
irony?
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Posted by Andrew Roman on February 6, 2010
Posted in Picture of the Day | Tagged: Picture of the Day | 1 Comment »
Posted by Andrew Roman on February 5, 2010
The English language can be flummoxing.
Some of its letters in certain situations can present significant challenges.
For instance, many of us are familiar with “silent e” (as in cape, vane and globe), but there are others that can be more perplexing, more troublesome.
One such example is the harrowing and sinister “silent p.”
They’re very tricky.
If your psychic has pneumonia, you know what I’m talking about.
I learned early in life how problematic they were watching everyone’s favorite Cuban band leader, Ricky Ricardo, stumble over the word “psychiatrist.”
I never forgot that.
Of course, the dreaded “silent p” is even more of a nuisance when it appears in the middle of a word.
Just ask the President of the United States.
The Harvard Law School alum, world-renowned orator, community organizer and civil rights attorney, must have been in the canteen the day they went over the “silent p” portion of his Language Arts workbook.
During yesterday’s National Prayer Breakfast, the President was lauding the efforts of relief workers in Haiti, and offered specific high praise for a Navy Corpsman. The silent “p” proved too much for the magne cum laude as he twice pronounced the word corpsman with the “p”.
As in “corpse, man.”
Messiahs are capable of many things, but to expect grammatical perfection is probably a bit much.
It’s that anti-Capitalist, anti-free market, pro-Marixst streak in him that is probably behind this gaffe. The word “corpsman” looks a lot like “corporation.”
We know he knows how to pronounce that word. Besides, teleprompters can’t whisper back.
Putting all in context, it’s not like he mispronounced the word “nuclear” or anything.
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Posted in Obama Bonehead | Tagged: corpsman, mispronounced corpsman, mispronounces corpsman, Nation Prayer Breakfast, Obama, Obama Gaffe | 1 Comment »
Posted by Andrew Roman on February 5, 2010
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Posted by Andrew Roman on February 4, 2010
It was embarrassing enough for Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to uninvitedly get up in front of the nation and tell owners of recalled Toyota vehicles to stop driving their cars, only to come back later and recant. Indeed, it was beyond moronic for him to advise the owners of eight recalled Toyota models to take their cars off the road until their accelerator pedals could be looked at, only to reappear hours later and explain that he really didn’t mean what he said. LaHood’s big mouth did nothing more than throw a monkey wrench into an already troubling situation.
But that’s okay. He’s from the government, and he was only here to help.
Of course, opening his mouth and letting out a whole lot of jackass is not the real issue here.
The issue – as always – is the demonstrable inability of Obama-style, big government to stay out of the way of its citizenry.
This Toyota recall is a private sector issue being handled by the company itself – as it ought to be. The company will adhere to the rules of the free market system by making its corrections, withstanding any financially losses that will inevitably come (if they can), and winning the trust of the public by coming back with a better product. It’s how free enterprise works.
This is not a government problem.
Besides, who in hell is Ray LaHood to open up his pie hole about a situation he clearly knows nothing about and confuse the hell out of everybody?
Because he’s the Transportation Secretary?
So what? Who gives a raccoon’s nipple?
All Mr. LaHood did was create a serious uproar and send a whole bunch of Toyota owners into a state of befuddlement and frustration before realizing that the taste of feet on his tongue is rather unpleasant.
Was it necessary for the Secretary of the Transportation Department – which serves “the United States by ensuring a fast, safe, efficient, accessible and convenient transportation system that meets our vital national interests and enhances the quality of life of the American people, today and into the future” – to come out publicly and tell drivers what to do with their own cars? Is there a “grease monkey” clause in the DOT mission satement I missed? Without LaHood, would American Toyota drivers have neglected following up on their recall notices? Would they not have known to be careful but for the grace of the federal government telling them to?
This nanny-state mentality does no one any good.
It is a perfect illustration of how government intervention into private sector matters causes more problems than it solves.
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Posted in Big Government, Nanny State | Tagged: Big Government, Ray LaHood, Secretary of Transportation, Toyota recall | 1 Comment »
Posted by Andrew Roman on February 4, 2010
It’s fairly common.
