Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Dignity and the President

What’s new Today 

Story #1 is about Obama’s strutting his killing of Osama bin Laden.  Will he overplay his hand?  #2 looks at green energy and wonders if it is sustainable.  #3 looks at Elizabeth Warren’s Indian heritage.  #4 Occupy Wall Street bombers weren’t just looking at Cleveland.  #5 tells of a reward for Obama’s school grades.  #6 it appears the measures the environmentalists want to take to minimize global warming is bad for your health. 


Today’s thoughts

Harrison Schultz, a leader of the Occupy Wall Street movement, was asked what OWS had been up to in the recent months.  His reply: “We never left. We were just tired. I mean anarchy isn’t easy.”

Back when the OWS demonstrations began, a lot of Democrats embraced the movement.  They saw it as a distraction from the economy that would work to their benefit.  It was a distraction.  It isn’t to their benefit.  As time passes they are being shown to be thugs. 



Elizabeth Warren now insists she listed herself as a minority law professor in hope of making friends, not to get ahead. 







1.  Should Obama Spike the Ball?

A Year after SEAL Team Six took its heart-stopping tour of the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad and took out the world’s most evil man, we’re talking about who deserves the credit.

That didn’t really seem to be a subject of controversy a week ago, but it has become one now — and oddly, that’s due to the man who actually got the credit.

President Obama got it, and he should have gotten it. He made the call, he gets the credit and anyone who says he shouldn’t is blinded by unreasoning hatred.

Or maybe is annoyed by just how much President Obama is demanding that everybody give him the credit. ..


….But note this distinction: We’re talking here about Obama the politician, not Obama the president. Shnorring for credit is an understandable act for a politician. It’s a little discomfiting for a president.

Why is that?

It’s actually a leadership issue of a different kind from the decisiveness he showed in making the call last year. Even though he said he didn’t want to “spike the football,” spiking the football is fine — just so long as he makes it clear that he is America’s representative and that it’s America spiking the football, not just Barack Obama.

And what’s been missing over the past week is the appropriate show of humility — even if it is a false humility — of merely acting on the public’s behalf and with the public’s will.

More troubling, perhaps, is the implicit credit-grabbing here from others who work under him and take orders from him — whose numbers in this specific case probably reach into the thousands…


The biggest problem was he took what should be a positive ad about his biggest victory and he threw in the negative part of questioning whether Mitt Romney would have done this.  That was stupid on the Administrations part.  It dragged BHO down into the mud with the other Administration surrogates. 









2.   What Liberals actual know, but won’t admit



…Obama boasted that his $2.3 billion plan would “help close the clean-energy gap between America and other nations.” But other nations now move in the opposite direction. “Countries are cutting these programs because they realize they aren’t sustainable and they are obscenely expensive,” says the American Enterprise Institute’s Kenneth P. Green. In Spain, economists at La Universidad Rey Juan Carlos found that each “green” job cost more than $750,000.

Obama claims that if we “invest” more, we can “create millions of jobs — but only if we accelerate the “green transition.” What could make more sense? A little push from the smart politicians, and — voila! — an abundance of new jobs and a cleaner, sustainable environment. It’s the ultimate twofer. Except it’s an illusion, because governments do not “create” jobs.

“All the government can do is subsidize some industries while jacking up costs for others,” writes Green. “It is destroying jobs in the conventional energy sector — and most likely in other industrial sectors — through taxes and subsidies to new green companies that will use taxpayer dollars to undercut the competition. The subsidized jobs ‘created’ are, by definition, less efficient uses of capital than market-created jobs.”

In judging any government initiative, you can’t look just at the credit side of the ledger. Government is unable to give without first taking away. Inevitably, more is taken away because the government substitutes force for free exchange. Instead of a process driven by consumers weighing their preferences, we get one imposed by politicians’ grand social designs, what F.A. Hayek called “the fatal conceit.” The green schemes make energy cost more.

Of course, some who push “green jobs” want the price of energy to rise. Then we will live in smaller homes, drive less and burn fewer fossil fuels. But if the environmental lobby wants Americans to be poorer, it ought to come clean about that…




That is the problem and the actual conceit of what the left is doing.  They do want American’s to be poorer along with the rest of the world.  That is why some of the more honest extremists talk of dedeveloping America.









