives for GM/ Delphi and their pensions were nearly wiped out during the bankruptcy proceedings, while the union folks' were actually enhanced.
Please read the whole article. It helps to have something to bite down on, like a strip of tree bark, or a leather wallet.
From Darrell Issa's Twitter feed; he refers to this event as the Delphi pension "heist." There is no more apt description.
Everything this administration does is of a piece. Remember: "...we're going to punish our enemies and we're going to reward our friends."
Suckers of cock.
