Why The Stigma Against Calling A Compulsive Liar a Liar?

Remember Joe Wilson? Yes, I am against heckling at a Sate of The Union speech but truth is, the president was lying. And he continues to lie with impunity. His predecessors were kept on their toes by a sometimes vigilant media and to some degree, they were kept honest. Barack Obama was given a blanket pardon on falsehood and he exercised his never before imagined privilege with impunity. In common parlance, he lied.

So Glenn Greenwald was on Fox News a few minutes ago and he was asked about Obama's previous statements denying that the NSA is spying on us. The quote is not exact but it was something like "the president knew the facts but he stated them falsely." In other words, he lied.

Why is stating the obvious truth stigmatized?

 

This Has Nothing To Do With Anything But...

...it sure is cool.

VIVA MONDO

When Will The Media Turn On Obama?

Maybe it will never happen. It's not as if the news media and the Obama Administration are separate and distinct. No political entity in American history has done such a masterful job of infiltrating, corrupting and polluting the news and entertainment media. The cross-pollination will be with us for years to come.

But the Clintons also have their media allies. So too, do Democratic stalwarts not beholden to either the Clinton Camp or Team Obama. And let us not rule out the emergence of whistle blowers, traitors, scorned lovers, disgruntled employees, opportunists with ghost writers, journalists with agents and the occasional Sharyl Atkisson (Did I spell both names right this time?) Honeymoons conclude and even smart people wake up and ask the eternal question, "Who the bleep did I marry?"

The media do have a track record. For decades the news media have created idols that they later destroyed. It's a double pay day. Cash in on their ascent and get richer on the crash and burn. Ka-ching.

I expected the media to turn on Obama about as fast as they turned on Vanilla Ice. That has not happened. They are keeping the lid on a half dozen or so "phony scandals" and there is now the train wreck formerly known as Obamacare. Be forewarned, David Axelrod: The honeymoon's conclusion does not arrive with an engraved notice.

So maybe loyalty will carry the day and the media will carry Barry's water till death do them part. However, that's not the way I would bet. As the skins are stripped away from the onion we don't know what we will see but we know the onion will make us cry. If Hillary--or any other Democrat--wants to win an election in 2016, they will have to distance themselves from Barack Obama.

It might behoove the Dems to throw Obama overboard sooner rather than later. Americans have notoriously short memories and it might serve the Dems to be a little proactive in their house cleaning. Strategically, sooner would be better than later. These are strange times but a shark will eventually show its fins. There is blood in the water and I would not want to swim too close to the big fish.

Rand Paul Demands Obama Explain Vatican Spying

I don't think it does any good for diplomacy to be spying on the Pope and I want an explanation from the President: http://t.co/H8w235J2Dq
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) October 31, 2013

Rand Paul is outraged at reports that the NSA spied on the Vatican and Pope Francis during the conclave to elect him pope. He has introduced a "sense of the senate" resolution calling on President Obama to "directly address the serious allegation whether his administration monitored the calls of Pope Francis or the conclave selecting the Pope."
The resolution also states the NSA, "monitored telephone calls made to and from a residence in Rome where then Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio stayed during the conclave selecting Bergoglio, now known as His Holiness Pope Francis, to succeed Pope Benedict XVI."
Paul says he expects to get an answer from Obama. Let's hope he filibusters a nomination until Obama does respond.

Send Obama where?

Now we know from whom Ted Cruz learned to speak his mind.




This is an old clip of Rafael Cruz, speaking to the North Texas Tea Party on behalf of his son, who was then running for Senate.

Don't let hackers scare you away from healthcare.gov

Don't let anyone scare you out of getting affordable health insurance. #GetCovered pic.twitter.com/l85M6jeh8k
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 31, 2013

Now what? The Tea Party is trying scare people from signing up for Obamacare? Kathleen Sebilius did testify that there has not been a comprehensive security check run on healthcare.gov but they have determined that the risk is acceptable. Hillary assured everyone that Benghazi was secure too or at least the risk was acceptable. That didn't work out so well.

