The Pajamahadin: 04/01/2012

Navy SEALS Slam Obama

The SEALS did not kill Osama bin Laden as an in-kind campaign contribution to Barack Hussein Obama.

A serving SEAL Team member said: ‘Obama wasn’t in the field, at risk, carrying a gun. As president, at every turn he should be thanking the guys who put their lives on the line to do this. He does so in his official speeches because he speechwriters are smart.

‘But the more he tries to take the credit for it, the more the ground operators are saying, “Come on, man!” It really didn’t matter who was president. At the end of the day, they were going to go.’

Chris Kyle, a former SEAL sniper with 160 confirmed and another 95 unconfirmed kills to his credit, said: ‘The operation itself was great and the nation felt immense pride. It was great that we did it.

‘But bin Laden was just a figurehead. The war on terror continues. Taking him out didn’t really change anything as far as the war on terror is concerned and using it as a political attack is a cheap shot.

‘In years to come there is going to be information that will come out that Obama was not the man who made the call. He can say he did and the people who really know what happened are inside the Pentagon, are in the military and the military isn’t allowed to speak out against the commander- in-chief so his secret is safe.’

A Hell Of A Punch!

That's gonna leave a mark!

Fake Indians

What do Ward Churchill and Elizabeth Warren have in common?

To judge by photographs, Elizabeth Warren, the leftist Democratic professor running for Scott Brown's Senate seat, is as white as a polar bear's ghost after a dental bleaching in a snowstorm. But the Boston Herald reported last week that Warren "was once touted by embattled Harvard Law School officials . . . as proof of their faculty's diversity."

"Although the conventional wisdom among students and faculty is that the Law School faculty includes no minority women," the Harvard Crimson reported in 1996, "[law school spokesman Mike] Chmura said professor of law Elizabeth Warren is Native American."

Apparently "family lore" has it that "both Warren's grandparents on her mother's side had Native American lineage." That lore may or may not be accurate. Genealogist Christopher Child "traced back Warren's family to her great-grandfather on her mother's side and couldn't find any proof of Native American heritage." He tells the Herald that "in her immediate pedigree there is no one who is listing themselves as not white," although he also says, in the reporter's paraphrase, "that finding Native American lineage is not always easy."

According to the earlier Herald story, "the Warren campaign said the candidate never authorized Harvard Law to claim her as a minority hire." She "has no recollection of discussing her Native American heritage with Harvard Law School faculty" before her hiring. Charles Fried, another Harvard law prof (and worshipful supporter of Barack Obama), also "said he didn't recall her Native American heritage ever coming up during the hiring process..."

...Not all minority professors could pull that off. If Warren were black, for instance, everyone would know it, and there would be no way of escaping the stereotype. Because she is--or can pass for--white, she was in a position to have the best of both worlds, advancing through affirmative action, then enjoying the white privilege of appearing to have gotten ahead solely on the merits.

Of course not. She got raises on promotions based upon her phony Indian heritage without knowing a thing about it.

Although, now that I look at her more closely, I do see a resemblance to the Upper Mohawk Valley Frumps.

For affirmative action exploitation, she deserves Ward Churchill's fate.

Three Years Without A Budget

Is has now been three years since the Democrat controlled Senate has obeyed the law and passed a budget.

“This is a deliberate plan that the Democratic majority has executed for three years to avoid the responsibility of laying out a financial plan for America,” he said in an interview.

The Democratic majority in the Senate, Sessions said, “cannot lead.”

“When your party cannot coalesce around a plan that your members can support and the American people can support, then you’ve got a very deep, serious problem. And I think that is basically what it is,” he explained.

“So you’ve got to hide that by avoiding any public accountability. So you have secret meetings, the gang of six, and those kind of things — trying to move along without every having to lay out their vision.”

Even Jimmy Carter Would Have Given THAT Order!

And for that matter, Jimmy Carter wouldn't have needed weeks to think it over.

Nancy Pelosi Lied

Yes, I know. This is an Obama bites dog story. After all, who doesn't know that Nancy Pelosi is a liar? If everybody already knows something, how can it be news? It's news when the Washington Post reports that Nancy Pelosi is a liar. It's as though the world if flat until the Post declares that it is spherical.

In his new book, “Hard Measures,” Rodriguez reveals that he led a CIA briefing of Pelosi, where the techniques being used in the interrogation of senior al-Qaeda facilitator Abu Zubaida were described in detail. Her claim that she was not told about waterboarding at that briefing, he writes, “is untrue.”

“We explained that as a result of the techniques, Abu Zubaydah was compliant and providing good intelligence. We made crystal clear that authorized techniques, including waterboarding, had by then been used on Zubaydah.” Rodriguez writes that he told Pelosi everything, adding, “We held back nothing.”

How did she respond when presented with this information? Rodriguez writes that neither Pelosi nor anyone else in the briefing objected to the techniques being used. Indeed, he notes, when one member of his team described another technique that had been considered but not authorized or used, “Pelosi piped up immediately and said that in her view, use of that technique (which I will not describe) would have been ‘wrong.’ ” She raised no such concern about waterboarding, he writes. “Since she felt free to label one considered-and-rejected technique as wrong,” Rodriguez adds, “we went away with the clear impression that she harbored no such feelings about the ten tactics [including waterboarding] that we told her were in use."

So we’re left with a “he said-she said” standoff? Not at all. Rodriguez writes that there’s contemporaneous evidence to back his account of the briefing. Six days after the meeting took place, Rodriguez reveals, “a cable went out from headquarters to the black site informing them that the briefing for the House leadership had taken place.” He explains that “[t]he cable to the field made clear that Goss and Pelosi had been briefed on the state of AZ’s interrogation, specifically including the use of the waterboard and other enhanced interrogation techniques.”

”

Jon Corzine Getting His Money's Worth

Disgraced Senator, governor, financial CEO Jon Corzine is one of Barack Hussein Obama's biggest fundraisers. He's also under criminal investigation from Barack Hussein Obama's ironically misnamed Department of Justice. And that investigation is on the slow track. The VERY SLOW track. I mean, Fast and Furious like SLOW TRACK.

The implosion of MF Global appears to be the single most investigated event in recent Wall Street history. The FBI, two US attorneys, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and several congressional committees all say they’re looking into the firm’s spectacular collapse last fall — and at just who’s responsible for the mysterious disappearance of $1.6 billion in customer money in its final days.

Yet investigators say they’re having a tough time assigning culpability. Then-CEO Jon Corzine insists he was clueless about what was happening; mass confusion is the best explanation the probes seem to have found.

Don’t buy it.