Talk radio hosts will field phone calls from liberal callers who, when asked to offer their take on President Obama’s skyrocketing deficit numbers, will inevitably, unfailingly, reflexively bring up George W. Bush. (I think it’s a law now). After all, as is made evident on a daily basis by this administration, there wasn’t anything in all of recorded human existence impervious to W’s gross mismanagement and downright destructiveness, particularly during the dark wilderness that defined America’s “BB” days (Before Barack). The inexpungible mark President Bush left on this nation was (and is) so ubiquitous, even eight disastrous years (God forbid) of Barack Obama can (and will) be overlooked by rational people, because no man – not even a Messiah – could ever hope to salvage anything from the splintered wreckage left by W.
Barack Obama’s budget, even by conservative estimates, will catapult America’s deficit to levels never seen before – and yet somehow, astoundingly, Democrats are talking about fiscal responsibility. It’s like a Weight Watchers class going out for chili dogs and cheeseburgers after the meeting.
And while this administration continues to count on the stupidity of the American public to buy into their “let’s spend our way out of debt” approach, they have no problem continuing to cite the deficits they inherited from George W. Bush when confronted with challenges to their own spend-and-more-spend agenda.
“Look at the hole Bush dug us into before we got here,” they say.
“You best look at what Bush did before you start pointing fingers this way,” they’ll exclaim.
But as political analysts Dick Morris and Eileen McGann write at Townhall.com, Obamacrats are not telling the whole truth.
President Obama was disingenuous when he said that the budget deficit he faced “when I walked in the door” of the White House was $1.3 trillion. He went on to say that he only increased it to $1.4 trillion in 2009 and was raising it to $1.6 trillion in 2010.
As Joe Wilson said, “You lie.”
Here are the facts:
In 2008, George W. Bush ran a deficit of $485 billion. By the time the fiscal year started on Oct.1, 2008, it had gone up by another $100 billion due to increased recession-related spending and depressed revenues. So it was $600 billion. That was the real Bush deficit.
But when the fiscal crisis hit, Bush had to pass TARP in the final months of his presidency, which cost $700 billion. Under the federal budget rules, a loan and a grant are treated the same. So the $700 billion pushed the deficit — officially — up to $1.3 trillion. But not really. The $700 billion was a short-term loan, and $500 billion of it has already been repaid.
So what was the real deficit Obama inherited? The $600 billion deficit Bush was running plus the $200 billion of TARP money that probably won’t be repaid (mainly AIG and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). That totals $800 billion. That was the real deficit Obama inherited.
So what, pray tell, happened once The One set up shop in the White House?
Then … he added $300 billion in his stimulus package, bringing the deficit to $1.1 trillion. And falling revenues and other increased welfare spending pushed it up to $1.4 trillion.
So, effectively, Obama came close to doubling the deficit.
It’s interesting to note that while the President continues to claim he inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit, he takes full credit for rescuing America’s financial institutions.
I admit to being quite impressed.
Being able to speak so well out of both sides of the mouth is no menial task.
It is the TARP money – $700 billion – that is credited with saving the banks, which is more than half of the deficit Obama says he inherited from Bush. To date, as Morris and McGann point out, $500 billion of that has been paid back.
It takes real talent to do what Obama does. He blames Bush for the deficit created by TARP, but takes credit for the results.
Too clever.
The fact is, President Obama is the proprietor and general manager of the largest deficit and largest budget on record – and no matter how many pins lefties keep sticking their little “W” dolls, it won’t change the fact that Obama owns it now.
It is all his.
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Posted in Bailout, Big Government, Economy, Obama Bonehead | Tagged: "conservative blog", $1.3 trillion, $700 billion, deficit, Dick Morris, Eileen McGann, George W. Bush, Obama, TARP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Andrew Roman on February 4, 2010

Whos’ got the number to the fire department?
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Posted in Picture of the Day | Tagged: Picture of the Day | 2 Comments »
Posted by Andrew Roman on February 2, 2010
As a small business owner, if the federal government was offering me “stimulus money” for the purpose of keeping an employee or hiring someone new, I’d have no choice – economically or morally – but to give it back. There is simply no way on God’s green earth that I, or any other small business owner, would (or could) actually use so-called stimulus cash to put someone to work or keep someone on the payroll.
