Headlines

All from Internet news sites. Guess which from Politico?

Scaramucci cranks up the pressure on Priebus

IRS continues to hire employees with performance problems

Plane sized asteroid buzzes Earth undetected ...

Erdogan: Universities need to stop Muslim 'brain drain to West'

Joint Chiefs: 'No change' to transgender policy

Pakistani village orders teen raped for her brother's crime

Texas GDP soars 3.9%: California flatlines at 0.1%

Amazon Bezos world's richest man

Graham: Firing Mueller would be the 'beginning of the end' of Trump's presidency

Newt Gingrich tells Scaramucci to slow down and learn the business

OJ sends cease and desist to Goldmans ... says threatening him ...

The 'Trump option': Basic health care for all, private insurance for everything else

Anything Goes

The political  right is learning the successful "anything goes" tactics of the political left. For generations liberals have used outrageous actions to push their agenda very effectively. Ever since the anti-war protests during the Vietnam war ... which proved very effective ... the left has been building and refining the way that it captures and keeps the national stage. Act Up, Code Pink, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, etc. ... all these myriad radical organizations have elbowed their way onto the front pages of the American media ... and continually moved their agendas forward by staying top of mind.

The right, being naturally conservative had, for the longest time, eschewed such outrageous behavior ... to its regret. Yes, occasionally Republicans like Newt Gingrich, would make small inroads into this rough and tumble world. But they were quickly belted back by the liberal media ... remember Time magazine's front-cover depiction of Newt as the Grinch who stole Christmas? Basically, outrageous behavior was the privileged territory of liberals ... because it worked so well.

But slowly, painfully slowly, conservatives have been shucking their propriety and getting down in the mud with the liberals. Ann Coulter comes immediately to mind. She has honed outrageous rhetoric to a rapier-edge. The more she is attacked, the more she attacks back, whether she is always right is unimportant ... it's the fact that she is undaunted in this political contest of wills ... and that is her calling card.

Others have filled out the ranks of these conservative brick-bat throwers ... Dinesh D'Souza, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos, and now ... enter stage right ... Donald Trump. Matter of fact, one could argue that one of the reasons Trump has been so successful has been his bodacious behavior. Middle America has enthusiastically embraced someone who is finally really pushing back against our steady descent into socialist anarchy, They are willing to hug a less than a perfect conservative merely because he is kicking over a few of the loony left's bar stools.

And the phlegmatic right ... such stalwarts as Mitt Romney, George Will, Jeb Bush, and, to a lesser extent, Charles Krauthammer are aghast at such Trump effrontery. These straight-lacers are not so much turned off by what Trump says ... it's the way that he says it. It cuts against the grain of what a conservative is. "Conservatives just don't behave this way."

Well, we better get used to it. Outrageous behavior is finally working wonders for the Republicans ... to the point that Hellary Clinton is starting to look like a Victorian school marm. For good or evil, politics has finally become a cage match where now, from both sides, anything goes.

Headlines

These headlines are real ... they have all been discovered on Internet news sites:

Truck crashes into [Nice, France] crowd, at least 84 dead

John Bolton: Obama's Iran deal was 'diplomatic Waterloo for United States'

SWEDEN: 'women who don't wear headscarf asking to be raped'

Tom Brady drops deflategate appeal, will serve suspension

Police questioned Mohamed before attack ... said he as delivering ice cream

Drunk passenger PEES on fellow flyers

Britain's [new] PM dumps global warming dept.

Countries warn travelers about coming to America

Police release video of the shooting of an unarmed WHITE man

Texas top state for business

Rhode Island worst state for business

Newt: deport people who 'believe in Sharia law'

Headlines

These headlines are real ... they have all been discovered on Internet news sites:

Massive migrant camp built next to George Clooney's $10 million Lago Como villa

HALF of  all U.S. food THROWN AWAY

Venezuela food supply put under military control

Black Harvard economist finds no bias against blacks in police shootings

Transgender woman arrested for voyeurism at TARGET

Newt Gingrich and Fox News part ways

[France's President] Hollande's hairdresser 'paid 10,000 euros per month'

282 Zika cases in Florida

China's 'predatory' [yuan] devaluation exports deflation

Germany sells 10-year bond with negative yield

Texas 'most wanted' fugitives all listed as white

[Bill] Maher: Hillery 'elderly'

When They Were Young #8

The following early-life pictures come to you courtesy of reddit/Pics. Enjoy!

