Bloodthirsty Liberal

Or do I mean yuck?

On January 26, 2012, President Obama visited a Las Vegas UPS plant. Stimulus subsidy for said UPS plant to purchase natural-gas-powered trucks: 5.6 million dollars. Stimulus subsidy for North Las Vegas green energy plant that laid off 200 workers yesterday: 5.9 million dollars. Using taxpayer dollars to leave an event promoting clean-energy vehicles in a motorcade of twenty-two fossil-fueled vehicles: Priceless.

Of course, his campaign appearances (as all appearances are lately) are usually more modest affairs.

The American economy grew 2.8% last quarter!

And if you believe that, I have a bridge for sale…

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 2.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 (that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter), according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 1.8 percent.

The Bureau emphasized that the fourth-quarter advance estimate released today is based on source data that are incomplete or subject to further revision by the source agency (see the box on page 4). The “second” estimate for the fourth quarter, based on more complete data, will be released on February 29, 2012.

…

It was, however, a touch below economists’ expectations for a 3.0 percent rate.

…

Inventories increased $56.0 billion, adding 1.94 percentage points to GDP growth. Excluding inventories, the economy grew at a tepid 0.8 percent rate, a sharp step-down from the prior period’s 3.2 percent pace.

The robust stock accumulation suggest the recovery will lose a step in early 2012.

And the retreat from 2.8% will begin in three… two… one…

P. J. O’Rourke on how the Left sticks it to the poor. (He starts off by saying that anti-smoking laws and taxes hammer the poor most, since they smoke the most, but I’m skipping that pertinent but obvious fact.)

The elites who denounce poverty despise the poor. Their every high-minded, right-thinking “poverty program” proves this detestation—from the bulldozing of vibrant tenement communities to the drug law policing policies that send poor kids to prison and rich kids to rehab to the humiliation of food stamps and free school lunches to the loathsome inner-city public schools where those free lunches are slopped onto cafeteria trays.

The federal government has some 50 different “poverty programs.” Nearly half a trillion dollars is spent on them each year. That’s about $11,000 per man, woman, and child under the poverty line, enough to lift each and every one of them out of poverty. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2011 poverty guideline for a family of three: $18,530.) We call them “poverty programs” for a reason. If ordinary people with down-to-earth common sense were spending that half trillion, we’d call them “modest prosperity programs.”

Have progressive elites always hated the poor? Teddy Roosevelt did some rough riding with them. But once Teddy got all high-minded and right-thinking you didn’t see him hanging around with poor people who weren’t cooking or cleaning for him. William Jennings Bryan was in favor of prohibition, the bastard. These days we’ve got Michael Moore. You wouldn’t think he’d hate poor people, having once been one. On the other hand, in dress and deportment, Moore shows every sign of self-loathing. So he’s a hater too.

Why do elites hate the poor? It’s xenophobia. They don’t know any poor people—except their off-the-books Brazilian nanny and illegal immigrant cleaning lady from Upper Revolta who don’t speak English. Modern elites live in bubbles of liberal affluence like Ann Arbor, Brookline, the Upper West Side, Palo Alto, or Chevy Chase. These places used to have impoverished neighborhoods nearby, but the poor people got chased out by young singles living in group homes, hipsters, and urban homesteading gay couples. When elites see a homeless person in the gutter, they assume he’s saving a parking place. And the elites have never been poor themselves. Although there was that time in graduate school, between research grants, when they had to go without sushi for a week.

Elites are irked at the charity they have to give to the poor. Not that elites, personally, give charity to the poor. They get the IRS to do it for them. Which is the way elites like it and why they’re in favor of higher taxes. It’s worth the price not to come into any actual contact and risk getting poverty cooties. But elites are human like the rest of us, and paying higher taxes irks them.

The elite resent the poor because, although poor people have few pleasures and many troubles, they also have a lot of fun. You can see it in their music videos. The elites whine and mope. You can hear it on NPR.

O’Rourke is playing for laughs, but the highlighted paragraph is distilled truth. All credit to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett for their charitable contributions. Why, then, do they want to pay more in taxes? Does Bill think Melinda is wasting his money? Does he think the government won’t?