NBC Post About Obamacare Develops Glitches.

Holy 404 Error, Batman!

 This is old news now but well worth reviewing. NBC shook the world by reporting a story that questioned the president's credibility. NBC? The poster child for both the military industrial complex and the media industrial complex? Is this a sea change? Would they be throwing Barry overboard to distance his corrupt ways from Hillary? Hmmm.

 It was too good to be true. Yes, NBC admitted that Obama lied but they then deleted the post. The deletion became a bigger news item and they brought back an edited version of the original story. Then it seemed to disappear again.

 http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/29/nbc-news-bombshell-obamacare-report-disappears-due-to-publishing-glitch-and-there-was-something-missing-from-republished-version/

http://twitchy.com/2013/10/29/nbc-news-has-weird-technical-issues-with-its-bombshell-obamacare-article/

http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/10/28/NBC-Disappears-Deadly-ObamaCare-Report

http://weaselzippers.us/2013/10/29/developing-nbc-deletes-story-exposing-obama-administration/

Dennis Miller's Modest Proposal

I don't necessarily agree with Miller but his comments are indicative of the vitriol this administration has generated.

Idiotic Judge and Police Chief Get Innocent Boy Dog Bitten

I'm beginning to think that the reason the country lost the war on drugs is because the drug dealers are a damn sight smarter than the opposition. Take for example Clay County Superior Court Judge J. Blaine Akers. He's so goddam stupid that he thinks the proper response for the judiciary to the war on drugs is to gather a bunch of 5th graders in his court to witness and take part in a drug search. What could possibly go wrong? Well the stupid drug sniffing dog bit the kid who was cooperating in the simulation. Naturally the judge is too embarrassed by his judicial ignorance to comment citing an ongoing insurance investigation. Try that the next time you have an auto accident. "I really don't want to tell you I ran a stop sign, Judge Akers, because there is an ongoing insurance investigation."
Then there is Brazil Police Chief Clint McQueen. That's Brazil, Indiana, hometown of the late Jimmy Hoffa. McQueen says, "Wish it hadn't happened like that but it did. We are trying to evaluate (the incident) to make sure nothing like this happens again."
I have an idea. Leave the kids in school where they belong instead of serving up propaganda masked as education. Next year during Red Ribbon Awareness week spend the entire week trying to to teach your cops how to direct traffic as it seems every time I happen upon a traffic accident it's a civilian directing traffic while three police officers sit in their cars. Try to learn police skills from some source other than  public service announcements. Childhood is too short to waste watching community leaders make fools of themselves. Fight your own drug war and leave the kids out of it.

With Amusement And Bemusement

The healthcare.com website and the larger monster of Obamacare have me conflicted. I am amused that the website does not work but I am not cheering on the code writers. I am offended that CGI is the beneficiary of graft but the one thing that might be worse is if the site worked exactly as it was intended. Then again, the website "glitch" might protect the administration from the ugly truth of just how gory the train wreck happens to be. For the administration, a functioning website might be the light at the end of the tunnel in the form of an oncoming train. If you believe in Obamacare, brace yourself for "I told you so." That is to be expected but I for one do not take pride in this particular prophesy. If I had predicted the World Series winner at the start of the season, yes, I would take pride in that. But this is toaster in the bathtub kind of prophesy. The people who support Obamacare are so !@#$$%^& stupid (and !@#$%^& stupid by choice, I might add) that they believe we can pass a 2,700 UNREAD UNREAD UNREAD bill and add thousands of pages of additional regulations and everything will be improved. It is a celebration of regulation per se. The religious confirmation that all regulation is good and more regulation is always better. The Dems are now in an intra-family feud that will dwarf the spat the GOP just waged. CBS tells us millions will lose their preferred plans and NBC tells us that the president knew in 2010 that rates will rise for most citizens and he continued his lies. This is big, folks. MSNBC opened the hour trying hard to spin an NBC report. This is a CBS that covers Benghazi on "60 Minutes" and does not mention Hillary or Obama. This is the CBS that did a recent "60 Minutes" report on Peter Schweizer that conveniently omits any mention of Eric Holder and Barack Obama, despite the fact that the corruption, abuse of power and probable criminality of the Holder DOJ is a big chunk of his book. Of course, the Democratic civil war might have been avoided had a few of them read the bill. I am amused at the chickens coming home to roost. But as amusing as it might be, I am befuddled, confused and even bemused that grown people put their unyielding faith in the supremacy of documents that they have never read. That must be some damn good Kool-Aid.