Rachel Maddow

Mel Brooks

Julie Andrews

Martha Stewart

Newt Gingrich

Screwing the Public

The federal government's spending sequestration is scheduled to take effect this coming Friday, March 1st.  This sequestration is nothing more than a decrease in the growth of government spending that Obama first backed … and then fled from … and is now desperately trying to pin on the Republicans.  These spending growth reductions total $43 billion (not the $85 billion as advertised) for fiscal 2013 (ends Sept. 30^th) out of a total federal budget of $3.8 trillion.  This is barely more than a 1% haircut on the baseline government spending that was already scheduled to increase by 0.2% (see: U.S. Federal Budget Detail ) … or as many pundits like to say, "it’s a rounding error."  But they are not even “cuts” … for federal government spending would still increase by 0.7%  even with this sequestration (after adding back the recent emergency appropriation of $64 billion for the victims of hurricane Sandy).  But, given the hair-on-fire rhetoric of the Obama administration … and the complicity of the main-stream media outlets in the United States, the American public generally hasn’t a clue to these meaningful facts.

So, the Obamanistas are out to make this sequestration look exactly like the government shutdown in 1995 when Bill Clinton humiliated Newt Gingrich into submission. It is nothing even closely resembling that.  The Obama administration is likely to go public with “furloughs” for as many government workers as they can in visible sectors of the U.S. economy -- air-traffic controllers, National Park rangers, TSA screeners, meat inspectors, etc. to try to inflict as much pain as possible on the American public (ergo, screw them) in order to pressure the Republicans into relenting on sequestration.  What is even more hypocritical is that these “furloughed” workers will then be paid any back wages due them once this sequestration is resolved.

This administration, using its hand-puppet, Jay Carney, is even saying that teachers, police and firemen will be laid off … employees that are not even paid for out of our Federal coffers.  Dear readers, if you ever want to know exactly what the word “demagoguery” means; this would be a perfect example … screw the naive American public and try to blame it on the other party.  I would love to see this type of despicable political misdirection be labeled the eighth deadly sin ... and come back to haunt Obama and his minions in Congress.

Don't Feed the Bears

Newt Gingrich has called Barack Obama "the food-stamp President" because this U.S. Dept. of Agriculture program has more than doubled under his watch.  See the interesting table here.  Now, in a bit of government bureaucratic irony, the U.S. Forest Service has posted this equivalent notice in many of its National Parks:

Please don't feed the bears. They get used to this
source of food and then can't fend for themselves.

(Thanks to John B. for a heads-up to this tidbit.)

Queuing Up

Here is a partial list of well-known Republicans (Rush Limbaugh would call them "Establishment Republicans") who are lining up to take their shots at Newt Gingrich:

Ann Coulter

Joe Scarborough (see: The Newt I Knew)

Eliot Abrams

Bob Tyrrell

Bob Dole

Tom DeLay

Matt Drudge

Mark Steyn

Chris Christie

Marco Rubio

Jonah Goldberg

If Gingrich loses in the Florida primary next Tuesday, it may be because of the rotten tomatoes that this group brought to the festivities.

Puzzled?

Newt Gingrich has claimed that he has been exonerated on all the charges relating to the 1,300 page Congressional ethics investigation document (see: Think Progress).  If this were the case, then I must ask ... why did he resign his Speakership, pay a $300,000 fine, and depart Congress?

It would seem to me that, as feisty as Newt is, he would have and should have stood his ground.  But he didn't ... and this, to me, is compelling.