The probers sifting through documents and taking depositions from witnesses are no doubt dedicated professionals, but their bosses are political — and that’s the best clue as to why a probe that’s allegedly been running full steam for six months has made such slow progress.

The bumbling Corzine, one of Wall Street’s most prominent Democrats, is a close ally of President Obama and one of his best bundlers of Wall Street campaign cash.

"D" Student Lectures The World On Global Warmin

Al Gore got a "D" in Natural Sciences at Harvard. It's really, really, really hard to get a D in any class at Harvard.

In his commencement speech at Hamilton College on Sunday, former Vice President Al Gore told the graduates that global warming is “the most serious challenge our civilization has ever faced.” But as an undergraduate at Harvard University in the late 1960s, Gore--one of the most prominent spokesmen on climate change today--earned a “D” in Natural Sciences.

Gore’s transcript documents that during his sophomore year at Harvard he earned a "D" in Natural Sciences 6 (Man’s Place in Nature). Also, as a senior at Harvard, he earned a C-plus in Natural Sciences 118.

Obama/MSNBC Merger Complete

Lean forward.

Wind Farms Create Global Warming

And unlike global warming, this warming is measurable and not just theoretical.

"We attribute this warming primarily to wind farms," the study said. The temperature change could be due to the effects of the energy expelled by farms and the movement and turbulence generated by turbine rotors, it said.

"These changes, if spatially large enough, may have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate," the authors said.

Barack Hussein Obama Wins The Coveted Larry Flynt Endorsement

Obama still holds the porn belt.

Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, who once ran for governor of California with the slogan “the smut peddler who cares,” told The Daily Caller that he will vote to re-elect President Barack Obama in November.

Flynt has been a longtime Obama skeptic. In December 2010 he penned an open letter to the president in The Daily Beast titled “President Obama: You Are Toast.”

“I was delighted when you were elected,” he wrote then. “Now, like many other Americans, all I see is an ineffectual wimp. If you want a second term in office, you must win back the respect of the American people. From my vantage point it’s hard to see how you can do that.”

In a subsequent April 2011 letter to Obama, he wrote, “As it stands, you can no longer count on any of the groups that supported your Presidential bid last time around.”

But despite his disappointment with Obama on civil liberties issues, on ending foreign wars, on health care reform and on extending the Bush-era tax cuts, Larry Flynt is prepared to change his mind.

The Resurrection Of Osama bin Laden

Barack Hussein Obama claims that Mitt Romney wouldn't have had the balls to order the hit on bin Laden.

Just how much courage did that require? If the SEAL commanders told me that they could do it, I would have taken their word for it.

Robert Gibbs told "Meet The Press" this morning that it "wasn't clear" that a President Romney would make the same call as President Obama did in the order to kill Bin Laden. He said he wasn't using the "politics of fear" but the "politics of brave decision making" in questioning Romney's credentials as Commander-In-Chief.

If Obama Concentrated As Much Energy On Governing As He Does On Campaigning...

Barack Hussein Obama's deficit attention disorder.

While big issues simmer untended, our leader is focused like a laser beam on trivia that benefit him politically but do the country little or no good.

Obama devoted a full week this month to smacking the rich around with the “Buffett rule” — which his own advisers acknowledged was more a crusade for “fairness” than a way to fill the budget gap. This is approximately like complaining to a bank robber that he is cutting in line.

The president then launched a crusade to hire a new crew of federal enforcers to nab crafty oil speculators who might be driving up the price of gasoline — assuming these speculators exist.

This ploy was a model of PR efficiency. It not only portrayed Obama as riding to the rescue of motorists besieged by $4 a gallon gas, it showed him ready to slay a few more Wall Street types he’s set up as the boogeymen of his administration.

He moved on last week to solve the crisis that subsidized student loan rates might rise to their normal level — something everyone should have been planning for, because the end date of this benefit was set five years ago in a vote that he missed.

If Hugo Chavez Can't Dictate Economics...

...What makes Obama think he can? After all, Obama doesn't yet have Hugo Chavez's dictatorial powers.

By 6:30 a.m., a full hour and a half before the store would open, about two dozen people were already in line. They waited patiently, not for the latest iPhone, but for something far more basic: groceries. …Venezuela is one of the world’s top oil producers at a time of soaring energy prices, yet shortages of staples like milk, meat and toilet paper are a chronic part of life here, often turning grocery shopping into a hit or miss proposition. Some residents arrange their calendars around the once-a-week deliveries made to government-subsidized stores like this one, lining up before dawn to buy a single frozen chicken before the stock runs out. Or a couple of bags of flour. Or a bottle of cooking oil. The shortages affect both the poor and the well-off, in surprising ways. A supermarket in the upscale La Castellana neighborhood recently had plenty of chicken and cheese — even quail eggs — but not a single roll of toilet paper. Only a few bags of coffee remained on a bottom shelf. Asked where a shopper could get milk on a day when that, too, was out of stock, a manager said with sarcasm, “At Chávez’s house.” At the heart of the debate is President Hugo Chávez’s socialist-inspired government, which imposes strict price controls that are intended to make a range of foods and other goods more affordable for the poor. They are often the very products that are the hardest to find. …many economists call it a classic case of a government causing a problem rather than solving it. Prices are set so low, they say, that companies and producers cannot make a profit. So farmers grow less food, manufacturers cut back production and retailers stock less inventory. Moreover, some of the shortages are in industries, like dairy and coffee, where the government has seized private companies and is now running them, saying it is in the national interest.

If Batman Belonged To A Public Employee Union

CNBC Makes The Case For Obamanomics

Government isn't growing fast enough.

Friday's gross domestic product report confirmed what a drag government can be: While consumer spending grew at a 2.9 percent clip, state and local governments cut back spending by 1.2 percent on an annualized basis and the federal government pulled back by 5.6 percent.

As a result, the GDP number showed just a 2.2 percent improvement. The report disappointed economists, some of whom had the number as high as 3 percent and beyond, and cast an uncertain future on a stock market dependent on Federal Reserve stimulus for growth.

"None of this is all that surprising, so where is the miss?" wondered Brown Brothers Harriman global currency strategist Marc Chandler, after noting some fairly pedestrian and in-line quarterly growth results. "Contrary to what passes as conventional wisdom, the main drag is coming from the government itself."

Before anyone starts thinking that Washington suddenly has gotten religion on spending, the bulk of the federal government cuts came from defense spending, which plunged 8.1 percent.

Liberals Discover Culture

Philadelphia has strict gun laws, loads of cops and a culture of violence. San Diego has relatively lax gun laws, and far less violence. Where has liberalism gone wrong?

