Coincidence

On NCIS, there are rules that Jethro Leroy Gibbs follows and teaches his team as a method of being the best at what they do.

Rule #39: There is no such thing as coincidence.

Based on evidence presented to me today, I must concur.

On the Instapundit Blog today:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/

I QUESTION THE TIMING: A reader who works at Yale emails:

I found it interesting that this email came out today from Yale benefits:

Dear Colleagues:
We would like to make you aware of a significant federally mandated change which will impact Yale’s healthcare flexible spending account benefit. Effective January 1, 2013, as a provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the annual contribution limit will be capped at $2,500. Currently, the maximum amount of pre-tax dollars you can set aside in a healthcare flexible spending account is $12,000.

As a participant who contributed $2,500 or more in 2012, we encourage you to keep this in mind as you begin to plan for your 2013 out-of-pocket medical, dental and vision expenses. You will soon have an opportunity to re-enroll in the flexible spending account benefit plan during Annual Benefits Enrollment (December 3-17). As a reminder, you have until March 15, 2013 to incur expenses against your 2012 contributions, and until April 30, 2013 to submit claims those for reimbursement. We hope that this grace period is helpful for maximizing your flexible spending benefit for 2012.

If you have any further questions, please contact an Employee Services representative.
What interesting timing! I did know about this, as a former CPA/tax accountant, but how many did?

Today my husband came home and told me that his boss informed him today that a layoff is planned. Small aerospace/manufacturing plant.   We were worried before the election that if the direction didn’t change, we’d face an ugly economic future. It may already becoming true for our family.  

 I think a lot of stuff will be coming out over the next few weeks and months that was carefully kept off the radar before Election Day.

--------------------------------

Then today, I get this from a shipmate working out here in the AFGHN Sandbox:

Hi - Hope you're well

We just started open enrollment with my company; so I asked the benefits guy if I do nothing will all benefits remain the same-----a resounding yes was his answer. He did however advise me to go on the website to review the benefits to ensure all was OK.---so I did

All benefits were defaulted to the ones I have had for 3 yrs----good news; until the last page; that was the calculation page. My contribution for 3 years has been $106.00 per month; but the new contribution effective Jan. 2013 will be $293.00. 

 

That's almost a 200% increase.

So I e-mailed the benefits guy to verify this and of course his answer was "YES--WE'VE BEEN HIT WITH A HUGE RATE INCREASE'

A huge rate increase????????????????? can you say OBAMA-CARE

this is only the beginning

please share with your readers (and delete my name)

 

The idea that this all was "coincidence" is not only naive, but demonstrates a level of cluelessness that is scary.

This was part of the plan all along and people were dumb enough to vote for it.

Might be best to brush on these - we all might need them to deal with what will be coming:

500 Military Officers can't be wrong.....

THIS Speaks volumes.  Veterans take note. Vote and make your voice count.

RomneyMACad--500final4NOV2012

Performance Evaluation

As a HR professional, I have handled many performance evaluations and counseled managers on the finer points of how to fairly evaluate the performance of a staff member.

In this case, this person would be in line with the kind of evaluation you give a CEO.  The Board and shareholders would hold the CEO accountable for performance and making sure that things were done right.

In the case of this employee, he would have been let go years ago if it were possible.  He has failed on every level.  The only successes he can claim are soley due to the actions of others.

I agree with this write up.  Time to put an end to this person being in charge and get ADULT LEADERSHIP in place ASAP.

Presidential Performance Review

Mr. Obama, your performance has been unsatisfactory.

By Kevin D. Williamson

Memo From: Performance Review Committee

Employee: Barack Obama
Employee Code: USAPOTUS0044\
Contract Term: 4 Years

Recommendation: Do Not Renew (“Shoebox”)

Dear Mr. Obama:

It is with a measure of regret that I must recommend to the review committee that our firm decline to renew your contract, based on non-performance of the following deliverables:

Deliverable 1: National Security. This is the key deliverable for your role in our organization. Failure here is critical, and, while there will be inevitable setbacks and unforeseen developments, your performance here has been substandard. While I have frequently recommended to the management a more restrained policy on overseas matters — a position you endorsed during your interview process — you have managed to combine the worst aspects of your predecessor with the worst aspects of the opposing view. For example, you used the firm’s military and diplomatic pressure in service to what I think we can agree turned out to be the wrong side in Egypt and Libya, and your deployment of military assets to Uganda and the Congo is, in my view, a proposition with zero profit opportunities for the firm, horrific as that conflict is.