Hell Hath No Fury ...

Like a woman scorned.  Newt Gingrich's second wife, Marianne, has unloaded on Newt in an ABC interview to be aired tonight after the debates (see: Washington Post Story) and two days before the South Carolina primary.  Apparently, this scorned woman drops at least one bomb on Newt saying that he requested, after many years of their marriage, that they should have an "open relationship" (each partner would be free to have other love partners).

I don't want to beat a dead horse ... nor do I want to seem to be endorsing Newt Gingrich's candidacy, but would this be a prime-time, network "news" story if it involved either of the Clintons ... particularly prior to their running for office?  (This is obviously a rhetorical question.)

DEN left a comment that freezes things on this blog (perhaps Google is trying to tell me something).  Anyway here it is:

I think the timing of this "news" is very suspect, and also Marianne is a skank, who knew he was a cheater because she was giving him lewinskis when he was married to #1. Most Gingrich fans will ignore this info (just as I did when you railed about Clinton's dalliences.)

Capitalism on Trial

Isn't it funny and, yes, a little frightening that Republican candidates for President like Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry can make blatant anti-capitalism statements for their own seeming political gain?  (See details at: Newt's Attack and Perry's Attack.)  Fortunately it doesn't seem to have so far worked ... but this is just the beginning of a full-frontal assault on our free-enterprise system that is bound to occur once the presumptive Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, is chosen.  He and Bain Capital, the private equity firm he once ran, will be made the poster children of this onslaught.  This belligerency is what the Occupiers represented this past summer and fall ... and the surprising sympathy that they received among many media types and left-leaning pols was a omen of what is to come in this fall's election season.

The liberals in the United States have for generations been eating away at the foundations of capitalism ... often funded from the profits gained from the very system they despise.  This is despite formidable evidence that capitalism is a wealth generating engine nonpareil and that its many alternatives are not.  Just the contrast that is evident in China where merely a soupçon of capitalism has unleashed mighty forces that are propelling this former denier of property rights into an economic powerhouse ... should be enough to convince the Occupiers that their nihilism is futile.  But no ... the current economic stagnation in the United States, has inflamed the juices of these anarchists.  They would pull down the economic structure of this country around their heads without any thought-through idea of what to build in its stead.

Yes, capitalism does develop some warts from time to time (trusts, insider trading, creative accounting, carried interest, crony capitalism, etc.) but these have, can, or should be easily remedied.  And many politicians, unfortunately including Gingrich and Perry, but more predictably including Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama are more than willing to capitalize on this current anti-capitalist fervor to gain or retain their place at that feeding trough called "big government."

Inoculation Time

The conventional wisdom (whatever that means) says that Newt Gingrich (and maybe Rick Santorum) will now be coming after Mitt Romney with both gun barrels blazing in the ensuing Presidential race.  This media narrative results from the supposed effective negative ads that Romney's Super-PACs ran against Newt in Iowa.  Such attacks are believed to have sunk Newt's caucus chances there.  And Newt is just vindictive enough to try to turn the tables on Romney and spend every dime he can raise or borrow to slime this now-seeming frontrunner.

I think Mitt Romney should welcome this Gingrich vitriol and respond quickly to each and every charge (i.e., his dog riding on the car roof, Bain Capital layoffs in the companies it took over, Romneycare, etc.)  In effect, the more that Newt, Santorum, et alia throw at Mitt, the less negative surprises that The Barry will have to spend his billion-dollar war chest on ... when (and if) Mitt is his opponent when the real race begins  in the late summer.  (This theory is based on the assumption that voters will tire of hearing the same charges over and over again.)  This political tactic is know as "inoculation" and has been used effectively, particularly by Bill Clinton, in past elections.

But the important caveat is that Romney must respond quickly to all of these brickbats with convincing ripostes.  If he lets them stand and fester, then he will indeed be in deep sneakers.

As you may have guessed, I still believe that a Predident Romney is our best chance for curing our in extremis nation.