In a single week last April, 3 people were killed with guns in Philadelphia, 14 more were shot and wounded, 68 robberies were carried out at gunpoint and a total of 144 crimes involving firearms were reported.

During that same week in San Diego, a city of roughly the same size with far fewer police officers, there were no gun-related homicides, 2 people wounded by gunshots, 4 robberies committed at gunpoint and a total of only 20 gun-related crimes.

What made the difference? About 250 police chiefs from around the country debated this question and gun violence more generally at a meeting here this week, taking as their focus a survey of crimes occurring in six cities — Philadelphia, San Diego, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Austin, Tex., and Toronto — over a seven-day period in April 2011. The survey was carried out by the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit police research group that sponsored the session as part of its two-day annual meeting.

San Diego, is a largely conservative, Republican city. Philadelphia has been tyrannized by liberal Democrats for generations.

Muslims Murdering Christians

Remind about that "religion of peace" bullshit again.

Gunmen killed 15 people and wounded many more when they attacked a lecture theatre used by Christian worshippers in Nigeria's second largest city of Kano on Sunday, a university worker told Reuters.

The man, who asked not to be named, said he saw 15 bodies being carried from the site and many more being treated for injuries.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack but Islamist sect Boko Haram has killed hundreds in bomb and gun attacks this year, some of which have targeted churches.

Did You Know That Obama Once Ate A Dog?

Barack Obama brings up Mitt Romney's dog.

[I]t was a spoof about Mitt Romney and his dog Seamus that highlighted the president's monologue.

The joke recalled a political ad released by the Newt Gingrich campaign that took aim at Romney for admitting he once put his family dog in a cage and perched it on the top of his car.

"I know everybody is predicting a nasty election, and thankfully, we've all agreed that families are off-limits," the president said. "Dogs, however, are apparently fair game."

At least Romney didn't eat his dog.

More Religious Bigotry

From Team Obama.

Bill Maher, the largest donor to President Obama's super PAC, called Mormonism a "cult" on his HBO show last night, and said that donating money to that religion doesn't count as charity because it's "bulls---."

I have just a few observations, questions and animadversions.

Question number 1: Why is Barack Obama’s presidential campaign accepting campaign contributions from Jon Corzine?

There are few people walking this earth with a history more drenched with sleaze than Jon Corzine.

He served as CEO of the investment firm Goldman Sachs, and in the process pocketed somewhere in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars. This might imply that he was a crafty businessman, but in fact, he and Goldman-Sachs were making money by repackaging subprime mortgages into derivatives and reselling them to unsuspecting investors by concealing the risks inherent in those derivatives.

Goldman Sachs, and Jon Corzine were central to the 2008 financial crisis.

With a record like that, the next natural step was for Corzine to run for the US Senate as a Democrat. A few years later, he spent $40 million of his fortune to purchase residence in the New Jersey governor’s mansion.

He immediately used the skills he honed at Goldman Sachs to plunge New Jersey billions of dollars into debt. The residents of New Jersey had their fill and, in 2009, did what was previously considered unthinkable and replaced him with a Republican.

Corzine was not unemployed long. His White House connections gained him an appointment as CEO of MF Global, which after less than two years of his stewardship, was bankrupt. Worse than that, 1.2 billion dollars simply disappeared without a trace.

One cannot innocently lose $1.2 billion. The man responsible should be the subject of a criminal investigation. One might ask why he isn’t in jail already.

The answer might be that Corzine has raised at least half a million dollars for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. One need only search Obama’s campaign website to learn that Corzine ranks among Obama’s top fundraisers.

It’s hard to imagine that the president of the United States would accept campaign contributions from a man who, by all rights, should be under criminal investigation by his Justice Department. But, Obama did promise us fundamental change. Certainly his predecessor would not have knowingly and flagrantly accepted money from someone his Department of Justice might soon be prosecuting.

Question number 2: How many times will the mainstream news media permit Obama to get away with his bumper sticker inspired lies about US oil consumption and production? He regularly claims that the US uses 20% of the world’s oil production, while possessing only 2% of the world’s reserves. In fact, thanks to the policies of Obama’s predecessor, the United States is on track to become the world’s largest oil producing nation. The New York Times predicted that we would be free of foreign oil dependency by 2020, assuming that Obama fails in his crusade to shut down oil exploration.

If even the New York Times can figure that out, then where are the rest of the media? For that matter, does the rest of the New York Times’ staff even read their own paper’s business section?

Question number 3: Since Obama took office the price of gasoline has more than doubled. His Interior Secretary testified this week that it might double again. Or more!

The inflation rate for college tuition far exceeds that of the consumer price index. It rose 8.3% just last year, more than double the rate of inflation elsewhere in the economy.

Half of all college graduates who matriculated since Obama took office are either unemployed or underemployed.

So, somebody please tell me why anybody should be impressed with a promised extension of subsidized student loan interest rates.

Wouldn’t it be a whole lot easier on graduates if they could find jobs and didn’t have to spend so much filling their tanks?

Question number 4: Just how desperate is the left if they’re going to keep attacking Romney’s religious faith?

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has several times smeared all Mormons. Martin Bashir even went so far as to claim that Mitt Romney couldn’t be a good president because he doesn’t drink enough alcohol.

The Democrat governor of Montana criticized Romney because of Mormonism’s historical polygamy, even though the last polygamist in Romney’s family was three generations ago.

This should be particularly perilous territory for the left, because if it’s suddenly okay to judge candidates by their faith, then can’t we start reexamining Obama’s two decade long association with the racist, anti-American reverend Jeremiah Wright?

And by the way, the last polygamist in Obama’s lineage was his father.

High Unemployment Good For Obama And Democrats

The party of hopelessness and despair.

“We’re headed in the right direction. Unemployment continues to drop and those people who are unemployed, they’re not going to be voting for the party who wants to cut their benefits, cut access to food stamps, cut job training,” Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA) said on MSNBC’s Al Sharpton program.

“The idea that Republicans are trying to help those who are unemployed is nonsense and I think that on this election day, those who have a job can credit the administration for stabilizing our economy and those who don’t know that this administration is trying to put them to work,” he said.

A Treatment For Prion - Transmitted Diseases?

Let's hope so.

Toxic prions in the brain can be detected with self-illuminating polymers. The originators, at Linköping University in Sweden, has now shown that the same molecules can also render the prions harmless, and potentially cure fatal nerve-destroying illnesses.

Linköping researchers and their colleagues at the University Hospital in Zürich tested the luminescent conjugated polymers, or LCPs, on tissue sections from the brains of mice that had been infected with prions. The results show that the number of prions, as well as their toxicity and infectibility, decreased drastically. This is the first time anyone has been able to demonstrate the possibility of treating illnesses such as mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jacobs with LCP molecules.

