We’re #2

Flint, Detroit, then St. Louis.

Reading through yesterday’s Best of the Web, this on liberal populism and condescension:

When we clicked through to Crook’s piece, though, we were astounded to find this sentence qualifying his just-stated sympathy for pro-American populism: “Of course, not many black Americans and not many women long for the lives their parents led.” A whole world of condescension and presumption are wrapped in those 17 words, and we’d like to unpack it.

What Crook is saying more precisely is that blacks and women are grateful for the mid-20th-century liberation movements, which culminated in the 1950s and ’60s for blacks and in the ’60s and ’70s for women. When you put it that way, it’s hard to deny the statement is true for blacks, who were in fact liberated from an unjust system. It would be shocking to find a black person who longs for a return to Jim Crow.

Yet Crook’s disparagement of “the lives their parents led” is awfully reductive. There is more to a black person’s life than the way he is treated by the government or by whites. When one considers the social problems that have beset the black community since the civil rights era–the decline of marriage and rise of illegitimacy, drug abuse, the shockingly high incarceration rate for young black men–it’s not hard to imagine that many blacks might be nostalgic for the relative social stability of 50 to 60 years ago, as distinct from the undeniably oppressive political regime.

Yes, right. And so we come to Detroit and today’s paper:

In northwest Detroit, a grandmother clung to the casket of her 9-month-old grandson, who was killed by gunfire.

On the east side of town, an uncle sat on a porch stoop, clutching a family photo of his slain sister and her 14-year-old son, who is accused of killing her.

And in an east-side hospital room, a 6-year-old boy was fighting for his life after being shot in an attempted carjacking.

Those were three scenes Monday of the aftermath of violence in Detroit, which is experiencing a 25% increase in homicides so far this year compared with the same time period last year, according to Detroit police crime statistics.

More stomach-churning details

In recent weeks, the city has witnessed the shooting death of an infant, the shooting death of a 12-year-old girl, a 14-year-old boy accused of killing his mother and a 6-year-old critically injured after being shot with an AK47 in an attempted carjacking.

The suspects in the attempted carjacking are two 15-year-olds, who will be charged as adults. Police say they went on a violent crime spree, striking five times in less than 24 hours before being arrested on the city’s east side early Monday.

Free at last, right?

Remember when we were going to have that national conversation about race?

Yea, well,that convo has been canceled. Instead, Obama’s going to do everything he can to make sure that Toby stays on the plantation.

African-Americans for Obama are urged to volunteer their time, making callings, organizing event, and encouraging their church friends to do the same. ANd this:

As part of his efforts to lock down the black community as a voting bloc, Obama has arrived in Florida accompanied by an invasion of rappers and NBA basketball stars – all at taxpayer expense.

“The group — which organizers said includes Magic Johnson, Alonzo Mourning and NBA Commissioner David Stern — will meet with President Obama for a $30,000-a-plate fundraiser at the (actual) home court of Dallas Mavericks guard Vince Carter in his Isleworth mansion,” reports the Orlando Sentinel.

The expensive fundraising trip is timed to coincide with Sunday’s 61st NBA All-Star Game at Orlando’s Amway Center.

Another reason to ignore the NBA.

I wanted to know what Obama has done for the African-American community, so I downloaded their handy-dandy factsheet available here. Most of it lists all the money he’s directed toward minorities, and there is way too much bullshit for me to tackle this morning, but buried waaaaaay at the bottom is this:

• The Obama administration announced the settlement of the longstanding Pigford II litigation and signed a bill providing funding for African Americans who were discriminated against by the USDA.

ba haaa haa haaaa haaa …

FIAF – Marshmallow and Alae edition

Today’s must read Obama’s Budget Flunks the Marshmallow Test. The marshmallow represents an avoidance of struggle. Instant reward, unearned and un-fought for.

Entrepreneurs know that when they sacrifice, they are learning and improving, exactly what they need to do to earn success through their merits. Every sacrifice and deferred gratification makes them wiser and better, showing them that they’re not getting anything free. When success ultimately comes, they wouldn’t trade away the earlier days for anything, even if they felt wretched at the time.

Government aid, bailouts, and even subsidies represent that marshmallow.

The present administration believes we should be able to get our country fiscally back on track without the vast majority of Americans having to accept less from government. Year after year, no entitlement recipient is asked to give up benefits—even benefits well above a basic safety net.

Bailouts for homeowners, auto companies and financial firms have protected many from the consequences of poor decisions. And even as we run up unprecedented debt, public-sector workers continue to receive pay and benefits that exceed those of their private-sector counterparts.