CAUTION!

If it came down to a election contest between Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama, I would without hesitation pull the "R" lever ... since I believe that four more years of The Barry would probably damage this country almost beyond repair.  However, I would prefer Mitt Romney instead of Newt Gingrich for no other reason than I believe that he can and will heal our economy.  At the moment all other considerations pale by comparison in my mind.

But recently Gingrich said that he would give the $1.4 million dollars back to Freddie Mac (money he got for his giving it "historical perspective" shortly before the sub-prime mortgage crisis) if Romney would give back the money that Bain Capital (Romney's former venture capital firm) got  from “bankrupting companies and laying off employees.”  Now, I have dealt with a few venture capitalists in my life time and I can't imagine that any of them has ever made an investment with the objective of bankrupting the company they just gave their money to.

This is nonsensical Newt.  So please stop playing fast and loose with such pejorative utterances (you too, Mitt).  And, if you do get the nomination, please erect a "Caution, Slow Down" sign between your fertile brain and your voice box.

Juxtaposition XXX

Republican's Barney Frank

Democrat's Newt Gingrich

Acknowledgment: Thanks for this idea goes to my wife, Jeanette.

The Long Knives

An assegai

W.C. Fields, as Egbert Souse' in The Bank Dick, claimed that the antagonist bank robber had attacked him with a long knife, an “assegai."  Fields loved to use strange-sounding words like this one (including such others as "Lompoc" and "Petaluma"), but claiming he was attacked by a long knife in this classic movie made him an accidental hero. 

However, I have been increasingly perplexed by the assegais that are being wielded by almost everyone in the media these days ... to reduce the ranks of potential Republican heroes, the aspirants to the Presidency.  First Michele Bachmann, then Rick Perry, then Herman Cain and now Newt Gingrich and yes, even Mitt Romney are being sliced up by the press for any verbal gaffs and/or minor character flaws.  It's as though those media personae want to make their bones by taking down the current Republican front runner in the Presidential sweepstakes.

Thinking back to the last Presidential election, I can remember dozens of Obama's verbal gaffs and, not minor, but major character flaws that were glossed over by these same members of the fourth estate.  Such media inconsistencies have always perplexed me.  It's as though there is a subconscious narrative written in the stars that is then followed throughout the campaign by these too-often-pompous talking heads.  Some call this a double standard, but, to me, it is much more insidious and puzzling than this.  How does this happen?  Why can politics become a blood sport one day while, at other times, candidates seem to be adoringly carried on sedan chairs into office? 

This morning on Morning Joe, Mitt Romney was being savaged for expressing his private displeasure to Brett Baier of Fox News's Special Report for his tough interviewing technique. To me this is a mere bagatelle. Actually, this MSNBC morning show had previously become one that I looked forward to watching. Now, its seems to be nothing more than a pissing contest ... besmirching each favored Republican candidate in turn with clever pejoratives, snorts, and sideways scowls. As a result, I have started to switch more often to Imus in the Morning (gasp!!)

Kitchen Cabinet

Last night, while watching the Republican debate from the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, I was impressed with this lineup of Presidential hopefuls. I also felt it was a shame that only one of them could take the fight to The Barry next fall. I realize that this idea cuts across the grain of the current media narrative -- that the Republicans offer a weak slate of candidate hopefuls. But, to me, each of these potentials is better than what we got now … and each has significant strengths that he/she could bring to the next administration. Since only one could be our next President, the next fanciful step then was to imagine how each of them would fit into a Republican administration. I do realize that this would never happen, but I did have this chimera and let me here share it with you:

Mitt Romney – President
Newt Gingrich – Vice President (if I can’t have Marco Rubio)
Jon Huntsman – Secretary of State
Ron Paul – Surgeon General
Rick Perry – Secretary of Defense
Michele Bachmann – Attorney General
Rick Santorum – Secretary of  Treasury (if I can’t have Paul Ryan)
Herman Cain – Secretary of Commerce

I can dream can't I?