"When we see this effect on prion infections, we believe the same approach could work on Alzheimer's disease as well," says Peter Nilsson, researcher in Bioorganic Chemistry funded by ERC, the European Research Council.

Along with professors Per Hammarström and Adriano Aguzzi and others, he is now publishing the results in The Journal of Biological Chemistry.
Prions are diseased forms of normally occurring proteins in the brain. When they clump together in large aggregates, nerve cells in the surrounding area are affected, which leads to serious brain damage and a quick death. Prion illnesses can be inherited, occur spontaneously or through infection, for example through infected meat – as was the case with mad cow disease.

The course of the illness is relentless when the prions fall to pieces and replicate at an exponential rate. When researchers inserted the LCP molecules into their model system, the replication was arrested, possible through stabilizing the prion aggregates.

California Hemorrhaging Productive Citizens

Over the last two decades, California has experienced a net exodus of 4 million productive citizens and replaced them with illegal immigrants and welfare recipients.

And California's political class is okay with that.

The new USC study pointing to a much-slower rate of population growth in California has been greeted by demographers and urban planners as good news, in that it supposedly gives our state's leaders a little breathing room to better plan for the future. The rate of growth has slowed to about 1 percent a year, the result of fewer immigrants coming here and many Californians heading to other states.

"The cooling pace means the state, city and county governments and other entities will have more time to prepare for a bigger population than they did in years past, allowing for more effective planning," according to the Los Angeles Times, paraphrasing the study's authors. "That could ensure that new roads and parks, for example, are put in areas where they are most needed and where growth is likely to be sustained, they said."

That's an absurdly optimistic spin. California's elected officials have been doing as little planning as possible, unless one counts planning to spend tens of billions of dollars the state doesn't have on a high-speed rail line that will partially replicate what the airlines already do. Our leaders are battling new water-storage facilities and punishing farmers with absurd water-use restrictions. They impose roadblocks to building new highway systems, and land-use regulations make it nearly impossible to build the homes and businesses necessary to meet the needs of a growing population. You can hardly call that planning.

Jay Carney Never Lies

According to Jay Carney. Less biased observers often see things differently.

Carney told reporters in April that the president had never argued the Buffett Rule would solve the country’s deficit problems. But when the Buffett Rule was first introduced in September, President Obama claimed the tax would “stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade.”

Following a report that Hilary B. Rosen, the Democratic consultant who said Ann Romney had “never actually worked a day in her life,” had visited the Obama White House 35 times, Carney told reporters he personally knew three people named “Hilary Rosen.” Rosen herself said she was the only Hilary Rosen she had met before.

Carney also battled this month with Fox News reporter Ed Henry and CBS News reporter Norah O’Donnell after he claimed the president had not said it would be an “unprecedented” step for the Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare:

ED HENRY: In his original comments he did not draw out that caveat. He just said the whole thing would be unprecedented.
JAY CARNEY: That’s not what he said, Ed, and that’s certainly not what he meant. It was clear to most folks who observe this and understand is at issue here.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Jay, that’s not true. The president said on Monday: “It would an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” It took him until yesterday to talk about the commerce clause and on an economic issue—there are two instances in the past 80 years where the precedent, where the Supreme Court has overturned stuff—U.S. vs. Lopez and U.S. vs. Morrison. These are very specific legal issues. It’s not evident to everybody.
CARNEY: Well, it may not be evident to you. It is clear that the president was talking about matters like this that involve the commerce clause.
Last year, Carney told reporters that Obama was never against signing statements except when George W. Bush abused them–but Obama had come out against signing statements in 2008 while running for president.

Estimated Bakken Reserves Double

It's amazing how much we can achieve when Obama can't interfere.

The U.S. Geological Survey, in a highly anticipated report to be released next year, is expected to at least double the amount of oil reserves that can be recovered from the U.S. portion of the massive Bakken play in North Dakota and Montana. This is the consensus of company executives and industry consultants interviewed by Petroleum News on the sidelines of the 2nd Annual Bakken Investor Conference held April 2-4 in Minot, North Dakota.

April 2008 was the last time the USGS reported on the immense play, estimating it held from 3-to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area generally known as the Bakken formation. The study estimated mean undiscovered volumes of 3.65 billion barrels of oil, plus 1.85 trillion cubic feet of associated-dissolved natural gas, and 148 million barrels of natural gas liquids. That estimate represented a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that could be recovered compared to the agency’s 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.

Obama's Enemies List

Much was made of Richard Nixon's "enemies list," which in truth was nothing more than a list of hostile journalists who were not to be invited to prestigious White House functions. Barack Obama has a list of people whom he treats as enemies.

Where's the journalistic outrage?

Richard Nixon's "enemies list" appalled the country for the simple reason that presidents hold a unique trust. Unlike senators or congressmen, presidents alone represent all Americans. Their powers—to jail, to fine, to bankrupt—are also so vast as to require restraint. Any president who targets a private citizen for his politics is de facto engaged in government intimidation and threats. This is why presidents since Nixon have carefully avoided the practice.

Save Mr. Obama, who acknowledges no rules. This past week, one of his campaign websites posted an item entitled "Behind the curtain: A brief history of Romney's donors." In the post, the Obama campaign named and shamed eight private citizens who had donated to his opponent. Describing the givers as all having "less-than-reputable records," the post went on to make the extraordinary accusations that "quite a few" have also been "on the wrong side of the law" and profiting at "the expense of so many Americans."

These are people like Paul Schorr and Sam and Jeffrey Fox, investors who the site outed for the crime of having "outsourced" jobs. T. Martin Fiorentino is scored for his work for a firm that forecloses on homes. Louis Bacon (a hedge-fund manager), Kent Burton (a "lobbyist") and Thomas O'Malley (an energy CEO) stand accused of profiting from oil. Frank VanderSloot, the CEO of a home-products firm, is slimed as a "bitter foe of the gay rights movement."

These are wealthy individuals, to be sure, but private citizens nonetheless. Not one holds elected office. Not one is a criminal. Not one has the barest fraction of the position or the power of the U.S. leader who is publicly assaulting them.

The Storm Trooper Shuffle

How Stupid Is Nancy Pelosi?

Can anybody follow the train of logic here?

Economy Sucks Even Worse Than We Thought

Expectedly.