The expanding welfare state exists, in no small part, to shove marshmallows into our collective mouth. The government expunges sacrifice, smooths the risk out of our economic lives, and protects us from the consequences of our actions. It is aggressively moving us away from the national entrepreneurial ethos, teaching dependency and changing our relationship to the state.

And, in this vein, we’ve got this from Andrew Malcolm on Obama’s speech yesterday.

We’re making new investments,” he said, “in the development of gasoline and diesel and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance — algae. You’ve got a bunch of algae out here, right?”

With the knowledge that only he had the stat handy, Obama said, “Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17% of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in the United States.”

Grow oil? 17%! Pretty impressive! Wait though! Don’t get too excited over Obama’s green scum energy scheme.

It turns out, the president admitted, no one actually knows how to turn algae (or a million other things) into motor fuel. It simply cannot be done yet by anyone anywhere, although it does sound great, doesn’t it?

Then Obama added, in at least one indisputable presidential observation, “If we can figure out how to make energy out of that, we’ll be doing all right.”

Really? Did he just say that? And if we can figure out how to make energy out of dog poop, packing peanuts, and dirt we’d be doing all right as well. Imagine the possibilities! Yes, I’m thinking unicorns …

The Morning Jolt points us to this piece:

President Obama is a man who feeds others a line of bull that he hopes they’ll accept as some sort of plan, instead of actually dealing in the world of reality. He wishes and hopes that somehow, magically, algae will be used to take the place of oil which is a proven source of energy. Pipe dreams versus reality. For us, something tangible like an actual pipeline that would alleviate our pain at the pump, has been relegated to a pipe dream because of the dreamer we have in the White House.

Of course, who better to direct this dream than the federal government? They’re handing out those marshmallows; right NOW, they’re accepting proposals from small businesses and Universities to fund that research. $14 million for whoever’s got a PLAN!!! Apply TODAY.

Because, of course, where private enterprise fails, the government is there with the answer! Solazyme began as a company with the goal of using the “power of biotechnology to solve environmental problems” – turning algae into fuel. When that didn’t work out so good, they pivoted an started a line of anti-aging skincare products.

Case in point is Solazyme Inc., a South San-Francisco-based biofuel company that made over its product line and is now selling beauty products and nutritional supplements in addition to fuel that can be used in ground and air transportation. But how quickly the new model pays off is to be determined.

On Tuesday, Solazyme posted a wider-than-expected net loss for Q4 2011 of $15.6 million on a GAAP basis, compared with $2.9 million in the same quarter in 2010.

Ooops. What’s a $15.6 million lose FOR ONE QUARTER? The fuel thing isn’t working so well.

Solazyme adjusted its business model out of necessity, suggested Pavel Molchanov, a Houston-based energy analyst at Raymond James. “Solazyme isn’t likely to become in the foreseeable future a fuel-centered business,” he said.

Despite having a partnership with Chevron Oil and selling algae-produced fuel to the Department of Defense, its capacity is limited and its costs are too high to manufacture cheap fuel with fuel priced in the range of $3 a gallon.

Let’s pretend for a moment that there is a future with algae powering our cars. And let’s pretend that you’re a small guy out there, plugging away at this problem. On the VERGE of discovery.

But, because Obama gave the free money, $14 million dollars, to someone else – YOU fail. Go out of business.

Nobody can compete against government favoritism, and the government doesn’t exactly have a track record of picking the creme of the crop.

The Left Lies. Rinse, Repeat

As was pointed out in this masterful article yesterday, the left, and it’s helpers, lie. Peter Ferrara uses the nicer term -”Calculated Deception”:

That is President Obama’s practice of taking advantage of what he calculates average people don’t know, and what the Democratic Party-controlled media won’t tell them, to mislead them into thinking and believing what will most benefit him politically. That practice is now spreading across the entire Democrat party.

Ferrara then goes on to explain that the current “calculated deception” they are plying is that the republicans want to ban contraception. Case in point:

Existing standards for covering birth control at the state level, which have been upheld in court and laid the groundwork for the Obama policy, are now “in danger because the right, which has now been unmasked as opposing contraception as well as abortion … stayed in the ring and flamed up an issue,” says Gloria Feldt, a former president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and author of “No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power.”

Few people believed Feldt when she predicted in 2004 that opposition to birth control was more than just a fringe movement that needed to be taken seriously, she says. But if the right is “successful in pulling that thread,” she adds, “the entire fabric of contraceptive coverage will be unraveled.” The pro-choice movement, Feldt contends, must “set the terms of engagement or lose the battle.”