DiGenova: Obama refused to order rescue forces to Benghazi

This is not the first time we've heard that General Carter Ham was relieved of command during the Benghazi raid because he insisted upon attempting a rescue operation. Benghazi whistleblower attorney Joe DiGenova was on with WMAL radio. According to DiGenova Obama refused to authorize a rescue operation because it would have been an act of war and went to bed.

…There is more to learn about Benghazi. Panetta has never told the full story.
Here’s an interesting question. Remember General Ham and what happened the night of the assault on the American embassy? We have reason to believe that things happened that night in the chain of command where people were relieved of their duties because they insisted that there be a military response. We’re working on trying to establish that with some news organizations but there’s very very good evidence that people were actually relieved of command because they refused not to try and dispatch troops and some response.
And by the way, this notion that the administration has put out – it’s this little straw man that military couldn't’t have landed in Libya, Greg Hicks has testified and so have some other military people that if there had only been a flyover, that would have dispersed these crowds because they remembered what the American military did its flyovers and its assaults.
There were planes in Croatia that could have been there by the time of the attack on the annex and no planes were ever sent. That was because the president of the United States refused to issue an order allowing for the dispersal of military into Libya because that was considered an act of war. The president, himself, who went to sleep, refused to issue some order.
You know, Panetta is not a bad man. He knows what went wrong that night. He’s never been properly questioned about this and pressed. And if he were he would admit all of this stuff.

Jesse Jackson Jr. begins serving time

"I am happy to report that he is in good spirits, all things considered," said North Carolina Representative G.K. Butterfield, who accompanied Jackson to the prison, according to the statement.
It's nice that Jesse Jackson Jr. is feeling good about going to prison. I'm sure many of us feel the same way. It will be easier on the country too, knowing where Jesse is and not having to speculate why he is not in Congress and how his drug rehab is going. Jesse will be residing at the Butner, North Carolina federal pen for the next 2 1/2 years and after that it will be 3 years of supervised release.

RIP Lou

Lou Reed: An artist of many facets and perspectives. Reed was the rare artist who is both of his time and place and not of any time or place. We lost a giant.

More On The Virginia Gubernatorial Race

The democratic candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe, was being funded by the dysfunctional dream team of Bill and Hillary Clinton, among others including NYC soda-banning mayor Michael Bloomberg. A supposedly state-level race became a national race, and began receiving an incredible amount of media attention. A number of almost assumed GOP wins turned into doubts. Could Virginia maintain its Blue-Federal/Red-State election status? The purple color Virginia is often painted on political maps started to grow a darker shade of blue. After the respective party conventions, Terry McAuliffe and current Attorney General of Virginia Ken Cuccinelli emerged as the nominated candidates. Cuccinelli is the conservative’s conservative, and a great man who had led Virginia to be a tough state for criminals, and a great place to call home. McAuliffe, on the other hand, is a crazy person’s crook. In addition to being bankrolled by liberal heavy hitters like the Clintons and Bloomberg, he has spoken harshly against coal, promised extreme Colorado-style gun control, and is adamantly pro-choice. McAuliffe is egalitarian in his policies, and if he’s elected he will do nothing but take freedoms away from the citizens of this commonwealth, and turn Virginia into a mess of regulations, taxation, unemployment, crime, and corruption. Read more at http://genfringe.com/2013/10/purple-sliding-blue-virginias-fall-from-freedom/#2Al61LqmM09iAeC6.99

Repost: Looking Back At Bluegrass

If the quality of the video this old is surprising it's because it was filmed by a professional documentary producer, David Hoffman. It was shot in 1964 just after Lyndon Johnson had declared his war on poverty and very little was known about Appalachia. Hoffman went on to produce 88 prime time documentaries for PBS.

