Sunday - February 05, 2012

Pimping for Paul – Nevada brothels back the libertarian contender

Snow last night and almost gone this morning. Cold but no freeze so far. Lucky in this part of the country.

I found this in a paper yesterday and thought it was funny.  In a way. Just not certain what way but hey, it is interesting. When was the last time a candidate had the backing of this potentially large group. lol.  Sorry guys but it is amusing.  I just haven’t figured out exactly why that’s so.  One does find if one looks, some interesting things in liberal papers. Not always the maddening stuff.  Anyway, I forgive myself for this on the grounds that at least it isn’t The Guardian. Which for Americans reading here I should explain. Guardian .... Karl Marx .... Trotsky ..... the same family by blood ties.

Pimping for Paul – Nevada brothels back the libertarian contender

In a state built on rugged individualism, Ron Paul is a major Republican player

Forget Newt Gingrich’s “Winning our Future” or Mitt Romney’s “Believe in America”. The snappiest campaign slogan so far this Republican election season greets visitors who step across the threshold of an establishment called the Moonlite Bunny Ranch a few miles outside Carson City, Nevada.

There, in a dimly-lit world of red satin and inexpensive perfume, a cigar-chomping entrepreneur with a bald head and a smile as wide as the desert sky politely informs visitors that he and his employees intend to spend the coming months: “Pimpin’ for Paul”.

The entrepreneur is Dennis Hof, a reality TV star who achieved fame in Cathouse, an HBO fly-on-the-wall series which for the past decade has followed proceedings at the Bunny Ranch, one of five legal brothels that he owns in Nevada. The Paul he is pimping for is of course Ron Paul, the ultra-libertarian Congressman from Texas currently seeking the Republican nomination.

In Nevada, which holds caucuses this morning, Mr Paul is a major player. And Mr Hof is one of his best-known donors and most prolific advocates. Sitting at his desk, with a noisy Pomeranian called Gucci at his feet and a blonde who calls him “Daddy” rubbing moisturising lotion into his head, Mr Hof noted that he’d recently endorsed the Congressman on all three of America’s major news networks: MSNBC, Fox News and CNN.

“Ron Paul fits perfectly with the ethos of the Bunny Ranch,” he said. “He doesn’t want to tell you how to live, who to sleep with, and what to do. He might not approve of prostitution, but he believes individual states have the right to choose whether to accept it. That makes him my kind of guy.”

Mr Hof argues, with some justification, that legalisation prevents abuse and disease within the sex industry. He also says it provides valuable revenue to communities. All 500 of the prostitutes at the Bunny Ranch declare their earnings to the taxman. The licence fee provides $500,000 a year to the local authority. “It’s legal. It’s sex for sale, and it works,” he says. “It eliminates the problems with prostitution. And we put millions and millions of dollars back into society.”

Inside the Bunny Ranch’s front door, in the reception area is a glass Perspex box, stuffed with banknotes destined for Mr Paul’s coffers. Next to it is a pile of “Ron Paul 2012” leaflets. In the car park sit limousines which will provide free lifts to the caucus this morning.

Members of Mr Hof’s harem work as independent contractors, setting their own fees and paying the house a 50 per cent commission. Several are currently putting all of the tips they receive from clients into the Perspex kitty.

“He is the only candidate who supports our right to do what we want with our bodies in our own lives,” said Cami Parker, a Hustler magazine centrefold. She also likes Mr Paul’s non-interventionist foreign policy platform. “We should bring our troops home. I’m about making love, not war.”

Other colleagues offered eloquent endorsements of Mr Paul’s policy. The venue’s general manager, who gave her name as “Madam Suzette,” waxed lyrical about his support for the rights of states over the federal government: “because that’s what keeps us in business”.

Jayla Conrad, 21, said she was backing Paul as “an animal lover”. He is the only Republican candidate to oppose a recent federal law legalising the slaughter of horses for human consumption.

Beyond the pink brothel walls, the existence of “Pimpin’ for Paul” highlights an important factor playing into today’s caucus: Ron Paul’s libertarian platform speaks directly to the ethos of Nevada, a quirky desert state which from the days of the Gold Rush was built on rugged individualism. Nevada has no income tax, no state income tax, and no laws to prevent you losing your shirt at the casino, while smoking. It’s the only state in the US where brothels are legal. Ron Paul came second here in 2008, picking up 14 per cent of the vote to Mitt Romney’s 51 per cent, and has been doggedly courting local voters ever since. He launched his economic policy in Nevada several months ago, and was in Las Vegas this week speaking to the large Latino community.