These people are either willfully stupid, or evil.

But, why? To win, of course. And this tactic is frighteningly familiar:

For the Obama administration, the Democrats, and their party-controlled media allies to play-act, to mislead the public over supposed Republican policies that are so radically disconnected from reality, is a Leninist-Stalinist tactic. And for modern American media institutions to allow themselves to be as thoroughly controlled by a political party as the old Soviet media was controlled by the old Communist party is not only fundamentally deceptive to the point of being dishonorable, it is now a crisis in American media. That adds up to a crisis in American democracy, and whether it is even functional anymore.

Of course, then you have the far left, who are just insane. Mandy, at Pandagon (no link) says the pill is “an entitlement.”

The truth of the matter is that there are a hunk of people who really believe this stuff. They are far left loonies, who throw around the term “patriarchy” a lot and view just about everything through the prism of sex and gender. EVERYTHING. Here’s Mandy again (no link), arguing why MORE people don’t oppose contraception – because they’re too stupid to understand it’s significance:

I honestly think half the reason that contraception isn’t [more] controversial is because most people aren’t big thinkers, and therefore don’t really see contraception as the straw that broke the patriarchy’s back. Part of that is that abortion plays that role, since rejecting pregnancy after a man’s seed has planted is a much more resonant symbol of rejecting male power and authority. The interesting thing about this is that many of the men who are up in arms about this are big, long-term thinkers. They’re not wrong to see that contraception is far more the problem even than abortion (which has actually been more consistent and widespread in human history than contraception).

Abortion and contraception is really about rejecting male power.

Got it.

Do I believe Obama and mainstream democrats believe all this stuff? No. But they’ve got their worker drones out there, doing their part. Spreading the shit for them. So they can make their Calculated Deceptions and have it swallowed by the masses.

They count on the masses not understanding the arguments of the right.

The bottom line is that there is no Republican anywhere in America campaigning on banning contraceptives. There are no proposals in state legislatures anywhere to ban contraceptives, even though Republicans now control a majority of state legislatures. But this is not about a debate on the issues. It is about dishonorable Calculated Deception to mislead voters about what Republicans stand for, in an extreme, fundamental way completely unrelated to reality.

The bottom line. Right there.

But be on the look out for all the articles that will say the exact opposite.

Skyrocketing Energy Prices

Can he blame Bush for this?

Under fire from Republicans over rising gasoline prices, the White House on Tuesday highlighted factors beyond its control for gains in global oil markets, as it sought to deflect blame over a potentially damaging election-year issue.
****
“There are no magic solutions to rising oil prices,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney. “The rising gas prices clearly the effect of a variety of factors on the global price of oil,” he told reporters, citing geopolitical unrest and rapid growth in India and China.

But this should be no problem, because higher gas prices is exactly what Obama wanted, right?

More-

Meanwhile, at the White House, last night:

Boy, it’s fun to be President, huh?

Still more

When gas prices hit $4 a gallon in 2008, candidate Barack Obama said it was due to previous failed energy policies. Now that prices are heading still higher, President Obama calls it progress.

Already, pump prices are higher than they’ve been in previous years, suggesting they will top $4 soon and possibly reach an unprecedented $5 this summer.

President Obama is starting to notice the political implications. So he sent Robert Gibbs — now a top campaign adviser — out to tell the public not to worry.

“Just on Friday, the Department of the Interior issued permits that will expand our exploration in the Arctic,” Gibbs said Sunday. “Our domestic oil production is at an eight-year high, and our use of foreign oil is at a 16-year low. So we’re making progress.”

Spin spin spin.

Phoning it in Tuesday

I don’t feel well, been skiing for a few days, and while I’m full of piss and vinegar I don’t much feel like doing a post.

So, go read this because it’s excellent.

News you can use

Obama’s schedule today:

10:05 am || Delivers remarks at a fundraiser; Corona Del Mar, Calif.
11:45 am || Departs Los Angeles
12:50 pm || Arrives San Francisco
2:00 pm || Attends a fundraiser; San Francisco Intercontinental Hotel
7:10 pm || Delivers remarks at a fundraiser; private residence, San Francisco
9:00 pm || Delivers remarks at a fundraiser; Nob Hill Masonic Center

An entire day fund raising. Yesterday, he was in Milawukee, Wisconsin, for “an official visit” at Master Lock. That day ended in California, with a few “campaign events.” No press.

Today is entirely devoted to fund raising. Tomorrow?