One would think this dance was rehearsed and produced by somebody such as June Taylor but Hoffman explains that this is just a "roll back the rugs" dance in someone's home. He was so awestruck he tried to dance with the camera. The irony of Johnson's war on poverty was it targeted the most self reliant segment of the country"s population. They didn't take the bait and showed their gratitude for Johnson's solicitude by becoming Republican voters and VISTA was forced to shift its attention to impoverishing urban America where it found a ready supply of welfare clients. Looking at the dancers does not conjure up images of poverty. Sure they were wearing the best clothes because they knew they were going to a dance and may have known it would be filmed but these were not poor people. Using criteria such as availability of electricity and running water and per capita income are poor indicators of poverty when the population has spent 200 years learning to get along without them.
Bluegrass, like jazz, still demands instrumental virtuosity. It is it the folk music of the Scotch-Irish who populate Appalachia. The term Bluegrass is recent and was popularized by Bill Monroe who never lived in Appalachia but learned the music from his uncle. Monroe was born and raised in Western Kentucky, in Rosine, not far from Owensboro where they actually have blue grass but few Scotch-Irish. He was first to discover this young man in the video below. Monroe owned a minor league baseball team and hired a pitcher from Eastern Kentucky, Dave Akeman. Later he learned the pitcher could also play a banjo so he nicknamed him Stringbean and moved him to the band. As luck would have it, Monroe also happened upon Earl Scruggs who popularized his technique of banjo picking as opposed to flailing or strumming.

Before the Hoffman documentary a few examples of bluegrass had begun to appear on local television in towns such as Wheeling, West Virginia and Roanoke, Virginia. Don Reno and Red Smiley even had a well known sponsor, Kroger. Prior to that it existed on the AM radio band. The Carter Family, although never billed as bluegrass was one of its best acts. Wildwood Flower was an old song long before Maybelle Carter discovered it. Notice the "claw hammer" guitar  technique the family uses.

I would guess that there is a zero percent probability that Bluegrass will ever become as popular as country music for the simple reason that the performers are not interested in modifying their music to conform to popular tastes. They play by their own rules. No amplifiers, no drums, everything is acoustical and vocals are okay but merely an embellishment. I suppose it parallels with jazz in that the idea is to make music not money. Yes, a few do become wealthy but scores of little known groups travel from festival to festival in fifth wheel campers, performing and selling their cd's. I have been assured by someone who plays country music that very few country musicians could make it in Bluegrass. Vince Gill and Marty Stuart could but the list ends about there. I'll close with a video of Rhonda Vincent and the Rage, a group so demanding you apparently have to marry into it. Two of Vincent's musicians are son-in-laws.

2014 Senate Elections

Usual disclaimer. I am not a Republican but I usually vote that way because the GOP has established itself as the party of lesser evil. They send us slowly over the real fiscal cliff as they advocate for a slower death spiral and truth is, they are not as evil as the Democrats vintage 2008-2013. Voter fraud is overwhelmingly a Democratic pursuit. So too is using the DOJ or the IRS to shake down donors and to punish the non-compliant.

If Reince Priebus fails to take the Senate in 2014, he needs to be fired. No more General McClellans. I do not hold to the defeatist viewpoint that the Udalls and Shaheens are untouchable. I don't buy it.

The Democrats are vulnerable in seven states and at least seven more are shaky. There are a couple more that are long shots but are by no means done deals.

First, the vulnerable.

Alaska.   Mark Begich.

Arkansas. Marl Pryor.

Louisiana. Mary Landrieu.