Supporters, who note that Mr Paul tends to over-perform in caucuses admit they face an uphill struggle to achieve an upset victory: Mr Romney enjoys huge support from Nevada’s Mormon community, who are expected to make up around 30 per cent of voters and last time backed him by a majority of more than nine to one.

But after a string of disappointing performances, including a hammering in Florida this week, Nevada provides Ron Paul with a valuable chance to reinsert himself into the conversation.

source

Posted by peiper     on 02/05/2012 at 05:05 AM   
Filed Under: • Politics • Sex •  
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   Wednesday - February 01, 2012

myths about republicans and can we actually win come november.

I happen to catch Janet Daley on the radio last night for the first time.  Hope it won’t the last cos she can wipe the floor with any lib. they put against her.
Oh how I wish she could take the time to answer each of her critics on this article.  Of course, there may an honest point or two made by those who oppose her comments here. I’m not posting the comments cos while interesting, they are also anger inducing. So you read them if you want to, at the link.

Three myths about the Republican primary contest

Explaining the more arcane procedures of the American presidential primary system to my British friends is difficult enough. The distinction between a caucus and a primary ballot, and the various forms of the latter – those that are open to everyone in the state, as opposed to those that are restricted to registered voters of a particular party; those that are winner-takes-all as opposed to those in which the delegates are distributed in proportion to the votes won, etc - can take up half a lunch time by itself. But once these technical matters have been mastered, there are more serious political misconceptions that must be dispelled. So in the interests of international understanding, let me take on three prevailing confusions about the current Republican primary season.

Myth 1:
There is so much acrimony and bile being expended between the candidates that irrevocable harm is likely to be done to all of them in the eyes of the electorate. The mudslinging – all the negative ads and personal malice – will leave a permanently unsavoury impression of the party, whoever wins in the end.
Refutation: no, it won’t. Primary contests are always bloody and bitter. In 2008, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton gouged lumps out of one another for months. She accused him of being hopelessly callow and inexperienced – and worse, her husband unforgivably dismissed Obama’s campaign as being similar to Jesse Jackson’s ie just another futile attempt from an over-ambitious black politician to leapfrog over the legitimate candidate. Obama in turn, implied that Mrs Clinton had no legitimate political credentials at all: that she seemed to think that having lived in the White House as a First Lady was sufficient qualification to be president. All of this nastiness was forgotten once Obama got the nomination whereupon the entire Democratic machine got behind him and propelled him to victory. What the melodramatic vitriol had served to do was make the Democrats seem like the centre of the political universe, providing a setting in which its rising star could establish a national reputation.

Myth 2:
The longer this ugly race goes on, the worse it will be for the Republicans who will end up looking like vindictive children, and damage each other so much that they will be crippled when it comes to the actual election. It would be better if everybody except the obvious front-runner pulled out now.
Refutation: The longer the race goes on, the more the mettle and personal courage of the candidates will be tested. There is always something of the OK Corral shoot-out in American elections: behaving like a gentleman is fine for a president once he is in office but a candidate needs to be able to remain standing in a long and bruising fight to prove his fitness. And, as I noted above, the longer the national drama is centred on the Republicans, the longer voters will pay attention to them. As soon as the nomination is seen to be a done deal, the public gaze will move away.

Myth 3:
Gingrich is now a dead duck. Defeat in Florida has finished him.
Refutation: This is likely to be true but not necessarily so. In 2008, Hillary’s campaign came back from the dead repeatedly. She was written off – only to recover again – so frequently that it became the received wisdom that Obama had failed “to seal the deal” until virtually the last moment. The outcome which seems in retrospect to have been inevitable was very much touch-and-go during the primaries – and the dramatic suspense of that uncertainty almost certainly helped the Democrats in the presidential election.
Moral of the story? American politics is very, very different from our own. US voters are not so repulsed by “unpleasantness” as the British, and they really, really do not like being second-guessed by the media.

COMMENTS AT SOURCE

Hope I don’t P.O. my friends here but .........

I am not feeling very confident about the election.  People who voted for Obama and are now unhappy, are not necessarily Republican friendly.  But they might vote for him again if only because of ill feelings about our side.  And to be frank, while I like Gingrich, and I think he’s far and away smarter then any of his opponents, I don’t think he can win.  And that leaves who as a choice? 