On the other hand, an attack on the firm’s representatives in Libya is an attack on the firm itself, i.e., precisely the time for using military force, and, more important, for taking proactive steps to prevent it in the first place — especially when such steps have been specifically requested. You don’t sit around in the executive suite and watch it happen while doing nothing — and you don’t run off to Vegas on the company jet afterward, either.
Worse, you compounded your mistakes in Benghazi by spending two weeks offering our shareholders misleading information about the nature of the episode, a firing offense. If your record were otherwise immaculate, I would still be recommending your termination to the committee for this mistake.

Deliverable 2: Public Safety. Under your management, violent crime is up 18 percent — the first such increase in 20 years. Your “Fast and Furious” project has caused serious damage to the balance sheet: one dead federal officer, more than a hundred dead civilians, a seriously cheesed-off next-door business partner, and zero cartel convictions — the lattermost being, if I understand your business strategy, the whole point of this mess. Your performance reports here have been remarkably obstructive, which is why you should have on our advice terminated Eric Holder.

Deliverable 3: Energy. When interviewing for this position, you said, and I quote, “We could have headed off $4-a-gallon gas.” We’ve seen gas prices above or near $4 for most of your term, and above $5 in some parts of the country under the management of your associates. Energy production on the firm’s lands is down substantially year-over-year.

Deliverable 4: Balance Sheet. During your interview, you proposed cutting the firm’s current operating deficit in half. In fact, the firm has acquired trillions of dollars of new debt under your management, along with new unfunded liabilities that our accountants are still trying to work out. When you were presented recommendations from a committee named by you and your management team, you refused even to consider implementing them. You are on track to add another $1 trillion in debt this year.

Deliverable 5: Growth. The first and second quarters of this year saw 1.2 percent and 2 percent growth, respectively, well under the firm’s historic average and less than half of your own team’s assumptions.

Deliverable 6: Human-Capital Deployment. We lose money when our people aren’t working. On the day you were hired, we had 65.7 percent of them on the job; today we have only 63.6 percent. We understand that the recession presented challenges, but if you had kept pace with prior post-recession human-capital deployment, we’d have 6 million more workers on the job today.

Deliverable 7: Retained Shareholder Earnings by Unit. Household incomes are down in real terms by $3,002.96 since you’ve been on the job. In case you haven’t been informed, we were hoping to get them moving in the other direction. Losing money for our shareholders is not our business model.

Deliverable 8: Cost Control. Welfare expenditures are up 32 percent since we hired you and your team. Instead of paying our people to work, we’re paying them not to work. As you might say, this is “not optimal.”

On a personal note, I’d like to say that the first time I ever had to fire anybody, I felt really bad about it. She was a nice young woman in her first real job, courteous, well-liked, always on time, and eager to do a good job. She had, unfortunately, been hired for a position that required more than her talents and experience enabled her to deliver. This is also true of you, with the exception of being courteous, likable, and punctual. If I could, I would fire you twice.

Alice from personnel will provide you with a shoebox in which to put your Nobel medal and other personal items; I’m told you won’t need a bigger box for that Churchill bust. Fortunately for you, we have a generous severance package and benefits, even in cases of gross nonperformance of duties. Please see to it that Mr. Biden gets the message — he hasn’t been answering his phone for two weeks now, and, frankly, we’re a little worried about him.

I’m also issuing a reprimand for the committee that screens our applications and hired you in the first place.

Time to go. Now.

White House told of militant claim two hours after Libya attack

Many knew that this was truth - The White House put out LIES, LIES and more damned LIES. The White House was aware from the very start that the Benghazi attack was the work of Terrorists.

Obama needs to go as he has failed as our President.  The Benghazi Cover-up is more serious than Watergate as 4 good men died and their deaths were preventable.  If we had Adult Leadership in place, they would have made sure our Ambassador in Libya had sufficient security.

Protecting our people and country is the first duty of the President.  Obama has failed.

REUTERS: White House told of militant claim two hours after Libya attack: email

The U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is seen in flames during a protest by an armed group said to have been protesting a film being produced in the United States September 11, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Esam Al-Fetori

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 9:11pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.

The brief emails also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a "terrorist" attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.

Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.

While officials did mention the possible involvement of "extremists," they did not lay blame on any specific militant groups or possible links to al Qaeda or its affiliates until intelligence officials publicly alleged that on September 28.

There were indications that extremists with possible al Qaeda connections were involved, but also evidence that the attacks could have erupted spontaneously, they said, adding that government experts wanted to be cautious about pointing fingers prematurely.

U.S. intelligence officials have emphasized since shortly after the attack that early intelligence reporting about the attack was mixed.

Spokesmen for the White House and State Department had no immediate response to requests for comments on the emails.

