Reported Without a Note of Irony

Here’s the  biggest understatement regarding the situation in Detroit of the decade – so far.

As reported on Detroit’s News Radio 960 WWJ 1:00  PM report on Sunday July 11: scattered power outages in the downtown area over the weekend continued and as a result many traffic lights were not functioning and  the (infamous) Detroit People Mover was likewise not operating. Beth Fisher continued her report saying that a sign was posted at one of the People Mover Stations which read “Downtown Detroit is experiencing technical difficulties.” 

Well finally. Someone noticed. FYI - if you’re not from around here - that’s been the case since 1968.

If anyone has a picture of said sign at said station, please send and I’ll include it in the post.

How Dumb is He?

Many in the MSM have spent the better part of the past 3 years comparing Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln - and deeming Obama the champion in the matchup. He’s been frequently confirmed as both a genius of immeasurable capacity and a leader of such stature that all others pale in comparison.

Now comes Stuart Schwartz, a brave soul, who postulates that dear leader may in fact be The Dumbest President. . . EVER!  In fact, he thinks the idolaters were off in their fawning presidential comparison by one: he thinks a more apt comparison would be to Lincoln’s predecessor, James Buchanan Jr.. The 15th president is almost universally regarded as the worst president ever to serve; a man whose

“judgment was so wretched that he thought anti-slavery forces could be convinced to give up their opposition by his personal assurances that slaves were "treated with kindness and humanity" and whose “approach to the raging controversy over slavery in the decade preceding the Civil War was based on ignoring evidence and acting upon events as he wished them to be, not as they were.”

Schwartz sees the same absence of true insight and intelligence in our current dear leader. To support his hypothesis, he unleashes expert witnesses’ analysis of what constitutes demonstrable intelligence:

One survey of more than fifty researchers in the field of intelligence offers the following definition:

A very special mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings---"catching on", "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.

After explaining several areas in which he believes Obama has failed the above test (i.e.  fiscal response, terrorism response, Gulf oil spill response) he goes on to explain the equally important definition of what intelligence is not:

It does not include, as David Brooks, tells us, having an exceptional and "perfectly creased pant [leg]" or -- in what Hot Air's Allahpundit calls "a loathsome expression of elitism" -- being able to "talk like us," Brooks, and others of the "smart set." If that were the case, all we would need to increase intelligence in the U.S. Congress is to provide our elected representatives with dry cleaning services. As for the "talk like us" part, it doesn't take intelligence to talk like a self-styled intellectual, a.k.a. a New York Times columnist. . .

Want to impress David Brooks and others of the media engaging in what Bernard Goldberg calls "a slobbering love affair" with the president? Simple. Reply, as Obama has done, "Ahhh...Burke" to David Brooks, enthralled by a president who expressed appreciation for the "finer points" of political philosophy; or flash your degree to Christopher Buckley, formerly of National Review, awestruck by Obama's "Harvard intellect"; or simply present Marxism and mainline elegance as typical of the academic life, and media academics like Michael Beschloss will gush on mainstream news, "he's probably the smartest guy ever to become President."

But do read the whole article. If for no other reason than to be entertained by Schwartz’s non-rhetorical question of  “How dumb is he?” which he answers in part with  “How-many-Obamas-does-it-take-to-screw-in-a-light-bulb dumb.”

NASA: Not About Space Anymore

Muslim scientist in weapons lab, praying for cold fusion 

Byron York reported on NASA’s new mission statement yesterday, as articulated by Charles Bolden, administrator of the agency. Here Mr. Bolden explains the mandate given to him by President Obama:

"One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering."

I have several questions regarding NASA’s new mission statement.

1) If we no longer have need for the services of the National Aeronautics and Space Association, why didn’t Obama just abolish it rather than appoint a new director in the person of Charles Bolden?

2) What the hell is the administrator of NASA doing giving interviews to the Middle Eastern news network al-Jazeera - the unofficial Bin Laden network and suspected supporter of Islamic terrorists?

Allow me to answer my own questions:

1) Because in government there is no “delete” key – it’s been replaced with a  “reset” key. Nothing and no one ever goes away, they are simply “repurposed” to perform jobs that no other government employee will do, even if it is in their job description. Because they’d rather be doing something different (such as cruising porn sites). If government employees spent more time doing their own damn jobs, maybe someone would have known what to do when Deepwater Horizon blew a hole in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

If you push the “reset” at the same time as the “insert” key you can invent new departments within existing departments and make them even bigger!  That’s right, instantly embiggening them. In the case of NASA, Obama just wrote over the “space exploration” field with “boosting Muslim self-esteem.”

2) Obama’s goal is to move every network on the planet, with the exception of Fox, into the “supportive media” column.

But let’s examine all three of NASA’s new initiatives: “inspire children to study science and math.” That’s currently the responsibility of the Education Department, whose 2010 budget was a paltry $140 billion. “Expand our international relationships” – uh, isn’t that what the State Department’s supposed to do? “Help (Muslim nations) feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.” Ok, you’ve stumped me there. As God is my witness, I did not know that was either a function or objective of the federal government. Does that include Muslim terrorists? I suppose so, since they’re the ones we’re trying to persuade to stop blowing us up.

 Muslim field engineer: not quite clear on the wheel concept, but feeling really good about himself.

The only think perfectly clear is that NASA’s acronym now means “Not About Space Anymore.”

But I have an idea. Since NASA will now be doing the jobs of Education, State and the Homeland Security, maybe that would free those agencies up to “go where no man has gone before.” I leave it up to you to decide where that might be.