When I was in Ca. a few months ago, I watched one of the debates and was thoroughly put off by the bad behavior of Santorum.  If some didn’t spot it, and I was surprised hardly anything was made of it, then some just weren’t listening and watching as closely as they might have. 
I’m not crazy about Mitt either and I heard him singing on the radio last night.  Good grief how embarrassing.  I thought he appeared desperate.  Some may not see it that way.  I don’t feel too good about this. The prospect of another term for Obama is genuinely a very scary thought.  So I suppose I’ll either have to pass on voting, which is not an option, or vote for whoever wins the Republican nomination, which is the only option open to me that I can see.  And it’s far too late to run for office myself and anyway, even I wouldn’t vote for me. Depressing thought here.  We may not have anyone on our side who will be able to defeat Obama.
I am not feeling very well at that thought.  In fact, I am increasingly sick over it. 

Posted by peiper     on 02/01/2012 at 11:08 AM   
Filed Under: • Politics • Republicans • USA •  
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   Monday - January 23, 2012

Time For A Purge

Gird your loins for 2012, conservatives.  A voter fraud case in upstate New York should serve as a reminder of what crooked politicians are willing to try during an election year.

The election fraud in Troy grows ever larger…

Via the Times Union:

A grand jury investigating ballot fraud in a 2009 primary indicted City Councilman Gary Galuski.  He is the eighth person to face charges in connection with the probe.

Galuski was arraigned Wednesday afternoon in Rensselaer County Court by Greene County Court Judge George J. Pulver. Galuski pleaded not guilty.

Galuski was charged with four counts of first-degree falsifying business records.

The case centers around fraudulent attempts to get Democrat candidates on the ballot for the Working Families Party.  The problem with the WFP?  Roger Stone reports:

The WFP has been proven to be nothing more than a front for ACORN and its left-ward agenda.

WFP is used by ACORN as a sledge hammer to force Democrats to toe the Union line.  WFP was founded by key members of ACORN, and shares many of its political strategies.  The WFP has listed ACORN as an affiliate program directly on their Web site.

For those thinking ACORN has disbanded in New York, think again.  They simply had a name change to New York Communities for Change.

As the city of Troy, NY, awaits jury selection in the first trial involving two Democrats and their alleged roles in a “massive” voter fraud scheme, new details have emerged from the investigation.  Details involving two other veteran political operatives that have already pleaded guilty.

According to a recent Fox News report, Anthony Renna, a Democrat guilty of second-degree forgery, and Anthony DeFiglio, a Democrat guilty of first-degree falsifying business records, are trying to drag all local politicians, regardless of party affiliation, down with the ship.  Thus far, eight people have been charged in connection with the ballot fraud investigation, four of which have pleaded guilty.

Reports emerging from the investigation indicate that the Democrats are trying to implicate Republicans of the same conduct they have been charged with.  According to the state police, Renna and DeFiglio both claimed that, ”voter fraud is an accepted way of winning elections, and faking absentee ballots was commonplace.”

Renna explained that the process of handing in forged ballots and fake votes ensures that “ballots are voted correctly.” He adds, “‘Voted correctly’ is a term used for a forged application or ballot.”

DeFiglio added that such fraud is actually “an ongoing scheme and it occurs on both sides of the aisle.  What appears as a huge conspiracy to nonpolitical persons is really a normal political tactic.”

Local Republicans, presumably the party being referred to on the other side of the aisle, are vehemently denying that ballot fraud was,or is, a normal political tactic.

James Gordon, Chairman of the Troy Republican Committee said, having been a part of the election process for a number of years that he has, “never heard or seen anything resembling these actions.”
...
With eight Democrats facing charges in the investigation, Gordon sums up the situation by saying, ”Democrats wanted to win and it appears at any cost.”

“This was greed, ignorance, lack of ethics, and laziness.  Bad people doing bad things.”

even more here

Every voter roll in the country needs to be purged and brought up to date, cross referenced to the graves registration folks, Social Security, the Post Office, et cetera. No motor voters, no absentee ballots without a certifying witness. Photographic voter IDs when you vote. And significant fines laid on those who try to vote more than once, who try to vote in someone else’s name, and so on. If you want an honest government the very first step is to make sure they are elected honestly. Not a single citizen should tolerate any of this crap, ever. Not even once. And for the officials involved in collecting and counting the votes? Jail time if they rig it or mess it up. They’ve been given a sacred public trust, and sullying that ought to be a stoning offense.

We The People are the law, and the law is there for us. We are not there for the law. Never forget.

“It shakes the confidence of the voters when they see something like this happened,” said former Troy Mayor Harry Tutunjian, who recently left office and is now a Republican member of the county legislature. “We want to encourage people to get out and vote and express their democracy. But if they see their right to vote being taken away by others, they are going to be hesitant and think that their vote isn’t worth anything,”

Special Prosecutor Trey Smith obtained indictments against a slew of public officials, including former City Council President Clem Campana, City Clerk William McInerney, and two city councilmen besides LoPorto, John Brown and Gary Galuski. Campana and Galuski have pleaded not guilty.