It doesn’t even make sense, does it?
I run a business out here in the private sector – or as I refer to it, Obama’s toilet. How am I – or anyone else in the trenches – supposed to benefit from such a moronic, ill-conceived handout program?
To me, the idea of expanding government by hiring people is bad enough. But the thought of having my neighbors relinquish more of their hard-earned money so that I could temporarily “save” an employee’s job in my private sector business, assuming such a dumb thing would ever work, is inconceivable to me.
And if, in some alternate universe, I could retain an employee based on a government handout, how in the world would that be a good thing?
How does taking from the earners make for a healthy economy?
Honestly, listening to liberals speak is sometimes like having someone run a cheese grater along the back of your leg.
It hurts.
Assuming the economy is limping along – which it would have to be to warrant a stimulus money infusion – how does paying someone with other people’s money to keep someone else employed help my business? How does it generate capital? How does it keep me a viable competitor in the market place? In other words, if I am not seeing any real-world increase in business – if the only boost in income is artificial – what happens when the handout dries up? Do I then fire the person whose job I was supposedly “saving?” Do I keep that person on and raise prices during an economic downturn?
Do liberals ever think ahead?
Of course, the vast majority of jobs supposedly “saved” or “created” by President Obama’s stimulus bill were government jobs.
Thus, what President Obama really accomplished was sucking money out of the economy – always a bad move during tough economic times – and redistributing it in the form of paychecks.
Sounds like a winning plan, doesn’t it?
Well, brace yourselves. The future looks very bright ahead … for high-paying, non-private sector jobs, that is.
Susan Adams from Forbes.com, writing for ABC News:
While companies large and small continue to shrink their workforces, the federal government remains on a steady hiring course across the country.
Uncle Sam will hire 600,000 people over the next four years, a 50% increase over the previous four, reports Max Stier of the Washington-based Partnership for Public Service, a group that promotes government jobs.
Six-hundred thousand over four years?
Despite popular notions to the contrary, an increase in the number of public-sector jobs is not something to be tripping the light fantastic over. It is no indicator of recovery. I’m not sure why this concept eludes leftists. It’s unclear to those who tend toward rational thought why such monumental wastes of taxpayer dollars, like the construction of light rail systems where they aren’t needed, are seen as positive, productive endeavors.
In what universe? How exactly?
(Those leftists love their light rail systems, don’t they?)
Next to President Obama’s policies, I don’t know that there is anything quite as empty as the cars in Seattle’s never-used, taxpayer raping trains.
There’s nothing like confiscating money from private citizens to pay the salaries of people who hold jobs that would never exist in the private sector.
Please don’t misunderstand me.
I’m not talking about jobs that almost everyone agrees are best handled by government – military, police, fire protection, etc. Yes, there are legitimate functions of government.
Rather, I’m talking about useless government expansion for the purpose of “putting people to work.”
When the government outpaces the private sector in both job growth and pay – which it has been, and will continue to do under President Obama – the word unsustainable comes to mind.
And with projected record deficits of well over a trillion dollars ahead – that’s just the deficit, not the total debt – it won’t be long before those making over $150,000 … then a $100,000 … then $75,000 … will all become America’s wealthy class – and subject accordingly to Obamacrat tax increases.
Congratulations!
Under President Obama, we’ve made it!
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Posted in Big Government, Economy, stimulus bill | Tagged: "conservative blog", Big Government, government jobs, public-sector jobs, stimulus bill, Stimulus Package | 1 Comment »
Posted by Andrew Roman on February 2, 2010
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Posted by Andrew Roman on February 1, 2010
I mean … I don’t really want to make a big deal out of this. On the whole, I’d much rather delve into more substantive issues. This is just too easy.
But isn’t this getting a little ridiculous already? Isn’t this propensity to bow when meeting someone gone a little overboard already? Hasn’t this entire new-age, metrosexual, compassionate, in-touch-with-his-feminie-side, bend-over-and-look-like-a-weakling thing run its course?