MISSIVES FROM LIBYA

The records obtained by Reuters consist of three emails dispatched by the State Department's Operations Center to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI, on the afternoon of September 11.

The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time - or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began - carried the subject line "U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack" and the notation "SBU", meaning "Sensitive But Unclassified."

The text said the State Department's regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was "under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well."

The message continued: "Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four ... personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support."

A second email, headed "Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi" and timed 4:54 p.m. Washington time, said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that "the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared." It said a "response team" was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.

A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: "Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack."

The message reported: "Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli."

While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president's secure command post.
Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command center, the source said.

It was not known what other messages were received by agencies in Washington from Libya that day about who might have been behind the attacks.

Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.

By the morning of September 12, the day after the Benghazi attack, Reuters reported that there were indications that members of both Ansar al-Sharia, a militia based in the Benghazi area, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda's faltering central command, may have been involved in organizing the attacks.

One U.S. intelligence official said that during the first classified briefing about Benghazi given to members of Congress, officials "carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, relying on the best analysis available at the time."

The official added, however, that the initial analysis of the attack that was presented to legislators was mixed.

"Briefers said extremists were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous, there may have been a variety of motivating factors, and possible links to groups such as (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar al-Sharia) were being looked at closely," the official said.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Mary Milliken and Jim Loney

Bayonets & Horses?? Oh yeah, they are part of our military DNA

Well we heard and have seen how much POTUS cares about the military and our Veterans.  That is why he directed that Veterans must pay more for the benefits and healthcare they deserve.  He is not fooling anyone as he hates and holds distain for all military.

We deserve better than the failed fool who we have suffered under for the last 4 years.

Bayonets & Horses??  Oh yeah, they are part of our military DNA, not that Obama would know that.

If you need a reminder, please see the enclosed picture I took in Sept. 2010 when I attended the funeral of a fallen Marine at Arlington National Cemetery who was a shipmate of mine.

 

Obama line about horses, bayonets fails - www.dailycaller.com

 

In a debate exchange Monday night that set Twitter on fire, President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney crossed swords over the kinds of equipment and materials the U.S. military uses for modern warfare.

In a response to Romney’s barb that Obama has allowed the U.S. Navy’s inventory of battleships to approach a historic low mark, Obama snarked that “we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed.”

But horses and bayonets both remain vital parts of the U.S arsenal.

The Daily Caller won a prestigious Edward R. Murrow award this year for a war report about the American soldiers who — riding on horseback — were the first U.S. forces to fight in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terror attacks.

And bayonets remain a fixture in Army infantry training and deployment. On August 6 a blogger at the Gizmodo technology website reported that the military was trading in bayonets for a “tomahawk”-like hand-to-hand combat weapon, but it later emerged that the source of that erroneous report was Duffelblog — a military spoof website modeled on The Onion.

“I think Gov. Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works,” Obama claimed Monday night.

“You — you mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.”

Deny, Deny, Deny - The strategy of a Failed Administration

The WSJ lays it out bare - The last 4 years have been a fiasco and the Village Idiot from Chicago needs to go.  Read the whole thing....

Dorothy Rabinowitz: The Unreality of the Past Four Years

The Benghazi fiasco is a brutally illuminating portrait of the Obama White House in crisis mode.

By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ

In the 1967 film "A Guide for the Married Man," a husband, played by a peerless Walter Matthau, is given lessons in ways to cheat on his wife safely. The most essential rule: "Deny! Deny! Deny!"—no matter what. In an instructive scene, he's shown a wife undone by shock, and screaming, with reason: She has just walked in on her husband making love to a glamorous stranger.

"What are you doing," she wails, "who is that woman?"

"What woman, where?" the husband serenely counters, as he and the tart in question get out of bed and calmly dress.

So the scene proceeds, with the distraught wife pointing to the woman she clearly sees before her, while her husband, unruffled, continues to look blankly at her, asking, "What woman?" Confused by her spouse's unblinking assurance, she gives up. Two minutes later she's asking him what he'd like for dinner.

For much of the past four years, the Obama administration's propensity for asserting views of reality wildly at odds with those evident to most rational citizens has looked increasingly like a page from that film script.

All administrations conceal, falsify and tell lies—this is understood—but there's no missing the distinctive quality of the prevaricating issuing from the White House in these four years.

It's a quality on vivid display now in the administration's mesmerizing narrative of the assault on the U.S. consulate in Libya. Here's a memorable picture, its detail brutally illuminating, of Obama and company in crisis mode over their conflicting stories about who knew what when. The resulting costs to truth-telling and sanity, or even the appearance thereof, are clear. Nor can we forget the strong element of farce—think U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on those five Sunday talk shows, reciting with unflagging fervor that official talking point regarding mob violence and a YouTube video. Farce, but no one is laughing.