Brown, who pleaded guilty to possession of a forged instrument, could go to jail for six months. LoPorto, who ran for re-election last November as the Working Families Party candidate, was defeated.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/23/2012 at 08:48 AM   
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   Wednesday - January 18, 2012

NAAAH looks for, finds racism in unreleased app

The National Association for the Advancement of Assholes (NAAAH, aka NAACP) has found racism in a smart phone app that is not only unreleased, but is still under development.

An in-development Microsoft smart phone app designed to help drivers and pedestrians avoid unsafe neighborhoods is proving controversial among some minority rights groups that find the software potentially discriminatory.

The as-of-yet unnamed product is being referred to as the “Avoid The Ghetto” app by those who are concerned with where it will guide users.

“I’m going to be up in arms about it if it happens,” said Dallas NAACP President Juanita Wallace.

That’s the way to ‘tone down’ the rhetoric isn’t it? Especially after your President asked for the rhetoric to be ‘toned down’ after the Gifford’s shooting.

Wallace spent her afternoon at a rally on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and said she felt safe there, but fears the app may project otherwise.

“Can you imagine me not being able to go to MLK Blvd. because my GPS says that’s a dangerous crime area? I can’t even imagine that,” she said.

No I can’t. It just informs you that it is a high crime area. You are free to enter the area. Nothing is stopping you!

Now, to make this a really racist app, and therefore more useful, I would include stats about white-on-black crimes vs. black-on-white crimes in the area. That would be useful!

Almost forgot: source article here.

Having reported that, last time I checked, there is still a Constitutional freedom of association. If I don’t wish to associate with assholes, jackoffs, and other assorted scumbags, that’s not discrimination. That’s freedom of association.

Ditto if I’m a business owner and don’t want AJS in my business. Or even want to hire such.

What we really need is an app that would show conservative vs. liberal areas!

Posted by Christopher     on 01/18/2012 at 11:24 PM   
Filed Under: • Computers and Cyberspace • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Politics • Racism and race relations •  
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The Breaking Romney ‘Scandal’?

John Fricke over at the American Thinker blog has an entry on the latest religious bigotry against Mitt Romney:

The media is digging hard on, among other things, Romney’s tithing to the Mormon church.  Reports say that Romney, either by himself or as a large part of a group of LDS members from Bain Capital, gave to the Mormon church stock holdings from his/their personal Bain accounts.  Stock holdings worth millions of dollars.
The stories then, at least begin to, ask the question as to the impact the Mormon church would have on policy within the Oval Office of a Romney administration.

Excuse me? Romney GIVES his Church millions in tithing and the Church is going to influence him? It’s not like the Church is giving Romney millions to influence him.

Here’s the deal: the LDS Church encourages tithing 10% of your income. Romney’s made millions, so of course he’s tithed millions. I daresay he’s also contributed to other Church programs: missionary fund, welfare fund, building fund, special funds set up when disasters like Katrina or tsunamis in Indonesia and Japan occur.

Anyway, I agree with John Fricke:

This is a problem, a very big problem.  For Barack Obama…

Romney should tell the media they need to dig through the President’s records to see what he has given to his church.  When and how much and what for.  Romney should further state that he is a proud member in solid standing within his church and he has no intentions of fleeing that church for political reasons.

Exactly. Who abandoned his church for political reasons? Why? Let’s compare Thomas S. Monson (current President of the LDS Church) to the racist Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And just what church does Obama attend these days? The Church of the 19th Hole?

BTW, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is also Mormon. Where’s the scrutiny of his tithing?

Posted by Christopher     on 01/18/2012 at 07:23 PM   
Filed Under: • Politics • Religion •  
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   Wednesday - December 21, 2011

GOP Victory?

Posted by Christopher     on 12/21/2011 at 09:26 PM   
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff • Politics •  
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   Tuesday - December 06, 2011

US/Brit Extradition Treaty … at loggerheads over fairness … your comments welcome

All I know is what I read in the papers and what LyndonB tells me on this subject.  The Brit/American extradition treaty.  Which some say is one way and only favors the USA. If that’s true they’re correct in the criticism.  I really don’t know and have no time to do honest and serious research on the subject.  But it has been causing a stir here, and this is some background.

A computer geek with a new age disease called Asperger’s Syndrome which I renamed Asparagus Syndrome, broke into American security computers and wrecked havoc for a time. 
His name is Gary McKinnon, lives a quiet life with mommy and is in his 40’s, I have read.  He is supposed to be a whiz with a computer.

Well, what Gary did was break into US puters which exposed our security as pitiful.
According to reports, we had no passwords and no firewalls. 
He was eventually tracked down, arrested and has been facing extradition ever since.