3.  Affirmative Action for Elizabeth Warren



The NYT reports that “officials involved” in hiring Elizabeth Warren “all said that she was hired because she was an outstanding teacher, and that her lineage was either not discussed or not a factor.”

What would you expect them to say?

“To suggest that she needed some special advantage to be hired here or anywhere is just silly,” said Jay Westbrook, chairman of business law at the University of Texas.

But you see, in faculty hiring, the question isn't whether this particular candidate is good enough. The question is why does this person with excellent credentials get selected from the pool of applicants who all have excellent credentials? Why did Warren move up the ranks of the law schools the way she did?

Her identification as a member of a minority group in the Association of American Law Schools directory would help. Why are the schools reticent about saying that they consider minority status a plus factor in hiring? Why aren't they out-and-proud about diversity?...






It appears the NYT is suffering from the “conservative” bias that considers affirmative action candidates not as “good” as non-affirmative action candidates.   









4.  Occupy Bombers targeted the Republican Convention too



Five self-proclaimed anarchists were arrested Monday after allegedly conspiring to blow up a bridge about 15 miles south of Cleveland. Based on statements in the affidavit, not only are the suspects linked to the Occupy movement, but one of them mentioned the Republican National Convention in Tampa as another possible target.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Stephen Anthony says, "The co-conspirators placed the inert IEDs at the base of a concrete support pillar and prepared to remotely detonate the devices."

But officials say their plan fizzled out after an undercover agent sold them two inoperable explosive devices.

Agent Anthony adds, "I want to stress, we all want to stress up here, that at no time during the course of the investigation was the public ever in danger."

What's troubling for many, though, is that two of the men -- 26-year-old Douglas Wright and 20-year-old Brandon Baxter -- also discussed timing and how to "make a good statement" at the Republican Convention in Tampa.

Tampa Police confirm there is a special transportation committee set up whose prime objective is to keep our roadways and bridges safe during the convention and Ken Jones, the president of the Republican National Convention Host Committee, told 10 News earlier this year, "While it may be a little nervous to most people what we know is going on out there, we know they're going to do their job to protect us at this event."…


There definitely is something wrong with the leftist’s brain that thinks violence is not only acceptable, but it is desirable. 









5.   $10K reward for Obama’s College Transcripts

The Daily Caller has identified the owner of a website that promised on Tuesday to pay $10,000 to anyone who can provide an authentic copy of President Barack Obama’s course transcripts from his days at Occidental College, Harvard University or Columbia University.

Although its one-page website is presented anonymously, conservative blogger Brooks Bayne confirmed to The Daily Caller that he is responsible for it.

Bayne told The DC that a group of eight people  – including some he called “recognizable” figures – are coordinating the effort to make Obama’s college transcripts public, Bayne told The Daily Caller. He declined to name any of them.

“We are doing this because we are tired of the media not doing their job,” he said. ”We are tired of the PR propaganda coming out of places like Media Matters, and we are tired of this administration stonewalling over things like Fast and Furious.”

“We are tired of a lot of things.”




Not real news, but interesting considering the stink the left is making over Romney’s tax returns. 











6.   Global Warming Policies are bad for your health

Policies to reduce global warming may be doing more harm than good to public health in both developing and industrialised countries. This is the conclusion of a new report published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

In his report, Dr Indur Goklany, a leading expert on human health and climate change, shows that

• Global warming does not currently rank among the top public health threats

The contribution of much-publicized 'Extreme Weather Events' to global mortality is negligible and declining.

Poverty is a much larger public health threat than global warming

• Present climate policies are already adding to death and disease

• Focused adaptation to climate change and/or economic development would provide greater health benefits at lower costs than climate mitigation policies.

The report warns that exaggerating the impact of global warming on human health seriously risks misdirecting the world’s priorities and resources in combating poverty and improving public health.

“Climate policies that hinder or slow down economic development or increase the price of energy and food threaten to augment poverty and, as a result, increase net death and disease,” Dr Goklany said.

The increase in biofuel production between 2004 and 2010, for example, is estimated to have increased the population in absolute poverty in the developing world by over 35 million, leading to about 200,000 additional deaths in 2010 alone.




The road to hell is paved with good intentions. 




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