So much for the +3.0% GDP whisper number. Instead of printing at the expected number of +2.5%, the first preliminary GDP data point (two more revisions pending) came out at 2.2%, a big disappointment for a quarter which had a substantial boost from the weather. And while of the 2.2%, Personal Consumption came in strong - as expected, as it was precisely the factor most impacted by pulling in demand forward courtesy of "April in February", 0.59% of the 2.2% was an increase in inventories, something which was not supposed to happen as it means that the quality of the economic growth in Q1 was far worse than expected. Cementing the ugly composition of Q1 GDP was fixed investment which added just a paltry 0.18% - this is the number which is critical for ongoing cashflow generation and unfortunately, the very low print means that growth outlook for Q2 is now even worse than before and we expect economists will promptly trim their already bearish predictions for Q2 GDP. Finally, government "consumption" subtracted just 0.6% from the total number, a decrease from the 0.84% in Q4, which means that once again the government is starting to become less of a detractor to growth - a dagger in the heart to anyone who claims there is "quality" in GDP growth. And the number you have all been waiting for: At March 31, US Debt/GDP was 100.8%.

Eat Yogurt - Be Manly

Yogurt eating mice have bigger balls.

First, the scientists noticed that the yogurt-eating mice were incredibly shiny. Using both traditional histology techniques and cosmetic rating scales, the researchers showed that these animals had 10 times the active follicle density of other mice, resulting in luxuriantly silky fur.

Then the researchers spotted something particular about the males: they projected their testes outward, which endowed them with a certain “mouse swagger,” Erdman says. On measuring the males, they found that the testicles of the yogurt consumers were about 5 percent heavier than those of mice fed typical diets alone and around 15 percent heavier than those of junk-eating males.

More important, that masculinity pays off. In mating experiments, yogurt-eating males inseminated their partners faster and produced more offspring than control mice. Conversely, females that ate the yogurt diets gave birth to larger litters and weaned those pups with greater success. Reflecting on their unpublished results, Erdman and Alm think that the probiotic microbes in the yogurt help to make the animals leaner and healthier, which indirectly improves sexual machismo.

The Most Corrupt US Government Ever?

I have never seen such brazen corruption, or such news media cooperation.

President Obama is presiding over a corrupt administration. In fact, the moral rot renders America an international laughingstock. Mr. Obama has created a political culture of arrogance and abuse of power that is infecting every segment of the federal government.

The U.S. Secret Service is a case in point. Hookergate has shaken the agency to its very foundations. Secret Service agents went wild in Cartagena, Colombia, prior to a recent summit attended by Mr. Obama and other world leaders. A dozen agents and more than 10 military personnel have been implicated so far. Bar hopping, boozing and soliciting prostitutes — all of this took place as the Secret Service was supposed to be laying the groundwork for the president’s arrival. Instead, they behaved like puerile frat boys, taking hookers back to their hotel rooms and partying all night long. Some press reports even claim that cocaine use was involved.

The Secret Service was once a venerated institution; its reputation is now in tatters. These agents were more than unprofessional. They engaged in sexually permissive, immoral and illegal behavior. They also put America’s national security at risk, opening them to potential blackmail. The president’s schedule was in one of the rooms attended by a prostitute. Moreover, as Sen. Charles Grassley, Iowa Republican, has rightly pointed out, what if the hookers were acting as spies for a hostile foreign power such as Russia, China or Iran? The agents had become compromised, and could be leveraged to obtain vital intelligence information.

Moreover, the image it sends to the world is that of the ugly American. Decadent, perverse and arrogant — these Secret Service agents embody the worst traits of U.S. culture. Landing on foreign soil, they behaved as a conquering imperial army, lacking self-restraint, humility or even common decency.

Obama And The Democrats Are Economically Ignorant

Expectedly.

Lately, speculators have come under attack by Barack Obama. The president blames them for raising prices on oil and gasoline, and he has proposed new restrictions on oil traders. But this is a wrong turn on the road to a healthy economy.

Back in 1958, onion farmers were concerned that speculators were taking advantage of them. They were especially concerned about the extreme volatility of onion prices, which could often double in a short period of time and then drop to a level below the cost of production. Farmers aimed their ire at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the principal futures market for commodities. They thought if futures trading in onions was banned then speculators would not create so much price volatility and farmers would benefit. At the behest of Congressman Gerald Ford (R-Mich.), Congress banned futures trading in onions—the only commodity for which trading is prohibited by law.

Four years after the ban, Stanford agricultural economist Roger Gray examined the impact on onion prices. He found that, contrary to the farmers’ expectations, onion price volatility had actually increased. Gray compared onion price volatility into four periods: 1922-41, a period in which there was no futures trading; 1942-49, when futures trading was only developing; 1949-58, an era when futures trading was robust; and 1958-62 when futures trading was banned.

Gray’s analysis showed conclusively that onion price volatility was far greater during the period when futures trading was undeveloped or nonexistent than during the period when it was robust. This is exactly the result predicted by economic theory. As Gray put it, “An organized futures market widens the opportunity to buy a commodity during the harvest surplus and sell it for later delivery, hence the diminution of in seasonal price range was to be expected on a priori grounds.”

Frankly, I think that the Democrats' routine "blame the speculators" or "blame Wall Street" are just the latest manifestation of the left's blame the Jews meme.

Crucify Them

EPA distills Obama's economic policy into two words.

One of President Obama’s radical eco-bureaucrats has apologized for confirming an indelible truth: This White House treats politically incorrect private industries as public enemies who deserve regulatory death sentences.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Al Armendariz, an avowed greenie on leave from Southern Methodist University, gave a little-noticed speech in 2010 outlining his sadistic philosophy. “I was in a meeting once, and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting, but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said,” he began. In a video obtained and released by Sen. James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Armendariz then shared his bloody analogy:

It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. . . . So, that’s our general philosophy.

Echoing President Obama’s “punch back twice as hard” treatment of his political enemies, Armendariz explained to his underlings: “You hit them as hard as you can, and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there. And, companies that are smart see that, they don’t want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it’s time to clean up.”

Welcome Back Carter

Stagnation.

It may happen. But the Romney campaign and those who wish it well have to grapple with the fact that the country has changed in the past 32 years in ways that don't advantage Republicans.

One of Reagan's campaign themes arose out of the anti-tax mood of the electorate in 1980. Proposition 13 had passed in California in 1978 and was swiftly imitated around the nation. Arguing that the Democrats were the party of "tax and spend" had resonance when more Americans paid federal taxes. But the federal tax rate on an average family of four in 1980 had reached a 50-year high. It has been declining steeply since then. According to the Urban Institute/Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, a family of four in 2011 would pay only 5.6 percent of its income in federal income taxes and another 8.7 in payroll taxes. Today about 50 percent of tax filers pay zero in federal taxes, and 70 percent of taxpayers take more from the IRS than they contribute to it.