But I think O’Rourke’s larger point is correct, too: the Left hates the poor. You’d have to hate someone to keep them in misery—and nearly half a century of Great Society/War on Poverty programs would have to qualify to any dispassionate observer as well-disguised slavery (serfdom, if “slavery” offends your sensibilities). I keep meaning to get back to Rush Limbaugh’s CPAC speech from a couple of years ago. He talked about how conservatives love people.

Here it is. Ditto.

Wow

Turkish public television will show an epic French documentary about the Holocaust, the first broadcast of its kind by national media in a Muslim state, it was announced Wednesday.

A spokesman for Turkish public television TRT said the 1985 film “Shoah” would be shown on one of the network’s 14 channels, but did not say when.

The director of nine-hour-plus documentary, Claude Lanzmann, called the Turkish move historic.

“We should acknowledge the courage and determination of the Turks,” said Lanzmann, who spent 11 years working on the documentary. “Turkey is a country people don’t know and understand very badly.”

Turkey’s broadcast of the film is the culmination of work by the Aladdin Project, a Paris-based group which tries to improve Jewish-Muslim relations.

…

Consisting largely of Holocaust-survivor interviews, the film examines the killing of European Jews in Nazi death camps during World War II.

Its broadcast comes at a sensitive time in Turkey’s international relations.

I’ll say.

Is the air going out of the Global Warming theory:

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’ In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific “heretics” is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

…

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere’s life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work…

…

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”

…

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

Oh well.

Say, how about them Africanized killer bees? Anybody seen them lately?

And the Media is the enemy:

Over the years, pro-life activists have come to accept that the media isn’t interested in their annual March for Life in Washington D.C. protesting abortion, even though it routinely attracts hundreds of thousands of people. But this year’s photo slideshow hosted on a local Washington CBS website has activists scratching their heads in disbelief.

Currently the March for Life slideshow of seven photos features protesters who actually support abortion; none of the photos actually feature pro-life marchers.

The photos feature people waving signs from the Feminine Majority Foundation reminding marchers that “Family Planning Saves Lives Worldwide.”

Another photo shows a woman wears a sticker saying “Abortion on demand and without apology.” Also making an appearance, three smiling girls holding “Keep Abortion Legal” signs.

In front of the Supreme Court, a smiling protestor holds a sign “Keep Abortion Safe, Legal and accessible!”

The slideshow is going viral among pro-lifers who are leaving dozens of annoyed comments on the content item.

I checked, and somebody wised up. They stuck a few pro-life pix at the head of the slideshow. But the anti-lifers still dominate the coverage.

Aggie and I get pretty angry about the media (as do many of you), but every act of self-degradation only diminishes their influence. Doesn’t finish it off entirely, but diminishes it. The uncurious and passive observer might be fooled, but to borrow from the Bush-era bumper sticker: if you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.

The Civil War:

Former President John Tyler, born 221 years ago, still has two living grandchildren. The one-term president isn’t a well-known historical figure; he’s probably best remembered for helping to push through the annexation of Texas in 1845, shortly before leaving office.

So, how is it possible that a former president who died 150 years ago would still have direct descendents alive today? As it turns out, the Tyler men were known for fathering children late in life.

And that math is pretty outstanding when added up:

John Tyler was born in 1790. He became the 10th president of the United States in 1841 after William Henry Harrison died in office. Tyler fathered Lyon Gardiner Tyler in 1853, at age 63. Then, at the age of 71, Lyon Gardiner Tyler fathered Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. in 1924 and four years later at age 75, Harrison Ruffin Tyler. Both men are still alive today.

That means just three generations of the Tyler family are spread out over more than 200 years.

…

A few other Tyler tidbits:

He joined the South’s secession efforts shortly before his death and was even elected to the Confederate House of Representatives.

Because of his Confederate ties, Tyler’s is the only presidential death not officially mourned.

Well, I don’t mourn him, but then I had forgotten all about him.