Team Obama clung to its original story—the attack had come spontaneously at the hands of a mob enraged by that now famous video insulting to the Prophet—long after it was clear that it had been an organized terrorist assault by an al Qaeda affiliate. By Tuesday's debate, we saw a Barack Obama in high dudgeon over suggestions that his office might have deliberately misrepresented the facts. It was, he fumed, an intolerable insult that such charges could have been made about him, the president who had had to receive the bodies of the slain Americans—and who then had to set about getting to the bottom of this murderous terror assault.

Profound and urgent concerns indeed—which, the president neglected to say, had not prevented him from jetting off to his fundraiser in Las Vegas the day after the murders. His administration was not given to politicizing serious matters, the president sternly informed the nation in that second debate:

 "That's not what we do."

 

Good to know. Americans might otherwise have gotten the wrong impression in the past four years, not least from Attorney General Eric Holder, who heads the most openly politicized Justice Department in the nation's history. Among his more recent noteworthy pronouncements, this one relevant to the coming election, Mr. Holder declared that photo ID requirements intended to prevent voting fraud were nothing less than a "poll tax." He was referring to an infamous institution from the days of Jim Crow, whose aim was to suppress black voting. Mr. Holder—so famously fastidious about group sensibilities that he has never been able to bring himself to utter any description identifying a terrorist as Muslim—has apparently had no inhibitions about smearing whole segments of the population as racists.

Mr. Obama's outrage notwithstanding, the administration's prolonged efforts to muddle the picture of the Benghazi attack raised proper suspicions. The Obama team's instant response—that Republicans were attempting to politicize a tragedy—was entirely characteristic. If ever a story screamed its politicized nature, it was the administration's Scheherazade-like tale, now five weeks old and rolling on, about that Sept. 11 assault. A tale that left little doubt of its motivation: fear of the impact, so close to the election, of a successful terrorist attack—the clear indication that al Qaeda was not, as claimed, on the run.

It didn't hurt, of course, that a crude video like the one insulting to Islam is exactly the kind of fodder to which the Obama ministry is partial: Here was an opportunity for right-minded condemnation of bigotry, and if that bigotry was directed at Muslims, all the more opportune. It would be hard to say which member of the Obama administration most invoked the power and influence of that bit of film, officially to be known, now and forever, as the disgusting and reprehensible video.

More and more clearly, the Obama administration has put its faith in the view that the governed, who must be told what is best for their lives, whether they want it or not (see ObamaCare), can also be told that they have not seen what they've seen, have not heard what their ears clearly told them. When the "if you've got a business, you didn't build that" speech proved to be a political land mine, team Obama instantly charged malicious, out-of-context distortion. The president was only talking about—infrastructure! About government-built roads vital for businesses, transportation, etc.

It isn't likely that Americans who had heard the Obama address failed to understand, rightly, its sneering tone directed at those who believed they had a right to think they were responsible for their own success. Not likely that they didn't notice the icy thrust of those words, "I'm always struck by people who feel, 'Well, it must be because I'm just so smart.'" The president had revealed, with unforgettable clarity, his contempt for faith in individual enterprise—a value Americans of every station hold dear. So clear was this contempt, the Republicans knew enough to make it the Day One theme of their convention—the only good day. Democratic Party representatives meanwhile went forward en masse to charge the Republicans with dishonesty.

In the books yet to be written about this presidency, the Obama administration's exceptional readings of reality will deserve an honored place, and a large one. One that should also acknowledge the fact that, in the end, the American people inevitably recognize the difference between lies and truth, illusion and the real thing.

The most telling example of this capacity—the October surprise that shouldn't have been surprising—came with the first presidential debate. The nation saw a superbly cogent Mitt Romney, speaking to them in terms instantly recognizable, words without artifice that addressed their real lives. Viewers saw the life in him, the play of mind, felt the sense of powerful will—that of a leader. It didn't matter all that much that the president looked most unpresidential, a man lost. What mattered was the other man before them, who had brought home to Americans what they had been missing the past four years.

Not surprisingly, when the debate's effects were clear, Obama squads were again deployed to cry fraud. Mr. Romney, we were told, had done nothing but lie. This would now be the official story. It would have no effect. People had seen what they had seen and that would not be changed, not by an improved, fighting Obama as he was last Tuesday, or by a heroically transformed one on Monday night.

Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal's editorial board

18 Days to go - Time for America to elect ADULT LEADERSHIP

18 Days to go on one what has been one of the longest Presidential Campaigns known to our country.

Based on the way things are now with the 24 hours a day news cycles and such, the campaign has been ongoing since back in 2010 when the Congressional Mid Term elections concluded.  The way things are going, as soon as the results are in for the election on November 6th, we will start to hear news idjits commenting on the 2016 Presidential race.