Further to the story, his defenders say he wasn’t tying to do harm but was trying to research and track down the “truth” about flying saucers and little green men etc.
Poor deluded Gary. 

Now I can not pretend to know a darn thing about the treaty that the Brits have with the USA on extradition.  From what I have been hearing due to this case though, is that it is very one sided and not only favors the USA, but does so at the expense of the UK.  And they are very unhappy.  If it’s true, one can’t blame them. 

So here we have this poor innocent (by way of his particular syndrome) young man facing possible jail in America if he is indeed turned over to the US.

Yeah well, little green men and flying saucers aside, that was not the subject of messages he left on American computers. Nope.
Perhaps one of the side effects of asparagus syndrome, is the ability to be very articulate which he was, it was originally reported.  He wrote anti-war tracts for the war mongering Americans to read.  Italics are mine.  He knew damn well what he was doing from the get go.  He was well written and one might even say professional in his approach. 

So for well over a year now, maybe two, the fight has been going on to save Gary from American clutches. And oh btw, his mommy said that Gary would kill himself if he had to go to jail in the USA. So now the campaign is not only to stop any extradition, but save his life as well.  And the Daily Mail has been campaigning on his behalf from the beginning, with headlines such as; GARY’S SUFFERED ENOUGH. DON’T LET US DOWN.  Well anyway, that was written by his mommy in a column yesterday in the DM.  Monday’s DM headline covered almost half a page with the words;

* DO YOUR DUTY FOR GARY AND BRITAIN.
* MPs VOTE ON UNFAIR EXTRADITION LAWS.
* AN AFFRONT TO BRITISH JUSTICE
* NEW HOPE FOR GARY AS MPs BACK RETHINK ON EXTRADITION

The hope is that Gary McKinnon if tried and found guilty, which he must be since he said he hacked in looking for the twilight zone, would be allowed to served his time in a Brit jail.  Apparently he wouldn’t try to kill himself there. Only in America. 

Which now brings us to the American response from the US Ambassador himself.

US - UK extradition treaty is fair and balanced

By Louis Susman

I want to state clearly the US position – and correct some of the myths, distortions, and inaccuracies that have developed. We believe that the existing US-UK Extradition Treaty works, is fair and balanced, promotes justice in both countries, and does not need to be changed.

We are not alone in this opinion. It is a view shared by a distinguished panel of UK legal experts appointed by the Home Secretary to review the fairness of the treaty and to ensure protection of Britain’s interests. That panel was led by the esteemed judge Sir Scott Baker and included two highly respected lawyers with significant experience in extradition proceedings – one from representing the accused; the other from representing governments.

Over more than a year, they solicited views from all interested parties – on both sides of the argument. Anyone holding a grievance was given the fullest opportunity to express their concerns. The panel received more than 200 written responses. Hearings and meetings were held with affected organisations and individuals, including officials and lawyers from the UK and the US. The extradition procedures of both countries were studied, and extraditions already concluded under the treaty examined.

Sir Scott Baker’s Commission conducted an exhaustive, meticulous and considered review. And it reached the only conclusion that could be supported by the facts: that the US-UK treaty in its current form is fair and balanced.

However, we recognise that the panel’s findings are not accepted by everyone. There have, of course, been vocal criticisms of Britain’s extradition arrangements aired for many years. We heard them again during last week’s Parliamentary debate and its subsequent press coverage.

Where there are concerns, they should not be confused with issues surrounding the European Arrest Warrant – a completely different agreement to our treaty. It should be clear that one has nothing to do with the other. As regards the US-UK Extradition Treaty, there appear to be two main criticisms. Neither is justified.
First, critics say that it is easier to extradite someone from the UK than from the US due to a different burden of proof. There may be some confusion because the standards of evidence for extradition under the treaty are different in terminology. But in practice, the UK’s “reasonable suspicion” test is the same as the US’s “probable cause”. They are the standards that police officers in our respective countries must meet to justify an arrest.

British citizens are also protected by the “probable cause” test since the US cannot make an extradition request to the UK until probable cause has been successfully established in a US court. So the standard of evidence that each country has to meet to extradite someone is the same. Plain and simple. In fact, it is worth noting that the United States has never denied an extradition request from the UK under the present treaty.