But isn’t that wild? I thought it was cool that my grandfather was alive during WWI (and could have fought in it, though he didn’t). There are Tyler grandchildren whose grandpa was around for the Civil War (if on the “wrong” side).

PS: I always felt bad about William Henry Harrison. He died of pneumonia a month into office, possibly because he didn’t dress warmly enough on his inauguration. Neither did Jimmy Carter, alas.

You bet!

The White House’s 36 tax-delinquents put President Barack Obama’s personal office in the top tier of IRS deadbeats.

The White House’s 36 tax deadbeats owe an average of $23,165.33, far above the average federal delinquent’s outstanding debt of $13,911.

The revelation comes two days after Obama used his State of the Union speech to declare that “we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

White House officials declined to comment to The Daily Caller.

Politics is such a slimy business.

- Aggie

I don’t bother you with too many local stories unless they have some national or international importance.

I can make no such claim in this case, unless it’s to prove to you how hopeless and pathetic Massachusetts Democrats are.

The back ground: Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray was involved in a single-car high speed accident in the wee hours of an early November morning. He veered off the road, totaled his car against a stone wall, and somehow walked out without a scratch—despite not wearing his seat belt.

Okay-y-y…

Let Howie Carr take it from here:

Lt. Gov. Tim Murray has now floated a third, or maybe it’s his fourth, excuse for his mystery-shrouded traffic accident last November.

Now he says (through certain unnamed associates) that he was terribly depressed by the news that his dodgy man in the Merrimack Valley, Mike McLaughlin, had been making $360,000 a year at the Chelsea Housing Authority, rather than the $160,000 he was claiming.

This latest tale told by an idiot follows Crash’s earlier alibi that he was awakened when his 5-year-old daughter crawled into bed with him and he couldn’t get back to sleep.

Which followed his initial excuse that he was a) doing a damage survey from the October snowstorm in the predawn hours while b) looking for a cup of coffee and a Herald. (This is why it’s unclear whether he’s now working on his third or fourth excuse; does that first day’s damage control count as one or two stories?)

He’s also offered differing accounts as to whether he was conscious or unconscious at the time of the crash. Not to mention he first said he was going “around” the 65 mph speed limit but now acknowledges that he was in fact travelling at 108 mph.

And he’s still offered no explanation for why he looked so much better after his accident than John Kerry after his “hockey game.”

Wow! He looks almost as bad as when Bush kicked his a**! Are we sure those bruises aren’t from botox injections?

But back to Crash Murray. First, you ask, what is Lieutenant Governor? I’m not sure, but I think he keeps the salted almond bowl full and changes the toilet paper when the roll gets low. Really, I think that’s it.

Second, is Howie serious about all those excuses? Yep. Murray really did say he wanted to go out and get a cup of coffee and the paper (20 miles from home), before saying he wanted to inspect storm damage (in the dark of a moonless night), that he couldn’t sleep, that he was asleep, but was awoken by his daughter, that he was going the speed limit, that he may—or may not—have fallen asleep behind the wheel.

Only now do we hear that he was sleepless over the exposure of an associate as a corrupt hack. (Which would make him different how?)

In the words of Bill Clinton, this guy should be getting us coffee. Oh wait—he already is!

But you can’t take Libya out of Libya:

Several people have died after being tortured by militias in Libyan detention centres, human rights group Amnesty International has said.

It claimed to have seen patients in Tripoli, Misrata and Gheryan with open wounds to their head, limbs and back.

Meanwhile, charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has suspended operations in Misrata after treating 115 patients with torture-related wounds.

The UN says it is concerned about the conditions in which patients are held.

“The torture is being carried out by officially recognised military and security entities as well as by a multitude of armed militias operating outside any legal framework,” a spokesman for London-based Amnesty said.

…

More than 8,500 detainees, most of them accused of being loyal to former Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi, are being held by militia groups in about 60 centres, according to UN human rights chief Navi Pillay.

“The lack of oversight by the central authority creates an environment conducive to torture and ill treatment,” she said.

Wow, that’s almost as bad as Jews living in Judea and Samaria!