At the same time, the number of Americans who receive government checks in one form or another has ballooned. In 1983, less than a third of households received a monthly government check. By 2011, 49 percent were getting a government subsidy. One out of 7 Americans today is receiving food stamps -- including 1 in 4 children.

John Edwards Calls The Mother Of His Child "A Crazy Slut"

The Democrats' war on women.

Perhaps it’s a bad sign if John Edwards tells you that he loves you. But Andrew Young, who finished his third day of testimony for the prosecution, already had pretty fair warning—he had claimed to be the father of a child that wasn’t his; had his wife deposit a check for a hundred thousand dollars for “furniture” under her maiden name (“Tables could cost that much,” Edwards said, according to Young); dodged the National Enquirer; and gone on a road trip with Rielle Hunter, the mother of Edwards’s baby girl, that cost about two hundred thousand dollars plus the psychic toll of hearing Hunter talk about the “energy” of hotel rooms—before Edwards told him “that he loved me and that I knew he would never abandon me.” According to the Times, he testified that a few minutes before that they had been arguing loudly and almost hit each other. That moment of actual anger sounds like one of the saner points in this story.

What did Young, or any of us, see in Edwards? What did Edwards see in Hunter, for whom he risked his marriage, despite telling Young, according to his testimony yesterday, “that she was ‘a crazy slut,’ and there was a ‘one-in-three chance’ that it was his child.” In quoting that, I don’t mean to imply that his characterization was in any sense fair; but it does say a good deal about, first, a view of women, and, second, about the assumption that the view is widely enough shared that one would talk that way in a bid for support. Rielle Hunter may not be the most sympathetic figure (though her daughter certainly is)—a hotel room with bad energy, according to Young, seems to have mostly been one that wasn’t nice enough—but that adds no points to Edwards’s column. It only makes the story more unpleasant.

Romney Not Prepared To Be Commander In Chief

Joe Biden tries out his comedy routine.

Vice President Joe Biden rebuked Mitt Romney on foreign policy Thursday, attacking the presumptive GOP nominee as woefully unprepared to serve as commander in chief.

It was the most direct and specific refutation of Romney to date by the Obama administration, reflecting the intensity of the general election campaign that is now fully underway.

Aside from his personal hygiene, what preparation did Barack Hussein Obama have before becoming president?

G-Spot Discovered At Last

That's the good news. The bad news is that it was found on a dead Polish woman, which should only be of interest to Egyptians.

The elusive G-spot has finally been discovered! Well, at least maybe. A gynecologist in Florida claims he's found the Holy Grail of female pleasure after performing a postmortem exam on a cadaver in Poland. Dr. Adam Ostrzenski says he came across a cluster of erectile tissue in a small sac deep within the vaginal wall and concluded, well there you go, it's there, case closed. The problem is Ostrzenski wasn't able to test what type of tissue made up the small spot, and couldn't say that it could be found in the same place on all women. And since the dead woman couldn't confirm his finding with a "yes, yes, YES!", it sounds like we're back where we started.

If You Though John Edwards Was A Sleazeball Already

You probably don't even know the half of it yet.

So brazen was the affair, the jury heard, that when Edwards travelled to the spot outside his hometown of Chapel Hill where he announced his second bid for the presidency, he arrived in a car driven by Young with Hunter at his side. They had shared wine in the back of the car on the way to the site, and upon arrival the candidate turned to his top aide and allegedly whispered, "Andrew, whatever you do, don't let Rielle get close to Elizabeth." Unfortunately, Young told the court, the two women did cross paths at the ladies' room, and that was the moment Elizabeth Edwards' "smile turned into a glare" and Rielle feared the relationship with John was over.

"She was upset," Young remembered. "And she said if Mr. Edwards didn't call her she would go public."

It was the beginning of a very long odyssey that, according to Young, turned him into a virtual slave to his employer's love affair. Young says he stuck it out for as long as he did out of loyalty and determination to support his wife and three children, two of whom were born with serious heart problems. Young recalled how he took out a lease for a nearby house in his name to keep Hunter's name secret, arranged for Hunter to have a new BMW, doled out an Edwards-supplied allowance to Hunter, and put up with her frequent visits to their home - just a quarter of a mile away. "She treated us as errand people," he testified. "She was very difficult."

Young described how he was ordered to procure a special cell phone so the lovers could secretly communicate. "We called it the Bat Phone," Young said. "He worried that Mrs. Edwards was checking his cell phone records." Edwards' now-deceased wife had cause for concern ever since he returned from his trip to China. As John slept off the jet-lag, said Young, Elizabeth answered his ringing cell phone and immediately heard his mistress cooing about their shared love.

In the courtroom, Edwards' posture faltered at times as he rubbed his eyes and blew air through puffed cheeks. At one point he turned to his lawyer at the defense table and mouthed the words, "This is crazy..."

Young chillingly described to the jury how a National Enquirer reporter and a photographer finally tracked down the visibly pregnant Rielle at a grocery store - and then showed up at Young's home looking for comment. This testimony helped explain the tension and panic within the Edward's camp. "The kids were yelling and screaming that bad men were looking in the window at them," Young said. He confronted two men outside while his wife called the police. No arrests were made and the men were ushered away by the cops. They realized then that it was only a matter of time before the lid blew off the scandal.

Once the prosecutor had established there was a clandestine nature to the affair, he turned to the pregnancy and the alleged scramble to finance hiding Hunter without Elizabeth finding out. This line of questioning most directly challenged Edwards' claim that he knew nothing about how any money was raised, where Rielle was hiding, or any particulars about Andrew Young's actions on his behalf. The idea of a rogue aide out to line his own pockets by trading off the Senator's name seemed remote as the day of testimony evolved.

In a stunning revelation, the witness alleged the multi-millionaire Edwards first asked him for a loan knowing that the Youngs had recently come into a windfall of some $400,000 on the sale of their home. Asked for his response to Edwards by the prosecutor, Young replied, "I said, 'No, sir.' We needed that money to build our new house." And, Young added, "We always had trouble getting reimbursed from the office. Giving him two or three hundred dollars once in a while was one thing, but ..." His voice trailed off and the point was made. (To hear Young tell it, Edwards rarely dipped into his own pocket - not even the day Young drove the lovers to a clinic to get their shots prior to their alleged trip to Africa.)

Obama's Fake Poverty

Obama likes to remind disciples that the didn't finish paying off his student loans until just eight years ago. What he doesn't say is that those loans were not a burden.

[A]ccording to their tax returns, which are available on the White House website, the Obamas had a healthy, six-figure income by the year 2000 (the earliest return available). And for at least two years before his loans were paid off, Obama, by his own definition, made so much they were wealthy enough to pay higher taxes.