I have already voted and it was one of the important tasks I need to complete while stateside.  I was glad to be able to cast my vote back home as I am seriously concerned on whether a vote cast here in AFGHN would find its way back to the homefront in a timely fashion.  I remember that there were many issues with votes cast by servicemen and women overseas back in the 2008 election.

In the meantime, we will have to endure another 18 days of the BS spewed at us by the media and look to what the people say when they cast there ballots.

I pray and hope that we get a new President out of the process as I cannot see the present occupant of the office being there for another 4 years.  the last 4 years under his stewardship have been marked with utter failure to handle the responsibilities which he has been given charge of and his utter inability to perform the job in a manner that provides the US with Leadership.

I have said it before and I will say it again - Obama is not the most qualified person for the job and he has shown that electing someone based on " Hope and Change " is NOT how we need to elect Leaders in our country.

His election to the highest office in the land has been a major setback for our country and an demonstrated failure by those who placed him there.

It is time for our country to get back to having ADULT Leadership in our highest office, something that has been absent for the past 4 years.

Winter is coming and $ 4 a gallon heating oil is a major economic issue

If you live in the Northeast US or anywhere north of Florida, the news for this winter is not good.  Heating Oil costs $4 Gallon and the price of natural gas is going up at least 20%.

So what is the response from those in charge of our country to this critical issue???

Well the President and the Congress are giving it a " What do you expect us to do??" response that means many people will be freezing in their own homes as filling the oil tank with 250 gallons of heating oil costs $ 1000, and that is not something that most people can spare right now.

Read what the WSJ had to say about what our President has done to make us more energy independent - Those clueless enough to vote for the President might want to rethink their vote.

President Obama is campaigning as a champion of the oil and gas boom he’s had nothing to do with, and even as his regulators try to stifle it. The latest example is the Interior Department’s little-noticed August decision to close off from drilling nearly half of the 23.5 million acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

The area is called the National Petroleum Reserve because in 1976 Congress designated it as a strategic oil and natural gas stockpile to meet the “energy needs of the nation.” Alaska favors exploration in nearly the entire reserve. The feds had been reviewing four potential development plans, and the state of Alaska had strongly objected to the most restrictive of the four. Sure enough, that was the plan Interior chose.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says his plan “will help the industry bring energy safely to market from this remote location, while also protecting wildlife and subsistence rights of Alaska Natives.” He added that the proposal will expand “safe and responsible oil and gas development, and builds on our efforts to help companies develop the infrastructure that’s needed to bring supplies online.”

The problem is almost no one in the energy industry and few in Alaska agree with him. In an August 22 letter to Mr. Salazar, the entire Alaska delegation in Congress—Senators Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski and Representative Don Young—call it “the largest wholesale land withdrawal and blocking of access to an energy resource by the federal government in decades.” This decision, they add, “will cause serious harm to the economy and energy security of the United States, as well as to the state of Alaska.” Mr. Begich is a Democrat.

The letter also says the ruling “will significantly limit options for a pipeline” through the reserve.

So we have anabundent supply but the FEDS have decided they would rather import oil from overseas.  In the meantime, people will freeze in their homes while the pols dither.  We deserve better.

VP DEBATE - Biden yells, " Hey Kid, Get off my lawn ! "

I watched the VP Debate last night and it was exactly what was expected.  Biden was unable to defend his points so he resorted to acting like  " Rude Joe "

The Wall Street Journal writes it up well this morning:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443749204578051073494711456.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

If the DEMS strategy is to act rude and try to shout over your opponent, they will lose as people are sick of that version of politics.  I have already voted by absentee ballot....make sure you vote as this election matters.

EPIC Bumper Sticker

THIS one says it all - The Campaigner-In-Chief was too busy going to THE VIEW, David Letterman's show and fundraisers to do his job - Because of his negligence, good men died.  Obama is a disgrace and needs to go.  Dereliction of Duty is the charge and Obama is guilty along with Secretary Clinton.   She is equally responsible and needs to go also.

There can be no more serious issue than the defense of our embassies and the staff who work there.  Obama and Hillary Clinton have failed their responsibility and need to go.

The Choice is Clear

This sign is at the Intersection of M40 and Blue Star near Saugatuck, MI

Pretty much sums it up - The Choice IS Clear

A Businessman who generated BILLIONS or a POL who wasted TRILLIONS ????

 

Lying Liz Warren gets slammed by Senator Scott Brown in debate

It's about time Senator Scott Brown puts this pathetic liar and tool of the Libs away.