Science is exciting, isn’t it?

A Holiday Round-up

Here, to wrap the holiday weekend, a compendium of notable issues from the previous week.

Icon Issues:

May he rest in peace, but I mean, really? Robert Byrd just joined the KKK to get elected? And that’s OK with you, President Clinton? Apparently he would now have all of us conform to the time honored political standard of “the ends justifies the means” ethics.

So here it is. Totally explained, without apology, by a guy who knows what he’s talking about..

 

Then again, maybe Bill was just talking about himself.

Budgetary Issues:

Since the pesky Republicans and many of their own Dems refused to vote to pass a $1.1 trillion budget, House Democrats instead passed - as part of a procedural vote on the emergency war supplemental bill – a non-existent $1.1 trillion budget which they “deemed as passed” According to Human Events  “the execution of the "deeming" document allows Democrats to start spending money for Fiscal Year 2011 without the pesky constraints of a budget.”

Never before -- since the creation of the Congressional budget process -- has the House failed to pass a budget, failed to propose a budget then deemed the non-existent budget as passed as a means to avoid a direct, recorded vote on a budget, but still allow Congress to spend taxpayer money.

Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) has issues:

"Facing a record deficit and a tidal wave of debt, House Democrats decided it was politically inconvenient to put forward a budget and account for their fiscal recklessness.  With no priorities and no restraints, the spending, taxing, and borrowing will continue unchecked for the coming fiscal year," Ryan said.  "The so-called ‘budget enforcement resolution’ enforces no budget, but instead provides a green light for the Appropriators to continue spending, exacerbating our looming fiscal crisis."

If we can procedurally begin to “deem” bills passed – as you will recall Nancy the P wanted to do if Obamacare didn’t pass – why do we even need elections? Why don’t we just deem Obama president for life? Just think how robust the economy would be if we could just deem the deficit to be a surplus.

 “So let it be written; so let it be done.”

Economy Issues:

Last week’s jobs report couldn’t possibly be perceived positively, could it? Wall Street certainly didn’t think so. The best that might possibly be said about the data out last week is that the decline has leveled off. There is no recovery. 83,000 private sector jobs created, but a net job loss of 125,000. Yes, the unemployment rate dropped from 9.7% to 9.5%. Unless you add back the people working part-time who need full time work and the people who’ve given up looking altogether. That segment of the uncounted unemployed are either spending their retirement savings or living in mom and dad’s basement and investigating the availability of government grants to finally go back to school to snag that gender-studies degree they always dreamed of getting.

President Obama was busy putting the best face on things, telling a crowd last week after the numbers came out: "Make no mistake, we are headed in the right direction." The Historical Leader and Master of Spin’s comment reminded me of Golden Flotus Winner Vereteno’s prize winning entry: “We are on correct path comrades”

Indeed.

Obamacare Issues:

Surprise! Health overhaul may mean longer ER rates, overcrowding, according to AP.

That might come as a surprise to those who thought getting 32 million more people covered by health insurance would ease ER crowding. It would seem these patients would be able to get routine health care by visiting a doctor's office, as most of the insured do.

But it's not that simple. Consider:

_There's already a shortage of front-line family physicians in some places and experts think that will get worse.

Oh dear. Yes, as it turns out, it really was that simple. So all you morons out there who thought that those of us who did think it was that simple were, well, morons - and racists: we accept your apologies. Now grab a mop and help us clean up this mess.

Legal Issues:

From one of the most under-quoted editorial writers around, Daniel Henniger comments in A Plague of Vagueness on last week’s Supreme Court ruling in the case of the previously most reviled man in all of US business history: Jeffery Skilling of ENRON infamy. The Court ruled unanimously that Skilling was wrongfully prosecuted under the “honest services fraud law” because the law was in a word, too “vague.” Known as the “void-for-vagueness” doctrine, it is classically described by Justice George Sutherland in 1926:  "a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning . . . violates the first essential of due process of law."

Henninger suggests the such a common-sense rule should be extended to include other aspects of public life beyond penal law. Specifically, some of the most recently passed or proposed legislation. He holds forth several excellent examples, but focused on the current Financial Reform Bill:

Our Congress, the one with a current approval rating of 22%, is attempting to enact its hapless answer to the financial crisis—now called, with no hint of irony, the Dodd-Frank bill…

Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling, in a comment on the legislation that should go straight into Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, said, "There are probably three unintended consequences on every single page of this bill."

Mr. Henninger’s weekly editorial column is titled, appropriately “Wonder Land.” Wonder no more, we’re there, Alice.

BP Deep Water Horizon

Day 77. Still no rest.

Happy Birthday America!

 

Happy birthday America, from all three houses:

  aligned left (temporarily)

 

 

 

 

 aligned right (temporarily)

simply maligned 

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."  James Madison

So on this 4th of July – this most quintessential of American holidays – when we celebrate the founding of our Republic and the freedom and liberty that has been inferred on each and every one of its (legal) citizens,  let us pause and reflect on our Founding Fathers handiwork:

The Declaration of Independence

The Constitution

The Bill of Rights 

 

These founding documents were designed and declared with full knowledge of human nature and complete understanding of the soul’s tendencies. The result was the formation of a more perfect union which has stood the test of time, in no small part due to the wisdom of these founders who crafted a near sacred separation of powers within the government they created.  Let us honor their courage, their genius and their foresight.

And for our part, let us be ever vigilant against those who would impinge on that greatness by opening the very gates that hold tyranny at bay.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?