Headlines

Rick Perry dances toward the exits

Black Friday shoppers spend $7.4 billion in second largest online sales day ever

Ginsburg health scare raises prospect of election-year Supreme Court battle ...

Burisma director admits Hunter Biden secured post because of Joe

Leaked papers hint at post-Brexit trade priorities for U.K., U.S

Tesla, GE and Uber make list of most divisive stocks on Wall Street

Poll: Majority of Republicans say Trump better president than Lincoln

Report: London attacker was convicted terrorist, recently released

Super PAC backing Booker will shut down

Brazil’s president accuses DiCaprio of financing Amazon fires, offers no evidence

Biden to blitz Iowa back roads by bus in 800-mile hunt for support ...

Dems doubt Biden’s S.C. lead will hold after early state losses

Fault Line

I've written before on Obamatrade (see: Trust Me), but now, as more and more of the details of this Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact leak out, I am getting very chary about this pact (really a treaty) and how the Obama administration is attempting another end-run around the U.S. Constitution. Heroic Senator Jeff Sessions, unlike many of his Senate-mates, has read this bill and is revealing enough of its onerous details to cause many second thoughts on this fast-track authority that the administration is seeking ... you really should read about his revelations ... see: Breitbart Story.

In fact, Obamatrade might well be the fault line in the Republican field of candidates for the presidential nomination in 2016. Unfortunately, my favorite candidate, Marco Rubio seems once again to be on the wrong side of this geographic schism ... just like he originally was on immigration ... as part of the Senator Chuck Schumer-led Gang of Eight. Also on the wrong side of this issue are Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator Ted Cruz and presidential contenders Jeb Bush and Rick Perry. Against this ultra-secret deal are Senator Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Carly Fiorina, Dr. Ben Carson, Bobby Jindal and Donald Trump. Both Senators Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio voted to authorize this partnership without reading its details.

On the Democrat side, Hillary Clinton favors this legislation while Martin O'Malley and Senator Bernie Sanders oppose it.

This week the House of Representatives takes up this bill and, heaven forbid, if they pass it, President Obama will be one step closer to an absolute monarchy ... perhaps, with a more trustworthy president, this partnership wouldn't be so dangerous. (Representative Paul Ryan has already indicated that he is for this bill.) I just hope enough other representatives take the time to read this bill (or talk to Senator Sessions) before they cast their votes.

A New Station of the Cross

Apparently our modern society has become obsessed with our backsides. Witness Kim Kardashian's popularity (see: Juxtaposition LII) and a bunch of puerile Dartmouth College students' expressed curiosity about Texas Governor Rick Perry's anus (see: Bile Green). Now, some equally infantile feminists in Rome have decided that crucifixes make fine sex toys for insertion into their posteriors. A group of three topless oinkers from the Ukraine called Femen demonstrated outside of the Vatican protesting the Pope's planned visit to the European Parliament ... see: The Gateway Pundit.

Their attempt to rouse or arouse their onlookers with their 15th station of the cross certainly made international new reports ... but I don't think that Pope Francis was that impressed.

Bile Green

Can Dartmouth sink any lower? For a rarity at the college on the hill, a conservative was invited to speak to the undergraduates. Apparently the college Republicans had invited Rick Perry, outgoing governor of Texas, to speak at an open event and he drew a number of anal-sex questions from the audience ... some of which were printed on a flyer that was passed out by a sophomoric sophomore, Ben Packer. A typical example was, "Do you [Rick Perry] dislike bootysex because the peeny goes in where the poopy comes out?"

Another green weenie in the audience, senior Emily Sellers, asked the governor if he might engage in anal sex for a large campaign contribution. Wow … such disrespect from seemingly liberal artists! And freshman, Timothy Messen, snidely queried if Rick Perry thought that homosexuals were equivalent to alcoholics. Obviously not everyone in the audience was so crass, but to read more of the details of this sour event see: Breitbart Story.

Because of a recent similarly scatological story coming out of Harvard ... see: UK Daily Mail Story, and an overwhelming vote of the Dartmouth faculty to abolish fraternities and sororities, I was commenting to my wife that college professors must live in a parallel universe ... and she agreed. They must have dispatched pedagogical space ships to bring some of their more naively insipid students along with them.

Obviously, the Dartmouth administration cannot and should not punish these miscreant students like it once attempted to stifle campus conservatives for "vexatious" speech. But it surely would be appropriate to embarrass them (and a few of the more notorious faculty members) in some public way.

Afterward: Here is a link to a related article: Powerline Piece.

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."

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!!)

The Rock

When I was much younger, there was a law in Virginia against sodomy.  In so many words, this law stated that "sodomy is a crime so heinous that it can not be described."  I often humorously imagined what would happen in a courtroom where someone was being tried for this crime.  What evidence could be produced?  How would the defendant counter such a nebulous charge?  What would the judge's instructions to the jury contain?  And how would such a convicted defendant feel spending years in the slammer without any specifics ever having been given at trial? 

I was reminded of this enigma this morning watching Morning Joe where there was an allusion to a word on a rock at the entry leading in to a Texan hunting lodge that Rick Perry had used/rented/owned.  No one on this TV show would describe what was on this rock except to decry it and, in hushed tones, say that it could not be specified.  So I had to wait until I read the Powerline blog later in the AM.  Here's where I found what I couldn't hear on Morning Joe -- The Rock.  I'm not writing this blog entry to defend Rick Perry.  You will have to judge this for yourself after reading all the various spins on this "indescribable incident" ... but rather to indicate how amused I am by the lexical temerity of those who are usually so outspoken on Morning Joe.

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?

Full Eclipse

The Barry has announced he would like to schedule his "jobs speech" to a joint session of Congress for the same night (Wednesday) and at the same time (8:00 PM) as the next Republican debate at the Reagan Library (see: Schedule Conflict).  Clearly this timing is meant to eclipse the audience and news coverage of this debate (the first to include Rick Perry.) This otherwise important debate event is to be broadcast on NBC.  The White House has suggested that, if this conflict is a problem,  the debate can be rescheduled.  Small-minded is a complement for this Administration action and I'm sure it is designed to get Republicans "all wee-wee-ed up" (to use an old Obama quote.)

An opening salvo such as this suggests that the coming election campaign on the part of Democrats will be beyond dirty ... it likely will be despicable.

Postscript:  The Barry's "jobs speech" has been petulantly moved to Thursday night.