Here’s a rundown of the president’s income, according to his tax returns, in the years before he paid off his student loans:

2004: $207,647
2003: $238,327
2002: $259,394
2001: $272,759
2000: $240,505

In 2001 and 2002, the Obamas would have met the $250,000 standard the president has set for those wealthy enough to afford to pay more taxes.

It’s also notable that the Obamas didn’t claim deductions for student loans on any of those years, most likely because they made too much money to qualify for the student loan deduction.

And of course, a little later, Michelle Obama was given a no-show, $300,000/year job by the hospital she worked for as a reward for earmarks that Obama steered the hospital's way.

Another Secret Service Prostitute Scandal

This time, in El Salvador.

Seattle-based Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne (KIROTV- CBS- COX MEDIA GROUP) just returned from El Salvador, where he interviewed a U.S. government subcontractor who worked extensively with the Secret Service advance team (snipers, K-9 and explosives sweeps) in San Salvador prior to President Obama’s trip there in March of 2011.

The eyewitness says he joined about a dozen Secret Service agents and a few U.S. military specialists at a strip club in San Salvador a few days before President Obama and his family arrived in El Salvador to meet with its new president, Mauricio Funes.

This source witnessed the majority of the men drink heavily ("wasted," "heavily intoxicated") at the strip club. He says most of the Secret Service "advance-team" members also paid extra for access to the VIP section of the club where they were provided a number of sexual favors in return for their cash. Although our source says he told the agents it was a "really bad idea" to take the strippers back to their hotel rooms, several agents bragged that they "did this all the time" and "not to worry about it." Our source says at least two agents had escorts check into their rooms. It is unclear whether the escorts who returned to the hotels were some of the strippers from the same club.

Forty Dollar Light Bulbs, Elephant Dung Paper, Green Beds Made Of Latex

Our green future.

If You Dig Sex With Corpses, Go To Egypt

Or if you want to marry little girls.

Egypt’s National Council for Women (NCW) has appealed to the Islamist-dominated parliament not to approve two controversial laws on the minimum age of marriage and allowing a husband to have sex with his dead wife within six hours of her death according to a report in an Egyptian newspaper.

The appeal came in a message sent by Dr. Mervat al-Talawi, head of the NCW, to the Egyptian People’s Assembly Speaker, Dr. Saad al-Katatni, addressing the woes of Egyptian women, especially after the popular uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.

She was referring to two laws: one that would legalize the marriage of girls starting from the age of 14 and the other that permits a husband to have sex with his dead wife within the six hours following her death.

Jobless Claims Unexpectedly High

I expected it. But then I'm not invested into buoying Obama.

The number of Americans who filed requests for jobless benefits was virtually unchanged last week at 388,000, the U.S. Labor Department said Thursday, keeping claims near their highest level of 2012. Claims from two weeks ago were revised up to 389,000 from 386,000. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had projected claims would drop to a seasonally adjusted 375,000 in the week ended April 21. The average of new claims over the past four weeks, meanwhile, climbed by 6,250 to 381,750, matching the highest level of the year.

Grown Men Who Like "My Little Pony?"

Girly men. And proud of it.

As sickening as it is, we can’t just ban grown men from acting like idiots because we disapprove of their lifestyle choices – after all, we aren’t progressives. It’s still a free country – coincidentally due entirely to the efforts of men and women who put aside childish things to contribute to society instead of feeding at the trough and then sitting on their expansive backsides as they eagerly clap like seals at the antics of colorful cartoon steeds.

If these losers want to waste their lives lingering in a childhood fugue state, Hollywood has every right to serve them up more of the same cultural slop and pocket the cash proceeds. But it shouldn’t.

Hollywood is famously nonjudgmental about anything that happens to undercut the foundations of American society, gleefully mocking traditional morality, conservatism, and now what the LA Times calls “tired stereotypes of what boys should or shouldn’t like.” Trashing positive values is standard operating procedure in Tinseltown.

But perhaps now it’s time for Hollywood to get a bit more judgmental. Perhaps it’s time to say, “Hey, glad you like the show, but it’s for little girls and maybe you man-children ought to find something better to do with your lives. Which would be anything.”

EPA Apologizes For Inadverntant Honesty

Crucifiction?

The Obama-appointed Environmental Protection Agency official who explained that the agency uses a “crucify them” enforcement philosophy against oil and gas companies apologized for his comments on Wednesday night.

“I apologize to those I have offended and regret my poor choice of words,” Region 6 EPA Administrator Al Armendariz said in a statement provided to The Daily Caller. “It was an offensive and inaccurate way to portray our efforts to address potential violations of our nation’s environmental laws. I am and have always been committed to fair and vigorous enforcement of those laws. ”

On Wednesday morning, Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe highlighted a speech Armendariz gave in 2010 in which he described the manner in which the agency keeps oil and gas companies under their thumb.

“I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said,” Armendariz said. “It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them,” Armendariz said.

“And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. And so you make examples out of people who are in this case not compliant with the law. Find people who are not compliant with the law, and you hit them as hard as you can and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there,” he added.

Justice For Trayvon - And Witness Intimidation?

Is the media narrative falling apart again? Supposedly the mob that savagely beat Matthew Owens did so because he insulted some children.

Owens' sister says that her daughter witnessed some of his assailants stealing from a neighbor and he confronted them.

The sister of a white Mobile, Alabama man who suffered severe head trauma during a beating by approximately 20 black neighbors on Saturday spoke exclusively to The Daily Caller, saying that the incident started after one of her children witnessed some of the eventual assailants stealing an item from a neighbor’s porch — not, as some media outlets have reported, following a disagreement about a pick-up basketball game in the street.

Ashley Parker, whose brother Matthew Owens is clinging to life after the assault, said Owens was attacked after her 21-year-old daughter witnessed a group of African-American youth moving from yard to yard in the neighborhood and taking something that didn’t belong to them. She told Owens, who confronted the youths.

She “saw one of them take something off a porch,” Parker said, “and that is when Matthew approached them and told them they need to go home.”

The group returned with more than a dozen others, she said, beating Owens with bats, brass knuckles, a chair, a paint can and other objects. The attack left him bloodied and unconscious.

But who cares? He doesn't look like he's related to Barack Obama.

If I Wanted America To Fail

Obama's EPA "Crucifies" Oil Companies

Obama has been trying to claim credit for increased oil production since taking office. That oil production is the result of the policies of George W. Bush.

Here's how the Obama regime has worked for US oil independence.

Obama's Other Weapons Smuggling Scandal

Hand grenades, from the mainstream news media's lone wolf, Sharyl Atkinson.