Fauxcahontas found out last night her lies will not carry her into office. Take a look at the picture from last night. Prof. " Blame America First" Warren who doesn't wear an American Flag on her lapel, just like her boss/mentor President Doofus.

Scott Brown charges out of gate, slams Liz Warren on ‘truthfulness’ By Hillary Chabot and Joe Battenfeld Friday, September 21, 2012 - Boston Herald

U.S. Sen. Scott Brown turned aggressor in his first debate clash with rival Elizabeth Warren, questioning her character for claiming to be Native American and scolding her for “scaring women” to win votes.

“She checked the box claiming she was a Native American, and clearly she’s not,” Brown said in the opening minute of the debate, referring to law school directories where Warren listed herself as a Native American minority.

“When you are a United States senator, you have to pass a test, and that’s one of character and honesty and truthfulness,” Brown said. “And I believe and others believe that she’s failed that test.”

Read the whole thing -

http://bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1061161946&position=1

"The house is burning down, and the Democratic constituencies want free ice cream."

Jennifer Rubin from the WAPO puts it succinctly - The DEMS haven't got a clue and we need ADULT LEADERSHIP, not a President who acts like a petulant teenager on a spending spree with our national credit card.

Whistling past the graveyard at the Democratic convention By Jennifer Rubin - Washington Post

If you had been dropped from outer space into the Democratic National Convention, you would have thought that we enjoyed full employment, reduced poverty and stared down Iran, leaving us with deeply important issues like paying for birth control for grown women. You would have thought that a large majority of Americans weren’t sympathetic to Israel and weren’t religious. You’d have thought that the federal government had money to burn and no looming debt crisis. You would never have thought that Obama had signed a “historic” health-care bill. And you’d have thought that the political heavyweight in the Obama household was Michelle. (Well, you might have been right about the last one.)

But knowing that the America of 2012 is so very different than the convention portrait, it’s worth asking how the Democrats’ convention became so divorced from reality.

We saw a party in which the inability to tackle the monumental problems of our time ( entitlement reform, fiscal crisis, endemic high unemployment, a nuclear-armed Iran) has left a large gaping hole where its core should be. As our problems have gotten bigger, the party has gotten smaller, angrier and less grown-up. The house is burning down, and the Democratic constituencies want free ice cream.

So, how does it happen that days are spent on abortion on demand (which we essentially have anyway until the Supreme Court decides differently) and contraception, while big-ticket items are ignored?

The answer is twofold, I think. The current state of the Democratic Party is both the natural consequences of a longtime trend and the reflection of a president who is tragically unequipped to do his job.

Constituent politics is nothing new to the Democratic Party, of course. Ever since FDR strung together an alliance of urban blacks, Southern whites, labor and immigrants, the Democratic Party has been collecting interest groups like a girl collects charms for her bracelet. The groups have multiplied (gays, Native Americans, public employees), but the concept has been the same for 70 years. In exchange for votes the Democratic Party will give you lots of “free” stuff. To get free stuff you have to pay a lot of taxes and idealize government as the font of good deeds, so that citizens won’t mind an increasingly intrusive and expensive government. The point is not to solve problems or even measure success; the point is to keep the swapping (votes for free stuff) going strong.

A lot of the big-ticket items have already been doled out. So now we’re down to the really small beans ( free contraception!). Whether the giveaways are small or large (e.g., unlimited health care for all, free college education) the idea is propounded that the measure of a decent, successful society is how much free stuff you give away.

This phenomenon has been amply documented (most recently by Jay Cost in in his new book, Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic). But usually the itty-bitty items and the atomized nature of a party strung together only by the common desire to get free stuff are not so obvious. Usually, there is an overarching purpose that takes center stage, while the interest group plate-spinners carry on along the sidelines. What was so startling at this year’s Democratic convention was that there is nothing else but the interest group beg-a-thon.

And this brings us to the current president. In 2008 Barack Obama had big themes and big ambitions that gave the party coherence. Having failed to do the big things (curb the debt, stop Iran, jump-start the economy), he chose to ignore the biggest issues of our time. My colleague Michael Gerson aptly put it: “Obama made almost no mention of the continuing jobs crisis. He offered nothing new or creative on a fiscal and debt crisis that undermines economic confidence. Much of Obama’s agenda — lowering tuition costs, recruiting math and science teachers, ‘long-lasting batteries’ — sounded like a seventh-year State of the Union address, a collection of policy leavings and leftovers.”