On Friday, the President will travel to the Seattle, Washington area where he will continue to discuss his blueprint for an economy built to last based on American manufacturing. He will also attend campaign events in the Seattle area before returning to Washington, D.C. later in the evening.

Those two official visits – on the first an last day- mean we get to pick up the cost of his trip. How much? Who knows, no one cares. Obama is Caesar, he does what he wants. And the rich and famous line up to line his pockets.In Hollywood:

When President Obama arrived Wednesday evening in Hollywood for a pair of fundraisers, 1,000 supporters greeted him at the home of a soap opera producer. Foo Fighters jammed a live set. Actor George Clooney was among the 80 guests who joined the president for a $35,800-a-plate dinner.

On tap for today and tomorrow?

In San Francisco on Thursday, the president’s supporters will hear a performance by the former frontman for Soundgarden, Chris Cornell.

And on Friday, Seattle band the Head and the Heart will perform at a fundraiser in Bellevue, Wash.

Obama is holding eight fundraisers during a three-day trip to Wisconsin, California and Washington state to benefit the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising account for the president’s re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The president raised more than $220 million in 2011 in preparation for the general election race.

It’s a shame Obama can’t campaign much, you know, because of his “full time job.”

Foch You 2013 Budget

Wow, Obama really sucks at creating a budget:

To wit: President Obama’s first budget projected 2010–2012 annual deficits of $1.17 trillion, $912 billion, and $581 billion, respectively. The actual deficits for those years were $1.29 trillion, $1.3 trillion, and (a projected) $1.33 trillion.

$1.17 trilllion – $1.29 trillion
$912 billion – $1.3 trillion
$581 billion- $1.33 trillion

Math is hard.

Now for a laugh- remember this?

In February of 2009, the president vowed “to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office” by making “difficult decisions” and facing “challenges we’ve long neglected,” so that our children wouldn’t be left “with a debt they cannot repay.”

He hasn’t made one difficult decision yet. He’s made nothing but political decisions, those he hopes will keep him and Michelle dining on Kobe beef for four more years.

All you need to know about the Obama budget is right here. It’s sad and ugly.

He wants to raise taxes on and he STILL can’t get our deficit under control, and adds $6.7 TRILLION of new debt.

So – quick review:
Higher taxes
Increased spending
Debt – still rising

And, the “Buffet rule” – of course:

Obama calls for taxing dividends as ordinary income, essentially raising the top rate all the way to 39.6 percent. And then when you tack on the 3.8 percentage point Obamacare surtax — and an additional 1.2 percentage point itemized deduction phase-out for high-end taxpayers — the rate rises to 44.6 percent.

Fairness, you haters.

Houston, We Have a Problem

We are disabled. We’ve got a national epidemic of becoming disabled. The ravages of (?) are overtaking our country. We MUST find the cause of disability. It’s become a budget quagmire.

In 1988, 4 percent of men and 2 percent of women aged 40 to 59 received disability benefits. By 2008, the men’s rate was almost 6 percent and the women’s, 5 percent.

In ten short years, the rate of disability has risen 2% for men an 3% of women.

Through the 1970s, strokes, heart attacks and cancer were major causes. Now, mental problems (depression, personality disorder) and musculoskeletal ailments (back pain, joint stress) dominate (54 percent of awards in 2009, nearly double 1981’s 28 percent).

Disability has become long-term unemployment insurance. An once ON disability, people simply remain … forever.

On average, recipients start receiving payments at age 49 and keep them until 66, when they switch to Social Security’s retiree benefits.

And reform? Nearly impossible. Why? Because it’s lucrative. For the lawyers.

In a series of well-reported stories, The Wall Street Journal’s Damian Paletta showed that the system is open to abuse. But it’s also lucrative. Lawyers and other advocates are entitled to 25 percent of back benefits up to $6,000 per case. Their total payments approach $1.5 billion annually.

The disability program (ss combined with the medicare they automatically qualify for after two years on disability) costs every household $1,500 a year.

Justifiable Homicide on the Rise in Detroit

Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder is preparing to announce a state-led effort to tackle the crippling crime in it’s most dangerous cities- Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, and Pontiac.

In Detroit, unemployment is at 20%, and homicides rose 12% last year to 344. Residents are taking matters into their own hands: 10% of all homicides in the city last year were ruled justifiable. “A lot of citizens are just protecting themselves from home invasion,” said the deputy police chief, Morris Wells.

I think he should just get more guns into the hands of responsible citizens, so they can protect themselves from the violence around them. I can’t find any national stats on this, but 10% seems pretty high.