The second mistaken claim is that the treaty somehow denies British citizens British justice. In all extradition cases, the UK authorities always begin by considering whether an individual can and should be tried in the UK instead of being extradited. Once the UK authorities decide that the case should be tried in the US, all extradition hearings are then held in UK courts – as are subsequent appeals. It is only when these avenues have been exhausted – when UK prosecutors, the courts, and the Home Secretary have all affirmed that the request is proper – that an extradition goes ahead. Moreover, the Baker Commission’s report stated that UK extradition judges “could not think of any case already decided under the 2003 act in which it would have been in the interests of justice for it to have been tried in the United Kingdom rather than in the requesting territory”. These are not the only arguments used by critics of the treaty.

In fact, neither country can ask for an extradition if the crime allegedly committed is not a serious crime in both countries. Nor does the US get special treatment – the UK’s domestic extradition law is the same for Australia, Canada, Israel, Russia, and Turkey. And nor do we seek the death penalty for any individual extradited from the UK.

In an age of international crime syndicates, global terror networks and cyber attacks, my government strongly supports the US-UK Extradition Treaty as an essential tool for bringing criminals to justice. It is a treaty that has been tested robustly by the British and the US justice systems, and now has been validated by the Baker Commission’s review.

For these reasons we remain confident that the treaty is fair and balanced. Because the treaty is valid, we hope that it will receive the endorsement from Members of Parliament that it deserves.

• Louis Susman is United States ambassador to the United Kingdom

source

Posted by peiper     on 12/06/2011 at 10:26 AM   
Filed Under: • International • Politics • UK • USA •  
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   Thursday - October 13, 2011

Just a bit off center

I saw a link to one of those “find your political leanings” tests over at C&S. WTH, I took it.



Whaddya know, I’m really pretty much middle of the road, just a bit on the neo-conservative, libertarian side. That seems about right to me. Mr. Average.


Or so I thought! Turns out that I’m more libertarian and more conservative than just about every demographic group I could come up with.

All of these online tests have shortcomings. 2 or 3 of the 50 questions on this one seemed rather ambiguous to me, but I did like how you could rate the importance of each question. I was emphatic about quite a lot of them, but I was also meh about a good number of others. And I just couldn’t have cared less about a small handful of others.

Take it yourself if you want.


One more nice feature of this quiz is that it has some data comparisons based on political party affiliation. This one only works for the US and the UK, but it was a little enlightening:



Republicans really are the Big Tent party, while Democrats march well in lockstep. The US Green Party are just a hair to the left of America’s Democrats. Green Party? We have a Green Party???

You can also compare your results against a host of different demographics; age, gender, nation, etc.



We Are The Digital World: international average from over 1.1 million users around the world



Cousins across the pond: left and right in the US and the UK

Posted by Drew458     on 10/13/2011 at 01:04 PM   
Filed Under: • Politics •  
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   Monday - October 03, 2011

Carex Secta

This is for the Perry supporters out there -

Cyperacae carex secta is a grass that grows in clumps. It’s a tussock, a sedge weed, similar to rushes. It just happens to have had an unfortunate common name for many many years. They grow in boggy areas the world over ... carex secta happens to be a New Zealand native, but it has first cousins (eg carex virgata) in every temperate marshy area, and they all look pretty much the same, and most of those in the USA have shared the same name for several hundred years now. To name a hunting camp after them really tells you more about the land than it does about the people who hunt there. This little “unknown” fact is pretty much common knowledge to anyone who lives anywhere near a bit of wetlands and is not a brainwashed product of government schools.

In a large part of the southwest United States, another whole family of tussock grasses grow in drier areas. One of these is Muhlenbergia rigens, also known as deergrass, which puts down deep roots and sends up long strong stems. Native Americans favored it for basket weaving. Guess what the white settlers called it?

Once again, the media is out of touch and out of control.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/03/2011 at 01:20 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Politically-Incorrect • Politics •  
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   Sunday - October 02, 2011

In My Inbox

What you may not know about Herman Cain who is running for president....
He’s not a career politician (in fact he has never held political office). He’s known as a pizza guy, but there’s a lot more to him. He’s also a computer guy, a banker guy, and a rocket scientist guy.
Here’s his bio:

* Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics.
* Master’s degree in Computer Science.
* Mathematician for the Navy, where he worked on missile ballistics (making him a rocket scientist).
* Computer systems analyst for Coca-Cola.
* VP of Corporate Data Systems and Services for Pillsbury (this is the top of the ladder in the computer world, being in charge of information systems for a major corporation).

All achieved before reaching the age of 35. Since he reached the top of the information systems world, he changed careers!