Montana.  Max Baucus's vacating seat.

North Carolina.  Kay Hagan.

South Dakota. Tim Johnson's vacating seat.

West Virginia.  Jay Rockefeller's vacating seat.

If Priebus loses any of these, chop chop.

The shaky (if not vulnerable) seats.

Colorado
Iowa
Michigan
Minnesota
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico

Comments on the seven shaky if not vulnerable states.

Colorado. A state that recalls gun grabbers and dislikes Obamacare could be a happy hunting ground in an off-year election.

Iowa: It would be nice if Steve King stepped up but no matter who runs, this seat is available for the taking.

Michigan: Carl Levin is retiring. Michigan is a purple state that is trending red. They have a GOP governor and the bankruptcy of Detroit after decades of Dem mismanagement should send a chill through this frigid land. Low hanging fruit.

Minnesota: Franken should probably be downgraded to vulnerable. He had to steal the election in 2008 against a weak candidate in a blue state that was going goo goo for their new deity, Barack Obama. If the GOP runs a good candidate who sticks to the issues, Franken will be going back to Hollywood.

New Hampshire.  New Hampshire has gone purple due to widespread voter fraud. Fraudsters from Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts and elsewhere pour in on election day where they take advantage of same day registration (after voting in their home states earlier in the day.) As well, students who cast absentee ballots in their home state ate recruited to vote in New Hampshire. I used to like Jeanne Shaheen but the NH Dems are as corrupt as the Chicago machine.
This is an uphill battle but it is well worth waging.

New Jersey. I am not a big Christie fan but I think he could beat Booker. This assumes that Christie wins his gubernatorial election and then decides help his party. More likely, he will want to be Corey's special buddy.

New Mexico. Run Gary Johnson, the two-time governor. He could win but the GOP establishment would rather lose to Dems than embrace a Libertarian.

Outside chances:

Delaware
Hawaii
Massachusetts
Oregon

Delaware. If the GOP runs O'Donnell, Chris Coons will be re-elected. Anyone else has a fighting chance.

Hawaii. If Charles Djou runs, this seat is in play.

Massachusetts. Markey is vulnerable. The problem is the GOP has no bench in this state. Their strongest candidate, Charlie Baker, will be running for governor. Gabriel Gomez was a joke of a candidate in the special election--so much so that Boston talk radio middleweight Michael Graham refused to mention him by name--but he was able to keep it close.

Oregon. Jeff Merkley is not a particularly strong candidate. But like Delaware, Hawaii and Massachusetts, the GOP has no bench.

This is do or die for Priebus. He blew 2012 but now he is given another chance. Let's hope he makes the most of it.

What IF They Gave An Auction And No One Came?

I'll cut to the chase. Our Federal government has opened up some of its vast holdings to accommodate solar panels. Imagine becoming the next solar baron and jetting around with the rich and famous. Who could afford to thumb their nose at this lucrative and pr-enhancing action?

Everyone, so it seems. The first round of bids brought zero bidders. That is a zero like nothing. Zilch. Nill. Goose egg. Place holder. Empty set. Nada. In other words, the response was less than optimum.

Solar panels follow Moore's Law with one slight variation. Insted of an eighteen month cycle, solar panels are on a thirty year cycle. Every three decades solar panels double their energy output and become half as expensive (in hard to find real dollars) to purchase. One hundred years from now, solar energy will be the energy of the future.

From Foxnews...

Federal officials are trying to figure out why the Bureau of Land Management's first-ever auction of public land for solar-energy development failed to attract any bids.

According to the Denver Post, no bidders showed up for the first auction for three parcels of land in Colorado's San Luis Valley, even though five solar development companies had expressed interest in the land.

Three parcels covering 3,700 acres in so-called solar-energy zones were offered on Thursday. The bureau has created 19 zones for large solar projects in six Western states, encompassing nearly 300,000 acres, the newspaper reported.

Read entire article here.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/26/colorado-solar-auction-draws-no-bids/