What is with all the bowing?
I honestly don’t get it.
Is it hard-wired in him? Did he get into the habit by bowing to his nightstand picture of Karl Marx every time he got up to pee when he was in college? Did he wake up in a daze and think he was overseas meeting some head of state? What on earth is going on?
First, the Saudi king gets a close-up of President Obama’s scalp. Then, it’s the emperor of Japan who gets a peak. But now, the mayor of Tampa, Florida?
I mean, come on … what is this already?
Why in hell would the mayor of Tampa, Florida – second-term Democrat, Pam Iorio – require a bow from the President of the United States?
My Lord … If the mayor of Tampa gets a full-fledged bow, I wonder what Michelle Obama gets when they wake up in the morning. A toe-licking? Armpit smooches? An ear-wax tongue cleansing?
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Huge H/T to Weasel Zippers.
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Posted in Obama Bonehead | Tagged: Obama bowing, Obama bows, President bows head to Tampa mayor, Tampa mayor | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Andrew Roman on February 1, 2010
All of that “hockey stick” talk turned out to be a load of balderdash, but it hasn’t been enough. The inability of scientists to explain why the world isn’t warming anymore doesn’t seem to matter. The fact that not a single computer model managed to predict the current cooling patterns hasn’t seemed to curb anyone’s hysteria. The reality that global temperatures are trending down is explained away as being “part of the larger climate change problem.” The fact that no one can seem to tell us what the correct temperature should be hasn’t stopped the climate fascists from pushing their agenda. The idea that the world’s leading authorities on global warming were caught in a disgraceful data manipulation scandal has not kept the zealots at bay.
To be clear, the polar bear population is not decreasing, the Arctic will not lose all of its ice inside of five years, coastal cities are not in danger of being submerged beneath ice-cap melting floods, and using multiple squares of toilet paper will not make Sheryl Crowe’s music sound any better.
But it doesn’t matter.
The science is settled. We’re just waiting on the data to catch up.
A couple of weeks ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had to retract a claim that “climate change” would likely melt the Himalayan glaciers by the year 2035. The “warning” was not based on peer-reviewed science, mind you, but on anecdotal observations from a magazine.
Brilliant, no?
The fact is, even with climatic conditions at their ice-melting worst, it would likely take hundreds of years for all of that ice to turn to water.
But wait, it gets better.
This time, the anecdotally-based “science” concerns the Amazon rain forests.
Jonathan Leake at the Times Online writes:
A STARTLING report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its 2007 benchmark report that even a slight change in rainfall could see swathes of the rainforest rapidly replaced by savanna grassland.
The source for its claim was a report from WWF, an environmental pressure group, which was authored by two green activists. They had based their “research” on a study published in Nature, the science journal, which did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning. This weekend WWF said it was launching an internal inquiry into the study.
So, they heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from another …
The latest controversy originates in a report called A Global Review of Forest Fires, which WWF published in 2000. It was commissioned from Andrew Rowell, a freelance journalist and green campaigner who has worked for Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and anti-smoking organisations. The second author was Peter Moore, a campaigner and policy analyst with WWF.
In their report they suggested that “up to 40% of Brazilian rainforest was extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall” but made clear that this was because drier forests were more likely to catch fire.
The IPCC report picked up this reference but expanded it to cover the whole Amazon. It also suggested that a slight reduction in rainfall would kill many trees directly, not just by contributing to more fires.
And where, pray tell, is the media on this one? Where are all the young, fraud-hungry Woodward and Bernsteins out there? How is it that this little masterpiece isn’t making the rounds?
And when will we finally be able to say goodbye to those God-forsaken squiggly light bulbs?
And can I get a great big “hip-hip-hooray” for those engine idling, incandescent bulb burning, over flatulating, anti-environment types?
It’s damn cold here in New York.
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Posted in global climate change, Global Warming, Junk Science | Tagged: "conservative blog", Amazon rain forest, bogus report, environmentalism, global cooling, Global Warming, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, WWF | 1 Comment »
Posted by Andrew Roman on February 1, 2010
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