* Business Manager. Took charge of Pillsbury’s 400 Burger King restaurants in the Philadelphia area, which were the company’s poorest performers in the country. Spent the first nine months learning the business from the ground up, cooking hamburger and yes, cleaning toilets. After three years he had turned them into the company’s best performers.
* Godfather’s Pizza CEO. Was asked by Pillsbury to take charge of their Godfather’s Pizza chain (which was on the verge of bankruptcy). He made it profitable in 14 months.
* In 1988 he led a buyout of the Godfather’s Pizza chain from Pillsbury. He was now the owner of a restaurant chain. Again he reached the top of the ladder of another industry.
* He was also chairman of the National Restaurant Association during this time. This is a group that interacts with government on behalf of the restaurant industry, and it gave him political experience from the non-politician side.

Having reached the top of a second industry, he changed careers again!

* Adviser to the Federal Reserve System. Herman Cain went to work for the Federal Reserve Banking System advising them on how monetary policy changes would affect American businesses.
* Chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank. He worked his way up to the chairmanship of a regional Federal Reserve bank. This is only one step below the chairmanship of the entire Federal Reserve System (the top banking position in the country). This position allowed him to see how monetary policy is made from the inside, and understand the political forces that impact the monetary system.

After reaching the top of the banking industry, he changed careers for a fourth time!

* Writer and public speaker. He then started to write and speak on leadership. His books include Speak as a Leader, CEO of Self, Leadership is Common Sense, and They Think You’re Stupid.
* Radio Host. Around 2007—after a remarkable 40 year career—he started hosting a radio show on WSB in Atlanta (the largest talk radio station in the country).

He did all this starting from rock bottom (his father was a chauffeur and his mother was a maid). When you add up his accomplishments in his life—including reaching the top of three unrelated industries: information systems, business management, and banking—

STACK THAT UP AGAINST THE ‘COMMUNITY ORGANIZER’....

Herman Cain may have the most impressive resume of anyone that has run for the presidency in the last half century.

I have not paid enough attention to this guy yet, but I intend to do so. If this email is factually correct - and I remind everyone to Trust but verify - then my guess he has a pretty darn good head for business. And being a core IT guy with a rocket science background, you know he is no dope. The banking experience probably can’t hurt either. I don’t know his views on every issue yet, but I am a realist and can not expect him to agree with me on everything. What America needs is a leader who can get the country back into the business of business first. All the rest is icing on the cake that can be debated and modified as needed.

I haven’t even watched any of the “debates” yet; my feeling is that at this early point they are all pretty much a waste of time. But Mr. Cain may be worth looking into.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/02/2011 at 02:12 PM   
Filed Under: • Politics •  
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   Wednesday - September 14, 2011

My reply to flapjawman

Those of you who’ve been here for awhile know flapjawman is a friend of mine since the early 70s. Here’s my reply to one of his emails:

I don’t believe the Dems will survive 2012.

The question is: Will we put up an American candidate? Or just the latest RINO.

Reagan showed the way. Unapologetic conservative positions win every time. Even the new RINOs like Scott Brown know that. I may be too hard on Scott Brown, he’s a Massachusetts Republican. By definition a NE Republican will be more socialist than the rest of us.

I believe we can keep the House, recapture the Senate…

But the last thing I want is a President who will ‘reach across the aisle’.

As Dr. Thomas Sowell has written:

“Much as we may deplore partisanship in Washington, bipartisan disasters are often twice as bad as partisan disasters — and this is a bipartisan disaster in the making.”

Me? I want more partisanship. George Washington did not talk to the British. He shot them. He wasn’t ‘bipartisan’.

The Democrats are a more dangerous enemy than Islam. We can deal with an external threat. We’ve problems with dealing with internal threats. Especially if the leader of that threat lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

I honestly believe Obama is our biggest national threat.

See this.

Christopher

SNOFU! –– Situation Normal, Obama Fucked Up!

Posted by Christopher     on 09/14/2011 at 05:37 PM   
Filed Under: • Obama, The One • Politics •  
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Seemed Obvious To Me

NEW YORK – Republicans have scored an upset victory in a House race that became a referendum on President Barack Obama’s economic policies.

Retired media executive and political novice Bob Turner defeated Democratic state Assemblyman David Weprin in a special election Tuesday to succeed Rep. Anthony Weiner, a seven-term Democrat who resigned in June after a sexting scandal.

With more than 80 percent of precincts reporting, Turner had 54 percent of the vote to Weprin’s 46 percent in unofficial results.

“We’ve been asked by the people of this district to send a message to Washington,” Turner told supporters after the landmark win. “I hope they hear it loud and clear. We’ve been told this is a referendum. Mr. President, we are on the wrong track. We have had it with an irresponsible fiscal policy which endangers the entire economy.”

Wait and see. He could be just another RINO. But New Yorkers were pretty embarrassed by Weiner, and Weprin, the “shoe-in” candidate selected by the Democrat Machine that matched all the local demographics (he’s one of us, let’s elect him!) found himself at odds with the locals over his stance on Gay Marriage and other issues.