So then it wasn’t merely that Obama let loose the rent-seekers (and birth control-seekers and free-education-seekers). No, he needed them to fill up the space and the airwaves, to promise that no matter what (fiscal crisis, recession) he will still be there to cater to the whims and demands of the constituent groups. Sure the economy is bad, but who’s going to give you free college tuition?

It’s ludicrous, of course. If the economy doesn’t improve and we don’t avoid the fiscal cliff, we’ll be taking away, not handing out stuff. This is the “austerity” against which the liberals inveigh. In fact, they are driving us ever closer to the point where we will will have to quickly and severely cut out the handouts.

It is, as conservatives have said for so long, the Western European syndrome. As we spend and cater to the demanding crowd, we push ourselves closer and closer to the point where both the excessive demands and actual needs will go unmet.

It is interesting that on Friday major financial institutions sounded the alarm about the state of the economy. James Pethokoukis quoted JPMorgan’s economist Michael Feroli:

Labor market activity was disappointing again in Aug . . . The more comprehensive employment-to-population ratio ticked down to 58.3%; this measure is a mere 0.1% above its cycle trough, indicating that once one takes account of population growth there has been essentially no progress in repairing the labor market after the recent downturn. In fact, if you go through the details it’s hard to find any redeeming aspects to this jobs report. In terms of the broader economy, today’s numbers should check any enthusiasm that the economy was gaining momentum toward the end of the summer. Instead, the economy appears to remain stuck in the mud.

“Awful,” “dreary,” weak” and “dismaying.” He sounds like the town crier straining to wake up the town. But in Charlotte the Democrats had their fingers in their ears, as if blocking out the noise would make it go away, or at least muffle others’ hearing. What’s that? The economy is near a recession? Hmm. Did I mention we’ll give you free birth control?

I like to say that the first side in a campaign to raise social issues is losing on everything else. In this case, the campaign spending three days on wedge issues and statist trinkets is getting clobbered on everything else.

Maybe the Obama cynicism is right and the public is willing to be coddled and distracted. But somehow I think not. At some point voters want to fix the big things; they might even be willing to forgo a lot of free stuff

Picture from a Politics Free Zone

PIC from the surface of MARS via Curosity - Many likley wish they could be there to escape the non-stop BS from the POLS....This is what the surface of another world looks like and we need to keep reaching for the stars, not letting the POLS kill off NASA.

OHIO spells FAILURE for OBAMA

Important Campaign issues

The choice is pretty easy to see.......

The Real Story - Romney is winning and the MEDIA is baised against him

The shite has already started from those in the LIB Media who want to keep Obama in office.  The stories are like the one posted in Newsweek ( You mean they are still in business??) with a story title like " The Obama Landslide ??" - Puhleeeeeze.

This crap about Obama winning is just that - CRAP.

Pro Publica analyzed the news over the last few months and found that news reports written about Romney were 84% negative...... 84% !!  That is from a non-biased organization dedicated to providing the facts. 

People are hurting, unemployment is outta control, the economy is teetering on a 2nd recession and the media thinks people believe that the Village Idiot from Chicago is going to get re-elected ??? 

Bull.  That's what this it is  -  out & out BULLSHITE.

The Media think putting down a self-made millionaire is going to work with people who see that the President has never held a job in the private sector in his adult life???  I vote for the candidate who knows how to make money in the private sector. All Obama wants to do is print up and hand out more federal dollars out of our pockets.

Read this and get a fresh perspective of what the media are trying to do.....then Vote the Idiot in the White House out of office.  If you care about our country, don't give Obama four more years to continue the crap he has wrought upon our nation.  He is not worthy and we, the American people deserve better.


The Real Poll Numbers
By Dick Morris on August 6, 2012 

The media is trying to create a sense of momentum and of inevitability about the Obama candidacy. One benighted Newsweek reporter even speculated about a possible Democratic landslide.

On Friday, I saw the real numbers. These state-by-state polls, taken by an organization I trust (after forty years of polling) show the real story. The tally is based on more than 600 likely voter interviews in each swing state within the past eight days.

The trend line is distinctly pro-Romney. Of the thirteen states studied, he improved or Obama slipped in nine states while the reverse happened in only four. To read the media, one would think that Romney had a terrible month. In fact, the exact reverse is true.

Romney is currently leading in every state McCain carried plus: Indiana, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, and Colorado. If he carries these states, he’ll have 228 electoral votes of the 270 he needs to win.

To win the election, Romney would then have to carry Florida where he trails by two points, and either Virginia (behind by two) or Ohio where he’s down by only one.

If he carries all three of these states and also wins all the others where Obama is now at 50% or less – Iowa, New Mexico, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey — he will get 351 electoral votes, a landslide about equal to Obama’s 363 vote tally in 2008.