Documents show ATF secretly intercepted the grenade bodies Kingery had ordered, marked them, and delivered them to him on Jan. 26, 2010. Their plan was to follow Kingery to his weapons factory in Mexico, with help from Mexican authorities Immigration and Customs (ICE).

ATF realized they might lose track of Kingery and the grenade parts in Mexico. But their emails show little attention to those who could be killed. Instead, officials expressed concerned with tying the grenades to Kingery after they reached Mexico. "Even in a post blast, as long as the safety lever is recovered we will be able to identify these tagged grenades," says one email.

An official now investigating ATF and the Justice Department for their actions in the Kingery case tells CBS News: "All the usual safeguards of law enforcement were thrown out. They were more worried about making a big case than they were about the public safety."

The plan to allow Kingery to traffic grenade parts into a foreign country and track him to his factory drew strong internal objections.

"That's not possible," wrote a lead ATF official in Mexico. "We are forbidden from doing that type of activity. If ICE is telling you they can do that, they are full of [expletive]..."

ATF officials in Mexico worried that once Kingery and the grenades crossed the border, they would disappear. And that's exactly what happened. Though ATF agents say they'd given all the specifics to Mexican military and police, the Mexicans failed to stop Kingery once he crossed into Mexico.

Four months later, Kingery surfaced again in the U.S. This time, the Border Patrol caught him trying to smuggle the new stash of grenade hulls shown in the photos. ATF questioned him but, once again, he was let go. Nobody has stepped forward to explain why Kingery was released after this incident. He allegedly continued to supply the Mexican drug cartels for another year and a half.

Olbermann's Hypocrisy Summarized In 63 Seconds

How Stupid Is Debbier Wasserman Schultz?

I know. I know. We've probed this question before. But every few days she provides us with examples of the depth and breadth of her stupidity. Is she really the best spokesperson that the Democrats could draft from their ranks?

Oh, and by the way, the Republicans did bring Barack Obama's budget to a vote. It was rejected unanimously. Not even Debbie Wasserman Schultz voted for it.

Elizabeth Warren - Liberal Sex Symbol!

Obama et al Obstructing $1 Billion In New Investments

Barack Obama has been complaining that US companies are not reinvesting their profits into new job creation Here's why.

Lengthy federal and state review of new business projects is delaying up to $1 trillion in new investments, according to John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable.

If the government streamlined the federal permitting process — without sacrificing safety or the quality of reviews — it would unleash a flood of investments that would improve economic growth and reduce the federal deficit, said Engler, whose members include Fortune 500 companies such as AT&T, Boeing, Xerox and Yahoo.

“The payoff is in jobs and growth,” Engler, a former Republican governor of Michigan, told The Daily Caller on Tuesday.

12 Incredible Facts About The Canadian Tar Sands

The third largest source of oil in the world.

Durable Goods Order Plunge

Unexpectedly.

Demand for long-lasting manufactured goods tumbled by the most in three years in March and businesses cut back on spending plans, suggesting the economy slowed as the first quarter drew to a close.

Durable goods orders dropped 4.2 percent, the largest decline since January 2009 when the economy was nose-diving, Commerce Department data showed on Wednesday. Economists had expected a drop of just 1.7 percent.

It Was Only This Long!

My suggested caption. What's yours?

Heart Attack Grill Claims Another Victim

We've been down this road before. And now the Bypass Burger strikes again!

There is a sign at the Heart Attack Grill that issues the warning, "This Establishment is Bad for Your Health." Items on the menu include burgers with names such as the “Triple” and “Quadruple Bypass Burger,” and lard-cooked “Flatliner French Fries.” The quadruple bypass burger has even been named by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most caloric sandwich in the world, coming in at 10,000 calories for the 4-patty burger topped with layers of cheese and bacon.

Andrew Chow of Reuters reports that on Saturday evening, a female diner in her 40s collapsed during her meal at the Heart Attack Grill. The customer was reportedly eating a “Double Bypass Burger,” smoking cigarettes, and drinking an alcoholic beverage. Chow’s article suggests that it’s unlikely the woman, who is now recovering from the emergency, will be able to sue the establishment to pay for her medical bills for several reasons.

Never Let A Tragedy Go To Waste

Liberals see Trayvon Martin's death as an opportunity to push through their entire leftist agenda.

Israel Certain Of Iranian Nuclear Threat

"We know."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained Tuesday that his government is certain that Iran’s intent is to become a nuclear threat to Israel.

In a Jerusalem interview that aired on CNN’s “Outfront,” Erin Burnett asked Netanyahu how he knows what Iran is doing with its nuclear program. The prime minister gave an emphatic response.

“We know,” he said. “We know, and others know, and we share what we know. This is not the case of the questions that people had about Saddam Hussein.”

Netanyahu scoffed at the possibility that the Iranians were developing nuclear technology for medical purposes, pointing to the type of technologies and underground by which they are being developed.

However, Netanyahu would not comment on the possibility of a nuclear war between Israel and Iran because he declined to confirm his nation’s capabilities.

$9 Per Gallon Gasoline

Obama Interior Secretary thinks it's possible. What the hell? Unaffordable oil is policy!

Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that "no one knows" if gasoline prices in the United States will reach $9 per gallon, and acknowledged that the possibility is outside his control.

"I don't think anyone can speculate what will happen with respect to oil prices and gas prices because they are set on the global economy," Salazar told reporters when asked if gas prices could reach $9 per gallon, as they have been in Greece. "Where it will all end, no one knows.

Like hell it's out of his control! Anybody ever heard of Keystone XL? Who was it that shut down oil shale drilling on the front range? Who was it that imposed on illegal moratorium on Gulf of Mexico oil exploration? Who is standing in the way of developing oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

Wrong Turn, Bad Advice, Prison Time

Only intentional smuggling by Obama is permissible.

“Mexican federal prosecutors will press charges against the U.S. trucker who may have accidentally crossed into Juárez with 268,000 rounds of ammunition last week, a source familiar with the investigation said Monday,” the El Paso Times reports today.

The driver, who took a wrong turn and ended up on the Bridge of the Americas, and who was reportedly told by an officer that the only way to turn around was to cross the Mexican border, “could face between four and 15 years in prison if charged with possession, and between 10 and 25 years if charged with introduction.”

This is hardly the same treatment given to Mexicans last year when “military trucks…loaded down with soldiers and weapons” ended up on the U.S. side of the border.

Continue reading on Examiner.com Trucker accidentally transporting ammo to Mexico highlights inequity in laws - National gun rights | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/article/trucker-accidentally-transporting-ammo-to-mexico-highlights-inequity-laws#ixzz1t3cu8t8E

The Pajamahadin

Monday, April 30, 2012