The heavily Democratic district, which spans parts of Queens and Brooklyn, had never sent a Republican to the House. But frustration with the continued weak national economy gave Republicans the edge.

Turner has vowed to bring business practicality to Washington and push back on spending and taxes.

Yup, wait and see. But the press is seeing this as an Obama rebuke ... and this district has NEVER elected a Republican, EVER, even though the R party is about 160 years old by now. So the MSM may be right for once.

Hey, one more R in the House. It can’t hurt.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/14/2011 at 10:31 AM   
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   Friday - June 24, 2011

Spineless GOP thinks they’re the UN

House Rebukes Obama on Libya, Stops Short of Funding Cutoff

The House on Friday delivered its strongest rebuke yet to President Obama over his handling of the U.S. military intervention in Libya, refusing to endorse the U.S. operation three months after it began. But the House stopped short of stripping funding for the mission.

In the last of two votes Friday afternoon, the House rejected a Republican-authored bill to strike funding for the Libya operation. The House voted 238-180 against it, with 89 Republicans opposing.

The vote ensured that, at least for the moment, the Obama administration has the money to sustain its involvement in the NATO-led campaign—though the funding bill was unlikely to pass in the Senate anyway.

However, the vote came after the House, in a 295-123 decision, rejected a resolution to “authorize” the mission in Libya—even a limited operation with no ground troops. One-hundred-and-fifteen Democrats and only eight Republicans voted for the proposal; in a blow to Obama, 70 Democrats voted against it. Though that resolution is non-binding, it represents the most definitive statement the chamber has made about the conflict.

If they can’t stand up to the tyrant for crap like this, they won’t be able to stand up to him for anything.

Vote them all out.

Michelle Bachmann was one of the NO votes. Thanks.

The funding measure would have barred drone attacks and airstrikes but allowed the United States to continue actions in support of NATO.

So it was a half-assed pussy bullshit bill to begin with. If they had even one pair of working nalgas amongst them, the bill would have been to cut ALL funding and cease ALL activity immediately.

So I guess the War Powers Act is dead. The Legislature does not have the balls to halt combat operations for even a single day to force a meeting to discuss the Libya thing.  All by himself the President can send troops into harm’s way and spend hundreds of millions on blowing things up, and do so WHENEVER and FOREVER, without so much as a nod of approval from the legislature, much less a debate and a vote (forget about asking the people what they want), or anything so archaic as an actual Declaration of War. They are his toothless useless running dogs and he holds the leash.

You know what that means don’t you? It means our President is now actually a dictator.

All hail Obamacles, the Mighty, the Won!!!

Posted by Drew458     on 06/24/2011 at 03:28 PM   
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   Wednesday - June 15, 2011

being led by conservative lite

MILLIONS for Bribes and Tribute but not one cent for Defense

Hey … has a ring to it.  I wonder if history will soon note. Whatever.

The prime minister, call me Dave (Cameron) said the following two days ago.

The generous foreign aid policy will help to stop British troops becoming embroiled in future foreign wars.  Jeesh. So why didn’t they simply buy off the Germans in 1939.
Oh right. Different generation with a different set of b***s.  Makes a difference ya know.

Anyway, Dave says that if the govt. had taken a more ambitious approach to offering development assistance to Afghanistan in the 1990s, troops may never have been sent to that country.  Oh, you think that’s loony tune time?  Here’s what else this conservative lite pm had to say.  He’s real proud of this and in fact he deserves the much unheralded BMEWS Moonbat award for the year. Or at the least, a runner up.

Mister call me Dave says that by the year 2015, British funds would be used to educate more people abroad then in his own country.  He claimed that Brits would have done better if they’d put more money into countries like Afghanistan before they came so badly broken that “we had to send troops there.”

He went on to say that the Brit sense of duty “makes me proud of our country.”

The man is delusional I tell ya.  Most Brits I hear say otherwise.  He’s spending other people’s money whether they like it or no. Duty doesn’t come into it.  If he thinks it does, then let him make a call for voluntary financial support for his action in Libya and every other turd world medieval country that’s always deprived of something.  Lets see where he’d get with that. 

His version of the British sense of duty doesn’t exactly match what many here see as that.  There’s a sense of duty to protect and nurture your own. First. That’s human nature.  Squandering millions is also human nature, sadly, and so far he shows every sign of being up to that task.

Stay Tuned

cartoon is from the Telegraph ....  rant is from frustration ....

Posted by peiper     on 06/15/2011 at 09:01 AM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life • Politics • UK •  
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