The strong probability is that Romney does, in fact, carry Florida, Ohio, and Virginia and a share of the other states where Obama is below 50% of the vote.

So don’t believe the garbage being put out by the media. The attempt to portray Romney as not catching on and as dropping in the polls is ludicrous. It is, at best, the product of incompetent polling and, at worst, the result of deliberate media bias. But Romney is winning and expanding his lead each week. That’s the real story

Hard to tell who is the bigger dummy

Obama and Reid are a pair of Dummies.  If they think the American people believe anything they say, it proves they really are a pair of dummies - unethical and without honor. 

Time to go Mr. Obama and take Hapless Harry Reid with you.....

The HYPOCRISY of the LIBERAL MEDIA knows no bounds

If you read this blog, you know I am big about the definition of words as the definition is important.

Today's word is:

hy·poc·ri·sy - Noun:The practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.

As in MEDIA HYPOCRISY.

The idjits who sit in the ivory towers at the NY Times and other bastions of LIB stupidity will condemn Ann Romney for wearing a $990 shirt, but lavish praise on the First Lady for wearing a $6800 outfit.

Pathetic. The worst part is they think you and I are stupid and will not catch on to the way they try to scam us.

Both Presidential Candidates are Millionaires.  Both have more money than common sense.  Both are far above the majority of average Americans.

To think the Media can be so partial and basically be cheerleaders for one candidate and condemn another is the surest sign that things are not what they should be in reporting.

The Journalists who act this way are lying to you.  I see it, and others see it.  They should be ashamed to show their faces as things have gone downhill for what passes as reporting the news.

Edward R. Murrow must be spinning in his grave. 

VOTE and show the idjits in the media you know that they are liars.  Buck the system and put the liars on the losing side as that is the best way to show them you know their game is up.


Ann Romney slammed for $990 Shirt, Michelle Obama praised for $6,800 jacketBy Hollie McKay
Pop Tarts
Published August 01, 2012

Back in May, Ann Romney, wife of Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, wore a $990 Reed Krakoff silk shirt for a media appearance. The item of clothing set off a media firestorm, with the Romneys widely accused of being “out of touch” with average Americans.
In particular, the Washington Post wrote that the $990 blouse “will not help her husband change those perceptions, no matter how many Laundromat photo ops are on the campaign’s itinerary.”

Fast forward to last Friday, when First Lady Michelle Obama attended an Olympics reception for heads of state at Buckingham Palace, donning a J. Mendel cap sleeve jacket from the 2013 Resort collection.

The price-tag? $6,800.

This time, the Washington Post simply described the intricacies of the jacket and noted that Mrs. Obama has previously been criticized for “not dressing up enough for Queen Elizabeth II, so she stepped up her game.” No snide remarks, no outrage over the cost, no suggestion she was “out of touch.”

“The media’s overabundant love affair with the Obamas has become increasingly blatant as this election draws nearer. Scrutinizing Mrs. Romney for a fashion choice that cost considerably less than that of the First Lady is yet another example of the media being purely sanctimonious,” former political publicist Angie Meyer told FoxNews.com. “The media continues to relish their roles as liberal bullies, and have relentlessly bullied the Romneys from the beginning. It is pure hypocrisy at its finest.”

Glenn Selig of The Publicity Agency concurred.

“The media will not stay quiet on the issue because wealth remains a big issue with the Romneys. It is not his fault that he's wealthy, but the media is portraying it as a liability,” Selig said.

Dan Gainor, VP of Business and Culture for Media Research Center in Washington DC, said it’s “just the latest example of a consistent media theme that somehow Romney is too wealthy and out of touch because he's a millionaire. Except of course that Obama is also a millionaire. “

Some also highlighted the apparent hypocrisy on Twitter. “And you thought the Romneys were out of touch?” tweeted one, while another wondered who had to pay for the almost $7,000 dress, and another balked that the “jacket would put a lot of food on the table of one of the 25M unemployed people in USA.”

Not everyone’s nose was out of joint, however. Media commentator Jenn Hoffman told FoxNews.com that “Americans need to face the fact that with our current system, politicians need to have money. That is how they get into the office in the first place. If you are near the White House, you have access to serious cash and much of that cash is spent on honing your image.”

Mark Joseph, producer of “Wild Card: The Promise & Peril of Sarah Palin,” added that “Mrs. Romney's wardrobe expenses are certainly fair game, but so are Mrs. Obama's, and political reporters have got to do a better job of being even-handed."

" You didn't build that..."

It is very likely he would have been thrown over the side......sounds like a great idea.

What an idiot.  A failure who has been exposed by his own words....Time to go Mr.Obama.